YouTube Rejects Calls to Monitor Videos

Video sharing website YouTube is refusing to filter out threatening material, despite calls for more restrictions in the wake of the school shooting in Finland.

Pekka-Eric Auvinen, 18, used YouTube to publicize his plans to attack his high school in Tuusula, hours before he killed eight people then shot himself. But Peter Fleischer, privacy counsel at Google, which bought YouTube last year, said the website was not considering passing more information to the police to avert such events. "Logistically we couldn't do pre-screening," he said. "We don't want to become censors of the web."

Vetting every video on the site would prove a technical challenge, with more than seven hours of footage uploaded to YouTube every minute.

Auvinen's YouTube videos, posted using a pseudonym, featured specific details of his plans and images of him posing with a gun. They were removed from YouTube several hours after the killings.

Mr Fleischer said privacy was of paramount importance but admitted there was no blanket ban on passing on information. "If it were child pornography then we would inform the authorities immediately. In the case of somebody doing a video that looks something like hate speech, however, we would remove the account. In most of these cases we don't report it."

YouTube users can flag up anything of concern, particularly pornography, bullying and violence. Moderators then decide whether the material breaks YouTube's rules and often remove offending video in minutes. YouTube also employs filtering tools, mainly focused around child abuse and preventing copyright infringement.