Famous High Street Brands associated with Childrens Fight Club
I watched in amazement at Panorama http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/6921555.stm last night and am so furious and angry at the arrogance of Google’s YouTube and the independent website LiveLeak at knowingly facilitating people to upload their filming of kids violently attacking other kids to the point where by a few that have been filmed, we hear, had been hospitalised, some of these young kids have been so traumatised that the psychological damage has already been done and all in the name of “entertainment”.
One family interviewed have been completely devastated when their young teenage son became a victim of bullying, it was bad enough that the frequent physical attacks were happening, but to have a crowd of jeering onlookers egging the ferocious attacks on so they could be filmed and uploaded on to yourtube, so the attack can be seen globally across the world.
Teenagers are amongst the most vulnerable members of our community, it’s a time in their lives where peer pressure is the be all and end all, it’s the time in their lives where they are looking for self identity, self value and worth. It’s the toughest part of their lives where they are changing physically and emotionally, they are making the journey from becoming children to young adults. Experiences like being bullied will always follow them throughout their adult lives. The suicide rate amongst teenagers because of bullying is so high. Child line has spent years in supporting these young vulnerable people, but youtube has just wiped all that hard work out because as the report highlights, they don’t remove offensive videos, they think this is perfectly acceptable material and leave the onus on the general public to determine what stays and what goes “Rachel Whetstone told me it was up to the community who use the site to decide when something was inappropriate”(source BBC panorama website). As the panorama report showed, even the films that were flagged by the general public as offensive and should be removed, were still left on the site.
If this were not sickening enough, in the midst of these violent films, there were famous High Street Brands adverts being served up “blue-chip brands – including British Telecom, John Lewis, Carphone Warehouse and Orange – came to be splashed across an internet website called Pure Street Fights.” When asked why on earth they would be seen associated with what is not too far off child abuse, the predictable answer was “they had no knowledge of the adverts’ appearance on the site and have launched investigations.” Some sacked their advertising agencies “Almost all blamed rogue advertising networks for putting them onto the website. Both Carphone Warehouse and O2 have sacked the advertising networks responsible.”(source panorama website) And this one may sound familiar “Guy Philpott of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), which represents online advertising companies, said that brands were often not aware of where advertising networks were placing their adverts.” (Panorama)I wonder if Rachel Whetstone of youtube and Hayden Hewitt, the co-founder of LiveLeak would remain so arrogant if it were their children being filmed taking a beating? You both have seriously lost the plot and you are facilitating nothing short of child abuse (teenagers are still minors and as adults, we should and have a duty to be protecting them) and for those high street brands not knowing where your adverts are being shown, is no excuse, do you really need clicks that badly?
Im disgusted!
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Didn’t watch the programme Jess, but totally agree with you – it’s one of the main reasons I don’t let my 12 year old use YouTube – someone on the A4U forum posted a link to something similar.