by Cody Hodge

Created on: November 06, 2009

Should there be moderators on the forums of Youtube? Youtube is a very interesting phenomenon when it comes to allowing people to express themselves. Having moderators would seemingly be very ironic taking into account the very spirit in which Youtube was created, however, the question still remains as to whether or not moderators should be included on a site like Youtube.

I would venture a guess that the first reason that people would want to have moderators at Youtube is that anyone can use it. This means that young kids can use it, and young kids do use the site, or appear in videos where their parents use them as a prop, or some other means in the video. Whenever you have kids around, you automatically want to start to restrict what you say around some people.

The second reason is that Youtube is big business, and as such, it has a huge risk if anything were to happen. If Youtube were to be sued, they could risk having to pay millions in damages. Would Youtube want to risk itself to that as opposed to simply having moderators present on the site? I would think you would want to reduce your risk as much as possible.

Another good reason to have moderators on forums is that you don't want people to assume that they have the right to do or say whatever they want. Youtube is supposed to be a site where the average guy can simply make a video, and put it up without having to deal with harassment. In reality though, there is always the chance that some random person will same something racist or inflammatory and someone could carry that out.

The problem with the Internet is that people think that they could say anything and they wouldn't start anything. The problem is that people tend to take what one guy says on a message board, and might try to carry it out. If some guy called for a riot in the streets of New York, and some idiot decided that it would be cool, you never know what you could start.

Whenever you have a popular place where people can come and post whatever they want, you need to have someone watching. I don't mean someone watching to censor, but simply to make sure that everyone can enjoy the site, and that they are not doing anything that could put someone in danger. That is the best reason why moderators should be used at any site with a forum.

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