4 min read
“There are more than one billion unique users who visit YouTube each month. Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on You Tube. That is almost an hour for every person on earth. 100 hours of video are uploaded to You Tube every minute. 80% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US, from 61 countries across 61 languages. According to Neilsen, YouTube reaches more US adults ages 18-24 than any cable network. Millions of subscriptions happen each day. The number of daily subscriptions is up more than 4x since last year. Thousands of channels are making six figures a year.” Via Youtube Stats
No, YouTube did not pay me to advertise for it. I am merely stating the facts that authorities casually hush over and bury under religious conflicts which are rather more based on political interests. Okay, before the *religious sermons* start, let me state my reasons.
First of all, it is easy to block the falsely believed facts with harsh behavior but it is difficult to defend the true facts in a peaceful manner while listening the trash talk. The extravagant protests will only fuel the efforts of those who want to tarnish your identity.
Secondly, people all around the world are fed with the false depictions through digital media every day. In such a scenario, choosing not to share your side of the story will leave you nowhere; no matter how many diplomatic efforts are made.
Trust me when I say, that, unblocking YouTube will not only be beneficial but also helpful in developing veracious identity for us to the outside world. You may still be using YouTube through proxy servers but the benefits are limited and you may even end up with malfunctioned Internet connection once in a while.
I skipped over a few lectures of matrices in high school which haunted me in my first semester at college. I was searching for the simplest possible explanation for all the weird row/column rules when I stumbled upon some YouTube lectures. Those lectures not only cleared my concepts to the core but also helped me secure ‘A’ grade in the subject. From that moment onwards, YouTube became my primary source for tutorials and I learned far more from YouTube than from any teacher at college. Even though, nowadays, many different video distribution platforms are available; none of them can compete in scale and content to YouTube channels. Most of the video tutorials from various educational platforms can be accessed on YouTube at all times while they may not be available on the respective website.
The YouTube ban in the country is not only voiding our youth with possibility of an income through a YouTube channel but also an advertisement platform for small businesses. YouTube have more than a million advertisers using Google ad platforms for their businesses. Thousands of advertisers are displaying their product in-front of millions of people around the world. Then why are we not taking advantage of such a potential resource?
If we unblock YouTube, we can produce more individuals like Zaid Ali and Syed Muzamil Ali Zaidi who can change our negative image through their hilarious content and video making skills. We can show case our side of the world, our culture, our traditions, our beauty, our scientists, our research, our startups, our life style and nullify the bad depictions on digital media such as TV and Internet.
Bruno Torturra, founder of Media Ninja, shared in his Ted Talk, a new way of broadcasting national events using a smartphone and live streaming on web. Anyone can capture the reality and stream it directly on the web without any fancy software editing or heavy equipment. Taking the idea from this talk, YouTube can also be used to stream live events such as well-known cultural and sports event of our country which will only let the world see the truth instead of being deceived with cooked-up lies from someone else’s camera lens.
Therefore, blocking content over internet will not do any good to anyone. If you truly want to have an upper hand over the silent digital war, let your people share their stories so that they can silence the ones which offend your beliefs and your identity.
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