a. re-posting videos
The paradox in starting a new account is that it’s not only done by the so-called ‘haters’, but also by the users whom account has been ‘fagged’. They do this in a way so that their audience can trace them back. For example, keeping the same name and adding something. So has the user ‘cha970’ turned into ‘cha9701’ and is currently available under ‘cha9704’. Her whole account exists of posting and re-posting episodes of ‘The L-Word’, a TV-series with lesbians in the lead roles. And as soon as her account is about to be deleted, she warns her subscribers by the means of a video. In which she tells that her account will be deleted and what her new account name will be. ‘Luvcats4’s account has been suspended, while ‘luvcats4again’ contains solely lesbian themed video clips. Amongst which a video called ” This Video May Not Be Suitable for Minors” YT Protest.” with this text on the side:
Every time you look around you see the words, “This video may not be suitable for minors” at the top of the screen. What bothers me is that a majority of these videos are either gay or lesbian and are quite tame in their content. To all you flaggers out there, come into the 21st Century. Don’t let homophobia rule YouTube.
Sometimes it isn’t the account that has been deleted, but just videos. Also in these cases this strategy is applied as well. For example, ‘ChrisCrocker’ reposts all his deleted videos under ‘ChrisCrockerDeleted’. Renaming accounts can also be done in advance of deletion in order that not all videos are gone when the account has been deleted. The user ‘mightyatomant’ also has an account under the name ‘mightyatomantagain’. Although she refers to the other on both sites and it’s quite clearly a way of categorizing her own content, it’s striking to see the different use in naming and tags.
b. hiding / controlling
Mightyatomant’s account is used to post clips from ‘The L Word’ (written full out in the title) and ‘Queer as Folk’ (abbreviated as ‘QAF’). While the ‘mightyatomantagain’ account is used to post lesbian themed movies, from which the titles are all abbreviated except for every first clip of a movie . This could be laziness of the user, seen the fact she had to make an average of ten posting per movie. But the specific use of tags stands out, for she tags a lot of movies with just the tag ‘movie’, while her first account has an average seven tags per videoclip. A tag like that in combination with an abbreviated title makes it hard for gay haters (also called ‘gay bashers’) to find the movie in order to flag it. Mightyatomantagain doesn’t do this consistently enough for it to be a strategy. She also sometimes uses just the tag ‘lesbian’, which is also notoriously used to attract users to porn videos. But the activity of specific tagging is seen more. Previously mentioned user ‘cha9704’ avoids using the tag ‘lesbian’ and with her history of multiple suspensions, being suspended at least four times and re-posting at least 74 videoclips every time, it seems she knows what “aggravates” gay haters and/or allows the YouTube staff to suspend her.
There are different functions tags perform for bookmarks as identified by Golder and Huberman (Golder, 2006). This list is extended with an 8th function by Tisselli (Tisselli, 2008), which recognizes the strategic role tags can play as been described above;
I. Identifying What (or Who) it is About.
Overwhelmingly, tags identify the topics of bookmarked items. These items include common nouns of many levels of specificity, as well as many proper nouns, in the case of content discussing
people or organizations.
II. Identifying What it Is.
Tags can identify what kind of thing a bookmarked item is, in addition to what it is about. For
example, article, blog and book.
III. Identifying Who Owns It.
Some bookmarks are tagged according to who owns or created the bookmarked content. Given the apparent popularity of weblogs among Delicious users, identifying content ownership can be particularly important.
IV. Refining Categories.
Some tags do not seem to stand alone and, rather than establish categories themselves, refine or
qualify existing categories. Numbers, especially round numbers (e.g. 25, 100), can perform this function.
V. Identifying Qualities or Characteristics.
Adjectives such as scary, funny, stupid, inspirational tag bookmarks according to the tagger’s opinion of the content.
VI. Self Reference.
Tags beginning with “my,” like mystuff and mycomments identify content in terms of its relation
to the tagger.
VII. Task Organizing.
When collecting information related to performing a task, that information might be tagged according to that task, in order to group that information together. Examples include toread, jobsearch. Grouping task-related information can be an important part of organizing while performing a task.
VIII. Strategic.
A tag can be created and disseminated for strategic purposes
The best example of hiding is done by the user account ‘mgsg07’, for she only allows other users to see her playlists after they’ve become friends with her on YouTube. Consequently her channel contains a mere 40 lesbian themed videos for everyone to see, while her playlists contains 287 videos which can only be viewed by friends and don’t show up in search results.
She quite consistently tags her movies with just the tag ‘Movie’, with exception of music videos. She shows luvcats4again’s YT protest video on her channel, which indicates that she’s aware of (and active in) the ”fagging” discussion.
YouTube participants can broaden or limit physical access to their videos and thus create larger or smaller media circuits by using technical features such as limited “friends-only” viewing or strategic tagging. (…) For example, one video maker used his YouTube name as his only tag. Unless one were a close enough friend to know this tag, it would be difficult to find his videos using the tagging system. (Lange, 2007)
I first called this strategy just ‘hiding’, but having read the article by P.G. Lange I added ‘controlling’. Because as the excerpt above shows, strategic / limited tagging is not only a way of getting lost in the mass (hiding), but also a way to control how easily a user can be found or not. Tagging can also be used in other strategic ways as the use of the tag ‘thinkflickrthink’ on Flickr shows; which was part of the reactions of Flickr users who, in an uncoordinated way, responded to a change in its filtering policy in Germany (Tisselli, 2008). When Flickr announced on June 12th 2007 new restrictions for its German users, which would prevent them from viewing content marked (by Flickr users themselves) as inappropriate, or “unsafe”. (see 4.1.1 SafeSearch)
c. reacting
Another strategy against ”fagging” is addressing the issue directly, like previously mentioned user Grimace has done. Or posting videos about ‘Gay Hate’ on YouTube in general, without talking about the flagging system. As did the previously mentioned ChrisCrocker with “Chris Crocker – Gay HATE on Youtube!” , in which he talks about hate speech, safety and the lack of media attention to this subject. With the exception of an article in the Advocate called “Homophobosphere” , of which he posted the URL next to the video. More users address the issue of ”fagging” and gay hate on YouTube in their videopostings . But, as many of them claim, the issue should get more media attention and to be taken more seriously. By joining the discussion, starting a platform and/or openly blogging about the subject matter. Just as YouTube does with other subjects like terrorism , American politics and wars (a.o. Iraq, Myanmar and Dafur).