Ala’a Basatneh and Social Media Platforms

Ala’a Basatneh uses Facebook and Youtube to organize and spread awareness of protests in Syria. Social media platforms are an excellent way to spread awareness of tragedy and propagate political activism, but, by nature, it is at the mercy of those social media companies.

Recently, Youtube rolled out changes in its algorithms that were intended to demonetize or remove videos glorifying extremist views and violent tragedies. Unfortunately, since Youtube is so large and its content so diverse there were a lot of errors. The most notable of which were videos like Casey Neistat’s charity promotion for mass shooting victims getting demonetized but Jimmy Kimmel’s video about the Las Vegas shooting still had a GMC ad. Other news videos spreading awareness, but not promoting tragedies also faced demonetization or removal.

Activists like Ala’a Basatneh will likely continue to face these complex and emergent issues that social media platforms have yet to address properly. While social media platforms like Facebook and Youtube are fantastic for spreading awareness, it isn’t necessarily even in their best interest to continue hosting these videos from a monetary standpoint. This begs the question, is this the best sustainable way to promote awareness?

Casey Neistat on Youtube demonetization: