Posting Videos of Children - WARNING.

[Belly Love]

So, I was randomly looking at youtube vids of belly dancers and some child dancers came up. Occaisonally I look at these and think they are cute. I do have in the back of my mind that it may not be the best idea for people to post these vids because of the perverts out there, but I thought what are you gonna do, hide all children from the public?

Anyway, I came across another child belly dance video and could not believe the sick comments I came across. When I went to the commenter(s) pages, they were full of seemingly harmless child videos with tons of disgusting comments that these sick people are using for their own perversions. There are thousands and thousands of them out there and all these child videos feed their sickness (a lot of them are of little girls dancing around). Because there is no outright nudity, Youtube has a hard time doing anything about it and the more there is out there, the harder it is for them to stop it. But from my research, I don't think youtube is doing much to stop it.

Please, I beg anyone reading this, never post videos of your children or teens on youtube (especially if they are showing any skin). I didn't see what the big deal was for quite a long time, but after reading the sick comments about what these grown men want to do to these young children, I cannot believe how ignorant I've been.

For those of you who don't agree, think about this: What if your child were just sitting on a park bench in their summer outfit and a child molester was sitting right by them, thinking disgusting sexual thoughts. How would you feel? You may not stop taking your kid to the park, but you would certainly want to do something about the man sitting there. What if you couldn't? Would you keep taking your kid to that park where the child molester sits and waits every day? Well, Youtube is a park full of thousands of child molesters waiting for you to show them your kid.

 

[Imeera]

I think Youtube is a problem for all kinds of things. Normally they are things like religious intolerance, racism ect On the internet it just seems like more. I understand what your saying, and I hate it too. Youtube is more worried about copyrights than people abusing the site, it is wrong. I really hate people looking at adult women like that let alone children. It sends a shiver down my spine and I feel sick just thinking about it. But seriously, do not worry. The sick masses are on the internet and only on the internet. The sick people who you talk about are no different to the accumulated masses of racist people ect from all over the world. They accumulate there because its well, the internet. It has no reflection on what its like where you live, these kinds of people are usually rarer than you think. As much as I am sure mothers and fathers would want to, you can't keep your child locked away for fear of what might happen, in truth there is more chance of an Earthquake then you encountering a pervert like that. But yes, no one realised how bad it is until something like this happens. I didn't realise until my partner told me when we were having a discussion about human instinct of how many people just don't give two pennies to help a child if they were obviously being kidnaped. There was a study, a child was (staged of course) taken and recorded how many people reacted to help that child. Out of ten times only one person one of thoes times actually did anything. I could not believe that. I was just as shocked at your post, I did not realise Youtube would turn a blind eye to this, racism and religious banterings yes but this? Its so despicable.

 

[~Diana~]

You tube is a site for everyone with some kind of perversion. The main problem is that people post videos to share with family but they don't set any security settings for it. They just make them open. Others just don't think of what kind of person is going to be able to look at those videos. I'm not a child but I have experiences some perverts who sent very rude comments and wants to my videos.

Youtube does not turn a blind eye Imeera but they also can't look through every single comment and remove what they think is bad. That is left up to the responsibility of the person who posts the video. I personally removed those comments and I moderate all comments to my videos. You can also flag very inappropriate comments or videos to youtube and they will deal with it. It is obvious that the people who post these videos are not moderating comments nor doing anything of the sort to remove them or stop them.

Youtube also can't just remove an account over comments unless flagged by someone and their looking into it shows the comments cross the line. They will however remove any account that has obvious videos of child pornography, child molestation, etc. Again of the millions of videos uploaded each day, someone has to flag it for them in order to bring it to their attention. I have personally flagged some videos and individuals to youtube that was not appropriate at all. Youtube cannot fix everything and it is not fair to blame them soly on it. Everyone who uses youtube must take some responsibility to keep these things from happening.

 

[Mosaic]

So, I was randomly looking at youtube vids of belly dancers and some child dancers came up. Occaisonally I look at these and think they are cute. I do have in the back of my mind that it may not be the best idea for people to post these vids because of the perverts out there, but I thought what are you gonna do, hide all children from the public?

Anyway, I came across another child belly dance video and could not believe the sick comments I came across. When I went to the commenter(s) pages, they were full of seemingly harmless child videos with tons of disgusting comments that these sick people are using for their own perversions. There are thousands and thousands of them out there and all these child videos feed their sickness (a lot of them are of little girls dancing around). Because there is no outright nudity, Youtube has a hard time doing anything about it and the more there is out there, the harder it is for them to stop it. But from my research, I don't think youtube is doing much to stop it.

Please, I beg anyone reading this, never post videos of your children or teens on youtube (especially if they are showing any skin). I didn't see what the big deal was for quite a long time, but after reading the sick comments about what these grown men want to do to these young children, I cannot believe how ignorant I've been.

For those of you who don't agree, think about this: What if your child were just sitting on a park bench in their summer outfit and a child molester was sitting right by them, thinking disgusting sexual thoughts. How would you feel? You may not stop taking your kid to the park, but you would certainly want to do something about the man sitting there. What if you couldn't? Would you keep taking your kid to that park where the child molester sits and waits every day? Well, Youtube is a park full of thousands of child molesters waiting for you to show them your kid.

I suggest you flag those inappropriate comments so that you tube can deal with them, as cheart suggested. At least you may stop a few of those creeps in their tracks.
~Mosaic

 

[goddessyasaman]

Yes when it comes to the internet there is not much that will or can be done about this kind of thing, not surprised really. I was belly dancing at a young age but I was not aloud to record and post videos of it nor was I aloud to dance in a public place. I understood why my mother was like that and that right there is one of the reasons. People like this are all over the internet and in places of our daily lives, some places worse then others, You have to watch your kids, I heard my Mother have conversations with other parents about that, they would say "I can't watch them all the time", and my mom would say "If you are not someone else will" and she is right. I live in Md and I at one point lived in Harford county my mother did sercurity at the mall in that county and she found out that it was a hot spot for pedophiles, at the mall for the security they had a list of pedophiles(which was in the hundreds mind you), my mom would see these people come and sit in the mall watching these children, it's bad, but you have parents taking thier kids there and dropping them off :naghty:. You should not leave your kids alone like that, I really can not stand it when I see a five, six, seven year old (the number goes higher for me) outside by themselves, I do not agree with this, you as a parent are leaving the possibility that something can happen. Watching your child and knowing where there are at all times can be done, it's a matter of will you do it. So I do not think that these videos should be posted really, there is nothing wrong with a child learning belly dance but I think performing should wait till they are in there late teens thats just me.

 

[Greek Bonfire]

Youtube is more worried about copyrights than people abusing the site, it is wrong.

You got that right. Luckily, we can flag some of these videos and hopefully if they get too many, it may get their attention. But unless someone flat out sues YouTube and wins, copyright will be their No. 1 priority.

 

[shiradotnet]

I remember many years ago there was an issue in the news in which some pervert went to high school sports events, took photos of the cheerleaders doing normal cheerleading, and then cropped them to show only the girls' crotches and sold the pictures to other perverts. (The girls were fully clothed in normal cheerleading briefs, but the use of cropping to show only the crotch created a very skeevy effect.) I think the parents tried to use the legal system to stop the guy. I don't remember how it all turned out.

The moral, of course, is that activities most people would consider perfectly wholesome for girls are viewed in a very different way by perverts. So parents need to consider what risks they're willing to take with their children.

And any belly dance teachers who might be arranging public performances for their classes need to make sure that if they have children as part of their group, SOMEONE is specifically assigned to watch those children every minute. If the parent can't come along to the performance, then someone else needs to do it. Someone who won't be on stage performing.

 

[Belly Love]

Lots of good input.

I suggest you flag those inappropriate comments so that you tube can deal with them, as cheart suggested. At least you may stop a few of those creeps in their tracks.
~Mosaic

I spent about an hour flagging And then I couldn't read or look at any more, I just couldn't take it.

Luckily, we can flag some of these videos and hopefully if they get too many, it may get their attention. But unless someone flat out sues YouTube and wins, copyright will be their No. 1 priority.

Yup.

activities most people would consider perfectly wholesome for girls are viewed in a very different way by perverts. So parents need to consider what risks they're willing to take with their children.

Exactly.

No one can be perfect and shelter their children all of the time, but everyone can make more of an effort to protect innocent children, whether it be their own or someone elses.

 

[Belly Love]

seriously, do not worry. The sick masses are on the internet and only on the internet. It has no reflection on what its like where you live, these kinds of people are usually rarer than you think. in truth there is more chance of an Earthquake then you encountering a pervert like that.

These sick people are definitely not just on the interent. They are out in the real world doing very sick things to children all of the time and not only does the internet fuel their disgusting desires, but makes doing these things more accessible. It is 100% a reflection of the type of people who are out there- they are everywhere. It is not rare whatsoever. It's something like 1 in every 5 children are sexually abused at some point during their childhood, maybe even more seeing as often times it's not even reported and other times (like on the internet or some perv at the park taking pics) they aren't even aware it's happening. There is FAR more of a chance of someone being sexually abused than experiencing an earthquake.

Child pornography like pics and vids, feeds these sickos. It makes them want to act on abusing a child even more. Are you not aware of all the children being sold into sex slavery? This is a booming business all over the world. It even happens in the suburbs of the States. You know why they can't stop it? Because there are soooo many people doing it. Millions.

 

[LilithNoor]

It's something like 1 in every 5 children are sexually abused at some point during their childhood,

Very true, but sadly the vast majority of those children are abused by people they know and trust, often members of their own family. I've spent six years working in child protection of one form or another, and for every child who was the victim of abuse from an unknown or unrelated adult, there were probably close to ten who had been abused by a family member

The public awareness of protecting your children from strangers is thankfully getting better and better, but a lot of parents struggle to accept the dangers posed by a family member or new partner.

 

[LadyFatima]

Wow, I can't believe it, that's so disgusting. . .

It makes me mad because I've seen a few of the videos of children belly dancing too, and a couple of them are really good dancers, but they're only like 5, 6 and 7 years old. To people like us who understand and respect belly dancing as an art, that's all we see, is art. But there's always going to be those ignorant, pathetic ***holes who take something beautiful and ruin it for everyone else with their sick fantasies.

In all honesty, it was one of the reasons why I almost decided NOT to become a belly dancer. Because as hard as it is for me to say it, we can go on and on forever calling belly dancing a beautiful thing, a sacred dance, something to be honored and respected, something that's meant for fun and not meant to be sexual tidilation, etc. . . .we're never going to be able to convince certain people of these things, they'll see us as they want to see us: either as beautiful and talented dancers or as glorified strippers.

And even though perverts who prey on kids is 10 times worse (to me at least) it still bugs me how little respect people have for the female body. I was on a different site/thread the other day, and some idiotic baboon had the nerve to ask "Why do women choose to dress themselves a certain way, but then get mad if a man tries to hit on them or makes comments about the way she's dressed? She's basically asking for that type of attention right?"



Now I'm all for women who choose to dress modestly (myself included) and choose to cover themselves up in public, that's totally understandable. But I REFUSE to buy into this idea that female form is solely used for temptation purposes, and as such women should never show any confidence in their bodies, because to do so would only mean that she's trying to tempt/sexually excite someone. . .

Look, the way I see it, I don't care if I'm wearing my belly dancing costume, or wearing a baggy hoodie and sweat pants, you can think whatever you want about me. Fantasize about my body, undress me with your eyes. Just don't let me HEAR you making nasty comments about me. And for your sake, PLEASE don't think that you have the honor and pleasure of putting your hands on me. I'm a generally peaceful and soft spoken person, but I don't mind acting out in public when it comes to putting people in check

 

[Belly Love]

LadyFatima- I'm with you 100%

I wanted to put this thread out there because I know that sometimes it takes something being brought to one's attention for people to actually think about it and/or do something about it... which is exactly what happened to me. Instead of it being brought to my attention though, I accidently stumbled upon it.

You made me think of this fictional movie I saw a few years back. It was about this 11yr old(?) girl who got raped. I watched the behind the scenes and they surveyed a bunch of men and women and asked them if the young girl was being too sexy or being provocative. The vast majority of men said "yes" and the vast majority of women said "no". I agreed with the women. It's like people project their perverted minds onto others- that's a huge part of the problem. Because men are easily aroused, they are typically the ones who do this.

 

[Yame]

Regardless of the potential dangers of posting videos and pictures of children online (everything is potentially dangerous, each individual has to weigh in the pros and cons of something like that and try to reach a balance between putting their child in danger and being overprotective), there is one facet of this issue that I think is very relevant but rarely mentioned: the autonomy of the child.

As we modernize, we are moving away from these concepts... moving toward a world with less privacy and where people have less and less control over their image due to things being posted about them without their permission. I find this unfortunate. I don't like that there are hundreds of pictures of me on other people's facebooks that were posted without my permission... On the ones I've been tagged and notified about, I always have the choice to ask the person to take them down (which I don't do because I don't want to seem like a jerk), but then I am sure there are others I don't even know about... people can just take your picture and post it, and you have no control over it.

People do the same thing with their children. I think sometimes it gets to a point where it's an invasion of the child's privacy... that child may not be able to make their own decisions now, but s/he will grow into an autonomous person who might want to be able to have some control over what's out there about their person. If you post every little detail about your child's life and every picture you take of them, then people will have way more information about your child than s/he might want when s/he is older.

I get that we think our children are cute, we want to share their pictures and their videos with our friends... people have done this before the internet and will continue to do so. But before the internet, just the people in your immediate circle saw those things. It wasn't out there for the world to see.

OTOH, there are a lot of cute videos of little kids doing/saying funny things on youtube that are huge hits. So, I'm kind of ambivalent on this issue.

 

[Erik]

Please, I beg anyone reading this, never post videos of your children or teens on youtube (especially if they are showing any skin). I didn't see what the big deal was for quite a long time, but after reading the sick comments about what these grown men want to do to these young children, I cannot believe how ignorant I've been.

Belly Love, please don't blame yourself. I glanced at this thread when you started it. I found it disturbing and haven't been following it, but tonight it jumped into my head and would not go away. You did a very good thing in bringing this up. I completely agree with you about not posting videos of children. It's a shame, but that's just the kind of world we live in.

The videos I watch typically don't have children in them (offhand I can only think of one in my favorites list; the Volkswagen commercial with the little boy trying to be Darth Vader....hilarious), so this came as something of a surprise, but not quite as much of a surprise as it might have been. I've seen many videos which I didn't consider sexual and don't know why anyone would, but many of the comments were written by individuals who are undoubtedly sick.

Not sure what should be done about teens who make their own videos and want to share them, like the one posted here recently. I watched it and didn't notice anything objectionable about it. My first reaction would be to say there is nothing wrong with posting it. And yet......those are not my kids. I never had any kids. I wonder, if they were my kids, would I be okay with it? The answer is: I don't know.

I'm grateful that I don't have to deal with it, but I can tell you that if I did have kids there is absolutely NO WAY that I would post videos of them (or even photos for that matter) anywhere on the Web. Even if I could know that my children were safe, images of them could serve as an inspiration for crimes committed against someone else's children, and that's not acceptable either.

 

[Zorba]

Gets on soapbox:

One more time people. YouTube is the cesspool of the Internet. I'd *NEVER* post *ANY* of my videos there...

Gets off soapbox...

FaceBook, MySpace and similar aren't a whole lot better...

 

[teela]

I do not post anything on the internet via youtube, facebook, my space, etc. I know there are privacy choices but I don't trust the people who run these things to not redo their site and open it to the public. A search can bring up many things that are normally on private because of the way search engines run.
Once something appears on the internet, it can be copied, edited, changed so that it is no longer innocent. We do have some very disturbing people out there and many don't look as if they'd do something nasty. Due to working in education, I've know folks on the list of convicted sexual perps and one was a grandfather who seemed so benign but had sexually abused his daughters and granddaughters.
Remember there are folks who run all sorts of contests (even for bellydance) where they are looking for something sexy that may border on soft/hard porn and there is always going to be someone who is desperate for fame and will enter it or will enter their child in the hopes of winning something.

 

[LilithNoor]

YouTube is the cesspool of the Internet.

Amen. I find Youtube a fantastic resource for dance and music, but it's also a magnet for every mouthbreathing cave dweller with the IQ of yeast.

I've posted a couple of things up there, but I make good use of the disable comments feature. Most of the fun for the walking examples of why there should be more chlorine in the gene pool is in engaging with other primitive life forms to cause as much upset as possible. No comments section, no problem!

 

[Belly Love]

Amen. I find Youtube a fantastic resource for dance and music, but it's also a magnet for every mouthbreathing cave dweller with the IQ of yeast.

I've posted a couple of things up there, but I make good use of the disable comments feature. Most of the fun for the walking examples of why there should be more chlorine in the gene pool is in engaging with other primitive life forms to cause as much upset as possible. No comments section, no problem!

Ha!

Is there a way to keep your videos from being copied? I would think they would have something to block that... maybe not.

 

[LilithNoor]

I'm not techy enough to know if there's a way to physically prevent someone copying a video that you put online, but if they then reproduce it on Youtube I'd imagine you'd have good grounds for asking for it to be removed.

Inshallah, it's never been a problem for me.

 

[~Diana~]

Ha!

Is there a way to keep your videos from being copied? I would think they would have something to block that... maybe not.

no there is no way to keep your videos from being copies. Trust me I know how that is done (copying videos) and there is just no way to stop that ever.