Friday, November 22, 2019

Social medias' management in foreign countries


Warning: the video linked above contains graphic images. Watch at your own discretion.
First, some backstory: there’s obviously no market for dog meat in Vietnam, but there are demands. Thus, dog thieves who steal dogs from local residents and sell them illegally to butchers in another province can make a lot of money.
This video depicts a graphic aftermath of a dog heist gone wrong in Phu Tho, a Vietnamese province, in which two dog thieves are seen either severely injured, or possibly dead, and stuffed into a dirty cart along with their bloodhound (this is a dog that the thieves use to sniff out other dogs within the area). It was an ugly sight. Even more horrifying is the fact that with just the right Vietnamese keywords, many more videos of this kind, even more gory and upsetting, will easily pop up in one's search.
Now imagine your younger siblings or nieces, in an unfortunate turn of events, stumbling upon this video completely by chance. Imagine the sheer terror they’ll be faced with, and the mental trauma that can possibly result from said experience. This hypothetical but completely viable threat raises an important question: how do international media platforms govern their content in a market outside of their HQ’s country?
Every once in a while, you’ll also encounter grotesque videos on Facebook in non-English accounts in which a motorist’s leg is completely severed by a traffic accident, or in which a woman lactates streams after streams of mucus in front of the camera (no, there will be no link this time. I do have them but you guys definitely don’t need to see them.) Judging by how this particular Youtube video has more than 8000 views and has been up for over 4 years, I’d say Youtube’s foreign management, especially in Vietnam, has failed the hardest among all.
This failure raises many particularly interesting questions about Youtube’s management system: Is its HQ in California responsible for greenlighting or blocking every video submitted to the system? Is the process completely automatic and computer-run? Or are there branches of management in each country’s market it has expanded to? If so, how effective is the communication between said branches and the HQ? If it is indeed a fault with management, can it potentially be exploited by ill-willed individuals?
Let me know what you guys think. Have you ever encountered a grotesque video on any media platform you browse? Was it a video in a foreign language? What steps do you think can be taken to solve this issue?

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