鼓励将“贼手”伸向华人 YouTube执意留它！？
近日，YouTube上一首针对华人，具有种族主义色彩的歌曲再次引发轩然大波，也令本就脆弱的“仇恨亚裔犯罪”神经变得更为敏感。
撤不撤已纠结数年
这首宣扬将“贼手”伸向华人的歌曲名为《Meet the Flockers》，创作人为美国非洲裔Hip Hop歌手YG，于2014年3月18日发行，歌词没有丝毫隐晦，开门见山就把盗窃对象直指华人社区。
“首先找到一个华人社区，
因为他们不相信银行……
按下门铃，确定没人……
去拿珠宝、还有现金……”
如此露骨的表述和详实的细节描写，彷佛就是教唆他人如何盗窃华人家庭的“罪恶教科书”。
歌曲发布后，公众特别是广大华人可谓群情激昂。如果你们不能理解和尊重我们的谦卑和隐忍，那也请不要利用它宣扬并引导其他人做如此恶毒的事情。
随后的两年时间里，歌曲在YouTube的点击量超过15万，并有700多人点赞。各类华人团体纷纷组织到YouTube举报抗议，据理力争让网站将歌曲下架。美国联邦调查局（FBI）费城办公室探员当时也曾在回复当地华人团体的举报时表示，这首歌的歌词低俗且令人担心，将对此开展调查，但歌曲是否下架则超出了FBI的权限。最终，一切无疾而终。
该歌曲再次被提及，与近期全美数起针对亚裔的暴力犯罪有着直接的关系。
目前，该歌曲已开始在YouTube引发纷争。针对一些员工要求公司高管从平台上移除该歌曲的要求，公司“动之以理、晓之以情”般的拒绝了。
真的是于情于理、无论如何都要保留该歌曲吗？公司高管表示，这段视频是无礼的，也给很多人带来了痛苦，特别是在当前针对亚裔暴力事件频繁的特殊事情。但经过长时间的讨论，我们决定将视频保留，这样做，是为了今后不会因为类似事件删除其他更多作品。
一名不赞成下架歌曲的公司高管还称，自己的妻子就是亚裔，言下之意是他能对大家的心情“感同身受”。但正所谓“不鸣则已一鸣惊人”，一些员工对高管如此高调的“博同情”并不买账，“有一名亚裔的妻子能证明什么？”“虽然家庭成员没有亚裔，但大家都会有亚裔朋友，这难道是我们保留歌曲的原因？”“荒谬的理由！”
我们来看一下回复的全文内容：
Read the full email explaining YouTube’s rationale here:
Hi everyone,
Thank you for raising this issue. We lead YouTube’s Trust & Safety and Content Policy teams that are responsible for creating and enforcing the content policies that govern YouTube.
We’ll start by saying we find this video to be highly offensive and understand it is painful for many to watch, including many in Trust & Safety and especially given the ongoing violence against the Asian community. One of the biggest challenges of working in Trust & Safety is that sometimes we have to leave up content we disagree with or find offensive.
Our hate speech policy prohibits content promoting violence or hatred against protected groups, for attributes like race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and expression. Sometimes videos that otherwise violate our policies are allowed to stay up if they have Educational, Documentary, Scientific or Artistic context. This is what allows us to preserve things like stand up comedy routines containing offensive material or even raw, sometimes violent news footage shared by journalists or NGOs.
In this case, this video receives an EDSA exception as a musical performance. While EDSA is not a free pass for any content, there are likely thousands of music videos that would otherwise violate policies including Sex & Nudity, Violent or Graphic Content and Hate Speech were it not for these sorts of EDSA exceptions. As a result, removing this video would have far-reaching implications for other musical content containing similarly violent or offensive lyrics, in genres ranging from rap to rock. While we debated this decision at length amongst our policy experts, we made the difficult decision to leave the video up to enforce our policy consistently and avoid setting a precedent that may lead to us having to remove a lot of other music on YouTube.
We can always do more to improve our hate and harassment policies. We frequently engage with our ERGs while developing these policies, and will continue to do so: We also realize that responding to a bug isn’t enough. To that end, we’re working with our Head of Diversity & Inclusion and others now to set up the right forum to hear your questions and concerns on how we can better make YouTube a more inclusive platform.
These are difficult lines to draw and we will continue working to try to get this right. Thanks again for raising this issue.
坏的示范
时至今日，《Meet the Flockers》在YouTube的点击量已过10万，其影响力也可想而知。
其实早在该歌曲发布之初，就已经引来不少模仿者将歌曲作为背景录制MV。在一段剪辑中可以清楚看到两名蒙面“窃贼”闯入一户家庭，镜头随即切换，一副亚裔脸孔的全家福照片映入屏幕。
几年的时间里，究竟有多少人是因为被该歌曲蛊惑最终走上犯罪之路，我们不得而知。但有一点几乎可以肯定，这首歌坚定了无数窃贼或试图想尝试偷窃的人释放了这样一个信号：偷窃不爱存款、不爱报案的华人家庭更容易得手。
由“黑名贵”到《乱世佳人》暂时下架
对于很多华人来说，当年为了禁播《Meet the Flockers》，几十万人在白宫网站请愿的一幕至今仍历历在目。
白宫的回应是：美国宪法《第一修正案》保护言论自由，该歌曲的是否可以公开播放，决定权在平台。
这看似合理合法的逻辑，却伤了更多华人的心。
相比之下，非洲裔的呼声更能被人倾听，也更能转化为现实行动。
因为对美国南北战争前奴隶制的过度美化，《乱世佳人（Gone with the Wind）》这部经典影片近年来饱受争议，美国部分地区也因担心影片进一步激化种族主义冲突而临时停播。
随着去年5月由乔治佛洛依德引发的“黑名贵”事件爆发，流媒体HBO Max宣布于6月宣布暂时下架《乱世佳人》，日后重映，将附上对当时历史环境等相关问题的补充说明。
几乎同样的问题，结果却大相径庭。愤愤不平之余，也许我们更应该思考，在遭到了种族歧视等不公正的待遇后，是否也应该更多的像“黑名贵”活动一样，在更多渠道、更多领域，发出我们的坚强声音！
需要补充一点的是，尽管上传者后来自愿删除了音乐视频，但YouTube也拒绝对2016年的争议采取行动。这首歌通过官方YG帐户保留在YouTube上，并以静态专辑封面图片播放。
ref：https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-30/youtube-refuses-to-remove-anti-asian-song-drawing-staff-ire
https://blog.youtube/inside-youtube/look-how-we-treat-educational-documentary-scientific-and-artistic-content-youtube/
