It's a welcome move by YouTube to introduce a new tool that would help blur human faces in any videos that you upload on the video-sharing website
BANGALORE, INDIA: It's a known fact that the presence of and influence wielded by YouTube has become almost ubiquitous. So, as the usage of the video-sharing website skyrockets, it's only natural that diverse set of contents will be uploaded and they will bring along with them their own implications.
It is something that can't be ignored altogether. If there are fun videos, recipe shows and movie grabs, there are also protest videos, molestation recordings and violence-related screenshots and imagery.
That's exactly where a new feature introduced by the popular site to blur human faces gains all the more weightage.
Take, for instance, the Arab Spring, London riots or the recent Guwahati molestation incident. This tool would have come in handy to mask the faces of certain people, protestors, dissidents or victims, whose identities could have not been made public.
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"Whether you want to share sensitive protest footage without exposing the faces of the activists involved, or share the winning point in your 8-year-old's basketball game without broadcasting the children's faces to the world, our face blurring technology is a first step towards providing visual anonymity for video on YouTube," YouTube said in a blog post on Wednesday.
Earlier this week, a study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism said amateur "citizen journalism" footage from events such as the 2011 tsunami in Japan were some of the most-watched clips on YouTube.
Moreover, the feature also allows for the original copy of the uploaded video to be deleted and also options to keep videos private.
It's debatable, and in cases like the unfortunate Guwahati incident, downright doubtful whether the person who uploads would really make use of the new feature. But, if one wishes so, it can always come in handy. In any case, it would be easier to blur the faces right on YouTube rather than run around to get a professional video-editing or processing tool/software.
And it will certainly help protect the identities of such victims of untoward incidents as well as save their modesty.
Don't you agree?
(With inputs from Reuters)
