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Quietube Provides a Portal for Censored Vids in the Middle East

by Matthew Zuras on November 8, 2009 at 11:30 AM


Back in March, James Bridle designed a bookmarklet called Quietube, a script that allows users to "watch web videos without the comments and crap." As a minimalist reversal of the hyper-glut that is YouTube, Quietube is a welcome departure from all the typical sidebar claptrap that we've grown to accept.

But Bridle has recently observed that Quietube, as an external proxy for viewing video, has an unexpected function: the ability to play material that may be otherwise censored on the host site by restrictive governments. Bridle wrote on his blog, "So it turns out, I think I accidentally created a YouTube proxy being used by tens of thousands of people in the Middle East." He noted that nearly 65-percent of his traffic in one week originated from Saudi Arabia, with Kuwait, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan, and Egypt following in the top 10. The top videos were both religious and secular in nature, but the inbound links originated from private emails, suggesting that the videos were being shared by individuals.

After this summer's tumultuous Iranian presidential election, we saw the necessity of spreading information online, as images and accounts of the bloody protests in Tehran were transmitted via Twitter -- one of the few sites not blocked by the incumbent regime. We're not suggesting that Quietube will necessarily be the epicenter of the next Middle Eastern (attempted) revolution, but the point is that such a basic script allows thousands, if not millions, of people to join in information sharing. Bridle, who says that his script is easy enough for others to reproduce, remarks on his blog, "Information does indeed want to be free." [From: Book Two, via Clusterflock]

Tags: bookmarklet, censorship, middle east, MiddleEast, quietube, top, youtube

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