Ever since Youtube has been ‘caving in’ – reflectively, caving in for the rest of us in the country actually – with the airing of “Innocence of Muslims” from about a year ago in September 2012, there has been a dearth in actual learning, sardonic, so it seems, in keeping with the government’s tall claims to shaping up a ‘knowledge economy.’ Learning, being the runway necessary for a dynamic economy to spruce up and take flight, YouTube was encouraging such a culture. It did so by weaving together documentaries, movies, short films, home movies and so and on and so forth, related to all industries under the sun. From fashion to technology, economy, lifestyle, business – on an international and/or a local perspective. The list is exhaustive and by no means limited, hence thinking about it, gives a headache, even now, at how much one could have learnt from audio and visual content, than having to go through the written content – even now as you reader, are reading this.
1. Interestingly enough, even with the clamping down of the website, there has still been learning. Just as every destruction, must follow creation of some kind, so too this. Creativity stood tall and begged the focus of Tune.com, a Chrome extension having surfaced to cure us all of the YouTube withdrawal symptoms we were staggering with, albeit briefly with the surge of Tune.com. Jahanzeb Hassan the one leading the team maintains that the ban was just and square, hence began work on the website to make for the lack of a medium to connect and grow from. “It hardly took us two days to make the whole system, then three more days to make it fully scalable,” reminisces Hassan. The website is stacked with thousands of videos and the popularity of the medium can be judged by the 8000 videos that saw it through.
2. Tumblr – another unique platform, that makes videos and images come to life, jumped up as another substitute for providing fresh audio-visual content to Pakistanis in a refreshing manner. L’oreal’s tumblr page, is a great case in point. Make-up tutorials for girls can be accessed in a pleasant and compact way, making for beautiful faces and plastic races.
3. Proxies such as Spotflux have come out as another way to sidetrack problems associated with difficulty accessing YouTube. However, these make for slower PCs and consequently flighty tempers.
Google tends to localize YouTube for countries world over. In an age where knowledge is power, the heads of states must realize that and bridge whatever gaps might arise out of lapse in the emission of such data.
We would love to hear what you think about the YouTube ban in Pakistan. Let us know your thoughts by leaving a comment below, via your preferred social network, or over on our IDG forums.
