Google, the owner of YouTube, is a sucker for information. It lives only because of data it collects about all of us as we mosey our way around the Web. But privacy concerns are now behind Google being dropped as the official carrier of President Obama’s weekly addresses.
YouTube Helped Obama Win
During the Presidential election, Barack Obama and his team used YouTube extensively in order to spread the message of hope and unification. Over 1800 clips were uploaded to Obama’s YouTube page over the two year campaign, and those videos garnered over 110 million page views.
This level of video posting was unprecedented in an election, and no doubt, along with all the other forms of social media Obama’s team utilized, helped him win.
After The Election
When Obama was duly elected the 44th President of the United States, he didn’t just drop the forms of communication he had adopted, and instead set out to use them in order to stay in touch with the electorate.
President Obama (at the time still President-elect) made his first weekly address to the nation in November, 2008. This fireside chat which have become tradition since first being used by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, wasn’t important so much for its content as for its means of delivery.
As well as the radio, the President’s weekly addresses were to be filmed and uploaded to YouTube for the first time. This had dual benefits for both the White House and YouTube, showing a President willing to adopt new technologies, and helping Google gain even more traffic than it already does.
Privacy Concerns
Unfortunately, it also meant the White House Web site was contravening strict guidelines about using cookies on government properties. Every time you visit a page with a YouTube video embedded on it, or watch a YouTube video, Google issues a longterm tracking cookie.
Privacy groups weren’t happy about this and kicked up a fuss, leading to the White House exempting itself from these rules. YouTube has also taken the criticism on board and have, over the last week or so, rolled out new features in order to offer more privacy options. These include a ‘delayed cookies’ option which prevent passer-by from being issued with a cookie unless they actually click play on an embedded video.
White House Drops YouTube
But the changes haven’t come quickly enough, or aren’t stringent enough to have stopped the White House from suddenly dropping YouTube like a hot potato. While the President’s YouTube channel will still carry the weekly addresses, the main video on the White House homepage is now powered by Akamai’s content delivery network.
There hasn’t been an official announcement concerning the change of delivery method, but it’s safe to assume the White House has decided to act in response to the ongoing privacy concerns from groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Digital Democracy.
No news yet as to whether Congress and the House of Representatives will follow suit.
[Via CNet]
