hey mojo holics i’m your host rebecca
and in this tenth installment of
watchmojo faq our CEO and co-founder
ashcan carvers frisson joins me to
discuss why we took down our national
anthems clip and then put it back up and
the campus ambassador program hey mojo
Alex welcome to watchmojo with me as
always is ash this week we’re going to
jump right in to discuss a Content issue
that popped up in the last couple weeks
sooo we published top ten national
anthems last week but then on Saturday
we took it down did we offend somebody
yes but not in the way we thought we
would so basically one of the entries
was the German national anthem which
whose lyrics were penned in the 1840s
but obviously throughout World War 2 the
Nazis used components of that anthem for
propaganda purposes and given their
history today three out of the four
verses are banned now as we featured the
anthem we meshed the text with some
audio of the whole original song with
video a former Chancellor Gerhard
schröder but when we kind of married it
all together we did feature an excerpt
of the unofficially band frowned upon
version of the anthem now you know we we
didn’t obviously notice that when we
produced it that was not our intent as
non German speakers as non German
speakers and when the clip went up
basically we didn’t get that many emails
we didn’t get that many comments we do
scan the comments but what happened is
Saturday morning picture this i sat down
with my coffee and instead of getting
comments on the YouTube page or emails
at our inbox we got an email at watch at
watchmojo where one of our German
viewers kind of said you know what I’m a
big fan but I might rather offended that
you guys featured this and right away
like my heart sank and I was like wait a
second so I went through the comments
and I kind of work backwards read the
text saw the video a few times and
actually sent it to a few German friends
of mine to be like what the hell do we
do here and yeah basically what may have
been acceptable and I’m stressing may is
we would have kind of featured that one
little line of the band portion but kind
of said this has since been banned due
to Nazi propaganda and and what unfolded
during World War two or if we would have
played other portions of the widely
accepted and used legal version but the
way it was kind of edited together it
did it would have been offensive to a
lot of people especially if you’re a
German viewer you’re proud to see your
anthem featured and then you sit down
you’re like watch Muldrow what the hell
is this so the second we found out where
we actually got an inbound message and
not posted on YouTube or somewhere we
took immediate action so we never take
clips down but Saturday morning we took
it down so why not just delete the clip
kind of in secret do it surreptitiously
so nobody notices put it back up why are
we kind of casting a spotlight on it
here because we’re sadist no I mean in
all seriousness we are very transparent
we rarely make mistakes if you make
mistakes it could be like oh we say
something about an actress but may show
Bureau love someone else and a lot of
moving parts and we kind of put an
annotation we put a comment
self-deprecating usually and move on but
in this case you know what’s at Michael
Jordan line I failed over and over and
over and that’s why we succeed that’s
kind of how I look at it the only way
you can avoid mistakes is if you just
don’t take forget risk if you just don’t
do anything you just sit there and like
a vacuum in it in a dark room so i think
we are setting the standard and the best
practices in publishing to you guys you
know the generation of viewers who turn
to youtube and you know emerging
platforms but we do we cover a thousand
topics across a hundred top 10 list and
that’s a lot of content so you know we I
kind of had a roger goodell moment where
I had to decide like do we kind of put
our head in the sand and are like too
bad it’s banned in Germany pure it’s not
banned and I didn’t feel that was the
way we operate so we just took it down
and we didn’t want to totally just
ignore and move on we want to explain
that yeah there are a lot of moving
parts with between the research and the
text and the editing and the
fact-checking and all that and once the
law mistakes will happen but this was a
mistake of a different nature so we did
want to explain it yeah and add just I
mean we’ve discussed this before but
that’s another reason why things take so
long from going from the green lit stage
2
e online stage because there are a lot
of moving parts a lot of people that
have to touch the video and make sure
that everything is accurate yeah and on
that point I don’t think this is what
happened here but it’s totally possible
that there might have been a line in the
script saying but this excerpt has since
been banned and that may have been cut
out but we also didn’t correspondingly
cut out the bureau sorry not the mural
but the audio I don’t think that’s what
happened here I just think it was you
know an eclipse kind of thing that had
just slipped through the cracks right
now I think you had mentioned something
about wanting the like foreign viewers
as insiders to prevent something like
this yeah that’s it so we have a lot of
insiders and specialists who may be
experts in a given sport or like in a
given genre movies and we turn to them
sometimes just as like a seventh and
eighth layer of Defense but what this
kind of made me realize is we do need to
have regional and language experts as
well because this is the kind of thing
that may occur and when it occurs to a
print publication or a TV publication it
is kind of forgotten but online you know
one of the great things is when these
mistakes happen in our case you guys are
there to remind us and tell us loud and
clear so you know these mistakes are
recognized right away and address
sometimes just with the correction once
in a blue moon with a whole takedown and
the clip will be edited and published
later on today right so if you do want
to be an insider for any purpose let us
know in the comments or email us at
watch it watch mojo calm but anyway last
week you talked about the college
Ambassador Program sue what is the deal
with that yeah so we realized that part
of the our demo a lot of mojo holics are
in school be at high school or college
and many of you watch us through youtube
and found us through youtube there’s
actually a whole other set of students
that find out about watchmojo when there
are students when there were teachers
use our videos as part of the curriculum
I’m not talking about like top ten girl
on girl kisses videos but a lot of our
like history videos geography video
science videos as well as pop culture if
it always blows my mind that when people
send us like a screengrab or something
or a picture of their teacher showing
that’s awesome life that’s it and
there’s also academic publishers like
Pearson and whatnot that use our videos
to augment their textbooks bring them to
life in the 21st century so to speak or
each foreigners how to speak English so
and a few years ago we made our videos
free for use in academic nonprofit ways
in presentations and whatnot for
students and teachers so what we want to
do is yeah without a doubt is we want to
get the Mojo holics to further
evangelize and leverage our videos in
the classroom right but is there like a
social component to it well there’s
always a social component yeah i mean i
don’t know if it’s like you and then
doing a tour of out on a florida state
university or arizona state university
but but maybe that that could be one
thing it’s also just maybe like setting
up like you know exclusive screenings at
given schools where we have so much
content we could easily carve out a
series and say we’re going to air this
this weekend at a given campus and you
know we’ll be giving away chromecast so
you guys could watch I don’t know what
that is chromecast is YouTube’s dongle
which is basically that’s not what you
think is it’s basically just like a
little widget gizmo you put in your
big-screen TV so you could project you
could cast your Netflix or YouTube on to
your big screen so you know the idea is
we do want to start to tap into that
community not just online but physical
world so we’ll have to get you secret
service as you know nice security make
sure nobody rushes the stage but I
remember going to see a diggnation event
in New York and it was really cool to
see the fans you know come out and watch
the show so we’ll do something like that
pretty cool all right so let us know in
the comments what you think about that
yeah I’ll just gonna say and the way
down the field I think we may eventually
do even scholarships and things like
that so if there’s like high school
students I want to go study media
broadcasting publishing the internet all
that jazz we just want to get you guys
involved sooner than later that’s it so
730 ideas and yeah just a programming
note we’ll be switching the watchmojo
faq to thursdays and that means when you
notice that that we will have as you
know now we have three clips on weekdays
and four on weekend days which is insane
but when we’re going to move it to
thursdays will then have four clips
every day which is insane that’s like
that’s all that’s almost 60 minutes of
content each day no wonder I’m so tired
anyway thank you guys for watching
that’s all for this week tune in again
next time and tell us what you think
you
and in this tenth installment of
watchmojo faq our CEO and co-founder
ashcan carvers frisson joins me to
discuss why we took down our national
anthems clip and then put it back up and
the campus ambassador program hey mojo
Alex welcome to watchmojo with me as
always is ash this week we’re going to
jump right in to discuss a Content issue
that popped up in the last couple weeks
sooo we published top ten national
anthems last week but then on Saturday
we took it down did we offend somebody
yes but not in the way we thought we
would so basically one of the entries
was the German national anthem which
whose lyrics were penned in the 1840s
but obviously throughout World War 2 the
Nazis used components of that anthem for
propaganda purposes and given their
history today three out of the four
verses are banned now as we featured the
anthem we meshed the text with some
audio of the whole original song with
video a former Chancellor Gerhard
schröder but when we kind of married it
all together we did feature an excerpt
of the unofficially band frowned upon
version of the anthem now you know we we
didn’t obviously notice that when we
produced it that was not our intent as
non German speakers as non German
speakers and when the clip went up
basically we didn’t get that many emails
we didn’t get that many comments we do
scan the comments but what happened is
Saturday morning picture this i sat down
with my coffee and instead of getting
comments on the YouTube page or emails
at our inbox we got an email at watch at
watchmojo where one of our German
viewers kind of said you know what I’m a
big fan but I might rather offended that
you guys featured this and right away
like my heart sank and I was like wait a
second so I went through the comments
and I kind of work backwards read the
text saw the video a few times and
actually sent it to a few German friends
of mine to be like what the hell do we
do here and yeah basically what may have
been acceptable and I’m stressing may is
we would have kind of featured that one
little line of the band portion but kind
of said this has since been banned due
to Nazi propaganda and and what unfolded
during World War two or if we would have
played other portions of the widely
accepted and used legal version but the
way it was kind of edited together it
did it would have been offensive to a
lot of people especially if you’re a
German viewer you’re proud to see your
anthem featured and then you sit down
you’re like watch Muldrow what the hell
is this so the second we found out where
we actually got an inbound message and
not posted on YouTube or somewhere we
took immediate action so we never take
clips down but Saturday morning we took
it down so why not just delete the clip
kind of in secret do it surreptitiously
so nobody notices put it back up why are
we kind of casting a spotlight on it
here because we’re sadist no I mean in
all seriousness we are very transparent
we rarely make mistakes if you make
mistakes it could be like oh we say
something about an actress but may show
Bureau love someone else and a lot of
moving parts and we kind of put an
annotation we put a comment
self-deprecating usually and move on but
in this case you know what’s at Michael
Jordan line I failed over and over and
over and that’s why we succeed that’s
kind of how I look at it the only way
you can avoid mistakes is if you just
don’t take forget risk if you just don’t
do anything you just sit there and like
a vacuum in it in a dark room so i think
we are setting the standard and the best
practices in publishing to you guys you
know the generation of viewers who turn
to youtube and you know emerging
platforms but we do we cover a thousand
topics across a hundred top 10 list and
that’s a lot of content so you know we I
kind of had a roger goodell moment where
I had to decide like do we kind of put
our head in the sand and are like too
bad it’s banned in Germany pure it’s not
banned and I didn’t feel that was the
way we operate so we just took it down
and we didn’t want to totally just
ignore and move on we want to explain
that yeah there are a lot of moving
parts with between the research and the
text and the editing and the
fact-checking and all that and once the
law mistakes will happen but this was a
mistake of a different nature so we did
want to explain it yeah and add just I
mean we’ve discussed this before but
that’s another reason why things take so
long from going from the green lit stage
2
e online stage because there are a lot
of moving parts a lot of people that
have to touch the video and make sure
that everything is accurate yeah and on
that point I don’t think this is what
happened here but it’s totally possible
that there might have been a line in the
script saying but this excerpt has since
been banned and that may have been cut
out but we also didn’t correspondingly
cut out the bureau sorry not the mural
but the audio I don’t think that’s what
happened here I just think it was you
know an eclipse kind of thing that had
just slipped through the cracks right
now I think you had mentioned something
about wanting the like foreign viewers
as insiders to prevent something like
this yeah that’s it so we have a lot of
insiders and specialists who may be
experts in a given sport or like in a
given genre movies and we turn to them
sometimes just as like a seventh and
eighth layer of Defense but what this
kind of made me realize is we do need to
have regional and language experts as
well because this is the kind of thing
that may occur and when it occurs to a
print publication or a TV publication it
is kind of forgotten but online you know
one of the great things is when these
mistakes happen in our case you guys are
there to remind us and tell us loud and
clear so you know these mistakes are
recognized right away and address
sometimes just with the correction once
in a blue moon with a whole takedown and
the clip will be edited and published
later on today right so if you do want
to be an insider for any purpose let us
know in the comments or email us at
watch it watch mojo calm but anyway last
week you talked about the college
Ambassador Program sue what is the deal
with that yeah so we realized that part
of the our demo a lot of mojo holics are
in school be at high school or college
and many of you watch us through youtube
and found us through youtube there’s
actually a whole other set of students
that find out about watchmojo when there
are students when there were teachers
use our videos as part of the curriculum
I’m not talking about like top ten girl
on girl kisses videos but a lot of our
like history videos geography video
science videos as well as pop culture if
it always blows my mind that when people
send us like a screengrab or something
or a picture of their teacher showing
that’s awesome life that’s it and
there’s also academic publishers like
Pearson and whatnot that use our videos
to augment their textbooks bring them to
life in the 21st century so to speak or
each foreigners how to speak English so
and a few years ago we made our videos
free for use in academic nonprofit ways
in presentations and whatnot for
students and teachers so what we want to
do is yeah without a doubt is we want to
get the Mojo holics to further
evangelize and leverage our videos in
the classroom right but is there like a
social component to it well there’s
always a social component yeah i mean i
don’t know if it’s like you and then
doing a tour of out on a florida state
university or arizona state university
but but maybe that that could be one
thing it’s also just maybe like setting
up like you know exclusive screenings at
given schools where we have so much
content we could easily carve out a
series and say we’re going to air this
this weekend at a given campus and you
know we’ll be giving away chromecast so
you guys could watch I don’t know what
that is chromecast is YouTube’s dongle
which is basically that’s not what you
think is it’s basically just like a
little widget gizmo you put in your
big-screen TV so you could project you
could cast your Netflix or YouTube on to
your big screen so you know the idea is
we do want to start to tap into that
community not just online but physical
world so we’ll have to get you secret
service as you know nice security make
sure nobody rushes the stage but I
remember going to see a diggnation event
in New York and it was really cool to
see the fans you know come out and watch
the show so we’ll do something like that
pretty cool all right so let us know in
the comments what you think about that
yeah I’ll just gonna say and the way
down the field I think we may eventually
do even scholarships and things like
that so if there’s like high school
students I want to go study media
broadcasting publishing the internet all
that jazz we just want to get you guys
involved sooner than later that’s it so
730 ideas and yeah just a programming
note we’ll be switching the watchmojo
faq to thursdays and that means when you
notice that that we will have as you
know now we have three clips on weekdays
and four on weekend days which is insane
but when we’re going to move it to
thursdays will then have four clips
every day which is insane that’s like
that’s all that’s almost 60 minutes of
content each day no wonder I’m so tired
anyway thank you guys for watching
that’s all for this week tune in again
next time and tell us what you think
you
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