YouTube has restored Fred Karger’s controversial campaign video.
“Sexy Frisbee,” the openly gay Republican’s latest presidential campaign ad, was taken down Tuesday night, a move many attributed to video’s closing scene: two men kissing. Campaign spokesperson Rina Shah said was “censorship at its worst.”
After the video was restored, the campaign released a statement from Karger, whose long-shot run for the White House started early last year.
“Thanks to a lot of upset ‘Sexy Frisbee’ fans and believers in the First Amendment, YouTube reinstated our commercial,” he wrote to supporters. “No explanation was given, but we are asking for an investigation into why YouTube deemed it ‘inappropriate’ yesterday.”
The complication seems to be driven by the YouTube’s problematic “pull first, ask later”—where videos that have been flagged as inappropriate or as copyright-infringing are immediately removed by the company.
“With the massive volume of videos on our site, sometimes we make the wrong call,” a YouTube spokesperson said. “When it is brought to our attention that a video has been removed mistakenly, we act quickly to reinstate it.”
Since being posted on April 20, the video has gained more than 26,000 views. It’s also gained a handful of comments, most which, on Wednesday afternoon, addressed how the video was taken down.
“Apparently (YouTube) is anti-gay or anti-life as lived my millions of people on this planet,” wrote bill3murr. “To hell with this needless censorship.”
It hasn’t taken much time for the video to become Karger’s most popular, beating out his other notable campaign ad. The video called out Rick Perry for alleged anti-gay views, especially in regards to military service.
Photo via YouTube
