Justin Bieber fans — Beliebers, if you will — are rallying behind the pop sensation in the hopes of preventing YouTube from removing the video for his smash hit, ‘Baby.’ A fanbase as astronomical as Bieber’s isn’t built without amassing some enemies (UnBeliebers?) too, though. The ‘Baby’ video, which was uploaded in February 2010, has seen 583,442,992 hits at the time of this writing.
If you find a number of that size any kind of intimidating, that’s well over half a billion views.
And amidst all of those views are 1,539,271 dislikes, triggering YouTube’s algorithm that determines content that should be removed from the site.
But can half a billion teenage girls be wrong?
Beliebers rallied on Monday via Twitter, using the hashtags #DearYouTube (which has become a trending topic) and #dontdeletebaby, petitioning YouTube to refrain from removing Bieber’s ‘Baby’ video from the site. Comments ranged from humorous to, well, kind of scary (and not just because of their grammar and spelling):
- DearYouTube, Roses are red, Violets are blue, if you delete baby 10 million girls will attack you. #dontdeletebaby. (via @CantBeliebIt)
- DearYoutube, #dontdeletebaby. 10 million girls will be freaking angry with you and never use you again. -swings knife around- (via @ohiheartquotes)
- DearYoutube keep baby unless you’ve removed that abomination of music called Friday by Rebecca Black! Matter of fact just #dontdeletebaby! (via @NameBrannChick)
- DearYoutube the haters dont have to watch baby if they dont like it #dontdeletebaby! (via @nicolebelieber6)
- Dearyoutube if your gunna delete ‘BABY’ then be prepared for World War 3. (via @iKanoshikita)
And just as there are those rallying in support of Bieber, there are those rallying in support of YouTube with their own trending topic (#deletebaby). But who will win? It’s hard to deny the influence of over half a billion views, but what about YouTube’s terms of service? As thousands of teenage girls have pointed out, this appears to be just a bunch of haters who don’t like Biebs. If that’s the case, then might YouTube refer them to the part of their community guidelines that says, “If you don’t like something, why not just watch something else?”
What do you think? Should YouTube remove the ‘Baby’ video, or do you see a re-write in their terms in the near future?
Image Source: Wikipedia
UPDATE: According to reports, YouTube will not be deleting Justin Bieber’s “Baby” video.