YouTube, And A Lack Of Common Sense

September 19th, 2006 by Alex

Seems everyone’s getting into the act — from Newsvine comes a report that the government plans to upload anti-drug advertisements to YouTube.

The decision to distribute anti-drug, public service announcements and other videos over YouTube represents the first concerted effort by the U.S. government to influence customers of the popular service, which shows more than 100 million videos per day.

The administration was expected to announce the decision formally on Tuesday. It said it was not paying any money to load its previously produced videos onto YouTube’s service, so the program is effectively free.

“If just one teen sees this and decides illegal drug use is not the path for them, it will be a success,” said Rafael Lemaitre, a spokesman for the drug office.

Just one problem — it’s already been proven that these ads, when they appeared on television, didn’t work, and were in fact counterproductive. Oops.

 
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