The stupidity that is Revver - Cartoon labelled as racist!
Today I chose to submit Mine! to Revver. I’ve had one film there for about a year but frankly didn’t feel it was worthwhile uploading any others. I don’t think much of their revenue model nor the number of hits they were generating. So what’s the point? But, on a whim, I thought what the hell and uploaded my 20-second action film anyway. Foolish me.
Of course after you’ve uploaded your film it goes to a ’so-called’ human reviewer. This is different from when I last used Revver. There was no reviewer. It was like Youtube or Blip.tv. You uploaded and once the conversion was completed the vid was live. But, oh how things have changed.
I’d been warned that the review could take up to 24 hours, so I went and did other stuff before returning to discover this in my inbox:
Dear skribe,
Your video “Mine!” was rejected because our reviewers found it to be in violation of the Revver Member Agreement, which prohibits users from uploading hateful content. For more info on content upload guidelines, please review this section <http://one.revver.com/go/tou#17> of our Member Agreement.
If you have any questions or feel this video has been rejected in error, please respond to this email.
Visit the Revver blog for updates - http://blog.revver.com
The Revver Team
review@revver.com
Now, I’ve tried thinking of ways that Mine! could be hateful, and the only thing I could come up with is that it casts emo boys in a bad light. After all, the boy needs to be rescued by his girlfriend.
What do you think?
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June 27th, 2007 at 2:33 am
Hey there, Alex Black from Revver here. Just wanted to let you know that our human reviewers are, well, human - and occasionally they make mistakes (sometimes the wrong button gets clicked). The only other thing I can think of for why this video may have gotten rejected is if it contained a title or description that could be perceived as hateful in any way (titles and descriptions are also taken into consideration by our reviewers when reviewing videos). Either way, the rejection letter clearly gives you recourse for rectifying the situation - just respond to the email with your username, the video title, and an explanation of why you think the video was rejected in error and our reviewers will make things right. Feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions about this - alexblack@revver.com
June 27th, 2007 at 8:45 am
That’s fine, Alex, except for two salient points:
1. The title and description are equally inoffensive.
2. The video has been erased from Revver and there has been no response - not even an autoresponder - to my email about the matter for 36 hours (and counting).
As I described I wasn’t a fan of Revver before the upload, this farce hardly inspires confidence.
June 27th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Skribe,
You call it a farce, we call it a content management system that respects artists’ rights and keeps a clean network of original content for people to watch and share without any legal grey areas. Your video has been approved and is now online.
June 27th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Thank you for your efforts, Alex. Unfortunately I have decided that Revver is just not for me and so I have removed all my videos. Good luck in your current and future pursuits.