There’s finally been a concession in a story I’ve been following since late in 2007: according to a report at NewTeeVee, YouTube has finally acted on a commitment to police it’s userbase, removing users that members of Al Qaeda and inciting others to violence. This is a commitment it made it made two years ago.

YouTube has taken down a series of videos that include calls to jihad by Yemeni-based cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, after receiving pressure from U.S. and U.K. officials. The removal of the videos falls under YouTube’s terms of service, which prohibit “dangerous or illegal activities such as bomb-making, hate speech, and incitement to commit violent acts.

We’ve Been Waiting Years for YouTube to Deliver on this Promise

YouTube’s embarrassment tracks all the way back to the build-up to the 2008 election cycle, in which a member of CAIR, an organization that the FBI and other intelligence agencies have tied strongly to terrorist organizations, was allowed to ask questions of the Republican presidential candidates.

Even more embarrassing for YouTube has been their ongoing refusal to limit or eliminate the accounts of known Al Qaeda and Muslim insurgency groups in the middle east. In May of 2008, I documented in a Mashable post the inconsistent censorship policy at YouTube, in which seemingly innocous YouTube users were censored, while more egregious offenders were allowed to create clearly offensive, illegal and violent content.

In September of 2008, YouTube finally relented in their staunch protection of their broadcasters who had known connections to terrorist organizations, and gave a non-binding commitment to Joe Lieberman and other members of the US Government to start policing their userbase.

In 2009, though, YouTube once again embarrassed themselves with their censorship policy, this time with regard to the social media-fueled uprising in Iran. During the well documented crisis, Eric Schmidt boasted about YouTube’s role in disseminating information, which I noted on my personal blog:

"We have lots of lawyers, lawyers in every one of these countries," Schmidt said. "We explain if they do this [block freedom of speech and communication] what will happen. Sometimes they moderate their behaviour and sometimes not. If they don’t listen to us it is at their peril."

Speaking to MediaGuardian.co.uk following the seminar, Schmidt expanded on this point: "By ‘peril’ I mean it is what the citizens will do, citizens can no longer be restricted by the kind of strategies evil dictatorships do… you can’t keep people in the dark."

Of course, mere days earlier, it was revealed that YouTube was censoring the efforts of election protesters, though the allowed and documented misuse of flagging mechanisms on YouTube’s site.

Is Google Evil, or Just Biased?

YouTube’s and their parent company Google has always had strange and inconsistent policies when it came to censorship and privacy of their users. In general, I prefer to believe that their heart is in the right place, but their political biases and inability to come to grips with reality on many of the political and security issues at stake have definitely been a black mark on the company.

It is fairly perplexing that Google/YouTube has waited this long to act on what I’ve long termed as an urgent issue. Does a move this late mean that their words two years ago were merely lip service? When Google promises to act against terrorists on their network, why is it we need to wait two years to hear of any actual movement on this promise?

Even though videos are just now starting to come down, NewTeeVee notes that there still exist over 5,000 videos from Yemeni-based cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, the alleged inspiration of the knife-attack on a British MP.