YouTube lifts Swazi reed dance restrictions

London – YouTube has lifted restrictions from videos showing Swaziland’s reed dance, which feature bare-breasted women.

A spokesperson for the video-sharing platform told the BBC that YouTube allows nudity when “culturally relevant or properly contextualised”.

The move was in response to a campaign led by Lazi Dlamini, the head of TV Yabantu, an online video production company, featuring Africa’s “finest culture… as seen, and recorded by the African people”.




Users who had uploaded reed dance videos were angered when it was classified as age-restricted content.

YouTube has denied accusations of racism, saying it was keen to be culturally sensitive.

YouTube has been criticised for how it moderates content and in most cases relies on inappropriate content being flagged by users, which it then investigates.

More than 400 hours of content is uploaded to YouTube per minute.

Source:News24.com