TroopTube Has Disappointing Lack Of Chocolate Rain

The US military has blundered in its quest to get down with media networking by blocking its own terrible answer to YouTube, TroopTube, which is currently blocked at many bases, from Germany to New Jersey. The site is so terrible that you’d be forgiven for thinking that the block is down to the dullard bunch of contributions – either this, or it’s given up on the project, given that most videos have less than 200 views, out of a military comprising three million personnel.

Basically it’s people saying how great the Army is, safety videos, and a scanty selection of soldier-generated content. In other words its no “kittens inspired by kittens”, the closest TroopTube answer to which is a bunch of hopelessly uninspiring videos of a golden Labrador called Bella. “Bella being bored!!!” is one thigh-slapping episode, featuring a dog literally chasing its own tail. And I bet the troops are over the moon with comedy gems like the sarcasm-gone-wrong genius found in videos like “a day in the life of a Hurlbert field librarian”.

US troops are banned from reading blogs and watching YouTube for fear that they might leak top-secret secrets, to Hamas and other bad dudes (who incidentally have an unsuccessful YouTube spinoff of their own, the catchily titled AqsaTube, which is mostly about jihads). So to keep the troops happy Military One Source devised the Youtube-without-the-fun TroopTube.

However, their efforts have backfired, since a long list of bases have had access banned to the site. But the lucky few in the Pentagon and in Iraq still get to watch such gems as “The most shared flag in America”, “Michelle Obama Reads The Cat in the Hat to Military Children” and the sloppily scripted ham-fisted safety video “Unexploded Ordnance are not Souvenirs!”, whose animation is disarmingly grotesque enough to put off any potential viewers – imagine asking a retired conservative army general to make a safety video that looks “a bit like South Park”.

Dealing with online content has turned into a bureaucratic nightmare for the US Defense Department pen-pushers, and officers have the enviable task of checking each and every bit of content uploaded by their soldiers. Access to any site with ‘blog’ in the url has also been blocked since early last year, thus cutting off all Blogger sites, and leaving security to pick through Wordpress blog by blog. “Often, we block first and then review exceptions,” said the ‘Cyber Command’ spokesman Tech. Sgt. Christopher DeWitt, in keeping with the organisation’s act now, think later style of operations.

There’s quite a few within the military that notice the absurdity of the security measures, given that soldiers can presumably watch as much restricted information on their home computers, and iPhones and the like. One Army officer commented to Wired: ““I’m certain that by blocking blogs for official use, our airmen will never, ever be able to read them on their own home computers, so we have indeed saved them from a contaminating influence. Sorry, didn’t mean to drip sarcasm on your rug.”

So it’s just another case to add to the pile of governments and their organisations blundering through to try and keep up with new media.

Posted by Jennifer Allan in Creative Economy | March 20, 2009 3:16PM |