Youtube is becoming more popular than ever, not just with people seeking to see a Panda sneeze, but with activists who want to share important footage. The video sharing website was instrumental in the Arab Spring and helped spread the word about police crackdowns and assaults. However, it was still considered a dangerous tool as activists' faces were exposed. That is why Youtube decided to add a face blurring tool to help protect protesters worldwide by maintaining their anonymity. Google on Wednesday announced the new face-blurring tool for its video-sharing website YouTube that makes the site the first to provide such a feature to protect identities. According to the international human rights organization WITNESS' Cameras Everywhere report, “No video-sharing site or hardware manufacturer currently offers users the option to blur faces or protect identity” making Google a first with its new tool. “Face Blurring is a feature that allows you to obscure the identities of individuals within videos you've uploaded. When you apply Face Blurring within Video Enhancements, you will see a preview of what your video will look like with faces blurred. When you click ‘save as' a new copy of your video will be created in which the detected faces are permanently blurred,” read the Getting Started with YouTube Video Enhancements page at the website. “It is meant to protect the identity of protesters around the world. “Whether you want to share sensitive protest footage without exposing the faces of the activists involved, or share the winning point in your 8-year-old's basketball game without broadcasting the children's faces to the world, our face blurring technology is a first step towards providing visual anonymity for video on YouTube," Google wrote on its blog.
