Nearly all of NutritionFacts.org videos are currently down. With your help, though, not only will we be back up and running again soon but stronger than ever!
Yesterday, YouTube terminated our account for supposedly “violating Community Standards.” Unnamed persons flagged one or more NutritionFacts.org videos as inappropriate, something that’s supposed to be reserved for things like graphic violence or hate speech. Evidently whatever mechanism YouTube has in place to prevent misuse of this flagging system failed. By terminating our account, YouTube removed each of the 791 videos on NutritionFacts.org, making them inaccessible to users. We assume that as soon as YouTube realizes their mistake they will reinstate our account, but that could take weeks.
In the interim, we’ve started migrating the videos over to another video hosting site called Vimeo. So this past week’s videos are now back up, as well as my two live presentations, Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death and More Than an Apple a Day: Combating Common Diseases. Only 786 to go! Tomorrow’s new video will go up as scheduled and we’re working as hard as we can to get the site back up to its former glory.
If you’d like to express your support for NutritionFacts.org, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the 501c3 nonprofit charity that keeps it going. Switching over the videos to a paid service will only add to our budget shortfall this year. So far, we’ve raised about $12,000 towards our $50,000 year-end goal. With help from enough supporters, we will surely fill up the carrot!
What would you miss most about NutritionFacts.org? I have done videos about studies that make the headlines, but I think my most important role is to showcase studies that would otherwise never see the light of day. The reason we don’t see ads on TV for broccoli is the same reason we don’t hear about the vast majority of published research–there’s no profit motive. It may not make anyone money, but what if our lives would profit?
NutritionFacts.org was set up as a grand experiment. Can a nutrition website remain independent and not bow to pressure to accept ad revenue or product endorsements or sell some Dr. Greger’s Brand SnakeOilWonderSupplement? :)
We set up the website on faith. The generous seed funding from the Jesse and Julie Rasch Foundation that launched NutritionFacts.org ran out this summer. Now it’s completely up to viewers like you to keep the site up and running.
Everything on the website is free. There’s no special member area where you pay a fee to get extra life-saving information. That’s not how medicine should work. That’s not how science should work. What membership websites are saying, in essence, is give them money or else they’ll keep something from us that could make our families healthier. That’s unacceptable to me. Advances in nutritional science should be freely available and accessible to all.
To make a contribution to NutritionFacts.org you can use a credit card, use a direct Paypal link, or send a check to “NutritionFacts.org” c/o Michael Greger, 700 Professional Dr., Gaithersburg, MD 20879.
Join me in sending this message to whoever is responsible for the YouTube sabotage attempt: your efforts to keep people in the dark will just strengthen our resolve to bring the latest research to light.
-Michael Greger, M.D.
UPDATE: YouTube reversed their decision and reinstated our account!
Thank you so much everyone for your overwhelming support–we pureed that carrot!
