| Rank | Party Name | Score |
| =1 (most tolerant) | Green | 9 |
| =1 | Liberal Democrats | 9 |
| =1 | UKIP | 9 |
| 2 | SNP | 8 |
| 3 | Labor | 5 |
| 4 | BNP | 1 |
| 5 | Conservative | 0 |
Or as a nice pretty graphic.
Credit goes to thunderf00t for giving me this idea. Thunderf00t made the point in a 2012 (US) election video that essentially the management of a Youtube channel gives a crude proxy into the attitudes of the political parties attitudes towards free speech. In the UK I think this is even more relevant, since political parties play a bigger role than they do in the states (conversely the president is more important than our prime minister). Thus, I am going to rank the UK political parties by how they choose to manage there channels; after-all why should a party whose policy it is to ban comments be anymore tolerant to free speech where it actually matters?
For each YouTube channel I will select 3 videos; the 'trailer/default' video, the most popular video, and the most recent video. I will select them in this respective order, and if it happens that the most popular video is also the trailer then I will select the 2nd most popular video (similar logic is also used in the case of the most recent video). Each video will be allocated points on the following basis.
Comments are enabled. +1
Ratings are enabled. +1
There is at least one negative comment posted: +1 (this is a crude test for post-hoc comment moderation)
Also in the event that comments are enabled I will perform a test with a 2nd account to see if despite comments being enabled, they are selectively being moderated (the comment I will leave will be neutral and non-inflammatory but not supportive in nature*). If the test is passed then there is no penalty. However if the test is failed then a penalty is applied:
If the moderation is not excessive: -1
If there are relatively few and only positive comments (typically with very large ratings): -2
A further one point penalty will be applied to the final score if anything else about the channel is disabled (for example #subscribers or stats on any video). This is far less serious than disabling comments or ratings and is arguably more about transparency (however I have noticed it is a fairly good proxy for censorship on Youtube channels in general). Thus a maximum of 1 point only may be deducted in this way.
Therefore the maximum score a party can achieve is 9, if everything is enabled and there is no evidence of selection. The lowest score a party can achieve is -4, if ratings are disabled and comments are manipulated to portray everything in a positive light.
*It doesn't really matter what the comment is, since this only tests for automatic comment restriction. However I made sure my comments were constructed such that they wouldn't get caught in YouTube's spam filter.
Finally this analysis is limited only to primary YT channels, i.e the most popular and most viewed and the ones I expect most reflect party policy. Obviously this is not perfect, but it is really the best of a bad situation as a party might have a large number of minor secondary channels.
Format: Name of party (name of YT channel)
The Conservative Party (webcameronuk)
Trailer: 0/3
Most popular video: 0/3
Most recent video: 0/3
Free speech index: 0/9
The Labor party (theuklabourparty)
Trailer: 3/3
Most popular video: 0/3 (test failed and evidence of excessive moderation)
Most recent video: 2/3
Free speech index: 5/9
The liberal democrats (LibDem)
Trailer: 3/3
Most popular video: 3/3
Most recent video: 3/3
Free speech index: 9/9
The Green party (greenpartyew)
Trailer: 3/3
Most popular video: 3/3
Most recent video: 3/3 (no negative comments but the benefit of the doubt has been given due to the small number of views)
Free speech index: 9/9
The UKIP party (ukipofficial)
Trailer: 3/3 (only 1 negative comment and it was borderline, benefit of the doubt given due to small number of views.)
Most popular video: 3/3
Most recent video: 3/3
Free speech index: 9/9
The SNP party (TheSnp)
Trailer: 3/3
Most popular video: 3/3
Most recent video: 3/3Free speech index: 8/9 (the subscriber number is hidden).
Finally the BNP who are little more than a joke party these days. However they are the far-right extreme nationalist party of the UK so it will be interesting.
The BNP party (bnptv)
Trailer: 1/3
Most popular video: -1/3 (test failed and heavy moderation very evident. There is one *borderline* negative comment, however given that it also contains strong praise for the video and in light of the test being failed I cannot count it).
Most recent video: 1/3 (test failed and heavy moderation once again obvious. There is one negative comment that merits a point as it is not borderline this time. However 1/3 is a very generous score considering).
Free speech index: 1/9
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