YouTube censors the video by Lapsus Planck when they were kids
A video shows a naked young man running away, except for a blue bathrobe that reveals his entire body. It’s unclear who he is or who’s chasing him, as he runs for two minutes with the sound of electrifying guitars. And there it is, on YouTube for over a year, with 2,300 views.
It’s Achicoria, the first music video by Lapsus Planck. It shares the channel with Muerte en Venecia, the rock group’s most recent clip, which appears completely pixelated. The latter showed family scenes of the band members as children.
YouTube has censored their latest work for “violating the platform’s policies,” according to the Madrid musicians. Vimeo hasn’t been shy about it. Thanks to this alternative website, they’ve published it, avoiding wasted hours of editing.
Is YouTube too strict, or does it depend on the day? For now, they don’t know. They think it could be due to the single’s title. Death and children don’t mix well on YouTube, even though the war in Gaza is showing this every day on television. Perhaps the reason lies in images of children having fun from the past. Bullfights and fireworks would be unthinkable nowadays. It could also be due to the children’s right to personal privacy, which in this case is them and their families.
The question remains in the air. The tech giant “hasn’t given any further explanation,” as several members of Lapsus Planck explain in this interview.
In your first video, an actor runs around naked, and nothing happens. But you, as children, are censored. Who came up with the idea for this production of yours when you were kids?
We were similarly surprised when we received the YouTube censorship email. We thought that, after uploading Chicory and the rest of the music videos, Death in Venice, being the least controversial, would receive a papal bull. But it turns out that the regulations regarding child protection on this platform are infallible, which, on the other hand, doesn’t seem wrong to us. However, it’s true that, since it’s our most emotional music video, it made us quite angry, since it was a tribute to our families, who are also the protagonists of the piece. The idea for the music video came from Txema, the singer and guitarist who usually leads the creative audiovisual work for the band. This song emerged from a time of global crisis, the pandemic, and from a rather traumatic moment for the singer. The song alludes to the feeling of having reached adulthood by overcoming crises that first left our parents without jobs, then prevented us from finding one, the degree crisis, the pandemic… and hence the idea of countering that frustration with images of when the innocence of our childhood allowed us complete happiness, without complications.
Who appears in the video and how old were you?
This video features footage of Pesto (guitarist), Carlos (bassist), and Txema. Unfortunately, Juan (drummer) couldn’t find the home videos from when he was little. We couldn’t put together the video with the full band. I think these videos show footage of us from when we were a few months old until we were pre-adolescents. I couldn’t say exactly, but it’s a journey through the 90s and early 2000s.
Were you very unruly as children or were you good kids?
I think we start to become more boorish as we enter adolescence, some more than others. But in the images you can see, we’re still pure tenderness and uncorrupted innocence, ha ha ha.
Now that you’re older, are you just as mischievous, or even more so? Although it seems like you’ve never broken a plate, you littered Broncano’s set with red rubber balls, and he didn’t even notice.
The four of us have toned down our mischief considerably compared to our teenage years. But that doesn’t mean Pesto [the creator of the idea of throwing balls on a TV set] isn’t just as crazy. I think marketing has missed out on a shameless genius who goes all out. This thing about throwing the balls at the Revuelta stage was a plan he devised, and it “almost” worked out. It was very complicated. He messed up the entire line waiting to get into the show, handing out red balls so that when Broncano made his appearance on stage, the entire audience would throw them toward him, trying to provoke a reaction that would give us a little hype. Our name was written on the balls, the very day we premiered the song FOMO. At first, things started off badly. Contrary to what they usually do, they cleared away everything that was on the stage when preparing a performance for [singer] Aitana. They didn’t leave anything on the floor. However, one of the balls was saved, left on the guests’ sofa. When Aitana started talking about her depression, she unconsciously picked up the rubber ball. She spent a long time playing with it, squeezing it. Imagine how we were at home watching it, wanting to celebrate the goal… And we were close. Aitana alluded to the ball. She passed it to Broncano, who looked at it and was about to read our name. But, in the end, it all came to nothing. It only gave us a couple of reels [on Instagram] to tell the anecdote and little else. I’m looking forward to seeing what Pesto comes up with for the next promo.
What happened when you uploaded the video to YouTube? What message did you get from the platform? Did you expect it?
When we uploaded the video, we received an email from the platform a few minutes later. It stated that our video didn’t comply with their child safety policy, and that we could appeal because the first filter was automated. I suppose it was due to ignorance, but no, we didn’t expect it.
Did you appeal? What explanation did they give you?
We did appeal, and they told us again that the video violated the platform’s policies, once viewed by a human. They gave us no further explanation. As I said before, on the one hand, it’s understandable, but on the other, this situation speaks a bit to the strange and inflexible moment we find ourselves in socially, although that’s a whole other topic that could be another story.
Have you identified the image in question that’s causing the conflict with YouTube? Do you think there’s anything that could put a minor at risk, if that’s what happened?
I think the problem lies in uploading videos of minors in general. Besides, I don’t know if the song title helps. Associating the word death with images of children, or the slightly more “violent” images of a burning falla, two big-headed people kissing… I don’t really know. We still don’t know what the problem was. We’re not sure what the real reason for the cancellation is, nor do we believe anything we do could put a child in danger. In general, society has evolved quite a bit since these videos were recorded. Probably many of the things our parents and we did would be frowned upon today, in terms of road safety or risk prevention. But all of this has made us who we are. We’re fortunate to have lived in both worlds and evolved accordingly.
Vimeo didn’t see the problem. Did you talk to them before uploading it to their platform?
We mentioned them in a story about the problem, but it didn’t go any further… And we didn’t get any feedback when we uploaded the video. We uploaded it and that was it, a little apprehensive, of course, in case the same thing happened to us and we had to store the video in a drawer, which would have been a shame. Luckily, everything turned out well.
You also ended up uploading it to YouTube, but with head-sized pixels. Did they accept that one?
Yes. We uploaded it this way because, in the end, it’s very rare that someone who follows us will go to Vimeo to search for our video. It’s a platform aimed at a more professional audience: audiovisual. We basically uploaded the pixelated video to YouTube to serve as a bridge to the Vimeo video, and if someone follows us, or suddenly starts following us, and wants to see the original video, they can access it directly from the link we added in the description.
We’ll see you in Madrid in September on the Jungle anniversary tour. Are you going to rock it again?
The truth is, we’re really looking forward to it. It’s also the third time we’re playing at Sala Vesta, which has become like home. Besides, the Jungle tour and the concert we’re playing at the Movistar Arena in July are our only two dates in Madrid this year, so far. Of course, we’re going with every intention of making a great night and making it a memorable one. We hope we don’t have to pixelate you… 😊
