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Local organization upset about Youtube's new comments policy

A local organization is now cut off from its viewers on YouTube.

This comes after the platform created a fairly new policy to disable comments on most videos with minors.

Action News Jax reporter Courtney Cole explains how this policy is hurting the nonprofit.

"For the past four years we've been doing everything we can to help give a voice to the people," said Alyssa Porter.

Porter and Chris Ulmer do this through an organization called Special Books by Special Kids.

According to their website, Porter and Ulmer created the nonprofit in 2016 to, "normalize the diversity of the human condition."

The duo exposes the world to children, all with different types of disabilities, using multimedia.

"To show the people that we meet, there is good in the world. That they are valued and they are accepted. That so many people understand them and love them and want them to be included and I feel like YouTube took that from us," Ulmer said in a video posted to YouTube.

In the video, which is gotten hundreds of thousands of views, Porter and Ulmer say they want to use their videos to spread love and acceptance.

They say this new YouTube policy that disables comments on most videos with minors interrupts their mission.

YouTube says they're enforcing this new policy to combat child predators.

Porter and Ulmer created this petition on Change.org, to reinstate the comment section on their YouTube videos.

So far, more than 315,000 people have signed it.

The organization is also calling on their supporters to tweet organizations that could potentially influence YouTube's decision using the hashtag--#UnsilenceSBSK.

Ulmer and Porter call YouTube's act discriminatory and say they don't understand how YouTube selects the accounts to disable the comments.

Action News Jax reached out to YouTube to learn how they plan to respond to the tweets and petition. We have not yet heard back.

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