Social media has become a powerful means to record and disseminate global intangible cultural heritage (ICH). YouTube specifically provides an avenue for a range of users to distribute ICH videos on this commercial platform. YouTube is essentially designed to monetize the labor and communication of users through algorithms and business models. With the aim of making corporate profits, this platform simultaneously offers a social service by distributing diverse ICH representations in video format. In light of the paradox of disseminating ICH on a commercial platform, the issue is raised as to whether YouTube’s diffusion of heritage videos transmits community expressions of ICH that are not recognized by nation-states. Communities produce ICH within the boundaries of nations, yet the practices of given communities may be excluded from national heritage narratives. The narratives addressed here are those that have been put forward by state representatives through UNESCO. Since 2003, UNESCO has safeguarded ICH through the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (Convention). This research is approached through the case study of the Mevlevi Sema (Whirling Dervish Ceremony) of Turkey, recognized as official ICH by UNESCO in 2005. Representatives of the Turkish state safeguard the Sema as a practice that is linked to Sunni Islam and performed in public ceremonies only by men. This national safeguarding renders the Sema a political tool to realize the ruling government’s nationalist agenda of privileging Sunni Islam above other religious affiliations (Aykan, 2012). This safeguarding through the Convention leads to the exclusion of other Sema communities, particularly a community known as the Foundation of Universal Lovers of Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi (EMAV), which has allowed women to perform in public ceremonies since 1993 (Pietrobruno, 2014).