YouTube Will Redirect Searches For Extremist Videos To Anti-Terrorist Playlists

The precedence this sets is so scary and shortsighted.

So a gay man ( or even a straight person ) in saudi arabia wanting to find out more about homosexuality will be directed to anti-gay playlist which tells them how evil gays are?

In china, instead of blocking tiannamen square searches, they'll simply redirct it to showing what a great a idea it was?

What about religious countries? Will youtube simply redirect searches for atheism to "anti-atheism" site?

This is the worst form of censorship as it is sneaky and exploitive. As a liberal ( possibly former liberal ), it is shocking to me that the liberals are the ones leading the call for censorship online, in academia and business. It reminds me of Animal Farm/1984. Now that liberals have used the protections free speech to gain a lot of power/mindshare, we are trying to use it to censor everything we find offensive.

Not only is this a horrific form of censorship, it removes any credibility we ever had of criticizing others for their censorship.

How will YouTube decide if my search (as an example) is to learn more about extremism? Maybe I'm a budding political and social thinker who's interested in understanding the deeper driving forces and would like to come up with approaches on how to deal with these threats in ways that are not just "let's just bomb the hell out of all these people and that will solve the problem once and for all." What about journalists who want to report on these propaganda videos in a concise yet coherent manner for the rest of the public to get a better grip of things? What about policy makers who'd like to understand and then take action? What about think tanks and policy research? What about economic and political researchers? What about "good" people who create similar videos for educational purposes (maybe a classroom assignment to analyze and come up with essays)?

I seem to be repeating stuff, but there are a lot of people who can truly help humankind (and non-humans) by accessing these videos. We have to get better at understanding things better before we can claim to have solutions. The dynamics of a year ago may not be the same as what exists now or what may happen a year from now. Censorship is a bad answer if we want to solve issues.

Would even the intelligence agencies be happy with such a move since it makes the wanted people disappear off their radars and use other modes of communication? I believe this is a self-defeating attitude and approach for anyone who desires to look beyond knee jerk reactions and instant conclusions.

The way to deal with damaging propaganda is to create more awareness and education material and put it in front of people, IMO.

> What does this pattern tell us? Doc wants to cut all your limbs to be sure you're not leaving his clinic, right?

Yes.

> Reddit too closed down a couple of subreddits

It is disappointing what reddit has become in the past few years. From a genuine open platform to where the admins and the mods are now open and unabashed propagandists.

It is also scary how the traditional media has so easily forced social media to conform to their standards. The promise of social media was that it was the anti-traditional media. Unfiltered, raw, source and open discussion. Now reddit has adopted the exact same standards of traditional media and the rest of social media are following along.

> Extremist ideas need to be fought with rational discourse, drag them out into the open and let the sunshine disinfect them.

I agree. But it isn't just extremism. Look at how the admins are so openly anti-trump. They shut down subs that they disagree with ( alt-right ) and punished trump subs for "spamming". And yet, they openly support the dozens of anti-trump subs.

I'm a liberal who supports free speech and I loved reddit/social media that it allowed open raw discourse ( even if it offended me ). But what is happening to reddit and the rest of social media is really disappointing and quite frankly scary.