Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

YouTube AI deletes war crimes evidence as 'extremist material'

middleeasteye.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 334 posts

Re: YouTube AI deletes war crimes evidence as 'extremist material'

#21

Post by Sir_Substance »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #7

To be fair, YouTube is under no obligation to some greater good; it's just a video hosting service. Expecting it to "preserve footage" and any footage at that, is a strange expectation.

>To be fair, YouTube is under no obligation to some greater good;

Eeeeeeeeeeh....I don't know about that.

Lots of corporations today target "owning" a certain aspect of humanity. Facebook "owns social", Google "owns search", and LinkedIn is having a jolly good swing at "owning recruitment". Youtube wanted to "own video" and by and large it has succeeded. I'm not sure they get to have that position consequence free though.

I'm increasingly of the opinion that companies that manage to pin an entire market implicitly take on a social responsibility, and lots of them are not shouldering it appropriately.

Re: YouTube AI deletes war crimes evidence as 'extremist material'

#22

Post by snerbles »

Hasknewbie wrote: post #9

Youtube's response regarding one of these videos documenting abuses (emphasis mine): > "we've determined that your video does violate our Community Guidelines and have upheld our original decision. We appreciate your understanding ." Can someone explain to me why corporations, when interacting with customers regarding complaints/appeals, seem to have "don't forget to add insult to injury" as one of their motto more o…

Internal studies probably correlates such language with reduced pushback from users.

Re: YouTube AI deletes war crimes evidence as 'extremist material'

#23

Post by mnm1 »

Such AI coupled with the inflexible policies of companies like Google and Amazon is already starting to be a problem and will only get worse as it's deployed more broadly. Accounts are closed without recourse for invalid reasons and their owners treated like violators. Short of a law requiring explanations and an appeal process, I don't see this situation getting better ever. Yet another reason not to trust these companies or use their services that require creating accounts and agreeing to their bullshit TOS.

Re: YouTube AI deletes war crimes evidence as 'extremist material'

#24

Post by WalterSear »

brndnmtthws wrote: post #4

If you use YouTube, you are subject to the whims of that private corporation, regardless of whether it's right or wrong. They should find a way to host the content somewhere else.

They are non-technical people posting from a war zone.

Or were, some are dead now, and have taken their videos with them.

Re: YouTube AI deletes war crimes evidence as 'extremist material'

#25

Post by Mangalor »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #8

It was folly to think that YouTube would be a safe place to document war crimes. YouTube is a distribution channel, not a preservation channel. Its ease of use certainly makes it an attractive option to upload things quickly, but anything of historical significance should have the video raws immediately turned over to a human rights organization for preservation.

Where else should they be stored?

Re: YouTube AI deletes war crimes evidence as 'extremist material'

#26

Post by wyager »

YouTube is a really horrible service for content creators. For this type of content, you're practically probably best off with LiveLeak (which, incidentally, seems to be a much better source of breaking news than YouTube these days). Ideally, we'd all switch to LBRY or some sort of IPFS video distribution or something, but that will take time.

Re: YouTube AI deletes war crimes evidence as 'extremist material'

#27

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

Mangalor wrote: post #25
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #8

It was folly to think that YouTube would be a safe place to document war crimes. YouTube is a distribution channel, not a preservation channel. Its ease of use certainly makes it an attractive option to upload things quickly, but anything of historical significance should have the video raws immediately turned over to a human rights organization for preservation.

Where else should they be stored?

archive.org

Re: YouTube AI deletes war crimes evidence as 'extremist material'

#29

Post by viridian »

Hasknewbie wrote: post #9

Youtube's response regarding one of these videos documenting abuses (emphasis mine): > "we've determined that your video does violate our Community Guidelines and have upheld our original decision. We appreciate your understanding ." Can someone explain to me why corporations, when interacting with customers regarding complaints/appeals, seem to have "don't forget to add insult to injury" as one of their motto more o…

If I remember correctly, the exact same message was delivered to Jordan Peterson a couple of weeks ago or so, before he sat down with the google memo guy. He was in the middle of a bible lecture series, and Google banned his account, and sent the exact same "we've determined that your video does violate our Community Guidelines and have upheld our original decision. We appreciate your understanding." message.

It seems tone deaf especially since in cases such as these there is no understanding to appreciate. Google will not tell you what you did to violate policy, only that they checked to ensure that they found you guilty, and then they snub you further with the HR speak. It's maddening.

Re: YouTube AI deletes war crimes evidence as 'extremist material'

#30

Post by ballenf »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #8

It was folly to think that YouTube would be a safe place to document war crimes. YouTube is a distribution channel, not a preservation channel. Its ease of use certainly makes it an attractive option to upload things quickly, but anything of historical significance should have the video raws immediately turned over to a human rights organization for preservation.

Youtube used to be a distribution channel but it slowly became an ad delivery tool with content along for the ride. Like 99% of other free (and even some paid) internet sites.

Either way, totally agree that it's a tragic situation.

The only sympathy I have for Google is that trying to separate the good vs. "evil" (as in "Don't be evil.") content is a monumental task that machine learning will probably never be capable of performing. So they're left with the choice of spending an inordinate amount on human review and detailed research or just make wildly over-broad removals.

I'd rather they leave up more rather than less, but they tried this approach and it almost lost them every major advertiser. So continuing down that road would potentially lead to the whole platform losing viability. Maybe some would like that outcome but these historical videos would be just as lost.

Maybe we'll see the pendulum swing back in an effort to reach a more reasonable middle ground.

Post reply on HN