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YouTube AI deletes war crimes evidence as 'extremist material'

middleeasteye.net

151–160 of 334 posts

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

#151
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst part of the information age is arbitration by unreasonable and impenetrable algorithms rather than humans with the capacity to make a judgement call when the rules clearly don't account for the situation at hand. A transparent appeals process staffed by humans who can at least deliver a rationale, including what rule you broke, should be required by law. There's irreparable reputational damage associated wi…

I think the bigger issue is that certain companies have near monopolies in their spaces to start with. For plebs like myself, youtube is really the only viable option I have to distribute video media if I hope to build an audience. The fact that you effectively can't mount an alternative to facebook, youtube, etc due to network effects is the larger disease, and this is one of many symptoms.

I think the only solution is a distributed and decentralized web.

Distributed hosting of static content is a sorta-solved problem. But curating, linking and discoverability (which require mutating content) is a lot harder due to the trust anchor problem.

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

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the process needs to be much more than merely transparent. It needs to be independent. That means that it needs to be done by an entity outside of Google itself, and not in any way associated with or influenced by Google.

Google is a company. You want video hosting to be run by the government?

It doesn't have to be the hosting itself that's independent, but it would be an improvement if there was an independent body to which you could appeal.

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

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the process needs to be much more than merely transparent. It needs to be independent. That means that it needs to be done by an entity outside of Google itself, and not in any way associated with or influenced by Google.

Google is a company. You want video hosting to be run by the government?

Yes.

An alternative is to classify Google as a common carrier, exempting them from the DMCA, but preventing them from censoring or even throttling traffic, however given their business model is around sponsorship, it is unclear how to also protect the advertisers' interests. Trying to get government shackles onto Google simply seems too tricky;

It seems much easier to simply run Google with tax dollars and no advertising.

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

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not an expert in international law, but you would still have to prove intent, I believe. It's hard to prove intent on an algorithm that very simply is incapable of understanding the significance of its actions.

Deferring decisions to an algorithm doesn't absolve the owner from responsibility for its actions. If the consequences are unknown, why should it be allowed to use it?

Couldn't that also imply that someone else would need to view the algorithm to verify it's intent?

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

#155
What did they train the AI on to deem something 'extremist'?

Should we get to see the training data used and labels?

Or is this the modern day equivalent of credit score algo, something that can have huge impact on lives, but you are not allowed to know what it is.

This is bad.

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

#156
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well almost everything we use these days belongs to a private organization. And we're fully subject to their whims. Something is wrong about that.

And yet, without those private organizations and the free markets that allowed them to thrive - the whole notion of having all that is preserved online by them would be utterly unimaginable. The internet as we know it, capable of passing all this bandwidth to individuals around the world wouldn't exist. At best, it would still be a toy in government labs and academia like it was before it was commercialized.

I don't see how this would be any different than a library. We need new, good public institutions such as this.

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

#157

Yes, I could see how that classifies as "extremist material", but that's no reason to delete them... IMHO the gradual increase of (self-)censorship in the popular Internet is worrying --- one of the most compelling things about the Internet as it existed was that, from the safety of your own home, you could see and experience things that would otherwise be impossible to access. Now it seems it's turned into a massive…

Old internet is still there, you just have to not be too lazy to host your own content..

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

#158
post #131
post #58

should be required by law If your videos don't pass the algorithm, post them somewhere else rather than reaching for the government hammer. Youtube/Google has every right to run their business of posting or denying video content the way they see fit without justifying it to you, free user of their service. If you think they're making a bad business decision and that there's a need for a video service that gives great…

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14998738 and marked it off-topic.

On second thought, nevermind. I realized that I'm just wasting my Saturday here. Have a nice day.

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

#159
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well almost everything we use these days belongs to a private organization. And we're fully subject to their whims. Something is wrong about that.

And yet, without those private organizations and the free markets that allowed them to thrive - the whole notion of having all that is preserved online by them would be utterly unimaginable. The internet as we know it, capable of passing all this bandwidth to individuals around the world wouldn't exist. At best, it would still be a toy in government labs and academia like it was before it was commercialized.

You're conflating the products of an economic system with its organization.. which is not to say you are wrong necessarily, but this is not a neutral, objective, or provable position to take..

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

#160
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ignored the first part of my post where I said: post elsewhere rather than appealing to government authority. My last statement was suggesting a better idea in a free society than to try to bit-by-bit destroy that free society with yet more overpowering, overintrusive government. The implied position is that Google is doing something bad for society That completely doesn't compute. Google isn't in business to mak…

Eric Schmidt disagrees with you: "In general, I think our mission is to use technology to really change the world for the better." But anyway, you keep trying to argue with me, while I'm only making the point that you should understand the argument. I'm not sure if you're unwilling to try, but in any case I'm not interested. I actually sympathize with the position that we shouldn't have laws requiring Google to host…

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