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YouTube AI deletes war crimes evidence as 'extremist material'

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

#271

Post by notahacker »

nnq wrote: post #267

Maybe people should get their shit together and realize that true free speech include allowing videos that seek to recruit people into despicable organizations be available! Yeah, even Hitler had a right to say what he thought and it'a a good thing he had it, despite the consequences that ensued. The problem that needs to be solved is how to educate people into not being lured into those organization DESPITE having a…

True free speech also entails allowing private companies not to be compelled to host what they deem to be extremist material at their own expense. (whilst simultaneously being expected to take down copyright infringements, because whilst people are prepared to defend to the death certain groups' right to incite people to genocide, an unauthorised Bieber video is clearly going too far)

That remains true even if their algorithm or human criteria for determining what is and isn't extremist material sucks.

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

#272

Post by 4ad »

icebraining wrote: post #123
giancarlostoro wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a little insane... Makes me wish there was some sort of website that archived specific YouTube videos marked as historical or criminal evidence or some sort of qualification, as long as they don't abuse copyright just to make sure if places like YouTube delete them they can remain. Or a service that uploads to multiple video streaming sources at once (though I imagine these might violate the TOS of YouTube fo…

An YouTube clone is expensive . TPB only hosts simple HTML pages (they no longer have torrent files, and even those were just a few KBs), not files with hundreds of MBs or more. As others said, the Internet Archive may be a good option for these videos. I wouldn't mind writing a system for backing them up to archive.org, but I'm not sure how would I detect them. Marking those videos requires the user to know they sho…

> A YouTube clone is expensive.

A YouTube clone that uses a clone of YouTube's infrastructure is expensive, but what about a distributed p2p YouTube clone?

Obviously it's hard to quantify, as it doesn't exist yet, but I think it's technologically feasible.

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

#273

Post by Quanttek »

nnq wrote: post #267

Maybe people should get their shit together and realize that true free speech include allowing videos that seek to recruit people into despicable organizations be available! Yeah, even Hitler had a right to say what he thought and it'a a good thing he had it, despite the consequences that ensued. The problem that needs to be solved is how to educate people into not being lured into those organization DESPITE having a…

Agree to disagree. This isn't really an issue of a lack of absolute free speech but instead has much more to do with AI gone bad. With any reasonable definition of free speech (i.e. limited) it would've been wrong to remove footage documenting war crimes - hell even with a highly restricted free speech.

Freedom of speech is not inherenlty the highest value there possibly is. You should be able to defend something like "Yeah, even Hitler had a right to say what he thought and it'a a good thing he had it, despite the consequences that ensued." because, in my opinion, I rather restrict the freedom of one genocidal maniac than see the dath of 85 mio. people.

Using your definition of freedom of speech we could easily justify not outlawing murder: "We should just educate people not to murder each other instead of banning it." Maybe banning can actually have a chilling effect on ie. hate-speech, heroin abuse? (While I'm for banning heroin, I advocate for providing services that ensure safe consumption (e.g. needle dispensaries, consumption rooms) and help prevent (further) abuse instead of jailing them)

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

#274

Post by PeterisP »

7373737373 wrote: post #143
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #56

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?

For things that are crimes only if the intent is there, it certainly does absolve the owner from responsibility. There's no duty to preserve everything that might be evidence in some manner (because, really, everything might be) - if evidence gets destroyed as a byproduct of normal operations, that's not prohibited.

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

#275

Post by afarrell »

4ad wrote: post #272
icebraining wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An YouTube clone is expensive . TPB only hosts simple HTML pages (they no longer have torrent files, and even those were just a few KBs), not files with hundreds of MBs or more. As others said, the Internet Archive may be a good option for these videos. I wouldn't mind writing a system for backing them up to archive.org, but I'm not sure how would I detect them. Marking those videos requires the user to know they sho…

> A YouTube clone is expensive. A YouTube clone that uses a clone of YouTube's infrastructure is expensive, but what about a distributed p2p YouTube clone? Obviously it's hard to quantify, as it doesn't exist yet, but I think it's technologically feasible.

Meaning, you just have data stored on people's hard drives?

That would be more expensive because

- You have a much higher failure rate of the storage media as people say "I'm running out of hard drive space. What should I get rid of?"

- You need to recruit those people to give up a resource that (unlike the spare compute cycles that SETI uses) they are likely currently using.

- You have to convince people to trust you to put arbitrary video content on their hard drives. Therefore, you need to have some process for deciding what video content is objectionable enough that you won't store it.

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

#276

Post by PeterisP »

mustacheemperor wrote: post #233
monocasa wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but I'm saying that in a 'documentation of war crimes' context YouTube might allow a little peek behind the veil if the videos aren't deleted but hidden.

Agreed. I think the larger problem highlighted here is that in this case "YouTube" is just the faceless algorithm making these decisions, and accessing the judgement of a real human being is nearly impossible for the average end user.

They quite likely have some humans verify the content - however, the criteria most likely are quite straightforward (depictions of the deaths violate their guidelines).

They don't provide the judgement because that only invites attempts of explaining and negotiation - they don't want to spend time to do a careful review of every contested video, they want to make an usually accurate final judgement with the minimum time investment possible (e.g. 5 seconds for a video), and they don't want to spend resources reading all kinds of reasoning and appeals, so they don't. And that is their right to do so - they can completely arbitrarily choose which videos to host on their site and which not.

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

#277

Post by Eridrus »

PeanutCurry wrote: post #220
jacobr wrote: post #2

Also see this Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/896358097320636416 > Ironically, by deleting years old opposition channels YouTube is doing more damage to Syrian history than ISIS could ever hope to achieve > Also gone are the dozens of playlists of videos from Syria I created, including dozens of chemical attacks in playlists by date > Keep in mind in many cases these are the only copies of the…

In my opinion the important thing to remember is that Youtube could easily do something about this. It seems like there's a trend in a lot tech-centric companies to save money automating away actual content review as well as customer interaction. But humans are entirely capable of reviewing content and giving detailed explanations for why something has been judged a certain way, especially if you have them work along…

Try some back of the envelope math to see if it is possible. Start with 300 hours of video uploaded every minute.

I calculated the cost to be 6bn USD/yr assuming the fully loaded cost of a full time reviewer is 20k, which dwarfs the revenue YouTube has.

So please, lay out a plan that actually works with the economics of YouTube.

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

#278

Post by sharmi »

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…

All the responses are ascribing a nefarious ulterior motive for that piece of text. It could well be true, as these orgs have enough resources and data to A/B test it to hell.

Or, it could be that, long long ago, that phrase actually conveyed sincerity that won customers.

Soon, that became the next big customer retention tactic to apply. Next, it became cliché. Now it is just grating on our senses to hear the fake insincerity echoing from these huge organizations all around.

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

#279

Post by ryan-allen »

viridian wrote: post #29
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 seem…

His channel was re-instated which... was nice, I guess.

I have watched hours upon hours of his videos (I've been a fan long before his PC controversy - I love personality theory and the twist he adds to them).

I'm pretty centre left as far as I'm concerned and his videos do not in any way promote anything nasty. He's completely upstanding. I have no idea why they'd ban his channel unless there was a coordinated flagging.

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

#280

Post by davidreiss »

ballenf wrote: post #30
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 capabl…

> 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

That's an impossibility because evil depends on perspective.

This is why we have free speech rights in america. If we determined others to limit our free speech by their perception of evil, then atheist speech and lgbt speech would be banned. Pornography would be banned along with "offensive" music. Hell books like huckleberry finn would be banned.

This is why we cherish free speech rights in america ( or we used to ) and why we have the saying "You have the right to be offended".

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