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Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

theatlantic.com

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Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#131

Post by 52-6F-62 »

jtr1 wrote: post #129
52-6F-62 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly are you claiming is being censored? The media regularly investigates and reports on itself. The press is far from perfect, but you’re alleging a vast and deep conspiracy when reality is likely far simpler: The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. Sales and business have little impact on editorial. Editorial flies by the whims of a wide variety of strong personalities. Politicians and rele…

These do not have to be mutually exclusive accounts. There does not have to be a secret cabal of shadowy deep state operatives pushing a unified message, there just needs to be a propensity for the rich and well-connected (by definition a small group) to find their way into positions of influence in rough proximity to major media outlets. As you've said: Politicians and relevant players get columnist and editorial ro…

Granted, but what’s being implied and not said outright is that those people are somehow influencing entire organizations of strong-willed career professionals and not just given their own post to say what they want alongside the rest.

I’m asserting the latter is usually what’s happening.

Over the past 100 years there have been many times where North American governments have attempted to rule over the press. That never went well for them (save the inception of Fox News).

OP seemed to suggest the large number of contradictory articles was the result of a larger unified conspiracy. I’m suggesting that is highly unlikely.

For what it’s worth- people don’t get into working for the media because it pays really well. Not usually anyway. So in that way I’d rule out wealth as a primary motivating factor to sacrificing one’s principles in that business.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#132

Post by indigochill »

Nasrudith wrote: post #130

To be frank tech companies are a second order symptom of fucked up societal attitudes pushing the censorship. The puritan mass market push towards "child friendly mass market" as a default which leaves no place for the ugliness of reality. They don't care about suffering - they just don't want to see it. It is narcissistic sociopathy as a norm - how dare they run out of a burning building in their underwear! Children…

>The absence of those masses of people is what I miss the most about the internet not being mainstream.

I've seen this sentiment before, but I don't get it. Sure, the internet's mainstream and there are parts of it that have a mainstream culture and that's probably not going anywhere in the foreseeable future.

But the internet itself has no culture (heh). It's just a network. There are still corners of the internet that have whatever culture you're looking for. And if you can't find it, you can make it. It probably won't make much money or make the news, but the option is there.

That said, I agree with the main thrust of your argument that tech companies are just reflecting the mainstream preference to whitewash reality.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#133

Post by indigochill »

Stratechery had an article that I think provides a reasonable compromise for displaying and taking responsibility of content some might find objectionable but which others would argue has value. It involves the poster being responsible and owning the consequences for the content as opposed to some third party platform which has to try to please opposing sides.

https://stratechery.com/2019/a-regulatory-framework-for-the-...

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#134

Post by yters »

Digit-Al wrote: post #87

So, here's an idea. Let's take the case of YouTube, instead of its algorithm deleting this content, how about it is marked with a flag. Normal users are completely unable to view, or even know of the existence of content marked with this flag. It doesn't come up in searches and even a direct link will just show some "content unavailable" message. Human rights groups and the like can request permission for a designate…

Yes, some sort of tiered access seems better than mass deletion.

However, I'm sure all these videos still exist somewhere in backup. I doubt they are really deleted.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#135

Post by [deleted] »

basetop wrote: post #106

Tech companies are deleting evidence of war crimes and everything else at the behest of media companies like the atlantic. Youtube, facebook, reddit, google search, etc have all been targeted by the atlantic, nytimes, washingtonpost, cnn, etc and bullied into scrubbing content and direct their users to "authoritative sources". Ironically enough, in china, russia and most countries, "authoritative sources" are state p…

[deleted]

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#136

Post by [deleted] »

basetop wrote: post #106

Tech companies are deleting evidence of war crimes and everything else at the behest of media companies like the atlantic. Youtube, facebook, reddit, google search, etc have all been targeted by the atlantic, nytimes, washingtonpost, cnn, etc and bullied into scrubbing content and direct their users to "authoritative sources". Ironically enough, in china, russia and most countries, "authoritative sources" are state p…

[deleted]

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#137

Post by naasking »

jeandejean wrote: post #109
Digit-Al wrote: post #87

So, here's an idea. Let's take the case of YouTube, instead of its algorithm deleting this content, how about it is marked with a flag. Normal users are completely unable to view, or even know of the existence of content marked with this flag. It doesn't come up in searches and even a direct link will just show some "content unavailable" message. Human rights groups and the like can request permission for a designate…

Why would Human rights groups be entitled to have this censorship privilege? So they'd decide now what's good or bad to display on Youtube? If anyone needs evidence, it is Justice prosecutors and it is likely already possible. Deleted from user-facing Youtube and Facebook and the like doesn't mean it's deleted from their storage... Plus the title is misleading: they're not deleting evidence of war crimes, they're del…

> Why would Human rights groups be entitled to have this censorship privilege?

Indeed, who watches the watchmen? The SPLC was recently embroiled in sexist and racist controversies. No human organization is exempt from corruption. We all have to watch each other while simultaneously be charitable and willing to forgive.

> Plus the title is misleading: they're not deleting evidence of war crimes, they're deleting upsetting and distressing videos from their open platform, and that's a good thing!

Debatable. There's no such thing as a right to be "not distressed" or "not upset". Being a member of any human society means being exposed to stresses of all kinds, and we arguably all have the stressful duty of guarding our human and civil rights.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#138

Post by naasking »

ghjjjj wrote: post #121
mattlondon wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. What do people want? First everyone goes crazy that people can find stuff on these platforms, then they go crazy that you can't . I find all this pinning of the world's problems on Facebook/Twitter/Google irritating. Sure they have a lot to answer for, but it's not like propaganda, censorship, or media manipulation did not exist before. Sigh. I guess they are an easy target to pick on.

“First everyone goes crazy that people can find stuff on these platforms, ” I don’t. I get crazy when effectively censor at the behest of (any) government under the “we’re private” excuse. I’m perfectly consistent about this. That and our imperative need to break apart the big tech companies (and bank, but that’s a different question)

> I get crazy when effectively censor at the behest of (any) government under the “we’re private” excuse.

It's depressing how quickly people are willing to throw away the civil and human rights that have taken millennia to win. Let's hope it doesn't take actual violence to remind people of the difference between speech and violence. We haven't had real physical strife and a world war in our generation to keep this distinction fresh in our minds.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#139

Post by ataturk »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #120
basetop wrote: post #106

Tech companies are deleting evidence of war crimes and everything else at the behest of media companies like the atlantic. Youtube, facebook, reddit, google search, etc have all been targeted by the atlantic, nytimes, washingtonpost, cnn, etc and bullied into scrubbing content and direct their users to "authoritative sources". Ironically enough, in china, russia and most countries, "authoritative sources" are state p…

What exactly are you claiming is being censored? The media regularly investigates and reports on itself. The press is far from perfect, but you’re alleging a vast and deep conspiracy when reality is likely far simpler: The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. Sales and business have little impact on editorial. Editorial flies by the whims of a wide variety of strong personalities. Politicians and rele…

It doesn't bother you at all that we only get slightly warmed over variations of the party line? I'm not that old, but I grew up in the 1980s and I very distinctly remember the media NOT being like this! Today, no matter what "news" source you visit, it pretty much all has the same narrative. It is as though they all receive the talking points and are told what to do from a central committee.

To me, it's very bad. You don't even realize it because if you grew up without any other perspective on the matter, you would have no way of knowing about it. What is going on in the West today is extremely alarming, and I'm not the alarmist type. It is like all our safeguards are down now and what is going on politically is extremely bad for the average citizen, and yet we do nothing because everyone is being confused, sent in all different directions, and thus not enough people are unified behind any particular ideas and the media is making very sure that cognitive dissonance is all we get.

Worse yet, millions of people are being conditioned to hate. It makes utterly no sense unless you wish to start a war--you can't go on demonizing and pissing off the people who actually do the work. Hard-working people don't complain, they just keep working as hard as they can. They think this will pass. I'm sure the average Austrian Jew thought so, too. It's not going to.

Honestly, I have no idea if there is a conspiracy or not. I can only point to the poor quality of today's "news" sources and wonder how this can possibly play out in any good way. What I am weary of is the constant demonizing of anyone holding traditional values, anyone who speaks out against the idiocy, the waste, and the total lack of accountability in government.

Being a journalist used to mean you were duty bound to stand up for ideas no matter what direction the story took you, it was your job to follow the story and not deviate from objectivity. Today's journalists are part of a machine that controls the narrative. They don't get to think or they are banished. Why does anyone bother going to Journalism School anymore? What a waste of time to just be some dumb cog in a totalitarian machine.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#140

Post by naasking »

yoz-y wrote: post #41
rlt wrote: post #2

Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

This. It is simply not possible to have these platforms host this kind of content and it boils down to money. If you want Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the likes you need ads. Advertisers don't want to be displayed alongside gruesome content. If people were ready to pay for a platform with "raw" footage of others' lives there could be a place for it. So far the market has proven otherwise.

> Advertisers don't want to be displayed alongside gruesome content.

There are ways to mitigate this. For instance, ad spots in non-controversial content is a premium marketing tier. No one wants ad spots in very controversial material, so that would be a cheap tier. Advertisers only get associated with safe/pablum content if they're willing to pay for that assurance, or they get more widespread coverage in more controversial content if they're unwilling to pay.

Controversy is inferred from like/dislike ratios and/or content reports, all of which is user-driven. Some threshold of user ratings would be needed before content is monetized, a threshold that crosses echo chambers, which is a classification amenable to machine learning.

So this results in user-driven content classification and pricing tier driven ad placements, all without requiring any moderation or censorship on Google's part.

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