YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#61

Post by Krasnol » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 4:40 PM UTC

nilkn wrote: post #46

okket wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No censorship. You are still free to create your own YouTube clone and publish your extreme political views there. Maybe call it "GabTube"?

Sure. We might as well allow public speech in cities and towns to be controlled and limited as well, and if you don't like it you can always just go settle your own town somewhere. There's tons of open land in the US available for cheap after all.

No wonder people are throwing around "censorship" when they don't understand the difference between a public space and a private homepage....

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#62

Post by ModernMech » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 4:40 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #31

okket wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No censorship. You are still free to create your own YouTube clone and publish your extreme political views there. Maybe call it "GabTube"?

"Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me." A free society has costs, including tolerating speech you find deplorable. To support censorship because it aligns with your current political leanings makes you no different than the politics you take issue with. Will you complain if Google mass fires left leaning employees? It's entirely within their right to do. You could even start a competitor to…

It's a pretty big stretch between a company taking down content on their own service that violates their terms, and the holocaust. Have a little perspective please.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#63

Post by iamalexm » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 4:40 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #31

okket wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No censorship. You are still free to create your own YouTube clone and publish your extreme political views there. Maybe call it "GabTube"?

"Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me." A free society has costs, including tolerating speech you find deplorable. To support censorship because it aligns with your current political leanings makes you no different than the politics you take issue with. Will you complain if Google mass fires left leaning employees? It's entirely within their right to do. You could even start a competitor to…

Sure - but you are missing the point. Youtube can publish videos they want to and are not owned by the government.

It's funny how right-wing people, who argue so hard for capitalism, fundamentally don't understand capitalism.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#64

Post by busterarm » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 4:40 PM UTC

GrayTextIsTruth wrote: post #36

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #5

Note that it's not extreme views (like my adherence to the FSF). Nope, we're talking about "videos and channels that advocate for neo-Nazism, white supremacy and other bigoted ideologies". As much as I don't like censorship, views that advocate for extermination of other people can rightly fuck off.

> other bigoted ideologies That's not specific enough. What about people who want to preserve European culture but don't think its "superior" to any other culture?

What about people with conservative religious beliefs that others perceive to be exclusionary?

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#65

Post by steveeq1 » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 4:41 PM UTC

warp_factor wrote: post #10

And here we go. As usual the "racist" pretext is being used to censor videos. I have no doubt that there are some terrible awful racist videos in that lot but you have to wonder how many times this is ALSO used as a mean to censor pretty much any video that the youtube execs don't like. Censorship is getting worse Edit: Replacing "Censorship is coming back" with "Censorship is getting worse"

It would be interesting to see if they also start banning rap videos using the same reasoning.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#66

Post by Manfred » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 4:41 PM UTC

nullbyte wrote: post #12

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #5

Note that it's not extreme views (like my adherence to the FSF). Nope, we're talking about "videos and channels that advocate for neo-Nazism, white supremacy and other bigoted ideologies". As much as I don't like censorship, views that advocate for extermination of other people can rightly fuck off.

YouTube gets to decide what a "bigoted ideology" is. That's a sweeping term that can be used as a catch-all for videos they don't like. I think that this will be bad for the platform overall -- an increase in censorship is never good.

In the absence of a government that makes clear laws concerning hate speech it’s up to the platforms to find a good balance.

From the YouTube blog post:

> We’ve been taking a close look at our approach towards hateful content in consultation with dozens of experts in subjects like violent extremism, supremacism, civil rights, and free speech.

So at the very least they claim to understand that it should not be a random decision.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#67

Post by dingoegret » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 4:41 PM UTC

warp_factor wrote: post #10

And here we go. As usual the "racist" pretext is being used to censor videos. I have no doubt that there are some terrible awful racist videos in that lot but you have to wonder how many times this is ALSO used as a mean to censor pretty much any video that the youtube execs don't like. Censorship is getting worse Edit: Replacing "Censorship is coming back" with "Censorship is getting worse"

Take the tinfoil off. Extremist and hateful content on YouTube needs to be removed and your conspiracy theory that it could be used by execs to ban videos they personally don't like is not a good enough reason to go against this, even if it was somehow true.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#68

Post by luckylion » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 4:41 PM UTC

Kye wrote: post #19

warp_factor wrote: post #10

And here we go. As usual the "racist" pretext is being used to censor videos. I have no doubt that there are some terrible awful racist videos in that lot but you have to wonder how many times this is ALSO used as a mean to censor pretty much any video that the youtube execs don't like. Censorship is getting worse Edit: Replacing "Censorship is coming back" with "Censorship is getting worse"

Since when do they need a pretext? Countless videos from LGBTQ+ people and people of color got wiped out due to mass reporting and inaccurate automated removals. All the people who usually cry censorship were silent.

That was a while ago, right? From what I remember, the "usual suspects" (aka libertarians, liberalists etc) weren't that silent, they pointed out the irony that the try to control platforming backfired, but did oppose the bans.

Might be something newer, of course, in which case I didn't see it and can't comment on it.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#69

Post by ausbah » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 4:41 PM UTC

Here is the actual blog post: https://youtube.googleblog.com/2019/06/our-ongoing-work-to-t...

Main points:

>Removing more hateful and supremacist content from YouTube

I think this is great, I see nothing of value being lost from channels whose whole schtick is to marginalize people's of a target group.

>Reducing borderline content and raising up authoritative voices

I do like attempts to curtail outright scams and misinformation, but don't like YouTube choosing "top channels" as voices of authority.

>Continuing to reward trusted creators and enforce our monetization policies

I think this shows what drives YouTube and many other platforms, what is and isn't advertiser friendly. Principles only go as far as the bottomline.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#70

Post by api » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 4:41 PM UTC

YouTube is a privately owned and operated proprietary delivery platform. This is no different from a TV station deciding what to air. If you don't like it, switch platforms or just host stuff yourself somewhere.

Yes I am concerned that these dragnets will delete a lot of content that doesn't even match the stated criteria. In my experience Google/YouTube's evaluation of content for compliance is not very deep or well considered. It's generally performed by underpaid overworked folks that lack any domain expertise.

This is part of why I am a data packrat. If something is really interesting I snarf it and store it on my personal NAS. Easy to do and means I'll have backups of things that get "disappeared" and can share them with others if needed. If more people did this I think we'd have less of an issue with this.