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YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

nytimes.com

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Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#471

Post by ModernMech »

jim_dow_jones wrote: post #414
fwip wrote: post #358

You're not pro-LGBT if you think trans women aren't women.

Why not? Do you have to share the views of every single person within a group to be considered a supporter? What if they vote for every pro-LGBT politician that runs for office? What if they vote for every pro-LGBT legislation that they come across? What if they give support and words of affirmation to LGBT family members that are close to them? Why is he suddenly not a supporter because he disagrees with a small par…

> Why is he suddenly not a supporter because he disagrees with a small part of the discussion?

That trans women are women isn't a "small part" of the discussion. It's kind of the whole point.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#472

Post by indigochill »

anigbrowl wrote: post #460
indigochill wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would the rules look for establishing the long-term governance of a wikiocracy? Specifically, my impression is that it works because it has good people. If the good people left and lesser people replaced them, could it still be made to work? One of the things I'll give the US is as crappy as the leaders get, the system still remains cohesive rather than suffering a bloody coup every four years.

Well lots of other countries get on OK with parliamentary democracies, I don't think the US system is uniquely reliable in this regard. You'd have to look at the ups and downs of Wiki edit wars, figure out what standards would apply for citations of empirical data as valid policymaking inputs and so forth. I don't think Wikipedia has especially 'good people', just experienced ones and a general agreement to operate w…

>I don't think the US system is uniquely reliable in this regard

Completely agree. I'm just speaking from an American perspective. There are plenty of other countries that are similarly stable (perhaps even moreso thanks to having more than two diametrically opposed parties).

The "general agreement to operate within the framework" bit was what I was getting at with "good people". I'm not sure how stable it would be against a concerted effort to disrupt/distort it. But I haven't looked into its governance in much depth, either, thus my original question.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#473

Post by tal8d »

drilldrive wrote: post #387

We talk all the time about the two internets, one of China and one of the rest of the world. But more and more we are seeing a new division arising within America itself of two internets. I can't say how this will play out long-term, but with alternative-media sites rising we may well see two broad forces developing.

> ...but with alternative-media sites rising...

That should be happening, but isn't - not to the degree it naturally would. Debanking. Payment processors have been very busy weeding out potential competitors to the big names in SV. I almost want to laugh at the fact that the early cryptocurrency proponents experienced the exact same treatment while building the very thing that would protect those presently being targeted by Visa/Mastercard. I'm still banned from two major banks...

This youtube censorship stuff is going to pale in comparison to the coming wave of debanking. There is a very freaked out class of people who have their hands on the wheel at the moment (especially true at Mastercard), so you can't rely on traditional profit motives to predict behavior - anything is possible. My financial adviser suggested, with a straight face, that I consider a portfolio built around some new social equity index... my account has been self directed ever since.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#474

Post by HBKXNCUO »

dageshi wrote: post #446
HBKXNCUO wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not close to TV, in any way shape or form other than the fact that it's a video on a screen. Regular people don't put things on TV. That has always been a privilege for the very rich, or for local governments in the case of public access TV. Either way, not something regular people have access to. It's closer to pamphlets than newspapers, in that regular people can make and distribute pamphlets, whereas regular…

Then using your analagy I could see a compromise here, youtube could host whatever content as you desire but it wouldn't necessarily surface it in seach or anywhere else on the site. It would only be accessible by direct link. That would satisfy the common carrier aspect as you could simply email the links out to your existing audience. Because to use your analagy, to send out your pamphlets you must know your audien…

>That would satisfy the common carrier aspect as you could simply email the links out to your existing audience.

Yes, but the analogy with traditional delivery services breaks down because people don't ask the delivery service to find new content for them. Preferring certain people's videos in search and recommendations based upon their political content is a deliberate reduction in the ability of the penalized people to meaningfully participate in the political conversation, which is what we should be trying to prevent. It's dangerous. Less dangerous than banning them altogether, perhaps, but still dangerous.

Google and Facebook et al built very successful products that a lot of people enjoy using. But I don't think very many people think that should entitle them to shape the political conversation. The people being shut out to varying degrees will certainly not see it that way.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#475

Post by fulafel »

vowelless wrote: post #91

Good. Online radicalism is a thing. To all the people here who are decrying this as “censorship”, remember that during the early 2010s, Islamic radicals were getting radicalized on YouTube by pretty benign sermons (Ex: Awlaki and his “tour of Paradise” lectures that inspired Boston 2013, fort hood and a bunch of other international attacks). YouTube removed all that out and I think Muslims getting radicalized on YouT…

Trivia:

"The term Radical (from the Latin radix meaning root), during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, identified proponents of democratic reform, in what subsequently became the parliamentary Radical Movement."

"The term political radicalism (in political science known as radicalism) denotes political principles focused on altering social structures through revolutionary or other means and changing value systems in fundamental ways. "

And of course the classic Rules for Radicals book about community organizing and starting grassroots movements.

Let's not label all radical things bad, it can become a way to suppress dissent and societal change.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#476

Post by ng12 »

dawnerd wrote: post #137
Simulacra wrote: post #125

I strongly disagree banning anyone or any video that does not call for violence. I think it's a slippery slope and smacks of book banning. The information is out there, right or wrong. Who is it to judge what the public should see?

YouTube is in charge of what they serve on their site. That’s your answer right there.

I'll never understand this reductionist argument. Yes, YouTube/Facebook/Salesforce/etc can do whatever they want. That doesn't mean that it's good for society or that it's not worth talking about.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#477

Post by indigochill »

anigbrowl wrote: post #466
indigochill wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe so, but I still think this can work. I think the problem is that we've moved away from communities focused around a particular topic to just throwing everyone into a pool and crossing our fingers. If a community has a topic and the majority of users are interested in discussing that topic, then when someone veers off-topic to rant about their favorite conspiracy theory, you don't have to be a judge of the valid…

The problem isn't an ideological or semantic one but the fact that most news operations don't have the resources or motivation to moderate online commentary effectively, and the cost of poisoning conversation is trivially low.

Most new organizations are also general-purpose, meaning the organization will cover everything from politics to sports to tech to finance to gossip. My assertion is that trying to be all things to all people leads us into impossible-to-moderate scenarios even before you look at the motivation/resources available with which to perform said moderation.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#478

Post by 0815test »

ng12 wrote: post #464
gamblor956 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is he fearmongering? A white nationalist uprising is quite literally relatively recent European history, and resulted in the torture and slaughter of tens of millions. Before Al Queda, the West's biggest fear was domestic white nationalist terrorists like Timothy McVeigh. EDIT: It's very disturbing that so many people don't understand what the Nazi platform was all about. The supremacy of the "Aryan Race" was lit…

The battleground was fascism vs. capitalism vs. communism. Fascism was, at it's core, reactionairy to the rise of communism and it's dishonest to describe it simply as "white nationalism". Furthermore, for a "white nationalist" movement they spent a whole lot of time killing and oppressing other "whites".

Fascism was not "reactionary". It was, in many ways, a sibling ideology to 'communism', but with glorification of violence, a broadly "irrational" (i.e. explicitly anti-intellectual, and almost relishing in the use of blatant propaganda as a means of influence) attitude to mass politics and either nationalist or (in the more extreme Nazi version) racially-supremacist ideology as major selling points. "White nationalist" is somewhat inaccurate as you point out but "reactionary" is totally wrong, and Soviet propaganda is the only reason why some people today still think of fascism as "conservative" or "reactionary".

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#479

Post by tomp »

Frondo wrote: post #423
CodiePetersen wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although any hateful speech is terrible of course, I think censoring like this is a bad idea. Like other conversations about freedom of speech on HN it will eventually lead to talking about banning non hateful but extreme ideas like flat earth and anti vax. While ridiculous as they are, I think it would be equally ridiculous to ban them. What's the line you draw when you decide what gets to be promoted. Maybe certain…

I'm also okay banning anti-vax ideas, in defense of the community in general, and in defense in specific of those vulnerable few who can't be immunized and rely on herd immunity. Foregoing vaccination imposes an as-yet-unaccounted externality on the community; you put everyone at risk by not vaccinating yourself or your kids, and there's no way for the vulnerable (those relying on herd immunity) to know who around th…

Obligatory vaccination is oppression, however you twist it.

How far are you willing to go when it comes to oppressing individuals in the name of the common good? Force women to have children to repopulate aging countries (or, alternatively, force sterilize them in overpopulated countries)?

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#480

Post by tomp »

r3bl wrote: post #465
saynay wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wondering why YouTube doesn't have something like Reddit's "quarantine" where certain videos and/or channels are blocked from the recommendation algorithms without being outright banned, but still available for those who specifically search for them.

Here, try this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8beSkkKJ_0 No comments, likes, dislikes, and no recommendations on the sidebar. It can still be viewed if you accept the risk, and can be found using the search bar or by scrolling through the channel.

Funny enough, it's available in the US, but not in many EU countries (I tried Italy, Spain and Belgium).
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