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By removing “extremist content,” platforms are purging human rights evidence

nytimes.com

141–150 of 168 posts

Re: By removing “extremist content,” platforms are purging human rights evidence

#141
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been wondering about this phenomenon for awhile. Spotify can delete music history. Youtube can delete video history. If it's on a streaming service it may as well not exist. We're at this strange point where convenience may as well be access, because the same service you used for discovery is the one for consumption. I don't know if this phenomenon has a name.

Likewise Amazon removing books from its site is much more effective than any book burning.

Fahrenheit 451, good movie about that. I just found out Amazon owns Goodreads. They also own IMDB.

Re: By removing “extremist content,” platforms are purging human rights evidence

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of times I've taken a google search that gave me useless results, copied-and-pasted it into duck-duck-go, and immediately found what I'm looking for, is astounding. I do think that they are starting to lose the power-user userbase when it comes to browsers and search engines. But their email, docs/sheets/whatever, drive, and now their DNS registrar services are all cemented into business flow. It makes sen…

> The number of times I've taken a google search that gave me useless results, copied-and-pasted it into duck-duck-go, and immediately found what I'm looking for, is astounding. I'll bet it's dwarfed by the number of times I get useful results from Google and total garbage from DDG. Earlier today I searched for "CADT syndrome" to figure out what another HN comment meant by it. Both engines automatically correct that…

To be fair, two points. One, DDG isn't perfect in all areas, and has lots of work to do. Their budget is a tiny sliver of what the google search teams is/was, and they are much newer. Some topics get better results than others, and that is to be expected.

Two, the others are referencing controversial opinion content in particular. They are saying that if the search is about something controversial or politically charged, the google result is noticeably lacking. This seems more concerning to many of us because this isn't just a newer search engine not quite up to par, this is the search engine purposefully pushing users into filter bubbles of Googles choosing!

I hope I cleared up the difference between what you are referring to and what the others are talking about. Anecdotally, I can confirm as a heavy youtube user (both web and youtube-dl/mps) that youtube search is also affected. Many searches for things that aren't even that "out there" return no results, even with the exact name of the video. If you don't have the actual link from somewhere else, you can't find it. I think what google is doing is dangerous and a very slippery slope. Many of my datahording friends have been on youtube downloading sprees because they are afraid google is about to memory hole important videos that don't exist anywhere else that is easily accessible.

ps. This is also the nice part of the bangs of ddg. Don't like the ddg results, just do it again with !gyear etc. (vs the google gui way, and I don't even know if googles daterange: operator even works anymore)

Re: By removing “extremist content,” platforms are purging human rights evidence

#143
post #141
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likewise Amazon removing books from its site is much more effective than any book burning.

Fahrenheit 451, good movie about that. I just found out Amazon owns Goodreads. They also own IMDB.

An oft-overlooked aspect of Fahrenheit 451 is that it's everyday people that report others to the firemen in the book, very similar to how content is censored these days.

Goodreads will list any book for the time being, even ones banned from Amazon. One example is The Culture of Critique - the link to Amazon goes to a broken page, but links to buy it from other vendors remain.

Link to the book - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/182136.The_Culture_of_Cr...

Re: By removing “extremist content,” platforms are purging human rights evidence

#144
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Been wondering about this phenomenon for awhile. Spotify can delete music history. Youtube can delete video history. If it's on a streaming service it may as well not exist. We're at this strange point where convenience may as well be access, because the same service you used for discovery is the one for consumption. I don't know if this phenomenon has a name.

Likewise Amazon removing books from its site is much more effective than any book burning.

You can buy them (or if curious, simply see which books have been banned) here http://www.unz.com/bookstore/

Re: By removing “extremist content,” platforms are purging human rights evidence

#145

Not only Youtube, I've noticed a huge disparity between Duck Duck Go results and Google results when writing queries that could be thought of as containing a controversial/politically/racially/etc charged topic. Youtube recommendations and search/ranking suppress searches as it is, even if they were to leave the content on there, most of it will never be surfaced through organic means without a direct link or a searc…

I am getting racially and politically charged content suggested on youtube and don't have any interest on it. Maybe there is some more extreme content I could not find, but this stuff is going to me without me wanting it.

Re: By removing “extremist content,” platforms are purging human rights evidence

#146
post #92
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it well documented that the human moderators who do exist at places like facebook and youtube end up having their mental health screwed after they watch so much disturbing content? Just throwing human moderators at the problem probably has more cost than just the salaries involved.

How does 4chan do it? Last I checked they have moderators (well "janitors"). They are volunteers, work for almost no recognition (still Anon), and probably do not have the mental health problems that regular people do. There is also clearly an ability to follow direction or enforce appropriate (e.g. the janitors of /b/ /pol/ /g/ and /fit/ are clearly all operating on different sets of rules). I am 100% in agreement t…

What makes you think 4chan volunteers don't have mental health problems "regular people do"?

Re: By removing “extremist content,” platforms are purging human rights evidence

#147
post #3

Youtube and Facebook, while convenient, aren't really appropriate mediums for them to share this sort of footage. Liveleak comes to mind as a service better suited for a public repository of this video. Archival of footage shouldn't be dependent on a third party platform that can, at will, delete every single video on a whim. Likely for this sort of thing a diligent archivist will need to put in the effort of storing…

Been wondering about this phenomenon for awhile. Spotify can delete music history. Youtube can delete video history. If it's on a streaming service it may as well not exist. We're at this strange point where convenience may as well be access, because the same service you used for discovery is the one for consumption. I don't know if this phenomenon has a name.

Long ago only very rich people or clergymen owned books. They were read out loud to the illiterate at gatherings.

Re: By removing “extremist content,” platforms are purging human rights evidence

#148
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I somewhat do agree with the ad engine... but it's a crappy one. I'm a guy in my 30s. Nothing in my view history ever says, "Hey, this guy is progressive enough to wear makeup." At that, I watch english, polish, and french videos. Ads I get, Spanish. I dont know spanish. I'd accept general language learning ads. But tostitos and I think one was health or house insurance... in spanish. It's like the ad bot is some red…

Book a honeymoon, constantly Google administrative marriage questions ... still get ads for engagement rings.

You never know. Maybe people who got married recently are more likely to get married again soon?

Re: By removing “extremist content,” platforms are purging human rights evidence

#149
post #3

Youtube and Facebook, while convenient, aren't really appropriate mediums for them to share this sort of footage. Liveleak comes to mind as a service better suited for a public repository of this video. Archival of footage shouldn't be dependent on a third party platform that can, at will, delete every single video on a whim. Likely for this sort of thing a diligent archivist will need to put in the effort of storing…

During the Arab Spring I had savec gigabytes of Youtube footages of protests, because I 100% expected them to be removed.

"You should not show identifiable people being beaten!"

That's true, because it could go one way or another depending on whether the revolution succeeds. If it does, though, it can help identify the perpetrators of brutality.

Publishing it is irresponsible, but destroying them is as well. This is potential criminal evidences.

Re: By removing “extremist content,” platforms are purging human rights evidence

#150
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get "Sorry. This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine." To my understanding websites can chose to not be included in the Wayback Machine.

Not only that, if they are archived at one point and later decide to be excluded then all of the archives for that domain are deleted retroactively. This means that a valuable site can be archived for years but if the domain lapses and gets bought up by somebody who decides to exclude the Wayback Machine then all of that precious content is destroyed even though the destroyer never owned it! I feel like we’re in the…

If the site goes down and the robots.txt becomes unavailable, the content will become available on internet archive.
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