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Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

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Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#291

Post by Diederich »

catalogia wrote: post #193
dleslie wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a bunch of friends at Google; it's a mix of "not my department," "the pay is good," and a few "true believers."

Don't say that he's hypocritical Rather say that he's apolitical "Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down?" "That's not my department!" says Werner von Braun

For those who aren't aware and/or won't look this reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro

As the other comenter noted, Tom Lehrer is indeed a national treasure, and his satire is top shelf.

From the light-hearted "The Elements": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcS3NOQnsQM (watch for the surprise at the end)

To the gallows comedy of "We Will All Go Together When We Go": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frAEmhqdLFs

NB: I appreciate the irony linking to YouTube content in a 'WTF Google/YouTube' thread.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#292

Post by mc32 »

geofft wrote: post #103
ddevault wrote: post #38

Google & YouTube employees on HN: how do you justify still working at this company? Enough of the cognitive dissonance. Face your choices and tell me how you square yourself with them. For shame.

Not a Google or YouTube employee, but, practically, what would change? In the most likely case, a bunch of Googlers who believe it's important to be apolitical at work would take over the product and implement much stronger censorship to get promo. In the unlikely event all of them (and every applicant drooling for a FAANG job) had a change of heart too, Tencent would gladly step into the vacuum.

They can organize against project maven but apparently this issue isn’t attractive enough for them.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#293

Post by joshuamorton »

manigandham wrote: post #253
RIMR wrote: post #225

What an infantile understanding of the issue. The reason that hate speech creates outrage is because it exists to communicate inhuman hatred of others for their immutable characteristics. The reason that sites like YouTube don't tolerate it isn't that they share in the outrage - it's that they rely entirely on advertisers to keep their bottom line positive, and advertisers aren't going to pay to be associated with ha…

Where does it say that hate speech is about immutable characteristics? Is that your subjective personal definition? Advertisers really don't care that much (and I'm speaking as a 12 year adtech veteran). They play into popular culture and are being carried along with the increasingly sensitive social environment online. Also we're talking about comments, not video content, and it's futile to try and control how other…

Here's the first result from Googling "hate speech":

> public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation

I might broaden the final bit to "immutable characteristics" instead of the specific list they provide. For the same reason, I probably wouldn't consider the comment under discussion hate speech, but I'm really curious what you find difficult about that definition.

Edit: see the followups for why something that is a social construct can be immutable, since multiple people have made the same flawed response.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#294

Post by ng12 »

gabaix wrote: post #63

Youtube is in a tough spot. They will be blamed: - if they don't take down speech some consider hateful - if they take down speech some do not consider hateful 共匪 is seen as an insult by a group, but others do not. If Youtube bans nothing, then hate speech thrives and they get bad PR. If Youtube bans anything anyone flags as hate speech, then they become de facto as censorship agents for foreign powers. Anything crit…

Do not conflate this with hatespeech, it leads the discussion away from the issue. Communist bandit refers to the government, not a protected class. It's not in any way similar to posting a racist/sexist/homophobic comment.

To be clear: hatespeech by definition relates to race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation. Communist bandit is unrelated to any of those categories.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#295

Post by pacala »

skybrian wrote: post #191
ddevault wrote: post #38

Google & YouTube employees on HN: how do you justify still working at this company? Enough of the cognitive dissonance. Face your choices and tell me how you square yourself with them. For shame.

I don't work there anymore, but this is a confused argument born of zealotry. Taking Google's money to work on open source is totally fine. More money spent on good things might even mean less spent on bad things. For example, nothing good would come from the Go team quitting over unrelated political stuff.

FWIW, open source is not an absolute good. It is undercutting the ability of your peers to make a living. It is making software a commodity, such that capital rich hardware owners can make a killing. See AWS.

Commoditize your complement. https://www.gwern.net/Complement

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#296

Post by criddell »

judge2020 wrote: post #98
gabaix wrote: post #63

Youtube is in a tough spot. They will be blamed: - if they don't take down speech some consider hateful - if they take down speech some do not consider hateful 共匪 is seen as an insult by a group, but others do not. If Youtube bans nothing, then hate speech thrives and they get bad PR. If Youtube bans anything anyone flags as hate speech, then they become de facto as censorship agents for foreign powers. Anything crit…

It seems the problem is often scale. When you can't automate something at the same mistake level a human could, scaling it either requires compromises or extreme resource expenditure via something like tens of thousands of human moderators.

Too big to moderate in relation to Google and Facebook sounds a little like too big to fail in relation to banks.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#297

Post by jldugger »

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 wrote: post #19
dionian wrote: post #3

This phrase is a pejorative for Communists; it is more or less equivalent to the term 'commies' in English. EDIT: Please don't downvote me for contributing relevant facts to the discussion. I do not support censorship.

They definitely don’t ban the word “commie” in English, so why ban the Chinese one?

You know why.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#298

Post by mistermann »

duxup wrote: post #194
missosoup wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The submission I linked is not flagged (at least as far as I can see from my account?). Either there's some non-intuitive stuff going on with the way submissions stay on the front page, or HN soft-nuked it. Either way I think we deserve an explanation and a clear understanding of the underlying rules.

Does HN always tell you when someone flags it? Or just a critical number of users or something like that? I see the flagged indicator now and then, but I see it somewhat less frequently than I would THINK things get flagged, admittedly that's all conjecture.

If something is memory holed quickly enough after being flagged, perhaps combined with an automated algorithm that considers certain keywords, then the likelihood of people noticing flagged posts can be kept very low.

Of course this is all speculation, the truth of censorship on various platforms will likely never be known.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#299

Post by shadowgovt »

bradly wrote: post #198
virvar wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you buy hardware? I’m genuinely asking because where I live it’s impossible to buy stuff that wasn’t made in China. It’s almost impossible to lead en ethical life in this day and age if you do anything related to tech.

> It’s almost impossible to lead en ethical life in this day and age if you do anything related to tech. That doesn't change that an engineer in the bay area can choose to work for Google or choose to find an alternative place of employment. People can choose more ethical choices without living in a pure ethical panacea.

Sure, but then we're back to "What mental gymnastics do techies do to justify buying hardware they know is made in sweatshop conditions in China?"

Take that template and apply it to Googlers. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism; everyone has compromised a rigid belief structure somewhere.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#300

Post by jimbob45 »

Counterpoint: this is (weirdly effective) reverse psychology. We know China runs slave camps near the NK border and slavery is typically demonized here in America. However, no one talks about it because China deplatforms relatively benign topics instead. Do we really think they wouldn't prefer a Winnie the Pooh image of their leader over slave camps? Even Tiananmen Square is preferable to forced human organ harvesting.
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