YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#581

Post by Supermancho » Sat, May 23, 2020, 1:08 AM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #501

Supermancho wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> recommendation algorithm (time based) Can't any choice (not being purely audio, why the title is only in X languages, etc) can be considered editorial, for any TV news show or book? It isn't constructive to construe FIFO as editorial when it is the common way to experience and share events. Since content creators ostensibly retain control of what is published, they could ideally rearrange their content in their fee…

> Can't any choice (not being purely audio, why the title is only in X languages, etc) can be considered editorial, for any TV news show or book? Yes exactly. > It isn't constructive to construe FIFO as editorial when it is the common way to experience and share events. In what context? > Since content creators ostensibly retain control of what is published, they could ideally rearrange their content in their feed by…

> This sounds horrendous.

Any "editorial algorithm", by the standards you have put forth, can be abused.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#582

Post by d3ntb3ev1l » Sat, May 23, 2020, 1:17 AM UTC

_bxg1 wrote: post #207

acituan wrote: post #51

I don’t agree with the interview contents, nor think professorship alone gives sufficient credibility in the face of a novel pandemic, data of which is in the process of emerging. That said, I don’t want youtube to be in charge of deciding what is credible or not. They don’t have in-house experts on these domains, they don’t have a magic epistemology machine that spits out the “facts”. They are good at writing web se…

And on the other end of the spectrum we have people being indoctrinated into violent conspiracy groups like QAnon, or being prompted to set fire to cell towers, or bringing measles back from the dead, because of YouTube videos. There's a line to be drawn here - and it's a tricky line, to be sure - but "YouTube should be totally neutral and not pull anything" is not a viable answer.

Google is a private company. They should be allowed to do whatever they want. They are not a government.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#583

Post by joshuamorton » Sat, May 23, 2020, 2:14 AM UTC

Supermancho wrote: post #581

joshuamorton wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can't any choice (not being purely audio, why the title is only in X languages, etc) can be considered editorial, for any TV news show or book? Yes exactly. > It isn't constructive to construe FIFO as editorial when it is the common way to experience and share events. In what context? > Since content creators ostensibly retain control of what is published, they could ideally rearrange their content in their feed by…

> This sounds horrendous. Any "editorial algorithm", by the standards you have put forth, can be abused.

I don't disagree. But what you (or the prior posters) are saying is that the law should prevent companies from trying to optimize for the best user experience. If only showing things in time-order is "safe" for the company, but filtering out spam becomes "unsafe", then I as a consumer am forced to endure a crappy experience for solely legal reasons. Neato.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#584

Post by soraminazuki » Sat, May 23, 2020, 2:33 AM UTC

ehsankia wrote: post #573

soraminazuki wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard enough of these machine learning buzzword bingos every week when things like this happen. The thing is, I don't care. I just want things like this to never happen again.

Then we should shut down videos on the internet entirely, because 500 hours of video per minute is not something anyone can manually moderate. We would all love to live in an utopia where everything works perfectly and there's a solution to every problem, but that's not realistic.

Constantly cracking down on videos that slightly mentions a certain topic goes way too far. Do we really want GFW style censoring to maintain an artificial utopia where harmful content™️ won't exist?

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#585

Post by int_19h » Sat, May 23, 2020, 6:50 AM UTC

AbrahamParangi wrote: post #570

int_19h wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that memes themselves undergo natural selection, which favors the "bad" ones overall. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

I don't think this is true in the long run, any more than genes which favor their propagation are bad in the long run. In the short term, viruses, cancers, shitty memes, doomsday cults and other low-sophistication replicators are favored. But long term you get things like multicellularity, complex nervous systems, the scientific method, civilization and art. The road may be rocky but I see no reason for it to be any…

It's "bad" for us as individuals with our cultural background. It's not necessarily "bad" for the memes themselves, especially since the ultimate score in this game is to have an entire civilization proactively spreading the meme to others. Christianity, Islam, and other proselytizing religions are a good example.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#586

Post by xondono » Sat, May 23, 2020, 8:45 AM UTC

modriano wrote: post #447

2019-nCoV wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is wrong with relying on the existing legal foundation? Arrest them for arson, if and when they decide to ravage a cell tower. Should we halt the sale of knives because they can be misused to murder?

Nationally, the clearance rate for arson is typically under 23%, meaning the vast majority of arsonists get away with it. In general, clearance rates are pretty bad across most crimes. The homicide clearance rate is typically below 62%, clearance rates for non-fatal shootings is typically below 55%, clearance rates for reported rape is typically below 40%, clearance rates for motor vehicle theft is typically below 20…

Then just do what all legal codes already do, increase the severity of punishment to compensate.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#587

Post by coldtea » Sat, May 23, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

wrsh07 wrote: post #577

coldtea wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Advertisers will always have power Not if laws lessen it. Which is my whole point. > If an advertiser today wants to advertise with pornhub, that is a different editorial decision than choosing to advertise on YouTube. I shouldn't have to spell this out because it seems pretty obvious. It's only obvious within a certain puritan culture. In Europe nobody would bat an eye if an advertiser for a, say, fast food store,…

Legislation can't possibly prevent YouTube from sharding into a bunch of disparate publishing entities In fact, the "break up big tech" groups might laud such a thing There is no way of framing your regulation so that it does something useful. Instead it will only ever be a burden on smaller distributers and hurt their chances of advertising (because in order to find advertisers, those advertisers will either have to…

>Legislation can't possibly prevent YouTube from sharding into a bunch of disparate publishing entities

Actually it can. That's the whole point, legislation can do anything, In the US case it can even change the constitution with a new amendment...

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#588

Post by JohnBooty » Sun, May 24, 2020, 2:21 AM UTC

myk9001 wrote: post #432

JohnBooty wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me be contrary: who shut down millions of businesses and put millions out of work? Well, I'd blame the pandemic itself. Sweden provides an imperfect but interesting what-if scenario for countries wondering what would have happened if they'd imposed little to no lockdown restrictions. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/30/coronavirus-sweden-economy-t... Their economy is still taking a very severe hit despite retail busi…

Lockdowns are causing the majority of economic damage. Whether lockdowns are justified anyway is a question for another discussion. But economies are hit by lockdowns not the pandemic itself. Let's look at info we can find about Sweden. Sure, people in Sweden are staying at home more, but the decrease in activity is hardly on the level of locked down countries. "When people became aware of coronavirus around March 12…

I don't agree with your conclusion, but I appreciate those links. Thank you.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#589

Post by Zak » Sun, May 24, 2020, 2:55 PM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #575

Zak wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laws don't have to be philosophically pure. A law can define or describe what counts as an editorial algorithm and what does not, and it could exclude simple sorting while including the complicated thing Youtube does to keep you watching. What might be harder is to distinguish sophisticated search algorithms from recommendation algorithms. There's some overlap, but I'm inclined to think that the two are mostly differ…

Indeed, but (at least in the US), you can't really do that without running afoul of the first amendment, presenting content is just a form of speech. Government restrictions on speech are the thing that everyone's afraid of, right?

Currently, platform immunity means the platform can't be sued or criminally charged because a user hosts something for which the user can be. The proposed change would expose the operator of an editorial algorithm to liability for the algorithm recommending things that are already illegal.

I don't think the concern with rolling back platform immunity is government restrictions on free speech, exactly. In the US, the first amendment provides the same protections it always has. Instead, concerns include that the risk of liability will hamper innovation, that only companies with a lot of resources will be able to take the risk, and that companies will overreact with their own proactive censorship to stay well clear of areas with potential liability.

We've seen the latter with FOSTA/SESTA weakening platform immunity, which is arguably what its creators intended, but I suspect not what everyone in congress who voted for it expected.

Re: YouTube removes interview with professor of medicine on Covid stats and policy

#590

Post by joshuamorton » Sun, May 24, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

Zak wrote: post #589

joshuamorton wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, but (at least in the US), you can't really do that without running afoul of the first amendment, presenting content is just a form of speech. Government restrictions on speech are the thing that everyone's afraid of, right?

Currently, platform immunity means the platform can't be sued or criminally charged because a user hosts something for which the user can be. The proposed change would expose the operator of an editorial algorithm to liability for the algorithm recommending things that are already illegal. I don't think the concern with rolling back platform immunity is government restrictions on free speech, exactly. In the US, the…

Right, but the "platform immunity" thing applies equally to all platforms. You're instead proposing to extend immunity to some platforms and not others based on how they choose to recommend things. If you (like I do) believe that recommendation is a form of speech, this creates government favored classes of speech.

To word it differently: "Platforms that recommend/aggregate speech in government sanctioned ways are protected from liability, while those that do not are not". That's, while not open and shut perhaps, certainly spooky.