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YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Gets 'Freedom Expression' Award Sponsored by YouTube

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Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Gets 'Freedom Expression' Award Sponsored by YouTube

#111
I think people here are fundamentally misunderstanding what happened here. There is a nonprofit, the "Freedom Forum Institute" that awarded this award. Only the award ceremony was sponsored by YouTube. It's common practice for nonprofits to use awards like this as an opportunity to ask for donations, and for the company associated with that person to offer to sponsor the awards ceremony.

I don't see anything to indicate that this award was created by YouTube or that YouTube decided to award this to her.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Gets 'Freedom Expression' Award Sponsored by YouTube

#112
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A childhood friend committed suicide, I found out, then the next day or so my science-curated youtube feed suddenly showed me a totally out of context video in the top spot with content that mocked my friend's life. It appeared as though google/youtube algos used the data point about my friend's suicide to perform a psychological experiment on me. At the least, this was amoral, but appeared malicious to me. I fail to…

The simple answer is no algorithm is that smart. It's just picking up your "interests" and trying to tailor that. AFAIK people do try to tune recommender systems to avoid this but it's an inscrutable problem to solve with today's state-of-the-art.

My youtube feed had been purposely curated to two science topics for weeks prior. How does the suicide of a friend factor into an "interests" algo that all of a sudden overrides my customizations? I was not doing any searches etc for suicide at that point but I did learn of the suicide via SMS from someone who uses an Android phone. (likely infiltration point for google to initially gather the data point User.FriendsSuicide.WasInformed)

I'm willing to accept the innocent explanation but not on conjecture. This was blatant and fucking hurt me badly and I haven't recovered since. It was the worst possible gaslighting.

Recently: tweeting about my suicidal ideations and having twitter respond with personalized trends such as "He's dead" and "Rope" while shadowbanning me doesn't look good.

Also recently: Facebook showing me a long string of county sheriffs as "people you may know" when a guy i knew long ago was scheduled to be released from a long term federal stint, doesnt look good either. Makes it clear that I've been on a "associate of bad guy" list since Season 6 Ep 12. Is it possible that some kind of social credit algos have been deployed by American tech companies, in a limited fashion? I suspect the architectural arrangements at big tech companies offers compartments for performing limited use-case experiments totally out of view of the rank and file engineers. By design, those ouside that clearance zone won't even know it exists. "CIA middleware" might be appropriate

It seems unlikely to me that the google incident was just a random fluke based on my "interest" in learning of the suicide of a childhood friend. However, only google has the logs, data, and algorithms. I find it unlikely that Google will ever give a straight answer but to me its evidence that Google's data and algos need to be turned over to the justice dept. A big part of Google's power is their impunity to perform such experiments with total deniability. They are worth a trillion dollars yet any damage, incidental or intentional, inflicted on a user goes totally unchecked.

Google is loyal to google/shareholders. They dont give a fsk about me, and I fully expect that no response is forthcoming. There's no accountability, and these services start to look more like public utilities. If it isnt transparent then any such malice can easily be played off with statements claiming that some kind of intelligence is needed for an algo to be malicious

An algo doesn't have to be "smart" to gaslight a person. All you need is their personal data, especially intimate data such as:

* Childhood bully's name

* Subsequent taken name of your ex wife who you were heartbroken to lose

* Suicide of a childhood friend

* Other personals such as siblings' names

Worse yet is rumors. An algo can use info related to rumors to gaslight a person. Just use keywords from the rumors for personalized content. None of this requires any complex algos. Just incompetence and/or malice.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Gets 'Freedom Expression' Award Sponsored by YouTube

#114
post #104

You should watch the video of her accepting the award. She talks about censoring people for violating the terms of service and the four responsibilities, one of which is to their advertisers. All this in an acceptance speech for freedom of speech. Talk about digging your own hole.

Absolutely bizarre. It's so disconnected, I don't know what to make of it.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Gets 'Freedom Expression' Award Sponsored by YouTube

#115
post #104

You should watch the video of her accepting the award. She talks about censoring people for violating the terms of service and the four responsibilities, one of which is to their advertisers. All this in an acceptance speech for freedom of speech. Talk about digging your own hole.

Absolutely bizarre. It's so disconnected, I don't know what to make of it.

I think it’s a power strut. Victors strutting and defining what is the truth. Somewhat common in corporate America and politics actually.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Gets 'Freedom Expression' Award Sponsored by YouTube

#117

I think people here are fundamentally misunderstanding what happened here. There is a nonprofit, the "Freedom Forum Institute" that awarded this award. Only the award ceremony was sponsored by YouTube. It's common practice for nonprofits to use awards like this as an opportunity to ask for donations, and for the company associated with that person to offer to sponsor the awards ceremony. I don't see anything to indic…

Does the Freedom Forum Institute do societally beneficial things or are they just a prestige laundering service?

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Gets 'Freedom Expression' Award Sponsored by YouTube

#118

I think people here are fundamentally misunderstanding what happened here. There is a nonprofit, the "Freedom Forum Institute" that awarded this award. Only the award ceremony was sponsored by YouTube. It's common practice for nonprofits to use awards like this as an opportunity to ask for donations, and for the company associated with that person to offer to sponsor the awards ceremony. I don't see anything to indic…

Even if you completely ignore whatever sponsorship YouTube has with the organization, the sheer idea of awarding YouTube a prize related to freedom of expression/freedom of speech is what's laughable.

I suspect some people think the only possible reason YouTube could win this award is because of the sponsorship of the award ceremony. Because how else would you explain it?

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Gets 'Freedom Expression' Award Sponsored by YouTube

#119

I think people here are fundamentally misunderstanding what happened here. There is a nonprofit, the "Freedom Forum Institute" that awarded this award. Only the award ceremony was sponsored by YouTube. It's common practice for nonprofits to use awards like this as an opportunity to ask for donations, and for the company associated with that person to offer to sponsor the awards ceremony. I don't see anything to indic…

An award that the recipient pays for isn't a meritorious award.
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