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YouTube takes down Xinjiang videos, forcing rights group to seek alternative

reuters.com

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Re: YouTube takes down Xinjiang videos, forcing rights group to seek alternative

#201

Post by samspenc »

georgeburdell wrote: post #137

Reddit is doing the same thing. I tried to post this (apparent) forced marriage video, between a Uyghur woman and Han man, to a number of subreddits and it's been auto-removed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFy5K2NFNlE I'm happy to entertain alternative explanations *I should point out the obvious that this video has remained on Youtube

Reddit has been removing posts critical of the CCP for a while now, in their case, Tencent did do a massive investment in them in 2019: https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/11/reddit-300-million/ ("Reddit confirms $300M Series D led by China's Tencent at $3B Value")

Re: YouTube takes down Xinjiang videos, forcing rights group to seek alternative

#202

Post by jimmydorry »

mylons wrote: post #200
2939223 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't require top-down capitulation to the CCP. Much cheaper to infiltrate from the bottom-up. How heavily vetted are those filling the ranks of YouTube's Community Standards teams?

i witnessed the hiring of CCP sympathizers at Twitch. it’s certainly happening at youtube

Care to elaborate any more on the Twitch situation? This is certainly an alarming inditement, as I was not aware of Twitch being big or eyeing the China market.

Re: YouTube takes down Xinjiang videos, forcing rights group to seek alternative

#203

Post by seppin »

gre wrote: post #181
tablespoon wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you link some more sources about the gray zone? Being banned from Wikipedia just makes sense because they are a blog and not a primary source. IIRC, it was mainly banned because "there is consensus that The Grayzone publishes false or fabricated information" (as the summary states). I believe this was one of the examples: https://www.thedailybeast.com/in-nicaragua-torture-is-used-t... (Grayzone presenting the f…

The second article is ten years old and reads like a "he said/she said" and the payoff is pretty underwhelming. The political position of the grayzone is anti-imperialist which is an insightful way to view the US and its actions in central and south america for the past few decades. I am having trouble following the Nicaragua article as it is heavy on details. I know that one of the grayzone reporters actually lives…

> The political position of the grayzone is anti-imperialist

No it's not. They have no problem with the imperialism of China or Russia or Iran. They call themselves "anti-imperialist" the way Trump would call someone else a liar, to get out in front of the accusation before someone (rightfully) labels them as such.

> And huge thanks to Russia for funding some media critical of the US.

Propaganda. The word you are looking for is propaganda. Do pick up a history book and read the difference between, say Radio Free Europe (which is US funded) and the current attacks on anyone willing to expose Russian war crimes in Syria for example, funded of course by the Russian government.

Don't allow yourself to be used by a foreign state, just because your politics match up.

Re: YouTube takes down Xinjiang videos, forcing rights group to seek alternative

#204

Post by seppin »

justicezyx wrote: post #191
tablespoon wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to echo this dead comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27647592 > But I assume it was Adrian Zenz who was throughly discredited in [1] Zenz isn't discredited, it's just the PRC propaganda apparatus is trying its hardest to smear him as part of their coverup. Also thegrayzone.com is so unreliable that it was banned from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per... . > Grayzo…

> Why would that matter? All of our authorities on Ancient Rome never set foot in the Roman Empire. LMAO What kind of logic is this? Roman expert can look at fossils, an expert on genocide research has no fossils, how can one claim that without ever set foot on the genocide site... Does China automatically triggered some kind of emotional outburst that shut down reasoning instantly?...

Are you defending the Chinese government because you are ethnically Chinese? Just a wild guess.

Re: YouTube takes down Xinjiang videos, forcing rights group to seek alternative

#206

Post by gre »

tablespoon wrote: post #196
gre wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second article is ten years old and reads like a "he said/she said" and the payoff is pretty underwhelming. The political position of the grayzone is anti-imperialist which is an insightful way to view the US and its actions in central and south america for the past few decades. I am having trouble following the Nicaragua article as it is heavy on details. I know that one of the grayzone reporters actually lives…

> The political position of the grayzone is anti-imperialist which is an insightful way to view the US and its actions in central and south america for the past few decades. These articles might be more up your alley: https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/no-to-chinese-authori... https://newpol.org/against-the-grayzone-slanders/ https://newpol.org/on-gutter-journalism-and-purported-anti-i... Edit: here's another goo…

Thanks for the articles, I'll read them tomorrow.

Re: YouTube takes down Xinjiang videos, forcing rights group to seek alternative

#207

Post by jldugger »

mylons wrote: post #199
jeswin wrote: post #134

I doubt this was YouTube policy, or that it was driven from the top. If it was, we'd have seen a few leaks. This is more likely mass reporting of such content (perhaps organized by State apparatus), exploiting the automated flagging algorithm. In any case, I hope Google takes a stand now.

how is invoking “the algorithm,” a defense? we want algorithmic censors, now?

It's not a defense but an explanation. OP asked why google cared, and the answer is 'they likely don't and likely took no special actions.'

Algorithmic censors exist pretty much anywhere you or I can publish information on someone else's domain name; even HN has a report button that feeds into algorthmic hiding of posts. All this shows that the algorithm is not particularly robust to state sponsored manipulations; the same way internet polling in the past decades were not particularly robust to 4chan.

Re: YouTube takes down Xinjiang videos, forcing rights group to seek alternative

#208

Post by tablespoon »

commoner wrote: post #192
tablespoon wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Xinjiang is indeed highly locked down, and foreign reporters are not allowed to enter the region unless they are producing content that aligns with the Chinese government's message. I don't think it's locked down (for non-covid reasons), because I linked an account of the experiences of an NY Times journalist that went there. However, it's definitely true that reporters who aren't there to further the government's…

Let me clarify what I meant by "locked down". The border situation at Xinjiang is exceptionally invasive. The following investigation is from 2019: > Foreigners crossing certain Chinese borders into the Xinjiang region, where authorities are conducting a massive campaign of surveillance and oppression against the local Muslim population, are being forced to install a piece of malware on their phones that gives all of…

Yeah, but does that happen on the internal border between Xinjiang and the rest of China? That boarder is more relevant for reporting.

However, the surveillance in China is definitely an issue. Journalists have to declare themselves as such in visa applications (or pledge to not do any journalism), all foreigners have to register with the local police wherever they're staying (hotels do this for you behind the scenes), and I think pretty much all long distance travel requires ID. So the government knows who the journalists are, where they are, and can swarm them with minders to manage what they see (and intimidate people from speaking to them). I've read multiple reports that say that's exactly what happens when (good) journalists visit Xinjiang.

Re: YouTube takes down Xinjiang videos, forcing rights group to seek alternative

#209

Post by EMM_386 »

It seems highly likely that these videos were "reported" to YouTube (this could have been from a state initiative or otherwise) and the videos were reviewed by a human somewhere whos job it is to read a rule book and see if it applies.

And they get removed because they broke one rule or another.

This is the same as the process for any other video.

> it had received multiple so-called 'strikes' for videos which contained people holding up ID cards to prove they were related to the missing, violating a YouTube policy which prohibits personally identifiable information from appearing in its content.

Re: YouTube takes down Xinjiang videos, forcing rights group to seek alternative

#210

Post by roenxi »

jeswin wrote: post #174
roenxi wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it was, we'd have seen a few leaks. What would there be to leak? Google has taken a very activist stance on moderating their content (probably driven in part by global pressure from a large range of governments). They are actively enforcing their views of what is and isn't true as has been a hot-button political topic through the Coronavirus pandemic. There wouldn't be anything to leak even if they took a more i…

> It is reasonable to treat the Chinese government as a source of authoritative truth, even if the average American doesn't trust them. Mistrust of the CCP isn't strictly limited to "average Americans". Why should anyone trust them, given that they don't have anything close to a free press or opposition?

That is a reasonable position. But "The government are authority figures and I trust authority" is also a reasonable position (and quite common). There are a lot of people out there who trust authority - who can say that YouTube doesn't employ them?

Jobs censoring minority views are going to attract those people.

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