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YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

nytimes.com

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Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#281

Will YouTube also remove their algos that send people down rabbit holes of “extreme views” and encapsulate individuals in information bubbles that seem to validate and fail to challenge their views? The platform should shoulder as much or more blame than the content in this case. Free speech man. This is not ok.

One thing I wish YouTube would clamp down on is extreme planet trashing. People do pranks such as buying a thousand burgers to toss the lot in a swimming pool. They get the ten million likes that pays for the burgers and the local burger restaurant makes a bit of money but some cows had to die for the 'stunt'. Meanwhile at YouTube headquarters they are diligently doing their recycling. At some stage you have to wonder if YouTube are being a good corporate citizen. They encourage this wasteful behaviour.

Regarding the censoring of extreme views, what I don't understand is why YouTube gave the likes of Alex Jones such a long run. I suspect that for a while it was working out well for YouTube having people watch his rants as well as the 9/11 conspiracy theory stuff.

This defied common sense, his garbage was being recommended to people that weren't looking for it. I think these Google people get a bit too clever for their own good without taking time out to just ask if things are common sense.

I think we should all have the option to seek out views differing to our own, for instance I do care to find out what the likes of Timothy McVeigh actually thought. It doesn't mean I believe in them or what they have done. I don't want some BBC journalist to interpret that for me, I want to hear it for myself.

Recently the Iran state broadcaster Press TV got banned from YouTube with no explanation given. They did not have many views, however, now they are gone, how is anyone supposed to 'see' what Iran thinks of the world? There was no hate speech on their channel, it was just banished. Press TV is positively benign compared to recent UK/US leaders and I don't believe I am controversial in saying that. Something is deeply wrong with the censorship landscape.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#283
post #276
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Removing more hateful and supremacist content from YouTube > I think this is great, I see nothing of value being lost from channels whose whole schtick is to marginalize people's of a target group. Who gets to pick what's 'hateful' and 'supremacist' though? Did you think of that?

Google. Is this a trick question or something?

More specifically, the political party with the most supporters at Google (currently democratic party, but could change)

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> White supremacy is a much bigger deal with a worse tail risk than Islamic extremism. Wait... you're saying that white supremacy is worse than islamic extremism? Is you opinion perhaps a manifestation of your perspective? I'm sure there are some people in Syria, Afghanistan, etc... that would disagree with you. BTW, I'm not saying one is worse than the other, just that they are both bad, both a problem, and both sho…

I'd be willing to say Islamic extremism is worse than white supremacy.

One difference is that radical Islam basically just wants you to convert. White supremacy doesn't really present that option.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#285
post #69

Here is the actual blog post: https://youtube.googleblog.com/2019/06/our-ongoing-work-to-t... Main points: >Removing more hateful and supremacist content from YouTube I think this is great, I see nothing of value being lost from channels whose whole schtick is to marginalize people's of a target group. >Reducing borderline content and raising up authoritative voices I do like attempts to curtail outright scams and mi…

> Today, we're taking another step in our hate speech policy by specifically prohibiting videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status.

I wonder if things like the Freedom From Religion Foundation would qualify for a ban. Or a church that preaches that their god is the correct one.

You can't choose your age, gender (mostly), race, caste, sexual orientation, or veteran status, but religion is malleable and public discourse about those topics where one person argues that their view is superior to others is pretty important to society.

It's not clear if YouTube is going to remove anything that asserts some religious beliefs are indeed superior to others.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's their choice. If they don't like YouTube they should boycott YouTube, not leverage the government to force YouTube to host arbitrary videos for free.

True, however this wraps back to the publisher vs platform debate. If they don't want the government forcing them to host content and uphold free speech then they have to take responsibility for the content in the eyes of the law. Currently they're having it both ways, free to ban ideas they don't like and control the content they deliver without being responsible for libel/slander.

> If they don't want the government forcing them to host content and uphold free speech then they have to take responsibility for the content in the eyes of the law. Currently they're having it both ways, free to ban ideas they don't like and control the content they deliver without being responsible for libel/slander.

It sounds like you're saying that they either have to host absolutely any video anyone uploads, or else stand behind every video as if they made it themselves.

I don't see how a video platform could exist on those terms.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WW2.

White supremacy can be reasonably credited for the Holocaust, but not for the war itself. The usual intervention after a major war was for a few hundred years to carve up the major belligerent into smaller states. This happened fairly regularly throughout the early modern period but curiously stopped being a thing after the Napoleonic wars. I suspect this is because carving France back up into kingdoms at that point…

> White supremacy can be reasonably credited for the Holocaust,

Not so! There is significant, though not watertight evidence that Hitler intended the Holocaust to be followed by mass extermination and enslavement of Slavic peoples (so-called Generalplan Ost), whom Nazi Germans regarded as an "inferior" race according to their racial ideology, and surely not "Aryan" - despite, y'know, Slavic languages sharing a common ancestry with both Germanic languages and Indo-Iranic ones! Nazi German attitudes to the "supremacy" of race, culture and the like were a lot weirder than people are usually ready to admit these days; while they may have been rooted in some sorts of shared vocabulary from the early 20th-century, to a far greater extent they were just "Nazi Germany and the friends of Nazi Germany good, everyone else bad!" Of course, this is the story of supremacist ideologies everywhere; but the point is that we should not grow complacent and reassure ourselves that there's anything especially peculiar about white-supremacist nationalism; it's just one of many, many ideologies with broad similarities in their appeal to hateful sentiment.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#288
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because it's literally what YouTube is? Why do you think a nation of free speaking individuals is patently not entitled to say what they want on a platform specifically created to allow people to say whatever they want? To be absolutely clear on my position, I am not saying YouTube is acting outside their rights to censor content. But I am very much saying people have a right to be peeved about the bait and…

>Probably because it's literally what YouTube is? That's obviously not true. A list of banned content has been place for most of its existence, e.g porn and illegal content.

YouTube started out as a way to empower people to post home videos on the internet, a place for every day people to share video.

And you're right, it has always restricted illegal content. And that's a good line to draw.

So..

What's illegal about this new content?

Or what has changed that they now think they're ready to judge what is extreme and hateful?

Or what has changed that they now think they even should?

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False pretexts are a subset of pretexts. It's only circular if you are not precise with the logic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bijection,_injection_and_surje...

Perhaps you should have written your initial interjection with the same precision you now seek to apply. Since it was written in English, I invite you to reflect on how it might be received by the unwary reader. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

Your logic falls apart, if the initial set != the 2nd set.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#290

I'm starting to think that comment sections on news sites are a really bad idea. At first I thought NPR and the like were cowards for removing theirs. It's bad enough that NYT can be pretty biased on its own, but the comment sections are always full of low-tier thinking that just push whatever narrative is currently in the Overton window. What I find distressing is how people remark that a telecom and advertising gia…

I was a huge proponent of this in the early days of the web and was leading the crusade for reader engagement, championing the idea of anonymous commentary and a pure marketplace of ideas.

Well, it turns out I had an over-optimistic view of people.

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