Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Academic media censorship conference censored by YouTube?

mintpressnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 103 posts

Re: Academic media censorship conference censored by YouTube?

#41

Post by azangru »

ladyanita22 wrote: post #3

Many will disagree, but this is the result of holding the plataforms accountable for what the users upload. The traffic is so inmense that they have to resort to shitty algorithms. Because given Google's (any big tech company really) lack of morals, I don't believe they'd care to censor anything at all.

> Because given Google's (any big tech company really) lack of morals, I don't believe they'd care to censor anything at all.

Oh, come on now! A big company may lack morals, true, but in order to appease the most vocal, acutely political and obsessively moral part of the general public, including its own employees, it needs to conform to the societal demands on it. How else would you explain the appearance of banners linking to official Covid-related sites under videos about Covid, or pulling down of the videos that question the official Covid-related policies (such as lockdowns), or banners under videos from state-sponsored channels such as RT, or removal of videos that question the outcome of the US presidential election, or, well, most of the articles on the Youtube blog, really [0]. They are firmly placing themselves on specific sides of political, cultural, or ethical divides.

[0] - https://blog.youtube/news-and-events

Re: Academic media censorship conference censored by YouTube?

#42

Post by doh »

judge2020 wrote: post #31
doh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's basically impossible to do so. Well, not true. I built whole company that does exactly this. It's disappointing that YouTube is used as the standard of what technology can do and how these systems can work. We built system with the creator as a first class citizen. This means they are able to claim exceptions (as defined by law) before any action is taken. They are also able to utilize outside arbiters (WIPO,…

Do you plan to offer wide access to peertube instances once your product is GA, or will it be up to maintainers to pay for and integrate the platform into their upload pipeline? Your system sounds like it would immediately solve the problem of compliance with this law for the PT instances that are afraid that they might be required to block access from the EU.

I did answer some of this already here [0] but in short, yes. We are offering our systems free of charge to all types of platforms including one like peertube. Anyone can implement our SDK and built at the top of it. We operate very similarly to Stripe where the system is free and we live off of the transactions.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26009027

Re: Academic media censorship conference censored by YouTube?

#43

Post by ttt0 »

exolymph wrote: post #37
pjc50 wrote: post #12

Bizarre. Anyway, I did a quick check of their website, and they have a really interesting list of "censored" stories: https://www.projectcensored.org/category/the-top-25-censored... (I've not seen any of the usual right wing free speech faction stand up for these...)

> (I've not seen any of the usual right wing free speech faction stand up for these...) Hi! Part of the right-wing free-speech faction here! (Well, I don't consider myself a rightist, but you probably would.) This incident sucks just like all the other ones! Hope this helps.

I just want to point out that the stories seem to be about predominantly left-wing causes. I don't expect anyone in the right-wing free-speech faction to even know about them, since 1. it was silenced, 2. it was probably talked about only in more obscure left-wing circles, that right-wingers are not a part of.

It's unreasonable to assume that a right-winger would know about it, just like it is unreasonable to assume that a left-winger is going to know about all the silencing that goes on against the right-wing. It's the media blackouts we're talking about here. That's the entire point.

Re: Academic media censorship conference censored by YouTube?

#44

Post by ikerdanzel »

motbob wrote: post #33
Jabbles wrote: post #2

Google is claiming these videos were never on YouTube? That seems... odd? And surely easy to refute, if they were public? Internet Archive would at least have scraped the channel's page. TFA links to https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGPZJTVIpNe-hroLo-CQ9wQ/vid... which currently 404s... But which indeed did contain many videos... https://web.archive.org/web/20201101020416if_/https://www.yo...

Fwiw, there have been instances of Google straight up not being able to restore deleted content. When you go to delete videos, you do get warnings that deletion cannot be undone. I wouldn't be surprised if Google didn't have great records of deleted content. Maybe Google deleted this tiny channel, or maybe it was user error by Project Censored (the apparent organizers of the conference), or maybe it was a publicity s…

Google censorship is more equal than other possibilities. They themselves have committed a lot lately compare to say owner did it. Purely based on perception, without any proof, I say your last statement is unlikely.

Re: Academic media censorship conference censored by YouTube?

#45

Post by wmf »

It is unfortunately well known that moderators (human and machine) can't reliably distinguish between X and discussion/criticism about X. So it's quite common for academic discussion of topics like fascism, conspiracy theories, terrorism, trolling, etc. to be mistakenly censored. Either YouTube/Facebook/Twitter need to invest 1000x more on better moderation or academics should host their content on university sites.

Re: Academic media censorship conference censored by YouTube?

#46

Post by ajnin »

hsuduebc2 wrote: post #38

Just a friendly reminder that corporations doesn't care about justice and your basic rights. Only money.

I don't get why this maxim is constantly touted as if it were a fundamental truth. Corporations exist in a social and legal framework that we agreed to create, and that we could change so that money would not be the sole measure of value.

You might say that's the way things are right now, but if you stop there it sounds like fatalism. I'd rather say something like "let's find ways to regulate corporations so that they have to care about our basic rights". Sorry if I'm misunderstanding your comment.

Re: Academic media censorship conference censored by YouTube?

#47

Post by tal8d »

azangru wrote: post #41
ladyanita22 wrote: post #3

Many will disagree, but this is the result of holding the plataforms accountable for what the users upload. The traffic is so inmense that they have to resort to shitty algorithms. Because given Google's (any big tech company really) lack of morals, I don't believe they'd care to censor anything at all.

> Because given Google's (any big tech company really) lack of morals, I don't believe they'd care to censor anything at all. Oh, come on now! A big company may lack morals, true, but in order to appease the most vocal, acutely political and obsessively moral part of the general public, including its own employees, it needs to conform to the societal demands on it. How else would you explain the appearance of banners…

Many will unironically justify their actions by declaring themselves to be "on the right side of history". The phrase has an unsurprising origin.

Re: Academic media censorship conference censored by YouTube?

#48

Post by lsh123 »

tal8d wrote: post #47
azangru wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because given Google's (any big tech company really) lack of morals, I don't believe they'd care to censor anything at all. Oh, come on now! A big company may lack morals, true, but in order to appease the most vocal, acutely political and obsessively moral part of the general public, including its own employees, it needs to conform to the societal demands on it. How else would you explain the appearance of banners…

Many will unironically justify their actions by declaring themselves to be "on the right side of history". The phrase has an unsurprising origin.

“This is all for the greater good”

Re: Academic media censorship conference censored by YouTube?

#49

Post by gipp »

Jabbles wrote: post #2

Google is claiming these videos were never on YouTube? That seems... odd? And surely easy to refute, if they were public? Internet Archive would at least have scraped the channel's page. TFA links to https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGPZJTVIpNe-hroLo-CQ9wQ/vid... which currently 404s... But which indeed did contain many videos... https://web.archive.org/web/20201101020416if_/https://www.yo...

They said they had no record. Considering this incident supposedly happened in November, there would be a strong possibility the content would have been permanently deleted after a given period due to GDPR concerns, in which case of course they would have no record.

Re: Academic media censorship conference censored by YouTube?

#50

Post by cryptica »

ajnin wrote: post #46
hsuduebc2 wrote: post #38

Just a friendly reminder that corporations doesn't care about justice and your basic rights. Only money.

I don't get why this maxim is constantly touted as if it were a fundamental truth. Corporations exist in a social and legal framework that we agreed to create, and that we could change so that money would not be the sole measure of value. You might say that's the way things are right now, but if you stop there it sounds like fatalism. I'd rather say something like "let's find ways to regulate corporations so that the…

This is incorrect. Corporations are soulless financial instruments designed purely to deflect blame away from people who repeatedly engage in unethical activities. Corporations ought to be abolished. They are a cancer on society.

Just read the legal definition of a corporation out loud and it's pretty clear what it's designed to do. There is nothing ambiguous about it. It's an instrument designed to legitimize criminal activity by deflecting blame away from real people and towards inanimate abstract entities which cannot be jailed or punished in any meaningful way. They operate with total impunity.

Anyone who cannot see it is a hypocrite. They are willfully blind to the horrors that they benefit from.

Corporations were humanity's first foray into legitimizing crime, cryptocurrencies may be the next instrument... Most of these instruments present themselves as workarounds which can leverage the darkest aspects of human nature for the social good but in fact they bring out the worst in people and make their dark predictions self-fulfilling.

Post reply on HN