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YouTube Bans True Crime Videos That Reanimate Dead Children with AI

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Re: YouTube Bans True Crime Videos That Reanimate Dead Children with AI

#3

Good thing too. Absolute gutter exploitation, like most of the 'true crime' genre.

I disagree. AI is becoming an increasingly important tool for telling stories, and making it harder to tell stories about true crimes and dead children is not a good thing. We need our full range of tools to think about and communicate about these horrors, as much as for anything else.

Re: YouTube Bans True Crime Videos That Reanimate Dead Children with AI

#4
While obviously it can veer off into the morbid and obscene, anyone remember "dramatic reenactment" labels on true crime TV in the 90s? (maybe before too)

But I do think there's a space for communicating with impactful re-enactment and tasteful "redaction" (censor blurs, keeping things off scene, or jumping forward allowing implication to tell the story).

As with all laws, and rules, the enforcement story will tell what the policy actually means.

Re: YouTube Bans True Crime Videos That Reanimate Dead Children with AI

#5
post #3

Good thing too. Absolute gutter exploitation, like most of the 'true crime' genre.

I disagree. AI is becoming an increasingly important tool for telling stories, and making it harder to tell stories about true crimes and dead children is not a good thing. We need our full range of tools to think about and communicate about these horrors, as much as for anything else.

So true. I've never really been able to understand the visceral nature of a childs death in my 40+ years on this earth. Until now, the horrors could never be adequately told, let alone shown by complete amateurs. Luckily we now have notAnExploiter420 to reanimate your dead child to show their well researched hot take and for monetary gain!

Re: YouTube Bans True Crime Videos That Reanimate Dead Children with AI

#6

Good thing too. Absolute gutter exploitation, like most of the 'true crime' genre.

"True Crime" as a genre is littered with unscrupulous hosts. But not all of it is in the gutter. In fact, some of it produces a public good. I admit I am attracted to these stories and try to choose carefully. If I may - two recommendations:

"My Only Story" - an adult man notices with horror that the man who secretly raped him as a school boy in South Africa is still working as a teacher. He quits his job and starts a podcast about how grooming works and how the school system is letting pupils down. All the while he is trying to expose this man for who he is without being sued - so he has to dance around the man's name. It is riveting. The story unfolds live as he finds more and more fellow students who were victimized willing to go on the record. This leads to naming names.

"The Root Of Evil" which features (in part) a retired Los Angeles homicide detective who believes his surgeon father was behind the famous Black Dahlia murder. He brings receipts. An astonishing amount of historical material is unearthed including cassette tape audio from the 70's.

Story telling is such an integral part of the social experience. Like everything it can be corrupted by greed and bad incentives. Not every True Crime podcast falls into this trap.

Re: YouTube Bans True Crime Videos That Reanimate Dead Children with AI

#8

Good thing too. Absolute gutter exploitation, like most of the 'true crime' genre.

"True Crime" as a genre is littered with unscrupulous hosts. But not all of it is in the gutter. In fact, some of it produces a public good. I admit I am attracted to these stories and try to choose carefully. If I may - two recommendations: "My Only Story" - an adult man notices with horror that the man who secretly raped him as a school boy in South Africa is still working as a teacher. He quits his job and starts…

> "True Crime" as a genre is littered with unscrupulous hosts. But not all of it is in the gutter. In fact, some of it produces a public good.

True crime has a similar problem to, say, commerical fishing. Some of the early stuff was quite good, because the first shows to do it had their pick of complex and narratively satisfying events to be based on. But once the low-hanging fruit was plucked, subsequent shows had no choice but to begin trawling, in the same way that fishermen do when populations run thin. The demand for true crime has considerably outpaced the supply, and hence why newer shows essentially can't not be bad and dangerous: they have to either invent predators out of thin air or otherwise make mountains out of molehills.

There needs to be like a 30-year moratorium on true crime, to let the "fish stocks" replenish.

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