YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/business/youtube-remove-extremist-videos.html

by okket • 7 years ago

251 630 7 years ago

Note that it's not extreme views (like my adherence to the FSF).

Nope, we're talking about "videos and channels that advocate for neo-Nazism, white supremacy and other bigoted ideologies".

As much as I don't like censorship, views that advocate for extermination of other people can rightly fuck off.

nullbyte3• 7 years ago

YouTube gets to decide what a "bigoted ideology" is. That's a sweeping term that can be used as a catch-all for videos they don't like.

I think that this will be bad for the platform overall -- an increase in censorship is never good.

davidw• 7 years ago

If nazis are fundamental to the success of their platform, that's... a problem.

Manfred• 7 years ago

In the absence of a government that makes clear laws concerning hate speech it’s up to the platforms to find a good balance.

From the YouTube blog post:

We’ve been taking a close look at our approach towards hateful content in consultation with dozens of experts in subjects like violent extremism, supremacism, civil rights, and free speech.

So at the very least they claim to understand that it should not be a random decision.

raverbashing2• 7 years ago

Sure because targeted harassment, advocacy for the extermination of large groups, conspiracy theories like anti-vax BS that are actually killing people are just just fine

People against (limited) censorship usually react very quickly once it's their group that's being attacked (as some very famous subreddit does)

fwip14• 7 years ago

An increase in censorship is very frequently good.

Consider a discussion forum that never banned any users or removed any spam. It quickly becomes very difficult to have a meaningful discussion when a third of the posts are "CHEEP ROLE X bUY NOW" and another third are racial hatred.

dragonwriter2• 7 years ago

an increase in censorship is never good.

Increases in curation (private censorship of one’s own offering) are very frequently good.

Whether the paying customers are consumers or advertisers, quality of curation is typically on of the main things they are paying for in content platforms. It’s true that there has been some effort to substitute algorithmic recommendation engines providing a consumer-specific view in place of curation, but it's also pretty clear that even the best of those is not viewed as an adequate solution by significant segments of the market.

Madmallard• 7 years ago

dontreact• 7 years ago

How is removing a video from YouTube the same as literally killing someone?

randyrand3• 7 years ago

Maybe I’m under a rock, but I don’t know anyone that argues for that.

GrayTextIsTruth4• 7 years ago

other bigoted ideologies

That's not specific enough. What about people who want to preserve European culture but don't think its "superior" to any other culture?

busterarm7• 7 years ago

What about people with conservative religious beliefs that others perceive to be exclusionary?

mc32• 7 years ago

I agree to an extent. I prefer a world where extreme hate calling for death of others doesn’t happen and isn’t tolerated. So the McVeighs (and death calling mullahs) of the world and company are justifiably deplatformable and if possible prosecuted for terroristic threats (and whatever else applies).

What I don’t agree with is conflating that with being un-PC. Or having s difference of opinion on contentious social topics, even if they can be personally offensive.

For example, for some, abortion is seen as pro-death. For others denying asylum is tantamount to a death sentence and thus is also death and hate. Or saying “f the police”. Police will say that is calling for hate, etc.

Today it feels like the PMRC was just a few decades too early. Would music be better without misogyny, violence, yes, in many respects but also we would deny a voice to those who feel oppressed and need an outlet to voice against the mainstream understanding.

randyrand3• 7 years ago

Extreme political views. The title is missing a very important qualifier.

okket5• 7 years ago

I added it, although the it's on the NYT website.

okket5• 7 years ago

The [Political] got removed, not by me.

warp_factor5• 7 years ago

And here we go. As usual the "racist" pretext is being used to censor videos.

I have no doubt that there are some terrible awful racist videos in that lot but you have to wonder how many times this is ALSO used as a mean to censor pretty much any video that the youtube execs don't like. Censorship is getting worse

Edit: Replacing "Censorship is coming back" with "Censorship is getting worse"

Kye5• 7 years ago

Since when do they need a pretext? Countless videos from LGBTQ+ people and people of color got wiped out due to mass reporting and inaccurate automated removals. All the people who usually cry censorship were silent.

luckylion5• 7 years ago

That was a while ago, right? From what I remember, the "usual suspects" (aka libertarians, liberalists etc) weren't that silent, they pointed out the irony that the try to control platforming backfired, but did oppose the bans.

Might be something newer, of course, in which case I didn't see it and can't comment on it.

okket5• 7 years ago

No censorship. You are still free to create your own YouTube clone and publish your extreme political views there. Maybe call it "GabTube"?

toomuchtodo• 7 years ago

"Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

A free society has costs, including tolerating speech you find deplorable. To support censorship because it aligns with your current political leanings makes you no different than the politics you take issue with.

Will you complain if Google mass fires left leaning employees? It's entirely within their right to do. You could even start a competitor to hire those people!

nilkn• 7 years ago

Sure. We might as well allow public speech in cities and towns to be controlled and limited as well, and if you don't like it you can always just go settle your own town somewhere. There's tons of open land in the US available for cheap after all.

luckylion5• 7 years ago

No censorship. You are still free to create your own YouTube clone and publish your extreme political views there.

With that line of argument, there is no possibility for censorship anywhere, ever. You can always create your own country someplace else.

daenz2• 7 years ago

GoDaddy banned the gab.com domain name from their registrar. What's next? "No censorship. You are still free to establish your own telecommunications infrastructure and publish your extreme political views there." ?

warp_factor5• 7 years ago

by all means this is censorship. Let's not get confused here.

It is a private company doing the censorship but this is 100% in the definition of censorship.

anoncake8• 7 years ago

This is only a sensible argument if you define censorship as violating the letter of the law of the US constitution or of another constitution that does require individuals and companies to respect basic rights. But if you consider the purpose of freedom of opinion -- to enable the public discourse necessary for a democratic society -- this is absolutely censorship.

infamia• 7 years ago

Censorship isn't limited to government even though that's the first example that rushes to mind. Any organization or person (i.e. "self-censored") can censor themselves or others. So yes, YouTube is most definitely censoring others who advertisers might object to -- dangerous considering YouTube's position as the new town square.

censor verb censored; censoring\ ˈsen(t)- sə- riŋ , ˈsen(t)s- riŋ \

Definition of censor (Entry 2 of 2)

transitive verb : to examine in order to suppress (see suppress sense 2) or delete anything considered objectionable censor the news also : to suppress or delete as objectionable censor out indecent passages

nullbyte3• 7 years ago

Exactly. The phrasing used in their press release allows them to take down any video they deem offensive.

Censorship is bad for the platform as a whole.

bityard2• 7 years ago

YouTube/Google can already take down any video they like, for any reason, or for no reason at all. And they already do this literally all the time, ask any content creator with more than a handful of videos on the platform.

The only reason there is a press release for this particular event is for the inevitable positive press and media attention it will garner.

lsniddy• 7 years ago

at best, social media sites will be declared public squares, at worst they'll be utilized. Either one is probably better than the current setup

vuln• 7 years ago

Censorship is coming back

Censorship never left. What's changing is who controls the Censorship and those few people are wielding very very powerful weapons of mass surveillance that will ultimately "disrupt" civilization as we know it.

anigbrowl13• 7 years ago

By all means offer a better solution for dealing with the problem of algorithms matching viewers with extremist content.

anoncake8• 7 years ago

No algorithms matching viewers. It's not ideal, sure, but freedom of opinion is a lot more important than Youtube being easy to use.

steveeq1• 7 years ago

It would be interesting to see if they also start banning rap videos using the same reasoning.

zelon88• 7 years ago

Honestly, it should to some extent.

Conspiracy theorists and/or political extremists (on both sides) should have to seek out their extreme content with prejudice. No more marketing birther theories alongside CSPAN videos on YouTube, or click-bait "TOP 10 UNEXPLAINED PHENOMENON" when someone looks for academic material. It shouldn't be possible to "stumble" onto a video that promotes falsehoods like vaccines causing autism or holistic medicine alongside legitimate medical content. It's damaging our society because not everyone has the acumen to know when they're being gaslit.

If these content creators were doing this as satire and advertised as such it wouldn't be an issue. What we have are content creators creating deliberately misleading content and then pushing it deliberately to the most gullible audience they can.

The first amendment shouldn't be used as a weapon to trick stupid people. It's diluting real political discourse and creating factions of people who don't have substantial opinions, just a bunch of inaccurate facts and unscrupulous sources for information.

Miner49er• 7 years ago

The statement "censorship is coming back" is simply not true, it's been here the entire time. YouTube has been censoring videos since probably the very beginning. They've already had the power to and have already silenced certain political opinions on their platform. This is nothing new, they're simply (maybe) expanding it.

daenz2• 7 years ago

What is the end game of this censorship nonsense? Do people really think that if they play whack-a-mole against every instance of speech you don't like online, it will improve the world somehow? How, exactly? Other people won't see it, so they won't be "infected" by it? What is the theory, exactly, because it always looks to me like an inane reactionary conclusion...something a mob would do.

HBKXNCUO24• 7 years ago

I'm not sure why we should give them a pass on censoring ANY legal political content, including racism, homophobia, anti-semitism, or any other political stance outside of the corporate mainstream.

The fact is that YouTube has become one of the primary places (along with Facebook and Twitter) where people not rich enough to own a newspaper or television station engage in political speech. Preventing people from meaningful participation in the public political debate is a precursor to real world violence, because you leave people with little other choice to advocate for what they view as their interests.

YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, and all other corporate entities attempting to regulate political discourse are driving us toward a civil war. There is no good reason for us to allow them to do that.

biogewuerz2• 7 years ago

Reminds me of the shooting at Youtube HQ. Nasim Aghdam also went postal because she was deplatformed by them. Wouldn't surprise me if another nutter decides to take revenge in the future.

mffnbs• 7 years ago

I personally don't understand the anti-censorship argument wrt racism.

YouTube has always been free to remove any content they'd like for any reason. When they more specifically define the content that they will be removing, it somehow now becomes controversial? This surrounds the argument with uncomfortable undertones. The idea that your message deserves equal treatment despite the content seems to be a value promoted by racists.

Also, Google/YouTube, Facebook/Instagram, Twitter, etc, don't owe anyone a platform. If this were not true, I don't quite understand how corporations could reasonably comply.

wnevets3• 7 years ago

Why do some people think they're entitled to say what they want on youtube?

rukittenme2• 7 years ago

Because some people view free speech as more than a legal requirement. Its a philosophy of individual rights.

wnevets3• 7 years ago

Why do you think you're right to free speech has anything to do with what you can say on someone else's property?

root_axis19• 7 years ago

Getting banned from YouTube is not a violation of individual rights. Forcing a company to host videos for free sounds like a violation of individual rights though.

redog4• 7 years ago

Wait what? The first amendment protections are just a limit on GOVERNMENT power. The right is that THE GOVERNMENT won't prevent your speech. Youtube isn't the government, therefore they can limit the fuck out of your speech when you're on their property.

I think most agree that Government needs to be prevented from preventing our speech not that our neighbors must allow us to grandstand upon their property even if their property is listed as a public place to grandstand. They have been given rights over the venue and we're supposed to be intelligent enough to recognize government activity vs private activity.

Why can't the voice actor of mickey mouse say fuck more often? iTs hIs pHiloSoPhicAl rIGhT!!! Sure, he can say fuck and then get fucking fired.

root_axis19• 7 years ago

Youtube is the most popular video website on the internet. This makes it a fundamental human right. I am being sarcastic.

falcolas3• 7 years ago

If a private developer were to take over most residential areas in a section of town, they would be responsible for providing public access, affordable housing, and other responsibilities normally associated with the government. This is enshrined in law - a private company that is the de-facto entity for a particular function gains the responsibilities of acting as a government entity.

Since YouTube has a monopoly on video content on the internet, it may be reasonable to require YouTube to take on responsibilities normally handled by the government, such as ensuring the freedom of speech on their platform.

HBKXNCUO24• 7 years ago

YouTube is the most popular website on the internet for regular (i.e. non-rich) people to participate in the public political debate by posting/watching videos. This means banning regular people from it substantially reduces their ability to meaningfully participate in the public political debate. When people can't peacefully advocate for their interests, they do so violently. We don't want real world violence, so it's probably not a great idea to give YouTube carte blanche to decide who can meaningfully participate in the public political debate.

warp_factor5• 7 years ago

because it became the de facto place most of non tech-savy people go to to see videos online. They have a huge monopoly on our time and attention and that's extremely disturbing.

Imagine that the electricity company providing electricity policed what kind of devices you can use inside your home (you are allowed to connect a Samsung washer but not a Bosh washer). There would be a lot of outcry.

root_axis19• 7 years ago

They have a huge monopoly on our time and attention and that's extremely disturbing.

You mean that you willingly give them control over your time and attention.

jonas21• 7 years ago

Perhaps I'm taking your analogy too far, but if you're an "extreme" user of electricity, either by consuming much more power than they expect you to or destabilizing the grid, the electric company absolutely will cut you off.

anigbrowl13• 7 years ago

But there are lots of other places you can watch video without being subject to YouTube's content policies.

lugg14• 7 years ago

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 switch.

Further to my point. People being concerned about who and what specifically will be caught up in this is well, well within reason to bring into question given their current approach to takedowns which consistently missflag videos inappropriately.

"It's their business they can do what they want" isn't a valid argument against any of these questions, you're just stating a fact that doesn't answer or even acknowledge the potentially problematic situation at hand.

wnevets3• 7 years ago

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.

weaksauce3• 7 years ago

It’s disengenuous to say that YouTube didn’t have rules before this. This is just another rule on what’s allowed. Is it wise? I don’t know, probably. In America white supremacy is a rising problem and they are getting radicalized by YouTube and the economics of hate for profit making a lot of money by recommending the more clickbaity extreme videos. They are perhaps correcting the course. Perhaps they are overreacting. We will see where the chips lie after this.

Edit. I looked at the way back on YouTube’s tou from when the site was a dating site and it’s always disallowed hateful content regarding race or other things. This seems like a clarification on that provision.

raverbashing2• 7 years ago

Well, not surprising

The tension was evident on Tuesday, when YouTube said that a prominent right-wing creator who used racial language and homophobic slurs to harass a journalist in videos on YouTube did not violate its policies. The decision set off a firestorm online, including accusations that YouTube was giving a free pass to some of its popular creators.

For context: https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/4/18653088/youtube-steven-cr...

shadowmore• 7 years ago

'“Opinions can be deeply offensive, but if they don’t violate our policies, they’ll remain on our site,” YouTube said in a statement about its decision on Mr. Crowder.'

I'm sure those policies will shift stealthily until everything except Baby Shark videos is banned.

Left, right or center politically? But a little too spicy for your average 8-year-old? Banned. Gotta keep the Coca-Cola ad execs happy.

It's a curious hyper-puritanical yet simultaneously secular social order we find ourselves in today. I'm sure this won't lead to any social unrest or civilization-wrecking upheaval.

chocolatebunny• 7 years ago

We can always go back to liveleak and vimeo. I think all the youtube I watch would be fine for an 8 year old and I think most of the people who use youtube are the same. The most popular platform should be the most innocuous. But there should be alternatives.

stcredzero8• 7 years ago

We can always go back to liveleak and vimeo.

Good luck trying to monetize that. Good luck getting viral traction with that. (I will be happy if someone succeeds, because that will be the end of the YouTube monopoly on video commentary.)

patagonia8• 7 years ago

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.

blancNoir• 7 years ago

From the article:

"In addition to tightening its hate speech rules, YouTube announced it would also tweak its recommendation algorithm, the automated software that shows users videos based on their interests and past viewing habits. This algorithm is responsible for more than 70 percent of overall time spent on YouTube, and has been a major engine for the platform’s growth. But it has also drawn accusations of leading users down rabbit holes filled with extreme and divisive content, in an attempt to keep them watching and drive up the site’s usage numbers."

patagonia8• 7 years ago

Touché. Guilty. I didn’t read. Thank you for pointing out. Pessimistic me says that not much will change because as the other person’s comment says, algos are there to maximize the viewing time of people, and that have their views challenged etc, they aren’t gonna watch as much.

6d6b73• 7 years ago

The cynic in me thinks this is simply to have an excuse to recommend videos to people to change their views, only when it's in Google's interest.

la_barba8• 7 years ago

and encapsulate individuals in information bubbles that seem to validate and fail to challenge their views?

Err, how do you know that the algorithm does this? And also, how do you know that people are not exposed to other views outside of YouTube. And lastly, why do you think its the job of an entertainment platform to "challenge" views?

chronial5• 7 years ago

Err, how do you know that the algorithm does this?

Youtube optimizes for watch time. Most people don't want to spend their afternoons having their views challenged.

Any algorithm that properly optimizes for watch time of the masses will learn to validate views.

patagonia8• 7 years ago

I assume based on my own use of it and pretty much all the memes and anecdotes from everyone. I make no assumptions about what people are exposed to outside of YouTube. It’s not the platforms job to challenge one’s views, rather one’s views are naturally challenged when in an open marketplace of ideas. YouTube isn’t an open marketplace of ideas. It is effectively a curated presentation of ideas, customized to each individual by the platform. For the economic profit of the platform, at the expense of community goods such as civil discourse. Your snark didn’t add anything to your argument, btw.

FabHK• 7 years ago

It might not be the job of an entertainment platform to challenge views, per se, but you can argue that it is its job to make sure that their profit-maximising algorithms do not devolve into steering users down a rabbit hole of ever more extreme and dishonest content within an information bubble.

Or, at any rate, if that's the outcome, then it might be time to regulate said platform.

umvi6• 7 years ago

and fail to challenge their views

So you are saying YouTube should actively recommend people stuff they disagree with? Like, if you are religious it should recommend atheist and skeptic videos? And if you are vegetarian it should recommend meat smoking videos?

I'm pretty should people would hate that

wry_discontent• 7 years ago

I think you know what's being discussed.

YouTube should actively try to prevent people from being drawn into racist rabbit holes. If your rabbit hole ends with "and that's why we should exterminate Jews", probably not a good idea to encourage viewers down that path.

Theodores• 7 years ago

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.

0815test5• 7 years ago

So, they're removing thousands of bad videos... thousands! Don't worry though, there are many, many other videos just like those on the platform. Your default recommendations are still going to suck.

ModernMech3• 7 years ago

Headline says thousands of videos, story body says thousands of videos and channels. I imagine you have to remove only about 20% of the videos/channels to account for 80% of the views.

ausbah• 7 years ago

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 misinformation, but don't like YouTube choosing "top channels" as voices of authority.

Continuing to reward trusted creators and enforce our monetization policies

I think this shows what drives YouTube and many other platforms, what is and isn't advertiser friendly. Principles only go as far as the bottomline.

skrowl5• 7 years ago

> 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?

Retra6• 7 years ago

Why do you assume they didn't? People make decisions. That's how decisions are made the world over.

tootahe45• 7 years ago

Who do you think?

Hint: If they go the Facebook route it will be various 'anti-hate' orgs which have openly called people like Trump and Ben Shapiro Nazis.

fwip14• 7 years ago

Google. Is this a trick question or something?

QualityReboot4• 7 years ago

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.

davinic• 7 years ago

As your quote shows, it's not simply a matter of saying your group is superior, but then using that view to "justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion".

neetdeth2• 7 years ago

This is all a very interesting thought experiment, but you're supposing some attempt at logical consistency which will surely not be made.

What this announcement actually means is that YouTube is going to become more politically active in their content curation. This is what a subset of their employees, as well as influential bluechecked Twitterati, have been lobbying for. As a progressive/neo-liberal institution, it will apply exactly the sort of differential policy enforcement that one might expect.

I won't delve into the details of how that applies to your examples because it would quickly become too controversial for HN.

Just imagine how the median Bay Area tech-person would parse out the details and you'll have the answers.

api• 7 years ago

YouTube is a privately owned and operated proprietary delivery platform. This is no different from a TV station deciding what to air. If you don't like it, switch platforms or just host stuff yourself somewhere.

Yes I am concerned that these dragnets will delete a lot of content that doesn't even match the stated criteria. In my experience Google/YouTube's evaluation of content for compliance is not very deep or well considered. It's generally performed by underpaid overworked folks that lack any domain expertise.

This is part of why I am a data packrat. If something is really interesting I snarf it and store it on my personal NAS. Easy to do and means I'll have backups of things that get "disappeared" and can share them with others if needed. If more people did this I think we'd have less of an issue with this.

GrayTextIsTruth4• 7 years ago

YouTube is a privately owned and operated proprietary delivery platform.

Are there any public online social platforms? There literally isn't the equivalent of a "public space" online so many view it as a de facto public space.

Notorious_BLT• 7 years ago

If YouTube wants to be treated like a TV station who can choose what to air, then they need to stop receiving the benefits of section 230. If they are allowed to choose what content is allowed and what is not, then they must be held directly accountable for the content that they don't remove. This includes content that infringes copyright, content that is illegal, etc. They can't have both.

argd678• 7 years ago

It would be good if they apply the policy consistently to people in power too, such as politicians. I doubt they will though.

throwaway1906052• 7 years ago

We're not talking about the removal of extreme political views. We're talking about the censorship of one particular ideology. Where is the corresponding elimination of polarizing videos espousing views from the radical left?

A wholesale expunction from one end of the spectrum is hard not to interpret as politically charged censorship. Let's see how many Antifa and BLM videos get taken down.

untog3• 7 years ago

We're not talking about the removal of extreme political views.

Yes we are.

You are implying equivalence where there is none. Black Lives Matter and Antifa are not equivalent to white supremacists.

throwaway1906052• 7 years ago

You're arguing with the least interesting part of my point.

Just watch how many radical left videos get removed, irrespective of what group posted them.

Fins3• 7 years ago

Antifa isn't? That's highly debatable.

fooey• 7 years ago

Preventing the spread of hate isn't an act of partisan censorship

I find it interesting that conservatives want to protect genocidal racists, but there isn't an equivalent on the progressive side of things. If there was, progressives would want that noise shut down faster than anyone else.

pjc50• 7 years ago

There are reports of YouTube demonetizing any mention of "trans": https://socialblade.com/blog/youtube-lgbt-videos-demonetized...

Not to mention lots of pro-weed and pro-sexworker stuff being banned.

GrayTextIsTruth4• 7 years ago

There are comments being removed from this thread even though they are not supremacist. People need to wake up to the control of big tech, big govt, etc.

happytoexplain4• 7 years ago

Wouldn't that imply that the only reason comments might be removed from Hacker News is if they encourage violent, extremist political ideologies?

GrayTextIsTruth4• 7 years ago

they did neither.

Dirlewanger• 7 years ago

I'm surprised this post is even still up. HN usually removes anything remotely controversial. A couple weeks ago, they removed a NYT article solely because the article had "White Liberals" in the title.

dang6• 7 years ago

Users flagged them, in most cases probably because they broke the site guidelines by being generic ideological flamewar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

vowelless6• 7 years ago

Good. Online radicalism is a thing.

To all the people here who are decrying this as “censorship”, remember that during the early 2010s, Islamic radicals were getting radicalized on YouTube by pretty benign sermons (Ex: Awlaki and his “tour of Paradise” lectures that inspired Boston 2013, fort hood and a bunch of other international attacks). YouTube removed all that out and I think Muslims getting radicalized on YouTube plummeted.

White supremacy is a much bigger deal with a worse tail risk than Islamic extremism. Don’t see why anyone would object to removal of Neo nazi content yet go along with the removal of wahabi sermons.

creaghpatr4• 7 years ago

getting radicalized on YouTube by pretty benign sermons

Which is it? You're contradicting yourself here.

vowelless6• 7 years ago

The point is, awlakis sermons were not even “extreme”. They didn’t call for violence. They just talked about how great heaven was. YouTube rightly removed those videos because they were inspiring suicide attacks by teaching pretty mainstream Islamic beliefs like: martyrs go to heaven.

Would be for or against YouTube removing videos that encouraged suicide in depressed individuals?

chrisjc6• 7 years ago

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 should be removed from social media.

vowelless6• 7 years ago

White supremacy was the cause for the worst wars of the 20th century. A white nationalist uprising in Europe would be deadlier (again) than Islamic extremists taking over most middle eastern nations due to the resources that will be available to them.

Romanulus2• 7 years ago

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

TomMckenny• 7 years ago

Worse is impossible to determine.

But do be aware that white supremacist have committed more acts of violence in the US than Muslim extremist. And this not counting lynching which is a systematic form of terrorism that lasted more than a century.

The same people who cheer blocking Al Qaeda now claim that blocking neo-nazis is suppressing conservative views, so right-wing extremism has been and is far more tolerated and prevalent than other violent extremism.

martin_bech• 7 years ago

Seems like the last part is pure speculation.. Islamic extremism, is what happened in Syria, and the root of pretty much all terrorism in Europe and parts of Africa..

baud1472584• 7 years ago

White supremacy is a much bigger deal with a worse tail risk

Do you have anything to support that assertion?

vowelless6• 7 years ago

WW2.

themagician3• 7 years ago

Those looking to be radicalized will look at this as an example of the conspiracy. Look at QAnon. Or look at things like Conservapedia: https://www.conservapedia.com/Paul_Manafort

Go ahead and read that article on Paul Manafort. That's just one, mundane article—you could pick any. Understand that, true or false, it doesn't matter anymore—this is a narrative and a set of facts that around 100 million people in the United States now subscribe to.

We are way, way, way, way past removing a few thousand YouTube videos. That might have been marginally effective ten years ago. But there's been a decade of rhetoric now about how "they" control the media and will try and censor it. Sometimes it's "they" and sometimes it's (((they))).

Jews control the media, shadow governments, deep state, extreme hate against muslims, gays, etc.. This stuff is mainstream. Patrick Little ran for Senate in California, of all places, as an actual nazi and got 1.2% of the vote. That's 50,000+ people who went out of their way to vote for someone who was relatively unknown, all because his platform was based on removing Jews from the United States.

I don't know what the solution is, I really don't. But I DO know that removing videos from YouTube won't make it better. It may make it worse.

Zancarius• 7 years ago

But I DO know that removing videos from YouTube won't make it better. It may make it worse.

I think you're right, and I have some first-hand knowledge on the matter. I've debated QAnon types and flat earthers alike. In both cases, they often see an absence of information as some overarching conspiracy. I'm not really sure who is worse (the flat earthers are a subset of a broader "government-is-hiding-things" conspiracy), but they both follow a cult-like structure in that if you disagree with them, you're not "one of us" and are either not smart enough to understand the implications of their beliefs or are willfully blind to their "truth." I doubt YT would ever remove QAnon or flat earth videos, but if they did, I suspect the fallout would be far worse than just leaving them alone. In some cases, it's helpful to cite their own predictions (and have something to cite) to dismantle their argument! Admittedly, this isn't useful in direct debate, because they're forever moving the goalpost, but it can be helpful for illustrating deficiencies to third parties that might be sympathetic to their views but are still open to the idea that there are problems with the opposition's argument[1].

Now, I say this as a conservative with some libertarian leanings. I don't like censorship, and I think it's harmful to shield people from ideas they don't like. However, I think moderation within a community is incredibly important to its survival provided it is applied equally. Nothing is worse for reasonable discourse than having someone jump in and start slinging pejoratives, insults, and abuse for no other reason than they don't like what you've said. As an example, I've personally had someone stalk my admittedly limited social media presence across various sites in order to post screenshots "proving" some inane belief they had about me supporting some ridiculous conspiracy. They then repeatedly posted insults and diatribes across numerous unrelated comments until I blocked them. That type of behavior should be an immediate--and permanent--ban.

[1] We might be passed this point, because the number of undecided people with regards to any particular conspiracy (for or against) is diminishing. I used to think the flat earth groups were largely trolling, but I've spoken with some people who have encountered them in real life or have friends who have been duped into believing the conspiracy. I also know a small handful of people who believe QAnon. No amount of evidence is going to sway either party. And no, I don't know what the best solution is other than to continue engaging where appropriate and banning where there's abuse.

hackerbrother• 7 years ago

I don't know about your conclusion. There's a lot of people out there arguing that deplatforming works. I think it was considered to be effective in reducing Alex Jones' influence.

smsm427• 7 years ago

[flagged]

foldr10• 7 years ago

but I almost never hear Islamic radicals cited as an example.

That's probably just because banning radical Islamists isn't very controversial.

What you mean by "white supremacy"? If you mean actual people that think White race (whatever the hell that is) is supreme and are willing to take action to ensure its power - it is demonstrably false, the number of these people are tiny, and they could never pull off even one hundredth of what ISIS has been pulling off for years.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/03/world/white-e...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/homegrown-...

smsm427• 7 years ago

usually the latter gets all passes in the world for calling for actual physical violence, and the former gets banned

And I switched the "latter" and "former" but it's too late to edit... Duh.

013a• 7 years ago

Its so concerning that you simplify ridiculously complex issues down to a soundbyte like "islamic radicals were getting radicalized", like the videos are some kind of hypnosis spiral that turns a promising young middle eastern boy into a monster.

fulafel• 7 years ago

Trivia:

"The term Radical (from the Latin radix meaning root), during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, identified proponents of democratic reform, in what subsequently became the parliamentary Radical Movement."

"The term political radicalism (in political science known as radicalism) denotes political principles focused on altering social structures through revolutionary or other means and changing value systems in fundamental ways. "

And of course the classic Rules for Radicals book about community organizing and starting grassroots movements.

Let's not label all radical things bad, it can become a way to suppress dissent and societal change.

StanislavPetrov2• 7 years ago

I'm reasonably certain our invasion and destruction of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and our bombings in a host of other countries had more to do with "fomenting radicalism" than any Youtube videos.

Gibbon13• 7 years ago

The biggest fomenters of terrorism are our dear allies in the Middle East.

tal8d3• 7 years ago

Don’t see why anyone would object to removal of Neo nazi content yet go along with the removal of wahabi sermons.

Setting aside the fact that this culling has nothing to do with Neo nazi content... maybe islamic extremism is a greater threat because we've had decades to implement countermeasures to a resurgence of white supremacy, whereas islamic terrorists exploit existing gaps in our society's trust model? I'm confident that had the KKK employed trucks of peace in the 50s, civil engineers wouldn't have assumed that nobody would be insane enough to drive down a pedestrian thoroughfare at full speed.

Now back to the issue at hand. This is a purge of alternative media at the behest of Vox Media, of which Comcast is the majority shareholder. This has been going on for well over a year now, the old media making demands for Youtube deplatformings and policy changes. I started listing them, but the list of crybullies is effectively a list of all media companies founded before Youtube. It is really amazing how stupid Google has been in all this, because it seems that they don't understand who their competitors are in the attention market, and how those competitors have effectively transformed them from a relatively low maintenance and legally protected platform - into a legally exposed publisher full of upset content providers. Youtube has been a loss leader for a long time, which might explain the leadership selection and the lack of corrective action for laughably stupid executive decisions... but it is well beyond the point of just being a money hole - it is in the precedent setting legal liability zone at this point. They aren't even subtle about being a publisher anymore, selectively editorializing user generated content with editor's notes under the guise of fighting disinformation.

iamnothere3• 7 years ago

Islamic radicals were getting radicalized on YouTube by pretty benign sermons (Ex: Awlaki and his “tour of Paradise” lectures that inspired Boston 2013, fort hood and a bunch of other international attacks). YouTube removed all that out and I think Muslims getting radicalized on YouTube plummeted.

Regardless of the effects, this was also wrong, IMHO.

If you are a supporter of radically free expression, sometimes you have to allow radicals to express themselves too.

Edit: I know there will be a contingent that disagrees with this. For many people, the ends justify the means, regardless of the corrosive effect to civil liberties. In my opinion this is a myopic view.

dang6• 7 years ago

"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

What a wretched, demoralizing 118-comment subthread. A white supremacy vs. Islamic extremism cage match was the last thing we needed, and of course it hopped via WWII and Nazis to capitalism vs. communism—the mother of generic ideological flamewars, whither all return. None of this is good discussion for Hacker News; it's predictable, nasty, and the essence of what we're trying to avoid. To the extent it proliferates like this here, we might as well just shut the damn place down.

Everyone: please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

vowelless6• 7 years ago

I apologize. I’m just going to avoid those topics from now on.

ravenstine2• 7 years ago

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 giant acting as a de facto government over the public square isn't a violation of free speech principles because they're a "private business", as if that's an original thought that's profound. Funny how people say "it's a private business" when it suits their own political interests.

We wouldn't blindly allow company-owned cities or states to pass laws, especially vague or undefined ones, that potentially violate our rights, so why do we allow "states" in cyberspace to be run in such a way?

Ban people promoting violence? Sure, why not. I'm as against hate and violence as the next person. But not only is censoring "hate speech" becoming a slippery slope at the company level, it's bad for the public in general because it sets a greater precedent for what the big corporations that run our everyday lives can tell us what we can or cannot do, and with no forgiveness. I don't find it hard to imagine a world where individuals can be instantly and permanently banned from doing everyday things, just like they are on YouTube, because they said or did something off the platform.

AndrewStephens3• 7 years ago

I was shocked when news sites started publishing comments as a matter of course.

They worked so hard to research and create a 2000 word article that accurately reflects the world (in accordance to their editorial guidelines) using their good name - and then let fReEtHiNkErChAd and 2020BloodInTheStreets chime in at the end.

It would be OK if they strictly moderated the comments, but few sites seem to do that.

lostmymind66• 7 years ago

"They worked so hard to research and create a 2000 word article that accurately reflects the world"

I find this laughable. Many recent articles I've seen are designed to get clicks and have nothing to do with good journalism or research beyond what someone can get from behind a keyboard.

bityard2• 7 years ago

They worked so hard to research and create a 2000 word article that accurately reflects the world (in accordance to their editorial guidelines) using their good name

I'm not sure which news sites you read but most of the ones I've seen count only as journalism in a very vague and abstract sense. The information is thin, the writing poor, and major important questions go unanswered and ignored. If there is indeed any point to following the news on a daily basis (and there is good evidence to suggest there is not), the quality of most new sources is atrocious enough that none of it is worth my time.

(The exception here is the occasional piece of very well done investigative journalism.)

But, in regard to comments, they do it for the same reason that Hacker News or any other site has a comments section: community engagement. This is not necessary a bad thing but it comes with the responsibility to _moderate_ the resulting community and almost every site drops the ball on this.

kazinator3• 7 years ago

Here is a crazy wild-assed concept: letters to the editor, published in the next issue.

mistermann• 7 years ago

accurately reflects the world

Sometimes, to some degree, and sometimes not. The level and consistency of accuracy varies per organization, per individual reporter, per story, and per person doing the judgement of "accuracy".

vpmpaul• 7 years ago

My experience is the exact opposite. I often skim the article and find that commenters are better informed than the author and provide more relevant information.

LifeLiverTransp• 7 years ago

Comments would be better if there was a enforced delay in the conversation, and you would have to sign off on what you wrote. 24h laters, the rage of the past would be seen indignified by many.

yoodenvranx• 7 years ago

I'm starting to think that comment sections on news sites are a really bad idea

I have no idea how it is in other countries but in Germany the comment sections in every single newspaper is _horrible_, especially when it is articles about refugees, climate change and similar topics.

Nasrudith4• 7 years ago

That is sadly the way anywhere mainstream without heavy moderation. The scary thing about Youtube comments isn't that they are extra stupid because they aren't - they are the norm and essentially what happens when a representative sample of the population is available.

repolfx4• 7 years ago

I suspect you're defining horrible comments as, "comments expressing views I don't like and wish didn't exist". Germany has particularly extreme and unusual policies regarding migrants/asylum seekers/refugees, climate change and a few other such things. Is it any surprise that extreme views in one direction trigger extreme views in the other?

gervase• 7 years ago

The advantage of removing (or at least, humans actively moderating) comments is that it pushes discussion back to face-to-face (or at least, more direct and personal) channels and restricts the anonymity of commentary. This has a few benefits, namely:

* Self-moderating: Such conversations require a certain level of decorum, since these are presumably people you interact with every day. The likelihood of calling your desk mate a Nazi, racist, race traitor, etc. to their face are astronomically smaller than when it's cloaked in anonymity, since there may be consequences to your commentary.

* Self-authenticating: It reduces the efficacy of message amplification, since the real world serves as an out-of-band identity authentication mechanism.

* Self-regulating: It's easier, cheaper, and less risky for the hosting site, since they no longer have any enforcement role to play in the discussion itself (beyond the original slant when presenting the information, e.g. by news organizations).

Of course, this doesn't address the problems of sites which are inherently designed to do one-to-many broadcasting and discussion, such as Youtube or Reddit. How would these sites look without comments at all, or with a very strict attestation/vouching system?

Although HN follows a similar model vis-à-vis discussion and broadcasting, the active HN moderation is pretty good, at least good enough to maintain a relatively high-quality discourse and removing very low-quality discussion. However, this is difficult to scale and relatively expensive.

decoyworker• 7 years ago

They can choose to not be a platform for anything that they want. You don't have a right to that platform. Forcing YouTube to leave everything up infringes on their rights to run their site as they want.

elliekelly• 7 years ago

To play devil's advocate to the "private platform" argument: we force tv networks and radio stations to give equal air time to all presidential candidates.[1] NBC is a private a company but if they permit one candidate to host SNL they must give the other candidate(s) an equivalent opportunity so as not to unfairly sway public opinion. I don't necessarily think that "infringes" on NBC's right to run their platform as they want. They're still given the option of whether or not they want to wade into politics on their airways but once they do they're obligated to open their platform to both sides.

Now you could argue that Donald Trump expertly exploited exceptions to the "equal-time rule" in order to get much more coverage than his competition, but that's more to do with the structure of the law than the spirit of what it's trying to accomplish.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule

joshuaheard• 7 years ago

YouTube has become a mass communication platform, more akin to the telephone company than say a magazine. A magazine has editorial control over what it publishes, and can decide what to put into its content. A telephone company has no say over what is said over its phone lines.

YouTube is just asking to be regulated in such a way as the phone companies. And it should be regulated to follow the First Amendment as a mass communication platform, even though it is a private company.

ap3• 7 years ago

Comments are the worst part of the web

TY for reading my comment

anigbrowl13• 7 years ago

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.

asdf212• 7 years ago

What no one really wants to admit here on YC is that the userbase here is something like the top .01% of (intelligence / literacy / analytical skills). Hell, even reddit, as low-brow as that has gotten, is still top 1% easily. But there are still plenty of staggeringly oblivious views in both places.

It's hard to admit that dichotomy, because when we realize that the top 1% or .01% can still be so ignorant, we also gradually realize that we are all probably in for a lot of trouble moving forward, particularly if and when resource wars become a bit more widespread than they are now.

indigochill4• 7 years ago

Maybe so, but I still think this can work. I think the problem is that we've moved away from communities focused around a particular topic to just throwing everyone into a pool and crossing our fingers.

If a community has a topic and the majority of users are interested in discussing that topic, then when someone veers off-topic to rant about their favorite conspiracy theory, you don't have to be a judge of the validity of his viewpoint. You just gently point out that's not what people are there to talk about and that they're welcome to discuss said conspiracy theory over on yonder conspiracy theory aficionado forum (and ban them if they continue trying to detract from the conversation).

This then removes moderators as judges of what is Right and True (the problem facing moderators on Facebook/YouTube/other anything-goes platforms) and positions them in the much more manageable role of, well, moderating a conversation.

dageshi7• 7 years ago

Is a privately owned museum a "public square"? Or a sports stadium owned by a private company? Or a Cinema? Or a threatre? No, neither is youtube.

It's a place the public visit not a piece of public infrastructure. Repeating "public square" over and over again does not make it so.

icxa• 7 years ago

Then why does it get the legal benefits of being a "neutral platform"?

HBKXNCUO24• 7 years ago

Do any of those places host a substantial portion of the public political debate? If any of those places banned people, would that significantly reduce the ability of those people to meaningfully participated in the public political debate?

bzbarsky9• 7 years ago

On the other hand, a privately owned shopping mall is legally a "public square" in a number of states in the US, with the justification that it is explicitly a place for people to gather and interact, just like the main street of a town in the 19th century.

Which of these cases is Youtube more like? It's already hard to tell, and it's continuing to change. I expect the legal status of online forums to evolve over the next several decades, just like the legal status of brick-and-mortar spaces has evolved over time.

core-questions2• 7 years ago

Youtube runs on the back of publicly-funded infrastructure and, as a natural monopoly in the space, it has a position of privilege that needs to be regulated.

We need an Internet Bill of Rights to ensure free speech on any platform of this scale. Yes, that means speech you don't like; may I suggest not watching it?

josteink3• 7 years ago

Is a privately owned museum a "public square"?

I think a key insight in discussions like this is realising that “public square” is as more of a function rather than a state of ownership.

IMO if your company becomes big enough to obtain the function as a public square, you should be prepared to be required to act as one.

Legislation isn’t there yet, but just like privacy and data-ownership is getting more legislative attention these days, I wouldn’t be surprised if things like this are subject to regulation within 5-10 years.

As this infinitely repeated discussion shows, it’s clearly a problem which needs to be solved.

busterarm7• 7 years ago

There's already a SCOTUS ruling on the books where the government cannot deny convicted sex offenders their access to Facebook because it is the public square. It's literally in the ruling.

The public square argument at this point isn't deniable, it's more about what the company that maintains that public square gets to define as trash.

Udik• 7 years ago

Youtube, Facebook, have to decide whether they're communication infrastructure, like telephone companies, or publishers. In the first case, they have to publish everything that doesn't violate a state law; in the second case, they get to choose, but they accept liability for everything that is published on their platform.

epiphanitus• 7 years ago

Well, social media is heavily based on network effects, so it's not like consumers can just leave one platform for another and reach the same people.

If your cell company prevented you from calling your crazy uncle on Christmas eve because he believed aliens built the pyramids, that would be considered a violation of your right to free speech AND free association, and it would be very creepy.

CodiePetersen3• 7 years ago

Although any hateful speech is terrible of course, I think censoring like this is a bad idea. Like other conversations about freedom of speech on HN it will eventually lead to talking about banning non hateful but extreme ideas like flat earth and anti vax. While ridiculous as they are, I think it would be equally ridiculous to ban them. What's the line you draw when you decide what gets to be promoted. Maybe certain religious ideas or ideas criticising religions?

I do disagree with your private business comment though. It is a private business and they can do what they want to an extent. You don't tell a news paper who they have to let write articles. But I think the problem is that youtube is so large and the service so imporant that it might as well be a government deciding rights. It's not just youtube there are a lot of tech giants that powerful. I think when it's obvious they are that powerful and important it's time to break them up. I mean hell the bread company my step dad works at even had to go through a process to see if they would be too big with a recent purchase. But yet tech companies have been getting away with this sort of unchecked growth. They are global powers with dwindling competition. Break them up. Reintroduce competition.

convivialdingo• 7 years ago

Agreed. The only comment I would add is that, unlike newspapers, these companies receive a broad immunity through the laws so that they can operate without fear of legal retribution. Even though they operate as private companies, I would argue that they still have a mandate to the public good as part of their operations.

Frondo3• 7 years ago

I'm also okay banning anti-vax ideas, in defense of the community in general, and in defense in specific of those vulnerable few who can't be immunized and rely on herd immunity.

Foregoing vaccination imposes an as-yet-unaccounted externality on the community; you put everyone at risk by not vaccinating yourself or your kids, and there's no way for the vulnerable (those relying on herd immunity) to know who around them will put them at risk.

It goes way beyond an individual choice, to vaccinate or not. That decision has impacts far beyond the individual's life.

ravenstine2• 7 years ago

Yet you say that "they can do what they want to an extent." I'm not sure that we disagree at all. I support private businesses right to do what they want, until they become large enough that they've reached "escape velocity", if you will, where they have become so large that it's unlikely that any meaningful competition can come close to matching them in budget or influence. Companies of Google's size should see even fewer freedoms when they get massive kickbacks from the government; Google receives millions in public money but has nebulous "rules" they arbitrarily enforce over the public.

I don't know if breaking up these massive "tech" companies is a good approach, but something has to be done at some point, and there needs to be rules over how YouTube can regulate its platform. At the very least, YouTube needs to be forced to make all of its rules explicit and to not insta-ban entire channels while deleting all their data.

emiliobumachar• 7 years ago

The thing about an online comment section is that the guy who really likes pedophilia is going to start posting on every thread about sexual minorities “I’m glad those sexual minorities have their rights! Now it’s time to start arguing for pedophile rights!” followed by a ten thousand word manifesto. This person won’t use any racial slurs, won’t be a bot, and can probably reach the same standards of politeness and reasonable-soundingness as anyone else. Any fair moderation policy won’t provide the moderator with any excuse to delete him. But it will be very embarrassing for to New York Times to have anybody who visits their website see pro-pedophilia manifestos a bunch of the time.

“So they should deal with it! That’s the bargain they made when deciding to host the national conversation!”

No, you don’t understand. It’s not just the predictable and natural reputational consequences of having some embarrassing material in a branded space. It’s enemy action.

Every Twitter influencer who wants to profit off of outrage culture is going to be posting 24-7 about how the New York Times endorses pedophilia. Breitbart or some other group that doesn’t like the Times for some reason will publish article after article on New York Times‘ secret pro-pedophile agenda. Allowing any aspect of your brand to come anywhere near something unpopular and taboo is like a giant Christmas present for people who hate you, people who hate everybody and will take whatever targets of opportunity present themselves, and a thousand self-appointed moral crusaders and protectors of the public virtue. It doesn’t matter if taboo material makes up 1% of your comment section; it will inevitably make up 100% of what people hear about your comment section and then of what people think is in your comment section. Finally, it will make up 100% of what people associate with you and your brand. The Chinese Robber Fallacy is a harsh master; all you need is a tiny number of cringeworthy comments, and your political enemies, power-hungry opportunists, and 4channers just in it for the lulz can convince everyone that your entire brand is about being pro-pedophile, catering to the pedophilia demographic, and providing a platform for pedophile supporters. And if you ban the pedophiles, they’ll do the same thing for the next-most-offensive opinion in your comments, and then the next-most-offensive, until you’ve censored everything except “Our benevolent leadership really is doing a great job today, aren’t they?” and the comment section becomes a mockery of its original goal.

[...]

Fourth, I want anybody else trying to host “the national conversation” to have a clear idea of the risks. If you plan to be anything less than maximally censorious, consider keeping your identity anonymous, and think about potential weak links in your chain (ie hosts, advertisers, payment processors, etc). I’m not saying you necessarily need to go full darknet arms merchant. Just keep in mind that lots of people will try to stop you, and they’ve had a really high success rate so far.

tomp3• 7 years ago

That Slate Star Codex article is soooo good, and I suspect severely underrated.

anbop2• 7 years ago

I agree with your comment but find it rambling, so I’ll concur with this: If free speech is a right worth protecting from the government, it’s worth protecting against equally powerful corporations.

nybble413• 7 years ago

If free speech is a right worth protecting from the government, it’s worth protecting against equally powerful corporations.

The right of free speech is that you can say what you want without violent repercussions, such as fines, prison time, or capital punishment. Corporations and individuals already aren't allowed to do any of that, so no additional protection is needed. Governments are singled out specifically because they do not follow the same rules as everyone else—asserting that violence is a "legitimate" means of achieving arbitrary goals.

manfredo• 7 years ago

If free speech is a right worth protecting from the government, it’s worth protecting against equally powerful corporations.

But corporations' ability to decide what to host is guaranteed by freedom of speech. Remember, freedom of speech is not just freedom to say what you want it's also freedom from compelled speech. It's the freedom from the government telling you to make or host speech. Mandating that corporations host speech they don't want is not protecting freedom of speech, it is violating freedom of speech.

geofft• 7 years ago

We wouldn't blindly allow company-owned cities or states to pass laws, especially vague or undefined ones, that potentially violate our rights, so why do we allow "states" in cyberspace to be run in such a way?

Actual states have a monopoly on violence, and can deprive me of life, liberty, and property. So I want them to have as few excuses to do that as possible. These "states" in cyberspace can do none of that, so it's significantly less of a problem if they don't embrace freedom of speech as an ideal.

(I guess it depends somewhat on whether you see free speech as an inherent virtue or as a safety valve against government oppression. I've been leaning towards the latter personally.)

qrbLPHiKpiux• 7 years ago

I wish all internet comment sections be removed. If you have something to say, promote your own website. Yelp is the worst.

saynay• 7 years ago

I'm wondering why YouTube doesn't have something like Reddit's "quarantine" where certain videos and/or channels are blocked from the recommendation algorithms without being outright banned, but still available for those who specifically search for them.

scottlocklin• 7 years ago

They do. Now they're taking the additional step of just deleting them.

FWIIW this censorious crap cost them $70b in market cap last quarter. Looking forward to next quarter.

r3bl2• 7 years ago

Here, try this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8beSkkKJ_0

No comments, likes, dislikes, and no recommendations on the sidebar. It can still be viewed if you accept the risk, and can be found using the search bar or by scrolling through the channel.

woliveirajr• 7 years ago

Funny how last XKCD refers to NPR and comment sections: https://xkcd.com/2159/

drewcoo• 7 years ago

What strange irony that you post about it on HN, effectively a detached comment section for a news site. Was that intended? Regardless, I think you're making the tacit assertion that comments for the news belong somewhere. How? How should its censorship work? Would that take care of the problem?

munk-a2• 7 years ago

There definitely is an effect to white-labeling and brand confidence. When comments are hosted by an organization - regardless of the specific legal implications and understandings - people assume the brand has some ownership of the contents of those comments... No matter how big of a font is used to say "The opinions expressed below belong solely to their owners and do not reflect the views of <BRAND>."

empath752• 7 years ago

Generally, true statements are not profound or original, but sometimes still need to be repeated when people assert the opposite. “The world is round” is neither an original or profound statement and yet people still need to say it periodically.

xfitm3• 7 years ago

Am I the only one who really enjoys shitty YouTube comments?

siruncledrew• 7 years ago

1. Comments sections on prominent, generalized websites (non-niche sites) are oftentimes not even worth reading. Buried beneath idiotic nonsense, spam/scams, edgelords, trolls, bots, and narcissists are the actual few insightful comments that are refreshing bits of value. It's like panning for gold in a river.

2. There's not going to be a fair judge of what counts as "censorable content" when two opposite sites of the debate are each arguing in favor of their side. It's like why referees exist in sports. Of course Team A will say "No way! That wasn't a foul, I didn't touch them!", while Team B says "It was definitely a foul, I got hit!". To anyone who's heard "boos or cheers" from the crowd at a sports game, it's not a shocker the response centers around which calls benefits their team.

3. With regards to the "freedom of speech" rights and personal liberties - how much of a shit does a monopoly-level, multi-national corporation give about strictly adhering to government-defined "rights"? What is the business cost of vehemently adhering to potentially-gray-area covenants vs. saying "Yeahh.. fuck that shit it's too much effort". Finagling laws to suit business needs is what huge companies pay teams of people to do already.

4. YouTube is like a factory farm. The more users are bunched into YouTube, the more money Google makes from advertising. It's all a numbers game. Google has no incentive to change the setup of the farm, so to speak, when what they have has been paying off to keep the service free and hold market share. Unless someone has a particularly large audience, the main solution to complaints from random, non-paying users is: "Deal with it".

5. Ban specific items that are violent, devious, or dangerous? Sure. Banning "DIY drinking bleach cures autism" is not the same as banning something more nuanced like "trailer trash ride dirt bikes on the interstate" on the grounds a specific subgroup has a problem. As customer service will show you, people will always find something to complain about. If Google came out with, "We will ban whatever we feel like based on what disagrees with our superior, self-selected ideology", that would be a very different story. That's not much better than a dictatorship banning anything that disagrees with the State.

kgraves• 7 years ago

dang, could you please flag this post, people are disagreeing with me here and this post isn't technically stimulating.

I think we should keep politics out of HN at this point, I don't want it to become reddit.

happytoexplain4• 7 years ago

How do we deal with cases where a topic is important and relevant both technically and politically? I agree with you generally, but it would also be a big shame if many socially and technically interesting and impactful stories simply could not be found or discussed on Hacker News.

AndrewStephens3• 7 years ago

In my opinion, sites like YouTube that rely on user generated content should drop any pretense of being neutral - they aren't and never have been. What they have been doing is dodging responsibility for being the publisher of racist and harmful material.

I'm sure that YouTube would say that they don't play favorites but even if that were true, as we have seen there are organizations all the way up to nation states that are hell-bent on corrupting platforms like YouTube for their own ends. And they don't require much corrupting.

Moderation is key. Sites like Hacker News work only because of strict moderation by humans. Similar sites without such moderation quickly become a haven for trolls and spam. Automatic systems can always be gamed - what is needed is a strong editorial hand.

I don't want YouTube to end - there are thousands of hours of great content. But if it is to survive it needs to make a choice of what kind of site they want to be. Letting itself be anything its users want is turning it into a cesspit.

skrowl5• 7 years ago

Google / Facebook are private companies, and they should absolutely be able to pick and choose what is posted on their platform if they want.

However, they SHOULD NOT be able to have it both ways where they censor posts they don't like (like a publisher would do) but enjoy protections afforded to actual open / neutral platforms.

Once you start censoring things that aren't breaking any laws, you're now a PUBLISHER and not an OPEN PLATFORM, so you are responsible for what's posted on your site.

javagram4• 7 years ago

FWIW, this would be a major shift in the law.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communica...

The court upheld AOL's immunity from liability for defamation. AOL's agreement with the contractor allowing AOL to modify or remove such content did not make AOL the "information content provider" because the content was created by an independent contractor. The Court noted that Congress made a policy choice by "providing immunity even where the interactive service provider has an active, even aggressive role in making available content prepared by others."

busterarm7• 7 years ago

The problem that you're missing, is that these companies choose the aspects of being a publisher when it's convenient to them and a platform what that is more convenient.

Publishers are responsible for the content that they put out. The New York Times can't publish some of the things that people put on Facebook without legal repercussions. When the government wants to stop some behavior happening on Facebook, Facebook says "we're not a publisher, we're a platform".

But as a platform there are certain consumer protection laws that apply to these companies. In some regard, they are responsible to their users/customers. Except when people try to exercise their rights there, Facebook says "we're not a platform, we're a publisher. We're responsible for the content we publish and we can't publish that."

They really shouldn't be able to have it both ways.

AndrewStephens3• 7 years ago

Youtube has always been a PUBLISHER. They have never been an OPEN PLATFORM in any real sense.

They have so far managed to shirk responsibility for PUBLISHING hateful content while being amazingly on-the-ball when dealing with copyrighted material.

I am sure YouTube wouldn't put it in these terms, but from the outside it looks like every day they make the editorial decision to enforce copyrights while pushing hate speech. I am sure this makes sense financially.

guitarbill• 7 years ago

But if you editorialise too much, do you lose e.g. safe harbor status? Most edited media is liable.

It's possible their hands are tied here. The copyright strike thing is out of hand, too, but in that case the blame is also on the (often scummy) copyright owners/enforcers. (That isn't to say they don't benefit from keeping advertisers happy, or that their platform/brand won't suffer the consequences of this approach)

buboard• 7 years ago

How easy is it to shut down decentralized systems like mastodon, ipfs, bitchute etc? because i feel they are going to become quite popular

Kye5• 7 years ago

The nuisance model on Mastodon is different. Silos push everyone together in the same space, so you pretty much have to fight to protect your own little corner.

People you might like to remove from your experience will tend to congregate on certain instances favorable to that kind of thinking. You have the power to block that instance at an individual level. There isn't the same impetus to deplatform them because you can just break the link.

I have many (but not all) "free speech" instances blocked because they're packed with users who try to force that perspective on me by (for example) removing content warnings when replying. I don't have to appeal to any authority to enforce my boundaries. Only the owners can decide who has the power to make those decisions on centralized social media sites. That seems to be outsourced moderators with little or no understanding of niche or marginalized communities.

Simulacra• 7 years ago

I strongly disagree banning anyone or any video that does not call for violence. I think it's a slippery slope and smacks of book banning. The information is out there, right or wrong. Who is it to judge what the public should see?

dawnerd• 7 years ago

YouTube is in charge of what they serve on their site. That’s your answer right there.

ng128• 7 years ago

I'll never understand this reductionist argument. Yes, YouTube/Facebook/Salesforce/etc can do whatever they want. That doesn't mean that it's good for society or that it's not worth talking about.

happytoexplain4• 7 years ago

I think that line is just too unsubtle. If that rule, and that rule alone, were applied to practically any platform, it would be overrun with extremely low-quality content (though the entertainment value might increase, for whatever that's worth).

nocturnial• 7 years ago

I'm not sure if I follow your line of reasoning. Suppose it wasn't a call to violence but rather a call to never speak or engage with that person again. That person can be fired and never be able to rent again... (I have examples of this if you're curious)

The slippery slope argument works both ways.

Faark5• 7 years ago

I would also prefer Youtube not banning those videos. But they certainly should not help them get views. Google is fully responsible for the output of its recommendation algorithms and the impact to society.

adwi• 7 years ago

Even as lifelong card-carrying ACLU supporter I don’t see why they don’t just take down anything they damn well please.

They’re a private company and are entitled to have a curatorial viewpoint—and for my particular beliefs culling white suprematists and borderline pedophilic content is a Good Thing.

You’re entitled to say whatever you want in this country, but I’m not obligated to broadcast it for you.

skrowl5• 7 years ago

I think the problem is that they censor views they don't like that aren't breaking any laws, which makes them a PUBLISHER but then they claim they need protections only offered to OPEN PLATFORMS.

They've often claimed in court to be an open / neutral platform, because that comes with legal protections against what your users post - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/02/facebook-...

Publishers (like Forbes when people blog on there) on the other hand are responsible for their user posts. I think Facebook / Youtube is more like the Forbe here, so they should be treated legally as a publisher.

esailija3• 7 years ago

I cannot find any mention of youtube in the link, it seems to be about facebook.

sintaxi• 7 years ago

I don’t see why they don’t just take down anything they damn well please.

Its because Youtube would rather be legally categorized as a service rather than as a publisher.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...

microdrum• 7 years ago

The beginning of the end of YT. "Extreme" is the ultimate slippery slope situation, and Google is unable to articulate respectable, bright-line rules around extremism. I can think of dozens of startups that allow video sharing, and some like streamable seem to have speeds and compute that outperform YT.

JacksonGariety• 7 years ago

Regarding the general phenomenon of removing 'hateful content' from social media platforms (Facebook and Twitter as well) there seem to be primarily two reactions:

1) Good. Hateful content spreads hate and causes it to multiply. We should not allow it to proliferate on the internet.

2) This is censorship. It it is the fault of the individuals watching/reading the hateful media who are to blame for number of views the videos/articles get.

So I wonder: is it really an either/or decision? Is there no third option here? It seems like a classic ethical antinomy. Authority influences people but, at the same time, the authority always needs to be recognized as authoritative by the people who are influenced by it.

minikites2• 7 years ago

Most people are not information or media literate, they don't do their own research to fact-check claims, and they believe any authority who says something similar to what they already believe. The "marketplace of ideas" requires people to put in the effort I describe, effort that they clearly aren't, so the responsibility for checking and enforcing content limitations passes to the platform owner.

If you don't like this outcome, argue for more humanities and social science classes in primary and secondary education to educate society in evaluating claims and the other aspects of information and media literacy.

root_axis19• 7 years ago

If you believe that YouTube unjustly engages in censorship on their platform then boycott YouTube and encourage others to do so. Just because YouTube is popular doesn't mean YouTube is obligated to host your videos for free. In reality, YouTube is unimportant and not something the government should guarantee you access to.

staunch• 7 years ago

Private companies like Google can't be expected to uphold human rights. They will almost always act in their own financial interest. It's up to the citizenry and their elected lawmakers to force them to do what is right.

All it would take is a law that compels public internet services to behave as if they're public services once they start reaching >33% of citizens.

The problem seems to be that a large percentage of citizens don't grasp that important freedoms often have a high price tag. Anyone can see this with the response to second and fourth amendment issues, and the same is becoming true of the first amendment.

Free societies have an inherent amount of chaos. That chaos is the price you pay. People desiring to live in a fully ordered society are unwittingly asking to live in a prison.

Sephr• 7 years ago

That's fine if we can agree on what is an "extreme view".

YouTube has already decided that academic software vulnerability exploitation proof-of-concept videos are "dangerous content", which results in video removal and a strike on your account.

swalsh• 7 years ago

53% of millenials have a favorable view of socialism today. But in th 20th century when we were fighting wars to "contain" it, we had senators keeping lists of people they suspected had favorable opinions of it. It used to be an extreme view.

This seems like another example of containment, but it's scary because what's normal today might be an extreme view tomorrow... and what's extreme today could be normal tomorrow. As much as I detest the idea of ideas like white supremecy spreading, I'm not sure I like the idea of fighting it by hiding it from view.

Yesterday was the anniversary of Tiananmen square. China avoided democracy by hiding all evidence of this terrible event. I think most people can agree the government hiding the truth is wrong, but if social media is the new public square (which the supreme court in a way ruled to be true when it ruled Trump can't block his tweets), I think these ideals of not hiding information still applies. The 1st amendment, and what it stands for is truely in jeopody with these actions.

Bakary• 7 years ago

An extreme view is anything that may reduce income by making advertisers leave.

celdon255• 7 years ago

Correction: Anything that can be reasonably argued to make a layperson believe that it has the potential to make advertisers leave.

praptak• 7 years ago

"They came for the Nazis and I protested. Then they came for me and it was the Nazis."

Tolerating extreme views is okay as the price for freedom of speech. It does not mean large platforms are obligated to give them megaphones. Some kinds of speech do cause harm far beyond someone getting angry at someone else's views.

cwperkins• 7 years ago

I applaud any effort towards deradicalisation, but we need to work towards transparency. My gut reaction to the college board instituting an adversity score, was that it would’ve disproportionately impacted a guy like me growing up, but I’ve since come to realize that I’d prefer one entity with a transparent methodology tackling the problems instead of each institution, like Harvard, having an opaque system of their own.

nyczomg• 7 years ago

From the article: 'The new policy will ban “videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion,” the company said in a blog post.'

Is this going to include videos that mention "white privilege" (which one could argue alleges superiority of white people) in which white people are asked to "check their privilege" in some way (which one could argue is an attempt to justify exclusion)?

sneak• 7 years ago

How about PHP devs? Furries? Racists? KKK members? Pedophile activism? Nationalism? Pro-EU content?

I will happily allege that people who aren’t racist are superior, and that racists should be discriminated against, segregated, and excluded wherever possible. Is that video permitted?

YouTube is going too far. This will either be the biggest footgun due to unintended blast radius, or will be selectively enforced so that they have an excuse to editorialize and shut down stuff they or their advertisers personally find icky (entirely subjectively) while ignoring other stuff that breaks these rules.

DuskStar6• 7 years ago

YouTube is going too far. This will either be the biggest footgun due to unintended blast radius, or will be selectively enforced so that they have an excuse to editorialize and shut down stuff they or their advertisers personally find icky (entirely subjectively) while ignoring other stuff that breaks these rules.

Pretty sure it'll be the latter. Selective enforcement seems to be the name of the game in SV, and IMO that's going to bite them in the ass eventually. (this isn't to say that selective enforcement is avoidable with the ruleset they've chosen, because it's probably not, but instead that policies that minimize the opportunity for selective enforcement should be used)

ajross3• 7 years ago

"check their privilege" [...] (which one could argue is an attempt to justify exclusion)?

If you can make the case, maybe. I mean, it sounds like a kind of insane case to make to me. Who's being excluded, and from what, merely by having their assumptions challenged in a discussion context?

The groups actually being targetted are ones that tend to advocate for the status of the US as an inherently white nation. Sort of an easier sell to my mind.

deogeo4• 7 years ago

It's not surprising there'd be groups advocating for that. They don't want to become a minority in their country, as both history and current events show that's a bad position to be in.

lugg14• 7 years ago

Who's being excluded, and from what, merely by having their assumptions challenged in a discussion context?

Good question, so why are we removing all this content?

umvi6• 7 years ago

"videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion"

What if the group is a political party alleging they are morally superior in order to justify "intolerance of intolerance" and "bigotry of bigotry" as a tactic to decry, discriminate, and exclude political opponents?

noelsusman• 7 years ago

I'm sure you could find an individual case of that, but in general those phrases do not mean what you described them to mean.

StanislavPetrov2• 7 years ago

The whole idea that a mass censorship policy can be implemented in a way that is "unbiased" is absurd. This would be true even if it wasn't being implemented by a company with incredible political bias like Google (Youtube).

xwdv• 7 years ago

What I worry here is that the extremity of a view will vary depending on how close it is to your own beliefs. Extremists don’t self identify as extremists, so the question is where does YouTube’s temperament lie?

yakshaving_jgt• 7 years ago

We’ve seen their leaked meeting videos. We know where their temperaments lie.

Animats• 7 years ago

Not good. What's "extreme"? Medicare for All? Brietbart News? Islam? Haredi? School shootings? Kim Jong-un? Putin? Trump?

YouTube already tries to transcribe videos to text. Is it within the state of the art to recognize common false statements and superimpose a crawl with counterarguments? One thing you have going for you is that the nuts aren't that original. If you had a classifier that could pick up the 100 best known nutty statements, you could do this.

Is there a startup in this?

creaghpatr4• 7 years ago

It's up to the advertisers really, think cable TV. A little bit of edginess, but if it gets crazy a boycott can force an advertiser pull out. We're only a few years away from YouTube turing into cable TV, maybe even the FCC will get involved in making that determination.

Edit: I don't agree that advertisers should be in charge, I just think they will ultimately decide the line between edgy and extreme.

jsonne• 7 years ago

It's curious to me that people who were absolutely up in arms about ISPs censoring content are 100% okay with Youtube doing it. Not that I support the views that these videos they're removing espouse (I don't) but it seems to me to be a pretty big about face by this community.

Nasrudith4• 7 years ago

Well YouTube isn't a pipe but a platform in spite of its popularity. I can always head someplace else with a website. I can't just switch ISPs casually as entering a different URL.

llamataboot• 7 years ago

I think the difference is that YouTube /pays these people/. It's almost an employer/employee relationship.

YouTube generates revenue, youtube shares that revenue, contributors with tons of views are making money directly from YT.

This is simply not the same as Twitter, etc. Twitter may make money off of eyeballs. I may somehow make money by becoming twitter famous. But my money is not coming as a share of twitter revenue.

The incentives are all screwed up. YT benefits financially the more 'shocking' my vid can be, and I benefit financially if YT does.

themacguffinman• 7 years ago

If that was the only issue, YouTube can demonetize the content or creator. They already do so for controversial content that advertisers won't abide. The fact remains that people want this content completely gone from YouTube, and preferably the entire internet.

kypro3• 7 years ago

What I find funny about all this is that I'm certain if YouTube existed a few decades earlier we would likely be under pressure to ban "disgusting" pro-LGBT content or content supporting things as "vile" as interracial relationships.

We would say, these private companies have a duty not to radicalise our children. That our children are being led away from god and into sinful lifestyles like homosexuality.

Some of us would welcome our views being censored by a few execs in silicon valley because we would see them defending the moral values of the status-quo...

Surely I'm not the only one who feels it might be a little short sighted to give a handful of billionaires like Zuckerberg control over what we can and can't express in the 21st century?

If we're so concerned and don't want to see content we morally disagree with, why can't we have family friendly modes?

I for one am glad we were all radicalised to support the "homosexual agenda". I'm glad we were radicalised by people like MLK to resist racism. And sure, there were some extremists along the way who took it upon themselves to commit acts of terrorism for the "greater good", but we understood these people were rare and this was the unfortunate, but necessary cost of liberty.

So before we continue too far down this road, are we certain we have all the answers now? If someone can be banned from social media sites for stating biological (but perhaps unfortunate) facts such as, "trans women aren't women" are we completely sure we'll get mass censorship right this time?

It might be worth remembering vast majority of us hold one or two "extreme views" that others find morally offensive.

Edit: Not that I should have to, but for those who are suspicious of my motives, I'm a left-wing, pro-LGBT, anti-racist type of guy.

lugg14• 7 years ago

I don't think the analogy fits. Those individuals are protected classes and refusing them access like this would be discriminatory behavior. Likely not illegal in USA but it would be illegal elsewhere.

Racists are not a protected class of people. They aren't afforded those same rights. And on some grounds their disruption of society actually puts an onus on you as a platform to restrict their access.

leereeves4• 7 years ago

They weren't protected classes when the political pressure would have been against them.

"Protected class" basically means politically favored group, and as GP points out, that changes.

paulpcook• 7 years ago

Nobody is in a protected class. In civil rights law, protected class does not refer to any specific group of people, but to the classifications that the law applies to. For instance, religion is a protected class, but the law applies equally to all. The confusion arises I believe because people think of it like "middle class", or "working class", but it is not. In the case of religion, because it is a protected class, discrimination based on religion is illegal, but the law protects all equally, so Baptists are treated the same as Mormons, for example. Racists are protected just the same as anyone else. Whether or not someone is racist is irrelevant in this context.

fzeroracer• 7 years ago

I always find things like this interesting. A short while ago I posted a thread here [1] on a publicly owned service engaging in clear viewpoint discrimination with nary a peep. YouTube, a privately owned service, moves to moderate their platform and all hell breaks loose.

Mind you this isn't an attempt to defend YouTube at all given what they did yesterday but rather that I've always seen the battles over free speech and the bias on HN as being incredibly lopsided.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19976398

RosanaAnaDana• 7 years ago

Relevant xkcd (todays): https://xkcd.com/2159/

smsm427• 7 years ago

The company also said that channels that “repeatedly brush up against our hate speech policies,” but don’t violate them outright, would be removed from YouTube’s advertising program

Even their own rules written by them is never enough for censors. They have to invent stuff like "brush up" to extend censorship even further, even when recognizing there's no violation of their own policies, that they themselves wrote. Talk about slippery slope...

idlewords2• 7 years ago

Hacker News should follow YouTube's lead by nuking this thread. Flagged.

pessimizer• 7 years ago

I'm sure that Google has been waiting for a youtube media panic to pull the trigger on this for a while. They'd prefer to be an on-demand cable channel, and would love to remove any material controversial to anyone, but didn't want censorship to be the story (especially with antitrust stuff going around.)

Google isn't in the video business because it wants people to be able to share videos with each other. Google is in the video business to sell ads. Censoring the illiberal is the way to get to get liberals to support censorship. Announcing manual control over the suggestions is a way to justify steering viewers away from any content, starving it of revenue, and getting it off the platform.

LinuxBender• 7 years ago

I know this will be an unpopular opinion, but Youtube can delete whatever they want. It's their site. AFAIK, most people don't have legally binding contracts stating that Youtube must keep all their videos online. Even the big streamers that make money off Youtube have to follow whatever guidelines Youtube come up with. I bet there is wording that says something to the effect of "Subject to revision..." or like that in the AUP.

That said, there is nothing stopping people from creating their own sites, or putting taboo / extreme videos on chan sites, forums, etc... and plonk it down behind Cloudflare or Akamai. i.e. 4chan, 8chan, I mean, you won't find more extreme videos that what get posted there every 90 seconds. In this case, I am not linking to the examples.

squarefoot• 7 years ago

As an antifascist I welcome this move, though at the same time I fear the risk of abuse.

FTA: "... and videos denying that violent incidents occurred"

This one seems perfectly tailored to match with the Chinese Govt. negationism about Tiananmen Square events, so that would be generally A-OK for us, but what about videos or comments by police officers denying violent behaviour of their colleagues? Would their videos/comments be axed the same way? Then what about governments lying about civil deaths figures or use of banned weapons in military attacks?

100 Euros and a beer that the rule will be heavily bent case by case.

munificent• 7 years ago

For almost all of human history, sharing and persisting information had a pretty high cost. To get something into someone else's head, first you had to verbally tell them. Then you could at least write it once and have it read multiple times. That written work persisted over time longer too, though it required scribes to manually copy them periodically to broadcast it farther.

During all of that time, driving the cost to persist and broadcast information down has been a good thing. The cheaper the better, because it gives more brains access to useful information. I think because of that, we assumed the ideal cost is zero.

In the past several years, I believe we are slowly, painfully, realizing that we were wrong. The web has driven that cost down to practically zero. Any rando can write anything and it will be served on the web to all and sundry in perpetuity.

The problem with that is that it makes it equally easy to broadcast mis-information. What humans need to prosper is access to good information — true facts and useful ideas. Information that helps us take actions that help people.

When there's a non-zero maintainance cost for info, someone has to periodically choose to pay that cost. The scribe has to decide what book to copy. The printer has to decide which pamphlets to re-print. The public access channel has to decide which shows to schedule.

If someone can't be motivated to care about some piece of information enough to do that, it naturally decays and disappears. Like evolution, there's a natural selection process where some memes die. Now, granted, even with a non-zero cost, bad or misinformed actors may choose to further bad information. But I think that happens way more often when the cost to doing so is nil.

So, when you have a non-zero cost, it encourages a certain amount of selection where useful information tends to last longer. At the same time, you don't want the cost too high. When that happens, only the powerful are able to decide what information persists and they choose only information that furthers their own power. Driving the cost down has been, I think, one of the major engines of democracy.

But I do think we've overshot the mark now. In the next several years, it's going to be up to us as a culture to figure out how to effectively deal with the hurricane of misinformation constantly roaring around us. It is, I think, the biggest threat facing human society today.

(You might argue that climate change is a bigger threat. But note that a primary reason we're failing to take sufficient action on climate change is because of misinformation.)

fwip14• 7 years ago

You're not pro-LGBT if you think trans women aren't women.

DuskStar6• 7 years ago

And you're anti-women if you think trans women should be able to compete in weightlifting competitions as women.

This isn't an issue with easy, clearcut answers.

jim_dow_jones• 7 years ago

Why not? Do you have to share the views of every single person within a group to be considered a supporter? What if they vote for every pro-LGBT politician that runs for office? What if they vote for every pro-LGBT legislation that they come across? What if they give support and words of affirmation to LGBT family members that are close to them? Why is he suddenly not a supporter because he disagrees with a small part of the discussion? This seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

ModernMech3• 7 years ago

Why is he suddenly not a supporter because he disagrees with a small part of the discussion?

That trans women are women isn't a "small part" of the discussion. It's kind of the whole point.

kypro3• 7 years ago

This isn't my opinion. I will happily call people by whatever pronoun they wish to be called. That's just common decency in my opinion.

That comment was in reference to this story, it looks like I got the quote wrong: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/journalist-sues-twitter-...

I think there's a difference between how we should recognise someone socially and the reality of an individual's biology. What's worrying here is that stating a biological fact can be viewed as too extreme if it goes against a certain political ideology.

But there are plenty of examples like this. I know people have been kick off of social media for suggesting the Prophet Muhammad was a pedophile, or for discussing racial crime stats. And many of the examples I've seen of this don't appear to be in bad faith either, in fact most seem to be in the interest of honest dialogue. They just had the wrong opinions.

fwip14• 7 years ago

"In reality, you're not a woman, we're just pretending because we're polite" isn't a very pro-trans stance.

DuskStar6• 7 years ago

But there are plenty of examples like this. I know people have been kick off of social media for suggesting the Prophet Muhammad was a pedophile, or for discussing racial crime stats. And many of the examples I've seen of this don't appear to be in bad faith either, in fact most seem to be in the interest of honest dialogue. They just had the wrong opinions.

I find the trend of "this fact/data is not to be discussed" to be particularly disturbing.

Muhammed being a pedophile/child molester by modern definitions is pretty damn clear in the Quran. Saying we can't discuss it is very odd.

There are significant differences in racial crime and academic stats in the US. The causes can be debated - the existence of a difference less so.

And for a less controversial parallel to the previous... there are major differences in gendered crime stats in the US. Again, the causes can be debated - but a difference most definitely exists.

Under what standard is "racial crime differences are a forbidden discussion" reasonable where "gendered crime differences are a forbidden discussion" is not? What level of fact are we willing to memoryhole if it ends up politically inconvenient?

Nadya2• 7 years ago

This is patently untrue in some domains that could be life-impacting, particularly in healthcare/medicine where differences in gender matters for treatment.

If a trans-man is given medicine in doses as a man, and not a woman, they have a much higher risk of overdosing because of differences in how the body metabolizes drugs for each gender [0] [1]. It isn't transphobic to identify them as a woman and give them the proper dosage for their gender. I'd prefer to be given the correct amount of medicine than to pretend there aren't important gender differences and that my actual gender and the gender I would prefer to identify and portray myself as differs [2].

Then you get into the mess of trans-women competing (and usually one-sidingly dominating) in women's sports because lo' and behold there are still gender differences between men and women regardless of how they choose to identify.

I'm becoming accustomed to being told how I should think. Must be my internalized transphobia speaking for me though and not that political correctness is going to cost someone their life one day and that that person could be me.

[0] https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/the-drug-dose-gend...

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=lindsey%20w%2C%20se...

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12648189

minikites2• 7 years ago

This is patently untrue in some domains that could be life-impacting, particularly in healthcare/medicine where differences in gender matters for treatment.

https://www.bustle.com/articles/144447-what-is-concern-troll...

fwip14• 7 years ago

It's important for doctors to know your medical history, that's obviously true.

Do you know how trans people on HRT respond to Ambien, as your first link brings up? I sure don't. Depends on why the drug works differently.

If you're scared that you'll die because your doctor thinks you're cis, tell them you're trans.

That doesn't mean you have to tell your doctor "I'm really a man, despite being a trans woman, and it's definitely important for you to store an M in your records because you might suddenly forget that I'm trans and also I'm sure my reaction to medicine is the same as a cis man's."

Just be an adult and talk with your doctor honestly.

bufferoverflow• 7 years ago

It depends on your definition of "woman". Biologically/genetically they different from biological women (females). It's a simple scientific fact.

Of course, we should treat them as humans in any case.

dang6• 7 years ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20106922.

man2525• 7 years ago

My sense is that unless content creators get views for calling out the behavior of other content creators, they risk losing likes and advertising revenue. Then they become the political agenda guy, and no longer the comic book movie critic, chef, video game expert, or theremin playing guy they were trying to portray. I'd like extremism resolved through naming and shaming, a living exile ideally, but I don't think drafting popular YouTubers to do so is completely realistic. Black Mirror, here we come?

patagonia8• 7 years ago

You ever been to a legit protest? Have you been near the police line at a protest when there are thousands of protesters and hundreds of police officers and tensions are high and really not nice stuff is being said all around? And the police officers just stand there at the ready. (Sometimes they don’t and they antagonize protestors or just plain assault then, but my experience has been that is the exception.) I have immense, enormous, huge respect for those officers. Sometimes the individual officers personal beliefs align with the protesters. Sometimes not. But they stand there. Just stand there. If things get violent then they shut things down. But a lot of times it feels like things don’t get violent because they are there and people know they will shut it down if things get violent. That’s what I want YouTube to be. YouTube should be the public infrastructure that is available for people to gather and exchange ideas upon, such that most people don’t even give a second thought to the importance of having public streets available to protest on, and the police are there when the law is broken or unprotected speech is spoken. That is it. The job doesn’t pay well. It’s not a glorified role. And it’s prob pretty miserable when things get heated. But it’s a beauty to behold when you step back from it all and take it in and see what is happening.

mbrameld• 7 years ago

The job doesn’t pay well.

I think this is an outdated belief. Many officers earn 6 figure salaries in the US.

patagonia8• 7 years ago

A quick google, the top three results said average was 50k-60k. One result said the top 10% make low 6 figures. I doubt the majority of officers in those lines are top 10%, almost by simple math.

fwip14• 7 years ago

I don't know if this is what you meant, but that's what youtube is doing now. They've decided that these neo-Nazi videos are causing violence, so they've stepped in to remove those bad actors for the sake of everyone else.

umvi6• 7 years ago

They've decided that these neo-Nazi videos are causing violence

By this logic, shouldn't neo-Nazi rallies or protests be "causing violence" as well because they influence people to commit violent acts later the same way neo-Nazi videos influence people? Yet that is the very thing the officers in GP's comment are protecting.

josteink3• 7 years ago

They've decided that these neo-Nazi videos are causing violence

I’ve decided that your comment causes violence towards people inclined to believe in freedom.

And so does Antifa, BLM, third wave feminists.

When do we start banning them? And are you “ok” with having someone else randomly labelling your speech as something “causing violence”?

No? Then if it’s not ok to do to you, why is it ok to do upon others?

joshfraser• 7 years ago

Give your worst political enemy the power to decide what is "hate speech" and what is "disinformation" and then you'll realize that free speech isn't something we should ever compromise on. - Naval Ravikant

drilldrive2• 7 years ago

We talk all the time about the two internets, one of China and one of the rest of the world. But more and more we are seeing a new division arising within America itself of two internets. I can't say how this will play out long-term, but with alternative-media sites rising we may well see two broad forces developing.

tal8d3• 7 years ago

...but with alternative-media sites rising...

That should be happening, but isn't - not to the degree it naturally would. Debanking. Payment processors have been very busy weeding out potential competitors to the big names in SV. I almost want to laugh at the fact that the early cryptocurrency proponents experienced the exact same treatment while building the very thing that would protect those presently being targeted by Visa/Mastercard. I'm still banned from two major banks...

This youtube censorship stuff is going to pale in comparison to the coming wave of debanking. There is a very freaked out class of people who have their hands on the wheel at the moment (especially true at Mastercard), so you can't rely on traditional profit motives to predict behavior - anything is possible. My financial adviser suggested, with a straight face, that I consider a portfolio built around some new social equity index... my account has been self directed ever since.

drilldrive2• 7 years ago

Yes this is absolutely true. But once the cryptocurrencies gain a true grip, along with alternative payment processors, we will really begin to see a true divergence. In some sense, such particulars are the bedrock of the second internet.

fallous• 7 years ago

I'm not entirely sure that certain large sites have thought through the legal implications of this kind of behavior, and no I'm not talking about "censorship!" or other free speech laws that are applicable to government rather than private entities.

Back during the late 90s all of us working on public websites knew that allowing user-contributed content was a great way to build both community and to increase the sheer amount of content, which increased advertising revenues. But there's a catch to user-contributed content... in order to avoid legal responsibility as a site owner for the user content posted on the site you can't moderate that content directly. The reason for this is the "common carrier" rule.

Common carrier essentially states that as a communications platform you are not liable for the legal implications of the communications that occur on your platform as long as you do not choose to engage in editing or moderating that content. AT&T, for example, was not legally liable for a conversation that occurred on their telephone network even if the conversation involved the commission of a crime (we're plotting a terror attack, a bank robbery, etc.) The reason they were not liable was because they did not monitor the communications on their network and did not cut off a phone call if it sounded like you were planning something illegal, evil, whatever.

The minute you, as the carrier, begin actively moderating the content (as opposed to setting up common universal rules such as site karma or user driven moderation), you are responsible for ALL of that content. You managed to remove 99.99% of all illegal communication? Too bad, you're still on the hook for that 0.01% that you missed.

This does not mean that content may never be removed by the company, it's just that they must do it under the order of a court or applicable government entity... in the same way that AT&T could not tap your phones absent a court order.

Many sites opted not to have user-contributed content due to the potential concerns regarding advertisers or their own brand reputation. Others did allow such content and later removed things such as comments and the like due to the conflict between violating common carrier and the problems that arose with advertisers and/or their brand (see Yahoo Finance comments circa 2002 or so).

telaelit• 7 years ago

And yet they’re not taking down Crowder’s homophobic videos??

r3bl2• 7 years ago

They kinda are over at Twitter: https://twitter.com/gaywonk/status/1136056663927087105

They've demonetized Crowder.

Update on our continued review–we have suspended this channel’s monetization. We came to this decision because a pattern of egregious actions has harmed the broader community and is against our YouTube Partner Program policies.

Then they've made some additional confusion by talking about how they'll remonetize him when he removes shirts from the shop (they've presented it as the only requirement to reinstate monetization). At the end, they've doubled down on the first thing they've said:

Again, this channel is demonetized due to continued egregious actions that have harmed the broader community. To be reinstated, he will need to address all of the issues with his channel.

lucaspm98• 7 years ago

You're going to have to explain what you are accusing him of because I am struggling to find anything homophobic.

malloreon• 7 years ago

I said it about facebook and I'll say it again about youtube: zero credit for deciding extremist views like white hate have no place on your platform a decade later.

How many ad dollars did Google make off these videos?

And how much damage did hosting those videos do?

SmaryLarry• 7 years ago

I think the analogies in this case are often extremely accurate ways that people have been getting the point across. I'll add one of my own in just a second. The problem here is not censorship at all, the problem is monopoly. Take the recent Disney acquisition of Fox for example in which in the acquisition they were forced to sell off regional fox sports stations in their purchase. The problem was they were about to have a monopoly on sports TV content. Now look at YouTube which has a near monopoly on ALL user uploaded video content. The problem is an entire industry - user uploaded video - is consolidated. Peoples incomes, their very livelihoods depend on YouTube. YouTube decides whether individuals succeed or fail with user uploaded video with their recommendations, suggestions, and trending algorithms. Success of individuals depends as much on YouTubes opinion of them as much as on their own abilities to produce content. YouTube itself people wouldn't call a small company, but it doesn't have that many employees... unless you start to count people who upload videos as employees, then they have millions of them, most which work for free until they can make it big. YouTube is the largest employer in the world and their monopoloy on content means their employees have no where else to go when they get banned. This doesn't even scratch the fact that typically we have seen bans done across multiple platforms - Facebook, Twitter, iTunes, Paypal, Patreon. They all ban users simultaneously to silence people and cut their income off. Imagine if the water company decided your speech meant you were too evil to be worth supplying. Well Money is not quiet as necessary as water but it comes close for many people who are working or trying to make it big at YouTube. Hey you can buy water from some other company, they might say, right? Even other large companies are depending on their YouTube videos to succeed and they employ hundreds more people who rely on YouTube. It is clear that their monopoly on user generated video content is what is the true problem. How can their power be weakened is the better question than what should they be censoring. Splitting YouTube from Google and the rest of Alphabet is a start. They likely saw this coming a long time ago and preemptively worked towards this goal with their recent restructuring. How else do you break up a monopoly that was made by user choice? Well in the Disney example they simply split the channels. Force YouTube to split into two or more companies. Whether that means breaking subscribers right now the middle and making two companies or dividing it up into multiple categorical companies then do it. I don't know the best way but I do know their dominance and user lack of choice by virtue of the monopoly is the true enemy, not censorship.

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