YouTube's Olympics Highlights Are Riddled with Propaganda (wired.co.uk) 80
"Sports fans who tuned in to watch the Beijing Winter Olympics on YouTube are instead being served propaganda videos," reports Wired:
An analysis of YouTube search results by WIRED found that people who typed "Beijing," "Beijing 2022," "Olympics," or "Olympics 2022" were shown pro-China and anti-China propaganda videos in the top results. Five of the most prominent propaganda videos, which often appear above actual Olympics highlights, have amassed almost 900,000 views.
Two anti-China videos showing up in search results were published by a group called The BL (The Beauty of Life), which Facebook previously linked to the Falun Gong, a Chinese spiritual movement that was banned by the Chinese Communist Party in 1999 and has protested against the regime ever since. They jostled for views with pro-China videos posted by Western YouTubers whose work has previously been promoted by China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Similar search results were visible in the US, Canada, and the UK.
WIRED also found signs that viewing numbers for pro-China videos are being artificially boosted through the use of fake news websites....
YouTube did not respond to a request to comment on why content used as propaganda to promote or deride China was being pushed to the top of Olympics search results, nor did the company say if those behind the videos had violated its terms of service by using fake websites to inflate their views.
The problem was first spotted by John Scott-Railton, a researcher at the University of Toronto's research laboratory, Citizen Lab. He tells Wired that after watching skating and curling videos, YouTube's autoplay kicked in and "I found myself on a slippery slide from skating and curling into increasingly targeted propaganda."
While the videos he saw are no longer being autoplayed, Wired still argues that "the way similar videos still dominate YouTube search results suggests the platform is at risk of letting such campaigns hijack the Olympics."
Two anti-China videos showing up in search results were published by a group called The BL (The Beauty of Life), which Facebook previously linked to the Falun Gong, a Chinese spiritual movement that was banned by the Chinese Communist Party in 1999 and has protested against the regime ever since. They jostled for views with pro-China videos posted by Western YouTubers whose work has previously been promoted by China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Similar search results were visible in the US, Canada, and the UK.
WIRED also found signs that viewing numbers for pro-China videos are being artificially boosted through the use of fake news websites....
YouTube did not respond to a request to comment on why content used as propaganda to promote or deride China was being pushed to the top of Olympics search results, nor did the company say if those behind the videos had violated its terms of service by using fake websites to inflate their views.
The problem was first spotted by John Scott-Railton, a researcher at the University of Toronto's research laboratory, Citizen Lab. He tells Wired that after watching skating and curling videos, YouTube's autoplay kicked in and "I found myself on a slippery slide from skating and curling into increasingly targeted propaganda."
While the videos he saw are no longer being autoplayed, Wired still argues that "the way similar videos still dominate YouTube search results suggests the platform is at risk of letting such campaigns hijack the Olympics."
So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple solution.
Ignore the Olympics.
Don't help the corrupt IOC.
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Don't worry guys, the Olympics will help China respect human rights and open up to the world!
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We did a bad thing so they can do a bad thing
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You know, there actually ARE human beings who care about sports and are interested in the Olympics because they find sports interesting.
I do know that the stereotype of slashdot readers is that they are basement-dwelling nerds who hate jocks, detest sports, and are contemptuous of all popular culture (except they can go on for hours about trivia in the MCU), but there is no need to exemplify this.
The problem is that yootoob is diverting people away from the sports that they are looking for and pushing pro
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Ding. So... solution is let's be divisive?
Honestly, cutting off most western media has been a godsend. But fuck yes, I was happy about the American Hockey team beating Canada. Take that your far too northern wankers!
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> You know, there actually ARE human beings who care about sports and are interested in the Olympics because they find sports interesting.
But that's the problem, if you care about sports, why watch the Olympics? The IOC has repeatedly gone easy on Russia to the extent they're still competing and still cheating every single time, and it's not just Russia, they're just the ones that got caught for being the biggest most obvious cheaters.
Why watch something so repeatedly corrupt and rigged? That's not sport
Re: So? (Score:1)
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Google in bed with the CCP? What a surprise!
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That's what I was expecting the article to be, but it surprised me. They got both pro- *and* anti-CCP propaganda. The point is that they got propaganda--propaganda from both sides, but propaganda--and not, you know, *sports.*
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I have been doing this all my life, but every 4 years it keeps coming back (I mean really, why the fuck does anyone care what country is better at dog tossing and figure skating)
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The politics usually end up being the more interesting, and annoying, parts. As in China loves one half-Chinese American because she speaks *Mandarin*, but doesn't like the other half-Chinese American because she doesn't speak it well. Even though both have the same Chinese background, the emphasis on Mandarin as the one and only Chinese language out of hundreds that matters to the social media thought police. It shouldn't be surprising that developing and emerging countries repeat the same mistakes othe
Re: So? (Score:1)
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Better yet, stop participating in the Olympics. For oppressive hosts it's a way to shill their propaganda and for capitalist hosts it's a way to suck billions of taxpayer money into the hands of the construction industry for projects that ultimately end up providing, at best, no long term benefit to the impacted communities.
And better yet while we can't ban "elite" sports what we can do is stop letting them use our public schools (including public colleges) as government subsidized training & recruitme
Re: So? (Score:1, Insightful)
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Shocked! I am shocked! (Score:2)
Stop hitting me with that cattleprod you bastard Youtube person!
This is so unsurprising that I'm surprised it's even worth an article...
Re:Shocked! I am shocked! (Score:4, Informative)
You do have to wonder what they expected to happen. It's hardly new, this happened with Tokyo 2020. It happens on almost any big event. It's been happening with videos about COVID.
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This is so unsurprising that I'm surprised it's even worth an article...
And it is unsurprising somebody always posts that "this exactly confirms my worldview so it's not surprising, I don't even know why slashdot bothers to post stuff like this because I already know it because my worldview is superior".
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If you replace "my worldview" with "humans acting like humans", I agree with you!
Autoplay on by default is dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Autoplay was one of the very first things I turned off so many years ago. I don't want an algorithm choosing what I watch. It's welcome to suggest things to me, and I might rarely click on those, but that's my choice and not theirs. I'll stick to what I've explicitly opted into from my subscriptions feed, thank you very much.
Google news not much better (Score:3)
When I googled winter olympics I mostly found topics on problems with the snow, Russian doping, COVID quarantine. I guess the olympic events and results are not of interest.
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Well, America's not in the olympics this time, except expats playing for other countries. Russia's technically not in except for the "we're not Russia but we really are" ROC. And the lack of audiences actually there in person. But also very big is that we had Olympics just last year! The delay due to covid seems to show that you need at least 2 years gap between Olympics. And probably we need more bland/neutral countries hosting; the "spirit" of the olympics has never really existed, they're almost alwa
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I think the winter Olympics are always of less interest because the sports are much less accessible to most people. They tend to need expensive equipment, or certain weather (snow/ice) and that means they feel remote to many people.
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Not much snow in SoCal, but I've been a skier for 35 years. I DO it. I don't watch it. Or any other sport except the Olympic skating and gymnastics winners who do incredible things with their bodies. No, I can't skate worth a damn. Fortunately youtube allows me to choose ONLY what I actually want to watch and skip the dreck, which is most of it.
Most here are too young to know Cold War Olympics (Score:4, Interesting)
Back then it was really exciting to watch the events. We actually got to see them all too. Not like today.
There were even had transgenders competing. It was a progressive time, the USSR was leading the fight for gender enlightened sports.
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While everything you said is interesting... do you really believe there was a period the USSR was leading the fight for "gender enlightened sports" or like you said was the motive political gain through competition?
Re:Most here are too young to know Cold War Olympi (Score:4, Informative)
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The current rules require that testosterone levels are below a certain level of 6 months before the competition. The ICO has spent over a century trying to come up with a definition of what a biological female is, but everything they tried failed - genital inspections, chromosomes, doctor's opinions. At the very highest level of sport everyone is exceptional, and in many sports that means exceptional physiology. There are many, many corner cases.
The testosterone limit is not great either, there are women wh
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If you look at the history of women's strength events especially there were a lot of world records set by eastern bloc nations in the 1980's that may never be beaten
https://www.irozhlas.cz/sport/... [irozhlas.cz]
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Found the "Too Young" one.
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A joke based on some Soviet Bloc countries seemingly overdoping their women's team; why does that women's shotputter look like Hulk Hogan?
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The DDR was also very much a front runner in the transgender competitions!
Re: Most here are too young to know Cold War Olymp (Score:1)
Problem? (Score:2)
Why is this a problem? People are more interested in "propaganda" (sometimes known as political views) than they are in amateur winter sports, as evidenced by the precipitous drop in TV ratings from last time.
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Are there still amateurs involved at the Olympics level? I mean, real amateurs, not the highly paid and over trained government propaganda reps?
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What *exactly* counts as "anti-Chinese Propoganda" (Score:2, Interesting)
Reporting on their human rights violations ?
Maybe their behavior with respect to Hong Kong ?
Perhaps it's their stellar environmental policies ?
Oh, did I forget the Belt And Road initiative ?
Ahh, I see now, if it's anything like the truth, it's propaganda, and when it's propaganda, we're supposed to treat it as truth.
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Why is mainstream media in quotes? Because most people think of CNN, MSNBC, FOX,
Pick any time of day or night, and the most viewed broadcast/cable show has numbers meaningfully below a dozen different streamers during that same time "slot."
The people on their way out are telling us how bad the people on the way in are, yet they are on their way in be
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Marked as troll for telling the truth that media has a bias... the new /. -- yet another arm of modernized media.
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The kind of stuff that gets INJECTED into completely unrelated activities for the purpose of demonising other people - especially those that the ELITE are trying to foment war with.
Why aren't we being served ads on US State Department Coup in Ukraine, the US State Department's failed Coup attempt in Syria, The US State Departments Failed Coup in Venezuela, the lies that led to Iraq war, the hundreds of thousands of Civilians killed in countries the US invaded?
Get it now? Wake up.
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I would agree about potential coups in other places, but would like to be updated on Ukraine? I mean Ukraine is a rock and a hard place... with Crimea it seems kind of clear that Russia will take the assets it needs for strategical advantage if Ukraine doesn't play ball... of course the irony seems to be this pushes them to seek more western support but fuck if I would play that card anymore for the reasons you already outline...
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I'm interested in China topics, so as you can imagine, social media algorithms feed me a lot of content on China, including large volumes of both pro- and anti-Chinese Communist Party propaganda.
Here's the thing about propaganda: the conclusions it wants you to come to are not necessarily wrong. I absolutely agree with most of the conclusions and even the *feelings* about the CCP that the Falun-Gong backed propaganda videos want me to reach. But that doesn't mean I can't see the methods they use are decep
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Speaking Mandarin with an accent?
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Besides the country that you may currently reside in, what other country really has a good human right record.
In short politics is much easier to keep your power when there is some sort of minority who can be shown as scary and dangerous, who is against all the things you believe in. Truth has no part of that narrative.
Falun Gong is a racist conspiracy theory cult (Score:3)
It is not a "spiritual movement".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
On race
Li Hongzhi teaches that extraterrestrial beings are getting different human races to mix as part of a plan to overtake humankind.[52] Li in "Teaching the Fa at the Conference in Switzerland" says that:
"The way alien beings get human beings to shake free of the gods is to mix the races, causing human beings to become rootless people, just like the plant hybrids people make nowadays.
South Americans, Central Americans, Mexicans and some people in South East Asia - all of these races have been mixed. None of this can evade the gods' eyes. Alien beings have made rather extensive preparations for overtaking human beings."[52]
Their great leader Li Hongzhi [wikipedia.org] is also the sole protector of humanity against evil extraterrestrials, possessor of various superpowers like levitation, invisibility, energy levels over 9000 etc.
And then there's that whole fascist thing.
https://newrepublic.com/articl... [newrepublic.com]
It is a far-right conspiracy theory cult. Let's call it what it is.
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It is a far-right conspiracy theory cult. Let's call it what it is.
Even far-right conspiracy theory cults have a right to free speech and assembly.
China's attempt to oppress FG is misguided and has backfired, making China look like a bully and giving credibility to the kooks.
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Even far-right conspiracy theory cults have a right to free speech and assembly.
No they don't.
By definition and their own alignment such groups are based around extermination of the "other" based on some internal in-group mythology.
It's a hate group.
No free speech or assembly rights for them.
And that's just for your regular fascists and racists.
These guys are also insane AND very well organized cultists - i.e. a slavery organization exploiting the vulnerable.
I don't need to wait to see them too pull a sarin gas attack on a subway somewhere to know that THAT is where they are going.
As f
Re: Falun Gong is a racist conspiracy theory cult (Score:2)
Funny, they're saying that YOU are a member of a "hate group." Better hope they never attain enough power to do unto you what you'd like to do unto them.
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As it turns out, not all people and not all governments agree with you.
I know... your world has been shattered. But imagine for a minute, a person is telling you if you do nothing to stop them, a bomb will destroy New York. Now they of course are doing nothing but talking, so what can you do, free speech right?
Now there is basically no nation with "free speech" that given adequate examination of the propensity for the outcome this individual mentions, would not take steps against them. This includes the US,
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Also, what religion can't be reframed as a conspiracy theory of some sort?
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Looks like Slashdot has the same propaganda problem as YouTube. Painting the whole movement as one thing is a dead giveaway. For every religion you can find a few nutsos and usually majority of followers who find it useful as practical and emotional self help guide. Even words of a self pro-claimed leader are not super relevant, as religion is by definition about things outside the realm of human. Scientology now has a Freezone of people who think they get some benefit from the practices while not wanting a
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These people scare me. Mainly because people don't realize how scary they are.... they dress something up as a harmless practice while driving to a philosophy that proselytizes devotion to a radical belief without thought to a degree that others indoctrinated similarly accept them while being enemies in principle of thought. These people... are beyond dangerous, if risen to prominence they are a relative ending if not a total one.
Re: Falun Gong is a racist conspiracy theory cult (Score:2)
But enough about evangelical Christianity, this thread is about China.
Thank goodness ... (Score:2)
When the government has already selected the "Great Wall" brand as the best and only product that you will be buying, it frees up a lot of airtime to convince you that those that did the selecting are all knowing.
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Dontcha know -- media only serves to tell you what you want. Branding -- the only true form of inauthenticity.
"Fake websites" (Score:1)
This by you is news? (Score:3)
No, seriously . . . let me put on my shocked face . . .
8^O
The Olympics? Politicized? Awww, say it isn't so? (*looks with soulful eyes at IOC*)
Just to say - I remember moonshots (we won't talk about men in space) - and even when I was a kid, the Olympics was always about us getting more gold medals than the Communist Russians and the Communist Chinese put together. We were awesome, we were guaranteed to be better, 'cuz we were American. It was more fashionable back then to admit all that. I'm pretty sure nothing's changed ('cept there's no USSR - we bankrupted them years ago, Russia's only just now coming out of receivership). Oh, and suddenly we have to start taking Communist China seriously, so now instead of Democratic China we have Taiwan.
Were the modern Olympics ever about anything but propaganda?
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Er (Score:2)
Two anti-China videos showing up in search results were published by a group called The BL (The Beauty of Life), which Facebook previously linked to the Falun Gong, a Chinese spiritual movement that was banned by the Chinese Communist Party in 1999 and has protested against the regime ever since.
Is it really "propaganda" when you are complaining about actually being persecuted?
Olympic competition is fundamentally nationalist (Score:3)
The Olympics a perfect vector for propaganda. Most humans are unsophisticated so spectator sports appeal to them. Olympic competition is fundamentally NATIONALIST competition and don't forget that for a second.
It would be childishly stupid not to take advantage. Politics is war for simple minds so do what works not what you wish would work.
Political ads (Score:2)
Here it's election time this spring. Youtube runs ads from parties, which you either hate or support, but mostly makes your blood boil.
DV (Score:2)
Don't worry, I've been downvoting all the propaganda videos.