YouTube Is Fighting Conspiracy Theories With 'Authoritative' Context and Outside Links (theverge.com) 311
In an effort to reduce misinformation on YouTube, the video-sharing website will be adding "authoritative" context to search results about conspiracy-prone topics, as well as putting $25 million toward news outlets producing videos. YouTube made the announcement today as part of a new step in its Google News Initiative, a journalism-focused program that aims to help publishers earn revenue and combat fake news. The Verge reports: This update includes new features for breaking news updates and long-standing conspiracy theories. YouTube is implementing a change it announced in March, annotating conspiracy-related pages with text from "trusted sources like Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica." And in the hours after a major news event, YouTube will supplement search results with links to news articles, reasoning that rigorous outlets often publish text before producing video.
YouTube is also funding a number of partnerships. It's establishing a working group that will provide input on how it handles news, and it's providing money for "sustainable" video operations across 20 markets across the world, in addition to expanding an internal support team for publishers.
YouTube is also funding a number of partnerships. It's establishing a working group that will provide input on how it handles news, and it's providing money for "sustainable" video operations across 20 markets across the world, in addition to expanding an internal support team for publishers.
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
You haven't been around humanity much if you think that people are currently learning when they screw up. Or what's your explanation for the number of inbred tinfoil-hatters who believe sites like Infowars?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Good point. After all there's plenty of inbred tinfoil-hatters that believe sites like media matters, shareblue, and so on too.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
If you are trying to compare Media Matters, which is primarily a fact-checking and informational review site, to a conspiracy peddler site like Infowars... well, you're part of the problem. False equivalence ploys by white supremacist conservatives are a common and well observed tactic.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Considering that media matters has a long history of "quote mining" aka manufacturing news & outrage, lying through omission, and pushing political agendas despite it's classification status. You're simply ignorant, and are happily defending a company that's just as bad.
I enjoyed the "white supremacy conservatives" bit. Get that racism and bigotry out early, fly that flag. It's doing a bang up job for the democrats and progressives. When you finish frothing at the mouth, you can sit down and read jus [amazon.com]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I love how you trot out a book by a white supremacist hack who beat the "benghazi whee" tinfoil hat nonsense to death and derailed her own career by making crap up repeatedly, as your "source".
I'm amused that you're continuing to double down on your racism and bigotry. If that source is so terrible, why don't you pick it up and dispute it. I'll wait. I'll give you say 110 pages in and pick whatever you want.
But hey, that stuff must sell in the trailer park.
Oh boy, tripling down on the bigotry. What a beautiful face of modern progressiveness.
Re: (Score:2)
I can simply point out you're a white supremacist troll and ignore you instead.
You mean bog him down as a troll tactic? And replying is the opposite of ignoring.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
You mean bog him down as a troll tactic?
Skim their post history, they don't believe it's a troll tactic. They simply believe that anyone who disagrees with the progressive agenda in any form are white nationalists. If you want to see the face of extremism, it's right there. And that, is just plain sad.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I mean, it should cut both ways, right?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
So the only thing you have is, nothing. But the only thing you've done for everyone else is to show you're a racist and a bigot, that runs away when the facts become inconvenient.
Re: (Score:2)
So who was the one saying that someone was a white supremacist again? I kinda pity you that you're so far down that rabbit hole.
Re: (Score:2)
Completely off topic here, but I just wanted to thank you, Mashiki, for single handedly reminding me why I don't browse at 2. I wish I had your kind of free time.
Re: Why? (Score:2)
Oh... and in trailer parks they don't tend to purchase or read books any more than you do.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You can stop sucking David Brock's dick.
Re: (Score:3)
" the propaganda wing of the Democrat party"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me get this straight. An article about a monetary donation to a fact checking site and two opinion articles, and you're too media illiterate to check the bylines?
I'd laugh if it weren't so sad.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Fact checking sites will routinely counter both Republican AND Democratic lies? Maybe they're being labeled as liberal because the conservatives have more fake news sites (Brietbart, Infowars) and editorials masquerading as news (Fox)?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
The govt has done some things, and lied about things over the history of our country....things like the revelations in the the Pentagon papers [wikipedia.org], and MKUltra [wikipedia.org], etc.
Things that until revealed, seemed like pretty kooky and unthinkable did come out to be true.
I'm sure we don't know ALL the things that have occurred by or sanctioned by our government over the years...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There may be a conspiracy for the Heritage Foundation to select the next Supreme Court Judge. But again, we don't know.
However, there are huge areas that are pretty cut-and-dry.
When Trump says the USA has a trade deficit with Cana
Re: (Score:2)
Take whichever stat helps support your political view.
No, take the stat which represents the generally-agreed-upon definition of a trade surplus or trade deficit.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, mkultra was kooky and unthinkable, but not nearly as kooky and unthinkable as the conspiracy theories claimed.
Government conspiracies never seem to be as wide spread and organized as is often believed.
Re: Why? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh that fact is out there, you just don't like that it looks really bad for your team.
Re: (Score:3)
Nope. The ACA didn't take away 30 million people's healthcare.
You're thinking of the cross burners trying to REPEAL it. DARVO tactics again... unsurprising that white supremacist trolls use tactics of domestic abusers though.
https://www.cbpp.org/blog/who-... [cbpp.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Swing and miss. So very close, and yet so far. Need a hint? It begins with a P and happened during the previous administration.
Re: (Score:3)
From personal experience the only effective method I've ever discovered to get peop
Re: (Score:2)
Most all people learn, but social media provides a way for a small portion of the mentally ill to share their common delusions in a supportive atmosphere. People who profit from mental illness, like Alex Jones, have an obvious interest in promoting their delusions, the louder the better.
Sex Slaves on Mars (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
TFA shows that with breaking news there is a little warning saying that details may change. A search for "moon landing" uses a snippet from Encyclopedia Britannica.
Seems like they have thought this one through. It's very conservative.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yea, what could possibly go wrong [slashdot.org].
Re: (Score:3)
Lots of things, but is the odd mistake that gets quickly fixed really worse than regularly showing conspiracy theories about the moon landings, US presidents being in the KKK, Obama declaring martial law, vaccines giving kids autism etc?
Let's not let perfect be the enemy of good here.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly, and making perfect the enemy of good is just the tactic post-truth types love to use against fact-checking. Case in point: "Sometimes fresh news articles get corrected, therefore let's give batshit nutjobbery and Russian propaganda a head start (particularly on hot-button issues where I want to empower post-truth narratives) until things settle down."
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think his point was that the system was imperfect.... more that the system is ripe for abuse. If "nutjobbery" and "russian propaganda" have a head start, it's because YOUR ideology is in 2nd place. And don't try to pretend this isn't political for you.
Re: (Score:2)
"post-truth types" ... ahh yes, because we all know GameboyRMH has an iron grasp on the truth, even when it contradicts his worldview.
LOL. What a perfect example of GameboyRMH's point. "Exactly, and making perfect the enemy of good is just the tactic post-truth types love to use against fact-checking."
Obviously there are a large number of things GameboyRMH is wrong about, so we should dismiss his comments about everything. Never mind that "there are a large number of things X is wrong about" is true of absolutely everyone, and that following this line of reasoning to its logical end results in having to decide that there is no such thi
Re: (Score:3)
Odd mistake? How many mistakes does it take to damage the reputation of a "reputable source"? Are the major media outlets even held accountable for any misinformation they put out? No. No one is fired for putting out misinformation from any major outlet and there is never any accountability for them deceiving the public at large or pushing a political bias.*
Conspiracy theories are held by a very slime minority of people. So what? You are going to give those conspiracies vindication because "look at what goo
Re: (Score:3)
How many mistakes does it take to damage the reputation of a "reputable source"?
Depends on the nature of the mistake and if they publish corrections.
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed, some countries have a rule where the correction must be equally prominent. Front page headline results in a front page apology.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Let people learn when they screw up
Our last election, and even current reporting, showed that a lot of people do not learn, and even the ones that do end up learning too late. If Google can do something to flag obviously false reports as what they are, then I say more power to them -- it'll be doing us a service.
Even if they take things that are merely probably false or highly spun and supply a few links to what reputable sources say about the issue, that'd help keep people more informed and outside of their bubble.
I don't like having one company be an arbiter of truth either, but... if people can't do it for themselves, who is going to do it? Traditional news agencies have been unable to counter this round of nonsense, and in some cases are contributing to it.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
So who exactly watches and corrects traditional news agencies when they spew lies like NBC did when NBC said Jill Stein had a show on RT....NBC NEVER corrected the lie.
Re: (Score:2)
NBC said Jill Stein had a show on RT
Do you have a link for this? A quick google didn't turn up anything.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Our last election, and even current reporting, showed that a lot of people do not learn, and even the ones that do end up learning too late.
Are you serious?
You didn't like the results of the last presidential election, so that means that video sites need to festoon any unapproved opinions and information with warnings and links to goodthink?
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
The person who won does not matter to my post. There is evidence showing that regardless of who you were voting for, you were being targeted. Some of it was more obvious than others, but people on all sides of the political spectrum -- me included -- failed to filter out some of the spin coming their way.
Stop jumping to conclusions with divisive outrage. It's what they wanted. There's no room for pride here.
Re: (Score:3)
Your last election was a choice between bad and worse. You cloose bad.
No, they chose worst.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes it's fun to watch tinfoil-hat videos...
Why? I'll use moon landings as an example. We went there, and we left tons of trash which are proof enough.. never mind the tons of film footage, photographs, experiments
Apollo, Gemini and Mercury made so many jobs for so many, directly and indirectly.
It was America's apogee, and after that it's been one long backslide. The moon deniers spit in the face of all that work. And if it's *that* easy to twist the denier's minds, what with all the hard evidence, then how easy is it to twist their minds on subjects with no evidence?
It's fun at first, then it's just sad. And the weak-minded are an exploitable things... food for thought.
Re: (Score:2)
and we left tons of trash which are proof enough..
Huh? I can't see it from here. Your proof by way of fake photos from sources who are all in on the conspiracy are meaningless! We don't spit in the face of anything. You just need to show us actual proof not something from your fake news website like nasa.org.
Signed, your friendly neighborhood conspiracy theorist.
OPEN YOUR EYES!
Re: (Score:3)
With a good telescope you can see there is a huge rocket visible on the moon. And I mean huge. That's the rocket they used to ship all that crew and shitloads of material over there which was needed to stage and film the fake moonlandings.
Re: (Score:3)
NASA never found out and they couldn't complain when they got the bill. All they did was ask Kubrick to make it realistic and you know how perfectionist Kubrick was. The only way he saw to make it realistic was to film it on the moon behind their backs. Word is he got some help from the Russians.
Re: (Score:2)
You can still watch all the crazies you want. There will just be other suggested videos explaining why those people are total bat shit.
Who watches the watchmen? (Score:3, Interesting)
For example, you might yell tinfoil hate but here are a few off the top of my head:
Dan Rather, anchor long time CBS anchor, forced to resign in disgrace for manufacturing anti-conservative news
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.c... [yourlogicalfallacyis.com]
Meanwhile - Fox Lies pumps out daily falsehoods and propaganda, the same with talk radio, not to even mention the various tinfoil hat youtube sites, "Infowars", conservative cross burners like Curt Schilling and Roseanne who went whole-hog into insane nonsense...
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed:
Mighty Wurlitzer [wikipedia.org]
Operation Mockingbird [wikipedia.org]
Why waste good propaganda on foreigners? [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Why make up misinformation? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Many of those have "corrections" issued a few days later, meaning that they were NOT in fact, authoritative.
OK... So gather up corrections to any videos the user has watched, and when they arrive show them to the user as a "Notice bar" that will keep coming up until dismissed ---- If there is no correction, the noticebar can also be used to inform the user that a video they had watched was later found to be fake news with an optional link to a correcting source.
Re: (Score:2)
Please! (Score:2, Insightful)
Could you also eliminate fails videos and the 'you won't believe this trick' shit? Who the fuck is making all of these fake videos?
Frankly, it would be great is Youtube scrapped the recommendations all together. They suck balls.
Re: (Score:2)
Recommendations are based on your history. I don't get much of this crap.
If most of you recommendations are clickbait it can means:
- You click the clickbait
- You share an account with someone who click the clickbait
- You have no history
- You are not logged in and you block tracking
- You are actually talking about the "trending" section (the only untargeted section)
This isn't going to help the way they want it to (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that you have to have trust in the authoritative sources and the first thing the vast majority of the conspiracy peddlars do is to throw massive amounts of doubt upon said sources. This quickly devolves into a one side versus the other argument that authoritative sources almost never win.
It comes down to how you cannot reason someone out of a idea they didn't arrive at through reason in the first place.
Re:This isn't going to help the way they want it t (Score:5, Insightful)
This quickly devolves into a one side versus the other argument that authoritative sources almost never win.
Depends on what you mean by "win". If by "win" you mean that the conspiracy theorists are convinced of the error of their ways, yeah, that's not going to happen. But if you mean that you'll prevent a significant number of visitors who would otherwise get sucked into the weirdness from getting sucked in, that seems much more feasible.
Re: (Score:2)
This. Fighting irrational/illogical/counterfactual thinking is like fighting an outbreak of zombie virus: Trying to find a cure is a waste of time and may even be impossible, it's much more important to contain the spread - that means reducing new exposure. The authoritative videos are like a zombie proximity warning system. Won't help the zombies, but it will help to keep the uninfected but vulnerable from becoming infected.
People who want to spread ideologies that rely on irrational/illogical/counterfactu
Re: (Score:2)
It comes down to how you cannot reason someone out of a idea they didn't arrive at through reason in the first place.
And I wish YouTube would realize that trying to police reason, logic, and facts on their platform makes herding cats look easy.
They will. Soon enough.
Re: (Score:2)
This is a likely scenario, but the division will not be what you think. It'll be more like a big cluster of big power who declare trust in each other, and those who don't trust them are refused any platform. It's like the NYTimes trusts the Pentagon and the CIA. Wikipedia trusts the NYTimes. Youtube trusts the NYTimes and Wikipedia. Big interests trust Youtube because they get some control over the output. So the CIA considers Youtube safe.
The essence of a conspiracy theorist is not the incompetence but tha
Wikipedia dosen’t even have most conspiracie (Score:2)
Updated (Score:3, Interesting)
So, now we need to update the old Russian saying
""there's no truth in Pravda, and no You in YouTube"
Wait.... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Fighting fire with fire is a thing, but it tends to end badly if you don't know exactly what you're doing.
Yay! (Score:2)
Yay, let's make YouTube even more bland than it already is!
Fake News is an opportunistic virus (Score:4, Interesting)
The reason "fake news" can thrive is because MSM is so constantly horseshit that people correctly distrust it. The problem is that the replacements often have lower quality and reliability. The answer is to bludgeon MSM into shape. Ban CNN's account for a week when they post a bullshit story, and this will be resolved pretty quickly, because it's treating the cause. What Youtube is proposing here is treating the symptoms.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sorry, but anyone who replaces something problematic with another thing that is a thousand times worse has no one to blame but themselves.
And really, going to any American cable news aside from C-SPAN as a primary source of information is idiotic. CNN gets knocked for being biased plenty, but real issue is that their coverage is incredibly light-weight and shallow.
Re: (Score:2)
Personal responsibility is an illusion. Yes, it's shitty behavior, but it's also reality. You can either try and blame people, or look at the problem amorally and figure out how to solve the damn problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's simple, yet flawed logic. CNN/MSNBC spread bullshit. Fox/InfoWars/etc. are not CNN/MSNBC. Therefore, Fox/InfoWars/etc. are not bullshit. Switch the names for the "liberal" news viewers. That neither group realizes the hypocrisy is kind of the point.
Re: (Score:2)
Youtube engages in FUD, propaganda, censorship (Score:2, Flamebait)
Title fixed. This is all about suppressing news that goes against the establishment narrative - if Youtube had been big in 2003 it would have been tagging videos questioning Saddam's WMD's and ties to Al Queda as conspiracy theories.
Speaking of CT, Youtube doesn't give a shit about batshit crazy theories as long as they're coming from CNN or MSDNC. Like how Putin was such a master chess player that he knew years in advance that a professional wrestling character could be president, but at the same time wa
Re: (Score:3)
I think that's a good post. This is just another step in a censorship drive of historic proportions. It's not very centralized though. Youtube for instance works with a Trusted Flagger Program. In principle these don't decide what to censor but Youtube says they advise very well so in practice just about anything these organisations don't like is removed. Youtube itself doesn't care. Fake news has got nothing to do with it.
Re: (Score:3)
Here is a short video from the ADL, Youtube's trusted flagger, describing their efforts to build a online hate index. [youtube.com] If censorship isn't centralized yet, it soon will be.
The slide at :27 was extra interesting. And of course, comments on all their recent videos are disabled.
Re: (Score:2)
I doubt centralization is key here. AI can drive automation and in that way it increases the scope, the share of the web they control. But just take the trusted flagger program, last I read there were about 100 organizations. There will be more but each will take care of its own interests, even if they outsource the operations to the same server farms.
'hate' is simply a pejorative word for 'anyone who objects to what you're doing', and together with 'subversion' or 'incitement' it can be applied to any form
Re: (Score:2)
That's a good start (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Controlling the media (Score:2)
The IT giants are lining themselves up to control what we're supposed to believe. They want to be our corporatised "Ministry of Information" that puts us back on the straight and narrow path of groupthink. All news is fake, by definition. It's all biased, skewed, and has hidden or overt agendas, e.g. the UK's Daily Mail and Fox News. Google et al. want to be the gatekeepers who decide. Just imagine how powerful that'd make them.
And remember that Google took money from BP during the Gulf of Mexico disaster
Re: (Score:2)
> Admin conduct hasn't changed since, Wikipedia's a joke.
Wow, Wiki bashing. How 2010.
Re: (Score:2)
Please. Judge Dredd had the law to answer to. Admins at wikipedia have only the lynch mob of their peers.
Jimbo pretty much nailed it many years back, when he was asked about it. Paraphrasing from memory, "wikipedia isn't about facts, it's about popular opinions".
Supposed to cite sources in Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
Aside from that, Wikipedia authors are supposed to cite reliable sources in the articles. Why? Because Wikipedia itself isn't a reliable source, it's only roughly as reliable as the sources it cites (or doesn't).
That said, on most topics it ends up being pretty good.
Re: (Score:2)
Because Wikipedia itself isn't a reliable source,
That said, on most topics it ends up being pretty good.
THIS -- it's a good Cliff notes intro to most anything, but NOT an true authoritative source like most people seem (want?) to believe. I wish they would learn the difference.
"But old, slow, hard-to-access paper is so inconvenient -- and the words just sit there and don't dance around the page with audio or anything? Where's the entertainment in my scholarly article? What, you expect me to think or something?"
Don't confuse notability with reliability (Score:2)
Here are the Wikipedia guidelines for reliable sources:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
It's very clear that being published does NOT make it reliable. Publication is generally a prerequisite to citing a source simply because others need to be able to refer to the source and see it for themselves. For example, I once heard Mikhail Gorbachev say something interesting, in person. I can't cite that as a source because you can't tell if he actually said what I claim. I could have heard him wrong, or I could com
Trust (Score:2)
Wikipedia. As a trusted source.
Absolutely. Nobody is claiming that it is a primary source or should be trusted blindly but it's demonstrably a reliable source for quite a huge amount of information. Honestly I trust it more than I do quite a number of so-called "news" sources. No source should be trusted independently of verification.
That's hysterical, really. Wikipedia's lies-by-omission and scandals surrounding admins controlling and twisting content are legendary.
And that is different from any other source of news and information how exactly? Plus you clearly are overstating the scope of the problem substantially. ("Legendary"?) Most Wikipedia articles are fine
Re: (Score:2)
"Liberal view points" are the exact same thing actually.
And then there is the non-extremist overwhelming majority that don't do that shit on either side that actually get views unlike most of the extremist content that is watched by almost no one, but that would get in the way of your narrative, so let's not talk about them.
Re: (Score:2)
Those are not much of a problem for the "lefties".
It's the actually liberal ones such as pointing that social justice is not seeking actual equality and that you should not censor any sort of speech that are.
But that said, youtube is doing the right thing here, actually bringing in the discussion to the table, but i think it would be better if the "authorities" were picked by the users rather than the site itself.
Re: (Score:2)
By getting between content views and the people who make and upload new content.
Re: (Score:2)
Because if they don't, mad people with pitchforks will make business very difficult for them. Or so they believe.
Re: (Score:2)
I cannot help but notice that since the US President was elected with zero endorsements from "papers of record" or "mainstream media outlets"
TIL the most popular TV news station (Fox) isn't mainstream.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, you fail. Post the fucking evidence.