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Google Youtube Censorship

YouTube's Crackdown on Violent Extremism Mistakenly Whacks Channels Fighting Violent Extremism (boingboing.net) 313

AmiMoJo shares an article by Cory Doctorow: Wednesday, Youtube announced that it would shut down, demonetize and otherwise punish channels that promoted violent extremism, "supremacy" and other forms of hateful expression; predictably enough, this crackdown has caught some of the world's leading human rights campaigners, who publish Youtube channels full of examples of human rights abuses in order to document them and prompt the public and governments to take action....

Some timely reading: Caught in the Net: The Impact of "Extremist" Speech Regulations on Human Rights Content, a report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Jillian C York: "The examples highlighted in this document show that casting a wide net into the Internet with faulty automated moderation technology not only captures content deemed extremist, but also inadvertently captures useful content like human rights documentation, thus shrinking the democratic sphere. No proponent of automated content moderation has provided a satisfactory solution to this problem."

A British history teacher living in Romania complained Wednesday that his YouTube channel had been banned completely from YouTube, possibly over its documenting of propaganda speeches from World War II. He tweeted that he was frustrated that "15 years of materials for #HistoryTeacher community have ended so abruptly."

Later that same day, his account was restored -- but he's still concerned about other YouTube accounts. "It's absolutely vital that @YouTube work to undo the damage caused by their indiscriminate implementation as soon as possible," he tweeted Wednesday. "Access to important material is being denied wholesale as many other channels are left branded as promoting hate when they do nothing of the sort."
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YouTube's Crackdown on Violent Extremism Mistakenly Whacks Channels Fighting Violent Extremism

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday June 08, 2019 @10:48AM (#58730748)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Saturday June 08, 2019 @11:18AM (#58730854)

      You're trying like hell to exclude anyone you don't like, but you have to pretend that you're following your own published rules.

      We'd hope so anyway. From YT's last statement:

      Even if a creator’s content doesn’t violate our community guidelines, we will take a look at the broader context and impact, and if their behavior is egregious and harms the broader community, we may take action. In the case of Crowder’s channel, a thorough review over the weekend found that individually, the flagged videos did not violate our Community Guidelines. However, in the subsequent days, we saw the widespread harm to the YouTube community resulting from the ongoing pattern of egregious behavior, took a deeper look, and made the decision to suspend monetization.

      These are the same clumsy noises YT made a couple years ago:

      https://www.blog.google/around... [www.blog.google]

      Third, we will be taking a tougher stance on videos that do not clearly violate our policies — for example, videos that contain inflammatory religious or supremacist content.

      This is contradictory language that says "We have no policy to censor this video, but we're doing it anyway." Bullshit. You DO have a biased censorship policy (and the goons to enforce it); you just know how badly that reflects on you, so you won't admit it.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        It's too early to say if YouTube's actions have had the desired effect.

        Previously demonetizing and deplatforming has in fact worked. If it didn't work no-one would care about it, obviously. So assuming that their goal is to stop the harassment going on, there is a fair chance that is action may have the desired effect.

        • by epyT-R ( 613989 ) on Saturday June 08, 2019 @03:31PM (#58732036)

          'harassment', 'harmful', 'public interest' etc are just buzzwords to label positions google does not agree with. Totalitarians love using this language because such ideologues can't stand it when others have the power to fling shit back at them.

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Actually "harassment" has a specific legal definition.

            In any case, what does this have to do with totalitarians? It's YouTube, a private for-profit company that is desperate to keep advertisers happy because they are how it makes most of its money.

      • on stuff like this [youtube.com]. It's gotten common enough that even Family Guy's [youtube.com] making fun of it.
        • by epyT-R ( 613989 )

          Oh I see. So right wing conspiracies are verboten, but we should buy into 'dog whistling' and other left wing conspiracies?

          Why not just let all the content be and let people make their own decisions? That's the truly liberal perspective.

    • I don't mind YouTube's censorship efforts as long as its failures don't include content that supports my world view.

  • Intentional (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Kunedog ( 1033226 ) on Saturday June 08, 2019 @10:57AM (#58730796)
    Crowder and others like him oppose violent extremism. Youtube intentionally censored him, and intentionally leaves much leftist violent extremism untouched. Spinning the adpocalypse the way this article does is transparent and pathetic.
    • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday June 08, 2019 @12:12PM (#58731046)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • of violent extremism from the left? So far all I've seen is people calling for a Milkshaking here and there. Yeah, that's assault (and a terrible idea if you're a lefty, you're liable to get shot) but not what I'd call violent extremism.

      I guess there's this [youtube.com]. But you do realize that when the left say "It's going to be brutal and violent" they don't mean "We're going to be brutal and violent" they mean that the establishment is going to send goons against them. I know a bunch of lefties who gave up after
      • by ChatHuant ( 801522 ) on Saturday June 08, 2019 @03:08PM (#58731916)

        So far all I've seen is people calling for a Milkshaking here and there.

        Is your memory really so bad? Here's [wikipedia.org] a case just a couple of years ago. Also, look up Shining Path, the Sandinista movement, FARC, or, in the United States, the Weather Underground or the Symbionese Liberation Army; also any number of left wing terrorist organizations active in Europe.

        It's a fact that left wing extremism has decreased in the last couple of decades - most of the organizations above were active before the nineteen-nineties. I however believe you're misinterpreting the reasons why this happens. You're assigning it to the theory that left wing extremism doesn't exist, or is very mild. I think you're wrong, and the decrease happened because of the fall of Communism. This cut the support of left-wing groups, both financially and ideologically - because a lot of information about the realities of life in former communist countries became available, and popular support dropped.

        The effect of 1989 is however fading, as new generations, who never had to live in such a divided world, forget or simply ignore the lessons of the past. The resurgence of sympathy for Communism in the West is one of the symptoms. Of course, countries like Russia use this as a good opportunity to divide, propagandize and generally lead a low level war against the West. So don't be surprised if left-wing extremism returns as well.

        • and the communists. I'm also aware they're the furthest thing from mainstream left. Yeah, we've got the occasional nut jobber. But you'll notice you're citing movements that began in the 70s and had petered out by the 90s.

          Congrats, you found one mildly left wing guy (he was in the Bernie campaign in 2016) that flew off the handle. One. Who was "described by a fellow campaigner in Iowa as a "quiet guy, very mellow, very reserved." In other words he wasn't very active.

          Still, I'll give you that, you di
  • Youtube had problems with this in the past [forbes.com] and Twitter came out and admitted they can't ban racism because it would bleed over [slashdot.org] to Republican politicians. Meanwhile the left wing black power [youtube.com] folks that are really just part of Black Lives Matter / anti-police violence crowds keep getting smacked down. That last one gets his channels banned about every 2 years like clockwork around the time he reaches 25,000 subs...

    At the end of the day this is about one thing, making advertisers happy. Like that last lin
    • YouTube would like it very much if ya'll would stop talking about them political things and just stick to video games (the non-violent ones) and movies.

      I thought reviewing non-violent video games and movies was just as dangerous on the whole. In this part of YouTube, owners of copyright in the reviewed works have a habit of claiming copyright over the reviews, and review uploaders tend to lack the finances for a vigorous fair use defense in court.

    • Meanwhile the left wing black power [youtube.com]

      Trancript please.

    • And that's basically the problem. Porn, extremism, 'wrong think', whatever - is subjective and code is not.
      • on Youtube [youtube.com]. The TL;DW is that ideally it gets banned when it becomes hate speech, and it becomes hate speech when you start to advocate for hurting people. And that includes the classic "Won't someone rid me of this meddlesome priest" style dog whistles

        Note that I said "hurting people", not just violence. If you're a segregationist then yeah, you get banned. We figured out decades ago that separate but equal isn't.
        • by epyT-R ( 613989 )

          We figured out decades ago that separate but equal isn't.

          Too bad they haven't learned that equal outcome and 'identity' are the same thing dressed up in clothes of piety and selflessness. Unfortunately, I suspect we will have to the hard way before the century's out.

          Maybe those who feel so threatened by someone's dumbass shit on the internet should stay off it or at least away from such outlets. There's no reason we should dumb discourse down to the level of the dumbest, slowest, most timid soccer mom.

  • by walterbyrd ( 182728 ) on Saturday June 08, 2019 @11:11AM (#58730836)

    Social Media is opposed to any political opinions except Islam, or leftist.

    Leftists and Islamists are entirely free to be racist, to incite violence, and to be as extreme as they want to be.

    The following is a list of some conservatives that have been banned, demonetised, deplatformed, or in some way censored. None of them incite violence.

    James Woods
    Pat Condell
    Steven Crowder
    Paul Joeseph Watson
    Mark Dice
    Laura Loomer
    PragerU
    Milo Yiannopoulous
    Gavin McIanns
    Roger Stone
    Julian Assange
    Diamond & Silk
    Tommy Robbinison
    Alex Jones

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I and several other Leftist SJWs like Kevin Logan have been demonetized on YouTube too.

      It's not just the right, YouTube went nuts.

  • Whitewashing (Score:2, Informative)

    by Dan East ( 318230 )

    And here we go. When you whitewash our reality, our history, our facts and the state of the real world, you ignore the crimes and atrocities that humanity has endured. We required the knowledge of these facts to prevent or avoid reliving the bad parts of our history again.

    There's another, deeper, issue here as well. Human nature. The reason these things happen is because of aspects of human nature itself, and how we form societies, etc. Survival instinct is a part of this as well. Instead of trying to si

  • by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Saturday June 08, 2019 @11:48AM (#58730950) Journal

    Mass-movement destructive ideologies are attractive and plausible-seeming. They convince people that certain goals and acts are virtuous, and lead them into behaviors that cause great, and escalating, harm. They SEEM good. But as they are followed to their logical conclusion, they prove to be disastrous.

    To avoid them, you must understand them, in their early, "demo version" "bright idea", stages, in their late "run into the ground" stages, and how they get from the former to the latter. Then, when you see the attractive early stage, you can recognize it as the first step down the slippery slope. You can avoid it, and lead others away from it.

    Suppressing talk about the ideas suppresses this recognition. Then the ideas can resurface, with just enough name-changing to make them non-obvious, and another generation get sucked into the same disastrous path as a previous one.

    So the thing to do is not suppress the ideas, but expose them, and give wide coverage to them.

    Yes, a few people will take them up and try to follow them. They'll even do some harm. But instead of a mass movement that takes over governments and start pogroms and wars you get a little clutch of people in funny outfits holding a parade, to the amusement and/or annoyance of jeering throngs. But their antics act as a vaccine, while any of their number that actually harm others can be treated as criminals.

    The moves to censor social media are the exact opposite of what is needed. The members of every new generation are born ignorant. Hide the "bad" ideas from them and you've just set them up for Santayana's classic observation: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

    • by Livius ( 318358 )

      It also forces people who disagree with something to formulate actual counter-arguments and that gives them insight into what they do believe. That can help them have better beliefs that promote their values.

      If you believe something because a 3000-year old religion says you should believe it, that's your right, but if you reflect on why a rule made sense 3000 years ago, you might (or might not) discover that there could be some reasonable modification in order for it to work better in modern society. Simi

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      While I agree it is important to understand and speak against these populist ideas, I think there are two important points being missed here.

      1. YouTube cares about advertising revenue, not benefiting society.

      2. Banning does actually work too. Look at poor Milo, 2 million dollars in debt and unable to find a platform for his "work", completely marginalized and largely hidden from sight. It may be distasteful but from a social media platform's point of view they could either spend a lot of time and effort try

  • rewritten to drive behaviors the writers and censors want to push (and monetize)

    I'd expect a channel named Sax and Violins to be censored as well, I mean close enough. /s

  • After all, its such a simple problem to identify hate speech, as separate from legitimate political discussion, satire, and quotes of opponents hate speech - NOT.

    Turn over the rocks and let people see what is wriggling underneath. I can't thing of anything more negative to say about Nazis that the things that they say about themselves.

  • Let's face it, people: so-called 'social media' was always an experiment in sociology, and it is a massive failure. Yes, YouTube has also become part of 'social media' and has been for quite some time now, and it's also a disaster.

    Those of you old enough to remember the dialup BBS days: remember how even those early experiments into social media (and that's what they were, in hindsight), microcosms that they were, were still prone to the same pitfalls that todays' Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are facin
  • I always liken censorship to sweeping dirt under the rug. You don't actually make the problem disappear, you're just hiding it from view. Same with censoring "offensive" videos on YouTube. You're not making the problem go away, you're just hiding it from view.

    To make the problem go away, you have to change society itself. Which is hard and requires things like good education and teaching people how to think critically so they can spot and disregard BS on their own. Only those wanting a quick and dir
  • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Saturday June 08, 2019 @01:08PM (#58731330)

    If you are really going to remove nazis from YouTube that means all of them, for all time.

    Or after ten years will you allow content you are blocking today, because it is historical? 20? Where is the line?

    Better to just let people publish whatever, attack each other in comments from a comfy home, so that nothing ever happens anywhere. An internet flamewar is a far more cheerful affair than the real thing.

  • Totalitarians are very adept at subverting language to aid their cause. Look at what was done in the title article "Crackdown on Violent extremism." In reality, it has little to do with that, or anti-fa and other hate groups who use violence would have zero presence. Yet, they are largely unscathed.

    What this really is about is political purging. Plain and simple. The powers that be are unhappy that their gate keeper media was bypassed and information that they wanted to stay hidden got out. It is no acci
  • Vox (@Vox)

    Carlos Maza (@gaywonk)

    YouTube for not having a spine and cowtowing, even in a half-assed manner to virulent activists masquerading as journalists.

  • Well like they say, if you want to get rid of all the cancer you have to cut out some of the good tissue. Throw out the baby with the bath water and kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
  • In the current regime where the social media giants are constantly removing , demonetizing, hiding, banning content for whatever reason, it has become easy to target anyone and whenever there is any public outcry you can always say it's a glitch.

A committee takes root and grows, it flowers, wilts and dies, scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom. -- Parkinson

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