YouTube Unveils a Stricter Harassment Policy (cnn.com) 152
After months of promising to reexamine how it handles harassment on its platform, YouTube has unveiled an update to its policy. From a report: On Wednesday, the Google-owned video platform said it would take a "stronger stance" against threats and personal attacks, among other changes intended to address the safety of its community. YouTube said it would now prohibit "veiled" or "implied" threats, not just explicit ones. This new policy includes content that simulates violence against a person or language indicating physical violence could occur. YouTube also said it will no longer permit "maliciously" insulting someone based on characteristics like race, gender expression or sexual orientation, whether it's a private individual, YouTube personality or public figure. The policy applies to content, as well as comments. The move comes six months after YouTube faced one of its most high-profile controversies over harassment in recent memory.
Welcome to nanny-tube (Score:3, Interesting)
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"we as a society"
LOL.
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Stawp it. Your disrupting my corporate sanitized society! That's hatespeech.
I can't handle it. Stawp it. I'm telling on you! You should be banned cuz you're not corporate friendly. Your message is not approved for my society!
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How about you stop demanding a free soapbox from everyone you meet? YouTube is a private business and entitled to make money, and if that means banning content that loses them money that's their right.
If you want to argue for full state ownership of YouTube or for destroying their business by forcing them to host all content then just say so. Be honest about what you are demanding here.
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"How about your personal capacity to live and let live, to think twice and speak once, to live life with love? We're all in it together, it takes a village, etc"
Maybe some people don't believe in that drivel. The idea of "live and let live" for example is idiotic. If you are doing something wrong, I don't want you to "live".
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Re:Welcome to nanny-tube (Score:4, Insightful)
Free speech includes hurtful speech, therefore it has no place in our civilization. Amen!
Somewhere there's a totalitarian dictator wannabe looking for a useful idiot. You two should get a room.
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Yeah, it's like we as a society have decided that psychological predators and molesters have no place in our civilization. Amen! May they get the mental wellness care they so clearly need as the wrongful outlets for their disorderly hatreds close the doors and withdraw the welcome mats. Let them be shunned into submission.
Isn't one highly-censored & controlled Chinese internet and social credit system in the world enough?
Strat
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They better not! (Score:2)
They better not do anything to my account if they know what is good for them!
'bout time (Score:3)
I was getting tired of ignoring comments that might have offended my delicate sensibilities. This is a good thing for everyone /s
Youtube going further downhill (Score:5, Interesting)
Youtube was originally great specifically because it was an outlet for opinions, views, and comments that weren't "safe" enough for mainstream media. As they've become more and more entrenched in ad money it's been further and further restricted into basically just being the same thing that they were originally the alternative to.
The people now will have to go out and find yet another outlet to communicate all the ideas that the powers that be have concluded are "inappropriate".
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The people now will have to go out and find yet another outlet to communicate all the ideas that the powers that be have concluded are "inappropriate".
How about they learn to express themselves without trying to intimidate others out of sharing their opinions?
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Shutting them up and banning them doesn't make them learn anything.
Nor does letting them shit all over the comments sections. If someone tells them off they just call them a cuck or whatever and move on to the next video to shit all over that one, too.
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Can you give an example of an opinion you can't give without violating these rules?
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The summary doesn't say anything about political ideology, but I wonder if it gets applied anyhow. In which case all of those people talking about how it's their duty to punch Nazis would be in
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> In which case all of those people talking about how it's their duty to punch Nazis would be in for a rude awakening when they get pimp smacked by the censorious hand of YouTube.
It wouldn't be the first time some kind of censorship backfired with unintended consequences. Tik Tok [slate.com] started banning videos by fat, disabled, or LGBT because it was easier and more cost effective than dealing with the "hatespeech" those videos received. Go figure the more cost effective corporate path to address "hatespeech" is
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None of those are threats or personal attacks and so not covered by this rule. And in fact there are plenty of people saying those things on YouTube, e.g.
https://youtu.be/XcA9aoqnVvs [youtu.be]
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I think that's great. I'm much more comfortable spending my advertising budget on Youtube, now. I don't advertise with companies that are platforms for assholes.
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>live like civilized human beings.
Yea. Censorship is how you get "civilized humans".
Humans are too stupid and evil to speak freely. They need an authority figure, like you, that is smart, charismatic, intelligent, and corporate to make decisions for them. Humans need a curated message to make the correct decisions that the authority figure decides is best.
Without censorship you'll have unsavory things like minorities wanting civil rights or an end to slavery. Disgusting. Could you imagine homosexuals get
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Actually ... yes. Self-censorship and toleration of others (to a point) -- as well as policing others beyond that point -- is at the core of civilization. [youtube.com]
Self-censorship is a tool of civilized tyranny. *smug laughter* Why step on every neck when you need only break one in a circus for the plebeians? You of course are not a plebeian.
>It's how members of a city are supposed to act -- as opposed to rural folk where it's easy to avoid people who are unpleasant to be around.
Those rural folks just don't unders
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You must be the life of all those parties you never get invited to because no one can stand your miserable ass. :)
So no more music videos and movie trailers? (Score:2)
(unless they pay to be hosted)
Bias (Score:5, Insightful)
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Like where? (Score:2)
YouTube has a de-facto monopoly, don't delude yourself there.
That is why they can act like that in the first place.
Otherwise everyone would to that magical other place where you can talk like a human being and are expected to handle being talked to like a sane person.
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We run a nice establishment here! (Score:3, Interesting)
Really? They want to elevate the atmosphere of YouTube? ROFLMAO is the only thing to say.
The root of the problem is that YouTube is a criminal enterprise. So many citations that I can't pick one, but I think the most recent I encountered may have been in Think Fast & Break Things . Taplin came back to YouTube's abuse of copyright a number of times, especially for music. YouTube and the EVIL google are loving that safe harbor clause of the broken copyright system.
Can't recall if he addressed the obvious solution, but I'll repeat it: Popular content needs to be whitelisted. If YouTube actually wanted to stop the piracy and abuse of copyright, then they would stop feeding the pirates. The copyright-abusing searches are obvious precisely because the targets are famous. If your search is for famous content, then you are going to use the famous name, and that search should only return the authorized links approved by the owner of the copyright. (Separate sadness that the owner of the copyright is so rarely the creator these days. And yes, there are fair use exceptions, but they need to be whitelisted, too.)
Of course YouTube will never do anything along such lines. It would reduce the traffic, and the entire fake value of YouTube is based on the volume of the traffic. That actually includes the quantity of comments, too, no matter how much they stink. Quantity uber alles.
Oh yeah. About deodorizing the YouTube comments. Cesspool. 'Nuff said.
P.S. Deep thought of the weird day. We don't need any new content. If you were born yesterday you could spend the rest of your life consuming the content that already exists. We could benefit from better content, but we sure don't need no more.
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A poignant post, but why’d you have to end it with a death sentence for humanity. Why even bother trying to save the planet let alone getting out of bed when there’s nothing new beneath the sun and never will be.
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I'm not advocating for the horror scenario. I'm apparently using a different sense of "need" than you are thinking about.
I wonder if it would help to put it in more scientific terms? Some people think that the time of Thomas Jefferson was the last period when a single human being could learn all of the important science. In the case of math, I just read a lamentation from a serious mathematician than we are far beyond the point where any mathematician can learn all of what's going on. The same thing applies
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s/once sense/one sense/
Hate typos.
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Uh, YouTube is regularly accused of overzealous copyright enforcement.
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Sometimes crimes doesn't pay.
At least not directly. My theory is that the google is willing to prop YouTube up for the sake of preventing a viable economic model from capturing the market for low-cost streaming video. It would be nice if the viable model was less criminal, but that's not the google's concern. The actual business plan is to convert YouTube to the viable model (whatever it is) and "win" by "inheriting" the first-mover advantage.
Meanwhile, the google has plenty of cash to play with and they ju
Ah, so THEY'LL get to decide? (Score:4, Interesting)
Basically, they've been trying to formulate a policy that would support their idea of demonetizing and demonizing anyone they don't politically agree with, without somehow coming off as well-intentioned fascists.
Well, well-intentioned totalitarianism is still despotism, isn't it? I'm sure all who agree with them will FLOCK to their banner and cheer that now YouTube is a delightful "safe space" where they are all freely allowed to agree with each other vehemently.
Of course if you DON'T happen to agree with some of their credo: ....I guess you can just fuck off?
- that Trump is the worst human ever, if he's even human
- that global warming is the worst thing ever
- that cops suck and are more or less only the jackbooted enforcers for the patriarchy
- that America sucks, always has
- etc
"The policy applies to content, as well as comments."
Will it also apply to the people that respond if I, say, put up a video about how global warming is bullshit? Will they also prevent people being mean to me there?
Re:Ah, so THEY'LL get to decide? (Score:4, Insightful)
Will it also apply to the people that respond if I, say, put up a video about how global warming is bullshit? Will they also prevent people being mean to me there?
This isn't about "being mean". People will still be free to tell you that you're an idiot when you say stupid shit. They won't be free to threaten you, or make racist insults, or attack your sexuality or identity.
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There you go. You could have just said I was wrong but you didn't - you went for "idiot" which is a gratuitous insult meant to hurt feelings.
Per their standards, that would be maliciously insulting someone.
No, dumbass. I chose to go for "idiot" because you were being a typical slashdot dumbshit and not only playing denialist (or probably not playing) but also not RTFAing. For example:
So like I said in my reply to your comment, people will be free to be accurate in their replies, and call
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Feelings hurt.
Comments needlessly malicious.
Clearly you hate trans people and minorities.
Someone please ban him/her/it?
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The problem with this conspiracy theory is that it's easy disproven by simply looking at YouTube. For example, many progressive and left leaning channels are demonetized as well. Some More News, Three Arrows, Contrapoints, Philosophy Tube, The Young Turks, the list goes on.
You can also find many far right channels which are not demonetized. Some Prager U (fake university run by billionaires) videos are monetized, for example. People like Carl Benjamin, aka Sargon, are monetized.
Conspiracy theories work best
I'm offended (Score:3)
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That would require a level of introspection and self awareness these people are incapable of.
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Nah they will build a censorship wall around themselves and stay safe in their own little Youtube world. In the meantime the rest of us will have moved on to other sites where we can carry on normal conversations.
From TFA: YouTube also said it will no longer permit "maliciously" insulting someone based on characteristics like race, gender expression or sexual orientation, whether it's a private individual, YouTube personality or public figure.
If your normal conversations involve barking racial, homophobic a
Calm down everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
There's nothing to worry about. They're not going to take away your right to insult, demonize, and harrass someone for being white or male. That will always be an exception to whatever rules they put in place.
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new policy? (Score:3)
"YouTube said it would now prohibit "veiled" or "implied" threats" ... "content that simulates violence against a person or language indicating physical violence could occur. YouTube also said it will no longer permit "maliciously" insulting someone based on characteristics like race, gender expression or sexual orientation, whether it's a private individual, YouTube personality or public figure. "
So they are getting rid of the comment section then?
Define "malicious" (Score:5, Interesting)
YouTube also said it will no longer permit "maliciously" insulting someone
Soo...
"TRUMP is a hateful racist who needs to die" - well that's not malicious, they're just making a political statement
"Elizabeth Warren lied and said she was an indian to get benefits" - Well that's a racist attack on indians and women and needs to be stricken.
Do we recall that no less than 10 years ago the Cartoon Network BANNED Speedy Gonzales because he was a racist stereotype? The same Speedy Gonazles that continues to proudly air on Mexican airwaves?
This is retarded /s (Score:2)
I'm all for a civil discourse but NOT at the expense of freedom of expression / opinion where censorship is some half-assed "solution."
This can and WILL be used to shut down conversations because somebody is butt hurt and offended over another person's opinion. From what I hear FecesBook is already banning people when they simply state history about the Nazis!?
Since this applies not only to comments but content as well what does this mean for jokes about other people? Are they censored now?
This is an extre
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>
When did America turn into a bunch of wussies when you are no longer allowed to express your opinion on something, regardless of how unpopular it may be?
Right about 2008 by my reckoning.
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When did America turn into a bunch of wussies when you are no longer allowed to express your opinion on something, regardless of how unpopular it may be?/
Right about 2008 by my reckoning.
That's when it reached critical mass.
The seeds were planted in colleges back in the 30's, 40's, 50's and especially 60's and 70's.
This cancer, this mollycoddling has to be purged from our society.
Youtube alternatives? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm going to bypass the free-speech debate here, and just start my own Ask Slashdot:
What are the best alternatives to Youtube, and why do you like them?
Possible factors to consider include: better handling of controversial speech (for various values of "better"); better handling of DMCA complaints; better monetization options for small producers; better content for audiences.
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BitChute because reasons.
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Brighteon.
Fuckin iSnowflake generation! (Score:3)
You know what happens, when somebod does those things to me?
NOTHING!
Why would it? It is some meanigless moron yelling. ... Then what?
How are these people even going through daily life? Will we soon see them rolling around in Dalek safe space suits, exterminating everyone who might suggest they are not perfect snowflakes?
They need a mental hospital! For anxiety distorder and a debilitating lack of self-confidence!
I'm serious. This is a health crisis, it's just that nobody sees it as one.
Re:probably long overdue (Score:5, Insightful)
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Anonymous threats online have real world consequences. Threats of violence are not protected speech, nor should they be.
Tell you what. You buy me a bullhorn and let me stand on your couch shouting my "free speech" at 3 in the morning, then tell me how you support forcing private individuals to pay to broadcast other's speech.
I mean, you claim to support free speech, but that includes the right not to say things you don't want to. How is the government, forcing the owners of Youtube to broadcast things they
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Threats of violence are not protected speech, nor should they be.
The Supreme Court disagrees with you. It takes quite a lot for threats of violence to cross the line from free speech into crime. Recently there was a /. article about the court case involving Elon Musk [slashdot.org] insulting some other person that got a fair bit of discussion. However, there was another one on the same day that was far more important: Man Who Offered $500 for Killing an ICE Agent Is Acquitted [nytimes.com].
I agree with much of the rest of your post. No private person or company should be forced to carry speech th
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This is hilarious, but you're actually the one not using the term "free speech" correctly.
Free speech has NOTHING to do with saying what you want when you want. It simply means the government doesn't have the right to incarcerate you when you do say whatever it is you're going to say.
Incorrect. You're referring to the First Amendment. That is what says that the government can't censor your opinion. Free speech as a concept is much broader. For example, I think people should be able to say what they want, even if it's evil or heinous. That's supporting free speech. You do not support free speech, but then, you don't really even understand what free speech is.
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People who use 'free speech' as you do seem to imply that it's wrong for said speech to have any real-world repercussions.
If someone's free to say all muslims are evil, I'm free to complain to their advertisers and get them defunded. But oh no, that's attacking free speech.
If I use a free, non-governmentally-controlled website, and call a moderator a whole lot of shit, I'll get banned. But oh no, that's attacking free speech.
"Oh no," the miserable bastards complain, "there're fewer and fewer places that'l
Re:probably long overdue (Score:5, Informative)
Do you understand why racist violence is on the rise right now?
[citation needed] The number one killer of black Americans is still other black Americans.
Re:probably long overdue (Score:5, Funny)
"political fraud"
LOL.
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> Freedom of speech does not equate a right to perpetuate political fraud
You what? Both sides claim the other "perpetuates political fraud". The entire essence of politics is persuading enough people that your interpretation is correct while the other lies. Freedom of speech is primarily first to protect political speech.
> it does not exonerate deception and manipulation and gaslighting, it does not excuse credible threats, it does not allow for the incitement of others to violence and hatred, and it
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Not even those who claim to prefer "truth over facts"?
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Pish. Not many people care about facts anymore which contradict their reality. Reality is what they make it, and sheer force of will is all that is required to change what is factual.
Re:probably long overdue (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually...it does.
Right, Right and wrong.
There is no rules against speech for/against hatred, you are free to hate as much as you wish, but you cannot incite violence or threaten.
That is actionable, but how you feel or want to convince others to feel, is perfectly within free speech.
Re:probably long overdue (Score:5, Insightful)
But, that is not what the GP said.
I can speak towards "political fraud" all day long, I can shout to the top of my lungs and publish my thoughts and try to convince you that the Republicans all are secretly planning to annex the state of California as the west coast version of DC and remove statehood...and are pro mandated homosexual marriage or anything out of the blue you'd like. I could run campaigns that the Democrats are subversively trying to make lesbianism illegal again, and that I have proof....etc.
Those would be false, and a 'fraud', but it isn't bilking you of money or property in any sort of fashion. I can say that or try to convince you or anyone else of any hoax I wish, fraud is cheating you out of property or the like. I can tell lies all day long. Perfectly legal.
Libel is different than what the GP was saying too, he never mentioned it, nor did he mention slander.
Free speech as I described it, is not the same as committing fraud, nor libel nor slander. Those are acts that harm people, but talking about things and policies or whatever, are not. I can say I hate person X...you should hate them too....that's not illegal.
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What ever happened to "Sticks and Stones...."
Geez, when did the whole US suddenly lose any semblance to thick skin and worry about every little comment stranger makes about them?
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What ever happened to "Sticks and Stones...."
Nothing ever happened to it because it was never a thing. If speech is unimportant and inconsequential then why does it matter if it's banned?
Re:probably long overdue (Score:5, Insightful)
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What do you think we get when everyone's a bully? Hint: bang bang
Re:probably long overdue (Score:5, Insightful)
What happened is we grew up as a civilization. We recognized that abuse is abuse and has real impacts on the victims. It's been studied endlessly, and now there's a scientific basis for saying that verbal abuse is literally physically harmful.
I will offer a counter: It *is* possible to convince yourself that words hurt only if you let them
Once I realized that -- and it took me almost 3 fucking decades on this rock -- I've been a *LOT* happier.
If I can do it, so can anyone. 20 years ago I was pretty much a poster child for what you're talking about. And then I grew a pair.
Do the same. Words hurt only if you let them.
As a result, now I have very little tolerance to those who claim injury from words.
Re:probably long overdue (Score:5, Insightful)
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No mods, but vote up!
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Letting the scumbags speak out helps by identifying them as scumbags and the community can treat them the way they deserve....
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Welcome to real life, where
...scumbags will say anything to justify their scumbaggery.
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Like put them in the White House?
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Letting the scumbags speak out helps them band together and form a larger scumbaggery society. Those societies enable and support them and allow their messages to thrive instead of die. Instead of living in isolation, embarrassed to be a douchebag in public, they are emboldened and strengthened by their "free speech." Giving them that scumbag society has them no longer worrying about what non-assholes think. By more easily finding like-minded people, they have become stronger for it, like a cult group that
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Hiding it under the rug is better than free reign to spread. If the past five years have taught me anything, it's taught me the truth of that.
Like an actual plant, those ideologies wither and stagnate when swept under the rug, they grow and thrive when out in the sunlight.
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Yeah, cracking down on Christianity worked wonderfully for the Romans.
Hey, Christianity might have fallen as just one of the many messiah-figure religions of the time that rose and fell, if Constantine hadn't converted. YMMV as to whether Byzantium was actually the Roman Empire after the fall of Rome or not.
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https://boundingintocomics.com/2019/05/01/alphabet-inc-blames-youtube-for-70-billion-market-cap-loss/
Yes, that is exactly what is happening. We ARE "fucking off". But I don't see you digging deeper in your pocket to keep Youtube afloat.