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YouTube Reinforces Guidelines on Fighting Misleading Election Content (reuters.com) 125

YouTube on Monday reinforced its guidelines on tackling fake or misleading election-related content on its platform as the United States gears up for the presidential election later this year. From a report: YouTube will remove any content that has been "technically doctored" or manipulated or misleads the user about the voting process or makes false claims about a candidate, it said in a blog.
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YouTube Reinforces Guidelines on Fighting Misleading Election Content

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  • by Anonymous Coward
    You have somehow cracked the /. frontpage code when msmash is editing and have been richly rewarded with credit for a story. I am stunned.
  • Really??? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 03, 2020 @03:58PM (#59686550)

    or makes false claims about a candidate, it said in a blog.

    Would that also include saying that "Hillary has a 97% chance of winning the election"? That was a horrifically false claim.

    Oh no, it is only a false claim if it doesn't match Youtube's views.

    • by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Monday February 03, 2020 @04:05PM (#59686580)

      It wasn't 100%.
      The polling during the 2016 elections weren't wrong. Their were enough places that had Clinton winning within the recorded margin of error. And She did get the popular vote (This was from nation wide polling). However the swing areas were polled and showed that Trump did have path to victory from the polling weeks ahead of the election.

      Going back to the polls of 2016 I wouldn't say there was a 97% of her winning, but a 54% chance of her winning. The margin of error was still within range, but with a lot of openings.

    • by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Monday February 03, 2020 @04:18PM (#59686620)

      To be fair, that specific claim was true. At least it was true within the margin of error.

      What happened was the polling was *clear*, HRC would win and the chances of that *not* happening was pretty slim. However, the polling companies where struggling with their MOE's, turnout models and sampling techniques. Nobody like Trump had ever run before, and while they where *trying* in good faith to account for the voting, they missed their predictions in a number of *very* close states. In short, the headline number from the polls showed that HRC would win, but the polls where skewed in her favor, slightly.

      Now I've heard folks ague that the polling organizations were partisan, they where skewing their results in an effort to skew the vote count toward HRC. Obviously, *some* do that kind of thing, but in this case, I think the majority of pollsters really tried to get it right and MOST of them actually got their numbers RIGHT (i.e. within their MOE). What happened was nearly all of them where skewed towards HRC by a few percent (with the MOE) and the margin of victory was *so* slim in some states because just about everybody used the same turnout projection models.

      So, they where not wrong, but Trump won, even if the polling headline numbers didn't reflect the final results. Few folks actually read past the headline numbers (reporters included) so the 97% number wasn't well informed, but it wasn't specifically wrong.

      • Re:Really??? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by ToTheStars ( 4807725 ) on Monday February 03, 2020 @05:03PM (#59686814)

        To be fair, that specific claim [of a 97% likelihood that HRC would be elected] was true. At least it was true within the margin of error.

        ...assuming that all polling error margins are independently distributed. FiveThirtyEight (correctly) understands that polling errors tend to correlate, so they assigned Hillary "only" a ~70% chance of winning [fivethirtyeight.com] (for which they got criticized by Democrats! [fivethirtyeight.com]). If you scroll down the page, you will find that that includes a ~10% chance of HRC winning the popular vote but losing the electoral college. However, the mainstream media (like much of humanity) has a poor understanding of probability. [fivethirtyeight.com]

        • One time (in 1990) playing AD&D2 I needed a 1 in 100 saving throw to not die, when my party was barely clinging to life. And I rolled it, and my character survived.

          A few years later, I was the millionth customer at a store. There was no prize, the clerk was just like, "OMG, you got receipt #1000000, you're so lucky, will you pick my lottery numbers?"

          You might be "lucky" too; less than one in a billion people are you. Or something like that.

      • by Xenographic ( 557057 ) on Monday February 03, 2020 @05:04PM (#59686816) Journal

        No, what happened was that a lot of polls were BS because they get "adjusted" from actual numbers to whatever they predict the turnout numbers will look like. So if you expect 60% Democrats and 40% Republicans for example, then you say that well, X% of Democrats say they'll vote for Trump/Hillary/whoever and Y% of Republicans and you do a bit of math and say you're correcting for biased samples. You can fudge all kinds of things, like your determination of how likely someone is to vote, etc. to give yourself plausible deniability. This is usually done to manipulate people via the 'bandwagon effect', though it was badly overplayed and ended up backfiring on them.

        538 to their credit made some very, very late adjustments when they realized the way things were going. Feel free to scroll back to the election stories and replay all the folks on Slashdot telling everyone that Trump had no chance to see the change in tune. It's funny to fast forward to now and see people trying to say that they were right the whole time after living through that. I should remember, take a look at who submitted the "Trump won" story (albeit, they copy/pasted my submission into a new one for some odd reason).

        This sort of nonsense happens every election and you have to be pretty dumb not to know the results are manipulated. For example, the Des Moines Register found a "problem" with one of their most recent polls because Bernie won that one, so they scrubbed that poll. They've been adding candidates (i.e. Bloomberg) to use the spoiler effect to split off votes from Bernie. I have to wonder how much longer the Democratic party will survive with a rigged primary system like that?

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          "the Des Moines Register found a "problem" with one of their most recent polls because Bernie won that one"

          The results weren't released, so your sole factual example that polls are rigged is either mistaken, or a deliberate lie.

          It was canceled because of evidence that Buttigieg's name was left out of a single phone call. They were trying to AVOID the possibility of minimizing support for a niche candidate.

          Polling is difficult under the best circumstances, and 2016 was weird. To accuse all major polling oper

          • Yeah, well we saw that coin toss too, so you can pretend they're not trying to screw Sanders again but it's wearing thin. Add that to the Shadow firms links to him and well...

            The fun thing is that I don't think the Dem establishment actually wants Pete to win, this is just a way to hobble Sanders and redirect any anger at the cheating found away from their real candidates. The establishment wants Biden (though God only knows why), but he's shown to be weak enough to be extra vulnerable, so there's an offh

        • from actual numbers to whatever they predict the turnout numbers will look like

          In others words: "from worse numbers to better numbers." Polling which doesn't incorporate important factors like voter turnout is just poor quality polling.

          Five Thirty Eight put Hillary at 70% to win. That was lower than other competing models, and since Hillary lost that could imply that Five Thirty Eight's model is better than those other models. That's a big maybe though. If one poll says 98% and another says 70%, and an event with a likelihood of 2% takes place and throws the election... Which model

        • How is Bloomberg a spoiler for Bernie? People who want to vote for the self-styled socialist candidate aren't going to vote for a corporatist billionaire. If anything Bloomberg helps Sanders because Bloomberg is going to take votes from Biden or candidates like Pete Buttigieg which makes Sanders a comparatively more competitive candidate.
      • How do you explain some saying 97% chance and 58pt to hillary, and others like LATimes giving it to Trump? They all polled the same samples in each college area, and ask for similar numbers. Itâ(TM)s their methods that were rigged. They created reasons to cut down scores they didnâ(TM)t like. Oh white peoples are richer and have better access to phone so boost the count to hillary by x% etc etc.
    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by Rockoon ( 1252108 )
      Youtube still promotes FOX/MSNBC/CNN content, so it clearly isnt "false claims" that they are removing.
      • Ironically, the calls for YouTube to crack down on wrongthink has pushed Fox as recommendation for any political channel.

        We can't have independent thought that is not approved by corporate overlords now can we.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • the FBI director would effectively state: "Well we think she's probably a criminal" about a week before the election.

      That was pretty much the only reason she lost. ... and then he would effectively say "Just kidding... all's good!" after the opinion-changing and voting damage had been done.

      That was a crystal clearly stolen election.
      • Yea, Comey wanted to be in the good graces of Clinton by ensuring that she didn't start her presidency in scandal. It was assumed she would win by such a large margin that the damage done would not change the election. This is from Comey.

        • Comey was in it for Comey. Where I fully believe he expected Clinton to win so he rushed the whole "Carlos Danger" E-Mail thing, both getting into the mess and then getting out of it with his acquittal without a trial press conference. It was all grandstanding by Comey and yes, it blew the majority of HRC's hopes of a last min surge.

          But hey, HRC was running a campaign that was "her's to lose" and then did just that. She *should* have trampled Trump into dust, but she literally threw the presidency away w

          • > Comey was in it for Comey.

            Absolutely. Kissing up to the future boss is one way to put Comey first even if it had the opposite effect. (let's all laugh that he is gone)

            > The election was SO close that you can blame Comey for her loss, or any number of other flubs her campaign made.

            Agreed. While the electoral victory was large and the national popular vote was distinct enough, the state races that Trump won were very close. Any number of things different could have changed the result. I wonder what w

      • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        It was shown that they allowed top secret cotent onto the insecure server, that is criminal negligence and a crime. They destroyed the evidence of that crime after that evidence had been requested, that is also a crime. The content that was exposed because apparantly the public is more effective at investigating crime than the FBI showed all kinds of pay to play schemes running, which as also crimes. It also showed they actively tampered with the electoral process quite extensively during the primaries, als

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by fafalone ( 633739 )
      Who's modding this ignorance up?

      It's not a false claim when you say something is unlikely to happen, and it happens anyway. 1 in 33 is not odds so long there's never been instances of something with those odds happening. If I say I have a 3% chance picking the number 1 from a set with items numbers 1 to 33, do you say I was lying if I go on to actually pick it?

      Or are you saying you have evidence their models predicted a different outcome, and then they lied about it?
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      There is a difference between a prediction that doesn't come true, and a lie.

      The take home lesson isn't that pollsters are liars, it's that they aren't fortune tellers. Poll predictions are subject to failure of assumptions about turnout, and that's where they went wrong in 2016. Trump turned out more voters in swing states than expected and Clinton fewer. As few as a 100,000 strategically placed votes would have swung the EC the other way.

      Elections aren't won by persuading voters; they're won by getting

  • This will end well (Score:1, Insightful)

    by jwymanm ( 627857 )
    Already content that is subjectively accurate is being deleted or being marked by users. Basically chilling any speech on the platforms but I am guessing that is the actual desired effect. In five years things will be even worse on these platforms since other things that could change the outcome of an election or whatever will be blocked. So on and so forth. Things we think today are silly / weird but not harmful will be considered banned in ten years. So further down the slippery slope. Alternative platfor
    • Already content that is subjectively accurate is being deleted or being marked by users. Basically chilling any speech on the platforms but I am guessing that is the actual desired effect. In five years things will be even worse on these platforms since other things that could change the outcome of an election or whatever will be blocked. So on and so forth. Things we think today are silly / weird but not harmful will be considered banned in ten years. So further down the slippery slope. Alternative platforms on blockchain need to catch up sooner than later.

      Could you explain what you mean by "subjectively accurate"? Usually a distinction is made between facts, which are said to be objectively true or false and it is those that the new youtube policies deal with. Value judgments on the other hand can not be determined objectively true/false (and are dealt with in other youtube policies such as hate speech).

  • election content allowed at all, since you know they're lying, their lip are moving...

  • by forkfail ( 228161 ) on Monday February 03, 2020 @04:02PM (#59686570)

    Whelp, that's going to be fairly and equally administered, no matter who the speaker is, and who the target of the speech is, I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever at all. Really.

    • Yea, they will certainly not give special privileges to Democrat-supporting late night shows that just happen to have the best "social scores" among all channels on Youtube and get pushed at every opportunity. No way!
    • I know right? It's like they don't understand that sometimes your confirmation bias often informs your determination of that is "fact" and what's not.

      For instance, many claim that Bernie is a communist. While there is ample evidence to support this claim, Bernie denies being a full bore communist, though he readily admits to being a socialist and has belonged to multiple socialists political organizations which ARE separate from the communist party, don't really differ all that much in ideology. So is the

    • because TFA says, and I quote, "false claims related to a candidate’s eligibility to run for office".

      YouTube is saying that if a video outright lies about election specifics like polling offices, election dates, and if a candidate is eligible to run for office then that video will be removed. This is exactly as it should be, in most jurisdictions those lies would be a crime and for damn good reason.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Don't let perfection be the enemy of good. In this case the result of doing nothing is far worse than the result of making some mistakes.

  • by Anonymous Coward
    Cracking down on falsehoods disproportionately affects Republicans!
    • Yes since the Dems only tells lies and and the Republicans actually tell the truth sometimes, there will be zero content from the Dems.
  • who will decide what is misleading and what is not? the reality is, it will end up being whatever youtube don't agree with that will be considered misleading and taken down. There can be only one .viewpoint and it will be theirs.

    • by goldspider ( 445116 ) on Monday February 03, 2020 @04:43PM (#59686724) Homepage

      That's the short-sightedness of the howler-monkeys screeching to get Facebook to police misleading/dishonest ads/posts.

      I can't think of a worse idea than letting the likes of Facebook assert itself as the arbiter of truth.

    • Rather than an outright ban, which I don't trust Google to do right, how about mark them as dubious. Example:

      NOTICE: This video claims that Joe Politician eats puppies. Google researchers couldn't find any reliable sources to back this claim. [Link to more info.]

      (Ironically, a well-known politician has admitted to eating dogs.)

      • I do like your idea.. Personally, I'd recommend we just mark ALL political videos with a disclaimer - "Political Videos are often inaccurate and routinely make unsubstantiated claims. Viewers are advised to investigate any claims made in this video." I'd also make it necessary to have a positive ID that UTube has verified so the video can be traced back to the producers.

        Then allow the comments section deal with the debate over what's true or not in the video.

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Re "who will decide what is misleading and what is not?"
      NATO? The gov of Australia? The EU? Political experts on US jokes from Germany? The UN? Staff in Spain who really know New York, New Jersey and Connecticut politics?
      A think tank? MI6? A charity? ex/former NSA/CIA? An expert from MI6, Some people who get politically educated at some US university? An ad company? Staff in the same US timezone ... from Canada who really understand the politics of a Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, Texas a
  • by Ogive17 ( 691899 ) on Monday February 03, 2020 @04:34PM (#59686676)
    Seriously - get rid of them all. I've only seen a handful of informative political ads over the past few cycles.. definitely not worth the trash that we get most of the time.

    Let's just have 2 hour debates followed by a live 30 minute fact check section with the candidates still standing on the stage.

    I'm amazed at how far we've fallen in such a short period of time. Of course there has always been bias in the reporting, no one is perfectly impartial... but now we're to the point of ignoring lie after lie after lie simply because the candidate represents the party we're affiliated with.

    And political ads in the super bowl.. gah. Can I at least have a safe space with sports broadcasts?

    The money in politics.. it's really sad.
    • and who picks the debate questions? CNN and MSNBC have repeatedly framed questions in debates to attack Bernie Sanders, so much so it's not even up for debate if they did or not. The last straw was when a CNN moderator asking Bernie why he said Women couldn't win the Whitehouse only for Sanders to say "I didn't say that" and for the moderator to turn to Warren asked "Why do you think Bernie said that". Even MSNBC called that out.

      Point is that it's not so clear cut. There's very clear biases in favor of
      • by k6mfw ( 1182893 )

        CNN moderator asking Bernie why he said Women couldn't win the Whitehouse only

        arrg, at times I wish they would answer questions that are not loaded (i.e. "when will you stop beating your wife"). I've noticed CSPAN has some interviewers good at asking questions not loaded so person can answer from a neutral position.

        I'm old enough to remember when League of Women Voters hosted the debates. It gave third party candidates opportunity to voice their positions. Of course both D and R parties established Debate Commission that effectively shut out other political parties.

  • by Daralantan ( 5305713 ) on Monday February 03, 2020 @04:36PM (#59686694)
    I don't seriously mean that (in the boohoo how dare they MAGA!11 way), but I can't help but remember those recordings or whatever released from a meeting of head people at Google after Trump was elected.... didn't they say they needed to get him out of office? Seems like it could easily make them just declare anything helpful to him as something that needs to go.
  • by TigerPlish ( 174064 ) on Monday February 03, 2020 @04:37PM (#59686702)

    I don't trust John Jackson, and sure as hell don't trust John Jackson!

    The trick is, fellas, to first divine who's lying to you. The answer is, all of them.

    Then the next trick is to sort out whose lies are worse. Why are they lyign to you? What do they want to take away from you? Rights? Freedoms? Money? Speech? Who are they tryign to help by taking these things and limiting your rights? Think clearly on this. This is key. Who are they trying to help?

    THEN, you need to have a good think on what you believe, what they're telling you, and what you must do.

    I did all that, and the answer was 180* away from my prior orientation. And what changed it was asking myself "Who is suppressing speech online and why?"

    That one question changed it all. There is one side of this equation that wishes a large swath of the population to outright shut the fuck up. And that same side is aligned against a few of my other interests too, so it became a no-brainer.

    So while I don't trust *anyone* outside of a *very* small group of people, I find I absolutely can distrust one party more than the other.

    The track record in the past 4 years speaks for itself, and no amount of adjustments by the media will fix it.

    But a lot of you, listen up: You *think* you're being told the truth by your guys. You *think* you have the right data, the right answers. But I caution you to do some really deep soul-searching about how one side is suppressing speech online way more than the other. You're being lied to, by everyone, but one side is particularly offensive in how they're going about it. And it may not be the obvious answer.

    Or, you know.. do whatever the talking head in the TV tells you to do. It's worked so well for us this far, right?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      This is how we end up with serial liars like Boris and Trump. People think they are all lying all the time so just vote for the lies they prefer.

      We need to end the post-truth nonsense and value honesty and integrity again.

      • Ami, who is going to say who's true and who is a liar?

        Honesty? Integrity? In politics? Since bloody when?! Seriously, since WHEN do you find that in politics, any politics at any scale?!

        Maybe George Washington, sure. But after him? Find me one. Find me one true, honest politician.

        Go ahead, I'll wait.

        I'l likely die waiting. They are all lying, not just here, but there too, Ami. Your fellow Briton politicians are just as borked.

        Now. If you can't accept that, if you continue to pine for honesty and i

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          If you are looking for an absolute, the perfect politician who never stretches the truth or uses a dubious statistic then you will be disappointed.

          But there is still a huge gulf between the better ones and the worst ones. Ignore the false equivalents, they are not all the same.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • A small correction:

      I don't trust John Jackson or Jack Johnson.

      Because ultimately those are the two options presented to us.

    • They're just a symptom.

      The problem is the job of politician seems to be a magnet for liars. If you think long enough about why that is, I think you'll come to the same conclusion that I have. The problem is us. We, the voters, have completely unrealistic expectations of our politicians. We demand that they be so squeaky clean that no real person, no matter how honest, no matter how perfectly they lived their lives, could ever meet our expectations. Meaning the only people who can meet our standards
  • YouTube Reinforces Guidelines on Fighting Misleading Election Content

    For this to matter, people would need to be on the fence. They have already decided.

  • and make the doofuses running for office stick to there platforms you know useful things like, what they want to do how much will it cost out of my weekly paycheck you know the important stuff that way we can have *Gasp* informed voters
  • YouTube will remove any content that has been "technically doctored" or manipulated or misleads the user about the voting process or makes false claims about a candidate.

    Meaning no more political ads -- right? Because it seems the entire point of 99.9% of political ads is to mislead someone about the voting process and/or make misleading claims about a candidate. In any case, surely there won't be any more ads from the incumbent President because he -- not naming any names here -- lies about, almost literally, everything. (just sayin')

  • More censorship (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by AHuxley ( 892839 )
    For one side of US politics...
    Show a video clip of a:
    Coughing fit ... "technically doctored"
    A politician so sick they need help standing.. "technically doctored".
    A cartoon about the news of the coughing fit.. "false claims about a candidate"
    Art work about a politician so sick they need help standing... "false claims about a candidate"
    All ability to comment, link, share... joke about, LOL at, create a meme of ... is removed as a "false claims about a candidate".
    Everything fun, new worthy created by sk
  • So, You Tube found a way to block ALL political content? Good!
  • In 2016 there was a distinct lack of corporate control over the Overton window. Platforms were platforms and not acting sufficiently as publishers.

    As good corporate citizens, we here at Youtube want to make sure only the best and correct political outcomes are made possible, because our democracy is at stake.

    As we strive to go the extra mile in policing even microagressions within our own corporate culture, you can be absolutely sure to trust us in safeguarding your carefully cultivated opinion, and make yo

    • In 2016 there was a distinct lack of corporate control over the Overton window.

      It was really nice to see how upset they got about that fact.

      • Some of the leftist channels that were so fervent about removing ""hate"" from Youtube, now find themselves getting censored and demonitized.

        They actually act surprised by this.

  • ... makes false claims about a candidate ...

    That doesn't prevent negative campaigning or flag-waving during the election. For example:

    "For 3 years, your senator didn't stop red-tide algae blooms"

    Critical thinking:
    For 3 years, we didn't have algae blooms.
    What will you do to stop algae blooms?
    His laziness is not a reason to vote for you.

    "was a captain in the US air force."

    Assessment:
    At leadership, check.
    At bombs and bullets, check.
    At hearts and minds, fail.
    At compromise, fuck, no.

  • What if you physically observed it but they didn't, and you just state the facts, but they claim it's false simply because they haven't seen that? Aka equaling the third option in the ternary logic of observation, namely "I don't know" to whatever they like it to be, namely "false".

    Or other toddler-level logic catch-22s that laymen make about logic and the scientific method.

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