An update on our commitment to fight terror content online
youtube.googleblog.com
youtube.googleblog.com
This makes me cringe. Every single one of these organisations consists of people with specific political views of acceptable and not acceptable content.
In Europe, the 'no hate speech' idea has very quickly expanded the concept of hate speech to include any rightwing opinion around certain topics (mostly religion and immigration related).
More people feel disenfranchised and excluded from the discourse, more grandstanding around fighting hate speech where the existence of countless organisations, consultants, experts and so forth can only be justified by uncovering more hate speech. Quite literally the growth of their economy requires expansion of the concept. The divide continues.
Here's Dabiq, ISIS's propaganda magazine.[1] It's well-produced and in English. See what the other side wants. There are the usual rants: "We ask Allah to support the mujāhidīn of the Islamic State against the agents of the tawāghīt and the crusaders until the banner of the Khilāfah is raised high above Istanbul and Vatican City". Their strongest ire is raised against Arabs who oppose ISIS. The West is just the enemy, but Islamists who oppose them are committing apostasy. They're opposed to democracy on principle. Allah must rule, and that means autocratic rule by religious leaders. "Legislation is not but for Allah".
There's a concern that some people will be taken in by this stuff. That's only a problem for people who haven't seen enough extremist material to be able to evaluate it. There's a certain similarity to all that stuff, along the lines of "We're good, because God is on our side, and we have to kill the other guys because they're evil." This message is available in Christian, Jewish, and Islamic flavors. Kids should see all of those in school, to immunize them against such messages.
Will "trusted flaggers" be allowed to make Dabiq inaccessable?
("Maybe they is not evil. Maybe they is just enemies." - Poul Anderson)
[1] https://clarionproject.org/islamic-state-isis-isil-propagand...
You'd have to go about that very carefully not to accidentally re-inforce a message that has already been planted and ending up making things worse rather than better.
I'm not sure what that means; doesn't every group have an agenda? I think the implication is that these groups' agendas are no better than any other groups' agendas. I think that's clearly wrong; we can't take politically correct relativism and openness to a logical extreme - we must make distinctions between good and bad (though carefully reasoned ones). Though I agree we should be careful, and no group or agenda is perfect, the agendas of hate groups are not just as good as the ADL's, for example.
> They shouldn't be allowed to block articles which disagree with their agenda.
Is that the standard used by Google?
I wouldn't say that there's a moral equivalence between the ADL's agenda (promoting Israel) and, say, Amnesty's agenda (ending torture & political imprisonment).
Amnesty got hit by the latest "fake news" google update:
https://mronline.org/2017/07/28/new-google-algorithm-restric...
Beyond that basic observation, I can't speak to the other groups, but to me, the degree of anti-Arab bias that the ADL exhibits is really appalling, and I have no confidence whatsoever in their ability to fairly filter the news for the masses.
The answer is no. This post is about YouTube. Presumably a magazine won't be impacted. Also, new content is not being removed, but rather:
"If we find that these videos don’t violate our policies but contain controversial religious or supremacist content, they will be placed in a limited state. The videos will remain on YouTube behind an interstitial, won’t be recommended, won’t be monetized, and won’t have key features including comments, suggested videos, and likes."
Which is ironically not dissimilar from your suggestion that hateful and ignorant views be taught in context to school children.
You comment reminds me of those news stories where the headline is a question. When you read the article, the answer is always, "No."
It's not an abstract issue, it actually happens.
Should we ban it?
Social psychiatric help and better public education are also necessary tools in this battle.
It's a shame (but understandable) that we're only doing that once they start raping, torturing and killing...
Why are these people necessarily wrong to include?
I did a search and I found many articles on the issue, suggesting it's a semi-famous controversy, but no reliable sources (all partisan and either untrustworthy or unknown, from the far left and far right).
EDIT: It's worth watching the guy speak for himself: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/449004/anti-radical-mus.... As an apostate I think this guy is a hero.
Nawaz was himself radicalized as a young man, and much of his work today is around preventing other young Muslims from taking that path. It disgusts me that a man with such a important perspective is carelessly labeled anti-Muslim.
Check out the audiobook discussion with Sam Harris if you haven't, "Islam and the future of Tolerance". It was a good, respectful discussion between two very different viewpoints, and Nawaz made very insightful and logical arguments for mainstream Islam being capable of undertaking certain anti-radicalization reforms and why those matter.
This sort of thing from the Western left is incredibly alarming to me. Imagine hardline Christian conservatives took over America and now we live in Handmaid's Tale. You're one of the tiny minority trying to fight back. How would you feel about people in Europe apologizing for the hardliners and condemning anyone who speaks out against their culture?
Obviously it's not Handmaid's Tale bad, but it's worse than you assume. My family is from Bangladesh. A third of the people from my country think I should be executed for leaving Islam: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religi... Bangladesh is a moderate country in the grand scheme of things--that number is 2/3 in Egypt, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
Bangladesh was founded as a secular republic, but that was jettisoned and Islam was made the official religion the year before my family left the country. That was all part of a long societal shift away from the west towards the Islamic world. For years--long before any of this hit the radar of anyone at SPLC--my family used the number of women in Dhaka wearing head coverings as a barometer for the country's descent into theocracy (very rare in the 1980s, quite common today).
I get its a fine line. You can't help people integrate if you can't let them adopt western values on their own terms. At the same time, some of this stuff from well-meaning liberals is really a kick to the gut of people fighting for modernity in these countries.
[1] My family was never religious, but that's not a distinction they recognize over there. I can't count how many times I've gotten in a cab with a driver from south asia/the middle east, and someone has asked me "where are you from?" And if I reply "Bangladesh," the answer is invariably "oh so you're Muslim?"
http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2003_archives/...
> But major elements of his story have been disputed by former friends, members of his family, fellow jihadists and journalists, and the evidence suggests that Nawaz is far more interested in self-promotion and money than in any particular ideological dispute.
The only concrete fact is that we received a bunch of British government funding. I don't know a lot about the guy, and obviously I don't stuff about surveillance. But wherever the line is for extremist, he's nowhere close.
>Nawaz tweeted out a cartoon of Jesus and Muhammad — despite the fact that many Muslims see it as blasphemous to draw Muhammad.
Looks like they're just upset anyone would upset Muslims.
There's the problem. Many other Muslims also have a representation of Muhammad on their walls on home so clearly have no problem with it.
Why should we take any position at all?
I'm not defending SPLC, which again I think overstepped by targeting Nawaz. But the argument that they did so to prevent Islam from being criticized appears to oversimplify. Their problem with Nawaz is that they believe he's a profiteering fraud.
The answers are: Not necessarily, not necessarily, yes, and yes.
I have no problem with Maajid fundraising and paying himself a salary. You need to be careful with the "X profits from fundraising, therefore they're just trying to profit from Y sentiment." That argument could be applied to Planned Parenthood, Churches, and just really anything. Just because an organization is well-funded doesn't mean they're morally bankrupt.
Ugh. Ideological rants are not allowed on HN, so please don't post like this again.
If you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; otherwise please don't comment until you do.
And extremeist? I'm not sure what they say is even remotely extreme.
The ADL is of course free to propagate for whatever they want, but it being included in the Trusted Flagger program might lead to more news stories like this one: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/09/facebook-blocks-accoun...
The reason for mentioning this is that it is not only right-wing ideas that will be censored. Groups working for ending the occupation and advocating peace between Israel and Palestine are generally associated with the left-wing. They will equally be at risk of being silenced with programs like this.
This is an outright lie. There are an astonishing plurality of mainstream, right-wing views about religion and immigration in every European country.
And yes, being in Europe, the "no hate speech" laws make me cringe, even if they are not really abused nowadays, censorship is censorship and seeing "my guys" doing it does not make me particularly comfortable.
That's because last time rightwing speeches about religion and races (that's "immigration-related" really) were permitted and tolerated in Europe the result has been WWII and the Shoa, probably.
Can you provide examples of this?
When Google and Facebook (among others) are explicitly enforcing censorship favoring the leftist worldview it really makes me wonder who stands to benefit and whether it is done with good intentions.
> their politics are the ones supported by "The System" and that they are perhaps not the rebels they thought they were?
Certainly there is a very well-established and long history, and continuing practice, of prejudice in government against (almost any group besides white Christian males, as a shorthand for a long list). There is also now a countervailing force, protecting the freedoms and asserting the interests of the oppressed groups. The existence of both forces can't seriously be questioned.
But going back to my first sentence: Really, that's the fundamental debate going on in this HN thread and in many others: Some assert, implicitly, that the hate groups are just another point of view, and that they are inherently no better or worse than other POVs. Others, including Google, disagree.
Sometimes that argument is made using extreme relativism or political correctness: All POVs have the same merit and deserve equal treatment; it's politically incorrect to discriminate at all. While that's an interesting and valuable philosophical discussion - how do we distinguish perfectly between good and bad - we can and must still distinguish between them. We don't have to wait for the perfect philosophical solution.
But we can approach the question with reason: First, I believe that many (not all) arguing that the hate groups should be heard simply support the hate groups - it has nothing to do with public interest or freedom of speech; probably that's true on the other side too. Second, a more reasoned argument: Why should we tolerate groups who don't tolerate others? It breaks a fudamental social contract of free societies: If you want me to respect you, you must respect me.
That said, I do actually think the terrorists have an inherently worse POV. That's one of the reasons I'm ok with them spouting it.
>Why should we tolerate groups who don't tolerate others? It breaks a fudamental social contract of free societies: If you want me to respect you, you must respect me.
That is not now and never has been a part of the fundamental social contract.
Interestingly, not only is it almost universal, but it's even present on HN and in our immediate interaction.
It sure is not. If you take the dictionary definition of the word hate. But what a lot of people do is use one word which have different meaning for them than for the public. When hate comprise any contrary view from yours, suddenly being against hate is not a healthy worldview.
You have the exact same word-play with equality, equity, meritocracy etc.
Set a good goal which everyone can accept, then swap the meaning of the words used to describe your goal and go after those who "don't think of the children".
I believe that view is hatred. A necessary premise is that some group of people is inferior to your own.
First, because the review system is unreliable - it's prone to acting defensively in the interests of the host (Google) and making the fastest defensible decision, regardless of accuracy.
Second, because the review system is slow. Even 24-hour turnaround is slow in a setting where display rankings risk exponential falloff if they don't get traction quickly. A brief delay on a Facebook post or Youtube video can be a death sentence in terms of engagement.
I'm not sure this system will have problems; "input from" doesn't mean "giving control to". But I certainly wouldn't want to rely on the review system as a reason to trust that nothing legitimate will be restricted.
In unrelated news Jordan Peterson, a University of Toronto professor with 350k subscribers was banned today. He's about as centrist as you can get but occasionally speaks against marxism and postmoderism. Apparently not being communist is now terrorism according to youtube.
Let's not pretend this system is doing what it says on the tin. He was reinstated because they realized how it looked and because he has the clout to make a fuss. The next potential Jordan Peterson will be snuffed out before that can happen.
Which is exactly how these Trust and Safety councils like it. Soft power with plausible deniability, like the two faced authoritarians they are. It's always set up as a one way ratchet, they can never allow this stuff to be rolled back in any form. Disagreement is harassment, after all, and harassers are guilty until proven super guilty.
They still haven't apologized or corrected their major mistake nearly destroying Fark.com last December.
He also occasionally says transphobic things about gender pronouns.
A quick search also suggests he does have actual transphobic issues -
> At the event, Peterson outlined his criticism of transgender people, arguing that the idea that biological sex and gender were independent quantities was “wrong.”
And misogyny issues -
> “I think disciplines like women’s studies should be defunded,”
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/4/11/peterson-talk-dr...
How much you wanna bet that “feature” is going to be used to alter/redirect the video results for other things like political opinions that Google doesn’t approve of? I foresee the right wing extremists like Breitbart and InfoWars getting affected by this. Not that I like either of those, but I think this is going to be a super sneaky way to curate the feeds that people see and the videos that are searchable online. Twitter did something recently that was very similar to this and people were finding that their followers weren't seeing their tweets.
Like you, I also find the Alex Jones and his ilk to be disturbing and harmful, and consider it a bad sign that people like you and me need to qualify any statement against censorship by explicitly saying we aren't part of the American far right.
"To target immigrant-hating videos, the room-sharing service uses keywords on YouTube’s ad platform that are associated with far-right content and anti-immigration groups, such as Pegida, Germany’s anti-Islamist group, and its leader Lutz Bachmann. Other keywords include “refugees out” (“asylanten raus”), “refugees terrorists,” and “the truth about refugees.”
A German can’t watch a anti-immigrant YouTube video associated with a keyword without first seeing a 30-second preroll ad from Refugees Welcome."
If you want to make an Immigrants Not Welcome ad and pay for it to appear before videos with terms you choose you are free to do so.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservative...
"Neutral" is no longer neutral, and if you keep telling people they are bigots undeservedly, they will leave and set up their own media, with blackjack and hookers, creating real extremism.
And extremist content should be harder to find, regardless of source. There's a big difference between extremist content and less violent political discourse, though. And YouTube as a hosting platform vs. hosting your video elsewhere.
That all said, the Google OneBox is already an example of altering search results to display what Google thinks you meant based on potentially slanted sources on the Internet.
https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/89244921355616665...
(University of Toronto Psychology Professor who makes popular YouTube videos and draws ire from a lot of SJW types)
~~~
In a way, Google is announcing to startups that making a YouTube successor/killer is still possible. As they degrade their own service, they open up more space for newcomers and competitors.
"Over the past weeks, we have begun working with more than 15 additional expert NGOs and institutions through our Trusted Flagger program, including the Anti-Defamation League, the No Hate Speech Movement, and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue."
Note the seamless transition from terrorism, to hate, to hate speech. Therefore, to protect open societies, we have to put censors to work on our users. How far we got in a couple of blog posts!
Note that the "No Hate Speech Movement" is "A youth campaign of the Council of Europe"[1] (so, not a movement at all), and the Council of Europe is an intergovernmental organization [2], so these are quite literally government censors.
Speaking of openness, is the full list of NGOs participating in the Trusted Flagger program available anywhere?
[0]: https://www.blog.google/topics/google-europe/four-steps-were...
I wish they'd articulate what values those are.
When a company the size of Google embarks on "preventing and stopping" extremists I am a little leery. Terrorism and extremism have often become synonyms with "speech I don't agree with". I have seen people called "nazis" all too easily on popular political forums like Reddit's /r/politics for daring to criticize the popular opinions. So maybe I am too paranoid here but I'd take what Google does with a grain of salt.
You say something they disagree with and you might just find your email, youtube, drive, google docs, and other accounts removed...
Only after hours of pressure from many people they reinstated it silently.
We need anti-trust laws to curve this authoritarian Internet rising.
Openly anti-trans too.
A quick (and biased) search turns up:
"His employers have warned that, while they support his right to academic freedom and free speech, he could run afoul of the Ontario Human Rights code and his faculty responsibilities should he refuse to use alternative pronouns when requested."
Now I'm sure there's more to the issue, but that's kind of my point - increasingly, not ceding to every demand by group X is labelled as being 'anti-X', and ending any discussion.
No, he's actually anti-trans too.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/4/11/peterson-talk-dr...
Wouldn't it be more fair, even necessary, to just say "he doesn't want pronoun choice to be enforced, and doesn't think biological sex and gender are distinct"? Why distort his views by condensing them to 'anti-trans'?
That just makes him a dickhead that should be ignored.
> doesn't think biological sex and gender are distinct
Which makes him wrong, scientifically (his testimony to the Canadian Senate has him saying that because the vast majority of people express their biological* sex as their gender, it would violate causality to accept they weren't linked), and, because he keeps using this nonsense to push his "trans people are just SJW leftists trying to take control" rhetoric, that makes him anti-trans.
For more about the spectrum of biological sex (way more than 2) and the expressed biological genders that can result (more than 2, not necessarily matching the biological sex) -
He is not against trans people at all. He is against being legally _forced_ to use dozens of new gender pronouns.
You keep using far left sources who don't back their claims. Jordan Peterson has hundreds of _hours_ of videos and lectures where he explais his positions. Link one of those to have an argument. Not some paraphrased nonsense to justify your position.
Do his words there count as "not some paraphrased nonsense"?
> At the event, Peterson outlined his criticism of transgender people, arguing that the idea that biological sex and gender were independent quantities was “wrong.”
To me, his words directly quoted in that article are sufficient to show he's transphobic (but certainly doing a good job of cloaking it in "free speech" rhetoric.)
A fair point. But I'd suggest that if he was just actually arguing the free speech case, there would be no need for arguing whether trans people are a legitimate thing (cf his comments on biological sex <=> gender causality). His broadening of his argument to that and "leftists are trying to force new words into the language" (cf Canadian Senate testimony) suggests he's not actually entirely about the free speech but rather just finding a fanatical new audience for his railing against SJWs and snowflakes and political correctness.
> to suggest that Dr Peterson hates trans people
I'd say "anti-trans" rather than "hates trans" - there can be a world between those two viewpoints.
It makes very little practical difference if the censorship comes from a large company or a government if at the end of the day you can't say what you want.
And yes:
I do believe in the basic free speech bargain. I do think it's better to have ISIS recruitment videos (and anti-ISIS videos, and everything else) up freely than to have some organization sitting in judgement of what's "acceptable" and not.
Of course it's a trade-off. There is a cost to social harmony from free speech (& democracy!). China seems to be doing pretty well with a very different approach; they value social harmony highly.
But I was raised like a good little patriotic American boy, so I value free speech pretty damn highly, and I find this policy misguide and scary.
Also, let's not kid ourselves -- ISIS is just an excuse. I guaran-fucking-tee this policy will be used to stifle all kinds of objectionable, non-politcally-correct videos.
Google is a company backed by advertising. Youtube has faced very noticeable controversy from advertisers (including a "boycott" -- https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/24/15053990/google-youtube-a...) over "hate speech" and other offensive content.
In my opinion, this update is a direct response to that issue (the paragraph on "de-monetizing" content that is found unacceptable, but still within content guidelines, suggests to me as much). This is all about placating advertisers, who didn't want an advertisement for Brand XYZ appearing to ISIS recruitment videos and the like. I can't really think of a way to get around this -- to do so, you are basically asking Google to force brands to pay for content they find objectionable. (Which they won't do, in the end.)
I agree Google doesn't care about free speech.
I'm not sure about the best remedy to the problem. Things as diverse as legislation to alternative non-centralized social network to simply trying to change corporate and cultural values all come to mind...
There is a reason every single state constitution has provisions on the abuse of speech, and that is because we always saw the potential for this. (Why not the constitution? Because the Federal government has no jurisdiction over speech. It's up to the states. See e.g. Federalist #84)
This idea that "freedom of speech" means "I can say whatever I want, and any and all platforms must amplify what I say" is a completely misguided idea that has no basis in reality, the constitution, or even the debates the founders had.
> "I can say whatever I want, and any and all platforms must amplify what I say"
That's not an accurate summary of what I want.
Instead of 'any and all' and 'amplify', how about 'dominant' and 'not suppress'?
That is, I'm saying that pervasive communication mediums like YouTube or Twitter or Facebook should not be arbitrarily censoring content.
That's all.
(Is it really that dangerous to let people express themselves?)
Sure you are. Except... you tie them specifically to the American interpretation. Which is firmly rooted in the Constitution/1st amendment, and what our founders thought about it.
Quoth: "But I was raised like a good little patriotic American boy, so I value free speech pretty damn highly"
So, either you subscribe to those specific values, or you should scrub the patriotic rah-rah from your argument.
> Instead of 'any and all' and 'amplify', how about 'dominant' and 'not suppress'?
Nobody "suppresses" anything. If you want to be a white supremacist, host your own server. These platforms are private entities - they get to choose who is welcome. (cf https://xkcd.com/1357/)
> Is it really that dangerous to let people express themselves?
Yes. Once a line is crossed, because at that point it turns from speech to acts of aggression utilizing speech. As I said above, everybody arguing free speech understood that back when we decided what basic rights we wanted or didn't want.
And please don't argue "slippery slope", because that's a strawman. There's a very clearly recognizable line from free speech to hate speech, be it white supremacy, gay bashing, nazism, or ISIS. And the vast majority of people is perfectly capable of recognizing that line
(Here's an interesting read on the whole concept that there are limits to tolerance: https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1...)
I feel like we're talking past each other. My belief is that when a corporation becomes large and omnipresent enough, it's basically a de-facto government, and should probably be constrained from abusing its power in similar ways.
Imagine that YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit &c decide that idea X is inappropriate. It will become difficult for us, as a society, to have a discussion about X, because it has been suppressed in our dominant discussion forums. That's not a healthy thing for an open society.
But even if we leave that aside, a loss of YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit is not a threat to discussion. You seem to imply that before these existed, there wasn't any actual discussion of important topics.
Sure, social media has enabled massive amounts of screeching and foaming at the mouth, but beyond that, the impact on useful debate is more than doubtful.
Unless you prefer populism over democracy, in which case it's an incredibly useful tool.
I'm all for free speech, but why should Google distribute that for free so we can have more lone wolf terrorist attacks?
Maybe that's what you want – not be aware of those drawbacks. But those people who are censored still exist, are more rejected, and they can't confront their ideas, so they derive towards extremism. Now you can't hear their demands, you get surprised with their votes (hello Trump voters) and they keep being racists (or insert minority here).
Extremism isn't a birth defect. It's a reaction to circumstances. Go visit 9Gag. Under anonymity, huge numbers of young people have very pronounced hatred towards minorities and SJWs.
I'd prefer seeing this debate happening on Youtube and public spaces than excluding them than not knowing where they are.
Recent example: Trump decided to end the CIA program arming rebel groups in Syria after watching a video of one such group behead a young boy.
And there's also the difference between reporting horrible, graphical news, and being the platform for ISIS to tell and show them in their terms.
Do you have a source for that? The only one I could find is The Weekly Standard which doesn't cite any officials or sources itself.
This new policy and the tech that backs it are little more than a political cudgel.
> But I was raised like a good little patriotic American boy, so I value free speech pretty damn highly, and I find this policy misguide and scary. Also, let's not kid ourselves -- ISIS is just an excuse. I guaran-fucking-tee this policy will be used to stifle all kinds of objectionable, non-politcally-correct videos.
What about that isn't clear to you? He supports it on principle.
Would a disclaimer blunt its impact as a recruitment tool?
For instance, Jordan Peterson's Google account was suspended today for "violations of terms of service", with no other reason given and no official channel for recourse. It was only reinstated after news of the ban began gaining traction on twitter and other outlets. What will happen to smaller entities caught in the net, with less social clout to defend themselves?
https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/89244909895099187...
This is almost drumhead court martial for peoples online personas. :-/
Those shouldn't be tolerated any more than videos that show torture of animals or abuse of children.
Seems like a reasonable standard and not necessarilya slippery slope?
If this was all that was censored then we'd likely be more agreeable. Unfortunately there is cases like this which seems to be from today:
If we have no limits, then should YouTube also allow pro-child rape videos showing how awesome a 3-year old gang bang is with a crowd of guys cheering that on?
At some point you have to draw the line. I admit this is a very hard and nuanced thing to do, I generally support free speech, but I think that ISIS deserves a platform on YouTube. I'm not sure I'd support outlawing it from the government level, but that doesn't mean we can't do things to curb its influence online.
In fact, from an anti-terrorism perspective, it may be more effective to leave ISIS's videos up (and keep tabs on their most frequent watchers, if anything). It can even have direct benefits in terms of intelligence gathering (e.g. the locations shown can be identified).
That is not a reference that supports your claim.
by that logic they shouldn't allow US military recruitment videos either
We are not talking about the Russian. We are not talking about the Arabs. We are talking about the Anders Bering Breiviks, the Timothy McVeighs, the real nazis of 2017 and of course ISIS.
Or am I missing the really juicy part here?
and no, mcveigh did not act alone. he conspired with terry nichols and michael fortier, who also served and met in the military. according to his biography, mcveigh took joy in being ordered to slaughter surrendered prisoners. did the military radicalize him?
further: did it train him in the skills he needed to successfully carry out such an atrocious act? was he provided adequate care when he returned home from iraq and kuwait, broken? to what extent is the military responsible? should youtube ban anti-US videos in general? does an organization need to be on a particular US government-sanctioned list to be considered a terrorist organization by youtube? the list of questions goes on.
overall, what I'm trying to express is that it is bad for youtube to make decisions based on politics. if they want to make decisions on morals, that's fine, but apply it to everyone, not just ISIS. either that, or allow them all.
Our opinions will still differ somewhat though.
Sigh. The chance for overlap with educational videos is going to be pretty damned high. Just like past efforts to stop porn have also stopped a large number of sex education sites.
Also, how are they judging accuracy? That's one key bit of information they're missing here. What's the escalation path for videos improperly caught up in the automated sweeps? Their existing copyright flagging mechanisms shows the inadequacy of their automated systems to date. Who reviews the human flags? The Alex Mauer YouTube debacle (a contracted worker taking down let's play videos to put pressure on a developer unrelated to the videos) has shown that the power is too far in the accuser's hands.
That raises an interesting example: YouTube has effectively blocked porn, and I haven't heard anyone complain.
It's going to get very problematic. When big players squeeze the Overton Window it becomes an Overton Bubble. We'll be blindsided by more electoral decisions that are puzzling due to preference falsification.
And even the US has limits on what you can publish - see for example the Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act 2010. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Crush_Video_Prohibition...
Here lies individualist-collectivist divide.
There, fixed it for you. There are a lot of human rights "most countries" have historically opposed.
It's not law anywhere else in the world, but many people share it, myself included.
Do not confuse law with ideals - after all, google acting as a censor is perfectly legal even in the 'free speech extremist' US.
The slippery slope we are careening down is getting pretty troubling.
They have no independent definition of what terrorism is. They have made no statements about how any one definition of terrorism is better or worse than any other one. They've done nothing proactively to identify terrorist or prevent terrorist acts.
Instead, they're trying to do something without actually being responsible for it. They've gathered together their own pack of cool kids and those folks have been tasked with telling Google what to do. In this manner the company actually stands for nothing more than "We've tried to cover all the bases of groups that are important to us that might complain"
That's not taking a stand. That's just an odd combination of shrewdness, weaseling, and self-congratulation. Par for the course for big SV companies. Some huge companies will control what kinds of political posters go up in its halls -- an act with nothing more than symbolic meaning -- while cooperating with dictatorships that use their services to hunt down dissidents. Related: http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/11/16/how-social-media-helps-d...
As tech folks, we've been congratulating ourselves way too much and taking way too little of an honest look at what actual impact we're having. That's gotta stop.
I'd love to see some real stats. How many videos are we talking about here? How many views do they get?
Whether it's exaggerated "by the right-wing press" or not (I find it concerning despite being left-leaning and not the press), I don't like the notion of any politically-aligned parties having an outsized role in deciding what's "appropriate".
So happy to see free speech is alive & kicking in the west.
Don't tolerate intolerance. Thats not tolerance is spineless.
I also think the power Google of today wields over my life is probably comparable to the power the government of 1789 wielded over its citizens.
Is it really wise to so readily accept arbitrary behavior from Google just because they're a private company? At a certain point, companies become big and powerful enough that I think it's reasonable to hold them to similar standards as governments.
YouTube is a company. It has employees, a business model, and a TOS. It decides what is acceptable content. You are free to patronize another video site if you don't like it.
In the 90s, if you argued your local mall was a public space because a lot of people spent time there and that's where the conversation was happening, you would be just as wrong.
What does that even mean? You can still have speech you dont agree with, nobody is forcing you to see it.
The ISIS videos are often calls to violence, showing beheadings and encouraging beheadings. Consider which group intentionally targets civilians, which groups condone vs punish rape, which groups answers to people vs outdated books.
Either way its not my choice, its Google's choice. Oh and the law has some say, calls incite to violence are not protected under even the first amendment. Google has to remove at least some of these because they are illegally asking for violence and people. This law has just been selectively enforced because that is how strong the First Amendment is. It is so strong it protects even more speech in more places than was intended.
> Consider which group intentionally targets civilians, which groups condone vs punish rape, which groups answers to people vs outdated books.
I do consider that and I can't defend America in this case. We have historically targeted civilians, condoned rape, and definitely answer to a book that I strongly consider outdated.
This is the problem that I have with censorship: It usually ends up being OK if the "good guys" do it, but we can't let "them" do the same thing, or people might listen to them!
I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy.
The US military does not post beheading videos, or any of the rebuttals I pposted easlier. There are periods were we did bad things, but those are the exception, and we take active effort to fix. the US military has ethics panels and a court system. Can you show me the ISIS court system?
Today the level of scandal is places like gitmo or drone strikes. We have an army of lawyers overseeing both. Waterboarding as inhumane as it is not the condoned rape of 14 year girl every day for 6 months because she was born into the wrong ethnicity.
One side has done wrong things. The other wants to do wrong things. The ethical line is clear.
EDIT- Also thank you for finally bringing up the real issue, the slippery slope.
My rebuttal to that is that what was posted was generally not legal as it was. Speech that incites violences is not protetected in the United States. The government is allowed to silence people doing things like calling for "Death to all Infidels". This isn't censorship this is enforcing laws we have already had for centuries.
Just like the US military the Russians are imperfect but after WWII they didn't promote rape as a benefit of joining their armed services. ISIS today presents the option of raping infidels as a virtue and a reason for potential rapists to join. Russia doesn't promote attacks on unarmed civilians, ISIS does.
This is only us vs them issue I have is difficulty endorsing people who embrace rape, attacks on non-combatants and other embracing of war crimes. No other group that is a world power does this that I am aware of. No group is perfect, but most groups at least make an attempt to punish people who participate in war crimes like this. ISIS promotes these war crimes.
Democracy is not an blank check that allows anything. Even some of the worst leaders in History were actually elected through regular, due process. And there is no principle that shows that Democracies don't engage in Mass-Murder of civilians (erm, Dresden? Hiroshima? Nagasaki? And many others)...
Hitler, anyone?[0] (sorry Godwin)
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_presidential_election,_...
We did commit all three of those atrocities you mentioned. We are imperfect. We also did the best we could the time. We have also improved since then and attempt to actively prevent nuclear proliferation. We have developed bombed that can destroy a single building making arms and leave the hospital across the street untouched. Consider the 1991 gulf war. It had the lowest rate of civilian casualties of any war up until then. We have never set out with the goal of killing enemy civilians out of some direct malice, sometimes we did it because we saw an existential and no other choice.
We blew up cities because we thought it was the best way to destroy factories making arms and we mistakenly thought it would scare the enemy into defeat. Our leaders didn't understand the psychology of our enemy. We have never demanded "death of all infidels" or beheaded our enemies and used that in promotional material. ISIS is the ethical equal of a military of any modern world power.
The public square has effectively become platforms like YouTube. If I cannot participate in these discussions, my ideology, and perhaps my welfare, will suffer. Giving public speeches in my town is increasingly meaningless, because this is not where discussions take place in the digital age.
Then people have willfully given up their rights. Google and the companies they bought and developers they pay made their software services. People own this stuff it is property and the property owners get the say as long as they follow the laws.
One could even argue they have to remove this stuff because much of it is "calls to violence" which are illegal and not protected by the first amendment.
This might sound snide and dismissive, but that is not what I am going for, so I am sorry. You are free to make any service you like and host it. It has literally never been easier. Look at 4chan. The first versions cost nearly nothing to setup and maintain and that is about as free as speech gets. You can have whatever rules you like on your property. You apparently haven't gone through the effort of making a giant video or communication service so you have to play by the rules of the people who own the ones that exist. If you think you shouldn't have to make one to (to enforce your rules) then petition to make one, but that is really asking for trouble in my opinion.
How is hindering their recruiting not good? Many of the videos are already illegal even in the USA with first amendment protections. Inciting violence is not legal, and most of these videos do that on some level. And Google/Alphabet don't what that rubbish on their private property, why would they?
I see how it could be a slippery slope, but that is not what anyone here is arguing. Instead people here are literally arguing that Google should host recruitment videos for a group that literally beheads people and uses that to market to people who are probably in need of mental health services instead of recruitment to zealotry.
Wait, are you talking about the Christian extremists who caused the unrest in Syria and Libya? What about the Christian extremists who started the war in Iraq? Or maybe you're talking about the Hindu extremists in India who committed genocide?
>> I see how it could be a slippery slope, but that is not what anyone here is arguing.
You're right, most of what you seem to be arguing accepts that we've already completely slid down that slope and are now just figuring out where to aim the bullets
Sure. Just define "intolerance".
Consider: during Prohibition here in the U.S., alcohol was illegal. Were a similar situation develop, should discussion of alcohol distilling be illegal? What about where to find a speakeasy? What about simply discussing how wrong a ban on alcohol is?
[edit: Or for a different point: does this mean that US airfoce reqruitment videos for drone pilots would be censored by Google in Yemen?]
or is this really
"An update on our commitment to avoid expensive lawsuits and pesky Internet pitchfork campaigns by appearing to do something about content some people find objectionable"?
I haven't decided yet.
This is just pr fluff.
It's no secret that the moderation here disagrees with the consensus formed in these comments. It's definitely odd.
I'm not a mod, but I'm pretty sure moderators didn't touch this.