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Comment by chiaro | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, it's hard to get this right, and while they've been overly aggressive on copyright claims for a while, I'm glad that they're finally expanding this hardline stance against extremist content too. Though I'm not surprised it took literally funding Hezbollah (in contravention of UN SCR 2178 I might add) for them to take a look at what their monetisation schemes were enabling. A lot more to go though. When opening an incognito tab and searching something as innocuous as "feminist" gives the results it does, it's not hard to see youtube as being one of the foremost contributors to extremism, especially in kids. Real change won't happen until flagged videos get penalised in recommendations and search results too.

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Extremism is still just a political viewpoint. It's not inherently more wrong than the others. You're saying Google should impose popular US culture and politics on the world. Including taking sides in conflicts between other countries. It's pretty arbitrary and could easily be wrong.

If you're worried about kids, better ban violent movies, video games, the news, and angry music. No, people have tried "think of the children" before but the children turned out fine.

Extremism is political, but it can't be reduced to a simple difference in viewpoints. Cultural/moral relativism, beyond being a bit of a dead end philosophically, can certainly result in an inaction that opens the doors to political degeneration, anti-social behaviour, and terrorism.

As for other forms of media, we do prevent kids from accessing age-inappropriate stuff, more or less in line with developmental psych research [see: Huesmann, Moise-Titus, Podolski, & Eron (2003)]. YouTube is the odd man out here. The handwringing apologia over the appropriateness of a child entertainer using ethnic slurs would be laughable in any other medium.

Google has famously taken a stance on not being evil. It'd somewhat undermine this goal if it were unable to determine what evil is, and isn't.

> Google has famously taken a stance on not being evil.

They changed this policy when they got into the business of telling people what to think and control opinions.

Anyone that writes code connecting a query to some media content is in "the business of telling people what to think and control opinions" whether they like it or not. The concern is doing so responsibly.

Google's motto is still "Don't be evil". You may be confusing it with Alphabet's motto, which is "Do the right thing".

Regardless, both are still failing.

> funding Hezbollah

Do we have a list of what Google considers to be a banned terrorist group for purposes of defunding?

This wouldn't be a bad place to start.

https://scsanctions.un.org/consolidated/

> Though I'm not surprised it took literally funding Hezbollah (in contravention of UN SCR 2178 I might add) for them to take a look at what their monetisation schemes were enabling.

Fine. Google should demonetize the videos or channels, but they shouldn't take down the channels altogether.

> searching something as innocuous as "feminist" gives the results it does

What's innocuous about feminist?

> it's not hard to see youtube as being one of the foremost contributors to extremism

That's what extremists say. That's why lgbt subs are demonetized.

> especially in kids.

I always get suspicious when pretty bring up "kids" or exploit "kids" to support an agenda.

> Real change won't happen until flagged videos get penalised in recommendations and search results too.

So you are advocating google censor?

Google always already censor; you've never been allowed "porn" on Youtube from day 1.

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