YouTube's New Moderators Mistakenly Pull Right-Wing Channels | Hacker News Reader

YouTube's New Moderators Mistakenly Pull Right-Wing Channels

bloomberg.com

32 pointsJerry222 comments

Its not a mistake and its not a coincidence that this happened. Youtube employed a lot of left wing NGOs like SPLC and ADL and lots of similar left wing authoritarians. Left wing commentators were cheering the news that InfoWars might get banned from youtube. They are extremely short sighted. This very tool will soon be turned against them too.

Damore warned about google hiring policies. Susan Wojcicki, CEO of youtube is sister of Sergei Brins (Sergey Brin, together with Larry Page, co-founded Google) ex wife.

ToS on most of social media are too vague for fair moderation and moderators are too ideologically driven. Social media became largest meeting place humans had in history. Moderation should not be controlled on the whims of CEOs and business interests.

If it were the case that Google and Youtube were actively engaged in a campaign of "left wing authoritarianism," and that Google employed "a lot of left wing NGOs like SPLC and ADL" specifically to implement such an agenda (which is what you seem to be implying,) why would they allow right-wing content to be hosted to begin with, or not specify under their terms of service that they only allow left-wing content?

I understand the need for right-wingers to believe themselves to be victims of global leftist persecution, many forms of identity politics do so, but Youtube can legally delete any material from their platform under any terms they choose. There's no need for a conspiracy when you already have absolute and arbitrary power.

Youtube publicly stated that they are working with SPLC and ADL on Youtubes Trusted Flagger Program. I am not implying that this was plan of evil CEOs from the start. But they let it happen. They let political bias seep in and steer public discourse on largest communication channels we have. This recent ridiculously vague "hate speech" rules can be used to prevent posting anything negative about arbitrary topics is we define those things as "protected groups" first. This is not partisan problem. Sooner or later this censorship that is normal now will be used against the left too.

I’m more on the side of saying that Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and the like are large enough that they should be thought of as public space. Having as much social interaction as we do on platforms that can be controlled on the whims of CEOs and business interests isn’t much different than government control of ideas, and I would argue it’s worse because the government is at least elected. They have transcended beyond a business-customer relationship and have become the largest meeting space in history, and as such they should be free and open just like a public square.

I think the problem is the right wing stalwarts like Alex Jones are doing stuff like inciting people to send hate mail to the people who lost their kids at the Sandy Hook massacre. Further, hate speech rules are often codified in law, and for good reason. It's not youtube's fault that mainstream rightwing culture is deeply sick, neither is it politicized censorship to censure people like Alex Jones.

I think it's a case of Google strongly enforcing their policies within the company, and not doing anything to combat moderation bias, rather than them delibelatery targeting different political views. I think, as usual, people are looking for malice where incompetence would suffice; in this case, Google failing to foster a culture of acceptance, and understanding towards a wide range of political views, given that they're a global company.

Either way, silencing political views is like fighting fire by turning off the fire alarm. I think everybody should be worried by actions like these, because this breeds radicalism by empowering one side, and making the other side feel threatened. This isn't good for anybody.

They're two conspiracy-theory scumbags who should be booted off YouTube. It's a private company, not a common carrier.

The problem is that that private company is so big it's basically entangled with most (younger) peoples lifes.

Edit: Talking in general about censorship. Not about those 2 specific conspiracy theorists...

Edit 2: Ok good, calm down. I guess we should censor everyone that doesn't agree with us. Even if "us" is some private company that somehow got control of your kids. Got it :)

the last thing the world needs is more censorship

"mistakenly"

Eh. The explanation they offered that they were hiring a large mass of moderators and some of them made mistakes is more than plausible. When they add that many people it's really inevitable that someone would get over-eager or misread the message of a video.

It can hardly be called a mistake when the same doesn’t happen to people and channels that align themselves politically with Google’s internal policies and culture.

Google can do as they please, YouTube is theirs, but you can’t seriously accept statements like these at face value.

Of course it can. Taking this action against someone with a political stance opposite from yours may be a mistake you're more likely to make, but it's still a mistake.

Besides that, the point I was trying to make was less about whether it was a mistake, and more that it's plausible that this was something that was done by an individual against company policy rather than in accordance with it.

Regardless of whether the actions are against company policy, they were taken on purpose by the "moderators".

I don't dispute that. What I dispute is the implication that they had been instructed to do so by Google.

So similar to the Wells Fargo account creation fraud.

You know, this group is still active, collecting revenue on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsdGlryupg5aU1849rUzeHw ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loose_Change

Trying to trample opposing political views by force won't end well.

They may have hired remote workers from a firm called 'Vaco', which employs people from abroad and asked them to moderate.

Yup I have already seen threads with screenshots from linkedn pages of some of those people. I guess that just as in US, where Youtube is using partisan and highly controversial NGOs like ADL and SPLC; they are using equally ideologically driven people from other countries. You can call this mistakes if you want but we all know what happened. Dozens of channels that were deleted in past few weeks appealed youtubes decisions and got negative response. So this was not done by just one or two rouge moderators. Even people who oversee moderators are biased and think that censorship is good and will work.

Moderation needs to be controlled by third and politically/ideologically independent party.

You are right that "they are using equally ideologically driven people from other countries".

France is effectively censored by the norms and values of Algeria, which is evidently the low-cost place to find people who understand French.

To clarify, the problem here is Bloomberg automatically turning YouTube's PR statement into their headline. "Mistakenly" is how YouTube's PR copy wants to describe the actions to soften the impact. A neutral headline would have been "YouTube's New Moderators Mistakenly Pull Right-Wing Channels."

Then, in the body of the story, the reporter can report that YouTube's PR department assures us that this wasn't company policy. Instead, they chose to carry the PR department's water by incorporating their PR claims into the headline.

In all likelihood, the "moderators" ban channels they don't agree with on purpose. It may be against company policy for them to that, but that doesn't an honest mistake make. Clearly, company policy and procedures are not geared towards catching these kinds of "mistakes".

Now, actually do not follow these channels, and I am indifferent to their existence. I am more offended by the reduction of journalism to verbatim copying from PR responses.

What if such moderators had banned Bloomberg's YouTube channel? Would this story have assured us that it was just a simple mistake?

PS: For the record, YouTube has the right to decide what content they will host on their platform.

Good thing DTube topped HN the other day:

https://d.tube/

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