YouTube Blacklist Censors Content Containing Certain Keywords
oneangrygamer.net
oneangrygamer.net
Some Americans don't like google interfering with their discourse and they spend their time using constitutional arguments as to how ok that is or not. International people watching these arguments look on with boredom.
Meanwhile, and american company per default explicitly shapes the dialog of the entire world and people shrug.
The international angle on this is absolutely scandalous and no one cares. Every international government acknowledges the problems of the great firewall of China, but this doesn't matter?
The internet is making online discourse more and more important, perhaps online discourse is already more important than oral discourse.
My metaphor obviously differs in some regards to the article, but I think it elucidates my main point, that Google has become sufficiently large and important that we can't really excuse this type of censorship on the basis that they are a private company.
For example the list clearly shows that Google is pro-choice, with phrases such as "abortion is wrong" appearing on the blacklist. This is not up to Google to decide for others. If Google, or its employees, want to voice their perspective, that is fine. It is not fine to try to manipulate people through their software while pretending to be a neutral party.
But we already have that in European countries. Why do we accept this from the government instead?
It's an Eternal September[0] problem, though, in the fact that any discourse has effectively been quashed by setting up "us versus them" factions, yeah?
In our bubble (on HN), sure, we can have respectable (or maybe not so much) discourse but we all come not holding our fingers in our ears, stamping our feet because we think 'x' person is in 'y' camp.
You don't see the festering problems that have affected other platforms (yet) and I think it's very telling that we recognise that discourse is important - but we seem to be in the minority (in this sense of openness to exchange).
The problem with YouTube, however, is that discourse hasn't been a principle part of YoutTube for quite some time. Someone makes a video. If we're lucky someone else might make a "My Response To..." video and, if we're luckier, a further response might be made, "My Response to the Response To...".
However, all one needs to do is look at the cesspool that has become YouTube comments and they will see that discourse isn't a fundamentally important principle there (anymore).
The likewise goes with places like Reddit, which has divided itself into "us versus them" camps about almost everything under the sun.
So, I agree that (online) discourse is important - but it seems to be a bygone idea that a select few of us (present company included) are desperately trying to hold on to.
I'm conflicted as to whether that should give me a feeling of hope or an immense sadness.
(Bonus:"They" don't actually wonder it. Extremist events are great excuses to amass more power to the powerful).
I'm glad this stuff is coming out, but there are viable youtube alternatives for sharing video. If they want stuff off their platform, just say so, and people will use new platforms.
I still believe this behaviour by social media companies will yield new platforms. The kids learning to code now are realizing there is a network of people using "censorship," to actively manage a simulation of a world with a manufactured consensus they find acceptable. We're barely a decade past the winner-take-all pattern of platforms, and a totally new dominant platform is less than 5 years away. I'm still optimistic that these platforms are the AOL, Compuserve, and Myspace of today.
This too shall pass.
Youtube doesn't promise anyone publicity. Any ranking algorithm or suggested content list by its very design "deranks" everything else, and most content on the platform is probably never watched, or barely watched.
Youtube's current default of biasing recommendations towards extremist content "deranks" less extremist content, yet that doesn't appear to be a problem for people who are suddenly up in arms that the site is changing the bias of an already biased system.
There is no bait-and-switch here, nor is there sabotage.
And Youtube appears to be taking over in the broadcast TV world.
Youtube has to have content controls. But it's unconscionable that these controls are not open source, not created through a public process, not auditable, nor appeallable.
It would be so easy to do this in an open and positive way, and Google has decided to do it on the cheap in an ugly, biased, and destructive way, one that is harming their brand and creating regulatory scrutiny.
People do treat Google search results like truth. There's not a great deal google can do about that, and it's irresponsible for google to feed people lies.
I have some bad news for you about the world's largest advertising company.
Education is censorship. If it's unacceptable for Youtube to derank lies and extremism, it must also be unacceptable to teach children that lies and extremism are incorrect. If we can't trust one one arbiter of truth, then surely we can't trust any.
The free speech solution would be to treat all ideas equally, regardless of their merit, and allow the marketplace of ideas to educate people and let everyone decide for themselves what truth is. But that just leads us to where we are now, with social media being overrun by cancer, and ever more people believing QAnon and Alex Jones and anti-vaxxers and flat earth.
The inconvenient truth is that education sometimes works, but often doesn't. Censorship sometimes works, but often doesn't. Context matters (not all speech is equally valid, not all attempts at censorship inevitably lead to Orwellian dystopia) and the problem is more complex and nuanced than heated internet debates will allow.
So even if it's actually true YouTube has this mechanism, it's not worth discussing because of who brought it up first?
This is strawman thinking and to use your phrase, "I'm surprised it showed up on HN."
A discussion on censorship is a great thing to have. Just not starting with this guy.
The "publication of record" ship has sailed and we're left with competing agendas and increased need for personal vetting, which many have done on this leak--a fact which is easily searchable.
What I don't get is why the author whines about rating content by source. Anyone basing a statement on Alex Jones, Breitbart or RT should be removed from any promotion (i.e. search, "next video") features, there can only be crap as a result of relying on these "sources". As long as Youtube doesn't remove the videos outright there is no censorship and frankly I wouldn't have any problems with removing them either.
Social media platforms need to wake up and realize they have a responsibility to society - just like "classic" media - and that is to further democratic discourse instead of helping to destroy it. Allowing lies and propaganda fabrications to spread is nothing less than destruction of democracy.
To quote Karl Popper: "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."
Democracy needs provable facts to work, it ceases to work when the electorate gets flooded by destructive lies.
Karl Popper sounds like a real winner.
I’m OK with this if Google takes full responsibility for the veracity of its search results and liability for any consequences of someone being misled.
They won’t do that of course, they want the power without the responsibility.
Yet the human experience is subjective and fallible.
Any durably functioning society has means to shun & shed liars & those who work to destroy the society. Treating rules as absolute rarely works well.
Further even factual "truth" should always questioned, debated, and explored, no one gave Google the power to say what is "Truth" and then to expel any other idea that challenges said "Truth" that is dangerous for society
Of course truths should be debated, there is a difference between useful debate and shouting or deceit.
To paraphrase Asimov, we should well remember that democracy does not mean that Alan's ignorance is equal to Bob's truth.
It has been well demonstrated that trolls can easily and consistently derail even sound scientific discussions, destroying the discussion and even the forum, if allowed. One only need to look her at HN to see how much filtering & moderation work is required to maintain a valid discussion.
Individuals have better discussions than mobs. There is no basis to think that large scale discussions need less filtering & moderation than tight communities, yet even this obvious concept is fought here...
YouTube is an amplifier and while they give anyone a voice they're not forced by any law lo amplify its reach. Just like you won't go share my opinion with all your discussion partners.
#is it anti-democratic if someone flags or downvotes a comment on HN? Are you or HN acting in an anti-democratic fashion by hiding and censoring that opinion? (obvious answer: no) Freedom and democracy are seriously misinterpreted these days.
How so? The video is there and it can be viewed. That is 1. That is your voice. It just gets no amplification while other voices do. Did you ever see Breitbart putting an anti-Breitbart opinion on the front page? Are they being anti-democratic by doing this?
So I'll ask again, if you downvoted/flagged my comment thus making it less readable (factor < 1) did you act in an anti-democratic way? And if so how do you reconcile your actions with your words?
No, because I only have a limited amount of power in this regard. If I was HN the platform and I systematically silenced your comments simply on the basis that they were coming from you (and you were not rude and/or an obvious spammer), then I would be censoring you. While this is not necessarily anti-democratic since HN is not a government institution, it does get unsavoury rather quickly. And like it or not, it is more unsavoury the larger the entity (in terms of audience) doing it.
Agreed, it's not anti-democratic (I guess we're actually talking about freedom of speech) to ignore or refuse to amplify someone's opinion.
> because I only have a limited amount of power
That only changes the scale. You and a few other users are enough to completely censor someone's opinion and you do it all the time. A moderator can wipe a comment, a submission, or a user without any suspicion that they are anti-democratic. And whether it's unsavory or not is a matter of taste.
> HN is not a government institution
Indeed, private companies have no legal duty to let your voice be heard at all. It is not my right to post on HN or YouTube.
People overestimate what "freedom" means: you are allowed to say your piece but your freedom ends where someone else's freedom begins. YouTube doesn't have to promote your opinion more than you have to promote mine.
Let's put it another way. What's a good example of a "democratic" site, paper, etc. that you know of? Together we will ask them to publish something that goes against every value they hold dear to test out your theory.
Yes, but scale is important. After all, the only difference between a government and a corporation is scale. The scale of power, the scale of leverage, the scale of trust that people put in it.
I'm of the opinion that a large platform like Youtube should not be allowed to police the content hosted there completely according to its own arbitrary whim precisely because of scale.
Far from it and I'm surprised anyone would see it this way. In a democracy the government is the people's representative looking out for all of their interests from a unique position of power. A corporation is one of the many private entities that provide a product or service. I have a say in who is leading my country but once the decision is made I have no choice but to live under it. I have no say in who is leading your company but I can always choose the services of another.
> Youtube should not be allowed
You're suggesting that size should be the difference between getting to enjoy the benefits of freedom and democracy or not. Should wealth be treated the same way? Or general influence of social media influencers with millions of people hanging on their every word? You're negotiating when and to whom should freedom and democracy apply.
Then again maybe there is a way to regulate this in a fair way. Then again even if hate speech laws exist they are more or less only enforced by platforms who don't want their image associated with that. If private entities weren't tasked with enforcing laws maybe the pressure would be relieved.
Not listening to an opinion, and declaring it invalid without actually addressing it, are two very different things. Reducing the visibility for others so they don't even get to make up their mind is a step beyond even that.
> To hold different opinions and to be aware that other people think differently on the same issue shields us from Godlike certainty which stops all discussion and reduces social relationships to those of an ant heap. A unanimous public opinion tends to eliminate bodily those who differ, for mass unanimity is not the result of agreement, but an expression of fanaticism and hysteria.
-- Hannah Arendt
I don't get the outrage: we warned people for 15 years this would happen. Now people put all their eggs in the same basket and cry when things go wrong.
Well, good. It's a learning opportunity.
I prefer my corporations greedy instead of virtuous, it's much more trustworthy.
"You shouldn't be able to poison the well" is not invalidated if the well is owned by a corporation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...
It didn't work. So what's the argument for them now?
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/copenhagen-speech-v...
These European thinkers have not always aligned with European policy. You cite Nazi Germany as the result of free speech, but it is an odd example. The Gestapo arrested people for things like "listening to the BBC" or "attending a party where someone made a stray remark about the course of the war."
I take your perspective as, "we must stop Nazis early before they come to power, and limiting public speech is an effective tool to do so."
You probably think of governments restricting speech more along the lines of Germany restricting holocaust denial, but Poland uses the same framework to restrict the acknowledgement of the Polish role during the holocaust.
The US perspective is just that inevitably you're going to get some bad governments, and they will use speech restrictions to suppress counter-speech that is necessary to bring things back to normal. And that driving speech underground isn't really an effective way to stop it.
The question for us is not, "is there some speech you would like to restrict?" But "would you like to allow your political opponents to control your speech?"
You're right that there's a difference in perspective. I know this debate can be frustrating from either side, it draws on intense conviction. But if you're passionate about it, it's worth understanding the roots of it, and knowing that Europe has not been monolithic on this issue.
There's another word to describe what you get when the ultra-rich and powerful are the ones that decide what's true and what's not: plutarchy.
Further, I'm not so sure the classic media organizations see their responsibility the same way you do. The centralization of the media landscape resulting from the invention of radio and television was extremely pernicious: it led to the near-total control of news and information by a few people, who were able to effectively propagandize their interests to millions of Americans.
These same media organizations worked hand-in-hand with the CIA and other intelligence agencies to advance falsehoods and propaganda. We have a long and sordid public history of things like Operation Mockingbird, and it never stopped. The same situation goes on today - what do you think all these "anonymous officials" are doing, who end up being cited repeatedly by the media, even after they prove to be lying, and why do you think media organizations actively hire people like John Brennan?
The Internet has given us, for the first time in decades, the ability to read information not controlled and filtered by the news media/government establishment. It is difficult to see these efforts on the part of YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms as anything other than an attempt under pressure (by the government and the classic media) to get the populace back under control and wholly informed only by government/plutarch approved information sources.
For centuries, even millenia, "fake news" and propaganda have been real problems. There were arguments at the Constitutional Convention about how 'designing men' were already spreading lies and propaganda to influence elections. Rumors and propaganda caused all sorts of problems in democratic societies throughout history, which survived anyway. Democratic discourse means yes, letting everyone speak even when it means a lot of people will be misinformed. It means it's your duty to try to convince people otherwise, even if you have to do it a thousand times or a million times. It means that you are not the possessor of ultimate truth and you don't get to dictate the truth to others. Maybe that's not the best way to run a society. Maybe we should be trying to construct Plato's Republic and penalizing people who put out what we decide is harmful. But that's not democratic.
As long as protests are limited to designated "free speech zones", there's no censorship either, right?
Yes yes one is private and the other is public property, but the effect is the exact same. Worse, in fact - at least when you're herded into a free speech zone, you know your speech is being restricted. But when your video doesn't get many views, you have no idea.