Academic media censorship conference censored by YouTube?
mintpressnews.com
mintpressnews.com
And surely easy to refute, if they were public? Internet Archive would at least have scraped the channel's page.
TFA links to https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGPZJTVIpNe-hroLo-CQ9wQ/vid... which currently 404s...
But which indeed did contain many videos... https://web.archive.org/web/20201101020416if_/https://www.yo...
Maybe Google deleted this tiny channel, or maybe it was user error by Project Censored (the apparent organizers of the conference), or maybe it was a publicity stunt by Project Censored. All three possibilities seem about equally likely.
As there’s (former, no-NDA) YouTube SWEs/SREs here - can anyone shed light onto how YouTube’s storage system works? What amount of storage redundancy and retention is available for the vast majority of videos that only get a few views ever?
It would surprise me if Google didn't keep everything. Harvesting data is part of their business model.
https://sre.google/sre-book/data-integrity/#first-layer-soft...
I work at Google, not on anything related to this though.
Source: This was published by Google in their research papers on GFS. Sorry, can't remember which paper.
It also likely would reindex it, meaning that you can't find it if you go looking for it unless you happen to know which disk it's in already and it hasn't been overwritten yet.
Where is that link in the article? I just see a link to this channel:
Because given Google's (any big tech company really) lack of morals, I don't believe they'd care to censor anything at all.
Countries are struggling hard to put this into local law right now since it has to be by July this year - and as it turns out, to the surprise of no one, it's basically impossible to do so. The worst part must be that the law is retroactive, so a lot of old content will be removed and I'm sure no one will bother putting in a counter-notice for a six year old video.
I'm very curious how small services like Peertube instances will handle this.
Something funny from an iteration of the law in Germany: You are allowed to use 128x128 images of copyrighted content for "fair use"/without running into the chance of it getting taken down automatically, so good luck making quality content :)
Well, not true. I built whole company that does exactly this. It's disappointing that YouTube is used as the standard of what technology can do and how these systems can work.
We built system with the creator as a first class citizen. This means they are able to claim exceptions (as defined by law) before any action is taken. They are also able to utilize outside arbiters (WIPO, ...) free of charge to make independent decisions when there is an issue.
This are just few highlights. But the reality is that just because YouTube built shitty system doesn't mean the whole Internet has to copy it.
Good luck with your work!
Absolutely! We need to be held accountable.
> It's nice that there's ways to make this friendlier for creators, but wouldn't most bigger services rather block and build a cheap system in-house than rely on a SaaS/b2b product, if you don't give it away for free or price very competitively?
The biggest innovation of our company is not its technology but the business model. We in fact do give it free to all platforms, rightsholders and creators equally. How do we make money? When there is monetization occurring on the platform, we take %. It's literally the same model of VISA, where cards are free (ok, not all of them) but you pay for the transaction.
Some platforms will still try to build their own internal system, similarly to YouTube's Content ID. However as it stands right now, they are not complaint with EUCD and even they do become complaint, they are retaining extreme liability. We, on the other hand, created a setup where we are able to take this liability from the hands of the platforms while providing best service possible.
We also aligned our incentives with the success of everyone involved. If rightsholders over block, we don't get paid. If platforms can't attract creators because the system is too intrusive, we don't get paid. If creators don't benefit from our system, we don't get paid.
We intentionally built this way. We made it free to allow widespread adoption. We can scale much further than CID (currently can process 1,100 hours of content a second, or 66,000 hours a minute; while guaranteeing 5 second response time with full license being issued) but we also spent last two years working with civic societies, copyright scholars and others to help us build balance system with processes that don't favor one side over the other.
We have still long way to go, but I believe we are on a good path.
Great! In the interest of preserving that alignment into the future, it might be helpful to lock in important aspects of the business model by limiting your future decisions with a Ulysses pact[1]. Cory Doctorow gave a tall[2] about using Ulysses pacts in the tech industry:
>> It's not that you don't want to lose weight when you raid your Oreo stash in the middle of the night. It's just that the net present value of tomorrow's weight loss is hyperbolically discounted in favor of the carbohydrate rush of tonight's Oreos. If you're serious about not eating a bag of Oreos your best bet is to not have a bag of Oreos to eat. Not because you're weak willed. Because you're a grown up. And once you become a grown up, you start to understand that there will be tired and desperate moments in your future and the most strong-willed thing you can do is use the willpower that you have now when you're strong, at your best moment, to be the best that you can be later when you're at your weakest moment.
>> The answer to not getting pressure from your bosses, your stakeholders, your investors or your members, to do the wrong thing later, when times are hard, is to take options off the table right now.
Designing for durability and failure safety is still important when designing business models.
It's why we made the business model is built into the core of the service and can't be easily changed. Obviously where there is a will there is a way, but it would have very significant consequences to the business to do so.
The whole point is that we can offer this system exactly because we get to share the upside with the platform, rightsholders and creators.
Guess VPN-Serversi within the evil Brexit Kingdom are going to be in high demand.
That line, as I interpret it, makes the whole blog post that you linked invalid.
But for this one, if I were running a Peertube instance I would block EU IPs and tell people to use TOR or at least ssh to a lineode if they wanted to see things.
How can that be your interpretation of article 17 when it literally says : "The application of this Article shall not lead to any general monitoring obligation." in it.
Oh, come on now! A big company may lack morals, true, but in order to appease the most vocal, acutely political and obsessively moral part of the general public, including its own employees, it needs to conform to the societal demands on it. How else would you explain the appearance of banners linking to official Covid-related sites under videos about Covid, or pulling down of the videos that question the official Covid-related policies (such as lockdowns), or banners under videos from state-sponsored channels such as RT, or removal of videos that question the outcome of the US presidential election, or, well, most of the articles on the Youtube blog, really [0]. They are firmly placing themselves on specific sides of political, cultural, or ethical divides.
Since when is public health a political, cultural or ethical issue ?
You're either not American or you've been living under a rock for the past year. Public health has been a political issue for decades, and culture and ethics are inseparable from politcs. And then COVID happened and now everything down to believing the virus exists and choosing to take precautions has political ramifications.
It shouldn't be that way but it is.
Also, platforms are famously not accountable for what users upload - that's what makes them platforms and not editors.
Old Google maybe. The kind of Google employee who broke down in 2016 asking “How could we let this happen?” has a very different approach.
Nobody wants their video ad up against 'controversial' material.
That said, there has to be a way to redress these grievances.
Of the many things we could start to regulated it's that:
1) If there is a take-down, they have to tell you why and give you a few days to dispute or to open a grievance.
2) Grievances have to be addressed.
I don't mind even if there is a fee - it's reasonable for Google to require $100 to address a grievance, after all, they are hosting for free.
Alternatively, they could be required to have a 'paid version' without ads in which the bar for issues was considerably higher.
That's just off the of my head, so not exactly well thought out.
The point is, however, they're reaching a scale whereby some of these platforms are equivalent to a public good. It's like they are becoming broadcast or telecoms, which were always subject to regulation.
The content moderation algorithm is optimizing for three variables simultaneously - maximum number of videos hosted, maximum number of views, minimum number of lawsuits/negative press articles written/anti-Big Tech tweets.
The algorithm can't know if its truly maximizing the first two without letting the last one trigger every so often.
We are just witnessing/participating in the live dataset they are testing on.
Just because the company is amoral doesn't mean that political-moral entryists can't get their hands on the internal levers of power.
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thecleaners2018
One really eye opening thing that was super obvious in retrospect is the societal context that's required for a lot of the content moderation. No matter how many people you cram into a room in Malaysia, they aren't going to be able to fully appreciate the nuances of things like satire targeted towards a US audience. For the same reason, you can't have a team of well paid moderators in San Francisco moderating political discussions happening in Burma.
This is what makes the problem of content moderation so intractable. There are extreme financial and political incentives trying to evade moderation, and no matter how many people you throw at the problem, from any number of backgrounds, your coverage is still going to be dismal.
Couple that with the fact that this is probabally the most traumatizing job in the world, with incredibly high suicide rates. It's really really hard to build up a moderation team that can make a sizable dent in the flood of horrific content that floods these platforms. Your best bet is a swarm of AI doing its best, and as many humans as you can hire double checking their work, which is the state of moderation on most major platforms.
To me this shows the need for public platforms with open systems for distribution and moderation. Some possible approaches are out there. I hope people will support them. And if they find content they don't like, study the history of political dissent and political speech, and learn about ways of improving open moderation before dismissing open distributed platforms. Because otherwise you get what Google decides you will get.
There is no single majority.
That's either self-contradictory, or a very interesting idea.
If you want public platforms with moderation, then it's self-contradictory. Once it's moderated, it's not public (for at least some definitions of public).
If you meant "open" to apply to moderation, though... that could be really interesting. Here's a platform, and it's public, that is, anyone can say anything on it. And it's got open moderation. You don't like Google's moderation? Create your own. Those that like yours better than Google's, use yours rather than Google's. Those that like Google's use Google's. Those that like the CCP's moderation use it.
The whole article is extremely thin on facts and very fat on speculation and breathless rhetoric.
The other commenter was trying to flame, now that others seemingly piled on by needlessly flagging. I was generous and didn't engage in anything but a nudge to what I was implying/saying.
Google's behavior might be 'obvious' to some but it's not obvious to everyone, hence why I posted what I did in a public forum where ~2 billion people have access to this website but don't have uniform understanding of all things Google, that Google's behavior was hypocritical. The commenter expected me to say one thing or another and that's where the disconnect is. Not me. If you can cite my error, I'll happily provide 1 BTC for you clearly proving my error. But you can't. I don't come here to blame/flame. I come to contribute what I find valuable to the community. Others didn't find it valuable, that's fine but I tried.
When dealing with trolls. There is nothing wrong with giving them a gentle nudge, which is what I did. I didn't engage past my initial comment and one additional.
Finally, when dealing with people. Don't prejudge, even if you are the judge, when dealing with the community. I've done nothing wrong and the only problem is the narrative in people's head and their expectations to ~'not rehash what others have said' as @blauditore and @saagarjha were implying.
What others may have said in the past doesn't inform my experience, I wasn't there. I'm speaking for myself and there is nothing wrong with what I said. And still isn't.
For @blauditore and @saagarjha, I'd say their comments were trying to flame. Don't project their bad behavior on me.
Pointing out that the morals of Google diverging from their founding motto is absolutely substantive.
As for flamebait, to someone whom has an axe to grind, everything is flamebait. Which is something I have zero control over.
> rather to err on the side of posting thoughtfully and substantively.
I did. As for beauty, it's in the eyes of the beholder. Which why I'm standing my ground on what I said. I didn't entice someone. I didn't get into ad hominem. I simply only responded once that I'm pointing out something that is clear to me (hypocrisy of Google's morals).
I already stated how Google diverged from it's original motto. One commenter felt it was unoriginal. Well, I don't live on this website. Also, where are these unproductive expectations coming from? Pointing out that someone is 'unoriginal' isn't engaging anyone to discuss something.
Since speaking plainly isn't getting through.
Let me reason by comparison.
If I'm a 5th grader and the commenter is a professional 12th grader. How is the 5th grader wrong for posting it's opinion? That is clearly substantive and thoughtful, I literally quoted Google's code of ethics page to make my case. The 12th grader should've known better.
If something has been said 100s of times on HN, guess what happens? Typically, it educates the new readers whom haven't seen that information before. Or it gets downvoted into oblivion. Nothing wrong with that and it's self policing.
I believe this type of response, to me, was misplaced and unnecessary.
I'll rephrase your question. What is the reason for the deletion of your comment?
Simple. People were flaming. It was getting downvoted and flagged. If the community sends a clear statement (by acting in concert with one another), then I'd prefer not to get downvoted into oblivion. To me, it's not a hill I want to die on. And it was clear that others were misunderstanding. All I can do is communicate my perspective. If someone comes to the conversation with misguided expectations (even if it's a swarm of people), then I'll bow out. It's simple non-violent communication.
I appreciate the attempt at clarity but I don't see a question here.
How so? I wasn't embarrassed. I was shocked at the immature reactions.
First you wrote a short one-liner comment that said (roughly summarizing from memory) "google's motto used to be don't be evil, lol". Users flagkilled it almost instantly and you, embarrassed, deleted it. Then a moderator scolded you, which is even more unpleasant and embarrassing and you started writing lengthy defenses pretending the embarrassing thing you deleted was some Voltairean epigram, talking about how you 'stand by' a thing you yourself deleted. When this inconsistency was pointed out to you, you pretended not to understand the issue and went on to blame other users because, I assume, the whole thing becomes even more embarrassing if we recall that it's, in fact, about a comment that said (roughly summarizing from memory) "google's motto used to be don't be evil, lol".
I asked you what your question was but instead of realizing that you asked me a judgemental question (which isn't really a fair question...you presume guilt), you continue with your judgement without the facade of asking. You told me what you thought. Now, this latest comment, you're expounding as if you're doing someone a favor but instead it's condensation and gaslighting my perspective.
As for these longer follow-up questions. Honestly, if they got downvoted, I'd just laugh because it would only confirm how immature the readers are (which does happen occasionally but is rare) but instead, I wouldn't edit them b/c objectively, I'm not in the wrong on these longer posts. And someone would be hard pressed to say anything to the contrary.
To be clear, I'm standing my ground on my right to do what I did, for my own reasons and it was pointless/meritless to throw me into the mix of someone trying to provoke a flamewar. Which is a presumption beyond any evidence (even the deleted evidence) can verify. But...maybe I'm 'guilty' because someone might have power over me and they projected their negative mental patterns onto my comments? Cool world. Seems like the irony of my original comment! But I hope that rationality comes.
Instead, it was an innocent comment and the reaction has been anything but mature or consistent. I've seen even more superficial, pointless, and antagonistic comments than mine daily on HN, yet it's rare to see them squashed. I've checked multiple times. It's hit/miss, since HN has scaled over the years.
Take a step back and chill out. /fin
(I've not seen any of the usual right wing free speech faction stand up for these...)
Since college faculty often skews 10:1 or better democrat, I don't find that too surprising.
Hi! Part of the right-wing free-speech faction here! (Well, I don't consider myself a rightist, but you probably would.) This incident sucks just like all the other ones! Hope this helps.
It's unreasonable to assume that a right-winger would know about it, just like it is unreasonable to assume that a left-winger is going to know about all the silencing that goes on against the right-wing. It's the media blackouts we're talking about here. That's the entire point.
But to address the left-wing causes on the site, It doesn't actually seem like they're partisan issues unless you're talking about the ones specifically about the previous administration, perhaps except for #22 (which boils down to 'we should tax the wealthy', aka something that was not censored, even if it was narrated against) and #6 which is specifically about a new national news source which is trying to deceive readers by appearing as a bunch of different local news sources. Obviously you might not agree with more but they don't seem to be strictly selecting left-wing articles for this top 25 list.