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"Third, we will be taking a tougher stance on videos that do not clearly violate our policies — for example, videos that contain inflammatory religious or supre

"Third, we will be taking a tougher stance on videos that do not clearly violate our policies — for example, videos that contain inflammatory religious or supremacist content. In future these will appear behind an interstitial warning and they will not be monetised, recommended or eligible for comments or user endorsements. That means these videos will have less engagement and be harder to find. We think this strikes the right balance between free expression and access to information without promoting extremely offensive viewpoints." I cannot help but think that this will not be applied evenly - that some political content will be allowed and some will not.

xapata 9y ago
That's the status quo. One could argue nearly anything is political content, or art. They're announcing that they're going to draw the line differently, not that they're drawing a line for the first time.
- zdean 9y ago
  "... extremely offensive viewpoints." I imagine it'll be a very fuzzy line that they draw.
- DuskStar 9y ago
  There are Leftist movements in the US that are arguably just as violent as those on the alt-Right. What's the chance that these policies apply to both sides equally? Given the history, I'd say not much. And I don't think that's a good thing. EDIT: Unless someone is saying that AntiFa ISN'T violent?
  - ithinkinstereo 9y ago
    The recent controversies at Evergreen College provide an illustrative example. Videos of student protestors bullying professors, ala Maoist Cultural Revolution style, were taken down due to issues with "bullying". It's worth noting that these were original videos uploaded to YT by the protestors themselves!
    - DuskStar 9y ago
      Also worth noting that the videos were probably taken down less for "bullying" and more because they made the protesters look horrible, too.
      - kjksf 9y ago
        Make up your mind. By your definition(s), YouTube can't possibly handle inflammatory leftist material. If they don't remove it, they're clearly leftist biased. If the do remove it, they're also clearly leftist biased, but for a different reason. You can't have it both ways.
        DuskStar 9y ago
        IMO, the entire situation with Evergreen College is closer to being an alt-Right propaganda piece than a leftist one. Screaming at and demanding the resignation of a professor essentially for saying that "On a college campus, one's right to speak - or to be - must never be based on skin color" looks pretty bad, you know? The fact it was produced by leftists who need a far better grasp of optics really doesn't change that. Removing things that make one side look bad - but not similarly doing the same for the other side - is bias, yes. Unless you think YouTube would have removed videos taken by the protesters if the situation was reversed, and it was a neo-Nazi protest that was looking horrible?
        patrickg_zill 9y ago
        Pardon me, but your view is ridiculous! Or are you claiming that the people at Evergreen are all secret members of the Pepe Brotherhood and that they are not holding their leftist views honestly?
        dropit_sphere 9y ago
        What part of his view seems ridiculous to you?
  - xapata 9y ago
    > What's the chance ...? How about doing some old-fashioned data gathering for the benefit of the community? Document all violent events, how many YouTube videos are posted of each, how many are removed and how long it takes for each to be pulled down. Without data, it's just conspiracy theory.
    - JetSpiegel 9y ago
      Considering there are several hours of video uploaded to YouTube per second, this is nigh impossible for someone without Google-level resources. And that's just the last two points of your comment. The first requires a nation state.
      - xapata 9y ago
        You could do a statistical sample or find some proxy variables.
  - Angostura 9y ago
    > What's the chance that these policies apply to both sides equally? I would say there's a very good chance that it will
    - omginternets 9y ago
      How do you figure?
      - chillydawg 9y ago
        Well most of the abuse is from the right, so most of the correct action will be towards the right. It won't be equal in terms of amount of action for a given side, but it will be equal in terms of blocking dodgy content.
        omginternets 9y ago
        >Well most of the abuse is from the right, so most of the correct action will be towards the right That's a hell of an assumption. This subthread succinctly illustrates the problem at hand.
        Corristowolf 9y ago
        >Well most of the abuse is from the right, so most of the correct action will be towards the right ^ lmao this guy.
    - Angostura 9y ago
      Well, you're assuming asymmetry with no evidence that it's particularly likely.
  - freshhawk 9y ago
    So far, no they aren't. Not even close. Not that there isn't any violence from the left, but not nearly as much. But using the left/right simplified political spectrum is a terrible metric in any case. If there was ever a time to at least use the compass metric to differentiate between authoritarian/libertarian opinions as well as left/right it is now. It can be hard to realize as an American but judged globally you are comparing far right authoritarians to centre or even centre-right authoritarians as if they were opposites.
    - BearGoesChirp 9y ago
      >So far, no they aren't. Not even close. Not that there isn't any violence from the left, but not nearly as much. This is based on information that is highly controlled by the companies which we were just discussing, right?
    - bzbarsky 9y ago
      > Not that there isn't any violence from the left, but not nearly as much Are you sure? I'd love to see credible sources for this data, for the US. Note that sources talking about "hate crimes" are unfortunately not usable here simply because they by definition exclude violence towards groups that violent left-wing groups target. I am aware that after this last election there was an upsurge in hate crimes; there was also an upsurge in violent attacks on Trump supporters. I have had little luck finding good numbers on what's going on, and would appreciate pointers. Also, are we talking about recent history, or historically? Because again, for the US, there was a good deal of left-wing violence in the 70s that has been successfully whitewashed out of history. For example, some (but not all) of the leaders of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground moved right on to positions like "Clinical Associate Professor of Law at the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University School of Law"[1] and "communications director at Environmental Advocates of New York" (and for the same one, "heads up his own consulting firm called Jeff Jones Strategies that specializes in media expertise, writing, and campaign strategies that help grassroots and progressive groups achieve their goals")[2]. Going further down the list we have people becoming high school teachers and then academics specializing in education[3], and mathematics instructors [4]. At least as of 20 years ago, none of this was discussed in high school history classes that cover the period. Most people who didn't personally live through it aren't aware that any of this ever happened. > or even centre-right authoritarians as if they were opposites The centre-right authoritarians, by that definition, are not the ones involved in what would be considered "leftist violence" in the US. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardine_Dohrn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardine_Dohrn [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Jones_(activist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Jones_(activist) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Machtinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Machtinger [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rudd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rudd
Retra 9y ago
No judgement is not good judgement.
- weirdstuff 9y ago
  It's simply none at all, right?
eplanit 9y ago
It won't be, because "inflammatory" (esp. juxtaposed to "religious"), and "supremacist" are subjective. Unpopular viewpoints, especially regarding religion and race, can easily be branded and thus squelched.
elihu 9y ago
I have mixed feelings about this and I share your concern about it not being applied evenly. I think what bothers me the most, though, is that we're too reliant on one company to be the gatekeeper to the vast majority of video content online. I'd feel better if there were more competitors in this space, and if YouTube was overly restrictive of certain content, you could just move to a different service and have a similar experience. I can't really blame YouTube for being "too successful", but this is one of those cases where being a near-monopoly can put a company into an awkward position.
glasz 9y ago
already happening with alternative media. also, anti "hatespeech" laws are being passed while the term isnt even defined. the establishment and left extremism figured out that the internet as the greatest platform for real free speech undermines their prerogativd of interpretation in the public. this is a fight to control public opinion and we will lose it when we continue to be jelly fish.
coolgeek 9y ago
> for example, videos that contain inflammatory religious or supremacist content. Why does that trigger concerns for you about 'political content'?
sidcool 9y ago
I feel it's next to impossible to apply this objectively
- randyrand 9y ago
  doesnt seem like they want to try to be anyway
zamalek 9y ago
That's why we classically had the Supreme Court to deal with this stuff. Sadly it do not scale.
- forgottenpass 9y ago
  This is not a question of scale, it's a question of kind. SCOTUS decisions scale just fine. It's called "stare decisis." This is simply a new censor with less permissive and less stringent standards.
odiroot 9y ago
Aha, so big US companies are our police now. I share your fear. The "kosher" content would be now defined by some faceless person in NY/SF.
- walshemj 9y ago
  Or more likely a minimum wage drone in a third world country
  - Ygg2 9y ago
    Don't worry, once their opinion is enshrined in a neural net somewhere, they'll no longer be in charge. Then it will just be a cold metallic box that will silently, and efficiently judge you.
  - freshhawk 9y ago
    The definitions won't be outsourced, but the psychological trauma involved in doing the actual moderation certainly will be.
  - rootsudo 9y ago
    For example BPO for Google in Makati, Philippines through Skykes is an 25-30,000 PESO/month job for content moderator. $500-600. And that's considered a good job if you're a filipino. It's about half that in India.
- vacri 9y ago
  By 'our police', do you mean 'actively curating their own content'? Do you call your local librarian a cop as well?
  - izacus 9y ago
    Local librarian doesn't dictate culture and content to the whole world.
    - tomelders 9y ago
patrickg_zill 9y ago
Given that the costs will still be present but Google won't get any benefit for hosting these videos, how likely are they in the future to simply delete them?
- Faark 9y ago
  You seem to simplify quite a lot. Costs should go down with videos not being recommended and thus less watched. Not excessively oppressing their users should be a benefit. Sure we could find more of both costs and benefits and I wouldn't be sure about the resulting score. I also wonder how much it will cost to classify a video versus just hosting one of those average and barely viewed videos.
auganov 9y ago
Right, quite honestly I'd like to see them just make a mostly uncensored spinoff and set up censorship on vanilla youtube. Lax, uneven censorship gives you the worst of both worlds really.
skybrian 9y ago
This is not really new. Looking for "biases" that give better search results is kind of the point; it goes back to PageRank. (A preference for more popular content is going to rank less popular content lower.) Similarly for many other search ranking signals.

xapata 9y ago

That's the status quo. One could argue nearly anything is political content, or art. They're announcing that they're going to draw the line differently, not that they're drawing a line for the first time.

zdean 9y ago
"... extremely offensive viewpoints." I imagine it'll be a very fuzzy line that they draw.
DuskStar 9y ago
There are Leftist movements in the US that are arguably just as violent as those on the alt-Right. What's the chance that these policies apply to both sides equally? Given the history, I'd say not much. And I don't think that's a good thing. EDIT: Unless someone is saying that AntiFa ISN'T violent?
- ithinkinstereo 9y ago
  The recent controversies at Evergreen College provide an illustrative example. Videos of student protestors bullying professors, ala Maoist Cultural Revolution style, were taken down due to issues with "bullying". It's worth noting that these were original videos uploaded to YT by the protestors themselves!
  - DuskStar 9y ago
    Also worth noting that the videos were probably taken down less for "bullying" and more because they made the protesters look horrible, too.
    - kjksf 9y ago
      Make up your mind. By your definition(s), YouTube can't possibly handle inflammatory leftist material. If they don't remove it, they're clearly leftist biased. If the do remove it, they're also clearly leftist biased, but for a different reason. You can't have it both ways.
      - DuskStar 9y ago
        IMO, the entire situation with Evergreen College is closer to being an alt-Right propaganda piece than a leftist one. Screaming at and demanding the resignation of a professor essentially for saying that "On a college campus, one's right to speak - or to be - must never be based on skin color" looks pretty bad, you know? The fact it was produced by leftists who need a far better grasp of optics really doesn't change that. Removing things that make one side look bad - but not similarly doing the same for the other side - is bias, yes. Unless you think YouTube would have removed videos taken by the protesters if the situation was reversed, and it was a neo-Nazi protest that was looking horrible?
        patrickg_zill 9y ago
        Pardon me, but your view is ridiculous! Or are you claiming that the people at Evergreen are all secret members of the Pepe Brotherhood and that they are not holding their leftist views honestly?
        dropit_sphere 9y ago
        What part of his view seems ridiculous to you?
- xapata 9y ago
  > What's the chance ...? How about doing some old-fashioned data gathering for the benefit of the community? Document all violent events, how many YouTube videos are posted of each, how many are removed and how long it takes for each to be pulled down. Without data, it's just conspiracy theory.
  - JetSpiegel 9y ago
    Considering there are several hours of video uploaded to YouTube per second, this is nigh impossible for someone without Google-level resources. And that's just the last two points of your comment. The first requires a nation state.
    - xapata 9y ago
      You could do a statistical sample or find some proxy variables.
- Angostura 9y ago
  > What's the chance that these policies apply to both sides equally? I would say there's a very good chance that it will
  - omginternets 9y ago
    How do you figure?
    - chillydawg 9y ago
      Well most of the abuse is from the right, so most of the correct action will be towards the right. It won't be equal in terms of amount of action for a given side, but it will be equal in terms of blocking dodgy content.
      - omginternets 9y ago
        >Well most of the abuse is from the right, so most of the correct action will be towards the right That's a hell of an assumption. This subthread succinctly illustrates the problem at hand.
      - Corristowolf 9y ago
        >Well most of the abuse is from the right, so most of the correct action will be towards the right ^ lmao this guy.
  - Angostura 9y ago
    Well, you're assuming asymmetry with no evidence that it's particularly likely.
- freshhawk 9y ago
  So far, no they aren't. Not even close. Not that there isn't any violence from the left, but not nearly as much. But using the left/right simplified political spectrum is a terrible metric in any case. If there was ever a time to at least use the compass metric to differentiate between authoritarian/libertarian opinions as well as left/right it is now. It can be hard to realize as an American but judged globally you are comparing far right authoritarians to centre or even centre-right authoritarians as if they were opposites.
  - BearGoesChirp 9y ago
    >So far, no they aren't. Not even close. Not that there isn't any violence from the left, but not nearly as much. This is based on information that is highly controlled by the companies which we were just discussing, right?
  - bzbarsky 9y ago
    > Not that there isn't any violence from the left, but not nearly as much Are you sure? I'd love to see credible sources for this data, for the US. Note that sources talking about "hate crimes" are unfortunately not usable here simply because they by definition exclude violence towards groups that violent left-wing groups target. I am aware that after this last election there was an upsurge in hate crimes; there was also an upsurge in violent attacks on Trump supporters. I have had little luck finding good numbers on what's going on, and would appreciate pointers. Also, are we talking about recent history, or historically? Because again, for the US, there was a good deal of left-wing violence in the 70s that has been successfully whitewashed out of history. For example, some (but not all) of the leaders of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Underground moved right on to positions like "Clinical Associate Professor of Law at the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University School of Law"[1] and "communications director at Environmental Advocates of New York" (and for the same one, "heads up his own consulting firm called Jeff Jones Strategies that specializes in media expertise, writing, and campaign strategies that help grassroots and progressive groups achieve their goals")[2]. Going further down the list we have people becoming high school teachers and then academics specializing in education[3], and mathematics instructors [4]. At least as of 20 years ago, none of this was discussed in high school history classes that cover the period. Most people who didn't personally live through it aren't aware that any of this ever happened. > or even centre-right authoritarians as if they were opposites The centre-right authoritarians, by that definition, are not the ones involved in what would be considered "leftist violence" in the US. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardine_Dohrn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardine_Dohrn [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Jones_(activist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Jones_(activist) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Machtinger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Machtinger [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rudd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rudd

Retra 9y ago

No judgement is not good judgement.

weirdstuff 9y ago
It's simply none at all, right?

eplanit 9y ago

It won't be, because "inflammatory" (esp. juxtaposed to "religious"), and "supremacist" are subjective. Unpopular viewpoints, especially regarding religion and race, can easily be branded and thus squelched.

elihu 9y ago

I have mixed feelings about this and I share your concern about it not being applied evenly. I think what bothers me the most, though, is that we're too reliant on one company to be the gatekeeper to the vast majority of video content online. I'd feel better if there were more competitors in this space, and if YouTube was overly restrictive of certain content, you could just move to a different service and have a similar experience. I can't really blame YouTube for being "too successful", but this is one of those cases where being a near-monopoly can put a company into an awkward position.

glasz 9y ago

already happening with alternative media. also, anti "hatespeech" laws are being passed while the term isnt even defined. the establishment and left extremism figured out that the internet as the greatest platform for real free speech undermines their prerogativd of interpretation in the public. this is a fight to control public opinion and we will lose it when we continue to be jelly fish.

coolgeek 9y ago

> for example, videos that contain inflammatory religious or supremacist content. Why does that trigger concerns for you about 'political content'?

sidcool 9y ago

I feel it's next to impossible to apply this objectively

randyrand 9y ago
doesnt seem like they want to try to be anyway

zamalek 9y ago

That's why we classically had the Supreme Court to deal with this stuff. Sadly it do not scale.

forgottenpass 9y ago
This is not a question of scale, it's a question of kind. SCOTUS decisions scale just fine. It's called "stare decisis." This is simply a new censor with less permissive and less stringent standards.

odiroot 9y ago

Aha, so big US companies are our police now. I share your fear. The "kosher" content would be now defined by some faceless person in NY/SF.

walshemj 9y ago
Or more likely a minimum wage drone in a third world country
- Ygg2 9y ago
  Don't worry, once their opinion is enshrined in a neural net somewhere, they'll no longer be in charge. Then it will just be a cold metallic box that will silently, and efficiently judge you.
- freshhawk 9y ago
  The definitions won't be outsourced, but the psychological trauma involved in doing the actual moderation certainly will be.
- rootsudo 9y ago
  For example BPO for Google in Makati, Philippines through Skykes is an 25-30,000 PESO/month job for content moderator. $500-600. And that's considered a good job if you're a filipino. It's about half that in India.
vacri 9y ago
By 'our police', do you mean 'actively curating their own content'? Do you call your local librarian a cop as well?
- izacus 9y ago
  Local librarian doesn't dictate culture and content to the whole world.
  - tomelders 9y ago

patrickg_zill 9y ago

Given that the costs will still be present but Google won't get any benefit for hosting these videos, how likely are they in the future to simply delete them?

Faark 9y ago
You seem to simplify quite a lot. Costs should go down with videos not being recommended and thus less watched. Not excessively oppressing their users should be a benefit. Sure we could find more of both costs and benefits and I wouldn't be sure about the resulting score. I also wonder how much it will cost to classify a video versus just hosting one of those average and barely viewed videos.

auganov 9y ago

Right, quite honestly I'd like to see them just make a mostly uncensored spinoff and set up censorship on vanilla youtube. Lax, uneven censorship gives you the worst of both worlds really.

skybrian 9y ago

This is not really new. Looking for "biases" that give better search results is kind of the point; it goes back to PageRank. (A preference for more popular content is going to rank less popular content lower.) Similarly for many other search ranking signals.