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YouTube AI deletes war crimes evidence as 'extremist material'

674 points by jacobr 9y ago

jacobr 9y ago
Also see this Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/896358097320636416 https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/896358097320636416 > Ironically, by deleting years old opposition channels YouTube is doing more damage to Syrian history than ISIS could ever hope to achieve > Also gone are the dozens of playlists of videos from Syria I created, including dozens of chemical attacks in playlists by date > Keep in mind in many cases these are the only copies of the videos, and in some the channel owner will have died, so nothing can stop it
- giancarlostoro 9y ago
  That is a little insane... Makes me wish there was some sort of website that archived specific YouTube videos marked as historical or criminal evidence or some sort of qualification, as long as they don't abuse copyright just to make sure if places like YouTube delete them they can remain. Or a service that uploads to multiple video streaming sources at once (though I imagine these might violate the TOS of YouTube for w/e reason). Kind of sad where you have video evidence being deleted by YouTube. It would be nice if they allowed some sort of option for political type videos like these to actually be uploaded by users, especially if the original uploader was killed, to be downloaded with metadata (upload date to youtube, youtuber username, etc) so anyone can reupload it elsewhere. Another case where I wish TPB had made their own YouTube clone already. I'm sure they would of not taken down these sort of videos. Wondering where Wikileaks is in these sort of cases? Do they download these sort of videos? That begs the question: why don't they? It seems right up their own alley. I don't always agree with them, nor do I digest their content but at the very least for a site like theirs it would make sense for them to archive YouTube and other politically sensitive videos no?
  - icebraining 9y ago
    An YouTube clone is expensive. TPB only hosts simple HTML pages (they no longer have torrent files, and even those were just a few KBs), not files with hundreds of MBs or more. As others said, the Internet Archive may be a good option for these videos. I wouldn't mind writing a system for backing them up to archive.org, but I'm not sure how would I detect them. Marking those videos requires the user to know they should be marked, which just moves the question to how they would know.
    - 4ad 9y ago
      > A YouTube clone is expensive. A YouTube clone that uses a clone of YouTube's infrastructure is expensive, but what about a distributed p2p YouTube clone? Obviously it's hard to quantify, as it doesn't exist yet, but I think it's technologically feasible.
      - afarrell 9y ago
        Meaning, you just have data stored on people's hard drives? That would be more expensive because - You have a much higher failure rate of the storage media as people say "I'm running out of hard drive space. What should I get rid of?" - You need to recruit those people to give up a resource that (unlike the spare compute cycles that SETI uses) they are likely currently using. - You have to convince people to trust you to put arbitrary video content on their hard drives. Therefore, you need to have some process for deciding what video content is objectionable enough that you won't store it.
        4ad 9y ago
        > You have a much higher failure rate of the storage media as people say "I'm running out of hard drive space. What should I get rid of?" Not really, because data is replicated between many people. People can delete it and other people would still have it. > You need to recruit those people to give up a resource that (unlike the spare compute cycles that SETI uses) they are likely currently using. It's no different than people seeding torrents or people just using ipfs. Simply accessing the system would transparently increase availability. In fact, ipfs is probably suited as-is. > You have to convince people to trust you to put arbitrary video content on their hard drives. Therefore, you need to have some process for deciding what video content is objectionable enough that you won't store it. No, data will become more accessible as people would consume it. People only need to understand how the system works, they don't need to trust "me" (whoever you refer as "you" in your post). As I said, ipfs probably works as-is.
  - aiyodev 9y ago
    Not to pick on you because this seems to be a popular opinion but I would just like to point out the insanity of your what you just wrote. "as long as they don't abuse copyright" Would we delete videos of the liberation of concentration camps if there was Nickelback music playing in the background? This just demonstrates how successful media companies have been in distorting the true purpose of copyright laws: to promote science, art, and culture for the public's benefit. It does not exist for fairness or personal gain. Copyright laws should be changed to better reflect this. Nobody should be able to silence any information that has a public benefit.
    - Spivak 9y ago
      Like, Nickelback is in the original footage or someone overalyed the track on top of the footage? I would imagine if this ever really happened it would be fine in the former, and muted in the latter. You're forgetting that 'promote...' means give the creator control of that content for the purpose of limiting access and making money. Promote in the sense that it becomes possible to actually sell artistic works like commodities. And then once the value has ben extracted the public can do what they please with it.
      - josinalvo 9y ago
        And we just need 140 years to extract it! :P
      - oh_sigh 9y ago
        Not quite on the level of concentration camp liberation videos, but wasn't there a video of a 2 year old dancing that had like a 20 second clip of some popular song playing on the radio in very low quality in the background, and it got deleted for copyright infringement? I think this was the video, but it is obviously back up now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KfJHFWlhQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KfJHFWlhQ
      - tripzilch 9y ago
        > Like, Nickelback is in the original footage or someone overalyed the track on top of the footage? I would imagine if this ever really happened it would be fine in the former, and muted in the latter. While I agree that would be the most sensible course of action, if this in reality happened right now, the whole video would be deleted in both cases, automatically (assuming it's clear enough to trigger detection in the first example).
  - LoSboccacc 9y ago
    > Makes me wish there was some sort of website Can't people just use liveleaks for that kind of videos?
    - giancarlostoro 9y ago
      I guess we need more education about online video hosting is also a factor, most people from other sides of the world will know mainly the most popular websites and the smaller ones (by comparison) might not be even heard of by these people.
  - pmlnr 9y ago
    > Makes me wish there was some sort of website that archived specific YouTube videos marked as historical or criminal evidence or some sort of qualification Make one. Add it as warrior project to archive team; save them and re-upload them if they are deleted. Unfortunately we all need to participate, because https://medium.com/message/never-trust-a-corporation-to-do-a-librarys-job-f58db4673351 https://medium.com/message/never-trust-a-corporation-to-do-a...
    - giancarlostoro 9y ago
      Fair enough, been looking more into the projects from the Archive Team. They at least had one project, will have to see how functional it may or may not be. https://github.com/ArchiveTeam/riptube https://github.com/ArchiveTeam/riptube
- zeep 9y ago
  It's ridiculous easy to sensor the web for corporations and Governments (but for some reason, they keep saying that once something it's posted online, it's over and it will stay there forever)... which is why I use youtube-dl for the videos that I really want to keep...
- sondr3 9y ago
  People really need to download videos from YouTube if they are that important, not doing otherwise is in my opinion reckless. YouTube is not a service you can expect to actually archive important videos, if I look through my favorites or other playlists, a ton of videos are deleted. Use youtube-dl, download it to your own server and back them up yourself. Yes, this is awful and sucks on so many levels, but please, please, back up data.
- carvalho 9y ago
  Why wouldn't Youtube pass on any extremist material on to the FBI before making it unavailable for the wider public?
- PeanutCurry 9y ago
  In my opinion the important thing to remember is that Youtube could easily do something about this. It seems like there's a trend in a lot tech-centric companies to save money automating away actual content review as well as customer interaction. But humans are entirely capable of reviewing content and giving detailed explanations for why something has been judged a certain way, especially if you have them work alongside an automated system that simplifies the process for them. I realize that minimizing human labor is a big part of how these sorts of business models achieve their profitability, but problems like this aren't going to go away as long as that's the norm. And I don't just mean poor explanations for policy decisions either. The core issue is bigger than that imo. The information age has privatized a lot of the modern 'public' social/cultural spaces. For nations that value both the freedom of speech and the preservation of historically/culturally significant speech this is problematic. It reduces the public's ability to express itself but also their ability to look back on old expressions and learn about the history or cultural paradigms behind them. This isn't really supposed to be a rant at Google in specific. They're just the topic at hand so they're the easy punching bag. In general, customer service aside, I think they do good work and more importantly they exercised the necessary foresight and resources to develop their products into what they are today. I'm by no means implying we should socialize social media... no pun intended. But I do think there needs to be more discourse about how these trends will affect the future of speech and historical censorship. Right now it's just a modern problem in its infancy, but decades from now people who want to see visceral content depicting firsthand experiences from events like those happening in Syria, or the Arab Spring, are going to be getting censored history. What if China started pressuring foreign companies, via benevolent coercion such as financial incentives, to implement systems that made finding information about Tienanmen Square more difficult? The privatized nature of these platforms makes this sort of attack easier as well. And I don't have a good solution, but that's why I think there needs to be more dialogue about the future of online media in general and what direction we want to steer it in.
  - Eridrus 9y ago
    Try some back of the envelope math to see if it is possible. Start with 300 hours of video uploaded every minute. I calculated the cost to be 6bn USD/yr assuming the fully loaded cost of a full time reviewer is 20k, which dwarfs the revenue YouTube has. So please, lay out a plan that actually works with the economics of YouTube.
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brndnmtthws 9y ago
If you use YouTube, you are subject to the whims of that private corporation, regardless of whether it's right or wrong. They should find a way to host the content somewhere else.
- emilsedgh 9y ago
  Well almost everything we use these days belongs to a private organization. And we're fully subject to their whims. Something is wrong about that.
  - crusso 9y ago
    And yet, without those private organizations and the free markets that allowed them to thrive - the whole notion of having all that is preserved online by them would be utterly unimaginable. The internet as we know it, capable of passing all this bandwidth to individuals around the world wouldn't exist. At best, it would still be a toy in government labs and academia like it was before it was commercialized.
    - leereeves 9y ago
      That's hardly certain. The government built the interstate highways, it could have built the Internet as well. Privatizing it was a political decision.
    - emilsedgh 9y ago
      I'm not against privatizing internet. I'm sure it wouldn't have been this useful if it wasn't for private companies. I'm just saying the notion that private companies (on the internet or not) have almost zero responsibility and we're subject to their whim is wrong. I guess that's where the rule of law is supposed to enter the discussion.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      At best, it would still be a toy in government labs and academia like it was before it was commercialized. This is demonstrably untrue. Minitel was already much more than that, despite being designed and implemented by a division of the French Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications.
monocasa 9y ago
Have they checked with YouTube to see if the files are actually deleted? Like just because their gateway won't give you access to it doesn't necessarily mean that the bits have been scrubbed on the back end. Also: here's a project to archive this information. https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7909-syrian_archive https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7909-syrian_archive
- mustacheemperor 9y ago
  Unfortunately many of the original uploaders have since died in the war, and the deleted playlists were the only visible place the videos were accessible.
  - monocasa 9y ago
    Sure, but I'm saying that in a 'documentation of war crimes' context YouTube might allow a little peek behind the veil if the videos aren't deleted but hidden.
    - mustacheemperor 9y ago
      Agreed. I think the larger problem highlighted here is that in this case "YouTube" is just the faceless algorithm making these decisions, and accessing the judgement of a real human being is nearly impossible for the average end user.
      - PeterisP 9y ago
        They quite likely have some humans verify the content - however, the criteria most likely are quite straightforward (depictions of the deaths violate their guidelines). They don't provide the judgement because that only invites attempts of explaining and negotiation - they don't want to spend time to do a careful review of every contested video, they want to make an usually accurate final judgement with the minimum time investment possible (e.g. 5 seconds for a video), and they don't want to spend resources reading all kinds of reasoning and appeals, so they don't. And that is their right to do so - they can completely arbitrarily choose which videos to host on their site and which not.
cisanti 9y ago
I have (had) a channel that had videos about missing people, their last sightings on CCTV etc. The parents of a missing person even used an embed video on their site of a CCTV footage. They emailed me if I still have the video because they need it. YouTube banned the whole channel for extremist/hateful content. Probably some of the videos/titles told the AI that the footage is extreme or some sort of glorification. I appealed on some form but don't even bother anymore. I hope YouTube as a video platform (not streaming) gets a serious competitor.
TheRealPomax 9y ago
To be fair, YouTube is under no obligation to some greater good; it's just a video hosting service. Expecting it to "preserve footage" and any footage at that, is a strange expectation.
- beejiu 9y ago
  An organiziation should not be free of criticism simply because it does not have an obligation to do or not do something.
  - tentaTherapist 9y ago
    Yes, but lots of people are suggesting regulation, which is more than just criticism.
- cisanti 9y ago
  Not an obligation, but their mission statement is "To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful." Guess they need to change to "information that we and our advertisers agree with." Yes, I know they are different companies under Alphabet but it doesn't matter. Google has become a monster and too big, powerful.
  - dickbasedregex 9y ago
    Agreed. Google just grosses me out these days.
  - deleted 9y ago
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  - camus2 9y ago
    > but their mission statement is "To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful." It's just marketing. If you really want to see what the actual "mission" is read the TOS. Google,Facebook,Twitter and co like to boast about their humanitarian and humanist stance, the Apple way, when it comes to their relationship with their users but that's all a lie. The moment the need of their users doesn't match their financial interest all bets are off. The shit-storm triggered by a few outraged online publications and announcers a few month ago is a demonstration of that fact. Independence and freedom of speech online has a price and "users" are going to find it out the hardway when Google refuses to host their content for political reasons. People already forgot, that the tech to share content online already exists, it's called RSS and Google,Twitter,Facebook and co want it to go away.
AdmiralAsshat 9y ago
It was folly to think that YouTube would be a safe place to document war crimes. YouTube is a distribution channel, not a preservation channel. Its ease of use certainly makes it an attractive option to upload things quickly, but anything of historical significance should have the video raws immediately turned over to a human rights organization for preservation.
- eloisius 9y ago
  I doubt they're grieving lost footage. It's loss of access to that distribution channel. Documentation is pointless if it can't be distributed and used to effect change.
  - privong 9y ago
    > I doubt they're grieving lost footage. This comment by jacobr suggests there is a risk of lost footage: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14998452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14998452
- Mangalor 9y ago
  Where else should they be stored?
  - moogly 9y ago
    liveleak
  - Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
    archive.org
    - osteele 9y ago
      I hope we're in a world where that can happen. At the least, we probably need “upload video to archive.org” mobile apps to make this as useful to journalists in the field as YouTube currently is. If the Archive grows as a journalistic distribution channel, it might then face YouTube's issues of copyrights, piracy, and other criminal use. However, the Archive could apply goals that are more compatible with journalism than YouTube can. Maybe sufficient philanthropic support could make this possible.
Hasknewbie 9y ago
Youtube's response regarding one of these videos documenting abuses (emphasis mine): > "we've determined that your video does violate our Community Guidelines and have upheld our original decision. We appreciate your understanding." Can someone explain to me why corporations, when interacting with customers regarding complaints/appeals, seem to have "don't forget to add insult to injury" as one of their motto more often than not? Does that kind of patronizing tone sound polite to the ears of a PR drone?
- snerbles 9y ago
  Internal studies probably correlates such language with reduced pushback from users.
  - mcguire 9y ago
    The wall of jello defense. Works well.
- viridian 9y ago
  If I remember correctly, the exact same message was delivered to Jordan Peterson a couple of weeks ago or so, before he sat down with the google memo guy. He was in the middle of a bible lecture series, and Google banned his account, and sent the exact same "we've determined that your video does violate our Community Guidelines and have upheld our original decision. We appreciate your understanding." message. It seems tone deaf especially since in cases such as these there is no understanding to appreciate. Google will not tell you what you did to violate policy, only that they checked to ensure that they found you guilty, and then they snub you further with the HR speak. It's maddening.
  - cvsh 9y ago
    The worst part of the information age is arbitration by unreasonable and impenetrable algorithms rather than humans with the capacity to make a judgement call when the rules clearly don't account for the situation at hand. A transparent appeals process staffed by humans who can at least deliver a rationale, including what rule you broke, should be required by law. There's irreparable reputational damage associated with an algorithm libelously labeling something "extremist content" that isn't.
mschuster91 9y ago
Once again, the only hope for customer service seems to be a (social) media shitstorm. Seriously, Google, Twitter and FB massively need to ramp up their customer service and not externalize the costs of a lack of support onto society any more. And there are many "costs": people being actively harrassed and intimidated, sometimes so far they are afraid leaving their house, due to hate speech or doxxing, a loss of historically relevant information as in this case, people locked out of vital emails or their businesses (e.g. when their Gmail account gets closed due to copyright violations on Youtube)...
- TuringTest 9y ago
  > Google, Twitter and FB massively need to ramp up their customer service This is not going to happen; the whole point of their businesses based on offering free massive online services is that they are dirt-cheap by being run mostly automatically. No, the only way to fix the problem in those juggernauts, and protect the tiny individuals from getting caught and squashed in their wheels, is the mechanism that governments use to protect citizens from the worst effects of bureaucracy: having an ombudsman. A semi-independent service to receive complaints of severe abuse by the main service, and for which the primary goal is protecting users, not reducing costs. In some sense, this is how their PR department operates: they'll bring human attention and put all the required effort to fix an unjust situation, to clean the image of the company. The difference is that now the unjust situation needs to become a scandal, as you said, and an ombudsman would be required to examine all applications (either to accept them or reject them) as part of their official definition.
  - mschuster91 9y ago
    > No, the only way to fix the problem in those juggernauts, and protect the tiny individuals from getting caught and squashed in their wheels, is the mechanism that governments use to protect citizens from the worst effects of bureaucracy: having an ombudsman. A semi-independent service to receive complaints of severe abuse by the main service, and for which the primary goal is protecting users, not reducing costs. Yeah but who would finance the ombudsman? To service a country like Germany, I'd bet it needs around 2.000 FTE minimum (Facebook alone is opening a new, additional 500 FTE centre right now, and that's just for deleting the worst of the worst hate speech and porn). That's around 5M € per month. Having it paid for by taxpayers is the true manifestation of cost externalization, having it paid for by the services quickly leads down to "do whatever $company wants", and having it paid for by users leads to service only for those who can afford it while leaving the poor and most vulnerable persons in the rain.
dickbasedregex 9y ago
Screw YouTube's automation across the board. It's horrendous and lazy.
- mtgx 9y ago
  Yeah, forget about beating Go and StarCraft 2 top players. How about making the takedown of YouTube videos actually fair for a change?
  - ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    Games are still 'easy' in comparison to this sort of topic for AI. Bear in mind, every game they've had an AI play still has a firm set of rules.
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mozumder 9y ago
Can't any prosecutor gain access to those videos via subpoena anyways?
- megous 9y ago
  What are you talking about? They are deleting entire accounts of people who were filming their cities/districts being bombed by Russians, Assad or US/Coalition. (where there may not be any direct violence to any particular persons visible) Who will prosecute whom? Primary source historical material is being removed wholesale by some shitty "AI". Account of recent history is being erased. Researchers who want to put some account of history together will have harder job. They will not go to subpoena google to release some material they don't even know google has. People whose lives were destroyed by a dictator will see YouTube erasing evidence of what happened, often times leaving propaganda channels for the regime untouched. It's a disgrace. I actually came here today to try again to post about this issue, after deleting my Google/YouTube account, because I wholeheartedly disagree with this whole fiasco, that's going on for the last month or so. So I'm glad it's finally discussed.
  - deleted 9y ago
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mnm1 9y ago
Such AI coupled with the inflexible policies of companies like Google and Amazon is already starting to be a problem and will only get worse as it's deployed more broadly. Accounts are closed without recourse for invalid reasons and their owners treated like violators. Short of a law requiring explanations and an appeal process, I don't see this situation getting better ever. Yet another reason not to trust these companies or use their services that require creating accounts and agreeing to their bullshit TOS.
- tenpies 9y ago
  > Such AI coupled with the inflexible policies of companies like Google and Amazon I would argue that there is a key difference in customer support which makes me much more confident in Amazon than Google. Google has non-existent customer support for the public and virtually non-existent customer support for paid customers. If something goes wrong with your Google product your best bet - even as a paid customer - is to contact someone you know at Google. Going through the official channels is a waste of time. Amazon, on the other hand, will bend over backwards to make sure you're satisfied - even if it loses money in that transaction. Refund decisions are mostly automated at this point, although human support for both vendors and buyers is there if needed.
  - mnm1 9y ago
    I specifically listed Amazon because they close accounts with no appeals and no reason. Just because you've had a good experience, doesn't mean that's universally so.
wyager 9y ago
YouTube is a really horrible service for content creators. For this type of content, you're practically probably best off with LiveLeak (which, incidentally, seems to be a much better source of breaking news than YouTube these days). Ideally, we'd all switch to LBRY or some sort of IPFS video distribution or something, but that will take time.
- tpallarino 9y ago
  Yeah wow, an audience of billions having instant access to your content at the click of a button. So terrible for content creators. Most of these content creators wouldn't even exist without Youtube, they'd be working in a cubicle somewhere forwarding memos.
Alex3917 9y ago
Since my understanding is that covering up a war crime is itself a war crime under Complicity doctrine, could Google executives get charged for this in The Hague?
- cema 9y ago
  Unlikely, but an interesting argument.
- gambiting 9y ago
  I'm willing to bet that in their hundreds and hundreds of pages of terms and conditions there is a paragraph saying that by using their services you give up your right to sue Google for war crimes.
  - leereeves 9y ago
    Even if there were, such contracts have been tried before and the courts simply ignore them. A contract can't override criminal law.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  I am not an expert in international law, but you would still have to prove intent, I believe. It's hard to prove intent on an algorithm that very simply is incapable of understanding the significance of its actions.
  - 7373737373 9y ago
    Deferring decisions to an algorithm doesn't absolve the owner from responsibility for its actions. If the consequences are unknown, why should it be allowed to use it?
    - CaptSpify 9y ago
      Couldn't that also imply that someone else would need to view the algorithm to verify it's intent?
pottersbasilisk 9y ago
Perhaps its time for google and youtube to be regulated.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Every company is regulated. You have to be more specific than that.
- carapace 9y ago
  "Nationalize Google!" Okay, no, that would be turning the knob to 11. I upvoted you because I was like, "Yeah, maybe some regulation might be good." Then I thought about who would be doing the regulating and now I'm much less enthusiastic. :-/ Still, it does seem like there should be a bit more, uh, community input into how these vast silos are administered.
  - mythrwy 9y ago
    The community making it's own silo(s) might be another option. (Problem is, silo making by committee has it's own set of challenges.)
    - carapace 9y ago
      Well, I agree, but then how do you get Joe and Jane User to switch?
013a 9y ago
YouTube is balking at their own size. They're discovering what should have been obvious to anyone; the sheer amount of content entering their centralized system is impossible to moderate in any fair way. The only way they can manage is (A) prioritize quality moderation toward channels which are more popular, and (B) enforce the most bland, vanilla experience possible. They need to moderate because they are centralized, and their revenue demands it. We, as a society, need to create a better option. Not just another YouTube, but a seamless decentralized solution.
- LoSboccacc 9y ago
  They need to metamoderate: let people tag video by content (nudity, violence, crime, death...) and as soon a video missing a tag gets flagged close the channel. User that enable viewing of certain tags csn't complain then, and google only needs to put enough legalese when enabling comtent They already doing that to an extent with mature content, so there's that
raverbashing 9y ago
Why are people storing evidence on Youtube again? Not blaming the victim, but at this point most of Google services have not shown to be reliable, especially if you require some kind of thinking human behind a decision
- gambiting 9y ago
  If you are a rebel in a contested part of the world, submitting videos to youtube takes literally 2 clicks on any cheapest android phone, and then the entire world can watch it. Everything else requires at least a bit of technical expertise which you might not have.
  - raverbashing 9y ago
    Correct. You could also save it to Google Drive or other "Cloud Backup" solutions like OneDrive/Dropbox But I guess hindsight is 20/20, and I would probably have trusted YT more than I should
    - gambiting 9y ago
      If you submit a video to google drive and start giving people links then it will be very promptly disabled with a warning that if you want to share it you need to upload it to youtube. Same with OneDrive/Dropbox. It's fine to share with a few people, but go into hundreds and it gets quickly shut down.
      - raverbashing 9y ago
        Yes, don't share it from those, but you can upload to both
  - lazyasciiart 9y ago
    There is probably someone in that 'entire world watching it' who has the time and technical expertise to help make backups. If nobody else knows about it, then it wasn't going to be used for evidence of anything anyway.
userbinator 9y ago
Yes, I could see how that classifies as "extremist material", but that's no reason to delete them... IMHO the gradual increase of (self-)censorship in the popular Internet is worrying --- one of the most compelling things about the Internet as it existed was that, from the safety of your own home, you could see and experience things that would otherwise be impossible to access. Now it seems it's turned into a massively commercialised effort of "curating" content so that it doesn't offend anyone, and only results in more profits for advertisers.
- cat199 9y ago
  Old internet is still there, you just have to not be too lazy to host your own content..
mtgx 9y ago
I remember when I used to like - no, love - almost anything Google did. That seems like such a long time ago. Since then my attitude has changed to being mostly hostile towards Google, with every such event. Google should have never entered the "content game" and should have remained a neutral search and distribution (YouTube) platform. Once it went down the path of being a content company, it started "compromising" in all sorts of ways that were terrible for its users. I wonder if the higher-ups have even noticed this change in attitude towards them, and if they did, then they've probably decided that making money is more important even if they become the Comcast of the internet (most hated company).
solarkraft 9y ago
YouTube is not a reliable video host, but that's okay. It's a company. Fortunately these videos don't really rely on people finding them by having them recommended by an algorithm as they are merely evidence. I don't see a problem and completely understand why YouTube (especially as it's getting as non-offensive as it can) doesn't want to show war crimes.
crusso 9y ago
should be required by law If your videos don't pass the algorithm, post them somewhere else rather than reaching for the government hammer. Youtube/Google has every right to run their business of posting or denying video content the way they see fit without justifying it to you, free user of their service. If you think they're making a bad business decision and that there's a need for a video service that gives great explanations when they deny your videos, start such a service.
- chc 9y ago
  "Go start your own business if you disagree" seems like a middlebrow dismissal unless you're actually offering to fund the endeavor.
  - crusso 9y ago
    It's a dismissal of the idea that we need to appeal to an authority to solve every problem we see without acknowledging that there are very real ways that the civil society can solve problems without the use of government force and the myriad of unintended consequences that go along with it. There are countless guides on the Internet for writing software that can create blogs, host pictures, videos, and other content. You could do it yourself or hire a few people for a relatively small amount of money. Start off with a hosting company and if you're successful, get your own colocation facility. Build from there. (yes, I was an engineering founder of an ISP in the Bay Area and built it up to past the point of being capable of the above - and we did it without outside funding, just our own savings from our jobs: engineers, accountant, support person)
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      But people have legitimate desires as consumers without necessarily wanting to be competitors, and without necessarily waiting for the market to evolve an alternative. You seem like a smart person, surely you know that while other platforms besides Youtube exist the network effects the obtain on a large platform have huge commercial value. I get that you don't like government force and the unintended consequences that often follow from the creation of laws, but you seem oblivious to the fact that markets have externalities and problems of their own, and are not by themselves sufficient for the operation of a society.
AmIFirstToThink 9y ago
And, come to think they had me convinced that this was not going to happen for few decades. I think YouTube went down pretty fast and without fight. The ideological takeover of Facebook and Twitter raged on for few years. I think YouTube was taken over literally overnight. I remember being appreciative of YouTube just a few days back. Guess, time to cancel my $15 Youtube Red Family membership. Ugh, I really hate ads on YouTube. And I was happy to give my $15 month over month. But, I can't fund Youtube anymore given what they are doing. $15 to Youtube, $10 to NetFlix, $10 to Amazon, with $35 a month, I can sponsor ton of content on Patreon that I like. My subscription list on YouTube is not 35 people long, I think it would work out. Never ever I thought I would type these words... break up Google and Facebook and Amazon.
- pmoriarty 9y ago
  "I really hate ads on YouTube." Just use youtube-dl and you'll never see any ads.
  - tomp 9y ago
    I use an adblock (uBlock Origin I think or something similar), and never see ads on YouTube.
  - luck_fenovo 9y ago
    youtube-dl this and tell me if you see an ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMpZ0TGjbWE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMpZ0TGjbWE I just tried and I saw one
    - pmoriarty 9y ago
      That's a video of an ad, which is quite different from videos that aren't ads but have ads injected in to them by youtube. If you want to watch videos of ads, of course you can do so. But if you want to avoid them you can do so as well, by using youtube-dl.
  - arca_vorago 9y ago
    May I also suggest mpsyt(mps-youtube). GPL cli YouTube interface that will open your player of choice. I hardly use the web interface anymore. I wish goblin would take off.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ajb 9y ago
Douglas adam's 'Peril sensitive sunglasses' are nearly here.
bedros 9y ago
very related to this article about facebook [0] corporations control what info passed to people, and create their own version of reality, but blocking what they don't agree with. I know it's AI, but seems that google appeal agrees with AI decision. people should read Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing consent book, here's interview about it in 1992 [1] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14998081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14998081 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrBQEAM3rE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrBQEAM3rE
carvalho 9y ago
War crime evidence can also be extremist material. It is often repackaged as propaganda to rile up new troops. Give evidence to the courts or police. Don't upload it to a video entertainment site and expect it to stay up, despite skirting their rules.
snakeanus 9y ago
It seems that we really need to find a new distributed/decentralised censorship-resistant way to distribute videos.
haterswillhate 9y ago
YouTube start to be dead. People move to use different platforms! Google, you really start to suck more than my socks!
floatingatoll 9y ago
In case it's not already apparent, there's a business opportunity here for someone to automate "set up an S3 bucket and host videos in it" as an app that uses an API key, so that you simply provide the key to the app and it manages your video collection, gives you a UX to it, and charges you a fee per month.
chinathrow 9y ago
The revolution will not be televised.
AmIFirstToThink 9y ago
What did they train the AI on to deem something 'extremist'? Should we get to see the training data used and labels? Or is this the modern day equivalent of credit score algo, something that can have huge impact on lives, but you are not allowed to know what it is. This is bad.
- nthcolumn 9y ago
  We will have to get used to this - people hiding behind their AI's skirts saying 'Wasn't me - she did it'.
  - AmIFirstToThink 9y ago
    They are still liable. They unleashed it upon the world. Can't wait till they are sued out of their bubble.
anotherbrownguy 9y ago
Given that all of the videos happen to be anti-ISIS... and YouTube happens to be owned by an evil empire in bed with American military industry which created ISIS... the AI must have figured out that the videos could be a threat to its masters.
GlobalServices 9y ago
Google needs to be broken up. They have too much power.
alexandercrohde 9y ago
To me, if you want to regulate controversial opinions, you have to err strongly to the side of too-open. Remember, before the declaration of independence our founding fathers were terrorists/rebels. I don't mean this as a snappy hollow comparison. I'm saying fundamentally, you can't distinguish between a US soldier recruitment video and an ISIS soldier recruitment video without applying a moral context. How would an AI ever do this? And even if it could, who's moral retelling is the right one? Better in my mind to stay out of the censorship game altogether and promote a forum that is inherently structure in a format that incentivizes accuracy over emotions.
- lerpa 9y ago
  Exactly, but in a world where people desire facebook and others to have "truth checking authorities", I don't expect things to get much better.
- LoSboccacc 9y ago
  >US soldier recruitment video and an ISIS soldier recruitment video Somehow I doubt US recruitment videos have englishmen being decapitated as job perk
AmIFirstToThink 9y ago
Why not create a setting that allows user to see YouTube as sanitized by their AI or all content? Allow people to chose content level just like they choose security level in browser settings. 1. Legal content. May include content that violates YouTube content policy, but is legal in USA, or the country of the viewer. Maximum freedom of speech and maximum ability to see content that you may find offending. 2. YouTube content policy met. Content that is legal and meets YouTube Content Policy. 3. Legal, Meets YouTube content policy, Meets a certain org's taste. Like when you can pick a charity that you can donate to when you shop on smile.amazon.com. You can select the org whose bubble you want to live in. ADL, Focus on Family, Skeptics etc. The org bans content and it only is banned for people who opt into that blacklist on youtube. 4. When user is not logged in they get AI filtered list but can select "all legal" or "all that meets content policy" filters, even when logged out. All others bubbles available to logged in users only. Advertisers can opt into certain bubble if they want, or opt out of certain content e.g. content deemed inappropriate by the AI? How does that sound YouTube? Doesn't the government security agencies want to know who is watching extremist content and who is not interested in it? How would we know who the extremist are if they fall back to person to person, in person, communication?
- colejohnson66 9y ago
  Because YouTube doesn’t care about the videos; it cares about the advertisers. You can’t be a proponent of free speech (extremist propaganda) while trying to please advertisers. Also, with today’s political climate, people seem like they want anything that disagrees with them to be labeled as hate speech.
  - AmIFirstToThink 9y ago
    The advertisers would find it suitable to chase a bubble e.g. greens, nationalists, globalist, feminist, religions etc. I think a good strong case can be made to advertisers that their ad will only be served to people opting into a certain bubble. Or reverse of that i.e. show my Ads to all people except those who are in this bubble. Inclusion list and exclusion list.
cyanexttuesday 9y ago
Google is seemingly more and more a regular almost evil corporation. I miss the days of "don't be evil".
ekianjo 9y ago
Is it possible to host such videos on archive.org ? is that a valid option?
Iv 9y ago
During the Arab Springs I suspected many police violence video would be deleted from Youtube. I had downloaded them to my server and posted everywhere the links for people to mirror them. Not a single person did yet. I have been amazed at the little importance people put on this kind of video. You have video evidence of crimes with faces appearing clearly. It can take 5 to 10 years for such events to calm down enough to reach a point where crimes can be prosecuted. And it is hard to blame youtube for that. They are considered the channel for Lady Gaga and silly cats video. Hell, I know 3 years old toddler who browse youtube unsupervised. In many places Youtube is criticized to promote violence and extremism by leaving these videos. I feel bad for them, they are between a hammer and a hard place. I just hope that the censored video are not totally deleted from their servers. They should have someone reviewing criminal videos and keeping them at the disposal of judicial authorities but even that opens a whole can of worms: do you obey only to US authorities (who do not care about war crimes in other countries)? Do you obey all world authorities including Saudi and Chinese? Anyway, that's youtube's problem, not ours. Simply, helping prosecute war crime is not part of Youtube's mission, so do not trust them for it. To anyone who feels this is important content, use youtube-dl and keep backups. Make torrents of it, share it around, make sure it does not disappear. And when some NGO finally realize that this content is precious, pump up your upload bandwidth and fill their servers.
- flamedoge 9y ago
  Youtube isn't the only channel to upload videos. Check out webtorrent or bitchute for p2p based videos.
ajarmst 9y ago
YouTube does not seem to me to be an appropriate medium for "war crimes evidence". Evidence needs documented provenance, chain-of-custody, storage integrity, affidavits, etc etc. Why does this evidence need a high-bandwidth publicly accessible and searchable interface? For what purpose? To be honest, if you have evidence of a war crime, I hope your plan to seek justice doesn't depend on Youtube.
devpalmari 9y ago
hope YT did a soft-delete on those files...
redthrowaway 9y ago
One of the most interesting developments in AI will be watching how we respond to human rationality detached from human morality. Programs that optimize for practical outcomes are going to come up with a whole host of solutions that we consider abhorrent, not least because the mere notion that that solution is a practical one riles our sensibilities.
mirimir 9y ago
So does YouTube want to look like an ISIS supporter? Or at least, that it doesn't approve of criticizing ISIS?
StreamBright 9y ago
Torrent based Youtube alternative when? I think the technology is ready to move all of the content to a distributed system where it cannot be censored.
superioritycplx 9y ago
This is a side effect of Google employing ADL who are only interested in doing political cleansing. "AI" let's them have plausible deniability.
dandare 9y ago
I am very concerned about Google using AI to filter hoaxes from search results. Government testing syphilis on black population or selling drugs to fund terrorism? That must clearly be a hoax, right?
immanuel_huel 9y ago
This was to be expected. All history books are written this way. History books are government propaganda. History books do not document the truth. History lessons are nothing but propaganda. So history at school is nothing but learning government propaganda.
ricky_kutch 9y ago
They don't care, better to lose legit content than advertising dollars.
greyman 9y ago
As I understand it, this is the result of Google itself having quite a strong political opinions, at least recently. They profiled themselves as being leftist/progressive... their software just enforces this.
nnq 9y ago
Maybe people should get their shit together and realize that true free speech include allowing videos that seek to recruit people into despicable organizations be available! Yeah, even Hitler had a right to say what he thought and it'a a good thing he had it, despite the consequences that ensued. The problem that needs to be solved is how to educate people into not being lured into those organization DESPITE having access to those materials... This kind of censorship is just as STUPID as banning drugs like heroin and cocaine (instead of just making them unavailable to children, or without a "license") or the "war on drugs". Imho the problem comes from the fact that corporations try to hard to be "democratic" about things and "please the majority". But this is not a good idea: sometimes the majority of 99% is against freedom, and they are wrong, despite being the 99%. And the majority should be opposed and freedom protected even when the cost is someone's blood. For me personally, there are these words from my native country's national anthem: "life in freedom or death [for all]"... and I will sure as hell fight, die or kill for them.
- ss248 9y ago
  You are right, but i don't think that's actually possible. It's not easy to educate general population. How would you teach critical thinking, if most people just don't want to? Current solution is to just babysit general population by essentially censoring information.
  - pas 9y ago
    Most people as in they don't want their kids to learn it, or they themselves don't want to learn it? Because kids don't want to go to school usually, yet they do. And luckily with a good curricula the school system could teach critical thinking with a significant efficacy. (And it could be added to common core)
- noiv 9y ago
  It seems to me history stays in replay until we eventually understand freedom is more important than whatever risks are attached.
- notahacker 9y ago
Anagmate 9y ago
I feel like YouTube uses its monopoly to create a walled garden focused on (in their own words) advertiser-friendly content. The thing is, it makes perfect sense from their side - they will make people angry, but why would they bother if those people can't go anywhere else? I'm starting to feel that a competitor providing the same quality of service while allowing all kinds of videos has a chance to succeed. It's OK to have both child videos, porn and Syrian documentation, as long as you can filter - maybe have some sort of a "curiosity" slider that filters child content on one side, YouTube content in the middle and all content to the other side. Also some category toggles,... If you're unhappy with the current selection, just take a few minutes of your time and change your preferences.
davidreiss 9y ago
Thank you WSJ, NYTimes and the traditional media for pressuring youtube, facebook, reddit and social media to censor. People aren't aware that for the past few years, traditional media and social media has been battling behind the scenes over content, narrative and censorship. It was a major war going on that the public was simply unaware of. Suffice it to say, traditional media won. It is amazing how a select group of news organizations and their editors and journalists can use their bully pulpit to intimidate certain industries.
tetromino_ 9y ago
Often there is no difference between war crime evidence and war crime glorification that machine learning could discern. Exactly the same content could be interpreted as "look at us do great things in defense of our noble ideals!" and "look at these monsters do horrific things for no justifiable reason!". The difference is in the audience's mindset - which is only partially influenced by the uploader's intentions, and partially by how other pages and channels link to the video and present it, and partially by historical context (the same content can acquire a different interpretation five years down the road). Machine learning cannot be expected to emulate that.
bryanrasmussen 9y ago
I find this interesting in comparison with the google api that detects toxic comments. I suppose we'll be seeing the same sort of situation in comments sections (less irritating though)
tempodox 9y ago
Mis-applying bad so-called “artificial intelligence” is still a prime example of natural stupidity.

674 points by jacobr 9y ago

Also see this Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/896358097320636416 https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/896358097320636416 > Ironically, by deleting years old opposition channels YouTube is doing more damage to Syrian history than ISIS could ever hope to achieve > Also gone are the dozens of playlists of videos from Syria I created, including dozens of chemical attacks in playlists by date > Keep in mind in many cases these are the only copies of the videos, and in some the channel owner will have died, so nothing can stop it

giancarlostoro 9y ago
That is a little insane... Makes me wish there was some sort of website that archived specific YouTube videos marked as historical or criminal evidence or some sort of qualification, as long as they don't abuse copyright just to make sure if places like YouTube delete them they can remain. Or a service that uploads to multiple video streaming sources at once (though I imagine these might violate the TOS of YouTube for w/e reason). Kind of sad where you have video evidence being deleted by YouTube. It would be nice if they allowed some sort of option for political type videos like these to actually be uploaded by users, especially if the original uploader was killed, to be downloaded with metadata (upload date to youtube, youtuber username, etc) so anyone can reupload it elsewhere. Another case where I wish TPB had made their own YouTube clone already. I'm sure they would of not taken down these sort of videos. Wondering where Wikileaks is in these sort of cases? Do they download these sort of videos? That begs the question: why don't they? It seems right up their own alley. I don't always agree with them, nor do I digest their content but at the very least for a site like theirs it would make sense for them to archive YouTube and other politically sensitive videos no?
- icebraining 9y ago
  An YouTube clone is expensive. TPB only hosts simple HTML pages (they no longer have torrent files, and even those were just a few KBs), not files with hundreds of MBs or more. As others said, the Internet Archive may be a good option for these videos. I wouldn't mind writing a system for backing them up to archive.org, but I'm not sure how would I detect them. Marking those videos requires the user to know they should be marked, which just moves the question to how they would know.
  - 4ad 9y ago
    > A YouTube clone is expensive. A YouTube clone that uses a clone of YouTube's infrastructure is expensive, but what about a distributed p2p YouTube clone? Obviously it's hard to quantify, as it doesn't exist yet, but I think it's technologically feasible.
    - afarrell 9y ago
      Meaning, you just have data stored on people's hard drives? That would be more expensive because - You have a much higher failure rate of the storage media as people say "I'm running out of hard drive space. What should I get rid of?" - You need to recruit those people to give up a resource that (unlike the spare compute cycles that SETI uses) they are likely currently using. - You have to convince people to trust you to put arbitrary video content on their hard drives. Therefore, you need to have some process for deciding what video content is objectionable enough that you won't store it.
      - 4ad 9y ago
        > You have a much higher failure rate of the storage media as people say "I'm running out of hard drive space. What should I get rid of?" Not really, because data is replicated between many people. People can delete it and other people would still have it. > You need to recruit those people to give up a resource that (unlike the spare compute cycles that SETI uses) they are likely currently using. It's no different than people seeding torrents or people just using ipfs. Simply accessing the system would transparently increase availability. In fact, ipfs is probably suited as-is. > You have to convince people to trust you to put arbitrary video content on their hard drives. Therefore, you need to have some process for deciding what video content is objectionable enough that you won't store it. No, data will become more accessible as people would consume it. People only need to understand how the system works, they don't need to trust "me" (whoever you refer as "you" in your post). As I said, ipfs probably works as-is.
- aiyodev 9y ago
  Not to pick on you because this seems to be a popular opinion but I would just like to point out the insanity of your what you just wrote. "as long as they don't abuse copyright" Would we delete videos of the liberation of concentration camps if there was Nickelback music playing in the background? This just demonstrates how successful media companies have been in distorting the true purpose of copyright laws: to promote science, art, and culture for the public's benefit. It does not exist for fairness or personal gain. Copyright laws should be changed to better reflect this. Nobody should be able to silence any information that has a public benefit.
  - Spivak 9y ago
    Like, Nickelback is in the original footage or someone overalyed the track on top of the footage? I would imagine if this ever really happened it would be fine in the former, and muted in the latter. You're forgetting that 'promote...' means give the creator control of that content for the purpose of limiting access and making money. Promote in the sense that it becomes possible to actually sell artistic works like commodities. And then once the value has ben extracted the public can do what they please with it.
    - josinalvo 9y ago
      And we just need 140 years to extract it! :P
    - oh_sigh 9y ago
      Not quite on the level of concentration camp liberation videos, but wasn't there a video of a 2 year old dancing that had like a 20 second clip of some popular song playing on the radio in very low quality in the background, and it got deleted for copyright infringement? I think this was the video, but it is obviously back up now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KfJHFWlhQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KfJHFWlhQ
    - tripzilch 9y ago
      > Like, Nickelback is in the original footage or someone overalyed the track on top of the footage? I would imagine if this ever really happened it would be fine in the former, and muted in the latter. While I agree that would be the most sensible course of action, if this in reality happened right now, the whole video would be deleted in both cases, automatically (assuming it's clear enough to trigger detection in the first example).
- LoSboccacc 9y ago
  > Makes me wish there was some sort of website Can't people just use liveleaks for that kind of videos?
  - giancarlostoro 9y ago
    I guess we need more education about online video hosting is also a factor, most people from other sides of the world will know mainly the most popular websites and the smaller ones (by comparison) might not be even heard of by these people.
- pmlnr 9y ago
  > Makes me wish there was some sort of website that archived specific YouTube videos marked as historical or criminal evidence or some sort of qualification Make one. Add it as warrior project to archive team; save them and re-upload them if they are deleted. Unfortunately we all need to participate, because https://medium.com/message/never-trust-a-corporation-to-do-a-librarys-job-f58db4673351 https://medium.com/message/never-trust-a-corporation-to-do-a...
  - giancarlostoro 9y ago
    Fair enough, been looking more into the projects from the Archive Team. They at least had one project, will have to see how functional it may or may not be. https://github.com/ArchiveTeam/riptube https://github.com/ArchiveTeam/riptube
zeep 9y ago
It's ridiculous easy to sensor the web for corporations and Governments (but for some reason, they keep saying that once something it's posted online, it's over and it will stay there forever)... which is why I use youtube-dl for the videos that I really want to keep...
sondr3 9y ago
People really need to download videos from YouTube if they are that important, not doing otherwise is in my opinion reckless. YouTube is not a service you can expect to actually archive important videos, if I look through my favorites or other playlists, a ton of videos are deleted. Use youtube-dl, download it to your own server and back them up yourself. Yes, this is awful and sucks on so many levels, but please, please, back up data.
carvalho 9y ago
Why wouldn't Youtube pass on any extremist material on to the FBI before making it unavailable for the wider public?
PeanutCurry 9y ago
In my opinion the important thing to remember is that Youtube could easily do something about this. It seems like there's a trend in a lot tech-centric companies to save money automating away actual content review as well as customer interaction. But humans are entirely capable of reviewing content and giving detailed explanations for why something has been judged a certain way, especially if you have them work alongside an automated system that simplifies the process for them. I realize that minimizing human labor is a big part of how these sorts of business models achieve their profitability, but problems like this aren't going to go away as long as that's the norm. And I don't just mean poor explanations for policy decisions either. The core issue is bigger than that imo. The information age has privatized a lot of the modern 'public' social/cultural spaces. For nations that value both the freedom of speech and the preservation of historically/culturally significant speech this is problematic. It reduces the public's ability to express itself but also their ability to look back on old expressions and learn about the history or cultural paradigms behind them. This isn't really supposed to be a rant at Google in specific. They're just the topic at hand so they're the easy punching bag. In general, customer service aside, I think they do good work and more importantly they exercised the necessary foresight and resources to develop their products into what they are today. I'm by no means implying we should socialize social media... no pun intended. But I do think there needs to be more discourse about how these trends will affect the future of speech and historical censorship. Right now it's just a modern problem in its infancy, but decades from now people who want to see visceral content depicting firsthand experiences from events like those happening in Syria, or the Arab Spring, are going to be getting censored history. What if China started pressuring foreign companies, via benevolent coercion such as financial incentives, to implement systems that made finding information about Tienanmen Square more difficult? The privatized nature of these platforms makes this sort of attack easier as well. And I don't have a good solution, but that's why I think there needs to be more dialogue about the future of online media in general and what direction we want to steer it in.
- Eridrus 9y ago
  Try some back of the envelope math to see if it is possible. Start with 300 hours of video uploaded every minute. I calculated the cost to be 6bn USD/yr assuming the fully loaded cost of a full time reviewer is 20k, which dwarfs the revenue YouTube has. So please, lay out a plan that actually works with the economics of YouTube.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

brndnmtthws 9y ago

If you use YouTube, you are subject to the whims of that private corporation, regardless of whether it's right or wrong. They should find a way to host the content somewhere else.

emilsedgh 9y ago
Well almost everything we use these days belongs to a private organization. And we're fully subject to their whims. Something is wrong about that.
- crusso 9y ago
  And yet, without those private organizations and the free markets that allowed them to thrive - the whole notion of having all that is preserved online by them would be utterly unimaginable. The internet as we know it, capable of passing all this bandwidth to individuals around the world wouldn't exist. At best, it would still be a toy in government labs and academia like it was before it was commercialized.
  - leereeves 9y ago
    That's hardly certain. The government built the interstate highways, it could have built the Internet as well. Privatizing it was a political decision.
  - emilsedgh 9y ago
    I'm not against privatizing internet. I'm sure it wouldn't have been this useful if it wasn't for private companies. I'm just saying the notion that private companies (on the internet or not) have almost zero responsibility and we're subject to their whim is wrong. I guess that's where the rule of law is supposed to enter the discussion.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    At best, it would still be a toy in government labs and academia like it was before it was commercialized. This is demonstrably untrue. Minitel was already much more than that, despite being designed and implemented by a division of the French Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications.

monocasa 9y ago

Have they checked with YouTube to see if the files are actually deleted? Like just because their gateway won't give you access to it doesn't necessarily mean that the bits have been scrubbed on the back end. Also: here's a project to archive this information. https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7909-syrian_archive https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7909-syrian_archive

mustacheemperor 9y ago
Unfortunately many of the original uploaders have since died in the war, and the deleted playlists were the only visible place the videos were accessible.
- monocasa 9y ago
  Sure, but I'm saying that in a 'documentation of war crimes' context YouTube might allow a little peek behind the veil if the videos aren't deleted but hidden.
  - mustacheemperor 9y ago
    Agreed. I think the larger problem highlighted here is that in this case "YouTube" is just the faceless algorithm making these decisions, and accessing the judgement of a real human being is nearly impossible for the average end user.
    - PeterisP 9y ago
      They quite likely have some humans verify the content - however, the criteria most likely are quite straightforward (depictions of the deaths violate their guidelines). They don't provide the judgement because that only invites attempts of explaining and negotiation - they don't want to spend time to do a careful review of every contested video, they want to make an usually accurate final judgement with the minimum time investment possible (e.g. 5 seconds for a video), and they don't want to spend resources reading all kinds of reasoning and appeals, so they don't. And that is their right to do so - they can completely arbitrarily choose which videos to host on their site and which not.

cisanti 9y ago

I have (had) a channel that had videos about missing people, their last sightings on CCTV etc. The parents of a missing person even used an embed video on their site of a CCTV footage. They emailed me if I still have the video because they need it. YouTube banned the whole channel for extremist/hateful content. Probably some of the videos/titles told the AI that the footage is extreme or some sort of glorification. I appealed on some form but don't even bother anymore. I hope YouTube as a video platform (not streaming) gets a serious competitor.

TheRealPomax 9y ago

To be fair, YouTube is under no obligation to some greater good; it's just a video hosting service. Expecting it to "preserve footage" and any footage at that, is a strange expectation.

beejiu 9y ago
An organiziation should not be free of criticism simply because it does not have an obligation to do or not do something.
- tentaTherapist 9y ago
  Yes, but lots of people are suggesting regulation, which is more than just criticism.
cisanti 9y ago
Not an obligation, but their mission statement is "To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful." Guess they need to change to "information that we and our advertisers agree with." Yes, I know they are different companies under Alphabet but it doesn't matter. Google has become a monster and too big, powerful.
- dickbasedregex 9y ago
  Agreed. Google just grosses me out these days.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- camus2 9y ago
  > but their mission statement is "To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful." It's just marketing. If you really want to see what the actual "mission" is read the TOS. Google,Facebook,Twitter and co like to boast about their humanitarian and humanist stance, the Apple way, when it comes to their relationship with their users but that's all a lie. The moment the need of their users doesn't match their financial interest all bets are off. The shit-storm triggered by a few outraged online publications and announcers a few month ago is a demonstration of that fact. Independence and freedom of speech online has a price and "users" are going to find it out the hardway when Google refuses to host their content for political reasons. People already forgot, that the tech to share content online already exists, it's called RSS and Google,Twitter,Facebook and co want it to go away.

AdmiralAsshat 9y ago

It was folly to think that YouTube would be a safe place to document war crimes. YouTube is a distribution channel, not a preservation channel. Its ease of use certainly makes it an attractive option to upload things quickly, but anything of historical significance should have the video raws immediately turned over to a human rights organization for preservation.

eloisius 9y ago
I doubt they're grieving lost footage. It's loss of access to that distribution channel. Documentation is pointless if it can't be distributed and used to effect change.
- privong 9y ago
  > I doubt they're grieving lost footage. This comment by jacobr suggests there is a risk of lost footage: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14998452 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14998452
Mangalor 9y ago
Where else should they be stored?
- moogly 9y ago
  liveleak
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
  archive.org
  - osteele 9y ago
    I hope we're in a world where that can happen. At the least, we probably need “upload video to archive.org” mobile apps to make this as useful to journalists in the field as YouTube currently is. If the Archive grows as a journalistic distribution channel, it might then face YouTube's issues of copyrights, piracy, and other criminal use. However, the Archive could apply goals that are more compatible with journalism than YouTube can. Maybe sufficient philanthropic support could make this possible.

Hasknewbie 9y ago

Youtube's response regarding one of these videos documenting abuses (emphasis mine): > "we've determined that your video does violate our Community Guidelines and have upheld our original decision. We appreciate your understanding." Can someone explain to me why corporations, when interacting with customers regarding complaints/appeals, seem to have "don't forget to add insult to injury" as one of their motto more often than not? Does that kind of patronizing tone sound polite to the ears of a PR drone?

snerbles 9y ago
Internal studies probably correlates such language with reduced pushback from users.
- mcguire 9y ago
  The wall of jello defense. Works well.
viridian 9y ago
If I remember correctly, the exact same message was delivered to Jordan Peterson a couple of weeks ago or so, before he sat down with the google memo guy. He was in the middle of a bible lecture series, and Google banned his account, and sent the exact same "we've determined that your video does violate our Community Guidelines and have upheld our original decision. We appreciate your understanding." message. It seems tone deaf especially since in cases such as these there is no understanding to appreciate. Google will not tell you what you did to violate policy, only that they checked to ensure that they found you guilty, and then they snub you further with the HR speak. It's maddening.
- cvsh 9y ago
  The worst part of the information age is arbitration by unreasonable and impenetrable algorithms rather than humans with the capacity to make a judgement call when the rules clearly don't account for the situation at hand. A transparent appeals process staffed by humans who can at least deliver a rationale, including what rule you broke, should be required by law. There's irreparable reputational damage associated with an algorithm libelously labeling something "extremist content" that isn't.

mschuster91 9y ago

Once again, the only hope for customer service seems to be a (social) media shitstorm. Seriously, Google, Twitter and FB massively need to ramp up their customer service and not externalize the costs of a lack of support onto society any more. And there are many "costs": people being actively harrassed and intimidated, sometimes so far they are afraid leaving their house, due to hate speech or doxxing, a loss of historically relevant information as in this case, people locked out of vital emails or their businesses (e.g. when their Gmail account gets closed due to copyright violations on Youtube)...

TuringTest 9y ago
> Google, Twitter and FB massively need to ramp up their customer service This is not going to happen; the whole point of their businesses based on offering free massive online services is that they are dirt-cheap by being run mostly automatically. No, the only way to fix the problem in those juggernauts, and protect the tiny individuals from getting caught and squashed in their wheels, is the mechanism that governments use to protect citizens from the worst effects of bureaucracy: having an ombudsman. A semi-independent service to receive complaints of severe abuse by the main service, and for which the primary goal is protecting users, not reducing costs. In some sense, this is how their PR department operates: they'll bring human attention and put all the required effort to fix an unjust situation, to clean the image of the company. The difference is that now the unjust situation needs to become a scandal, as you said, and an ombudsman would be required to examine all applications (either to accept them or reject them) as part of their official definition.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > No, the only way to fix the problem in those juggernauts, and protect the tiny individuals from getting caught and squashed in their wheels, is the mechanism that governments use to protect citizens from the worst effects of bureaucracy: having an ombudsman. A semi-independent service to receive complaints of severe abuse by the main service, and for which the primary goal is protecting users, not reducing costs. Yeah but who would finance the ombudsman? To service a country like Germany, I'd bet it needs around 2.000 FTE minimum (Facebook alone is opening a new, additional 500 FTE centre right now, and that's just for deleting the worst of the worst hate speech and porn). That's around 5M € per month. Having it paid for by taxpayers is the true manifestation of cost externalization, having it paid for by the services quickly leads down to "do whatever $company wants", and having it paid for by users leads to service only for those who can afford it while leaving the poor and most vulnerable persons in the rain.

dickbasedregex 9y ago

Screw YouTube's automation across the board. It's horrendous and lazy.

mtgx 9y ago
Yeah, forget about beating Go and StarCraft 2 top players. How about making the takedown of YouTube videos actually fair for a change?
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  Games are still 'easy' in comparison to this sort of topic for AI. Bear in mind, every game they've had an AI play still has a firm set of rules.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

mozumder 9y ago

Can't any prosecutor gain access to those videos via subpoena anyways?

megous 9y ago
What are you talking about? They are deleting entire accounts of people who were filming their cities/districts being bombed by Russians, Assad or US/Coalition. (where there may not be any direct violence to any particular persons visible) Who will prosecute whom? Primary source historical material is being removed wholesale by some shitty "AI". Account of recent history is being erased. Researchers who want to put some account of history together will have harder job. They will not go to subpoena google to release some material they don't even know google has. People whose lives were destroyed by a dictator will see YouTube erasing evidence of what happened, often times leaving propaganda channels for the regime untouched. It's a disgrace. I actually came here today to try again to post about this issue, after deleting my Google/YouTube account, because I wholeheartedly disagree with this whole fiasco, that's going on for the last month or so. So I'm glad it's finally discussed.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

mnm1 9y ago

Such AI coupled with the inflexible policies of companies like Google and Amazon is already starting to be a problem and will only get worse as it's deployed more broadly. Accounts are closed without recourse for invalid reasons and their owners treated like violators. Short of a law requiring explanations and an appeal process, I don't see this situation getting better ever. Yet another reason not to trust these companies or use their services that require creating accounts and agreeing to their bullshit TOS.

tenpies 9y ago
> Such AI coupled with the inflexible policies of companies like Google and Amazon I would argue that there is a key difference in customer support which makes me much more confident in Amazon than Google. Google has non-existent customer support for the public and virtually non-existent customer support for paid customers. If something goes wrong with your Google product your best bet - even as a paid customer - is to contact someone you know at Google. Going through the official channels is a waste of time. Amazon, on the other hand, will bend over backwards to make sure you're satisfied - even if it loses money in that transaction. Refund decisions are mostly automated at this point, although human support for both vendors and buyers is there if needed.
- mnm1 9y ago
  I specifically listed Amazon because they close accounts with no appeals and no reason. Just because you've had a good experience, doesn't mean that's universally so.

wyager 9y ago

YouTube is a really horrible service for content creators. For this type of content, you're practically probably best off with LiveLeak (which, incidentally, seems to be a much better source of breaking news than YouTube these days). Ideally, we'd all switch to LBRY or some sort of IPFS video distribution or something, but that will take time.

tpallarino 9y ago
Yeah wow, an audience of billions having instant access to your content at the click of a button. So terrible for content creators. Most of these content creators wouldn't even exist without Youtube, they'd be working in a cubicle somewhere forwarding memos.

Alex3917 9y ago

Since my understanding is that covering up a war crime is itself a war crime under Complicity doctrine, could Google executives get charged for this in The Hague?

cema 9y ago
Unlikely, but an interesting argument.
gambiting 9y ago
I'm willing to bet that in their hundreds and hundreds of pages of terms and conditions there is a paragraph saying that by using their services you give up your right to sue Google for war crimes.
- leereeves 9y ago
  Even if there were, such contracts have been tried before and the courts simply ignore them. A contract can't override criminal law.
ocdtrekkie 9y ago
I am not an expert in international law, but you would still have to prove intent, I believe. It's hard to prove intent on an algorithm that very simply is incapable of understanding the significance of its actions.
- 7373737373 9y ago
  Deferring decisions to an algorithm doesn't absolve the owner from responsibility for its actions. If the consequences are unknown, why should it be allowed to use it?
  - CaptSpify 9y ago
    Couldn't that also imply that someone else would need to view the algorithm to verify it's intent?

pottersbasilisk 9y ago

Perhaps its time for google and youtube to be regulated.

icebraining 9y ago
Every company is regulated. You have to be more specific than that.
carapace 9y ago
"Nationalize Google!" Okay, no, that would be turning the knob to 11. I upvoted you because I was like, "Yeah, maybe some regulation might be good." Then I thought about who would be doing the regulating and now I'm much less enthusiastic. :-/ Still, it does seem like there should be a bit more, uh, community input into how these vast silos are administered.
- mythrwy 9y ago
  The community making it's own silo(s) might be another option. (Problem is, silo making by committee has it's own set of challenges.)
  - carapace 9y ago
    Well, I agree, but then how do you get Joe and Jane User to switch?

013a 9y ago

YouTube is balking at their own size. They're discovering what should have been obvious to anyone; the sheer amount of content entering their centralized system is impossible to moderate in any fair way. The only way they can manage is (A) prioritize quality moderation toward channels which are more popular, and (B) enforce the most bland, vanilla experience possible. They need to moderate because they are centralized, and their revenue demands it. We, as a society, need to create a better option. Not just another YouTube, but a seamless decentralized solution.

LoSboccacc 9y ago
They need to metamoderate: let people tag video by content (nudity, violence, crime, death...) and as soon a video missing a tag gets flagged close the channel. User that enable viewing of certain tags csn't complain then, and google only needs to put enough legalese when enabling comtent They already doing that to an extent with mature content, so there's that

raverbashing 9y ago

Why are people storing evidence on Youtube again? Not blaming the victim, but at this point most of Google services have not shown to be reliable, especially if you require some kind of thinking human behind a decision

gambiting 9y ago
If you are a rebel in a contested part of the world, submitting videos to youtube takes literally 2 clicks on any cheapest android phone, and then the entire world can watch it. Everything else requires at least a bit of technical expertise which you might not have.
- raverbashing 9y ago
  Correct. You could also save it to Google Drive or other "Cloud Backup" solutions like OneDrive/Dropbox But I guess hindsight is 20/20, and I would probably have trusted YT more than I should
  - gambiting 9y ago
    If you submit a video to google drive and start giving people links then it will be very promptly disabled with a warning that if you want to share it you need to upload it to youtube. Same with OneDrive/Dropbox. It's fine to share with a few people, but go into hundreds and it gets quickly shut down.
    - raverbashing 9y ago
      Yes, don't share it from those, but you can upload to both
- lazyasciiart 9y ago
  There is probably someone in that 'entire world watching it' who has the time and technical expertise to help make backups. If nobody else knows about it, then it wasn't going to be used for evidence of anything anyway.

userbinator 9y ago

Yes, I could see how that classifies as "extremist material", but that's no reason to delete them... IMHO the gradual increase of (self-)censorship in the popular Internet is worrying --- one of the most compelling things about the Internet as it existed was that, from the safety of your own home, you could see and experience things that would otherwise be impossible to access. Now it seems it's turned into a massively commercialised effort of "curating" content so that it doesn't offend anyone, and only results in more profits for advertisers.

cat199 9y ago
Old internet is still there, you just have to not be too lazy to host your own content..

mtgx 9y ago

I remember when I used to like - no, love - almost anything Google did. That seems like such a long time ago. Since then my attitude has changed to being mostly hostile towards Google, with every such event. Google should have never entered the "content game" and should have remained a neutral search and distribution (YouTube) platform. Once it went down the path of being a content company, it started "compromising" in all sorts of ways that were terrible for its users. I wonder if the higher-ups have even noticed this change in attitude towards them, and if they did, then they've probably decided that making money is more important even if they become the Comcast of the internet (most hated company).

solarkraft 9y ago

YouTube is not a reliable video host, but that's okay. It's a company. Fortunately these videos don't really rely on people finding them by having them recommended by an algorithm as they are merely evidence. I don't see a problem and completely understand why YouTube (especially as it's getting as non-offensive as it can) doesn't want to show war crimes.

crusso 9y ago

should be required by law If your videos don't pass the algorithm, post them somewhere else rather than reaching for the government hammer. Youtube/Google has every right to run their business of posting or denying video content the way they see fit without justifying it to you, free user of their service. If you think they're making a bad business decision and that there's a need for a video service that gives great explanations when they deny your videos, start such a service.

chc 9y ago
"Go start your own business if you disagree" seems like a middlebrow dismissal unless you're actually offering to fund the endeavor.
- crusso 9y ago
  It's a dismissal of the idea that we need to appeal to an authority to solve every problem we see without acknowledging that there are very real ways that the civil society can solve problems without the use of government force and the myriad of unintended consequences that go along with it. There are countless guides on the Internet for writing software that can create blogs, host pictures, videos, and other content. You could do it yourself or hire a few people for a relatively small amount of money. Start off with a hosting company and if you're successful, get your own colocation facility. Build from there. (yes, I was an engineering founder of an ISP in the Bay Area and built it up to past the point of being capable of the above - and we did it without outside funding, just our own savings from our jobs: engineers, accountant, support person)
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    But people have legitimate desires as consumers without necessarily wanting to be competitors, and without necessarily waiting for the market to evolve an alternative. You seem like a smart person, surely you know that while other platforms besides Youtube exist the network effects the obtain on a large platform have huge commercial value. I get that you don't like government force and the unintended consequences that often follow from the creation of laws, but you seem oblivious to the fact that markets have externalities and problems of their own, and are not by themselves sufficient for the operation of a society.

AmIFirstToThink 9y ago

And, come to think they had me convinced that this was not going to happen for few decades. I think YouTube went down pretty fast and without fight. The ideological takeover of Facebook and Twitter raged on for few years. I think YouTube was taken over literally overnight. I remember being appreciative of YouTube just a few days back. Guess, time to cancel my $15 Youtube Red Family membership. Ugh, I really hate ads on YouTube. And I was happy to give my $15 month over month. But, I can't fund Youtube anymore given what they are doing. $15 to Youtube, $10 to NetFlix, $10 to Amazon, with $35 a month, I can sponsor ton of content on Patreon that I like. My subscription list on YouTube is not 35 people long, I think it would work out. Never ever I thought I would type these words... break up Google and Facebook and Amazon.

pmoriarty 9y ago
"I really hate ads on YouTube." Just use youtube-dl and you'll never see any ads.
- tomp 9y ago
  I use an adblock (uBlock Origin I think or something similar), and never see ads on YouTube.
- luck_fenovo 9y ago
  youtube-dl this and tell me if you see an ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMpZ0TGjbWE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMpZ0TGjbWE I just tried and I saw one
  - pmoriarty 9y ago
    That's a video of an ad, which is quite different from videos that aren't ads but have ads injected in to them by youtube. If you want to watch videos of ads, of course you can do so. But if you want to avoid them you can do so as well, by using youtube-dl.
- arca_vorago 9y ago
  May I also suggest mpsyt(mps-youtube). GPL cli YouTube interface that will open your player of choice. I hardly use the web interface anymore. I wish goblin would take off.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

ajb 9y ago

Douglas adam's 'Peril sensitive sunglasses' are nearly here.

bedros 9y ago

very related to this article about facebook [0] corporations control what info passed to people, and create their own version of reality, but blocking what they don't agree with. I know it's AI, but seems that google appeal agrees with AI decision. people should read Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing consent book, here's interview about it in 1992 [1] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14998081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14998081 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrBQEAM3rE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrBQEAM3rE

carvalho 9y ago

War crime evidence can also be extremist material. It is often repackaged as propaganda to rile up new troops. Give evidence to the courts or police. Don't upload it to a video entertainment site and expect it to stay up, despite skirting their rules.

snakeanus 9y ago

It seems that we really need to find a new distributed/decentralised censorship-resistant way to distribute videos.

haterswillhate 9y ago

YouTube start to be dead. People move to use different platforms! Google, you really start to suck more than my socks!

floatingatoll 9y ago

In case it's not already apparent, there's a business opportunity here for someone to automate "set up an S3 bucket and host videos in it" as an app that uses an API key, so that you simply provide the key to the app and it manages your video collection, gives you a UX to it, and charges you a fee per month.

chinathrow 9y ago

The revolution will not be televised.

AmIFirstToThink 9y ago

What did they train the AI on to deem something 'extremist'? Should we get to see the training data used and labels? Or is this the modern day equivalent of credit score algo, something that can have huge impact on lives, but you are not allowed to know what it is. This is bad.

nthcolumn 9y ago
We will have to get used to this - people hiding behind their AI's skirts saying 'Wasn't me - she did it'.
- AmIFirstToThink 9y ago
  They are still liable. They unleashed it upon the world. Can't wait till they are sued out of their bubble.

anotherbrownguy 9y ago

Given that all of the videos happen to be anti-ISIS... and YouTube happens to be owned by an evil empire in bed with American military industry which created ISIS... the AI must have figured out that the videos could be a threat to its masters.

GlobalServices 9y ago

Google needs to be broken up. They have too much power.

alexandercrohde 9y ago

To me, if you want to regulate controversial opinions, you have to err strongly to the side of too-open. Remember, before the declaration of independence our founding fathers were terrorists/rebels. I don't mean this as a snappy hollow comparison. I'm saying fundamentally, you can't distinguish between a US soldier recruitment video and an ISIS soldier recruitment video without applying a moral context. How would an AI ever do this? And even if it could, who's moral retelling is the right one? Better in my mind to stay out of the censorship game altogether and promote a forum that is inherently structure in a format that incentivizes accuracy over emotions.

lerpa 9y ago
Exactly, but in a world where people desire facebook and others to have "truth checking authorities", I don't expect things to get much better.
LoSboccacc 9y ago
>US soldier recruitment video and an ISIS soldier recruitment video Somehow I doubt US recruitment videos have englishmen being decapitated as job perk

AmIFirstToThink 9y ago

Why not create a setting that allows user to see YouTube as sanitized by their AI or all content? Allow people to chose content level just like they choose security level in browser settings. 1. Legal content. May include content that violates YouTube content policy, but is legal in USA, or the country of the viewer. Maximum freedom of speech and maximum ability to see content that you may find offending. 2. YouTube content policy met. Content that is legal and meets YouTube Content Policy. 3. Legal, Meets YouTube content policy, Meets a certain org's taste. Like when you can pick a charity that you can donate to when you shop on smile.amazon.com. You can select the org whose bubble you want to live in. ADL, Focus on Family, Skeptics etc. The org bans content and it only is banned for people who opt into that blacklist on youtube. 4. When user is not logged in they get AI filtered list but can select "all legal" or "all that meets content policy" filters, even when logged out. All others bubbles available to logged in users only. Advertisers can opt into certain bubble if they want, or opt out of certain content e.g. content deemed inappropriate by the AI? How does that sound YouTube? Doesn't the government security agencies want to know who is watching extremist content and who is not interested in it? How would we know who the extremist are if they fall back to person to person, in person, communication?

colejohnson66 9y ago
Because YouTube doesn’t care about the videos; it cares about the advertisers. You can’t be a proponent of free speech (extremist propaganda) while trying to please advertisers. Also, with today’s political climate, people seem like they want anything that disagrees with them to be labeled as hate speech.
- AmIFirstToThink 9y ago
  The advertisers would find it suitable to chase a bubble e.g. greens, nationalists, globalist, feminist, religions etc. I think a good strong case can be made to advertisers that their ad will only be served to people opting into a certain bubble. Or reverse of that i.e. show my Ads to all people except those who are in this bubble. Inclusion list and exclusion list.

cyanexttuesday 9y ago

Google is seemingly more and more a regular almost evil corporation. I miss the days of "don't be evil".

ekianjo 9y ago

Is it possible to host such videos on archive.org ? is that a valid option?

Iv 9y ago

During the Arab Springs I suspected many police violence video would be deleted from Youtube. I had downloaded them to my server and posted everywhere the links for people to mirror them. Not a single person did yet. I have been amazed at the little importance people put on this kind of video. You have video evidence of crimes with faces appearing clearly. It can take 5 to 10 years for such events to calm down enough to reach a point where crimes can be prosecuted. And it is hard to blame youtube for that. They are considered the channel for Lady Gaga and silly cats video. Hell, I know 3 years old toddler who browse youtube unsupervised. In many places Youtube is criticized to promote violence and extremism by leaving these videos. I feel bad for them, they are between a hammer and a hard place. I just hope that the censored video are not totally deleted from their servers. They should have someone reviewing criminal videos and keeping them at the disposal of judicial authorities but even that opens a whole can of worms: do you obey only to US authorities (who do not care about war crimes in other countries)? Do you obey all world authorities including Saudi and Chinese? Anyway, that's youtube's problem, not ours. Simply, helping prosecute war crime is not part of Youtube's mission, so do not trust them for it. To anyone who feels this is important content, use youtube-dl and keep backups. Make torrents of it, share it around, make sure it does not disappear. And when some NGO finally realize that this content is precious, pump up your upload bandwidth and fill their servers.

flamedoge 9y ago
Youtube isn't the only channel to upload videos. Check out webtorrent or bitchute for p2p based videos.

ajarmst 9y ago

YouTube does not seem to me to be an appropriate medium for "war crimes evidence". Evidence needs documented provenance, chain-of-custody, storage integrity, affidavits, etc etc. Why does this evidence need a high-bandwidth publicly accessible and searchable interface? For what purpose? To be honest, if you have evidence of a war crime, I hope your plan to seek justice doesn't depend on Youtube.

devpalmari 9y ago

hope YT did a soft-delete on those files...

redthrowaway 9y ago

One of the most interesting developments in AI will be watching how we respond to human rationality detached from human morality. Programs that optimize for practical outcomes are going to come up with a whole host of solutions that we consider abhorrent, not least because the mere notion that that solution is a practical one riles our sensibilities.

mirimir 9y ago

So does YouTube want to look like an ISIS supporter? Or at least, that it doesn't approve of criticizing ISIS?

StreamBright 9y ago

Torrent based Youtube alternative when? I think the technology is ready to move all of the content to a distributed system where it cannot be censored.

superioritycplx 9y ago

This is a side effect of Google employing ADL who are only interested in doing political cleansing. "AI" let's them have plausible deniability.

dandare 9y ago

I am very concerned about Google using AI to filter hoaxes from search results. Government testing syphilis on black population or selling drugs to fund terrorism? That must clearly be a hoax, right?

immanuel_huel 9y ago

This was to be expected. All history books are written this way. History books are government propaganda. History books do not document the truth. History lessons are nothing but propaganda. So history at school is nothing but learning government propaganda.

ricky_kutch 9y ago

They don't care, better to lose legit content than advertising dollars.

greyman 9y ago

As I understand it, this is the result of Google itself having quite a strong political opinions, at least recently. They profiled themselves as being leftist/progressive... their software just enforces this.

nnq 9y ago

Maybe people should get their shit together and realize that true free speech include allowing videos that seek to recruit people into despicable organizations be available! Yeah, even Hitler had a right to say what he thought and it'a a good thing he had it, despite the consequences that ensued. The problem that needs to be solved is how to educate people into not being lured into those organization DESPITE having access to those materials... This kind of censorship is just as STUPID as banning drugs like heroin and cocaine (instead of just making them unavailable to children, or without a "license") or the "war on drugs". Imho the problem comes from the fact that corporations try to hard to be "democratic" about things and "please the majority". But this is not a good idea: sometimes the majority of 99% is against freedom, and they are wrong, despite being the 99%. And the majority should be opposed and freedom protected even when the cost is someone's blood. For me personally, there are these words from my native country's national anthem: "life in freedom or death [for all]"... and I will sure as hell fight, die or kill for them.

ss248 9y ago
You are right, but i don't think that's actually possible. It's not easy to educate general population. How would you teach critical thinking, if most people just don't want to? Current solution is to just babysit general population by essentially censoring information.
- pas 9y ago
  Most people as in they don't want their kids to learn it, or they themselves don't want to learn it? Because kids don't want to go to school usually, yet they do. And luckily with a good curricula the school system could teach critical thinking with a significant efficacy. (And it could be added to common core)
noiv 9y ago
It seems to me history stays in replay until we eventually understand freedom is more important than whatever risks are attached.
notahacker 9y ago

Anagmate 9y ago

I feel like YouTube uses its monopoly to create a walled garden focused on (in their own words) advertiser-friendly content. The thing is, it makes perfect sense from their side - they will make people angry, but why would they bother if those people can't go anywhere else? I'm starting to feel that a competitor providing the same quality of service while allowing all kinds of videos has a chance to succeed. It's OK to have both child videos, porn and Syrian documentation, as long as you can filter - maybe have some sort of a "curiosity" slider that filters child content on one side, YouTube content in the middle and all content to the other side. Also some category toggles,... If you're unhappy with the current selection, just take a few minutes of your time and change your preferences.

davidreiss 9y ago

Thank you WSJ, NYTimes and the traditional media for pressuring youtube, facebook, reddit and social media to censor. People aren't aware that for the past few years, traditional media and social media has been battling behind the scenes over content, narrative and censorship. It was a major war going on that the public was simply unaware of. Suffice it to say, traditional media won. It is amazing how a select group of news organizations and their editors and journalists can use their bully pulpit to intimidate certain industries.

tetromino_ 9y ago

Often there is no difference between war crime evidence and war crime glorification that machine learning could discern. Exactly the same content could be interpreted as "look at us do great things in defense of our noble ideals!" and "look at these monsters do horrific things for no justifiable reason!". The difference is in the audience's mindset - which is only partially influenced by the uploader's intentions, and partially by how other pages and channels link to the video and present it, and partially by historical context (the same content can acquire a different interpretation five years down the road). Machine learning cannot be expected to emulate that.

bryanrasmussen 9y ago

I find this interesting in comparison with the google api that detects toxic comments. I suppose we'll be seeing the same sort of situation in comments sections (less irritating though)

tempodox 9y ago

Mis-applying bad so-called “artificial intelligence” is still a prime example of natural stupidity.