7 ms·

And here we go. As usual the "racist" pretext is being used to censor videos. I have no doubt that there are some terrible awful racist videos in that lot but

And here we go. As usual the "racist" pretext is being used to censor videos. I have no doubt that there are some terrible awful racist videos in that lot but you have to wonder how many times this is ALSO used as a mean to censor pretty much any video that the youtube execs don't like. Censorship is getting worse Edit: Replacing "Censorship is coming back" with "Censorship is getting worse"

Kye 7y ago
Since when do they need a pretext? Countless videos from LGBTQ+ people and people of color got wiped out due to mass reporting and inaccurate automated removals. All the people who usually cry censorship were silent.
- luckylion 7y ago
  That was a while ago, right? From what I remember, the "usual suspects" (aka libertarians, liberalists etc) weren't that silent, they pointed out the irony that the try to control platforming backfired, but did oppose the bans. Might be something newer, of course, in which case I didn't see it and can't comment on it.
  - Kye 7y ago
    It's an ongoing thing, and not just on YouTube. I see people popping on to Mastodon every day because they said, on their own timeline to people following them, that (for example) "transphobes can fall off a cliff." Banned for threats. Sometimes permanently. Most big instances have the :guillotine: and :trebuchet: emoji because of one such case. This is way more than the few cases that float up into your attention. It's been going on for years across all these big silos. People who fully endorse actual censorship know they can abuse automated systems to silence marginalized people.
    - stcredzero 7y ago
      People who fully endorse actual censorship know they can abuse automated systems to silence marginalized people. Very true. This statement is neutral with regards to both the left-right axis and authoritarian/anti-authoritarian axis. In order to have a society in which people can speak truth to power, in 2019, we have to be on the lookout for new forms that censorious power can take. Technology is a double edged sword here. New tech introduces ways of circumventing censorship, but also introduces new forms of censorship not covered by old laws.
    - luckylion 7y ago
      That's the problem with policies like this: they might apply them to everyone. If a feminist tweets "men are scum", they are going to get in trouble. If some white supremacist wrote "anti-whites can fall off a cliff", I suppose many would support removing/banning that. You won't get large companies to officially make value calls and say "no, it's okay if this user says that because they are part of a special group", they will be too vulnerable to public/media/political pressure, especially in a culture that is generally pro free speech.
okket 7y ago
No censorship. You are still free to create your own YouTube clone and publish your extreme political views there. Maybe call it "GabTube"?
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  "Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me." A free society has costs, including tolerating speech you find deplorable. To support censorship because it aligns with your current political leanings makes you no different than the politics you take issue with. Will you complain if Google mass fires left leaning employees? It's entirely within their right to do. You could even start a competitor to hire those people!
  - empath75 7y ago
    This isn’t censorship full stop. What you are advocating for is forcing YouTube to carry content that it doesn’t want to. I also think it’s grotesque to quote an anti nazi poem in defense of nazis.
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      I fully and without compromise support the right to free speech of all citizens, including "nazis" or whatever the overloaded term people are using these days. Rights aren't removed from citizens because you don't like their politics or beliefs. If you cheer when someone is deplatformed, remember that it is a short walk for your own ideas and beliefs to be deplatformed when the winds change.
      - kgraves 7y ago
        > I FULLY support the right to free speech of all citizens, including "nazis" Careful there, you yourself might be a nazi by the left's logic. /s
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
nullbyte 7y ago
Exactly. The phrasing used in their press release allows them to take down any video they deem offensive. Censorship is bad for the platform as a whole.
- bityard 7y ago
  YouTube/Google can already take down any video they like, for any reason, or for no reason at all. And they already do this literally all the time, ask any content creator with more than a handful of videos on the platform. The only reason there is a press release for this particular event is for the inevitable positive press and media attention it will garner.
lsniddy 7y ago
at best, social media sites will be declared public squares, at worst they'll be utilized. Either one is probably better than the current setup
vuln 7y ago
> Censorship is coming back Censorship never left. What's changing is who controls the Censorship and those few people are wielding very very powerful weapons of mass surveillance that will ultimately "disrupt" civilization as we know it.
anigbrowl 7y ago
By all means offer a better solution for dealing with the problem of algorithms matching viewers with extremist content.
- anoncake 7y ago
  No algorithms matching viewers. It's not ideal, sure, but freedom of opinion is a lot more important than Youtube being easy to use.
  - anigbrowl 7y ago
    I'm fine with freedom of opinion, but not fine with things like threats to individuals or groups.
    - anoncake 7y ago
      If this is what "extremism" means here, I'm also fine with it in principle. But I don't trust Google to be neutral and refrain from censoring views that run counter to their interests. Removing recommendations to remove that risk would be worth it IMO.
steveeq1 7y ago
It would be interesting to see if they also start banning rap videos using the same reasoning.
dingoegret 7y ago
Take the tinfoil off. Extremist and hateful content on YouTube needs to be removed and your conspiracy theory that it could be used by execs to ban videos they personally don't like is not a good enough reason to go against this, even if it was somehow true.
zelon88 7y ago
Honestly, it should to some extent. Conspiracy theorists and/or political extremists (on both sides) should have to seek out their extreme content with prejudice. No more marketing birther theories alongside CSPAN videos on YouTube, or click-bait "TOP 10 UNEXPLAINED PHENOMENON" when someone looks for academic material. It shouldn't be possible to "stumble" onto a video that promotes falsehoods like vaccines causing autism or holistic medicine alongside legitimate medical content. It's damaging our society because not everyone has the acumen to know when they're being gaslit. If these content creators were doing this as satire and advertised as such it wouldn't be an issue. What we have are content creators creating deliberately misleading content and then pushing it deliberately to the most gullible audience they can. The first amendment shouldn't be used as a weapon to trick stupid people. It's diluting real political discourse and creating factions of people who don't have substantial opinions, just a bunch of inaccurate facts and unscrupulous sources for information.
- creaghpatr 7y ago
  >It's damaging our society because not everyone has the acumen to know when they're being gaslit. Do you understand how pretentious this sounds?
  - zelon88 7y ago
    Honestly, no. We've got people who still believe that feeding your kids bleach is a holistic medical treatment. It's not pretentious: it's 100% true. I've got an 8 year old who watches YT. How is he supposed to have the contextual data to know when he's being gaslit?
    - creaghpatr 7y ago
      He has a competent parent, right?
Miner49er 7y ago
The statement "censorship is coming back" is simply not true, it's been here the entire time. YouTube has been censoring videos since probably the very beginning. They've already had the power to and have already silenced certain political opinions on their platform. This is nothing new, they're simply (maybe) expanding it.
daenz 7y ago
What is the end game of this censorship nonsense? Do people really think that if they play whack-a-mole against every instance of speech you don't like online, it will improve the world somehow? How, exactly? Other people won't see it, so they won't be "infected" by it? What is the theory, exactly, because it always looks to me like an inane reactionary conclusion...something a mob would do.
HBKXNCUO 7y ago
I'm not sure why we should give them a pass on censoring ANY legal political content, including racism, homophobia, anti-semitism, or any other political stance outside of the corporate mainstream. The fact is that YouTube has become one of the primary places (along with Facebook and Twitter) where people not rich enough to own a newspaper or television station engage in political speech. Preventing people from meaningful participation in the public political debate is a precursor to real world violence, because you leave people with little other choice to advocate for what they view as their interests. YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, and all other corporate entities attempting to regulate political discourse are driving us toward a civil war. There is no good reason for us to allow them to do that.
- letusnot 7y ago
  You are deranged if you think we are remotely on the course to civil war.
- biogewuerz 7y ago
  Reminds me of the shooting at Youtube HQ. Nasim Aghdam also went postal because she was deplatformed by them. Wouldn't surprise me if another nutter decides to take revenge in the future.
mffnbs 7y ago
I personally don't understand the anti-censorship argument wrt racism. YouTube has always been free to remove any content they'd like for any reason. When they more specifically define the content that they will be removing, it somehow now becomes controversial? This surrounds the argument with uncomfortable undertones. The idea that your message deserves equal treatment despite the content seems to be a value promoted by racists. Also, Google/YouTube, Facebook/Instagram, Twitter, etc, don't owe anyone a platform. If this were not true, I don't quite understand how corporations could reasonably comply.

Kye 7y ago

Since when do they need a pretext? Countless videos from LGBTQ+ people and people of color got wiped out due to mass reporting and inaccurate automated removals. All the people who usually cry censorship were silent.

luckylion 7y ago
That was a while ago, right? From what I remember, the "usual suspects" (aka libertarians, liberalists etc) weren't that silent, they pointed out the irony that the try to control platforming backfired, but did oppose the bans. Might be something newer, of course, in which case I didn't see it and can't comment on it.
- Kye 7y ago
  It's an ongoing thing, and not just on YouTube. I see people popping on to Mastodon every day because they said, on their own timeline to people following them, that (for example) "transphobes can fall off a cliff." Banned for threats. Sometimes permanently. Most big instances have the :guillotine: and :trebuchet: emoji because of one such case. This is way more than the few cases that float up into your attention. It's been going on for years across all these big silos. People who fully endorse actual censorship know they can abuse automated systems to silence marginalized people.
  - stcredzero 7y ago
    People who fully endorse actual censorship know they can abuse automated systems to silence marginalized people. Very true. This statement is neutral with regards to both the left-right axis and authoritarian/anti-authoritarian axis. In order to have a society in which people can speak truth to power, in 2019, we have to be on the lookout for new forms that censorious power can take. Technology is a double edged sword here. New tech introduces ways of circumventing censorship, but also introduces new forms of censorship not covered by old laws.
  - luckylion 7y ago
    That's the problem with policies like this: they might apply them to everyone. If a feminist tweets "men are scum", they are going to get in trouble. If some white supremacist wrote "anti-whites can fall off a cliff", I suppose many would support removing/banning that. You won't get large companies to officially make value calls and say "no, it's okay if this user says that because they are part of a special group", they will be too vulnerable to public/media/political pressure, especially in a culture that is generally pro free speech.

okket 7y ago

No censorship. You are still free to create your own YouTube clone and publish your extreme political views there. Maybe call it "GabTube"?

toomuchtodo 7y ago
"Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me." A free society has costs, including tolerating speech you find deplorable. To support censorship because it aligns with your current political leanings makes you no different than the politics you take issue with. Will you complain if Google mass fires left leaning employees? It's entirely within their right to do. You could even start a competitor to hire those people!
- empath75 7y ago
  This isn’t censorship full stop. What you are advocating for is forcing YouTube to carry content that it doesn’t want to. I also think it’s grotesque to quote an anti nazi poem in defense of nazis.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    I fully and without compromise support the right to free speech of all citizens, including "nazis" or whatever the overloaded term people are using these days. Rights aren't removed from citizens because you don't like their politics or beliefs. If you cheer when someone is deplatformed, remember that it is a short walk for your own ideas and beliefs to be deplatformed when the winds change.
    - kgraves 7y ago
      > I FULLY support the right to free speech of all citizens, including "nazis" Careful there, you yourself might be a nazi by the left's logic. /s
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]

nullbyte 7y ago

Exactly. The phrasing used in their press release allows them to take down any video they deem offensive. Censorship is bad for the platform as a whole.

bityard 7y ago
YouTube/Google can already take down any video they like, for any reason, or for no reason at all. And they already do this literally all the time, ask any content creator with more than a handful of videos on the platform. The only reason there is a press release for this particular event is for the inevitable positive press and media attention it will garner.

lsniddy 7y ago

at best, social media sites will be declared public squares, at worst they'll be utilized. Either one is probably better than the current setup

vuln 7y ago

> Censorship is coming back Censorship never left. What's changing is who controls the Censorship and those few people are wielding very very powerful weapons of mass surveillance that will ultimately "disrupt" civilization as we know it.

anigbrowl 7y ago

By all means offer a better solution for dealing with the problem of algorithms matching viewers with extremist content.

anoncake 7y ago
No algorithms matching viewers. It's not ideal, sure, but freedom of opinion is a lot more important than Youtube being easy to use.
- anigbrowl 7y ago
  I'm fine with freedom of opinion, but not fine with things like threats to individuals or groups.
  - anoncake 7y ago
    If this is what "extremism" means here, I'm also fine with it in principle. But I don't trust Google to be neutral and refrain from censoring views that run counter to their interests. Removing recommendations to remove that risk would be worth it IMO.

steveeq1 7y ago

It would be interesting to see if they also start banning rap videos using the same reasoning.

dingoegret 7y ago

Take the tinfoil off. Extremist and hateful content on YouTube needs to be removed and your conspiracy theory that it could be used by execs to ban videos they personally don't like is not a good enough reason to go against this, even if it was somehow true.

zelon88 7y ago

Honestly, it should to some extent. Conspiracy theorists and/or political extremists (on both sides) should have to seek out their extreme content with prejudice. No more marketing birther theories alongside CSPAN videos on YouTube, or click-bait "TOP 10 UNEXPLAINED PHENOMENON" when someone looks for academic material. It shouldn't be possible to "stumble" onto a video that promotes falsehoods like vaccines causing autism or holistic medicine alongside legitimate medical content. It's damaging our society because not everyone has the acumen to know when they're being gaslit. If these content creators were doing this as satire and advertised as such it wouldn't be an issue. What we have are content creators creating deliberately misleading content and then pushing it deliberately to the most gullible audience they can. The first amendment shouldn't be used as a weapon to trick stupid people. It's diluting real political discourse and creating factions of people who don't have substantial opinions, just a bunch of inaccurate facts and unscrupulous sources for information.

creaghpatr 7y ago
>It's damaging our society because not everyone has the acumen to know when they're being gaslit. Do you understand how pretentious this sounds?
- zelon88 7y ago
  Honestly, no. We've got people who still believe that feeding your kids bleach is a holistic medical treatment. It's not pretentious: it's 100% true. I've got an 8 year old who watches YT. How is he supposed to have the contextual data to know when he's being gaslit?
  - creaghpatr 7y ago
    He has a competent parent, right?

Miner49er 7y ago

The statement "censorship is coming back" is simply not true, it's been here the entire time. YouTube has been censoring videos since probably the very beginning. They've already had the power to and have already silenced certain political opinions on their platform. This is nothing new, they're simply (maybe) expanding it.

daenz 7y ago

What is the end game of this censorship nonsense? Do people really think that if they play whack-a-mole against every instance of speech you don't like online, it will improve the world somehow? How, exactly? Other people won't see it, so they won't be "infected" by it? What is the theory, exactly, because it always looks to me like an inane reactionary conclusion...something a mob would do.

HBKXNCUO 7y ago

I'm not sure why we should give them a pass on censoring ANY legal political content, including racism, homophobia, anti-semitism, or any other political stance outside of the corporate mainstream. The fact is that YouTube has become one of the primary places (along with Facebook and Twitter) where people not rich enough to own a newspaper or television station engage in political speech. Preventing people from meaningful participation in the public political debate is a precursor to real world violence, because you leave people with little other choice to advocate for what they view as their interests. YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, and all other corporate entities attempting to regulate political discourse are driving us toward a civil war. There is no good reason for us to allow them to do that.

letusnot 7y ago
You are deranged if you think we are remotely on the course to civil war.
biogewuerz 7y ago
Reminds me of the shooting at Youtube HQ. Nasim Aghdam also went postal because she was deplatformed by them. Wouldn't surprise me if another nutter decides to take revenge in the future.

mffnbs 7y ago

I personally don't understand the anti-censorship argument wrt racism. YouTube has always been free to remove any content they'd like for any reason. When they more specifically define the content that they will be removing, it somehow now becomes controversial? This surrounds the argument with uncomfortable undertones. The idea that your message deserves equal treatment despite the content seems to be a value promoted by racists. Also, Google/YouTube, Facebook/Instagram, Twitter, etc, don't owe anyone a platform. If this were not true, I don't quite understand how corporations could reasonably comply.