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YouTube Blacklist Censors Content Containing Certain Keywords

60 points by rhabarba 7y ago

mschuster91 7y ago
I get why certain keywords (e.g. "crisis actors") are ranked down, YouTube has rightfully been under fire for actively promoting this crap. What I don't get is why the author whines about rating content by source. Anyone basing a statement on Alex Jones, Breitbart or RT should be removed from any promotion (i.e. search, "next video") features, there can only be crap as a result of relying on these "sources". As long as Youtube doesn't remove the videos outright there is no censorship and frankly I wouldn't have any problems with removing them either. Social media platforms need to wake up and realize they have a responsibility to society - just like "classic" media - and that is to further democratic discourse instead of helping to destroy it. Allowing lies and propaganda fabrications to spread is nothing less than destruction of democracy.
- rhabarba 7y ago
  How is it "democratic discourse" to ignore statements of certain people? Last time I read a dictionary, democracy did not make a difference between citizens.
  - mschuster91 7y ago
    > Last time I read a dictionary, democracy did not make a difference between citizens. To quote Karl Popper: "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." Democracy needs provable facts to work, it ceases to work when the electorate gets flooded by destructive lies.
    - rhabarba 7y ago
      If Google only shows provable facts in the future, Google is pretty much useless in the future.
    - FakeComments 7y ago
      Google calls mainstream conservatives, including Jewish ones, Nazis in their internal documents. [1] Antifa attacks the elderly and journalists routinely, but face no censorship on Google. Google employees have repeatedly testified that Google is intentionally trying to steer public perception, and that they knowingly lied about doing so to Congress. [2] Google is not on the side of tolerance. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noHtKljPgJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noHtKljPgJc [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_XzcTINGOg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_XzcTINGOg
    - agsilvio 7y ago
      Tolerance leads to intolerance, and we don't want that so we better not tolerate some stuff. Karl Popper sounds like a real winner.
      - andrepd 7y ago
        Yes, that's his point. Tolerating "Jews should not be able to vote" as an opinion will ironically lead to a less tolerant society. You must be intolerant with the intolerant.
        tux1968 7y ago
        You literally just said "Jews should not be able to vote" and the world did not explode. Words are much more nuanced than you seem to want to believe. We are not equipped to properly censor them without doing much more damage than we do good.
        ftr45 7y ago
        that doesn't change the fact that tolerance should be limited
  - toss1 7y ago
    How is treating lies as if they were truth any form of legitimate discourse? Especially when the lies are specifically crafted to undermine democracy? Any durably functioning society has means to shun & shed liars & those who work to destroy the society. Treating rules as absolute rarely works well.
    - syshum 7y ago
      The biggest problem we have over Fake new and "lies" is too many people associate opinions and feelings with facts, and if anyone opposes those opinions or feelings then they are "Denying their reality" or "Their Truth" Further even factual "truth" should always questioned, debated, and explored, no one gave Google the power to say what is "Truth" and then to expel any other idea that challenges said "Truth" that is dangerous for society
      - toss1 7y ago
        Indeed, far too many confound feelings vs facts. Of course truths should be debated, there is a difference between useful debate and shouting or deceit. To paraphrase Asimov, we should well remember that democracy does not mean that Alan's ignorance is equal to Bob's truth. It has been well demonstrated that trolls can easily and consistently derail even sound scientific discussions, destroying the discussion and even the forum, if allowed. One only need to look her at HN to see how much filtering & moderation work is required to maintain a valid discussion. Individuals have better discussions than mobs. There is no basis to think that large scale discussions need less filtering & moderation than tight communities, yet even this obvious concept is fought here...
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - close04 7y ago
    There's no democratic principle that forces you to listen to all opinions#. They just ensure you're free to have a voice (within the limits of the law) but they won't force anyone to listen to that voice or to amplify it. YouTube is an amplifier and while they give anyone a voice they're not forced by any law lo amplify its reach. Just like you won't go share my opinion with all your discussion partners. #is it anti-democratic if someone flags or downvotes a comment on HN? Are you or HN acting in an anti-democratic fashion by hiding and censoring that opinion? (obvious answer: no) Freedom and democracy are seriously misinterpreted these days.
    - feanaro 7y ago
      But discriminating certain videos negatively by removing them from certain features (such as search results) is still amplification, just with a factor < 1.
      - close04 7y ago
        > with a factor < 1 How so? The video is there and it can be viewed. That is 1. That is your voice. It just gets no amplification while other voices do. Did you ever see Breitbart putting an anti-Breitbart opinion on the front page? Are they being anti-democratic by doing this? So I'll ask again, if you downvoted/flagged my comment thus making it less readable (factor < 1) did you act in an anti-democratic way? And if so how do you reconcile your actions with your words?
        feanaro 7y ago
        > So I'll ask again, if you downvoted/flagged my comment thus making it less readable (factor < 1) did you act in an anti-democratic way? And if so how do you reconcile your actions with your words? No, because I only have a limited amount of power in this regard. If I was HN the platform and I systematically silenced your comments simply on the basis that they were coming from you (and you were not rude and/or an obvious spammer), then I would be censoring you. While this is not necessarily anti-democratic since HN is not a government institution, it does get unsavoury rather quickly. And like it or not, it is more unsavoury the larger the entity (in terms of audience) doing it.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  I don't understand why you're so comfortable having a giant corporation decide what's true. HN is so bizare sometimes.
  - high_derivative 7y ago
    Cynically, because he believes them on his side?
    - koolba 7y ago
      ... for now.
  - sametmax 7y ago
    Google is not a public service. They are a for profit company. They are not our friends, their youtube ranking algo is not designed to be fair and improve the life of human kind. It's designed to make money. I don't get the outrage: we warned people for 15 years this would happen. Now people put all their eggs in the same basket and cry when things go wrong. Well, good. It's a learning opportunity.
    - cameronbrown 7y ago
      There is a massive, massive difference between a trillion dollar company optimising for money and optimising for "the truth". I prefer my corporations greedy instead of virtuous, it's much more trustworthy.
      - PavlovsCat 7y ago
        There is a lot of money and power in shaping what is considered to be true.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    The alternative is having a giant corporation heedlessly promote lies which will get people killed. "You shouldn't be able to poison the well" is not invalidated if the well is owned by a corporation.
- syshum 7y ago
  I see so only those with "correct opinions" should be allowed to talk Only those on the Authoritarian left should be allowed access to the Social Media Publishers (as they are not platforms) Libertarians and conservatives should be shut out of the conversations because of our wrong think... Nice position you have there comrade
  - mschuster91 7y ago
    > I see so only those with "correct opions" should be allowed to talk No, exactly opposite: those who repeatedly and knowingly distribute lies to manipulate people (e.g. "crisis actor" crap) should be silenced, for they are not interested in furthering democratic discourse, but rather in destroying discourse.
    - syshum 7y ago
      You can point to extreme examples to supply support for your Draconian position, however the road to hell is paves with good intentions. For example I 100% oppose the Death Penalty, not because I want to protect the life of a serial killer, no it is because I want to protect the life (and rights) of the innocent guy that was not able to prove innocence to a biased jury... Similarly I do not support Free Speech because I want to defend conspiracy theorist that talk about crisis actors, no I do so because I want to defend the guys that talking about Government spying on everyone years before Snowden released the documents, I want defend the scientists that has the balls to say the Earth is not flat when everyone else says it is. Giving a corporation or government the power to silence anyone that they say is "wrong" is far far far too dangerous
    - DuskStar 7y ago
      "only those with correct opinions should be allowed to talk" and "people with incorrect opinions should NOT be allowed to talk" are essentially equivalent. I'm really not sure how you don't see this.
  - agsilvio 7y ago
    Yeah. His was a real dumb comment.
- adolph 7y ago
  If platforms edit like “classic” media, then they won’t count as distributors under Sec 230. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...
- kmfrk 7y ago
  Quite the irony for people who disagree with you to vote your post down. Apparently that's the approved kind of censorship here.
  - mschuster91 7y ago
    HN is (like Reddit) US-dominated, and with it comes that most of the users follow an absolutist version of "free speech" that is totally ridiculous for people coming from Europe who have learned from the Nazi regime where absolute limitless free speech can and inevitably will end.
    - syshum 7y ago
      Yea America should really learn from the EU and start putting people in prison for Twitter Jokes... /s
      - andrepd 7y ago
        The topic here is not twitter jokes, so refrain from derailing the conversation to your pet talking point.
        syshum 7y ago
        The Topic here is censorship and how the US should take a position like EU and regulate the speech of its citizens, which includes things like Comedy
        DuskStar 7y ago
        Does this mean we should 1. allow anything to be posted on Twitter, or 2. somehow determine whether something on twitter is a joke with perfect accuracy?
    - acollins1331 7y ago
      Wait until the Nazis end up in power anyway and have the powers of censorship you gave them. It'll be game over then, I'm glad to be in America and know I have the right to speak out against a fascist president.
- Amezarak 7y ago
  > Social media platforms need to wake up and realize they have a responsibility to society - just like "classic" media - and that is to further democratic discourse instead of helping to destroy it. Allowing lies and propaganda fabrications to spread is nothing less than destruction of democracy. There's another word to describe what you get when the ultra-rich and powerful are the ones that decide what's true and what's not: plutarchy. Further, I'm not so sure the classic media organizations see their responsibility the same way you do. The centralization of the media landscape resulting from the invention of radio and television was extremely pernicious: it led to the near-total control of news and information by a few people, who were able to effectively propagandize their interests to millions of Americans. These same media organizations worked hand-in-hand with the CIA and other intelligence agencies to advance falsehoods and propaganda. We have a long and sordid public history of things like Operation Mockingbird, and it never stopped. The same situation goes on today - what do you think all these "anonymous officials" are doing, who end up being cited repeatedly by the media, even after they prove to be lying, and why do you think media organizations actively hire people like John Brennan? The Internet has given us, for the first time in decades, the ability to read information not controlled and filtered by the news media/government establishment. It is difficult to see these efforts on the part of YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms as anything other than an attempt under pressure (by the government and the classic media) to get the populace back under control and wholly informed only by government/plutarch approved information sources. For centuries, even millenia, "fake news" and propaganda have been real problems. There were arguments at the Constitutional Convention about how 'designing men' were already spreading lies and propaganda to influence elections. Rumors and propaganda caused all sorts of problems in democratic societies throughout history, which survived anyway. Democratic discourse means yes, letting everyone speak even when it means a lot of people will be misinformed. It means it's your duty to try to convince people otherwise, even if you have to do it a thousand times or a million times. It means that you are not the possessor of ultimate truth and you don't get to dictate the truth to others. Maybe that's not the best way to run a society. Maybe we should be trying to construct Plato's Republic and penalizing people who put out what we decide is harmful. But that's not democratic.
- giantsloth 7y ago
  The fact is that, while the mainstream media pays attention to the far right outcry of censorship and demonetization, the left alternative media is also censored and demonetized on YouTube. YouTube is actively promoting the content of mainstream corporate sources that are inoffensive to advertisers with no say from its creators, it’s employees or its viewers/subscribers. And this is truly the fundamental problem. YouTube has zero accountability to anyone accept its advertisers, it’s major shareholders which there are few, and its board which there are few. YouTube being the only game in town, makes it impossible for the free market to allow you to move your eyeballs to another video platform. The fact is we need regulation and democratic oversight over YouTube as it is demonstrably a public good and a monopoly.
- deogeo 7y ago
  > As long as Youtube doesn't remove the videos outright there is no censorship As long as protests are limited to designated "free speech zones", there's no censorship either, right? Yes yes one is private and the other is public property, but the effect is the exact same. Worse, in fact - at least when you're herded into a free speech zone, you know your speech is being restricted. But when your video doesn't get many views, you have no idea.
romaaeterna 7y ago
Warren Buffett has mentioned the irony of the fact that the internet took us from a world with thousands of successful money-making newspapers to a world with just two that are likely to be around for long (WSJ, NYT). And Youtube appears to be taking over in the broadcast TV world. Youtube has to have content controls. But it's unconscionable that these controls are not open source, not created through a public process, not auditable, nor appeallable. It would be so easy to do this in an open and positive way, and Google has decided to do it on the cheap in an ugly, biased, and destructive way, one that is harming their brand and creating regulatory scrutiny.
- RickJWagner 7y ago
  Yes, open sourcing it would be best.
akitzmiller 7y ago
This "blacklist" comes from James O'Keefe's Project Veritas. They have a long history of staged "expose"s around the current Republican "bad guy of the day"; ACORN, voter fraud, etc. Regardless of whether this is legit, I'm surprised it showed up on HN.
- otisfunkmeyer 7y ago
  ad hominem attacks don't change the veracity of the leaked documents. This is strawman thinking and to use your phrase, "I'm surprised it showed up on HN."
  - akitzmiller 7y ago
    It changes the likelihood of the veracity of the document. If HN has done some sort of vetting, great. But there is no reason to take at face value anything that comes from Veritas. A discussion on censorship is a great thing to have. Just not starting with this guy.
    - otisfunkmeyer 7y ago
      ...As opposed to all of the other media outlets with their stellar records of truth-telling. The "publication of record" ship has sailed and we're left with competing agendas and increased need for personal vetting, which many have done on this leak--a fact which is easily searchable.
- PavlovsCat 7y ago
  > Regardless of whether this is legit So even if it's actually true YouTube has this mechanism, it's not worth discussing because of who brought it up first?
  - ftr45 7y ago
    no you take that sentence out of context
acollins1331 7y ago
You're not treating them like they are truth. You're a video hosting site and it's a video. Just let the videos rank how they will. Stupid videos being promoted and trending will let more people know they are stupid. When more people learn about who Alex Jones is, and he becomes a household name for being an idiot, when a gullible lad stumbles across him they are likely to be like "oh this dude is the idiot I heard about", rather than thinking they found some secret censored truth.
- pjc50 7y ago
  Except we can see that's not how it works, and Alex Jones became incredibly successful all the way up to slandering the parents of murdered children. It turns out that's where the line is. People do treat Google search results like truth. There's not a great deal google can do about that, and it's irresponsible for google to feed people lies.
  - acollins1331 7y ago
    This problem is solved by better education, not censorship. I know for a fact we currently don't teach people how to tell whether a youtube video is bullshit in school or not, teach it. People are agents, not pawns to be controlled into thinking what you want. There will always be bad apples.
    - pjc50 7y ago
      > People are agents, not pawns to be controlled into thinking what you want. I have some bad news for you about the world's largest advertising company.
    - krapp 7y ago
      >This problem is solved by better education, not censorship. Education is censorship. If it's unacceptable for Youtube to derank lies and extremism, it must also be unacceptable to teach children that lies and extremism are incorrect. If we can't trust one one arbiter of truth, then surely we can't trust any. The free speech solution would be to treat all ideas equally, regardless of their merit, and allow the marketplace of ideas to educate people and let everyone decide for themselves what truth is. But that just leads us to where we are now, with social media being overrun by cancer, and ever more people believing QAnon and Alex Jones and anti-vaxxers and flat earth. The inconvenient truth is that education sometimes works, but often doesn't. Censorship sometimes works, but often doesn't. Context matters (not all speech is equally valid, not all attempts at censorship inevitably lead to Orwellian dystopia) and the problem is more complex and nuanced than heated internet debates will allow.
im3w1l 7y ago
What I find the most interesting about this saga is not the leak itself but swat team and bomb squad that showed up at the leakers house during a psychological wellness call made in connection with the leaking.
- acollins1331 7y ago
  And they wonder why the people that need mental health help the most never get it, and why we have such a growth in extremist violent events. (Bonus:"They" don't actually wonder it. Extremist events are great excuses to amass more power to the powerful).
jeromic 7y ago
Imagine if humans weren't born with biological mouths, instead synthetic mouths were invented and sold by a company, allowing people to speak. We wouldn't accept the company installing a blacklist of words or phrases to stop people from saying them. The internet is making online discourse more and more important, perhaps online discourse is already more important than oral discourse. My metaphor obviously differs in some regards to the article, but I think it elucidates my main point, that Google has become sufficiently large and important that we can't really excuse this type of censorship on the basis that they are a private company. For example the list clearly shows that Google is pro-choice, with phrases such as "abortion is wrong" appearing on the blacklist. This is not up to Google to decide for others. If Google, or its employees, want to voice their perspective, that is fine. It is not fine to try to manipulate people through their software while pretending to be a neutral party.
- qzygr 7y ago
  >Imagine if humans weren't born with biological mouths, instead synthetic mouths were invented and sold by a company, allowing people to speak. We wouldn't accept the company installing a blacklist of words or phrases to stop people from saying them. But we already have that in European countries. Why do we accept this from the government instead?
- maxheadroom 7y ago
  >The internet is making online discourse more and more important, perhaps online discourse is already more important than oral discourse. It's an Eternal September[0] problem, though, in the fact that any discourse has effectively been quashed by setting up "us versus them" factions, yeah? In our bubble (on HN), sure, we can have respectable (or maybe not so much) discourse but we all come not holding our fingers in our ears, stamping our feet because we think 'x' person is in 'y' camp. You don't see the festering problems that have affected other platforms (yet) and I think it's very telling that we recognise that discourse is important - but we seem to be in the minority (in this sense of openness to exchange). The problem with YouTube, however, is that discourse hasn't been a principle part of YoutTube for quite some time. Someone makes a video. If we're lucky someone else might make a "My Response To..." video and, if we're luckier, a further response might be made, "My Response to the Response To...". However, all one needs to do is look at the cesspool that has become YouTube comments and they will see that discourse isn't a fundamentally important principle there (anymore). The likewise goes with places like Reddit, which has divided itself into "us versus them" camps about almost everything under the sun. So, I agree that (online) discourse is important - but it seems to be a bygone idea that a select few of us (present company included) are desperately trying to hold on to. I'm conflicted as to whether that should give me a feeling of hope or an immense sadness. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
nzjrs 7y ago
I'm continually surprised this isn't a major international scandal. Some Americans don't like google interfering with their discourse and they spend their time using constitutional arguments as to how ok that is or not. International people watching these arguments look on with boredom. Meanwhile, and american company per default explicitly shapes the dialog of the entire world and people shrug. The international angle on this is absolutely scandalous and no one cares. Every international government acknowledges the problems of the great firewall of China, but this doesn't matter?
- iagovar 7y ago
  It is concerning. I've seen spanish keywords there and I can't wrap my head around the reason they are filtered.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
loraa 7y ago
If you think CNN is somehow more accurate than RT, you are part of the problem. I used to pay extra on my cable bill for the new package which was CNN, MSNBC, BBC World, DW and Fox News. Never bothered with Fox, but it was interesting to see how inaccurate or false CNN and MSNBC we're compared to BBC or DW. I guess if you are covering your ears at anything presented that doesn't match your political ideology, you're a lot dumber than you think you are. Personally I like to have as much news as possible from all sources so I can come to my conclusion to the actual truth, compared to being told that you can only trust leftist news channels because if you don't you're racist(2015),Russian Bot(2016),homophobic(2017),transphobic or alt-right(2018), white supremacists (2019)
motohagiography 7y ago
The most insidious thing social platforms do is secretly ban and filter content to give the impression it is published when it is not. In any other situation, de-ranking, "shadow banning," and other opaque filtering while giving the impression of being public would be fraud. It's designed to steal the posters time and effort. Their platform their rules, except it could become difficult to justify using a platform to actively defraud people of their time and effort. Attracting peoples content with the promise of publicity only to sabotage it is straight bait and switch. I'm sure it's all very narrowly legal, but post-election lawsuits in 2022 will be ones to watch. I'm glad this stuff is coming out, but there are viable youtube alternatives for sharing video. If they want stuff off their platform, just say so, and people will use new platforms. I still believe this behaviour by social media companies will yield new platforms. The kids learning to code now are realizing there is a network of people using "censorship," to actively manage a simulation of a world with a manufactured consensus they find acceptable. We're barely a decade past the winner-take-all pattern of platforms, and a totally new dominant platform is less than 5 years away. I'm still optimistic that these platforms are the AOL, Compuserve, and Myspace of today. This too shall pass.
- krapp 7y ago
  >Attracting peoples content with the promise of publicity only to sabotage it is straight bait and switch. I'm sure it's all very narrowly legal, but post-election lawsuits in 2022 will be ones to watch. Youtube doesn't promise anyone publicity. Any ranking algorithm or suggested content list by its very design "deranks" everything else, and most content on the platform is probably never watched, or barely watched. Youtube's current default of biasing recommendations towards extremist content "deranks" less extremist content, yet that doesn't appear to be a problem for people who are suddenly up in arms that the site is changing the bias of an already biased system. There is no bait-and-switch here, nor is there sabotage.
RickJWagner 7y ago
Wow, that's a little disturbing. Some imaginative phrases there I wouldn't have dreamed of looking up. I'm going to try to forget some of that stuff.

60 points by rhabarba 7y ago

I get why certain keywords (e.g. "crisis actors") are ranked down, YouTube has rightfully been under fire for actively promoting this crap. What I don't get is why the author whines about rating content by source. Anyone basing a statement on Alex Jones, Breitbart or RT should be removed from any promotion (i.e. search, "next video") features, there can only be crap as a result of relying on these "sources". As long as Youtube doesn't remove the videos outright there is no censorship and frankly I wouldn't have any problems with removing them either. Social media platforms need to wake up and realize they have a responsibility to society - just like "classic" media - and that is to further democratic discourse instead of helping to destroy it. Allowing lies and propaganda fabrications to spread is nothing less than destruction of democracy.

rhabarba 7y ago
How is it "democratic discourse" to ignore statements of certain people? Last time I read a dictionary, democracy did not make a difference between citizens.
- mschuster91 7y ago
  > Last time I read a dictionary, democracy did not make a difference between citizens. To quote Karl Popper: "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them." Democracy needs provable facts to work, it ceases to work when the electorate gets flooded by destructive lies.
  - rhabarba 7y ago
    If Google only shows provable facts in the future, Google is pretty much useless in the future.
  - FakeComments 7y ago
    Google calls mainstream conservatives, including Jewish ones, Nazis in their internal documents. [1] Antifa attacks the elderly and journalists routinely, but face no censorship on Google. Google employees have repeatedly testified that Google is intentionally trying to steer public perception, and that they knowingly lied about doing so to Congress. [2] Google is not on the side of tolerance. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noHtKljPgJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noHtKljPgJc [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_XzcTINGOg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_XzcTINGOg
  - agsilvio 7y ago
    Tolerance leads to intolerance, and we don't want that so we better not tolerate some stuff. Karl Popper sounds like a real winner.
    - andrepd 7y ago
      Yes, that's his point. Tolerating "Jews should not be able to vote" as an opinion will ironically lead to a less tolerant society. You must be intolerant with the intolerant.
      - tux1968 7y ago
        You literally just said "Jews should not be able to vote" and the world did not explode. Words are much more nuanced than you seem to want to believe. We are not equipped to properly censor them without doing much more damage than we do good.
        ftr45 7y ago
        that doesn't change the fact that tolerance should be limited
- toss1 7y ago
  How is treating lies as if they were truth any form of legitimate discourse? Especially when the lies are specifically crafted to undermine democracy? Any durably functioning society has means to shun & shed liars & those who work to destroy the society. Treating rules as absolute rarely works well.
  - syshum 7y ago
    The biggest problem we have over Fake new and "lies" is too many people associate opinions and feelings with facts, and if anyone opposes those opinions or feelings then they are "Denying their reality" or "Their Truth" Further even factual "truth" should always questioned, debated, and explored, no one gave Google the power to say what is "Truth" and then to expel any other idea that challenges said "Truth" that is dangerous for society
    - toss1 7y ago
      Indeed, far too many confound feelings vs facts. Of course truths should be debated, there is a difference between useful debate and shouting or deceit. To paraphrase Asimov, we should well remember that democracy does not mean that Alan's ignorance is equal to Bob's truth. It has been well demonstrated that trolls can easily and consistently derail even sound scientific discussions, destroying the discussion and even the forum, if allowed. One only need to look her at HN to see how much filtering & moderation work is required to maintain a valid discussion. Individuals have better discussions than mobs. There is no basis to think that large scale discussions need less filtering & moderation than tight communities, yet even this obvious concept is fought here...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- close04 7y ago
  There's no democratic principle that forces you to listen to all opinions#. They just ensure you're free to have a voice (within the limits of the law) but they won't force anyone to listen to that voice or to amplify it. YouTube is an amplifier and while they give anyone a voice they're not forced by any law lo amplify its reach. Just like you won't go share my opinion with all your discussion partners. #is it anti-democratic if someone flags or downvotes a comment on HN? Are you or HN acting in an anti-democratic fashion by hiding and censoring that opinion? (obvious answer: no) Freedom and democracy are seriously misinterpreted these days.
  - feanaro 7y ago
    But discriminating certain videos negatively by removing them from certain features (such as search results) is still amplification, just with a factor < 1.
    - close04 7y ago
      > with a factor < 1 How so? The video is there and it can be viewed. That is 1. That is your voice. It just gets no amplification while other voices do. Did you ever see Breitbart putting an anti-Breitbart opinion on the front page? Are they being anti-democratic by doing this? So I'll ask again, if you downvoted/flagged my comment thus making it less readable (factor < 1) did you act in an anti-democratic way? And if so how do you reconcile your actions with your words?
      - feanaro 7y ago
        > So I'll ask again, if you downvoted/flagged my comment thus making it less readable (factor < 1) did you act in an anti-democratic way? And if so how do you reconcile your actions with your words? No, because I only have a limited amount of power in this regard. If I was HN the platform and I systematically silenced your comments simply on the basis that they were coming from you (and you were not rude and/or an obvious spammer), then I would be censoring you. While this is not necessarily anti-democratic since HN is not a government institution, it does get unsavoury rather quickly. And like it or not, it is more unsavoury the larger the entity (in terms of audience) doing it.
cameronbrown 7y ago
I don't understand why you're so comfortable having a giant corporation decide what's true. HN is so bizare sometimes.
- high_derivative 7y ago
  Cynically, because he believes them on his side?
  - koolba 7y ago
    ... for now.
- sametmax 7y ago
  Google is not a public service. They are a for profit company. They are not our friends, their youtube ranking algo is not designed to be fair and improve the life of human kind. It's designed to make money. I don't get the outrage: we warned people for 15 years this would happen. Now people put all their eggs in the same basket and cry when things go wrong. Well, good. It's a learning opportunity.
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    There is a massive, massive difference between a trillion dollar company optimising for money and optimising for "the truth". I prefer my corporations greedy instead of virtuous, it's much more trustworthy.
    - PavlovsCat 7y ago
      There is a lot of money and power in shaping what is considered to be true.
- pjc50 7y ago
  The alternative is having a giant corporation heedlessly promote lies which will get people killed. "You shouldn't be able to poison the well" is not invalidated if the well is owned by a corporation.
syshum 7y ago
I see so only those with "correct opinions" should be allowed to talk Only those on the Authoritarian left should be allowed access to the Social Media Publishers (as they are not platforms) Libertarians and conservatives should be shut out of the conversations because of our wrong think... Nice position you have there comrade
- mschuster91 7y ago
  > I see so only those with "correct opions" should be allowed to talk No, exactly opposite: those who repeatedly and knowingly distribute lies to manipulate people (e.g. "crisis actor" crap) should be silenced, for they are not interested in furthering democratic discourse, but rather in destroying discourse.
  - syshum 7y ago
    You can point to extreme examples to supply support for your Draconian position, however the road to hell is paves with good intentions. For example I 100% oppose the Death Penalty, not because I want to protect the life of a serial killer, no it is because I want to protect the life (and rights) of the innocent guy that was not able to prove innocence to a biased jury... Similarly I do not support Free Speech because I want to defend conspiracy theorist that talk about crisis actors, no I do so because I want to defend the guys that talking about Government spying on everyone years before Snowden released the documents, I want defend the scientists that has the balls to say the Earth is not flat when everyone else says it is. Giving a corporation or government the power to silence anyone that they say is "wrong" is far far far too dangerous
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    "only those with correct opinions should be allowed to talk" and "people with incorrect opinions should NOT be allowed to talk" are essentially equivalent. I'm really not sure how you don't see this.
- agsilvio 7y ago
  Yeah. His was a real dumb comment.
adolph 7y ago
If platforms edit like “classic” media, then they won’t count as distributors under Sec 230. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communications_Decency_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...
kmfrk 7y ago
Quite the irony for people who disagree with you to vote your post down. Apparently that's the approved kind of censorship here.
- mschuster91 7y ago
  HN is (like Reddit) US-dominated, and with it comes that most of the users follow an absolutist version of "free speech" that is totally ridiculous for people coming from Europe who have learned from the Nazi regime where absolute limitless free speech can and inevitably will end.
  - syshum 7y ago
    Yea America should really learn from the EU and start putting people in prison for Twitter Jokes... /s
    - andrepd 7y ago
      The topic here is not twitter jokes, so refrain from derailing the conversation to your pet talking point.
      - syshum 7y ago
        The Topic here is censorship and how the US should take a position like EU and regulate the speech of its citizens, which includes things like Comedy
      - DuskStar 7y ago
        Does this mean we should 1. allow anything to be posted on Twitter, or 2. somehow determine whether something on twitter is a joke with perfect accuracy?
  - acollins1331 7y ago
    Wait until the Nazis end up in power anyway and have the powers of censorship you gave them. It'll be game over then, I'm glad to be in America and know I have the right to speak out against a fascist president.
Amezarak 7y ago
> Social media platforms need to wake up and realize they have a responsibility to society - just like "classic" media - and that is to further democratic discourse instead of helping to destroy it. Allowing lies and propaganda fabrications to spread is nothing less than destruction of democracy. There's another word to describe what you get when the ultra-rich and powerful are the ones that decide what's true and what's not: plutarchy. Further, I'm not so sure the classic media organizations see their responsibility the same way you do. The centralization of the media landscape resulting from the invention of radio and television was extremely pernicious: it led to the near-total control of news and information by a few people, who were able to effectively propagandize their interests to millions of Americans. These same media organizations worked hand-in-hand with the CIA and other intelligence agencies to advance falsehoods and propaganda. We have a long and sordid public history of things like Operation Mockingbird, and it never stopped. The same situation goes on today - what do you think all these "anonymous officials" are doing, who end up being cited repeatedly by the media, even after they prove to be lying, and why do you think media organizations actively hire people like John Brennan? The Internet has given us, for the first time in decades, the ability to read information not controlled and filtered by the news media/government establishment. It is difficult to see these efforts on the part of YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms as anything other than an attempt under pressure (by the government and the classic media) to get the populace back under control and wholly informed only by government/plutarch approved information sources. For centuries, even millenia, "fake news" and propaganda have been real problems. There were arguments at the Constitutional Convention about how 'designing men' were already spreading lies and propaganda to influence elections. Rumors and propaganda caused all sorts of problems in democratic societies throughout history, which survived anyway. Democratic discourse means yes, letting everyone speak even when it means a lot of people will be misinformed. It means it's your duty to try to convince people otherwise, even if you have to do it a thousand times or a million times. It means that you are not the possessor of ultimate truth and you don't get to dictate the truth to others. Maybe that's not the best way to run a society. Maybe we should be trying to construct Plato's Republic and penalizing people who put out what we decide is harmful. But that's not democratic.
giantsloth 7y ago
The fact is that, while the mainstream media pays attention to the far right outcry of censorship and demonetization, the left alternative media is also censored and demonetized on YouTube. YouTube is actively promoting the content of mainstream corporate sources that are inoffensive to advertisers with no say from its creators, it’s employees or its viewers/subscribers. And this is truly the fundamental problem. YouTube has zero accountability to anyone accept its advertisers, it’s major shareholders which there are few, and its board which there are few. YouTube being the only game in town, makes it impossible for the free market to allow you to move your eyeballs to another video platform. The fact is we need regulation and democratic oversight over YouTube as it is demonstrably a public good and a monopoly.
deogeo 7y ago
> As long as Youtube doesn't remove the videos outright there is no censorship As long as protests are limited to designated "free speech zones", there's no censorship either, right? Yes yes one is private and the other is public property, but the effect is the exact same. Worse, in fact - at least when you're herded into a free speech zone, you know your speech is being restricted. But when your video doesn't get many views, you have no idea.

romaaeterna 7y ago

Warren Buffett has mentioned the irony of the fact that the internet took us from a world with thousands of successful money-making newspapers to a world with just two that are likely to be around for long (WSJ, NYT). And Youtube appears to be taking over in the broadcast TV world. Youtube has to have content controls. But it's unconscionable that these controls are not open source, not created through a public process, not auditable, nor appeallable. It would be so easy to do this in an open and positive way, and Google has decided to do it on the cheap in an ugly, biased, and destructive way, one that is harming their brand and creating regulatory scrutiny.

RickJWagner 7y ago
Yes, open sourcing it would be best.

akitzmiller 7y ago

This "blacklist" comes from James O'Keefe's Project Veritas. They have a long history of staged "expose"s around the current Republican "bad guy of the day"; ACORN, voter fraud, etc. Regardless of whether this is legit, I'm surprised it showed up on HN.

otisfunkmeyer 7y ago
ad hominem attacks don't change the veracity of the leaked documents. This is strawman thinking and to use your phrase, "I'm surprised it showed up on HN."
- akitzmiller 7y ago
  It changes the likelihood of the veracity of the document. If HN has done some sort of vetting, great. But there is no reason to take at face value anything that comes from Veritas. A discussion on censorship is a great thing to have. Just not starting with this guy.
  - otisfunkmeyer 7y ago
    ...As opposed to all of the other media outlets with their stellar records of truth-telling. The "publication of record" ship has sailed and we're left with competing agendas and increased need for personal vetting, which many have done on this leak--a fact which is easily searchable.
PavlovsCat 7y ago
> Regardless of whether this is legit So even if it's actually true YouTube has this mechanism, it's not worth discussing because of who brought it up first?
- ftr45 7y ago
  no you take that sentence out of context

acollins1331 7y ago

You're not treating them like they are truth. You're a video hosting site and it's a video. Just let the videos rank how they will. Stupid videos being promoted and trending will let more people know they are stupid. When more people learn about who Alex Jones is, and he becomes a household name for being an idiot, when a gullible lad stumbles across him they are likely to be like "oh this dude is the idiot I heard about", rather than thinking they found some secret censored truth.

pjc50 7y ago
Except we can see that's not how it works, and Alex Jones became incredibly successful all the way up to slandering the parents of murdered children. It turns out that's where the line is. People do treat Google search results like truth. There's not a great deal google can do about that, and it's irresponsible for google to feed people lies.
- acollins1331 7y ago
  This problem is solved by better education, not censorship. I know for a fact we currently don't teach people how to tell whether a youtube video is bullshit in school or not, teach it. People are agents, not pawns to be controlled into thinking what you want. There will always be bad apples.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    > People are agents, not pawns to be controlled into thinking what you want. I have some bad news for you about the world's largest advertising company.
  - krapp 7y ago
    >This problem is solved by better education, not censorship. Education is censorship. If it's unacceptable for Youtube to derank lies and extremism, it must also be unacceptable to teach children that lies and extremism are incorrect. If we can't trust one one arbiter of truth, then surely we can't trust any. The free speech solution would be to treat all ideas equally, regardless of their merit, and allow the marketplace of ideas to educate people and let everyone decide for themselves what truth is. But that just leads us to where we are now, with social media being overrun by cancer, and ever more people believing QAnon and Alex Jones and anti-vaxxers and flat earth. The inconvenient truth is that education sometimes works, but often doesn't. Censorship sometimes works, but often doesn't. Context matters (not all speech is equally valid, not all attempts at censorship inevitably lead to Orwellian dystopia) and the problem is more complex and nuanced than heated internet debates will allow.

im3w1l 7y ago

What I find the most interesting about this saga is not the leak itself but swat team and bomb squad that showed up at the leakers house during a psychological wellness call made in connection with the leaking.

acollins1331 7y ago
And they wonder why the people that need mental health help the most never get it, and why we have such a growth in extremist violent events. (Bonus:"They" don't actually wonder it. Extremist events are great excuses to amass more power to the powerful).

jeromic 7y ago

Imagine if humans weren't born with biological mouths, instead synthetic mouths were invented and sold by a company, allowing people to speak. We wouldn't accept the company installing a blacklist of words or phrases to stop people from saying them. The internet is making online discourse more and more important, perhaps online discourse is already more important than oral discourse. My metaphor obviously differs in some regards to the article, but I think it elucidates my main point, that Google has become sufficiently large and important that we can't really excuse this type of censorship on the basis that they are a private company. For example the list clearly shows that Google is pro-choice, with phrases such as "abortion is wrong" appearing on the blacklist. This is not up to Google to decide for others. If Google, or its employees, want to voice their perspective, that is fine. It is not fine to try to manipulate people through their software while pretending to be a neutral party.

qzygr 7y ago
>Imagine if humans weren't born with biological mouths, instead synthetic mouths were invented and sold by a company, allowing people to speak. We wouldn't accept the company installing a blacklist of words or phrases to stop people from saying them. But we already have that in European countries. Why do we accept this from the government instead?
maxheadroom 7y ago
>The internet is making online discourse more and more important, perhaps online discourse is already more important than oral discourse. It's an Eternal September[0] problem, though, in the fact that any discourse has effectively been quashed by setting up "us versus them" factions, yeah? In our bubble (on HN), sure, we can have respectable (or maybe not so much) discourse but we all come not holding our fingers in our ears, stamping our feet because we think 'x' person is in 'y' camp. You don't see the festering problems that have affected other platforms (yet) and I think it's very telling that we recognise that discourse is important - but we seem to be in the minority (in this sense of openness to exchange). The problem with YouTube, however, is that discourse hasn't been a principle part of YoutTube for quite some time. Someone makes a video. If we're lucky someone else might make a "My Response To..." video and, if we're luckier, a further response might be made, "My Response to the Response To...". However, all one needs to do is look at the cesspool that has become YouTube comments and they will see that discourse isn't a fundamentally important principle there (anymore). The likewise goes with places like Reddit, which has divided itself into "us versus them" camps about almost everything under the sun. So, I agree that (online) discourse is important - but it seems to be a bygone idea that a select few of us (present company included) are desperately trying to hold on to. I'm conflicted as to whether that should give me a feeling of hope or an immense sadness. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

nzjrs 7y ago

I'm continually surprised this isn't a major international scandal. Some Americans don't like google interfering with their discourse and they spend their time using constitutional arguments as to how ok that is or not. International people watching these arguments look on with boredom. Meanwhile, and american company per default explicitly shapes the dialog of the entire world and people shrug. The international angle on this is absolutely scandalous and no one cares. Every international government acknowledges the problems of the great firewall of China, but this doesn't matter?

iagovar 7y ago
It is concerning. I've seen spanish keywords there and I can't wrap my head around the reason they are filtered.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

loraa 7y ago

If you think CNN is somehow more accurate than RT, you are part of the problem. I used to pay extra on my cable bill for the new package which was CNN, MSNBC, BBC World, DW and Fox News. Never bothered with Fox, but it was interesting to see how inaccurate or false CNN and MSNBC we're compared to BBC or DW. I guess if you are covering your ears at anything presented that doesn't match your political ideology, you're a lot dumber than you think you are. Personally I like to have as much news as possible from all sources so I can come to my conclusion to the actual truth, compared to being told that you can only trust leftist news channels because if you don't you're racist(2015),Russian Bot(2016),homophobic(2017),transphobic or alt-right(2018), white supremacists (2019)

motohagiography 7y ago

The most insidious thing social platforms do is secretly ban and filter content to give the impression it is published when it is not. In any other situation, de-ranking, "shadow banning," and other opaque filtering while giving the impression of being public would be fraud. It's designed to steal the posters time and effort. Their platform their rules, except it could become difficult to justify using a platform to actively defraud people of their time and effort. Attracting peoples content with the promise of publicity only to sabotage it is straight bait and switch. I'm sure it's all very narrowly legal, but post-election lawsuits in 2022 will be ones to watch. I'm glad this stuff is coming out, but there are viable youtube alternatives for sharing video. If they want stuff off their platform, just say so, and people will use new platforms. I still believe this behaviour by social media companies will yield new platforms. The kids learning to code now are realizing there is a network of people using "censorship," to actively manage a simulation of a world with a manufactured consensus they find acceptable. We're barely a decade past the winner-take-all pattern of platforms, and a totally new dominant platform is less than 5 years away. I'm still optimistic that these platforms are the AOL, Compuserve, and Myspace of today. This too shall pass.

krapp 7y ago
>Attracting peoples content with the promise of publicity only to sabotage it is straight bait and switch. I'm sure it's all very narrowly legal, but post-election lawsuits in 2022 will be ones to watch. Youtube doesn't promise anyone publicity. Any ranking algorithm or suggested content list by its very design "deranks" everything else, and most content on the platform is probably never watched, or barely watched. Youtube's current default of biasing recommendations towards extremist content "deranks" less extremist content, yet that doesn't appear to be a problem for people who are suddenly up in arms that the site is changing the bias of an already biased system. There is no bait-and-switch here, nor is there sabotage.

RickJWagner 7y ago

Wow, that's a little disturbing. Some imaginative phrases there I wouldn't have dreamed of looking up. I'm going to try to forget some of that stuff.