10 ms·

By removing “extremist content,” platforms are purging human rights evidence

308 points by jbegley 7y ago

Gusen 7y ago
The President and Speaker want to erase this: Listen to our President Donald Trump demand a $4 billion dollar bribe from child rapists to "turn a blind eye" on January 3rd, 2019. Download the video, turn the volume all the way up and put head phones on. Trump is on a call from with Henry Porter and Gigi Hadid. (See Page 63) Bribe demand at 1018am: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Grdr8xF2psKNsuYlEnl9dIRV-77YG0Vr/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Grdr8xF2psKNsuYlEnl9dIRV-77... This is the tip of the iceberg. PDF link below: Full 84 page document [updated 22Oct]: FBI_FinalDraft_26Jul2019_BSchlenker.pdf https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sj9EN_pHmicKS6rFQlmk67knMdJc9cGk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sj9EN_pHmicKS6rFQlmk67knMdJ... You might want to save this post. It will be censored when this account logs off. Listen to Speaker of the House, Senator Nancy Pelosi, accept a $3 billion dollar bribe from wealthy high profile child rapists for safe passage to get Asian boys through the border at "Monterrey" on January 17, 2019. Download the video, turn the volume all the way up and put head phones on. Call starts at 10:31am. 17JanCh3_949-1100.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eodHu4o5Cm3xEWhDqipSuTj-M1CZUvmE/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eodHu4o5Cm3xEWhDqipSuTj-M1C... Excerpts of the dialogue: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi returns to the Porter camera system at 1031 for a check-in. "Nancy Pelosi is here and she wants $3 billion to keep the border open at Monterrey. $3 billion dollars to keep that shit open do you believe that?" Matthew Porter commentates. Pelosi states 1034: "I think he [Brian Schlenker] needs to be removed. I think we need to get this guy out of here". Speaker Pelosi then agrees to call back at 7pm PST. Gigi Hadid at 1034: "Thanks for calling us. I've got you down for three minutes". Pelosi don't worry about that I've got 3 billion. 1031 Matthew Porter: Nancy Pelosi is on and she wants $3 billion dollars to keep the border open at Monterrey. Three billion dollars to keep that shit open do you believe that? 1033 Nancy Pelosi: I don't think that will be necessary unless you insist. 1033 Donald Reeves?: We insist. 1033 Nancy Pelosi: Ok then I guess we have a deal. 1033 Matthew Porter: Thank you Mrs. Pelosi. 1033 Nancy Pelosi: Please call me Speaker Pelosi. 1033 Nancy Pelosi: We want to make sure you have safe passage at Monterrey. 1033 Matthew Porter: We appreciate that Speaker Pelosi. 1033 Gigi Hadid: I think we may have to scale back a little bit though. 1033 Nancy Pelosi: Gigi I think we'll be just fine. 1035 Nancy Pelosi: God damn it! I want Kamala to get a billion out of yours, not out of mine. 1035 Gigi Hadid: I think we can accommodate you but we need to find out if Monterrey will be open on the 30th of January. 1036 Nancy Pelosi: Of course it will Gigi. 1036 Nancy Pelosi: $3 billion goes a long way Peter. 1036 Peter Thiel: Excellent answer. 1043 Gigi Hadid: I think we need to give Kamala a billion dollars to keep her [happy]. 1043 Matthew Porter: I think we can do that but we need to get her to do something first. 1043 Gigi Hadid: She did. We got her fucking Rahm Emmanuel Monday morning [14Jan] at 235. 1043 Matthew Porter: Perfect, then we're all set. Send her the billion. 1043? Nancy Pelosi: She'll accept the money, I guarantee it. 1043? Gigi Hadid: Nancy thank you for everything. <ch4> 1036 Donald Reeves: Don't listen to her. She will close down the border if it's not there. Make sure she gets the $3 billion. This is the tip of the iceberg. Full 84 page document [updated 22Oct]: FBI_FinalDraft_26Jul2019_BSchlenker.pdf https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sj9EN_pHmicKS6rFQlmk67knMdJc9cGk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sj9EN_pHmicKS6rFQlmk67knMdJ... You might want to save this post. It will be censored when this account logs off. Earlier at 11:27, New York Senator Charles Schumer checks in on the Porter camera system. "We're jerking off to Brian Schlenker, we want you to join us." says Matthew Porter. "Obviously I can't jerk off with you, but I can keep watching him in the apartment." replies Senator Schumer, who also comments: "...crazy that you expect me to stay here while you jerk off. As crazy as this shit is, it's pretty fucking funny." Download the video, turn the volume all the way up and put head phones on. Video link below: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kwsxQhi1I26w5PhNhPfmMLfcELXUhJCc/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kwsxQhi1I26w5PhNhPfmMLfcELX... That was from page 57 of this 84 page PDF, that gives the same audio of wealthy high profile child rapists incriminating themselves. It keeps getting censored, but they will eventually have to face justice. Please get this around: Full 84 page document [updated 22Oct]: FBI_FinalDraft_26Jul2019_BSchlenker.pdf https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sj9EN_pHmicKS6rFQlmk67knMdJc9cGk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sj9EN_pHmicKS6rFQlmk67knMdJ...
least 7y ago
Youtube and Facebook, while convenient, aren't really appropriate mediums for them to share this sort of footage. Liveleak comes to mind as a service better suited for a public repository of this video. Archival of footage shouldn't be dependent on a third party platform that can, at will, delete every single video on a whim. Likely for this sort of thing a diligent archivist will need to put in the effort of storing it safely, because those videos will almost all end up being deleted on platforms that rely on ad revenue.
- campfireveteran 7y ago
  Exactly. You need something like Internet Archive or better that is archival quality, random internet vandalism-proof and FBI raid-proof.
  - reaperducer 7y ago
    Or even something more distributed. Like each public library has a storage cube and each cube has an overlapping portion of history. They checksum each other peer-to-peer to detect anyone trying to change history. There are 110,000 public libraries in the United States. Plus thousands more private libraries. Seems like enough for U.S. history, at least.
    - bilbo0s 7y ago
      Shouldn't be the public libraries though. Public libraries will not save certain videos. Especially if the local police or the guys in the blue windbreakers with three yellow letters on them show up. Maybe that's a problem that everyone has? But it would be best if there was some offshore, FBI proof, kind of way to do this archiving.
      - reaperducer 7y ago
        Especially if the local police or the guys in the blue windbreakers with three yellow letters on them show up. I wouldn't be so sure about that. After 9/11, the libraries were the first to stand up to the government's desperate search for information. The feds wanted everyone's lending history, and ended up backing off when the libraries put up a fight.
campfireveteran 7y ago
Sounds about right. They demonetize blancoliorio's in-depth commercial aircraft and pilot industry analysis as "sad content." Oh and donutoperator gets demonetized despite blurring almost everything and not swearing. Non-corporate content creators and random people have NO rights on corporate platforms like YT. The only solution is another platform that respects creators, has sane/straightforward policies and doesn't permit rampant scams and extortions.
- notadoc 7y ago
  > The only solution is another platform that respects creators, has sane/straightforward policies and doesn't permit rampant scams and extortions. What is that alternate platform? For many people, web video is YouTube.
  - campfireveteran 7y ago
    You're speaking for other people when you can only speak for yourself, and you need to get out more. A not-yet-existent, co-op-owned platform where creators share in monetization and have straight-forward/transparent content policies and processes, not secret ones, and not shady algorithms that curate user filter-bubbles without telling them how they're being shown recommendations. YT isn't the only web address on the internet. Apps, integrations, and plugins can be replaced if people are willing to support quality and minimally-censored content that respects creators' ability, autonomy and sometimes livelihoods, rather than a power-law income distribution beholden to random countries' censorship and corporate advertisers' nearly arbitrary whims.
    - teh_klev 7y ago
      I didn't downvote you, I feel the same way. But YT is where channels I watch such as Linus TechTips, BigClive, Cody's Channel, Chef John, Glen and Friends, Andrew Camarata et al publish their content to. Realistically, how do we change this?
    - EpicEng 7y ago
      >You're speaking for other people when you can only speak for yourself, and you need to get out more Millions upon millions of people watching YT, but GP "needs to get out more" in order to experience your fantasy platform that doesn't exist. Ok.
dvt 7y ago
This is a volume problem that has no real solution. On one hand, it's a shame that this kind of content is getting removed, but on the other, it's also untenable for YouTube to hire thousands upon thousands of video moderators. It's a sad reality that if anyone uploaded content akin to Shoah[1] -- the 9-hour-long Holocaust documentary; a personal favorite and an absolute masterpiece -- it would get promptly removed. But it's a reality nonetheless. YouTube is trying to straddle the line between platform and publisher and it feels like the hammer will soon drop. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoah_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoah_(film)
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  >This is a volume problem that has no real solution. [...] it's a shame that this kind of content is getting removed It's not a volume problem though, because the videos are never removed. They are just effectively delisted. Homeland Security shows up and I guarantee YouTube hands the videos over to them. So YouTube has plenty of space. Of course that also means that the original complaint of YouTube destroying evidence is also bogus, but answering a bogus complaint with a bogus excuse as the pro YouTube crowd seems to be doing doesn't really get us anywhere.
andryshko 7y ago
This is sad, I'm waiting for YouTube and others to f*ck up even more to move masses to decentralized solutions.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mdszy 7y ago
Why would you trust a for-profit company to archive anything and care? They don't. It's unreasonable to expect anything different. If you want things archived, non-profit solutions exist, or you should be doing it yourself and making sure the content is shared among people who are also able to archive it.
- archgoon 7y ago
  "To organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible" Because they claimed they cared about this sort of thing. For a while, it seemed as if they meant it.
  - mdszy 7y ago
    Again, why would you believe them? Use a couple of brain cells and realize that maybe, just maybe, the things that corporations say aren't exactly true most of the time.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - nemo44x 7y ago
      Parent is voted down but the cynicism, unfortunately, is well founded. Not to victim blame but there is a certain amount of distrust and suspicion we all should have with regards to any profit seeking entity - especially one that does not rely on you paying them - that makes outrage at these entities for ‘betraying us’ laughable at best. Maybe “brain cells” is harsh but do at least use your instinct.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  If you want things archived, non-profit solutions exist You seem to be under the impression that non-profits don't ever go out of business, which is completely untrue. I'm not saying that for-profits are the solution, but maybe something like a trusted .gov or network of trusted .edus would be better.
codingslave 7y ago
Not only Youtube, I've noticed a huge disparity between Duck Duck Go results and Google results when writing queries that could be thought of as containing a controversial/politically/racially/etc charged topic. Youtube recommendations and search/ranking suppress searches as it is, even if they were to leave the content on there, most of it will never be surfaced through organic means without a direct link or a search with a direct title match.
- cft 7y ago
  For anything not technical, I use DDG or Bing (If I need recency). Google results omit anything politically controversial.
  - crummy 7y ago
    Can you give some examples of politically controversial results google might be censoring?
    - mynameishere 7y ago
      I have no idea what Google is censoring in the search results, but compare the "search suggestions" for almost anything even slightly controversial. For example type "is stephen miller" (a Trump advisor) in Google and Bing and you can see how Google just removes stuff. I suspect they are partly worried about results being gamed there...but everything is gamed. Maybe the main search results should be empty too.
      - crummy 7y ago
        I opened an incognito window and tried it. Google suggestions for "is stephen miller": * is stephen miller married? Bing suggestions for "is stephen miller": * is stephen miller gay? * is steven miles married? Maybe there's location stuff going on, or maybe they're guessing at what you're searching for based on previous searches or something.
- corndoge 7y ago
mindgam3 7y ago
YouTube could solve this problem by throwing money at it, i.e. investing much more heavily in human moderators. They are extremely unlikely to ever do so, as the market would punish them for it in the short term and Google is unlikely to prioritize human rights over revenue. This presents an opportunity for another Internet Archive-like repo as mentioned in earlier comments. Unfortunately the barrier to entry (just getting people to know about it) would be super high. The WITNESS movement associated with one of the authors is worth checking out: https://www.witness.org/ https://www.witness.org/
- dageshi 7y ago
  Isn't it well documented that the human moderators who do exist at places like facebook and youtube end up having their mental health screwed after they watch so much disturbing content? Just throwing human moderators at the problem probably has more cost than just the salaries involved.
  - mindgam3 7y ago
    I am well aware that human moderators are currently treated like crap by Big Tech, and that their mental health is suffering as a result. When I say "throw more money at the problem", I mean, hire a lot more of them, and treat them all better. The alternatives are 1. Algorithms, which always going to fail in human rights type "edge cases" like the ones described in the article, and which really shouldn't be seen as edge cases IMO, or 2. Bury your head in the sand and allow terrible content to exist. Do you have any better ideas for how to deal with processing traumatic content at scale?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - wahern 7y ago
      Some people are much better able than others to deal with such content. Do YouTube, Facebook, etc, implement some sort of psychological screening? I would think we know enough about PTSD, depression, etc to be able to filter out many of those most likely to suffer significant trauma, even if the screening was crazy imprecise. Plus, I assume we have many decades of experience with handling psychological issues among police and emergency personnel. Perhaps a large part of the issue is money; why bother with the expense if you can use ML, even if the false positive rate is abysmal.
m0zg 7y ago
Edit: original title was about YouTube "erasing history" They're erasing a good chunk of the present as well. It is widely known and observable that they algorithmically throttle and aggressively demonetize anything even remotely conservative in the US. E.g. Tim Pool (a liberal who nevertheless likes to point out the lunacy and hypocrisy of the leftist "free press") often gets demonetized under the flimsiest of pretenses.
root_axis 7y ago
Stop relying on for-profit companies to host your videos for free. If you need reliable hosting try paying for it.
kazinator 7y ago
Is this pure populism, or does the principle apply to the "little guy" as well? If I set up a machine under my desk at home with a domain (courtesy of dynamic DNS), and provide a few terabytes of free-of-charge storage to a small bunch of people, am I "erasing history" if I can't keep all their stuff forever? Or do I have to be a Youtube-sized corporate entity before I'm a fucking asshole?
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  If you just say "Haha, suckers, you trusted me but I'm deleting your stuff, you lose", then yes, you're a colossal jerk. On the other hand, if you can't do it forever, and you give them warning so they have time to find alternate places to store their stuff, then I don't see any problem.
- taneq 7y ago
  Depends what you say to them. If you say "hey guys, feel free to use this storage to host stuff" and then delete it, then yes, you're an asshole. If you say "hey guys, I have some hard drive space, send me stuff you think I might like and if I like it I'll host it for a while before deleting it" then no, you're not an asshole. If you say something that sounds like the first statement but is actually the second statement because of some obfuscated legalese attached to a footnote, and then delete it, then you're back to being an asshole.
  - marshray 7y ago
    What if you promote this service with a name that starts with "You" and ends with a word referencing one of the most dominant media of public record for over a half century?
    - kazinator 7y ago
      The only way that is a "public record" is if we consider the perspective that anything that was ever broadcast is still radiating in space.
- 7y ago
jedmeyers 7y ago
While NYT themselves just shadow-edited the article about HRC calling Tulsi a Russian asset to a Republican asset. Video from Tim Pool about it: https://youtu.be/tzTod38VS8c https://youtu.be/tzTod38VS8c
- jakeogh 7y ago
  https://i.imgur.com/VUdcIou.jpg https://i.imgur.com/VUdcIou.jpg
  - mandukya 7y ago
    Straight out of 1984.
  - jedmeyers 7y ago
    “Paper of making up the record”, as they say.
- nl 7y ago
  For those who don't want to sit though 16 minutes of ranting.. At [1] the quote is: Hillary Clinton waded into the Democratic primary on Friday by suggesting that Russia was “grooming” Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii as a third-party candidate for president. By the next day at [2] it had changed to: Hillary Clinton waded into the Democratic primary on Friday by suggesting that Russia was backing Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii for president and that Republicans were “grooming” her as a third-party candidate. The NY Times published a correction: Correction: Oct. 23, 2019 An earlier version of this article described incorrectly an element of Hillary Clinton's recent comments about Representative Tulsi Gabbard. While Mrs. Clinton said that a Democratic presidential candidate was "the favorite of the Russians," and an aide later confirmed the reference was to Ms. Gabbard, Mrs. Clinton's remark about the “grooming” of a third-party candidate in the 2020 race was in response to a question about the Republicans’ strategy, not about Russian intervention. This matches other reporting of the same interview. Politco reported it like this[3]: Clinton, the 2016 Democratic nominee, made the comments on the podcast hosted by David Plouffe, who managed former President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. Clinton also said that Republicans could boost Gabbard to become a third-party “spoiler” Conclusion: The NY Times did the correct thing in updating their reporting, and in publishing the correction. The reporting is now more accurate that it was initially. [1] https://archive.is/0G9uI https://archive.is/0G9uI [2] https://archive.is/ZPZCU https://archive.is/ZPZCU [3] https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/18/hillary-clinton-tulsi-gabbard-russias-050991 https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/18/hillary-clinton-tul...
urda 7y ago
Go ahead and add reddit into the mix as well. It's starting to be really concerning only a few people control these important discussion and meeting places, and exercise (often) power abuse from such a position to push their agenda. History isn't pleasant, that doesn't mean reddit and YouTube should be white washing it.
- bafflingworld 7y ago
  The sheer amount of pro-Chinese government moderators on Reddit is absolutely insane. So much dissent being either erased or forced into "megathreads." This is not how we should be reacting to genocide.
  - betterbeehome 7y ago
    Thanks for helping me think differently about megathreads. political containment and pruning is the result.
    - bafflingworld 7y ago
      Yup, another classic tactic is a moderator stepping in and doing some variation of "This thread has gone out of control! Locked." This has become very common in Hong Kong threads. I strongly believe that TenCent needs to be rooted out of U.S. tech and media, and fast.
      - betterbeehome 7y ago
        I'm starting to come around to the idea of rejecting Chinese investment. They clearly have a negative influence. See Hollywood, political coverage, historical programming, video games, current affairs... If nothing is done, in a few decades they'll have manipulated the entire social political landscape of the West. All of us will be using the Social Credit system. Worse, we'll defend it, too. Future is bleak if we do nothing.
- calimac 7y ago
  I mentioned the hypocrisy of the reddit ceo Steve Huffman's answer to an Ama he was holding and my account was deleted a half hour later with no email no explanation.
stebann 7y ago
Oh yeah! Now they're taking down videos showing the Chilean soldiers and Chilean police unleashing their rage and violence against their own civilians.
- taneq 7y ago
  Sadly the flip side of "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" is "a freedom fighter is always someone's terrorist."
aussieguy1234 7y ago
As far as I'm aware, knowingly destroying evidence of a crime is illegal. So would this be illegal also?
- skissane 7y ago
  Do they actually delete the files? Or do they just remove public access to them, but keep them on their servers? Maybe they send the data to law enforcement automatically? (I've heard that they do that for child pornography; maybe they do, or could do, the same for terrorist material as well.)
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    This. It's naive to think these videos are deleted. Homeland Security shows up and YouTube has no problems giving them the videos. (They probably have an entirely separate search interface that does nothing but surface that extremist content for the Feds. So Homeland Security probably doesn't even have to leave their office.)
- AdrianB1 7y ago
  Only if Google has a branch in Syria that is destroying the evidence for a legal action in Syria. Laws are linked to territories, US law is not applicable in Syria and the other way around.
  - colejohnson66 7y ago
    > Laws are linked to territories, US law is not applicable in Syria and the other way around. Doesn’t stop countries from trying. The CLOUD Act in the US is the US trying to extend its influence into other countries.
humble_engineer 7y ago
Google tells me that "European people history" is all black people. What an advanced and amazing technology.
justcorrect 7y ago
This is a digital content issue, not so much an issue of extremist content. Almost 10 years ago now, Geocities was shut down and took 38 million of the most popular pages of the Internet 1.0 with it.
- selimthegrim 7y ago
  Wasn’t there an attempt, neocities, to bring back the aesthetic?
  - justcorrect 7y ago
    I believe so, yeah, and there's an archive out there. But only because the site itself was so massive and notice was given that the end was coming, was the data saved.
  - chongli 7y ago
    The aesthetic is one thing, the content is another. The former is easy to replace, the latter irreplaceable.
wavefunction 7y ago
They don't have to delete it, just stop publishing it for consumption by their users. I would expect them to turn over evidence of crimes to appropriate law enforcement.
facorreia 7y ago
They still haven't understood that they're the product being sold, not the customers.
rolph 7y ago
I think most of the reason we have history, is due to physical media, such as print. newspapers books diaries and scrap books would live for decades and centuries even, so investigators could elucidate the past and bring it to light. internet media in the current form is subject to great purges of intentional and accidental nature. no matter the corporate intention, there is a great danger of major events being deleted from social memory, and the engineering attempts currently in play, will easily become best practice in gov parlance.
- nemo44x 7y ago
  This is an insightful comment. The audio engineer Steve Albini often comments that one reason he only records artists using analogue tape is because digital is easily lost either through obsolete and proprietary formats, or deliberate governance. Analogue tape, although inconvenient, requires a physical action to be destroyed in possibly many physical places and isn’t subject to evolving digital formats.
calimac 7y ago
They are editors by definition. Argue all you want. If they administer editorial control of any sort they are publishers. Do they administer their of content policy or do they strictly enforce jurisdictional statute? if their content moderation policies do anything other than or in addition to moderating based on jurisdictional statute they are editors. PERIOD DOT
PhasmaFelis 7y ago
> "Ogrish was a very serious site, it wasn't like a lot of the gore sites you might see now that are based off that model. It was tremendously serious, everything was researched, there was no laughing at dead people or anything like that" ...Just a bit undermined by the screenshot of Ogrish video titles in the article... https://media.businessinsider.com/images/54117ca9ecad04406f25dd39-750-460.jpg https://media.businessinsider.com/images/54117ca9ecad04406f2...
drewbt 7y ago
Inappropriate content can be flagged, and continuing to view or partake in discussion of extremist things, that are counter to the interests of every living thing on the planet, waive the users right to privacy, and logs of activity automatically get passed on to public protection agencies. Or something better. Keep refining and optimizing the system.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
lonelappde 7y ago
Are these videos newsworthy? If so, why isn't NYT hosting them?
anfilt 7y ago
Very similar topic discussed about 6 months ago. Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes (theatlantic.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19864994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19864994
pif 7y ago
People should go back to understanding the difference between a public service (i.e. operated by the people for the sake of the people) and a private company (i.e. operated by some people for their sake).
anfilt 7y ago
I have said this before and will say again: Honestly, why do platforms need to delete anything. Why not just have options like most search engines sort have... Let the users decide if they want to see objectionable or even violent content. They are adults they can make up their own mind. Consider duckduckgo's search results you can choose: Strict *No Adult content* Moderate *No Explicit images or video* Off *Don't filter content*
knzhou 7y ago
In the media, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. If tech companies weren't removing violent content, there would be twice as many articles complaining about it. For any choice, whether it's a blanket policy or a content moderator's personal call, either action can be painted as "dystopian" or "violating human rights" or whatever else is the flavor of the day. Reading hundreds of one-sided hit pieces over the years has totally desensitized me, to the point that I start feeling extreme skepticism whenever anybody starts talking about human rights or dystopias. That's not a good thing, but I would say it's not all my fault, either. Across prestigious universities, mini-think tanks that study "tech and society" have been popping up. As far as I can tell, they exist solely to contribute to this tidal wave of narrative. They look at what is happening, and make up a reason it's bad. I can't think of a single example where they concluded that tech did something good.
squarefoot 7y ago
Which brings us to a couple good practices: never trust the cloud or any other online storage and always back up sensitive information offline, multiple times and in multiple places, before putting it online.

308 points by jbegley 7y ago

The President and Speaker want to erase this: Listen to our President Donald Trump demand a $4 billion dollar bribe from child rapists to "turn a blind eye" on January 3rd, 2019. Download the video, turn the volume all the way up and put head phones on. Trump is on a call from with Henry Porter and Gigi Hadid. (See Page 63) Bribe demand at 1018am: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Grdr8xF2psKNsuYlEnl9dIRV-77YG0Vr/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Grdr8xF2psKNsuYlEnl9dIRV-77... This is the tip of the iceberg. PDF link below: Full 84 page document [updated 22Oct]: FBI_FinalDraft_26Jul2019_BSchlenker.pdf https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sj9EN_pHmicKS6rFQlmk67knMdJc9cGk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sj9EN_pHmicKS6rFQlmk67knMdJ... You might want to save this post. It will be censored when this account logs off. Listen to Speaker of the House, Senator Nancy Pelosi, accept a $3 billion dollar bribe from wealthy high profile child rapists for safe passage to get Asian boys through the border at "Monterrey" on January 17, 2019. Download the video, turn the volume all the way up and put head phones on. Call starts at 10:31am. 17JanCh3_949-1100.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eodHu4o5Cm3xEWhDqipSuTj-M1CZUvmE/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eodHu4o5Cm3xEWhDqipSuTj-M1C... Excerpts of the dialogue: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi returns to the Porter camera system at 1031 for a check-in. "Nancy Pelosi is here and she wants $3 billion to keep the border open at Monterrey. $3 billion dollars to keep that shit open do you believe that?" Matthew Porter commentates. Pelosi states 1034: "I think he [Brian Schlenker] needs to be removed. I think we need to get this guy out of here". Speaker Pelosi then agrees to call back at 7pm PST. Gigi Hadid at 1034: "Thanks for calling us. I've got you down for three minutes". Pelosi don't worry about that I've got 3 billion. 1031 Matthew Porter: Nancy Pelosi is on and she wants $3 billion dollars to keep the border open at Monterrey. Three billion dollars to keep that shit open do you believe that? 1033 Nancy Pelosi: I don't think that will be necessary unless you insist. 1033 Donald Reeves?: We insist. 1033 Nancy Pelosi: Ok then I guess we have a deal. 1033 Matthew Porter: Thank you Mrs. Pelosi. 1033 Nancy Pelosi: Please call me Speaker Pelosi. 1033 Nancy Pelosi: We want to make sure you have safe passage at Monterrey. 1033 Matthew Porter: We appreciate that Speaker Pelosi. 1033 Gigi Hadid: I think we may have to scale back a little bit though. 1033 Nancy Pelosi: Gigi I think we'll be just fine. 1035 Nancy Pelosi: God damn it! I want Kamala to get a billion out of yours, not out of mine. 1035 Gigi Hadid: I think we can accommodate you but we need to find out if Monterrey will be open on the 30th of January. 1036 Nancy Pelosi: Of course it will Gigi. 1036 Nancy Pelosi: $3 billion goes a long way Peter. 1036 Peter Thiel: Excellent answer. 1043 Gigi Hadid: I think we need to give Kamala a billion dollars to keep her [happy]. 1043 Matthew Porter: I think we can do that but we need to get her to do something first. 1043 Gigi Hadid: She did. We got her fucking Rahm Emmanuel Monday morning [14Jan] at 235. 1043 Matthew Porter: Perfect, then we're all set. Send her the billion. 1043? Nancy Pelosi: She'll accept the money, I guarantee it. 1043? Gigi Hadid: Nancy thank you for everything. <ch4> 1036 Donald Reeves: Don't listen to her. She will close down the border if it's not there. Make sure she gets the $3 billion. This is the tip of the iceberg. Full 84 page document [updated 22Oct]: FBI_FinalDraft_26Jul2019_BSchlenker.pdf https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sj9EN_pHmicKS6rFQlmk67knMdJc9cGk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sj9EN_pHmicKS6rFQlmk67knMdJ... You might want to save this post. It will be censored when this account logs off. Earlier at 11:27, New York Senator Charles Schumer checks in on the Porter camera system. "We're jerking off to Brian Schlenker, we want you to join us." says Matthew Porter. "Obviously I can't jerk off with you, but I can keep watching him in the apartment." replies Senator Schumer, who also comments: "...crazy that you expect me to stay here while you jerk off. As crazy as this shit is, it's pretty fucking funny." Download the video, turn the volume all the way up and put head phones on. Video link below: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kwsxQhi1I26w5PhNhPfmMLfcELXUhJCc/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kwsxQhi1I26w5PhNhPfmMLfcELX... That was from page 57 of this 84 page PDF, that gives the same audio of wealthy high profile child rapists incriminating themselves. It keeps getting censored, but they will eventually have to face justice. Please get this around: Full 84 page document [updated 22Oct]: FBI_FinalDraft_26Jul2019_BSchlenker.pdf https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sj9EN_pHmicKS6rFQlmk67knMdJc9cGk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sj9EN_pHmicKS6rFQlmk67knMdJ...

least 7y ago

Youtube and Facebook, while convenient, aren't really appropriate mediums for them to share this sort of footage. Liveleak comes to mind as a service better suited for a public repository of this video. Archival of footage shouldn't be dependent on a third party platform that can, at will, delete every single video on a whim. Likely for this sort of thing a diligent archivist will need to put in the effort of storing it safely, because those videos will almost all end up being deleted on platforms that rely on ad revenue.

campfireveteran 7y ago
Exactly. You need something like Internet Archive or better that is archival quality, random internet vandalism-proof and FBI raid-proof.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  Or even something more distributed. Like each public library has a storage cube and each cube has an overlapping portion of history. They checksum each other peer-to-peer to detect anyone trying to change history. There are 110,000 public libraries in the United States. Plus thousands more private libraries. Seems like enough for U.S. history, at least.
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    Shouldn't be the public libraries though. Public libraries will not save certain videos. Especially if the local police or the guys in the blue windbreakers with three yellow letters on them show up. Maybe that's a problem that everyone has? But it would be best if there was some offshore, FBI proof, kind of way to do this archiving.
    - reaperducer 7y ago
      Especially if the local police or the guys in the blue windbreakers with three yellow letters on them show up. I wouldn't be so sure about that. After 9/11, the libraries were the first to stand up to the government's desperate search for information. The feds wanted everyone's lending history, and ended up backing off when the libraries put up a fight.

campfireveteran 7y ago

Sounds about right. They demonetize blancoliorio's in-depth commercial aircraft and pilot industry analysis as "sad content." Oh and donutoperator gets demonetized despite blurring almost everything and not swearing. Non-corporate content creators and random people have NO rights on corporate platforms like YT. The only solution is another platform that respects creators, has sane/straightforward policies and doesn't permit rampant scams and extortions.

notadoc 7y ago
> The only solution is another platform that respects creators, has sane/straightforward policies and doesn't permit rampant scams and extortions. What is that alternate platform? For many people, web video is YouTube.
- campfireveteran 7y ago
  You're speaking for other people when you can only speak for yourself, and you need to get out more. A not-yet-existent, co-op-owned platform where creators share in monetization and have straight-forward/transparent content policies and processes, not secret ones, and not shady algorithms that curate user filter-bubbles without telling them how they're being shown recommendations. YT isn't the only web address on the internet. Apps, integrations, and plugins can be replaced if people are willing to support quality and minimally-censored content that respects creators' ability, autonomy and sometimes livelihoods, rather than a power-law income distribution beholden to random countries' censorship and corporate advertisers' nearly arbitrary whims.
  - teh_klev 7y ago
    I didn't downvote you, I feel the same way. But YT is where channels I watch such as Linus TechTips, BigClive, Cody's Channel, Chef John, Glen and Friends, Andrew Camarata et al publish their content to. Realistically, how do we change this?
  - EpicEng 7y ago
    >You're speaking for other people when you can only speak for yourself, and you need to get out more Millions upon millions of people watching YT, but GP "needs to get out more" in order to experience your fantasy platform that doesn't exist. Ok.

dvt 7y ago

This is a volume problem that has no real solution. On one hand, it's a shame that this kind of content is getting removed, but on the other, it's also untenable for YouTube to hire thousands upon thousands of video moderators. It's a sad reality that if anyone uploaded content akin to Shoah[1] -- the 9-hour-long Holocaust documentary; a personal favorite and an absolute masterpiece -- it would get promptly removed. But it's a reality nonetheless. YouTube is trying to straddle the line between platform and publisher and it feels like the hammer will soon drop. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoah_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoah_(film)

bilbo0s 7y ago
>This is a volume problem that has no real solution. [...] it's a shame that this kind of content is getting removed It's not a volume problem though, because the videos are never removed. They are just effectively delisted. Homeland Security shows up and I guarantee YouTube hands the videos over to them. So YouTube has plenty of space. Of course that also means that the original complaint of YouTube destroying evidence is also bogus, but answering a bogus complaint with a bogus excuse as the pro YouTube crowd seems to be doing doesn't really get us anywhere.

andryshko 7y ago

This is sad, I'm waiting for YouTube and others to f*ck up even more to move masses to decentralized solutions.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mdszy 7y ago

Why would you trust a for-profit company to archive anything and care? They don't. It's unreasonable to expect anything different. If you want things archived, non-profit solutions exist, or you should be doing it yourself and making sure the content is shared among people who are also able to archive it.

archgoon 7y ago
"To organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible" Because they claimed they cared about this sort of thing. For a while, it seemed as if they meant it.
- mdszy 7y ago
  Again, why would you believe them? Use a couple of brain cells and realize that maybe, just maybe, the things that corporations say aren't exactly true most of the time.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 7y ago
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  - nemo44x 7y ago
    Parent is voted down but the cynicism, unfortunately, is well founded. Not to victim blame but there is a certain amount of distrust and suspicion we all should have with regards to any profit seeking entity - especially one that does not rely on you paying them - that makes outrage at these entities for ‘betraying us’ laughable at best. Maybe “brain cells” is harsh but do at least use your instinct.
reaperducer 7y ago
If you want things archived, non-profit solutions exist You seem to be under the impression that non-profits don't ever go out of business, which is completely untrue. I'm not saying that for-profits are the solution, but maybe something like a trusted .gov or network of trusted .edus would be better.

codingslave 7y ago

Not only Youtube, I've noticed a huge disparity between Duck Duck Go results and Google results when writing queries that could be thought of as containing a controversial/politically/racially/etc charged topic. Youtube recommendations and search/ranking suppress searches as it is, even if they were to leave the content on there, most of it will never be surfaced through organic means without a direct link or a search with a direct title match.

cft 7y ago
For anything not technical, I use DDG or Bing (If I need recency). Google results omit anything politically controversial.
- crummy 7y ago
  Can you give some examples of politically controversial results google might be censoring?
  - mynameishere 7y ago
    I have no idea what Google is censoring in the search results, but compare the "search suggestions" for almost anything even slightly controversial. For example type "is stephen miller" (a Trump advisor) in Google and Bing and you can see how Google just removes stuff. I suspect they are partly worried about results being gamed there...but everything is gamed. Maybe the main search results should be empty too.
    - crummy 7y ago
      I opened an incognito window and tried it. Google suggestions for "is stephen miller": * is stephen miller married? Bing suggestions for "is stephen miller": * is stephen miller gay? * is steven miles married? Maybe there's location stuff going on, or maybe they're guessing at what you're searching for based on previous searches or something.
corndoge 7y ago

mindgam3 7y ago

YouTube could solve this problem by throwing money at it, i.e. investing much more heavily in human moderators. They are extremely unlikely to ever do so, as the market would punish them for it in the short term and Google is unlikely to prioritize human rights over revenue. This presents an opportunity for another Internet Archive-like repo as mentioned in earlier comments. Unfortunately the barrier to entry (just getting people to know about it) would be super high. The WITNESS movement associated with one of the authors is worth checking out: https://www.witness.org/ https://www.witness.org/

dageshi 7y ago
Isn't it well documented that the human moderators who do exist at places like facebook and youtube end up having their mental health screwed after they watch so much disturbing content? Just throwing human moderators at the problem probably has more cost than just the salaries involved.
- mindgam3 7y ago
  I am well aware that human moderators are currently treated like crap by Big Tech, and that their mental health is suffering as a result. When I say "throw more money at the problem", I mean, hire a lot more of them, and treat them all better. The alternatives are 1. Algorithms, which always going to fail in human rights type "edge cases" like the ones described in the article, and which really shouldn't be seen as edge cases IMO, or 2. Bury your head in the sand and allow terrible content to exist. Do you have any better ideas for how to deal with processing traumatic content at scale?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - wahern 7y ago
    Some people are much better able than others to deal with such content. Do YouTube, Facebook, etc, implement some sort of psychological screening? I would think we know enough about PTSD, depression, etc to be able to filter out many of those most likely to suffer significant trauma, even if the screening was crazy imprecise. Plus, I assume we have many decades of experience with handling psychological issues among police and emergency personnel. Perhaps a large part of the issue is money; why bother with the expense if you can use ML, even if the false positive rate is abysmal.

m0zg 7y ago

Edit: original title was about YouTube "erasing history" They're erasing a good chunk of the present as well. It is widely known and observable that they algorithmically throttle and aggressively demonetize anything even remotely conservative in the US. E.g. Tim Pool (a liberal who nevertheless likes to point out the lunacy and hypocrisy of the leftist "free press") often gets demonetized under the flimsiest of pretenses.

root_axis 7y ago

Stop relying on for-profit companies to host your videos for free. If you need reliable hosting try paying for it.

kazinator 7y ago

Is this pure populism, or does the principle apply to the "little guy" as well? If I set up a machine under my desk at home with a domain (courtesy of dynamic DNS), and provide a few terabytes of free-of-charge storage to a small bunch of people, am I "erasing history" if I can't keep all their stuff forever? Or do I have to be a Youtube-sized corporate entity before I'm a fucking asshole?

AnimalMuppet 7y ago
If you just say "Haha, suckers, you trusted me but I'm deleting your stuff, you lose", then yes, you're a colossal jerk. On the other hand, if you can't do it forever, and you give them warning so they have time to find alternate places to store their stuff, then I don't see any problem.
taneq 7y ago
Depends what you say to them. If you say "hey guys, feel free to use this storage to host stuff" and then delete it, then yes, you're an asshole. If you say "hey guys, I have some hard drive space, send me stuff you think I might like and if I like it I'll host it for a while before deleting it" then no, you're not an asshole. If you say something that sounds like the first statement but is actually the second statement because of some obfuscated legalese attached to a footnote, and then delete it, then you're back to being an asshole.
- marshray 7y ago
  What if you promote this service with a name that starts with "You" and ends with a word referencing one of the most dominant media of public record for over a half century?
  - kazinator 7y ago
    The only way that is a "public record" is if we consider the perspective that anything that was ever broadcast is still radiating in space.
7y ago

jedmeyers 7y ago

While NYT themselves just shadow-edited the article about HRC calling Tulsi a Russian asset to a Republican asset. Video from Tim Pool about it: https://youtu.be/tzTod38VS8c https://youtu.be/tzTod38VS8c

jakeogh 7y ago
https://i.imgur.com/VUdcIou.jpg https://i.imgur.com/VUdcIou.jpg
- mandukya 7y ago
  Straight out of 1984.
- jedmeyers 7y ago
  “Paper of making up the record”, as they say.
nl 7y ago
For those who don't want to sit though 16 minutes of ranting.. At [1] the quote is: Hillary Clinton waded into the Democratic primary on Friday by suggesting that Russia was “grooming” Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii as a third-party candidate for president. By the next day at [2] it had changed to: Hillary Clinton waded into the Democratic primary on Friday by suggesting that Russia was backing Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii for president and that Republicans were “grooming” her as a third-party candidate. The NY Times published a correction: Correction: Oct. 23, 2019 An earlier version of this article described incorrectly an element of Hillary Clinton's recent comments about Representative Tulsi Gabbard. While Mrs. Clinton said that a Democratic presidential candidate was "the favorite of the Russians," and an aide later confirmed the reference was to Ms. Gabbard, Mrs. Clinton's remark about the “grooming” of a third-party candidate in the 2020 race was in response to a question about the Republicans’ strategy, not about Russian intervention. This matches other reporting of the same interview. Politco reported it like this[3]: Clinton, the 2016 Democratic nominee, made the comments on the podcast hosted by David Plouffe, who managed former President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. Clinton also said that Republicans could boost Gabbard to become a third-party “spoiler” Conclusion: The NY Times did the correct thing in updating their reporting, and in publishing the correction. The reporting is now more accurate that it was initially. [1] https://archive.is/0G9uI https://archive.is/0G9uI [2] https://archive.is/ZPZCU https://archive.is/ZPZCU [3] https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/18/hillary-clinton-tulsi-gabbard-russias-050991 https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/18/hillary-clinton-tul...

urda 7y ago

Go ahead and add reddit into the mix as well. It's starting to be really concerning only a few people control these important discussion and meeting places, and exercise (often) power abuse from such a position to push their agenda. History isn't pleasant, that doesn't mean reddit and YouTube should be white washing it.

bafflingworld 7y ago
The sheer amount of pro-Chinese government moderators on Reddit is absolutely insane. So much dissent being either erased or forced into "megathreads." This is not how we should be reacting to genocide.
- betterbeehome 7y ago
  Thanks for helping me think differently about megathreads. political containment and pruning is the result.
  - bafflingworld 7y ago
    Yup, another classic tactic is a moderator stepping in and doing some variation of "This thread has gone out of control! Locked." This has become very common in Hong Kong threads. I strongly believe that TenCent needs to be rooted out of U.S. tech and media, and fast.
    - betterbeehome 7y ago
      I'm starting to come around to the idea of rejecting Chinese investment. They clearly have a negative influence. See Hollywood, political coverage, historical programming, video games, current affairs... If nothing is done, in a few decades they'll have manipulated the entire social political landscape of the West. All of us will be using the Social Credit system. Worse, we'll defend it, too. Future is bleak if we do nothing.
calimac 7y ago
I mentioned the hypocrisy of the reddit ceo Steve Huffman's answer to an Ama he was holding and my account was deleted a half hour later with no email no explanation.

stebann 7y ago

Oh yeah! Now they're taking down videos showing the Chilean soldiers and Chilean police unleashing their rage and violence against their own civilians.

taneq 7y ago
Sadly the flip side of "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" is "a freedom fighter is always someone's terrorist."

aussieguy1234 7y ago

As far as I'm aware, knowingly destroying evidence of a crime is illegal. So would this be illegal also?

skissane 7y ago
Do they actually delete the files? Or do they just remove public access to them, but keep them on their servers? Maybe they send the data to law enforcement automatically? (I've heard that they do that for child pornography; maybe they do, or could do, the same for terrorist material as well.)
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  This. It's naive to think these videos are deleted. Homeland Security shows up and YouTube has no problems giving them the videos. (They probably have an entirely separate search interface that does nothing but surface that extremist content for the Feds. So Homeland Security probably doesn't even have to leave their office.)
AdrianB1 7y ago
Only if Google has a branch in Syria that is destroying the evidence for a legal action in Syria. Laws are linked to territories, US law is not applicable in Syria and the other way around.
- colejohnson66 7y ago
  > Laws are linked to territories, US law is not applicable in Syria and the other way around. Doesn’t stop countries from trying. The CLOUD Act in the US is the US trying to extend its influence into other countries.

humble_engineer 7y ago

Google tells me that "European people history" is all black people. What an advanced and amazing technology.

justcorrect 7y ago

This is a digital content issue, not so much an issue of extremist content. Almost 10 years ago now, Geocities was shut down and took 38 million of the most popular pages of the Internet 1.0 with it.

selimthegrim 7y ago
Wasn’t there an attempt, neocities, to bring back the aesthetic?
- justcorrect 7y ago
  I believe so, yeah, and there's an archive out there. But only because the site itself was so massive and notice was given that the end was coming, was the data saved.
- chongli 7y ago
  The aesthetic is one thing, the content is another. The former is easy to replace, the latter irreplaceable.

wavefunction 7y ago

They don't have to delete it, just stop publishing it for consumption by their users. I would expect them to turn over evidence of crimes to appropriate law enforcement.

facorreia 7y ago

They still haven't understood that they're the product being sold, not the customers.

rolph 7y ago

I think most of the reason we have history, is due to physical media, such as print. newspapers books diaries and scrap books would live for decades and centuries even, so investigators could elucidate the past and bring it to light. internet media in the current form is subject to great purges of intentional and accidental nature. no matter the corporate intention, there is a great danger of major events being deleted from social memory, and the engineering attempts currently in play, will easily become best practice in gov parlance.

nemo44x 7y ago
This is an insightful comment. The audio engineer Steve Albini often comments that one reason he only records artists using analogue tape is because digital is easily lost either through obsolete and proprietary formats, or deliberate governance. Analogue tape, although inconvenient, requires a physical action to be destroyed in possibly many physical places and isn’t subject to evolving digital formats.

calimac 7y ago

They are editors by definition. Argue all you want. If they administer editorial control of any sort they are publishers. Do they administer their of content policy or do they strictly enforce jurisdictional statute? if their content moderation policies do anything other than or in addition to moderating based on jurisdictional statute they are editors. PERIOD DOT

PhasmaFelis 7y ago

> "Ogrish was a very serious site, it wasn't like a lot of the gore sites you might see now that are based off that model. It was tremendously serious, everything was researched, there was no laughing at dead people or anything like that" ...Just a bit undermined by the screenshot of Ogrish video titles in the article... https://media.businessinsider.com/images/54117ca9ecad04406f25dd39-750-460.jpg https://media.businessinsider.com/images/54117ca9ecad04406f2...

drewbt 7y ago

Inappropriate content can be flagged, and continuing to view or partake in discussion of extremist things, that are counter to the interests of every living thing on the planet, waive the users right to privacy, and logs of activity automatically get passed on to public protection agencies. Or something better. Keep refining and optimizing the system.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

lonelappde 7y ago

Are these videos newsworthy? If so, why isn't NYT hosting them?

anfilt 7y ago

Very similar topic discussed about 6 months ago. Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes (theatlantic.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19864994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19864994

pif 7y ago

People should go back to understanding the difference between a public service (i.e. operated by the people for the sake of the people) and a private company (i.e. operated by some people for their sake).

anfilt 7y ago

I have said this before and will say again: Honestly, why do platforms need to delete anything. Why not just have options like most search engines sort have... Let the users decide if they want to see objectionable or even violent content. They are adults they can make up their own mind. Consider duckduckgo's search results you can choose: Strict *No Adult content* Moderate *No Explicit images or video* Off *Don't filter content*

knzhou 7y ago

In the media, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. If tech companies weren't removing violent content, there would be twice as many articles complaining about it. For any choice, whether it's a blanket policy or a content moderator's personal call, either action can be painted as "dystopian" or "violating human rights" or whatever else is the flavor of the day. Reading hundreds of one-sided hit pieces over the years has totally desensitized me, to the point that I start feeling extreme skepticism whenever anybody starts talking about human rights or dystopias. That's not a good thing, but I would say it's not all my fault, either. Across prestigious universities, mini-think tanks that study "tech and society" have been popping up. As far as I can tell, they exist solely to contribute to this tidal wave of narrative. They look at what is happening, and make up a reason it's bad. I can't think of a single example where they concluded that tech did something good.

squarefoot 7y ago

Which brings us to a couple good practices: never trust the cloud or any other online storage and always back up sensitive information offline, multiple times and in multiple places, before putting it online.