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Youtube is in a tough spot. They will be blamed: - if they don't take down speech some consider hateful - if they take down speech some do not consider hatefu

• MangoCoffee 6y ago
  its sad to see a company from "Don't be evil" to kowtow but whatever
• 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 6y ago
  Compounding this is the veritable explosion of what words which are considered “harmful”, not to mention how vogue it is to be offended (“harmed”) on behalf of another group. If google is hoping to appease these groups, they’re in for a futile challenge.
  • ccsnags 6y ago
    They consider offense to be harm because they seem to want to justify violence against their political rivals.
• ecmascript 6y ago
  Fuck the CCP and Russia. This just shows Google is fine with censorship as long as they can profit from it.
  • sysashi 6y ago
    please don't mistake political party with a country
• judge2020 6y ago
  It seems the problem is often scale. When you can't automate something at the same mistake level a human could, scaling it either requires compromises or extreme resource expenditure via something like tens of thousands of human moderators.
  • criddell 6y ago
    Too big to moderate in relation to Google and Facebook sounds a little like too big to fail in relation to banks.
• manigandham 6y ago
  The solution is to realize "hate speech" is mostly subjective and revert back to the clear rules that we had last decade before the current political climate of gratuitous outrage.
  • shadowgovt 6y ago
    Sadly, can't agree. The rules we had in the last decade weren't actually working; they only appeared to work. They looked like they were creating conflict-free environments, but they were really creating environments where, in general, minority populations hate speech was targeted against weren't using the tools or participating in the forums that had a laissez-faire attitude on such things.
    • manigandham 6y ago
      What do you mean by not "actually working"? What is a "conflict-free environment"? What does hate speech have to do with minority populations? Do people within those populations never say hateful things, even to each other? How do you know they never participated in any forums? This sounds like an awful lot of assumptions.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • foldr 6y ago
        >What does hate speech have to do with minority populations? Come on. There's a debate to be had about hate speech and free speech, but it can't even get started on a reasonable footing if some of the participants don't know enough history to be able to answer this question.
        • manigandham 6y ago
          Instead of claiming that I lack the history, why don't you explain what the connection is? The definition of minority is just as subjective.
• ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Fundamentally, this is the issue with international corporations in the speech realm. People will believe and argue they shouldn't be subject to a given country's laws or have to apply that law globally, but in a real world sense, they must follow all of the laws of any country they want to operate in, no matter how ridiculous or unfair they might feel. Because if you aren't obeying a country's laws, they'll shut you out.
  • shadowgovt 6y ago
    Yep. In some cases, Google has addressed this by Balkanizing their rulesets. Sometimes semi-literally; the territorial boundaries Google Maps shows are contingent upon the request's point of origin in some disputed regions [https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/04/12/302337754/google-maps-displays-crimean-border-differently-in-russia-u-s https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/04/12/302337754...] Using such an approach on the global channels like YT comments isn't an option (unless they choose to Balkanize them, and let only Chinese commenters talk to Chinese people). Google isn't the only firm that does this; Twitter will selectively filter some tweets based on whether it's legal to show that content in countries that have outlawed fascist agitation (which makes for an interesting side-effect; doing a request for a tweet stream against a US proxy server and a German proxy server and delta-ing the results can give you a clear signal on "Twitter thinks this person is a Nazi propagandist." I'm wondering when someone will put an API in front of that and make it a service... "DoesTwitterThinkThatGuyIsANazi.com" anyone? ;) ).
    • the8472 6y ago
      > Using such an approach on the global channels like YT comments isn't an option (unless they choose to Balkanize them, and let only Chinese commenters talk to Chinese people). That doesn't seem unreasonable. They could hide filtered comments from chinese users. This would allow the rest of the world to be unaffected by chinese regulation and "allowed" speech between chinese and foreigners.
      • philwelch 6y ago
        But this is a case of Chinese speech in the Chinese language. If I used the English phrase “communist bandits”, YT presumably wouldn’t care. YT is applying Chinese regulations to Chinese comments written in Chinese.
• lenkite 6y ago
  Any opinion in this world can be categorised as hate speech.
• jpxw 6y ago
  The words “communist bandit” are not “hate speech”. This is ridiculous. How infantilised have we become these days?
  • artificial 6y ago
    It's a drama called The 21st Century Western World: The Softening.
  • michaelt 6y ago
    While I agree there are over-sensitive people in our society, I'm not sure you can reliably recognise hate speech in translation. I mean, I know a word that Google Translate defines as "a Jewish person" - do you think you can tell me if it's offensive or not based on that?
  • munificent 6y ago
    I don't know the context behind "communist bandit", but the idea that a term can't be hate speech simply because it doesn't contain any words that are obviously bad when stripped of cultural or historical context is wrong. The recipient of these slurs likely does have that context and will take that into account when interpreting it. Calling an African American in the South a "cotton picker" is profoundly hateful even though the term itself seems innocuous.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > 共匪 is seen as an insult by a group, but others do not This is where the legal concept of protected classes may be helpful. They're sets of attributes society has deemed one cannot discriminate against. That tends to line up well with said society's line between insulting and hateful. As a legal definition, these class definitions tend to be precise. That makes them convenient for exporting. Notably, political affiliation is not a protected class under U.S. law.
  • marcolussetti 6y ago
    However, political affiliation is a protected class in other countries where YouTube operates. It's hard to strike a balance on this I fear.
    • JumpCrisscross 6y ago
      > political affiliation is a protected class in other countries where YouTube operates At which point Google should decide on what countries they operate in. If they operate in a country where political affiliation is a protected class, go ahead and hide those comments to users in that country. But don't export that country's values to mine.
      • ThrowawayR2 6y ago
        Unfortunately, the Internet allows a user to connect to to a server in any country on the planet, so your solution is really a non-solution because it's trivially bypassed.
        • JumpCrisscross 6y ago
          > your solution is really a non-solution because it's trivially bypassed One, governments who don't like this have ways of fixing it. Two, this true for other media--I can ship my friend a book banned in their country. And three, tough. Nobody has global jurisdiction.
• CivBase 6y ago
  This is why I cannot separate hate speech from free speech. I don't like hate speech. I don't condone it. But I cannot conceive of a safe way to separate the two. The first step must be to define what hate speech is, but we can't even all agree on that. All speech is free speech, even the parts I don't like - hate, lies, slander, and everything in between. That said, it's okay to regulate speech in some circumstances. You are legally obligated to tell the truth in court. It is rightfully illegal to lie about who you are in many scenarios. YouTube is private property and Google has the legal right to censor whatever speech they want on it. I don't think we should regulate that. However, who and what they censor shows us who they consider to be most valuable on their platform. Anyone who depends on YouTube should keep a close eye on Google's censorship patterns and constantly weigh their options. If you want to have any serious discussions about existing communist regimes, you'd be foolish to stay dependent on YouTube. EDIT: If you can come up with a way to distinguish between hate speech and free speech that can't be easily abused, I'm all ears.
• takecarefnd 6y ago
  舔共(which means curry favor of CCP) also will be deleted. We can confirm that Google is 舔共ing!
• wmkn 6y ago
  > Youtube is more and more siding towards removing content. I wonder, can US regulators do something about it? A few weeks ago the discussion here was about how YouTube is not removing enough content (mostly in relation to Covid-19). The consensus was pretty much that they do it on purpose because it makes them money. I don’t think YouTube (or any large public content platform) has a winning move in this discussion. Any move will be perceived as nefarious.
  • seph-reed 6y ago
    User configurations. Opt in/out features. This isn't even remotely difficult, and I can't believe people are so obsessed with forcing their opinions on each-other that a live-and-let-live solution does not even occur to them.
    • fredrb 6y ago
      > This isn't even remotely difficult Not technically but in practice it is difficult. - What happens if I opt out but you reply with an "offensive" word in the thread I'm in? - If two people are discussing and one uses "offensive" words what do I see? Nothing or one person screaming at the void? The other problem I see having more confirmation bias. We would have a split in the community between politically correct and incorrect. You'll get deeper in the rabbit hole if you only talk to people that have the same views as you. Regardless of which side of the wall you're at. Edit: Formatting
      • seph-reed 6y ago
        If someone wants to hammer in screws, let them. YouTube is a tool. Obviously things will be a bit broken, that's what happens when you want a hammer for screws.
• yashap 6y ago
  Strongly disagree, there are some blurred lines around hate speech, but this isn’t one of them at all. This is a critique of a political party, that’s clear cut not hate speech.
  • jshevek 6y ago
    I am opposed to censorship, and I disagree with your claim. This qualifies as "hate speech". It's derogatory, its directed at a specific group of people, and it can foster animosity. That the group is a political party is not material.
    • yashap 6y ago
      Every hate speech law I’ve seen has a reasonably rigorous definition of what qualifies, including what kind of groups are protected. I’ve never seen a hate speech law that protects criticism of political parties, if you have please link to it.
    • andromeduck 6y ago
      So is "Nazi scum", or "Braindead Republican", or "corporate sellout", or "slum lord" or, "liberal elite", or "wellfare queen", hell even "Boomer" or "hippie" or "neoliberal". That's an extremely low bar, so low as to be utterly useless.
    • arcturus17 6y ago
      Dozens of millions of people have been murdered in the name of communism by communists, and I can’t call communists “bandits”? Do you think you can be taken seriously when you say you oppose censorship?
  • dntbnmpls 6y ago
    Your comment proves the guy's point. Hate speech is subjective. There is no "blurred lines" around hate speech. All hate speech is protected speech. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled on that. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/06/19/supreme-court-unanimously-reaffirms-there-is-no-hate-speech-exception-to-the-first-amendment/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201... If we don't have hate speech, we necessarily don't have free speech. All speech should be allowed. Hate speech should be criticized but not banned.
• 101404 6y ago
  "some consider hateful"... There will always be "some people" to consider anything hateful. Maybe we should just all stop communicating with each other, so nobody gets "hurt".
  • eeZah7Ux 6y ago
    Not so fast. All societies need to draw a line on where speech constitute offense, libel, or even death threats.
    • 101404 6y ago
      Societies, yes. But when compones do it, they will use the lowest bar, because they have a financial interest to keep even the most unreasonable person as a customer.
      • eeZah7Ux 6y ago
        I fully agree that companies should not have this power. But this was not my point: I wrote "societies". Downvoters: care to explain?
• ksec 6y ago
  Youtube this is absolutely ridiculous. Now is the word "ridiculous" towards Google or Youtube considered as hate speech? I mean if you look around YouTube, there are lots of name calling, idiots, rude words that starts with F and S. None of the them were considered as hate speech, but all of a sudden every single negative word used to describe Communist "共" ( Which is in no specific to Chinese Communist, after all there are still a few Communist regime around the world ), and that includes "licking" ( "舔" ) communist, which the word licking in itself isn't in anyway "hateful", is now also considered as inappropriate or hate speech and be removed? Using the Chinese Communist standards, anything that used to support the Hong Kong movement or demand will be considered as an act of attack on China and also as hate speech. Because you are in support of Hong Kong independence. For those who are not aware none of the five demands in Hong Kong specifically mentioned independence or separation, but that label has been used as any disobedience against CCP to be considered as one. So at what point will words used to support Hong Kong, or even US Government in sanction of China considered as hate speech? Especially when Youtube is already removing lots of content that is in support of the movement. Edit: Yes Keep up with the downvoting.
• cowmoo728 6y ago
  Youtube, and Google as a whole, are in for a world of pain in politics. Google pushes "quality and relevance" when they promote news articles, but this leads to them heavily emphasizing established outlets like BBC / NYT / etc. There is an increasing number of calls from official government representatives for promoting "alternative" news. What will Google do when they get a DOJ request to promote or dissuade a specific political viewpoint that isn't endorsed by their chosen "reputable" media outlets? Is the current anti-trust action against Google happening because of their perceived bias against Trump-friendly news? "Facebook, Google accused of anti-conservative bias at U.S. Senate hearing" https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-congress-socialmedia-idUSKCN1RM2SJ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-congress-socialmedia-... The volume of low quality biased news is set to explode in the coming years, and Google/Youtube will be attacked by various governments (Turkey, Hungary, USA, Brazil, China, Russia) when they avoid promoting this flood of content, and when Google promotes news and speech that various countries dislike. Youtube will be forced to remove viral videos like "Plandemic" constantly. Imagine when they start getting calls from the Senate for scrubbing some powerful government official's [conspiracy of the month] youtube video. Or when US House members escalate from personally suing Twitter to creating the House Committee on Online Censorship and use official government subpoenas to harass companies that host content that harm their political allies under the guise of "online fairness". Enough mainstream and fringe politics has now migrated onto the internet that there are no longer neutral platforms, only platforms that have not yet taken a political and editorial stance on speech.
• ng12 6y ago
  Do not conflate this with hatespeech, it leads the discussion away from the issue. Communist bandit refers to the government, not a protected class. It's not in any way similar to posting a racist/sexist/homophobic comment. To be clear: hatespeech by definition relates to race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation. Communist bandit is unrelated to any of those categories.
• empath75 6y ago
  It's almost like they have to make difficult decisions like everybody else does.
• stOneskull 6y ago
  Can't we hate, and express that hate? Why can't I say "I hate Scientology, I hate Scientologists. Brainwashed bandits, they are! Hate them so much!". It seems a lot of things we want to express include hating. Isn't speech a lot about getting things off your chest? Can the frustration build up and explode and be worse that just expressing what you hate?
  • banads 6y ago
    Yep, being able to voice one's feelings, even if they are negative or erroneous, is crucial to mental health. It wasn't until Dr. King began exposing/revealing the violent hatred of southern white supremacists to the public consciousness through mass media that things began to change. "Like a boil that can never be cured as long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its pus-flowing ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must likewise be exposed, with all of the tension its exposing creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured." -Letter From The Birmingham Jail, 1963
• hammock 6y ago
  Third solution: take those people who consider some speech harmful off your platform Twitter has a choice to be a platform for as many people as possible, or a platform for as much speech as possible. They have made that choice, but aren't too consistent in communicating it.
• Shivetya 6y ago
  well do we have a list of words or symbols they automatically delete?
  • jshevek 6y ago
    I'm not sure if this list of banned words is treated the same way as "共匪" in all cases, but "共匪" is on this list: https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2012/jun/all-blocked-keywords-according-google https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2012/jun/all-blocked-keywords-...
• proc0 6y ago
  I don't think it would be that tough. They need to make sure their engineers are as objective and neutral as possible, and technically only allow Americans to say anything they want, but they would still have authority to remove foreigner content, especially since many countries will reach out to YT to do so because those countries censor their populace on a daily basis and have an industry around it.
• JungleGymSam 6y ago
  > hate speech This is not a real thing. It is not based on a standard we can agree to easily or for a long time. The law (in the US) already handled this situation and made certain things illegal. Those laws are good enough. YouTube only gets bad PR, if it doesn't police "hate speech", among the vocal minority of leftist progressive nitwits that have nothing better to do than complain about nothing. The normal, "everyday person", does not care about such things. "hate speech" is easily abused because the premise is based on crappy ideas.
• microcolonel 6y ago
  共匪 is a solely political term, communism is an ideology. The CCP's propaganda mouthpieces can call it hate speech until the cows come home, but even if you believe that hate speech is a thing, there is no consistent definition of hate speech that would include 共匪 but not "colonialist bandits" or "imperialist bandits". 中共/中國共產黨 is a political party like Hamas/PA or Likud or the U.S. Democratic party; and 共匪 is no more hate speech than "repuglican" or "libtard".
• Zak 6y ago
  The problem I see here is that Youtube is not deleting other content that's obviously politically insulting. "Feminazi libtard cuck" is a 0 on PG's disagreement hierarchy, but such comments aren't hard to come by on Youtube videos related to social issues in the US. If Youtube wanted to have a broader policy of deleting, or better, optionally hiding incivility, I'd have no objection to "共匪" being part of the training data for that filter. This seems much more targeted than that, and I don't think it's unreasonable for people to guess that the reasoning has something to do with pleasing Chinese officials.
• dh5 6y ago
  As an aside, I'm of the opinion that selective censorship marginalizes groups that don't readily have representation at companies like Google. I'm talking about with terms like "redneck" or even "dumb American" that we (me included) mention that go with the flow of current mainstream discourse that some groups likely find offensive. Perhaps that is why there can be a divide and we end up with such insular communities like infowars or thedonald.
• majani 6y ago
  They should honestly consider outsourcing the legal work on their platforms to various law firms around the world. There's clearly no will within the company to do legal heavy lifting and trying to develop tech solutions for this is a band aid at best
• AdrianB1 6y ago
  >> I wonder, can US regulators do something about it? No. 1st Amendment protects hate speech ("Effectively, the Supreme Court unanimously reaffirmed that there is no 'hate speech' exception to the First Amendment."), but this applies only to government, private companies or people can do whatever they want. Not great, but better than the obvious alternatives.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• asabjorn 6y ago
  Douglas Murray said it well [1]: TLDR; the problem is that the tech companies have been flooded with people of a particular political kind after their political factions lost. They went to Facebook and google bringing strong convictions with them. They try to deal with things like hate without having thought deeply about it. What’s the next human emotion you’ll try to eradicate? Lustfulness? Gluttony? Envy? A war on pride? Once you’ve decided you’ll take on the self appointed task of eradicating hate you’ll also take out some things that are true. Who is worthy of this kind of power? Who can do it well? Western civilization has struggled with how to deal with human emotional excesses over hundreds of years, spilling lots of blood and tears, and we’ve learned that we have to reconcile within ourselves that there is something ineradicable about them. We can expose human excesses, but as long as there is no incitement we just have to live with the fact that at some level people will say things we may not like or find wrong. [1] https://youtu.be/YmNfm88pIe8 https://youtu.be/YmNfm88pIe8
  • edmundsauto 6y ago
    What makes you think these companies haven't thought deeply about the issue, other than the fact that you disagree with their actions?
    • asabjorn 6y ago
      It’s a claim from Douglas Murray. Recommend the video. The opinion on it being a bad idea to try to eradicate hate is in the question of who is worthy of such power? When you try to eradicate what you think is hate in the way google is you risk also erasing truths. In my opinion only an unwise person would think themselves worthy of eradicating hate because they must think themselves worthy of this self appointed task. Do you think google is worthy of determining what hate is and eradicating it?