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YouTube reinstates Right Wing Watch
- rvz 5y agoContext [0] Of course... another 'Accident' as all ways with these tech companies with dangerous levels of power. I can't believe that they can just sit there and 'trust' these tech giants because they 'think' that they are on their side. They can do it to anyone for any reason and they were already rejecting their appeals (Because of the guidelines). Probably will happen again to someone else previously banned. Like I said before, they are not you friends; accident or not. On the side of profit. To Downvoters: What alternatives do you suggest to move away from platforms like YouTube and to avoid these so called 'accidents' from happening? How on earth do you continue to trust these platforms by tech giants to not flag your account because of another 'accident'? This is not the first time this has happened and it will only get worse unless you find an alternative. Don't take my word for it, this user [1] RIGHT NOW on HN has their YouTube channel suspended, for NO REASON, other than "The guidelines". [1] It will only get worse and worse for everyone. [0] https://twitter.com/RightWingWatch/status/1409498743158812675/photo/1 https://twitter.com/RightWingWatch/status/140949874315881267... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27669715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27669715
- seattle_spring 5y agoI'd rather use a moderated platform with a few moderation mistakes than a completely unmoderated "anything goes" cesspool like Voat, 8Chan or Parler.
- _-david-_ 5y agoYouTube doesn't have a "few" mistakes. They consistently ban people incorrectly and will often times not reverse it as quickly or have temporary bans that last weeks.
- seattle_spring 5y agoStill better than unmoderated.
- GenerocUsername 5y agoOur apologies! We thought your controversial opinions WERE right wing. Sorry for missunderstanding, we did not mean to deplatform like minded folks. -youtube
- pacerwpg 5y agoIt's likely documenting things like death threats that were the violations. I wouldn't whitewash that by simply labelling those as 'controversial right wing opinions'.
- ravenstine 5y agoRWW should upload to BitChute and Odysee. Why not?
- rvz 5y agoYes. We should be promoting these alternatives rather than complaining to tech giants that will never change or keep repeating the same 'mistakes' or 'accidents' all over again.
- darksaints 5y agoI had never heard of them so I just went and took a look at the front page of BitChute, and holy shit, that's gonna be a no from me.
- ravenstine 5y agoIt's a self perpetuating problem, though. The first people to migrate to new platforms are the first ones who got dejected from YouTube, and then the inner circle at Wikipedia label the platforms as "far right" in order to scare off the rest of society. In the case of BitChute, I think it'd merely be funny if RWW and possibly some other left-leaning channels decided to post there just to stick it to Google. Otherwise it's both a dumpster fire in terms of content and what they offer technologically speaking. They've made tons of promises over the years and never delivered. (it used to use WebTorrent, and they promised streaming years ago and that never happened either)
- mdoms 5y agoI just took a look and yeah I'm going to take the hardest possible pass on that website. Yikes.
- rvz 5y agoI do not care. It could be from BitChute, Odysee, Streamable, PeerTube, whatever. Some creators chose other alternatives over BitChute or another platform over that same reaction and still ignored YouTube. If they complain to YouTube, that they got their channel de-platformed again, for no reason other than 'The guidelines', I'm just going to laugh anyway. Just recently, another user on HN got a suspension notice on their YouTube account without warning. They would be wise not to go with YouTube again and find another alternative [0] And No, Vimeo is not even an option for some creators. [1] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27669715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27669715 [1] https://twitter.com/thedak/status/1395367583503851524 https://twitter.com/thedak/status/1395367583503851524
- astrange 5y agoDoes the YouTube appeal process actually do anything? It sounds like it never checks for mistakes like this. https://twitter.com/RightWingWatch/status/1409498743158812675 https://twitter.com/RightWingWatch/status/140949874315881267...
- ALittleLight 5y agoI think fixing popular "mistakes" like this is problematic in its own way. Google/YouTube approach the problem of moderation by using unreliable systems and correcting mistakes when there is enough of a popular outrage. The problem is, people who can't generate the outrage are subject to Google's poor moderation. If Google did not fix mistakes that generated a lot of outrage, then competitors could differentiate themselves by providing better moderation policies and whenever some popular account got banned from YouTube that would generate a lot of traffic for alternatives. As is, if something popular gets banned, YouTube will "correct" their error while they ignore things below this threshold. This simultaneously subjects everyone to their poor moderation and stifles an advantage that competitors might enjoy.
- hytdstd 5y agoWould it be better if google/youtube didn't correct its mistakes?
- unixfg 5y agoI believe that was the point being made in the comment: "...competitors could differentiate themselves by providing better moderation policies and whenever some popular account got banned from YouTube that would generate a lot of traffic for alternatives"
- throwaway2048 5y agothe problem is its mostly the dregs that get banned, and having a platform full of dregs is its own serious issue.
- anfilt 5y agoYea and also having it as your initial content off puts a lot of viewers, and similar to people making and creating stuff. While it might boost you initial user-base its gonna make growth slow to a crawl long term unless you have some clever way if dealing with it.
- rektide 5y agoI liked slg's post, in the earlier thread on RWW being banned: > Has anyone else noticed that most complaints like this about Youtube's moderation fail Hanlon's razor? I'm just not sure I believe these type of conspiracies that attribute specific and nefarious reasons for these moderation decisions. > It is natural to try to see patterns in the moderation, but I think the largest pattern is that there is little pattern. They instead have an job that is impossible to do at the scale they do it at the budget they do it at. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27666611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27666611
- lr4444lr 5y agoIf the "incompetence" didn't so ppredictably fall in certain political directions, we might invoke Hanlon's Razor, but it overwhelmingly seems to favor what we could broadly call "left of center".
- hippich 5y agoWhen car exceeds a certain speed, it becomes impossible to control it reliably. That's why we have speed limits. Perhaps, we should have size limits for such platforms as well?
- heavyset_go 5y agoHanlon's razor exists as plausible deniability for one party's bad faith actors by marks who want to ignore the larger pattern of bad faith actions.
- rektide 5y agothe enormous difficulty of the task seems dead obvious apparent to me. this situation got corrected real fast. it's hard as heck for me to imagine large secret conspiracies or top down machinations to manipulate this stuff. it's not bottom up. if it were top down I feel like the thousands & thousands oflwer level employees would taddle on it real fast. almost all obviously shit decisions get corrected quickly. buying into the sourest, meanest, most anti-corporate party line is ultra popular. but I think Hanlon's describes things well. there is enormous difficulty applying tasteful moderation at scale.
- LAC-Tech 5y agoYoutube has become such a mindless distraction of mine. Like television used to be. And their censorship really is loathsome. I don't need mega-corporations telling me what is and isn't ok to see and hear.
- Black101 5y agoThey need to become a dumb pipe...
- netr0ute 5y agoThis is what YT used to be, some place to host video files and where people could just add comments.
- Covzire 5y agoYes it's essentially CorpTube now for any kind of news topics, they promote all the content providers who already have tremendous societal reach over everyone else by default.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- amanaplanacanal 5y agoBut then, they weren’t making money, and now, they are. Google is an advertising company, and YouTube will be moderated in whatever way they think is going to sell the most advertising.
- Tehchops 5y agoYea except that it's been demonstrated over and over that unmitigated, unrestricted content can and does radicalize susceptible population demographics. No way around it, they have a responsibility to moderate and monitor.
- Black101 5y ago
- dang 5y agoPrevious related thread: YouTube permanently bans Right Wing Watch - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27665188 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27665188 - June 2021 (172 comments)
- marcodiego 5y agoI'm ambiguous about the need to create laws to regulate services like youtube. In my view, it is a private service and they have their right to instate their own rules. What we really need, I think, are options. Peertube seems like a good one.
- dunco 5y agoI'm interested to know what would be the trigger point for you here that might demand regulation. are you fully libertarian and willing to endure serious negative societal effects to preserve this one type of freedom? If you could see that the lack of moderation on youtube was causing societal collapse because everyone believed things that were not true(lets say here for the sake of argument that this fact is not disputable in this example) would you then be in favour of some kind of regulation?
- marcodiego 5y agoIf youtube knowingly helps to spread disinformation, specially while making money with it, they should be held accountable for the harm they do to society. For the content they themselves choose to restrict... this seems more complicated.
- visarga 5y ago> it is a private service Should there be a certain size threshold after which they can't claim "private" anymore? It has a huge effect on society. > What we really need, I think, are options Yes, but they don't want to allow those options to exist. It's not in their interest. All this said, if YT would vanish from the internet I'd be devastated. So many technical talks that are not mirrored anywhere else, great courses, hobby stuff, documentaries, not to mention the breadth of music. Together with Wikipedia and arXiv I think it's one of the fundamental resources of the internet. And the content is, like Google search, generated by the users, it's our work. Does that still qualify as "private" when it gets to hoard so much of our creations? Is it their right to assert their massive size and power against content creators who are many and small, and can't coordinate to mount a meaningful opposition?
- dannyr 5y agoGoogle/YouTube is so predictable. Make an uproar on social media for their unjustifiable action and they would reverse it.
- DFHippie 5y agoThe old use-mention distinction rears its ugly head: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use%E2%80%93mention_distinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use%E2%80%93mention_distinctio...
- guerrilla 5y agoTwitter has this problem too. I just accidentally got my account limited for 12h for mentionimg that somone else was making death threats. Apparently their algorithm isn't the best at telling the difference.
- plank_time 5y agoYouTube is a monopoly and needs to be regulated. Period. End of story. They dominate online video and too many people are dependent on them and because of their monopoly position, they can do whatever they want without accountability. If they had competition, they would not be able to get away with having no customer support. The fact their customer support (which any other company like theirs would have) is practically non-existent is proof that they are using their monopoly position to the detriment of their customers who have no choice but to use them. It’s the same as them raising their prices. Except what they do instead is instead of explicitly raising prices, they cut services so that they are themselves more and more profitable. This is a direct result of their monopoly. YouTube and other Google properties needs to be regulated by the government. They need to reinstate competent customer support and have a viable appeal system that isn’t a black hole. They need to be explicit with what constitutes a strike or a violation, and they need to be more effective in combatting fraudulent notices of copyright violation.
- Jcowell 5y agoMy question odd how does this work? As far as I can there’s no anti-comp or nefarious means of stopping a competitor from rising. It’s just hard as hell for to get the capital for even storing the data and getting a user base and profiting from them. YouTube works because it can be “free” with ads, and have paid options we don’t have to use. A complete paid version of a YouTube competitor is never going to work because the public will never pay for an inferior product they regularly use for free with no hassle
- dukeofdoom 5y agoCan still be kicked off if you question Bidens win?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- 8note 5y agoI'm not sure it'll matter. Next election, it'll be illegal to vote for anyone other than trump anyways Edit: illegal to vote if republicans think you won't vote for trump
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- Jimmc414 5y agoBanning conspiracy theories is such a slippery slope. Where is the line for something like the lab leak hypothesis? What had to change to allow it to exist? Weren't Woodward and Bernstein or Daniel ellsberg conspiracy theorists? Should they have been silenced?
- seventytwo 5y agoSlippery slope arguments aren’t good arguments.
- WillPostForFood 5y agoThey are good arguments as long as you can show evidence the slope is slippery. The slippery slope fallacy isn't that slippery slopes don't exist, it is that they are asserted without evidence.
- seventytwo 5y agoFair… but but even one cycle of cause/effect is difficult to provide evidence for, let alone a cascade of causes and effects which sum to a slippery slope. Slippery slope arguments would need entire dissertations of evidence to even be plausibly considered, and yet they’re one of the most common methods of naysaying. While you’re technically correct, I’m functionally correct.
- 8note 5y agoEvidence of the slipperiness is also insufficient. Youre really lookingfor an inductive argument where each step implies the next one. Showing that you can get n+3 via separate evidence for n+1, n+2, and n+3 says nothing about n+7
- julianapostate 5y agodo political things not start, get normalized, then serve as a foundation on which new trends can build?
- Applejinx 5y agoFrom the accounts of what RWW is, I think I can see how this happened. Are they functionally any different from an aggregator? If YouTube's content guidelines are taking on the self-imposed duty of restricting their amplification of calls to right-wing violence, genocide, etc, to what extent does RWW communicate that it is critical of the views of the extremists it apparently seeks to amplify?
- squarefoot 5y agoThey got two strikes, before the third (and IMO a very suspicious one, as it was for a years old video) got their channel removed. Does it mean that all strikes are now void, or just the last one? Sorry if I'm asking the obvious, but I'm not a content creator on YT.
- neartheplain 5y agoActivists of every stripe routinely abuse reporting systems to deplatform one another. AntifaWatch, essentially "Left Wing Watch", had their paid account suspended by ProtonMail recently following one such coordinated flagging attempt. They regained access to the account after petitioning ProtonMail on Twitter, who conducted an investigation and cleared them of wrongdoing: https://twitter.com/AntifaWatch2/status/1389980167360163841 https://twitter.com/AntifaWatch2/status/1389980167360163841
- Trias11 5y agoIs there unbanned Left Wing Watch as well?
- exo-pla-net 5y agoThis comment is a lightning rod for tribalist rancor and contributes nothing.
- guerrilla 5y agoMaybe you could look into that if you're curious about it instead of posting flamebait.
- Trias11 5y agoIt's just a question. Where did you see flamebait?
- beervirus 5y agoWell of course, the ban was an accident and it was reversed as soon as YT realized they were anti right wing.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ladyattis 5y agoI think one of the worse problems with YouTube is the fact that they actively avoid hiring and using human beings to curate the content on the site. I've seen all kinds of stuff get approved that I think most folks would've at least sent to another mod to review before approval and I've seen stuff just categorically demonetized and removed that wasn't even a big deal (Example: someone who's doing a Let's Play of Fallout 3 and they stumble upon a radio playing the licensed soundtrack.). The only reason why folks tolerate this stuff because it's the only viable platform to post content on if you want to make money off of advertising dollars. Otherwise, good luck. :)
- zimbatm 5y agoHow is this newsworthy? This channel has 50k subscribers. This is nothing in YouTube subscriber numbers.