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UK MP speech about freedoms censored by YouTube

164 points by ColinHayhurst 5y ago

ColinHayhurst 5y ago
The video has now been restored: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VidUXZjzNVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VidUXZjzNVk Worth a watch. Should we "assume the best" by assuming this was taken down by AI, and without human check? MP says: “This is an outrageous attack on free speech. Throughout the pandemic we've seen blatant attempts by Big Tech to silence opposition voices challenging the conventional wisdom. This episode serves as a further example of the worrying trend of strangling free speech" "My speech at conference was carefully researched, wholly accurate & backed up with the latest scientific evidence." "Govnt must stop the erosion of free speech online. That starts with looking again at the wholly inadequate proposals in the Online Safety Bill” "The unambiguous attempt by YouTube to censor my speech is a warning." "If YouTube is happy to attempt to silence elected Members of Parliament, then they are also happy to censor anyone uploading content to their services."
- mojzu 5y ago
  Yeah it seems likely to me to be an overzealous AI decision, given the background noise of anti-vaccine disinformation on youtube these days I wouldn't be surprised if they've turned up their algorithms at the cost of more false and marginal positives What's strange however is them seeming to use this to try and 'strengthen' the online safety bill which in it's current form would already be damaging to free speech online (adds massive liability for illegal/'harmful' content if it isn't removed quickly so companies will most likely block more content as a result)
  - PontifexMinimus 5y ago
    > an overzealous AI decision Then they simply shouldn't use AI algorithms to censor people. > What's strange however is them seeming to use this to try and 'strengthen' the online safety bill which in it's current form would already be damaging to free speech online It's not obvious to me that the UK government has any coherent idea of what it is trying to do.
    - ColinHayhurst 5y ago
      Some would say the Bill is a symptom of Facebook Derangement Syndrome https://webdevlaw.uk/2020/12/09/facebook-derangement-syndrome/ https://webdevlaw.uk/2020/12/09/facebook-derangement-syndrom... Based on those they are consulting with that seems justfied.
  - mathw 5y ago
    Sadly that is not strange - if there are any technologically literate people advising our government on policy they're not being listened to.
  - hliyan 5y ago
    Should we be more forgiving of harm done by faulty algorithms than by negligent human beings? It was the company's choice to save money by automating a process that normally only human beings can do reliably. The consequences to the victim are the same regardless of the instrument used in the commission of the wrongdoing.
    - mojzu 5y ago
      Given the quantity of video uploaded to youtube I'm not sure human moderation of any significant amount of it is even possible anymore. Humans are definitely better at handling many situations but are also prone to their own biases (e.g. there were facebook moderators a while back who would take down reported content they disagreed with for religious reasons), they are often not given enough time to reasonably review a report, and when exposed to the kind of videos being reported can experience serious mental health problems Some of these could be dealt with by the companies investing more in moderation (make them employees/better pay/healthcare etc.), but if you want to moderate at the scale of youtube/facebook/etc. then I don't see how you could do it without some automated tools
      - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
        "human moderation of any significant amount of it is even possible anymore." Then maybe free video hosting is not a viable business, why should youtube destroy all competition and then complain that checking their uploads is not possoble?
        hliyan 5y ago
        Exactly. Perhaps if lots of little video hosting companies existed, this wouldn't be an issue. "Too big to do the right thing" seems like an even worse version of "Too big to fail".
        mojzu 5y ago
        The argument that these companies are too big and that creates bad incentives/lack of incentives to improve is one I'm much more sympathetic to. I'd be in favour of more smaller companies/communities although I don't think this would remove the need for automated tools (e.g. smallish reddit and discord communities often use bots and other tools to automate some moderation). And to make something like this a reality you'd probably need government intervention to overcome the network effect that these bigger platforms have
- andrekandre 5y ago
  > "Govnt must stop the erosion of free speech online. That starts with looking again at the wholly inadequate proposals in the Online Safety Bill” why don't they (govt) open a public video site for anyone to upload to, so they don't have to mess with private sites? forcing private entities to host things they dont want to sounds like a huge can of worms
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - ben_w 5y ago
    This particular government is very fond of opening cans of worms, but is always surprised and upset to find worms inside them.
  - PontifexMinimus 5y ago
    It would make a lot of sense for the UK government to encourage UK-based PeerTube websites (and other federated social media such as Mastodon, PixelFed, Lemmy, etc), and to make sure all UK government content is uploaded on such sites. Then once they have done that, and these sites have lots of users and traction, mandate that Google, Facebook etc also federate using ActivityPub. If they don't, block their sites.
    - my123 5y ago
      PeerTube doesn't scale when most of the user base nowadays is on mobile, with asymmetric connections that have data caps. (which happens to be the real world)
      - PontifexMinimus 5y ago
        > most of the user base nowadays is on mobile I've never actually watched a video on a mobile device (I tried once and didn't have enough bandwidth). If I'm at home or office, I have a desktop PC, and if I'm out and about I have better things to be doing with my time.
      - 5y ago
- thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
  >Should we "assume the best" by assuming this was taken down by AI, and without human check? Isn't that exactly the problem? Social media platforms' business models depend on not being able to moderate all content. Examples like this are an inevitability of the concept.
- protomyth 5y ago
  How about we blame the company regardless of the technology used? The result is the same.
- paganel 5y ago
  > Should we "assume the best" by assuming this was taken down by AI, Imo that would be the worst, because a human doing it can be corrected (more training, revised check-lists etc.), but afaik AI moderating in its current form is a black hole and it will remain a black hole for the foreseeable future.
  - oauea 5y ago
    AI can easily be turned off.
  - ColinHayhurst 5y ago
    I agree and should have said "should we assume the best of intentions by humans". Delegating decisions on freedom of speech to AI is a flawed and dangerous path.
- jameshart 5y ago
  The idea that a member of parliament should enjoy at least a a much freedom of speech over private media as the broader public actually deserves some challenge. In the UK tradition, political speech in the private sphere is somewhat tightly regulated. As an MP he can’t buy advertising space on terrestrial TV; during election cycles if he is featured on TV the broadcasters are obliged to give equal time to his opponents; there are strictly limited amounts of time permitted for ‘party political broadcasts’ and they are allocated to all parties equally. So the precedent in UK law is not that MPs have unfettered access to broadcast their private speeches. Quite the opposite. As a member of parliament he does enjoy parliamentary privilege, and the ability to put his views on the permanent public record of Hansard by delivering a speech in the Commons. That should give him quite enough of a soapbox. It certainly doesn’t entitle him to oblige a private entity to carry his speech without comment - and any legal regime which required such a thing would be dangerously authoritarian. When political campaigners show up at a radio station and demand to be put on the air, we don’t call that ‘normal exercise of free speech’, we call that ‘the first step in a coup’.
  - torstenvl 5y ago
    > the broadcasters are obliged to give equal time to his opponents Um. This is not the rebuttal to the MP's position that you think it is.
    - jameshart 5y ago
      It might not be intended to be the rebuttal you are assuming it is. I’m not saying that British law broadly sets a precedent of requiring equal treatment of contrasting political views. It absolutely does not - look at the UK newspaper opinion pages. I am mainly responding to the ‘if they’ll do this to an MP they will do it to you’ syllogism, which seems to rest on the underlying assumption that an MP has at least the same speech rights (on a private website) as a member of the public - when in fact the ability of an MP to oblige a private company to carry their speech is expressly limited. I am arguing that the fact he is an MP does not entitle him to special treatment and indeed historically brings his speech rights under greater scrutiny. My point is mostly that MPs are not broadly entitled to use private platforms to speak unopposed, and in fact are more restricted by current law in that respect than people who are not MPs or parliamentary candidates.
- ralfn 5y ago
  >Should we "assume the best" by assuming this was taken down by AI, and without human check? How is that 'the best'. Only Silicon Valley thinks that is a valid legal excuse for anything. If you can't operate within the law you can't operate. The US better start regulating their companies or you end up with a trade war due to the whole world including Europe just kicking these vendors out of the market entirely and permanently
  - rawTruthHurts 5y ago
    >How is that 'the best'. Hence the quotes wrapping sentence.
  - revolvingocelot 5y ago
    >If you can't operate within the law you can't operate That's demonstrably untrue. Look at the rise of Uber. If I started running an unlicensed taxi, they'd come down on me very hard and very quickly, but Uber had the resources to tie up enforcement until public opinion about their VC-subsidized "taxis" prevented any action.
    - ralfn 5y ago
      >they'd come down on me very hard and very quickly I can't speak for the rest of the world, but here in the Netherlands, it wouldn't have been the state that would come down 'hard'. (its the other cab drivers, physically assaulting you) As a response to this kind of energy, we actually ended up liberizing our cab market a lot more before Uber came. And when Uber came here there was no good will for the existing established cab companies, because people considered them borderline mobsters.
  - true_religion 5y ago
    Okay. So it wasn’t a mistake. Google like any other media company decided to exercise editorial control and let part A speak while muzzling party B. Now what? There is no consensus of what to do with political speech and media. In some counties only the ruling government gets access. In some counties, only the leading parties have access and all must share time equally. In others, you only get the access that you can buy. In still others, no one gets access except under regulated conditions like a debate. If Google takes a step back from the label of Big Tech and admits that YouTube is just another multinational media company… then what do they lose?
- caeril 5y ago
  > wholly accurate & backed up with the latest scientific evidence. Much of the problem comes down to the fact that the "science" changes quite frequently. When new evidence appears, which updates our Bayesian Priors ( airborne vs aerosol/fomites, vaccine type effectiveness, delta variant transmittivity, ventilator usefulness, lab leak hypothesis, comorbidity statistics, etc ) the Powers That Be rely on the pre-update "science" to determine if censorship is warranted. One can argue if censorship of "disinformation" is a societal good, and I won't litigate that general matter here, but it becomes a particular point of contention if what is classified as disinformation changes with every Lancet publication.
roenxi 5y ago
And just to try and be helpful for the direction of the debate... The issue isn't that YouTube can do this. They can, that is cool. Free world. The issue that is if they are going to do this everyone should respond. Nobody ever vetted YouTube as the arbiter of truth. They are not qualified for this, and they are going to screw up really badly. If they're going to set themselves up for failure, we all have to make sure we're standing outside the blast zone when they screw up really badly.
- deleted 5y ago
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- lucasverra 5y ago
  Sadly, YouTube is among Google best products. Myself do lots of cognitive load to avoid google services when possible, but yt has not rival amount quality of content and application. Im even paying for premium now. I'm paying with my dollars because there is no alternative except maybe the internet library..
- mschuster91 5y ago
  > Nobody ever vetted YouTube as the arbiter of truth. The institutions we set up to arbitrate truth - the courts - are already swamped beyond belief in many countries. The problem is that our societal systems of governance have been designed hundreds of years past, when life was focused on a couple dozen kilometers around where one lived. Nowadays, with global instant communication and knowledge available to almost everyone, conflicts and disagreements achieve far, far more reach and impact - and our societal foundations have never been updated to reflect the new reality and its demands. The US still votes on Tuesdays because of farmers commitments to church and market days in the 19th century (https://www.history.com/news/why-is-election-day-a-tuesday-in-november https://www.history.com/news/why-is-election-day-a-tuesday-i...), copyright as a concept dates back to the 1700s, and legal language is so full of Latin and other outdated language it is impossible to understand for normal citizens. We are witnessing a break-up of society, especially between the old/Boomer generation and the young "digital natives". For us young people, we see the possibilities and dangers of technology - and we see that our societal infrastructure is horribly outdated and the old generation which is in power dragging their feet and doing everything they can to prevent progress.
dua2020 5y ago
This is a government which is in the process of criminalising protest under a deliberately vague 'public nuisance' clause. They only want freedom of expression for their views and not for those that oppose them.
- CTDOCodebases 5y ago
  Are there any five eyed nations where I can get a group of my friends together then block a major arterial road to protest some issue without expecting to be arrested?
- bserge 5y ago
  So, just like most other governments. I often wonder how these people seem to almost inevitably get into power. Is it just because they really want to, compared to people with a more "live and let live" attitude?
- zpeti 5y ago
  Can someone explain to me how this makes sense when they are letting insulate britain block motorways? Like which protests are they trying to stop? I assume blocking motorways is illegal already, yet the police are doing nothing, which is leading dangerously to vigilante justice as per some videos, which is only a question of time before it turns really violent. Wtf is the UK government doing? Why do they need more powers when they don't use the current ones? Or is it for "other" types of protests? Shutting down motorways is fine.
  - misnome 5y ago
    > Why do they need more powers when they don't use the current ones? Is this a serious question? To make their job easier, always. It's a lot easier to do what you want when you don't have little things like the law or people's rights standing in the way.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - pydry 5y ago
basisword 5y ago
"Freedom is the reason the UK has had such a long an illustrious history." I'm sure the inhabitants of the many countries the British invaded and continue to hang on to would disagree. The Online Safety Bill he mentions in his outrage at YouTube taking down his speech is itself an attack on freedoms. He's also part of a political party working to criminalise protests they disagree with.
- PontifexMinimus 5y ago
  > British invaded and continue to hang on to The only places I can think of that Britain currently "hangs on to" against the will of the inhabitants are arguably Scotland and Northern Ireland, but in both those places about half the population want to continue to belong to the UK. So it's not obvious to me who you're referring to here.
  - basisword 5y ago
    Badly phrased. I meant inhabitants of all current and ex-colonies. Not just the remaining ones. Although, the talk of blocking another Scottish independence referendum could certainly be used as evidence of holding on to a country against the inhabitants will. You can't know their will if you prevent them from expressing it. Yes, they expressed it 7 years ago but a lot has changed since then, most notably leaving the EU.
    - TrispusAttucks 5y ago
      Regarding ex-colonies: Don't we have to eventually "let bygones be bygones"? Otherwise, where do we draw the line? How far do we go back? Those original human perpetrators are long dead. "Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin." ~ Deuteronomy 24:16
      - basisword 5y ago
        I'm not arguing that, it's a bigger debate. But claiming that the UK exists as it does because of a long commitment to freedom (when the colonies are a big example of the antithesis of freedom) is dishonest.
throw_m239339 5y ago
Each time the debate about free speech on social media comes up, people say: "well private platforms, they can censor whatever they want, they are not the government". Of course it only applies to the speech the former do not like: expediency. Here is a thing: social media grew that big because governments created a legal environment in which social media could grow that big. DMCA, safe harbor, the fact that social media are not liable for the content their users post... Are these social media entitled to all these favorable laws? My point is, it goes both ways. Yes social media as private companies can censor whatever legal content they want, No the government doesn't have to let them off the hook and doesn't have to keep a favorable legal or fiscal framework for these particular platforms to growth exponentially either... I'm not saying governments should crack down on these platforms, I'm just saying that ultimately, the legislator makes the laws... The platforms make money at scale, well how about they become liable "at scale" if the content is public?
- deleted 5y ago
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- simonh 5y ago
  Concerns about liability is why platforms like Youtube are blocking stuff, they're trying to self-police before the government hits them with a big liability hammer. So I'm not sure really what you're trying to say. You seem to be against safe harbour and laws that make them not liable. You argue that they should 'become liable at scale'. However you seem to be against their attempts to block content such regulations are likely to make them liable for. Yes of course, I know perfectly well this is an inappropriate example. None of us want it to have been blocked. Probably nobody at Youtube actually wants to block it either, they're just applying their rules inappropriately. In fact it looks like it's already unblocked. But who gets to write the rules and objectively define what is or isn't appropriate? If you want regulation and liability, edge cases like this are absolutely going to happen and we're going to have to find ways to manage that.
  - geofft 5y ago
    I'm interpreting the comment above as advocating for the pre-Section 230 world, where as long as you didn't moderate at all, you were shielded from liability. I'm not sure that's good for the world per se (there's also no obligation for YouTube to collect contact info, so either you've effectively legalized defamation/libel because there's no way to hold anyone legally accountable for it in order to remove it, or you're replacing it with a DMCA-like system where mere accusations of defamation are enough to remove a video, thereby increasing censorship). But it is true that it's specific policy choice by lawmakers and we could choose differently.
vfred 5y ago
I'm not surprised. Google cancelled a Ukrainian engineer who had objections to the CRT "fact" that all white people enjoy privilege. Remember that Ukrainians had to suffer Hitler, the Great Famine, Stalin and the Soviet Union. The insidious mind games that the Google nomenklatura plays are described here, by an honest and harmless person. Highly recommended, also the comment section under the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs27FtYKEos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs27FtYKEos
- zimpenfish 5y ago
  > the CRT "fact" that all white people enjoy privilege Do you have a source for this? I am very far from knowledgeable about CRT but AFAIK what you've said there is just an incorrect right-wing talking point in the current anti-CRT fervour.
  - lamppost123 5y ago
    I believe there are many schools of CRT, so nitpicking is always possible. Di Angelo, whose views are being taught at Google, seems to believe that white privilege and white unconscious racism are prevalent. I'm not sure that this is a "right wing" talking point. Here is a Black man, who studied CS at Oxford, talking about white privilege: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAo3t_KWHhI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAo3t_KWHhI
    - zimpenfish 5y ago
      > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAo3t_KWHhI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAo3t_KWHhI I mean, looking at the content, that's a heavily conservative, definitely alt-right, if not outright right-wing, channel. And the segment immediately prior to him proclaiming the white privilege is "a garbage concept" is him proudly relating the story about how he triggered and trolled people by "identifying as a female powerlifter" and all the alt-right people who covered it...
      - CodeGlitch 5y ago
icare_1er 5y ago
Those who brought out Champagne when Trump was censored... watch out... sooner or later, you'll be the one censored, and no one will be there to help you.
- valdiorn 5y ago
  Is this apt for the situation? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...
  - jf22 5y ago
    The slippery slope argument, which is already a logical fallacy, that digital censorship will lead to persecution is ridiculous.
    - ghoward 5y ago
      The slippery slope argument is not a fallacy if there's evidence for it, and in the case of censorship, there is.
      - jf22 5y ago
        Ok, has any group been persecuted?
        ghoward 5y ago
        There's plenty of evidence from history that if a group is censored, it is persecuted thereafter. The evidence does not need to be from now.
        jf22 5y ago
        Could be specific which "group" this is?
        5y ago
harry8 5y ago
Smash the tech giants into many little pieces and their market power is reduced to the point that it really is private businesses and none of this matters. youtube_v1 blocks your video, touyube_v2 or v3 or whatever will have it because they are separate and not a cartel as that would be illegal. The problem is facbook, google, apple, microsoft, etc etc are all vastly too big. If they need to be monolithic (they don't, but let's entertain the argument ) then treat them as a utility the same way we treat natural monopolies of drinking water distribution. Nationalisation is one way. Regulated return and heavily regulated business practise is another. Generally hacking it up into pieces and letting the pieces remain private is preferred when that can be done effectively. Nobody cares that NBC didn't cover this speech. It's not interesting as a censorship question even if the omission is following the explicit political dictates of their owners (or staff). That's a better place to be all around.
- quotemstr 5y ago
  > . youtube_v1 blocks your video, touyube_v2 or v3 or whatever will have it because they are separate and not a cartel as that would be illegal. You're supposing that youtube_v1, youtube_v2, and youtube_v3 wouldn't all block you. They would, because all three companies would include a cohort of the same activist employees with the same censorious ideology all pushing to cancel the same people at the same time. And why wouldn't we? That's the situation we have today. People banned from one major social media platform get banned from all major social media platforms pretty quickly. The state even encourages it. Splitting tech companies won't do any good for censorship resistance on its own. We need common carrier requirements, not more heads on the censorship hydra.
  - harry8 5y ago
    > They would, because all three companies would include a cohort of the same activist employees with the same censorious ideology all pushing to cancel the same people at the same time. Which is collusion and we have remedies for it. It's just a better place to be all around. >Splitting tech companies won't do any good for censorship resistance on its own It really will. The power imbalance is redressed so a multitude of normal policy options become available that aren't against a monolithic standard oil. But sure, please do focus on the many other benefits of smashing _all_ entities with outsized market power into many pieces wherever such outsized market power arises. edit: 3 is because I was establishing the point and didn't want to list out 50, which is closer to the right number of competing similar sized entities we'd want. If not a thousand.
Traster 5y ago
It is worth noting, for those outside of the UK that David Davis has an absolutely brilliant track record of saying absolutely asinine nonsense. There's just no substance to what he says. No, I'm not talking about this video (although I have watched it and it's absolutely par for the course). He never talks with substance on any issue, and his main claim to fame was violating a binding vote of the house of commons to provide accurate sector by sector guidance to the house on the impact of Brexit. He was famously quoted as saying "There will be no downside to Brexit, only a considerable upside" and equally famous for... editting the reports to remove any references to the downsides of brexit. Needless to say he went on to resign in protest at the deal he himself had negotiated. He's just a hilariously inadequate man. Having said all this, it sounds like the video was taken down by an over-aggressive automated system rather than some grand conspiracy to censor this incredibly inconsequential (and ahistorical) speech and it was back up within 6 hours.
- 0xy 5y ago
  None of what you said justifies censorship so I'm not sure why it's even relevant to the discussion.
anamax 5y ago
WRT "political speech on private property" (Yes, US-specific.) From https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/583/pruneyard-shopping-center-v-robins https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/583/pruneyard-s... "In PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74 (1980), the Supreme Court ruled that California could interpret its state constitution to protect political protesters from being evicted from private property, held open to the public, without running afoul of the Fifth Amendment. In this case, the California court went beyond the federal rule and held that, under the California constitution, a shopping mall owner could not exclude a group of high school students who were engaged in political advocacy. The state court decision has been adopted in one form or another by a substantial minority of states."
airpoint 5y ago
I mean this is the reason why Twitter won’t employ AI for racist posts detection right? It would auto-ban half the politicians on there. Same with this guy. Another lies-spewing Tory was autodetected as talking nonsense. Colour me surprised.

164 points by ColinHayhurst 5y ago

The video has now been restored: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VidUXZjzNVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VidUXZjzNVk Worth a watch. Should we "assume the best" by assuming this was taken down by AI, and without human check? MP says: “This is an outrageous attack on free speech. Throughout the pandemic we've seen blatant attempts by Big Tech to silence opposition voices challenging the conventional wisdom. This episode serves as a further example of the worrying trend of strangling free speech" "My speech at conference was carefully researched, wholly accurate & backed up with the latest scientific evidence." "Govnt must stop the erosion of free speech online. That starts with looking again at the wholly inadequate proposals in the Online Safety Bill” "The unambiguous attempt by YouTube to censor my speech is a warning." "If YouTube is happy to attempt to silence elected Members of Parliament, then they are also happy to censor anyone uploading content to their services."

mojzu 5y ago
Yeah it seems likely to me to be an overzealous AI decision, given the background noise of anti-vaccine disinformation on youtube these days I wouldn't be surprised if they've turned up their algorithms at the cost of more false and marginal positives What's strange however is them seeming to use this to try and 'strengthen' the online safety bill which in it's current form would already be damaging to free speech online (adds massive liability for illegal/'harmful' content if it isn't removed quickly so companies will most likely block more content as a result)
- PontifexMinimus 5y ago
  > an overzealous AI decision Then they simply shouldn't use AI algorithms to censor people. > What's strange however is them seeming to use this to try and 'strengthen' the online safety bill which in it's current form would already be damaging to free speech online It's not obvious to me that the UK government has any coherent idea of what it is trying to do.
  - ColinHayhurst 5y ago
    Some would say the Bill is a symptom of Facebook Derangement Syndrome https://webdevlaw.uk/2020/12/09/facebook-derangement-syndrome/ https://webdevlaw.uk/2020/12/09/facebook-derangement-syndrom... Based on those they are consulting with that seems justfied.
- mathw 5y ago
  Sadly that is not strange - if there are any technologically literate people advising our government on policy they're not being listened to.
- hliyan 5y ago
  Should we be more forgiving of harm done by faulty algorithms than by negligent human beings? It was the company's choice to save money by automating a process that normally only human beings can do reliably. The consequences to the victim are the same regardless of the instrument used in the commission of the wrongdoing.
  - mojzu 5y ago
    Given the quantity of video uploaded to youtube I'm not sure human moderation of any significant amount of it is even possible anymore. Humans are definitely better at handling many situations but are also prone to their own biases (e.g. there were facebook moderators a while back who would take down reported content they disagreed with for religious reasons), they are often not given enough time to reasonably review a report, and when exposed to the kind of videos being reported can experience serious mental health problems Some of these could be dealt with by the companies investing more in moderation (make them employees/better pay/healthcare etc.), but if you want to moderate at the scale of youtube/facebook/etc. then I don't see how you could do it without some automated tools
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      "human moderation of any significant amount of it is even possible anymore." Then maybe free video hosting is not a viable business, why should youtube destroy all competition and then complain that checking their uploads is not possoble?
      - hliyan 5y ago
        Exactly. Perhaps if lots of little video hosting companies existed, this wouldn't be an issue. "Too big to do the right thing" seems like an even worse version of "Too big to fail".
      - mojzu 5y ago
        The argument that these companies are too big and that creates bad incentives/lack of incentives to improve is one I'm much more sympathetic to. I'd be in favour of more smaller companies/communities although I don't think this would remove the need for automated tools (e.g. smallish reddit and discord communities often use bots and other tools to automate some moderation). And to make something like this a reality you'd probably need government intervention to overcome the network effect that these bigger platforms have
andrekandre 5y ago
> "Govnt must stop the erosion of free speech online. That starts with looking again at the wholly inadequate proposals in the Online Safety Bill” why don't they (govt) open a public video site for anyone to upload to, so they don't have to mess with private sites? forcing private entities to host things they dont want to sounds like a huge can of worms
- deleted 5y ago
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- ben_w 5y ago
  This particular government is very fond of opening cans of worms, but is always surprised and upset to find worms inside them.
- PontifexMinimus 5y ago
  It would make a lot of sense for the UK government to encourage UK-based PeerTube websites (and other federated social media such as Mastodon, PixelFed, Lemmy, etc), and to make sure all UK government content is uploaded on such sites. Then once they have done that, and these sites have lots of users and traction, mandate that Google, Facebook etc also federate using ActivityPub. If they don't, block their sites.
  - my123 5y ago
    PeerTube doesn't scale when most of the user base nowadays is on mobile, with asymmetric connections that have data caps. (which happens to be the real world)
    - PontifexMinimus 5y ago
      > most of the user base nowadays is on mobile I've never actually watched a video on a mobile device (I tried once and didn't have enough bandwidth). If I'm at home or office, I have a desktop PC, and if I'm out and about I have better things to be doing with my time.
    - 5y ago
thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
>Should we "assume the best" by assuming this was taken down by AI, and without human check? Isn't that exactly the problem? Social media platforms' business models depend on not being able to moderate all content. Examples like this are an inevitability of the concept.
protomyth 5y ago
How about we blame the company regardless of the technology used? The result is the same.
paganel 5y ago
> Should we "assume the best" by assuming this was taken down by AI, Imo that would be the worst, because a human doing it can be corrected (more training, revised check-lists etc.), but afaik AI moderating in its current form is a black hole and it will remain a black hole for the foreseeable future.
- oauea 5y ago
  AI can easily be turned off.
- ColinHayhurst 5y ago
  I agree and should have said "should we assume the best of intentions by humans". Delegating decisions on freedom of speech to AI is a flawed and dangerous path.
jameshart 5y ago
The idea that a member of parliament should enjoy at least a a much freedom of speech over private media as the broader public actually deserves some challenge. In the UK tradition, political speech in the private sphere is somewhat tightly regulated. As an MP he can’t buy advertising space on terrestrial TV; during election cycles if he is featured on TV the broadcasters are obliged to give equal time to his opponents; there are strictly limited amounts of time permitted for ‘party political broadcasts’ and they are allocated to all parties equally. So the precedent in UK law is not that MPs have unfettered access to broadcast their private speeches. Quite the opposite. As a member of parliament he does enjoy parliamentary privilege, and the ability to put his views on the permanent public record of Hansard by delivering a speech in the Commons. That should give him quite enough of a soapbox. It certainly doesn’t entitle him to oblige a private entity to carry his speech without comment - and any legal regime which required such a thing would be dangerously authoritarian. When political campaigners show up at a radio station and demand to be put on the air, we don’t call that ‘normal exercise of free speech’, we call that ‘the first step in a coup’.
- torstenvl 5y ago
  > the broadcasters are obliged to give equal time to his opponents Um. This is not the rebuttal to the MP's position that you think it is.
  - jameshart 5y ago
    It might not be intended to be the rebuttal you are assuming it is. I’m not saying that British law broadly sets a precedent of requiring equal treatment of contrasting political views. It absolutely does not - look at the UK newspaper opinion pages. I am mainly responding to the ‘if they’ll do this to an MP they will do it to you’ syllogism, which seems to rest on the underlying assumption that an MP has at least the same speech rights (on a private website) as a member of the public - when in fact the ability of an MP to oblige a private company to carry their speech is expressly limited. I am arguing that the fact he is an MP does not entitle him to special treatment and indeed historically brings his speech rights under greater scrutiny. My point is mostly that MPs are not broadly entitled to use private platforms to speak unopposed, and in fact are more restricted by current law in that respect than people who are not MPs or parliamentary candidates.
ralfn 5y ago
>Should we "assume the best" by assuming this was taken down by AI, and without human check? How is that 'the best'. Only Silicon Valley thinks that is a valid legal excuse for anything. If you can't operate within the law you can't operate. The US better start regulating their companies or you end up with a trade war due to the whole world including Europe just kicking these vendors out of the market entirely and permanently
- rawTruthHurts 5y ago
  >How is that 'the best'. Hence the quotes wrapping sentence.
- revolvingocelot 5y ago
  >If you can't operate within the law you can't operate That's demonstrably untrue. Look at the rise of Uber. If I started running an unlicensed taxi, they'd come down on me very hard and very quickly, but Uber had the resources to tie up enforcement until public opinion about their VC-subsidized "taxis" prevented any action.
  - ralfn 5y ago
    >they'd come down on me very hard and very quickly I can't speak for the rest of the world, but here in the Netherlands, it wouldn't have been the state that would come down 'hard'. (its the other cab drivers, physically assaulting you) As a response to this kind of energy, we actually ended up liberizing our cab market a lot more before Uber came. And when Uber came here there was no good will for the existing established cab companies, because people considered them borderline mobsters.
- true_religion 5y ago
  Okay. So it wasn’t a mistake. Google like any other media company decided to exercise editorial control and let part A speak while muzzling party B. Now what? There is no consensus of what to do with political speech and media. In some counties only the ruling government gets access. In some counties, only the leading parties have access and all must share time equally. In others, you only get the access that you can buy. In still others, no one gets access except under regulated conditions like a debate. If Google takes a step back from the label of Big Tech and admits that YouTube is just another multinational media company… then what do they lose?
caeril 5y ago
> wholly accurate & backed up with the latest scientific evidence. Much of the problem comes down to the fact that the "science" changes quite frequently. When new evidence appears, which updates our Bayesian Priors ( airborne vs aerosol/fomites, vaccine type effectiveness, delta variant transmittivity, ventilator usefulness, lab leak hypothesis, comorbidity statistics, etc ) the Powers That Be rely on the pre-update "science" to determine if censorship is warranted. One can argue if censorship of "disinformation" is a societal good, and I won't litigate that general matter here, but it becomes a particular point of contention if what is classified as disinformation changes with every Lancet publication.

roenxi 5y ago

And just to try and be helpful for the direction of the debate... The issue isn't that YouTube can do this. They can, that is cool. Free world. The issue that is if they are going to do this everyone should respond. Nobody ever vetted YouTube as the arbiter of truth. They are not qualified for this, and they are going to screw up really badly. If they're going to set themselves up for failure, we all have to make sure we're standing outside the blast zone when they screw up really badly.

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lucasverra 5y ago
Sadly, YouTube is among Google best products. Myself do lots of cognitive load to avoid google services when possible, but yt has not rival amount quality of content and application. Im even paying for premium now. I'm paying with my dollars because there is no alternative except maybe the internet library..
mschuster91 5y ago
> Nobody ever vetted YouTube as the arbiter of truth. The institutions we set up to arbitrate truth - the courts - are already swamped beyond belief in many countries. The problem is that our societal systems of governance have been designed hundreds of years past, when life was focused on a couple dozen kilometers around where one lived. Nowadays, with global instant communication and knowledge available to almost everyone, conflicts and disagreements achieve far, far more reach and impact - and our societal foundations have never been updated to reflect the new reality and its demands. The US still votes on Tuesdays because of farmers commitments to church and market days in the 19th century (https://www.history.com/news/why-is-election-day-a-tuesday-in-november https://www.history.com/news/why-is-election-day-a-tuesday-i...), copyright as a concept dates back to the 1700s, and legal language is so full of Latin and other outdated language it is impossible to understand for normal citizens. We are witnessing a break-up of society, especially between the old/Boomer generation and the young "digital natives". For us young people, we see the possibilities and dangers of technology - and we see that our societal infrastructure is horribly outdated and the old generation which is in power dragging their feet and doing everything they can to prevent progress.

dua2020 5y ago

This is a government which is in the process of criminalising protest under a deliberately vague 'public nuisance' clause. They only want freedom of expression for their views and not for those that oppose them.

CTDOCodebases 5y ago
Are there any five eyed nations where I can get a group of my friends together then block a major arterial road to protest some issue without expecting to be arrested?
bserge 5y ago
So, just like most other governments. I often wonder how these people seem to almost inevitably get into power. Is it just because they really want to, compared to people with a more "live and let live" attitude?
zpeti 5y ago
Can someone explain to me how this makes sense when they are letting insulate britain block motorways? Like which protests are they trying to stop? I assume blocking motorways is illegal already, yet the police are doing nothing, which is leading dangerously to vigilante justice as per some videos, which is only a question of time before it turns really violent. Wtf is the UK government doing? Why do they need more powers when they don't use the current ones? Or is it for "other" types of protests? Shutting down motorways is fine.
- misnome 5y ago
  > Why do they need more powers when they don't use the current ones? Is this a serious question? To make their job easier, always. It's a lot easier to do what you want when you don't have little things like the law or people's rights standing in the way.
- deleted 5y ago
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- pydry 5y ago

basisword 5y ago

"Freedom is the reason the UK has had such a long an illustrious history." I'm sure the inhabitants of the many countries the British invaded and continue to hang on to would disagree. The Online Safety Bill he mentions in his outrage at YouTube taking down his speech is itself an attack on freedoms. He's also part of a political party working to criminalise protests they disagree with.

PontifexMinimus 5y ago
> British invaded and continue to hang on to The only places I can think of that Britain currently "hangs on to" against the will of the inhabitants are arguably Scotland and Northern Ireland, but in both those places about half the population want to continue to belong to the UK. So it's not obvious to me who you're referring to here.
- basisword 5y ago
  Badly phrased. I meant inhabitants of all current and ex-colonies. Not just the remaining ones. Although, the talk of blocking another Scottish independence referendum could certainly be used as evidence of holding on to a country against the inhabitants will. You can't know their will if you prevent them from expressing it. Yes, they expressed it 7 years ago but a lot has changed since then, most notably leaving the EU.
  - TrispusAttucks 5y ago
    Regarding ex-colonies: Don't we have to eventually "let bygones be bygones"? Otherwise, where do we draw the line? How far do we go back? Those original human perpetrators are long dead. "Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin." ~ Deuteronomy 24:16
    - basisword 5y ago
      I'm not arguing that, it's a bigger debate. But claiming that the UK exists as it does because of a long commitment to freedom (when the colonies are a big example of the antithesis of freedom) is dishonest.

throw_m239339 5y ago

Each time the debate about free speech on social media comes up, people say: "well private platforms, they can censor whatever they want, they are not the government". Of course it only applies to the speech the former do not like: expediency. Here is a thing: social media grew that big because governments created a legal environment in which social media could grow that big. DMCA, safe harbor, the fact that social media are not liable for the content their users post... Are these social media entitled to all these favorable laws? My point is, it goes both ways. Yes social media as private companies can censor whatever legal content they want, No the government doesn't have to let them off the hook and doesn't have to keep a favorable legal or fiscal framework for these particular platforms to growth exponentially either... I'm not saying governments should crack down on these platforms, I'm just saying that ultimately, the legislator makes the laws... The platforms make money at scale, well how about they become liable "at scale" if the content is public?

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simonh 5y ago
Concerns about liability is why platforms like Youtube are blocking stuff, they're trying to self-police before the government hits them with a big liability hammer. So I'm not sure really what you're trying to say. You seem to be against safe harbour and laws that make them not liable. You argue that they should 'become liable at scale'. However you seem to be against their attempts to block content such regulations are likely to make them liable for. Yes of course, I know perfectly well this is an inappropriate example. None of us want it to have been blocked. Probably nobody at Youtube actually wants to block it either, they're just applying their rules inappropriately. In fact it looks like it's already unblocked. But who gets to write the rules and objectively define what is or isn't appropriate? If you want regulation and liability, edge cases like this are absolutely going to happen and we're going to have to find ways to manage that.
- geofft 5y ago
  I'm interpreting the comment above as advocating for the pre-Section 230 world, where as long as you didn't moderate at all, you were shielded from liability. I'm not sure that's good for the world per se (there's also no obligation for YouTube to collect contact info, so either you've effectively legalized defamation/libel because there's no way to hold anyone legally accountable for it in order to remove it, or you're replacing it with a DMCA-like system where mere accusations of defamation are enough to remove a video, thereby increasing censorship). But it is true that it's specific policy choice by lawmakers and we could choose differently.

vfred 5y ago

I'm not surprised. Google cancelled a Ukrainian engineer who had objections to the CRT "fact" that all white people enjoy privilege. Remember that Ukrainians had to suffer Hitler, the Great Famine, Stalin and the Soviet Union. The insidious mind games that the Google nomenklatura plays are described here, by an honest and harmless person. Highly recommended, also the comment section under the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs27FtYKEos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs27FtYKEos

zimpenfish 5y ago
> the CRT "fact" that all white people enjoy privilege Do you have a source for this? I am very far from knowledgeable about CRT but AFAIK what you've said there is just an incorrect right-wing talking point in the current anti-CRT fervour.
- lamppost123 5y ago
  I believe there are many schools of CRT, so nitpicking is always possible. Di Angelo, whose views are being taught at Google, seems to believe that white privilege and white unconscious racism are prevalent. I'm not sure that this is a "right wing" talking point. Here is a Black man, who studied CS at Oxford, talking about white privilege: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAo3t_KWHhI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAo3t_KWHhI
  - zimpenfish 5y ago
    > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAo3t_KWHhI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAo3t_KWHhI I mean, looking at the content, that's a heavily conservative, definitely alt-right, if not outright right-wing, channel. And the segment immediately prior to him proclaiming the white privilege is "a garbage concept" is him proudly relating the story about how he triggered and trolled people by "identifying as a female powerlifter" and all the alt-right people who covered it...
    - CodeGlitch 5y ago

icare_1er 5y ago

Those who brought out Champagne when Trump was censored... watch out... sooner or later, you'll be the one censored, and no one will be there to help you.

valdiorn 5y ago
Is this apt for the situation? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...
- jf22 5y ago
  The slippery slope argument, which is already a logical fallacy, that digital censorship will lead to persecution is ridiculous.
  - ghoward 5y ago
    The slippery slope argument is not a fallacy if there's evidence for it, and in the case of censorship, there is.
    - jf22 5y ago
      Ok, has any group been persecuted?
      - ghoward 5y ago
        There's plenty of evidence from history that if a group is censored, it is persecuted thereafter. The evidence does not need to be from now.
        jf22 5y ago
        Could be specific which "group" this is?
        5y ago

harry8 5y ago

Smash the tech giants into many little pieces and their market power is reduced to the point that it really is private businesses and none of this matters. youtube_v1 blocks your video, touyube_v2 or v3 or whatever will have it because they are separate and not a cartel as that would be illegal. The problem is facbook, google, apple, microsoft, etc etc are all vastly too big. If they need to be monolithic (they don't, but let's entertain the argument ) then treat them as a utility the same way we treat natural monopolies of drinking water distribution. Nationalisation is one way. Regulated return and heavily regulated business practise is another. Generally hacking it up into pieces and letting the pieces remain private is preferred when that can be done effectively. Nobody cares that NBC didn't cover this speech. It's not interesting as a censorship question even if the omission is following the explicit political dictates of their owners (or staff). That's a better place to be all around.

quotemstr 5y ago
> . youtube_v1 blocks your video, touyube_v2 or v3 or whatever will have it because they are separate and not a cartel as that would be illegal. You're supposing that youtube_v1, youtube_v2, and youtube_v3 wouldn't all block you. They would, because all three companies would include a cohort of the same activist employees with the same censorious ideology all pushing to cancel the same people at the same time. And why wouldn't we? That's the situation we have today. People banned from one major social media platform get banned from all major social media platforms pretty quickly. The state even encourages it. Splitting tech companies won't do any good for censorship resistance on its own. We need common carrier requirements, not more heads on the censorship hydra.
- harry8 5y ago
  > They would, because all three companies would include a cohort of the same activist employees with the same censorious ideology all pushing to cancel the same people at the same time. Which is collusion and we have remedies for it. It's just a better place to be all around. >Splitting tech companies won't do any good for censorship resistance on its own It really will. The power imbalance is redressed so a multitude of normal policy options become available that aren't against a monolithic standard oil. But sure, please do focus on the many other benefits of smashing _all_ entities with outsized market power into many pieces wherever such outsized market power arises. edit: 3 is because I was establishing the point and didn't want to list out 50, which is closer to the right number of competing similar sized entities we'd want. If not a thousand.

Traster 5y ago

It is worth noting, for those outside of the UK that David Davis has an absolutely brilliant track record of saying absolutely asinine nonsense. There's just no substance to what he says. No, I'm not talking about this video (although I have watched it and it's absolutely par for the course). He never talks with substance on any issue, and his main claim to fame was violating a binding vote of the house of commons to provide accurate sector by sector guidance to the house on the impact of Brexit. He was famously quoted as saying "There will be no downside to Brexit, only a considerable upside" and equally famous for... editting the reports to remove any references to the downsides of brexit. Needless to say he went on to resign in protest at the deal he himself had negotiated. He's just a hilariously inadequate man. Having said all this, it sounds like the video was taken down by an over-aggressive automated system rather than some grand conspiracy to censor this incredibly inconsequential (and ahistorical) speech and it was back up within 6 hours.

0xy 5y ago
None of what you said justifies censorship so I'm not sure why it's even relevant to the discussion.

anamax 5y ago

WRT "political speech on private property" (Yes, US-specific.) From https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/583/pruneyard-shopping-center-v-robins https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/583/pruneyard-s... "In PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74 (1980), the Supreme Court ruled that California could interpret its state constitution to protect political protesters from being evicted from private property, held open to the public, without running afoul of the Fifth Amendment. In this case, the California court went beyond the federal rule and held that, under the California constitution, a shopping mall owner could not exclude a group of high school students who were engaged in political advocacy. The state court decision has been adopted in one form or another by a substantial minority of states."

airpoint 5y ago

I mean this is the reason why Twitter won’t employ AI for racist posts detection right? It would auto-ban half the politicians on there. Same with this guy. Another lies-spewing Tory was autodetected as talking nonsense. Colour me surprised.