112 ms·

YouTube takes down independent court livestreams

554 points by crocodiletears 5y ago

blumomo 5y ago
YouTube also just deleted the accounts of the German independent investigatory committee www.corona-ausschuss.de who are an important information source for many German citizen.
- martneumann 5y ago
  You are being very generous by calling them an "investigatory committee". They routinely compare the anti Covid measures by the German government to the Holocaust [1]. On the same site, you can also see that they touted the weird conspiracy theory of becoming magnetic after being vaccinated. They violated Youtube's ToS with their conspiracy theories and got kicked out, it seems. [1] https://www.psiram.com/de/index.php/Stiftung_Corona-Ausschuss https://www.psiram.com/de/index.php/Stiftung_Corona-Ausschus...
  - trhway 5y ago
    >They violated Youtube's ToS with their conspiracy theories and got kicked out, it seems. great sign of progress. Just mere 400 years ago they would have been tortured and burned at stake as heretics. Though who knows, the way things been moving lately ...
    - rat87 5y ago
      Yes I see it as progress that YouTube kicks off antivax conspiracies. It would be nice if Facebook did the same
      - trhway 5y ago
        From USSR times I'm very sceptical about supposed truths which can't stand on their merits alone and require active administrative suppression of the doubt to maintain the perception of truthiness.
        Karsteski 5y ago
        Out of curiosity, why did people downvote this comment? I find that it states a very valid concern in our digital age where information can be very effectively suppressed from the majority of people, regardless if I agree or disagree with the message of said information.
      - ravenstine 5y ago
        Yeah, because surely governments and medical institutions have never lied to, hurt, or killed anyone. They say they want to help us and no one should be allowed to say otherwise. And I'm sure YouTube's only motivation is to protect us.
  - 1cvmask 5y ago
    [flagged]
    - martneumann 5y ago
      None of these things relate to what the "Corona-Ausschuss" has been doing in any way. Just because the government does shady things, doesn't mean the quack theories by some people on the internet are suddenly correct. Especially when they do not believe Covid exists, or if it does that it's a bioweapon, which is apparently harmless for some reason, but masks don't work and vaccines don't work, either... They also receive lots of support and attention from Russians state media. It is to be assumed that the Russian state has an interest in fanning the flames here and to sow doubt in the German government. Isn't it ironic that the Russian media in Germany pushes any negative vaccine story they can find to foster hesitancy, but urges its own population to get vaccinated ASAP in domestic media? I will leave it at that.
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      Are you sure you meant to toss the Maine in there? Because history strongly suggests that was a maintenance failure / expected consequence of the volatile coal used at the time. If anything, the story of the Maine proves the rule; it reminds us that sometimes conspiracies aren't.
      - 1cvmask 5y ago
        Yes. They spread a whole bunch of conspiracies to justify the war. Those conspiracies were later proven to be bogus. The USS Maine was not blown up by the Spanish as the US media asserted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish-American_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish-Amer...
    - throwawaygh 5y ago
      >> the weird conspiracy theory of becoming magnetic after being vaccinated. > Everything is a conspiracy theory till proven otherwise. Please tell me this comment is ironic.
  - HideousKojima 5y ago
    [flagged]
    - soco 5y ago
      As your examples correctly point out, the sites documenting government abuses were not censored. Only the tinfoil wackos were taken down, so I believe in this particular case it works as expected. (later clarification: anyway I definitely don't like the way YouTube goes and I'd post my stuff also on other sites)
      - thriftwy 5y ago
        These abuses are also historical. They ought to have a different censorship dynamic from current events.
    - nawgz 5y ago
      What does this piece of misdirection have to do with the fact that this channel promoted - falsely - anti-vaccine myths and in doing so made TOS-violating statements? It is clear that government and corporation are both largely morally devoid institutions in the modern age, but this doesn't even rely on any traditional sense of trust. The data is published and we can see what it does and doesn't do, and if you want to discard that you mightaswell just take the kid gloves off and type something really offensive next
      - HideousKojima 5y ago
        >The data is published and we can see what it does and doesn't do See my last link
        nawgz 5y ago
        Yes, a link suggesting 1k of 44k participants in the Pfizer Phase III trials were not well monitored and had other logistical issues does not surprise me. It does not concern me either; have you seen the reduced IFR post vaccination? It is not like 2% of 1/3 vaccines phase III participants is even a notable amount of the data. Like I said, if this type of thing is enough for you to go forward and claim that the whole thing is a lie, I think you’re creeping into some very dumb territory.
- rat87 5y ago
  > German independent investigatory committee Sounds like an official body or a body set up by prominent scientists > www.corona-ausschuss.de Seems to be a bunch of crazy conspiracy theorists. I didn't 3ven have to look far for a description. So good I'm glad YouTube is moderating their platform https://m-tagesspiegel-de.translate.goog/luegen-und-hetze-im-berliner-corona-ausschuss-im-impfstoff-sind-so-etwas-wie-lebendige-kraken/27670234.html?utm_referrer=https://www.google.com/&_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=nui https://m-tagesspiegel-de.translate.goog/luegen-und-hetze-im...
AussieWog93 5y ago
Title is a little bit misleading. They've only taken down some streams from a single high-profile trial.
gerash 5y ago
I'd suggest those who haven't watched at least the closing arguments from both sides (4 hrs of video in total) to watch it first. There's no point in sounding like legal experts or arguing over semantics for the sake of defending the position you have already taken before spending the time watching the full version of both sides arguments. https://youtube.com/c/fox6milwaukee https://youtube.com/c/fox6milwaukee
crocodiletears 5y ago
Note: the streams in the screenshot have since been restored.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  It's entirely possible they were taken down in the first place because so many parallel streams of coverage on the same data tripped either a spam detector or an honest-to-God bug in the YouTube backend ("Hm... lots of parallel channels running the exact same bytes. I bet we can consolidate this if we just tee the stream sinks against a source that oops that's a hotspot...").
  - GenerocUsername 5y ago
    doubt. Over the last 6 years there have been toooooo many coincidences which go in 1 direction politically instead of equally in both directions. You only need to flip a coin 5-6 times before you suspect it might be rigged... and after 100's of tosses there is no longer any question.
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      I'm not sure what the directions are as relates to dropping signal on the Rittenhouse trial.
    - r00fus 5y ago
      You are comparing YouTube policing their platform to a a coin flip? YT isn't a public service.
      - Natsu 5y ago
        They're gesturing at the argument that was famously made in the 2016 movie Denial. In that, a Holocaust denier has filed a defamation lawsuit against a Jewish professor. Under UK law, she bears the burden of proof. When they later confront the denier, they point out that he makes many historical mistakes and every single one of them favors the Nazis and/or Hitler. They then compare this to a rigged coin. If he were being honest and doing history wrong, then some of his mistakes should've gone either way, but the fact that his mistakes are substantially in one direction shows evidence of bias. Denial is a great film, I recommend it.
_-david-_ 5y ago
Is it just me or does it seem like these "accidents" impact smaller and perhaps less politically authoritative channels than the big channels? I am not just talking about this incident but others as well.
- oopsyDoodl 5y ago
  They own all IP, why would they be subject to automated scans?
  - fault1 5y ago
    There is many good reasons to "scan" _all_ content. How about spam, illegal content, or anything that violates their TOU? These days if you do not have a litany of algorithms performing these tasks, the worst case is that you'll end up like Facebook where genocide occured (in Myanmar) because the content was not in unicode and the detection systems couldn't "read" it. Like any other site, accounts with less "trust" are probably going to be flagged by automatic mechanisms. I've been on a few teams with various companies that have done things like fraud detection and it almost always works this way. sometimes there is of course, legitimate false positives.
    - oopsyDoodl 5y ago
      That’s a good point. scanAll() and applyAutomatedTakedownAI() would not be applied equally because of course big corp never pirates
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  I have no direct knowledge of YouTube's configuration, but my more general knowledge of how Alphabet does business suggests that high-business-value customers have company-internal guardians (in sales, advertising, or biz-dev) who are actually tasked with making sure nothing breaks on their services. I assume they do the same for high-biz-value channels, so I'd expect fewer accidents on bigger channels with more opportunity to make a mess for YT than smaller ones.
- rossdavidh 5y ago
politician 5y ago
Dry run for when the verdict is announced.
- politician 5y ago
  I wanted to come back to this prediction and note that the stream was not interrupted during or after the verdict.
- dkdk8283 5y ago
  Sad but I think your conjecture is spot on. Platforms such as YT abuse their power regularly without batting an eye.
- laurent92 5y ago
  I couldn’t imagine witnessing this in my life, not for something so obvious and in plain sight. But is it better than 30 years ago or worse? When I hear the suicides committed upon whistleblowers in France 30 years ago, or the Ustica crash, or the Greenpeace boat bombed in NZ, are we committing more today?
- rossdavidh 5y ago
  Likely true, especially given that the streams in question have apparently been restored. And, given the potential for lives lost and property damage, perhaps justified.
  - bequanna 5y ago
    Are you saying we should suppress the truth because we’re worried the woke mob won’t like it? One solution: Open, transparent justice and cities enforce laws for rioters instead of letting them throw city burning temper tantrums.
    - phone8675309 5y ago
      > Are you saying we should suppress the truth because we’re worried the woke mob won’t like it? Yes, because right-wingers have never committed violence when they got the outcome they didn't like./s
butmuh 5y ago
just in time for the removal of dislikes too..
BitwiseFool 5y ago
I really want to stress that while the internet has enabled just about everyone to act as a citizen journalist, it is not the ubiquity of information that matters, but rather, the access to information. YouTube and Google wield great power when it comes to gatekeeping information. The sinister part is that plenty of people, left and right, will defend Google's ability to do this merely because they are "a private company".
- fault1 5y ago
  Isn't this just a market opportunity for other companies? Google isn't the only company that owns the field of information retrieval. They just came the right place/right time after the .com crash.
  - eftychis 5y ago
    Are you going to vote with your money and pay for such a company to exist is the right question I would say.
  - sm4rk0 5y ago
    It is in a perfect market, but Google holds the monopoly and the game is set against competition.
    - fault1 5y ago
      A monopoly for information retrieval? Surely not. For online ads? Sure you can make that case. Their business in the end is based on delivering relevant content. If there is a market for the traffic Google refuses to host, then there are probably market opportunities there.
      - sm4rk0 5y ago
        For video-sharing platforms. 1. When you buy an Android phone there's a good chance that YouTube app is preinstalled. 2. If you search the net for "how to do XYZ" or for any song you'll get 99% video results from YouTube. 3. Almost every company/celebrity/influencer/... has a YouTube account and until recently (TikTok, Odysee, BitChute,...) alternative platforms (Vimeo, Dailymotion,...) were mostly a niche market.
thepasswordis 5y ago
I think at this point we can just expect this stuff. The ridiculousness of it, though. The rekieta law stream (which is fantastic, btw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7YXd2M5E-8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7YXd2M5E-8) has anywhere from 4-12 active lawyers giving commentary and context to everything that is happening. This is exactly the type of thing we dreamed about when we were first creating the internet. However: often times these smaller independent journalists and commenters go against the reality that media companies want you to believe you live in. Thus: they get censored. Rekieta lost almost 40,000 people who were getting live commentary from a diverse (idealogically) set of lawyers, and now must to places where these companies can assert more narrative control. It's sad.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  Fantastic in that they frequently promote JackPosobiec? Even on their Twitter you can see that they retweeting #PizzaGate supporters. I can't tell you how many times they mocked one of the prosecutors for their weight. I actually do think this is a clear case of self-defense, but if you have to make fun of someone for their weight then you prob don't have a very good point.
- NoPie 5y ago
  It is strange to see all submissions about Kyle Rittenhouse here disappear very quickly. I just thought that if more or less randomly selected 12 jury members agreed that he was innocent then what most people really think and what the media portraits it to be are very different things.
- caeril 5y ago
  > these smaller independent journalists and commenters go against the reality that media companies want you to believe you live in. For an example from this specific case, compare the actual unedited testimony of Gaige Grosskreutz, who admitted on the stand that Rittenhouse did not fire until Gaige's Glock 17 was pointed directly at Kyle's head, to the coverage of his testimony by CNN, et. al. The mainstream media lies, constantly and blatantly, not by minor omissions or bad research, but by gross, egregious violations of truth that can only be explained by extreme malice and contempt for their viewers.
1cvmask 5y ago
YouTube is the great digital video censorship platform. My all time favorite was when they censored an academic conference on censorship. The HN discussion on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26008217 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26008217
- inChargeOfIT 5y ago
  How about censoring Dislikes? This is in progress now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxOuG8jMIgI&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxOuG8jMIgI&t=1s
  - BitwiseFool 5y ago
    I really hope this comes back to bite them. I already find myself not watching as many videos simply because I can't gauge the like/dislike ratio on them. In the short term I expect an explosion in clickbait and low quality videos because people won't be able to immediately see that the video is bogus from dislike counts. I suspect people will tend to retreat into watching the channels they already like and cut down on consuming recommendations. I'm already trying to gauge likes vs watch count as a sloppy proxy for video quality but it's just not the same.
    - gknoy 5y ago
      I find what you said really interesting, mainly because I don't think I've _ever_ used likes or dislikes (or their ratio) as a metric for choosing what to watch. The most I've interacted with dislikes is when seeing some helpful low-production-value video, or some artist's music stream, I've wondered why 1-3% of the viewers disliked it. I mean, even when I've found _better_ or _more informative_ videos, I've never been tempted to dislike the previous ones I'd watched that weren't as good.
      - oriki 5y ago
        This. I find that the vast majority of cases where I'd pay any attention to the dislike bar are just cases where people are getting dogpiled for whatever reason (whether they deserve it or not, or if anyone deserves to be treated like that on the internet, is another matter entirely) but I've heard reasonable arguments from people talking about tutorials and other informative videos that the like:dislike ratio is a convenient sniff test for if the video is worth watching.
skinkestek 5y ago
It is pretty amazing isn't it? Fun to work at Google these days? Get to manipulate the crowds big time? Edit: at least you have now gotten me to watch it. Seriously interesting. Good thing the kid has gotten a good lawyer.
- furgooswft13 5y ago
  Remember when Google employees made a big stink about Project Dragonfly (censored search for China) and got it "cancelled"? Pepperidge Farm does. Now just wait a few days for a wild "whistleblower" to appear claiming Google coulda censored shit _even sooner_.
- GenerocUsername 5y ago
  "Manipulating crowds at scale is what we do" "I wouldn't even know how to manipulate just 1 person... unless I am manipulating thousands of people, its just not worth my time as a engineer at Google." "Its not evil if it encourages people to think correctly about issues"
  - rPlayer6554 5y ago
    I don't think Google could manipulate only one person. They can't count that low!
perihelions 5y ago
This is inverted moderation: they're penalizing anodyne, wonkish lawyers' podcasts, while leaving up most of the nonfactual, inflammatory ragebait. This is the exact opposite of how every platform professes to moderate. The rules-violating stuff must look very impressive for ad engagement metrics.
- narrator 5y ago
  The political power of youtube is way more valuable than any ad stream.
- thriftwy 5y ago
  I'm yet to see any moderation system that used content quality as a criteria.
- freejazz 5y ago
  Pretty sure it was just automatic and based upon the fact that they are using the same feed, but let's not let reason get in the way of finding our conclusions when they can just confirm how we want to feel.
  - loonster 5y ago
    They have been using the same feeds for two weeks. Automatic doesn't sound as likely.
    - freejazz 5y ago
      Because?
      - loonster 5y ago
        Temporal proximity. If it tripped today because it was automatic, why didn't it trip the other 10 days they used the same feeds?
        5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
judge2020 5y ago
This might be happening because the same feed is available on YouTube TV, so similar content might be hit by the Content ID system meant to stop people from restreaming TV on YouTube.
- SubiculumCode 5y ago
  Actually, this HN post was a honey trap to identify its conspiratorial user-base. lol
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- LegitShady 5y ago
  It's public video - there's no copyright to claim.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Not DMCA; Content ID has never been a legal force YT is forced to comply with, but rather they do it on their own will to appease rights holders to not sue them en mass. YT can remove any video under the guise of "copyright content detected" even if it's not something copyrightable.
    - LegitShady 5y ago
      again its a live cast of a criminal trial. There's no one who owns that content. There's no way to make it legitimate.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
  Does this trigger a "stream suspended for policy violations" or some more copyright-specific message? In the end this will boil down to speculation until/if YouTube makes a statement, but at least it can be informed speculation.
foxhop 5y ago
This is why we must reject big tech's monopoly on moderation. I wrote this essay here which you should read next: https://www.remarkbox.com/remarkbox-is-now-pay-what-you-can.html https://www.remarkbox.com/remarkbox-is-now-pay-what-you-can....
rayiner 5y ago
Wow. We slid down that slippery slope pretty quick.
kyleblarson 5y ago
It doesn't fit the narrative that they and the entire mainstream media are so desperate to perpetuate. Allowing the plebs to see unbiased content and judge for themselves terrifies them. Same thing with removing the downvote count. They can't stand to see ratio of down to up votes on content about the current US administration, COVID, etc.
- rat87 5y ago
  "unbiased content"
  - GenerocUsername 5y ago
    "Raw feeds of court proceedings"
  - merpnderp 5y ago
    I think they mean unbiased by the giant advertising agencies through which all major media's takes are filtered through. If you're watching CNN, MSNBC, Fox, etc, you're watching what their advertisers approve of. And usually that approval is "The hottest take that, causes the most angry tweets, that gets the most views, of our dish soap." But also sometimes corporate politics bleeds through. Like you the WaPo ignoring or soft-pedaling Amazon stories.
  - jfax 5y ago
    I'd like to think a court would be the definition of unbiased.
    - _yoqn 5y ago
      Judges, yes. Jurys? Not always. They can be directly or indirectly intimidated if the trial is high profile enough and if their identities are leaked. With Chauvin's trial, the jury was indirectly intimidated by the public demands for a guilty verdict from politicians like Maxine Waters and other public figures. In the Rittenhouse trial the judge caught someone in the courtroom surreptitiously filming the jury presumably to leak their identities. It's definitely possible to get a biased court.
thirteenfingers 5y ago
Between stuffing non-monetized videos with ads, the dislike button thing, and capricious censorship, I'm seriously looking into self-hosting[0] my video and streamed content. Disregarding the difficulty of maintaining a following outside of the big platforms, do any of you HNers have experience with hosting your own video and streaming sites? What software do you use? [0] I could also just switch platforms, but I have similar problems with all the big platforms. Vimeo is a potential paid option, but their streaming plans are a bit out of my budget.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- thebeefytaco 5y ago
  If you actually get significant traction on any videos, wouldn't the bandwidth costs be stupidly expensive if you're self hosting?
  - genewitch 5y ago
    It depends on how you host it. If you go in with a collective for a portion of a rack in a data center, generally the transit, while not "cheap" is unmetered and therefore the "per client" cost is nearly negligible. Obviously if your service becomes insanely popular you'll need to upgrade your circuit - depending on the provider and the data center, obviously. Most providers will gently coerce you into racking a higher bandwidth optics than you're planning to use, like recommending 10gbit gbics instead of 1 or 2.5 gbit. However the price per megabit goes down significantly after the first 100, so, assuming you're merely sharing the cost with other rack users, again, it's negligible.
- smaryjerry 5y ago
  Try rumble. It’s growing and pays users for ads run.
angry_octet 5y ago
[flagged]
- eertami 5y ago
  You're not wrong. I clicked through on one guy and he's posted all caps angry rants about this trial 2 to 3 times per minute for the last hour. It's getting harder to tell the difference unhinged lunatics and paid bots.
- swlp21 5y ago
  I'm not sure I understand - do you mean these suggestions are placed there by Twitter to deligitimize the original tweet [who, in that case, would have a valid complaint but is being maligned by association with the addition of "crank stuff"] ? Or are you saying the original tweet is from a crank and the placement by twitter of additional "crank stuff" is proof of the crank label? BTW when I view the tweet (also not logged in), I got no suggestions at all, so Twitter are presenting it in a different way to different visitors (i.e. you and me for sure). Perhaps you were part of an A-B test?
  - angry_octet 5y ago
    I don't know why it was showing this content. I don't believe there is any motivation like de-legitimisation, it's just their algo, possibly it thinks showing that content boosts engagement.
- mikevm 5y ago
  Ben Shapiro is under insanity crank stuff? I think the only crank here is you.
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    Same with Scott Adams...
    - monocasa 5y ago
etchalon 5y ago
The streams are back up. Yet, this thread quickly devolved into a discussion about the grand conspiracy to censor instead of the repeated failure of automated tools and the ease at which they're abused.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  The internet is becoming a more paranoid place by the day.
- trhway 5y ago
  >a discussion about the grand conspiracy to censor instead of the repeated failure of automated tools i wonder whether Google/etc have already done A/B testing on how frequently and how visibly they need to have "repeated failure of automated tools" for the populace to get used to that idea instead of censorship.
- baryphonic 5y ago
  I think this depends on how you consider a "conspiracy" to be organized. If a conspiracy is a bunch of humans making explicit decisions about each of these incidents, it's laughable. However, if the "conspiracy" is in fact a bunch of automated tools created by a bunch of humans who all have similar biases in the same ideological direction (biases which happen to be ascendant on elite college campuses and/or in the Bay Area), then this is a fairly reasonable belief. When an incident like this happens, the outcry is great enough that the humans, who are themselves still human and capable of compassion, can reinstate accounts and override the automated system. But how many "failures" such as this occur where the affected parties simply have no recourse because they don't have the privilege of 60k simultaneous streamers watching?
  - belltaco 5y ago
    >However, if the "conspiracy" is in fact a bunch of automated tools created by a bunch of humans who all have similar biases in the same ideological direction (biases which happen to be ascendant on elite college campuses and/or in the Bay Area), then this is a fairly reasonable belief. The conspiracy theorists just don't know about bad automated decisions made in the other direction because it's suppressed in their echo chamber.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bjt2n3904 5y ago
Once is an accident. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.
- president 5y ago
  It's not even just that. Earlier this year, the White House admitted it had a line to Facebook and presumably other social media companies so that it could tell it which stories to censor.
  - tadbit 5y ago
    Citation, please. First I'm hearing about this.
    - csee 5y ago
      Jen Psaki said in a press conference that the executive branch is working with Facebook to take down posts containing "COVID misinformation".
      - redundantly 5y ago
        Quite the leap being taken there.
- estaseuropano 5y ago
  Thats not fact, just drivel. If it were true YouTube would long be an enemy of pretty much everyone.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    >YouTube would long be an enemy of pretty much everyone. They're barreling down that path as we speak.. You'll have to forgive the general public for being a little slow to get with the program. There was kind of a pandemic going on.
  - h2odragon 5y ago
shuntress 5y ago
Is it possible for us to put aside the edgelord screeching over censorship and instead talk rationally about content distribution regulations, required public APIs, and using the Post Office for things like email/videos/blogs/PGP keys/etc?
- js-fella 5y ago
  This sounds interesting. Can you please elaborate?
  - shuntress 5y ago
    I think "Why is it noteworthy that YouTube took down some content?" is a much more interesting start to discussion. (as opposed to "I am mad that something was taken down by YouTube") To elaborate, It is noteworthy because YouTube is essentially the de-facto monopoly video host on the Internet. From there, we have basically two main paths of discussion: 1) We should do nothing 2) We should force change on that monopoly to either: 2a) break it up 2b) control its actions 2c) nurture competition I think that 2c is the topic with most interesting discussion because the core issue is deeply connected with the general difficulty involved in existing online outside of "walled gardens". What does "nurturing" a potential competitor to YouTube actually involve? It could potentially be oblique changes that result in easier self-hosting or easier inter-system integration for basic communication like contacts/messages/email.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
sergiotapia 5y ago
Can't have people talking freely
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
baryphonic 5y ago
Never forget that Susan Wojcicki won a free speech award sponsored by YouTube. [0] Never forget it. [0] https://www.newsweek.com/youtube-ceo-susan-wojcicki-gets-freedom-expression-award-sponsored-youtube-1585147 https://www.newsweek.com/youtube-ceo-susan-wojcicki-gets-fre...
- forgotmyoldacc 5y ago
  Genuinely, who cares about the award? I don't think anyone will assume that YouTube abides by free speech just because their CEO won an award no one's ever heard about.
  - denkmoon 5y ago
    I think GP is pointing it out because of how patently ridiculous it is, not as an example of how they abide free speech. That situation is the obama-gives-obama-a-medal meme.
- rurp 5y ago
  That award immediately comes to my mind every time I read a story like this, which I find hilarious. I'd bet the same is true for a number of others as well, given how high profile and ridiculous that free speech award was.
- lovelyviking 5y ago
  It even worse. Ukraine is under Russian attack for more then 7 years. Yet all disputes are directed to 'Moscow office' because Susan Wojcicki thinks it is absolutely logical to have such structure. As result any attempts to stand against Russia sponsored propaganda and lies are prosecuted by Youtube. There are brave Ukrainian man and women who with their own time and resources are trying to stand against huge Russian propaganda machine. The task itself is almost impossible and in addition to that Youtube acts against them. Recently Youtube have managed to close Ukrainian channel with 125k subscribers. No warnings, no nothing. The channel was criticizing Russia sponsored propaganda and lies. I wish someone who can speak with this Susan Wojcicki would deliver her warmest "hi" from Ukraine and a big thanks for supporting Russian war against Ukraine. Not only democratic Ukraine faces aggression from Russia it also faces injustices on Youtube. This is absolutely unacceptable situation. Recovered channel with video describing situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY_02243_Ck&t=354s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY_02243_Ck&t=354s
28uwedj 5y ago
Nothing is stopping them from just making a live commentary of them with no video, you just load it in the background.
paganel 5y ago
On that note, google-ing "WarRoom podcast" doesnt' return as the first result a link to the website itself [1], the first page is occupied by other podcast websites that "re-publish" (is that the correct word?) said podcast. Yandex does the correct thing, the website actually behind Bannon's podcast is the first in the SERPs, DDG has it as the 3rd result, still ok, because visible. So it looks like the people at Alphabet/Google are well into suppressing political discourse, in which case I think a break-up of the company once this administration is voted out is totally in the cards. [1] https://listen.warroom.org/?__cf_chl_rt_tk=gIeuKWPwW6dBmcIkh6.W_WkRhOun45t4XL.pZKdfe6c-1637015134-0-gaNycGzNCpE https://listen.warroom.org/?__cf_chl_rt_tk=gIeuKWPwW6dBmcIkh...
- endisneigh 5y ago
  If this is a surprise to you, then you fundamentally misunderstand how Google works.
- andai 5y ago
  I've noticed Google hiding websites from the search results, if you look up the name of a site they won't like, you won't find the site, only results about the site.
im3w1l 5y ago
Hopefully this is a big enough misstep that something comes off it. Can't say I'm holding my breath though.
endisneigh 5y ago
It's hilarious how some people are always saying everything is some conspiracy. You work at any of these companies (YouTube, Twitter, Meta, Snap) and the amount of internal outages is so frequent your eyes glaze over. Not to say that the outages necessarily affect users, but so much so that I just assume all of this stuff is just the result of automation gone wrong. The bar for conspiracy I think needs to be pretty high. Perfect example of this is "X." X is some highly mainstream, controversial thing happening right now. "X" has a lot of videos. YouTube starts removing videos of "X". People start to say YouTube is censoring. Maybe they are. However it's more likely that the increased traffic to "X" and the fact that it's controversial results in more people (in aggregate) using built in tools such as commenting, flagging , etc. to highlight the video. Some criterion might be met and high activity videos that are "controversial" might be removed or throttled. From the outside it looks like a conspiracy. I'd love for someone to post conclusive evidence of YouTube engaged in some conspiracy around these livestreams.
- Minor49er 5y ago
  The closed nature of these companies feeds into this sort of thing, though. A frequent complaint of channel owners is that they aren't told why they've received strikes against their channels. Google also makes it incredibly difficult to submit feedback about their platforms. And any time something questionable or unfavorable arises, they just claim that it's the mysterious will of their overly-complicated algorithms that simply cannot be explained, despite being deliberately engineered by their teams of developers. On top of that, there have been clear examples of censorship. For example, when Google specifically targeted Christian websites in a blacklist on Google Now [1], or when they were noted for scrubbing autocomplete results that were critical of Hillary Clinton around the 2016 election [2] when it was also revealed that then-Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt had been a major supporter of Clinton for years [3]. These things seldom get questioned, and even then rarely get answers. It's hardly surprising to see why many people don't trust these companies and jump to conspiracy theories when these things happen. [1] https://www.christiantoday.com/article/google-is-blacklisting-christian-and-conservative-websites-whistleblower-reveals/133053.htm https://www.christiantoday.com/article/google-is-blacklistin... [2] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3636048/Google-accused-fixing-autocomplete-results-favorable-Hillary-Clinton.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3636048/Google-accu... [3] https://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-emails-google-eric-schmidt-relationship-with-clintons-2016-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-emails-google-eric...
diebeforei485 5y ago
I haven't understood why this is a thing. Court proceedings are (at least in theory) open to the public, I thought.
scruffyherder 5y ago
There is no YOU in youtube. I hope these people are rounded up for the camps.
xtat 5y ago
Super sad - I love these streams
formerchamp 5y ago
I didn't even realize the 3 people shot were white. And one of them was a serial pedophile.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
I have said it at the very beginning of this case. As much as I hate cameras everywhere, this is the one time, I am so glad everyone can see exactly what happened. There is no 'he said, she said'. We can all see what happened from multiple angles ( including FBI drone ). If that is the case, it goes down to the 'narrative'. Was the Kyle a poor kid trying to get away from vicious mob and killing in self-defense, a blood-thirsty vigilante with ties white supremacist movement, or something in between? A lot of people have already decided. At this point, I am just waiting to see if the jury upholds the right to self-defense. If they don't, riots next year are bound to be much worse.
- YeBanKo 5y ago
  Could you please link the videos you are talking about? Every time I try to find them, I end up with videos overlayed with a bunch of commentaries and opinions, low resolution/quality or without clear marks of who is where and timeline of the events. I genuinely am wondering if I missing anything.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
    So when it first happened NYT had all the videos listed here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/us/kyle-rittenhouse-kenosha-shooting-video.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/us/kyle-rittenhouse-kenos... I tried accessing them now, but paywall hit me hard.
  - smaryjerry 5y ago
    This is a real issue on YouTube and every single website that censored any mention or video about Kyle Rittenhouse. There was probably 20 angles I saw the first day after this happened that I couldn’t find again because every website took the videos down. If a person and not a corporation had done that in a topic they could be facing obstruction of justice charges.

YouTube also just deleted the accounts of the German independent investigatory committee www.corona-ausschuss.de who are an important information source for many German citizen.

martneumann 5y ago
You are being very generous by calling them an "investigatory committee". They routinely compare the anti Covid measures by the German government to the Holocaust [1]. On the same site, you can also see that they touted the weird conspiracy theory of becoming magnetic after being vaccinated. They violated Youtube's ToS with their conspiracy theories and got kicked out, it seems. [1] https://www.psiram.com/de/index.php/Stiftung_Corona-Ausschuss https://www.psiram.com/de/index.php/Stiftung_Corona-Ausschus...
- trhway 5y ago
  >They violated Youtube's ToS with their conspiracy theories and got kicked out, it seems. great sign of progress. Just mere 400 years ago they would have been tortured and burned at stake as heretics. Though who knows, the way things been moving lately ...
  - rat87 5y ago
    Yes I see it as progress that YouTube kicks off antivax conspiracies. It would be nice if Facebook did the same
    - trhway 5y ago
      From USSR times I'm very sceptical about supposed truths which can't stand on their merits alone and require active administrative suppression of the doubt to maintain the perception of truthiness.
      - Karsteski 5y ago
        Out of curiosity, why did people downvote this comment? I find that it states a very valid concern in our digital age where information can be very effectively suppressed from the majority of people, regardless if I agree or disagree with the message of said information.
    - ravenstine 5y ago
      Yeah, because surely governments and medical institutions have never lied to, hurt, or killed anyone. They say they want to help us and no one should be allowed to say otherwise. And I'm sure YouTube's only motivation is to protect us.
- 1cvmask 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - martneumann 5y ago
    None of these things relate to what the "Corona-Ausschuss" has been doing in any way. Just because the government does shady things, doesn't mean the quack theories by some people on the internet are suddenly correct. Especially when they do not believe Covid exists, or if it does that it's a bioweapon, which is apparently harmless for some reason, but masks don't work and vaccines don't work, either... They also receive lots of support and attention from Russians state media. It is to be assumed that the Russian state has an interest in fanning the flames here and to sow doubt in the German government. Isn't it ironic that the Russian media in Germany pushes any negative vaccine story they can find to foster hesitancy, but urges its own population to get vaccinated ASAP in domestic media? I will leave it at that.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    Are you sure you meant to toss the Maine in there? Because history strongly suggests that was a maintenance failure / expected consequence of the volatile coal used at the time. If anything, the story of the Maine proves the rule; it reminds us that sometimes conspiracies aren't.
    - 1cvmask 5y ago
      Yes. They spread a whole bunch of conspiracies to justify the war. Those conspiracies were later proven to be bogus. The USS Maine was not blown up by the Spanish as the US media asserted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish-American_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish-Amer...
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    >> the weird conspiracy theory of becoming magnetic after being vaccinated. > Everything is a conspiracy theory till proven otherwise. Please tell me this comment is ironic.
- HideousKojima 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - soco 5y ago
    As your examples correctly point out, the sites documenting government abuses were not censored. Only the tinfoil wackos were taken down, so I believe in this particular case it works as expected. (later clarification: anyway I definitely don't like the way YouTube goes and I'd post my stuff also on other sites)
    - thriftwy 5y ago
      These abuses are also historical. They ought to have a different censorship dynamic from current events.
  - nawgz 5y ago
    What does this piece of misdirection have to do with the fact that this channel promoted - falsely - anti-vaccine myths and in doing so made TOS-violating statements? It is clear that government and corporation are both largely morally devoid institutions in the modern age, but this doesn't even rely on any traditional sense of trust. The data is published and we can see what it does and doesn't do, and if you want to discard that you mightaswell just take the kid gloves off and type something really offensive next
    - HideousKojima 5y ago
      >The data is published and we can see what it does and doesn't do See my last link
      - nawgz 5y ago
        Yes, a link suggesting 1k of 44k participants in the Pfizer Phase III trials were not well monitored and had other logistical issues does not surprise me. It does not concern me either; have you seen the reduced IFR post vaccination? It is not like 2% of 1/3 vaccines phase III participants is even a notable amount of the data. Like I said, if this type of thing is enough for you to go forward and claim that the whole thing is a lie, I think you’re creeping into some very dumb territory.
rat87 5y ago
> German independent investigatory committee Sounds like an official body or a body set up by prominent scientists > www.corona-ausschuss.de Seems to be a bunch of crazy conspiracy theorists. I didn't 3ven have to look far for a description. So good I'm glad YouTube is moderating their platform https://m-tagesspiegel-de.translate.goog/luegen-und-hetze-im-berliner-corona-ausschuss-im-impfstoff-sind-so-etwas-wie-lebendige-kraken/27670234.html?utm_referrer=https://www.google.com/&_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=nui https://m-tagesspiegel-de.translate.goog/luegen-und-hetze-im...

AussieWog93 5y ago

Title is a little bit misleading. They've only taken down some streams from a single high-profile trial.

gerash 5y ago

I'd suggest those who haven't watched at least the closing arguments from both sides (4 hrs of video in total) to watch it first. There's no point in sounding like legal experts or arguing over semantics for the sake of defending the position you have already taken before spending the time watching the full version of both sides arguments. https://youtube.com/c/fox6milwaukee https://youtube.com/c/fox6milwaukee

crocodiletears 5y ago

Note: the streams in the screenshot have since been restored.

shadowgovt 5y ago
It's entirely possible they were taken down in the first place because so many parallel streams of coverage on the same data tripped either a spam detector or an honest-to-God bug in the YouTube backend ("Hm... lots of parallel channels running the exact same bytes. I bet we can consolidate this if we just tee the stream sinks against a source that oops that's a hotspot...").
- GenerocUsername 5y ago
  doubt. Over the last 6 years there have been toooooo many coincidences which go in 1 direction politically instead of equally in both directions. You only need to flip a coin 5-6 times before you suspect it might be rigged... and after 100's of tosses there is no longer any question.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    I'm not sure what the directions are as relates to dropping signal on the Rittenhouse trial.
  - r00fus 5y ago
    You are comparing YouTube policing their platform to a a coin flip? YT isn't a public service.
    - Natsu 5y ago
      They're gesturing at the argument that was famously made in the 2016 movie Denial. In that, a Holocaust denier has filed a defamation lawsuit against a Jewish professor. Under UK law, she bears the burden of proof. When they later confront the denier, they point out that he makes many historical mistakes and every single one of them favors the Nazis and/or Hitler. They then compare this to a rigged coin. If he were being honest and doing history wrong, then some of his mistakes should've gone either way, but the fact that his mistakes are substantially in one direction shows evidence of bias. Denial is a great film, I recommend it.

_-david-_ 5y ago

Is it just me or does it seem like these "accidents" impact smaller and perhaps less politically authoritative channels than the big channels? I am not just talking about this incident but others as well.

oopsyDoodl 5y ago
They own all IP, why would they be subject to automated scans?
- fault1 5y ago
  There is many good reasons to "scan" _all_ content. How about spam, illegal content, or anything that violates their TOU? These days if you do not have a litany of algorithms performing these tasks, the worst case is that you'll end up like Facebook where genocide occured (in Myanmar) because the content was not in unicode and the detection systems couldn't "read" it. Like any other site, accounts with less "trust" are probably going to be flagged by automatic mechanisms. I've been on a few teams with various companies that have done things like fraud detection and it almost always works this way. sometimes there is of course, legitimate false positives.
  - oopsyDoodl 5y ago
    That’s a good point. scanAll() and applyAutomatedTakedownAI() would not be applied equally because of course big corp never pirates
shadowgovt 5y ago
I have no direct knowledge of YouTube's configuration, but my more general knowledge of how Alphabet does business suggests that high-business-value customers have company-internal guardians (in sales, advertising, or biz-dev) who are actually tasked with making sure nothing breaks on their services. I assume they do the same for high-biz-value channels, so I'd expect fewer accidents on bigger channels with more opportunity to make a mess for YT than smaller ones.
rossdavidh 5y ago

politician 5y ago

Dry run for when the verdict is announced.

politician 5y ago
I wanted to come back to this prediction and note that the stream was not interrupted during or after the verdict.
dkdk8283 5y ago
Sad but I think your conjecture is spot on. Platforms such as YT abuse their power regularly without batting an eye.
laurent92 5y ago
I couldn’t imagine witnessing this in my life, not for something so obvious and in plain sight. But is it better than 30 years ago or worse? When I hear the suicides committed upon whistleblowers in France 30 years ago, or the Ustica crash, or the Greenpeace boat bombed in NZ, are we committing more today?
rossdavidh 5y ago
Likely true, especially given that the streams in question have apparently been restored. And, given the potential for lives lost and property damage, perhaps justified.
- bequanna 5y ago
  Are you saying we should suppress the truth because we’re worried the woke mob won’t like it? One solution: Open, transparent justice and cities enforce laws for rioters instead of letting them throw city burning temper tantrums.
  - phone8675309 5y ago
    > Are you saying we should suppress the truth because we’re worried the woke mob won’t like it? Yes, because right-wingers have never committed violence when they got the outcome they didn't like./s

butmuh 5y ago

just in time for the removal of dislikes too..

BitwiseFool 5y ago

I really want to stress that while the internet has enabled just about everyone to act as a citizen journalist, it is not the ubiquity of information that matters, but rather, the access to information. YouTube and Google wield great power when it comes to gatekeeping information. The sinister part is that plenty of people, left and right, will defend Google's ability to do this merely because they are "a private company".

fault1 5y ago
Isn't this just a market opportunity for other companies? Google isn't the only company that owns the field of information retrieval. They just came the right place/right time after the .com crash.
- eftychis 5y ago
  Are you going to vote with your money and pay for such a company to exist is the right question I would say.
- sm4rk0 5y ago
  It is in a perfect market, but Google holds the monopoly and the game is set against competition.
  - fault1 5y ago
    A monopoly for information retrieval? Surely not. For online ads? Sure you can make that case. Their business in the end is based on delivering relevant content. If there is a market for the traffic Google refuses to host, then there are probably market opportunities there.
    - sm4rk0 5y ago
      For video-sharing platforms. 1. When you buy an Android phone there's a good chance that YouTube app is preinstalled. 2. If you search the net for "how to do XYZ" or for any song you'll get 99% video results from YouTube. 3. Almost every company/celebrity/influencer/... has a YouTube account and until recently (TikTok, Odysee, BitChute,...) alternative platforms (Vimeo, Dailymotion,...) were mostly a niche market.

thepasswordis 5y ago

I think at this point we can just expect this stuff. The ridiculousness of it, though. The rekieta law stream (which is fantastic, btw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7YXd2M5E-8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7YXd2M5E-8) has anywhere from 4-12 active lawyers giving commentary and context to everything that is happening. This is exactly the type of thing we dreamed about when we were first creating the internet. However: often times these smaller independent journalists and commenters go against the reality that media companies want you to believe you live in. Thus: they get censored. Rekieta lost almost 40,000 people who were getting live commentary from a diverse (idealogically) set of lawyers, and now must to places where these companies can assert more narrative control. It's sad.

encryptluks2 5y ago
Fantastic in that they frequently promote JackPosobiec? Even on their Twitter you can see that they retweeting #PizzaGate supporters. I can't tell you how many times they mocked one of the prosecutors for their weight. I actually do think this is a clear case of self-defense, but if you have to make fun of someone for their weight then you prob don't have a very good point.
NoPie 5y ago
It is strange to see all submissions about Kyle Rittenhouse here disappear very quickly. I just thought that if more or less randomly selected 12 jury members agreed that he was innocent then what most people really think and what the media portraits it to be are very different things.
caeril 5y ago
> these smaller independent journalists and commenters go against the reality that media companies want you to believe you live in. For an example from this specific case, compare the actual unedited testimony of Gaige Grosskreutz, who admitted on the stand that Rittenhouse did not fire until Gaige's Glock 17 was pointed directly at Kyle's head, to the coverage of his testimony by CNN, et. al. The mainstream media lies, constantly and blatantly, not by minor omissions or bad research, but by gross, egregious violations of truth that can only be explained by extreme malice and contempt for their viewers.

1cvmask 5y ago

YouTube is the great digital video censorship platform. My all time favorite was when they censored an academic conference on censorship. The HN discussion on it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26008217 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26008217

inChargeOfIT 5y ago
How about censoring Dislikes? This is in progress now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxOuG8jMIgI&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxOuG8jMIgI&t=1s
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
  I really hope this comes back to bite them. I already find myself not watching as many videos simply because I can't gauge the like/dislike ratio on them. In the short term I expect an explosion in clickbait and low quality videos because people won't be able to immediately see that the video is bogus from dislike counts. I suspect people will tend to retreat into watching the channels they already like and cut down on consuming recommendations. I'm already trying to gauge likes vs watch count as a sloppy proxy for video quality but it's just not the same.
  - gknoy 5y ago
    I find what you said really interesting, mainly because I don't think I've _ever_ used likes or dislikes (or their ratio) as a metric for choosing what to watch. The most I've interacted with dislikes is when seeing some helpful low-production-value video, or some artist's music stream, I've wondered why 1-3% of the viewers disliked it. I mean, even when I've found _better_ or _more informative_ videos, I've never been tempted to dislike the previous ones I'd watched that weren't as good.
    - oriki 5y ago
      This. I find that the vast majority of cases where I'd pay any attention to the dislike bar are just cases where people are getting dogpiled for whatever reason (whether they deserve it or not, or if anyone deserves to be treated like that on the internet, is another matter entirely) but I've heard reasonable arguments from people talking about tutorials and other informative videos that the like:dislike ratio is a convenient sniff test for if the video is worth watching.

skinkestek 5y ago

It is pretty amazing isn't it? Fun to work at Google these days? Get to manipulate the crowds big time? Edit: at least you have now gotten me to watch it. Seriously interesting. Good thing the kid has gotten a good lawyer.

furgooswft13 5y ago
Remember when Google employees made a big stink about Project Dragonfly (censored search for China) and got it "cancelled"? Pepperidge Farm does. Now just wait a few days for a wild "whistleblower" to appear claiming Google coulda censored shit _even sooner_.
GenerocUsername 5y ago
"Manipulating crowds at scale is what we do" "I wouldn't even know how to manipulate just 1 person... unless I am manipulating thousands of people, its just not worth my time as a engineer at Google." "Its not evil if it encourages people to think correctly about issues"
- rPlayer6554 5y ago
  I don't think Google could manipulate only one person. They can't count that low!

perihelions 5y ago

This is inverted moderation: they're penalizing anodyne, wonkish lawyers' podcasts, while leaving up most of the nonfactual, inflammatory ragebait. This is the exact opposite of how every platform professes to moderate. The rules-violating stuff must look very impressive for ad engagement metrics.

narrator 5y ago
The political power of youtube is way more valuable than any ad stream.
thriftwy 5y ago
I'm yet to see any moderation system that used content quality as a criteria.
freejazz 5y ago
Pretty sure it was just automatic and based upon the fact that they are using the same feed, but let's not let reason get in the way of finding our conclusions when they can just confirm how we want to feel.
- loonster 5y ago
  They have been using the same feeds for two weeks. Automatic doesn't sound as likely.
  - freejazz 5y ago
    Because?
    - loonster 5y ago
      Temporal proximity. If it tripped today because it was automatic, why didn't it trip the other 10 days they used the same feeds?
      - 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

judge2020 5y ago

This might be happening because the same feed is available on YouTube TV, so similar content might be hit by the Content ID system meant to stop people from restreaming TV on YouTube.

SubiculumCode 5y ago
Actually, this HN post was a honey trap to identify its conspiratorial user-base. lol
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
LegitShady 5y ago
It's public video - there's no copyright to claim.
- judge2020 5y ago
  Not DMCA; Content ID has never been a legal force YT is forced to comply with, but rather they do it on their own will to appease rights holders to not sue them en mass. YT can remove any video under the guise of "copyright content detected" even if it's not something copyrightable.
  - LegitShady 5y ago
    again its a live cast of a criminal trial. There's no one who owns that content. There's no way to make it legitimate.
tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
Does this trigger a "stream suspended for policy violations" or some more copyright-specific message? In the end this will boil down to speculation until/if YouTube makes a statement, but at least it can be informed speculation.

foxhop 5y ago

This is why we must reject big tech's monopoly on moderation. I wrote this essay here which you should read next: https://www.remarkbox.com/remarkbox-is-now-pay-what-you-can.html https://www.remarkbox.com/remarkbox-is-now-pay-what-you-can....

rayiner 5y ago

Wow. We slid down that slippery slope pretty quick.

kyleblarson 5y ago

It doesn't fit the narrative that they and the entire mainstream media are so desperate to perpetuate. Allowing the plebs to see unbiased content and judge for themselves terrifies them. Same thing with removing the downvote count. They can't stand to see ratio of down to up votes on content about the current US administration, COVID, etc.

rat87 5y ago
"unbiased content"
- GenerocUsername 5y ago
  "Raw feeds of court proceedings"
- merpnderp 5y ago
  I think they mean unbiased by the giant advertising agencies through which all major media's takes are filtered through. If you're watching CNN, MSNBC, Fox, etc, you're watching what their advertisers approve of. And usually that approval is "The hottest take that, causes the most angry tweets, that gets the most views, of our dish soap." But also sometimes corporate politics bleeds through. Like you the WaPo ignoring or soft-pedaling Amazon stories.
- jfax 5y ago
  I'd like to think a court would be the definition of unbiased.
  - _yoqn 5y ago
    Judges, yes. Jurys? Not always. They can be directly or indirectly intimidated if the trial is high profile enough and if their identities are leaked. With Chauvin's trial, the jury was indirectly intimidated by the public demands for a guilty verdict from politicians like Maxine Waters and other public figures. In the Rittenhouse trial the judge caught someone in the courtroom surreptitiously filming the jury presumably to leak their identities. It's definitely possible to get a biased court.

thirteenfingers 5y ago

Between stuffing non-monetized videos with ads, the dislike button thing, and capricious censorship, I'm seriously looking into self-hosting[0] my video and streamed content. Disregarding the difficulty of maintaining a following outside of the big platforms, do any of you HNers have experience with hosting your own video and streaming sites? What software do you use? [0] I could also just switch platforms, but I have similar problems with all the big platforms. Vimeo is a potential paid option, but their streaming plans are a bit out of my budget.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
thebeefytaco 5y ago
If you actually get significant traction on any videos, wouldn't the bandwidth costs be stupidly expensive if you're self hosting?
- genewitch 5y ago
  It depends on how you host it. If you go in with a collective for a portion of a rack in a data center, generally the transit, while not "cheap" is unmetered and therefore the "per client" cost is nearly negligible. Obviously if your service becomes insanely popular you'll need to upgrade your circuit - depending on the provider and the data center, obviously. Most providers will gently coerce you into racking a higher bandwidth optics than you're planning to use, like recommending 10gbit gbics instead of 1 or 2.5 gbit. However the price per megabit goes down significantly after the first 100, so, assuming you're merely sharing the cost with other rack users, again, it's negligible.
smaryjerry 5y ago
Try rumble. It’s growing and pays users for ads run.

angry_octet 5y ago

[flagged]

eertami 5y ago
You're not wrong. I clicked through on one guy and he's posted all caps angry rants about this trial 2 to 3 times per minute for the last hour. It's getting harder to tell the difference unhinged lunatics and paid bots.
swlp21 5y ago
I'm not sure I understand - do you mean these suggestions are placed there by Twitter to deligitimize the original tweet [who, in that case, would have a valid complaint but is being maligned by association with the addition of "crank stuff"] ? Or are you saying the original tweet is from a crank and the placement by twitter of additional "crank stuff" is proof of the crank label? BTW when I view the tweet (also not logged in), I got no suggestions at all, so Twitter are presenting it in a different way to different visitors (i.e. you and me for sure). Perhaps you were part of an A-B test?
- angry_octet 5y ago
  I don't know why it was showing this content. I don't believe there is any motivation like de-legitimisation, it's just their algo, possibly it thinks showing that content boosts engagement.
mikevm 5y ago
Ben Shapiro is under insanity crank stuff? I think the only crank here is you.
- skinkestek 5y ago
  Same with Scott Adams...
  - monocasa 5y ago

etchalon 5y ago

The streams are back up. Yet, this thread quickly devolved into a discussion about the grand conspiracy to censor instead of the repeated failure of automated tools and the ease at which they're abused.

ashtonkem 5y ago
The internet is becoming a more paranoid place by the day.
trhway 5y ago
>a discussion about the grand conspiracy to censor instead of the repeated failure of automated tools i wonder whether Google/etc have already done A/B testing on how frequently and how visibly they need to have "repeated failure of automated tools" for the populace to get used to that idea instead of censorship.
baryphonic 5y ago
I think this depends on how you consider a "conspiracy" to be organized. If a conspiracy is a bunch of humans making explicit decisions about each of these incidents, it's laughable. However, if the "conspiracy" is in fact a bunch of automated tools created by a bunch of humans who all have similar biases in the same ideological direction (biases which happen to be ascendant on elite college campuses and/or in the Bay Area), then this is a fairly reasonable belief. When an incident like this happens, the outcry is great enough that the humans, who are themselves still human and capable of compassion, can reinstate accounts and override the automated system. But how many "failures" such as this occur where the affected parties simply have no recourse because they don't have the privilege of 60k simultaneous streamers watching?
- belltaco 5y ago
  >However, if the "conspiracy" is in fact a bunch of automated tools created by a bunch of humans who all have similar biases in the same ideological direction (biases which happen to be ascendant on elite college campuses and/or in the Bay Area), then this is a fairly reasonable belief. The conspiracy theorists just don't know about bad automated decisions made in the other direction because it's suppressed in their echo chamber.

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bjt2n3904 5y ago

Once is an accident. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.

president 5y ago
It's not even just that. Earlier this year, the White House admitted it had a line to Facebook and presumably other social media companies so that it could tell it which stories to censor.
- tadbit 5y ago
  Citation, please. First I'm hearing about this.
  - csee 5y ago
    Jen Psaki said in a press conference that the executive branch is working with Facebook to take down posts containing "COVID misinformation".
    - redundantly 5y ago
      Quite the leap being taken there.
estaseuropano 5y ago
Thats not fact, just drivel. If it were true YouTube would long be an enemy of pretty much everyone.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  >YouTube would long be an enemy of pretty much everyone. They're barreling down that path as we speak.. You'll have to forgive the general public for being a little slow to get with the program. There was kind of a pandemic going on.
- h2odragon 5y ago

shuntress 5y ago

Is it possible for us to put aside the edgelord screeching over censorship and instead talk rationally about content distribution regulations, required public APIs, and using the Post Office for things like email/videos/blogs/PGP keys/etc?

js-fella 5y ago
This sounds interesting. Can you please elaborate?
- shuntress 5y ago
  I think "Why is it noteworthy that YouTube took down some content?" is a much more interesting start to discussion. (as opposed to "I am mad that something was taken down by YouTube") To elaborate, It is noteworthy because YouTube is essentially the de-facto monopoly video host on the Internet. From there, we have basically two main paths of discussion: 1) We should do nothing 2) We should force change on that monopoly to either: 2a) break it up 2b) control its actions 2c) nurture competition I think that 2c is the topic with most interesting discussion because the core issue is deeply connected with the general difficulty involved in existing online outside of "walled gardens". What does "nurturing" a potential competitor to YouTube actually involve? It could potentially be oblique changes that result in easier self-hosting or easier inter-system integration for basic communication like contacts/messages/email.
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sergiotapia 5y ago

Can't have people talking freely

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baryphonic 5y ago

Never forget that Susan Wojcicki won a free speech award sponsored by YouTube. [0] Never forget it. [0] https://www.newsweek.com/youtube-ceo-susan-wojcicki-gets-freedom-expression-award-sponsored-youtube-1585147 https://www.newsweek.com/youtube-ceo-susan-wojcicki-gets-fre...

forgotmyoldacc 5y ago
Genuinely, who cares about the award? I don't think anyone will assume that YouTube abides by free speech just because their CEO won an award no one's ever heard about.
- denkmoon 5y ago
  I think GP is pointing it out because of how patently ridiculous it is, not as an example of how they abide free speech. That situation is the obama-gives-obama-a-medal meme.
rurp 5y ago
That award immediately comes to my mind every time I read a story like this, which I find hilarious. I'd bet the same is true for a number of others as well, given how high profile and ridiculous that free speech award was.
lovelyviking 5y ago
It even worse. Ukraine is under Russian attack for more then 7 years. Yet all disputes are directed to 'Moscow office' because Susan Wojcicki thinks it is absolutely logical to have such structure. As result any attempts to stand against Russia sponsored propaganda and lies are prosecuted by Youtube. There are brave Ukrainian man and women who with their own time and resources are trying to stand against huge Russian propaganda machine. The task itself is almost impossible and in addition to that Youtube acts against them. Recently Youtube have managed to close Ukrainian channel with 125k subscribers. No warnings, no nothing. The channel was criticizing Russia sponsored propaganda and lies. I wish someone who can speak with this Susan Wojcicki would deliver her warmest "hi" from Ukraine and a big thanks for supporting Russian war against Ukraine. Not only democratic Ukraine faces aggression from Russia it also faces injustices on Youtube. This is absolutely unacceptable situation. Recovered channel with video describing situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY_02243_Ck&t=354s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY_02243_Ck&t=354s

28uwedj 5y ago

Nothing is stopping them from just making a live commentary of them with no video, you just load it in the background.

paganel 5y ago

On that note, google-ing "WarRoom podcast" doesnt' return as the first result a link to the website itself [1], the first page is occupied by other podcast websites that "re-publish" (is that the correct word?) said podcast. Yandex does the correct thing, the website actually behind Bannon's podcast is the first in the SERPs, DDG has it as the 3rd result, still ok, because visible. So it looks like the people at Alphabet/Google are well into suppressing political discourse, in which case I think a break-up of the company once this administration is voted out is totally in the cards. [1] https://listen.warroom.org/?__cf_chl_rt_tk=gIeuKWPwW6dBmcIkh6.W_WkRhOun45t4XL.pZKdfe6c-1637015134-0-gaNycGzNCpE https://listen.warroom.org/?__cf_chl_rt_tk=gIeuKWPwW6dBmcIkh...

endisneigh 5y ago
If this is a surprise to you, then you fundamentally misunderstand how Google works.
andai 5y ago
I've noticed Google hiding websites from the search results, if you look up the name of a site they won't like, you won't find the site, only results about the site.

im3w1l 5y ago

Hopefully this is a big enough misstep that something comes off it. Can't say I'm holding my breath though.

endisneigh 5y ago

It's hilarious how some people are always saying everything is some conspiracy. You work at any of these companies (YouTube, Twitter, Meta, Snap) and the amount of internal outages is so frequent your eyes glaze over. Not to say that the outages necessarily affect users, but so much so that I just assume all of this stuff is just the result of automation gone wrong. The bar for conspiracy I think needs to be pretty high. Perfect example of this is "X." X is some highly mainstream, controversial thing happening right now. "X" has a lot of videos. YouTube starts removing videos of "X". People start to say YouTube is censoring. Maybe they are. However it's more likely that the increased traffic to "X" and the fact that it's controversial results in more people (in aggregate) using built in tools such as commenting, flagging , etc. to highlight the video. Some criterion might be met and high activity videos that are "controversial" might be removed or throttled. From the outside it looks like a conspiracy. I'd love for someone to post conclusive evidence of YouTube engaged in some conspiracy around these livestreams.

Minor49er 5y ago
The closed nature of these companies feeds into this sort of thing, though. A frequent complaint of channel owners is that they aren't told why they've received strikes against their channels. Google also makes it incredibly difficult to submit feedback about their platforms. And any time something questionable or unfavorable arises, they just claim that it's the mysterious will of their overly-complicated algorithms that simply cannot be explained, despite being deliberately engineered by their teams of developers. On top of that, there have been clear examples of censorship. For example, when Google specifically targeted Christian websites in a blacklist on Google Now [1], or when they were noted for scrubbing autocomplete results that were critical of Hillary Clinton around the 2016 election [2] when it was also revealed that then-Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt had been a major supporter of Clinton for years [3]. These things seldom get questioned, and even then rarely get answers. It's hardly surprising to see why many people don't trust these companies and jump to conspiracy theories when these things happen. [1] https://www.christiantoday.com/article/google-is-blacklisting-christian-and-conservative-websites-whistleblower-reveals/133053.htm https://www.christiantoday.com/article/google-is-blacklistin... [2] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3636048/Google-accused-fixing-autocomplete-results-favorable-Hillary-Clinton.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3636048/Google-accu... [3] https://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-emails-google-eric-schmidt-relationship-with-clintons-2016-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-emails-google-eric...

diebeforei485 5y ago

I haven't understood why this is a thing. Court proceedings are (at least in theory) open to the public, I thought.

scruffyherder 5y ago

There is no YOU in youtube. I hope these people are rounded up for the camps.

xtat 5y ago

Super sad - I love these streams

formerchamp 5y ago

I didn't even realize the 3 people shot were white. And one of them was a serial pedophile.

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A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago

I have said it at the very beginning of this case. As much as I hate cameras everywhere, this is the one time, I am so glad everyone can see exactly what happened. There is no 'he said, she said'. We can all see what happened from multiple angles ( including FBI drone ). If that is the case, it goes down to the 'narrative'. Was the Kyle a poor kid trying to get away from vicious mob and killing in self-defense, a blood-thirsty vigilante with ties white supremacist movement, or something in between? A lot of people have already decided. At this point, I am just waiting to see if the jury upholds the right to self-defense. If they don't, riots next year are bound to be much worse.

YeBanKo 5y ago
Could you please link the videos you are talking about? Every time I try to find them, I end up with videos overlayed with a bunch of commentaries and opinions, low resolution/quality or without clear marks of who is where and timeline of the events. I genuinely am wondering if I missing anything.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  So when it first happened NYT had all the videos listed here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/us/kyle-rittenhouse-kenosha-shooting-video.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/27/us/kyle-rittenhouse-kenos... I tried accessing them now, but paywall hit me hard.
- smaryjerry 5y ago
  This is a real issue on YouTube and every single website that censored any mention or video about Kyle Rittenhouse. There was probably 20 angles I saw the first day after this happened that I couldn’t find again because every website took the videos down. If a person and not a corporation had done that in a topic they could be facing obstruction of justice charges.