YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

[SummerMadness]

YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

YouTube announced plans on Wednesday to remove thousands of videos and channels that advocate for neo-Nazism, white supremacy and other bigoted ideologies in an attempt to clean up extremism and hate speech on its popular service.

The new policy will ban "videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion," the company said in a blog post. The prohibition will also cover videos denying that violent incidents, like the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, took place.

 

[dzheremi]

While no doubt there are many clear-cut cases where such a policy is advisable and commendable, I wonder if many people trust YouTube and/or their team or algorithm or whatever/whoever is deciding what is "extreme" and what isn't to do the job of removing the videos. I've seen plenty of pro-ISIS/pro-Islamist terrorism Twitter accounts skate by with no repercussions (presumably because they primarily communicate in Arabic or other languages that the monitors don't/can't read or understand), while those of ex-Muslims who are now critical of the very movements that they themselves used to be a part of get deleted or suspended for "inciting racial hatred", "inciting violence", etc. From what I've heard in the ex-Muslim community on YouTube, it is much the same, with many videos being removed for pointing out the supremacist ideologies inherent in this or that hadith or section of the Qur'an (stuff about the Jews and Christians being "the sons of apes and pigs", while the Muslims are the "best of people ever created" or whatever). Surely there is some latitude regarding what is 'extreme' when it comes to religious texts written in the pre-modern era (so long as they aren't Christian in any way...), but if suddenly pointing out that the attitudes that some adopt as a result of their fidelity to their religion and its texts (or rather their understanding of it, I suppose) becomes in itself 'extremism', then I have very little hope that this kind of wide-reaching mandate will be anything but a breeding ground for abuse and enforcement of group-think.

Since YouTube, et al. are so much of the 'digital public square' these days, I personally think they ought to be taken out of the hands of private companies and run like utilities. You can't cut off a guy's phone service because he's a Nazi, but you can prosecute him for racist hate crimes planned over said phone line. That sort of distinction would be great, rather than YouTube's current system wherein if a view is merely unpopular with a particularly loud segment of society, it gets flagged as 'hate' when what it really is is criticism that they do not like to hear, but that others should still be allowed to say, assuming that they don't say it in a way that itself invokes racial/ethnic/religious extremism. (And, yes, all of this should apply to Christians, too. Why wouldn't it? We're not strangers to having our religion criticized from every corner and under every possible guise, and anyone else should be too if they're going to use these platforms. I just fear that there will be some very bad unintended consequences of this very well intended plan, which may enable certain kinds of extremism to grow unchallenged.)

 

[SummerMadness]

If people are going to classify YouTube as a public square, does this apply to all forms of social media then?

 

[thecolorsblend]

If people are going to classify YouTube as a public square, does this apply to all forms of social media then?

The big ones, yes.

 

[usexpat97]

YouTube sort of got shot at. I can see YouTube taking this whole extremist thing personally.

Although, the reason Nasim Sabz committed the YouTube shooting in the first place was none other than censorship. So what we have here is a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg situation.

 

[SummerMadness]

It's interesting to see so many conservatives believing in government takeovers of companies. Interesting times. But beware socialism! Oh noes!!!1!!

 

[Aldebaran]

YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

Will extreme left-leaning videos be removed as well? Antifa, BLM, LGBT pride and other such videos would have to be scrutinized for removal unless Youtube is only going after conservative groups.

 

[tulc]

Will extreme left-leaning videos be removed as well? Antifa, BLM, LGBT pride and other such videos would have to be scrutinized for removal unless Youtube is only going after conservative groups.

I agree. If people are advocating violence they should be removed.
tulc(wonders if this is really a "censorship thing/free speech" thing unless it's done by the government?)

 

[Kenny'sID]

Ouch!

We'll just have to see where that ends. Halting free speech seems like a bad idea all around.

 

[SummerMadness]

Ouch!

We'll just have to see where that ends. Halting free speech seems like a bad idea all around.

If someone comes into my house and starts protesting, I'll kick them out, I abridged their speech, but is that free speech? How is it different from a social media platform, which you are free to not use, are they obligated to let you do as you please on their servers? Must they pay their money to cede you bandwidth?

 

[Aldebaran]

Ouch!

We'll just have to see where that ends. Halting free speech seems like a bad idea all around.

With Facebook and Twitter doing it, and now Youtube, it seems to be a trend toward internet censorship. The other big platforms will follow so they won't be called out as "hosting hate speech".

The internet used to be talked about as being the new frontier of free speech, unregulated and uncensored. It looks like the page has turned on that idea.

 

[tulc]

Ouch!

We'll just have to see where that ends. Halting free speech seems like a bad idea all around.

uhmmm...again, it's not a "free speech issue" unless it's being done by the government.
tulc(wonders why conservatives don't simply start their own social media platforms?)

 

[Aldebaran]

If someone comes into my house and starts protesting, I'll kick them out, I abridged their speech, but is that free speech? How is it different from a social media platform, which you are free to not use, are they obligated to let you do as you please on their servers? Must they pay their money to cede you bandwidth?

If someone posts a protest video on Youtube and you click on it to play it in your house, you can kick them out by clicking the little red "X" in the upper right corner of your screen. But for Youtube to censor it from their platform is to censor it from everyone who wants to see it.

 

[dzheremi]

If people are going to classify YouTube as a public square, does this apply to all forms of social media then?

Depends. Do free speech laws and protections apply to all kinds of gatherings, speech, etc.? There will always be exceptions, but in the main I think that the social media companies like YouTube, Facebook, etc. should get at least the same level of treatment as the Christian baker who may be forced to serve someone whose views or actions he or she finds odious. In those cases, the bakeries (and floral shops, etc.) lost their cases on account of their being "public accommodations", so I guess the question should be: do social media companies serve the public or do they not? I could see the argument being made in the early days of Facebook, when it really was by design restricted to college students, that it does not amount to a public accommodation, but today now that anyone and everyone can join (fictional characters have their own profile) and largely has, that argument would no longer hold. Ditto with YouTube: it may have originally been designed to be more private than it currently is, but now that it is completely public, I do not see the compelling interest that speech be silenced beyond that which is absolutely necessary to comply with state and federal law (and NOT the blasphemy laws of nations like Pakistan, which banned YT for three years ending in 2016 or so due to its hosting of 'blasphemous' ex-Muslim/anti-Islam/doubting Islam videos).

Perhaps you see things differently, but I don't see this as a particularly 'conservative' vs. 'liberal' issue. It's more of a "can we please decide what to do about the reality of our social world today" question, which I don't trust the companies themselves to do without the oversight of the people -- not just the people they've hired to perform this very work, but the people that monitor free speech online, too, like the Electronic Frontiers Foundation and the ACLU. There should be, as in all things, a balance of the concerns for free speech and matters of safety and justice that errs on the side of free speech, as is supposed to be the American ideal according to pretty much everyone. I.e., I doubt anyone of any political stripe would be for losing their own freedom of speech, even though this means tolerating the speech -- not necessarily the actions, and certainly never the criminal actions -- of others. This used to be the grand compromise that made society function, and I agree that some really are pushing it, but that's kinda what any society is, y'know? And YouTube and all these other companies are a part of that.

TL;DR: Yes, if they can be reasonably classified as "public accommodations", which I believe many of them can be.

 

[Yennora]

Google (owning Youtube), Facebook (owning Instagram) and Twitter are all corrupt.

I remember back in 2016 when i was researching the PizzaGate scandal and the 3 companies were targetting channels and accounts that shared robust evidence condemning the Podesta brothers of pedophelia and child trafficking.

Now if you make a search on PizzaGate you will nearly find nothing useful because these companies worked hard to ban accounts and remove the evidence. But back in 2016 things were clear and evident and that's why they started their corrupt "Anti-fake news" campaign.

I don't trust these companies and i deal with them with caution. And you are taking this from a Computer Science student. Their privacy policies are a big joke imho.

 

[SummerMadness]

I see it as a conservative vs liberal issue because of the rank hypocrisy of conservatives. When it was a question of whether data streams on the Internet are a public utility that no company should restrict, you had conservatives coming out the woodwork saying it was okay. But now they don't like the very policy they supported. Net neutrality has a much better argument for the Internet as a public space. If you don't like the censorship on a website, you are free to use another website, the same cannot be said for choice of Internet service providers.

 

[SummerMadness]

Google (owning Youtube), Facebook (owning Instagram) and Twitter are all corrupt.

I remember back in 2016 when i was researching the PizzaGate scandal and the 3 companies were targetting channels and accounts that shared robust evidence condemning the Podesta brothers of pedophelia and child traficking.

Now if you make a search on PizzaGate you will nearly find nothing useful because these companies worked hard to ban accounts and remove the evidence. But back in 2016 things were clear and evident and that's why they started their corrupt "Anti-fake news" campaign.

I don't trust these companies and i deal with them with caution. And you are taking this from a Computer Science student. Their privacy policies are a big joke imho.

Pizzagate was fake, that's why it was removed. But that is not the discussion.

 

[Yennora]

Pizzagate was fake, that's why it was removed. But that is not the discussion.

No it was not fake, i saw pictures with my own eyes (an IG account that contained photos promoting child-abuse indirectly, the owner of the account was a powerful connection to Hillary and the Podesta brothers. Those who released the images from the IG account were either banned or had their contents removed! the companies were so aggressive about it and did their best hiding those images). Don't start this please as PizzaGate had a powerful negative impact on me personally.

Ben Swann was STOPPED because he discussed it on air. I saw the language used in the leaked emails.

PizzaGate is just a matter of time until it comes back to light again.

 

[Yennora]

Ask yourself! If it was fake, why would they team to ban accounts that shared it while leaving the media FLOODING in other fake news? Why especially PizzaGate?

 

[SummerMadness]

uhmmm...again, it's not a "free speech issue" unless it's being done by the government.
tulc(wonders why conservatives don't simply start their own social media platforms?)

These are same people that applaud the NFL for restricting the speech of football players. Because taking a knee is blasphemy, but neo-Nazis and white supremacists must have their voices heard. I just don't get it...