by pimpampum on 11/29/20, 1:34 PM with 275 comments
by 3663288262 on 11/29/20, 2:22 PM
Who knows, maybe in theory land there's no reason we can't have it both ways. But it seems to me that in the real world precisely the opposite is true. We can't demand increasingly invasive and opaque mechanisms to prevent the spread of misinformation (once upon a time many examples of which would have just been called "gossip" or the "rumor mill") and then act surpised when radicals for our own important causes get swept up in the net. At some point we either have to admit that what we really want to build is a like-minded dictorship or we have to start discussing (in a sober manner devoid of the histrionics and gamesmanship that have come to envelope contemporary dialogues) what an intellient compromise in objectives might look like.
by kossTKR on 11/29/20, 2:23 PM
There is only freedom of speech until you actually go against those in power.
by leto_ii on 11/29/20, 4:52 PM
> A few months ago I uploaded a video about police brutality. It showed explicit acts of violence by the police, and it was understandably age-gated. The video was appropriate only for older audiences, but did not break any of YouTube's terms and conditions.
> That video earned me a visit from the DHS, who asked me about "Anti-American sentiment" in my videos. That was the first time I realized, wow, I guess people really are monitoring what we say and are willing to try to intimidate us, even if what we say is objectively true.
The video in question is, I suspect, this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEVoX-RwMJw
To me it's beyond disturbing that this kind of stuff still happens, it's the kind of thing that you'd think went away in the 50's or so.
by motohagiography on 11/29/20, 2:41 PM
Tar-pitting spammers is one thing, deceiving creators, especially ones who are politically engaged as to the impact of their work discredits the legitimacy of the platforms, and the agencies. Are the government agencies "persons," deserving protection in this case?
A major part of the problem is the language platforms use in their alerts, which is patronizing, gaslighting, and from what I have read in posts like these, basically enraging (which is what their business does best, so no surprises there).
If platforms would use language that made it clear they owned their role as referees it would go a lot more smoothly, and mitigate the effects of this "for your own good," deception bit. Of course I see it as the effect of platform employees who culturally reject the idea of binding principles in favour of exercising arbitrary power, but if that's not going to change, they can't reasonably complain about explosive reactions to their "dynamic choices" either.
by mark_l_watson on 11/29/20, 2:12 PM
Individuals and companies have the right to do what they want with their own property, and I don’t have any great ideas on how to solve this dilemma. One solution would be to have many platforms but we live in a winner take all world and platforms like YT get more powerful because of network effects.
by jeanlucas on 11/29/20, 2:35 PM
First of all, the video uploader is promoting a competitor to YouTube. This is not disclaimed clearly.
The video goes over criticism to the CIA, which are fair enough. But it takes some things as axioms, for example, that only the US are interfering/meddling in the world. He presents it as "the US is the bad guy and the world would be fair without the CIA." Which also is a form of propaganda.
It's a bit näive to not see this as anti-government propaganda. The crude reality is: true democracies never existed, and influence between countries is as old as society.
About the "censorship" itself: Youtube's goals is not the same as the authors, why would they promote something that is not what they want to be? They have a huge infant audience, they want to be advertiser-friendly. This is not something hidden or unknown.
They did not delete the video, but they shouldn't promote it. No fault in my eyes.
And at the same time, the buzz around saying "my video is being suppressed" get more views and is even a badge to prove the content "hits where it hurts". Just like rock bands in the 80s/90s would go after being censored or considered 18+ just to sell more.
by fwsgonzo on 11/29/20, 2:10 PM
by iandanforth on 11/29/20, 4:47 PM
I don't need YouTube to advertise the video, but if I do an exact string search on the title of the video and don't find it, that's suppression.
The content of the video is innocuous. It appears to be a factual recounting of CIA ops with some editorializing. It doesn't present new information or a new opinion.
by shap3 on 11/29/20, 3:55 PM
edit - and what does a DHS visit look like? Do they knock on your door at 6am or leave a card to call them back? Sorry I've never been in this situation before so I'd be interested in more details on that side of things.
by mmaunder on 11/29/20, 2:40 PM
by jancsika on 11/29/20, 3:53 PM
Everything after, "Fine. I'm used to that," is irrelevant.
This thread is apparently content using services built with a spirit functionally equivalent to, "Let's see if we can do the opposite of all four of the freedoms of the GPL."
And as long as everyone is content with these algorithmic blackboxes controlling discoverability for most of the population, we'll continue discussing heinous second-order effects of these systems. Here and now it happens to be free speech, but there are plenty of others waiting in the wings for as long as we avoid the main problem.
by dalbasal on 11/29/20, 3:26 PM
Demonetization, age-gating, recommendation engines, bans, shadowbans and their subtler varieties are many-2-many media's equivalent of an editor. Every one impacts the distribution of a video on youtube. Every one of these also impacts what content gets made/posted, because views are like currency.
It doesn't matter if it's algorithmic, and it doesn't matter if there are other reasons for (eg) demonetisation to exist. It's still an editor. You need to make the editor happy to succeed on youtube. The single difference between an editor and a censor is scale. If you edit all the magazines, magazines are censored.
The innocuous type example for censorship is (as usual) pornography. IDK what the consequences of posting pornography and its juniors (nudity, etc) on youtube, but they're obviously sufficient to make youtube mostly nudity free. It's not because no one wants raunchy videos. The same toolkit can be used (and is) to make any kind of content more or less prevalent on youtube.
It's funny that "section 230" is being mentioned by so many under informed politicians and pundits. Changing 230 is unlikely to "fix" the problem, considering that most politicians obviously don't even understand the problem. But section 230 at least captures the main part of the problem. Youtube is not "dumb pipes." Youtube is a content business, and they have a lot of control over content. It's not direct, "delete this segment" control like they have at FOX, but it is editing nonetheless. At youtube, twitter or FB scale, editing is censorship.
by 7636528A on 11/29/20, 2:18 PM
by snowron6 on 11/29/20, 5:26 PM
I know the site isn't meant for political discussion, but other stories about tech companies censoring political opinions haven't fallen from the front page as quickly as this one.
by jakelazaroff on 11/29/20, 2:09 PM
> A few months ago I uploaded a video about police brutality. It showed explicit acts of violence by the police, and it was understandably age-gated. The video was appropriate only for older audiences, but did not break any of YouTube's terms and conditions.
> That video earned me a visit from the DHS, who asked me about "Anti-American sentiment" in my videos. That was the first time I realized, wow, I guess people really are monitoring what we say and are willing to try to intimidate us, even if what we say is objectively true.
It’s “anti-American” to say that the people ostensibly enforcing our laws should not commit violence against us.
by aminozuur on 11/29/20, 5:48 PM
The CIA is a Terrorist Organization: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2khAmMTAjI
by crazydoggers on 11/29/20, 4:26 PM
I think the most important thing to keep in mind is that we’ve always been fighting to preserve our rights under the constitution. Freedom and democracy doesn’t just come for free.
Take another period in US history... at a time of another pandemic, the Spanish flu, and a World war.
The 1918 Sedition Act [1] made illegal the use of "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States.
The effects of this law were so successful, that at a time when a pandemic killed 20 million Americans, the newspapers never wrote about the flu. In fact this is why that virus was named the Spanish flu, since during the war Spain was neutral and allowed its press to freely report on it. Not because the virus came from Spain.
History of course repeats itself. But the real lesson for us is that we need to always be vigilant. And it’s not a time to despair that things are at their worst, or can’t get better, or everything is downhill.
Instead look at how far we’ve come. Look at what we’ve overcome in history.
We just need to keep moving the ball forward.
by villgax on 11/29/20, 3:47 PM
by cblconfederate on 11/29/20, 4:10 PM
1. https://twitter.com/NeilPHauer/status/1328460455380193286
by itronitron on 11/29/20, 3:48 PM
by everdrive on 11/29/20, 2:45 PM
by siliconmountain on 11/29/20, 3:05 PM
by geongeorgek on 11/29/20, 3:59 PM
Trying to watch this for the first time I had to find some other website that embed this. If it were any other video finding this shouldn't have took more than 10 seconds.
Maybe youtube wants to prevent spread of misinformation but making something inaccessible is whole nother level of evil.
by leephillips on 11/29/20, 5:16 PM
by golemotron on 11/29/20, 5:04 PM
by andrewHN_ on 11/29/20, 3:40 PM
by mandragon on 11/29/20, 5:13 PM
by Triv888 on 11/29/20, 2:22 PM
by question000 on 11/29/20, 3:03 PM
by swiley on 11/29/20, 3:11 PM
There are other video sites you can go to for this sort of thing.
by danoloan on 11/29/20, 3:41 PM
by zpeti on 11/29/20, 2:20 PM
And why, for 200 years, free speech and anti-censorship has been extremely important to Americans. There's a reason the ACLU defended nazis being able to protest. Because eventually censorship will ALWAYS be turned on your side. Whichever side you are on.
by Hnrobert42 on 11/29/20, 3:01 PM
by georgeplusplus on 11/29/20, 3:39 PM
Present proof or leave the conspiracies to 4chan.
by mensetmanusman on 11/29/20, 2:14 PM
YouTube has signed up for determining what is true in the west, and it will definitely upset some people, so shadow banning is the best happy medium.
(I personally think most people should start shadow banned and then an algorithm should slowly start opening the sphere of influence/votes to see if information is spreading more widely).