In the subtitle of this article, the author asks "How
'neutral' should social-media platforms try to be?" I asked a similar question in a blog post[1] using different terms. Should "platforms" just be flat platforms, or should they curate their content like a publisher? If they don't, can they make money? Can they pay content creators decently while still remaining a platform, or is that something only a publisher can do? I don't know that there's a good answer.
the world has already decided that they should be curated. the question is now, "at what level we make the distinction."
Why should it be at any level besides that of legality, or those levels analogous to movie ratings?
everyone agrees that spam, fraud, phishing have no legitimate place
Those are issues of non-consensual activity. What YouTube, Patreon, PayPal, Facebook, et al. have done includes the suppression of content people want to see and are even willing to pay for. They've even gone farther and not let them pay. By going against the consent of the public, they've moved themselves in the same immoral direction as the spammers, fraudsters, and phishers. They're doing what large swathes of the public don't want done to their access to data. (Merely in order to get advertising dollars from other large corporations, I might add.) It's just that they currently look more legitimate, as they slowly creep in that immoral direction.
we have a dial, and even on the "free speech" end of things, people agree it shouldnt be turned up far enough to allow all noise
There are disingenuous actors who want that power over almost all the relevant discourse, and wish to turn that dial in such a way that they hold the power. It doesn't matter if they've convinced themselves they'll wield it in a "good" way. No one should have it. That's what Free Speech is all about.
Stopping short of misrepresenting what they're doing. Stopping short of arbitrary enforcement. (Which means keeping employees from (apparently) arbitrarily using company mechanisms to further their own ideological ends.) Stopping short of meddling in payments handled by another company. (Which looks a bit too much like tortious interference.)
If the companies were merely driven by profit motive and getting ad dollars, it would be fine. It's the manipulation of the public discourse which people object to and feels slimy.
If my email provider decides to stop delivering my email because the person emailing me is a crank I'm going to get another email provider. Because they're a platform for email, not a publisher of email.
I don't want a YouTube that is a publisher because at that point it ceases being my tube and starts being their tube. This defeats what makes YouTube so special.
Your email provider blocks thousands of emails it thinks you dont want. Youtube blocks copywritten material on upload. Those are things a publisher does (reduce noise, detect plagiarism.)
The author seems to, at several points, conflate political bias with truth.
While there may be some correlation there, to me it would seem more valuable to point people towards factual, reputable, meaningful content regardless of whether it's left or right wing (if the user seems to be looking for educational or editorial content). Letting videos cite sources could go a long way there.
If, on the other hand, a user seems to be looking for trolling videos of one political persuasion or another, why not let them go down that rabbit hole? That can also be fun.
I wonder if Youtube is prepared for the massive censorship demanded to create a safe space. It's not helpful that the progressive grievance hierarchy isn't robustly formulated, if a woman and a black man are mad at each other, it's not clear who has more victim points which is important for determining 'the right side of history'. I don't envy Youtube creating a moderation engine that attempts to place inconsistent people.
> In the course of the spring, YouTube drafted a new policy that would ban videos trafficking in historical “denialism” (of the Holocaust, 9/11, Sandy Hook) and “supremacist” views (lauding the “white race,” arguing that men were intellectually superior to women).
Cool. So YouTube will force that group of people off their platform and magnify the intensity of their echo chamber in the process.
To many of those "problematic" videos other people have created detailed responses explaining why they are misguided. Now the other group won't see those rebuttals because they're on a different platform.
Thanks to what passes for a "good" recommendation engine nowadays people are already mostly subjected to content they already agree with - instead of content that might challenge their views and make them a better person.
This will continue until nobody's opinion is challenged ever (and doing so won't be socially acceptable in any case). I hope to never see the kind of society this leads too, but I fear we might be entering the endgame sooner rather than later.
Speech has always been a slippery slope. For example, they could start ghosting and demonetising videos critical of governments/companies. What's the acceptable limit to speech on Youtube?
They are really not. They may be considered "common knowledge" in your circles.
You can find plenty of detailed rebuttals to the theories you subscribe to and I invite you to seek them out and consider the other side of the argument.
> Your other responses (I strongly agree with) tell me you haven't really looked into it.
By Tuesday you mean the WTC attacks?
I spent the better part of three years listening to someone who tried to convince me of the false-flag POV.
I'm still in the camp of I don't know and I don't care though, because it's not even my country and either way the weather forecast is gonna have a bigger influence on my life.
As for the Holocaust, you'll have a hard time convincing me since I'm German and there's still enough evidence of it here to drown yourself in if you so please (or touch with your bare hands if archives are not your thing). Also I guess my grandparents (or their parents) and virtually every older person with first or second-hand knowledge would have to be lying to me.
So yeah... that position is pretty untenable here. It's like if your distant uncle from France tried to convince you your arbor doesn't exist when it's right there outside your window in Arizona and your granddad can still tell you stories of his father building it.
Your french uncle would have to be damn convincing on the phone.
That's pretty common. If I bring up the (rather specific) subject of that link to someone who has been extensively exposed to bad information, they associate it with some other event.
Association, where there is none, is a very effective way to poison the well and change the subject. I'm not suggesting you did either on purpose, it's clear you are being candid and relaying your experience.
Note I said nothing (anywhere... ever) about the unrelated older historical event you brought up. Indeed, I bet we agree.
> it can happily expose people to content that makes them a worse person.
I'll just assume you meant "most people" here, because otherwise it's not an useful argument.
Then this would only be true if one of the following applies:
a. The position you consider "better" can't withstand criticism. (Which I'll just assume you don't believe.)
b. Most people don't want to be a good person. (Probably untrue.)
c. What constitutes a good person is not consistent in your circles and most people have a different understanding. (Unlikely?)
d. Most people can't think for themselves.
Assuming you believe d., let me tell you that most people are probably smarter than you think and are indeed able to think critically. Don't extrapolate from a few noisy but bad examples of humanity.
Have you seen bad content and now know that you've become a worse person? How are you worse now? If you haven't watched that sort of content then how do you know it would make you a worse person if you did? It sounds silly to me.
At first, the site was moderated largely by its co-founders; in 2006, they hired a single, part-time moderator. The company removed videos often, rarely encountering pushback. In the intervening thirteen years, a lot has changed. “YouTube has the scale of the entire Internet,” Sundar Pichai, the C.E.O. of Google, which owns YouTube, told Axios last month. The site now attracts a monthly audience of two billion people and employs thousands of moderators. Every minute, its users upload five hundred hours of new video.
If YouTube is now sized at entire-Internet scale, and is the overwhelming dominant player in next generation video news and commentary, then what YouTube does becomes a Free Speech issue. Something the size of YouTube should rightly be a Platform. It cannot be a Publisher at this scale. Wielding the power of a Publisher at such a scale is concentrating too much power in too few hands.
In a way, the days of the Printing Press were far superior to today's era of YouTube. Printing presses can be crafted by determined DIYers. Network effects couldn't suppress an independent press, but in 2019, YouTube just has to hold onto its Network Effect and wait until the energy and seed capital of potential competitors runs out, or they're at least reduced to 3rd-rate irrelevant zombie sites.
This makes sense to me. The question to me is should platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc be subject to common carrier laws / net neutrality laws? The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that hate speech is protected as free speech.
"Hate" is also very subjective as well. If it is controversial even in the slightest, then someone, somewhere, is going to be offended and think it is hateful.
I think offending people is really important to the development of society. Opposing viewpoints are really important to fostering discussion and stimulating minds. Universities must be the bastion of this: free speech must come before all else. Uni is a purpose built institution to grow minds.
I don't buy this argument. There are known psychological effects which mute interesting discussion and promote division and extremism. Regulating algorithms that amplify these effects seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do to me.
There are known psychological effects which mute interesting discussion and promote division and extremism.
As in putting content creators into a state of fear and uncertainty?
Regulating algorithms that amplify these effects seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do to me.
What users of these sites have found, is that the companies are regulating algorithms in order to amplify these effects: namely to discourage certain political advocacy and encourage others.
YouTube, by their own words, operates at "entire Internet scale." Having a single megacorp decide for everyone how to "regulate algorithms that amplify these effects" is too much concentration of power! Who knows? Maybe such megacorps would abide by "Don't be Evil" one day, then turn around and have to abandon such a motto later?
It also strengthens the ability of people to get along despite having opposing views and philosophies.
When you insulate people and teach them to be offended at the slightest "micro" aggression, then people become intolerant and unable to function in normal society without being "triggered".
Look, there is always going to be stuff that is banned from Youtube. They're not going to allow porn on there. Given that they control content to some extent, the question has to be what their responsibility is.
Also, recommendations aren't part of a platform, they are Youtube's free speech. Those are in some ways more important than mere hosting, as that's how Youtube has radicalized people.
Look, there is always going to be stuff that is banned from Youtube. They're not going to allow porn on there.
Again, that would be fine. If there was a consistent standard, content creators could just abide by those rules. That's not the experience of content creators. Instead, it's arbitrary, and often driven by the ideological whims of lower level employees with an axe to grind.
Also, recommendations aren't part of a platform, they are Youtube's free speech
That's awfully convenient. Virality and discovery are huge amplifying forces. In 2019, it makes no sense at all to be part of a "platform" then wield the editorial control of manipulating recommendations. The only reason that flies, is that the law and the general culture haven't caught up to the implications of manipulated virality and discovery. Would you like it if somehow Fox News were given editorial control of manipulating virality and discovery? If your answer is no, then you already understand that it's too much power to let a single corporation wield.
as that's how Youtube has radicalized people.
That NYT piece is a shallow hit piece. There's far less radicalization going on than the emperor losing his clothes. What's going on is that young people are figuring out the BS of the older generation, and the establishment NYT is trying to spin it in a way to scare people away from the process. Far more young people are just rejecting the establishment narrative and crafting their own. As usual, the establishment are crying the sky is falling, and the young people will be fine. (And a small fringe will be nut-jobs, and a smaller fringe will be vile, but that's always been the case as well.)
And being "radicalized" is a bad thing per se? "radix" means root, in Latin. A radical approach tackles issues at their root. Even adopting moderation needs to be done with some moderation...
For those who are looking for neutral alternatives:
bitchute.com
minds.com
I really commend YouTube for holding out a long as they have. It can't be overstated how important they have been in being the only real media source for liberal/libertarian alternative thought to the censorious leftist orthodoxy...but the writing is on the wall. YouTube, please continue to hold out as long as you can, and thank you.
"leftist orthodoxy"? The orthodoxy in the US is pro-corporate neo-liberal, which hardly counts as "left". Perhaps you mean "democratic-party-supporting" instead?
"executives at YouTube began mulling, once again, the problem of online speech. On grounds of freedom of expression and ideological neutrality, the platform has long allowed users to upload videos endorsing noxious ideas, from conspiracy theories to neo-Nazism."
They're not "mulling" anything. YouTube, and Google's search engine, are engaging in effective censorship of non-mainstream political content (both left and right wing, by the way) - for a couple of years now.
and everyone knows how for, what is it now, a couple of years or so, YouTube pushes mainstream news media items when you watch over political content - videos which used to have almost no views, and are now artificially massively popular.
36 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 88.9 ms ] thread[1] https://wilsocr88.github.io/#0/7
no product does client side spam determination anymore. everyone agrees that spam, fraud, phishing have no legitimate place.
we have a dial, and even on the "free speech" end of things, people agree it shouldnt be turned up far enough to allow all noise.
Why should it be at any level besides that of legality, or those levels analogous to movie ratings?
everyone agrees that spam, fraud, phishing have no legitimate place
Those are issues of non-consensual activity. What YouTube, Patreon, PayPal, Facebook, et al. have done includes the suppression of content people want to see and are even willing to pay for. They've even gone farther and not let them pay. By going against the consent of the public, they've moved themselves in the same immoral direction as the spammers, fraudsters, and phishers. They're doing what large swathes of the public don't want done to their access to data. (Merely in order to get advertising dollars from other large corporations, I might add.) It's just that they currently look more legitimate, as they slowly creep in that immoral direction.
we have a dial, and even on the "free speech" end of things, people agree it shouldnt be turned up far enough to allow all noise
There are disingenuous actors who want that power over almost all the relevant discourse, and wish to turn that dial in such a way that they hold the power. It doesn't matter if they've convinced themselves they'll wield it in a "good" way. No one should have it. That's what Free Speech is all about.
What else would you expect from an internet advertising company?
If the companies were merely driven by profit motive and getting ad dollars, it would be fine. It's the manipulation of the public discourse which people object to and feels slimy.
I don't want a YouTube that is a publisher because at that point it ceases being my tube and starts being their tube. This defeats what makes YouTube so special.
While there may be some correlation there, to me it would seem more valuable to point people towards factual, reputable, meaningful content regardless of whether it's left or right wing (if the user seems to be looking for educational or editorial content). Letting videos cite sources could go a long way there.
If, on the other hand, a user seems to be looking for trolling videos of one political persuasion or another, why not let them go down that rabbit hole? That can also be fun.
Cool. So YouTube will force that group of people off their platform and magnify the intensity of their echo chamber in the process.
To many of those "problematic" videos other people have created detailed responses explaining why they are misguided. Now the other group won't see those rebuttals because they're on a different platform.
Thanks to what passes for a "good" recommendation engine nowadays people are already mostly subjected to content they already agree with - instead of content that might challenge their views and make them a better person.
This will continue until nobody's opinion is challenged ever (and doing so won't be socially acceptable in any case). I hope to never see the kind of society this leads too, but I fear we might be entering the endgame sooner rather than later.
Will the users care?
You can find plenty of detailed rebuttals to the theories you subscribe to and I invite you to seek them out and consider the other side of the argument.
Your other responses (I strongly agree with) tell me you haven't really looked into it.
By Tuesday you mean the WTC attacks?
I spent the better part of three years listening to someone who tried to convince me of the false-flag POV.
I'm still in the camp of I don't know and I don't care though, because it's not even my country and either way the weather forecast is gonna have a bigger influence on my life.
As for the Holocaust, you'll have a hard time convincing me since I'm German and there's still enough evidence of it here to drown yourself in if you so please (or touch with your bare hands if archives are not your thing). Also I guess my grandparents (or their parents) and virtually every older person with first or second-hand knowledge would have to be lying to me.
So yeah... that position is pretty untenable here. It's like if your distant uncle from France tried to convince you your arbor doesn't exist when it's right there outside your window in Arizona and your granddad can still tell you stories of his father building it.
Your french uncle would have to be damn convincing on the phone.
Association, where there is none, is a very effective way to poison the well and change the subject. I'm not suggesting you did either on purpose, it's clear you are being candid and relaying your experience.
Note I said nothing (anywhere... ever) about the unrelated older historical event you brought up. Indeed, I bet we agree.
Wait... what was 1, 2, and 7 referring to then? I just numbered the topics in the order they were brought up in the original article.
I'll just assume you meant "most people" here, because otherwise it's not an useful argument.
Then this would only be true if one of the following applies:
a. The position you consider "better" can't withstand criticism. (Which I'll just assume you don't believe.)
b. Most people don't want to be a good person. (Probably untrue.)
c. What constitutes a good person is not consistent in your circles and most people have a different understanding. (Unlikely?)
d. Most people can't think for themselves.
Assuming you believe d., let me tell you that most people are probably smarter than you think and are indeed able to think critically. Don't extrapolate from a few noisy but bad examples of humanity.
If YouTube is now sized at entire-Internet scale, and is the overwhelming dominant player in next generation video news and commentary, then what YouTube does becomes a Free Speech issue. Something the size of YouTube should rightly be a Platform. It cannot be a Publisher at this scale. Wielding the power of a Publisher at such a scale is concentrating too much power in too few hands.
In a way, the days of the Printing Press were far superior to today's era of YouTube. Printing presses can be crafted by determined DIYers. Network effects couldn't suppress an independent press, but in 2019, YouTube just has to hold onto its Network Effect and wait until the energy and seed capital of potential competitors runs out, or they're at least reduced to 3rd-rate irrelevant zombie sites.
"Hate" is also very subjective as well. If it is controversial even in the slightest, then someone, somewhere, is going to be offended and think it is hateful.
As in putting content creators into a state of fear and uncertainty?
Regulating algorithms that amplify these effects seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do to me.
What users of these sites have found, is that the companies are regulating algorithms in order to amplify these effects: namely to discourage certain political advocacy and encourage others.
YouTube, by their own words, operates at "entire Internet scale." Having a single megacorp decide for everyone how to "regulate algorithms that amplify these effects" is too much concentration of power! Who knows? Maybe such megacorps would abide by "Don't be Evil" one day, then turn around and have to abandon such a motto later?
When you insulate people and teach them to be offended at the slightest "micro" aggression, then people become intolerant and unable to function in normal society without being "triggered".
Also, recommendations aren't part of a platform, they are Youtube's free speech. Those are in some ways more important than mere hosting, as that's how Youtube has radicalized people.
Again, that would be fine. If there was a consistent standard, content creators could just abide by those rules. That's not the experience of content creators. Instead, it's arbitrary, and often driven by the ideological whims of lower level employees with an axe to grind.
Also, recommendations aren't part of a platform, they are Youtube's free speech
That's awfully convenient. Virality and discovery are huge amplifying forces. In 2019, it makes no sense at all to be part of a "platform" then wield the editorial control of manipulating recommendations. The only reason that flies, is that the law and the general culture haven't caught up to the implications of manipulated virality and discovery. Would you like it if somehow Fox News were given editorial control of manipulating virality and discovery? If your answer is no, then you already understand that it's too much power to let a single corporation wield.
as that's how Youtube has radicalized people.
That NYT piece is a shallow hit piece. There's far less radicalization going on than the emperor losing his clothes. What's going on is that young people are figuring out the BS of the older generation, and the establishment NYT is trying to spin it in a way to scare people away from the process. Far more young people are just rejecting the establishment narrative and crafting their own. As usual, the establishment are crying the sky is falling, and the young people will be fine. (And a small fringe will be nut-jobs, and a smaller fringe will be vile, but that's always been the case as well.)
https://slate.com/technology/2019/06/measles-outbreak-anti-v...
It's not a bad thing per se. It's good if it's a good person. It's bad if one is a jerk.
bitchute.com
minds.com
I really commend YouTube for holding out a long as they have. It can't be overstated how important they have been in being the only real media source for liberal/libertarian alternative thought to the censorious leftist orthodoxy...but the writing is on the wall. YouTube, please continue to hold out as long as you can, and thank you.
Anyway, thanks for the links.
They're not "mulling" anything. YouTube, and Google's search engine, are engaging in effective censorship of non-mainstream political content (both left and right wing, by the way) - for a couple of years now.
See this report already in 2017: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/27/goog-j27.html
and everyone knows how for, what is it now, a couple of years or so, YouTube pushes mainstream news media items when you watch over political content - videos which used to have almost no views, and are now artificially massively popular.