> Coupled with this, we’ve also seen new laws that impose individual liability on local employees for actions taken by a company offering online services. These types of laws have drawn concern from organizations like the Global Network Initiative because individuals can be pressured, prosecuted, and held personally liable, even when they are not responsible for the content decisions of the company they work for.
The thinking that the company cares enough about the safety of their people that they will comply with government demands. I believe Russia threatened to prosecute employees for Apple/Google unless they took certain steps with stuff in the App Store/Google Play.
The logic is that if a company wants to operate on that country, they have to have local employees, who are liable for the company following the laws. It makes it near impossible for global companies such as Google and Facebook to hide behind "no local presence, won't follow your crazy laws, and you can't ban us because people need us and will be pissed at you".
The final paragraph is creepy. "According to a higher-up in an organization many despise, as well as our own internal investigation, shows that censorship and removal will be more frequent in the near future. And it's not for nefarious reasons!"
Using double quotes for something you've paraphrased is misleading.
In addition, reading the UNOCHR's report does not show any indication that they're in favour of such additional restrictions. It's just research that shows where the trend is going, judging by recent and in-progress legislation on this theme.
Using double quotes is a standard way of marking a use/mention distinction, but that the mention is a paraphrase and not a direct quote should be explicitly called out.
T'was not intentionally misleading. Sorry. It's not that difficult to load the page, hit the End key and see the paragraph I referred to in its raw form.
With YouTube increasingly removing or penalising content without government asking, this regular report is starting to feel out of touch.
At least in this year, at least in the US, content being removed for being "disinformation" or having the wrong politics is a bigger problem than government censorship. Where is the report for those takedowns?
American Renaissance's entire channel. That has, as far as I'm aware, never called for violence, or spread misinformation, though I welcome news to the contrary.
It would appear that they were cut for violating hate speech policies. "We have strict policies prohibiting hate speech on YouTube, and terminate any channel that repeatedly or egregiously violates those policies," said a YouTube spokesperson on the topic.
Yes, that is what Google says, without citing any examples of what the hate speech in question was. This way they can censor any politics they like under the pretense of hate speech.
Wouldn't highlighting specific examples fall prey to Streisand Effect? If they don't want to spread hate speech, they can't name it.
On the flip side, I see AmRen acknowledging the ban on their site, but not suggesting the ban was unfounded; only that it stifles speech (indeed, but stifling hate speech is the point of banning it in YouTube's TOS). Unless I'm missing something, it doesn't appear that even the aggrieved party contests the nature of their content.
Not if they include a debunking. Right now we only have their word, which isn't worth much. Though that is a wonderful catch 22 they can use as excuse. We should be content to know only that the banned party was guilty. Of what, exactly, is not our concern.
Google broadly and secretly [1] defining hate speech, and removing based on that definition, is exactly the example you asked for: content removed for having the wrong politics. That they won't even tell you the exact politics, but leave you guessing, makes it worse, not better. What might be an entirely factual, dispassionate video, becomes in your mind a foaming-at-the-mouth murderous screed, because all you know about it is that Google (known for being straightforward and trustworthy) called it hate speech.
[1] We never get to find out what their interpretation of their stated rules is in practice, only who is guilty of breaking them, and only in the few cases that are high-profile enough for us to learn about.
They're on a list of splc's hate groups, and are a self-described white supremacist organization. This is pretty far from political differences (there are plenty of alt-right YouTubers, just not that promote a white ethnostate)
While I don't know how exactly the SPLC arrived at their categorization, the "self-described" part is false. The 3rd paragraph of their "about" page shows:
> We also believe that whites, like all racial groups, have legitimate interests that must be defended. The defense of those interests is white advocacy. We seek to advance only those interests that we recognize and would defend for all other racial groups. We seek no advantages as whites — only the expression of preferences for our own people and culture that are taken for granted by people of other races but denied to us.
Now this paragraph may be a lie, and the SPLC may be correct that they are hateful supremacists. But they're not self-described as such. Again, I welcome evidence supporting this, but I don't feel inclined to go through their website to find it.
I suppose if you want to nit pick, they don't self-identify as white supremecist, but openly promote the idea that whites are superior and deserve to dominate society.
> openly promote the idea that whites are superior and deserve to dominate society.
From what I could gather, the idea they're promoting is for whites to have a separate society, and not dominate anyone. But since they're so open about promoting, as you say, whites dominating others, you should have no trouble finding an example proving me wrong.
I didn't realize there were actual white nationalists on this site - that's what I get for not looking at comment histories.
I know I'm not going to convince you - but for others who aren't radicalized, I'll spell it out - the idea of a white ethnostate is a hateful, racist one. Promoting that idea means you're hateful and racist. Do not read American Renaissance.
Amren posts articles like this: https://www.amren.com/news/2008/08/race_and_psycho/ that the core argument is that we should kick blacks and Hispanics out of society because they're stupider than white people. Supporting this makes you a bad person. This is not just "political differences" - this is doesn't belong on any platform.
> the idea of a white ethnostate is a hateful, racist one.
Surely you mean any ethnostate is hateful and racist, not just a white one? Such as the hateful, racist states of Algeria, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Finland, Sierra Leone, Lithuania, and Turkey? All nearly homogeneous at the granularity where 'white' is a single group.
The hateful and racist part of this comes from where you why you think this is a good idea for America. Done with this thread though, enjoy being a miserable person.
Now what makes you think I'm miserable? Because white advocates in movies are portrayed as irrational and violent, filled with hate for everyone that's different, like in American History X?
Have you ever considered that movies and media might be deceiving you?
Funny coincidence, I just started watching [1]. In it, Tyler Cowen makes the case that "Big Tech" is underrated, and around 6:30 he talks about the claim that YouTube radicalises people. He doesn't find a compelling case in the academic literature.
From a philosophical perspective, though, I'm a liberal -- if someone's videos are "unhealthy" but inside the bounds of the law, I think it's usually good for society for platforms to host them (though the companies shouldn't have a legal obligation to host them, and certainly need not promote them.) Grown-ups are grown-ups.
But maybe you're talking about actually criminal radicalization, like telling people to kill others? Not just asking difficult questions about the shape of the Earth?
1: https://vimeo.com/636460268. You may also be interested in the section after the one on "YouTube radicalization", on the Facebook whistleblower, around 10:30.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 89.0 ms ] threadWow. What's the logic behind those laws?
Right. Riiiiight.
In addition, reading the UNOCHR's report does not show any indication that they're in favour of such additional restrictions. It's just research that shows where the trend is going, judging by recent and in-progress legislation on this theme.
At least in this year, at least in the US, content being removed for being "disinformation" or having the wrong politics is a bigger problem than government censorship. Where is the report for those takedowns?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9DClYso2FA
https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/29/21307303/youtube-bans-mol...
On the flip side, I see AmRen acknowledging the ban on their site, but not suggesting the ban was unfounded; only that it stifles speech (indeed, but stifling hate speech is the point of banning it in YouTube's TOS). Unless I'm missing something, it doesn't appear that even the aggrieved party contests the nature of their content.
Google broadly and secretly [1] defining hate speech, and removing based on that definition, is exactly the example you asked for: content removed for having the wrong politics. That they won't even tell you the exact politics, but leave you guessing, makes it worse, not better. What might be an entirely factual, dispassionate video, becomes in your mind a foaming-at-the-mouth murderous screed, because all you know about it is that Google (known for being straightforward and trustworthy) called it hate speech.
[1] We never get to find out what their interpretation of their stated rules is in practice, only who is guilty of breaking them, and only in the few cases that are high-profile enough for us to learn about.
> We also believe that whites, like all racial groups, have legitimate interests that must be defended. The defense of those interests is white advocacy. We seek to advance only those interests that we recognize and would defend for all other racial groups. We seek no advantages as whites — only the expression of preferences for our own people and culture that are taken for granted by people of other races but denied to us.
Now this paragraph may be a lie, and the SPLC may be correct that they are hateful supremacists. But they're not self-described as such. Again, I welcome evidence supporting this, but I don't feel inclined to go through their website to find it.
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/grou...
I suppose if you want to nit pick, they don't self-identify as white supremecist, but openly promote the idea that whites are superior and deserve to dominate society.
From what I could gather, the idea they're promoting is for whites to have a separate society, and not dominate anyone. But since they're so open about promoting, as you say, whites dominating others, you should have no trouble finding an example proving me wrong.
I know I'm not going to convince you - but for others who aren't radicalized, I'll spell it out - the idea of a white ethnostate is a hateful, racist one. Promoting that idea means you're hateful and racist. Do not read American Renaissance.
Amren posts articles like this: https://www.amren.com/news/2008/08/race_and_psycho/ that the core argument is that we should kick blacks and Hispanics out of society because they're stupider than white people. Supporting this makes you a bad person. This is not just "political differences" - this is doesn't belong on any platform.
Surely you mean any ethnostate is hateful and racist, not just a white one? Such as the hateful, racist states of Algeria, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Finland, Sierra Leone, Lithuania, and Turkey? All nearly homogeneous at the granularity where 'white' is a single group.
Have you ever considered that movies and media might be deceiving you?
From a philosophical perspective, though, I'm a liberal -- if someone's videos are "unhealthy" but inside the bounds of the law, I think it's usually good for society for platforms to host them (though the companies shouldn't have a legal obligation to host them, and certainly need not promote them.) Grown-ups are grown-ups.
But maybe you're talking about actually criminal radicalization, like telling people to kill others? Not just asking difficult questions about the shape of the Earth?
1: https://vimeo.com/636460268. You may also be interested in the section after the one on "YouTube radicalization", on the Facebook whistleblower, around 10:30.