YouTube Will Now Redirect Searches For Extremist Videos To Anti-Terrorist Playlists (tubefilter.com)

YouTube will return anti-terrorist playlists when users search for hateful content on the site using certain keywords pertaining to terrorism. Tubefilter.com reports: The new feature, dubbed The Redirect Method, is part of a four-prong strategy announced by Google last month to quash extremist ideologies across its platforms. The Redirect Method was developed by Jigsaw -- an Alphabet subsidiary whose mission is to counter extremism, censorship, and cyber attacks -- alongside another tech company called Moonshot CVE (which stands for "Countering Violent Extremism"). Jigsaw and Moonshot CVE developed the tech after studying, over several years, how terrorist factions like ISIS leverage technology to spread their messaging and recruit new followers. In coming weeks, YouTube says it intends to incorporate The Redirect Method into a wider set of search queries in languages beyond English, use machine learning to dynamically update search terms, work with partner NGOs to develop new anti-extremist content, and roll out the Method to Europe.

Comments

Who determines the definition of hateful content?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is a video against socialized health care hateful? Is a video exposing the dangers of communism hateful? Is a video against men using women's bathrooms hateful?

Thanks to the kind overlords at youtube, they'll just let us know so we don't have to think for ourselves.

Re:Free speech is always to nice a thing

[whitlocktj]

Free speech is a protected right, that doesn't mean that a company has to promote or distribute others ideologies.

Re:Free speech is always to nice a thing

[gatfirls]

When they are redirecting, they are promoting and/or distributing others ideologies.

I get that they are a company and can do as they want with their platform but I am sure how you can see their intervention like this being used for not so warm and fuzzy things. Let's say something like they want some bill to get passed so they direct searches to only videos promoting the bill.

Not a fan of when companies get in the 'arbiters of free speech' business. It's either within your TOS or it isn't. You're either responsible for all content or none.

'Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful.' -Charles Bradlaugh

Who defines what is hateful

[rey2]

I definitely don't support terrorist/extremist videos that show murder, violence, terrorism, etc, but this says "hateful" content, that's such a loaded word. As a religious person I worry about the time Google and their employees decide that the very words or ideas from my religious text are "hateful". Not good not good at all.

Re:Who defines what is hateful

[Chuck Messenger]

You mean hateful words like the following...?

"Whoever does any work on [the Sabbath] must be put to death."

"... in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes."

"Whoever is captured will be thrust through; all who are caught will fall by the sword. Their infants will be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses will be looted and their wives ravished."

"Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man."

"If anyone comes to me [Jesus] and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple."

"They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open."

"We completely destroyed them, as we had done with Sihon king of Heshbon, destroying every city—men, women and children."

"If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, "Let us go and worship other gods" (gods that neither you nor your fathers have known, gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must certainly put him to death."

Re:Free speech is always to nice a thing

[mrclevesque]

"Why don't they just remove the videos then instead of messing up the search results."

Exactly, remove the videos or refuse the search, what they're doing is like shooting themselves in the foot, it promotes the idea that they manipulate search results.

To counter censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Right in the article

The Redirect Method was developed by Jigsaw â" an Alphabet subsidiary whose mission is to counter extremism, censorship, and cyber attacks

I still wonder if some of these people can stop a bit and start reflecting on what they are doing.

No hypocrisy here

[Anonymous Coward]

"Alphabet subsidiary whose mission is to counter extremism, censorship, and cyber attacks"

So they plan on countering censorship by censoring?

Easier if one is tolerant of dissenting views

[jbn-o]

It's easy to say "Evil speech is harmful" but not so easy to put any meaning to that glib statement. Noam Chomsky reminds us that free speech means being very tolerant for views one does not agree with which gives rise to the idea that the fix for whatever one might deem 'bad speech' is more speech: "Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you're really in favor of free speech, then you're in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you're not in favor of free speech." Niemoller ("First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-because I was not a Socialist. ... Then they came for me-and there was no one left to speak for me.") reminds us to ask how long until one's ideas are deemed "evil", "terroristic", or whatever other language triggers censorship on a particular hosting service.

In the meantime, it's easy to upload to multiple places (such as archive.org) and host one's videos on one's own server thus avoiding YouTube's censorship altogether. I know this is a difficult tack to take on /.; take one look at any story having to do with proprietary software and see how quickly the posts advocating software freedom for its own sake are downvoted (without comment, of course, due to the structure of /.'s moderation system) while business-friendly (pro-DRM, pro-tinkering at the edges of giving into proprietary control) posts are left alone or upvoted. A far cry from what /. used to be when it began. I imagine different discussion sites have differing ad-hoc effective defintions for what's objectionable. All the more reason to host one's own blog.