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YouTube's New Moderators Mistakenly Pull Right-Wing Channels (bloomberg.com)
In December, said it would assign more than 10,000 people to moderate content in an attempt to curb its child exploitation problem. Today, Bloomberg reports that those new moderators mistakenly removed several videos and some channels from right-wing, pro-gun video producers and outlets in the midst of a nationwide debate on gun control. From the report: Some YouTube channels recently complained about their accounts being pulled entirely. On Wednesday, the Outline highlighted accounts, including Titus Frost, that were banned from the video site. Frost tweeted on Wednesday that a survivor of the shooting, David Hogg, is an actor. Jerome Corsi of right-wing conspiracy website Infowars said on Tuesday that YouTube had taken down one of his videos and disabled his live stream. Shutting entire channels would have marked a sweeping policy change for YouTube, which typically only removes channels in extreme circumstances and focuses most disciplinary action on specific videos. But YouTube said some content was taken down by mistake. The site didn't address specific cases and it's unclear if it meant to take action on the accounts of Frost and Corsi. "As we work to hire rapidly and ramp up our policy enforcement teams throughout 2018, newer members may misapply some of our policies resulting in mistaken removals," a YouTube spokeswoman wrote in an email. "We're continuing to enforce our existing policies regarding harmful and dangerous content, they have not changed. We'll reinstate any videos that were removed in error."
Seriously, just goto no ip dot com, setup your own website, point it at a tiny 35 dollar raspberry pi, then stream YOUR videos to YOUR hearts content.
If you guys want to stop being the butt rape fun time of corporations then just stop being it. It is not hard, it is not expensive, and it is not difficult.
You just want to show off your silly shit to the world in a way the other sheeple are doing so that your a special snowflake like the other 10 trillion special snowflakes, just stop for gods sakes. Have dignity ownership and responsibility.
It boggles the mind just how absurd all of this is, people are utilizing these services to the point where they imagine using these things isn't just a right but a necessity.
I cannot even....jesus wept...fucking hell...
From looking, Sanders started at about 800K and ended up at about 300, about the same proportion as Trump.
There's really no comparison, because Trump's numbers were so much higher to begin with. Maybe Trump just acquired more casual onlookers than the other candidates.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Of course it's censorship. It's not legally-mandated censorship, so one could consider it self-censorship on the part of YouTube, being that it owns the series of tubes here. But it's still censorship.
I find it odd how people will go to the argument that it's only censorship if the government does it. Is it also not illegal search and search and seizure if your neighbor or business partner, who is not the government, breaks in your door and rummages through your stuff to collect evidence?
Governments exist to secure people's rights. Against attacks by other people. And other governments. And since someone has to watch the watcher, we specifically enumerate the rights the government cannot violate in pursuit of that purpose.
Read your Declaration. The right to free speech isn't only the right against government censorship; it is a Natural Right that you have by virtue of sucking down oxygen. The government is there to make sure no one takes it from you. That includes other private actors to whom you have not ceded it. YouTube's community guidelines do not constitute an agreement to relinquish the right to make right-wing statements. If YouTube is treating it as such, that would be a breach of contract between customer and service provider.
I'll add one more thing. Again: if you don't want the government censoring you, then you've got to model respect for freedom of expression in the wider culture. Because government doesn't perpetuate itself. This is a democracy. The impressionable people watching you now (aka children) will be tomorrow's legislators and prosecutors. Not a good idea to give them the idea that free speech is not sacrosanct.
Why the hell are they allowing obviously untrained people the power to wipe out entire channels on a whim?
Who the Hell would apply for a job as a YouTube political correctness moderator anyway? Well, folks who can't argue their political standpoints, and must resort to censorship, when the intellectual backing of their own convictions fail, and silencing their opponent by force is their only option.
It's just not a real job.
If anything should be eliminated by AI and automation, it's this. Removing human bias from the system would silence critics on both sides of the political spectrum.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Nah, whats 17 dead kids compared to your right to be a fucking moron with a gun.
Reality is, these mass school shooting virtually only happen in the US because of a stupid 200 year old rule that simply doesnt work in the modern world.
I am no less free if I dont own a gun, and all the other excuses boil down to tiny dick ammosexual bullshit.
Nah, whats 17 dead kids compared to your right to be a fucking moron with a gun.
You're right, what's 17 dead kids compared to our right to bear arms? Nothing. The right to bear arms is more important than a few lives.
Besides, if we ban guns it would just be easier to get them. Drugs are ban and I can get illegal drugs much easier than getting a doctor's prescription.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
So no, the primary purpose of guns is not to kill more efficiently. That's a fantasy concocted by people trying to think of the worst possible rationale for something they dislike.
What you're basically saying above is that the primary purpose of guns is to maim more efficiently. That's not really much better you know. It's also massively ignorant, and you're referring to one particular 20th century invention as "all guns".
The purpose of guns is to intimidate - make people fear the consequences of noncompliance with the person holding the gun. That's why sometimes police with guns can defuse a situation without ever firing a shot.
No, that's not why, because often the police can defuse a situation without ever bringing guns into it at all.
Part of the reason the U.S. won the Revolutionary War was because a significant fraction of the milita
The other part was the French. And the Spanish.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Well, you say that, but when Google controls the narrative and buys congresscritters, the difference between Google's censorship and federal censorship becomes meaningless.
That works both ways. Congresscritters (and governments in Europe) are increasingly leaning on social media behemoths to curb hate speech and "fake news". Which is more than a little bit scary. What is "fake"? Recently some EU task force accused a couple of newspapers and websites of spreading fake news. In a few cases they retracted the accusation, but not until the websites themselves pointed out the articles in question were wholly factual, and threatened legal action. I really don't want that sort of stuff going on behind the scenes, where websites might not even know they were cut from the news feeds and penalized in page rankings.
There's much talk these days about the influence of large social media companies. But if these companies can be called upon to fight "fake news", by the same token they can be called upon to uphold principles of free speech. I am in favour of applying some additional "common carrier"-like rules to the larger social media sites, not to enforce censorship but to prevent it. When these companies grow to a certain size, they should be considered a "public space" and forced to offer their services indiscriminately... just like many other services are. And to be clear, in my country "indiscriminately" by law doesn't just mean race or gender or religion, it also applies to political conviction.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
SJW activist were seen and screenshotted to be talking about joining the youtube heroes program and the moderation contractors to purposely only take down anti-conservative content and let absolutely anything liberal through, even massively perverted gay and trans content. This is NO ACCIDENT.