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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."
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!
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.
Which is FUCKING HILARIOUS.
Because someone DID JUST THAT.
Voat.
And you know what happened? They got DDoS'd for weeks (if not months). And when THAT didn't stop it? They posted child porn, and then called their ISP and said "Look, you're hosting a child porn website."
Yeah. All of those people who say "Start your own" are straight up liars. They don't want you to move... they want to "deplatform" you. A literal term, coined by the left. Once the PLATFORM changes? _They go after the next platform._
They don't even hide it anymore. Look at this one. Where they want their readers to harass any company that supports the NRA, and keep a constant update of who is still holding out, and who has collapsed:
https://thinkprogress.org/corp...