Slashdot Mirror
YouTube Will Add Information From Wikipedia To Videos About Conspiracies (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: YouTube will add information from Wikipedia to videos about popular conspiracy theories to provide alternative viewpoints on controversial subjects, its CEO said today. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said that these text boxes, which the company is calling "information cues," would begin appearing on conspiracy-related videos within the next couple of weeks. Wojcicki, who spoke Tuesday evening at a panel at the South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, showed examples of information cues for videos about the moon landing and chemtrails. "When there are videos that are focused around something that's a conspiracy -- and we're using a list of well-known internet conspiracies from Wikipedia -- then we will show a companion unit of information from Wikipedia showing that here is information about the event," Wojcicki said. The information cues that Wojcicki demonstrated appeared directly below the video as a short block of text, with a link to Wikipedia for more information. Wikipedia -- a crowdsourced encyclopedia written by volunteers -- is an imperfect source of information, one which most college students are still forbidden from citing in their papers. But it generally provides a more neutral, empirical approach to understanding conspiracies than the more sensationalist videos that appear on YouTube.
There is something called the Backfire Effect. In short, the more factual information you give to someone pointing how/where they're wrong, the more strident in their viewpoint they become.
The media has always been biased, but biased news isn't the same as fake news. The American media, through the printed word, wasn't exactly favorable toward their rules in Great Britain, and the British didn't exactly like the satirical coverage they received. They sought to restrict the freedom of American newspapers to publish stories that were unfavorable to them. That's why the first amendment guarantees the freedom of the press. No doubt the American media was biased against the British government, but that's not the same as fake news. Even a completely satirical publication like The Onion isn't fake news because it clearly discloses that it's satire. Journalistic errors also aren't fake news, provided that retractions are issued when the errors are brought to the attention of those responsible. Fake news is when fiction is presented as real news for the purpose of deceiving people. The term "fake news" has become incredibly overused and abused, just as your post is doing.
Speaking of countering extreme or harmful posts, I'd love to see Slashdot implement better measures to reduce the garbage that gets posted here. They've had millions of comments that have been moderated up or down, so it should be possible to analyze that database and find predictors of comments (like the parent) that have a very high probability of ending up at -1. These comments could then be automatically rejected or flagged for editor review before being displayed. It wouldn't get rid of all trolling, and that really shouldn't be the goal. But it could curtail the most egregious forms of spam including some of the racist and conspiracy comments like the Qanon nonsense that gets posted sometimes. YouTube has a much bigger challenge in analyzing the content of videos, but the relatively simplistic natural language processing required to filter the most harmful of comments should be relatively simple to implement.
this affects a lot of "science" subjects. e.g. climate and medicine
You could even call WP a regular pharma ho' or sock puppet.
You know what...no. Every single thing you hold dear is a contentious issue if the audience is wide enough.
Freedom of religion is a contentious issue. In America we have it. In Iran they don't.
Free and fair elections are a contentious issue. In much of the west we have them, in much of the rest of the world they don't and they make a point of touting it as a superior alternative to ours...and some people here quietly agree.
Same thing for blind justice, property rights, the right to operate an automobile, plastic bags in grocery stores. All of is a contentious issue.
So unless you plan fact-check every video for any expression of an opinion or advocacy of a contentious issue, you shouldn't do it at all.
If a Christian theologian were to put a video of his sermon, would you want little atheist factboxes popping up around it? Maybe you would, but you can't expect him to stay on the platform if it's going to go at his content with a thousand little pinpricks.
If an atheist like Richard Dawkins puts up a lecture of his, is it sensible for little factboxes of REPENT SINNERS to pop up there?
Be serious dude. You're either responsible for policing all of the content on your platform or you're responsible for none of it. There's very little ground in the middle.
I'd love to see the reaction to the little factbox stating "there are only two genders". This whole experiment would get pulled pretty quick if it was equally applied.
A few years ago Wikipedia saved me from believing all these monstrous conspiracy theories about Jimmy Saville being some prolific peodo or something.
I'm sure it will do an excellent job in protecting the fragile masses from any other conspiracy theory today.
that a silicon valley outfit will flag the Trump-Russia stuff as a conspiracy theory?
yeah... didn't think so.
This is likely to be a replay of the garbage already playing out at Google which uses whacko places like the SPLC to flag "hate" and snopes and politifact to "fact check". In other words, progressives will flag everything and everyone they HATE as a conspiracy, or "hate speech" or false, while leaving even the most dishonest bile-filled hate fountains of the left to go unchecked or unflagged, since as everybody knows progressives are always good and truthful and loving even while they are flinging explitives and lying and demanding everybody they disagree with must die.
I want to see a huuuuge disclaimer on these looney SJWs' videos stating there are only 2 genders and thinking otherwise is a mental illness.
First of all, one man's racism is not another's differing viewpoint. Racism is really just racism, it's a pretty well-defined notion. Nobody is expected to or even should be tolerant towards intolerant people. Read Sir Karl Poppers "The Open Society and Its Enemies", that might enlighten you.
Second and way more importantly, this is not about racism or political opinions, this is about getting rid of obvious off-topic troll posts. This thread is not about whether Hillary Clinton is a member of the KKK, and the people who post this useless drivel can just go fuck off - permban them, shadow-ban them, delete their posts. I'm personally fine leaving all kinds of KKK posts in a thread about "Hillary Clinton is a member of KKK".
These off-topic posts are designed to derail discussions. Ban those assholes, it's as simple as that.
Wrong, people mentioning issues with outsourcing major projects to India or wanting to discuss demographics of inner city crime have been called racist. It is often a smoke screen raised to prevent rational discussion, a label thrown when no substantial argument exists.
Racism is really just racism, it's a pretty well-defined notion.
Not in a today's SJW-infested world. For example, opposition to illegal immigration often portrayed as racism. So definition is anything but clear, and I can guarantee that my definition is quite different from AmiMoJo's.