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YouTube Says Computers Helped It Pull Down Millions of Objectionable Videos Last Quarter (recode.net)

YouTube says it has successfully trained computers to flag objectionable videos. In the last quarter of 2017, the company reportedly pulled down more than six million of these videos before any users saw them. The news comes from a brief aside in Google CEO Sundar Pichai's scripted remarks during parent company Alphabet's earnings call today. "He said YouTube had pulled down more than six million videos in the last quarter of 2017 after first being flagged by its 'machine systems,' and that 75 percent of those videos 'were removed before receiving a single view,'" reports Recode.

13 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. How many of them were false positives? by Lordpidey · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I remember not too long ago that a LOT of people were wondering why the hell their videos were banned, with something as innocuous as just a TF2 match.

    AI is not good enough for detecting hate speech yet.

    --
    Some people encrypt by using rot-13 twice. I prefer the more secure method of using rot-1 a total of twenty six times.
    1. Re:How many of them were false positives? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's likely not that much.

      It's also fairly obvious that that number is inflated. If objectional videos were really being pulled down, ALL of Alex Jones infowars content would never show up.

      Rather "objectionable" , includes reaction videos and uploads/re-uploads of television footage that was live not to long ago, before ContentID gets to it. If they have successfully trained AI to be able to tell the difference between a video game and live footage, that would be an amazing breakthrough. That said, most of what is "easy" to block objectionable content is by having the auto-subtitle system pick up violent language.

    2. Re:How many of them were false positives? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Hate speech".

      I bet you would have been the type to have called the Founding Fathers hate speeches for their anti-British stance back in the day. I understand Youtube is a private company with no reason to uphold anybody's free speech, and that I don't mind... but people like you would give it away that right wholesale without a fight everywhere and help barricade any companies who do want to provide it, and then wonder why in 20 years down the road the ruling political elites have no fear not representing any of your interests.

      AI is certainly already good enough at replacing your shilling with their own.

    3. Re: How many of them were false positives? by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 5, Insightful

      When you silence a man, you only show that you fear what he has to say.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  2. They do stupid shit so you don't have to. by technosaurus · · Score: 4, Informative

    Many of the real world science shows get shut down by this crap: King of Random, Cody's Lab, Demolition Ranch to name a few. One of Cody's takedowns was how to make (low quality) gunpowder over the course of a year using your urine. Who can keep up with their terms of use anyhow. Too bad Youtube doesn't spend as much effort on the UI (try and search the comments sometime).

  3. Re:Who Judges?? by BlueStrat · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So, if Google/YouTube had some point of view, or points of view, that they wished to either promote or demote... how do we know if they are protecting us or harming us? I do data science sorts of things as part of my job. I know that very, very minor tweaks to algorithms provide quite different results.

    Well, as long as they haven't nuked my '80s retro videos, then I'm good. Ah, Leah!

    It's quite possible now to place individuals and groups into internet "algorithm ghettos". Like the Nazis did to Jews in Poland by crowding them into a section of the city and erecting tall walls both to prevent escape and so the people outside the walls didn't see what went on inside, companies like Google, Facebook, and others can place individuals and groups into a digital algorithm ghetto where what they can access is controlled & filtered and what they publish/post/send can be filtered or blocked such that you'd have no way to tell nobody could actually see what you uploaded even to your own website, especially with a well-trained AI tasked with the job. If you call a friend to ask them to verify it the AI will know who you know and listen/monitor the call/message and make it visible to him so you remain unaware that the greater web doesn't know you exist.

    This is an extremely dangerous time where how we react or don't right now to control these technologies and the governments and corporations that use them will have very serious and long-lasting consequences for many generations to come around the world.

    Strat

    --
    Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
  4. Re: Who Judges?? by Reverend+Green · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The answer is obvious: Big Brother Google loves us all. If Google wants to enserf us, it's *for our own good*.

  5. Re:AI by stephanruby · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You may have been downsized because of this, but don't believe all the hype. AI only helps partially. Youtube still needs human reviewers (even if they're unwilling to pay them).

    Remember what prompted the advertiser pullouts last year, youtube was still incapable of filtering very obvious unambiguous swear and racist language from the text subject lines and the text descriptions of its hosted videos. To me, that just means that they didn't care, and/or that they were unwilling to pay for that kind of manual sifting by actual human beings.

  6. googliness by Reverend+Green · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Capitalist stooges sure are proud of mass censorship.

    1. Re:googliness by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 3, Informative

      It would be nice if Google were a capitalist company. But no, they don't practice capitalism, they practice corporatism. Moreover they are super left wing, you can't even say that men and women are different without getting fired and blacklisted throughout the entire IT industry. They keep their own blacklists internally and continually police their workers for signs of thoughtcrime.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  7. Re:Not As Interesting by rtb61 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Typical major tech firm failure. That market dominance, rushes to their genitals and they have delusions of total power and promptly start pissing off their customers, only to build up hate and dissension and then wham, they start loosing customers in droves and simply can not get them back. Alta Vista, MYspace, MSN, Yahoo, Lotus Software, all the same end, market dominance, engorged genitals, no blood to the brain, ego dominates over common sense and customer resistance builds whilst arrogance and ego demands it be ignored, until it is too late.

    It looks like https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22s... (two for one, heh heh) are the new upcomers, that will dethrone the arrogant egoists. Maps will be the next target, as will Android or oddly enough Android might well fork in an odd way as Google try to force their own proprietary core.

    --
    Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  8. Town Square by forkfail · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The problem is that YouTube has become the town square for video.

    Sure, anyone is free to build their own. The problem is, though, that metaphorically speaking, the only land available is out near the town dump.

    When YouTube was assuming this role, they were far more benign to viewpoints that differed from their own. But now that they have a lock on internet video, they know they can control the content. They wrap it up in removing "objectionable" video - but they keep changing the standards of "objectionable". With disturbing increading frequency, "objectionable" is defined to include religious views held by people for thousands of years, exercise of constitutional rights, and advocacy for political positions and candidates that do not meet with the approval of the Alphabet ownership.

    --
    Check your premises.
  9. Re:Kinda defeats the purpose of youtube by Rockoon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This YouTube algorithm has a nasty habit of "flagging" conservatives. For example, recently it "flagged" a discussion between Dave Rubin and Thomas Sowell.

    Only Sowell is a conservative. The channel operator, Rubin, is a liberal (in spite of being called alt-right because he dares to also interview conservatives.)

    --
    "His name was James Damore."