Google CEO Admits Company Must Better Address the Spread of Conspiracy Theories on YouTube (techcrunch.com)

Google CEO Sundar Pichai admitted today that YouTube needs to do better in dealing with conspiracy content on its site that can lead to real-world violence. From a report: During his testimony on Tuesday before the House Judiciary Committee, the exec was questioned on how YouTube handles extremist content that promotes conspiracy theories like Pizzagate and, more recently, a Hillary Clinton-focused conspiracy theory dubbed Frazzledrip. According to an article in Monday's Washington Post, Frazzledrip is a variation on Pizzagate that began spreading on YouTube this spring. In a bizarre series of questions, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) asked Pichai if he knew what Frazzledrip was.

Pichai replied that he was "not aware of the specifics about it." Raskin went on to explain that the recommendation engine on YouTube has been suggesting videos that claim politicians, celebrities and other leading figures were "sexually abusing and consuming the remains of children, often in satanic rituals." He said these new conspiracist claims were echoing the discredited Pizzagate conspiracy, which two years ago led to a man firing shots into a Washington, D.C. pizzeria, in search of the children he believed were held as sex slaves by Democratic Party leaders.

Comments

Believe anything

[magarity]

that claim politicians, celebrities and other leading figures were "sexually abusing and consuming the remains of children, often in satanic rituals.

Seriously, if you think this is true then really isn't it a case of not getting your medication more than a problem with youtube?

Re:Believe anything

[RedK]

A few years ago, I would have been hard pressed to believe Allison Mack of Smallville fame would be 2nd in command of a sex trafficking operation.

Yet here we are.

Re:Believe anything

[bickerdyke]

The Pizzagate claims were so ridiculous, that trying to expose or disprove it would have made anyone who tried look like a nutter himself. It's like trying to disprove the claim that gravity stopped working last thirsday between 3 and 5 pm. Where would you start when you even can't find a single person who would recall such an event? And even mentioning that would just be switched over as evidence on how powerfull the cover-up has to be if "they" manage to delete everyone's memories....

Yes, people you would need their medication posting on youtube IS a problem. But neither stopping them from posting would be an solution, nor would trying to sensibly counter them be.

Even before the internet every village had the village idiot. But they were isoplated, everyone else knew to ignore him and most important: He couldn't team up with thousands of other village's village idiots for confirmation.

Wrong answer. Correct answer is

[Luckyo]

"Dear representative, surely you're not trying to apply pressure from position of governmental authority on me, the private entity in violation of my first amendment rights? Are you at all aware of the principles outlined in constitution, and why they were put there?"

Re:Wrong answer. Correct answer is

[Actually, I do RTFA]

"Dear representative, surely you're not trying to apply pressure from position of governmental authority on me, the private entity in violation of my first amendment rights? Are you at all aware of the principles outlined in constitution, and why they were put there?"

Leaving aside a needlessly combative tone, there are a lot of issues with that response that make it pretty dumb.

• There is no first amendment right to libel or slander, nor on inciting people to commit violent crimes
• Asking questions like "what is your company's policy on X" and "are you trying to prevent X" isn't a violation of the first amendment, even if X relates to speech.
• YouTube claims no editorial control over videos, and therefore it has no expression that would be infringed upon
• The "safe harbor" exemptions to copyright infringement enforcement that enable YouTube to function make Google's policy questions fair game

Re:Wrong answer. Correct answer is

[Actually, I do RTFA]

There is absolutely a First Amendment right to libel and slander!

Not according to the Supreme Court. For example, in NYT vs. Sullivan, the SC modified NY's libel laws because of the first amendment (demonstrating that just calling it a civil action doesn't remove it from the first amendment), but libel is still actionable (demonstrating that libel itself is not protected.) Prior restraint is a different issue, and could be used to prevent publication of a serious enough libel. But, in general, prior restraint has to be justified on a case-by-case basis.

ouTube consistently exercises editorial control over videos

I'd have to look it up, but algorithms promoting/demoting/demonetizing is not editorial control. And removing videos that violate the ToS isn't either. Again, according to the courts.

Or Perhaps...

[iCEBaLM]

... they should just stop trying to be the gatekeepers on speech, and let ideas live and die on their merits.

Re:Or Perhaps...

[Your.Master]

The only way to stop being the gatekeepers of speech here is to remove the search box and recommended links, and only allow people to subscribe to channels / watch videos that they can directly link to outside of their platform.

Re:Or Perhaps...

[lgw]

Google recommendations are pretty straightforward, though. If you watch X, they'll recommend what other people clicked on after watching X. It's a bit more subtle than that, but that's the essence. What you're complaining about is "clickbait works", which is a sad commentary on human nature more than anything else.

Snowden revelations, then and now

[russotto]

Then: "Holy shit, the NSA is reading everything! Start encrypting more!"

Now: "The NSA is reading everything? Ridiculous! Another stupid conspiracy theory, bury it."

Re:Snowden revelations, then and now

[Actually, I do RTFA]

This is pretty much to goal of the Kremlin-backed conspiracy theories. They know the truth about X is going to come out, but they just want 50 falsehoods about X for it to get lost in.

Re:Dear moron plastic-eater Luckyo

[DaHat]

Yet.

Like it or not, at some point many of these sites are going to be regulated under "privately owned public space" type laws, or perhaps even as utilities.

I'm not calling for it, it's just an obvious result of the degree of power these companies have over so much communication, and the arbitrary nature their policies are enforced.

Make America Gullible Again

[Tablizer]

Why don't they teach critical thinking in grade school? I don't understand why there are so many gullible people in the USA who want to stay that way. Maybe preachers are spreading it, and people believe their preacher because of family/town habit? I'm very uncomfortable sharing a country with so many idiots. Large quantities of such people are dangerous. They will get us poisoned, nuked, and/or locked up in Comcast Central Prison one of these days.

Re:Make America Gullible Again

[alvinrod]

If you think people could learn critical thinking by being taught in the appropriate manner, this wouldn't be a problem. Read up on the massive number of cognitive biases that humans exhibit and some of the other literature that suggests they're baked in to the hardware as it were (and may have been beneficial at the time from an evolutionary standpoint) and you'll realize that you're dealing with a much harder problem than just adding it to the school curriculum.

Re:Only Approved Conspiracy Theories Are Allowed

[dryriver]

Except of course that those "alternative" platforms will very quickly get shut down with brand new "hate speech" laws. Look what they did to everything from Torrent sites to emulated games sites.

Re:Probably just had the wrong pizza joint

[chiefcrash]

Notice the summary said "discredited" and not "disproven." Pizzagate was never investigated. Police never bothered looking into the claims. We have no idea what happened with it. It may be "discredited" in that the media claims it's false, but it's never been disproven because no one has ever seriously looked into it.

This is a bit like saying nobody has disproven my theory that you molest sea anemones by candlelight. After all, there's no evidence that it doesn't happen, and nobody has really investigated it...

Of course, there's no evidence that my theory is correct, or even enough evidence to launch an investigation, but let's not worry about that....

I have to ask though: why sea anemones?

Conspiracy theories?

[AHuxley]

Like Tiananmen Square https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Term limits in China?
Celebrities want their good movie reviews found and bad movie reviews banned?
Big brands want no results on their DRM efforts?
Repairing a computer is now a trade in counterfeit parts?
Time to help Spain with all results about anything to do with any Catalan declaration of independence.
Not find results about French protester?
Only find what a German government approves of politically?

Time for a real search engine again.
Removing content for the politics of NGO, nations, think tanks, European bureaucrats, faith groups, cults, celebrities will not result is a useful search product.
Users know what they enjoy search for. Provide that search service to the users and show them some ads. A search engine is not a publisher of content.

Re:Only Approved Conspiracy Theories Are Allowed

[Tyler Durden]

Those aren't "Approved Conspiracy theories". They're just a bunch of straw men you invented to represent everyone who pisses you off.

Maybe decide if you're a platform or a publisher?

[argStyopa]

If you're a platform, then you're just the delivery device.
Of course, you'd have to stop with the fucking editing, censoring everyone that doesn't follow your religion, stop trying evangelize your creed and just serve up videos.
Hint: 2018 rewind, where was your BIGGEST SUBSCRIBER youtuber Pewdiepie?

If you're a publisher, then understand the moment you start to pick winners and losers, when you put your finger on the scales (even if it's for a cause you really really believe in!) you are now RESPONSIBLE for the message.
IMO you should lose your section 230 exemption too, then. The EFF's position that Sec 230 allows basically any modding at all is hypocritical; they would certainly change the moment someone started to censor out EFF 'freedom' posts.

Re:Only Approved Conspiracy Theories Are Allowed

[dryriver]

I'm not talking about Terms Of Service. I'm talking about sweeping "hate speech laws" - such as those Emanuel Macron is pushing for - that could be used against anyone and anything and any kind of video of text based website for just about any arbitrary reason. The European Union loves this kind of stuff - what Atheist Progressive-Socialist Europeans express is ALWAYS "love speech", and anything that deviates from it is ALWAYS "hate speech that will bring about another Hitler invasion of Europe, make children cry, bla bla bla...". TOS is not the problem. Hard laws that can be ABUSED to shut down any and all alternatives to mainstream hot air news-analysis-make-believe is the problem. Calling something your opponent or adversary posits "hate speech" is the sneakiest and easiest way to avoid a real debate. Just press the HATE SPEECH GO AWAY BUTTON and everything is great again in your Atheist Progressive-Socialist European paradise.

That would be fine if that's how it worked

[rsilvergun]

in practice powerful propagandists prop up bad ideas all the time.

Put another way, there is no such thing as a "Free Marketplace of Ideas" anymore than there's a free marketplace anywhere or any time. In the absence of anti-trust laws you get robber barons, but I'd hardly call a regulated economy a "free marketplace".

So you make trade offs between protecting vulnerable groups and having freedom and innovation. Google's done an alright job so far. The only folks I've seen completely deplatformed ere the ones actively encouraging violence (and no, having your ad revenue go away isn't a deplatforming...).

Re:Only Approved Conspiracy Theories Are Allowed

[AmiMoJo]

It's easy to rant about this stuff in ALL CAPS, but do you have any specific criticisms of the rules that Macron is proposing, for example?