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.
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.
They see and hear what you watch, then they use that information for deep web research to sell.
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?
"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?"
... they should just stop trying to be the gatekeepers on speech, and let ideas live and die on their merits.
Where thousands of Architects and Engineers study the event and find that science simply does not support the claims nor evidence being made in the official conspiracy theory?
Yeah - this is going to work..
Plenty of Ancient Alien's episodes on YouTube, which come from the History Channel (which is usually legit).
Where would they go? They seem popular enough to run for 13 seasons.
Those are just innocent conspiracy theories? Ever stop to think about the racism of them? Suggesting that PoC wouldn't have been able to build the pyramids and other ancient structures on their own... but only with the help of aliens was it possible.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
"Dear moron Luckyo, you don't have a 1st amendment case vs. Youtube for kicking your nazi conspiracy faggot shit off their platform, they owe you nothing, idiot. Sincerely - reality."
What is bugging the hell out of the mainstream media and the companies that own and operate aforementioned media is hard-truth Youtube channels like ACFAU ("A Call For An Uprising") which uncover all sorts of craaazy-nasty stuff about Hollywood, TV producers, music artists and more that are not supposed to be known or discussed. There are "conspiracy" videos about pop stars like Beyonce and Jay-Z that easily reach 4 - 5 million views. A lot of people are beginning to realize that we do live in a very elaborately constructed media-matrix, and that the truth behind the people who control said matrix is, to put it bluntly, horrible. So no, Google should NOT censor Youtube.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
Then: "Holy shit, the NSA is reading everything! Start encrypting more!"
Now: "The NSA is reading everything? Ridiculous! Another stupid conspiracy theory, bury it."
AC attacks non-AC Slashdot user on Slashdot. Nobody knows who AC is. News at 11.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
Only Approved Conspiracy theories, like Hillary clinton would have won 100% of the vote
Funny, I get a lot of political news and I've never even heard that. Maybe you ought to check your subscriptions.
Counterpoint: Fuck youtube. The sooner the rest of everyone from the conspiracy circles stops using it, the better. It is only a matter of time before a full suite of "alternative" platforms is built. And, the faster the mainstream platforms ruin their user trust, the better.
The problem is that YouTube wants to be the arbitrator of truth rather than let the community handle it. Add a link to videos that simply says "upload a response" and when someone uploads a video, that video is linked to under the original video and the video being responded to is linked on the response page. The community can then vote on the original and response so that garbage responses are voted down and good responses have a chance to be voted up.
YouTube wants to rule by tyranny rather than by encouraging dialog.
Work Safe Porn
When a search brand wants to publish its own news under it sown brand then it can keep its own staff to its own politics.
Let the rest of the internet publish what it wants and show "search" results for the users who expect to find content.
Censorship is not a result users want to pay for with ads.
Censorship opens the marketplace to competition who can actually "search" the internet without the constant party political removal of results.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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.
Table-ized A.I.
Except that the specific Youtube channel I pointed to has a narrator who is about 100 IQ points above you, dear anonymous coward. You keep watching your CNN...
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
PIzzagate is absolutely real. I have no idea if it involves pizza, kiddies, or a specific pizza parlor. But you can go and read the damned emails yourself.
They're clearly doing illegal, clandestine shit and using codewords for it all.
Yes, please. get rid of those fucking flat-earthers and moon landing hoaxers. Seriously, they are not just people with "differing viewpoints". They are a concerted, well organized plague of trolls and con-artists who's goal if solely to flood every single channel about science, astronomy, space-exploration, etc, to infuriate people and direct them to their innane and pathetic videos, in order to generate views and ad revenue.
They are a disease, a cancer of youtube.
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.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
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?
Show me on the 1st Amendment bobblehead where the moderator touched you...
The third sex is "troll". The key questions are not about biology, but about whether the gov't should regulate and divide by gender. Conservatives say they don't like regulation, but they sure like regulating wankers. Looks like hypocrisy to me.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Why bother with an investigation?
You would just argue with the results and claim there was a cover-up if the results didn't fit your paranoid fantasy. You don't want information, you want affirmation.
Your baseless claims are interesting when one considers that Donnie Two Scoops was a Democrat for decades, including the years when Clinton was a NY Senator...
Did his predatory instincts go away when he jumped the aisle?
Wouldn't it be great if giant sh1t eating pieces of garbage AC's couldn't comment on posts from actual Slashdot users? Yeah, it would.
Those aren't "Approved Conspiracy theories". They're just a bunch of straw men you invented to represent everyone who pisses you off.
Happy people make bad consumers.
During his testimony on Tuesday before the House Judiciary Committee [...] Pichai replied that he was "not aware of the specifics about it."
How does a CEO of a company worth almost a trillion dollars go into a high profile meeting with the US House Judiciary Committee and _not_ already know about the things they're likely to ask about?
Maybe Pichai is in too much of a billionaire bubble to know about it directly, but he has people that ought to have informed him about probable topics long before the meeting itself. The implication is that either no one in the company is actually aware of what YouTube is recommending to people, no one in the company is willing to pass word up the chain of command if YouTube is recommending videos that should be reviewed, or someone in that chain of command believes that it doesn't matter what content YouTube is promoting as long as it gets them more views and thus gets them more ad revenue.
All three possibilities are disturbing and slightly scary, but i'd easily believe that any of them are true, especially that last one.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
As other commenters have said, only the approved "conspiracy theories" will be allowed.
Be nice if we saw more of the obvious facts such as the profits from stock speculation on 9/11 (on the airlines involved, and businesses residing in the WTC Twin Towers) went into an account with investment firm, Alex. Brown and Sons, a subsidiary of the Deutsche Bank, and that an inactive partner with Alex. Brown was CIA executive director, Buzz Krongard, whose wife was a partner with Apollo Asset Management which owned EurekaGGN, a fiber optics cabling company, which had just installed dark (still inactive) fiber optic cabling in the top 20 to 40 stories of the WTC's Twin Towers, and that aboard Flight 77 was a physicist with the Naval Surface Warfare Center who had previously worked on a research project about destroying building by injecting nanothermite into fiber optics cabling, then triggering it with a single laser pulse. Sadly, that physicist died aboard Flight 77, which crashed into the west wall of the Pentagon, killing almost all the auditors of the DIA's Financial Management Group who had recently discovered that $2.3 trillion in funds were missing from the DoD.
With several months, the asset values of hedge funds would double from $2 trillion to $4 trillion and we know after the fact that the stock speculation on those 9/11 business took place on the investment firm computer systems located in the Twin Towers. Now would facts like this be allowed???
https://www.foreignpolicyjourn...
Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy added, "[T]he Free World depends on a free Internet. “. Too bad in practice they gleefully watched Ajit Pai crush that notion while they lined their pockets with $101M Big Telco Payola ( https://www.theverge.com/2017/... ).
Further, Republican Rep. Lamar Smith cited a debunked study ( https://www.politifact.com/tru... ) to claim Google provides biased results for searches about President Donald Trump. Smith accused Google of having a liberal bias "programmed into the company's culture."
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.
-Styopa
I don't think it has anything to do with race, but the fact that nobody but them were able to accomplish such a feat in that time period. I guess for some it is easier to believe that aliens helped primitive man, than that primitive man was more intelligent than we give him credit for. It's interesting that you brought race into it though, since the Egyptians had white slaves (although this was long before the pyramids were built).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The people tricking you are not children, buddy. They do it in a very smart, very cold and very calculated fashion. Again, keep watching mainstream stuff and you'll continue to think the world is all flowers and white unicorns.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
Basically it's another excuse to label anything against the company's ideological bent as "conspiracy".
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Trump-Russia collusion is 100% a conspiracy theory. It's complete nonsense.
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.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
The Pirate Bay is over 15 years old and still going strong.
What the freeze peach crowd really want is to be promoted on the popular platforms. Some want the money, some want the exposure.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I looked at ACFAU... It's all just clickbait and Illuminati nonsense. They really love ALL CAPS. Is this really your idea of "hard truth"?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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...).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
https://www.gocomics.com/pearl...
This explains everything.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Yes it has. The Republicans aren't interfering in the least in his use of illegal immigrants for slave labour.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I should be believed because I'm so right, that one of the people who was wrong is butthurt enough to stalk me on slashdot obviously.
Central/south Americans & Egyptians... not exactly white folks, long ago built great structures... yet the Europeans didn't. Apparently the ancient aliens didn't like them?
I brought race into it to demonstrate the silliness of more 'popular' conspiracy theories, which are apparently ok. After all, what's the point of conspiracy theories if you don't make em extra crazy?
Unrelated, if you are referring to the Hebrew slaves, be careful who you say that to, as anyone on the alt-right will talk at length about how Jewish people aren't actually white. They can never quite explain how they will achieve their ethno-state and be successful keeping out Jewish people, when they can so easily blend in.
Granted, the alt-right are kind of like communists, they believe that a wave of a magic fairy wand will achieve their end goal.
Slashdot users learn to change the subject instead of handing gutter trash their karma bonus. That sure would be great.
not all of them, but the Evangelicals are.
I'm inclined to think it has less to do with religion and more to do with the ruling class wanting to keep a lid on the working class. Too much education and critical thinking will get folks to start demanding better pay and working conditions.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Where would they go?
You're right of course, and the idea of a separate YouTubeNutter site misses the point. This is not a question of where 'Ancient Aliens' or any conspiracy theory or other extremist material should go, it's not immediately a question of what should be censored or banned, it's a question of Google cleaning up its act as to the content it actively recommends.
The current recommendation algorithms are calculated to throw up low quality, outright false, and extremist content. Promoting factual and quality information automatically is hard, after all sorting facts from bullshit is difficult enough for greater than 2/3rds of humanity. The "wisdom of the crowd" doesn't seem to be working too well here.
Do you support Net Neutrality?
If you go in for all that "human breed" stuff (IMHO we're all "Human" race), Egyptians are considered "white"....so are Jews. Whatever, I don't care how much melanin is in your skin.
I'm pretty sure YouTube has taken the exact opposite route. You know how so many YouTube creators encourage you to leave comments ("Tell us what you think" at the end of videos)? The ubiquity of such encouragements lead me to think they've been coached to do that, like at CreatorFest or something.
Except the servers have been wiped with a clothe!
Isn't it a bit self serving that a politician would be advocating for a private company to censor content which makes his type look worse?
Caution: Contents under pressure
One can know a man but his enemies. If the faggottroll farm is stalking you, you must have said _something_ that was true.
"freeze peach"
As one who holds and loudly expresses extremist views that are considered deplorable by the vast majority of your countrymen, I'm surprised you hold in such low regard the freedom that allows you to express those views.
LOL extremist views. Like what? My views are to the left but fairly mainstream around here.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I do. But what does it have to do with this issue?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
...until it hurts your ideological affiliation so much that becomes one of the factors causing Democrats white house.
Organizing protests and opposition via Facebook ok .... until they are organized against politically correct tax burden in France or organized voting in aforementioned spectacular defeat.
I can easily see the future without Web 2.0, without no user generated content at all.
When it was limited in 1980s to academics only, it was tolerable, because users were intellectual elite of society.
Now Web 2.0 is just a circlejerk of the entropically dominating dark matter.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
As long as they also ban all UFO conspiracy theories, flat earth theories, and Kardashian and other celebrity theories, I'm OK with this. But I'll bet the idiots that love to spread these around, including magazines like Us and People, won't put up with it.
I'm just wondering who gets to decide if it's a conspiracy theory or not.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Some people just seem to have a chip on their shoulder all the time looking for anything that could possibly appear to hint that racism is involved. No, nobody ever said it was PoCs. The inference is that HUMANS didn't have the technology back then. Sheesh.
Just another day in Paradise
They aren't suggesting that the reason they would have been unable to do it is their skin color you dotard.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Any woman who went through what you claim would *never* have a boyfriend. Methinks the sick fuck is you.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Some plastics are, and in fact McDonald's shakes have, or at least one time had, such plastic in them.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
More, Africa and South America were less affected by the Greenland Crater they discovered last month. The one that was likely a mile-wide iron asteroid that reset human society back to the stone age.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I have no idea how this got modded up. The conspiracy theories that everybody is concerned about involve specific people or places and are presented in ways that encourage believers to engage in extra-judicial remedies. Even if Russian interference in the election turns out not to exist, I've yet to see it presented in a way that encourages people to go commit random acts of violence against any ethnic Russian that they happen to encounter. Saying "it's all men's fault" is silly in many cases, but it's only silly. Encouraging violence against men would be problematic. Whenever there is a "call to action" that includes responding with violence (even if it is somewhat of a dog whistle), we then have a problem. It's doubly problematic when leveled against a particular person or establishment.
and you can get around the paywall. They don't go out of their way to enforce it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
outrage culture. Like right wing SJWs. It's folks using outrage of any kind to get Youtube views, ad-clicks and Pateron donations.
There's a youtuber named "Cult of Dusty" that does a good job calling people out on this. He made the point that there's only so many blue haired college chicks saying crazy anti-man crap out there, so that we're getting increasingly crazy attacks on things that are "SJW" and the like. The left wing SJWs for their part are often happy to join in on the circle jerk of clicks and Pateron donations, though I don't think they do as well as the right wing guys.
It's all crap to distract you and me from economic issues like healthcare, low and declining wages, expensive college and are general declining standard of living. If you're engaging in it yourself stop it. It's a mean, nasty thing to do. If you've falling in with the anti-SJW crowd get yourself out and start focusing on real, substantive economic policy instead.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Being a member of the Illuminati and the Knights Templar...
the dividing line is pretty clear. As soon as you call for violence, either directly or in the classic "Won't someone rid me of this meddlesome priest" way then blamo, out you go. At least as far as deplatforming goes. If you take it far enough you'll face criminal charges (just like that kid who kept swatting did) though if you keep a modest lid on it you can at least still get a web site hosted, much like Alex Jones does.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Fuck off. If youre against people making comments and voicing their opinion why the fuck are you here
What is bugging the hell out of the mainstream media.
The rich and upper class don't like the peasants like us to have access to information not approved by corproate pravda, see here, former national security advisor of the united states... we are the 'central global menace' he's talking about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Zbig:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
1. What exactly is an "assclown"?
2. What happened to the "drink!" guy? I miss that AC.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
> 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.
.. in Switzerland or couple dozen other countries that don't give a shit about it.
There are more torrent sites now than ever in history of internet, and more people are "pirating" than ever.
You just need to host them outside the authoritarian reach (US/EU), say
There is some evidence that there was an earlier tool using civilization that got wiped out when the Greenland meteor hit. Primarily in Northern Africa, but also around the world. The inventors of the Pyramid seemed to have had, at one time, a global culture- and methods of cutting stone that we still cannot replicate to this day.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I'm so tired of all these people being able to say things I don't approve of! Cen-sor-ship! Cen-sor-ship!