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?"

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:Make America Gullible Again

[jettoblack]

Think of it like herd immunity for vaccines. As much as I love the internet, it broke through all of the barriers that used to protect us from the spread fake news, and society hasn't yet figured out how to fix it.

There have always been lots of crazy people spread throughout society, but before the internet, your social interactions were limited to your local community groups. If you didn't want to be ostracized, you had to at least pretend to blend in with local norms. Your choice of media were limited to things like TV, radio, and newspapers which had to appeal to a geographic market rather than a particular bias or viewpoint. These factors acted like herd immunity, protecting these vulnerable crazy people and helping to contain fake news before it could spread.

Enter the internet. Every crazy and/or dishonest person can now make a direct connection with millions of vulnerable people without geographic, political, or financial barriers. Media outlets can now specialize in highly tailored viewpoints without any consideration for geographic appeal, and have to constantly out-extreme each other to maintain a shrinking slice of viewers. Instead of local social groups helping to contain the spread of misinformation, we now have a positive re-enforcement cycle: the bolder and crazier your fake news, the bigger your audience of gullible people eager to consume more and more outlandish ideas, and the faster it spreads. It's like a virus spreading rapidly through a population that lacks natural immunity.

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:Dear moron plastic-eater Luckyo

[DaHat]

I would expect such a law would require equal treatment under the 'policies' in place, as well as an abolishment of 'hate speech' rules.

Over the weekend we saw a prominent youtuber kicked off Patreon for having used a racial slur when mocking the alt-right, on a video from 10 months ago, that was on someone elses channel and was never posted to Patreon.

They week before they kicked someone off because of a *previous* association with a group which a third party has labeled a 'hate group'.

Conversely, they apparently had no problem with a popular left-leaning podcast telling viewers/listeners (rather emphatically) to kill themselves and those around them... which was posted to the site.

Up until recently a 'journalist' on the site was quite up front that they were not only seeking to start a (non political revolution, and mentioned the use of firearms to achieve it (since edited).