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YouTube Executives Ignored Warnings, Letting Toxic Videos Run Rampant (bloomberg.com)
Proposals to change recommendations and curb conspiracies on YouTube were sacrificed for engagement, Bloomberg reported Monday, citing Google employees. From the report: In recent years, scores of people inside YouTube and Google, its owner, raised concerns about the mass of false, incendiary and toxic content that the world's largest video site surfaced and spread. One employee wanted to flag troubling videos, which fell just short of the hate speech rules, and stop recommending them to viewers. Another wanted to track these videos in a spreadsheet to chart their popularity. A third, fretful of the spread of "alt-right" video bloggers, created an internal vertical that showed just how popular they were. Each time they got the same basic response: Don't rock the boat.
The company spent years chasing one business goal above others: "Engagement," a measure of the views, time spent and interactions with online videos. Conversations with over twenty people who work at, or recently left, YouTube reveal a corporate leadership unable or unwilling to act on these internal alarms for fear of throttling engagement. Wojcicki would "never put her fingers on the scale," said one person who worked for her. "Her view was, 'My job is to run the company, not deal with this.'"
The company spent years chasing one business goal above others: "Engagement," a measure of the views, time spent and interactions with online videos. Conversations with over twenty people who work at, or recently left, YouTube reveal a corporate leadership unable or unwilling to act on these internal alarms for fear of throttling engagement. Wojcicki would "never put her fingers on the scale," said one person who worked for her. "Her view was, 'My job is to run the company, not deal with this.'"
Beheading videos from the worldview that must not be named, of course, are fine.
Videos talking (negatively) about beheading videos and the culture that makes them, however, are "alt right" and we can't tolerate that.
Even if this was a good idea at all, i don't think youtube can even find the massive number of social justice advocates that checking every video posted would require, or build the social justice skynet able to perfectly understand the "context" and "dog whistles" and catch every video.
I can't say I've done a comprehensive enough study of the art of shit posting, but I know it when it see it.
That said, a YouTuber who goes by Shaun has done a pretty good job of calmly and rationally calling out the current crop of shit posters. Here's a good example. He's got plenty more.
For a good explanation of why this kind of shit posting is a problem see Noncompete's video here. The TL;DR; is that is a radicalization pipeline.
As for me, most of these YouTube agitators can be traced back to right wing think tanks like the ones run by the Kock brothers. The reason you're seeing them explode isn't just YouTube ignoring them, it's because they're going to conventions run by those think tanks where they're being taught how to grow and control a large audience. Seriously, pay attention to the venues and trips guys like Sargon of Arkad and Ben Shapiro attend. They're getting a huge amount of extremely valuable advice and training at the larger of those events. This isn't the help and advice you get from a grass roots org like "Justice Democrats". These are decades old professional PR firms that exit to push a right wing agenda.
These guys are basically propaganda for billionaires. They're not just shit posting, they're pushing a very specific right wing, pro-corporate agenda (low taxes, low regulation, anti-Union, etc). Spend a bit of time on the YouTube channels I linked above and you can confirm this for yourself.
What I'm saying is this: These guys are not your friends and they're not just randos on the net. There is a very specific purpose behind them. I just wish more folks were aware of it. I don't think they'd like it if they knew.
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The network of white nationalist radicalization on Youtube is well documented by actual researchers:
https://datasociety.net/output/alternative-influence/
Each year more and more white males are radicalized into violent reactionary ideologies by a network of insidiously low-key conspiracy theory channels such as Sargon of Akkad, Matt Christiansen and Stefan Molyneux, they actively promote white supremacy and hatred of Muslims, LGBT+ and women. Not to mention, the single most subscribed youtuber, PewDiePie, is openly a neo-nazi that has urged his viewers to "kill all Jews" and frequently makes videos while wearing nazi uniforms. In the wake of the Christchurch shooting, these pseudo-intellectual racists and memelords now have a body count directly associated with them, the time for excuses is over, they have to be taken down NOW.
The truth is that Internet reactionaries are a disease that must be expunged urgently and by any means necessary before they convince more white males to commit mass murder.
Oh, society can "take" the edgelords in stride, alright. It strides right over them. Historically, it's been done on a regular basis. It was done in the 1940s, and again to the KKK in the 1960s. And now it's your turn in the barrel.
Society interprets hateful edgelords as damage and routes around them.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Meh, conservatives and nationalists are just pissed off that the world is no longer their exclusive 'safe space' and that they are no longer free to indoctrinate however they see fit with no competition. Isn't it funny how they tend to accuse 'marxists' of doing exactly what they want to do and are upset at resistance?
Uh... everytime they do a food for the homeless drive? Everytime they're organizing in support of unpaid/wrongfully treated workers? Everytime I've seen them protest? You need to turn off the computer and meet with real people face to face, they won't bite you.
And that ignoratio elenchi you're peddling?
Well, ready or not, open wide...
First of all, setting the argument as if it is about the "value of the victim" clearly shows that you are scum.
That you're also setting that up as a strawman shows also signs of mental retardation and sociopathy.
You think that you are smarter than the average bear, but you're actually so pathetic that you don't even realize how epic your dumbness and ignorance truly are.
See... the actual issue is with the severity of the crime due to its premeditated nature (there are no accidental hate crimes) AND the presented lack of remorse.
You don't shoot up a synagogue, a mosque, a church, a gay wedding, an abortion clinic etc. due to a momentary lapse of reason - you do it because you believe such an act to be morally RIGHT.
That is why people who commit hate crimes deserve a harsher sentence. It has nothing to do with the "value of the victim".
But thanks for pointing out to everyone that YOU believe it to be so.
I.e. That lives of some people ARE inherently "more valuable" - and that said value revolves around hate crime issues.
Like race, religion, sex, ethnicity etc.
Oh and that's not a real cock I just showed down your throat. It's a catheter for artificially inseminating swine.
Only been used once.
On your mom.
As for motive determining guilt or innocence... Do you even language motherfucker?
motive
noun: motive; plural noun: motives
1.
a reason for doing something.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
You are confusing a defunct authoritarian regime with modern, peaceful communists.
We are not confusing the modern alt-right with Nazis, they are the same thing and actively committing terror attacks in the US right now.
rsilvergun is right, there is no equivalence at all.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC