
YouTube Blacklist Censors Content Containing Certain Keywords - rhabarba
https://www.oneangrygamer.net/2019/08/youtube-blacklist-suppresses-content-containing-certain-keywords/90926/
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nzjrs
I'm continually surprised this isn't a major international scandal.

Some Americans don't like google interfering with their discourse and they
spend their time using constitutional arguments as to how ok that is or not.
International people watching these arguments look on with boredom.

Meanwhile, and american company per default explicitly shapes the dialog of
the entire world and people shrug.

The international angle on this is absolutely scandalous and no one cares.
Every international government acknowledges the problems of the great firewall
of China, but this doesn't matter?

~~~
iagovar
It is concerning. I've seen spanish keywords there and I can't wrap my head
around the reason they are filtered.

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jeromic
Imagine if humans weren't born with biological mouths, instead synthetic
mouths were invented and sold by a company, allowing people to speak. We
wouldn't accept the company installing a blacklist of words or phrases to stop
people from saying them.

The internet is making online discourse more and more important, perhaps
online discourse is already more important than oral discourse.

My metaphor obviously differs in some regards to the article, but I think it
elucidates my main point, that Google has become sufficiently large and
important that we can't really excuse this type of censorship on the basis
that they are a private company.

For example the list clearly shows that Google is pro-choice, with phrases
such as "abortion is wrong" appearing on the blacklist. This is not up to
Google to decide for others. If Google, or its employees, want to voice their
perspective, that is fine. It is not fine to try to manipulate people through
their software while pretending to be a neutral party.

~~~
maxheadroom
> _The internet is making online discourse more and more important, perhaps
> online discourse is already more important than oral discourse._

It's an Eternal September[0] problem, though, in the fact that any discourse
has effectively been quashed by setting up "us versus them" factions, yeah?

In our bubble (on HN), sure, we can have respectable (or maybe not so much)
discourse but we all come not holding our fingers in our ears, stamping our
feet because we think 'x' person is in 'y' camp.

You don't see the festering problems that have affected other platforms (yet)
and I think it's very telling that we recognise that discourse is important -
but we seem to be in the minority (in this sense of openness to exchange).

The problem with YouTube, however, is that discourse hasn't been a principle
part of YoutTube for quite some time. Someone makes a video. If we're lucky
someone else _might_ make a " _My Response To..._ " video and, if we're
luckier, a further response might be made, " _My Response to the Response
To..._ ".

However, all one needs to do is look at the cesspool that has become YouTube
comments and they will see that discourse isn't a fundamentally important
principle there (anymore).

The likewise goes with places like Reddit, which has divided itself into "us
versus them" camps about almost everything under the sun.

So, I agree that (online) discourse is important - but it seems to be a bygone
idea that a select few of us (present company included) are desperately trying
to hold on to.

I'm conflicted as to whether that should give me a feeling of hope or an
immense sadness.

[0] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)

~~~
nzjrs
You aren't wrong, but some of us have been here for 10 years or more. I have a
very different measure of the cost / benefit of the increase in churn of
online discourse as that which I would presume to find on YouTube

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im3w1l
What I find the most interesting about this saga is not the leak itself but
swat team and bomb squad that showed up at the leakers house during a
psychological wellness call made in connection with the leaking.

~~~
acollins1331
And they wonder why the people that need mental health help the most never get
it, and why we have such a growth in extremist violent events.

(Bonus:"They" don't actually wonder it. Extremist events are great excuses to
amass more power to the powerful).

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motohagiography
The most insidious thing social platforms do is secretly ban and filter
content to give the impression it is published when it is not. In any other
situation, de-ranking, "shadow banning," and other opaque filtering while
giving the impression of being public would be fraud. It's designed to steal
the posters time and effort. Their platform their rules, except it could
become difficult to justify using a platform to actively defraud people of
their time and effort. Attracting peoples content with the promise of
publicity only to sabotage it is straight bait and switch. I'm sure it's all
very narrowly legal, but post-election lawsuits in 2022 will be ones to watch.

I'm glad this stuff is coming out, but there are viable youtube alternatives
for sharing video. If they want stuff off their platform, just say so, and
people will use new platforms.

I still believe this behaviour by social media companies will yield new
platforms. The kids learning to code now are realizing there is a network of
people using "censorship," to actively manage a simulation of a world with a
manufactured consensus they find acceptable. We're barely a decade past the
winner-take-all pattern of platforms, and a totally new dominant platform is
less than 5 years away. I'm still optimistic that these platforms are the AOL,
Compuserve, and Myspace of today.

This too shall pass.

~~~
krapp
>Attracting peoples content with the promise of publicity only to sabotage it
is straight bait and switch. I'm sure it's all very narrowly legal, but post-
election lawsuits in 2022 will be ones to watch.

Youtube doesn't promise anyone publicity. Any ranking algorithm or suggested
content list by its very design "deranks" everything else, and most content on
the platform is probably never watched, or barely watched.

Youtube's current default of biasing recommendations towards extremist content
"deranks" less extremist content, yet that doesn't appear to be a problem for
people who are suddenly up in arms that the site is changing the bias of an
already biased system.

There is no bait-and-switch here, nor is there sabotage.

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romaaeterna
Warren Buffett has mentioned the irony of the fact that the internet took us
from a world with thousands of successful money-making newspapers to a world
with just two that are likely to be around for long (WSJ, NYT).

And Youtube appears to be taking over in the broadcast TV world.

Youtube has to have content controls. But it's unconscionable that these
controls are not open source, not created through a public process, not
auditable, nor appeallable.

It would be so easy to do this in an open and positive way, and Google has
decided to do it on the cheap in an ugly, biased, and destructive way, one
that is harming their brand and creating regulatory scrutiny.

~~~
RickJWagner
Yes, open sourcing it would be best.

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acollins1331
You're not treating them like they are truth. You're a video hosting site and
it's a video. Just let the videos rank how they will. Stupid videos being
promoted and trending will let more people know they are stupid. When more
people learn about who Alex Jones is, and he becomes a household name for
being an idiot, when a gullible lad stumbles across him they are likely to be
like "oh this dude is the idiot I heard about", rather than thinking they
found some secret censored truth.

~~~
pjc50
Except we can see that's not how it works, and Alex Jones became incredibly
successful all the way up to slandering the parents of murdered children. It
turns out that's where the line is.

People _do_ treat Google search results like truth. There's not a great deal
google can do about that, and it's irresponsible for google to feed people
lies.

~~~
acollins1331
This problem is solved by better education, not censorship. I know for a fact
we currently don't teach people how to tell whether a youtube video is
bullshit in school or not, teach it. People are agents, not pawns to be
controlled into thinking what you want. There will always be bad apples.

~~~
pjc50
> People are agents, not pawns to be controlled into thinking what you want.

I have some bad news for you about the world's largest _advertising_ company.

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RickJWagner
Wow, that's a little disturbing. Some imaginative phrases there I wouldn't
have _dreamed_ of looking up. I'm going to try to forget some of that stuff.

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akitzmiller
This "blacklist" comes from James O'Keefe's Project Veritas. They have a long
history of staged "expose"s around the current Republican "bad guy of the
day"; ACORN, voter fraud, etc. Regardless of whether this is legit, I'm
surprised it showed up on HN.

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otisfunkmeyer
ad hominem attacks don't change the veracity of the leaked documents.

This is strawman thinking and to use your phrase, "I'm surprised it showed up
on HN."

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akitzmiller
It changes the likelihood of the veracity of the document. If HN has done some
sort of vetting, great. But there is no reason to take at face value anything
that comes from Veritas.

A discussion on censorship is a great thing to have. Just not starting with
this guy.

~~~
otisfunkmeyer
...As opposed to all of the other media outlets with their stellar records of
truth-telling.

The "publication of record" ship has sailed and we're left with competing
agendas and increased need for personal vetting, which many have done on this
leak--a fact which is easily searchable.

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mschuster91
I get why certain keywords (e.g. "crisis actors") are ranked down, YouTube has
rightfully been under fire for actively promoting this crap.

What I don't get is why the author whines about rating content by source.
Anyone basing a statement on Alex Jones, Breitbart or RT should be removed
from any promotion (i.e. search, "next video") features, there can only be
crap as a result of relying on these "sources". As long as Youtube doesn't
remove the videos outright there is no censorship and frankly I wouldn't have
any problems with removing them either.

Social media platforms need to wake up and realize they have a responsibility
to society - just like "classic" media - and that is to further democratic
discourse instead of helping to destroy it. Allowing lies and propaganda
fabrications to spread is nothing less than destruction of democracy.

~~~
cameronbrown
I don't understand why you're so comfortable having a giant corporation decide
what's true. HN is so bizare sometimes.

~~~
high_derivative
Cynically, because he believes them on his side?

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koolba
... for now.

