
Ask HN: Are YouTube's demonetization choices ideologically influenced? - arikr
A friend of mine made this claim to me.<p>At first, my reply was that this was absurd, and that Google&#x2F;YouTube are motivated by shareholder value only, and any ideological bias is only due to it&#x27;s impact on shareholder value (e.g. through impact on ability to recruit, through impact on advertisers).<p>But, now I&#x27;m less certain. Still seems unlikely, but I&#x27;d like to challenge my previously strongly held opinion on this that there&#x27;s no way it could be true.<p>Is there good evidence one way or the other, on whether google or YouTube specifically (and not their advertisers) are ideologically influenced on demonetization?
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badrabbit
Remember this: [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/google-searches-for-
hillar...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/google-searches-for-hillary-
clinton-yield-favorable-autocomplete-results-report-shows-2016-06-09)

I doubt anyone can give you a sure answer. But this sort of a thing is a
"public secret"

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/04/google-
in...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/04/google-influence-
hiring-government-officials)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/as-obama-
nea...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/as-obama-nears-close-
of-his-tenure-commitment-to-silicon-valley-is-
clear/2015/02/27/3bee8088-bc8e-11e4-bdfa-b8e8f594e6ee_story.html)

Any of these?:
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=google+cia+post](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=google+cia+post)

Notice the term "data provider" (a provider is a willing participant) in this
snowden leak slide:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence_(NSA)#/media/File...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence_\(NSA\)#/media/File%3APrism-
slide-7.jpg)

The question really is "what ideology?" Not whether or not everything they do
is ideological.

Maybe I should slowly put down my tinfoil hat.

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krapp
Given the scale at which demonetization seems to be occurring, one would
expect the evidence to be obvious: videos espousing an explicit ideological
point of view would be demonetized, and those expressing the opposite
ideology, or none at all, would not.

If you read about and watch content related to the issue you'll likely fail to
notice such a pattern. If demonetization were merely about suppressing right-
wing content, then why would Google also demonetize let's players, reviewers,
vloggers like Hank Green (who would doubtless be considered "left wing"),
anime channels, commercial and apolitical channels as well? The proof appears
to be disproved by contradiction.

It is possible for ideology to affect demonetization, but not in the obvious
sense that right-wingers mean (that of Google, being a "liberal" company,
simply choosing to harass them.) The motives of _advertisers_ are what is
important here, and Google's desperation to make an unprofitable platform
profitable and competitive.

This is hardly the first time a change in Youtube's algorithm has had major
consequences for types of content and revenue - see Ross' video on the future
of animation on Youtube[0] for instance... did Google have a political agenda
against animated content on Youtube? No, and neither is it likely that
Google's current monetization scheme is intended to suppress a particular kind
of content as much as _any content advertisers might consider unfriendly,_
which just _happens to include_ content intended to be provocative, anti-
establishment or controversial as a set.

Is it possible? Sure. Is it likely? No, at least not as a primary motivating
factor. Is there evidence for it? Nothing objective, in my opinion. I would
suggest that you do your own research and make up your own mind.

[0][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi6FcI2wFrw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi6FcI2wFrw)

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wu-ikkyu
>any ideological bias is only due to it's impact on shareholder value

This would be the primary source of ideological demonetization. I'm not quite
sure how this would be any less objectionable than developers at GOOG
demonetizing content based on their own independent ideologies?

In any case, it would seem the latter is negligable compared to the former.

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kypro
Well Google and YouTube have definitely removed sites and videos on the
right/far-right for supposed terms of service violations so there are
definitely things they won't let you say on their services that are legal.

For example, the racist and far-right site Daily Stormer was removed from
Google, and videos which discuss political issues such as immigration are
often privatised/removed by Youtube or at the very least, demonetised.

From personal experience these removals do seem to effect those on the
ideological right more, but I'm not sure I could provide any good data to back
that claim up. Although after firing James Damore for ideological
disagreements it does seems fairly hard to question whether or not Google
might have some internal ideological bias, it's just whether or not that bias
is affecting their algorithms.

I think Google are quite smart about this though. I don't think demonetisation
is a huge issue on it's own, I tend to agree that it's in Google finical
interest to demonetise certain content. But what worries me is that Google and
YouTube might be promoting content that fits a certain narrative. Google
searches and Youtube's trending section do seem to promote content that falls
into a specific ideological category.

[http://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_&_ROBERTSON_2017-A_Method...](http://aibrt.org/downloads/EPSTEIN_&_ROBERTSON_2017-A_Method_for_Detecting_Bias_in_Search_Rankings-
AIBRT_WP-17-02_6-1-17.pdf)

Perhaps this is all completely unintentional, but it does seem to be
happening. And with world leaders such as Angela Merkel requesting Zuckerberg
do something about ideological wrong-think on Facebook it does seem to suggest
there is at least some political pressure being pushed onto companies like
Google and Facebook from the outside, regards of the internal politics of the
company.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/27/angela-merkel-caught-on-
hot-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/27/angela-merkel-caught-on-hot-mic-
pressing-facebook-ceo-over-anti-immigrant-posts.html)

I think we'd be naive to believe it doesn't happen at all, but it's how
consciously these ideological decisions are made and how much influence
governments have over these companies that concerns me.

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romanovcode
Yes.

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acct1771
Read the article "Google is not what it seems" by Assange.

