Google Has An Actual Secret Speech Police
Content adapted from this Zerohedge.com article : Source
by Tyler Durden
Authored by Peter Hasson via The Daily Caller,
More than 100 nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and government agencies around the world help police YouTube for extremist content, ranging from so-called hate speech to terrorist recruiting videos.
All of them have confidentiality agreements barring Google, YouTube's parent company, from revealing their participation to the public, a Google representative told The Daily Caller on Thursday.
A handful of groups, including the Anti-Defamation League and No Hate Speech, a European organization focused on combatting intolerance, have chosen to go public with their participation in the program, but the vast majority have stayed hidden behind the confidentiality agreements. **Most groups in the program don't want to be publicly associated with it, **according to the Google spokesperson, who spoke only on background.
YouTube's "Trusted Flaggers" program goes back to 2012, but the program has exploded in size in recent years amid a Google push to increase regulation of the content on its platforms, which followed pressure from advertisers. Fifty of the 113 program members joined in 2017 as YouTube stepped up its content policing, YouTube public policy director Juniper Downs told a Senate committee on Wednesday.
The third-party groups work closely with YouTube's employees to crack down on extremist content in two ways, Downs said and a Google spokesperson confirmed. First, they are equipped with digital tools allowing them to mass flag content for review by YouTube personnel. Second, the partner groups act as guides to YouTube's content monitors and engineers who design the algorithms policing YouTube but may lack the expertise needed to tackle a given subject.
It's not just terrorist videos that Google is censoring. Jordan B. Peterson, a professor known for opposing political correctness, had one of his videos blocked in 28 countries earlier this month. A note sent to Peterson's account said YouTube had "received a legal complaint" about the video and decided to block it.
The censors are at it again. No explanation -- and no reason: Why in the world would this be blocked? pic.twitter.com/xe7UnwPzGb
— Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) January 2, 2018
Here's some more "explanation" for the censorship: incitement of hatred, terrorist recruitment, incitement of violence, celebration of terrorism. Even to fall briefly and erroneously into such a category is a chilling event.... pic.twitter.com/F00kmIGXLX
— Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) January 2, 2018
Peterson used his large social media following to push back, calling out YouTube on Twitter, where he has more than 300,000 followers. YouTube reversed Peterson's block after another popular YouTuber, Ethan Klein, demanded an explanation on Twitter, where he has more than 1 million followers. Although the original notice said that YouTube was responding to a legal complaint, on Twitter the company gave the impression that the block was erroneous.
@TeamYouTube any insight on this?
— Ethan Klein (@h3h3productions) January 2, 2018
**The overwhelming majority of the content policing on Google and YouTube is carried out by algorithms. **The algorithms make for an easy rebuttal against charges of political bias: it's not us, it's the algorithm. But algorithms are designed by people. As noted above, Google's anonymous outside partners work closely with the internal experts designing the algorithms. This close collaboration has upsides, Google's representatives say, pointing to advances in combatting terrorist propaganda on the platform. But it also provides little transparency, forcing users to take Google's word that they're being treated fairly.
YouTube's partnership with outside organizations to combat extremist content is just one part of the company's efforts to prioritize certain kinds of content over others. YouTube also suppresses certain content through its "restricted" mode, which screens out videos not suitable for children or containing "potentially mature" content, as well as by demonetizing certain videos and channels, cutting off the financial stream to their operators.
Prager University, a conservative nonprofit that makes educational videos, sued Google in October for both putting their content in restricted mode and demonetizing it. Prager faces an uphill battle in court (as a private company, Google isn't bound by the First Amendment) but the lawsuit has forced Google to take public positions on its censorship.
The Google representative who spoke with TheDC said that it is the algorithms that are responsible for placing videos in restricted mode. But in court documents reviewed by TheDC, Google's lawyers argued otherwise. "Decisions about which videos fall into that category are often complicated and may involve difficult, subjective judgment calls," they argued in documents filed on Dec. 29.
In her testimony before the Senate committee on Wednesday, Downs described some of the steps Google has taken to suppress "offensive" or "inflammatory" content that falls short of actual violent extremism.
"Some borderline videos, such as those containing inflammatory religious or supremacist content without a direct call to violence or a primary purpose of inciting hatred, may not cross these lines for removal. But we understand that these videos may be offensive to many and have developed a new treatment for them," she said.
"Identified borderline content will remain on YouTube behind an interstitial, won't be recommended, won't be monetized, and won't have key features including comments, suggested videos, and likes. Initial uses have been positive and have shown a substantial reduction in watch time of those videos," she added.
YouTube's demonetization push, which is affecting some of the most popular non-leftist political channels, is meant to accommodate advertisers who seek to avoid controversial content, the Google spokesperson said.
Dave Rubin, a popular YouTube host, has seen his videos repeatedly demonetized. Rubin posted a video, "Socialism isn't cool," on Wednesday. The video was up a little over 24 hours before YouTube demonetized it on Thursday.
And of course, @TeamYouTube has demonetized my video on socialism. Guaranteed a critique of capitalism would've been just fine.
Join us via Patreon/PayPal/Bitcoin: pic.twitter.com/UqDX3uBZV0
— Dave Rubin (@RubinReport) January 18, 2018
Hey @TeamYouTube, can you let me know which part of this video isn't advertiser friendly? Just trying to understand your official policy!
— Dave Rubin (@RubinReport) January 18, 2018
The video was later remonetized, a Google representative told TheDC. But users can't recoup the advertising dollars they lost while their videos were erroneously demonetized.
"I suspect that there is some political bent to it but I don't think it's necessarily a grand conspiracy against conservatives or anyone who's not a leftist. Part of the problem is their lack of transparency has created a situation where none of use really know what's going on," Rubin told TheDC.
"Does it seem that it is more so affecting non-leftist channels? Yeah, it does."
I have definitely been censored on youtube, including having my comments 'sandboxed' so that only I can see them when I'm logged in, but no-one else sees them and I am not even notified they have been blocked.
It's really great to see people/creators moving away from YouTube and releasing content on platforms like Twitch (content creators having more livestream events), Vimeo (meh, it'll just never compete with YouTube in any real capacity), hosting on their own websites, and now new platforms like dtube (although it has a ripped-off "tube" in the name, there's no reason they don't take a sizable portion out of YouTube/Google's monopoly as it's riding the soaring tsunami of this crypto-ocean/ecosystem).
Are you, or do you plan to begin releasing/uploading more (possibly exclusive) content on dtube?
I created my own social network, partially to bypass the censorship issues and may integrate a Smart Media Token into it at some point. I generally point people towards using Dtube and may upload more of my own content there, yes.
This comes as no surprise at all. Google, Facebook, Apple and others want to use the claim that they're combating "extremist" or "hate" speech as a red herring for imposing their far left progressive social norms on the rest of society. Aside from the fact that the First Amendment to the Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, who gets to decide whether something is extreme or not? What qualifies Google or Facebook employees to do that? We've already seen how Google fired a young engineer simply because he had the audacity to have a different opinion than Google executives. Since when did that become a basis for termination? Sadly, even groups like the ACLU that supposedly are the defenders of free speech are silent about all this.
A number of these corporations have become way too powerful due to all the personal information they collect. I hope the Google engineer who was terminated wins his lawsuit against the company and a large amount of damages, because this kind of corporate behavior is outrageous and needs to change.
"One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."
This is just censorship...nothing else.
Google and its cohorts are deciding what is "extreme" and what isnt. That is just lovely. Where does the Bill of Rights talk about that. It must be a newer amendment that I missed.
Facebook, Google, and the other tech companies talk about freedom (like a free Internet) yet they want the exact opposite. They are tyrannical in nature and their sole purpose is to control.
Decentralization is going to clean this mess up. More people need to embrace it and break away from the establishment. These tech titans are no different than the government...in fact, they comply with almost all the governments requests.
The time has come for a change. Over the next 3-5 years, we are going to see a radical change.
I do not know if you watched snowden filmini. But if you're watching, I'd recommend watching. I think that's enough explanation. The current situation is no different than before. Google, Youtube, Facebook and other social media channels. They all do large-scale data mining. They are analyzing us. They're recording us. They do it in the news of the governments. In short, governments that give us freedom with one hand. They play our freedom from our back pocket. Do you know what this is about. I do not know. But governments need to give up this desire.
The trouble with censoring anything on a public platform is who decides what to censor ?
A mother breast feeding might offend some while a child chasing a dog will offend others. The person deciding which one to censor is putting their personal beliefs on on others - they are taking your choices from you, very similar to the governments
As a member of any social platform you should have a choice what you want to read/watch/post and what you don't. As an adult you have that right
Big tech companies have proven time and time again that they are dedicated to the silencing of free speech, philosophy, and liberty in general. Youtube for example, was quick to censor political views but openly allowed pedophiles to pray on children on their platform. The problem for these companies is they are blinded by victory. They don't see that censorship is turning the public off to them. The public in return is looking for social media alternatives and are finding blockchain sites like Steemit which cannot be censored. In ten years the social media hierarchy will not resemble what it does now.
The tip of the Nuclear ICBM is what you'll have to be if you expect to successfully counter the weaponry which is being used against us..
@zer0hedge...The ADL is an over 500,000 foot soldier army for the government of Israel. So a racist, prejudice organization like ADL is censoring freedom of speech in America.If I point out something the Jews are doing to America, then I'm bad because I am not allowed to question the Jews.Google started by CIA. Now so infested with SJWs that it is called Goolag.Facebook has everyone making their own dossiers for the CIA. Also infested with SJWs.Twitter looks at your cookies and bans you if you have been visiting right wing sites. They also have 400 people dedicated to archiving dick pics, including deleted ones, but they can't stop ISIS from organizing there. Maybe it's because one of their major shareholders is Alwaleed bin Talal.During the revolution, we will cut off the dole and all the illegals and crimminals and useless idiots will go streaming into the sanctuary cities. Then we will seal the borders and offer food in exchange for scrap metal. Game over.The only cure for liberals is for their pets to eat them...thank you for sharing with us....
This Google /Youtube quadruple BS speak is getting hilarious. They pretend that people are stupid and can't see their bullshit and lies.
looks good