HN Gopher Feed (2017-08-12) - page 1 of 10 ___________________________________________________________________
YouTube AI deletes war crimes evidence as 'extremist material'
395 points by jacobr
http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/youtube-criticised-after-middl...___________________________________________________________________
[deleted]
userbinator - 5 hours ago
Yes, I could see how that classifies as "extremist material", but
that's no reason to delete them...IMHO the gradual increase of
(self-)censorship in the popular Internet is worrying --- one of
the most compelling things about the Internet as it existed was
that, from the safety of your own home, you could see and
experience things that would otherwise be impossible to access. Now
it seems it's turned into a massively commercialised effort of
"curating" content so that it doesn't offend anyone, and only
results in more profits for advertisers.
cat199 - 2 hours ago
Old internet is still there, you just have to not be too lazy to
host your own content..
[deleted]
[deleted]
bedros - 4 hours ago
very related to this article about facebook [0]corporations control
what info passed to people, and create their own version of
reality, but blocking what they don't agree with.I know it's AI,
but seems that google appeal agrees with AI decision.people should
read Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing consent book, here's interview
about it in 1992 [1][0]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14998081[1]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrBQEAM3rE
brndnmtthws - 6 hours ago
If you use YouTube, you are subject to the whims of that private
corporation, regardless of whether it's right or wrong.They should
find a way to host the content somewhere else.
emilsedgh - 6 hours ago
Well almost everything we use these days belongs to a private
organization. And we're fully subject to their whims.Something is
wrong about that.
crusso - 4 hours ago
And yet, without those private organizations and the free
markets that allowed them to thrive - the whole notion of
having all that is preserved online by them would be utterly
unimaginable. The internet as we know it, capable of passing
all this bandwidth to individuals around the world wouldn't
exist. At best, it would still be a toy in government labs and
academia like it was before it was commercialized.
leereeves - 4 hours ago
That's hardly certain. The government built the interstate
highways, it could have built the Internet as
well.Privatizing it was a political decision.
icebraining - 3 hours ago
At best, it would still be a toy in government labs and
academia like it was before it was commercialized.This is
demonstrably untrue. Minitel was already much more than that,
despite being designed and implemented by a division of the
French Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications.
tpallarino - 2 hours ago
I don't see how this would be any different than a library.
We need new, good public institutions such as this.
cat199 - 1 hours ago
You're conflating the products of an economic system with its
organization.. which is not to say you are wrong necessarily,
but this is not a neutral, objective, or provable position to
take..
emilsedgh - 3 hours ago
I'm not against privatizing internet. I'm sure it wouldn't
have been this useful if it wasn't for private companies.I'm
just saying the notion that private companies (on the
internet or not) have almost zero responsibility and we're
subject to their whim is wrong.I guess that's where the rule
of law is supposed to enter the discussion.
WalterSear - 6 hours ago
They are non-technical people posting from a war zone.Or were,
some are dead now, and have taken their videos with them.
monocasa - 6 hours ago
Have they checked with YouTube to see if the files are actually
deleted?Like just because their gateway won't give you access to it
doesn't necessarily mean that the bits have been scrubbed on the
back end.Also: here's a project to archive this
information.https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-7909-syrian_archive
mustacheemperor - 4 hours ago
Unfortunately many of the original uploaders have since died in
the war, and the deleted playlists were the only visible place
the videos were accessible.
monocasa - 1 hours ago
Sure, but I'm saying that in a 'documentation of war crimes'
context YouTube might allow a little peek behind the veil if
the videos aren't deleted but hidden.
[deleted]
alexandercrohde - 1 hours ago
To me, if you want to regulate controversial opinions, you have to
err strongly to the side of too-open.Remember, before the
declaration of independence our founding fathers were
terrorists/rebels. I don't mean this as a snappy hollow comparison.
I'm saying fundamentally, you can't distinguish between a US
soldier recruitment video and an ISIS soldier recruitment video
without applying a moral context. How would an AI ever do this? And
even if it could, who's moral retelling is the right one?Better in
my mind to stay out of the censorship game altogether and promote a
forum that is inherently structure in a format that incentivizes
accuracy over emotions.
cisanti - 6 hours ago
I have (had) a channel that had videos about missing people, their
last sightings on CCTV etc. The parents of a missing person even
used an embed video on their site of a CCTV footage. They emailed
me if I still have the video because they need it.YouTube banned
the whole channel for extremist/hateful content. Probably some of
the videos/titles told the AI that the footage is extreme or some
sort of glorification.I appealed on some form but don't even bother
anymore.I hope YouTube as a video platform (not streaming) gets a
serious competitor.
TheRealPomax - 6 hours ago
To be fair, YouTube is under no obligation to some greater good;
it's just a video hosting service. Expecting it to "preserve
footage" and any footage at that, is a strange expectation.
beejiu - 6 hours ago
An organiziation should not be free of criticism simply because
it does not have an obligation to do or not do something.
cisanti - 6 hours ago
Not an obligation, but their mission statement is "To organize
the world?s information and make it universally accessible and
useful."Guess they need to change to "information that we and our
advertisers agree with."Yes, I know they are different companies
under Alphabet but it doesn't matter. Google has become a monster
and too big, powerful.
camus2 - 2 hours ago
> but their mission statement is "To organize the world?s
information and make it universally accessible and useful."It's
just marketing. If you really want to see what the actual
"mission" is read the TOS. Google,Facebook,Twitter and co like
to boast about their humanitarian and humanist stance, the
Apple way, when it comes to their relationship with their users
but that's all a lie. The moment the need of their users
doesn't match their financial interest all bets are off. The
shit-storm triggered by a few outraged online publications and
announcers a few month ago is a demonstration of that
fact.Independence and freedom of speech online has a price and
"users" are going to find it out the hardway when Google
refuses to host their content for political reasons.People
already forgot, that the tech to share content online already
exists, it's called RSS and Google,Twitter,Facebook and co want
it to go away.
dickbasedregex - 6 hours ago
Agreed. Google just grosses me out these days.
[deleted]
jacobr - 6 hours ago
You are of course right in theory, but it's not good enough to
let that justify evidence of war crimes getting lost.If you film
people getting shot at in a demonstration and want to get the
word out, chances are you use a popular social network. You might
not have any further knowledge, or not be able to (imprisoned,
fleeing, dead, like the majority of Syrians) put the video
elsewhere.
mtgx - 5 hours ago
Yes, but the more people realize what an awful platform YouTube
is for them to keep their videos, the better.
Sir_Substance - 6 hours ago
>To be fair, YouTube is under no obligation to some greater
good;Eeeeeeeeeeh....I don't know about that.Lots of corporations
today target "owning" a certain aspect of humanity. Facebook
"owns social", Google "owns search", and LinkedIn is having a
jolly good swing at "owning recruitment". Youtube wanted to "own
video" and by and large it has succeeded. I'm not sure they get
to have that position consequence free though.I'm increasingly of
the opinion that companies that manage to pin an entire market
implicitly take on a social responsibility, and lots of them are
not shouldering it appropriately.
tomjen3 - 5 hours ago
And we are under no obligation to not hurt their PR over this.
AdmiralAsshat - 6 hours ago
It was folly to think that YouTube would be a safe place to
document war crimes. YouTube is a distribution channel, not a
preservation channel. Its ease of use certainly makes it an
attractive option to upload things quickly, but anything of
historical significance should have the video raws immediately
turned over to a human rights organization for preservation.
osteele - 4 hours ago
One issue with YouTube is archival status. Another is
provenance.At some point it will be as easy to create fake videos
as to create fake text. It is unrealistic to expect people who
aren't information literate about text will be literate about
video, but I hope that there's a way for journalists to move away
from YouTube by then.
eloisius - 6 hours ago
I doubt they're grieving lost footage. It's loss of access to
that distribution channel.Documentation is pointless if it can't
be distributed and used to effect change.
privong - 5 hours ago
> I doubt they're grieving lost footage.This comment by jacobr
suggests there is a risk of lost footage:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14998452
Mangalor - 6 hours ago
Where else should they be stored?
moogly - 4 hours ago
liveleak
Sir_Cmpwn - 6 hours ago
archive.org
osteele - 4 hours ago
I hope we're in a world where that can happen.At the least,
we probably need ?upload video to archive.org? mobile apps to
make this as useful to journalists in the field as YouTube
currently is.If the Archive grows as a journalistic
distribution channel, it might then face YouTube's issues of
copyrights, piracy, and other criminal use. However, the
Archive could apply goals that are more compatible with
journalism than YouTube can. Maybe sufficient philanthropic
support could make this possible.
ballenf - 6 hours ago
Youtube used to be a distribution channel but it slowly became an
ad delivery tool with content along for the ride. Like 99% of
other free (and even some paid) internet sites.Either way,
totally agree that it's a tragic situation.The only sympathy I
have for Google is that trying to separate the good vs. "evil"
(as in "Don't be evil.") content is a monumental task that
machine learning will probably never be capable of performing. So
they're left with the choice of spending an inordinate amount on
human review and detailed research or just make wildly over-broad
removals.I'd rather they leave up more rather than less, but they
tried this approach and it almost lost them every major
advertiser. So continuing down that road would potentially lead
to the whole platform losing viability. Maybe some would like
that outcome but these historical videos would be just as
lost.Maybe we'll see the pendulum swing back in an effort to
reach a more reasonable middle ground.
wbl - 5 hours ago
It's hopeless for people. Is that footage of ISIS burning a
prisoner alive evidence of war crimes or propaganda? How about
both! Ban child nudity and depictions of cruelty to children:
you've just banned a Pulitzer prize winning photograph from the
Vietnam war.
ikeboy - 2 hours ago
Leave them up, but remove ads?
nxc18 - 5 hours ago
Google has an inordinate amount of money to spend on inordinate
amount of content review. Deleting history and evidence of war
crimes is Evil; good thing Google had abandoned their earlier
aspirations.
jptman - 4 hours ago
I think you are underestimating the amount of video that gets
uploaded to Youtube. Smaller sites may be better at stuff
like this but that's solely because they don't have quite the
amount of content. Hundreds of hours of videos are uploaded
per minute. They may eventually have AI good enough to do a
better job, but this is an unprecedented amount of content to
review.
CaptSpify - 2 hours ago
So?If youtube can't handle the load, then they shouldn't
claim that they can. At the absolute lest, they need a
usable appeals process. If they can't do that, then they
need to own up to it, and stop allowing anyone to upload
anything.
koide - 1 hours ago
Sorry, but why? Google owns nobody anything. If you have
war crime evidence or other important content to publish,
upload it to YouTube and all other video sites, letting
archive.org and other human rights organizations in the
loop. You can put the press in the mix as well.
CaptSpify - 41 minutes ago
Because it's a shitty thing to do, and we shouldn't
encourage shitty behavior? Just because they want to take
the cheap and lazy route doesn't mean that we can't
criticize them for it.
ComodoHacker - 4 hours ago
>should have the video raws immediately turned over to a human
rights organization for preservationYou're saying like every
human rights organization have some magical means of preservation
other than uploading to YouTube.
PeterisP - 2 hours ago
Something like a computer with a hard drive or an USB memory
stick?
Hasknewbie - 6 hours ago
Youtube's response regarding one of these videos documenting abuses
(emphasis mine):> "we've determined that your video does violate
our Community Guidelines and have upheld our original decision. We
appreciate your understanding."Can someone explain to me why
corporations, when interacting with customers regarding
complaints/appeals, seem to have "don't forget to add insult to
injury" as one of their motto more often than not? Does that kind
of patronizing tone sound polite to the ears of a PR drone?
OzzyB - 4 hours ago
> We appreciate your understanding.It's their way of saying that
they know you won't find their decision popular but they hope you
won't pursue it any further.
snerbles - 6 hours ago
Internal studies probably correlates such language with reduced
pushback from users.
viridian - 6 hours ago
If I remember correctly, the exact same message was delivered to
Jordan Peterson a couple of weeks ago or so, before he sat down
with the google memo guy. He was in the middle of a bible lecture
series, and Google banned his account, and sent the exact same
"we've determined that your video does violate our Community
Guidelines and have upheld our original decision. We appreciate
your understanding." message.It seems tone deaf especially since
in cases such as these there is no understanding to appreciate.
Google will not tell you what you did to violate policy, only
that they checked to ensure that they found you guilty, and then
they snub you further with the HR speak. It's maddening.
lanevorockz - 3 hours ago
Google message to Jordan Peterson was not "Stop making sense,
we have an agenda to pass" ?
autokad - 1 hours ago
to me, this is further evidence that google needs to be put
under regulations.
cvsh - 5 hours ago
The worst part of the information age is arbitration by
unreasonable and impenetrable algorithms rather than humans
with the capacity to make a judgement call when the rules
clearly don't account for the situation at hand.A transparent
appeals process staffed by humans who can at least deliver a
rationale, including what rule you broke, should be required by
law. There's irreparable reputational damage associated with an
algorithm libelously labeling something "extremist content"
that isn't.
nnfy - 2 hours ago
This isn't just some AI gone wrong. YouTube has had an agenda
for years. At the very least, people with power to undo these
bans are complacent, there is simply no way that YouTube
staff are unaware of the gradual crackdowns. Even content
producers will mention demonitization occasionally.Nothing
major online happens by accident.
ingenuous2 - 4 hours ago
This has always existed. We call it bureaucracy.
cvsh - 4 hours ago
Bureaucracies are staffed with humans who have the capacity
to make a judgement call on how to interpret the rules, and
bend their letter to serve their spirit, or the interests
of pubic relations, or just common sense.
detaro - 4 hours ago
Do we know how much YouTube involves humans in the
process? I wouldn't be surprised if appeals go to a human
which clicks the "yeah, nope" button.
Retra - 4 hours ago
That's not the worst part at all! Anyone could file a
complaint about a mistaken algorithm; the companies are run
by people, and they'll have to address their customers'
concerns. The worst part is that humans use these algorithms
to justify and enforce their own shitty decisions; to say it
is "out of their hands" due to some inane, manufactured
inconvenience.>There's irreparable reputational damage
associated with an algorithm libelously labeling something
"extremist content" that isn't.The damage is definitely
repairable. You admit the algorithm is flawed and you
tolerate exceptions to it.
ScottBurson - 1 hours ago
I think they were talking about the content producer's
reputation.
pmoriarty - 4 hours ago
To be fair, the process needs to be much more than merely
transparent. It needs to be independent.That means that it
needs to be done by an entity outside of Google itself, and
not in any way associated with or influenced by Google.
hossbeast - 2 hours ago
Google is a company. You want video hosting to be run by
the government?
the8472 - 2 hours ago
How about by a non-profit?
pmoriarty - 2 hours ago
It doesn't have to be the hosting itself that's
independent, but it would be an improvement if there was
an independent body to which you could appeal.
geocar - 2 hours ago
Yes.An alternative is to classify Google as a common
carrier, exempting them from the DMCA, but preventing
them from censoring or even throttling traffic, however
given their business model is around sponsorship, it is
unclear how to also protect the advertisers' interests.
Trying to get government shackles onto Google simply
seems too tricky;It seems much easier to simply run
Google with tax dollars and no advertising.
dom0 - 1 hours ago
Google and Facebook are bigger than a single country now.
cloakandswagger - 1 hours ago
-The services provided by Google and Facebook have an
unassailable majority of market share and are relied on
by a huge amount of people.-They enjoy a de facto
monopoly and are protected by the extreme cost, risk and
time involved in building competing services.-Finally,
they have a potential for abuse (say, with selective
censorship or politically biased algorithms) that could
essentially curb the Constitutional rights of
individualsIf these points sound familiar it's because
they're frequently used when arguing for the
nationalization of a private company. Since I think
that's (currently) out of reach, I believe regulating
Facebook, Google, et al as public utilities to be the
next best thing.
briandear - 1 hours ago
Trusting government to regulate Facebook? No way. I lived
in China; I have seen how that story plays out.Some
people really do have a na?ve trust in government. Free
markets are the answer. Who has actually made a
legitimate attempt to compete with Google or Facebook?
What VCs are investing in Facebook alternatives?MySpace
was unstoppable ? until it wasn?t. Yahoo owned search ?
until it didn?t. Perhaps there ought to be more bold
entrepreneurship rather than calls for regulation.Sounds
to me that people are ok with just giving up and giving
Facebook the win.Don?t like Facebook?s dominance? Then
challenge it. Don?t cop out and just let the government
take control.History is littered with great companies
toppled by better ideas and execution.
likelynew - 4 minutes ago
I am on communities where I am fine with content being
removed or fined without delivering a rationale(HN
included). I definitely don't want government intervention
everywhere.
anigbrowl - 4 hours ago
The opacity is by design. It's notable that such behavior by
an individual would typically be considered psychologically
abusive. It's one reason I talk about power relations
frequently; we are in the throes of automating them, and
given the impact of technology on other spheres of human
activity we should be wary of what sort of social relations
were are baking in.Perhaps the Graph should be public domain.
Perhaps too we are heading towards a world where reputation
and legal identity are subject to casual destruction but
there's no real barrier to starting over, much like when you
die in a videogame.
viridian - 5 hours ago
I think the bigger issue is that certain companies have near
monopolies in their spaces to start with. For plebs like
myself, youtube is really the only viable option I have to
distribute video media if I hope to build an audience. The
fact that you effectively can't mount an alternative to
facebook, youtube, etc due to network effects is the larger
disease, and this is one of many symptoms.
the8472 - 2 hours ago
I think the only solution is a distributed and
decentralized web.Distributed hosting of static content is
a sorta-solved problem. But curating, linking and
discoverability (which require mutating content) is a lot
harder due to the trust anchor problem.
stephen82 - 1 hours ago
Your suggestion exists and has a name: bitchute. I will
paste here what they have for "About" at the end of their
main page: BitChute is a peer to peer content sharing
platform. Our mission is to put people and free
speech first. It is free to join, create and upload
your own content to share with others. Feel free to read
more about it in their FAQ. I really want to stop using
YouTube and use this instead.I hope they make
it.https://www.bitchute.com/
the8472 - 1 hours ago
Webtorrent does not meet the distributed requirement
since webrtc needs signalling servers.Plus the discovery
component is still hosted on websites subject to the
networking effect.
vidarh - 1 hours ago
The big challenge with this is to solve the problem that
almost everyone has a "one step too far" when it comes to
what type of content we are willing to tolerate and/or
what type of content we may get in trouble for hosting
even if it is not intentional.That makes it tricky to for
solutions that "put people and free speech first" to
succeed, because they've basically painted a giant target
on themselves, and it easily makes even a lot of people
that sympathise in principle worried about the bits and
pieces that steps over their personal line.Figuring out a
reasonable solution to this, I think, will be essential
to get more widespread adoptions of platforms like these.
the8472 - 54 minutes ago
I think the problem is the expectation of people that
someone else do the filtering for them. I.e. "I don't
want to see this kind of content" leads to "someone else
should remove it from all the sites I visit". Which
obviously leads to conflicting requirements once you have
more than one person and those people disagree on what
they want to see and don't want to see.The only
reasonable solution is to host everything, modulo
requirements by law, and give users the tools to locally
filter out content en masse.In a decentralized system you
also skip the law requirements since you cannot enforce
multiple incompatible jurisdictions at the platform
level, individual users will be responsible for enforcing
it on their own nodes, similar how all you can do when
accidentally encountering child porn is to clear your
cache.
vidarh - 42 minutes ago
The problem on these distributed platforms is not
filtering what people see, but filtering what people host
or allow to transit their network connections.> In a
decentralized system you also skip the law requirements
since you cannot enforce multiple incompatible
jurisdictions at the platform level, individual users
will be responsible for enforcing it on their own nodes,
similar how all you can do when accidentally encountering
child porn is to clear your cache.But that's the thing:
You don't skip it. You spread it to every user. They both
have to deal with whether or not they are willing to host
the material and whether or not it is even legal for
them.How many of us sympathise with the idea of running a
Tor exit node, for example, but avoid it because we're
worried about the consequences?These platforms will
always struggle with this unless they provide ways for
people to feel secure that the content that is hosted on
their machines is content they don't find too offensive,
and/or that traffic that transit their networks is not
content they find too offensive.Consider e.g. darknet
efforts like cjdns which are basically worthless because
their solution to this was to require people find
"neighbours" they can convince to let them connect. Which
basically opens the door to campaigns to have groups you
disapprove of disconnected by harassing their neighbours
and their neighbours neighbours, just the same as you can
go to network providers on the "open" internet.
the8472 - 16 minutes ago
First of all, not all p2p networks operate like Tor. For
example bittorrent and ipfs only host content you look
at. So hosters could largely self-select the content they
replicate.Secondly, there are several tiers of content.
a) stuff that is illegal to host b) stuff that is not
illegal but that you find so objectionable that you don't
even want to host it c) stuff that you don't like but
doesn't bother you too much d) stuff you actually want to
look at. I posit that a) and b) are fairly small
fractions and the self-selection mechanism of "things
that I looked at" will reduce that fraction even
further.And even if you are on a network where you
randomly host content you never looked at encryption can
provide you some peace of mind (of the obliviousness
kind) because you cannot possibly know or expected to
know what content you're hosting. Add onion routing and
the person who hosts something can't even be identified.
If Viewer A requests something (blinded) through Relay B
from Hoster C then B cannot know what they're forwarding
and C cannot know what they're hosting. If neither you
nor others can know what flows through or is stored on
your node it would be difficult to mount pressure against
anyone to disconnect.For the illegal content, especially
in oppressive environments, you could install a Voluntary
Compliance(tm) government blocklist on public-facing
nodes and still opt to run an internal node in your
network that uses encrypted connections to retrieve
things hosted in other countries you're not supposed to
see.----Anyway, back to content hosting. I think once you
have a network it is a matter of managing expectations.
You can't make content magically disappear. Platforms
like youtube, twitter, facebook etc. have raised the
false expectation that you can actually make things go
away by appealing to The Authority and it will be forever
gone. In reality things continue to exist, they just move
into some more remote corners of the net. Once
expectations become more aligned with reality again and
people know they can only avoid looking at content but
not make it non-existent things boil down to being able
to filter things out at the local level.
likelynew - 2 minutes ago
> modulo requirements by lawWhich law?
flamedoge - 1 hours ago
Webtorrent is another torrent based media sharing
ocdtrekkie - 5 hours ago
Agreed. If competition exists, customer service is one of
the angles competitors can improve on to try to gain
customers. For instance, one of the top reasons I prefer
FastMail over Gmail is that real customer service I get.
cabalamat - 5 hours ago
> Does that kind of patronizing tone sound polite to the ears of
a PR drone?I don't know, but you're right it is very common, and
infuriating."Your call is important to us. Please hold."
bobdole1234 - 5 hours ago
It's because every reason you give people is something they can
use to sue you or harass your employees if they don't agree with
the wording.If you say nothing, there's nothing to grab on
to.It's like online dating, everything you say is something that
someone will dislike about you.
tehwebguy - 46 minutes ago
The big secret is that YouTube, one of the most important sites
in the history of the internet, has had a bunch of people who
just don't care.Word is at some point it became a dumping ground
for Google employees who transferred in because they wanted an
easy job where they could use the amenities of the YouTube
offices in San Bruno.
carvalho - 4 hours ago
War crime evidence can also be extremist material. It is often
repackaged as propaganda to rile up new troops.Give evidence to the
courts or police. Don't upload it to a video entertainment site and
expect it to stay up, despite skirting their rules.
mtgx - 5 hours ago
I remember when I used to like - no, love - almost anything Google
did.That seems like such a long time ago. Since then my attitude
has changed to being mostly hostile towards Google, with every such
event.Google should have never entered the "content game" and
should have remained a neutral search and distribution (YouTube)
platform. Once it went down the path of being a content company, it
started "compromising" in all sorts of ways that were terrible for
its users.I wonder if the higher-ups have even noticed this change
in attitude towards them, and if they did, then they've probably
decided that making money is more important even if they become the
Comcast of the internet (most hated company).
mschuster91 - 6 hours ago
Once again, the only hope for customer service seems to be a
(social) media shitstorm.Seriously, Google, Twitter and FB
massively need to ramp up their customer service and not
externalize the costs of a lack of support onto society any more.
And there are many "costs": people being actively harrassed and
intimidated, sometimes so far they are afraid leaving their house,
due to hate speech or doxxing, a loss of historically relevant
information as in this case, people locked out of vital emails or
their businesses (e.g. when their Gmail account gets closed due to
copyright violations on Youtube)...
TuringTest - 5 hours ago
> Google, Twitter and FB massively need to ramp up their customer
serviceThis is not going to happen; the whole point of their
businesses based on offering free massive online services is that
they are dirt-cheap by being run mostly automatically.No, the
only way to fix the problem in those juggernauts, and protect the
tiny individuals from getting caught and squashed in their
wheels, is the mechanism that governments use to protect citizens
from the worst effects of bureaucracy: having an ombudsman. A
semi-independent service to receive complaints of severe abuse by
the main service, and for which the primary goal is protecting
users, not reducing costs.In some sense, this is how their PR
department operates: they'll bring human attention and put all
the required effort to fix an unjust situation, to clean the
image of the company. The difference is that now the unjust
situation needs to become a scandal, as you said, and an
ombudsman would be required to examine all applications (either
to accept them or reject them) as part of their official
definition.
mschuster91 - 5 hours ago
> No, the only way to fix the problem in those juggernauts, and
protect the tiny individuals from getting caught and squashed
in their wheels, is the mechanism that governments use to
protect citizens from the worst effects of bureaucracy: having
an ombudsman. A semi-independent service to receive complaints
of severe abuse by the main service, and for which the primary
goal is protecting users, not reducing costs.Yeah but who would
finance the ombudsman? To service a country like Germany, I'd
bet it needs around 2.000 FTE minimum (Facebook alone is
opening a new, additional 500 FTE centre right now, and that's
just for deleting the worst of the worst hate speech and porn).
That's around 5M ? per month.Having it paid for by taxpayers is
the true manifestation of cost externalization, having it paid
for by the services quickly leads down to "do whatever $company
wants", and having it paid for by users leads to service only
for those who can afford it while leaving the poor and most
vulnerable persons in the rain.
TuringTest - 4 hours ago
Maybe a non-profit foundation could assume the task, financed
by Google's PR money and wealthy patrons, and having some
sort of community representation to take care of the needs of
users.Modern society is looking a lot like time-compressed
feudal eras, with corporations taking the role of noble
families; imho the time of powerful independent bourgeois
professionals, thriving under the rule of law in nation
states, is coming to an end. Maybe we should start looking at
the medieval ways of organizing a fair society, at least as
the starting points for the new social structures that will
be unique to the digital era.
dickbasedregex - 6 hours ago
Screw YouTube's automation across the board. It's horrendous and
lazy.
mtgx - 5 hours ago
Yeah, forget about beating Go and StarCraft 2 top players. How
about making the takedown of YouTube videos actually fair for a
change?
ocdtrekkie - 5 hours ago
Games are still 'easy' in comparison to this sort of topic for
AI. Bear in mind, every game they've had an AI play still has a
firm set of rules.
[deleted]
AmIFirstToThink - 2 hours ago
What did they train the AI on to deem something 'extremist'?Should
we get to see the training data used and labels?Or is this the
modern day equivalent of credit score algo, something that can have
huge impact on lives, but you are not allowed to know what it
is.This is bad.
mozumder - 6 hours ago
Can't any prosecutor gain access to those videos via subpoena
anyways?
megous - 5 hours ago
What are you talking about? They are deleting entire accounts of
people who were filming their cities/districts being bombed by
Russians, Assad or US/Coalition. (where there may not be any
direct violence to any particular persons visible)Who will
prosecute whom? Primary source historical material is being
removed wholesale by some shitty "AI". Account of recent history
is being erased. Researchers who want to put some account of
history together will have harder job. They will not go to
subpoena google to release some material they don't even know
google has. People whose lives were destroyed by a dictator will
see YouTube erasing evidence of what happened, often times
leaving propaganda channels for the regime untouched. It's a
disgrace.I actually came here today to try again to post about
this issue, after deleting my Google/YouTube account, because I
wholeheartedly disagree with this whole fiasco, that's going on
for the last month or so. So I'm glad it's finally discussed.
snakeanus - 3 hours ago
It seems that we really need to find a new
distributed/decentralised censorship-resistant way to distribute
videos.
[deleted]
mnm1 - 6 hours ago
Such AI coupled with the inflexible policies of companies like
Google and Amazon is already starting to be a problem and will only
get worse as it's deployed more broadly. Accounts are closed
without recourse for invalid reasons and their owners treated like
violators. Short of a law requiring explanations and an appeal
process, I don't see this situation getting better ever. Yet
another reason not to trust these companies or use their services
that require creating accounts and agreeing to their bullshit TOS.
solarkraft - 5 hours ago
YouTube is not a reliable video host, but that's okay. It's a
company. Fortunately these videos don't really rely on people
finding them by having them recommended by an algorithm as they are
merely evidence. I don't see a problem and completely understand
why YouTube (especially as it's getting as non-offensive as it can)
doesn't want to show war crimes.
anotherbrownguy - 1 hours ago
Given that all of the videos happen to be anti-ISIS... and YouTube
happens to be owned by an evil empire in bed with American military
industry which created ISIS... the AI must have figured out that
the videos could be a threat to its masters.
wyager - 6 hours ago
YouTube is a really horrible service for content creators. For this
type of content, you're practically probably best off with LiveLeak
(which, incidentally, seems to be a much better source of breaking
news than YouTube these days). Ideally, we'd all switch to LBRY or
some sort of IPFS video distribution or something, but that will
take time.
tpallarino - 1 hours ago
Yeah wow, an audience of billions having instant access to your
content at the click of a button. So terrible for content
creators. Most of these content creators wouldn't even exist
without Youtube, they'd be working in a cubicle somewhere
forwarding memos.
ajb - 4 hours ago
Douglas adam's 'Peril sensitive sunglasses' are nearly here.
Alex3917 - 6 hours ago
Since my understanding is that covering up a war crime is itself a
war crime under Complicity doctrine, could Google executives get
charged for this in The Hague?
cema - 5 hours ago
Unlikely, but an interesting argument.
gambiting - 5 hours ago
I'm willing to bet that in their hundreds and hundreds of pages
of terms and conditions there is a paragraph saying that by using
their services you give up your right to sue Google for war
crimes.
leereeves - 4 hours ago
Even if there were, such contracts have been tried before and
the courts simply ignore them.A contract can't override
criminal law.
ocdtrekkie - 5 hours ago
I am not an expert in international law, but you would still have
to prove intent, I believe. It's hard to prove intent on an
algorithm that very simply is incapable of understanding the
significance of its actions.
justinclift - 27 minutes ago
The parent post mentions they've been reviewed by a human
(appeals process) and been rejected anyway.That should get past
any "it woz the algorithm that did it!" arguments about intent.
7373737373 - 2 hours ago
Deferring decisions to an algorithm doesn't absolve the owner
from responsibility for its actions. If the consequences are
unknown, why should it be allowed to use it?
CaptSpify - 2 hours ago
Couldn't that also imply that someone else would need to view
the algorithm to verify it's intent?
dmurray - 2 hours ago
Google executives are overwhelmingly US citizens. The ICC has no
jurisdiction over them.
meric - 2 hours ago
Do some of them have dual citizenship?
avip - 1 hours ago
I urge you to report this inhumane case and follow-up with a
"show HN" (I filed an ICC case, then THIS happened).
otp.informationdesk@icc-cpi.int
jacobr - 6 hours ago
Also see this Twitter thread:
https://twitter.com/EliotHiggins/status/896358097320636416>
Ironically, by deleting years old opposition channels YouTube is
doing more damage to Syrian history than ISIS could ever hope to
achieve> Also gone are the dozens of playlists of videos from Syria
I created, including dozens of chemical attacks in playlists by
date> Keep in mind in many cases these are the only copies of the
videos, and in some the channel owner will have died, so nothing
can stop it
giancarlostoro - 5 hours ago
That is a little insane... Makes me wish there was some sort of
website that archived specific YouTube videos marked as
historical or criminal evidence or some sort of qualification, as
long as they don't abuse copyright just to make sure if places
like YouTube delete them they can remain. Or a service that
uploads to multiple video streaming sources at once (though I
imagine these might violate the TOS of YouTube for w/e
reason).Kind of sad where you have video evidence being deleted
by YouTube. It would be nice if they allowed some sort of option
for political type videos like these to actually be uploaded by
users, especially if the original uploader was killed, to be
downloaded with metadata (upload date to youtube, youtuber
username, etc) so anyone can reupload it elsewhere.Another case
where I wish TPB had made their own YouTube clone already. I'm
sure they would of not taken down these sort of videos.Wondering
where Wikileaks is in these sort of cases? Do they download these
sort of videos? That begs the question: why don't they? It seems
right up their own alley. I don't always agree with them, nor do
I digest their content but at the very least for a site like
theirs it would make sense for them to archive YouTube and other
politically sensitive videos no?
icebraining - 3 hours ago
An YouTube clone is expensive. TPB only hosts simple HTML pages
(they no longer have torrent files, and even those were just a
few KBs), not files with hundreds of MBs or more.As others
said, the Internet Archive may be a good option for these
videos. I wouldn't mind writing a system for backing them up to
archive.org, but I'm not sure how would I detect them. Marking
those videos requires the user to know they should be marked,
which just moves the question to how they would know.
aiyodev - 3 hours ago
Not to pick on you because this seems to be a popular opinion
but I would just like to point out the insanity of your what
you just wrote."as long as they don't abuse copyright"Would we
delete videos of the liberation of concentration camps if there
was Nickelback music playing in the background? This just
demonstrates how successful media companies have been in
distorting the true purpose of copyright laws: to promote
science, art, and culture for the public's benefit. It does not
exist for fairness or personal gain. Copyright laws should be
changed to better reflect this. Nobody should be able to
silence any information that has a public benefit.
Spivak - 2 hours ago
Like, Nickelback is in the original footage or someone
overalyed the track on top of the footage? I would imagine if
this ever really happened it would be fine in the former, and
muted in the latter.You're forgetting that 'promote...' means
give the creator control of that content for the purpose of
limiting access and making money. Promote in the sense that
it becomes possible to actually sell artistic works like
commodities. And then once the value has ben extracted the
public can do what they please with it.
josinalvo - 1 hours ago
And we just need 140 years to extract it! :P
sondr3 - 1 hours ago
People really need to download videos from YouTube if they are
that important, not doing otherwise is in my opinion reckless.
YouTube is not a service you can expect to actually archive
important videos, if I look through my favorites or other
playlists, a ton of videos are deleted.Use youtube-dl, download
it to your own server and back them up yourself. Yes, this is
awful and sucks on so many levels, but please, please, back up
data.
zeep - 2 hours ago
It's ridiculous easy to sensor the web for corporations and
Governments (but for some reason, they keep saying that once
something it's posted online, it's over and it will stay there
forever)... which is why I use youtube-dl for the videos that I
really want to keep...
floatingatoll - 3 hours ago
In case it's not already apparent, there's a business opportunity
here for someone to automate "set up an S3 bucket and host videos
in it" as an app that uses an API key, so that you simply provide
the key to the app and it manages your video collection, gives you
a UX to it, and charges you a fee per month.
crusso - 5 hours ago
should be required by lawIf your videos don't pass the algorithm,
post them somewhere else rather than reaching for the government
hammer.Youtube/Google has every right to run their business of
posting or denying video content the way they see fit without
justifying it to you, free user of their service.If you think
they're making a bad business decision and that there's a need for
a video service that gives great explanations when they deny your
videos, start such a service.
AmIFirstToThink - 4 hours ago
And, Government has right to break up monopolies.I now fully
support breaking up Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft; may
be Apple.Executives at publicly traded companies have no right to
enforce their individual political views as company policies.
They are not privately held companies, they are public companies
who are held at higher standards of equal treatment to all.What
if Bic and Mead said you can't write a opinion that we don't like
using our pen and notebooks?What if US Postal Service said you
can't send a snail mail if it contains references to UPS or
FedEx?
crusso - 4 hours ago
And, Government has right to break up monopoliesYoutube is
successful and even dominates the space, but is not a monopoly.
There are other video hosting services that can be accessed by
anyone. You can start your own if you think there's a need.
The fact is that people like Youtube.Monopolies have a specific
lock on their customers or their supply of a limited resource.
That's why people are okay with breaking them up. Not just
because they're really popular and successful.What if Bic and
Mead said you can't write a opinion that we don't like using
our pen and notebooks?Bic and Mead don't host your content.
You buy their tools to create your own content and then publish
it yourself, give it out yourself on media you paid for,
etc.What if US Postal Service said you can't send a snail mail
if it contains references to UPS or FedEx?The USPS is a
government-supported entity. Special rules apply for entities
that have government laws behind just them.If a delivery entity
opened your packages to evaluate content, that would present an
entirely different sent of problems for them and their
customers - because the content is private. Youtube videos are
public. That's the point. Youtube has determined for their
own reasons that extremist content hurts their business model.
AmIFirstToThink - 4 hours ago
>Bic and Mead don't host your content. You buy their tools to
create your own content and then publish it yourself, give it
out yourself on media you paid for, etc.The people who bought
into YouTube as a platform, the content creators and their
followers, paid for by their time and watching ads into the
platform. Remember, when you are not paying for the service,
you are the product. The people who adopted into YouTube
platform paid for it's success. YouTube was sanctuary when
Facebook and Twitter were cracking down on Free Speech. Now,
YouTube changing their position is clear bait and switch. You
allowed people to use the platform till you are successful,
taking their time and energy to drive your ad revenue, now
you are cracking down on content you don't like. It is true
that it will be relatively easy in this day and age, to
secure funding outside of YouTube Ad revenue and host content
yourself. Startups will start doing just that. YouTube will
look at this moment in time where the executive's individual
political preferences were turned into company policy,
destroying shareholder value.>Monopolies have a specific lock
on their customers or their supply of a limited
resource.YouTube changes are bait and switch on content
creators and consumers who made the platform successful.
DeMonetizing someone overnight after years of efforts into
the platform and acquiring followers is extreme power held by
a corporation.>If a delivery entity opened your packages to
evaluate content, that would present an entirely different
sent of problems for them and their customers - because the
content is private.My argument precisely for Net Neutrality.
:-) Don't look at content, I bought data transfer, ISP should
just forward it on using internet routing rules, just like
Post Office does.
crusso - 4 hours ago
paid for by their time and watching adsThe ads pay for the
content you watch at the time. It doesn't pay for your
right to dictate the terms of their service in perpetuity.
Thus, this whole line of thinking is a non-starter.
Further, YT is not required to support whatever business
model you build on top of theirs unless they've agreed to a
contract of some sort. Do you know of such a
contract?destroying shareholder valueMaybe so, but their
rationale at the moment is that extremist videos create a
hostile environment for their users. They would rather not
perpetually expose their preferred users to the toxicity of
extremism. It's arguably a move to increase shareholder
value. If you think they're wrong, don't be a shareholder.
ComodoHacker - 4 hours ago
>I now fully support breaking up Google, Amazon, Facebook and
Microsoft; may be Apple.OTOH, only their shitloads of money
allow them to resist government demands to hack a user's phone
or hand over users' data in their cloud. Every cloud has a
silver lining.
greenyoda - 3 hours ago
Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Apple were all participants
in the NSA's PRISM surveillance program that Edward Snowden d
isclosed:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_pr
ogram)#M...
thaumasiotes - 4 hours ago
> only their shitloads of money allow them to resist
government demands to hack a user's phoneTheir extreme
centralization makes it much easier for the government to
make those demands. I think you're more right than wrong,
though.
macintux - 4 hours ago
When you find something Apple has a monopoly on, you might have
a point there.The only monopoly they've ever had is on taste,
and for a short period of time I suppose you could argue MP3
players.
jonex - 2 hours ago
Devices capable of running apps designed for IOS. Selling
native apps to iPhone users. Charging users within native
apps for IOS.
macintux - 2 hours ago
I suggest you re-read
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopolization.Defining a
market as "the products Apple sells" for the purpose of
determining that Apple has a monopoly on that market is
irrational.The iPhone is one competitor in the smartphone
market. Apple clearly lacks a monopoly.
AmIFirstToThink - moments ago
iMessenge
yeukhon - 4 hours ago
Yes, absolutely! We solved the problem!No really, seriously, this
idea is so flawed.* You don't like the government? Move or start
your own government!* You don't like your house? Rebuild it or
buy another house!* You don't like the way Earth is being run?
Move or RIP!* You don't like the way the school is being run?
Move to another town or build your own school!* You don't like
the fact oil is so expensive? Drill your own oil!* You don't like
this comment? Flag it or deal with it or build your own HN.* You
don't like the way anything is done or served? DIY all the way.*
You don't like your local Starbucks? Run one or go to Dunkin'
Donut.* You don't like the way hospital runs? Run one or don't
go.Something more extreme?* You don't like your parents? Disown
your relationship with your parents or make new parents!* You
don't like your child? Disown your child and make one again.Why
don't we dedicate our own life building things every time we
don't like? Because we have better things to do. We deserve to
complain and we have every right to dislike a service and we
don't need to discredit our expectations.Users want real time PvP
and exchange/trade in PokemonGo, but after a year they are still
not available. So why don't we build a new PokemonGo? Because we
need to rent servers, build the code, maintain the code, make
deal with Pokemon rights owners (which is impossible for a small
company). So we bend and yield to Google, because we have no
better alternative.This incident teaches us a few things;1.
Please do not think AI/algorithm is smart enough to replace an
actual human. Even though human carries biases and are sloppy
too, but algorithms are just as bias, if not, more bias and more
sloppy (dealing with "abnormality" and edge cases) than a human
being will ever be. The hype "AI" will take over... we are
nowhere near that.2. YT is too popular to listen. Losing a few
thousand users means nothing to YT. We will soon forget about
this in 5 hours and go back to do our own things.
crusso - 4 hours ago
Appealing to government authority every time some business does
something you don't like should make your list of "so flawed"
solutions.1. No one said it was, but it's their business. We
live in a society that allows you to start up your own business
in days if you don't like the offering of another private
business. Giving up immediately and suggesting that the
wielder of force in the society (government) jump in as a
parent is usually a fail.2. That still doesn't give you the
right to dictate how they run their business?There's definitely
something going on in our society these days where everyone
wants authority to solve all their problems without
acknowledging all of the potential problems that strengthening
authority leads to. The article below talks about victimhood,
but it mainly tries to help illuminate where this appeal to
authority strain is coming
from.http://reason.com/blog/2015/09/11/victimhood-culture-in-
amer...
sirtaj - 3 hours ago
It's a common response even here on HN when companies behave
contrary to the social good - "it's their job to make their
investors profit while working within the law. Don't like it?
Change the law." Well, don't be surprised when they do. Why
complain now?
anigbrowl - 3 hours ago
Proposing a legal change isn't appealing to government
authority. It's asserting that we should formalize a social
attitude into a rule. Complaining about government as
paternalistic intervenor ignores the right of people to shape
government to work on their behalf, which is the reason they
are instituted to begin with.So what that society 'allows'
you to start up your own business? The economic and
logistical barriers to doing so in competition with a
monopolistic are significant, and overcoming anticompetitive
tactics of incumbents is horrifically wasteful. People have
every right to set general standards for how they want
business to be conducted and promulgate those standards by
law.Rather than warding off government as some remote and
malign force, we should be seeking to make the process of
governance more responsive to the public interest. The
stability and consistency that allows markets to operate is
government's primary product.
crusso - 1 hours ago
Complaining about government as paternalistic intervenor
ignores the right of people to shape government to work on
their behalf, which is the reason they are instituted to
begin with.Anigbrowl, I'm sure you and I are just going to
have to disagree on that one.The purpose of the federal
government in the USA is to execute its duties in the
Constitution within its enumerated powers agreed to by the
States that ratified it, along with the amendments that
have been agreed upon since. Ultimately, the Constitution
was constructed in such a way as to protect individual
liberty while minimizing the chance that the government
would become too powerful. Mechanisms such as the checks
and balances and enumerated government powers were put in
there explicitly to constrain those in government and
prevent them from thinking that they could shape the
government however they wanted without fundamentally
altering the Constitution through new amendments.Treating
the government like it's a parent there to fix all problems
for the children has led to failed state after failed state
as leaders assume more and more power over their people.
Venezuela is the latest in a long line of where the
paternalistic intervenor view of government leads. It's a
shame that societies never seem to learn that lesson. My
FB feed is full of my more left-leaning friends' laments of
how Trump is in control of the American government. But
the left still doesn't seem to grasp the fact that Trump
isn't as bad as it can get - assuming he doesn't do
something that makes things even worse. Keep increasing
the power of government and a future incarnation of Trump
will really terrify you.
nnnnnande - 3 hours ago
The fact that this is being down voted is such a shame.
It's a good addition to the discussion and it shouldn't be
down voted just because one does not agree with it
politically."People have every right to set general
standards for how they want business to be conducted and
promulgate those standards by law."I think that this in
particular is a very important insight with regards to the
accountability of multinational corporations. In this case
government acts as a way of stipulating conditions of
common decency.
quanticle - 3 hours ago
The problem is that YouTube is a monopoly in online video. We
wouldn't even be having this discussion if there were other
viable providers for online video hosting. However, there
aren't. So we're down to either complaining about YouTube
blocking videos where it shouldn't or defending YouTube on
the grounds that they're a private corporation and they have
the right to host or not host whatever they please.Moreover,
I've noticed a certain ideological favoritism on Hacker News
towards Google, Facebook, etc. I strongly suspect that if it
weren't YouTube, but rather Comcast that was filtering these
videos, the community's reaction would be different.
nradov - 2 hours ago
Vimeo
dang - 3 hours ago
We detached this subthread from
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14998738 and marked it off-
topic.
crusso - 1 hours ago
On second thought, nevermind. I realized that I'm just wasting
my Saturday here. Have a nice day.
cvsh - 4 hours ago
That addresses one issue posed by AI bans, but not the other
issue I mention in the second paragraph.
crusso - 4 hours ago
That the ban was libelous? I'm not a lawyer, but being extreme
according to their own standards doesn't sound like something
you could successfully sue for libel.I think that libel
involves written statements that have objective specificity
that is provably wrong. Subjective statements, especially if
only implied by the removal of some videos would seem to be
entirely within the realm of protected opinion.
tanilama - 1 hours ago
Agree. If Google just wants Youtube to be an entertainment
funnel, it has every right to do so.If the service you describe
exists, it won't survive long. People would begin to swarm such
services with rejected videos from Youtube, which you can foresee
will be problematic and messy, in the end it might just turned
into a 4chan where you can upload video. Hardly an attractive
business.
chc - 4 hours ago
"Go start your own business if you disagree" seems like a
middlebrow dismissal unless you're actually offering to fund the
endeavor.
crusso - 4 hours ago
It's a dismissal of the idea that we need to appeal to an
authority to solve every problem we see without acknowledging
that there are very real ways that the civil society can solve
problems without the use of government force and the myriad of
unintended consequences that go along with it.There are
countless guides on the Internet for writing software that can
create blogs, host pictures, videos, and other content. You
could do it yourself or hire a few people for a relatively
small amount of money.Start off with a hosting company and if
you're successful, get your own colocation facility.Build from
there.(yes, I was an engineering founder of an ISP in the Bay
Area and built it up to past the point of being capable of the
above - and we did it without outside funding, just our own
savings from our jobs: engineers, accountant, support person)
anigbrowl - 3 hours ago
But people have legitimate desires as consumers without
necessarily wanting to be competitors, and without
necessarily waiting for the market to evolve an alternative.
You seem like a smart person, surely you know that while
other platforms besides Youtube exist the network effects the
obtain on a large platform have huge commercial value.I get
that you don't like government force and the unintended
consequences that often follow from the creation of laws, but
you seem oblivious to the fact that markets have
externalities and problems of their own, and are not by
themselves sufficient for the operation of a society.
icebraining - 4 hours ago
If you think they're making a bad business decisionNo, that's not
what people arguing for a law think, and if you don't understand
that, you can't make an effective argument rebutting their
position.The implied position is that Google is doing something
bad for society, even if it's good for business. You may disagree
that this is bad for society, or that even if it is, it's still
Google's prerogative, but you should at least understand the
argument if you want to have a meaningful discussion.
jMyles - 4 hours ago
I actually thought crusso did a good job of rebutting that
argument given the context of a HN comment that presumably
can't stretch on for volumes of political theory.
crusso - 4 hours ago
You ignored the first part of my post where I said: post
elsewhere rather than appealing to government authority. My
last statement was suggesting a better idea in a free society
than to try to bit-by-bit destroy that free society with yet
more overpowering, overintrusive government.The implied
position is that Google is doing something bad for societyThat
completely doesn't compute. Google isn't in business to make
things better for society. If they are, maybe they should give
all their profits to charity, stop hosting cat videos and
instead become some kind of hoster of national public content?
Who said that was their business?I mean, why not argue that
youporn.com isn't hosting these anti-ISIS videos either? They
host videos. They could start hosting anti-ISIS videos to
archive them.
icebraining - 3 hours ago
Eric Schmidt disagrees with you: "In general, I think our
mission is to use technology to really change the world for
the better."But anyway, you keep trying to argue with me,
while I'm only making the point that you should understand
the argument. I'm not sure if you're unwilling to try, but in
any case I'm not interested.I actually sympathize with the
position that we shouldn't have laws requiring Google to host
this content, by the way.
crusso - 1 hours ago
xx
icebraining - 1 hours ago
It's not ad hominem because I'm not trying to rebut your
argument. In fact, I'm explicitly saying I'm not engaging
with the argument you keep making. Your post just
underlines that you're not actually listening to the
people you're talking to.
jMyles - 3 hours ago
I wholeheartedly share your "don't run to government"
sentiment.However, this sentiment bugs me:> That completely
doesn't compute. Google isn't in business to make things
better for society.If we're going to refrain from seeking the
violence of state intervention when actors do things we don't
like, don't we then have to count on business (and more
generally, the market) to do things that we do like?Yes, I
want Google to be in business to make things better for
society. I'll go even further: I want Google to position
itself so that its profit depends on it doing good for
society. I was proud of Google when it aligned things this
way re: VP8 / webm.If the violence inherent in the state is
undesirable - and I agree that it is - then we need to build
a society in which the free market selects for societal good.
krapp - 2 hours ago
>If the violence inherent in the state is undesirable - and
I agree that it is - then we need to build a society in
which the free market selects for societal good.That's not
a free market though.The unfortunate truth is, if you want
"societal good" to be guaranteed, (given some definition of
that) you have to force it to be so - which is what the
violence of the state is intended for. Otherwise markets
take the path of least resistance to greatest profit, and
that may not be a path which benefits society as a whole.
jMyles - 32 minutes ago
> That's not a free market though.> markets take the path
of least resistance to greatest profitI assert that a
society in which love and compassion are the orders of
the day will, in the demands and price signals it sends
to the market, not abide by this orthodoxy.> if you want
"societal good" to be guaranteed, (given some definition
of that) you have to force it to be so - which is what
the violence of the state is intended forThe idea that
wonderful ends can spring from such unseemly means is not
in keeping with what I am able to observe of the
universe.
pottersbasilisk - 5 hours ago
Perhaps its time for google and youtube to be regulated.
icebraining - 5 hours ago
Every company is regulated. You have to be more specific than
that.
carapace - 5 hours ago
"Nationalize Google!" Okay, no, that would be turning the knob
to 11.I upvoted you because I was like, "Yeah, maybe some
regulation might be good." Then I thought about who would be
doing the regulating and now I'm much less enthusiastic.
:-/Still, it does seem like there should be a bit more, uh,
community input into how these vast silos are administered.
mythrwy - 4 hours ago
The community making it's own silo(s) might be another
option.(Problem is, silo making by committee has it's own set
of challenges.)
carapace - 4 hours ago
Well, I agree, but then how do you get Joe and Jane User to
switch?
chinathrow - 2 hours ago
The revolution will not be televised.
013a - 5 hours ago
YouTube is balking at their own size. They're discovering what
should have been obvious to anyone; the sheer amount of content
entering their centralized system is impossible to moderate in any
fair way. The only way they can manage is (A) prioritize quality
moderation toward channels which are more popular, and (B) enforce
the most bland, vanilla experience possible.They need to moderate
because they are centralized, and their revenue demands it. We, as
a society, need to create a better option. Not just another
YouTube, but a seamless decentralized solution.
AmIFirstToThink - 4 hours ago
And, come to think they had me convinced that this was not going to
happen for few decades.I think YouTube went down pretty fast and
without fight. The ideological takeover of Facebook and Twitter
raged on for few years. I think YouTube was taken over literally
overnight. I remember being appreciative of YouTube just a few days
back.Guess, time to cancel my $15 Youtube Red Family membership.
Ugh, I really hate ads on YouTube. And I was happy to give my $15
month over month. But, I can't fund Youtube anymore given what they
are doing. $15 to Youtube, $10 to NetFlix, $10 to Amazon, with $35
a month, I can sponsor ton of content on Patreon that I like. My
subscription list on YouTube is not 35 people long, I think it
would work out.Never ever I thought I would type these words...
break up Google and Facebook and Amazon.
icebraining - 4 hours ago
I have no idea what you're saying. YouTube was "taken over"? By
whom?If this news was what changed your opinion, you were simply
uninformed; nothing has actually changed. YouTube had done the
same more than two years ago[1], and that's very unlikely to be
the first case.[1]
https://www.reddit.com/r/syriancivilwar/comments/2wra0d/well...
AmIFirstToThink - 4 hours ago
https://www.adl.org/news/press-releases/adl-applauds-
google-...https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/1/16072840/youtube-
placing-l...
icebraining - 4 hours ago
From your first link, "[Google is] one of the founding
members of ADL?s Anti-Cyberhate Working Group, established
almost a decade ago".Like I said, nothing significant has
changed recently. They are just expanding what they were
already doing.
thaumasiotes - 4 hours ago
It seems pretty conventional to say that "taking over" is
the culmination of a gradual "expansion", no?
icebraining - 4 hours ago
Expanding their actions. I think the ideology has been
the same for a very long time.
dang - 3 hours ago
We detached this subthread from
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14998738 and marked it off-
topic.
pmoriarty - 4 hours ago
"I really hate ads on YouTube."Just use youtube-dl and you'll
never see any ads.
luck_fenovo - 4 hours ago
youtube-dl this and tell me if you see an ad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMpZ0TGjbWEI just tried and I
saw one
pmoriarty - 4 hours ago
That's a video of an ad, which is quite different from videos
that aren't ads but have ads injected in to them by
youtube.If you want to watch videos of ads, of course you can
do so. But if you want to avoid them you can do so as well,
by using youtube-dl.
arca_vorago - 3 hours ago
May I also suggest mpsyt(mps-youtube). GPL cli YouTube
interface that will open your player of choice. I hardly use
the web interface anymore.I wish goblin would take off.
pmoriarty - 3 hours ago
What's goblin?
detaro - 3 hours ago
Do you mean https://mediagoblin.org/, or something else?
tomp - 4 hours ago
I use an adblock (uBlock Origin I think or something similar),
and never see ads on YouTube.
raverbashing - 5 hours ago
Why are people storing evidence on Youtube again?Not blaming the
victim, but at this point most of Google services have not shown to
be reliable, especially if you require some kind of thinking human
behind a decision
gambiting - 5 hours ago
If you are a rebel in a contested part of the world, submitting
videos to youtube takes literally 2 clicks on any cheapest
android phone, and then the entire world can watch it. Everything
else requires at least a bit of technical expertise which you
might not have.
raverbashing - 4 hours ago
Correct.You could also save it to Google Drive or other "Cloud
Backup" solutions like OneDrive/DropboxBut I guess hindsight is
20/20, and I would probably have trusted YT more than I should
gambiting - 4 hours ago
If you submit a video to google drive and start giving people
links then it will be very promptly disabled with a warning
that if you want to share it you need to upload it to
youtube. Same with OneDrive/Dropbox. It's fine to share with
a few people, but go into hundreds and it gets quickly shut
down.
raverbashing - 3 hours ago
Yes, don't share it from those, but you can upload to both
lazyasciiart - 2 hours ago
There is probably someone in that 'entire world watching it'
who has the time and technical expertise to help make backups.
If nobody else knows about it, then it wasn't going to be used
for evidence of anything anyway.