Remove ads

YouTube finally bans extremist content on their platform

Tellos said:
people are not caring about it and my fear is we will lose a way to show people the false promises of fascism.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The tiny number of people who would be dissuaded from fascism by seeing old documentary footage, but not by the fact that the murdered millions of people seem pretty insignificant compared to the number of people being recruited by currently active media personalities pushing fascism. It isn't like the footage is being taken out and burned some place, they can get it back up pretty easily.

As for Totalbiscuit, he hurt a lot of people and aligned himself with a bunch of misogynistic creeps. That;s the legacy he made for himself.
 
mesonoxian said:
The tiny number of people who would be dissuaded from fascism by seeing old documentary footage, but not by the fact that the murdered millions of people seem pretty insignificant compared to the number of people being recruited by currently active media personalities pushing fascism. It isn't like the footage is being taken out and burned some place, they can get it back up pretty easily.

As for Totalbiscuit, he hurt a lot of people and aligned himself with a bunch of misogynistic creeps. That;s the legacy he made for himself.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

never saw TB do that but as I said we wont make headway on that topic so I'll stick to the one the thread is about.
 
One of the things I really hope for with this purge is that big Internet personalities like PewDiePie can and will be affected. Pewd is a pretty well-known racist/Nazi sympathizer, and he speaks to a pretty big audience of kids and adults alike. If they manage to do something right and ban him, I think it'll certainly help with the gamer/fascist pipeline a lot, since iirc Pewd was one of the first few big gamer YouTuber personalities to start being really open and out there with his racism.* Admittedly, I don't think he does games anymore, but he certainly did in the past.

Honestly, I'm really glad I bailed out from continuing to watch him when I did. I always felt like some of the things he did in his videos were...off, to say the least, and I never knew how to put it into words. Like with his photoshop vids and stuff. Not to mention the Swedish swears he'd say all being incredibly sexual in nature. I only really liked his RPGMaker and Happy Wheels stuff when I was a kid, but I do remember noticing that a lot of the jokes he made just felt weird even before he started being really overt with his racism.

*note that I don't usually watch a lot of lets players/YouTube personalities in general, I mostly use it to listen to music, so admittedly I'm not entirely sure on how accurate this is. But I do know he was the first really big one I heard of, esp since PewDiePie was just so incredibly popular and well known.
 
Karyis said:
One of the things I really hope for with this purge is that big Internet personalities like PewDiePie can and will be affected. Pewd is a pretty well-known racist/Nazi sympathizer, and he speaks to a pretty big audience of kids and adults alike. If they manage to do something right and ban him, I think it'll certainly help with the gamer/fascist pipeline a lot, since iirc Pewd was one of the first few big gamer YouTuber personalities to start being really open and out there with his racism.* Admittedly, I don't think he does games anymore, but he certainly did in the past.

Honestly, I'm really glad I bailed out from continuing to watch him when I did. I always felt like some of the things he did in his videos were...off, to say the least, and I never knew how to put it into words. Like with his photoshop vids and stuff. Not to mention the Swedish swears he'd say all being incredibly sexual in nature. I only really liked his RPGMaker and Happy Wheels stuff when I was a kid, but I do remember noticing that a lot of the jokes he made just felt weird even before he started being really overt with his racism.

*note that I don't usually watch a lot of lets players/YouTube personalities in general, I mostly use it to listen to music, so admittedly I'm not entirely sure on how accurate this is. But I do know he was the first really big one I heard of, esp since PewDiePie was just so incredibly popular and well known.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I hoenstly think Pew di pie is an idiot racist no I think he's a troll so more useless but thats the thing there is no upswing in racism or fascism on youtube. People jsut react to things faster and more often now. And people learned people like to watch things that offend them or make them outraged. So they started making it more. And the more you scream outrage about them them ore people go to watch to see the outrage.
 
Tellos said:
I hoenstly think Pew di pie is an idiot racist no I think he's a troll so more useless but thats the thing there is no upswing in racism or fascism on youtube. People jsut react to things faster and more often now. And people learned people like to watch things that offend them or make them outraged. So they started making it more. And the more you scream outrage about them them ore people go to watch to see the outrage.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Nothing you're talking about here actually resembles reality. This is wishful thinking from people looking for excuses to not worry about the entertainment they consume. But, hey, whatever helps you sleep at night.
 
I'll take YouTube at their word when they ban the likes of Sargon, BlackPigeon and those types of fools permanently.

Openly supremacist channels are easy to delete, but people like Chowder not so much.
 
PDP is one of those "too big to fail" things at moment, very unlikely YouTube will do anything about him.
 
galahad said:
PDP is one of those "too big to fail" things at moment, very unlikely YouTube will do anything about him.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I suppose that could be the case, they certainly aren't doing anything about that alt-right commentator the articles mentioned in the OP. Since Pewd is such a big money-maker for them (I'm pretty sure, at least?) they might be reluctant to do anything at all.

I'm still hoping they'll get rid of him anyway. Being too cynical about this won't do anyone much good, I don't think, but then again being overly optimistic won't help either.
 
Tellos said:
gamer gate was hijacked by a handful of trolls with fake accounts this is a moral panic my experience is relevant your claim that it is not and blanketing of an entire group is hideous
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yeah, bullshit. I was on the gamergate ground floor back when it started as an InternetAristocrat hit piece on Zoe Quinn based on the bitter blog posts of her ex-boyfriend. And even IA noped the fuck out and called the collapse of gamergate into a 150 ring circus shortly before it happened.

The #notyourshield campaign was not a result of "trolling" as much as you want it to be and the "movement" acquired nothing of value since AAA companies are doing the same things as always, reviews still suck and are biased and paid for in many cases, consumers are still exploited and at a worse rate than before, communities are even more toxic and the list goes on.

Now we have Attack on Sony: Son of Gamergate which consists of nerds pissing themselves over having their boobies covered up in anime games, something made hysterically funny by the sizable overlap of those same complainers in hyper exploitative games like Fate/Grand Order.

Would you like to guess who owns F/GO?
 
FortePlus said:
Yeah, bullshit. I was on the gamergate ground floor back when it started as an InternetAristocrat hit piece on Zoe Quinn based on the bitter blog posts of her ex-boyfriend. And even IA noped the fuck out and called the collapse of gamergate into a 150 ring circus shortly before it happened.

The #notyourshield campaign was not a result of "trolling" as much as you want it to be and the "movement" acquired nothing of value since AAA companies are doing the same things as always, reviews still suck and are biased and paid for in many cases, consumers are still exploited and at a worse rate than before, communities are even more toxic and the list goes on.

Now we have Attack on Sony: Son of Gamergate which consists of nerds pissing themselves over having their boobies covered up in anime games, something made hysterically funny by the sizable overlap of those same complainers in hyper exploitative games like Fate/Grand Order.

Would you like to guess who owns F/GO?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

if they genuinely wanna cover boobs fine I consider it benevolent sexism as it sounds like the same puritanical nonsense telling women how they ought to dress. I dont feel women should HAVE to dress any more or less sexy than they wish and any asshat who consider that permission to grope or harass them is an idiot who needs to learn to control himself. I followed gamergate as a outsider observer as I feel twitter is a fucking joke. Sarksian and others fade liek I knew they would. Not by any GAMER GATE power but by the fact like all moral outrage critics when their only solution is shout louder than everyone else you run outta content fast. In the end Ignoring the loud jack hole is what works best not trying to deplatform them. If sargon had been ignored 4 years ago he'd be dead in the water. Instead people still outrage about him.
 
Last edited:
You forgot to mention the death threats routinely lobbed at Sarkeesian (who I feel is a fraud but for reasons divorced from le gamers) including an online game where the objective is literally just to beat the shit out of her.

But get it in my dude.
 
The problem with a global corporation policing the bounds of speech is structural and based on the fact that corporations are not actually built to be instruments to police speech. Until that structural issue is dealt with any effort is going to be a joke and just more fodder for the endless, pointless online wars about who has the right to go on what platform. Youtube isn't actually going to hire enough human moderators to deal with it unless made to, because human moderators would be extremely expensive and to do a comprehensive sweep, actually financially impossible.

It would be devoting a huge resource expenditure to what is effectively a peripheral issue for Youtube: maintaining credibility by doing just enough to appear as though it is not a platform for whatever far-right group is the subject of the latest outrage. But this touches into fundamental free speech questions, such as regardless of the fact that Youtube is "just" a corporation, it's also one of the largest platforms for speech ever conceived, and it's entirely in the hands of a company unprepared for the consequences, which is a story that has repeated itself throughout the internet.

And frankly, I'm not sure how a company could be prepared for the consequences. The financial incentives involved encourage growing your platform as rapidly as possible while keeping expenses as low as possible as the server costs balloon. How can companies actually effectively respond without resorting to neglect or algorithms? Youtube's staff is not prepared to deal with the fact that they act as unaccountable dictators for the largest cultural platform in the world.
 
Cetashwayo said:
The problem with a global corporation policing the bounds of speech is structural and based on the fact that corporations are not actually built to be instruments to police speech. Until that structural issue is dealt with any effort is going to be a joke and just more fodder for the endless, pointless online wars about who has the right to go on what platform. Youtube isn't actually going to hire enough human moderators to deal with it unless made to, because human moderators would be extremely expensive and to do a comprehensive sweep, actually financially impossible.

It would be devoting a huge resource expenditure to what is effectively a peripheral issue for Youtube: maintaining credibility by doing just enough to appear as though it is not a platform for whatever far-right group is the subject of the latest outrage. But this touches into fundamental free speech questions, such as regardless of the fact that Youtube is "just" a corporation, it's also one of the largest platforms for speech ever conceived, and it's entirely in the hands of a company unprepared for the consequences, which is a story that has repeated itself throughout the internet.

And frankly, I'm not sure how a company could be prepared for the consequences. The financial incentives involved encourage growing your platform as rapidly as possible while keeping expenses as low as possible as the server costs balloon. How can companies actually effectively respond without resorting to neglect or algorithms? Youtube's staff is not prepared to deal with the fact that they act as unaccountable dictators for the largest cultural platform in the world.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think that's an extremely fair point. Unfortunately, there's only so much one can do in terms of the human department, and while they could go the Facebook route and outsource it (not ideal, and at what I personally think is too high of a cost to many people's mental states and personal safety, based on those articles that came out recently, although admittedly this would likely be a problem for any moderation team, outsourced or not) would it truly be just as/more effective than the algorithm they've got going on while keeping costs just as low? I do think that having at least some human input would be best, perhaps it could just be limited to the appeals process should someone get wrongfully flagged. I admittedly don't really know how moderation works, especially not for a big tech/website company like YouTube, but I do know that (unfortunately) including any human input at all would be difficult to say the least. And any possible solutions to this problem will probably be just as difficult to implement, too.

But on your point on those questions on free speech, as far as I am aware hate speech isn't protected by the law, even though many people don't seem to realize this. So couldn't this be defended in court (should someone be stupid enough to take them there) as following the law according to the first amendment? Since hate speech isn't protected, YouTube is actually doing their job by (attempting to) police it, where they weren't before and things got out of hand.

Honestly, it's almost scary to think that the rights to deciding such a thing have been given over to such a large company, whose interests are more vested in making the most money they can rather than protecting anyone's rights. And if they end up deciding that moderation isn't worth it and the money is where the alt-right and nazis are at, well...
 
Cetashwayo said:
The problem with a global corporation policing the bounds of speech is structural and based on the fact that corporations are not actually built to be instruments to police speech. Until that structural issue is dealt with any effort is going to be a joke and just more fodder for the endless, pointless online wars about who has the right to go on what platform. Youtube isn't actually going to hire enough human moderators to deal with it unless made to, because human moderators would be extremely expensive and to do a comprehensive sweep, actually financially impossible.

It would be devoting a huge resource expenditure to what is effectively a peripheral issue for Youtube: maintaining credibility by doing just enough to appear as though it is not a platform for whatever far-right group is the subject of the latest outrage. But this touches into fundamental free speech questions, such as regardless of the fact that Youtube is "just" a corporation, it's also one of the largest platforms for speech ever conceived, and it's entirely in the hands of a company unprepared for the consequences, which is a story that has repeated itself throughout the internet.

And frankly, I'm not sure how a company could be prepared for the consequences. The financial incentives involved encourage growing your platform as rapidly as possible while keeping expenses as low as possible as the server costs balloon. How can companies actually effectively respond without resorting to neglect or algorithms? Youtube's staff is not prepared to deal with the fact that they act as unaccountable dictators for the largest cultural platform in the world.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

A lot of the issue is that they address people differently depending on how many viewers they have, though, and that's definitely something they could change. Eliminating bigoted content entirely is probably out of their reach, but the fact they're unwilling to move against even the well identified big names or cases of abuse reported to them show that it's not just a problem of ability, it's one of choice. As you say, all they'll ever do is the bare minimum to be seen as acceptable and keep raking in the money.
 
So, in related new Reddit has quarantined r/the_donald which is a weird status that keeps anyone who isn't explicitly looking for it from finding it.

This has been reported on in multiple media outlets:
NY Times
Forbes
Vice

Figured this belonged here since it looks like they got hit because Reddit is tightening its standards the way YouTube is.
 
Zap Rowsdower said:
Either they start hiring humans to help with moderation rather than leaving it to the algorithm, and stop the video game to nazi pipeline generated by said algorithm's dedication to increasing views (because they can crack down on extremism all they want, their own algorithm encourages it because extremism increases view count), or its all shuffling the deckchairs on the titanic.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

One of my favorite people on youtube, pushinguproses , gets flagged for putting up content from Murder She Wrote. The algorithim is stupid.
 
Mre said:
Figured this belonged here since it looks like they got hit because Reddit is tightening its standards the way YouTube is.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Nah it's because they're openly talking about murdering the police. That's not something Reddit wants any parts of.

Janus said:
One of my favorite people on youtube, pushinguproses , gets flagged for putting up content from Murder She Wrote. The algorithim is stupid.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Yeah but Google isn't going to pay like 3000 people to do actual moderating work when you can have the robots do it for less.
 
I'm glad Reddit chooses to intervene for the sake of public safety when their platform is being used to endorse vile behaviour to a truly vulnerable group like... cops. Yep.

How long has Reddit been a nexus for Gamergate/MRA/Incel bullshit again? Maybe feminists should get APC's body armour, and M4's paid for by state budgets. Maybe threats against them will be taken seriously then.
 
Last edited:
I think they did shut down r/Incel at least at some point, but only after it got really really bad to a degree where it would hurt their reputation/credibility even more than anything else has. So I'm not really surprised that they quarantined r/the_donald only after people who worked as part of law enforcement got threatened.
 
Makes sense, media companies care about their reputation and bottom dollar the most. The second a hate group like r/the_donald or the rightwing youtube channels starts undermining their credibility in the eyes of the larger public, they're going to go.

Naturally, they'll screech and howl and cry about their free speech, and never ever stop to consider that maybe the reset of the world considers them repulsive and would rather not be associated with them. Their victim complex wont let them.
 
Last edited:
Karyis said:
I think they did shut down r/Incel at least at some point, but only after it got really really bad to a degree where it would hurt their reputation/credibility even more than anything else has. So I'm not really surprised that they quarantined r/the_donald only after people who worked as part of law enforcement got threatened.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

They only do something when it winds up on the news. That's hardly the first bit of terrorism support that T_D mods have tolerated.
 
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top