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Youtube to ban videos promoting segregation and discrimination

Rufus Shinra

Well-known member

Today, we're taking another step in our hate speech policy by specifically prohibiting videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status. This would include, for example, videos that promote or glorify Nazi ideology, which is inherently discriminatory. Finally, we will remove content denying that well-documented violent events, like the Holocaust or the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, took place. We recognize some of this content has value to researchers and NGOs looking to understand hate in order to combat it, and we are exploring options to make it available to them in the future. And as always, context matters, so some videos could remain up because they discuss topics like pending legislation, aim to condemn or expose hate, or provide analysis of current events. We will begin enforcing this updated policy today; however, it will take time for our systems to fully ramp up and we'll be gradually expanding coverage over the next several months.

Who wanna bet the usual suspects will whine and complain, explaining in totally good faith that this will only reinforce the bad guys?
 
Let's be honest though, this is still youtube we're talking about. Quite frankly I don't trust their technical capabilities in the pursuit of their goals, regardless of how noble their goals are.
 
Let's be honest though, this is still youtube we're talking about. Quite frankly I don't trust their technical capabilities in the pursuit of their goals, regardless of how noble their goals are.
Of course they cannot remove everything, just like a country's police system does not prevent or punish all crime. The interesting thing is that the mindset is shifting quite away from the notion of "let's leave all ideas fight together in the free market of ideas and the best will obviously be the ones that emerge", a mindset that has been disproven by History yet kept by people unaffected by History.
 
Hmmm, yes, but also reported about YouTube today (based off of tweets made yesterday afternoon):


...I expect this to be exactly the same sort of tough talk followed by half-hearted actions as all the other times that they have put their foot down over systematic violations of guidelines. Because shock videos and ongoing hate speech makes money for Google too.

So, as for me, I will believe it when I actually see it happening consistently. Not just when there is an uprising of advertisers and users that threaten the bottom line if immediate action does not take place.
 
I absolutely do not see why a website owner, should be forced to host content that he considers reprehensible. I wouldn't want to be forced to host such content on here and I don't get why YouTube should not be held to the same level of standards.

The line of reasoning that it counts as a public space is odd, as it implies YouTube is a public service, sure if you want to nationalise such a service and then debate it, fair enough, but there is a basic concept of private property being private property at stake here. If you're not going to brake up the mega corps, then I don't see why we should treat them any differently to other things people own, such as homes.

I think the line of reasoning goes that this will slippery slope into actual government restrictions on speech. One issue is such an idea ignores the concept of psychological accounting on different types of speech, meaning there's going to be a rapid influx of emotions once a government did step over the line on what is and isn't considered reprehensible.

In turn, if we are to jump into the realms of simplistic political slogans like that, I think it would be reasonable to argue in turn that such concepts could also be legally twisted to justify forcing normal people to host content that in their mind is wrong. It would be very interesting to note that the whole gay wedding cake dramas are basically a variant on this argument, with the sides typically reversed.

Or we can agree that consent, power and slopes are far more complicated then that, which is why it's an informal fallacy for a reason.

I do not think restricting speech is always a certain block on extremism though, it certainly is harmful to have unfetted speech just flowing around and crowding out facts as the US shows; but I'd consider extremism more a result of the overall economic situation and banning Nazis is a plaster, but still something that doesn't address root causes, as the AFD in Germany shows.

...

I wonder where the origin of defending the free speech of Nazis came from though, I have suspicions that it was started by actual Nazis themselves and dropped into a conservative audience, as a way of manipulating them. But now I'm just going into hypothesising here...

Because Nazis having been manipulating the right almost as long as they've been around, it's not hard for a malicious few to exploit the weakness of a majority, me thinks. ;)
 
Of course they cannot remove everything, just like a country's police system does not prevent or punish all crime. The interesting thing is that the mindset is shifting quite away from the notion of "let's leave all ideas fight together in the free market of ideas and the best will obviously be the ones that emerge", a mindset that has been disproven by History yet kept by people unaffected by History.
Not exactly my point, it's more like their enforcement of policies tend to knock out innocents while more often than not leaving the guilty around barring certain high profile cases because the latter brings in the dosh while the former usually doesn't.

As long as those creepyass "childrens" channels (that somehow have millions of views on all their videos and probably millions of subs, most likes bots) keep on showing up on my recommended list I'll continue to question their technical competency.
 
YouTube have shown that platitudes are one thing, enforcement another entirely. As akuz noted on sv, lgbt content will get screwed over.

And a regular reminder that the British government spouted platitudes of political correctness but that didn't stop them sending Go Home vans to immigrant communities.
 
I wonder where the origin of defending the free speech of Nazis came from though, I have suspicions that it was started by actual Nazis themselves and dropped into a conservative audience, as a way of manipulating them. But now I'm just going into hypothesising here...

Because Nazis having been manipulating the right almost as long as they've been around, it's not hard for a malicious few to exploit the weakness of a majority, me thinks. ;)
Let's be honest here. Historically, most of the right lurved the Nazis. I mean, in the US there were pro-Nazi rallies and they kept out of WWII for so long because they couldn't bear to fight them nice ol' Nazis.

Yeah, history has been rewritten, and everyone says that the Nazis were all bad all the time, but even up to the point of publicly exposing death camps the Nazis had a whole fucking lot of support. That support almost exclusively came from the conservative factions that fill the right-wing spectrum of modern politics.

In which case it is less a question of how the Nazis keep manipulating the right, and more a question of what it is about the right that has led them to consistently defend the Nazis. One would naturally assume in any other conversation that such a long-standing defense implies that there is at best a mild sympathy for the twisted ideals, at worst that it is not at all a coincidence and that the right would promote those ideas themselves if not for pesky public opinion.

But they learned that lesson. Deny deny deny anything that might put themselves in a bad light. Never say the bad things in public. And if all your policies reinforce the public's suspicions that there is dark intent, deny it again, call it a complete coincidence, and then accuse the other side of making up cruel stories when they put the pieces of the two-piece puzzle together. It's about free speech, and only about free speech, honest. Now let's force the media to stop saying bad things about our side, it is mean.
 
Let's be honest here. Historically, most of the right lurved the Nazis. I mean, in the US there were pro-Nazi rallies and they kept out of WWII for so long because they couldn't bear to fight them nice ol' Nazis.

Yeah, history has been rewritten, and everyone says that the Nazis were all bad all the time, but even up to the point of publicly exposing death camps the Nazis had a whole fucking lot of support. That support almost exclusively came from the conservative factions that fill the right-wing spectrum of modern politics.

In which case it is less a question of how the Nazis keep manipulating the right, and more a question of what it is about the right that has led them to consistently defend the Nazis. One would naturally assume in any other conversation that such a long-standing defense implies that there is at best a mild sympathy for the twisted ideals, at worst that it is not at all a coincidence and that the right would promote those ideas themselves if not for pesky public opinion.

But they learned that lesson. Deny deny deny anything that might put themselves in a bad light. Never say the bad things in public. And if all your policies reinforce the public's suspicions that there is dark intent, deny it again, call it a complete coincidence, and then accuse the other side of making up cruel stories when they put the pieces of the two-piece puzzle together. It's about free speech, and only about free speech, honest. Now let's force the media to stop saying bad things about our side, it is mean.
Free Speech!

(Unless you're a Muslim)
 
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I wonder where the origin of defending the free speech of Nazis came from though, I have suspicions that it was started by actual Nazis themselves and dropped into a conservative audience, as a way of manipulating them. But now I'm just going into hypothesising here...

Because Nazis having been manipulating the right almost as long as they've been around, it's not hard for a malicious few to exploit the weakness of a majority, me thinks. ;)
What, you don't think it's because the Nazis say things that the right wishes they could?
 
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What, you don't think it's because the Nazis say things that the right wishes they could?

And again despite hate speech laws and political correctness policies, the tories got away with a lot of racist shit during the 2010-15 coalition, and this was during a time the far right bnp imploded
 
Free Speech!

(Unless you're a Muslim)
Or post "misleading"... truths, like the New York Times, or Washington Post.

Funny how the main fatass saying that is also the guy with a copy of Mein Kampf next to his bed, and who responded to a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi at an alt-right hate speech rally killing someone with his car as "both sides were bad". He can dogwhistle all day, or even be openly racist in comments and policies, but the Fake News Media is bad and should not be allowed to be mean to him when they place his own words into context.
 
What, you don't think it's because the Nazis say things that the right wishes they could?
I mean, they're not really a homogeneous blob, but that might just be my UK centric perspective.

You've got a mixture of people from an-caps to, to racists, to bible thumpers in the current Republican Party.

TBH, I suspect a lot of the politicians up there want Ayn Rand land more then Hitlerland, but that might be just prior to Trumpie Dumpty.

If I had to say they're anything, it's be a bunch of people I united by a mixture of hating the libs, single issues and the then obviously racist side.
 
I wouldn't want to be forced to host such content on here and I don't get why YouTube should not be held to the same level of standards.
Two reasons, one being that the hardline position isn't held by YouTube, such that Steven Crowder's tapdancing-on-the-line-to-piss-on-libs comedy stuff doesn't quite violate it, nor does his critical use of someone's ways of referring to themselves, the other being that they've got explicit case law saying that their protection from being sued over copyright infringement is reliant on them being clueless about the bulk of what happens on their platform. As in they narrowly avoided being sued into oblivion because the people suing them were the first known to do fake leaks, making YouTube's safe harbor defense flawless in the process. It's why they're not officially involved in the appeals process for copyright claims.

All these big tech companies, as platforms, are extremely reliant on not being publishers to avoid being sued into oblivion like Gawker was, and thus have legal disincentive to do anything to police the sorts of things that go on on their sites. However, they have commercial disincentive to make no motions of caring about all these issues, so they do a whole bunch of talking, but ultimately can't really act on it without landing in very bad waters. Also, there's plenty of data to show that progressivism doesn't sell, but refusing to pay lip service tends to result in vast PR nightmares. And YouTube, in particular, has a track record of holding closely to its own take on the matters, rather than giving in whenever the media calls.

I wonder where the origin of defending the free speech of Nazis came from though, I have suspicions that it was started by actual Nazis themselves and dropped into a conservative audience, as a way of manipulating them.
The right to not be discriminated against based on political ideology was included in the 1948 list of Universal Human Rights, written by the people who fought the Nazis. So the origin of this was literally the people who beat the Nazis in open warfare saying that freedom of speech covers Nazis. Not directly, but Nazism is generally regarded as a political ideology first and foremost. An utterly abhorrent one, but people don't go around calling it a religion or nationality or something.
 
The right to not be discriminated against based on political ideology was included in the 1948 list of Universal Human Rights, written by the people who fought the Nazis. So the origin of this was literally the people who beat the Nazis in open warfare saying that freedom of speech covers Nazis. Not directly, but Nazism is generally regarded as a political ideology first and foremost. An utterly abhorrent one, but people don't go around calling it a religion or nationality or something.
Of course, in the real world, in the vast majority of the countries set up by the people who fought the Nazis, Nazism isn't tolerated. :)

This interpretation of freedom of speech is absolutely not universal among democracies, no matter how hard you might claim it is. The desire to murder, torture, rape and destroy entire populations for no other reason than their existence... well, it's not something civilized people want to tolerate anymore, because there's a fundamental principle you seem to be unaware of, in your little spiel: human dignity.
 
Two reasons, one being that the hardline position isn't held by YouTube, such that Steven Crowder's tapdancing-on-the-line-to-piss-on-libs comedy stuff doesn't quite violate it, nor does his critical use of someone's ways of referring to themselves, the other being that they've got explicit case law saying that their protection from being sued over copyright infringement is reliant on them being clueless about the bulk of what happens on their platform. As in they narrowly avoided being sued into oblivion because the people suing them were the first known to do fake leaks, making YouTube's safe harbor defense flawless in the process. It's why they're not officially involved in the appeals process for copyright claims.
But...if i'm parsing you correctly, in that you're saying that it's not actual Nazis being blocked, then does not my point still stand?

You're forcing people to host content on their private property they find reprehensible, now we can make the argument here that politics is more abut in attribute, that certainly can be argued in general, however that doesn't follow for this case as we're talking about expressing those views, which is a different matter entirely, a Christian Church has every right to deny Muslims from using it as a place of worship and vis visa.

All these big tech companies, as platforms, are extremely reliant on not being publishers to avoid being sued into oblivion like Gawker was, and thus have legal disincentive to do anything to police the sorts of things that go on on their sites. However, they have commercial disincentive to make no motions of caring about all these issues, so they do a whole bunch of talking, but ultimately can't really act on it without landing in very bad waters. Also, there's plenty of data to show that progressivism doesn't sell, but refusing to pay lip service tends to result in vast PR nightmares. And YouTube, in particular, has a track record of holding closely to its own take on the matters, rather than giving in whenever the media calls.

Define 'progressive' here.

The right to not be discriminated against based on political ideology was included in the 1948 list of Universal Human Rights, written by the people who fought the Nazis. So the origin of this was literally the people who beat the Nazis in open warfare saying that freedom of speech covers Nazis. Not directly, but Nazism is generally regarded as a political ideology first and foremost. An utterly abhorrent one, but people don't go around calling it a religion or nationality or something.
We're missing the point entirely,

What I'm saying is why Nazism? I'm sure you could find plenty of cases in which NAMBLA was bared from speaking and you don't see massive outcry about that, so why Nazis?

Why them of all groups? Why psychologically? And the document you brought forward...I find it hard to believe that had the influence you think seeing McCarthyism was almost directly after that date.
 
I fully expect this to fizzle out but it would be truly hilarious if youtube moved to stomp on ALL segregation and discrimination hate speech and not just the convenient ones.

The mixed screetches of outraeg from Neonazis, Alt righters, Alt lefters, TERFs and all manner of hate peddlers that think their hate being fashionable makes it ok would be glorious.
 
I mean, they're not really a homogeneous blob, but that might just be my UK centric perspective.

You've got a mixture of people from an-caps to, to racists, to bible thumpers in the current Republican Party.

TBH, I suspect a lot of the politicians up there want Ayn Rand land more then Hitlerland, but that might be just prior to Trumpie Dumpty.

If I had to say they're anything, it's be a bunch of people I united by a mixture of hating the libs, single issues and the then obviously racist side.
It's not that they want Hitlerland, just that many of the sentiments neo-Nazis express are ones that conservatives can find common ground with. I can only speak to American conservatism, but there's a deep undercurrent of exclusivity that also forms the core of Nazism, a shared notion of "We are the superior race/culture/lifestyle/religion, and the Other does not deserve the prosperity that should be reserved for us." That's there in religious fundamentalism, nationalism, white supremacy, etc. Contrast this with liberals, where the shared ideal is that of inclusivity, i.e. "Everyone deserves our prosperity."

Libertarians are a bit of an interesting case; there are very few actual Ayn Randians around, but they have a disproportionate amount of influence in national politics because their ideology is very useful to the wealthy. The association between big business and the right is, I think, more historical happenstance than anything else. It goes back the post-Civil War era, when Republicans were the progressive, liberal party, the party of the rich and industrialized North. Then the Depression happened, the progressives started flocking to the party that wasn't associated with big business, followed by the great realignment and the Southern Strategy, but big business stayed Republican. So I don't think that there's necessarily much of a shared ideological identity between the business conservative and the rest of the right.
 
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But...if i'm parsing you correctly, in that you're saying that it's not actual Nazis being blocked, then does not my point still stand?

You're forcing people to host content on their private property they find reprehensible, now we can make the argument here that politics is more abut in attribute, that certainly can be argued in general, however that doesn't follow for this case as we're talking about expressing those views, which is a different matter entirely, a Christian Church has every right to deny Muslims from using it as a place of worship and vis visa.
The issue is mostly a matter of practicalities of scale. Twitter and Facebook are the public discourse, for many practical purposes. Each of the big social media platforms is an effective monopoly, because each has different usage patterns that they are the only major player within. Twitter and Facebook don't compete for users, because they function fundamentally differently. Facebook is heavily focused on community functionality, while Twitter is about the immediacy of response, and people use them in different ways accordingly, causing different public figures to become prominent on them.

Social media, fundamentally, is a perfect fit for monopolistic practices. Userbase is content. The value of these places is in how many already use them, independently of virtually all other factors, and this is why antitrust is uniquely well-suited as a regulation framework. Because it is not possible to break Facebook up into separate platforms of its kind, same for Twitter. If these companies are abusing their private regulatory power to control what the public may discuss, then they have to be restricted from restricting their users.

You, as an individual owner of a forum with only a few thousand users, have extremely limited impact on public discourse. Twitter and Facebook can, and have, enabled and destroyed social movements on other continents from where they are beholden to rule of law. The Arab Spring, for example. This is why they're being gone after with antitrust, as functional monopolies, rather than the proposed regulation being a general matter of forbidding platform owners the ability to self-regulate. It's very much "Facebook, Google and Twitter have abused their market positions to deny public discourse of numerous topics, therefor these companies need forbidden the ability to self-regulate."

Define 'progressive' here.
The difference from liberalism is primarily in that progressivism proposes "making up for" the bigotry of the past through active benefits, as seen with affermative action, and considers emotional harm to be of similar importance to physical harm, as seen with hate speech. Meanwhile, liberalism generally draws the line at deliberate, persistent emotional abuse of individuals, the stuff covered under current harassment laws, and seeks to rectify things by tackling the damage itself (well, when they aren't being "the free market will fix all!", which is more libertarian stuff), rather than counteracting it on a demographic basis.

Basically, it's a Liberty vs. Authority matter. Progressives tend towards authoritarian due to hate speech bans, affirmative action policies and other bureaucratic brute-force solutions to the matters of bigotry and unequal outcome, separating them from Liberals who, in terms of legislation, generally stop at preventing systemic materially detrimental bias and fixing overall issues independently of demographic after that.

We're missing the point entirely,

What I'm saying is why Nazism? I'm sure you could find plenty of cases in which NAMBLA was bared from speaking and you don't see massive outcry about that, so why Nazis?

Why them of all groups? Why psychologically? And the document you brought forward...I find it hard to believe that had the influence you think seeing McCarthyism was almost directly after that date.
Nazi happens to be the buzzword for the people who are currently tackled by private mechanisms of censorship, as well as the supposed target, though it generally extends to opposition to Progressivism in general, as seen with the ban on any sort of criticism of the "mainstream" advocacy of transgender rights. As in "Twitter has banned people for stating scientific facts" levels of upholding the political movement. Also, you were asking about the origin of defending the free speech of Nazis, and an early UN declaration of Human Rights as covering political ideology in the immediate aftermath seems a clear starting point to the attitude. Just because it wasn't popularly upheld, doesn't mean the idea didn't start there and continue into today.

I fully expect this to fizzle out but it would be truly hilarious if youtube moved to stomp on ALL segregation and discrimination hate speech and not just the convenient ones.

The mixed screetches of outraeg from Neonazis, Alt righters, Alt lefters, TERFs and all manner of hate peddlers that think their hate being fashionable makes it ok would be glorious.
I want to see the very guy who started this mess de-ranked into oblivon for the open advocacy of (admittedly minor to the point of petty humor) violence. Watch his views abruptly halve on him as YouTube decides "Fuck the media, they've done jack shit for us but insults for the last five years". And a huge chunk of the Social Justice YouTubers going up in smoke for their own calls for forceful solutions.
 
Need to download all those Nazi march songs before they get taken down (Flashback to the great nasheed massacre of 2016)
 
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Need to download all those Nazi march songs before they get taken down (Flashback to the great nasheed massacre of 2016)
Also don't forget the Yugoslav war music!
 
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Pretty sure those count as having historical relevance.

Remove Kebab, not so much. Probably. Or, since it is Google, possibly. Eventually, after another public outcry. Maybe.
 
With Ultranationalists/Fascists in power like Matteo Salvini, Nanendra Modi and Jair Bolsonaro in power, I get a Too Little Too Late vibe going here.
 
With Ultranationalists/Fascists in power like Matteo Salvini, Nanendra Modi and Jair Bolsonaro in power, I get a Too Little Too Late vibe going here.
I think you're blaming the symptoms rather than the cause. The post WWII "Never again" mentality was more of a historical anomaly than anything else (and even then it was mostly sweeping things under the carpet rather than actually rooting it out the underlying issues), and with the death of the generation that experienced it mankind is returning to historical norms, where authoritarianism, oppression, bigotry, and despotism are the norm rather the exception.
 
Also don't forget the Yugoslav war music!

Pretty sure those count as having historical relevance.

Remove Kebab, not so much. Probably. Or, since it is Google, possibly. Eventually, after another public outcry. Maybe.
The most popular channel of yugo war music is down but the rest are up. Seems they are worse at uploading elsewhere than alt-right vloggers are unfortunately.
 
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