Platform Cleaning: YouTube, Censorship and Grievance



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Platform Cleaning: YouTube, Censorship and Grievance

Undressing the altars, burning the heretics and cleaning the stables are the usual dishes of a morally crazy order. Committed agents think they have found the reason for their existence and need to disturb everyone about it. Part of that can be a very dangerous thing – at least historically. Those who claim to know the truth are those who are happy to fill morgues, to ban theaters, and to destroy musical instruments. But when it comes to social media, we are dealing with lower rates. Right now, there's a childish marvel at YouTube's moves to excise, cut and move anything that might be considered mean, offensive, indoctrinated and anything that is not.

A burning question focuses on the elimination of milky white supremacist content, simply another element of the recent surge in what might be termed extremist content (these terms remain extremely vague). The promise of Christchurch, a deal reached last month between state leaders and Silicon Valley tech giants to target such unpleasant content, has turned out to be catalytic.

On June 5th, YouTube announced that it "expressly prohibits videos claiming that a group is superior to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities such as age, bad, caste, religion , badual orientation or veteran status ". glorifying Nazi ideology are provided as examples that will be deleted, whose content 'deny that well-documented violent events, such as the Holocaust or the shooting at the elementary school of Sandy Hook, took place. "

An email from YouTube revealed that this would be a problem: "We know it can be disappointing, but it's important to us that YouTube is a safe place for everyone. If the content violates our rules, we delete it. "

This has already led to the removal or concealment of videos documenting hate speech and activities for journalistic and educational purposes. Scott Allsop, a Romanian-based history professor, has seen his chain banned for hosting archive footage containing Nazi propaganda, including news footage of Hitler's speeches. Organizations with anti-racism platforms, such as the One People's Project, have also been confronted with the removal of news videos designed to discuss and combat racism. Never say that digital platform manufacturers can not be ironic.

YouTube has recognized in these changes that "some of this content is valuable to researchers and NGOs seeking to understand hatred to combat it." As always, this remains the problem when a platform dictates the content of the conversation and what is allowed to flow there. Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's intelligence project, mentions an obvious technical problem. "This indicates that [YouTube] have not made the difference between a person who is exploring the issues of racism and hate and someone who is promoting it. "

The censorship mentality is not just dangerous for the content, but also for the attitude. It encourages artificial frailty and aggrieved people to attack what is unpleasant and unpleasant, not in terms of ideas, but in terms of neutralization. Carlos Maza from Vox, for example, argues that the platform should be rigorously structured and censored to avoid any infringement of badual orientation, race and gender. It naturally does the business he's "pretty skin thick in terms of online harbadment," but claims to pretend to be so upset that he needs YouTube to act.

Such skin, it seems, uses thin in the fight, taking off before the idiot, the absurd and even the obscene. "Since I started working at Vox, tweeted Maza, "Steven Crowder made a video after video" demystification " Closed off. Each video contains repeated and overt attacks against my badual orientation and ethnicity. "

Crowder should not be encouraged, but Maza should not, in his thin skin, his courage reduced to nothing. Both should be able to indulge in the super-depth needed for YouTube, a kind of purge-like behavior that has allowed human interaction on the Internet. To suggest a strong moral point is to arrogate superior civilizational properties (do you dare to use the word nowadays?) To a chicanery, a bad skirmish. More problematic, any action aimed at removing annoying content has a wider implication, conversations and stifling speeches that might be considered subjectively offensive, essential characteristic of many human relationships. The acquisition of authentic knowledge is rarely a comfortable thing, let alone a safe one.

YouTube would never come up with a clear line, although that decided to demonitize Crowder after initially concluding that offensive videos, while "obviously offensive", do not "violate our policies". Words desperately seeking a spine were mentioned. "Even if a video remains on our site, it does not mean that we approve / support this point of view."

The public relations team of the company undoubtedly undergoes the sleepless routine of tranquility and pacification. "Today & # 39; hui" the company tweeted June 5, "generated a lot of questions and confusion. We know that it has not been easy for everyone. In the future, we will take a closer look at our own harbadment policies with a view to updating them. "

The purpose of Crowder is a quasi-judicial badessment of his case. No laws were broken or rules broken except for some understanding of community guidelines, interpreted liberally under pressure. YouTube wanted to give a digital surgeon reply to all the mess of Maza-Crowder, we do not know what to do with his scalpel: "Thank you again for taking the time to share all this information with us. We take allegations of harbadment very seriously – we know this is important and affects many people. "

Identifying the problems behind this cradle niche is not difficult. The grievance will arrive on time and Maza uses the identity system as a gibberish pro. Glenn Greenwald from L & # 39; interceptionwho understands what it is like to be harbaded and ridiculed on issues of badual orientation and politics, hinted that it would never come to him at all. idea of ​​"turning to social media companies to beg for censorship". To Tucker Carlson, he presented his vision: "I do not want to live in a world where our speech is controlled and determined by benevolent lords, who run companies in Silicon Valley, you know, who will always serve the faction the more powerful." we are already too late.

Maza does not look beyond his personal problem, which has, like others in the field of offended business, a means to magnify. People in distress want revenge, see a world in a tweet and an eternity in a video. "YouTube rewards attractive content. Hate speech is engaging. So YouTube rewards hate speech. The implication of this stupid summary of Maza is obvious: avoid the platform or block the platform to accommodate its interests. To you, YouTube.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College in Cambridge. He teaches at RMIT University in Melbourne. E-mail: [email protected]

Warning: "The views / contents expressed in this article only imply that the responsibility of the authors) and do not necessarily reflect those of modern Ghana. Modern Ghana can not be held responsible for inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article. "

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