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posted by n1 on Wednesday June 21 2017, @11:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the google-goes-to-war dept.

Google will step up efforts to censor terrorism-related content on YouTube and its other services. The company says it will take four steps to address violent extremism online:

We will now devote more engineering resources to apply our most advanced machine learning research to train new "content classifiers" to help us more quickly identify and remove extremist and terrorism-related content.

[...] [We] will greatly increase the number of independent experts in YouTube's Trusted Flagger programme. Machines can help identify problematic videos, but human experts still play a role in nuanced decisions about the line between violent propaganda and religious or newsworthy speech. While many user flags can be inaccurate, Trusted Flagger reports are accurate over 90 per cent of the time and help us scale our efforts and identify emerging areas of concern. We will expand this programme by adding 50 expert NGOs to the 63 organisations who are already part of the programme, and we will support them with operational grants.

[...] [We] will be taking a tougher stance on videos that do not clearly violate our policies — for example, videos that contain inflammatory religious or supremacist content. In future these will appear behind an interstitial warning and they will not be monetised, recommended or eligible for comments or user endorsements.

[...] Finally, YouTube will expand its role in counter-radicalisation efforts. Building on our successful Creators for Change programme promoting YouTube voices against hate and radicalisation, we are working with Jigsaw to implement the "Redirect Method" more broadly across Europe. This promising approach harnesses the power of targeted online advertising to reach potential Isis recruits, and redirects them towards anti-terrorist videos that can change their minds about joining. In previous deployments of this system, potential recruits have clicked through on the ads at an unusually high rate, and watched over half a million minutes of video content that debunks terrorist recruiting messages.

Human video flaggers are paid to skim and evaluate hours worth of content in mere minutes (seconds?). But paying NGOs to watch YouTube all day could improve the situation. I would like to remind any potential terrorists reading this summary to "bomb violence with mercy".

Reported at Bloomberg and NYT.


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday June 21 2017, @01:29PM (13 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 21 2017, @01:29PM (#529001) Journal

    Google believes that if a youngster goes online, searching for "good" Wahabbi doctrine and explanations, he'll be put off learning more about Wahabbism if Google doesn't serve up what he is looking for. Censor his searches, and he won't be radicalized.

    My best guess is, some individual who has lead a sheltered life came up with this idea, and several dozen Yes-men praised the idea. And, none of them have ever been on the outside, looking in. They have no idea that a determined square peg who doesn't fit into society's round holes will find whatever he is looking for. If Google won't serve it up, some other search engine will. And, if there are no search engines willing to serve up Wahabbi dogma, the imam down at the mosque has it all anyway.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Unixnut on Wednesday June 21 2017, @01:51PM (11 children)

    by Unixnut (5779) on Wednesday June 21 2017, @01:51PM (#529010)

    Indeed, especially as pretty much after every terrorist attack, the authorities manage to identify which "radicalising mosque" they came from.

    Fact of the matter is, when you are dealing with a religious war (which is essentially what this is, just asymmetric in nature) then the core lynchpins that keep it together is the religious establishment. In this case, mosques that preach for those to "go out and strike against the crusaders".

    You don't need youtube, or fb, to get into that swing of things. Just go to the right mosques. Sure, there can be some propaganda value in showing beheadings, and other cruel methods of execution to show who is "the boss" and in charge, but a) that would only appeal to people who are already radicalised, and b) your local radical imam has probably got the videos himself, or the links where you can get them.

    I suspect this is more a case of "do something", along with a "out of sight, out of mind" mentality. So if all the big social and video networks don't show it, then maybe we can all pretend it doesn't exist, until they strike in the USA or western Europe again.

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday June 21 2017, @03:52PM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 21 2017, @03:52PM (#529066) Journal

      "or the links where you can get them."

      I wasn't thinking along those lines, but yes, that is pretty obvious. Activists in the western world have aided and abetted citizens of China bypassing their Great Firewall often enough. On the other side, the non-Western world certainly has a lot of activists willing to help people get around Western censorship. It isn't necessary that an activist be Muslim to help the Muslims. Like any hacker anywhere, he just wants to see what he can do, then he brags about it to all his friends, then his friends brag to their friends, etc ad nauseum.

      Maybe you and I don't spend a lot of time bypassing US/EU surveillance, but there are other people who do. The US/EU isn't going to tell US of people successfully beating them at their own game.

    • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday June 21 2017, @04:52PM (9 children)

      by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday June 21 2017, @04:52PM (#529105) Journal

      Indeed, especially as pretty much after every terrorist attack, the authorities manage to identify which "radicalising mosque" they came from.

      Only if you define terrorism to exclude Christians.

      • (Score: 2) by Unixnut on Wednesday June 21 2017, @05:14PM (8 children)

        by Unixnut (5779) on Wednesday June 21 2017, @05:14PM (#529120)

        > Only if you define terrorism to exclude Christians.

        Indeed, which I do (although technically I exclude all other religions in my statement, not just Christians). When radical Christians start declaring a crusade against the Muslim world en masse, I will happily point out which radical church is responsible (last time that happened, it was the Catholic church, if I remember correctly).

        • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday June 21 2017, @06:48PM (7 children)

          by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday June 21 2017, @06:48PM (#529148) Journal

          When?

          Table 1: Far Right Violent Extremist-Motivated Attacks that Resulted in Fatalities, September 12, 2001 through December 31,
          2016, as reported in the U.S. Extremist Crime Database (ECDB)

          White Supremacist member of Aryan
          Brotherhood killed a man
          9/15/2001 Mesquite Texas 1
          Same white supremacist as previous case but
          another victim a few weeks later
          10/4/2001 Mesquite Texas 1
          White supremacist murdered an African American 3/21/2002 Portland Oregon 1
          White supremacist skinhead murdered a
          transgender person
          4/10/2002 El Paso Texas 1
          Far right violent extremists murdered 3 fast food
          workers (one Native American and two Hispanic)
          5/19/2002 Mesa Arizona 3
          Neo-Nazi murdered a gay man 6/12/2002 Tucson Arizona 1
          Appendix II: Violent Extremist Attacks in the
          United States that Resulted in Fatalities,
          September 12, 2001 to December 31, 2016
          Page 30 GAO-17-300 Countering Violent Extremism
          Summary of ECDB
          Incident Description Date City State
          Number
          of Victim
          Deaths
          Anti-government “Sovereign Citizen” murdered an
          Ohio police officer
          8/2/2002 Massillon Ohio 1
          Two white supremacist skinheads murdered a
          man
          8/30/2002 Las Vegas Nevada 1
          White supremacist skinhead beat a man to death
          outside a diner
          9/1/2002 St. Louis Missouri 1
          White supremacist murdered bisexual man 12/14/2002 Salinas California 1
          White supremacist gang murdered a homeless
          man as part of a gang initiation
          3/23/2003 Tacoma Washington 1
          Anti-government militiaman shot and killed a
          Michigan state trooper
          7/7/2003 Fremont Michigan 1
          White supremacist shot and killed 6 co-workers at
          Lockheed Martin Plant
          7/8/2003 Meridian Mississippi 6
          Neo-Nazi killed sex-offender priest 8/23/2003 Shirley Massachusetts 1
          Anti-government “constitutionalist” killed 2 in
          standoff over land
          12/8/2003 Abbeville South Carolina 2
          White supremacist killed a man while “hunting
          down Mexicans”
          1/9/2004 Dateland Arizona 1
          White supremacists murdered two homeless men 4/15/2005 Hingham Massachusetts 2
          Six white supremacist inmates beat another
          prisoner to death
          10/14/2005 Kingman Arizona 1
          White supremacist skinhead murdered an African
          American woman
          12/16/2005 Mays Landing New Jersey 1
          Neo-Nazi murdered a gay man 3/23/2006 New Port Richey Florida 1
          White supremacist inmate killed his African
          American cellmate
          11/13/2006 Chipley Florida 1
          White supremacist murders Hispanic man in
          convenience store after argument
          7/2/2007 Lubbock Texas 1
          White supremacist murdered Lubbock, TX police
          officer
          8/15/2007 Brandon Florida 1
          Two white supremacists murdered a homeless
          man
          9/3/2007 Reno Nevada 1
          Two white supremacists murdered a gay man as
          gang initiation rite
          10/26/2007 Goldsby Oklahoma 1
          Skinhead gang murdered an Hispanic man 12/4/2007 Yucaipa California 1
          Middle school skinhead student shot and killed
          gay peer
          2/12/2008 Oxnard California 1
          White supremacist teens beat a Hispanic man to
          death
          7/12/2008 Shenandoah Pennsylvania 1
          Anti-government violent extremist killed 2 at
          Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church
          7/27/2008 Knoxville Tennessee 2
          Appendix II: Violent Extremist Attacks in the
          United States that Resulted in Fatalities,
          September 12, 2001 to December 31, 2016
          Page 31 GAO-17-300 Countering Violent Extremism
          Summary of ECDB
          Incident Description Date City State
          Number
          of Victim
          Deaths
          White man obsessed with Nazism murdered an
          African American man and a Hispanic man
          8/1/2008 Bristol Pennsylvania 2
          White supremacist teens murdered an
          Ecuadorian immigrant
          11/8/2008 Patchogue New York 1
          Two anti-government violent extremists planted a
          bomb inside a bank, killing 2
          12/12/2008 Woodburn Oregon 2
          Far rightist murdered a homeless man 1/19/2009 Woodstock Illinois 1
          White supremacist killed 2 immigrants 1/21/2009 Brockton Massachusetts 1
          Same perpetrator as previous case in Brockton,
          MA killed a homeless man later the same day
          1/21/2009 Brockton Massachusetts 1
          Neo-Nazi murdered Wesleyan University Jewish
          student
          5/6/2009 Middleton Connecticut 1
          White supremacists murdered 2 immigrants in
          home invasion
          5/30/2009 Arivaca Arizona 2
          Anti-government Sovereign Citizen murdered
          abortion provider Dr. George Tiller
          5/31/2009 Wichita Kansas 1
          White supremacist killed Holocaust museum
          guard
          6/10/2009 Washington District of
          Colombia
          1
          White supremacist and associate killed a child
          molester
          6/30/2009 Carmichael California 1
          White supremacist murdered his stepfather to
          gain “street cred”
          7/28/2009 Paradise California 1
          White supremacist murdered a convicted sex
          offender
          8/28/2009 N. Palm Springs California 1
          Two white supremacist skinheads shoot at
          interracial couple and killed female
          10/3/2009 Phoenix Arizona 1
          Anti-government violent extremist flew a small
          plane into an Austin, TX office building with U.S.
          Internal Revenue Service (IRS) office in it to
          protest the IRS and the government
          2/18/2010 Austin Texas 1
          Neo-Nazi killed an African American man 3/29/2010 South Huntington Pennsylvania 1
          White supremacist shot and wounded 4 women
          then killed a man
          4/20/2010 Wichita Falls Texas 1
          Two Sovereign Citizen members killed two police
          officers
          5/21/2010 West Memphis Arkansas 2
          Prison gang white supremacists murdered
          another inmate for not objecting to having an
          African American cellmate
          3/1/2011 Atlanta Georgia 1
          White supremacist teenagers run over and kill an
          African American man in a motel parking lot
          6/26/2011 Jackson Mississippi 1
          Two white supremacists murdered a 53-year old
          African American man
          10/4/2011 Eureka California 1
          Appendix II: Violent Extremist Attacks in the
          United States that Resulted in Fatalities,
          September 12, 2001 to December 31, 2016
          Page 32 GAO-17-300 Countering Violent Extremism
          Summary of ECDB
          Incident Description Date City State
          Number
          of Victim
          Deaths
          Same perpetrators as previous case in Eureka,
          CA; perpetrators killed a teenager they thought
          was Jewish
          10/7/2011 Corvallis Oregon 1
          Neo-Nazi killed 6 at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin 8/5/2012 Oak Creek Wisconsin 6
          Two neo-Nazis and a third associate murdered a
          local drug-dealer
          1/9/2013 Verona Kentucky 1
          Anti-government “survivalist” boarded a school
          bus with a gun and demanded a student be given
          to him; he then shot and killed the bus driver
          1/29/2013 Midland City Alabama 1
          Two white supremacists killed a husband and
          wife because the husband was a sex offender
          7/21/2013 Jonesville South Carolina 2
          Anti-government extremist kills Transportation
          Security Administration officer at Los Angeles
          International Airport
          11/1/2013 Los Angeles California 1
          White supremacist shot and killed 2 at a Jewish
          Community Center
          4/13/2014 Overland Park Kansas 2
          Same perpetrator as previous attack in Overland
          Park; perpetrator murdered another person at a
          Jewish retirement center later the same day
          4/13/2014 Leawood Kansas 1
          Anti-government married couple killed 2 officers
          during shooting rampage on Las Vegas strip
          6/8/2014 Las Vegas Nevada 2
          Same perpetrators as previous attack in Las
          Vegas; perpetrators murdered another person
          later the same day
          6/8/2014 Las Vegas Nevada 1
          Anti-government extremist Eric Frein murdered a
          state trooper.
          9/12/2014 White Haven Pennsylvania 1
          White supremacist Dylann Roof shot and killed 9
          African Americans in a shooting at an African
          American church in Charleston, SC
          6/17/2015 Charleston South Carolina 9
          Right-wing extremist opened fire and killed 2
          young women among patrons during an Amy
          Schumer movie
          7/23/2015 Lafayette Louisiana 2
          White supremacist shot and killed 9 at his
          community college
          10/1/2015 Roseburg Oregon 9
          Anti-government survivalist extremist killed 3 at
          Planned Parenthood clinic including a responding
          police officer
          11/27/2015 Colorado Springs Colorado 3
          Number of
          incidents: 62

          • (Score: 2, Offtopic) by Unixnut on Wednesday June 21 2017, @07:13PM (4 children)

            by Unixnut (5779) on Wednesday June 21 2017, @07:13PM (#529155)

            > incidents: 62

            So 62 incidents in 15 years, most killing 1 or 2 people. The formatting of your post is awful, but I think the largest I saw was 9 people. To be generous we can say on average 3 people were killed per incident, so for 62 incidents you are looking at 186 dead, in total over a 15 year period to these loons.

            So in essence, this "other side" managed less than a couple of hours of ISIS work in 15 years? Very poor performance, I give a 2/5 for effort though. Besides, none of that qualified as "En masse", "Christian", or "organised by a church" or even religiously motivated. From what I can see most of it is motivated by race. Anti-government extremist, skinhead, neo-nazi, white supremacist, etc.. are not necessarily Christians.

            In fact, considering that Christianity started in the middle east (not exactly whitey central), and that one of the first Christians were the Ethiopians (not exactly known for their fair skin), I don't see how you could be a white supremacist and/or neo-nazi and a Christian at the same time.

            Anti-government types are generally brutally anti-religion as well, seeing it as just another form of control/government.

            All you managed to show is that the sum total of all other extremists combined barely register on the shit-o-meter compared to what Muslim extremists are doing. It also tells me is that the USA is so fucked up that it is an entirely separate class of problem to the rest of the world, quite frankly.

            • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday June 21 2017, @07:54PM (2 children)

              by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday June 21 2017, @07:54PM (#529174) Journal

              Here's the full report. [gao.gov]

              It does the math for us:

              Right-Wing Attacks:

              Number of
              incidents: 62
              Total
              victims: 106

              Islamic Attacks:

              Number of
              Incidents: 23
              Total
              Victims: 119

              • (Score: 2) by KGIII on Wednesday June 21 2017, @08:24PM

                by KGIII (5261) on Wednesday June 21 2017, @08:24PM (#529185) Journal

                I suspect that is for a very small part of the globe.

                --
                "So long and thanks for all the fish."
              • (Score: 2) by Unixnut on Wednesday June 21 2017, @08:44PM

                by Unixnut (5779) on Wednesday June 21 2017, @08:44PM (#529196)

                Aaah, thank you! Much better.

                The data however is US only. The USA has very many miles of sea between the middle east and the majority of Muslims. Those suffering most are in the middle east, and to a lesser extent in Europe and Africa. Ideally would need data on the whole world to do a proper like for like comparison, but I suspect the number of victims due to Islamic extremism would still be magnitudes bigger than the rest.

                However even within the USA, I notice the records actually start on the 15th September, ignoring 9/11, which was one of the biggest Islamic attacks on US soil. if we take into account the years 2001 to 2015 as a whole, then the true numbers look like this:

                Right-Wing/Anti-government/Racist Attacks:

                Number of
                incidents: 62
                Total
                victims: 106

                Islamic Attacks:

                Number of
                Incidents: 24
                Total
                Victims: 3,115

                Quite a bit different, eh? I didn't update the victims for the whole of 2001 for the other attacks, but if in a period of 15 years there were 106 victims, we can say there were around 7 victims per year. So we can up the victims to 113 for Right-Wing/Anti-government/Racist attacks (which again, does not necessary mean religiously motivated attacks).

                On context, actually, 7 victims per year from the other extremist nuts in a country of ~150,000,000 people is actually pretty good. There will always be some tiny percentage of nuts in any population.

            • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Thursday June 22 2017, @05:16PM

              by JNCF (4317) on Thursday June 22 2017, @05:16PM (#529584) Journal

              In fact, considering that Christianity started in the middle east (not exactly whitey central), and that one of the first Christians were the Ethiopians (not exactly known for their fair skin), I don't see how you could be a white supremacist and/or neo-nazi and a Christian at the same time.

              I get that DeathMonkey was conflating Christianity and white supremacy, but you just stepped way too far in the other direction. There are plenty of Christian white supremacists, and a good number of them believe that modern white people are actually the descendants of the ancient Hebrews. [wikipedia.org] This at least adds some loony context to all of those blue-eyed Jesus portraits. [wikipedia.org]

          • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday June 21 2017, @09:07PM

            by tangomargarine (667) on Wednesday June 21 2017, @09:07PM (#529206)

            Are you assuming all these white supremacists are Christians? Because the word "Christian" doesn't appear in that list once and that was what I was under the impression we were talking about.

            Or has somebody redefined "white supremacist" as "absolutely must be a Christian"?

            --
            "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @10:54PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 21 2017, @10:54PM (#529254)

            http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/ [thereligionofpeace.com]

            Daily statistics on the number of kills in this religious war.

            During ramadan in 2017, so far, there have been 149 recorded muslim based attacks resuling in at least 1378 deaths in the name of islam.

            On the other side, there has been 1 attack and 1 death by a non-islamic party.

  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday June 21 2017, @02:35PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 21 2017, @02:35PM (#529036)

    Given how little terrorism there actually is, the vast majority of people in the USA searching for "Violent Wahabbism" or whatever are white middle class students trying to write a term paper for school related to the general subject.

    This kind of censorship is actually very much like gun control, brought to you by the same people in fact. Consider the people most likely to follow gun control laws are precisely the people you have to worry the least about WRT gun crime. By analogy the vast majority of school students trying to write a term paper are the least likely to be Islam-radicalized group out there (because they're already being indoctrinated as radical progressives) so they're the safest viewer group out there LOL.

    I'm not sure it'll really help anyway. Did burning all the Jews books really help the nazis win anything? Would replicating that today by having the public libraries in 2017 burn all their copies of the Koran really help anything? Likewise will "digital book burning" like google censorship realistically help anything? Probably not. I'm amazed how ineffectively nazi-like google is becoming, its like they read every other word of a cookbook and now they're trying to make a feast in the kitchen and they get some little parts right but seem to be missing the big picture in so many ways. If you're gonna do a book burning or a krystalnacht in the traditional sense in digital locale, at least get it freaking right, don't half-ass it. Google is like developmentally delayed kids trying to act like nazis. At least stop licking the window while you're burning books.