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On June 5th, YouTube announced in a post on its official blog that it is going to be:
Removing more hateful and supremacist content from YouTube
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.
Finally, we will remove content denying that well-documented violent events, like the Holocaust or the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, took place.
Reducing borderline content and raising up authoritative voices
In January, we piloted an update of our systems in the U.S. to limit recommendations of borderline content and harmful misinformation
We're looking to bring this updated system to more countries by the end of 2019. Thanks to this change, the number of views this type of content gets from recommendations has dropped by over 50% in the U.S. Our systems are also getting smarter about what types of videos should get this treatment, and we'll be able to apply it to even more borderline videos moving forward. As we do this, we'll also start raising up more authoritative content in recommendations
Continuing to reward trusted creators and enforce our monetization policies
we are strengthening enforcement of our existing YouTube Partner Program policies. Channels that repeatedly brush up against our hate speech policies will be suspended from the YouTube Partner program, meaning they can't run ads on their channel or use other monetization features like Super Chat.
In an article discussing this, Silicon Valley reporter Casey Newton of The Verge notes that this "is expected to result in the removal of thousands of channels across YouTube."
The crackdown goes into effect today and will "ramp up" over the next few days.
Aristarchus adds from Time:
The video streaming company says it has already made it more difficult to find and promote such videos, but it's now removing them outright. YouTube will also prohibit videos that deny certain proven events have taken place, such as the Holocaust.
The changes come as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other online services face mounting concern that the services allow, and in some cases foster , extremism.
YouTube's new policies will take effect immediately. Specifically, the service is banning videos "alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion." The ban applies to a range of characteristics, including race, sexual orientation and veteran status.
[...] The companies have said they are walking the balance between creating safe spaces while also protecting freedom of expression. With little government oversight on online material, internet companies have become the arbiters for what is and isn't allowed.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday June 11 2019, @12:46AM (2 children)
Right now, no such law exists requiring printers to print anything at all, nor is any bookstore or library required to have any particular books on hand. That material gets printed because there are neo-Nazi publishing houses in the US and other countries that will print it. So the free market is preventing the censorship - why should online be any different than print media in this regard, when it's even easier for the free market to prevent censorship?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday June 11 2019, @02:50AM (1 child)
That's because print media was way less monopolistic than internet media. Also, print did not have that much influence and was way more difficult to fake. Today we have monopolies on one hand and technology to cheaply manipulate opinions on the other. The next elections might be hacked by a gang of teenagers with a few bitcoins.
Free market needs strong limitations such as anti-monopoly policies. Otherwise free market will either die or become not so free.
Besides, free speech assumed that the air where sound waves propagate is not censored and free. Once print became "speech", it would be vise to make the same true for printing process. In the Internet times, broadband should be virtually free and definitely not censored. Large platforms, such as Facebook, go into the same bucket.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday June 11 2019, @11:04AM
You continue to insist that Youtube is a monopoly when there are a bunch of existing competitors, and the cost to switching services is a matter of changing a URL in an address bar, and the cost to creating a new service is relatively low - rent out some cloud servers, install some FOSS, do a bit to make it a decent-looking website, done. There have even been some advertising efforts from those competitors that amount to "Your stuff is being blocked by Youtube? Put it on our service instead." That all makes Youtube not a monopoly.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.