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Youtube announces new policy


cdowis

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“We’ll soon be applying tougher treatment to videos that aren’t illegal but have been flagged by users as potential violations of our policies on hate speech and violent extremism,” the company announced Aug. 1 on its official blog. “If we find that these videos don’t violate our policies but contain controversial religious or supremacist content, they will be placed in a limited state. The videos will remain on YouTube behind an interstitial, won’t be recommended, won’t be monetized, and won’t have key features including comments, suggested videos, and likes.”

It appears that if LDS viewers start lodging complaints against the more extreme antiMormon videos, those videos may fall under this new policy.  Just flag them under the hate speech category.

But we need to be selective in the videos that we flag -- The Godmakers have many copies on youtube, for example, under different titles.

Edited by cdowis
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57 minutes ago, ksfisher said:

Should youtube be considered a venue for free speech?  It is a for-profit business. 

Social engineering via limited speech. If youtube was a store front business , and posted a sign limiting blacks or Jews or homosexuals all he!! would break loose. I believe about 400 hours of video are uploaded to youtube every few minutes. It is impossible for any human group to monitor this wave of information, hence it will be done by algorithm -bots that will flag words or combinations of words, just like the NSA does when looking for terrorists. Guess who will be deciding which words to look for . Facebook is/will be doing the same thing. These entities are essentially monopolies .

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I have a channel and they have a system now that automatically flags videos, I think when certain words are in the title or keywords or used.  I did a Memorial Day video with no talking - just honoring those who served, showing a ceremony honoring them, etc.  I used keywords like "patriotism" and "veterans".  I got a message that it wasn't approved for monetization and I swear it's because they consider those terms to most likely be right wing.  I had them review it and then it was approved again.  Also, I did a video where I briefly mentioned my grandma dying and I think it didn't like the keyword "death".  Maybe in case it was a gruesome death video?  Anyway, drives me crazy because I don't get paid for views while they're reviewing it.  I've had to have them review my videos at least 10 times.

They're also encouraging people to make videos that fight xenophobia. homophobia, racism, etc., which might get them more publicity.  That's a nice thought, but it won't work if you have certain theme, like if you only bake cakes for videos, fix cars, etc.  I think that's what their advertisers want though.  

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3 hours ago, ksfisher said:

Should youtube be considered a venue for free speech?  It is a for-profit business. 

Youtube uses the publicly owned bandwidth -- a public accommodation which should be available to all, just like the public street or sidewalk.  Many profit-making businesses must comply with public accommodations, and many of them are regulated by gov't agencies (FCC, FAA, etc.).  Of course in Vlad Putin's neo-Soviet Union the public has no rights and journalists are regularly killed.

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On 8/11/2017 at 6:33 AM, Stargazer said:

This policy is actually directed against any right-wing, conservative or non-PC voices out there. Just check on which organizations they plan to rely upon for "expert advice." You can start with Southern Poverty Law Center, which recently decided that Pepe the Frog is a racist symbol. 

It's more likely that pro-LDS voices might be silenced -- because the LDS church is definitely not PC.  

I bet that plenty of LDS have been reporting extreme anti-Mormon videos -- and it hasn't made any difference at all.

To be fair Pepe was being used as a white supremacist mascot. I am okay with a private company choosing not to host white supremacist content.

On 8/11/2017 at 10:19 AM, strappinglad said:

Social engineering via limited speech. If youtube was a store front business , and posted a sign limiting blacks or Jews or homosexuals all he!! would break loose. I believe about 400 hours of video are uploaded to youtube every few minutes. It is impossible for any human group to monitor this wave of information, hence it will be done by algorithm -bots that will flag words or combinations of words, just like the NSA does when looking for terrorists. Guess who will be deciding which words to look for . Facebook is/will be doing the same thing. These entities are essentially monopolies .

There is a difference between a sign forbidding a race or orientation from entering a store and banning hate speech on the premises. In fact I bet if you tried to give a white supremacist diatribe in a business you would be asked to leave.

On 8/11/2017 at 1:00 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

Youtube uses the publicly owned bandwidth -- a public accommodation which should be available to all, just like the public street or sidewalk.  Many profit-making businesses must comply with public accommodations, and many of them are regulated by gov't agencies (FCC, FAA, etc.).  Of course in Vlad Putin's neo-Soviet Union the public has no rights and journalists are regularly killed.

Nope. YouTube is not a monopoly like a sidewalk or a street that people have no other option but to use. There are many video hosting sites out there and if someone wants to run a video hosting site that preaches white supremacy or even nothing but white supremacy they can. 

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If you check which videos have been deleted or put on limited , they are not white supremacy only. They have opinions that are not advocating violence or hatred, but are simply conservative. As has been said already here, words such as terrorist or patriotism have been flagged. The slope has been greased.

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1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

........................................................

Nope. YouTube is not a monopoly like a sidewalk or a street that people have no other option but to use. There are many video hosting sites out there and if someone wants to run a video hosting site that preaches white supremacy or even nothing but white supremacy they can. 

Money talks, Nehor, and those with the most money will be the most influential and have the best and most pervasive access -- regardless of content or fairness.  Innocuous sites will be shut down for pretend PC violations, while bad actors with power will continue to get airplay.  All that on a public accommodation using publicly owned bandwidth.

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5 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Money talks, Nehor, and those with the most money will be the most influential and have the best and most pervasive access -- regardless of content or fairness.  Innocuous sites will be shut down for pretend PC violations, while bad actors with power will continue to get airplay.  All that on a public accommodation using publicly owned bandwidth.

YouTube is not a public accommodation. I have no idea what you even mean by publicly owned bandwidth. Innocuous sites will be shut down? Are we still talking about Youtube? Shutting down a website is its own problem. The only way to do that is to get the host to shut it down (hard unless they are not paying their bills) or catch it with illegal content and in the latter case that only works if the website is based in the nation in which the content is illegal. Wikileaks would be shut down as illegal if it were hosted in the United States but because it is based in Sweden and everything they do is legal there they are basically untouchable. So if your "innocuous site" is in danger you just host it overseas. Even if it were illegal in every country you could hide it in the Deep Web.

You seem to think the United States government has control over the internet it most assuredly does not. Saying that YouTube choosing of their own volition not to host certain kinds of videos is the beginning of a pogrom against certain views would be like an antiMormon getting banned on this board saying that this proves that the Mormons are going to shut down antimormon activity throughout the internet. The idea is preposterous. Also, the idea that money talks on YouTube is silly. They are a business. They want to make money. They make money from the ads on videos so they want lots of videos. The only reason not to host a video (from a purely business standpoint) is that hosting that video creates public backlash against the company. Has nothing to do with money. In any case, again, there are LOTS of video hosting sites. Considering what kind of porn is hosted on the web people who want to will be able to find a place to put their KKK rallies on the internet.

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8 hours ago, The Nehor said:

To be fair Pepe was being used as a white supremacist mascot. I am okay with a private company choosing not to host white supremacist content.

 

No, that is not fair. White supremacists also fly the US flag, and that does not give a private company any kind of right to not to host a US flag, does it?  And perhaps you can explain to me how a green frog can reasonably be construed as "white supremacist"?

Pepe started out life in 2005 as a comic that turned into a widely-used meme, and any use of Pepe by alt-right or white supremacists is a tiny segment of the usage, and very recent. Actually, I've been following this particular meme and what use is being made of it, and one of its biggest current uses is in trolling politically correctness.  Ever hear of Kekistan?  Kekistan is an ancient country whose god is a frog. In fact, the Kekistani god Kek is the same as the ancient Egyptian god of the same name (the god or sometimes goddess of darkness). And it is associated with Pepe the Frog.  You'll find that there are people who claim to be of Kekistani heritage, and demanding that Kekistan be freed from its oppressors. There is a movement to gain official recognition of Kekistani ethnicity in the British census -- originally suggested by YouTuber Carl Benjamin, aka Sargon of Akkad. 

And it's a big huge pointed joke.

The short of it is this: Aside from its original use as a comic and generic meme symbol, Pepe the Frog and Kekistan are being used as a big huge troll -- and these self-important organizations like CNN, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League have swallowed it hook, line and sinker.  During her presidential race Hillary Clinton even came out against Pepe the Frog. And the source of this? In May 2016 a Daily Beast article by Olivia Nuzzi came out that described how Pepe the Frog was being used by Trump supporters in favor of the alt-right. But once Hillary made a public statement about Pepe, the two sources for Nuzzi's Daily Beast article revealed to The Daily Caller that they had coordinated beforehand to mislead Nuzzi (particularly about the existence of a campaign) under the expectation that she would uncritically repeat what she was told, with one saying, "Basically, I interspersed various nuggets of truth and exaggerated a lot of things, and sometimes outright lied — in the interest of making a journalist believe that online Trump supporters are largely a group of meme-jihadis who use a cartoon frog to push Nazi propaganda. Because this was funny to me."

What is the term that describes "uncritically accepting what you're told as long as it goes along with your existing prejudices"?  Oh, yes. Confirmation bias.

Shadilay!

Oh, and just for the sake of full disclosure, I am the President-for-Life of Kekistan.  No, I'm not.

Here is a YouTube video explaining the matter:

The Internet for Dummies: Pepe, Kekistan and Normies: 

 

 

 

 

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2 hours ago, The Nehor said:

YouTube is not a public accommodation. I have no idea what you even mean by publicly owned bandwidth. Innocuous sites will be shut down? Are we still talking about Youtube? Shutting down a website is its own problem. The only way to do that is to get the host to shut it down (hard unless they are not paying their bills) or catch it with illegal content and in the latter case that only works if the website is based in the nation in which the content is illegal. Wikileaks would be shut down as illegal if it were hosted in the United States but because it is based in Sweden and everything they do is legal there they are basically untouchable. So if your "innocuous site" is in danger you just host it overseas. Even if it were illegal in every country you could hide it in the Deep Web.

You seem to think the United States government has control over the internet it most assuredly does not. Saying that YouTube choosing of their own volition not to host certain kinds of videos is the beginning of a pogrom against certain views would be like an antiMormon getting banned on this board saying that this proves that the Mormons are going to shut down antimormon activity throughout the internet. The idea is preposterous. Also, the idea that money talks on YouTube is silly. They are a business. They want to make money. They make money from the ads on videos so they want lots of videos. The only reason not to host a video (from a purely business standpoint) is that hosting that video creates public backlash against the company. Has nothing to do with money. In any case, again, there are LOTS of video hosting sites. Considering what kind of porn is hosted on the web people who want to will be able to find a place to put their KKK rallies on the internet.

Please note this Common Cause petition online at http://www.commoncause.org/take-action/act/save-net-neutrality-open-internet-ajit-pai-fcc.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIl-7tzdXT1QIVzYF-Ch0WQQjwEAAYAyAAEgI9p_D_BwE?referrer=https://www.google.com/ 

Quote

We need Net Neutrality -- help save the Internet!

Donald Trump's new FCC Chair, Ajit Pai, wants to roll back Open Internet protections. Tell the FCC, we need Net Neutrality!

Our democracy relies on a free, fair, and Open internet. Every day, journalists, voters, and activists rely on the FCC's Net Neutrality protections to communicate freely online.

Net Neutrality is simply the principle that Internet providers must treat all web traffic equally. It's the only thing stopping companies like Comcast & Verizon from controlling what we can see and say online -- and from censoring or slowing down speech they don't like.

But Chairman Ajit Pai, Donald Trump's newly appointed head of the Federal Communications Commission, has offered up grim warning s of what's in store for Net Neutrality under his leadership. But if enough of us speak out in its defense, we can stop Chairman Pai and defend Net Neutrality.

Add your name to tell the FCC, Congress, and anyone else -- don't roll back Net Neutrality!

Are they hallucinating a threat to net neutrality?  And are the new rules imposed by YouTube as innocuous as you suggest?

Edited by Robert F. Smith
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9 hours ago, Stargazer said:

No, that is not fair. White supremacists also fly the US flag, and that does not give a private company any kind of right to not to host a US flag, does it?  And perhaps you can explain to me how a green frog can reasonably be construed as "white supremacist"?

Pepe started out life in 2005 as a comic that turned into a widely-used meme, and any use of Pepe by alt-right or white supremacists is a tiny segment of the usage, and very recent. Actually, I've been following this particular meme and what use is being made of it, and one of its biggest current uses is in trolling politically correctness.  Ever hear of Kekistan?  Kekistan is an ancient country whose god is a frog. In fact, the Kekistani god Kek is the same as the ancient Egyptian god of the same name (the god or sometimes goddess of darkness). And it is associated with Pepe the Frog.  You'll find that there are people who claim to be of Kekistani heritage, and demanding that Kekistan be freed from its oppressors. There is a movement to gain official recognition of Kekistani ethnicity in the British census -- originally suggested by YouTuber Carl Benjamin, aka Sargon of Akkad. 

And it's a big huge pointed joke.

The short of it is this: Aside from its original use as a comic and generic meme symbol, Pepe the Frog and Kekistan are being used as a big huge troll -- and these self-important organizations like CNN, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League have swallowed it hook, line and sinker.  During her presidential race Hillary Clinton even came out against Pepe the Frog. And the source of this? In May 2016 a Daily Beast article by Olivia Nuzzi came out that described how Pepe the Frog was being used by Trump supporters in favor of the alt-right. But once Hillary made a public statement about Pepe, the two sources for Nuzzi's Daily Beast article revealed to The Daily Caller that they had coordinated beforehand to mislead Nuzzi (particularly about the existence of a campaign) under the expectation that she would uncritically repeat what she was told, with one saying, "Basically, I interspersed various nuggets of truth and exaggerated a lot of things, and sometimes outright lied — in the interest of making a journalist believe that online Trump supporters are largely a group of meme-jihadis who use a cartoon frog to push Nazi propaganda. Because this was funny to me."

What is the term that describes "uncritically accepting what you're told as long as it goes along with your existing prejudices"?  Oh, yes. Confirmation bias.

Shadilay!

Oh, and just for the sake of full disclosure, I am the President-for-Life of Kekistan.  No, I'm not.

Here is a YouTube video explaining the matter:

The Internet for Dummies: Pepe, Kekistan and Normies: 

 

 

 

 

Nope.

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Are they hallucinating a threat to net neutrality?  And are the new rules imposed by YouTube as innocuous as you suggest?

Net Neutrality is an entirely different issue. It is a real problem that I have strong feelings about.

It has nothing to do with YouTube setting new rules and there is no correlation between the two. YouTube is changing the rules on its own site, something it has every right to do. Net Neutrality is designed to prevent internet providers from prioritizing data speeds on the internet to favor certain sites and services. Providers insist that they will keep net Neutrality without stricter federal guidelines. They want us to trust them to behave. History suggests they will not behave.

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On 8/11/2017 at 4:33 AM, Stargazer said:

This policy is actually directed against any right-wing, conservative or non-PC voices out there. Just check on which organizations they plan to rely upon for "expert advice." You can start with Southern Poverty Law Center, which recently decided that Pepe the Frog is a racist symbol. 

It's more likely that pro-LDS voices might be silenced -- because the LDS church is definitely not PC.  

I bet that plenty of LDS have been reporting extreme anti-Mormon videos -- and it hasn't made any difference at all.

Pepe the Frog was hijacked by the Alt-Right and used as a racist meme.

SEE http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/pepe-frog-dead-meme-matt-furie-kills-alt-right-image-white-supremacists-hijacked-a7723586.html

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So the enlightened few will judge what the stupid masses can hear. Yup, and we really think we live in a free society with a concept of free speech?!?  Yeah, right.

The public square - electronic or otherwise - is for the public to speak. It does not matter the quality or caliber of the ideas expressed, it is the fact that they can be expressed without fear of violence or reprisal from the majority or anyone else. It is the fact that allowing all to speak encourages the discussion and evaluation of what is good and what is bad.  The fact that people stop listening is when ideas lose their validity - AFTER they have been heard and evaluated.  

No, little Johnny, we are not free when any groups is disallowed to participate in the public square. 

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4 hours ago, thesometimesaint said:

Yeah, and long before it was "hijacked" everyone who has had something to say via a meme has been using Pepe to do it with. And Pepe is still be used by every point-of-view to create memes. The racists are just johnnie-come-latelies.

If Mickey Mouse was suddenly being used to create racist memes would Teh Nehor say "Nope" to that too? Suddenly Disney would have to abolish Mickey from their parks? 

 

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On 8/13/2017 at 5:12 PM, Stargazer said:

Yep

Nope.

On 8/13/2017 at 5:24 PM, Stargazer said:

Yeah, and long before it was "hijacked" everyone who has had something to say via a meme has been using Pepe to do it with. And Pepe is still be used by every point-of-view to create memes. The racists are just johnnie-come-latelies.

If Mickey Mouse was suddenly being used to create racist memes would Teh Nehor say "Nope" to that too? Suddenly Disney would have to abolish Mickey from their parks? 

If Mickey Mouse were suddenly being used to create racist memes Disney would denounce them. Pepe is a little different. Pepe is obscure. Pepe only became popular because 4chan (the slum of the internet) fell in love with making memes using Pepe's image. The writer tried to rehabilitate Pepe but gave up and killed Pepe off a few months ago to sever relations with the character. He did not like what happened and basically ended his affiliation with the character.

Now Pepe is almost exclusively used by the alt-right racist nutjob wing of the far-right. YouTube is doing what any other business has the right to do. Vet the content they distribute. Pepe is almost always used for racist trash. They banned Pepe. They have every right to do so. This is not a threat to free speech.

Edited:  No comics with bad language please.

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On 8/13/2017 at 7:23 PM, The Nehor said:

Nope.

If Mickey Mouse were suddenly being used to create racist memes Disney would denounce them. Pepe is a little different. Pepe is obscure. Pepe only became popular because 4chan (the slum of the internet) fell in love with making memes using Pepe's image. The writer tried to rehabilitate Pepe but gave up and killed Pepe off a few months ago to sever relations with the character. He did not like what happened and basically ended his affiliation with the character.

Now Pepe is almost exclusively used by the alt-right racist nutjob wing of the far-right. YouTube is doing what any other business has the right to do. Vet the content they distribute. Pepe is almost always used for racist trash. They banned Pepe. They have every right to do so. This is not a threat to free speech.

Nope.

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On 8/11/2017 at 6:33 AM, Stargazer said:

This policy is actually directed against any right-wing, conservative or non-PC voices out there. Just check on which organizations they plan to rely upon for "expert advice." You can start with Southern Poverty Law Center, which recently decided that Pepe the Frog is a racist symbol. 

 

It is a racist symbol

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25 minutes ago, Gray said:

Because racists have adopted it as their symbol. That's how symbols work.

So, when KKK marches around with a cross pinned to their robes, we can no longer use the cross because it's racist? 

In any case, the history of Pepe as a meme does not support your theory. Whether racists have adopted it or not is immaterial, because it has been adopted by thousands of others for completely different purposes before and after. The first time Pepe became a racist symbol was actually not because racists used it. It was because a couple of jokesters induced the author of a Daily Beast to believe that this was some new "thing" just to show how she would "under the expectation that she would uncritically repeat what she was told". I suggest a read of the portion of the Wikipedia article summarizing this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepe_the_Frog#Association_with_the_alt-right.  This Daily Beast article is what induced Hillary Clinton to claim that Pepe the Frog was a racist symbol, and apparently started the ball rolling.

Pepe the Frog is not a racist symbol. Pepe the Frog is a meme, and memes are used for whatever purpose the memer chooses. 

This video is the best video description of the evolution of Pepe I've found: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyEQCYnYbyU

 

 

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