Google Has An Actual Secret Speech Police
Google Has An Actual Secret Speech Police
By Peter Hasson Associate Editor 10:45 PM 01/19/2018
More than 100 nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and
government agencies around the world help police YouTube for extremist content,
ranging from so-called hate speech to terrorist recruiting videos.
All of them have confidentiality agreements barring
Google, YouTube’s parent company, from revealing their participation to the
public, a Google representative told The Daily Caller on Thursday.
A handful of groups, including the Anti-Defamation League
and No Hate Speech, a European organization focused on combatting intolerance,
have chosen to go public with their participation in the program, but the vast
majority have stayed hidden behind the confidentiality agreements. Most groups
in the program don’t want to be publicly associated with it, according to the
Google spokesperson, who spoke only on background.
YouTube’s “Trusted Flaggers” program goes back to 2012,
but the program has exploded in size in recent years amid a Google push to
increase regulation of the content on its platforms, which followed pressure
from advertisers. Fifty of the 113 program members joined in 2017 as YouTube
stepped up its content policing, YouTube public policy director Juniper Downs
told a Senate committee on Wednesday.
The third-party groups work closely with YouTube’s
employees to crack down on extremist content in two ways, Downs said and a
Google spokesperson confirmed. First, they are equipped with digital tools
allowing them to mass flag content for review by YouTube personnel. Second, the
partner groups act as guides to YouTube’s content monitors and engineers who
design the algorithms policing YouTube but may lack the expertise needed to
tackle a given subject.
It’s not just terrorist videos that Google is censoring.
Jordan B. Peterson, a professor known for opposing political correctness, had
one of his videos blocked in 28 countries earlier this month. A note sent to
Peterson’s account said YouTube had “received a legal complaint” about the
video and decided to block it.
Peterson used his large social media following to push
back, calling out YouTube on Twitter, where he has more than 300,000 followers.
YouTube reversed Peterson’s block after another popular YouTuber, Ethan Klein,
demanded an explanation on Twitter, where he has more than 1 million followers.
Although the original notice said that YouTube was responding to a legal
complaint, on Twitter the company gave the impression that the block was erroneous.
The overwhelming majority of the content policing on
Google and YouTube is carried out by algorithms. The algorithms make for an
easy rebuttal against charges of political bias: it’s not us, it’s the
algorithm. But algorithms are designed by people. As noted above, Google’s
anonymous outside partners work closely with the internal experts designing the
algorithms. This close collaboration has upsides, Google’s representatives say,
pointing to advances in combatting terrorist propaganda on the platform. But it
also provides little transparency, forcing users to take Google’s word that
they’re being treated fairly.
YouTube’s partnership with outside organizations to
combat extremist content is just one part of the company’s efforts to
prioritize certain kinds of content over others. YouTube also suppresses
certain content through its “restricted” mode, which screens out videos not
suitable for children or containing “potentially mature” content, as well as by
demonetizing certain videos and channels, cutting off the financial stream to
their operators.
Prager University, a conservative nonprofit that makes
educational videos, sued Google in October for both putting their content in
restricted mode and demonetizing it. Prager faces an uphill battle in court (as
a private company, Google isn’t bound by the First Amendment) but the lawsuit
has forced Google to take public positions on its censorship.
The Google representative who spoke with TheDC said that
it is the algorithms that are responsible for placing videos in restricted
mode. But in court documents reviewed by TheDC, Google’s lawyers argued
otherwise. “Decisions about which videos fall into that category are often
complicated and may involve difficult, subjective judgment calls,” they argued
in documents filed on Dec. 29.
In her testimony before the Senate committee on
Wednesday, Downs described some of the steps Google has taken to suppress
“offensive” or “inflammatory” content that falls short of actual violent
extremism.
“Some borderline videos, such as those containing
inflammatory religious or supremacist content without a direct call to violence
or a primary purpose of inciting hatred, may not cross these lines for removal.
But we understand that these videos may be offensive to many and have developed
a new treatment for them,” she said.
“Identified borderline content 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. Initial uses
have been positive and have shown a substantial reduction in watch time of
those videos,” she added.
YouTube’s demonetization push, which is affecting some of
the most popular non-leftist political channels, is meant to accommodate
advertisers who seek to avoid controversial content, the Google spokesperson
said.
Dave Rubin, a popular YouTube host, has seen his videos
repeatedly demonetized. Rubin posted a video, “Socialism isn’t cool,” on
Wednesday. The video was up a little over 24 hours before YouTube demonetized
it on Thursday.
The video was later remonetized, a Google representative
told TheDC. But users can’t recoup the advertising dollars they lost while
their videos were erroneously demonetized.
“I suspect that there is some political bent to it but I
don’t think it’s necessarily a grand conspiracy against conservatives or anyone
who’s not a leftist. Part of the problem is their lack of transparency has
created a situation where none of use really know what’s going on,” Rubin told
TheDC. “Does it seem that it is more so affecting non-leftist channels? Yeah,
it does.”
Comments
Post a Comment