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 committeeon 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.
The censors are at it again. No explanation — and no reason: Why in the world would this be blocked? https://t.co/YMMw2BLPx8 pic.twitter.com/xe7UnwPzGb
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) January 2, 2018
Here's some more "explanation" for the censorship: incitement of hatred, terrorist recruitment, incitement of violence, celebration of terrorism. Even to fall briefly and erroneously into such a category is a chilling event…. pic.twitter.com/F00kmIGXLX
— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) January 2, 2018
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.
Hi Ethan, this is fixed now, thanks for bringing it to our attention!
— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) January 2, 2018
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.
Remember when Google celebrated Memorial Day with their Logo for Tetris?
Google is a government contractor and, as such, has to (should) abide by all the equal rights rules and laws. This includes discrimination against employees for their religious, sexual or political beliefs. The problem is, can the government enforce this on Google without “retaliation”? And does the government have the will to uphold citizens’ rights?
Twitter Google and Facebook are the biggest offenders of privacy, and banning of wrong think.