Google hiring 10,000 reviewers to censor YouTube content
by Zaida Green, via WSWS
Google is escalating its campaign of internet censorship, announcing that it will expand its workforce of human censors to over 10,000, the internet giant announced on December 4. The censors’ primary focus will be videos and other content on YouTube, its video-sharing platform, but will work across Google to censor content and train its automated systems, which remove videos at a rate four times faster than its human employees.
Human censors have already reviewed over 2 million videos since June. YouTube has already removed over 150,000 videos, 50 percent of which were removed within two hours of upload. The company is working to accelerate the rate of takedown through machine-learning from manual censorship, according to YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki in an official blog post.
The hiring drive by Google is yet another advance in the campaign against any expression of political opposition. Other social media giants have implemented measures against “fake news”; Facebook has altered its algorithms to reduce the visibility of certain news stories, and Twitter has banned the Russian-funded media outlets RT and Sputnik from advertising on the platform. While railing against “extremist content,” “child exploitation” and “hoaxes” in the interest of “public safety,” the ultimate goal of this campaign is the suppression of left-wing, anti-war sentiment.
Any censorship on YouTube will undoubtedly have an immense impact on online political discourse. According to a white paper by technology conglomerate Cisco, video will account for 69 percent of all consumer-based internet traffic in 2017; this is expected to rise to 80 percent by 2019. YouTube essentially operates a monopoly on prerecorded video sharing and general video monetization, with some 1.5 billion viewers who watch 1 billion hours of video each day on the platform; in 2015, Google policy manager Verity Harding informed the European Parliament, which was then pressuring YouTube to censor “terror-related” content, that 300 hours of video were being uploaded to the platform every minute.
YouTube began removing photographic and video documentation of war crimes in Syria in August, terminating some 180 accounts and removing countless videos from other channels, including footage uploaded by Airwars of coalition air raids that have killed civilians, according to Hadi al-Khatib, the founder of Syrian Archive. YouTube later stated that it would work to “quickly reinstate” any videos and channels that it “removed mistakenly.”
In November, YouTube removed over 51,000 videos concerning Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni-American imam who was assassinated via missile raid by the Obama administration on September 30, 2011. Awlaki was never charged with, let alone convicted of any crime. The mass removal was praised by the New York Times, one of the largest mouthpieces of the American ruling elite, as a “watershed moment.”
YouTube’s automated video removal system, implemented in August, places some videos under a “limited state” which makes it impossible for users to access the videos without already having the URL. Limited videos will not appear in search results, playlists, or viewers’ own histories. In addition, the videos can no longer be liked or disliked, commented on (all previous comments are hidden as well), monetized, embedded on other websites, or easily shared on social media through YouTube’s share buttons. YouTube has not revealed what criteria it uses to categorize a video as “extremist” and delist it.
The company has also begun using automated demonetization to financially censor video producers who upload content it deems “inappropriate” for monetization, including “controversial or sensitive subjects, war, political conflicts, natural disasters and tragedies, even if graphic imagery is not shown.” In August, the videos of “Ron Paul’s Liberty Report” were demonetized after a “manual review” by YouTube found it “unsuitable for advertisers.” Julian Assange referred to the action as “economic censorship,” noting that the “unsuitable” videos featured the former congressman’s criticism of president Donald Trump’s decision to send more American troops to Afghanistan, as well as criticizing the US Senate Intelligence Committee for branding Wikileaks a hostile foreign intelligence service.
YouTube has openly admitted on Twitter that it is censoring videos based on content, stating, “if the video is also not suitable for a wider audience … then it might see poorer performance.”
The system may also pre-emptively flag videos as unsuitable for advertising even before it is uploaded. In the cases where the censorship system cannot evaluate the content of the video—because it doesn’t exist—it bases its decision on the video’s description, tags, and thumbnail.
The requirements to file an appeal against demonetization are extremely demanding, leaving most small producers with zero recourse. To file an appeal, the channel must either have more than 10,000 subscribers, or the video in question must have at least 1,000 views within the past seven days. Producers are also not informed of when or what in their video the system finds inappropriate. Both small and large producers have complained on Twitter of double-digit percentage drops in new views after their videos have been demonetized, making it even more difficult to meet appeal requirements.
Google is not alone in its expansion of automated censorship. Last week, Facebook announced its newly implemented system to scan users’ posts and contact police and other first-responders, ostensibly to prevent suicide.
Last month, Google admitted to “demoting” content from RT and Sputnik news in its search engine and news service, confirming allegations by the World Socialist Web Site that the company engages in mass political censorship in the name of fighting “fake news.”
SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN
If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.
For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.
YouTube is a company that has the right to do whatever it pleases concerning the content it displays. Of course, it has to abide by certain laws regarding extremist content, however, I feel like it is hard to make a case for censorship, if YouTube decides to remove content it deems not suitable for the advertisers that the site needs to be viable.
Your argument aims at a deeper issue – the fact that people’s realities are increasingly shaped in the digital space. This changes many things – some for the worse. Being dependent on the profit motive of video streaming companies to be informed about current events and political developments is almost certainly a negative development, which you correctly identify.
The necessary response here is to create another medium or platform through which opinions can be shared and issues can be discussed – YouTube is not the last chance for online political dialogue.
Also, it will be increasingly necessary to directly financially support political content creators through another avenue than ad placement. Advertisements have the issue that they force creators to focus on what sells best, rather than the truth.
It is thus necessary to come up with new and innovative ways to have political conversations and to support the pursuit of truth by dedicated and impartial people who are seeking to inform the public.
Like the BBC?
Why the BBC?
I think there should be a multitude of solutions – not just going back to established media outlets or state-funded media
Tip of the ice(Bilder)berg.
Reblogged this on Worldtruth.
I have numerous links that go to the dreaded ‘this video has been removed’ or ‘the account has been removed’. None of them were violent and barely political. In fact one was Syrian soldiers singing when they retook Wadi Barada. The joy within the video made me smile. I knew I should have copied it. It appears to me that anything slightly off kilter with mainstream is under threat. If you want the ‘ten best of anything’ or a plethora of useless ‘hacks’, it’s still the place to be.
One man’s word is no man’s word / Justice heeds that both be heard.
Reblogged this on Susanna Panevin.
Beyond music and personal stupidity who would take faceless corporate You Tube seriously? For sure their are thoughtful insights however the platform is deeply compromised. Unfortunately sincere up loaders face a loosing battle.
Actually, there is as much excellent stuff as deplorable stuff on YouTube – in essence, it is a rather accurate reflection of societies around the world.
talks/lectures, documentaries, all the vaxxed videos, old tv/film not available elsewhere, interviews.
and fewer and fewer alt media channels every day 🙁
and some will happily work for fascism while others will need to to survive. 🙁
While they are increasing this censorship they are simultaneously increasing the “fake news” content and circulation of those so called approved purveyors of CIA licensed group think.
But not to worry this is being done for your own good. Remember there are some-things you should not know. There is nothing more dangerous than a clever sheep…
There are at least three other video platforms which have not indulged in such censoring (yet) – DailyMotion.com and Vimeo.com, as well as Liveleak.com.
there are. sadly most content is on youtube. and those have some issues as well.
The One Per Cent are nervous.
Those who control the information, control the people, or most of them at least.
The weapons of mass distraction, dumbing down and pseudo heroes is upon us.
Bypass Gaggle and use DuckDuckGo.
I’ve gone over to Yandex and it’s been brilliant.
What is required is an alternative platform for censored material.
Stop trying to change these fascists. Change the options available….
@rtj. Like stop trying to change the Guardian, make this option available?
is there any content, in particular, that you believe may be targeted?
what could possibly be so controversial?
All of the alternate media sites are already being targeted. We’ve carried fact-based articles on this and you can search for them using the Search function on this page.
@marley: “what could possibly be so controversial?” Already answered by George Orwell: in the Kingdom of Lies, telling the truth is in itself a revolutionary act. I read somewhere that Google was set up with money from the CIA, one of whose spokesman aired his opinion that “we shall have achieved our aim when everything Joe Shmoe believes is a lie”. A recent and very influential director of CIA was George Bush Snr, who praised The New World Order. So did Adolph Hitler, the friend of Grand Daddy Prescott Bush and recipient of financial aid from said illustrious Anglo-American philanthropist who founded a dynasty of Publicly Praying Christian Capitalist Crusaders. As a despairing Yank wrote to me, the fruit does not fall far from the tree. The Devil is The Father of Lies, and censorship is the cloak of the Devil.
Yes that is true. But the masters of this world still push their ideas. But anything that goes against it ?? It will be stopped. People need to understand the technology we love ! It’s part of the Beast system. They made people want to tell them everything. Where they are and how they feel. And we post all of this on social media . Just like the coming mark ? They going to make people want it. We will probably stand in long lines and be very happy to get it !! Crazy world. God bless.
The target is anything unsupportive of the status quo. Much alternative media is but much alternative media is not, so it is not, in that way, ‘alternative’.