Tag: youtube

Over 70 Percent of YouTube Videos Viewers Deemed Objectionable Were Recommended by YouTube’s Own Algorithm

A new study by software nonprofit Mozilla Foundation found that 71 percent of videos study participants deemed objectionable were suggested to them by YouTube’s own recommendation algorithm.

“Research volunteers encountered a range of regrettable videos, reporting everything from COVID fear-mongering to political misinformation to wildly inappropriate “children’s” cartoons,” Mozilla Foundation wrote in a post.

The largest-ever crowdsourced probe into YouTube’s controversial recommendation algorithm found that the automated software continues to recommend videos viewers considered “disturbing and hateful,” Mozilla said, including ones that violate YouTube’s own content policies.

The study involved nearly 38,000 YouTube users across 91 countries who volunteered data to Mozilla about the “regrettable experiences” they have had on the world’s most popular video content platform. Overall, participants flagged 3,362 regrettable videos between July 2020 and May 2021, with the most frequent “regret” categories being misinformation, violent or graphic content, hate speech, and spam/scams.

Mozilla said that almost 200 videos that YouTube’s algorithm recommended to volunteers have since been removed from the platform, including several that YouTube deemed violated their own policies.

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An Ugly War Among Leftist YouTubers Shows Two Common, Toxic Pathologies Plaguing U.S. Politics

An incredibly vicious and protracted war is being waged, seemingly with no end in sight, among numerous prominent liberal and left-wing commentators who work primarily on YouTube. The conflict erupted on May 26 when Cenk Uygur — the founder and long-time host of The Young Turks, the largest liberal-left YouTube platform — baselessly and falsely accused independent journalist Aaron Maté of being “paid by the Russians,” while his co-host, Ana Kasparian, spouted innuendo that Maté was “working for” unnamed dictators.

Maté is one of the very few left-wing journalists who reported skeptically on Russiagate and who questioned the U.S. Government’s narrative about the civil war in Syria, including by traveling to war-torn parts of that country to do so. He won the 2019 Park Center for Independent Media’s Izzy Award for his work debunking Russiagate. Yet with a one-minute rant from their insulated studio, Uygur baselessly branded Maté as someone who is “paid by the Russians” while Kasparian asserted that he “seemed” to be working for Assad and other dictators — a potentially reputation-destroying smear for a journalist and one that can be quite dangerous for a reporter who, like Maté, works on the ground in war zones.

The conflict engendered by those grotesque fabrications escalated significantly when Kasparian sent a private Twitter message to one of Maté’s defenders, Jimmy Dore, in which she threatened to accuse Dore of #MeToo-type sexual harassment from when they worked together seven years earlier. Kasparian made clear that her intent to publicly vilify Dore as a sexual harasser would serve as punishment for his criticisms of The Young Turks. Dore then revealed Kasparian’s threat on his program, and days later, Kasparian made good on her threat by accusing Dore of sexual harassment back in 2014.

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A Case of “Intellectual Capture?” On YouTube’s Demonetization Of Bret Weinstein

Just under three years ago, Infowars anchor Alex Jones was tossed off Facebook, Apple, YouTube, and Spotify, marking the unofficial launch of the “content moderation” era. The censorship envelope has since widened dramatically via a series of high-profile incidents: Facebook and Twitter suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story, Donald Trump’s social media suspension, Apple and Amazon’s kneecapping of Parler, the removal of real raw footage from the January 6th riots, and others.

This week’s decision by YouTube to demonetize podcaster Bret Weinstein belongs on that list, and has a case to be to be put at or near the top, representing a different and perhaps more unnerving speech conundrum than those other episodes.

Profiled in this space two weeks ago, Weinstein and his wife Heather Heying — both biologists — host the podcast DarkHorse, which by any measure is among the more successful independent media operations in the country. They have two YouTube channels, a main channel featuring whole episodes and livestreams, and a “clips” channel featuring excerpts from those shows.

Between the two channels, they’ve been flagged 11 times in the last month or so. Specifically, YouTube has honed in on two areas of discussion it believes promote “medical misinformation.” The first is the potential efficacy of the repurposed drug ivermectin as a Covid-19 treatment. The second is the third rail of third rails, i.e. the possible shortcomings of the mRNA vaccines produced by companies like Moderna and Pfizer.

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YouTube removes videos exposing China’s abuse of Uyghurs, citing policy violation

A human rights group that gained popularity on YouTube largely because of its videos exposing China’s human rights abuses against the Uyghur Muslims had several of its videos removed from the platform, with YouTube citing unrelated policy violations, according to a report. 

Reuters reported that the YouTube channel Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights, which is based in Kazakhstan, also had its channel temporarily blocked by YouTube. The activist who runs the channel, Serikzhan Bilash, has been called a “well-known rights activist” by the group Human Rights Watch.

According to Reuters, 12 of Bilash’s videos were removed this year by YouTube amid an apparent campaign by groups who deny China is committing genocide to mass-report the Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights videos. The channel was completely blocked this month and only restored after inquiries from Reuters.

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YouTube censors video of Nobel Prize winner Dr. Satoshi Ōmura discussing ivermectin

Before the coronavirus pandemic, ivermectin was described as a “wonder” drug by the medical community. And in 2015, Dr. Satoshi Ōmura and Dr. William C. Campbell were awarded half the Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work that led to the development of ivermectin.

“The importance of Ivermectin for improving the health and wellbeing of millions of individuals with River Blindness and Lymphatic Filariasis, primarily in the poorest regions of the world, is immeasurable,” the Nobel Assembly stated in its press release for the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

But after the pandemic began, the tech giants have gone all out to purge content that recommends ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19.

And today, these Big Tech policies against ivermectin resulted in one of Ōmura’s speeches where he discussed ivermectin being struck down for “violating YouTube’s community guidelines.”

“When the fascists at YouTube censor the Noble Prize winner Dr. Satoshi Omura, a man whose discoveries have saved a hundred million + from blindness, the world has entered a very, very dark place,” Australian Member of Parliament Craig Kelly tweeted. “I cannot express in words how angry & sad this makes me & fearful for the future.”

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‘Violation of First Amendment’ – Judicial Watch YouTube Video Censored at Request of California Government Officials

The California Secretary of State’s office pressured YouTube to remove Judicial Watch’s videos on election integrity.Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch received 165 pages of new documents showing the California Secretary of State directly emailing YouTube to remove Tom Fitton’s videos on election integrity.

The video titled “ELECTION INTEGRITY CRISIS — Dirty Voter Rolls, Ballot Harvesting & Mail-in-Voting Risks!” was removed three days after California government officials made the request.

Judicial Watch had previously sued California over its dirty voter rolls and Los Angeles County agreed to remove 1.6 million inactive voters.

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YouTube censors scientist’s popular podcast for mentioning ivermectin

YouTube censored one of the most popular podcasts in the country because it mentioned the drug ivermectin as a safe and effective treatment for COVID-19.

Bret Weinstein, an evolutionary biologist who was a professor at Evergreen State College, told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson on Tuesday night YouTube has blocked “The Darkhorse Podcast” from generating ad revenue, which is how he makes a living.

YouTube said it will not allow any channel to discuss “[c]laims that ivermectin is effective in treatment or prevention of COVID.”

Carlson asked Weinstein why YouTube, which is owned by Google, would do such a thing.

“It is confusing, but I think to understand it, the thing to do is to consider the question of what would be ideal from the perspective of the pharmaceutical industry at the moment? It would be ideal if vaccines were recommended for all people irrespective of their age, irrespective of whether they had already had COVID-19, and irrespective of whether or not they were pregnant,” he said.

“And it would be essential that there were no safe and effective alternatives to the vaccine because if there were safe and effective alternatives, the Emergency Use Authorizations that allow the administration of the vaccines would evaporate.”

Weinstein said the “evidence is strong that ivermectin works both as a prophylactic and as a treatment if given early.

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YouTube deletes President Trump interview

YouTube has removed another interview with former President Trump, continuing its pattern of blacklisting Trump from its platform, even when appearing as a guest on other channels.

This time, Trump’s interview with David Brody on “The Water Cooler” show on the Real America’s Voice news network has been purged after the tech giant claimed that the video contained “content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome of the U.S. 2020 presidential election.”

During the interview, Trump responded to headlines that claimed he’d admitted he lost the 2020 US presidential election by saying: “I never admitted defeat.”

He also said it’s up to the public and “perhaps, politicians” to decide wether the election was fraudulent and added: “I don’t think there’s ever been a case like this where hundreds of thousands of votes will be found. So we’ll have to see what happens.”

Not only was this Trump interview scrubbed but the Real America’s Voice YouTube channel was also hit with a strike which blocks it from uploading or live streaming for seven days.

Real America’s Voice program director Roger Hudson described the censorship of this Trump interview as “a little heavy-handed and probably inappropriate” and said Trump “didn’t say what they [YouTube] said he said.”

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Amazing New Website Confirms YouTube Is Suppressing Dislikes on Joe Biden Videos by as Much as 600%

There is a relatively new website that tracks the popularity of Joe Biden’s video channel — the same man that smashed all US records and received 81 million votes in the 2020 election while campaigning from his basement.

The website tracks the YouTube page of Joe Biden’s White House. And after several weeks of results can confirm that far-left YouTube is suppressing the dislikes on Joe Biden’s videos.

In fact the dislikes on the White House YouTube page are being manipulated on every single Joe Biden White House video!

EVERY SINGLE ONE!

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Former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao: ‘Deplatforming Works’

“Deplatforming works,” boasted former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao, who became notorious among Reddit users for her pro-censorship policies during her brief tenure as head of the company, in a tweet posted this week.

Pao made the tweet in response to a study that showed the decline in attention for a group of right-wing commentators in the wake of their bans from YouTube.

“Deplatforming hate works,” said Pao. “It worked on reddit in 2015, and now it’s working on YouTube.”

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