{"id":68127,"date":"2024-05-17T14:35:44","date_gmt":"2024-05-17T19:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=68127"},"modified":"2024-05-17T14:35:44","modified_gmt":"2024-05-17T19:35:44","slug":"youtube-removes-35000-eu-videos-for-misinformation-enhances-content-censorship-ahead-of-2024-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=68127","title":{"rendered":"YouTube Removes 35,000 EU Videos for \u201cMisinformation,\u201d Enhances Content Censorship Ahead of 2024 Elections"},"content":{"rendered":"
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YouTube Removes 35,000 EU Videos for \u201cMisinformation,\u201d Enhances Content Censorship Ahead of 2024 Elections<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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If you\u2019re tired of censorship and surveillance,\u00a0join Reclaim The Net.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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YouTube has (\u201cvoluntarily\u201d or otherwise) assumed the role of a private business entity that \u201csupports elections.\u201d<\/p>\n

Google\u2019s video platform detailed in a\u00a0blog post<\/a>\u00a0how this is supposed to play out, in this instance, in the EU.<\/p>\n

With the European Parliament (EP) election just around the corner, YouTube set out to present \u201can overview of our efforts to help people across Europe and beyond find helpful and authoritative election news and information.\u201d<\/p>\n

The overview is the usual hodgepodge of reasonable concepts, such as promoting information on how to vote or register for voting, learning about election results, etc., that quickly morph into yet another battle in the \u201cwar on disinformation.\u201d<\/p>\n

And what better way to \u201csupport\u201d an election (and by extension, democracy) \u2013 than to engage in another round of mass censorship? \/s<\/p>\n

But YouTube was happy to share that in 2023 alone, it removed 35,000 videos uploaded in the EU, having decided that this content violated the platform\u2019s policies, including around what the blog post calls \u201ccertain types of elections misinformation\u201d (raising the logical question if some types of \u201celection misinformation\u201d might be allowed).<\/p>\n

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As for who is doing this work, YouTube suggests it is a well-oiled machine hard at it around the clock, and \u201cat scale\u201d \u2013 made up of \u201cglobal teams of reviewers\u201d and machine learning algorithms.<\/p>\n

The blog post first states that one of the goals of YouTube\u2019s efforts is to help users \u201clearn about the issues shaping the debate.\u201d But then in the part of the article that goes into how the platform is \u201cdealing with harmful content,\u201d it at one point starts to look like the giant might be trying to shape that debate itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur Intelligence Desk has also been working for months to get ahead of emerging issues and trends that could affect the EU elections, both on and off YouTube,\u201d reads the post.<\/p>\n

In case somebody missed the point, YouTube reiterates it: \u201cThis helps our enforcement teams to address these potential trends before they become larger issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

And while machine learning (aka, AI) is mentioned as a positive when it comes to powering YouTube\u2019s ability to censor at scale, later on in the post the obligatory mention is made of AI as a tool potentially dangerous to elections and democracy.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

YouTube Removes 35,000 EU Videos for \u201cMisinformation,\u201d Enhances Content Censorship Ahead of 2024 Elections If you\u2019re tired of censorship and surveillance,\u00a0join Reclaim The Net. YouTube has (\u201cvoluntarily\u201d or otherwise) assumed the role of a private business entity that \u201csupports elections.\u201d Google\u2019s video platform detailed in a\u00a0blog post\u00a0how this is supposed to play out, in this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[120,33879,253,279,283,284,1426,33878,3931],"class_list":["post-68127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-censorship","tag-didi-rankovic","tag-elections","tag-eu","tag-european-parliament","tag-european-union","tag-misinformation","tag-reclaim-the-net","tag-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68127"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68128,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68127\/revisions\/68128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}