The
Elite Are Doing Their All To Ensure Americans Only Have Fake News
The
Elite Are Doing Their All To Ensure Americans Only Have Fake News
Dear
friends, thank you for your support of your website. You can see what we are up
against. The oligarchy intends to control all explanations and, thereby, our
understanding of events. The elite who rule have no respect for the
Constitution or for government that is accountable to the people. Government is
accountable to the elite, period.
By Zaida Green
Global
Research, December 10, 2017
8 December 2017
Region: USA
Theme: Intelligence, Media
Disinformation
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.”
The
original source of this article is World Socialist Web Site
Copyright
© Zaida Green, World Socialist Web Site, 2017
/https://www.niagarafallsreview.ca/content/dam/thestar/news/canada/2021/09/25/huawei-executive-meng-wanzhou-receives-warm-welcome-upon-return-to-china/_1_meng_wanzhou_2.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.