Google rolled out a new blog post update for their Limited State policy on religious and supremest content deemed “extremist”, even if the content does not directly violate YouTube’s content policy rules. The new Limited State policy will be rolled out over the next few weeks for desktop devices, and will roll out thereafter for mobile devices.
According to Google, this new method will be the first step in a series of new measures to curb what they deem as “extremist” and “terrorist” content. According to the post, Limited State content will be demonetized, will not allow for comments, and will not be recommended…
“If we find that these videos don’t violate our policies but contain controversial religious or supremacist content, they will be placed in a limited state. The videos will remain on YouTube behind an interstitial, won’t be recommended, won’t be monetized, and won’t have key features including comments, suggested videos, and likes.”
YouTube will also be applying a new facilitation tool for cultural re-education in the form of automatically redirecting people toward playlists, information and videos that “debunk” terminology, phraseology, studies and information that they deem harmful.
The post states…
“We’ve started rolling out features from Jigsaw’s Redirect Method to YouTube. When people search for sensitive keywords on YouTube, they will be redirected towards a playlist of curated YouTube videos that directly confront and debunk violent extremist messages.”
Google will be working with the Anti-Defamation League, No Hate Speech Movement, and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue to help identify and categorize language and content that they feel is extremist or offensive, even if it does not directly violate YouTube’s content policy rules. They will be updating a machine learning algorithm to automatically apply the Limited State functionality to videos that the AI labels as “extremist” or “supremest”.
YouTuber Mister Metokur did a short video on the situation, outlining how a method of shadowbanning was used against psychologist Jordan Petersen, and that he was able to get his content and account back after Google attempted to scrub him from the net, as reported by the Daily Caller. However, it’s stated that Petersen only managed to get his account back because of how popular he is and due to the value of his brand. Metokur believes average users will be affected much more negatively due to their lack of social media capital to force a company not to censor them.
According to AdWeek, Google will be working with 15 additional non-governmental institutions to help curb “hate speech”, and will continue to improve their machine learning in order to censor, demonetize, and de-platform content they deem offensive.
