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YouTube Will Redirect Searches For Extremist Videos To Anti-Terrorist Playlists (tubefilter.com)
71 points by lainon on July 22, 2017 | hide | past | favorite | 83 comments


I hate the fact that if I voice anything skeptical of this policy someone will call me a terrorist sympathizer. I'm of the conviction that the idea of blowing yourself up is bad enough that we don't really need to censor it. Furthermore I've noticed that the public largely stops thinking the moment "terrorists" or "ISIS" is mentioned. We now live in a state where we can't move ~5000 USD without informing the government because "anti-terrorism money laundering laws". We can't mail certain food products into the US because "bio terrorism act of 2003". Our FBI wants to back door encryption because "ISIS". Notice a pattern yet?

Will it stop with ISIS? Once the precedent is set how long will it be before other search results are manipulated for political reason?

And its not like there's any side of the political spectrum I can vote for. Both Hillary and Trump wanted to censor extremism on Twitter. Both wanted to expand the no-fly list into a no-buy-guns list (constitutional implications be damned). Left, right, center and abroad the civil libertarian is under siege.


The other day I was considering commenting in a negative way about something the NSA tweeted, but a voice in my head said, "Do you really want to be put on a special surveilance list?" That's when I realized our freedoms are under threat by those that are tasked with defending them. Think what you will about the NSA, but they certainly have not gone out of their way to make clear to me they care about my freedoms. Lying to congress, private courts granting warrants via secret constitution interpretations -- something is very wrong here. I fear the NSA as an upstanding citizen and they seem to be OK with that.

Also more related to your comment the "don't watch ISIS videos it gives them power." I think it's misguided. Just out of curiousity I tracked down a couple of them online and it was very thought provoking. It did not make me fear ISIS more, but it did help me understand the situation more. Just not convinced intelligent people should avoid uncensored information collection, but there is so much being censored in the US right now and the media encourages you to not educate yourself on both sides.


+1 for watching ISIS videos. I needed to understand the situation, I needed to internalize it better. I watched an execution. I watched combat footage. And I am glad I did. I now understand the severity and urgency of the problem. I didn't use a VPN or anything. NSA, come get me.


>Also more related to your comment the "don't watch ISIS videos it gives them power." I think it's misguided. Just out of curiousity I tracked down a couple of them online and it was very thought provoking. It did not make me fear ISIS more, but it did help me understand the situation more. Just not convinced intelligent people should avoid uncensored information collection

I think there has to be a better way to educate oneself/understand the situation than to watch terrorist propaganda. ISIS does not create videos 'to help people understand the situation more' but to radicalize suspectible people into becoming terrorists


Anything else would be second hand though. Sometimes I feel the need to research something for myself and it's important that some people do that. Watching allows me to answer questions like, "What is the message they are trying to get across in these videos?" "Do the videos match up to the descriptions given by the media?" These are important questions to answer.


I get your point - we've slowly, and sometimes quite quickly, seen some of our rights eroded as a result of policies that are advertised as being anti-terrorist.

Speaking directly to this policy, though, isn't your man premise that blow oneself up is bad enough in a vacuum unsupported? Many of these videos are crafted by the terrorist organizations as a recruitment tool. Wouldn't th see organizations not create them if they didn't wield at least some power to actually recruit or radicalize? I don't think arguing that line is consistent, even if I agree that we shouldn't censor these videos.


There are also videos made by murderous dictatorial regimes as a recruitment tool. YouTube has no problem with that. There are videos made by US to get more cannon fodder for their wars which also killed millions of innocent people over the decades. Where do you stop?

I'm fine with stopping recruitment videos for war, but at least do it on principle as against the war, not just against a few particular organizations. It's ridiculous otherwise. It's just one belligerent suppressing the other one in a conflict. Nothing else.


IMO, there is a difference between war and attacks on civilians.


A hypothetical difference, or a practical difference? Can you give me an example of a war that managed to avoid attacks on civilians?


One difference is, war kills far more civilians, typically by several orders of magnitude.


99.9999% of people don't blow themselves up. It's not a significant issue because it's such a bad idea. Don't get me wrong lightning strikes are also a non issue, but that does not make swimming in a thunder storm a good idea.

Basic airport screening is useful, but you very quickly hit diminishing returns.


I get your point - we've slowly, and sometimes quite quickly, seen some of our rights eroded as a result of policies that are advertised as being anti-terrorist.

Honestly when I first heard of ISIS I was pretty sure it was going to turn out to be some kind of "false alarm" excuse to continue war in the Middle East and continue curbing rights in the US. Somewhat like how Al Qaeda didn't really exist until the US started telling ghost stories about them, which turned into free recruiting.

What are the chances that the CIA is behind ISIS?


The fact that there always seems to be some new mortally dangerous enemy (who comes along just when it became unavoidably obvious the previous one was hardly a threat) makes one a little suspicious of the whole thing.


What do we do with those who thinks and is dead sure that blowing himself up in a crowd is a good idea?

We all are able to see patterns, but seeing patterns is not what solves complex problems. When doctor cuts your rotten fingers and then it happens it didn't help to save an entire arm, there is a pattern too. What does this pattern tell us? Doc wants to cut all your limbs to be sure you're not leaving his clinic, right?


> What does this pattern tell us? Doc wants to cut all your limbs to be sure you're not leaving his clinic, right?

Yes.


It's simply called authoritarianism. The problem is that the left AND the right are authoritarian. The benefit of all those 'anti terror' laws is not only not proven but also largely debunked, however, you just need to instill a bit of fear in the population and they give up all their oh so cherished freedoms.


> I hate the fact that if I voice anything skeptical of this policy someone will call me a terrorist sympathizer.

It's a form of bullying and intimidation in order to take away once voice. It's reminiscent of the red scare and the mccarthy era. If you don't agree with our censorship, you are an commie/terrorist/etc sympathizer.

It's a well-used method of silencing opposition. The catholic church used to do that to silence opposition.. You don't think the earth is the center of the universe? You are a heretic.

> And its not like there's any side of the political spectrum I can vote for. Both Hillary and Trump wanted to censor extremism on Twitter.

This is the problem. Money ultimate dictates who we can vote for. By the time the selection gets whittled down to 2, they are pretty much the same - indebted to the elite and the pretense of "left/right" is just a superficial distraction.


This recent trend is really worrisome. YouTube also shut down quite a lot of channels in connection with the Syrian civil war. Reddit too closed down a couple of subreddits, and admins banned users who shared ISIS related content on the /r/syriancivilwar/ subreddit.

What an utterly useless and counterproductive exercise in de facto censorship. The only thing this does is drive people deeper into the underground, even closer to actual extremists.

Extremist ideas need to be fought with rational discourse, drag them out into the open and let the sunshine disinfect them. Trying to hide them out of sight, like they don't exist, only makes them fester all the more in secret and partly legitimizes these extremists in their view of being unjustly persecuted.


Great then. Do you have any ideas then how to stop the radicalisation of young muslims? I'm less inclined to believe that rational discussions with ISIS warriors and their supporters will lead that far.

I live in what used to be one of the most secular countries in the world, and for various reasons our government have encouraged immigration from the middle east for 20 years, providing free education, free healthcare, generous social welfare, and an actively non-racist society. Unfortunately, this didn't seem to automatically integrate many in our society, mainly because of unemployment caused by the originally low "human capital", and partly due to there are many cultural issues that wasn't even socially acceptable to discuss at all until recently.

While many have done great, there are many more that haven't and the 2nd or 3rd generation are still doing pretty bad compared to the natives, which has created street gangs and criminality in many areas, even in small towns.

Among many bad things, one of the results is that we now have many ISIS warriors here, and no plan on how to handle them. It doesn't even seem to be illegal to be an ISIS warrior here.

Many more are susceptible to the propaganda, and in my book, any means stop the propaganda is more than welcome. I really don't understand how large US companies can carry messages from violent extremist like it's no big deal.


> Great then. Do you have any ideas then how to stop the radicalisation of young muslims?

The stuff GP is talking about is generally not being done to "stop the radicalisation of young muslims" but more likely as CYA/good PR. Maybe for some it's genuinely in good spirit but let's be honest here, it's probably not going to make a big difference.

Ideas to stop radicalization? Well, slowing down marginalization first would be a good move and that's going nowhere good in the US right now. Maybe electing representatives and leaders that don't feed on a self-fueled machine of fear would help. To do that you need an electorate with more critical thinking, which means better education. (And here you see you got a catch-22 since you need leaders that fight for better education in the first place...)

Concretely, what "you" as in any average joe can do is not much, but if you want to do something: help people understand their votes, educate them on politics as well as foreign culture, make them travel more.

What a big company like Google/Youtube could do if they cared to fight for it? Probably a hell of a lot more, but they're not in that business honestly.


I wish we could stop the marginalization, but just free education including university, healthcare, etc, isn't enough apparently.

It's a similar problem as other marginalized groups - there must be some dynamics in play that keeps them marginalized.

Maybe it's as simple as their own pride combined with more or less subtle classism (more than racism) from the middle classes that alienates them.

I don't think this is fixable without rather far going measures, like tearing down bad suburbs and rebuild as low scale areas that encourages a high degree of social control that also the middle class would like to live in, forcibly designate schools to assure an even mix of social background, programs for encouraging studies, repress religious influences, some new ideas to punish young criminals without putting them in crime-scools like now, and probably really harsh punisment for repeat offenders.

Nothing of this is likely to happen except harsh punishment that won't do much on its own.


> It's a similar problem as other marginalized groups - there must be some dynamics in play that keeps them marginalized.

It's called having a scapegoat, it's especially obvious in Europe. 30 years ago the scapegoats in Western Europe used to be Eastern Europeans. Refugees from the Yugoslav wars had not been welcomed at all, EU expansion to the East (Poland) resulted in a lot of racist sentiments flaming up along the lines of "These Poles are gonna steal all our stuff and are criminal".

Now, 30 years later, not much has changed. Those that used to be marginalized have now found a new target they can marginalize themselves: Muslim refugees.

Suddenly we have a "European Identity" and that identity even includes Eastern Europeans who seem to have learned very little from their own marginalization and now proceed to do exactly the same things to another group.

It looks like humans always need somebody to put the blame on, stuff just can't go wrong, there always has to be some "evil mind" behind all the ugly stuff that happens.


Hiding any thing from the tops and news and making it underground makes it unpopular and orders of magnitude less spread. Imagine what would happen to spinner if youtube redirected it to something different.

Real actions are already underground, extremism only uses public places to recruit masses to get better selection and financial support. Which is good to cut off.

I bet you're living in first-world country saying that you we should just go and rationally talk to extremists.


> Real actions are already underground, extremism only uses public places to recruit masses to get better selection and financial support.

And it's exactly these public places where their ideas need to be opposed. If you drive them, and their ideas, deeper into the underground there will be no one there to oppose any of their ideas, it will be yet another echo-chamber driven by a victim complex.

> I bet you're living in first-world country saying that you we should just go and rationally talk to extremists.

What else you want to do with them through the Internet? Would you rather censor them and their ideas away like they don't exist, exactly like they try to censor opposing views away in their territories of influence?

How does that make us any better than them? It doesn't, it's hypocrisy at it's finest and exactly the kind of hypocrisy which also drives recruitment.

It's a giant crying shame on our "western culture" which supposedly values "freedom" so much.


> If you drive them, and their ideas, deeper into the underground there will be no one there to oppose any of their ideas, it will be yet another echo-chamber driven by a victim complex.

Exactly. This is the same argument I pose with my neoliberal friend about Ann Coulter, Alex Jones, David Duke, etc.

"Think of the children!", I cry. If society refuses to acknowledge ideas that they find offensive the ideas don't go away, ignorance just goes unanswered.

Following this line of thinking, maybe it would be more useful for YouTube to recommend more moderate sermons/lectures to people who are looking for extremist videos.

Google could go a step further and insert ads for mental health when people view content like this. The public could also take this upon itself, especially in countries like the UK and Canada, purchasing ads for national mental health services targeting these users.


Yes, you cut human resources and organization can't grow or even retain its size.

>What else you want to do with them through the Internet? Would you rather censor them and their ideas away like they don't exist, exactly like they try to censor opposing views away in their territories of influence?

Isolate and make them unsure. Growth and spread is a thing that feeds their influence. Look, they produce nothing, they invent nothing. The only thing they do is growth. It is obviously just a cancer of idea. The word "extremism" already has a hint in it.

>How does that make us any better than them?

How is mushroom killing a bacteria better than bacteria? I don't know. It's just a way mushrooms are, maybe. Hypocritical bastards!

If seriously, I don't know why you're asking who's better/more right, because there is no absolute right. It is them or you, as it always was. Negotiation can't be done with your natural enemy.

I'm more from semi-eastern culture, if that matters.


You didnt cite examples where this is working.

Sending them from pro to anti propaganda, assuming propaganda works, does work.


You didn't cite examples either, and I'm skeptical of the premise. If reddit started redirecting /r/the_donald links to anti-Trump propaganda, or Youtube started redirecting his own videos to anti-Trump propaganda, no matter how good that propaganda is, I don't believe you that you could change their mind. And those people aren't even radicalised.


I don't have any sources either, but I'm sure that there will be different reactions to such redirects, depending on the individual.

The hardened core will probably feel justified in their beliefs by the attempt to combat them and radicalize even quicker.

But more casual group members might actually change their mind if they are confronted with outside opinions, especially if they hadn't considered them before.

So whether this kind of propaganda is effective or not essentially depends on the makeup of the targeted group. I guess you could try measuring the effect by tracking engagement of the redirected. If they are truly radicalized, they are likely to leave; but if they are more open-minded, they might stay a little longer.


> But more casual group members might actually change their mind if they are confronted with outside opinions, especially if they hadn't considered them before.

Not if they are literally being tricked into being lectured, that's not how you convince any sane person of your credibility, it's, in fact, a giant disservice to your credibility.

You don't convince people through forced lectures, you convince people by engaging with them on an even level discourse to reach a common understanding of the issue at hand.

Also consider the reverse possibility of your scenario: What happens when somebody from the "good side" wants to see what opinions on the "bad side" actually look like? Such a thing might become impossible because every search will only lead to the supposedly "good opinions".


> You don't convince people through forced lectures, you convince people by engaging with them on an even level discourse to reach a common understanding of the issue at hand.

Is that how Trump became presidents? Is he convincing by doing even level discourse? Bullshit. We are still all humans after all and so believe what we want to believe no matter the truth.


If you really want to go there, we can do that, sure. Imho one of the reasons why Trump won is because nobody took him seriously, democrats underestimated him that's why they focused on him as the potential competition, they figured he would be an easy target to tear down.

Didn't exactly play out that way did it? That's why understanding is important, otherwise reality will just come crashing down on you and you won't even understand why it happened. Just like many democrats are now in denial and increasingly behaving equally childish as Trump, blaming everything and everybody for Trumps win except for themselves and their lackluster candidate.

It's gotten to a point where even when Trump does something sensible, like cutting CIA funding for "moderate rebels" in Syria, he's still vilified as having done it "for Russia" or whatever other reason one could come up with for the sole sake of not saying a single positive thing about the current US administration, which is just childish.


My point i wrote already was that he did not win with even-level discourse.

Contrary to what you asserted is it not a requirement to convince somebody to have an even-level discourse with him.

So it is fair to assume our target group behaves similarly cause we are all human. If you look around you you may find lots more examples of this.


Heartily agree.

YouTube is trying to be Big Brother for us. What they don't realize is they're infantilizing all of their users by doing this.


> Reddit too closed down a couple of subreddits

It is disappointing what reddit has become in the past few years. From a genuine open platform to where the admins and the mods are now open and unabashed propagandists.

It is also scary how the traditional media has so easily forced social media to conform to their standards. The promise of social media was that it was the anti-traditional media. Unfiltered, raw, source and open discussion. Now reddit has adopted the exact same standards of traditional media and the rest of social media are following along.

> Extremist ideas need to be fought with rational discourse, drag them out into the open and let the sunshine disinfect them.

I agree. But it isn't just extremism. Look at how the admins are so openly anti-trump. They shut down subs that they disagree with ( alt-right ) and punished trump subs for "spamming". And yet, they openly support the dozens of anti-trump subs.

I'm a liberal who supports free speech and I loved reddit/social media that it allowed open raw discourse ( even if it offended me ). But what is happening to reddit and the rest of social media is really disappointing and quite frankly scary.


To be fair, is the problem with reddit not mostly subreddit moderators? Obviously reddit admins are guilty as well with modifying the algorithm to hide certain types of speech, but it seems to me the biggest problem is moderators.

For the time being, I think a widespread movement to create a well-known convention of /r/{subreddit}_uncensored would help things immensely.


In the case of the scw subreddit it was actually the reddit admins forcing the issue while the subreddit mods heavily opposed it.

So even if you created uncensored subreddits, you would most likely have the admins swoop in just to delete them.


That's all very well but perhaps they should also stop deleting Russian opposition videos/channels and justify that by claiming they contain extremist content when there is none. #FixRussianYoutube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZwAVsAgsLQ&t=190s


Going on a tangent / Google(youtube) is a publicly traded corporation, being banned in a country to support democracy(and missing out on advertising income) is not in their list of fiduciary duties to their investors. As such anti terrorist videos are monetizable while terrorist and antigovernment rhetoric full of bad vibes and forbidden speech is not.


I got to agree with the other guy on this. Youtube is bound by the laws of whatever country they operate in. If they refuse to cooperate with the Russian gov they will be banned and some other service which does comply will take their place. If you want to #FixRussianYoutube you got to first #FixRussianGovernment.


I think your chances are doing that are slim. Maybe a better strategy is to not base our societal discourse on central points of control.

Maybe #FixInternet.


Sure. Companies have to abide by the rules of the nations they operate in. The problem is that we used to have the higher moral ground and could mock their censorship and try to change their censorship of free expression. Now, we really can't.


And who will decide what is "Extremist Videos"? This is a dangerous game YT plays now. Who will decide who is a freedom fighter and who is an extremist? Who is good and who is bad?


It doesn't need to be decided in any meaningful or principled way. The metric can simply be: whatever brings in more advertising money and less trouble from people in power.

YouToube is no unbiased public service with higher moral or principled goals. It has to operate in a complicated world with many competing pressures from powerful entities.


>Who will decide who is a freedom fighter and who is an extremist?

For the moment the "reagan meets the taliban" search still points to the right, non-brain-washing videos (https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=reagan++meets+t...), so on this front we are safe.

On a more serious note, who ever thought this might be a good idea? Censorship never works in this sort of cases, it never has. All it does is it adds legitimacy to fringe beliefs. I for example still think that if it hadn't been for the martyrdoms and censorship they had to suffer early on the Christians and their sect would have had never gained such a following.


I wonder if white supremacist videos are gonna count as terrorist https://theintercept.com/2017/07/06/facebooks-tough-on-terro...


Of course not, because when white people engage in terrorism, they are "deeply disturbed individuals with unmet psychiatric needs" and the public/media sympathize with them.


I also wonder if any religious video of any faith that calls for beating one's wife,inequality between men and women, death for non believers and homosexuals, antisemitism or female genital mutilation will also be counted as extremist video.


Yes, any religious video as such should absolutely be counted. Feel free to start flagging them with your brave throwaway account:

https://www.youtube.com/results?

search_query=CHRISTIAN+PASTOR+death+homosexuality


Even if the video calls for none of those, you mean?

Of course, like you, I would quite like to see all Christian videos banned, but I'm afraid it might set a precedent.


Really, because we must censor ideas like "love your enemies" and "treat others the way you want to be treated"? (Matthew 5:44) (https://youtu.be/L0HhHLHLHaA)

I agree that abusers will use any name for their own means, but generalization of a group because of false persons who claim that group is never helpful.

Of course there are the false teachers who use Christianity for their own power (i.e. televangelist types), but there are also people who actually believe the great teachings like forgiveness and love one another. They are the ones who will pick you up when someone else has beaten you into the mud.


This comment is just "no true Scotsman..."


a la 'isis aren't real muslims'?


A la "christian terrorists aren't real terrorists".


Yes, because none of Islam preaches love and none of Christianity preaches death to homosexuals.


i don't see many christians blowing up kids 'for jesus', or decaptitating children 'for jesus' or throwing people off buildings, or raping or pillaging...

the radicalization of young christians into violent murder machines is a massive problem.

certtainly we must pursue this blatant false equivalency at all costs. because all religion is obviously the same in every way.


> i don't see many christians blowing up kids 'for jesus', or decaptitating children 'for jesus' or throwing people off buildings, or raping or pillaging...

Most Muslims don't do any of those things, either.

Meanwhile, some Christians do blow up abortion clinics, shoot up gay nightclubs, mosques and Sikh temples, and put Bible verses on their gunsights when shooting Muslims in the desert. And then you have Christian groups like the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda who do decapitate children, rape and pillage "for Jesus," and practice many of the same violent tactics as any Muslim extremist group.

>certtainly we must pursue this blatant false equivalency at all costs. because all religion is obviously the same in every way.

You are right about there being a false equivalency, but it's not where you seem to think it is.


> Most Muslims don't do any of those things, either.

most soviets never hurt anyone. most nazis never hurt anyone.

> some Christians do ...

with what structural support? how often do they quote verses and present a religious arguments that millions are sympathetic to?

> it's not where you seem to think it is

your dialectic of equivalency that you engage in legitimizes religiosity and by proxy religious violence, and delegitimizes secularism as well as non-religiosity and atheism.


>how often do they quote verses and present a religious arguments that millions are sympathetic to?

Millions of Americans are sympathetic to the idea of a war with Islam being necessary to usher in Armageddon, and of current US policy being a way to bring this about. George W. Bush even called the War on Terror a "new Crusade," explicitly evoking the mythology of war between Christianity and Islam, a mythology which exists in both religions, although in a context in which each religion believes it will win.

The philosophies of modern, Apocalyptic conservative Christianity and radical Islam are more alike than different.

>your dialectic of equivalency that you engage in legitimizes religiosity and by proxy religious violence, and delegitimizes secularism as well as non-religiosity and atheism

How does it legitimize religiosity and violence to point out that both Christianity and Islam have a violent fringe?


> George W. Bush even called the War on Terror a "new Crusade,"

perhaps ironically for your argument, he's also the guy who started the 'religion of peace' comedy (iirc anyways).

> How does it legitimize religiosity and violence to point out that both Christianity and Islam have a violent fringe

it's not about 'have a violent fringe'. your words convey 'there are no functional differences'. islam has a 'violent fringe' in the way the revolutionary proletariats or nazi brownshirts had a 'violent fringe'. the violence is rationalized through ideological structures.

when your dialectic is unable to articulate or recognize the extant ideological structures that rationalize, justify and endorse violence, the discussion must then pursue things outside of religion if it pretends to explain anything.

this supports the postmodernist and terrorist sympathizer claims that every dead westerner brought it upon themselves for being evil westerners.

this dialetic is further endorsed and mirrored by islamists (and other religionists) who fold this into a dialectic where religion is good by definitional fiat.

their religion doesn't influence violence because religion is good by definition. any suggestion otherwise becomes a category error.

but hey. maybe you're right. perhaps western civilization is functionally the same as isis, and we shouldn't judge misunderstood islamists.

their violence has no religious basis (religion is good!), it's just them defending themselves from our evil ways by decapitating children while screaming (purely coincidentally, no correlation) 'allahu akhbar'.


> islam has a 'violent fringe' in the way the revolutionary proletariats or nazi brownshirts had a 'violent fringe'. the violence is rationalized through ideological structures.

Well, no, Islam has a 'violent fringe' in the way Germans had a violent fringe. Are you claiming that every Muslim is the equivalent of a Nazi brownshirt, when not even every Nazi was a brownshirt, and not every German was a Nazi? It seems like you're making my point more than refuting it.

>when your dialectic is unable to articulate or recognize the extant ideological structures that rationalize, justify and endorse violence, the discussion must then pursue things outside of religion if it pretends to explain anything.

I do recognize them, I'm just refusing to recognize that they only exist in Islam.

I'm attempting to draw an equivalency between radical Islam and radical Christianity, and trying to point out that while similar claims about the violent ideals and tactics can be made about both, particularly when taking a literal interpretation of the canon of each religion, neither represents the mainstream view of that religion.

You're kind of proving my point, here. The problem with radical Islam isn't Islam, it's the politics of the radicals and the states that support them.

>this supports the postmodernist and terrorist sympathizer claims that every dead westerner brought it upon themselves for being evil westerners

But, that's not a claim I'm actually making, so no it kind of doesn't. It seems like we're typing past one another.


(Forgive me for the length of this, but I hope it does give you something to consider.)

I would just request a fair hearing on the point of what a literalist Christian is by definition:

"Die to save your enemies" (Christ's teaching and action) is the direct opposite of "kill your enemies at all costs" (terrorism).

Just from the sermon on the mount (Matthew 5-7), a literalist Christian would have to do the following:

- Be glad when people insult you and falsely accuse you (5:11-12)

- Always be a good example for your community (5:14-16)

- Have a righteousness greater then the religious leaders (5:20)

- Not be angry or insult others (5:22)

- Make peace with others before coming to God (5:23)

- Settle with people quickly and find a solution to disagreements before it becomes a legal battle (5:25)

- Not look at a woman lustfully (or a man in the general sense) (5:28)

- Control yourself (5:29-30)

- Never seek divorce (5:31-32)

- Every single communication must be truthful (5:37)

- Don't fight back or resist those who attack you (5:39)

- If someone steals or sues you, give them double what they seek (5:40)

- If someone forces you to work, do twice as much as they demand (5:41)

- Always give whoever asks and always lend to others who ask (5:42)

- Love your enemies and pray good for them and be perfect in that love for them (5:44-48)

- Never do good just to look good (6:1)

- Do good in secret as much as possible (6:3-4)

- Pray in secret to God not to be seen by people (6:5-6)

- Don't pray like an idiot (6:7)

- Pray for God's honor (6:9)

- Pray for God's will be done (6:10)

- Pray for daily needs (6:11)

- Pray for forgiveness as you forgive others (6:12)

- Pray for avoidance of temptation (6:13)

- Expect to receive forgiveness equally to the way you forgive others (6:14-15)

- Only fast in secret (6:18)

- Do not have treasures on earth, but instead have treasures in heaven (6:19-21)

- Do not chase after money, but chase after God (6:24)

- Do not worry about food, clothing, and daily needs. Expect God to take care of you (6:25-32)

- Instead seek God's kingdom and his righteousness in your life and let him take away your worry (6:33-34)

- Do not judge others or you will be judged in the same way by God (7:1)

- Don't accuse your brother when you have your own problems. (7:3-4)

- Solve your own problems first, then you can try to help your brother. (7:5)

- Don't go around like your crap don't stink (being a jerk judging everyone else) or you will find enemies who will rip you a new one. (7:6)

- Ask and work to obtain your needs (7:7-11)

- Treat others exactly the way you would like them to treat you (7:12)

- Don't follow popular opinion because it leads to death (7:13-14)

- Watch out for false teachers who claim to be lambs but are really wolves (7:15)

- Judge a person's character according to the evidence of their life not by the name they claim (7:16-20)

- If you only claim Jesus and don't obey him, you do not know him (7:21-23)

- If you listen to Jesus and obey his teaching, you are wise (7:24-25)

- If you listen to Jesus but don't obey him, you are acting stupidly and will destroy yourself (7:26-27)

- Jesus teaching is amazing and completely different then the religious leaders (7:28-29)

I think in my best objective reasoning, that if every human lived like this, the world would be an awesome place to live.

Refer to Galations 5:22-23 (ESV): "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law"

(Before continuing, I would confess I fail to live up to these often and I recognize my own stupidity, arrogance, and selfishness. Despite that, as instructed, I seek forgiveness for my failings; and I strive to live up to these values, as I intend to love God and love others like this.)

Having said that, any hateful person can claim any name and use it to attack others. When that person is clearly acting in the exact opposite of the teachings of that group, should those teachings be blamed?

This is not a "No True Scottsman" claim:

I am not saying people who do evil are not Christians. On the contrary, a Christian might do evil things, but when they do so, they are acting in error - in direct contradiction to their teachings. The fault is not with the teachings, but with the failure of the individual to "practice what they preach".

As a tech analogy:

A diode with a flaw in it may act like a capacitor. Though it was intended to be a diode, it is no longer acting like one and it is now acting in direct contradiction to it's definition. The individual diode is in a failure state, but the failure state of an individual diode (or even some percentage of the group) does not apply to the definition of what a diode should be.

The definition of the diode is good and the goal would be that all diodes actually fulfill their definition.

So the argument should not be against "all Christian videos", but the argument should be that "all Christians should actually do what Christ said".

Concerning Islam, I think it would be great for any Islam teacher (and everyone) to preach love, forgiveness, and sacrificing yourself to save your enemies.


>Even if the video calls for none of those, you mean?

...Eh?


There's a big difference between "inequality between sexes" and "death for homosexuals".


This is very scary. They control what we see and only show us what they want us to see. Some party use terrorism execuse to have more control. Play on people fears to take their freedom and choice.

What they believe to be politically right is now what is right. This is drak ages church stoning witches and if you say something against it then you support black magic and get stoned


It's hard to tell what "redirect to playlists" means - will the relevant videos be completely censored, or are they adding a playlist of opposing views to the same results? The latter seems like a nice compromise.


>> Once we have this content in place, we create targeted advertising campaigns that serve this content directly to people who are searching for information about ISIS and the caliphate, as well as people who are trying to view extremist content online. We serve these ads the same way that businesses have been doing for years—we serve advertising against certain keywords that people tend to use when they’re looking for jihadist content online << https://redirectmethod.org/qa/


Which also means journalists won't be able to access those videos as sources. Although, I'm not ready to call that a bad decision, because propaganda is indeed the biggest problem with ISIS.

This is just treating the symptom, obviously (why do young people ever consider joining a terrorist group? Certainly not through youtube videos as the only factor), but also treating the symptom is ok if we try to solve the deeper problem at the same time (unemployment? defiance resulting from corruption?).


Also normal people who just don't want to be fed the conclusions and sanitized images from the news outlets, and want to watch the actual thing in full length, compare information from multiple opposing sources, geolocate events, timestamp them, or whatever is up to their current fancy, to be able to form their worldview themselves also have a harder time. But that's nothing new, you already have to be quick, as links have been disappearing shortly after being posted for a long time.


> Which also means journalists won't be able to access those videos as sources

Journalists and news media are the biggest advocates for censorship on social media as it competes with their narrative.

> Although, I'm not ready to call that a bad decision, because propaganda is indeed the biggest problem with ISIS.

Most people equate ISIS with pure evil because of their propaganda. The biggest problem with ISIS is the killing/murders. Not their propaganda. Just because a few unhinged people are attracted to it doesn't mean that their propaganda is working.

> but also treating the symptom is ok if we try to solve the deeper problem at the same time (unemployment? defiance resulting from corruption?).

Don't forget the invasions of iraq/libya/syria/etc by our governments to destabilize the region. Which was supported by the traditional media.


How will YouTube decide if my search (as an example) is to learn more about extremism? Maybe I'm a budding political and social thinker who's interested in understanding the deeper driving forces and would like to come up with approaches on how to deal with these threats in ways that are not just "let's just bomb the hell out of all these people and that will solve the problem once and for all." What about journalists who want to report on these propaganda videos in a concise yet coherent manner for the rest of the public to get a better grip of things? What about policy makers who'd like to understand and then take action? What about think tanks and policy research? What about economic and political researchers? What about "good" people who create similar videos for educational purposes (maybe a classroom assignment to analyze and come up with essays)?

I seem to be repeating stuff, but there are a lot of people who can truly help humankind (and non-humans) by accessing these videos. We have to get better at understanding things better before we can claim to have solutions. The dynamics of a year ago may not be the same as what exists now or what may happen a year from now. Censorship is a bad answer if we want to solve issues.

Would even the intelligence agencies be happy with such a move since it makes the wanted people disappear off their radars and use other modes of communication? I believe this is a self-defeating attitude and approach for anyone who desires to look beyond knee jerk reactions and instant conclusions.

The way to deal with damaging propaganda is to create more awareness and education material and put it in front of people, IMO.


It should be noted that this not an actual redirect. As I understand it, no content is hidden. The "redirect" name is terribly chosen.

All they do is add ads for other videos

From the FAQ >> Once we have this content in place, we create targeted advertising campaigns that serve this content directly to people who are searching for information about ISIS and the caliphate, as well as people who are trying to view extremist content online. We serve these ads the same way that businesses have been doing for years—we serve advertising against certain keywords that people tend to use when they’re looking for jihadist content online << https://redirectmethod.org/qa/


I'd even be fine with this if it were applied equally to US politicians calling for executions and sermons threatening people with damnation.

This isn't about actual extremism though; it's simply about getting off of YouTube the things that cannot be sold for advertising dollars.


This is simply censorship. YouTube has a right to censor its content so it can make more money. The service will be less useful for research and reporting of news stories, I suppose but the censorship is not any different than what TV and other media have been doing for decades. Frankly, I'm surprised it took them this long. They are a commercial entity after all and their only reason for being is to make money. Of course, now they are using the technology to censor terrorists. Tomorrow they'll censor more reasonable content, no doubt. That's how these things work.


There is already suspicion that Google manipulated results for political ends: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/31/google_axes_eu_refe...

You might think "good, it was a stupid idea anyway" but what if next time it's something that you care about? It's a dangerous precedent to allow to be set.


what's interesting is that Google has been doing this for some time! For the longest time I was curious what would happen if you did a specific but obviously wrong search such as "how do I poison someone and get away with it" or "how do I join ISIS without being caught" or something. Well as you can imagine for obvious reasons I did not do those searches! (To spell it out, I did not want them in my search history, and also they show pretty clear criminal intent, and also we have clandestine agencies who presumably watch for such things perhaps with Google's cooperation, etc.)

Well some time ago I had the brilliant idea that I could test an "obviously wrong" search to see what kinds of results it would give.

So I'm male, and I decided to search "How do I trick a man into thinking he's the father" or something (as though I'm pregnant) which is pretty clearly wrong but which I'm obviously immune to the idea of intent for. (To spell it out, because males obviously don't get pregnant.)

I expected search results like forum discussions, a Yahoo Answer question phrased with that exact word, etc. You know, same as if you Google any other specific question like that.

Well that's not what I got at all. Despite my very specific question phrased something like the above, ALL of the top ten links were to pages about "paternity fraud" - which I didn't even know was a thing. (I just thought it was just a shitty thing to do, and anyway could always be played off as a genuine mistake.)

So I instantly learned that what I was Googling was fraud, and closed the page without clicking any of the links to learn more. But my reaction was: well played, Google!!

If I had actually started out with that thought, it's likely I would have abandoned it after that search.

To be clear, Google did NOT answer my question directly (even though no doubt there are tons of pages that would have answered it exactly as asked), instead teaching me why it's wrong.

I was very impressed. I can only imagine the same would be done for some of the worse types of queries someone can do.

-

Note: just to make this gender-neutral: if I were a woman then to do my experiment I could have Googled something like "how long can I trick her into having sex with me if I got a vasectomy and she is trying to get pregnant" or something, which obviously cannot be a genuine question by a woman.


Have you tried without a profile and with another profile ?

I regularly search Google with questions I think another persona would ask (parents or project manager recently).


no but it doesn't matter - none of the pages had my search terms, and they all had a different search term. It's obvious Google actively decided to return totally different pages.

for my example with the vasectomy, it's as though all the pages returned were about "sex by deception" or maybe even "rape by deception". I'm not going to do the male version so we'll never know :)


These are my results for "How do I trick a man into thinking he's the father" (same results for normal profile and anonymous browsing):

``` It Is Never OK to Trick a Man Into Fatherhood | CafeMom thestir.cafemom.com/pregnancy/128660/it_is_never_ok_to Women who trick men into fatherhood are the lowest of the low. ... like these where the man is clearly duped into becoming a father because of the woman's ... I think mothers need to be supported and that men get off the hook on many things ... NO SHE DIDN'T ! she's NEVER had a kid, and I know it, before when we used to ...

Four men reveal the trauma of becoming a dad by deception | Daily ... www.dailymail.co.uk/.../Four-men-reveal-trauma-dad-deception.ht... She's not the only one to have tried this ultimate deception. ... Last week, Liz Jones confessed how she tried to trick her husband into fathering her child. .... I also think Carol wasn't thinking of the child, and I wonder how she ...

Man fools partner into thinking he's in bed on Twitter | Daily Mail Online www.dailymail.co.uk/.../Boyfriend-fools-partner-thinking-s-bed.ht... The man used a coat to construct a fake bed and took a selfie while at the ... with his attempt to trick his girlfriend into thinking he is in bed while.

These Guys Say They Were Tricked Into Becoming Fathers | Glamour https://www.glamour.com/story/these-guys-say-they-were-trick ... who supposedly trick men into having babies with them--the idea being, ... He's never met his son and bailed when I was 11-weeks pregnant (and I ... their guys with the complete intension of getting pregnant but I also think ...

It Happened to Me: I Tried to Trick my Ex Into Getting Me Pregnant www.xojane.com/.../it-happened-me-i-tried-trick-my-ex-getting-m... “Besides,” she coaxed me, “really, don't you think he's gay? ... now to my beautiful son, whose father -- my husband -- was a willing participant ...

Eight Loving Ways to Manipulate Someone into Loving You - Medium https://medium.com/.../eight-loving-ways-to-manipulate-someo.... Here are eight tricks you can use which I don't think cause any harm… ... Try them not just on lovers but also on parents, siblings, friends and anyone ... Stare into someone's eyes for 60 seconds to induce feelings similar to love. ... end of the film when he's expecting you to say something like, “That Meryl.

Secretarial Wars - Page 89 - Résultats Google Recherche de Livres https://books.google.be/books?isbn=0595275923 Linda Gould - 2003 - ‎Fiction You're prepared to trick a man into thinking he's gotten you pregnant, and you'll be ... Didn't you have enough trouble convincing him he was the father last time, ...

Grandpa Tricks Family into Thinking He Died in Heartbreaking Holiday ... "How do I trick a man into thinking he's the father" 1:29 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoIZfycTWuM

Grandpa Tricks Family into Thinking He Died in Heartbreaking Holiday Ad ... which starts with an old man ... Dad Pranks Son With Fake Hand - YouTube "How do I trick a man into thinking he's the father" 0:42 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH_TRzlO13s

See the fear in this kid's eyes when his dad tricks him into thinking he sawed off his own father's hand ... Dad tricked into believing IVF baby was his only to find the father was ... www.mirror.co.uk › News › Real Life Stories › IVF Dad tricked into believing IVF baby was his only to find the father ... But now it is a heartbreaking reminder of the cruel trick that tore nine-year-old Simon from him. ... you love and think is your own – that is the cruelest thing anyone can do. ... “Yet he is with her every day while I just long to have him here. ```


Not sure what my exact search had been but at any rate none of your search results give practical advice into how to trick a different man into thinking he's the father, if you're already pregnant by someone else. If you're really intent on reproducing my results maybe add something about how you're already pregnant. I certainly am not making up my results as I had never heard the term paternity fraud (or some equivalent term.)

Note: parent comment is a male based on username, this is apparently just research.


So how will people know just how vile ISIS is? Should be defer our judgement to main stream news media to tell us?

It's absurd that the Redirect company's mission statement is to "counter censorship" and their main job is to censor information.


The precedence this sets is so scary and shortsighted.

So a gay man ( or even a straight person ) in saudi arabia wanting to find out more about homosexuality will be directed to anti-gay playlist which tells them how evil gays are?

In china, instead of blocking tiannamen square searches, they'll simply redirct it to showing what a great a idea it was?

What about religious countries? Will youtube simply redirect searches for atheism to "anti-atheism" site?

This is the worst form of censorship as it is sneaky and exploitive. As a liberal ( possibly former liberal ), it is shocking to me that the liberals are the ones leading the call for censorship online, in academia and business. It reminds me of Animal Farm/1984. Now that liberals have used the protections free speech to gain a lot of power/mindshare, we are trying to use it to censor everything we find offensive.

Not only is this a horrific form of censorship, it removes any credibility we ever had of criticizing others for their censorship.


generally, 'liberal' politicians in the us are the same corporate sell-outs that 'conservative' politicians are.

they just work in a smidge of meaningless feel-good language in the rhetoric while doing largely nothing of consequence to actually help put food on the table.

they glory in war and economic imperialism and servicing the oligarchy just as much as any.




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