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Corporate censorship now in full force
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  • A group of the biggest technology companies in the US say they have banded together in a commitment to fight coronavirus-related fraud and misinformation. The group includes Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Reddit, Twitter, and YouTube. All seven companies sent out a joint statement Monday evening announcing the effort.

    “We are working closely together on COVID-19 response efforts,” the joint statement reads. “We’re helping millions of people stay connected while also jointly combating fraud and misinformation about the virus, elevating authoritative content on our platforms, and sharing critical updates in coordination with government healthcare agencies around the world. We invite other companies to join us as we work to keep our communities healthy and safe.”

    Nice, they care for us. May be. But most probably not.

  • “Therefore, WHO is working with various social media platforms, including TikTok, to help us reach the right audience (the right community, the right age group, etc.), as well as to detect the spread of misinformation on the new coronavirus. We understand that different platforms might have their specific audience, hence important to make trustworthy information available where people are looking for it.”

    “If you search for coronavirus on Facebook, you’ll see a pop-up that directs you to the World Health Organization or your local health authority for the latest information.”

    Sometimes forums are useful.

  • Google will start indexing all websites by their mobile versions beginning in September. Google was already using mobile-first indexing for new domains, but this change will apply the phone-friendly indexing to all domains.

    Most people do not understand that Google ranking is now among main forms of censorship. And forcing "mobile friendly" will lead tens of thousands of nice useful sites to be ditched and SEO made land pages and easy generated content will go up.

    We already can see how Google algorithms lead to much worse content quality, as they are dump as hell, even total idiot will rank content 100x better.

  • In three months, YouTube received nearly 110,000 appeals from creators who were frustrated that their videos were taken down — but less than a quarter were later reinstated.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/28/21157476/youtube-video-removal-appeal-takedown-community-guidelines-report

  • New twitter feature coming

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    Hope this Twitter will die in pain very soon.

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  • Online content should be regulated with a system somewhere between the existing rules used for the telecoms and media industries, Facebook (FB.O) CEO Mark Zuckerberg told global leaders and security chiefs on Saturday.

    Surprise.

  • And @Vitaliy...where did the above quote originate ?

    Youtube blog post, latest.

    I have no idea what u mean by "Most very frequent searches on google are... manual" ?

    I explained, they specially modify algorithms, pull results to top pages and even add completely absent results to form necessary first and second pages.

  • I have no idea what u mean by "Most very frequent searches on google are... manual" ? ...but a year ago you could search "torrent" or you could search the hashtag and get results. Now ....zero. As well, like I said, google is not returning any alternative news results. It appears to be a gradual process most people wouldn't notice, unless they used google alot. And @Vitaliy...where did the above quote originate ?

  • @kurth

    Most very frequent searches on google are... manual. With special algos modifications and just bare results inserts that otherwise will be on 1007 page.

  • I do alot of googling and since the coronavirus debut, I've noticed a decidedly preponderance of only official propaganda hits returned from google on the virus, or any related subject matter. Of course it's only anecdotal based on my personal research habits, but coronavirus info that disagrees with the official line appears to be more difficult to find...on google at least, and alternative info sites that question the official line are invisible or way down their list....even when I target my queries to find their exact information.

  • Political news and events can be subject to misinformation, so the availability of quality information sources is crucial. That’s why we raise up authoritative voices, including news sources, for news and information in search results and “watch next” panels. Millions of search queries and recommendations are getting this authoritative ranking treatment today, and we're continuing to improve and expand our systems.

    Wanted your shitty major TV outlets on Youtube? No? Bad for ya.

  • Mark Ledwich and Anna Zaitseva have published a study suggesting that YouTube "actively discourages" radicalism through its recommendation system. Their reviewers classified over 760 politics-oriented channels based on overall leaning, topics and proximity to the mainstream, and found that YouTube removed "almost all" suggestions for conspiracy theorists, white identitarians and "provocateurs" (read: purposefully offensive creators). For the most part, there's only a significant likelihood of being matched with questionable content if you're already watching that material.

    YouTube has the opposite problem -- it's overly safe. The recommendations tend to clearly favor mainstream channels, including outlets labeled as partisan like Fox News and John Oliver's Last Week Tonight. Independents and smaller outlets like The Young Turks tend to suffer regardless of their political leanings. Ledwich also warned that the recommendation algorithm tends to promote "filter bubbles" where people rarely see videos that challenge their views.

    Surprise.

  • Facebook (FB.O) said on Saturday it had issued a correction notice on a user’s post at the request of the Singapore government, but called for a measured approach to the implementation of a new “fake news” law in the city-state.

    “Facebook is legally required to tell you that the Singapore government says this post has false information,” said the notice, which is visible only to Singapore users. The correction label was embedded at the bottom of the original post without any alterations to the text.

    The Singapore government said on Friday it had instructed Facebook “to publish a correction notice” on a Nov. 23 post which contained accusations about the arrest of a supposed whistleblower and election rigging.

    Facebook often blocks content that governments allege violate local laws, with nearly 18,000 cases globally in the year to June, according to the company’s “transparency report.”

    And now, imagine this all this posts happen across 1000-5000 independent communities, lot of problems to do same.
    This is why all major media told you each minute to come to Facebook for years.

  • Some direct orders follow

    The US State Department on Saturday called on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to suspend the accounts of Iranian government leaders until Tehran re-establishes internet coverage throughout the riot-torn country.

    "It is a deeply hypocritical regime," Brian Hook, special US representative for Iran, said in an interview with Bloomberg posted on the official State Department Twitter account.

  • Slow preparations and privatization of everything

    On June 30th, ICANN, the non-profit that oversees all domain names on the internet, agreed to remove price caps on rates for .org domain names — which were previously pretty cheap.

    Public Interest Registry (PIR), which maintains the .org top-level domain, announced that it will be acquired by Ethos Capital, a private equity firm.

    Why it is required? It makes it much simpler to censor sites in .org domains.

  • Zuckerberg on coordination

    It’s just that breaking up these companies, whether it’s Facebook or Google or Amazon, is not actually going to solve the issues. And, you know, it doesn’t make election interference less likely. It makes it more likely because now the companies can’t coordinate and work together. It doesn’t make any of the hate speech or issues like that less likely. It makes it more likely because now ... all the processes that we’re putting in place and investing in, now we’re more fragmented.

  • @bradneffphoto

    Sometimes if you can't respond at the proper level people try personal attacks to undermine opponent. It is bad approach. Spend time reading and return to talk on proper level instead.

  • Like most of your readers, I usually ignore these topics. I assume most don't take them seriously either.

  • @bradneffphoto

    Let's focus on content and topic title. No such way as "government censorship" exist in abstract. as government acts in the interest of classes.

  • Yes, I prefer Government Censorship more, like your country.

  • Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism - ruling class organization against you

    The new, independent GIFCT will integrate its existing work to develop technology, cultivate strong corporate policies and sponsor research with efforts to fulfill commitments in the nine-point action plan released after the Christchurch Call. More importantly, it will institutionalize the spirit of shared purpose that the Call represents. GIFCT has made significant achievements since it was founded in 2017, and worked closely with a range of governments, particularly under the auspices of the European Union Internet Forum, but the horrific terrorist attack in Christchurch and the extraordinary virality of the attacker’s video online illustrated the need to do even more. We believe these next steps are best executed within an industry-led framework with deep input from both civil society and governments.

  • Twitter has suspended multiple large Cuban media accounts for reasons the social media platform has yet to explain as of this writing, a move which journalist Dan Cohen has described as “the equivalent of silencing CNN, Fox, WaPo and NPR’s accounts” for that nation. The Union of Cuban Journalists has denounced the move as censorship.

  • Youtube

    Because of this ongoing work, over the last 18 months we’ve reduced views on videos that are later removed for violating our policies by 80%, and we’re continuously working to reduce this number further.

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    It is time to make some other video platform, without Google.

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  • YouTube plans to tweak its recommendation algorithm to cut back on conspiracy theory videos in the UK, eight months after it conducted a similar experiment in the US. The platform is in the middle of rolling out the update to its British users, a spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch.

    They tweak it all days. But quite soon it will come a day where this algorithm will be inserted all up to their guts and it will explode. Will be quite a drama.

  • YouTube must leave up some videos that are “controversial or even offensive” in order to remain an open platform, said YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki .

    Wojcicki outlined a new way that YouTube is framing its existing set of goals to keep the platform a positive, healthy space. She calls them the four “R”s: removing prohibited content quickly, raising up authoritative voices, reducing the spread of problematic content, and rewarding proper aka "trusted" creators

    Nicer and nicer.