{"id":95598,"date":"2018-02-28T12:41:41","date_gmt":"2018-02-28T16:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=95598"},"modified":"2018-02-28T12:41:41","modified_gmt":"2018-02-28T16:41:41","slug":"busted-youtube-secretly-using-splc-to-police-videos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=95598","title":{"rendered":"BUSTED! YouTube Secretly Using SPLC To Police Videos"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Peter Hasson
\nThe Daily Caller<\/p>\n

The Southern Poverty Law Center is assisting YouTube in policing content on their platform, The Daily Caller has learned.<\/p>\n

The left-wing nonprofit \u2014 which\u00a0has more recently<\/a>\u00a0come\u00a0under fire for labeling legitimate<\/a>\u00a0conservative organizations as \u201chate groups\u201d \u2014 is one of the more than\u00a0100 nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and government agencies in YouTube\u2019s \u201cTrusted Flaggers\u201d program, a source with knowledge of the arrangement told TheDC.<\/p>\n

The SPLC and other program members help police YouTube for extremist content, ranging from so-called hate speech to terrorist recruiting videos.<\/p>\n

All of the groups in the program have confidentiality agreements, a spokesperson for Google, YouTube\u2019s parent company,\u00a0previously told TheDC<\/a>.\u00a0A handful of YouTube\u2019s \u201cTrusted Flaggers,\u201d including the Anti-Defamation League and No Hate Speech \u2014 a European organization focused on combatting intolerance \u2014 have gone public with their participation in the program. The vast majority of the groups in the program have remained hidden behind their confidentiality agreements.<\/p>\n

The SPLC\u2019s close involvement in policing content on YouTube is likely to cause consternation among conservatives who worry that they may not be treated fairly. The left-wing group has consistently labeled pedestrian conservative organizations as \u201chate groups\u201d and has\u00a0been directly tied to violence against conservatives in the past. Floyd Lee Corkins, who opened fire at the Family Research Center in 2012, said he chose the FRC for his act of violence\u00a0because the SPLC listed them as a \u201chate group.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear when the SPLC joined YouTube\u2019s \u201cTrusted Flaggers\u201d program. The program goes back to 2012 but exploded in size in recent years amid a Google push to increase regulation of the content on its platforms, which followed pressure from advertisers.\u00a0Fifty of the 113 program members joined in 2017 as YouTube stepped up its content policing,\u00a0YouTube public policy director\u00a0Juniper Downs\u00a0told a Senate committee<\/a>\u00a0in January.<\/p>\n

Downs said the third-party groups work closely with YouTube\u2019s employees to crack down on extremist content in two ways, both of which a Google spokesperson previously confirmed to TheDC.<\/p>\n

First, the flaggers are equipped with digital tools allowing them to mass flag content for review by YouTube personnel. Second, the partner groups act as guides to YouTube\u2019s content monitors and engineers designing the algorithms policing the video platform but may lack the expertise needed to tackle a given subject.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe work with over 100 organizations as part of our Trusted Flagger program and we value the expertise these organizations bring to flagging content for review. All trusted flaggers attend a YouTube training to learn about our policies and enforcement processes. Videos flagged by trusted flaggers are reviewed by YouTube content moderators according to YouTube\u2019s Community Guidelines. Content flagged by trusted flaggers is not automatically removed or subject to any differential policies than content flagged from other users,\u201d said a YouTube spokesperson, who would not specifically comment on the SPLC\u2019s participation in the program.<\/p>\n

The SPLC did not return multiple voicemails and emails seeking comment.<\/p>\n

The overwhelming majority of the content policing on Google and YouTube is carried out by algorithms. The algorithms make for an easy rebuttal against charges of political bias: it\u2019s not us, it\u2019s the algorithm. But actual people with actual biases write, test and monitor the algorithms.<\/p>\n

As noted above, Google\u2019s anonymous outside partners (such as the SPLC) work closely with the internal experts designing the algorithms. This close collaboration has upsides, Google\u2019s representatives have said, such as in combatting terrorist propaganda on the platform.<\/p>\n

But it also provides little transparency, forcing users to take Google\u2019s word that they\u2019re being treated fairly.<\/p>\n

The SPLC has faced criticism for its cavalier definitions of \u201chate group\u201d and \u201cextremist.\u201d The organization stoked controversy in 2015 by labeling Dr. Ben Carson, now the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), an anti-gay \u201cextremist.\u201d After a backlash, the SPLC reversed its ruling and\u00a0apologized to Carson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The organization\u00a0 faced a similarly intense backlash in 2016 for\u00a0labeling<\/a>\u00a0Maajid Nawaz, a respected counter-extremism activist,\u00a0an \u201canti-Muslim extremist.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0(RELATED:\u00a0SPLC Says Army Bases Are Confederate Monuments That Need To Come Down)<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Washington Examiner\u2019s Emily Jashinsky\u00a0noted<\/a>\u00a0last year that \u201cthe SPLC\u2019s claim to objectivity is nothing less than fraudulent, a reality that informed observers of its practices from both the Left and Right accept.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe routine of debunking their supposedly objective classifications occurs like clockwork each time a major outlet makes the mistake of turning to them when reporting on the many conservative thinkers and nonprofits the group absurdly designates as hateful.\u201d<\/p>\n

The SPLC has faced tough criticisms not just from conservatives but from the mainstream press as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt a time when the line between \u2018hate group\u2019 and mainstream politics is getting thinner and the need for productive civil discourse is growing more serious, fanning liberal fears, while a great opportunity for the SPLC, might be a problem for the nation,\u201d Politico Magazine\u2019s Ben Schreckinger\u00a0wrote last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bloomberg columnist Megan McArdle similarly noted last year that the SPLC commonly\u00a0lumps in principled conservatives<\/a>\u00a0alongside actual racists and extremists and warned of the possibility that tech companies could rely on the SPLC\u2019s misleading definitions.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the increasing tendency of powerful tech companies to flex their muscle against hate groups,\u201d she wrote, \u201cwe may see more and more institutions unwittingly turned into critics or censors, not just of Nazi propaganda, but also of fairly mainstream ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n

___
\nhttp:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2018\/02\/27\/google-youtube-southern-poverty-law-center-censorship\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=95598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95598\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=95598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=95598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=95598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}