[HN Gopher] Google, YouTube to prohibit ads and monetization on ...
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Google, YouTube to prohibit ads and monetization on climate denial
content
Author : ra7
Score : 65 points
Date : 2021-10-07 20:29 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| Bostonian wrote:
| "Google said it's making these changes in response to frustration
| from advertisers and content creators about their messages
| appearing alongside climate denialism."
|
| Then why not give advertisers the option to avoid putting their
| ads next to climate denialism, as opposed to demonetizing such
| videos entirely?
| Splendor wrote:
| Maybe because no advertisers have requested that ability.
| beezischillin wrote:
| I distinctly remember advertisers saying they would put their
| ads on demonetised content featuring guns after they banned
| ads from such so it's not impossible that some advertisers
| would be okay with their ads on some controversial content.
| lliamander wrote:
| That seems doubtful.
| camhart wrote:
| How could they have, this is a brand new change. I doubt they
| asked all advertisers there opinion. The assumption that all
| advertisers are in agreement on this topic is almost
| guaranteed to be wrong.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| superfist wrote:
| so looks like now advertisers vote what is science ;)
| nicce wrote:
| What if climate denialists want their ads next to these videos?
| Who is getting prioritized?
| postingawayonhn wrote:
| The people with the money. Obviously.
| nicce wrote:
| Of course. It seems that I missread and this was all about
| advertisers, not about content creators.
| sp332 wrote:
| Understandable. Debate is nice and all, but self-defense is
| justifiable.
| Alupis wrote:
| The core of science is debate. There is no singular truth for
| most things in the scientific world, and lots and lots of shades
| of "the truth".
|
| We're straying very far away from a nation that believes in
| actual science - and we're replacing it with some quansi-religion
| called "Science" - a belief system where nobody is allowed to
| think or say anything that might contradict or challenge "the
| truth".
|
| How many times have you read a headline saying something along
| the lines of "Scientists say..."? As-if all scientists have come
| to exactly the same conclusion, when the reality is it was one
| person or one group saying something.
|
| What exactly even is a scientist? Are computer scientists
| qualified to speak about climate change? Probably not... yet we
| never know exactly what types of scientists are proclaiming
| things - just trust them, they're scientists!
|
| There is very little actual consensus in the scientific community
| about anything... eggs are bad for you - no wait, eggs are good
| for you - no wait, only 1 egg a day - eat as many eggs as you
| can! Nobody agrees on eggs - how can we have agreement on far
| more important and challenging-to-study things like the climate?
|
| The truth is there is no consensus so censoring half (or more) of
| the discussion is downright absurd.
| zamalek wrote:
| While I agree with you in terms of true unknowns such as dark
| matter/energy (science does need more diversity of ideas),
| climate change science is comprehensive and conclusive.
|
| Any other ideas are absurd: we know the human contribution to
| climate change cause, have measured the anticipated effect, and
| found irrefutable causality.
|
| Disputing human climate change is like disputing the surface
| temperature of the sun. These are measured facts, not theories.
| CheezeIt wrote:
| What's conclusive is that more greenhouse gases means higher
| temperatures.
|
| What's not conclusive is the doomsaying and specific claims
| about the future and present. A great example of this is
| California's governor blaming forest fires on climate change,
| and another one is the signs predicting certain glaciers
| would melt.
| [deleted]
| random314 wrote:
| > The core of science is debate.
|
| The core of science is not debate. It is a cluster of related
| items such as falsifiability, empiricism, mathematical
| modeling, reproducibility etc. It is most certainly not debate.
| You are confusing politics with science, which in many cases is
| a very deliberate right wing stance.
|
| > There is very little actual consensus in the scientific
| community about anything... eggs are bad for you
|
| This is also false. Argument by analogy with nutrition science
| is a cop out, because it is unethical to run controlled
| experiments on human subjects without appropriate consent.
| However, nutrition is important for society and we make do with
| weaker correlational studies on biased samples which can evolve
| or get overturned in the future.
|
| Climate modeling is very unlike nutritional or social science
| and can by modeled consistently.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Climate can be modeled consistently ? You must have missed
| the hundreds of models that predicted nothing and that we
| conveniently hide from view to cherry pick the ones that
| worked. Completely ridiculous statement.
| tmp_anon_22 wrote:
| When did the United States as a nation uniformly believe in
| science?
| animal_spirits wrote:
| We never did, but it can look as if it is moving further away
| from that goal
| ekianjo wrote:
| You dont need to believe in anything. Science is not a dogma.
| if Science is correct it can be demonstrated.
| munk-a wrote:
| Unlike heating up balloons filled with different gases -
| climate change isn't something that can be demonstrated
| easily. I don't disagree with your statement in general,
| but when it comes to climate change I'm offended by any
| contrarian who passively sits back in their chair and
| shouts "prove it" - you aren't owed that.
| bowmessage wrote:
| "believe in science" What does this even _mean_?
| markdown wrote:
| That you have faith in the ability of the scientific method
| to ultimately reveal objective truths about the universe.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Why do you need to have faith ? The scientific method is
| all about proof.
| nickff wrote:
| At some point, you just have to believe, if you want to
| go much deeper, you get into epistemology.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology
| nickff wrote:
| I (mostly) agree with your definition, but the word
| 'ultimately' does a lot of work there. Many people who
| use 'believe in (the) science' are actually asserting
| that science _already_ revealed the objective truths of
| the matter in question.
| Cederfjard wrote:
| And, I guess, that you believe that there's a scientific
| establishment that adheres to that method, and that the
| results it generates are disseminated faithfully to
| society at large.
| version_five wrote:
| It means think what someone else wants you to and don't
| question it.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Believe that the things that science says are true actually
| are true. It's pretty clear, no?
| [deleted]
| hanniabu wrote:
| If you don't back up claims with actual science then it's not
| part of the scientific method. Should flat-earthers be given
| equal authority too?
| ekianjo wrote:
| i remember not long ago lancet scientists claimed that the
| lab leak was some kind of ridiculous conspiracy theory.
|
| Scientists can be corrupted too.
| version_five wrote:
| > Should flat-earthers be given equal authority too?
|
| That's not the relevant question to this discussion (and also
| basically a strawman).
|
| The question is, should being a "flat earther" be banned from
| online monopolies as misinformation? As objectively stupid as
| it might be (even though I don't think anyone actually
| believes it) I think it would be extreme overreach to start
| trying to shut down youtube videos positing the earth is flat
| hanniabu wrote:
| > That's not the relevant question to this discussion (and
| also basically a strawman).
|
| It's not strawman, it's on the same level in the science
| spectrum as decisively not scientific at all. It's meant to
| (hopefully) help them understand how stupid of a suggestion
| they're proposing by offering an equally stupid example.
|
| > The question is, should being a "flat earther" be banned
| from online monopolies as misinformation?
|
| No, the question is should we reward them for their
| misinformation content and the answer is no.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _start trying to shut down youtube videos_
|
| Not getting ad revenue is not having your video shut down.
| Set up patreon if you want income making "more CO2 is good,
| actually" videos (you probably should regardless of
| content).
| nickff wrote:
| > _" Set up patreon if you want income making "more CO2
| is good, actually" videos..."_
|
| What about when Patreon demonetizes the content?
| yoloyoloyoloa wrote:
| Does the mainstream media back up any of its claims that are
| supposedly scientific. "Trust the science", ask Galileo if he
| trusted the science of his time.
| nemo44x wrote:
| No one and no institution is an authority. Some people and
| institutions certainly have more credibility. But ultimately
| a core tenant of classical liberalism and the enlightenment
| is there are no authorities. Kings are authorities. Popes are
| authorities. We moved away from that for a reason.
|
| Saying that, you're right. If your science sucks then you
| should be ignored because there is little chance of finding a
| consensus of truth in it.
| mc32 wrote:
| I'm okay with demonetization for things with less proof than
| the main alternative.
|
| What I would be against is censorship: denying the voice.
| CheezeIt wrote:
| Either is for the purpose of central control of discourse.
| mc32 wrote:
| My view is no one has a right to "monetization" on someone
| else's platform.
|
| Admittedly it is has a "chilling effect" but I'm more
| concerned that we should allow debate instead of being
| concerned we should be able to make money off of the
| debate.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _The core of science is debate. There is no singular truth for
| most things in the scientific world, and lots and lots of
| shades of "the truth"._
|
| Science isn't done by youtube video battles but by debates in
| scholarly journals. Youtube is a medium for popularizing
| whatever content. Youtube seems well in its rights in banning
| content it considers harmful and in this case I'd agree with
| this ban.
|
| That's not to say youtube's effective monopoly isn't
| concerning. I'd rather see ten providers but I'd like to see
| them all ban climate change, antivax and similarly noxious
| content - make people interested in the subject read long texts
| instead.
|
| Video isn't good medium for sustained, coherent debate. In this
| instance, it's a means of broadcasting shallow propaganda to
| morons, or put less insultingly, those not using rational
| facilities to decide things.
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| > Science isn't done by YouTube video battles but by debates
| in scholarly journals.
|
| That's a lot of confidence to have in a very broken system
| given the replication crisis, ineffective peer review
| process, excessive and pervasive paywalls, and general high
| barrier to entry.
|
| Youtube is actually pretty great platform for lots of science
| and educational channels. I could easily see a scenario where
| some very poorly done climate study is talked about on
| Youtube and it becomes demonetized simple because the
| algorithm believed it was 'climate change denial ism'.
|
| Sure it is Youtube's right to do whatever they want and we
| are just 'lucky' that Youtube isn't controlled by anti-vax,
| climate change truthers, etc.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _That 's a lot of confidence to have in a very broken
| system given the replication crisis, ineffective peer
| review process, excessive and pervasive paywalls, and
| general high barrier to entry._
|
| Lots of alternative scientific journals exist. Climate
| change denial is, in fact, well financed. There's nothing
| about a youtube ban that prevents alternative scientific
| research, even into things I'd considered absurd and
| despicable.
| hartator wrote:
| > but by debates in scholarly journals.
|
| And these debates should be open. It's incredible how hard
| getting data on clinical studies are vs. here our culture of
| open source.
| creato wrote:
| They're not even banning the content, they're just not
| showing ads on it.
| Aerroon wrote:
| YouTube only makes money if ads are shown on the video.
| YouTube also has an algorithm that chooses what gets
| promoted and recommended. There is absolutely no way that
| YouTube does not take into account whether a video is
| monetized when choosing recommendations. Ie this will most
| certainly limit the visibility of these kinds of videos.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Not to mention science doesn't consider all opinions equal
| or worth publication in standard journals, etc.
|
| Science is just more forgiving and less dogmatic than
| religion. etc.
| ekianjo wrote:
| They recently removed videos against Covid vaccines.
| munk-a wrote:
| Those videos lead to deaths - so that's completely
| reasonable. America has pretty much plateaued in terms of
| vaccination rates and that is prolonging a disaster.
|
| If we're going to ban instructional bomb construction
| videos then I think anti-vax stuff is perfectly
| acceptable as well. I really don't understand where this
| miscomprehension that you should be able to say anything
| you want on private platforms comes from - there have
| always limits even on public speech, and private
| platforms have traditionally refused to print or publish
| items that go too strongly against their corporate
| beliefs. This even extends into print media and editorial
| boards.
| wetpaws wrote:
| You can debate, you are just not getting ad revenue for this.
| nicce wrote:
| > We're straying very far away from a nation that believes in
| actual science
|
| One big issue is using the term "believe". It is not matter of
| belief, it is a matter of understanding, wrapping theorems and
| facts. We need to understand the science. We have already 10
| 000 gods, so let's not make science equated to the religion and
| reduce its power with that.
| curiousgeorgio wrote:
| > It is not matter of belief, it is a matter of
| understanding, wrapping theorems and facts.
|
| That's true of most of the "hard sciences" like physics and
| chemistry. Climatology, however, is unfortunately full of
| beliefs and incredibly lacking when it comes to theorems and
| facts. Part of that is just due to the inherent difficulty
| associated with making inferences about climate history using
| a relatively limited amount of data from modern, accurate
| instruments. Add to that some extremely biased incentives in
| the institutions and governments funding climate research,
| and you're no longer in the same ballpark as the other hard
| sciences.
| Craighead wrote:
| Please, go away and stop using the Internet. Your kind is
| literally unable to fathom what a false equivalence is to begin
| with. Don't dare to lecture others on cult like behavior.
|
| No, the core of science is not debate, the core of science is
| peer reviewed published research, for which there are (shocker)
| way WAY more research that has withstood publication and review
| that speaks to the validity of human activity lead climate
| change.
|
| The time has come for you and your cult to take your place on
| obsolescence island, where you can frolick and "debate" about
| science meanwhile everyone else will solve the actual problem
| and save our species from causing a mass extinction event.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| > There is very little actual consensus in the scientific
| community about anything
|
| Scientists agree that at low velocities, the force of an object
| equals the mass times the acceleration. This is just one point
| of agreement. There are others that I can't list here. You may
| be surprised at the amount of info that scientists agree upon.
| molbioguy wrote:
| It's not sufficient to cherry pick an example of agreement to
| refute the original comment. There are obviously many things
| scientists agree on, but there are also many complicated
| things scientists disagree on, especially when it comes down
| to the details. The key point is that the public tends to
| treat science and scientists as monolithic in their views.
| The truth is far different and there is an enormous amount of
| diversity in thought and lots of debate within the scientific
| community on many, many topics.
| curiousgeorgio wrote:
| > The truth is there is no consensus so censoring half (or
| more) of the discussion is downright absurd.
|
| I agree with your point, though _even if there is consensus_ on
| a topic, we should _still_ be able to have open discussion
| without censorship.
|
| If you assume consensus is infallible, you'll be wrong
| sometimes. If dissenting voices are silenced, it's even worse:
| you'll be wrong, and _not know_ that you 're wrong.
|
| In the cases where consensus is right, you only add fire to the
| conspiracy theories when you censor opposing views.
|
| In summary: freedom of speech - even _wrong and unpopular_
| speech - is essential to our continual pursuit of truth. To
| pretend that our world is somehow different today (as if
| misinformation or wrong ideas didn 't exist before the
| internet) is just ignorance. How many times does history have
| to show us where the road of censorship leads?
| nemo44x wrote:
| Sad this is being downvoted. When you assume anyone or any
| consensus is infallible you have kings and endless appeals to
| the authority. The reason we have made unbelievable
| scientific progress is because we follow sone rules:
|
| 1) no one is an authority on the truth.
|
| 2) no one is infallible.
|
| 3) we can change our minds when new evidence occurs
|
| This doesn't mean everyone's opinion is equal or that truth
| doesn't exist. Credibility is important. Method is important.
| Reproducibility is important. Consensus is important.
|
| It's more difficult today because of the ease of mass
| communication. But in the end we are better off taking the
| long, difficult, and often infuriating road to finding the
| truth. The alternative is an inquisition and worse.
|
| The truth will always rise to the top, eventually, this way
| even if we are wrong along the way.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I am completely exhausted by these large private monopolies
| becoming arbiters of speech. They have too much power and play
| too big a role in controlling our politics. Democracy isn't just
| the act of voting - it also involves everything that comes before
| it, and if you have massive platforms that bias their audiences
| through algorithmic/policy interference, it ultimately amounts to
| interference in our democracy. In a world where most of society's
| speech takes place on these platforms, we need to treat them for
| the common carriers they are, as UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh
| put it (https://shapingopinion.com/is-big-tech-a-common-
| carrier/), and regulate them.
|
| To get more specific, this decision is going to result in Google
| drawing arbitrary, indefensible lines based on the perspectives
| their employees and leaders deem allowable. For instance, can a
| content producer monetize their perspective that the Pacific
| Northwest heatwave from June was not primarily caused by climate
| change? There were numerous headlines claiming that this heatwave
| was "virtually impossible" without climate change, quoting a
| paper that was not peer-reviewed. But the paper itself admitted
| that a record breaking heatwave would have taken place even
| without climate change, and this point was made by others such as
| Atmospheric Sciences Professor Cliff Mass at the University of
| Washington (https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2021/07/flawed-
| heatwave-repor...).
|
| So whose opinion is allowed in that situation? Who gets
| monetization that biases the world towards that perspective and
| who gets drowned out? Who gets a fact check or context label that
| casts doubt on their content and who doesn't? Apparently, the
| world we've accepted, is one where a small number of Silicon
| Valley progressive elites decide all of that for the whole world.
| munk-a wrote:
| A while back a representative of one of the major US political
| parties said that "My goal is to cut government in half in
| twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can
| drown it in the bathtub." - when the government is constantly
| defunded more power is handed to private corporations. Somebody
| has the authority at the end of the day - you can't have a
| vacuum of authority - since the government has been restricted
| from actually being responsible for reasonable platform
| creation we've ended up in this bad timeline where mega-corps
| are the arbiters of speech instead.
| perihelions wrote:
| > _" The tech giant says that when evaluating content against the
| new policy, "we'll look carefully at the context in which claims
| are made, differentiating between content that states a false
| claim as fact, versus content that reports on or discusses that
| claim."_
|
| This is obviously an unrealistic and impossible moderation task,
| and they're plainly lying if they claim they can do that. Clear
| evidence: YouTube took down a podcast by a member of President
| Biden's Covid advisory board -- spectacularly failing the
| use/mention distinction test (about the subject of anti-
| vaccination sentiment). Their misinformation classifier does not
| pass the Turing test.
|
| (Michael Osterholm's Episode 61, "Divided by Delta", if anyone
| wants to research further. It was reinstated in a few days).
|
| (late edit) Here's a source:
| https://twitter.com/cidrap/status/1420482621696618496
|
| and a bio: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/about-us/cidrap-
| staff/michael-t-o...
| Craighead wrote:
| "N=1 proves my argument"
|
| Gosh why does HN continually fall for this type of absolute
| drivel.
| DantesKite wrote:
| My professor made a pretty good criticism of the "hockey" stick
| graph climate change scientists often referred to, showing how it
| was just bad science.
|
| Would criticisms like that be demonetized for climate denial
| content? Seems like it would.
| Aerroon wrote:
| Considering YouTubers were afraid of simply mentioning words
| such as "covid" and "virus" in their videos I'd say that it'll
| have a chilling effect whether YouTube gets it right or not.
| And I have little faith in YouTube getting it right.
| michaelterryio wrote:
| So, what us promoters of free speech read this as is, "anything
| that qualifies the unified messaging of the dominant orthodoxy is
| banned."
|
| Anthropogenic global warming is of course true. But there is an
| absolute metric ton of shit to qualify about the messaging and
| particular facts, claims, and policies around it. Some of this
| qualification will come from adversarial debate where the policy
| opponents are mostly wrong, but still provide some nuggets of
| truth.
|
| Now I know that YouTube cannot be trusted to host this
| discussion.
| edgyquant wrote:
| > But there is an absolute metric ton of shit to qualify about
| the messaging and particular facts, claims, and policies around
| it.
|
| And a lot of the doomsaying is as unscientific as denying
| climate change
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Very true. The doomsayers are part of a cohort that feels
| like a left-leaning QAnon, but they have somehow avoided that
| label and enjoyed legitimacy. Those who try to draw nuance on
| the topic of climate are often viciously attacked for it. For
| example a blog post claiming that climate change is a serious
| issue but not an existential threat
| (https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/08/is-global-warming-
| exi...) resulted in activists trying to pressure this
| university into firing this professor. Meanwhile, children
| who have repeatedly heard doomsayer messaging are
| experiencing extreme anxiety to a point where it is affecting
| their daily life and function
| (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/14/four-
| in-...). Of course, none of that messaging will be subject to
| fact checks, demonetization, or bans.
| beezischillin wrote:
| So does this apply in this case as well:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/youtube-will-put-ads-on-non-... ?
| boppo1 wrote:
| What's the threshold for denialism? If I think climate change is
| man made but the threat is probably overblown until manhattan
| real estate prices start to come down, am I a denier?
| version_five wrote:
| That's usually the argument against censorship. You may have
| noticed though that in the last couple years we have moved into
| a regime of information control where a loud group would rather
| we only have access to one narrative about things.
|
| In this case, it seems more of a commercial decision, but as
| another poster pointed out, you'd think advertisers could just
| opt out of being opposite certain content. Currently as an
| advertiser, do you get any choice? What about videos about drug
| use or medical advice or whatever that I imagine all
| advertisers don't necessarily want to be associated with?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| There are some things where advertisers do just get an opt-
| out, but Youtube's existing content policies have a blanket
| prohibition against "harmful health or medical claims" with
| no advertiser choice available.
| (https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6162278, "Harmful
| or dangerous acts" section)
| xqcgrek2 wrote:
| The threshold is whatever Google thinks it is, or rather,
| whatever the panel of 20-somethings communications or sociology
| BAs they've hired to mod their platform think it is.
| weakfish wrote:
| I agree, but you're edging on strawman there.
| [deleted]
| nemo44x wrote:
| I wonder too. What if you believe and have models that say:
|
| 1) yes CO2 warms the atmosphere. This is reproducible.
|
| 2) the climate will warm.
|
| 3) but it doesn't really matter according to these particular
| models.
|
| It turns out there are climatologists that have models they
| interpret this way. Are they banned? Is this denialism? Do you
| have to agree it's a "crisis" or can you agree it's happening
| but it doesn't make a big difference
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