Posted on 03/02/2023 5:22:56 PM PST by DoodleBob
About 500 hours of video gets uploaded to YouTube every minute. The online video-sharing platform houses more than 800 million videos and is the second most visited site in the world, with 2.5 billion active monthly users.
Given the deluge of content flooding the site every day, one would surmise that YouTube must have an army of people guarding against the spread of misinformation — especially in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that was fueled by lies on social media.
Well, not actually.
Following recent cutbacks, just one person is in charge of misinformation policy worldwide, according to a recent report in the New York Times. This is alarming, since fact-checking organizations have said YouTube is a major pipeline in the spread of disinformation and misinformation.
YouTube is owned by Google. The cutbacks were part of a broader reduction by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, which shed 12,000 jobs in an effort to boost profits, which were around $60 billion last year.
YouTube is not the only social media company easing some of the already limited safeguards put in place following the Russian disinformation campaign that helped elect Donald Trump in 2016.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, slashed 11,000 jobs last fall and is reportedly preparing more layoffs.
Those cuts came as Facebook, which made $23 billion last year, quietly reduced its efforts to thwart foreign interference and voting misinformation before the November midterm elections.
Facebook also shut down an examination into how lies are amplified in political ads on the social media site and indefinitely banned a team of New York University researchers from the site.
Twitter implemented even deeper cuts, laying off 50% of its employees days before the midterm election in November. The cuts included employees in charge of preventing the spread of misinformation. Additional layoffs in the so-called trust and safety team occurred in January.
It’s not just the spread of political misinformation that is misleading and dividing the public. Twitter recklessly ended its ban on COVID-19 misinformation, which will likely lead to more needless deaths.
Hate speech also exploded on Twitter since Elon Musk purchased the company for $44 billion in October.
In the weeks after Musk took control of Twitter, antisemitic posts jumped more than 61%. Slurs against Black people soared by more than 200%, while slurs against gay men increased by 58%. The hate spewed online has been linked to an increase in violence toward people of color and immigrants around the world.
But Musk says he is a free speech absolutist — except when it impacts him. The billionaire temporarily suspended the accounts of several journalists and blocked others who rebuked him on Twitter. He also fired employees at SpaceX, one of his other companies, who criticized him.
More to the point, Musk fails to understand that freedom of speech is not absolute. As much as we support and cherish the First Amendment, there are rules and regulations surrounding what can be said. ...
For example, you can’t harass or violate the rights of others. Just ask Alex Jones. The conspiracy theorist and Infowars founder was ordered to pay nearly $1 billion in damages to the families of eight victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting for his repeated lies that the massacre was a hoax.
To be sure, the First Amendment makes it difficult to regulate social media companies. But doing nothing is not the answer. The rise of artificial intelligence to create sophisticated chatbots such as ChatGPT and deepfake technology will worsen the spread of fake news, further threatening democracy. Policymakers must soon strike a balance between the First Amendment and regulating social media.
Texas and Florida have already muddied the regulation debate by passing laws that will upend the already limited content moderation efforts by social media companies and make the internet an even bigger free-for-all. The U.S. Supreme Court put off whether to take up the cases, leaving the state laws in limbo for now.
Meanwhile, the European Union is pushing forward with its own landmark regulations called the Digital Services Act. The measure takes effect next year and aims to place substantial content moderation requirements on social media companies to limit false information, hate speech, and extremism.
The spread of misinformation and disinformation is a growing threat to civil society. Social media companies can’t ignore their responsibility.
Achtung!
Congress shall make no law...
Nobody reads Newspapers anymore. They have 2 writers, they farm out there stories. Boring.
There is no “balance” needed. Or permitted.
It used to be the press wanted to protect free speech knowing that next on the chopping block was a free press.
Newspapers don’t like the competition in the English speaking authoritarian country of Australia social media companies are forced to compensate mainstream media for links to their material on social media sites.
Similar legislation moving now in Parliament in the English speaking authoritarian nation of Canada.
My point was that nobody I Philly reads it. It’s like 10 pages now.
It’s a valid point but the mainstream media have lost audience and ad revenue to the internet so they and their politician friends in some parts of the world near to the USA by language are bailing them out financially by forcing social media to give them money.
No one is reading it anyway. It’ s all AP stories, and about 10 pages. It’s basicly the Metro now. Newspapers are dying out.
Social media sites are the vendors of a service only. They are not the arbitors of what is the truth.
“...especially in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that was fueled by lies on social media...”
Notice they can LIE all THEY want. Who the hell fact checks the Pravda Inquirer? THERE WAS NO INSURRECTION!
Seems they don’t want any competition for who gets to submit propaganda. /spit
I haven’t read the Inquirer for decades, and even then it was a flaming leftist rag.
Sounds like trash can 🗑️ liner
Everything this rag printed about COVID two years ago turned out to be misinformation.
Shut it down.
No subsequent tyrannical nation implementing thought control has ever come close to the current global environment and its thought control technologies...
Particularly in the communist-controlled United States...
However, No Big Deal!
Our communist masters know that the pathetically servile and indolent Aamerican people will just continue to roll over and spread their collective cheeks...
The babbling of an idiot.
Any government restrictions on the 1st Amendment will be used against newspapers.
Also we are finding out more every day that the government is the biggest source of lies. So it is a good idea to put the biggest liar in charge of the news.....right?
Balance? There is no balance! Freedom of speech is freedom of speech. As soon as you subject it to “balance” you negate it.
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