I warned in 2018 YouTube was fueling far-right
extremism. Here's what the platform should be doing
Becca Lewis
YouTube’s attempts to stay apolitical has kept it tied
up in knots, focusing decisions on small technicalities
YouTube claims it is taking hate speech seriously, but
Islamophobia is still alive and well on the platform.
Fri 11 Dec
2020 11.00 GMT
In the fall
of 2018, I released a research report warning of a growing trend of far-right
radicalization on YouTube. Specifically, I identified a loosely connected
network of reactionary YouTubers, ranging from mainstream conservatives and
libertarians all the way to overt white supremacists and neo-Nazis, who were
all broadcasting their political ideas to young audiences. Tethered together by
a shared opposition to “social justice warriors” and the mainstream media, they
frequently collaborated with each other and amplified each other’s content. In
the process, they made it extremely easy for a viewer to move bit by bit into
more extremist content.
The
following March, I watched in horror along with much of the rest of the world,
as a white supremacist gunman killed 51 people and injured 40 more at the Al
Noor Mosque and the Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Throughout the chaos of the day, researchers parsed his manifesto and found
that under the layers of irony and memes, the message was quite clear. He had
been radicalized to believe in the Great Replacement, a white nationalist
conspiracy theory that claims that white populations are being purposefully
replaced with (often Muslim) immigrants.
The
shooter’s manifesto clearly spelled out his racist and Islamophobic beliefs,
but it provided scant information on how he came to embrace them. On Monday,
with the release of the Royal Commission’s inquiry into the attacks, we got a
fuller picture: the Christchurch shooter was radicalized on YouTube, by many of
the propagandists myself and other researchers had warned about. So why didn’t
YouTube take action sooner, and what should they be doing now?
There are a
million different ways YouTube could have been, and could be now, taking
action. They could enforce their terms of service more aggressively, or make
those terms more robust. They could make changes to their algorithm so it stops
recommending ever-more-extreme content. They could de-prioritize borderline
content that acts as a first step to radicalization. They could refine their
content moderation algorithms to catch content more effectively. And, in fact,
YouTube consistently claims it has done many of those things.
The great
irony is that by attempting to stay apolitical, YouTube consistently makes the
political choice not to care about or protect vulnerable communities
And yet,
there is often a great disconnect between what actions YouTube says it is
taking and what users and creators actually experience. This is in part because
these actions mean little if the platform has no clear idea of how it defines
hate speech, extremism, harassment, or borderline content and what values it
seeks to uphold in its actions. Indeed, YouTube has often backed itself into a
corner by attempting to stay as “apolitical” as possible and turning deeply
value-based judgments into the parsing of minor details. In an attempt to avoid
accusations of politicized censorship, the platform has frequently tied itself
up in knots, focusing their decisions on the smallest technicalities when
determining whether a piece of content has violated its terms.
The great
irony is that by attempting to stay apolitical, YouTube consistently makes the
political choice not to care about or protect vulnerable communities. It can
tweak its algorithms and update its policies as much as it likes, but it won’t
truly address the underlying issues until it makes a firm commitment to protect
Muslim creators and users of YouTube and to stop the spread of Islamophobia on
their platform. This does not just mean stating this commitment clearly,
although that would be a reasonable first step. (YouTube could, for example,
follow the example of New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and apologize
for the role it played in facilitating the terrorist attack.) It also would
mean devoting significant resources to it and framing their approach to content
along those lines.
Because,
despite YouTube’s claims to be taking hate speech seriously, Islamophobia is
still alive and well on the platform. Ben Shapiro, the conservative pundit who
frequently promotes Islamophobic ideas, is thriving on YouTube, with almost 2.5
million subscribers and an additional 2.4 million on his outlet The Daily Wire.
Stephen Crowder, a controversial creator with more than 5 million subscribers
has claimed that “Islamophobia is a perfectly rational ‘phobia’,” among similar
statements. This propaganda is coming not only from small, fringe creators but
from some of the biggest political commentators on the platform.
In the end,
YouTube’s approach strangely mirrors that of the New Zealand government in the
leadup to the attack. Muslim community members interviewed for the commission’s
report said they had been raising the alarm about rising Islamophobia to the
government but that no one listened. As one Muslim New Zealander said, “The
events of the day were presaged by so many tell-tale signs of its coming, all
of which were evident and all of which were ignored by those who had power to
act.”
Instead,
the government was hyper-focused on potential terrorist threats from Muslim
individuals, leading one interviewee to say that “they were watching us, not
watching our backs”. Likewise, social media platforms such as YouTube have
consistently taken swift and decisive action against Isis recruitment channels
and other threats they see coming from Muslim extremists while simultaneously
allowing widespread Islamophobic content to thrive. For YouTube, just like the
New Zealand government, the question is if they can watch the backs of Muslims
instead of simply watching them.
Becca Lewis
is a PhD candidate at Stanford University and a graduate affiliate at the
University of North Carolina’s Center for Information, Technology, and Public
Life.
Opinion
When it Comes to Facebook, the Need for Action
Has Been Obvious for a Long Time
It’s not too late for the government to take back
power from Big Tech.
Kara
Swisher
By Kara
Swisher
Ms. Swisher
covers technology and is a contributing opinion writer.
Dec. 10,
2020
It’s about
time, even if it’s been a very long 22 years.
It was 1998
when Microsoft finally landed in the cross hairs of the federal government,
when the Justice Department and 20 state attorneys general alleged in an
antitrust lawsuit that the software giant had abused its market power to crush
competition. It was the last time the government took meaningful action against
the unfettered rise of a tech behemoth.
The Big
Tech companies that have sprouted up since the Microsoft case have been treated
by government as if they were the most delicate of flowers, in need of more
nurturing than the most finicky of ferns. There have been laughable fines,
while one merger after another was allowed to sail on by.
Those
charged with regulation have given companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon a
very wide berth to grow into some of the most valuable entities in the history
of the planet. Their founders are among the richest people ever.
It all came
to a halt with the announcement in October that the Justice Department was
finally taking aim at Google in an antitrust lawsuit focused on search and
advertising. And on Wednesday, in the most potent government action since the
Microsoft case, the Federal Trade Commission and 46 states, as well as the
District of Columbia and Guam, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for
the District of Columbia alleging that Facebook has employed anticompetitive
tactics that allowed it to bully and bury rivals. The filing, after an 18-month
investigation, recommends breaking up the company.
“For nearly
a decade, Facebook has used its dominance and monopoly power to crush smaller
rivals and snuff out competition,” said the New York attorney general, Letitia
James, who led the state group, at a news conference. “By using its vast troves
of data and money, Facebook has squashed or hindered what the company perceived
to be potential threats.”
The F.T.C.,
which is charged with protecting consumers from corporate dominance, has ducked
its responsibilities many times over the years when it comes to tech companies.
It has finally decided in the waning days of the Trump administration to go for
broke.
Facebook
will bring its enormous power to bear against the agency, which has only some
1,100 employees and a paltry budget of $330 million. In contrast, Facebook’s
revenue rose sharply to $21.5 billion in its most recent quarter, giving it
ample resources to add to its already ample resources.
“It will be
the lawyer employment act of 2020,” one regulator joked to me about the
prospect of Facebook sucking up every hired legal gun in Washington to battle
the F.T.C. and the states.
But it’s no
joke. And Facebook would be wise to mount the strongest possible defense since
the stars are finally aligned for serious antitrust action. In this case, the
stars include the feds, the states — and also a bipartisan group of
legislators.
For those
of us who have been paying attention, the need for this legal action has been
obvious for a long time. The unchecked growth of some tech companies has been a
challenge to new entrants and ultimately a dampener of innovation. And with
unfettered power, Big Tech companies have become bullies, armed with fists full
of data, acquired through outsize market share, to keep them at the top of the
heap.
Which is
why it is amusing that Facebook’s first response to the lawsuit has been to act
like a victim. It’s a feint that those of us covering Silicon Valley have had
to listen to for years, where those with most weaponry cry most plaintively
about being under siege.
“The most
important fact in this case, which the commission does not mention in its
53-page complaint, is that it cleared these acquisitions years ago,” Jennifer
Newstead, Facebook’s canny general counsel, said in a statement. “The
government now wants a do-over, sending a chilling warning to American business
that no sale is ever final.”
That’s
laughable and disingenuous. The agency never actually approved the deals in
question, specifically Facebook’s purchase of the Instagram social photo
service in 2012 for $1 billion and the WhatsApp messaging service acquisition
in 2014 for $19 billion. Rather, the government simply did not step in to stop
the acquisitions.
Think of it
more like regrets that are now being resolved, using proof — and an unearthed
spate of mine-mine-mine emails from the Facebook founder and chief executive
Mark Zuckerberg. His missives make it clearer than it was possible back then
that Facebook sucked up possible competitors in order to eliminate challenges
to its hegemony. And so, in hindsight, it’s time to rewind to unwind.
Here’s a
test for you to better understand what that means: What was the last
significant and big social network to gain traction?
That would
be Snapchat, started in 2011. It’s a creative company that Facebook tried its
best to buy. And when Facebook was rebuffed, it simply copied Snap’s products,
over and over, in order to suck dry Snap’s innovation and kill it.
This has
long been a Facebook go-to move, which is why I am looking forward to the
discovery process in the new lawsuit to see how far Facebook pushed the Trump
administration to take aim at its most recent rival, TikTok.
This “buy
or bury” strategy is reminiscent of the allegations aimed at Bill Gates of
Microsoft decades ago. These charges still have heft when lobbed at Mr.
Zuckerberg today.
Which is
why Facebook’s Ms. Newstead is trying hard to paint the case as “revisionist
history,” claiming that the government could have acted to stop the
acquisitions of Instagram and What’sApp if it were so concerned.
It’s a
savvy effort to claim that we can’t turn back time — even if we did not know
then what we know now. And what we know now is that Facebook has become a
menace in ways that require limiting its size and power.
The thing
is that you can turn back time. And even though it may take years to do so, we
will wait as long as it takes.
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