Thread by @MalwareJake

I've had a few DMs asking me if I support censorship and how I reconcile free speech with asking YouTube to take action on this content.

The original context was that @Viking_Sec was being algorithmically driven to this content and THAT is concerning by itself. 1/

https://twitter.com/MalwareJake/status/1305924020299235328

This is also several degrees of bad. It's not "swastika might mean something else" (what???) when you are putting someone wearing a Jewish symbol in an oven. I don't think this has any place on the platform, but that's up to the platform and advertisers who support it. 2/

On the broader question of censorship, content platforms have a choice for what they wish to allow.

But they have a responsibility to not push offensive and radicalizing content to those who don't ask to see it. Driving dangerous content because people engage is unacceptable. 3/

I feel like we're back to ethics in development again. If the goal of the algorithm is to drive maximum engagement (likes, shares, subscribes) then serve whatever does that.

But if the goal of being decent is important too (perhaps more important), maybe adjust the algo? 4/

Because on YouTube, you never seem to be more than a few clicks away from a conspiracy theory or hate speech.

Case in point, I fell asleep to @LastWeekTonight a few months ago and woke up to some seriously anti-Semitic content. That was driven by autoplay, not preferences. /FIN