Silenced by an Algorithm:How YouTube and Facebook Became the Thought Police

“What advertiser doesn’t want to be associated with…saving puppies?”

Matt Carriker’s YouTube channel, Vet Ranch, has over 1.8 million subscribers. His videos feature him, a handsome veterinarian, giving homeless animals life-saving medical treatment. This often includes footage of actual surgical procedures. His channel is both educational and inspirational for kids who love animals and dream of growing up to become a vet.

Or it would be, except YouTube has limited his videos to viewers 18 years of age or older.

It’s not just life-saving-but-bloody puppy surgery that YouTube deems inappropriate for underage eyes (or the eyes of anyone with the platform’s “Restricted Mode” on by default). For a while there, videos with references to same-sex relationships and LGBTIQ+ issues were restricted too. Before YouTube eventually reversed its murky sex and gender censorship policy and vaguely apologized, LGBTIQ+ creators were left wondering what queer content might be considered “sensitive” or “mature” and scrambling to ensure their fans could still see their videos without knowing which would be flagged or why.

On YouTube, “Restricted” videos are demonetised videos — presumably because Nike and Coca-Cola don’t want their sparkling family-friendly advertising screened before something mainstream America might consider pornographic. But inside YouTube’s walled garden, authoritarian algorithms are responsible for complex cultural judgements of “appropriateness” and “wholesomeness” that affect everyday media most people would never consider obscene.

Are all YouTube videos with sexual references inappropriate? What about those offering sex education? How does the YouTube algorithm feel about artistic nudity?

What are Facebook’s policies regarding these issues? The World Bodypainting Festival, the world’s premier organization for the nascent body art movement, had its Facebook Page deleted by Facebook overnight, without any recourse or explanation. It has taken them years to build up the following they once had. Five-time World Bodypainting Champions Scott Fray and Madelyn Greco have been repeatedly banned by Facebook for posting pictures of the artwork that won them their titles.

These issues are not black and white. Standards of appropriateness vary from culture to culture, and from community to community. Yet YouTube and Facebook’s heavy-handed, top-down algorithmic content censorship doesn’t allow for the diversity of norms that exist in the real world. What is or is not appropriate for a particular audience should be determined by that particular audience, not a one-size-fits-all algorithm.

We didn’t elect them, but these media giants now make the rules about what content we should and should not experience. In order to change this, we must come together to create something better: a decentralised platform that lets diversity flourish.

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