in 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center labelled women's rights activist, female genital mutilation victim, atheist, and ex-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali an "anti-Muslim extremist" because she opposes Islamic extremism. (AP Photo/Shiho Fukada)
YouTube has tapped the Southern Poverty Law Center to help it police objectionable content, the Daily Caller reported this week.
What a disaster. YouTube couldn't have chosen a worse or less trustworthy partner.
The SPLC is a dishonest, irresponsible and obnoxiously partisan organization. Trusting them to decide what constitutes objectionable and “extremist” content, as YouTube’s more than 100 “Trusted Flaggers” have been asked to do, is like asking the inmates to run the asylum.
YouTube’s monitoring program dates to 2012. However, according to the Caller, it has “exploded in size in recent years amid a Google push to increase regulation of the content on its platforms, which followed pressure from advertisers.”
“Fifty of the 113 program members joined in 2017 as YouTube stepped up its content policing,” the report added. “[T]he third-party groups work closely with YouTube’s employees to crack down on extremist content in two ways … First, the flaggers are equipped with digital tools allowing them to mass flag content for review by YouTube personnel. Second, the partner groups act as guides to YouTube’s content monitors and engineers designing the algorithms policing the video platform but may lack the expertise needed to tackle a given subject.”
Spokespersons for the SPLC have not yet responded to the Washington Examiner’srequest for comment. In the meantime, though, it’s worth repeating: This group is not to be taken seriously, especially when it comes to identifying objectionable content and so-called hate speech.
In 2015, for example. the group caught well-deserved criticism after it put Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson on its “extremist watch list,” citing the one-time presidential candidate’s “anti-LGBT views.” Later, in 2016, the SPLC labeled women’s rights activist, female genital mutilation victim, atheist, and ex-Muslim Ayaan Hirsi Ali an “anti-Muslim extremist” because she opposes Islamic extremism. The British activist and extremist-turned-counter-extremist Maajid Nawaz was placed in the same category.
The left-wing advocacy group lumps pro-family and pro-Israel organizations with actual neo-Nazis. If YouTube is serious about monitoring and rooting out actually objectionable content, this is not the way to go. The SPLC will slap the word “extremist” on just about anything so long as it's right-tilting.
While we’re on the topic of extremism, the SPLC is itself more closely tied to acts of political violence than many of the people and groups they monitor. One wonders if they have plans to add their own name to their “hate map.”
The SPLC is not in the business of making the world a more loving, tolerant and polite place. They are interested only in crushing anything to the right of the Democratic Party, not just crazy white nationalist groups.
Journalist Ken Silverstein, who has covered SPLC extensively, summed it up best in 2010 when he said the group is "essentially a fraud" with "a habit of casually labeling organizations as 'hate groups.'"
Update: An SLPC spokesperson confirmed in a statement to ThinkProgress that the organization is indeed a member of YouTube's "Trusted Flaggers" program. What a farce.
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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