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FiatLux posted an update 5 years, 6 months ago
More YouTube censorship of “conspiracy theorists” and “fringe” opinions coming? A lawsuit’s been filed in CA re: YouTube content moderators’ psychological harm from viewing “graphic and objectionable” content. Per court doc (the complaint) such content includes actually violent stuff, but also “conspiracy theories, fringe beliefs, and political disinformation—from false information about participating in the census, to lies about a political candidate’s citizenship status or eligibility for public office, to manipulated and/or doctored videos of elected officials, to denials that the Holocaust occurred, to suggestions that Covid-19 is a fraud.” (Note the guilt-by-assocation tactic of putting questions about Covid on a par with Holocaust denial.)
“This type of content,” it continues, “has destabilized society. . . .” For real?! The complaint also alleges, “PTSD and related syndromes . . . can be triggered by . . . seeing racially discordant posts sowing political dissension in America.” Huh??
The complaint also gets in a jab at religious folks: “Plaintiff spoke with a fellow Content Moderator that had met with a different Wellness Coach. That Wellness Coach told Plaintiff’s co-worker to ‘trust in God,’ advice that was unhelpful.”
For my part, I hope this kind of language doesn’t someday make it into a precedent-setting court decision.
Whether or not the case goes ahead, another possible outcome is that YouTube will use the hullaballo caused as an excuse to tighten its censorship. (Makes me wonder if YouTube itself isn’t behind the whole thing.)
The court doc I quote from (it mentions actually disturbing content, is highly technical, and I can’t really recommend reading it; but just to cite the source [all emphases mine]):
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/7214887/Jane-Doe-v-Youtube.pdf
The Giza Forum (Legacy)
Closed Archive of The Old Forum
One of the articles about it–Zerohedge has one as well:
https://www.businessinsider.com/youtube-sued-by-ex-moderator-who-developed-ptsd-symptoms-depression-2020-9?op=1
wouldn’t the idea be for that complainant to simply be banned from the job of moderator, or ever looking at You Tube, or television, many films, commercials and print material ever again? Certainly ban them from porn…then they can finally live in peace. Why can’t they just go join a cloister somewhere?
You’d think the complainant would’ve just quit and looked for other work. But we live in a victim culture and she’s out for a big cash settlement (a lot more lucrative than a content moderator gig!). On the face of it, anyway. I’m suspicious there’s more going on because of all the language I quoted, which I don’t think, in a reasonable person’s judgment, would qualify as something violent enough to create or trigger mental problems in a person whose mental state was sound enough to allow them to work.