Google algorithms are automatically selecting videos from news channels to be censored from Australian viewers that it deems offensive, inaccurate or dangerous, a media diversity inquiry has heard.
But the tech giant has defended the move, saying its parameters were set by global “trust and safety teams” based on the best evolving advice from governments, health authorities and community standards.
The admission was made during testimony by the Senate Environment and Communications References Committee into diversity in media chaired by Sen. Sarah Hanson-Young of the Australian Greens Party regarding a one-week ban of Sky News by Google-owned YouTube as well as the platform's removal of 23 videos last year related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In response to a question from Sen. Kim Carr, a Google representative admitted that the platform removed the videos after Google's algorithms found the footage featuring Sky News commentators remarking about the virus to be in violation of policies against spreading misinformation -- though Sky News is a legitimate news organization not prone to spreading lies or fake stories.
Google Australia and New Zealand public policy director Lucinda Longcroft told the legislative panel that fighting misinformation takes a whole-of-society approach, adding that her company takes its responsibilities in that realm seriously
“We are not an anything-goes platform,” Longcroft said.
But of course, unsaid in all of this is the fact that one person's "misinformation" is another person's 'uncomfortable truth' and when your government has become very dictatorial in the age of COVID, as Australia's has, then any counterfactual information revealing your authoritarian policies to be misguided, inappropriate, unnecessary, and outright stupid must be blocked.
And apparently, Google is on board with doing the Aussie government's bidding.
"The footage, the committee was told, was largely filmed prior to the availability of Covid-19 vaccinations and included medical experts and commentators questioning whether ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine could be a treatment for Covid-19," NWO Report noted, adding that, "Longcroft said the videos were determined to be misinformation by artificial intelligence software and no personal complaint had been made to the platform."
She went on to say that Google has 12,000 members on its trust and safety teams, but none of them are qualified medical experts -- they just know what information the platform and its government clients want blocked.
The platform says that its guidelines were created after consulting with "experts in that area," but many of the "experts" are politicized hacks like Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head immunologist in the U.S. who is all-in for vaccines and refuses to entertain any other treatments -- despite the fact that the available vaccines are nowhere close to the efficacy of 85-95 percent they were made out to be and despite the fact that vaccinated people are now getting COVID.
One of the best defenses against the virus is the natural immunity built up after someone actually contracts the disease and then recovers from it. That's been true of viruses since the advent of humans, but now, suddenly, Fauci and other "experts" aren't pushing "herd immunity" for COVID -- just vaccines.
As for YouTube, the platform has already taken down some 5,000 videos related to the pandemic with Australian IP addresses, which means that the platform has also taken them down from other countries' addresses too.
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