Latest news with #NicoleBell
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
YouTube Makes Adjustments to Its Moderation Guidelines
YouTube quietly made changes to its moderation policies last December, ahead of President Donald Trump's second term. According to The New York Times, which reviewed internal documents, YouTube is allowing content containing political, social, and cultural issues that would have been subject to removal under previous guidelines to remain on the platform. YouTube is allowing this type of content to remain on its platform as long as it is considered to be in the public's interest. The threshold for these videos has been extended from one-quarter of a video to one-half of a video. In a statement to the Times, Nicole Bell, a spokesperson for the Google-owned platform, said, "Recognizing that the definition of 'public interest' is always evolving, we update our guidance for these exceptions to reflect the new types of discussion we see on the platform today." She added, "Our goal remains the same: to protect free expression on YouTube while mitigating egregious harm." For years, conservative circles decried the moderation techniques employed by the various social media platforms, bemoaning that the takedown of their content was agenda-driven and a form of censorship. With the transition to the Trump administration, the rigid stances employed by various platforms have been jettisoned in favor of a more loose approach. YouTube joins Meta's Instagram and Facebook and X, formerly Twitter, in relaxing their moderation guidelines. Those platforms shifted from employing fact-checkers to having community members vet the veracity of content posted on their sites.
The Verge
10 hours ago
- Politics
- The Verge
YouTube has loosened its content moderation policies
YouTube has relaxed its moderation policies and is now instructing reviewers not to remove content that might violate its rules if they're in the 'public interest,' according to a report from The New York Times. The platform reportedly adjusted its policies internally in December, offering examples that included medical misinformation and hate speech. In training material viewed by the Times, YouTube says reviewers should now leave up videos in the public interest — which includes discussions of elections, ideologies, movements, race, gender, sexuality, abortion, immigration, censorship — if no more than half of their content breaks its rules, up from one quarter. The platform said in the material that the move expands on a change made before the 2024 US election, which allows content from political candidates to stay up even if they violate its community guidelines. Additionally, the platform told moderators that they should remove content if 'freedom of expression value may outweigh harm risk,' and take borderline videos to a manager instead of removing them, the Times reports. 'Recognizing that the definition of 'public interest' is always evolving, we update our guidance for these exceptions to reflect the new types of discussion we see on the platform today,' YouTube spokesperson Nicole Bell said in a statement to the Times. 'Our goal remains the same: to protect free expression on YouTube while mitigating egregious harm.' YouTube didn't immediately respond to The Verge 's request for comment. YouTube tightened its policies against misinformation during Donald Trump's first term as US president and the covid pandemic, as it began removing videos containing false information about covid vaccines and US elections. The platform stepped back from removing election fraud lies in 2023, but this recent change goes a step further and reflects a broader trend of online platforms taking a more lax approach to moderation followingTrump's reelection. Earlier this year, Meta similarly changed its policies surrounding hate speech and ended third-party fact-checking in favor of X-style community notes. The changes follow years of attacks on tech companies from Trump, and Google in particular is in a vulnerable legal situation, facing two Department of Justice antitrust lawsuits that could see its Chrome browser and other services broken off. Trump has previously taken credit for Meta's moderation changes. As noted by the Times, YouTube showed reviewers real examples of how it has implemented the new policy. One video contained coverage of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s covid vaccine policy changes — under the title 'RFK Jr. Delivers SLEDGEHAMMER Blows to Gene-Altering JABS' — and was allowed to violate policies surrounding medical misinformation because public interest 'outweighs the harm risk,' according to the Times. (The video has since been taken off the platform, but the Times says the reasoning behind this is 'unclear.') Another example was a 43-minute video about Trump's cabinet appointees that violated YouTube's harassment rules with a slur targeting a transgender person, but was left up because it had only a single violation, the Times reports. YouTube also reportedly told reviewers to leave up a video from South Korea that mentioned putting former president Yoon Suk Yeol in a guillotine, saying that the 'wish for execution by guillotine is not feasible.'
Newsweek
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
Tired Mom Offers Kids Money To Go To Sleep, Laughter At What Happens Next
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. A tired mom resorted to desperate measures at bedtime in a bid to her kids off to sleep, but it didn't have the desired effect. Parenting can be exhausting, not least when it comes to bedtime. Last year, a survey of over 1,500 parents conducted by the mattress retailer Sleepopolis found 71.91 per cent of respondents got less than 7 hours of sleep 3 nights a week or more. Nicole Bell from Fort Myers, Florida, is one of those parents. In many ways her life sounds like the kind most would dream of. "My husband and I have known each other since we were 6 as neighbors and I was and still am his sister's best friend," Bell told Newsweek. "We started dating when we were 16, and now we have 3 little girls, aged 7, 4, and 2 and a 13 year old dog." Nicole Bell offered her daughters money to go to sleep. Nicole Bell offered her daughters money to go to sleep. TikTok/thataverageparent However, as is often the case with young children, bedtime can occasionally turn into a nightmare. In Bell's case, the main culprit is their middle child. "The oldest is a decent sleeper, the youngest actually has been our best sleeper," Bell. "The 4 year old takes a solid hour and a half to fall asleep then wakes up at 3am to crawl into our bed." Matters came to a head one night recently. Bell's two eldest daughters, who share a room, were in bed but still very much awake. So, in moment captured on a nearby baby cam and later shared to TikTok under the handle @thataverageparent, Bell decided to up the ante. "Whoever's asleep first gets a dollar in the morning," Bell states as she leaves the room, hoping against all hope that it has the desired effect. But it's the hope that kills you. "At this point my husband had gone out for a run after putting the 2 year old to bed and I just wanted to get to bed myself so I was pulling out all the tricks," Bell said. "I went in, offered the dollar, then took a quick shower and came back to check on them." She hoped to return to find them both fast asleep. However, as the clip posted online shows, that wasn't the case. "The 7 year old was fast asleep, as I expected, but the 4 year old- not so much," Bell said. Instead her 4-year-old was wide awake and ready to explain why that was the case. "I can't sleep because the ninjas got my sleeping power," Bell's daughter can be heard saying on the clip. "So can you just give me a dollar in the morning?" Read more Teacher's Award for Girl in seventh grade sparks debate: "Poor kiddo" Teacher's Award for Girl in seventh grade sparks debate: "Poor kiddo" As baffling as her reasoning may have been to the casual viewer, Bell knew exactly what her daughter was referring to. "Her favorite show currently is PJ Masks, which has a villain called the Night Ninja and his sidekicks are Ninjalinos which is where her comeback originated from," she said. Bell said this is only the second time she had tried bribing her kids to go to sleep. "I honestly wasn't expecting the 4 year old to fall asleep, but I hoped she would," Bell said. "Really the goal was to give the oldest motivation to stop talking, because once she actually tries to fall asleep, she is out fast and then I would only have one awake kid left." Bell shared the footage to TikTok because her daughter's response made her laugh and she figured others would find it amusing too. "She's such a big goofball with a huge imagination that that response didn't even phase me as out of the ordinary," Bell said. The clip appears to have had the desired effect, with over 400,000 views and counting since being shared earlier this month. "I hope people just see it for what it is, a mom trying to make it until the end of the day, and not look too deep into it," Bell said. "I hope parents know that whatever they are doing to get by, however many real or metaphorical dollars they need to bribe kids with, they are doing a great job!"
Engadget
11 hours ago
- Politics
- Engadget
YouTube now allows more harmful misinformation on its platform
YouTube is following in the potentially dangerous steps of Meta and X (formerly Twitter) by relaxing its content moderation policies. New internal training materials viewed by The New York Times instruct moderators to leave videos live if up to half its content violates YouTube's policies, an increase from a quarter of it. The platform introduced the new policy in mid-December, a month after President Trump was re-elected. The new guidelines reflect what YouTube deems as "public interest." These areas include discussing or debating elections, movements, race, gender, immigration and more. "Recognizing that the definition of 'public interest' is always evolving, we update our guidance for these exceptions to reflect the new types of discussion we see on the platform today," Nicole Bell, a YouTube spokesperson, told The New York Times . "Our goal remains the same: to protect free expression on YouTube while mitigating egregious harm." The platform has reportedly removed 22 percent more videos due to hateful and abusive content than last year. It's not clear how many videos were reported or would have been removed under the previous guidelines. YouTube reportedly told moderators to now value keeping content up if it's a debate between freedom of expression and risk. For example, they were shown a video called "RFK Jr. Delivers SLEDGEHAMMER Blows to Gene-Altering JABS" which falsely stated that Covid vaccines can change people's genes. However, YouTube told the moderators that public interest "outweighs the harm risk" and the video should stay up. It has since been removed, though the reason why is unclear. Other videos allowed to remain online included one with a slur aimed at a transgender person and one in which a commentator discussed a graphic demise for former South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol. Engadget has reached out to YouTube for comment.
