Platforms like YouTube and X say anti-trans documentaries don’t violate guidelines — but advocacy groups call them “propaganda”
I thought it said “right wing orgies” at first
Hey! Remember that guy that told us all about being invited to one? And then all the Kompromat they were holding against him all these years started flowing out everywhere over and over, and he was shunned by the entire Far Right fan base he had built up for years and years leading him to Congress?
Yeah. Me either.
Wouldn’t be the first time, nor the last
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In a political landscape already fraught for the transgender community, right-wing media organizations have found a new way to bypass platform guidelines prohibiting hate speech, by producing documentaries advocacy groups are calling “propaganda” and promoting them with carefully edited trailers.
Starting in June, right-wing outlet The Epoch Times began promoting its own documentary, Gender Transformation: The Untold Realities, with both skippable and unskippable advertisements that play before users are able to watch YouTube videos.
The site also prohibits advertisements that “display shocking content or promote hatred, intolerance, discrimination, or violence,” but negative events and imagery from professional media are evaluated under different criteria, which allows for documentaries and news organizations so long as the source is clearly linked.
In Gender Transformation, The Epoch Times presents several arguments that imply the transgender movement is being funded by high-ranking government officials, directly causing suicide and inflated death rates, and is promoted by medical organizations in an attempt to make as much money as possible— all claims that would most likely prevent the video from being monetized and could lead to its removal if posted on YouTube.
In conjunction with concerted efforts by Republican lawmakers to strip health care rights away from the transgender community, the promotion of violating content with ads and edited trailers doesn’t just allow right-wing organizations to circumvent hate-speech protections — it could cause direct violence to LGBTQ people.
And 2023 reports from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, the Anti-Defamation League, and GLAAD all found increased incidents of violence (including harassment, vandalism, and assault) in states where conservative politicians have spearheaded anti-LGBTQ bills.
The original article contains 977 words, the summary contains 263 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
My gf puts on YouTube to fall asleep. Imagine waking up to “propaganda” implying your life is a lie and saying people like you are a danger to society, self-obsessed sexual deviants and mentally ill. That was my morning the other day… Words can’t even begin to capture how distressing that was. Fuck YouTube and fuck anyone who thinks hate will fix anything. A more peaceful world is the only better one.
Damn dude. I’m sorry about that
Still the right decision by the platforms IMO. Documentaries are often making a point, arguing a stance.
Calling it propaganda actually calls into question the definition of “propaganda” I mean is Super Size Me “propaganda” against McDonalds? It’s certainly framed a certain way to make an argument and is lacking in scientific rigor. But like doesn’t that just make it a bad, biased documentary? The government isn’t producing or encouraging it.
If propaganda is just a bad documentary when it’s political in nature which I think is a fair argument then you’re presumably just saying the documentary on a political issue is bad and then is YouTube supposed to decide if it’s bad or not? I don’t see any way to determine that in an unbiased way as a platform. The way they deal with determining quality is their algorithm.
It is propaganda becauae they will twist truths and outright lie to make trans people seem sick or confused, they’ll tout harmful and ineffective “cures” as real medical science. They do their best to villify the trans community and the treatments they undergo with cherry picked information and blatant falsehoods and claims of grooming to discredit anything they say or do.
Being trans is not a trend, or a sickness, or evil, or whatever they try to say to make it go away. Our rights, existence, and our medical treatment are not up for debate. This is the same as the true facts they once touted about nonwhites to make a racist agenda and it is most certainly propoganda.
Why should “documentaries”—by which I mean videos of a bunch of transphobic bigots spreading outright fabrications meant to incite hatred against trans people—be exempt from a site’s rules on hate speech?
“(derogatory) Biased communication aimed to influence an audience to further an agenda, encourage a particular perception or provoke an emotional response.” (https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/propaganda)
Other dictionaries give similar definitions. The Oxford Languages definition, given by Google, which doesn’t seem to be linkable, says: “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.” That’s the only one I’ve seen that does indicate something like the word “misleading”, but even there it is only “especially” information of that sort, not always.
Generally, the word “propaganda” indicates an intent, not an inherent property. Although it is a derogatory term, which people are unlikely to use to describe things they agree with, it is certainly possible for completely true and well-sourced works to qualify as propaganda.
The videos in question are neither true, nor well-sourced, but that isn’t why they are propaganda. They are propaganda because they are produced with the intent of provoking an emotional response (fear and disgust at trans people), of encouraging a particular perception (that trans people are dangerous and mentally ill), and of furthering an agenda (of taking away human rights from trans people).
None of that speaks to whether it is the right decision by the platforms. I don’t think it is, but I also don’t think that the videos should be deplatformed simply because they are propaganda. They should be deplatformed because they are hate-speech and because they are dishonest.
The problem is with the first definition, if propaganda means biased intent, then the platform solution for removing propaganda would be that the platform would have to remove from the platform every video with biased intent.
For one that’s a huge percentage of political video. Second, intent is unknowable maybe there’s a Roblox tutorial made with biased intent. Third, it’s not the platonic ideal of perfect video removal, it’s each corporation deciding what counts as biased and I certainly don’t trust them to do it in a way that I agree with.
Documentaries are often making a point, arguing a stance.
You’re talking about bias. A documentary that portrays a lie as the truth, with regard to politics, is propaganda. When watching video evidence of something it would be important to note how it was edited and framed, but even then you can tell when they’re bullshitting you versus giving you an honest caption of an event.
I mean is Super Size Me “propaganda” against McDonalds?
No, McDonald’s isn’t a political organization and propaganda is distinctly political. This isn’t presenting an example of bias either as his goal was to shock his audience. I remember this being in theaters and it was all the shock of what McDonald’s does to the average, sedentary, white person - basically middle America in the 90’s.
“Bad documentary” really isn’t covering what propaganda is. It’s more than movies and messages and in the case of the right wing of America they’re given credence to voices that will never be trusted by the string pullers. YouTube Shitter, Facebook they don’t need algorithms to be done with these dumb-dumbs because it’s common sense the earth isn’t flat. One utterances of that shit should delete them from a platform. To promote those views, as harmless as they seem, only encourages that poison to filter through the rest of the know-nothings who regurgitate this crap.
America smuggled flashdrives of NCIS (the show) into North Korea. They used the show as propaganda.
A lot of left leaning people will call cop shows COPaganda.
Propaganda is a lot less scary when you learn that sesame street is also propaganda. They preach unAmerican things like “be nice” and “care for others”.
When people talk about propaganda they generally mean lying to an audience to motivate people for political power.
I think you’re focusing too much on the “propaganda” part and not the “hate speech” part.
Wasn’t this the argument for Citizens United?
…not at all? I don’t follow. I said nothing about corporations having free speech rights due to corporate personhood or money being speech.
