<story><title>Google gives UK government “super flagger” status for YouTube?</title><url>http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2334027/google-gives-uk-government-super-flagger-status-for-youtube</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>r00fus</author><text>&amp;quot;Google told the FT that while the Home Office had been given these new permissions, the company still retained the right to decide whether they ought to be removed or not. Google&amp;#x27;s own user policy on YouTube forbids content that incites hatred or violence.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;So what does this really mean? So Google ultimately decides, but the UK can &amp;quot;recommend&amp;quot;? Without seeing the process in practice, it&amp;#x27;s hard to say if this actually changes anything.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ColinDabritz</author><text>It definitely sounds from the article that all this allows is that given their special &amp;quot;super flagger&amp;quot; status, is that videos they flag, whether one or &amp;quot;swaths&amp;quot;, simply jump to the top of the &amp;quot;to be reviewed&amp;quot; queue. Presumably the same queue that normal individuals flagging videos use, and ultimately approved or rejected through the same mechanism.&lt;p&gt;So in a purely practical sense, basically &amp;quot;nothing changed&amp;quot; in terms of video accessibility, but the fact that it&amp;#x27;s special status alone might cause behavior to change just because they know a &amp;quot;super flagger&amp;quot; flagged the video.&lt;p&gt;Ideally for biggest &amp;quot;do no evil&amp;quot; effect, Google would hide the fact that a super flagger was the one that flagged this particular video from the reviewer, to allow an unbiased review.&lt;p&gt;I think it makes a certain amount of sense for government representatives, especially police, to get &amp;quot;direct service&amp;quot; for reviewing things that could be dangerous, or illegal. Perhaps a video on YouTube accidentally reveals the name&amp;#x2F;address of some in witness protection. I think it&amp;#x27;s fair for that to be immediately reviewed and addressed by Google. The question is, what other abuses of this privilege might it lead to? Might this open the door for not only fast review, but influencing the result of reviews?&lt;p&gt;Interesting ethical questions for sure.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google gives UK government “super flagger” status for YouTube?</title><url>http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2334027/google-gives-uk-government-super-flagger-status-for-youtube</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>r00fus</author><text>&amp;quot;Google told the FT that while the Home Office had been given these new permissions, the company still retained the right to decide whether they ought to be removed or not. Google&amp;#x27;s own user policy on YouTube forbids content that incites hatred or violence.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;So what does this really mean? So Google ultimately decides, but the UK can &amp;quot;recommend&amp;quot;? Without seeing the process in practice, it&amp;#x27;s hard to say if this actually changes anything.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lazyjones</author><text>Sounds like the RIAA &amp;#x2F; various large publishers are still more powerful than the Home Office and fighting copyright infringement is still more important than fighting terrorism, since they can reportedly take down videos directly (and have often done so).</text></comment>