YouTube Unleashed a Conspiracy Theory Boom. Can It Be Contained?

Because people view it as harmful. If even one person thumbs their nose at science because some idiot on YouTube told them that gravity can't be real because "water always finds its level", that is causing harm. If even one person takes Alex Jones's ramblings about the Sandy Hook victims seriously, and perhaps starts sending texts threatening the victims (which actually happened), that is causing harm.

It's not hard to see why recommending false and/or misleading information is dangerous, and you'd have to be purposefully ignorant to not see that.

I don't think that the NY Times or the YouTube executives would ever advocate that you arrest people for spreading this misinformation, short of direct harassment, but they don't want to be party to the purposeful dumbening of society.

What? No, that's not how this works. You have freedom of speech. I have freedom of association. This is why I don't need to host your ramblings. I can choose to tell you to get off my lawn (metaphorically) and go ramble somewhere else.

But is this really the case? For decades there were things like the National Enquirer and other such rags sitting by the checkout counter with all sorts of sensationalized, hyperbolic, and often fake articles. Yet people, somehow, understood that taking things from it as more than entertainment as not a great idea. I think a big part of the reason for this is because there were other, much more stable, sources of information that consistently provided reliable information in a clear, objective, and well considered manner.

Today it's increasingly difficult to point to any particularly stable source of information. The media has become ubiquitously driven by partisanship, agenda, and sensationalism. And reporting of falsifiable facts has been replaced with opinion, conjecture, speculation, and leading statements. And one of the biggest issues is that this is all happening during the era of the internet. In times past if you wanted to read older news articles you needed to go to a library and hope they had the paper scanned onto film, and then dig through the paper to try to find whatever you looking for. Now when a paper engages in shoddy reporting, it can be instantly referenced and used as an example to all.

The lowest common denominator always wins the short game in society. Offer somebody a sensational[ized] and poorly researched story, or a well researched, considered, and frankly somewhat boring story. The sensationalized story will almost always win in a one-off. It's fun to read light weight trash when you're just going for a taste. Who didn't occasionally flick through that National Enquirer at the checkout stand? It was fun! But in the long game, the trash loses. It may be fun to read a trashy story here and there, but it's not fun when that's all you have because it's ultimately meaningless.

The big problem is that I think the media was very late to react to the internet, and then overreacted by trying to compete with social media. And that inevitably meant becoming trash. I'm going to conclude with a very high hanging target, The Intercept. In my opinion The Intercept remains arguably the most reputable media outlet today. Nonetheless, especially in recent times have also started to go down the path of partisanship and it always ends the same way.

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[1] - This is an archive of an article The Intercept ran some time back suggesting it was absurd and unimaginable for the president to suggest that some bomb threats against Jewish community centers might be driven by something other than anti-semitism. The outrage driven article focused on his suggestion that attacks can, in lieu of anti-semitism, sometimes by done because "Someone’s doing it to make others look bad." The paper suggested such thoughts were "white supremacist conspiracy theories."

[2] - This is an article The Intercept ran two days later after it was revealed that one of their former reporters had been the person executing the bomb threats. He was an extremely liberal black individual who reported almost exclusively on social justice and racial issues. He had been calling in the hoaxes in a convoluted attempt to frame his ex-girlfriend (whom had recently broken up with him) for calling in the bomb threats.

[3] - This is how the article was updated given #2.

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[1] - https://archive.fo/DwZLx

[2] - https://theintercept.com/2017/03/03/statement-on-the-arrest-...

[3] - https://theintercept.com/2017/02/28/trump-suggests-anti-semi...

The thing you are not considering here is that in this world of censorship you now need a 'Ministry of Truth.' Let's consider Google and the NYTimes. The NYTimes was one of the loudest cheerleaders for the war in Iraq. They unquestionably ran stories advocating and spreading our likely fabricated "evidence" even though a critical examination would likely have revealed some serious questions, but they chose either not to investigate or not to ask those questions. They, years after the fact, wrote an article condemning their own lack of scrutiny [1]. But did they really learn anything? They returned to the exact same pattern of unquestioning cheerleading for war in Syria, and I predict we'll likely see something similar should our actions in Venezuela culminate in yet another invasion.

Google is a massive multinational corporation that profits by harvesting and exploiting personal individual on people. They have shown an eagerness to expand their operations to countries such as China. They planned to launch a censored search engine and were happy to agree to record and track individuals by tying their search to their phone number. Such behavior would enable convenient tracking and 'correction' by Chinese officials if they so desired. Among the list of terms they included in their prototype for China was literally "human rights." [2]. A company literally censoring information on "human rights" is like something out of bad dystopia fiction. This should not be reality - but it is.

I'm sure you see the point I'm making. By claiming that the average person is too stupid to be allowed to access whatever information they would like, you are implicitly asking somebody to be the gatekeeper of truth who decides true vs false, right vs wrong. But nobody is capable, let alone deserving, of this right. And the most ironic thing of all is that the typical gate keepers of truth that people would nominate are some of the worst actors in society that certainly have caused unimaginably more harm than all the total sum consequences of all the absurdity spread by individuals. And that's because when individuals spread fake stuff around, they might fool a few people but it mostly goes without notice. By contrast when the current gatekeepers spread misinformation, hundreds of thousands of people die at cost of literally trillions of dollars.

[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-th...

[2] - https://theintercept.com/2018/12/01/google-china-censorship-...

Sure, but this is under the assumption that the information is being censored, which I don't think anyone in this conversation is calling for. I'm certainly not suggesting that flat-earthers be jailed for believing in something really stupid, and certainly I'd never support them being shutdown in a public venue unless they got violent.

That said, and as I've kept repeating, YouTube and Google are not government entities, and they aren't required or even given incentive to platform horrible people, or people that they view as horrible. While I agree that it's a bit disturbing that Google is releasing a censored search in China, I don't live in China, and I was talking largely in regards to the United States, (since that was where the whole freedom of speech thing came up).

We draw the line all the time. If someone was in my house and started spouting off Neo-Nazi propaganda, I would tell them to leave, and I would be completely unimpressed with their argument for freedom of speech, as I think you would as well. Am I an evil totalitarian dictator because I don't want to give an audience to people I think are disgusting? Am I anti-free-speech because I'm denying the other members (especially children) of my house the ability to hear opposing viewpoints? Of course not; it's my property and I don't want disgusting people in there.

I would definitely prefer to keep open discourse, but my point is that I don't see how it comes down to the evil dystopian world that your comment indicates because YouTube doesn't want to recommend stuff that they view as dangerous.