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YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

bbc.co.uk

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Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>It's ironic, because the left, not the right, has spent nearly the last 50 years promoting pedophilia. ... What? Your evidence is that Salon.com had one article about people who specifically avoid acting on their urges? >But what is kind of shocking is how anti-free-speech so many on this site are. I'm old enough to remember the idealistic - although rather fatuous in hindsight - early days of the "internet culture"…

>many of us have seen how bad groups have benefited from the current state of affairs since then. It was easy to be idealistic about free speech on the internet back when it was almost solely populated by academic types. But the world changed, and we don't have to be dogmatic about old ideals.

Exactly my point. This is simply a minority political faction using their political and economic power to silence those they don't agree with, all the while hypocritically pretending it's about pedophilia, which they, more than anyone, have been attempting to mainstream.

>Just because it might be natural or common doesn't make it acceptable and worth spreading.

Unacceptable - to you - you are simply asserting moral superiority. Why should anyone accept your assertion? The left certainly has no objective definition of "racist" which is why certain kinds of "racist" speech are acceptable to leftists. Again, this is the point. You, Google, Facebook, the SPLC and the ADL are simply declaring themselves the moral authority and censoring speech. The pretense at morality is just that, a pretense. It's just a display of raw political and economic power, couched - as naked displays of power typically are - in the language of morality. Many people find your ideas unacceptable and not worth spreading.

> Your evidence is that Salon.com had one article about people who specifically avoid acting on their urges?

That is called "an example" and one could give 100 more from the last 50 years, for instance, the German Green party chairman, who admitted in his own book to molesting children at his leftist school as part of "sexual liberation." But I obviously can't give anymore, because YCombinator doesn't allow expressions of opposition to the Silicon Valley/Democratic party political establishment, hence the removal of my comment.

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#532
post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I couldn’t help but feel that two decades ago, people similarly believed things that were baseless, but they had less capability to disseminate those ideas to other people. Which people? Twenty years ago, people (by which I mean schoolteachers) baselessly believed that Columbus proved that the world was round rather than flat and disseminated that idea, and it was hard to disseminate the counter-idea of "no, actual…

Two kinds of ideas I would consider harmful to the point of using the force of law to ban them: antivax materials, and the kinds of comments broadcast over media leading up to and during the Rwandan genocide that lead to that genocide taking place. I could not in good conscience say "the kids who die of preventable illness, their lives are worth it so antivax people can spread misinformation without consequence." I c…

The "force of law" was largely on the side of the Rwandan genocide, so it's a slightly nonsensical example, although some of the broadcasts do satisfy the tight bound of speech that calls for "imminent lawless action" (which is the most recent criteria set by the US Supreme Court).

Aside from that, both of those examples are examples where the harm comes from a specific action (or inaction), rather than the speech itself. If refusing to vaccinate children was treated as criminal neglect and unvaccinated children were forcibly removed from their families, people could talk and talk all they want and it wouldn't matter.

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#534
post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is me proceeding accordingly, short of making a bunch of email accounts on different services, which seems a bit shady.

I understand your frustration, but please stop effectively spamming HN with these requests.

Ok, what should I do then?

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And Google makes a lot of money. They make money by not spending it when they can get the same outcome for free[1]. Also, Search and Adwords make money, YouTube is getting by[2] (relatively). Why should other divisions subsidize a loss-making YouTube? Some channels don't make enough money relative to number of comments to be financially viable (no matter how cheap the moderators are) - Google has simply outsourced…

I understand that. I also understand that stuff like YouTube is effectively becoming the public square of the twenty-first century and if a company wants to own that, they can deal with not making all the money off of it that they could possibly, theoretically, make. People matter more than corporations. Society matters more than corporations. I'm comfortable asserting that it would be better for Google to close YouT…

Are you seriously suggesting that disabling comments on a certain type of video content is more damaging to society than losing a global engine of content creation and community?

YouTube benefits society immensely by sustaining a very expensive 21st century public square. If we as a society want to have that - and I at least very much do - we can deal with not making comments on all the videos we could theoretically comment upon.

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#536
post #138

Or, you know, maybe the kids/parents could turn off the comments themselves?

YT isn't really worried about the kids/parents. They're worried about the Feds in the same way that craigslist was worried about the Feds when they scrapped their "escorts" section. (And the same way that Backpage should have been worried about the Feds when they hosted their "escorts" section.) If the Feds find that pedophilia stuff on your servers, you better have a good lawyer. Which I assume YT does, and just lik…

Fair enough. And I know companies need to act in the best interests of their shareholders. But shouldn’t a backpage exist? We need companies to provide services that the government (which is still stuck in the dark) doesn’t approve of: prostitution, drugs, etc.

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#537
post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two kinds of ideas I would consider harmful to the point of using the force of law to ban them: antivax materials, and the kinds of comments broadcast over media leading up to and during the Rwandan genocide that lead to that genocide taking place. I could not in good conscience say "the kids who die of preventable illness, their lives are worth it so antivax people can spread misinformation without consequence." I c…

The "force of law" was largely on the side of the Rwandan genocide, so it's a slightly nonsensical example, although some of the broadcasts do satisfy the tight bound of speech that calls for "imminent lawless action" (which is the most recent criteria set by the US Supreme Court). Aside from that, both of those examples are examples where the harm comes from a specific action (or inaction), rather than the speech it…

Do you not see that there is a line drawn from speech to action, like in the situation surrounding the Rwandan genocide or in the case of antivaxxers leading to a resurgence in preventable disease?

Like, are you trying to frame this in the sense of, "I can swing my fist toward your face all I want, but so long as I don't actually make contact it's okay"?

I'm trying to understand how you're trying to thread the needle here and am coming up empty-handed.

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that. I also understand that stuff like YouTube is effectively becoming the public square of the twenty-first century and if a company wants to own that, they can deal with not making all the money off of it that they could possibly, theoretically, make. People matter more than corporations. Society matters more than corporations. I'm comfortable asserting that it would be better for Google to close YouT…

Are you seriously suggesting that disabling comments on a certain type of video content is more damaging to society than losing a global engine of content creation and community? YouTube benefits society immensely by sustaining a very expensive 21st century public square. If we as a society want to have that - and I at least very much do - we can deal with not making comments on all the videos we could theoretically…

I am seriously suggesting that this is not something that can be algorithmically determined. I'm quite OK with all manner of content not having comments enabled. I'm not okay with unthinkingly stupid false positives all over the place harming creatives' (actual creatives) ability to feed themselves, and those false positives are overwhelmingly caused by bad heuristics and objectively dumb algorithmic decision-making.

Feeding humans into The Machine, having The Machine make context-free, alarmingly inaccurate, and functionally beyond-appeal decisions--because the appeal process doesn't scale either, we are so frequently told, when it isn't just "drop the appeal on the floor--is bad. If Google has no other answer than Feed The Machine, then The Machine should be considered inimical to humans and should be dismantled.

But, of course, The Machine is not necessary; that's a convenient fiction to paint the problem as a dilemma of "no YouTube" and "some unaccountable algorithm runs YouTube and decide what you can see, free to lead kids from Let's Plays to Nazi agitprop and pedophiles to their spank bait." It's just that the Machine is cheaper, you know? And that's really, and literally, all.

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seriously suggesting that disabling comments on a certain type of video content is more damaging to society than losing a global engine of content creation and community? YouTube benefits society immensely by sustaining a very expensive 21st century public square. If we as a society want to have that - and I at least very much do - we can deal with not making comments on all the videos we could theoretically…

I am seriously suggesting that this is not something that can be algorithmically determined. I'm quite OK with all manner of content not having comments enabled. I'm not okay with unthinkingly stupid false positives all over the place harming creatives' (actual creatives) ability to feed themselves, and those false positives are overwhelmingly caused by bad heuristics and objectively dumb algorithmic decision-making.…

I can't take your concern for creatives' ability to feed themselves seriously when you turn around and advocate for fully destroying the platform that is feeding them. Many full-time content creators on YouTube aren't big enough to make it on a smaller platform or on their own.

I also don't think the "Machine" is necessary, but I do think it's better than having no global engine for content creation and community at all. If you think there's a viable third option, I'm interested in hearing how it would work and the cost of achieving it. But of course you're free to continue making dystopian metaphors and pointing at Nazis instead.

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am seriously suggesting that this is not something that can be algorithmically determined. I'm quite OK with all manner of content not having comments enabled. I'm not okay with unthinkingly stupid false positives all over the place harming creatives' (actual creatives) ability to feed themselves, and those false positives are overwhelmingly caused by bad heuristics and objectively dumb algorithmic decision-making.…

I can't take your concern for creatives' ability to feed themselves seriously when you turn around and advocate for fully destroying the platform that is feeding them. Many full-time content creators on YouTube aren't big enough to make it on a smaller platform or on their own. I also don't think the "Machine" is necessary, but I do think it's better than having no global engine for content creation and community at…

The way it works is to have these companies hire, and pay for, and care for (see Facebook terminating counseling services, etc. for leaving content-moderation employees) employees to make the decisions to provide a platform that's safe and sane.

That's it. That's literally it. That's just...it.

You are ultimately correct, in that it will be of relatively higher cost. You are ultimately correct, in the sense that "anything" costs more than "nothing". And I genuinely don't care. It must to happen,. And a large part of why I don't care is that I am not advocating for its destruction; what I am saying is that I am perfectly okay with going to the mat with Google and other ostensibly supra-national corporations because they'll back down. They will back down because they will still do just fine. Google is not going to shutter YouTube, Twitter is not going to fold (well, not because of this), Facebook is not going to hang a CLOSED sign on the door because governments say "no, you have to actually have humans make decisions that impact these other humans and process them sanely instead of having your robots blap stuff to death because it found a peak in their hill-climbing." They will comply, because they will still make plenty of money.

And if they don't? If I'm wrong? Somebody else will do it. They're plenty of gold in that hill, even if you aren't allowed to get at it for completely free.

(It is also worth noting that...uh...on YouTube, those Nazis exist. They're right there. I've watched them radicalize teenage boys who started on Let's Plays. The algorithm happily feeds those boys to them. That's part of this problem, too, and you can't just handwave it away.)

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