Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes • Hacker News Board

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#191

Post by billfruit » Thu, May 09, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

52-6F-62 wrote: post #120

basetop wrote: post #106

Tech companies are deleting evidence of war crimes and everything else at the behest of media companies like the atlantic. Youtube, facebook, reddit, google search, etc have all been targeted by the atlantic, nytimes, washingtonpost, cnn, etc and bullied into scrubbing content and direct their users to "authoritative sources". Ironically enough, in china, russia and most countries, "authoritative sources" are state p…

What exactly are you claiming is being censored? The media regularly investigates and reports on itself. The press is far from perfect, but you’re alleging a vast and deep conspiracy when reality is likely far simpler: The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. Sales and business have little impact on editorial. Editorial flies by the whims of a wide variety of strong personalities. Politicians and rele…

Journalists and the press has their self interest to protect too. That is why it is hard to take criticism of Facebook, Google, etc from them, because their criticism is tainted by conflict of interest. One does not go to the Pope to get an impartial view about atheism. I do not say that what Atlantic/NY times/etc says on this topic is without value. Only that what they say should not be regarded as final or defenitive word, rather only as claims in argument.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#192

Post by losteric » Thu, May 09, 2019, 4:11 PM UTC

sbenitoj wrote: post #127

basetop wrote: post #106

Tech companies are deleting evidence of war crimes and everything else at the behest of media companies like the atlantic. Youtube, facebook, reddit, google search, etc have all been targeted by the atlantic, nytimes, washingtonpost, cnn, etc and bullied into scrubbing content and direct their users to "authoritative sources". Ironically enough, in china, russia and most countries, "authoritative sources" are state p…

Great post, I think you’d get a lot out of reading this old blog post on Unqualified Reservations — Is journalism official? https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/09/is-journali...

I was curious who could write so well with such poor reasoning... unsurprisingly, it's a world-famous mental gymnast:

> Yarvin, attacking the accepted "World War II mythology" in a speech to the 2012 BIL Conference, claimed that Hitler’s invasions were forgivable acts of self-defense, and that this historical fact was suppressed by America’s ruling communists, who invented political correctness as an "extremely elaborate mechanism for persecuting racists and fascists." "If Americans want to change their government," he said, "they’re going to have to get over their dictator phobia." > > Yarvin's opinions have been described as racist, with his writings interpreted as supportive of slavery, including the belief that whites have higher IQs than blacks for genetic reasons. Yarvin himself maintains that he is a racist because he doubts that "all races are equally smart," and supports the notion "that people who score higher on IQ tests are in some sense superior human beings". He also describes himself as being an "outspoken advocate for slavery", and has argued that some races are more suited to slavery than others.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#193

Post by cr0sh » Thu, May 09, 2019, 4:13 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #140

yoz-y wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. It is simply not possible to have these platforms host this kind of content and it boils down to money. If you want Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the likes you need ads. Advertisers don't want to be displayed alongside gruesome content. If people were ready to pay for a platform with "raw" footage of others' lives there could be a place for it. So far the market has proven otherwise.

> Advertisers don't want to be displayed alongside gruesome content. There are ways to mitigate this. For instance, ad spots in non-controversial content is a premium marketing tier. No one wants ad spots in very controversial material, so that would be a cheap tier. Advertisers only get associated with safe/pablum content if they're willing to pay for that assurance, or they get more widespread coverage in more cont…

> Controversy is inferred from like/dislike ratios and/or content reports, all of which is user-driven.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but I don't think it will be as simple as you think.

For instance, it's possible for a community to develop that thinks certain content is just fine, while another community does not, but is unaware of the first community or its content.

Then they suddenly through some mechanism become aware - and brigade the other community, stirring up controversy.

Heck, they could do this even if they weren't against the content, all for the purpose of having the content removed or otherwise censored, in order to drive their own narrative (which they may not be followers of either - ie, imposing some fake narrative or content on a community they don't believe in, in order to remove content they have no problem with, because of the lulz - seriously, there are some very weird, very toxic people out there who have found each other and do this all the time).

That's just one example I've thought of - the ways to game the system and cause problems with it are innumerable. I don't think this problem is something we will be able to fix as easily as that.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#194

Post by sbenitoj » Thu, May 09, 2019, 4:14 PM UTC

losteric wrote: post #192

sbenitoj wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great post, I think you’d get a lot out of reading this old blog post on Unqualified Reservations — Is journalism official? https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/09/is-journali...

I was curious who could write so well with such poor reasoning... unsurprisingly, it's a world-famous mental gymnast: > Yarvin, attacking the accepted "World War II mythology" in a speech to the 2012 BIL Conference, claimed that Hitler’s invasions were forgivable acts of self-defense, and that this historical fact was suppressed by America’s ruling communists, who invented political correctness as an "extremely elabo…

All I can suggest is to think for yourself, read his long format writings and make up your own mind. Don’t just read what people write about him.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#195

Post by marcosdumay » Thu, May 09, 2019, 4:26 PM UTC

gdy wrote: post #92

tracer4201 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a surprise. Many of us grew up believing we as Americans are exceptional, that we are inherently the good guys in any international conflict. The reality is our government has interests. Morality and interests are orthogonal, with the latter being influenced primarily by profits or some perceived direct or indirect threat to America’s elite.

"Many of us grew up believing we as Americans are exceptional, that we are inherently the good guys in any international conflict." Sounds like the USSR, only that we get rid of this delusion almost 30 years ago. Now it's slowly coming back thanks to the Russian government's propaganda, but it is still far from the present US level.

Sounds like any dictatorship ever.

What is unsettling is that the US is clearly not a dictatorship (or at least, not like "any dictatorship ever"). It manages to stay reasonably democratic even with this and other dictatorship enabling mechanism (powerful Executive Power, heavy sectorial financing of the government, etc). On this point, they are exceptional.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#196

Post by cr0sh » Thu, May 09, 2019, 4:30 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #138

ghjjjj wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“First everyone goes crazy that people can find stuff on these platforms, ” I don’t. I get crazy when effectively censor at the behest of (any) government under the “we’re private” excuse. I’m perfectly consistent about this. That and our imperative need to break apart the big tech companies (and bank, but that’s a different question)

> I get crazy when effectively censor at the behest of (any) government under the “we’re private” excuse. It's depressing how quickly people are willing to throw away the civil and human rights that have taken millennia to win. Let's hope it doesn't take actual violence to remind people of the difference between speech and violence. We haven't had real physical strife and a world war in our generation to keep this di…

> We haven't had real physical strife and a world war in our generation to keep this distinction fresh in our minds.

Don't worry, we're doing our best to make it happen, give it time, we'll get there!

/the nice thing is, the next world war after that will only involve sticks and stones...

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#197

Post by naasking » Thu, May 09, 2019, 4:39 PM UTC

cr0sh wrote: post #193

naasking wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Advertisers don't want to be displayed alongside gruesome content. There are ways to mitigate this. For instance, ad spots in non-controversial content is a premium marketing tier. No one wants ad spots in very controversial material, so that would be a cheap tier. Advertisers only get associated with safe/pablum content if they're willing to pay for that assurance, or they get more widespread coverage in more cont…

> Controversy is inferred from like/dislike ratios and/or content reports, all of which is user-driven. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I don't think it will be as simple as you think. For instance, it's possible for a community to develop that thinks certain content is just fine, while another community does not, but is unaware of the first community or its content. Then they suddenly through some mechanism b…

> Heck, they could do this even if they weren't against the content, all for the purpose of having the content removed or otherwise censored

But that's just it, I'm suggesting that legal content is never censored, merely that the monetization is proportional to the controversy, because advertiser skittishness is the real problem causing censorship on these free platforms. So brigading to raise the controversy score would move its ad revenue to a lower tier, but it wouldn't get removed.

Perhaps brigading would become a problem, but you leave it to the person whose channel was impacted to request a manual review if they suspect brigading. The review requirements have now shrunk dramatically.

There may be ways to abuse this too, but I think the spirit of this approach is right.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#198

Post by dmix » Thu, May 09, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #195

gdy wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Many of us grew up believing we as Americans are exceptional, that we are inherently the good guys in any international conflict." Sounds like the USSR, only that we get rid of this delusion almost 30 years ago. Now it's slowly coming back thanks to the Russian government's propaganda, but it is still far from the present US level.

Sounds like any dictatorship ever. What is unsettling is that the US is clearly not a dictatorship (or at least, not like "any dictatorship ever"). It manages to stay reasonably democratic even with this and other dictatorship enabling mechanism (powerful Executive Power, heavy sectorial financing of the government, etc). On this point, they are exceptional.

> dictatorship enabling mechanism (powerful Executive Power, heavy sectorial financing of the government, etc).

+ significant increases in secret courts and endless budgets and free reign for intelligence agencies that report to executive branch.

All shifts that have been happening over the last two decades.

It only becomes a problem to most people when someone they don't like is given those powers. Which is why they should never have those powers in the first place. Something many have warned about this for a long time and something the US has had a unique history of pushing back against, which is now long ago.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#199

Post by yoz-y » Thu, May 09, 2019, 4:55 PM UTC

naasking wrote: post #189

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out over time. In this case, the Supreme Court made it clear that governments cannot prevent people from using social media. However other Supreme Court decisions have it that property owners don't have to allow others to use their property for speech, except in unusual cases like company towns. It's not obvious to me that they will find these two ideas to be in conflict.

They might not. Then again, aren't Twitter and Facebook essentially company towns in the online world? If they are so ubiquitous that you must join these platforms to participate in modern political debate, that seems pretty darn close to qualifying.

These platforms have became a sort of super states with citizens from all around the world. A single nation's definition of what is acceptable or not is hard to apply to the platform as a whole.

Re: Tech Companies Are Deleting Evidence of War Crimes

#200

Post by pnongrata » Thu, May 09, 2019, 4:58 PM UTC

ionised wrote: post #157

refurb wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On balance has done more damage? Do you believe that in the countries where the US has intervened that without US involvement things would be that much better? Seems to me that when the US supported a dictatorship, the alternative wasn’t a thriving democracy but just another dictatorship aligned to a different power.

> Seems to me that when the US supported a dictatorship, the alternative wasn’t a thriving democracy but just another dictatorship aligned to a different power. You're free to think that if it helps you sleep at night. You would be mistaken though. Some may have been just as bad as those they were replacing, but considering many of them were democratically elected governments that the US chose to overthrow in favour…

Don't forget "economic warfare", where the US crushes its "enemiy countries" through painful sanctions, which always leaves the poorest portions of those countries in shambles. Not to mention the refugee crisis it creates, which in turn has the "pleasant" effect of lowering wages across the globe.