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YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

nytimes.com

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Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#71

And here we go. As usual the "racist" pretext is being used to censor videos. I have no doubt that there are some terrible awful racist videos in that lot but you have to wonder how many times this is ALSO used as a mean to censor pretty much any video that the youtube execs don't like. Censorship is getting worse Edit: Replacing "Censorship is coming back" with "Censorship is getting worse"

Honestly, it should to some extent.

Conspiracy theorists and/or political extremists (on both sides) should have to seek out their extreme content with prejudice. No more marketing birther theories alongside CSPAN videos on YouTube, or click-bait "TOP 10 UNEXPLAINED PHENOMENON" when someone looks for academic material. It shouldn't be possible to "stumble" onto a video that promotes falsehoods like vaccines causing autism or holistic medicine alongside legitimate medical content. It's damaging our society because not everyone has the acumen to know when they're being gaslit.

If these content creators were doing this as satire and advertised as such it wouldn't be an issue. What we have are content creators creating deliberately misleading content and then pushing it deliberately to the most gullible audience they can.

The first amendment shouldn't be used as a weapon to trick stupid people. It's diluting real political discourse and creating factions of people who don't have substantial opinions, just a bunch of inaccurate facts and unscrupulous sources for information.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have a huge monopoly on our time and attention and that's extremely disturbing. You mean that you willingly give them control over your time and attention.

the issue is not me or you but with the masses of people that don't know // don't care where they give their attention. And that's the huge majority unfortunately.

That's their choice. If they don't like YouTube they should boycott YouTube, not leverage the government to force YouTube to host arbitrary videos for free.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#73
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me." A free society has costs, including tolerating speech you find deplorable. To support censorship because it aligns with your current political leanings makes you no different than the politics you take issue with. Will you complain if Google mass fires left leaning employees? It's entirely within their right to do. You could even start a competitor to…

It's totally ok to not tolerate the extreme intolerant in some places [1]. Again, no laws change, it is just a company telling to very extreme people: Not here. Please go outside. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance#Tolerance...

The issue here is that Youtube is already known to ban people that clearly didn't show any extreme views. This was used as an easy pretext for the ban though.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#74
post #55
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No censorship. You are still free to create your own YouTube clone and publish your extreme political views there. Maybe call it "GabTube"?

GoDaddy banned the gab.com domain name from their registrar. What's next? "No censorship. You are still free to establish your own telecommunications infrastructure and publish your extreme political views there." ?

Yup don't like it, make your own internet. Can't? To bad

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t censorship full stop. What you are advocating for is forcing YouTube to carry content that it doesn’t want to. I also think it’s grotesque to quote an anti nazi poem in defense of nazis.

I fully and without compromise support the right to free speech of all citizens, including "nazis" or whatever the overloaded term people are using these days. Rights aren't removed from citizens because you don't like their politics or beliefs. If you cheer when someone is deplatformed, remember that it is a short walk for your own ideas and beliefs to be deplatformed when the winds change.

> I FULLY support the right to free speech of all citizens, including "nazis"

Careful there, you yourself might be a nazi by the left's logic. /s

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#76
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because some people view free speech as more than a legal requirement. Its a philosophy of individual rights.

Why do you think you're right to free speech has anything to do with what you can say on someone else's property?

As warp_factor said in sibling:

> because it became the de facto place most of non tech-savy people go to to see videos online. They have a huge monopoly on our time and attention

Society has a vested interest in either regulating or breaking up monopolies. Our rights don't magically stop at property borders. It needs to be checked on a case-by-case basis, whether the right to free speech or youtube's right to do what they please with their property is more important.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#77
post #2

Censorship bad

Germany does fine not allowing for nazi ideology to be espoused. Commoditizing the spread of bad ideas is not, in fact, a public good.

Please cite your source.

> According to the annual report of Germany's interior intelligence service (Verfassungsschutz) for 2012, at the time there were 26,000 right-wing extremists living in Germany, including 6,000 neo-Nazis.

> The National Socialist Movement (NSM), with about 400 members in 32 states,[195] is currently the largest neo-Nazi organization in the United States.

It seems the right to free speech and the right to association has led to FEWER Neo Nazis in America than Germany despite America's population being 4 times larger than Germany's.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#80

Will YouTube also remove their algos that send people down rabbit holes of “extreme views” and encapsulate individuals in information bubbles that seem to validate and fail to challenge their views? The platform should shoulder as much or more blame than the content in this case. Free speech man. This is not ok.

>and encapsulate individuals in information bubbles that seem to validate and fail to challenge their views?

Err, how do you know that the algorithm does this? And also, how do you know that people are not exposed to other views outside of YouTube. And lastly, why do you think its the job of an entertainment platform to "challenge" views?

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