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YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

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Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> White supremacy is a much bigger deal with a worse tail risk than Islamic extremism. Wait... you're saying that white supremacy is worse than islamic extremism? Is you opinion perhaps a manifestation of your perspective? I'm sure there are some people in Syria, Afghanistan, etc... that would disagree with you. BTW, I'm not saying one is worse than the other, just that they are both bad, both a problem, and both sho…

White supremacy was the cause for the worst wars of the 20th century. A white nationalist uprising in Europe would be deadlier (again) than Islamic extremists taking over most middle eastern nations due to the resources that will be available to them.

This is historically illiterate. WW1 was a war between Imperial powers both sides of which were entirely white. WWII was caused by a German supremicist movement opposed to all non-Germans — it’s not as if the Polish are non-white.

White supremacism is supported by a fraction of a percentage of white Europeans. Support for Islamic fundamentalism is substantially higher in the Muslim world.

(Plenty of Europeans are opposed to large scale immigration, but you’re not conflating that with white supremicism are you?)

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#372
post #139

We're not talking about the removal of extreme political views. We're talking about the censorship of one particular ideology. Where is the corresponding elimination of polarizing videos espousing views from the radical left? A wholesale expunction from one end of the spectrum is hard not to interpret as politically charged censorship. Let's see how many Antifa and BLM videos get taken down.

> We're not talking about the removal of extreme political views. Yes we are. You are implying equivalence where there is none. Black Lives Matter and Antifa are not equivalent to white supremacists.

Antifa isn't? That's highly debatable.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#373
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is a privately owned museum a "public square"? Or a sports stadium owned by a private company? Or a Cinema? Or a threatre? No, neither is youtube. It's a place the public visit not a piece of public infrastructure. Repeating "public square" over and over again does not make it so.

Then why does it get the legal benefits of being a "neutral platform"?

The main legal benefit is §230 of the Communications Decency Act, which has never required platforms to refrain from exercising editorial control in order to receive immunity (in fact, one motivation for this law was to encourage platforms to engage in exercising editorial control without incurring liability for doing this).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230_of_the_Communicati...

(I can see political pressure now and in the future to say that some platforms should have some kind of neutrality and/or transparency obligation in order to get this immunity -- but under current U.S. law, they don't.)

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#374
post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, a privately owned shopping mall is legally a "public square" in a number of states in the US, with the justification that it is explicitly a place for people to gather and interact, just like the main street of a town in the 19th century. Which of these cases is Youtube more like? It's already hard to tell, and it's continuing to change. I expect the legal status of online forums to evolve over the…

The main case related to this is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._R... (which other states have a Pruneyard rule? I think it's not very many).

It's not many, true. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2003/03/why-can-shopping... lists New Jersey, Colorado, Oregon, Massachusetts, Washington, and Pennsylvania, in addition to California.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#376

I'm starting to think that comment sections on news sites are a really bad idea. At first I thought NPR and the like were cowards for removing theirs. It's bad enough that NYT can be pretty biased on its own, but the comment sections are always full of low-tier thinking that just push whatever narrative is currently in the Overton window. What I find distressing is how people remark that a telecom and advertising gia…

I agree with your comment but find it rambling, so I’ll concur with this: If free speech is a right worth protecting from the government, it’s worth protecting against equally powerful corporations.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#377
post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What no one really wants to admit here on YC is that the userbase here is something like the top .01% of (intelligence / literacy / analytical skills). Hell, even reddit, as low-brow as that has gotten, is still top 1% easily. But there are still plenty of staggeringly oblivious views in both places. It's hard to admit that dichotomy, because when we realize that the top 1% or .01% can still be so ignorant, we also g…

The major consequence of this for me is that it has caused me to reevaluate my views on representative democracy. Edit: As a clarification, while I still tend toward a preference for representative democracy, I now acknowledge that it is possible for a fruitful and productive society to flourish in systems that some may label as an "oppressive dictatorship".

I abandoned that idea a while ago. I think we could move toward a wikiocracy, which would have problems of its own but for which we have a working prototype that is reasonably transparent, responsive, and accessible and delivered a significant public good in a relatively short time frame.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> White supremacy is a much bigger deal with a worse tail risk than Islamic extremism. Wait... you're saying that white supremacy is worse than islamic extremism? Is you opinion perhaps a manifestation of your perspective? I'm sure there are some people in Syria, Afghanistan, etc... that would disagree with you. BTW, I'm not saying one is worse than the other, just that they are both bad, both a problem, and both sho…

White supremacy was the cause for the worst wars of the 20th century. A white nationalist uprising in Europe would be deadlier (again) than Islamic extremists taking over most middle eastern nations due to the resources that will be available to them.

You should brush up on your history. First World War had nothing to do with "white supremacy" - every side whose opposition led to it was lily white, Germans, French, Belgians, Russians, British, Sebrians, whoever you point to - they where white. It was a very complex tangle of reasons that led to the war, but "white supremacy" had zero to do with it.

Second Word War, as we all know, has been mostly led by Nazis, who were, among other things, undoubtedly very very racist. However, even then they gladly paired with Japanese - most definitely not "white", Arabs - not really considered "white" by most Nazis - to achieve their goals. And they had absolutely no problem suppressing and massacring Eastern Europeans (very "white") when it suited them. Their goal was, ultimately, world domination under the aegis of the Nazi party, and their "white supremacy" was mostly "Nazi supremacy" - if you were white but not agreeing with Nazis, you were dead. So it was a standard totalitarian approach, which is no different in any totalitarian regime, racism notwithstanding. Nazis where definitely racial supremacists (though just "white" didn't go nearly far enough for them) but even if they weren't, it would end up in the same way.

And as history teaches us, totalitarian regimes like to expand, if they can, and cause wars, if they have resources for it (fortunately, North Korea has none, but even then they are trying to provoke something constantly).

> A white nationalist uprising in Europe would be deadlier

There is no white nationalist movement in Europe even close to pulling something like this off. In fact, I don't think there's even one serious "white" nationalist movement in Europe at all - most nationalist parties are specifically "nationally" nationalists - e.g. French nationalists, British nationalists, Hungarian nationalists, etc. and they couldn't care less about other "whites" as soon as they aren't French, British or Hungarian. Of course, racial movements exist too, but again - they are minuscule compared to nation-based movements.

OTOH, ISIS has already pulled off a major war in Middle East, and while it fortunately looks like they're ending up on the losing side now, it already cost major loss in life and economic damage, and it is very far from the end. Taliban in Afghanistan is far from being beaten too. They are massively in force right now, while "white nationalist uprising" is nothing but an extremely unlikely hypothetical.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#379

I strongly disagree banning anyone or any video that does not call for violence. I think it's a slippery slope and smacks of book banning. The information is out there, right or wrong. Who is it to judge what the public should see?

I would also prefer Youtube not banning those videos. But they certainly should not help them get views. Google is fully responsible for the output of its recommendation algorithms and the impact to society.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#380

I'm starting to think that comment sections on news sites are a really bad idea. At first I thought NPR and the like were cowards for removing theirs. It's bad enough that NYT can be pretty biased on its own, but the comment sections are always full of low-tier thinking that just push whatever narrative is currently in the Overton window. What I find distressing is how people remark that a telecom and advertising gia…

> We wouldn't blindly allow company-owned cities or states to pass laws, especially vague or undefined ones, that potentially violate our rights, so why do we allow "states" in cyberspace to be run in such a way?

Actual states have a monopoly on violence, and can deprive me of life, liberty, and property. So I want them to have as few excuses to do that as possible. These "states" in cyberspace can do none of that, so it's significantly less of a problem if they don't embrace freedom of speech as an ideal.

(I guess it depends somewhat on whether you see free speech as an inherent virtue or as a safety valve against government oppression. I've been leaning towards the latter personally.)

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