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Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

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Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#301

Post by mistermann »

baq wrote: post #260
brmgb wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some users tend to flag stories about China and censorship because they generate a lot of nationalistic and hot headed comments and very little actual intelligent discussion. Just look at the comments attached to this submission.

the best and surest way to have your account deleted from facebook is to post porn. the best and surest way to delete an inconvenient discussion from hn is to spam it with a political flame war. i don't have proof that this is the case here but i wouldn't be surprised that such threads are actively heated up and/or gaslighted by nation state sponsored censors.

Or ideologues.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#302

Post by shadowgovt »

ekianjo wrote: post #136
virvar wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you buy hardware? I’m genuinely asking because where I live it’s impossible to buy stuff that wasn’t made in China. It’s almost impossible to lead en ethical life in this day and age if you do anything related to tech.

> I’m genuinely asking because where I live it’s impossible to buy stuff that wasn’t made in China. So wait, now buying something that was made in China means condoning the CCP? That's a pretty big jump in logic.

Similar to the jump that working on the YouTube moderation toolkit is condoning the CCP, yes.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#303

Post by davesque »

ajconway wrote: post #173
ddevault wrote: post #38

Google & YouTube employees on HN: how do you justify still working at this company? Enough of the cognitive dissonance. Face your choices and tell me how you square yourself with them. For shame.

How do you justify being a citizen of your country? (not sure what country that is, but most of them have done bad things in the past). It's possible to be a part of a large organization and not agree with its every action.

This analogy holds water about as well as a sieve. You can't shop around citizenship in most other countries. You can't just willy-nilly decide to renounce citizenship in one and go become a citizen in another. I'm sure people will jump in here with counter examples but I'm also sure they'll be the exception and not the norm. You're also born into citizenship. Comparing citizenship to the job market just seems so silly.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#304

Post by crankylinuxuser »

im3w1l wrote: post #219
ddevault wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YCombinator has a financial incentive to support the Chinese regime.

Hacker news and dang in particular has a very good track record of even handed and well thought of moderation. They have definitely earned benefit of the doubt from me. Let's wait a little before bringing the torches.

I would think that having more transparency (eg: moderation/removal log) is much more appropriate than "he looks good to me".

I've already seen a few times where content demeaning YC companies mysteriously got disappeared... and then summarily blamed on automated removal. Who's right? No clue. But being able to see that log as it happens would be a significant good faith action.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#305

Post by AlexMax »

manigandham wrote: post #119
gabaix wrote: post #63

Youtube is in a tough spot. They will be blamed: - if they don't take down speech some consider hateful - if they take down speech some do not consider hateful 共匪 is seen as an insult by a group, but others do not. If Youtube bans nothing, then hate speech thrives and they get bad PR. If Youtube bans anything anyone flags as hate speech, then they become de facto as censorship agents for foreign powers. Anything crit…

The solution is to realize "hate speech" is mostly subjective and revert back to the clear rules that we had last decade before the current political climate of gratuitous outrage.

Those rules applied today would result in indecipherable cesspools of memes at best or a community of authoritarian sympathizers at worst, who would be oh-so-happy to start conditioning their like-minded members to force undesirables away, either explicitly through bans or implicitly through non-stop hatred and coordinated harassment.

Neither one is the type of community I have any interest in participating in, and if some sort of mandate came down enforcing it on any of the large social networks I would no longer participate in them.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#307

Post by andai »

ajconway wrote: post #173
ddevault wrote: post #38

Google & YouTube employees on HN: how do you justify still working at this company? Enough of the cognitive dissonance. Face your choices and tell me how you square yourself with them. For shame.

How do you justify being a citizen of your country? (not sure what country that is, but most of them have done bad things in the past). It's possible to be a part of a large organization and not agree with its every action.

Bit easier to change employer than citizenship.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#308

Post by philwelch »

baylearn wrote: post #144
missosoup wrote: post #41

There was a previous unrelated discussion about this just a few hours ago which was climbing to the top of the front page when I saw it. And then just vanished: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23221264 It's not flagged, it just went from #13 on the front page to invisible. In a single refresh. How does that work? Looking at the votes and age, it should be in the top 5 of both Ask and the front page. What's the m…

I also experienced this on numerous Chinese government-related posts in the past, where front page articles were not flagged, but quickly disappeared. Don't really have an explanation. Would be great if @dang can look into this.

I seriously doubt that there’s anything to “look into” from @dang’s perspective. A huge share of his moderation lately is focused on “nationalistic flamewar”, and from his perspective, it’s probably easier for any thread that might tend towards that to just quietly sink off the front page.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#309

Post by Lewton »

missosoup wrote: post #153
brmgb wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some users tend to flag stories about China and censorship because they generate a lot of nationalistic and hot headed comments and very little actual intelligent discussion. Just look at the comments attached to this submission.

The submission I linked is not flagged (at least as far as I can see from my account?). Either there's some non-intuitive stuff going on with the way submissions stay on the front page, or HN soft-nuked it. Either way I think we deserve an explanation and a clear understanding of the underlying rules.

It takes some amount of people flagging it before it shows up as [flagged] but flagging submissions affect rankings before it reaches that point. On top of that "Ask HN" posts also have some modifier on them that makes them drop quicker, these two effects seem to be cumulative, explaining why it dropped so quickly

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#310

Post by oneiftwo »

linuxftw wrote: post #261
manigandham wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution is to realize "hate speech" is mostly subjective and revert back to the clear rules that we had last decade before the current political climate of gratuitous outrage.

"Hate speech" was only ever a tool of political control. It's contemporary usage is no accident.

Absolutely. You're being downvoted because we're once again forgetting history as this modern wave of left-leaning pearl clutchers feels justified in having biased moderation which is aligned with their political views.
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