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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

#451

Post by davesque »

shadowgovt wrote: post #430
davesque wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you speaking as a Google employee or just from personal opinion? Also, this viewpoint is naive. Simply more information isn't better. What if all that information was about the flat earth theory and nothing else? Wouldn't more "mutually consistent" information be a better goal? Flat earth stuff is fun but you must limit yourself to a very small plausible universe in order to really buy into it.

> Are you speaking as a Google employee or just from personal opinion? The distinction is irrelevant; were I speaking as a Google employee I would still be speaking from personal opinion, not on behalf of my employer. > Also, this viewpoint is naive. Simply more information isn't better. What if all that information was about the flat earth theory and nothing else? It's not though; it's "all" the world's information…

> The distinction is irrelevant; were I speaking as a Google employee I would still be speaking from personal opinion, not in behalf of my employer.

Seems like word splitting and I disagree. If you're working at Google, then your opinion is an answer to OP's question. If you're not, then your opinion doesn't count as a Google employee's justification for continuing to work at Google.

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

#453

Post by uoaei »

jungletime wrote: post #121
uoaei wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One fascinating thing about being Very Online in the past 10-20 years is watching the messages of astroturfing campaigns slowly leak into public sentiment. I'm sure the same thing happens with other forms of media, primarily cable television. But as an example, with the whole 50 Cent Army, a few people have heard convincing arguments from them and turned into unwitting (or otherwise) propagators of the same rhetoric.

Carl Jung: “People don't have ideas. Ideas have people.”

That dude was right on. The concept that's helped me the most in my personal growth has been that of the Jungian shadow.

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

#455

Post by deyan »

op03 wrote: post #400
shadowgovt wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is it replaced with "I'm an American company?" There's a deep rabbit-hole of hyper-nationalism right next to the deep rabbit-hole of hyper-corporatism. Does a YouTube beholden to the US government get banned from being used in China at all? And if it does, what happens when China creates a competing product that is more successful than YouTube, and YouTube gets displaced globally by a product that is beholden to…

Wikipedia is the way to go. Why have the hypercorporatists and hypernationalists not replaced it??? Because fuckers in both those camps think it has to make money as a condition to exist. It's their weakness. Requires imagination to exploit.

Wikipedia is very easy to game unfortunately.

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

#456

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

shadowgovt wrote: post #151
koheripbal wrote: post #112

I think a more fundamental problem is a single private company having a near-monopoly on various public communication channels, and having financial interests in various global dictatorships. The Founding Fathers could not have predicted this. Google's "We're a private company" get-out-jail-free card cannot continue to apply.

But is it replaced with "I'm an American company?" There's a deep rabbit-hole of hyper-nationalism right next to the deep rabbit-hole of hyper-corporatism. Does a YouTube beholden to the US government get banned from being used in China at all? And if it does, what happens when China creates a competing product that is more successful than YouTube, and YouTube gets displaced globally by a product that is beholden to…

Hyper-nationalism is a backlash to globalism due to the recently realized risks of opaque governments exploiting transparent governments.

The intentions were good: Reduce the risk of global nuclear war. The globalism outcome is good for trade and relations with nations that have transparent governments, bad with the opaque.

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

#457

Post by harpratap »

gerland wrote: post #393
harpratap wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having a near-monopoly on various public communication channels Since when did Google became the defacto public communication channel?

I would say from approximately 2008

Last time I checked Facebook, Whatsapp and fake news outlets were being used by bad actors to manipulate elections in various countries. If Google holds monopoly in public communication channels, this shouldn't have even happened?

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

#458

Post by Leary »

manigandham wrote: post #442
jayd16 wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were those clear rules we apparently abandoned for no reason?

The First Amendment of the US Constitution.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

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

#459

Post by munificent »

jpxw wrote: post #178
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 words “communist bandit” are not “hate speech”. This is ridiculous. How infantilised have we become these days?

I don't know the context behind "communist bandit", but the idea that a term can't be hate speech simply because it doesn't contain any words that are obviously bad when stripped of cultural or historical context is wrong. The recipient of these slurs likely does have that context and will take that into account when interpreting it.

Calling an African American in the South a "cotton picker" is profoundly hateful even though the term itself seems innocuous.

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

#460

Post by apazzolini »

TrackerFF wrote: post #146
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.

I guess the same as consultants working for McKinsey, or bankers working for Goldman "Not my department / group / office" "Just a few bad apples" I mean yes, those are valid points - and I'd imagine most junior workers being there just for the future (career) opportunities. No junior engineer at google is going to have any say in strategic and political decisions like censorship.

I wish that people who use the "a few bad apples" quote as a defense (especially when it comes to the police) would realize the full quote is "a few bad apples spoil the barrel."
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