YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#831

Post by skissane » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 6:29 AM UTC

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #625

Yhippa wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a vision for what could end up happening. We will see a bifurcation of Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Reddit into a conservative and liberal version. There appear to be many (apparently unsuccessful) attempts right now to do exactly that. The recent swath of bans could change that however. It's not too dissimilar to message board culture from the aughts. You essentially had federated versions of Reddit. It lo…

Twitter, YouTube, Facebook serve a global audience - but the “conservative”/“liberal” dichotomy you describe is unique to the USA. If social media companies will be bifurcated as you say, it’ll be a tiny fraction of their American audiences - leaving the rest of the world sticking with the mainstream. Those smaller Ameri-centric sites will fail to reach critical-mass needed to sustain themselves in the long-term and…

> Twitter, YouTube, Facebook serve a global audience - but the “conservative”/“liberal” dichotomy you describe is unique to the USA.

Not really. Many other countries also have a left-wing/right wing split in their politics. There is a lot of sharing of thought and cross-influence between right-wing politics and left-wing politics in different countries. Figures on the British right like Lord Monckton [1] or Nigel Farage [2] find many admirers in American and Australian conservatism. Conservative American journalists write puff pieces extolling the virtues of Marion Maréchal [3].

And I think you will similarly find a lot of exchange of ideas and thinkers on the political left between different countries too.

[1] https://www.heartland.org/about-us/who-we-are/lord-christoph...

[2] https://ukipwsx.org/nigel-farages-speech-at-us-heritage-foun...

[3] https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/marion-marech...

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#832

Post by 0xy » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 6:32 AM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #150

anticonformist wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The public square is owned by private companies and they're enforcing anti-first amendment principles. One can't even argue that these banned people can move to another platform if they're all coordinating. Leftist extremists are effecting public banishment of their rightist extremist opponents. It wouldn't be as bad if leftist extremists were getting banned at the same time. The problem is that leftist extremists ha…

People get regularly banned for racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and many other kinds of hate, whether their profiles say 'D' or 'R' or something else. If many of their profiles tend to say 'R' or otherwise have similar political views, that's not an indication of bias on the part of platforms.

Absolutely false. It means more of them have been banned, not more of them are participating in that. You're assuming equal enforcement of the rules, with absolutely no evidence to support that.

Reddit after all developed moderation tools like shadow banning and deranking and used them exclusively against right-leaning subs, including stealth editing from the CEO.

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#833

Post by tathougies » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 6:43 AM UTC

hnick wrote: post #748

tathougies wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, we need to rethink this. For example, I 'own' my sidewalk, but anyone can protest there. A lot of public space is privately owned, but can still be used for protest. The internet is the new public square. It can be privately owned, but still forced to recognize the rights of the public.

I'm not sure what the laws are for physical protests. Do mall car parks and similar places on "private" but non-enclosed land have to accommodate public protest? Is that sort of thing what you're talking about? I'm leaning towards the idea that platforms with no barrier to entry should be treated as public to some degree, while those with a sign-up process more involved than email and password are still treated as pr…

No... I'm talking about things like 'privately-owned public space' in cities like San Francisco (so Salesforce park), or city sidewalks.

In most cities, the land owner even in downtown will own the sidewalks, but there is an 'easement' that says it's a public right of way. However, it's a public space, and anyone can protest or say what they want there. Their freedom of speech is protected, even though the land is private. The land is certainly private because the landowner is responsible for upkeep and can generally modify it so long as the sidewalk meets certain requirements.

Here's an example in New York City where the Occupy protests took place: https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/the-21-million-sidewalk-how...

All this is to say is that we have a model for privately owned public space -- spaces where private interests have certain rights and obligations and ownership but where accomodations for the public must be made.

Here's another example in London and Portland: https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/public-space-battle-playing...

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jul/24/revealed-pseu...

In San Francisco at least -- only using it because I'm most familiar -- certain buildings are required to have public spaces, and you in general have a right to be in this space for free. There are even some beautiful rooftop decks that are privately owned but have been made public to meet the requirement -- like the deck on one kearny.

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#834

Post by chrisdirkis » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 7:00 AM UTC

erichocean wrote: post #809

chrisdirkis wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the end, the SSC guy banned more and more commenters but it wasn't sufficient to save him and he ended up deleting his blog [0] when the world turned its eyes to the kinds of discussions he allowed. I expect the same to happen with HN. That's... not what happened? He's explicitly stated that he deleted his blog due to the fact that the NYT are planning on doxxing him in a story about SSC. He's fine with the stor…

I do disagree, there was a lot of discussion about this on SSC prior to Scott shutting it down. If you just read what's on the site now, you're missing most of the important background information. In particular, the "reporter" at the NYT was clearly looking to get SSC cancelled, so Scott self-cancelled before that could happen, on his own terms. I'm ambivalent about his decision, but it was definitely his to make an…

I've read SSC for a while now, and check in with the community every so often. Before the takedown, there was talk about the reporter writing an article, with the general consensus being "nervous but optimistic".

I'd love to see clear evidence about the reporter clearly looking to get Scott cancelled. The scare quotes on "reporter" are unnecessary.

I'm sad that the blog is down. "Categories are for man" is an essay/lens that I find very valuable. I hope the situation resolves with the blog being up and the NYT not doxxing Scott.

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#835

Post by mesozoic » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 7:03 AM UTC

AlexandrB wrote: post #569

contrapunter wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah; I've listened to a number of his shows. He's a popular political commentator who is anti-communist/leftwing -- that's why they banned him.

You should check out some of the Stefan Molyneux quotes the SPLC has gathered: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/indi... An example: > "Screaming 'racism' at people because blacks are collectively less intelligent...is insane." These all have associated YouTube video links - which are now taken down it seems.

Well now the videos are gone and I can't verify that any of those quotes were truly said. Many of them such as the one liners are obviously missing context as well.

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#836

Post by pw201 » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 7:08 AM UTC

stx wrote: post #447

dwaltrip wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Private companies can't (mechanically, not legally) determine who has a moral right to speak. Of course not, no one is claiming they are the ultimate arbiters of morality. But they do have the right to decide who can use their platform (as long as they don’t discriminate against protected groups). The broader public can then judge them positively or negatively for these decisions.

The thing is are these companies platforms like a phone company or are they publishers? Social media companies have argued that they cant be held liable for things posted to their platforms in the past and have tried to position themselves at neutral platforms. When they start to become the arbitrators of what is and is not to be posted they are no longer neutral platforms like the phone company. I do not recall a ti…

Where does this "publisher/platform" meme come from? It's completely incorrect (https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...) but I keep seeing it.

Suggest you give less credence to whoever you contracted it from.

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#837

Post by mesozoic » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 7:12 AM UTC

fault_lines wrote: post #124

etherael wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar with Richard Spencer or David Duke's content, but I have heard plenty of Stefan Molyneux's, and > by alleging that members of protected groups were inferior. From the article is an outright lie, that simply flat out never happened. If this is what "the people" are demanding, this should be taken as evidence that "the people" are to put it bluntly, fucking retarded. But that is no great surprise by th…

"Screaming 'racism' at people because blacks are collectively less intelligent...is insane." “You cannot run a high IQ [white] society with low IQ [non-white] people…these [non-white] immigrants are going to fail...and they're not just going to fail a little, they are going to fail hard…they're not staying on welfare because they’re lazy...they’re doing what is economically the best option for them...you are importin…

Video is gone can't be verified.

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#838

Post by lliamander » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 7:14 AM UTC

user982 wrote: post #688

lliamander wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the end, the SSC guy banned more and more commenters but it wasn't sufficient to save him and he ended up deleting his blog when the world turned its eyes to the kinds of discussions he allowed. That isn't why he deleted it. He deleted it because the NYT was threatening to publish his real name in a way that would make it untenable for him to continue to practice psychiatry. > [1] This is from an hour ago: https…

> To reduce criticism of SPLC to "racism" isn't helping the health of discourse here. "The SPLC is a hate group" is considered healthy, valid criticism to you, coming from an account which then said that "hate speech against white people has been normalized in our society for some time now" and linked to The Bell Curve as proof for the superiority of the white race, but referring to them as "racist-adjacent" is unacc…

The comment "The SPLC is a hate group" is not racist. Even if the person who said it is otherwise racist, it's entirely possible for racists to say things that aren't racist.

Whatever "racist-adjacent" means, clearly it must mean "not actually racist" because if it was racist, I'm sure you would call that.

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#839

Post by golf1052 » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 7:16 AM UTC

istorical wrote: post #773

golf1052 wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's kind of shocking to see people defend white nationalist speech on private platforms. Of all the marginalized groups out there why does the group that advocates for the discrimination, removal, or even genocide of historically discriminated and murdered people (black people, indigenous people, Jewish people) need defending?

people aren't defending these things. they are defending this 'slippery slope' idea that if you give companies the power and support them in banning content based off of ideological stuff, then you risk that 'bannable' content threshold slowly growing. it's literally a straw man to imply people are focused on individuals in this situation, they are just worried about precedent and the future.

No private platform, even those that claimed to be a "bastion of free speech" [1] when they were first created has ever not banned for ideological stuff. Back in 2015 this same discussion came up [2]. 5 years later we're still worried about sliding down the slope. What is too far? Hating fat people? Hating trans people? Hating black people? Should a private platform allow it all even though people supporting those views actively harm people?

And we can even see what happens when platforms try to truly allow all speech. Voat [3 NSFW] is a good example, Gab is another example. The worst content takes over and your platform gets rejected by most of the world. Way before reddit banned the_donald they had to specifically delist it from the front page because awful content would end up being the first thing people saw. [4]

I also don't expect that Youtube or reddit or Twitter would end up banning all ideological content, religious videos will not get banned one day, discussing electoral politics will not get banned one day, we're not going to slide off the slope because the slope isn't there.

1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/02/reddit-c... 2. https://www.theverge.com/2015/7/15/8964995/reddit-free-speec... 3. NSFW: https://voat.co/ 4: https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/30/13797712/reddit-trump-th...

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#840

Post by lurgburg » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 7:18 AM UTC

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #457

gguevaraa wrote: post #246

Christ, spez is getting hammered in the announcements. I mean seriously, he's basically saying it's alright to be discriminatory against the "majority", whatever that means. Dude doesn't even clarify what that means, just skirts around the question. Lot of people are wondering why r/BlackPeopleTwitter or r/politics haven't been banned despite blatant racism or calls to violence. People are pretty pissed at spez, to s…

You literally have to send a picture of your black skin to the mods of r/BlackPeopleTwitter in order to be added to the country club. Imagine a subreddit forcing people to send pictures of their white skin to the mods. People would be outraged. The only good way to use reddit these days is to unsubscribe from all of the default subreddits and only subscribe to small subreddits dedicated to your hobbies/interests. Eve…

This policy ("send a picture of your black skin") sounds like what they found they needed to do prevent black voices from being drowned out on a site so overwhelming white as reddit. If they'd found white people were capable of recognising that maybe bpt wasn't about them I doubt they'd need that policy.