Live data from Hacker News

YouTube shadowbans video titled “The CIA is a Terrorist Organization”

twitter.com

161–170 of 298 posts

Re: YouTube shadowbans video titled “The CIA is a Terrorist Organization”

#161

Just watched the video, read the thread. Here are some thoughts. First of all, the video uploader is promoting a competitor to YouTube. This is not disclaimed clearly. The video goes over criticism to the CIA, which are fair enough. But it takes some things as axioms, for example, that only the US are interfering/meddling in the world. He presents it as "the US is the bad guy and the world would be fair without the C…

Don't get me wrong, it's a great video with lots of research in the most known CIA meddling like Cuba, Latin America, Iran, and so on. But it's literally nothing new to anyone with any political knowledge that countries meddle in each other business all the time. The difference is that it is exposed in a way to make it sensationalist.

The buildup to the Iraq war (WMD) was sensationalist. Propaganda propagated by powerful corporations on the American people to instigate a fake excuse for war. If it's sensationalist to speak truth regards power of the US propaganda machine, them yes, there is no other way. One cannot downplay the fact that the machine is all-powerful.

The internet was supposed to be the antidote to old propaganda, but corporations have taken over the mainstream internet, and wield even more power over our lives. Again, we should not downplay this fact.

Re: YouTube shadowbans video titled “The CIA is a Terrorist Organization”

#162
post #95

Speaking as a lurker, this seems basically like what people have been asking for for awhile now including here. I remember seeing numerous top comment chains over the last four years (and of course before that but not here) that all boiled down to very eloquent defenses of censoring fringe thinkers. Who knows, maybe in theory land there's no reason we can't have it both ways. But it seems to me that in the real world…

Children are taught to not question what they're told, because it's much easier on parents and teachers when children don't question what they're told. Then when they're adults they lack any kind of critical thinking skills because they've been miseducated and they're easy targets for disinformation. To me, the solution is obviously better education. When people believe the Earth is round only because that's what the…

So your saying your a sphere or ball earther? And in reality you think you understand the physics behind it but can't tell me how the color blue is the way it is. When one true creator sets boundaries and sustains all things in this world. Maybe when I see around 100 jets constantly spraying supposedly ice from their exhaust engines that it leaves strips that dissipate into clouds that man is creating. Its easier to control idiots than a failed education system. Or maybe the educational system creates idiots instead. Once a system fails and it will, good luck on surviving.

Re: YouTube shadowbans video titled “The CIA is a Terrorist Organization”

#163
There is a public video with 3.6 million views exactly titled: "Bohemian Grove - Alex Jones"

Trying to watch this for the first time I had to find some other website that embed this. If it were any other video finding this shouldn't have took more than 10 seconds.

Maybe youtube wants to prevent spread of misinformation but making something inaccessible is whole nother level of evil.

Re: YouTube shadowbans video titled “The CIA is a Terrorist Organization”

#164
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might be true, but these posts have been on reddit/hn for years. You'd think that if there was some sort of effort to harass people making these posts that we'd stop seeing them and/or hear more people speaking out about government harassment.

You mean harassment like calling them, "Russian agents" (soon to be "Chinese agents" as our geopolitical focus shifts)? Or harassing them by having their websites deranked and hidden on Google, like what happened to WSWS (among many other "dissident" sites)? Or simply disappearing them on Facebook and Twitter with unexplained and unappealable shadowbans and account suspensions? Do you think the widespread establishme…

>You mean harassment like calling them, "Russian agents" ?

Strange, I'm not seeing any of that for the topics mentioned:

"military industry": https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/e0b1ui/dwight_d_eis...

"crime financial complex": https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/3r93j0/til_t...

"pretexts to war": https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1aiszn/new_eviden...

These have all received high amount of upvotes, and I'm not seeing any evidence of smearing/harassment happening in the comment threads.

>Or harassing them by having their websites deranked and hidden on Google, like what happened to WSWS (among many other "dissident" sites)?

The problem here is that you're lumping fringe/extremist anti-establishment content with mainstream anti-establishment content, and assuming that if the fringe/extremist content is being taken down, it's because it's anti-establishment rather than being fringe/extremist. I've shown counter-examples of anti-establishment content being left up (there's plenty more if you search around), so the original claim of

>Talk about [anti-establishment] and see yourself get delisted from Google, smeared in the media, then get harassed by various agencies until you either flee the country or end up like Hastings or car bombed like Daphne.

is demonstrably false.

Re: YouTube shadowbans video titled “The CIA is a Terrorist Organization”

#165
post #95

Speaking as a lurker, this seems basically like what people have been asking for for awhile now including here. I remember seeing numerous top comment chains over the last four years (and of course before that but not here) that all boiled down to very eloquent defenses of censoring fringe thinkers. Who knows, maybe in theory land there's no reason we can't have it both ways. But it seems to me that in the real world…

Children are taught to not question what they're told, because it's much easier on parents and teachers when children don't question what they're told. Then when they're adults they lack any kind of critical thinking skills because they've been miseducated and they're easy targets for disinformation. To me, the solution is obviously better education. When people believe the Earth is round only because that's what the…

I agree 100%. The lack of critical thinking skills in this country is a national security threat. We need a national initiative improve the baseline education and critical thinking skills of the next generation.

The powers that be, haven't got the memo yet that it doesn't benefit them anymore to have a populous which is easily manipulated. In the past, old media acted as parameter control, though concentrated ownership. Sure they had vested interests, but they were generally alined with American values; capitalism, stable democracy, international leadership by America, etc. But now each of the 340 million brains in this country can be accessed directly by foreign adversaries. Parameter control can not work anymore, unless we shut down the internet. We must bring the security to each individual endpoint.

Some will argue that we should shutdown the internet or censor it. But is that the world we want to live in? That would stifle economic growth and i do not believe it is compatible with the ideals of liberal democracies.

Re: YouTube shadowbans video titled “The CIA is a Terrorist Organization”

#166

Eventually something you agree with or think is reasonable will be censored by a corporation. censorship is always a problem

Without forming a specific argument, this popular expression is meaningless by its very nature. Yes, of course people won't like when a system they live in punishes them. That's not avoidable.

Re: YouTube shadowbans video titled “The CIA is a Terrorist Organization”

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would add one additional qualifier to your statement, it was wealthy white men, not merely white men. To the extent we tend to project the past onto the present, it doesn't make sense to see a random white male construction worker as part of this powerful elite who was denying women the right to vote or enslaving anyone. It was a very small number of people who had power, and like all people in power, wrote rules t…

This is actually a really interesting point/question, and it's one that doesn't have an easy answer. It's true that, overall, most slaves (in pre-civil-war US) were owned by a small number of plantations. But in some southern states, nearly half the White families owned at least one slave. In those families, obviously the women and children didn't themselves "own" any slaves, but they nevertheless controlled that per…

...in some southern states, nearly half the White families owned at least one slave.

Which states? This is easier to imagine of e.g. South Carolina than of Tennessee.

In general, exaggerating differences in the interests of different portions of the working class is not to the advantage of the working class. American blacks have suffered more from our racist authoritarian capitalist system than poor whites have, but they have both suffered. Many residents of southern states did not enthusiastically join the war effort; this was why they had to have a "Confederate Home Guard" to brutalize conscripts.

Re: YouTube shadowbans video titled “The CIA is a Terrorist Organization”

#168
post #114
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the popular reply to that is "orphans with leukemia"

I think you could make a good case that orphans with leukaemia are a stereotypical example of a utility monster, where the moral halo around them leads our society to waste tons of resources that would go much further doing something unglamorous like, say, free mass vitamin D supplementation. Would this rise to the level of criticism? Because I wouldn't be particularly worried about making that statement and signing…

I think any public figure would be eviscerated for such a suggestion. It would certainly cost you tech jobs if it were known to the hiring committee. Perhaps the ‘masters’ statement would apply to the people profiting from public funding of such causes.

And in a totally different response, the vitamin D comment reminded me of the ad council messages of the 80s and 90s, which would tell people things that were unambiguously good for them, like “go play outside”, in a mitigation effort for their negative effects. The Mormon church also ran a lot of these type of ads. This was intended to be the opposite form of social good, one with high leverage through a small positive effect on everybody. This sort of thing seems unrecognizable today in the corporate media.

Re: YouTube shadowbans video titled “The CIA is a Terrorist Organization”

#169
post #12

People who cheer when "right wing" misinformation is censored, should think very carefully about what just happened here. And why, for 200 years, free speech and anti-censorship has been extremely important to Americans. There's a reason the ACLU defended nazis being able to protest. Because eventually censorship will ALWAYS be turned on your side. Whichever side you are on.

You're being pretty presumptuous. I support the majority of cases of banning misinformation that become controversial on HN, and agree that they're often "right wing", but I don't feel my ideology or politics attacked here at all. Not everything is a black and white data point in a culture war.

Re: YouTube shadowbans video titled “The CIA is a Terrorist Organization”

#170
post #95

Speaking as a lurker, this seems basically like what people have been asking for for awhile now including here. I remember seeing numerous top comment chains over the last four years (and of course before that but not here) that all boiled down to very eloquent defenses of censoring fringe thinkers. Who knows, maybe in theory land there's no reason we can't have it both ways. But it seems to me that in the real world…

Children are taught to not question what they're told, because it's much easier on parents and teachers when children don't question what they're told. Then when they're adults they lack any kind of critical thinking skills because they've been miseducated and they're easy targets for disinformation. To me, the solution is obviously better education. When people believe the Earth is round only because that's what the…

> Children are taught to not question what they're told, because it's much easier on parents and teachers when children don't question what they're told. Then when they're adults they lack any kind of critical thinking skills because they've been miseducated and they're easy targets for disinformation.

I'm gonna guess you don't have children. Children like easy-to-follow directions. They don't understand nuance at all. It's not because it's "easier on parents and teachers", it's because it's what works.

You add nuance later in middle and high school.

Post reply on HN