rumble.com is better about free speech than YouTube, although they don't yet support live streaming as far as I've seen.
The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire
281–290 of 981 posts
Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
This kind of dogmatic statement is good for soliciting a response, but I think it's intellectual degradation. There are infinitely many interpretations of "democracy" and "free speech" and it's hardly a simple yes/no question. We should be free/democratic society as much as possible, and it's an ongoing (while not always successful) effort. We should discuss concrete steps.
On the contrary, I think this goes to the root of the matter. Can you trust people or not? That's a fundamental question that decides whether you can have real democracy, or only a sham. Because any kind of democracy where people are only allowed to make "safe" choices, decided on by someone else (e.g. the censors), is a sham. And that's true even if the censors themselves are directly or indirectly democratically ap…
I'm sorry but trust isn't a binary value. I trust people in my life to be reliable and trustworthy to a certain extent and in certain areas. I don't trust my party-animal buddies to be on time for breakfast a 8 AM, and I don't trust my stressed out workaholic friend to just chill on a Friday afternoon.
You cannot simplify trust to a single variable; you have to go case by case. And trust in the masses is partial; finding where it is and where it is not is critical.
Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire
#283If people disagree with YouTube's normative choices they can (a) wage a boycott, (b) create a new platform that follows the desired norms, (c) attempt political action to regulate private companies.
I don't think (a) is very effective due to the practicality of network effects and also that video hosting is quite expensive. A distributed system may solve the money issues of (b), but the legal ramifications of child exploitation will chill any unmoderated distributed system. For (c), because of the first amendment, I'm not sure what political regulation is possible (see Citizen's United). The government probably can't regulate YouTube's free speech (hosting videos) even if that limits other peoples speech (on their platform).
I think one solution would be a distributed but not private video peer-to-peer hosting system. Perhaps like a public IPFS? Speech would protected against government intervention, but without privacy it could be easily policed. I don't think a peer-to-peer system will gain any traction if it is possible to host illicit content that the government could punish you over, so that's why I raise those points.
Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you believe in science, you also believe that things can be proven wrong, and that repeating wrong things can influence people especially if you have the power to amplify your voice with money. If you believe in liberty, you believe in the liberty of a set of an individuals (a company) to do what they damn well please with their platform.
Science does not talk about right or wrong. It talks about things that are falsifiable. If there is an idea that so far has not been falsified, it becomes the established scientific fact. However, someone else may come up with a better idea. Do we prevent them from talking about it or collaborating with people? It may take some time and lots of communication and collaboration to get to the bottom of it. Years or even…
Are the things people uploading false?
Then what's the problem.
Are these people trying to collaborate to solve the problem or are you using people who might be doing that as cover for a giant set of disinformation campaigns that are actively killing people right now?
Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you believe in science, you also believe that things can be proven wrong, and that repeating wrong things can influence people especially if you have the power to amplify your voice with money. If you believe in liberty, you believe in the liberty of a set of an individuals (a company) to do what they damn well please with their platform.
their platform. If Youtube wants it to be "their platform" and not part of the public commons, then they need to remove everything that isn't a YouTube Original. No UGC.
Ask everyone who willingly uploaded stuff to youtube to take down the stuff they uploaded, sure.
Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire
#286Spreading these lies about voting is much worse and more dangerous than the classic example of yelling FIRE in a crowded theater. YouTube has every right, and a deep responsibility to cut this kind of bullshit off at every turn.
Strict banning of speech about the electoral controversy is more dangerous than the classic example of yelling FIRE in a crowded theater.
One company moderating their own private platform isn't "strict banning" of anything at all.
Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is literally the foundation of American govt structure namely the respect for unalienable rights of individuals to express themselves. > It’s the first line in our enumerated rights. > This isn’t “oh we should rethink things” this is a matter of natural rights and precedes anything we’ve constructed. I never said anyone shouldn't have the right to express themselves. Do you think it's in the Constitution that…
> lies are toxic to free speech IMHO you're not interested in free speech unless you're willing to defend speech you find repugnant. You don't need to protect speech everyone finds unobjectionable. You need to protect speech that is almost universally opposed. Minorities need protection, majorities don't, and this the basis of the American notion of freedom - insofar as the individual is the smallest minority. > Do y…
You're not really offering any solutions with these platitudes, because if we take your statement to its conclusion, heck it seem we'll just have to live with a third of the population being lulled into supporting potentially violent and seditious people who want to subvert democracy itself. Oh, guess we'll just have to let them or allow the situation to devolve into a civil war.
Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
Authoritarians always justify silencing speech for the greater good. You can reject lies with counters to those lies, or do it your way, and end democracy.
So when a lawyer or doctor is stripped of their professional license because they become professional bullshit peddlers, does that constitute silencing people or saving lives and the integrity of the justice system? I don't have time to listen to million bullshit peddlers with an agenda.
Then don't listen to them, the same way the rest do. Doesn't mean you should get to silence them.
A bullshit peddler named Dr. Atkins was the only guy in the 90's saying that eggs were good for you. The rest of the establishment physicians said eggs were bad for you, guacamole was bad for you, all fat was bad, eat more pasta.
They were all wrong, Atkins was right (when it comes to eggs.) But if Youtube had existed, people like you would have said he was dangerous and demanded he be removed. That's the problem: How do you know the people you think are quacks are actually quacks? What about when the establishment is wrong. The Australian doctor who claimed ulcers were caused by bacteria was silenced, mocked, and ridiculed for decades. He was right, as we know now.
Yann LeCunn was mocked and ridiculed for his neural networks. He was outright rejected from conferences, and papers ignored, despite having groundbreaking results that set new benchmarks, because the established CS folks had decided that neural nets were garbage in the 80's. They were wrong, he was right.
But it's cool, I trust you to make decisions for me on what I can hear.
Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
>algorithms are too effective How effective are they? Just because social media keeps promoting people who promote those ideas doesn't mean they're actually widely and strongly held. If you really care about misinformation, you'd be more worried about Islam which is explicitly sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-science, and supremacist and those beliefs aren't just written in a book somewhere, they're held by mos…
This is one of the most shallow and outright racist comments I've ever seen on this site.
Islam isn't a race. If you criticize Christianity, or Hinduism, or Buddhism, or yes, even Islamism, you aren't being racist.
Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
Question: Why is this a threat to democracy, but previous censorship wasn't? There's always been an expectation of truthfulness in communication: We don't allow people to go around claiming that Pepsi causes AIDS, or cures cancer. You're not allowed to claim you're collecting for a charity, and then keep all the money for yourself. I doubt you'd be terribly okay with me claiming that you're a murderer and asking how…
>We don't allow people to go around claiming that Pepsi causes AIDS, or cures cancer I'm pretty certain you're 100% allowed to do this, though Pepsi inc may sue for damages.
If you're a doctor and you claim this then those are grounds for having your license stripped and being held criminally liable if people actually take you up for advice.