The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire • Hacker News Board

Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire

#431

Post by camdenlock » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 3:43 AM UTC

phailhaus wrote: post #303

The author theorizes that this ban will inflame tensions, but I don't believe that's true. Look at Reddit's ban on toxic subreddits. They found that banning toxic subreddits reduced the toxicity in the website as a whole, and that "post-ban, hate speech by the same users was reduced by as much as 80-90 percent." [1] Reddit is just a closed system of communities; YouTube is one such community in the larger system of s…

The issue with your argument is that you assume there’s some universal definition of “toxic” with which everyone should agree. That simply isn’t the case, especially with the content YouTube has decided to block.

Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire

#432

Post by friendlybus » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 3:43 AM UTC

phailhaus wrote: post #303

The author theorizes that this ban will inflame tensions, but I don't believe that's true. Look at Reddit's ban on toxic subreddits. They found that banning toxic subreddits reduced the toxicity in the website as a whole, and that "post-ban, hate speech by the same users was reduced by as much as 80-90 percent." [1] Reddit is just a closed system of communities; YouTube is one such community in the larger system of s…

Banning topics frequently cuts losses on trends that are dying anyway. Nobody wants to see ghost town subreddits. It's good for the websites health to keep the place looking alive and clean.

Separating the effectiveness of bans from these trendy moments is difficult. Applying a ban on political discussions around 2015-2016 would have likely maintained toxicity.

Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire

#433

Post by charonn0 » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 3:44 AM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #406

charonn0 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Net neutrality isn't about censoring ISPs, though.

It is from the point of view of ISPs. E.g. they are being censored from using their bandwidth as they desire.

They'd be wrong. "Censored from using their bandwidth" is a nonsensical phrase.

Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire

#434

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 3:46 AM UTC

Spartan-S63 wrote: post #16

These types of articles are always insane to me. YouTube is a private company. They're pretty much allowed to moderate the content on their platform in an arbitrary way. I would argue that this is a good thing. We can't have it both ways, but we want it both ways. We want a non-government controlled way to communicate, but we want to mandate that they're liable to uphold the same First Amendment protections that the…

[deleted]

Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire

#435

Post by UncleMeat » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 3:46 AM UTC

bob33212 wrote: post #153

gabereiser wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube can choose to keep or delete any content on their platform regardless of truth/free speech/or not. It's in the EULA. You want free speech, go outside and yell. No one is stopping anyone from free speech. What Google is doing is cleaning up content on their service according to their EULA. If you disagree with the EULA, you can gladly go use another service. I will add, targeting a specific genre of videos loo…

Content filtering is impossible to get right. For Example, Holocaust denial is shitty and something that anyone should be allowed to ban just because they don't want to be associated with it. The problem is that you have to draw the line somewhere between "The Jews faked the Holocaust and none of it ever happened" and " The exact number of deaths in the Holocaust will never been known but it was in the millions". The…

> but it is hard to say without context and you may never know the intent of the person who said it.

So? There is a certain revulsion that a lot of engineers have for situational decision making, but that's how we've been doing the law for centuries. Virtually every line that matters is hard to draw. Yet we don't paralyze ourselves by refusing to act.

Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire

#436

Post by throwaway3699 » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 3:49 AM UTC

seppin wrote: post #396

ehsankia wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 3 scenarios: 1. Someone who is radicalized digging deeper 2. Someone who is radicalized changing their mind 3. Someone who is not radicalized getting radicalized #1 is bound to happen, #2 has no chance of happening, so at this point, preventing #3 is the way to go. Keeping these already radicalized people on Youtube achieves nothing. On the other hand, keeping them on Youtube gives these them a huge platfor…

Honestly if the choice is between no bans and allowing the current trends of radicalization continue, almost any outcome is preferable than what we've seen happen the last 5-10 years.

Really? Things only really hit the fan when the bans scaled up. I don't ever remember things being this bad 5 years ago.

Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire

#437

Post by listless » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 3:50 AM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #407

phailhaus wrote: post #303

The author theorizes that this ban will inflame tensions, but I don't believe that's true. Look at Reddit's ban on toxic subreddits. They found that banning toxic subreddits reduced the toxicity in the website as a whole, and that "post-ban, hate speech by the same users was reduced by as much as 80-90 percent." [1] Reddit is just a closed system of communities; YouTube is one such community in the larger system of s…

Participants in controversial discourse have long said that the system wants to silence them -- banning such discourse actually makes that true. In the past, they said they were censored and there was a conspiracy against them, and we could all say, no there isn't, you are active on major online platforms and nobody is suppressing you. Now we can't say that anymore. Not only has the suppression they falsely alleged a…

I wish more people understood this dynamic.

I’m married to someone who is caught up in this right-wing cult (it is a cult) and every time a video is removed, it simply convinces her even more that it’s true. If it wasn’t true, why would they hide it? Why do they not want you to see it? BECAUSE IT MUST BE TRUE.

This is just the information equivalent of Ruby Ridge - a self-fulfilling conspiracy theory.

Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire

#438

Post by krapp » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 3:51 AM UTC

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #416

jessah wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I's not about changing the participants minds. It's about keeping them to radicalize more people by taking away reach.

There is nothing even remotely radical about questioning an election, which this makes a bannable offense.

They're not questioning an election, they're making baseless accusations of fraud.

Conspiracy theories like Sharpiegate, hacked Dominion voting machines and Georgia election workers counting suitcases full of illegal ballots have been debunked. Trump's legal team has filed over 50 lawsuits to date, none of which have exposed any evidence of fraud or criminal conspiracy. The legitimate questioning is being done and the answer is, to an ever increasing degree of certainty, that Biden has won, and won legitimately.

QAnon nuts claiming the election is a coup de tat by Red China or a satanic cabal of Democratic pedophiles are not engaged in honest, good faith attempts at validating the integrity of the electoral process.

Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire

#439

Post by roenxi » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 3:52 AM UTC

ardy42 wrote: post #394

wkjenjkwenf wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it reduced tensions on reddit , but what about tensions everywhere else? The author doesn't care about how toxic Youtube is, he cares how toxic the US is. Pushing these radicals onto radical websites only further radicalizes them. That should be an axiomatic fact, yet nobody seems to understand it.

>> Sure, it reduced tensions on reddit, but what about tensions everywhere else? The author doesn't care about how toxic Youtube is, he cares how toxic the US is. Pushing these radicals onto radical websites only further radicalizes them. That should be an axiomatic fact, yet nobody seems to understand it. > Sure, it reduced tensions on reddit, but what about tensions everywhere else? The author doesn't care about ho…

Who are "them" and "these people" here? Republican voters? The Republican leadership?

Even if the plan is to marginalise Republicans by selectively suppressing their views on YouTube, it seems questionable if that will provoke the same response as banning "fatpeoplehate" and "coontown" from Reddit. Tensions are likely to increase.

Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire

#440

Post by koolba » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 3:52 AM UTC

jessah wrote: post #363

wkjenjkwenf wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it reduced tensions on reddit , but what about tensions everywhere else? The author doesn't care about how toxic Youtube is, he cares how toxic the US is. Pushing these radicals onto radical websites only further radicalizes them. That should be an axiomatic fact, yet nobody seems to understand it.

Everybody understands that. But reach is taken from them. That's a extremely important effect. Way more important than the radicalisation, because if these people seek out new platforms to radicalize them self, they would likely have done so in every case. The danger of radicalizing a bigger part of the population is what is at stake here.

> The danger of radicalizing a bigger part of the population is what is at stake here.

The real danger is that, one day, your own ideas are the ones considered too radical.