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

taibbi.substack.com

461–470 of 981 posts

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

#461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is amazing to me that there are so many people, smart people even, that are adamant that we shouldn't have free speech in society. This can be attributed to nothing more than personal political bias. There is no way these people would be arguing for censorship if the censorship favored the other side. It also makes me want to move. There is no advantage to being an American without the freedom of speech and pres…

Where could you move that has more freedom of speech and press than the US? Asking for a friend...

No where on earth. If freedom of speech and press are over here, and it certainly looks like it is over here. Then why not move to China or Singapore? You could have the same level of censorship, but a more effective political system and more opportunity to grow wealth.

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

#462

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…

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.

Frankly? I don't care. Let the Stormfronters, incels, et al go off and rage somewhere where I'm not.

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

#463

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…

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.

This doesn't really accord with any of the research and literature on the topic that I've seen, from the initial studies of forum bbs community lifecycles to more modern online marketing community analysis.

Do you have any quantitative analysis to cite for this or is it just your feeling?

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

#464
post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

#2 can happen. It happens when a person is shown that whatever they are feeling isn't the result of something inevitable

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C22&q=red...

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

#465

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…

How is newsmax “radicalized”?

They're a firehose of hyper-partisan swill not supported by facts.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/newsmax/

"Overall, we rate Newsmax Right Biased and Questionable based on the promotion of conspiracy theories and pseudoscience as well as numerous failed fact checks. (M. Huitsing 10/8/2017) Updated (11/12/2020)"

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

#466

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…

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.

> Pushing these radicals onto radical websites only further radicalizes them.

Alienation. Yes, this will create some self-feeding echo chamber elsewhere far away and out of sight. I am fine with that. The only people bothered by that are thought police who cry that somebody online might have a disgusting opinion.

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

#467
post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taibbi Also this guy is not the same author some might have known a few years ago, he himself has been relegated to the regressive left Glenn Greenwald corner of the internet. Take his narrative with the proper grain of salt.

Why do you consider them part of the "regressive left"? Is it because you think they've behaved unethically, or are they hopelessly biased, or do you just disagree with them, or some other reason?

They consider Trump less a threat than mainstream democratic politicians, who they consider to be "traitors".

That's why they are all appearing on right wing media, a shared enemy.

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

#468

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.

Completely agree.

They got rid of things like the_donald but if you dare look at comments sections you see things like cheering the death of people who spoke out against masks or lockdowns.

They got rid of the right-leaning toxicity.

They specialize in, profit from, and are ok with left-leaning toxicity.

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

#469
post #405

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…

And of course they use a measure of toxic which means "is a republican". Go on the front page of reddit and count how many posts from subs like /r/insanepoeplefacebook, /r/publicfreakout, /r/idiotsincars, /r/trashy, and the like there are, right now it's at 15/25. On most days I've done this is close to 20/25. Today there are 5 posts about the TX appeal not being heard by the SC which has pushed some of the usual gar…

Reddit had a bipolar shift around 2015 before the election. Thats when the main subs were astroturfed and gamed like I had never seen before.
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