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

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

#471

Post by titanomachy » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 4:27 AM UTC

Vomzor wrote: post #345

Daishiman wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a retconning farce this is. 40 years ago you could not publicly endorse recreational drug use, atheism, or interracial marriages without a substancial block of society chastating you as an incorrectable heathen. Values change, what people find acceptable and what they do not find acceptable changes.

I'm not sure what your point is? As we seem to agree values change.

I'm not 100% sure either. I think maybe GP is suggesting that rather than being stalwart champions of free speech as you implied, boomers are just more racist and want to be free to say racist things.

Fortunately for all of us, it's not the general population of millenials or boomers who decide what speech the government gets to prevent; it's experienced justices, who tend to take the constitution much more seriously than the average person.

The statistic that 40% of millenials want laws preventing statements offensive to minorities is kind of baffling to me. Do you think they just don't understand the constitution, or do they want it rewritten to allow this kind of law?

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

#472

Post by trident1000 » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 4:28 AM UTC

krapp wrote: post #438

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

This has all been debunked?: https://youtu.be/rri6flxaXww?t=4916 (from Phil Waldron)

I'm not here to deny elections but I dont think much of it was including the machines going live on the net when Dominion said they didnt. They witnessed the packet traffic to international servers.

With regards to "debunking" on sites like Politifact you need to be careful. For instance they say the Smartmatic technology was not used in states that are being challenged when thats just not true. The tech is the same but runs under different banners and is all owned by Dominion. Also they focus on if Hugo Chavez family owns Smartmatic as the thing to debunk. Obviously thats not the case or the main convincing argument that is even being made. Its that the technology was used to game elections in Venezuela and that adopted tech is used in elections around the world now (why else would it be acquired unless they wanted the tech). There are no code audits because Dominion claims IP protection. Does that mean election rigging is happening? Not necessarily. But people have every right to ask that question and you should ask it too no matter what side you're on.

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

#473

Post by seppin » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 4:28 AM UTC

throwaway3699 wrote: post #436

seppin wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

unprovable/unknowable and subjective analysis. Youtube banning people doesn't radicalize them, radicalizing content delivered to million of people on youtube radicalizes them.

A point so simple it feels silly to point it out, but here we are.

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

#474

Post by abacadaba » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 4:29 AM UTC

vorpalhex wrote: post #27

jiofih wrote: post #4

Then what? Allowing false information to fester is wrong, censorship is wrong. The way forward is to ban recommendation algorithms and go back to personal (as in, from other humans you know) recommendation systems.

The algorithm here really is the perpetrator. The insane things I've had recommended to me by Youtube after watching rather boring philosophy videos or a bit of history is amazing. One of their recommendations was literally full on nutter ranting at a camera - and it came up on a video of a guy who builds and tests medieval longbows! I much prefer recommendations from people.

Sort of a paradox personally. I think the algorithm has gotten better, not perfect, about recommending me less batshit insane videos. And I appreciate it.

But things like the Hunter censorship absolutely cross a line and are enraging. Banning (even loosely defined) hate speech is not the same thing as being the arbiter of truth.

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

#475

Post by dangus » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 4:29 AM UTC

Surely the conservatives will believe in the freedom of private enterprise.

YouTube can do whatever they want on their platform. For example, they can ban model train enthusiasts for no reason at all.

Love it or hate it, there's nothing un-American about a private company doing whatever they want inside their area of control. That's kind of the definition of America.

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

#476

Post by diebeforei485 » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 4:32 AM UTC

wkjenjkwenf wrote: post #331

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…

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.

I agree. This may be a business decision to keep the media (and regulators/lawmakers of certain political stripes) happy, and it may indeed lower tensions on reddit in the short term, but it may not result in lower tensions as a whole.

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

#477

Post by rayiner » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 4:32 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…

That only works if the people who are banned are fringe minority nobodies. We’re talking about banning the President of the United States, who although he lost just won 5 million more votes than Obama in 2008. This ends with further destruction of trust in elites, fracturing the media ecosystem, and opportunistic competitors arising.

The idea that gatekeepers need to withhold information from people so they believe the correct things is insane and has no limiting principle. We’ve already tumbled well down the slippery slope. Just a couple of years ago, the censorship was just going to be about “flat earth”-type stuff. Now we’re censoring stuff that’s still the subject of active litigation. They’re probably correct about it, but the first application of a terrible idea is usually workable. The Ministry of Truth probably started out to keep misinformation from spreading about vaccination, or something innocuous like that.

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

#478

Post by TeeMassive » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 4:32 AM UTC

konjin wrote: post #405

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…

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…

You make a really good point. The toxicity really was upped a notch ever since Tencent got that sweet Chinese money and I think those sub makes sense if you think about it from the point of view of a Chinese Nationalist making fun of White and Black foreigners and the worse stereotypes about Americans and Westerners in general.

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

#479

Post by skrueger » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 4:33 AM UTC

FlyMoreRockets wrote: post #379

waterhouse wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they should not be forced. However, YouTube should be shamed for the bans, and everyone should be encouraged to think worse of them for it.

I think YouTube should be applauded for protecting democracy. Why do you think they should be shamed for doing this?

How is YouTube protecting democracy? It seems to me its action silences a group of people in a democracy.

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

#480

Post by lliamander » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 4:34 AM UTC

olefoo wrote: post #150

This is all the result of confusing 1st amendment rights with the right to access the audience that gathers at a particular URL. What Taibbi is asking for is that the guy who tells you that drinking rat poison is good for you should be allowed an audience and that even putting a warning alongside the video would be an infringement on his rights. Looking at the comments here I have to conclude that HN is no longer on…

In case you didn't know, Warfarin, a heart medication, is also used as a rat poison.

A guy telling people they should drink genuinely harmful poison is of course bad, but by analogy I would say many of us are concerned that YouTube's current trajectory would result in banning important information about the health benefits of Warfarin in their crude attempt to stop the people from taking the bad sorts of rat poison.