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

taibbi.substack.com

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

#501

Post by spc476 »

konjin wrote: post #419
ardy42 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you reject the idea that people are intelligent enough to think about politics for themselves then you reject the idea that they're intelligent enough to govern themselves. I mean, the American founders already rejected a lot of ideas about the people governing themselves, because they knew from history that the people often can't check their worst impulses. > Democracy and free speech are intrinsically linked.…

>Sort of like how radical Athenian-style direct democracy doesn't work, maybe radically giving everyone near-unchecked access to nationwide broadcasting doesn't work, either. Ah yes, because Switzerland is such a hell hole.

The difference is that direct democracy doesn't scale. Switzerland has a population of 8 million; the US has a population of 330 million. Also, I'm willing to bet that Switzerland is more homogeneous than the US. And size wise, Switzerland is only larger than 9 US states.

What I'm saying is that the US is huge. And diverse. It's a scaling issue.

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

#502

Post by darepublic »

majormajor wrote: post #216
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are making normative arguments, not legal arguments. We are aware that this is legal, just like it used to be legal to discriminate in hiring practices against black people. Taibbi is suggesting that if you can't trust the people not to post error and lies, how can you trust the oligarchs and officials? Especially if your access to alternative perspectives is limited. Read for yourself: >> Cutting down the pub…

Those with platforms have always had the opportunity to lie to large groups, but extending that ability to every single person seems like an EXTREMELY BAD "solution." Historically there's been a burden of proof for wild claims because it's been hard to get a huge mass audience. And people with those audiences were reluctant to repeat whatever wild bullshit was proposed to them if they couldn't vet it themselves. If y…

You reference a totalitarian dystopia and yet you are salivating for widespread censorship to be applied. The great thing about the internet is the freedom of communication which broke the monopoly of mainstream media. If people like you have your way the internet will be as censored as cable tv used to be, in your blessed utopia of the 60s to 80s. Were you alive back then? Have you heard of the Vietnam war. It's not an exaggeration to say your ignorance and stupidity is staggering

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

#503

Post by rayiner »

gruez wrote: post #483
rayiner wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

>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. Is litigation supposed to be a indicator of legitimacy or something? Anyone can file a lawsuit for any reason. In addition, most (all?) of the lawusits being dismissed without trial , which suggests they were rubbish to begin with.

No, it’s supposed to be an indicator of “we have institutions to handle this and we don’t need Google to take on that role.”

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

#504

Post by chipotle_coyote »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #358
FlyMoreRockets wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed the most important point. It bears repeating: an informed populace is the basis of democracy. A misinformed populace acts to destroy democracy.

> A misinformed populace acts to destroy democracy. who is to be trusted with the authority to decide what counts as misinformation? Is it possible that a gatekeeper of information would find it easier to misinform the populace than a prominent person who had to contend with other dissenting voices?

It feels to me like both sides in this debate want to argue "of course it's patently obvious that I'm right". But services like YouTube and Facebook have no real historical precedents in terms of audience reach, and it's hard to think of a more rock-and-a-hard-place situation than choosing between "force a private company to treat their property like a public square no matter the cost to society" and "allow a private company to dictate what's allowed in a de facto public square."

So, yes, of course it's possible a gatekeeper would find it easier to misinform the populace. Over the long term, it's almost guaranteed. Yet it's also possible -- in fact, one can argue the probability is essentially 1.0 -- that refusing to have any gates will also misinform the populace. If we're looking for a blanket rule that will cover all possible situations in this new information reality, we're probably looking in vain.

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

#505

Post by cambalache »

deeviant wrote: post #198
rsync wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Not really. UK has far more limits on speech than the US but is just as much of a Democracy as the US." They have a literal "House of Lords" which is "... by appointment or by heredity or official function."[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords

So you are attempting to make the point that the UK is not an equivalent democracy? The house of lords can not create bills nor stop them. They can look over the elected parliament's shoulders and whine, that's it. It is a vestigial leaving of the monarchy system that, like the Monarchs themselves, the UK keeps because it's cute. While in the US, un-elected corporations do very much the same thing, except when they w…

> While in the US, un-elected corporations do very much the same thing, except when they whine, they get their way.

Thanks god that never happens in Britain.

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

#506

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #389
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.

Are you saying that people who voted for Trump are radicals?

It's interesting. My question is getting a number of both downvotes and upvotes and for the moment is even. But no replies. So I'll go on.

In my view, 'zealotry' crosses over to 'radicalism' when the threshold of violence is crossed. We generally are concerned about radicals in religion or politics because we fear they will or have committed violence in the name of their cause.

Yet... there are far (far) more instances of violence on the record against Americans who support Trump than by them. Up to and including murder. In fact, there is so much political violence against them that congress created a list of violent political acts and entered the list into the congressional record[0].

Who is committing this violence and why?

Here is about 10 minutes of research:

- One of the murders, Lee Keltner, a hatter in Colorado:

https://www.denverpost.com/2020/10/17/lee-keltner-protest-sh...

- In this assault, the first is mild. The student punched in the face could have had knocked teeth out:

https://wjla.com/news/nation-world/rising-political-tension

- Punched in the face for wearing a hat in Russian. The assailant couldn't read it, but attacked once the wearer told him the translation:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-beaten-up-in-california-re...

- [0] And here is that seven pages of a Political Violence Report, official congressional record:

https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU00/20190409/109266/HHRG...

- The other murder:

https://katu.com/news/local/patriot-prayer-founder-man-shot-...

- Here are three more assaults, including an 81 year-old man:

https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/02/28/maga-hat-wearing-vic...

- This was a serious beating, an art gallery owner:

https://abcnews.go.com/US/york-city-gallery-owner-attacked-w...

- Citing the Berkeley assault, this guy wrote and app to help conservatives find safe places to dine out:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/11/need-safe...

- This is attempted murder:

https://abcnews.go.com/US/man-arrested-allegedly-driving-van...

Regarding the 7 page listing of more than 200 various acts of political violence, including attempted murder, against conservative politicians; I searched for the same document produced during the Obama administration and could not find one. From that I infer that during his administration, neither conservative nor liberal politicians saw political violence as enough of a concern to list it and enter into the permanent record of the United States Congress.

Political and religious violence and oppression was one of the primary motivators for the United States to seek independence from England. We are going backwards.

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

#507

Post by stormcode »

Animats wrote: post #482
koolba wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The real danger is that, one day, your own ideas are the ones considered too radical. True. Worse, the acceptable range of opinions within both the US right and the US left have narrowed.

I used to strongly believe this but now I think we've moved beyond having a public discourse and into things that are not protected speech. The president and others inciting violence against people doing their jobs, and those that are megaphoning those claims and calls to action deserve to be shutdown and deplatformed before someone is killed.

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

#508

Post by zucker42 »

seppin wrote: post #467
zucker42 wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

First, I looked up the term "regressive left" and you might want to know your use of the term doesn't match its general usage, which might make it confusing.

Secondly, I think you're doing yourself a disservice if you dismiss these voices and are critical of them but not the mainstream pro-Democrat press. Ryan Taibbi, for example, clearly dislikes Trump, but also thinks the Democrats aren't responding to him well[1], which is an interesting perspective to understand if you are anti-Trump. If you are a liberal who fails to incorporate or understand even the criticisms of people who are close to being your allies, you may be less equipped to properly combat Trumpism.

Basically, it sounds to me like you are advocating ignoring these people because you disagree with them, which doesn't strike me as the best way to rigorously improve one's political perspective.

[1] https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-trump-era-sucks-and-needs-...

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

#509

Post by rayiner »

darepublic wrote: post #489
Barrin92 wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>. Pushing these radicals onto radical websites only further radicalizes them. That should be an axiomatic fact, yet nobody seems to understand it. First off, that's not an axiomatic fact, that's the definition of an empirical question. Secondly, even if it was true, who cares? You can't enlighten every crazy person on the planet, it's a waste of time. The goal of effective policy is to isolate radical elements to a…

You're not engaging with the articles main point, that this censorship and exclusion is not evenly applied, and that it is rather conspicuously applied along political lines. There are many non scientific, ideology driven ideas that have been bullying their way into every facet of communication these days. Labelling people who resist this trend as fringe radicals who should be segregated and monitored is frankly disg…

For example: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2019... (AOC: “the world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change.").

This is flat-earth conspiracy theory level falsehood. And it’s a falsehood about an extremely politically and socially important issue that if widely accepted could have massive repercussions. Is YouTube going to censor it?

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

#510

Post by wtfiswiththis »

moralestapia wrote: post #493
gruez wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Is litigation supposed to be a indicator of legitimacy or something? Anyone can file a lawsuit for any reason. In addition, most (all?) of the lawusits being dismissed without trial , which suggests they were rubbish to begin with.

I am sure you are able to grasp the essence of what @rayiner is trying to say.

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