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

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

#511

Post by gruez » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:05 AM UTC

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #238

defen wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - GMO, again, same point above. "Sure you can have this great crop, no seeds". Again, GMO per say isn't bad, its the implementation that's bad. Why specifically is it bad? If you want non-GMO food you can just grow your own.

Because it increases the amount of pesticides used (or incorporates them directly into the plant where they can't be rinsed off) and pollutes the natural gene pool with artificial genes. The increased amounts of pesticide run off the field and mess up the rest of the ecosystem. Now you're seeing herbicide-resistant weeds come up in these fields.

>Because it increases the amount of pesticides used (or incorporates them directly into the plant where they can't be rinsed off)

Does this argument work without the "all pesticides are bad" assumption? I searched up bt gene's use in pesticides[1] and it looks pretty safe.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_thuringiensis#Toxicol...

>and pollutes the natural gene pool with artificial genes

As opposed to the natural gene pool being constantly polluted by spontaneous mutations? Or is that fine because of the naturalistic fallacy?

>The increased amounts of pesticide run off the field and mess up the rest of the ecosystem. Now you're seeing herbicide-resistant weeds come up in these fields.

AFAIK this is a non-issue except to the farmers. Resistance to whatever usually comes at a cost, so in the wild the superweeds will get out-competed by their non-resistant counterparts.

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

#512

Post by stopping » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:07 AM UTC

Vomzor wrote: post #19

https://hereistheevidence.com/

Meh, I'm not impressed. Of the dozen or so sources I looked at, half them are links to articles on right-leaning news sites or tweets parroting speech from Trump lawyers, with no links to primary documents. This isn't evidence.

One source was a video of election workers moving boxes around, with a conspiratorial narrative overlaid. This isn't evidence.

Several tweets showing "voting spikes" in favor of Biden as a result of regular counting operations. Nothing wrong here.

The remaining sources discuss "irregularities of expectation", yet none provide any plausible narrative of wrongdoing. The most plausible explanation is that it Democrat-favored voting methods were more streamlined, reliable, and less contested this year compared to years previous. Obviously this nets more votes for Democrats, but nothing practical is stopping a Republican from voting by mail, either. Also, I wouldn't be shocked if the 2020 election was actually more fair than in previous years, due to a large decrease in wrongfully-rejected ballots. I wouldn't be surprised if more Democratic votes were thrown away wrongfully in 2016 than fraudulent Democratic votes were accepted in 2020. If you're concerned about the legitimacy and fairness of U.S. elections, you can't talk about voter fraud while ignoring historical voter disenfranchisement. If someone thinks that mail-in voting was too easy this year, then their gripe is with the judicial systems that permitted this year's election rules.

Conclusion: The linked website doesn't seem to have very high standards of verification, as most items are obviously flimsy or easily debunkable.

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

#513

Post by jasonlotito » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:08 AM UTC

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #320

FlyMoreRockets wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should I be forced to pay for public schools if I don't have kids or disagree with what they are being taught? Yes you should. An informed populace is the basis of democracy. If you choose to continue living in a democracy, you have to help pay for its upkeep.

> Yes you should. Thank you. This is exactly the basis upon which we justify the proposal to force YouTube to host content that their shareholders would prefer not to host. Or the alternative formulation, this is the basis on which we justify prohibiting YouTube from censoring political speech that their shareholders disagree with.

> This is exactly the basis upon...

That's not something legally recognized though. You can't say you base this on something when there is nothing equivalent. An education is one thing. It's something that's been recognized in court.

Now, if you want to claim that public sites like YouTube should be forced to host content they don't want to from people they don't want to do business with, you'll have to explain how that equates with your established rights in the US?

More to the point: You'll have to explain why you want to take away my rights?

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

#514

Post by Jetrel » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:08 AM UTC

kennywinker wrote: post #359

effingwewt wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this argument all the time. Sweeping opinions you don't like under the rug doesn't make them go away. People will still hold the same opinions they will just do so where you can't hear them. I prefer the racist I can see. This pushes them underground and radicalizes them. You mentioned reddit. Do you remember what voat became when reddit closed down subs? That hate didn't go away it just moved and concentrated…

The idea is not to sweep them under the rug, but rather to stop the uptake of new people. A lot of people go to reddit for funny pictures, and end up being exposed to some very radical ideas. Those same people might never be drawn to a more fringe site. Banning posters doesn’t stop them from holding their views, but it seems like it may stop them from spreading. It’s a gamble, but i think it’s worked in reddit’s case

Nailed it.

It's epidemiology for ideas.

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

#515

Post by _kbh_ » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:10 AM UTC

abacadaba wrote: post #451

krapp wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> and Georgia election workers counting suitcases full of illegal ballots have been debunked citation needed

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/04/facebook-p...

There you go.

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

#516

Post by rayiner » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:10 AM UTC

malwrar wrote: post #356

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…

Incels and other such creeps aren't popping up in other places or real life though. Spend a week in a rural place near you and you'll find that people there legit think that "big tech"--who they know is insanely powerful and think are biased against folks like them--attempt to a.) censor people and b.) censor claims about election fraud specifically in regards to "their president" winning. Think about how that might…

Bingo. But to be fair Big Tech didn’t cause this problem and it can’t solve this problem. There has been a general breakdown of trust in elites and media institutions over the past 30 years. It’s just spilling over to tech now.

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

#517

Post by jasonlotito » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:10 AM UTC

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #504

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The burden of proof lies with those who want to deny me rights, not those of us who want to maintain those rights. FB and YouTube has a right to remove content they don't want to host, just like me. If you want to take away my rights, you'd better come up with something really really good.

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

#518

Post by jb_gericke » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:11 AM UTC

cambalache wrote: post #485

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…

> even if it was true, who cares? So what did you ban them in the first time? > The goal of effective policy is to isolate radical elements to a point where they can't target mainstream communities of people who hold malleable beliefs. That is effective prevention. Let's say I think Google is a threat to individual rights. Are their on their right to prevent people with "malleable beliefs"(how condescending) to liste…

As opposed to? Government controlled or moderated media would be devoid of agenda? I also don't see how capitalism is to blame, we are already seeing new social media platforms emerge pandering to the other side of the partisan spectrum. At the end of the day, YouTube and their ilk have executive decision making over the content they surface. I don't believe they should be beholden to some 'higher' journalistic ideals around objectivity. As a consumer if I'm not happy with their policies (extending well beyond content moderation), I'm obliged to go elsewhere. Whether this drives further polarisation or results in the creation of fringe or radicalised groups is actually besides the point.

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

#519

Post by pooya13 » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:11 AM UTC

The problem is that YouTube, Twitter, Facebook et al. want to have the protections of social networking platforms (e.g not being accountable for the content), while at the same time be able to autonomously remove/censor content outside the existing legal system. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. (well, apparently you can in this day and age but you shouldn’t be able to in a fair society)

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

#520

Post by yongjik » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:11 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #477

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 t…

> We’re talking about banning the President of the United States

Well, yes, we're talking about the President of the United States spreading FUD on a national election, just because he lost. That's how much America has fallen.

> further destruction of trust in elites, fracturing the media ecosystem, and opportunistic competitors arising

All of this has already happened - keeping Trump and his supporters in "mainstream sites" did nothing to restore trust in elites, or mend the rift in media, so I'm not sure why it would suddenly work now that he's finally being shown the door.