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

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

#521

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

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…

Isolating fringe radicals who explicitly aim to topple democratic systems is vastly preferable, in my opinion, to the actions of those fringe radicals to intimidate voters, threaten elected officials and poll workers with violence, and openly foment civil war that could bring untold misery to millions. It's not all that different from how the lectures of Anwar al-Awlaki were removed from YouTube back in 2017. Not every idea, no matter how pernicious, needs to be given room to flourish.

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

#522

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

ehsankia wrote: post #391

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…

You are trying to intentionally muddy the waters here. Vaccines, masks and who won the election are not "sweeping opinions you don't like". People have actually died due to the anti-vaxx movement, leading to +50% Measle deaths in 2019. These are hard facts and these decisions are a matter of life or death. No one is blocking opinions. Trump has failed to prove election fraud in over 50 cases so far, and the safe harb…

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

#523

Post by joshuamorton » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:14 AM UTC

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #506

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 instanc…

Any congressperson is free to enter something into the congressional record. That alone should hold no sway. As for this list, it includes tweets comparing trump to hitler as acts of "violence", and the fbi disagrees with your top-line conclusion that Trump's supporters are victims more often than assailants.

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

#524

Post by triceratops » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:14 AM UTC

lukifer wrote: post #318

Analemma_ wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember the days on forums when people screaming "YOU'RE VIOLATING THE FIRST AMENDMENT!!!11" after the admin banned them were treated as the laughable jokes they were. Now there are supposedly serious political thinkers subscribing to this same idea: that the Constitution forces private parties to do business with you against their will. It's a serious lack of civic knowledge.

It's worth reading Barry Goldwater's opposition [0] to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, despite him claiming to be "unalterably opposed to discrimination or segregation on the basis of race, color, or creed, or on any other basis". His stance was exactly what you describe: that government did not have a right to force private parties to conduct business against their will. There's a good-faith debate to be had about pos…

You are aware of the difference between "what you are" and "what you say" are you not? CRA prohibits discrimination on the basis of "what you are". So it's not really the same thing at all.

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

#525

Post by konjin » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:15 AM UTC

spc476 wrote: post #501

konjin wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Switzerland

Calling Switzerland homogeneous because everyone there is white is as racist as saying that China and Japan are the same because they are all yellow.

The US is less diverse than Switzerland and using the current system when it was half the population of Switzerland. The only reason why we do not have direct democracy is because it's a lot harder to rob a country blind when everyone is involved in the decisions.

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

#526

Post by konjin » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:16 AM UTC

trident1000 wrote: post #469

konjin wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've heard the same thing about 2008, 2011, 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2019. It's not different this time either. Bad decisions from the top are the reason why the site is getting worse.

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

#527

Post by trident1000 » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:20 AM UTC

konjin wrote: post #526

trident1000 wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've heard the same thing about 2008, 2011, 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2019. It's not different this time either. Bad decisions from the top are the reason why the site is getting worse.

I think its a combo. Ive also been on reddit since the early days and never witnessed a tectonic shift like that.

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

#528

Post by Gibbon1 » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:20 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #522

ehsankia wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are trying to intentionally muddy the waters here. Vaccines, masks and who won the election are not "sweeping opinions you don't like". People have actually died due to the anti-vaxx movement, leading to +50% Measle deaths in 2019. These are hard facts and these decisions are a matter of life or death. No one is blocking opinions. Trump has failed to prove election fraud in over 50 cases so far, and the safe harb…

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Fascists killed something like 70-5 million people during WWII. The neocon/neoliberal wars in the middle east have killed a couple of million.

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

#529

Post by rayiner » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:22 AM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #520

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…

> 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 "mainstrea…

> 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.

The media and elites just spent four years burning their credibility in an incinerator. (Which I think is a tremendously bad thing for America.) Imagine if, instead of spinning out a yarn about Trump being a Russian asset for two years and having to massively walk it back, they had kept their powder dry and responsibly reported on the bad things actually contained in the Mueller report. Do you think that maybe folks would be less willing to believe the outrageous things Trump is saying now?

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

#530

Post by stale2002 » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 5:23 AM UTC

scoopertrooper wrote: post #388

FreeTrade wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pseudo anonymity is probably fine, but web-of-trust solutions to help quarantine armies of sock puppets and manipulators would be really useful. Can't imagine why Twitter/FB won't implement. (Ok. I can imagine)

I can't see any benefit to even pseudo-anonymous political discourse on open mainstream mass-broadcast social media in a free society. If your message has a reach on the order of hundreds of thousands of people, then you should be able to stand by what you say.

Let's say the government does something bad. Say it starts an unnecessary war or something.

I want people to be free to criticize that without being worried about being targeted by the government or it's supporters.

It is extremely important that people are free to criticize the government, while being as immune as possible to retaliation for that criticism.