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

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

#691

Post by CyberRabbi »

leovingi wrote: post #609
hackyhacky wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about banning disagreement. It's not even about opinions. It's about combating weaponized misinformation. It's strange for Americans to be on the business side of a propaganda weapon, as we're more used to using against our enemies. Technology has finally made it feasible for malicious actors to cheaply and effectively manipulate people with lies, here in the US. If you don't believe it's a weapon, you're wr…

"weaponized misinformation" scary buzzwords are scary

When you can’t call something a lie but you still want to invalidate its legitimacy, you say “misinformation”

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

#692

Post by forgingahead »

kenjackson wrote: post #676
rayiner wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the harm model here? After the 2016 election, more than half of Democrats disagreed that the elections “were free and fair.” https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/e... > Of registered voters surveyed, 53% said the 2016 election between Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton was free and fair and 33% said it was not.... 39% of Democratic or Democratic-leaning voters said it was. Half of Democr…

Very different situations though. Hillary conceded. And no one I personally knew really thought that Trump would not become president. Most people believed there was Russian interference, but most didn’t believe they were literally changing votes. The Senate agreed with that assessment. While I’m no fan of Trump and vote mostly Democratic I do think Trump won in 2016 and I don’t know anyone who doesn’t. I have a much…

So why not then support the process of:

1. Signature matching on mailed ballots

2. Broadcasting the hearings in the accused states (MI, PA, GA, WI, AZ, etc)

3. Actually hearing the cases at both the state and federal level, and then throwing them out on the facts presented, instead of refusing to hear them on "lack of standing" to begin with?

Win in the court of transparency. Make the crackpots look like crackpots, loudly and publicly, through a process of transparency that then becomes impossible to challenge or cast doubt upon, except for the most hardened of partisans.

Why is there such a refusal for this to happen?

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

#693

Post by remarkEon »

rayiner wrote: post #652
ceilingcorner wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Demonetized.

Censorship by definition includes not only banning and deletion, but “suppression,” which fits denying monetization to particular content on a site otherwise designed for it. For example, it wouldn’t get around the first amendment for the government to say “we’re not banning this book, you just can’t charge money for it.” (I understand that Google as a private actor is permitted to engage in censorship while the gove…

I think you should extend this thought a little bit further.

If tech companies start deciding that certain gun content (to use the example in the parent) shouldn't be allowed, that will of course have an effect on the general population's opinion about guns and gun rights given their market control of online video. To me it's fairly obvious that this channel of media can be used to control what people think is "normal" or "allowed".

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

#694

Post by endominus »

hackyhacky wrote: post #640
tomcam wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling the opinion of someone you disagree with “weaponized disinformation” doesn’t mean it’s anything but someone else’s opinion. It is chilling that you don’t seem to know the difference between a free Press and an immediate threat to your life.

I think you don't know what the weapon is. The weapon is wielded by people who know better: by Trump, by Giuliani, by Hannity. They know the truth, but are cynically using their platform to manipulate the population. The consequences are destructive. The opinions are not the weapon. The opinions are the wound, caused by the weapon.

Your point raises a couple of questions. First, do you think it is only your outgroup (Fox News, Republican politicians, etc) that would use misinformation? Democrats and other media outlets don't stand to gain from its use, or are too moral to resort to it? Second, the precedent this sets is that the government can state one set of facts to be true, and force compliance to that truth from media. Do you not see this as a potential problem? Even if you believe that your group would never abuse that power, do you think that they will remain in power eternally? Is it not possible for this "defense" against "weaponized misinformation" to be used against you?

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

#695

Post by ceilingcorner »

foepys wrote: post #680
ceilingcorner wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not arguing for that, but it might actually be an indirect solution. By forcing everyone to deal with it, skepticism will grow and new solutions toward treating information and the media will arise. As an example, I think a similar situation will happen with deepfakes. Once it becomes widely known that it’s easy to fake video, people will become more skeptical of it.

> skepticism will grow and new solutions toward treating information and the media will arise And you are willing to sacrifice democracy for just the chance of this happening?

This rhetoric makes no sense to me. People are already subject to incomprehensible levels of propaganda from every angle and have been for over a century. When and where was there a perfect democracy?

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

#696

Post by JellyBeanThief »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #648
andrei_says_ wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope this is not an argument for giving powerful weaponized mass disinformation tools to more people, including foreign governments and other actors actively seeking to polarize society to the point of inciting conflict and dismantling democracy. Yes, removing this type of speech from YouTube may be an imperfect / stopgap solution. What are some better alternatives?

I’m not arguing for that, but it might actually be an indirect solution. By forcing everyone to deal with it, skepticism will grow and new solutions toward treating information and the media will arise. As an example, I think a similar situation will happen with deepfakes. Once it becomes widely known that it’s easy to fake video, people will become more skeptical of it.

What is the difference between "forcing everyone to deal with it" and what we've been doing for the last four years? Or, alternatively, why do we think we'll get a different result by doing the same thing over again?

I mean, it seems to me like we already have scepticism in spades. There's two sides, and if one of them said the sky was blue the other would be sure it were green.

It looks to me like what is needed is detached, discerning thinking, which is not the same thing. What reason do we have to think that people will start to do better about it and it will take care of itself?

I'm not opposed to your view, I just don't think I'm on the same page as you and it I'd like to hear more.

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

#697

Post by dasil003 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #661
ceilingcorner wrote: post #495

I find it really disconcerting how many people on Hacker News want a corporate entity to decide what information is deemed acceptable to know. Do you even know where that word came from? The irony is almost overwhelming. But I digress... The idea that banning certain information will somehow result in it disappearing has been shown repeatedly to not work. A cursory reading of history should make this clear. You canno…

I think the idea is making things harder to access. The failed idea behind making drugs illegal is that they'd be harder to access and less people would do them. There's evidence this didn't work. I think the idea here is the same - if the big platforms ban certain types of egregious and harmful misinformation (that gets recommended to people susceptible to conspiracies) - these companies are hoping less people overa…

I don't disagree, but the difference with drugs is that people specifically seek them out and there is a lot of effort and involved to make it happen through the whole supply chain.

The problems with social media are largely around removing all friction from the process, and adding a huge dose of virality and highly specific targeting. The former means people get a vast amount of information with minimal effort, and the latter enables targeted propaganda which then gets magnified in echo chamber bubbles by the algo.

The individual elements all existed before, but the combination creates pretty unique effects. I'm also skeptical these companies can effectively address the problem since these properties are what has fueled their growth.

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

#698

Post by Reelin »

twentydollars wrote: post #649
ceilingcorner wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really can’t think of anything more alien to the hacker ethos than, “A group of unknown people at a technology corporation should be the ultimate authority on what I’m allowed to say, read, or share with my friends.” Disinformation is indeed a difficult problem, but there are enough smart people in the world to figure it out without resorting to authoritarianism. We can do better.

> “A group of unknown people at a technology corporation should be the ultimate authority on what I’m allowed to say, read, or share with my friends.” Literally nobody is suggesting this. It's about freedom of Reach, not freedom of speech.

> It's about freedom of Reach, not freedom of speech.

What a snappy cliche. If you prohibit certain people from using the printing press but allow others to do so, then in practice you are limiting their freedom to speak relative to other people. To imply otherwise is either disingenuous or profoundly misinformed.

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

#699

Post by hackyhacky »

cmdshiftf4 wrote: post #657
ceilingcorner wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming that the regular media is the default, the truth, and that propaganda didn’t exist prior to 2016. Read Manufacturing Consent for a brief overview of this history of widespread weaponization of information by innumerable actors. Weaponized misinformation has existed as long as human speech has existed. What is new is the democratization of it, hence the establishment’s hostility.

>Weaponized misinformation has existed as long as human speech has existed. What is new is the democratization of it, hence the establishment’s hostility. Beautifully put. Better get ahead of it lest the proles gain class consciousness and use it against us.

I'm sure you mean that sarcastically, but you shouldn't. It's fun to complain about "the establishment," until it isn't there anymore. In the current case, "the establishment" means American democracy, which is built on people's faith in the institution of elections. If you erode that faith, democracy no longer works. That may be fine with you, but it's not fine with me.

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

#700

Post by [deleted] »

zionic wrote: post #270
Spartan-S63 wrote: post #16

These types of articles are always insane to me. YouTube is a private company. They're pretty much allowed to moderate the content on their platform in an arbitrary way. I would argue that this is a good thing. We can't have it both ways, but we want it both ways. We want a non-government controlled way to communicate, but we want to mandate that they're liable to uphold the same First Amendment protections that the…

> These types of articles are always insane to me. YouTube is a private company. They're pretty much allowed to moderate the content on their platform in an arbitrary way. Now post “YouTube is a private company and I support their right to ban BLM” For the record.

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