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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

#701

Post by dasil003 »

hackyhacky wrote: post #635
rayiner wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 cannot turn the entire world into West Coast USA by banning everyone that disagrees with you. You’ll only create further echo chambers, both on your own platform and on the (new) platforms inevitably created by the exiled. And in the process…

The half of the country that voted for Trump is already alienated. They're fully prepared to destroy every American institution, simply because Trump them that they should. As we've already seen countless times, there is no amount of rational discussion or documented evidence that will persuade them otherwise. The question is, do the rest of us have to go along with it, or are allowed to fight back?

Trump support is more about disillusionment and distrust of career politicians and frustration at the steady decline of blue-collar prosperity than it is about actually believing his mouth words.

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

#702

Post by XorNot »

forgingahead wrote: post #692
kenjackson wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

So you're clearly not actually following the proceedings of any of this anyway, so what difference would it make?

Testimony has been broadcast, court rulings are public, the reasoning and legal procedure is all happening in the open.

You're demanding transparency because it suits whatever narrative you have in your head, yet demonstrating you won't put any effort into following the process which is already public.

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

#703

Post by southeastern »

dasil003 wrote: post #697
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Take qanon. I don't it naturally spreads as virulently as drugs. But when you add Facebook into the mix, people are able to disseminate this information instantly to people who just don't understand how to vet sources. The comparison to drugs just doesn't work.

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

#704

Post by Reelin »

twentydollars wrote: post #674
ceilingcorner wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now, at this very moment, Facebook and Twitter prevent you from sending certain links via private message.

They're private platforms. You can send those links via many other routes which would be legally protected speech.

> They're private platforms. You can send those links via many other routes ...

That is a complete non sequitur. You say it's not about freedom of speech. Someone responds that, in fact, blatant censorship is occurring. You don't even attempt to refute this point, instead falling back to pointing out that the censorship isn't illegal!

Censorship reduces freedom to speak. That statement remains true whether or not the speech happens to be legally protected, and regardless of how wide spread the censorship might be.

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

#705

Post by Reelin »

dorkwood wrote: post #682
twentydollars wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're private platforms. You can send those links via many other routes which would be legally protected speech.

As someone not familiar with what those routes are -- what are they? Is email sent through Gmail protected, or is that also a private platform?

Don't worry, you're free to speak your mind so long as you don't actually try to communicate with anyone. Please take care not to express your opinions outside of the officially designated free speech zones!

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

#706

Post by southeastern »

yew wrote: post #644
hackyhacky wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The half of the country that voted for Trump is already alienated. They're fully prepared to destroy every American institution, simply because Trump them that they should. As we've already seen countless times, there is no amount of rational discussion or documented evidence that will persuade them otherwise. The question is, do the rest of us have to go along with it, or are allowed to fight back?

Speaking as an American who didn't vote for Trump, either time, you've certainly alienated me. You'd (collectively) best hope you're making more friends than enemies. Hope's all any of us have at this point.

Eh when your consider things like this; https://www.fox7austin.com/news/texas-gop-chair-suggests-law...

>Texas GOP chair says 'law-abiding states' should 'form a union' after SCOTUS rejects election suit

I feel there may be a real point to that. Is he being a bit emotional with his post? Sure. Should that be enough to write off a possible threat to democracy? No. I mean if that alienates you, I expect what the TX GOP chair did will REALLY make you passionate

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

#707

Post by ardy42 »

jcranmer wrote: post #596
ardy42 wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't need to protect speech everyone finds unobjectionable. I wasn't talking about objectionable opinions or perspectives. I was talking about lies and falsehoods , which are becoming alarmingly widespread. Even now those things don't full First Amendment protections, which is why there can be laws against fraud and defamation, and the Supreme Court has even said "false statements of fact" do not enjoy protect…

Do note that US v Alvarez did hold that false statements are not a sufficient basis to restrict speech--there needs to be something else to justify restriction of speech. Or, a better quote from the syllabus: > Although the Court has frequently said or implied that false factual statements enjoy little First Amendment protection, see, e.g., Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U. S. 323, 340, those statements cannot be r…

That's true, but we're actually talking about YouTube here, not the government. So if false factual statements enjoy little First Amendment protection, then there's even less grounds to whine about a private party choosing not to disseminate them.

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

#708

Post by beaner »

hackyhacky wrote: post #607
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…

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 mininformation."

The same people claiming this now are the same ones who promoted Russigate for 2+ years. It had absolutely no basis in reality and resulted in no evidence of collusion - at all. But the whole time we were bombarded with claims of it by the media. It wasn't just fringe youtubers or twitter commenters, it was the actual mainstream media.

Where was this attitude of yours when that was going on?

I'm sorry but you're just fucking full of shit. You don't even realize how compromised and implicitly biased your thinking is. You are not being honest, not being fair.

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

#709

Post by Reelin »

kenjackson wrote: post #679
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.

The Hacker Ethos is to build your own media platform and stop whining about someone else’s (unless net neutrality is at play).

It's generally a good attitude to have, but network effects are real. Disregarding them is a mistake.

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

#710

Post by southeastern »

gd1 wrote: post #653
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…

>The idea that banning certain information will somehow result in it disappearing has been shown repeatedly to not work Maybe it didn't work in the old days. But now maybe the CEO of Cloudflare will wake up one morning, decide he doesn't like your politics and block your DNS. Now you might wake up one morning and find that Mailchimp have terminated your account because they don't like your politics (Molyneux). Now yo…

>Because, you know, they're "private companies" or something.

Wait so are you for them being able to do whatever they want, where you can be banned from their service? Or do you want them under the arm of the government where they could be regulated? I think you're just mad at the culture. Trump isn't gonna fix that

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