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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

#751

Post by scoopertrooper »

stale2002 wrote: post #712
scoopertrooper wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ok, and regardless of that, anonymity still helps people avoid consequences for their speech. Which is a good thing, given that the government has in the past done things like that. Perhaps, but there is now firm legal precedent that greatly limits their ability to do it again. > None of this stuff is exclusive. Feel free to try and stop government consequences some other way. But regardless of that, anonymity stil…

> but there is now firm legal precedent that greatly limits their ability to do it again. There are also the situations of highly targeted minorities that would now be unable to protect themselves, because you've made anonymity illegal. These people really do need anonymity to protect themselves. And no amount of laws can protect someone from a hate mob attacking them, that doesn't care about the consequences. One of…

> There are also the situations of highly targeted minorities that would now be unable to protect themselves because you've made anonymity illegal. These people really do need anonymity to protect themselves.

To reiterate, I was specifically talking about circumstances where people broadcast to mass audiences. If people of a certain minority want to congregate together in a private space to discuss things important to them as though they would in their own house, then they should have every right to do so in private.

> And no amount of laws can protect someone from a hate mob attacking them, that doesn't care about the consequences. One of the only ways for many of these people to protect themselves, is to be anonymous.

I don't know what world you live in, but I haven't seen a hate mob running down my street for a while.

> Actually, it is possible with basically no amount of tech savviness. All you have to do is click the create new account button, on twitter, and you have just been given a pretty large amount of anonymity.

> In order to have your twitter account de-anonymized, the government has to take pretty extreme actions, such as court orders

That won't offer you much protection at all from the government. So you seem to have a lot of trust in warrants being issued justly, but also a great fear that the government will turn against you.

It's not that hard to get a court order if the government has probable cause that you've committed a crime. There have been 55,000 warrants for US Facebook accounts since the start of 2020. This is not including national security requests, which Facebook is not legally allowed to disclose.

https://transparency.facebook.com/government-data-requests/c...

> Also, the original point that I was countering was this "pseudo-anonymous political discourse on open mainstream mass-broadcast social media".

> So I am talking about specifically why anonymity, in the form of having the ability to do what people do now, which is create anonymous twitter accounts, and engage in political discourse.

I'm glad we're back on the same page, so would you say that the culture of anonymous political discourse on social media has resulted a constructive political discourse? Is there nothing you'd change about it?

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

#752

Post by nomel »

hackyhacky wrote: post #699
cmdshiftf4 wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Then why base it on faith? Make it impossible to vote multiple times/places, or as someone else. Invalidate registration [6] for , and immediately flag when, a dead person tries to vote. Make it so you can instantaneously see that your vote was entered and confirm it to help with the anomaly detection. I think this is what everyone wants, and I think it would appease many worries. Unfortunately, this would almost certainly require voter ID, which has mixed popularity, and a reporting system, which requires tech, which the governments lowest bidder mentality appears to be wholly incapable of.

Additionally, harden these electronic voting machines, which have had constant press about their vulnerable for the last two decades [1][2][3][4]. Open source the software stack. Even simple, human, steps like each person puts a provided penny into the machine, so counts can be correlated, would be an improvement and add a real world aspect that people could personally understand, over the counter in memory that has no traceability.

The thing that I find most frustrating part about all of this is the perspective. Rather than silencing talk about fraud, hoping it will go away, we should tackle the reality of it and ask why people distrust the voting system, and find real world solutions, to increase that trust. The fact that every election before this one ended with sensational headlines of examples of voter fraud, but this year it's journalistic silence and social taboo, probably doesn't help (as insignificant as those previous stories were).

[1] 2018: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-vulnerabiliti...

[2] 2015: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/meet-the-e-votin...

[3] 2010: https://www.texastribune.org/2010/10/22/e-voting-suit-reveal...

[4] 2004: https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/29/technology/security-poor-...

[5] https://www.city-journal.org/html/how-steal-election-12824.h...

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

#753

Post by inglor_cz »

Daishiman wrote: post #282
int_19h wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, I think this goes to the root of the matter. Can you trust people or not? That's a fundamental question that decides whether you can have real democracy, or only a sham. Because any kind of democracy where people are only allowed to make "safe" choices, decided on by someone else (e.g. the censors), is a sham. And that's true even if the censors themselves are directly or indirectly democratically ap…

I'm sorry but trust isn't a binary value. I trust people in my life to be reliable and trustworthy to a certain extent and in certain areas. I don't trust my party-animal buddies to be on time for breakfast a 8 AM, and I don't trust my stressed out workaholic friend to just chill on a Friday afternoon. You cannot simplify trust to a single variable; you have to go case by case. And trust in the masses is partial; fin…

But at the end of the day either you give everyone a vote or you don't.

A system where the most trusted people had 10 votes and least trusted people had 0.1 vote might make sense in a society of nerds voting on a software project, but not in general political application.

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

#754

Post by Reelin »

tbatchelli wrote: post #233
cousin_it wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I see the argument made that people are hackable by lies, therefore censorship is needed as an antidote. But I don't buy it, because 1) lying is equally available to all, but censorship is available only to the powerful 2) the powerful are as flawed as anyone else, except with power 3) historically the powerful who dabbled in censorship have also lied a lot, and censorship has helped them lie more easily. S…

I was just covering one side of the equation. I don't like censorship, and as they say: you should legislate as if your opponent is the one that will apply the law. You can apply censorship to take care of one "good" reason, but eventually censorship will be applied for a "bad" reason. What I wanted to focus on is that it is not true that free speech is the solution to all democratic problems, it's not an absolute go…

> We limit speech already, you can't advocate for the killing of other people, races, etc...

Actually, not that I support such behavior but (at least in the US) you can generally advocate for it. People usually don't (thankfully) so I don't have any examples immediately to hand, but my understanding is that the legal test is "imminent lawless action". (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio)

> free speech is the solution to all democratic problems, it's not an absolute good

Rather than an absolute good, I would argue that it ought to be viewed as an absolute right. I would also argue that, whether used for good or ill, free political speech is a functional necessity of any democracy. (Necessary but not sufficient and all that.)

> in a way censorship might be already happening. In this case non-arousing messages are being suppressed

Agreed, but it's a separate issue and I've no idea what anyone is actually supposed to do about it.

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

#755

Post by dredmorbius »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #613
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…

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.

Manufacturing an argument the other party didn't make, ("You are assuming that the regular media is the default, the truth"), and choosing to rebut that strawman then their actual key point ("It's about combating weaponized misinformation"), is disengenuous in the extreme.

The weapons now are bigger, faster, have greater reach, higher fidelity, multimedia appeal, vastly more intelligence and data, can be tuned in realtime, and delivered with precisionnto higly selected audiences completely under the public radar.

All of which "Weaponized misinformation has existed as long as human speech has existed" utterly ignores.

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

#756

Post by inglor_cz »

deeviant wrote: post #155
swiley wrote: post #2

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. Democracy and free speech are intrinsically linked.

> Democracy and free speech are intrinsically linked. Not really. UK has far more limits on speech than the US but is just as much of a Democracy as the US. "Free" speech has be weaponized in the internet age. It is a cancer that is actively destroying democracy.

"Democracy and free speech are intrinsically linked."

Yes, really, because an important part of the democratic process is that the opposition can express their ideas, criticism and disagreement without fearing fines or prison.

Yes, in the UK, this verbal playing field is narrower than in the US, but still fairly wide. Corbynistas could advocate for nationalization and open borders without being jumped on by uniformed thugs.

Look to places like Russia and Turkey to see a severely constricted field, with the opposition risking their freedom by doubting the Dear Leader.

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

#757

Post by read_if_gay_ »

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).

What happens next is your platform either gets zero traction, or it gets ridiculed as alt-right conspiracy theorist shithole, which is basically a self fulfilling prophecy.

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

#758

Post by inglor_cz »

JPKab wrote: post #288
Daishiman wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So when a lawyer or doctor is stripped of their professional license because they become professional bullshit peddlers, does that constitute silencing people or saving lives and the integrity of the justice system? I don't have time to listen to million bullshit peddlers with an agenda.

Then don't listen to them, the same way the rest do. Doesn't mean you should get to silence them. A bullshit peddler named Dr. Atkins was the only guy in the 90's saying that eggs were good for you. The rest of the establishment physicians said eggs were bad for you, guacamole was bad for you, all fat was bad, eat more pasta. They were all wrong, Atkins was right (when it comes to eggs.) But if Youtube had existed, p…

This is a good example, with eggs and Atkins.

There is a lot of things we do not know, even on seemingly simple topics such as nutrition.

Just watch the "calorie is a calorie" crowd crashing with "sugar is chronic toxin" crowd. Not surprisingly, Coca-Cola pushes the former view. And in a curated YouTube world, who is going to get removed for spreading misinformation?

Not Coca-Cola, they are too rich for that.

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

#759

Post by bachmeier »

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…

Your argument is unlikely to have anything to do with the reason for YouTube's decision. They're thinking about their brand. Do they want to be branded as the company that lets anyone post videos about the election being stolen without any evidence? They get to choose between "yes" and "no" and the choices lead to very different brands.

The same point comes up again and again when porn is removed from [website]. "How dare they remove porn! I don't see anything wrong with it!" Sometimes it's even looking down their noses at the obviously primitive American culture that is the problem. Of course porn won't disappear from the world, and of course people that like porn will be disappointed, but it won't be that company's brand.

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

#760

Post by samizdis »

xg15 wrote: post #727
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.

Sorry, you are in fact arguing for that. But that won't work. It's well-known that misinformation propaganda works even if people know it's propaganda . People won't magically build up some kind of immunity and suddenly trust the scientific method - they will simply grow sceptical of all kinds of news sources and retreat further into their own bubble. If employed by a state, this is often the goal of that propaganda.

> ... they will simply grow sceptical of all kinds of news sources and retreat further into their own bubble.

This is a central theme of the book This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality by Peter Pomerantsev, which I found thought-provoking.

I've just been looking for a decent review. This is half-decent:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/10/this-is-not-pr...

As is this:

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2019/10/13/bo...

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