Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

taibbi.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

771–780 of 981 posts

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

#771

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

nickysielicki wrote: post #659
rayiner wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Demonetization is not censorship, imho. They support YouTube through their advertisers, and their advertisers don't want to be affiliated with guns. It makes sense that they won't pay you for videos that they can't monetize -- they're just passing on the loss to the video producer. Beyond demonetization, YouTube did categorically ban videos demonstrating how to install and/or fabricate an autosear. In practice, this…

If you think that this isn't censorship, then I strongly encourage you to read Manufacturing Consent.

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

#772

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

kenneth wrote: post #688
ipython wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it that we have to ignore nuances in these arguments? We never had unrestricted free speech in this country. There is a whole Wikipedia article about it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_ex... In addition other democratic states have strict limits on free speech such as Singapore: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_14_of_the_Constituti... After all even “democracy” is nuanced here…

I wouldn't call Singapore a democracy. It's an authoritarian one-party state that happens to hold elections. These elections are always won by the same party. The democracy index rates Singapore at 6.02/10. About 0.03 away from being a "hybrid regime" and currently rated a "flawed democracy." It's ranked as worse than places such as Ukraine (currently in a civil war), Thailand (run by a military dictatorship), etc. H…

Singapore is essentially an extremely well-run, technocratic police state.

Lovely place, but I definitely wouldn't want to live there.

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

#773

Post by CuriouslyC »

dredmorbius wrote: post #755
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.

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 rea…

People have been killing each other and themselves for the supremacy of fairy tales since the beginning of time, but please tell me how getting someone to believe a conspiracy theory and vote "badly" is somehow a society-breaking new invention.

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

#774

Post by forest_dweller »

int_19h wrote: post #278
forest_dweller wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make that sound like a bad thing? There are some that believe (as I do) that democracy will leads to oligarchy. But then again I've been reading a lot of Rothbard recently. https://www.britannica.com/topic/iron-law-of-oligarchy As for populism in a democratic system is a symptom of politicians/political parties not being seen by their citizens to be taking actions in regards to thorny subjects such as immigration…

Rothbard ended up as extreme paleocon, and his adherents such as Hans-Hermann Hoppe developed his line of thinking to its logical conclusion: "In a covenant concluded among proprietor and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property, no such thing as a right to free (unlimited) speech exists, not even to unlimited speech on one's own tenant-property. One may say innumerable things and promot…

These conversations always go like this. It becomes tedious.

1) I don't care what Rothbard became in the end. It is completely irrelevant. Rothbard's critique of the state is an interesting perspective and some of them seem particularly apt when the leviathan of government is eroding people's rights because of COVID.

2) As for the Hoppe quote. The "neo-reactionary" you mention can be counted on one hand. The activist left (which is why that quote is on wikipedia in the first place) will take quotes and call someone alt-right based on one spicy paragraph in a book (which is exactly the trick you've tried here and I am not that naive to fall for it).

I haven't read "Democracy the God that failed" (yet) and I will decide for myself once I've read the book. I very much doubt it is a new feudalism and I very much doubt you've read the book either.

From watching him speaking. Hoppe's construction seems to be that given the choice between King and a Politician, a King would be better. His rationale for this is sound IMO. The most important part of it (for me) is a King will care about his legacy and a politician typically won't.

My own feelings is that I've never thought that democracy is effective or desirable. I've found the act of voting to be completely pointless due to the fact I have nobody to vote for in the UK that represents my interests of decreasing the state.

The only time when voting is effectives is during referendums when it is a single issue. Even then it isn't effective The UK's politicians and press did everything they could to deny the referedum result (and are still doing so btw).

I have heard arguments that the whole idea of democracy itself has been perverted during the enlightenment of those putting a Christian/Individualist perspective on Athenian ideas. But I won't pretend to know the argument well enough to have any opinion either way on it.

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

#775

Post by ldng »

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…

It always existed and education is a great way to treat it. Banning certainly is easier.

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

#776

Post by im3w1l »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #258
travisoneill1 wrote: post #193

Thank god for all of the people at Youtube working on censoring misinformation. They are so much smarter than me and obviously better than me at figuring out what is true and what isn't! And isn't it great that they always act selflessly in favor of the truth and never in the narrow interest of Google? I don't know what I would do if I didn't have them there to protect me from the dangerous misinformation. I am so he…

I'll take the bait in the spirit of casual friday night internet debating and recognizing your tone as purely sarcastic. I would ask then... What if, there was in fact an organization comprised of people smarter than you and obviously better than you at figuring out what is true or not - and I would go further - one that can tell you how to make better/more optimal decisions than you would have made without them? Wou…

Salesmen have spent much more time learning about the products they sell than I do. Should I trust them completely and buy what they tell me to?

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

#777

Post by Reelin »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #767
Reelin wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, in the age of ML it more or less does. You wire up the model, specify the metrics to optimize for, and then feed it lots of data. The algorithm figures out the details of how to achieve the specified goal on it's own. Have a look at ( https://cs.stanford.edu/people/karpathy/convnetjs ).

Who chooses the model, metrics and data?

I suspect you're being rhetorical, but the algorithm and specific metrics to use are selected by the developer. The data is entirely user generated - it's the result of collecting the metrics over some period of time. The trained model is the result of feeding the collected data into the chosen algorithm.

The point is that the algorithm is, for all practical purposes, tuning itself. The developer has essentially selected a black box to feed the data into, told it what to optimize for, and given it the ability to wiggle a bunch of unlabeled knobs. Which knobs it should tweak and in precisely what way is never specified by the developer. Instead of "show the following things to the following users", the developer just says "maximize number of videos viewed per visit" and the algorithm tweaks whatever parameters have been made available to it until it finds something that works.

Unfortunately, "something that works" is often not what we might have liked. ML is a bit like a Djinn, fulfilling wishes in an unpredictable and borderline malicious manner.

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

#778

Post by pii »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #750
hackyhacky wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the kinds of "both-sides-ism" that gives centrists a bad reputation. You're basically saying: "everyone uses media to achieve their goals, therefore all sides are equally bad." No. Using misinformation to intentionally disrupt a democratic election is demonstrably dangerous to society. Say what you will about the "establishment," but traditional media still bear some semblance of the truth. Now we're seeing t…

I don’t like the word bothsidesism because it implies that in reality only one side is the bad actor. That is a massive implication considering how casually it’s thrown around. Moreover, it’s used like an accusation. Accusing people of acknowledging that things probably aren’t black and white . Full on groupthink.

Black and white ;)

It's more like 80% / 20%. The disparity is huge, documented, and factual.

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

#779

Post by mrighele »

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 find it really disconcerting how many people on Hacker News want a corporate entity to decide what information is deemed acceptable to know.

It's up to a corporate entity to decide what should be in its platform though. The issue in the case of Youtube (and other social platform) is that there are a few players that get much of the cake, so their decisions have wide effect. It is this last point that should be addressed in my opinion

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

#780

Post by rbanffy »

endominus wrote: post #694
hackyhacky wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> First, do you think it is only your outgroup (Fox News, Republican politicians, etc) that would use misinformation?

Can you point to any evidence anyone on the Democratic side of the fence has questioned the legitimacy of the last election even though control of the Senate may still easily fall into the hands of the group that prevented legal court nominations by an elected president while, under the very same conditions, rushed through the nomination to a SCOTUS seat of a judge that has barely three years of experience in that function?

Post reply on HN