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

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

#861

Post by michaelmrose » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:19 PM UTC

My7thAccount wrote: post #747

JellyBeanThief wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One leaves control of speech up to the individual speaker while the other leaves it in the hands of an Oligarchy of people who think they are know better than everyone else because they have more money. There's a degree of arrogance behind the thinking, "I'm smart enough to discern fact from fiction but those less intelligent than I must need my help or else they might believe a falsehood"

Everyone ought to be allowed to speak but networks ought to shut down organized campaigns to spread disinformation and networks that exist purely to spread hate and misinformation ought to be challenged by the people lied about on such platforms. Its not an ideal solution but none is probably possible to implement or live through.

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

#862

Post by dragontamer » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:23 PM UTC

Talanes wrote: post #854

dragontamer wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And yet the solution to a negative can still itself be the cause of equal or greater negatives. Cracking down on anti-election rhetoric is an obvious net positive, and needs no further explanation. > Because the Government cracking down on speech, even obvious lies, will erode some people's trust in the system as well. Too late for that. Dozens of millions of Americans have lost faith in the 2020 election. The only…

>Cracking down on anti-election rhetoric is an obvious net positive, and needs no further explanation. Yes, it does. Cracking down on speech would further enrage all those people, while also pissing off a great deal more. I think riots are a more likely outcome of your solution than anything positive.

And you are just happy to assert "riots" and leave the discussion off at that?

I mean, I can say "boogieman" too and leave the discussion, pretending to have made a point. It will encourage socialism, or it will destroy freedom, or it will encourage censorship! (Etc. Etc). Come on, just stating a boogieman doesn't help anyone's point of view.

No offense to you personally, but a one sentence assertion is not an argument I'll take seriously. Your contribution to this discussion so far has been less than mine. How about you elaborate your points a bit more?

------

But whatever, I'll mirror you, so you see how stupid this gets if you just do one sentence assertions of boogiemen.

Your point of view will destroy democracy.

Ball is in your court now. Figure out a way to elevate the discussion. I'm not doing the heavy lifting unless I see some work from you as well.

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

#863

Post by titanomachy » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 10:31 PM UTC

SamReidHughes wrote: post #568

titanomachy wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the United States doesn't have laws against hate speech Interesting, thanks for enlightening me! Canada does have laws against hate speech and I'd mistakenly thought the US did as well. In any case, speech intended to incite lawbreaking, whether a hate crime or otherwise, is not protected under the first amendment. If you tell your Twitter followers to go burn down all the Jewish-owned business or whatever, and the…

> In any case, speech intended to incite lawbreaking, The standard is "imminent lawless action." You can in fact advocate lawbreaking, including violent lawbreaking (e.g. people advocating punching all Nazis are protected).

If a bunch of people went out and punched Nazis because you said to, then that meets the standard, right?

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

#864

Post by thu2111 » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 11:01 PM UTC

bachmeier wrote: post #759

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…

The reality is if YouTube was committed to free speech this wouldn't even come up at all. People would 'brand' YouTube this way about as much as they do Chrome for letting you browse websites claiming the election was stolen, or web search for letting you find it, or your ISP for letting you download the HTML. Nobody would give a crap, they'd just argue about other platforms where the owners were engaging in censorship.

Political censorship isn't just morally wrong, it's bad for business and bad for your brand too. The moment you allow that camel to put its nose under the tent, you're inviting in a whole world of pain. Suddenly every zealot out there will be demanding you silence the people who disagree with them, because they know that maybe if they make enough noise you will. They'll attack your brand hard because they know if they do you might cave. A hard core libertarian "everyone is served on principle" attitude keeps the fighting at bay because people know it's not worth putting in the energy.

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

#865

Post by thu2111 » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 11:12 PM UTC

pensatoio wrote: post #165

deeviant wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's patently not, and that's the parent comment's point. Free speech is highly restricted in the United Kingdom.

It's not highly restricted. It's a bit more restricted than in the USA and there are plenty of brits that think that's dumb, meaningless and just creates drama whilst simultaneously distracting the police from solving actual crimes.

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

#866

Post by nomel » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 11:19 PM UTC

bmn__ wrote: post #852

nomel wrote: post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cer…

> harden these electronic voting machines Make that voting computers , and abolish . If even HN readers can't get this right, there is no hope of electoral reform in the USA to raise it to an acceptable democratic level: ODIHR election observers must not be blocked anymore.¹ Elections are to be held on a Sunday to not disenfranchise the working population. Votes are always counted and tallied manually.² Postal votes…

> Make that voting computers, and abolish.

I understand this perspective, and mostly agree, but I think that having a deep level of verification, traceability, and limits could really help with trust. I don't think that having a box of votes disappear into a, from our perspective, somewhat mysteries process filled with rooms full of volunteers counting things in relative secrecy, could provide as much confidence in the process. I'm not sure how that could be achieved without some digital system. Maybe a required mix of physical and digital systems?

For any system, I think some form of adversarial counting is required to know that someone "on your side" had a chance to count your vote. This could be implemented by having each party of interest select the counters, along with an "unbiased" automated system/digital results. The votes could be randomized between them. Some portion is then feed back through to help catch if any of the intentionally biased counters tried to tilt the system, to keep everyone honest. Regardless of the system, I think the minimum requirements for the counting process should be enough to obtain some level of trust, and be at a federal level, since we all have to live with the results.

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

#867

Post by thu2111 » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 11:24 PM UTC

phailhaus wrote: post #188

Though I too am surprised that YouTube is setting such a precedent for fine-grained moderation, we cannot pretend as if this is an "infringement of our rights." YouTube is running a for-profit website, you don't have the "right" to a spot on their platform. YouTube has made the careful calculation that the people who are turned off by this ban are far outweighed by public support, and will reduce their contribution t…

I really doubt there's any careful calculation involved with this. YouTube is run by Susan Wojcicki who's a woman at Google and thus untouchable. She's repeatedly imposed her own left wing views on it despite this obviously attracting severe and negative attention from the ruling parties at the time, despite there being no obvious business case for it and despite many of her mandates making no sense and being unenforceable. "Anything that disagrees with the WHO" was an especially idiotic one because the WHO routinely disagrees with itself.

Basically, the reason this thread is about YouTube and not Google is because Google now has weak and basically absent CEO leadership, so it's split into fiefdoms where different moral standards apply. Chrome is content neutral, Gmail too, Android mostly but a bit less so and YouTube is flat out "if you aren't like Ms Wojcicki you're immoral and should be banned". A strong CEO would sort it out so things are at least consistent but Pichai is useless, he seems to spend his time doing whatever he thinks will get him shouted at the least.

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

#868

Post by twentydollars » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 11:33 PM UTC

Reelin wrote: post #698

twentydollars wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “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.

So newspapers should be compelled to print every letter they receive?

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

#869

Post by lliamander » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 11:34 PM UTC

hackyhacky wrote: post #857

lliamander wrote: post #845

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you don't believe it's a weapon, you're wrong. If you don't believe weaponized misinformation is dangerous, look at the regimes it's toppled. And if you think the "American spirit," or somesuch nonsense, makes us immune, I hope we won't have to find out. I don't see anyone here arguing those points, so I think this is a bit of a strawman. > It's not about banning disagreement. It's not even about opinions. It's…

They are definitely separable, based on intent. The marketplace of ideas works only insofar as everyone involved operates with good faith. Weaponized misinformation is the opposite of that: expressing what appears to be an opinion, but is actually a manipulation tactic. Look in particular for arguments that appeal to emotion (especially anger), nationalism, and in-group/out-group. The fascists understood, and still u…

> They are definitely separable, based on intent.

That is frankly naive. Many earnest people repeat dangerous lies, and wicked people are more that willing to use the truth, especially if it is an uncomfortable truth that is important but overlooked by polite society.

> If you can't tell the difference between a genuine opinion and a misinformation tactic, you are ill prepared to participate in today's media environment.

On the contrary, I can do a much better job at the scale I operate at than YouTube can do at the scale it operates at.

Furthermore, I take the very liberal view that I have both the right and the responsibility to make up my own mind about others' speech. I hold in low regard those who try to take that from me.

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

#870

Post by twentydollars » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 11:42 PM UTC

Reelin wrote: post #704

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.

> 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…

It's not a non sequitur. Freedom of speech is not the same thing as a (nonexistent) right to post whatever you want on a private platform regardless of the consequences for others or for the platform itself.

I never said it's not censorship. You can post links on a number of competing services (or start your own), therefore statements like

“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.”

are the real non sequiturs.