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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

#871

Post by twentydollars »

Reelin wrote: post #856
dTal wrote: post #815

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone has access to the modern equivalent of a printing press. Anyone can buy a domain name and a VPS and "print" as many leaflets as they want. Publishing on YouTube is more like, well, publishing. There's a middleman. They own their own press, they have a reputation and an audience, they bring the eyeballs, they make the money and they give you a cut. It has never been censorship for a publisher to decline to pu…

YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc (and to a lesser extent search engines) are the modern equivalent of the printing press in terms of the effect they've had on how we communicate. A domain and VPS are simply not a viable substitute for access to mainstream social networks; to claim otherwise is disingenuous. They are not at all similar to publishing. There's no editor. There's no approval process for the typica…

> A domain and VPS are simply not a viable substitute for access to mainstream social networks; to claim otherwise is disingenuous.

Nobody is claiming this. That's the whole idea of the "Freedom of reach" thing...

Why should you be entitled to post lies on Youtube?

There are dozens of competing platforms that will let you post these things, you actually don't even have to start your own...

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

#872

Post by twentydollars »

Reelin wrote: post #705
dorkwood wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Don't be ridiculous. There are thousands of competing communications providers. If you want to share content that harms society or harms the platforms themselves then you might just have to do it outside of Facebook or Twitter.

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

#873

Post by twentydollars »

gnusty_gnurc wrote: post #851
twentydollars wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMHO you're not interested in free speech unless you're willing to defend speech you find repugnant. Defending speech I find repugnant is not the same thing as defending a nonexistent right to post lies on Youtube. Host the lies on your own website. Create flyers and pass them out. Talk to people in public settings. Write to the newspaper (they might not post your lies, but you're free to try to get them). Hold con…

The whole point is the sanctimonious, heavy-handed nature of a platform that otherwise likes to act like they're concerned about the public good. I recognize they have a right to do it, but I have a right to make noise about it and criticize them. We got so many pop-ups, accounts suspended, etc. around the Hunter Biden stuff, and what do you know - it turns out there was substance to the story. This never happened ar…

> I recognize they have a right to do it, but I have a right to make noise about it and criticize them.

Nobody suggested otherwise, and your statement that "you're not interested in free speech unless you're willing to defend speech you find repugnant" is clearly a sidestep. You can support free speech without supporting the nonexistent (and unrelated) right to post lies on Youtube.

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

#874

Post by rbanffy »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #822
rbanffy wrote: post #807

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right to say something is not to be confused with the right to be paid to say something. In fact, monetization creates a perverse incentive to prioritize financial gain over informing the public.

So, the central point (or one of them, at least) of Manufacturing Consent is that news/media organisations are shaped by what advertisers desire, such that the reporting is mostly friendly to a capitalistic worldview. This is 100% analogous to what Google are doing with respect to demonetising youtube videos, and troubling for exactly the same reasons.

Isn't it troubling that the videos are not created to inform, but to keep the audience paying for them?

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

#875

Post by SamReidHughes »

titanomachy wrote: post #863
SamReidHughes wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Only if they did so or were likely to do so right away.

I think the standard could change, considering that when that standard was set, such advocacy couldn't be effectively spread without a trail of publishers and broadcasters that would be vulnerable to direct retaliatory violence.

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

#876

Post by read_if_gay_ »

MrMan wrote: post #832
read_if_gay_ wrote: post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People who want to shoot me for being "liberal" are not as good as people who don't want to shoot me

I don’t think I understand. Are you basically saying that all Republicans literally want to kill you?

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

#877

Post by read_if_gay_ »

hackyhacky wrote: post #810
read_if_gay_ wrote: post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not all bad actors are equally bad. Hillary wasn't perfect. People didn't like her, and we got Trump. The Weimar Republic was corrupt and ineffective. The Third Reich was corrupt and extremely effective. Democracy is the history of choosing the least bad. If you consider all bads to be the same, you are not a responsible voter.

> Democracy is the history of choosing the least bad.

Ok, so bothsidesism is justified since you acknowledge both sides are bad?

> If you consider all bads to be the same, you are not a responsible voter.

It’s a strawman to claim both sides are exactly the same level of bad. That’s not what GP was saying.

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

#878

Post by andrewprock »

tim333 wrote: post #804
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 a free market. YouTube can host videos it wants to or not. Likewise you can get a $5 server and host what videos you want to or not. That's different from "decide what information is deemed acceptable to know."

It's not just different, it's very different.

The weirdest thing about this whole discussion is the number of people that want to impose more regulation on private entities, but who are trying to couch this as some kind of anti-censorship crusade.

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

#879

Post by jagannathtech »

michaelmrose wrote: post #859
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.

Half of people have a below average IQ. More like 65% of older adults are both below average thinkers and above average voters. Why would you think skepticism would be a suitable response to misinformation? The only mathematically viable way to combat such misinformation is to disenfranchise people too stupid to be in charge of anything that effects other people's lives.

Calm down there stalin

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

#880

Post by tekknik »

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. Do you even know where that word came from? The irony is almost overwhelming. But I digress...

Many on HN are the ones implementing these features, therefore have a bit of power over the rest of us. Further, judging from cancel culture, the left seems to want to force their opinions on others that have different ones. So this makes pretty clear sense to me.

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