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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

#881

Post by Reelin »

twentydollars wrote: post #870
Reelin wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Freedom of speech is not the same thing as a (nonexistent) right to post whatever you want on a private platform

Again with a non sequitur - I never claimed that it was. I said:

> > Censorship reduces freedom to speak. That statement remains true whether or not the speech happens to be legally protected

It's really hard to have a good faith discussion about the pros and cons of a nuanced issue when one of the parties repeatedly fails to make good faith interpretations of claims which appear to challenge their worldview.

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

#882

Post by Reelin »

twentydollars wrote: post #871
Reelin wrote: post #856

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> Nobody is claiming this.

The person I responded to did, in fact, directly imply this. Recall that I had compared the impact of modern mainstream social media to that of the printing press historically. Directly ignoring my central point clearly places your comment in bad faith.

"Freedom of reach" is nothing more than a thinly veiled attack on (cultural, not legal) freedom of speech (and liberalism more generally) for the reasons I've already articulated in this and nearby threads.

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

#883

Post by _kbh_ »

abacadaba wrote: post #745
_kbh_ wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/04/facebook-p... There you go.

Ya but that debunking has been debunked https://thefederalist.com/2020/12/07/no-the-georgia-vote-cou... Partisan source? Maybe. But unfortunately the fact checkers have lost all credibility over the last few months by debunking things like, in the context of this article, hunter's laptop.

The federalist itself has spread a lot fake news over the years so you may want a better source to debunk the republicans in the state who literally ran the election who are saying it wasn't fraudulent.

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

#884

Post by Reelin »

twentydollars wrote: post #868
Reelin wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

No. Those are the very definition of publishers, not communications providers masquerading as publishers when it's politically convenient for them (recall the dance around Section 230 protections).

If a local newspaper ever somehow became the central point of communication for a significant fraction of the population, posting nearly everything they received by default with very little to no curation, then it would be reasonable to reexamine the expectations placed upon them by society.

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

#885

Post by togs »

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…

China bans topics all the time, and they're on a trajectory to become the strongest nation in the world.

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

#886

Post by hackyhacky »

thu2111 wrote: post #860
xg15 wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Basically everyone trusts the scientific method. However, there are a lot of people who don't trust certain types of 'scientists' because they've observed that those people don't seem to use the scientific method, even though they claim they do. That's a very reasonable and correct form of skepticism. The lazy assumption that anyone who claims to be scientific actually is has been exploited by demagogues throughout h…

The most prominent examples of modern anti-science in the US, such as in climate change, abortion, and epidemiology, do not find their roots in well-justified scepticism of particular scientists. Climate deniers don't care what science says, or how reliable peer-reviewed journals, and have no interest in the scientific method: they base their opposition in ideological grounds: "I don't believe climate change to be true, therefore anyone who does is a liar." They've made their decision because they have financial (or religious, or other) interests that make the truth uncomfortable for them. Why bother trying to understand the truth when you can just deny it?

You can't argue rationally with someone like that. They aren't skeptics, they're devout believers.

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

#888

Post by aww_dang »

DangitBobby wrote: post #724
aww_dang wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Weaponized misinformation has existed as long as human speech has existed Agreed. The poster above invokes the special pleading fallacy. >What is new is the democratization of it, hence the establishment’s hostility. There's a historical precedent for this in creation of moveable type printing presses.

You have invoked the fallacy fallacy. Unfortunately, special pleading is only a fallacy if something isn't actually different from the thing it's being compared to. So I disagree fundamentally that it's special pleading. The hostility is not just from establishment, it's from normal people like me, GP, and millions of other Americans that feel like we're taking crazy pills because of all the stupid shit people now in…

"Weaponized information" can mean everything from partisan hyperbole to observations that don't mesh with one's biases.

Addicts everywhere repeat the phrase, "this time is different". What makes it special pleading is the lack of evidence or even a reasoned argument supporting this assertion.

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

#889

Post by togs »

thorough wrote: post #342
charonn0 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying it's not censorship at all. Being denied by your preferred publisher is not the same as being prevented from publishing.

Right. The actor matters a huge amount. We all agree on that. But if you run a forum and say you will not allow any view to be expressed therein that you don't agree with, you aren't in fact "allowing people to make up their own minds"---unless by "allowing people" you just mean not actively harming them for expressing views in other places, or something equally wild. Another way of saying it is that no one would say…

> But if you run a forum and say you will not allow any view to be expressed therein that you don't agree with, you aren't in fact "allowing people to make up their own minds"

I think you're missing their argument. YouTube censoring doesn't prevent information from being published elsewhere.

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

#890

Post by EricE »

hackyhacky wrote: post #618
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.

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…

"traditional media still bear some semblance of the truth."

Seriously? Four years of "RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA" and it turns out that the same people knew before they started peddling that narrative that it was (and still is) at its core a smear campaign cooked up by the Clintons.

Hunter Biden - completely buried before the election, now all of the sudden that the election is over the media is "breaking" this important story?

I could go on but I'm sure if it didn't fit your preconceived notions of what the "truth" is you'd be too busy drawing your lines.

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