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

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

#941

Post by forgingahead » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 2:34 AM UTC

matt_kantor wrote: post #816

XorNot wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're clearly not actually following the proceedings of any of this anyway, so what difference would it make? Testimony has been broadcast, court rulings are public, the reasoning and legal procedure is all happening in the open. You're demanding transparency because it suits whatever narrative you have in your head, yet demonstrating you won't put any effort into following the process which is already public.

To make it easy, here's a summary of the cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-election_lawsuits_related... Be sure to click the links for each case to get details, and from there most of the references are the actual court documents.

Thanks for the link. This seems to prove the point though? The vast majority of official cases were dismissed on procedural issues (standing, filing in the "wrong" court, etc etc). You'll need to click through to each of the sources of why each case was dismissed, but the majority of linked cases seem like no decision was made on the facts presented, if they were allowed to be presented to begin with.

So if a crime is committed, but a judge refuses to hear it, did the crime not happen?

A dismissed case means that a lawsuit is closed with no finding of guilt and no conviction for the defendant in a criminal case by a court of law. Even though the defendant was not convicted, a dismissed case does not prove that the defendant is factually innocent for the crime for which he or she was arrested.[0]

https://www.recordgone.com/articles/definition-of-a-dismisse...

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

#942

Post by DangitBobby » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 8:16 AM UTC

aww_dang wrote: post #913

DangitBobby wrote: post #901

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I will not pretend that I am the one to make a good case for it. I'm not going to spend a lot of time trying to debate you about it. I never said it was equivalent to violence. However, if it leads to violence, speech is absolutely dangerous. See murder cases where people are convinced to kill others under false pretenses. Or they are just talked into doing it by a charismatic individual. This sort of speech is…

The bar has been lowered for entry. The bar has continued to lower throughout history. To advance this point, you would need to establish a demarcation point where "this time is different". Above you suggest that credentialed gatekeepers somehow did a better job of protecting the public from misinformation which results in dangerous violence. A cursory examination of history debunks this. The Pulitzer prize (a covete…

You argue that the scale of the problem does not make it different ("more of the same"). I disagree. I could not draw you a line in a gradient of white to black to demonstrate exactly where light-grey becomes dark-grey. That does not mean that there is no distinction between the two hues or that it cannot be demonstrated.

Also, you keep talking about equating it to violence, which I never said.

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

#943

Post by thu2111 » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 10:16 AM UTC

xg15 wrote: post #932

thu2111 wrote: post #929

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has rationally argued against epidemiology based on finding a constant stream of severe errors in their papers, I can assure you that epidemiology is almost entirely pseudo-scientific. I don't think I've ever encountered a field as disastrous as this one (though I've never really looked at climatology). Epidemiology has so many massive cultural and methodological issues you could write an entire book a…

> if they can get a more dramatic paper by using data that's 8 months old and based on a sample size of 7 people when they could use data published last week and which has a sample size of hundreds of thousands, they'll happily pick the former every time. Do you have a particular example of this?

Heck more than one. Try "Determining the optimal strategy for reopening schools, the impact of test and trace interventions, and the risk of occurrence of a second COVID-19 epidemic wave in the UK: a modelling study"

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4...

Published August. Based on the Covasim model, paper describing it here:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.10.20097469v...

The model takes its IFR data from Verity et al (see table 2), which is about 4x too high because it's taken from Wuhan evacuee data in January. The Verity paper that calculated this had access to a bigger and better dataset, the Diamond Princess cruise ship which they acknowledged they had looked at, and which yielded a lower IFR, but they didn't use it:

https://www.nicholaslewis.org/covid-19-updated-data-implies-...

"The Verity et al. CFR estimates were derived primarily from Chinese data, which reflected non-random testing ... When Verity et al. was prepared, the final death toll was not known. The data available only ran to 5 March 2020, at which point 7 passengers had died."

There's an analysis of the school re-opening paper that explains all this here. It also claims the paper used values for k (over-dispersion) from February, when there were hardly any cases on which to calculate that: https://lockdownsceptics.org/schools-paper/

Here's another paper that used an IFR of 1% in May:

https://www.nicholaslewis.org/did-lockdowns-really-save-3-mi...

And another paper that assumed a 1% IFR in June:

https://github.com/ptti/ptti/blob/master/docs/PTTI-Covid-19-...

Analysis: https://lockdownsceptics.org/new-ucl-paper-on-contact-tracin...

That one didn't even bother to give a citation for its source, just assumed a value that was 4x too high.

Here are some current, reasonably up to date and sourced IFR estimating papers: https://swprs.org/studies-on-covid-19-lethality/

Epidemiologists know IFR rates fall over time because they always do. Yet they continued to use the earliest calculated value they could find, based on a tiny dataset that wasn't even the best available, because it gives the highest value and that lets them make the most dramatic results. This is a systematically untrustworthy field, they literally do not care about their own reliability at all.

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

#944

Post by kyriee » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 12:21 PM UTC

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…

Canada has limits in free speech and seems to be doing just fine as a democracy. At least, it’s muuuuch better than the American one.

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

#945

Post by dredmorbius » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 1:48 PM UTC

samdlathsworth wrote: post #786

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…

The Democrats ran maybe the biggest misinformation campaign in my lifetime following the 2016 election. Massive turmoil and investigations later, it was all found to be false. What is this about “sides” again?

Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections

ICA 2017-01D 6 January 2017

Key Judgments

Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations.

We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments. ...

https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

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

#946

Post by complexmango » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 2:29 PM UTC

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…

I’m probably older than you and heard this exact same argument used by the Indian government to censor television (we had exactly 1 channel of government run TV growing up).

Are you listening to yourself? You sound like a religious zealot hundreds of years ago arguing to ban the technology of books because they might say things you disagree with. ‘Ban Martin Luther, he is trying to destroy the Catholic Church’.

It remains a mystery why so many Americans are so incredibly ignorant of history. Is it because school systems became overrun by propaganda because of teachers unions?

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

#947

Post by falcrist » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #362

falcrist wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People constantly conflate "freedom of speech" with the protection granted by the first amendment. That's right up to and including Randal Munroe, who said "The right to free speech means the government can't arrest you for what you say" That's not freedom of speech, that's the first amendment protections of freedom of speech... and it doesn't even adequately describe the protections. There are other things the gover…

Where is the line though? If I disagree with what you say am I allowed to call you an idiot? Am I allowed to no longer associate with you? Those could both be considered retaliation or sanction. And am I required to publish your words even though I disagree with them? That would seem to infringe my freedom of speech.

You HAVE to make those determinations on a case-by-case basis.

Like all freedoms, the freedom of speech is slippery, difficult to define, and has fuzzy boundaries. It can never be absolute, because that would immediately raise contradictions. Where does your freedom end and mine begin?

In this particular case, how big does a company need to be before we start forcing it to host content that it doesn't want to host? When is it ok to force someone to provide a universal platform... to tie their hands so they can't moderate as they see fit?

Do I have a right to stand on your stage and shout whatever I want at your audience? Do you have a right to buy every stage and then exclude and censor people like me?

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

#948

Post by r0s » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

celdon25 wrote: post #675

r0s wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One company moderating their own private platform isn't "strict banning" of anything at all.

Sounds like something a censorship advocate would say (or someone who dislikes the actual things being censored as of the current climate). Will you still believe the same way when the pendulum swings and it's the left that is being censored?

What makes you think this kind of political baiting is suitable for this platform?

Did you read the terms of posting here?

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

#949

Post by thorough » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 6:17 PM UTC

togs wrote: post #889

thorough wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, I've definitely grasped their argument, which became clear once they clarified that "allowing people to make up their minds" doesn't mean "allowing content the owners disagree with" but rather "we won't try to criminalize this speech on other platforms." After all, if I were a publisher who refused to publish books with a certain viewpoint, in what other way could I say I (as opposed to the government, say, or the publishing industry as a whole) am "allowing people to make up their minds"?

(Sidenote: I do think YouTube and other corporate-run forums like that would welcome some regulation in the area, for two reasons: (1) they'd no longer be blamed for how they decide difficult content questions, and (2) it might make it more difficult for small startups to disrupt this space by increasing the legal barriers to entry.)

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

#950

Post by thorough » Mon, Dec 14, 2020, 7:13 PM UTC

Eupolemos wrote: post #931

prohobo wrote: post #782

To anyone reading these threads who is disconcerted by all the apologists, rationalizations, and blindness: Hello, this is what modern totalitarianism looks like. The whole point is to shake the foundations of your principles, and make you doubt yourself. Corporations that control 90% of the internet, and therefore public discourse, are hiding behind the technicality of being private entities, and therefore can enfor…

> We must hear people out, even if they're wrong. So, I'm going to pull out good old Harry Frankfurt here and his "On Bullshit". If the one you debate is debating in good faith, you are right. If the one you debate is bullshitting, you are wrong. "Bullshitting" is not caring about true or false, but simply arguing for an effect. If someone argues in good faith but is "wrong", hear them out. In particular, it is easy…

So this "good faith" requirement seems like a huge gaping loophole, just a wonderfully easy way to dismiss and even censor a ton of people you merely disagree with. Whether or not they are arguing in good faith is so subjective and therefore the question of who you should hear out becomes the usual popularity contest: if you are sufficiently unpopular, it will be easy to convince people to dismiss someone as arguing in bad faith if they already dislike that person.

One example might convince you that this "good faith" rule is too restrictive if you agree with me on one premise, that ~90% of politicians regularly argue in bad faith. Yet most of us who agree with this do not as a rule claim that we will never hear them out.