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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

#961

Post by My7thAccount »

michaelmrose wrote: post #861
My7thAccount wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why are people so afraid of lies and falsehoods? It’s accidentally shutting down things you thought were false but arent that is really terrifying

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

#962

Post by michaelmrose »

My7thAccount wrote: post #961
michaelmrose wrote: post #861

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why are people so afraid of lies and falsehoods? It’s accidentally shutting down things you thought were false but arent that is really terrifying

Almost entirely because of misinformation we just spent 4 years with a complete idiot having the key to nuclear weapons that if used will almost certainly lead to at minimum crashing global civilization as we know it. His mishandling will ultimately be responsible for hundreds of thousands of excess deaths.

We can probably make individual expression possible without allowing organized disinfo campaigns to continue unchecked.

Acting like this is an unsolvable problem is an intellectual disservice.

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

#963

Post by smaryjerry »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #757
kenjackson wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Hacker Ethos is to build your own media platform and stop whining about someone else’s (unless net neutrality is at play).

What happens next is your platform either gets zero traction, or it gets ridiculed as alt-right conspiracy theorist shithole, which is basically a self fulfilling prophecy.

Don’t forget plants/trolls. People that don’t like a platform will go there act like the worst human alive just to get it banned or looked down upon. How many news stories now use proof of what you said by using “one user said..and another said..” therefore we have proof that this platform is or allows xyz. Its effective.

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

#964

Post by smaryjerry »

dTal wrote: post #814
pas wrote: post #788

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also prevent sending links to known phishing sites. They prevent the spread of malware. Yes, this Trump-idiocy is malware. Yes, this oversight needs oversight in the open. A list of banned stuff, with explanation. Also, not surprisingly alternative platforms quickly sprung up to serve that audience and host. Though they might eventually get kicked off Cloudflare, and so on.

It's a really good analogy. HN is fairly equivocal on the concept of walled gardens as a safety measure, despite the lack of accountability. There's some consensus that it's perfectly fine for e.g. Apple to prevent you from installing something outside the app store, or to put up major hurdles to installing anything unsigned on MacOS, because Grandma and Grandpa can't be trusted not to do something silly and get pwne…

At some point you have to trust adults and allow them to make mistakes. I get protecting children from bad information but adults should be trusted with their own lives. We should trust them to have a basic level of comprehension and logic by a certain age. If they don’t we need to revamp the education system, not cater to the lowest common denominator.

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

#965

Post by pas »

smaryjerry wrote: post #964
dTal wrote: post #814

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a really good analogy. HN is fairly equivocal on the concept of walled gardens as a safety measure, despite the lack of accountability. There's some consensus that it's perfectly fine for e.g. Apple to prevent you from installing something outside the app store, or to put up major hurdles to installing anything unsigned on MacOS, because Grandma and Grandpa can't be trusted not to do something silly and get pwne…

At some point you have to trust adults and allow them to make mistakes. I get protecting children from bad information but adults should be trusted with their own lives. We should trust them to have a basic level of comprehension and logic by a certain age. If they don’t we need to revamp the education system, not cater to the lowest common denominator.

It doesn't have much to do with age.

It's the same problem as the "both sides" approach to anything [0] ("my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge").

This inherently just moves the problem to decide who's informed (or equivalently what's the required level of "informedness").

Many jurisdictions routinely suspend people's voting rights. Due process and all. Of course when it comes to giving them back after they've served their sentence the process somehow slows down. So I'm fully aware of the downsides of this.

I'm not advocating for doing that to any concrete group of people, I'm advocating for working on this problem. It's not the first time this has come up in history, nor the last.

The long term solution is education. Yes. Is there even a short-term solution? Maybe not. However I'm interested in the details of best arguments for and against.

And I'm not convinced at all that just because someone is older than X years they now have to be "trusted". After all we should protect elderly people from bad information too, they seem to live their second childhood.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGArqoF0TpQ

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

#966

Post by jacinabox »

tibbydudeza wrote: post #54

Democracy will eventually die. “In sum, the majority of Americans are generally unable to understand or value democratic culture, institutions, practices or citizenship in the manner required”. “To the degree to which they are required to do so, they will interpret what is demanded of them in distorting and inadequate ways. As a result they will interact and communicate in ways that undermine the functioning of democ…

I think that life would be better if employers honoured their wage obligations instead of drawing up elaborate networks of hidden fees and transfers which put employees' hard earned wages back into the employer's pocket. Nobody really owns anything, they have everything they think they earned on layaway.

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

#967

Post by hackyhacky »

complexmango wrote: post #946
hackyhacky wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

1. There is a quantifiable difference between banning dissenting opinions and banning intentional weaponized misinformation. No ban will be perfect, but a failure to fight back against misinformation is the same as giving power to anyone with enough money and enough Twitter followers. The loudest voice controls the most minds.

2. We're not in the middle ages anymore. Back then, a malicious individual seeking to spread misinformation was limited in their options. The target audience wasn't literate, so the best you could do was stand shouting on the street corner. These days, unlike any previous time in history, we have fast, effective, cheap methods, that adapt to the user's preferences, to tell them exactly what they want to hear. We know from plenty of historical examples of both wartime and peace-time propaganda, that lies are effective. How can you be so ignorant of history?

In short, it's not Martin Luther I'm fighting against, but rather the Catholic Church.

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

#968

Post by hackyhacky »

poutrathor wrote: post #937
hackyhacky wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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's strange for Americans to be on the business side of a propaganda weapon, as we're more used to using against our enemies. Funny that no top replies pounced on that starting axiom. USA have been widely known as a propaganda massive producer firstly toward its own citizens, even today. From military cult, pledge at schools, commies witch hunting and globalisation hammering, and of course, all your religions and…

Yes. The difference was, back then, the US government had a monopoly on propaganda in the US. I'm not saying that's great, but at least it's stable. Now we're in an age where propaganda literally goes to the highest bidder.

Propaganda is a weapon, and I'd rather my own government hold it, than unknown entities.

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

#969

Post by brigandish »

skyzyx wrote: post #855
My7thAccount wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

You’re missing a key point — journalistic integrity. It’s something that can be measured and validated. Second is experience in discerning fact from fiction — not everybody has it. And example is that guy who believed that the earth was flat, so he jury rigged a rocket and shot himself straight up in the air. He then died from his injuries. Elementary school mathematics taught us that he wasn’t going to be successful…

> And finally, the word “censorship”. This is an accusatory word used by people who think it relates to their non-existent “freedom of speech”. The first amendment applies to the agreement between the US government and its citizens. It does not apply to your relationship with YouTube. > YouTube is a corporation that has an entirely separate agreement with its users, which does not include freedom of speech. Therefore, it’s not censorship — by definition.

The first amendment and freedom of speech are not synonyms, quite obviously because there can be freedom of speech outside of the jurisdiction of the US government; and similarly, Youtube is a trans-national corporation with more than just US citizens using it.

Even if it were wholly within US jurisdiction and Youtube only served US citizens, the first amendment is still not a synonym for freedom of speech. The word censor comes from a Latin word for a governmental position in ancient Rome but it does not follow that all censorship is therefore only possible or enacted by government. Not only is there no supporting logic for that, it's not evident in practice. Companies like Twitter[1], Facebook[2] and Google[3] remove things from their platforms for political convenience (or, as Anand Giridharadas points out[4], for any convenience):

> When you look at the ways in which the winners of our age give back, help out, make a difference, they are often designed to protect the system - above all - that the winners stand on top of.

As ever, I suggest getting a copy of On Liberty[0] by J.S. Mill, where he goes over both the tyranny of government and the tyranny of non-governmental actors, with regards to speech.

[0] https://www.bartleby.com/130/

[1] https://nypost.com/2020/12/15/facebook-twitter-donated-to-bi...

[2] https://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-sup...

[3] https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/tulsi-gabbard-lawsuit...

[4] https://youtu.be/d_zt3kGW1NM?t=179

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

#970

Post by 8note »

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?

Technically it was found to be "by policy we do not press charges against sitting presidents" rather than false
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