A corporation deciding not to run ads on videos of a crank promoting snake oil is not a First Amendment issue. It is barely even a censorship issue in the broadest sense of the term. Very sad to see Taibbi reduced to this kind of totally empty hysteria.
Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?
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Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?
#52Every social group eventually uses the weapon of censorship. It's not just government...even without a proper institutional structure , censorship will emerge as a thing that a social group does endogeneously. Like just scrolling back and looking at my last 10 posts on HN , I had to delete them after a few minutes in order to cut my losses because they were being heavily downvoted and once you are in negative territo…
Disapproval and shaming are very strong and potentially dangerous tools, but they are not the same as censorship, even though they overlap to some degree. (But what doesn't?)
The worst kind of censorship is probably the emotionless, impersonal, mechanical sort done on a large scale either by specialized professionals or by robots.
Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?
#53The amount of gray posts in censorship threads always cracks me up. Please go on.
This is my least favorite thing about HN, because it strongly reinforces groupthink. I'd much rather have the number of upvotes and downvotes visible, like Reddit, and leave the styling of the text unchanged.
Have the admins of HN ever defended their decision to grey out downvoted comments with some good arguments?
Because reading a text thread where the color of the text constantly changes is rather annoying.
Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?
#54People shake their heads and wonder how the Catholic church could have been so backwards, dogmatic, and ignorant as to jail Copernicus. Yet, here we are. "At the time, it was scarier to be associated with Trump and to become a tool for racists, so people didn't want to publicly call for an investigation into lab origins." https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-c... Censoring commentary on scientif…
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"Who is the modern Copernicus?"
History being what it is, we may know around the year 2300.
Let us hope the longevity science is onto something ...
Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?
#55The amount of gray posts in censorship threads always cracks me up. Please go on.
This is my least favorite thing about HN, because it strongly reinforces groupthink. I'd much rather have the number of upvotes and downvotes visible, like Reddit, and leave the styling of the text unchanged.
Personally, I think that voting is ridiculous, but I see the point.
It's one of the strongest methodologies for making a discussion board addictive.
I think an interesting feature to add would be to have peoples' user areas show how many downvotes they have spewed forth.
Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?
#56A corporation deciding not to run ads on videos of a crank promoting snake oil is not a First Amendment issue. It is barely even a censorship issue in the broadest sense of the term. Very sad to see Taibbi reduced to this kind of totally empty hysteria.
If promoting a certain snake oil because you'll receive government favours, then it IS censorship, cf. all the Title IX unconstitutional enforcement following threats of pulling federal fundings.
In this case, GAFAMs are scared as can be from being "regulated".
Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?
#57The amount of gray posts in censorship threads always cracks me up. Please go on.
Actually, it helps me figure out posts I should upvote.
Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?
#58The thing that really bothers me about Weinstein's approach is that, while he and his wife are scientists, they're exceedingly quick to assert their hunches as scientific fact. They wear their scientist labels on their sleeves but their thinking is far more ideological. In a recent podcast about fluoridation in tap water, they were talking about how they avoid iodized salt, because iodine is a reactive chemical and y…
I don't see how this comment has anything to do with the article.
They are scientists and they made errors outside of their field. Unless you can prove this is common to them. I don't see how this particular error they made is relevant to the discussion at all.
Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
That comes down to nearly-unprovable hairsplitting. If government employees are demanding action, backed by force of law, then Yes. But if YT is merely free to follow or reject advice as it chooses, then No. I can hear advice all day long from experts, but whether I choose to follow or ignore, the consequence is on me.
That’s not really a fair representation of reality. YT and others aren’t really “free to follow”. There are implications for their choice. For example they may face less anti trust scrutiny from the progressive left if they continue to perform censorship that aligns to that political ideology. They may face less scrutiny when it comes to taxes or privacy laws as well. It is precisely because we can’t prove or disprov…
> we can’t prove or disprove these links
Then the burden of proof lies with the person making the claim that these links exist. Until then, they functionally don’t exist from an outside perspective.
Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?
#60People shake their heads and wonder how the Catholic church could have been so backwards, dogmatic, and ignorant as to jail Copernicus. Yet, here we are. "At the time, it was scarier to be associated with Trump and to become a tool for racists, so people didn't want to publicly call for an investigation into lab origins." https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-c... Censoring commentary on scientif…
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I picture a future with hordes of millions of gullible fools who can be commanded like armies by social media demagogues.
The stream is six hours long, but it's packed with moments such as:
35m — Crowd listens to some conspiracy theorist blame all the world's ills on 'Kabalah'
1h 26m — A face-spitting street altercation breaks out between an anti-masker and an alarmed doctor who apparently got caught in the demonstration.
2h 13m — Some insane woman with a bullhorn explains that WiFi and 5g will 'destroy your ovaries' with 'Communism' (or something to that effect, anyways).