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YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

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Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#171

Regardless of what you believe to be 'The Truth', has suppression or censorship ever worked to quench dissonance or convince skeptical people, again, whether right or wrong, that there really is 'nothing to see here'.

I see 2 opposing arguments here:

Social media is engaging in censorship, which means our society is screwed.

Social media _has_ to engage in this type of censorship because if they _don't_, society is screwed.

I think both views are probably correct.

But if we're going to screw up our society, I'd at least like to be on the side that's acting in good faith. Maybe we can stave off the inevitable a little longer.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#173

20 years ago reputed organizations such as newspapers, radio stations and television informed people the truth. Conspiracy theories were fringe and didn't have a way to spread. Today more than half the population believes in conspiracy theories because they learn the "truth" from disreputable sources on social media. This is dangerous for society. I am glad social media companies are taking action themselves, instead…

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Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#174

We are very fortunate to have the algorithms, employees & management of Youtube/Google watching out for us. We're not intelligent enough to view a video and decide for ourselves what is fact v. propaganda v. entertainment. Hopefully some day we will have the same protections the CCP gives its people with even more content moderation. Thank you Google - you're the nanny the American people and the world always hoped f…

While the sarcasm is dripping, it's also true. There clearly are people that can view a video and realize that it's is 100% BS. Yet, at the same time, there are other people that will watch it and 100% believe it. If it wasn't effective, it wouldn't be used.

Remarkable to see this comment unironically on HN.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#175

This is actually quite bad. It creates bubbles and divide between people if there are no common ground on de facto monopolies like Reddit, Facebook or Youtube. Reddit banned Trumps fanclub on Reddit and they reopened on a their own server with far more relaxed rules concerning incitement to violence. Pushing people out of common ground is not a very good longterm solution ...

I noticed this too. I am a casual observer in politics, but see what both sides are up to typically via r/politics and thedonald. /r/thedonald was mostly memes and some disillusionment. The new site is a call for absolute civil war.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#177
This is such an unbelievably bad idea, especially if they are trying to avoid regulation.

Even if we agreed, for some reason, that widespread fraud did not possibly happen and no possible evidence could ever be discovered to suggest it might have, they are going to have a ton of collateral damage that will effectively ban legitimate inquiry and discussion of the topic, including any neutral or objective attempts to analyze the data if it even leaves open questions.

Previous elections, particularly the Florida debacle, were the subject of a ton of statistical analysis and voting machine security research for years after the election. This is useful.

In this election, there were a lot of things that looked odd at first glance. I’m sure many people saw the huge vertical spike in Biden votes. A reasonable person would see that and say it looks suspicious, we should find out why. And as part of that process, an explanation was found, and this served a useful purpose in giving us confidence that this anomaly was nothing nefarious and was not cause for concern. What exactly do you think happens when you suppress our ability to do that?

All of this because our youtube nannies want to decide what we should or shouldn’t see? If Trump is being a moron, I have the right to watch him be one first hand. I want to know how dumb my president is. Why would anyone want Youtube deciding this for me?

Such an utterly stupid move youtube.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#178

Regardless of what you believe to be 'The Truth', has suppression or censorship ever worked to quench dissonance or convince skeptical people, again, whether right or wrong, that there really is 'nothing to see here'.

Yes, it has, to a degree. C.f. Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, etc. (These voices became much less prominent after their deplatforming.) There's also a deontological argument to be made for banning dangerous falsehoods on one's platform.

Alex Jones seems more prominent now after the deplatforming.

Banning on platforms for whatever reason reduces the platforms reach and raises the platform the party moves too.

We use to separate people by race now we do it by idea. Now sure martin luther king or lennon would agree.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#179

Regardless of what you believe to be 'The Truth', has suppression or censorship ever worked to quench dissonance or convince skeptical people, again, whether right or wrong, that there really is 'nothing to see here'.

in France you can get fined or go to jail for saying fascist stuff, works pretty well.

I don't know the details here, hopefully these laws are extremely tightly scoped. Being able to be put in jail for speech doesn't sound like something that is "working pretty well" to me.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#180

Let’s be real for a moment; why didn’t YouTube do the same for the russian collusion charade? How about the many video clips used out of context to manipulate the public? YouTube, google, facistbook etc are all surrogates for the DNC. the idea of a safe harbor date is also one which we will see shorty, has little relevance. https://hereistheevidence.com/

Because it wasn't a charade. The US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found that collusion occurred between Russian nationals, and possibly Russian intelligence, and the Trump campaign.

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/512487-senate-p...

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