YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#291

Post by core-questions » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 6:51 PM UTC

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #72

PeterStuer wrote: post #64

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.

This will work wonderfully as long as Youtube, the near-monopolistic arm of a gigantic corporation that makes its money from analyzing what you see and read in order to influence your behaviour, never bans anything that's actually true in reality.

I'm sure we can trust our censors to never do something like that! They have our best interests at heart, right? Nothing like this could ever go wrong, there's no examples from history or fiction about anything like that. Nope, it's always Wonderful Good People that only ban things that Bad Evil People would like, and reality is totally black-and-white, and only Bad Evil People would think otherwise.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#292

Post by whiddershins » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 6:52 PM UTC

enumjorge wrote: post #259

howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #110

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…

Once again a thread about censorship invites comments that ignore the nuance of the situation. Having companies dictate what information is widely accessible is dangerous for democracy. Having the sitting president make completely baseless claims in an effort to delegitimize the results of an election because it didn’t go his way is also dangerous for democracy. That’s what we call a tricky situation. We don’t have a…

I would genuinely like to know why you are so confident about what claims are and aren’t baseless.

Do you have inside knowledge that the public doesn’t posses? Because I’ve been paying attention and I’m genuinely unsure what is happening ... default skeptical about all claims in every direction.

Edit: A lot of the responses here seem to be unaware of Texas’ lawsuit and the ramifications. I expect the conspiracy claims to be separated out from the genuine concerns if the Supreme Court chooses to hear that suit.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#293

Post by secondcoming » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 6:52 PM UTC

enumjorge wrote: post #259

howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #110

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…

Once again a thread about censorship invites comments that ignore the nuance of the situation. Having companies dictate what information is widely accessible is dangerous for democracy. Having the sitting president make completely baseless claims in an effort to delegitimize the results of an election because it didn’t go his way is also dangerous for democracy. That’s what we call a tricky situation. We don’t have a…

If the election was totally normal would Texas still be suing four other states?

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#294

Post by andrewzah » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 6:53 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #200

howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #110

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…

It's a private company. If you don't like their slant, use another private company. I swear, it's like people have never had to cancel a newspaper subscription before.

This argument doesn't really hold when you're discussing a monopoly/social network.

Referring to youtube as "just a private company" or "just a video hosting service" is almost to the point of being disingenuous. There are no alternatives that come even close to what youtube offers. You can't just replicate a social network, and even if you could, who has the hardware and resources to do what youtube does?

Vimeo is niche/specialized, it's not for general video uploads. Selfhosting via e.g. Peertube only really works in smallish communities, due to hardware limitations and word of mouth discovery. No other service has the social aspect that youtube does.

The reality is that this is a much more complicated discussion than "oh, merely switch to another private company".

> I swear, it's like people have never had to cancel a newspaper subscription before

This is such a blithe comment that I'm not sure if you actually use youtube to any degree. It is -the- place to put videos and content. Nowhere else has the sheer amount of educational content, etc, all in one place. There's an extreme wealth of content that is not replicated anywhere else on the internet, much less spread across random websites.

Youtube not only allows for discovery via topics/related youtubers, but it also incentivizes people to make content due to income both internally on youtube and externally as they build a brand. I'm not trying to be a shill here, but without youtube I wouldn't have been able to learn about topics like woodworking, chess, bass guitar, music theory, cooking, programming, etc, to the degree that I have , and discover great content makers as well. Not to mention discovering music that isn't necessarily on spotify/etc.

So it's not so easy as to say "just use a different site/company/etc". What site...?

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#295

Post by zug_zug » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 6:53 PM UTC

Let's talk about the root of the disagreement. There are two "models" of reality, that explain the two viewpoints on this.

One, I'd call it the libertarian model, is that people are rational, more information is always good, videos only contain information, and that all information should be available to everybody.

The other, let's call it the fascist model, is that people are not rational, people can easily be emotionally manipulated en-masse (e.g. Hitler), masses of emotionally manipulated people are a risk to democracy, and therefore any functional system requires punishing and suppressing misinformation.

People in the first came make a bunch of meaningless comments "This is censorship and encroaching on my rights!" and the second camp says "Boy we're lucky, and it's crazy how much of the US didn't understand Trump lost. Yikes." Neither comment convinces anybody.

The only way to move people over, would be to present evidence that the libertarian model is true, or the fascist model is true. Everything besides evidence is mere drum-beating.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#296

Post by pupdogg » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 6:53 PM UTC

enumjorge wrote: post #259

howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #110

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…

Once again a thread about censorship invites comments that ignore the nuance of the situation. Having companies dictate what information is widely accessible is dangerous for democracy. Having the sitting president make completely baseless claims in an effort to delegitimize the results of an election because it didn’t go his way is also dangerous for democracy. That’s what we call a tricky situation. We don’t have a…

I'm on the same boat as @whiddershins, please take a moment to explain your thoughts in detail.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#297

Post by shakezula » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 6:53 PM UTC

jahewson wrote: post #55

flowerlad wrote: post #39

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…

Ah yes, the truth of 20 years ago, like all those WMD in Iraq.

That wasn't the media's fault, though, that was the Bush administration manufacturing an excuse to invade the Middle East.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#298

Post by res0nat0r » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 6:53 PM UTC

howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #110

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…

I'm sure the folks who died at the Christchurch shooting think differently, since the shooter was radicalized on youtube.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/8/22162779/christchurch-sho...

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#299

Post by helen___keller » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 6:54 PM UTC

I'm not happy that it's come to this, but I can't say I blame Youtube for doing it. Everything's a mess from everybody's point of view, and Youtube has a big share of responsibility for the way things are, so I guess they chose to do something.

Is this the best way forward? Probably not. But atleast it's a firm, consistent, unambiguous stance, and not an entirely arbitrary one. Unless I'm mistaken, we've never had an election reach this point and then be overturned. Youtube is making a bet that this won't be the first, rather than sit around and abide the moving goalposts that will lead us to January 20th (and possibly even further than that).

Again, it's weird and awful that we've reached a point in society where a video hosting service feels the need to intervene on matters of "what's true" on behalf of the nation. And it's simultaneously weird and awful that our internet is such a monoculture that it's hard to find a high-quality service that exists in competition to this one.

But of the weird and awful things that have happened this year, this is pretty low on my list.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#300

Post by bitcurious » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 6:54 PM UTC

I wonder if Google will apply this same "it's settled per the courts" standard to the Bush v. Gore election. I've encountered a number of videos claiming it was stolen.