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YouTube suspends The Hill for playing clip of Trump denying election results

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Re: YouTube suspends The Hill for playing clip of Trump denying election results

#391
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bush v Gore fiasco is nothing like what is going on now: in 2000, in Florida, after all votes were tallied, the vote totals were so close a recount was legally mandated . During the recount a large number of ballots (actual, tangible evidence) were noted to have unclear undervotes and overvotes on them and were simply not counted. To compare this to the utterly baseless claims that lack even a scintilla of eviden…

Even if the discarded ballots Gore fought to save had been counted, Bush would have won. It was very close. Close enough to reveal the messiness that extremely close elections can create. But not enough to change the outcome. Bush won. He probably won by double digits in Florida. But he still won. As late as 2008, Howard Dean was falsely claiming SCOTUS had “snatched” the election from the Dems, which was demonstrabl…

> Trump is spreading disinformation, as Howard Dean

President Trump. What was Howard Dean? The distinction really matters.

> They allowed the charade of a campaign to go on, allowing Democrats a heavy advantage in elections like the Wisconsin State Supreme Court.

Primaries are not elections, though, and there is no reason a political party has to call them off just because someone believes the game has already been effectively won. I.e. it ain't over until it's over. It's bad enough that voters in later primaries basically believe their vote doesn't matter, but you're suggesting that we should formalize that? The parties are private organizations, so who do you propose gets to decide when to call the whole thing off?

Re: YouTube suspends The Hill for playing clip of Trump denying election results

#392
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t get why people think youtube should be forced to host stuff they don’t want to host. Youtube should be socialized and forced to become a content-neutral storage? But why?!? We have the internet, where you can rent or run your own server and storage and post your conspiracy theory videos.

Youtube is a major information source for two billion people, that has largely supplanted the online 'public space' of video hosts. No other video site is remotely comparable, and it's not even feasible for the vast majority of individuals, companies or even governments to compete with it. Google also controls the largest search platform, so good luck growing that 'conspiracy theory video' platform. I don't believe a…

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Re: YouTube suspends The Hill for playing clip of Trump denying election results

#393
post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why people think youtube should be forced to host stuff they don’t want to host For the same reasons that AT&T can't terminate your phone service if they hear you talking about something that's opposed to the political preferences of AT&T or its leadership. These companies have become the public square and the law needs to be updated to reflect that. If they have to become public utilities fine. There's a big diffe…

Youtube doesn’t have any kind of monopoly on posting videos to the internet. What they do have is a brand and a social network that surfaces, promotes, and moderates video content to drive engagement and ad views. They’ve grown large by moderating and curating content but now that they’ve done so they should no longer be allowed to moderate and curate content? Makes no sense whatsoever. You’re pronouncing youtube a “…

Lots of logical leaps here.

Utilities haven't been "seized" by the government because there are regulations on them. Telecoms haven't been seized by the government.

YouTube has monopoly level dominance in terms of engagement. Competitors can't gain market share because YouTube is already prevalent, and video is a "solved" problem. Consumer gets no benefit by using a different platform, and there is essentially no product feature that could be invented to make an alternative platform compelling enough to use over YouTube.

Instead of regulating YouTube, we could define an open database/protocol of video content and allow anybody to build a UI around the same set of content. In that way, there is no network effect gating people into a single platform. This is where things will likely trend in the longer run with social etc. And I would bet the free market will get to it eventually.

Then YouTube is just a web UI. And I guarantee you in this world there would be many other widely used sites, as there's no content/network effect lock.

Monopolies appear on the basis where it is effectively unreasonable to expect a competitor to form. E.g. railroads. Anybody can build their own railroad. Is it going to happen in practice? No, because cost to do so is prohibitively high.

Re: YouTube suspends The Hill for playing clip of Trump denying election results

#394

This is what "private companies can do what they like" results in.

This isn't a problem, there are alternatives. Attacks that involve choking off access to the banking system are dangerous because starting a up a new bank is legally challenging. Attacks involving deplatforming are just a temporary annoyance, there is already a fairly healthy constellation of alternative platforms growing that can host serious political debate that have grown up in a few short years once these companies went off the rails circa 2020. There are competent competitors out there to at least Twitter & YouTube. Probably Facebook too in time.

YouTube can play politics if they want. It isn't a good thing, but life has survived CNN and Fox News and it doesn't get worse than that for biased publishing.

Re: YouTube suspends The Hill for playing clip of Trump denying election results

#395
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t get why people think youtube should be forced to host stuff they don’t want to host. Youtube should be socialized and forced to become a content-neutral storage? But why?!? We have the internet, where you can rent or run your own server and storage and post your conspiracy theory videos.

No one is arguing about YouTube being forced to do things. People are discussing how sad it is that YouTube has gone down that road.

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Re: YouTube suspends The Hill for playing clip of Trump denying election results

#396
post #127

It's scary how many of the systems we were worried about in China (e.g. social credit system, censorship, etc.) are basically being created now in the west through the proxy of critical companies blocking access and/or working together.

A bit different considering the west has alternatives which are not blocked, whereas China doesn't. You can even spin up your own sources and serve whatever you want,a right not afforded the average Chinese citizen.

How much does it matter in practice ? If you personally decide to host your own blog from your house, nobody will probably come after you.

If you get enough traction, you’ll need to host a whole operation that can be managed by a full staff and serve millions of views every day. There’s now in the picture one or more platform providers, and payment processing that you depend on for your income.

A bunch of entities are now allowing you to have your soapbox, that can be swept away at any turn if you’re too much of a problem for any of them. No need to arrest you or kidnap you, “violate your rights”, they just cut your supplies.

Re: YouTube suspends The Hill for playing clip of Trump denying election results

#397
post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example? What's a view that's been eliminated?

Heres an example: Bari Weiss was fired for commissioning an op-ed by a US Senator Tom Cotton calling for the national guard to be called in to break up riots. Note that she did not write the essay, but merely commissioned it. They sometimes have op-eds from varying voices. NY Times apologized and said "This review made clear that a rushed editorial process led to the publication of an Op-Ed that did not meet our stan…

How is the view simultaneously eliminated and held by the majority of Americans?

Re: YouTube suspends The Hill for playing clip of Trump denying election results

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious about where you see an institutionalized support on the left for election tampering claims, if you have any sources.

Not GP, but Hilary Clinton 2016 [1]: > “There’s just a lot that I think will be revealed. History will discover,” the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential nominee continued. “But you don’t win by 3 million votes and have all this other shenanigans and stuff going on and not come away with an idea like, ‘Whoa, something’s not right here.’ That was a deep sense of unease.” [1]: https://news.yahoo.com/hillary-clinton-ma…

> Hilary Clinton 2016

... actually conceded the night of the election. Bitched about it later, for sure. But conceded the election immediately. Something that hasn't happened yet for Mr. Trump.

Re: YouTube suspends The Hill for playing clip of Trump denying election results

#399
post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can even spin up your own sources and serve whatever you want,a right not afforded the average Chinese citizen. It's difficult when the backbone of the internet isn't available to you. For instance, AWS can be denied cutting off vital internet infrastructure we take for granted. Further payment processors like Visa can cut off access. Even banks could cut you off and even seize your funds if they got the direct…

And spinning your own service also fails once the upstream ISPs and DNS registrars also start banning you for wrongthink. That's coming too.

That's where we need regulation. There should some default level of access to the net by everyone.

At the same time, don't expect everyone to provide access to their platform regardless of what someone does.

YouTube suspending accounts is the old guy yelling at kids to get off his lawn.

Re: YouTube suspends The Hill for playing clip of Trump denying election results

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the falsifiable hypothesis of the stolen election? There's nothing coherent about an ever evolving list of grievances. I'm convinced this is by design. If there were a sound theory, it could be disproven. But if its just a nebulous collection of disjointed complaints, the wound can stay open forever, which is the actual goal.

The 136-page 2nd interim report of the Office of Special Counsel of the state of Wisconsin, recently released, raises troubling issues. See especially: Chapter 6: Wisconsin Election Officials’ Widespread Use of Absentee Ballot Drop Boxes Facially Violated Wisconsin Law. Chapter 7: The Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) Unlawfully Directed Clerks to Violate Rules Protecting Nursing Home Residents, Resulting in a 100…

Citizens have names. There's no reason to try and rely on statistical analysis to suggest whether improper voting has occurred. Provide evidence, not conjecture.
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