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

taibbi.substack.com

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

#441

Post by waterhouse »

heavyset_go wrote: post #371
waterhouse wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why those platforms shouldn't be allowed The key word is "allowed". YouTube should be allowed to do everything they have the right to do. They have the right to stop providing all free services (unless they have contractual obligations). They have the right to ban all creators whose names start with "K". They have the right to add a 10-second delay to all page loads. They have the right to put Goatse on their homep…

> However, if they do any of the above things, the rest of us have the right to be disappointed, to think YouTube sucks, and to tell everyone else about it. > So, if they demonstrate that they have no respect for the principle of freedom of speech, we have the right to call them cowardly, un-American, probably unfair in their implementation, counterproductive even assuming their goals, etc.* They aren't just saying i…

Well, Taibbi hasn't mentioned Section 230; I see only two other comments mentioning it. Also, I skimmed an article that says most people don't understand Section 230 (or the context around it—it provides immunity for certain things, and therefore you have to understand "immunity from what?"), so I would hesitate to say too much about it. It's entirely likely that there are some prominent partisans who claim to be in favor of free speech but don't have a principled stance on the subject (e.g. think flag-burning should be illegal), or who are as ignorant as I am on section 230 and less averse to recklessly advocating for political measures they don't understand.

At any rate, as I doubt you'll be surprised to hear, I am also not in favor of business owners getting raided by the FBI because users uploaded illegal content. That sounds like a mechanism for crushing small websites who can't afford their own legal department, thereby protecting large websites against competition.

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

#442

Post by Barrin92 »

wkjenjkwenf wrote: post #331
phailhaus wrote: post #303

The author theorizes that this ban will inflame tensions, but I don't believe that's true. Look at Reddit's ban on toxic subreddits. They found that banning toxic subreddits reduced the toxicity in the website as a whole, and that "post-ban, hate speech by the same users was reduced by as much as 80-90 percent." [1] Reddit is just a closed system of communities; YouTube is one such community in the larger system of s…

Sure, it reduced tensions on reddit , but what about tensions everywhere else? The author doesn't care about how toxic Youtube is, he cares how toxic the US is. Pushing these radicals onto radical websites only further radicalizes them. That should be an axiomatic fact, yet nobody seems to understand it.

>. Pushing these radicals onto radical websites only further radicalizes them. That should be an axiomatic fact, yet nobody seems to understand it.

First off, that's not an axiomatic fact, that's the definition of an empirical question. Secondly, even if it was true, who cares? You can't enlighten every crazy person on the planet, it's a waste of time. The goal of effective policy is to isolate radical elements to a point where they can't target mainstream communities of people who hold malleable beliefs. That is effective prevention.

I also see absolutely no evidence that the thesis of further radicalisation is even true. Here in Germany we have taken fairly strong, preventative measures to tackle hate speech and conspiracies online. It seems to have mostly worked, we have I think, one of the least polarized populations right now, broadly speaking. Insofar as there are fringe elements in their dedicated spaces, because they are in dedicated spaces, they can be monitored.

edit: another important point I forgot to mention, a lot of radical activity today uses commercial platforms for revenue to further fund their cause, maybe nowhere as evident as in the US where that sort of political activity seems to be a legitimate business. Depriving extremists of those revenue streams alone probably does significant damage to their cause.

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

#443

Post by dragonwriter »

prucomaclu2 wrote: post #367
dragonwriter wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given the large number of affidavits that their team has provided of a similar nature, it seems reasonable that the case should be allowed to be heard in a manner that takes both sides seriously. Before presenting evidence, you have to present a legal argument for which the evidence would provide factual substantiation. The vast majority of the Trump- and Trump-allied-lawsuits have failed at that and been dismissed…

This is indeed a fair point. Several of the lawsuits have been dismissed on the general basis that "election laws being broken is not evidence that fraud occurred". It's logically a true statement, and I think it's a fair opinion to have. But I do disagree with it: The laws regarding poll observers are designed to detect fraud. It is extremely hard to detect fraud when the poll observers aren't allowed to do their jo…

> Several of the lawsuits have been dismissed on the general basis that "election laws being broken is not evidence that fraud occurred".

I do not believe that is correct. I have seen none for which that is the case.

Several have been dismissed because (1) process changes that they claimed violated election laws were well-known long before the election and, if they were illegal, had a viable remedy before the election, but the actions were not filed until after the election with no good cause for delay, and were thus barred by laches, (2) they made allegations which were incoherent in the light of the applicable election law and procedures, (3) because the remedy requested was factually impossible (e.g., cases asking for the ballot count to be halted because observers were allegedly denied access and until that access was restored that reached the court after ballot counting had completed, cases seeking delays in certification of results that has already occurred, etc.), (4) because the plaintiffs failed to present evidence of the specific allegation in the case, and (5) [what appears to be the single most common reason] because, after grabbing headlines by filing the suit, it was voluntarily withdrawn by the plaintiffs. This last seems particularly common with cases filed by Trump, though Trump-allied groups have also withdrawn a lot of suits.

Which specific cases are you referring to?

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

#444

Post by abacadaba »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #404
ehsankia wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 3 scenarios: 1. Someone who is radicalized digging deeper 2. Someone who is radicalized changing their mind 3. Someone who is not radicalized getting radicalized #1 is bound to happen, #2 has no chance of happening, so at this point, preventing #3 is the way to go. Keeping these already radicalized people on Youtube achieves nothing. On the other hand, keeping them on Youtube gives these them a huge platfor…

How is newsmax “radicalized”?

spoopyskelly 3 minutes ago [dead] [–]

Caters to the other side, therefore bad.

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

#446

Post by scoopertrooper »

bccdee wrote: post #417
scoopertrooper wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of the morality, I suspect that it will prove to be quite efficacious. Banning this kind of nonsense from mainstream platforms will certainly not reduce the toxicity of the existing radicals, but it will curtail their ability to spread their message and recruit. These movements did not materialise out of a vacuum. Their growth and replenishment of strength is largely contingent on permissive mainstream pla…

Doxxing and harassment are already huge problems on the internet; a zero-anonymity policy would be terrible for marginalized groups because it would make spokespeople and activists extremely vulnerable. Imagine that whenever you said anything on the internet, every Trump supporter with a phonebook could find out where you lived. Then imagine you're (eg) trans. Beside, plenty of far-right reactionaries are entirely un…

To be clear, my comments were limited to mass-broadcast over social media. If people want to form small clubs within which to share lived experiences without fear of societal retribution, then I'm fine with that.

> make spokespeople and activists extremely vulnerable

As you've demonstrated, anonymity is an imperfect system of protecting such spokespeople, so they should have greater legal protections. Reducing the spectrum of internet anonymity would actually support this goal as it'd simplify applying existing legal protections such as restraining orders within the internet domain.

> Beside, plenty of far-right reactionaries are entirely unafraid of attaching their names to their beliefs. Just look at the stuff people say on Facebook.

Perhaps, but that far right ideology must receive social promotion through 'likes', 'shares', and other such mechanisms in order to spread their message. Why is it necessary for these acts to be anonymous?

I sincerely don't understand how further decentralisation or federation could help resolve the problem. It just seems to me like you'd be making the moderation problem harder as you'd be shifting the burden from a few large companies to many small companies.

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

#447

Post by titanomachy »

will4274 wrote: post #211
titanomachy wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a right to say whatever you want to whomever you want without fear of government retaliation, as long as it isn't "hate speech" in a fairly narrow legal sense. This is what "having free speech in society" has always meant. The government will also punish people who commit crimes against you merely because they dislike your words, which frees you to say things you might otherwise keep to yourself. What you do…

> You have a right to say whatever you want to whomever you want without fear of government retaliation, as long as it isn't "hate speech" in a fairly narrow legal sense. This is what "having free speech in society" has always meant Wrong twice. First of all, the United States doesn't have laws against hate speech. The US Supreme Court has said hate speech is protected by the first amendment. So, you're protected fro…

> the United States doesn't have laws against hate speech

Interesting, thanks for enlightening me! Canada does have laws against hate speech and I'd mistakenly thought the US did as well. In any case, speech intended to incite lawbreaking, whether a hate crime or otherwise, is not protected under the first amendment. If you tell your Twitter followers to go burn down all the Jewish-owned business or whatever, and they do, your speech is illegal. So there are at least some limits.

And I agree that freedom of speech goes beyond the first amendment. But the "significant public figure" of that is important: not anyone could get published in the New York Times, you already had to have reach and notoriety. They wouldn't have published articles by some random basement crackpot moon conspiracist, because that person wouldn't have a chance to get famous in the first place. They probably also don't publish opinion pieces with easily-disproven counterfactual statements. YouTube's algorithm, by default, makes no distinction: any idiot can go viral and get tons of reach on a video loaded with outright lies. YouTube has provided a platform that makes the spread of misinformation much easier and in my opinion it's their responsibility to take action to correct that.

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

#448

Post by Gunax »

wkjenjkwenf wrote: post #338
ipython wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it that we have to ignore nuances in these arguments? We never had unrestricted free speech in this country. There is a whole Wikipedia article about it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_ex... In addition other democratic states have strict limits on free speech such as Singapore: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_14_of_the_Constituti... After all even “democracy” is nuanced here…

What a stupid argument. "Child pornography and obscenity are banned, therefore democracy does not rely on free speech, therefore we don't need free speech at all." Obviously "free speech" comes with the colloquially-understood fact that it doesn't include child pornography.

Sometimes arguing about where the line should be drawn necessitates establishing that there exists a line.

By mentioning child porn, he/she shows that there is actually a line and now we can discuss where it should lie.

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

#449

Post by [deleted] »

Barrin92 wrote: post #442
wkjenjkwenf wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it reduced tensions on reddit , but what about tensions everywhere else? The author doesn't care about how toxic Youtube is, he cares how toxic the US is. Pushing these radicals onto radical websites only further radicalizes them. That should be an axiomatic fact, yet nobody seems to understand it.

>. Pushing these radicals onto radical websites only further radicalizes them. That should be an axiomatic fact, yet nobody seems to understand it. First off, that's not an axiomatic fact, that's the definition of an empirical question. Secondly, even if it was true, who cares? You can't enlighten every crazy person on the planet, it's a waste of time. The goal of effective policy is to isolate radical elements to a…

[deleted]

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

#450

Post by zug_zug »

When Trump got elected I had to listen to my friends freak out about a "Hitler" "Fascist" crazy-man. I silently rolled my eyes.

Then when he lost the election, and lied about it, and confused more than a third of the country in the process, I realized I was wrong.

I had wanted to believe (though never based on any evidence), that more information was always better, and that people are smarter than TV assumes. I wanted to believe that a pre-selected, pre-digested set of channels was ludicrous, and removing the gatekeepers would force a radically more efficient system. I wanted to believe that because I "knew" I personally didn't need such pabulum.

Perhaps we'll grow into it. Personally, I'd rather not risk it right now.

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