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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

#441

Post by bobsmooth »

jrobn wrote: post #377
robjan wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Death and calamity has been the theme of the whole of history. We're still generally in a much better situation than 100 years ago, even better than 200 and so on.

What is your metric? We have weapons that can end our entire human species. Never before in the history of our entire planet was this even been a possibility. Its like living with a loaded gun to your head. Not to mention the impending climate related crisis domino effect we are going to face in the next 50 years. I'm sure having nuclear weapons will make that go smoothly.

>What is your metric?

Poverty and disease, for one.

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

#442

Post by lordnacho »

adam_arthur wrote: post #421
lordnacho wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree on the economics, but I think it's weak to compare these to the purely forensic question of whether the election was stolen. Economic opinions are generally not that clear cut, requiring an awful lot of theoretical harness and qualifications to explain. Evidence is similar, you can quibble about a lot of things in economics. Whether the election was stolen, well, where is a shred of evidence? It's not hard to d…

Most things aren't clear cut, and there have been many times in history where widely held beliefs have been proven largely false. If you'll recall there was a multi year period of mass belief that the president colluded with Russians to steal the election. On the back of very little evidence, other than news heads talking about it and "he said, she said" There was also a multi year investigation that found nothing, a…

I would hate for people to fall out of the practice of critically thinking about what they see in the news. Our whole open society depends on people practicing deciding what they think it's right.

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

#443

Post by PragmaticPulp »

Thorentis wrote: post #112

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

It's wild to read HN comments advocating for significantly more government control of private companies.

A decade ago that would be pure heresy on any tech forum. Now it's (currently) the top comment on one of the top stories on HN.

That said, I guarantee that a government-controlled or otherwise heavily regulated platform would have far, far more instances of benign content removed for violating obscure rules. Once the consequences rise to the level of regulatory violations, the companies will pull content without thinking because nobody wants to risk the fines or worse.

These companies are rushing to self-censor their own content as a way to get out ahead of potential future regulation. Politicians and journalists can, and will, seize upon even the slightest missteps or unpopular comment to lambaste tech companies as evil. This move was definitely a mistake, but it's part of a larger movement to aggressively err on the side of safety when it comes to any potentially controversial content.

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

#444

Post by rootusrootus »

cryptonector wrote: post #253
virgildotcodes wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it's nonsense, then why censor it? Because people believe the nonsense and then storm the capital, and/or support overturning democratic elections in order to allow would-be dictators to seize power. Misinformation can have a serious and deeply negative impact on the world, and the general public is clearly not immune to it.

Specious argument. First of all, the democrats did a lot of calling of elections into question, and so have republicans, and so what? Second, there has been an enormous amount of violence in the U.S. in the past several years, and the vast majority of that did not happen on 2021-01-06. Third, "storming" of capitols is a thing that has happened plenty in the U.S., and fairly recently too, once in the past year alone i…

So storming the US Capitol is okay, and to be expected in the future? What will you say when Democrats do it? Will it be insurrection in that case? I mean, explicitly stating the purpose is to overturn the election. When does it become insurrection, exactly? Does it not count when 'patriots' are doing it to 'save the country'?

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

#445

Post by vel0city »

prepend wrote: post #236
jmull wrote: 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.

Why should broadcasters be forced to host debates? Broadcasters are forced to do all kinds of stuff. In Canada they have to carry a certain percentage of Canadian content.

Broadcasting uses a highly limited resource, local TV freqiencies. Especially until recently, these were really limited to a dozen or so channels per metro area.

There are far more than a dozen websites out there.

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

#446

Post by atlantas »

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #329
lliamander wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What nonsense from YouTube. Do they really think putting in such disclaimers is actually going to change anyone's mind?

I sense the goal isn’t to change anyone’s mind from “the election was stolen” to “the election was fair”. Rather, it serves to enforce the notion that believing the former is considered unacceptable.

That's interesting. If they're not trying to persuade (and it doesn't appear so), then is the point of that to flex their power or what?

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

#447

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

user3939382 wrote: post #386
jmull wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 “…

> Youtube doesn’t have any kind of monopoly on posting videos to the internet Of course they do. There are channels that can be removed that would instantly lose access to millions of monthly viewers that can't practically be replaced anywhere. They have a monopoly on that type of reach (the most important type), and especially when these platforms decide to blacklist in concert. > now that they’ve done so they shoul…

I'm sympathetic, but you're going to have to define some thresholds.

If I set up Paul's Video Hosting Service next week, and someone wants to post videos of kittens being tortured, I'm not hosting their videos. I'm not even hosting videos of a presidential candidate making certain pronouncements. No US court would agree that I should be forced to do so.

To whatever extent it is reasonable for YT to be forced to host any legal content, where's the boundary between the putative pvhs.com and youtube.com?

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

#449

Post by roenxi »

maccam94 wrote: post #403
bko wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think it was weird that when a damning article about a presidential candidate's son came out a few weeks before the election, every single media company and social network decided at the same exact time not to cover the story? Even so much as censoring the one paper that carried it and on private messages between people? Twitter, Facebook, NY Times, NPR and others. The former guy got banned on all the services…

No, it's not weird at all that the mainstream media wouldn't publish such a story without multiple sources right before an election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biden%E2%80%93Ukraine_conspira...

Seems a bit weird, there is quite a story there [0]. In the grand scheme of things is looks like a pretty routine case of potential corruption, but that being associated with the president's son like a big deal. Vigorously suppressing the story was a pretty suspect move.

The complaint seems to be that the corruption he was probably involved in is slightly different than the corruption Trump was talking about. Which again, standard political fare but the crackdown on the story seems suspicious. If it had been Trump there is no way such a story would have been quietened down.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden#Investor_and_lobb...

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

#450

Post by anonymouswacker »

cryptonector wrote: post #158

If it's nonsense, then why censor it? If it's not nonsense, then why censor it?

YouTube is just a wolf in sheep's clothing; another media outlet disguised as a sharing platform.

“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses. The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make the criminal look like he’s a the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. This is the press, an irresponsible press. It will make the criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal. If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” ― Malcom X

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