451–460 of 933 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Free speech cannot be sacrificed. We’ll lose everything.
You're posting this on HN, a platform that has moderators and doesn't allow certain things to be said. So you implicitly agree that there is a trade-off between free speech and ability to live in a community.
— Mister Gotcha (https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/)
I'll preface this by stating that I hate the idea of censorship and I always have. However, were I to happen across someone motionless on the floor with a needle in their arm, I would give them NARCAN instead of a ride to a rehab center. I'm from the United States. Social media is currently poisoning our country to a degree that I think it may be too late to try and draw out the fight for free speech by using free sp…
I say this for emphasis, not to personally attack you: Whenever I read or hear this it makes me extremely suspicious, because it often doesn't come from those who will do the sacrifice themselves.
Censorship and other forms of regulating free speech is simply never a good solution. Perpetrators of lies will even hide behind this, and create a false image of rebellious heroism, instead of facing public discourse and the consequences thereof.
YouTube is a private entity but they correctly assess that they have a significant responsibility here. But curating social media content is not unheard of, Wikipedia manages it surprisingly well. Instead they could for example certify and emphasize content that is grounded in science and verify content creators of such. This is from the top of my head but there are certainly other people who have smarter ideas that don't involve straight up censorship.
Talk is talk. Actions should have consequences, which is why we have rules and agreements in the real world. I also very much doubt that censorship achieves what it is supposed to. People don't suddenly become enlightened (depending on context it might be the other way around) when you ban that stuff. It can easily become worse.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They never redacted some of it.
Neither did they continue with these claims. Stop moving the gioal post. If we keep applying unreasonable near-perfect standards to one side and way more lax standards for the other we don't do good to neither side.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate it as well, and if I could come up with some new way of advancing our species aside from free speech I would. I cannot and cannot see how such a thing would ever be possible. Here's a bit of sunshine: the human species has not changed in thousands of years. We're still the same hairless monkeys we were back when people were thinking up all kinds of cool shit. Knowing this, it follows that 10% or so of the popu…
You are right. Hardware hardly changed. However, one can argue, that software that we install into the new copies of hardware changed quite a bit. I think education and developing critical thinking skills should be the key to fixing those problems. Alas, the current trend is to try a way to get an education with as little effort as possible, which is destined to fail.
To your other point, I think that "education" and "critical thinking skills" are often conflated as one and the same, or that perhaps one necessarily leads to the other, but this is certainly not the case. While I think being educated to some degree is important in order to share a "common language" with others and to become a contributing member of society, the ability to think critically, and to act on it, is really necessary if we are to succeed and not fail catastrophically along the way.
To go back to the analogy, having the ability to execute the software faithfully is one thing, but understanding when it might make sense to modify the software and how to do so responsibly given the fixed hardware we have available is really the critical piece.
Yay, this is great, and should be used for everything! /s If we used this for medical advice in my country, this would make it very funny... at the start of the epidemic, our government "experts" said: - "healthy people don't need masks" ...and youtube would censor all the "fearmongering paranoics" advocating for mask use. Then on some random spring day, our government makes a new rule: - "you need a mask and gloves…
Don't you think it makes sense that as we learned about how the virus spreads, and as the number of people infected exploded, that the mask recommendation might change? I think you're trying to mock scientific experts, but what kind of expert would NOT be willing to change their recommendation based on new, strong, contrary information? Of course experts would prefer not to make a recommendation until all the facts a…
I think part of the solution to the misinformation problem is to A) have a much better education system, and B) have much better media presentation around the facts.
If you don’t have A, all is lost ultimately. There’s not much hope for democracy if the majority of the citizens are misinformed and incapable of critical thought.
I'll preface this by stating that I hate the idea of censorship and I always have. However, were I to happen across someone motionless on the floor with a needle in their arm, I would give them NARCAN instead of a ride to a rehab center. I'm from the United States. Social media is currently poisoning our country to a degree that I think it may be too late to try and draw out the fight for free speech by using free sp…
> Social media is currently poisoning our country Does this really come close to diagnosing the root problem? I am frustrated when I see this argument. ”Intellectual property is the oil of the 21 century. Look at the richest men a hundred years ago; they all made their money extracting natural resources or moving them around. All today's richest men have made their money out of intellectual property.” — Mark Getty Th…
I'll preface this by stating that I hate the idea of censorship and I always have. However, were I to happen across someone motionless on the floor with a needle in their arm, I would give them NARCAN instead of a ride to a rehab center. I'm from the United States. Social media is currently poisoning our country to a degree that I think it may be too late to try and draw out the fight for free speech by using free sp…
Democracy functions with an educated electorate. If you're saying that YouTube has to act as gatekeeper ban non-libellous, legal misinformation, you're passing a grim judgment on your fellow citizens which implies that the battle for the country is already lost.
Humans, on the other hand, have proven themselves largely unprepared for the modern media environment. We have consumer protection laws about what can be put in our food, and I think it’s worth exploring what that would look like for media.
Personally, I come down on a power*responsibility compromise. Individual people should have the broadest possible freedoms, but:
1. Wealthy and powerful people have an unchecked ability to amplify their voices, and we should think carefully about how to manage that. Returning to a sane world of campaign finance law would be one example.
2. Media corporations have a lot of power, and many have abdicated the corresponding responsibility. I think we should work towards editorial standards, mandatory complaint resolution and correction at least for those masquerading as news.
3. Platforms like FB and YT have shown themselves capable of algorithmically maximizing engagement, and it seems that for a subset of their users the effect is radicalization and conspiratorial nonsense (Qanon, anti-vax, climate deniers, holocaust deniers etc.) I don’t have the solution, but a bit more gatekeeping against misinformation would probably help.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They lied because they didn't want medical professionals to run out of masks
For a while I assumed they lied as well. Now, looking back I'm not so sure. There really wasn't much scientific evidence of masks being effective for respiratory diseases.
We should realise by now that Google, youtube, facebook and apple really DO have the truth! They studied truth hard, and know it! Why others don't know the truth is their problem.
Its definitely not the case that the FAANG companies are espousing a self-serving opinion, nor that they are driving a politically divisive agenda for their benefit. Its just not that!
So sorry - FAANG have the Truth, and those who get banned deserved it! And if you know what's good for you, you'd better learn the truth too and quick!