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

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#481

Post by Jochim » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 8:36 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…

A non-insignificant proportion of your population believes the earth is as young as 6,000 years old.

A non-insignificant proportion of your population believes Obama is a Muslim anti-christ who wasn't born in the U.S.. Fun fact, the current president is one of the people who participated in stirring up that last part.

A non-insignificant proportion of your population believes Joe Biden defrauded himself into the position of president elect.

Providing a platform every fringe/crackpot conspiracy theory has legitimised some increasingly insane viewpoints in the U.S. and social media appears to be pushing these to even greater extremes than we've seen in the past.

Edit:

We're seeing the same thing in Europe with Q-Anon/Coronavirus/Anti-vaxx conspiracies taking hold as well.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#482

Post by cm2187 » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 8:36 PM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #400

I don't like what YouTube is doing. But... What is going on in the US just now is unprecedented in modern Western democracies - we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA. Mainstream news networks like Fox have talking heads spouting venomous lies that are demonstrably and trivially proven as such. The POTUS is lying on an hourly basis (many of those lies just brazenly , ridiculously false), and has millions of people…

You probably switched off your TV the last four years (and you were right to do so). But the likes of CNN and MSNBC have been pushing their own fake news continuously for 4 years, pretending that the election had been stolen, that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, etc.

I think all of this is bad, but I refuse to accept that this is a bad behavior that just came up and is the monopoly of a single side of the political aisle.

All this is, is Youtube picking a side in this fight.

By the way, on the back of the David Fincher's movie I re-watched Citizen Kane. I love the part where Kane's newspaper prepared two alternative front pages the night of the elections: "Kane elected governor" and "Massive fraud at the polls". 1942. Nothing new under the sun.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#483

Post by weaksauce » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 8:36 PM UTC

tmpz22 wrote: post #408

GordonS wrote: post #400

I don't like what YouTube is doing. But... What is going on in the US just now is unprecedented in modern Western democracies - we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA. Mainstream news networks like Fox have talking heads spouting venomous lies that are demonstrably and trivially proven as such. The POTUS is lying on an hourly basis (many of those lies just brazenly , ridiculously false), and has millions of people…

The GOP has raised over $200m since the election, with very little of it earmarked ( I can only see this behavior being completely normalized due to its effectiveness. Short of massive bipartisan regulation limiting election fundraising this is the future of America.

The only way forward i see is massive campaign finance reform. what's happening now is a travesty and the citizenry doesn't benefit from it.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#484

Post by sam_goody » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 8:37 PM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #400

I don't like what YouTube is doing. But... What is going on in the US just now is unprecedented in modern Western democracies - we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA. Mainstream news networks like Fox have talking heads spouting venomous lies that are demonstrably and trivially proven as such. The POTUS is lying on an hourly basis (many of those lies just brazenly , ridiculously false), and has millions of people…

The POTUS has made claims that need to be thought about rationally.

Does the tech world really think that electronic voting is reliable when done the way Dominion did it?

Is there is a rational explanation when votes jump from one candidate to another on live public TV?

Are there too many acceptable mail in votes to make sense?

Etc.

The conclusion for someone who does the research may be that things are OK, that all is legit. I don't know, as I have no interest in doing that research.

But if you start removing all the videos that present any arguments in that direction, than I will definitely assume there is fraud going on.

It is far better for all the "proofs" to be out there and available, than to have people saying that all of the "proofs" were deleted by the people with obvious interests.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#485

Post by mistermann » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 8:38 PM UTC

macksd wrote: post #463

GordonS wrote: post #400

I don't like what YouTube is doing. But... What is going on in the US just now is unprecedented in modern Western democracies - we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA. Mainstream news networks like Fox have talking heads spouting venomous lies that are demonstrably and trivially proven as such. The POTUS is lying on an hourly basis (many of those lies just brazenly , ridiculously false), and has millions of people…

> I don't like private companies getting to decide what's truthful and what's not, but it's not like the US government is doing a better job If the responsibility has to lie with either one (to police other people's truth, I mean - both have a responsibility not to spew the garbage themselves) then we're screwed. If a majority of the population simply doesn't have the critical thinking and background knowledge necess…

> If a majority of the population simply doesn't have the critical thinking and background knowledge necessary to weed out fake news, democracy simply can't work.

One could probably make this same claim about a wide array of things that people are not capable of on an individual basis, yet humanity can typically overcome these with various systemic approaches (why have every individual perform every task, when many can be offloaded to public services).

Does it seem odd that no one's floated the idea that rather than providing information to the public only through a kind of whirlwind of conflicting news flashes and memes, that we also adopt an approach where we endeavour to assemble all important issues into a slowly changing master list, and then off of that we attach news updates, centralized, evidence-based fact checking, public debate & voting, etc? Of course this is extremely far from easy, and is surely impossible to do perfectly, but it doesn't seem at all like a crazy idea to me...and yet, I don't think I've ever heard the idea mentioned.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#486

Post by purephase » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 8:39 PM UTC

cambalache wrote: post #421

GordonS wrote: post #400

I don't like what YouTube is doing. But... What is going on in the US just now is unprecedented in modern Western democracies - we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA. Mainstream news networks like Fox have talking heads spouting venomous lies that are demonstrably and trivially proven as such. The POTUS is lying on an hourly basis (many of those lies just brazenly , ridiculously false), and has millions of people…

> But... There is no "buts" regarding freedom. I dont know if you have any experience with authoritarian measures but none of them starts like "This is a bad and permanent measure for no reason"... all of them are "exceptional", "to ensure public safety" ,"only valid as long as extraordinary circumstances are present"..all of them. The democrats were claiming fraud 4 years go due to a supposed Russian influence.The e…

Other have rebutted the claim that the evidence of Russian influence was "tenuous" and "circumstantial", but one piece of information that they haven't mentioned is that the Republican led Senates' own intel report the coroborated the claims made by the Democrats.

Also, it was the Republican DoJ w/Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein that commissionned the Mueller report (Robert Mueller, a Republican as well).

To continue to believe otherwise and post these false claims online only makes you part of the problem, not actually looking for a solution.

I say this as someone who is generally not a fan of the approach that Twitter, Youtube etc. make in terms of censorship like this. I just think we all need to call a spade a spade when we see it though, and the evidence here is overwhelming.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#487

Post by donkeyd » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 8:40 PM UTC

ghthor wrote: post #476

donkeyd wrote: post #327

Holy shit, this thread is scary. Sure, there are some implications worth discussing based on this news. However, the number of people directly posting doubts on the election results is way more concerning and shows that Youtube might be doing a good thing in this case.

If you dont have doubts about this election, you've been thoroughly brainwashed.

Oh, I definitely have doubts. I have doubts about the legality of voter suppression tactics like defunding the USPS, doubts about gerrymandering, doubts about influence by foreign actors and much more. They're just not the baseless stuff that Youtube is now removing.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#488

Post by admiralspoo » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 8:41 PM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #467

singlow wrote: post #330

If there is to be toleration in the world, one of the things taught in schools must be the habit of weighing evidence, and the practice of not giving full assent to propositions which there is no reason to believe true. For example, the art of reading the newspapers should be taught. The schoolmaster should select some incident which happened a good many years ago, and roused political passions in its day. He should…

> some impartial account of what really happened We do see students, even at the college level, claiming that the high quality academic writing they are assigned in curricula is "liberal indoctrination". This method does not function because even the most well researched academic study of these topics can be simply rejected out of hand by students who have been fed lies about the very structure of education.

PhD here. Indeed a lot of academic curricula are indoctrination and mostly useless bullshit. The Humanities are quite out of touch with reality.

My advice to students is to pay lip service and keep quiet.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#489

Post by timmytokyo » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 8:41 PM UTC

sam_goody wrote: post #484

GordonS wrote: post #400

I don't like what YouTube is doing. But... What is going on in the US just now is unprecedented in modern Western democracies - we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA. Mainstream news networks like Fox have talking heads spouting venomous lies that are demonstrably and trivially proven as such. The POTUS is lying on an hourly basis (many of those lies just brazenly , ridiculously false), and has millions of people…

The POTUS has made claims that need to be thought about rationally. Does the tech world really think that electronic voting is reliable when done the way Dominion did it? Is there is a rational explanation when votes jump from one candidate to another on live public TV? Are there too many acceptable mail in votes to make sense? Etc. The conclusion for someone who does the research may be that things are OK, that all…

It's telling that none of these "fraud" arguments ever make it into the president's campaign's lawsuits. They're only ever repeated on sympathetic propaganda outlets.

It's almost as if they realize they're peddling bullshit.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#490

Post by nailer » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 8:41 PM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #400

I don't like what YouTube is doing. But... What is going on in the US just now is unprecedented in modern Western democracies - we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA. Mainstream news networks like Fox have talking heads spouting venomous lies that are demonstrably and trivially proven as such. The POTUS is lying on an hourly basis (many of those lies just brazenly , ridiculously false), and has millions of people…

> What is going on in the US just now is unprecedented in modern Western democracies - we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA. Mainstream news networks like Fox have talking heads spouting venomous lies that are demonstrably and trivially proven as such.

Agreed about Fox, but conversely - the three liberal networks supported the Russiagate conspiracy theory that alleged Trump had colluded which the Russia to win the 2016 election. Let's not pretend brazen lying is somehow a new thing created by Donald Trump.