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YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

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Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#551

Post by GordonS »

wdr1 wrote: post #515
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…

> unprecedented in modern Western democracies - we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA. Citation needed? The founding fathers owned newspapers & regularly fabricated stories about opponents. Ben Franklin openly wrote about it and he was far from alone. William Randolph Hearst controlled a significant portion of newspapers & blatantly used used that power to manipulate public opinion, frequently with suspect inform…

You point out some good examples, though I'd argue some of those were politicians/governments lying and those lies simple being reported (admittedly, often with an editorial bias).

I think what we are seeing now is different. People like Trump don't need doctored satellite photographs and elaborately constructed propaganda that the press will fall for - they can use social media platforms as a very public podium from which to spew lies. And, perhaps because of the viral nature of social media, and perhaps because of the inherent terseness of Twitter, people are bombarded by these tiny nuggests of "truth" from "trusted" people who "obviously" wouldn't lie, and the become "truth" for those people.

I think the key difference now is that it's never been so easy to put out "news", and it's never been so easy to consume so very many sources of "news", or so frequently.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#552

Post by togs »

iphorde wrote: post #542

There has been election fraud. To the extent it was organized has yet to be determined, I'm very skeptical of conspiracy. The fact YouTube will delete complaints, and evidence is very scary. This should scare everyone. How do we know it isn't true if they decided what the truth is? You might agree with Google, on this issue, but wait until they have interest in something that kills people, and Google decides to take…

> There has been election fraud.

Has there been election fraud? What evidence supports this claim?

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#553

Post by iphorde »

togs wrote: post #552
iphorde wrote: post #542

There has been election fraud. To the extent it was organized has yet to be determined, I'm very skeptical of conspiracy. The fact YouTube will delete complaints, and evidence is very scary. This should scare everyone. How do we know it isn't true if they decided what the truth is? You might agree with Google, on this issue, but wait until they have interest in something that kills people, and Google decides to take…

> There has been election fraud. Has there been election fraud? What evidence supports this claim?

Video evidence (which is being taken down), eye witness testimont (affadavits), statistical anomilies.

The video evidence might be wrong, the witnesses might by lying, the statistical evidence might be able to be explained, but I don't need Google hiding the information from me.

This just makes it look like there is something to hide.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#554

Post by benmmurphy »

It is interesting that YouTube refers to historical charges of voter fraud. In 1876 we had a similar situation where there were charges by Republican's against Democrats of electoral irregularities. This was resolved by a 15 member committee from the house, senate and supreme court who effectively appointed the Republican candidate the winner after an 8-7 vote. If this was to happen again and Trump was appointed President would YouTube remove any content that questioned whether this was a legal practice or whether the result of the election was fair. If I was a Democrat and this happened I would certainly be concerned that I was wronged and I think it would be entirely inappropriate for content questioning whether this was the correct decision to be removed.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#555

Post by codegeek »

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…

The dems cried fraud in 2016 but the difference is that Clinton conceded the night of the election. There is a big difference between claiming something but still doing the right thing vs. claiming something and then just double/triple downing on it which is what the Republicans and Trump are doing. It is dangerous, extremely dangerous. Trump margin of loss is bigger than Hillary's margin of loss from 2016 btw.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#556

Post by GordonS »

jsperson wrote: post #518
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…

> we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA Who cares?! As you said, Fox is crappy news so they don't get my business. Same thing with (generally) MSNBC and others. To answer the next question: The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Shepard Smith > it's one of those "least worst" choices I respectfully and completely disagree. This is policing thought. Things are not worse than they have been before. The communist w…

> Who cares?! As you said, Fox is crappy news so they don't get my business

I wish I could brush it off so easily, but the truth is that, well, the truth, does matter. You or I might choose to consume "news" from the likes of Fox, but many millions do. At that scale, the lies and fake news have an undeniable impact.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#557

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

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..."

YouTube viewers are not Google's customers.1 If it is to survive, Google must cater to the wishes of its clients.

1. Yes, I am aware that a small number of people pay Google to remove ads, but that is not a viable business model unless Google is also selling ad space.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#558

Post by bob33212 »

txmachinery wrote: post #434

Where is the evidence? Https://hereistheevidence.com

these are minor problems and more importantly they don't have any proof that they would have changed the outcome. For example, 9500 people were dead. What was the breakdown of Trump/Biden in those votes? I don't understand how we can fix that. Do you have a crystal ball we can all look into to find out if we will die between the day we mail in our ballot and the day of the election?

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#559

Post by carapace »

sxyuan wrote: post #303

A lot of short, knee-jerk reactions on this thread, not to mention snark and downright flame. Seeing as this is at the top of HN right now, can we try to elevate the level of discourse a little bit? A few questions to consider: 1. Is content moderation necessary in online platforms? I think the answer to this question is self-evident, but others may disagree and so I think it's worth posing. FWIW, HN has moderation,…

The obvious solution is to break up YouTube. Moderation doesn't scale. It's NP-Hard or whatever.

Dynamical systems theory tells us that when you have a large densely-interconnected system (like YT) you get dramatic behavior. In other words, YouTube is always going to create memetic storms and we can predict that (even though we can't predict the exact content of the storms.)

Adding regulators won't help.

Cybernetics revealed the law of requisite variety, to wit: "the variety in the regulator must be equal to or greater than the variety in the system being regulated"

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASC/LAW_VARIE.html

YouTube is doomed, the question is do we let it take us down with it?

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#560

Post by [deleted] »

togs wrote: post #552
iphorde wrote: post #542

There has been election fraud. To the extent it was organized has yet to be determined, I'm very skeptical of conspiracy. The fact YouTube will delete complaints, and evidence is very scary. This should scare everyone. How do we know it isn't true if they decided what the truth is? You might agree with Google, on this issue, but wait until they have interest in something that kills people, and Google decides to take…

> There has been election fraud. Has there been election fraud? What evidence supports this claim?

[deleted]
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