Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

taibbi.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

581–590 of 981 posts

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

#581

Post by iliketosleep »

ipython wrote: post #219
swiley wrote: post #2

If you reject the idea that people are intelligent enough to think about politics for themselves then you reject the idea that they're intelligent enough to govern themselves. Democracy and free speech are intrinsically linked.

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…

> Could one make the argument that entities with an interest in destabilizing our democracy should not be able to inject propaganda into our discourse because “free speech”?

One could also argue that censoring one side of politics deepens divisions and drives people to polical extremes. I would rephrase "democracy can’t survive without free speech" as "democracy can’t survive without free political speech"

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

#582

Post by cmroanirgo »

seppin wrote: post #473
throwaway3699 wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Things only really hit the fan when the bans scaled up. I don't ever remember things being this bad 5 years ago.

unprovable/unknowable and subjective analysis. Youtube banning people doesn't radicalize them, radicalizing content delivered to million of people on youtube radicalizes them. A point so simple it feels silly to point it out, but here we are.

Most content is "delivered" in the form of suggested videos from within youtube itself and other social graphs that seem unwilling to concede that they might be part of the problem itself.

The rate of spread is a problem of YouTube's own devising based on clicks, views and likes. Remove this gamification and you'll see less engagement, hence less scale of radicalization.

With youtube labeling people "radicals" is a deliberate polarising term designed to do little more than tar and feather people into a specific box. Just like segregation, just like Protestants, just like the German Jews... Etc. It's very unflattering.

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

#583

Post by dleslie »

If you don't like YouTube's content policy then use something else; as many other people are now doing.

Vimeo, DailyMotion, PeerTube, BitChute and so on and so forth.

I'd hazard to say that this marketplace of providers and their variety of policies is quite American.

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

#584

Post by scoot_718 »

travisoneill1 wrote: post #193

Thank god for all of the people at Youtube working on censoring misinformation. They are so much smarter than me and obviously better than me at figuring out what is true and what isn't! And isn't it great that they always act selflessly in favor of the truth and never in the narrow interest of Google? I don't know what I would do if I didn't have them there to protect me from the dangerous misinformation. I am so he…

"How dare they have the freedom to what speech they can transmit."

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

#585

Post by anonunivgrad »

drak0n1c wrote: post #212
Spartan-S63 wrote: post #16

These types of articles are always insane to me. YouTube is a private company. They're pretty much allowed to moderate the content on their platform in an arbitrary way. I would argue that this is a good thing. We can't have it both ways, but we want it both ways. We want a non-government controlled way to communicate, but we want to mandate that they're liable to uphold the same First Amendment protections that the…

Why is it insane to criticize the decisions of a corporation? Activists of all stripes regularly criticize corporate behavior that is completely legal and within their rights as a private company. Is there some substantial difference between arguing a corporation should go out of its way to accommodate the spirit of environmental conservation, and going out of its way to accommodate the spirit of open discussion? You…

This reflexive “YouTube can ban whatever they want” is just a way for people to stop thinking about the issue to avoid cognitive dissonance. Aside from a few hard-headed libertarians, no one who says that believes it in any other context aside from censoring conservatives.

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

#586

Post by robswc »

I hate politics in general... that said this is such a dumb precedence imo and anyone cheering it on I feel is short sighted.

There was some quote about how unfortunately when you defend free speech, you're mostly sticking up for the worst of the worst.

Same thing here.

Personally, I hate how hard it is to find the really crazy conspiracy stuff these days on youtube. I remember you could fall down some rabbit holes and I loved that. I didn't believe a word of it... but all the same, it was fascinating to see these far out takes.

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

#587

Post by asguy »

ardy42 wrote: post #75
enchiridion wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a non sequitur. Free speech is an ideal. We would like google to preserve free speech, even though they are not legally obligated to per the Constitution. If their EULA does not uphold that ideal, then they should change it, not compromise the ideal.

> This is a non sequitur. Free speech is an ideal. We would like google to preserve free speech, even though they are not legally obligated to per the Constitution. If their EULA does not uphold that ideal, then they should change it, not compromise the ideal. I would like to uphold that ideal by putting a political bumper sticker on your car. Can you give me your address so I can send it to you? If you don't have a…

If they were a company offering services of transport, they might do that (e.g. ads on a side of a bus).

Alternatively this could be your next great side hustle: live ad and t-shirt marketing in the gig economy.

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

#588

Post by tasogare »

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…

> Here in Germany we have taken fairly strong, preventative measures to tackle hate speech

Only when those speeches are formulated in German.

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

#589

Post by [deleted] »

kill-procrustes wrote: post #573
ceilingcorner wrote: post #495

I find it really disconcerting how many people on Hacker News want a corporate entity to decide what information is deemed acceptable to know. Do you even know where that word came from? The irony is almost overwhelming. But I digress... The idea that banning certain information will somehow result in it disappearing has been shown repeatedly to not work. A cursory reading of history should make this clear. You canno…

This is a really underrated point. This whole site is really "tech industry news" with some hacking sprinkled in, but its name at least is based on the idea of the hacker ethos. That whole thing about decentralization, distrusting authority, information being free? A curiosity for how things work and logical investigation rather than letting someone else do your thinking for you? Disinformation is a huge problem and…

[deleted]

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

#590

Post by scoopertrooper »

stale2002 wrote: post #574
scoopertrooper wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The red scare didn't end with the advent anonymity, but rather it was ended by the checks and balances within the government belatedly stepping up to the plate. Joe McCarthy was censured by congress and fell out of political favour. Furthermore, the Supreme Court handed down a number of decisions that greatly reduced the scope of the government's ability to penalise supporters of communism such as: Yates v. United St…

> but rather it was ended by the checks and balances within the government belatedly stepping up to the plate. Ok, and regardless of that, anonymity still helps people avoid consequences for their speech. Which is a good thing, given that the government has in the past done things like that. > This is how such matters should be tackled in a free society Well that is cold comfort to the people who suffered real harm,…

> Ok, and regardless of that, anonymity still helps people avoid consequences for their speech. Which is a good thing, given that the government has in the past done things like that.

Perhaps, but there is now firm legal precedent that greatly limits their ability to do it again.

> None of this stuff is exclusive. Feel free to try and stop government consequences some other way. But regardless of that, anonymity still helps some people avoid some consequences for their speech, which is good.

Some people should not be able to avoid the consequences of their speech. For instance, people that harass, slander, and threaten others online. Additionally, people that use their speech to obtain money under false pretenses shouldn't be able to hide behind a veil of anonymity. Police officers that enforce the law by day and joke about how much they hate black people and jews while squirreled away behind their keyboard at night should have to own their opinions in the public square.

> Lots of people have pretty effective ability to post speech anonymously.

It's possible with enough tech savviness, but tactics like VPNs are more frail than most people believe.

Post reply on HN