621–630 of 1001 posts
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.
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…
Just not YouTube’s.
America is built on private property rights.
Americans LOVE to go on about freedom while selling themselves, their time, body, ideas.
Say what you want. There is no physical law or social that obliges others to carry your message or submit to your expectations.
Change the ownership model.
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…
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 is lying on an hourly basis (many of those lies just brazenly, ridiculously false), "
I've paid fairly close attention to Trump's statements since 2015 or so, and I have not seen any such, certainly not one a day or hour.
If there are such lies, then I'd sure like to know about them. As part of that, I'd like to see credible references, hopefully to primary sources, that is, just following common high school term paper writing standards.
I will grant that maybe Trump (1) exaggerates and (2) says things to gauge reactions, e.g., the common "run it up the flag pole to see if anyone salutes".
But actual lies, you have one an hour for four years, and so far I don't have even one.
As you are an HN contributor, I'd believe that you want to stick close to what you can document.
Maybe you could document three of his serious lies?
Regardless of where you stand, this is _blatant_ political bias (democrats) towards an equally valid opposing viewpoint (republican) This is literally definition of a slippery slope where Google is going and would have caused an absolute outrage had it happened with the whole Russian election meddling 4 years ago. Let the freedom of expression take course, trying to control the narrative is exact opposite of democrac…
This is Orwellian bullshit. And I'll take it because I think the alternative is leading to a few greedy assholes using analytical data to successfully weaponize millions upon millions of uninformed people against logic and common sense. Do we add restrictions to voting to weed out people who habitually vote anti-facts? No. Disenfranchisement. Do we make fake news illegal? No. Censorship leading to state run media. Do…
Doesn't this just feed into people's fears about conspiracies? I can't understand why people are signing off on this. Let the Like/Dislike button do its job.
Youtube's recommendation algorithm means that the people who see these videos are already predisposed to believe what is in them. That overrides the usefulness of the Like and Dislike buttons.
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…
Fundamentally, what people are saying here is that the current US administration should be able to force YouTube to distribute material containing lies that benefit them. This is obviously just as harmful as someone being stopped from publishing something by the government.
I agree there are cases where private entities can become so important to speech that they need to be regulated, but the kneejerk response to this kind of thing just seems so ill thought out. The right to freedom of expression clearly has to include the freedom to not express something.
The obvious example is, should Google be able to go to Fox News and force them to publish pieces that Google write? Is the line editorial control? That path leads to YouTube ceasing to exist as a platform anyone can upload to, which seems like a large cost as well.
I don't think there are easy answers, and "free speech" tends to end up as a thought-terminating cliche in these discussions, ignoring the fact that there are multiple parties with the right to freedom of speech that can conflict. The question really becomes about the right to platform, and if everyone has a legal right to any platform, everything will be drowned out in noise.
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…