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Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

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Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#651

Post by xenocyon »

humaid wrote: post #59

Similar happens with the name "Eric Ciaramella", which YouTube instantly deletes. This is a name of a CIA whistle blower. It would be interesting to know what other words are in the YouTube censor list.

That's a strange equivalence, and a malevolent comment.

Outing whistle-blowers (or supposed whistle-blowers) is bad for democracy. The government is supposed to be transparent to the people. This does not mean that the people should be transparent to the government, or that dissidents should be outed.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#652

Post by dang »

ddevault wrote: post #533
dang wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does? What incentive?

YC wound down YC China, but still committed to funding Chinese companies[0], in a blog post carefully written to avoid explaining YC's motivations. And beyond that - how much Chinese money is invested in YC startups? How many YC companies have exited by bringing Chinese money to YC's coffers? [0] https://blog.ycombinator.com/an-update-on-yc-china/

I have absolutely no idea, but I'd bet it's extremely little because I've never heard of anything. In any case, this strikes me as weak sauce. You can make up purity tests to accuse anybody of anything, and if you choose to read that blog post as signifying "support for the Chinese regime", that is entirely your fantasy.

In any case, this has zero effect on HN moderation. It had zero effect while YC China was being set up, zero effect while YC China was being wound down, and zero effect regardless of whatever "Chinese money" you're referring to, which you seem to know more about than I do. The only effect any of this has on HN moderation is people making up dark insinuations about it and posting them to HN. I expect that kind of thing from trolls but it's pretty weird to see you stoop to it.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#653

Post by Swenrekcah »

che_shirecat wrote: post #399
Swenrekcah wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, but there is a pretty clear difference between censorship to protect an individual and censorship of critisising a government.

Are we playing "what censorship is OK censorship" now? Who determines that "pretty clear difference?" Isn't the point of being against censorship is that nothing is above the interests of public scrutiny? Partial censorship seems fundamentally contradictory in terms of the underlying moral justification.

Some things are above the interest of public scrutiny. Medical records and whistleblower identities are two examples.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#654

Post by eej71 »

streb-lo wrote: post #496
koheripbal wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point was that the Constitution does not handle the current situation - not specifically that the authors thought of it or not.

OK, but why is there so much Constitution/Founding Father worship in America? It's a flawed document that has lead to a flawed nation. It does not have Messiah-like abilities to deal with current problems so why be surprised it doesn't have modern solutions to modern problems.

This last summer I read through the two Chernow bios for Washington and Hamilton. I came away from them with a renewed respect for their leadership through a difficult war and the daunting challenge of errecting a new government built on a system of checks and balances that protects individual rights. I'd say they were pretty darn successful.

We are lucky that they were able to pull it off. It really could have fallen apart. But it didn't. And for that they deserve an enormous amount of veneration.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#655

Post by remarkEon »

jacquesm wrote: post #571
pokepim wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it really bad for US until China started working on 5G and trying to become independent in semiconductor sector? Because until that time globalism was pretty profitable in terms of trade and relations for US.

> Because until that time globalism was pretty profitable in terms of trade and relations for US. It still is.

It's profitable for certain strata of economic classes and is destructive for most of the rest. But "in the aggregate the pie gets bigger", so Macroecon 101 is conserved. Yay.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#656

Post by acituan »

awa wrote: post #539
acituan wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t know, because right now youtube is one black box in Google’s finance sheets. We don’t know if it is a loss leader, which I think is very likely. Imagine youtube was a separate company that always ran in the red and another private company solely footed their bill. Would you trust YouTube’s neutrality then? Wouldn’t that explicate why competition is having difficulty emerging? Or imagine YouTube were to split…

Google started breaking out youtube numbers in their recent quarterly results (once sundar became Alphabet CEO)

That is only the revenue, which is mostly meaningless because most of the revenue is disbursed to content creators. We also don’t know how much the whole system costs to run.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#657

Post by three_seagrass »

bobthepanda wrote: post #612
pokepim wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it really bad for US until China started working on 5G and trying to become independent in semiconductor sector? Because until that time globalism was pretty profitable in terms of trade and relations for US.

People have been going on about China in the US since their ascension to the WTO. Plenty of federal politicians have been elected on platforms for pushing hawkwish trade policy with China. Obama and Romney both ran with the policy of designating China a currency manipulator in 2008: https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/03/currency-manip...

Which is fascinating because the TPP that got bi-partisaned slamming in 2016 was an anti-China trade agreement for the APAC region.

When the TPP fell through, China moved in with it's own version lock down the region called RCEP.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#658

Post by pb7 »

ulzeraj wrote: post #646
pb7 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine thinking anything Google does comes close to resembling having blood on its hands. It really seems to me that the first world doesn't have enough real problems on its hands.

Since when did enabling a tyrannical dictatorship doesn’t relate to bloodshed? They have concentration camps for gods sake.

Please do tell in very specific terms what Google does to enable a tyrannical dictatorship.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#659

Post by Zak »

gabaix wrote: post #63

Youtube is in a tough spot. They will be blamed: - if they don't take down speech some consider hateful - if they take down speech some do not consider hateful 共匪 is seen as an insult by a group, but others do not. If Youtube bans nothing, then hate speech thrives and they get bad PR. If Youtube bans anything anyone flags as hate speech, then they become de facto as censorship agents for foreign powers. Anything crit…

The problem I see here is that Youtube is not deleting other content that's obviously politically insulting. "Feminazi libtard cuck" is a 0 on PG's disagreement hierarchy, but such comments aren't hard to come by on Youtube videos related to social issues in the US.

If Youtube wanted to have a broader policy of deleting, or better, optionally hiding incivility, I'd have no objection to "共匪" being part of the training data for that filter. This seems much more targeted than that, and I don't think it's unreasonable for people to guess that the reasoning has something to do with pleasing Chinese officials.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#660

Post by skybrian »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #529
skybrian wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't work there anymore, but this is a confused argument born of zealotry. Taking Google's money to work on open source is totally fine. More money spent on good things might even mean less spent on bad things. For example, nothing good would come from the Go team quitting over unrelated political stuff.

> nothing good would come from the Go team quitting over unrelated political stuff. Are you sure about that? It might actually harm google enough that they respond by giving into some demands.

Other than for commercial tool vendors like JetBrains, development tool improvements are rarely business critical in that way.

Go in particular is known for stability. In the short term, descoping or delaying Go releases is unlikely to matter to any business goal. Language and SDK improvements are for improving the ecosystem in the long term.

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