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

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

#681

Post by aww_dang »

jb775 wrote: post #638
hackyhacky wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about banning disagreement. It's not even about opinions. It's about combating weaponized misinformation. It's strange for Americans to be on the business side of a propaganda weapon, as we're more used to using against our enemies. Technology has finally made it feasible for malicious actors to cheaply and effectively manipulate people with lies, here in the US. If you don't believe it's a weapon, you're wr…

What happens when the "weaponized misinformation" ends up being true? From the article: Hunter Biden was announcing that his “tax affairs” were under investigation....That news was denounced as Russian disinformation by virtually everyone in “reputable” media, who often dismissed the story with an aristocratic snort....That tale was not Russian disinformation, however, and Biden’s announcement this week strongly sugg…

Contrast this to the accusations of election meddling in the previous election.

At this point the farce has exceeded its self. Yet raging partisans still manage to suspend their disbelief where it suits their biases.

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

#682

Post by dorkwood »

twentydollars wrote: post #674
ceilingcorner wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now, at this very moment, Facebook and Twitter prevent you from sending certain links via private message.

They're private platforms. You can send those links via many other routes which would be legally protected speech.

As someone not familiar with what those routes are -- what are they? Is email sent through Gmail protected, or is that also a private platform?

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

#683

Post by jmnicolas »

zimpenfish wrote: post #658
jmnicolas wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple months ago I watched a video of Wranglestar where he spoke about his "ammo dispersion units" in an attempt for his video not to be demonetized / banned.

Taofledermaus talk about their "mass accelerator" and "launch director" for the same reasons.

How long before we have electronic samizdat on TOR?

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

#684

Post by Barrin92 »

darepublic wrote: post #489
Barrin92 wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>. 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…

You're not engaging with the articles main point, that this censorship and exclusion is not evenly applied, and that it is rather conspicuously applied along political lines. There are many non scientific, ideology driven ideas that have been bullying their way into every facet of communication these days. Labelling people who resist this trend as fringe radicals who should be segregated and monitored is frankly disg…

>and that it is rather conspicuously applied along political lines. There are many non scientific, ideology driven ideas that have been bullying their way into every facet of communication these days.

Yes, but not all of them are equally dangerous, so there actually is no reason to assume they ought to be evenly treated. There are ideologies that lead to people shooting up a restaurant or behead non-believers in the streets, and then there are people who are just annoyingly woke, or to take that example from the comment below, are overly cautious about climate change.

There's a difference between something that is merely non-scientific or silly and something that gets people killed or threatens democratic society or peaceful transition of power. That false equivalence seems prominent in US discourse when it comes to identifying and dealing with radicalism. The numbers of domestic terrorism in the US by political orientation actually make that very clear as well.

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

#685

Post by WhyDoesDangSuck »

visarga wrote: post #611
greenflame7 wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic its not contradictory to be intolerant of people intolerant of intolerance. Or is it only valid logic with an even number of intolerances?

This logic doesn't work in the abstract, you got to apply it to a concrete situation. Each situation is different, they are not all the same to be judged in one swoop.

Each situation is morally relative and ineffective at resolving conflict, instead only deepening the divide. You cannot fight hate with hate and achieve love. We all must be more tolerant of people and their fallibility in order to reach common ground and discover that we are all much more alike than we are different. Don't love the sinner, hate the sin. MLK nailed it when he said that the means are the seeds from which the ends grow. You cannot hope to bear fruit when starting from a rotten seed. It's so easy to retaliate but true power is the confidence to de-escalate.

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

#686

Post by VyperCard »

bussierem wrote: post #633
balls187 wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a corporate entity to decide what information An AI algorithm.

An algorithm doesn't write or tune itself. This is unnecessary pedantry.

In YouTube’s case it may do in part. If you give it the wrong objective like „make people look at more Videos“ it will optimize its suggestions for this

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

#687

Post by CyberRabbi »

hackyhacky wrote: post #607
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…

It's not about banning disagreement. It's not even about opinions. It's about combating weaponized misinformation. It's strange for Americans to be on the business side of a propaganda weapon, as we're more used to using against our enemies. Technology has finally made it feasible for malicious actors to cheaply and effectively manipulate people with lies, here in the US. If you don't believe it's a weapon, you're wr…

I think your information is weaponized misinformation, so now it’s just a game of “who has more power?” Live by the sword...

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

#688

Post by kenneth »

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…

I wouldn't call Singapore a democracy. It's an authoritarian one-party state that happens to hold elections. These elections are always won by the same party.

The democracy index rates Singapore at 6.02/10. About 0.03 away from being a "hybrid regime" and currently rated a "flawed democracy." It's ranked as worse than places such as Ukraine (currently in a civil war), Thailand (run by a military dictatorship), etc.

Having been stuck in the lockdown they imposed earlier this year, which was widely unpopular with the city's residents and which lead to the biggest support for the opposition in the country's history, I would not at all call Singapore a democracy.

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

#689

Post by Reelin »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #641
ceilingcorner wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not a centrist and none of my points are making any centrist arguments. Using misinformation to intentionally disrupt a democratic election is demonstrably dangerous to society. And you think this is the first time in the history of American democracy that actors used misinformation to influence an election? Again, this is not a new phenomenon whatsoever. All that’s new is that more people have access to the tech…

I hope this is not an argument for giving powerful weaponized mass disinformation tools to more people, including foreign governments and other actors actively seeking to polarize society to the point of inciting conflict and dismantling democracy. Yes, removing this type of speech from YouTube may be an imperfect / stopgap solution. What are some better alternatives?

> foreign governments and other actors actively seeking to polarize society

> What are some better alternatives?

I have no idea if it's mathematically possible but I'd be optimistic about the potential of a (hypothetical) privacy preserving web of trust metric. It would be really nice to have at least some limited indication of how the person behind the account fits into the world at large. Right now you can't reliably determine (arbitrary examples) country or even continent of residence, paid posts by an organized campaign (PR, propaganda, etc) versus organic occurrences, etc.

Of course, Facebook is the ever present counterexample where people proudly attach their full legal name to hate filled streams. But at least I personally know for certain that they're local people who actually exist and aren't being paid for their posts! Silver linings and all that.

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

#690

Post by aww_dang »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #613
hackyhacky wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about banning disagreement. It's not even about opinions. It's about combating weaponized misinformation. It's strange for Americans to be on the business side of a propaganda weapon, as we're more used to using against our enemies. Technology has finally made it feasible for malicious actors to cheaply and effectively manipulate people with lies, here in the US. If you don't believe it's a weapon, you're wr…

You are assuming that the regular media is the default, the truth, and that propaganda didn’t exist prior to 2016. Read Manufacturing Consent for a brief overview of this history of widespread weaponization of information by innumerable actors. Weaponized misinformation has existed as long as human speech has existed. What is new is the democratization of it, hence the establishment’s hostility.

>Weaponized misinformation has existed as long as human speech has existed

Agreed. The poster above invokes the special pleading fallacy.

>What is new is the democratization of it, hence the establishment’s hostility.

There's a historical precedent for this in creation of moveable type printing presses.

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