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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

#691

Post by 22c »

cityofdelusion wrote: post #671
dukeofdoom wrote: post #420

If we don't have a meaningful signature match, than we don't have a meaningful way to prevent fraud with mail in ballots. Period. Bad ballot Rejection rate of 6% in previous election to now 0.02%, with mail in ballots. Mismatched signatures resulted in a rejection for only 0.02% of all absentee ballots cast. How is that even possible. They counted almost everything. For those of you that think its unfair to reject ba…

Is there any evidence that signature matching is an accurate way to ensure correctness? As a useless anecdote, my current signature looks _nothing_ like the one on my state issued ID from 10 years ago. Something that someone else said is quite important here: the time to fix these things is before an election, not afterwards. It doesn't take much imagination to see how invalidating large quantities of ballots after-t…

> Is there any evidence that signature matching is an accurate way to ensure correctness?

In these cases, I don't think that matters as much as the fact that the laws were not followed.

"Is there any evidence that me abiding by the speed limit would have been any safer?" is not a good defence to accusations of "you broke the speed limit".

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#693

Post by glenstein »

superjan wrote: post #214
bradenb wrote: post #105

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.

But what if people don’t “Like” the truth?

This is the critical question, and it baffles me that people don't reflect on this a bit more. The "marketplace of ideas", whether it be through back-and-forth dialogue expressed through media platforms, or through likes or comment sections or follower amounts... there's no reason to believe that that process leads to the best ideas coming to the top.

So that can't and shouldn't be cited as a reason not to be concerned over the spread of misinformation.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#694

Post by grawprog »

https://www.engadget.com/youtube-election-misinformation-dem...

So, i'm kind of curious how it's reasonable a political party can ask for partisan censorship.

>YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki received a letter on Tuesday from four Democratic senators expressing “deep concern” over the spread of election misinformation on Google’s video platform. In the letter, senators Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, Gary Peters of Michigan and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota ask YouTube to commit to removing content with false or misleading information about the 2020 US presidential election and future political races, including the coming, pivotal Senate runoffs in Georgia.

>“We urge you to immediately remove all election outcome misinformation and take aggressive steps to implement prohibitions, as other social media companies have done, regarding outcomes in future elections,” the letter reads.

This isn't a company deciding, this is censorship urged by the government. I thought that kind of thing was illegal down there.

Not saying anything either way about the politics of the election, but isn't this blatant government censorship?

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#695

Post by knowaveragejoe »

crocodiletears wrote: post #690
donkeyd wrote: post #327

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.

Yes, to think that somebody might have doubts that the most ideologically contentious election in modern history, wherein both sides perceived the opposition to be an existential threat to their lives or lifestyles might have on any scale been marred by political actors attempting to fix the results in their favor is a sign that people are too irrational to be exposed to the idea going forward…

...yes. yes, it's absurd that after the last few weeks, the GOP candidate refuses to concede and is still continually playing with fire by pushing the notion that the result was fraudulent.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#696

Post by brobdingnagians »

endymi0n wrote: post #630
singlow wrote: post #330

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…

"False balance, also bothsidesism, is a media bias in which journalists present an issue as being more balanced between opposing viewpoints than the evidence supports. Journalists may present evidence and arguments out of proportion to the actual evidence for each side, or may omit information that would establish one side's claims as baseless. False balance has been cited as a major cause of spreading misinformation…

Censorship usually involves removing one side's articles and reasoning and not even attempting to dispute it. True balance by taking account of both sides will include rebuttals of the sides against the other side. Both sides should be free to make their case and also make their rebuttals to the other side. Censorship likes to eliminate one side, so that rebuttal and dissent doesn't take place and isn't known. To what degree a piece of information makes one side's claims baseless is often up to interpretation as well. Our claims are often stronger in our own minds than when spoken out loud to others in reasoned discourse. When we accept any one arbiter as the single source of truth for what is true or fake, we have given up reasoned discourse and dissent. We should think for ourselves, and trust others to think for themselves. No one is more totalitarian than the person who thinks only he and his friends are worthy of thinking for and choosing for themselves and that they must protect others from themselves at all costs.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#697

Post by standyro »

graycat wrote: post #624
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…

For "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…

"I will grant that maybe Trump exaggerates" is an immense exaggeration.

Extreme exaggeration is endemic to his character. It's not a maybe. He exaggerates everyday, all day.

"Nobody has more respect for women than Donald Trump!"

"Nobody has more respect for women than I do."

"Nobody has more respect for women than I do. Nobody."

“Nobody reads the Bible more than me.”

"Nobody loves the Bible more than I do"

"Nobody does self-deprecating humor better than I do. It’s not even close"

“Nobody knows more about taxes than I do, maybe in the history of the world.”

"Nobody knows more about trade than me"

"Nobody knows the (visa) system better than me. I know the H1B. I know the H2B. Nobody knows it better than me."

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#698

Post by forgingahead »

dukeofdoom wrote: post #420

If we don't have a meaningful signature match, than we don't have a meaningful way to prevent fraud with mail in ballots. Period. Bad ballot Rejection rate of 6% in previous election to now 0.02%, with mail in ballots. Mismatched signatures resulted in a rejection for only 0.02% of all absentee ballots cast. How is that even possible. They counted almost everything. For those of you that think its unfair to reject ba…

You're right. It was interesting to learn that Obama won his first election in Chicago by getting his opponents disqualified due to signature issues:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_Senate_elections_of_B...

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2007-04-04-070403...

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#699

Post by sdwa »

graycat wrote: post #624
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…

For "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…

>I will grant that maybe Trump (1) exaggerates and (2) says things to gauge reactions

You mean lies? They're called lies.

This is the crux of the issue and why Google's action are sadly necessary: The stereotype regarding Americans is mostly true; around half of them really are quite, quite stupid.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#700

Post by refurb »

newacct583 wrote: post #278
bradenb wrote: post #105

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.

> Let the Like/Dislike button do its job. Community moderation has completely and totally failed. Giant, enormous lies are being told to half the population without barrier. People who want to believe in a completely fabricated story about election fraud have all their eyeballs can get. Fine. I get the free speech angle. But... who cares about free speech when democracy is dying in front of us? Free speech was suppos…

When we covered the 1st Amendment in school and talked about censorship I always thought “who could possibly be against the 1st Amendment?”.

Apparently a lot of people!

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