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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

#711

Post by failuser »

slg wrote: post #143
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.

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.

Not really. I see a couple videos about guns and YouTube fills my recommendations with nut jobs. I see a couple of video game reviews and YouTube assumes I want to watch videos about SJWs performing white genocide. And so on.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#712

Post by b1daly »

mfDjB wrote: post #389
flowerlad wrote: post #39

20 years ago reputed organizations such as newspapers, radio stations and television informed people the truth. Conspiracy theories were fringe and didn't have a way to spread. Today more than half the population believes in conspiracy theories because they learn the "truth" from disreputable sources on social media. This is dangerous for society. I am glad social media companies are taking action themselves, instead…

Is there any data that shows the number of people believing in conspiracy theories is actually greater than it was, and that that gap was due to social media? 20 years ago I remember TV shows talking about the moon landing being a hoax, and a decent number of people I talked to at the time believing it. This is just an anecdote, but I've noticed that people make the claim that conspiracy theories are on the rise and…

The difference is the moon landing or ‘who shot JFK’ are about subjects that are low stakes, very low. Having millions people believe the Presidential election was corrupt is corrosive to the basic civic foundations of the political process.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#713

Post by odessacubbage »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #119
ryaan_anthony wrote: post #75

So who decides what is true/accurate? Is this action just related to the current election or will this extend to other "fake news" and elections in other countries? Covid news comes to mind.

The courts do? And so far they haven't produced any evidence and they get flung out of every court. On COVID, every country on the planet agrees. The scientists have spoken. The guy who thinks the royal family are lizards should not be considered even remotely reliable.

so oj didn't do it?

that's a relief.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#714

Post by [deleted] »

zionic wrote: post #157
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.

This plays exactly into their narrative. "If they didn't steal it, they wouldn't have to work so hard to cover it up!" Megacorps should never become arbiters of truth.

[deleted]

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#715

Post by jonbronson »

grawprog wrote: post #694

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…

The facts aligning in the Senator's favor does not make the request partisan. Nor are they the only political figures to reference the widely acknowledged facts that there was no spread widespread voter fraud. Prominent Republican politicians in positions of oversight have agreed with this outcome.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#716

Post by cycomanic »

cambalache wrote: post #421
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…

> 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…

The issue with comments like this is that nobody was shouting when ISIS accounts were being banned from twitter or some of their execution videos were removed from platforms. Now I'm not advocating that ISIS videos should be allowed, but if you are in fact thinking "there are no buts" than you should have been shouting loudest at those times, because if you only shout when someone you agree with is being "censored" it suddenly seems much more that you only care about your freedom to say what you want, not the freedom for everyone to say anything.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#717

Post by young_unixer »

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…

> [...] present an issue as being more balanced between opposing viewpoints than the evidence supports.

The idea that some evidence X supports viewpoint Y usually requires some underlying moral assumptions. Many times it's those fundamental moral assumptions that are in discussion, not the evidence itself.

For example: if the scientific evidence is "lockdowns stop the spread of the virus", someone may say: "well, this evidence supports my viewpoint that we should be in permanent lock-down until the virus is completely eradicated". But that starts from the assumption that stopping the spread of the virus is always the most important goal and other considerations (economy, education, etc) should be ignored.

Fake facts are an issue, but once we agree on facts, we're only halfway there, then we need to agree on what to do based on those facts.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#718

Post by anigbrowl »

grawprog wrote: post #694

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…

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?

If you think it is, then why are you asking? If you're not sure, why are you asserting it (and suggesting that a party is equivalent to a government because some of its members are part of the government)?

Perhaps you should extend your inquiry, and ask how it is that much of one party and its leader are demanding that an election be overturned or declared invalid, using a variety of extremely tenuous arguments. Please consider that these demands originate with people who have also demanded tech companies be stripped of legal immunity for content publication and regularly expresses a wish to sue media outlets out of existence, topics which seem to have earned little discussion on HN.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#719

Post by hartator »

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…

> the time to fix these things is before an election, not afterwards.

Mail-in ballots were not approved by state legislature which what what the constitution defines.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#720

Post by Zanneth »

anigbrowl wrote: post #670
exabrial wrote: post #79

Absolutely nothing about the USA is in danger of falling apart. These conspiracy theories would die by themselves in a month or two. Lets be clear about what's happening here: Google/Facebook and the like are becoming targets of anti-trust regulatory lawsuits (privacy, data-gathering, monopolistic behavior, etc). This is just an attempt to build goodwill with the incoming administration so they can call in a favor la…

Absolutely nothing about the USA is in danger of falling apart. These conspiracy theories would die by themselves in a month or two. Yes, totally normal to have armed militias running around state capitols, organizing kidnap plots of governors, retired generals calling for suspension of the Constitution etc., happens every election cycle. /sarcasm

Those are all extremely biased ways to phrase current events that have comparatively little significance in the real world.
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