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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

#721

Post by knowaveragejoe »

3princip wrote: post #441

I live in a country that the US has sanctioned in the past for undemocratic election processes. Also, I'm familiar with our voting procedures and have worked on election oversight, data gathering etc. If we had an election that had a fraction of the irregularities that are surfacing in some of these problematic states, I'm pretty sure we would have been invaded by now. Jokes aside, those states are a similar populati…

> If we had an election that had a fraction of the irregularities that are surfacing in some of these problematic states, I'm pretty sure we would have been invaded by now.

This should probably clue you in that there are, in fact, no real irregularities(beyond what normally occurs).

Surely you must stop at some point and ask yourself - why are you carrying water for Trump?

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#722

Post by nl »

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…

> 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.

This isn't true at all.

We've had mail-in voting in Australia for decades, and there is no signature matching.

Some US states do use it at all.

Signature verification is error prone and becoming more-so as less people use their signatures regularly.

> Bad ballot Rejection rate of 6% in previous election to now 0.02%, with mail in ballots.

Wikipedia says in the 2016 election 1% of mail ballots were rejected[1]. I'd expect that to be a lot less this year because of the increased emphasis on it and the much higher numbers, but I haven't verified your 0.02% number. But going from 1% to 0.02% shouldn't be surprising based on the completely different voting behavior this year.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_voting_in_the_United_St...

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#723

Post by belorn »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #615
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…

This is the inevitable ruckus as more people realize that USA is a rigged democracy, and lose trust in the electoral system. A plain and transparent democracy would be "everybody votes, the candidate with more votes wins". Instead USA has the electoral college (what for? it has to vote the same as its citizens), winning by districts (what for? districts only exist to allow gerrymandering), and vote by mail without st…

It would be much similar to other nations if instead of an electoral college, people would just vote for senate seats. The senate then vote on a senate president who then becomes the leader of the nation.

In order to not give small states too much power they then could do as the EU parliament and give seats based on degressive proportionality.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#724

Post by stickyricky »

There's a lot of interesting take-aways in this post.

1. YouTube "prominently surfaces authoritative information" (i.e. promotes their corporate partners' content).

2. YouTube "limits the reach of borderline content" (i.e. suppresses content which does not violate its rules).

3. YouTube is trying to prevent third party content aggregators from linking to "borderline" content.

YouTube clearly has a preferred content source. I still remember the days when videos from Fox News or CNN would have 500 views. Those days are long gone now. Can't help but see them recommended on any political video.

All in all, a good day for some keen entrepreneurs. People joined "You"Tube not "Video"Tube. I hope this encourages disruption in the space.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#725

Post by ed25519FUUU »

Sophistifunk wrote: post #680
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #386

Unpopular opinion: it is much better to have a leader hated by the media and who's every move is scrutinized by the press than to have a leader cowtowed by the press and given a free pass on anything. How do I know? I'm from Russia. Authoritatism begins with tight control of news sources.

This is definitely true when the boss-man doesn't change. But these people aren't against power, or even against power used abusively against the people - they're only against "the other team" and clearly happy to cover up just about any bad actions of their preferred team.

I’m not sure who “these people” are, but this policy for everyone. What happens when “these people” is you?

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#726

Post by learnstats2 »

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…

> the practice of not giving full assent to propositions which there is no reason to believe true.

Given that YouTube is not school, I read this to understand that Bertrand Russell is here saying that YouTube shouldn't give equal weight to presumed falsehoods.

He is saying that people should be explicitly educated, in a controlled environment, to recognise the schemes of scoundrels - so that decent people can act accordingly.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#727

Post by marksbrown »

sxyuan wrote: post #303

A lot of short, knee-jerk reactions on this thread, not to mention snark and downright flame. Seeing as this is at the top of HN right now, can we try to elevate the level of discourse a little bit? A few questions to consider: 1. Is content moderation necessary in online platforms? I think the answer to this question is self-evident, but others may disagree and so I think it's worth posing. FWIW, HN has moderation,…

Easy - the tech monopolies must be broken up. Make it illegal for any company to have more than a quarter of the market. Make any market without at least say five competitors not a free market. I'd go with punitive taxation on global turnover myself.

Until this is done, their influence is only going to grow.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#728

Post by mountainboy »

tptacek wrote: post #51
rayiner wrote: post #23

This is an enormous overreach. > Given that, we will start removing any piece of content uploaded today (or anytime after) that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, in line with our approach towards historical U.S. Presidential elections. For example, we will remove videos claiming that a Presidential candidate won the election due to…

These claims are being slaughtered in ongoing court cases, and many of them are objectively batshit, like the guy who filed an affidavit about being prevented from observing vote counts because he drove to the wrong location, or the woman, central to the Texas suit against PA and MI, who claims the Obamas "funded the Wuhan lab where coronavirus was made". It is not the case that Google has to provide space for a clai…

you obviously have a bias and agree with Google/YouTube regarding the election dispute.

If your side's arguments are correct, then they should withstand transparency and scrutiny.

If you must censor others to win an argument, that should be a pretty good clue that maybe you are not on the winning side of debate, or of history.

There are many people in the world saying things I don't agree with, but I have never called for censorship, and never will.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#729

Post by stickyricky »

jonbronson wrote: post #715
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.

Its possible to censor incorrect information. Recognizing false information is not equivalent to calling for it to be suppressed.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#730

Post by hartator »

From the article II of the constitution:

> Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

Governors have outstepped their authority by allowing mail-in ballots which changes election rules. Which led us into the mess we're currently are.

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