YouTube suspends The Hill for playing clip of Trump denying election results • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube suspends The Hill for playing clip of Trump denying election results

#781

Post by no-dr-onboard » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 4:22 PM UTC

hotpotamus wrote: post #761

greyhair wrote: post #755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tell this to my liberal friends all the time. You don't have to listen to the swill on Fox News, but you should at least listen to valid conservative viewpoints to understand why the disagreements exist in the first place, to understand why there is a range of views on any topic to begin with. Living inside a singular viewpoint bubble doesn't help anyone. The same people that insist that human sexuality is non-bina…

Who would you consider a valid conservative if not the most mainstream conservative news organization? I have the utmost respect for David Frum and a lot of the "Never Trump" type conservatives who clearly actually believed in their principled ideas, but even they would tell you that they're a minority of a minority. It's often hard to tell if Fox News is leading or following mainstream conservative opinion (and of c…

I’ve found that thoughtful opinions are best sampled on an individual to individual basis and not easily found by reading articles from a news organization.

News orgs are rushing to print the story and (at most) only include small tidbits of reactionary analysis. It isn’t the fault of the individual as much as it is the medium. The medium inherently lacks depth.

Two places to start: Daryl Cooper, Michael Tracy.

Re: YouTube suspends The Hill for playing clip of Trump denying election results

#782

Post by UnpossibleJim » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 4:44 PM UTC

DoctorOW wrote: post #680

UnpossibleJim wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I represented myself well at all. I'm not for censorship or any form of "Ministry of Truth". Those ideas will be paired with videos naturally by people who would choose to refute the ideas put forth. And I think fair use should cover rebuttal videos (though I'm unsure how copyright works in that way). I don't think anyone needs to be banned for showing a video discussing any topic... it's legal, and a pr…

> I don't see how I could have been misconstrued as for not rebutting poor arguments or false information with facts, good arguments and critical thinking skills. Again, you're agreeing with YouTube on that point. The Hill's ban was because they didn't contextualize the false information they shared.

Here's Kim Iverson breaking down the criteria for Political Disinformation and what they might have done to break said policy:

https://youtu.be/t-oEaACklrc

EDIT: and I think I see where we're breaking down in our communications. We are basically agreeing (I think). I don't think YouTube's need for an immediate tag or rebuttal around "misinformation" leads to further discourse. I think rebuttal videos which would be linked, by way of the shared interest algorithm, would further discourse. Instead of scrounging for ad revenue and pushing people down into their own little bubble, YouTube has an obligation to offer up rebuttal videos, videos which offer an alternative to supposed misinformation, not to outright ban something like raw footage of political figures putting their foots in their mouths.

Re: YouTube suspends The Hill for playing clip of Trump denying election results

#783

Post by dang » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 4:47 PM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #615

dang wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't take HN threads into partisan flamewar. Last thing we need here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

My very point is that it is a partisan policy and a hypocrisy. If pointing that it is a partisan policy is partisan and therefore cannot be said, we are exactly in the same sort of circular "you can't express that opinion" policies than on YT.

Ok, but your comment failed to disambiguate those two levels. That is, it could be read either as a point about partisanship (which is what you intended), or it could be read as a garden-variety partisan swipe. When there's an ambiguity like that, the flamebait interpretation always wins out in the mind of the median reader, which is what determines the expected outcome of the thread. Therefore, the burden is on the commenter to disambiguate.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

Re: YouTube suspends The Hill for playing clip of Trump denying election results

#784

Post by hammock » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 4:51 PM UTC

bashinator wrote: post #35

hammock wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.

Not at all. Google is a private concern with the right to publish or not any content they see fit. That they can defacto censor opinions they don’t approve of is a failure of the market.

My point was that YouTube seems prefer to erase historical events rather than promote a favored narrative of those events. That's interesting to me.

All this hub about right to publish is a non sequitur.

Re: YouTube suspends The Hill for playing clip of Trump denying election results

#785

Post by bckr » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 4:51 PM UTC

rhino369 wrote: post #484

bckr wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this sentiment, although I agree it's stupid that The Hill was suspended. If anyone wants to give a reason why these arguments are always about freedom of speech VS censorship, instead of being about private property + free markets, please I'm open to this.

One issue you should consider is that the government can exert soft power on these companies. The same people who regulate, pass laws, and appoint prosecutors who oversee litigation against big tech, also hold hearings and blame social media for fake news and extremism. There have been explicit calls to clean up their content or face regulation. That starts to implicate government censorship. Google doesn't give a fu…

another interesting point

> slave labor

Can you be more specific?

Googling "Google slave labor" reveals a lawsuit from 2019 or so from folks whose children were injured & died in cobalt mines that big tech ultimately received refined cobalt from.

The case was thrown out[] because the companies were found to have just purchased refined cobalt down the supply chain, and the labor did not fall under the definition of human trafficking.

[] https://www.jurist.org/news/2021/11/federal-court-dismisses-...

Re: YouTube suspends The Hill for playing clip of Trump denying election results

#786

Post by coolso » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 4:59 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #750

coolso wrote: post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever Trump was doing to handle Putin certainly seemed to prevent Putin from doing any Ukrainian invading. I think Zelensky and the entire world would prefer more Trump phone calls and less Putin aggression right about now.

You know that the Russian army have been in Ukraine for Trump's entire term, right? One of his early big gaffes when running was to say "Russia won't invade Ukraine if he wins" and the journalist pointed out they already had.

You know that’s not what I meant (and likely not what Trump meant either) by “invasion” right?

You can prove anyone “wrong” by playing with definitions or getting super technical about things.

Re: YouTube suspends The Hill for playing clip of Trump denying election results

#787

Post by lukifer » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 5:09 PM UTC

DoctorOW wrote: post #229

cryptonector wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it's instructions on drinking bleach, why censor it? Not comparable.

That's fair. Instructions on drinking bleach might cause others to be harmed. This is different because nobody has ever come to harm because of this. I'd imagine if people believed this, there would have been some kind of violence on say, January 6th the day of the insurrection-- sorry, inauguration. Please let me know if you know how to fix this unfortunate typo.

A similar claim of "clear and present danger" was used in 1919 to prosecute anti-war protestors for handing out pamphlets which advocated draft resistance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States

While there is certainly a case for criminalizing direct prompts to imminent violence, attaching consequentialism to ideas is a very slippery slope, given enough creative hermeneutics by whoever currently wields state power. (I recall no shortage of conservatives circa 2004 who genuinely believed Michael Moore was guilty of treason.)

You tell me: is this comedy sketch satire, or an explicit call to violence? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhWCk2f2alI

Re: YouTube suspends The Hill for playing clip of Trump denying election results

#788

Post by telchior » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 5:17 PM UTC

spacexsucks wrote: post #756

Before internet, the village idiot was just that and laughed off. With internet, they got a group and justified themselves and now people are falling for that. If these idiots were taking just themselves off the cliff, then sure. But they are taking villagers who cant tell the difference between legit or not off the cliff too. Even worse, those idiots are turning these misguided villagers onto the rest who know bette…

Is it really the village idiot? Or is it a national-level genius, masquerading as a local villager?

Most of this stuff is really just memes being shared around. And memes, as much as they sometimes look like utterly uneducated trash (complete with errors of spelling / grammar / logic) are usually created by one person then shared by many. I suspect that one person is something of a mastermind; the many, of course, may be morons.

The discussion always seems to go toward censoring the many. I don't support that, even if I vehemently disagree with them. If my aunt, who I don't want to call a moron but does share some utterly insane memes, continues posting things, that's fine. I vehemently disagree with her and hate her viewpoint. She should get to share it anyway.

But I feel like social networks could do a lot more in locating and halting the mastermind that's 50 shares back in the chain, whispering in in their ears. It's like the story from a couple weeks back about a 3-person media shop being responsible for a huge amount of misinformation on Facebook. That was exposed by journalists. Facebook, I feel, would let them go on forever and invests basically nothing in finding out where some of the more virulent content comes from.

Re: YouTube suspends The Hill for playing clip of Trump denying election results

#789

Post by quantified » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 5:23 PM UTC

trustscientism wrote: post #777

spacexsucks wrote: post #756

Before internet, the village idiot was just that and laughed off. With internet, they got a group and justified themselves and now people are falling for that. If these idiots were taking just themselves off the cliff, then sure. But they are taking villagers who cant tell the difference between legit or not off the cliff too. Even worse, those idiots are turning these misguided villagers onto the rest who know bette…

I agree the news feed algorithm is pouring gasoline on the fire, but how do you expect human beings to react to being persecuted and censored as "viruses" and "cancers"; untermensch ? What is the ultimate end game with that line of thinking? "Like a boil that can never be cured as long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its pus-flowing ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must li…

To continue the analogy, the way that information flows now allows the exposure to infect everyone else. Is it the information a boil of injustice or an Ebola cough of Nazism?

I’m not arguing either way. I lean more toward keeping information uncensored, but let’s recognize that the ready ingestion of poison isn’t in the majority’s interest. And society always is willing to say “we’ll censor our taboos”, we didn’t really mean uncensored anyway.

Re: YouTube suspends The Hill for playing clip of Trump denying election results

#790

Post by ok123456 » Sat, Mar 05, 2022, 5:24 PM UTC

greyhair wrote: post #759

themitigating wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the midterms do this?

In this election year, Republicans will, at the very least, retake control of the House of Representatives, making Kevin McCarthy, speaker of the house. There is also an opportunity for them to take control of the Senate, returning Mitch McConnell to his leadership role. The far right despises technology companies, and there will be a huge push by their members to bring them all to heel.

It's not just the 'far right'. It's anybody who has an opinion which falls outside of the technocratic consensus machine at the current moment. Right. Left. Anarcho-Syndicalist. Mid-century UFO Cultists. It doesn't matter.

This is fundamentally a business decision driven by advertising: they don't want ads for dish washing detergent pixels away from someone Chomsky posting or Brandon posting. They want a stream of inane pablum for the Skinner box.