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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

#931

Post by vsssk »

anonymouse008 wrote: post #859
owlbynight wrote: post #418

This is Orwellian bullshit. And I'll take it because I think the alternative is leading to a few greedy assholes using analytical data to successfully weaponize millions upon millions of uninformed people against logic and common sense. Do we add restrictions to voting to weed out people who habitually vote anti-facts? No. Disenfranchisement. Do we make fake news illegal? No. Censorship leading to state run media. Do…

I’m asking as sincerely as I can, I wish no one harm or to lose their right to vote — How do we have a higher mail in ballot rejection rate in non-pandemic times than we do in pandemic times? And then follow up, if we assume incredible voter turnout, how do many of these first time mail in ballots follow the process so correctly that the ballot rejection rate is lower? Were the standards altered? That’s fine with me.…

> How do we have a higher mail in ballot rejection rate in non-pandemic times than we do in pandemic times?

I mean, here's an explanation for a specific case

> According to the nonprofit, nonpartisan organisation Ballotpedia, Georgia rejected 6.42% of mail-in ballots in total in the 2016 general election and 3.10% in total in the 2018 midterm (here). These totals include rejections because of signatures, but also include, for example, ballots received late or past deadlines, problems with return materials or a voter having already voted in person.

> It may be that Trump was referring to the 0.15% of ballots specifically rejected for "missing or non-matching signatures" when saying that ballots rejected in 2020 were "almost zero", but this percentage is consistent with past years. The higher percentage he mentions for past years is likely based off the total rejected ballots (here) which can not be compared with 2020, as this information is not available.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-georgia-rejecte...

https://sos.ga.gov/index.php/elections/number_of_absentee_ba...

Edit: And just for fun, I pulled data for 2020 and 2018 statewide, November elections from https://elections.sos.ga.gov/Elections/voterabsenteefile.do

I looked at a largeish file (didnt want to deal with the 1gig state wide file), ended up being CHATHAM county. (file name 025).

In 2018, there were 351 rejections for 40683 mail in ballots. In 2020, there were 321 rejections for 110831 mail in ballots.

The interesting thing to me was that in 2018, 286 ballots were rejected for being late, but in 2020, only 191 were rejected for being late.

Which tells me at least some of the higher acceptance rates can be attributed simply to people being more diligent about mailing their ballots in.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#932

Post by kunfuu »

lukev wrote: post #814

I'm glad that the HN consensus is against government censorship. I also really wish we collectively put more effort into solving the underlying problem of mass disinformation in the internet age. It's a real problem, and while ham-fisted censorship isn't the right solution, clearly _some_ solution is necessary. Working on how to solve the problem without censorship is more likely to lead to a successful outcome, and…

I have an amusing idea: an independent amateur journalist network, composed of people doing the field work, in their free time. I'm not confident it will ever come true, but it's good to fantasize, at the minimum.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#933

Post by kunfuu »

wpietri wrote: post #789
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…

He wrote that nearly 100 years ago. With an additional century's experience, I think it's clearer that teaching media literacy just isn't enough. One reason is the bullshit asymmetry principal: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it." Another is that liars get a lot more practice in selling their lie than people do in analyzing and refuting a particular lie.…

Here is my heavily biased take. People need to teach analytic philosophy, scientific methodology, logical empiricism, social-psychological dynamics, journalism, jurisprudence, and perhaps a version of initiative (e.g. initiative to try doing journalistic investigation or playing an impartial judge) in middle schools for every student.

I'm not sure if it is too much to ask from folks, but progress doesn't come easy anyway.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#934

Post by erichocean »

ve55 wrote: post #286

Is there any evidence that removal of content one believes to be false actually achieves the remover's goals of changing the opinions of the potential viewers? I would personally be quite upset if I found platforms deleting content that I wanted to read and learn about, I don't think anyone wants someone else to choose what they can and can't learn about, regardless of its veracity. Again, I'm sure Google starts with…

> Is there any evidence that removal of content one believes to be false actually achieves the remover's goals of changing the opinions of the potential viewers?

Yes, recently in fact: Rasmussen polled Biden voters about the Hunter Biden laptop story that was suppressed on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (and legacy media), and 9.4% said they would not have voted for Biden if they had known prior to voting (IIRC ~50% of them had not heard about it). That's enough votes to get Trump elected in spite of the changes to how elections were conducted in the four swing states Texas sued earlier this week.

Suppression works really, really well. Expect to see more of it in the future.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#935

Post by erichocean »

misiti3780 wrote: post #90

Is there any article or video out there that outlines a compelling case of how massive election fraud could have even occurred ? I do believe some election fraud happened, how could it not with 150MM voters in this past election. But I have yet to read a single article that could outline any explanation for how democrats stole 8MM votes so Trump lost, but did not change down-ballot votes so that they also lost house…

The Texas Supreme Court lawsuit has a concise summary of the actual problems with the 2020 presidential election alleged by Republicans:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163215/2020...

To the best of my knowledge, the facts discussed in the lawsuit are not in dispute by Democrats. Instead, Republicans are alleging that the way the election itself was conducted in four swing states violated the Constitution.

The election changes were made due to the COVID pandemic, and the number of votes affected by the changes were obtained by the certified election results in each state, those vote totals are not in dispute, and those vote totals are large enough to put the results in each state in doubt.

So what the Supreme Court is being asked to do is declare those votes invalid. Whether they will take the case or rule in favor of Republicans is extremely unlikely according to virtually all legal and media experts…but the same was true for Bush v. Gore and we all know how that turned out.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#937

Post by pqhwan »

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.

So we should vote for leaders that “the media” hates and scrutinizes? That is a sad, cynical view of the world. Also, you realize that the media in the US includes outlets on both sides, right? As in, every leader pretty much fits both characterizations?

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#938

Post by raxxorrax »

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…

Remember the Russian election manipulation? I firmly believe any doubt would have been censored because it didn't align with the narrative for which there was zero evidence in the end. Indeed, this was a false balance as it was political propaganda for a party to safe face and explain defeat.

This Wikipedia article is bad and it should be removed as it doesn't do anything to further knowledge and the message of the sources was daringly misinterpreted and would not constitute anything different than the anecdote I mentioned in the first paragraph.

The article is hostile to thought, thoroughness and honesty at the same time, that is only topped by the shallow word creation that is "bothsidesism", which should constitute assault if written down in earnest.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#939

Post by erichocean »

bamboozled wrote: post #16
firloop wrote: post #3

> Yesterday was the safe harbor deadline for the U.S. Presidential election and enough states have certified their election results to determine a President-elect. 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... This is likely going to make a lot of c…

YouTube is run by a private company, they can do what they like with the content they own. If they don’t want to show the content, tough luck. Don’t like the content? Don’t watch it. Don’t agree with their ethics ? Don’t use their product. It’s simple.

> YouTube is run by a private company

Sigh. YouTube is run by a public company, has been for many years.

Re: YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

#940

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

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…

Google is lifting a ban on political ads tomorrow, about a month ahead of a Jan 5th runoff election in Georgia that will determine which party controls the Senate.

Perhaps the message here from subsidiary YouTube is that potentially viral videos that could damage voter confidence in past elections (and thereby affect their responsiveness to political ads for future ones) will not be tolerated while parent Google is trying to sell political ads for the Jan 5th election.

How much money will Google make selling ads for this runoff election in Georgia.

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