America is fucking stupid. Yours, The Rest of the World
We've already asked you to stop posting nationalistic flamebait: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24191922. If you keep doing it we're going to have to ban you, so please stop.
The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire
951–960 of 981 posts
Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire
#952Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's worth reading Barry Goldwater's opposition [0] to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, despite him claiming to be "unalterably opposed to discrimination or segregation on the basis of race, color, or creed, or on any other basis". His stance was exactly what you describe: that government did not have a right to force private parties to conduct business against their will. There's a good-faith debate to be had about pos…
You are aware of the difference between "what you are" and "what you say" are you not? CRA prohibits discrimination on the basis of "what you are". So it's not really the same thing at all.
I'm not claiming it's a fully apt comparison; rather, that if one supports a principle of "it is entirely out of scope for government to force private businesses to transact against their will", with no other qualifiers, that would necessarily preclude the CRA as well.
It's a different stance to say "the government is allowed to force transactions where one party is unwilling, but only where the unwillingness is related to identity rather than actions". (Though even that distinction can blur: a religious person banned for sharing "my faith teaches that life begins at conception" could hardly be blamed for interpreting the act as being based on their protected-class religious identity, rather than their speech as such.)
Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire
#953Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire
#954Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you sincerely think that a person that manages to be elected is stupid? An elected president might be a lot of stuff, some of them bad, but stupid he surely isn't.
Why is getting elected proof of intelligence? We literally elected the guy that convinced an overwhelming number of uneducated people that he was going to build a wall to keep the illegals from stealing their jobs.
Illegal Immigration does have an affect on blue collar jobs. You can research this yourself, btw. There is a truckload of studies.
https://www.nber.org/digest/may07/effects-immigration-africa...
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/pub/Immigration/EffOnMinoritie...
https://www.c-span.org/video/?204714-1/illegal-immigration-a...
Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire
#955Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Weaponized misinformation has existed as long as human speech has existed. What is new is the democratization of it, hence the establishment’s hostility. Beautifully put. Better get ahead of it lest the proles gain class consciousness and use it against us.
I'm sure you mean that sarcastically, but you shouldn't. It's fun to complain about "the establishment," until it isn't there anymore. In the current case, "the establishment" means American democracy, which is built on people's faith in the institution of elections. If you erode that faith, democracy no longer works. That may be fine with you, but it's not fine with me.
May I ask your opinion the below ? In your opinion, is this disinformation ? Something that should be suppressed and censored and to keep the establishment glowing ?
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/election-integrity-...
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/dec/14/forensic-au...
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2020/12/mi-judge-approves-r...
Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire
#956Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are assuming that the regular media is the default, the truth, and that propaganda didn’t exist prior to 2016. Read Manufacturing Consent for a brief overview of this history of widespread weaponization of information by innumerable actors. Weaponized misinformation has existed as long as human speech has existed. What is new is the democratization of it, hence the establishment’s hostility.
The problem is that now we have weapons of mass information distraction.
I agree - you can't trust the main stream media anymore. Always verify their reports by yourself. They are careful about directly lying - but twisting and omitting information is something they are genius at.
Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire
#957Earlier quoted context omitted.
>convince people without coercion I think OP's question was whether one would voluntarily defer to some groups' decisions. Speaking about TFA, Youtube isn't coercing anyone, technically. There's no negative externality (punishment) being implemented, only the deprivation of a service that they provide. One might argue that since Youtube is effectively a monopoly, it's different. The counterargument is that people who…
If they were truly right, you could weigh the evidence they present and you would be convinced it is correct because they are so smart and compelling. Then you would make the decision that their evidence suggests. There would be no need to cede any authority to them, they should be able to convince you on the merits of their arguments.
True. It needs to be traded against the cost of doing all that research for yourself, though. It all depends on how much you enjoy researching a subject vs. how important the conclusion is to you vs. how much you trust others to get it right.
Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire
#958I find it really disconcerting how many people on Hacker News want a corporate entity to decide what information is deemed acceptable to know. Do you even know where that word came from? The irony is almost overwhelming. But I digress... The idea that banning certain information will somehow result in it disappearing has been shown repeatedly to not work. A cursory reading of history should make this clear. You canno…
The problem is YouTube's algorithm -- recommendations. If we accept the algorithm, then there is no middle ground: either you ban this content from the platform entirely, or watch misinformation spread wildly. But there could be a middle ground in which the platform changes how its algorithm works. I think neither YouTube nor its detractors are considering this as a serious possibility, for some reason.
They don't consider alternatives, because the algorithm is optimized for view counts. Sensationalism has always brought more views than "good" content. Youtube would need to forgo a lot of ad revenue to change the algorithm.
Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire
#959Earlier quoted context omitted.
>That may be fine with you, but it's not fine with me. It is fine with me. If the choice is between continuing down the path we're on and some unknown chaos, I'm willing to roll the dice on the chaos. At least it would be interesting .
Have you lived in a country where the establishment fails? Iran (1979), Soviet Union (1989), Turkey (take your pick)? Yep, interesting times. If boredom is the greatest difficulty you face, you're very fortunate. At least have consideration for those who value stability.
I said it would be interesting at least, and you can't deny that.
Re: The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire
#960Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is it that we have to ignore nuances in these arguments? We never had unrestricted free speech in this country. There is a whole Wikipedia article about it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_ex... In addition other democratic states have strict limits on free speech such as Singapore: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_14_of_the_Constituti... After all even “democracy” is nuanced here…
I wouldn't call Singapore a democracy. It's an authoritarian one-party state that happens to hold elections. These elections are always won by the same party. The democracy index rates Singapore at 6.02/10. About 0.03 away from being a "hybrid regime" and currently rated a "flawed democracy." It's ranked as worse than places such as Ukraine (currently in a civil war), Thailand (run by a military dictatorship), etc. H…
Interesting that Singapore also is the 4th least corrupt country per the Corruption Perceptions Index - one of the biggest discrepancies with the Democracy Index.