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> If you're going to murder your parents over a conspiracy theory is there any reason to assume you wouldn't murder them for a dozen other reasons? I'd wager t

> If you're going to murder your parents over a conspiracy theory is there any reason to assume you wouldn't murder them for a dozen other reasons? I'd wager that some will and some won't, and that if you were morbid enough you could probably measure such a thing statistically. > How justified is censoring a platform for millions of users because of one mentally ill user? Not only the mentally ill occasionally have absolutely terrible ideas, buy into something stupid, or get occasionally conned. Adding information to videos is also not censorship - at least insofar as I'd define the term, or generally seen it defined, unless perhaps if you're going so far as to try to bury a needle in a haystack - so I'm not sure the question is relevant here unless you're worried about some slippery slope or something. I'd hesitate to impose censorship, but adding information to pierce the walls of echo chambers - and to let e.g. "the marketplace of ideas" actually work - seems like a great idea to me. Not that any implementation of such a thing won't have it's flaws, mind you. > Is there any evidence that being exposed to certain ideas "pushes someone over the edge" any more than what they can come up with in their own head or without technological assistance? I've read some stuff about school shootings that suggests media coverage encourages "copycat" attacks. I feel like you've answered your own question here, but I may be missing something. Isn't what a copycat being exposed to when they read the news about one of these incidents, also ideas? Terrible, terrible ideas? Or are you perhaps asking if any of that stuff you've read rises to the level of evidence instead of clickbait hearsay? I've likely read little more than you have - references to studies that suggest the evidence is there. I don't recall reading about any studies refuting that idea or showing no correlation.

verylittlemeat 9y ago
I agree with you that what youtube is doing now is not censorship by any standard definition and I don't think it's a bad thing. You might be able to argue that it's a form of "positive censorship" in the sense that a wiki on a video would be a scarlet letter but even that seems like very weak censorship. I included the example of copycat attacks to show good faith that I'm not ignoring examples I know of that counter my own argument. What I'm trying to understand is the role of radicalization and conspiracy in violent acts. We know there are large communities of radical conspiracy theorists and yet physical violence or violent harassment is only a small subset of that community. How safely can we presume that "radical media" is the main cause of the latter violent groups? It's definitely an appealing narrative to imagine these people groom and reinforce their own beliefs until they "boil over" into violence but is that really how it works? We act as though people can be almost brainwashed into doing terrible things just by mere exposure. I'm arguing that at the very least it's more complicated than that and we should inject a little bit of nuance into the rhetoric of what conspiracy theories mean for society.
gowld 9y ago
In the one anecdote in this thread, the perpetrator in question was Milo's intern. Someone receiving direct 1st-hand gaslighting from Milo himself doesn't really need Youtube to learn about Milo's conspiracy theories.

verylittlemeat 9y ago

I agree with you that what youtube is doing now is not censorship by any standard definition and I don't think it's a bad thing. You might be able to argue that it's a form of "positive censorship" in the sense that a wiki on a video would be a scarlet letter but even that seems like very weak censorship. I included the example of copycat attacks to show good faith that I'm not ignoring examples I know of that counter my own argument. What I'm trying to understand is the role of radicalization and conspiracy in violent acts. We know there are large communities of radical conspiracy theorists and yet physical violence or violent harassment is only a small subset of that community. How safely can we presume that "radical media" is the main cause of the latter violent groups? It's definitely an appealing narrative to imagine these people groom and reinforce their own beliefs until they "boil over" into violence but is that really how it works? We act as though people can be almost brainwashed into doing terrible things just by mere exposure. I'm arguing that at the very least it's more complicated than that and we should inject a little bit of nuance into the rhetoric of what conspiracy theories mean for society.

gowld 9y ago

In the one anecdote in this thread, the perpetrator in question was Milo's intern. Someone receiving direct 1st-hand gaslighting from Milo himself doesn't really need Youtube to learn about Milo's conspiracy theories.