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I have a question for anyone who reads this and thinks that YouTube needs to police it's own content: How many flat-earther videos would you have to watch befo

I have a question for anyone who reads this and thinks that YouTube needs to police it's own content: How many flat-earther videos would you have to watch before you started to believe that the earth was flat? If your answer is "No amount of flat-earther videos would convince me the earth is flat": 1. Thank goodness 2. Why do you care that they (or any other weird conspiratorial videos) exist at all?

hobs 8y ago
This is an argument from personal experience - just because you cant see yourself do it doesnt mean it isnt happening to others. Clearly since flat earthers continue to exist, your logic is broken.
zeroname 8y ago
It's never them, it's always the "other" people that need to be "protected" from "toxic" content. Having said that, fake news and conspiracy theories have played a major role in setting the groundwork for the Holocaust, so there's a valid argument to be made there. I wouldn't want the people writing/reading Vox to make the call though.
- dgacmu 8y ago
  It's easy to identify when others repost propaganda. It's hard to identify when we ourselves fall for it, because by definition, we were fooled. Just as most people believe they are above average drivers, most people probably believe they are above-average at filtering out internet propaganda. Even in a media-savvy forum like HN, I would be willing to bet that most of us, myself obviously included, have at least liked/up voted/whatever'd a modest number of maliciously spread memes/posts/etc.
minikites 8y ago
YouTube is extremely popular with children and adolescents who generally lack developed critical thinking skills and the context to evaluate the claims in these videos.
- monksy 8y ago
  Our education system needs to teach critical thinking skills and media literacy.
  - zeroname 8y ago
    Conspiracy thinking is a form of paranoia, education cannot fix it. Case in point, the moment you start educating about conspiracy theories, you're part of the conspiracy. You can't win.
    - monksy 8y ago
      You're assuming that the idea is so sticky that you can't avoid it if you hear it. If you acknowledge what it is, how it went wrong and the interactions with it go on. You can teach people how to spot it.
      - krapp 8y ago
        >You're assuming that the idea is so sticky that you can't avoid it if you hear it. Often times, it is. Many people who fall into conspiratorial thinking believe themselves to be the victims of elaborate campaigns of propaganda, mind control, gaslighting, etc. Many also reject the mainstream rationales behind arguments against their beliefs as being fallacious or misinformation, and interpret attempts to convince them otherwise as validation of their fears. Such people don't arrive at their beliefs by logical inference, their conspiracies serve an emotional need, similar to belief in cults or extremist religion. It can be comforting to "realize" there are puppetmasters pulling the strings behind the mundane chaos of the world, and that you alone can see the facade. Even if those puppetmasters are malicious, you know they're there, you know there's a plan. Conspiracies are about making sense of a senseless world, and that's why it can be difficult to turn people away from them. No one wants to live a meaningless life in a world of arbitrary and ultimately purposeless cruelty.
  - duskwuff 8y ago
    Even if it were easy to add that to school curricula and teach it effectively -- which it isn't -- Youtube reaches a lot of very young children who wouldn't have received that education yet. Many of them are too young to even have the necessary cognitive skills to recognize and appropriately respond to false information.
mikeash 8y ago
I don’t care that they exist, but it’s pretty annoying to have them showing up in my recommendations all the time. To a lesser extent I care about them showing up in other people’s recommendations a lot. Propaganda does work.
Dylan16807 8y ago
Flat earth is so obviously wrong that I'm safe from it. I'm not arrogant enough to think that I'm immune to misreporting of facts, or that I and millions of others couldn't be damaged by people arguing in bad faith. And "arguing in bad faith" covers a lot of the most objectionable content.
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  Even if I agreed with you that all of the thoughts/propaganda/ideas that a plurality of the current population thinks should be suppressed are objectively harmful and absolutely should be suppressed (which, incidentally, I don't), even you ought to be able to agree with me that, at some point in the future, an important idea or viewpoint could find itself in the censorship list that this line of thinking lays the groundwork for.
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    > Even if I agreed with you that You are reading way too far into my post, which is only about whether some videos are harmful, not what to do about it, and not how you determine which ones.
- malmsteen 8y ago
  Its not "obviously wrong" for flat earther. It always depend on the crowd Same here in this thread and even top comment: HN crowd so its "obvious" that we should ban alt-right and "people like video x or y because it is controverial" Well no. Some people just thing its ok and want to watch it and the line between fighting hate speech and censorship is very hard to draw
forgottenpass 8y ago
>Why do you care that they (or any other weird conspiratorial videos) exist at all? They think their judgement is better than people they disagree with. Therefore someone should exercise paternalistic control over those they disagree with, so those wrong people will stop disagreeing with their obviously-right opinions so darn much. They also don't foresee the resentment this will generate among the scolded and/or think they can contain that resentment. Which tells me their judgement was actually untrustworthy all along, and regardless of the advisability of censorship they should not be allowed to wield it.

hobs 8y ago

This is an argument from personal experience - just because you cant see yourself do it doesnt mean it isnt happening to others. Clearly since flat earthers continue to exist, your logic is broken.

zeroname 8y ago

It's never them, it's always the "other" people that need to be "protected" from "toxic" content. Having said that, fake news and conspiracy theories have played a major role in setting the groundwork for the Holocaust, so there's a valid argument to be made there. I wouldn't want the people writing/reading Vox to make the call though.

dgacmu 8y ago
It's easy to identify when others repost propaganda. It's hard to identify when we ourselves fall for it, because by definition, we were fooled. Just as most people believe they are above average drivers, most people probably believe they are above-average at filtering out internet propaganda. Even in a media-savvy forum like HN, I would be willing to bet that most of us, myself obviously included, have at least liked/up voted/whatever'd a modest number of maliciously spread memes/posts/etc.

minikites 8y ago

YouTube is extremely popular with children and adolescents who generally lack developed critical thinking skills and the context to evaluate the claims in these videos.

monksy 8y ago
Our education system needs to teach critical thinking skills and media literacy.
- zeroname 8y ago
  Conspiracy thinking is a form of paranoia, education cannot fix it. Case in point, the moment you start educating about conspiracy theories, you're part of the conspiracy. You can't win.
  - monksy 8y ago
    You're assuming that the idea is so sticky that you can't avoid it if you hear it. If you acknowledge what it is, how it went wrong and the interactions with it go on. You can teach people how to spot it.
    - krapp 8y ago
      >You're assuming that the idea is so sticky that you can't avoid it if you hear it. Often times, it is. Many people who fall into conspiratorial thinking believe themselves to be the victims of elaborate campaigns of propaganda, mind control, gaslighting, etc. Many also reject the mainstream rationales behind arguments against their beliefs as being fallacious or misinformation, and interpret attempts to convince them otherwise as validation of their fears. Such people don't arrive at their beliefs by logical inference, their conspiracies serve an emotional need, similar to belief in cults or extremist religion. It can be comforting to "realize" there are puppetmasters pulling the strings behind the mundane chaos of the world, and that you alone can see the facade. Even if those puppetmasters are malicious, you know they're there, you know there's a plan. Conspiracies are about making sense of a senseless world, and that's why it can be difficult to turn people away from them. No one wants to live a meaningless life in a world of arbitrary and ultimately purposeless cruelty.
- duskwuff 8y ago
  Even if it were easy to add that to school curricula and teach it effectively -- which it isn't -- Youtube reaches a lot of very young children who wouldn't have received that education yet. Many of them are too young to even have the necessary cognitive skills to recognize and appropriately respond to false information.

mikeash 8y ago

I don’t care that they exist, but it’s pretty annoying to have them showing up in my recommendations all the time. To a lesser extent I care about them showing up in other people’s recommendations a lot. Propaganda does work.

Dylan16807 8y ago

Flat earth is so obviously wrong that I'm safe from it. I'm not arrogant enough to think that I'm immune to misreporting of facts, or that I and millions of others couldn't be damaged by people arguing in bad faith. And "arguing in bad faith" covers a lot of the most objectionable content.

commandlinefan 8y ago
Even if I agreed with you that all of the thoughts/propaganda/ideas that a plurality of the current population thinks should be suppressed are objectively harmful and absolutely should be suppressed (which, incidentally, I don't), even you ought to be able to agree with me that, at some point in the future, an important idea or viewpoint could find itself in the censorship list that this line of thinking lays the groundwork for.
- Dylan16807 8y ago
  > Even if I agreed with you that You are reading way too far into my post, which is only about whether some videos are harmful, not what to do about it, and not how you determine which ones.
malmsteen 8y ago
Its not "obviously wrong" for flat earther. It always depend on the crowd Same here in this thread and even top comment: HN crowd so its "obvious" that we should ban alt-right and "people like video x or y because it is controverial" Well no. Some people just thing its ok and want to watch it and the line between fighting hate speech and censorship is very hard to draw

forgottenpass 8y ago

>Why do you care that they (or any other weird conspiratorial videos) exist at all? They think their judgement is better than people they disagree with. Therefore someone should exercise paternalistic control over those they disagree with, so those wrong people will stop disagreeing with their obviously-right opinions so darn much. They also don't foresee the resentment this will generate among the scolded and/or think they can contain that resentment. Which tells me their judgement was actually untrustworthy all along, and regardless of the advisability of censorship they should not be allowed to wield it.