10 ms·

I might be in the minority here but I enjoy the low quality youtube comments. Most people dismiss them as cancer but the reality is a lot of people think in pat

by xfitm3 8y ago

I might be in the minority here but I enjoy the low quality youtube comments. Most people dismiss them as cancer but the reality is a lot of people think in patterns that drive these comments. I would rather be in touch with and exposed to this rather than try to pretend it doesn’t exist. It won’t ever go away, it will just be hidden.

Barrin92 8y ago
>It won’t ever go away, it will just be hidden. deplatforming is an effective strategy to reduce the spread of malicious content for several reasons, in the case of youtube because it reduces the incentive to monetize and spread harmful content. To say that you'd rather be a exposed to pedophilia in youtube comments than to remove them is a little bit like saying you'd like to stay in contact with the marburg virus.
- Mirioron 8y ago
  I agree! Since Hacker News could also potentially be such a way to disseminate bad information we should remove all comments here too. See the problem? That's basically what you're justifying.
  - number_six 8y ago
    IGNORE ME! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMNJuSl91qY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMNJuSl91qY
  - clucas 8y ago
    There are logical stopping points on the way from "all comments should be allowed" to "no comments should be allowed." One such stopping point could be "no comments should be allowed on media with certain features that overwhelmingly tend to attract morally reprehensible comments." Another such stopping point could be "all comments should be allowed, except those which the community has decided have no merit." In fact, (almost?) all worthwhile online communities are somewhere between the two extremes you seem to advocate. They don't always call it "deplatforming," which may be where you're getting hung up, but comment moderation is everywhere, and it does work. Now, if you want to say that Youtube could handle this particular type of comment moderation in a better way, I think there are plenty of arguments to be made. But the choice isn't "all comments" or "no comments."
    - Mirioron 8y ago
      >One such stopping point could be "no comments should be allowed on media with certain features that overwhelmingly tend to attract morally reprehensible comments." Another such stopping point could be "all comments should be allowed, except those which the community has decided have no merit." The comment chain is about whether comment sections should be available or not, not individual comments. Furthermore, down the chain you'll find a person saying that they like youtube's comment sections, because it represents the way many/most people think. The post I'm replying to is saying that deplatforming is good for stopping the spread of bad information. This does not read like the person is advocating for nuance or some in between solution, because if most people say those kinds of things, then the community would decide that they have merit. >no comments should be allowed on media with certain features that overwhelmingly tend to attract morally reprehensible comments. And who decides what is and is not morally reprehensible? If I tell Americans that letting an 8 year old play outside unsupervised, then I would be found to be morally reprehensible (as it is illegal in many places in the US). If I tell Polish people that it's okay to punish parents who let their 8 year old play unsupervised, then I would be found to be morally reprehensible. Both of the stop points you brought up are basically ways to segment communities. Reddit calls this a "circlejerk".
    - Kaiyou 8y ago
      You may see logical stopping points, but I see a slippery slope. And at each such stopping points there will be someone having good arguments for going down just a little bit further. Interestingly, starting down that path always seems to start with something relating to pedophilia. It's unfortunate that one always has to defend scoundrels in the first stages of what will otherwise naturally snowball into something nobody at the starting line ever intended for.
  - gjs278 8y ago
    they already do that. you can be banned for being mean to the crazies but they don't ban you for spreading misleading information about technology
  - jaabe 8y ago
    I think HN is actually a poster child of strong moderation on social media, because it remains relevant by being one of the most regulated platforms. There is a reason this place hasn’t devolved into complete and utter uselessness as well as why you rarely see any form of political debate, and it’s exactly because this places isn’t liberatarian in its approach to free speech. Free speech comes with responsibility, and part of that responsibility is to make sure people aren’t legally monetising videos of children for pedofiles. I know it’s not always a popular opinion, but I think social media has been hiding from its responsibility for far too long, and I’m personally happy the EU is stepping in to regulate it. Big tech companies shouldn’t be able to get away with things no one else could simply by being big. Especially not when it’s used to undermine the foundation of our society. If someone uses your platform for a network of pedos, or to commit genocide then you are also responsible for enabling it in my opinion.
    - 0x445442 8y ago
      I'd say the one down side to HN is the moderation and I don't think social media has any responsibility to moderate comments. Readers of NN comments are free to ignore any content they wish to ignore. I find the trend of individuals demanding organizations and governments protect them from content they may find distasteful or content they don't agree with to very disturbing.
    - ndnxhs 8y ago
      HN is self selecting a higher quality audience. The content is interesting to an educated audience, the website contains very little fluff/idle entertainment and the ui is ugly to the average user.
      - ghaff 8y ago
        While true, the moderation system also tends to discourage the snarky or ad hominem attack that at least some of us might otherwise be attempted to make from time to time.
    - GoblinSlayer 8y ago
      Is your reasoning invariant across different moral systems (like Iran, China)?
  - dang 8y ago
    This comment breaks the site guidelines—in particular this one: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." You also got into some pretty flamey discussions elsewhere, e.g. the religious flamebait in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19275923—not https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19275923—not cool on Hacker News. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and refrain from doing those things here, we'd be grateful.
    - toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
      Hi dang, I’m given to understand that you’re one of the moderators here. I’ve tried to contact you three times in theee weeks through email, and this is my third time trying to get your attention in the comments, so far without a response. Is there a better way to contact you? I don’t feel good about inserting my comment in an unrelated post like this, but I’m unsure what else to do.
      - dexen 8y ago
        I've had good results sending messages to mailbox named "hn" in the "ycombinator" domain, in "com" TLD.
        toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
        I’ve tried that for three weeks without a response.
        dexen 8y ago
        I would assume your email address is mistakenly flagged by anti-spam system, and proceed accordingly.
        toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
        This is me proceeding accordingly, short of making a bunch of email accounts on different services, which seems a bit shady.
- philwelch 8y ago
  Ideally, I'd like a vaccine for the Marburg virus so being exposed isn't a big deal. I think the analogy is obvious enough from there.
TACIXAT 8y ago
This isn't about shitposting on YouTube videos, this is about pedos time stamping videos of kids in sexualized positions. Mostly in response to this video [1] (with a warning that it's pretty uncomfortable and gross). 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O13G5A5w5P0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O13G5A5w5P0
- xfitm3 8y ago
  Ahh, I see. Thanks for explaining.
- Shivetya 8y ago
  that truly was uncomfortable to watch, did not finish. Amazing how the human mind works that such a system came about but the algorithm that is built into youtube itself needs to be questioned. so what solution is there, preventing any content with children under a certain age? blocking any comment that features a link? can youtube detect use of vpn? once you leave certain countries I am not sure it can be policed.
  - TACIXAT 8y ago
    My best idea is containerized video platforms. A parent can pay for the service or host it themselves. You control who is on it. The place where this breaks down though is not everyone has friends and the world would no longer be the audience. As well, video hosting is expensive, not sure it is affordable in most countries. I don't think there is a great solution yet.
    - sah2ed 8y ago
      Are direct-to-DVD types of content dead and buried in developed countries? Lots of middle-class families in developing countries still buy (pirated) DVDs of Barney & Friends and similar family friendly shows for playback on their home theatre systems, for those moments when kids announce they are bored.
PhasmaFelis 8y ago
People's beliefs and behaviors are shaped by what they're exposed to and what they see to be publicly acceptable. Of course you can't completely stamp these things out, but you can absolutely affect how widespread and popular they are.
disillusioned 8y ago
I think that there's an element of validation and indoctrination that is a serious concern here. In addition to an overall significant lowering of the discourse around things by allowing garbage quality trolls and other horrible comments, and in addition to bullying, aggressive behavior, stalking, and other things that are broadly considered unpleasant, this kind of behavior breeds more of this behavior. Consider someone growing up on the internet. The more they're exposed to this sort of content, the more it will be normalized in their mind. The more they're exposed to this sort of content, the more likely susceptible people are to be radicalized by it, and to grow into the same sort of troll. Hiding or suppressing low-quality content creates a herd immunity effect. It prevents a shift of the Overton Window to where "generally allowable discourse" suddenly includes timestamping the most "salacious" parts of a child's video, or telling people to actually kill themselves, or sharing their purely racist, hate-filled viewpoints. While you may rather be exposed to it because you have the strength and capability to view it as a curiosity and a sociological study, the impressionable among us maybe deserve to not be bombarded with garbage, and we may have a moral duty to at least make some effort to minimize indoctrination and radicalization on these platforms.
- Haga 8y ago
  And we would have gotten away with new humans in a new utopia if it weren't for those meddling kids.
- lr4444lr 8y ago
  If you're "growing up on the Internet", the major problem is probably your negligent parents who don't monitor your Internet usage or teach you about trust, not the stupid and immature trolls typing to you.
  - edoceo 8y ago
    IME it's difficult as one or two parents to out weigh 100s of other voices.
- colechristensen 8y ago
  This is one of the reasons I think anonymity on the Internet is a bad thing. Not that I am saying it should be banned, but it should not be the norm. Much of the toxicity simply would not happen, could be prosecuted, or could be filtered if a "real person" attribute was widely available.
Mediterraneo10 8y ago
> I would rather be in touch with and exposed to this rather than try to pretend it doesn’t exist. YT comments do more than just represent ideas that are out there. Sometimes they can serve as a means of disseminating harmful ideas. Just yesterday I was looking at some YT videos about the history of the Balkan peoples and languages, where the speakers were internationally recognized historians and linguists (and who are from outside the region and don’t have a dog in any of the ethnic fights). However, the comment sections had become a place where people could post lengthy crackpot claims about their people’s history in direct contradiction to the authoritative scholar speaking in the video. Furthermore, it appeared that many people, when they came to the video, went straight to the comments section to read the other YT commenters, and thus absorb their crackpot ideas. They didn’t actually watch the video and learn any of the information in it. I couldn’t help but feel that two decades ago, people similarly believed things that were baseless, but they had less capability to disseminate those ideas to other people.
- philwelch 8y ago
  > I couldn’t help but feel that two decades ago, people similarly believed things that were baseless, but they had less capability to disseminate those ideas to other people. Which people? Twenty years ago, people (by which I mean schoolteachers) baselessly believed that Columbus proved that the world was round rather than flat and disseminated that idea, and it was hard to disseminate the counter-idea of "no, actually, that's not true, the Ancient Greeks already knew the world was round, Columbus just thought the world was round and also much smaller, and he was wrong". If you can stop people from disseminating "harmful" ideas, you have the power to decide which ideas are "harmful". You might think it's "harmful" to disseminate the idea that the American Civil War was motivated primarily by the issue of slavery, for instance. If you're just in charge of buying school textbooks for the state of Texas, you won't buy textbooks that disseminate this idea, and that's harmful enough. But if you're in charge of moderating user-generated content on a huge set of platforms like Google and Facebook are, it starts becoming more and more of a problem.
  - Frondo 8y ago
    Two kinds of ideas I would consider harmful to the point of using the force of law to ban them: antivax materials, and the kinds of comments broadcast over media leading up to and during the Rwandan genocide that lead to that genocide taking place. I could not in good conscience say "the kids who die of preventable illness, their lives are worth it so antivax people can spread misinformation without consequence." I could not in good conscience say "the Tutsi lives lost were worth protecting the Hutu rights to free speech."
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
npunt 8y ago
I get where you're coming from with the academic curiosity of seeing how people think. That said, it seems you're assuming comments are simply a one-way output of different people's thought patterns, rather than a two-way process that has an effect on others. It's obvious it has a two-way effect - the point of reading and listening is to learn, and we can learn in ways that make us worse off. The idea that we should have a super low-friction way to be exposed to the internal thought process of anybody who is motivated to post those is an idea worth challenging, and we're starting to wake up to just how negative the repercussions of it are. That level of reach without any filtering steps (such as community standards, social feedback loops, etc) is fuel for extremism, harassment, and triggering/exacerbating mental illness. Lets not give everyone PTSD if we don't have to, cause thats effectively what your argument boils down to.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  As a staunch supporter of free speech, being exposed to your internal thought process had some negative repercussions for me. None of my fellow pro-free-speech HN users were able to filter you, nor even were they able to socially pressure you, and as result I read an extremist opinion. I think it's important that communities control anti-free-speech comments, otherwise they will descend into extremism.
  - npunt 8y ago
    You haven't refuted my argument that super low-friction reach is valuable enough to preserve. I have pretty decent karma in HN and there are much better filtering mechanisms in this community to remove bad actors and posts than there are on youtube. That's the context of my post that, while hidden, is nonetheless present in this community. There is no community for many youtube comments - its driveby comments that get free reach.
    - whatshisface 8y ago
      What's so bad about being exposed to the public id that you'd be willing to even loose a sliver of free speech to prevent it? You're already being exposed to the public id every moment, awake or asleep, because part of it is you.
esturk 8y ago
And you'll still get that from non-children related videos. No one is taking anything away from those. Unless I'm mistake, may I ask why you'd be interested in comments specifically for children videos?
el_dev_hell 8y ago
I agree, in most cases. Hiding the insanity of YouTube comments won't change anything it will just hide it ever so slightly. Like strategies to _hide_ homelessness in cities. But I strongly disagree when it comes to pedophiles sharing suggestive timestamps in comments and making vile sexual remarks targeted at children. That's where I nope out. That shit shouldn't be allowed in the comments section - even reddit doesn't allow this kind of commentary.
james_s_tayler 8y ago
Actually, that's a very good point. I think along similar lines. That it's not the comments or platforms that are terrible, they simply shine a light on our own human nature. We're dark, ugly creatures.
- Florin_Andrei 8y ago
  > We're dark, ugly creatures Among other things. Don't forget the duality. I'm not sure if the bright side is justification for the rest, but regardless, we are what we are.
Florin_Andrei 8y ago
> I enjoy the low quality youtube comments They're the solution to a hard engineering problem: how to generate stupid statements on a given topic? Not grammatically incoherent statements, but the products of true stupidity. Pretty hard to automate that kind of thing. But with YouTube, it's easy. Just search for videos that match the topic, and pull random comments from them. A large fraction are guaranteed to be examples of genuine stupidity.
vadym909 8y ago
The only reason I still have yahoo as my homepage is the the comments on the top stories. While most are low quality, there are some very clever comments and I feel I get a better sense of what everyday people are thinking about it.
house_atr 8y ago
Harassing people on the street and being a total scum is awful. But I would rather be exposed to this reality of human nature rather than having laws that just simply hide it. That's how dumb that sounded.
Kurtz79 8y ago
The problem has more to do with validation and echo chamber. It wouldn't be a huge issue if these kind of comments would stay constrained in the digital realm. But as people see that the tone and hardline position is shared by a lot of other people, they feel empowered and validated, so that that behavior starts rippling in the "real" world.
sascha_sl 8y ago
>but the reality is a lot of people think in patterns that drive these comments and that's where you might be mislead by machine-learning optimized comment sorting, recommendations that drive more people that'll agree with any given videos point and vocal minorities in general.
coldtea 8y ago
YouTube comments is the only real democratic and open dialog on the web. Everything else is one's or another's ideas for "right" dialog imposed.
- parasubvert 8y ago
  That’s pretty obviously false. I think you mean “anarchic”. Democracy would allow the majority’s idea for “right” dialogue and would censor minority ideas. Which is what moderation does.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >That’s pretty obviously false. I think you mean “anarchic” Democratic. The people ("demos") control the dialogue and have equal voice. As in this dictionary definition: (3): relating to, appealing to, or available to the broad masses of the people - democratic art - democratic education (4): favoring social equality - not snobbish I'm also referring to the original meaning of the word and practice in ancient Athens when it came to deciding, where every participating citizen could be heard [1]. What you describe (suppressing the minority etc) is about lawmaking and decisions (e.g. the democratic , which is not part of the YouTube dialogue. Users don't decide what's to be done. Nobody is surpassed in YouTube comments, minority or not -- they just get downvotes and negative counter-comments, but they can still write and have their comments shown. [1] The innovation was that it was not a king, tyrant, or group of rulers, but the whole citizen community (even if restricted to slaves/women which was the baseline at the time -- not to mention also for 2.5 millennia later) themselves openly debating and voting.
anongraddebt 8y ago
The low quality YT comments often (by the law of large numbers) lead to some of the funniest quips/quotes/jokes/etc. that I've ever read.

by xfitm3 8y ago

Barrin92 8y ago

>It won’t ever go away, it will just be hidden. deplatforming is an effective strategy to reduce the spread of malicious content for several reasons, in the case of youtube because it reduces the incentive to monetize and spread harmful content. To say that you'd rather be a exposed to pedophilia in youtube comments than to remove them is a little bit like saying you'd like to stay in contact with the marburg virus.

Mirioron 8y ago
I agree! Since Hacker News could also potentially be such a way to disseminate bad information we should remove all comments here too. See the problem? That's basically what you're justifying.
- number_six 8y ago
  IGNORE ME! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMNJuSl91qY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMNJuSl91qY
- clucas 8y ago
  There are logical stopping points on the way from "all comments should be allowed" to "no comments should be allowed." One such stopping point could be "no comments should be allowed on media with certain features that overwhelmingly tend to attract morally reprehensible comments." Another such stopping point could be "all comments should be allowed, except those which the community has decided have no merit." In fact, (almost?) all worthwhile online communities are somewhere between the two extremes you seem to advocate. They don't always call it "deplatforming," which may be where you're getting hung up, but comment moderation is everywhere, and it does work. Now, if you want to say that Youtube could handle this particular type of comment moderation in a better way, I think there are plenty of arguments to be made. But the choice isn't "all comments" or "no comments."
  - Mirioron 8y ago
    >One such stopping point could be "no comments should be allowed on media with certain features that overwhelmingly tend to attract morally reprehensible comments." Another such stopping point could be "all comments should be allowed, except those which the community has decided have no merit." The comment chain is about whether comment sections should be available or not, not individual comments. Furthermore, down the chain you'll find a person saying that they like youtube's comment sections, because it represents the way many/most people think. The post I'm replying to is saying that deplatforming is good for stopping the spread of bad information. This does not read like the person is advocating for nuance or some in between solution, because if most people say those kinds of things, then the community would decide that they have merit. >no comments should be allowed on media with certain features that overwhelmingly tend to attract morally reprehensible comments. And who decides what is and is not morally reprehensible? If I tell Americans that letting an 8 year old play outside unsupervised, then I would be found to be morally reprehensible (as it is illegal in many places in the US). If I tell Polish people that it's okay to punish parents who let their 8 year old play unsupervised, then I would be found to be morally reprehensible. Both of the stop points you brought up are basically ways to segment communities. Reddit calls this a "circlejerk".
  - Kaiyou 8y ago
    You may see logical stopping points, but I see a slippery slope. And at each such stopping points there will be someone having good arguments for going down just a little bit further. Interestingly, starting down that path always seems to start with something relating to pedophilia. It's unfortunate that one always has to defend scoundrels in the first stages of what will otherwise naturally snowball into something nobody at the starting line ever intended for.
- gjs278 8y ago
  they already do that. you can be banned for being mean to the crazies but they don't ban you for spreading misleading information about technology
- jaabe 8y ago
  I think HN is actually a poster child of strong moderation on social media, because it remains relevant by being one of the most regulated platforms. There is a reason this place hasn’t devolved into complete and utter uselessness as well as why you rarely see any form of political debate, and it’s exactly because this places isn’t liberatarian in its approach to free speech. Free speech comes with responsibility, and part of that responsibility is to make sure people aren’t legally monetising videos of children for pedofiles. I know it’s not always a popular opinion, but I think social media has been hiding from its responsibility for far too long, and I’m personally happy the EU is stepping in to regulate it. Big tech companies shouldn’t be able to get away with things no one else could simply by being big. Especially not when it’s used to undermine the foundation of our society. If someone uses your platform for a network of pedos, or to commit genocide then you are also responsible for enabling it in my opinion.
  - 0x445442 8y ago
    I'd say the one down side to HN is the moderation and I don't think social media has any responsibility to moderate comments. Readers of NN comments are free to ignore any content they wish to ignore. I find the trend of individuals demanding organizations and governments protect them from content they may find distasteful or content they don't agree with to very disturbing.
  - ndnxhs 8y ago
    HN is self selecting a higher quality audience. The content is interesting to an educated audience, the website contains very little fluff/idle entertainment and the ui is ugly to the average user.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      While true, the moderation system also tends to discourage the snarky or ad hominem attack that at least some of us might otherwise be attempted to make from time to time.
  - GoblinSlayer 8y ago
    Is your reasoning invariant across different moral systems (like Iran, China)?
- dang 8y ago
  This comment breaks the site guidelines—in particular this one: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." You also got into some pretty flamey discussions elsewhere, e.g. the religious flamebait in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19275923—not https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19275923—not cool on Hacker News. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and refrain from doing those things here, we'd be grateful.
  - toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
    Hi dang, I’m given to understand that you’re one of the moderators here. I’ve tried to contact you three times in theee weeks through email, and this is my third time trying to get your attention in the comments, so far without a response. Is there a better way to contact you? I don’t feel good about inserting my comment in an unrelated post like this, but I’m unsure what else to do.
    - dexen 8y ago
      I've had good results sending messages to mailbox named "hn" in the "ycombinator" domain, in "com" TLD.
      - toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
        I’ve tried that for three weeks without a response.
        dexen 8y ago
        I would assume your email address is mistakenly flagged by anti-spam system, and proceed accordingly.
        toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
        This is me proceeding accordingly, short of making a bunch of email accounts on different services, which seems a bit shady.
philwelch 8y ago
Ideally, I'd like a vaccine for the Marburg virus so being exposed isn't a big deal. I think the analogy is obvious enough from there.

TACIXAT 8y ago

This isn't about shitposting on YouTube videos, this is about pedos time stamping videos of kids in sexualized positions. Mostly in response to this video [1] (with a warning that it's pretty uncomfortable and gross). 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O13G5A5w5P0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O13G5A5w5P0

xfitm3 8y ago
Ahh, I see. Thanks for explaining.
Shivetya 8y ago
that truly was uncomfortable to watch, did not finish. Amazing how the human mind works that such a system came about but the algorithm that is built into youtube itself needs to be questioned. so what solution is there, preventing any content with children under a certain age? blocking any comment that features a link? can youtube detect use of vpn? once you leave certain countries I am not sure it can be policed.
- TACIXAT 8y ago
  My best idea is containerized video platforms. A parent can pay for the service or host it themselves. You control who is on it. The place where this breaks down though is not everyone has friends and the world would no longer be the audience. As well, video hosting is expensive, not sure it is affordable in most countries. I don't think there is a great solution yet.
  - sah2ed 8y ago
    Are direct-to-DVD types of content dead and buried in developed countries? Lots of middle-class families in developing countries still buy (pirated) DVDs of Barney & Friends and similar family friendly shows for playback on their home theatre systems, for those moments when kids announce they are bored.

PhasmaFelis 8y ago

People's beliefs and behaviors are shaped by what they're exposed to and what they see to be publicly acceptable. Of course you can't completely stamp these things out, but you can absolutely affect how widespread and popular they are.

disillusioned 8y ago

I think that there's an element of validation and indoctrination that is a serious concern here. In addition to an overall significant lowering of the discourse around things by allowing garbage quality trolls and other horrible comments, and in addition to bullying, aggressive behavior, stalking, and other things that are broadly considered unpleasant, this kind of behavior breeds more of this behavior. Consider someone growing up on the internet. The more they're exposed to this sort of content, the more it will be normalized in their mind. The more they're exposed to this sort of content, the more likely susceptible people are to be radicalized by it, and to grow into the same sort of troll. Hiding or suppressing low-quality content creates a herd immunity effect. It prevents a shift of the Overton Window to where "generally allowable discourse" suddenly includes timestamping the most "salacious" parts of a child's video, or telling people to actually kill themselves, or sharing their purely racist, hate-filled viewpoints. While you may rather be exposed to it because you have the strength and capability to view it as a curiosity and a sociological study, the impressionable among us maybe deserve to not be bombarded with garbage, and we may have a moral duty to at least make some effort to minimize indoctrination and radicalization on these platforms.

Haga 8y ago
And we would have gotten away with new humans in a new utopia if it weren't for those meddling kids.
lr4444lr 8y ago
If you're "growing up on the Internet", the major problem is probably your negligent parents who don't monitor your Internet usage or teach you about trust, not the stupid and immature trolls typing to you.
- edoceo 8y ago
  IME it's difficult as one or two parents to out weigh 100s of other voices.
colechristensen 8y ago
This is one of the reasons I think anonymity on the Internet is a bad thing. Not that I am saying it should be banned, but it should not be the norm. Much of the toxicity simply would not happen, could be prosecuted, or could be filtered if a "real person" attribute was widely available.

Mediterraneo10 8y ago

> I would rather be in touch with and exposed to this rather than try to pretend it doesn’t exist. YT comments do more than just represent ideas that are out there. Sometimes they can serve as a means of disseminating harmful ideas. Just yesterday I was looking at some YT videos about the history of the Balkan peoples and languages, where the speakers were internationally recognized historians and linguists (and who are from outside the region and don’t have a dog in any of the ethnic fights). However, the comment sections had become a place where people could post lengthy crackpot claims about their people’s history in direct contradiction to the authoritative scholar speaking in the video. Furthermore, it appeared that many people, when they came to the video, went straight to the comments section to read the other YT commenters, and thus absorb their crackpot ideas. They didn’t actually watch the video and learn any of the information in it. I couldn’t help but feel that two decades ago, people similarly believed things that were baseless, but they had less capability to disseminate those ideas to other people.

philwelch 8y ago
> I couldn’t help but feel that two decades ago, people similarly believed things that were baseless, but they had less capability to disseminate those ideas to other people. Which people? Twenty years ago, people (by which I mean schoolteachers) baselessly believed that Columbus proved that the world was round rather than flat and disseminated that idea, and it was hard to disseminate the counter-idea of "no, actually, that's not true, the Ancient Greeks already knew the world was round, Columbus just thought the world was round and also much smaller, and he was wrong". If you can stop people from disseminating "harmful" ideas, you have the power to decide which ideas are "harmful". You might think it's "harmful" to disseminate the idea that the American Civil War was motivated primarily by the issue of slavery, for instance. If you're just in charge of buying school textbooks for the state of Texas, you won't buy textbooks that disseminate this idea, and that's harmful enough. But if you're in charge of moderating user-generated content on a huge set of platforms like Google and Facebook are, it starts becoming more and more of a problem.
- Frondo 8y ago
  Two kinds of ideas I would consider harmful to the point of using the force of law to ban them: antivax materials, and the kinds of comments broadcast over media leading up to and during the Rwandan genocide that lead to that genocide taking place. I could not in good conscience say "the kids who die of preventable illness, their lives are worth it so antivax people can spread misinformation without consequence." I could not in good conscience say "the Tutsi lives lost were worth protecting the Hutu rights to free speech."

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

npunt 8y ago

I get where you're coming from with the academic curiosity of seeing how people think. That said, it seems you're assuming comments are simply a one-way output of different people's thought patterns, rather than a two-way process that has an effect on others. It's obvious it has a two-way effect - the point of reading and listening is to learn, and we can learn in ways that make us worse off. The idea that we should have a super low-friction way to be exposed to the internal thought process of anybody who is motivated to post those is an idea worth challenging, and we're starting to wake up to just how negative the repercussions of it are. That level of reach without any filtering steps (such as community standards, social feedback loops, etc) is fuel for extremism, harassment, and triggering/exacerbating mental illness. Lets not give everyone PTSD if we don't have to, cause thats effectively what your argument boils down to.

whatshisface 8y ago
As a staunch supporter of free speech, being exposed to your internal thought process had some negative repercussions for me. None of my fellow pro-free-speech HN users were able to filter you, nor even were they able to socially pressure you, and as result I read an extremist opinion. I think it's important that communities control anti-free-speech comments, otherwise they will descend into extremism.
- npunt 8y ago
  You haven't refuted my argument that super low-friction reach is valuable enough to preserve. I have pretty decent karma in HN and there are much better filtering mechanisms in this community to remove bad actors and posts than there are on youtube. That's the context of my post that, while hidden, is nonetheless present in this community. There is no community for many youtube comments - its driveby comments that get free reach.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    What's so bad about being exposed to the public id that you'd be willing to even loose a sliver of free speech to prevent it? You're already being exposed to the public id every moment, awake or asleep, because part of it is you.

esturk 8y ago

And you'll still get that from non-children related videos. No one is taking anything away from those. Unless I'm mistake, may I ask why you'd be interested in comments specifically for children videos?

el_dev_hell 8y ago

I agree, in most cases. Hiding the insanity of YouTube comments won't change anything it will just hide it ever so slightly. Like strategies to _hide_ homelessness in cities. But I strongly disagree when it comes to pedophiles sharing suggestive timestamps in comments and making vile sexual remarks targeted at children. That's where I nope out. That shit shouldn't be allowed in the comments section - even reddit doesn't allow this kind of commentary.

james_s_tayler 8y ago

Actually, that's a very good point. I think along similar lines. That it's not the comments or platforms that are terrible, they simply shine a light on our own human nature. We're dark, ugly creatures.

Florin_Andrei 8y ago
> We're dark, ugly creatures Among other things. Don't forget the duality. I'm not sure if the bright side is justification for the rest, but regardless, we are what we are.

Florin_Andrei 8y ago

> I enjoy the low quality youtube comments They're the solution to a hard engineering problem: how to generate stupid statements on a given topic? Not grammatically incoherent statements, but the products of true stupidity. Pretty hard to automate that kind of thing. But with YouTube, it's easy. Just search for videos that match the topic, and pull random comments from them. A large fraction are guaranteed to be examples of genuine stupidity.

vadym909 8y ago

The only reason I still have yahoo as my homepage is the the comments on the top stories. While most are low quality, there are some very clever comments and I feel I get a better sense of what everyday people are thinking about it.

house_atr 8y ago

Harassing people on the street and being a total scum is awful. But I would rather be exposed to this reality of human nature rather than having laws that just simply hide it. That's how dumb that sounded.

Kurtz79 8y ago

The problem has more to do with validation and echo chamber. It wouldn't be a huge issue if these kind of comments would stay constrained in the digital realm. But as people see that the tone and hardline position is shared by a lot of other people, they feel empowered and validated, so that that behavior starts rippling in the "real" world.

sascha_sl 8y ago

>but the reality is a lot of people think in patterns that drive these comments and that's where you might be mislead by machine-learning optimized comment sorting, recommendations that drive more people that'll agree with any given videos point and vocal minorities in general.

coldtea 8y ago

YouTube comments is the only real democratic and open dialog on the web. Everything else is one's or another's ideas for "right" dialog imposed.

parasubvert 8y ago
That’s pretty obviously false. I think you mean “anarchic”. Democracy would allow the majority’s idea for “right” dialogue and would censor minority ideas. Which is what moderation does.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >That’s pretty obviously false. I think you mean “anarchic” Democratic. The people ("demos") control the dialogue and have equal voice. As in this dictionary definition: (3): relating to, appealing to, or available to the broad masses of the people - democratic art - democratic education (4): favoring social equality - not snobbish I'm also referring to the original meaning of the word and practice in ancient Athens when it came to deciding, where every participating citizen could be heard [1]. What you describe (suppressing the minority etc) is about lawmaking and decisions (e.g. the democratic , which is not part of the YouTube dialogue. Users don't decide what's to be done. Nobody is surpassed in YouTube comments, minority or not -- they just get downvotes and negative counter-comments, but they can still write and have their comments shown. [1] The innovation was that it was not a king, tyrant, or group of rulers, but the whole citizen community (even if restricted to slaves/women which was the baseline at the time -- not to mention also for 2.5 millennia later) themselves openly debating and voting.

anongraddebt 8y ago

The low quality YT comments often (by the law of large numbers) lead to some of the funniest quips/quotes/jokes/etc. that I've ever read.