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> 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 t

> 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."
  - philwelch 8y ago
    The "force of law" was largely on the side of the Rwandan genocide, so it's a slightly nonsensical example, although some of the broadcasts do satisfy the tight bound of speech that calls for "imminent lawless action" (which is the most recent criteria set by the US Supreme Court). Aside from that, both of those examples are examples where the harm comes from a specific action (or inaction), rather than the speech itself. If refusing to vaccinate children was treated as criminal neglect and unvaccinated children were forcibly removed from their families, people could talk and talk all they want and it wouldn't matter.
    - Frondo 8y ago
      Do you not see that there is a line drawn from speech to action, like in the situation surrounding the Rwandan genocide or in the case of antivaxxers leading to a resurgence in preventable disease? Like, are you trying to frame this in the sense of, "I can swing my fist toward your face all I want, but so long as I don't actually make contact it's okay"? I'm trying to understand how you're trying to thread the needle here and am coming up empty-handed.
      - philwelch 8y ago
        Speech can counter speech, and action can counter action. If you don't vaccinate your kids, CPS can take them away from you. If you want to write paranoid screeds about how vaccines and fluoridated water are a communist plot to block the pineal gland, that's up to you, buddy. Just know that if you have kids, we're keeping an eye on you, and if their shot cards aren't up to date or you have a doctor buddy forging them, we're gonna take away your kids and throw you in prison for a long, long time--just to make an example of you. This is what happens to tax protesters (like Wesley Snipes) and this is why tax protester conspiracy theories don't really get anywhere despite the absolute lack of any legal authority to stop people from disseminating them. I mostly agree with you about Rwanda because openly calling for people to commit genocide does cross a threshold that justifies forceful reaction. My point there is that you're appealing to government, which is exactly who in Rwanda was organizing the genocide in the first place. But if you're imagining a UN peacekeeping force being deployed to Rwanda being the censors instead--sure, among many other things they should probably shut down the radio stations. I'm fine with that. > Do you not see that there is a line drawn from speech to action The problem is that this argument makes it too easy to misuse the instrument of censorship. You're calling for censorship that's both unnecessary and insufficient to solve the anti-vax problem, using a standard that could be just as easily abused to call for censorship that even you would disagree with.
deleted 8y ago
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wccrawford 8y ago
That's the problem with videos. It's a lot quicker and easier to read a short text and respond to it than to watch a 10+ minute video and then respond. There's been a very large movement towards making videos instead of writing articles, even when a video isn't really necessary or helpful.

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."
- philwelch 8y ago
  The "force of law" was largely on the side of the Rwandan genocide, so it's a slightly nonsensical example, although some of the broadcasts do satisfy the tight bound of speech that calls for "imminent lawless action" (which is the most recent criteria set by the US Supreme Court). Aside from that, both of those examples are examples where the harm comes from a specific action (or inaction), rather than the speech itself. If refusing to vaccinate children was treated as criminal neglect and unvaccinated children were forcibly removed from their families, people could talk and talk all they want and it wouldn't matter.
  - Frondo 8y ago
    Do you not see that there is a line drawn from speech to action, like in the situation surrounding the Rwandan genocide or in the case of antivaxxers leading to a resurgence in preventable disease? Like, are you trying to frame this in the sense of, "I can swing my fist toward your face all I want, but so long as I don't actually make contact it's okay"? I'm trying to understand how you're trying to thread the needle here and am coming up empty-handed.
    - philwelch 8y ago
      Speech can counter speech, and action can counter action. If you don't vaccinate your kids, CPS can take them away from you. If you want to write paranoid screeds about how vaccines and fluoridated water are a communist plot to block the pineal gland, that's up to you, buddy. Just know that if you have kids, we're keeping an eye on you, and if their shot cards aren't up to date or you have a doctor buddy forging them, we're gonna take away your kids and throw you in prison for a long, long time--just to make an example of you. This is what happens to tax protesters (like Wesley Snipes) and this is why tax protester conspiracy theories don't really get anywhere despite the absolute lack of any legal authority to stop people from disseminating them. I mostly agree with you about Rwanda because openly calling for people to commit genocide does cross a threshold that justifies forceful reaction. My point there is that you're appealing to government, which is exactly who in Rwanda was organizing the genocide in the first place. But if you're imagining a UN peacekeeping force being deployed to Rwanda being the censors instead--sure, among many other things they should probably shut down the radio stations. I'm fine with that. > Do you not see that there is a line drawn from speech to action The problem is that this argument makes it too easy to misuse the instrument of censorship. You're calling for censorship that's both unnecessary and insufficient to solve the anti-vax problem, using a standard that could be just as easily abused to call for censorship that even you would disagree with.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

wccrawford 8y ago

That's the problem with videos. It's a lot quicker and easier to read a short text and respond to it than to watch a 10+ minute video and then respond. There's been a very large movement towards making videos instead of writing articles, even when a video isn't really necessary or helpful.