6 ms·

Honestly, it's pretty ridiculous that YouTube is being pressured to police the content on its platform. What worries me far more than extremist videos on YouTub

by noego 8y ago

Honestly, it's pretty ridiculous that YouTube is being pressured to police the content on its platform. What worries me far more than extremist videos on YouTube, is the idea of a mega-corporation exerting outsized influence over the opinions we are exposed to. Is our democracy really so fragile that it cannot survive an open marketplace of ideas?

minikites 8y ago
It's not an open marketplace and each side is is fighting a different fight: >Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.
- noego 8y ago
  What makes it not an open marketplace? The very bias introduced by platform like YouTube which you seem to be defending? Is the average person so dumb that they cannot distinguish between "sound argument" vs "intimidate and disconcert"? If that's how you feel about the average person, why do you still favor democracy?
  - minikites 8y ago
    People aren't dumb, but I think people have poor information literacy skills, which is linked to the decline in liberal arts education in favor of the emphasis on STEM education. The lack of these skills leads to people being unable to distinguish between "sound argument" vs "intimidate and disconcert" (again, not related to their intelligence, this is a developed skill). https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10858.html https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10858.html >We increasingly treat education as though its primary goal were to teach students to be economically productive rather than to think critically and become knowledgeable, productive, and empathetic individuals. This shortsighted focus on profitable skills has eroded our ability to criticize authority, reduced our sympathy with the marginalized and different, and damaged our competence to deal with complex global problems. And the loss of these basic capacities jeopardizes the health of democracies and the hope of a decent world.
    - luckylion 8y ago
      > People aren't dumb, but I think people have poor information literacy skills, which is linked to the decline in liberal arts education in favor of the emphasis on STEM education. Citation needed. Obviously, people from the humanities believe that they are very important and should be paid a lot to shepherd society, but that's not enough to convince me. Edit: Sorry, due to serial flagging thanks to this I can't reply. I don't care enough about this to retry later and get flagged again. Emotions apparently run too high if it concerns worldviews.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - minikites 8y ago
        Given your hostile opening, I'll start by asking what you think that evidence would look like and what you would find convincing.
      - pas 8y ago
        I don't consider myself from "the humanities", but the lack of applied rationality skills in the general population is dangerously severe. (Look at how populism spread by convincing people via the cheapest of rhetorical appeals to ego and arrogance.)
    - themacguffinman 8y ago
      So not dumb-dumb, but dumb for all intents and purposes of making decisions in a democracy? What's the difference? At the core of your argument is the idea that people in a democracy aren't able to do their singular duty: make a reasonable choice based on available information, so they need to be coddled and only fed information that is "fair", "fair" as determined by liberal arts majors I guess. And if anti semitic arguments are so unfairly effective, why hasn't it won? All the major platforms have a lot of anti semitic speech that they haven't been able to filter out, and it's remarkably easy to find on the internet, so why hasn't it entranced the majority of non-liberal-arts majors? Why are the masses of average people calling for the removal of anti semitic content - an act built on a rejection of anti semitic ideas - instead of being enthralled by it?
CharlesW 8y ago
> Honestly, it's pretty ridiculous that YouTube is being pressured to police the content on its platform. It's not "ridiculous", it's table stakes. If you ever run an open community, you'll find that bad actors are inevitable.
- noego 8y ago
  What are these bad actors doing that requires top-down censorship and marginalization?
  - forgottenpass 8y ago
    >What are these bad actors doing As far as I can tell the problem is that they scare sheltered white people.
  - lilactown 8y ago
    Posting videos of death, gore, kiddie porn, targeted bullying, fascist propaganda, trying to incite genocide, rape and other violence. The idea that we should allow sites that are marketed to the general public to be unmoderated is completely ridiculous.
    - stronglikedan 8y ago
      The only things on your list that they should be prohibited by law from showing is kiddie porn, rape, and targeted bullying. People should be able to police themselves from the rest as they see fit, but there's nothing wrong with posting it online.
      - lilactown 8y ago
        Yeah, those should be prohibited by law. I think that genocide should also be on that list. And youtube can (and IMO should) continue to prevent the rest. Death, gore, genocide, fascism, violence, etc. do not belong in general public discourse. There's always some other website to post snuff porn. I don't agree with the way that youtube has applied their guidelines for removing content in general, but I do generally believe that they should moderate their content.
notatoad 8y ago
I think it's fairly reasonable that anybody who runs a recommendation service is held responsible for the content they recommend. YouTube isn't just a video hosting platform, it's a homepage providing recommendations, a service that automatically queues up a new video after the one you're currently watching, and an advertising network that directly funds the creation of the videos they host. YouTube is already putting their thumb on the scale - the least they can do is be responsible about what they recommend. It's been pretty clear over the last couple years that our democracy really is so fragile that it can't survive one of the dominant media companies of the day actively promoting extremist and hateful content.
- tracker1 8y ago
  There's no real reason that "recommended" can't also mean "curated." They could definitely limit recommendations to +1's by trusted users who are getting feeds by entropy.

by noego 8y ago

minikites 8y ago

It's not an open marketplace and each side is is fighting a different fight: >Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.

noego 8y ago
What makes it not an open marketplace? The very bias introduced by platform like YouTube which you seem to be defending? Is the average person so dumb that they cannot distinguish between "sound argument" vs "intimidate and disconcert"? If that's how you feel about the average person, why do you still favor democracy?
- minikites 8y ago
  People aren't dumb, but I think people have poor information literacy skills, which is linked to the decline in liberal arts education in favor of the emphasis on STEM education. The lack of these skills leads to people being unable to distinguish between "sound argument" vs "intimidate and disconcert" (again, not related to their intelligence, this is a developed skill). https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10858.html https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10858.html >We increasingly treat education as though its primary goal were to teach students to be economically productive rather than to think critically and become knowledgeable, productive, and empathetic individuals. This shortsighted focus on profitable skills has eroded our ability to criticize authority, reduced our sympathy with the marginalized and different, and damaged our competence to deal with complex global problems. And the loss of these basic capacities jeopardizes the health of democracies and the hope of a decent world.
  - luckylion 8y ago
    > People aren't dumb, but I think people have poor information literacy skills, which is linked to the decline in liberal arts education in favor of the emphasis on STEM education. Citation needed. Obviously, people from the humanities believe that they are very important and should be paid a lot to shepherd society, but that's not enough to convince me. Edit: Sorry, due to serial flagging thanks to this I can't reply. I don't care enough about this to retry later and get flagged again. Emotions apparently run too high if it concerns worldviews.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - minikites 8y ago
      Given your hostile opening, I'll start by asking what you think that evidence would look like and what you would find convincing.
    - pas 8y ago
      I don't consider myself from "the humanities", but the lack of applied rationality skills in the general population is dangerously severe. (Look at how populism spread by convincing people via the cheapest of rhetorical appeals to ego and arrogance.)
  - themacguffinman 8y ago
    So not dumb-dumb, but dumb for all intents and purposes of making decisions in a democracy? What's the difference? At the core of your argument is the idea that people in a democracy aren't able to do their singular duty: make a reasonable choice based on available information, so they need to be coddled and only fed information that is "fair", "fair" as determined by liberal arts majors I guess. And if anti semitic arguments are so unfairly effective, why hasn't it won? All the major platforms have a lot of anti semitic speech that they haven't been able to filter out, and it's remarkably easy to find on the internet, so why hasn't it entranced the majority of non-liberal-arts majors? Why are the masses of average people calling for the removal of anti semitic content - an act built on a rejection of anti semitic ideas - instead of being enthralled by it?

CharlesW 8y ago

> Honestly, it's pretty ridiculous that YouTube is being pressured to police the content on its platform. It's not "ridiculous", it's table stakes. If you ever run an open community, you'll find that bad actors are inevitable.

noego 8y ago
What are these bad actors doing that requires top-down censorship and marginalization?
- forgottenpass 8y ago
  >What are these bad actors doing As far as I can tell the problem is that they scare sheltered white people.
- lilactown 8y ago
  Posting videos of death, gore, kiddie porn, targeted bullying, fascist propaganda, trying to incite genocide, rape and other violence. The idea that we should allow sites that are marketed to the general public to be unmoderated is completely ridiculous.
  - stronglikedan 8y ago
    The only things on your list that they should be prohibited by law from showing is kiddie porn, rape, and targeted bullying. People should be able to police themselves from the rest as they see fit, but there's nothing wrong with posting it online.
    - lilactown 8y ago
      Yeah, those should be prohibited by law. I think that genocide should also be on that list. And youtube can (and IMO should) continue to prevent the rest. Death, gore, genocide, fascism, violence, etc. do not belong in general public discourse. There's always some other website to post snuff porn. I don't agree with the way that youtube has applied their guidelines for removing content in general, but I do generally believe that they should moderate their content.

notatoad 8y ago

I think it's fairly reasonable that anybody who runs a recommendation service is held responsible for the content they recommend. YouTube isn't just a video hosting platform, it's a homepage providing recommendations, a service that automatically queues up a new video after the one you're currently watching, and an advertising network that directly funds the creation of the videos they host. YouTube is already putting their thumb on the scale - the least they can do is be responsible about what they recommend. It's been pretty clear over the last couple years that our democracy really is so fragile that it can't survive one of the dominant media companies of the day actively promoting extremist and hateful content.

tracker1 8y ago
There's no real reason that "recommended" can't also mean "curated." They could definitely limit recommendations to +1's by trusted users who are getting feeds by entropy.