9 ms·

company says it's taking action to prevent conspiracy videos from reaching large numbers of people I'm not afraid of conspiracies. Are you?

sabertoothed 7y ago
Yes. People are remarkably dumb and gullible.
- mattigames 7y ago
  It's mostly a fault of the education system, countries with better education such as Japan do not have it this many gullible people (per capita), USA and other countries do not teach even the most basic skepticism going as far as teaching completely ridiculous things such as creationism inside the schools themselves under the guise of "tolerance" and "teach both sides".
  - tombert 7y ago
    Back up, before you crap all over American schools, public schools don't teach creationism, and the attempt to do so resulted in court case ruling it unconstitutional. Also, do you have any direct evidence in your claim that Japanese are more skeptical? The Aum Shinrikyo death cult got almost 10% of the vote in the mid-90's.
    - mattigames 7y ago
      The amount of studies about skeptisim and gullibility around the world are near none, but there is some data about US highschoolers consider true and it shows dangerous trends such as 1 every 4 students believing astrology is real: https://www.questia.com/magazine/1G1-148278044/skepticism-in-the-classroom-a-high-school-science https://www.questia.com/magazine/1G1-148278044/skepticism-in...
      - tombert 7y ago
        I would need to see comparisons with the rest of the world before that has any relevance to my point. Kids will believe lots of stupid things. According to todayifoundout, US schools aren't nearly as bad as the meme likes to portray them [1]. [1] https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2015/01/kids-get-summer-school/ https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2015/01/kids-get-su...
        mattigames 7y ago
        The thing is that we don't know how related the other areas of education are with skepticism; if I would have to guess I would say reading and science are the most related but that's just a guess, the best path forward would be to actually measure skepticism, stuff like how good are people at spotting fake news from the real ones and such.
  - brigandish 7y ago
    I live in Japan and I'm shocked at how many people here believe in patently absurd nonsense. I wouldn't be surprised if someone mentions to me, for example, that they saw a ghost recently, or went to a fortune teller.
    - mattigames 7y ago
      At least for the ghosts thing, belief in ghosts, demons and spirits has been deep-rooted in Japanese folklore throughout history[0]. Also there is different kinds of "believe", for example if some Japanese lady said a ghost got her pregnant I think nobody would believe her, my guess is that they believe to a point but not to the point to spark risky behavior from it (e.g. antivaxxers) [0] http://www.asianart.com/articles/rubin/ http://www.asianart.com/articles/rubin/
      - brigandish 7y ago
        You don't believe modern Japanese believe in absurdities from the past because it's part of folklore but it's not okay for Americans to believe in absurdities from the past because… the Japanese have a better education system? (Which I'd also count as an absurd belief because I only hear complaints about it.) And are you really going to give lessons on the mythology of Japan to people who live in Japan? That's perhaps a tad presumptuous, especially considering it's like telling people living in Britain that witches are part of British folklore. I mean, please.
        mattigames 7y ago
        You miss-represented all the points, AND skipped the one where I said they don't take such superstitions as seriously as their American counterparts.
        brigandish 7y ago
        An anecdote: A friend of a friend's son was very sick in the stomach. She went to see a fortune teller to ask what was wrong. The fortune teller took her money, did a reading, and told her she needed to take her son to a doctor. I found that amusing. I have tons of these, most of them amuse me. Try living here and (among the many other notions you have of the place that are no doubt wrong) you'll see there's a huge amount of superstition, regardless of education level. If you can't afford to come, https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/ https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/ is a good resource. It's amazing how much that sounds absurd is true.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
I think flat eartherism is stupid but I really don’t want YouTube start censoring stuff. That’s a dangerous path.
- ss2003 7y ago
  They already effectively censor via algorithm. They are a monopoly that should be broken up.
  - MBCook 7y ago
    How, exactly, would you ‘break up’ YouTube? How do you divide the whole into reasonable parts?
    - pwinnski 7y ago
      You start by separating it from Google, so that it needs to compete with other video-sharing sites on a more-level playing field.
      - MBCook 7y ago
        YouTube is the 900lb gorilla. How would breaking apart from Google (which is not what was suggested) help other video sites? YouRube is FAR past critical mass. It IS online video. And I can’t think of anything you could do short of shutting the site down that would fix that and give competitors a level playing field.
        pwinnski 7y ago
        A big chunk of YouTube's dominance comes from Google's other lines of business including online search and online ads. See the other post today from a former competitor[0] for an example. The reasoning is that stripping YouTube of Alphabet's deep pockets from advertising would give competitors a chance to monetize as well as YouTube, without fearing that Google will choke off their air supply to preserve YouTube's dominance. It might not be enough, but it would be a start. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20472351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20472351
RandomTisk 7y ago
And frankly, I'm not convinced it's gaining any kind of new followers at all. 20 years ago it was virtually unheard of to encounter a flat earth believer, but thanks to Youtube and the Internet at large all kinds of fringe beliefs are brought to the masses' consciousness. That doesn't mean that those beliefs are finding new adherents. It doesn't give fascists license to crack down on anyone's beliefs either. Google/Youtube censoring anyone over this is literally doing more harm than good in every conceivable way.
- scrollaway 7y ago
  But it is. No matter how stupid you think a belief is, giving it an audience does give it new followers. The more stupid it is, the more of an audience it needs to gain significant amounts of new followers… but thanks to youtube, you can have hundreds of thousands of people watching a video and that's a drop in the ocean. And it's not flat-earth BS that's actually harmful, it's the spread of other kinds of political propaganda which radicalizes people. For some reason, it's not controversial to say "we're banning ISIS propaganda videos which radicalize young muslims", but it is controversial to say "we're banning political propaganda videos which radicalize young americans". Young or old, actually.
  - transreal 7y ago
    I spoke to a flat earther once. Trying to convince her via science - explaining how GPS works, showing her images from space, etc, was not convincing her. So I tried to understand her mindset, and just talked about her life. Turned out she was abused by a parent who was "doing it for her own good" - it was a horrible story. Her whole childhood was a lie, she was trained by the parent not to trust her instincts, and to believe something false so the parent could benefit. My takeaway was that her childhood experience taught her that you can't trust people and that "big lies" are possible, and so she latched onto the flat earth thing due to that.
    - brigandish 7y ago
      This reminds me of something I read of Thich Nhat Hanh's - don't answer the question, answer the questioner. The belief they're espousing is really secondary to the attitude that leads them to buy into it. I find your approach as not only more likely to effect positive change with that, it's just more compassionate and respectful. There's an almost palpable element of dehumanisation among those ridiculing them and wanting to silence them, as if holding on to untruths makes them unworthy to exist in our society.
tombert 7y ago
I don't want to get too political here, but the propagation of Alex-Jones-esque conspiracy can be very influential to a larger-than-it-should-be percentage of the population, who will vote in demagogues who perpetuate these narratives.
- bijsv 7y ago
  The opposite of Alex Jones is not virtue and knowledge, but Alex-Jones-of-the-opposing-political-side
  - bastawhiz 7y ago
    Sorry, what's the opposing-political-side of "Sandy Hook was a hoax"? Or "Hillary Clinton is a pedophile operating out of the basement of a pizza restaurant"? The notion that all speech has an opposite but equally-biased counterpart is simply not correct.
    - bijsv 7y ago
      I'm not American but I've read laughable things like "trump is a russian agent", "children are being kept in concentration camps at the border", and more I can't be bothered to remember. You have to understand that these beliefs (the ones you and I have described) are held by almost nobody. And only very crazy people are going to act violently about them. And they would eventually find any other excuse to act violently.
      - fzeroracer 7y ago
        Except we literally are holding children in squalid conditions at our borders. This is well documented. Whether or not they're concentration camps depends on how strongly you feel about child abuse.
- FakeComments 7y ago
  The argument is legitimate media is no better: - Supporting Jussie Smollett - Supporting the Antifa ambushes on Andy Ngo and ICE in the NW - Defaming the Covington kids All cases in recent history, where the media has either supported terrorism or been reckless in their reporting. You want to talk about conspiracy theories, while the media perpetuates racist hoaxes and armed terrorism? Why shut down Alex Jones, and his nutty claims, just to support that kind of media? Who gets to decide that Alex Jones should be an unperson, but beating Andy Ngo is okay? Is it Google? The traditional media? Whatever harm the conspiracies cause, fighting against the social engineering lies from traditional media is a higher priority.
i_am_proteus 7y ago
It's easy for scientifically-minded people who inhabit communities of similar thinkers to underestimate the power of propaganda. Human psychology hasn't changed, though, and propaganda is still powerful.
brigandish 7y ago
I'm afraid of real conspiracies, but the main stream media seems far less interested in them than this nonsense that I've yet to be convinced is any more harmful than any other weird hobby.

sabertoothed 7y ago

Yes. People are remarkably dumb and gullible.

mattigames 7y ago
It's mostly a fault of the education system, countries with better education such as Japan do not have it this many gullible people (per capita), USA and other countries do not teach even the most basic skepticism going as far as teaching completely ridiculous things such as creationism inside the schools themselves under the guise of "tolerance" and "teach both sides".
- tombert 7y ago
  Back up, before you crap all over American schools, public schools don't teach creationism, and the attempt to do so resulted in court case ruling it unconstitutional. Also, do you have any direct evidence in your claim that Japanese are more skeptical? The Aum Shinrikyo death cult got almost 10% of the vote in the mid-90's.
  - mattigames 7y ago
    The amount of studies about skeptisim and gullibility around the world are near none, but there is some data about US highschoolers consider true and it shows dangerous trends such as 1 every 4 students believing astrology is real: https://www.questia.com/magazine/1G1-148278044/skepticism-in-the-classroom-a-high-school-science https://www.questia.com/magazine/1G1-148278044/skepticism-in...
    - tombert 7y ago
      I would need to see comparisons with the rest of the world before that has any relevance to my point. Kids will believe lots of stupid things. According to todayifoundout, US schools aren't nearly as bad as the meme likes to portray them [1]. [1] https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2015/01/kids-get-summer-school/ https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2015/01/kids-get-su...
      - mattigames 7y ago
        The thing is that we don't know how related the other areas of education are with skepticism; if I would have to guess I would say reading and science are the most related but that's just a guess, the best path forward would be to actually measure skepticism, stuff like how good are people at spotting fake news from the real ones and such.
- brigandish 7y ago
  I live in Japan and I'm shocked at how many people here believe in patently absurd nonsense. I wouldn't be surprised if someone mentions to me, for example, that they saw a ghost recently, or went to a fortune teller.
  - mattigames 7y ago
    At least for the ghosts thing, belief in ghosts, demons and spirits has been deep-rooted in Japanese folklore throughout history[0]. Also there is different kinds of "believe", for example if some Japanese lady said a ghost got her pregnant I think nobody would believe her, my guess is that they believe to a point but not to the point to spark risky behavior from it (e.g. antivaxxers) [0] http://www.asianart.com/articles/rubin/ http://www.asianart.com/articles/rubin/
    - brigandish 7y ago
      You don't believe modern Japanese believe in absurdities from the past because it's part of folklore but it's not okay for Americans to believe in absurdities from the past because… the Japanese have a better education system? (Which I'd also count as an absurd belief because I only hear complaints about it.) And are you really going to give lessons on the mythology of Japan to people who live in Japan? That's perhaps a tad presumptuous, especially considering it's like telling people living in Britain that witches are part of British folklore. I mean, please.
      - mattigames 7y ago
        You miss-represented all the points, AND skipped the one where I said they don't take such superstitions as seriously as their American counterparts.
        brigandish 7y ago
        An anecdote: A friend of a friend's son was very sick in the stomach. She went to see a fortune teller to ask what was wrong. The fortune teller took her money, did a reading, and told her she needed to take her son to a doctor. I found that amusing. I have tons of these, most of them amuse me. Try living here and (among the many other notions you have of the place that are no doubt wrong) you'll see there's a huge amount of superstition, regardless of education level. If you can't afford to come, https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/ https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/ is a good resource. It's amazing how much that sounds absurd is true.

Ididntdothis 7y ago

I think flat eartherism is stupid but I really don’t want YouTube start censoring stuff. That’s a dangerous path.

ss2003 7y ago
They already effectively censor via algorithm. They are a monopoly that should be broken up.
- MBCook 7y ago
  How, exactly, would you ‘break up’ YouTube? How do you divide the whole into reasonable parts?
  - pwinnski 7y ago
    You start by separating it from Google, so that it needs to compete with other video-sharing sites on a more-level playing field.
    - MBCook 7y ago
      YouTube is the 900lb gorilla. How would breaking apart from Google (which is not what was suggested) help other video sites? YouRube is FAR past critical mass. It IS online video. And I can’t think of anything you could do short of shutting the site down that would fix that and give competitors a level playing field.
      - pwinnski 7y ago
        A big chunk of YouTube's dominance comes from Google's other lines of business including online search and online ads. See the other post today from a former competitor[0] for an example. The reasoning is that stripping YouTube of Alphabet's deep pockets from advertising would give competitors a chance to monetize as well as YouTube, without fearing that Google will choke off their air supply to preserve YouTube's dominance. It might not be enough, but it would be a start. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20472351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20472351

RandomTisk 7y ago

And frankly, I'm not convinced it's gaining any kind of new followers at all. 20 years ago it was virtually unheard of to encounter a flat earth believer, but thanks to Youtube and the Internet at large all kinds of fringe beliefs are brought to the masses' consciousness. That doesn't mean that those beliefs are finding new adherents. It doesn't give fascists license to crack down on anyone's beliefs either. Google/Youtube censoring anyone over this is literally doing more harm than good in every conceivable way.

scrollaway 7y ago
But it is. No matter how stupid you think a belief is, giving it an audience does give it new followers. The more stupid it is, the more of an audience it needs to gain significant amounts of new followers… but thanks to youtube, you can have hundreds of thousands of people watching a video and that's a drop in the ocean. And it's not flat-earth BS that's actually harmful, it's the spread of other kinds of political propaganda which radicalizes people. For some reason, it's not controversial to say "we're banning ISIS propaganda videos which radicalize young muslims", but it is controversial to say "we're banning political propaganda videos which radicalize young americans". Young or old, actually.
- transreal 7y ago
  I spoke to a flat earther once. Trying to convince her via science - explaining how GPS works, showing her images from space, etc, was not convincing her. So I tried to understand her mindset, and just talked about her life. Turned out she was abused by a parent who was "doing it for her own good" - it was a horrible story. Her whole childhood was a lie, she was trained by the parent not to trust her instincts, and to believe something false so the parent could benefit. My takeaway was that her childhood experience taught her that you can't trust people and that "big lies" are possible, and so she latched onto the flat earth thing due to that.
  - brigandish 7y ago
    This reminds me of something I read of Thich Nhat Hanh's - don't answer the question, answer the questioner. The belief they're espousing is really secondary to the attitude that leads them to buy into it. I find your approach as not only more likely to effect positive change with that, it's just more compassionate and respectful. There's an almost palpable element of dehumanisation among those ridiculing them and wanting to silence them, as if holding on to untruths makes them unworthy to exist in our society.

tombert 7y ago

I don't want to get too political here, but the propagation of Alex-Jones-esque conspiracy can be very influential to a larger-than-it-should-be percentage of the population, who will vote in demagogues who perpetuate these narratives.

bijsv 7y ago
The opposite of Alex Jones is not virtue and knowledge, but Alex-Jones-of-the-opposing-political-side
- bastawhiz 7y ago
  Sorry, what's the opposing-political-side of "Sandy Hook was a hoax"? Or "Hillary Clinton is a pedophile operating out of the basement of a pizza restaurant"? The notion that all speech has an opposite but equally-biased counterpart is simply not correct.
  - bijsv 7y ago
    I'm not American but I've read laughable things like "trump is a russian agent", "children are being kept in concentration camps at the border", and more I can't be bothered to remember. You have to understand that these beliefs (the ones you and I have described) are held by almost nobody. And only very crazy people are going to act violently about them. And they would eventually find any other excuse to act violently.
    - fzeroracer 7y ago
      Except we literally are holding children in squalid conditions at our borders. This is well documented. Whether or not they're concentration camps depends on how strongly you feel about child abuse.
FakeComments 7y ago
The argument is legitimate media is no better: - Supporting Jussie Smollett - Supporting the Antifa ambushes on Andy Ngo and ICE in the NW - Defaming the Covington kids All cases in recent history, where the media has either supported terrorism or been reckless in their reporting. You want to talk about conspiracy theories, while the media perpetuates racist hoaxes and armed terrorism? Why shut down Alex Jones, and his nutty claims, just to support that kind of media? Who gets to decide that Alex Jones should be an unperson, but beating Andy Ngo is okay? Is it Google? The traditional media? Whatever harm the conspiracies cause, fighting against the social engineering lies from traditional media is a higher priority.

i_am_proteus 7y ago

It's easy for scientifically-minded people who inhabit communities of similar thinkers to underestimate the power of propaganda. Human psychology hasn't changed, though, and propaganda is still powerful.

brigandish 7y ago

I'm afraid of real conspiracies, but the main stream media seems far less interested in them than this nonsense that I've yet to be convinced is any more harmful than any other weird hobby.