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Yay another extremist swept under the digital carpet, problem solved - well NO. This will just shift this extremist content to other unregulated and unmonitore

by Zenst 6y ago

Yay another extremist swept under the digital carpet, problem solved - well NO. This will just shift this extremist content to other unregulated and unmonitored platforms that will not engage in debate, but blindly accept such things. After all, if people believe this kinda stuff, cutting of the head won't stop them believing, just shifts the problem out of the public glare, at least on the surface.

barrkel 6y ago
It's not a binary. The more places extremists can find like-minded people, the more their worldview is normalized and validated. The fewer places, the higher the probability that they realize (or be continuously confronted by) how far out their views are, and the less extremist a position they'll end up taking. I genuinely don't think universal free speech is the answer, because people aren't confronted with the counterargument until they seek it out. If you could guarantee that argument, it would be much safer. But I don't think it's possible with today's media; people exist in a bubble of both their own choosing and algorithmic choosing, and aren't challenged.
- Zenst 6y ago
  Agreed it is a hard balance, all gets down to how responsible the average person is and working around that aspect. Universal free speech as it stands, allows racism and with that, you are not wrong. Free speech within some moral boundaries, though free debate, that is the aspect of free speech to provide balance that is equally important.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  When you ban these people you erode something we all hold dear in Western countries, and that’s free speech. Even those who are not aligned with you share that ideal, and we have integrity on this one issue because there’s proof of it - you don’t get censored. When you do start censoring them, we will all start losing faith in our values as we don’t apply it across the board. If you look at other non free countries, the average person doesn’t really believe that you have the right to express your views. Take the Muhammad cartoons for example, a vast majority of Muslims in non-western countries think that’s a no go from a rights perspective ( as in, you shouldn’t even have the right to draw it). That kind of thinking extends and extends to all kinds undermining of individual rights. If you look at China, the vastness of inaction to their Internet being censored is another key example of this. It takes a lot to get a society to value it, and we worked pretty hard to get those values ingrained in our culture. There might be some absolutely abhorrent people in our country, but even they cannot deny that they do have the right to express themselves here. We lose that baseline integrity of our values when we start withering it away, until we ourselves can’t even recognize ourselves anymore, where suddenly we have all these caveats to a principle that defines our society.
lovehashbrowns 6y ago
Problem solved! Yay another person that thinks if something doesn't fix the issue 100% then it can't be considered. This is taking away their access to a platform that has global reach. They already had platforms where they didn't engage in debate, btw; they're called youtube channels with heavily-moderated chat sections. Except there they can reach millions of people.
- Zenst 6y ago
  It would of been better to leave it there, but had a disclaimer warning that couldn't be skipped akin to the old piracy warnings on purchased movie DVD's. You also won't stop such types of content from appearing on said platforms, less popular but still they will appear, get popular and get closed down. But that's an issue with some types of content that all social media platforms have. No solution will be 100%, let's not presume that there will ever be 100% solution. Though is this the best approach. Exposing and debating head on would be the better solution and this eliminates that.
  - lovehashbrowns 6y ago
    The key component is them having access to a platform with global reach. Exposing and debating hasn't been working all that well, has it? These 5G conspiracy theories are absurdly easy to bust. Yet here we are, with people attacking 5G towers and threatening employees. 9/11 conspiracy theories are still popular. Moon landing conspiracy theories. Debating in an of itself doesn't work. Humans aren't perfectly logical. ugh there are literally people who think the Earth is flat. There are literally people who think the Earth is flat!
    - Zenst 6y ago
      >ugh there are literally people who think the Earth is flat. There are literally people who think the Earth is flat! True, should they ban that as well? Though they havn't been going around flattening mountains or any other harm, so there is that. Not all those who believe conspiracy stuff, act upon it. Some will, those are more the ones who will engage in lesser, more niche platforms in which such content will run, along with more such content. Thus, driving many who will want to watch it to be exposed to other platforms in which such content is less tacked as more echo chambers and this is not something to be overlooked. Thing is, whatever you do, there will always be some and with so many humans, the odds of there being more than one is a given. Do you ridicule/educate in public or cast aside to dark corners in which they can carry on unchecked.
nojito 6y ago
The point is to the stop seeds of thought from spreading in the first place. The way these Youtubers work is to cast as wide of a net as possible as quickly as possible to hook a small percentage of followers who they exploit consistently with newer and wilder beliefs. By pushing them "under ground" you effectively take away their means of spreading and protect the masses in the process.
chasing 6y ago
> This will just shift this extremist content to other unregulated and unmonitored platforms... Good. YouTube doesn’t need to be promoting every flavor of garbage known to man. That’s why the rest of the internet exists.
bamboozled 6y ago
Yup, this will just reinforce the idea that Mr Icke is "onto something" and that's why he needed to be silenced.
- bamboozled 6y ago
  I don't really get the down vote here, if people think trying to silence someone would actually make conspiracy theorists less likely to believe this guy, then I'm kind of shocked?
gamblor956 6y ago
This will just shift this extremist content to other unregulated and unmonitored platforms that will not engage in debate, but blindly accept such things. We already have this. It's called 4chan and 8chan. And you know what? It's absolutely better to keep this shit to their echo chamber, where they have limited exposure, than Youtube, where they have a potential audience of billions.
- Zenst 6y ago
  True, though even those outlets grow and bubble over into the mainstream in various manifestations.
01100011 6y ago
Yes. But association with those unregulated and unmonitored sites will hopefully assist viewers with putting the content in its proper context. Having your content on a major broadcast network is different than having your content on public access. If YT decides to regulate content, it may provide a measure of credibility to popular content still on YT, and that is certainly something that may be beneficial to their brand and something they should be free to do.
stolen_biscuit 6y ago
Actually it's been pretty conclusively shown that removing extremist content from mainstream channels pretty much prevents the ideas from propagating in the mainstream. If the cockroaches want to crawl under the fridge there's not much you can do to stop them but you can stop them from breeding on the table.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dvt 6y ago
  > Actually it's been pretty conclusively shown that removing extremist content from mainstream channels pretty much prevents the ideas from propagating in the mainstream. Actually, no it hasn't. And for anyone that holds such a viewpoint, I'd strongly suggest reading J. S. Mill's classic, On Liberty[1] -- a foundational document of Western political thought. [1] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwaway2048 6y ago
    Or we can look at modern evidence, not centuries old political philosophy.
    - dvt 6y ago
      I'd be careful with dismissing the giants whose shoulders we straddle. If it weren't for the Magna Carta, the French and American Revolutions, and the Declaration of Independence, most of us would still be living under despotic rule.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - 6y ago
Barrin92 6y ago
>Yay another extremist swept under the digital carpet, problem solved - well NO. Well yes, at least partially. Studies of bans on hate communities on reddit have shown effectiveness not only in reducing the total hate, but also, and this is important, changing the behaviour of individual users who were active in the hate communities as they moved towards more moderate, diverse communities. [...] "What they found was encouraging for this strategy of reducing unwanted activity on a site like Reddit: Post-ban, hate speech by the same users was reduced by as much as 80-90 percent. Members of banned communities left Reddit at significantly higher rates than control groups. Migration was common, both to similar subreddits (i.e. overtly racist ones) and tangentially related ones (r/The_Donald). However, within those communities, hate speech did not reliably increase, although there were slight bumps as the invaders encountered and tested new rules and moderators. All in all, the researchers conclude, the ban was quite effective at what it set out to do: For the definition of “work” framed by our research questions, the ban worked for Reddit. It succeeded at both a user level and a community level. Through the banning of subreddits which engaged in racism and fat-shaming, Reddit was able to reduce the prevalence of such behavior on the site." [...] https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/11/study-finds-reddits-controversial-ban-of-its-most-toxic-subreddits-actually-worked/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/11/study-finds-reddits-contro...
- brailsafe 6y ago
  is racism equivalent to fat shaming now?
  - harimau777 6y ago
    I suppose it would depend on what you mean by equivalent. It seems plausible that they stem from the same or similar social, psychological, and/or moral defects.
    - Zenst 6y ago
      Most stems from ignorance. Of which education and constructive debate style education are the best solutions and what you have left, that is the pure hate that need more than blocking in society.
RIMR 6y ago
I would rather extremists have to go to some other website to get their content, than for it to end up in tens of thousands 12 year olds' recommendations lists on YouTube.

by Zenst 6y ago

barrkel 6y ago

It's not a binary. The more places extremists can find like-minded people, the more their worldview is normalized and validated. The fewer places, the higher the probability that they realize (or be continuously confronted by) how far out their views are, and the less extremist a position they'll end up taking. I genuinely don't think universal free speech is the answer, because people aren't confronted with the counterargument until they seek it out. If you could guarantee that argument, it would be much safer. But I don't think it's possible with today's media; people exist in a bubble of both their own choosing and algorithmic choosing, and aren't challenged.

Zenst 6y ago
Agreed it is a hard balance, all gets down to how responsible the average person is and working around that aspect. Universal free speech as it stands, allows racism and with that, you are not wrong. Free speech within some moral boundaries, though free debate, that is the aspect of free speech to provide balance that is equally important.
runawaybottle 6y ago
When you ban these people you erode something we all hold dear in Western countries, and that’s free speech. Even those who are not aligned with you share that ideal, and we have integrity on this one issue because there’s proof of it - you don’t get censored. When you do start censoring them, we will all start losing faith in our values as we don’t apply it across the board. If you look at other non free countries, the average person doesn’t really believe that you have the right to express your views. Take the Muhammad cartoons for example, a vast majority of Muslims in non-western countries think that’s a no go from a rights perspective ( as in, you shouldn’t even have the right to draw it). That kind of thinking extends and extends to all kinds undermining of individual rights. If you look at China, the vastness of inaction to their Internet being censored is another key example of this. It takes a lot to get a society to value it, and we worked pretty hard to get those values ingrained in our culture. There might be some absolutely abhorrent people in our country, but even they cannot deny that they do have the right to express themselves here. We lose that baseline integrity of our values when we start withering it away, until we ourselves can’t even recognize ourselves anymore, where suddenly we have all these caveats to a principle that defines our society.

lovehashbrowns 6y ago

Problem solved! Yay another person that thinks if something doesn't fix the issue 100% then it can't be considered. This is taking away their access to a platform that has global reach. They already had platforms where they didn't engage in debate, btw; they're called youtube channels with heavily-moderated chat sections. Except there they can reach millions of people.

Zenst 6y ago
It would of been better to leave it there, but had a disclaimer warning that couldn't be skipped akin to the old piracy warnings on purchased movie DVD's. You also won't stop such types of content from appearing on said platforms, less popular but still they will appear, get popular and get closed down. But that's an issue with some types of content that all social media platforms have. No solution will be 100%, let's not presume that there will ever be 100% solution. Though is this the best approach. Exposing and debating head on would be the better solution and this eliminates that.
- lovehashbrowns 6y ago
  The key component is them having access to a platform with global reach. Exposing and debating hasn't been working all that well, has it? These 5G conspiracy theories are absurdly easy to bust. Yet here we are, with people attacking 5G towers and threatening employees. 9/11 conspiracy theories are still popular. Moon landing conspiracy theories. Debating in an of itself doesn't work. Humans aren't perfectly logical. ugh there are literally people who think the Earth is flat. There are literally people who think the Earth is flat!
  - Zenst 6y ago
    >ugh there are literally people who think the Earth is flat. There are literally people who think the Earth is flat! True, should they ban that as well? Though they havn't been going around flattening mountains or any other harm, so there is that. Not all those who believe conspiracy stuff, act upon it. Some will, those are more the ones who will engage in lesser, more niche platforms in which such content will run, along with more such content. Thus, driving many who will want to watch it to be exposed to other platforms in which such content is less tacked as more echo chambers and this is not something to be overlooked. Thing is, whatever you do, there will always be some and with so many humans, the odds of there being more than one is a given. Do you ridicule/educate in public or cast aside to dark corners in which they can carry on unchecked.

nojito 6y ago

The point is to the stop seeds of thought from spreading in the first place. The way these Youtubers work is to cast as wide of a net as possible as quickly as possible to hook a small percentage of followers who they exploit consistently with newer and wilder beliefs. By pushing them "under ground" you effectively take away their means of spreading and protect the masses in the process.

chasing 6y ago

> This will just shift this extremist content to other unregulated and unmonitored platforms... Good. YouTube doesn’t need to be promoting every flavor of garbage known to man. That’s why the rest of the internet exists.

bamboozled 6y ago

Yup, this will just reinforce the idea that Mr Icke is "onto something" and that's why he needed to be silenced.

bamboozled 6y ago
I don't really get the down vote here, if people think trying to silence someone would actually make conspiracy theorists less likely to believe this guy, then I'm kind of shocked?

gamblor956 6y ago

This will just shift this extremist content to other unregulated and unmonitored platforms that will not engage in debate, but blindly accept such things. We already have this. It's called 4chan and 8chan. And you know what? It's absolutely better to keep this shit to their echo chamber, where they have limited exposure, than Youtube, where they have a potential audience of billions.

Zenst 6y ago
True, though even those outlets grow and bubble over into the mainstream in various manifestations.

01100011 6y ago

Yes. But association with those unregulated and unmonitored sites will hopefully assist viewers with putting the content in its proper context. Having your content on a major broadcast network is different than having your content on public access. If YT decides to regulate content, it may provide a measure of credibility to popular content still on YT, and that is certainly something that may be beneficial to their brand and something they should be free to do.

stolen_biscuit 6y ago

Actually it's been pretty conclusively shown that removing extremist content from mainstream channels pretty much prevents the ideas from propagating in the mainstream. If the cockroaches want to crawl under the fridge there's not much you can do to stop them but you can stop them from breeding on the table.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dvt 6y ago
> Actually it's been pretty conclusively shown that removing extremist content from mainstream channels pretty much prevents the ideas from propagating in the mainstream. Actually, no it hasn't. And for anyone that holds such a viewpoint, I'd strongly suggest reading J. S. Mill's classic, On Liberty[1] -- a foundational document of Western political thought. [1] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway2048 6y ago
  Or we can look at modern evidence, not centuries old political philosophy.
  - dvt 6y ago
    I'd be careful with dismissing the giants whose shoulders we straddle. If it weren't for the Magna Carta, the French and American Revolutions, and the Declaration of Independence, most of us would still be living under despotic rule.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - 6y ago

Barrin92 6y ago

>Yay another extremist swept under the digital carpet, problem solved - well NO. Well yes, at least partially. Studies of bans on hate communities on reddit have shown effectiveness not only in reducing the total hate, but also, and this is important, changing the behaviour of individual users who were active in the hate communities as they moved towards more moderate, diverse communities. [...] "What they found was encouraging for this strategy of reducing unwanted activity on a site like Reddit: Post-ban, hate speech by the same users was reduced by as much as 80-90 percent. Members of banned communities left Reddit at significantly higher rates than control groups. Migration was common, both to similar subreddits (i.e. overtly racist ones) and tangentially related ones (r/The_Donald). However, within those communities, hate speech did not reliably increase, although there were slight bumps as the invaders encountered and tested new rules and moderators. All in all, the researchers conclude, the ban was quite effective at what it set out to do: For the definition of “work” framed by our research questions, the ban worked for Reddit. It succeeded at both a user level and a community level. Through the banning of subreddits which engaged in racism and fat-shaming, Reddit was able to reduce the prevalence of such behavior on the site." [...] https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/11/study-finds-reddits-controversial-ban-of-its-most-toxic-subreddits-actually-worked/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/11/study-finds-reddits-contro...

brailsafe 6y ago
is racism equivalent to fat shaming now?
- harimau777 6y ago
  I suppose it would depend on what you mean by equivalent. It seems plausible that they stem from the same or similar social, psychological, and/or moral defects.
  - Zenst 6y ago
    Most stems from ignorance. Of which education and constructive debate style education are the best solutions and what you have left, that is the pure hate that need more than blocking in society.

RIMR 6y ago

I would rather extremists have to go to some other website to get their content, than for it to end up in tens of thousands 12 year olds' recommendations lists on YouTube.