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> I believe in shining a light on them I hear this a lot. Light is the best disinfectant. What evidence do you have for this? I've never seen a bad or immoral

> I believe in shining a light on them I hear this a lot. Light is the best disinfectant. What evidence do you have for this? I've never seen a bad or immoral or harmful idea die out when more people learn about it and scrutinize it. However, I have repeatedly seen the opposite: Sharing bad ideas increases their audience, increases ignorance, hate, fear, and human suffering. You're looking at an article describing this phenomena right now. More importantly, I've also seen the opposite: Private platforms actively suppressing people trying to harm humanity does work. Deplatforming these people and, importantly, showing social pressure that these are bad ideas and shouldn't even be entertained as valid debate, has shown to work repeatedly. In fact, social pressure is one of the most effective tools against hate and ignorance like this. I don't think you're basing your "shine the light" argument in evidence, which I suspect is ironic because I suspect you believe you're objective and use evidence to judge things.

2019-nCoV 6y ago
> I've never seen a bad or immoral or harmful idea die out when more people learn about it and scrutinize it. Communism.
catalogia 6y ago
> I hear this a lot. Light is the best disinfectant. What evidence do you have for this? The propensity of totalitarian governments to censor dissidents is proof of it.
- DuskStar 6y ago
  Ah, but it's not bad when we're censoring the wrong opinions, don't you see? /s if it wasn't obvious.
colordrops 6y ago
I know that HN is an international community but it's based in the US and most users are Americans. In the US, you need strong evidence of negative repercussions to restrict speech, and even then it's extremely difficult, due to the 1st amendment being one of the most important laws of the land. It's not the other way around - evidence is not needed to show that allowing speech is helpful.
- fzeroracer 6y ago
  That's just not true though. In the US the rights of property trumps the rights of Freedom of Speech in 99% of cases. If someone puts up a cardboard box on my property and begins a speech, I have the right to kick them off of my property. We have 'Free Speech Zones' which we kick protesters into so that their exertion of their rights doesn't bother other people. We have cases of senators getting people arrested solely because they laughed at them. And that's ignoring our long history of suppressing people based on their race or origin. Black Americans are the first ones that come to mind, but we treated Italians and Asians as second-class citizens not that long ago as well. We've had this 'freedom of speech' right enshrined but not at all interpreted like people seem to think it was.
  - colordrops 6y ago
    "one of the most important" != "The most powerful"
- p1necone 6y ago
  That's not what the first amendment says. The first amending only stops the government from enacting laws that limit speech. Private companies and individuals are free to limit speech however they like on their own platforms and environments (within the bounds of the law of course). The first amendment is like 50 words long, you should read it.
  - colordrops 6y ago
    No need for snark. Of course I've read the first amendment. I'm speaking of speech in general. This post is about censorship by private entities, but there is current of thought in this thread that speech should be restricted in general.
- yesenadam 6y ago
  > most [HN] users are Americans. Apparently, that's not true. I initially had that strong impression too, from the way estadounidenses talk on here, (like as if everyone in the world lives under US constitutional amendments etc) but I heard the majority are non-US. Last I heard, HN might have another survey on that question soon. I hope so, I'd love to know what the numbers actually are.
pacala 6y ago
What you are missing is the bad, immoral and harmful ideas that perpetuate themselves by virtue of being proclaimed true by the authorities. Every totalitarian regime out there perpetuates a set of such 'official truths', that are painfully and obviously untrue to the subjects, but have to be aquiesced to.
enraged_camel 6y ago
There's even a saying for this: "A lie can travel half-way around the globe before the truth gets done putting its shoes on."
Negitivefrags 6y ago
> More importantly, I've also seen the opposite: Private platforms actively suppressing people trying to harm humanity does work. Deplatforming these people and, importantly, showing social pressure that these are bad ideas and shouldn't even be entertained as valid debate, has shown to work repeatedly. In fact, social pressure is one of the most effective tools against hate and ignorance like this. Really? Seems to me like there is a resurgence in hate and ignorance right now and deplatforming seems to only be adding fuel to the fire.
runawaybottle 6y ago
You don’t see a pattern? We went from questionable analysis of COVID cases by actual doctors last week, over to 5G coronavirus conspiracy theories this week. This is the proverbial slippery slope, albeit a bit anachronistic as the more egregious case is the latter (5G conspiracy), so the escalation is unable to be painted by the sequence. I’d also ask you consider that your line of thinking as a framework has been misused throughout history, often in the context of censorship. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair Of course, the obvious retort is that these people aren’t Galileo, but I’m arguing that this framework is bad on a societal level.
- pacala 6y ago
  The '5G coronavirus conspiracy theory' is a convenient broad brush to paint any dissident thought as inane, even if 99% people entertaining dissident thoughts are just as appalled as anyone at the 5G theory.
  - throwaway2048 6y ago
    are 99% of people entertaining dissident thoughts getting banned from youtube?
    - pacala 6y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23063265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23063265 > We have a myriad of evidence that societies that suppress the truth for "the public good" don't go in a desirable direction or end well. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23063531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23063531 > Are you saying that the truth is "Covid-19 is caused by 5-g towers"?
      - joshuamorton 6y ago
        I'm not sure why you're quoting me here. My argument is that the assumption that societies which suppress truth end badly may be valid, but "covid-19 5g lizard people" is so far outside the realm of what is possibly true that it isn't relevant to such arguments. You can socially suppress the obviously wrong without any danger. The marketplace of ideas doesn't need to make an effort to hold on to cranks.
steveeq1 6y ago
So you already do things like this for, say, rap music. Right?
knzhou 6y ago
> I've never seen a bad or immoral or harmful idea die out when more people learn about it and scrutinize it. Exactly. Despite the claims of the piles of misguided comments below, there has never been any such thing as a public "marketplace of ideas". At best, there's a used car dealership. Just about anybody with the slightest bit of cleverness and free time can convince any trusting person of anything whatsoever, no matter how horrible, given enough exposure. Bullshit is easy to produce and, once it's burrowed in, almost impossible to counter.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- remarkEon 6y ago
  >I've never seen a bad or immoral or harmful idea Sure but who decides what ideas are bad or immoral or harmful? Everyone pretends like this is some simple problem to solve but come on. It's incredibly complex and it seems that both sides of this argument that want to anoint an Arbiter of Truth are only okay with it insofar as it's their Arbiter.
  - knzhou 6y ago
    Just imagine traveling back in time and trying to convince your grandmother of this. "We just can't know if the polio vaccine will work, because it's just fundamentally impossible to decide what is true and false." "What about the trials the scientists did?" "No, grandma, believing the scientists would be picking a side." The only reason that anybody thinks deciding the truth is impossible is because we're currently living with the greatest amount of free speech in history. It's a slippery slope but in the exact opposite direction than everybody thinks.
    - remarkEon 6y ago
      This is a really stupid example because they didn't actually do the kind of double-blind peer-reviewed trials for the polio vaccine that you seem to think is the only way for "science" to declare something as acceptable - they just did it. And actually, in the first round of "trials" for the Polio vaccine a bunch of children died. But, thankfully, we didn't have some annoying corporate apparatus running things at the time, so we eventually got over that initial hiccup and BAM ... no more Polio.
pasquinelli 6y ago
"More importantly, I've also seen the opposite: Private platforms actively suppressing people trying to harm humanity does work." On who, really? David Icke and the dude from infowars? Are these the big players in the harming humanity business? I don't think so. I'd go as far as to say they're irrelevant. David Icke was a crank on youtube and now he's a crank off youtube-- which might sound significant until you remember he was a crank before youtube, and could well be a crank after youtube. The big players, the significant forces harming humanity, they won't be challenged by private platforms, because the private platforms need their money, or need access to them, or in some other way have their interests entangled.
koolba 6y ago
The problem is that your bad ideas are my rules to live by. Canceling the spread of ideas itself because you disagree with it or fear that others may agree is downright scary.
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> I've never seen a bad or immoral or harmful idea die out when more people learn about it and scrutinize it. Leaded gasoline, phlogiston, cold fusion, phrenology, scientific racism, basically the entire history of the progress of science. But let's also not forget that you're asking for a list of discredited ideas, so you wouldn't have heard of them, by definition, if things are working as they should, because they're wrong and the former proponents have long since abandoned trying to disseminate them to you. > Deplatforming these people and, importantly, showing social pressure that these are bad ideas and shouldn't even be entertained as valid debate, has shown to work repeatedly. If all you're doing is defining "work" as "the censorship target was censored" then you're not claiming anything. When you kick these people off of major platforms, they don't cease to exist, they break off like an extremist splinter group and go to a place with no moderating influences to fester. You don't see them anymore, but they're still there, and then suddenly somehow Donald Trump is the President of the United States and people can't believe it and don't understand how it happened. > In fact, social pressure is one of the most effective tools against hate and ignorance like this. Censorship isn't social pressure, it's force. Social pressure is telling wrong people why they're wrong, every time. People who are wrong need to be made right, not made frustrated and angry and yet not only still wrong but now even more convinced that their wrong ideas are right because they now have real evidence that they're not getting a fair public debate.
- knzhou 6y ago
  > Leaded gasoline, phlogiston, cold fusion, phrenology, scientific racism, basically the entire history of the progress of science. The progress of science wasn't driven by nutjobs delivering spittle-flecked rants on Youtube. Almost all of it was driven by careful peer review of ideas -- which is the exact opposite of unrestricted speech.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    "E pur si muove...!"
    - knzhou 6y ago
kazinator 6y ago
Vigilante lynch mobs instead of a justice system also do work.
throwaway829 6y ago
The problem is who decides what's a "bad idea"? Every group has its own list, whether it's Scientology, the CCP, NAMBLA, PITA, etc. What group do you trust with defining your list of "bad ideas"? Historically the "bad idea" list has been generated by whoever rules/controls you. Why do you think it's different this time?
- stevebmark 6y ago
  Yes, this is a completely valid question. In this specific case: Do you think it's bad for YouTube to be active in reducing the spread of this information? Because to me it's almost self evident it shouldn't be entertained as a valid idea. I might also ask why you aren't protesting Hacker News having moderators? Content is deleted from this platform all the time.
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    Again, the issue is the abuse of power. Google is very nearly a quasi-government organization. They have endless government contracts, they spend more on DC lobbying than anyone else, and they actively share data with US intelligence agencies. At some point, the laws that protect us from government, must also apply to these massive quasi-government monopolies - or they quickly become worthless.
    - chrononaut 6y ago
      > At some point, the laws that protect us from government, must also apply to these massive quasi-government monopolies - or they quickly become worthless. Except that Google cannot arrest you, prosecute you, sentence you to prison or limit any other right you might have. The best that they can do is no longer letting your voice be heard on their service because you have violated one of their _stated_ guidelines. If corporations were doing this in secret, that's a little bit different, but Google is being very forthcoming on the guidelines they are setting.
    - zimpenfish 6y ago
      I would venture that the government should be protecting its people from misinformation like Icke's (after all, they enforce things like "truth in advertising", "medicines must state side effects", etc.) and not leaving it up to YouTube.
unishark 6y ago
I think it's a silly analogy because sunlight won't do squat for many infections. There are clearly better disinfectants out there. But in terms of speech, a better quote is: the best response to bad speech is good speech.
- knzhou 6y ago
  That's an idealistic statement but a false one. Bullshit is much easier to produce than truth, and is inherently much more appealing, because it isn't constrained by having to be true. For example, the "good speech" counterpart of David Icke is a number of real experts who are taking to Twitter and blogs. I've seen a few. They usually have single digit reach. In five minutes, Icke can reach a larger audience than all of them combined throughout their entire lives.
  - unishark 6y ago
    Perhaps you'd prefer a quote like: the best response to bad speech is an authoritarian censor with unlimited powers to silence and imprison people? Because if your only criterion is effectiveness at silencing someone I think that misses the point. Built into the statement is the idea that otherwise the cure (censorship) is worse than the disease.
    - knzhou 6y ago
      This slope isn't nearly as slippery as you're saying. If YouTube began issuing a million times more bans, it might approach the quality of an average newspaper in terms of accuracy. Would we be living in a dystopia at that point? No, we'd be living just like we did in the year 2000, when YouTube wasn't around but newspapers were. Just like a nutjob in 2000, Icke still has print, radio, TV, going outside with a megaphone, and going door to door with pamphlets to promote his message. In fact, he's even luckier, because he still has access to the entire rest of the internet. Indeed, the fact that we're here discussing Icke's massive popular impact is proof that in 2020, there is far more free speech than there was in 2000, when he was mostly ignored. We are at historically high levels of free speech. Freaking out over this is like thinking we've gone back to the Bronze Age every time the stock market goes down 1%.
aantthony 6y ago
> What evidence do you have for this? I've never seen a bad or immoral or harmful idea die out when more people learn about it and scrutinize it. There is a significant amount of evidence for it. For example, one could measure the effects of showing people fact-checks, and it has been demonstrated that it does indeed work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact-checking#Effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact-checking#Effects And there are countless ideas that have died out when more people learn. It's easy to forget about them, precisely because they do die off. A few big ones that were held by the majority but died out: - flat earth (before Galileo) - pro-slavery views - human sacrifice - caning children - hanging - smoking is good for you - communism - laws against gay marriage > In fact, social pressure is one of the most effective tools against hate and ignorance like this It can be used to enforce hate and ignorance as well. It's naive to think that the way you propose enforcing it would be different to all other times in history when it was used.
- quazeekotl 6y ago
  Most of those ideas didn't die out because one day people found out about them, and then we put an end to them. Most of them _everyone_ knew about for thousands, or even tens of thousands of years, why didn't this "sunlight" disinfect them?
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    Because "sunlight" includes the norms of a free and intellectually-open society, which didn't develop until well after those thousands of years. Censorship itself is not even that bad merely due to how it might deal with the YouTube fruitcake du jour; it's really, really bad because it's openly destructive of these hard-gained shared norms, in so many ways.
    - quazeekotl 6y ago
      Maybe, but the argument is that mere public existence of an idea effectively promotes correct ideas and demotes incorrect ideas. That is absolutely not in evidence.
BurningFrog 6y ago
> * I've never seen a bad or immoral or harmful idea die out when more people learn about it and scrutinize it.* If this was true, all bad or immoral or harmful ideas from all of human history should currently be vigorously alive. That is obviously not the case.
downerending 6y ago
> In fact, social pressure is one of the most effective tools against hate and ignorance like this. If you de-platform people, you no longer have a way to pressure them. Declaring them "beyond the pale" means giving up further rational influence on them. Nothing is left but violence. The people we revere as history's greatest moral leaders never took this approach.
econcon 6y ago
>However, I have repeatedly seen the opposite: Sharing bad ideas increases their audience, increases ignorance, hate, fear, and human suffering. A lot of time hate is already there, just it doesn't find a way out untill someone shows there is no consequence of doing so. Hitler is one example of this who harnessed anti Jewish sentiments, he didn't create it, you can't make so many people change their beliefs.
- lonelappde 6y ago
  That's off the mark. It's more that there are angry, frustrated, or stupid people and they taught how to channel their anger, frustration, and stupidity into specific forms of hate. Conspiracy theories don't grow because all these people came to the same conclusion independently and then found each other.

2019-nCoV 6y ago

> I've never seen a bad or immoral or harmful idea die out when more people learn about it and scrutinize it. Communism.

catalogia 6y ago

> I hear this a lot. Light is the best disinfectant. What evidence do you have for this? The propensity of totalitarian governments to censor dissidents is proof of it.

DuskStar 6y ago
Ah, but it's not bad when we're censoring the wrong opinions, don't you see? /s if it wasn't obvious.

colordrops 6y ago

I know that HN is an international community but it's based in the US and most users are Americans. In the US, you need strong evidence of negative repercussions to restrict speech, and even then it's extremely difficult, due to the 1st amendment being one of the most important laws of the land. It's not the other way around - evidence is not needed to show that allowing speech is helpful.

fzeroracer 6y ago
That's just not true though. In the US the rights of property trumps the rights of Freedom of Speech in 99% of cases. If someone puts up a cardboard box on my property and begins a speech, I have the right to kick them off of my property. We have 'Free Speech Zones' which we kick protesters into so that their exertion of their rights doesn't bother other people. We have cases of senators getting people arrested solely because they laughed at them. And that's ignoring our long history of suppressing people based on their race or origin. Black Americans are the first ones that come to mind, but we treated Italians and Asians as second-class citizens not that long ago as well. We've had this 'freedom of speech' right enshrined but not at all interpreted like people seem to think it was.
- colordrops 6y ago
  "one of the most important" != "The most powerful"
p1necone 6y ago
That's not what the first amendment says. The first amending only stops the government from enacting laws that limit speech. Private companies and individuals are free to limit speech however they like on their own platforms and environments (within the bounds of the law of course). The first amendment is like 50 words long, you should read it.
- colordrops 6y ago
  No need for snark. Of course I've read the first amendment. I'm speaking of speech in general. This post is about censorship by private entities, but there is current of thought in this thread that speech should be restricted in general.
yesenadam 6y ago
> most [HN] users are Americans. Apparently, that's not true. I initially had that strong impression too, from the way estadounidenses talk on here, (like as if everyone in the world lives under US constitutional amendments etc) but I heard the majority are non-US. Last I heard, HN might have another survey on that question soon. I hope so, I'd love to know what the numbers actually are.

pacala 6y ago

What you are missing is the bad, immoral and harmful ideas that perpetuate themselves by virtue of being proclaimed true by the authorities. Every totalitarian regime out there perpetuates a set of such 'official truths', that are painfully and obviously untrue to the subjects, but have to be aquiesced to.

enraged_camel 6y ago

There's even a saying for this: "A lie can travel half-way around the globe before the truth gets done putting its shoes on."

Negitivefrags 6y ago

> More importantly, I've also seen the opposite: Private platforms actively suppressing people trying to harm humanity does work. Deplatforming these people and, importantly, showing social pressure that these are bad ideas and shouldn't even be entertained as valid debate, has shown to work repeatedly. In fact, social pressure is one of the most effective tools against hate and ignorance like this. Really? Seems to me like there is a resurgence in hate and ignorance right now and deplatforming seems to only be adding fuel to the fire.

runawaybottle 6y ago

You don’t see a pattern? We went from questionable analysis of COVID cases by actual doctors last week, over to 5G coronavirus conspiracy theories this week. This is the proverbial slippery slope, albeit a bit anachronistic as the more egregious case is the latter (5G conspiracy), so the escalation is unable to be painted by the sequence. I’d also ask you consider that your line of thinking as a framework has been misused throughout history, often in the context of censorship. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair Of course, the obvious retort is that these people aren’t Galileo, but I’m arguing that this framework is bad on a societal level.

pacala 6y ago
The '5G coronavirus conspiracy theory' is a convenient broad brush to paint any dissident thought as inane, even if 99% people entertaining dissident thoughts are just as appalled as anyone at the 5G theory.
- throwaway2048 6y ago
  are 99% of people entertaining dissident thoughts getting banned from youtube?
  - pacala 6y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23063265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23063265 > We have a myriad of evidence that societies that suppress the truth for "the public good" don't go in a desirable direction or end well. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23063531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23063531 > Are you saying that the truth is "Covid-19 is caused by 5-g towers"?
    - joshuamorton 6y ago
      I'm not sure why you're quoting me here. My argument is that the assumption that societies which suppress truth end badly may be valid, but "covid-19 5g lizard people" is so far outside the realm of what is possibly true that it isn't relevant to such arguments. You can socially suppress the obviously wrong without any danger. The marketplace of ideas doesn't need to make an effort to hold on to cranks.

steveeq1 6y ago

So you already do things like this for, say, rap music. Right?

knzhou 6y ago

> I've never seen a bad or immoral or harmful idea die out when more people learn about it and scrutinize it. Exactly. Despite the claims of the piles of misguided comments below, there has never been any such thing as a public "marketplace of ideas". At best, there's a used car dealership. Just about anybody with the slightest bit of cleverness and free time can convince any trusting person of anything whatsoever, no matter how horrible, given enough exposure. Bullshit is easy to produce and, once it's burrowed in, almost impossible to counter.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
remarkEon 6y ago
>I've never seen a bad or immoral or harmful idea Sure but who decides what ideas are bad or immoral or harmful? Everyone pretends like this is some simple problem to solve but come on. It's incredibly complex and it seems that both sides of this argument that want to anoint an Arbiter of Truth are only okay with it insofar as it's their Arbiter.
- knzhou 6y ago
  Just imagine traveling back in time and trying to convince your grandmother of this. "We just can't know if the polio vaccine will work, because it's just fundamentally impossible to decide what is true and false." "What about the trials the scientists did?" "No, grandma, believing the scientists would be picking a side." The only reason that anybody thinks deciding the truth is impossible is because we're currently living with the greatest amount of free speech in history. It's a slippery slope but in the exact opposite direction than everybody thinks.
  - remarkEon 6y ago
    This is a really stupid example because they didn't actually do the kind of double-blind peer-reviewed trials for the polio vaccine that you seem to think is the only way for "science" to declare something as acceptable - they just did it. And actually, in the first round of "trials" for the Polio vaccine a bunch of children died. But, thankfully, we didn't have some annoying corporate apparatus running things at the time, so we eventually got over that initial hiccup and BAM ... no more Polio.

pasquinelli 6y ago

"More importantly, I've also seen the opposite: Private platforms actively suppressing people trying to harm humanity does work." On who, really? David Icke and the dude from infowars? Are these the big players in the harming humanity business? I don't think so. I'd go as far as to say they're irrelevant. David Icke was a crank on youtube and now he's a crank off youtube-- which might sound significant until you remember he was a crank before youtube, and could well be a crank after youtube. The big players, the significant forces harming humanity, they won't be challenged by private platforms, because the private platforms need their money, or need access to them, or in some other way have their interests entangled.

koolba 6y ago

The problem is that your bad ideas are my rules to live by. Canceling the spread of ideas itself because you disagree with it or fear that others may agree is downright scary.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> I've never seen a bad or immoral or harmful idea die out when more people learn about it and scrutinize it. Leaded gasoline, phlogiston, cold fusion, phrenology, scientific racism, basically the entire history of the progress of science. But let's also not forget that you're asking for a list of discredited ideas, so you wouldn't have heard of them, by definition, if things are working as they should, because they're wrong and the former proponents have long since abandoned trying to disseminate them to you. > Deplatforming these people and, importantly, showing social pressure that these are bad ideas and shouldn't even be entertained as valid debate, has shown to work repeatedly. If all you're doing is defining "work" as "the censorship target was censored" then you're not claiming anything. When you kick these people off of major platforms, they don't cease to exist, they break off like an extremist splinter group and go to a place with no moderating influences to fester. You don't see them anymore, but they're still there, and then suddenly somehow Donald Trump is the President of the United States and people can't believe it and don't understand how it happened. > In fact, social pressure is one of the most effective tools against hate and ignorance like this. Censorship isn't social pressure, it's force. Social pressure is telling wrong people why they're wrong, every time. People who are wrong need to be made right, not made frustrated and angry and yet not only still wrong but now even more convinced that their wrong ideas are right because they now have real evidence that they're not getting a fair public debate.

knzhou 6y ago
> Leaded gasoline, phlogiston, cold fusion, phrenology, scientific racism, basically the entire history of the progress of science. The progress of science wasn't driven by nutjobs delivering spittle-flecked rants on Youtube. Almost all of it was driven by careful peer review of ideas -- which is the exact opposite of unrestricted speech.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  "E pur si muove...!"
  - knzhou 6y ago

kazinator 6y ago

Vigilante lynch mobs instead of a justice system also do work.

throwaway829 6y ago

The problem is who decides what's a "bad idea"? Every group has its own list, whether it's Scientology, the CCP, NAMBLA, PITA, etc. What group do you trust with defining your list of "bad ideas"? Historically the "bad idea" list has been generated by whoever rules/controls you. Why do you think it's different this time?

stevebmark 6y ago
Yes, this is a completely valid question. In this specific case: Do you think it's bad for YouTube to be active in reducing the spread of this information? Because to me it's almost self evident it shouldn't be entertained as a valid idea. I might also ask why you aren't protesting Hacker News having moderators? Content is deleted from this platform all the time.
- koheripbal 6y ago
  Again, the issue is the abuse of power. Google is very nearly a quasi-government organization. They have endless government contracts, they spend more on DC lobbying than anyone else, and they actively share data with US intelligence agencies. At some point, the laws that protect us from government, must also apply to these massive quasi-government monopolies - or they quickly become worthless.
  - chrononaut 6y ago
    > At some point, the laws that protect us from government, must also apply to these massive quasi-government monopolies - or they quickly become worthless. Except that Google cannot arrest you, prosecute you, sentence you to prison or limit any other right you might have. The best that they can do is no longer letting your voice be heard on their service because you have violated one of their _stated_ guidelines. If corporations were doing this in secret, that's a little bit different, but Google is being very forthcoming on the guidelines they are setting.
  - zimpenfish 6y ago
    I would venture that the government should be protecting its people from misinformation like Icke's (after all, they enforce things like "truth in advertising", "medicines must state side effects", etc.) and not leaving it up to YouTube.

unishark 6y ago

I think it's a silly analogy because sunlight won't do squat for many infections. There are clearly better disinfectants out there. But in terms of speech, a better quote is: the best response to bad speech is good speech.

knzhou 6y ago
That's an idealistic statement but a false one. Bullshit is much easier to produce than truth, and is inherently much more appealing, because it isn't constrained by having to be true. For example, the "good speech" counterpart of David Icke is a number of real experts who are taking to Twitter and blogs. I've seen a few. They usually have single digit reach. In five minutes, Icke can reach a larger audience than all of them combined throughout their entire lives.
- unishark 6y ago
  Perhaps you'd prefer a quote like: the best response to bad speech is an authoritarian censor with unlimited powers to silence and imprison people? Because if your only criterion is effectiveness at silencing someone I think that misses the point. Built into the statement is the idea that otherwise the cure (censorship) is worse than the disease.
  - knzhou 6y ago
    This slope isn't nearly as slippery as you're saying. If YouTube began issuing a million times more bans, it might approach the quality of an average newspaper in terms of accuracy. Would we be living in a dystopia at that point? No, we'd be living just like we did in the year 2000, when YouTube wasn't around but newspapers were. Just like a nutjob in 2000, Icke still has print, radio, TV, going outside with a megaphone, and going door to door with pamphlets to promote his message. In fact, he's even luckier, because he still has access to the entire rest of the internet. Indeed, the fact that we're here discussing Icke's massive popular impact is proof that in 2020, there is far more free speech than there was in 2000, when he was mostly ignored. We are at historically high levels of free speech. Freaking out over this is like thinking we've gone back to the Bronze Age every time the stock market goes down 1%.

aantthony 6y ago

> What evidence do you have for this? I've never seen a bad or immoral or harmful idea die out when more people learn about it and scrutinize it. There is a significant amount of evidence for it. For example, one could measure the effects of showing people fact-checks, and it has been demonstrated that it does indeed work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact-checking#Effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact-checking#Effects And there are countless ideas that have died out when more people learn. It's easy to forget about them, precisely because they do die off. A few big ones that were held by the majority but died out: - flat earth (before Galileo) - pro-slavery views - human sacrifice - caning children - hanging - smoking is good for you - communism - laws against gay marriage > In fact, social pressure is one of the most effective tools against hate and ignorance like this It can be used to enforce hate and ignorance as well. It's naive to think that the way you propose enforcing it would be different to all other times in history when it was used.

quazeekotl 6y ago
Most of those ideas didn't die out because one day people found out about them, and then we put an end to them. Most of them _everyone_ knew about for thousands, or even tens of thousands of years, why didn't this "sunlight" disinfect them?
- zozbot234 6y ago
  Because "sunlight" includes the norms of a free and intellectually-open society, which didn't develop until well after those thousands of years. Censorship itself is not even that bad merely due to how it might deal with the YouTube fruitcake du jour; it's really, really bad because it's openly destructive of these hard-gained shared norms, in so many ways.
  - quazeekotl 6y ago
    Maybe, but the argument is that mere public existence of an idea effectively promotes correct ideas and demotes incorrect ideas. That is absolutely not in evidence.

BurningFrog 6y ago

> * I've never seen a bad or immoral or harmful idea die out when more people learn about it and scrutinize it.* If this was true, all bad or immoral or harmful ideas from all of human history should currently be vigorously alive. That is obviously not the case.

downerending 6y ago

> In fact, social pressure is one of the most effective tools against hate and ignorance like this. If you de-platform people, you no longer have a way to pressure them. Declaring them "beyond the pale" means giving up further rational influence on them. Nothing is left but violence. The people we revere as history's greatest moral leaders never took this approach.

econcon 6y ago

>However, I have repeatedly seen the opposite: Sharing bad ideas increases their audience, increases ignorance, hate, fear, and human suffering. A lot of time hate is already there, just it doesn't find a way out untill someone shows there is no consequence of doing so. Hitler is one example of this who harnessed anti Jewish sentiments, he didn't create it, you can't make so many people change their beliefs.

lonelappde 6y ago
That's off the mark. It's more that there are angry, frustrated, or stupid people and they taught how to channel their anger, frustration, and stupidity into specific forms of hate. Conspiracy theories don't grow because all these people came to the same conclusion independently and then found each other.