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Deplatforming has proven highly effective at preventing bad actors from continuing to spread misinformation on Reddit and other social media sites [1]. I suppor

Deplatforming has proven highly effective at preventing bad actors from continuing to spread misinformation on Reddit and other social media sites [1]. I support free speech in principle, but internet platforms are such a powerful megaphone for spreading misinformation, the likes of which history has never seen, that platform owners may feel ethically obligated to act against those who would misuse their systems to cause global societal harm. Some misinformation is just unambiguously harmful and so profoundly incorrect that no reasonable person could see stopping it as a slippery slope of free speech. For example, the misinformation being proliferated by Icke, that 5G spreads coronavirus and that people should destroy 5G towers. People actually went out and set 5G towers alight in response to Icke's posts [2]. It's quite reasonable that Youtube or any other social media platform would not want to be responsible for disseminating information to leads to real-life crimes. [1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bjbp9d/do-social-media-bans-work https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bjbp9d/do-social-media-ba... [2] https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/4/21207927/5g-towers-burning-uk-coronavirus-conspiracy-theory-link https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/4/21207927/5g-towers-burning...

rlt 6y ago
"Deplatforming" is some pretty great doublespeak for "censoring". We already have a solution to idiots vandalizing 5G towers: arrest them.
- deminature 6y ago
  This board regularly ‘censors’ people who break the rules. It’s the price of having a reasonably nice board to post on. There’s a difference between censorship and punishing bad behavior.
  - rlt 6y ago
    See this comment which makes this point already, and the subthread discussing the differences between YouTube and Hacker News https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23064505 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23064505
    - lstamour 6y ago
      If I'm interested in content not on HN, I'll find it elsewhere. Why is it any different for YouTube? Now, if you'd said to me that Google doesn't prioritize other content, I'd argue that those wanting to talk about other content always have smaller forums to do it in, they just might be more local or viral in other ways. To me it's the difference between national broadcast TV "I'll know it's wrong when I see it," and the ability to post flyers or posters in a community. One is local and the other is wide-reaching. There is, I suppose, another alternative. If we want to promote fringe ideas, we should make it easier to organize and elect local candidates, abolish "first-past-the-post" voting systems that encourage a two-party system, and so on. But currently scientific reasoning is an accepted system of analysis for evidence-based decisions, and most politicians rely on it in addition to emotional intelligence to alter and guide their behaviour and decisions, even as they generally do whatever the person with the deepest pockets says to do, whether because that person sponsors scientific research or conducts surveys and campaigns to sway public opinion. The issue I have is that fringe opinion, like this, would reject cause-and-effect reasoning and evidence to rely almost entirely on emotions instead. And because it's controversial, people click on it and watch it and wonder about it. When there's no actual evidence to it. We used to and probably still do, have courses in grade/high school on media literacy, or not believing everything you see on TV. We routinely, as an HN community, encourage reading source materials and deciding for ourselves. But we're a small community, and for YouTube, it's easier to say "it's not our problem any longer" than it is to try and provide counterpoints to the material. There's a serious risk to YouTube to not pull this down, because of how the feedback loop of their algorithms will encourage folks who like this to watch other fringe videos, until eventually they think all of YouTube, or the world, thinks the same way as these commentators. It's easier in the short term to pull down the content than to change how the algorithms work to make them somehow less relevant. And back to my original point, folks who want this content, they will find it, regardless of what platform it's on.
      - t0ughcritic 6y ago
        Have you found any new blogs or websites you visit on a frequent basis in the last 3 months? You can’t discover the voice of the little guy, there’s too much noise.
t0ughcritic 6y ago
The solution isn’t deplatforming, it is arresting these people if they light stuff on fire as that’s the crime. Let them believe what they want.
robertlagrant 6y ago
> I support free speech in principle, but internet platforms are such a powerful megaphone for spreading misinformation, the likes of which history has never seen This analogy is misleading, because it does not make it clear that in this situation, everyone has a megaphone.
benbristow 6y ago
Not defending him, nor do I believe him, but I watched a brief portion of the London Real livestream interview last night and he said that 5G provokes symptoms similar to that of COVID-19, not that 5G spreads Coronavirus.
- daveFNbuck 6y ago
  He's said a lot of bullshit in a lot of different venues. I did a quick search and found a long, rambling article [1] on his website about how coronavirus and 5G are linked. He sums his position up at the end with > The evidence that COVID-19 is a bioweapon is overwhelming – and so is the evidence that 5G is involved to either cause the flu-like symptoms/pneumonia people have been experiencing, and/or to exacerbate the virulity of the virus by weakening people’s immune systems and subjecting them to pulsed waves of EMF to open up their skin to foreign DNA fragments (including viruses). So he's been saying both that 5G causes an illness that is mistaken for COVID-19 and that 5G spreads coronavirus. [1] https://www.davidicke.com/article/564306/coronavirus-5g-connection-coverup https://www.davidicke.com/article/564306/coronavirus-5g-conn...
- qtplatypus 6y ago
  This is also incorrect. Also he believes that British Royal Family are shape shifting reptiles; he might not have the best judgement on what is backed by evidence.

rlt 6y ago

"Deplatforming" is some pretty great doublespeak for "censoring". We already have a solution to idiots vandalizing 5G towers: arrest them.

deminature 6y ago
This board regularly ‘censors’ people who break the rules. It’s the price of having a reasonably nice board to post on. There’s a difference between censorship and punishing bad behavior.
- rlt 6y ago
  See this comment which makes this point already, and the subthread discussing the differences between YouTube and Hacker News https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23064505 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23064505
  - lstamour 6y ago
    If I'm interested in content not on HN, I'll find it elsewhere. Why is it any different for YouTube? Now, if you'd said to me that Google doesn't prioritize other content, I'd argue that those wanting to talk about other content always have smaller forums to do it in, they just might be more local or viral in other ways. To me it's the difference between national broadcast TV "I'll know it's wrong when I see it," and the ability to post flyers or posters in a community. One is local and the other is wide-reaching. There is, I suppose, another alternative. If we want to promote fringe ideas, we should make it easier to organize and elect local candidates, abolish "first-past-the-post" voting systems that encourage a two-party system, and so on. But currently scientific reasoning is an accepted system of analysis for evidence-based decisions, and most politicians rely on it in addition to emotional intelligence to alter and guide their behaviour and decisions, even as they generally do whatever the person with the deepest pockets says to do, whether because that person sponsors scientific research or conducts surveys and campaigns to sway public opinion. The issue I have is that fringe opinion, like this, would reject cause-and-effect reasoning and evidence to rely almost entirely on emotions instead. And because it's controversial, people click on it and watch it and wonder about it. When there's no actual evidence to it. We used to and probably still do, have courses in grade/high school on media literacy, or not believing everything you see on TV. We routinely, as an HN community, encourage reading source materials and deciding for ourselves. But we're a small community, and for YouTube, it's easier to say "it's not our problem any longer" than it is to try and provide counterpoints to the material. There's a serious risk to YouTube to not pull this down, because of how the feedback loop of their algorithms will encourage folks who like this to watch other fringe videos, until eventually they think all of YouTube, or the world, thinks the same way as these commentators. It's easier in the short term to pull down the content than to change how the algorithms work to make them somehow less relevant. And back to my original point, folks who want this content, they will find it, regardless of what platform it's on.
    - t0ughcritic 6y ago
      Have you found any new blogs or websites you visit on a frequent basis in the last 3 months? You can’t discover the voice of the little guy, there’s too much noise.

t0ughcritic 6y ago

The solution isn’t deplatforming, it is arresting these people if they light stuff on fire as that’s the crime. Let them believe what they want.

robertlagrant 6y ago

> I support free speech in principle, but internet platforms are such a powerful megaphone for spreading misinformation, the likes of which history has never seen This analogy is misleading, because it does not make it clear that in this situation, everyone has a megaphone.

benbristow 6y ago

Not defending him, nor do I believe him, but I watched a brief portion of the London Real livestream interview last night and he said that 5G provokes symptoms similar to that of COVID-19, not that 5G spreads Coronavirus.

daveFNbuck 6y ago
He's said a lot of bullshit in a lot of different venues. I did a quick search and found a long, rambling article [1] on his website about how coronavirus and 5G are linked. He sums his position up at the end with > The evidence that COVID-19 is a bioweapon is overwhelming – and so is the evidence that 5G is involved to either cause the flu-like symptoms/pneumonia people have been experiencing, and/or to exacerbate the virulity of the virus by weakening people’s immune systems and subjecting them to pulsed waves of EMF to open up their skin to foreign DNA fragments (including viruses). So he's been saying both that 5G causes an illness that is mistaken for COVID-19 and that 5G spreads coronavirus. [1] https://www.davidicke.com/article/564306/coronavirus-5g-connection-coverup https://www.davidicke.com/article/564306/coronavirus-5g-conn...
qtplatypus 6y ago
This is also incorrect. Also he believes that British Royal Family are shape shifting reptiles; he might not have the best judgement on what is backed by evidence.