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> since YouTube is a general platform and that no serious alternatives exist, we should advocate for less censorship. Disagree. Online misinformation can kill

> since YouTube is a general platform and that no serious alternatives exist, we should advocate for less censorship. Disagree. Online misinformation can kill people [0] and act as a recruitment tool for Nazis [1]. Less seriously, it can result in people burning down 5G towers. There's plenty to lose by YouTube hosting this stuff, and they're under no obligation to do so in the name of free speech. It strikes me as odd that more people seem to want YouTube to permit far-right propaganda on their platform, than want YouTube to permit 'adult content', which just about no-one advocates. > YouTube is the only serious option at the moment for general video content People don't have a positive right for their poisonous nonsense to be hosted by, and discoverable on, YouTube. Such content should be forced off mainstream platforms. > if YouTube begins to aggressively censor opinions they disagree with 'Disagree with' is trivialising the problem. This stuff is serious. [0] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/iran-700-dead-drinking-alcohol-cure-coronavirus-200427163529629.html https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/iran-700-dead-drinkin... edit It's not clear to me whether [0] was the result of online misinformation. [1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbzzzx/youtube-decides-to-leave-neo-nazi-propaganda-online https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbzzzx/youtube-decides-to...

italicbold 7y ago
And then you wake up one day to Brexit and Trump being elected. Forcing content/ideas underground doesnt stop it spreading, you just become totally unaware of the spread, its not even talked about in social settings. But still it silently spreads. Do you want a situation when it becomes vacine time, half your country revolts? Do you just not care about these people? If thats the case why bother supressing it at all. The time to address these ideas is now, but no its all too easy to stick your head in the sand and exclaim shock after the fact.
- zimpenfish 7y ago
  > you wake up one day to Brexit and Trump being elected > Forcing content/ideas underground doesnt stop it spreading In what way were Brexit or Trump "forced underground"? Trump got millions of dollars worth of free advertising from the second he announced he was running because the media could not stop covering him. CNN, MSNBC, and Fox aired 30 minutes of an empty podium for him! And Brexit was constantly in the media in the UK. There was no "underground" at all. The BBC were almost a full-on propaganda arm with their fawning over Farage and terror that any even slight non-worship of the Tories would be reflected in yet more license fee beatings by ukgov.
  - italicbold 7y ago
    Well thats my point, they werent forced underground. It was clear for anyone who looked to see what was going to happen. My point is there was an oportunity to engage and faciliate real conversations around these things. That oportunity was squandered with these two instances, because despite them not being outright supressed it was not socially acceptable to have a reasonable conversation around them without being labeled racist etc etc. If you force them underground you have no idea how prevalent the ideas are, nor do you have any oportunity to genuinely change peoples minds. You cant address a problem you are not aware of.
    - zimpenfish 7y ago
      > Well thats my point, they werent forced underground. My mistake, I misfollowed your logic. > it was not socially acceptable to have a reasonable conversation around them without being labeled racist Well, that's because Trump is an outspoken racist, the GOP is also pretty racist (but better at keeping it quiet), and Brexit was largely predicated on racism.
      - PureParadigm 7y ago
        Sure, you may think all these people are racist. Does calling them racist change anyone's mind? No, it just makes them and their supporters mad at you and just poisons the well. Instead, debate the policies. Explain why they're wrong in a reasonable conversation. You'll actually have a shot at changing people's minds this way.
        MaxBarraclough 7y ago
        > Explain why they're wrong in a reasonable conversation. You'll actually have a shot at changing people's minds this way. This seems to be expecting the opponent/interlocutor to be open to having their mind changed, while not being open yourself. Also, when it comes to values (as opposed to questions of fact), you can't really argue the point, you can just understand the differences between the positions. If someone values sovereignty so highly that it outweighs any possible cost of Brexit, for instance, then they're not likely to change their mind after a discussion.
- pknight 7y ago
  Forcing content out off mainstream media quite plainly does limit the spread of information and does limit radicalisation, we have plenty of examples of that. Conartists rack up millions of views because they can use free infrastructure of companies (companies that in turn convert human attention into profit via advertising, the sale of user data etc.). Without access to the infrastructure they can't have their business flourish as it does. The link with Brexit and T you make doesn't make sense either, both of these phenomenon got plenty public exposure, with all information available to those who wanted to find it. The central theme tieing both those developments was the ability for people to use the architecture built by digital corporations to quickly spread misinformation unopposed. People receive the information in isolation, they don't get it side-by-side with other views. People engineering the spread of misinformation know it's not a fair contest, that's why it is so effective. And that's the point being missed by people who say keep the content up and let bad ideas be exposed by better arguments, the problem is that the ideas aren't being opposed or presented in a robust way. Hosts like Brian Rose and others for instance interview in a way that don't challenge their controversial guests, instead they add credibility to their guests. And because we are thinking of these characters as individuals expressing themselves and exchanging their personal views, people are distracted from the fact that they are businesses operating a money making scheme. And they are only able to do that on this scale because they can use other corporate infrastructure for free.
  - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
    This content has been deliberately weaponised. Various interests, some of them hostile, have a stake in promoting it. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency Of course various US (Chinese, UK, Israeli, Saudi, Indian, Iranian, etc, etc) interests run their own versions, both at home and elsewhere. And corporate astroturfing is not a new thing. There's a huge difference between kooks sharing a bit of kookiness with each other, and industrial misinformation campaigns created for political and strategic ends - which may include political destabilisation, radicalisation, and the promotion of extremism and domestic terrorism. The two phenomena are not even remotely comparable. But at the moment information consumers literally cannot tell them apart, because there is no practical way to do that. The crucial distinction is between individual freedom of speech, where people with unusual views are allowed to say whatever they want as long they don't incite violence, and industrial misinformation, which is inherently toxic and cannot be excused or justified. There is no principle that can defend deliberate mass manipulation of the public through lies, exaggeration, and wilfully misleading manipulation. The challenge is getting that principle enshrined in law. So-called free speech advocates will of course agitate against it, and they will be wrong. Knowingly and deliberately running a campaign to mislead the public should be considered a criminal act with criminal consequences.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  Trump and Brexit aren’t silent spreaders, both used targeted video and social media to hit the people most open to their message. MAGA is magical for certain populations — they basically took the people who were loving Ron Paul back in the day and weaponized the message. It was silent to you, because the broadcast wasn’t aimed at you.
dingo_bat 7y ago
> Online misinformation can kill people [0] and act as a recruitment tool for Nazis [1]. So? Are those bad things? Is it for you to decide?
PureParadigm 7y ago
> Online misinformation can kill people [...] Such content should be forced off mainstream platforms. Censorship can kill people. Look at China's initial reaction to COVID19, to name a timely example. Admittedly, YouTube doesn't censor to the extent that China does, but whenever you have censorship you open the possibility of censoring life-saving speech, which may be controversial at the time. Yes, if taken blindly without critical thinking, online misinformation has the potential to do harm and even lead to deaths, as you mention. For freedom of speech to work best, you need an educated and thoughtful population. If you think people are sheep and believe everything they read online, then certainly at first pass it sounds like censoring what they see is the right move. But this relies on a critical implicit assumption: that you (or the censor you defer to) know better and are never wrong. Have you ever changed your opinion? Perhaps you from five years ago would censor something important you would say today. There is no flawless human being in the world that can be trusted with this power. Okay then, how about we just censor the obviously bad stuff, like Nazis or the 5G conspiracy theories? As other commenters have suggested, censorship will just feed into their narrative, further radicalize, and drive them underground. Instead, for things that are indeed so obviously wrong, simply explain why. Counter their flawed ideas with your correct ideas. If they're so obviously wrong and you're so obviously right, this should be trivial. Reasonable people will see that you're right, and those that don't would be radicalized anyway. > It strikes me as odd that more people seem to want YouTube to permit far-right propaganda on their platform, than want YouTube to permit 'adult content', which just about no-one advocates. Personally I would have no problem with adult content on YouTube as long as it's labelled as such. And it's not just "far-right propaganda" that falls under free speech, but also "far-left propaganda" and anything in between. True free speech would not discriminate. > 'Disagree with' is trivialising the problem. This stuff is serious. Censorship is also serious, and has serious consequences. It is important to think carefully about the consequences of censorship.
asdkjh345fd 7y ago
>and act as a recruitment tool for Nazis [1] That isn't an argument. Why should "nazis" be somehow special and different? I don't see anyone saying we need mass censorship because otherwise BLM or feminists or climate activists will use platforms like youtube as recruitment tools. The entire point is that letting greedy, evil corporations decide who is not allowed to talk gives them way too much control over us, and lets them silence anyone criticizing them or their actions by simply calling them "evil nazis" or whatever boogeyman replaces nazis in the future. >It strikes me as odd that more people seem to want YouTube to permit far-right propaganda on their platform It strikes me as odd that everyone seems to call anything they don't like "far right". What is right wing about claiming 5g causes covid? It isn't left or right.
- MaxBarraclough 7y ago
  > What is right wing about claiming 5g causes covid? Nothing. I hadn't meant to imply it was, but I can see how my comment could be read that way.
  - asdkjh345fd 7y ago
    So what is "far-right" that needs to be silenced, and why? Do you also want the "far-left" silenced?
    - MaxBarraclough 7y ago
      > what is "far-right" that needs to be silenced, and why? I'm not about to explain why I believe YouTube should officially oppose neo-Nazism. [0] > Do you also want the "far-left" silenced? If there are left-leaning life-threatening lies being spread, YouTube should treat them similarly. It's not the left/right spectrum that matters here. I suspect anti-vaxxers tend to lean left, for instance (the natural=good branch of human folly), but it's less clear-cut on the left/right spectrum than Nazism. On a related note, jihadist recruitment videos could be described as 'far right', but that's not normally how we think of them, and it's not especially relevant. YouTube should clearly ban those videos; the left/right question is of little concern. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Nazism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Nazism
coldtea 7y ago
>Disagree. Online misinformation can kill people [0] and act as a recruitment tool for Nazis [1]. Same as online, officially accepted information. Only the latter can be even more dangerous. As a reminder, the actual Nazis had the official, state sanctioned, platform on their hands, and they also labelled whatever they didn't like "misinformation" (from Jews, communists, etc). No war was ever started by David Icke and his conspiracy theories. But NYT "official" and "sanctioned" Saddam's WMDs stories were crucial in building support for the Iraq war. Same for many other wars -- it's usually the state, official, sanctioned, news that are more dangerous...
pbhjpbhj 7y ago
Who decides what content gets censored?
- MaxBarraclough 7y ago
  My comment was on the topic of YouTube's content policies.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    And you're content with YT effectively having the ability to choose the way "public" discourse is censored? Media outlets have immense political power because of this ability to keep the demos out of the loop of what can and can't be censored. Politicians have leverage with the media outlets, but The People do not. I'm not particularly content with that.
    - MaxBarraclough 7y ago
      > And you're content with YT effectively having the ability to choose the way "public" discourse is censored? This strikes me as a backward way of approaching the problem. My opinion is that it's not only acceptable for YouTube to ban certain categories of videos, but morally obligatory. It would clearly be atrocious for them to officially permit ISIS recruitment videos in the name of freedom of expression, or in the name of never taking down political videos (ISIS is political, after all). To put that another way then, my position is that: 1. A video platform like YouTube clearly needs to have, and to enforce, a content policy. It seems obvious that it cannot be a free-for-all. 2. Videos with political content cannot be granted a special exemption from the content policy on the grounds of political videos being special. The question then is what categories should be on the ban list. It clearly shouldn't include ordinary political videos. It clearly should include recruitment videos from ISIS or neo-Nazi groups. It clearly should include dangerous misinformation about COVID19. There may be contentious edge-cases, as there are for just about any matter of policy. That doesn't mean YouTube should run a free-for-all. That's just not a reasonable option. If you want a free-for-all, a centralised platform like YouTube isn't the place to start anyway.

italicbold 7y ago

And then you wake up one day to Brexit and Trump being elected. Forcing content/ideas underground doesnt stop it spreading, you just become totally unaware of the spread, its not even talked about in social settings. But still it silently spreads. Do you want a situation when it becomes vacine time, half your country revolts? Do you just not care about these people? If thats the case why bother supressing it at all. The time to address these ideas is now, but no its all too easy to stick your head in the sand and exclaim shock after the fact.

zimpenfish 7y ago
> you wake up one day to Brexit and Trump being elected > Forcing content/ideas underground doesnt stop it spreading In what way were Brexit or Trump "forced underground"? Trump got millions of dollars worth of free advertising from the second he announced he was running because the media could not stop covering him. CNN, MSNBC, and Fox aired 30 minutes of an empty podium for him! And Brexit was constantly in the media in the UK. There was no "underground" at all. The BBC were almost a full-on propaganda arm with their fawning over Farage and terror that any even slight non-worship of the Tories would be reflected in yet more license fee beatings by ukgov.
- italicbold 7y ago
  Well thats my point, they werent forced underground. It was clear for anyone who looked to see what was going to happen. My point is there was an oportunity to engage and faciliate real conversations around these things. That oportunity was squandered with these two instances, because despite them not being outright supressed it was not socially acceptable to have a reasonable conversation around them without being labeled racist etc etc. If you force them underground you have no idea how prevalent the ideas are, nor do you have any oportunity to genuinely change peoples minds. You cant address a problem you are not aware of.
  - zimpenfish 7y ago
    > Well thats my point, they werent forced underground. My mistake, I misfollowed your logic. > it was not socially acceptable to have a reasonable conversation around them without being labeled racist Well, that's because Trump is an outspoken racist, the GOP is also pretty racist (but better at keeping it quiet), and Brexit was largely predicated on racism.
    - PureParadigm 7y ago
      Sure, you may think all these people are racist. Does calling them racist change anyone's mind? No, it just makes them and their supporters mad at you and just poisons the well. Instead, debate the policies. Explain why they're wrong in a reasonable conversation. You'll actually have a shot at changing people's minds this way.
      - MaxBarraclough 7y ago
        > Explain why they're wrong in a reasonable conversation. You'll actually have a shot at changing people's minds this way. This seems to be expecting the opponent/interlocutor to be open to having their mind changed, while not being open yourself. Also, when it comes to values (as opposed to questions of fact), you can't really argue the point, you can just understand the differences between the positions. If someone values sovereignty so highly that it outweighs any possible cost of Brexit, for instance, then they're not likely to change their mind after a discussion.
pknight 7y ago
Forcing content out off mainstream media quite plainly does limit the spread of information and does limit radicalisation, we have plenty of examples of that. Conartists rack up millions of views because they can use free infrastructure of companies (companies that in turn convert human attention into profit via advertising, the sale of user data etc.). Without access to the infrastructure they can't have their business flourish as it does. The link with Brexit and T you make doesn't make sense either, both of these phenomenon got plenty public exposure, with all information available to those who wanted to find it. The central theme tieing both those developments was the ability for people to use the architecture built by digital corporations to quickly spread misinformation unopposed. People receive the information in isolation, they don't get it side-by-side with other views. People engineering the spread of misinformation know it's not a fair contest, that's why it is so effective. And that's the point being missed by people who say keep the content up and let bad ideas be exposed by better arguments, the problem is that the ideas aren't being opposed or presented in a robust way. Hosts like Brian Rose and others for instance interview in a way that don't challenge their controversial guests, instead they add credibility to their guests. And because we are thinking of these characters as individuals expressing themselves and exchanging their personal views, people are distracted from the fact that they are businesses operating a money making scheme. And they are only able to do that on this scale because they can use other corporate infrastructure for free.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  This content has been deliberately weaponised. Various interests, some of them hostile, have a stake in promoting it. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency Of course various US (Chinese, UK, Israeli, Saudi, Indian, Iranian, etc, etc) interests run their own versions, both at home and elsewhere. And corporate astroturfing is not a new thing. There's a huge difference between kooks sharing a bit of kookiness with each other, and industrial misinformation campaigns created for political and strategic ends - which may include political destabilisation, radicalisation, and the promotion of extremism and domestic terrorism. The two phenomena are not even remotely comparable. But at the moment information consumers literally cannot tell them apart, because there is no practical way to do that. The crucial distinction is between individual freedom of speech, where people with unusual views are allowed to say whatever they want as long they don't incite violence, and industrial misinformation, which is inherently toxic and cannot be excused or justified. There is no principle that can defend deliberate mass manipulation of the public through lies, exaggeration, and wilfully misleading manipulation. The challenge is getting that principle enshrined in law. So-called free speech advocates will of course agitate against it, and they will be wrong. Knowingly and deliberately running a campaign to mislead the public should be considered a criminal act with criminal consequences.
Spooky23 7y ago
Trump and Brexit aren’t silent spreaders, both used targeted video and social media to hit the people most open to their message. MAGA is magical for certain populations — they basically took the people who were loving Ron Paul back in the day and weaponized the message. It was silent to you, because the broadcast wasn’t aimed at you.

dingo_bat 7y ago

> Online misinformation can kill people [0] and act as a recruitment tool for Nazis [1]. So? Are those bad things? Is it for you to decide?

PureParadigm 7y ago

> Online misinformation can kill people [...] Such content should be forced off mainstream platforms. Censorship can kill people. Look at China's initial reaction to COVID19, to name a timely example. Admittedly, YouTube doesn't censor to the extent that China does, but whenever you have censorship you open the possibility of censoring life-saving speech, which may be controversial at the time. Yes, if taken blindly without critical thinking, online misinformation has the potential to do harm and even lead to deaths, as you mention. For freedom of speech to work best, you need an educated and thoughtful population. If you think people are sheep and believe everything they read online, then certainly at first pass it sounds like censoring what they see is the right move. But this relies on a critical implicit assumption: that you (or the censor you defer to) know better and are never wrong. Have you ever changed your opinion? Perhaps you from five years ago would censor something important you would say today. There is no flawless human being in the world that can be trusted with this power. Okay then, how about we just censor the obviously bad stuff, like Nazis or the 5G conspiracy theories? As other commenters have suggested, censorship will just feed into their narrative, further radicalize, and drive them underground. Instead, for things that are indeed so obviously wrong, simply explain why. Counter their flawed ideas with your correct ideas. If they're so obviously wrong and you're so obviously right, this should be trivial. Reasonable people will see that you're right, and those that don't would be radicalized anyway. > It strikes me as odd that more people seem to want YouTube to permit far-right propaganda on their platform, than want YouTube to permit 'adult content', which just about no-one advocates. Personally I would have no problem with adult content on YouTube as long as it's labelled as such. And it's not just "far-right propaganda" that falls under free speech, but also "far-left propaganda" and anything in between. True free speech would not discriminate. > 'Disagree with' is trivialising the problem. This stuff is serious. Censorship is also serious, and has serious consequences. It is important to think carefully about the consequences of censorship.

asdkjh345fd 7y ago

>and act as a recruitment tool for Nazis [1] That isn't an argument. Why should "nazis" be somehow special and different? I don't see anyone saying we need mass censorship because otherwise BLM or feminists or climate activists will use platforms like youtube as recruitment tools. The entire point is that letting greedy, evil corporations decide who is not allowed to talk gives them way too much control over us, and lets them silence anyone criticizing them or their actions by simply calling them "evil nazis" or whatever boogeyman replaces nazis in the future. >It strikes me as odd that more people seem to want YouTube to permit far-right propaganda on their platform It strikes me as odd that everyone seems to call anything they don't like "far right". What is right wing about claiming 5g causes covid? It isn't left or right.

MaxBarraclough 7y ago
> What is right wing about claiming 5g causes covid? Nothing. I hadn't meant to imply it was, but I can see how my comment could be read that way.
- asdkjh345fd 7y ago
  So what is "far-right" that needs to be silenced, and why? Do you also want the "far-left" silenced?
  - MaxBarraclough 7y ago
    > what is "far-right" that needs to be silenced, and why? I'm not about to explain why I believe YouTube should officially oppose neo-Nazism. [0] > Do you also want the "far-left" silenced? If there are left-leaning life-threatening lies being spread, YouTube should treat them similarly. It's not the left/right spectrum that matters here. I suspect anti-vaxxers tend to lean left, for instance (the natural=good branch of human folly), but it's less clear-cut on the left/right spectrum than Nazism. On a related note, jihadist recruitment videos could be described as 'far right', but that's not normally how we think of them, and it's not especially relevant. YouTube should clearly ban those videos; the left/right question is of little concern. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Nazism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Nazism

coldtea 7y ago

>Disagree. Online misinformation can kill people [0] and act as a recruitment tool for Nazis [1]. Same as online, officially accepted information. Only the latter can be even more dangerous. As a reminder, the actual Nazis had the official, state sanctioned, platform on their hands, and they also labelled whatever they didn't like "misinformation" (from Jews, communists, etc). No war was ever started by David Icke and his conspiracy theories. But NYT "official" and "sanctioned" Saddam's WMDs stories were crucial in building support for the Iraq war. Same for many other wars -- it's usually the state, official, sanctioned, news that are more dangerous...

pbhjpbhj 7y ago

Who decides what content gets censored?

MaxBarraclough 7y ago
My comment was on the topic of YouTube's content policies.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  And you're content with YT effectively having the ability to choose the way "public" discourse is censored? Media outlets have immense political power because of this ability to keep the demos out of the loop of what can and can't be censored. Politicians have leverage with the media outlets, but The People do not. I'm not particularly content with that.
  - MaxBarraclough 7y ago
    > And you're content with YT effectively having the ability to choose the way "public" discourse is censored? This strikes me as a backward way of approaching the problem. My opinion is that it's not only acceptable for YouTube to ban certain categories of videos, but morally obligatory. It would clearly be atrocious for them to officially permit ISIS recruitment videos in the name of freedom of expression, or in the name of never taking down political videos (ISIS is political, after all). To put that another way then, my position is that: 1. A video platform like YouTube clearly needs to have, and to enforce, a content policy. It seems obvious that it cannot be a free-for-all. 2. Videos with political content cannot be granted a special exemption from the content policy on the grounds of political videos being special. The question then is what categories should be on the ban list. It clearly shouldn't include ordinary political videos. It clearly should include recruitment videos from ISIS or neo-Nazi groups. It clearly should include dangerous misinformation about COVID19. There may be contentious edge-cases, as there are for just about any matter of policy. That doesn't mean YouTube should run a free-for-all. That's just not a reasonable option. If you want a free-for-all, a centralised platform like YouTube isn't the place to start anyway.