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Speaking as a lurker, this seems basically like what people have been asking for for awhile now including here. I remember seeing numerous top comment chains ov

Speaking as a lurker, this seems basically like what people have been asking for for awhile now including here. I remember seeing numerous top comment chains over the last four years (and of course before that but not here) that all boiled down to very eloquent defenses of censoring fringe thinkers. Who knows, maybe in theory land there's no reason we can't have it both ways. But it seems to me that in the real world precisely the opposite is true. We can't demand increasingly invasive and opaque mechanisms to prevent the spread of misinformation (once upon a time many examples of which would have just been called "gossip" or the "rumor mill") and then act surpised when radicals for our own important causes get swept up in the net. At some point we either have to admit that what we really want to build is a like-minded dictorship or we have to start discussing (in a sober manner devoid of the histrionics and gamesmanship that have come to envelope contemporary dialogues) what an intellient compromise in objectives might look like.

musingsole 6y ago
I think an open system is emergent, not something that can be planned around intelligent compromises. I have an intuition that planning government systems is about satisfying the shepherds that there are fences against the chaos and convincing the sociopaths there are rules to exploit. Otherwise, it'll just turn into DnD 3.5e where every action has a rule in a book somewhere, it'll be blasphemy if you handwave it before looking it up, and yet somehow that one guy always has their character just so to skirt that same rule.
cblconfederate 6y ago
It s as if we rediscover liberalism in full circles
- belval 6y ago
  My pet theory is that there will always be a constant loop much like the prey-predator relationship. We start by going in one direction i.e. liberalism, then we realize that some pieces of authoritarianism might be good for a problem we currently have, so we water it down a bit. Fast forward 50-70 years, we realize that the balance has swung too much to one side so we try to do a sharp turn. That action causes an overcompensation which is when revolution and violence happen. Finally we end up back at some sort of liberalism and the circle begins anew. I see it as a result of generation gap. We don't know the value of something until we lose it. Right now the public doesn't value freedom of speech as much as it used to so we are right on track to have it more limited.
  - pydry 6y ago
    We're on a loop alright, but it's caused by the interplay of the more numerous working/underclasses and elites struggling to stay on top. Currently we are at the bit of the loop where the underclasses are thrashing out and the elites are trying to channel that rage somehow.
  - musingsole 6y ago
    I don't think it's a given that revolution and violence reset the cycle to liberalism. There would appear to be plenty of examples where the chaos just ushers in a greater degree of authoritarianism and how much liberalism that follows a power change is just caused by the period of new power consolidating its control? Even if it's a matter of picking the right start and stop times to a cycle, every iteration would be heterogeneous enough that calling it a cycle is probably missing some important behaviors.
    - belval 6y ago
      Absolutely, to be clear I don't have the arrogance to think that I can explain the complexity of western society in a single HN comment. I am just a software engineer.
  - Kim_Bruning 6y ago
    Fortunately -in many civilized countries- we have institutionalized and ritualized the act of having a revolution every 4 years. As with many such rituals, -and as long as everyone sticks to the prescribed acts- this reduces the bloodshed immeasurably. With a little luck, the only victims are dead trees and broken pencils.
handoflixue 6y ago
I think the OP's author makes a pretty good point: the censorship itself doesn't bother him; it's the opaqueness that's a problem. If they just said "this is censored because the CIA requires it", he'd be fine (his own words from the OP) I can understand the call for censorship, but I don't see any particular value in the opaqueness.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  Any censorship is going to be pretty opaque. The author accuses Youtube of lying to him, but I don't think it was a lie; most likely, whoever runs the TeamYoutube account simply looked it up in the support documentation, which really does say what they told him (https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/58097?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/58097?hl=en).
6510 6y ago
At first I suspected peoples world view was build on compound falsehoods. I couldn't help but pay attention to this concept. I had to rub my eyes a few times wondering if I was not simply seeing what I was hoping to find. At later age I was seeing the unquestioned bullshit all around me. Then came a stage where I repeatedly noticed my own subscriptions to nonsense and the erroneous mindset that one would logically build on top - repeatedly, again and again! I had to learn to carefully avoid telling people how things really work which worked wonderfully with repeatedly discovering that my revised world view was almost as wrong as the previous iteration. That said, I learn a lot from people still naive enough to speak their unconventional mind. Their topics of interest are not half as interesting as the route to their world view. I don't want to give an example since those usually get confused for the subject but I'll share 2 things that made me laugh at the time: 1) I use to think people are logical beings. I believed the first half of my life that we act based on logic and reason. Then one day I noticed this is simply something I like to believe to be true. That I can think this without a shred of evidence is evidence in it self of the opposite. 2) We build, create and design to make things as easy and convenient as possible for ourselves and for other people. Comfort is taken on faith as a valid goal so obvious that it needs not be questioned. In the process we distance ourselves from the core mechanics of our existence and we fail to challenge our mind as well as our body. If we can build the apparatus we are happy to forget how to tie our shoes. We no longer need to know what we can eat in the forest, when to plant crops, how to make all of those nice wooden things, how to forge metals, how to have a productive conversation (which requires disagreement) we think we benefit from calling that taxi but what we really needed was the 3 km walk in the sun or snow, fresh air and to see those birds fly over that old tree. Even the shoes are a solution to their own problem. :-)
- Retric 6y ago
  Logic unfortunately tends to fail in the real world. Even seemingly concrete ideas like life and death get tricky when dealing with frozen sperm and viruses. Edge cases abound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics) People really want stuff like Bayesian statistics to work. But it’s also fails for similar reasons as it depends on accurately updating a model. The world is filled with models that are simple enough to use and accurate enough to be useful, sadly that doesn’t make them correct. Censorship seems so simple on the surface, but like everything else the implementation rarely matches the theory. I would argue for disclaimers as a much better option, even if they also fail.
calibas 6y ago
Children are taught to not question what they're told, because it's much easier on parents and teachers when children don't question what they're told. Then when they're adults they lack any kind of critical thinking skills because they've been miseducated and they're easy targets for disinformation. To me, the solution is obviously better education. When people believe the Earth is round only because that's what they were told, it's not that hard for a clever talker to convince them the Earth could be flat. When people know the Earth is round because they actually understand the physics behind it, there's no way you're ever going to convince them the Earth is flat. Instead of admitting our education system has failed, people's ignorance is being used as an excuse to tighten control over the media even further.
- ab3rC1te 6y ago
  So your saying your a sphere or ball earther? And in reality you think you understand the physics behind it but can't tell me how the color blue is the way it is. When one true creator sets boundaries and sustains all things in this world. Maybe when I see around 100 jets constantly spraying supposedly ice from their exhaust engines that it leaves strips that dissipate into clouds that man is creating. Its easier to control idiots than a failed education system. Or maybe the educational system creates idiots instead. Once a system fails and it will, good luck on surviving.
  - keymone 6y ago
    Thanks, I giggled. When conspiracy theorists aren’t horrifying for the potential impact on lives of their victims, they are immensely entertaining. I bet most of the views on flat earther’s videos are just people looking for non artificial comedy.
- coenhyde 6y ago
  I agree 100%. The lack of critical thinking skills in this country is a national security threat. We need a national initiative improve the baseline education and critical thinking skills of the next generation. The powers that be, haven't got the memo yet that it doesn't benefit them anymore to have a populous which is easily manipulated. In the past, old media acted as parameter control, though concentrated ownership. Sure they had vested interests, but they were generally alined with American values; capitalism, stable democracy, international leadership by America, etc. But now each of the 340 million brains in this country can be accessed directly by foreign adversaries. Parameter control can not work anymore, unless we shut down the internet. We must bring the security to each individual endpoint. Some will argue that we should shutdown the internet or censor it. But is that the world we want to live in? That would stifle economic growth and i do not believe it is compatible with the ideals of liberal democracies.
happytoexplain 6y ago
"Fringe thinkers" is a very complementary and misleading way of describing the kinds of things HN users are typically OK with websites banning.
sudoaza 6y ago
So enumerating historical events became being a fringe thinker?
- WealthVsSurvive 6y ago
  Radicals are now people that speak truth in plain language.
  - happytoexplain 6y ago
    This is a romantic characterization that's rooted in only believing people who are "on your side", which is what is destroying society.
    - everbane 6y ago
      This is a simplistic and reductionist understanding of what is destroying society.
Kim_Bruning 6y ago
I think that people are increasingly getting stuck in their own filter bubbles. This leads to people drifting apart over time and into extremes. This is because there is no cohesive force getting them to think together anymore. One proposed solution is to simply filter the more 'extreme' standpoints out of the dialogue. Hence censorship. But I don't think that filtering and moderation are going to help much if people still stay isolated in their bubbles. All you're doing is superficially fighting symptoms; but the root cause remains. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble
- shi314 6y ago
  People are stuck in bubbles created by companies. If recommendation algorithms were developed to recommend videos that tell contrary perspective or didn't recommend similar videos and fill My Feeds with similar videos, no individual would have being in the bubble in first place in best scenario or at worst in some private forum like he/she used to in early days of internet. Instead people have started allowing companies to create bubbles and censor them too and now they are rationalising the power they gave to corporates.
AnHonestComment 6y ago
HN has shadowbanned me for being an “inherent flame war” — no matter how politely I state my opinions or how well cited they are. This is definitely what the community here wants.
pvg 6y ago
Maybe you can link some of the numerous top comments you've run across that are very eloquent defenses of censoring fringe thinkers.
jl2718 6y ago
More fundamentally, what is the point of participating in a social platform that only allows one set of information? Why would you want to read the same thing from many sources? Seems like it’s easier to just read one source and be done with it. I posit that the lack of censorship is the reason that social media exists. Similarly, the printing press. Why on earth would anybody want to read the Bible, or any other book, by themselves? All truth is taught in Church. To think otherwise is blasphemy.
salawat 6y ago
On topic: Ah, the Paradox of Tolerance and the Age-Old Quandry of "Is unconditionally punching a Nazi consistent with liberalism?" The fact is, you can't try to stabilize or bring stability to the system by cutting off or ignoring the "fringes". The entire system is always seeking an equilibrium, and the increased relevance of the fringes indicates the direction the Overton window is shifting in. Cutting things off on one side just guarantees an unsympathetic schism forming on the other, where the people just barely this side of the schism point are left wondering whether the folks on the other side may have had a point. Rinse repeat. Authoritarianism in all forms tends to capture the public imagination in times of crisis. The issue right now is magnitude, and if you keep pushing the censorship button now, there's going to be a loss of quite a few reasonable people previously amenable to putting their differences aside. For those without ShowDead on, there is a user, AnHonestComment, who has apparently run afoul of some moderation policies, and tends to get his posts nuked from orbit (likely by the user base) as a response, I figured that it was worth pointing out the irony of his attempted statement "This is what HN wants," sans the combative tone with regards to the moderation team. If you take a spin through his comment history, it's not terribly unreasonable aside from a serious chip on his shoulder with regards to the moderation team. AnHonestComment, if you're still reading this, you aren't necessarily shadowbanned or anything like that, you're just inviting downvote bombing with the constant references to the moderation by the community. You seem a decent sort, and I know as well the harrowing plight of the conscientious objector. There is a place here for it, even if it might be well advised to build up some karma first. It shouldn't be that way arguably, but it is, and it's what we've all got to work with.
bufferoverflow 6y ago
More importantly, thinking that Youtube can be an efficient arbiter of truth is delusional.
rgcapozz 6y ago
Dictatorship of the Proletariat is pretty famous...

musingsole 6y ago

I think an open system is emergent, not something that can be planned around intelligent compromises. I have an intuition that planning government systems is about satisfying the shepherds that there are fences against the chaos and convincing the sociopaths there are rules to exploit. Otherwise, it'll just turn into DnD 3.5e where every action has a rule in a book somewhere, it'll be blasphemy if you handwave it before looking it up, and yet somehow that one guy always has their character just so to skirt that same rule.

cblconfederate 6y ago

It s as if we rediscover liberalism in full circles

belval 6y ago
My pet theory is that there will always be a constant loop much like the prey-predator relationship. We start by going in one direction i.e. liberalism, then we realize that some pieces of authoritarianism might be good for a problem we currently have, so we water it down a bit. Fast forward 50-70 years, we realize that the balance has swung too much to one side so we try to do a sharp turn. That action causes an overcompensation which is when revolution and violence happen. Finally we end up back at some sort of liberalism and the circle begins anew. I see it as a result of generation gap. We don't know the value of something until we lose it. Right now the public doesn't value freedom of speech as much as it used to so we are right on track to have it more limited.
- pydry 6y ago
  We're on a loop alright, but it's caused by the interplay of the more numerous working/underclasses and elites struggling to stay on top. Currently we are at the bit of the loop where the underclasses are thrashing out and the elites are trying to channel that rage somehow.
- musingsole 6y ago
  I don't think it's a given that revolution and violence reset the cycle to liberalism. There would appear to be plenty of examples where the chaos just ushers in a greater degree of authoritarianism and how much liberalism that follows a power change is just caused by the period of new power consolidating its control? Even if it's a matter of picking the right start and stop times to a cycle, every iteration would be heterogeneous enough that calling it a cycle is probably missing some important behaviors.
  - belval 6y ago
    Absolutely, to be clear I don't have the arrogance to think that I can explain the complexity of western society in a single HN comment. I am just a software engineer.
- Kim_Bruning 6y ago
  Fortunately -in many civilized countries- we have institutionalized and ritualized the act of having a revolution every 4 years. As with many such rituals, -and as long as everyone sticks to the prescribed acts- this reduces the bloodshed immeasurably. With a little luck, the only victims are dead trees and broken pencils.

handoflixue 6y ago

I think the OP's author makes a pretty good point: the censorship itself doesn't bother him; it's the opaqueness that's a problem. If they just said "this is censored because the CIA requires it", he'd be fine (his own words from the OP) I can understand the call for censorship, but I don't see any particular value in the opaqueness.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
Any censorship is going to be pretty opaque. The author accuses Youtube of lying to him, but I don't think it was a lie; most likely, whoever runs the TeamYoutube account simply looked it up in the support documentation, which really does say what they told him (https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/58097?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/58097?hl=en).

6510 6y ago

At first I suspected peoples world view was build on compound falsehoods. I couldn't help but pay attention to this concept. I had to rub my eyes a few times wondering if I was not simply seeing what I was hoping to find. At later age I was seeing the unquestioned bullshit all around me. Then came a stage where I repeatedly noticed my own subscriptions to nonsense and the erroneous mindset that one would logically build on top - repeatedly, again and again! I had to learn to carefully avoid telling people how things really work which worked wonderfully with repeatedly discovering that my revised world view was almost as wrong as the previous iteration. That said, I learn a lot from people still naive enough to speak their unconventional mind. Their topics of interest are not half as interesting as the route to their world view. I don't want to give an example since those usually get confused for the subject but I'll share 2 things that made me laugh at the time: 1) I use to think people are logical beings. I believed the first half of my life that we act based on logic and reason. Then one day I noticed this is simply something I like to believe to be true. That I can think this without a shred of evidence is evidence in it self of the opposite. 2) We build, create and design to make things as easy and convenient as possible for ourselves and for other people. Comfort is taken on faith as a valid goal so obvious that it needs not be questioned. In the process we distance ourselves from the core mechanics of our existence and we fail to challenge our mind as well as our body. If we can build the apparatus we are happy to forget how to tie our shoes. We no longer need to know what we can eat in the forest, when to plant crops, how to make all of those nice wooden things, how to forge metals, how to have a productive conversation (which requires disagreement) we think we benefit from calling that taxi but what we really needed was the 3 km walk in the sun or snow, fresh air and to see those birds fly over that old tree. Even the shoes are a solution to their own problem. :-)

Retric 6y ago
Logic unfortunately tends to fail in the real world. Even seemingly concrete ideas like life and death get tricky when dealing with frozen sperm and viruses. Edge cases abound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_(genetics) People really want stuff like Bayesian statistics to work. But it’s also fails for similar reasons as it depends on accurately updating a model. The world is filled with models that are simple enough to use and accurate enough to be useful, sadly that doesn’t make them correct. Censorship seems so simple on the surface, but like everything else the implementation rarely matches the theory. I would argue for disclaimers as a much better option, even if they also fail.

calibas 6y ago

Children are taught to not question what they're told, because it's much easier on parents and teachers when children don't question what they're told. Then when they're adults they lack any kind of critical thinking skills because they've been miseducated and they're easy targets for disinformation. To me, the solution is obviously better education. When people believe the Earth is round only because that's what they were told, it's not that hard for a clever talker to convince them the Earth could be flat. When people know the Earth is round because they actually understand the physics behind it, there's no way you're ever going to convince them the Earth is flat. Instead of admitting our education system has failed, people's ignorance is being used as an excuse to tighten control over the media even further.

ab3rC1te 6y ago
So your saying your a sphere or ball earther? And in reality you think you understand the physics behind it but can't tell me how the color blue is the way it is. When one true creator sets boundaries and sustains all things in this world. Maybe when I see around 100 jets constantly spraying supposedly ice from their exhaust engines that it leaves strips that dissipate into clouds that man is creating. Its easier to control idiots than a failed education system. Or maybe the educational system creates idiots instead. Once a system fails and it will, good luck on surviving.
- keymone 6y ago
  Thanks, I giggled. When conspiracy theorists aren’t horrifying for the potential impact on lives of their victims, they are immensely entertaining. I bet most of the views on flat earther’s videos are just people looking for non artificial comedy.
coenhyde 6y ago
I agree 100%. The lack of critical thinking skills in this country is a national security threat. We need a national initiative improve the baseline education and critical thinking skills of the next generation. The powers that be, haven't got the memo yet that it doesn't benefit them anymore to have a populous which is easily manipulated. In the past, old media acted as parameter control, though concentrated ownership. Sure they had vested interests, but they were generally alined with American values; capitalism, stable democracy, international leadership by America, etc. But now each of the 340 million brains in this country can be accessed directly by foreign adversaries. Parameter control can not work anymore, unless we shut down the internet. We must bring the security to each individual endpoint. Some will argue that we should shutdown the internet or censor it. But is that the world we want to live in? That would stifle economic growth and i do not believe it is compatible with the ideals of liberal democracies.

happytoexplain 6y ago

"Fringe thinkers" is a very complementary and misleading way of describing the kinds of things HN users are typically OK with websites banning.

sudoaza 6y ago

So enumerating historical events became being a fringe thinker?

WealthVsSurvive 6y ago
Radicals are now people that speak truth in plain language.
- happytoexplain 6y ago
  This is a romantic characterization that's rooted in only believing people who are "on your side", which is what is destroying society.
  - everbane 6y ago
    This is a simplistic and reductionist understanding of what is destroying society.

Kim_Bruning 6y ago

I think that people are increasingly getting stuck in their own filter bubbles. This leads to people drifting apart over time and into extremes. This is because there is no cohesive force getting them to think together anymore. One proposed solution is to simply filter the more 'extreme' standpoints out of the dialogue. Hence censorship. But I don't think that filtering and moderation are going to help much if people still stay isolated in their bubbles. All you're doing is superficially fighting symptoms; but the root cause remains. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble

shi314 6y ago
People are stuck in bubbles created by companies. If recommendation algorithms were developed to recommend videos that tell contrary perspective or didn't recommend similar videos and fill My Feeds with similar videos, no individual would have being in the bubble in first place in best scenario or at worst in some private forum like he/she used to in early days of internet. Instead people have started allowing companies to create bubbles and censor them too and now they are rationalising the power they gave to corporates.

AnHonestComment 6y ago

HN has shadowbanned me for being an “inherent flame war” — no matter how politely I state my opinions or how well cited they are. This is definitely what the community here wants.

pvg 6y ago

Maybe you can link some of the numerous top comments you've run across that are very eloquent defenses of censoring fringe thinkers.

jl2718 6y ago

More fundamentally, what is the point of participating in a social platform that only allows one set of information? Why would you want to read the same thing from many sources? Seems like it’s easier to just read one source and be done with it. I posit that the lack of censorship is the reason that social media exists. Similarly, the printing press. Why on earth would anybody want to read the Bible, or any other book, by themselves? All truth is taught in Church. To think otherwise is blasphemy.

salawat 6y ago

On topic: Ah, the Paradox of Tolerance and the Age-Old Quandry of "Is unconditionally punching a Nazi consistent with liberalism?" The fact is, you can't try to stabilize or bring stability to the system by cutting off or ignoring the "fringes". The entire system is always seeking an equilibrium, and the increased relevance of the fringes indicates the direction the Overton window is shifting in. Cutting things off on one side just guarantees an unsympathetic schism forming on the other, where the people just barely this side of the schism point are left wondering whether the folks on the other side may have had a point. Rinse repeat. Authoritarianism in all forms tends to capture the public imagination in times of crisis. The issue right now is magnitude, and if you keep pushing the censorship button now, there's going to be a loss of quite a few reasonable people previously amenable to putting their differences aside. For those without ShowDead on, there is a user, AnHonestComment, who has apparently run afoul of some moderation policies, and tends to get his posts nuked from orbit (likely by the user base) as a response, I figured that it was worth pointing out the irony of his attempted statement "This is what HN wants," sans the combative tone with regards to the moderation team. If you take a spin through his comment history, it's not terribly unreasonable aside from a serious chip on his shoulder with regards to the moderation team. AnHonestComment, if you're still reading this, you aren't necessarily shadowbanned or anything like that, you're just inviting downvote bombing with the constant references to the moderation by the community. You seem a decent sort, and I know as well the harrowing plight of the conscientious objector. There is a place here for it, even if it might be well advised to build up some karma first. It shouldn't be that way arguably, but it is, and it's what we've all got to work with.

bufferoverflow 6y ago

More importantly, thinking that Youtube can be an efficient arbiter of truth is delusional.

rgcapozz 6y ago

Dictatorship of the Proletariat is pretty famous...