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Regardless of what you believe to be 'The Truth', has suppression or censorship ever worked to quench dissonance or convince skeptical people, again, whether ri

Regardless of what you believe to be 'The Truth', has suppression or censorship ever worked to quench dissonance or convince skeptical people, again, whether right or wrong, that there really is 'nothing to see here'.

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
Yes, it has, to a degree. C.f. Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, etc. (These voices became much less prominent after their deplatforming.) There's also a deontological argument to be made for banning dangerous falsehoods on one's platform.
- generalizations 6y ago
  It also worked in China when scientists were trying to get word of the virus out in January. Fooled most of the western media.
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    This analogy is so dishonest. These people are free to talk about all the conspiracies they want on their own websites, blogs and so on. They are not entitled to having their content hosted on other people's websites though. It's like if I complained that the NYT isn't talking about my coolest new invention and called that censorship. That's very different than the government (not a private company) trying to shut you down from speaking anywhere.
    - generalizations 6y ago
      Except I wasn't talking about the entity involved, I was talking about the efficacy of shutting down the 'misinformation'. Entity A shutdown covid info successfully, and Entity B wants to shutdown election info. That's dishonest? What's dishonest is you misreading my comment and then blaming me for it.
  - vkou 6y ago
    You are rewriting history. Western media was not 'fooled'. It's ironic that you are doing so in a thread about spreading misinformation on the internet. January 8th - China identifies new virus causing phenomnia-like illness [1] January 10th - China reports first death from new virus [2] January 21st - The outbreak, which began in December in a seafood and poultry market in Wuhan, a city of 11 million, is spreading: Patients have been identified in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, as well as Taiwan, Japan, Thailand and South Korea. [3] Don't blame our inability to react to the virus on China. The pandemic was raging for months, with news coverage of people being locked in their own apartments, doctors dying, makeshift hospitals getting set up in stadiums, before it exceeded more than a handful of cases in the West. Hell, even after hundreds of thousands dead, we still don't have the political will to do what would have been necessary to stamp it out back in March - massive testing, massive contact tracing, enforced quarantine. If we were to go back in time, and do it again, I think we would arrive at pretty much the same outcome. The 'China hid the facts' [4] narrative has little explanatory power, and its primary purpose is to shift the blame from our own failings. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/health/china-pneumonia-outbreak-virus.html?searchResultPosition=3 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/health/china-pneumonia-ou... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/world/asia/china-virus-wuhan-death.html?searchResultPosition=4 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/world/asia/china-virus-wu... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/health/cdc-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/health/cdc-coronavirus.ht... [4] It[5] did hide the facts, but it hid them so poorly that everyone who was paying any attention, both inside, and outside China was aware of how serious this pandemic is at the start of the year. It's hard to hide the facts about something when you put an entire city under lockdown (But don't cut the telephone and internet lines into it.) [5] China isn't a monolith. To be exact, local government did its best to downplay the pandemic. National government was not very happy with how that went down, and purged their local and regional party branches for their mishandling of the outbreak.
- golemotron 6y ago
  How do you know? Their voices might just be someplace where you (and people you know) don't hear them. The world of discourse is wider than our awareness.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    You can't know anything, but you can form beliefs that have various levels of confidence. For example, there is reporting about the objective reach of Jones' properties post-deplatforming. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/technology/alex-jones-infowars-bans-traffic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/technology/alex-jones-inf... This type of reporting, plus my priors about how viral media spreads, inform my belief that deplatforming these individuals was moderately efficient for decreasing their reach. But it is an empirical question that would benefit from further study.
    - wolco2 6y ago
      They didn't count app/twitter or other views. So you are measuring two different datasets.
      - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
        I don't need perfect evidence to form beliefs. It seems unlikely that Jones' reach increased on Twitter enough to offset his bans on other platforms. If it did, that doesn't seem consistent with the loss of traffic to his website. After he was banned on Twitter, it seems very unlikely that there was any other platform where his reach grew enough to offset that loss. Anything's possible, but it doesn't seem likely.
        golemotron 6y ago
        We only see what is in our bubble.
        asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
- markkanof 6y ago
  I can't necessarily argue the exact wording that you used "prominent", because the folks you listed are certainly no longer visible in the most mainstream venues, but do you really think Alex Jones has lost a lot of the audience that was deep into his content. If anything this just makes him into a martyr and gives his arguments additional fuel because "they don't want you to know the truth".
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    Addressed your question here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25362065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25362065
  - jrumbut 6y ago
    The problem is not the 100,000 people who have constructed their whole lives around Alex Jones, that's what Alex Jones had for 20 years of being a mostly harmless crank who makes a good living at it. The problem was giving him access to a much broader public, to sow paranoia and FUD among tens or hundreds of millions of people who actually play important roles in society and don't have time to spend debunking everything they hear.
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    I do believe he has lost a lot of juice, but even if the hardcore viewers have stuck with him, he at least is not growing anywhere as fast anymore. If anything, this means he should've been deplatformed much sooner. The longer you wait, the more you are allowing them to grow their roots in.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    Yes, I absolutely believe that Alex Jones has lost some of his audience since being "deplatformed". Some of his audience will continue to follow him, some will continue to follow some other source of cray, and some will wander out of the fever swamps. I consider this a positive outcome, even if it's not a perfect one. Also consider that he's lost a lot of his ability to grow his audience, which is no small thing.
- RobertKerans 6y ago
  Yep. UK based, and Katie Hopkins has thankfully become far less visible after deplatforming (seems to have removed most income streams post-bankrupcy).
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Yes, it was notable that merely advocating crimes against humanity (shooting refugees) wasn't enough, and finally libelling a blogger who managed to crowd fund a lawsuit silenced her. Just like Alex Jones.
- wolco2 6y ago
  Alex Jones seems more prominent now after the deplatforming. Banning on platforms for whatever reason reduces the platforms reach and raises the platform the party moves too. We use to separate people by race now we do it by idea. Now sure martin luther king or lennon would agree.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    I doubt MLK would object to the marginalization of Alex Jones. Certainly modern racial justice advocates are, by and large, not clamoring for his restoration. But, we can't know for sure, and, regardless, his hypothetical opinion on this question doesn't matter very much to me.
    - generalizations 6y ago
      That's not the point. The point is that separating people based on their beliefs is nothing new, and generally frowned upon by history.
      - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
        Forcible, violent segregation by race and declining to publish videos by content and truthfulness are far too dissimilar for me to reason about their relationship in the eyes of history.
        generalizations 6y ago
        Those are examples, but the principle is the same.
        asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
        Maybe to you.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Martin Luther King specifically said that he wanted people judged on the quality of their character, of which dishonesty is definitely a part.
- francisofascii 6y ago
  The "ideas" of Alex Jones and Milo are very much alive and well.
- core-questions 6y ago
  This will work wonderfully as long as Youtube, the near-monopolistic arm of a gigantic corporation that makes its money from analyzing what you see and read in order to influence your behaviour, never bans anything that's actually true in reality. I'm sure we can trust our censors to never do something like that! They have our best interests at heart, right? Nothing like this could ever go wrong, there's no examples from history or fiction about anything like that. Nope, it's always Wonderful Good People that only ban things that Bad Evil People would like, and reality is totally black-and-white, and only Bad Evil People would think otherwise.
pjc50 6y ago
People only believe there is "something" because they've been lied to.
- rriepe 6y ago
  Fascism and disallowing lying are the same thing.
  - inetknght 6y ago
    Falsely calling fire in a crowded theatre is inciting panic and a crime. Falsely calling someone a rapist is libelous and slanderous -- both crimes. Not all types of lies need to fall under free speech.
  - NikolaeVarius 6y ago
    Oh please shut up. I'm pretty up there on the scale as a free speech absolutist, but this is the sort of shit that makes people have no fucking clue what facism is, and why its used as a pejorative generic insult by all sides. Reducing an entire movement with complex beliefs to a single talking point is not valid in the least.
    - rriepe 6y ago
      Only reason to be offended is if you are one. I've noted your request!
misnome 6y ago
I doubt it, but it _might_ help prevent radicalisation of newer people by making it harder to randomly encounter.
- slowhand09 6y ago
  ...radicalizization meaning choosing to believe differently than you?
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    "Radicalization" in this context refers to participation in a currently active and well-known plot to overthrow democracy in the United States. It's not exactly a hypothetical here.
    - wooger 6y ago
      Yes, election fraud would be a plot to overthrow democracy wouldn't it.
      - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        See, this is the kind of thing that makes it impossible for me to maintain my general opposition to censorship here. The president is publicly calling for the election to be overturned, reaching out to state governors and asking them to please over turn the election for him - and a lot of smart, well-meaning people are stuck in an information bubble where this is just a legitimate process raising legitimate concerns about election fraud. That has to be addressed, and I just haven't seen any suggestions for popping the bubble other than censoring it out of all the popular places. I was sympathetic to the ideas floating around in early November, that the issue would go away once we let all the legal processes play out. But they have played out, the votes are all certified, and nothing's changed.
      - ericd 6y ago
        What evidence have they put forth that makes you think they have a real case for meaningful amounts of fraud? Because from where I’m sitting, it’s really obvious they’re grasping at any straw they can find.
gameswithgo 6y ago
There are many examples out of there of people ending up in some weird conspiracy theory rabbit hole, and often it starts with some youtube video, or post on facebook. Mothers who have lost sons, wives who have lost husbands. They have seen them turn into crazy people (examples: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/09/14/qanon-families-support-group/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/09/14/qanon-f... ) If those videos are not as present on youtube to begin with, perhaps fewer people end up down these rabbit holes. Of course it won't do anything to convince people who are already falling down the hole.
- jakelazaroff 6y ago
  Not sure why this is downvoted. The YouTube radicalization pathway is fairly well documented, e.g. [1][2][3]. Even if we can't all agree on the specific mechanism of action, the phenomenon certainly exists. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.11211 https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.11211 [2] https://mark-ledwich.medium.com/youtube-radicalization-an-authoritative-saucy-story-28f73953ed17 https://mark-ledwich.medium.com/youtube-radicalization-an-au... [3] https://www.wired.com/story/not-youtubes-algorithm-radicalizes-people/ https://www.wired.com/story/not-youtubes-algorithm-radicaliz...
- dylan604 6y ago
  Conspiracy peddlers and those that follow them have been around long before YouTube and social media. Some extraordinarily bizarre ideas have been published on Xeroxed/mimeographed 'zines sent out via snail mail. While social media definitely makes it easier, it's not the only way for information to disseminate.
  - metamet 6y ago
    The difference is that mainstream platforming of those ideas exposes them to massive amounts of folks who stumble upon them, whereas you would have historically had to seek it out on purpose.
kyle_martin1 6y ago
You’re right, people can make their own decisions. The justice warriors should not coddle people’s minds by shaping a narrative according to their own opinions of what radical/right/wrong mean. Unless...they’re a publication in which case they need to be regulated and taxed accordingly.
gtrhtrhtrhtr 6y ago
in France you can get fined or go to jail for saying fascist stuff, works pretty well.
- cmehdy 6y ago
  I wouldn't necessarily say it works well though.. The FN (yeah yeah they changed names, who cares) still spews its hatred behind closed doors, our police forces are amongst the worst offenders of any developed countries when it comes to racism and systemic issues (and consistently proving that even the police unions are a bunch of thugs), we have people like Zemmour on TV spewing hateful nonsense that even Fox News would probably frown at by now, and our own current government has been trying to get a law in place to prevent freedom of press so significantly that the UN and most of the world looking at those pieces of news have actually been ringing the alarms in every possible way. While on a personal and biased level I certainly don't mind that daddy Le Pen was fined multiple times throughout the years for calling the Holocaust "a detail of history", we don't really have any proof that it does anything more than make people who dislike him (like me) happy to see him fined, and unfortunately give reasons for supporters of his bullshit to feel vindicated (i.e. rise of the extreme right everywhere with a very salient point regarding being "silenced", which crystallizes to the extreme in stuff coming from the US like Qanon). Youtube is having a tough time because they're almost always pointed at first and foremost for being THE rabbit hole of misinformation/radicalization and other things, but they're stepping into a minefield by touching on one such hot subject without having a broader policy (extending beyond whatever the current US issue is at any moment), backed by an army of lawyers. (I've stopped following the battles of up and downvotes on this message instead of any actual reply.. I'm only left to wonder how many of either are emotional responses over valuing the argument itself, and on this subject even HN isn't proving to be very different from reddit today)
- ralusek 6y ago
  What is "fascist" stuff? Earlier this year, people protesting coronavirus lockdowns were called "fascists." People protesting against government authority were called fascists. Berkeley had to spend $600k in security to allow Ben Shapiro to speak, because "anti fascists" were accusing him of white supremacy, and being a fascist, and violently attempting to prevent him from speaking. And this was after they had successfully prevented him from speaking earlier in the year. Similar "anti fascists" pulled the fire alarm on Janice Fiamengo for speaking about men's issues. Warren Farrel had a similar experience, with people absolutely berating the attendants of one of his lectures for their support of fascism.
harikb 6y ago
Society can only function if those with opposing views at least agree on ground rules to debate on. Unchecked expression of view with no option for rebuttal from the other side will only destroy society. We have cases were US Senate candidates don't even show up for pre-election debates.
- giantg2 6y ago
  Why should they (rhetorical)? Many people vote based on political identity rather than actual positions or accomplishments anyways. (I hate those blanket options on the first page of the ballot to vote the entire ballot for one party or the other. People should at least go through and make sure the names are the ones they researched.)
watwut 6y ago
I mean, historically it did worked. Suppresion actually works to suppress viewpoints. Just like with any power, violence tends to work too.
curiousgeorgio 6y ago
Nope. It basically fuels the Streisand effect, both for what is really true, and for what some people believe to be the hidden truth. This kind of censorship has the opposite effect of what it claims to do. The real truth stands up to all scrutiny, and that scrutiny is an essential part in arriving at the truth.
throwaway894345 6y ago
I'm pretty anti-censorship; specifically I believe that sunshine/debate is the best disinfectant. However, we aren't having a healthy debate right now because the election fraud conspiratorialists are shouting their message without regard for the rebuttals. I think there's something to be said for bringing the volume down to manageable levels so that we can actually have a debate. That said, I'm not remotely convinced that there's any kind of evidence that will convince these people that there wasn't election fraud--it feels like arguing with flat-earthers or blank-slaters or whomever--which isn't so much to vindicate 'censorship' (in general or in particular) as it is to express sadness at the state of our collective intellectual and political well-being.
- electrondood 6y ago
  Sunshine only works as a disinfectant when there isn't a massive coordinated artificial amplification of disinformation. It assumes that people are rational actors, and have good critical thinking skills, and care to apply those skills. None of those is true of Americans en masse.
  - kinghajj 6y ago
    > None of those is true of Americans en masse. None of those is true for people en masse.
  - TuringNYC 6y ago
    >> Sunshine only works as a disinfectant when there isn't a massive coordinated artificial amplification of disinformation. Agree in general, but where does it stop? What about articles? Web searches? Websites hosted on Google Cloud? What about documented (albeit very limited) cases of voter fraud in favor of Biden? What about documented (albeit very limited) cases of voter fraud in favor of Trump?
  - PKop 6y ago
    >when there isn't a massive coordinated artificial amplification of disinformation >It assumes that people are rational actors, and have good critical thinking skills, and care to apply those skills This could always be true in reverse, and pretty un-recognizable no? Does not your statement itself reflect some assumption in the ability of people to be rational actors to determine which debate is and isn't true, artificial, astro turfed, propagandized etc. Think of for example the Iraq war push, and evidence provided for it. There are always unknown unknowns, and so your "first principles" cannot be assumed to be true https://commoncog.com/blog/how-first-principles-thinking-fails/ https://commoncog.com/blog/how-first-principles-thinking-fai...
kayodelycaon 6y ago
No, but it keeps it from spreading to other people and becoming part of the social consciousness.
laurent92 6y ago
Censorship has always worked quite well, unfortunately. I grew up believing certain things until, around 30, I went to look up the figures and noticed clichés and prejudices were more correct than teachers and journalists. What a world we live in. Not a situation I’d desire! To start with, it seems Galileo didn’t say « Pero se mueve ». If you pull the string from there, he can’t possibly have been incarcerated for saying that the Earth wasn’t the center of universe, because Kepler more or less said the same before and wasn’t incarcerated. All of that, which I had been taught in school, is false. The king of France was guillotined because he wanted to organize a referendum for him, which he was confident to win, not because he was unpopular. And so it goes on to XXth century, and the to XXIth century, with the feminism and racism narratives. When you notice the ILO’s universal treaty of 1928 against slavery of every human on Earth... ...didn’t include males from 18 to 49. Who had to wait until the UN treaty of 1957 against forced labour, if I remember, to be included. I’m praying every night for the world to pop out of this censorship of reality. But praying is less efficient than censorship.
- tasogare 6y ago
  You’re right that the whole France’s history program in school (or what remains of it, why was it suppressed in high school scientific section?) is indeed a made up narrative trying to build a certain image of the world, often very far from the truth. It’s especially flagrant by the constant bashing of royal era, and constant praise of the republic with important facts conveniently untold like the Vendée massacre. I like reading things about history on Wikipedia, and things are a lot more nuanced than that. And like with Santa Klaus, once you know you’ve been fooled, you wonder about what else they lied... and why.
- cmonfeat 6y ago
  While censorship is certainly a real thing that happens, many of your examples seem to fall on the side of "History is written by the winners." Selective omission and censorship are not exactly the same thing (although the result can certainly be the same).
Veedrac 6y ago
Censorship does work, that's why countries do it.
BitwiseFool 6y ago
Everything starts out as un-proven. If you use that measure to remove content you can justify any censorship.
- blacksmith_tb 6y ago
  I think the principle is a little different, it's more a question of at what point do you reign in potentially inflammatory arguments. It's not all disproven arguments: for example, there hasn't been a big push to silence people who insist the Earth is flat, as the potential for harm stemming from that kind of nonsense is limited.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    "potentially inflammatory" So, banning Salman Rushdie and any cartoon of Muhammad?
    - blacksmith_tb 6y ago
      Well, they are both banned in, say, Iran or Saudi Arabia... but I see your side there, for example, if they were banned in France, that would have likely saved lives, but it would also have meant a long slide down the slippery slope. For my flat-earth example, it would require the backers of the discredited argument to be taking to the streets armed, which luckily they at least haven't shown much inclination to do (and presumably why no one has really called for them to removed from public platforms).
sixothree 6y ago
Why do you put "the truth" in quotes? Are you honestly questioning the validity of this election?
- pcdoodle 6y ago
  Honestly? Yes.
- ralusek 6y ago
  I think they were implying that when people advocate for censorship, they seem to be the ones that have a very secure concept on "the truth," when in reality there is no such thing. For example, there HAS been voter fraud uncovered this election, because there is voter fraud EVERY election. The question is one of magnitude. Has the Trump administration been able to provide evidence sufficient to actually change the result of the election? No. Most conservative pundits I have seen are extremely clear about this distinction. But is this going to ban them discussing it, or discussing new evidence that is being brought forward? As other users have mentioned, this country went through 3 years of hearing about Russian collusion during an investigation that ultimately provided no evidence of that having been an issue capable of unseating the president or delegitimizing that election. Throughout that period, I didn't hear any arguments saying that discussion of that topic should have been censored, and that is a good thing.
- munchbunny 6y ago
  Taken in context "the truth" in quotes is alluding to the large number of people in the US who genuinely believe that the election was stolen, not the commenter's personal stance.
- PeterStuer 6y ago
  I put it in quotes because I observed people on both sides of the issue being convinced of "their" truths. To me, the issue of how to effectively reach a general consensus in these matters is even more important than who is right or wrong. It is my personal opinion that this can only be achieved through transparency and openness, but, as always, I am my own harshest critic, so I entertain that I might be wrong.
mbesto 6y ago
> has suppression or censorship ever worked to quench dissonance or convince skeptical people, again, whether right or wrong Say this is true. How would you recommend measuring this?
- PeterStuer 6y ago
  To me it is not so much about quantifying the effectiveness as it is about qualifying the results. This is not a trivial question as democracy, which is in essence a non-violent system for transition of power, relies on a nearly unanimous acceptance of the process and the results. So, for introspection, and I know it is not a perfect analogy, but imagine you are at a scientific presentation, and you're gut feeling tells you there is a flaw in the arguments presented. So you pose a question but instead of receiving an answer that might lay to rest your misgivings, the speaker just says "That question is not allowed. Next.". How likely is it that that response changed your mind in favor of the theories presented?
busyant 6y ago
I see 2 opposing arguments here: Social media is engaging in censorship, which means our society is screwed. Social media _has_ to engage in this type of censorship because if they _don't_, society is screwed. I think both views are probably correct. But if we're going to screw up our society, I'd at least like to be on the side that's acting in good faith. Maybe we can stave off the inevitable a little longer.
vkou 6y ago
Yes, pretty frequently, actually. Despite the best efforts of a few folks, for instance, holocaust denial 'scholarship' has been suppressed incredibly effectively, and is not part of the common zeitgeist.
pavanky 6y ago
Spam filters worked plenty fine over email.
Fargren 6y ago
In Germany displays of Nazi symbols are forbidden, as well as any political expression that incites violence against a specific race or religion. I can readily believe than in an alternative reality where they were not forbidden, the Nazi movement would be alive and well (not that there is absolutely no Nazis in Germany, but I bet there would be many more, and in power, were it not for suppression and censorship)
ashtonkem 6y ago
Yes. Extreme communities banned from their favorite platform always reform with significantly smaller numbers in whatever replacement platform they decide to go to.
jacquesm 6y ago
I take it you also operate without a spam filter and an ad blocker on account of those being censorship?
aerovistae 6y ago
This isn't about convincing people there's nothing to see, it's about preventing more people from being onboarded to the idea that there's something to see.
dalbasal 6y ago
>> has suppression or censorship ever worked to quench dissonance. Yes. Absolutely it has. It's naive to think that censorship, propaganda and such never work. They're not absolutes, certainly. But thinking of these as impotent and doomed is a dangerous naivety. Chris Hitchens had a great piece about banned literature like Orwell in Czechoslovakia: More people seemed to have read it than in the west. There are plenty of examples where censorship fails. That said, thinking that it always fails is dangerous. There's a reason censorship exists by default unless it's explicitly banned. There's a reason why strong censorship (heresy bans) exists in all monotheistic religions. Not only have they had an effect, but it's a defining feature of the religion and (IMO) the reason why these have taken over the whole world. It matters what the top papers print, top channels run, and what appears (or does not) on social media. It may not be a predictable and mechanical effect, but censorship is not inert. That said, we tend to overuse the word "censorship." The difference between an editor and a censor is reach. If the editor of newspaper X edits all newspapers, they are a censor. Youtube is wading into the murky gray area of this dichotomy.
davesque 6y ago
> Regardless of what you believe to be 'The Truth', has suppression or censorship ever worked to quench dissonance or convince skeptical people, again, whether right or wrong, that there really is 'nothing to see here'. I suppose that depends on if that dissonance was based in factual accounts of reality. If so, then yeah censorship probably wouldn't work. That's because opinions based in fact are consistent with the rest of the world and that tends to keep them in circulation. On the other hand, completely false and baseless lies don't last long without someone pouring energy into them. That's because they're in conflict with details that are readily observed. They might catch people's attention as a kind of entertainment. But, beyond that, they don't provide much practical value. When they're squelched, they'll just fall out of fashion like a cancelled Netflix series.

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago

Yes, it has, to a degree. C.f. Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, etc. (These voices became much less prominent after their deplatforming.) There's also a deontological argument to be made for banning dangerous falsehoods on one's platform.

generalizations 6y ago
It also worked in China when scientists were trying to get word of the virus out in January. Fooled most of the western media.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  This analogy is so dishonest. These people are free to talk about all the conspiracies they want on their own websites, blogs and so on. They are not entitled to having their content hosted on other people's websites though. It's like if I complained that the NYT isn't talking about my coolest new invention and called that censorship. That's very different than the government (not a private company) trying to shut you down from speaking anywhere.
  - generalizations 6y ago
    Except I wasn't talking about the entity involved, I was talking about the efficacy of shutting down the 'misinformation'. Entity A shutdown covid info successfully, and Entity B wants to shutdown election info. That's dishonest? What's dishonest is you misreading my comment and then blaming me for it.
- vkou 6y ago
  You are rewriting history. Western media was not 'fooled'. It's ironic that you are doing so in a thread about spreading misinformation on the internet. January 8th - China identifies new virus causing phenomnia-like illness [1] January 10th - China reports first death from new virus [2] January 21st - The outbreak, which began in December in a seafood and poultry market in Wuhan, a city of 11 million, is spreading: Patients have been identified in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, as well as Taiwan, Japan, Thailand and South Korea. [3] Don't blame our inability to react to the virus on China. The pandemic was raging for months, with news coverage of people being locked in their own apartments, doctors dying, makeshift hospitals getting set up in stadiums, before it exceeded more than a handful of cases in the West. Hell, even after hundreds of thousands dead, we still don't have the political will to do what would have been necessary to stamp it out back in March - massive testing, massive contact tracing, enforced quarantine. If we were to go back in time, and do it again, I think we would arrive at pretty much the same outcome. The 'China hid the facts' [4] narrative has little explanatory power, and its primary purpose is to shift the blame from our own failings. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/health/china-pneumonia-outbreak-virus.html?searchResultPosition=3 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/health/china-pneumonia-ou... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/world/asia/china-virus-wuhan-death.html?searchResultPosition=4 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/world/asia/china-virus-wu... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/health/cdc-coronavirus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/health/cdc-coronavirus.ht... [4] It[5] did hide the facts, but it hid them so poorly that everyone who was paying any attention, both inside, and outside China was aware of how serious this pandemic is at the start of the year. It's hard to hide the facts about something when you put an entire city under lockdown (But don't cut the telephone and internet lines into it.) [5] China isn't a monolith. To be exact, local government did its best to downplay the pandemic. National government was not very happy with how that went down, and purged their local and regional party branches for their mishandling of the outbreak.
golemotron 6y ago
How do you know? Their voices might just be someplace where you (and people you know) don't hear them. The world of discourse is wider than our awareness.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
  You can't know anything, but you can form beliefs that have various levels of confidence. For example, there is reporting about the objective reach of Jones' properties post-deplatforming. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/technology/alex-jones-infowars-bans-traffic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/technology/alex-jones-inf... This type of reporting, plus my priors about how viral media spreads, inform my belief that deplatforming these individuals was moderately efficient for decreasing their reach. But it is an empirical question that would benefit from further study.
  - wolco2 6y ago
    They didn't count app/twitter or other views. So you are measuring two different datasets.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
      I don't need perfect evidence to form beliefs. It seems unlikely that Jones' reach increased on Twitter enough to offset his bans on other platforms. If it did, that doesn't seem consistent with the loss of traffic to his website. After he was banned on Twitter, it seems very unlikely that there was any other platform where his reach grew enough to offset that loss. Anything's possible, but it doesn't seem likely.
      - golemotron 6y ago
        We only see what is in our bubble.
        asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
markkanof 6y ago
I can't necessarily argue the exact wording that you used "prominent", because the folks you listed are certainly no longer visible in the most mainstream venues, but do you really think Alex Jones has lost a lot of the audience that was deep into his content. If anything this just makes him into a martyr and gives his arguments additional fuel because "they don't want you to know the truth".
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
  Addressed your question here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25362065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25362065
- jrumbut 6y ago
  The problem is not the 100,000 people who have constructed their whole lives around Alex Jones, that's what Alex Jones had for 20 years of being a mostly harmless crank who makes a good living at it. The problem was giving him access to a much broader public, to sow paranoia and FUD among tens or hundreds of millions of people who actually play important roles in society and don't have time to spend debunking everything they hear.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  I do believe he has lost a lot of juice, but even if the hardcore viewers have stuck with him, he at least is not growing anywhere as fast anymore. If anything, this means he should've been deplatformed much sooner. The longer you wait, the more you are allowing them to grow their roots in.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Yes, I absolutely believe that Alex Jones has lost some of his audience since being "deplatformed". Some of his audience will continue to follow him, some will continue to follow some other source of cray, and some will wander out of the fever swamps. I consider this a positive outcome, even if it's not a perfect one. Also consider that he's lost a lot of his ability to grow his audience, which is no small thing.
RobertKerans 6y ago
Yep. UK based, and Katie Hopkins has thankfully become far less visible after deplatforming (seems to have removed most income streams post-bankrupcy).
- pjc50 6y ago
  Yes, it was notable that merely advocating crimes against humanity (shooting refugees) wasn't enough, and finally libelling a blogger who managed to crowd fund a lawsuit silenced her. Just like Alex Jones.
wolco2 6y ago
Alex Jones seems more prominent now after the deplatforming. Banning on platforms for whatever reason reduces the platforms reach and raises the platform the party moves too. We use to separate people by race now we do it by idea. Now sure martin luther king or lennon would agree.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
  I doubt MLK would object to the marginalization of Alex Jones. Certainly modern racial justice advocates are, by and large, not clamoring for his restoration. But, we can't know for sure, and, regardless, his hypothetical opinion on this question doesn't matter very much to me.
  - generalizations 6y ago
    That's not the point. The point is that separating people based on their beliefs is nothing new, and generally frowned upon by history.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
      Forcible, violent segregation by race and declining to publish videos by content and truthfulness are far too dissimilar for me to reason about their relationship in the eyes of history.
      - generalizations 6y ago
        Those are examples, but the principle is the same.
        asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
        Maybe to you.
- pjc50 6y ago
  Martin Luther King specifically said that he wanted people judged on the quality of their character, of which dishonesty is definitely a part.
francisofascii 6y ago
The "ideas" of Alex Jones and Milo are very much alive and well.
core-questions 6y ago
This will work wonderfully as long as Youtube, the near-monopolistic arm of a gigantic corporation that makes its money from analyzing what you see and read in order to influence your behaviour, never bans anything that's actually true in reality. I'm sure we can trust our censors to never do something like that! They have our best interests at heart, right? Nothing like this could ever go wrong, there's no examples from history or fiction about anything like that. Nope, it's always Wonderful Good People that only ban things that Bad Evil People would like, and reality is totally black-and-white, and only Bad Evil People would think otherwise.

pjc50 6y ago

People only believe there is "something" because they've been lied to.

rriepe 6y ago
Fascism and disallowing lying are the same thing.
- inetknght 6y ago
  Falsely calling fire in a crowded theatre is inciting panic and a crime. Falsely calling someone a rapist is libelous and slanderous -- both crimes. Not all types of lies need to fall under free speech.
- NikolaeVarius 6y ago
  Oh please shut up. I'm pretty up there on the scale as a free speech absolutist, but this is the sort of shit that makes people have no fucking clue what facism is, and why its used as a pejorative generic insult by all sides. Reducing an entire movement with complex beliefs to a single talking point is not valid in the least.
  - rriepe 6y ago
    Only reason to be offended is if you are one. I've noted your request!

misnome 6y ago

I doubt it, but it _might_ help prevent radicalisation of newer people by making it harder to randomly encounter.

slowhand09 6y ago
...radicalizization meaning choosing to believe differently than you?
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  "Radicalization" in this context refers to participation in a currently active and well-known plot to overthrow democracy in the United States. It's not exactly a hypothetical here.
  - wooger 6y ago
    Yes, election fraud would be a plot to overthrow democracy wouldn't it.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      See, this is the kind of thing that makes it impossible for me to maintain my general opposition to censorship here. The president is publicly calling for the election to be overturned, reaching out to state governors and asking them to please over turn the election for him - and a lot of smart, well-meaning people are stuck in an information bubble where this is just a legitimate process raising legitimate concerns about election fraud. That has to be addressed, and I just haven't seen any suggestions for popping the bubble other than censoring it out of all the popular places. I was sympathetic to the ideas floating around in early November, that the issue would go away once we let all the legal processes play out. But they have played out, the votes are all certified, and nothing's changed.
    - ericd 6y ago
      What evidence have they put forth that makes you think they have a real case for meaningful amounts of fraud? Because from where I’m sitting, it’s really obvious they’re grasping at any straw they can find.

gameswithgo 6y ago

There are many examples out of there of people ending up in some weird conspiracy theory rabbit hole, and often it starts with some youtube video, or post on facebook. Mothers who have lost sons, wives who have lost husbands. They have seen them turn into crazy people (examples: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/09/14/qanon-families-support-group/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/09/14/qanon-f... ) If those videos are not as present on youtube to begin with, perhaps fewer people end up down these rabbit holes. Of course it won't do anything to convince people who are already falling down the hole.

jakelazaroff 6y ago
Not sure why this is downvoted. The YouTube radicalization pathway is fairly well documented, e.g. [1][2][3]. Even if we can't all agree on the specific mechanism of action, the phenomenon certainly exists. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.11211 https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.11211 [2] https://mark-ledwich.medium.com/youtube-radicalization-an-authoritative-saucy-story-28f73953ed17 https://mark-ledwich.medium.com/youtube-radicalization-an-au... [3] https://www.wired.com/story/not-youtubes-algorithm-radicalizes-people/ https://www.wired.com/story/not-youtubes-algorithm-radicaliz...
dylan604 6y ago
Conspiracy peddlers and those that follow them have been around long before YouTube and social media. Some extraordinarily bizarre ideas have been published on Xeroxed/mimeographed 'zines sent out via snail mail. While social media definitely makes it easier, it's not the only way for information to disseminate.
- metamet 6y ago
  The difference is that mainstream platforming of those ideas exposes them to massive amounts of folks who stumble upon them, whereas you would have historically had to seek it out on purpose.

kyle_martin1 6y ago

You’re right, people can make their own decisions. The justice warriors should not coddle people’s minds by shaping a narrative according to their own opinions of what radical/right/wrong mean. Unless...they’re a publication in which case they need to be regulated and taxed accordingly.

gtrhtrhtrhtr 6y ago

in France you can get fined or go to jail for saying fascist stuff, works pretty well.

cmehdy 6y ago
I wouldn't necessarily say it works well though.. The FN (yeah yeah they changed names, who cares) still spews its hatred behind closed doors, our police forces are amongst the worst offenders of any developed countries when it comes to racism and systemic issues (and consistently proving that even the police unions are a bunch of thugs), we have people like Zemmour on TV spewing hateful nonsense that even Fox News would probably frown at by now, and our own current government has been trying to get a law in place to prevent freedom of press so significantly that the UN and most of the world looking at those pieces of news have actually been ringing the alarms in every possible way. While on a personal and biased level I certainly don't mind that daddy Le Pen was fined multiple times throughout the years for calling the Holocaust "a detail of history", we don't really have any proof that it does anything more than make people who dislike him (like me) happy to see him fined, and unfortunately give reasons for supporters of his bullshit to feel vindicated (i.e. rise of the extreme right everywhere with a very salient point regarding being "silenced", which crystallizes to the extreme in stuff coming from the US like Qanon). Youtube is having a tough time because they're almost always pointed at first and foremost for being THE rabbit hole of misinformation/radicalization and other things, but they're stepping into a minefield by touching on one such hot subject without having a broader policy (extending beyond whatever the current US issue is at any moment), backed by an army of lawyers. (I've stopped following the battles of up and downvotes on this message instead of any actual reply.. I'm only left to wonder how many of either are emotional responses over valuing the argument itself, and on this subject even HN isn't proving to be very different from reddit today)
ralusek 6y ago
What is "fascist" stuff? Earlier this year, people protesting coronavirus lockdowns were called "fascists." People protesting against government authority were called fascists. Berkeley had to spend $600k in security to allow Ben Shapiro to speak, because "anti fascists" were accusing him of white supremacy, and being a fascist, and violently attempting to prevent him from speaking. And this was after they had successfully prevented him from speaking earlier in the year. Similar "anti fascists" pulled the fire alarm on Janice Fiamengo for speaking about men's issues. Warren Farrel had a similar experience, with people absolutely berating the attendants of one of his lectures for their support of fascism.

harikb 6y ago

Society can only function if those with opposing views at least agree on ground rules to debate on. Unchecked expression of view with no option for rebuttal from the other side will only destroy society. We have cases were US Senate candidates don't even show up for pre-election debates.

giantg2 6y ago
Why should they (rhetorical)? Many people vote based on political identity rather than actual positions or accomplishments anyways. (I hate those blanket options on the first page of the ballot to vote the entire ballot for one party or the other. People should at least go through and make sure the names are the ones they researched.)

watwut 6y ago

I mean, historically it did worked. Suppresion actually works to suppress viewpoints. Just like with any power, violence tends to work too.

curiousgeorgio 6y ago

Nope. It basically fuels the Streisand effect, both for what is really true, and for what some people believe to be the hidden truth. This kind of censorship has the opposite effect of what it claims to do. The real truth stands up to all scrutiny, and that scrutiny is an essential part in arriving at the truth.

throwaway894345 6y ago

I'm pretty anti-censorship; specifically I believe that sunshine/debate is the best disinfectant. However, we aren't having a healthy debate right now because the election fraud conspiratorialists are shouting their message without regard for the rebuttals. I think there's something to be said for bringing the volume down to manageable levels so that we can actually have a debate. That said, I'm not remotely convinced that there's any kind of evidence that will convince these people that there wasn't election fraud--it feels like arguing with flat-earthers or blank-slaters or whomever--which isn't so much to vindicate 'censorship' (in general or in particular) as it is to express sadness at the state of our collective intellectual and political well-being.

electrondood 6y ago
Sunshine only works as a disinfectant when there isn't a massive coordinated artificial amplification of disinformation. It assumes that people are rational actors, and have good critical thinking skills, and care to apply those skills. None of those is true of Americans en masse.
- kinghajj 6y ago
  > None of those is true of Americans en masse. None of those is true for people en masse.
- TuringNYC 6y ago
  >> Sunshine only works as a disinfectant when there isn't a massive coordinated artificial amplification of disinformation. Agree in general, but where does it stop? What about articles? Web searches? Websites hosted on Google Cloud? What about documented (albeit very limited) cases of voter fraud in favor of Biden? What about documented (albeit very limited) cases of voter fraud in favor of Trump?
- PKop 6y ago
  >when there isn't a massive coordinated artificial amplification of disinformation >It assumes that people are rational actors, and have good critical thinking skills, and care to apply those skills This could always be true in reverse, and pretty un-recognizable no? Does not your statement itself reflect some assumption in the ability of people to be rational actors to determine which debate is and isn't true, artificial, astro turfed, propagandized etc. Think of for example the Iraq war push, and evidence provided for it. There are always unknown unknowns, and so your "first principles" cannot be assumed to be true https://commoncog.com/blog/how-first-principles-thinking-fails/ https://commoncog.com/blog/how-first-principles-thinking-fai...

kayodelycaon 6y ago

No, but it keeps it from spreading to other people and becoming part of the social consciousness.

laurent92 6y ago

Censorship has always worked quite well, unfortunately. I grew up believing certain things until, around 30, I went to look up the figures and noticed clichés and prejudices were more correct than teachers and journalists. What a world we live in. Not a situation I’d desire! To start with, it seems Galileo didn’t say « Pero se mueve ». If you pull the string from there, he can’t possibly have been incarcerated for saying that the Earth wasn’t the center of universe, because Kepler more or less said the same before and wasn’t incarcerated. All of that, which I had been taught in school, is false. The king of France was guillotined because he wanted to organize a referendum for him, which he was confident to win, not because he was unpopular. And so it goes on to XXth century, and the to XXIth century, with the feminism and racism narratives. When you notice the ILO’s universal treaty of 1928 against slavery of every human on Earth... ...didn’t include males from 18 to 49. Who had to wait until the UN treaty of 1957 against forced labour, if I remember, to be included. I’m praying every night for the world to pop out of this censorship of reality. But praying is less efficient than censorship.

tasogare 6y ago
You’re right that the whole France’s history program in school (or what remains of it, why was it suppressed in high school scientific section?) is indeed a made up narrative trying to build a certain image of the world, often very far from the truth. It’s especially flagrant by the constant bashing of royal era, and constant praise of the republic with important facts conveniently untold like the Vendée massacre. I like reading things about history on Wikipedia, and things are a lot more nuanced than that. And like with Santa Klaus, once you know you’ve been fooled, you wonder about what else they lied... and why.
cmonfeat 6y ago
While censorship is certainly a real thing that happens, many of your examples seem to fall on the side of "History is written by the winners." Selective omission and censorship are not exactly the same thing (although the result can certainly be the same).

Veedrac 6y ago

Censorship does work, that's why countries do it.

BitwiseFool 6y ago

Everything starts out as un-proven. If you use that measure to remove content you can justify any censorship.

blacksmith_tb 6y ago
I think the principle is a little different, it's more a question of at what point do you reign in potentially inflammatory arguments. It's not all disproven arguments: for example, there hasn't been a big push to silence people who insist the Earth is flat, as the potential for harm stemming from that kind of nonsense is limited.
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  "potentially inflammatory" So, banning Salman Rushdie and any cartoon of Muhammad?
  - blacksmith_tb 6y ago
    Well, they are both banned in, say, Iran or Saudi Arabia... but I see your side there, for example, if they were banned in France, that would have likely saved lives, but it would also have meant a long slide down the slippery slope. For my flat-earth example, it would require the backers of the discredited argument to be taking to the streets armed, which luckily they at least haven't shown much inclination to do (and presumably why no one has really called for them to removed from public platforms).

sixothree 6y ago

Why do you put "the truth" in quotes? Are you honestly questioning the validity of this election?

pcdoodle 6y ago
Honestly? Yes.
ralusek 6y ago
I think they were implying that when people advocate for censorship, they seem to be the ones that have a very secure concept on "the truth," when in reality there is no such thing. For example, there HAS been voter fraud uncovered this election, because there is voter fraud EVERY election. The question is one of magnitude. Has the Trump administration been able to provide evidence sufficient to actually change the result of the election? No. Most conservative pundits I have seen are extremely clear about this distinction. But is this going to ban them discussing it, or discussing new evidence that is being brought forward? As other users have mentioned, this country went through 3 years of hearing about Russian collusion during an investigation that ultimately provided no evidence of that having been an issue capable of unseating the president or delegitimizing that election. Throughout that period, I didn't hear any arguments saying that discussion of that topic should have been censored, and that is a good thing.
munchbunny 6y ago
Taken in context "the truth" in quotes is alluding to the large number of people in the US who genuinely believe that the election was stolen, not the commenter's personal stance.
PeterStuer 6y ago
I put it in quotes because I observed people on both sides of the issue being convinced of "their" truths. To me, the issue of how to effectively reach a general consensus in these matters is even more important than who is right or wrong. It is my personal opinion that this can only be achieved through transparency and openness, but, as always, I am my own harshest critic, so I entertain that I might be wrong.

mbesto 6y ago

> has suppression or censorship ever worked to quench dissonance or convince skeptical people, again, whether right or wrong Say this is true. How would you recommend measuring this?

PeterStuer 6y ago
To me it is not so much about quantifying the effectiveness as it is about qualifying the results. This is not a trivial question as democracy, which is in essence a non-violent system for transition of power, relies on a nearly unanimous acceptance of the process and the results. So, for introspection, and I know it is not a perfect analogy, but imagine you are at a scientific presentation, and you're gut feeling tells you there is a flaw in the arguments presented. So you pose a question but instead of receiving an answer that might lay to rest your misgivings, the speaker just says "That question is not allowed. Next.". How likely is it that that response changed your mind in favor of the theories presented?

busyant 6y ago

I see 2 opposing arguments here: Social media is engaging in censorship, which means our society is screwed. Social media _has_ to engage in this type of censorship because if they _don't_, society is screwed. I think both views are probably correct. But if we're going to screw up our society, I'd at least like to be on the side that's acting in good faith. Maybe we can stave off the inevitable a little longer.

vkou 6y ago

Yes, pretty frequently, actually. Despite the best efforts of a few folks, for instance, holocaust denial 'scholarship' has been suppressed incredibly effectively, and is not part of the common zeitgeist.

pavanky 6y ago

Spam filters worked plenty fine over email.

Fargren 6y ago

In Germany displays of Nazi symbols are forbidden, as well as any political expression that incites violence against a specific race or religion. I can readily believe than in an alternative reality where they were not forbidden, the Nazi movement would be alive and well (not that there is absolutely no Nazis in Germany, but I bet there would be many more, and in power, were it not for suppression and censorship)

ashtonkem 6y ago

Yes. Extreme communities banned from their favorite platform always reform with significantly smaller numbers in whatever replacement platform they decide to go to.

jacquesm 6y ago

I take it you also operate without a spam filter and an ad blocker on account of those being censorship?

aerovistae 6y ago

This isn't about convincing people there's nothing to see, it's about preventing more people from being onboarded to the idea that there's something to see.

dalbasal 6y ago

>> has suppression or censorship ever worked to quench dissonance. Yes. Absolutely it has. It's naive to think that censorship, propaganda and such never work. They're not absolutes, certainly. But thinking of these as impotent and doomed is a dangerous naivety. Chris Hitchens had a great piece about banned literature like Orwell in Czechoslovakia: More people seemed to have read it than in the west. There are plenty of examples where censorship fails. That said, thinking that it always fails is dangerous. There's a reason censorship exists by default unless it's explicitly banned. There's a reason why strong censorship (heresy bans) exists in all monotheistic religions. Not only have they had an effect, but it's a defining feature of the religion and (IMO) the reason why these have taken over the whole world. It matters what the top papers print, top channels run, and what appears (or does not) on social media. It may not be a predictable and mechanical effect, but censorship is not inert. That said, we tend to overuse the word "censorship." The difference between an editor and a censor is reach. If the editor of newspaper X edits all newspapers, they are a censor. Youtube is wading into the murky gray area of this dichotomy.

davesque 6y ago

> Regardless of what you believe to be 'The Truth', has suppression or censorship ever worked to quench dissonance or convince skeptical people, again, whether right or wrong, that there really is 'nothing to see here'. I suppose that depends on if that dissonance was based in factual accounts of reality. If so, then yeah censorship probably wouldn't work. That's because opinions based in fact are consistent with the rest of the world and that tends to keep them in circulation. On the other hand, completely false and baseless lies don't last long without someone pouring energy into them. That's because they're in conflict with details that are readily observed. They might catch people's attention as a kind of entertainment. But, beyond that, they don't provide much practical value. When they're squelched, they'll just fall out of fashion like a cancelled Netflix series.