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We are very fortunate to have the algorithms, employees & management of Youtube/Google watching out for us. We're not intelligent enough to view a video and dec

• dylan604 6y ago
  While the sarcasm is dripping, it's also true. There clearly are people that can view a video and realize that it's is 100% BS. Yet, at the same time, there are other people that will watch it and 100% believe it. If it wasn't effective, it wouldn't be used.
  • OliverGilan 6y ago
    Remarkable to see this comment unironically on HN.
    • tjr225 6y ago
      Why? Its true.
    • tfehring 6y ago
      I'm unironically inclined to agree with it, but I'd be interested in reading a more substantial refutation.
      • rriepe 6y ago
        There's no refutation because there's no argument to refute. It's always some form of "There are bad people doing bad things and we need to stop them." Notice how every thread here is about acting against alleged disinformation agents? It's not about any argument at all. It's a generic outgroup argument. Should we expect people to just never question elections? It's completely bizarre.
        • ribosometronome 6y ago
          Come on. That same group questioning elections 1) has spent 4 years decrying the questioning of an election 2) actively prevented measures being taken to secure elections and 3) hasn't come up with any proof of vote changes. We should expect people to come at things in good faith, which is clearly not the case in this discussion.
    • enumjorge 6y ago
      It’s a fact that a lot of people believe the misinformation. I don’t understand what’s so remarkable about pointing this out.
      • friendlybus 6y ago
        Who decides what information is
        • xxpor 6y ago
          Why does the public get to decide what a private company hosts?
          • djfobbz 6y ago
            Actually, shareholders do get a say in what a publicly traded company hosts!
            • xxpor 6y ago
              That's not the public. But I'm fine with owners of a company deciding what they would like to host.
          • friendlybus 6y ago
            They do via proxy of government laws. The public vs megacorp is not a balanced relationship anyway and will eventually get regulated.
          • wolco2 6y ago
            Because this publically traded company (not private) invites the public to view and share content. Now the public is voicing concern over who they are censoring. If Google doesn't like it they are free to shutdown the service.
          • jpttsn 6y ago
            It often does. You want it to, in many cases.
    • ehsankia 6y ago
      If you don't believe it's true, then explain to me how Measles, something that was more or less a solved problem, suddenly had a huge resurgence, leading to 50% increase in the number of deaths from 2016 to 2019? While flat earthers are mostly harmless, other misinformation have real tangible cost. People are literally dying due to the anti-vaxx and anti-mask misinformation. Not blocking these videos is equivalent to having blood on your hands.
      • syshum 6y ago
        You do realize that the largest outbreak of measles in 2019 was not because of Anti-Vax YouTube Videos or other misinformation right? It was directly linked to religious fundamentalism that barred a large group of people from getting vaccinated So all the YT censorship in the world will not stop that unless you are going to advocate prohibition of religion as well which I feel you likely will not get as much support for YT and online misinformation is a good scapegoat, much like Usenet was in the 1990's for people that do not understand the real, actual problem you are not going to fix these problems by censorship
        • ehsankia 6y ago
          > It was directly linked to religious fundamentalism that barred a large group of people from getting vaccinated And it just happened to be perfectly in sync with the rise of anti-vaxx content on social media? You do realize these "religious fundamentalism" with fringe ideas also use Youtube, FB and other sites to share their anti-vaxx ideas and have their own ideas re-affirmed?
    • Aunche 6y ago
      Let this be a lesson that a lot of people are susceptible to all sorts of "remarkable" ideas, including objectively dangerous ones like believing that Covid is a hoax.
  • mlyle 6y ago
    At the same time, getting used to curation of informal speech and having intermediaries censoring this type of content has its own, potentially greater risks.
    • dylan604 6y ago
      You have the potential of getting only curated information any time you only use one source for that information.
      • mlyle 6y ago
        Here we have many social platforms effectively colluding and setting common standards for curation. Concentrated power is scary. I'd agree it's mostly being used for good here...
    • shadowgovt 6y ago
      I'll take the potentially greater risks over the immediate risks in this context.
    • actusual 6y ago
      First, Google is already heavily curating information on their platform. Don't kid yourself into thinking otherwise. Secondly, Youtube is not a public good. It is a product owned by a company who answers to their shareholders. Google is free (and should remain free) to censor whatever they want on the platform that they own, and users/content creators are free to leave for other platforms. Finally, before folks say that Youtube is a monopoly in video content on the internet, no they aren't. Are they the biggest? Sure. But by no means are they the only platform.
      • mod 6y ago
        I doubt most of the people (like myself) disagree with anything you say. We can still think it's absolutely ridiculous that they're doing it. I don't think they should face legal sanctions or anything. I think they should step out of politics. But yeah, they don't have to.
  • logicslave 6y ago
    This is disgusting
  • the8472 6y ago
    If we take that position then how is that reconcilable with democracy?
    • shadowgovt 6y ago
      Traditionally, it's been extremely reconcilable. News agencies had a responsibility to be more accurate than not. The government itself keeps a very hands-off approach to that information flow, and the people reward papers that succeed with subscriptions and eyeballs. This detente is why the media has traditionally been referred to as "The fourth estate." Unclear what the solution is as that system breaks down because the subscription-free ad-fueled Internet dwarfs the traditional model.
      • Fjolsvith 6y ago
        Ultimately, people (the audience) will go to sources that are credible and abandon sources that are not, regardless of how the source pays their bills.
    • scarmig 6y ago
      Hypothetically, you can think that you need institutions to properly frame and prioritize issues in public discourse, and only then is democracy ideal. And at some scale it's true: if a bunch of us were suddenly dropped into a locked room and told to discuss and then vote for the best mayor of Mumbai with no resources, we'd fail. Democracy isn't looking too healthy nowadays though, I agree.
    • AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
      Making some assumptions about what you mean by "democracy", that's actually a good question. We believe in freedom of expression because we don't want the government suppressing information for the purpose of manipulating us, but in the information age it has become obvious that one can manipulate people by spreading information just as easily as by suppressing it. For this reason, I am forced to wonder if democracy can survive the information age at all.
    • syshum 6y ago
  • curiousgeorgio 6y ago
    > Yet, at the same time, there are other people that will watch it and 100% believe it When has that ever not been the case? Fortunately there are natural barriers preventing most people with wild ideas from gaining enough support to be a detriment to society. Should I really care if someone else chooses to believe x, y, or z in the face of contradictory evidence? If they try and do something public with a wrong idea, their failure will be the teacher, not me.
    • pjc50 6y ago
      We've got to this place because the people with wrong ideas were succeding.
      • curiousgeorgio 6y ago
        > We've got to this place because the people with wrong ideas were succeding. Hate to break it to you, but if those ideas are succeeding, maybe they weren't wrong after all...
        • kube-system 6y ago
          History is full of people with very clearly wrong ideas who were succeeding at the time. Something something, Godwin's law.
          • curiousgeorgio 6y ago
            History is more full of examples where censorship has lead to tyranny and the downfall of civilizations.
            • kube-system 6y ago
              Government censorship, yes. Fortunately, that is not happening here.
        • kibwen 6y ago
  • astura 6y ago
    Americans largely have trouble distinguishing facts from opinions, sadly. https://www.journalism.org/2018/06/18/distinguishing-between-factual-and-opinion-statements-in-the-news/ https://www.journalism.org/2018/06/18/distinguishing-between... >The main portion of the study, which measured the public’s ability to distinguish between five factual statements and five opinion statements, found that a majority of Americans correctly identified at least three of the five statements in each set. But this result is only a little better than random guesses. Far fewer Americans got all five correct, and roughly a quarter got most or all wrong.
    • ffggvv 6y ago
      fact or opinion: there are two biological sexes? do you want a corporation determining that for you and banning you from seeing anything otherwise? what if their view of the facts is different?
      • metamet 6y ago
        Sex and gender aren't the same thing.
      • Helloworldboy 6y ago
        They do, they’re afraid of life without a digital babysitter
      • itronitron 6y ago
        then go somewhere else for content
        • ffggvv 6y ago
          says the same people who cry if someone makes a mean tweet or a comedian tells an offcolor joke and calls for them to be deplatformed. how about i argue for them not to censor, and you go to another platform if you want your safe space.
      • astura 6y ago
        It would be classified as a factual statement for the survey study even though it's an inaccurate statement (intersexed people exist) As >Respondents were asked to determine if each was a factual statement (whether accurate or not) or an opinion statement (whether agreed with or not). I never gave my opinion on the matter, but since you asked, no, I don't personally care if corporations ban me because I disagree with their TOS (which had inaccurate statements of fact in it), that's their right. I probably wouldn't be doing business with them in the first place, though it's also my right to petition them to change it if I wanted to. Example: When I was a kid Walmart only sold censored CDs so everyone knew not to buy CDs from Walmart.
  • pupdogg 6y ago
    Correct, the exact same way "some people" think indenting with tab is 100% BS. Yet, at the same time, there are "other people" that will indent TAB + 2 spaces every new line.
    • secondcoming 6y ago
      > there are "other people" that will indent TAB + 2 spaces every new line. I hope I never encounter these psychopaths!
  • kube-system 6y ago
    The issue is that people see it as a failure of YouTube, when it is in fact, a failure of our education system.
    • ehsankia 6y ago
      Sure, but improvement to the education system won't come into effect for decades, and in the short term, real people are dying from anti-vaxx and anti-mask misinformation. I know 2020 has been wild, but let's not forget the huge surge in Measle deaths, something that was mostly solved beforehand. Blocking certain content now literally saves people's lives.
      • kube-system 6y ago
        For sure, but I think it's important not to lose sight of the fact that YouTube is merely dealing with the symptoms of a much broader societal problem. We can't truly fix the issue until we address the root cause. Everything else is whack-a-mole.
        • ehsankia 6y ago
          Again, why not both? This is a short term solution, while we work in parallel in improving the education system. Youtube itself can be a great source of education if you promote scientific videos over trashy conspiracy videos.
    • contravariant 6y ago
      There's some role for education but Youtube driving tons of people to watch these kinds of videos is Youtube's mistake, not anyone else's.
  • jimbob45 6y ago
    It’s always someone else needing to be censored with you pro-censorship types, never yourself. No one wants to be censored, least of all yourself, so why would you foist it on someone else? If you’re going to stand up for censoring citizens en masse, then you ought to volunteer to be the first one to be censored.
  • newacct583 6y ago
    Yeah, I just don't know what to do anymore. It's clear that the idea of good information rising to the top of vigorous discourse among an informed populace just isn't working. We're tearing the country apart right now with lies. Is this fixable at all? Do we just give up? Do we fight the lies directly by not spreading them? No good options as long as the lies are spreading. I have a very hard time seeing Youtube or Twitter as the bad guys here. At least they're trying. Screaming about censorship as the civilization falls apart seems to really be missing the point. If freedom of speech won't save us, what will?
  • res0nat0r 6y ago
    This is correct. > The Australian white supremacist who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand was radicalized by YouTube, according to a 792-page report on the March 2019 shooting. https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/8/22162779/christchurch-shooter-youtube-mosque-radicalized https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/8/22162779/christchurch-sho...
    • Noumenon72 6y ago
      I have a feeling he'd say that was ridiculous, based on this quote from his manifesto: Q: Were you taught violence and extremism by video games, music, literature, cinema? Yes, Spyro the dragon 3 taught me ethno-nationalism. Fortnite trained me to be a killer and to floss on the corpses of my enemies. No. People are more intelligent than these criticisms give them credit for. Their beliefs come from opinions and thoughts, not just from above. See Ross Douthat's recent column, "Why Do So Many Americans Think the Election Was Stolen?" "The potency of this belief has already scrambled some of the conventional explanations for conspiratorial beliefs, particularly the conceit that the key problem is misinformation spreading downward from partisan news outlets and social-media fraudsters to the easily deceived. As I watch the way certain fraud theories spread online, or watch conservatives abandon Fox News for Newsmax in search of validating narratives, it’s clear that this is about demand as much as supply. A strong belief spurs people to go out in search of evidence, a lot of so-called disinformation is collected and circulated sincerely rather than cynically, and the power of various authorities — Tucker Carlson’s show or Facebook’s algorithm — to change beliefs is relatively limited." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/opinion/sunday/trump-election-fraud.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/opinion/sunday/trump-elec...
      • uoaei 6y ago
        I invite you to read up on the psychological effect known as "priming." Top-down disinformation primes the minds of the less-scrupulous, who then seek to rationalize and harden their half-baked beliefs through their everyday experiences.
        • 6y ago
  • warlord1 6y ago
    You: "Some people are just too dumb to think for themselves, so I guess we'll censor it all." Me: "Sounds like a nanny state with extra steps."
• ainiriand 6y ago
  One tend to think that what is good/bad for one will be like that for everyone. In this case, stopping misinformation, is better for the average citizen and then better for the society.
• shadowgovt 6y ago
  It's a private company. If you don't like their slant, use another private company. I swear, it's like people have never had to cancel a newspaper subscription before.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago
    > If you don't like it, use another private company. Who are YouTube's comparable competitors?
    • shadowgovt 6y ago
      I hear BitChute is flourishing.
      • SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago
        Who?
  • akira2501 6y ago
    Newspapers typically did not enjoy monopoly positions in the markets they served, and even for those that did, rarely did those translate into worldwide monopolies. Also, because newspapers have an editor, they are liable for what they print. Google enjoys protections from these liabilities, even though they're clearly willing and capable of editing their users content. The two situations are entirely different.
    • shadowgovt 6y ago
      > Newspapers typically did not enjoy monopoly positions in the markets they served On average, newspapers definitely did. Most major cities have at most two primary newspapers. The difference between them and YouTube was geographic reach. ... even still, YT's size doesn't obligate them to provide hosting for high-bandwidth data. It definitely doesn't obligate them to put any specific videos in people's field-of-view. People with alternative viewpoints can buy cloud storage if they desperately need a place to host videos. The "Is YouTube an editor" question is a good one, but I have a hard time reconciling the notion that they're taking on new editorial behavior with the fact that they've always had both community standards and full control of their curation algorithm. Haven't they always been an editor in that sense, and the new concern is some people don't like how they're using that power?
• ouid 6y ago
  Youtube's content delivery algorithm is also a kind of nanny, don't you think?
• jacquesm 6y ago
  What a crap comment. Instead, yes, let's be happy that there are at least some entities out there that will not let themselves be willingly used to subvert a democracy.
  • TravHatesMe 6y ago
    Partisanship has leaked into this thread.. What if the tables were turned? As a non-American, it disappoints me to read some of these comments. Defending your side at all costs. I wish there was more balanced comments, acknowledging points on each side. The inability to concede to anything makes for ugly discussion. Whatever side you are on, stubbornness and hostility is not a good strategy to convince the other side. "The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence." -Richard Feynman
    • MGGJFU 6y ago
      As a Canadian, the republican "side" of politics in the US has made it so that debating with them is no longer necessary. When the moment arrived that facts were no longer on their side, they chose to alter the perception of reality of their voters instead of changing their behavior. They band together and adopt a narrative which they then spread through the networks which are aligned with them and in other public tools like youtube and twitter. This is so incredibly successful that the only thing guiding their behavior is a change in polling with their base, rather than any philosophy based on values, convictions or general sense of morality. Hell yes their outright lies should be banned from places like Youtube. They have no basis in reality and contrary to other types of false information, their information has the single goal of maintaining or increasing their power and delegitimizing democracy in the US. Now from the point of view of the brainwashed conservatives, people like me are the brainwashed ones. There's pretty much nothing we can say to them to convince them otherwise. We can try and prevent the bad actors from saying the things which lead them down the path to dismissing reality.
    • SavageBeast 6y ago
      You make a fine point about partisan hostility leaking into every crack and crevice these days. It really does get tiring. Its as if we in the US are all Sports Fans rooting for The Home Team without regard to inconvenient facts or anything that challenges the outcome desired. America is in a sad state for sure. "What if the tables were turned?" - Is it really a "What If" kind of question? Maybe the tables have in fact turned? YouTube certainly has no problem hosting videos that purport the idea of a rigged 2016 election. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Russian+collusion+election https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Russian+collusi... For a solid 4 years one party accused the other of rigging an election and it was considered news and reported on nearly non-stop. Now the tables are turned and the formerly accused party is claiming the other one rigged the election. 4 years ago one party went with a Boogey Man kind of narrative where a nebulous and hostile foreign power used untold influences and means to change the course of the election. Today one party is going with the narrative that laws were broken regarding the conduct of elections. These 2 things are similar but I put forth the idea they are not exactly the same. The TX vs. PA suit presents evidence and makes specific claims. Maybe I missed something along the way but I never saw anything but innuendo regarding what specific crimes were committed in the "Russian Rigging" of the 2016 election. Im open to reading up if anyone cares to drop a relevant link or two.
• watertowine 6y ago
  This is directly in line with the future as prophetically described in Fahrenheit 451.
  • jacquesm 6y ago
    You should re-read that book, you haven't understood it at all.
• nacho2sweet 6y ago
  Why should their algorithm amplify every message? You can go roll your own hosting and host your own video and send the link to whoever you want.
  • jacquesm 6y ago
    Precisely. Youtube is a hosting service first and foremost but increasingly it is used as the propaganda arm of some of the most despicable entities in politics who are aiming for the audience, not the hosting as their main reason for dumping content there. They are freeriding on the youtube brand and do incalculable damage to some very precious concepts and societal structures.
  • hnracer 6y ago
    You can't though. Bitchute was banned on Twitter for a long time. The barriers to entry for a new competitor, including network effects in addition to hostility from other platforms, is incredible. YT have a monopoly in their domain.
• pavanky 6y ago
  You say this while half the country believes random people on Youtube and Facebook, refuse to wear masks in a pandemic that is killing people by the thousands. I was young and believer in open internet once (and still am mostly) but the society as a whole has underestimated how much people are susceptible to being deceived and the cost differential between spreading and refuting false information. I don't see this as anything other than an extension of anti-spam over email efforts of early 2000s.
  • googlryas 6y ago
    So if that is the mental state of half the country - is democracy worth defending? Why not just ban wrong-think and come out and admit that authoritarianism is the best, since too many people are too stupid to make the right decisions?
    • pavanky 6y ago
      Because we are faulty creatures with faulty institutions. Let us work with what we have. Authoritarianism is mostly never better than democracy. Absolute democracy isn't always better than authoritarianism. And in this case it is largely irrelevant because the government is not the one censoring people. The arguments about if and when companies can exercise these rights are good to have otherwise we may end up in one of the extremes.
  • Solvitieg 6y ago
    "The idea that half the population has lost its mind while you have retained a perfect grasp of reality is unlikely."
    • oblio 6y ago
      That quote would work with "the entire population". Instead, now he's not alone, the other half of the population supports him and holds the opposite opinion and I'm quite sure the first half the grand parent comment mentions (Covid denying crowd) has lost its grasp on reality. Or they have other motives to deny it... Which makes things worse.
• rriepe 6y ago
  It's so excellent that they've streamlined things for us here. I wish we had something like this here on Hacker News, to tame the ne'er-do-wells who disagree with Mother TV.
• throwaway6734 6y ago
  Does this same logic apply to financial instruments, cigarettes, alcohol, unhealthy food, etc?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• enumjorge 6y ago
  Once again a thread about censorship invites comments that ignore the nuance of the situation. Having companies dictate what information is widely accessible is dangerous for democracy. Having the sitting president make completely baseless claims in an effort to delegitimize the results of an election because it didn’t go his way is also dangerous for democracy. That’s what we call a tricky situation. We don’t have an easy solution.
  • whiddershins 6y ago
    I would genuinely like to know why you are so confident about what claims are and aren’t baseless. Do you have inside knowledge that the public doesn’t posses? Because I’ve been paying attention and I’m genuinely unsure what is happening ... default skeptical about all claims in every direction. Edit: A lot of the responses here seem to be unaware of Texas’ lawsuit and the ramifications. I expect the conspiracy claims to be separated out from the genuine concerns if the Supreme Court chooses to hear that suit.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • donkeyd 6y ago
      I would say those claims based on the absence of evidence, or evidence that was proven fraudulent or incorrect would be baseless. It's impossible to prove something didn't happen, so we need proof something did happen. None was provided, just look at all the lawsuits.
      • linuxftw 6y ago
        In the case of ballots, each ballot should have a recorded chain of custody, so it's actually not 'impossible' to prove something didn't happen. If the accusations are "There are a bunch of ballots that were entered into the counts without proper chain of custody" that can be easily proven or disproven. If the accusation is "Signatures were required to be verified and bipartisan representatives were legally supposed to witness the process" which apparently is the case in many jurisdictions, that too would be easy to prove or disprove. There will be records associated with those observations and chain of custody records of those ballots. Unfortunately, some ballot envelopes have already been 'thrown away' so they cannot be audited to see if counts match, to see how many ballots were indeed signed (sometimes a witness is required), or be able to be verified against other controls (such as numbering, ensuring the name on the ballot matches who it was sent to, etc). The law says you must hold an election, and exactly what steps you need to take to hold such an election. If you didn't follow the steps, there wasn't a lawful election. That's more or less what some of the lawsuits are about. Are these claims 'baseless'? I don't think so. There's no shortage of sworn affidavits and statements from election officials about how the processes weren't followed. There's also court cases (such as in Georgia) where the executive branch possibly unlawfully struck an agreement with Democrats to relax certain requirements. The only remaining question is, how heavily should this evidence be weighed, and is it enough to affect the outcome of the process. TBD.
• pkulak 6y ago
  Google can either do this or fix the American public school system and wait a couple decades. One seems easier than the other.
• Veen 6y ago
  > Hopefully some day we will have the same protections the CCP gives its people Do you not see the contradiction inherent in this? Your implied argument is that people are smart enough to see through propaganda, and your example is China, a society shaped by an extremely effective propaganda machine.
  • tikthot 6y ago
    Can you not read the sarcasm?
• meroes 6y ago
  YouTube gets to make the call. That's the difference between it and the CCP. If they are losing money to wasting bandwidth on unadvertisable content, why shouldn't they be able to decide to drop it? Ironically, I'd say your alternative is closer to the CCP. The private entity gets to decide.
• SavageBeast 6y ago
  https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/admin/2020/Press/SCOTUSFiling.pdf https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima... The AG of Texas has alleged wrongdoing officially in the form of a suit. I wonder what YouTubes policy would be of someone reading this document on video?
• findjashua 6y ago
  yes, as we have seen over the course of history, people are completely impervious to misinformation and propaganda.
• SCLeo 6y ago
  This is slippery slope fallacy. I don't think YouTube removing genuially harmful and false content is really comparable to CCP's suppression of opposing views.
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    Conversely, others could say that the CCPs removing of generally harmful and false content isn't really comparable to YouTube’s suppression of opposing views. The difference isn't that some third party observer thinks that what YouTube is suppressing is “harmful and false” while what the CCP is suppressing is opposing views that are neither, in that estimation, harmful nor false, but that YouTube isn't the state and people in the geographic region served by YouTube have alternate sources of content that are not subject to YouTube’s editorial decisions, while those in the region “served” by the CCP have all information sources subjected to (at least by policy, if not always completely successful) the same editorial oversight.
  • inglor_cz 6y ago
    What if CCP believes that opposing views are false and harmful? Especially the "harmful" part is bendable beyond belief.
  • skoopie 6y ago
    "genuinely harmful" and that's how it's sold
  • x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
    Why should a private company be forced to host conspiracy theories for free?
• res0nat0r 6y ago
  I'm sure the folks who died at the Christchurch shooting think differently, since the shooter was radicalized on youtube. https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/8/22162779/christchurch-shooter-youtube-mosque-radicalized https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/8/22162779/christchurch-sho...
• manfredo 6y ago
  I think Google would be more than happy to take a hands off approach. The issue is that the PR hit for being alleged to "radicalize" people or promote fringe views had becomes smaller than the PR hit of censorship.
• Spooky23 6y ago
  We’re not. Propaganda works. We’ll probably end up with almost a million Americans dead from COVID, largely because “the big lie” is effective.
• SeanLuke 6y ago
  "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." That's the problem. Propaganda is more effective than education. If people were rational actors, you'd have a point. But they are not.
• mesozoic 6y ago
  All praise to our information gatekeepers!
• titzer 6y ago
  This is completely within Google's deeply held belief that they are smarter than everyone else.
• unethical_ban 6y ago
  This, but unironically. It is unsettling, but look at where we are in 2020, when deepfakes are not yet zero-effort. Imagine a world where every mobile device can deepfake any activity with any person's face. Now think of how places like Newsmax, Fox and Infowars have no scruples spreading lies or dancing around the truth. We need institutions to trust. Trust in authoritative journalism is all we will have in the future.
• smm11 6y ago
  If I created a massively popular social media platform, and a large volume of posts found there were outright lies about you, would that be okay?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• TimPC 6y ago
  Also worth noting is are they censoring content that is at the level of "Democrats rigged the election". Or are they censoring all content relating to the election that mentions anything to do with out-of-state voters, dead voters, or unusual voting patterns. The former might be justifiable, the latter seems to censor uncomfortable truths. I personally think the total level of fraud was not nearly large enough to decide the election but a non-zero amount of fraud exists. If we censor any amount of coverage of that fraud how do we improve the system so that dead people and out of state people no longer vote?
• Atlantium 6y ago
  I'd argue that many humans think too highly of their intelligence and are not intelligent enough to decide correctly for themselves. Watching a video or reading an article is, at least, second hand information that you can't verify. If you don't have enough verified data then you cannot make an informed decision anyway. Many people simply feel they "trust" a source. What is that? Your brain taking input and deciding it "likes" the pattern it concocts? That's okay for lesser decisions but not major nation changing ones. If you cannot form a consistent logical chain of events that you can extrapolate a decision from then what you are really doing is guessing or gambling. No matter what your "feelings" may tell you.
• kiba 6y ago
  The fact is that people believe and watch misinformation promoted by Youtube algorithms in the first place. It's probably not intelligence either, given that people believe in what they want to hear rather than not.
• warlord1 6y ago
  BASED.
• vecinu 6y ago
  I have a hard time understanding how this view can be held when we know that there is "censorship" and "moderation" happening in EVERYTHING we do online. There is a reason you can't find snuff films, pornography, abuse or other exceptionally offensive videos on YouTube. You have to go on some shady websites to get to that kind of content and I'm sure even there some censorship happens so the admins are not legally liable for content. How about text? Highly classified government information and informant data can put peoples' lives at risk so some text must be "moderated".
• Jochim 6y ago
  A non-insignificant proportion of your population believes the earth is as young as 6,000 years old. A non-insignificant proportion of your population believes Obama is a Muslim anti-christ who wasn't born in the U.S.. Fun fact, the current president is one of the people who participated in stirring up that last part. A non-insignificant proportion of your population believes Joe Biden defrauded himself into the position of president elect. Providing a platform every fringe/crackpot conspiracy theory has legitimised some increasingly insane viewpoints in the U.S. and social media appears to be pushing these to even greater extremes than we've seen in the past. Edit: We're seeing the same thing in Europe with Q-Anon/Coronavirus/Anti-vaxx conspiracies taking hold as well.
• psychometry 6y ago
  >We're not intelligent enough to view a video and decide for ourselves what is fact v. propaganda v. entertainment Um, it's pretty clear that this is literally true. Most people are too ignorant to reject absurd conspiracy theories.
• WhompingWindows 6y ago
  Would you prefer: 1) YT and Google employees watching over us OR 2) the Koch Brothers, paid actors from Russia and Saudi and hyper-partisan US groups, etc. all flooding our information platforms with trash and noise, completely UNCHECKED, in the name of "freedom"? I think there's solid evidence that option 2 is terrible for us, the USA has had a disastrous COVID response, for instance. Meanwhile, we haven't really tried option 1, we are just at the beginning of this censorship of trash information. In general, I find many talking of "freedom" in US history are using it as a shield to ignore sticky issues and allow bad solutions to reign...freedom to own slaves, freedom to expand wherever and kill any natives there, freedom of pollution, freedom of marketing with harmful lies...freedom is an over-used and intellectually lazy concept.
  • FpUser 6y ago
    >"I think there's solid evidence that option 2 is terrible for us, the USA has had a disastrous COVID response, for instance." So you are blaming Koch, Russia, information platforms, etc for Government fuckup? Does your Government decide their actions based on youtube videos? Somehow I doubt and if it does then it only has itself to blame.
• seanmcdirmid 6y ago
  I know its weird, but if I don't like YouTube here in the USA, I can choose to watch videos somewhere else, it isn't my only choice. Except in China, YouTube isn't a choice at all (even via a flaky VPN, video streaming is iffy). As another analogy, there have been resemblances made between Trump and Xi as both being authoritarians. However, one was unelected, and one declared himself president for life. Huge difference (and if Trump overturns the election, that difference will be gone, but that's a huge "if").
  • lopmotr 6y ago
    You can't just declare it. You have to have the political power for people to respect it. Even after Xi became president, he didn't have that power until he purged his opponents. Trump certainly never will.
• deeeeplearning 6y ago
  >We're not intelligent enough to view a video and decide for ourselves what is fact v. propaganda v. entertainment. You're being sarcastic but growing up we used to joke around saying "I saw it on the internet so it must be true" and now a significant portion of the population actually uses this as a guideline for truth.
• hue3 6y ago
  As they say, "sarcasm is the wit of the fools." Your comment brings nothing to the discussion.