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I don't like what YouTube is doing. But... What is going on in the US just now is unprecedented in modern Western democracies - we've reached "peak fake news"

I don't like what YouTube is doing. But... What is going on in the US just now is unprecedented in modern Western democracies - we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA. Mainstream news networks like Fox have talking heads spouting venomous lies that are demonstrably and trivially proven as such. The POTUS is lying on an hourly basis (many of those lies just brazenly, ridiculously false), and has millions of people believing his every word - he's personally profiting hugely, while brainwashing them and whipping them up into frenzy. It's fucking dangerous, especially with the US' lax gun laws. I don't like private companies getting to decide what's truthful and what's not, but it's not like the US government is doing a better job, and is it safe to allow mad conspiracies and obvious lies to become "truth" for so many millions? I don't think there are any good outcomes here regardless - it's one of those "least worst" choices.

CamperBob2 6y ago
The POTUS is lying on an hourly basis (many of those lies just brazenly, ridiculously false), and has millions of people believing his every word - he's personally profiting hugely, while brainwashing them and whipping them up into frenzy. Also, I believe his forces should have all the best guns. Is that a reasonable rephrasing of your point?
- metalliqaz 6y ago
  the armed forces don't belong to POTUS as much as the current occupant of the office would like them to have loyalty to him personally, they don't still, Congress has given up too much control and needs to take it back
  - CamperBob2 6y ago
    the armed forces don't belong to POTUS * blinks * Yes, they do. He's their commander in chief, authorized by Congress to attack anyone or anything in the name of "fighting terrorism" with zero immediate accountability to anyone. (And yes, as you suggest, this is a problem Congress created for itself.) POTUS also has the ability to invoke something called the "Insurrection Act," which effectively deploys the military on domestic soil for law-enforcement purposes. Oh, and speaking of Federal law enforcement, that's an executive branch function as well. as much as the current occupant of the office would like them to have loyalty to him personally, they don't An idealistic perspective that isn't always borne out by reality. [1] still, Congress has given up too much control and needs to take it back That's for darned sure. Of course, a complicit Congress is arguably worse than an impotent one, because it opens the door to a captive judicial branch as well. [1]: https://taskandpurpose.com/news/dod-report-reveals-details-seals-punished-flying-trump-flag/ https://taskandpurpose.com/news/dod-report-reveals-details-s... : “[The convoy commander] was also aware of the rules precluding Department of Defense (DoD) endorsement of political candidates during an election,” the documents stated. “However, he believed that flying the flag was not inappropriate since the election was over and since the candidate was now the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.”
tmpz22 6y ago
The GOP has raised over $200m since the election, with very little of it earmarked (<25%) for actual legal expenses. Most of it will go towards paying off campaign debts, the Georgia runoff election, and the rest of it who knows where else. I can only see this behavior being completely normalized due to its effectiveness. Short of massive bipartisan regulation limiting election fundraising this is the future of America.
- weaksauce 6y ago
  The only way forward i see is massive campaign finance reform. what's happening now is a travesty and the citizenry doesn't benefit from it.
andrewclunn 6y ago
Hmmm, lies? Would you believe... video evidence? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8bBMXSXbWE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8bBMXSXbWE Alternative media is the ONLY way the truth gets out there. Calling them fake news, or promoting "official" propaga... I mean "news" outlets doesn't protect you from misinformation. That IS the misinformation.
99_00 6y ago
>we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA. Mainstream news networks like Fox have talking heads spouting venomous lies that are demonstrably and trivially proven as such I think that mainstream news has been doing this for the past 4 years. Here are 3 examples: 1) Trump Russia collusion hoax. 2) Trump saying that neo-nazis and white supremacists are "fine people" hoax. 3) Trump recommending people "inject bleach" hoax.
- Daishiman 6y ago
  You mean the Trump-Russia collusion that ended up with Michael Flynn going to prison?
  - 99_00 6y ago
    It's not clear exactly what point you're trying to make here.
    - Daishiman 6y ago
      The point is very clear. But let me clarify it: there was an effort by state actors to manipulate and aid a specific party in a way that is fully illegal.
      - 99_00 6y ago
        The Trump campaign did not coordinated or conspire with the Russian government in its election-interference activities.
        onli 6y ago
        It very likely did. The Muller report showed that it did, at least in all likelihood and given the evidence available. The report just stopped short of taking the next step, calling it proven and going forward with whatever the next step would have been. It did so because of the very high bar Muller set himself given that the accused was the sitting president, that the DoJ under Barr claimed wrongly that the president is immune (=he were a king), and that he wanted the democratic system to act on the findings in the report.
cambalache 6y ago
> But... There is no "buts" regarding freedom. I dont know if you have any experience with authoritarian measures but none of them starts like "This is a bad and permanent measure for no reason"... all of them are "exceptional", "to ensure public safety" ,"only valid as long as extraordinary circumstances are present"..all of them. The democrats were claiming fraud 4 years go due to a supposed Russian influence.The evidence was tenuous and circumstantial at best. I dont remember seeing a similar cry for censorship. The problem that America , and for extension a big part of the world has, is that the world is view through tribalism. People LOVE to say they are objective, but that is rarely rarely the case.
- risaacs99 6y ago
  > There is no "buts" regarding freedom. This is clearly not true. You are an intelligent person and can probably think of half a dozen counters to this without trying too hard. You may wish this were the case, but it just isn't. Not under any conceivable society that we could structure.
  - __blockcipher__ 6y ago
    Most people take your view, but I would be very careful to claim that it's actually impossible to not have limits on freedoms. There are some who believe that the state should not exist at all; those types would not concede the ground that there exist any reasonable restrictions on fundamental natural rights. Whereas a statist (i.e. someone who is not an anarchist) would basically always concede that there are limits on rights. To use US jurisprudence as an example, even the very pro-2A supreme court justices have ruled that the state has a compelling interest in reducing gun violence and thus is allowed to take guns away from violent felons, etc. Personally, I take the former position; I think it's better to have a society where property rights (which includes the right of self-ownership i.e. owning your own body) and other natural rights (speech, self defense [technically these are just derived from property rights but I digress]) cannot be infringed upon for any reason. I am very heavily in the minority with that position, and I'm aware of that fact. --- Anyway, switching back to the original topic of censorship of supposed "disinfo", if you don't buy a natural rights argument at all, then from a utilitarian perspective I think it's still a bad idea. In places like Saudi Arabia or Iran, the idea that women should be able to choose what clothing to wear or not wear would be considered harmful to society and worthy of censorship. In Turkey the idea that the Armenian genocide occurred could be considered worthy of censorship. In America the notion that we should not have warrantless wiretapping of all communications between private citizens could be considered dangerous to society, etc etc. It always starts with a "good" reason. It never ends with one.
skoskie 6y ago
I think you nailed it, but I want to reframe it just a little. There have always been limitations on free speech, especially when it presents a danger to others. That’s exactly what the talking heads are doing, and their speech absolutely should be limited. But as with so many harmful things, we humans tend to only be good at reacting to immediate threats while ignoring those that kill us slowly. Think dietary decisions. If you call for violence, you get in trouble, but if you spend months pushing propaganda meant to inspire violence, you get away with it. We’ve got to recognize the cumulative effects are the same and react accordingly.
- netsharc 6y ago
  Your comment makes me wonder what the reaction would be if one political side starts screaming, without any evidence, "Bleach is effective against the virus! Drink it right now, guys! MSM is not talking about it, or even downplaying it, because they want you to take the vaccine and be controlled by Bill Gates". Well in effect QAnon is probably spreading crazy shit like this, but QAnon is way way more fringe than the current "won't-admit-Joe-Biden-won" movement, which comprise a lot of the "R"-branded people, a lot of them are even allowed on Fox News.
- SamReidHughes 6y ago
  Do you think YouTube should suppress Black Lives Matter content? They've inspired, you know, actual violence, with disinformation.
  - gitrog 6y ago
    Would you mind providing an example of that?
    - wu_tang_chris 6y ago
      The disinformation is the notion that police are targeting black people (they're not). The entirety of BLM is built on disinformation. The violence is widespread and easy to find evidence of. There's plenty here, just scroll back to late May: https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/media https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/media I was going provide a long list of specific examples but I am very skeptical it would have any effect, I'd rather not waste my time.
throway1gjj 6y ago
Wait, are you talking about the Russia hoax or Charlottesville hoax?
briefcomment 6y ago
I mean, what's your source for whether right wing media is lying? Left wing media? Does that really make you feel like you're getting an accurate picture of what's happening?
- ketzo 6y ago
  The election is over. Right wing media is claiming that it's not. That's a lie. End of story.
  - netsharc 6y ago
    To elaborate: right wingers claim massive fraud, they claim to have evidence, but the cases they've taken to court have been flimisier than fifth grader writing assignments and have mostly been thrown out. To grandparent commenter: at a certain point you have to use a bit of your intelligence and see for yourself whether a claim is full of shit or has merit. Unfortunately this might be an example of Dunning-Kruger in action...
    - themaninthedark 6y ago
      From my understanding, most of the cases that have been thrown out were due to lack of standing not evidentiary merit.
      - oldfriend 6y ago
        That's correct, many of the complaints have been dismissed for non-evidentiary reasons. The talking point that 50 cases have been dismissed is at best misleading. There have been a wide variety of complaints, in multiple jurisdictions, from multiple plantiffs, alleging a variety of facts. Drawing any single conclusion about the entirety of evidence based on this aggregation of dissimilars is tenuous at best. As they said, perhaps an example of dunning kruger in action.
  - skoopie 6y ago
    According to left-wing media
anonymousab 6y ago
I don't think we're anywhere near peak. The potential of deepfake videos - and not realistic ones necessarily, but memey reaffirments ala many photoshops - is massive and heavily underutilized compared to where they could be. And that's just one small dimension of lightly explored territory. If anything, this cycle has simply shown that there is massive merit in investing heavily in brazen manipulation techniques. We ain't seen nothing yet.
- SerLava 6y ago
  In the long term, Deepfake won't make people believe in fake videos, it will just make all confidence in video evidence disappear. People will trust some fake videos until they see stunningly realistic videos of themselves hanging out with Hitler, or whatever. Later we will have some video devices that use some kind of encryption and network connectivity to validate frames of video faster than they could be post-processed, creating trustworthy video. However, crazy people will just say the organizations running the validation are illegitimate.
  - JKCalhoun 6y ago
    > it will just make all confidence in video evidence disappear You don't see a problem with that? Why stop there, why have confidence in anything any longer? Earth is flat, earth is round? Who knows, both are likely.
    - antibuddy 6y ago
      Video material is going to lose its value, like many other kinds of evidence before. Just think about your own judgement about pictures nowadays and you can probably apply it to videos in 10-20 years. Neither of them will lose all of their value as evidence, but they will be adjusted as technology is going forward.
      - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
        A lot of people are going to fall for the con before we get to that point, unfortunately.
neogodless 6y ago
The President is the most powerful figure of the government. Government censorship is the greatest threat to democracy. The President wants his voice to be the loudest, most trusted voice. The President wants to discredit any dissenting voices. The President only wants your vote to count if you voted for him. If you are against censorship, how can you stand behind such a President, who wants to control the messaging that every citizen hears and believes, and whether your own voice even counts? Who here thinks more people get political information from President Trump than get political news from YouTube?
- disgrunt 6y ago
  > If you are against censorship, how can you stand behind such a President, who wants to control the messaging that every citizen hears and believes, and whether your own voice even counts? Because this supposedly omnipotent being can't even tweet without a warning message attached to it?
  - neogodless 6y ago
    Where did I claim omnipotence? Yes - when your own government feeds you misinformation, it should come with warning labels. Trusting your government without any consideration is handing over freedom foolishly.
    - disgrunt 6y ago
      Your entire post makes it sound like Trump is some kind of dictator. Yet he can't even tweet without a bright red warning message disputing it. If Trump is having his message subverted, then maybe your views on censorship are misdirected?
      - ilikehurdles 6y ago
        I hope you realize how your argument is in bad faith.
  - knowaveragejoe 6y ago
disgrunt 6y ago
> What is going on in the US just now is unprecedented in modern Western democracies - we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA. Mainstream news networks like Fox have talking heads spouting venomous lies that are demonstrably and trivially proven as such. The POTUS is lying on an hourly basis (many of those lies just brazenly, ridiculously false), and has millions of people believing his every word - he's personally profiting hugely, while brainwashing them and whipping them up into frenzy. It's fucking dangerous, especially with the US' lax gun laws. Yeah, don't see a political slant here...
- Daishiman 6y ago
  There is definitely a political slant. It just turns out that one side is obviously factually true for all neutral observers, and the other side is in the equivalent of a collective psychotic break from reality.
  - newfriend 6y ago
    The political party I agree with is factually correct! The other party is insane! I wonder if the people you disagree with would say the exact same thing?
    - Daishiman 6y ago
      > The political party I agree with is factually correct! The other party is insane! Yes buddy, sorry to be hard about it, but sometimes you're right and the other side is wrong. It's not about partisanship; it's about objective reality. And the objective reality is that for anyone who's not stuck on the Fox/OANN spin cycle (which includes the billions of US outside the US watching from afar) the results are clear, conclusive and bright as day.
    - bob33212 6y ago
      Certainly there are videos made by Democrats which include wild inaccuracies. You have to draw the line somewhere. Imagine someone buying all the toilet paper in a town and then running targeted adds on-line to start panic buying. So they can sell theirs. At some point Google becomes an accessory to price gouging law. What if Trump ends up in prison for violating the oath of the office? Does Google have no liability in helping him commit his crimes?
artvark11 6y ago
The media has been the propaganda division of military industrial complex for decades. Mainstream networks spouting lies is nothing new.
fsflover 6y ago
See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24813641 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24813641
macksd 6y ago
> I don't like private companies getting to decide what's truthful and what's not, but it's not like the US government is doing a better job If the responsibility has to lie with either one (to police other people's truth, I mean - both have a responsibility not to spew the garbage themselves) then we're screwed. If a majority of the population simply doesn't have the critical thinking and background knowledge necessary to weed out fake news, democracy simply can't work. I would argue we're there in the United States. Too much bias for us to recover from our current politics without very significant changes to our system and / or the population.
- mistermann 6y ago
  > If a majority of the population simply doesn't have the critical thinking and background knowledge necessary to weed out fake news, democracy simply can't work. One could probably make this same claim about a wide array of things that people are not capable of on an individual basis, yet humanity can typically overcome these with various systemic approaches (why have every individual perform every task, when many can be offloaded to public services). Does it seem odd that no one's floated the idea that rather than providing information to the public only through a kind of whirlwind of conflicting news flashes and memes, that we also adopt an approach where we endeavour to assemble all important issues into a slowly changing master list, and then off of that we attach news updates, centralized, evidence-based fact checking, public debate & voting, etc? Of course this is extremely far from easy, and is surely impossible to do perfectly, but it doesn't seem at all like a crazy idea to me...and yet, I don't think I've ever heard the idea mentioned.
AlexandrB 6y ago
Whatever you think of Trump's politics, I think it's safe to say that his time in office has set a series of very bad precedents for the US political process. This is just the latest in that series. I agree that this is the "least worst" choice in the short term, but it fails to address what I think are the core problems with Youtube w.r.t. radicalization and fake news while setting a precedent for blocking political content in the future.
- GordonS 6y ago
  I fully agree. What YouTube is doing right now is perhaps the "least worst" to deal with radicalisation in the very short term - but if this increasing lie-based polarisation continues unchecked, I genuinely fear for the future of the US. But what can realistically be done while maintaining freedom of speech, and especially when the "leader of the free world" is arguably the main culprit?
linuxftw 6y ago
Do you yourself have first hand knowledge that what is being said are lies, or are you relying on a 3rd party media source to determine what's real and what isn't? > he's personally profiting hugely, while brainwashing them and whipping them up into frenzy Who's being whipped up into a frenzy, how do you know this to be true? Did you see it on... the news? Members of which political party recently participated in wide-spread property crime (aka 'peaceful protests' depending on which 'news' organization you follow)? Can't you see how applying one set of standards to your preferred political views and another to those you disagree with is hypocritical?
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  I’m not aware of any party requirements to have participated in the summer protests. I would guess that most of them were democrats, or greens, or socialists, but I didn’t see anything partisan about them.
nodesocket 6y ago
The fundamental problem is these tech companies are claiming to be fair 3rd party moderators of the internet and all media, but they are heavily biased. I highly recommend watching the documentary The Plot Against the President[1] on Amazon Prime. It does a very good job showing how the media does not report the facts anymore. I bet most people don't even know that the entire Trump and Russia ties / collusion were fabricated and proved patently false. The media decided to ignore reporting that, leading most people to think Trump has ties with Russia. It's dishonest and disingenuous and manipulating people to think a certain way and believe things that are not true. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Plot-Against-President-Devin-Nunes/dp/B08LMJ93LL https://www.amazon.com/Plot-Against-President-Devin-Nunes/dp...
cm2187 6y ago
You probably switched off your TV the last four years (and you were right to do so). But the likes of CNN and MSNBC have been pushing their own fake news continuously for 4 years, pretending that the election had been stolen, that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, etc. I think all of this is bad, but I refuse to accept that this is a bad behavior that just came up and is the monopoly of a single side of the political aisle. All this is, is Youtube picking a side in this fight. By the way, on the back of the David Fincher's movie I re-watched Citizen Kane. I love the part where Kane's newspaper prepared two alternative front pages the night of the elections: "Kane elected governor" and "Massive fraud at the polls". 1942. Nothing new under the sun.
- weaksauce 6y ago
  > that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia the mueller report stated "while the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign, the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges." That and they also found many cases of obstruction of justice that could be charged and would have said that he was cleared if they could clear him. so obstruct justice numerous times and then the outcome of that obstruction makes it so that they can't find sufficient evidence of a crime. Reporting on that is not "fake news."
  - roenxi 6y ago
    > the Mueller report stated "while the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign, the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges." That covers a very large range of possible realities. It also describes the expected relationship between every US president and the Russians - diplomacy doesn't happen by telepathy. If there is a point there, it needs to be made more explicitly.
    - weaksauce 6y ago
      > It also describes the expected relationship between every US president and the Russians - diplomacy doesn't happen by telepathy. this specifically was way before anyone held any power and it also covered many connections that were covered up and lied about to the investigators.
sam_goody 6y ago
The POTUS has made claims that need to be thought about rationally. Does the tech world really think that electronic voting is reliable when done the way Dominion did it? Is there is a rational explanation when votes jump from one candidate to another on live public TV? Are there too many acceptable mail in votes to make sense? Etc. The conclusion for someone who does the research may be that things are OK, that all is legit. I don't know, as I have no interest in doing that research. But if you start removing all the videos that present any arguments in that direction, than I will definitely assume there is fraud going on. It is far better for all the "proofs" to be out there and available, than to have people saying that all of the "proofs" were deleted by the people with obvious interests.
- timmytokyo 6y ago
  It's telling that none of these "fraud" arguments ever make it into the president's campaign's lawsuits. They're only ever repeated on sympathetic propaganda outlets. It's almost as if they realize they're peddling bullshit.
- drchopchop 6y ago
  The POTUS makes claims which have no evidence backing them, which is why he keeps losing over and over again in court. Why should any random claim be called a "proof"? Should flat earth videos get the same equivalent as NASA programming? Why should we, as society, give equal weight to people like yourself who have "no interest in doing that research"?
  - antibuddy 6y ago
    Nobody says they are the same. However false or even only what one might consider false or misleading is a very low bar for censorship.
    - gitrog 6y ago
      Come on, it's not being censored based solely on the fact that it's false and misleading, it's being censored because it has the potential to incite violence and cause serious social upheaval.
nailer 6y ago
> What is going on in the US just now is unprecedented in modern Western democracies - we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA. Mainstream news networks like Fox have talking heads spouting venomous lies that are demonstrably and trivially proven as such. Agreed about Fox, but conversely - the three liberal networks supported the Russiagate conspiracy theory that alleged Trump had colluded which the Russia to win the 2016 election. Let's not pretend brazen lying is somehow a new thing created by Donald Trump.
conceptualspace 6y ago
as the nazi minister of propaganda once said, "truth is the foundation of the press, and all we ask of it!"
wdr1 6y ago
> unprecedented in modern Western democracies - we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA. Citation needed? The founding fathers owned newspapers & regularly fabricated stories about opponents. Ben Franklin openly wrote about it and he was far from alone. William Randolph Hearst controlled a significant portion of newspapers & blatantly used used that power to manipulate public opinion, frequently with suspect information. We went through a whole era of questionable news -- referred to as "yellow journalism": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism The fake news around the Gulf of Tonkin escalated the conflict into a relatively minor to what the US would call the Vietnam War. The fake news about Iraq WMDs led to the disastrous second golf war. Bill Clinton stood before the camera & said "I did not have sex with that woman" and his wife, HRC, said it was all "a ring wing conspiracy." Obama said "if you like your health plan, you can keep it", which several newspapers defended & fact-checked as true, as until much later rating it as lie of the year. Don't get me wrong. I despise Trump, I despise what's he's doing, and I want to see him removed. But if we're too be critical of him playing loose with facts, we can't be ourselves. And saying this is "peak" when it's likely only a local maxima seems dubious at best.
- some-guy 6y ago
  It's a matter of degree. The _degree_ of constant lying the current president does is absolutely insane. I don't like what YouTube is doing either, but it's really hard to say what any other alternative is at this point.
- GordonS 6y ago
  You point out some good examples, though I'd argue some of those were politicians/governments lying and those lies simple being reported (admittedly, often with an editorial bias). I think what we are seeing now is different. People like Trump don't need doctored satellite photographs and elaborately constructed propaganda that the press will fall for - they can use social media platforms as a very public podium from which to spew lies. And, perhaps because of the viral nature of social media, and perhaps because of the inherent terseness of Twitter, people are bombarded by these tiny nuggests of "truth" from "trusted" people who "obviously" wouldn't lie, and the become "truth" for those people. I think the key difference now is that it's never been so easy to put out "news", and it's never been so easy to consume so very many sources of "news", or so frequently.
jsperson 6y ago
> we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA Who cares?! As you said, Fox is crappy news so they don't get my business. Same thing with (generally) MSNBC and others. To answer the next question: The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Shepard Smith > it's one of those "least worst" choices I respectfully and completely disagree. This is policing thought. Things are not worse than they have been before. The communist witch hunts of the 50s is one example. A lot of the things FDR did were marginal (turned out alright though). Once you start controlling freedom of expression, you own all expression. No one is smart enough. The free market may suck in the short run, but in the long run it will work out. One perfect example of this: > The POTUS is lying on an hourly basis Yep, and HE LOST! His lying was a significant factor in this loss. Come January he won't be the POTUS.
- GordonS 6y ago
  > Who cares?! As you said, Fox is crappy news so they don't get my business I wish I could brush it off so easily, but the truth is that, well, the truth, does matter. You or I might choose to consume "news" from the likes of Fox, but many millions do. At that scale, the lies and fake news have an undeniable impact.
  - jsperson 6y ago
    So here’s what will happen. Ban the “fake news” from Google, FB etc. You will have a pristine, non-offensive safe space bubble. All the banned folks will create their own safe space bubble on Parler or some other yet to be created platform. This won’t be a fringe group. It could be 30-40% of the populous. Comity and public discourse is extinct and then we really do have problems. I think we are much better off with the misinformation and lies out in the sunlight for all to see and refute.
liopleurodon 6y ago
lol. you're brainwashed if you believe the lies of the legacy media. this election was stolen. there's so much evidence. video evidence, affidavits, forensic evidence of voting machines, proof of tens of thousands of underage people voting, and so much more. Pennsylvania: 1.8 million ballots mailed out, 2.5 million ballots received. Hello? Trump won and Biden stole it.
- togs 6y ago
  Why should we believe you if you don't cite any evidence for your claims?
- Analemma_ 6y ago
  It's amazing that the evidence is so obvious, and yet none of Trump's lawyers cited it in any of their multiple lawsuits, where they would be jailed for perjury if they were lying. Almost as if it isn't actually true.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    Lawyers aren't under oath and wouldn't be jailed for perjury. Now, they would be committing all kinds of other misconduct besides perjury, but then, Trump's (remaining) attorneys have been committing all kinds of other misconduct (that the campaign being waged requires that explains why so many have left.)
- goshx 6y ago
  ah yes, look at all the court cases that Trump's legal team has won and all the evidence they presented. And you call someone else brainwashed, holly fuck.
- tootie 6y ago
  Case in point, should the HN mods ban this user for spreading deliberate disinformation? Btw, 2 seconds of googling shows that PA sent out 3 million absentee ballots and received 2.5M.
  - 6y ago
TomMckenny 6y ago
Note it is backwards to think that if a platform _fails_ to carry the regime's message then _the platform_ is impeding freedom rather than noting that it is _the government_ that is applying anti-freedom pressure on a dissenting _non government_ organization. Youtube is _not_ the government but by reigning in falsehoods, is acting in _opposition_ to the government here. So what Youtube is doing is the very definition of _freedom_ of expression. A government pressuring them to carry pro-government messages is the crime, not the other way around. You are now having the government and pro-government voices pressure non-government organizations to publish pro-government material while claiming that it "protects" freedom of speech. This the exact _opposite_ of freedom of speech, it is in fact forced propaganda. So indeed there is no "but" because it is _the government_ that is in the wrong by pressuring publishers in what they must include.
- pestaa 6y ago
  Finally, someone! A private company doing content moderation & censorship is not a violation of the free speech amendment. Freedom of expression is not freedom to use any platform or service -- it is protection against state level actors.
jrockway 6y ago
I think the difference between now and the past is that everyone can exercise their constitutional right to free speech. Free speech used to be somewhat expensive -- by the time you've gone to journalism school and have been hired by someone with a media outlet, you've become the establishment. You want to tell a good story and hold those in power to account, but you know that you have a reputation and you can throw it all away if you don't think carefully about which stories you write and publish. All of this care has made free speech look pretty good and that's it's a must-have for society. (Using your words, to some extent this is "private companies getting to decide what's truthful and what's not"; Facebook doing it is not a whole lot different than the New York Times doing it. The Times doesn't publish every "letter to the editor", and Facebook doesn't have to either.) What I think is happening now is that free speech is actually free. Thanks to tech companies, there is no cost to getting your ideas out there. The problem is, you have nothing to lose if your reputation is destroyed by poorly-thought-out speech. ("Cancel culture" seems to be the workaround for this, but it doesn't seem very good to me.) The result is that we have decided that we don't actually like this whole freedom thing. But, I think it's actually pretty okay; you have to take the bad with the good (or the very bad with the very good). We should all be vigilant about calls for regulating speech. It looks like a very good short-term solution, but it won't be a very good long-term solution. To have the best possible society, we need to confront the underlying issues head-on. It's not "fake news" or that people are inflammatory on Facebook. It's that they don't have the educational background to think critically about what they read or hear, and can't actually distinguish a flame designed to manipulate them from writing that is designed to inform them. They are also often so isolated they can't even begin to understand other people's perspectives, and so have no mental model of how to even interpret writing they don't personally understand. As a society, we have to make sure that we fix this problem. We need every human being to get a great education. We need people to interact with people that look different from them from an early age. It will be expensive, it will be hard, and it will take a long time. But I think looking out 200 years, it's where we want to go, and we should get started right now. Resist the calls to sweep posts you don't like under the rug, or even to make them illegal. It won't fix any of the underlying problems.
- neogodless 6y ago
1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
"But..." YouTube viewers are not Google's customers.1 If it is to survive, Google must cater to the wishes of its clients. 1. Yes, I am aware that a small number of people pay Google to remove ads, but that is not a viable business model unless Google is also selling ad space.
paul7986 6y ago
Ummm this country is built upon free speech ... all free speech from the dawn of time has either been true or false! Youtube getting involved and hushing any type of free speech that does not cause physical harm or threatening to one's life is vile and disgusting period! I am independent who leans republican yet did not/could not vote for the maniac.
seanwilson 6y ago
> but it's not like the US government is doing a better job I think this is the part people are overlooking when they talk about censorship and freedom of speech...what are you supposed to do when it's the government of your country itself that is actively pushing large amounts of misinformation? Does it not completely change the situation compared to an individual or organisation doing this? It takes more effort to show a lie to be false than it does to tell another lie, and the public only have finite time to weigh up the accuracy of information. The government has more power to push out convincing misinformation in vast quantities than anyone else. A lot of the time of you don't need censorship because truth and open critique will drown out the lies, but there's going to be a breaking point when the misinformation being thrown out becomes overpowering.
- gwright 6y ago
  > The government has more power to push out convincing misinformation in vast quantities than anyone else. Really? You don't think that the mass media is at least in the same league?
  - seanwilson 6y ago
    Yes, on reflection, I could have phrased it better. The government is for sure a powerful entity though and although the media can push misinformation, there's multiple outlets (that aren't all working together to push the same message) and only a single government per country. Anything the government says or does immediately becomes news and gets reported everywhere too, and few have a megaphone like that. Just having a lie with no evidence being discussed is enough to give it some legitimacy.
gentleterror 6y ago
Yeah, like that one time when Twitter and Facebook banned spreading of a mostly true article about Hunter Biden. Oh, wait, that rejects your point, man. Social networks are much more venomous.
- etchalon 6y ago
  They banned the spread of a story that lacked anything resembling coloration or basic standards of journalism. "Mostly" is still completely unknown when it comes to the contents of that laptop, it's provenance, and the veracity of individual emails.
  - gentleterror 6y ago
    Well, Hunter Biden smoking a pipe naked photo is legit.
complianceowl 6y ago
Prefacing your attempted justification of censorship with "I don't like what YouTube is doing." doesn't add an ounce of validity to your statement. I am absolutely no fan of Fox News, but for you to not mention other propaganda-producing, Fake News outlets like CNN and Bloomberg is a huge hit to your credibility. I'll openly admit I am on the conservative side of politics, but my identity isn't wrapped up in politics; that's not how I identify myself or other people. I'm surrounded by conservatives; that's my world, and guess what? There's a lot of discontent with the way election fraud claims are being handled, and despite almost every single one of them having enough firearms to supply a small militia, nobody is even remotely close to even thinking about some sort of armed resistance. You say it's dangerous? You need to stop letting mainstream media form your perception of the world. What's dangerous is constantly race-baiting people of color like myself and white people against each other. To people who truly love and believe in freedom, your comment is disgusting. Wrong information must be countered and corrected by right information -- not censorship, buddy!
eloff 6y ago
It's all fine until they censor us. Sooner or later they'll go to far. In my opinion they already have. When they censor medical doctors for talking about the facts around HCQ. Or I see PHDs censoring themselves on the subject of covid19 vaccinations instead of being able to have an open, honest conversation. I don't like all the lies and fake news out there and how easily it sucks people in. But censorship isn't the answer in my opinion.
ASalazarMX 6y ago
This is the inevitable ruckus as more people realize that USA is a rigged democracy, and lose trust in the electoral system. A plain and transparent democracy would be "everybody votes, the candidate with more votes wins". Instead USA has the electoral college (what for? it has to vote the same as its citizens), winning by districts (what for? districts only exist to allow gerrymandering), and vote by mail without strict controls. I bet fewer people would complain if the system wasn't so evidently made for gaming numbers.
- sdwa 6y ago
  Ironically the Electoral College was designed in part to protect against populist lunatics like Trump, but it's he who has benefited from it.
- belorn 6y ago
  It would be much similar to other nations if instead of an electoral college, people would just vote for senate seats. The senate then vote on a senate president who then becomes the leader of the nation. In order to not give small states too much power they then could do as the EU parliament and give seats based on degressive proportionality.
its_simple 6y ago
I don't need Youtube to tell me what I should and shouldn't watch. It's not any more complicated than that. If you need someone to tell you what you should or shouldn't be watching, then that's your problem, and they should make a product specifically for you rather than forcing it on everyone that participated in building their product and participating in their business and making them money. This is a total slap in the face. It is amazing to me that there are so many people here discussing why they need Youtube to tell them which videos to watch.
- confidantlake 6y ago
  As far as I know, youtube doesn't let me watch or upload porn on their site despite it being legal. Should they be forced to allow it?
  - its_simple 6y ago
    Who are you talking to?
    - confidantlake 6y ago
      I was responding to your post. You mentioned >I don't need Youtube to tell me what I should and shouldn't watch I was wondering if that extended to youtube banning porn. If you don't want to engage that is fine I will go reply to some other comment.
graycat 6y ago
For "The POTUS is lying on an hourly basis (many of those lies just brazenly, ridiculously false), " I've paid fairly close attention to Trump's statements since 2015 or so, and I have not seen any such, certainly not one a day or hour. If there are such lies, then I'd sure like to know about them. As part of that, I'd like to see credible references, hopefully to primary sources, that is, just following common high school term paper writing standards. I will grant that maybe Trump (1) exaggerates and (2) says things to gauge reactions, e.g., the common "run it up the flag pole to see if anyone salutes". But actual lies, you have one an hour for four years, and so far I don't have even one. As you are an HN contributor, I'd believe that you want to stick close to what you can document. Maybe you could document three of his serious lies?
- standyro 6y ago
  "I will grant that maybe Trump exaggerates" is an immense exaggeration. Extreme exaggeration is endemic to his character. It's not a maybe. He exaggerates everyday, all day. "Nobody has more respect for women than Donald Trump!" "Nobody has more respect for women than I do." "Nobody has more respect for women than I do. Nobody." “Nobody reads the Bible more than me.” "Nobody loves the Bible more than I do" "Nobody does self-deprecating humor better than I do. It’s not even close" “Nobody knows more about taxes than I do, maybe in the history of the world.” "Nobody knows more about trade than me" "Nobody knows the (visa) system better than me. I know the H1B. I know the H2B. Nobody knows it better than me."
  - graycat 6y ago
    Wow! Good to see that that is what you had in mind!!! I count such statements as personality characteristics, unpolished, maybe gauche behavior, not welcome in country club society unless are worth > $5 billion! I'm really sensitive to lying, but such statements don't even start to raise my fur. Gee, I was worried that you'd found some actual lies, e.g., like we have heard nearly daily (I won't say hourly) from the FBI about Page, Flynn, and Manafort and from Pelosi and Schiff about Trump. For the mainstream media, I gave up on them after the gang up, pile, party talking point collection in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1ab6uxg908&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1ab6uxg908&feature=youtu.be That is from 1-2 years ago and fun to watch now. For what the next few weeks holds, I'm finding some interesting reading in https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163215/20201209144840609_2020-12-09%20-%20Texas%20v.%20Pennsylvania%20-%20Amicus%20Brief%20of%20Missouri%20et%20al.%20-%20Final%20with%20Tables.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163215/2020... with In the Supreme Court of the United States STATE OF TEXAS, Plaintiff, v. COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA, STATE OF GEORGIA, STATE OF MICHIGAN, AND STATE OF WISCONSIN, Defendants. On Motion for Leave to File Bill of Complaint BRIEF OF STATE OF MISSOURI AND 16 OTHER STATES AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFF’S MOTION FOR LEAVE TO FILE BILL OF COMPLAINT with Article II requires that each State “shall appoint” its Presidential electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” U.S. CONST. art. II, § 1, cl. 4 (emphasis added); see also id. art. I, § 4, cl. 2 (providing that, in each State, the “Legislature thereof” shall establish “[t]he Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives”). Wow! I'd missed that last part about the Senators and Representatives -- it did occur to me that the argument for the POTUS should also apply to other elected national offices. Good to see that part! Sooooo, the state legislatures ALSO get to put their hands, fingers, fingernails, hammers, crowbars, etc., on the when, where, and how of elections of Senators and Representatives in their own states and on fair dealing in the other states. Some smart founding fathers or amendment writers. Both you and Youtube might be circumspect about betting the farm on Biden taking office on 1/20/2021. "It ain't over until ..." whatever that saying was!
Latty 6y ago
It's kinda funny to me how many people who claim to value "true free speech" are in favour of the government being able to enforce speech. Fundamentally, what people are saying here is that the current US administration should be able to force YouTube to distribute material containing lies that benefit them. This is obviously just as harmful as someone being stopped from publishing something by the government. I agree there are cases where private entities can become so important to speech that they need to be regulated, but the kneejerk response to this kind of thing just seems so ill thought out. The right to freedom of expression clearly has to include the freedom to not express something. The obvious example is, should Google be able to go to Fox News and force them to publish pieces that Google write? Is the line editorial control? That path leads to YouTube ceasing to exist as a platform anyone can upload to, which seems like a large cost as well. I don't think there are easy answers, and "free speech" tends to end up as a thought-terminating cliche in these discussions, ignoring the fact that there are multiple parties with the right to freedom of speech that can conflict. The question really becomes about the right to platform, and if everyone has a legal right to any platform, everything will be drowned out in noise.
simnim 6y ago
I recommend Hate Inc by Matt Taibbi. It's a fantastic book that brilliantly illuminates the false dichotomy of red team vs blue team politics and news media. We should all be careful of the corporate press. Their purpose is to profit, not inform. This applies both to red team and blue team news media. Comfortable lies are profitable while difficult truths are not. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Silencing voices we don't like only give them credence and power, especially in the age of the internet and new media.

CamperBob2 6y ago

The POTUS is lying on an hourly basis (many of those lies just brazenly, ridiculously false), and has millions of people believing his every word - he's personally profiting hugely, while brainwashing them and whipping them up into frenzy. Also, I believe his forces should have all the best guns. Is that a reasonable rephrasing of your point?

metalliqaz 6y ago
the armed forces don't belong to POTUS as much as the current occupant of the office would like them to have loyalty to him personally, they don't still, Congress has given up too much control and needs to take it back
- CamperBob2 6y ago
  the armed forces don't belong to POTUS * blinks * Yes, they do. He's their commander in chief, authorized by Congress to attack anyone or anything in the name of "fighting terrorism" with zero immediate accountability to anyone. (And yes, as you suggest, this is a problem Congress created for itself.) POTUS also has the ability to invoke something called the "Insurrection Act," which effectively deploys the military on domestic soil for law-enforcement purposes. Oh, and speaking of Federal law enforcement, that's an executive branch function as well. as much as the current occupant of the office would like them to have loyalty to him personally, they don't An idealistic perspective that isn't always borne out by reality. [1] still, Congress has given up too much control and needs to take it back That's for darned sure. Of course, a complicit Congress is arguably worse than an impotent one, because it opens the door to a captive judicial branch as well. [1]: https://taskandpurpose.com/news/dod-report-reveals-details-seals-punished-flying-trump-flag/ https://taskandpurpose.com/news/dod-report-reveals-details-s... : “[The convoy commander] was also aware of the rules precluding Department of Defense (DoD) endorsement of political candidates during an election,” the documents stated. “However, he believed that flying the flag was not inappropriate since the election was over and since the candidate was now the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.”

tmpz22 6y ago

The GOP has raised over $200m since the election, with very little of it earmarked (<25%) for actual legal expenses. Most of it will go towards paying off campaign debts, the Georgia runoff election, and the rest of it who knows where else. I can only see this behavior being completely normalized due to its effectiveness. Short of massive bipartisan regulation limiting election fundraising this is the future of America.

weaksauce 6y ago
The only way forward i see is massive campaign finance reform. what's happening now is a travesty and the citizenry doesn't benefit from it.

andrewclunn 6y ago

Hmmm, lies? Would you believe... video evidence? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8bBMXSXbWE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8bBMXSXbWE Alternative media is the ONLY way the truth gets out there. Calling them fake news, or promoting "official" propaga... I mean "news" outlets doesn't protect you from misinformation. That IS the misinformation.

99_00 6y ago

>we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA. Mainstream news networks like Fox have talking heads spouting venomous lies that are demonstrably and trivially proven as such I think that mainstream news has been doing this for the past 4 years. Here are 3 examples: 1) Trump Russia collusion hoax. 2) Trump saying that neo-nazis and white supremacists are "fine people" hoax. 3) Trump recommending people "inject bleach" hoax.

Daishiman 6y ago
You mean the Trump-Russia collusion that ended up with Michael Flynn going to prison?
- 99_00 6y ago
  It's not clear exactly what point you're trying to make here.
  - Daishiman 6y ago
    The point is very clear. But let me clarify it: there was an effort by state actors to manipulate and aid a specific party in a way that is fully illegal.
    - 99_00 6y ago
      The Trump campaign did not coordinated or conspire with the Russian government in its election-interference activities.
      - onli 6y ago
        It very likely did. The Muller report showed that it did, at least in all likelihood and given the evidence available. The report just stopped short of taking the next step, calling it proven and going forward with whatever the next step would have been. It did so because of the very high bar Muller set himself given that the accused was the sitting president, that the DoJ under Barr claimed wrongly that the president is immune (=he were a king), and that he wanted the democratic system to act on the findings in the report.

cambalache 6y ago

> But... There is no "buts" regarding freedom. I dont know if you have any experience with authoritarian measures but none of them starts like "This is a bad and permanent measure for no reason"... all of them are "exceptional", "to ensure public safety" ,"only valid as long as extraordinary circumstances are present"..all of them. The democrats were claiming fraud 4 years go due to a supposed Russian influence.The evidence was tenuous and circumstantial at best. I dont remember seeing a similar cry for censorship. The problem that America , and for extension a big part of the world has, is that the world is view through tribalism. People LOVE to say they are objective, but that is rarely rarely the case.

risaacs99 6y ago
> There is no "buts" regarding freedom. This is clearly not true. You are an intelligent person and can probably think of half a dozen counters to this without trying too hard. You may wish this were the case, but it just isn't. Not under any conceivable society that we could structure.
- __blockcipher__ 6y ago
  Most people take your view, but I would be very careful to claim that it's actually impossible to not have limits on freedoms. There are some who believe that the state should not exist at all; those types would not concede the ground that there exist any reasonable restrictions on fundamental natural rights. Whereas a statist (i.e. someone who is not an anarchist) would basically always concede that there are limits on rights. To use US jurisprudence as an example, even the very pro-2A supreme court justices have ruled that the state has a compelling interest in reducing gun violence and thus is allowed to take guns away from violent felons, etc. Personally, I take the former position; I think it's better to have a society where property rights (which includes the right of self-ownership i.e. owning your own body) and other natural rights (speech, self defense [technically these are just derived from property rights but I digress]) cannot be infringed upon for any reason. I am very heavily in the minority with that position, and I'm aware of that fact. --- Anyway, switching back to the original topic of censorship of supposed "disinfo", if you don't buy a natural rights argument at all, then from a utilitarian perspective I think it's still a bad idea. In places like Saudi Arabia or Iran, the idea that women should be able to choose what clothing to wear or not wear would be considered harmful to society and worthy of censorship. In Turkey the idea that the Armenian genocide occurred could be considered worthy of censorship. In America the notion that we should not have warrantless wiretapping of all communications between private citizens could be considered dangerous to society, etc etc. It always starts with a "good" reason. It never ends with one.

skoskie 6y ago

I think you nailed it, but I want to reframe it just a little. There have always been limitations on free speech, especially when it presents a danger to others. That’s exactly what the talking heads are doing, and their speech absolutely should be limited. But as with so many harmful things, we humans tend to only be good at reacting to immediate threats while ignoring those that kill us slowly. Think dietary decisions. If you call for violence, you get in trouble, but if you spend months pushing propaganda meant to inspire violence, you get away with it. We’ve got to recognize the cumulative effects are the same and react accordingly.

netsharc 6y ago
Your comment makes me wonder what the reaction would be if one political side starts screaming, without any evidence, "Bleach is effective against the virus! Drink it right now, guys! MSM is not talking about it, or even downplaying it, because they want you to take the vaccine and be controlled by Bill Gates". Well in effect QAnon is probably spreading crazy shit like this, but QAnon is way way more fringe than the current "won't-admit-Joe-Biden-won" movement, which comprise a lot of the "R"-branded people, a lot of them are even allowed on Fox News.
SamReidHughes 6y ago
Do you think YouTube should suppress Black Lives Matter content? They've inspired, you know, actual violence, with disinformation.
- gitrog 6y ago
  Would you mind providing an example of that?
  - wu_tang_chris 6y ago
    The disinformation is the notion that police are targeting black people (they're not). The entirety of BLM is built on disinformation. The violence is widespread and easy to find evidence of. There's plenty here, just scroll back to late May: https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/media https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/media I was going provide a long list of specific examples but I am very skeptical it would have any effect, I'd rather not waste my time.

throway1gjj 6y ago

Wait, are you talking about the Russia hoax or Charlottesville hoax?

briefcomment 6y ago

I mean, what's your source for whether right wing media is lying? Left wing media? Does that really make you feel like you're getting an accurate picture of what's happening?

ketzo 6y ago
The election is over. Right wing media is claiming that it's not. That's a lie. End of story.
- netsharc 6y ago
  To elaborate: right wingers claim massive fraud, they claim to have evidence, but the cases they've taken to court have been flimisier than fifth grader writing assignments and have mostly been thrown out. To grandparent commenter: at a certain point you have to use a bit of your intelligence and see for yourself whether a claim is full of shit or has merit. Unfortunately this might be an example of Dunning-Kruger in action...
  - themaninthedark 6y ago
    From my understanding, most of the cases that have been thrown out were due to lack of standing not evidentiary merit.
    - oldfriend 6y ago
      That's correct, many of the complaints have been dismissed for non-evidentiary reasons. The talking point that 50 cases have been dismissed is at best misleading. There have been a wide variety of complaints, in multiple jurisdictions, from multiple plantiffs, alleging a variety of facts. Drawing any single conclusion about the entirety of evidence based on this aggregation of dissimilars is tenuous at best. As they said, perhaps an example of dunning kruger in action.
- skoopie 6y ago
  According to left-wing media

anonymousab 6y ago

I don't think we're anywhere near peak. The potential of deepfake videos - and not realistic ones necessarily, but memey reaffirments ala many photoshops - is massive and heavily underutilized compared to where they could be. And that's just one small dimension of lightly explored territory. If anything, this cycle has simply shown that there is massive merit in investing heavily in brazen manipulation techniques. We ain't seen nothing yet.

SerLava 6y ago
In the long term, Deepfake won't make people believe in fake videos, it will just make all confidence in video evidence disappear. People will trust some fake videos until they see stunningly realistic videos of themselves hanging out with Hitler, or whatever. Later we will have some video devices that use some kind of encryption and network connectivity to validate frames of video faster than they could be post-processed, creating trustworthy video. However, crazy people will just say the organizations running the validation are illegitimate.
- JKCalhoun 6y ago
  > it will just make all confidence in video evidence disappear You don't see a problem with that? Why stop there, why have confidence in anything any longer? Earth is flat, earth is round? Who knows, both are likely.
  - antibuddy 6y ago
    Video material is going to lose its value, like many other kinds of evidence before. Just think about your own judgement about pictures nowadays and you can probably apply it to videos in 10-20 years. Neither of them will lose all of their value as evidence, but they will be adjusted as technology is going forward.
    - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
      A lot of people are going to fall for the con before we get to that point, unfortunately.

neogodless 6y ago

The President is the most powerful figure of the government. Government censorship is the greatest threat to democracy. The President wants his voice to be the loudest, most trusted voice. The President wants to discredit any dissenting voices. The President only wants your vote to count if you voted for him. If you are against censorship, how can you stand behind such a President, who wants to control the messaging that every citizen hears and believes, and whether your own voice even counts? Who here thinks more people get political information from President Trump than get political news from YouTube?

disgrunt 6y ago
> If you are against censorship, how can you stand behind such a President, who wants to control the messaging that every citizen hears and believes, and whether your own voice even counts? Because this supposedly omnipotent being can't even tweet without a warning message attached to it?
- neogodless 6y ago
  Where did I claim omnipotence? Yes - when your own government feeds you misinformation, it should come with warning labels. Trusting your government without any consideration is handing over freedom foolishly.
  - disgrunt 6y ago
    Your entire post makes it sound like Trump is some kind of dictator. Yet he can't even tweet without a bright red warning message disputing it. If Trump is having his message subverted, then maybe your views on censorship are misdirected?
    - ilikehurdles 6y ago
      I hope you realize how your argument is in bad faith.
- knowaveragejoe 6y ago

disgrunt 6y ago

> What is going on in the US just now is unprecedented in modern Western democracies - we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA. Mainstream news networks like Fox have talking heads spouting venomous lies that are demonstrably and trivially proven as such. The POTUS is lying on an hourly basis (many of those lies just brazenly, ridiculously false), and has millions of people believing his every word - he's personally profiting hugely, while brainwashing them and whipping them up into frenzy. It's fucking dangerous, especially with the US' lax gun laws. Yeah, don't see a political slant here...

Daishiman 6y ago
There is definitely a political slant. It just turns out that one side is obviously factually true for all neutral observers, and the other side is in the equivalent of a collective psychotic break from reality.
- newfriend 6y ago
  The political party I agree with is factually correct! The other party is insane! I wonder if the people you disagree with would say the exact same thing?
  - Daishiman 6y ago
    > The political party I agree with is factually correct! The other party is insane! Yes buddy, sorry to be hard about it, but sometimes you're right and the other side is wrong. It's not about partisanship; it's about objective reality. And the objective reality is that for anyone who's not stuck on the Fox/OANN spin cycle (which includes the billions of US outside the US watching from afar) the results are clear, conclusive and bright as day.
  - bob33212 6y ago
    Certainly there are videos made by Democrats which include wild inaccuracies. You have to draw the line somewhere. Imagine someone buying all the toilet paper in a town and then running targeted adds on-line to start panic buying. So they can sell theirs. At some point Google becomes an accessory to price gouging law. What if Trump ends up in prison for violating the oath of the office? Does Google have no liability in helping him commit his crimes?

artvark11 6y ago

The media has been the propaganda division of military industrial complex for decades. Mainstream networks spouting lies is nothing new.

fsflover 6y ago

See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24813641 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24813641

macksd 6y ago

> I don't like private companies getting to decide what's truthful and what's not, but it's not like the US government is doing a better job If the responsibility has to lie with either one (to police other people's truth, I mean - both have a responsibility not to spew the garbage themselves) then we're screwed. If a majority of the population simply doesn't have the critical thinking and background knowledge necessary to weed out fake news, democracy simply can't work. I would argue we're there in the United States. Too much bias for us to recover from our current politics without very significant changes to our system and / or the population.

mistermann 6y ago
> If a majority of the population simply doesn't have the critical thinking and background knowledge necessary to weed out fake news, democracy simply can't work. One could probably make this same claim about a wide array of things that people are not capable of on an individual basis, yet humanity can typically overcome these with various systemic approaches (why have every individual perform every task, when many can be offloaded to public services). Does it seem odd that no one's floated the idea that rather than providing information to the public only through a kind of whirlwind of conflicting news flashes and memes, that we also adopt an approach where we endeavour to assemble all important issues into a slowly changing master list, and then off of that we attach news updates, centralized, evidence-based fact checking, public debate & voting, etc? Of course this is extremely far from easy, and is surely impossible to do perfectly, but it doesn't seem at all like a crazy idea to me...and yet, I don't think I've ever heard the idea mentioned.

AlexandrB 6y ago

Whatever you think of Trump's politics, I think it's safe to say that his time in office has set a series of very bad precedents for the US political process. This is just the latest in that series. I agree that this is the "least worst" choice in the short term, but it fails to address what I think are the core problems with Youtube w.r.t. radicalization and fake news while setting a precedent for blocking political content in the future.

GordonS 6y ago
I fully agree. What YouTube is doing right now is perhaps the "least worst" to deal with radicalisation in the very short term - but if this increasing lie-based polarisation continues unchecked, I genuinely fear for the future of the US. But what can realistically be done while maintaining freedom of speech, and especially when the "leader of the free world" is arguably the main culprit?

linuxftw 6y ago

Do you yourself have first hand knowledge that what is being said are lies, or are you relying on a 3rd party media source to determine what's real and what isn't? > he's personally profiting hugely, while brainwashing them and whipping them up into frenzy Who's being whipped up into a frenzy, how do you know this to be true? Did you see it on... the news? Members of which political party recently participated in wide-spread property crime (aka 'peaceful protests' depending on which 'news' organization you follow)? Can't you see how applying one set of standards to your preferred political views and another to those you disagree with is hypocritical?

amanaplanacanal 6y ago
I’m not aware of any party requirements to have participated in the summer protests. I would guess that most of them were democrats, or greens, or socialists, but I didn’t see anything partisan about them.

nodesocket 6y ago

The fundamental problem is these tech companies are claiming to be fair 3rd party moderators of the internet and all media, but they are heavily biased. I highly recommend watching the documentary The Plot Against the President[1] on Amazon Prime. It does a very good job showing how the media does not report the facts anymore. I bet most people don't even know that the entire Trump and Russia ties / collusion were fabricated and proved patently false. The media decided to ignore reporting that, leading most people to think Trump has ties with Russia. It's dishonest and disingenuous and manipulating people to think a certain way and believe things that are not true. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Plot-Against-President-Devin-Nunes/dp/B08LMJ93LL https://www.amazon.com/Plot-Against-President-Devin-Nunes/dp...

cm2187 6y ago

You probably switched off your TV the last four years (and you were right to do so). But the likes of CNN and MSNBC have been pushing their own fake news continuously for 4 years, pretending that the election had been stolen, that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, etc. I think all of this is bad, but I refuse to accept that this is a bad behavior that just came up and is the monopoly of a single side of the political aisle. All this is, is Youtube picking a side in this fight. By the way, on the back of the David Fincher's movie I re-watched Citizen Kane. I love the part where Kane's newspaper prepared two alternative front pages the night of the elections: "Kane elected governor" and "Massive fraud at the polls". 1942. Nothing new under the sun.

weaksauce 6y ago
> that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia the mueller report stated "while the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign, the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges." That and they also found many cases of obstruction of justice that could be charged and would have said that he was cleared if they could clear him. so obstruct justice numerous times and then the outcome of that obstruction makes it so that they can't find sufficient evidence of a crime. Reporting on that is not "fake news."
- roenxi 6y ago
  > the Mueller report stated "while the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign, the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges." That covers a very large range of possible realities. It also describes the expected relationship between every US president and the Russians - diplomacy doesn't happen by telepathy. If there is a point there, it needs to be made more explicitly.
  - weaksauce 6y ago
    > It also describes the expected relationship between every US president and the Russians - diplomacy doesn't happen by telepathy. this specifically was way before anyone held any power and it also covered many connections that were covered up and lied about to the investigators.

sam_goody 6y ago

The POTUS has made claims that need to be thought about rationally. Does the tech world really think that electronic voting is reliable when done the way Dominion did it? Is there is a rational explanation when votes jump from one candidate to another on live public TV? Are there too many acceptable mail in votes to make sense? Etc. The conclusion for someone who does the research may be that things are OK, that all is legit. I don't know, as I have no interest in doing that research. But if you start removing all the videos that present any arguments in that direction, than I will definitely assume there is fraud going on. It is far better for all the "proofs" to be out there and available, than to have people saying that all of the "proofs" were deleted by the people with obvious interests.

timmytokyo 6y ago
It's telling that none of these "fraud" arguments ever make it into the president's campaign's lawsuits. They're only ever repeated on sympathetic propaganda outlets. It's almost as if they realize they're peddling bullshit.
drchopchop 6y ago
The POTUS makes claims which have no evidence backing them, which is why he keeps losing over and over again in court. Why should any random claim be called a "proof"? Should flat earth videos get the same equivalent as NASA programming? Why should we, as society, give equal weight to people like yourself who have "no interest in doing that research"?
- antibuddy 6y ago
  Nobody says they are the same. However false or even only what one might consider false or misleading is a very low bar for censorship.
  - gitrog 6y ago
    Come on, it's not being censored based solely on the fact that it's false and misleading, it's being censored because it has the potential to incite violence and cause serious social upheaval.

nailer 6y ago

> What is going on in the US just now is unprecedented in modern Western democracies - we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA. Mainstream news networks like Fox have talking heads spouting venomous lies that are demonstrably and trivially proven as such. Agreed about Fox, but conversely - the three liberal networks supported the Russiagate conspiracy theory that alleged Trump had colluded which the Russia to win the 2016 election. Let's not pretend brazen lying is somehow a new thing created by Donald Trump.

conceptualspace 6y ago

as the nazi minister of propaganda once said, "truth is the foundation of the press, and all we ask of it!"

wdr1 6y ago

> unprecedented in modern Western democracies - we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA. Citation needed? The founding fathers owned newspapers & regularly fabricated stories about opponents. Ben Franklin openly wrote about it and he was far from alone. William Randolph Hearst controlled a significant portion of newspapers & blatantly used used that power to manipulate public opinion, frequently with suspect information. We went through a whole era of questionable news -- referred to as "yellow journalism": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism The fake news around the Gulf of Tonkin escalated the conflict into a relatively minor to what the US would call the Vietnam War. The fake news about Iraq WMDs led to the disastrous second golf war. Bill Clinton stood before the camera & said "I did not have sex with that woman" and his wife, HRC, said it was all "a ring wing conspiracy." Obama said "if you like your health plan, you can keep it", which several newspapers defended & fact-checked as true, as until much later rating it as lie of the year. Don't get me wrong. I despise Trump, I despise what's he's doing, and I want to see him removed. But if we're too be critical of him playing loose with facts, we can't be ourselves. And saying this is "peak" when it's likely only a local maxima seems dubious at best.

some-guy 6y ago
It's a matter of degree. The _degree_ of constant lying the current president does is absolutely insane. I don't like what YouTube is doing either, but it's really hard to say what any other alternative is at this point.
GordonS 6y ago
You point out some good examples, though I'd argue some of those were politicians/governments lying and those lies simple being reported (admittedly, often with an editorial bias). I think what we are seeing now is different. People like Trump don't need doctored satellite photographs and elaborately constructed propaganda that the press will fall for - they can use social media platforms as a very public podium from which to spew lies. And, perhaps because of the viral nature of social media, and perhaps because of the inherent terseness of Twitter, people are bombarded by these tiny nuggests of "truth" from "trusted" people who "obviously" wouldn't lie, and the become "truth" for those people. I think the key difference now is that it's never been so easy to put out "news", and it's never been so easy to consume so very many sources of "news", or so frequently.

jsperson 6y ago

> we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA Who cares?! As you said, Fox is crappy news so they don't get my business. Same thing with (generally) MSNBC and others. To answer the next question: The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Shepard Smith > it's one of those "least worst" choices I respectfully and completely disagree. This is policing thought. Things are not worse than they have been before. The communist witch hunts of the 50s is one example. A lot of the things FDR did were marginal (turned out alright though). Once you start controlling freedom of expression, you own all expression. No one is smart enough. The free market may suck in the short run, but in the long run it will work out. One perfect example of this: > The POTUS is lying on an hourly basis Yep, and HE LOST! His lying was a significant factor in this loss. Come January he won't be the POTUS.

GordonS 6y ago
> Who cares?! As you said, Fox is crappy news so they don't get my business I wish I could brush it off so easily, but the truth is that, well, the truth, does matter. You or I might choose to consume "news" from the likes of Fox, but many millions do. At that scale, the lies and fake news have an undeniable impact.
- jsperson 6y ago
  So here’s what will happen. Ban the “fake news” from Google, FB etc. You will have a pristine, non-offensive safe space bubble. All the banned folks will create their own safe space bubble on Parler or some other yet to be created platform. This won’t be a fringe group. It could be 30-40% of the populous. Comity and public discourse is extinct and then we really do have problems. I think we are much better off with the misinformation and lies out in the sunlight for all to see and refute.

liopleurodon 6y ago

lol. you're brainwashed if you believe the lies of the legacy media. this election was stolen. there's so much evidence. video evidence, affidavits, forensic evidence of voting machines, proof of tens of thousands of underage people voting, and so much more. Pennsylvania: 1.8 million ballots mailed out, 2.5 million ballots received. Hello? Trump won and Biden stole it.

togs 6y ago
Why should we believe you if you don't cite any evidence for your claims?
Analemma_ 6y ago
It's amazing that the evidence is so obvious, and yet none of Trump's lawyers cited it in any of their multiple lawsuits, where they would be jailed for perjury if they were lying. Almost as if it isn't actually true.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  Lawyers aren't under oath and wouldn't be jailed for perjury. Now, they would be committing all kinds of other misconduct besides perjury, but then, Trump's (remaining) attorneys have been committing all kinds of other misconduct (that the campaign being waged requires that explains why so many have left.)
goshx 6y ago
ah yes, look at all the court cases that Trump's legal team has won and all the evidence they presented. And you call someone else brainwashed, holly fuck.
tootie 6y ago
Case in point, should the HN mods ban this user for spreading deliberate disinformation? Btw, 2 seconds of googling shows that PA sent out 3 million absentee ballots and received 2.5M.
- 6y ago

TomMckenny 6y ago

Note it is backwards to think that if a platform _fails_ to carry the regime's message then _the platform_ is impeding freedom rather than noting that it is _the government_ that is applying anti-freedom pressure on a dissenting _non government_ organization. Youtube is _not_ the government but by reigning in falsehoods, is acting in _opposition_ to the government here. So what Youtube is doing is the very definition of _freedom_ of expression. A government pressuring them to carry pro-government messages is the crime, not the other way around. You are now having the government and pro-government voices pressure non-government organizations to publish pro-government material while claiming that it "protects" freedom of speech. This the exact _opposite_ of freedom of speech, it is in fact forced propaganda. So indeed there is no "but" because it is _the government_ that is in the wrong by pressuring publishers in what they must include.

pestaa 6y ago
Finally, someone! A private company doing content moderation & censorship is not a violation of the free speech amendment. Freedom of expression is not freedom to use any platform or service -- it is protection against state level actors.

jrockway 6y ago

I think the difference between now and the past is that everyone can exercise their constitutional right to free speech. Free speech used to be somewhat expensive -- by the time you've gone to journalism school and have been hired by someone with a media outlet, you've become the establishment. You want to tell a good story and hold those in power to account, but you know that you have a reputation and you can throw it all away if you don't think carefully about which stories you write and publish. All of this care has made free speech look pretty good and that's it's a must-have for society. (Using your words, to some extent this is "private companies getting to decide what's truthful and what's not"; Facebook doing it is not a whole lot different than the New York Times doing it. The Times doesn't publish every "letter to the editor", and Facebook doesn't have to either.) What I think is happening now is that free speech is actually free. Thanks to tech companies, there is no cost to getting your ideas out there. The problem is, you have nothing to lose if your reputation is destroyed by poorly-thought-out speech. ("Cancel culture" seems to be the workaround for this, but it doesn't seem very good to me.) The result is that we have decided that we don't actually like this whole freedom thing. But, I think it's actually pretty okay; you have to take the bad with the good (or the very bad with the very good). We should all be vigilant about calls for regulating speech. It looks like a very good short-term solution, but it won't be a very good long-term solution. To have the best possible society, we need to confront the underlying issues head-on. It's not "fake news" or that people are inflammatory on Facebook. It's that they don't have the educational background to think critically about what they read or hear, and can't actually distinguish a flame designed to manipulate them from writing that is designed to inform them. They are also often so isolated they can't even begin to understand other people's perspectives, and so have no mental model of how to even interpret writing they don't personally understand. As a society, we have to make sure that we fix this problem. We need every human being to get a great education. We need people to interact with people that look different from them from an early age. It will be expensive, it will be hard, and it will take a long time. But I think looking out 200 years, it's where we want to go, and we should get started right now. Resist the calls to sweep posts you don't like under the rug, or even to make them illegal. It won't fix any of the underlying problems.

neogodless 6y ago

1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago

"But..." YouTube viewers are not Google's customers.1 If it is to survive, Google must cater to the wishes of its clients. 1. Yes, I am aware that a small number of people pay Google to remove ads, but that is not a viable business model unless Google is also selling ad space.

paul7986 6y ago

Ummm this country is built upon free speech ... all free speech from the dawn of time has either been true or false! Youtube getting involved and hushing any type of free speech that does not cause physical harm or threatening to one's life is vile and disgusting period! I am independent who leans republican yet did not/could not vote for the maniac.

seanwilson 6y ago

> but it's not like the US government is doing a better job I think this is the part people are overlooking when they talk about censorship and freedom of speech...what are you supposed to do when it's the government of your country itself that is actively pushing large amounts of misinformation? Does it not completely change the situation compared to an individual or organisation doing this? It takes more effort to show a lie to be false than it does to tell another lie, and the public only have finite time to weigh up the accuracy of information. The government has more power to push out convincing misinformation in vast quantities than anyone else. A lot of the time of you don't need censorship because truth and open critique will drown out the lies, but there's going to be a breaking point when the misinformation being thrown out becomes overpowering.

gwright 6y ago
> The government has more power to push out convincing misinformation in vast quantities than anyone else. Really? You don't think that the mass media is at least in the same league?
- seanwilson 6y ago
  Yes, on reflection, I could have phrased it better. The government is for sure a powerful entity though and although the media can push misinformation, there's multiple outlets (that aren't all working together to push the same message) and only a single government per country. Anything the government says or does immediately becomes news and gets reported everywhere too, and few have a megaphone like that. Just having a lie with no evidence being discussed is enough to give it some legitimacy.

gentleterror 6y ago

Yeah, like that one time when Twitter and Facebook banned spreading of a mostly true article about Hunter Biden. Oh, wait, that rejects your point, man. Social networks are much more venomous.

etchalon 6y ago
They banned the spread of a story that lacked anything resembling coloration or basic standards of journalism. "Mostly" is still completely unknown when it comes to the contents of that laptop, it's provenance, and the veracity of individual emails.
- gentleterror 6y ago
  Well, Hunter Biden smoking a pipe naked photo is legit.

complianceowl 6y ago

Prefacing your attempted justification of censorship with "I don't like what YouTube is doing." doesn't add an ounce of validity to your statement. I am absolutely no fan of Fox News, but for you to not mention other propaganda-producing, Fake News outlets like CNN and Bloomberg is a huge hit to your credibility. I'll openly admit I am on the conservative side of politics, but my identity isn't wrapped up in politics; that's not how I identify myself or other people. I'm surrounded by conservatives; that's my world, and guess what? There's a lot of discontent with the way election fraud claims are being handled, and despite almost every single one of them having enough firearms to supply a small militia, nobody is even remotely close to even thinking about some sort of armed resistance. You say it's dangerous? You need to stop letting mainstream media form your perception of the world. What's dangerous is constantly race-baiting people of color like myself and white people against each other. To people who truly love and believe in freedom, your comment is disgusting. Wrong information must be countered and corrected by right information -- not censorship, buddy!

eloff 6y ago

It's all fine until they censor us. Sooner or later they'll go to far. In my opinion they already have. When they censor medical doctors for talking about the facts around HCQ. Or I see PHDs censoring themselves on the subject of covid19 vaccinations instead of being able to have an open, honest conversation. I don't like all the lies and fake news out there and how easily it sucks people in. But censorship isn't the answer in my opinion.

ASalazarMX 6y ago

This is the inevitable ruckus as more people realize that USA is a rigged democracy, and lose trust in the electoral system. A plain and transparent democracy would be "everybody votes, the candidate with more votes wins". Instead USA has the electoral college (what for? it has to vote the same as its citizens), winning by districts (what for? districts only exist to allow gerrymandering), and vote by mail without strict controls. I bet fewer people would complain if the system wasn't so evidently made for gaming numbers.

sdwa 6y ago
Ironically the Electoral College was designed in part to protect against populist lunatics like Trump, but it's he who has benefited from it.
belorn 6y ago
It would be much similar to other nations if instead of an electoral college, people would just vote for senate seats. The senate then vote on a senate president who then becomes the leader of the nation. In order to not give small states too much power they then could do as the EU parliament and give seats based on degressive proportionality.

its_simple 6y ago

I don't need Youtube to tell me what I should and shouldn't watch. It's not any more complicated than that. If you need someone to tell you what you should or shouldn't be watching, then that's your problem, and they should make a product specifically for you rather than forcing it on everyone that participated in building their product and participating in their business and making them money. This is a total slap in the face. It is amazing to me that there are so many people here discussing why they need Youtube to tell them which videos to watch.

confidantlake 6y ago
As far as I know, youtube doesn't let me watch or upload porn on their site despite it being legal. Should they be forced to allow it?
- its_simple 6y ago
  Who are you talking to?
  - confidantlake 6y ago
    I was responding to your post. You mentioned >I don't need Youtube to tell me what I should and shouldn't watch I was wondering if that extended to youtube banning porn. If you don't want to engage that is fine I will go reply to some other comment.

graycat 6y ago

For "The POTUS is lying on an hourly basis (many of those lies just brazenly, ridiculously false), " I've paid fairly close attention to Trump's statements since 2015 or so, and I have not seen any such, certainly not one a day or hour. If there are such lies, then I'd sure like to know about them. As part of that, I'd like to see credible references, hopefully to primary sources, that is, just following common high school term paper writing standards. I will grant that maybe Trump (1) exaggerates and (2) says things to gauge reactions, e.g., the common "run it up the flag pole to see if anyone salutes". But actual lies, you have one an hour for four years, and so far I don't have even one. As you are an HN contributor, I'd believe that you want to stick close to what you can document. Maybe you could document three of his serious lies?

standyro 6y ago
"I will grant that maybe Trump exaggerates" is an immense exaggeration. Extreme exaggeration is endemic to his character. It's not a maybe. He exaggerates everyday, all day. "Nobody has more respect for women than Donald Trump!" "Nobody has more respect for women than I do." "Nobody has more respect for women than I do. Nobody." “Nobody reads the Bible more than me.” "Nobody loves the Bible more than I do" "Nobody does self-deprecating humor better than I do. It’s not even close" “Nobody knows more about taxes than I do, maybe in the history of the world.” "Nobody knows more about trade than me" "Nobody knows the (visa) system better than me. I know the H1B. I know the H2B. Nobody knows it better than me."
- graycat 6y ago
  Wow! Good to see that that is what you had in mind!!! I count such statements as personality characteristics, unpolished, maybe gauche behavior, not welcome in country club society unless are worth > $5 billion! I'm really sensitive to lying, but such statements don't even start to raise my fur. Gee, I was worried that you'd found some actual lies, e.g., like we have heard nearly daily (I won't say hourly) from the FBI about Page, Flynn, and Manafort and from Pelosi and Schiff about Trump. For the mainstream media, I gave up on them after the gang up, pile, party talking point collection in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1ab6uxg908&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1ab6uxg908&feature=youtu.be That is from 1-2 years ago and fun to watch now. For what the next few weeks holds, I'm finding some interesting reading in https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163215/20201209144840609_2020-12-09%20-%20Texas%20v.%20Pennsylvania%20-%20Amicus%20Brief%20of%20Missouri%20et%20al.%20-%20Final%20with%20Tables.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163215/2020... with In the Supreme Court of the United States STATE OF TEXAS, Plaintiff, v. COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA, STATE OF GEORGIA, STATE OF MICHIGAN, AND STATE OF WISCONSIN, Defendants. On Motion for Leave to File Bill of Complaint BRIEF OF STATE OF MISSOURI AND 16 OTHER STATES AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFF’S MOTION FOR LEAVE TO FILE BILL OF COMPLAINT with Article II requires that each State “shall appoint” its Presidential electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” U.S. CONST. art. II, § 1, cl. 4 (emphasis added); see also id. art. I, § 4, cl. 2 (providing that, in each State, the “Legislature thereof” shall establish “[t]he Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives”). Wow! I'd missed that last part about the Senators and Representatives -- it did occur to me that the argument for the POTUS should also apply to other elected national offices. Good to see that part! Sooooo, the state legislatures ALSO get to put their hands, fingers, fingernails, hammers, crowbars, etc., on the when, where, and how of elections of Senators and Representatives in their own states and on fair dealing in the other states. Some smart founding fathers or amendment writers. Both you and Youtube might be circumspect about betting the farm on Biden taking office on 1/20/2021. "It ain't over until ..." whatever that saying was!

Latty 6y ago

It's kinda funny to me how many people who claim to value "true free speech" are in favour of the government being able to enforce speech. Fundamentally, what people are saying here is that the current US administration should be able to force YouTube to distribute material containing lies that benefit them. This is obviously just as harmful as someone being stopped from publishing something by the government. I agree there are cases where private entities can become so important to speech that they need to be regulated, but the kneejerk response to this kind of thing just seems so ill thought out. The right to freedom of expression clearly has to include the freedom to not express something. The obvious example is, should Google be able to go to Fox News and force them to publish pieces that Google write? Is the line editorial control? That path leads to YouTube ceasing to exist as a platform anyone can upload to, which seems like a large cost as well. I don't think there are easy answers, and "free speech" tends to end up as a thought-terminating cliche in these discussions, ignoring the fact that there are multiple parties with the right to freedom of speech that can conflict. The question really becomes about the right to platform, and if everyone has a legal right to any platform, everything will be drowned out in noise.

simnim 6y ago

I recommend Hate Inc by Matt Taibbi. It's a fantastic book that brilliantly illuminates the false dichotomy of red team vs blue team politics and news media. We should all be careful of the corporate press. Their purpose is to profit, not inform. This applies both to red team and blue team news media. Comfortable lies are profitable while difficult truths are not. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Silencing voices we don't like only give them credence and power, especially in the age of the internet and new media.