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Censorship usually involves removing one side's articles and reasoning and not even attempting to dispute it. True balance by taking account of both sides will

Censorship usually involves removing one side's articles and reasoning and not even attempting to dispute it. True balance by taking account of both sides will include rebuttals of the sides against the other side. Both sides should be free to make their case and also make their rebuttals to the other side. Censorship likes to eliminate one side, so that rebuttal and dissent doesn't take place and isn't known. To what degree a piece of information makes one side's claims baseless is often up to interpretation as well. Our claims are often stronger in our own minds than when spoken out loud to others in reasoned discourse. When we accept any one arbiter as the single source of truth for what is true or fake, we have given up reasoned discourse and dissent. We should think for ourselves, and trust others to think for themselves. No one is more totalitarian than the person who thinks only he and his friends are worthy of thinking for and choosing for themselves and that they must protect others from themselves at all costs.

isv 6y ago
This is truly the worst aspect of censorship - You don't know what you don't know. And this is being greatly amplified by social media. I am not afraid that I will be fed false information; if it appears too outlandish, I will do sufficient fact-checking before accepting it as truth. In most cases on open platforms someone would have already done fact-checking to debunk. I am afraid however that I become too enwrapped in my social bubble that relevant information never gets brought up in the first place. This is nothing new and relates to "Lies, damned lies, and statistics". Most facts can be manipulated by omission, taking things out of context, and choosing favorable metrics, so that you can lie without saying anything falsifiable. Only way to correct this is to allow the other side to present their argument in an open discussion.
- csnover 6y ago
  What is too outlandish to you is not too outlandish to others. Some believe the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by the CIA. Some believe the earth is flat. Some believe a Nigerian prince got their email address from their dead friend’s cousin’s mother’s embassy and is about to send them a billion dollars. How can you be so totally confident that your own bullshit meter is accurate? Why do you think your confidence in your own ability to decipher fact from fiction is any different than people who believe complete bullshit? If your main objection to censorship is that it is used to hide the truth, why don’t you object equally to people with megaphones intentionally flooding the zone with shit and distributors that enable that behaviour? Just as the left–right political spectrum is actually more of a circle than a straight line, it seems to me that the spectrum of censorship vs free speech is also a circle. A bad actor may obfuscate truth through censorship; a bad actor may also obfuscate truth through massive volumes of misinformation. The latter is what is happening here. It’s a denial of service attack on human brains, and like a DoS attack, the only way to weather it is to filter the malicious traffic—you can’t just add capacity in the form of “good counterpoints” since human brains can’t scale like that.
  - timeeater 6y ago
    " why don’t you object equally to people with megaphones intentionally flooding the zone with shit" That analogy is simply incorrect. You can spend your life on YouTube watching cat videos, no conspiracy theory in sight. Nobody can force you to watch their video on YouTube. So nobody has a megaphone in YouTube. Only YouTube itself has the megaphone, they can choose what to push to people. It is NOT TV where you have a single stream that everybody watched, and if you insert shit, everybody watches it.
    - bonestormii_ 6y ago
      It's crazy. I started writing why I disagreed based on my visceral reaction to the topic. But as I constructed my arguments, they were not sound. So I suppose I agree? Hm. The above paragraph is sincere--that did happen. And interestingly, it shows the power of consuming the opposing view point. We all know that the government is currently spewing lies, and it is indeed a disgusting and corrosive thing. I want to silence it, but it's easy enough to contempt it from a distance. Let the truth and the lies be heard so that we as a people will grow wise to it all.
      - timeeater 6y ago
        Personally I am not from the US, and I don't know that the government is spewing lies. What makes you so sure? And if you are so sure, why are you worried people could be swayed by the lies - why not make them equally sure with the information you have? However, I am happy with letting the courts decide. Where is the problem? I have seen lies from all big political parties in the US.
        bra-ket 6y ago
        it's funny the lies this time are coming not from the government but from the opposition and their propaganda machinery. I'd never consider myself government supporter, but with Trump it's like the last bastion before the country is overrun with far-left SJW hordes swayed by misinformation. It's ironic the ultimate win for democracy manifests itself in stolen elections.
- adamsea 6y ago
  tl;dr You assume both side argue in good faith. When one side doesn’t argue in good faith they can hack our classic understanding of freedom of speech. We need a word for flooding a space of discourse with so much noise that the truth is obscured and hidden. It’s not censorship in that it’s removing speech, but it’s as effective in undermining free speech. It’s obviously what is happening now. I think the error in what you say is you assume both side are arguing in good faith. But when one party doesn’t argue in good faith, it means they are saying things they don’t truly believe, or that they don’t respect or care about having a fair discourse. Like how during the debates Donald Trump continuously attempted to talk over Biden, and essentially control the discourse via bullying. Just making shit up in order to shut someone else down isn’t okay, and we need to figure out how to protect our traditional values of free speech while also combating when people attempt to destroy our freedom of speech by using this technique at a mass scale in our modern media environment.
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    I think its more accurate to say there are bad faith actors on both sides. Thats why its so dangerous to let someone shut down one side of a debate because of bad faith actors. You're also shutting down the good faith actors on that side, while leaving the bad faith actors on the other side still able to participate in bad faith.
    - adamsea 6y ago
      > I think its more accurate to say there are bad faith actors on both sides. Bullshit, because at this moment that comparison is a mountain vs a molehill. 0. Trumps lies about Covid and the pandemic crisis which have contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans 1. The racist birther conspiracy. 2. The vast number of well-documented lies Trump told over the last few years. 3. The baseless lies about election fraud or whatever. But you know all this. I don’t believe you’re arguing in good faith and I think you’re full of shit. Because, after these last four years saying “bad actors on both sides” means that you’ve chosen to either obscure or deny reality. What you’re doing is dangerous to democracy and you should be ashamed of yourself. I’m not saying YouTube removing this content is the right move, but your logic only holds up in a fantasyland devoid of fact or context.
UncleMeat 6y ago
Is youtube really the arena to dispute the election claims? The courts are the proper arena for this and Trump and company have had ample opportunity to use those.
- tartoran 6y ago
  They did and were dismissed. Why? Because had no damn evidence for their claims. They are now trying to cancel millions of mail in votes. I’ve never seen anything more coward, tactless and boorish than the people supporting this whole charade. I am completely and unequivocally disgusted by these people who would rather burn everything down than acknowledge loss
  - alexandre_m 6y ago
    Affidavits are evidence. Are you simply implying the affidavits are all lying and want to cut short the ruling?
    - mike00632 6y ago
      Affidavits are not evidence if you never submit them. Rudy Giuliani has been going around having people signing affidavits that he never subits to court as evidence (they would then be subject to perjury laws). I can't believe this tactic is fooling some literate people.
      - mk81 6y ago
        No court has let them submit evidence. Maybe SCOTUS will maybe not. Don't act like they have had a chance to submit evidence yet.
        mike00632 6y ago
        Do you seriously believe that the courts are simply not letting the Trump team make their case? That they tried to submit evidence but they couldn't? You really need to evaluate your news sources. In Pennsylvania Rudy Giuliani said in court that there was no fraud when he was questioned in the slightest about his claim of widespread voter fraud. “this is not a fraud case.” Of course, they failed to provide evidence too, not even any of those affidavits. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/giuliani-pennsylvania-court-appearance/2020/11/18/ad7288dc-2941-11eb-92b7-6ef17b3fe3b4_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/giuliani-pennsylvani...
cogman10 6y ago
The problem is that when a side has no real standing, they'll Gish gallop. A good example of this is flat earthers or anti vaxxers. They've got no scientific or reasonable leg to stand on, yet they publish so much unscientific garbage as to be garnering support. It will LOOK like they are more credible because the shear amount of garbage they push will go unresponded to by the other side. Meanwhile, they'll just simply ignore the other half of the argument. They refuse to address those points while making a ton of their own. It gets worse. There's starting to be major bubbles of misinformation forming. So broad that the arguments made are almost impossible for the other side to decode. A great example of this is something like the comet pizza Q anon conspiracy. If you don't know, it goes something like this "A pizzeria in DC was a central location in a pedophile ring which the Clinton's had deep connections to." Where does a reasonable debate even begin with something like that? It's easy enough to show that "No, that's crazy" Heck, even minimal rational thought should be enough to debunk this garbage. Yet it still flows (so much so that someone decided to show up armed to demand the pizzeria release the kids[1]) Yet, when a debate comes up, all a Q anon follower would pretty much have to say something like "Yeah and I bet you like comet pizza as well". That sort of attack would be devastating in the eyes of those already tuned into Q anon crap yet would be completely reasonable for an outsider to be like "Yeah, I like their pizza". These techniques are effective which is evidenced by how much misinformation flows throughout the internet. Giving equal time and access to both sides doesn't appear to be effective in combating this misinformation. There's got to be a better way. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/22/533941689/pizzagate-gunman-sentenced-to-4-years-in-prison https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/22/533941689...
- mypalmike 6y ago
  Yeah. The way I've been thinking about it lately as like the "pigeon playing chess"... He just knocks over your pieces and declares victory. A confluence of factors has led us to a point where a scary number of people side with the pigeon. And that is how democracy is eroded.
  - nmfisher 6y ago
    This is such an incredibly apt comment.
Guvante 6y ago
In this context that has been done. No attempt was made to block court cases brought up about the incident and everyone has been talking about the claims made since the election happened over a month ago. Algorithmic sharing causes misinformation bubbles to grow in a way that has never before been seen. Why do we need to ignore this effect and let it run its natural course? We know what happens. Flat earthers and anti vaxxers and now millions of illegal ballots. They even explicitly allowed the discussion during the counting process and afterwards as court cases were brought forward.
Reedx 6y ago
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” -C.S. Lewis
- adamsea 6y ago
  > It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. So you’re saying that C.S. Lewis would have voted for Trump? ;)
  - bra-ket 6y ago
    absolutely, any rational person who cares about reason and objectivity would have voted for Trump. It wouldn't help with the stolen elections though, sometimes the dishonest win. And even the most reasonable people can be misled by lies and propaganda.
- ModernMech 6y ago
  "The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated" This is clearly wrong. Greedy people are never satisfied. Look at our modern day robber barons, a mere handful with more money than hundreds of millions of people. Yet their wealth continues to grow.
  - BrandonMarc 6y ago
    Woosh
fulafel 6y ago
Youtube was already pervasively censored and editorialized / moderated. If you are using Youtube, it's important to be aware of its role as the arbiter of what's allowed and how discourse is directed. But of course most Youtube hogwash content producers and their followers aren't in it for the love of truth or philosophy. Maybe some of the more naive are, and have been fooled to be puppets in Youtube's strings.
- minot 6y ago
  I have a screencast of installing Debian that’s unlisted and has one view uploaded several years ago and last month I got an email saying YouTube had decided, after a review, that it is only suitable for mature audiences. I don’t know who flagged it or who reviewed it but there’s no video, only a screen share of Debian installation and there’s no audio. I think YouTube just counts on people appealing wrongful flags. I no longer believe YouTube is more malicious than it is incompetent.
  - UnFleshedOne 6y ago
    Does it have instances of fsck running, or maybe launching daemons? Can't show this stuff to the kiddies.
CraigJPerry 6y ago
If you allow Islamic terrorists to publish their indoctrination materials, conversions to their cause will increase. I’m ok with censoring that stuff. Most of the censorship cases i can think of have been religious or conservative groups and in all those cases i thought the call for censorship was misguided. There are situations where I’m ok with censorship. One of them is Islamic terrorist propaganda and fake news.
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago
  > If you allow Islamic terrorists to publish their indoctrination materials, conversions to their cause will increase. This is especially what I'm sceptica about, as well as the banning of publications such as Mein Kampf. It seems to me that the proportion of those that were first unconvinced, and then read such material and become convinced by it is negligibly small. Rather, most of the followers never actually read the publications and mostly got into it to feel part of a group as their friends were followers. They're typically publications that were never read by either the proponents, nor the detractors who wish to ban it. > Most of the censorship cases i can think of have been religious or conservative groups and in all those cases i thought the call for censorship was misguided. There are situations where I’m ok with censorship. One of them is Islamic terrorist propaganda and fake news. There is very few news that is not fake — the addage of “All news is accurate, except that one article about that one field one happens to be a specialist in.” seldom fails to hit the mark. That you need to specifically single out “Islamic terrorism”, opposed to simply keeping it about “terrorism” as a general concept also betrays a deal of specificity in your view, which is often the problem with censorship — that not all are censored æqual.
  - hef19898 6y ago
    People become readicalized. Nobody s born a die-hard islamist, so yes, making it harder to access radical content is maiing id harder, but not impossible, to become radicalized. Goes for extreme right wing content and other religious extremists as well. And most news isn't fake, luckily. All news is biased, true, but that doesn't mean it's fake. Which is a big difference. That the press isn't doing itself a lot of favours by being what it is today is also true.
weare138 6y ago
At what point to we discern fact from fiction? We're currently discussing this issue on a site that caters to the tech community, an industry and culture based on solid science and facts. I doubt anyone in the industry would argue unsubstantiated fanciful opinions stand on equal ground as the established and proven scientific facts that underlie everything we do in stark terms. If we did, we would get nowhere. Why would this principle not apply to anything else? Yes of course there are no shortage of divergent opinions and theories within our science and any other science for that matter. Questioning withing reason leads to innovation but there is no valid argument to be made that any opinion is equal to established facts and should be treated as such. Our industry and culture would simply not exist if that were the case or any other science. Should the wild opinions of people who think the Earth is flat hold the same scientific weight as millennia of established and proven math, science and observation? Our opinions of reality do not change reality. I'm sorry, your assertion only tries to poison the well by arguing emotion and unsupported opinions somehow carries equal weight to established and provable truths. The arbitrator of truth is reality.
- nec4b 6y ago
  Why does it bother you so much if somebody believes in flat earth? And why do you want to prevent them to discuss their silly theories? Are you so insecure in your own knowledge? A bunch of people believing in flat earth does not diminish our science in any way.
  - 542354234235 6y ago
    Beliefs inform actions. I believe the building I am in is not on fire and I am conducting myself accordingly. If I believed the building was on fire, my actions would be quite different. It is naïve at best, disingenuous at worst, to pretend that someone’s beliefs exist in some magic bubble that does not have any effect on the world around them. When people believed in witchcraft, real people were burned. Even before the pandemic, people that did not believe in the science supporting vaccinations led to real outbreaks of real disease that killed real people.
    - 6y ago
prucomaclu 6y ago
> Censorship usually involves removing one side's articles and reasoning and not even attempting to dispute it. This is what I find most disturbing about this election. There is a significant portion of people in America (ballpark 30-40%) who believe there is literally no evidence of election fraud and Trump is just being obnoxious. There is also a significant portion of people in America (ballpark 30-40%) who believe there are literally mountains of evidence of election fraud and Trump has a legitimate case. Regardless of which camp you fall under, there is no consensus as to who is right. There are roughly equal amounts of people on both sides, who believe extremely different things. Yet it is the latter group that is unilaterally and universally censored by big tech and big media. The latter group is casually dismissed, with extreme prejudice. Regardless of which camp you fall under, censoring such a large group of people in such a dismissive way, is neither healthy nor productive. It breeds distrust, hostility, and division. For the record, as is probably obvious, I fall in the latter half. I have done my own research, and to me, it seems unquestionable that election laws were broken in a variety of significant ways that meaningfully impacted the result of the election. I say this as a person who really does not care if Trump wins or loses. I have never voted, and never will, for personal ethical reasons. But I do care that this country is becoming increasingly divided.
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  Trump has crossed so far over the line and lied so much, that not caring if he wins or loses isn't a reasonable, defensible position any more. You're pretty lucky to be in such a privileged position that you can be so careless, but there are so many people who are directly affected and attacked by him that aren't privileged to be so lucky and care-free as you claim to be. What exactly would he have to do in order for you to care? Is separating kids from their parents and putting them in cages while undermining Democracy just fine with you? Or can he get away with anything he wants to in your mind, even worse than that, and you still don't care if he wins or loses? Where do you draw the line?
  - prucomaclu 6y ago
    I'm not defending Trump. He's a terrible person. But, to me, he's not much worse than other Presidents. Other Presidents have started wars. Tortured people. Persecuted whistleblowers. Spied on the American people. Generally speaking, Trump continued those things, as would Biden.

isv 6y ago

This is truly the worst aspect of censorship - You don't know what you don't know. And this is being greatly amplified by social media. I am not afraid that I will be fed false information; if it appears too outlandish, I will do sufficient fact-checking before accepting it as truth. In most cases on open platforms someone would have already done fact-checking to debunk. I am afraid however that I become too enwrapped in my social bubble that relevant information never gets brought up in the first place. This is nothing new and relates to "Lies, damned lies, and statistics". Most facts can be manipulated by omission, taking things out of context, and choosing favorable metrics, so that you can lie without saying anything falsifiable. Only way to correct this is to allow the other side to present their argument in an open discussion.

csnover 6y ago
What is too outlandish to you is not too outlandish to others. Some believe the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by the CIA. Some believe the earth is flat. Some believe a Nigerian prince got their email address from their dead friend’s cousin’s mother’s embassy and is about to send them a billion dollars. How can you be so totally confident that your own bullshit meter is accurate? Why do you think your confidence in your own ability to decipher fact from fiction is any different than people who believe complete bullshit? If your main objection to censorship is that it is used to hide the truth, why don’t you object equally to people with megaphones intentionally flooding the zone with shit and distributors that enable that behaviour? Just as the left–right political spectrum is actually more of a circle than a straight line, it seems to me that the spectrum of censorship vs free speech is also a circle. A bad actor may obfuscate truth through censorship; a bad actor may also obfuscate truth through massive volumes of misinformation. The latter is what is happening here. It’s a denial of service attack on human brains, and like a DoS attack, the only way to weather it is to filter the malicious traffic—you can’t just add capacity in the form of “good counterpoints” since human brains can’t scale like that.
- timeeater 6y ago
  " why don’t you object equally to people with megaphones intentionally flooding the zone with shit" That analogy is simply incorrect. You can spend your life on YouTube watching cat videos, no conspiracy theory in sight. Nobody can force you to watch their video on YouTube. So nobody has a megaphone in YouTube. Only YouTube itself has the megaphone, they can choose what to push to people. It is NOT TV where you have a single stream that everybody watched, and if you insert shit, everybody watches it.
  - bonestormii_ 6y ago
    It's crazy. I started writing why I disagreed based on my visceral reaction to the topic. But as I constructed my arguments, they were not sound. So I suppose I agree? Hm. The above paragraph is sincere--that did happen. And interestingly, it shows the power of consuming the opposing view point. We all know that the government is currently spewing lies, and it is indeed a disgusting and corrosive thing. I want to silence it, but it's easy enough to contempt it from a distance. Let the truth and the lies be heard so that we as a people will grow wise to it all.
    - timeeater 6y ago
      Personally I am not from the US, and I don't know that the government is spewing lies. What makes you so sure? And if you are so sure, why are you worried people could be swayed by the lies - why not make them equally sure with the information you have? However, I am happy with letting the courts decide. Where is the problem? I have seen lies from all big political parties in the US.
      - bra-ket 6y ago
        it's funny the lies this time are coming not from the government but from the opposition and their propaganda machinery. I'd never consider myself government supporter, but with Trump it's like the last bastion before the country is overrun with far-left SJW hordes swayed by misinformation. It's ironic the ultimate win for democracy manifests itself in stolen elections.
adamsea 6y ago
tl;dr You assume both side argue in good faith. When one side doesn’t argue in good faith they can hack our classic understanding of freedom of speech. We need a word for flooding a space of discourse with so much noise that the truth is obscured and hidden. It’s not censorship in that it’s removing speech, but it’s as effective in undermining free speech. It’s obviously what is happening now. I think the error in what you say is you assume both side are arguing in good faith. But when one party doesn’t argue in good faith, it means they are saying things they don’t truly believe, or that they don’t respect or care about having a fair discourse. Like how during the debates Donald Trump continuously attempted to talk over Biden, and essentially control the discourse via bullying. Just making shit up in order to shut someone else down isn’t okay, and we need to figure out how to protect our traditional values of free speech while also combating when people attempt to destroy our freedom of speech by using this technique at a mass scale in our modern media environment.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  I think its more accurate to say there are bad faith actors on both sides. Thats why its so dangerous to let someone shut down one side of a debate because of bad faith actors. You're also shutting down the good faith actors on that side, while leaving the bad faith actors on the other side still able to participate in bad faith.
  - adamsea 6y ago
    > I think its more accurate to say there are bad faith actors on both sides. Bullshit, because at this moment that comparison is a mountain vs a molehill. 0. Trumps lies about Covid and the pandemic crisis which have contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans 1. The racist birther conspiracy. 2. The vast number of well-documented lies Trump told over the last few years. 3. The baseless lies about election fraud or whatever. But you know all this. I don’t believe you’re arguing in good faith and I think you’re full of shit. Because, after these last four years saying “bad actors on both sides” means that you’ve chosen to either obscure or deny reality. What you’re doing is dangerous to democracy and you should be ashamed of yourself. I’m not saying YouTube removing this content is the right move, but your logic only holds up in a fantasyland devoid of fact or context.

UncleMeat 6y ago

Is youtube really the arena to dispute the election claims? The courts are the proper arena for this and Trump and company have had ample opportunity to use those.

tartoran 6y ago
They did and were dismissed. Why? Because had no damn evidence for their claims. They are now trying to cancel millions of mail in votes. I’ve never seen anything more coward, tactless and boorish than the people supporting this whole charade. I am completely and unequivocally disgusted by these people who would rather burn everything down than acknowledge loss
- alexandre_m 6y ago
  Affidavits are evidence. Are you simply implying the affidavits are all lying and want to cut short the ruling?
  - mike00632 6y ago
    Affidavits are not evidence if you never submit them. Rudy Giuliani has been going around having people signing affidavits that he never subits to court as evidence (they would then be subject to perjury laws). I can't believe this tactic is fooling some literate people.
    - mk81 6y ago
      No court has let them submit evidence. Maybe SCOTUS will maybe not. Don't act like they have had a chance to submit evidence yet.
      - mike00632 6y ago
        Do you seriously believe that the courts are simply not letting the Trump team make their case? That they tried to submit evidence but they couldn't? You really need to evaluate your news sources. In Pennsylvania Rudy Giuliani said in court that there was no fraud when he was questioned in the slightest about his claim of widespread voter fraud. “this is not a fraud case.” Of course, they failed to provide evidence too, not even any of those affidavits. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/giuliani-pennsylvania-court-appearance/2020/11/18/ad7288dc-2941-11eb-92b7-6ef17b3fe3b4_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/giuliani-pennsylvani...

cogman10 6y ago

The problem is that when a side has no real standing, they'll Gish gallop. A good example of this is flat earthers or anti vaxxers. They've got no scientific or reasonable leg to stand on, yet they publish so much unscientific garbage as to be garnering support. It will LOOK like they are more credible because the shear amount of garbage they push will go unresponded to by the other side. Meanwhile, they'll just simply ignore the other half of the argument. They refuse to address those points while making a ton of their own. It gets worse. There's starting to be major bubbles of misinformation forming. So broad that the arguments made are almost impossible for the other side to decode. A great example of this is something like the comet pizza Q anon conspiracy. If you don't know, it goes something like this "A pizzeria in DC was a central location in a pedophile ring which the Clinton's had deep connections to." Where does a reasonable debate even begin with something like that? It's easy enough to show that "No, that's crazy" Heck, even minimal rational thought should be enough to debunk this garbage. Yet it still flows (so much so that someone decided to show up armed to demand the pizzeria release the kids[1]) Yet, when a debate comes up, all a Q anon follower would pretty much have to say something like "Yeah and I bet you like comet pizza as well". That sort of attack would be devastating in the eyes of those already tuned into Q anon crap yet would be completely reasonable for an outsider to be like "Yeah, I like their pizza". These techniques are effective which is evidenced by how much misinformation flows throughout the internet. Giving equal time and access to both sides doesn't appear to be effective in combating this misinformation. There's got to be a better way. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/22/533941689/pizzagate-gunman-sentenced-to-4-years-in-prison https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/22/533941689...

mypalmike 6y ago
Yeah. The way I've been thinking about it lately as like the "pigeon playing chess"... He just knocks over your pieces and declares victory. A confluence of factors has led us to a point where a scary number of people side with the pigeon. And that is how democracy is eroded.
- nmfisher 6y ago
  This is such an incredibly apt comment.

Guvante 6y ago

In this context that has been done. No attempt was made to block court cases brought up about the incident and everyone has been talking about the claims made since the election happened over a month ago. Algorithmic sharing causes misinformation bubbles to grow in a way that has never before been seen. Why do we need to ignore this effect and let it run its natural course? We know what happens. Flat earthers and anti vaxxers and now millions of illegal ballots. They even explicitly allowed the discussion during the counting process and afterwards as court cases were brought forward.

Reedx 6y ago

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” -C.S. Lewis

adamsea 6y ago
> It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. So you’re saying that C.S. Lewis would have voted for Trump? ;)
- bra-ket 6y ago
  absolutely, any rational person who cares about reason and objectivity would have voted for Trump. It wouldn't help with the stolen elections though, sometimes the dishonest win. And even the most reasonable people can be misled by lies and propaganda.
ModernMech 6y ago
"The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated" This is clearly wrong. Greedy people are never satisfied. Look at our modern day robber barons, a mere handful with more money than hundreds of millions of people. Yet their wealth continues to grow.
- BrandonMarc 6y ago
  Woosh

fulafel 6y ago

Youtube was already pervasively censored and editorialized / moderated. If you are using Youtube, it's important to be aware of its role as the arbiter of what's allowed and how discourse is directed. But of course most Youtube hogwash content producers and their followers aren't in it for the love of truth or philosophy. Maybe some of the more naive are, and have been fooled to be puppets in Youtube's strings.

minot 6y ago
I have a screencast of installing Debian that’s unlisted and has one view uploaded several years ago and last month I got an email saying YouTube had decided, after a review, that it is only suitable for mature audiences. I don’t know who flagged it or who reviewed it but there’s no video, only a screen share of Debian installation and there’s no audio. I think YouTube just counts on people appealing wrongful flags. I no longer believe YouTube is more malicious than it is incompetent.
- UnFleshedOne 6y ago
  Does it have instances of fsck running, or maybe launching daemons? Can't show this stuff to the kiddies.

CraigJPerry 6y ago

If you allow Islamic terrorists to publish their indoctrination materials, conversions to their cause will increase. I’m ok with censoring that stuff. Most of the censorship cases i can think of have been religious or conservative groups and in all those cases i thought the call for censorship was misguided. There are situations where I’m ok with censorship. One of them is Islamic terrorist propaganda and fake news.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago
> If you allow Islamic terrorists to publish their indoctrination materials, conversions to their cause will increase. This is especially what I'm sceptica about, as well as the banning of publications such as Mein Kampf. It seems to me that the proportion of those that were first unconvinced, and then read such material and become convinced by it is negligibly small. Rather, most of the followers never actually read the publications and mostly got into it to feel part of a group as their friends were followers. They're typically publications that were never read by either the proponents, nor the detractors who wish to ban it. > Most of the censorship cases i can think of have been religious or conservative groups and in all those cases i thought the call for censorship was misguided. There are situations where I’m ok with censorship. One of them is Islamic terrorist propaganda and fake news. There is very few news that is not fake — the addage of “All news is accurate, except that one article about that one field one happens to be a specialist in.” seldom fails to hit the mark. That you need to specifically single out “Islamic terrorism”, opposed to simply keeping it about “terrorism” as a general concept also betrays a deal of specificity in your view, which is often the problem with censorship — that not all are censored æqual.
- hef19898 6y ago
  People become readicalized. Nobody s born a die-hard islamist, so yes, making it harder to access radical content is maiing id harder, but not impossible, to become radicalized. Goes for extreme right wing content and other religious extremists as well. And most news isn't fake, luckily. All news is biased, true, but that doesn't mean it's fake. Which is a big difference. That the press isn't doing itself a lot of favours by being what it is today is also true.

weare138 6y ago

At what point to we discern fact from fiction? We're currently discussing this issue on a site that caters to the tech community, an industry and culture based on solid science and facts. I doubt anyone in the industry would argue unsubstantiated fanciful opinions stand on equal ground as the established and proven scientific facts that underlie everything we do in stark terms. If we did, we would get nowhere. Why would this principle not apply to anything else? Yes of course there are no shortage of divergent opinions and theories within our science and any other science for that matter. Questioning withing reason leads to innovation but there is no valid argument to be made that any opinion is equal to established facts and should be treated as such. Our industry and culture would simply not exist if that were the case or any other science. Should the wild opinions of people who think the Earth is flat hold the same scientific weight as millennia of established and proven math, science and observation? Our opinions of reality do not change reality. I'm sorry, your assertion only tries to poison the well by arguing emotion and unsupported opinions somehow carries equal weight to established and provable truths. The arbitrator of truth is reality.

nec4b 6y ago
Why does it bother you so much if somebody believes in flat earth? And why do you want to prevent them to discuss their silly theories? Are you so insecure in your own knowledge? A bunch of people believing in flat earth does not diminish our science in any way.
- 542354234235 6y ago
  Beliefs inform actions. I believe the building I am in is not on fire and I am conducting myself accordingly. If I believed the building was on fire, my actions would be quite different. It is naïve at best, disingenuous at worst, to pretend that someone’s beliefs exist in some magic bubble that does not have any effect on the world around them. When people believed in witchcraft, real people were burned. Even before the pandemic, people that did not believe in the science supporting vaccinations led to real outbreaks of real disease that killed real people.
  - 6y ago

prucomaclu 6y ago

> Censorship usually involves removing one side's articles and reasoning and not even attempting to dispute it. This is what I find most disturbing about this election. There is a significant portion of people in America (ballpark 30-40%) who believe there is literally no evidence of election fraud and Trump is just being obnoxious. There is also a significant portion of people in America (ballpark 30-40%) who believe there are literally mountains of evidence of election fraud and Trump has a legitimate case. Regardless of which camp you fall under, there is no consensus as to who is right. There are roughly equal amounts of people on both sides, who believe extremely different things. Yet it is the latter group that is unilaterally and universally censored by big tech and big media. The latter group is casually dismissed, with extreme prejudice. Regardless of which camp you fall under, censoring such a large group of people in such a dismissive way, is neither healthy nor productive. It breeds distrust, hostility, and division. For the record, as is probably obvious, I fall in the latter half. I have done my own research, and to me, it seems unquestionable that election laws were broken in a variety of significant ways that meaningfully impacted the result of the election. I say this as a person who really does not care if Trump wins or loses. I have never voted, and never will, for personal ethical reasons. But I do care that this country is becoming increasingly divided.

DonHopkins 6y ago
Trump has crossed so far over the line and lied so much, that not caring if he wins or loses isn't a reasonable, defensible position any more. You're pretty lucky to be in such a privileged position that you can be so careless, but there are so many people who are directly affected and attacked by him that aren't privileged to be so lucky and care-free as you claim to be. What exactly would he have to do in order for you to care? Is separating kids from their parents and putting them in cages while undermining Democracy just fine with you? Or can he get away with anything he wants to in your mind, even worse than that, and you still don't care if he wins or loses? Where do you draw the line?
- prucomaclu 6y ago
  I'm not defending Trump. He's a terrible person. But, to me, he's not much worse than other Presidents. Other Presidents have started wars. Tortured people. Persecuted whistleblowers. Spied on the American people. Generally speaking, Trump continued those things, as would Biden.