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The facts aligning in the Senator's favor does not make the request partisan. Of course it's partisan. Had Trump won, and Biden voters were publishing content

The facts aligning in the Senator's favor does not make the request partisan. Of course it's partisan. Had Trump won, and Biden voters were publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence, do you believe that Democratic senators would still be urging YouTube to take it down in the interest of fairness to Trump? I think you know the answer to that. The scary part of this is that elected officials, who were presumably elected by people that thought they were going to protect the freedoms granted to them by the Constitution, and who must take an oath upon taking office to "support and defend the Constitution," sat down and wrote a letter that gleefully trampled all over one of our most fundamental constitutional rights. Since they were successful in this endeavor, it will happen again, on other, more expansive, partisan issues. Down the slippery slope we go. The simple fact of the matter is that people are entitled to their opinions, and in the United States, they have a constitutional right to express those opinions in the same way and on the same platforms as those that disagree with them. The only problem is that now we have politicians who believe that those rights should only be extended to those who are on their side. Both sides of the political aisle are acting this way, and it does not bode well for our future as a country.

jakelazaroff 6y ago
> Had Trump won, and Biden voters were publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence, do you believe that Democratic senators would still be urging YouTube to take it down in the interest of fairness to Trump? I think you know the answer to that. The premise here is that both sides are just as likely to push misinformation on behalf of their team. The Democrats aren't perfect, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking that they would engage in the exact same tactics and rhetoric as the GOP if the shoe were on the other foot. I'll flip the question around. Had Trump won, would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence? I think you know the answer to that.
- downandout 6y ago
  I'll flip the question around. Had Trump won, would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence? I just listened to 4 years of CNN, MSNBC, and virtually every other media outlet claiming that the previous election was rigged, with similarly sparse evidence. So yes, not only do I believe that they would, but they have already done it, 24/7, for the last 4 straight years.
  - adamsea 6y ago
    You're assuming equivalence between the two. What matters is evidence. Facts. Logic. Reason. The two simply are not equivalent. Check out what Wikipedia says about the Mueller Report: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report I'm not claiming the Democrats are perfect or that there aren't mixed motives. But it's obvious to any thinking person not living in a poisoned media ecosystem that all of these election fraud claims are baseless and ridiculous. The same is not true about Russian influence operations during the 2016 election and the Trump campaigns, let's say, benign support of them.
    - downandout 6y ago
      There is no evidence that Russian influence changed the outcome of the election. A few thousand dollars worth of Facebook ads, mostly written in broken English, is unlikely to have caused a massive swing in voter turnout or opinions. It seems clear from the Mueller report that Russians attempted to engage in election interference. There is zero evidence that it had any effect on even a single vote. If you turn on CNN for a second or two today, you'll hear them use the phrase "no widespread voter fraud occurred". In other words, there is evidence that some fraud occurred, as it does in every election. Just not enough to have swayed the results. The same can be said about any Russian interference. So the two things are equivalent, because both happened to some degree, and it is extremely unlikely that either had any effect on the outcome.
      - _RPL5_ 6y ago
        To me the DNC leak stood out as more damaging than Facebook ads / twitter bots. That being said, if anyone has an unbiased academic paper that looked in-depth at Russia's Twitter/Facebook shenanigans, please cite. I'd like to read it.
        downandout 6y ago
        While the leak was illegal, in the case of elections, personally I am all for anything that brings voters a better understanding of the candidates. Misinformation is untrue, and people can generally see right through it; email leaks are true. Given the polarization at the time, I don’t think that the email leaks had an impact on the outcome, but voters did become more informed, and that likely swayed some votes. Educated voters are a good thing in my opinion.
- asabjorn 6y ago
  > I'll flip the question around. Had Trump won, would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence? I think you know the answer to that. After his win in 2016 we had Russia collusion claims about election collusion that is still ongoing, it even led to the Mueller investigation that extended beyond the 2018 election, so yes absolutely the Democrats would do this.
  - p1necone 6y ago
    I'm not sure how you can read the Mueller report and come away with the conclusion that there's a lack of evidence.
    - asabjorn 6y ago
      Declassified FBI documents indicate otherwise. Flynn actually notified FBI of all meetings with Russians and debriefed with them afterwards. There is much that is puzzling about the judges treatment of this case considering: 1) The FBI agents in charge of the Flynn case wrote a 'case closure memo' on Jan. 4, 2017, concluding he had found "no derogatory" evidence that Flynn committed a crime or posed a national security threat. FBI management then ordered the closure to be rescinded and pivoted toward trying lure Flynn into an interview. 2) In an extraordinary interview with prosecutors this fall, the FBI agent who led the Flynn case, William Barnett, admitted there was never evidence of wrongdoing by the retired general or Russian collusion by Trump, but the probe was kept open by Special Counsel Robert Mueller because his team was obsessed with punishing the president. [2] And there are a long list of other odd facts about the case that put into question Judge Sullivans extraordinary actions by acting as a prosecutor in this case. [3] [1] https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-04/FBIFlynnCaseCloseMemo.pdf https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-04/FBIFlynn... [2] https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-09/04518073623.pdf https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-09/04518073... [3] https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/dozen-belated-disclosures-turned-tide-michael-flynns https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-sc...
      - TMWNN 6y ago
- 1958325146 6y ago
  Didn't we see the shoe on the other foot, roughly, in 2016 with the Russia collusion thing?
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    No. That was not allegations that the votes themselves were tampered with.
    - downandout 6y ago
      Here [1] is a 2016 article from CNN, titled Computer scientists urge Clinton campaign to challenge election results. The articles says that "they have found evidence that vote totals in the three states could have been manipulated or hacked". Of course no such evidence existed, but it was most certainly among the allegations that Democrats were making in the wake of their loss. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/22/politics/hillary-clinton-challenge-results/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/22/politics/hillary-clinton-chal...
      - cjohnson318 6y ago
        Here are examples of Hillary tweeting that the election was rigged multiple times, every day, for over a month. ...
        rayiner 6y ago
        Here is Hilary accusing Trump of being an “illegitimate” President and that he “knows” he stole the 2016 election: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trump-is-an-illegitimate-president/2019/09/26/29195d5a-e099-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trum... > Hillary Clinton dismissed President Trump as an “illegitimate president” and suggested that “he knows” that he stole the 2016 presidential election in a CBS News interview to be aired Sunday. Is there a word for someone or something that mirrors your sins back at you, but in a grotesquely amplified manner?
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  > would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence? 0) Biden totally won and the Trump cases are ill-founded and wrong, but 1) One can make the case that the Democratic establishment has been pushing disinformation since the first time Trump was elected, insinuating that the election was invalidated by Russian interference. The Washington Post, as late as September 21, 2020, ran the following article: "The unanswered question of our time: Is Trump an agent of Russia?" In what manner is this new material qualitatively different? If it is a simple question of fact, to what extent is YouTube really qualified to determine facts? 2) It is eminently within reason for a human to believe that if Biden had lost, we'd be hearing cries of "voter suppression!" Hillary Clinton herself advised Biden not to concede if it came down to it, and we have other historical cases to look at, like Bush v Gore, and Stacey Abrams (D-GA) still hasn't conceded the 2018 election for governor of Georgia. I do not ask you to litigate the matter itself, as HN is ill suited for such a dispute. I ask you instead: Is there some clear and indisputable factual evidence that would demonstrate to all comers the indicators above are not meaningful, such that it is unreasonable for your fellow man to rely on them? If not, why is the cynical position such a wrong one to take here? Postscript: I see the score comment wobbling! Lots of fun! The -1 Insufficiently Supportive of Groupthink vote is coming through loud and clear <3
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    > It is eminently within reason for a human to believe that if Biden had lost, we'd be hearing cries of "voter suppression!" Hillary Clinton herself advised Biden not to concede if it came down to it Voter suppression is real and has been happening for a long time. Biden winning or losing doesn't change that. So those cries wouldn't demonstrate much. > Hillary Clinton herself advised Biden not to concede if it came down to it She said not to concede on the night of the election, because of factors like mail-in voting. Someone that thinks she said not to concede at all, at any point, is just wrong.
    - caseysoftware 6y ago
      I'm not seeing your "on the night of the election" qualification and she may have said it in other interviews but the "under any circumstances" bit is true: “Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances, because I think this is going to drag out, and eventually I do believe he will win if we don't give an inch, and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is,” Clinton said in an interview with her former communications director Jennifer Palmieri for Showtime's “The Circus,” which released a clip Tuesday. Ref: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/hillary-clinton-says-biden-should-not-concede-2020-election-under-n1238156 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/hillary-clint...
- meanderer 6y ago
  Do people remember the Dems crying large scale voter fraud in 2016? I don’t too.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    No. They were crying large scale Russian hacking and how Trump was a “Russian asset.” As a result of that rhetoric, 2/3 of Democrats believed that Russians had altered the vote tallies to help Trump win: https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2018/03/09/russias-impact-election-seen-through-partisan-eyes https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20... Is it as bad as what Trump is doing? No. Is it as bad as what Democrats did in 2000, 2004, and 2016 put together? Well my schadenfreude meter is pretty pegged.
    - eggy 6y ago
      Not to mention but Russian (Soviet) collusion seems to be a move out of the Democrat's own playbook when Ted Kennedy solicited Soviet intervention to foil the reelection of Ronald Reagan [1]. When you point your finger at something there's usually three more pointing straight back at you. Hillary said the election was fraudulent from day one all the way up to current election. Or how on October 26, 2020, PBS (hardly a right-wing or conservative news agency), aired a documentary [2] on the problems with the Dominion voting machines showing how you could just copy the QR codes and they could be re-scanned and count as a legitimate vote, no major hacking needed here. Here's an excerpt: - "J. Alex Halderman: By analyzing the structure of the Q.R. codes, I have been able to learn that there's nothing that stops an attacker from just duplicating one, and the duplicate would count the same as the original bar code. Miles O’Brien: And in late September, another concern came to light. During testing, election workers found half the names of the 21 candidates for Senate intermittently disappeared from screens during the review phase. Dominion sent out a last-minute software patch. J. Alex Halderman: I'm worried that the Georgia system is the technical equivalent to the 737 MAX. They have just made a last-minute software change that might well have unintended consequences and cause even more severe problems on Election Day." For me, it's the individual states changing their own election laws via unconstitutional methods right before the election. I think that is widespread fraud without a doubt, and those votes need to be audited or discounted. [1] https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/27/ted-kennedy-soviet-union-ronald-reagan-opinions-columnists-peter-robinson.html?sh=4b04b69c359a https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/27/ted-kennedy-soviet-union-r... [2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/will-georgias-new-voting-machines-solve-election-problems-or-make-them-worse https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/will-georgias-new-voting-m...
- cjohnson318 6y ago
  In the 2000 election, results disputed in Florida, but at the end of the day, Gore conceded and that was that. There is exactly 44 examples of successful, non-dumpster fire, transfers of power in this country.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    No he absolutely did not. He tried to cheat through an outrageous request for hand recounts but only in counties he had won: https://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/files/publications/working_papers/01-17.pdf https://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/files/publications/working_pa... Specifically, he demanded recounts of under votes, where the machine hadn’t registered any pick for President. But he did so only in counties where he had won a large majority. Theoretically, this wouldn’t help. Statistically, Bush voters should have been as likely as Gore voters to fail to completely punch a ballot. But by only requesting recounts in counties he had won solidly—I.e. the base rate in the data set heavily favored Gore—newly discerned votes would break in heavily his favor. If he had won the county 2-1, he’d get two newly discernible votes for every one that Bush got. This was an obvious attempt at cheating. So obvious that the Florida Supreme Court smacked Gore down and ordered a statewide recount. And the Supreme Court agreed 7-2 that recount was still unconstitutional because under votes were being counted using different standards in different counties. Imagine if Trump had demanded hand recounts of under votes in this election in Wisconsin, but only those votes that were made in person on Election Day. This would be obvious cheating, since the pool of Election Day voters went heavily for Trump to begin with, so newly discernible votes would break for him as well. Gore did the exact same thing. And it would have been a huge news story if the media understood basic Bayesian probability.
  - briandear 6y ago
    Gore conceded 37 days after the election. And only after the courts struck down his final challenge. And Hillary Clinton still calls the 2016 election illegitimate. Pot meet Kettle.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    I'm going to be a pedantic HN type, but 43. See the 1876 elections. This is important, because you could get an idea of what has to be done to fix the issues and what repercussions it might have by looking at historical precedence.
- cicero 6y ago
  Trump did win 4 years ago, and Hilary Clinton claimed the election was stolen from her and that there is a specter of illegitimacy over his presidency. This is the exact kind of talk that people are now saying is dangerous and must be suppressed. https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/26/four-years-later-bitter-hillary-clinton-claims-2016-election-was-stolen-from-her/ https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/26/four-years-later-bitter...
p1necone 6y ago
Wow, I've seen plenty of whataboutism before, but I've never seen hypothetical whataboutism until this comment...
- jessaustin 6y ago
  Helpful info: https://theoutline.com/post/8610/united-states-russia-whataboutism-cold-war-trump https://theoutline.com/post/8610/united-states-russia-whatab...
  - xupybd 6y ago
    I loved this part: What if a man comes home, and says to his wife: “Susan, you didn’t take out the trash!” he says. “Brad, you have never taken out the trash once in your life,” she replies. Would it be fair for him to turn, smugly clutching a copy of The Economist, and say, “Susan, this is not about me. I can’t believe you are doing whataboutism”?
    - brongondwana 6y ago
      Without reading the context and just looking at that quote... yeah, probably! If he's really never taken the trash out once in his life and they're married, then either they have an arrangement where she's the one taking out the trash, or they'd be totally covered in trash. ... getting in before the "maybe they've only been married a couple of days and this is the first load of trash" - then how does she know he's never taken the trash out in his life? I call shenanigans.
- xupybd 6y ago
  Well not really. The argument is that if this is a non partisan effort then this would have caused the same outcome if the political motivations were reversed. The parent comment is suggesting that is not true. I don't know if that has been well argued by the parent but I don't think this is an attempt at mud slinging. A better argument would be to point out that a non partisan motion should gain some Republican support and it has not. Additionally you could point out that it would be unlikely to gain support from the right due to the current incarnation of right wing politicians tending to support freedom of speech and would be opposed to this action on a partisan basis.
tzs 6y ago
> The simple fact of the matter is that people are entitled to their opinions, and in the United States, they have a constitutional right to express those opinions in the same way and on the same platforms as those that disagree with them. You've never had a constitutional right to a particular platform for your opinions. E.g., if a magazine or newspaper published an opinion that disagreed with yours, you do not have a constitutional right to have your opinion published in that same magazine or newspaper.
- downandout 6y ago
  Newspapers are static publications, and are not primarily engaged in the business of distributing third party content, so the comparison doesn't work. But if the newspaper had interactive functions, and had billed itself as an open platform where opinions of any kind could be published (as is the case with YouTube), then yes, censorship would become a thorny legal issue for them. Further, one of the big problems here is that YouTube didn't do this of its own accord. Agents of the government - Democratic Senators in this case, who signed the letter in their official capacity - pressured the company into suppressing free speech that they simply didn’t like. That is a clear violation of the Constitution.
  - csnover 6y ago
    If you want to be pedantic about it, YouTube is a distributor, like a book store or a news stand, not a publisher like a newspaper. Distributors are in the business of distributing third party content. You can’t force a distributor to carry your content, and it would not become a “thorny legal issue” for them to stop carrying your product unless they violate your contract with them. Speaking of contracts, when someone sign up for YouTube, they agree to their terms of service, which don’t say “we’re an open platform where opinions of any kind can be published”. They say “YouTube is under no obligation to host or serve Content” and “you understand and agree that there will be times when we make […] changes without notice” and “If we reasonably believe that any Content is in breach of this Agreement or may cause harm to YouTube, our users, or third parties, we may remove or take down that Content in our discretion”.
thomastjeffery 6y ago
> Of course it's partisan. Had Trump won, and Biden voters were publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence, do you believe that Democratic senators would still be urging YouTube to take it down in the interest of fairness to Trump? I think you know the answer to that. The answer that it feels like I would have is, "No"; but it only feels that way because I can't even imagine them doing that in the first place. In order to even enter your thought experiment, I must put Biden and the Democrats in the shoes of Trump and the Republicans, and imagine that they have done something I don't believe they would do; and that is where the entire thing falls apart. > The simple fact of the matter is that people are entitled to their opinions, and in the United States, they have a constitutional right to express those opinions in the same way and on the same platforms as those that disagree with them. False. Everyone has the right to express whatever they want, but they don't have the right to do so using someone else's platform. For example, I have the right to express my criticisms of The Bible, but I don't have the right to walk into a church, walk up to the pulpit, and start a TED talk about the lack of evidence for Noah and the great flood, Moses and Hebrew slaves in Egypt, New Testament authorship, etc. What keeps getting called "censorship" here is really "moderation". The reason it's such a big deal is that YouTube is a huge monolithic platform, so moderation on that platform is inherently a big deal. If we want to remove the power YouTube has over public discourse, we need to create real competitors. The same goes for Facebook, Twitter, et al.

jakelazaroff 6y ago

> Had Trump won, and Biden voters were publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence, do you believe that Democratic senators would still be urging YouTube to take it down in the interest of fairness to Trump? I think you know the answer to that. The premise here is that both sides are just as likely to push misinformation on behalf of their team. The Democrats aren't perfect, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking that they would engage in the exact same tactics and rhetoric as the GOP if the shoe were on the other foot. I'll flip the question around. Had Trump won, would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence? I think you know the answer to that.

downandout 6y ago
I'll flip the question around. Had Trump won, would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence? I just listened to 4 years of CNN, MSNBC, and virtually every other media outlet claiming that the previous election was rigged, with similarly sparse evidence. So yes, not only do I believe that they would, but they have already done it, 24/7, for the last 4 straight years.
- adamsea 6y ago
  You're assuming equivalence between the two. What matters is evidence. Facts. Logic. Reason. The two simply are not equivalent. Check out what Wikipedia says about the Mueller Report: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report I'm not claiming the Democrats are perfect or that there aren't mixed motives. But it's obvious to any thinking person not living in a poisoned media ecosystem that all of these election fraud claims are baseless and ridiculous. The same is not true about Russian influence operations during the 2016 election and the Trump campaigns, let's say, benign support of them.
  - downandout 6y ago
    There is no evidence that Russian influence changed the outcome of the election. A few thousand dollars worth of Facebook ads, mostly written in broken English, is unlikely to have caused a massive swing in voter turnout or opinions. It seems clear from the Mueller report that Russians attempted to engage in election interference. There is zero evidence that it had any effect on even a single vote. If you turn on CNN for a second or two today, you'll hear them use the phrase "no widespread voter fraud occurred". In other words, there is evidence that some fraud occurred, as it does in every election. Just not enough to have swayed the results. The same can be said about any Russian interference. So the two things are equivalent, because both happened to some degree, and it is extremely unlikely that either had any effect on the outcome.
    - _RPL5_ 6y ago
      To me the DNC leak stood out as more damaging than Facebook ads / twitter bots. That being said, if anyone has an unbiased academic paper that looked in-depth at Russia's Twitter/Facebook shenanigans, please cite. I'd like to read it.
      - downandout 6y ago
        While the leak was illegal, in the case of elections, personally I am all for anything that brings voters a better understanding of the candidates. Misinformation is untrue, and people can generally see right through it; email leaks are true. Given the polarization at the time, I don’t think that the email leaks had an impact on the outcome, but voters did become more informed, and that likely swayed some votes. Educated voters are a good thing in my opinion.
asabjorn 6y ago
> I'll flip the question around. Had Trump won, would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence? I think you know the answer to that. After his win in 2016 we had Russia collusion claims about election collusion that is still ongoing, it even led to the Mueller investigation that extended beyond the 2018 election, so yes absolutely the Democrats would do this.
- p1necone 6y ago
  I'm not sure how you can read the Mueller report and come away with the conclusion that there's a lack of evidence.
  - asabjorn 6y ago
    Declassified FBI documents indicate otherwise. Flynn actually notified FBI of all meetings with Russians and debriefed with them afterwards. There is much that is puzzling about the judges treatment of this case considering: 1) The FBI agents in charge of the Flynn case wrote a 'case closure memo' on Jan. 4, 2017, concluding he had found "no derogatory" evidence that Flynn committed a crime or posed a national security threat. FBI management then ordered the closure to be rescinded and pivoted toward trying lure Flynn into an interview. 2) In an extraordinary interview with prosecutors this fall, the FBI agent who led the Flynn case, William Barnett, admitted there was never evidence of wrongdoing by the retired general or Russian collusion by Trump, but the probe was kept open by Special Counsel Robert Mueller because his team was obsessed with punishing the president. [2] And there are a long list of other odd facts about the case that put into question Judge Sullivans extraordinary actions by acting as a prosecutor in this case. [3] [1] https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-04/FBIFlynnCaseCloseMemo.pdf https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-04/FBIFlynn... [2] https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-09/04518073623.pdf https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-09/04518073... [3] https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/dozen-belated-disclosures-turned-tide-michael-flynns https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-sc...
    - TMWNN 6y ago
1958325146 6y ago
Didn't we see the shoe on the other foot, roughly, in 2016 with the Russia collusion thing?
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  No. That was not allegations that the votes themselves were tampered with.
  - downandout 6y ago
    Here [1] is a 2016 article from CNN, titled Computer scientists urge Clinton campaign to challenge election results. The articles says that "they have found evidence that vote totals in the three states could have been manipulated or hacked". Of course no such evidence existed, but it was most certainly among the allegations that Democrats were making in the wake of their loss. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/22/politics/hillary-clinton-challenge-results/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/22/politics/hillary-clinton-chal...
    - cjohnson318 6y ago
      Here are examples of Hillary tweeting that the election was rigged multiple times, every day, for over a month. ...
      - rayiner 6y ago
        Here is Hilary accusing Trump of being an “illegitimate” President and that he “knows” he stole the 2016 election: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trump-is-an-illegitimate-president/2019/09/26/29195d5a-e099-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trum... > Hillary Clinton dismissed President Trump as an “illegitimate president” and suggested that “he knows” that he stole the 2016 presidential election in a CBS News interview to be aired Sunday. Is there a word for someone or something that mirrors your sins back at you, but in a grotesquely amplified manner?
fennecfoxen 6y ago
> would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence? 0) Biden totally won and the Trump cases are ill-founded and wrong, but 1) One can make the case that the Democratic establishment has been pushing disinformation since the first time Trump was elected, insinuating that the election was invalidated by Russian interference. The Washington Post, as late as September 21, 2020, ran the following article: "The unanswered question of our time: Is Trump an agent of Russia?" In what manner is this new material qualitatively different? If it is a simple question of fact, to what extent is YouTube really qualified to determine facts? 2) It is eminently within reason for a human to believe that if Biden had lost, we'd be hearing cries of "voter suppression!" Hillary Clinton herself advised Biden not to concede if it came down to it, and we have other historical cases to look at, like Bush v Gore, and Stacey Abrams (D-GA) still hasn't conceded the 2018 election for governor of Georgia. I do not ask you to litigate the matter itself, as HN is ill suited for such a dispute. I ask you instead: Is there some clear and indisputable factual evidence that would demonstrate to all comers the indicators above are not meaningful, such that it is unreasonable for your fellow man to rely on them? If not, why is the cynical position such a wrong one to take here? Postscript: I see the score comment wobbling! Lots of fun! The -1 Insufficiently Supportive of Groupthink vote is coming through loud and clear <3
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  > It is eminently within reason for a human to believe that if Biden had lost, we'd be hearing cries of "voter suppression!" Hillary Clinton herself advised Biden not to concede if it came down to it Voter suppression is real and has been happening for a long time. Biden winning or losing doesn't change that. So those cries wouldn't demonstrate much. > Hillary Clinton herself advised Biden not to concede if it came down to it She said not to concede on the night of the election, because of factors like mail-in voting. Someone that thinks she said not to concede at all, at any point, is just wrong.
  - caseysoftware 6y ago
    I'm not seeing your "on the night of the election" qualification and she may have said it in other interviews but the "under any circumstances" bit is true: “Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances, because I think this is going to drag out, and eventually I do believe he will win if we don't give an inch, and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is,” Clinton said in an interview with her former communications director Jennifer Palmieri for Showtime's “The Circus,” which released a clip Tuesday. Ref: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/hillary-clinton-says-biden-should-not-concede-2020-election-under-n1238156 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/hillary-clint...
meanderer 6y ago
Do people remember the Dems crying large scale voter fraud in 2016? I don’t too.
- rayiner 6y ago
  No. They were crying large scale Russian hacking and how Trump was a “Russian asset.” As a result of that rhetoric, 2/3 of Democrats believed that Russians had altered the vote tallies to help Trump win: https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2018/03/09/russias-impact-election-seen-through-partisan-eyes https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20... Is it as bad as what Trump is doing? No. Is it as bad as what Democrats did in 2000, 2004, and 2016 put together? Well my schadenfreude meter is pretty pegged.
  - eggy 6y ago
    Not to mention but Russian (Soviet) collusion seems to be a move out of the Democrat's own playbook when Ted Kennedy solicited Soviet intervention to foil the reelection of Ronald Reagan [1]. When you point your finger at something there's usually three more pointing straight back at you. Hillary said the election was fraudulent from day one all the way up to current election. Or how on October 26, 2020, PBS (hardly a right-wing or conservative news agency), aired a documentary [2] on the problems with the Dominion voting machines showing how you could just copy the QR codes and they could be re-scanned and count as a legitimate vote, no major hacking needed here. Here's an excerpt: - "J. Alex Halderman: By analyzing the structure of the Q.R. codes, I have been able to learn that there's nothing that stops an attacker from just duplicating one, and the duplicate would count the same as the original bar code. Miles O’Brien: And in late September, another concern came to light. During testing, election workers found half the names of the 21 candidates for Senate intermittently disappeared from screens during the review phase. Dominion sent out a last-minute software patch. J. Alex Halderman: I'm worried that the Georgia system is the technical equivalent to the 737 MAX. They have just made a last-minute software change that might well have unintended consequences and cause even more severe problems on Election Day." For me, it's the individual states changing their own election laws via unconstitutional methods right before the election. I think that is widespread fraud without a doubt, and those votes need to be audited or discounted. [1] https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/27/ted-kennedy-soviet-union-ronald-reagan-opinions-columnists-peter-robinson.html?sh=4b04b69c359a https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/27/ted-kennedy-soviet-union-r... [2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/will-georgias-new-voting-machines-solve-election-problems-or-make-them-worse https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/will-georgias-new-voting-m...
cjohnson318 6y ago
In the 2000 election, results disputed in Florida, but at the end of the day, Gore conceded and that was that. There is exactly 44 examples of successful, non-dumpster fire, transfers of power in this country.
- rayiner 6y ago
  No he absolutely did not. He tried to cheat through an outrageous request for hand recounts but only in counties he had won: https://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/files/publications/working_papers/01-17.pdf https://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/files/publications/working_pa... Specifically, he demanded recounts of under votes, where the machine hadn’t registered any pick for President. But he did so only in counties where he had won a large majority. Theoretically, this wouldn’t help. Statistically, Bush voters should have been as likely as Gore voters to fail to completely punch a ballot. But by only requesting recounts in counties he had won solidly—I.e. the base rate in the data set heavily favored Gore—newly discerned votes would break in heavily his favor. If he had won the county 2-1, he’d get two newly discernible votes for every one that Bush got. This was an obvious attempt at cheating. So obvious that the Florida Supreme Court smacked Gore down and ordered a statewide recount. And the Supreme Court agreed 7-2 that recount was still unconstitutional because under votes were being counted using different standards in different counties. Imagine if Trump had demanded hand recounts of under votes in this election in Wisconsin, but only those votes that were made in person on Election Day. This would be obvious cheating, since the pool of Election Day voters went heavily for Trump to begin with, so newly discernible votes would break for him as well. Gore did the exact same thing. And it would have been a huge news story if the media understood basic Bayesian probability.
- briandear 6y ago
  Gore conceded 37 days after the election. And only after the courts struck down his final challenge. And Hillary Clinton still calls the 2016 election illegitimate. Pot meet Kettle.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  I'm going to be a pedantic HN type, but 43. See the 1876 elections. This is important, because you could get an idea of what has to be done to fix the issues and what repercussions it might have by looking at historical precedence.
cicero 6y ago
Trump did win 4 years ago, and Hilary Clinton claimed the election was stolen from her and that there is a specter of illegitimacy over his presidency. This is the exact kind of talk that people are now saying is dangerous and must be suppressed. https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/26/four-years-later-bitter-hillary-clinton-claims-2016-election-was-stolen-from-her/ https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/26/four-years-later-bitter...

p1necone 6y ago

Wow, I've seen plenty of whataboutism before, but I've never seen hypothetical whataboutism until this comment...

jessaustin 6y ago
Helpful info: https://theoutline.com/post/8610/united-states-russia-whataboutism-cold-war-trump https://theoutline.com/post/8610/united-states-russia-whatab...
- xupybd 6y ago
  I loved this part: What if a man comes home, and says to his wife: “Susan, you didn’t take out the trash!” he says. “Brad, you have never taken out the trash once in your life,” she replies. Would it be fair for him to turn, smugly clutching a copy of The Economist, and say, “Susan, this is not about me. I can’t believe you are doing whataboutism”?
  - brongondwana 6y ago
    Without reading the context and just looking at that quote... yeah, probably! If he's really never taken the trash out once in his life and they're married, then either they have an arrangement where she's the one taking out the trash, or they'd be totally covered in trash. ... getting in before the "maybe they've only been married a couple of days and this is the first load of trash" - then how does she know he's never taken the trash out in his life? I call shenanigans.
xupybd 6y ago
Well not really. The argument is that if this is a non partisan effort then this would have caused the same outcome if the political motivations were reversed. The parent comment is suggesting that is not true. I don't know if that has been well argued by the parent but I don't think this is an attempt at mud slinging. A better argument would be to point out that a non partisan motion should gain some Republican support and it has not. Additionally you could point out that it would be unlikely to gain support from the right due to the current incarnation of right wing politicians tending to support freedom of speech and would be opposed to this action on a partisan basis.

tzs 6y ago

> The simple fact of the matter is that people are entitled to their opinions, and in the United States, they have a constitutional right to express those opinions in the same way and on the same platforms as those that disagree with them. You've never had a constitutional right to a particular platform for your opinions. E.g., if a magazine or newspaper published an opinion that disagreed with yours, you do not have a constitutional right to have your opinion published in that same magazine or newspaper.

downandout 6y ago
Newspapers are static publications, and are not primarily engaged in the business of distributing third party content, so the comparison doesn't work. But if the newspaper had interactive functions, and had billed itself as an open platform where opinions of any kind could be published (as is the case with YouTube), then yes, censorship would become a thorny legal issue for them. Further, one of the big problems here is that YouTube didn't do this of its own accord. Agents of the government - Democratic Senators in this case, who signed the letter in their official capacity - pressured the company into suppressing free speech that they simply didn’t like. That is a clear violation of the Constitution.
- csnover 6y ago
  If you want to be pedantic about it, YouTube is a distributor, like a book store or a news stand, not a publisher like a newspaper. Distributors are in the business of distributing third party content. You can’t force a distributor to carry your content, and it would not become a “thorny legal issue” for them to stop carrying your product unless they violate your contract with them. Speaking of contracts, when someone sign up for YouTube, they agree to their terms of service, which don’t say “we’re an open platform where opinions of any kind can be published”. They say “YouTube is under no obligation to host or serve Content” and “you understand and agree that there will be times when we make […] changes without notice” and “If we reasonably believe that any Content is in breach of this Agreement or may cause harm to YouTube, our users, or third parties, we may remove or take down that Content in our discretion”.

thomastjeffery 6y ago

> Of course it's partisan. Had Trump won, and Biden voters were publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence, do you believe that Democratic senators would still be urging YouTube to take it down in the interest of fairness to Trump? I think you know the answer to that. The answer that it feels like I would have is, "No"; but it only feels that way because I can't even imagine them doing that in the first place. In order to even enter your thought experiment, I must put Biden and the Democrats in the shoes of Trump and the Republicans, and imagine that they have done something I don't believe they would do; and that is where the entire thing falls apart. > The simple fact of the matter is that people are entitled to their opinions, and in the United States, they have a constitutional right to express those opinions in the same way and on the same platforms as those that disagree with them. False. Everyone has the right to express whatever they want, but they don't have the right to do so using someone else's platform. For example, I have the right to express my criticisms of The Bible, but I don't have the right to walk into a church, walk up to the pulpit, and start a TED talk about the lack of evidence for Noah and the great flood, Moses and Hebrew slaves in Egypt, New Testament authorship, etc. What keeps getting called "censorship" here is really "moderation". The reason it's such a big deal is that YouTube is a huge monolithic platform, so moderation on that platform is inherently a big deal. If we want to remove the power YouTube has over public discourse, we need to create real competitors. The same goes for Facebook, Twitter, et al.