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If you reject the idea that people are intelligent enough to think about politics for themselves then you reject the idea that they're intelligent enough to gov

by swiley 6y ago

If you reject the idea that people are intelligent enough to think about politics for themselves then you reject the idea that they're intelligent enough to govern themselves. Democracy and free speech are intrinsically linked.

euske 6y ago
This kind of dogmatic statement is good for soliciting a response, but I think it's intellectual degradation. There are infinitely many interpretations of "democracy" and "free speech" and it's hardly a simple yes/no question. We should be free/democratic society as much as possible, and it's an ongoing (while not always successful) effort. We should discuss concrete steps.
- int_19h 6y ago
  On the contrary, I think this goes to the root of the matter. Can you trust people or not? That's a fundamental question that decides whether you can have real democracy, or only a sham. Because any kind of democracy where people are only allowed to make "safe" choices, decided on by someone else (e.g. the censors), is a sham. And that's true even if the censors themselves are directly or indirectly democratically appointed. Iran is a good example of such system taken to its logical conclusion.
  - Daishiman 6y ago
    I'm sorry but trust isn't a binary value. I trust people in my life to be reliable and trustworthy to a certain extent and in certain areas. I don't trust my party-animal buddies to be on time for breakfast a 8 AM, and I don't trust my stressed out workaholic friend to just chill on a Friday afternoon. You cannot simplify trust to a single variable; you have to go case by case. And trust in the masses is partial; finding where it is and where it is not is critical.
    - int_19h 6y ago
      How would you manifest that partial trust when it comes to political power, though? The problem with that power is that splitting it up is a zero-sum game - you can give less to "the masses", but then somebody else is getting more. Who would that be, and why would you trust them?
    - inglor_cz 6y ago
      But at the end of the day either you give everyone a vote or you don't. A system where the most trusted people had 10 votes and least trusted people had 0.1 vote might make sense in a society of nerds voting on a software project, but not in general political application.
      - 8note 6y ago
        Given that that's how the us elections work, it seems like plots of people have considered a good approach
gabereiser 6y ago
YouTube can choose to keep or delete any content on their platform regardless of truth/free speech/or not. It's in the EULA. You want free speech, go outside and yell. No one is stopping anyone from free speech. What Google is doing is cleaning up content on their service according to their EULA. If you disagree with the EULA, you can gladly go use another service. I will add, targeting a specific genre of videos looks bad, sure. It's only that we are talking about that genre and not all the others of topics YouTube has removed.
- swiley 6y ago
  Just because it's legal doesn't mean it makes sense. Monarchs used to make the same argument defending what they did.
- pyronik19 6y ago
  Fine, time for some trustbusting.
- bendbro 6y ago
  If corporations can't discriminate in hiring due to an American principle of anti-racism, then we can also prevent corporations from discriminating in speech on an American principle of free speech.
- JPKab 6y ago
  They have the right to do it, and it will make the world worse off. Taibbi always has had a great guy instinct for normal Americans and how they react to elite condescension, and he's right here. My idiot brother got twice as radicalized when they kicked Alex Jones's crazy ass off YouTube. It made people feel better and more morally superior, especially employees. It hurt my brother. Now when he watches that asshole, he's on a website where he is guaranteed to never get the other side. If you support this, then you don't know anything about how humans react to censorship.
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    Even before Jones was kicked off, people went to YouTube for insane conspiracy theories and ended up, due to the video recommendation system, still only seeing one side. It really didn't matter whether Jones was on there or his own platform, people watching his videos still only see his (and related) videos.
Daishiman 6y ago
We in fact already do that and nobody bats an eye. People are not intimate with the details of most government bureaucracies, they are not expected to be, and they're no expected to grasp such details in a way that they can make informed decisions. And frankly that is absolutely correct. We believe in democracy to be the best system despite its flaws, and one of its flaws is that it's evident that most people have no freaking clue about how government works. If you believe in speech for the purpose of government then you have to reject outright lies design with the intent of deligitimizing democracy.
- JPKab 6y ago
  Authoritarians always justify silencing speech for the greater good. You can reject lies with counters to those lies, or do it your way, and end democracy.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    Eloquent, but... YouTube isn't an authoritarian (over anything except their own platform), and their policy, whatever it is, isn't going to "end democracy".
    - JPKab 6y ago
      Obviously, YouTube has the right to do whatever they want with their servers. My point wasn't that YouTube's policy was the end of democracy, but that the ethos espoused by the parent commenter, if shared by a majority of the electorate and leaders, results in the end of democracy. Democracy requires trusting people to not be complete morons. Unfortunately, the polarized nature of political discourse in the US has caused people to think that the 50% of the country that doesn't think like them is too stupid to be trusted with speech and videos. Despite the fact that my brother has been sucked into the world of Alex Jones, I don't think most Americans are too stupid to resist dumb conspiracy theories. In decades past, this brother was a radical leftist, regularly arrested for trespassing in the late 80's at nuclear power plant protests, and later a radical in Greenpeace in the early 90's. This was long before the internet. He didn't believe the moon landing was real, and always believed in dumb ass conspiracy theories. (He's 11 years older than me, and by the time I was 11, I knew he was a moron.) My other 4 siblings aren't like him. His new shift was, honestly, not that weird. He happened to shift to the right, but it's a horseshoe as you know, and crazy is crazy. There have been, and always will be, highly illogical people looking to indulge their desperate desire to have symmetrical, orderly views of the universe that aren't real. The big, disastrous outcomes must always have been carefully plotted, large, grand plans (like 9/11 being a false flag operation, which my brother also believed then). My brother is one of these people, but most people aren't like that. This huge drive for censorship didn't occur when a large portion of the American left thought that 9/11 was an inside job, because the normal people on the left knew that it was a large, but still fringe, group within their own sphere. The problem is that the same normal people on the left don't know normal people on the right. Why? Because they don't know ANY people on the right. They are in bubbles now. So they are unable to draw the same conclusion that people like my brother are a fringe on the right. To them, voting for Donald Trump is evidence of a massively delusional person, rather than the grim reality that the vast majority of Trump's voters don't like him, and simply chose a lesser of two evils in their worldview, due to a corrupt, oligarchical class at the top of both major political parties resulting in highly polarized policy positions that force them to do this.
anotherman554 6y ago
Since you've defined free speech as being published by Youtube, a private publisher, I guess you think democracy didn't exist before Youtube and free speech didn't before Youtube?
Thaxll 6y ago
I thought people were intelligent enough, until we found out that some 75M voted for x. Now x is saying that it's a global conspiracy and bringing 75M believing that lie.
dmix 6y ago
That what I find most amusing about the “everyone should vote”. Then they complain about the stupid people and policies that get voted in. I might be okay with “every informed person should vote”. But that “informed” part can be heavily politically interpreted. People have largely missed the fact that politics used to be the domain of informed groups fighting for power blocs. Now it’s been “decentralized” and radicalized on Twitter and Reddit and made into glorified reality Tv entertainment by the mass media (who are clearly serving a market with high demand who treat politics like sports teams). I’d rather have way less people voting and it go back to being mostly boring educated people topic than it’s below common denominator mess it is today. But I’m unabashedly elitist and understand that there are plenty of well funded groups who want dumb malleable voters and as many as possible.
- loopz 6y ago
  Better parties sounds like they could end stalemate between billionaires. Both voting blocs have legitimate concerns that need better addressing.
jasode 6y ago
>Democracy and free speech are intrinsically linked. Yes but the only "free speech" that's realistically able to be implemented is freedom of speech without fear of the government putting you jail for criticizing the government. The other idealism of free speech implemented by commercial businesses is not possible because we (the collective "we") won't allow it to happen. There is no broadcasting medium (including websites) in any country that doesn't have interference and pressure to remove/ban content via consumer boycotts, advertiser influence, subscribers, business' self-discretion, or decrees from government officials. The above list of actors in society is the collective "we" that makes absolute free speech an unattainable goal. There is no business with an infinite bank account that can withstand all outside pressures to censor information. Apple has $200 billion in the bank and yet they bowed to China pressure to remove podcasts that supported Hong Kong. If a successful/influential giant like Apple can't implement absolute free speech, what's the proposed alternative corporate structure that can do it? Nobody ever lays out a concrete plan that makes free speech possible. [I don't mind the downvotes but I would really appreciate some replies with constructive comments explaining how commercial businesses can realistically implement free speech.]
- swiley 6y ago
  Apple specifically designed their platform for censorship. That's why so many people hate it.
  - jasode 6y ago
    >Apple specifically designed their platform for censorship. That's why so many people hate it. Which business with UGC is censorship proof? Isn't that the issue? Nobody has come up with a way to accomplish that. Does anyone have any constructive ideas on this?
tbatchelli 6y ago
People are rational most of the times, and act based on the well of knowledge they have at the time. When you choose to promote certain content because of its high engagement benefits you given its controversial nature, then you are poisoning the well of knowledge for each individual. If you do so in a feedback loop, considering what they were interested in before, you accelerate your earnings as well as the poisoning. Human brains are hackable, more so if you can control their inputs. Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, they all found the attack vector. So democracy and truth are more related to each other than democracy and speech. We tend to think that speech is truth, but it is not, and people over time have voted themselves out into dictatorships over and over. (edit: typos, many)
- nonbirithm 6y ago
  There has to be a good reason why psychological warfare is used, including by the United States in periods like the Vietnam War. The expectation is that statements written on paper or recited through loudspeakers or similar influence people's thoughts, which influences what actions they will take. Those actions are supposed to be beneficial to the forces scattering them from a helicopter or posting them on walls. They're trying to get you to do something regardless of what your preexisting thoughts are beforehand. Now tear down the pieces of propaganda and burn them. Is this censorship? I think human brains are sufficiently able to be hacked by the right information. With certain kinds of information, those people could end up causing material harm to someone who is completely uninvolved. That is the ultimate danger that I believe YouTube and the like are trying to avoid, and if true it would be an admittance of a sort that some kinds of information are dangerous to some kinds of people. The name "psychological warfare" implies that communication can be weaponized, in a sense. Certain people do not change their ways regardless of what you try to tell them. I think the issue is centered not around people trying to have a reasoned debate, but those who have been lost to debate more or less permanently. Previously, you couldn't scatter this kind of information about on the scale were seeing today, and also recommend similar content using very effective algorithms. The more millions of people the content reaches, the more latent believers it will reach and end up converting, even if the conversion rate is a fraction of a percent. And many of these people are very vocal. In a sense, the content takedown seems like an attempt to counteract the fact that the algorithms are too effective of a medium for misinformation. I don't think we would have seen this kind of scale with books or flyers.
ardy42 6y ago
> If you reject the idea that people are intelligent enough to think about politics for themselves then you reject the idea that they're intelligent enough to govern themselves. I mean, the American founders already rejected a lot of ideas about the people governing themselves, because they knew from history that the people often can't check their worst impulses. > Democracy and free speech are intrinsically linked. Yeah, but what kinds of free speech work and what kinds don't? I used to be a free speech fundamentalist, but now I'm getting more skeptical of that position. Sort of like how radical Athenian-style direct democracy doesn't work, maybe radically giving everyone near-unchecked access to nationwide broadcasting doesn't work, either. Now, I'm not advocating for some kind of universal censorship apparatus, but maybe it's would be best if broadcast speech at least passed through some kind of editor (and I mean editor, making editorial decisions, not a censor) to build more judgement into the system. As software engineers, we understand the value of code reviews. That kind of thing shouldn't be anathema.
- gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
  This is literally the foundation of American govt structure namely the respect for unalienable rights of individuals to express themselves. It’s the first line in our enumerated rights. This isn’t “oh we should rethink things” this is a matter of natural rights and precedes anything we’ve constructed.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > This is literally the foundation of American govt structure namely the respect for unalienable rights of individuals to express themselves. > It’s the first line in our enumerated rights. > This isn’t “oh we should rethink things” this is a matter of natural rights and precedes anything we’ve constructed. I never said anyone shouldn't have the right to express themselves. Do you think it's in the Constitution that you have the unalienable right post any lie you want to YouTube? I don't remember that being in there. IMHO, lies are toxic to free speech, and it's in everyone's interest (and moral obligation) to do their best to limit their spread.
    - 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
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tzs 6y ago
It's not a question of whether they are intelligent enough to do so. It is whether or not they can get the information that allows them to do so. With the vast amount of information on social media, which is where more and more people are getting most of their information nowadays, and the way social media algorithms are designed to maximize engagement, and the way human cognitive biases work, the result is you almost never get a balanced view presenting arguments for all sides even if all sides offering information are acting in good faith. Then add in all those who are not acting in good faith, who have a much easier time generating vast quantities of low quality information than the people arguing in good faith have for generating high quality information, and it is even worse. There was a recent article in Scientific American that covered research into this. Here was the HN discussion of it [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25153716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25153716
- rightbyte 6y ago
  > you almost never get a balanced view presenting arguments for all sides By banning allegations of election fraud you could change "almost never" to "never".
  - twentydollars 6y ago
    They're not banning all allegations of fraud. They're blocking a specific set of claims that have been shown to be false, for instance that Donald Trump won the 2020 US election.
- bordercases 6y ago
  You need expertise to interpret information and you need the right kind of expertise and even the right combinations of expertise, and even knowing what the right combination of expertise is. It is a question of intelligence, information, expertise and meta-expertise, all of those things. Privileging any of those components of sense-making is myopia of different sorts depending on what claims people are actually wanting to forward. For instance if you want to look like a centrist while avoiding calling people dumb you say they're low-information voters, change the news, make them listen to these experts, give person X more control or say, when the news and those experts and that person all have problems of different sorts. Not one-dimensional.
ignoramous 6y ago
FTFY: If you reject the idea that a majority are intelligent enough to think about politics for themselves then you reject the idea that they're intelligent enough to elect a capable government.
rmrfstar 6y ago
I think this is a push-not-pull situation. Here is a vision of the future articulated by a promising In-Q-Tel funded startup: [1,2] "[We need] a set of guiding principles to inform the types of speech that should be permitted in digital town squares" [1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/15/forget-counterterrorism-the-united-states-needs-a-counter-disinformation-strategy/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/15/forget-counterterrorism... [2] https://primer.ai/ https://primer.ai/
handoflixue 6y ago
Question: Why is this a threat to democracy, but previous censorship wasn't? There's always been an expectation of truthfulness in communication: We don't allow people to go around claiming that Pepsi causes AIDS, or cures cancer. You're not allowed to claim you're collecting for a charity, and then keep all the money for yourself. I doubt you'd be terribly okay with me claiming that you're a murderer and asking how much that biases your stance. (Genuinely trying to understand if there is something that makes this different from any other sort of fraudulent communication - I don't see people defending the other stuff under the guise of "Free Speech", and I'm not clear why this would be different)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- NeutronStar 6y ago
  If you can prove the lies did damages then you have to pay for the damages. But you still have the right to say it. Having the right to speak doesn't mean there's no consequences to it.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > (Genuinely trying to understand if there is something that makes this different from any other sort of fraudulent communication - I don't see people defending the other stuff under the guise of "Free Speech", and I'm not clear why this would be different) People are not defending fraudulent communication. They are observing that the same factors that make audiences vulnerable to misinformation affect the censors and the process by which censors determine which information is harmful. If we had a test for truth or sincerity we could use it to determine which information was false or put forth in bad faith. We don't, so any person who acts as an information gatekeeper could be one of those people who is lying or deceived and they would then be able to corrupt the discourse by censoring the information that exposes their lies or misunderstandings.
  - pnw_hazor 6y ago
    Fraud is a very specific (and hard to prove) term of art in US law. There is no US law that would stop someone from making expressions that are later determined to be fraudulent. Note, commercial speech (e.g., advertisement) is considered a less protected species of speech and may be subject to prior restraint in limited viewpoint neutral circumstances.
ethn 6y ago
Further, even if the citizen ostensibly advocates the wrong belief, or say are persuaded by an adversary, that belief becomes the legitimate value of the population regardless of the reason—-as democracy is purposed to obligate government to pursue the values of its citizens. I’ve been to a country with a dictatorship with a faux democracy and no free speech. I asked the minister of journalism & communications whether he believes that free speech is possible in a democracy. He unabashedly said no, as there is no guarantee the “consensus” will be “correct”, especially given the influence of its adversaries.
deeviant 6y ago
> Democracy and free speech are intrinsically linked. Not really. UK has far more limits on speech than the US but is just as much of a Democracy as the US. "Free" speech has be weaponized in the internet age. It is a cancer that is actively destroying democracy.
- rsync 6y ago
  "Not really. UK has far more limits on speech than the US but is just as much of a Democracy as the US." They have a literal "House of Lords" which is "... by appointment or by heredity or official function."[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords
  - deeviant 6y ago
    So you are attempting to make the point that the UK is not an equivalent democracy? The house of lords can not create bills nor stop them. They can look over the elected parliament's shoulders and whine, that's it. It is a vestigial leaving of the monarchy system that, like the Monarchs themselves, the UK keeps because it's cute. While in the US, un-elected corporations do very much the same thing, except when they whine, they get their way.
    - cambalache 6y ago
      > While in the US, un-elected corporations do very much the same thing, except when they whine, they get their way. Thanks god that never happens in Britain.
      - deeviant 6y ago
        I'm sure it does but in the UK, there is no Citizens United, where the Supreme Corporate Court of America (LLC) decided $$$ = speech, more $$$ = more speech, thus infinite $$$ to political campaigns = ALL GOOD HOMIES (This isn't even satire, this is actually their logic here). Let's get real, it isn't the fact that corps lobby goverments that is the problem, there problem is when they can give unlimited cash bribes, like that can in the US. But they can not in the UK. When you really start examining it, the US democrazy(sic) doesn't seem all that exceptional.
charonn0 6y ago
Free speech isn't implicated here.
ThoreauBred 6y ago
Seems you are still plenty capable of speaking your mind. I cannot help but wonder if anyone has considered Taibbi is just Trump; cashing in on rage he induces. No way to comment unless you pay. Hrmmm
tootie 6y ago
I feel like have unequivocal evidence that they can't.
ipython 6y ago
Why is it that we have to ignore nuances in these arguments? We never had unrestricted free speech in this country. There is a whole Wikipedia article about it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_ex... In addition other democratic states have strict limits on free speech such as Singapore: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_14_of_the_Constitution_of_Singapore https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_14_of_the_Constituti... After all even “democracy” is nuanced here in the states. Obvious examples from our past include the wholesale disenfranchisement of women until 100 years ago, Jim Crow era laws, poll taxes, and more. Did we have democracy then? Do we have democracy now? Did we have free speech when broadcasters in the USA had to abide by the Fairness Doctrine? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine. Our system has it’s faults. But one can’t say that we ever had unfettered democracy or free speech, ever. At what point is speech considered abuse? If you make the analogy between speech and network traffic, we intentionally censor “abusive” traffic to save our networks from collapse. Could one make the argument that entities with an interest in destabilizing our democracy should not be able to inject propaganda into our discourse because “free speech”? I think it’s a valid argument to have and a nuance that we have to contend with. There are no absolutes. Trivializing this with a snappy trope of “democracy can’t survive without free speech” is disingenuous IMO.
- wkjenjkwenf 6y ago
  What a stupid argument. "Child pornography and obscenity are banned, therefore democracy does not rely on free speech, therefore we don't need free speech at all." Obviously "free speech" comes with the colloquially-understood fact that it doesn't include child pornography.
  - ipython 6y ago
    Be careful. Your hot air may just blow over the straw man you’re arguing with.
  - m3at 6y ago
    You're new so you might wonder why you're downvoted. Hackernews has some guidelines, and while they're far from being perfect they do help to maintain above average online conversation. Please have a read (it's pretty short!): https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Key point related to your comment: > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
modriano 6y ago
An individual's understanding of the world is shaped exclusively by the signals produced by their 5 senses. Intelligence governs an individual's ability to interpret those signals and draw further conclusions from those interpreted signals, but if that individual is fed a constant stream of bad yet internally-consistent data, correct application of logic and reason will lead that individual to objectively incorrect conclusions. Further, human beings aren't perfectly rational machines capable of processing the utterly overwhelming amount of signals we are exposed to at any given instant, rather we develop blinders to focus in on specific signals and we develop heuristics to reach decisions without processing all possible signals. I haven't read every whitepaper put out by every politician I've ever supported, nor has 99.9999+% of others, but we still support politicians because of our heuristics and blinders. I prefer forming my opinions from whitepapers, source documents, and a rigorous analysis of a candidate's behavior, but ultimately a heuristic I rely on is the opinion of other people or institutions that I trust, like the New York Times, the Economist, Ezra Klien, Matt Yglesias, Raj Chetty, etc. I've decided that I don't like believing incorrect things, so I've thought a lot about epistemology and embraced a mixture of pragmatism and empiricism (where possible). I try to independently verify suspicious claims, but it took me a long time to become a competent data scientist, I'm willing to spend far more time searching for good data/signals and analyzing them than most other people, and I still can't be informed on everything which necessitates reliance on sub-optimal heuristics. Most people don't even attempt the rigor I aspire to, preferring a tribal epistemology, where they outsource opinion-forming to the thought-leaders of their tribe. If those tribal thought-leaders are telling people things like * "Hillary Clinton is running a pedophilia ring out of the basement of this pizza restaurant" or * "COVID-19 is a librul hoax so don't wear a mask or embrace any hard-won public health advice" or * "Joe Biden's landslide victory isn't real, and even though we can't prove it, despite the fact that electoral systems are designed so that malfeasance would be easily detectable, you should ignore reject the result of a DEMOCRATIC ELECTION, EVEN IN STATES WHERE THE OUTCOME WAS CONFIRMED BY A HAND RECOUNT" you'll see behavior from individuals in that tribe that's consistent with the signals those individuals perceive, but the behavior won't produce the expected outcome, because the signals don't reflect reality. Instead, it will produce mayhem, death, destruction, pain, and loss. This is empirically undeniable. TL,DR: Democracy depends on the votes of people. People form opinions only from the information that passes through their senses and into their mind. Garbage in, garbage out. It's possible to solve problems through rational analysis of sufficiently accurate models of reality, but models that don't reflect reality can be extremely, devastatingly destructive. If the signal "Donald Trump actually won the election and it is being stolen from him" was an accurate description of reality, it would rational to use violence to repel the usurpers trying to steal your country. But that signal is false, and spreading that signal both is eroding belief in democracy among the communities where enough members embrace that false signal, and it will in lead to unjustified murders.
AndrewKemendo 6y ago
What does "Govern themselves" practically mean in this context? Lets say that I'm an intelligent person that firmly believes in "rugged individualism" to the point where I'm an anarcho-georgist [1] and do not recognize the state as an authority for real property allocation based on a well reasoned moral philosophy. Given the fact that there is no unclaimed territory for which I could live without falling under the purview of a state's thumb, and hence would not be allowed to "govern myself", how would I then govern myself consistent with my political philosophy? This is obviously a hyperbolic example, but it's IMO an important exercise to explicate how a large group of people with heterogeneous values, is supposed to act/behave when a prime mover state system is (in effect) demanding no values be higher than it. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism
Der_Einzige 6y ago
Well, we do reject this idea. That's why we have a republic rather than a direct democracy. The same allegory of the cave justifications for why the average individual is too stupid to rule and shouldn't be allowed to are made today. Oh, you aren't well enough educated or experienced enough? You should not govern, and move aside for those who are educated or experienced...
- int_19h 6y ago
  We have a republic, because that's how it was organized more than two centuries ago, and changing it from within the system is extremely difficult. But many states have elements of direct democracy in form of public initiatives, and they generally tend to be the states that were settled and organized later (e.g. West Coast), and did so with benefit of hindsight, after seeing many decades of how the original system works. So I'm not sure if it's even meaningful to say that we do reject the idea. The original designers did (mostly; they weren't a hivemind, either), but we aren't them; and they weren't really representative of their entire society, either.
zionic 6y ago
If people are too stupid to reject false information that wasn’t curated for them why are they smart enough to vote. Any argument advocating censorship is ultimately arguing for dictatorship.
- staticman2 6y ago
  If you think people are so smart, why should you care if people get banned from Youtube? Clearly smart people will discover smart videos on any web site they are located on, and there's no reason for anyone to need Youtube to find an audience.
- weavejester 6y ago
  How would one determine whether information is false or not? It's easier to publish disinformation than it is to disprove it, and while some people are clearly better at sifting truth from fiction than others, I suspect everyone has beliefs that are based upon false information. Moreover, this isn't censorship by the government, but by Google. Why should a private company be made to disseminate disinformation when it doesn't want to? A key part of freedom of speech is the freedom not to speak, and mandating that a company publish information it doesn't want to is surely just as bad as forcing it to censor information it does want to publish.
froh 6y ago
The possibilities of targeting messaging via fb, youtube, twitter ad budgets go far beyond the freedom of speech the authors of the constitution had in mind, no? The ability to address a snug fit tailored messaging to specific audiences is a completely new level of "talking". It subverts the traditional democratic communication, where all participants realistically had a comparable and diverse data/information set. In contrast, given sufficient targeting advertisement budget, you can very deliberately dissimimate messages which shift the electorates decisions just enough that you get the political climate and outcome you want. That's no longer the free speech of the constitution. That's mass manipulation. Brain hacking it was called elsewhere in the discussion. What can yt, twitter, fb do? Banning certain content feels bad, but how can they nudge us with the tweets, videos and posts that challenge us a little, like the old news stand always carried the paper we normally wouldn't read. Until we did, once in a while. And of course the paper was not 95% letters to the editor, unredacted. How can the fb, google ai help us to structure the flood of information in a more nuanced way? Instead of a plump ban? Until then, I reluctantly take the ban.
ronaldj 6y ago
This country's government is based on the idea that people aren't intelligent (or interested) enough to think about politics for themselves. That's what a representative democracy is.
- colordrops 6y ago
  That's not why it's a representative democracy. The reason is that direct democracy was not logistically possible at the time, and also for support if states' rights.
scoot_718 6y ago
It is not contradictory to be intolerant of the intolerant. To allow free speech for those who call for such repugnant lies is to tacitly accept them. Likewise, no government should allow for parties that would destroy itself - yet here America is, falling apart.
- greenflame7 6y ago
  By that logic its not contradictory to be intolerant of people intolerant of intolerance. Or is it only valid logic with an even number of intolerances?
  - visarga 6y ago
    This logic doesn't work in the abstract, you got to apply it to a concrete situation. Each situation is different, they are not all the same to be judged in one swoop.
    - WhyDoesDangSuck 6y ago
      Each situation is morally relative and ineffective at resolving conflict, instead only deepening the divide. You cannot fight hate with hate and achieve love. We all must be more tolerant of people and their fallibility in order to reach common ground and discover that we are all much more alike than we are different. Don't love the sinner, hate the sin. MLK nailed it when he said that the means are the seeds from which the ends grow. You cannot hope to bear fruit when starting from a rotten seed. It's so easy to retaliate but true power is the confidence to de-escalate.
    - My8thAccount 6y ago
      Each situation is morally relative and animosity is ineffective at resolving conflict, instead only deepening the divide. You cannot fight hate with hate and achieve love. We all must be more tolerant of people and their fallibility in order to reach common ground and discover that we are all much more alike than we are different. Love the sinner, hate the sin, but teach and forgive. MLK nailed it when he said that the means are the seeds from which the ends grow. You cannot hope to bear fruit when starting from a rotten seed. It's so easy to retaliate but true power is the confidence to de-escalate.
dleslie 6y ago
Democracy is also intrinsically linked to freedom of association. YouTube has chosen to deny associating itself with certain views, as is their right. It is no different than how Fox, CNN and others may choose what to broadcast. Don't like that? Use BitChute or PeerTube or similar.
- waheoo 6y ago
  YouTube isn't a broadcaster. Don't confuse them.
  - dleslie 6y ago
    For sure, it's subject to even less regulation than broadcasters.
cutitout 6y ago
> Well, I think here you point out to one, really, of the basic defects of our system: that the individual citizen has very little possibility of having any influence - of making his opinion felt in the decision-making. And I think that, in itself, leads to a good deal of political lethargy and stupidity. It is true that one has to think first and then to act - but it's also true that if one has no possibility of acting, one's thinking kind of becomes empty and stupid. -- Erich Fromm He said that 1958, in an interview with Mike Wallace. Since then the gap between rich and poor (and between rich and mega-rich) kept exploding, media have been consolidated further, people have been uprooted even more, have been shit on and lied to even more, and have even less stakes in the outcome. Just doing more of the same will never lead to different results, yet by now many use current the state of things to argue for exactly that.
abandonliberty 6y ago
There's no such thing as free speech. Speech is bought through marketing. The wealthier and more get more of it. This is inherently undemocratic, as constituents don't have equal political influence. Dogmatic arguments suck. Is Android/Apple better? We don't live in a democratic utopia. Instead, belief in democracy and associated values has provided maximal value creation and competitiveness generated by knowledge economies when compared to other current operating models. That half the country is willing to dismantle what's responsible for their quality of life would be funny, if it wasn't the joy of dictators everywhere. They can point to the absurdity of mob rule as half of us bite the hand that feeds. Clearly, something is already broken.
cmdshiftf4 6y ago
>If you reject the idea that people are intelligent enough to think about politics for themselves then you reject the idea that they're intelligent enough to govern themselves. Elegantly put. It seems you've triggered an avalanche of replies looking to stick asterisks or [#] footnotes and caveats to this statement to suit their biases of the day. Bang some caveats in there and you put universal suffrage as a concept in question.

by swiley 6y ago

euske 6y ago

This kind of dogmatic statement is good for soliciting a response, but I think it's intellectual degradation. There are infinitely many interpretations of "democracy" and "free speech" and it's hardly a simple yes/no question. We should be free/democratic society as much as possible, and it's an ongoing (while not always successful) effort. We should discuss concrete steps.

int_19h 6y ago
On the contrary, I think this goes to the root of the matter. Can you trust people or not? That's a fundamental question that decides whether you can have real democracy, or only a sham. Because any kind of democracy where people are only allowed to make "safe" choices, decided on by someone else (e.g. the censors), is a sham. And that's true even if the censors themselves are directly or indirectly democratically appointed. Iran is a good example of such system taken to its logical conclusion.
- Daishiman 6y ago
  I'm sorry but trust isn't a binary value. I trust people in my life to be reliable and trustworthy to a certain extent and in certain areas. I don't trust my party-animal buddies to be on time for breakfast a 8 AM, and I don't trust my stressed out workaholic friend to just chill on a Friday afternoon. You cannot simplify trust to a single variable; you have to go case by case. And trust in the masses is partial; finding where it is and where it is not is critical.
  - int_19h 6y ago
    How would you manifest that partial trust when it comes to political power, though? The problem with that power is that splitting it up is a zero-sum game - you can give less to "the masses", but then somebody else is getting more. Who would that be, and why would you trust them?
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    But at the end of the day either you give everyone a vote or you don't. A system where the most trusted people had 10 votes and least trusted people had 0.1 vote might make sense in a society of nerds voting on a software project, but not in general political application.
    - 8note 6y ago
      Given that that's how the us elections work, it seems like plots of people have considered a good approach

gabereiser 6y ago

YouTube can choose to keep or delete any content on their platform regardless of truth/free speech/or not. It's in the EULA. You want free speech, go outside and yell. No one is stopping anyone from free speech. What Google is doing is cleaning up content on their service according to their EULA. If you disagree with the EULA, you can gladly go use another service. I will add, targeting a specific genre of videos looks bad, sure. It's only that we are talking about that genre and not all the others of topics YouTube has removed.

swiley 6y ago
Just because it's legal doesn't mean it makes sense. Monarchs used to make the same argument defending what they did.
pyronik19 6y ago
Fine, time for some trustbusting.
bendbro 6y ago
If corporations can't discriminate in hiring due to an American principle of anti-racism, then we can also prevent corporations from discriminating in speech on an American principle of free speech.
JPKab 6y ago
They have the right to do it, and it will make the world worse off. Taibbi always has had a great guy instinct for normal Americans and how they react to elite condescension, and he's right here. My idiot brother got twice as radicalized when they kicked Alex Jones's crazy ass off YouTube. It made people feel better and more morally superior, especially employees. It hurt my brother. Now when he watches that asshole, he's on a website where he is guaranteed to never get the other side. If you support this, then you don't know anything about how humans react to censorship.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  Even before Jones was kicked off, people went to YouTube for insane conspiracy theories and ended up, due to the video recommendation system, still only seeing one side. It really didn't matter whether Jones was on there or his own platform, people watching his videos still only see his (and related) videos.

Daishiman 6y ago

We in fact already do that and nobody bats an eye. People are not intimate with the details of most government bureaucracies, they are not expected to be, and they're no expected to grasp such details in a way that they can make informed decisions. And frankly that is absolutely correct. We believe in democracy to be the best system despite its flaws, and one of its flaws is that it's evident that most people have no freaking clue about how government works. If you believe in speech for the purpose of government then you have to reject outright lies design with the intent of deligitimizing democracy.

JPKab 6y ago
Authoritarians always justify silencing speech for the greater good. You can reject lies with counters to those lies, or do it your way, and end democracy.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Eloquent, but... YouTube isn't an authoritarian (over anything except their own platform), and their policy, whatever it is, isn't going to "end democracy".
  - JPKab 6y ago
    Obviously, YouTube has the right to do whatever they want with their servers. My point wasn't that YouTube's policy was the end of democracy, but that the ethos espoused by the parent commenter, if shared by a majority of the electorate and leaders, results in the end of democracy. Democracy requires trusting people to not be complete morons. Unfortunately, the polarized nature of political discourse in the US has caused people to think that the 50% of the country that doesn't think like them is too stupid to be trusted with speech and videos. Despite the fact that my brother has been sucked into the world of Alex Jones, I don't think most Americans are too stupid to resist dumb conspiracy theories. In decades past, this brother was a radical leftist, regularly arrested for trespassing in the late 80's at nuclear power plant protests, and later a radical in Greenpeace in the early 90's. This was long before the internet. He didn't believe the moon landing was real, and always believed in dumb ass conspiracy theories. (He's 11 years older than me, and by the time I was 11, I knew he was a moron.) My other 4 siblings aren't like him. His new shift was, honestly, not that weird. He happened to shift to the right, but it's a horseshoe as you know, and crazy is crazy. There have been, and always will be, highly illogical people looking to indulge their desperate desire to have symmetrical, orderly views of the universe that aren't real. The big, disastrous outcomes must always have been carefully plotted, large, grand plans (like 9/11 being a false flag operation, which my brother also believed then). My brother is one of these people, but most people aren't like that. This huge drive for censorship didn't occur when a large portion of the American left thought that 9/11 was an inside job, because the normal people on the left knew that it was a large, but still fringe, group within their own sphere. The problem is that the same normal people on the left don't know normal people on the right. Why? Because they don't know ANY people on the right. They are in bubbles now. So they are unable to draw the same conclusion that people like my brother are a fringe on the right. To them, voting for Donald Trump is evidence of a massively delusional person, rather than the grim reality that the vast majority of Trump's voters don't like him, and simply chose a lesser of two evils in their worldview, due to a corrupt, oligarchical class at the top of both major political parties resulting in highly polarized policy positions that force them to do this.

anotherman554 6y ago

Since you've defined free speech as being published by Youtube, a private publisher, I guess you think democracy didn't exist before Youtube and free speech didn't before Youtube?

Thaxll 6y ago

I thought people were intelligent enough, until we found out that some 75M voted for x. Now x is saying that it's a global conspiracy and bringing 75M believing that lie.

dmix 6y ago

That what I find most amusing about the “everyone should vote”. Then they complain about the stupid people and policies that get voted in. I might be okay with “every informed person should vote”. But that “informed” part can be heavily politically interpreted. People have largely missed the fact that politics used to be the domain of informed groups fighting for power blocs. Now it’s been “decentralized” and radicalized on Twitter and Reddit and made into glorified reality Tv entertainment by the mass media (who are clearly serving a market with high demand who treat politics like sports teams). I’d rather have way less people voting and it go back to being mostly boring educated people topic than it’s below common denominator mess it is today. But I’m unabashedly elitist and understand that there are plenty of well funded groups who want dumb malleable voters and as many as possible.

loopz 6y ago
Better parties sounds like they could end stalemate between billionaires. Both voting blocs have legitimate concerns that need better addressing.

jasode 6y ago

>Democracy and free speech are intrinsically linked. Yes but the only "free speech" that's realistically able to be implemented is freedom of speech without fear of the government putting you jail for criticizing the government. The other idealism of free speech implemented by commercial businesses is not possible because we (the collective "we") won't allow it to happen. There is no broadcasting medium (including websites) in any country that doesn't have interference and pressure to remove/ban content via consumer boycotts, advertiser influence, subscribers, business' self-discretion, or decrees from government officials. The above list of actors in society is the collective "we" that makes absolute free speech an unattainable goal. There is no business with an infinite bank account that can withstand all outside pressures to censor information. Apple has $200 billion in the bank and yet they bowed to China pressure to remove podcasts that supported Hong Kong. If a successful/influential giant like Apple can't implement absolute free speech, what's the proposed alternative corporate structure that can do it? Nobody ever lays out a concrete plan that makes free speech possible. [I don't mind the downvotes but I would really appreciate some replies with constructive comments explaining how commercial businesses can realistically implement free speech.]

swiley 6y ago
Apple specifically designed their platform for censorship. That's why so many people hate it.
- jasode 6y ago
  >Apple specifically designed their platform for censorship. That's why so many people hate it. Which business with UGC is censorship proof? Isn't that the issue? Nobody has come up with a way to accomplish that. Does anyone have any constructive ideas on this?

tbatchelli 6y ago

People are rational most of the times, and act based on the well of knowledge they have at the time. When you choose to promote certain content because of its high engagement benefits you given its controversial nature, then you are poisoning the well of knowledge for each individual. If you do so in a feedback loop, considering what they were interested in before, you accelerate your earnings as well as the poisoning. Human brains are hackable, more so if you can control their inputs. Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, they all found the attack vector. So democracy and truth are more related to each other than democracy and speech. We tend to think that speech is truth, but it is not, and people over time have voted themselves out into dictatorships over and over. (edit: typos, many)

nonbirithm 6y ago
There has to be a good reason why psychological warfare is used, including by the United States in periods like the Vietnam War. The expectation is that statements written on paper or recited through loudspeakers or similar influence people's thoughts, which influences what actions they will take. Those actions are supposed to be beneficial to the forces scattering them from a helicopter or posting them on walls. They're trying to get you to do something regardless of what your preexisting thoughts are beforehand. Now tear down the pieces of propaganda and burn them. Is this censorship? I think human brains are sufficiently able to be hacked by the right information. With certain kinds of information, those people could end up causing material harm to someone who is completely uninvolved. That is the ultimate danger that I believe YouTube and the like are trying to avoid, and if true it would be an admittance of a sort that some kinds of information are dangerous to some kinds of people. The name "psychological warfare" implies that communication can be weaponized, in a sense. Certain people do not change their ways regardless of what you try to tell them. I think the issue is centered not around people trying to have a reasoned debate, but those who have been lost to debate more or less permanently. Previously, you couldn't scatter this kind of information about on the scale were seeing today, and also recommend similar content using very effective algorithms. The more millions of people the content reaches, the more latent believers it will reach and end up converting, even if the conversion rate is a fraction of a percent. And many of these people are very vocal. In a sense, the content takedown seems like an attempt to counteract the fact that the algorithms are too effective of a medium for misinformation. I don't think we would have seen this kind of scale with books or flyers.

ardy42 6y ago

> If you reject the idea that people are intelligent enough to think about politics for themselves then you reject the idea that they're intelligent enough to govern themselves. I mean, the American founders already rejected a lot of ideas about the people governing themselves, because they knew from history that the people often can't check their worst impulses. > Democracy and free speech are intrinsically linked. Yeah, but what kinds of free speech work and what kinds don't? I used to be a free speech fundamentalist, but now I'm getting more skeptical of that position. Sort of like how radical Athenian-style direct democracy doesn't work, maybe radically giving everyone near-unchecked access to nationwide broadcasting doesn't work, either. Now, I'm not advocating for some kind of universal censorship apparatus, but maybe it's would be best if broadcast speech at least passed through some kind of editor (and I mean editor, making editorial decisions, not a censor) to build more judgement into the system. As software engineers, we understand the value of code reviews. That kind of thing shouldn't be anathema.

gnusty_gnurc 6y ago
This is literally the foundation of American govt structure namely the respect for unalienable rights of individuals to express themselves. It’s the first line in our enumerated rights. This isn’t “oh we should rethink things” this is a matter of natural rights and precedes anything we’ve constructed.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > This is literally the foundation of American govt structure namely the respect for unalienable rights of individuals to express themselves. > It’s the first line in our enumerated rights. > This isn’t “oh we should rethink things” this is a matter of natural rights and precedes anything we’ve constructed. I never said anyone shouldn't have the right to express themselves. Do you think it's in the Constitution that you have the unalienable right post any lie you want to YouTube? I don't remember that being in there. IMHO, lies are toxic to free speech, and it's in everyone's interest (and moral obligation) to do their best to limit their spread.
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tzs 6y ago

It's not a question of whether they are intelligent enough to do so. It is whether or not they can get the information that allows them to do so. With the vast amount of information on social media, which is where more and more people are getting most of their information nowadays, and the way social media algorithms are designed to maximize engagement, and the way human cognitive biases work, the result is you almost never get a balanced view presenting arguments for all sides even if all sides offering information are acting in good faith. Then add in all those who are not acting in good faith, who have a much easier time generating vast quantities of low quality information than the people arguing in good faith have for generating high quality information, and it is even worse. There was a recent article in Scientific American that covered research into this. Here was the HN discussion of it [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25153716 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25153716

rightbyte 6y ago
> you almost never get a balanced view presenting arguments for all sides By banning allegations of election fraud you could change "almost never" to "never".
- twentydollars 6y ago
  They're not banning all allegations of fraud. They're blocking a specific set of claims that have been shown to be false, for instance that Donald Trump won the 2020 US election.
bordercases 6y ago
You need expertise to interpret information and you need the right kind of expertise and even the right combinations of expertise, and even knowing what the right combination of expertise is. It is a question of intelligence, information, expertise and meta-expertise, all of those things. Privileging any of those components of sense-making is myopia of different sorts depending on what claims people are actually wanting to forward. For instance if you want to look like a centrist while avoiding calling people dumb you say they're low-information voters, change the news, make them listen to these experts, give person X more control or say, when the news and those experts and that person all have problems of different sorts. Not one-dimensional.

ignoramous 6y ago

FTFY: If you reject the idea that a majority are intelligent enough to think about politics for themselves then you reject the idea that they're intelligent enough to elect a capable government.

rmrfstar 6y ago

I think this is a push-not-pull situation. Here is a vision of the future articulated by a promising In-Q-Tel funded startup: [1,2] "[We need] a set of guiding principles to inform the types of speech that should be permitted in digital town squares" [1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/15/forget-counterterrorism-the-united-states-needs-a-counter-disinformation-strategy/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/15/forget-counterterrorism... [2] https://primer.ai/ https://primer.ai/

handoflixue 6y ago

Question: Why is this a threat to democracy, but previous censorship wasn't? There's always been an expectation of truthfulness in communication: We don't allow people to go around claiming that Pepsi causes AIDS, or cures cancer. You're not allowed to claim you're collecting for a charity, and then keep all the money for yourself. I doubt you'd be terribly okay with me claiming that you're a murderer and asking how much that biases your stance. (Genuinely trying to understand if there is something that makes this different from any other sort of fraudulent communication - I don't see people defending the other stuff under the guise of "Free Speech", and I'm not clear why this would be different)

deleted 6y ago
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NeutronStar 6y ago
If you can prove the lies did damages then you have to pay for the damages. But you still have the right to say it. Having the right to speak doesn't mean there's no consequences to it.
chordalkeyboard 6y ago
> (Genuinely trying to understand if there is something that makes this different from any other sort of fraudulent communication - I don't see people defending the other stuff under the guise of "Free Speech", and I'm not clear why this would be different) People are not defending fraudulent communication. They are observing that the same factors that make audiences vulnerable to misinformation affect the censors and the process by which censors determine which information is harmful. If we had a test for truth or sincerity we could use it to determine which information was false or put forth in bad faith. We don't, so any person who acts as an information gatekeeper could be one of those people who is lying or deceived and they would then be able to corrupt the discourse by censoring the information that exposes their lies or misunderstandings.
- pnw_hazor 6y ago
  Fraud is a very specific (and hard to prove) term of art in US law. There is no US law that would stop someone from making expressions that are later determined to be fraudulent. Note, commercial speech (e.g., advertisement) is considered a less protected species of speech and may be subject to prior restraint in limited viewpoint neutral circumstances.

ethn 6y ago

Further, even if the citizen ostensibly advocates the wrong belief, or say are persuaded by an adversary, that belief becomes the legitimate value of the population regardless of the reason—-as democracy is purposed to obligate government to pursue the values of its citizens. I’ve been to a country with a dictatorship with a faux democracy and no free speech. I asked the minister of journalism & communications whether he believes that free speech is possible in a democracy. He unabashedly said no, as there is no guarantee the “consensus” will be “correct”, especially given the influence of its adversaries.

deeviant 6y ago

> Democracy and free speech are intrinsically linked. Not really. UK has far more limits on speech than the US but is just as much of a Democracy as the US. "Free" speech has be weaponized in the internet age. It is a cancer that is actively destroying democracy.

rsync 6y ago
"Not really. UK has far more limits on speech than the US but is just as much of a Democracy as the US." They have a literal "House of Lords" which is "... by appointment or by heredity or official function."[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords
- deeviant 6y ago
  So you are attempting to make the point that the UK is not an equivalent democracy? The house of lords can not create bills nor stop them. They can look over the elected parliament's shoulders and whine, that's it. It is a vestigial leaving of the monarchy system that, like the Monarchs themselves, the UK keeps because it's cute. While in the US, un-elected corporations do very much the same thing, except when they whine, they get their way.
  - cambalache 6y ago
    > While in the US, un-elected corporations do very much the same thing, except when they whine, they get their way. Thanks god that never happens in Britain.
    - deeviant 6y ago
      I'm sure it does but in the UK, there is no Citizens United, where the Supreme Corporate Court of America (LLC) decided $$$ = speech, more $$$ = more speech, thus infinite $$$ to political campaigns = ALL GOOD HOMIES (This isn't even satire, this is actually their logic here). Let's get real, it isn't the fact that corps lobby goverments that is the problem, there problem is when they can give unlimited cash bribes, like that can in the US. But they can not in the UK. When you really start examining it, the US democrazy(sic) doesn't seem all that exceptional.

charonn0 6y ago

Free speech isn't implicated here.

ThoreauBred 6y ago

Seems you are still plenty capable of speaking your mind. I cannot help but wonder if anyone has considered Taibbi is just Trump; cashing in on rage he induces. No way to comment unless you pay. Hrmmm

tootie 6y ago

I feel like have unequivocal evidence that they can't.

ipython 6y ago

Why is it that we have to ignore nuances in these arguments? We never had unrestricted free speech in this country. There is a whole Wikipedia article about it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_ex... In addition other democratic states have strict limits on free speech such as Singapore: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_14_of_the_Constitution_of_Singapore https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_14_of_the_Constituti... After all even “democracy” is nuanced here in the states. Obvious examples from our past include the wholesale disenfranchisement of women until 100 years ago, Jim Crow era laws, poll taxes, and more. Did we have democracy then? Do we have democracy now? Did we have free speech when broadcasters in the USA had to abide by the Fairness Doctrine? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine. Our system has it’s faults. But one can’t say that we ever had unfettered democracy or free speech, ever. At what point is speech considered abuse? If you make the analogy between speech and network traffic, we intentionally censor “abusive” traffic to save our networks from collapse. Could one make the argument that entities with an interest in destabilizing our democracy should not be able to inject propaganda into our discourse because “free speech”? I think it’s a valid argument to have and a nuance that we have to contend with. There are no absolutes. Trivializing this with a snappy trope of “democracy can’t survive without free speech” is disingenuous IMO.

wkjenjkwenf 6y ago
What a stupid argument. "Child pornography and obscenity are banned, therefore democracy does not rely on free speech, therefore we don't need free speech at all." Obviously "free speech" comes with the colloquially-understood fact that it doesn't include child pornography.
- ipython 6y ago
  Be careful. Your hot air may just blow over the straw man you’re arguing with.
- m3at 6y ago
  You're new so you might wonder why you're downvoted. Hackernews has some guidelines, and while they're far from being perfect they do help to maintain above average online conversation. Please have a read (it's pretty short!): https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Key point related to your comment: > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

modriano 6y ago

An individual's understanding of the world is shaped exclusively by the signals produced by their 5 senses. Intelligence governs an individual's ability to interpret those signals and draw further conclusions from those interpreted signals, but if that individual is fed a constant stream of bad yet internally-consistent data, correct application of logic and reason will lead that individual to objectively incorrect conclusions. Further, human beings aren't perfectly rational machines capable of processing the utterly overwhelming amount of signals we are exposed to at any given instant, rather we develop blinders to focus in on specific signals and we develop heuristics to reach decisions without processing all possible signals. I haven't read every whitepaper put out by every politician I've ever supported, nor has 99.9999+% of others, but we still support politicians because of our heuristics and blinders. I prefer forming my opinions from whitepapers, source documents, and a rigorous analysis of a candidate's behavior, but ultimately a heuristic I rely on is the opinion of other people or institutions that I trust, like the New York Times, the Economist, Ezra Klien, Matt Yglesias, Raj Chetty, etc. I've decided that I don't like believing incorrect things, so I've thought a lot about epistemology and embraced a mixture of pragmatism and empiricism (where possible). I try to independently verify suspicious claims, but it took me a long time to become a competent data scientist, I'm willing to spend far more time searching for good data/signals and analyzing them than most other people, and I still can't be informed on everything which necessitates reliance on sub-optimal heuristics. Most people don't even attempt the rigor I aspire to, preferring a tribal epistemology, where they outsource opinion-forming to the thought-leaders of their tribe. If those tribal thought-leaders are telling people things like * "Hillary Clinton is running a pedophilia ring out of the basement of this pizza restaurant" or * "COVID-19 is a librul hoax so don't wear a mask or embrace any hard-won public health advice" or * "Joe Biden's landslide victory isn't real, and even though we can't prove it, despite the fact that electoral systems are designed so that malfeasance would be easily detectable, you should ignore reject the result of a DEMOCRATIC ELECTION, EVEN IN STATES WHERE THE OUTCOME WAS CONFIRMED BY A HAND RECOUNT" you'll see behavior from individuals in that tribe that's consistent with the signals those individuals perceive, but the behavior won't produce the expected outcome, because the signals don't reflect reality. Instead, it will produce mayhem, death, destruction, pain, and loss. This is empirically undeniable. TL,DR: Democracy depends on the votes of people. People form opinions only from the information that passes through their senses and into their mind. Garbage in, garbage out. It's possible to solve problems through rational analysis of sufficiently accurate models of reality, but models that don't reflect reality can be extremely, devastatingly destructive. If the signal "Donald Trump actually won the election and it is being stolen from him" was an accurate description of reality, it would rational to use violence to repel the usurpers trying to steal your country. But that signal is false, and spreading that signal both is eroding belief in democracy among the communities where enough members embrace that false signal, and it will in lead to unjustified murders.

AndrewKemendo 6y ago

What does "Govern themselves" practically mean in this context? Lets say that I'm an intelligent person that firmly believes in "rugged individualism" to the point where I'm an anarcho-georgist [1] and do not recognize the state as an authority for real property allocation based on a well reasoned moral philosophy. Given the fact that there is no unclaimed territory for which I could live without falling under the purview of a state's thumb, and hence would not be allowed to "govern myself", how would I then govern myself consistent with my political philosophy? This is obviously a hyperbolic example, but it's IMO an important exercise to explicate how a large group of people with heterogeneous values, is supposed to act/behave when a prime mover state system is (in effect) demanding no values be higher than it. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolibertarianism

Der_Einzige 6y ago

Well, we do reject this idea. That's why we have a republic rather than a direct democracy. The same allegory of the cave justifications for why the average individual is too stupid to rule and shouldn't be allowed to are made today. Oh, you aren't well enough educated or experienced enough? You should not govern, and move aside for those who are educated or experienced...

int_19h 6y ago
We have a republic, because that's how it was organized more than two centuries ago, and changing it from within the system is extremely difficult. But many states have elements of direct democracy in form of public initiatives, and they generally tend to be the states that were settled and organized later (e.g. West Coast), and did so with benefit of hindsight, after seeing many decades of how the original system works. So I'm not sure if it's even meaningful to say that we do reject the idea. The original designers did (mostly; they weren't a hivemind, either), but we aren't them; and they weren't really representative of their entire society, either.

zionic 6y ago

If people are too stupid to reject false information that wasn’t curated for them why are they smart enough to vote. Any argument advocating censorship is ultimately arguing for dictatorship.

staticman2 6y ago
If you think people are so smart, why should you care if people get banned from Youtube? Clearly smart people will discover smart videos on any web site they are located on, and there's no reason for anyone to need Youtube to find an audience.
weavejester 6y ago
How would one determine whether information is false or not? It's easier to publish disinformation than it is to disprove it, and while some people are clearly better at sifting truth from fiction than others, I suspect everyone has beliefs that are based upon false information. Moreover, this isn't censorship by the government, but by Google. Why should a private company be made to disseminate disinformation when it doesn't want to? A key part of freedom of speech is the freedom not to speak, and mandating that a company publish information it doesn't want to is surely just as bad as forcing it to censor information it does want to publish.

froh 6y ago

The possibilities of targeting messaging via fb, youtube, twitter ad budgets go far beyond the freedom of speech the authors of the constitution had in mind, no? The ability to address a snug fit tailored messaging to specific audiences is a completely new level of "talking". It subverts the traditional democratic communication, where all participants realistically had a comparable and diverse data/information set. In contrast, given sufficient targeting advertisement budget, you can very deliberately dissimimate messages which shift the electorates decisions just enough that you get the political climate and outcome you want. That's no longer the free speech of the constitution. That's mass manipulation. Brain hacking it was called elsewhere in the discussion. What can yt, twitter, fb do? Banning certain content feels bad, but how can they nudge us with the tweets, videos and posts that challenge us a little, like the old news stand always carried the paper we normally wouldn't read. Until we did, once in a while. And of course the paper was not 95% letters to the editor, unredacted. How can the fb, google ai help us to structure the flood of information in a more nuanced way? Instead of a plump ban? Until then, I reluctantly take the ban.

ronaldj 6y ago

This country's government is based on the idea that people aren't intelligent (or interested) enough to think about politics for themselves. That's what a representative democracy is.

colordrops 6y ago
That's not why it's a representative democracy. The reason is that direct democracy was not logistically possible at the time, and also for support if states' rights.

scoot_718 6y ago

It is not contradictory to be intolerant of the intolerant. To allow free speech for those who call for such repugnant lies is to tacitly accept them. Likewise, no government should allow for parties that would destroy itself - yet here America is, falling apart.

greenflame7 6y ago
By that logic its not contradictory to be intolerant of people intolerant of intolerance. Or is it only valid logic with an even number of intolerances?
- visarga 6y ago
  This logic doesn't work in the abstract, you got to apply it to a concrete situation. Each situation is different, they are not all the same to be judged in one swoop.
  - WhyDoesDangSuck 6y ago
    Each situation is morally relative and ineffective at resolving conflict, instead only deepening the divide. You cannot fight hate with hate and achieve love. We all must be more tolerant of people and their fallibility in order to reach common ground and discover that we are all much more alike than we are different. Don't love the sinner, hate the sin. MLK nailed it when he said that the means are the seeds from which the ends grow. You cannot hope to bear fruit when starting from a rotten seed. It's so easy to retaliate but true power is the confidence to de-escalate.
  - My8thAccount 6y ago
    Each situation is morally relative and animosity is ineffective at resolving conflict, instead only deepening the divide. You cannot fight hate with hate and achieve love. We all must be more tolerant of people and their fallibility in order to reach common ground and discover that we are all much more alike than we are different. Love the sinner, hate the sin, but teach and forgive. MLK nailed it when he said that the means are the seeds from which the ends grow. You cannot hope to bear fruit when starting from a rotten seed. It's so easy to retaliate but true power is the confidence to de-escalate.

dleslie 6y ago

Democracy is also intrinsically linked to freedom of association. YouTube has chosen to deny associating itself with certain views, as is their right. It is no different than how Fox, CNN and others may choose what to broadcast. Don't like that? Use BitChute or PeerTube or similar.

waheoo 6y ago
YouTube isn't a broadcaster. Don't confuse them.
- dleslie 6y ago
  For sure, it's subject to even less regulation than broadcasters.

cutitout 6y ago

> Well, I think here you point out to one, really, of the basic defects of our system: that the individual citizen has very little possibility of having any influence - of making his opinion felt in the decision-making. And I think that, in itself, leads to a good deal of political lethargy and stupidity. It is true that one has to think first and then to act - but it's also true that if one has no possibility of acting, one's thinking kind of becomes empty and stupid. -- Erich Fromm He said that 1958, in an interview with Mike Wallace. Since then the gap between rich and poor (and between rich and mega-rich) kept exploding, media have been consolidated further, people have been uprooted even more, have been shit on and lied to even more, and have even less stakes in the outcome. Just doing more of the same will never lead to different results, yet by now many use current the state of things to argue for exactly that.

abandonliberty 6y ago

There's no such thing as free speech. Speech is bought through marketing. The wealthier and more get more of it. This is inherently undemocratic, as constituents don't have equal political influence. Dogmatic arguments suck. Is Android/Apple better? We don't live in a democratic utopia. Instead, belief in democracy and associated values has provided maximal value creation and competitiveness generated by knowledge economies when compared to other current operating models. That half the country is willing to dismantle what's responsible for their quality of life would be funny, if it wasn't the joy of dictators everywhere. They can point to the absurdity of mob rule as half of us bite the hand that feeds. Clearly, something is already broken.

cmdshiftf4 6y ago

>If you reject the idea that people are intelligent enough to think about politics for themselves then you reject the idea that they're intelligent enough to govern themselves. Elegantly put. It seems you've triggered an avalanche of replies looking to stick asterisks or [#] footnotes and caveats to this statement to suit their biases of the day. Bang some caveats in there and you put universal suffrage as a concept in question.