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> They caved to censoring things that were reasonable, but now anyone can make them censor anything as long as they have some poltical power somewhere. Can you

by eli 5y ago

> They caved to censoring things that were reasonable, but now anyone can make them censor anything as long as they have some poltical power somewhere. Can you define "reasonable" here in an objective way that we could all agree on? There's no such thing as neutrality. Leaving up a popular anti-vax video is just as political a decision as taking it down.

anm89 5y ago
I'm subjectively inserting that comment. I think that a lot of it was reasonable. I'm not arguing that it was objectively reasonable. I'm writing my thoughts on the internet. I'm not obligated by the burden of proof to justify my subjective opinions. >There's no such thing as neutrality. Leaving up a popular anti-vax video is just as political a decision as taking it down. Nonsense. We don't apply this standard to anything else in life.
- eli 5y ago
  That's my point. There is no objectively reasonable way to do this. What you think is reasonable to take down and what I think is reasonable to take down are not going to always agree. I'm not sure what "elsewhere in life" means, but bookstores choose what books they will sell while also not necessarily endorsing every book they carry.
  - RHSeeger 5y ago
    > I refuse to take down anything that doesn't come with the force of law to take it down and > I refuse to take down this video, because I do not think it needs to be taken down are two VERY different things. The first one is a political choice about taking down videos in general. The second one is a political choice about a specific topic. The second one is more or less similar to taking down the video because you think it needs to be taken down (same topic, different political decision)... the first one is absolutely nothing like that. Edit: In case it wasn't clear (because I replied in the wrong place), this is the comment I was discussing > There's no such thing as neutrality. Leaving up a popular anti-vax video is just as political a decision as taking it down. While it may be "just as political", it's a political about a totally different thing.
    - eli 5y ago
      I get what you're saying, but I just don't agree. They're only different in the abstract. At some point an incredibly noxious (but legal) video gets posted, complaints pour in, and you are either continuing to host it or you aren't. That's a decision and having a policy of "we never remove legal videos" doesn't absolve you. Anyway, a social platform that only removes illegal content (not even spam?) sounds absolutely dreadful and I would not use it and no one would pay to advertise on it.
      - toast0 5y ago
        On a social platform where I'm only seeing content posted by my friends (or maybe content my friends interact with), anything dreadful I see is brought to me by my friends. If my friends bring me dreadful content that I don't like, I'm not sure we'll stay friends. If my friends are spamming, I'll ask them to stop and if they continue, I'm not going to stay friends (or at least I'll unfollow them where they're spamming). If people post garbage to my posts, I'll delete their garbage and restrict access to my posts. There's no need for the social platform to do moderation, until it starts putting unrelated people's content in front of me; which is something I don't really want from a social platform.
        yunohn 5y ago
        Have you read the HN guidelines? Most rules have nothing to do with legality, and @dang moderates HN on a best-effort basis to ensure quality discussion. Presumably, you don’t notice you’re on a moderated platform, but HN is very much not an unmoderated free-for-all.
        toast0 5y ago
        HN isn't really a social platform, IMHO. I'm not connecting with my friends here, I'm talking with all sorts of random people. I absolutely notice it's moderated, and I wouldn't be here if it wasn't.
        5y ago
  - ergocoder 5y ago
    Unless it is the only book store in town, banning certain books would be problematic.
throwawayswede 5y ago
> Leaving up a popular anti-vax video is just as political a decision as taking it down That's a misconception, and basically what the whole trolley problem is all about. Doing nothing is not the same as doing something. Each have their own ethical consequences and it's not as easy as you think to spurt out the "right" answer. Sure, you might have a preference that's difficult for others to argue against or for, but others also have the right to reach a different conclusion. With that being said, may I ask you what you know about vaccination? Are you using information from articles you've read online from "authorized" sources, or are you an expert on the matter? Again my point here is not to say that you're wrong or right, you're absolutely free to reach whatever conclusion you desire, but it's really difficult even for actual experts in the medical field to know what's going on currently, who's motivated by altruism, greed, selfishness, or cronyism. Taking up these stands and pretending it's "science" is an insult to science, because "science" is ever evolving and there's no such thing as consensus in the scientific process.
syshum 5y ago
Platforms that claim to be open content systems (i.e it is not topic limited like say a Mac Forum) should only remove content that is illegal in nature, i.e Sexual Exploitation of minors, True Threats, etc. > popular anti-vax since Anti-Vax has now been refined to include anyone that opposes government mandated vaccinations, I am a Vaxxed Anti-Vaxer as I oppose all government mandates. People should be free to choose on their own if they want a vaccine or any other medical treatment. So should a video of me expressing this position be removed under an "anti-vaxx" policy?
- namlem 5y ago
  You would never want to use a big platform that had no moderation, the quality would be shit. For a small, niche platform, it's fine, but as platforms grow they get filled with 13 year-olds posting garbage, which someone has to clean up to avoid driving away other users.
  - syshum 5y ago
    I do not want to, nor do I use any of the big platforms now... I have no twitter account, no facebook account, no insta account, no tiktok account, etc... I have locals.com account, reddit accounts (which is diminishing amount of my usage as they continue to "mainstream" aka censor the site) , and HN, that is pretty much it for me
    - namlem 5y ago
      The quality decline from mainstreaming isn't due to censorship, it's due to the increased presence of normies and children. Meanwhile the heavy-handed censorship of subreddits like AskHistorians has resulted in the preservation of high quality standards.
  - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
    I don’t agree that decent conversation can only exist with heavy moderation. If you haven’t seen the issue with echo chambers by now… you’re in one.
akira2501 5y ago
> Leaving up a popular anti-vax video is just as political a decision as taking it down. Why is it political? They didn't commission the content or request that it be created and hosted on their platform in any way. They're offering the same reasonable self-hosting process that they offer to anyone who shows up with an email address. It only seems to become political when you decide to take action and either protect or remove the material. You're now no longer a disinterested third party, you're making editorial decisions and it's hard to believe they've taken this step without considering the impact of those decisions.
- BeefWellington 5y ago
  > Why is it political? They didn't commission the content or request that it be created and hosted on their platform in any way. They're offering the same reasonable self-hosting process that they offer to anyone who shows up with an email address. And profiting from it. The scope changes slightly when you realize your business could get sued repeatedly because you promoted misinformation (which is how it would be spun) and someone died because they followed that misinformation. This is risk, and few of these businesses want to tackle that risk apparently. It's a testament to how well marketers over the decades have sold the idea that companies care about anything other than their shareholders that people mistake profit-driven motivation for political stances.
- notJim 5y ago
  The idea that the service is a neutral 3rd party who hosts any video is a political idea, in other words it is a choice made by platforms that both influences and is influenced by politics. Note, because people get confused on here, this doesn't mean that it's a bad idea. Other publishing media do not have this standard. For example, the radio waves are another medium where the FCC (which regulates them) could say that only certain things are allowed, or they could say you can broadcast whatever you want. (In fact I think they regulate content, re: obscenity, but I don't want to look it up right now.) So again, the idea of being only a neutral 3rd party who hosts videos for all-comers is a choice, which has political implications.
  - 5y ago
elmomle 5y ago
Science isn't politics and the truth about scientific issues isn't political, but misinformation about issues in which there exists a scientific consensus is very definitely political.
yunohn 5y ago
> There's no such thing as neutrality. Leaving up a popular anti-vax video is just as political a decision as taking it down. A lot of the replies to your comment fixate on this, since they take issue with “everything is political”. But I think it’s very true, and agree with you. Why should YouTube host anything and everything that random anonymous users decide to upload? Why is this /holy/ act of uploading deemed undoable and unrevocable? It’s a very weird way of thinking that it’s political only if the video is removed, but not if it is kept online.
- orangecat 5y ago
  It’s a very weird way of thinking that it’s political only if the video is removed, but not if it is kept online. Because keeping it up is the default, while you have to go out of your way to remove it. If I own a store, is it as much of a political act to allow Trump supporters to shop there as it is to ban them?
  - yunohn 5y ago
    If you own a store, do you have to sell something, just because it is manufactured by someone, or because you want to sell it?
spoonjim 5y ago
True, once you start deleting videos, then leaving any up is a political decision. That's why, as a platform, you should not be deleting any videos, other than those that violate the law.
- yunohn 5y ago
  The law is also subjective, there is no fixed law. There is ever-updating case law and dynamic precedence, and it differs by county<state<country.
- nradov 5y ago
  It's not always clear whether a particular video violates the law. If a video is in the legal gray area of, let's say, advocating violence against a particular person then should it be left online until a court specifically orders removal?
  - ergocoder 5y ago
    Yes, that seems reasonable. It is like getting a warrant to search your house. It can be expedite if someone is in grave danger.
- eli 5y ago
  Not deleting videos is also a political decision.

by eli 5y ago

anm89 5y ago

I'm subjectively inserting that comment. I think that a lot of it was reasonable. I'm not arguing that it was objectively reasonable. I'm writing my thoughts on the internet. I'm not obligated by the burden of proof to justify my subjective opinions. >There's no such thing as neutrality. Leaving up a popular anti-vax video is just as political a decision as taking it down. Nonsense. We don't apply this standard to anything else in life.

eli 5y ago
That's my point. There is no objectively reasonable way to do this. What you think is reasonable to take down and what I think is reasonable to take down are not going to always agree. I'm not sure what "elsewhere in life" means, but bookstores choose what books they will sell while also not necessarily endorsing every book they carry.
- RHSeeger 5y ago
  > I refuse to take down anything that doesn't come with the force of law to take it down and > I refuse to take down this video, because I do not think it needs to be taken down are two VERY different things. The first one is a political choice about taking down videos in general. The second one is a political choice about a specific topic. The second one is more or less similar to taking down the video because you think it needs to be taken down (same topic, different political decision)... the first one is absolutely nothing like that. Edit: In case it wasn't clear (because I replied in the wrong place), this is the comment I was discussing > There's no such thing as neutrality. Leaving up a popular anti-vax video is just as political a decision as taking it down. While it may be "just as political", it's a political about a totally different thing.
  - eli 5y ago
    I get what you're saying, but I just don't agree. They're only different in the abstract. At some point an incredibly noxious (but legal) video gets posted, complaints pour in, and you are either continuing to host it or you aren't. That's a decision and having a policy of "we never remove legal videos" doesn't absolve you. Anyway, a social platform that only removes illegal content (not even spam?) sounds absolutely dreadful and I would not use it and no one would pay to advertise on it.
    - toast0 5y ago
      On a social platform where I'm only seeing content posted by my friends (or maybe content my friends interact with), anything dreadful I see is brought to me by my friends. If my friends bring me dreadful content that I don't like, I'm not sure we'll stay friends. If my friends are spamming, I'll ask them to stop and if they continue, I'm not going to stay friends (or at least I'll unfollow them where they're spamming). If people post garbage to my posts, I'll delete their garbage and restrict access to my posts. There's no need for the social platform to do moderation, until it starts putting unrelated people's content in front of me; which is something I don't really want from a social platform.
      - yunohn 5y ago
        Have you read the HN guidelines? Most rules have nothing to do with legality, and @dang moderates HN on a best-effort basis to ensure quality discussion. Presumably, you don’t notice you’re on a moderated platform, but HN is very much not an unmoderated free-for-all.
        toast0 5y ago
        HN isn't really a social platform, IMHO. I'm not connecting with my friends here, I'm talking with all sorts of random people. I absolutely notice it's moderated, and I wouldn't be here if it wasn't.
        5y ago
- ergocoder 5y ago
  Unless it is the only book store in town, banning certain books would be problematic.

throwawayswede 5y ago

> Leaving up a popular anti-vax video is just as political a decision as taking it down That's a misconception, and basically what the whole trolley problem is all about. Doing nothing is not the same as doing something. Each have their own ethical consequences and it's not as easy as you think to spurt out the "right" answer. Sure, you might have a preference that's difficult for others to argue against or for, but others also have the right to reach a different conclusion. With that being said, may I ask you what you know about vaccination? Are you using information from articles you've read online from "authorized" sources, or are you an expert on the matter? Again my point here is not to say that you're wrong or right, you're absolutely free to reach whatever conclusion you desire, but it's really difficult even for actual experts in the medical field to know what's going on currently, who's motivated by altruism, greed, selfishness, or cronyism. Taking up these stands and pretending it's "science" is an insult to science, because "science" is ever evolving and there's no such thing as consensus in the scientific process.

syshum 5y ago

Platforms that claim to be open content systems (i.e it is not topic limited like say a Mac Forum) should only remove content that is illegal in nature, i.e Sexual Exploitation of minors, True Threats, etc. > popular anti-vax since Anti-Vax has now been refined to include anyone that opposes government mandated vaccinations, I am a Vaxxed Anti-Vaxer as I oppose all government mandates. People should be free to choose on their own if they want a vaccine or any other medical treatment. So should a video of me expressing this position be removed under an "anti-vaxx" policy?

namlem 5y ago
You would never want to use a big platform that had no moderation, the quality would be shit. For a small, niche platform, it's fine, but as platforms grow they get filled with 13 year-olds posting garbage, which someone has to clean up to avoid driving away other users.
- syshum 5y ago
  I do not want to, nor do I use any of the big platforms now... I have no twitter account, no facebook account, no insta account, no tiktok account, etc... I have locals.com account, reddit accounts (which is diminishing amount of my usage as they continue to "mainstream" aka censor the site) , and HN, that is pretty much it for me
  - namlem 5y ago
    The quality decline from mainstreaming isn't due to censorship, it's due to the increased presence of normies and children. Meanwhile the heavy-handed censorship of subreddits like AskHistorians has resulted in the preservation of high quality standards.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  I don’t agree that decent conversation can only exist with heavy moderation. If you haven’t seen the issue with echo chambers by now… you’re in one.

akira2501 5y ago

> Leaving up a popular anti-vax video is just as political a decision as taking it down. Why is it political? They didn't commission the content or request that it be created and hosted on their platform in any way. They're offering the same reasonable self-hosting process that they offer to anyone who shows up with an email address. It only seems to become political when you decide to take action and either protect or remove the material. You're now no longer a disinterested third party, you're making editorial decisions and it's hard to believe they've taken this step without considering the impact of those decisions.

BeefWellington 5y ago
> Why is it political? They didn't commission the content or request that it be created and hosted on their platform in any way. They're offering the same reasonable self-hosting process that they offer to anyone who shows up with an email address. And profiting from it. The scope changes slightly when you realize your business could get sued repeatedly because you promoted misinformation (which is how it would be spun) and someone died because they followed that misinformation. This is risk, and few of these businesses want to tackle that risk apparently. It's a testament to how well marketers over the decades have sold the idea that companies care about anything other than their shareholders that people mistake profit-driven motivation for political stances.
notJim 5y ago
The idea that the service is a neutral 3rd party who hosts any video is a political idea, in other words it is a choice made by platforms that both influences and is influenced by politics. Note, because people get confused on here, this doesn't mean that it's a bad idea. Other publishing media do not have this standard. For example, the radio waves are another medium where the FCC (which regulates them) could say that only certain things are allowed, or they could say you can broadcast whatever you want. (In fact I think they regulate content, re: obscenity, but I don't want to look it up right now.) So again, the idea of being only a neutral 3rd party who hosts videos for all-comers is a choice, which has political implications.
- 5y ago

elmomle 5y ago

Science isn't politics and the truth about scientific issues isn't political, but misinformation about issues in which there exists a scientific consensus is very definitely political.

yunohn 5y ago

> There's no such thing as neutrality. Leaving up a popular anti-vax video is just as political a decision as taking it down. A lot of the replies to your comment fixate on this, since they take issue with “everything is political”. But I think it’s very true, and agree with you. Why should YouTube host anything and everything that random anonymous users decide to upload? Why is this /holy/ act of uploading deemed undoable and unrevocable? It’s a very weird way of thinking that it’s political only if the video is removed, but not if it is kept online.

orangecat 5y ago
It’s a very weird way of thinking that it’s political only if the video is removed, but not if it is kept online. Because keeping it up is the default, while you have to go out of your way to remove it. If I own a store, is it as much of a political act to allow Trump supporters to shop there as it is to ban them?
- yunohn 5y ago
  If you own a store, do you have to sell something, just because it is manufactured by someone, or because you want to sell it?

spoonjim 5y ago

True, once you start deleting videos, then leaving any up is a political decision. That's why, as a platform, you should not be deleting any videos, other than those that violate the law.

yunohn 5y ago
The law is also subjective, there is no fixed law. There is ever-updating case law and dynamic precedence, and it differs by county<state<country.
nradov 5y ago
It's not always clear whether a particular video violates the law. If a video is in the legal gray area of, let's say, advocating violence against a particular person then should it be left online until a court specifically orders removal?
- ergocoder 5y ago
  Yes, that seems reasonable. It is like getting a warrant to search your house. It can be expedite if someone is in grave danger.
eli 5y ago
Not deleting videos is also a political decision.