7 ms·

"Keep in mind that this isn't a complete list." Yeah, so why even give us a list. Just keep striking videos and youtubers for no clear reason. The hoops people

"Keep in mind that this isn't a complete list." Yeah, so why even give us a list. Just keep striking videos and youtubers for no clear reason. The hoops people have to hop through with copyright, politics, etc is getting crazier by the day. Limiting free speech in the name of the greater good will not end well. And good luck creating an alternative platform that isn't a total echo chamber.

pyronite 5y ago
I disagree. If someone is posting misinformation according to these standards, I'm happy about YouTube taking such things down. How can we have an informed electorate when misinformation (whether intentional or not) is allowed to propagate? We know at this point that incendiary content tends to spread faster than the often-boring truth. Turning a blind eye is a race to the bottom that encourages political parties and those with an agenda to create more of this misleading content. They give a list so you have some guidelines. Ultimately, you can argue with the guidelines and generally agreed-upon facts, and I'm sure many will.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  Who gets to define misinformation? The lab leak theory was misinformation at one point. Wearing masks was misinformation at one point. The problem with censorship is that no man is fit to play the censor.
  - belltaco 5y ago
    >The lab leak theory was misinformation at one point So? We know more about it now, so the earlier wild claims without evidence or proof were definitely misinformation at the time, intended to deflect blame from the ineptness of the politicians in power in feb 2020.
    - fighterpilot 5y ago
      Given that lab leaks are fairly common through recent history and the location of the WIV, it was a totally plausible hypothesis back then. It was just taboo for purely political reasons. The case for a lab leak now is mostly the same as it was back then - circumstantial.
      - belltaco 5y ago
        There were a lot of claims that it was a bioweapon leak, in the recent months there has been more circumstantial evidence that it might have been an accidental leak. So yes, there was a lot of misinformation at that time around this.
        vorpalhex 5y ago
        You can't badly conflate two different claims and then use that as a reason to engage in censorship.
        fighterpilot 5y ago
        The leak hypothesis itself - not merely a bioweapon leak - was verboten despite its evident plausibility as a hypothesis given a precedent of other lab leaks. Little has changed since then aside from Trump being voted out which then freed up the political left to consider this possibility in its discourse.
        belltaco 5y ago
        A case of the boy who cried wolf not being believed.
        fighterpilot 5y ago
        If you don't see a serious problem with scientists and journalists abdicating their responsibility to dispassionatly pursue the truth and the damage this does to institutions and the public confidence of those institutions, and moreover you do not even lay any blame at their feet and excuse this behavior just because the other side is more dishonest, then I can only think that you have some pretty powerful ideological blinders that have pushed you into a very partisan culture-war type worldview.
  - fighterpilot 5y ago
    YouTube deciding what is and isn't misinformation has a positive side effect in that it indirectly protects the first amendment through the middle ground of private voluntary self-regulation. 1A proponents need to understand that there's a grey area between outright incitement to violence and otherwise. Within that grey area lies conspiracy theories and hate speech which can motivate actual harmful and illegal activity downstream if these ideas become sufficiently widespread. It's plausible that the unmoderated hate speech on 8chan motivated numerous lone wolf shooters, given how many manifestos have been posted there. While we may want this speech to be legal (I largely do), we should not want to voluntarily assist in the spreading of this speech above and beyond the legal requirements of 1A. Anti-1A sentiment is growing on the political left and that sentiment isn't totally invalid if we zoom into specific examples of speech motivating heinous outcomes. So nipping a real problem in the bud with private self-regulation seems to be the least slippery slopey outcome of them all.
    - shockeychap 5y ago
      > Anti-1A sentiment is growing on the political left That statement, if you stop to think about what it means for all other freedoms, should genuinely scare you. Freedom only matters if it includes the right to offend others. Anything less isn't freedom at all. If you genuinely believe in the principles of freedom, you will trust that the free exchange of all ideas - good and bad, right and wrong - is the best and only way to bring out the truth. All of this hearkens back to dark ideas in which one class of people exercise power over another. Remember what they say about power.
      - fighterpilot 5y ago
        "Free exchange of ideas... best and only way to bring out the truth." I don't believe this to be true. I only think the 1A is a good idea because it's too easy for an authoritarian government to co-opt speech restrictions. The free exchange in itself isn't what I care about. People on the whole are pretty stupid, tribal and irrational creatures. I see no reason why a free exchange of ideas can't sometimes lead to a fascist or communist state if certain ideas get enough social contagion.
- smitty1e 5y ago
  These diabolical moves are sold as purely reasonable moves that only a reactionary nitwit would object to, yes.
- BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
  I for one, am comfortable with the orthodoxy. The powers that be do not know how heresy will express itself, so it makes sense for them to be ambiguous about what is allowed. Why limit the orthodoxy’s ability to censor what they deem to be subversive disinformation? I would rather ten true facts be censored than let one piece of misinformation go free. /s
- ekianjo 5y ago
  > How can we have an informed electorate when misinformation (whether intentional or not) is allowed to propagate? It's not up to youtube to define what is Misinformation, if they even have a little tiny pretense of being a platform and not a publisher.
mehphp 5y ago
I'm not absolving YouTube (or any other media platform) of blame, but I really don't see a good solution here. We've already seen how devastating misinformation can be; however, I still tend to err on the side of freedom of speech. I don't want widespread misinformation, but who gets to decide what that is?
- umvi 5y ago
  Can't I decide for myself what is misinformation and what isn't? Why do I need a truth arbitrating nanny to shield me from what it deems to be false?
  - mehphp 5y ago
    Because it causes real harm, same as yelling bomb on an airplane or fire in a crowded building. Misinformation can cause people to not get vaccinated or storm the capital building... As much as we'd like to think people are "deciding" anything, it's simply not the case. They just take what they hear as fact because they believe the source is trustworthy.
    - CivBase 5y ago
      > They just take what they hear as fact because they believe the source is trustworthy. No, they take what they hear as fact if they believe the source is trustworthy. So how do we determine which sources are trustworthy? Who decides that? And how are they held accountable when they're wrong? These are very serious questions which need to be answered before I can support any effort to filter out misinformation. And to go back to the bomb-on-a-plane comparison, there is one key difference between that and something like election conspiracies. The person who yelled "bomb" is only penalized if they were knowingly wrong - something that's generally pretty easy to prove when it comes to bombs and fires. They aren't prevented from saying "bomb" in the first place and they aren't reprimanded until it's known that they were lying.
      - mehphp 5y ago
        > No, they take what they hear as fact if they believe the source is trustworthy. So how do we determine which sources are trustworthy? Who decides that? And how are they held accountable when they're wrong? I agree, this is exactly my hesitation I pointed out in my original post.
peteradio 5y ago
Yep, its pretty weird. I feel like I'm doing more to train some AI bot than actually participating in discourse on youtube videos. Some comments of mine which are visible to me are invisible for any other user. The suggestion to discover what was wrong with my comment is to alter my sentences until something gets through. WTH? How about show the rules to play ahead of time. No more youtube comments for me I guess, I didn't realize that I was talking into a void.
- HPsquared 5y ago
  If it's a neural network system, it's probably more of a general "feeling" the system has. Explainability is a notorious problem for ML systems.
  - peteradio 5y ago
    That's fucked. I bet this comment would get censored. Would it be because of the "fuck", the "censor" or the fact that now I've written both twice. Or maybe I'm flagged as a dissenter and comments are saved from review. Who even knows whats going on? Could be some mechanical turk for all we know.

pyronite 5y ago

I disagree. If someone is posting misinformation according to these standards, I'm happy about YouTube taking such things down. How can we have an informed electorate when misinformation (whether intentional or not) is allowed to propagate? We know at this point that incendiary content tends to spread faster than the often-boring truth. Turning a blind eye is a race to the bottom that encourages political parties and those with an agenda to create more of this misleading content. They give a list so you have some guidelines. Ultimately, you can argue with the guidelines and generally agreed-upon facts, and I'm sure many will.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
vorpalhex 5y ago
Who gets to define misinformation? The lab leak theory was misinformation at one point. Wearing masks was misinformation at one point. The problem with censorship is that no man is fit to play the censor.
- belltaco 5y ago
  >The lab leak theory was misinformation at one point So? We know more about it now, so the earlier wild claims without evidence or proof were definitely misinformation at the time, intended to deflect blame from the ineptness of the politicians in power in feb 2020.
  - fighterpilot 5y ago
    Given that lab leaks are fairly common through recent history and the location of the WIV, it was a totally plausible hypothesis back then. It was just taboo for purely political reasons. The case for a lab leak now is mostly the same as it was back then - circumstantial.
    - belltaco 5y ago
      There were a lot of claims that it was a bioweapon leak, in the recent months there has been more circumstantial evidence that it might have been an accidental leak. So yes, there was a lot of misinformation at that time around this.
      - vorpalhex 5y ago
        You can't badly conflate two different claims and then use that as a reason to engage in censorship.
      - fighterpilot 5y ago
        The leak hypothesis itself - not merely a bioweapon leak - was verboten despite its evident plausibility as a hypothesis given a precedent of other lab leaks. Little has changed since then aside from Trump being voted out which then freed up the political left to consider this possibility in its discourse.
        belltaco 5y ago
        A case of the boy who cried wolf not being believed.
        fighterpilot 5y ago
        If you don't see a serious problem with scientists and journalists abdicating their responsibility to dispassionatly pursue the truth and the damage this does to institutions and the public confidence of those institutions, and moreover you do not even lay any blame at their feet and excuse this behavior just because the other side is more dishonest, then I can only think that you have some pretty powerful ideological blinders that have pushed you into a very partisan culture-war type worldview.
- fighterpilot 5y ago
  YouTube deciding what is and isn't misinformation has a positive side effect in that it indirectly protects the first amendment through the middle ground of private voluntary self-regulation. 1A proponents need to understand that there's a grey area between outright incitement to violence and otherwise. Within that grey area lies conspiracy theories and hate speech which can motivate actual harmful and illegal activity downstream if these ideas become sufficiently widespread. It's plausible that the unmoderated hate speech on 8chan motivated numerous lone wolf shooters, given how many manifestos have been posted there. While we may want this speech to be legal (I largely do), we should not want to voluntarily assist in the spreading of this speech above and beyond the legal requirements of 1A. Anti-1A sentiment is growing on the political left and that sentiment isn't totally invalid if we zoom into specific examples of speech motivating heinous outcomes. So nipping a real problem in the bud with private self-regulation seems to be the least slippery slopey outcome of them all.
  - shockeychap 5y ago
    > Anti-1A sentiment is growing on the political left That statement, if you stop to think about what it means for all other freedoms, should genuinely scare you. Freedom only matters if it includes the right to offend others. Anything less isn't freedom at all. If you genuinely believe in the principles of freedom, you will trust that the free exchange of all ideas - good and bad, right and wrong - is the best and only way to bring out the truth. All of this hearkens back to dark ideas in which one class of people exercise power over another. Remember what they say about power.
    - fighterpilot 5y ago
      "Free exchange of ideas... best and only way to bring out the truth." I don't believe this to be true. I only think the 1A is a good idea because it's too easy for an authoritarian government to co-opt speech restrictions. The free exchange in itself isn't what I care about. People on the whole are pretty stupid, tribal and irrational creatures. I see no reason why a free exchange of ideas can't sometimes lead to a fascist or communist state if certain ideas get enough social contagion.
smitty1e 5y ago
These diabolical moves are sold as purely reasonable moves that only a reactionary nitwit would object to, yes.
BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
I for one, am comfortable with the orthodoxy. The powers that be do not know how heresy will express itself, so it makes sense for them to be ambiguous about what is allowed. Why limit the orthodoxy’s ability to censor what they deem to be subversive disinformation? I would rather ten true facts be censored than let one piece of misinformation go free. /s
ekianjo 5y ago
> How can we have an informed electorate when misinformation (whether intentional or not) is allowed to propagate? It's not up to youtube to define what is Misinformation, if they even have a little tiny pretense of being a platform and not a publisher.

mehphp 5y ago

I'm not absolving YouTube (or any other media platform) of blame, but I really don't see a good solution here. We've already seen how devastating misinformation can be; however, I still tend to err on the side of freedom of speech. I don't want widespread misinformation, but who gets to decide what that is?

umvi 5y ago
Can't I decide for myself what is misinformation and what isn't? Why do I need a truth arbitrating nanny to shield me from what it deems to be false?
- mehphp 5y ago
  Because it causes real harm, same as yelling bomb on an airplane or fire in a crowded building. Misinformation can cause people to not get vaccinated or storm the capital building... As much as we'd like to think people are "deciding" anything, it's simply not the case. They just take what they hear as fact because they believe the source is trustworthy.
  - CivBase 5y ago
    > They just take what they hear as fact because they believe the source is trustworthy. No, they take what they hear as fact if they believe the source is trustworthy. So how do we determine which sources are trustworthy? Who decides that? And how are they held accountable when they're wrong? These are very serious questions which need to be answered before I can support any effort to filter out misinformation. And to go back to the bomb-on-a-plane comparison, there is one key difference between that and something like election conspiracies. The person who yelled "bomb" is only penalized if they were knowingly wrong - something that's generally pretty easy to prove when it comes to bombs and fires. They aren't prevented from saying "bomb" in the first place and they aren't reprimanded until it's known that they were lying.
    - mehphp 5y ago
      > No, they take what they hear as fact if they believe the source is trustworthy. So how do we determine which sources are trustworthy? Who decides that? And how are they held accountable when they're wrong? I agree, this is exactly my hesitation I pointed out in my original post.

peteradio 5y ago

Yep, its pretty weird. I feel like I'm doing more to train some AI bot than actually participating in discourse on youtube videos. Some comments of mine which are visible to me are invisible for any other user. The suggestion to discover what was wrong with my comment is to alter my sentences until something gets through. WTH? How about show the rules to play ahead of time. No more youtube comments for me I guess, I didn't realize that I was talking into a void.

HPsquared 5y ago
If it's a neural network system, it's probably more of a general "feeling" the system has. Explainability is a notorious problem for ML systems.
- peteradio 5y ago
  That's fucked. I bet this comment would get censored. Would it be because of the "fuck", the "censor" or the fact that now I've written both twice. Or maybe I'm flagged as a dissenter and comments are saved from review. Who even knows whats going on? Could be some mechanical turk for all we know.