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I'm very pro-vaccines, I don't think the 2020 election was stolen. But I think we have to realize silencing people doesn't work. It just causes the ideas to met

• felixgallo 1y ago
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  • dotnet00 1y ago
    How can you say that banning Nazis has worked well considering everything so far this year?
    • miltonlost 1y ago
      Well it would if we would actually ban Nazis instead of platform them. They haven't been banned. That's the problem.
      • dotnet00 1y ago
        You'd have to ban them from society outright without somehow devolving into an authoritarian hellhole in the process (impossible). Trump still primarily posts on a platform specifically created to be a right wing extremist echo chamber.
        • felixgallo 1y ago
          the choice is not 'devolving into an authoritarian hellhole' or 'give the nazis the ability to do whatever they want'. There is a middle ground that we have lived in for many decades effectively, until recently.
          • dotnet00 1y ago
            What changed recently? Until the latest admins, most platforms didn't change their stance on what is and is not allowed all too much. I'm not trying to imply that dichotomy, just saying that simply banning nazis is not effective, because they just retreat into their echo chambers and fester until they can trick enough people into giving them power. I don't know what the ideal solution is, but simply banning them doesn't seem to be it, and neither do the two extremes mentioned seem reasonable.
      • cpursley 1y ago
        What is a Nazi?
        • indy 1y ago
          For a lot of people it's "anyone who I disagree with".
      • knifemaster 1y ago
        [flagged]
    • felixgallo 1y ago
      Europe is sliding, but has done ok so far. Crossing fingers.
  • putzdown 1y ago
    No. This perspective is wrong in both directions: (1) it is bad medicine and, (2) the medicine doesn't treat the disease. If we could successfully ban bad ideas (assuming that "we" could agree on what they are) then perhaps we should. If the damage incurred by the banning of ideas were sufficiently small, perhaps we should. But both of these are false. Banning does not work. And it brings harm. Note that the keepers of "correct speech" doing the banning today (eg in Biden's day) can quickly become the ones being banned another day (eg Trump's). It's true that drowning the truth through volume is a severe problem, especially in a populace that doesn't care to seek out truth, to find needles in haystacks. But again, banning doesn't resolve this problem. The real solution is develop a populace that cares about, seeks out, and with some skill identifies the truth. That may not be an achievable solution, and in the best case it's not going to happen quickly. But it is the only solution. All of the supply-based solutions (controlling speech itself, rather than training good listeners) run afoul of this same problem, that you cannot really limit the supply, and to the extent you can, so can your opponents.
    • paulryanrogers 1y ago
      What do you think about measures that stop short of banning? Like down ranking, demonetizing, or even hell 'banning' that just isolates cohorts that consistently violate rules?
      • rahidz 1y ago
        Not OP, but my opinion is that if a platform wants to do so, then I have zero issues with that, unless they hold a vast majority of market share for a certain medium and have no major competition. But the government should stay out of it.
    • felixgallo 1y ago
      No. You are objectively wrong. It's great medicine that works -- for example, in Germany, and in the US, and elsewhere, it has stemmed the flow of violent extremism historically to stop the KKK and the Nazis. You can't even become a citizen if you have been a Nazi. Even on the small scale, like reddit, banning /r/fatpeoplehate was originally subject to much handwringing and weeping by the so-called free speech absolutists, but guess what -- it all went away, and the edgelords and bullies went back to 4chan to sulk, resulting in the bullshit not being normalized and made part of polite society. If you want to live in a society where absolutely anything goes at all times, then could I recommend Somalia?
  • unclad5968 1y ago
    Can we stop with the Nazi stuff. I don't know if they stopped teaching history, but there is nothing happening in the US that is within an order of magnitude of the evil the Nazi's perpetrated. Being anti-vax is not comparable to genocide.
    • tehjoker 1y ago
      [flagged]
      • unclad5968 1y ago
        [flagged]
    • jjk166 1y ago
      The Nazis in 1933 hadn't done anything within an order of magnitude of the evil they would perpetrate in 1943. They nevertheless were still Nazis, and everyone who did not actively condemn them then was in part responsible for what they did later. Many evil people weren't Nazis; some Nazis weren't necessarily evil. Evil is not part of the definition of Nazism. Promoting authoritarianism, exclusionary nationalism, institutional racism, autarky, anti-liberalism and anti-socialism are the hallmarks of Nazism. Anyone who holds the beliefs of the Nazis is a Nazi, regardless of what level of success they have to date achieved in carrying out their aims.
      • unclad5968 1y ago
        > The Nazis in 1933 hadn't done anything within an order of magnitude of the evil they would perpetrate in 1943. They nevertheless were still Nazis, and everyone who did not actively condemn them then was in part responsible for what they did later. Only because what they did in 1943 surpassed anything imaginable. In 1933 the Nazi party immediately banned all political parties, arrested thousands of political opponents, started forcing sterilization of anyone with hereditary illnesses, and forced abortions of anyone with hereditary illness. Evil is absolutely an identifying part of Nazis. The idea that Nazis are just anti-liberals is exactly why we cannot go around calling everyone we don't like Nazis. The Nazis were not some niche alt-right organization. If you genuinely think there are Nazis controlling youtube or the government, and all you're doing is complaining about it on hackernews, you're just as complicit as you're claiming those people were.
  • tehjoker 1y ago
    [flagged]
    • indy 1y ago
      Perhaps not the wisest comment to make in light of recent events
      • tehjoker 1y ago
        I didn't say violence. Whatever you read into that comment is a projection. I'm not even sure violence is effective, but something more muscular than op-eds is called for. For example, labor organizing and various forms of self-defense organizations, of which there are many kinds, not only militias. For example, anti-ICE organizing which protects vulnerable people from the gestapo.
• vkou 1y ago
  > But I think we have to realize silencing people doesn't work. We also tried letting the propaganda machine full-blast those lies on the telly for the past 5 years. For some reason, that didn't work either. What is going to work? And what is your plan for getting us to that point?
  • _spduchamp 1y ago
    Algorithmic Accountability. People can post all sorts of crazy stuff, but the algorithms do not need to promote it. Countries can require Algorithmic Impact Assements and set standards of compliance to recommended guidelines.
    • amanaplanacanal 1y ago
      This seems unlikely to be constitutional in the US.
• hash872 1y ago
  It's their private property, they can ban or promote any ideas that they want to. You're free to not use their property if you disagree with that. If 'silencing people' doesn't work- so online platforms aren't allowed to remove anything? Is there any limit to this philosophy? So you think platforms can't remove: Holocaust denial? Clothed underage content? Reddit banned r/jailbait, but you think that's impermissible? How about clothed pictures of toddlers but presented in a sexual context? It would be 'silencing' if a platform wanted to remove that from their private property? Bomb or weapons-making tutorials? Dangerous fads that idiotic kids pass around on TikTok, like the blackout game? You're saying it's not permissible for a platform to remove dangerous instructionals specifically targeted at children? How about spam? Commercial advertising is legally speech in the US. Platforms can't remove the gigantic quantities of spam they suffer from every day? Where's the limiting principle here? Why don't we just allow companies to set their own rules on their own private property, wouldn't that be a lot simpler?
  • softwaredoug 1y ago
    I used to believe this. But I feel more and more we need to promote a culture of free speech that goes beyond the literal first amendment. We have to tolerate weird and dangerous ideas.
    • andrewmcwatters 1y ago
      Better out in the open with refutations or warnings than in the dark where concepts become physical dangers.
      • benjiro 1y ago
        Refuting does not work... You can throw scientific study upon study, doctor upon doctor, ... negatives run deeper then positives. In the open, it becomes normalized, it draws in more people. Do you rather have some crazies in the corner, or 50% of a population that believes something false, as it became normalized. The only people benefiting from those dark concepts are those with financial gains. They make money from it, and push the negatives to sell their products and cures. Those that fight against it, do not gain from it and it cost them time/money. That is why is a losing battle.
• andy99 1y ago
  The more important point (and this is really like a high school civics debate) is that the government and/or a big tech company shouldn't decide what people are "allowed" to say. There's tons of dumb stuff online, the only thing dumber is the state dictating how I'm supposed to think. People seem to forget that sometimes someone they don't agree with is in power. What if they started banning tylenol-autism sceptical accounts?
  • mapontosevenths 1y ago
    > the government and/or a big tech company shouldn't decide what people are "allowed" to say. That "and/or" is doing a lot of work here. There's a huge difference between government censorship and forcing private companies to host content they don't want to host on servers they own. Then again, Alphabet is now claiming they did want to host it and mean old Biden pressured them into pulling it so if we buy that, maybe it doesn't matter. > What if they started banning tylenol-autism sceptical accounts? What if it's pro-cannibalism or pedophilia content? Everyone has a line, we're all just arguing about where exactly we think that line should be.
    • MostlyStable 1y ago
      It can simultaneously be legal/allowable for them to ban speech, and yet also the case that we should criticize them for doing so. The first amendment only restricts the government, but a culture of free speech will also criticize private entities for taking censorious actions. And a culture of free speech is necessary to make sure that the first amendment is not eventually eroded away to nothing.
      • lkey 1y ago
        Or it might be the case that that 'culture' is eroding the thing it claims to be protecting. https://www.popehat.com/p/how-free-speech-culture-is-killing-free-speech-part-one https://www.popehat.com/p/how-free-speech-culture-is-killing...
        • 1y ago
• kypro 1y ago
  I agree. People today are far more anti-vaccine than they were a few years ago which is kinda crazy when you consider we went through a global pandemic where one of the only things that actually worked to stop people dying was the roll out of effective vaccines. I think if public health bodies just laid out the data they had honestly (good and bad) and said that they think most people should probably take it, but left it to people to decide, the vast, vast majority of people would still have gotten the vaccine but we wouldn't have allowed anti-vaccine sentiment to fester.
  • vkou 1y ago
    > but left it to people to decide, the vast, vast majority of people would still have gotten the vaccine but we wouldn't have allowed anti-vaccine sentiment to fester. Nah, the same grifters who stand to make a political profit of turning everything into a wedge issue would have still hammered right into it. They've completely taken over public discourse on a wide range of subjects, that go well beyond COVID vaccines. As long as you can make a dollar by telling people that their (and your) ignorance is worth just as much - or more - than someone else's knowledge, you'll find no shortage of listeners for your sermon. And that popularity will build its own social proof. (Millions of fools can't all be wrong, after all.)
    • kypro 1y ago
      I agree. Again the vast majority would have gotten the vaccine. There's always going to be people for all kinds of reasons pushing out bad ideas. That's part of the trade-off of living in a free society where there is no universal "right" opinion the public must hold. > They've completely taken over public discourse on a wide range of subjects Most people are not anti-vax. If "they've" "taken over public discourse" in other subjects to the point you are now holding a minority opinion you should consider whether "they" are right or wrong and why so many people believe what they do. If can't understand their position and disagree you should reach out to people in a non-confrontational way, understand their position, then explain why you disagree (if you still do at that point). If we all do a better job at this we'll converge towards truth. If you think talking and debate isn't the solution to disagreements I'd argue you don't really believe in our democratic system (which isn't a judgement).
• tonfreed 1y ago
  The best disinfectant is sunlight. I'm similarly appalled by some of the behaviour after a certain political activist was murdered, but I don't want them to get banned or deplatformed. I'm hoping what we're seeing here is a restoration of the ability to disagree with each other
  • slater- 1y ago
    >> The best disinfectant is sunlight. Trump thought so too.
  • thrance 1y ago
    How's that working out? The worst ideas of the 20th century are resurfacing in plain sunlight because the dem's couldn't pluck their heads out of the sand and actually fight them. Now vaccines are getting banned and the GOP is gerrymandering the hell out of the country to ensure the end of the democratic process. Sure, let's do nothing and see where that brings us. Maybe people will magically come to their senses.
    • andrewmcwatters 1y ago
      Well, people literally died. So, I think we all know how it played out. The same thing since time eternal will continue to occur: the educated and able will physically move themselves from risk and others will suffer either by their own volition, or by association, or by lot.
  • LeafItAlone 1y ago
    >The best disinfectant is sunlight. Is it? How does that work at scale? Speech generally hasn’t been restricted broadly. The same concepts and ideas removed from YouTube still were available on many places (including here). Yet we still have so many people believing falsehoods and outright lies. Even on this very topic of COVID, both sides present their “evidence” and and truly believe they are right, no matter what the other person says.
    • TeeMassive 1y ago
• Aloha 1y ago
  I think it made sense as a tactical choice at the moment, just like censorship during wartime - I dont think it should go on forever, because doing so is incompatible with a free society.
  • ioteg 1y ago
    [dead]
  • llm_nerd 1y ago
    It didn't even make sense at the time. It tainted everything under a cloud that the official, accepted truth needed to suppress alternatives to win the battle of minds. It was disastrous, and it is astonishing seeing people (not you, but in these comments) still trying to paint it as a good choice. It massively amplified the nuts. It brought it to the mainstream. I'm a bit amazed seeing people still justifying it after all we've learned. COVID was handled terribly after the first month or so, and hopefully we've learned from that. We're going to endure the negative consequences for years. And to state my position like the root guy, I'm a progressive, pro-vaccine, medical science believer. I listen to my doctor and am skeptical if not dismissive of the YouTube "wellness" grifters selling scam supplements. I believe in science and research. I thought the worm pill people were sad if not pathetic. Anyone who gets triggered by someone wearing a mask needs to reassess their entire life. But lockdowns went on way too long. Limits on behaviour went on way too long. Vaccine compliance measures were destructive the moment we knew it had a negligible effect on spread. When platforms of "good intentions" people started silencing the imbeciles, it handed them a megaphone and made the problem much worse. And now we're living in the consequences. Where we have a worm-addled halfwit directed medicine for his child-rapist pal.
    • LeafItAlone 1y ago
      >It massively amplified the nuts. It brought it to the mainstream. >COVID was handled terribly after the first month or so, and hopefully we've learned from that. We're going to endure the negative consequences for years. In theory, I agree, kind of. But also - we were 10+ months into COVID raging in the US before Biden’s administration, the administration that enacted the policies the article is about, came to be. Vaccine production and approval were well under way, brought to fruition in part due to the first Trump administration. The “nuts” had long been mainstream and amplified before this “silencing” began. Misinformation was rampant and people were spreading it at a quick speed. Most people I know who ultimately refused the vaccines made up their minds before Biden took office.
• thrance 1y ago
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• heavyset_go 1y ago
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• breadwinner 1y ago
  > silencing people doesn't work I agree, but how do you combat propaganda from Putin? Do you match him dollar for dollar? I am sure YouTube would like that, but who has deep enough pockets to counter the disinformation campaigns? Similar issue with Covid... when you are in the middle of a pandemic, and dead bodies are piling up, and hospitals are running out of room, how do you handle misinformation spreading on social media?
  • JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    Slow down our algorithmic hell hole. Particularly around elections.
    • breadwinner 1y ago
      If the government asks private companies to do that, then that's a violation of 1st amendment, isn't it? This is the conundrum social media has created. In the past only the press, who were at least semi-responsible, had the ability to spread information on a massive scale. Social media changed that. Now anyone can spread information instantly on a massive scale, and often it is the conspiracy theories and incorrect information that people seek out. "We were a bit naive: we thought the internet, with the availability of information, would make us all a lot more factual. The fact that people would seek out—kind of a niche of misinformation—we were a bit naive." -- Bill Gates to Oprah, on "AI and the Future of us".
      • JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > If the government asks private companies to do that, then that's a violation of 1st amendment, isn't it? Yes. An unfortunate conclusion I’m approaching (but have not reached, and frankly don’t want to reach) is the First Amendment doesn’t work in a country that’s increasingly illiterate and addicted to ad-powered algorithmic social media.
        • breadwinner 1y ago
          It is social media that is the root problem. On the internet everything can appear equally legitimate. Breitbart looks as legit as the BBC. Sacha Baron Cohen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymaWq5yZIYM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymaWq5yZIYM Excerpts: Voltaire was right when he said "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." And social media lets authoritarians push absurdities to millions of people. Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach. Sadly There will always be racists, misogynists, anti-Semites, and child abusers. We should not be giving bigots and pedophiles a free platform to amplify their views and target their victims. Zuckerberg says people should decide what's credible, not tech companies. When 2/3rds of millennials have not heard of Auschwitz how are they supposed to know what's true? There is such a thing as objective truth. Facts do exist.
• deegles 1y ago
  no, letting misinformation persist is counterproductive because of the illusory truth effect. the more people hear it, the more they think (consciously or not) "there must be something to this if it keeps popping up"
  • NullCascade 1y ago
    Elon Musk's takeover of X is already a good example of what happens with unlimited free speech and unlimited reach. Neo-nazis and white nationalists went from their 3-4 replies per thread forums, 4chan posts, and Telegram channels, to now regularly reaching millions of people and getting tens of thousands of likes. As a Danish person I remember how American media in the 2010s and early 2020s used to shame Denmark for being very right-wing on immigration. The average US immigration politics thread on X is worse than anything I have ever seen in Danish political discussions.
• lkey 1y ago
  I think you are granting false neutrality to this speech. These misinfo folks are always selling a cure to go with their rejection of medicine. It's a billion dollar industry built off of spreading fear and ignorance, and youtube doesn't have any obligation to host their content. As an example, for 'curing' autism, the new grift is reject Tylenol and buy my folic acid supplement to 'fix' your child. Their stores are already open and ready.
  • mvdtnz 1y ago
    And silencing these people only lends credence to their "they don't want you to know this" conspiracy theories. Because at that point it's not a theory, it's a proven fact.
    • lkey 1y ago
      These people will claim they were 'silenced' regardless. Even as they appear with their published bestseller about being silenced on every podcast and news broadcast under the sun, they will speak of the 'conspiracy' working against them at every step. The actual facts at hand almost never matter. Even at a press conference where the President is speaking on your behalf they'll speak of the 'groups' that are 'against' them, full of nefarious purpose. There is no magical set of actions that changes the incentive they have to lie, or believe lies. (except regulation of snake oil, which is not going to happen any time soon)
      • mvdtnz 1y ago
        And most people roll their eyes and don't believe it. Which is why it's a good idea not to make it true.
        • lkey 1y ago
          Conspiratorial thinkers are more likely to believe that Osama Bin Laden was already dead and is still alive rather than the official narrative that he was killed on the day reported. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235449075_Dead_and_Alive_Beliefs_in_Contradictory_Conspiracy_Theories https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235449075_Dead_and_... In general, you can't argue or 'fact' people out of beliefs they were not argued into. The best you can do is give them a safe place to land when disconfirmation begins. Don't be too judgy, no one is immune to propaganda.
• benjiro 1y ago
  Funny thing, several person that counter responded and disagreed got grayed out (aka negative downvoted ... as in censored). Reality is, i have personally seen what this type of uncontrolled anti-vax stuff does. The issue is that its harder to disprove a negative with a positive, then people realize. The moment you are into the youtube, tiktok or whatever platform algorithm, you are fed a steady diet of this misinformation. When you then try to argue with actual factual studies, you get the typical response from "they already said that those studies are made up"... How do you fight that? Propaganda works by flooding the news and over time, people believe it. That is the result of uncensored access because most people do not have the time to really look up a scientific study. The amount of negative channels massive out way positive / fact based channels because the later is "boring". Its the same reason why your evening news is 80% deaths, corruptions, thefts, politicians and taxes or other negative world news. Because it has been proven that people take in negative news much more. Clickbait titles that are negative draw in people. There is a reason why holocaust denial is illegal in countries. Because the longer some people can spew that, the more people actually start to believe it. Yes, i am going to get roasted for this but people are easily influenced and they are not as smart as they think themselves are. We have platforms that cater to people's short attention span with barely 1~3 min clips. Youtube video's longer then 30min are horrible for the youtubers income as people simply do not have the attention span and resulting lost income. Why do we have laws like seatbelt, speed limits, and other "control" over people. Because people left to their own devices, can be extreme uncaring about their own family, others, even themselves. Do i like the idea of censorship for the greater good, no. But when there are so many that spew nonsense just to sell their powders, and their homemade vitamine C solutions (made in China)... telling people information that may hurt or kills themselves, family or others. Where is the line of that unbridled free speech? Silencing people works as in, your delaying the flow of shit running down a creek, will it stop completely? No, but the delay helps people downstream. Letting it run uninterrupted, hoping that a few people downstream with a mop will do all the work, yea ... We only need to look at platforms like X, when "censorship" got removed (moderation). Full of free speech, no limits and it turned into a soak pit extreme fast (well, bigger soak pit). Not sure why i am writing this because this is a heated topic but all i can say is, I have seen the damage that anti-vax did on my family. And even to this day, that damage is still present. How a person who never had a issue with vaccinations, never had a bad reaction beyond the sour arm for a day, turned so skeptical to everything vaccination. All because those anti-vax channels got to her. The anti-vax movement killed people. There is scientific study upon study how red states in the US ended up with bigger amounts of deaths given the time periodes. And yet, not a single person was ever charged for this, ... all simply accepted this and never looked back. Like it was a natural thing, that people's grandparents, family members died that did not need to die. The fact that people have given up, and now accept to let those with often financial interests, spew nonsense as much as they like. Well, its "normal". I weep for the human race because we are not going to make it.
• yojo 1y ago
  I think there's a difference between silencing people, and having an algorithm that railroads people down a polarization hole. My biggest problem with YouTube isn't what it does/doesn't allow on its platform, it's that it will happily feed you a psychotic worldview if it keeps you on the site. I've had several family members go full conspiracy nut-job after engaging heavily with YouTube content. I don't know what the answer is. I think many people would rightly argue that removing misinformation from the recommendation engine is synonymous with banning it. FWIW I'd be happy if recommendation engines generally were banned for being a societal cancer, but I'm probably in the minority here.
• dawnerd 1y ago
  It also turns into a talking point for them. A lot of these weird conspiracies would have naturally died out if some people didn’t try to shut them down so much.
• braiamp 1y ago
  > But I think we have to realize silencing people doesn't work It actually does work. You need to remove ways for misinformation to spread, and suppressing a couple of big agents works very well. - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07524-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07524-8 - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2021.1994631 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2021.1... - https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3479525 https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3479525 - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.11864 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.11864 Obviously, the best solution would be prevention, by having good education systems and arming common people with the weapons to assess and criticize information, but we are kinda weak on that front.
• sazylusan 1y ago
  Perhaps free speech isn't the problem, but free speech x algorithmic feeds is? As we all know the algorithm favors the dramatic, controversial, etc. That creates an uneven marketplace for free speech where the most subversive and contrarian takes essentially have a megaphone over everyone else.
  • sazylusan 1y ago
    Building on that, the crazy person spouting conspiracy theories in the town square, who would have been largely ignored in the past, suddenly becomes the most visible. The first amendment was written in the 1700s...
  • hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
    Glad to see this, was going to make a similar comment. People should be free to say what they want online. But going down "YouTube conspiracy theory" rabbit holes is a real thing, and YouTube doesn't need to make that any easier, or recommend extreme (or demonstrably false) content because it leads to more "engagement".
    • squigz 1y ago
      Online, sure. But online doesn't mean YouTube or Facebook.
  • cptnapalm 1y ago
    As I understand it, Twitter has something called Community Notes. So people can write things, but it can potentially have an attached refutation.
    • emseetech 1y ago
      Community notes is better than nothing, but they only relate to a single tweet. So if one tweet with misinformation gets 100k likes, then a community note might show up correcting it. But if 100 tweets each get 1000 likes, they're never singularly important enough to community note.
• ants_everywhere 1y ago
  These policies were put in place because the anti-vax and election skepticism content was being promoted by military intelligence organizations that were trying to undermine democracy and public healthy in the US. The US military also promoted anti-vax propaganda in the Philippines [0]. A lot of the comments here raise good points about silencing well meaning people expressing their opinion. But information warfare is a fundamental part of modern warfare. And it's effective. An American company or individual committing fraud can be dealt with in the court system. But we don't yet have a good remedy for how to deal with a military power flooding social media with information intentionally designed to mislead and cause harm for people who take it seriously. So > I think we have to realize silencing people doesn't work it seems to have been reasonably effective at combating disinformation networks > It just causes the ideas to metastasize I don't think this is generally true. If you look at old disinformation campaigns like the idea that the US faked the moon landings, it's mostly confined to a small group of people who are prone to conspiracy thinking. The idea of a disinformation campaign is you make it appear like a crazy idea has broad support. Making it appear that way requires fake accounts or at least boosters who are in on the scheme. Taking that away means the ideas compete on their own merit, and the ideas are typically real stinkers. [0] https://www.btimesonline.com/articles/167919/20240727/u-s-admits-anti-vax-propaganda-campaign-in-philippines-to-undermine-china.htm https://www.btimesonline.com/articles/167919/20240727/u-s-ad...
• asadotzler 1y ago
  My refusing to distribute your work is not "silencing." Silencing would be me preventing you from distributing it. Have we all lost the ability to reason? Seriously, this isn't hard. No one owes you distribution unless you have a contract saying otherwise.
  • sterlind 1y ago
    I'd certainly consider an ISP refusing to route my packets as silencing. is YouTube so different? legally, sure, but practically?
    • michaelt 1y ago
      If we were still in the age of personal blogs and phpbb forums, where there were thousands of different venues - the fact the chess forum would ban you for discussing checkers was no problem at all. But these days, when you can count the forums on one hand even if you're missing a few fingers, and they all have extremely similar (American-style) censorship policies? To me it's less clear than it once was.
    • jabwd 1y ago
      yes... coz youtube is not your ISP. A literal massive difference. RE: net neutrality.
    • scarface_74 1y ago
      No because you are perfectly technically capable of setting your own servers in a colo and distributing your video.
  • hn_throw_250915 1y ago
    [dead]
  • justinhj 1y ago
    So you're saying that YouTube is a publisher and should not have section 230 protections? They can't have it both ways. Sure remove content that violates policies but YouTube has long set itself up as an opinion police force, choosing which ideas can be published and monetized and which cannot.
• krapp 1y ago
  >A lot of people will say all kinds of craziness, and you just have to let it ride so most of us can roll our eyes at it. Except many people don't roll their eyes at it, that's exactly the problem. QAnon went from a meme on 4chan to the dominant political movement across the US and Europe. Anti-vax went from fringe to the official policy position of the American government. Every single conspiracy theory that I'm aware of has only become more mainstream, while trust in any "mainstream" source of truth has gone down. All all of this in an environment of aggressive skepticism, arguing, debating and debunking. All of the sunlight is not disinfecting anything. We're literally seeing the result of the firehose of misinformation and right-wing speech eating people's brains and you're saying we just have to "let it ride?" Silencing people alone doesn't work, but limiting the damage misinformation and hate speech can do while pushing back against it does work. We absolutely do need to preserve the right of platforms to choose what speech they spread and what they don't.
• wvenable 1y ago
  > But I think we have to realize silencing people doesn't work. Doesn't it though? I've seen this repeated like it's fact but I don't think that's true. If you disallowed all of some random chosen conspiracy off of YouTube and other mainstream platforms I think it would stop being part of the larger public consciousness pretty quickly. Many of these things arrived out of nothing and can disappear just as easily. It's basic human nature that simply hearing things repeated over and over embeds it into your consciousness. If you're not careful and aware of what you're consuming then that becomes a part of your world view. The most effective way to bring people back from conspiratorial thinking (like QAnon) is to unplug them from that source of information.
• bencorman 1y ago
  I wish someone could have seen the eye roll I just performed reading this comment. Silencing absolutely works! How do you think disinformation metastasized!?
• breadwinner 1y ago
  The government created this problem when they enacted Section 230. This is at the root of the misinformation and disinformation... social media companies are not responsible for the harm. The simple solution is repeal Section 230. When information can be transmitted instantly on a massive scale, somebody need to responsible for the information. The government should not police information but citizens should be allowed to sue social media companies for the harm caused to them.
  • int_19h 1y ago
    The practical end result of repealing Section 230 is that companies will crack down on any even remotely controversial speech because that's the only way to avoid lawsuits.
    • breadwinner 1y ago
      The New York Times has published plenty of stories you could call controversial. Just this morning the top headline was that Trump lied at the UN. Trump has sued the Times for defamation, yet the paper stands by its reporting. That’s how publishing works: if you can’t defend what you publish, don’t publish it. The Section 230 debate is about whether large online platforms such as Facebook should bear similar accountability for the content they distribute. I think they should. That's the only way we can control misinformation and disinformation.
• electriclove 1y ago
  I agree and I’m pro vaccines but want the choice on if/when to vaccinate my kids. I believe there were election discrepancies but not sure if it was stolen. I felt the ZeroHedge article about lab leak was a reasonable possibility. All these things were shutdown by the powers that be (and this was not Trump’s fault). The people shutting down discourse are the problem.
  • amanaplanacanal 1y ago
    You pretty much have the choice about vaccinating your kids. You might not be able to send them to public school without vaccinations though, depending on your local laws.
    • electriclove 1y ago
      In California, it is required for public schools and many private schools also require it, so effectively it isn't much of a choice.
• yongjik 1y ago
  I feel like we're living in different worlds, because from what I've seen, giving people platforms clearly doesn't work either. It just lets the most stupid and incendiary ideas to spread unchecked. If you allow crazy people to "let it ride" then they don't stop until... until... hell we're still in the middle of it and I don't even know when or if they will stop.
  • atmavatar 1y ago
    I wonder how much of that is giving a platform to conspiracy theorists and how much of it is the social media algorithms' manipulation making the conspiracy theories significantly more visible and persuasive.
    • prawn 1y ago
      Is there any consideration of this with regard to Section 230? e.g., you're a passive conduit if you allow something to go online, but you're an active publisher if you actively employ any form of algorithm to publish and promote?
    • thrance 1y ago
      Look at 4chan and it's derivatives: minimal algorithms and they're the shitholes of ideas on the internet.
  • mac-attack 1y ago
    It's poorly thought out logic. Everyone sees how messy and how mistakes can be made when attempting to get to a truth backed by data + science, so they somehow they conclude that allowing misinformation to flourish will solve the problem instead of leading to a slow decline of morality/civilization. Very analogous to people who don't like how inefficient governments function and somehow conclude that the solution is to put people in power with zero experience managing government.
    • mitthrowaway2 1y ago
      There's a journey that every hypothesis makes on the route to becoming "information", and that journey doesn't start at top-down official recognition. Ideas have to circulate, get evaluated and rejected and accepted by different groups, and eventually grasp their way towards consensus. I don't believe Trump's or Kennedy's ideas about COVID and medicine are the ones that deserve to win out, but I do think that top-down suppression of ideas can be very harmful to truth seeking and was harmful during the pandemic. In North America I believe this led to a delayed (and ultimately minimal) social adoption of masks, a late acceptance of the aerosol-spread vector, an over-emphasis on hand washing, and a far-too-late restriction on international travel and mass public events, well past the point when it could have contributed to containing the disease (vs Taiwan's much more effective management, for example). Of course there's no guarantee that those ideas would have been accepted in time to matter had there been a freer market for views, and of course it would have opened the door to more incorrect ideas as well, but I'm of the view that it would have helped. More importantly I think those heavy restrictions on pre-consensus ideas (as many of them would later become consensus) helped lead to a broader undermining of trust in institutions, the fallout of which we are observing today.
• homeonthemtn 1y ago
  You are on a platform that polices speech. It is evidence that policing speech helps establish civility and culture. There's nothing wrong with policing speech, but it can certainly be abused. If you were on the early Internet, you were self policing with the help of admins all the time. The difference was you had niche populations that had a stake in keeping the peace and culture of a given board We broke those boundaries down though and now pit strangers versus strangers for clicks and views, resulting in daily stochastic terrorism. Police the damn speech.
  • softwaredoug 1y ago
    For inciting violence. Sure. Free speech isn’t absolute. But along with fringe Covid ideas, we limited actual speech on legitimate areas of public discourse around Covid. Like school reopening or questioning masks and social distancing. We needed those debates. Because the unchecked “trust the experts” makes the experts dumber. The experts need to respond to challenges. (And I believe those experts actually did about as best they could given the circumstances)
    • homeonthemtn 1y ago
      If I were trying to govern during a generational, world stopping epoch event, I would also not waste time picking through the trash to hear opinions. I would put my trust in the people I knew were trained for this and adjust from there. I suspect many of these opinions are born from hindsight.
      • zmgsabst 1y ago
        Really? Experts have a worse track record than open debate and the COVID censorship was directed at even experts who didn’t adhere to political choices — so to my eyes, you’re saying that you’d give in to authoritarian impulses and do worse.
        • judahmeek 1y ago
          The problem with debate is that it hinders organized action. At some point in any emergency, organized action has to be prioritized over debate. Maybe that is still authoritarian, but they do say to have moderation in all things!
• TacticalCoder 1y ago
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• trinsic2 1y ago
  They don't silence people to stop narratives. People are silenced to cause divisions and to exert control over the population. When people stop using tech they don't control and supporting people or systems that do not have their best interests a heart, only then will we see reach change.
  • brookst 1y ago
    There is no conspiracy. It’s all emergent behavior by large groups of uncoordinated dunces who can’t keep even the most basic of secrets.
    • trinsic2 1y ago
      Its known strategy that happens all the time by corrupt individuals in governments around the world. Its so pervasive, im not going to even to bother posting links.
• fullshark 1y ago
  It works 99% of the time and you are overindexing on the 1% of the time it doesn’t to draw your conclusion.
• stinkbeetle 1y ago
  For that matter why is it even such a crazy wild idea for anybody to dare to question medicines and motives from pharmaceutical companies? Or question elections? Both have always been massively shady. I'm old enough to remember the big stink around the Al Gore election loss, or the robust questioning of the 2016 election for that matter. So ridiculous for self-proclaimed defenders of democracy to want to ban the discussion and disagreement about the facts around elections. Democratic processes and institutions should be open to doubt, questioning, and discussion. The response to covid vaccines was actually extremely rational. They were highly taken up by the elderly who were shown to have the greatest risk, despite that demographic skewing more conservative (and arguably could be most at risk of "misinformation" from social media). And they were not able to stop transmission or provide much benefit to children and younger people, so they didn't get taken up so much among those groups. So there was really no need for this massive sustained psychological campaign of fearmongering, divisiveness, censorship, and mandates. They could have just presented the data and the facts as they came to hand, and be done with it.
  • dotnet00 1y ago
    With medicine there's pushback because the vast majority of the time, someone's scamming you and you likely don't actually know what you're talking about, we had a ton of this during covid, radioactive jewelery that was supposed to protect you, cow piss (I personally know people who tried this...), 5G towers (actual damage done to all sorts of towers), Ivermectin, Hydrochloroquine and more. People who are sick or have a sick loved one are especially vulnerable to these sorts of things (there's an example of such a victim in the comments), and often end up making things worse by waiting too long or causing further damage. With questioning elections, I think Jan 6 would be a pretty good indication of why it wasn't appropriate? This wasn't how questioning the results of elections goes in democracies. Instead, even after courts had investigated, the outgoing president refused to accept the result without any substantiated evidence.
    • stinkbeetle 1y ago
      > With medicine there's pushback because the vast majority of the time, someone's scamming you and you likely don't actually know what you're talking about, we had a ton of this during covid, radioactive jewelery that was supposed to protect you, cow piss (I personally know people who tried this...), 5G towers (actual damage done to all sorts of towers), Ivermectin, Hydrochloroquine and more. People who are sick or have a sick loved one are especially vulnerable to these sorts of things (there's an example of such a victim in the comments), and often end up making things worse by waiting too long or causing further damage. Pushback on what? There's always been new age hippy garbage, Chinese medicine, curing cancer with berries, and that kind of thing around. I don't see that causing much damage and certainly not enough to warrant censorship. People can easily see through it and in the end they believe what they want to believe. Far far more dangerous and the cause of real damage that I have seen come from the pharmaceutical industry and their captured regulators. Bribing medical professionals, unconscionable public advertising practices, conspiring to push opioids on the population, lying about the cost to produce medications, and on and on. There's like, a massive list of the disasters these greedy corporations and their spineless co-conspirators in government regulators have caused. Good thing we can question them, their motives, their products. > With questioning elections, I think Jan 6 would be a pretty good indication of why it wasn't appropriate? I don't understand your question. Can you explain why you think Jan 6 would be a pretty good indication that discussion and disagreement about elections should be censored? > This wasn't how questioning the results of elections goes in democracies. Instead, even after courts had investigated, the outgoing president refused to accept the result without any substantiated evidence. I never quite followed exactly were the legal issues around that election. Trump was alleged to have tried to illegally influence some election process and/or obstructed legal transfer of power. Additionally there was a riot of people who thought Trump won and some broke into congress and tried to intimidate law makers. I mean taking the worst possible scenario, Trump knew he lost and was scheming a plan to seize power and was secretly transmitting instructions to this mob to enter the building and take lawmakers hostage or something like that. Or any other scenario you like, let your imagination go wild. I still fail to see how that could possibly justify censorship of the people and prohibiting them from questioning the government or its democratic processes. In fact the opposite, a government official went rogue and committed a bunch of crimes so therefore... the people should not be permitted to question or discuss the government and its actions? There are presumably laws against those actions of rioting, insurrection, etc. Why, if the guilty could be prosecuted with those crimes, should the innocent pay with the destruction of their human rights, in a way that wouldn't even solve the problem and could easily enable worse atrocities be committed by the government in future? Should people who question the 2024 election be censored? Should people who have concerns with the messages from the government's foremost immigration and deportation "experts" be prohibited from discussing their views or protesting the government's actions?
• aesthethiccs 1y ago
  Yes we should be allowed to bully idiots into the ground.
• Zanfa 1y ago
  IMO free speech requires moderation, but the "how" is an unsolved problem. In a completely unmoderated environment, free speech will be drowned out by propaganda from your adversaries. The decades of experience and the industrial scale that Russian (or similar) troll factories can manufacture grassroots content or fund influencers is not something that can be combated at an individual level. It would be a mistake to think such operations care too much about specific talking points, the goal is to drown out moderate discussion to replace it with flamewars. It's a numbers game, so they'll push in hundreds of different directions until they find something that sticks and also both sides of the same conflict.
• dyauspitr 1y ago
  Silencing people is the only thing that works is what I’ve learned on the internet.
• theshrike79 1y ago
  The problem is the algorithm. Content that makes people angry (extreme views) brings views. Algorithims optimise for views -> people get recommended extreme views. You can test this with a fresh account, it doesn't take many swipes on Youtube Shorts to get some pretty heinous shit if you pretend to be a young male to the algorithm.
• dakial1 1y ago
  I used to think like you, believing that, on average, society would expurge the craziness, but the last decade and the effect of social media and the echo chambers in groups made me see that I was completely wrong.
• tmaly 1y ago
  The issue for me is that kids are on YouTube, and I think there should be some degree of moderation.