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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,

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!
      - aianus 1y ago
        God forbid someone hinder some retarded organized action before enough peoples’ lives are ruined that our majestic rulers notice and gracefully decide to stop.
      - SV_BubbleTime 1y ago
        > The problem with debate is that it hinders organized action. Ah… so… ”we must do something! Even if it’s the wrong thing” Hot take.
      - zmgsabst 1y ago
        That’s not at all how you’re taught to handle emergencies. From health emergencies to shootings to computer system crashes to pandemics — doing things without a reason to believe they’ll improve the situation is dangerous. You can and many have made things worse. And ignoring experts shouting “wait, no!” is a recipe for disaster. When we were responding to COVID, we had plenty of time to have that debate in a candid way. We just went down an authoritarian path instead.
      - Gud 1y ago
        No it doesn't. It allows for correct action to be taken.
  - xboxnolifes 1y ago
    Letting fringe theories exist on YouTube does not stop you from accessing the WHO or CDC website.
    - fzeroracer 1y ago
      Those fringe theories have now embedded themselves into the government itself and directly have contributed to the rot of our public health institutions. So in many ways yes, they do.
      - xboxnolifes 1y ago
        That happened while Youtube was not allowing it as well.
    - jdiff 1y ago
      Fringe theories existing and being allowed to persist has led to wide takedowns of information from government sites including the CDC.
  - themaninthedark 1y ago
    Luckily, it is possible for you to just listen to those you trust. No need for you go pick through other people's opinions. I don't see how that turns into you needing to mandate what I read and who's opinions I hear.
    - scuff3d 1y ago
      There has been a massive uptick in anti-vax rhetoric over the last decade. As a result some Americans have decided to not vaccinate, and we are seeing a resurgence in diseases that should be eradicated. I have a three month old son. At the time he was being born, in my city, there was an outbreak of one of those diseases that killed more then one kid. Don't tell me this stuff doesn't have a direct impact on people.
- McGlockenshire 1y ago
  The "debate" ended up doing nothing but spreading misinformation. Society as a whole has a responsibility to not do that kind of shit. We shouldn't be encouraging the spread of lies.
- epistasis 1y ago
  Really, discussion was limited? Or blatant lies were rightly excluded from discourse? There's a big difference, and in any healthy public discourse there are severe reputations penalties for lies. If school reopening couldn't be discussed, could you point to that? It's very odd how as time goes on my recollection differs so much from others, and I'm not sure if it's because of actual different experiences or because of the fog of memory.
  - mixmastamyk 1y ago
    Blatant truths were excluded as well, and that's the main problem. See replies to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45353884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45353884
    - epistasis 1y ago
      That's a really long thread and I'm not sure where blatant truths were excluded.
      - mixmastamyk 1y ago
        Each top level reply responds with an example of a truth suppressed.
        epistasis 1y ago
        The top comment is emphatically not that: >As super low hanging fruit: > June 8, 2020: WHO: Data suggests it's "very rare" for coronavirus to spread through asymptomatics [0] > June 9, 2020: WHO expert backtracks after saying asymptomatic transmission 'very rare' [1] > 0: https://www.axios.com/2020/06/08/who-coronavirus-asymptomati https://www.axios.com/2020/06/08/who-coronavirus-asymptomati... 1: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/09/who-expert-bac https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/09/who-expert-bac... > Of course, if we just take the most recent thing they said as "revised guidance", I guess it's impossible for them to contradict themselves. Just rapidly re-re-re-revised guidance. My hypotheses for our discrepant viewpoints were 1) my aging memory, or 2) different experiences, but it's actually 3) not using words to have the same meaning! Citing this as "blatant truth suppression" weakens my view of any other evidence or argument you put forward, because I no longer trust that we can use words in ways that are compatible with each other.
- scuff3d 1y ago
  Try to post a meme here, see how long it stays up. More seriously, it's just not this simple man. I know people really want it to be, but it's not. I watched my dad get sucked down a rabbit hole of qanon, Alex Jones, anti-vax nonsense and God knows what other conspiracy theories. I showed him point blank evidence that qanon was bullshit, and he just flat out refuses to believe it. He's representative of a not insignificant part of the population. And you can say it doesn't do any damage, but those people vote, and I think we can see clearly it's done serious damage. When bonkers ass fringe nonsense with no basis in reality gets platformed, and people end up in that echo chamber, it does significant damage to the public discourse. And a lot of it is geared specifically to funnel people in. In more mainstream media climate change is a perfect example. The overwhelming majority in the scientific community has known for a long time it's an issue. There were disagreement over cause or severity, but not that it was a problem. The media elevated dissenting opinions and gave the impression that it was somehow an even split. That the people who disagree with climate change were as numerous and as well informed, which they most certainly weren't, not by a long shot. And that's done irreparable damage to society. Obviously these are very fine lines to be walked, but even throughout US history, a country where free speech is probably more valued than anywhere else on the planet, we have accepted certain limitations for the public good.
- fzeroracer 1y ago
  > We needed those debates. Because the unchecked “trust the experts” makes the experts dumber. The experts need to respond to challenges. We've had these debates for decades. The end result is stuff like Florida removing all vaccine mandates. You can't debate a conspiracy or illogical thinking into to going away, you can only debate it into validity.
nostromo 1y ago
You've missed the point entirely. It’s not if Google can decide what content they want on YouTube. The issue here is that the Biden Whitehouse was pressuring private companies to remove speech that they otherwise would host. That's a clear violation of the first amendment. And we now know that the previous Whitehouse got people banned from all the major platforms: Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc.
- homeonthemtn 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - nostromo 1y ago
    Thankfully the constitution explicitly forbids that in the US.
    - homeonthemtn 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - mensetmanusman 1y ago
        That was abc, and they just put him back.
      - themaninthedark 1y ago
        Huh, last I heard was that Jimmy Kimmel is back on air. If the Trump administration had decided to follow through with their threats, ABC could have sued and won. Lastly, Jimmy Kimmel could have(and still possibly might be able to) sue for tortious interference.
        abracadaniel 1y ago
        Nexstar and Sinclair are still blocking their stations from airing him which accounts for a quarter of the US.
zmgsabst 1y ago
[flagged]
- homeonthemtn 1y ago
  [flagged]
- z0r 1y ago
  There is no mass Marxist movement in the USA. There is a left wing crippled by worse than useless identity politics.
StanislavPetrov 1y ago
Policing speech for civility or spam is very different than policing speech for content that you disagree with. I was on the early internet, and on the vast majority of forums policing someone's speech for content rather than vulgarity or spam was almost universally opposed and frowned upon.
frollogaston 1y ago
Depends who is doing the policing. In this case, White House was telling Google who to ban.
- aeternum 1y ago
  I think it was even slightly worse. The White House was effectively delegating the decision of who to ban/police to the NIH/NIAID, an organization that was funding novel coronavirus research in Wuhan. It's easy to see how at minimum there could be a conflict of interest.
  - frollogaston 1y ago
    Did I miss somewhere in the article or Google's statement that the NIH was involved?
    - aeternum 1y ago
      Both administrations (Trump 2016 + Biden) adopted the guidance of Fauci and others at the NIH/NIAID more or less directly. So the guidance came through the administrations but originated with the NIH/NIAID. You had direct statements like this from scientific experts, those experts turned out to be the middleman group that was funding Wuhan via NIH grants. Peter Daszak, a zoologist and president of the EcoHealth Alliance, who has been among the most vocal critics of the idea of a lab leak, wrote, “I just wanted to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators, for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” Given an expert statement like that, youtube can and did take down lableak videos because they were misinformation (contrary to the information provided by the experts).
jader201 1y ago
> Police the damn speech. What happens when the “police” disagrees with and silences what you believe is true? Or when they allow the propagation of what you believe to be lies? Who gets to decide what’s the truth vs. lies? The “police”?
- palmfacehn 1y ago
  >Who gets to decide what’s the truth vs. lies? The “police”? This keeps coming up on this site. It seems like a basic premise for a nuanced and compassionate worldview. Humility is required. Even if we assume the best intentions, the fallible nature of man places limits on what we can do. Yet we keep seeing posters appealing to Scientism and "objective truth". I'm not sure it is possible to have a reasonable discussion where basic premises diverge. It is clear how these themes have been used in history to support some of the worst atrocities.

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!
    - aianus 1y ago
      God forbid someone hinder some retarded organized action before enough peoples’ lives are ruined that our majestic rulers notice and gracefully decide to stop.
    - SV_BubbleTime 1y ago
      > The problem with debate is that it hinders organized action. Ah… so… ”we must do something! Even if it’s the wrong thing” Hot take.
    - zmgsabst 1y ago
      That’s not at all how you’re taught to handle emergencies. From health emergencies to shootings to computer system crashes to pandemics — doing things without a reason to believe they’ll improve the situation is dangerous. You can and many have made things worse. And ignoring experts shouting “wait, no!” is a recipe for disaster. When we were responding to COVID, we had plenty of time to have that debate in a candid way. We just went down an authoritarian path instead.
    - Gud 1y ago
      No it doesn't. It allows for correct action to be taken.
- xboxnolifes 1y ago
  Letting fringe theories exist on YouTube does not stop you from accessing the WHO or CDC website.
  - fzeroracer 1y ago
    Those fringe theories have now embedded themselves into the government itself and directly have contributed to the rot of our public health institutions. So in many ways yes, they do.
    - xboxnolifes 1y ago
      That happened while Youtube was not allowing it as well.
  - jdiff 1y ago
    Fringe theories existing and being allowed to persist has led to wide takedowns of information from government sites including the CDC.
- themaninthedark 1y ago
  Luckily, it is possible for you to just listen to those you trust. No need for you go pick through other people's opinions. I don't see how that turns into you needing to mandate what I read and who's opinions I hear.
  - scuff3d 1y ago
    There has been a massive uptick in anti-vax rhetoric over the last decade. As a result some Americans have decided to not vaccinate, and we are seeing a resurgence in diseases that should be eradicated. I have a three month old son. At the time he was being born, in my city, there was an outbreak of one of those diseases that killed more then one kid. Don't tell me this stuff doesn't have a direct impact on people.
McGlockenshire 1y ago
The "debate" ended up doing nothing but spreading misinformation. Society as a whole has a responsibility to not do that kind of shit. We shouldn't be encouraging the spread of lies.
epistasis 1y ago
Really, discussion was limited? Or blatant lies were rightly excluded from discourse? There's a big difference, and in any healthy public discourse there are severe reputations penalties for lies. If school reopening couldn't be discussed, could you point to that? It's very odd how as time goes on my recollection differs so much from others, and I'm not sure if it's because of actual different experiences or because of the fog of memory.
- mixmastamyk 1y ago
  Blatant truths were excluded as well, and that's the main problem. See replies to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45353884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45353884
  - epistasis 1y ago
    That's a really long thread and I'm not sure where blatant truths were excluded.
    - mixmastamyk 1y ago
      Each top level reply responds with an example of a truth suppressed.
      - epistasis 1y ago
        The top comment is emphatically not that: >As super low hanging fruit: > June 8, 2020: WHO: Data suggests it's "very rare" for coronavirus to spread through asymptomatics [0] > June 9, 2020: WHO expert backtracks after saying asymptomatic transmission 'very rare' [1] > 0: https://www.axios.com/2020/06/08/who-coronavirus-asymptomati https://www.axios.com/2020/06/08/who-coronavirus-asymptomati... 1: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/09/who-expert-bac https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/09/who-expert-bac... > Of course, if we just take the most recent thing they said as "revised guidance", I guess it's impossible for them to contradict themselves. Just rapidly re-re-re-revised guidance. My hypotheses for our discrepant viewpoints were 1) my aging memory, or 2) different experiences, but it's actually 3) not using words to have the same meaning! Citing this as "blatant truth suppression" weakens my view of any other evidence or argument you put forward, because I no longer trust that we can use words in ways that are compatible with each other.
scuff3d 1y ago
Try to post a meme here, see how long it stays up. More seriously, it's just not this simple man. I know people really want it to be, but it's not. I watched my dad get sucked down a rabbit hole of qanon, Alex Jones, anti-vax nonsense and God knows what other conspiracy theories. I showed him point blank evidence that qanon was bullshit, and he just flat out refuses to believe it. He's representative of a not insignificant part of the population. And you can say it doesn't do any damage, but those people vote, and I think we can see clearly it's done serious damage. When bonkers ass fringe nonsense with no basis in reality gets platformed, and people end up in that echo chamber, it does significant damage to the public discourse. And a lot of it is geared specifically to funnel people in. In more mainstream media climate change is a perfect example. The overwhelming majority in the scientific community has known for a long time it's an issue. There were disagreement over cause or severity, but not that it was a problem. The media elevated dissenting opinions and gave the impression that it was somehow an even split. That the people who disagree with climate change were as numerous and as well informed, which they most certainly weren't, not by a long shot. And that's done irreparable damage to society. Obviously these are very fine lines to be walked, but even throughout US history, a country where free speech is probably more valued than anywhere else on the planet, we have accepted certain limitations for the public good.
fzeroracer 1y ago
> We needed those debates. Because the unchecked “trust the experts” makes the experts dumber. The experts need to respond to challenges. We've had these debates for decades. The end result is stuff like Florida removing all vaccine mandates. You can't debate a conspiracy or illogical thinking into to going away, you can only debate it into validity.

nostromo 1y ago

You've missed the point entirely. It’s not if Google can decide what content they want on YouTube. The issue here is that the Biden Whitehouse was pressuring private companies to remove speech that they otherwise would host. That's a clear violation of the first amendment. And we now know that the previous Whitehouse got people banned from all the major platforms: Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc.

homeonthemtn 1y ago
[flagged]
- nostromo 1y ago
  Thankfully the constitution explicitly forbids that in the US.
  - homeonthemtn 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - mensetmanusman 1y ago
      That was abc, and they just put him back.
    - themaninthedark 1y ago
      Huh, last I heard was that Jimmy Kimmel is back on air. If the Trump administration had decided to follow through with their threats, ABC could have sued and won. Lastly, Jimmy Kimmel could have(and still possibly might be able to) sue for tortious interference.
      - abracadaniel 1y ago
        Nexstar and Sinclair are still blocking their stations from airing him which accounts for a quarter of the US.

zmgsabst 1y ago

[flagged]

homeonthemtn 1y ago
[flagged]
z0r 1y ago
There is no mass Marxist movement in the USA. There is a left wing crippled by worse than useless identity politics.

StanislavPetrov 1y ago

Policing speech for civility or spam is very different than policing speech for content that you disagree with. I was on the early internet, and on the vast majority of forums policing someone's speech for content rather than vulgarity or spam was almost universally opposed and frowned upon.

frollogaston 1y ago

Depends who is doing the policing. In this case, White House was telling Google who to ban.

aeternum 1y ago
I think it was even slightly worse. The White House was effectively delegating the decision of who to ban/police to the NIH/NIAID, an organization that was funding novel coronavirus research in Wuhan. It's easy to see how at minimum there could be a conflict of interest.
- frollogaston 1y ago
  Did I miss somewhere in the article or Google's statement that the NIH was involved?
  - aeternum 1y ago
    Both administrations (Trump 2016 + Biden) adopted the guidance of Fauci and others at the NIH/NIAID more or less directly. So the guidance came through the administrations but originated with the NIH/NIAID. You had direct statements like this from scientific experts, those experts turned out to be the middleman group that was funding Wuhan via NIH grants. Peter Daszak, a zoologist and president of the EcoHealth Alliance, who has been among the most vocal critics of the idea of a lab leak, wrote, “I just wanted to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators, for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural origin for COVID-19 from a bat-to-human spillover, not a lab release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” Given an expert statement like that, youtube can and did take down lableak videos because they were misinformation (contrary to the information provided by the experts).

jader201 1y ago

> Police the damn speech. What happens when the “police” disagrees with and silences what you believe is true? Or when they allow the propagation of what you believe to be lies? Who gets to decide what’s the truth vs. lies? The “police”?

palmfacehn 1y ago
>Who gets to decide what’s the truth vs. lies? The “police”? This keeps coming up on this site. It seems like a basic premise for a nuanced and compassionate worldview. Humility is required. Even if we assume the best intentions, the fallible nature of man places limits on what we can do. Yet we keep seeing posters appealing to Scientism and "objective truth". I'm not sure it is possible to have a reasonable discussion where basic premises diverge. It is clear how these themes have been used in history to support some of the worst atrocities.