YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud(blog.youtube)
blog.youtube
YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud
https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/supporting-the-2020-us-election
3,173 comments
If there is to be toleration in the world, one of the things taught in schools must be the habit of weighing evidence, and the practice of not giving full assent to propositions which there is no reason to believe true. For example, the art of reading the newspapers should be taught. The schoolmaster should select some incident which happened a good many years ago, and roused political passions in its day. He should then read to the school-children what was said by the newspapers on one side, what was said by those on the other, and some impartial account of what really happened. He should show how, from the biased account of either side, a practised reader could infer what really happened, and he should make them understand that everything in newspapers is more or less untrue. The cynical scepticism which would result from this teaching would make the children in later life immune from those appeals to idealism by which decent people are induced to further the scheme of scoundrels.
--Bertrand Russell
--Bertrand Russell
"False balance, also bothsidesism, is a media bias in which journalists present an issue as being more balanced between opposing viewpoints than the evidence supports. Journalists may present evidence and arguments out of proportion to the actual evidence for each side, or may omit information that would establish one side's claims as baseless. False balance has been cited as a major cause of spreading misinformation.[1]"
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance
Censorship usually involves removing one side's articles and reasoning and not even attempting to dispute it. True balance by taking account of both sides will include rebuttals of the sides against the other side. Both sides should be free to make their case and also make their rebuttals to the other side. Censorship likes to eliminate one side, so that rebuttal and dissent doesn't take place and isn't known. To what degree a piece of information makes one side's claims baseless is often up to interpretation as well. Our claims are often stronger in our own minds than when spoken out loud to others in reasoned discourse. When we accept any one arbiter as the single source of truth for what is true or fake, we have given up reasoned discourse and dissent. We should think for ourselves, and trust others to think for themselves. No one is more totalitarian than the person who thinks only he and his friends are worthy of thinking for and choosing for themselves and that they must protect others from themselves at all costs.
This is truly the worst aspect of censorship - You don't know what you don't know. And this is being greatly amplified by social media. I am not afraid that I will be fed false information; if it appears too outlandish, I will do sufficient fact-checking before accepting it as truth. In most cases on open platforms someone would have already done fact-checking to debunk. I am afraid however that I become too enwrapped in my social bubble that relevant information never gets brought up in the first place.
This is nothing new and relates to "Lies, damned lies, and statistics". Most facts can be manipulated by omission, taking things out of context, and choosing favorable metrics, so that you can lie without saying anything falsifiable. Only way to correct this is to allow the other side to present their argument in an open discussion.
This is nothing new and relates to "Lies, damned lies, and statistics". Most facts can be manipulated by omission, taking things out of context, and choosing favorable metrics, so that you can lie without saying anything falsifiable. Only way to correct this is to allow the other side to present their argument in an open discussion.
What is too outlandish to you is not too outlandish to others. Some believe the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by the CIA. Some believe the earth is flat. Some believe a Nigerian prince got their email address from their dead friend’s cousin’s mother’s embassy and is about to send them a billion dollars.
How can you be so totally confident that your own bullshit meter is accurate? Why do you think your confidence in your own ability to decipher fact from fiction is any different than people who believe complete bullshit?
If your main objection to censorship is that it is used to hide the truth, why don’t you object equally to people with megaphones intentionally flooding the zone with shit and distributors that enable that behaviour?
Just as the left–right political spectrum is actually more of a circle than a straight line, it seems to me that the spectrum of censorship vs free speech is also a circle. A bad actor may obfuscate truth through censorship; a bad actor may also obfuscate truth through massive volumes of misinformation. The latter is what is happening here. It’s a denial of service attack on human brains, and like a DoS attack, the only way to weather it is to filter the malicious traffic—you can’t just add capacity in the form of “good counterpoints” since human brains can’t scale like that.
How can you be so totally confident that your own bullshit meter is accurate? Why do you think your confidence in your own ability to decipher fact from fiction is any different than people who believe complete bullshit?
If your main objection to censorship is that it is used to hide the truth, why don’t you object equally to people with megaphones intentionally flooding the zone with shit and distributors that enable that behaviour?
Just as the left–right political spectrum is actually more of a circle than a straight line, it seems to me that the spectrum of censorship vs free speech is also a circle. A bad actor may obfuscate truth through censorship; a bad actor may also obfuscate truth through massive volumes of misinformation. The latter is what is happening here. It’s a denial of service attack on human brains, and like a DoS attack, the only way to weather it is to filter the malicious traffic—you can’t just add capacity in the form of “good counterpoints” since human brains can’t scale like that.
" why don’t you object equally to people with megaphones intentionally flooding the zone with shit"
That analogy is simply incorrect. You can spend your life on YouTube watching cat videos, no conspiracy theory in sight. Nobody can force you to watch their video on YouTube. So nobody has a megaphone in YouTube. Only YouTube itself has the megaphone, they can choose what to push to people.
It is NOT TV where you have a single stream that everybody watched, and if you insert shit, everybody watches it.
That analogy is simply incorrect. You can spend your life on YouTube watching cat videos, no conspiracy theory in sight. Nobody can force you to watch their video on YouTube. So nobody has a megaphone in YouTube. Only YouTube itself has the megaphone, they can choose what to push to people.
It is NOT TV where you have a single stream that everybody watched, and if you insert shit, everybody watches it.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8360073/More-60-peo... (caution Daily Mail; mildly NSFW sidebar)
"internal @Facebook research that found over 60% of people who joined groups sharing extremist content did so at Facebook’s recommendation."
So you're right: youtube has the megaphone. I wonder what the proportion of people watching extremist/disinformation content on youtube because of suggestions is? In some ways it's worse than TV, because if you publish shit on TV you get people writing to the regulator to complain (qv Janet Jackson superbowl nipple ridiculousness). On youtube you may never know what your fellow citizens are watching until they say "of course the world is ruled by lizards, here's the video that proves it".
I wonder if people would accept the compromise that youtube would host this content but force it to "unlisted". After all, the recommendations are their speech, not yours.
"internal @Facebook research that found over 60% of people who joined groups sharing extremist content did so at Facebook’s recommendation."
So you're right: youtube has the megaphone. I wonder what the proportion of people watching extremist/disinformation content on youtube because of suggestions is? In some ways it's worse than TV, because if you publish shit on TV you get people writing to the regulator to complain (qv Janet Jackson superbowl nipple ridiculousness). On youtube you may never know what your fellow citizens are watching until they say "of course the world is ruled by lizards, here's the video that proves it".
I wonder if people would accept the compromise that youtube would host this content but force it to "unlisted". After all, the recommendations are their speech, not yours.
... and Facebook's recommendation would be based on their prior activity. If their interests on Facebook (what they like, follow, etc) were mostly cat videos, Facebook wouldn't be recommending extremist groups.
In the meantime, there's a heck of a gulf between whether or not Facebook lets a group be recommended, and actively censoring content dissenting to the chosen narrative.
In the meantime, there's a heck of a gulf between whether or not Facebook lets a group be recommended, and actively censoring content dissenting to the chosen narrative.
> If their interests on Facebook (what they like, follow, etc) were mostly cat videos, Facebook wouldn't be recommending extremist groups.
The whole point of recommendation algorithms is to find missing edges in the graph, so it can easily lead you to misinformation in 1 or 2 hops.
Think of it this way: the misinformation content is highly valuable - it generates a lot of engagement. There is always a “potential energy” (people like you also liked...) between low-value content and high-value content that the platforms are attempting to convert to “kinetic energy” (engagement - views, clicks, comments) in order to monetize it. The goal is to find the shortest path to the high value content.
The whole point of recommendation algorithms is to find missing edges in the graph, so it can easily lead you to misinformation in 1 or 2 hops.
Think of it this way: the misinformation content is highly valuable - it generates a lot of engagement. There is always a “potential energy” (people like you also liked...) between low-value content and high-value content that the platforms are attempting to convert to “kinetic energy” (engagement - views, clicks, comments) in order to monetize it. The goal is to find the shortest path to the high value content.
Proof required, from my personal experience moderating a political forum, and from that of other mods, the issue is the flooding of our information networks with Information prions and virii targeting our limbic systems. Social media is currently heavily polluted.
> If their interests on Facebook (what they like, follow, etc) were mostly cat videos, Facebook wouldn't be recommending extremist groups.
You're right, it's not that obvious, it's far more sinister. Cat videos are unlikely to end with you being recommended extremist groups, because there likely isn't much engagement from cat video viewers and extremist groups.
People who are deeply unsatisfied with life, however, might engage if they see it as a way out of their dissatisfaction, inadvertently training the recommendation algorithm to promote extremist content to dissatisfied people. That strikes me as at least plausible, though I don't know if the data is out there to find out what people are recommended what content under what criteria.
> In the meantime, there's a heck of a gulf between whether or not Facebook lets a group be recommended, and actively censoring content dissenting to the chosen narrative.
I disagree with this part. I don't have numbers handy for Facebook, but YouTube gets 500 hours of video uploaded every minute. It is physically impossible for you to see everything that gets uploaded to YouTube. Even if they stopped accepting uploads right now, you'd probably still die before you saw a significant portion of the content available.
Removing something from recommendations is, in most cases, tantamount to censoring it. If there are 500 hours uploaded per minute, and we assume that each video is 15 minutes long (which is likely longer than the reality), that's 2000 videos uploaded per minute. Assuming random distribution of views (which it's not, because of the recommendations), your video has a 0.05% chance of being viewed out of the videos uploaded in the same minute as yours. If you widen that to videos uploaded in the same hour, it goes down to a 0.00083% chance. Widen it to a day and you're down to a 0.0000347% chance. You would get 1 view per 2.8M views if YouTube deleted everything before that day, and killed recommendations entirely. I don't know how typical my usage patterns are, but I only search for probably 1 out of every 25 or 50 YouTube videos I watch. If that's a typical usage pattern, then you would actually get 1 view per 75M - 150M views. If everyone in the US logged on and watched a random video, you would get ~2-4 views.
It's all theoretical napkin math, but there is a staggering amount of data in the hands of Facebook, Google, et al. I do agree that actually removing the content is more significant, but the difference between removing the content and just making it so obscure that it's hard to see unless you're looking for it is basically the same. It's like if newspapers would agree to publish your stuff, but only if you encoded it as the first letter of each line of text. They have technically published your views, they've just made it hard enough to find that the only people who see it is people who already knew it was there.
I don't know what to suggest though. This is almost an inevitable outcome of collecting this amount of content; a lot of it is going to be relegated to some esoteric corner where no one ever sees it.
You're right, it's not that obvious, it's far more sinister. Cat videos are unlikely to end with you being recommended extremist groups, because there likely isn't much engagement from cat video viewers and extremist groups.
People who are deeply unsatisfied with life, however, might engage if they see it as a way out of their dissatisfaction, inadvertently training the recommendation algorithm to promote extremist content to dissatisfied people. That strikes me as at least plausible, though I don't know if the data is out there to find out what people are recommended what content under what criteria.
> In the meantime, there's a heck of a gulf between whether or not Facebook lets a group be recommended, and actively censoring content dissenting to the chosen narrative.
I disagree with this part. I don't have numbers handy for Facebook, but YouTube gets 500 hours of video uploaded every minute. It is physically impossible for you to see everything that gets uploaded to YouTube. Even if they stopped accepting uploads right now, you'd probably still die before you saw a significant portion of the content available.
Removing something from recommendations is, in most cases, tantamount to censoring it. If there are 500 hours uploaded per minute, and we assume that each video is 15 minutes long (which is likely longer than the reality), that's 2000 videos uploaded per minute. Assuming random distribution of views (which it's not, because of the recommendations), your video has a 0.05% chance of being viewed out of the videos uploaded in the same minute as yours. If you widen that to videos uploaded in the same hour, it goes down to a 0.00083% chance. Widen it to a day and you're down to a 0.0000347% chance. You would get 1 view per 2.8M views if YouTube deleted everything before that day, and killed recommendations entirely. I don't know how typical my usage patterns are, but I only search for probably 1 out of every 25 or 50 YouTube videos I watch. If that's a typical usage pattern, then you would actually get 1 view per 75M - 150M views. If everyone in the US logged on and watched a random video, you would get ~2-4 views.
It's all theoretical napkin math, but there is a staggering amount of data in the hands of Facebook, Google, et al. I do agree that actually removing the content is more significant, but the difference between removing the content and just making it so obscure that it's hard to see unless you're looking for it is basically the same. It's like if newspapers would agree to publish your stuff, but only if you encoded it as the first letter of each line of text. They have technically published your views, they've just made it hard enough to find that the only people who see it is people who already knew it was there.
I don't know what to suggest though. This is almost an inevitable outcome of collecting this amount of content; a lot of it is going to be relegated to some esoteric corner where no one ever sees it.
The 60% number sounds big, but how many people actually joined groups with extremist content? Without that context, the 60% doesn't say much.
It also doesn't say why people joined those groups. Maybe they are just curious to see what the crazy people are up to.
It also doesn't say why people joined those groups. Maybe they are just curious to see what the crazy people are up to.
It's crazy. I started writing why I disagreed based on my visceral reaction to the topic. But as I constructed my arguments, they were not sound. So I suppose I agree? Hm.
The above paragraph is sincere--that did happen. And interestingly, it shows the power of consuming the opposing view point. We all know that the government is currently spewing lies, and it is indeed a disgusting and corrosive thing. I want to silence it, but it's easy enough to contempt it from a distance. Let the truth and the lies be heard so that we as a people will grow wise to it all.
The above paragraph is sincere--that did happen. And interestingly, it shows the power of consuming the opposing view point. We all know that the government is currently spewing lies, and it is indeed a disgusting and corrosive thing. I want to silence it, but it's easy enough to contempt it from a distance. Let the truth and the lies be heard so that we as a people will grow wise to it all.
Personally I am not from the US, and I don't know that the government is spewing lies. What makes you so sure? And if you are so sure, why are you worried people could be swayed by the lies - why not make them equally sure with the information you have?
However, I am happy with letting the courts decide. Where is the problem?
I have seen lies from all big political parties in the US.
However, I am happy with letting the courts decide. Where is the problem?
I have seen lies from all big political parties in the US.
More broadly, I think the trouble is that "lies" are often more appealing than truths by design, while truth is what it is. For example, some Americans may have been swayed to support the Gulf War by the Nayirah testimony, or in 2003 by Saddam Hussein's alleged people shredder. I don't think this justifies censorship, but the ability to sharpen people's BS filter and the amount of bunk they may receive is somewhat asymmetrical, echoing Goering's quote from the Nuremburg trials.
[1] http://www.mit.edu/people/fuller/peace/war_goering.html
[1] http://www.mit.edu/people/fuller/peace/war_goering.html
But weren't those lies perpetuated by mainstream media? Where, if not YouTube, would you find the counter narratives? And wouldn't people who believe the MSM not then considered the YouTube debunking to be "lies" and called for censorship?
Unfortunately as YouTube and the rest of the internet has grown larger, and more consolidated, [1] the positions allowed have narrowed in scope and counter narratives have become less acceptable. While websites with counter narratives (WikiSpooks for example) do exist, they're generally not very visible anymore. I think what you're describing is largely what is happening will happen, and those who present counter narratives will be de-legitimized, including and conflating both those who are genuinely illegitimate (Dr. Gene Ray/time cube) and those who aren't.
The closest alternative I can see is reading media with opposing spin (People's Daily, RT) and yours and hoping together they composite a clearer picture. For example I would not expect to see this [2] headline in a US paper.
[1]https://www.ncta.com/sites/default/files/platform-images/wp-...
[2]https://canada.constructconnect.com/dcn/news/others/2020/05/...
The closest alternative I can see is reading media with opposing spin (People's Daily, RT) and yours and hoping together they composite a clearer picture. For example I would not expect to see this [2] headline in a US paper.
[1]https://www.ncta.com/sites/default/files/platform-images/wp-...
[2]https://canada.constructconnect.com/dcn/news/others/2020/05/...
it's funny the lies this time are coming not from the government but from the opposition and their propaganda machinery.
I'd never consider myself government supporter, but with Trump it's like the last bastion before the country is overrun with far-left SJW hordes swayed by misinformation.
It's ironic the ultimate win for democracy manifests itself in stolen elections.
I'd never consider myself government supporter, but with Trump it's like the last bastion before the country is overrun with far-left SJW hordes swayed by misinformation.
It's ironic the ultimate win for democracy manifests itself in stolen elections.
It's funny how from my perspective the reality is quite nearly the exact opposite of what you puport
yeah, there are 80M people like you and just 74M like me, congratulations.
Both groups are influenced by media and social circles but the first group tends to trust others opinions more, methinks.
The fact mainstream media was pretty much unified in anti-Trump stance strengthen that theory.
If every day for 4 years you hear just how bad is the orange man (from someone you trust) it would definitely shape a certain reality in ones mind.
Both groups are influenced by media and social circles but the first group tends to trust others opinions more, methinks.
The fact mainstream media was pretty much unified in anti-Trump stance strengthen that theory.
If every day for 4 years you hear just how bad is the orange man (from someone you trust) it would definitely shape a certain reality in ones mind.
Well, I have a belief system that's coherent and arrived at through my personal experience, which had me thinking very poorly of the 'orange man' LONG before it became a political thing. In fact, I'm damn horrified at how far the guy got, and I think I understand quite well how it was done.
It's not just some abstract 'otherwise neutral orange man' whose identity is entirely constructed by news media, and that's a strange argument to make. I think many people thought 'Al Capone bad' too, particularly if he'd robbed them or shot somebody they liked. I'm sure the greedy news media HELPED people get mad at Al Capone, and that there were redeeming factors in the guy, but the notion that there were automatically as many redeeming factors in Capone as in everybody else is NOT sensible. Maybe he just was mean, and sucked.
Likewise with 'orange man'. Way before he was a political figure, he was mean and sucked REALLY bad relative to my sense of how things work in the world. Some people just suck very, very much.
If you assume anyone who has success automatically does not suck, I admire your optimism but I sure don't share it. Seems to me that without considerable oversight, the opposite is usually true, and that the worst people, entities, companies etc. win. Hence, the invention of means of oversight, and the attempt to codify what's good and bad.
It's not just some abstract 'otherwise neutral orange man' whose identity is entirely constructed by news media, and that's a strange argument to make. I think many people thought 'Al Capone bad' too, particularly if he'd robbed them or shot somebody they liked. I'm sure the greedy news media HELPED people get mad at Al Capone, and that there were redeeming factors in the guy, but the notion that there were automatically as many redeeming factors in Capone as in everybody else is NOT sensible. Maybe he just was mean, and sucked.
Likewise with 'orange man'. Way before he was a political figure, he was mean and sucked REALLY bad relative to my sense of how things work in the world. Some people just suck very, very much.
If you assume anyone who has success automatically does not suck, I admire your optimism but I sure don't share it. Seems to me that without considerable oversight, the opposite is usually true, and that the worst people, entities, companies etc. win. Hence, the invention of means of oversight, and the attempt to codify what's good and bad.
You are trying to ignore facts.
Fact:
- He never shared his tax returns - He is a sexual predator - He supports white supremacy - He’s incredibly corrupt
Let’s talk about facts.
Fact:
- He never shared his tax returns - He is a sexual predator - He supports white supremacy - He’s incredibly corrupt
Let’s talk about facts.
I think that anyone who doesn't believe that the election was legitimate - i.e. that no meaningful fraud occurred - should be banned from the HN community.
Their "arguments" are full of shit and are a bunch of pseudo-philosophical, pseudo-analytical, pseudo-objective cant.
Their "evidence" is literally disinformation / propaganda.
They act exactly like those crypto-racists who know that their true belief would be deemed unpalatable or unacceptable by the community so they'll blow as much smoke around as possible without ever stepping out to say what they're actually driving towards.
Enough is enough. It's clearly dangerous to allow these views the shroud of legitimacy by giving them space in the public square. It's gone so far that anything other than a rejection functions as a legitimization.
By allowing the lie of election fraud to be presented as just another thing to be discussed on HN, HN is enabling those people and their cause, which is to overturn the results of a legitimate election.
The irony is anyone was to be banned it would probably be me for making this comment. Think on that! ; )
Their "arguments" are full of shit and are a bunch of pseudo-philosophical, pseudo-analytical, pseudo-objective cant.
Their "evidence" is literally disinformation / propaganda.
They act exactly like those crypto-racists who know that their true belief would be deemed unpalatable or unacceptable by the community so they'll blow as much smoke around as possible without ever stepping out to say what they're actually driving towards.
Enough is enough. It's clearly dangerous to allow these views the shroud of legitimacy by giving them space in the public square. It's gone so far that anything other than a rejection functions as a legitimization.
By allowing the lie of election fraud to be presented as just another thing to be discussed on HN, HN is enabling those people and their cause, which is to overturn the results of a legitimate election.
The irony is anyone was to be banned it would probably be me for making this comment. Think on that! ; )
You have a good point, but I think you're downplaying the power of clickbait. I consider myself a relatively smart, educated, and rational person, and I can't tell you the number of outlandish headlines I've clicked on just to see what they say.
The thing with censorship is they aren't going to censor the clickbait. Google knows exactly what clickbait looks like and they could have purged it years ago with a few algorithm tweaks that nobody would have minded. They're going to censor stuff that makes people ask hard-to-answer questions and/or challenge consensus positions.
That sounds like a good idea until it clicks that good scientists ask hard to answer questions and challenge consensus positions. Censorship is fundamentally anti-evidence. People can't present evidence that the channel owners don't like, and people can't model how to handle untrue opinions in conversation because they never come up.
That sounds like a good idea until it clicks that good scientists ask hard to answer questions and challenge consensus positions. Censorship is fundamentally anti-evidence. People can't present evidence that the channel owners don't like, and people can't model how to handle untrue opinions in conversation because they never come up.
We are talking about an adult audience, right? They are allowed to vote. So you have to assume they are independent enough to make their own decisions. Period. Your argument for censorship sounds a lot like patronisation.
Black-or-white thinking like this is false and damaging. The world has nuance, and the idea that “[people are] independent enough to make their own decisions. Period” rejects that nuance and substitutes a simplified and idealistic model of human behaviour which is alluring but does not reflect how human brains actually work.
It is not patronising to say that people are not all created with the same set of skills, beliefs, and values, and that some will engage with obvious bullshit. Many are not capable or interested in engaging with complex topics in a way that does not self-reinforce their pre-existing opinions. I have discussed this elsewhere[0].
When a group of people are motivated to exploit the weaknesses of others in order to get them to do things that are damaging to our democratic institutions, and they use misinformation to do it, it is unpleasant but not unreasonable to me to suggest that spreading lies through misinformation is as serious as suppressing truth through censorship and that they should both be treated equally seriously.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25359003
It is not patronising to say that people are not all created with the same set of skills, beliefs, and values, and that some will engage with obvious bullshit. Many are not capable or interested in engaging with complex topics in a way that does not self-reinforce their pre-existing opinions. I have discussed this elsewhere[0].
When a group of people are motivated to exploit the weaknesses of others in order to get them to do things that are damaging to our democratic institutions, and they use misinformation to do it, it is unpleasant but not unreasonable to me to suggest that spreading lies through misinformation is as serious as suppressing truth through censorship and that they should both be treated equally seriously.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25359003
I think you can argue that that assumption is wrong, and that that is also the biggest problem with democracy and voting. You are asking people to vote on a topic they are often not well informed on, or are unwilling/unable to spend time to educate themselves thoroughly. Also anybody of a certain age is allowed to vote, regardless their level of education, and their ability to make sound decisions.
If you want to drive a car, you have to proof you are able to do so. Why not demand the same if you want to vote?
If you want to drive a car, you have to proof you are able to do so. Why not demand the same if you want to vote?
In the US you vote on people, not policy. Most people can't understand all the ramifications of a policy, but a lot of people can spot a crooked liar if the know them a little, we do it every day. That is why I like the older idea of picking state legislators and letting them pick the president and maybe the senators. And up the number of people in the house. The idea is that you should know or know a lot of people who know the person you are voting for. Media won't come into it, civics education won't come into it. It will be like picking a plumber in your neighborhood.
If both of the candidates are crooked liars, how do you choose? I picked the party that I think is closer to being right.
Again, this is patronising. Apparently, you believe your opinion is more worthy then the opinion of others because you assume you are more intelligent and more informed then they are. So in essence you are saying you are the better human. This is a very slippery slope. In fact, I would consider this borderline fascism. But hey, if a lefty utters ssuch nonsense, nobody seems to notice.
Another wrong assumption. On many occasions i haven't voted because i felt i didn't know enough of the topic to make the right vote.
Good question and the answer is no one knows how to create rules about who is or isn’t fit to vote (beyond the most basic things like age, and even with that there’s an interesting history) without also giving so much power to whomever is able to set those rules that the result isn’t a democracy at all.
Exactly my point, and the same applies to corporate censorship. Since we have allowed corporations to perform censorship completely independent and on their own, free speech is a thing of the past.
Another way to see this is that those with less education or influence are basically the new women. The argument against giving women the right to vote was basically based on the same viewpoint. They dont know about the world, so all they can do is harm if allowed to vote.
Another way to see this is that those with less education or influence are basically the new women. The argument against giving women the right to vote was basically based on the same viewpoint. They dont know about the world, so all they can do is harm if allowed to vote.
I think I'm confused, then.
> If you want to drive a car, you have to proof you are able to do so. Why not demand the same if you want to vote?
Not sure if you meant this as a rhetorical question, an ironic one, or a real suggestion about creating restrictions around who can vote.
Either way, "free speech is a thing of the past" is a bit all-or-nothing. It's always been a battle, never as good as we thought it was (such as the argument Noam Chomsky makes in 'Manufacturing Consent'), and always been tricky to figure out what to do when, and where.
But it's not a thing of the past.
> If you want to drive a car, you have to proof you are able to do so. Why not demand the same if you want to vote?
Not sure if you meant this as a rhetorical question, an ironic one, or a real suggestion about creating restrictions around who can vote.
Either way, "free speech is a thing of the past" is a bit all-or-nothing. It's always been a battle, never as good as we thought it was (such as the argument Noam Chomsky makes in 'Manufacturing Consent'), and always been tricky to figure out what to do when, and where.
But it's not a thing of the past.
Indeed, you must be confused, since I never wrote anything about cars.
Driving on public roads is a privilege. Voting is a right.
Consider an opposite suggestion- if we need an educated voting group for educated decisions, we should move to educate the entire voting bloc.
Agreed, and that's one thing i do vote for: free/cheap education for everyone. I benefit from other people getting educated, so it's a no brainer that government should invest in this.
To be fair while its very distasteful to our current sensibilities, this was not always the assumption in the US, at least among some of the Founders. My understanding of the rationale for the support for the requirement of land ownership was that those who were not finically independent or secure would instead vote for those who issued wild campaign promises (giant walls, closing Guantanmo Bay or withdrawing troops for example) in order to get themselves elected.
> How can you be so totally confident that your own bullshit meter is accurate? Why do you think your confidence in your own ability to decipher fact from fiction is any different than people who believe complete bullshit?
I don't. I also don't believe the people at companies like YouTube are any likely to be better than myself or the average person.
I don't. I also don't believe the people at companies like YouTube are any likely to be better than myself or the average person.
It’s nice to think that everyone is on equal footing, but even ignoring differences in education and genetics, the universal existence of motivated reasoning, emotional reasoning, confirmation bias, and other cognitive distortions tends to refute your assertion that everyone is equally good at determining whether or not any given idea is bullshit.
All humans—myself included—will go to great lengths to reject reality when it feels like it is a threat to a core value. This is especially the case when people have tied their identity too tightly to a given subject (i.e. hyper-partisans.) The average person, sufficiently prejudiced toward believing a given falsehood, is not going to be able to determine that it is false because their brain will start to play tricks on them. I have written about this elsewhere[0], and The Story of Us[1][2] goes into this process in much more detail.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25359003
[1] https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/12/political-disney-world.html
[2] https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/story-of-us.html (table of contents)
All humans—myself included—will go to great lengths to reject reality when it feels like it is a threat to a core value. This is especially the case when people have tied their identity too tightly to a given subject (i.e. hyper-partisans.) The average person, sufficiently prejudiced toward believing a given falsehood, is not going to be able to determine that it is false because their brain will start to play tricks on them. I have written about this elsewhere[0], and The Story of Us[1][2] goes into this process in much more detail.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25359003
[1] https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/12/political-disney-world.html
[2] https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/story-of-us.html (table of contents)
> It’s nice to think that everyone is on equal footing, but even ignoring differences in education and genetics, the universal existence of motivated reasoning, emotional reasoning, confirmation bias, and other cognitive distortions tends to refute your assertion that everyone is equally good at determining whether or not any given idea is bullshit.
The universal existence of motivated reasoning, emotional reasoning, confirmation bias, and other cognitive distortions is precisely why no person or group can be expected to perform better at evaluating evidence and determining which ideas are too dangerous to allow other people to be exposed to.
> All humans—myself included—will go to great lengths to reject reality when it feels like it is a threat to a core value. This is especially the case when people have tied their identity too tightly to a given subject (i.e. hyper-partisans.) The average person, sufficiently prejudiced toward believing a given falsehood, is not going to be able to determine that it is false because their brain will start to play tricks on them.
This is precisely why no person can be expected to perform this role as a gatekeeper of truth.
Thanks for your links, I'm a big fan of waitbutwhy.com. With regard to [1], there's no reliable test to see where a person is on the psych spectrum, even heavy doses of introspection can lead to limited and imperfect insight, and its likely the case that the same person will move up and down on the psych spectrum depending on a variety of factors. Because cognition is costly, if someone reaches a conclusion while they are in tribal mode, its going to be difficult to reevaluate their position later when they are in scientist mode. This is why its so important to have access to a variety of opinions, thinkers, and perspectives. Even the best of us are vulnerable to motivated reasoning and other cognitive biases.
The universal existence of motivated reasoning, emotional reasoning, confirmation bias, and other cognitive distortions is precisely why no person or group can be expected to perform better at evaluating evidence and determining which ideas are too dangerous to allow other people to be exposed to.
> All humans—myself included—will go to great lengths to reject reality when it feels like it is a threat to a core value. This is especially the case when people have tied their identity too tightly to a given subject (i.e. hyper-partisans.) The average person, sufficiently prejudiced toward believing a given falsehood, is not going to be able to determine that it is false because their brain will start to play tricks on them.
This is precisely why no person can be expected to perform this role as a gatekeeper of truth.
Thanks for your links, I'm a big fan of waitbutwhy.com. With regard to [1], there's no reliable test to see where a person is on the psych spectrum, even heavy doses of introspection can lead to limited and imperfect insight, and its likely the case that the same person will move up and down on the psych spectrum depending on a variety of factors. Because cognition is costly, if someone reaches a conclusion while they are in tribal mode, its going to be difficult to reevaluate their position later when they are in scientist mode. This is why its so important to have access to a variety of opinions, thinkers, and perspectives. Even the best of us are vulnerable to motivated reasoning and other cognitive biases.
> The universal existence of motivated reasoning, emotional reasoning, confirmation bias, and other cognitive distortions is precisely why no person or group can be expected to perform better at evaluating evidence and determining which ideas are too dangerous to allow other people to be exposed to.
This isn’t what I was hoping folks would take away from my comment.
Have you ever been too invested in some problem, or too upset by something, to see the truth of the situation? And when you ask someone else, who is not emotionally invested, they easily point out the way forward? That is the kind of phenomenon I am talking about.
Most humans have the capability to objectively assess ideas in general, but when someone has a strong emotional attachment to a specific idea—such as partisans who are predisposed to believe voter fraud misinformation—they are not going to be capable of evaluating that specific idea as well as someone who isn’t predisposed to believe it.
I am not claiming that there is any single entity that is capable of being a gatekeeper of all truths. I am saying that there are people who are going to be less capable than others to evaluate the truthfulness of a specific idea. In this case, YouTube moderators are almost certainly going to be more capable of objectively evaluating whether or not a video is proof of widescale voter fraud than a poster who is strongly motivated to lie (intentionally or not), or an audience member who is strongly motivated to agree with that lie. And in that way, there are some people who are more capable of evaluating the objective truth than others.
> Because cognition is costly, if someone reaches a conclusion while they are in tribal mode, its going to be difficult to reevaluate their position later when they are in scientist mode. This is why its so important to have access to a variety of opinions, thinkers, and perspectives. Even the best of us are vulnerable to motivated reasoning and other cognitive biases.
Yes. Exactly. I’m confused how we are arriving at such different conclusions from the same basic understanding. I hope that this added explanation helps.
This isn’t what I was hoping folks would take away from my comment.
Have you ever been too invested in some problem, or too upset by something, to see the truth of the situation? And when you ask someone else, who is not emotionally invested, they easily point out the way forward? That is the kind of phenomenon I am talking about.
Most humans have the capability to objectively assess ideas in general, but when someone has a strong emotional attachment to a specific idea—such as partisans who are predisposed to believe voter fraud misinformation—they are not going to be capable of evaluating that specific idea as well as someone who isn’t predisposed to believe it.
I am not claiming that there is any single entity that is capable of being a gatekeeper of all truths. I am saying that there are people who are going to be less capable than others to evaluate the truthfulness of a specific idea. In this case, YouTube moderators are almost certainly going to be more capable of objectively evaluating whether or not a video is proof of widescale voter fraud than a poster who is strongly motivated to lie (intentionally or not), or an audience member who is strongly motivated to agree with that lie. And in that way, there are some people who are more capable of evaluating the objective truth than others.
> Because cognition is costly, if someone reaches a conclusion while they are in tribal mode, its going to be difficult to reevaluate their position later when they are in scientist mode. This is why its so important to have access to a variety of opinions, thinkers, and perspectives. Even the best of us are vulnerable to motivated reasoning and other cognitive biases.
Yes. Exactly. I’m confused how we are arriving at such different conclusions from the same basic understanding. I hope that this added explanation helps.
> Have you ever been too invested in some problem, or too upset by something, to see the truth of the situation? And when you ask someone else, who is not emotionally invested, they easily point out the way forward? That is the kind of phenomenon I am talking about.
Yes I have. Unfortunately, I am not aware of a reliable test to identify whether a person is capable of rational thought on a given subject. This means that when we witness a dispute between people about an issue, we are unable to reliably and provably evaluate the disputants meta-level reasoning. This is complicated by the fact that evaluating someone's reasoning on the meta level is nearly always complicated by object-level concerns, including our own cognitive biases.
> Most humans have the capability to objectively assess ideas in general, but when someone has a strong emotional attachment to a specific idea—such as partisans who are predisposed to believe voter fraud misinformation—they are not going to be capable of evaluating that specific idea as well as someone who isn’t predisposed to believe it.
Thats why its so harmful to put people in a position of being an information gatekeeper. You have no way of ensuring that your information is being filtered by a person who is emotionally detached. In fact, due to the potential for influencing other people, those positions are much more likely to be occupied by partisans who will then use it to advance their own perspective, often without even realizing it.
> In this case, YouTube moderators are almost certainly going to be more capable of objectively evaluating whether or not a video is proof of widescale voter fraud than a poster who is strongly motivated to lie (intentionally or not)
This is exactly the problem. There is no reason to suppose that a youtube moderator is non-partisan, a high rung thinker, or emotionally detached from the subject they are evaluating.
> And in that way, there are some people who are more capable of evaluating the objective truth than others.
Yes but there is not a reliable, objective way to identify them or to check their reasoning process for errors.
> Yes. Exactly. I’m confused how we are arriving at such different conclusions from the same basic understanding. I hope that this added explanation helps.
I feel exactly the same way. I'm at a loss to explain this except that either we have some different premises that have not been revealed in this discussion so far, or perhaps Aumann's agreement theorem [0] is not applicable to this issue for some reason.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann%27s_agreement_theorem
Yes I have. Unfortunately, I am not aware of a reliable test to identify whether a person is capable of rational thought on a given subject. This means that when we witness a dispute between people about an issue, we are unable to reliably and provably evaluate the disputants meta-level reasoning. This is complicated by the fact that evaluating someone's reasoning on the meta level is nearly always complicated by object-level concerns, including our own cognitive biases.
> Most humans have the capability to objectively assess ideas in general, but when someone has a strong emotional attachment to a specific idea—such as partisans who are predisposed to believe voter fraud misinformation—they are not going to be capable of evaluating that specific idea as well as someone who isn’t predisposed to believe it.
Thats why its so harmful to put people in a position of being an information gatekeeper. You have no way of ensuring that your information is being filtered by a person who is emotionally detached. In fact, due to the potential for influencing other people, those positions are much more likely to be occupied by partisans who will then use it to advance their own perspective, often without even realizing it.
> In this case, YouTube moderators are almost certainly going to be more capable of objectively evaluating whether or not a video is proof of widescale voter fraud than a poster who is strongly motivated to lie (intentionally or not)
This is exactly the problem. There is no reason to suppose that a youtube moderator is non-partisan, a high rung thinker, or emotionally detached from the subject they are evaluating.
> And in that way, there are some people who are more capable of evaluating the objective truth than others.
Yes but there is not a reliable, objective way to identify them or to check their reasoning process for errors.
> Yes. Exactly. I’m confused how we are arriving at such different conclusions from the same basic understanding. I hope that this added explanation helps.
I feel exactly the same way. I'm at a loss to explain this except that either we have some different premises that have not been revealed in this discussion so far, or perhaps Aumann's agreement theorem [0] is not applicable to this issue for some reason.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann%27s_agreement_theorem
> There is no reason to suppose that a youtube moderator is non-partisan, a high rung thinker, or emotionally detached from the subject they are evaluating.
The other way to frame this is that there is a reason to suppose that, at this point, someone uploading videos to YouTube claiming evidence of widespread voter fraud—which is all that YouTube are prohibiting here—is almost certainly not a high rung, emotionally detached thinker.
> Yes but there is not a reliable, objective way to identify them or to check their reasoning process for errors.
No, but you can make a reasonable deduction on which of these two groups of people—YouTube moderators or mass voter fraud video uploaders—is more likely to succeed at being objective. There are no certainties when dealing with humans and we just have to roll with it using the best heuristics we can.
> I'm at a loss to explain this except that either we have some different premises that have not been revealed in this discussion so far,
I don’t know. This may be a wrong assessment on my part, but it feels to me like you are extrapolating negatively into the future far more than I am in terms of the potential harm this one change to YouTube’s terms could cause.
Believe me, I totally understand the potential for harm caused by powerful interests controlling a narrative—there’s a limitless number of examples to choose from, many of which have been targeted directly at people like me—but the harm that is happening right now is that other powerful interests (the President of the United States & his political party) have made up a story about voter fraud and are encouraging a bunch of their partisans to flood the zone with shit, and they are doing that on YouTube.
In my eyes, this ban might help to disrupt the ongoing voter fraud misinformation campaign enough that it ends up collapsing before permanent damage is done to our democracy. It seems vanishingly unlikely that it is the start down some path that ends with people being brainwashed by YouTube into believing a bunch of falsehoods, especially compared to the alternative of letting people continue to upload this garbage to their site.
I’m far more concerned about YouTube’s recommendations algorithm and the way it is deliberately designed to funnel people toward more and more extreme content. I suspect YouTube would not need to ban this content at all if their algorithm hadn’t spent the last decade optimising for engagement over all else.
The other way to frame this is that there is a reason to suppose that, at this point, someone uploading videos to YouTube claiming evidence of widespread voter fraud—which is all that YouTube are prohibiting here—is almost certainly not a high rung, emotionally detached thinker.
> Yes but there is not a reliable, objective way to identify them or to check their reasoning process for errors.
No, but you can make a reasonable deduction on which of these two groups of people—YouTube moderators or mass voter fraud video uploaders—is more likely to succeed at being objective. There are no certainties when dealing with humans and we just have to roll with it using the best heuristics we can.
> I'm at a loss to explain this except that either we have some different premises that have not been revealed in this discussion so far,
I don’t know. This may be a wrong assessment on my part, but it feels to me like you are extrapolating negatively into the future far more than I am in terms of the potential harm this one change to YouTube’s terms could cause.
Believe me, I totally understand the potential for harm caused by powerful interests controlling a narrative—there’s a limitless number of examples to choose from, many of which have been targeted directly at people like me—but the harm that is happening right now is that other powerful interests (the President of the United States & his political party) have made up a story about voter fraud and are encouraging a bunch of their partisans to flood the zone with shit, and they are doing that on YouTube.
In my eyes, this ban might help to disrupt the ongoing voter fraud misinformation campaign enough that it ends up collapsing before permanent damage is done to our democracy. It seems vanishingly unlikely that it is the start down some path that ends with people being brainwashed by YouTube into believing a bunch of falsehoods, especially compared to the alternative of letting people continue to upload this garbage to their site.
I’m far more concerned about YouTube’s recommendations algorithm and the way it is deliberately designed to funnel people toward more and more extreme content. I suspect YouTube would not need to ban this content at all if their algorithm hadn’t spent the last decade optimising for engagement over all else.
> The other way to frame this is that there is a reason to suppose that, at this point, someone uploading videos to YouTube claiming evidence of widespread voter fraud—which is all that YouTube are prohibiting here—is almost certainly not a high rung, emotionally detached thinker.
I'm not aware of that reason. Could you explain further?
> No, but you can make a reasonable deduction on which of these two groups of people—YouTube moderators or mass voter fraud video uploaders—is more likely to succeed at being objective.
I disagree, but I'm really saying that I'm unable to make that deduction. Perhaps if you shared your reasoning process I might agree.
> I don’t know. This may be a wrong assessment on my part, but it feels to me like you are extrapolating negatively into the future far more than I am in terms of the potential harm this one change to YouTube’s terms could cause.
Almost certainly that is the case. I'm of the "sunshine is the best disinfectant" persuasion. When you tell people they aren't allowed to question the integrity of an election it is absolutely consistent with the interpretation that those questions might lead to unwanted answers. Its clearly consistent with other interpretations but the problem with closing down debate is that you lose the opportunity to compare those interpretations.
> powerful interests (the President of the United States & his political party) have made up a story about voter fraud
If they have made it up, wouldn’t the best response be to ask them for evidence so everyone could see how the allegations were baseless?
> encouraging a bunch of their partisans to flood the zone with shit, and they are doing that on YouTube.
If you consider that partisans of the other side are also flooding social media with their own claims about the integrity of the election, it starts to look more like a healthy debate that needs to be hashed out rather than suppressed.
> In my eyes, this ban might help to disrupt the ongoing voter fraud misinformation campaign enough that it ends up collapsing before permanent damage is done to our democracy.
There has already been a considerable amount of damage. I don’t know how permanent it is, but allowing President-elect Biden to take office under this cloud of suspicion while suppressing the means by which the suspicion can be removed would be devastating to the perception of legitimacy of the government. The only hope for our democracy is to investigate these allegations and demonstrate that our election system is robust enough to handle the challenge of people asking questions about facts they interpret to suggest fraud or misconduct.
> It seems vanishingly unlikely that it is the start down some path that ends with people being brainwashed by YouTube into believing a bunch of falsehoods, especially compared to the alternative of letting people continue to upload this garbage to their site.
Its not clear to everyone that these videos are garbage, yet suppressing them will prevent people from critically examining them while providing evidence that the other side has something to hide.
> I’m far more concerned about YouTube’s recommendations algorithm and the way it is deliberately designed to funnel people toward more and more extreme content.
Platforms that do not prioritize engagement will retain fewer users than those that do. Sadly, this is the same process in effect all over the world as a result of late capitalism converting everything into attractive commodities. This is the same emergent process that creates addictive snack foods and Netflix. If youtube didn’t prioritize engagement then they would be replaced by a platform that did.
I'm not aware of that reason. Could you explain further?
> No, but you can make a reasonable deduction on which of these two groups of people—YouTube moderators or mass voter fraud video uploaders—is more likely to succeed at being objective.
I disagree, but I'm really saying that I'm unable to make that deduction. Perhaps if you shared your reasoning process I might agree.
> I don’t know. This may be a wrong assessment on my part, but it feels to me like you are extrapolating negatively into the future far more than I am in terms of the potential harm this one change to YouTube’s terms could cause.
Almost certainly that is the case. I'm of the "sunshine is the best disinfectant" persuasion. When you tell people they aren't allowed to question the integrity of an election it is absolutely consistent with the interpretation that those questions might lead to unwanted answers. Its clearly consistent with other interpretations but the problem with closing down debate is that you lose the opportunity to compare those interpretations.
> powerful interests (the President of the United States & his political party) have made up a story about voter fraud
If they have made it up, wouldn’t the best response be to ask them for evidence so everyone could see how the allegations were baseless?
> encouraging a bunch of their partisans to flood the zone with shit, and they are doing that on YouTube.
If you consider that partisans of the other side are also flooding social media with their own claims about the integrity of the election, it starts to look more like a healthy debate that needs to be hashed out rather than suppressed.
> In my eyes, this ban might help to disrupt the ongoing voter fraud misinformation campaign enough that it ends up collapsing before permanent damage is done to our democracy.
There has already been a considerable amount of damage. I don’t know how permanent it is, but allowing President-elect Biden to take office under this cloud of suspicion while suppressing the means by which the suspicion can be removed would be devastating to the perception of legitimacy of the government. The only hope for our democracy is to investigate these allegations and demonstrate that our election system is robust enough to handle the challenge of people asking questions about facts they interpret to suggest fraud or misconduct.
> It seems vanishingly unlikely that it is the start down some path that ends with people being brainwashed by YouTube into believing a bunch of falsehoods, especially compared to the alternative of letting people continue to upload this garbage to their site.
Its not clear to everyone that these videos are garbage, yet suppressing them will prevent people from critically examining them while providing evidence that the other side has something to hide.
> I’m far more concerned about YouTube’s recommendations algorithm and the way it is deliberately designed to funnel people toward more and more extreme content.
Platforms that do not prioritize engagement will retain fewer users than those that do. Sadly, this is the same process in effect all over the world as a result of late capitalism converting everything into attractive commodities. This is the same emergent process that creates addictive snack foods and Netflix. If youtube didn’t prioritize engagement then they would be replaced by a platform that did.
>> What is too outlandish to you is not too outlandish to others
Sounds like we have an education problem then.
Censorship of a viewpoint and media that displays a giant FACT/FALSE in its headline amplifies exactly the problem you wish to solve.
Sounds like we have an education problem then.
Censorship of a viewpoint and media that displays a giant FACT/FALSE in its headline amplifies exactly the problem you wish to solve.
These are extreme cases where you think there is consent on any single example, but it is still not a good argument for a general case.
tl;dr You assume both side argue in good faith. When one side doesn’t argue in good faith they can hack our classic understanding of freedom of speech.
We need a word for flooding a space of discourse with so much noise that the truth is obscured and hidden.
It’s not censorship in that it’s removing speech, but it’s as effective in undermining free speech.
It’s obviously what is happening now.
I think the error in what you say is you assume both side are arguing in good faith.
But when one party doesn’t argue in good faith, it means they are saying things they don’t truly believe, or that they don’t respect or care about having a fair discourse.
Like how during the debates Donald Trump continuously attempted to talk over Biden, and essentially control the discourse via bullying.
Just making shit up in order to shut someone else down isn’t okay, and we need to figure out how to protect our traditional values of free speech while also combating when people attempt to destroy our freedom of speech by using this technique at a mass scale in our modern media environment.
We need a word for flooding a space of discourse with so much noise that the truth is obscured and hidden.
It’s not censorship in that it’s removing speech, but it’s as effective in undermining free speech.
It’s obviously what is happening now.
I think the error in what you say is you assume both side are arguing in good faith.
But when one party doesn’t argue in good faith, it means they are saying things they don’t truly believe, or that they don’t respect or care about having a fair discourse.
Like how during the debates Donald Trump continuously attempted to talk over Biden, and essentially control the discourse via bullying.
Just making shit up in order to shut someone else down isn’t okay, and we need to figure out how to protect our traditional values of free speech while also combating when people attempt to destroy our freedom of speech by using this technique at a mass scale in our modern media environment.
I think its more accurate to say there are bad faith actors on both sides. Thats why its so dangerous to let someone shut down one side of a debate because of bad faith actors. You're also shutting down the good faith actors on that side, while leaving the bad faith actors on the other side still able to participate in bad faith.
> I think its more accurate to say there are bad faith actors on both sides.
Bullshit, because at this moment that comparison is a mountain vs a molehill.
0. Trumps lies about Covid and the pandemic crisis which have contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans 1. The racist birther conspiracy. 2. The vast number of well-documented lies Trump told over the last few years. 3. The baseless lies about election fraud or whatever.
But you know all this. I don’t believe you’re arguing in good faith and I think you’re full of shit. Because, after these last four years saying “bad actors on both sides” means that you’ve chosen to either obscure or deny reality.
What you’re doing is dangerous to democracy and you should be ashamed of yourself.
I’m not saying YouTube removing this content is the right move, but your logic only holds up in a fantasyland devoid of fact or context.
Bullshit, because at this moment that comparison is a mountain vs a molehill.
0. Trumps lies about Covid and the pandemic crisis which have contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans 1. The racist birther conspiracy. 2. The vast number of well-documented lies Trump told over the last few years. 3. The baseless lies about election fraud or whatever.
But you know all this. I don’t believe you’re arguing in good faith and I think you’re full of shit. Because, after these last four years saying “bad actors on both sides” means that you’ve chosen to either obscure or deny reality.
What you’re doing is dangerous to democracy and you should be ashamed of yourself.
I’m not saying YouTube removing this content is the right move, but your logic only holds up in a fantasyland devoid of fact or context.
Thanks for the reply.
> Bullshit, because at this moment that comparison is a mountain vs a molehill.
Regardless, my point in replying to you was to assert that the existence of bad faith actors doesn't justify silencing good faith actors who seem to represent the same "side."
> But you know all this. I don’t believe you’re arguing in good faith and I think you’re full of shit.
Then why did you reply to me? What value is there in engaging in some bad faith bullshitter on the internet? Don't you believe that I'm going to respond with more bad faith bullshit and further confuse anyone who isn't rational and detached enough to see the truth?
> Because, after these last four years saying “bad actors on both sides” means that you’ve chosen to either obscure or deny reality.
After all this you're not even able to see how there could be bad faith actors on both sides? You don't think that bad faith actors on your own side might harm your cause or detract from your message? Or you don't think they exist?
> What you’re doing is dangerous to democracy and you should be ashamed of yourself.
I get that you're passionate about this so can you explain this statement? If me sharing my opinion is so dangerous then why is it safer to let me vote? I'm genuinely curious how you can think that its good for the common person to cast a ballot but its bad for the common person to share their opinions on the integrity of the election.
> I’m not saying YouTube removing this content is the right move, but your logic only holds up in a fantasyland devoid of fact or context.
What's the error in my logic? Is trump uniquely bad so the normal rules don't apply, or is there something dangerous about the idea that people who decide whose opinions should be heard are potentially bad faith actors who could corrupt the discourse?
> Bullshit, because at this moment that comparison is a mountain vs a molehill.
Regardless, my point in replying to you was to assert that the existence of bad faith actors doesn't justify silencing good faith actors who seem to represent the same "side."
> But you know all this. I don’t believe you’re arguing in good faith and I think you’re full of shit.
Then why did you reply to me? What value is there in engaging in some bad faith bullshitter on the internet? Don't you believe that I'm going to respond with more bad faith bullshit and further confuse anyone who isn't rational and detached enough to see the truth?
> Because, after these last four years saying “bad actors on both sides” means that you’ve chosen to either obscure or deny reality.
After all this you're not even able to see how there could be bad faith actors on both sides? You don't think that bad faith actors on your own side might harm your cause or detract from your message? Or you don't think they exist?
> What you’re doing is dangerous to democracy and you should be ashamed of yourself.
I get that you're passionate about this so can you explain this statement? If me sharing my opinion is so dangerous then why is it safer to let me vote? I'm genuinely curious how you can think that its good for the common person to cast a ballot but its bad for the common person to share their opinions on the integrity of the election.
> I’m not saying YouTube removing this content is the right move, but your logic only holds up in a fantasyland devoid of fact or context.
What's the error in my logic? Is trump uniquely bad so the normal rules don't apply, or is there something dangerous about the idea that people who decide whose opinions should be heard are potentially bad faith actors who could corrupt the discourse?
> Regardless, my point in replying to you was to assert that the existence of bad faith actors doesn't justify silencing good faith actors who seem to represent the same "side."
But as the case stands right now, Youtube isn't shutting down good faith actors on one side, but bad faith actors, who happen to be on one side.
There is no silencing of good faith actors, although I wholly agree in concept that it's a thin line to walk.
But as the case stands right now, Youtube isn't shutting down good faith actors on one side, but bad faith actors, who happen to be on one side.
There is no silencing of good faith actors, although I wholly agree in concept that it's a thin line to walk.
> But as the case stands right now, Youtube isn't shutting down good faith actors on one side, but bad faith actors, who happen to be on one side.
How are they determining bad faith in an objective, reliable, and verifiable way? The policy is to delete content that alleges that there was widespread fraud. That doesn't reference the sincerity or faith of the actor, but the object-level claims that are being made. It would seem that means they are deleting content they disagree with, regardless of whether it is put forth in good faith or not.
> There is no silencing of good faith actors
Can you support this statement? It seems like an article of faith to me. How would you know that all the videos that had been removed are put forth in bad faith?
> although I wholly agree in concept that it's a thin line to walk.
Does that mean you acknowledge the possibility of error in judgment with respect to this issue?
How are they determining bad faith in an objective, reliable, and verifiable way? The policy is to delete content that alleges that there was widespread fraud. That doesn't reference the sincerity or faith of the actor, but the object-level claims that are being made. It would seem that means they are deleting content they disagree with, regardless of whether it is put forth in good faith or not.
> There is no silencing of good faith actors
Can you support this statement? It seems like an article of faith to me. How would you know that all the videos that had been removed are put forth in bad faith?
> although I wholly agree in concept that it's a thin line to walk.
Does that mean you acknowledge the possibility of error in judgment with respect to this issue?
> How are they determining bad faith in an objective, reliable, and verifiable way? The policy is to delete content that alleges that there was widespread fraud. That doesn't reference the sincerity or faith of the actor, but the object-level claims that are being made. It would seem that means they are deleting content they disagree with, regardless of whether it is put forth in good faith or not.
How many cases of fraud has there been in this election? 1? There has been 0 evidence of widespread fraud. The only possible way any argument could be made in good faith is if you have the naivete of a child. I'm not saying that as a value judgment, but as a matter of fact.
> > There is no silencing of good faith actors
> Can you support this statement? It seems like an article of faith to me. How would you know that all the videos that had been removed are put forth in bad faith?
I can not prove a negative, other than the absence of evidence of the contrary. Do you have any examples of good faith actors being silenced that we can discuss the merits of?
> Does that mean you acknowledge the possibility of error in judgment with respect to this issue?
Yes, but I have seen no evidence of this, so I reserve that hypothetical for when it happens.
How many cases of fraud has there been in this election? 1? There has been 0 evidence of widespread fraud. The only possible way any argument could be made in good faith is if you have the naivete of a child. I'm not saying that as a value judgment, but as a matter of fact.
> > There is no silencing of good faith actors
> Can you support this statement? It seems like an article of faith to me. How would you know that all the videos that had been removed are put forth in bad faith?
I can not prove a negative, other than the absence of evidence of the contrary. Do you have any examples of good faith actors being silenced that we can discuss the merits of?
> Does that mean you acknowledge the possibility of error in judgment with respect to this issue?
Yes, but I have seen no evidence of this, so I reserve that hypothetical for when it happens.
> How many cases of fraud has there been in this election?
I haven't the foggiest idea, I'm not a cop or political-type person.
> There has been 0 evidence of widespread fraud.
What kind of evidence would you expect to see?
> The only possible way any argument could be made in good faith is if you have the naivete of a child. I'm not saying that as a value judgment, but as a matter of fact.
How are you able to attest to that fact?
> I can not prove a negative, other than the absence of evidence of the contrary.
What evidence would you expect to see if YouTube had deleted a good faith video?
> Do you have any examples of good faith actors being silenced that we can discuss the merits of?
No because I'm not even sure how one would attest to the "good faith" of a video that is no longer on YouTube. Thats why I'm so puzzled at the certainty exhibited by people who seem determined that these videos and ideas are so dangerous that they should be suppressed. What kind of experiences and evidence would make someone so confident that they were right and they hadn't merely been misinformed?
> Yes, but I have seen no evidence of this, so I reserve that hypothetical for when it happens.
Wouldn't you want to have some evidence in support of your statement before you make sweeping claims? I'm trying to see how you can reconcile the part where you think these other people are bad because they make statements about reality without evidence, but you're fine with making statements about reality yourself without evidence.
I haven't the foggiest idea, I'm not a cop or political-type person.
> There has been 0 evidence of widespread fraud.
What kind of evidence would you expect to see?
> The only possible way any argument could be made in good faith is if you have the naivete of a child. I'm not saying that as a value judgment, but as a matter of fact.
How are you able to attest to that fact?
> I can not prove a negative, other than the absence of evidence of the contrary.
What evidence would you expect to see if YouTube had deleted a good faith video?
> Do you have any examples of good faith actors being silenced that we can discuss the merits of?
No because I'm not even sure how one would attest to the "good faith" of a video that is no longer on YouTube. Thats why I'm so puzzled at the certainty exhibited by people who seem determined that these videos and ideas are so dangerous that they should be suppressed. What kind of experiences and evidence would make someone so confident that they were right and they hadn't merely been misinformed?
> Yes, but I have seen no evidence of this, so I reserve that hypothetical for when it happens.
Wouldn't you want to have some evidence in support of your statement before you make sweeping claims? I'm trying to see how you can reconcile the part where you think these other people are bad because they make statements about reality without evidence, but you're fine with making statements about reality yourself without evidence.
The burden of proof rests on the claimant. There’s a reason US courts of law keep throwing out these claims of widespread fraud: because the claimants consistently fail to provide the widespread evidence to back their claims up.
What there is widespread evidence of, however, is bad-faith actors that are both highly active and plentiful.
Therefore I would suggest the few good-faith actors who find themselves unfairly suppressed first take it up with those dirty lying bastards for sullying ALL their reputations, and secondly ask themselves what they must do to fully disassociate themselves from the scum and rebuild their negative credibility to a level where people are willing to listen again.
Qui cum canibus concumbunt cum pulicibus surgent. They can fix it or they can whine. And which they choose speaks volumes too.
What there is widespread evidence of, however, is bad-faith actors that are both highly active and plentiful.
Therefore I would suggest the few good-faith actors who find themselves unfairly suppressed first take it up with those dirty lying bastards for sullying ALL their reputations, and secondly ask themselves what they must do to fully disassociate themselves from the scum and rebuild their negative credibility to a level where people are willing to listen again.
Qui cum canibus concumbunt cum pulicibus surgent. They can fix it or they can whine. And which they choose speaks volumes too.
> The burden of proof rests on the claimant.
Indeed. Which is why I'm so interested in the evidence behind these claims that I keep hearing that there was no vote fraud, or at least not enough to change the election. Sadly, when asked for proof, these people who believe there was no vote fraud always walk it back: "I haven't seen any evidence." Well great, then maybe you're not in a position to make positive claims on the basis of a lack of evidence.
> There’s a reason US courts of law keep throwing out these claims of widespread fraud: because the claimants consistently fail to provide the widespread evidence to back their claims up.
Are you so sure you can read the mind of a judge? This whole discussion is about motivated reasoning and cognitive biases. When did we start assuming that judges were immune to political bias?
> What there is widespread evidence of, however, is bad-faith actors that are both highly active and plentiful.
I agree with that. Where is your evidence that none of them are judges or Google/YouTube employees?
> Therefore I would suggest the few good-faith actors who find themselves unfairly suppressed first take it up with those dirty lying bastards for sullying ALL their reputations
That would be like telling BLM activists to go tell the black criminals in their community to stop doing crimes that piss off the police. You're implying value judgments that aren't in evidence and lumping people together on the basis of your perceptions when those people may not even really have anything in common except being seen as enemies by the same group of people. People want to be heard. Its wrong to shut them down because some other people said some other ridiculous stuff that you think is basically the same thing because you're done listening.
> secondly ask themselves what they must do to fully disassociate themselves from the scum and rebuild their negative credibility to a level where people are willing to listen again.
People are willing to listen, that's why its so important not to give them a platform. Surely you don't think that YouTube is suppressing videos because they don't like them when those videos aren't going to be watched by anyone?
> Qui cum canibus concumbunt cum pulicibus surgent. They can fix it or they can whine. And which they choose speaks volumes too.
Part of fixing the alleged election fraud would be to present evidence to the public, including videos of that alleged fraud. And if those videos are being suppressed then part of fixing that would be to debate the propriety of suppressing viewpoints that you don't like.
Indeed. Which is why I'm so interested in the evidence behind these claims that I keep hearing that there was no vote fraud, or at least not enough to change the election. Sadly, when asked for proof, these people who believe there was no vote fraud always walk it back: "I haven't seen any evidence." Well great, then maybe you're not in a position to make positive claims on the basis of a lack of evidence.
> There’s a reason US courts of law keep throwing out these claims of widespread fraud: because the claimants consistently fail to provide the widespread evidence to back their claims up.
Are you so sure you can read the mind of a judge? This whole discussion is about motivated reasoning and cognitive biases. When did we start assuming that judges were immune to political bias?
> What there is widespread evidence of, however, is bad-faith actors that are both highly active and plentiful.
I agree with that. Where is your evidence that none of them are judges or Google/YouTube employees?
> Therefore I would suggest the few good-faith actors who find themselves unfairly suppressed first take it up with those dirty lying bastards for sullying ALL their reputations
That would be like telling BLM activists to go tell the black criminals in their community to stop doing crimes that piss off the police. You're implying value judgments that aren't in evidence and lumping people together on the basis of your perceptions when those people may not even really have anything in common except being seen as enemies by the same group of people. People want to be heard. Its wrong to shut them down because some other people said some other ridiculous stuff that you think is basically the same thing because you're done listening.
> secondly ask themselves what they must do to fully disassociate themselves from the scum and rebuild their negative credibility to a level where people are willing to listen again.
People are willing to listen, that's why its so important not to give them a platform. Surely you don't think that YouTube is suppressing videos because they don't like them when those videos aren't going to be watched by anyone?
> Qui cum canibus concumbunt cum pulicibus surgent. They can fix it or they can whine. And which they choose speaks volumes too.
Part of fixing the alleged election fraud would be to present evidence to the public, including videos of that alleged fraud. And if those videos are being suppressed then part of fixing that would be to debate the propriety of suppressing viewpoints that you don't like.
This characterization of flaws in political discourse reminds me of the SEO arms race discovering flaws / hacks in Google's search results rankings.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” -C.S. Lewis
"The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated"
This is clearly wrong. Greedy people are never satisfied. Look at our modern day robber barons, a mere handful with more money than hundreds of millions of people. Yet their wealth continues to grow.
This is clearly wrong. Greedy people are never satisfied. Look at our modern day robber barons, a mere handful with more money than hundreds of millions of people. Yet their wealth continues to grow.
Woosh
At what point to we discern fact from fiction? We're currently discussing this issue on a site that caters to the tech community, an industry and culture based on solid science and facts. I doubt anyone in the industry would argue unsubstantiated fanciful opinions stand on equal ground as the established and proven scientific facts that underlie everything we do in stark terms. If we did, we would get nowhere. Why would this principle not apply to anything else? Yes of course there are no shortage of divergent opinions and theories within our science and any other science for that matter. Questioning withing reason leads to innovation but there is no valid argument to be made that any opinion is equal to established facts and should be treated as such. Our industry and culture would simply not exist if that were the case or any other science. Should the wild opinions of people who think the Earth is flat hold the same scientific weight as millennia of established and proven math, science and observation? Our opinions of reality do not change reality. I'm sorry, your assertion only tries to poison the well by arguing emotion and unsupported opinions somehow carries equal weight to established and provable truths. The arbitrator of truth is reality.
Flat earth conspiracies has not poisoned any well. When Mythbusters tested some of the theories we also gained as society a bit by showing the scientific process in the face of conspiracy theories.
A corner stone in science, which goes far back in history, is trust. In order to understand anything we have to put trust in established facts, in experts and common understanding. Part of building science is building trust, and censorship has a strong negative impact on trust. If we go back to the analogy of poisoning the well of knowledge, censorship destroys people trust in the water itself.
To take an example of why this new Youtube policy might be problematic, could we still have a video about the risk in Postal voting? In the UK election in 1990, it was estimated that 50% of postal voting arriving from Ireland was fraudulent. Trust in the voting system was at an all time low. As a response the voting system was changed and identification became a requirement in order to vote. Trust in the election system went massively up, and suspicion of fraud went down. A decade later the UK government removed some parts of the requirements, but for Ireland the requirement still remain today. Should an opinion that the US could learn from the UK past experience with postal votes and voter trust be censored, or would it poison the ability to discern fact from fiction?
A corner stone in science, which goes far back in history, is trust. In order to understand anything we have to put trust in established facts, in experts and common understanding. Part of building science is building trust, and censorship has a strong negative impact on trust. If we go back to the analogy of poisoning the well of knowledge, censorship destroys people trust in the water itself.
To take an example of why this new Youtube policy might be problematic, could we still have a video about the risk in Postal voting? In the UK election in 1990, it was estimated that 50% of postal voting arriving from Ireland was fraudulent. Trust in the voting system was at an all time low. As a response the voting system was changed and identification became a requirement in order to vote. Trust in the election system went massively up, and suspicion of fraud went down. A decade later the UK government removed some parts of the requirements, but for Ireland the requirement still remain today. Should an opinion that the US could learn from the UK past experience with postal votes and voter trust be censored, or would it poison the ability to discern fact from fiction?
What if the President of the United States suddenly started supporting flat earthers?
I think suddenly then they would be able to poison the well.
Science is a bad example because the process of science can be quantified. We can argue about it but basically can quantify what is or isn’t a valid scientific experiment.
This creates a “good faith” environment because everyone has to play by the same rules.
Outside of science this is harder to achieve. If one side argues in bad faith, they can just keep making shit up or doing things to undermine the discourse itself, like talk over someone else or bully them.
Freedom of speech kind of both depends on and is in conflict with culturally enforced norms and restrictions around who is able to say what when, and how loud.
Bear in mind that when our classic idea of free speech was developed, it was simply assumed by most that it would be white, propertied men doing the talking. Point being there are assumptions behind these conceptions with are important to consider.
Most of us don’t want white, properties dudes to be the only ones talking, but no one who cared about any form of democracy or equality would want to hang out in a town square where everyone is just yelling all the time and beating up other people so they can be the only one talking.
Restriction per se isn’t bad. It’s all about how it’s done, and why.
What we are seeing now is a shifting both of cultural norms and the infrastructure of our media environment which means that “free speech” no longer has some of the constraints and restrictions which enabled it to perform the truth-seeking function we desire it to.
I think suddenly then they would be able to poison the well.
Science is a bad example because the process of science can be quantified. We can argue about it but basically can quantify what is or isn’t a valid scientific experiment.
This creates a “good faith” environment because everyone has to play by the same rules.
Outside of science this is harder to achieve. If one side argues in bad faith, they can just keep making shit up or doing things to undermine the discourse itself, like talk over someone else or bully them.
Freedom of speech kind of both depends on and is in conflict with culturally enforced norms and restrictions around who is able to say what when, and how loud.
Bear in mind that when our classic idea of free speech was developed, it was simply assumed by most that it would be white, propertied men doing the talking. Point being there are assumptions behind these conceptions with are important to consider.
Most of us don’t want white, properties dudes to be the only ones talking, but no one who cared about any form of democracy or equality would want to hang out in a town square where everyone is just yelling all the time and beating up other people so they can be the only one talking.
Restriction per se isn’t bad. It’s all about how it’s done, and why.
What we are seeing now is a shifting both of cultural norms and the infrastructure of our media environment which means that “free speech” no longer has some of the constraints and restrictions which enabled it to perform the truth-seeking function we desire it to.
Good faith and bad faith environment is about trust. When that trust break down you either find methods to regain trust or discourse becomes impossible.
So what strategies works most effective in restoring trust? We can learn by looking at the effective ways people have done in the past to create the opposite, increase distrust and conflict. Assuming bad faith based on race and class is very effective in creating environments of distrust, both on internet forums and elsewhere. Preemptively exercise power in unpredictable way, and enforce unclear rules in an inconsistent and nontransparent way also works wonder to further conflicts. Displaying symbols of ideological values and focus on tribal differences can effectively increase conflict over multiple generations.
You can not censor people into trust, and thus censorship is not a tool to create a good faith environment. You can remove people from the discourse until only people who belong to the same tribe is left, where every single participant trust the others because of psudo-kinship. Free speech, along with concepts like human rights and liberty, is however centered around common rules being enforced consistently in order to create trust among people who would otherwise be mistrusting of each other. You let the other side talk in order to create a common trust that they will let you talk.
So what strategies works most effective in restoring trust? We can learn by looking at the effective ways people have done in the past to create the opposite, increase distrust and conflict. Assuming bad faith based on race and class is very effective in creating environments of distrust, both on internet forums and elsewhere. Preemptively exercise power in unpredictable way, and enforce unclear rules in an inconsistent and nontransparent way also works wonder to further conflicts. Displaying symbols of ideological values and focus on tribal differences can effectively increase conflict over multiple generations.
You can not censor people into trust, and thus censorship is not a tool to create a good faith environment. You can remove people from the discourse until only people who belong to the same tribe is left, where every single participant trust the others because of psudo-kinship. Free speech, along with concepts like human rights and liberty, is however centered around common rules being enforced consistently in order to create trust among people who would otherwise be mistrusting of each other. You let the other side talk in order to create a common trust that they will let you talk.
> You let the other side talk in order to create a common trust that they will let you talk.
Oh they’ve been talking. We’ve all heard.
> Good faith and bad faith environment is about trust.
Not so. Someone acting in bad faith is by definition untrustworthy.
You seem to want to equivocate. I don’t know if YouTube choosing to censor this content is wise, but since the content is false, spreads disinformation on purpose, nutty, and dangerous to democracy and the lives of civil servants, I can understand why.
Oh they’ve been talking. We’ve all heard.
> Good faith and bad faith environment is about trust.
Not so. Someone acting in bad faith is by definition untrustworthy.
You seem to want to equivocate. I don’t know if YouTube choosing to censor this content is wise, but since the content is false, spreads disinformation on purpose, nutty, and dangerous to democracy and the lives of civil servants, I can understand why.
> Science is a bad example because the process of science can be quantified. We can argue about it but basically can quantify what is or isn’t a valid scientific experiment.
The demarcation problem is essentially scientists disagreeing that we can sharply divide science from non-science.
The replication crisis is evidence that not all "science" is actually science.
> If one side argues in bad faith, they can just keep making shit up or doing things to undermine the discourse itself, like talk over someone else or bully them.
Silencing one side of a debate is also undermining the discourse.
> What we are seeing now is a shifting both of cultural norms and the infrastructure of our media environment which means that “free speech” no longer has some of the constraints and restrictions which enabled it to perform the truth-seeking function we desire it to.
Actually what we are seeing now is the democratization of free speech so that an oligarchic elite is no longer the only group who is able to make their voice heard. In this light it is unsurprising that the oligarchic elite wants restrictions on speech.
The demarcation problem is essentially scientists disagreeing that we can sharply divide science from non-science.
The replication crisis is evidence that not all "science" is actually science.
> If one side argues in bad faith, they can just keep making shit up or doing things to undermine the discourse itself, like talk over someone else or bully them.
Silencing one side of a debate is also undermining the discourse.
> What we are seeing now is a shifting both of cultural norms and the infrastructure of our media environment which means that “free speech” no longer has some of the constraints and restrictions which enabled it to perform the truth-seeking function we desire it to.
Actually what we are seeing now is the democratization of free speech so that an oligarchic elite is no longer the only group who is able to make their voice heard. In this light it is unsurprising that the oligarchic elite wants restrictions on speech.
> Actually what we are seeing now is the democratization of free speech so that an oligarchic elite is no longer the only group who is able to make their voice heard.
Exactly who do you think the major donors to the Trump campaign and the Republican Party are?
Do you actually believe these election-fraud lies were spontaneous, as opposed to something people were whipped into believing by a propaganda campaign funded by the wealthy?
Money in politics is a problem for both parties, not just Republicans, but, your argument is bullshit.
Exactly who do you think the major donors to the Trump campaign and the Republican Party are?
Do you actually believe these election-fraud lies were spontaneous, as opposed to something people were whipped into believing by a propaganda campaign funded by the wealthy?
Money in politics is a problem for both parties, not just Republicans, but, your argument is bullshit.
Thanks for the reply. Do you honestly think this is the best way to reach mutual understanding? I'm not even sure what you're disagreeing with.
I am disagreeing with bullshit and my goal here isn’t mutual understanding but to call out bullshit for what it is.
Case in point:
Do you yourself believe Joe Biden won the election, and that there was not any meaningful “election fraud” or whatever? Yes or no.
Anything other than a yes-or-no answer to my question is bullshit.
Case in point:
Do you yourself believe Joe Biden won the election, and that there was not any meaningful “election fraud” or whatever? Yes or no.
Anything other than a yes-or-no answer to my question is bullshit.
> Do you yourself believe Joe Biden won the election
I refuse to answer on the principle that I don't submit to religious tests. You can call this bullshit if you like, you've said you're not here for mutual understanding and so I understand that you're not interested in my point of view.
> there was not any meaningful “election fraud” or whatever?
Of course there was meaningful election fraud. Any fraud is meaningful because it challenges the idea that free and fair elections are possible.
> Anything other than a yes-or-no answer to my question is bullshit.
Those were two questions, a yes-or-no answer wouldn't have even explained which one I was answering.
I refuse to answer on the principle that I don't submit to religious tests. You can call this bullshit if you like, you've said you're not here for mutual understanding and so I understand that you're not interested in my point of view.
> there was not any meaningful “election fraud” or whatever?
Of course there was meaningful election fraud. Any fraud is meaningful because it challenges the idea that free and fair elections are possible.
> Anything other than a yes-or-no answer to my question is bullshit.
Those were two questions, a yes-or-no answer wouldn't have even explained which one I was answering.
[deleted]
Firehosing also destroys trust. That’s its purpose.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood
Why does it bother you so much if somebody believes in flat earth? And why do you want to prevent them to discuss their silly theories? Are you so insecure in your own knowledge? A bunch of people believing in flat earth does not diminish our science in any way.
The problem isn't that some people believe the Earth is flat. The problem is that it's no longer disqualifying.
If one person believes the Earth is flat, that's not an issue. The problem is that much of the country has organized itself into information bubbles. Those bubbles can be large enough to span entire congressional districts and even entire states. Those states elect representatives and senators. These days, the Senate and House can be split by a single vote on some issues. We live in a world where there's a very real possibility that a state will elect someone to office who believes things as wild as "the Earth is flat" and they will be the deciding voice on critical issues facing us today.
If one person believes the Earth is flat, that's not an issue. The problem is that much of the country has organized itself into information bubbles. Those bubbles can be large enough to span entire congressional districts and even entire states. Those states elect representatives and senators. These days, the Senate and House can be split by a single vote on some issues. We live in a world where there's a very real possibility that a state will elect someone to office who believes things as wild as "the Earth is flat" and they will be the deciding voice on critical issues facing us today.
Beliefs inform actions. I believe the building I am in is not on fire and I am conducting myself accordingly. If I believed the building was on fire, my actions would be quite different. It is naïve at best, disingenuous at worst, to pretend that someone’s beliefs exist in some magic bubble that does not have any effect on the world around them. When people believed in witchcraft, real people were burned. Even before the pandemic, people that did not believe in the science supporting vaccinations led to real outbreaks of real disease that killed real people.
I believe procrastinating on HN makes me less productive and here I am still procrastinating. I'm not acting on my own belief. And yes beliefs do mostly exist in "magic bubbles" without any special impact on the world at large. I hope you realize a lot of people have also died because of unscientific beliefs that seemed scientific at the time. The idea of censoring of wrongthink is nothing new. There are still many countries today which still practice such policies and I don't think you'd want to live in such places.
> And yes beliefs do mostly exist in "magic bubbles" without any special impact on the world at large.
> I hope you realize a lot of people have also died because of unscientific beliefs that seemed scientific at the time.
“Beliefs mostly don’t effect the world…people are dead because of false beliefs” Which is it? What people believe mostly doesn’t matter, or people’s incorrect beliefs have been life or death matters often?
> I believe procrastinating on HN makes me less productive and here I am still procrastinating. I'm not acting on my own belief
You are acting on it by talking about it to other people. But good job picking a belief so low stakes that you can try to pretend that your beliefs that are literally your map of the world, don’t determine how you act in the world.
> The idea of censoring of wrongthink is nothing new.
Neither I nor the parent comment talked about that. Just that what people believe is important and has real world ramifications. It isn’t being “insecure” in my science to worry about people that think physics isn’t real, or vaccines aren’t real, or that killing someone that doesn’t believe in their god is required, or people with certain skin colors are biologically predisposed to violence, or that there is a vast global conspiracy going back hundreds of years to trick people about the shape of the earth.
> I hope you realize a lot of people have also died because of unscientific beliefs that seemed scientific at the time.
“Beliefs mostly don’t effect the world…people are dead because of false beliefs” Which is it? What people believe mostly doesn’t matter, or people’s incorrect beliefs have been life or death matters often?
> I believe procrastinating on HN makes me less productive and here I am still procrastinating. I'm not acting on my own belief
You are acting on it by talking about it to other people. But good job picking a belief so low stakes that you can try to pretend that your beliefs that are literally your map of the world, don’t determine how you act in the world.
> The idea of censoring of wrongthink is nothing new.
Neither I nor the parent comment talked about that. Just that what people believe is important and has real world ramifications. It isn’t being “insecure” in my science to worry about people that think physics isn’t real, or vaccines aren’t real, or that killing someone that doesn’t believe in their god is required, or people with certain skin colors are biologically predisposed to violence, or that there is a vast global conspiracy going back hundreds of years to trick people about the shape of the earth.
If majority of humans acted upon majority of their beliefs, the humanity would have destroyed itself several times over. You cannot have good ideas without bad ones. How would you learn anything otherwise.
I don't know what are you talking about then if not about censorship? Are you only asserting: bad people do bad things?
I don't know why, but it seems that of all the silly ideas out there, flat-earthers have a special place in the minds of some people here on HN, since they are brought up so many times.
I don't know why, but it seems that of all the silly ideas out there, flat-earthers have a special place in the minds of some people here on HN, since they are brought up so many times.
Believing that the Earth is flat is mostly harmless. Believing that vaccines cause autism, that covid is a hoax, etc is actively harmful to society and actually kills people (more often then not not the one who believe it in the first place).
The assertion
>True balance by taking account of both sides will include rebuttals of the sides against the other side.
isn't the same and giving both equal weight. With stuff like flat earth it's quite easy to rebut for example.
>True balance by taking account of both sides will include rebuttals of the sides against the other side.
isn't the same and giving both equal weight. With stuff like flat earth it's quite easy to rebut for example.
Youtube was already pervasively censored and editorialized / moderated. If you are using Youtube, it's important to be aware of its role as the arbiter of what's allowed and how discourse is directed.
But of course most Youtube hogwash content producers and their followers aren't in it for the love of truth or philosophy. Maybe some of the more naive are, and have been fooled to be puppets in Youtube's strings.
But of course most Youtube hogwash content producers and their followers aren't in it for the love of truth or philosophy. Maybe some of the more naive are, and have been fooled to be puppets in Youtube's strings.
I have a screencast of installing Debian that’s unlisted and has one view uploaded several years ago and last month I got an email saying YouTube had decided, after a review, that it is only suitable for mature audiences. I don’t know who flagged it or who reviewed it but there’s no video, only a screen share of Debian installation and there’s no audio. I think YouTube just counts on people appealing wrongful flags.
I no longer believe YouTube is more malicious than it is incompetent.
I no longer believe YouTube is more malicious than it is incompetent.
Does it have instances of fsck running, or maybe launching daemons? Can't show this stuff to the kiddies.
If you allow Islamic terrorists to publish their indoctrination materials, conversions to their cause will increase.
I’m ok with censoring that stuff.
Most of the censorship cases i can think of have been religious or conservative groups and in all those cases i thought the call for censorship was misguided. There are situations where I’m ok with censorship. One of them is Islamic terrorist propaganda and fake news.
I’m ok with censoring that stuff.
Most of the censorship cases i can think of have been religious or conservative groups and in all those cases i thought the call for censorship was misguided. There are situations where I’m ok with censorship. One of them is Islamic terrorist propaganda and fake news.
> If you allow Islamic terrorists to publish their indoctrination materials, conversions to their cause will increase.
This is especially what I'm sceptica about, as well as the banning of publications such as Mein Kampf.
It seems to me that the proportion of those that were first unconvinced, and then read such material and become convinced by it is negligibly small. Rather, most of the followers never actually read the publications and mostly got into it to feel part of a group as their friends were followers.
They're typically publications that were never read by either the proponents, nor the detractors who wish to ban it.
> Most of the censorship cases i can think of have been religious or conservative groups and in all those cases i thought the call for censorship was misguided. There are situations where I’m ok with censorship. One of them is Islamic terrorist propaganda and fake news.
There is very few news that is not fake — the addage of “All news is accurate, except that one article about that one field one happens to be a specialist in.” seldom fails to hit the mark.
That you need to specifically single out “Islamic terrorism”, opposed to simply keeping it about “terrorism” as a general concept also betrays a deal of specificity in your view, which is often the problem with censorship — that not all are censored æqual.
This is especially what I'm sceptica about, as well as the banning of publications such as Mein Kampf.
It seems to me that the proportion of those that were first unconvinced, and then read such material and become convinced by it is negligibly small. Rather, most of the followers never actually read the publications and mostly got into it to feel part of a group as their friends were followers.
They're typically publications that were never read by either the proponents, nor the detractors who wish to ban it.
> Most of the censorship cases i can think of have been religious or conservative groups and in all those cases i thought the call for censorship was misguided. There are situations where I’m ok with censorship. One of them is Islamic terrorist propaganda and fake news.
There is very few news that is not fake — the addage of “All news is accurate, except that one article about that one field one happens to be a specialist in.” seldom fails to hit the mark.
That you need to specifically single out “Islamic terrorism”, opposed to simply keeping it about “terrorism” as a general concept also betrays a deal of specificity in your view, which is often the problem with censorship — that not all are censored æqual.
>> It seems to me that the proportion of those that were first unconvinced
That population is every person ever born - no one was born believing in Anti-semitism or Nazism.
>> and then read such material
Wait - we're not just limited to first order effects, someone who reads may relay those ideas to another in a different form. E.g. by starting a social gathering of some sort.
>> and become convinced by it is negligibly small
The Nazi party membership reached over 8 million people.
>> There is very few news that is not fake
Poor wording on my part, i meant specifically Islamic terrorist propaganda not fake news more generally.
That population is every person ever born - no one was born believing in Anti-semitism or Nazism.
>> and then read such material
Wait - we're not just limited to first order effects, someone who reads may relay those ideas to another in a different form. E.g. by starting a social gathering of some sort.
>> and become convinced by it is negligibly small
The Nazi party membership reached over 8 million people.
>> There is very few news that is not fake
Poor wording on my part, i meant specifically Islamic terrorist propaganda not fake news more generally.
>That population is every person ever born - no one was born believing in Anti-semitism or Nazism.
No one is born tob believe in anything, however one typically has opinions on matters by the time that one is capable of reading.
>Wait - we're not just limited to first order effects, someone who reads may relay those ideas to another in a different form. E.g. by starting a social gathering of some sort.
And even there I feel the reading of material in print is negligible as a proximate cause to inspire that.
>The Nazi party membership reached over 8 million people.
And most had never read Mein Kampf. They were members because their friends were — most Christians have of course also never read a Bible from cover to cover.
No one is born tob believe in anything, however one typically has opinions on matters by the time that one is capable of reading.
>Wait - we're not just limited to first order effects, someone who reads may relay those ideas to another in a different form. E.g. by starting a social gathering of some sort.
And even there I feel the reading of material in print is negligible as a proximate cause to inspire that.
>The Nazi party membership reached over 8 million people.
And most had never read Mein Kampf. They were members because their friends were — most Christians have of course also never read a Bible from cover to cover.
>> And even there I feel the reading of material in print is negligible
But the written bible needs to exist or the religion will fade out, correct? No one is able to adopt the practices of the Minoan religion. The Minoan religion is dead since their people have gone and they didn't write much, if anything, down and no one can accurately choose to adopt their beliefs.
>> most Christians have of course also never read a Bible
Why differentiate between them reading and them being read to by a pastor for example? What's the difference?
Christian churches often choose to host bible classes, why would they promote use of scripture to further indoctrination if it's not effective? Why would they read to the congregation from the bible?
But the written bible needs to exist or the religion will fade out, correct? No one is able to adopt the practices of the Minoan religion. The Minoan religion is dead since their people have gone and they didn't write much, if anything, down and no one can accurately choose to adopt their beliefs.
>> most Christians have of course also never read a Bible
Why differentiate between them reading and them being read to by a pastor for example? What's the difference?
Christian churches often choose to host bible classes, why would they promote use of scripture to further indoctrination if it's not effective? Why would they read to the congregation from the bible?
> But the written bible needs to exist or the religion will fade out, correct?
By name perhaps, the same ideas will always live on under a different name.
> No one is able to adopt the practices of the Minoan religion. The Minoan religion is dead since their people have gone and they didn't write much, if anything, down and no one can accurately choose to adopt their beliefs.
The practices have lived on under a different name.
> Why differentiate between them reading and them being read to by a pastor for example? What's the difference?
A pastor has also never read the entire Bible to them from cover to cover; most haven't the faintest idea of what is in there.
> Christian churches often choose to host bible classes, why would they promote use of scripture to further indoctrination if it's not effective? Why would they read to the congregation from the bible?
You will find that they tend to omit the passages that are considered controversial, and that would lead to the Bible's potential banning.
By name perhaps, the same ideas will always live on under a different name.
> No one is able to adopt the practices of the Minoan religion. The Minoan religion is dead since their people have gone and they didn't write much, if anything, down and no one can accurately choose to adopt their beliefs.
The practices have lived on under a different name.
> Why differentiate between them reading and them being read to by a pastor for example? What's the difference?
A pastor has also never read the entire Bible to them from cover to cover; most haven't the faintest idea of what is in there.
> Christian churches often choose to host bible classes, why would they promote use of scripture to further indoctrination if it's not effective? Why would they read to the congregation from the bible?
You will find that they tend to omit the passages that are considered controversial, and that would lead to the Bible's potential banning.
>> By name perhaps, the same ideas will always live on under a different name.
No they don’t. My point was we don’t actually know what the minoans believed. If it’s not written down it’s doomed.
>> The practices have lived on under a different name
They haven’t. That was the whole point. We don’t really know what practices they followed.
>> from cover to cover
Why does a written work have to be read from cover to cover in order to convey an idea?
If essential use was made of the written work even in part, your assertion that written works are not important is nullified.
No they don’t. My point was we don’t actually know what the minoans believed. If it’s not written down it’s doomed.
>> The practices have lived on under a different name
They haven’t. That was the whole point. We don’t really know what practices they followed.
>> from cover to cover
Why does a written work have to be read from cover to cover in order to convey an idea?
If essential use was made of the written work even in part, your assertion that written works are not important is nullified.
>No they don’t. My point was we don’t actually know what the minoans believed. If it’s not written down it’s doomed.
If you don't know what they believed, then how would you know whether it lived on under a different name, or not?
If you don't know what they believed, then how would you know whether it lived on under a different name, or not?
> But the written bible needs to exist or the religion will fade out, correct? No one is able to adopt the practices of the Minoan religion. The Minoan religion is dead since their people have gone and they didn't write much, if anything, down and no one can accurately choose to adopt their beliefs.
Despite the extinction of their civilization and our inability to translate their language, we do know quite a bit about minoan religion through the study of artifacts and the accounts of their neighbors. Contemporaneously the Homeric epics were carried on in oral tradition for hundreds of years before the greeks wrote them down. And yet despite ready access to greek mythology you would be hard pressed to find anyone alive today who believes it to be true. The absence of a text does not eliminate the idea it conveys, nor does conveying an idea lead automatically to its adoption.
Despite the extinction of their civilization and our inability to translate their language, we do know quite a bit about minoan religion through the study of artifacts and the accounts of their neighbors. Contemporaneously the Homeric epics were carried on in oral tradition for hundreds of years before the greeks wrote them down. And yet despite ready access to greek mythology you would be hard pressed to find anyone alive today who believes it to be true. The absence of a text does not eliminate the idea it conveys, nor does conveying an idea lead automatically to its adoption.
>> we do know quite a bit about minoan religion
No
Dr Jeremy B Rutter:
“ Since Linear A is as yet undeciphered, there is effectively no contemporary textual evidence regarding Minoan religion. Even if Linear A were deciphered, it is unlikely that much information regarding Minoan cult practices, much less Minoan religious ideology, would be forthcoming above and beyond the names of the divinities which the Minoans worshipped.”
— we know basically nothing of their religious practices except that we think they existed based on artifacts found and some reasonable hypothesis.
>> you would be hard pressed to find anyone alive today who believes it
What does belief have to do with whether an idea can be communicated or not? It’s sufficient to be able to say the idea was XXX
No
Dr Jeremy B Rutter:
“ Since Linear A is as yet undeciphered, there is effectively no contemporary textual evidence regarding Minoan religion. Even if Linear A were deciphered, it is unlikely that much information regarding Minoan cult practices, much less Minoan religious ideology, would be forthcoming above and beyond the names of the divinities which the Minoans worshipped.”
— we know basically nothing of their religious practices except that we think they existed based on artifacts found and some reasonable hypothesis.
>> you would be hard pressed to find anyone alive today who believes it
What does belief have to do with whether an idea can be communicated or not? It’s sufficient to be able to say the idea was XXX
> What does belief have to do with whether an idea can be communicated or not? It’s sufficient to be able to say the idea was XXX
What does belief have to do with a religion dying out? Everything!
Without writing, the greeks could get people to carry on their religion. With writing their religion died out. Clearly the spread of ideologies is not as simple as "writing spreads it and the absence of writing kills it."
What does belief have to do with a religion dying out? Everything!
Without writing, the greeks could get people to carry on their religion. With writing their religion died out. Clearly the spread of ideologies is not as simple as "writing spreads it and the absence of writing kills it."
People become readicalized. Nobody s born a die-hard islamist, so yes, making it harder to access radical content is maiing id harder, but not impossible, to become radicalized. Goes for extreme right wing content and other religious extremists as well.
And most news isn't fake, luckily. All news is biased, true, but that doesn't mean it's fake. Which is a big difference. That the press isn't doing itself a lot of favours by being what it is today is also true.
And most news isn't fake, luckily. All news is biased, true, but that doesn't mean it's fake. Which is a big difference. That the press isn't doing itself a lot of favours by being what it is today is also true.
>> And most news isn't fake, luckily
Agreed - poor wording on my part above, i meant specifically islamic terrorist propaganda when i said fake news.
>> making it harder to access radical content is maiing id harder, but not impossible, to become radicalized
Agreed but harder is a good outcome. I'm fine with "better, but not perfect"
Agreed - poor wording on my part above, i meant specifically islamic terrorist propaganda when i said fake news.
>> making it harder to access radical content is maiing id harder, but not impossible, to become radicalized
Agreed but harder is a good outcome. I'm fine with "better, but not perfect"
I think it is telling you specifically mention "Islamic terrorist" twice in your brief comment. It would seem you are OK with censoring that (I agree), but given your very narrow focus, seems you are not OK with banning "terrorist", which is revealing.
Since you took the extra effort to exactly specify what exactly should be censored, under your definition, would you be OK with Anders Breivik's manifesto?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Norway_attacks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik
It is also the problem -- when people want to use censorship as a tool to selectively ban some bad but leave other bad alone. Who decides which bad is bad, and which bad we should conveniently ignore?
Since you took the extra effort to exactly specify what exactly should be censored, under your definition, would you be OK with Anders Breivik's manifesto?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Norway_attacks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik
It is also the problem -- when people want to use censorship as a tool to selectively ban some bad but leave other bad alone. Who decides which bad is bad, and which bad we should conveniently ignore?
> given your very narrow focus
That's an incorrect assumption on your part. As i said originally:
>> There are situations where I’m ok with censorship. One of them is ...
That's an incorrect assumption on your part. As i said originally:
>> There are situations where I’m ok with censorship. One of them is ...
> Most of the censorship cases I can think of have been religious or conservative groups
That's all the Islamists are: a conservative religious group which believes in gun ownership and the use of violence. The difference between the people posting with gun+quran and the people posting with gun+bible is razor-thin.
That's all the Islamists are: a conservative religious group which believes in gun ownership and the use of violence. The difference between the people posting with gun+quran and the people posting with gun+bible is razor-thin.
exactly
That is such a perfect example of ingroup bias in action.
You can label these materials as censorable because you, likely not a follower of islam, believe that material from islamic uploaders talking about a revolution and indoctrination do not belong on your platform.
yet here we are, with thousands of christian, america-first indoctrination videos, calling for an uprising against everything from vaccines to elections. IT IS THE SAME THING.
you do realize this is a "are we the baddies?" situation, no?
You can label these materials as censorable because you, likely not a follower of islam, believe that material from islamic uploaders talking about a revolution and indoctrination do not belong on your platform.
yet here we are, with thousands of christian, america-first indoctrination videos, calling for an uprising against everything from vaccines to elections. IT IS THE SAME THING.
you do realize this is a "are we the baddies?" situation, no?
The problem is that YouTube explicitly promotes "credible and authoritative" news sources, but these are the same sources that tell you:
Case 1: Leaked Podesta emails and CNN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjDLcvOB1og
"It's illegal to possess these stolen documents. It's different for the media. So everything you're learning about this, you're learning from us."
Learning from us, get that?
Numerous legal scholars weighed in on that hot take, just one of the examples.
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/law-prof-smacks-down-cn...
Case 2: Washington Post calls ISIS Leader al-Baghdadi "austere religious scholar"
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/washington-post-headline-abu-...
So here we are, being told by YouTube that sources calling the leader of the world's most vile and brutal organization an "austere religious scholar" and deliberately misinforming public about what they can and cannot read are called "credible and authoritative sources".
When your supposedly single reliable source of truth (the media) is so obviously and shamelessly biased, how can you not question the source of "truth" and those who suppress other viewpoints?
I'm reminded of a seemingly prescient quote from 1999's Alpha Centauri:
https://www.quotes.net/mquote/2347
"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny.
The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"
Case 1: Leaked Podesta emails and CNN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjDLcvOB1og
"It's illegal to possess these stolen documents. It's different for the media. So everything you're learning about this, you're learning from us."
Learning from us, get that?
Numerous legal scholars weighed in on that hot take, just one of the examples.
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/law-prof-smacks-down-cn...
Case 2: Washington Post calls ISIS Leader al-Baghdadi "austere religious scholar"
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/washington-post-headline-abu-...
So here we are, being told by YouTube that sources calling the leader of the world's most vile and brutal organization an "austere religious scholar" and deliberately misinforming public about what they can and cannot read are called "credible and authoritative sources".
When your supposedly single reliable source of truth (the media) is so obviously and shamelessly biased, how can you not question the source of "truth" and those who suppress other viewpoints?
I'm reminded of a seemingly prescient quote from 1999's Alpha Centauri:
https://www.quotes.net/mquote/2347
"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny.
The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"
You should have picked better examples like the censorship of the photos of inside the detention centre used to keep the now-orphaned kids that the US split from their parents at the Mexico border and now can’t find the parents.
Or the US involvement in civilian deaths in Yemen.
Your examples both got proper smack downs. My examples are still censored - you or i have never seen pictures of the conditions the kids are stored in (and if you think you have, double check its authenticity). Would be reporters for the Yemen are suppressed well before there’s any risk of them deciding to just skip mainstream media and post online instead. End result is an information vacuum and we can’t have an informed discussion because neither you nor i knows what’s actually happening.
Or the US involvement in civilian deaths in Yemen.
Your examples both got proper smack downs. My examples are still censored - you or i have never seen pictures of the conditions the kids are stored in (and if you think you have, double check its authenticity). Would be reporters for the Yemen are suppressed well before there’s any risk of them deciding to just skip mainstream media and post online instead. End result is an information vacuum and we can’t have an informed discussion because neither you nor i knows what’s actually happening.
I’d happily scrap that lot too to be fair.
It’s a private company platform, if you don’t like my policies go start another facebook or whatever.
It’s a private company platform, if you don’t like my policies go start another facebook or whatever.
concordDance(3)
Western governments support religious Muslim groups against secular fascists in Syria and people at home complain about religion and conservatives. There is an educational deficit somewhere and these censorship ambitions are not only counter productive for foreign policy issues, they seem to be more of a crave to control a world that isn't understood in the slightest.
If we censor fake news, I am also in favor of censoring you.
If we censor fake news, I am also in favor of censoring you.
The problem is that when a side has no real standing, they'll Gish gallop.
A good example of this is flat earthers or anti vaxxers. They've got no scientific or reasonable leg to stand on, yet they publish so much unscientific garbage as to be garnering support. It will LOOK like they are more credible because the shear amount of garbage they push will go unresponded to by the other side. Meanwhile, they'll just simply ignore the other half of the argument. They refuse to address those points while making a ton of their own.
It gets worse. There's starting to be major bubbles of misinformation forming. So broad that the arguments made are almost impossible for the other side to decode. A great example of this is something like the comet pizza Q anon conspiracy. If you don't know, it goes something like this "A pizzeria in DC was a central location in a pedophile ring which the Clinton's had deep connections to."
Where does a reasonable debate even begin with something like that? It's easy enough to show that "No, that's crazy" Heck, even minimal rational thought should be enough to debunk this garbage. Yet it still flows (so much so that someone decided to show up armed to demand the pizzeria release the kids[1])
Yet, when a debate comes up, all a Q anon follower would pretty much have to say something like "Yeah and I bet you like comet pizza as well". That sort of attack would be devastating in the eyes of those already tuned into Q anon crap yet would be completely reasonable for an outsider to be like "Yeah, I like their pizza".
These techniques are effective which is evidenced by how much misinformation flows throughout the internet. Giving equal time and access to both sides doesn't appear to be effective in combating this misinformation. There's got to be a better way.
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/22/533941689...
A good example of this is flat earthers or anti vaxxers. They've got no scientific or reasonable leg to stand on, yet they publish so much unscientific garbage as to be garnering support. It will LOOK like they are more credible because the shear amount of garbage they push will go unresponded to by the other side. Meanwhile, they'll just simply ignore the other half of the argument. They refuse to address those points while making a ton of their own.
It gets worse. There's starting to be major bubbles of misinformation forming. So broad that the arguments made are almost impossible for the other side to decode. A great example of this is something like the comet pizza Q anon conspiracy. If you don't know, it goes something like this "A pizzeria in DC was a central location in a pedophile ring which the Clinton's had deep connections to."
Where does a reasonable debate even begin with something like that? It's easy enough to show that "No, that's crazy" Heck, even minimal rational thought should be enough to debunk this garbage. Yet it still flows (so much so that someone decided to show up armed to demand the pizzeria release the kids[1])
Yet, when a debate comes up, all a Q anon follower would pretty much have to say something like "Yeah and I bet you like comet pizza as well". That sort of attack would be devastating in the eyes of those already tuned into Q anon crap yet would be completely reasonable for an outsider to be like "Yeah, I like their pizza".
These techniques are effective which is evidenced by how much misinformation flows throughout the internet. Giving equal time and access to both sides doesn't appear to be effective in combating this misinformation. There's got to be a better way.
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/22/533941689...
Yeah. The way I've been thinking about it lately as like the "pigeon playing chess"... He just knocks over your pieces and declares victory. A confluence of factors has led us to a point where a scary number of people side with the pigeon. And that is how democracy is eroded.
I think the full analogy is something akin to "He'll knock over all the pieces, shit on the board, and strut around like he won." Which is quite the mental image and fits perfectly.
If you're not that good or interested in chess, the pigeon appears to be clearly winning.
This is such an incredibly apt comment.
"Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience." ― Mark Twain
That is why I never argue with Mark Twain.
We have an attention economy and you only hear about anti-vaxxers from people that like to distinguish themselves against the most basic fantasies. Grow some standards and it will solve itself.
Well actually Epstein's tropical island was a central location in a pedophile ring which the Clinton's had deep connections to. All they got wrong was the location.
> A good example of this is [...] anti vaxxers. They've got no scientific or reasonable leg to stand on
You should read up on the Leicester Method.
I have no opinion one way or the other, but it seems to me, that rather than malleable minds being "influenced" by propaganda, it is a natural reaction to being "told" what to think.
Pro vaccine advocates, come across much the same as modern atheists, or rust users - vehemently proselytising their views, with little regard to the fears, concerns, or opinions of others. This naturally rubs people the wrong way, especially if one is predisposed to contrarianism.
You should read up on the Leicester Method.
I have no opinion one way or the other, but it seems to me, that rather than malleable minds being "influenced" by propaganda, it is a natural reaction to being "told" what to think.
Pro vaccine advocates, come across much the same as modern atheists, or rust users - vehemently proselytising their views, with little regard to the fears, concerns, or opinions of others. This naturally rubs people the wrong way, especially if one is predisposed to contrarianism.
I've been on the internet for 23 years and I have never been forced to watch an anti-vaxxer's video. Your theory that by producing lots of videos they subvert lots of people is simply wrong.
It's the same fallacy as with the "Russian Bots" election conspiracy. Just because you can create lots of content, doesn't mean you can make people watch it.
It's the same fallacy as with the "Russian Bots" election conspiracy. Just because you can create lots of content, doesn't mean you can make people watch it.
I'm afraid I'm not as optimistic as you. What Russia correctly worked out is that, if you can create the requisite content, you WILL get people to watch it, just statistically. And because you're (indirectly) feeding it with a coherent, directed intention, including specific elements like 'the Russian Bots people are talking about don't exist and anybody saying so is a loony', you can get your bubble of alternate information to grow and serve useful purposes (useful to you: NOT necessarily useful to the people you're using to fill your bubble)
You absolutely can make people watch it, even side with it passionately to where they'll burn through their friends requiring loyalty to the information bubble. It's a matter of statistics, and directing the contents of the information bubble with reasonable effectiveness. It's a bit like nuclear fusion: sort of 'wait, these lumps of metal do THAT?!?'
Yes, in fact they do. And, yes, you can direct HUMANITY to whatever ends you like, including 'The USA should be torn to bits by civil war please, so it is no longer a rival superpower'. Plenty of people out there would find that useful, wouldn't even have to be exceptionally short-sighted. Mind you, it's still damn reckless even if it is not absolutely short-sighted.
You absolutely can make people watch it, even side with it passionately to where they'll burn through their friends requiring loyalty to the information bubble. It's a matter of statistics, and directing the contents of the information bubble with reasonable effectiveness. It's a bit like nuclear fusion: sort of 'wait, these lumps of metal do THAT?!?'
Yes, in fact they do. And, yes, you can direct HUMANITY to whatever ends you like, including 'The USA should be torn to bits by civil war please, so it is no longer a rival superpower'. Plenty of people out there would find that useful, wouldn't even have to be exceptionally short-sighted. Mind you, it's still damn reckless even if it is not absolutely short-sighted.
I'm not sure you decided to use weasel words on purpose. There's a colossal difference between "being forced to watch" propaganda and being exposed to it.
I'm not forced to open phishing emails but sometimes I do by accident or carelessness. I'm also not forced to open links someone close or not happen to send my way. I'm not forced to read weird facts-denying delusional rants on social media but sometimes I stumble upon it while scrolling around a main page.
Given the unlimited torrent of propaganda and manipulated content that we are exposed constantly and is designed precisely to control you to serve the manipulator's goals, what should we do?
Hell, just open a tab with any of the facts-denying extremist media channels that currently plague the US. Do you believe they are preaching to fishes, or that there are people exposed and manipulated by it?
I'm not forced to open phishing emails but sometimes I do by accident or carelessness. I'm also not forced to open links someone close or not happen to send my way. I'm not forced to read weird facts-denying delusional rants on social media but sometimes I stumble upon it while scrolling around a main page.
Given the unlimited torrent of propaganda and manipulated content that we are exposed constantly and is designed precisely to control you to serve the manipulator's goals, what should we do?
Hell, just open a tab with any of the facts-denying extremist media channels that currently plague the US. Do you believe they are preaching to fishes, or that there are people exposed and manipulated by it?
Not weasel words - are you saying if you were exposed to anti-vaxxer videos, you would become an anti-vaxxer? It should be obvious to you how ridiculous that assumption is.
This is just hand-wavy fearmongering about "mass psychology"
This is just hand-wavy fearmongering about "mass psychology"
Yet that is exactly how propaganda and mis-information works.
How exactly do you think antivaxers became antivaxers? They weren’t born like that, they were exposed to propaganda and eventually fell for it.
I know several wonderful, educated and otherwise reasonable people, who have fallen for antivaxing, antimask, covid-is-a-lie conspiracies. This includes two teachers in the public school system. The same people who are supposed to teach critical thinking to the next generation. Think about what that means for a moment.
Propaganda works. Stopping propaganda, highlighting “fake news”, debunking conspiracies, and teaching critical thinking is essential.
How exactly do you think antivaxers became antivaxers? They weren’t born like that, they were exposed to propaganda and eventually fell for it.
I know several wonderful, educated and otherwise reasonable people, who have fallen for antivaxing, antimask, covid-is-a-lie conspiracies. This includes two teachers in the public school system. The same people who are supposed to teach critical thinking to the next generation. Think about what that means for a moment.
Propaganda works. Stopping propaganda, highlighting “fake news”, debunking conspiracies, and teaching critical thinking is essential.
"antivaxing, antimask, covid-is-a-lie conspiracies"
You are mixing things together that don't belong together. Covid is very new and scientific discussion is still ongoing. There is no consensus. Anti-vaxxers are about tried and proven vaccines they don't trust.
I think as with other things (like religion), people get mostly "infected" by their peer group. Also there are certain aspects that make memes prevail, like fear and protectiveness of one's own children in the case of vaccines. It's not simply a matter of exposure to YouTube videos.
You are mixing things together that don't belong together. Covid is very new and scientific discussion is still ongoing. There is no consensus. Anti-vaxxers are about tried and proven vaccines they don't trust.
I think as with other things (like religion), people get mostly "infected" by their peer group. Also there are certain aspects that make memes prevail, like fear and protectiveness of one's own children in the case of vaccines. It's not simply a matter of exposure to YouTube videos.
> You are mixing things together that don't belong together.
But they do belong together, don't they? I mean, they are all under attack by facts-denying militant groups fueled by anti-intellectual propaganda.
> Covid is very new and scientific discussion is still ongoing. There is no consensus.
That's no excuse to intentionally deny facts and information already established on the disease. And no, just because a militant group actively denies and rejects facts that doesn't make them disputed nor does it means there is no consensus.
> It's not simply a matter of exposure to YouTube videos.
This is not about youtube or twitter or sneaker net. This is about people actively disseminating and consuming propaganda and disinformation. The shit is the same even if you switch spoons.
But they do belong together, don't they? I mean, they are all under attack by facts-denying militant groups fueled by anti-intellectual propaganda.
> Covid is very new and scientific discussion is still ongoing. There is no consensus.
That's no excuse to intentionally deny facts and information already established on the disease. And no, just because a militant group actively denies and rejects facts that doesn't make them disputed nor does it means there is no consensus.
> It's not simply a matter of exposure to YouTube videos.
This is not about youtube or twitter or sneaker net. This is about people actively disseminating and consuming propaganda and disinformation. The shit is the same even if you switch spoons.
"But they do belong together, don't they? I mean, they are all under attack by facts-denying militant groups fueled by anti-intellectual propaganda."
No, that is just a strategy of defamation that you fell for. Basically the "Hitler was a vegetarian" argument against vegetarianism. In short, "a person of type x believes y" does not imply "everybody who believes y is a person of type x".
" And no, just because a militant group actively denies and rejects facts that doesn't make them disputed nor does it means there is no consensus."
If you would watch more YouTube, you would be aware that it is not only "militant groups" who argue about aspects of Covid.
"This is about people actively disseminating and consuming propaganda and disinformation."
There are such people on all sides.
No, that is just a strategy of defamation that you fell for. Basically the "Hitler was a vegetarian" argument against vegetarianism. In short, "a person of type x believes y" does not imply "everybody who believes y is a person of type x".
" And no, just because a militant group actively denies and rejects facts that doesn't make them disputed nor does it means there is no consensus."
If you would watch more YouTube, you would be aware that it is not only "militant groups" who argue about aspects of Covid.
"This is about people actively disseminating and consuming propaganda and disinformation."
There are such people on all sides.
I do sports pistol shooting as a hobby. Recommendations have improved recently, but before you never were never further than two clicks away from ISSF championship chronicles to videos by disturbed people with firearms.
And have they turned you into a disturbed person with firearms?
Was that your original point?
There was undeniable steep gradient towards extremism, how it worked on me in particular is irrelevant. It is a numbers game.
There was undeniable steep gradient towards extremism, how it worked on me in particular is irrelevant. It is a numbers game.
What do you mean by "undeniable steep gradient towards extremism" - it was undeniable that more people were becoming extremists via YouTube? I thought that is what we are discussing? Whether YouTube algorithm tries to show you extremism is another question. I am not defending the YouTube algorithm - presumably more extreme things lead to more engagement.
Look at external data. We now have diseases reappearing that were eradicated decades ago. Inside anti-vaxx communities.
Nobody is “forced” to watch a YT video. But if these show up in searches, along with pseudo-scientific articles, pseudo-documentaries on all platforms and actively work on becoming viral, then there is a problem.
Maybe creating a lot of content does not imply that people will watch it, but the reality is that a lot of people do.
Nobody is “forced” to watch a YT video. But if these show up in searches, along with pseudo-scientific articles, pseudo-documentaries on all platforms and actively work on becoming viral, then there is a problem.
Maybe creating a lot of content does not imply that people will watch it, but the reality is that a lot of people do.
Anti-vaxxing was not started by YouTube. Provide the evidence that YouTube has inflated the problem.
And by evidence I don't mean "hit pieces in traditional media that don't like the competition from social media".
And by evidence I don't mean "hit pieces in traditional media that don't like the competition from social media".
True. And I don't have evidence that it has inflated the problem beyond anecdata. That said I don't think it's reaching to believe it has.
Anti-vaxx movement was started by a bogus publication from a then reputable source. It was blown up by ease of information spread and exacerbated by the undermined confidence in traditional media. That much is known.
Anti-vaxx movement was started by a bogus publication from a then reputable source. It was blown up by ease of information spread and exacerbated by the undermined confidence in traditional media. That much is known.
I think the vaccine story has specific aspects for why it spread, not simply YouTube exposure. It provides good anecdotes, because many people get vaccinated and many people get randomly sick. So almost everybody knows an anecdote from somebody who got severely sick after vaccination.
It takes basic knowledge of statistics to verify that those things are just random correlations, not causation (show that incidence of certain afflictions (like autism) is the same among vaccinated and non-vaccinated people). That is what the memes feed from. I don't think censoring would help much here, especially as most people know such stories personally. I don't know people directly, but I know people who know people who got sick after vaccination. I suspect many others do, too.
Granted, anecdotes spread especially well on Social Media. It works the other way round, too. Have you heard a story of somebody who almost died, or died, from Covid, despite being young and healthy? Such incidents are very rare, but since they get shared a lot, one such personal report may be shared by thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people. every one of them now feels like they "know" somebody who died from Covid despite of being young and healthy.
Should such stories also be banned, to ease the psychological burden (fear) on billions of people?
It takes basic knowledge of statistics to verify that those things are just random correlations, not causation (show that incidence of certain afflictions (like autism) is the same among vaccinated and non-vaccinated people). That is what the memes feed from. I don't think censoring would help much here, especially as most people know such stories personally. I don't know people directly, but I know people who know people who got sick after vaccination. I suspect many others do, too.
Granted, anecdotes spread especially well on Social Media. It works the other way round, too. Have you heard a story of somebody who almost died, or died, from Covid, despite being young and healthy? Such incidents are very rare, but since they get shared a lot, one such personal report may be shared by thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people. every one of them now feels like they "know" somebody who died from Covid despite of being young and healthy.
Should such stories also be banned, to ease the psychological burden (fear) on billions of people?
> Should such stories also be banned, to ease the psychological burden (fear) on billions of people?
No, they are clearly different. One encourages dangerous behaviour for yourself and more importantly others around you, the other does not. This is also there is not much talk about banning flat earth or moon landing conspiracies out of social media.
No, they are clearly different. One encourages dangerous behaviour for yourself and more importantly others around you, the other does not. This is also there is not much talk about banning flat earth or moon landing conspiracies out of social media.
Your assumption that the fear does no harm is wrong.
Maybe not from them, een if you get your fair share of recommendations (at least I do), but certainly about them. And that is attention for anti-vaxxers as well. The moment traditional media stops being after clicks and treating reporting like entertainment will be a very big step in the right direction, so.
> The problem is that when a side has no real standing, they'll Gish gallop. A good example of this is flat earthers or anti vaxxers. They've got no scientific or reasonable leg to stand on....
> Where does a reasonable debate even begin with something like that?
Observe how your mind is drawn to the very most egregious examples of conspiracy theories, and conspiracy theorists, and then expands that into your conceptualization of the whole. Also observe your sense of omniscience ("They've got no scientific or reasonable leg to stand on...", demonstrating your perception that you've reviewed all the evidence and arguments from the community).
I believe that a reasonable debate first requires that all parties realize and acknowledge the illusory nature of consciousness, and in turn reality. But this seems to be an extremely unpopular idea, so we may be waiting a long time before we can have a reasonable debate.
> Where does a reasonable debate even begin with something like that?
Observe how your mind is drawn to the very most egregious examples of conspiracy theories, and conspiracy theorists, and then expands that into your conceptualization of the whole. Also observe your sense of omniscience ("They've got no scientific or reasonable leg to stand on...", demonstrating your perception that you've reviewed all the evidence and arguments from the community).
I believe that a reasonable debate first requires that all parties realize and acknowledge the illusory nature of consciousness, and in turn reality. But this seems to be an extremely unpopular idea, so we may be waiting a long time before we can have a reasonable debate.
Not who you are replying, but fair points, and there is obviously a really important question at hands, that is trust. No one person can hold all the information, discoveries we have accumulated over the years, so we ultimately rely on the belief that someone we respect is trustworthy.
And the thing to notice here is that even an astrophysicist can only BELIEVE that gravity exists, when asked even though they could most probably prove it if needed.
With these things aside, the both sides mentality stops being applicable at a certain point. While one side can show you thousands of evidence that a certain cure does work, the other side shows one questionable example of it not working and it is enough for their believers. So as to answer the specific case with antivaxxers: I will not engage with such an argument because they in fact have no scientific leg to stand on automatically. For to have any meaningful debate, we would have to talk about a specific vaccine that may or may not be safe. If we have such a strong statement (in a mathematical sense) that ALL instance of something is a given property, is ought to not be true in a mathematical sense - and without understanding probabilities there is no point in arguing.
With these things aside, the both sides mentality stops being applicable at a certain point. While one side can show you thousands of evidence that a certain cure does work, the other side shows one questionable example of it not working and it is enough for their believers. So as to answer the specific case with antivaxxers: I will not engage with such an argument because they in fact have no scientific leg to stand on automatically. For to have any meaningful debate, we would have to talk about a specific vaccine that may or may not be safe. If we have such a strong statement (in a mathematical sense) that ALL instance of something is a given property, is ought to not be true in a mathematical sense - and without understanding probabilities there is no point in arguing.
> No one person can hold all the information, discoveries we have accumulated over the years, so we ultimately rely on the belief that someone we respect is trustworthy.
Agreed. However:
a) it is not necessary to accept these beliefs as epistemically flawless
b) it is possible (and useful) to be consciously aware that we have done this (as opposed to holding the perception that we know(!) these things)
> With these things aside, the both sides mentality stops being applicable at a certain point.
I'm not sure, so I will ask for clarification: do you believe I have asserted that both sides are equal, at the object level? I am pointing out their similarity at the abstract, neurological level, although perhaps that is lost in translation (but the more explicit one is, it seems the more offense is often taken)
> While one side can show you thousands of evidence that a certain cure does work, the other side shows one questionable example of it not working and it is enough for their believers
How confident are you that this belief is accurate? You realize that it is an intuitive belief, at least now that I point it out, right? (And I do not mean this in a snarky way, I mean it literally, and seriously, for reasons that may not be obvious).
> So as to answer the specific case with antivaxxers: I will not engage with such an argument because they in fact have no scientific leg to stand on automatically.
This suggests omniscience, on at least two levels. (I do not intend this in a snarky way either.)
> For to have any meaningful debate, we would have to talk about a specific vaccine that may or may not be safe.
There is no shortage of anti-vaxxers willing to have that conversation. Finding one that genuinely knows what they are talking about, that is another matter, but there are some very well read people among all the idiots.
> If we have such a strong statement (in a mathematical sense) that ALL instance of something is a given property, is ought to not be true in a mathematical sense - and without understanding probabilities [and epistemology] there is no point in arguing.
Does this apply to both sides of the disagreement? :)
I believe that a big part of the problem here (and the numerous other culture war arguments that are currently raging out of control) is that people tend to approach/discuss the issues from a strict object level perspective, and also that both parties tend to not be mindful that such discussions are fundamentally a neurological process, and therefore subject to all the flaws and fallacies inherent in any such undertaking (which seem to be heavily amplified in discussions that are indeterminate, and culture war based) [1].
I believe that if people really cared about optimizing outcomes on these issues as much as they proclaim/self-perceive that they do, they would be willing to take the steps that are necessary to do so, or at least consider the ideas. But alas, it seems to be a bit of an intractable, recursive/coordination problem. Maybe things will get better in 2021 - one should never give up hope!
[1] For example, if you go looking for it specifically, can you spot any omniscience (lack of self-awareness) in this thread (both in the noted anecdotes, as well as in the conversation itself)?: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25385833
Agreed. However:
a) it is not necessary to accept these beliefs as epistemically flawless
b) it is possible (and useful) to be consciously aware that we have done this (as opposed to holding the perception that we know(!) these things)
> With these things aside, the both sides mentality stops being applicable at a certain point.
I'm not sure, so I will ask for clarification: do you believe I have asserted that both sides are equal, at the object level? I am pointing out their similarity at the abstract, neurological level, although perhaps that is lost in translation (but the more explicit one is, it seems the more offense is often taken)
> While one side can show you thousands of evidence that a certain cure does work, the other side shows one questionable example of it not working and it is enough for their believers
How confident are you that this belief is accurate? You realize that it is an intuitive belief, at least now that I point it out, right? (And I do not mean this in a snarky way, I mean it literally, and seriously, for reasons that may not be obvious).
> So as to answer the specific case with antivaxxers: I will not engage with such an argument because they in fact have no scientific leg to stand on automatically.
This suggests omniscience, on at least two levels. (I do not intend this in a snarky way either.)
> For to have any meaningful debate, we would have to talk about a specific vaccine that may or may not be safe.
There is no shortage of anti-vaxxers willing to have that conversation. Finding one that genuinely knows what they are talking about, that is another matter, but there are some very well read people among all the idiots.
> If we have such a strong statement (in a mathematical sense) that ALL instance of something is a given property, is ought to not be true in a mathematical sense - and without understanding probabilities [and epistemology] there is no point in arguing.
Does this apply to both sides of the disagreement? :)
I believe that a big part of the problem here (and the numerous other culture war arguments that are currently raging out of control) is that people tend to approach/discuss the issues from a strict object level perspective, and also that both parties tend to not be mindful that such discussions are fundamentally a neurological process, and therefore subject to all the flaws and fallacies inherent in any such undertaking (which seem to be heavily amplified in discussions that are indeterminate, and culture war based) [1].
I believe that if people really cared about optimizing outcomes on these issues as much as they proclaim/self-perceive that they do, they would be willing to take the steps that are necessary to do so, or at least consider the ideas. But alas, it seems to be a bit of an intractable, recursive/coordination problem. Maybe things will get better in 2021 - one should never give up hope!
[1] For example, if you go looking for it specifically, can you spot any omniscience (lack of self-awareness) in this thread (both in the noted anecdotes, as well as in the conversation itself)?: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25385833
In this context that has been done. No attempt was made to block court cases brought up about the incident and everyone has been talking about the claims made since the election happened over a month ago.
Algorithmic sharing causes misinformation bubbles to grow in a way that has never before been seen.
Why do we need to ignore this effect and let it run its natural course? We know what happens. Flat earthers and anti vaxxers and now millions of illegal ballots.
They even explicitly allowed the discussion during the counting process and afterwards as court cases were brought forward.
Algorithmic sharing causes misinformation bubbles to grow in a way that has never before been seen.
Why do we need to ignore this effect and let it run its natural course? We know what happens. Flat earthers and anti vaxxers and now millions of illegal ballots.
They even explicitly allowed the discussion during the counting process and afterwards as court cases were brought forward.
prucomaclu(4)
Is youtube really the arena to dispute the election claims? The courts are the proper arena for this and Trump and company have had ample opportunity to use those.
They did and were dismissed. Why? Because had no damn evidence for their claims. They are now trying to cancel millions of mail in votes. I’ve never seen anything more coward, tactless and boorish than the people supporting this whole charade. I am completely and unequivocally disgusted by these people who would rather burn everything down than acknowledge loss
Affidavits are evidence.
Are you simply implying the affidavits are all lying and want to cut short the ruling?
Are you simply implying the affidavits are all lying and want to cut short the ruling?
Affidavits are not evidence if you never submit them. Rudy Giuliani has been going around having people signing affidavits that he never subits to court as evidence (they would then be subject to perjury laws). I can't believe this tactic is fooling some literate people.
No court has let them submit evidence. Maybe SCOTUS will maybe not. Don't act like they have had a chance to submit evidence yet.
Do you seriously believe that the courts are simply not letting the Trump team make their case? That they tried to submit evidence but they couldn't?
You really need to evaluate your news sources.
In Pennsylvania Rudy Giuliani said in court that there was no fraud when he was questioned in the slightest about his claim of widespread voter fraud.
“this is not a fraud case.”
Of course, they failed to provide evidence too, not even any of those affidavits.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/giuliani-pennsylvani...
You really need to evaluate your news sources.
In Pennsylvania Rudy Giuliani said in court that there was no fraud when he was questioned in the slightest about his claim of widespread voter fraud.
“this is not a fraud case.”
Of course, they failed to provide evidence too, not even any of those affidavits.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/giuliani-pennsylvani...
Affidavits are not evidence until they're presented to a court. There has been no evidence.
Those Affidavits might not yet be evidence according to the legal definition, but they certainly are according to the common usage definition and the bayesian definition. Which are the relevant definitions in this thread.
This appears to be some sort of "technicality" narrative that's being used to quickly and without effort/discussion dismiss the election fraud claims arising from the witness affidavits. The affidavits exist, representing people that claim to have witnessed certain things.
So in a reasonable society with good discourse, we should be saying "wow, that looks serious, so many people claim they witnessed crimes." followed by "let's all do our best to get these infront of a court/judge, or get the government entities investigating it so they can be resolved/dismissed formally".
Instead, we get information suppression/dismissal on the part of Youtube and news outlets, and internet lawyers dismissing things because "it hasn't gone in front of a court yet". Come on man, let's solve this and either dismiss them fully or get them investigated. Otherwise we're just perpetuating "conspiracy theories" and then turning around and complaining about how half the population believes in conspiracy theories.
So in a reasonable society with good discourse, we should be saying "wow, that looks serious, so many people claim they witnessed crimes." followed by "let's all do our best to get these infront of a court/judge, or get the government entities investigating it so they can be resolved/dismissed formally".
Instead, we get information suppression/dismissal on the part of Youtube and news outlets, and internet lawyers dismissing things because "it hasn't gone in front of a court yet". Come on man, let's solve this and either dismiss them fully or get them investigated. Otherwise we're just perpetuating "conspiracy theories" and then turning around and complaining about how half the population believes in conspiracy theories.
Stop. Just stop.
There have been dozens of cases submitted to various courts.
Those courts evaluated the evidence presented and dismissed the cases out of hand. What do you think the court does when it dismisses a case? Do you think it just randomly chooses cases to dismiss?
Don't pretend that hasn't happened. Don't conflate what is playing out in the media and what has happened in the court system.
There have been dozens of cases submitted to various courts.
Those courts evaluated the evidence presented and dismissed the cases out of hand. What do you think the court does when it dismisses a case? Do you think it just randomly chooses cases to dismiss?
Don't pretend that hasn't happened. Don't conflate what is playing out in the media and what has happened in the court system.
Most of these dismissals have come before evidence is considered. There are dozens of reasons to dismiss cases without considering evidence.
There is a bucket load of evidence that shows election irregularities and failures of election staff to follow laws, but that does not mean there is enough evidence to prove the Trump campaign's allegations in court.
Also, a lot of the cases getting bounced are seeking emergency relief which often requires a higher standard of proof/evidence which is usually hard to come up with before discovery.
Also, even if the allegations are proven, there may not be a legal remedy that a court is willing to offer -- this can be grounds for early dismissal too. If you ask for something the court thinks it cannot offer, case dismissed no matter what the evidence is. Often if legal remedy is unavailable courts will point to the electoral process as the remedy.
There is a bucket load of evidence that shows election irregularities and failures of election staff to follow laws, but that does not mean there is enough evidence to prove the Trump campaign's allegations in court.
Also, a lot of the cases getting bounced are seeking emergency relief which often requires a higher standard of proof/evidence which is usually hard to come up with before discovery.
Also, even if the allegations are proven, there may not be a legal remedy that a court is willing to offer -- this can be grounds for early dismissal too. If you ask for something the court thinks it cannot offer, case dismissed no matter what the evidence is. Often if legal remedy is unavailable courts will point to the electoral process as the remedy.
So who am I supposed to argue with here? The other guy that said "affidavits aren't evidence because they haven't been submitted to courts", or you that say that "things have been submitted to various courts and dismissed". Which one is it?
Either way, I'm not going to stop arguing for reasonable discourse and getting to the bottom of things.
Either way, I'm not going to stop arguing for reasonable discourse and getting to the bottom of things.
Why can't both be true?
The "other guy" said this: Affidavits are not evidence until they're presented to a court. [emphasis mine]
There have been so many court cases tossed out (50+ if some accounts are to be believed, but that's just hearsay) , one of two things has to be happening:
1) The affidavits never made their way into court as evidence, likely because the plaintiff lawyers didn't want to put them forward as such, or
2) The affidavits were presented in court as evidence and got discounted because they're too weak as evidence
But the common thread appears to be that these "affidavits" don't stand up to any strong scrutiny, and amount to "random person alleges they saw fraud happen", which then quickly changes to "random person alleges they believe they saw fraud, but couldn't state for sure" when under penalty of perjury.
The "other guy" said this: Affidavits are not evidence until they're presented to a court. [emphasis mine]
There have been so many court cases tossed out (50+ if some accounts are to be believed, but that's just hearsay) , one of two things has to be happening:
1) The affidavits never made their way into court as evidence, likely because the plaintiff lawyers didn't want to put them forward as such, or
2) The affidavits were presented in court as evidence and got discounted because they're too weak as evidence
But the common thread appears to be that these "affidavits" don't stand up to any strong scrutiny, and amount to "random person alleges they saw fraud happen", which then quickly changes to "random person alleges they believe they saw fraud, but couldn't state for sure" when under penalty of perjury.
Both of these are true.
There are affidavits. They have not be submitted to courts. But this is not because Trump and friends have been prevented from doing so. Instead they have chosen not to submit this material. So cases have been tossed for lack of any factual evidence. These affidavits are reasonably declared "not evidence" because when offered the chance to get a court to look at them the legal team has instead skipped it.
There are affidavits. They have not be submitted to courts. But this is not because Trump and friends have been prevented from doing so. Instead they have chosen not to submit this material. So cases have been tossed for lack of any factual evidence. These affidavits are reasonably declared "not evidence" because when offered the chance to get a court to look at them the legal team has instead skipped it.
Are you saying nobody should report about the claims? Only the courts, nobody else should here about it?
Reporting about it on YouTube does not mean it will be decided on YouTube.
Reporting about it on YouTube does not mean it will be decided on YouTube.
The problem is in this case “reporting about it” literally means “spreading baseless lies”. Since as others have said we’ve now seen in court that the Trump administration and their cronies had shit.
Furthermore, it’s “spreading baseless lies which also fire up people who are threatening to murder civil servants.”
I don’t know if YouTube deciding to censor itself on this is right or not, but, let’s not censor ourselves. If we are going to discuss this let’s discuss the whole truth of the matter.
Furthermore, it’s “spreading baseless lies which also fire up people who are threatening to murder civil servants.”
I don’t know if YouTube deciding to censor itself on this is right or not, but, let’s not censor ourselves. If we are going to discuss this let’s discuss the whole truth of the matter.
I happen to agree that false balance is a truly profound problem. And I would go so far as to say it's one of a small handful of ideas I wish could be drilled into the head of every consumer of news. I find it to be one of the most underappreciated and incredibly important ideas of the past few decades.
All of that said, this is one of the last places where I think it is a helpful response. The thrust of Russell's quote is about being informed and thinking critically, which you can value without equating it to false balance.
All of that said, this is one of the last places where I think it is a helpful response. The thrust of Russell's quote is about being informed and thinking critically, which you can value without equating it to false balance.
Russell's approach would be (it seems to me) to have school exercises about false balance,
So that the students got harder to manipulate via false balance methods
So that the students got harder to manipulate via false balance methods
> [...] present an issue as being more balanced between opposing viewpoints than the evidence supports.
The idea that some evidence X supports viewpoint Y usually requires some underlying moral assumptions. Many times it's those fundamental moral assumptions that are in discussion, not the evidence itself.
For example: if the scientific evidence is "lockdowns stop the spread of the virus", someone may say: "well, this evidence supports my viewpoint that we should be in permanent lock-down until the virus is completely eradicated". But that starts from the assumption that stopping the spread of the virus is always the most important goal and other considerations (economy, education, etc) should be ignored.
Fake facts are an issue, but once we agree on facts, we're only halfway there, then we need to agree on what to do based on those facts.
The idea that some evidence X supports viewpoint Y usually requires some underlying moral assumptions. Many times it's those fundamental moral assumptions that are in discussion, not the evidence itself.
For example: if the scientific evidence is "lockdowns stop the spread of the virus", someone may say: "well, this evidence supports my viewpoint that we should be in permanent lock-down until the virus is completely eradicated". But that starts from the assumption that stopping the spread of the virus is always the most important goal and other considerations (economy, education, etc) should be ignored.
Fake facts are an issue, but once we agree on facts, we're only halfway there, then we need to agree on what to do based on those facts.
Agreed. There seems to be this assumption among certain partisans that the only reason people disagree with them is because they’ve been lied to. If everyone just knew the truth, then we would obviously be in unanimous agreement on policy etc. First example that comes to mind is the oft-repeated assertion that working class Republican voters have been duped into “voting against their own interests”.
I’m of the opinion that misinformation, while dangerous, is often incorrectly blamed for problems that are really caused by fundamental disagreements in morals and values.
I’m of the opinion that misinformation, while dangerous, is often incorrectly blamed for problems that are really caused by fundamental disagreements in morals and values.
Sabine Hossenfelder has a great quote about this:
> Science tells us what situation we are in and what consequences our actions are likely to have, but it does not tell us what to do. Science does not say you shouldn’t pee on high voltage lines, it says urine is an excellent conductor.
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2020/09/follow-science-nons...
> Science tells us what situation we are in and what consequences our actions are likely to have, but it does not tell us what to do. Science does not say you shouldn’t pee on high voltage lines, it says urine is an excellent conductor.
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2020/09/follow-science-nons...
This isn't a moral assumption this is just simplistic and stupid. Moral assumptions are pretty close to irrelevant in all practical issues, because they're not the simple little checkboxes people put them into for examples.
But then they wouldn't fit in 2 and half sentences and we might actually have an attempt at a reasonable conversation rather then suspiciously starting from the conclusion one side wanted to start with.
But then they wouldn't fit in 2 and half sentences and we might actually have an attempt at a reasonable conversation rather then suspiciously starting from the conclusion one side wanted to start with.
GP's quote implores the reader to do the balancing. When journalists do it (especially poorly) it becomes just another facet of a the publication's/writer's bias.
That's not to say that a good counter argument shouldn't be presented in the article, just that a moral mandate to include both sides often creates that false balance
That's not to say that a good counter argument shouldn't be presented in the article, just that a moral mandate to include both sides often creates that false balance
> When journalists do it (especially poorly) it becomes just another facet of a the publication's/writer's bias.
But that's also why the condemnation of balance is misdirected. Facebook is not a journalist, it's a communications platform. It isn't choosing how to spend its own words in a newspaper with a finite number of pages or a news channel with a finite amount of airtime, it's choosing what other people can say in a medium with effectively unlimited carrying capacity.
It also has a big problem because the platform is simultaneously a medium for the dissemination of information to the public and a medium for the debate of nascent ideas.
Suppose that tomorrow we got a claim of widespread election fraud that could actually be substantiated, given a sufficient amount of crowdsourcing or collaboration between experts in different fields. Now they can't even discuss it because the effort to substantiate it involves putting forth a theory that hasn't been substantiated yet?
But that's also why the condemnation of balance is misdirected. Facebook is not a journalist, it's a communications platform. It isn't choosing how to spend its own words in a newspaper with a finite number of pages or a news channel with a finite amount of airtime, it's choosing what other people can say in a medium with effectively unlimited carrying capacity.
It also has a big problem because the platform is simultaneously a medium for the dissemination of information to the public and a medium for the debate of nascent ideas.
Suppose that tomorrow we got a claim of widespread election fraud that could actually be substantiated, given a sufficient amount of crowdsourcing or collaboration between experts in different fields. Now they can't even discuss it because the effort to substantiate it involves putting forth a theory that hasn't been substantiated yet?
Facebook is not a journalist, it's a communications platform.
That's just mincing words. Facebook is very much a communications platform that determines what its users get to see. In that sense, Facebook exercises editorial control over its content, and to its users it makes no difference whether that control is automated or manual. Therefore it doesn't matter whether we classify Facebook as a "journalist", the damage done by Facebook's editorial control is the same.
That's just mincing words. Facebook is very much a communications platform that determines what its users get to see. In that sense, Facebook exercises editorial control over its content, and to its users it makes no difference whether that control is automated or manual. Therefore it doesn't matter whether we classify Facebook as a "journalist", the damage done by Facebook's editorial control is the same.
> That's just mincing words.
It isn't. A journalist is choosing what they themselves say out of their own mouths. Anybody attributing everything that third party speakers say via Facebook as the official position of Facebook is false.
It isn't. A journalist is choosing what they themselves say out of their own mouths. Anybody attributing everything that third party speakers say via Facebook as the official position of Facebook is false.
Ah, yes... that only works if we are not being actively manipulated.
In ideal world all people would be weighing evidence, try to think logically and appeal to timeless, basic principles.
Unfortunately, the world is not ideal and (what a shocker) half of people have less than 100 IQ.
While it is easy to see through most lies most of the time (the logic just isn't there), the goal is not to fool everybody. It is enough to fool just enough people to sow confusion.
In ideal world all people would be weighing evidence, try to think logically and appeal to timeless, basic principles.
Unfortunately, the world is not ideal and (what a shocker) half of people have less than 100 IQ.
While it is easy to see through most lies most of the time (the logic just isn't there), the goal is not to fool everybody. It is enough to fool just enough people to sow confusion.
[deleted]
An important distinction, granted.
Although my quote rather questions whether there is always something to balance in the first place. If you try to find the middle ground between truth and a blatant, confident lie that was pulled from thin air to sow doubts on that truth, you get a half-lie — or truth casted in doubt, which was exactly what the lie was made for.
Find a fringe case about a dead body voting and you can sow doubts about a whole election. Call out a politician lying once and suddenly it does not matter anymore whether you are lying every day to the casual onlooker.
I am absolutely not sure whether censoring such content is the right answer, but I'm pretty sure providing an open microphone and an uncontrolled echo chamber to narcisstic sociopaths backed by Wall Street interests and foreign bot armies isn't either.
Although my quote rather questions whether there is always something to balance in the first place. If you try to find the middle ground between truth and a blatant, confident lie that was pulled from thin air to sow doubts on that truth, you get a half-lie — or truth casted in doubt, which was exactly what the lie was made for.
Find a fringe case about a dead body voting and you can sow doubts about a whole election. Call out a politician lying once and suddenly it does not matter anymore whether you are lying every day to the casual onlooker.
I am absolutely not sure whether censoring such content is the right answer, but I'm pretty sure providing an open microphone and an uncontrolled echo chamber to narcisstic sociopaths backed by Wall Street interests and foreign bot armies isn't either.
[deleted]
We're inundated with information every day. We don't have enough time in our lifespan to individually process all of that information.
Hence we need a system that naturally filters out the noise and out only input to is to ensure that the system is fair.
Hence we need a system that naturally filters out the noise and out only input to is to ensure that the system is fair.
> We're inundated with information every day. We don't have enough time in our lifespan to individually process all of that information. Hence we need a system that naturally filters out the noise and out only input to is to ensure that the system is fair.
The system you are referring to is called our discerning minds, and it is already in place. By removing any piece of an argument you are removing the ability of a discerning mind to make a sound judgement.
The system you are referring to is called our discerning minds, and it is already in place. By removing any piece of an argument you are removing the ability of a discerning mind to make a sound judgement.
And which part of your discerning mind has the superhuman ability to process and fully investigate every bit of information you run across vying for your attention?
There's a reason why advertisements work, and it goes hand-in-hand on why ads are regulated.
There's a reason why advertisements work, and it goes hand-in-hand on why ads are regulated.
[deleted]
[deleted]
[deleted]
[deleted]
> And which part of your discerning mind has the superhuman ability to process and fully investigate every bit of information you run across vying for your attention?
Good question. Of course, there is no individual human mind capable of such a thing, and so why should such a mind be permitted to decide what the masses get to see?
Good question. Of course, there is no individual human mind capable of such a thing, and so why should such a mind be permitted to decide what the masses get to see?
Why do we need courts anyway when we can use our own discerning sense of vigilante justice?
Individually humans are quite helpless. That's why we build systems to are able allow us to cooperate and tackle problems that are bigger than any one of us.
The justice system, government, private enterprises, the media, etc. We should make sure that all of them are doing their job and weeding out the bad actors accordingly. We then give input to these systems to ensure that operate within their remit.
Individually humans are quite helpless. That's why we build systems to are able allow us to cooperate and tackle problems that are bigger than any one of us.
The justice system, government, private enterprises, the media, etc. We should make sure that all of them are doing their job and weeding out the bad actors accordingly. We then give input to these systems to ensure that operate within their remit.
> Why do we need courts anyway when we can use our own discerning sense of vigilante justice?
You're still talking about humans though, right? Does that system not count as part of "our discerning minds"? What is a jury if not a group of discerning minds?
To be clear, I agree that human systems are necessary (the justice system, military, etc), but when it comes to squelching speech I disagree with that approach. When real people have real concerns and those concerns are silenced by an opposing group, that is oppression plain and simple.
Is satire to be suppressed because it makes exagerrated or nonsensical claims? Where do we draw the line, and who gets to decide when satire crosses the line to become incendiary?
What would be the end goal of your proposed system that filters speech that you consider "noise"? To prevent a tyrant from taking power by spreading false information? The truth is that once we live in a society where free speech is suppressed then we are already living under a tyranny.
You're still talking about humans though, right? Does that system not count as part of "our discerning minds"? What is a jury if not a group of discerning minds?
To be clear, I agree that human systems are necessary (the justice system, military, etc), but when it comes to squelching speech I disagree with that approach. When real people have real concerns and those concerns are silenced by an opposing group, that is oppression plain and simple.
Is satire to be suppressed because it makes exagerrated or nonsensical claims? Where do we draw the line, and who gets to decide when satire crosses the line to become incendiary?
What would be the end goal of your proposed system that filters speech that you consider "noise"? To prevent a tyrant from taking power by spreading false information? The truth is that once we live in a society where free speech is suppressed then we are already living under a tyranny.
> Is satire to be suppressed because it makes exagerrated or nonsensical claims? Where do we draw the line, and who gets to decide when satire crosses the line to become incendiary?
Deciding what to publish is itself a system to disseminate information.
Free press and free speech doesn't mean you can force other people to publish your speech. It just means that government is not allowed to suppress it.
>What would be the end goal of your proposed system that filters speech that you consider "noise"? To prevent a tyrant from taking power by spreading false information? The truth is that once we live in a society where free speech is suppressed then we are already living under a tyranny.
Don't use silly slippery slope arguments. The US already has limits on speech that directly cause harm to others.
Deciding what to publish is itself a system to disseminate information.
Free press and free speech doesn't mean you can force other people to publish your speech. It just means that government is not allowed to suppress it.
>What would be the end goal of your proposed system that filters speech that you consider "noise"? To prevent a tyrant from taking power by spreading false information? The truth is that once we live in a society where free speech is suppressed then we are already living under a tyranny.
Don't use silly slippery slope arguments. The US already has limits on speech that directly cause harm to others.
> Free press and free speech doesn't mean you can force other people to publish your speech. It just means that government is not allowed to suppress it.
That's a fair point. This has been an interesting exchange. I'm still not sure if we've actually been agreeing with eachother without realizing it (due to me misinterpreting your meaning), but I've enjoyed the discussion. It's helpful to talk about this sort of thing if for nothing else than to reaffirm our own positions. I appreciate that you came back to the conversation to continue the engagement over the course of nearly a week, like a long game of chess. Your argument did cause me to reassess my own positions in a few cases, and that alone made the exchange worthwhile.
That's a fair point. This has been an interesting exchange. I'm still not sure if we've actually been agreeing with eachother without realizing it (due to me misinterpreting your meaning), but I've enjoyed the discussion. It's helpful to talk about this sort of thing if for nothing else than to reaffirm our own positions. I appreciate that you came back to the conversation to continue the engagement over the course of nearly a week, like a long game of chess. Your argument did cause me to reassess my own positions in a few cases, and that alone made the exchange worthwhile.
Allowing governments and corporations to be that filter is incredibly dangerous given how much the interests of those institutions and individuals can diverge from yours.
Though admittedly, it might not be much worse than the current system (the interests of news orgs definitely diverge from yours).
Though admittedly, it might not be much worse than the current system (the interests of news orgs definitely diverge from yours).
Government has certain duties, but the media should absolutely be held to certain standards by the public. We (as in the public) can't just allow media outlets to spout lies completely contrary to the truth. Free speech is protection from government interference. But the public absolutely should be able to seek redress from bad media, including those that facilitate bad actors.
"False balance" is irrelevant to Russell's point above. He would be the first to explain that the average of two false statements is not necessarily true. The referenced "inference as to what really happened" does not proceed by the method you assume it to do. Indeed, the false-balance problem, where it occurs, is merely another way in which his maxim, "everything in newspapers is more or less untrue" is realized!
What needs to be emphasized, because most people misunderstand it (evidence: all the comments around here): The problematic thing is _false_ balance, that is, making a show of representing both sides while actually doing a crappy job for one side. _Real_ balance is something to strive for. False balance might be equally bad or worse than just representing one side. But a properly balanced article is far preferrable to both. And the right approach to fixing false balance is not to remove one viewpoint, but to add arguments, evidence and (if nothing else is available) trustworthy opinions.
Also, balance doesn't mean that a reader will go away with a feeling of "this issue is 50-50, might as well throw a coin to decide". Balance in this case should mean that the writer has put a similar amount of effort into understanding and representing both sides. And if the writer happens to lean towards one side and naturally know more about it, that means making up for that inherent bias.
Also, balance doesn't mean that a reader will go away with a feeling of "this issue is 50-50, might as well throw a coin to decide". Balance in this case should mean that the writer has put a similar amount of effort into understanding and representing both sides. And if the writer happens to lean towards one side and naturally know more about it, that means making up for that inherent bias.
False balance is to pretend that there is a actually another side to the debate. climate-change denial, Trump's election delusion.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance
Yes, balancing an interview with an astronomer by bringing in an astrologer -- or a alchemist with a chemist.
I have recently seen two people attacked on Twitter for being balanced and not wanting to take the extreme point of view. I don't think it's healthy to polarize the talk so much.
Not clear to me why false balance is even a thing. It's the job of a paper in its reporting to report things, not to influence opinion. Implicit in "Bothsidesism" is the notion that a paper should have an interest in the direction of influence it provides. That's against the interest of "news" (in the literal sense of the word) and the general proliferation of reported facts. I suppose I'm several decades too late with this take.
Especially as only one side is attacked for not covering "both sides fairly". While the other side is fine for doing the exact opposite. Same goes for stuff like climate change ("Greta took a plane", "Greta has someone writing her speeches", "The guy wote a book, he only wants to sell it"...). That's simply dishonest, and that moderates are even considering taking these arguments into account is simply beyond me.
Singlow isn't talking about blind both-sidism, though, they're talking about skeptical reading of both (or many!) sides to zero in on the truth.
People say this like they think they're correct. If it turned out they were wrong, you can bet they'd be the first to demand the censure of anything that went against their careful constructed narrative
That wasn't a suggestion for bothsidesim though?
It was a suggestion to actually read articles from both sides.
Not read one article badly providing 1.25 sides.
It was a suggestion to actually read articles from both sides.
Not read one article badly providing 1.25 sides.
How about Covid-19 Pfizer or Moderna vaccine? Can we discuss that? Or we have to accept that it is great because it is great?
Is it allowed to cite Pfizer that in the III tests phase it applied vaccine or placebo to 43 000 people out of which 170 developed COVID-19 - 162 in placebo group and 8 among those vaccinated.
On that base vaccine producer claim that they achieved 95% effectiveness. Can we doubt that number because of the small number of people who developed disease? Is that fact somehow proves that Covid is not that infectious as people thought? And so on.
Should we believe Swiss regulator who refused to accept vaccine? Or maybe Swiss regulator did that since some Swiss company is working on the vaccine?
Can we ask if taking vaccine makes someone non-spreader of the virus? Can we ask if it was tested on older people, people who take a lot of other medicines (like many older people do)? Is seems that people with allergies (what?) should not take vaccine. Was this even testes?
There are many pros and cons and doubts, the evidences is one thing, the conclusions might be different.
Same with election case. Was there at least one case when we have a prove that election result was manipulated? I think at least one can be found. Why can't this be discussed?
Is it allowed to cite Pfizer that in the III tests phase it applied vaccine or placebo to 43 000 people out of which 170 developed COVID-19 - 162 in placebo group and 8 among those vaccinated.
On that base vaccine producer claim that they achieved 95% effectiveness. Can we doubt that number because of the small number of people who developed disease? Is that fact somehow proves that Covid is not that infectious as people thought? And so on.
Should we believe Swiss regulator who refused to accept vaccine? Or maybe Swiss regulator did that since some Swiss company is working on the vaccine?
Can we ask if taking vaccine makes someone non-spreader of the virus? Can we ask if it was tested on older people, people who take a lot of other medicines (like many older people do)? Is seems that people with allergies (what?) should not take vaccine. Was this even testes?
There are many pros and cons and doubts, the evidences is one thing, the conclusions might be different.
Same with election case. Was there at least one case when we have a prove that election result was manipulated? I think at least one can be found. Why can't this be discussed?
Remember the Russian election manipulation? I firmly believe any doubt would have been censored because it didn't align with the narrative for which there was zero evidence in the end. Indeed, this was a false balance as it was political propaganda for a party to safe face and explain defeat.
This Wikipedia article is bad and it should be removed as it doesn't do anything to further knowledge and the message of the sources was daringly misinterpreted and would not constitute anything different than the anecdote I mentioned in the first paragraph.
The article is hostile to thought, thoroughness and honesty at the same time, that is only topped by the shallow word creation that is "bothsidesism", which should constitute assault if written down in earnest.
This Wikipedia article is bad and it should be removed as it doesn't do anything to further knowledge and the message of the sources was daringly misinterpreted and would not constitute anything different than the anecdote I mentioned in the first paragraph.
The article is hostile to thought, thoroughness and honesty at the same time, that is only topped by the shallow word creation that is "bothsidesism", which should constitute assault if written down in earnest.
Was there really zero evidence of Russian manipulation?
There was nothing. Would you think a suppression of doubt about the accusation should be removed?
> There was nothing.
That wasn't my understanding and that's the reason I'm poking at this a bit. To see if I was mistaken and to what extent. The other replies seem to be confirming my feeling that "nothing" is at the very least an overstatement.
That wasn't my understanding and that's the reason I'm poking at this a bit. To see if I was mistaken and to what extent. The other replies seem to be confirming my feeling that "nothing" is at the very least an overstatement.
There is 5 volumes (!) worth of evidence, collected by the (bipartisan) Senate Intelligence Committee, showing that Russia did actively influence the 2016 election. What hasn’t been proven is collusion between Trump and Russia.
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/publications/report-sele...
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/publications/report-sele...
Of effective Russian manipulation? Yes.
Of any real collaboration between Trump and the Russians? Yep.
(I means it's not technically zero evidence as there's evidence of most things, including flat eartherism, it's just tiny compared to the counterevidence or even the complexity penalty)
Of any real collaboration between Trump and the Russians? Yep.
(I means it's not technically zero evidence as there's evidence of most things, including flat eartherism, it's just tiny compared to the counterevidence or even the complexity penalty)
OK. So you think there was attempted manipulation but it had little effect?
> Of any real collaboration between Trump and the Russians? (emphasis mine)
There seems to be a caveat here. Could you clarify what you think the evidence did show of contact between the two parties?
(EDIT - unusual as it is on this topic I am trying to ask genuine questions and test my own assumptions here. I'm hoping I can learn something)
> Of any real collaboration between Trump and the Russians? (emphasis mine)
There seems to be a caveat here. Could you clarify what you think the evidence did show of contact between the two parties?
(EDIT - unusual as it is on this topic I am trying to ask genuine questions and test my own assumptions here. I'm hoping I can learn something)
He wrote that nearly 100 years ago. With an additional century's experience, I think it's clearer that teaching media literacy just isn't enough.
One reason is the bullshit asymmetry principal: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it." Another is that liars get a lot more practice in selling their lie than people do in analyzing and refuting a particular lie. A third is that people who live on their lies usually have a much stronger incentive; if I blow $10 on a stupid purchase due to lying ads, I'm out $10, but the liar is making a living. And that's before we even get to the asymmetry in mass communication, where a liar can reach millions. Or the modern micro-targeting era, where lies can be tuned to the audience and hidden from debunkers. Or the way the whole idea of truth can be weakened by authoritarian behavior and mass disinformation.
So we really can't expect individuals to keep up on their own. As much as I love cynical skepticism, it's not enough these days.
One reason is the bullshit asymmetry principal: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it." Another is that liars get a lot more practice in selling their lie than people do in analyzing and refuting a particular lie. A third is that people who live on their lies usually have a much stronger incentive; if I blow $10 on a stupid purchase due to lying ads, I'm out $10, but the liar is making a living. And that's before we even get to the asymmetry in mass communication, where a liar can reach millions. Or the modern micro-targeting era, where lies can be tuned to the audience and hidden from debunkers. Or the way the whole idea of truth can be weakened by authoritarian behavior and mass disinformation.
So we really can't expect individuals to keep up on their own. As much as I love cynical skepticism, it's not enough these days.
Respectfully disagree.
> media literacy just isn't enough
How would we know? It's not really taught. As you pointed out later, it's not just "media literacy," it's "thinking for yourself," "critical thinking," "skepticism," "reasoning."
Very little of that is taught because the educational institutions who would be responsible for teaching it have curriculums that cannot withstand it.
Hand-waving to students that "u shuld do critical thinking" is not sufficient to actually teach critical thinking.
Also our educational institutions totally ignore the distribution of intelligence in the population. The curriculum is dumbed down to the lowest common denominator which does an incredible disservice to high (or even average) intelligence individuals.
> The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.
This is true, to an extent. But, that's what journalism is supposed to solve. Instead of spending 1000 hours researching some issue as an individual, have 100 journalists spend 10 hours researching it and collaborate on the reporting. Sadly, we have very little actual journalism anymore, which I'll explain next..
> people who live on their lies usually have a much stronger incentive
This, I totally agree with.
Journalism has failed because it was bought out by corporate interests who have a vested interest in a particular narrative. If not through advertising, but by buying the media companies directly. Further, if you give a "journalist" a choice between working for 10 hours to tell the truth or working for 1 hour to tell a lie, getting paid the same amount either way, the outcome is obvious.
Moreover, declining educational standards, and especially lack of critical thinking skills, has led to a deadening of the public palette. The market is not incentivizing actual journalism because objectivity is hard, opposes too many special interests, and the public (at large) doesn't have a taste for it.
The only takeaway from this ought to be obvious. We can't rely on the institutions and corporations who created this problem to solve it. Clearly they're leading us to "thought police" and censorship. I think, however, the lights should be turned on and the public at large should get a crash course in critical thinking.
> media literacy just isn't enough
How would we know? It's not really taught. As you pointed out later, it's not just "media literacy," it's "thinking for yourself," "critical thinking," "skepticism," "reasoning."
Very little of that is taught because the educational institutions who would be responsible for teaching it have curriculums that cannot withstand it.
Hand-waving to students that "u shuld do critical thinking" is not sufficient to actually teach critical thinking.
Also our educational institutions totally ignore the distribution of intelligence in the population. The curriculum is dumbed down to the lowest common denominator which does an incredible disservice to high (or even average) intelligence individuals.
> The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.
This is true, to an extent. But, that's what journalism is supposed to solve. Instead of spending 1000 hours researching some issue as an individual, have 100 journalists spend 10 hours researching it and collaborate on the reporting. Sadly, we have very little actual journalism anymore, which I'll explain next..
> people who live on their lies usually have a much stronger incentive
This, I totally agree with.
Journalism has failed because it was bought out by corporate interests who have a vested interest in a particular narrative. If not through advertising, but by buying the media companies directly. Further, if you give a "journalist" a choice between working for 10 hours to tell the truth or working for 1 hour to tell a lie, getting paid the same amount either way, the outcome is obvious.
Moreover, declining educational standards, and especially lack of critical thinking skills, has led to a deadening of the public palette. The market is not incentivizing actual journalism because objectivity is hard, opposes too many special interests, and the public (at large) doesn't have a taste for it.
The only takeaway from this ought to be obvious. We can't rely on the institutions and corporations who created this problem to solve it. Clearly they're leading us to "thought police" and censorship. I think, however, the lights should be turned on and the public at large should get a crash course in critical thinking.
> It's not really taught.
Critical reading of sources is part of the German high school curriculum, introduced around 8th grade; it is kept up until the end, and most people seem to come out none the wiser.
I think we regularly overestimate the role rational thought plays in people's decisions and opinions. It's not nearly enough to make rational appeals or offer factual evidence to convince people of anything.
Critical reading of sources is part of the German high school curriculum, introduced around 8th grade; it is kept up until the end, and most people seem to come out none the wiser.
I think we regularly overestimate the role rational thought plays in people's decisions and opinions. It's not nearly enough to make rational appeals or offer factual evidence to convince people of anything.
Recall that around 20% only reach a Hauptschulabschluss (or the equivalent in their state), where critical reading takes a back seat to just reading. A few percent don't finish secondary education at all.
Here[1] for example are the learning goals for Berlin. Assessing the quality of an informational text and weighing the arguments is skill level G and H (page 27). This is explicitly not a goal for these students.
[1] https://bildungsserver.berlin-brandenburg.de/fileadmin/bbb/u...
Here[1] for example are the learning goals for Berlin. Assessing the quality of an informational text and weighing the arguments is skill level G and H (page 27). This is explicitly not a goal for these students.
[1] https://bildungsserver.berlin-brandenburg.de/fileadmin/bbb/u...
Critical reading in the german curriculum is far from unbiased in the selection of topics: Should we have the death penalty? Of course not, arguing otherwise will get you a bad grade. What about the yellow-press? Universally bad of course, Katharina Blum is required reading. Religion? All are nice and equally fine, criticizing religion is a nono and "fear of god" is an aim of all education mandated by the constitution. So please read Nathan der Weise critically and regurgitate what the official comment says. Do we need a military? Of course not, why would you want to invade Poland again? Workers rights? Good and well, but compromise is necessary for the good of the economy and society. Except in the case of teachers, as state officials they always get a bad deal supposedly...
I've come to see "critical reading" to be just a furtherance of the teachers' and the states' biases and aims by means of a more sophisticated cloak. You are supposed to be able to fake a little critical thinking, but arrive at the predetermined conclusions. Don't rock the boat, stay inside the lines, but do this little hand-wringing ritual so you don't seem like an unsophisticated sheep.
I've come to see "critical reading" to be just a furtherance of the teachers' and the states' biases and aims by means of a more sophisticated cloak. You are supposed to be able to fake a little critical thinking, but arrive at the predetermined conclusions. Don't rock the boat, stay inside the lines, but do this little hand-wringing ritual so you don't seem like an unsophisticated sheep.
It would seem that you had a) not the best teachers and b) didn't get it. I had a very left-leaning liberal history and civics teacher, he never argued against the existence of a German military. I was in school when crosses were tossed out of classrooms, that was never a real question, besides a couple of catholic religion teachers.
And why wouldn't all religions be treated equal in a country that guarantees religious freedom? Quite an important lesson to learn, if you ask me. Death penalty? Abolished in Germany, so I don't get your point of arguing for it. That being said, you can. If the arguements are good, it shouldn't impact your grades. If it does, well, grades in German (literature) are highly subjective as well. And try arguing against Catholic dgma in Catholc religion class. Religion calsses are, by the way, mandatory in all (most?) German states, and the church has huge sa in who teaches it.
And why wouldn't all religions be treated equal in a country that guarantees religious freedom? Quite an important lesson to learn, if you ask me. Death penalty? Abolished in Germany, so I don't get your point of arguing for it. That being said, you can. If the arguements are good, it shouldn't impact your grades. If it does, well, grades in German (literature) are highly subjective as well. And try arguing against Catholic dgma in Catholc religion class. Religion calsses are, by the way, mandatory in all (most?) German states, and the church has huge sa in who teaches it.
I'm not sure if I didn't get it or I got it all too well... If you want to educate pupils to be critical, then of course they need to be critical not only in a curriculum-intended classroom setting. They need to be critical in all parts of life, or you've failed in what you wanted to teach them. This also means arguing against catholic dogma in catholic religion class. Every point of view needs to be defended, even the point of view that the teacher and curriculum promotes. Arguing otherwise means that you teach pupils to only be critical on a few select subjects that are politically acceptable to be critical about, like the usual tropes of "human rights in china" or "death penalty in the US". Then you are just teaching the faking of critical thinking and reading, not the actual thing.
Bavaria re-introduced crosses in classrooms several years ago, with very shady arguments.
> "And why wouldn't all religions be treated equal in a country that guarantees religious freedom?" and "Religion calsses are, by the way, mandatory in all (most?) German states, and the church has huge sa in who teaches it."
The notion of religious freedom that you promote and that schools promote explicitly excludes freedom from religion, i.e. Atheism or Agnosticism. Just like forced religious education (couldn't pick ethics as an alternative for lack of teachers, and as soon as ethics was available, noticed that the religion curriculum is literally "dancing and singing" while ethics is hardcore philosophy to keep pupils away from the subject and from any kind of acceptable grades).
Oh, and that the death penalty was abolished is beside the point. If you pick "death penalty" as a subject of discussion, then of course it must be an equally valid outcome of the discussion to be pro death penalty, if the arguments provided weigh more heavily. Changing policy isn't the intent here. Learning to discuss such matters critically is. Which doesn't work if the outcome is predetermined and you will be punished with bad marks for arriving at the "wrong" conclusion.
Bavaria re-introduced crosses in classrooms several years ago, with very shady arguments.
> "And why wouldn't all religions be treated equal in a country that guarantees religious freedom?" and "Religion calsses are, by the way, mandatory in all (most?) German states, and the church has huge sa in who teaches it."
The notion of religious freedom that you promote and that schools promote explicitly excludes freedom from religion, i.e. Atheism or Agnosticism. Just like forced religious education (couldn't pick ethics as an alternative for lack of teachers, and as soon as ethics was available, noticed that the religion curriculum is literally "dancing and singing" while ethics is hardcore philosophy to keep pupils away from the subject and from any kind of acceptable grades).
Oh, and that the death penalty was abolished is beside the point. If you pick "death penalty" as a subject of discussion, then of course it must be an equally valid outcome of the discussion to be pro death penalty, if the arguments provided weigh more heavily. Changing policy isn't the intent here. Learning to discuss such matters critically is. Which doesn't work if the outcome is predetermined and you will be punished with bad marks for arriving at the "wrong" conclusion.
Ethics is a very common alternative, even bavarian countryside schools (source: a friend of ours is teaching English and religion at such a school), upt to the point where they have to mix classes for catholic religion. And ethics is covering much more than just religion (source: bith my childern are in ethics class).
Regarding your last argument, following that logic would include argueing genocide as a solution as well. Which you obviously cannot. There is no way why China's human righs abuses should be tolerated or supported. Tolerated to the degree geopolitical realities dictate, sure. Learning why realities are what they are and why China is doing what they do, of course. Finding arguments supporting their actions for the sake of the argument and "critical thinking" excersise, no way. Same goes for the death penalty.
Regarding your last argument, following that logic would include argueing genocide as a solution as well. Which you obviously cannot. There is no way why China's human righs abuses should be tolerated or supported. Tolerated to the degree geopolitical realities dictate, sure. Learning why realities are what they are and why China is doing what they do, of course. Finding arguments supporting their actions for the sake of the argument and "critical thinking" excersise, no way. Same goes for the death penalty.
Well, but in that case the curriculum is even more screwed up because they picked exercise topics (and death penalty is the classic) that according to your arguments are totally unsuitable. You are arguing to limit critical thinking to the cute "bunnies or butterflies" topics. I would argue that critical thinking is necessary, especially in topics that "hurt". One may leave genocide or cannibalism to the advanced classes, but if a topic isn't the least bit controversial, I would say it is impossible to learn critical thinking.
Lots of people historically considered genocide a solution (and lots still do). So it is very very far from "obvious". If you dismiss such arguments out of hand instead of showing why the strongest versions of them are flawed you will never convince anybody who is not on your side already.
Maybe you just were unlucky with your teachers. I got very good grades multiple times despite disagreeing with my teacher.
> It's not really taught.
It is. This is one of the major outcomes of a strong history curriculum. Interpreting sources and narratives. Every single major university offers a four year degree that is basically nothing but this sort of thing. And engineers consistently yell and scream that it isn't real education.
It is. This is one of the major outcomes of a strong history curriculum. Interpreting sources and narratives. Every single major university offers a four year degree that is basically nothing but this sort of thing. And engineers consistently yell and scream that it isn't real education.
That's a fair point, however we don't reach university until after 12 years of compulsory state-run education in the U.S.
By that time, many developmental windows have been missed, a persons personality is already solidified.
University is too late for these fundamentals, which IMHO ought to be taught in primary school. I think we horribly underestimate the ability of children to do this. Which I attribute to the assembly-line education that appeals to the lowest common denominator.
By that time, many developmental windows have been missed, a persons personality is already solidified.
University is too late for these fundamentals, which IMHO ought to be taught in primary school. I think we horribly underestimate the ability of children to do this. Which I attribute to the assembly-line education that appeals to the lowest common denominator.
> University is too late for these fundamentals, which IMHO ought to be taught in primary school.
There are so many fundamentals that are skipped throughout compulsory education. Stuff like basic taxes and home economics and labour law, which is the kind of stuff we all have to endure throughout our lives.
School is not designed from the point of view of the citizen. It's designed from the point of view of the elites running the nation.
There are so many fundamentals that are skipped throughout compulsory education. Stuff like basic taxes and home economics and labour law, which is the kind of stuff we all have to endure throughout our lives.
School is not designed from the point of view of the citizen. It's designed from the point of view of the elites running the nation.
I'd add that the UK history curriculum taught us about interpreting sources from the age of 11. Which also goes to show that teaching has its limits.
(I'm not sure how much this has been eroded since 2010 by the Gove reforms aimed at teaching history as chronology)
(I'm not sure how much this has been eroded since 2010 by the Gove reforms aimed at teaching history as chronology)
It shouldn’t take 4 years to learn those skills though. Just the fundamentals of identifying what the biases of the authors and institutions are is something that should be taught for a year in high school.
It’s not complex and doesn’t require 4 years of classes, but it does require practice and it’s better to start early before you develop a bunch of political views and ideological blind spots.
It’s not complex and doesn’t require 4 years of classes, but it does require practice and it’s better to start early before you develop a bunch of political views and ideological blind spots.
> It shouldn’t take 4 years to learn those skills though.
No skill is binary. You can learn some of this in a single class. You get more practice if you take two dozen classes. You get even more practice if it is your profession.
Quality humanities education teaches empathy and the ability to analyze and judge sources created by humans, especially written text. That can absolutely happen at an earlier age. I'm certainly on board with increasing the amount of history education offered to high schoolers, though I suspect that many people are not.
No skill is binary. You can learn some of this in a single class. You get more practice if you take two dozen classes. You get even more practice if it is your profession.
Quality humanities education teaches empathy and the ability to analyze and judge sources created by humans, especially written text. That can absolutely happen at an earlier age. I'm certainly on board with increasing the amount of history education offered to high schoolers, though I suspect that many people are not.
I would posit that 4 years is way too long and much of that 4 years is too much inward facing bullshit based on a huge pile of flawed science (social psychology).
My friends that went down the 4 year history/literature path appear to be just as susceptible to spreading biased bullshit full of logical fallacies on social media as anyone else.
My friends that went down the 4 year history/literature path appear to be just as susceptible to spreading biased bullshit full of logical fallacies on social media as anyone else.
> How would we know [media literacy isn’t enough]? It's not really taught. As you pointed out later, it's not just "media literacy," it's "thinking for yourself," "critical thinking," "skepticism," "reasoning."
While I also think it is true that we do a terrible job in general of educating people to think critically, it is not simply a failure of education—or at least, not in the traditional sense of “if you just force knowledge into someone, they will understand it”. I feel like there is real merit to the idea that media literacy may not be enough to save us from the firehose of the internet. Human brains are reckless and love to engage in motivated reasoning, filtering, and other cognitive distortions to protect us from information that threatens our core values.
I’ve known engineers with impeccable critical thinking and reasoning skills—but only when they were programming. On other matters, where any sort of emotional or value judgment was involved, they would uncritically accept false information which meshed with their belief of how the world is. For example, someone once told me that they didn’t think that vaccination actually caused the decline in measles rates because the MMR vaccine wasn’t developed until after infections started going down. OK, great, valid reasoning, except their next thought should’ve been that maybe there was a different measles vaccine that came first (because there was). They didn’t go there, though, because they have a deeply held belief that vaccines are bad/scary, and their brain conveniently suppressed the critical thinking process that might’ve lead them to need to reevaluate their position.
You might argue that this person doesn’t have “true” critical thinking skills, and maybe that’s true, but I also know that I tell myself stories and avoid seeking out contradictory evidence in order to protect some of my most deeply held beliefs—even though truth and honesty are what I value above all else. Some cows are just too sacred.
> Journalism has failed because it was bought out by corporate interests who have a vested interest in a particular narrative.
I feel like this is a reductive answer to a very complex problem. I think you’re spot on that the market is not incentivising high quality reporting, but there are many factors at play beyond “journalists got bought out” and “educational standards are bad”. There are so many diverse interests who don’t want people to think critically, including a lot of ordinary people! It’s hard to think critically all of the time. The world is unfathomably complex. You and I may be hanging on, just barely, thanks to genetic and/or socioeconomic lotteries giving us slightly better hands in life. Most people don’t have those advantages and are highly motivated to pound reality into an uncomplicated place where there are only two distinct genders, or all cops are bastards, or it’s all the mainstream media’s fault, or we can save the planet from global warming by just planting a trillion trees, or whatever. There’s no one single source of this quagmire, and no One Simple Trick that will solve it.
While I also think it is true that we do a terrible job in general of educating people to think critically, it is not simply a failure of education—or at least, not in the traditional sense of “if you just force knowledge into someone, they will understand it”. I feel like there is real merit to the idea that media literacy may not be enough to save us from the firehose of the internet. Human brains are reckless and love to engage in motivated reasoning, filtering, and other cognitive distortions to protect us from information that threatens our core values.
I’ve known engineers with impeccable critical thinking and reasoning skills—but only when they were programming. On other matters, where any sort of emotional or value judgment was involved, they would uncritically accept false information which meshed with their belief of how the world is. For example, someone once told me that they didn’t think that vaccination actually caused the decline in measles rates because the MMR vaccine wasn’t developed until after infections started going down. OK, great, valid reasoning, except their next thought should’ve been that maybe there was a different measles vaccine that came first (because there was). They didn’t go there, though, because they have a deeply held belief that vaccines are bad/scary, and their brain conveniently suppressed the critical thinking process that might’ve lead them to need to reevaluate their position.
You might argue that this person doesn’t have “true” critical thinking skills, and maybe that’s true, but I also know that I tell myself stories and avoid seeking out contradictory evidence in order to protect some of my most deeply held beliefs—even though truth and honesty are what I value above all else. Some cows are just too sacred.
> Journalism has failed because it was bought out by corporate interests who have a vested interest in a particular narrative.
I feel like this is a reductive answer to a very complex problem. I think you’re spot on that the market is not incentivising high quality reporting, but there are many factors at play beyond “journalists got bought out” and “educational standards are bad”. There are so many diverse interests who don’t want people to think critically, including a lot of ordinary people! It’s hard to think critically all of the time. The world is unfathomably complex. You and I may be hanging on, just barely, thanks to genetic and/or socioeconomic lotteries giving us slightly better hands in life. Most people don’t have those advantages and are highly motivated to pound reality into an uncomplicated place where there are only two distinct genders, or all cops are bastards, or it’s all the mainstream media’s fault, or we can save the planet from global warming by just planting a trillion trees, or whatever. There’s no one single source of this quagmire, and no One Simple Trick that will solve it.
I appreciate your well reasoned response and I totally agree with almost all of it.
> media literacy may not be enough
I would grant that there is an intelligence distribution in the population and the capacity to acquire critical thinking skills is clamped by something that is largely genetic (and somewhat random), not to mention education or experience. Further, people who are on the lower end of the intelligence spectrum need some way of reasoning about the world even without that capacity. They then must rely on more intelligent people to analyze and synthesize a cohesive perspective that will work for them and their level of interpretation. In other words, I agree that objectively it's not enough for everyone. But still, we certainly ought to educate as many people as possible and certainly the capacity of society to manage a consistent cohesive perspective for those people would increase as well.
> Human brains are reckless
This and your following point about engineers compartmentalizing their thinking ability is hard to refute. However I would say two things on the matter.
1. It's a matter of degrees and having a system which optimizes human development (e.g. parenting, family) to leverage as many developmental windows as possible (on an individual basis) would minimize reckless thinking.
2. At scale, a functioning and diverse media with a healthy amount of honest journalism also minimizes the likelihood that reckless thinking would persist for very long.
> this is a reductive answer
True. It's difficult to know what level of interpretation is appropriate in any context. I agree that there are complex issues and forces in play, however I would argue that after a certain point it is necessary to trim the fat and synthesize a cohesive, if not simplistic, perspective. Western civilization is known for it's ability to do that and maintain much of the original value of a thought. I'm not an oncologist, but there is a vested public interest for oncologists to "spread awareness" and educate people about cancer. We typically don't challenge the oncologist when they make an analogy, don't describe cancer with exactly the correct technical terminology, or unpack every individual aspect of cancer in their explanation.
Your point about ordinary people having an incentive to minimize critical thinking is very true and insightful. None of this occurs in a vacuum, and to some extent there is a degree of personal responsibility to be sure. Personally I am less inclined to lay this problem at the feet of an individual, who in my estimation, was sabotaged for generations by corrupted media and educational institutions. However, I will definitely acknowledge the pendulum of moral responsibility swings in both directions.
> There’s no one single source of this quagmire, and no One Simple Trick that will solve it.
This is true in analysis but not in synthesis. Abuse and predation, in particular against children (primarily perpetrated by parents) is the single biggest and impactful source of this quagmire. The One Simple Trick: peaceful parenting.
> media literacy may not be enough
I would grant that there is an intelligence distribution in the population and the capacity to acquire critical thinking skills is clamped by something that is largely genetic (and somewhat random), not to mention education or experience. Further, people who are on the lower end of the intelligence spectrum need some way of reasoning about the world even without that capacity. They then must rely on more intelligent people to analyze and synthesize a cohesive perspective that will work for them and their level of interpretation. In other words, I agree that objectively it's not enough for everyone. But still, we certainly ought to educate as many people as possible and certainly the capacity of society to manage a consistent cohesive perspective for those people would increase as well.
> Human brains are reckless
This and your following point about engineers compartmentalizing their thinking ability is hard to refute. However I would say two things on the matter.
1. It's a matter of degrees and having a system which optimizes human development (e.g. parenting, family) to leverage as many developmental windows as possible (on an individual basis) would minimize reckless thinking.
2. At scale, a functioning and diverse media with a healthy amount of honest journalism also minimizes the likelihood that reckless thinking would persist for very long.
> this is a reductive answer
True. It's difficult to know what level of interpretation is appropriate in any context. I agree that there are complex issues and forces in play, however I would argue that after a certain point it is necessary to trim the fat and synthesize a cohesive, if not simplistic, perspective. Western civilization is known for it's ability to do that and maintain much of the original value of a thought. I'm not an oncologist, but there is a vested public interest for oncologists to "spread awareness" and educate people about cancer. We typically don't challenge the oncologist when they make an analogy, don't describe cancer with exactly the correct technical terminology, or unpack every individual aspect of cancer in their explanation.
Your point about ordinary people having an incentive to minimize critical thinking is very true and insightful. None of this occurs in a vacuum, and to some extent there is a degree of personal responsibility to be sure. Personally I am less inclined to lay this problem at the feet of an individual, who in my estimation, was sabotaged for generations by corrupted media and educational institutions. However, I will definitely acknowledge the pendulum of moral responsibility swings in both directions.
> There’s no one single source of this quagmire, and no One Simple Trick that will solve it.
This is true in analysis but not in synthesis. Abuse and predation, in particular against children (primarily perpetrated by parents) is the single biggest and impactful source of this quagmire. The One Simple Trick: peaceful parenting.
> uncomplicated place where there are only two distinct genders, or all cops are bastards, or it’s all the mainstream media’s fault, or we can save the planet from global warming by just planting a trillion trees, or whatever
Or where everyone is created equal and there are no important differences between races and sexes. Where their political opponents are all evil and stupid. Where different government systems (representative democracy? Monarchy? Whatever the CCP is?) are obviously horrible. Where weird new ideas are destined to fail or have already been tried and found to fail (like reusable rockets, Musk was far from the first person to think it might be a good idea).
Or where everyone is created equal and there are no important differences between races and sexes. Where their political opponents are all evil and stupid. Where different government systems (representative democracy? Monarchy? Whatever the CCP is?) are obviously horrible. Where weird new ideas are destined to fail or have already been tried and found to fail (like reusable rockets, Musk was far from the first person to think it might be a good idea).
> Or the way the whole idea of truth can be weakened by authoritarian behavior and mass disinformation.
So... YouTube. YouTube is the arbiter of truth we should accept?
Does that sound any less creepy to you? That a handful of people whose management is headquartered in a few zip codes in San Francisco can determine what people are allowed to talk about?
So... YouTube. YouTube is the arbiter of truth we should accept?
Does that sound any less creepy to you? That a handful of people whose management is headquartered in a few zip codes in San Francisco can determine what people are allowed to talk about?
No, the courts are the arbiter of truth we should accept. And since many of these videos are alleging things that multiple court cases (including the US Supreme Court) have already thoroughly debunked, Youtube should not be getting flak for removing the content.
No common sense and reason are the arbiter of truth we should accept. I'm not convinced that corporations are people my friend.
I don't think YouTube has to be the arbiter of truth. Or of what people are allowed to talk about. But I think they definitely should be the arbiter of what they're comfortable supporting on their platform. As you're proving right now, they are far from the only platform.
Should twitter remove posts like this? https://twitter.com/Timcast/status/1337043496230932483
"Four people who received Pfizer's vaccine developed Bell's palsy, a form of temporary facial paralysis"
The trouble is, this one's a bit different than a slippery slope argument. We'll have to decide whether we want to allow fringe news at all.
If YouTube announced tomorrow that they would ban opposition to the new vaccine, would that feel as comfortable?
"Four people who received Pfizer's vaccine developed Bell's palsy, a form of temporary facial paralysis"
The trouble is, this one's a bit different than a slippery slope argument. We'll have to decide whether we want to allow fringe news at all.
If YouTube announced tomorrow that they would ban opposition to the new vaccine, would that feel as comfortable?
I think it's a reasonable choice for a platform to label, deamplify, or even ban content that is both clearly false and clearly dangerous. Do you think that tweet is both false and dangerous?
I think it's probably false. I don't think information is dangerous, no.
Do you think people should be able to make up their own minds? Unfortunately, all of those actions you mention run contrary to that premise.
Do you think people should be able to make up their own minds? Unfortunately, all of those actions you mention run contrary to that premise.
I think that's a pretty bad way to frame it.
E.g., look at medical licensing. One could oppose it, on the grounds that people should be able to make up their own minds as to whether somebody is competent to perform surgery on them. Saying that a person can't call themselves a medical doctor is just denying them freedom of speech! Who is the government to come between private parties! Etc, etc.
But in practice that would lead to incredible harm for little gain. I think individual freedom is an important value, but not the only one, and that real-world concerns require balancing values.
E.g., look at medical licensing. One could oppose it, on the grounds that people should be able to make up their own minds as to whether somebody is competent to perform surgery on them. Saying that a person can't call themselves a medical doctor is just denying them freedom of speech! Who is the government to come between private parties! Etc, etc.
But in practice that would lead to incredible harm for little gain. I think individual freedom is an important value, but not the only one, and that real-world concerns require balancing values.
[deleted]
Here is my heavily biased take. People need to teach analytic philosophy, scientific methodology, logical empiricism, social-psychological dynamics, journalism, jurisprudence, and perhaps a version of initiative (e.g. initiative to try doing journalistic investigation or playing an impartial judge) in middle schools for every student.
I'm not sure if it is too much to ask from folks, but progress doesn't come easy anyway.
I'm not sure if it is too much to ask from folks, but progress doesn't come easy anyway.
Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.
--Bertrand Russell
It's an important skill to independently discern the likely from the unlikely on your own, but any idea repeated often enough becomes "truth", and it's an important function of society to recognize fake truths and purge them.
--Bertrand Russell
It's an important skill to independently discern the likely from the unlikely on your own, but any idea repeated often enough becomes "truth", and it's an important function of society to recognize fake truths and purge them.
"Fake truth" - that hurts my head almost as much as "alternative facts". Maybe this is a term we can keep out of circulation.
You get rid of bad ideas by engaging with them, not by shoving them out of sight.
I don't try to change people irl. If they don't understand in a couple of tries, it's better to ignore them and let them go their merry way. It's not my job to educate tons of willfully ignorant people. Something something, don't fight with a pig, it will drag you down to its own level and win with experience.
How many times. One time? A thousand times? The ideas have been engaged with. At what point can we stop?
> At what point can we stop?
What gave you the idea that there is an end-game? The social dialogue is never ending.
What gave you the idea that there is an end-game? The social dialogue is never ending.
> What gave you the idea that there is an end-game? The social dialogue is never ending.
Then this is a denial-of-service attack. Bad-faith actors can hijack the public conversation forever by simply refusing the budge. The public conversation then becomes a free and indefinite platform for them to spread propaganda, and any attempt to change that is portrayed as a great evil.
Then this is a denial-of-service attack. Bad-faith actors can hijack the public conversation forever by simply refusing the budge. The public conversation then becomes a free and indefinite platform for them to spread propaganda, and any attempt to change that is portrayed as a great evil.
The comment they’re replying to said “get rid of”. That implies an end-game.
You seem rather confident of that. Engaging bad ideas gives them volume, legitimacy, momentum. Sidelining them is a powerful response.
Until you are the one sidelined.
That sounds nice in practice, but in our post-truth, post-evidence world I am not sure what else we can do. It's impossible to dissuade some of these people and many people viewing YouTube are vulnerable to falling for their bullshit.
Great! I will then sideline all your ideas from now on.
You already do.
You can't consume every possible idea. You automatically filter them, most of it subconsciously, just like everyone else.
You can't consume every possible idea. You automatically filter them, most of it subconsciously, just like everyone else.
> You get rid of bad ideas by engaging with them
‘Never feed a troll’
‘Never feed a troll’
Yet we still deal with Holocaust deniers.
Why not? Why does no longer publishing flat earth videos not kill the idea for the most part?
How do you think these critical masses around _specific ideas_ are formed? Qanon isn't a whisper campaign.
A thought experiment: we burn all books about Area 51 alien stuff. The whole myth would probably die along with our generation. There's no more stuff reinforcing it, no large traces. No more grainy photos.
That original quote might work for a general ideology but I don't think it works nearly as well when applied to specific narratives.
(Of course this works in all directions, see the obliteration of socialist movements in the 50s and 60s)
How do you think these critical masses around _specific ideas_ are formed? Qanon isn't a whisper campaign.
A thought experiment: we burn all books about Area 51 alien stuff. The whole myth would probably die along with our generation. There's no more stuff reinforcing it, no large traces. No more grainy photos.
That original quote might work for a general ideology but I don't think it works nearly as well when applied to specific narratives.
(Of course this works in all directions, see the obliteration of socialist movements in the 50s and 60s)
'It's an important skill to independently discern the likely from the unlikely on your own, but any idea repeated often enough becomes "truth", and it's an important function of society to recognize fake truths and purge them.'
Prove that an important function of society is fake truth purging. And define truth. How big are the fake truths, how much damage do they cause, and how expensive is it to disprove them? If a young child claims that the temperature of a hydrogen atom 52 light years away is 0.1K, but in reality it is 0.01K, shall we:
A. censor the child to stop the spread of misinformation B. print 8 billion flyers to correct anyone who may have overheard the child C. put teams of MIT scientists to run experiments to determine the most recent temperature of the atom D. ignore it E. claim it's 0K according to god's will
In a more practical example, most people are probably split between C, D and E. The C people might land on the moon sooner, the E people might be more fulfilled. D is watching their son's soccer game. Who is "right"?
Acquiring the true "truth" has a cost, and that cost may be too high, and until we have a proper document from god detailing the worth of each person, we can't know who should live and who should die. If we don't produce enough food, somebody will starve. Who should starve? Perhaps the person with the highest metabolism, to spare as much food as possible. Perhaps the dumbest, to ensure future generations aren't crippled and the problem gets solved quicker. Perhaps the meanest, to spare future conflict. Or perhaps future conflict is good, to weed out the weak. "Truth" might mean maximizing human potential, which could imply minimizing human "drag". Spray peanut dust in stadiums! Shoot people who wear glasses! Gene edit everyone to be 9 feet tall! Kill everyone and create and feed a world-spanning singular ultra-brain (skynet?), for _IT_ shall determine "truth".
The word "truth" almost has a political bias to it, belonging to the party of science-people. I say that with a straight face as someone familiar and trusting of mathematics. It's great that we can build F-22s and nukes with it, but, maybe we were better off worshipping Zeus. Actually, people are a relatively new thing, and the main spreaders of "lies". Perhaps the universe was "truer" before people came around. Perhaps birthing a child is to "lie".
And what is the endgame? What happens after our perfect system of rationalism solves every known fact and theoretical possibility in the entire universe? Did we win? Is our final score 42?
Truth is a lie.
Prove that an important function of society is fake truth purging. And define truth. How big are the fake truths, how much damage do they cause, and how expensive is it to disprove them? If a young child claims that the temperature of a hydrogen atom 52 light years away is 0.1K, but in reality it is 0.01K, shall we:
A. censor the child to stop the spread of misinformation B. print 8 billion flyers to correct anyone who may have overheard the child C. put teams of MIT scientists to run experiments to determine the most recent temperature of the atom D. ignore it E. claim it's 0K according to god's will
In a more practical example, most people are probably split between C, D and E. The C people might land on the moon sooner, the E people might be more fulfilled. D is watching their son's soccer game. Who is "right"?
Acquiring the true "truth" has a cost, and that cost may be too high, and until we have a proper document from god detailing the worth of each person, we can't know who should live and who should die. If we don't produce enough food, somebody will starve. Who should starve? Perhaps the person with the highest metabolism, to spare as much food as possible. Perhaps the dumbest, to ensure future generations aren't crippled and the problem gets solved quicker. Perhaps the meanest, to spare future conflict. Or perhaps future conflict is good, to weed out the weak. "Truth" might mean maximizing human potential, which could imply minimizing human "drag". Spray peanut dust in stadiums! Shoot people who wear glasses! Gene edit everyone to be 9 feet tall! Kill everyone and create and feed a world-spanning singular ultra-brain (skynet?), for _IT_ shall determine "truth".
The word "truth" almost has a political bias to it, belonging to the party of science-people. I say that with a straight face as someone familiar and trusting of mathematics. It's great that we can build F-22s and nukes with it, but, maybe we were better off worshipping Zeus. Actually, people are a relatively new thing, and the main spreaders of "lies". Perhaps the universe was "truer" before people came around. Perhaps birthing a child is to "lie".
And what is the endgame? What happens after our perfect system of rationalism solves every known fact and theoretical possibility in the entire universe? Did we win? Is our final score 42?
Truth is a lie.
If Trump wills it to be "truth" that he won the election then that will indeed cause a lot of damage. This effort is extremely damaging.
In my 'education', I can't think of a single element of the historical record that was presented through conflicting accounts of contemporary sources. One side is simply labeled as evil and ignored, but, as far as I know, nobody has ever agreed with this characterization of themselves. Evidence too, if at all, was always used to support a narrative account of events, rather than to eliminate possibilities until a particular version of history is proven.
You could never teach a class like this. It would unleash epistemological chaos throughout the school.
You could never teach a class like this. It would unleash epistemological chaos throughout the school.
My public U.S. high school history classes all included conflicting accounts from contemporary sources. Additionally we were several times asked to write position papers from an arbitrarily assigned side, regardless of our own opinions or those of the teacher, using those contemporary sources as a model for the arguments.
I would assume that that level of discourse in a history class is not the most common, but the opposing viewpoints were expressed directly in the textbooks as a standard appendix to each chapter, which were adopted district wide and probably statewide in Texas. This was not a special curriculum that our teachers designed, although they probably expanded on the concept more than most, given that it was a magnet high school.
I would assume that that level of discourse in a history class is not the most common, but the opposing viewpoints were expressed directly in the textbooks as a standard appendix to each chapter, which were adopted district wide and probably statewide in Texas. This was not a special curriculum that our teachers designed, although they probably expanded on the concept more than most, given that it was a magnet high school.
I wish I had a history class like that in high school. I took AP American History and there was a lot of attempt to discuss alternative viewpoints that was constantly shut down as "not being on the test."
Similar story from my high school history education. We had a good focus on historography and understanding the nature of different types of sources.
I feel as though things like this are not valued as they could be in our wider education system, or at least in what society values in the education system.
I feel as though things like this are not valued as they could be in our wider education system, or at least in what society values in the education system.
I believe you are talking mostly about conflicting rhetoric. I’m talking mostly about conflicting accounts of fact. In every level of education, even after the facts changed over time, there was always a canon. This is because history is taught by induction of stories versus deduction of fact. The former is indistinguishable from well-crafted propaganda. The latter is what makes a great defense attorney. But if you look at what history class is all about, it’s the story, which is considered true if it can’t be disproved. We should know that this is logically backward. The burden of proof beyond all plausible alternatives should fall on the storyteller, and in many cases the evidence is sparse enough to support many. And if there are alternative possibilities, the record of our own deceit tells us that we should be less righteous with opinions and more comfortable with uncertainty. For instance, there are entire generations of population labeled as patently stupid or evil for their beliefs and actions, which should induce a stack overflow recursion upon self-reflection.
My history education was mostly one-sided like this in primary school, but not in secondary & post-secondary school. Perhaps the difference is that I wasn't studying in the US, but I don't remember any grave epistemological chaos.
History is full of things that can't be proven. We'll never be able to know for sure if the (battleship) Maine was destroyed by Spanish sabotage or if it was simply a tragic accident. Or take for example, the question "Did Germany start WWI". It sounds like a yes or no question, but the reality is far more complicated. Failure to understand this complication causes real problems (in this case WWII).
edit: removed American sabotage theory regarding the Maine, as it is rather unlikely.
History is full of things that can't be proven. We'll never be able to know for sure if the (battleship) Maine was destroyed by Spanish sabotage or if it was simply a tragic accident. Or take for example, the question "Did Germany start WWI". It sounds like a yes or no question, but the reality is far more complicated. Failure to understand this complication causes real problems (in this case WWII).
edit: removed American sabotage theory regarding the Maine, as it is rather unlikely.
[deleted]
When did your history education end? Because this stuff happens literally constantly once you leave the 100-level undergraduate classes.
Assuming the truth of this, that's exactly the problem. This stuff is something every single person needs to be taught, not just the 1% choosing a history major of the 36% of the people who go to college.
I feel what you’re saying is an exaggeration. In highschool history class we definitely had conflicting viewpoints on the causes and blame for WW1, varying perspectives on the use of gas in warfare, the arguments about the ethics of bombing civilian targets in WW2, and the debates about the necessity and ethics of the conflicts between “western” and communist powers during the Cold War. This hardly unleashed “chaos” - it was an above average but otherwise normal Canadian highschool history class.
> some impartial account of what really happened
We do see students, even at the college level, claiming that the high quality academic writing they are assigned in curricula is "liberal indoctrination". This method does not function because even the most well researched academic study of these topics can be simply rejected out of hand by students who have been fed lies about the very structure of education.
We do see students, even at the college level, claiming that the high quality academic writing they are assigned in curricula is "liberal indoctrination". This method does not function because even the most well researched academic study of these topics can be simply rejected out of hand by students who have been fed lies about the very structure of education.
That’s because, outside certain fields where research can be verified objectively, it very often is a liberal take on whatever is being researched. A vanishingly small number of academics have conservative, or even moderate views. In fields where you can’t objectively analyze the arguments that are being made, liberal assumptions and viewpoints get baked into the research. Even when there is a numeric component, the numbers are viewed from the perspective of liberal assumptions about causation and significance.
I got into an argument the other day with a political science professor about colonization. It was completely unrecognizable to me as someone who is from a former British colony and whose father spent a lifetime working on bread and butter issues affecting the developing world, such as maternal health. (I explained the academic concept of “decolonization” to my father. He thought it was the political process of devolving governance from colonial powers to native governments. I said, no, what they mean by that now is removing colonial influences and culture from the country. My dad’s response was “why the hell would you want to do that?”)
I got into an argument the other day with a political science professor about colonization. It was completely unrecognizable to me as someone who is from a former British colony and whose father spent a lifetime working on bread and butter issues affecting the developing world, such as maternal health. (I explained the academic concept of “decolonization” to my father. He thought it was the political process of devolving governance from colonial powers to native governments. I said, no, what they mean by that now is removing colonial influences and culture from the country. My dad’s response was “why the hell would you want to do that?”)
> That’s because, outside certain fields where research can be verified objectively, it very often is a liberal take on whatever is being researched.
I don't really agree with this, but even if it were true the responses are completely disproportionate. My wife is a historian. Every semester or so she gets a student who outright refuses to do the readings because it is all sjw bullshit and insists on spending class time arguing that slavery was actually super good for africa. And then she needs to deal with this student with kid gloves or they will run to FIRE or whatever. A colleague of hers this semester had a student complain because "the course description didn't say that it would cover women" after a single lecture on subaltern groups.
I don't really agree with this, but even if it were true the responses are completely disproportionate. My wife is a historian. Every semester or so she gets a student who outright refuses to do the readings because it is all sjw bullshit and insists on spending class time arguing that slavery was actually super good for africa. And then she needs to deal with this student with kid gloves or they will run to FIRE or whatever. A colleague of hers this semester had a student complain because "the course description didn't say that it would cover women" after a single lecture on subaltern groups.
[deleted]
The answer, which is surely obvious to a person of your intellect, is that people wish to disentangle themselves from the institutions which gave rise to colonialism in the first place and have perpetuated it in indirect fashion, eg by the reification of private property and the legal infrastructure surrounding its disposition.
That sounds bananas to me, and I've literally never met a Bangladeshi (at least one whose ever lived in Bangladesh) express a view like that. The institutions and laws we inherited from the British are one of the few functioning parts of Bangladesh. When my parents were growing up, school instruction was still in English. That's proven to be a huge leg up in the global economy. And culturally, my mom still cherishes the education she received in classic American, British, and Russian literature.
What would you be left with if you "disentangled" Bangladesh from the "institutions" and "legal infrastructure" of British colonialism? What's left wouldn't be a society fit for modern people. And what's so good about what was there before the British, anyway? The Mughals were colonizers too. I have a Muslim last name despite being born thousands of miles away from the Middle East. How far back do we have to go?
There is a good essay by a Bangladeshi art historian on the subject: https://www.collegeart.org/pdf/programs/international/haque....
> Decolonization, as we call it, is rather a modern phenomenon that has been bubbling up since the late twentieth century. There are calls for decolonizing everything, art history included.
> In the postcolonial condition, the main challenge was to break this cycle or to create a process to rectify these influences. Indeed, such influences either denounced or distorted the precolonial ideas and elements of the society and culture. To many, this is what decolonization is, looking back to precolonial ideas.
> But, where to start? To reshape the curriculum of art education, the first thing needed is literature for the students. The problem is that formal art education was institutionalized here during the British period.
What would you be left with if you "disentangled" Bangladesh from the "institutions" and "legal infrastructure" of British colonialism? What's left wouldn't be a society fit for modern people. And what's so good about what was there before the British, anyway? The Mughals were colonizers too. I have a Muslim last name despite being born thousands of miles away from the Middle East. How far back do we have to go?
There is a good essay by a Bangladeshi art historian on the subject: https://www.collegeart.org/pdf/programs/international/haque....
> Decolonization, as we call it, is rather a modern phenomenon that has been bubbling up since the late twentieth century. There are calls for decolonizing everything, art history included.
> In the postcolonial condition, the main challenge was to break this cycle or to create a process to rectify these influences. Indeed, such influences either denounced or distorted the precolonial ideas and elements of the society and culture. To many, this is what decolonization is, looking back to precolonial ideas.
> But, where to start? To reshape the curriculum of art education, the first thing needed is literature for the students. The problem is that formal art education was institutionalized here during the British period.
As a citizen of Tunisia, a former French colony, I’m going to have to wholeheartedly disagree with you on this :)
Firstly, your experience does not automatically discount the experiences of countless people from the many European colonial projects. Statistically speaking, the fact that you’ve never met a Bangladeshi who disagrees with you tells me more about the company you keep than what Bangladeshis think about colonialism in general.
Secondly, disconnecting from colonialism is a logical continuation of independence, and a form of building a country’s identity. Yes, colonial powers did some good things, but everything they did was ultimately for the benefit of them and the citizens they forced on us. I assure you: had it not made economic sense, they would have burnt everything down when they left. If you do some basic research, you’ll find that many African colonies got the bare minimum of development required to extract resources, simply because the colonizers did not intend their citizens to relocate long term.
Finally, eschewing the colonial past does not mean that you need to throw everything out. Rather, you take control over the narrative: (1) take what benefits you, (2) be proud of your heritage, especially that which your colonizer tried to suppress, (3) throw out the nonsense, and most importantly, (4) explicitly condemn the atrocities and injustices perpetrated by your occupiers. Forgetting and forgiving is not how you build an independent nation; seeking truth and justice is.
Firstly, your experience does not automatically discount the experiences of countless people from the many European colonial projects. Statistically speaking, the fact that you’ve never met a Bangladeshi who disagrees with you tells me more about the company you keep than what Bangladeshis think about colonialism in general.
Secondly, disconnecting from colonialism is a logical continuation of independence, and a form of building a country’s identity. Yes, colonial powers did some good things, but everything they did was ultimately for the benefit of them and the citizens they forced on us. I assure you: had it not made economic sense, they would have burnt everything down when they left. If you do some basic research, you’ll find that many African colonies got the bare minimum of development required to extract resources, simply because the colonizers did not intend their citizens to relocate long term.
Finally, eschewing the colonial past does not mean that you need to throw everything out. Rather, you take control over the narrative: (1) take what benefits you, (2) be proud of your heritage, especially that which your colonizer tried to suppress, (3) throw out the nonsense, and most importantly, (4) explicitly condemn the atrocities and injustices perpetrated by your occupiers. Forgetting and forgiving is not how you build an independent nation; seeking truth and justice is.
> As a citizen of Tunisia, a former French colony
And before that it was controlled by the Ottomans, Muslims, Byzantine Romans, Vandals, Romans, Phoenicians and Berbers. (I may have left some groups out).
Many of these invaders had themselves been previously colonised from elsewhere.
It often seems to me that it’s only the last one or two groups that are demonised, and the atrocities perpetrated by previous generations of colonists are forgotten by those who would construct a new national myth.
And before that it was controlled by the Ottomans, Muslims, Byzantine Romans, Vandals, Romans, Phoenicians and Berbers. (I may have left some groups out).
Many of these invaders had themselves been previously colonised from elsewhere.
It often seems to me that it’s only the last one or two groups that are demonised, and the atrocities perpetrated by previous generations of colonists are forgotten by those who would construct a new national myth.
Well, that’s not really surprising, is it? The more recent the colonizer, the larger the impact felt by the average citizen.
Besides, I think invaders only got more “organized” as time progressed. Brutality and domination are shared across time periods, but the more subtle techniques, such as cultural genocide and historical revisionism, only became effective tools in the invader’s toolbelt relatively recently.
More crucially, thanks to various technological advancements, modern European colonizers were able to steal resources at a scale never before seen in the history of this planet.
Besides, I think invaders only got more “organized” as time progressed. Brutality and domination are shared across time periods, but the more subtle techniques, such as cultural genocide and historical revisionism, only became effective tools in the invader’s toolbelt relatively recently.
More crucially, thanks to various technological advancements, modern European colonizers were able to steal resources at a scale never before seen in the history of this planet.
[deleted]
As a citizen of Morocco, another former French colony, this is pretty absurd. Under the Ottomans, the Caliphates, Rome, and under Berber rule (which is pretty much 99% of people), the Average Tunisian was was more or less equal to anyone else. The land was integrated, and so on
You seem to be missing the distinction between invasion, colonisation, and imperialism. Out of all of those you listed, only one group colonized (read: Settled) Tunisia, which are the Berbers. The others simply invaded. Which, under the feudal system, was not that big of a deal for the average person, and Tunisia was kept to a pretty high degree of development, with an economy focused on trade and production.
This is completely different to Imperial economies based around resource extractions, where you are treated as inherently lesser to the citizen from the Métropole, where people are kept poor on purpose, and where industrial scale massacres were often commited, nowhere even near the scale of anything that came before.
You seem to be missing the distinction between invasion, colonisation, and imperialism. Out of all of those you listed, only one group colonized (read: Settled) Tunisia, which are the Berbers. The others simply invaded. Which, under the feudal system, was not that big of a deal for the average person, and Tunisia was kept to a pretty high degree of development, with an economy focused on trade and production.
This is completely different to Imperial economies based around resource extractions, where you are treated as inherently lesser to the citizen from the Métropole, where people are kept poor on purpose, and where industrial scale massacres were often commited, nowhere even near the scale of anything that came before.
Romans extracted tons of resources and used plenty of people as slaves. Arabs annihilated any culture that was there before and replaced it with islam and a lot of people died in ottoman invasions. What exactly did the French do to your country that was objectively so much worse than what any other invader before them did?
Rome did, but that was par for the course at the time, and Maghrebians were allowed to become full citizens to the point where many became Roman emperors.
The Ottoman invasions didn't actually do that much damage to the Maghreb. It's a place very far away from them. Ottoman conquests of the Maghreb had around 40 000 casualties, many of them not of Algerians but of Ottomans and French/Spanish soldiers.
As for the Caliphate, they certainly did not annihilate any culture before them, and it's incredible to equate culture with Religion. The dominant religions there at the time of their invasion were Christianism and Judaism, which were preserved for a long time and are barely different from Islam, and religion is a tiny aspect of Culture. Their impact on the common person is so small that during Islamic rule the vast majority of people didn't even speak Arabic.
What the French did that was objectively much worse was to create a system where the citizens of the Maghreb were to remain an inferior second class only useful insofar as resources can be stolen forever.
As for colonialism in general, which I should remind you is the point, it caused more deaths than WW2.
The Ottoman invasions didn't actually do that much damage to the Maghreb. It's a place very far away from them. Ottoman conquests of the Maghreb had around 40 000 casualties, many of them not of Algerians but of Ottomans and French/Spanish soldiers.
As for the Caliphate, they certainly did not annihilate any culture before them, and it's incredible to equate culture with Religion. The dominant religions there at the time of their invasion were Christianism and Judaism, which were preserved for a long time and are barely different from Islam, and religion is a tiny aspect of Culture. Their impact on the common person is so small that during Islamic rule the vast majority of people didn't even speak Arabic.
What the French did that was objectively much worse was to create a system where the citizens of the Maghreb were to remain an inferior second class only useful insofar as resources can be stolen forever.
As for colonialism in general, which I should remind you is the point, it caused more deaths than WW2.
You have hand waved away 2 thousand years of conquests of Maghreb as minor infractions. I'm mean it went from carthaginians to romans, vandals, byzantium, arabs, turks. Changed religion, culture and languages several times. You can't seriously believe that this were non violent happy occurences. Before the french even came they already spoke a different language than their ancestors, they prayed to a different god than their ancestors and they had no control over their territories. They were second class citizens even before the french came. I understand how you feel about French occupation and consider it worse because it was not so long ago and is in the nation's living memory. Other colonializations were more complete and successful and therefore part of what Maghreb is today. But objectively they were at least as bad as the french occupation.
The Maghreb followed Abrahamic religion for 1600 years, more or less, actually. The god we prayed to didn't change from Rome, the Vandals, Byzantium, Arabs, and Turks.
The language didn't change either. Most people spoke Berber languages for 2000 years. Even now there are towns where you can't get by with Arabic well.
People of the Maghreb were not second class citizens under Rome. Neither were they under the millenia+ in some places of self-rule.
It's fine if you don't know the difference between pre-modern invasions and colonization, and it's fine if you don't really understand the history of the region, but by god don't use that to justify imperialism which killed tens of millions of people.
In any case, ask yourself this. Why is it that two Africans became emperors of Rome, but that Africans never led modern European powers, nor were even allowed to vote? Ask yourself that, and you will understand the distinction between the two.
Not only that, but almost half of the Maghreb was never even invaded by the Ottomans, and even then it was De Jure, and not De Facto, mostly. Same for the Vandals and the Byzantines.
So no, your analysis is incorrect. Additionally, it's very well known that pre-modern war was much less bloody.
The language didn't change either. Most people spoke Berber languages for 2000 years. Even now there are towns where you can't get by with Arabic well.
People of the Maghreb were not second class citizens under Rome. Neither were they under the millenia+ in some places of self-rule.
It's fine if you don't know the difference between pre-modern invasions and colonization, and it's fine if you don't really understand the history of the region, but by god don't use that to justify imperialism which killed tens of millions of people.
In any case, ask yourself this. Why is it that two Africans became emperors of Rome, but that Africans never led modern European powers, nor were even allowed to vote? Ask yourself that, and you will understand the distinction between the two.
Not only that, but almost half of the Maghreb was never even invaded by the Ottomans, and even then it was De Jure, and not De Facto, mostly. Same for the Vandals and the Byzantines.
So no, your analysis is incorrect. Additionally, it's very well known that pre-modern war was much less bloody.
> Firstly, your experience does not automatically discount the experiences of countless people from the many European colonial projects.
I’m not discounting anything. But I’m skeptical that there are “countless” people who embrace decolonization of the kind which modern academics mean when they use the term. Note that @angibrowl talked about reforming institutions and legal systems and property rights, which is more aggressive than what you refer to below.
> Statistically speaking, the fact that you’ve never met a Bangladeshi who disagrees with you tells me more about the company you keep than what Bangladeshis think about colonialism in general.
It’s not about what you think of colonialism, but about what you want to do going forward. Polls show Bangladeshis are broadly supportive of for example the free market liberal order: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2014/10/09/emerging-and-d...
76% say the country is headed in the right direction under the current basically neoliberal government: https://www.iri.org/sites/default/files/bangladesh_2019_poll...
They like the things that come along with having an Anglo legal system that makes it easy for people to invest in the country. They cite development, the economy, increased living standards, and improved law and order as reasons why they think the country is headed in the right direction. They have high approval rates for the media, parliament, and high court. Their list of top problems is corruption, drugs, unemployment, security, and education.
Reading local news, talking to family, and following politics suggests to me that the problems that people actually care about have little to do with colonial legacy. Indeed, the problem of corruption is widely recognized among Bangladeshis as a cultural shortcoming, not some externally imposed problem.
Now, Bangladesh is quite a nationalist country. The Bangla language movement was a more political force in the mid 20th century and was one of the drivers of independence. At some point, the medium of instruction was changed from English to Bangla at the primary and secondary level. But today, English is taught from the first grade—with the big debate being how to teach it, not how much influence it has on the culture.
> (1) take what benefits you, (2) be proud of your heritage, especially that which your colonizer tried to suppress, (3) throw out the nonsense, and most importantly, (4) explicitly condemn the atrocities and injustices perpetrated by your occupiers. Forgetting and forgiving is not how you build an independent nation; seeking truth and justice is.
I agree with the first three, and strongly disagree with the fourth, at least in the context of my experience. Britain is never going to write Bangladesh a big check. They are a shadow of their former selves and cannot do so anyway. So what’s the point in dwelling on the past? All it does is tint the policy choices you make going forward. How a country shapes it’s institutions, laws, and culture, should rest on what will make the people prosperous going forward. Fixating on what aspects of culture or what laws and institutions were inherited from the colonial power creates a strong impetus to change those things for the sake of asserting the country’s own identity. For example, the Bangladesh High Court still writes its decisions in English and routinely cites decisions of other Anglo courts. That’s a good thing! The Anglo legal system is one of (in my opinion, the) finest in the world and highly suited for participation in the global economy. What are we going to do, replace it with Sharia? That’s what some people want, and that’s the only real alternative.
This is my beef with the academic decolonization literature. It makes your political discourse backwards looking. The article posted above about prosecution of homosexuality is a great example. The article notes that the first ever such prosecutions have happened in 2017. And it blames Victorian legal codes that have been on the books since 1860. But that’s obviously absurd. If those laws have been on the books since 1860, why are they only being enforced now? That’s obviously not what changed. Looking backward and blaming Britain blinds the author to the much more recent trend of fundamentalist Islam being imported from the Middle East.
If you want to talk about how to improve LGBT rights in Bangladesh, is decolonization a useful framework? Should we look back to acceptance of hijra (transgender people) in pre-Islamic Bangladesh? No! When the Indian Supreme Court recently granted recognition to Hijra, it did so by reference to international human rights law, court cases in the UK and Australia, and surveys of legislation in western countries: https://www.lawyerscollective.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04....
I’m not discounting anything. But I’m skeptical that there are “countless” people who embrace decolonization of the kind which modern academics mean when they use the term. Note that @angibrowl talked about reforming institutions and legal systems and property rights, which is more aggressive than what you refer to below.
> Statistically speaking, the fact that you’ve never met a Bangladeshi who disagrees with you tells me more about the company you keep than what Bangladeshis think about colonialism in general.
It’s not about what you think of colonialism, but about what you want to do going forward. Polls show Bangladeshis are broadly supportive of for example the free market liberal order: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2014/10/09/emerging-and-d...
76% say the country is headed in the right direction under the current basically neoliberal government: https://www.iri.org/sites/default/files/bangladesh_2019_poll...
They like the things that come along with having an Anglo legal system that makes it easy for people to invest in the country. They cite development, the economy, increased living standards, and improved law and order as reasons why they think the country is headed in the right direction. They have high approval rates for the media, parliament, and high court. Their list of top problems is corruption, drugs, unemployment, security, and education.
Reading local news, talking to family, and following politics suggests to me that the problems that people actually care about have little to do with colonial legacy. Indeed, the problem of corruption is widely recognized among Bangladeshis as a cultural shortcoming, not some externally imposed problem.
Now, Bangladesh is quite a nationalist country. The Bangla language movement was a more political force in the mid 20th century and was one of the drivers of independence. At some point, the medium of instruction was changed from English to Bangla at the primary and secondary level. But today, English is taught from the first grade—with the big debate being how to teach it, not how much influence it has on the culture.
> (1) take what benefits you, (2) be proud of your heritage, especially that which your colonizer tried to suppress, (3) throw out the nonsense, and most importantly, (4) explicitly condemn the atrocities and injustices perpetrated by your occupiers. Forgetting and forgiving is not how you build an independent nation; seeking truth and justice is.
I agree with the first three, and strongly disagree with the fourth, at least in the context of my experience. Britain is never going to write Bangladesh a big check. They are a shadow of their former selves and cannot do so anyway. So what’s the point in dwelling on the past? All it does is tint the policy choices you make going forward. How a country shapes it’s institutions, laws, and culture, should rest on what will make the people prosperous going forward. Fixating on what aspects of culture or what laws and institutions were inherited from the colonial power creates a strong impetus to change those things for the sake of asserting the country’s own identity. For example, the Bangladesh High Court still writes its decisions in English and routinely cites decisions of other Anglo courts. That’s a good thing! The Anglo legal system is one of (in my opinion, the) finest in the world and highly suited for participation in the global economy. What are we going to do, replace it with Sharia? That’s what some people want, and that’s the only real alternative.
This is my beef with the academic decolonization literature. It makes your political discourse backwards looking. The article posted above about prosecution of homosexuality is a great example. The article notes that the first ever such prosecutions have happened in 2017. And it blames Victorian legal codes that have been on the books since 1860. But that’s obviously absurd. If those laws have been on the books since 1860, why are they only being enforced now? That’s obviously not what changed. Looking backward and blaming Britain blinds the author to the much more recent trend of fundamentalist Islam being imported from the Middle East.
If you want to talk about how to improve LGBT rights in Bangladesh, is decolonization a useful framework? Should we look back to acceptance of hijra (transgender people) in pre-Islamic Bangladesh? No! When the Indian Supreme Court recently granted recognition to Hijra, it did so by reference to international human rights law, court cases in the UK and Australia, and surveys of legislation in western countries: https://www.lawyerscollective.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04....
> If you want to talk about how to improve LGBT rights in Bangladesh, is decolonization a useful framework.
Rhetorically, yes. Pointing out that a law certainly isn't something brought in to protect Bangladeshi values and culture, but a relic of the former colonial powers' values it's now extremely embarrassed by is a useful line of argument. Of course it would be wrong to assume that prejudice against LGBT people in Bangladesh stems primarily from fidelity to the values of Victorian Britons, but when you're arguing against people who insist that those arguing for greater tolerance are importing foreign values to replace what Bangladeshis have always believed, the actual historical context can help.
Rhetorically, yes. Pointing out that a law certainly isn't something brought in to protect Bangladeshi values and culture, but a relic of the former colonial powers' values it's now extremely embarrassed by is a useful line of argument. Of course it would be wrong to assume that prejudice against LGBT people in Bangladesh stems primarily from fidelity to the values of Victorian Britons, but when you're arguing against people who insist that those arguing for greater tolerance are importing foreign values to replace what Bangladeshis have always believed, the actual historical context can help.
It is certainly not for me to tell you how to feel about your home country, but it is not that hard to imagine a version of the past with less colonialism and a better outcome. Consider only Thailand's example as something to think about.
"Disentangling" isn't about throwing things away and being left with nothing, it - I think - is about reevaluating what you have and what you would like through the careful consideration of the colonial legacy. The people with power in a society, even if they are not themselves "colonists" are often served well by the status quo, so a detached examination of these things is often challenging.
I think the waves and waves of "colonialism" are not really relevant to the discussion, the "modern" system of colonialism is a distinct thing, worthy of consideration in isolation and there might very well be some good to come of thinking about it. For me, I am a Canadian so I think of these things in terms of the indigenous peoples of Canada, who have had a lot of success in reclaiming something of an independent identity within Canada but still inside the larger social context. It is not a straightforward thing and it is more important to some people than to others, but it is interesting and has value nonetheless.
"Disentangling" isn't about throwing things away and being left with nothing, it - I think - is about reevaluating what you have and what you would like through the careful consideration of the colonial legacy. The people with power in a society, even if they are not themselves "colonists" are often served well by the status quo, so a detached examination of these things is often challenging.
I think the waves and waves of "colonialism" are not really relevant to the discussion, the "modern" system of colonialism is a distinct thing, worthy of consideration in isolation and there might very well be some good to come of thinking about it. For me, I am a Canadian so I think of these things in terms of the indigenous peoples of Canada, who have had a lot of success in reclaiming something of an independent identity within Canada but still inside the larger social context. It is not a straightforward thing and it is more important to some people than to others, but it is interesting and has value nonetheless.
Exactly. Indigenous people in North America weren't just colonized, their cultures were systematically destroyed. Children were taken away on steamboats to boarding schools, forced into Christianity and beaten if they spoke their native languages. Now the languages are all almost completely dead and the cultures have suffered greatly. It was the explicit goal of the white governments to wipe out native cultures and forcibly assimilate them.
Decolonization is about recovering from that, not about eschewing cars for canoes.
Decolonization is about recovering from that, not about eschewing cars for canoes.
OK, but so what? Bangladesh is not the ne plus ultra of formerly colonialized places. People in other places have developed different ideas from those you adhere to, rooted in their own experiences of colonization, prior views, and outlooks on international affairs. I get it, you prefer the culture you were most recently colonized by to your perception of what existed prior to that, and that's a position I can relate to even if I don't fully share it.
But you're in no position to make that judgement for all other people, and dismissal of their sincerely held and closely argued points of view as 'bananas' is trite and beneath your level of education and accomplishment. And while you may not have met any Bangledeshis who have explored such views, a simple search for 'decolonization Bangladesh' turned up several thought-provoking reads, such as https://www.collegeart.org/pdf/programs/international/haque.... (on conceptions of beauty in art) and https://www.e-ir.info/2019/08/16/decolonising-queer-banglade... (on conceptions of propriety in sexual relations). Perhaps you would find it illuminating to assign yourself the exercise of writing a brief on the topic for an imaginary client whose views differed from your own.
But you're in no position to make that judgement for all other people, and dismissal of their sincerely held and closely argued points of view as 'bananas' is trite and beneath your level of education and accomplishment. And while you may not have met any Bangledeshis who have explored such views, a simple search for 'decolonization Bangladesh' turned up several thought-provoking reads, such as https://www.collegeart.org/pdf/programs/international/haque.... (on conceptions of beauty in art) and https://www.e-ir.info/2019/08/16/decolonising-queer-banglade... (on conceptions of propriety in sexual relations). Perhaps you would find it illuminating to assign yourself the exercise of writing a brief on the topic for an imaginary client whose views differed from your own.
> People in other places have developed different ideas from those you adhere to, rooted in their own experiences of colonization, prior views, and outlooks on international affairs.
Who are these people? Western academic journals and media amplify views that align with those of western academics, so it’s hard to gauge what ordinary people in other countries believe.
In my experience, apart from Britain and the US (alignment with the Anglo world), Bangladeshis look to ideas from the Middle East (alignment with the Muslim world) and socialism (alignment with the Soviet bloc). All of these are imported too. They were embraced not out of a desire to eliminate British influence, but out of the notion that those ideologies were the future. It’s like microkernels-socialism was seen as a scientific government of the future at the time. Today, the country is quite capitalist: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alyssaayres/2014/10/28/banglade...
About two decades ago I read an article from a Middlebury professor advocating Bangladesh to ignore the World Bank embrace what today would be described as economic decolonization. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2001/05/alternative-pro.... (“But there is another way of looking at things, a Gorasin way, one developed closer to home, less despairing and less grandiose at the same time.”).
Luckily these ideas found no purchase, and Bangladesh’s economy grew by a factor of five since that article was published.
> I get it, you prefer the culture you were most recently colonized by to your perception of what existed prior to that, and that's a position I can relate to even if I don't fully share it.
I prefer air conditioning and the rule of law and economic growth. Western culture, I find less relatable over time. Pets, I’ve always found odd. Pop culture attitudes towards marriage and babies and old age, young people talking back to their elders, etc. I find all that curiouser and curiouser as I get older.
> But you're in no position to make that judgement for all other people, and dismissal of their sincerely held and closely argued points of view as 'bananas' is trite and beneath your level of education and accomplishment.
Fair.
> And while you may not have met any Bangledeshis who have explored such views, a simple search for 'decolonization Bangladesh' turned up several thought-provoking reads, such as https://www.collegeart.org/pdf/programs/international/haque.... (on conceptions of beauty in art)
This is the article I linked, and it’s a (judicious and even handed) critique of decolonization ideas. It opens with a Tagore quote:
> Rabindranath Tagore, the great poet-philosopher of Bengal once said, “To taste the beauty of a Greek sculpture or an Italian Renaissance painting, one needs not to be a Greek or an Italian. A painting is actually a painting, not Indian, Ajantan, nothing.”
> https://www.e-ir.info/2019/08/16/decolonising-queer-banglade... (on conceptions of propriety in sexual relations)
This article is extremely disingenuous. While British law may be the statutory basis for prosecuting homosexual behavior, that’s not the reason prosecutions are suddenly happening now. (“On Thursday, 18 May 2017, Bangladesh saw the arrests of men on the alleged basis of their homosexuality for the first time in its history.”). The law has been on the books since 1860. The British are long gone. What changed? Islam—another colonial import. Bangladesh has increasingly aligned itself with the broader Islamic world. When we left in 1989, headscarves were nowhere to be seen. Today they are quite common. The best thing that could happen for LGBT people in Bangladesh is westernization. It’s our western constitution, with due process rights and equality of all under the law, that offer the best hope of protection.
Who are these people? Western academic journals and media amplify views that align with those of western academics, so it’s hard to gauge what ordinary people in other countries believe.
In my experience, apart from Britain and the US (alignment with the Anglo world), Bangladeshis look to ideas from the Middle East (alignment with the Muslim world) and socialism (alignment with the Soviet bloc). All of these are imported too. They were embraced not out of a desire to eliminate British influence, but out of the notion that those ideologies were the future. It’s like microkernels-socialism was seen as a scientific government of the future at the time. Today, the country is quite capitalist: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alyssaayres/2014/10/28/banglade...
About two decades ago I read an article from a Middlebury professor advocating Bangladesh to ignore the World Bank embrace what today would be described as economic decolonization. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2001/05/alternative-pro.... (“But there is another way of looking at things, a Gorasin way, one developed closer to home, less despairing and less grandiose at the same time.”).
Luckily these ideas found no purchase, and Bangladesh’s economy grew by a factor of five since that article was published.
> I get it, you prefer the culture you were most recently colonized by to your perception of what existed prior to that, and that's a position I can relate to even if I don't fully share it.
I prefer air conditioning and the rule of law and economic growth. Western culture, I find less relatable over time. Pets, I’ve always found odd. Pop culture attitudes towards marriage and babies and old age, young people talking back to their elders, etc. I find all that curiouser and curiouser as I get older.
> But you're in no position to make that judgement for all other people, and dismissal of their sincerely held and closely argued points of view as 'bananas' is trite and beneath your level of education and accomplishment.
Fair.
> And while you may not have met any Bangledeshis who have explored such views, a simple search for 'decolonization Bangladesh' turned up several thought-provoking reads, such as https://www.collegeart.org/pdf/programs/international/haque.... (on conceptions of beauty in art)
This is the article I linked, and it’s a (judicious and even handed) critique of decolonization ideas. It opens with a Tagore quote:
> Rabindranath Tagore, the great poet-philosopher of Bengal once said, “To taste the beauty of a Greek sculpture or an Italian Renaissance painting, one needs not to be a Greek or an Italian. A painting is actually a painting, not Indian, Ajantan, nothing.”
> https://www.e-ir.info/2019/08/16/decolonising-queer-banglade... (on conceptions of propriety in sexual relations)
This article is extremely disingenuous. While British law may be the statutory basis for prosecuting homosexual behavior, that’s not the reason prosecutions are suddenly happening now. (“On Thursday, 18 May 2017, Bangladesh saw the arrests of men on the alleged basis of their homosexuality for the first time in its history.”). The law has been on the books since 1860. The British are long gone. What changed? Islam—another colonial import. Bangladesh has increasingly aligned itself with the broader Islamic world. When we left in 1989, headscarves were nowhere to be seen. Today they are quite common. The best thing that could happen for LGBT people in Bangladesh is westernization. It’s our western constitution, with due process rights and equality of all under the law, that offer the best hope of protection.
Who are these people?
Those expressing a point of view you took issue with, whose point of view seems just as valid to me as yours.
This is the article I linked, and it’s a (judicious and even handed) critique of decolonization ideas. It opens with a Tagore quote:
Yes, but it goes on to explore other perspectives, and how art that Tagore appreciated alongside others has, in some contexts, been presented as objectively superior.
You can go on complaining about articles being disingenuous and so on (although I think you're choosing to miss the point it's making), but you started out by claiming that nobody in Bangladesh has any truck with such ideas and I'm pointing out that they are in fact being debated there as in other places, even though you may not approve or agree with many of the people articulating them.
Those expressing a point of view you took issue with, whose point of view seems just as valid to me as yours.
This is the article I linked, and it’s a (judicious and even handed) critique of decolonization ideas. It opens with a Tagore quote:
Yes, but it goes on to explore other perspectives, and how art that Tagore appreciated alongside others has, in some contexts, been presented as objectively superior.
You can go on complaining about articles being disingenuous and so on (although I think you're choosing to miss the point it's making), but you started out by claiming that nobody in Bangladesh has any truck with such ideas and I'm pointing out that they are in fact being debated there as in other places, even though you may not approve or agree with many of the people articulating them.
You’ve proven the point about the liberal assumptions that are baked in.
Hardly. I'm just summarizing the view of some advocates of decolonization I've met. Liberalism itself is characterized by a high regard for property rights, and most of the decolonization advocates I've met would not characterize themselves as liberals.
I don’t want to sound like I think all of academia is “liberal indoctrination.” (I have traditional engineers’ views on liberal arts majors, but that’s a separate issue.) But the liberal outlook is pervasive. Even when people are trying to be even handed, ideology just tends to give you different perspectives on the same facts, or makes it so you find different facts compelling. Let’s face it—you’re not going to have a robust discussion of religious freedom in your typical political science class, unless maybe if you invoke Muslims as the avatar for your argument.
I also don’t want to imply that o think liberals can’t be good scholars or do good research. But I think the overwhelming liberalness of academia, of the social sciences in particular, creates an echo chamber that makes people intellectually lazy.
To circle back to my colonialism example, there is a desperate need for political theory to help former colonies develop their societies and institutions. And the academic work in this area just isn’t helpful to anyone. Luckily nobody takes it seriously, and the actual work of developing post colonial societies has been ceded to economists and public health experts. But that’s sad. Academia used to matter in this area. The American framers relied heavily on the work of academic writers and philosophers in creating our system of government.
I also don’t want to imply that o think liberals can’t be good scholars or do good research. But I think the overwhelming liberalness of academia, of the social sciences in particular, creates an echo chamber that makes people intellectually lazy.
To circle back to my colonialism example, there is a desperate need for political theory to help former colonies develop their societies and institutions. And the academic work in this area just isn’t helpful to anyone. Luckily nobody takes it seriously, and the actual work of developing post colonial societies has been ceded to economists and public health experts. But that’s sad. Academia used to matter in this area. The American framers relied heavily on the work of academic writers and philosophers in creating our system of government.
There are many good reasons to preserve institutions such as private property and the legal infrastructure surrounding its disposition. I imagine rayiner's father's question had those in mind.
Particularly if you own a lot of property!
Correction: Particularly if you don’t enjoy starving to death.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
This is a sort of standard reply that seems very clever but entirely misses the point. Colonialism or any other system of injustice has winners and losers, heck even "perfectly just" systems would have winners and losers. The winners are less motivated to change the system that might create different winners, even if those outcomes are "more just" or "just as fair" or completely arbitrary in the assignment of new winners and losers. This was the basis for a lot of the colonial systems in fact, the British intentionally aligned themselves with minorities in many places to ensure a reliable partner that both profited from the rule and depended on the British to maintain their status.
Is the great Chinese famine relevant to a discussion of colonialism? Not really! The Bengal Famine on the other hand, pretty relevant! It killed a good 10 million people. Look it up!
Is the great Chinese famine relevant to a discussion of colonialism? Not really! The Bengal Famine on the other hand, pretty relevant! It killed a good 10 million people. Look it up!
> Is the great Chinese famine relevant to a discussion of colonialism?
It is relevant insofar as it addresses the question of private property and its value as an institution, which is precisely what the chain of comments I replied to was discussing.
I'm not sure why you chose to take issue with my comment, but not those preceding comments.
> The Bengal Famine
Another illustrative example of a famine caused by State policies and lack of respect for people's private property: Japanese raids and destruction of merchant ships, government-ordered destruction of rice stocks, trade barriers, the "rice denial" and "boat denial" policies, refusal of imports, etc.
It is relevant insofar as it addresses the question of private property and its value as an institution, which is precisely what the chain of comments I replied to was discussing.
I'm not sure why you chose to take issue with my comment, but not those preceding comments.
> The Bengal Famine
Another illustrative example of a famine caused by State policies and lack of respect for people's private property: Japanese raids and destruction of merchant ships, government-ordered destruction of rice stocks, trade barriers, the "rice denial" and "boat denial" policies, refusal of imports, etc.
Strangely enough, western property rights turn out not to prevent famine at all, though I imagine the property owners suffer least in these situations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_India
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_India
> western property rights
Not sure what you mean by "western" property rights. I'll assume you meant private property rights.
> turn out not to prevent famine at all
They do prevent famine. They don't prevent all famine. To conflate the two, as you have done here, is dishonest.
Certainly private property rights cannot prevent every natural disaster—that's not "strange" at all—but lack of respect for them can certainly amplify the effect of natural disasters.
For example, regarding the Great Irish Famine [0]:
After the defeat of James II in 1690 a series of “penal laws” were passed by the Irish Parliament, dominated by the Protestant minority who had supported William III. The first, in 1695, took away the right of Catholics to bear arms. Another forbade Catholics to go overseas for education and prohibited them from teaching or running schools within Ireland. The most important however was the Act to Prevent the Further Growth of Popery (1704). This prevented Catholics from buying land or inheriting it from Protestants, or from leasing land for more than 31 years. At about this time the potato was introduced as a major crop. The combination of the legislation and the new crop was ultimately disastrous.
The penal laws, together with other legislation, created a set of powerful and perverse incentives. Because Catholic tenant farmers could not own land or hold it on anything but short-term leases, with little or no security of tenure, they had no incentive to improve their land or modernize agricultural practice. All the benefit would go to the hated alien class of Protestant landlords in higher rents or more expensive leases.
By 1841, 45 percent of all holdings were of less than five acres. The lack of capital and the restraints on the Catholic majority meant that Irish commerce and manufacturing did not develop, and by 1841, 5.5 million out of a population of over 8 million were totally dependent on agriculture. The final, extra twist was the impact of the Corn Laws, the system of protection for English agriculture set up in the early nineteenth century that prohibited the import of grain until prices reached a particular level. This had the effect of preserving the flawed Irish farming system.
I'm not sure if you read your second link, but it doesn't refer to any particular famine. You'll have to be more specific.
[0] https://fee.org/articles/lessons-of-history-the-great-irish-...
Not sure what you mean by "western" property rights. I'll assume you meant private property rights.
> turn out not to prevent famine at all
They do prevent famine. They don't prevent all famine. To conflate the two, as you have done here, is dishonest.
Certainly private property rights cannot prevent every natural disaster—that's not "strange" at all—but lack of respect for them can certainly amplify the effect of natural disasters.
For example, regarding the Great Irish Famine [0]:
After the defeat of James II in 1690 a series of “penal laws” were passed by the Irish Parliament, dominated by the Protestant minority who had supported William III. The first, in 1695, took away the right of Catholics to bear arms. Another forbade Catholics to go overseas for education and prohibited them from teaching or running schools within Ireland. The most important however was the Act to Prevent the Further Growth of Popery (1704). This prevented Catholics from buying land or inheriting it from Protestants, or from leasing land for more than 31 years. At about this time the potato was introduced as a major crop. The combination of the legislation and the new crop was ultimately disastrous.
The penal laws, together with other legislation, created a set of powerful and perverse incentives. Because Catholic tenant farmers could not own land or hold it on anything but short-term leases, with little or no security of tenure, they had no incentive to improve their land or modernize agricultural practice. All the benefit would go to the hated alien class of Protestant landlords in higher rents or more expensive leases.
By 1841, 45 percent of all holdings were of less than five acres. The lack of capital and the restraints on the Catholic majority meant that Irish commerce and manufacturing did not develop, and by 1841, 5.5 million out of a population of over 8 million were totally dependent on agriculture. The final, extra twist was the impact of the Corn Laws, the system of protection for English agriculture set up in the early nineteenth century that prohibited the import of grain until prices reached a particular level. This had the effect of preserving the flawed Irish farming system.
I'm not sure if you read your second link, but it doesn't refer to any particular famine. You'll have to be more specific.
[0] https://fee.org/articles/lessons-of-history-the-great-irish-...
Totally agree - the phrase “reality has a liberal bias” is almost always a red-flag.
My viewpoints are almost all fairly liberal, but there is often no objective truth and suggesting there is one is dangerous.
My viewpoints are almost all fairly liberal, but there is often no objective truth and suggesting there is one is dangerous.
PhD here. Indeed a lot of academic curricula are indoctrination and mostly useless bullshit. The Humanities are quite out of touch with reality.
My advice to students is to pay lip service and keep quiet.
My advice to students is to pay lip service and keep quiet.
PhD here as well.
My advice is to learn as much as possible from experts who study their fields for a living while you have access to them.
My advice is to learn as much as possible from experts who study their fields for a living while you have access to them.
What does you having a PhD have anything to do with everything else you said??
A PhD would imply first hand experience of academia. I don't think they're using it to signal any particular level of intelligence.
It is true isn't it ?
It is not indoctrination, in that it comes from a sincere place. However, it does tend to construct a story that is reviewed and conceived entirely by liberals. This is by the very nature of academic research and the people who inhabit it. Especially in non-STEM fields where truth is a very subjective matter.
A clearer example is Economics, where people from certain schools of thought will actively consider what is taught at other schools as indoctrination. People can't even agree on the core axioms of their field.
We are already seeing a lot of weakly researched topics being pushed around as truths, because believing otherwise does not align with the political goals of the institution.
It is not indoctrination, in that it comes from a sincere place. However, it does tend to construct a story that is reviewed and conceived entirely by liberals. This is by the very nature of academic research and the people who inhabit it. Especially in non-STEM fields where truth is a very subjective matter.
A clearer example is Economics, where people from certain schools of thought will actively consider what is taught at other schools as indoctrination. People can't even agree on the core axioms of their field.
We are already seeing a lot of weakly researched topics being pushed around as truths, because believing otherwise does not align with the political goals of the institution.
The problem here is that parts of college (any department that ends in "studies") are liberal indoctrination. So this is the college's job to fix before criticizing the students.
"Cornell University announced this week that its faculty has voted to change the name of the English department as part of a broader campaign to eradicate “structural forms” of racism at the university. The department will now be referred to as the “department of literatures in English.”"[0]
When the same people who draft the curricula are responsible for ridiculous stunts like the one above, it's hard not to be sympathetic to the students who reject them out of hand.
[0] https://campusreform.org/article?id=16112
When the same people who draft the curricula are responsible for ridiculous stunts like the one above, it's hard not to be sympathetic to the students who reject them out of hand.
[0] https://campusreform.org/article?id=16112
As opposed to the department of linguistics in English? Or to avoid the implication that they study the literature of and by English people?
If it had been named the "department of literature in English" to begin with, would you support a name change to "The English Department"?
If it had been named the "department of literature in English" to begin with, would you support a name change to "The English Department"?
I can't understand at all what the problem with that is. "Ridiculous stunts?" They changed the name. So what? This is your example?
That's not how the human brain works. Repeat a lie often enough and it become true no matter how analytical you pretend to be.
>Repeat a lie often enough and it become true
And "often enough" here is drastically less, or fewer, than people appreciate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_men_make_a_tiger
And "often enough" here is drastically less, or fewer, than people appreciate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_men_make_a_tiger
*as long as they don’t die or suffer any bodily harm from it. Painful feedback changes things quick
bra-ket(1)
As far as I can tell "True" and "False" in any context are way more like popular consensus rather than some natural immutable objective state.
This would indeed be excellent. Unfortunately, "surrender to authority and do as you are told" is the main lesson of modern schooling, as they're mostly concerned about controlling (as in keep them physically close and supervised and presumably safe) as many students as possible with a limited budget and staff.
No, that's not what is taught, even subliminally. One might expect a more cowed populace were that true. Rather, public education in the US needs a deep overhaul, and a renewed discussion of what we collectively believe necessary to know and understand, and how best to accomplish that.
The public are not stupid. They have been tragically under-served by US public schools. Need to fix this.
The public are not stupid. They have been tragically under-served by US public schools. Need to fix this.
Google is lifting a ban on political ads tomorrow, about a month ahead of a Jan 5th runoff election in Georgia that will determine which party controls the Senate.
Perhaps the message here from subsidiary YouTube is that potentially viral videos that could damage voter confidence in past elections (and thereby affect their responsiveness to political ads for future ones) will not be tolerated while parent Google is trying to sell political ads for the Jan 5th election.
How much money will Google make selling ads for this runoff election in Georgia.
Perhaps the message here from subsidiary YouTube is that potentially viral videos that could damage voter confidence in past elections (and thereby affect their responsiveness to political ads for future ones) will not be tolerated while parent Google is trying to sell political ads for the Jan 5th election.
How much money will Google make selling ads for this runoff election in Georgia.
Incisive and based in clear economic motivation -- that sounds more like the big G these days. George Washington himself warned against the meddling of foreign powers in our democracy, but if we cannot entertain discussion on such things it's unlikely we'll be able to detect it.
> some impartial account of what really happened
This can be very hard to acquire, especially for events that we are far removed from. Then again, maybe it isn't necessary. Simply reading about a story twice with a deliberate bias on each side can be extremely revealing.
Would more people be inclined to do this if we taught it in schools? I hope so. These days it feels like the reporting of the news is more real to the general population than the news itself ..
This can be very hard to acquire, especially for events that we are far removed from. Then again, maybe it isn't necessary. Simply reading about a story twice with a deliberate bias on each side can be extremely revealing.
Would more people be inclined to do this if we taught it in schools? I hope so. These days it feels like the reporting of the news is more real to the general population than the news itself ..
Not only is it hard to acquire, such viewpoints are impossible to acquire: every attempt to put experience and research into words has a point of view and that point of view colors the story being told. Attempts to be impartial are themselves often a persuasive technique intended to make your appear view more plausible.
The reason why this never become a reality? Religion. The religious party/side will never agree to teaching critical thinking in the school.
> the practice of not giving full assent to propositions which there is no reason to believe true.
Given that YouTube is not school, I read this to understand that Bertrand Russell is here saying that YouTube shouldn't give equal weight to presumed falsehoods.
He is saying that people should be explicitly educated, in a controlled environment, to recognise the schemes of scoundrels - so that decent people can act accordingly.
Given that YouTube is not school, I read this to understand that Bertrand Russell is here saying that YouTube shouldn't give equal weight to presumed falsehoods.
He is saying that people should be explicitly educated, in a controlled environment, to recognise the schemes of scoundrels - so that decent people can act accordingly.
That doesn't match how good researchers find quality information. Critical thinking is a ponderous tool, and can even be counter-productive in isolation. Efficient research techniques should be taught in school, with attention to awareness about personal biases, assessing sources of information and cross-referencing
People also can and do read the same description of events and come to wildly different conclusions.
During the run up to the Iraq war, my history teacher in high school showed us front page articles and headlines about it, basically reading between the lines and extracting information that the casual reader didn't pick up on.
Just like computer programs are not perfect the first time it's released, printed text is not either. Most people have good intensions, but we are stupid.
Great idea. No chance my school in Australia will do this so will be upto me. That Bloomberg China supply chain compromise article. Never forget
Today I had a frightening interaction on Facebook with a friend of my wife's cousin. He claimed "the new COVID-19 virus had never been tested on humans, only animals" and when I called him on his misinformation and pointed out that the phase 3 trial for the Pfizer vaccine included 43,000 people he shrugged and told me he was entitled to his opinions, and he just had different sources.
This is somehow terrifying.
This is somehow terrifying.
Why does this "terrify" you
Because it's not factually correct, it's stating a full on falsehood (no human studies) and then doubling down when challenged on this falsehood.
You can believe what you want about all sorts of things about the vaccine, but there _are_ fundamental facts, and that's what I find disturbing about this mode of thinking. Spreading misinformation on purpose and then covering it under the guise of "just my opinion, man"
And nobody said anything about censoring him or "deplatforming" him. But some basic human decency would be nice.
You can believe what you want about all sorts of things about the vaccine, but there _are_ fundamental facts, and that's what I find disturbing about this mode of thinking. Spreading misinformation on purpose and then covering it under the guise of "just my opinion, man"
And nobody said anything about censoring him or "deplatforming" him. But some basic human decency would be nice.
Does anyone believing an incorrect thing terrify you?
It's spreading it, willfully, that's frightening. The consequences of propagation of bad public health information, and also what it says about the possibilities of public discourse, when it's considered acceptable by people to simply ignore facts in favour of preferred falsehoods.
We can argue many things about the Pfizer vaccine. And it's his choice to get it or not. But telling people it underwent no human testing is lying to people.
We can argue many things about the Pfizer vaccine. And it's his choice to get it or not. But telling people it underwent no human testing is lying to people.
I don’t think it’s terrifying.
Sure it’s dumb and poorly informed. There have always been dumb people spreading bad ideas. It is not our responsibility to force them to agree with us or de-platform them if they won’t agree with a certain narrative. This is called common human decency.
Sure it’s dumb and poorly informed. There have always been dumb people spreading bad ideas. It is not our responsibility to force them to agree with us or de-platform them if they won’t agree with a certain narrative. This is called common human decency.
Seeing people you know believe in bullshit makes it harder to believe that you and the people around you believe in what is right and do not believe in bullshit. The idea that you might not be right and might instead be believing in bullshit is uncomfortable to a lot of people.
Re-read what I wrote, where did I say anything about deplatforming? Yes, I understand TFA was about YouTube deplatforming people, but the comment I was replying to was about people's need to learn basic media criticism/critical thought.
Frankly, it's about holding other human beings to basic standards when they make pronouncements in public. Entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts, etc.
Frankly, it's about holding other human beings to basic standards when they make pronouncements in public. Entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts, etc.
Did you ask for further explanations? What are his sources? "His opinions" may refer to the fact that he doesn't trust the secondary source you quoted in "the phase 3 trial for the Pfizer vaccine included 43,000 people", or the primary source, or the very process/protocol of this trial...
He sent me some "sources" in a private google drive link that was access restricted and required me to enter email address to request access -- which I wasn't going to do, as said personal also makes his living doing multilevel marketing and as a "life coach"; not a contact list I have any desire to be on.
And, yeah, seems legit, right?
And, yeah, seems legit, right?
> He sent me some "sources"
((...))
> required me to enter email address to request access
Such a "source" often lets you better understand what/how such material works on some people. I played this a few times and was never disappointed. A disposable email address may work.
Such a "source" often lets you better understand what/how such material works on some people. I played this a few times and was never disappointed. A disposable email address may work.
It's depressing to read this quote and then realize it was delivered in 1922, meaning our media has been suffering from this problem of extreme political bias for likely more than a century now.
A lot of my friends spend all day "Liking" Facebook posts that mocking Trump supporters as ignorant simpletons, then they repeat blatant falsehoods like "Trump told people to drink bleach" or "Trump called Nazis 'very fine people'". The irony is completely lost on them because they're so deep in their own disinformation bubbles.
A lot of my friends spend all day "Liking" Facebook posts that mocking Trump supporters as ignorant simpletons, then they repeat blatant falsehoods like "Trump told people to drink bleach" or "Trump called Nazis 'very fine people'". The irony is completely lost on them because they're so deep in their own disinformation bubbles.
It's been a lot longer than a century. This is the natural order of things. Bertrand was not criticizing the media as much as he was pointing out its natural tendencies, which originate in the natural tendencies of humans. His solution was not to fix the media, it is to learn how to interpret it.
Learning how to interpret media means successfully defeating some of the best psychological tactics ever created. Bertrand didn't face these tactics and his methods are completely ineffectual at dealing with them.
"Learning how to interpret" the media is not even possible any longer.
"Learning how to interpret" the media is not even possible any longer.
What tactics?
Seems to me the age old skills of recognizing the source’s reputability still stand strong today. Many people just can’t be bothered to do it.
Seems to me the age old skills of recognizing the source’s reputability still stand strong today. Many people just can’t be bothered to do it.
> "very fine people"
https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/apr/26/context-trump...
The exact quote:
Reporter: "The neo-Nazis started this. They showed up in Charlottesville to protest --"
Trump: "Excuse me, excuse me. They didn’t put themselves -- and you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.
So. Trump admitted that the neo-Nazis are very bad people, but the group ALSO had some very fine people.
To Trump supporters or "enlightened centrists", this is proof that the left is also deliberately distorting the truth, but you're missing the point.
The point isn't that Trump drew a distinction between the Nazis (who were bad) and the non-Nazis (who were good), and therefore he didn't call Nazis good people.
The point is that there people marching with Neo-Nazis are not better than Neo-Nazis.
If you have a political position and you find yourself attracting neo-Nazis, you have to take a long hard look at what you're doing.
This is the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_German fallacy. Silently and tacitly accepting fascism because you benefit from it is still fascism.
So in conclusion, yes, Trump called Nazis "very fine people". It's just that you and Trump don't consider those people Nazis, when they are.
> "Trump told people to drink bleach"
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52407177
The exact quote:
"And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning? So it'd be interesting to check that."
Pointing to his head, Mr Trump went on: "I'm not a doctor. But I'm, like, a person that has a good you-know-what."
OK. First of all, let's start with the fact that Trump has a Cult of Personality. His supporters don't just love him, they TRUST him implicitly - more than any other authority figure. More than other politicians, but also more than DOCTORS.
An idea from Trump matters more to his supporters than an idea from any medical expert.
So. You have Trump "just asking questions" that if a disinfectant can be shown to knock out the virus on a kitchen counter (and at that point there were COUNTLESS news articles about how to protect yourself from the virus by bleaching and disenfecting all your things. He goes a step further and says maybe there is a way to do the same by taking the same disinfectant INSIDE the body. Finally, he says I'm not a doctor, but I know things. Which basically seals the deal and confirms he thinks it's a promising idea.
So, no, he didn't say the words "MAGA NATION! Go buy bleach and drink it!"
But he did say that he believes that: Disinfectant inside the body could help with the virus through injection or something like it.
It is a plausibly deniable one, but it is an endorsement nonetheless.
https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/apr/26/context-trump...
The exact quote:
Reporter: "The neo-Nazis started this. They showed up in Charlottesville to protest --"
Trump: "Excuse me, excuse me. They didn’t put themselves -- and you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.
So. Trump admitted that the neo-Nazis are very bad people, but the group ALSO had some very fine people.
To Trump supporters or "enlightened centrists", this is proof that the left is also deliberately distorting the truth, but you're missing the point.
The point isn't that Trump drew a distinction between the Nazis (who were bad) and the non-Nazis (who were good), and therefore he didn't call Nazis good people.
The point is that there people marching with Neo-Nazis are not better than Neo-Nazis.
If you have a political position and you find yourself attracting neo-Nazis, you have to take a long hard look at what you're doing.
This is the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_German fallacy. Silently and tacitly accepting fascism because you benefit from it is still fascism.
So in conclusion, yes, Trump called Nazis "very fine people". It's just that you and Trump don't consider those people Nazis, when they are.
> "Trump told people to drink bleach"
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52407177
The exact quote:
"And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning? So it'd be interesting to check that."
Pointing to his head, Mr Trump went on: "I'm not a doctor. But I'm, like, a person that has a good you-know-what."
OK. First of all, let's start with the fact that Trump has a Cult of Personality. His supporters don't just love him, they TRUST him implicitly - more than any other authority figure. More than other politicians, but also more than DOCTORS.
An idea from Trump matters more to his supporters than an idea from any medical expert.
So. You have Trump "just asking questions" that if a disinfectant can be shown to knock out the virus on a kitchen counter (and at that point there were COUNTLESS news articles about how to protect yourself from the virus by bleaching and disenfecting all your things. He goes a step further and says maybe there is a way to do the same by taking the same disinfectant INSIDE the body. Finally, he says I'm not a doctor, but I know things. Which basically seals the deal and confirms he thinks it's a promising idea.
So, no, he didn't say the words "MAGA NATION! Go buy bleach and drink it!"
But he did say that he believes that: Disinfectant inside the body could help with the virus through injection or something like it.
It is a plausibly deniable one, but it is an endorsement nonetheless.
In your link, Trump says: "I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists -- because they should be condemned totally".
How clearer could he have been?
Regarding bleach, "So it'd be interesting to check that" is a suggestion for medical research, not a recommendation for what patients should do now.
How clearer could he have been?
Regarding bleach, "So it'd be interesting to check that" is a suggestion for medical research, not a recommendation for what patients should do now.
> In your link, Trump says: "I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists -- because they should be condemned totally".
BUT HE IS.
The people he is talking about that he is separating out ARE white nationalists.
They are not carrying Nazi flags. They are not chanting "Jews will not replace us." If you asked them point blank, they wouldn't dog-whistle anything about "we don't think blacks are inferior, we just want a separate but equal society".
But their actions are aligned with white supremacy. Their obsession with the Confederacy and their generals is an expression of white supremacy. They are not interested in heritage. They are interested in perpetuating old power imbalances that keep "the poorest white man above the best black man".
> Regarding bleach, "So it'd be interesting to check that" is a suggestion for medical research, not a recommendation for what patients should do now.
That's now how supporters received it.
In both cases you give him the benefit of the doubt. His intentions are not to support white supremacy. his intentions are not to have his supporters drink bleach.
However he has a job, which is colloquially described as "the most powerful man in the world". That has responsibility. His throwaway lines embolden white supremacists who ABSOLUTELY seized on "fine people on both sides" just as much as the left did. His supporters do hear his guidance to the medial community and jump to the next conclusion.
BUT HE IS.
The people he is talking about that he is separating out ARE white nationalists.
They are not carrying Nazi flags. They are not chanting "Jews will not replace us." If you asked them point blank, they wouldn't dog-whistle anything about "we don't think blacks are inferior, we just want a separate but equal society".
But their actions are aligned with white supremacy. Their obsession with the Confederacy and their generals is an expression of white supremacy. They are not interested in heritage. They are interested in perpetuating old power imbalances that keep "the poorest white man above the best black man".
> Regarding bleach, "So it'd be interesting to check that" is a suggestion for medical research, not a recommendation for what patients should do now.
That's now how supporters received it.
In both cases you give him the benefit of the doubt. His intentions are not to support white supremacy. his intentions are not to have his supporters drink bleach.
However he has a job, which is colloquially described as "the most powerful man in the world". That has responsibility. His throwaway lines embolden white supremacists who ABSOLUTELY seized on "fine people on both sides" just as much as the left did. His supporters do hear his guidance to the medial community and jump to the next conclusion.
Who is it that repeats the "fine people on both sides" comment again and again, never mentioning Trump's explicit condemnation of white nationalists? It's not Trump, or the Republicans. It's Democrats and the Democrat-supporting news media. If there are any white nationalists taking comfort from the (incorrect) idea that the US president is sympathetic to their cause, it is not Trump's fault. It is, to be blunt, YOUR fault.
And the same for bleach. Why did the news media portray Trump's comments as a recommendation for people to drink bleach, rather than (correctly) portray him as suggesting research into something related to bleach? (If they have to criticize Trump, they could then mock him for thinking he knows anything about what the promising directions in medical research are.)
We all know why, don't we? They prioritized political gains over lives.
ADDED: To address your other point: Sure, one might be able to argue that people wanting to keep up a statue of Robert E. Lee are really more or less white nationalists. Just as you can argue that people in favour of a minimum wage are really more or less communists. Conflating these "more or less X" views with actual X is not a recipe for maintaining a stable democratic society.
And the same for bleach. Why did the news media portray Trump's comments as a recommendation for people to drink bleach, rather than (correctly) portray him as suggesting research into something related to bleach? (If they have to criticize Trump, they could then mock him for thinking he knows anything about what the promising directions in medical research are.)
We all know why, don't we? They prioritized political gains over lives.
ADDED: To address your other point: Sure, one might be able to argue that people wanting to keep up a statue of Robert E. Lee are really more or less white nationalists. Just as you can argue that people in favour of a minimum wage are really more or less communists. Conflating these "more or less X" views with actual X is not a recipe for maintaining a stable democratic society.
A lot of them are communists.
Maybe it's time. America tried fascism. Let's try communism next.
Maybe it's time. America tried fascism. Let's try communism next.
[deleted]
titzer(1)
warlord1(3)
https://www.engadget.com/youtube-election-misinformation-dem...
So, i'm kind of curious how it's reasonable a political party can ask for partisan censorship.
>YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki received a letter on Tuesday from four Democratic senators expressing “deep concern” over the spread of election misinformation on Google’s video platform. In the letter, senators Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, Gary Peters of Michigan and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota ask YouTube to commit to removing content with false or misleading information about the 2020 US presidential election and future political races, including the coming, pivotal Senate runoffs in Georgia.
>“We urge you to immediately remove all election outcome misinformation and take aggressive steps to implement prohibitions, as other social media companies have done, regarding outcomes in future elections,” the letter reads.
This isn't a company deciding, this is censorship urged by the government. I thought that kind of thing was illegal down there.
Not saying anything either way about the politics of the election, but isn't this blatant government censorship?
So, i'm kind of curious how it's reasonable a political party can ask for partisan censorship.
>YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki received a letter on Tuesday from four Democratic senators expressing “deep concern” over the spread of election misinformation on Google’s video platform. In the letter, senators Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, Gary Peters of Michigan and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota ask YouTube to commit to removing content with false or misleading information about the 2020 US presidential election and future political races, including the coming, pivotal Senate runoffs in Georgia.
>“We urge you to immediately remove all election outcome misinformation and take aggressive steps to implement prohibitions, as other social media companies have done, regarding outcomes in future elections,” the letter reads.
This isn't a company deciding, this is censorship urged by the government. I thought that kind of thing was illegal down there.
Not saying anything either way about the politics of the election, but isn't this blatant government censorship?
The facts aligning in the Senator's favor does not make the request partisan. Nor are they the only political figures to reference the widely acknowledged facts that there was no spread widespread voter fraud. Prominent Republican politicians in positions of oversight have agreed with this outcome.
> The facts aligning in the Senator's favor does not make the request partisan.
Politics requesting censorship is always partisan.
Politics requesting censorship is always partisan.
I am curious how something like this would have been handled 50, 100, 200 years ago.
Let's say you have a newspaper spreading misinformation that is hurting an important social institution. What do you do? Close it down? Sue the editor for defamation, then close it down? There must have been precedent.
Let's say you have a newspaper spreading misinformation that is hurting an important social institution. What do you do? Close it down? Sue the editor for defamation, then close it down? There must have been precedent.
100 years ago, most newspapers were party organs. Local political parties wanted "their guy" getting favorable coverage.
Later on, once ads became a major source of revenue, most newspapers realized that being completely one sided hurt ad revenue. After all, if you want to advertise your furniture store, don't you want to sell to everyone in your area regardless of their party?
Now with intelligent/micro-targeted ad systems and minimal geographic limitations, those previously "too small to matter" niches are suddenly worldwide and large enough to be a useful segment on their own.. so many organizations can say/do what they want up to the line of defamation/slander protections, if any.
Later on, once ads became a major source of revenue, most newspapers realized that being completely one sided hurt ad revenue. After all, if you want to advertise your furniture store, don't you want to sell to everyone in your area regardless of their party?
Now with intelligent/micro-targeted ad systems and minimal geographic limitations, those previously "too small to matter" niches are suddenly worldwide and large enough to be a useful segment on their own.. so many organizations can say/do what they want up to the line of defamation/slander protections, if any.
In America? You do nothing. These are cases of government trying to control things and losing.
> I am curious how something like this would have been handled 50, 100, 200 years ago.
The idea that the press should be politically neutral is a pretty new one -- historically there were highly partisan newspapers, alongside "impartial" ones.
But I think the lies, etc., were more likely to be litigated on charges of slander, defamation, etc., at least when they were about individuals.
Now they're all about "socialism" or whatever, and unfortunately socialism doesn't have any lawyers.
The idea that the press should be politically neutral is a pretty new one -- historically there were highly partisan newspapers, alongside "impartial" ones.
But I think the lies, etc., were more likely to be litigated on charges of slander, defamation, etc., at least when they were about individuals.
Now they're all about "socialism" or whatever, and unfortunately socialism doesn't have any lawyers.
It has always worked the same way: people ask publishers to change what they publish, and the publishers decide whether to make a change or not, based on their own opinions and sense of self-interest.
Censorship measures often have bipartisan support.
Politics in a two-party system is always divided by party lines, but that does not make it necessarily partisan.
You can say that it's the Democrats who want censorship, but the other side of the coin is that Republicans want to freely spread a false narrative.
You can say that it's the Democrats who want censorship, but the other side of the coin is that Republicans want to freely spread a false narrative.
> Politics requesting censorship is always partisan.
Extremely general statements are always applicable.
Extremely general statements are always applicable.
If YouTube does as good a job as Facebook, then I have zero faith it won't just become partisan censorship. I have seen "False Information" labels on Facebook posts which were linked to "fact checking articles" which confirmed the post as true rather than false.
Can you share examples?
Hunter Biden story suppression comes to mind a few months back. Stories were technically true (or at least mostly true) but fact checkers were going crazy labelling stories as false to suppress propagation.
Saying something is "technically true" or "at least mostly true" is a red flag. Try saying these out loud:
1. Try this sushi, it's mostly fresh.
2. Sure, I'll give you a ride, I'm mostly sober.
3. I know what I'm doing, I'm technically a doctor.Every article is going to have some statements not 100% true. Would you rather fact checkers flag mostly true articles or mostly false articles? If one grain of rice in the bag is bad, is the whole bag bad? How about 2 grains of rice? 20 grains? Where is the line drawn at which a fact checker should label the article as false or partly false?
What I've seen this last election on Facebook is partisan fact checkers hunting for that one bad grain of rice so they can use it to label the whole article as "false" or "partly false" in an effort to protect Biden/Harris. I'm having trouble finding them now because facebook isn't super searchable but I remember thinking a lot of them were really nit-picky, similar to this one from 2018[0]. It got so bad I started seeing various viral memes complaining about it[1]
[0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hillary-clinton-smash-phon...
(Context: Trump tweeted that "crooked Hillary destroyed her phones with a hammer", Snopes labels his tweet as partly false because Hillary personally didn't destroy her phones with a hammer, her aide did)
[1] https://imgur.com/a/1Job9xX
What I've seen this last election on Facebook is partisan fact checkers hunting for that one bad grain of rice so they can use it to label the whole article as "false" or "partly false" in an effort to protect Biden/Harris. I'm having trouble finding them now because facebook isn't super searchable but I remember thinking a lot of them were really nit-picky, similar to this one from 2018[0]. It got so bad I started seeing various viral memes complaining about it[1]
[0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hillary-clinton-smash-phon...
(Context: Trump tweeted that "crooked Hillary destroyed her phones with a hammer", Snopes labels his tweet as partly false because Hillary personally didn't destroy her phones with a hammer, her aide did)
[1] https://imgur.com/a/1Job9xX
Regarding rice, if your serving is sufficiently rancid to make you sick, then the bag is bad.
And yet, you were able to read on Snopes why they flagged something as "partially true", and you were able to make an informed decision.
When someone says "Hillary Clinton is using private email servers and unauthorized phones," that's technically true, and it sounds really, very bad. But when you learn that previous officials, like Colin Powell, and current officials, like members of the Trump family, did the same thing, then it provides more context, and it makes you wonder just how egregious the original charge is.
The point is, "technically true" things are often intentionally misleading; the fact that something is "technically true" should arouse more suspicion than trust.
I hear you calling out fact checkers that provide insight into why something is flagged true or false, but I don't hear you calling out officials that make misleading "technically true" statements, or totally false statements. What's up with that? Are fact checkers really the root of this problem, or are they a symptom?
And yet, you were able to read on Snopes why they flagged something as "partially true", and you were able to make an informed decision.
When someone says "Hillary Clinton is using private email servers and unauthorized phones," that's technically true, and it sounds really, very bad. But when you learn that previous officials, like Colin Powell, and current officials, like members of the Trump family, did the same thing, then it provides more context, and it makes you wonder just how egregious the original charge is.
The point is, "technically true" things are often intentionally misleading; the fact that something is "technically true" should arouse more suspicion than trust.
I hear you calling out fact checkers that provide insight into why something is flagged true or false, but I don't hear you calling out officials that make misleading "technically true" statements, or totally false statements. What's up with that? Are fact checkers really the root of this problem, or are they a symptom?
[deleted]
There was a post remarking about how China did not need a vaccine to get covid under control. Facebook flagged it as false information. They linked to an article which talked extensively about how China used lockdowns, contact tracing, masks, hand washing, and other things which were clearly not vaccines to get covid under control. Most of the vaccine talk was about anti-vaxxers and how Chinese weren't like that. There was a short blurb about how Chinese vaccines were still in phase 3 trials with several hundred thousand people given the vaccine. That's not going to make a big dent in California let alone China. None of the articles the "fact checking" article linked to even mentioned vaccines when talking about how China got it under control.
Who fact-checks the fact-checkers?
YouTube had security camera videos posted by members that showed taking mail in ballots from under the table rather than the counting bins. Stuff like that was called false or inaccurate. I cannot say if this mail in vote did the same across the USA, but it shows that the voting process is flawed that and the Dominion software flipping votes from Trump to Biden by mistake.
YouTube had security camera videos posted by members that showed taking mail in ballots from under the table rather than the counting bins. Stuff like that was called false or inaccurate. I cannot say if this mail in vote did the same across the USA, but it shows that the voting process is flawed that and the Dominion software flipping votes from Trump to Biden by mistake.
Jesus christ, it's because they opened the envelopes, but needed to go on a break, so they put them in secured bins.and put those under the table.
That's not what happened though, there's a 14 hour video feed.
These workers announced that they're closing the count for the night and that everyone must leave. You can see them in the video just sitting still not doing anything until everyone leaves. Then when poll watchers leave they spring into action pull out the ballots from under the table and start counting for three more hours.
These workers announced that they're closing the count for the night and that everyone must leave. You can see them in the video just sitting still not doing anything until everyone leaves. Then when poll watchers leave they spring into action pull out the ballots from under the table and start counting for three more hours.
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/12/video-doesnt-show-suitcase...
>state officials told us that the full video shows the supposed “suitcases” were actually standard containers used to secure ballots, and that the ballots in question were opened and prepared for counting earlier in the night in full view of observers.
>On Dec. 5, Frances Watson, the chief investigator for the secretary of state’s office, said in an affidavit that after reviewing the video and conducting interviews, her investigators found “that observers and media were not asked to leave” but “simply left” after they saw workers, whose job was to open the ballots, leave. She said the investigation remains open.
>state officials told us that the full video shows the supposed “suitcases” were actually standard containers used to secure ballots, and that the ballots in question were opened and prepared for counting earlier in the night in full view of observers.
>On Dec. 5, Frances Watson, the chief investigator for the secretary of state’s office, said in an affidavit that after reviewing the video and conducting interviews, her investigators found “that observers and media were not asked to leave” but “simply left” after they saw workers, whose job was to open the ballots, leave. She said the investigation remains open.
> Frances Watson, the chief investigator for the secretary of state’s office
We investigated ourselves and found no wrong doing.
The Secretary was DIRECTLY involved in the purchase and deployment of the Dominion machines. He is refusing any signature audits. He is now being sued by GA Legislature members.
Despite what FactCheck dot org says (and how could that possibly not be trustworthy!?) I don’t think a statement from this office is going to sway anyone.
How about this, here is footage from a GA official showing just how ridiculously insecure and awful the dominion software is.
This changed my opinion on the whole mess:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46CAKyyObls&feature=youtu.be
We investigated ourselves and found no wrong doing.
The Secretary was DIRECTLY involved in the purchase and deployment of the Dominion machines. He is refusing any signature audits. He is now being sued by GA Legislature members.
Despite what FactCheck dot org says (and how could that possibly not be trustworthy!?) I don’t think a statement from this office is going to sway anyone.
How about this, here is footage from a GA official showing just how ridiculously insecure and awful the dominion software is.
This changed my opinion on the whole mess:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46CAKyyObls&feature=youtu.be
There's nothing in that video that suggests the process is any more or less error-prone than a hand count.
No evidence will sway someone who's accepted one side as truth before hearing all the arguments.
No evidence will sway someone who's accepted one side as truth before hearing all the arguments.
Stop spreading misinformation please. It’s revolting enough that you eat this propaganda hook, line and sinker. Seeing that you are also spreading it is disgusting.
You should look up Dominion Election Systems old name: Diebold Election Systems. They did not have exactly iron clad security...
> On Dec. 5, Frances Watson, the chief investigator for the secretary of state’s office, said in an affidavit that after reviewing the video and conducting interviews, her investigators found “that observers and media were not asked to leave” but “simply left” after they saw workers, whose job was to open the ballots, leave.
That's a futile affidavit. Where are affidavits from the investigators and the precinct staff members themselves, where they say that observers and media were not asked to leave.
That's a futile affidavit. Where are affidavits from the investigators and the precinct staff members themselves, where they say that observers and media were not asked to leave.
Its possible to censor incorrect information. Recognizing false information is not equivalent to calling for it to be suppressed.
This. The world will end, if we treat every fucking word like an "opinion", which deserves to be heard.
"Covid19 is a lie!1!!" isn't an opinion. It's ignorant non-sense at best, likely malicious, indirect interest-driven misinformation. It absolutely does not deserve the same, attention, platform and range as scientific, or reasonably political debate.
Naive unconditional free speech, "attention communism", if you want lol, is an ignorant and anti-democratic idea. The only reason that hasn't hurt us like this before, was the cost of spreading information effectively, pre-www.
"Covid19 is a lie!1!!" isn't an opinion. It's ignorant non-sense at best, likely malicious, indirect interest-driven misinformation. It absolutely does not deserve the same, attention, platform and range as scientific, or reasonably political debate.
Naive unconditional free speech, "attention communism", if you want lol, is an ignorant and anti-democratic idea. The only reason that hasn't hurt us like this before, was the cost of spreading information effectively, pre-www.
The facts of this case are quite clearly in dispute, so to make a judgement about which of those facts are accurate and which aren’t is rather clearly taking a partisan political position.
This whole fact obsession has gotten completely out of hand. Presiding over disputed matters of fact is pretty much the core purpose of our entire court system. You can’t just call something a fact and be done with it. What you’ve actually described is a collection of opinions, and then declared them settled facts by referencing some of the people that hold them.
I know people get terribly riled up by politics, but they’re just losing sight of any form of reasonableness. Having an unaccountable central authority decide what’s true and what’s not is literally one of the most canonical forms of dystopia that exists.
This whole fact obsession has gotten completely out of hand. Presiding over disputed matters of fact is pretty much the core purpose of our entire court system. You can’t just call something a fact and be done with it. What you’ve actually described is a collection of opinions, and then declared them settled facts by referencing some of the people that hold them.
I know people get terribly riled up by politics, but they’re just losing sight of any form of reasonableness. Having an unaccountable central authority decide what’s true and what’s not is literally one of the most canonical forms of dystopia that exists.
I thought many (most?) US courts had already ruled against widespread voting fraud, and that so far there was no evidence presented.
How is it still "quite clearly in dispute"?
> Having an unaccountable central authority decide what’s true and what’s not
This part of your comment is highly ironic.
How is it still "quite clearly in dispute"?
> Having an unaccountable central authority decide what’s true and what’s not
This part of your comment is highly ironic.
For reasons such as "should have filed before the election". There is a significant volume of claims pending action before the supreme court, including one rather large case filed by the Texas AG, and joined by a number of other state AGs. This rule prohibits the discussion of unapproved narratives about the merits of any of those cases. In any case, anybody who believes they have no merits can happily wait for the supreme court to confirm that. No need for mass partisan political censorship.
I'm not at all sure why you think my comment is so ironic either, so please feel free to explain.
I'm not at all sure why you think my comment is so ironic either, so please feel free to explain.
I googled "court ruling against voting fraud" and read through articles Nevada, Pensylvannia and Michigan. None of those fit your "should have filed before the election" narrative. The closest thing I found was:
> Pennsylvania’s top court on Nov. 28 dismissed the challenge, saying that the lawsuit was not filed in a timely manner when the mail-in voting law was first enacted. It threw out a lower court ruling that had ordered the state not to certify the election pending a hearing.
But this is not about widespread fraud, this is about mail-in voting laws.
I don't know what's a reputable website for USA political news, feel free to tell me if I'm reading overly biased junk:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2020/12/09/nevada-...
https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-election-court-pennsylva...
https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/12/...
> I'm not at all sure why you think my comment is so ironic either, so please feel free to explain.
Trump calling it a win the night of the election is, no matter how you spin it, very close to your "unaccountable central authority" deciding what’s true and what’s not. So your final point seems correct, just pointed in the wrong direction.
> Pennsylvania’s top court on Nov. 28 dismissed the challenge, saying that the lawsuit was not filed in a timely manner when the mail-in voting law was first enacted. It threw out a lower court ruling that had ordered the state not to certify the election pending a hearing.
But this is not about widespread fraud, this is about mail-in voting laws.
I don't know what's a reputable website for USA political news, feel free to tell me if I'm reading overly biased junk:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2020/12/09/nevada-...
https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-election-court-pennsylva...
https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/12/...
> I'm not at all sure why you think my comment is so ironic either, so please feel free to explain.
Trump calling it a win the night of the election is, no matter how you spin it, very close to your "unaccountable central authority" deciding what’s true and what’s not. So your final point seems correct, just pointed in the wrong direction.
Minnesota and Pennsylvania both dismissed cases saying they should have been filed before the election. Essentially kicking them to the Supreme Court to rule on constitutionality, should the plaintiffs choose to pursue it that far. I’d also like to remind everybody that Bush’s election was potentially decided by the Supreme Court over ruling the Florida Supreme Court, so trying to claim that matters like these are settled in lower courts is really just ignorant of how our justice system works. It’s probably also worth mentioning that many people claimed at the time (and still do) that Gore was the true winner of that election. I’ve never heard anybody claim people with those opinions were spreading misinformation, nor that they needed large tech companies to censor the debates they were having about the topic.
> Trump calling it a win the night of the election is, no matter how you spin it, very close to your "unaccountable central authority" deciding what’s true and what’s not.
Your mistake to presume that I am defending Trump really backs my point here. I have made no comments defending him or any of his court action, or public statements, or any action or statements from his allies. I have only made comments in defence of reasonableness and common sense, and against mega-corps like google using their influence to control the internet in a way that suits their political agendas. The merits of his claims will be decided by our justice system, not by Google. But if you’re ok with Google dictating to the internet which sides of a political debate are allowed to exist on the internet, then I guess you and I just have very different values. It's also a bit of a false equivalence, as the president is accountable to both the law and the electorate, opposed to Google, which is accountable to what exactly? Shareholders (theoretically)?
> Trump calling it a win the night of the election is, no matter how you spin it, very close to your "unaccountable central authority" deciding what’s true and what’s not.
Your mistake to presume that I am defending Trump really backs my point here. I have made no comments defending him or any of his court action, or public statements, or any action or statements from his allies. I have only made comments in defence of reasonableness and common sense, and against mega-corps like google using their influence to control the internet in a way that suits their political agendas. The merits of his claims will be decided by our justice system, not by Google. But if you’re ok with Google dictating to the internet which sides of a political debate are allowed to exist on the internet, then I guess you and I just have very different values. It's also a bit of a false equivalence, as the president is accountable to both the law and the electorate, opposed to Google, which is accountable to what exactly? Shareholders (theoretically)?
Your comment being ironic does not depend on whether you support Trump or not. You're arguing against Trump opponent's with a phrase that describes Trump's actions to a tee. You might abhor him with all your heart, it's still ironic.
You're the one misrepresenting what I've said. I'm not ok with a corporation "dictating to the internet which sides of a political debate are allowed to exist" and whatever else you're accusing me of. I'm telling you, widespread fraud is not "quite clearly in dispute".
You're the one misrepresenting what I've said. I'm not ok with a corporation "dictating to the internet which sides of a political debate are allowed to exist" and whatever else you're accusing me of. I'm telling you, widespread fraud is not "quite clearly in dispute".
So 17 state AGs filing a dispute in the Supreme Court doesn't constitute a dispute to you? Neither does any of the other ongoing legal action? Even if you think those cases have no merit, to deny that these facts are disputed is simply to deny reality.
Also, criticizing somebody for something that you think other people are also guilty of isn't Irony. Even if both parties in this matter were equally despicable, that doesn't make either of them right. Your comments highlight a lot of issues we currently have with political tribalism. You're just proving that facts and misdeeds don't matter as long as they have the correct political context.
Also, criticizing somebody for something that you think other people are also guilty of isn't Irony. Even if both parties in this matter were equally despicable, that doesn't make either of them right. Your comments highlight a lot of issues we currently have with political tribalism. You're just proving that facts and misdeeds don't matter as long as they have the correct political context.
The people disputing the facts are doing it in bad faith because they want to steal the election. There is not a genuine argument to be made for widespread voter fraud.
The facts aligning in the Senator's favor does not make the request partisan.
Of course it's partisan. Had Trump won, and Biden voters were publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence, do you believe that Democratic senators would still be urging YouTube to take it down in the interest of fairness to Trump? I think you know the answer to that.
The scary part of this is that elected officials, who were presumably elected by people that thought they were going to protect the freedoms granted to them by the Constitution, and who must take an oath upon taking office to "support and defend the Constitution," sat down and wrote a letter that gleefully trampled all over one of our most fundamental constitutional rights. Since they were successful in this endeavor, it will happen again, on other, more expansive, partisan issues. Down the slippery slope we go.
The simple fact of the matter is that people are entitled to their opinions, and in the United States, they have a constitutional right to express those opinions in the same way and on the same platforms as those that disagree with them. The only problem is that now we have politicians who believe that those rights should only be extended to those who are on their side. Both sides of the political aisle are acting this way, and it does not bode well for our future as a country.
Of course it's partisan. Had Trump won, and Biden voters were publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence, do you believe that Democratic senators would still be urging YouTube to take it down in the interest of fairness to Trump? I think you know the answer to that.
The scary part of this is that elected officials, who were presumably elected by people that thought they were going to protect the freedoms granted to them by the Constitution, and who must take an oath upon taking office to "support and defend the Constitution," sat down and wrote a letter that gleefully trampled all over one of our most fundamental constitutional rights. Since they were successful in this endeavor, it will happen again, on other, more expansive, partisan issues. Down the slippery slope we go.
The simple fact of the matter is that people are entitled to their opinions, and in the United States, they have a constitutional right to express those opinions in the same way and on the same platforms as those that disagree with them. The only problem is that now we have politicians who believe that those rights should only be extended to those who are on their side. Both sides of the political aisle are acting this way, and it does not bode well for our future as a country.
> The simple fact of the matter is that people are entitled to their opinions, and in the United States, they have a constitutional right to express those opinions in the same way and on the same platforms as those that disagree with them.
You've never had a constitutional right to a particular platform for your opinions. E.g., if a magazine or newspaper published an opinion that disagreed with yours, you do not have a constitutional right to have your opinion published in that same magazine or newspaper.
You've never had a constitutional right to a particular platform for your opinions. E.g., if a magazine or newspaper published an opinion that disagreed with yours, you do not have a constitutional right to have your opinion published in that same magazine or newspaper.
> "You've never had a constitutional right to a particular platform for your opinions."
While this is true, it's a distracting non-sequitur.
US senators (of any political persuasion) asking any platform to take down any information, correct or not, is chilling. That's not their role in government. That's not their job.
Also distraction: the content is false and misleading
Also distraction: the content is "political"
The important part, that I wish every American regardless of party would understand deeply in their bones, is that once it's easy for "our guys" to do this illegal, rights-trampling thing, then it becomes easier for "their guys" to do it.
This is creeping authoritarianism. Not Trump, not Obama, not Democrats, not Republicans, not this or that party engaging in skullduggery.
Someday, a group of senators will ask the platform-du-jour to take down something that you agree with and that you think is important for people to know. Perhaps about actual election fraud, on a candidate you like. Imagine it. Inhabit that idea.
American complacency in the face of "our guys can use this new awesome power for good, so it's OK" is how we have secret Presidential assassination lists (Disposition Matrix), secret courts where the accused cannot see the evidence against them (FISA courts), gag orders on civilians, and so forth
Do not applaud senators using the weight of the government to suppress speech that you do not like, even if you believe that speech is false. It's about protecting your rights.
While this is true, it's a distracting non-sequitur.
US senators (of any political persuasion) asking any platform to take down any information, correct or not, is chilling. That's not their role in government. That's not their job.
Also distraction: the content is false and misleading
Also distraction: the content is "political"
The important part, that I wish every American regardless of party would understand deeply in their bones, is that once it's easy for "our guys" to do this illegal, rights-trampling thing, then it becomes easier for "their guys" to do it.
This is creeping authoritarianism. Not Trump, not Obama, not Democrats, not Republicans, not this or that party engaging in skullduggery.
Someday, a group of senators will ask the platform-du-jour to take down something that you agree with and that you think is important for people to know. Perhaps about actual election fraud, on a candidate you like. Imagine it. Inhabit that idea.
American complacency in the face of "our guys can use this new awesome power for good, so it's OK" is how we have secret Presidential assassination lists (Disposition Matrix), secret courts where the accused cannot see the evidence against them (FISA courts), gag orders on civilians, and so forth
Do not applaud senators using the weight of the government to suppress speech that you do not like, even if you believe that speech is false. It's about protecting your rights.
True. However YouTube isn’t a publisher, according to them. They want the Section 203 exemption, but they are acting as a publisher. If they want to be indemnified from libel liability, they can’t pick and choose what to publish as that is a tacit endorsement of what does get published. They can have it both ways.
> They want the Section 203 exemption, but they are acting as a publisher
You keep saying this over and over but you're wrong.
According to Section 230 they're allowed to "censor" all they want. It doesn't make them a publisher. That's literally the point of Section 230.
Repeating a lie doesn't make it true.
You keep saying this over and over but you're wrong.
According to Section 230 they're allowed to "censor" all they want. It doesn't make them a publisher. That's literally the point of Section 230.
Repeating a lie doesn't make it true.
The are allowed to censor in good faith. That generally means that they need to follow their own guidelines, which does not appear to have happened in this case.
"Good faith" can mean anything at all. And you should be thankful Section 230 exists. If everyone and his dog could sue a company for libelous content posted by a user, you know what would happen? More moderation, real name requirements, and "censorship".
[deleted]
Let's forget constitutional rights for a second.
The fact that Youtube is removing content about election fraud while leaving up much more egregiously false information is a huge red flag about their bias.
Have they taken down videos that blame George W. Bush and the federal government for the 9-11 attack?
The fact that Youtube is removing content about election fraud while leaving up much more egregiously false information is a huge red flag about their bias.
Have they taken down videos that blame George W. Bush and the federal government for the 9-11 attack?
Newspapers are static publications, and are not primarily engaged in the business of distributing third party content, so the comparison doesn't work. But if the newspaper had interactive functions, and had billed itself as an open platform where opinions of any kind could be published (as is the case with YouTube), then yes, censorship would become a thorny legal issue for them.
Further, one of the big problems here is that YouTube didn't do this of its own accord. Agents of the government - Democratic Senators in this case, who signed the letter in their official capacity - pressured the company into suppressing free speech that they simply didn’t like. That is a clear violation of the Constitution.
Further, one of the big problems here is that YouTube didn't do this of its own accord. Agents of the government - Democratic Senators in this case, who signed the letter in their official capacity - pressured the company into suppressing free speech that they simply didn’t like. That is a clear violation of the Constitution.
If you want to be pedantic about it, YouTube is a distributor, like a book store or a news stand, not a publisher like a newspaper. Distributors are in the business of distributing third party content. You can’t force a distributor to carry your content, and it would not become a “thorny legal issue” for them to stop carrying your product unless they violate your contract with them.
Speaking of contracts, when someone sign up for YouTube, they agree to their terms of service, which don’t say “we’re an open platform where opinions of any kind can be published”. They say “YouTube is under no obligation to host or serve Content” and “you understand and agree that there will be times when we make […] changes without notice” and “If we reasonably believe that any Content is in breach of this Agreement or may cause harm to YouTube, our users, or third parties, we may remove or take down that Content in our discretion”.
Speaking of contracts, when someone sign up for YouTube, they agree to their terms of service, which don’t say “we’re an open platform where opinions of any kind can be published”. They say “YouTube is under no obligation to host or serve Content” and “you understand and agree that there will be times when we make […] changes without notice” and “If we reasonably believe that any Content is in breach of this Agreement or may cause harm to YouTube, our users, or third parties, we may remove or take down that Content in our discretion”.
If you want to be pedantic about it
I don’t want to be pedantic about anything. The terms can say whatever they want - they write them. But regardless of what the TOS say, when you advertise yourself as an open platform for free speech, which YouTube certainly does, it opens you up to liability when you prove not to be that open platform. Further, if they go too far with moderation and begin censoring content over and above clear, previously set guidelines, they can lose their immunity to libel/slander lawsuits under the CDA (Communications Decency Act).
I don’t want to be pedantic about anything. The terms can say whatever they want - they write them. But regardless of what the TOS say, when you advertise yourself as an open platform for free speech, which YouTube certainly does, it opens you up to liability when you prove not to be that open platform. Further, if they go too far with moderation and begin censoring content over and above clear, previously set guidelines, they can lose their immunity to libel/slander lawsuits under the CDA (Communications Decency Act).
Normally I would ask you for you to please show me where in the law it says what you claim, but I am instead going to speak directly because I think it is important to be super clear on this: Wherever you are getting your information, it is a garbage source, they are lying to you, and you should find a better one.
Section 230 (which is essentially the only surviving part of the CDA; the rest was found to be unconstitutional in 1997[0]) gives interactive computer services immunity from civil claims (not just defamation) when removing material that they find objectionable, regardless of whether or not it is constitutionally protected, so long as it is done in good faith. The law is short and unambiguous[1]. There is no provision that says providers lose immunity if they go “above clear, previously set guidelines”. That is some straight made up garbage.
If what you were saying were true (again, it is not!), the “clear, previously set guidelines” are right in YouTube’s Terms. Those Terms explicitly say that they have no obligation to host your content, might change the rules, might remove your stuff, and you’re OK with that. And, even better, the issue of whether or not a provider can lose their S230 immunities through harm due to the reliance on misrepresentation of material fact was adjudicated in Green v America Online[2] and the answer was no! In that case, AOL’s member agreement was clear and binding. YouTube’s member agreement is similarly clear and binding. YouTube cannot lose their immunity in the way you claim.
[0] https://www.lawfareblog.com/whats-name-quite-bit-if-youre-ta...
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230
[2] https://www.eff.org/files/green-v-aol.pdf
Section 230 (which is essentially the only surviving part of the CDA; the rest was found to be unconstitutional in 1997[0]) gives interactive computer services immunity from civil claims (not just defamation) when removing material that they find objectionable, regardless of whether or not it is constitutionally protected, so long as it is done in good faith. The law is short and unambiguous[1]. There is no provision that says providers lose immunity if they go “above clear, previously set guidelines”. That is some straight made up garbage.
If what you were saying were true (again, it is not!), the “clear, previously set guidelines” are right in YouTube’s Terms. Those Terms explicitly say that they have no obligation to host your content, might change the rules, might remove your stuff, and you’re OK with that. And, even better, the issue of whether or not a provider can lose their S230 immunities through harm due to the reliance on misrepresentation of material fact was adjudicated in Green v America Online[2] and the answer was no! In that case, AOL’s member agreement was clear and binding. YouTube’s member agreement is similarly clear and binding. YouTube cannot lose their immunity in the way you claim.
[0] https://www.lawfareblog.com/whats-name-quite-bit-if-youre-ta...
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230
[2] https://www.eff.org/files/green-v-aol.pdf
Your detailed analysis is interesting. Not because of what it says, but because of what it doesn’t say. It completely ignored the fact (explicitly mentioned in my comment) that in this case - the case this entire thread is talking about - government officials pressured the company into suppressing free speech. That is not the situation in the AOL case you mentioned, and makes your entire analysis irrelevant to this case.
We aren’t talking about AOL. We are talking about a group of partisan senators pressuring a company that has a de facto monopoly in online video distribution into suppressing free speech for no reason other than “we don’t like it”.
Your analysis, even ignoring the fact that it has nothing to do with the present case, is also entirely incorrect as it relates to my comment. The CDA requires that the removal be “in good faith”. Removals that aren’t in line with “clear, previously set guidelines” can be ruled to not be in good faith. We essentially said the same thing, but you managed to hurl insults at me - saying that my “sources must be garbage” - while you said your version of it. Well done.
We aren’t talking about AOL. We are talking about a group of partisan senators pressuring a company that has a de facto monopoly in online video distribution into suppressing free speech for no reason other than “we don’t like it”.
Your analysis, even ignoring the fact that it has nothing to do with the present case, is also entirely incorrect as it relates to my comment. The CDA requires that the removal be “in good faith”. Removals that aren’t in line with “clear, previously set guidelines” can be ruled to not be in good faith. We essentially said the same thing, but you managed to hurl insults at me - saying that my “sources must be garbage” - while you said your version of it. Well done.
> It completely ignored the fact (explicitly mentioned in my comment) that in this case - the case this entire thread is talking about - government officials pressured the company into suppressing free speech.
Yes, I didn’t reply to that part because I couldn’t prove that a letter from four senators “pressured the company into suppressing free speech”, whereas I could conclusively prove that the claims I did reply to were false.
If you want me to opine on the “senators sending a letter equals government censorship” angle too, fine. It was a pretty typical letter from the senate. They make some claims, they ask some questions. Senators send letters like this often. YouTube had the option to say ‘we won’t commit to that’ and explain why, but they chose not to do that, despite having a pretty bottomless pit of lawyers and PR agents to throw at the problem. They also could easily have suggested that they were making a change due to inappropriate pressure from the senate in the press release, but they did not do that either. Any suggestion to the contrary is speculative at best.
> We aren’t talking about AOL.
You were claiming that YouTube could lose their legal immunity through some estoppel claim, and I gave you the relevant case law which explicitly rejects that interpretation of the law.
> Removals that aren’t in line with “clear, previously set guidelines” can be ruled to not be in good faith.
Please show me a single case where a court has accepted this interpretation of the immunity clause of Section 230. Please show me where in the law it says anything about “clear, previously set guidelines”.
> We are talking about a group of partisan senators pressuring a company that has a de facto monopoly in online video distribution into suppressing free speech for no reason other than “we don’t like it”.
Setting aside how there are actually quite a few places where people can post their videos (Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Periscope, their own $5 VPS, etc.), the letter[0] is actually quite clear on the senators’ concerns, which were not “we don’t like it”:
> These videos seek to undermine our democracy and cast doubt on the legitimacy of President-elect Biden’s incoming administration. Moreover, because the current president has not committed to a peaceful transition of power, misinformation and manipulated media content on your platform may fuel civil unrest.
> you managed to hurl insults at me - saying that my “sources must be garbage”
It was not my intent to insult you personally and I’m sorry if you took it that way. I didn’t say you were garbage, I said your sources were garbage.
If you can’t accept that both the law doesn’t say what you say it does, and that courts have explicitly rejected your claimed interpretation of the law, I don’t know what else I can say. Which is, of course, the problem with misinformation and the reason why removing it is sometimes an unpleasant but necessary course of action: people latch on to falsehoods which reinforce their pre-existing world view, then refuse to accept that they might be wrong.
And to be fair to that point, I could be completely full of shit too, but it’s on you to prove that by bringing facts to this discussion and not just repeating refuted claims and making it sound like I somehow proved them by giving evidence against them.
[0] https://www.menendez.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/YouTube%20Lett...
Yes, I didn’t reply to that part because I couldn’t prove that a letter from four senators “pressured the company into suppressing free speech”, whereas I could conclusively prove that the claims I did reply to were false.
If you want me to opine on the “senators sending a letter equals government censorship” angle too, fine. It was a pretty typical letter from the senate. They make some claims, they ask some questions. Senators send letters like this often. YouTube had the option to say ‘we won’t commit to that’ and explain why, but they chose not to do that, despite having a pretty bottomless pit of lawyers and PR agents to throw at the problem. They also could easily have suggested that they were making a change due to inappropriate pressure from the senate in the press release, but they did not do that either. Any suggestion to the contrary is speculative at best.
> We aren’t talking about AOL.
You were claiming that YouTube could lose their legal immunity through some estoppel claim, and I gave you the relevant case law which explicitly rejects that interpretation of the law.
> Removals that aren’t in line with “clear, previously set guidelines” can be ruled to not be in good faith.
Please show me a single case where a court has accepted this interpretation of the immunity clause of Section 230. Please show me where in the law it says anything about “clear, previously set guidelines”.
> We are talking about a group of partisan senators pressuring a company that has a de facto monopoly in online video distribution into suppressing free speech for no reason other than “we don’t like it”.
Setting aside how there are actually quite a few places where people can post their videos (Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Periscope, their own $5 VPS, etc.), the letter[0] is actually quite clear on the senators’ concerns, which were not “we don’t like it”:
> These videos seek to undermine our democracy and cast doubt on the legitimacy of President-elect Biden’s incoming administration. Moreover, because the current president has not committed to a peaceful transition of power, misinformation and manipulated media content on your platform may fuel civil unrest.
> you managed to hurl insults at me - saying that my “sources must be garbage”
It was not my intent to insult you personally and I’m sorry if you took it that way. I didn’t say you were garbage, I said your sources were garbage.
If you can’t accept that both the law doesn’t say what you say it does, and that courts have explicitly rejected your claimed interpretation of the law, I don’t know what else I can say. Which is, of course, the problem with misinformation and the reason why removing it is sometimes an unpleasant but necessary course of action: people latch on to falsehoods which reinforce their pre-existing world view, then refuse to accept that they might be wrong.
And to be fair to that point, I could be completely full of shit too, but it’s on you to prove that by bringing facts to this discussion and not just repeating refuted claims and making it sound like I somehow proved them by giving evidence against them.
[0] https://www.menendez.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/YouTube%20Lett...
[deleted]
> Of course it's partisan. Had Trump won, and Biden voters were publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence, do you believe that Democratic senators would still be urging YouTube to take it down in the interest of fairness to Trump? I think you know the answer to that.
The answer that it feels like I would have is, "No"; but it only feels that way because I can't even imagine them doing that in the first place. In order to even enter your thought experiment, I must put Biden and the Democrats in the shoes of Trump and the Republicans, and imagine that they have done something I don't believe they would do; and that is where the entire thing falls apart.
> The simple fact of the matter is that people are entitled to their opinions, and in the United States, they have a constitutional right to express those opinions in the same way and on the same platforms as those that disagree with them.
False. Everyone has the right to express whatever they want, but they don't have the right to do so using someone else's platform. For example, I have the right to express my criticisms of The Bible, but I don't have the right to walk into a church, walk up to the pulpit, and start a TED talk about the lack of evidence for Noah and the great flood, Moses and Hebrew slaves in Egypt, New Testament authorship, etc.
What keeps getting called "censorship" here is really "moderation". The reason it's such a big deal is that YouTube is a huge monolithic platform, so moderation on that platform is inherently a big deal.
If we want to remove the power YouTube has over public discourse, we need to create real competitors. The same goes for Facebook, Twitter, et al.
The answer that it feels like I would have is, "No"; but it only feels that way because I can't even imagine them doing that in the first place. In order to even enter your thought experiment, I must put Biden and the Democrats in the shoes of Trump and the Republicans, and imagine that they have done something I don't believe they would do; and that is where the entire thing falls apart.
> The simple fact of the matter is that people are entitled to their opinions, and in the United States, they have a constitutional right to express those opinions in the same way and on the same platforms as those that disagree with them.
False. Everyone has the right to express whatever they want, but they don't have the right to do so using someone else's platform. For example, I have the right to express my criticisms of The Bible, but I don't have the right to walk into a church, walk up to the pulpit, and start a TED talk about the lack of evidence for Noah and the great flood, Moses and Hebrew slaves in Egypt, New Testament authorship, etc.
What keeps getting called "censorship" here is really "moderation". The reason it's such a big deal is that YouTube is a huge monolithic platform, so moderation on that platform is inherently a big deal.
If we want to remove the power YouTube has over public discourse, we need to create real competitors. The same goes for Facebook, Twitter, et al.
> Had Trump won, and Biden voters were publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence, do you believe that Democratic senators would still be urging YouTube to take it down in the interest of fairness to Trump? I think you know the answer to that.
The premise here is that both sides are just as likely to push misinformation on behalf of their team. The Democrats aren't perfect, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking that they would engage in the exact same tactics and rhetoric as the GOP if the shoe were on the other foot.
I'll flip the question around. Had Trump won, would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence? I think you know the answer to that.
The premise here is that both sides are just as likely to push misinformation on behalf of their team. The Democrats aren't perfect, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking that they would engage in the exact same tactics and rhetoric as the GOP if the shoe were on the other foot.
I'll flip the question around. Had Trump won, would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence? I think you know the answer to that.
In the 2000 election, results disputed in Florida, but at the end of the day, Gore conceded and that was that. There is exactly 44 examples of successful, non-dumpster fire, transfers of power in this country.
No he absolutely did not. He tried to cheat through an outrageous request for hand recounts but only in counties he had won: https://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/files/publications/working_pa...
Specifically, he demanded recounts of under votes, where the machine hadn’t registered any pick for President. But he did so only in counties where he had won a large majority. Theoretically, this wouldn’t help. Statistically, Bush voters should have been as likely as Gore voters to fail to completely punch a ballot. But by only requesting recounts in counties he had won solidly—I.e. the base rate in the data set heavily favored Gore—newly discerned votes would break in heavily his favor. If he had won the county 2-1, he’d get two newly discernible votes for every one that Bush got.
This was an obvious attempt at cheating. So obvious that the Florida Supreme Court smacked Gore down and ordered a statewide recount. And the Supreme Court agreed 7-2 that recount was still unconstitutional because under votes were being counted using different standards in different counties.
Imagine if Trump had demanded hand recounts of under votes in this election in Wisconsin, but only those votes that were made in person on Election Day. This would be obvious cheating, since the pool of Election Day voters went heavily for Trump to begin with, so newly discernible votes would break for him as well. Gore did the exact same thing. And it would have been a huge news story if the media understood basic Bayesian probability.
Specifically, he demanded recounts of under votes, where the machine hadn’t registered any pick for President. But he did so only in counties where he had won a large majority. Theoretically, this wouldn’t help. Statistically, Bush voters should have been as likely as Gore voters to fail to completely punch a ballot. But by only requesting recounts in counties he had won solidly—I.e. the base rate in the data set heavily favored Gore—newly discerned votes would break in heavily his favor. If he had won the county 2-1, he’d get two newly discernible votes for every one that Bush got.
This was an obvious attempt at cheating. So obvious that the Florida Supreme Court smacked Gore down and ordered a statewide recount. And the Supreme Court agreed 7-2 that recount was still unconstitutional because under votes were being counted using different standards in different counties.
Imagine if Trump had demanded hand recounts of under votes in this election in Wisconsin, but only those votes that were made in person on Election Day. This would be obvious cheating, since the pool of Election Day voters went heavily for Trump to begin with, so newly discernible votes would break for him as well. Gore did the exact same thing. And it would have been a huge news story if the media understood basic Bayesian probability.
I'm going to be a pedantic HN type, but 43. See the 1876 elections.
This is important, because you could get an idea of what has to be done to fix the issues and what repercussions it might have by looking at historical precedence.
This is important, because you could get an idea of what has to be done to fix the issues and what repercussions it might have by looking at historical precedence.
Great catch, thank you!
Gore conceded 37 days after the election. And only after the courts struck down his final challenge. And Hillary Clinton still calls the 2016 election illegitimate.
Pot meet Kettle.
Pot meet Kettle.
Frankly, Gore should not have conceded - allowing the Bush campaign to steal that election set the stage for the unprecedented abuses of power that followed.
The current attempt to steal the election is bound to fail, but it's setting up the GOP playbook for stealing a closer, more plausibly contested presidential election.
The current attempt to steal the election is bound to fail, but it's setting up the GOP playbook for stealing a closer, more plausibly contested presidential election.
Do people remember the Dems crying large scale voter fraud in 2016? I don’t too.
Yeah it's not like the Democrats to do something like that. I certainly don't remember them spending three years and hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars pursuing an an investigation alleging Trump colluded with Russia to win that election, at the end of which the conclusion was that there was no evidence of it at all.
> No evidence
You're making it sound like a witchhunt but it was in fact extremely fishy.
"The investigation found there were over 100 contacts between Trump campaign advisors and individuals affiliated with the Russian government, before and after the election, but the evidence was insufficient to show an illegal conspiracy."[1]
I'd encourage you to at least read through the Wikipedia articles on the Mueller report before shouting "zero evidence" so loudly.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report#Russian_interfe...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Tower_meeting
You're making it sound like a witchhunt but it was in fact extremely fishy.
"The investigation found there were over 100 contacts between Trump campaign advisors and individuals affiliated with the Russian government, before and after the election, but the evidence was insufficient to show an illegal conspiracy."[1]
I'd encourage you to at least read through the Wikipedia articles on the Mueller report before shouting "zero evidence" so loudly.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report#Russian_interfe...
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Tower_meeting
Russiagate was the greatest psyops in the history of media.
Cool beans. Got any evidence?
See mainstream cable news 2016-2020.
I mean evidence they were wrong.
No. They were crying large scale Russian hacking and how Trump was a “Russian asset.” As a result of that rhetoric, 2/3 of Democrats believed that Russians had altered the vote tallies to help Trump win: https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...
Is it as bad as what Trump is doing? No. Is it as bad as what Democrats did in 2000, 2004, and 2016 put together? Well my schadenfreude meter is pretty pegged.
Is it as bad as what Trump is doing? No. Is it as bad as what Democrats did in 2000, 2004, and 2016 put together? Well my schadenfreude meter is pretty pegged.
Exactly what is it that the Democrats did in 2004? I worked that election, in Ohio. It was over early morning of election night, and I don't remember anyone litigating anything.
The House held hearings on supposed voting irregularities in Ohio: https://www.c-span.org/video/?184728-1/voting-irregularities.... (Jerry Nadler remarked in this hearing that “my experience in New York is that paper ballots are extremely susceptible to fraud.”)
Democrats on the House Judiciary committee released a report claiming that claimed Republicans cheated in the Ohio recount: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/something-rotten-o...
A fun thing about the 2004 theories is that they were based mainly on exit polls showing Kerry won. (Bush was ahead by 2 points in the actual vote.) Today we know that exit polls are probably unreliable and may well underestimate conservative votes.
Democrats on the House Judiciary committee released a report claiming that claimed Republicans cheated in the Ohio recount: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/something-rotten-o...
A fun thing about the 2004 theories is that they were based mainly on exit polls showing Kerry won. (Bush was ahead by 2 points in the actual vote.) Today we know that exit polls are probably unreliable and may well underestimate conservative votes.
That's an ad hoc hearing. How is it different from any other hearing about voter access to the polls? They happen all the time. By contrast, Giuliani's most recent hearing in MI was an actual, straight-faced attempt to get the state legislature of Michigan to overturn its election and award its electors to the outgoing President.
Just to keep this from noodling, I'll ask directly: are you really claiming that the Democrats seriously challenged the results of the 2004 election?
Jerry Nadler is a tool.
Just to keep this from noodling, I'll ask directly: are you really claiming that the Democrats seriously challenged the results of the 2004 election?
Jerry Nadler is a tool.
That’s an odd rebuttal, because the first is true and the second has large grains of truth.
There was Russian hacking, — as best we can tell, that’s where the Podesta emails came from. No one serious alleges that they tampered with the vote tallies, but we can credibly say they swung the election.
“Asset” is frustratingly vague word for Democrats to use, but a lot of the collusion narrative has panned out. The Mueller report revealed that the Trump campaign welcomed Russian interference, stopping just short of alleging outright collusion.
Meanwhile — basically everything Republicans allege now is laughably false, and many are outright calling for a coup.
There was Russian hacking, — as best we can tell, that’s where the Podesta emails came from. No one serious alleges that they tampered with the vote tallies, but we can credibly say they swung the election.
“Asset” is frustratingly vague word for Democrats to use, but a lot of the collusion narrative has panned out. The Mueller report revealed that the Trump campaign welcomed Russian interference, stopping just short of alleging outright collusion.
Meanwhile — basically everything Republicans allege now is laughably false, and many are outright calling for a coup.
Not to mention but Russian (Soviet) collusion seems to be a move out of the Democrat's own playbook when Ted Kennedy solicited Soviet intervention to foil the reelection of Ronald Reagan [1]. When you point your finger at something there's usually three more pointing straight back at you.
Hillary said the election was fraudulent from day one all the way up to current election.
Or how on October 26, 2020, PBS (hardly a right-wing or conservative news agency), aired a documentary [2] on the problems with the Dominion voting machines showing how you could just copy the QR codes and they could be re-scanned and count as a legitimate vote, no major hacking needed here. Here's an excerpt: -
"J. Alex Halderman:
By analyzing the structure of the Q.R. codes, I have been able to learn that there's nothing that stops an attacker from just duplicating one, and the duplicate would count the same as the original bar code.
Miles O’Brien:
And in late September, another concern came to light. During testing, election workers found half the names of the 21 candidates for Senate intermittently disappeared from screens during the review phase.
Dominion sent out a last-minute software patch.
J. Alex Halderman:
I'm worried that the Georgia system is the technical equivalent to the 737 MAX. They have just made a last-minute software change that might well have unintended consequences and cause even more severe problems on Election Day."
For me, it's the individual states changing their own election laws via unconstitutional methods right before the election. I think that is widespread fraud without a doubt, and those votes need to be audited or discounted.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/27/ted-kennedy-soviet-union-r...
[2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/will-georgias-new-voting-m...
Hillary said the election was fraudulent from day one all the way up to current election.
Or how on October 26, 2020, PBS (hardly a right-wing or conservative news agency), aired a documentary [2] on the problems with the Dominion voting machines showing how you could just copy the QR codes and they could be re-scanned and count as a legitimate vote, no major hacking needed here. Here's an excerpt: -
"J. Alex Halderman:
By analyzing the structure of the Q.R. codes, I have been able to learn that there's nothing that stops an attacker from just duplicating one, and the duplicate would count the same as the original bar code.
Miles O’Brien:
And in late September, another concern came to light. During testing, election workers found half the names of the 21 candidates for Senate intermittently disappeared from screens during the review phase.
Dominion sent out a last-minute software patch.
J. Alex Halderman:
I'm worried that the Georgia system is the technical equivalent to the 737 MAX. They have just made a last-minute software change that might well have unintended consequences and cause even more severe problems on Election Day."
For me, it's the individual states changing their own election laws via unconstitutional methods right before the election. I think that is widespread fraud without a doubt, and those votes need to be audited or discounted.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/27/ted-kennedy-soviet-union-r...
[2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/will-georgias-new-voting-m...
Yes they did. Democrats cried about Bernie Sanders getting defrauded of his election by other Democrats.
https://evidence2020.wordpress.com/2020/11/17/strong-evidenc...
Hillary is still going around claiming they stole the election from her.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/26/four-years-later-bitter...
https://evidence2020.wordpress.com/2020/11/17/strong-evidenc...
Hillary is still going around claiming they stole the election from her.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/26/four-years-later-bitter...
The best evidence you can provide for widespread Democratic allegations of cheating is… a random WordPress blog post and an outragebait Federalist article that doesn’t support its own headline?
Clinton is quoted in the second line: “I was the candidate that they basically stole an election from,” Clinton said Monday on the New York Times podcast “Sway.”
And if you read on, she’s talking about Comey reopening the email investigation a week before the election, right-wing misinformation, and misogyny. Not alleging that the Republicans cheated.
I'll flip the question around. Had Trump won, would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence?
I just listened to 4 years of CNN, MSNBC, and virtually every other media outlet claiming that the previous election was rigged, with similarly sparse evidence. So yes, not only do I believe that they would, but they have already done it, 24/7, for the last 4 straight years.
I just listened to 4 years of CNN, MSNBC, and virtually every other media outlet claiming that the previous election was rigged, with similarly sparse evidence. So yes, not only do I believe that they would, but they have already done it, 24/7, for the last 4 straight years.
I would feel entirely different about Fox News claiming election malfeasance than I do about the President of the United States claiming it.
More recently, the pre-election suppression of the Hunter Biden scandals that are now okay to talk about openly for some reason.
You're assuming equivalence between the two.
What matters is evidence. Facts. Logic. Reason.
The two simply are not equivalent. Check out what Wikipedia says about the Mueller Report:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report
I'm not claiming the Democrats are perfect or that there aren't mixed motives.
But it's obvious to any thinking person not living in a poisoned media ecosystem that all of these election fraud claims are baseless and ridiculous.
The same is not true about Russian influence operations during the 2016 election and the Trump campaigns, let's say, benign support of them.
What matters is evidence. Facts. Logic. Reason.
The two simply are not equivalent. Check out what Wikipedia says about the Mueller Report:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report
I'm not claiming the Democrats are perfect or that there aren't mixed motives.
But it's obvious to any thinking person not living in a poisoned media ecosystem that all of these election fraud claims are baseless and ridiculous.
The same is not true about Russian influence operations during the 2016 election and the Trump campaigns, let's say, benign support of them.
There is no evidence that Russian influence changed the outcome of the election. A few thousand dollars worth of Facebook ads, mostly written in broken English, is unlikely to have caused a massive swing in voter turnout or opinions. It seems clear from the Mueller report that Russians attempted to engage in election interference. There is zero evidence that it had any effect on even a single vote.
If you turn on CNN for a second or two today, you'll hear them use the phrase "no widespread voter fraud occurred". In other words, there is evidence that some fraud occurred, as it does in every election. Just not enough to have swayed the results. The same can be said about any Russian interference.
So the two things are equivalent, because both happened to some degree, and it is extremely unlikely that either had any effect on the outcome.
If you turn on CNN for a second or two today, you'll hear them use the phrase "no widespread voter fraud occurred". In other words, there is evidence that some fraud occurred, as it does in every election. Just not enough to have swayed the results. The same can be said about any Russian interference.
So the two things are equivalent, because both happened to some degree, and it is extremely unlikely that either had any effect on the outcome.
To me the DNC leak stood out as more damaging than Facebook ads / twitter bots.
That being said, if anyone has an unbiased academic paper that looked in-depth at Russia's Twitter/Facebook shenanigans, please cite. I'd like to read it.
That being said, if anyone has an unbiased academic paper that looked in-depth at Russia's Twitter/Facebook shenanigans, please cite. I'd like to read it.
While the leak was illegal, in the case of elections, personally I am all for anything that brings voters a better understanding of the candidates. Misinformation is untrue, and people can generally see right through it; email leaks are true. Given the polarization at the time, I don’t think that the email leaks had an impact on the outcome, but voters did become more informed, and that likely swayed some votes. Educated voters are a good thing in my opinion.
While you're maybe not wrong about it not changing the election outcome, I just wanted to say that it was more than a few Facebook ads. Russia was the likely source of the DNC email leak. Also, it was a lot of sock puppeting and co-opting large groups on Facebook and also Twitter and Reddit. Hundreds of people, masquerading as thousands, playing both sides off each other, all day long every day for months. There were groups for every demographic imaginable, swaying them, as appropriate, to stay home because Hillary doesn't care about [ethnic group], or to vote for Jill Stein because Hillary is just a neocon in disguise. Or to vote for Trump in protest. Or to vote for Trump because conservative.
It was a well funded and coordinated effort by a nation state. Not a few thousand dollars on bad english ads.
It was a well funded and coordinated effort by a nation state. Not a few thousand dollars on bad english ads.
> There is no evidence that Russian influence changed the outcome of the election
The alleged Russian actions are by themselves criminal. It makes no difference whether they had any impact. An attempted theft is still a crime.
The alleged Russian actions are by themselves criminal. It makes no difference whether they had any impact. An attempted theft is still a crime.
You’re missing my point. A Russian influence operation to support the Trump campaign actually happened. This is a fact supported by evidence which bears up under examination.
There is no evidence of electoral fraud or whatever nonsense is currently being claimed. It did not happen. It is, in fact, a deliberate lie.
Someone saying stuff on CNN is not reliable information. Are you really going to compare that to the Mueller report?
In fact, what is reliable right now is how courts have been deciding these ridiculous claims. And they’ve all been universally rejected because the claims have no evidence, make no sense, and are basically asking for something that’s actually illegal.
So we are talking about two completely different things. Something that really happened, based on evidence, and something that is a bunch of lies and distortions. That is my point.
And, I’d really encourage you to learn how to better judge things. Or, to stop participating in this anti-democratic bullshit.
There is no evidence of electoral fraud or whatever nonsense is currently being claimed. It did not happen. It is, in fact, a deliberate lie.
Someone saying stuff on CNN is not reliable information. Are you really going to compare that to the Mueller report?
In fact, what is reliable right now is how courts have been deciding these ridiculous claims. And they’ve all been universally rejected because the claims have no evidence, make no sense, and are basically asking for something that’s actually illegal.
So we are talking about two completely different things. Something that really happened, based on evidence, and something that is a bunch of lies and distortions. That is my point.
And, I’d really encourage you to learn how to better judge things. Or, to stop participating in this anti-democratic bullshit.
Didn't we see the shoe on the other foot, roughly, in 2016 with the Russia collusion thing?
No. That was not allegations that the votes themselves were tampered with.
Here [1] is a 2016 article from CNN, titled Computer scientists urge Clinton campaign to challenge election results. The articles says that "they have found evidence that vote totals in the three states could have been manipulated or hacked". Of course no such evidence existed, but it was most certainly among the allegations that Democrats were making in the wake of their loss.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/22/politics/hillary-clinton-chal...
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/22/politics/hillary-clinton-chal...
Here are examples of Hillary tweeting that the election was rigged multiple times, every day, for over a month.
...
...
Here is Hilary accusing Trump of being an “illegitimate” President and that he “knows” he stole the 2016 election: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trum...
> Hillary Clinton dismissed President Trump as an “illegitimate president” and suggested that “he knows” that he stole the 2016 presidential election in a CBS News interview to be aired Sunday.
Is there a word for someone or something that mirrors your sins back at you, but in a grotesquely amplified manner?
> Hillary Clinton dismissed President Trump as an “illegitimate president” and suggested that “he knows” that he stole the 2016 presidential election in a CBS News interview to be aired Sunday.
Is there a word for someone or something that mirrors your sins back at you, but in a grotesquely amplified manner?
Hilary's accusation is in some way legitimate though considering that the Mueller report found a foreign nation interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion. And then there was the making a mountain out of a molehill of her e-mail server with Comey coming out and publicly reprimanding her for it like a schoolmaster, which undoubtedly affected public perception of how electable she was at a critical time.
Of course it's not clear if Hilary would have won if there was no such interference, but her claim is not nearly as far-fetched as all the baseless crazy batshit stuff being thrown around by republicans nowadays.
Of course it's not clear if Hilary would have won if there was no such interference, but her claim is not nearly as far-fetched as all the baseless crazy batshit stuff being thrown around by republicans nowadays.
No. Stop trying to defend this behavior. Leveling the charge that the President is “illegitimate” and “knows he stole” the election is a serious accusation and should be backed by real evidence. Nothing in the Mueller report suggests that Russia swayed a decisive number of votes in an election where the parties spent billions of dollars on marketing and advertising. Democrats’ “blue wall” states swung 15-20 points in Republicans’ favor compared to 2012. Russians didn’t cause that. And the report confirms that Trump himself wasn’t involved with whatever contacts the campaign had with Russia.
I’ll grant you that Clinton’s allegations are less “far-fetched” than Trump’s. But that shouldn’t be the standard! We shouldn’t be trying to draw distinctions over claims that are totally made up and ones that are only mostly made up.
I’ll grant you that Clinton’s allegations are less “far-fetched” than Trump’s. But that shouldn’t be the standard! We shouldn’t be trying to draw distinctions over claims that are totally made up and ones that are only mostly made up.
He appeared on stage, during the election, and cheerled a series of email hacks conducted by the Russian government that almost certainly determined the outcome of the election. I accepted the results of the election at pretty much the same time Clinton did, the day after election day, but the accusation is colorable. Unlike birtherism. And no, the latter is not an amplified version of the former!
There was an uncharted level of animosity in public discourse that election cycle mostly because of Trump, and within the context of all the shit-flinging happening at that time of "locking her up", this accusation being made by a politician on a morning show, while I agree with you it's not entirely going along the spirit of a peaceful transition of power, I rather chalk it up as just a punch back in the political arena. Yes, that she said this was not responsible on her part, but she did call Trump a day or two after the election to concede and congratulate him on his win.
Without even getting into the brute facts about the 2016 election: there's a world of difference between Hillary Clinton being a sore loser as a private citizen and Donald Trump being a sore loser in the office of the executive.
I guess, if you are comparing -- 54 or so election fraud court cases lost, many with republican judges and vote systems run by republicans vs impeachment, fbi report findings that would have been enough to charge any normal citizen and but because a sitting president can't be proscicuted not acted on, what 12-18 of his close circle either pleading or found guilty of charges. Yeah seems close.
There is something seriously wrong with the republican party watching the destruction of core values -- I for one will never vote for them again. But I guess folks like me who were life long republicans until Trump are just silly dems.
The fact that Trump has the party on a leash is just insane. Republicans watching idly as he actively subverts all norms of transfer of power and millions choosing to grasp at theories that would be espoused by drunkards on city corners 5 or 6 years ago is insane.
There is something seriously wrong with the republican party watching the destruction of core values -- I for one will never vote for them again. But I guess folks like me who were life long republicans until Trump are just silly dems.
The fact that Trump has the party on a leash is just insane. Republicans watching idly as he actively subverts all norms of transfer of power and millions choosing to grasp at theories that would be espoused by drunkards on city corners 5 or 6 years ago is insane.
Trump did win 4 years ago, and Hilary Clinton claimed the election was stolen from her and that there is a specter of illegitimacy over his presidency. This is the exact kind of talk that people are now saying is dangerous and must be suppressed.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/26/four-years-later-bitter...
https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/26/four-years-later-bitter...
> I'll flip the question around. Had Trump won, would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence? I think you know the answer to that.
After his win in 2016 we had Russia collusion claims about election collusion that is still ongoing, it even led to the Mueller investigation that extended beyond the 2018 election, so yes absolutely the Democrats would do this.
After his win in 2016 we had Russia collusion claims about election collusion that is still ongoing, it even led to the Mueller investigation that extended beyond the 2018 election, so yes absolutely the Democrats would do this.
I'm not sure how you can read the Mueller report and come away with the conclusion that there's a lack of evidence.
Lack of evidence for what? Democrats were claiming Trump was a “Russian asset.” The rhetoric convinced 2/3 of Democrats that Russia had altered vote tallies: https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inline.... There was talk of impeaching Trump before he took office. Heck, Hilary Clinton called Tulsi Gabbard, a fellow Democrat, a “Russian asset.”
This partisan dichotomy about all this is extremely hard to credit. For two years we were subjected to Rachel Maddow dropping one “bombshell” after the other about how Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. What was proven in the Mueller Report was a fraction of that, with scant evidence linking Trump himself to wrongdoing.
What’s worse, a story that’s 90% made up or one that’s 100% made up? The latter, obviously, but I have zero sympathy for partisans trying to make hay out of that distinction.
This partisan dichotomy about all this is extremely hard to credit. For two years we were subjected to Rachel Maddow dropping one “bombshell” after the other about how Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. What was proven in the Mueller Report was a fraction of that, with scant evidence linking Trump himself to wrongdoing.
What’s worse, a story that’s 90% made up or one that’s 100% made up? The latter, obviously, but I have zero sympathy for partisans trying to make hay out of that distinction.
[deleted]
106 House Republicans have just joined in a lawsuit by 18 Republican AGs to overturn the results of the election. The Trump administration of course followed eight years of ferociously racist conspiracy-mongering about Obama's illegitimate birth. The GOP is a minority party that simply rejects the legitimacy of their political opponents to hold office. Why do you persist in these ridiculous false equivalences? They're not even 10% different, they're 100% different.
I’m not drawing an “equivalency” and I don’t need to. Norms don’t work if you only try to enforce them against the other team. Democrats eroded norms about acknowledging the legitimacy of elections in 2000, 2004, and 2016. What Trump is doing is much worse, but Democrats primed the public to believe it.
Look at what Democrats said just this year. Nadler asserted that if he wasn’t impeached, Trump would “rig the 2020 election.” They ran with a conspiracy theory that USPS would manipulate mail delivery to delay mail in votes. Numerous outlets ran articles on voting machine security and how easy they are to hack. You don’t think all this primed voters to believe our elections were easily manipulated? If you consistently piss in the pool, it’s fair to complain when someone takes a dump in it. Like yes, I’ll acknowledge it’s not the same. Yes, one is worse! But my sympathy is minimal.
Separate rant: As to Republicans being a “minority party”—Democrats thinking they’re the “silent majority” is a misperception that causes them to overplay their hand. They imagine that if only we had a popular vote, or higher turnout, or whatever, they’d win decisive majorities. We just had an election with mass mail-in voting with historically high turnout and Trump increased his percentage share of the vote from 2016. If you look at the data, Biden’s margin is built on (1) Republican-leaning suburbs in Phoenix, Atlanta, etc. (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/11/gop-wom...). Mine went +14 for Biden, but +38 for Hogan. (2) the collapse of the third party vote from over 5% to about 2% (https://www.vox.com/21561230/libertarian-party-third-party-2...). And (3) Trump suppressing his own vote by telling his supporters not to vote by mail in an election conducted primarily by mail: https://twitter.com/JustinGrayWSB/status/1328782492913033219...
When you’re the liberal party and you have to cash in Romney Republicans and Gary Johnson voters—while running against Donald Trump of all people—how smug can you possibly be?
It’s also worth looking down ballot. Despite historic turnout and the easiest voting ever, Republicans held Democrats to a razor thin House majority. They’ll finish within a couple of points in the Congressional popular vote. They regularly win the Congressional popular vote outright (in 2016 by a point, in 2014 by 6 points, in 2010 by 8 points). If we had a parliamentary system like other countries, that would allow them to regularly form the cabinet executive branch and select the prime minister.
Also, while I’m ranting, if we had a “popular vote” like France, Clinton never would have won because it would have gone to a run-off with Perot eliminated. And Trump may still have won, in a run-off with Johnson and McMullin eliminated.
Look at what Democrats said just this year. Nadler asserted that if he wasn’t impeached, Trump would “rig the 2020 election.” They ran with a conspiracy theory that USPS would manipulate mail delivery to delay mail in votes. Numerous outlets ran articles on voting machine security and how easy they are to hack. You don’t think all this primed voters to believe our elections were easily manipulated? If you consistently piss in the pool, it’s fair to complain when someone takes a dump in it. Like yes, I’ll acknowledge it’s not the same. Yes, one is worse! But my sympathy is minimal.
Separate rant: As to Republicans being a “minority party”—Democrats thinking they’re the “silent majority” is a misperception that causes them to overplay their hand. They imagine that if only we had a popular vote, or higher turnout, or whatever, they’d win decisive majorities. We just had an election with mass mail-in voting with historically high turnout and Trump increased his percentage share of the vote from 2016. If you look at the data, Biden’s margin is built on (1) Republican-leaning suburbs in Phoenix, Atlanta, etc. (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/11/gop-wom...). Mine went +14 for Biden, but +38 for Hogan. (2) the collapse of the third party vote from over 5% to about 2% (https://www.vox.com/21561230/libertarian-party-third-party-2...). And (3) Trump suppressing his own vote by telling his supporters not to vote by mail in an election conducted primarily by mail: https://twitter.com/JustinGrayWSB/status/1328782492913033219...
When you’re the liberal party and you have to cash in Romney Republicans and Gary Johnson voters—while running against Donald Trump of all people—how smug can you possibly be?
It’s also worth looking down ballot. Despite historic turnout and the easiest voting ever, Republicans held Democrats to a razor thin House majority. They’ll finish within a couple of points in the Congressional popular vote. They regularly win the Congressional popular vote outright (in 2016 by a point, in 2014 by 6 points, in 2010 by 8 points). If we had a parliamentary system like other countries, that would allow them to regularly form the cabinet executive branch and select the prime minister.
Also, while I’m ranting, if we had a “popular vote” like France, Clinton never would have won because it would have gone to a run-off with Perot eliminated. And Trump may still have won, in a run-off with Johnson and McMullin eliminated.
> Look at what Democrats said just this year. Nadler asserted that if he wasn’t impeached, Trump would “rig the 2020 election.”
How can you possibly say this is mere paranoia in the face of an active, ongoing attempt by both the President and a huge portion of the institutional GOP to do exactly that?
How can you possibly say this is mere paranoia in the face of an active, ongoing attempt by both the President and a huge portion of the institutional GOP to do exactly that?
Declassified FBI documents indicate otherwise. Flynn actually notified FBI of all meetings with Russians and debriefed with them afterwards.
There is much that is puzzling about the judges treatment of this case considering: 1) The FBI agents in charge of the Flynn case wrote a 'case closure memo' on Jan. 4, 2017, concluding he had found "no derogatory" evidence that Flynn committed a crime or posed a national security threat. FBI management then ordered the closure to be rescinded and pivoted toward trying lure Flynn into an interview. 2) In an extraordinary interview with prosecutors this fall, the FBI agent who led the Flynn case, William Barnett, admitted there was never evidence of wrongdoing by the retired general or Russian collusion by Trump, but the probe was kept open by Special Counsel Robert Mueller because his team was obsessed with punishing the president. [2]
And there are a long list of other odd facts about the case that put into question Judge Sullivans extraordinary actions by acting as a prosecutor in this case. [3]
[1] https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-04/FBIFlynn...
[2] https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-09/04518073...
[3] https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-sc...
There is much that is puzzling about the judges treatment of this case considering: 1) The FBI agents in charge of the Flynn case wrote a 'case closure memo' on Jan. 4, 2017, concluding he had found "no derogatory" evidence that Flynn committed a crime or posed a national security threat. FBI management then ordered the closure to be rescinded and pivoted toward trying lure Flynn into an interview. 2) In an extraordinary interview with prosecutors this fall, the FBI agent who led the Flynn case, William Barnett, admitted there was never evidence of wrongdoing by the retired general or Russian collusion by Trump, but the probe was kept open by Special Counsel Robert Mueller because his team was obsessed with punishing the president. [2]
And there are a long list of other odd facts about the case that put into question Judge Sullivans extraordinary actions by acting as a prosecutor in this case. [3]
[1] https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-04/FBIFlynn...
[2] https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-09/04518073...
[3] https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-sc...
> Declassified FBI documents indicate otherwise. Flynn actually notified FBI of all meetings with Russians and debriefed with them afterwards.
My "favorite" example of this is Carter Page, whose name was raked over the coals for years because a FBI lawyer intentionally altered evidence (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/us/politics/fbi-ig-report...) showing that far from being a Russian asset, Page had for years briefed the CIA every time he met with suspicious Russians. (Got to love how the Times describes said altering evidence as a "serious error".) For those who want an actual Russiagate-related indictment and guilty plea by an American, Kevin Clinesmith—said FBI lawyer—is your man.
My "favorite" example of this is Carter Page, whose name was raked over the coals for years because a FBI lawyer intentionally altered evidence (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/us/politics/fbi-ig-report...) showing that far from being a Russian asset, Page had for years briefed the CIA every time he met with suspicious Russians. (Got to love how the Times describes said altering evidence as a "serious error".) For those who want an actual Russiagate-related indictment and guilty plea by an American, Kevin Clinesmith—said FBI lawyer—is your man.
Mueller expressly said that Justice Dept doesn't go after a sitting President. Hopefully, he will get his day in court after Jan 20, 2021 (no resign + pardon shenanigans). That should set the record straight whether 2016 and 2020 are the same allegations (they are not!).
If there wasn’t something fishy going on, Flynn and Stone wouldn’t need to be pardoned.
Declassified evidence and interviews of the FBI agents in charge of the case corroborate that they thought Flynn was innocent, and actually tried to close the case in January 2017. [1 - contains links to declassified evidence] FBI management overrode their decision, and tried to arrange another meeting to fish for something to nail him on.
Here is the declassified note of the agents in charge of case trying to close it from Jan 4 2017. [2]
[1] https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-sc...
[2] https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-04/FBIFlynn...
Here is the declassified note of the agents in charge of case trying to close it from Jan 4 2017. [2]
[1] https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-sc...
[2] https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-04/FBIFlynn...
You're assuming equivalence between the two.
What matters is evidence. Facts. Logic. Reason.
The two simply are not equivalent. Check out what Wikipedia says about the Mueller Report:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report
I'm not claiming the Democrats are perfect or that there aren't mixed motives.
But it's obvious to any thinking person not living in a poisoned media ecosystem that all of these election fraud claims are baseless and ridiculous.
The same is not true about Russian influence operations during the 2016 election and the Trump campaigns, let's say, benign support of them.
What matters is evidence. Facts. Logic. Reason.
The two simply are not equivalent. Check out what Wikipedia says about the Mueller Report:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report
I'm not claiming the Democrats are perfect or that there aren't mixed motives.
But it's obvious to any thinking person not living in a poisoned media ecosystem that all of these election fraud claims are baseless and ridiculous.
The same is not true about Russian influence operations during the 2016 election and the Trump campaigns, let's say, benign support of them.
> But it's obvious to any thinking person not living in a poisoned media ecosystem that all of these election fraud claims are baseless and ridiculous.
If so, the facts around it should be freely discussable like the Russian collusion case was. Censoring the opposition seems fishy and anti-freedom.
If so, the facts around it should be freely discussable like the Russian collusion case was. Censoring the opposition seems fishy and anti-freedom.
Facts are being discussed. They’re being discussed on CNN. The New York Times. Fox News. In courts of law.
And actually, when the facts are discussed in courts of law what we find every time is that there is no evidence of fraud in any meaningful way. And, that the legal arguments being made don’t make any sense and may actually be asking for something illegal.
The question of a private company choosing to censor right wing anti-democratic propaganda (I think that’s a precise description even if it’s an unpalatable one to you) at the urging of some politicians is a different and tricky question.
I think it’s important to note that there have been threats of violence against state-level civil servants and their families. Threats which YouTube videos like the ones we are discussing foment.
But to say it’s not being discussed is just another lie.
And actually, when the facts are discussed in courts of law what we find every time is that there is no evidence of fraud in any meaningful way. And, that the legal arguments being made don’t make any sense and may actually be asking for something illegal.
The question of a private company choosing to censor right wing anti-democratic propaganda (I think that’s a precise description even if it’s an unpalatable one to you) at the urging of some politicians is a different and tricky question.
I think it’s important to note that there have been threats of violence against state-level civil servants and their families. Threats which YouTube videos like the ones we are discussing foment.
But to say it’s not being discussed is just another lie.
> would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence?
0) Biden totally won and the Trump cases are ill-founded and wrong, but
1) One can make the case that the Democratic establishment has been pushing disinformation since the first time Trump was elected, insinuating that the election was invalidated by Russian interference. The Washington Post, as late as September 21, 2020, ran the following article: "The unanswered question of our time: Is Trump an agent of Russia?"
In what manner is this new material qualitatively different? If it is a simple question of fact, to what extent is YouTube really qualified to determine facts?
2) It is eminently within reason for a human to believe that if Biden had lost, we'd be hearing cries of "voter suppression!" Hillary Clinton herself advised Biden not to concede if it came down to it, and we have other historical cases to look at, like Bush v Gore, and Stacey Abrams (D-GA) still hasn't conceded the 2018 election for governor of Georgia.
I do not ask you to litigate the matter itself, as HN is ill suited for such a dispute. I ask you instead: Is there some clear and indisputable factual evidence that would demonstrate to all comers the indicators above are not meaningful, such that it is unreasonable for your fellow man to rely on them? If not, why is the cynical position such a wrong one to take here?
Postscript: I see the score comment wobbling! Lots of fun! The -1 Insufficiently Supportive of Groupthink vote is coming through loud and clear <3
0) Biden totally won and the Trump cases are ill-founded and wrong, but
1) One can make the case that the Democratic establishment has been pushing disinformation since the first time Trump was elected, insinuating that the election was invalidated by Russian interference. The Washington Post, as late as September 21, 2020, ran the following article: "The unanswered question of our time: Is Trump an agent of Russia?"
In what manner is this new material qualitatively different? If it is a simple question of fact, to what extent is YouTube really qualified to determine facts?
2) It is eminently within reason for a human to believe that if Biden had lost, we'd be hearing cries of "voter suppression!" Hillary Clinton herself advised Biden not to concede if it came down to it, and we have other historical cases to look at, like Bush v Gore, and Stacey Abrams (D-GA) still hasn't conceded the 2018 election for governor of Georgia.
I do not ask you to litigate the matter itself, as HN is ill suited for such a dispute. I ask you instead: Is there some clear and indisputable factual evidence that would demonstrate to all comers the indicators above are not meaningful, such that it is unreasonable for your fellow man to rely on them? If not, why is the cynical position such a wrong one to take here?
Postscript: I see the score comment wobbling! Lots of fun! The -1 Insufficiently Supportive of Groupthink vote is coming through loud and clear <3
I did not downvote you but I was tempted to for the ridiculous Bush v. Gore remark. Bush v. Gore was a 0.009% difference in a state where both sides agreed that there were problems with a large number of ballots. The poorly designed ballots made it impossible to ever determine who a large number of voters intended to vote for. The dispute was over how to handle that. This is not even remotely like any other major disputed election.
No, that’s whitewashing what happened: https://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/files/publications/working_pa...
Bush won Florida in the first machine count. There was an automatic recount, and Bush won again. Gore then proceeded to create a cluster—k by demanding a hand recount of under votes only in counties he had won.
> Bush won the initial count by 1,784 votes, and he was still ahead by 327 votes after the automatic statewide machine recount. Gore then filed “protests,” demanding a hand recount of the ballots in four heavily Democratic counties, only three of which are relevant to the following discussion: Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade. Gore apparently chose these counties for one or both of two reasons. First, to the extent that errors by the counting machines were randomly distributed, Gore could expect to be a net gainer in these most heavily Democratic jurisdictions. Second, the hand recounts would be supervised by local elected officials, and the chances that such officials would be biased in Gore’s favor (or at least not biased in Bush’s favor) would be highest in the most heavily Democratic counties.
It’s a simple trick that leverages the large number of under votes (1-2% of all votes) generated by these punch machines. The machine can’t read cards that aren’t fully punched out, so there is a large pool of potentially discernible but uncounted ballots. If you only recount ballots in counties that went say 2-1 for Gore as the base rate, then when hand counters look at markings on the ballot to identify “voter intent” you’ll get 2 new Gore votes for every new Bush vote. Not only that, but there was some insane maneuvering by Gore to include partial recounts in the results. The Florida Supreme Court found this unconstitutional and ordered a statewide recount. 7 to 2, the Supreme Court found that recount unconstitutional as well. (The Court split 5-4 on what to do with the mess. But people overlook that Gore precipitated the mess, burning a ton of time before the safe harbor deadline, with his partial recount strategy.)
Bush won Florida in the first machine count. There was an automatic recount, and Bush won again. Gore then proceeded to create a cluster—k by demanding a hand recount of under votes only in counties he had won.
> Bush won the initial count by 1,784 votes, and he was still ahead by 327 votes after the automatic statewide machine recount. Gore then filed “protests,” demanding a hand recount of the ballots in four heavily Democratic counties, only three of which are relevant to the following discussion: Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade. Gore apparently chose these counties for one or both of two reasons. First, to the extent that errors by the counting machines were randomly distributed, Gore could expect to be a net gainer in these most heavily Democratic jurisdictions. Second, the hand recounts would be supervised by local elected officials, and the chances that such officials would be biased in Gore’s favor (or at least not biased in Bush’s favor) would be highest in the most heavily Democratic counties.
It’s a simple trick that leverages the large number of under votes (1-2% of all votes) generated by these punch machines. The machine can’t read cards that aren’t fully punched out, so there is a large pool of potentially discernible but uncounted ballots. If you only recount ballots in counties that went say 2-1 for Gore as the base rate, then when hand counters look at markings on the ballot to identify “voter intent” you’ll get 2 new Gore votes for every new Bush vote. Not only that, but there was some insane maneuvering by Gore to include partial recounts in the results. The Florida Supreme Court found this unconstitutional and ordered a statewide recount. 7 to 2, the Supreme Court found that recount unconstitutional as well. (The Court split 5-4 on what to do with the mess. But people overlook that Gore precipitated the mess, burning a ton of time before the safe harbor deadline, with his partial recount strategy.)
> It is eminently within reason for a human to believe that if Biden had lost, we'd be hearing cries of "voter suppression!" Hillary Clinton herself advised Biden not to concede if it came down to it
Voter suppression is real and has been happening for a long time. Biden winning or losing doesn't change that. So those cries wouldn't demonstrate much.
> Hillary Clinton herself advised Biden not to concede if it came down to it
She said not to concede on the night of the election, because of factors like mail-in voting. Someone that thinks she said not to concede at all, at any point, is just wrong.
Voter suppression is real and has been happening for a long time. Biden winning or losing doesn't change that. So those cries wouldn't demonstrate much.
> Hillary Clinton herself advised Biden not to concede if it came down to it
She said not to concede on the night of the election, because of factors like mail-in voting. Someone that thinks she said not to concede at all, at any point, is just wrong.
I'm not seeing your "on the night of the election" qualification and she may have said it in other interviews but the "under any circumstances" bit is true:
“Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances, because I think this is going to drag out, and eventually I do believe he will win if we don't give an inch, and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is,” Clinton said in an interview with her former communications director Jennifer Palmieri for Showtime's “The Circus,” which released a clip Tuesday.
Ref: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/hillary-clint...
“Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances, because I think this is going to drag out, and eventually I do believe he will win if we don't give an inch, and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is,” Clinton said in an interview with her former communications director Jennifer Palmieri for Showtime's “The Circus,” which released a clip Tuesday.
Ref: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/hillary-clint...
Even if she did qualify it, it's reasonable to expect that hundreds of millions didn't see it either, and they might quite reasonably default to cynicism on the matter.
As a pragmatic matter, running any party on Not As Bad As The Other Guys™ rules will not earn you respect, at least not outside those who were already voting for you; it's impossible to send virtue signals if they don't meaningfully cost you.
As a pragmatic matter, running any party on Not As Bad As The Other Guys™ rules will not earn you respect, at least not outside those who were already voting for you; it's impossible to send virtue signals if they don't meaningfully cost you.
And immediately preceding that in the video is:
"They have a couple of scenarios that they're looking toward. One is messing up absentee balloting, so that they then get maybe a narrow advantage in the electoral college, on election day."
"They have a couple of scenarios that they're looking toward. One is messing up absentee balloting, so that they then get maybe a narrow advantage in the electoral college, on election day."
Wow, I've seen plenty of whataboutism before, but I've never seen hypothetical whataboutism until this comment...
Well not really. The argument is that if this is a non partisan effort then this would have caused the same outcome if the political motivations were reversed. The parent comment is suggesting that is not true. I don't know if that has been well argued by the parent but I don't think this is an attempt at mud slinging.
A better argument would be to point out that a non partisan motion should gain some Republican support and it has not.
Additionally you could point out that it would be unlikely to gain support from the right due to the current incarnation of right wing politicians tending to support freedom of speech and would be opposed to this action on a partisan basis.
A better argument would be to point out that a non partisan motion should gain some Republican support and it has not.
Additionally you could point out that it would be unlikely to gain support from the right due to the current incarnation of right wing politicians tending to support freedom of speech and would be opposed to this action on a partisan basis.
I loved this part:
What if a man comes home, and says to his wife:
“Susan, you didn’t take out the trash!” he says.
“Brad, you have never taken out the trash once in your life,” she replies.
Would it be fair for him to turn, smugly clutching a copy of The Economist, and say, “Susan, this is not about me. I can’t believe you are doing whataboutism”?
What if a man comes home, and says to his wife:
“Susan, you didn’t take out the trash!” he says.
“Brad, you have never taken out the trash once in your life,” she replies.
Would it be fair for him to turn, smugly clutching a copy of The Economist, and say, “Susan, this is not about me. I can’t believe you are doing whataboutism”?
Without reading the context and just looking at that quote... yeah, probably! If he's really never taken the trash out once in his life and they're married, then either they have an arrangement where she's the one taking out the trash, or they'd be totally covered in trash.
... getting in before the "maybe they've only been married a couple of days and this is the first load of trash" - then how does she know he's never taken the trash out in his life?
I call shenanigans.
... getting in before the "maybe they've only been married a couple of days and this is the first load of trash" - then how does she know he's never taken the trash out in his life?
I call shenanigans.
huffmsa(4)
This isn't a company deciding, this is censorship urged by the government. I thought that kind of thing was illegal down there.
Not saying anything either way about the politics of the election, but isn't this blatant government censorship?
If you think it is, then why are you asking? If you're not sure, why are you asserting it (and suggesting that a party is equivalent to a government because some of its members are part of the government)?
Perhaps you should extend your inquiry, and ask how it is that much of one party and its leader are demanding that an election be overturned or declared invalid, using a variety of extremely tenuous arguments. Please consider that these demands originate with people who have also demanded tech companies be stripped of legal immunity for content publication and regularly expresses a wish to sue media outlets out of existence, topics which seem to have earned little discussion on HN.
Not saying anything either way about the politics of the election, but isn't this blatant government censorship?
If you think it is, then why are you asking? If you're not sure, why are you asserting it (and suggesting that a party is equivalent to a government because some of its members are part of the government)?
Perhaps you should extend your inquiry, and ask how it is that much of one party and its leader are demanding that an election be overturned or declared invalid, using a variety of extremely tenuous arguments. Please consider that these demands originate with people who have also demanded tech companies be stripped of legal immunity for content publication and regularly expresses a wish to sue media outlets out of existence, topics which seem to have earned little discussion on HN.
>If you think it is, then why are you asking?
hartator answered this pretty well.
>If you're not sure, why are you asserting it (and suggesting that a party is equivalent to a government because some of its members are part of the government)?
Yes, active senators are in fact part of the government. The partisanship system does affect even active member's of the US government and this does seem to be a partisan issue driven solely by politics.
>Perhaps you should extend your inquiry, and ask how it is that much of one party and its leader are demanding that an election be overturned or declared invalid, using a variety of extremely tenuous arguments.
Then the other party should counter those arguments and wait for things to resolve as they will. This will happen whatever the average person believes. The election will be decided by the electoral college, or possibly the courts if any of those lawsuits end up having substance. People posting videos about anything won't change this.
>Please consider that these demands originate with people who have also demanded tech companies be stripped of legal immunity for content publication and regularly expresses a wish to sue media outlets out of existence, topics which seem to have earned little discussion on HN.
The section 230 issue seems like a separate issue being spun as a response to this issue in ways that make no logical sense. But are being pushed as a response to actions like these. I don't support the repeal of this, but I do think this kind of obvious, government urged censorship is good either.
I didn't like when trump went on about fake news and I don't like when the other side of the government goes on about misinformation. I don't believe the government, either side, should be the arbiters of what is real news or real information.
When this happens, all the average person is left with is state sponsored propaganda.
hartator answered this pretty well.
>If you're not sure, why are you asserting it (and suggesting that a party is equivalent to a government because some of its members are part of the government)?
Yes, active senators are in fact part of the government. The partisanship system does affect even active member's of the US government and this does seem to be a partisan issue driven solely by politics.
>Perhaps you should extend your inquiry, and ask how it is that much of one party and its leader are demanding that an election be overturned or declared invalid, using a variety of extremely tenuous arguments.
Then the other party should counter those arguments and wait for things to resolve as they will. This will happen whatever the average person believes. The election will be decided by the electoral college, or possibly the courts if any of those lawsuits end up having substance. People posting videos about anything won't change this.
>Please consider that these demands originate with people who have also demanded tech companies be stripped of legal immunity for content publication and regularly expresses a wish to sue media outlets out of existence, topics which seem to have earned little discussion on HN.
The section 230 issue seems like a separate issue being spun as a response to this issue in ways that make no logical sense. But are being pushed as a response to actions like these. I don't support the repeal of this, but I do think this kind of obvious, government urged censorship is good either.
I didn't like when trump went on about fake news and I don't like when the other side of the government goes on about misinformation. I don't believe the government, either side, should be the arbiters of what is real news or real information.
When this happens, all the average person is left with is state sponsored propaganda.
> I don't believe the government, either side, should be the arbiters of what is real news or real information.
Shouldn't they?
When a murder happens, a court (which I guess is a part of a government) decides which testimony is true.
When a company makes food, FDA (or some similar department) gets to decide if their nutrition facts are correct or not.
ditto for IRS, FTC, etc.
What a government doesn't decide is if a certain opinion is right or wrong. But they usually urge public entities (e.g. media) to state the truth and suppress misinformation.
Shouldn't they?
When a murder happens, a court (which I guess is a part of a government) decides which testimony is true.
When a company makes food, FDA (or some similar department) gets to decide if their nutrition facts are correct or not.
ditto for IRS, FTC, etc.
What a government doesn't decide is if a certain opinion is right or wrong. But they usually urge public entities (e.g. media) to state the truth and suppress misinformation.
These are all issues of safety of one's very life and health. This is why there's a proper process in courts (even if stained by plea bargaining). FDA does not offer such a process, but its powers are way more limited.
None of these are in business of deciding truthiness of arbitrary statements or opinions, and they all operate in their well-defined narrow niches and run strict fact-checking procedures, collect proofs, etc.
None of these are in business of deciding truthiness of arbitrary statements or opinions, and they all operate in their well-defined narrow niches and run strict fact-checking procedures, collect proofs, etc.
It seems like most of the legislation is doing two things: restricting algorithmic sharing alone, not the ability to share. Leaving arbitration of what is good or bad in the context of the company.
Unless I misinterpreted what bills were brought forward.
I don't know why you are phrasing this as a both sides issue. Misinformation is an accurate description when nearly everything about the election being stolen is an explicit lie, unless we cannot rely on their own words in court as defining what is true.
Unless I misinterpreted what bills were brought forward.
I don't know why you are phrasing this as a both sides issue. Misinformation is an accurate description when nearly everything about the election being stolen is an explicit lie, unless we cannot rely on their own words in court as defining what is true.
Chosing to believe the story told by one side does not automatically make the other story misinformation.
> nearly everything about the election being stolen is an explicit lie
So all of the people who swore affidavits committed perjury?
> nearly everything about the election being stolen is an explicit lie
So all of the people who swore affidavits committed perjury?
> So all of the people who swore affidavits committed perjury?
Perjury is very rarely prosecuted as it's difficult to prove the person knew they were affirming a lie. So even though there have been sworn affidavits asserting fraud which was then utterly disproven by hand recounts, there still won't be many or any prosecutions of perjury. Even though these people are most likely guilty of perjury, prosecutors won't waste scarce resources building cases and prosecuting them. Judges have mostly just dismissed these false affidavits as not credible.
A better test would be corroborating evidence or some victories for these lawsuits. In most states, election systems are designed for traceability and error detection (while some like Kentucky only have auditability in 14% of precincts). If there was fraud, there would be evidence. If there's evidence, why has Trump lost 55 of 56 of these election-related cases to date (and the one victory changed nothing, because it held that that PA had to separate out ballots that arrived after Nov 3, which the PA SoS was already doing preemptively).
Seriously, read through these filings [0]. These are clearly bad faith arguments that have no basis in reality. Trump and co have raised over $170 million from the people they are blasting with these claims that can't stand up to any scrutiny [1]. One side is objectively spewing misinformation.
[0] https://www.democracydocket.com/ [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raises-more-th...
Perjury is very rarely prosecuted as it's difficult to prove the person knew they were affirming a lie. So even though there have been sworn affidavits asserting fraud which was then utterly disproven by hand recounts, there still won't be many or any prosecutions of perjury. Even though these people are most likely guilty of perjury, prosecutors won't waste scarce resources building cases and prosecuting them. Judges have mostly just dismissed these false affidavits as not credible.
A better test would be corroborating evidence or some victories for these lawsuits. In most states, election systems are designed for traceability and error detection (while some like Kentucky only have auditability in 14% of precincts). If there was fraud, there would be evidence. If there's evidence, why has Trump lost 55 of 56 of these election-related cases to date (and the one victory changed nothing, because it held that that PA had to separate out ballots that arrived after Nov 3, which the PA SoS was already doing preemptively).
Seriously, read through these filings [0]. These are clearly bad faith arguments that have no basis in reality. Trump and co have raised over $170 million from the people they are blasting with these claims that can't stand up to any scrutiny [1]. One side is objectively spewing misinformation.
[0] https://www.democracydocket.com/ [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raises-more-th...
So many people committed perjury that the Plaintiff's discarded the ones that were obviously spam. Some unknown number of affidavits were discarded by Trump's legal team that were acquired in exactly the same manner.
Their star witness claimed that there was an error of 100k in the books when an error of 30k (necessary to swing the election) wasn't found during review. When challenged on that point she claimed the Republican was in on it. Whatever it is.
No claim has been made of general election malfiance. All accusations are specifically about the presidential election. How and why would you rig only a presidential election? You can't do that by merely rescanning ballots.
Their star witness claimed that there was an error of 100k in the books when an error of 30k (necessary to swing the election) wasn't found during review. When challenged on that point she claimed the Republican was in on it. Whatever it is.
No claim has been made of general election malfiance. All accusations are specifically about the presidential election. How and why would you rig only a presidential election? You can't do that by merely rescanning ballots.
> If you think it is, then why are you asking?
OP made a rethoric question.
OP made a rethoric question.
This is roughly the equivalent of the yelling "fire" in a crowded theater problem. A lot of these videos are saying things that cannot reasonably be classified as anything other than misinformation. For example, they typically refer to things like mail-in voting as "fraud" to begin with. They also make up vague but scary claims about large numbers of illegal immigrants having voted, etc. All of this has a chilling effect on democracy and people exercising their lawful right to vote by post.
More Senators (from both parties) should be joining the named ones about cracking down on misinformation.
More Senators (from both parties) should be joining the named ones about cracking down on misinformation.
>This is roughly the equivalent of the yelling "fire" in a crowded theater problem
I don't see the equivalence. One of those has the potential of causing very immediate panic and potential injury or death as people rush to escape a non-existant fire. The other leads to people thinking dumb things about politics.
>For example, they typically refer to things like mail-in voting as "fraud" to begin with.
Ok, so wouldn't it be the people who seek out and watch these kinds videos that would be the ones that would be too afraid to use mail in ballots? Seems like the people who think those videos are nonsense won't believe them anyway.
>All of this has a chilling effect on democracy and people exercising their lawful right to vote by post
How? From what I understand, there was a record number of mail in ballots this year, seems like it did nothing of the sort.
>More Senators (from both parties) should be joining the named ones about cracking down on misinformation.
No, the government should not be allowed to decide what is or isn't real information, that's called propaganda.
I don't see the equivalence. One of those has the potential of causing very immediate panic and potential injury or death as people rush to escape a non-existant fire. The other leads to people thinking dumb things about politics.
>For example, they typically refer to things like mail-in voting as "fraud" to begin with.
Ok, so wouldn't it be the people who seek out and watch these kinds videos that would be the ones that would be too afraid to use mail in ballots? Seems like the people who think those videos are nonsense won't believe them anyway.
>All of this has a chilling effect on democracy and people exercising their lawful right to vote by post
How? From what I understand, there was a record number of mail in ballots this year, seems like it did nothing of the sort.
>More Senators (from both parties) should be joining the named ones about cracking down on misinformation.
No, the government should not be allowed to decide what is or isn't real information, that's called propaganda.
>One of those has the potential of causing very immediate panic and potential injury or death as people rush to escape a non-existant fire. The other leads to people thinking dumb things about politics.
Thinking dumb things about politics is how you end up bringing your AR-15 to investigate a pizza parlor... or trying to kidnap the governor.
Thinking dumb things about politics is how you end up bringing your AR-15 to investigate a pizza parlor... or trying to kidnap the governor.
I’ll say everything sounds like a bad game of “telephone” — that maybe someone told a friend that there’s a guy Epstein that keeps videos of powerful people, and then somehow 10,000 stories later, the story becomes the “pizza parlor around the corner is a powerful pedophile ring”
For those unfamiliar, telephone is a game in the US (maybe western countries) where 12 or so children sit in a circle and one whispers a phrase to another around the circle, something like “there’s a banana in the cabinet.” Then everyone has a big laugh at how ridiculous the story began and then ended up after going around the circle.
For those unfamiliar, telephone is a game in the US (maybe western countries) where 12 or so children sit in a circle and one whispers a phrase to another around the circle, something like “there’s a banana in the cabinet.” Then everyone has a big laugh at how ridiculous the story began and then ended up after going around the circle.
So we should keep people safe from any information that might upset them?
I don't understand your argument here. An astonishgly miniscule percent of the population commit crimes as a result of news stories.
Based on your argument, we also shouldn't report on police abuse because people may riot and burn down stores?
I don't understand your argument here. An astonishgly miniscule percent of the population commit crimes as a result of news stories.
Based on your argument, we also shouldn't report on police abuse because people may riot and burn down stores?
An astonishingly large percentage of the population are parroting this and all manner of other misinformation on social media, all day, every day, for months, and it's getting worse as one by one the dominoes fall and yet another impressionable mind is swayed and joins the chorus.
I don't think censorship is necessarily the right approach to mitigate this torrent of bullshit, but it's clearly out of control.
I don't think censorship is necessarily the right approach to mitigate this torrent of bullshit, but it's clearly out of control.
> So we should keep people safe from any information that might upset them?
There is no "we".
The platform is YouTube. It is their prerogative (and indeed their right to freedom of speech) to host content as they see fit. The Senators are merely asking them to exercise their freedom to a very reasonable extent.
There is no "we".
The platform is YouTube. It is their prerogative (and indeed their right to freedom of speech) to host content as they see fit. The Senators are merely asking them to exercise their freedom to a very reasonable extent.
>I don't understand your argument here.
>Based on your argument
I was pointing out how "believing dumb things about politics" is a deliberate minimization of the effect of disinformation.
>An astonishgly miniscule percent of the population commit crimes as a result of news stories.
But an astonishingly large number of people are afraid of vaccines/black people/corona jihad/the deep state pedophile ring because they read something that isn't true. Can you think of any effects this might have had recently? Any you think of anything bad going on that isn't strictly a crime?
>Based on your argument
I was pointing out how "believing dumb things about politics" is a deliberate minimization of the effect of disinformation.
>An astonishgly miniscule percent of the population commit crimes as a result of news stories.
But an astonishingly large number of people are afraid of vaccines/black people/corona jihad/the deep state pedophile ring because they read something that isn't true. Can you think of any effects this might have had recently? Any you think of anything bad going on that isn't strictly a crime?
[deleted]
What I didn't learn until recently was the "yelling fire in a crowded theater" was the analogy applied to pacifists opposing the draft in WWI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...). It was a bad ruling but the analogy itself stands.
So in that vein, should incitements for violence against the opposing party be unfettered free speech? At what point does it go too far?
So in that vein, should incitements for violence against the opposing party be unfettered free speech? At what point does it go too far?
> I don't see the equivalence. One of those has the potential of causing very immediate panic and potential injury
Wide scale misinformation about election fraud could result in a mini civil war. I don't see how you could be so sanguine about that.
Wide scale misinformation about election fraud could result in a mini civil war. I don't see how you could be so sanguine about that.
If only there was some way of auditing an election to calm peoples fears.
Which has been done right? Practically all the states have certified their results, after recounts and legal challenges heard, etc. Google has left it until now for the precise reason that "legitimate" scrutiny was taking place.
At this point continuing to assert wide scale fraud escalates beyond "reasonable" and up to the level of "recklessness" that brings it into parity with "yelling fire".
At this point continuing to assert wide scale fraud escalates beyond "reasonable" and up to the level of "recklessness" that brings it into parity with "yelling fire".
It’s not reckless. It’s criminal. And all the people that are spreading this misinformation are complicit of sedition.
[deleted]
Do you think the spread of misinformation causes harm? It doesn't sound like it, by how you diminish the impact of political misinfo ("The other leads to people thinking dumb things about politics.")
Not to take too strong a stance until I understand your position better, but record number of mail-in ballots doesn't imply there wasn't significant voter suppression.
Not to take too strong a stance until I understand your position better, but record number of mail-in ballots doesn't imply there wasn't significant voter suppression.
this is an imposition of bounds on acceptable political thought; kto kovo. "misinformation" is a political label created to influence political processes. that is not to say that there is no truth, but rather that there is an official truth which is subject to the contingencies of power.
the implicit justification for censoring this idea is that it delegitimizes the democratic process; it is ridiculous on its face to assert that overt censorship is any less delegitimizing. this is an expression of ideological power upon an opponent.
the implicit justification for censoring this idea is that it delegitimizes the democratic process; it is ridiculous on its face to assert that overt censorship is any less delegitimizing. this is an expression of ideological power upon an opponent.
So what do we do? From where can we possibly derive knowledge?
I would assert that, collectively, we have a vested interest in determining what's knowable about the material world. We have a tradition of allowing particularly well suited people to spend the majority of their waking lives in the detailed study of difficult to understand phenomena.
We have experts, in other words.
We have a political process that encourages the cultivation of experts and even has rules allowing for personal consequences for when experts and politicians breach ethical standards.
Is it here where we disagree? Should there, indeed, be no ethical standards to which we hold out experts?
Asking honestly, bc I don't follow your argument. Maybe I'm completely off base.
I would assert that, collectively, we have a vested interest in determining what's knowable about the material world. We have a tradition of allowing particularly well suited people to spend the majority of their waking lives in the detailed study of difficult to understand phenomena.
We have experts, in other words.
We have a political process that encourages the cultivation of experts and even has rules allowing for personal consequences for when experts and politicians breach ethical standards.
Is it here where we disagree? Should there, indeed, be no ethical standards to which we hold out experts?
Asking honestly, bc I don't follow your argument. Maybe I'm completely off base.
>So what do we do? From where can we possibly derive knowledge?
We all have brains capable of thinking. The idea is to examine objective facts as best one can, this means yes overcoming personal bias, which can be difficult and assessing things from a variety of sources.
Personally, I find, if you can't find an objective source, about the best thing you can do is listen to the extreme voices and assume truth likely lies somewhere between them, whatever that truth may be.
>I would assert that, collectively, we have a vested interest in determining what's knowable about the material world. We have a tradition of allowing particularly well suited people to spend the majority of their waking lives in the detailed study of difficult to understand phenomena.
We have a vested interest in figuring out what is untrue in the world, it's the only thing we as a species are truly capable of doing and what the scientific method is based on. Silencing dissenting opinions has never worked well at that, compounding observation and evidence does.
>We have experts, in other words.
No, we have people who have spent a lot of time doing one thing, those people are often times extremely knowledgable and correct many times, but they're still human with the same fallibilities and humanness as the rest of us.
>We have a political process that encourages the cultivation of experts and even has rules allowing for personal consequences for when experts and politicians breach ethical standards.
That comes down to the same thing that plagues a lot of science reporting and other things and is a logical fallacy called an appeal to authority.
A 'so called expert' is never correct over logic and facts. This may come down to an education, knowledge issue, I dunno.
>Is it here where we disagree? Should there, indeed, be no ethical standards to which we hold out experts?
>Asking honestly, bc I don't follow your argument. Maybe I'm completely off base.
Yes, but, a person posting videos on youtube isn't a expert just because they post things on youtube.
It's fairly easy to post a video on youtube. The issue of people assuming every video posted on youtube or every word someone says on the internet, is the word of an expert is something that again I think comes down to a lack of proper education on such things as psychology, marketing, written communications other things at maybe a younger age.
We live in a world where it's possible for anyone to say anything publicly. Censorship is not the solution to the problems that arise from that.
Every person has a brain, everyone's capable of being taught critical thinking. The world seems to push subservience, acquiescencing blindly to the authority of experts and assuming the average person has the intelligence of a child instead.
We all have brains capable of thinking. The idea is to examine objective facts as best one can, this means yes overcoming personal bias, which can be difficult and assessing things from a variety of sources.
Personally, I find, if you can't find an objective source, about the best thing you can do is listen to the extreme voices and assume truth likely lies somewhere between them, whatever that truth may be.
>I would assert that, collectively, we have a vested interest in determining what's knowable about the material world. We have a tradition of allowing particularly well suited people to spend the majority of their waking lives in the detailed study of difficult to understand phenomena.
We have a vested interest in figuring out what is untrue in the world, it's the only thing we as a species are truly capable of doing and what the scientific method is based on. Silencing dissenting opinions has never worked well at that, compounding observation and evidence does.
>We have experts, in other words.
No, we have people who have spent a lot of time doing one thing, those people are often times extremely knowledgable and correct many times, but they're still human with the same fallibilities and humanness as the rest of us.
>We have a political process that encourages the cultivation of experts and even has rules allowing for personal consequences for when experts and politicians breach ethical standards.
That comes down to the same thing that plagues a lot of science reporting and other things and is a logical fallacy called an appeal to authority.
A 'so called expert' is never correct over logic and facts. This may come down to an education, knowledge issue, I dunno.
>Is it here where we disagree? Should there, indeed, be no ethical standards to which we hold out experts?
>Asking honestly, bc I don't follow your argument. Maybe I'm completely off base.
Yes, but, a person posting videos on youtube isn't a expert just because they post things on youtube.
It's fairly easy to post a video on youtube. The issue of people assuming every video posted on youtube or every word someone says on the internet, is the word of an expert is something that again I think comes down to a lack of proper education on such things as psychology, marketing, written communications other things at maybe a younger age.
We live in a world where it's possible for anyone to say anything publicly. Censorship is not the solution to the problems that arise from that.
Every person has a brain, everyone's capable of being taught critical thinking. The world seems to push subservience, acquiescencing blindly to the authority of experts and assuming the average person has the intelligence of a child instead.
The equivalence absolutely has merit. "People thinking dumb things about politics" absolutely has the ability to cause panic, potential injury, and death. You can look at Facebook's role in the Rohingya genocide in Malaysia as a quick example.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/facebook-resists-handin...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/facebook-resists-handin...
Off topic, but I think you mean Myanmar (formerly Burma), not Malaysia here.
You’re going to have to walk me through that line of reasoning. The chain of causation between yelling “fire!” in a crowded theater and someone getting trampled to death while attempting to flee doesn’t require any stretch of the imagination. You claim that YouTube videos with false information about the 2020 election have a “chilling” effect on democracy. What does that even mean? And how would you even begin to establish some concrete chain of causation between the videos and whatever it is you define as “chilling”? Do you see how hand-wavy your argument is?
The causation has deniability built into it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_wolf_(terrorism)#Stochast...
The argument is that we can’t talk about how we have an untrustable, unverifiable election system, because that would lead people to not trust the results. As long they don’t think about it, they can trust it.
I press a button on a screen when I vote. I don’t know what the hell it is actually doing and it’s shocking to me the mainstream consensus is we can’t even talk about now horrifically broken American voting is compared to sane countries like France.
I press a button on a screen when I vote. I don’t know what the hell it is actually doing and it’s shocking to me the mainstream consensus is we can’t even talk about now horrifically broken American voting is compared to sane countries like France.
> sane countries like France
You might want to look at what's going on in France right now before calling our democratic institutions sane :)
You might want to look at what's going on in France right now before calling our democratic institutions sane :)
In Georgia the machine prints out a paper ballot that you hand in. Yet somehow that is one of the states being accused of widespread fraud...?
Only the swing states that Trump lost are being accused of fraud, but only in the presidential election. This is extremely disingenuous and lacks all credibility.
Now the GOP seems to be arguing in court that there wasn't even fraud, but they just don't like the outcome and want to reverse the will of the voters in swing states based on weird technicalities.
This entire thing is nonsense, and youtube should censor it because it is entirely just a scheme to subvert our democracy. That is extremely dangerous, more dangerous than yelling fire in a crowded theater.
Only the swing states that Trump lost are being accused of fraud, but only in the presidential election. This is extremely disingenuous and lacks all credibility.
Now the GOP seems to be arguing in court that there wasn't even fraud, but they just don't like the outcome and want to reverse the will of the voters in swing states based on weird technicalities.
This entire thing is nonsense, and youtube should censor it because it is entirely just a scheme to subvert our democracy. That is extremely dangerous, more dangerous than yelling fire in a crowded theater.
> it is entirely just a scheme to subvert our democracy.
If our democratic systems were transparent, verifiable, and understandable, it wouldn't be possible to 'subvert' our democracy in this way. The fact is that our democracy has already been 'subverted' whether or not any fraud occurred (and surely some did, just as it does in every election in American history; the only question is the scale - was it late 1800s scale or late 1900s scale - most people on HN would agree it was probably late 1900s scale, that is, minimal.) But the system is set up in such a way that we cannot actually prove anything. We just have to accept what we're told, because democracy.
The election systems in each state have their own problems. In Georgia the problems are with the tabulation, with absentee ballots, with chain of custody. I am not saying fraud did occur. I am saying that because of the problems I just mentioned, it is impossible to prove if fraud occurred or not. And things should not be that way.
At any rate, all you mean by 'subverting democracy' is 'decreasing faith in our institutions.' And I honestly don't know how anyone can look at the past few years and trust any of our institutions.
If our democratic systems were transparent, verifiable, and understandable, it wouldn't be possible to 'subvert' our democracy in this way. The fact is that our democracy has already been 'subverted' whether or not any fraud occurred (and surely some did, just as it does in every election in American history; the only question is the scale - was it late 1800s scale or late 1900s scale - most people on HN would agree it was probably late 1900s scale, that is, minimal.) But the system is set up in such a way that we cannot actually prove anything. We just have to accept what we're told, because democracy.
The election systems in each state have their own problems. In Georgia the problems are with the tabulation, with absentee ballots, with chain of custody. I am not saying fraud did occur. I am saying that because of the problems I just mentioned, it is impossible to prove if fraud occurred or not. And things should not be that way.
At any rate, all you mean by 'subverting democracy' is 'decreasing faith in our institutions.' And I honestly don't know how anyone can look at the past few years and trust any of our institutions.
This is completely absurd. There has been no time in the entire history of the
US that our "democratic systems were transparent, verifiable and understandable" in the face of a president and an army of his minions spreading lies meant to confuse people and undermine elections. The elections have never been more secure than they are right now.
When NO fact finding court will back up any of your claims then how do you know there are "problems" with the ballots in Georgia? Your only source is partisans and the manipulated media they are releasing.
Just because trump has been working to blanket the airwaves with lies and half truths to sew doubt doesn't mean there is anything there. If there was they would be taking it to court and not losing 50+ cases.
There is no way to justify trying to overturn the vote based on technicalities while filling the airwaves with lies about fraud and that the election was stolen. If there is fraud they can prove it. If they can't prove it then they don't get to find loopholes to steal the election.
Can you actually not tell that trump is using marketing and con artist style manipulation to trick you into believing the election was stolen? There is no substance to these accusations.
When NO fact finding court will back up any of your claims then how do you know there are "problems" with the ballots in Georgia? Your only source is partisans and the manipulated media they are releasing.
Just because trump has been working to blanket the airwaves with lies and half truths to sew doubt doesn't mean there is anything there. If there was they would be taking it to court and not losing 50+ cases.
There is no way to justify trying to overturn the vote based on technicalities while filling the airwaves with lies about fraud and that the election was stolen. If there is fraud they can prove it. If they can't prove it then they don't get to find loopholes to steal the election.
Can you actually not tell that trump is using marketing and con artist style manipulation to trick you into believing the election was stolen? There is no substance to these accusations.
> I honestly don't know how anyone can look at the past few years and trust any of our institutions.
Right. The faith is already gone, which is why allegations of election fraud immediately gained a large following. The cat is out of the bag, and nothing will be accomplished by censoring these videos except setting a bad precedent.
Right. The faith is already gone, which is why allegations of election fraud immediately gained a large following. The cat is out of the bag, and nothing will be accomplished by censoring these videos except setting a bad precedent.
> Now the GOP seems to be arguing in court that there wasn't even fraud, but they just don't like the outcome and want to reverse the will of the voters in swing states based on weird technicalities.
Interesting, do you have a source for this?
Interesting, do you have a source for this?
The entire case that the supreme court just rejected for PA was about that. This isn't claiming fraud. This is trying to find a technicality to use to invalidate millions of legitimate votes.
https://www.npr.org/2020/12/08/944230517/supreme-court-rejec...
https://www.npr.org/2020/12/08/944230517/supreme-court-rejec...
That "fire" problem is not actually a problem. It's amazing how something that's straight-up wrong has persisted in popular culture for so long:
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
I'm confused, the article seems to jump to the conclusion that the entire metaphor is invalid because of the ruling in Brandenburg v. Ohio. That doesn't make any sense to me. The metaphor still holds.
To put it another way, regardless of the ruling I still doubt a person who walks into a the same theater every day repeatedly screaming "fire" and pulling the fire alarm with malicious intent to hurt the profits of the theater would have a 1st amendment case get very far against the theater when the theater decides to throw that person out.
To put it another way, regardless of the ruling I still doubt a person who walks into a the same theater every day repeatedly screaming "fire" and pulling the fire alarm with malicious intent to hurt the profits of the theater would have a 1st amendment case get very far against the theater when the theater decides to throw that person out.
It's not just the ruling that was problematic, but also Oliver Wendell Holmes' often referenced grotesque metaphor.
Holmes' used the metaphor to equate criticism of the government during wartime to being so dangerous for society, specifically speaking against the draft during WWI, that it was akin to yelling fire in a crowded theatre.
Clearly, criticism of the government, especially regarding matters of war and public safety, are protected by the first amendment. Not only was the metaphor used to justify an unconstitutional ruling, but it also furthered gross misperceptions regarding limits on protected speech that are still referenced today.
Holmes' used the metaphor to equate criticism of the government during wartime to being so dangerous for society, specifically speaking against the draft during WWI, that it was akin to yelling fire in a crowded theatre.
Clearly, criticism of the government, especially regarding matters of war and public safety, are protected by the first amendment. Not only was the metaphor used to justify an unconstitutional ruling, but it also furthered gross misperceptions regarding limits on protected speech that are still referenced today.
I agree the metaphor was used incorrectly but I still would not say it was creating misconceptions. A better metaphor for the current day would be making prank 911 calls to the fire department when you know there is no fire. Doing this wastes taxpayer money, diverts resources away from actual emergencies and can cause real harm.
If anything, the metaphor seems to have persisted because it's applicable in so many other scenarios, not because of that one case that rarely seems to get brought up in casual discussion.
If anything, the metaphor seems to have persisted because it's applicable in so many other scenarios, not because of that one case that rarely seems to get brought up in casual discussion.
I appreciate you addressing this, because it speaks to the point.
Lies, falsehoods, misinformation and irrational statements are all protected by the first amendment. As is uttering insane and unintelligible thoughts in public.
If speech is used to further a crime or directly causes civil harm that result in damages (ex. assault or nuisance), there are existing applicable criminal and civil laws to either punish or provide a remedy.
If for example, the police were to execute a lawful warrant to search your property, it would not nullify or burden your fourth amendment protection from unreasonable searches and seizures.
Similarly, civil remedies (i.e. tort law) allowing for compensation for damages due to negligence - say from getting trampled in a crowd that was spooked by someone yelling "fire" or "shooter" - would not place limitations on your protected right of freedom to assemble.
The biggest problem with the campaign to justify censorship or moderation of misinformation/disinformation under the guise that it causes harm, is that it removes the measurable injury element of tort law and replaces it with vague and abstract notions of either mass ethereal or psychic harm (which the Supreme Court has expressing found against).
Lies, falsehoods, misinformation and irrational statements are all protected by the first amendment. As is uttering insane and unintelligible thoughts in public.
If speech is used to further a crime or directly causes civil harm that result in damages (ex. assault or nuisance), there are existing applicable criminal and civil laws to either punish or provide a remedy.
If for example, the police were to execute a lawful warrant to search your property, it would not nullify or burden your fourth amendment protection from unreasonable searches and seizures.
Similarly, civil remedies (i.e. tort law) allowing for compensation for damages due to negligence - say from getting trampled in a crowd that was spooked by someone yelling "fire" or "shooter" - would not place limitations on your protected right of freedom to assemble.
The biggest problem with the campaign to justify censorship or moderation of misinformation/disinformation under the guise that it causes harm, is that it removes the measurable injury element of tort law and replaces it with vague and abstract notions of either mass ethereal or psychic harm (which the Supreme Court has expressing found against).
If you mean something broader than this Youtube policy then it's not clear what campaign you're referring to. Certain types of misinformation/disinformation are already considered torts because they do cause harm, e.g. defamation/slander/libel. Continuing the metaphor, in the case of Youtube it appears that among other things they don't want to host videos of people encouraging others to make prank 911 calls because it causes lawsuits, bad press and lost profits in addition to it being illegal in a lot of places.
>they typically refer to things like mail-in voting as "fraud" to begin with
Not "fraud." Illegal votes. In fact, there is a case brought to the Supreme Court by Texas and 17 other states (36% of the United States) alleging this exact thing: that many mail-in votes were illegal, due to unconstitutional rule changes which allowed them to take place[1]. That's not ok to talk about on YouTube?
[1]If you don't know what I'm talking about, just say so and I'll point you to a non-partisan, levelheaded explanation of the argument.
Not "fraud." Illegal votes. In fact, there is a case brought to the Supreme Court by Texas and 17 other states (36% of the United States) alleging this exact thing: that many mail-in votes were illegal, due to unconstitutional rule changes which allowed them to take place[1]. That's not ok to talk about on YouTube?
[1]If you don't know what I'm talking about, just say so and I'll point you to a non-partisan, levelheaded explanation of the argument.
> Texas and 17 other states...that's not ok to talk about on YouTube?
Firstly, this is a false equivalence. The kind of videos I am talking about are not ones discussing some frivolous lawsuit, they are the ones by wild-eyed zealots ranting about the Constitution that end up hatching plots to kidnap the Governor of their State [1]. The sort of videos that lead to people shooting up a pizza parlor because they believe it's the center of a Satanic organization [2].
But leaving that aside for a moment, restricting what's okay to talk about on YouTube is, by definition, YouTube's problem. They can restrict videos uploaded on the platform to be exclusively people wearing pink furry suits if they want.
Senators can ask YouTube to try and stop running videos peddling conspiracy theories on their platform, because they believe YouTube (despite the large number of complaints about them) is generally speaking, a responsible and fairminded platform; and they expect that YouTube is broadly trying to do the right thing – not be political, but also crack down on unreasonable crackpot theories being peddled on its platform.
Asking this of a less fair-minded source (say the vidoes on a Stormfront website) would be pointless, which is why the Senators don't do so. You will notice that the Senators aren't asking the creators of Gab to crack down on crackpot theories on their platform either.
-----------------------------
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-michigan-whitmer/militia-...
[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/22/533941689...
Firstly, this is a false equivalence. The kind of videos I am talking about are not ones discussing some frivolous lawsuit, they are the ones by wild-eyed zealots ranting about the Constitution that end up hatching plots to kidnap the Governor of their State [1]. The sort of videos that lead to people shooting up a pizza parlor because they believe it's the center of a Satanic organization [2].
But leaving that aside for a moment, restricting what's okay to talk about on YouTube is, by definition, YouTube's problem. They can restrict videos uploaded on the platform to be exclusively people wearing pink furry suits if they want.
Senators can ask YouTube to try and stop running videos peddling conspiracy theories on their platform, because they believe YouTube (despite the large number of complaints about them) is generally speaking, a responsible and fairminded platform; and they expect that YouTube is broadly trying to do the right thing – not be political, but also crack down on unreasonable crackpot theories being peddled on its platform.
Asking this of a less fair-minded source (say the vidoes on a Stormfront website) would be pointless, which is why the Senators don't do so. You will notice that the Senators aren't asking the creators of Gab to crack down on crackpot theories on their platform either.
-----------------------------
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-michigan-whitmer/militia-...
[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/22/533941689...
>Senators can ask YouTube to try and stop running videos peddling conspiracy theories on their platform, because they believe YouTube (despite the large number of complaints about them) is generally speaking, a responsible and fairminded platform; and they expect that YouTube is broadly trying to do the right thing – not be political, but also crack down on unreasonable crackpot theories being peddled on its platform.
>Asking this of a less fair-minded source (say the vidoes on a Stormfront website) would be pointless, which is why the Senators don't do so. You will notice that the Senators aren't asking the creators of Gab to crack down on crackpot theories on their platform either.
That's an interesting theory. Someone else might argue they are targeting YouTube and Facebook because there are more swing voters on these platforms and because these platforms are far more viral than Gab or Storefront.
>Asking this of a less fair-minded source (say the vidoes on a Stormfront website) would be pointless, which is why the Senators don't do so. You will notice that the Senators aren't asking the creators of Gab to crack down on crackpot theories on their platform either.
That's an interesting theory. Someone else might argue they are targeting YouTube and Facebook because there are more swing voters on these platforms and because these platforms are far more viral than Gab or Storefront.
I don’t really understand the argument that taking away free speech will somehow prevent acts of violence. Violence is illegal regardless of if you saw it in a YouTube video or not.
As a matter of great irony to folks in the tech industry, this same argument was being used in the 1990s to ban violent video games. Of course it failed, because it was a terrible idea and was based on debunked science.
As a matter of great irony to folks in the tech industry, this same argument was being used in the 1990s to ban violent video games. Of course it failed, because it was a terrible idea and was based on debunked science.
> I don’t really understand the argument that taking away free speech will somehow prevent acts of violence.
No one is taking away free speech in this case, that's where I think people are talking past each other.
Isn't not allowing videos on your platform also a form of freedom of speech? The senators are simply urging YouTube to exercise their freedom of speech to run fact-checked, non-crackpot videos on their platform. Why do you want to force YouTube to carry videos of bizarre conspiracy theorists on their (private) platform?
If the Senators ordered YouTube (or indeed, Fox News) to suppress specific videos, that would indeed be taking away free speech.
No one is taking away free speech in this case, that's where I think people are talking past each other.
Isn't not allowing videos on your platform also a form of freedom of speech? The senators are simply urging YouTube to exercise their freedom of speech to run fact-checked, non-crackpot videos on their platform. Why do you want to force YouTube to carry videos of bizarre conspiracy theorists on their (private) platform?
If the Senators ordered YouTube (or indeed, Fox News) to suppress specific videos, that would indeed be taking away free speech.
So, tell me, you would be perfectly fine with someone putting videos on YouTube asserting that you are a pedophile and adding also your home address just for completeness’ sake?
It’s the same freedom of speech that caused a commando of terrorists to plot to kidnap and execute Michigan Governor.
> In fact, there is a case brought to the Supreme Court by Texas and 17 other states (36% of the United States) alleging this exact thing
This is incorrect. The other states' attorneys general, partisan elected officials that they are, filed amicus briefs. They didn't join the suit and aren't speaking for their states. The actual precedent that this case would set would be nightmarish for every state. Nobody wants this, it's a stunt.
This suit is going to be immediately rejected by the SC just like all the other frivolous lawsuits. The best way of predicting the future is to look at the past, and the past 50+ lawsuits have been dead on arrival.
This is incorrect. The other states' attorneys general, partisan elected officials that they are, filed amicus briefs. They didn't join the suit and aren't speaking for their states. The actual precedent that this case would set would be nightmarish for every state. Nobody wants this, it's a stunt.
This suit is going to be immediately rejected by the SC just like all the other frivolous lawsuits. The best way of predicting the future is to look at the past, and the past 50+ lawsuits have been dead on arrival.
Then the media are speaking inaccurately. I have never heard them mention that these are amicus briefs. All they say is "joining".
I'm not saying that you're wrong. I'm saying that the media do a deplorable job of reporting accurately.
I'm not saying that you're wrong. I'm saying that the media do a deplorable job of reporting accurately.
Even Fox News says it accurately. Headline: "Missouri, 16 other states file brief supporting Texas suit to delay presidential elector appointment"
(emphasis added) An amicus brief is also known as a 'brief.'
[1] https://www.foxnews.com/politics/missouri-16-other-states-fi...
(emphasis added) An amicus brief is also known as a 'brief.'
[1] https://www.foxnews.com/politics/missouri-16-other-states-fi...
Yes, this is the argument... and the courts keep rejecting it. As the rulings keep pointing out, you can't tell people they can vote one way, and then challenge it after they have already voted. It doesn't matter if it might be against some rules; the time to challenge was before people voted.
Look if 20 states are claiming it, its not news that you can censor. You can censor half the government
If you challenge it before hand you have no damages to base a case on.
The courts keep rejecting it because they dont want to take responsibility and see the country in riots. As simple as that.
Courts can't reject a case because they don't want to hear it (except for SCOTUS, although Thomas and Alito would argue they don't have that right for original jurisdiction). In order to reject a case, the case has to be lacking in merit or procedurally deficient. That so many of the cases have been rejected due to their procedural deficiencies should be in an indication of the quality of the legal teams pressing the issues.
(Note that rejecting for procedural deficiencies doesn't mean that the court approves of the merits of the case, it just means that the court also doesn't want to decide the merits. Although if you piss it off hard enough, they will also go own to berate you on why your claims lack merit in addition to enumerating procedural deficiencies).
(Note that rejecting for procedural deficiencies doesn't mean that the court approves of the merits of the case, it just means that the court also doesn't want to decide the merits. Although if you piss it off hard enough, they will also go own to berate you on why your claims lack merit in addition to enumerating procedural deficiencies).
"... unconstitutional..."
A reminder that states are sovereign and don't run their elections according to the Federal Constitution. This whole idea that states can't determine the course of their elections because it's "unconstitutional" is farcical.
A reminder that states are sovereign and don't run their elections according to the Federal Constitution. This whole idea that states can't determine the course of their elections because it's "unconstitutional" is farcical.
If states were sovereign, then they could secede, and we already settled that issue. The U.S. Constitution is the law of the land; see the Supremacy Clause.
They are sovereign on this matter. There are no laws in the Constitution to micromanage the state elections (that's where the "Supremacy Clause" would come up). This simply isn't a matter of the US Constitution.
You do know of course that the governor of Texas expanded early voting by personal proclomation, right? I suppose other states which did not have early voting, or a shorter window, can now claim TX has created substantial illegal votes by similar 'equal protection' arguments. Likewise, I believe one of the states that filed amicus briefs allowed counting of ballots days longer than did PA.
[EDIT: I choose to use strong language because it's important to speak the truth. Simplicity and clarity, combined with honesty, always are friends of truth. Sometimes you gotta say that the emperor has no clothes, and that shit does indeed stink. And this is shit that stinks.]
> In fact, there is a case brought to the Supreme Court by Texas and 17 other states ...
How do I put this delicately?
That case is bullshit.
Texas knows it, those 17 states know it, the Supreme Court knows it, and every single lawyer in the United States knows it.
And now you know it.
The Supreme Court will probably, like it did to the Pennsylvania Republicans, issue an order consisting of a single sentence rejecting their application:
"The application for injunctive relief presented to Justice Alito and by him referred to the Court is denied."
https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/120820zr_bq7...
> In fact, there is a case brought to the Supreme Court by Texas and 17 other states ...
How do I put this delicately?
That case is bullshit.
Texas knows it, those 17 states know it, the Supreme Court knows it, and every single lawyer in the United States knows it.
And now you know it.
The Supreme Court will probably, like it did to the Pennsylvania Republicans, issue an order consisting of a single sentence rejecting their application:
"The application for injunctive relief presented to Justice Alito and by him referred to the Court is denied."
https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/120820zr_bq7...
It's QAnon all the way down.
Indeed. I miss when it was turtles all the way down :):).
What I miss is the ability to discuss policy matters as an intellectual endeavor, rather than the tribal warfare that exists today.
Let’s do it - I love a good intellectual conversation!
Examining what facts we have it’s very clear that the Republican Party has put forth a number of specious lawsuits with no grounds - all of which have been vehemently rejected by every court in the land - and that the goal of these lawsuits is either to overturn the legitimate election results and/or undermine people’s faith in the election.
Many or most Republican politicians know the lawsuits will fail and are on board because they know they have to keep their base riled up in Georgia to win those Senate runoff elections.
And also because Trump still has a vise-grip on the Republican base, so these politicians have made the calculation that they’d rather do what Trump wants (so they can win re-election) than reaffirm what is America’s most fundamental small-d democratic process: voting for our president, having our leader be elected by the people.
Considering how fundamental voting is to a democracy, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to call an attempt to undermine the electoral process itself seditious.
It’s not very patriotic to put the success of your own political party ahead of the good of the country. Both sides do it a lot but in this specific case it’s clearly the Republicans and it’s a pretty egregious breach of faith of our social contract. In America we expect our elected officials to respect the rules of the game, and acknowledge an electoral loss.
Do you agree that these lawsuits are un-patriotic and seditious? If not, why?
I look forward to your reasoned, cogent, and rational response so we can have a nice intellectual discussion about policy.
Please don’t share evidence or whatnot which the courts have already examined and rejected - it doesn’t seem like a very good use of time to cover old ground, unless of course you wish to disagree with the decision of the courts.
Be careful what you wish for - you just might get it! ;)
———-
My point, of course, is that not all of our political conflict is blind “tribal warfare” where blame can be equally distributed between the two sides. There really are some important issues where one side is wrong, and where it’s important to fight for what’s right.
That’s not to say all partisan conflict is good and necessary. But I do think the facts show that (and I don’t deny the many flaws of the Democratic Party) the Republican Party has embraced obstruction as a technique to achieve and maintain power and continues to inch closer to “If I can’t have it, well then nobody can.”
And that they’ve embraced a figure who is very comfortable with undermining democracy itself and would love to become an authoritarian leader.
Examining what facts we have it’s very clear that the Republican Party has put forth a number of specious lawsuits with no grounds - all of which have been vehemently rejected by every court in the land - and that the goal of these lawsuits is either to overturn the legitimate election results and/or undermine people’s faith in the election.
Many or most Republican politicians know the lawsuits will fail and are on board because they know they have to keep their base riled up in Georgia to win those Senate runoff elections.
And also because Trump still has a vise-grip on the Republican base, so these politicians have made the calculation that they’d rather do what Trump wants (so they can win re-election) than reaffirm what is America’s most fundamental small-d democratic process: voting for our president, having our leader be elected by the people.
Considering how fundamental voting is to a democracy, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to call an attempt to undermine the electoral process itself seditious.
It’s not very patriotic to put the success of your own political party ahead of the good of the country. Both sides do it a lot but in this specific case it’s clearly the Republicans and it’s a pretty egregious breach of faith of our social contract. In America we expect our elected officials to respect the rules of the game, and acknowledge an electoral loss.
Do you agree that these lawsuits are un-patriotic and seditious? If not, why?
I look forward to your reasoned, cogent, and rational response so we can have a nice intellectual discussion about policy.
Please don’t share evidence or whatnot which the courts have already examined and rejected - it doesn’t seem like a very good use of time to cover old ground, unless of course you wish to disagree with the decision of the courts.
Be careful what you wish for - you just might get it! ;)
———-
My point, of course, is that not all of our political conflict is blind “tribal warfare” where blame can be equally distributed between the two sides. There really are some important issues where one side is wrong, and where it’s important to fight for what’s right.
That’s not to say all partisan conflict is good and necessary. But I do think the facts show that (and I don’t deny the many flaws of the Democratic Party) the Republican Party has embraced obstruction as a technique to achieve and maintain power and continues to inch closer to “If I can’t have it, well then nobody can.”
And that they’ve embraced a figure who is very comfortable with undermining democracy itself and would love to become an authoritarian leader.
I haven't heard of this argument, could you point me to an explanation?
The rough gist of the argument is that only legislatures are empowered to choose the method of selection of electors, and therefore governors (like Texas's governor) or courts (as in North Carolina) that order changes to election procedure render the entire count of the election invalid.
(You'll note that the examples I cite are not states that Texas is suing, and that should give you some indication of the likelihood of success.)
[Side note: that's one of the arguments. The actual brief is kind of a legally incoherent mess, so it kind of hops around from argument to argument a bit; the other main argument, which most of the amici seem to want to focus on, is that PA's Supreme Court improperly adjudicated PA law's propriety under the PA Constitution, and therefore Texas has right to settle that dispute in front of SCOTUS, despite SCOTUS dismissing an appeal alleging exactly that just yesterday.]
(You'll note that the examples I cite are not states that Texas is suing, and that should give you some indication of the likelihood of success.)
[Side note: that's one of the arguments. The actual brief is kind of a legally incoherent mess, so it kind of hops around from argument to argument a bit; the other main argument, which most of the amici seem to want to focus on, is that PA's Supreme Court improperly adjudicated PA law's propriety under the PA Constitution, and therefore Texas has right to settle that dispute in front of SCOTUS, despite SCOTUS dismissing an appeal alleging exactly that just yesterday.]
> The rough gist of the argument is that only legislatures are empowered to choose the method of selection of electors, and therefore governors (like Texas's governor) or courts (as in North Carolina) that order changes to election procedure render the entire count of the election invalid.
It’s a bad argument. The US Congress has delegated some of its power to the Executive Branch (FDA and IRS, among others), just like I’m sure some of these states have. If a state legislature passed laws allowing the governor to change election rules, then the legislature is still choosing the electors, not directly, but by having delegated that power to the executive branch of the state.
I’m not a lawyer but this argument sounds flimsy at best.
It’s a bad argument. The US Congress has delegated some of its power to the Executive Branch (FDA and IRS, among others), just like I’m sure some of these states have. If a state legislature passed laws allowing the governor to change election rules, then the legislature is still choosing the electors, not directly, but by having delegated that power to the executive branch of the state.
I’m not a lawyer but this argument sounds flimsy at best.
1) You should cite where the federal government has authority over state-run elections.
2) You should also explain more clearly why you think it could be rational to discount the decisions of state courts which rule on the laws passed by the state legislature on the basis that they aren't the state legislature... That is like saying the Supreme Court shouldn't have a say over how Federal laws are applied. It's their entire job.
And all this is ignoring the idea that the legal system ought to represent the democratic will of the people and the institutional processes they put in place, whether it's via upholding the laws of the legislature or the vote.
2) You should also explain more clearly why you think it could be rational to discount the decisions of state courts which rule on the laws passed by the state legislature on the basis that they aren't the state legislature... That is like saying the Supreme Court shouldn't have a say over how Federal laws are applied. It's their entire job.
And all this is ignoring the idea that the legal system ought to represent the democratic will of the people and the institutional processes they put in place, whether it's via upholding the laws of the legislature or the vote.
Just to be clear, I believe that Texas' argument here is complete and total bullshit, and I do eagerly await seeing the reply brief for an epic teardown of the arguments, as SCOTUS likely will deny the leave to file without explanation of why it is doing so.
Ok, and I just want to continue to point out that there are various legal standards a case must meet before proceeding towards a victory and the mere existance of the case is not one of them. People today, 9 December 2020, keep citing this particular case because we are currently living in the hours of human history where it is not thrown out of court so they would like to say the matter is unsettled, as if there won't be yet another frivolous lawsuit tomorrow when this one fails. The matter is settled legally and this lawsuit doesn't seem to open any questions. I really want to end this comment with, "let's see what the courts have to say," to seem amicable but my point is that the courts already have weighed in on this many times.
Another good analogy is fraudulent advertising. Freedom of speech does not mean that people can say any old thing without consequence. If people were selling fake Covid-19 cures, Google would be well within their rights to take down ads and videos. And elected officials would certainly be allowed to ask about it if they weren't.
I thought America was big on freedom of speech? The misinformation pisses me off too but you can't have it both ways.
America is really big on freedom of speech. That's why the Senators can't order YouTube to do this, they can only request.
They could also request (but not order) Russia Today, Fox News, One America News Network, and Stormfront to do some basic fact-checking on the videos they host; but that would be a complete waste of the Senators' time, so they don't bother with the request.
They could also request (but not order) Russia Today, Fox News, One America News Network, and Stormfront to do some basic fact-checking on the videos they host; but that would be a complete waste of the Senators' time, so they don't bother with the request.
America is also big on democracy.
AFAIK there is no rule that it's not allowed to gaslight the electorate.
What? There are a crap ton of laws that protect democracy. They are laws that decide how the votes are reported, where the votes are stored, even how the electoral college electors should vote. When you go into a court and swear an oath to tell the truth about democracy, that is our legal system censoring speech about democracy. Incidentally this is why Rudy Giuliani said in court that there was no fraud in the election. Because we have laws about what you can and can't say. Michael Flynn was prosecuted for lying to investigators about his conversations with the Russian ambassador; the heart of that investigation was the election and the Russian threat to the democratic process. No, you cannot legally say whatever you want about the election to whoever you want for self-serving ends. Even if it's in limited situations, there is a ton of censorship to protect our democracy.
And private entities should go even further, at least to protect their brands. I will always think of Facebook as the place where the Rohingya genocide was organized and carried out, and Facebook is where violent protesters like Kyle Rittenhouse gathered before killing multiple people. I think about the platforms that allowed ISIS to radicalize people. Google doesn't want YouTube to be the video hosting site where you can watch the world burn. Reddit removed the sub where you could literally watch people die. You might see these actions as against some dearly held political beliefs but it's pretty clear to me that these are just adults trying to act with a modicum of responsibility.
And private entities should go even further, at least to protect their brands. I will always think of Facebook as the place where the Rohingya genocide was organized and carried out, and Facebook is where violent protesters like Kyle Rittenhouse gathered before killing multiple people. I think about the platforms that allowed ISIS to radicalize people. Google doesn't want YouTube to be the video hosting site where you can watch the world burn. Reddit removed the sub where you could literally watch people die. You might see these actions as against some dearly held political beliefs but it's pretty clear to me that these are just adults trying to act with a modicum of responsibility.
Nothing you said contradicts anything I said. FWIW we're in full agreement if taking personal positions.
If you try to "gaslight" in court you will be subject to penalties.
OK I see why you said what you did. I was talking about the context of social and online media only.
It's legal to shout "fire!" in a theater if you believe there is a fire in the theater.
And I don't think there's any reason to believe that these YouTubers don't believe their allegations.
And I don't think there's any reason to believe that these YouTubers don't believe their allegations.
Anybody can claim that they believe whatever lie they spread. It is in fact impossible to asses whether they’re lying what they believe.
If things are backed by evidence is a whole different story (but it is not)
If things are backed by evidence is a whole different story (but it is not)
Mail-in voting really feels crazy from other countries. Just check why it was banned in France : https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/57152/why-isnt-...
"For context, electoral fraud was and is more prevalent in Corsica than in the rest of the country. The article goes on to mention that in Ajaccio (the largest city in Corsica), one list had obtained 33.5% of the physical votes but 90% of the mail-in votes in the first round, and similar figures in the second round."
Doesn't it feel familiar?
> Here also — observers generally agree on this point — mail-in voting is one of the preferred methods for fraud. The idea of removing mail-in voting and replacing it by proxy voting has therefore been generally admitted in the [parliamentary] legal commission.
Also the counting from some distant area with opaque machines and the fact not everyone is authorized to check the count is ripe for abuse.
"For context, electoral fraud was and is more prevalent in Corsica than in the rest of the country. The article goes on to mention that in Ajaccio (the largest city in Corsica), one list had obtained 33.5% of the physical votes but 90% of the mail-in votes in the first round, and similar figures in the second round."
Doesn't it feel familiar?
> Here also — observers generally agree on this point — mail-in voting is one of the preferred methods for fraud. The idea of removing mail-in voting and replacing it by proxy voting has therefore been generally admitted in the [parliamentary] legal commission.
Also the counting from some distant area with opaque machines and the fact not everyone is authorized to check the count is ripe for abuse.
> Mail-in voting really feels crazy from other countries. Just check why it was banned in France
This feel vaguely concern troll-y, but I'll engage. I am sure that there are valid security concerns, and some possibilities for fraud with mail-in voting.
However the argument about "Oh look it's bad, there are so many possibilities for fraud" would look a little more okay if the President wasn't engaging in it [1] and his party wasn't also quietly pushing for more of it in areas where it benefits them. Of course they find some flimsy excuse to justify this “well, ours is called an absentee ballot because you have to request it”.
You can't have it both ways. If mail-in voting feels crazy, the 2016 election where like 25% of eligible voters voted by mail should also be considered invalid.
What is not okay is crying "Fraud" in nebulously defined ways for only the states you lost at the moment you start losing with the existing system. This is basic kindergarten stuff, so it's kind of funny that it has to be explicitly explained in such a big national event.
------------------------------------
[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/08/19/903886567/trump-while-attacki...
[2] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/19/republicans-mail-in...
This feel vaguely concern troll-y, but I'll engage. I am sure that there are valid security concerns, and some possibilities for fraud with mail-in voting.
However the argument about "Oh look it's bad, there are so many possibilities for fraud" would look a little more okay if the President wasn't engaging in it [1] and his party wasn't also quietly pushing for more of it in areas where it benefits them. Of course they find some flimsy excuse to justify this “well, ours is called an absentee ballot because you have to request it”.
You can't have it both ways. If mail-in voting feels crazy, the 2016 election where like 25% of eligible voters voted by mail should also be considered invalid.
What is not okay is crying "Fraud" in nebulously defined ways for only the states you lost at the moment you start losing with the existing system. This is basic kindergarten stuff, so it's kind of funny that it has to be explicitly explained in such a big national event.
------------------------------------
[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/08/19/903886567/trump-while-attacki...
[2] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/19/republicans-mail-in...
> You can't have it both ways. If mail-in voting feels crazy, the 2016 election where like 25% of eligible voters voted by mail should also be considered invalid.
And those before. It's like most things are done in a way to make it possible to fudge results.
And those before. It's like most things are done in a way to make it possible to fudge results.
Well, that's an easy question. The answer is No. This isn't government censorship since the government isn't doing it. Same as if a politician asks you not to park on their lawn it's not "Government issues diktat against man for parking car".
Mafia coming to you for protection money since "bad things happen" is not extortion. They just ask nicely. The fact that your building burned down after you didn't pay is totally unrelated.
Ah, that explains why the government is going after Facebook then. They must have refused to pay the protection money. That's the best explanation.
Google has accepted over $600 million in government subsidies from Federal and State governments. Thus Google is effectively a public-private partnership and can be regulated no differently than public schools or any other public entity.
> This isn't a company deciding, this is censorship urged by the government.
Which is not new, the exactly same happened a couple of years ago to force Social Media companies to moderate more strongly on "extremist/jihadist", "foreign interference" and "child nudity" content.
During Senate hearings Google, Facebook and Twitter were faced with the choice to either do it themselves, or be forced to do it trough regulation, those were bipartisan efforts [0].
But even back then it was pretty evident how that whole thing would end up as a slippery slope.
[0] https://www.fastcompany.com/40489793/senators-grill-facebook...
Which is not new, the exactly same happened a couple of years ago to force Social Media companies to moderate more strongly on "extremist/jihadist", "foreign interference" and "child nudity" content.
During Senate hearings Google, Facebook and Twitter were faced with the choice to either do it themselves, or be forced to do it trough regulation, those were bipartisan efforts [0].
But even back then it was pretty evident how that whole thing would end up as a slippery slope.
[0] https://www.fastcompany.com/40489793/senators-grill-facebook...
Here is the full letter https://www.menendez.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/YouTube%20Lett...
The use of the word "urge", instead of "request" or "demand", seems to imply that Google is within its rights to decide. The letter does not threaten any legal action if Google decides not to remove alleged misinformation. It does not allege that Google has broken any law. What the letter does request are answers to questions. It looks like a standard letter requesting information that we commonly see from US Senators to US tech companies.
The use of the word "urge", instead of "request" or "demand", seems to imply that Google is within its rights to decide. The letter does not threaten any legal action if Google decides not to remove alleged misinformation. It does not allege that Google has broken any law. What the letter does request are answers to questions. It looks like a standard letter requesting information that we commonly see from US Senators to US tech companies.
yes, it is. Government pressured censorship at least.
One can make a reasonable argument that YouTube is making the decision voluntarily. And the letter is just giving them some cover for what they wanted to do, based on their own biases, anyway.
But private censorship is still censorship. And when a platform is so large that it has effectively become "the public square", well I do not go so far as to say that they cannot legally engage in censorship, but I do believe they are morally obliged not to, and should be publically called out when they do.
I hope people will begin moving to other platforms in droves so that some real competition emerges.
One can make a reasonable argument that YouTube is making the decision voluntarily. And the letter is just giving them some cover for what they wanted to do, based on their own biases, anyway.
But private censorship is still censorship. And when a platform is so large that it has effectively become "the public square", well I do not go so far as to say that they cannot legally engage in censorship, but I do believe they are morally obliged not to, and should be publically called out when they do.
I hope people will begin moving to other platforms in droves so that some real competition emerges.
How is that partisan censorship? People and parties have a right to ask a platform to remove content. Censorship imply you being FORCED not asked.
A letter from four people "urging" something isn't blatant censorship. Blatant censorship just happens--there's no asking in between (see China for more).
Google is making a strategic decision. Despite what you may hope, free speech isn't YouTube's main priority--it's profit. Right now they're trying to minimize the possibility profits may be impacted by stakeholder action. They don't care if your particular political views aren't adequately represented. Free speech isn't a mandated requirement for corporations.
Google is making a strategic decision. Despite what you may hope, free speech isn't YouTube's main priority--it's profit. Right now they're trying to minimize the possibility profits may be impacted by stakeholder action. They don't care if your particular political views aren't adequately represented. Free speech isn't a mandated requirement for corporations.
I wonder where it's going to end.
Once you have started taking sides, started to take down videos you fund spreading incorrect points of view, you can consider to extend it. Videos that doubt the efficaciousness of masks. Videos that say the quarantine is a plot by world government of reptiloid aliens. Videos that promote the idea of flat Earth. Well, this is a dead end.
How about videos that Taiwan is in fact independent from China? Videos that allege that unelected bureaucrars have more power than elected officials? Videos that suggest that there is trouble with voting counting during US elections?
You can easily end up doing way, way more censorship than strictly required to keep your resource legally clean (hate speech, copyright violations, etc). If I were Google (YouTube, Alphabet, whoever is responsible), I would stay as far away as possible from this kind of censorship, purely because of the cost of doing it, and the constant getting into hot water when not censoring enough, or censoring too much. Being a neutral pipe could be plainly better for the business.
Edited: typos.
Once you have started taking sides, started to take down videos you fund spreading incorrect points of view, you can consider to extend it. Videos that doubt the efficaciousness of masks. Videos that say the quarantine is a plot by world government of reptiloid aliens. Videos that promote the idea of flat Earth. Well, this is a dead end.
How about videos that Taiwan is in fact independent from China? Videos that allege that unelected bureaucrars have more power than elected officials? Videos that suggest that there is trouble with voting counting during US elections?
You can easily end up doing way, way more censorship than strictly required to keep your resource legally clean (hate speech, copyright violations, etc). If I were Google (YouTube, Alphabet, whoever is responsible), I would stay as far away as possible from this kind of censorship, purely because of the cost of doing it, and the constant getting into hot water when not censoring enough, or censoring too much. Being a neutral pipe could be plainly better for the business.
Edited: typos.
I would have agreed with you 5 or 10 years ago, full stop.
Today, we live in a society where crackpot ideas are being shared by acquaintances, but unlike 10 years ago there is no common sense and logic being applied at the value and factual nature of the information. The systems are designed and layered in such a way that a person gets a bit of information, that information is highly compounded in their world view, other ideas are not in their funnel. Even if they go and try to validate it (which they may not because everything else in the funnel on their information streams supports/compounds the view) there are whole markets of pseudo news that are entertainment channels masquerading as news supporting the same insane ideas.
These systems act as badly as a schizophrenic thought process slowly detaching the participants from reality as the information they see compounds their world view.
Today, we live in a society where crackpot ideas are being shared by acquaintances, but unlike 10 years ago there is no common sense and logic being applied at the value and factual nature of the information. The systems are designed and layered in such a way that a person gets a bit of information, that information is highly compounded in their world view, other ideas are not in their funnel. Even if they go and try to validate it (which they may not because everything else in the funnel on their information streams supports/compounds the view) there are whole markets of pseudo news that are entertainment channels masquerading as news supporting the same insane ideas.
These systems act as badly as a schizophrenic thought process slowly detaching the participants from reality as the information they see compounds their world view.
I see the problem. But I don't think that filtering input is a solution. Fixing the processing, that is, critical thinking, looks more efficacious to me.
I think Bertrand Russel, as quoted elsewhere in the comments in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25362730, explained it well.
That is, to me the solution is to help people become less religious / partisan / rooting for the in-group, and become more independent and critical. It's indeed pretty hard to do when most major information streams work in the opposite direction.
Some of my hope is in the built-in protest of teenagers and youth; some in the idea that people with a developed taste would stay away from echo chambers and outrage machines for esthetic reasons, among others.
I think Bertrand Russel, as quoted elsewhere in the comments in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25362730, explained it well.
That is, to me the solution is to help people become less religious / partisan / rooting for the in-group, and become more independent and critical. It's indeed pretty hard to do when most major information streams work in the opposite direction.
Some of my hope is in the built-in protest of teenagers and youth; some in the idea that people with a developed taste would stay away from echo chambers and outrage machines for esthetic reasons, among others.
Is it actually the government's agents censoring it, or is it a Zuckerberg owned website removing incorrect information? Do information platforms have any duty or obligation to not knowingly allow false information to spread in a democracy?
It's not censorship because Facebook is a private business, they can delete what they want, and if a post, meme, etc are full of dis/misinformation (from either party!) then it's perfectly within their rights to remove it as it damages their reputation and the enjoyment of the platform by customers. I for one am all for it. If I don't like what's going on I will simply stop using facebook. I stopped using it once for 6 months and they never sent booted thugs to my home, so they're doing just fine by me.
It is not partisan. There is no proof of fraud.
"Our observers could not see anything"... then they could not see any fraud taking place either. It is a dumb narrative.
"Our observers could not see anything"... then they could not see any fraud taking place either. It is a dumb narrative.
It's a tricky area. The challenge is how to deal with bad actors who use the rules of the game to undermine the game itself.
We also have to acknowledge the context in which this is occurring; the people claiming fraud are also threatening violence against civil servants and their children.
"Georgia officials were similarly reticent until last week, when threats online targeted a young contract worker for Dominion Voting Systems, whose voting machines were used in the state. One post on Twitter included a swinging noose.
That day, Gabriel Sterling, the Republican in charge of the voting machines, walked to a podium visibly angry and demanded that Trump “stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence.”
In an interview with Reuters, Sterling said that he personally had received a message calling him a him “traitor” that included his home address. Someone else wished him a happy birthday in a tweet saying it would be his last."
https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-election-threats/electio...
Just like it's difficult when and what content to censor when it comes to things like the ISIS recruiting pipeline, it's hard to know where the line is with what is basically a far-right ideology which bleeds into domestic terrorism.
We also have to acknowledge the context in which this is occurring; the people claiming fraud are also threatening violence against civil servants and their children.
"Georgia officials were similarly reticent until last week, when threats online targeted a young contract worker for Dominion Voting Systems, whose voting machines were used in the state. One post on Twitter included a swinging noose.
That day, Gabriel Sterling, the Republican in charge of the voting machines, walked to a podium visibly angry and demanded that Trump “stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence.”
In an interview with Reuters, Sterling said that he personally had received a message calling him a him “traitor” that included his home address. Someone else wished him a happy birthday in a tweet saying it would be his last."
https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-election-threats/electio...
Just like it's difficult when and what content to censor when it comes to things like the ISIS recruiting pipeline, it's hard to know where the line is with what is basically a far-right ideology which bleeds into domestic terrorism.
i don't think free speech applies on managed internet apps. If people are promoting fake news, it should be deleted, if they don't like it they can create their own YouTube that doesn't censor fake news.
This has been done before: McCarythy-era government labeled people as Communists. Those people were then voluntarily blacklisted from working in Hollywood by the Hollywood studios.
Not saying it’s right. Just saying it’s happened at least once before and I bet other times.
Not saying it’s right. Just saying it’s happened at least once before and I bet other times.
For it to be government censorship, they'd have to use government power to censor. No formal power was used. It's also not urged by the federal government, which is the organization that Trump runs, but instead by elected representatives.
I also think it's misleading to call it partisan, as if truth and falsehood are just two different flavors of ice cream, or two different sports teams. An informed populace is a necessary precondition for democracy to survive. Google might have the right to profit from misinformation, but I don't think they have an obligation to do so. They are allowed to support free and fair elections, just like the rest of us.
I also think it's misleading to call it partisan, as if truth and falsehood are just two different flavors of ice cream, or two different sports teams. An informed populace is a necessary precondition for democracy to survive. Google might have the right to profit from misinformation, but I don't think they have an obligation to do so. They are allowed to support free and fair elections, just like the rest of us.
[deleted]
This is an enormous overreach.
> Given that, we will start removing any piece of content uploaded today (or anytime after) that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, in line with our approach towards historical U.S. Presidential elections. For example, we will remove videos claiming that a Presidential candidate won the election due to widespread software glitches or counting errors.
These same claims are being made in ongoing court cases. It's far out of Google's ambit to claim to resolve "the truth" at this juncture.
Its also deeply hypocritical to claim that this is "in line with [Google's] approach towards historical U.S. Presidential elections. It took me 2 seconds to find videos claiming that the "GOP hacked/stole the 2004 election.": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=batAXTWBjMo
> Given that, we will start removing any piece of content uploaded today (or anytime after) that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, in line with our approach towards historical U.S. Presidential elections. For example, we will remove videos claiming that a Presidential candidate won the election due to widespread software glitches or counting errors.
These same claims are being made in ongoing court cases. It's far out of Google's ambit to claim to resolve "the truth" at this juncture.
Its also deeply hypocritical to claim that this is "in line with [Google's] approach towards historical U.S. Presidential elections. It took me 2 seconds to find videos claiming that the "GOP hacked/stole the 2004 election.": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=batAXTWBjMo
> These same claims are being made in ongoing court cases.
Of which what % have been tossed? 95%+? And the one (!) that hasn't have had zero impact on the results.
The election is over. Biden won. The votes will be certified, but not after Trump's team has done a great deal of damage to the American democracy.
Of which what % have been tossed? 95%+? And the one (!) that hasn't have had zero impact on the results.
The election is over. Biden won. The votes will be certified, but not after Trump's team has done a great deal of damage to the American democracy.
I think Trump's behavior is abhorrent. But I've been complaining for years about Gore, Kerry, Clinton, and Abrams laying about stolen elections, and nobody listened. It's worse this year than usual, because Trump is worse than usual, but the losing side believing the election was stolen has become a feature of American politics during the last two decades: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
After elections, half of people on the losing side now regularly believe the election wasn't free and fair.
After elections, half of people on the losing side now regularly believe the election wasn't free and fair.
Well Gore and Hillary both won popular vote and didn't win the election so it basically is a feature of American politics.
Gore's election was especially disputed because it literally came down to stopping a recount in a handful of key districts. I can't tell for sure what the result would have been otherwise but I think there's more legitimacy to that claim than here where people are complaining about millions of votes in multiple states.
>But I've been complaining for years about Gore, Kerry, Clinton, and Abrams laying about stolen elections, and nobody listened.
If you said complaints about 2000 being stolen lead to skepticism about the outcome in 2004, and are part of a set of ideas that may have inflamed democratic skepticism about 2016, I would probably disagree that there is anything super concerning about that, but at least understand the thread that connects those pieces.
As it happens, I think stolen is a perfectly fair characterization of the 2000 election, even in retrospect, and would confess that that experience lead me, for a time, to incorrectly believe 2004 may have been stolen as well, which I believed for a time but no longer do. And I can see how it launched an unfortunate trend of liberals believing future elections either were or would be stolen. Greg Palast, for instance, is a celebrated journalist in some circles despite incorrectly claiming that the 2006 election would "go down in infamy" as a stolen election, and saying the same thing again in 2008. Despite being a Democrat, I find Palast's record to be deeply inaccurate and I am disappointed in the lack of critical reflection on his record by people who cite him.
But those claims come from a completely different universe than the 2020 claims, and I don't think they had anything to do with explaining the sociological forces driving election skepticism in 2020. Instead, that breed of skepticism has come from Trump and a media ecosystem that established an entirely alternate reality, with fever pitched adversarial thinking.
The content, social forces and motivations are completely independent, in their sources, in their character and in their scale and should not be equated to each other.
If you said complaints about 2000 being stolen lead to skepticism about the outcome in 2004, and are part of a set of ideas that may have inflamed democratic skepticism about 2016, I would probably disagree that there is anything super concerning about that, but at least understand the thread that connects those pieces.
As it happens, I think stolen is a perfectly fair characterization of the 2000 election, even in retrospect, and would confess that that experience lead me, for a time, to incorrectly believe 2004 may have been stolen as well, which I believed for a time but no longer do. And I can see how it launched an unfortunate trend of liberals believing future elections either were or would be stolen. Greg Palast, for instance, is a celebrated journalist in some circles despite incorrectly claiming that the 2006 election would "go down in infamy" as a stolen election, and saying the same thing again in 2008. Despite being a Democrat, I find Palast's record to be deeply inaccurate and I am disappointed in the lack of critical reflection on his record by people who cite him.
But those claims come from a completely different universe than the 2020 claims, and I don't think they had anything to do with explaining the sociological forces driving election skepticism in 2020. Instead, that breed of skepticism has come from Trump and a media ecosystem that established an entirely alternate reality, with fever pitched adversarial thinking.
The content, social forces and motivations are completely independent, in their sources, in their character and in their scale and should not be equated to each other.
You're right of course. I recall in 2004 some people complaining about Bush stealing Ohio. I was living in Ohio in 2004, and I voted for Kerry, but even I thought those accusations were a bit silly at the time.
I think it just underscores the responsibility for platforms to not allow obvious misinformation to spread because it does erode faith in democracy.
I think it just underscores the responsibility for platforms to not allow obvious misinformation to spread because it does erode faith in democracy.
The presence of any major platform acting as the unilateral arbiter of what is and isn't misinformation for many people in society erodes faith in democracy as well.
What does it matter that suits are tossed out? Do you realize how silly it seems to ban critizing the election process unless you also aknowledge Biden as winner?
There are like, what, a dozen states' Attorney Generals that you can't tape a press release off and put on Youtube according to those rules.
There are like, what, a dozen states' Attorney Generals that you can't tape a press release off and put on Youtube according to those rules.
These claims are being slaughtered in ongoing court cases, and many of them are objectively batshit, like the guy who filed an affidavit about being prevented from observing vote counts because he drove to the wrong location, or the woman, central to the Texas suit against PA and MI, who claims the Obamas "funded the Wuhan lab where coronavirus was made". It is not the case that Google has to provide space for a claim simply because it's improvidently featured in a frivolous lawsuit.
As a matter of principle, do you believe Google staff (or their outsourced contractors) can and should pre-judge the outcomes of US court cases? I ask about principles because it's very easy to focus on the specific details of these particular cases, and the fact it's your political enemy pursuing them. But that may not be true next time, and certainly won't be true every time.
I think the presence of court cases, frivolous or not, is completely orthogonal to Google's content moderation policies. An appeal to "this is pending in court" is a deeply unprincipled argument; plenty of things that a court would certainly countenance are forbidden by Google's policies.
I agree but that's not really my concern. I am most concerned about granting Google (or anyone) the power to decide what is true or false, and to prevent individuals from seeing the information used to make those judgements, or to decide for themselves.
See my other reply to you below.
See my other reply to you below.
> granting Google (or anyone) the power to decide what is true or false
Certainly Google has the power to decide what they think is true or false on their YouTube service.
Certainly Google has the power to decide what they think is true or false on their YouTube service.
[deleted]
> Certainly Google has the power to decide what they think is true or false on their YouTube service.
And half of America that politically was skeptical of anti-trust has the power to rethink that as well. (And they will, and Google will find out if the juice is worth the squeeze on that.)
Because of COVID-19 and the huge increase of mail in ballots, there is good reason to believe that fraud was higher than other years. Biden's margin of victory in key swing states is smaller than Trump's in 2016. These are not unreasonable things to discuss and I find unfathomable that this policy would be something Google would apply to say, Iran, or any other country where there was speech skeptical of government.
Acting as if speech discussing this on their platform is beyond the pale is ludicrous. It shows a sheltered, fragile group of people who think their views are more common than they are.
And half of America that politically was skeptical of anti-trust has the power to rethink that as well. (And they will, and Google will find out if the juice is worth the squeeze on that.)
Because of COVID-19 and the huge increase of mail in ballots, there is good reason to believe that fraud was higher than other years. Biden's margin of victory in key swing states is smaller than Trump's in 2016. These are not unreasonable things to discuss and I find unfathomable that this policy would be something Google would apply to say, Iran, or any other country where there was speech skeptical of government.
Acting as if speech discussing this on their platform is beyond the pale is ludicrous. It shows a sheltered, fragile group of people who think their views are more common than they are.
There is in fact no reason to believe fraud is higher than other years; for example, states where elections were administered by conservative Republicans found essentially no instances of it, despite huge incentives.
Another strong indication that there wasn't fraud? The ludicrous affidavits accompanying the highest-profile lawsuits against states.
Another strong indication that there wasn't fraud? The ludicrous affidavits accompanying the highest-profile lawsuits against states.
What are these "huge incentives" you speak of?
What states were swung by a small margin "administered by Republicans" (political parties don't administer elections).
Most of the arguments revolve around mainly 4 metro areas: Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and Philadelphia (with a little Pittsburgh thrown in). These 4 metro areas alone could decide the election via electoral math. It is cliche that these areas have had voter fraud. It's been going on for a century. People have been convicted for these crimes in these areas regularly. For people to act like _this election_, that kind of talk is unreasonable, well, I have some not nice words to say to those people.
Given the extraordinary circumstances, and the narrow margins of victories, people bringing up these facts is reasonable. Youtube allows holocaust denial, and I'm supposed to believe that people claiming inner city fraud (only when it's claimed in the U.S. btw) is "a threat to democracy".
Please.
What states were swung by a small margin "administered by Republicans" (political parties don't administer elections).
Most of the arguments revolve around mainly 4 metro areas: Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and Philadelphia (with a little Pittsburgh thrown in). These 4 metro areas alone could decide the election via electoral math. It is cliche that these areas have had voter fraud. It's been going on for a century. People have been convicted for these crimes in these areas regularly. For people to act like _this election_, that kind of talk is unreasonable, well, I have some not nice words to say to those people.
Given the extraordinary circumstances, and the narrow margins of victories, people bringing up these facts is reasonable. Youtube allows holocaust denial, and I'm supposed to believe that people claiming inner city fraud (only when it's claimed in the U.S. btw) is "a threat to democracy".
Please.
It is a cliche that conservatives, who fare poorly both in urban areas and among the minorities who disproportionately live in those areas, accuse Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and Philadelphia of voter fraud. Nevertheless, no real evidence of fraud is produced; in fact, the rare cases we do see of actual voter fraud tend to be committed by older Republican voters.
The reason for this is simple: voter fraud is a stupid crime. It's hard enough to convince people that it's worth their time to add their real voice to the cacophony of voices being recorded on election day. To risk imprisonment to add a couple more voices makes no sense.
This has been a conservative trope for decades. If there was any substance to it, you should have no trouble coming up with concrete examples within the last 20 years of material voter fraud being detected in Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and Philadelphia. You can't, because there isn't any.
What the affidavits attached to these ludicrous but high-profile lawsuits instead provide is suppositions, like "suspicious" swings from certain levels of Clinton support to different levels of Biden support (it's almost like they're... different people!), or worse, batshit conspiracy theories, like the guy named "Spyder" who ran a SpiderFoot scan on Dominion Voting Systems and got dunked on by the author of SpiderFoot for not understanding the results. Or the woman who testified in Michigan, with the President's personal lawyer sitting next to her, who believes the Obamas funded the secret Wuhan lab where Coronavirus was created.
Liberals have their own problems and blind spots. But conservatives own this, and the travesty of the administration's handling of its predictable loss in the 2020 general election, completely and absolutely.
The reason for this is simple: voter fraud is a stupid crime. It's hard enough to convince people that it's worth their time to add their real voice to the cacophony of voices being recorded on election day. To risk imprisonment to add a couple more voices makes no sense.
This has been a conservative trope for decades. If there was any substance to it, you should have no trouble coming up with concrete examples within the last 20 years of material voter fraud being detected in Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and Philadelphia. You can't, because there isn't any.
What the affidavits attached to these ludicrous but high-profile lawsuits instead provide is suppositions, like "suspicious" swings from certain levels of Clinton support to different levels of Biden support (it's almost like they're... different people!), or worse, batshit conspiracy theories, like the guy named "Spyder" who ran a SpiderFoot scan on Dominion Voting Systems and got dunked on by the author of SpiderFoot for not understanding the results. Or the woman who testified in Michigan, with the President's personal lawyer sitting next to her, who believes the Obamas funded the secret Wuhan lab where Coronavirus was created.
Liberals have their own problems and blind spots. But conservatives own this, and the travesty of the administration's handling of its predictable loss in the 2020 general election, completely and absolutely.
> It's hard enough to convince people that it's worth their time to add their real voice to the cacophony of voices being recorded on election day. To risk imprisonment to add a couple more voices makes no sense.
But the voter fraud being alleged now isn't one or two ballots. It's ballot harvesting here, and lost SD cards there, voting machines not properly recognizing votes, and poll watchers not being allowed near tables. In any of these cases thousands of votes could have been altered, added, or removed.
We need to take this seriously, investigate, show that the fraud (which is inevitable at some level) didn't change the election (hopefully), and tighten up the rules for next time.
Stuff that should be bipartisan. 1) Voting machines suck, even when they only count. 2) Recounts can't be on the same machines as the first count. 3) Counts must stop unless poll watchers are able to watch. 4) Poll watchers should have to make a positive assertion that they could see, and did watch, or the votes should get recounted. 5) All disputed votes, either the ID or the vote marking, should be kept separate and recounts should involve reexamining the entire vote.
But the voter fraud being alleged now isn't one or two ballots. It's ballot harvesting here, and lost SD cards there, voting machines not properly recognizing votes, and poll watchers not being allowed near tables. In any of these cases thousands of votes could have been altered, added, or removed.
We need to take this seriously, investigate, show that the fraud (which is inevitable at some level) didn't change the election (hopefully), and tighten up the rules for next time.
Stuff that should be bipartisan. 1) Voting machines suck, even when they only count. 2) Recounts can't be on the same machines as the first count. 3) Counts must stop unless poll watchers are able to watch. 4) Poll watchers should have to make a positive assertion that they could see, and did watch, or the votes should get recounted. 5) All disputed votes, either the ID or the vote marking, should be kept separate and recounts should involve reexamining the entire vote.
Here you go:
> During his guilty plea hearing, Demuro admitted that while serving as an elected municipal Judge of Elections, he accepted bribes in the form of money and other things of value in exchange for adding ballots to increase the vote totals for certain candidates on the voting machines in his jurisdiction and for certifying tallies of all the ballots, including the fraudulent ballots. [1]
This was 6 months ago. That's election fraud. Investigations don't start with proof, they start with claims. These areas have in large part said that even trying to discover evidence is moot, and that no investigation has standing.
Worse, YouTube is saying that even claims for investigation are invalid. Or that claims of voter fraud past a deadline are somehow off limits, when essentially the _entire_ left wing of the Democratic party has been making claims like these for 4 years.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-philadelphia-judge-ele...
> During his guilty plea hearing, Demuro admitted that while serving as an elected municipal Judge of Elections, he accepted bribes in the form of money and other things of value in exchange for adding ballots to increase the vote totals for certain candidates on the voting machines in his jurisdiction and for certifying tallies of all the ballots, including the fraudulent ballots. [1]
This was 6 months ago. That's election fraud. Investigations don't start with proof, they start with claims. These areas have in large part said that even trying to discover evidence is moot, and that no investigation has standing.
Worse, YouTube is saying that even claims for investigation are invalid. Or that claims of voter fraud past a deadline are somehow off limits, when essentially the _entire_ left wing of the Democratic party has been making claims like these for 4 years.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-philadelphia-judge-ele...
> when essentially the _entire_ left wing of the Democratic party has been making claims like these for 4 years.
Clinton conceded the day after the 2016 election. The democrats have been saying that it is bad to solicit aid from a foreign power to help you win an election through social media campaigns and hacking email accounts. That's wildly different than "actually I got the most votes in relevant states and really should be president".
Clinton conceded the day after the 2016 election. The democrats have been saying that it is bad to solicit aid from a foreign power to help you win an election through social media campaigns and hacking email accounts. That's wildly different than "actually I got the most votes in relevant states and really should be president".
> Clinton conceded the day after the 2016 election.
That's immaterial. YouTube's censorship restrictions have nothing to do with a formal concession, merely claims of fraud impacting the election. And identical claims of election tampering resulting in a "fraudulent electioin" have been ongoing by Democrats on MSNBC, Twitter, Facebook, CNN etc. for 4 years.
So we're now in a boat where Google/YouTube is essentially arguing they're qualified to make judgements on defending election integrity in the U.S.
It has nothing to do with policy consistency, and everything to do with who the people are who work there.
That's immaterial. YouTube's censorship restrictions have nothing to do with a formal concession, merely claims of fraud impacting the election. And identical claims of election tampering resulting in a "fraudulent electioin" have been ongoing by Democrats on MSNBC, Twitter, Facebook, CNN etc. for 4 years.
So we're now in a boat where Google/YouTube is essentially arguing they're qualified to make judgements on defending election integrity in the U.S.
It has nothing to do with policy consistency, and everything to do with who the people are who work there.
Every private entity is qualified to make judgements on defending election integrity in the US. They are not required to come up with plans you like.
>Certainly Google has the power to decide what they think is true or false on their YouTube service.
And people have to right to find this despicable. Although Google may not actually have that power (I don't know how much Youtube is considered a monopoly)
And people have to right to find this despicable. Although Google may not actually have that power (I don't know how much Youtube is considered a monopoly)
It's not pre-judging when the courts have dismissed the cases. They have been judged to have no merit.
You seem to be arguing that because cases 1-9 were without merit, case 10 and beyond are too. That may turn out to be true, but it is also quite literally pre-judging.
Your argument also accepts that the courts judged these cases to have no merit, while implicitly denying that such judging was necessary.
How should a Google staffer differentiate between case number 9 (dismissed) and case number 10 (still on the docket)? And what hope can they have of coming to a better understanding of the details and merits of a case than the exact body (a court) which is set up to do precisely this?
The whole legal system is premised on every case being judged on its own merits, and rightly so.
Your argument also accepts that the courts judged these cases to have no merit, while implicitly denying that such judging was necessary.
How should a Google staffer differentiate between case number 9 (dismissed) and case number 10 (still on the docket)? And what hope can they have of coming to a better understanding of the details and merits of a case than the exact body (a court) which is set up to do precisely this?
The whole legal system is premised on every case being judged on its own merits, and rightly so.
Cases 10 and beyond are, too. One way you can see that is the subsequent cases have been relying on the same batshit evidence as the dead cases.
If Google was a courtroom, you might have a point --- the courts are in many circumstances obligated to hear and dispassionately resolve batshit frivolous cases. Google is not.
If Google was a courtroom, you might have a point --- the courts are in many circumstances obligated to hear and dispassionately resolve batshit frivolous cases. Google is not.
My concern is that you as an individual have used your personal judgement to come to the conclusion that these cases are batshit (as have I incidentally), and in this specific case you are most likely correct. But had Google prevented you from seeing this information, you would not have been able to form any view at all. And that is the direction all these platforms are moving in.
I also have absolutely zero trust in Random Googlers being capable of determining truth and falsity in the general case (which is where this is heading), or in managing this power in such a way that is a net benefit to society. If they didn't have monopolies on information consumption I would be a little less concerned.
A different example: Google could have stopped people seeing "false" information about COVID earlier this year. Twitter and other platforms labelled this "misinformation", and Google could have censored it from YouTube, searches, etc. The tech companies anointed the WHO as the arbiter of truth, yet the WHO was wrong for quite a while about several important things. I would prefer to live in a world where individuals are allowed to see all the contested facts and arguments, and decide for themselves.
One last example: Ignaz Semmelweis would have been censored as "misinformation". Ditto Galileo and many others.
I suppose the real solution is to break up the information monopolies, then let them do all the censoring they want.
I also have absolutely zero trust in Random Googlers being capable of determining truth and falsity in the general case (which is where this is heading), or in managing this power in such a way that is a net benefit to society. If they didn't have monopolies on information consumption I would be a little less concerned.
A different example: Google could have stopped people seeing "false" information about COVID earlier this year. Twitter and other platforms labelled this "misinformation", and Google could have censored it from YouTube, searches, etc. The tech companies anointed the WHO as the arbiter of truth, yet the WHO was wrong for quite a while about several important things. I would prefer to live in a world where individuals are allowed to see all the contested facts and arguments, and decide for themselves.
One last example: Ignaz Semmelweis would have been censored as "misinformation". Ditto Galileo and many others.
I suppose the real solution is to break up the information monopolies, then let them do all the censoring they want.
We're talking about Youtube, not Google search results for Fox News. I don't find any of this persuasive. Google is also preventing me from forming my own opinions about content featuring firearms, hate speech, violent criminal organizations, sales of regulated goods, nudity, and sexual content. I'm waiting for an argument from you that would be persuasive to someone who thinks it's just fine for Google to ban porn from Youtube.
I'm not trying to persuade you that your specific personal preferences for a "Safe Mode Internet" are wrong. I'm saying that just because you are personally comfortable with Google's current set of moderation choices, this does not mean that it is right or optimal for Google to start enforcing these preferences for society as a whole, particularly when it requires them to become the arbiter of truth and basic facts, while also avoiding the normal regulatory obligations associated with this. That is the slope we are on.
There is also a difference in kind between porn and this sort of speech. Different laws apply, different social norms apply, different technical options (and trade-offs) apply, and so on. I have also heard that there are many other porn hosting websites, and Google does not enjoy any sort of monopoly.
Perhaps we're talking past each other here but to put my general point a different way, and it's only relevant because Google is effectively a monopoly: If you were told you could be born into a world with a free internet, or a curated internet, but you had no influence over who would do the curation, which world would you choose?
There is also a difference in kind between porn and this sort of speech. Different laws apply, different social norms apply, different technical options (and trade-offs) apply, and so on. I have also heard that there are many other porn hosting websites, and Google does not enjoy any sort of monopoly.
Perhaps we're talking past each other here but to put my general point a different way, and it's only relevant because Google is effectively a monopoly: If you were told you could be born into a world with a free internet, or a curated internet, but you had no influence over who would do the curation, which world would you choose?
Google doesn't enjoy any sort of monopoly in any kind of video content. I don't think your argument is very coherent.
> We're talking about Youtube, not Google search results for Fox News.
YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine, next to Google itself. I would say it's not beyond the realms of possibility for YouTube to eventually eclipse Google.
YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine, next to Google itself. I would say it's not beyond the realms of possibility for YouTube to eventually eclipse Google.
You are being trolled. The other user does not believe in their arguments. They are just saying it to waste your time.
How, even in principle, would google prevent a person from seeing legal documents? Most (all?) jurisdictions publish them on the web themselves? https://www.courtlistener.com/ is great.
I'm not arguing Google are censoring legal documents. But let's take this trend in that direction...
1. How would the average person find that website? A search engine perhaps?
2. How many search engines does the average person use? One, perhaps? Which one?
1. How would the average person find that website? A search engine perhaps?
2. How many search engines does the average person use? One, perhaps? Which one?
1. Well, I just told you about them. It's old fashioned, but talking to people works wonders. You're not the first person I've encouraged to go directly to legal documents.
2. Probably the median person uses several -- google, facebook, and the like.
2. Probably the median person uses several -- google, facebook, and the like.
The election occurred over a month ago. The counting of votes was complete enough 4 days later that any violations subsequent to then could not have changed the outcome. The relief sought--to prevent the results from being certified--would have been impossible to grant two weeks ago.
At this point, any case being filed now over the results of the election is doomed to fail either by the doctrine of laches (you should have filed it sooner) or inability to grant relief, and that's even without considering any other possible failings it may have (including merit!).
While the courts will operate under the assumption that a case is meritorious until proven otherwise, there is no reason for the court of public opinion to operate under the same assumption, especially when there is clear precedent and established case history demonstrating why the case must be dismissed that the filing makes no attempt to address.
At this point, any case being filed now over the results of the election is doomed to fail either by the doctrine of laches (you should have filed it sooner) or inability to grant relief, and that's even without considering any other possible failings it may have (including merit!).
While the courts will operate under the assumption that a case is meritorious until proven otherwise, there is no reason for the court of public opinion to operate under the same assumption, especially when there is clear precedent and established case history demonstrating why the case must be dismissed that the filing makes no attempt to address.
I don't think "the court of public opinion" is a high enough standard for a prospective world-wide monopolistic censor of information. Such an authority needs to be completely rigorous, completely fair, completely objective, completely informed, and so on. Google cannot meet that bar.
By your standard, Semmelweis would have been censored as "misinformation". Ditto Galileo and the rest.
By your standard, Semmelweis would have been censored as "misinformation". Ditto Galileo and the rest.
Or for an even more recent example, the scientific community largely rejected plate tectonics initially
And was that borne out in the public square or in scientific journals and conferences? There are reasonable arenas for this material. In this case, that arena is the courts.
[deleted]
Just because the sun has risen every day of your life, that doesn't mean that you can expect it to do so tomorrow.
Of course we can, because it's a law of nature. Whereas man-made laws are subject to human action and interpretation, so outcomes are far less predictable.
[deleted]
They don't need to pre-judge them, they can look out at the actual outcomes of court cases that have already been litigated.
The "specific details" are a plethora of court rulings, election certifications, and statements from Trump's own lawyers that they are not bringing fraud cases.
Then let the courts decide that. There's no need for Google to get ahead of it. It's not like Youtube is running out of space.
That doesn't even make sense. There are all sorts of things a court won't strike down that practically nobody thinks Google should broadcast on Youtube. Go look at the Youtube content guidelines and see how many have anything to do with what a court thinks.
actually... sorry to gently disagree: the crazies are unfortunately amplifying each other and unchecked, the result will be people taking guns off the rack and people actually dying. Moving to wingnut-only platforms isn't a great solution, but at least it de-legitimizes the crazy and stops it from being "recommended" content on random peoples' screens.
example of crazy plot? hereya go:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_pl...
example of crazy plot? hereya go:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_pl...
The nasty question becomes:
How do you know the more non batshit accounts haven't already been taken down?
How do you know the more non batshit accounts haven't already been taken down?
>These claims are being slaughtered in ongoing court cases, and many of them are objectively batshit,
The Mike Kelly case in PA, arguing that the law allowing mail-in ballots was illegal, was ruled by a judge as completely legally valid, but was thrown out of the state supreme court because "they waited too long to complain".
So, no, not objectively batshit. If the GOP had filed that case in January, Trump would have won PA...assuming the same supreme court didn't throw out their case for some other arbitrary reason like "filing too soon."
The Democrats outplayed Republicans. Democrats passed an un-Constitutional law that helped them stuff ballot boxes with ballots that were almost certainly harvested or bought. If we're to believe the election results and voter turnout in, say, mostly black Philadelphia, Joe Biden is a more popular politician than even Barack Obama. Only an idiot would believe that. But still, it serves Republicans right for underestimating the extent to which Democrats would cheat.
The Mike Kelly case in PA, arguing that the law allowing mail-in ballots was illegal, was ruled by a judge as completely legally valid, but was thrown out of the state supreme court because "they waited too long to complain".
So, no, not objectively batshit. If the GOP had filed that case in January, Trump would have won PA...assuming the same supreme court didn't throw out their case for some other arbitrary reason like "filing too soon."
The Democrats outplayed Republicans. Democrats passed an un-Constitutional law that helped them stuff ballot boxes with ballots that were almost certainly harvested or bought. If we're to believe the election results and voter turnout in, say, mostly black Philadelphia, Joe Biden is a more popular politician than even Barack Obama. Only an idiot would believe that. But still, it serves Republicans right for underestimating the extent to which Democrats would cheat.
The judge emphatically did not rule on the merits of the case, simply that there was no reason to proceed further due to laches. A ruling on laches says nothing about the validity of the argument.
Trump is absolutely hoovering up money from his followers since he started on his election fraud rant - he's up to something like $250M, and he personally gets to keep something like 70% of it.
Most of the lawsuits are so ridiculously bad, it makes me wonder if it's just part of keeping up the act in order to keep his followers riled up and throwing cash at him. Inciting such intense hatred with so very many lies all for personal money and power - it's devisive, dangerous, and absolutely terrifying that this is happening in the USA, a country that spent decades forcing democracy on other countries.
Most of the lawsuits are so ridiculously bad, it makes me wonder if it's just part of keeping up the act in order to keep his followers riled up and throwing cash at him. Inciting such intense hatred with so very many lies all for personal money and power - it's devisive, dangerous, and absolutely terrifying that this is happening in the USA, a country that spent decades forcing democracy on other countries.
20 states are now making this claim. Are you saying that half the government should be censored?
The state attorneys general of 17 states have filed amicus briefs in a case, in some cases over the public objections of their Republican governors. They're all supporting a grift run by the President --- you know it's a grift, because substantially more than half of the hundreds of millions of dollars he's raised isn't going to the lawsuits. It's no surprise that feckless Republican officials in heavily-Republican states are willing to kowtow; the President has deluded his true believers into a frenzy, and they don't want those people outside their house at 1AM. I'm fine if Google "censors" them. This is what Parler is for.
Look, I hate to tell you, but still, 17 AGs running this is news. Forget what ever you think about the case, its blatant censorship not to report this information. I'll tell you what, I'm not right leaning, but if push comes to shove, which I think it will eventually, I will join the right and fight for political freedom. Go back to your big house and your consulting blog, this isnt for you
Look at the title, Youtube will remove content that alleges widespread fraud. Not content that alleges that 17 AGs are showing legal support for the president. Anyone can broadcast that information.
> These same claims are being made in ongoing court cases.
Anyone can make any crazy claim they want in a lawsuit. I could probably sue someone today claiming the earth was flat or Elvis is still alive if I wanted to. Do we reserve judgment on these topics just because someone sued someone else over them?
Anyone can make any crazy claim they want in a lawsuit. I could probably sue someone today claiming the earth was flat or Elvis is still alive if I wanted to. Do we reserve judgment on these topics just because someone sued someone else over them?
> Do we reserve judgment on these topics just because someone sued someone else over them?
No, but we also shouldn’t censor people for making those claims. It seems to be the attitude of many big tech companies that their users are too dumb to look at information and decide for themselves what is and isn’t true.
No, but we also shouldn’t censor people for making those claims. It seems to be the attitude of many big tech companies that their users are too dumb to look at information and decide for themselves what is and isn’t true.
> It seems to be the attitude of many big tech companies that their users are too dumb to look at information and decide for themselves what is and isn’t true.
This seems demonstrably true for vast swathes of users, who have become enamored with Flat Eartherism and other such nonsense. Not saying censorship is necessarily the right solution, but arguing on behalf of the reasoning capabilities of the user base is clearly misguided.
This seems demonstrably true for vast swathes of users, who have become enamored with Flat Eartherism and other such nonsense. Not saying censorship is necessarily the right solution, but arguing on behalf of the reasoning capabilities of the user base is clearly misguided.
Swathes how vast? Have you checked? Everyone seems to know of one, nobody seems to know one. And what happens when the big tech companies start pushing wrong information, or censoring right information? Or, a better question, how do you know they haven't started already?
>This seems demonstrably true for vast swathes of users, who have become enamored with Flat Eartherism and other such nonsense.
The alternative you're condoning is to make decisions for these people and tell them what to think; that is tyranny.
E.g. By not assuming good cognitive ability for people, you are setting them up to be controlled, that you agree with censorship or not.
The alternative you're condoning is to make decisions for these people and tell them what to think; that is tyranny.
E.g. By not assuming good cognitive ability for people, you are setting them up to be controlled, that you agree with censorship or not.
> The alternative you're condoning is to make decisions for these people and tell them what to think; that is tyranny.
TIL not repeating lies is tyranny.
TIL not repeating lies is tyranny.
You're being disingenuous. But I think you know that.
> You're being disingenuous. But I think you know that.
No I'm not. Transmission is a kind of repetition, but some people seem to think that YouTube has some obligation to transmit (i.e. repeat) their lies about "widespread election fraud." It's not a government service, so there's no First Amendment aspect to this at all, and the allegations themselves are disingenuous lies, so YouTube's moral obligation is on the side of removal.
No I'm not. Transmission is a kind of repetition, but some people seem to think that YouTube has some obligation to transmit (i.e. repeat) their lies about "widespread election fraud." It's not a government service, so there's no First Amendment aspect to this at all, and the allegations themselves are disingenuous lies, so YouTube's moral obligation is on the side of removal.
Youtube has been bullied by governement officials into adopting this policy. This is hardly about "forcing someone to repeat lies".
Also my argument wasn't even about this, it was that if you assume stupidity of a big portion of the population, you have no alternative but to turn to tyranny.
Also my argument wasn't even about this, it was that if you assume stupidity of a big portion of the population, you have no alternative but to turn to tyranny.
A couple hundred years ago these people never would have a platform and would be relegated to the depths of society, as their idiocracy rightly deserved.
Now the uneducated masses can yell and yell and yell, which gives other uneducated masses the false belief that their opinions are to be respected.
Now the uneducated masses can yell and yell and yell, which gives other uneducated masses the false belief that their opinions are to be respected.
Yes, and the superior, educated mass (that agree with me) should have all the say?
> No, but we also shouldn’t censor people for making those claims.
This is not the same argument as
> These same claims are being made in ongoing court cases.
I think your argument is definitely worth considering, but the “there are court cases” is clearly wrong.
This is not the same argument as
> These same claims are being made in ongoing court cases.
I think your argument is definitely worth considering, but the “there are court cases” is clearly wrong.
While in theory this is true, in practice we have seen in recent years that misinformation has as much weight (if not more) as true information in our fragmented global media landscape.
I see it more as doing their part to reduce the noise rather than contribute to the problem. And it’s a big problem.
I see it more as doing their part to reduce the noise rather than contribute to the problem. And it’s a big problem.
It's not that their users are too dumb. It's that weapons grade psychological tactics work and they don't want to be a part of that.
For the most part, people ARE too dumb.
I can also claim in court that I have been wronged by an ethnic group, and that the proper remedy for that is genocide. Again - "there's a pending court case alleging this" is not a reason not to take down that kind of content. The decision needs to be on the merits of the actual content.
> Anyone can make any crazy claim they want in a lawsuit. I could probably sue someone today claiming the earth was flat or Elvis is still alive if I wanted to.
And, yet, YouTube isn't censoring flat earthers.
And, yet, YouTube isn't censoring flat earthers.
No, but they are adding fact check notifications: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-alphabet-youtube-fact...
> Its also deeply hypocritical to claim that this is "in line with [Google's] approach towards historical U.S. Presidential elections.
Indeed.
I was told by all the right people that Russia hacked the 2016 election for 4 years.
To this day, Stacy Abrams acts like she's governor of Georgia and claims the election was stolen.
All of that content will not be taken down.
But yes, given the fact that 1) "safe harbor" means nothing historically, 2) there have been electoral contests in the U.S. decided within days of inauguration, and 3) there is active litigation being pursued, this chilling of speech can't be seen as anything other that Google pushing their hands on the scale here.
Indeed.
I was told by all the right people that Russia hacked the 2016 election for 4 years.
To this day, Stacy Abrams acts like she's governor of Georgia and claims the election was stolen.
All of that content will not be taken down.
But yes, given the fact that 1) "safe harbor" means nothing historically, 2) there have been electoral contests in the U.S. decided within days of inauguration, and 3) there is active litigation being pursued, this chilling of speech can't be seen as anything other that Google pushing their hands on the scale here.
There's a difference.
There is evidence[1, 2, 3] of Russian interference in the 2016 election. There is evidence[4, 5, 6, 7] of interference by Republicans in the 2018 gubernatorial race in Georgia. That content will not be taken down because it is true.
There is no evidence[8] of fraud in the 2020 election. Trump's own lawyers have admitted[9, 10, 11] that there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
[1]https://www.npr.org/2019/04/18/714810702/muellers-report-sho...
[2]https://www.cbsnews.com/news/senate-report-russian-interfere...
[3]https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
[4]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/10/georgia-elec...
[5]https://apnews.com/article/fb011f39af3b40518b572c8cce6e906c
[6]https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/6/18068492/g...
[7]https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/30/18118264/...
[8]https://apnews.com/article/barr-no-widespread-election-fraud...
[9]https://time.com/5914377/donald-trump-no-evidence-fraud/
[10]https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/11/trump-lawyers-no-ele...
[11]https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/20/us/politics/trump-electio...
There is evidence[1, 2, 3] of Russian interference in the 2016 election. There is evidence[4, 5, 6, 7] of interference by Republicans in the 2018 gubernatorial race in Georgia. That content will not be taken down because it is true.
There is no evidence[8] of fraud in the 2020 election. Trump's own lawyers have admitted[9, 10, 11] that there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud.
[1]https://www.npr.org/2019/04/18/714810702/muellers-report-sho...
[2]https://www.cbsnews.com/news/senate-report-russian-interfere...
[3]https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
[4]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/10/georgia-elec...
[5]https://apnews.com/article/fb011f39af3b40518b572c8cce6e906c
[6]https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/6/18068492/g...
[7]https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/30/18118264/...
[8]https://apnews.com/article/barr-no-widespread-election-fraud...
[9]https://time.com/5914377/donald-trump-no-evidence-fraud/
[10]https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/11/trump-lawyers-no-ele...
[11]https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/20/us/politics/trump-electio...
Well. I guess the Ministry of Truth has spoken.
There couldn't possibly be other dissenting views on that. It's _true_ my friends.
Vox is clearly an impartial observer. The Senate hearings which led to impeachment hearings on Trump (because he investigated Hunter Biden, who has been under FBI investigation for over a year now... a materially true fact) could not _possibly_ have been politically motivated.
Shutting down speech does not lead to "facts" or "truth", it leads to uncertainty. YouTube is basically the Catholic church, claiming they know the facts, they know the truth, and Galileo is spouting nonsense.
If you're so confident, then let those people speak and use arguments (even your ludicrous wall of links) against them. That's rational and dare I say it, scientific.
There couldn't possibly be other dissenting views on that. It's _true_ my friends.
Vox is clearly an impartial observer. The Senate hearings which led to impeachment hearings on Trump (because he investigated Hunter Biden, who has been under FBI investigation for over a year now... a materially true fact) could not _possibly_ have been politically motivated.
Shutting down speech does not lead to "facts" or "truth", it leads to uncertainty. YouTube is basically the Catholic church, claiming they know the facts, they know the truth, and Galileo is spouting nonsense.
If you're so confident, then let those people speak and use arguments (even your ludicrous wall of links) against them. That's rational and dare I say it, scientific.
You have not actually provided evidence to the contrary, instead went for a string of logical fallacies.
> You have not actually provided evidence to the contrary
YouTube is arguing that I shouldn't be able to provide evidence to the contrary, which is the point.
I'm not arguing with the list of bullet points. I'm arguing with the very silly implication that there is an obvious "truth" that some MegaCorp should be able to hand down and enforce on this.
YouTube is arguing that I shouldn't be able to provide evidence to the contrary, which is the point.
I'm not arguing with the list of bullet points. I'm arguing with the very silly implication that there is an obvious "truth" that some MegaCorp should be able to hand down and enforce on this.
You are free to host your video evidence on your own website, following your own internal moderation rules for what is deemed credible or not. No one is taking this right from you.
> No one is taking this right from you.
Correct. But it's tantamount to saying "you can't speak in this public square, how about you pretend your front yard is a public square and speak there."
Eventually, people are going to say the hell with that and that Google's "private" management of 90% of inbound searches and content is, in fact, public.
After that, maybe we can start calling it Gov-gle or something once it's nationalized.
Correct. But it's tantamount to saying "you can't speak in this public square, how about you pretend your front yard is a public square and speak there."
Eventually, people are going to say the hell with that and that Google's "private" management of 90% of inbound searches and content is, in fact, public.
After that, maybe we can start calling it Gov-gle or something once it's nationalized.
There are no public squares on the internet. Every DNS resolution leads to privately owned 'land'. You can be escorted off the property for nearly any reason.
Maybe Youtube gave the misconception that they were a public square when they weren't moderating as heavily.
Maybe Youtube gave the misconception that they were a public square when they weren't moderating as heavily.
> Maybe Youtube gave the misconception that they were a public square when they weren't moderating as heavily.
Welp. Time to get rid of Section 230 then!
Apparently these companies aren't neutral carriers and should be held liable for what they censor in their editorial discretion.
Welp. Time to get rid of Section 230 then!
Apparently these companies aren't neutral carriers and should be held liable for what they censor in their editorial discretion.
Great citations. I think the general point is that there are more specific examples of election irregularities than there are specific examples of Russia interfering.
you add this to your list: https://hereistheevidence.com which provides a detailed breakdown with citations.
you add this to your list: https://hereistheevidence.com which provides a detailed breakdown with citations.
LOL, ongoing court cases!
The fact that politicians and private actors choose to beclown themselves in front of state and federal judges shouldn't prevent businesses from being able to see the plain truth that is staring them in the face. This is farcical.
The fact that politicians and private actors choose to beclown themselves in front of state and federal judges shouldn't prevent businesses from being able to see the plain truth that is staring them in the face. This is farcical.
> These same claims are being made in ongoing court cases. It's far out of Google's ambit to claim to resolve "the truth" at this juncture.
Aren't you an actual lawyer? Do you think any of Giuliani's cases have enough merit that you would argue one and think you had a good chance of winning?
I could probably engineer a frivolous court case claiming Joe Biden's a space alien and is thus ineligible to be president, but that doesn't mean that anyone should withhold judgment on my claim before I inevitably flame out in the first hearing.
Aren't you an actual lawyer? Do you think any of Giuliani's cases have enough merit that you would argue one and think you had a good chance of winning?
I could probably engineer a frivolous court case claiming Joe Biden's a space alien and is thus ineligible to be president, but that doesn't mean that anyone should withhold judgment on my claim before I inevitably flame out in the first hearing.
Unpopular opinion: it is much better to have a leader hated by the media and who's every move is scrutinized by the press than to have a leader cowtowed by the press and given a free pass on anything.
How do I know? I'm from Russia. Authoritatism begins with tight control of news sources.
How do I know? I'm from Russia. Authoritatism begins with tight control of news sources.
This comment is really weird. There is a good reason why the media publishes more negative articles about some presidents and fewer on others; some presidents are legitimately better or worse than others.
I thought it was a good comment. I don't know why the left fears a legitimately impartial press instead of one that leaks debate questions to the Democratic candidate.
Source for the debate question leak? The one I know of was given to Clinton against Sanders in the Democratic primary... so it was the "further left" being antagonized lol. But if there's a recent instance of this between a Democrat vs Republican debate I'd be interested to hear of it.
Also debunked as false. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clinton-received-debate-qu...
That is about the primary, not the presidential debate.
It's funny when people try to play this up as some huge scandal.
Someone told Clinton's campaign manager that there would be a question by a woman experiencing heath problems related to Flint's water supply. [1]
The debate was being held in Flint.
Do you think maybe everyone kind of knew that one was coming?
[1] https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/303556-emails-brazi...
Someone told Clinton's campaign manager that there would be a question by a woman experiencing heath problems related to Flint's water supply. [1]
The debate was being held in Flint.
Do you think maybe everyone kind of knew that one was coming?
[1] https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/303556-emails-brazi...
Seriously? This president has not started/entered into a war for the first time since Carter, reformed the criminal justice system to reverse laws that unfairly targeted minorities and non-violent drug crimes (laws supported by Biden when they were passed, btw), presided over a record low unemployment rate and record high wage increases for American workers prior to the pandemic and the media treats him like he's the reincarnation of Hitler.
Imagine if Obama reformed the criminal justice system, wasn't a war monger in Syria/Libya and presided over a record economic boom? He'd be made a saint or something.
Go figure.
Imagine if Obama reformed the criminal justice system, wasn't a war monger in Syria/Libya and presided over a record economic boom? He'd be made a saint or something.
Go figure.
[deleted]
djsumdog(4)
By this metric, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un are greatest leaders the world has ever seen.
No serious person with an interest in politics respects the state-sponsored news outlets of Russia or DPRK, but okay.
No-one respects CNN and the likes also. They are just like Newsmax, but serving the opposite side.
Do you seriously believe that CNN's standards for truth are just as bad as Newsmax? That's quite a claim.
I see their standards to be just about the same with Russian state propaganda channels. If you'd seen them both you'd be amazed with the similarity. Unless,of course, you would choose to overlook it - people often shield themselves from the information that doesn't fit their paradigm.
Are you implying that political pressure might mean some leaders get more bad press than others?
There's no way to square this statement given the coverage of Obama and Trump looking only at their policies.
Why would you only look at "policies" instead of everything they do in an official capacity? "Policies" are basically just the stories that politicians tell about themselves. What they actually do matters, not just what they claim to support.
The point of having a critical media is that the electorate can actually punish their leaders for bad things. Leaving those leaders in place because criticism is actually good defeats the point.
You missed the point. It was about media being equally critical to all leaders, not selectively.
> equally critical to all leaders
Not all leaders do things the same way, and there might be more cause to criticize one over the others. It should be _possible_ to publish criticism for all; that doesn't mean there should be equal amounts of criticism.
Otherwise, you could have one administration that mishandles a lot of thing complain that they were treated unfairly, just because they're rightfully criticized for their shortcomings. (Which it looks like has been happening recently.)
The question is, though, what happens if one side keeps knowingly publishing baseless allegations to stir up fear and mistrust.
Not all leaders do things the same way, and there might be more cause to criticize one over the others. It should be _possible_ to publish criticism for all; that doesn't mean there should be equal amounts of criticism.
Otherwise, you could have one administration that mishandles a lot of thing complain that they were treated unfairly, just because they're rightfully criticized for their shortcomings. (Which it looks like has been happening recently.)
The question is, though, what happens if one side keeps knowingly publishing baseless allegations to stir up fear and mistrust.
They should absolutely be critical selectively, based on the actual performance of that leader. The point of the criticism is to provide a deterrent to oppression and mismanagement, and a deterrent doesn't work if it's applied without regard to its target's actions.
YouTube !== Government
Your comparison is off.
Your comparison is off.
I get your point, but given the proximity of Obama, Kamala Harris and the Democrat Party as a whole to Google/Alphabet and subsidiaries, it stands to reason that there's not some wall of separation between Google/YouTube management and the US government. This doesn't seem so hard to believe: we all saw that leaked video after the 2016 US elections where Sergey Brin and several other executives clearly aligned themselves with Hillary Clinton and the Democrats.
The business practices, profit sources, and donation habits of the Google/Alphabet on the other had point in entirely the other direction.
I'm having trouble parsing your reply. Google/Alphabet employees overwhelmingly support left-of-center politicians and causes. Management is aligned with the establishment New Left Democrats and the workers are split between populist New Leftists (e.g. Warren) and the socialists (e.g. Bernie).
Look at who the entity Alphabet itself donates political funds to the majority of the time. Look at which party's policies are more favorable to investor returns.
Examine which side of the political spectrum is overwhelmingly running media businesses through YouTube.
It is not Democrats.
Examine which side of the political spectrum is overwhelmingly running media businesses through YouTube.
It is not Democrats.
I did a small amount of searching and found the first and third skew strongly to the left. "Which party's policies are more favorable to investor returns" is underspecified, so I'm not sure how we can discuss it.
It might be helpful if you cited sources yourself.
It might be helpful if you cited sources yourself.
Funny thing is Democratic party and Biden themselves are center-right by most reasonable international definitions. The fact that republicans try to paint Biden and Democratic parties as radical left is laughable to most people with an international view. This also gives insight into the Republican style of pushing out falsities just for the sake of being in power.
The U.S. definition of "left" is different than the international estimation of "left". I don't know why international folks feel the need to correct this. It doesn't seem to bother the folks affected (U.S. citizens and residents).
Note that the reasons for this are complicated, but the U.S. doesn't historically have to deal with monarchy, titles of nobility, vestigial aspects of governance left over from feudalism, a relatively recent postwar recovery period, or government implicated into churches. For instance, there's no American conservative impulse to support the monarchy because there's no American monarchy. The lack of that issue means other things are discussed instead.
Note that the reasons for this are complicated, but the U.S. doesn't historically have to deal with monarchy, titles of nobility, vestigial aspects of governance left over from feudalism, a relatively recent postwar recovery period, or government implicated into churches. For instance, there's no American conservative impulse to support the monarchy because there's no American monarchy. The lack of that issue means other things are discussed instead.
This is correct. Also, the influence of nationalism - even under Trump - is much smaller on the American Right than in other countries. The US is both a very large country and a federation, and so a strong national identity doesn't really exist. People on the Right tend to be more nationalistic (they tend to want more immigration restrictions, the "melting pot" model and prefer English as the national language), and those on the Left tend to be more internationalist. But the degree is just much different than other countries.
Monarchism, a formal class system and state establishment of religion tend to be rejected by large swathes of both the American Left and Right.
Monarchism, a formal class system and state establishment of religion tend to be rejected by large swathes of both the American Left and Right.
> Funny thing is Democratic party and Biden themselves are center-right by most reasonable international definitions. The fact that republicans try to paint Biden and Democratic parties as radical left is laughable to most people with an international view.
We just had a summer in which armed gangs of self-identified Leftists roamed the streets of our major cities, set fire to buildings, harassed random passers-by and assaulted (and in a few cases, murdered) anyone they unilaterally labeled a "fascist" (i.e. anyone to the right of Mao). These Democrats you speak of were for three months ignoring the violence; when they occasionally admitted that violence had taken place, they claimed it was all perpetrated by right-wing agitators; when that didn't work (because who actually believes that right-wingers are spray-painting anarchy symbols, "BLM," "ACAB," and other slogans?), their propaganda mouthpieces calling it "mostly peaceful protest."
Do I think Biden is some hard leftist? No. But certainly his party feels extremely constrained in criticizing the hard left, and also feel that they must kowtow down to them.
> This also gives insight into the Republican style of pushing out falsities just for the sake of being in power.
This is a complete non-sequitur. The fact that US definitions of left and right (as mentioned in a sibling comment) differ from international ones "gives insight" into one particular political party lying? What?
Isn't the objective of every political party to obtain power, or at least influence? Don't all political parties "push[] out falsities" in order to obtain or retain power?
The one wrinkle here is that the Republicans (nor anyone on the Right - US definition) absolutely lack real political power, since they have no control over the bureaucracy, the media or the academe. Trump himself figured this out much too late, and wasted years appointing people who had no interest in carrying out his agenda. But in some ways, this is the exception that proves the rule.
We just had a summer in which armed gangs of self-identified Leftists roamed the streets of our major cities, set fire to buildings, harassed random passers-by and assaulted (and in a few cases, murdered) anyone they unilaterally labeled a "fascist" (i.e. anyone to the right of Mao). These Democrats you speak of were for three months ignoring the violence; when they occasionally admitted that violence had taken place, they claimed it was all perpetrated by right-wing agitators; when that didn't work (because who actually believes that right-wingers are spray-painting anarchy symbols, "BLM," "ACAB," and other slogans?), their propaganda mouthpieces calling it "mostly peaceful protest."
Do I think Biden is some hard leftist? No. But certainly his party feels extremely constrained in criticizing the hard left, and also feel that they must kowtow down to them.
> This also gives insight into the Republican style of pushing out falsities just for the sake of being in power.
This is a complete non-sequitur. The fact that US definitions of left and right (as mentioned in a sibling comment) differ from international ones "gives insight" into one particular political party lying? What?
Isn't the objective of every political party to obtain power, or at least influence? Don't all political parties "push[] out falsities" in order to obtain or retain power?
The one wrinkle here is that the Republicans (nor anyone on the Right - US definition) absolutely lack real political power, since they have no control over the bureaucracy, the media or the academe. Trump himself figured this out much too late, and wasted years appointing people who had no interest in carrying out his agenda. But in some ways, this is the exception that proves the rule.
But the "government" (well, several senators, the legislative branch of the power) did just politely ask YouTube to start censoring content.
I'd be fine with videos marked with something like "YouTube believes this video is untrue and spreads dangerous disinformation" put before or even over a video. But taking videos down is quite another matter.
I'd be fine with videos marked with something like "YouTube believes this video is untrue and spreads dangerous disinformation" put before or even over a video. But taking videos down is quite another matter.
God would I love to live in a world where Youtube videos, facebook comments, instagram stories weren't the _actual_ source of most people's news (and by news I mean baseless things people with obvious biases and insidious motives say).
What would be then? Newspapers? Gossip?
News sources are always biased, even when they try to stay neutral. The trick is to learn to extract useful nuggets of information from a number of biased streams. Having these streams biased differently helps.
This is much like raw data in science: all data have noise and imperfections, but statistics help extract a signal if there is one.
News sources are always biased, even when they try to stay neutral. The trick is to learn to extract useful nuggets of information from a number of biased streams. Having these streams biased differently helps.
This is much like raw data in science: all data have noise and imperfections, but statistics help extract a signal if there is one.
> What would be then? Newspapers? Gossip?
I think anywhere that libel and slander are enforced. Any random person with any random agenda can write on facebook or make youtube videos advancing that agenda.
> News sources are always biased, even when they try to stay neutral. The trick is to learn to extract useful nuggets of information from a number of biased streams. Having these streams biased differently helps.
I'm not talking about bias, I'm talking about obvious made-up QAnon garbage.
> This is much like raw data in science: all data have noise and imperfections, but statistics help extract a signal if there is one.
I would argue that baseless data is not data at all.
I think anywhere that libel and slander are enforced. Any random person with any random agenda can write on facebook or make youtube videos advancing that agenda.
> News sources are always biased, even when they try to stay neutral. The trick is to learn to extract useful nuggets of information from a number of biased streams. Having these streams biased differently helps.
I'm not talking about bias, I'm talking about obvious made-up QAnon garbage.
> This is much like raw data in science: all data have noise and imperfections, but statistics help extract a signal if there is one.
I would argue that baseless data is not data at all.
My understanding of GP point is that majority of social media companies is negative to Trump and positive to Biden. The difference with Russia is that media is controlled by government, but the original point is that it is healthier when media scrutinises government
citation very much needed.
Just because content on social media is negative towards Trump, doesn't mean the platform itself is.
In fact, Twitter has been incredibly lenient with Trump. Much of what he tweets (threats for example) contravene the TOS.
Just because content on social media is negative towards Trump, doesn't mean the platform itself is.
In fact, Twitter has been incredibly lenient with Trump. Much of what he tweets (threats for example) contravene the TOS.
As I recall, after his election, Twitter explicitly updated its TOS to basically say that they don't apply to certain public figures, in effect admitting that he does violate the TOS but they are unwilling to do anything about it.
Irrelevant. Employees != company.
> My understanding of GP point is that majority of social media companies is negative to Trump and positive to Biden
I don't think this is accurate, unless you mean that most employees of big tech vote/contribute Democrat. However, it doesn't necessarily follow that bias exists on the platform.
I don't think this is accurate, unless you mean that most employees of big tech vote/contribute Democrat. However, it doesn't necessarily follow that bias exists on the platform.
I live in the US and I've said this for decades. I wish the media were just as hard on the politicians they agree with.
The one thing different about trump is that he purposely provoked the media and responded to petty nonsense that previous presidents would have just ignored. Trump and the media have a symbiotic relationship because they both need the attention.
The one thing different about trump is that he purposely provoked the media and responded to petty nonsense that previous presidents would have just ignored. Trump and the media have a symbiotic relationship because they both need the attention.
It seems funny to me that when people say things about the "media" they by implication omit such members as Fox News, the many, many right leaning web-only news sites and "conservative" talk radio (terrestrial and sat). In addition, much of "local" tv news stations are owned by conservative leaning Sinclair Broadcasting, an ownership which has pressed its own views on the reporting of news by its properties.
I was mostly talking about fox news, they started the whole trend of being blatantly biased in their reporting. what made you think otherwise?
Likely "The one thing different about trump is that he purposely provoked the media" Generally, one does not provoke your sympathizers.
google doesnt have a search monopoly because bing is the default on internet explorer
No, there were other differences. Let’s just go with his most recent example: He’s still refuting election results with no evidence to backup his claim.
Just like Gore in 2000, who didn't concede until December 13th after every avenue to victory he had was closed.
Let the process play out. He'll have his day in court and will either win or lose, just like Bush and Gore.
Trying to rush things would have the opposite effect of building faith in the system.
Let the process play out. He'll have his day in court and will either win or lose, just like Bush and Gore.
Trying to rush things would have the opposite effect of building faith in the system.
There is no equivalence between Gore in 2000 and Trump in 2020. Gore demanded a recount of the exceedingly close outcome in Florda, one which hinged in large part on the accurate counting of the dreadful butterfly ballot. Gore at no time said, nor pressured anyone else to say, 'Its all fraud! Throw out all the votes and have the legislature put my elector slate in'
This is definitely true when the boss-man doesn't change. But these people aren't against power, or even against power used abusively against the people - they're only against "the other team" and clearly happy to cover up just about any bad actions of their preferred team.
I’m not sure who “these people” are, but this policy for everyone. What happens when “these people” is you?
So we should vote for leaders that “the media” hates and scrutinizes? That is a sad, cynical view of the world. Also, you realize that the media in the US includes outlets on both sides, right? As in, every leader pretty much fits both characterizations?
There's a difference between silencing dissent and silencing disinformation.
Who gets to decide what's disinformation?
The leader of course.
And we know she is good because all the news media say she is good.
And we know the news media is good because she tells us it is good.
Welcome to Hotel California, you can check out at any time, but you can never leave.
And we know she is good because all the news media say she is good.
And we know the news media is good because she tells us it is good.
Welcome to Hotel California, you can check out at any time, but you can never leave.
We don't need cosmic deity levels of certainty. Most first-world judicial systems are predicated on the standard of evidence being "reasonable". As in "reasonable cause to believe" or "beyond a reasonable doubt". We have functioned pretty well with based on "reasonable" and we can apply that same standard here. It is fair to label a statement as at least misinformation if it seems to be untrue beyond a reasonable doubt. Disinformation requires intent which is much harder to determine but not really relevant.
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
And Brutus is an honourable man.
[deleted]
I think this comment is underrated. Even using the term "censorship" is somewhat dubious when/if the "censor" is acting against the interests/wishes of government.
That said, I think google are making a bad mistake here. They've crossed a line that they've been toeing.
Social media isn't just a mass media. Media is always edited. Editing isn't censorship. But social media is also a communication channel. Haphazard interference in a communication channel sits wrong. We have no frame of reference for it.
Meanwhile, there are credible claims that social media fallacies have caused horrible things (including possibly genocide in Myanmar) in other countries/languages. FB (in that case) has no knowledge of the language or interest in getting involved in that. How can you justify one without the other?
That said, I think google are making a bad mistake here. They've crossed a line that they've been toeing.
Social media isn't just a mass media. Media is always edited. Editing isn't censorship. But social media is also a communication channel. Haphazard interference in a communication channel sits wrong. We have no frame of reference for it.
Meanwhile, there are credible claims that social media fallacies have caused horrible things (including possibly genocide in Myanmar) in other countries/languages. FB (in that case) has no knowledge of the language or interest in getting involved in that. How can you justify one without the other?
How is that an unpopular opinion though? Even the right-wingers keep hammering about fake news, which implies they care about fair, neutral and 'true' news.
I mean it's one of those doublespeak terms that they themselves don't fully understand (apparently), but still.
I mean it's one of those doublespeak terms that they themselves don't fully understand (apparently), but still.
I have yet to meet a reddit democrat that knows more about Obama than they do about Trump. That's why I thought Trump should've been in office again. Now we've got a dying old man and a pro cop VP.
This is Orwellian bullshit.
And I'll take it because I think the alternative is leading to a few greedy assholes using analytical data to successfully weaponize millions upon millions of uninformed people against logic and common sense.
Do we add restrictions to voting to weed out people who habitually vote anti-facts? No. Disenfranchisement.
Do we make fake news illegal? No. Censorship leading to state run media.
Do we have a civil war because it's so bad that people are being evicted and dying of starvation because their neighbors are being convinced by propaganda that they're less than? Hopefully not.
So we're kind of left with this option. We're stuck with speaking with our wallets through corporations because our voices in government have been corrupted.
It sucks.
And I'll take it because I think the alternative is leading to a few greedy assholes using analytical data to successfully weaponize millions upon millions of uninformed people against logic and common sense.
Do we add restrictions to voting to weed out people who habitually vote anti-facts? No. Disenfranchisement.
Do we make fake news illegal? No. Censorship leading to state run media.
Do we have a civil war because it's so bad that people are being evicted and dying of starvation because their neighbors are being convinced by propaganda that they're less than? Hopefully not.
So we're kind of left with this option. We're stuck with speaking with our wallets through corporations because our voices in government have been corrupted.
It sucks.
I’m asking as sincerely as I can, I wish no one harm or to lose their right to vote —
How do we have a higher mail in ballot rejection rate in non-pandemic times than we do in pandemic times?
And then follow up, if we assume incredible voter turnout, how do many of these first time mail in ballots follow the process so correctly that the ballot rejection rate is lower?
Were the standards altered? That’s fine with me. Just say it.
Can we see all the ballot signatures side by side with the rolls? I don’t think that’s too much to ask really — I mean it’s a part of the process (we already check voter rolls in state and local elections).
These questions could really begin a true discussion to build a shared world views. It’s what I imagine a forthright and true partner would do for someone with slight reservations... or at least I’d hope.
Shutting it down with Orwellian tactics rather than hard verifiable data is what feels a bit disingenuous that we are all on the same team.
How do we have a higher mail in ballot rejection rate in non-pandemic times than we do in pandemic times?
And then follow up, if we assume incredible voter turnout, how do many of these first time mail in ballots follow the process so correctly that the ballot rejection rate is lower?
Were the standards altered? That’s fine with me. Just say it.
Can we see all the ballot signatures side by side with the rolls? I don’t think that’s too much to ask really — I mean it’s a part of the process (we already check voter rolls in state and local elections).
These questions could really begin a true discussion to build a shared world views. It’s what I imagine a forthright and true partner would do for someone with slight reservations... or at least I’d hope.
Shutting it down with Orwellian tactics rather than hard verifiable data is what feels a bit disingenuous that we are all on the same team.
> How do we have a higher mail in ballot rejection rate in non-pandemic times than we do in pandemic times?
Probably because the rejection rate is exaggerated in normal times because the population that relies on absentee voting in regular times is less able to produce consistent signatures.
Also probably because a lot more effort (both official government and outside organization) went into educating people on the rules for mail-in ballots.
> And then follow up, if we assume incredible voter turnout, how do many of these first time mail in ballots follow the process so correctly that the ballot rejection rate is lower?
That's not a follow-up, it's just rephrasing the exact same question with different and more extensive framing commentary.
Probably because the rejection rate is exaggerated in normal times because the population that relies on absentee voting in regular times is less able to produce consistent signatures.
Also probably because a lot more effort (both official government and outside organization) went into educating people on the rules for mail-in ballots.
> And then follow up, if we assume incredible voter turnout, how do many of these first time mail in ballots follow the process so correctly that the ballot rejection rate is lower?
That's not a follow-up, it's just rephrasing the exact same question with different and more extensive framing commentary.
Thanks for the honest and thoughtful response. I have not heard that explanation, and believe it does give a wider margin for possible rejection rates.
I will have to chew on that new point a bit longer — it feels plausible, and I’d like to find more publicly available data that indicates how much weight should be given to that explanation.
So, now I guess I’ll ask a true “follow up” (thanks for that too ha!)...
From my experience in local and state elections, I know of scenarios where 1-3 people are in charge of “getting out the vote” (read as: not election fraud, but people would look side eyed at it). It is not hard for me to see how those same 1-3 people get out 100 votes when not in a pandemic, because they have to get the actual person voter to the polls. However, in this pandemic mail in voting environment, those same 1-3 people can get 500-1,000 voters information to fill out a ballot request - then have those ballots sent to the small team HQ. once there, the “get out the votes” become certain for the sides you want and you can cover tracks with the ways one fills in the ballot. Also, the team can just copy the signature from the gathering ballot request step. There are approximately a team like this for every 50,000 voters, in off presidential races.
So long story (or background) short, if such a scenario did occur, do you feel that is representative of the people and a valid election?
Then please poke holes in my scenario above if you see something else I missed.
I will have to chew on that new point a bit longer — it feels plausible, and I’d like to find more publicly available data that indicates how much weight should be given to that explanation.
So, now I guess I’ll ask a true “follow up” (thanks for that too ha!)...
From my experience in local and state elections, I know of scenarios where 1-3 people are in charge of “getting out the vote” (read as: not election fraud, but people would look side eyed at it). It is not hard for me to see how those same 1-3 people get out 100 votes when not in a pandemic, because they have to get the actual person voter to the polls. However, in this pandemic mail in voting environment, those same 1-3 people can get 500-1,000 voters information to fill out a ballot request - then have those ballots sent to the small team HQ. once there, the “get out the votes” become certain for the sides you want and you can cover tracks with the ways one fills in the ballot. Also, the team can just copy the signature from the gathering ballot request step. There are approximately a team like this for every 50,000 voters, in off presidential races.
So long story (or background) short, if such a scenario did occur, do you feel that is representative of the people and a valid election?
Then please poke holes in my scenario above if you see something else I missed.
I mean, anyone can make up hypothetical scenarios. Without proof they're just that -- an overactive imagination.
Also there is the reality that this election determined whether Trump would remain in office four more years. There was an optional witness signature block on my ballot and I called a lawyer to make sure I was filling it out right. Can't take any chances. Kids in cages.
I'm sure you know who built those cages :[0]
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/kids-in-cages-deb...
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/kids-in-cages-deb...
The content of this article doesn't support the point it looks like you intended to make.
The scandal isn't that the facilities exist. It's in how they're now being used: to indefinitely detain _children_ who, unlike before, have been separated from their families. To make matters worse, many of these kids are being abused by their captors, and many were never been reunited with their family members.
The scandal isn't that the facilities exist. It's in how they're now being used: to indefinitely detain _children_ who, unlike before, have been separated from their families. To make matters worse, many of these kids are being abused by their captors, and many were never been reunited with their family members.
> How do we have a higher mail in ballot rejection rate in non-pandemic times than we do in pandemic times?
I mean, here's an explanation for a specific case
> According to the nonprofit, nonpartisan organisation Ballotpedia, Georgia rejected 6.42% of mail-in ballots in total in the 2016 general election and 3.10% in total in the 2018 midterm (here). These totals include rejections because of signatures, but also include, for example, ballots received late or past deadlines, problems with return materials or a voter having already voted in person.
> It may be that Trump was referring to the 0.15% of ballots specifically rejected for "missing or non-matching signatures" when saying that ballots rejected in 2020 were "almost zero", but this percentage is consistent with past years. The higher percentage he mentions for past years is likely based off the total rejected ballots (here) which can not be compared with 2020, as this information is not available.
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-georgia-rejecte...
https://sos.ga.gov/index.php/elections/number_of_absentee_ba...
Edit: And just for fun, I pulled data for 2020 and 2018 statewide, November elections from https://elections.sos.ga.gov/Elections/voterabsenteefile.do
I looked at a largeish file (didnt want to deal with the 1gig state wide file), ended up being CHATHAM county. (file name 025).
In 2018, there were 351 rejections for 40683 mail in ballots. In 2020, there were 321 rejections for 110831 mail in ballots.
The interesting thing to me was that in 2018, 286 ballots were rejected for being late, but in 2020, only 191 were rejected for being late.
Which tells me at least some of the higher acceptance rates can be attributed simply to people being more diligent about mailing their ballots in.
I mean, here's an explanation for a specific case
> According to the nonprofit, nonpartisan organisation Ballotpedia, Georgia rejected 6.42% of mail-in ballots in total in the 2016 general election and 3.10% in total in the 2018 midterm (here). These totals include rejections because of signatures, but also include, for example, ballots received late or past deadlines, problems with return materials or a voter having already voted in person.
> It may be that Trump was referring to the 0.15% of ballots specifically rejected for "missing or non-matching signatures" when saying that ballots rejected in 2020 were "almost zero", but this percentage is consistent with past years. The higher percentage he mentions for past years is likely based off the total rejected ballots (here) which can not be compared with 2020, as this information is not available.
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-georgia-rejecte...
https://sos.ga.gov/index.php/elections/number_of_absentee_ba...
Edit: And just for fun, I pulled data for 2020 and 2018 statewide, November elections from https://elections.sos.ga.gov/Elections/voterabsenteefile.do
I looked at a largeish file (didnt want to deal with the 1gig state wide file), ended up being CHATHAM county. (file name 025).
In 2018, there were 351 rejections for 40683 mail in ballots. In 2020, there were 321 rejections for 110831 mail in ballots.
The interesting thing to me was that in 2018, 286 ballots were rejected for being late, but in 2020, only 191 were rejected for being late.
Which tells me at least some of the higher acceptance rates can be attributed simply to people being more diligent about mailing their ballots in.
> The higher percentage he mentions for past years is likely based off the total rejected ballots (here) which can not be compared with 2020, as this information is not available.
This is also the same style of reasoning that helps people explain away the abnormally high voter turnout in WI. Please understand I mean no disrespect in this - I just think changing definitions to cure the abnormalities isn’t necessarily correct (and is frighteningly Orwellian in the bad way).
If I had ever turned out 90% of voters measured as (votes/total registered voters) I would have more money than Elon. The way these shocking statistics get diluted is by placating to people with no experience in the process. The goal is to make them feel better by offering an alternative (however misguided) representation, that will stop the line of questioning.
So when confronted with an extremely implausible voter turnout, people say the real turnout is votes/total eligible voters... which is very different than every other time I’ve experienced voter turn out
This is also the same style of reasoning that helps people explain away the abnormally high voter turnout in WI. Please understand I mean no disrespect in this - I just think changing definitions to cure the abnormalities isn’t necessarily correct (and is frighteningly Orwellian in the bad way).
If I had ever turned out 90% of voters measured as (votes/total registered voters) I would have more money than Elon. The way these shocking statistics get diluted is by placating to people with no experience in the process. The goal is to make them feel better by offering an alternative (however misguided) representation, that will stop the line of questioning.
So when confronted with an extremely implausible voter turnout, people say the real turnout is votes/total eligible voters... which is very different than every other time I’ve experienced voter turn out
> So when confronted with an extremely implausible voter turnout, people say the real turnout is votes/total eligible voters... which is very different than every other time I’ve experienced voter turn out
Not sure how whatever conjured view of voter turnout YOU have is relevant. You can go to https://elections.wi.gov/elections-voting/statistics/turnout grab `Voter Turnout Partisan-NonPartisan Through August 2020.xlsx` and see that turnout percentage is computed as `number of votes cast` / `voting age population`.
Which puts Wisconsin turnout at 72.3% [1]
We were talking about ballot rejection, and you start going off about "shocking" voter turnout statistics because you had no retort to the rejection stuff. Either you have an axe to grind or you are a troll. Or maybe you're a masked free speech crusader. The hero we deserve. But I kind of doubt that.
1: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/11/05/fac...
Not sure how whatever conjured view of voter turnout YOU have is relevant. You can go to https://elections.wi.gov/elections-voting/statistics/turnout grab `Voter Turnout Partisan-NonPartisan Through August 2020.xlsx` and see that turnout percentage is computed as `number of votes cast` / `voting age population`.
Which puts Wisconsin turnout at 72.3% [1]
We were talking about ballot rejection, and you start going off about "shocking" voter turnout statistics because you had no retort to the rejection stuff. Either you have an axe to grind or you are a troll. Or maybe you're a masked free speech crusader. The hero we deserve. But I kind of doubt that.
1: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/11/05/fac...
> Not sure how whatever conjured view of voter turnout YOU have is relevant. You can go to https://elections.wi.gov/elections-voting/statistics/turnout grab `Voter Turnout Partisan-NonPartisan Through August 2020.xlsx` and see that turnout percentage is computed as `number of votes cast` / `voting age population`.
This is funny -- here's a single example from the WI.gov page to show how little care is given to cultivating and maintaining this data...
HINDI: 56184
County: ST. CROIX COUNTY
Municipality: VILLAGE OF SPRING VALLEY
Total Electors 2012: 4
Voting Age Estimate 2012: 6
Voter Turnout 2012: 66.67%
Total Electors 2016: 319
Voting Age Estimate 2016: 10
Voting Turnout 2016: 3190.00%
So I can find slivers that support wild claims too. I think the more productive discussion is just doing a side by side of signatures and rolls - not that hard, no real argument about it - and everyone can stop trying to dig for little things and becoming unbearably pedantic with each other.
This is funny -- here's a single example from the WI.gov page to show how little care is given to cultivating and maintaining this data...
HINDI: 56184
County: ST. CROIX COUNTY
Municipality: VILLAGE OF SPRING VALLEY
Total Electors 2012: 4
Voting Age Estimate 2012: 6
Voter Turnout 2012: 66.67%
Total Electors 2016: 319
Voting Age Estimate 2016: 10
Voting Turnout 2016: 3190.00%
So I can find slivers that support wild claims too. I think the more productive discussion is just doing a side by side of signatures and rolls - not that hard, no real argument about it - and everyone can stop trying to dig for little things and becoming unbearably pedantic with each other.
Agreed 100%.
YouTube’s massively outsized impact is obviously the problem here. This wouldn’t be Orwellian if they didn’t have so much power. We wouldn’t need it if YouTube didn’t allow for such insane manipulation of people.
But if we’re going to have YouTube, by god do I prefer people NOT proliferating this madness freely.
YouTube’s massively outsized impact is obviously the problem here. This wouldn’t be Orwellian if they didn’t have so much power. We wouldn’t need it if YouTube didn’t allow for such insane manipulation of people.
But if we’re going to have YouTube, by god do I prefer people NOT proliferating this madness freely.
> I prefer people NOT proliferating this madness freely.
Just the madness you happen to agree with, right?
Just the madness you happen to agree with, right?
Let's not pretend that this is a matter of opinion vs opinion. This is a matter of truth vs counterfactuals. There may be edge cases where the distinction isn't so clear cut; this isn't one of them.
That wasn't the point the person you are responding to was trying to get across... unless you somehow think everything you believe is 100% true.
"truth", "counterfactuals"
Words that no longer have a definition aside from whatever the user finds favorable for their own means.
I prefer we remove all the stops and see what the chaos brings. Survival of the fittest. Zero censorship of political speech true or false by whomever's standards.
Words that no longer have a definition aside from whatever the user finds favorable for their own means.
I prefer we remove all the stops and see what the chaos brings. Survival of the fittest. Zero censorship of political speech true or false by whomever's standards.
At which point in history did words have a centralized and objective meaning across all usages?
Bothsideism is not a good argument for preserving dangerous untruths.
Also, this is a free market. Those who feel they are being censored can freely start their own AntiTube service.
Also, this is a free market. Those who feel they are being censored can freely start their own AntiTube service.
>Those who feel they are being censored can freely start their own AntiTube service.
I'm pretty sure that's been tried, no? And then the same regressives have ensured those services are:
- Deplatformed by infrastructure providers
- Stripped of support from payment providers
- Deindexed, banned from advertising, etc. from search engines
- Silenced on social media so as to not be able to get their brand / product out
But hey, I mean it's a free world, right? I, as an impartial observer free from any consequences, honestly welcome the US tech industry to continue backing half of the US population into a corner, and believe me I will spare the same industry not one iota of sympathy when those same people inevitably snap.
I'm pretty sure that's been tried, no? And then the same regressives have ensured those services are:
- Deplatformed by infrastructure providers
- Stripped of support from payment providers
- Deindexed, banned from advertising, etc. from search engines
- Silenced on social media so as to not be able to get their brand / product out
But hey, I mean it's a free world, right? I, as an impartial observer free from any consequences, honestly welcome the US tech industry to continue backing half of the US population into a corner, and believe me I will spare the same industry not one iota of sympathy when those same people inevitably snap.
Do you have any examples of that happening to people for actions that aren’t straight up pedophilia or racism (ie Stormfront)?
Hate speech is free speech, in US law. Racism is absolutely protected.
Free speech is about government laws, not private action. Racist speech is protected, but so is the right to not propagate racist speech on private infrastructure.
This is what will lose them section 230 though, right? The bloc that "snaps" is going to vote, and those votes are going to have consequences.
it is funny how people with liberal tendencies resort to "it is a free market" when it is convenient to the them and if not they say it is rigged for people with power
That was exactly my point. It being a “free market” is why it sucks in the first place — but if it’s going to be a shitty adtech-driven brain-sludgifying monstrosity, the very least we can do is not actively promote the worst things people put into it.
The same will cry for net neutrality and government provided internet. Go start your own ISP if you don't like Comcast (or whoever).
Two competing camps trying to fork the nation because they both believe the guys upstream keep making shitty commits, year after year. Unless those 9 reviewers properly do their job, it's only a matter of time before the whole project is deprecated.
Such a tricky situation, but I think what youtube is getting used for is actually the Orwellian bullshit. The power of youtube videos to convince people of untrue things is quite astounding. I have no idea what the right answers to any of this is. At he moment nearly any action is considered as dire in that it will either make America a communist state or it will bring a right wing dictator to power. Hopefully, what we are witnessing is robustness of the legal system and constitution amongst all the chaos.
There is another option: use anti-trust enforcement or similar regulatory actions to ensure a competitive market, so people can be always get access to information, and no single private provider can become a universal censor.
its_simple(1)
Holy shit, this thread is scary. Sure, there are some implications worth discussing based on this news. However, the number of people directly posting doubts on the election results is way more concerning and shows that Youtube might be doing a good thing in this case.
I don't think the vote was rigged.
But rationally I have no way to be 100% certain, because, as a thought experiment, if it really was rigged, what would look different to how it does look?
The fact that "everyone knew" and was expecting the losing side to cry foul means that when they do, everyone says "you see? Told you so." But if it really was, how would we know? What would look different?
The fact that those who are meant to look out for such things (primarily, the media) are not trusted by one side to do so impartially means that if there really was foul play, their reporting would not necessarily be different. So again, how would you know?
To reiterate, I am not saying I think it was rigged. I'm not American, nor have I ever lived there. I'm just saying that _if it was_, things would look pretty much as they do now. _If t wasn't_, things would also look pretty much as they do now. So how can we know?
But rationally I have no way to be 100% certain, because, as a thought experiment, if it really was rigged, what would look different to how it does look?
The fact that "everyone knew" and was expecting the losing side to cry foul means that when they do, everyone says "you see? Told you so." But if it really was, how would we know? What would look different?
The fact that those who are meant to look out for such things (primarily, the media) are not trusted by one side to do so impartially means that if there really was foul play, their reporting would not necessarily be different. So again, how would you know?
To reiterate, I am not saying I think it was rigged. I'm not American, nor have I ever lived there. I'm just saying that _if it was_, things would look pretty much as they do now. _If t wasn't_, things would also look pretty much as they do now. So how can we know?
Republicans outperformed expectations in Congressional results. This is unusual given congressional results and presidential results have historically correlated. I don't understand the explanation for that if Democrats rigged the election somehow.
It seems more plausible that:
- there was a really high turnout aided by widespread absentee voting
- a large single-digit percentage of voters went Republican in the congressional races but didn't vote for Trump
I can't think of a fraud based scenario with any factual support that is as compelling.
It seems more plausible that:
- there was a really high turnout aided by widespread absentee voting
- a large single-digit percentage of voters went Republican in the congressional races but didn't vote for Trump
I can't think of a fraud based scenario with any factual support that is as compelling.
Yes, to think that somebody might have doubts that the most ideologically contentious election in modern history, wherein both sides perceived the opposition to be an existential threat to their lives or lifestyles might have on any scale been marred by political actors attempting to fix the results in their favor is a sign that people are too irrational to be exposed to the idea going forward…
...yes. yes, it's absurd that after the last few weeks, the GOP candidate refuses to concede and is still continually playing with fire by pushing the notion that the result was fraudulent.
It's not the GOP or DNC issue.
Here is hillary clinton saying that biden should not concede if he lost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwc0cJ409VQ
Neither side was going to concede this election. If Trump had won, Biden and the DNC would have taken it to the supreme court.
The truth of the matter is neither side trusts the election. The democrats accused Trump of cheating in 2016. Now the republicans accuse Biden. Frankly I don't see the solution to this. But censorship certainly is not the answer.
Here is hillary clinton saying that biden should not concede if he lost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwc0cJ409VQ
Neither side was going to concede this election. If Trump had won, Biden and the DNC would have taken it to the supreme court.
The truth of the matter is neither side trusts the election. The democrats accused Trump of cheating in 2016. Now the republicans accuse Biden. Frankly I don't see the solution to this. But censorship certainly is not the answer.
This isn’t an honest reading of Clinton’s comment:
> I think that [Republicans] have a couple of scenarios that they are looking toward. One is messing up absentee balloting. They believe that helps them so that they then get maybe a narrow advantage in the Electoral College on Election Day... Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances because I think this is going to drag out.
She clearly meant on Election Day, not even if all the votes are counted.
Another flaw in the argument is that the 2016 election was objectively undemocratic and indisputably subject to foreign interference designed to tilt the scales towards Trump. Whether that means 2016 was “stolen” is maybe a matter of perspective (in my view it was illegitimate). But only one of the parties is actually willing to steal a presidential election they clearly lost.
> I think that [Republicans] have a couple of scenarios that they are looking toward. One is messing up absentee balloting. They believe that helps them so that they then get maybe a narrow advantage in the Electoral College on Election Day... Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances because I think this is going to drag out.
She clearly meant on Election Day, not even if all the votes are counted.
Another flaw in the argument is that the 2016 election was objectively undemocratic and indisputably subject to foreign interference designed to tilt the scales towards Trump. Whether that means 2016 was “stolen” is maybe a matter of perspective (in my view it was illegitimate). But only one of the parties is actually willing to steal a presidential election they clearly lost.
While the GOP candidate is straight up a stubborn babbling moron, the media doesn't help the situation at all.
The GOP candidate refuses to concede in face of the recount results not supporting his case. But the media is adding flame to this by giving people half-truths and not being honest in their position either.
Is it the case that Trump still lost, even after the recounts? Yep, it is the case. Is it true that there were no missing votes? Media claims so, but the GA recount seems to prove them wrong. The media publications don't want to retract their earlier statements about there being no missing votes, despite the fact that recounts proved them wrong. Just because there weren't enough of missing votes to change the outcome doesn't mean that they didn't exist.
P.S. Biden won, recounts affirmed that he won legitimately, I am happy. The process of the recount seems to have worked as it was supposed to. But the loud media statements about "no missing votes" aren't helping their case, and it doesn't seem truthful to say there were "no missing votes" just because there weren't enough of them to change the election outcome.
The GOP candidate refuses to concede in face of the recount results not supporting his case. But the media is adding flame to this by giving people half-truths and not being honest in their position either.
Is it the case that Trump still lost, even after the recounts? Yep, it is the case. Is it true that there were no missing votes? Media claims so, but the GA recount seems to prove them wrong. The media publications don't want to retract their earlier statements about there being no missing votes, despite the fact that recounts proved them wrong. Just because there weren't enough of missing votes to change the outcome doesn't mean that they didn't exist.
P.S. Biden won, recounts affirmed that he won legitimately, I am happy. The process of the recount seems to have worked as it was supposed to. But the loud media statements about "no missing votes" aren't helping their case, and it doesn't seem truthful to say there were "no missing votes" just because there weren't enough of them to change the election outcome.
"Where Georgia’s Hand Recount Differed From the Initial Tally, by County" in the NYT -https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/19/us/elections/...
Far from claiming "no missing votes", the real media is doing hard work to document this election in extensive detail.
Far from claiming "no missing votes", the real media is doing hard work to document this election in extensive detail.
Despite the down votes, your point is salient, and a great one. It's similar to how medical officials and the media lied about masks are ineffective because they wanted to save them for medical professionals. Or how they claimed that vaccines are 100% safe, when there are in fact rare but existent severe side effects.
They think the people are too stupid to understand, so they lie to them "for their own good", which ends up backfiring and causing people to believe the opposite, because people have good bullshit detectors even when they aren't very well educated.
They think the people are too stupid to understand, so they lie to them "for their own good", which ends up backfiring and causing people to believe the opposite, because people have good bullshit detectors even when they aren't very well educated.
I have often wondered what the best way to communicate things like that is, because of this exact problem.
It seems like you really can’t win, if you’re the one doing the messaging, trading results now against trust later.
It seems like you really can’t win, if you’re the one doing the messaging, trading results now against trust later.
I struggle with this too, but one example that comes immediately to mind is the whole failed war on drugs thing and DARE program in the US.
Like, is it true that consuming cannabis can lead to being complacent in life and prevent you from achieving your full potential? Yes, but it isn't universally the case at all. Is it true that it is best to avoid cannabis usage in your teen years? Arguably yes. Is it more harmful than alcohol? Doubtful.
So this argument comes again, do we tell them the truth or do we try to get short-term results by telling half truths (and outright lies) to convince teens not to use cannabis? Well, we know the approach the US took back then, and it didn't end up working out well at all. Because once teens tried it and found out that 90% of the things about cannabis that were told to them were a lie, the trust was gone. By that point, they were less likely to believe even full truths about harder drugs, which could have way more destructive potential.
I agree though, it is a delicate balance to manage, and in some cases this gets really tricky. But imo, I think long-term-focused approaches are what builds up trust over time and leads to the best possible outcomes in most cases.
P.S. To make it clear, in case my post was too convoluted. I do think that War on Drugs was a failure, I believe that cannabis should be legal, but I also believe that we should have an honest conversation about it, without resorting to either "this will ruin your life after one puff and make you an addict" or "it is a miracle drug that will make your life amazing and cure your cancer".
P.P.S. Ironically enough, I think that the South Park episode on medical cannabis handled it super well, that whole talk Randy gave to his son Stan. TLDR of it was that Randy said that cannabis won't ruin your life, neither will it turn you into a drug addict. But cannabis makes you feel satisfied and fine with being bored, and being bored is when you should be learning new skills or improving yourself. So it is a delicate balance, and if you consume, you should be mindful of that. As long as you aren't using cannabis as a substitute for doing things you should be doing (aka consume responsibly and in moderation), you will be fine.
Like, is it true that consuming cannabis can lead to being complacent in life and prevent you from achieving your full potential? Yes, but it isn't universally the case at all. Is it true that it is best to avoid cannabis usage in your teen years? Arguably yes. Is it more harmful than alcohol? Doubtful.
So this argument comes again, do we tell them the truth or do we try to get short-term results by telling half truths (and outright lies) to convince teens not to use cannabis? Well, we know the approach the US took back then, and it didn't end up working out well at all. Because once teens tried it and found out that 90% of the things about cannabis that were told to them were a lie, the trust was gone. By that point, they were less likely to believe even full truths about harder drugs, which could have way more destructive potential.
I agree though, it is a delicate balance to manage, and in some cases this gets really tricky. But imo, I think long-term-focused approaches are what builds up trust over time and leads to the best possible outcomes in most cases.
P.S. To make it clear, in case my post was too convoluted. I do think that War on Drugs was a failure, I believe that cannabis should be legal, but I also believe that we should have an honest conversation about it, without resorting to either "this will ruin your life after one puff and make you an addict" or "it is a miracle drug that will make your life amazing and cure your cancer".
P.P.S. Ironically enough, I think that the South Park episode on medical cannabis handled it super well, that whole talk Randy gave to his son Stan. TLDR of it was that Randy said that cannabis won't ruin your life, neither will it turn you into a drug addict. But cannabis makes you feel satisfied and fine with being bored, and being bored is when you should be learning new skills or improving yourself. So it is a delicate balance, and if you consume, you should be mindful of that. As long as you aren't using cannabis as a substitute for doing things you should be doing (aka consume responsibly and in moderation), you will be fine.
That doesn't refute my point. You'd have to be willfully ignorant to our political context to not be suspicious of any results. If Biden had lost, I know people who I garuntee would be citing result and polling descrepencies as proof of impropriety and foreign interference.
To your point, they're both absurd. Trump should've been an adult, and conceded.
Responding to his legal dragnet by banning discussion of any descrepency it might uncover is just as toxic, and only validates the paranoia of his base.
Neither action is commensurate to any form of reconciliation. At this point, I don't think there can be any, honestly.
To your point, they're both absurd. Trump should've been an adult, and conceded.
Responding to his legal dragnet by banning discussion of any descrepency it might uncover is just as toxic, and only validates the paranoia of his base.
Neither action is commensurate to any form of reconciliation. At this point, I don't think there can be any, honestly.
Elect a cheater, and then claim the next election has the "most cheating in history." Amazingly, that's an accurate statement, because of the cheater.
I am willing to be "exposed to the idea" as you say. I have to ask which is more likely, a massive undetected fraud across multiple states, or the guy with 40% approval rate losing the election?
I am willing to be "exposed to the idea" as you say. I have to ask which is more likely, a massive undetected fraud across multiple states, or the guy with 40% approval rate losing the election?
My point was that having any doubts at all is not necessarily a sign of personal failure or lack of reason in our current political envirnment.
I personally hold that Biden won. Our election system is far too decentralized to allowed for large-scale, coordinated election interference to be viable while also being covert.
I also believe that there was likely an uptick in rule-bending across the board. This was in no way a 'normal election', given the mass-adoption of mail-in voting, and heightened polarization of our political environment.
Unfortunately, the US has shown a remarkable lack of historical introspection with respect to election integrity, so it's impossible to tell with any certainty whether this is truly the case since it's I believe it's safe to assume a low level of fraud in an election at the scale of the American federal election, with so heavily federated a system.
The doubts people have aren't entirely unfounded, and YouTube making an executive decision to perish the thought on their platform only adds fuel to the fire.
I personally hold that Biden won. Our election system is far too decentralized to allowed for large-scale, coordinated election interference to be viable while also being covert.
I also believe that there was likely an uptick in rule-bending across the board. This was in no way a 'normal election', given the mass-adoption of mail-in voting, and heightened polarization of our political environment.
Unfortunately, the US has shown a remarkable lack of historical introspection with respect to election integrity, so it's impossible to tell with any certainty whether this is truly the case since it's I believe it's safe to assume a low level of fraud in an election at the scale of the American federal election, with so heavily federated a system.
The doubts people have aren't entirely unfounded, and YouTube making an executive decision to perish the thought on their platform only adds fuel to the fire.
All you have to do is bring a specific claim with credible evidence to a court. If after 5 weeks you still cannot do that why do we need to continue to entertain these doubts? How long must we doubt? Is there any possible way Biden could have won this election without these doubts? The president began making these claims at 2:30 AM on 11/4 when he didn't know anything except what Fox News had told him: he was going to lose. And that was all the proof required for him and his followers to determine "a massive fraud" had been committed. So how could it have gone any differently?
The Trump campaign has yet to produce anything I would begin to consider a viable or coherent lawsuit concerning election fraud. Everything they've filed up to this point, seems to either have been hastily put together based on hearsay, or been entirely engineered to postpone state certifications beyond the safe-harbor date (they've all seemingly failed).
His administration doesn't particularly care for or about Democracy, and they (or their political allies, depending) are grasping at every straw they can find that might be provable in court, and are filing suits.
Any actual, deliberate voter fraud would likely be difficult to prove in a court, and committed by individuals at lower levels of the government, largely by unrelated individuals and small groups particularly concerned with the results.
An example likely impossible to prove in courts:
Richard Hopkins, a USPS mailcarrier came to James O'Keefe (conservative gotcha journalist), and anonymously asserted his belief that his supervisors had been backdating late ballots so that they could be counted in the Erie PA tally. https://youtu.be/AR_XpJ287Iw
After it became clear that the USPS knew he was behind the claims, he did an interview with O'Keefe, admitting his identity to his identity, and claiming retaliation. https://youtu.be/J-D-2GOswwA
The FBI opened an investigation to his claims, and did an interview with him that they hadn't been aware he was recording. https://youtu.be/QkNkQ2nDQfc
Shortly thereafter, the Washington post ran an article citing three anonymous officials familiar with the investigation that he had wholly recanted his claims. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/postal-worker-...
Over the next couple of days, O'Keefe published the FBI recording, as well as a video of Hopkins denying that he had recanted his claims. https://youtu.be/ibU5KVFCg4Y
By my estimate, none of this can be corroborated. It's an individual claim, concerning an activity likely only perpetrated by a small number of people in a manner unlikely to generate a paper trail fit for forensic investigation. In fact, it was included in one of Trump's PA lawsuits.
As a legal case, this is incredibly flimsy. A snippet of a conversation overheard from the sidelines could never be enough to convict anybody of anything on its own merit. There's a reason it wasn't successfully brought to court.
Nevertheless, the story itself is exceedingly plausible, and doesn't depend on a high level conspiracy in order to work.
I lean towards believing Hopkins' integrity, but have no ability to validate whether or not he had enough information to assert things happening as he claims they did with the confidence he has. I find the swiftness of WaPo's debunking to be much more interesting.
But stories like his are enough to turn the election into a political Rorschach test.
These doubts cannot be relieved. They'll be as interminable as the 'Obamas a Kenyan' rumors, the 'Trump's a Manchurian Candidate' narrative, and the 'Hanging Chad'.
Considering how dirty electoral primary processes have become (i.e. treatment of Tulsi, Yang, etc, McConnel's primary being marked by the unexptected closure of polling places…), the massive shift to mail-in voting due to covid… this whole bruhaha was inescapable.
His administration doesn't particularly care for or about Democracy, and they (or their political allies, depending) are grasping at every straw they can find that might be provable in court, and are filing suits.
Any actual, deliberate voter fraud would likely be difficult to prove in a court, and committed by individuals at lower levels of the government, largely by unrelated individuals and small groups particularly concerned with the results.
An example likely impossible to prove in courts:
Richard Hopkins, a USPS mailcarrier came to James O'Keefe (conservative gotcha journalist), and anonymously asserted his belief that his supervisors had been backdating late ballots so that they could be counted in the Erie PA tally. https://youtu.be/AR_XpJ287Iw
After it became clear that the USPS knew he was behind the claims, he did an interview with O'Keefe, admitting his identity to his identity, and claiming retaliation. https://youtu.be/J-D-2GOswwA
The FBI opened an investigation to his claims, and did an interview with him that they hadn't been aware he was recording. https://youtu.be/QkNkQ2nDQfc
Shortly thereafter, the Washington post ran an article citing three anonymous officials familiar with the investigation that he had wholly recanted his claims. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/postal-worker-...
Over the next couple of days, O'Keefe published the FBI recording, as well as a video of Hopkins denying that he had recanted his claims. https://youtu.be/ibU5KVFCg4Y
By my estimate, none of this can be corroborated. It's an individual claim, concerning an activity likely only perpetrated by a small number of people in a manner unlikely to generate a paper trail fit for forensic investigation. In fact, it was included in one of Trump's PA lawsuits.
As a legal case, this is incredibly flimsy. A snippet of a conversation overheard from the sidelines could never be enough to convict anybody of anything on its own merit. There's a reason it wasn't successfully brought to court.
Nevertheless, the story itself is exceedingly plausible, and doesn't depend on a high level conspiracy in order to work.
I lean towards believing Hopkins' integrity, but have no ability to validate whether or not he had enough information to assert things happening as he claims they did with the confidence he has. I find the swiftness of WaPo's debunking to be much more interesting.
But stories like his are enough to turn the election into a political Rorschach test.
These doubts cannot be relieved. They'll be as interminable as the 'Obamas a Kenyan' rumors, the 'Trump's a Manchurian Candidate' narrative, and the 'Hanging Chad'.
Considering how dirty electoral primary processes have become (i.e. treatment of Tulsi, Yang, etc, McConnel's primary being marked by the unexptected closure of polling places…), the massive shift to mail-in voting due to covid… this whole bruhaha was inescapable.
A move like this by youtube is the only thing that has given me doubt so far
I think a lot of people just know once done, this is not the last time a tech company will get letters from senators asking for content to be removed. This time, I happen to agree that the claim the election was stolen is actively harmful but I also remember when Covid was officially not spread human to human and if Covid misinformation had been a banned thing earlier in the pandemic we would have been probably removing content from actual doctors that ended up being right. Remember when "masks wouldn't help"?
I think youtube is doing a "good thing" in terms of getting us past this silliness faster, but I don't think it'll necessarily be a "good thing" next time so I'd rather it happen never.
I think youtube is doing a "good thing" in terms of getting us past this silliness faster, but I don't think it'll necessarily be a "good thing" next time so I'd rather it happen never.
> shows that Youtube might be doing a good thing in this case.
All youtube did was fan the flames of political division. Imagine after 2016, youtube decided to ban everyone accusing Trump of cheating. Do you think that would make the democrats "see the light"? Or do you think it would galvanize the democrats?
This election is ultimately going to be decided in the supreme court. Not on youtube. Youtube should have just kept out of this issue.
Trump is celebrating this right now because not only does it rile up his base, it makes independents and even some democrats take notice and sympathize with Trump.
Even if youtube had good intentions ( and I'm not sold on that ), they ultimately are damaging the country. But I guess that's why they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
All youtube did was fan the flames of political division. Imagine after 2016, youtube decided to ban everyone accusing Trump of cheating. Do you think that would make the democrats "see the light"? Or do you think it would galvanize the democrats?
This election is ultimately going to be decided in the supreme court. Not on youtube. Youtube should have just kept out of this issue.
Trump is celebrating this right now because not only does it rile up his base, it makes independents and even some democrats take notice and sympathize with Trump.
Even if youtube had good intentions ( and I'm not sold on that ), they ultimately are damaging the country. But I guess that's why they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Trump did cheat, in a way. Foreign actors clearly influenced those elections and Trump won with a minority in the popular vote. Democrats accepted that outcome and conceded the election. Many democrats gave Trump the benefit of the doubt. Barack invited him to the white house and allowed him to start the transition. All this even though many people already hated the idea of a Trump presidency.
I don't have to imagine the democrats did anything like the republicans are doing now, because it didn't happen.
Edit: here's a link to show you how small the margins were in swing states in 2016:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-electi...
I don't have to imagine the democrats did anything like the republicans are doing now, because it didn't happen.
Edit: here's a link to show you how small the margins were in swing states in 2016:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-electi...
Your comment is far more alarming than anything these Trumpists have come up with.
ghthor(2)
Yes, the only real question is can other sites follow Youtubes lead? Really getting sick of these conspiracy theorists infected our mental spaces.
In a free and fair society, it is not dangerous to ask questions. It is very dangerous to be told that you are not allowed to ask questions.
In a marketplace of ideas, with free sharing of information, bogus claims will eventually (usually quickly) collapse on themselves, and true claims will bear themselves out.
Attempting to silence ideas, even potentially false and harmful ideas, is the greatest way to build a society that is not free, fair, and based on fact, but only one that is based on the opinions of the gatekeepers of the ideas.
In a marketplace of ideas, with free sharing of information, bogus claims will eventually (usually quickly) collapse on themselves, and true claims will bear themselves out.
Attempting to silence ideas, even potentially false and harmful ideas, is the greatest way to build a society that is not free, fair, and based on fact, but only one that is based on the opinions of the gatekeepers of the ideas.
Have you heard about the bullshit asymmetry principle?
"The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it."
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/01/28/bullshit-a...
I personally don't buy this "free speech" speech, since free speech applies to the government, not to a public entity.
Youtube is free to make any rules they want and to enforce them however they want. They don't owe you anything and you can stop using it at any point in time (which I actually encourage you to do - but for a completely different set of reasons). You watch content, they show you ads and get money for the ads. That's it. You don't like the content or the lack of content you are free to, again, move to another site/platform/social network/etc.
It's amazing to me how much people are willing to entertain this charade that was started after the elections. It's also amazing to see the mental gymnastics involved to explain some of the things that were done and/or said. This is not 4D chess.
Youtube should get to do what they want as long as they operate withing the laws of the countries they are running their service within. I still have not seen the law that was broken here.
"The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it."
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/01/28/bullshit-a...
I personally don't buy this "free speech" speech, since free speech applies to the government, not to a public entity.
Youtube is free to make any rules they want and to enforce them however they want. They don't owe you anything and you can stop using it at any point in time (which I actually encourage you to do - but for a completely different set of reasons). You watch content, they show you ads and get money for the ads. That's it. You don't like the content or the lack of content you are free to, again, move to another site/platform/social network/etc.
It's amazing to me how much people are willing to entertain this charade that was started after the elections. It's also amazing to see the mental gymnastics involved to explain some of the things that were done and/or said. This is not 4D chess.
Youtube should get to do what they want as long as they operate withing the laws of the countries they are running their service within. I still have not seen the law that was broken here.
Sure, making stuff up takes very little effort, and refuting it properly takes more. Makes sense.
But what if it’s not as simple as “this side is making everything up, and the other side is 100% honest”.
You could easily turn that argument around and say that the right is going to great lengths to have their evidence investigated, while the left is just trying to make it go away. Surely “energy expended” is not a great metric for judging bullshit.
Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m not making a “free speech” argument. Of course YouTube is free to curate whatever they want to, and competitors are free to provide alternatives for users that want that. THAT is free speech.
My argument was not “YouTube can’t legally do this”, it was more trying to appeal to this notion some folks have that a topic of discussion merely existing is dangerous, and that somehow removing all of that discussion will eliminate that danger.
It also removes any possibility of the side removing the discussion from ever having to assess the validity of their facts, which logically and naturally means the other side will never have to assess and defend the validity of their argument either. Hello tribalism.
You don’t disprove flat earthers by telling them they aren’t allowed to ever talk about the shape of the earth, because naturally people will come up with the idea on their own, time and again, and forbidding it only lends itself to greater conviction.
Instead, sufficiently convince a large enough group of people through reason and evidence that the Earth is round, and those few people who willingly ignore the evidence will be too small and too fringe to be dangerous.
The danger is not in asking questions, the danger is in forbidding questions.
But what if it’s not as simple as “this side is making everything up, and the other side is 100% honest”.
You could easily turn that argument around and say that the right is going to great lengths to have their evidence investigated, while the left is just trying to make it go away. Surely “energy expended” is not a great metric for judging bullshit.
Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m not making a “free speech” argument. Of course YouTube is free to curate whatever they want to, and competitors are free to provide alternatives for users that want that. THAT is free speech.
My argument was not “YouTube can’t legally do this”, it was more trying to appeal to this notion some folks have that a topic of discussion merely existing is dangerous, and that somehow removing all of that discussion will eliminate that danger.
It also removes any possibility of the side removing the discussion from ever having to assess the validity of their facts, which logically and naturally means the other side will never have to assess and defend the validity of their argument either. Hello tribalism.
You don’t disprove flat earthers by telling them they aren’t allowed to ever talk about the shape of the earth, because naturally people will come up with the idea on their own, time and again, and forbidding it only lends itself to greater conviction.
Instead, sufficiently convince a large enough group of people through reason and evidence that the Earth is round, and those few people who willingly ignore the evidence will be too small and too fringe to be dangerous.
The danger is not in asking questions, the danger is in forbidding questions.
You're the one who started talking about "sides" here. GP didn't mention sides.
hey, thanks for your well articulated noninflammatory comment.
I agree with you on some points but as always there is a lot of nuance to things.
> But what if it’s not as simple as “this side is making everything up, and the other side is 100% honest”.
I don't think there are many absolute truths. Even in science, things that we thought were true change - all the time. It's not about being 100% correct. As far as honesty goes there is always an agenda.
> You could easily turn that argument around and say that the right is going to great lengths to have their evidence investigated, while the left is just trying to make it go away. Surely “energy expended” is not a great metric for judging bullshit.
I disagree. I don't see this as a right or a left issue. I see it as working with each other for an outcome that makes everyone's lives better. Energy expended is a great metric. Can you explain why all Americans had to pay attention all day, every day, to what I would describe as at best a clown? Why not put the American people ahead and do the right thing? Why did we turn an institution that is supposed to be one of the foundations of this country into a reality show?
There is a time and a place to investigate and ask questions and a time and a place to just, you know, accept reality. There was ample time to do this before the elections. Before judging if youtube could of, should of, let's ask ourselves what are the possible outcomes here? You either damage out democracy and freedom or you damage our democracy and freedom. Great choices.
> Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m not making a “free speech” argument. Of course YouTube is free to curate whatever they want to, and competitors are free to provide alternatives for users that want that. THAT is free speech. My argument was not “YouTube can’t legally do this”, it was more trying to appeal to this notion some folks have that a topic of discussion merely existing is dangerous, and that somehow removing all of that discussion will eliminate that danger.
You are free to discuss whatever you want. We are all free to talk about what we think happened, what should have happened, what is wrong with x and y. The fundamental problem is that when you come into my house and start arguing with me I have the right to kick you out. My house, my rules. Swap my house with youtube. That's all. I didn't attach any moral value of good or wrong to what they did. Content is moderated and "censored" all day, every day and nobody bats an eyelid. But because it's Google (ie BigTech) w/ youtube let's climb on our moral high horse and talk principles.
> Hello tribalism. You know this but I'll point it out anyway. If you think that all people have the same experience when they google for something or when they watch youtube you're in for a shock. The same machines that censor you, learn what you like and surface content that is similar. We are all already in a bubble.
I agree with you on some points but as always there is a lot of nuance to things.
> But what if it’s not as simple as “this side is making everything up, and the other side is 100% honest”.
I don't think there are many absolute truths. Even in science, things that we thought were true change - all the time. It's not about being 100% correct. As far as honesty goes there is always an agenda.
> You could easily turn that argument around and say that the right is going to great lengths to have their evidence investigated, while the left is just trying to make it go away. Surely “energy expended” is not a great metric for judging bullshit.
I disagree. I don't see this as a right or a left issue. I see it as working with each other for an outcome that makes everyone's lives better. Energy expended is a great metric. Can you explain why all Americans had to pay attention all day, every day, to what I would describe as at best a clown? Why not put the American people ahead and do the right thing? Why did we turn an institution that is supposed to be one of the foundations of this country into a reality show?
There is a time and a place to investigate and ask questions and a time and a place to just, you know, accept reality. There was ample time to do this before the elections. Before judging if youtube could of, should of, let's ask ourselves what are the possible outcomes here? You either damage out democracy and freedom or you damage our democracy and freedom. Great choices.
> Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m not making a “free speech” argument. Of course YouTube is free to curate whatever they want to, and competitors are free to provide alternatives for users that want that. THAT is free speech. My argument was not “YouTube can’t legally do this”, it was more trying to appeal to this notion some folks have that a topic of discussion merely existing is dangerous, and that somehow removing all of that discussion will eliminate that danger.
You are free to discuss whatever you want. We are all free to talk about what we think happened, what should have happened, what is wrong with x and y. The fundamental problem is that when you come into my house and start arguing with me I have the right to kick you out. My house, my rules. Swap my house with youtube. That's all. I didn't attach any moral value of good or wrong to what they did. Content is moderated and "censored" all day, every day and nobody bats an eyelid. But because it's Google (ie BigTech) w/ youtube let's climb on our moral high horse and talk principles.
> Hello tribalism. You know this but I'll point it out anyway. If you think that all people have the same experience when they google for something or when they watch youtube you're in for a shock. The same machines that censor you, learn what you like and surface content that is similar. We are all already in a bubble.
You can downvote me, but first indulge me...
Imagine, for a second, that you saw something concerning. For argument’s sake, say you saw your boss doing something you perceived to be illegal.
Imagine, then, that you were told that asking about those things was dangerous, because it would cause everyone to lose faith in who they work for.
Now imagine that HR or a PR firm comes, only after trying hard to convince you that you shouldn’t ask any questions at all, and then tells you that they investigated and found nothing wrong.
Then imagine that, while some of the explanation given made sense, some of it did not, and maybe led to more questions.
Finally, imagine then being told that not only should you no longer question, but that anyone caught talking about it would be removed.
Now, we don’t know that something illegal did or did not occur.
But be honest... would that scenario convince you that nothing illegal happened, and that you should move on as instructed?
Imagine, for a second, that you saw something concerning. For argument’s sake, say you saw your boss doing something you perceived to be illegal.
Imagine, then, that you were told that asking about those things was dangerous, because it would cause everyone to lose faith in who they work for.
Now imagine that HR or a PR firm comes, only after trying hard to convince you that you shouldn’t ask any questions at all, and then tells you that they investigated and found nothing wrong.
Then imagine that, while some of the explanation given made sense, some of it did not, and maybe led to more questions.
Finally, imagine then being told that not only should you no longer question, but that anyone caught talking about it would be removed.
Now, we don’t know that something illegal did or did not occur.
But be honest... would that scenario convince you that nothing illegal happened, and that you should move on as instructed?
> say you saw your boss doing something you perceived to be illegal.
Keyword being "perceived".
But let's examine the premise. Do I have any evidence of this act? Do I have sufficent expertise to determine if what I saw was actually illegal? Where are my biases? Can I argue my case in a coherent and believable manner?
and most importantly in this particular case, are there literally thousands of other people who contradict my position?
Keyword being "perceived".
But let's examine the premise. Do I have any evidence of this act? Do I have sufficent expertise to determine if what I saw was actually illegal? Where are my biases? Can I argue my case in a coherent and believable manner?
and most importantly in this particular case, are there literally thousands of other people who contradict my position?
All of those are very important points, and exactly why I chose the word "perceived".
Let's say multiple people observed a pattern of suspicious acts over a period of time from this boss. Maybe it's a big company, and you have hundreds of accusers, and hundreds of defenders of the accused.
So, you naturally have some people with flimsy testimony and inherent bias, and others who clearly don't know the law or policy. Then you have a few with valid testimony that the defenders of the accused are able to convincingly refute.
But you're still left with a core group of people with legit questions, hopefully trying to determine wrongdoing in honest, good faith, and they received flimsy evidence and inaccurate testimony in response from the defense. This core group still has questions unanswered... muddied, by the obviously false testimonies from those with bias, but still their core questions remain.
Deciding, at that point, that all discussion is to be silenced, does nothing to prove either side.
My point, though, really was not to draw a direct analogy, but to try, perhaps unsuccessfully, to get you to put yourself in the shoes of someone who, in good faith, has genuine questions. And to then imagine being told that your questions are so fundamentally offensive on their face, that you shouldn't even be allowed to further ask or discuss them, and that any explanation, regardless of how thorough or how flimsy, should be accepted without further scrutiny.
I think anyone who is being honest would admit that this would do nothing to satisfy you of no wrongdoing, but instead would probably convince you there was wrongdoing. Which, frankly, is a terrible way for cases of illegality to be decided, no matter which side you're on.
Let's say multiple people observed a pattern of suspicious acts over a period of time from this boss. Maybe it's a big company, and you have hundreds of accusers, and hundreds of defenders of the accused.
So, you naturally have some people with flimsy testimony and inherent bias, and others who clearly don't know the law or policy. Then you have a few with valid testimony that the defenders of the accused are able to convincingly refute.
But you're still left with a core group of people with legit questions, hopefully trying to determine wrongdoing in honest, good faith, and they received flimsy evidence and inaccurate testimony in response from the defense. This core group still has questions unanswered... muddied, by the obviously false testimonies from those with bias, but still their core questions remain.
Deciding, at that point, that all discussion is to be silenced, does nothing to prove either side.
My point, though, really was not to draw a direct analogy, but to try, perhaps unsuccessfully, to get you to put yourself in the shoes of someone who, in good faith, has genuine questions. And to then imagine being told that your questions are so fundamentally offensive on their face, that you shouldn't even be allowed to further ask or discuss them, and that any explanation, regardless of how thorough or how flimsy, should be accepted without further scrutiny.
I think anyone who is being honest would admit that this would do nothing to satisfy you of no wrongdoing, but instead would probably convince you there was wrongdoing. Which, frankly, is a terrible way for cases of illegality to be decided, no matter which side you're on.
The cases have been decided in the courts. Most have been thrown out.
Personally, I'm happy for the cases to be decided in the courts and not by some dumbarse with a youtube channel sputing obviouse nonsense.
I'm fine with people being able to post opinions, but as soon as you start making factual claims... back it up with some evidence.
Personally, I'm happy for the cases to be decided in the courts and not by some dumbarse with a youtube channel sputing obviouse nonsense.
I'm fine with people being able to post opinions, but as soon as you start making factual claims... back it up with some evidence.
Thanks YouTube! Trying to figure out what’s true and what’s not all on my own has been pretty damn hard. Frankly I may not be smart enough to sort it all out. Thankfully you, being at the center of truth in this universe, can help us all out. No election fraud. Got it.
Did you know that there are a bunch of videos that are critical of Apple products and a bunch more that praise Apple? They can’t both be right! Could you pick a side there and let me know before I buy my next laptop? Thanks!
Did you know that there are a bunch of videos that are critical of Apple products and a bunch more that praise Apple? They can’t both be right! Could you pick a side there and let me know before I buy my next laptop? Thanks!
Yeah, and then can you let us know what happened with JFK and also if the UFOs are aliens or what? Also, Coke or Pepsi? thanks in advance YouTube!
I'm baffled how people support this behavior from big tech.
It almost seems like they think of themselves as immune to this somehow, like little sheep unable to comprehend that they themselves once will deviate will get the same treatment (assuming they have spine to stand for what they believe).
The "slippery slope" argument doesn't work in this case (as for usual). Youtube already removes certain types of content and it already removes certain types of political content. This is necessary to monetize the platform in a meaningful way.
The year is 2047 and California is half desert, half ocean. Youtube has moved their offices to the hippest, most promising upstart of a community, Beluga, once a suburb of Fairbanks, Alaska.
A small collective of cyberpunk hackers have declared independence on an island remainder of Mt. Diablo. They call themselves "Hackerbridge" and base their upcoming government around ideas of universal basic income and their culture is based on pansexualism.
Youtube blocks any videos recognizing the independence of Hackerbridge.
As Hackerbridge fails to be recognized as a real nation, they cannot trade their wealth of knowledge building outdated UI apps with necessities like food, water, toilet paper, and general plumbing.
As their society perishes, their leader, Alexis Ohanian, finally leaves behind a stranded leftover on the island as he pushes away his hovercraft in the direction of Reno.
It is thought to be heard him say, "Where were you in 2020 when Youtube caved to corrupt government censorship?" but this quote is contradicted by other accounts.
A small collective of cyberpunk hackers have declared independence on an island remainder of Mt. Diablo. They call themselves "Hackerbridge" and base their upcoming government around ideas of universal basic income and their culture is based on pansexualism.
Youtube blocks any videos recognizing the independence of Hackerbridge.
As Hackerbridge fails to be recognized as a real nation, they cannot trade their wealth of knowledge building outdated UI apps with necessities like food, water, toilet paper, and general plumbing.
As their society perishes, their leader, Alexis Ohanian, finally leaves behind a stranded leftover on the island as he pushes away his hovercraft in the direction of Reno.
It is thought to be heard him say, "Where were you in 2020 when Youtube caved to corrupt government censorship?" but this quote is contradicted by other accounts.
Cool story but not really sure where this is coming from:
>Youtube caved to corrupt government censorship
Youtube, the private company, is doing what it thinks is best for the business. They are not the government, free speech does not apply, there is no censorship against any right.
>Youtube caved to corrupt government censorship
Youtube, the private company, is doing what it thinks is best for the business. They are not the government, free speech does not apply, there is no censorship against any right.
"Independent", Satire right?!
Haven't you heard of PRISM? or 'patriot act'?
The biggest concerned, i believe, most people have with censorship is that "they censor and at the same time claim to be a 'platform' not 'publishers'".
It would be 'ok', if they say who they 'are', not pretend to be open and at the same time silence voices who they disagree with by pretending to 'fact check'. 'Fact check' what? Peoples conversations? For what reason? Then it should, at least, be voluntary. You see the concern people have, right?!
The biggest concerned, i believe, most people have with censorship is that "they censor and at the same time claim to be a 'platform' not 'publishers'".
It would be 'ok', if they say who they 'are', not pretend to be open and at the same time silence voices who they disagree with by pretending to 'fact check'. 'Fact check' what? Peoples conversations? For what reason? Then it should, at least, be voluntary. You see the concern people have, right?!
It is voluntary, you agreed to the EULA when you signed up for Youtube.
"If we reasonably believe that any Content is in breach of this Agreement or may cause harm to YouTube, our users, or third parties, we may remove or take down that Content in our discretion."
"If we reasonably believe that any Content is in breach of this Agreement or may cause harm to YouTube, our users, or third parties, we may remove or take down that Content in our discretion."
The current leader of American government has a position on election directly opposing the one of YouTube and threatens to defund the military unless section 230 which allows distance of user-generated content to legally exist is cancelled.
deumeti isn't making a 'slippery slope' argument. A slippery slope would imply that the issue gets worse and worse along some spectrum over time. For example: arguing that allowing homosexuality will lead to bestiality and pedophilia because they all exist along a dimension of perverted acts.
deumeti is just pointing out that cheer-leading censorship and tyranny, just because you are on the 'winning side', will inevitably lead to you becoming oppressed in the same way. Think of all the stories where a bunch of lackeys support the antagonist, only to be ultimately betrayed and destroyed. It's more of a 'Lucius Malfoy' argument, not 'slippery slope'.
deumeti is just pointing out that cheer-leading censorship and tyranny, just because you are on the 'winning side', will inevitably lead to you becoming oppressed in the same way. Think of all the stories where a bunch of lackeys support the antagonist, only to be ultimately betrayed and destroyed. It's more of a 'Lucius Malfoy' argument, not 'slippery slope'.
My underlying understanding was that the soon to be deleted videos are in fact misinformation, that's why I understood this to be a slippery slope type of argument. Of course if one assumes that the President is actually correct this could be construed in another way. (But I'm definitely not going to argue with people who believe in these stolen-election allegations here, some divides are too deep to overcome in an online forum)
That's why there is a legal system in place for disagreements, not at the discretion of some corporation.
It is tyrannical, voices of concerned are silenced, it is wrong, it is evil.
It is tyrannical, voices of concerned are silenced, it is wrong, it is evil.
Sure, they even support it right here on hn - the downvoted comments are very difficult to read and you can’t read the flagged comments - thanks guys for your gentle care for my mental health.
Yes you can read flagged comments. Turn on showdead. I leave them off because they're far less often than a regular comment worth the time spent reading.
Oh, didn’t know that, thanks. But still, it’s turned off by default.
Is there a way to improve readability for the downvoted comments?
Is there a way to improve readability for the downvoted comments?
You could play with CSS, but I'm just selecting these with mouse.
This is ridiculous. Regardless of your politics, this is just going the wrong direction. Where was this policy when the other side was pushing the Russia collusion narrative for years?
Nice false equivalence. Judges have ruled that Trump's side has failed to show any evidence of fraud in Court, losing 50/51 court cases, with the "win" having nothing to do with fraud[1]. On the other hand, there are literally thousand of pages from the Senate Committee on Intelligence showing evidence of Russian Interference in 2016. [2] [3], along with the Mueller Report [4]. Russian Interference in 2016 is not comparable to Trump's false claims of fraud in 2020.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-losing-election-laws...
[2] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
[3] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
[4] https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf
[1] https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-losing-election-laws...
[2] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
[3] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
[4] https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf
Funny how the comment you’re responding to said Russian collusion but you instead bring up the separate topic of Russian interference.
It doesn't change the fact that the courts have decided that there was no fraud over dozens and dozens of lawsuits. The proponent of the Russia collusion wanted it investigated, and there was very little talk about it after (the honestly poorly handled) Mueller report.
And while there was no clear evidence of Trump himself colluding, many were indicted and even admitted guilt. How many people have gone to jail for fraud in the 2020 election? Is there the equivalent to the Jr. email and the Trump Tower meeting when it comes to election fraud? Has there been a single real evidence of fraud shown in courts (not on News or social media where there are no consequences for lying)?
And while there was no clear evidence of Trump himself colluding, many were indicted and even admitted guilt. How many people have gone to jail for fraud in the 2020 election? Is there the equivalent to the Jr. email and the Trump Tower meeting when it comes to election fraud? Has there been a single real evidence of fraud shown in courts (not on News or social media where there are no consequences for lying)?
Really it is worse than that, the media narrative pushed by the litigants is about "fraud" but most of the losing lawsuits don't even allege fraud!
Wait who admitted guilt of russian collusion? No Russian collusion was ever proven.
muttantt(1)
its_simple(1)
Exactly true. However the Russian investigation spanned years. These things take a lot of time to work through the investigative process. Take a look here, https://hereistheevidence.com, which provides significant questionable items that still need to be investigated.
Wait - was the "Russia collusion narrative" that one totally crazy massive investigation that ended up getting 34 people indicted? One of them Trump just pardoned Flynn for a week or so ago?
Are you just gonna sit here and pretend like they're even remotely the same thing to a bunch of people calling for the dismissal of our democratic institution of counting votes fairly? As if people were talking about "civil war" and kidnapping of government heads in the opposition party?
You're just like somebody arguing that intolerance of intolerance is itself intolerance. That is a path towards intolerance.
Now I'm not saying we shouldn't question Youtube's decision here, but the way you're doing it is straight up wrong.
Are you just gonna sit here and pretend like they're even remotely the same thing to a bunch of people calling for the dismissal of our democratic institution of counting votes fairly? As if people were talking about "civil war" and kidnapping of government heads in the opposition party?
You're just like somebody arguing that intolerance of intolerance is itself intolerance. That is a path towards intolerance.
Now I'm not saying we shouldn't question Youtube's decision here, but the way you're doing it is straight up wrong.
They weren't indicted for russian collusion. Your comment should be deleted for misinformation.
Flynn was indicted for lying about his call with the Russian ambassador which happened to have been recorded. Also, a pardon means that even Flynn admits his guilt.
As you say, Flynn was indicted for, and was pardoned for, lying to the FBI, which is absolutely not the same thing as collusion with Russia. Thanks for proving my point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Flynn
What's with the mental block all you people have? I am completely disgusted with Trump and am happy he is gone. That doesn't mean I'm going to ignore facts directly in front of my face if they don't fall in line with prevailing anti-Trump sentiment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Flynn
What's with the mental block all you people have? I am completely disgusted with Trump and am happy he is gone. That doesn't mean I'm going to ignore facts directly in front of my face if they don't fall in line with prevailing anti-Trump sentiment.
I think you missed the part about Russia, i.e. the subject of his lie. Also, Russia was wining and dining Flynn. Remember the photos of Flynn at the Russian propaganda event? I'm sure that has nothing to do with Russia, right? No Russian motive there, right? Just, you know, forget about Flynn pleading guilty in court and then acknowledging guilt by accepting the pardon. You forgot to mention those extremely relevant points.
I think you missed the part about him, nor anyone else getting convicted for colluding with Russians. Continue to change the subject and present circumstantial evidence or otherwise try to convince with your own personal court of law, but not one person was convicted of colluding with Russians. Let's say that again, no one was convicted of colluding with Russians. I don't take your personal circuitous deductions, anonymous internet stranger, over a very well financed and staffed team that was still unable to find evidence or convict.
Also, why do you continue to mislead about him pleading guilty to Russia collusion? He didn't - he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. I don't believe you are discussing in good faith with tactics like these.
Also, why do you continue to mislead about him pleading guilty to Russia collusion? He didn't - he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. I don't believe you are discussing in good faith with tactics like these.
The act of "collusion" isn't a crime. Conspiring with the Russians and then lying about it to the FBI when they are investigating Russian election interference is indeed a crime and it's precisely what Flynn says he is guilty of. Keep in mind too that this was meant to be a plea down from more major crimes. Flynn was getting off easy by only admitting to those crimes.
When you say, "but not one person was convicted of colluding with Russians": What criminal statute do you think would satisfy your criteria of "colluding with Russia"?
I think pleading guilty for lying to the FBI specifically around a call made to the Russian ambassador in which he coordinated Russian and incoming Trump Administration responses looks really bad. Rodger Stone was convicted on obstruction, making false statements, and witness tampering around his behavior coordinating the release of the hacked (by Russia) DNC emails, which also looks a lot like "Russian collusion".
I think pleading guilty for lying to the FBI specifically around a call made to the Russian ambassador in which he coordinated Russian and incoming Trump Administration responses looks really bad. Rodger Stone was convicted on obstruction, making false statements, and witness tampering around his behavior coordinating the release of the hacked (by Russia) DNC emails, which also looks a lot like "Russian collusion".
U.S. Code, 18 USC §371.
Or the Logan Act would work as well.
Neither of these were pursued.
Or the Logan Act would work as well.
Neither of these were pursued.
Your argument that the president's 34 indicted colleagues were actually guilty of X not Y is adorable.
I've only known two people to use the term "adorable" like this and they were both recognized to be huge assholes by everyone around them.
If you can provide a single shred of evidence that any of the 34 indicted colleagues were proven guilty of collusion with Russia I'll take everything back. But you can't, because they weren't.
If you can provide a single shred of evidence that any of the 34 indicted colleagues were proven guilty of collusion with Russia I'll take everything back. But you can't, because they weren't.
Read up on the facts. The investigation found tons of wrongdoing by inept people who really didn’t know election law or the rules around government dealings, and consistently lied under oath. But it didn’t find any evidence of the alleged collusion with the Russians. People were fired or went to jail, but mostly over lying to the investigators and obstructing the investigation.
Note the Russians certainly did meddle in the election. But collusion requires active, willing collaboration by Trump’s campaign, promises of quid-pro-quo, etc. None of that happened outside of a handful of isolated, rogue or accidental, and not very impactful instances.
Note the Russians certainly did meddle in the election. But collusion requires active, willing collaboration by Trump’s campaign, promises of quid-pro-quo, etc. None of that happened outside of a handful of isolated, rogue or accidental, and not very impactful instances.
The problem with this comparison is that there actually was significant evidence of collusion with Russia. If you read the Muller report you'll see it all over the place. Here's a summary: https://www.justsecurity.org/63838/guide-to-the-mueller-repo.... Reading the actual report would be better, but it is very long. Trump's repeated claim that Muller's report somehow supported his claims of "no collusion" is simply fiction. It did the opposite.
You may have a reasonable higher level point out selective application of the rules, but this is a bad example.
You may have a reasonable higher level point out selective application of the rules, but this is a bad example.
The entire point of the SCO was to try and shore up / verify the allegations in the Steele dossier, of which it couldn't make a single connection.
Where are the pee pee tapes? When did Cohen go to Prague to get the emails again? You'd think the SCO could have at least interviewed Julian Assange and asked him where he got the emails.
Where are the pee pee tapes? When did Cohen go to Prague to get the emails again? You'd think the SCO could have at least interviewed Julian Assange and asked him where he got the emails.
A lot of short, knee-jerk reactions on this thread, not to mention snark and downright flame. Seeing as this is at the top of HN right now, can we try to elevate the level of discourse a little bit? A few questions to consider:
1. Is content moderation necessary in online platforms?
I think the answer to this question is self-evident, but others may disagree and so I think it's worth posing. FWIW, HN has moderation, both official (e.g., dang) and unofficial (anyone with enough karma to flag/downvote). There's also built-in protections against flamewars (i.e., algorithmic moderation). I don't think HN would be the same place without these elements. Feel free to disagree.
2. If the answer to #1 is yes, how should content moderation happen?
This is a tough problem, and it's a lot to easier to find fault than to propose workable solutions. I definitely would prefer a more democratic moderation scheme for these mega-platforms that dominate online media today. But in some sense, every form of online moderation (HN included) has been top-down. And as we've seen in the US and elsewhere, democracy itself is prone to fracturing.
It's almost like we need a constitution for online governance. But could we ever agree on such a constitution in the first place? Does it need to be legislated (and if so, how do we get global consensus)? Can it be bootstrapped from the bottom up?
3. Setting aside the question of who gets to decide, should moderation be based on tone, factuality, importance of the topic, ...? How does one determine factuality? Is there something special about political matters that makes it off-limits for moderation? What if politics intersects with other matters (which probably is the case more often than not) - as in the case of COVID?
And of course, it's probably impossible to separate these questions from the question of "who gets to decide". That lies at the heart of all of these "what about X" complaints elsewhere in the thread. Truth often matters less than trust, and trust is in short supply these days.
Again, it's easy to criticize, but these are difficult questions. There are few easy choices. And unfortunately for the people who work on these platforms, inaction is also a choice, as I'm sure they're well aware.
1. Is content moderation necessary in online platforms?
I think the answer to this question is self-evident, but others may disagree and so I think it's worth posing. FWIW, HN has moderation, both official (e.g., dang) and unofficial (anyone with enough karma to flag/downvote). There's also built-in protections against flamewars (i.e., algorithmic moderation). I don't think HN would be the same place without these elements. Feel free to disagree.
2. If the answer to #1 is yes, how should content moderation happen?
This is a tough problem, and it's a lot to easier to find fault than to propose workable solutions. I definitely would prefer a more democratic moderation scheme for these mega-platforms that dominate online media today. But in some sense, every form of online moderation (HN included) has been top-down. And as we've seen in the US and elsewhere, democracy itself is prone to fracturing.
It's almost like we need a constitution for online governance. But could we ever agree on such a constitution in the first place? Does it need to be legislated (and if so, how do we get global consensus)? Can it be bootstrapped from the bottom up?
3. Setting aside the question of who gets to decide, should moderation be based on tone, factuality, importance of the topic, ...? How does one determine factuality? Is there something special about political matters that makes it off-limits for moderation? What if politics intersects with other matters (which probably is the case more often than not) - as in the case of COVID?
And of course, it's probably impossible to separate these questions from the question of "who gets to decide". That lies at the heart of all of these "what about X" complaints elsewhere in the thread. Truth often matters less than trust, and trust is in short supply these days.
Again, it's easy to criticize, but these are difficult questions. There are few easy choices. And unfortunately for the people who work on these platforms, inaction is also a choice, as I'm sure they're well aware.
Just to emphasize something thats generally unstated but I think pretty important: the only reason this is even remotely newsworthy or controversial is due to how large and influential Youtube is.
If I could choose between two worlds, in the first there is a single mega-platform that is moderated ultra-fairly so all people can use it, and in the second there is no megaplatform but a lot of small platforms that each moderate with nakedly partisan editorial lean, I would much prefer the latter. It would be more free both for publishers and consumers, in my opinion.
Right now we are all stuck trying to act like megaplatforms can house everyone fairly. They can't. Current events prove it. Facebook tried, Reddit tried, Twitter tried, and Youtube tried, and all ended up taking editorial stances that are often construed as partisan.
If we had a competitive landscape of smaller platforms, everyone could have a platform that works for them, with editorial decisions that work for them. This could all be decided by the free market instead of everyone collectively wringing their hands about freedom when a tech giant makes a stand on misinformation.
I don't know how society can deal with the tech giant's moats, but I think that's the real demon to slay.
If I could choose between two worlds, in the first there is a single mega-platform that is moderated ultra-fairly so all people can use it, and in the second there is no megaplatform but a lot of small platforms that each moderate with nakedly partisan editorial lean, I would much prefer the latter. It would be more free both for publishers and consumers, in my opinion.
Right now we are all stuck trying to act like megaplatforms can house everyone fairly. They can't. Current events prove it. Facebook tried, Reddit tried, Twitter tried, and Youtube tried, and all ended up taking editorial stances that are often construed as partisan.
If we had a competitive landscape of smaller platforms, everyone could have a platform that works for them, with editorial decisions that work for them. This could all be decided by the free market instead of everyone collectively wringing their hands about freedom when a tech giant makes a stand on misinformation.
I don't know how society can deal with the tech giant's moats, but I think that's the real demon to slay.
I agree with where you start out, but I think a proliferation of partisan platforms would
simply lead to more filter bubbles and more polarization. I would much rather see the Fairness Doctrine reinstated (in the US, anyhow) and expanded to Internet platforms, than to see everyone flocking to their platform of choice, becoming even more oblivious to alternate viewpoints.
I understand your point of view (and used to feel the same myself), but I'd say the last few years has changed my mind.
The way I see it, you either get filter bubbles, or you get miserable people who ditch your platform [subtext: and then the only remaining users are the rage-posters]. And in my opinion letting mainstream platforms rot into a cesspool of rageposters is worse for polarization.
I don't want to see people posting about how rigged the election is, or posting about what bad things hunter biden did, or posting about how hypocritical progressives were this week, or any of the other top conservative topics. I just want no part of it. It's a dead horse to me. If a platform wants to shove that stuff in my face I'm either going to find a way to hide it, or I'm going to leave the platform.
There's a time and place for having debates and seeing others point of view. If we had a proliferation of partisan platforms, I could go to the platform dedicated for open debate, or I could go to the opposing views' platform. I actually do this today (e.g. browsing foxnews if I want to see what's up in conservative-land). But when I'm chilling on reddit the last thing I have ever wanted is to see a trending post near the top of /r/all from the_donald posting some meme about Hillary Clinton passing out and being chucked into a car (this happened on several occasions leading up to the 2016 election).
The way I see it, you either get filter bubbles, or you get miserable people who ditch your platform [subtext: and then the only remaining users are the rage-posters]. And in my opinion letting mainstream platforms rot into a cesspool of rageposters is worse for polarization.
I don't want to see people posting about how rigged the election is, or posting about what bad things hunter biden did, or posting about how hypocritical progressives were this week, or any of the other top conservative topics. I just want no part of it. It's a dead horse to me. If a platform wants to shove that stuff in my face I'm either going to find a way to hide it, or I'm going to leave the platform.
There's a time and place for having debates and seeing others point of view. If we had a proliferation of partisan platforms, I could go to the platform dedicated for open debate, or I could go to the opposing views' platform. I actually do this today (e.g. browsing foxnews if I want to see what's up in conservative-land). But when I'm chilling on reddit the last thing I have ever wanted is to see a trending post near the top of /r/all from the_donald posting some meme about Hillary Clinton passing out and being chucked into a car (this happened on several occasions leading up to the 2016 election).
1) an online platform should be moderated (and it is moderated by humans and machine - anybody that tells you otherwise is delusional).
2) the content moderation is up to the owner of the platform. they do whatever they want as long as they operate within the laws of the country/state where they are running their business. an online platform is not a democracy. the owner decides.
3) see 2) moderation is up to the owner. You don't get to come into my house and tell me what kind of dishwasher I should have. If the owner of the platform does a bad job, he will go out of business. If its interests are not aligned with something that happen on the platform I think its reasonable to ban that activity.
side comment: in what world do we live where a freaking pandemic is politicized? This alone should make a lot of people scratch their heads and wonder what is wrong with our society.
2) the content moderation is up to the owner of the platform. they do whatever they want as long as they operate within the laws of the country/state where they are running their business. an online platform is not a democracy. the owner decides.
3) see 2) moderation is up to the owner. You don't get to come into my house and tell me what kind of dishwasher I should have. If the owner of the platform does a bad job, he will go out of business. If its interests are not aligned with something that happen on the platform I think its reasonable to ban that activity.
side comment: in what world do we live where a freaking pandemic is politicized? This alone should make a lot of people scratch their heads and wonder what is wrong with our society.
Easy - the tech monopolies must be broken up. Make it illegal for any company to have more than a quarter of the market. Make any market without at least say five competitors not a free market. I'd go with punitive taxation on global turnover myself.
Until this is done, their influence is only going to grow.
Until this is done, their influence is only going to grow.
[deleted]
The obvious solution is to break up YouTube. Moderation doesn't scale. It's NP-Hard or whatever.
Dynamical systems theory tells us that when you have a large densely-interconnected system (like YT) you get dramatic behavior. In other words, YouTube is always going to create memetic storms and we can predict that (even though we can't predict the exact content of the storms.)
Adding regulators won't help.
Cybernetics revealed the law of requisite variety, to wit: "the variety in the regulator must be equal to or greater than the variety in the system being regulated"
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASC/LAW_VARIE.html
YouTube is doomed, the question is do we let it take us down with it?
Dynamical systems theory tells us that when you have a large densely-interconnected system (like YT) you get dramatic behavior. In other words, YouTube is always going to create memetic storms and we can predict that (even though we can't predict the exact content of the storms.)
Adding regulators won't help.
Cybernetics revealed the law of requisite variety, to wit: "the variety in the regulator must be equal to or greater than the variety in the system being regulated"
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASC/LAW_VARIE.html
YouTube is doomed, the question is do we let it take us down with it?
> We also disallow content alleging widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of a historical U.S. Presidential election.
How can any honest person accept this state of affairs? What would be the reaction of the gleefully censorious US big tech employees, many here on HN, if non-US social media giant enacted such measures in their locality?
I don't see evidence that the 2020 election stolen from the Republican candidate, but this is a huge red flag that something might be going on. It would absolutely be consdiered as such were this happening elsewhere.
How can any honest person accept this state of affairs? What would be the reaction of the gleefully censorious US big tech employees, many here on HN, if non-US social media giant enacted such measures in their locality?
I don't see evidence that the 2020 election stolen from the Republican candidate, but this is a huge red flag that something might be going on. It would absolutely be consdiered as such were this happening elsewhere.
> but this is a huge red flag that something might be going on
On the contrary. This is an indicator of the Republican claims being based on no evidence. The fact that these lies happen to be incredibly damaging to the perception of US democracy is a good enough reason for a private company to decide not to host it.
It's not part of an even larger coverup, as you seem to believe. Do you know how many people would need to be involved on a coverup of this scale? How is that even remotely close to being the right explanation.
On the contrary. This is an indicator of the Republican claims being based on no evidence. The fact that these lies happen to be incredibly damaging to the perception of US democracy is a good enough reason for a private company to decide not to host it.
It's not part of an even larger coverup, as you seem to believe. Do you know how many people would need to be involved on a coverup of this scale? How is that even remotely close to being the right explanation.
To be clear, I did not say this is part of a larger coverup, as you seem to believe. I stated, quite clearly, I see no evidence that anything particularly strange has happened.
I suggested that a major tech firm banning content which challenges election results, not only this most recent election, would be considered a red flag if it were to happen anywhere else.
I suggested that a major tech firm banning content which challenges election results, not only this most recent election, would be considered a red flag if it were to happen anywhere else.
The majority of big tech people live in D+∞ areas. Given that, and the likely bias that comes as a result, it isn't unreasonable to not want their influence on what political opinions are or are not able to be said aloud.
> The fact that these lies happen to be incredibly damaging to the perception of US democracy is a good enough reason for a private company to decide not to host it.
This is the narrative, yes. Where is the evidence that Trump and his followers screaming about election fraud has damaged the perception of US democracy? So far, it appears that the system did the thing it was supposed to do: Trump is being removed from his office.
If people telling lies about a system is sufficient to destroy that system, then perhaps the system needs to die and be replaced with something less refutable.
Is democracy really so fragile?
A free society increasingly appears to be, as censorship ramps up.
This is the narrative, yes. Where is the evidence that Trump and his followers screaming about election fraud has damaged the perception of US democracy? So far, it appears that the system did the thing it was supposed to do: Trump is being removed from his office.
If people telling lies about a system is sufficient to destroy that system, then perhaps the system needs to die and be replaced with something less refutable.
Is democracy really so fragile?
A free society increasingly appears to be, as censorship ramps up.
>I don't see evidence that the 2020 election stolen from the Republican candidate, but this is a huge red flag that something might be going on.
The US tech giants have done all they can to back the Democrat party in the last 4 years and now they're seeing through their final act. You can't make all your moves at once, that would play the hand, but little by little chip away at it and slowly boil the frog.
Whether it's evidence of something being amiss, or a red flag that there's substance to the conspiracies, matters not to me. This whole ordeal has proven that the US* and its tech masters are no better than their Chinese counterparts when it comes to propaganda and censorship.
Whether they go the next step further and try to "re-educate" their opponents, as some have pondered on social media, is something we'll soon see play out in the new year.
Conspiracy or not, stolen election or not, the thirst and exercise of information (and disinformation) control is very, very real.
*I have no doubt that the effectiveness of this tech weaponry will be studied and emulated throughout the Western world in the coming years.
The US tech giants have done all they can to back the Democrat party in the last 4 years and now they're seeing through their final act. You can't make all your moves at once, that would play the hand, but little by little chip away at it and slowly boil the frog.
Whether it's evidence of something being amiss, or a red flag that there's substance to the conspiracies, matters not to me. This whole ordeal has proven that the US* and its tech masters are no better than their Chinese counterparts when it comes to propaganda and censorship.
Whether they go the next step further and try to "re-educate" their opponents, as some have pondered on social media, is something we'll soon see play out in the new year.
Conspiracy or not, stolen election or not, the thirst and exercise of information (and disinformation) control is very, very real.
*I have no doubt that the effectiveness of this tech weaponry will be studied and emulated throughout the Western world in the coming years.
[deleted]
Doesn't this just feed into people's fears about conspiracies? I can't understand why people are signing off on this. Let the Like/Dislike button do its job.
Youtube's recommendation algorithm means that the people who see these videos are already predisposed to believe what is in them. That overrides the usefulness of the Like and Dislike buttons.
Also, even if people outside of those bubbles see and dislike those videos, the Dislike button is more likely to feed and reinforce their primary audience's persecution complex than to cause them to reconsider.
I am reminded of the videos we have probably all seen of Flat Earthers doing experiments that are supposed to show whether the Earth is curved, the experiment does show a curve, and then they start to question why their experiment is failing rather than question their beliefs. Beliefs are a pretty strong thing.
It is much easier to stop harmful ideas from spreading rather than trying to argue down these harmful ideas once they have already taken a foothold in someone's mind.
It is much easier to stop harmful ideas from spreading rather than trying to argue down these harmful ideas once they have already taken a foothold in someone's mind.
I know at lest 2 flat earthers who were given anti-psychotic medication and stopped being flat earthers.
> It is much easier to stop harmful ideas from spreading rather than trying to argue down these harmful ideas once they have already taken a foothold in someone's mind.
It’s fucking terrifying that anyone holds this view, considering the implications. That’s CCP logic. Pro-censorship, “for their own good”?
Have we lost our fucking minds?
It’s fucking terrifying that anyone holds this view, considering the implications. That’s CCP logic. Pro-censorship, “for their own good”?
Have we lost our fucking minds?
Do you think Germany lost their fucking minds when they outlawed Holocaust denialism?
You have full access to facts here. Nothing is being truly hidden. Hell, all of these videos can still be shared a million other ways. It’s insane, systematic misinformation that YouTube doesn’t want to actively help spread.
You have full access to facts here. Nothing is being truly hidden. Hell, all of these videos can still be shared a million other ways. It’s insane, systematic misinformation that YouTube doesn’t want to actively help spread.
Down votes cause of whole set of reactions. Many of which prompt further inquiry and research. Humans have a wide range of reactions to things. An analysis that lumps them into a narrow set of reactions is useless.
So perhaps the problem actually lies with the recommendation algorithm, and youtube should do something about that.
No argument here. I would imagine a good deal of the people who think misinformation is a serious problem on Youtube would agree that the recommendation algorithm is a huge problem.
I wonder if this would be less of an issue if these videos were unlisted or shadowbanned instead. I'm fairly sure YouTube already does this (either intentionally or through unintended consequences of the recommendation engine) so why couldn't they do that here?
Not really. I see a couple videos about guns and YouTube fills my recommendations with nut jobs. I see a couple of video game reviews and YouTube assumes I want to watch videos about SJWs performing white genocide. And so on.
I think you're overestimating the average internet user. A lot of people think that because they view something online, it gives it authority. They fail to understand anyone can (and does) post content online.
I've often thought this way of thinking is a remnant of the media we've consumed in the past, where there were higher standards because producing media was more exclusive. Think print, radio, TV. On those mediums not just anyone could produce content.
I've often thought this way of thinking is a remnant of the media we've consumed in the past, where there were higher standards because producing media was more exclusive. Think print, radio, TV. On those mediums not just anyone could produce content.
It is so strange to me specifically because the cohort that seems to be eating this up(my parents age, I mean) were the same ones telling me NOT to believe anything I read on the internet when I was young and the internet was new.
What happened?
What happened?
They started getting targeted with stuff aimed at their existing biases.
(Along with an endless stream of Minions memes, it would seem.)
(Along with an endless stream of Minions memes, it would seem.)
It's easy to disbelieve what you read on the internet when it's one voice in a thousand. But increasingly, all thousand voices are telling you what you want to hear.
djsumdog(1)
Age-related cognitive decline.
You mean those dumb boomers and generation X'ers who were raised on the boob tube rather than YouTube.
This plays exactly into their narrative. "If they didn't steal it, they wouldn't have to work so hard to cover it up!"
Megacorps should never become arbiters of truth.
Megacorps should never become arbiters of truth.
Publishers have always been the arbiters of truth. "Anyone can publish anything targeting anyone" is a very recent development.
Sure, but are they publishers, or hosters? Isn't that the whole CDA Section 230 debate? Either be an impartial host (other than legal requirements) or be a publisher with all the trappings that come with that.
> Isn't that the whole CDA Section 230 debate? Either be an impartial host (other than legal requirements) or be a publisher with all the trappings that come with that.
No. That is not how 230 works at all. 230 does not add any requirements for web hosts. They don't have to conform to some "impartial host" or "publisher" distinction. It just means that websites cannot be sued for illegal content on their platforms, regardless of whether they attempt to remove other similar illegal content.
No. That is not how 230 works at all. 230 does not add any requirements for web hosts. They don't have to conform to some "impartial host" or "publisher" distinction. It just means that websites cannot be sued for illegal content on their platforms, regardless of whether they attempt to remove other similar illegal content.
You (and Ted Cruz) are under the illusion that platforms must be neutral. There is nothing in Section 230 mandating neutrality. Section 230 deals with liability of user content. The First Amendment gives platforms the right to censor.
I think we'll see if anyone is willing to fight the case that removing disinformation campaigns is enough to trip Section 230 immunity.
I can't imagine a judge hearing "we removed a malicious and harmful disinformation campaigns using our platform that were trying to undermine election integrity and trust in government and scientific bodies during a global pandemic" and saying "Yep, obviously that's editorial slant."
I can't imagine a judge hearing "we removed a malicious and harmful disinformation campaigns using our platform that were trying to undermine election integrity and trust in government and scientific bodies during a global pandemic" and saying "Yep, obviously that's editorial slant."
[deleted]
> Sure, but are they publishers, or hosters?
If a platform chooses a video to play next, based on "what we know you like, what we think you'll like" then it cannot be a mere hoster. Choosing means making a choice.
Youtube has been called a "radicalisation engine" with some evidence for that (search terms: "youtube radicalization", "Algorithmic Extremism"). This might just be a terrible consequence of "maximising engagement" rather than pushing a fixed political agenda. But evidently, they want to do better.
If a platform chooses a video to play next, based on "what we know you like, what we think you'll like" then it cannot be a mere hoster. Choosing means making a choice.
Youtube has been called a "radicalisation engine" with some evidence for that (search terms: "youtube radicalization", "Algorithmic Extremism"). This might just be a terrible consequence of "maximising engagement" rather than pushing a fixed political agenda. But evidently, they want to do better.
I would footnote truth to show it means whatever that publisher believes. There are plenty of older published texts that contain incorrect information, and sometimes outright lies (propaganda).
"Anyone can publish anything targeting anyone" happened in the past when the printing press was developed and paper got cheap enough that people could just print up pamphlets or newspapers and give them away on the streets. Around the 1880's. Yellow journalism. All sorts of different points of view getting spread. Communism, anarchism, etc. Then going father back at the very beginning of the printing revolution we had protestantism and religious wars that lasted a century (Hundred Years War, etc.) The internet is this but with even lower hurdles to publication and extremely wide and inexpensive distribution.
The invention of the press certainly made broad publishing much more viable than it was previously, but the capital requirements to distribute a broadsheet to the entire world, even in 1990 were beyond the reach of pretty much everyone except a few very large corporations and governments. Hence the aphorism "Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one."
The capital requirements today are an internet connection, a phone, and about ten minutes of typing. For the vast majority of people today, the ability to publish to the world is beyond the wildest dreams of William Randolf Hearst.
The capital requirements today are an internet connection, a phone, and about ten minutes of typing. For the vast majority of people today, the ability to publish to the world is beyond the wildest dreams of William Randolf Hearst.
YouTube was originally about "you" publishing whatever you want to the "tube". Now it's turning into some kind of censored truth filter, which is not very appealing.
It is about being appealing to the advertisers. Nothing else matters.
Why would an advertiser not like this type of content? They would know exactly who to target if they were watching this content.
Legally, Youtube is not a publisher. If it was it would lose the Section 230 protections, that is the whole point of that law, it is separate who is a publisher (like a news company) and who is just a "dumb wire" (a ISP for example, was the original goal).
Section 230 was created after people sued ISPs using laws intended to allow lawsuits against newspapers.
Section 230 is overall, a good law, but the bigtech abuse of it is greatly risking it to be killed for good, they are supposed to be either a platform, or a publisher, not Frankenstein's Monster that has parts of both, having the protections of a platform while having the powers of a publisher.
Section 230 was created after people sued ISPs using laws intended to allow lawsuits against newspapers.
Section 230 is overall, a good law, but the bigtech abuse of it is greatly risking it to be killed for good, they are supposed to be either a platform, or a publisher, not Frankenstein's Monster that has parts of both, having the protections of a platform while having the powers of a publisher.
>Section 230 was created after people sued ISPs using laws intended to allow lawsuits against newspapers.
No, they sued a Prodigy as a forum, not as an ISP. The distinction is critical. ISPs are closer to common carriers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod....
No, they sued a Prodigy as a forum, not as an ISP. The distinction is critical. ISPs are closer to common carriers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod....
Facts haven't influenced their narrative one bit. The "overturn the election" effort is about 1-51 in the courts, across states, Federal levels, and partisanship of judges.
There's a point where enough is enough, and a blatantly dishonest treasonous war on the very fabric of the government is over the line.
There's a point where enough is enough, and a blatantly dishonest treasonous war on the very fabric of the government is over the line.
[deleted]
For existing users maybe, but there's an argument to be made that you're saving newer users that haven't yet seen this content from being brainwashed.
I'd remove this kind of content from a public pinboard anytime if I was in charge of one, so I personally find it hard to object if Youtube removes it.
However, I also believe that any algorithmic removal without human oversight should be prohibited by law. The abuse of DMCA requests should be addressed, namely by prohibiting algorithmically generated requests and by treating repeated bogus DMCA takedown requests in a way similar to commercial copyright infringement.
Just letting companies take down whatever they like in whatever way they want is not the right solution. They are basically "information utilities" and provide public goods of a value to society that goes beyond those company's personal advertisement income.
However, I also believe that any algorithmic removal without human oversight should be prohibited by law. The abuse of DMCA requests should be addressed, namely by prohibiting algorithmically generated requests and by treating repeated bogus DMCA takedown requests in a way similar to commercial copyright infringement.
Just letting companies take down whatever they like in whatever way they want is not the right solution. They are basically "information utilities" and provide public goods of a value to society that goes beyond those company's personal advertisement income.
For the existing folks, almost certainly, but it prevents the spread of misinformation; and more importantly, it prevents the _repetitive reinforcement_ of misinformation.
Maybe for that one platform on this one issue. It wouldn't prevent the major networks from repeatedly spreading misinformation, nor on unidentified issues. I remember for years the major networks were stating that the gender wage gap was the difference between a man and a woman in the same job with all else being equal. Yet the BLS study they were getting the numbers from show a fundamentally different issue.
YouTube can censor whatever and however they want. I just don't see this as making much of an impact either way.
YouTube can censor whatever and however they want. I just don't see this as making much of an impact either way.
Assuming it's misinformation, this time but especially in the future.
Likes and disklikes are way too easy to game imo
Right, if you looked at likes/dislikes you'd think Trump won re-election by a landslide and Bernie won the primary easily.
Joe Biden, who won the most votes of any candidate in American history with 66% turnout and 51.3% of the vote, still had his announcement video [0] at 50/50 like/dislike.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbOU2fTg6cI&feature=youtu.be
Joe Biden, who won the most votes of any candidate in American history with 66% turnout and 51.3% of the vote, still had his announcement video [0] at 50/50 like/dislike.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbOU2fTg6cI&feature=youtu.be
If he only won 51.3% of the vote then a 50/50 like/dislike sounds rather representative actually, much more so than likes/dislikes on Youtube usually are.
The point is that Likes are feelings, not truthometers.
But what if people don’t “Like” the truth?
This is the critical question, and it baffles me that people don't reflect on this a bit more. The "marketplace of ideas", whether it be through back-and-forth dialogue expressed through media platforms, or through likes or comment sections or follower amounts... there's no reason to believe that that process leads to the best ideas coming to the top.
So that can't and shouldn't be cited as a reason not to be concerned over the spread of misinformation.
So that can't and shouldn't be cited as a reason not to be concerned over the spread of misinformation.
> there's no reason to believe that that process leads to the best ideas coming to the top.
I disagree, the reason is because when people have access to multiple ideas they can choose what ideas are best for themselves and other people can judge the outcome based on both the ideas and their effects on people.
> So that can't and shouldn't be cited as a reason not to be concerned over the spread of misinformation.
Without free and open exchange of ideas its not nearly as easy to even tell what is misinformation.
I disagree, the reason is because when people have access to multiple ideas they can choose what ideas are best for themselves and other people can judge the outcome based on both the ideas and their effects on people.
> So that can't and shouldn't be cited as a reason not to be concerned over the spread of misinformation.
Without free and open exchange of ideas its not nearly as easy to even tell what is misinformation.
The dislike button might inform The Algorithm, and it might inform users who are using the YouTube web UI (if they care to look); but it remains silent on video embeds on Facebook/Twitter/etc, and on "less-interactive" watching interfaces like the YouTube Apple/Android TV apps.
> Let the Like/Dislike button do its job.
Community moderation has completely and totally failed. Giant, enormous lies are being told to half the population without barrier. People who want to believe in a completely fabricated story about election fraud have all their eyeballs can get.
Fine. I get the free speech angle. But... who cares about free speech when democracy is dying in front of us? Free speech was supposed to have prevented this. It made it worse.
I don't have the answer here. But all I can see is people trying to deny the problem.
Community moderation has completely and totally failed. Giant, enormous lies are being told to half the population without barrier. People who want to believe in a completely fabricated story about election fraud have all their eyeballs can get.
Fine. I get the free speech angle. But... who cares about free speech when democracy is dying in front of us? Free speech was supposed to have prevented this. It made it worse.
I don't have the answer here. But all I can see is people trying to deny the problem.
Millions of people believe the election was rigged in the US. This is a total failure of building trust in elections, regardless weather its true or not.
I personally believe in "Trust but Verify". There is no way to verify this election. The process is made impossible, because signature check was not done on mail in ballots in any meaningful way. And has not been done now either in any of the recounts. We only know that currently 0.02% of ballots were rejected vs 6% previous elections.
To my common sense, this election could have been spammed with mail in ballots, and almost everything accepted. No meaningful signature match was performed, when only 0.02% of ballots were rejected.
I personally believe in "Trust but Verify". There is no way to verify this election. The process is made impossible, because signature check was not done on mail in ballots in any meaningful way. And has not been done now either in any of the recounts. We only know that currently 0.02% of ballots were rejected vs 6% previous elections.
To my common sense, this election could have been spammed with mail in ballots, and almost everything accepted. No meaningful signature match was performed, when only 0.02% of ballots were rejected.
> This is a total failure of building trust in elections
Rather it's a success in tearing down that trust. And the tools used in that effort were lies like this one:
> We only know that currently 0.02% of ballots were rejected vs 6% previous elections.
See: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-georgia-rejecte...
It's lies. It's all lies. You're reading lies and choosing to believe them[1]. So is it any wonder that Youtube is thinking that maybe they shouldn't have a hand in spreading those lies?
[1] As proven by your reply that the link does not "prove a lie"! That's not the way the burden of proof works. You are choosing to believe this categorical statement given to you without support. That is a "lie" in the vernacular.
Rather it's a success in tearing down that trust. And the tools used in that effort were lies like this one:
> We only know that currently 0.02% of ballots were rejected vs 6% previous elections.
See: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-georgia-rejecte...
It's lies. It's all lies. You're reading lies and choosing to believe them[1]. So is it any wonder that Youtube is thinking that maybe they shouldn't have a hand in spreading those lies?
[1] As proven by your reply that the link does not "prove a lie"! That's not the way the burden of proof works. You are choosing to believe this categorical statement given to you without support. That is a "lie" in the vernacular.
The fact check does not prove a lie. At most it proves that Trump is not making the statement based on publicly available data. Since the final rejection rate for 2020 have not yet been released.
From the fact check:
"Georgia rejected 6.42% of mail-in ballots in total in the 2016 general election "
"The higher percentage he mentions for past years is likely based off the total rejected ballots (here) which can not be compared with 2020, as this information is not available."
From the fact check:
"Georgia rejected 6.42% of mail-in ballots in total in the 2016 general election "
"The higher percentage he mentions for past years is likely based off the total rejected ballots (here) which can not be compared with 2020, as this information is not available."
This site seem have the most up to date numbers.
"Rejected absentee/mail-in ballots as a percentage of total absentee/mail-in ballots returned, 2016-2020"
Georgia 2016 6.42%
Georgia 2020 .60%
Source https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2020:_Analysis_of_...
Which cites the official Georgia election website as source of the raw data.
Georgia 2016 6.42%
Georgia 2020 .60%
Source https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2020:_Analysis_of_...
Which cites the official Georgia election website as source of the raw data.
The Reuters link specifically addresses that: it's a tabulation error, the older data shows ballots rejected for all causes, the 2020 data is limited to those rejected for signature mismatches only, they haven't released the all-cause number yet. And the signature rejection numbers broadly match up, both being sub-1%.
It isn't just Georgia. The other states reporting have a order of magnitude drop in absentee ballot rejections. Seems like a problem?
I mean if you even tried to use logic you could understand why there would be drastically less rejected mail in ballots then normal years. There were massive information campaigns about how to correctly fill out ballots and the things to be careful of leading up to this election because millions of people were going to be voting by mail this year. In previous years there is 0 information about it at all. Also most people learned about the mistakes when their ballots got rejected in the primary.
I don't think you could get 99.98% of people to tie their shoes correctly. Let alone fill out a paper ballot, and match their signatures. Have you ever worked with below average intelligence people?
When we covered the 1st Amendment in school and talked about censorship I always thought “who could possibly be against the 1st Amendment?”.
Apparently a lot of people!
Apparently a lot of people!
It literally begins “Congress shall make no law...”
Oh don't try and weasel out of it. America's respect for freedom of speech is codified in the constitution, but goes far beyond that and is a core tenant of our social contract.
Yes, Google is entirely within their right to censor whatever they want on their platform. Does it make them look like anti-free speech goons? Yeah, it does.
Yes, Google is entirely within their right to censor whatever they want on their platform. Does it make them look like anti-free speech goons? Yeah, it does.
> America's respect for freedom of speech is codified in the constitution
Is it? Where is this implication that the constitution is simultaneously both a legal document and also a list of broad values held by the nation's people?
Is it? Where is this implication that the constitution is simultaneously both a legal document and also a list of broad values held by the nation's people?
I mean, it's a founding document? It wouldn't be in there unless there was general agreement it is important?
That's a bit of a silly question.
That's a bit of a silly question.
There are lots of things that I believe to be important for the government but not at all important for other contexts. I suspect that's true for you too.
You probably support democratic control over the government where each citizen gets one vote. But very few Americans support democratic control over private corporations (that would be socialism after all). There are enormous numbers of such examples.
I think it is unreasonable to claim that because the constitution limits the state's ability to restrict speech that Americans believe that other actors should not be able to restrict speech in places where they exhibit control. It certainly could be the case that Americans support free speech more broadly, but it definitely does not follow from just being in the constitution.
You probably support democratic control over the government where each citizen gets one vote. But very few Americans support democratic control over private corporations (that would be socialism after all). There are enormous numbers of such examples.
I think it is unreasonable to claim that because the constitution limits the state's ability to restrict speech that Americans believe that other actors should not be able to restrict speech in places where they exhibit control. It certainly could be the case that Americans support free speech more broadly, but it definitely does not follow from just being in the constitution.
I mean, I’m not basing it off the constitution alone, but also the pervasive reference to free speech across American discourse. I mean, some joker will put a giant middle finger on his lawn in defiance of a developer who wants to buy him out and Americans will rally around his right to do so.
The 1st amendment doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
The 1st amendment doesn’t exist in a vacuum.
> I’m not basing it off the constitution alone
IMO, this does not come across in the posts I responded to.
IMO, this does not come across in the posts I responded to.
Perhaps? But those people probably already think Youtube's part of any number of conspiracies already.
I doubt this policy is based on any sort of broad principle. Youtube just doesn't want its platform to play any part in the currently ongoing coup attempt.
If there is widespread election fraud (which has not been proven and includes an undefined term used as a negative persuasion tool "widespread" anyway) then that is the coup attempt you refer to and their platform is host to uncountable instances of people claiming a certain person has been elected and now there will be no counter information for people to consider the alternatives.
Yes, that's true. Again, I don't think this is about any higher principle; many people just aren't willing to maintain editorial neutrality with respect to a coup, and I don't think it's reasonable to expect them to.
rglover(1)
Youtube et al can do what they want, but..
tech has gambled its entire good will on an impossible fight basically guaranteeing further stratification and divide. It is a bad move. It already backfired hard once during Hunter coverage, but this will only make it worse.
tech has gambled its entire good will on an impossible fight basically guaranteeing further stratification and divide. It is a bad move. It already backfired hard once during Hunter coverage, but this will only make it worse.
Careful there comrade, the Hunter leaks never happened. If it did then you'd seen it on Twitter and Youtube, same as for the CIA 'whistleblower' and anything questionable around "the most secure election in history".
20 years ago reputed organizations such as newspapers, radio stations and television informed people the truth. Conspiracy theories were fringe and didn't have a way to spread.
Today more than half the population believes in conspiracy theories because they learn the "truth" from disreputable sources on social media. This is dangerous for society.
I am glad social media companies are taking action themselves, instead of the government forcing them (which would be a 1st amendment issue).
Today more than half the population believes in conspiracy theories because they learn the "truth" from disreputable sources on social media. This is dangerous for society.
I am glad social media companies are taking action themselves, instead of the government forcing them (which would be a 1st amendment issue).
20 years ago, and before that, liberals complained that the media, schools, etc., were lying to the public.
Liberals? Conservatives complained too!
Ah yes, the truth of 20 years ago, like all those WMD in Iraq.
That wasn't the media's fault, though, that was the Bush administration manufacturing an excuse to invade the Middle East.
I agree that the fault ultimately lies with the Bush administration for making false claims. However, it is _critically_ important to also place fault with the media outlets who simply repeated those claims, abandoning their duty as a check against the state.
A lot of media actors were in on the con.
There is a well-documented connection between journalists and intelligence agencies. In some cases journalists have been little more than mouthpieces for the US (and allied) intelligence community.
There is a well-documented connection between journalists and intelligence agencies. In some cases journalists have been little more than mouthpieces for the US (and allied) intelligence community.
If a tree falls in the woods, but no TV stations or newspapers show repeats of it falling, does it make a sound?
IIRC an article by the New York Times was considered a turning point in convincing the population of WMDs in Iraq.
Arguably, the media's role is to stress test claims made by the government. They certainly do it for the trump admin. Though I wonder if they'll do it for the Biden admin.
I wouldn't say it's their fault. But still in 2020, the media breathlessly reports targeted leaks by intelligence agencies as fact. We didn't learn anything.
I wouldn't say it's their fault. But still in 2020, the media breathlessly reports targeted leaks by intelligence agencies as fact. We didn't learn anything.
Arguably, the media's role is to manufacture consent among the general public for whatever the government wants to do.
I'm left leaning, and I hope that they absolutely do stress-test the Biden administration and every administration after it. If nothing else, 2020 has showed me how important the 4th Estate is in our democracy and the power it truly has. Watching the major news networks cut Trump's speech short on Election Night when he started declaring victory and insisting they'd already won before Florida was even counted was the most important thing I've seen them do in a long, long time.
[deleted]
30 years ago back in Eastern Europe conspiracy theories didn't have a way to spread either. We had one truth. No further debates or opinions, one truth, The Truth.
I don't think you realize how dangerous suppression of freedom of speech is.
I don't think you realize how dangerous suppression of freedom of speech is.
We won't have that problem here. There will still be New York Times, Wall Street Journal, etc. More weight should be given to these legit sources than to social media. On the internet everything can appear equally legitimate. Breitbart looks as legit as the BBC. That's a problem. More on that by Sacha Baron Cohen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymaWq5yZIYM
Yeah, thank God you'll have a couple big companies owned by the same people to tell you what is the real truth.
China has different media as well. I'd like to see one of them saying the CCP should leave or something against them.
China has different media as well. I'd like to see one of them saying the CCP should leave or something against them.
Who do you think is the true arbiter of real truth?
A better question, is there really an arbiter?
The only thing we have is freedom of speech to challenge ideas, debate and find what is true by ourselves, if such truth exists.
The only thing we have is freedom of speech to challenge ideas, debate and find what is true by ourselves, if such truth exists.
Some say if you disagree with someone else's speech you should not just ban them, you should defeat them by arguing against their ideas. But when state-sponsored actors spread fake news and divisive ads at a massive scale on social media you can’t simply defeat them by arguing against their ideas. How do you counter it? By buying opposing ads on Facebook? Even if you have pockets as deep as Putin’s, what a waste of money that would be! This is a new world and the old methods are no longer applicable. Communities and social media companies will need to engage in some censorship.
Long term I think better education and promoting critical thinking is the only way that doesn't erode democracy.
Short term I have no idea. Silencing people you deem are running misinformation campaigns is probably the quickest, and easiest. Or try weather it out while doing the long term plan of education.
Unfortunately it seems the more democratic a state is the more it's open to misinformation by rival, less democratic states.
Short term I have no idea. Silencing people you deem are running misinformation campaigns is probably the quickest, and easiest. Or try weather it out while doing the long term plan of education.
Unfortunately it seems the more democratic a state is the more it's open to misinformation by rival, less democratic states.
Why are you so convinced of a grand conspiracy to suppress the "truth" being peddled by obvious grift artists?
I'm not convinced of anything. I just asked a simple question to another poster.
That's sometimes called "Just Asking Questions", and is sometimes a passive-aggressive way of arguing with someone. You don't state a position, you just ask (leading) questions, without ever stating a position that can be refuted. When someone calls you on it, you say that you're "just asking questions".
It can be a real dishonest, manipulative technique. You're running close enough to that to set off peoples' defense mechanisms. So, even if you're doing it in complete innocence, if you want to not have people upset with the way you're carrying out the conversation, change your style.
It can be a real dishonest, manipulative technique. You're running close enough to that to set off peoples' defense mechanisms. So, even if you're doing it in complete innocence, if you want to not have people upset with the way you're carrying out the conversation, change your style.
Yes, yes, I'm well aware that's a common tactic. However, it is completely fair given the conversational context to ask the poster for clarification for their actual beliefs in what determines "real truth", given that they have stated multiple situations that they find disagreeable for ascertaining "real truth." To shut down valid discussion and shout down fair questioners by throwing around accusations of logical fallacies is not conducive to debate and discussion. It creates a chilling effect that poisons the conversational well.
By the time you asked your question, I thought it was rather clear that darmoddy didn't think there was a real arbiter of truth. That tipped the scales somewhat toward me thinking you were manipulative rather than honest. Even so, I was careful not to actually accuse you of dishonest manipulation.
OTOH, asking question is at the base of the Socratic Method.
Sure. But when I'm trying to have a conversation, it's a total pain to have the other side trying to go Socratic Method on me. State your position, and I'll state mine, and then we'll talk. Trying to talk with someone who won't state their own position, but wants to make you answer questions about yours, is... not much of a "dialog", frankly.
Is there any data that shows the number of people believing in conspiracy theories is actually greater than it was, and that that gap was due to social media?
20 years ago I remember TV shows talking about the moon landing being a hoax, and a decent number of people I talked to at the time believing it. This is just an anecdote, but I've noticed that people make the claim that conspiracy theories are on the rise and I've yet to see hard evidence to support that claim.
20 years ago I remember TV shows talking about the moon landing being a hoax, and a decent number of people I talked to at the time believing it. This is just an anecdote, but I've noticed that people make the claim that conspiracy theories are on the rise and I've yet to see hard evidence to support that claim.
The difference is the moon landing or ‘who shot JFK’ are about subjects that are low stakes, very low. Having millions people believe the Presidential election was corrupt is corrosive to the basic civic foundations of the political process.
Exactly. Conspiracy theories are now being weaponized by the right (via YouTube) to whip up anger and violence.
> 20 years ago reputed organizations such as newspapers, radio stations and television informed people the truth. Conspiracy theories were fringe and didn't have a way to spread.
Are you genuinely arguing that conspiracy theories are a phenomenon that is unique to the 21st century?
Are you genuinely arguing that conspiracy theories are a phenomenon that is unique to the 21st century?
> 20 years ago reputed organizations such as newspapers, radio stations and television informed people the truth.
Come on, do you really believe this?
Come on, do you really believe this?
On mobile so I can’t find the source. Conspiracy theories spread in a low-trust environment. Maybe instead of trying to block ideas (which can never work), initiatives that work to restore trust should be investigated.
> 20 years ago reputed organizations such as newspapers, radio stations and television informed people the truth. Conspiracy theories were fringe and didn't have a way to spread. Today more than half the population believes in conspiracy theories because they learn the "truth" from disreputable sources on social media.
Why do you suppose that is, though? Could it be because algorithms designed to feed users content they like promote and reinforce echo chambers which, in turn, incentivize the creation and spread of convenient misinformation?
Social media did not start the echo chambers, but they have played a huge role in making them more accessible and extreme than ever before. How can we trust them to safeguard us from misinformation when they are the ones profiting from it?
I do not want Google deciding what is and isn't "misinformation". As far as I'm concerned, they're more guilty of the mess we're now in than any media organization or content creator.
Why do you suppose that is, though? Could it be because algorithms designed to feed users content they like promote and reinforce echo chambers which, in turn, incentivize the creation and spread of convenient misinformation?
Social media did not start the echo chambers, but they have played a huge role in making them more accessible and extreme than ever before. How can we trust them to safeguard us from misinformation when they are the ones profiting from it?
I do not want Google deciding what is and isn't "misinformation". As far as I'm concerned, they're more guilty of the mess we're now in than any media organization or content creator.
I just don't get this. Why does Google have to be the censorship police here? Just let people post what they want (minus graphic and illegal content) and make their own mistakes and their own learnings. Google is going down a rabbit hole full of worms. Posting conspiracy theories about election fraud is just people exercising their free speech. Google is a private platform, so they can censor whatever they want, but it's not like Google is going to get in trouble for allowing people to post about conspiracy theories. What's the goal here?
You're conflating free speech (government) with a business's decision to monitor their platform (private). These two things are very different.
>What's the goal here?
To make their platform not full of bullshit. YouTube isn't the government, there is no such thing as the 1st amendment to them, so they cull that which is bad for business.
>What's the goal here?
To make their platform not full of bullshit. YouTube isn't the government, there is no such thing as the 1st amendment to them, so they cull that which is bad for business.
> You're conflating free speech (government) with a business's decision to monitor their platform (private).
No, he specifically did not conflate those two things. Read his comment again. He said that he understands that Google can censor whatever they like, but doesn't understand why they choose to do so. I'd have to agree, I'm inclined to not trust YouTube as much anymore, even if I believe the content they are censoring is completely crazy in this case.
The argument that people conflate state censorship and private censorship has become overused to the point being disingenuous. There are some people who truly don't understand the difference between state and private censorship. But the more intellectually serious argument involves thinking about why we forbid the government from regulating speech. The first reason is that the government is ill-equipped to regulate speech; it's hard for the government to determine which speech is socially beneficial. The second is that it is often better in general to challenge incorrect ideas through rebuttal and education rather than censorship. This harkens back to Mill's argument for free speech. Importantly, the second idea doesn't just argue against government censorship, but private censorship as well.
As soon as someone argues that YouTube is wrong to take this action, people start parroting the argument that free speech only applies to government action. But that completely ignores the idea that censorship is just fundamentally the wrong way to combat wrong ideas or ideas you disagree with. And to make matters worse, many commenters also ignore the idea that you are allowed to disagree with a company's actions even if you don't think the government should compel them to act differently.
And another problem I see is we're trending toward there being two different groups of social media sites in the U.S., conservative social media and liberal social media sites, and I don't think that portends well to the future of American political discourse.
Whether all these ideas are rightly classified as "free speech" issues is a matter of terminology. Perhaps "open discourse" is a more accurate term. I just read an interesting article[1] that discusses this debate and argues it does not involve a fundamental threat to free expression, but nonetheless that it is important.
[1] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/7/22/21325942/f...
No, he specifically did not conflate those two things. Read his comment again. He said that he understands that Google can censor whatever they like, but doesn't understand why they choose to do so. I'd have to agree, I'm inclined to not trust YouTube as much anymore, even if I believe the content they are censoring is completely crazy in this case.
The argument that people conflate state censorship and private censorship has become overused to the point being disingenuous. There are some people who truly don't understand the difference between state and private censorship. But the more intellectually serious argument involves thinking about why we forbid the government from regulating speech. The first reason is that the government is ill-equipped to regulate speech; it's hard for the government to determine which speech is socially beneficial. The second is that it is often better in general to challenge incorrect ideas through rebuttal and education rather than censorship. This harkens back to Mill's argument for free speech. Importantly, the second idea doesn't just argue against government censorship, but private censorship as well.
As soon as someone argues that YouTube is wrong to take this action, people start parroting the argument that free speech only applies to government action. But that completely ignores the idea that censorship is just fundamentally the wrong way to combat wrong ideas or ideas you disagree with. And to make matters worse, many commenters also ignore the idea that you are allowed to disagree with a company's actions even if you don't think the government should compel them to act differently.
And another problem I see is we're trending toward there being two different groups of social media sites in the U.S., conservative social media and liberal social media sites, and I don't think that portends well to the future of American political discourse.
Whether all these ideas are rightly classified as "free speech" issues is a matter of terminology. Perhaps "open discourse" is a more accurate term. I just read an interesting article[1] that discusses this debate and argues it does not involve a fundamental threat to free expression, but nonetheless that it is important.
[1] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/7/22/21325942/f...
Google doesn't want to be 4Chan and they are well within their rights to maintain their reputation via censorship, especially given the bad actors they are dealing with.
The concept of 'free speech' is not limited to the first amendment. Whether or not the government is involved (which could be argued given that it was requested by politicians while anti-trust issues with Google is a hot topic); is less relevant.
I would say yes... but these companies have Section 230 protection. At what point can the public have a say in their business? Specifically when these protections were originally given to protect companies from lawsuits due to what people were posting on their platforms?
Corporations also have the first amendment right to include or exclude whatever they want on their own websites.
Section 230 just stops people from suing services for the speech of their users, ie you can't sue twitter for anything donald trump tweets even if it's illegal/defamatory/etc.
If section 230 didn't exist, then services would become liable for every action their users take on their platforms. I don't understand why people think this would reduce censorship, it'd be the exact opposite. If section 230 wasn't a thing, services would mitigate legal risk by censoring to an unprecedented degree.
Section 230 just stops people from suing services for the speech of their users, ie you can't sue twitter for anything donald trump tweets even if it's illegal/defamatory/etc.
If section 230 didn't exist, then services would become liable for every action their users take on their platforms. I don't understand why people think this would reduce censorship, it'd be the exact opposite. If section 230 wasn't a thing, services would mitigate legal risk by censoring to an unprecedented degree.
If 230 didn't exist we would have had a different medium for a public commons. These companies have become the commons and are now acting as a publisher in order to influence public debate in a direction they deem fit. Perhaps a solution to S230 is to add a clause that specifically states that the 1st amendment has to be upheld if they wish to be protected?
> it's not like Google is going to get in
> trouble for allowing people to post about
> conspiracy theories
Actually it is exactly like that, they see lost revenue coming if they get tagged as the go-to place for misinformation on this topic. They may already be seeing advertisers complaining that no matter how much they try to screen they are still getting complaints of their ads showing up in prerolls for conspiracy videos. So they are making a public show of letting everyone know that they don't want to be in that business and they are doing all they can to stay out of it.
If they will do all they can or not, who knows? It is not like they have done all that much about QAnon.
> trouble for allowing people to post about
> conspiracy theories
Actually it is exactly like that, they see lost revenue coming if they get tagged as the go-to place for misinformation on this topic. They may already be seeing advertisers complaining that no matter how much they try to screen they are still getting complaints of their ads showing up in prerolls for conspiracy videos. So they are making a public show of letting everyone know that they don't want to be in that business and they are doing all they can to stay out of it.
If they will do all they can or not, who knows? It is not like they have done all that much about QAnon.
It's not a bad point, but are you sure this actually hurts Google? I believe Google and Facebook business models are advertising-based, so they strive to maximize the root mean square engagement metrics. People aren't just going to leave YouTube and Facebook et al because there's a bunch of fake news and controversy because:
1. People love that shit.
2. There's no alternative since these companies are ~monopolies that already own all of the network mass.YouTube in particular has been demonetizing channels that they think are harmful to their business for a long time, their behaviour in this instance is consistent with that.
When I Google "who won the election?" it clearly shows Biden won. Is this equally objectionable behavior by Google?
So who decides what is true/accurate? Is this action just related to the current election or will this extend to other "fake news" and elections in other countries? Covid news comes to mind.
The courts do? And so far they haven't produced any evidence and they get flung out of every court.
On COVID, every country on the planet agrees. The scientists have spoken. The guy who thinks the royal family are lizards should not be considered even remotely reliable.
On COVID, every country on the planet agrees. The scientists have spoken. The guy who thinks the royal family are lizards should not be considered even remotely reliable.
Yes! The courts do. And this is going to court now. Google is not and should not be the arbiter of truth.
It's gone to the courts dozens of times already. Just because they continue to fruitlessly file suits doesn't mean that it is actually ongoing.
And just because courts decide something, doesn't mean they follow the truth...
Yep, just look at the recent series "Ourcry" about a kid who served 6 years and was then exonerated for wrongful conviction.
Or look at the Buck decision, a SCOTUS case that lead to forced sterilization.
Or look at the SCOTUS decision that led to Japanese internment camps.
Oh and both of those decisions .. based on Jacobson. Contrary to what the media tells you, in Jacobson, they never forced him to take the vaccination, only pay the $5 fine. But that decision led to Buck and Manzanar.
Or look at the Buck decision, a SCOTUS case that lead to forced sterilization.
Or look at the SCOTUS decision that led to Japanese internment camps.
Oh and both of those decisions .. based on Jacobson. Contrary to what the media tells you, in Jacobson, they never forced him to take the vaccination, only pay the $5 fine. But that decision led to Buck and Manzanar.
It has basically already been to court several times and been flung out repeatedly. With lawyers stating they have nothing to present. There is a certain point where we need to own up and remember saying Biden rigged the election is slander and YouTube is well within it's right not to host it.
You're looking at this through a lens of "fairness". It doesn't have to be fair. Google doesn't have to decide to either let no lies through, or let all lies through.
It's their platform, their property, they are allowed to do with it as they will. Just like a newspaper doesn't have to print every letter sent in by a reader, or every ad someone wants printed. (This later example is something I have experience with: I was the editor of a college newspaper targeted by a white-supremacist holocaust-denying group that wanted me to print their anti-Semitic ads. I didn't print them)
No one is entitled to the amplification of their views that these platforms make possible. They may be platforms that are publicly accessible, but they are privately owned & operated, and I think it would be a serious blow to the concept of private property to essentially impose forced speech on them.
There are plenty of other platforms that will let someone run anything they want through them. Sure, they're not as big and don't have the audience that Google does, but again: no one is entitled to that Freedom of speech doesn't require anyone to force others to repeat that speech.
It's their platform, their property, they are allowed to do with it as they will. Just like a newspaper doesn't have to print every letter sent in by a reader, or every ad someone wants printed. (This later example is something I have experience with: I was the editor of a college newspaper targeted by a white-supremacist holocaust-denying group that wanted me to print their anti-Semitic ads. I didn't print them)
No one is entitled to the amplification of their views that these platforms make possible. They may be platforms that are publicly accessible, but they are privately owned & operated, and I think it would be a serious blow to the concept of private property to essentially impose forced speech on them.
There are plenty of other platforms that will let someone run anything they want through them. Sure, they're not as big and don't have the audience that Google does, but again: no one is entitled to that Freedom of speech doesn't require anyone to force others to repeat that speech.
So we're only allowed to talk about what the courts deem appropriate? And people are ok with this? Screw that.
No, you're allowed to talk about whatever but people think YouTube has a responsibility to stop the spread of things that have been shown to be false and of which there is zero evidence dispite lots of searching for evidence.
[deleted]
so oj didn't do it?
that's a relief.
that's a relief.
There are no perfect solutions involving humans and you know that. Democracy is famously described as the worst system except every other.
Remember the controversy around "YouTube Heroes"? The arbiters of truth are going to be volunteers and activists. And, the process is going to be completely opaque with no appeals process. I guarantee it.
They are not making a decision or "fact checking". We have seen where that goes. They have made a decision not to host content on the topic.
[deleted]
In this case, they are following the judgment of lots and lots of experts, just like with COVID.
I bet it will extend to fully cover one side of the aisle, but not cross over to the other.
It would help if one side of the aisle didn't continue to stand behind a conspiracy theory that has failed in court _many_ dozens of times, now.
From what I understand, the majority of the lawsuits were dismissed for lack of standing not evidentiary reasons.
I doubt that it would help; I don’t think failing in court will be YouTube’s standard. As so many comments remind us, they’re a private company. They don’t have to wait for a court’s opinion.
I also think no left-of-center conspiracy theory would be thrown off YouTube, even if it failed in court.
Maybe this is great, I don’t make any value judgment. It’s just a bet. Take my money if I’m wrong.
I also think no left-of-center conspiracy theory would be thrown off YouTube, even if it failed in court.
Maybe this is great, I don’t make any value judgment. It’s just a bet. Take my money if I’m wrong.
In 2016 they demonitized The Young Turks at one point, a long with a slew of education and left-wing vlogs.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/fruzsinaeordogh/2016/09/02/maki...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/fruzsinaeordogh/2016/09/02/maki...
Was that a conspiracy theory, and had it failed in court?
Youtube does. They pay for the servers, and thus any sensible person who believes in capitalism and freedom of speech would support that they get to decide what content goes on their servers.
They've already been heavily censoring covid news.
No! God, I don't understand why people keep falling into this mindset. Do not hide/remove/censor/block/stop speech because of its content, ever, for any reason! Let all speak their piece, and let all hear what they choose to hear. There are a zillion and one reasons this is the right way to do things that people in first-world countries are forgetting.
Here's the easiest one to grasp: if you create the tools to suppress an idea and willingly let some party make use of them, then you have fulfilled all the preconditions for suppressing good ideas and true ideas except for "who holds the button" - but guess what? You can never guarantee button-holding status in the future! It is dangerous to enable, allow, or normalize speech suppression because you are doing the future bad guys' job for them in the process and making it easier to enact horrifying human rights abuses in the future.
Here's the easiest one to grasp: if you create the tools to suppress an idea and willingly let some party make use of them, then you have fulfilled all the preconditions for suppressing good ideas and true ideas except for "who holds the button" - but guess what? You can never guarantee button-holding status in the future! It is dangerous to enable, allow, or normalize speech suppression because you are doing the future bad guys' job for them in the process and making it easier to enact horrifying human rights abuses in the future.
So many people making capitulations for censorship, including calling fake news of Fox but ignoring how CNN and all the mainstream is full of the same bullshit for "the other side". It seems to be a theme of "I don't like it but $insertjustification." Shame on anybody making justifications for this. It's something you agree with now, but next time it won't be. First they came for the youtubers...
The wikipedia article for the 1876 presidential election should probably be removed from google search as well [1], since it alleges widespread fraud that changed the result of the election, and we are past the safe harbor deadline.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1876_United_States_presidentia...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1876_United_States_presidentia...
Except this is fact-based article. The issue at hand is that there are widespread claims being made that are completely baseless. They are not substantiated by facts. Videos that are making claims without any evidence are not equivalent to an actual scandal/controversy that is backed by evidence. In other words, the claims being made in this election will not be presented in the same format of the article you shared because no one can point to any actual widespread election meddling or vote tampering. I really am blown away why this fundamental distinction is so hard for people to grasp. I can make any false claims about anyone or anything. This does not inherently make something controversial and give it credence. If on the other hand my claims were not fabricated and have merit, then they may result in a scandal/controversy. It seems like you believe because this is being said over and over again that it somehow deserves attention or is credible. That's a really unfortunate position. You cannot will facts into into existence.
"Wrong is wrong, even if everyone is doing it. Right is right even if no one else is doing it." ― Saint Augustine
"Wrong is wrong, even if everyone is doing it. Right is right even if no one else is doing it." ― Saint Augustine
We can write a fact-based article about the 2020 election too. A better 1876 comparison to Youtube's place in 2020 probably can't be had, since I doubt there are many records of the conversations and arguments had about it by regular people in public spaces.
We've seen instances worldwide in the past of false conspiracies spinning out of hand, resulting in deaths.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-46145986
At some point, it becomes reasonable to ask whether private institutions have a responsibility to intercede when their media is used to spread false information that riles hate mobs to kill people.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-46145986
At some point, it becomes reasonable to ask whether private institutions have a responsibility to intercede when their media is used to spread false information that riles hate mobs to kill people.
You don't even need to go that obscure. Just look at the huge rise of Measles in 2019. A 50% increase in deaths compared to 2016. All those extra deaths are directly tied to the antivaxx movement. If social media had banned antivaxx sooner, those people would still be alive.
Blocking this content quite literally saves human lives. Same with antimask content.
Blocking this content quite literally saves human lives. Same with antimask content.
Remember about this when the usual "Google blocked my Gmail" post happens here. Interact with content like this on Youtube and you would risk losing your whole Google account.
"They are a private company so they can do whatever they want!"
"They are a private company so they can do whatever they want!"
Yes thanks for mentioning this, the comments to this post are unusual even for HN. I'm wondering if there are so many comments that they are not actually sorted by most upvotes correctly
I don't know the algorithm they use, but I don't think HN has ever sorted comments purely by most upvotes, or upvote ratio. There's definitely some sort of recency bonus, newer comments with no votes tend to reach the top above older comments with many votes.
Your way of thinking fascinates and terrifies me.
A lot of people are saying things I don’t agree with, so it must be a problem with the “algorithm”.
Maybe it’s just that the majority of the people here feel a certain way.
A lot of people are saying things I don’t agree with, so it must be a problem with the “algorithm”.
Maybe it’s just that the majority of the people here feel a certain way.
This thread is fascinating. Same type of troll/sarcasm/meme comments (e.g. "orange man bad") as you find on Reddit, which are normally absent from HN. This topic clearly brings out the worst no matter where it's discussed.
I’ve never seen such a cesspool in HN. This (low) level of debate here is novel.
This is the only comment I feel like I can meaningfully respond to (and agree with). Much of the rest of the opinions expressed (especially in the most upvoted comments) are done so in such a way that makes it seems as though there's no debate to be had. You're either for or against free speech. No in between. Of course, counterexamples abound but it doesn't matter in this discussion. Truly a sad thing to witness. As the Chinese proverb goes, we certainly do live in interesting times.
Or the commentary is largely coming from those normally absent from HN.
Many of the comments on both sides - although hopefully not most of the worst ones - are from long term contributors.
Many of us try to be reasonable even when we go against the grain here:
Personally I never liked or voted Trump and I trust the American public and American judges more than HN or YouTube.
As an outside observer with contacts on both sides I can see how maddening this must be, so here I am on HN, trying to explain how this feels like for Trump supporters.
Meanwhile I see messages waiting for me on Telegram and I think Instagram from some of those people and I will again tryvto explain them that even if they haven't seen a single Biden supporter for miles it just means they haven't looked in the right places.
But, historically I think being a reasonable person when American elections are discussed on HN is a losing proposition :-)
Many of us try to be reasonable even when we go against the grain here:
Personally I never liked or voted Trump and I trust the American public and American judges more than HN or YouTube.
As an outside observer with contacts on both sides I can see how maddening this must be, so here I am on HN, trying to explain how this feels like for Trump supporters.
Meanwhile I see messages waiting for me on Telegram and I think Instagram from some of those people and I will again tryvto explain them that even if they haven't seen a single Biden supporter for miles it just means they haven't looked in the right places.
But, historically I think being a reasonable person when American elections are discussed on HN is a losing proposition :-)
It must be the outside agitators?
Any political topic on Hacker News tends to bring out emotionally charged commentary. Anyone going against the prevailing ideology gets voted down into a light gray shade that is almost impossible to read. I love the technology discussions here, but when it comes to sociology and politics and topics like Big Tech censorship, it's tediously one sided.
I live in a country that the US has sanctioned in the past for undemocratic election processes. Also, I'm familiar with our voting procedures and have worked on election oversight, data gathering etc.
If we had an election that had a fraction of the irregularities that are surfacing in some of these problematic states, I'm pretty sure we would have been invaded by now. Jokes aside, those states are a similar population size to my country so it's not apples and oranges.
Censorship is also something the US is quick to call out others for.
If we had an election that had a fraction of the irregularities that are surfacing in some of these problematic states, I'm pretty sure we would have been invaded by now. Jokes aside, those states are a similar population size to my country so it's not apples and oranges.
Censorship is also something the US is quick to call out others for.
?? show actual factual sources if you're going to make a claim like that on a platform like HN
The POTUS has been telegraphing this litigation for months or even years before the election. Let's not pretend that his campaign is actually reacting to sincere revelations of fraud. They were always going to dispute the election if they lost it. So many people claim evidence of massive fraud and yet every case I can find gets laughed out of court, often by Trump appointed judges, despite massive incentives to show that evidence in court. It has gotten to the point where conspiracy theorists are literally referring to nonexistent state counties in their court filings. Frankly, it is a conspiracy theory.
> If we had an election that had a fraction of the irregularities that are surfacing in some of these problematic states, I'm pretty sure we would have been invaded by now.
This should probably clue you in that there are, in fact, no real irregularities(beyond what normally occurs).
Surely you must stop at some point and ask yourself - why are you carrying water for Trump?
This should probably clue you in that there are, in fact, no real irregularities(beyond what normally occurs).
Surely you must stop at some point and ask yourself - why are you carrying water for Trump?
The algorithms that optimize the shareholder value are against the idea of having a healthy debate on social media. Echo chambers deliberately implemented by Big Tech has led us here. It is a permanent damage.
If consumers of social media were shown both sides, perhaps we wouldn't be here in the first place.
Truth vs. Falsehood are like a special place on the nyquist plot and its stability criterion is like of an inverted pendulum. Truth is in an unstable equilibrium that requires constant vigilance, maintenance and upkeep. Falsehood thrives and the laws of nature (information theory) are on its side to spread faster, more vigorously and with ever increasing force. As shitty as it sounds, we need some temporary dampers.
Ultimately, we're here because we wanted to sell the right scent of soap to the right echo chamber.
If consumers of social media were shown both sides, perhaps we wouldn't be here in the first place.
Truth vs. Falsehood are like a special place on the nyquist plot and its stability criterion is like of an inverted pendulum. Truth is in an unstable equilibrium that requires constant vigilance, maintenance and upkeep. Falsehood thrives and the laws of nature (information theory) are on its side to spread faster, more vigorously and with ever increasing force. As shitty as it sounds, we need some temporary dampers.
Ultimately, we're here because we wanted to sell the right scent of soap to the right echo chamber.
One day it will be commonly accepted that these ML recommenders have played the same role in this social crisis as the Gaussian copula did in the financial crisis.
YouTube is not serving its users very well. It's becoming an unreliable service. Creators walk on eggshells to avoid political or copyright censorship. Users have a hard time finding interesting content since so much of it is being deleted and replaced with corporate media.
Will this include all videos talking of the Russia collusion?
No, because that actually happened.
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/512487-senate-p...
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/512487-senate-p...
It doesn't matter if it actually happened or not, YouTube's exact words are "We also disallow content alleging widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of a historical U.S. Presidential election." Nothing in there about only disallowing it if somebody believes it happened.
...but it did happen, and has actual admissible evidence to support it. If it weren't for the unprecedented obstruction from the WH on the matter, we'd know even more currently - but, we'll have to wait for a year or so to get more of the story.
Still blown away how trumpism has infected the HN crowd this deeply.
Still blown away how trumpism has infected the HN crowd this deeply.
I this is a good example to bring up. One person sees "Russian Intelligence officer is an associate of Trump's campaign manager, and they worked together on some 'narratives', whatever that means. And if it were something more clearly bad, The Hill would have given a clear explanation.", and another person sees "Definitive evidence of collusion." One person sees a suitcase full of ballots hidden under a table after lying about whether counting was done, another person sees a normal ballot counting process and a misunderstanding.
The same people (YouTube employees) who don't agree with you in the first place are now in the position to decide whether your argument is reasonable enough to make. Nobody is rightly in the position to put guard rails on speculation over events, and I think we'll all be better off when we finally understand this.
The same people (YouTube employees) who don't agree with you in the first place are now in the position to decide whether your argument is reasonable enough to make. Nobody is rightly in the position to put guard rails on speculation over events, and I think we'll all be better off when we finally understand this.
It's fairly definitive, the report didn't mince words:
> Among the probe's newest revelations is that Konstantin V. Kilimnik, an associate of Manafort's, was a "Russian intelligence officer." Manafort's contacts also posed a “grave counterintelligence threat,” according to the report.
> "Manafort worked with Kilimnik starting in 2016 on narratives that sought to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election," the report added.
> "At nearly 1,000 pages, Volume 5 stands as the most comprehensive examination of ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign to date — a breathtaking level of contacts between Trump officials and Russian government operatives that is a very real counterintelligence threat to our elections," Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the panel's vice chairman, added in a statement.
> Among the probe's newest revelations is that Konstantin V. Kilimnik, an associate of Manafort's, was a "Russian intelligence officer." Manafort's contacts also posed a “grave counterintelligence threat,” according to the report.
> "Manafort worked with Kilimnik starting in 2016 on narratives that sought to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election," the report added.
> "At nearly 1,000 pages, Volume 5 stands as the most comprehensive examination of ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign to date — a breathtaking level of contacts between Trump officials and Russian government operatives that is a very real counterintelligence threat to our elections," Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the panel's vice chairman, added in a statement.
Per my interpretation, this all amounts to something troubling, but not definitively something solid pointing to let's say a quid pro quo. So to me this doesn't close the question of whether "it happened".
> “grave counterintelligence threat,”
Somebody's opinion about what could happen or might have happened.
> "very real counterintelligence threat"
The opinion of a member of the opposing political party about what could happen or might have happened.
> narratives
This sounds like something that could be part of collusion but I'd need to see the rest. It's open to interpretation and I don't trust the media enough to assume they wouldn't imply something like this without having something big behind it. Indeed they hint at things without actually stating them because they're not actually true all the time.
> “grave counterintelligence threat,”
Somebody's opinion about what could happen or might have happened.
> "very real counterintelligence threat"
The opinion of a member of the opposing political party about what could happen or might have happened.
> narratives
This sounds like something that could be part of collusion but I'd need to see the rest. It's open to interpretation and I don't trust the media enough to assume they wouldn't imply something like this without having something big behind it. Indeed they hint at things without actually stating them because they're not actually true all the time.
The fact that you're retreating to the semantics of the word narrative and ignoring all surrounding words is a dead giveaway that your blinders are growing longer.
Well, that should be enough to convince you that I shouldn't be in charge of what claims people get to make on YouTube.
Anyway, it kind of sounds like Manafort is involved in a conspiracy of some sort to cover up wrongdoing by the Russians. But it just feels like weasel wording. It sounds bad but I'm not sure what it really means. Is the implication that the Russians did Trump the favor of the social media campaign, and Manafort is doing them the favor of helping them cover it up? That's the quid pro quo? I don't want to give anyone the benefit of the doubt here, I want to hear the point.
Anyway, it kind of sounds like Manafort is involved in a conspiracy of some sort to cover up wrongdoing by the Russians. But it just feels like weasel wording. It sounds bad but I'm not sure what it really means. Is the implication that the Russians did Trump the favor of the social media campaign, and Manafort is doing them the favor of helping them cover it up? That's the quid pro quo? I don't want to give anyone the benefit of the doubt here, I want to hear the point.
Except it didn't:
https://www.npr.org/2019/03/24/706318191/trump-white-house-h...
"Special counsel Robert Mueller did not find evidence that President Trump's campaign conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election, according to a summary of findings submitted to Congress"
https://www.npr.org/2019/03/24/706318191/trump-white-house-h...
"Special counsel Robert Mueller did not find evidence that President Trump's campaign conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election, according to a summary of findings submitted to Congress"
It couldn't find anything on collusion, but the question of obstruction is still open... and what exactly were they obstructing investigators from finding? Evidence of collusion maybe? We won't know because they obstructed the investigation.
Let's not remove the end of that quote so quickly:
"Special counsel Robert Mueller did not find evidence that President Trump's campaign conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election, according to a summary of findings submitted to Congress by Attorney General William Barr."
I think Attorney General William Barr did not correctly summarize the findings of the Mueller report, and was acting to drive an incorrect narrative.
Given that, I think it's entirely appropriate to also look at the Republican-controlled Senate report that the OP linked, which says it did.
"Special counsel Robert Mueller did not find evidence that President Trump's campaign conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election, according to a summary of findings submitted to Congress by Attorney General William Barr."
I think Attorney General William Barr did not correctly summarize the findings of the Mueller report, and was acting to drive an incorrect narrative.
Given that, I think it's entirely appropriate to also look at the Republican-controlled Senate report that the OP linked, which says it did.
>Given that, I think it's entirely appropriate to also look at the Republican-controlled Senate report that the OP linked, which says it did.
Wrong, it said it did not find collision.
Here's the summary from the lead on the US Senate Special Committee on Intelligence:
https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases...
“We can say, without any hesitation, that the Committee found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election."
Wrong, it said it did not find collision.
Here's the summary from the lead on the US Senate Special Committee on Intelligence:
https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases...
“We can say, without any hesitation, that the Committee found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election."
Rubio says this, but that doesn’t comport with the contents of the report. Trump’s Campaign manager giving internal campaign data, to a man who the Senate Intel Committee characterizes as a “Russian intel Agent”. and then lying about it to the American people and the FBI is clearly evidence of collusion.
For Rubio to make this statement, he needs to explain this finding of his committee.
For Rubio to make this statement, he needs to explain this finding of his committee.
If you read my link it was not referring to the Mueller investigation.
In August, of this year, the US Senate Special Committee on Intelligence concluded its investigation and found that collusion occurred with Russian nationals, and possibly Russian intelligence. _Separately_ from Mueller.
In August, of this year, the US Senate Special Committee on Intelligence concluded its investigation and found that collusion occurred with Russian nationals, and possibly Russian intelligence. _Separately_ from Mueller.
[deleted]
Your own article disagrees with you:
> The committee's findings are a more in-depth look at the interference than Mueller's investigation, but the findings run parallel to the conclusions of Mueller's probe, which found overwhelming evidence of Russia's efforts to interfere in the election through disinformation and cyber campaigns but a lack of sufficient evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin to impact the outcome of the 2016 election.
Mueller didn't indict a single US citizen for conspiring with Russia.
It didn't happen.
> The committee's findings are a more in-depth look at the interference than Mueller's investigation, but the findings run parallel to the conclusions of Mueller's probe, which found overwhelming evidence of Russia's efforts to interfere in the election through disinformation and cyber campaigns but a lack of sufficient evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin to impact the outcome of the 2016 election.
Mueller didn't indict a single US citizen for conspiring with Russia.
It didn't happen.
The article isn't about the Mueller report, it's about the Senate Committee. The Senate Committee did conclude that collusion with Russian nationals, and possibly intelligence, occurred; they did so _separately_ from the Mueller investigation.
I'll quote it again since you didn't read:
> the findings run parallel to the conclusions of Mueller's probe, which found overwhelming evidence of Russia's efforts to interfere in the election through disinformation and cyber campaigns but a lack of sufficient evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin to impact the outcome of the 2016 election.
That's from the article you linked.
a lack of sufficient evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin to impact the outcome of the 2016 election.
Do you see that part?
> the findings run parallel to the conclusions of Mueller's probe, which found overwhelming evidence of Russia's efforts to interfere in the election through disinformation and cyber campaigns but a lack of sufficient evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin to impact the outcome of the 2016 election.
That's from the article you linked.
a lack of sufficient evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin to impact the outcome of the 2016 election.
Do you see that part?
I do see that part, did you see the rest of that quoted paragraph?
The _subject_ of that quote is the Mueller investigation, _not_ the Senate Committee.
> the findings run parallel to the conclusions of Mueller's probe, which found overwhelming evidence of Russia's efforts to interfere in the election through disinformation and cyber campaigns but a lack of sufficient evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin to impact the outcome of the 2016 election.
It's stating that _Mueller's probe_ found evidence of efforts, but not sufficient evidence of conspiracy. This is _not_ stating that the committee did not.
The _subject_ of that quote is the Mueller investigation, _not_ the Senate Committee.
> the findings run parallel to the conclusions of Mueller's probe, which found overwhelming evidence of Russia's efforts to interfere in the election through disinformation and cyber campaigns but a lack of sufficient evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin to impact the outcome of the 2016 election.
It's stating that _Mueller's probe_ found evidence of efforts, but not sufficient evidence of conspiracy. This is _not_ stating that the committee did not.
It says they found the same thing: a lack of sufficient evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin to impact the outcome of the 2016 election.
It's possible to parse that quote two ways, but it's pretty easy to find another source (or read the Senate report yourself)
To quote The Intercept[1], on Paul Manafort in the Senate report:
One of Manafort’s closest aides during his time in Ukraine was Konstantin Kilimnik, who the Senate report identifies as a Russian intelligence officer. Kilimnik also served as Manafort’s liaison with Deripaska.
While he was working for Trump during the 2016 campaign, Manafort stayed in contact with Kilimnik and gave him the Trump campaign’s internal polling data, which showed that the key to defeating Clinton was to drive up negative attitudes about her among voters.
The Senate report says that the intelligence committee “obtained some information suggesting Kilimnik may have been connected to the GRU’s hack and leak operation targeting the 2016 election.” The report adds that “this information suggests that a channel for coordination on the GRU hack operation may have existed through Kilimnik.” The report adds that in interviews with Mueller’s prosecution team, “Manafort lied consistently about one issue in particular: his interactions with Kilimnik.” Manafort decided to “face more severe criminal penalties rather than provide complete answers about his interactions with Kilimnik.” The Manafort-Kilimnik relationship, the Senate report concludes, represents “the single most direct tie between senior Trump campaign officials and the Russian intelligence services.”
To emphasise a direct quote from the Republican-led Senate Committee: "the single most direct tie between senior Trump campaign officials and the Russian intelligence services."
Now it's possible that Manafort was doing this because he was greedy and getting money from the Russians (he was getting paid by them), and it's possible to argue that it wasn't collusion because Trump fired him.
And of course "collusion" is a messy thing anyway - there is no clear definition, and no crime called "colluding".
The whole report is worth reading[2].
[1] https://theintercept.com/2020/09/03/trump-russia-senate-repo...
[2] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
To quote The Intercept[1], on Paul Manafort in the Senate report:
One of Manafort’s closest aides during his time in Ukraine was Konstantin Kilimnik, who the Senate report identifies as a Russian intelligence officer. Kilimnik also served as Manafort’s liaison with Deripaska.
While he was working for Trump during the 2016 campaign, Manafort stayed in contact with Kilimnik and gave him the Trump campaign’s internal polling data, which showed that the key to defeating Clinton was to drive up negative attitudes about her among voters.
The Senate report says that the intelligence committee “obtained some information suggesting Kilimnik may have been connected to the GRU’s hack and leak operation targeting the 2016 election.” The report adds that “this information suggests that a channel for coordination on the GRU hack operation may have existed through Kilimnik.” The report adds that in interviews with Mueller’s prosecution team, “Manafort lied consistently about one issue in particular: his interactions with Kilimnik.” Manafort decided to “face more severe criminal penalties rather than provide complete answers about his interactions with Kilimnik.” The Manafort-Kilimnik relationship, the Senate report concludes, represents “the single most direct tie between senior Trump campaign officials and the Russian intelligence services.”
To emphasise a direct quote from the Republican-led Senate Committee: "the single most direct tie between senior Trump campaign officials and the Russian intelligence services."
Now it's possible that Manafort was doing this because he was greedy and getting money from the Russians (he was getting paid by them), and it's possible to argue that it wasn't collusion because Trump fired him.
And of course "collusion" is a messy thing anyway - there is no clear definition, and no crime called "colluding".
The whole report is worth reading[2].
[1] https://theintercept.com/2020/09/03/trump-russia-senate-repo...
[2] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
What? No. Factual videos are not what this is talking about.
Who decides that the videos in Russia are factual, while the videos in the US are not?
I suppose it would depend on whether the claims in the video have been substantiated, e.g., by the intelligence community. A video talking about Russian interference via targeted facebook ads would be fine.
On the other hand, a video claiming Russian agents infiltrated thousands of voting centers with sleeper agents should probably not get through the filter.
Though as with any content filters, there will be edge cases, false positives, false negatives, etc. that will all pose a problem.
This is the fundamental problem of common user spaces on the web these days: a failure to impose standards will often result in a toxic environment. Yet attempting to impose standards is something of an arms-race game of whack-a-mole.
I think HN only manages the balance somewhat decently because the users themselves are also highly interested in productive conversation and mostly downvote -> dead comments that are likely to provoke flaming instead of discourse.
On the other hand, a video claiming Russian agents infiltrated thousands of voting centers with sleeper agents should probably not get through the filter.
Though as with any content filters, there will be edge cases, false positives, false negatives, etc. that will all pose a problem.
This is the fundamental problem of common user spaces on the web these days: a failure to impose standards will often result in a toxic environment. Yet attempting to impose standards is something of an arms-race game of whack-a-mole.
I think HN only manages the balance somewhat decently because the users themselves are also highly interested in productive conversation and mostly downvote -> dead comments that are likely to provoke flaming instead of discourse.
If you're hosting a party, it's not only your right to determine what kinds of behavior and conversations are allowed and not allowed, it's your duty to do so.
YouTube gets to decide what's on their platform. As an organization, they have decided that the election fraud stuff is not only false, but harmful. That's not only their right, it's their duty.
YouTube gets to decide what's on their platform. As an organization, they have decided that the election fraud stuff is not only false, but harmful. That's not only their right, it's their duty.
Evidence!
How do we present evidence for the side that's banned, again?
Like normal, and that's a disingenuous rebuttal. The evidence is not being suppressed, the misinformation is.
GoFundMe deplatformed Matt Braynard when he tried to raise money for the voter fraud research. He didn't even assert that the fraud happened or not and they still kicked him off for what they've said is "disinformation".
Historically in the US there have been only a handful of cases where voter fraud overturned an election, and it was in small elections with very narrow margins. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, the likes of which will not happen in a GoFundMe. The effort was meant to sow distrust and repeat the weaponized cynicism.
Seems like "laminar flow" would be a possible explanation here...
Fluid flow near surfaces becomes a near zero vector.
Fluid flow near surfaces becomes a near zero vector.
You're moving the goalposts.
Nope! Just stating facts.
Sure, "facts" that are irrelevant to the topic.
But if you insist, Matt Braynard managed to raise the money on some other platform and he did found enough potentially illegal votes to swing some states. Mainly people who moved out of state and things like that. So here are your facts.
But if you insist, Matt Braynard managed to raise the money on some other platform and he did found enough potentially illegal votes to swing some states. Mainly people who moved out of state and things like that. So here are your facts.
I tried to look into this right now.
He says he's found evidence. All he's posted that I can find is a 42min long video I can't be bothered watching properly, but skipping through it his methodology seems to rely on surveying people now and comparing to voting records. This - of course - isn't "finding potentially illegal votes".
But maybe I missed something. I do think it's interesting that his Twitter profile says he's releasing "data and reports" a week from Nov 24, and there is nothing.
It's also interesting how much of his video is about asking for donations......
He says he's found evidence. All he's posted that I can find is a 42min long video I can't be bothered watching properly, but skipping through it his methodology seems to rely on surveying people now and comparing to voting records. This - of course - isn't "finding potentially illegal votes".
But maybe I missed something. I do think it's interesting that his Twitter profile says he's releasing "data and reports" a week from Nov 24, and there is nothing.
It's also interesting how much of his video is about asking for donations......
[Citation needed]
GoFundMe is allowed to look at off platform behavior to decide.
That's cool, but he started the campaign on November 6 and they kicked him out the next day. He didn't say anywhere that the fraud happened or not. He was just raising money for the research.
Will they let people raise money to see if theft of a bank is feasible, or to design business models for heroin dealers? They're not robbing banks or selling heroin... Where does your argument even end? It doesn't matter because it is a private platform, and if they smell BS they are free to get rid of it.
What are you even talking about? You can't compare teaching people how to sell heroin or rob a bank and conducting a research. What I take issue with is that they kicked him out for something that he did not do.
If you don't understand rhetorical argument, then I cannot address your falsehoods in a way that is coherent.
He was part of the Trump campaign in 2016 and from the 3rd to the 6th he interacted with various Twitter accounts that fueled the conspiracy and his fundraising was clearly attracting an audience who read between the lines.
GoFundMe is in their right to believe there was dog-whistling.
GoFundMe is in their right to believe there was dog-whistling.
All right then, show me where exactly can you see the dog-whistling here: https://archive.md/e5mwk
I'm not your monkey but this one is easy enough:
"Even just a few matches would be indicative of a much more substantial voter fraud operation" said by a Trump supporter who get's the support from a majority of misinformation spreaders when he opens the GoFundMe:
https://twitter.com/ZubSpike/status/1324871896689750017 https://twitter.com/Ester04848788/status/1324535773819924481
"Even just a few matches would be indicative of a much more substantial voter fraud operation" said by a Trump supporter who get's the support from a majority of misinformation spreaders when he opens the GoFundMe:
https://twitter.com/ZubSpike/status/1324871896689750017 https://twitter.com/Ester04848788/status/1324535773819924481
Bring the evidence to the court? It's funny how the side claiming there was fraud apparently has trucks full of evidence and affidavits on news channels and social media, but when it comes to an actual courtroom, where lying has real consequences, suddenly, they don't claim "fraud" anymore and they don't have any real evidence.
It's always the same. Lie endlessly the news, and they tell a different story under oath, or they go to jail for it.
Over and over again.
Over and over again.
Who would you have it be? The government? A committee? Honestly, a private company making the decision seems like the least problematic of all options. You're free to "vote them out of office" with your dollars if you wish.
Mueller report and various indictments with pretty documented evidence.
The US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which concluded there existed close ties between Russian nationals, and possibly Russian intelligence, and the Trump campaign.
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/512487-senate-p...
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/512487-senate-p...
Except it didn't find any evidence of collusion:
https://www.npr.org/2019/03/24/706318191/trump-white-house-h...
"Special counsel Robert Mueller did not find evidence that President Trump's campaign conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election, according to a summary of findings submitted to Congress"
https://www.npr.org/2019/03/24/706318191/trump-white-house-h...
"Special counsel Robert Mueller did not find evidence that President Trump's campaign conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 election, according to a summary of findings submitted to Congress"
Impressive, a throwaway account that uses the very controversial summary that Barr wrote quickly before the report was released and without Mueller's re-reading.
Here's the follow up from NPR where Mueller later distanced himself from this obviously misleading summary: https://www.npr.org/2019/04/30/718883130/mueller-complained-...
There's at least two accounts trying to conflate the Mueller investigation with the Senate Committee. It's kind of amazing how ... clearly identical their arguments are.
Yeah. In a thread where the debate is about "people being able to form their opinions on their own" it seems like they really like to depend on spoon-fed talking points.
tha0xa1(1)
>Impressive, a throwaway account that uses the very controversial summary that Barr
Or use the latest findings from the lead on the Senate Intel report: https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases...
“We can say, without any hesitation, that the Committee found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election."
Unfortunately it has to be a throwaway because these kinds of facts might as well be thought crimes here.
Or use the latest findings from the lead on the Senate Intel report: https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases...
“We can say, without any hesitation, that the Committee found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election."
Unfortunately it has to be a throwaway because these kinds of facts might as well be thought crimes here.
Once again, you're not linking to a source document that explicitly presents evidence. In fact there are clearly more than a hundred pages about Trump and Russians engaging in activity around the 2016 campaign.
You link to a partisan Senator who, by the way contributed to the Donald Trump campaign, says he found no-evidence.
The thought crime here is leaning into the weasel-word of "collusion" when it isn't clearly defined by Rubio or even the report or "Russian government" to cop out of the deep involvement of ex-spies and oligarchs out of Russia.
Source: https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
You link to a partisan Senator who, by the way contributed to the Donald Trump campaign, says he found no-evidence.
The thought crime here is leaning into the weasel-word of "collusion" when it isn't clearly defined by Rubio or even the report or "Russian government" to cop out of the deep involvement of ex-spies and oligarchs out of Russia.
Source: https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
>Once again, you're not linking to a source document that explicitly presents evidence.
This is the exact document that Rubio is referencing in his press release I linked above. The evidence presented explicitly presents no evidence of Trump colluding.
>You link to a partisan Senator
Rubio was the head chair of the investigation, not some random senator.
>The thought crime here is leaning into the weasel-word of "collusion" when it isn't clearly defined by Rubio
Facts and legal definitions are not "weasel-words".
Your linked source just proves the following statement:
"We can say, without any hesitation, that the Committee found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election."
You can continue to believe fake news, but that doesn't make it reality.
This is the exact document that Rubio is referencing in his press release I linked above. The evidence presented explicitly presents no evidence of Trump colluding.
>You link to a partisan Senator
Rubio was the head chair of the investigation, not some random senator.
>The thought crime here is leaning into the weasel-word of "collusion" when it isn't clearly defined by Rubio
Facts and legal definitions are not "weasel-words".
Your linked source just proves the following statement:
"We can say, without any hesitation, that the Committee found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election."
You can continue to believe fake news, but that doesn't make it reality.
Collusion in the context of election campaigns has no legal definition. If I'm the one who believes in fake news I wonder why you're the one sourcing your beliefs from controversial and disavowed summaries and partisan actors.
>I wonder why you're the one sourcing your beliefs from controversial and disavowed summaries and partisan actors.
NPR, official press releases from the chairs of senate intelligence committees, etc. have not been disavowed and the facts agree with me.
Again, if you stop believing fake news and actually read what has been linked above, you will find that:
“Over the last three years, the Senate Intelligence Committee conducted a bipartisan and thorough investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election and undermine our democracy. We interviewed over 200 witnesses and reviewed over one million pages of documents. No probe into this matter has been more exhaustive."
“We can say, without any hesitation, that the Committee found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election."
NPR, official press releases from the chairs of senate intelligence committees, etc. have not been disavowed and the facts agree with me.
Again, if you stop believing fake news and actually read what has been linked above, you will find that:
“Over the last three years, the Senate Intelligence Committee conducted a bipartisan and thorough investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election and undermine our democracy. We interviewed over 200 witnesses and reviewed over one million pages of documents. No probe into this matter has been more exhaustive."
“We can say, without any hesitation, that the Committee found absolutely no evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election."
I've read your links but somehow it feels you haven't read mine as they offer later rebuttals to your sources.
You may insist that Rubio said something about the report is an official source but his words are contradicted by the report itself.
But ok I'll concede your following point that relies on "collusion" and "government" : the report didn't find "evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election."
You are not addressing the central point of the SIC volume 5 report: Trump and his campaign engaged in criminal and unethical activity with Russian ex-spies, agents run by Russia and oligarchs.
You may insist that Rubio said something about the report is an official source but his words are contradicted by the report itself.
But ok I'll concede your following point that relies on "collusion" and "government" : the report didn't find "evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 election."
You are not addressing the central point of the SIC volume 5 report: Trump and his campaign engaged in criminal and unethical activity with Russian ex-spies, agents run by Russia and oligarchs.
The link I provided was not referring to the Mueller investigation.
In August, of this year, the a US Senate Committee on Intelligence found that the Trump campaign colluded with Russian nationals, and possibly Russian intelligence.
Independently of Mueller.
In August, of this year, the a US Senate Committee on Intelligence found that the Trump campaign colluded with Russian nationals, and possibly Russian intelligence.
Independently of Mueller.
In your own provided source:
"The committee's findings are a more in-depth look at the interference than Mueller's investigation, but the findings run parallel to the conclusions of Mueller's probe, which found overwhelming evidence of Russia's efforts to interfere in the election through disinformation and cyber campaigns but a lack of sufficient evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin to impact the outcome of the 2016 election."
Your own source literally disproves what you're claiming.
I'll say it again, from your source:
"lack of sufficient evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin to impact the outcome of the 2016 election."
"The committee's findings are a more in-depth look at the interference than Mueller's investigation, but the findings run parallel to the conclusions of Mueller's probe, which found overwhelming evidence of Russia's efforts to interfere in the election through disinformation and cyber campaigns but a lack of sufficient evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin to impact the outcome of the 2016 election."
Your own source literally disproves what you're claiming.
I'll say it again, from your source:
"lack of sufficient evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin to impact the outcome of the 2016 election."
Yes, that quote says that the Mueller investigation failed.
However, the article is _about the Senate Committee_. This is a different thing than the Mueller investigation, and it succeeded where Mueller failed.
FTA:
> Among the probe's newest revelations is that Konstantin V. Kilimnik, an associate of Manafort's, was a "Russian intelligence officer." Manafort's contacts also posed a “grave counterintelligence threat,” according to the report.
> "Manafort worked with Kilimnik starting in 2016 on narratives that sought to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election," the report added.
> "At nearly 1,000 pages, Volume 5 stands as the most comprehensive examination of ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign to date — a breathtaking level of contacts between Trump officials and Russian government operatives that is a very real counterintelligence threat to our elections," Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the panel's vice chairman, added in a statement.
However, the article is _about the Senate Committee_. This is a different thing than the Mueller investigation, and it succeeded where Mueller failed.
FTA:
> Among the probe's newest revelations is that Konstantin V. Kilimnik, an associate of Manafort's, was a "Russian intelligence officer." Manafort's contacts also posed a “grave counterintelligence threat,” according to the report.
> "Manafort worked with Kilimnik starting in 2016 on narratives that sought to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election," the report added.
> "At nearly 1,000 pages, Volume 5 stands as the most comprehensive examination of ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign to date — a breathtaking level of contacts between Trump officials and Russian government operatives that is a very real counterintelligence threat to our elections," Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the panel's vice chairman, added in a statement.
>Yes, that quote says that the Mueller investigation failed.
It says nothing of the sort, it actually agrees with the Mueller investigation, and only adds to its legitimacy.
Nothing that you quoted points towards collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. There were contacts with Russians from both the DNC and RNP, but once again:
> a lack of sufficient evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin to impact the outcome of the 2016 election.
Lack of evidence that Trump conspired. There is no collusion.
Thanks for proving my point with your source.
It says nothing of the sort, it actually agrees with the Mueller investigation, and only adds to its legitimacy.
Nothing that you quoted points towards collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. There were contacts with Russians from both the DNC and RNP, but once again:
> a lack of sufficient evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin to impact the outcome of the 2016 election.
Lack of evidence that Trump conspired. There is no collusion.
Thanks for proving my point with your source.
You keep quoting the bits that are talking about the Mueller investigation and not the Senate Committee.
This? This is about Mueller. Not the committee.
> lack of sufficient evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin to impact the outcome of the 2016 election.
This? This is about Mueller. Not the committee.
> lack of sufficient evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Kremlin to impact the outcome of the 2016 election.
>You keep quoting the bits that are talking about the Mueller investigation and not the Senate Committee.
Wrong, I am quoting the bits that are taking about the US Senate Special Committee on Intelligence report.
>"the findings run parallel to the conclusions of Mueller's probe"
"the findings [of the US Senate Special Committee on Intelligence] run parallel to the conclusions of Mueller's probe"
It's reconfirming that the Senate committee findings run parallel, or in other words, come to the same conclusion, as the Mueller report.
Wrong, I am quoting the bits that are taking about the US Senate Special Committee on Intelligence report.
>"the findings run parallel to the conclusions of Mueller's probe"
"the findings [of the US Senate Special Committee on Intelligence] run parallel to the conclusions of Mueller's probe"
It's reconfirming that the Senate committee findings run parallel, or in other words, come to the same conclusion, as the Mueller report.
Good lord that's a reach.
In stating they ran parallel they meant that they're investigating the same offences at the same time. It ran parallel, but did not collaborate with, the Mueller investigation. It found more evidence and drew stronger conclusions.
In stating they ran parallel they meant that they're investigating the same offences at the same time. It ran parallel, but did not collaborate with, the Mueller investigation. It found more evidence and drew stronger conclusions.
> Will this include all videos talking of the Russia collusion?
All of them? I highly doubt it.
All of them? I highly doubt it.
Because that actually happened
You were alive when Trump called for Russia to hack Hillary's emails? Or when his son and son and law admitted to negotiating with them? Or when Trump tried to drop Russian sanctions?
You were alive when Trump called for Russia to hack Hillary's emails? Or when his son and son and law admitted to negotiating with them? Or when Trump tried to drop Russian sanctions?
So, if China censors something that's censorship and if Youtube and Twitter does it (with the blessing of the Govt) , it's to protect the people from conspiracies..Got it..
The people passively or actively supporting this stuff because it suits their ideological aims are mentally more aligned with the guards over at China's Uyghur concentration camps than they are to the freedom orientated people who founded the country they're currently occupying.
Shoulder shrugs and "ugh, fuck, well at least it's the people we disagree with" at best.
Shoulder shrugs and "ugh, fuck, well at least it's the people we disagree with" at best.
Ah yes the slave owning freedom orientated people who founded the country would know best about freedom.
If you give that a little thought you'll realize that their first hand experience in the above matter would probably better qualify them on the topic of freedom and slavery than anything you can personally speak to.
And regardless, the point stands. The people who are cheering the silencing of the "other" are morally aligned with those championing the "re-education" of the other over in China. In fact, the former even broached the topic of how to "re-educate" their opponents on social media recently.
And regardless, the point stands. The people who are cheering the silencing of the "other" are morally aligned with those championing the "re-education" of the other over in China. In fact, the former even broached the topic of how to "re-educate" their opponents on social media recently.
There is almost nothing ‘provable’ or ‘disprovable’ about what is claimed to be ‘accurate’ or ‘misleading’. Therefore, everything comes down to an appeal to authority. I thought surely that we had, with all of our mathematical and technological sophistication, progressed beyond this point in our civilization.
For as smart as many of the people on this site are, I'm shocked how many don't understand the fundamental principal that YouTube is a private company and can do whatever they please with speech. This isn't the government, this isn't first amendment.
You're mischaracterizing the outrage. Virtually everyone is making a normative argument against this censorship, not a technical one. Google is perfectly within their rights to host what they want, everyone can agree with that. Whether they should engage in censorship (beyond what is required by law) is what everyone is debating.
I disagree. There are many here (including you) that conflate the idea of 1st Amendment "freedom of speech" and the general idea of censorship. You even use the word "censorship" to provoke a knee-jerk reaction as if censorship is automatically evil and we ought to have some inherent right to not be censored. We do have such a right, from the 1st Amendment, and it doesn't apply to YouTube.
Companies censor, as they often should. They should censor against violence, exploitation, DDOS attacks, and much more. They should censor to protect their viewers and their brands. If you want to spew hate speech, exploit some vulnerable people, build a devoted following of uneducated people then do it on your own dime.
Companies censor, as they often should. They should censor against violence, exploitation, DDOS attacks, and much more. They should censor to protect their viewers and their brands. If you want to spew hate speech, exploit some vulnerable people, build a devoted following of uneducated people then do it on your own dime.
And you are conflating the principle of freedom of speech with the implementation (the 1st Amendment). Many believe that people do indeed have an inherent, natural right to not be censored, while also acknowledging that 1A is only partial protection and that companies are free to choose what content they host.
Yes, companies are free to censor content as they should. It's not only a shrewd business decision but it is also good for anyone watching the platform. Censorship is even done to comply with the law, as is the case with child pornography. Censorship is not the inherently bad thing you make it out to be. By saying the word "censorship" as if it's synonymous with "bad" you are piggybacking off the idea that our legal rights are being violated, as if someone is experiencing a tremendous loss because they can't post their specific brand of hate speech on a popular website. The reality is that our rights are not violated and such content has proven to be directly harmful to other people and harmful to YouTube as a brand.
This thread starts out with the assumption that this was the result of a partisan request for censorship.
That is concerning, surely, but there's a big difference between a handful of government partisans asking a private corporation to censor content -- versus the Government forcing a private corporation to censor content. The former is not a violation of the first amendment.
You'd think we were in China considering how many people here think that our internet overlords know better about what we should and shouldn't see. Censorship in China is mostly through private platforms as well. And regardless of that, mostly people there buy the story that a particular bit of censored information is a threat to the nation and worthy of censorship.
Why is censorship suddenly a required response to every supposed existential threat to our nation now? In fact, this trend of censorship is an existential threat to the nation.
Why is censorship suddenly a required response to every supposed existential threat to our nation now? In fact, this trend of censorship is an existential threat to the nation.
He made no claims about any entity knowing better than any other entity.
Also, if you think a “private” company in China is even remotely the same as a private company in America you’re in for a surprise.
Also, if you think a “private” company in China is even remotely the same as a private company in America you’re in for a surprise.
I'm in for no such surprise. I worked at (and also ran) some of these companies in China and the business charters, org charts, and operations were not much different from US companies. And private companies on both sides of the Pacific can be tools of the government.
Google is an arm of the State Department [1] and Facebook and other SV companies have ties to the CIA [2].
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/assange-google-not-what-it-seems-27...
[2] https://theintercept.com/2016/04/14/in-undisclosed-cia-inves...
Google is an arm of the State Department [1] and Facebook and other SV companies have ties to the CIA [2].
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/assange-google-not-what-it-seems-27...
[2] https://theintercept.com/2016/04/14/in-undisclosed-cia-inves...
With apologies to H.L. Mencken [1]
"Freedom of video publishing belongs to those who own the platform."
The good news is that anyone can own a platform these days. If you want to publish something, you can do it yourself very easily. You don't have to have youtube do it for you.
[1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/05/21/free-press/#:~:text....
"Freedom of video publishing belongs to those who own the platform."
The good news is that anyone can own a platform these days. If you want to publish something, you can do it yourself very easily. You don't have to have youtube do it for you.
[1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/05/21/free-press/#:~:text....
This is a really dangerous line of argument for an example where one platform has a de-facto monopoly on views, whose censorship is fine-grained enough that people open to these other ideas simply won't be able to find them.
It makes a lot of sense for individual publications, or even Reddit banning certain communities, since people looking for alternatives will know to do so. It's a lot more insidious in a case like this, since there's no clear indication that anything is missing.
It makes a lot of sense for individual publications, or even Reddit banning certain communities, since people looking for alternatives will know to do so. It's a lot more insidious in a case like this, since there's no clear indication that anything is missing.
All of these alternatives are just a search and a click away. If people want to find them, they can.
Until the alternatives are de-listed from search because "they contain disinformation" and the alternative search engines are de-listed and black-holed at the DNS resolver level for the same reasons.
I suspect that will be the next problem. By basically disenfranchising conspiracists they will (and in some cases have) formed their own platforms.
Maybe it will be a net good to separate out the hardcore conspiracy types, but given how relatively widespread sympathy to this idea is, I wonder if it won't just create more and more polarized platforms, which I personally think will only worsen things.
I don't really have any alternative suggestions, and I do think the way ideas spread on the internet is pretty frightening, but I'm not how good the long term results of this are gonna be.
Maybe it will be a net good to separate out the hardcore conspiracy types, but given how relatively widespread sympathy to this idea is, I wonder if it won't just create more and more polarized platforms, which I personally think will only worsen things.
I don't really have any alternative suggestions, and I do think the way ideas spread on the internet is pretty frightening, but I'm not how good the long term results of this are gonna be.
Practically speaking, network effects make it nearly impossible for alternative platforms to achieve the scale of their mainstream ancestors. Right-wing communities exiled from Reddit have much smaller audiences in their new homes.
I'm not so concerned with this level of "censorship" in and of itself. But what happens, when, inevitably, the media starts to demand the same out of Google, AWS, ISPs? That's the truly scary prospect.
EDIT: scary
I'm not so concerned with this level of "censorship" in and of itself. But what happens, when, inevitably, the media starts to demand the same out of Google, AWS, ISPs? That's the truly scary prospect.
EDIT: scary
I abhor this, but what can be done about it? I genuinely don't know how to push back against measures like these and I'm hoping people here have some ideas.
If your favorite channels are on BitChute or Rumble, support them there instead.
If you don't like it, you can upload your videos to one of the other 1000's of platforms or sign up for a shared web host and utilize P2P video sharing.
Yep. You can make your own video uploader. Then build your own hosting provider. Which would use a payment processor that you also built. Which handles transactions from a bank that you created yourself as well.
Because if you step out of line on Accepted Thought And Speech, you get cancelled.
Because if you step out of line on Accepted Thought And Speech, you get cancelled.
technically you would also need to build your own payment network. and build your own electrical grid where you put the electricity you generated on your own. of course you would need to invent your own transistor to be able to build your own integrated circuits to be able to build your own computer.
I have nothing to upload because I'm not a content creator. I think that it's wrong for YouTube to be silencing people this way and I hope there's some way to influence YouTube without abandoning it - because the vast majority of people won't.
Here's a better title: "Private company where a large chunk of public discussion happens get to push a certain political agenda and decide what's true and what's not".
"Not hosting baseless nutjob conspiracy allegations" is easy to differentiate from your regular "political opinion".
Your equivalence is false.
Your equivalence is false.
>These stable packages just postpone the inevitable technological debt and when you have to pay the debt, it's too late.
Easy or not [1], it's not the business of a video to do the differentation in behalf of the citizenry.
Not to mention that it being "easy" is a naive assumption, by people who feel that it's only the "other bad side" that's affected, which even if it was true, is something that can turn around on a dime based on the political climate, changing corpoate interests, etc)
Easy or not [1], it's not the business of a video to do the differentation in behalf of the citizenry.
Not to mention that it being "easy" is a naive assumption, by people who feel that it's only the "other bad side" that's affected, which even if it was true, is something that can turn around on a dime based on the political climate, changing corpoate interests, etc)
I don't like what YouTube is doing.
But...
What is going on in the US just now is unprecedented in modern Western democracies - we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA. Mainstream news networks like Fox have talking heads spouting venomous lies that are demonstrably and trivially proven as such. The POTUS is lying on an hourly basis (many of those lies just brazenly, ridiculously false), and has millions of people believing his every word - he's personally profiting hugely, while brainwashing them and whipping them up into frenzy. It's fucking dangerous, especially with the US' lax gun laws.
I don't like private companies getting to decide what's truthful and what's not, but it's not like the US government is doing a better job, and is it safe to allow mad conspiracies and obvious lies to become "truth" for so many millions?
I don't think there are any good outcomes here regardless - it's one of those "least worst" choices.
But...
What is going on in the US just now is unprecedented in modern Western democracies - we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA. Mainstream news networks like Fox have talking heads spouting venomous lies that are demonstrably and trivially proven as such. The POTUS is lying on an hourly basis (many of those lies just brazenly, ridiculously false), and has millions of people believing his every word - he's personally profiting hugely, while brainwashing them and whipping them up into frenzy. It's fucking dangerous, especially with the US' lax gun laws.
I don't like private companies getting to decide what's truthful and what's not, but it's not like the US government is doing a better job, and is it safe to allow mad conspiracies and obvious lies to become "truth" for so many millions?
I don't think there are any good outcomes here regardless - it's one of those "least worst" choices.
I think you nailed it, but I want to reframe it just a little.
There have always been limitations on free speech, especially when it presents a danger to others. That’s exactly what the talking heads are doing, and their speech absolutely should be limited.
But as with so many harmful things, we humans tend to only be good at reacting to immediate threats while ignoring those that kill us slowly. Think dietary decisions.
If you call for violence, you get in trouble, but if you spend months pushing propaganda meant to inspire violence, you get away with it. We’ve got to recognize the cumulative effects are the same and react accordingly.
There have always been limitations on free speech, especially when it presents a danger to others. That’s exactly what the talking heads are doing, and their speech absolutely should be limited.
But as with so many harmful things, we humans tend to only be good at reacting to immediate threats while ignoring those that kill us slowly. Think dietary decisions.
If you call for violence, you get in trouble, but if you spend months pushing propaganda meant to inspire violence, you get away with it. We’ve got to recognize the cumulative effects are the same and react accordingly.
Do you think YouTube should suppress Black Lives Matter content? They've inspired, you know, actual violence, with disinformation.
Would you mind providing an example of that?
The disinformation is the notion that police are targeting black people (they're not). The entirety of BLM is built on disinformation. The violence is widespread and easy to find evidence of. There's plenty here, just scroll back to late May:
https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/media
I was going provide a long list of specific examples but I am very skeptical it would have any effect, I'd rather not waste my time.
https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/media
I was going provide a long list of specific examples but I am very skeptical it would have any effect, I'd rather not waste my time.
What I asked for was an example where BLM is calling for violence. What you've provided was evidence of protests - some violent, some not - in the name of various causes.
What you've now basically claimed, is that none of these protests have any legitimacy - violent or not. What you've explicitly claimed is the notion that police don't disproportionately act violently towards minorities. Why do you say BLM is built on disinformation?
Edit: there is just footage of the Paris protests thrown in there for good measure? Do you even know why people are protesting in Paris right now? Come on, man, I'm willing to look over your sources but don't just throw someone's twitter profile at me, shrug and go: "If you don't believe this then clearly nothing will convince you."
What you've now basically claimed, is that none of these protests have any legitimacy - violent or not. What you've explicitly claimed is the notion that police don't disproportionately act violently towards minorities. Why do you say BLM is built on disinformation?
Edit: there is just footage of the Paris protests thrown in there for good measure? Do you even know why people are protesting in Paris right now? Come on, man, I'm willing to look over your sources but don't just throw someone's twitter profile at me, shrug and go: "If you don't believe this then clearly nothing will convince you."
"I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain"
The only disinformation here is you saying "violence is widespread" and that police is not targeting black people. If so, how do you explain these findings?
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793#sec-2
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793#sec-2
I wouldn't consider Andy Ngo to be the good source for unbiased information, he's known to selectively edit and splice videos[1] he posts.
[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/andy-n...
[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/andy-n...
Viewpoints are fine.
Advocating violence is not.
Advocating violence is not.
Your comment makes me wonder what the reaction would be if one political side starts screaming, without any evidence, "Bleach is effective against the virus! Drink it right now, guys! MSM is not talking about it, or even downplaying it, because they want you to take the vaccine and be controlled by Bill Gates".
Well in effect QAnon is probably spreading crazy shit like this, but QAnon is way way more fringe than the current "won't-admit-Joe-Biden-won" movement, which comprise a lot of the "R"-branded people, a lot of them are even allowed on Fox News.
Well in effect QAnon is probably spreading crazy shit like this, but QAnon is way way more fringe than the current "won't-admit-Joe-Biden-won" movement, which comprise a lot of the "R"-branded people, a lot of them are even allowed on Fox News.
The President is the most powerful figure of the government. Government censorship is the greatest threat to democracy.
The President wants his voice to be the loudest, most trusted voice.
The President wants to discredit any dissenting voices.
The President only wants your vote to count if you voted for him.
If you are against censorship, how can you stand behind such a President, who wants to control the messaging that every citizen hears and believes, and whether your own voice even counts?
Who here thinks more people get political information from President Trump than get political news from YouTube?
The President wants his voice to be the loudest, most trusted voice.
The President wants to discredit any dissenting voices.
The President only wants your vote to count if you voted for him.
If you are against censorship, how can you stand behind such a President, who wants to control the messaging that every citizen hears and believes, and whether your own voice even counts?
Who here thinks more people get political information from President Trump than get political news from YouTube?
Orwellian drivel.
> If you are against censorship, how can you stand behind such a President
If you are against censorship, how can you be against censorhip of the president and his supporters?
> If you are against censorship, how can you stand behind such a President
If you are against censorship, how can you be against censorhip of the president and his supporters?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_censorship
> Political censorship exists when a government attempts to conceal, fake, distort, or falsify information that its citizens receive by suppressing or crowding out political news that the public might receive through news outlets. In the absence of neutral and objective information, people will be unable to dissent with the government or political party in charge. The term also extends to the systematic suppression of views that are contrary to those of the government in power.
I'm against political censorship most of all. I don't enjoy the current state of things in which private organizations are being utilized to spread misinformation that originated from a prominent voice of the government, and are faced with the difficult choice of adopting organizational censorship in order to combat political censorship.
> Political censorship exists when a government attempts to conceal, fake, distort, or falsify information that its citizens receive by suppressing or crowding out political news that the public might receive through news outlets. In the absence of neutral and objective information, people will be unable to dissent with the government or political party in charge. The term also extends to the systematic suppression of views that are contrary to those of the government in power.
I'm against political censorship most of all. I don't enjoy the current state of things in which private organizations are being utilized to spread misinformation that originated from a prominent voice of the government, and are faced with the difficult choice of adopting organizational censorship in order to combat political censorship.
This attempt to reframe speech that you dislike (that you feel "crowds out" speech that you see as more important) as censorship, in an attempt to justify actual censorship of that speech, is just what I call orwellian. It's like saying that "words are violence" to justify actual violence.
To crowd something out means "to push, move, or force (something or someone) out of a place or situation by filling its space". Youtube videos do not crowd out other youtube videos, there's enough space on youtube for everyone.
To crowd something out means "to push, move, or force (something or someone) out of a place or situation by filling its space". Youtube videos do not crowd out other youtube videos, there's enough space on youtube for everyone.
> If you are against censorship, how can you stand behind such a President, who wants to control the messaging that every citizen hears and believes, and whether your own voice even counts?
Because this supposedly omnipotent being can't even tweet without a warning message attached to it?
Because this supposedly omnipotent being can't even tweet without a warning message attached to it?
Where did I claim omnipotence?
Yes - when your own government feeds you misinformation, it should come with warning labels. Trusting your government without any consideration is handing over freedom foolishly.
Yes - when your own government feeds you misinformation, it should come with warning labels. Trusting your government without any consideration is handing over freedom foolishly.
Your entire post makes it sound like Trump is some kind of dictator. Yet he can't even tweet without a bright red warning message disputing it. If Trump is having his message subverted, then maybe your views on censorship are misdirected?
I hope you realize how your argument is in bad faith.
How did trumpism penetrate this deeply into the HN crowd?
I don't think we're anywhere near peak. The potential of deepfake videos - and not realistic ones necessarily, but memey reaffirments ala many photoshops - is massive and heavily underutilized compared to where they could be. And that's just one small dimension of lightly explored territory.
If anything, this cycle has simply shown that there is massive merit in investing heavily in brazen manipulation techniques.
We ain't seen nothing yet.
If anything, this cycle has simply shown that there is massive merit in investing heavily in brazen manipulation techniques.
We ain't seen nothing yet.
I was expecting to see a realistic convincing deepfake before the election, but this did happen: a video was faked making it look like Biden addressed a crowd as if they were in a different state. Pretty lame as far as fake videos go, but it plays into the "Biden is senile" narrative...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
In the long term, Deepfake won't make people believe in fake videos, it will just make all confidence in video evidence disappear.
People will trust some fake videos until they see stunningly realistic videos of themselves hanging out with Hitler, or whatever.
Later we will have some video devices that use some kind of encryption and network connectivity to validate frames of video faster than they could be post-processed, creating trustworthy video. However, crazy people will just say the organizations running the validation are illegitimate.
People will trust some fake videos until they see stunningly realistic videos of themselves hanging out with Hitler, or whatever.
Later we will have some video devices that use some kind of encryption and network connectivity to validate frames of video faster than they could be post-processed, creating trustworthy video. However, crazy people will just say the organizations running the validation are illegitimate.
> it will just make all confidence in video evidence disappear
You don't see a problem with that?
Why stop there, why have confidence in anything any longer? Earth is flat, earth is round? Who knows, both are likely.
You don't see a problem with that?
Why stop there, why have confidence in anything any longer? Earth is flat, earth is round? Who knows, both are likely.
Video material is going to lose its value, like many other kinds of evidence before. Just think about your own judgement about pictures nowadays and you can probably apply it to videos in 10-20 years. Neither of them will lose all of their value as evidence, but they will be adjusted as technology is going forward.
A lot of people are going to fall for the con before we get to that point, unfortunately.
In the long run I think you're correct, but just looking at how poorly the Boomers and even Gen Xers are adjusting to modern forms of media, I'd say it's safe to assume it will take a generation or even two before media literacy with regards to video is properly adjusted among the general public, at which point, who knows what kind of tech will be available?
I'd like to think younger people would be able to verify sources or discern misinformation, but I don't have much hope. A scroll through /r/all on reddit will show you millennial and gen Z audiences getting whipped up into a frenzy with fake or out-of-context tweets or posts all the time.
Why do you think deep fakes would be a problem? It just makes it cheap.
Any serius actor can make a video of someone doing something that might look real since years.
Any serius actor can make a video of someone doing something that might look real since years.
What? No that's horrible, the problem is obvious.
The GOP has raised over $200m since the election, with very little of it earmarked (<25%) for actual legal expenses. Most of it will go towards paying off campaign debts, the Georgia runoff election, and the rest of it who knows where else.
I can only see this behavior being completely normalized due to its effectiveness. Short of massive bipartisan regulation limiting election fundraising this is the future of America.
I can only see this behavior being completely normalized due to its effectiveness. Short of massive bipartisan regulation limiting election fundraising this is the future of America.
The only way forward i see is massive campaign finance reform. what's happening now is a travesty and the citizenry doesn't benefit from it.
The POTUS has made claims that need to be thought about rationally.
Does the tech world really think that electronic voting is reliable when done the way Dominion did it?
Is there is a rational explanation when votes jump from one candidate to another on live public TV?
Are there too many acceptable mail in votes to make sense?
Etc.
The conclusion for someone who does the research may be that things are OK, that all is legit. I don't know, as I have no interest in doing that research.
But if you start removing all the videos that present any arguments in that direction, than I will definitely assume there is fraud going on.
It is far better for all the "proofs" to be out there and available, than to have people saying that all of the "proofs" were deleted by the people with obvious interests.
Does the tech world really think that electronic voting is reliable when done the way Dominion did it?
Is there is a rational explanation when votes jump from one candidate to another on live public TV?
Are there too many acceptable mail in votes to make sense?
Etc.
The conclusion for someone who does the research may be that things are OK, that all is legit. I don't know, as I have no interest in doing that research.
But if you start removing all the videos that present any arguments in that direction, than I will definitely assume there is fraud going on.
It is far better for all the "proofs" to be out there and available, than to have people saying that all of the "proofs" were deleted by the people with obvious interests.
> ...think that electronic voting is reliable...
Given that there is a paper trail in virtually all cases, and that the manual counting of that paper trail almost perfectly matched the electronic version, the answer can only be "Yes!". There's zero evidence of fraud, and abundant affirmative evidence that the machines accurately and completely counted the ballots that were entered.
By all means, continue to have a paper record so we can verify afterwards, but the dominion systems worked very well.
Edit: The fact that this question is continuing to be asked, in spite of all of this mountain of easily available affirmative proof, is a shocking indictment of the general public. I wish people took the responsibility which comes with the right to free speech a little more seriously.
Given that there is a paper trail in virtually all cases, and that the manual counting of that paper trail almost perfectly matched the electronic version, the answer can only be "Yes!". There's zero evidence of fraud, and abundant affirmative evidence that the machines accurately and completely counted the ballots that were entered.
By all means, continue to have a paper record so we can verify afterwards, but the dominion systems worked very well.
Edit: The fact that this question is continuing to be asked, in spite of all of this mountain of easily available affirmative proof, is a shocking indictment of the general public. I wish people took the responsibility which comes with the right to free speech a little more seriously.
> Edit: The fact that this question is continuing to be asked, in spite of all of this mountain of easily available affirmative proof, is a shocking indictment of the general public. I wish people took the responsibility which comes with the right to free speech a little more seriously.
And yet cites no sources to this "easily available affirmative proof". Thanks for setting the example.
And yet cites no sources to this "easily available affirmative proof". Thanks for setting the example.
Fortunately for you, youtube has assembled a list of resources. Don't ask me how I found it:
https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/supporting-the-2020-us-...
https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/supporting-the-2020-us-...
[deleted]
I'm no Trump fan, but I try to be open with this stuff and actually tuned into one of the Arizona hearings out of curiosity. It was pretty interesting hearing from a retired US colonel giving evidence to say that these machines are built to be manipulated (1).
While I'm highly skeptical of any of the fraud stuff, I would much rather the opportunity to explore the issue like this myself than have it shut down by corporate gatekeepers.
(1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Wja-JMaNXQ
While I'm highly skeptical of any of the fraud stuff, I would much rather the opportunity to explore the issue like this myself than have it shut down by corporate gatekeepers.
(1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Wja-JMaNXQ
Perhaps I'm stating the obvious, but the video you linked to is still up. This, despite the fact that the specific claims made have been roundly debunked. Pima county, the county referenced, has done a hand count and it matched the machine count almost exactly. That news is widely available.
These videos being up isn't contributing to the debate so much as providing a lot of smoke that can be pointed to as evidence of fire by people who mostly haven't watched them and can't be bothered to do their own research (I'm not accusing you of this, to be clear).
These videos being up isn't contributing to the debate so much as providing a lot of smoke that can be pointed to as evidence of fire by people who mostly haven't watched them and can't be bothered to do their own research (I'm not accusing you of this, to be clear).
I really don't have a dog in this fight. I'm not a US citizen. I cannot stand Trump. I pretty much only care about this issue from an information architecture pov.
But ... from my understanding, a hand-count is not the same as an electoral audit. An audit exhaustively looks at the systems, procedures, and the path that the data has traveled in order to verify the result.
From what I'm aware of, that is what Trump people are disputing? Please correct me if I'm wrong on this.
But ... from my understanding, a hand-count is not the same as an electoral audit. An audit exhaustively looks at the systems, procedures, and the path that the data has traveled in order to verify the result.
From what I'm aware of, that is what Trump people are disputing? Please correct me if I'm wrong on this.
The Trump people are alleging that there was fraud, frequently with no specifics. Where they have made specific allegations, those allegations have been roundly disproved. They then continue to say there was fraud, see my previous statement about smoke.
The fundamental problem here is the impracticality of proving a negative. In order to conclusively demonstrate that there was no fraud of any kind we would need to have an audit trail from citizenship being granted (largely at birth) through votes being tabulated. That's impossible. So we have standards for what things we investigate and how we investigate them. Those standards have been surpassed out of an abundance of caution in virtually all cases this election cycle.
As an aside, it's interesting to me that the group which normally screams the loudest about government inefficiency and the waste that comes from the government are suddenly the people screaming that everything needs to be checked and rechecked at huge cost to the tax payer when there is very, very little chance of anything changing. This is going to be in textbooks in the future under the heading "Loss Aversion", which I guess means at least we'll get something out of the money we're lighting on fire?
The fundamental problem here is the impracticality of proving a negative. In order to conclusively demonstrate that there was no fraud of any kind we would need to have an audit trail from citizenship being granted (largely at birth) through votes being tabulated. That's impossible. So we have standards for what things we investigate and how we investigate them. Those standards have been surpassed out of an abundance of caution in virtually all cases this election cycle.
As an aside, it's interesting to me that the group which normally screams the loudest about government inefficiency and the waste that comes from the government are suddenly the people screaming that everything needs to be checked and rechecked at huge cost to the tax payer when there is very, very little chance of anything changing. This is going to be in textbooks in the future under the heading "Loss Aversion", which I guess means at least we'll get something out of the money we're lighting on fire?
I looked for the dominion api that lets you add weight factors to people’s votes, haven’t found the code though, its release has been blocked for trade secret reasons or something?
well, as long as you're sure.
I'm not sure what your point is, but you don't have to take my word for it. That's the nice thing about facts!
The POTUS makes claims which have no evidence backing them, which is why he keeps losing over and over again in court.
Why should any random claim be called a "proof"? Should flat earth videos get the same equivalent as NASA programming?
Why should we, as society, give equal weight to people like yourself who have "no interest in doing that research"?
Why should any random claim be called a "proof"? Should flat earth videos get the same equivalent as NASA programming?
Why should we, as society, give equal weight to people like yourself who have "no interest in doing that research"?
Nobody says they are the same. However false or even only what one might consider false or misleading is a very low bar for censorship.
Come on, it's not being censored based solely on the fact that it's false and misleading, it's being censored because it has the potential to incite violence and cause serious social upheaval.
As does silencing a large majority of people that either correctly or incorrectly believe that there was massive electoral fraud that resulted in Biden being elected president.
If you are trying to incite a civil war, this is a good way to help push it along by silencing people.
If you are trying to incite a civil war, this is a good way to help push it along by silencing people.
How do you feel about calls to 'liberate' individual US states, plots to kidnap and put on trial a state governor, and exhortations to sacrifice life on behalf of a failed candidate?
I've been rather unpopularly predicting an eventual civil war for about 5 years on HN, maybe a bit longer. Predicting is one thing; if you're suggesting that others are inciting it, as you did above, then your analysis should be a bit broader and more inclusive.
I've been rather unpopularly predicting an eventual civil war for about 5 years on HN, maybe a bit longer. Predicting is one thing; if you're suggesting that others are inciting it, as you did above, then your analysis should be a bit broader and more inclusive.
I think it's a lot more likely that Trump pushing outlandish/false/inflammatory claims starts the civil war, not the fact that some YouTube videos suddenly vanish.
If you can prevent the former by removing viral reach of the latter, isn't that a net win? It's sad that a private company has to do it, but one could argue that it's the morally correct thing to do, in this case.
These people are free to host their videos on Parler / Gab / etc, and broadcast this nonsense without the free mainstream reach.
If you can prevent the former by removing viral reach of the latter, isn't that a net win? It's sad that a private company has to do it, but one could argue that it's the morally correct thing to do, in this case.
These people are free to host their videos on Parler / Gab / etc, and broadcast this nonsense without the free mainstream reach.
It's telling that none of these "fraud" arguments ever make it into the president's campaign's lawsuits. They're only ever repeated on sympathetic propaganda outlets.
It's almost as if they realize they're peddling bullshit.
It's almost as if they realize they're peddling bullshit.
There will always be fraud going on in every election, in every country.
It's just stupid to think otherwise, now the question is to what extend and would it have changed the outcome. The answer is obvious.
> now the question is to what extend and would it have changed the outcome
That actually isn't the question in my mind. If there is fraud it should be investigated and prosecuted regardless of whether it would change the result or not.
I'm more interested in improving things for future elections, and for that reason I don't think it makes sense to dismiss accusations of fraud, widespread or not.
It seems pretty clear that there are lots of things we can do to improve the way in which we carry out elections. Devising systems that are resilient to fraud and are transparent such that accusations of fraud are easily resolved is important for injecting confidence back into the process.
That actually isn't the question in my mind. If there is fraud it should be investigated and prosecuted regardless of whether it would change the result or not.
I'm more interested in improving things for future elections, and for that reason I don't think it makes sense to dismiss accusations of fraud, widespread or not.
It seems pretty clear that there are lots of things we can do to improve the way in which we carry out elections. Devising systems that are resilient to fraud and are transparent such that accusations of fraud are easily resolved is important for injecting confidence back into the process.
> The POTUS has made claims that need to be thought about rationally.
The POTUS's claims are neither true nor rational, and yet they are prominent. We need to think about that rationally.
The POTUS's claims are neither true nor rational, and yet they are prominent. We need to think about that rationally.
Then how is it that election security was backburnered his entire term? And his accusations aren't that "voting machines may be vulnerable" which is at least defensible, but rather that "Voting machines were deliberately configured to flip votes for Biden based on a planned conspiracy involving the manufacturers, democrats and multiple foreign governments" which is utterly ludicrous and deserves nothing but scorn.
It's kinda funny to me how many people who claim to value "true free speech" are in favour of the government being able to enforce speech.
Fundamentally, what people are saying here is that the current US administration should be able to force YouTube to distribute material containing lies that benefit them. This is obviously just as harmful as someone being stopped from publishing something by the government.
I agree there are cases where private entities can become so important to speech that they need to be regulated, but the kneejerk response to this kind of thing just seems so ill thought out. The right to freedom of expression clearly has to include the freedom to not express something.
The obvious example is, should Google be able to go to Fox News and force them to publish pieces that Google write? Is the line editorial control? That path leads to YouTube ceasing to exist as a platform anyone can upload to, which seems like a large cost as well.
I don't think there are easy answers, and "free speech" tends to end up as a thought-terminating cliche in these discussions, ignoring the fact that there are multiple parties with the right to freedom of speech that can conflict. The question really becomes about the right to platform, and if everyone has a legal right to any platform, everything will be drowned out in noise.
Fundamentally, what people are saying here is that the current US administration should be able to force YouTube to distribute material containing lies that benefit them. This is obviously just as harmful as someone being stopped from publishing something by the government.
I agree there are cases where private entities can become so important to speech that they need to be regulated, but the kneejerk response to this kind of thing just seems so ill thought out. The right to freedom of expression clearly has to include the freedom to not express something.
The obvious example is, should Google be able to go to Fox News and force them to publish pieces that Google write? Is the line editorial control? That path leads to YouTube ceasing to exist as a platform anyone can upload to, which seems like a large cost as well.
I don't think there are easy answers, and "free speech" tends to end up as a thought-terminating cliche in these discussions, ignoring the fact that there are multiple parties with the right to freedom of speech that can conflict. The question really becomes about the right to platform, and if everyone has a legal right to any platform, everything will be drowned out in noise.
> but it's not like the US government is doing a better job
I think this is the part people are overlooking when they talk about censorship and freedom of speech...what are you supposed to do when it's the government of your country itself that is actively pushing large amounts of misinformation? Does it not completely change the situation compared to an individual or organisation doing this?
It takes more effort to show a lie to be false than it does to tell another lie, and the public only have finite time to weigh up the accuracy of information. The government has more power to push out convincing misinformation in vast quantities than anyone else.
A lot of the time of you don't need censorship because truth and open critique will drown out the lies, but there's going to be a breaking point when the misinformation being thrown out becomes overpowering.
I think this is the part people are overlooking when they talk about censorship and freedom of speech...what are you supposed to do when it's the government of your country itself that is actively pushing large amounts of misinformation? Does it not completely change the situation compared to an individual or organisation doing this?
It takes more effort to show a lie to be false than it does to tell another lie, and the public only have finite time to weigh up the accuracy of information. The government has more power to push out convincing misinformation in vast quantities than anyone else.
A lot of the time of you don't need censorship because truth and open critique will drown out the lies, but there's going to be a breaking point when the misinformation being thrown out becomes overpowering.
> The government has more power to push out convincing misinformation in vast quantities than anyone else.
Really? You don't think that the mass media is at least in the same league?
Really? You don't think that the mass media is at least in the same league?
Yes, on reflection, I could have phrased it better. The government is for sure a powerful entity though and although the media can push misinformation, there's multiple outlets (that aren't all working together to push the same message) and only a single government per country. Anything the government says or does immediately becomes news and gets reported everywhere too, and few have a megaphone like that. Just having a lie with no evidence being discussed is enough to give it some legitimacy.
> I don't like private companies getting to decide what's truthful and what's not, but it's not like the US government is doing a better job
If the responsibility has to lie with either one (to police other people's truth, I mean - both have a responsibility not to spew the garbage themselves) then we're screwed. If a majority of the population simply doesn't have the critical thinking and background knowledge necessary to weed out fake news, democracy simply can't work. I would argue we're there in the United States. Too much bias for us to recover from our current politics without very significant changes to our system and / or the population.
If the responsibility has to lie with either one (to police other people's truth, I mean - both have a responsibility not to spew the garbage themselves) then we're screwed. If a majority of the population simply doesn't have the critical thinking and background knowledge necessary to weed out fake news, democracy simply can't work. I would argue we're there in the United States. Too much bias for us to recover from our current politics without very significant changes to our system and / or the population.
> If a majority of the population simply doesn't have the critical thinking and background knowledge necessary to weed out fake news, democracy simply can't work.
One could probably make this same claim about a wide array of things that people are not capable of on an individual basis, yet humanity can typically overcome these with various systemic approaches (why have every individual perform every task, when many can be offloaded to public services).
Does it seem odd that no one's floated the idea that rather than providing information to the public only through a kind of whirlwind of conflicting news flashes and memes, that we also adopt an approach where we endeavour to assemble all important issues into a slowly changing master list, and then off of that we attach news updates, centralized, evidence-based fact checking, public debate & voting, etc? Of course this is extremely far from easy, and is surely impossible to do perfectly, but it doesn't seem at all like a crazy idea to me...and yet, I don't think I've ever heard the idea mentioned.
One could probably make this same claim about a wide array of things that people are not capable of on an individual basis, yet humanity can typically overcome these with various systemic approaches (why have every individual perform every task, when many can be offloaded to public services).
Does it seem odd that no one's floated the idea that rather than providing information to the public only through a kind of whirlwind of conflicting news flashes and memes, that we also adopt an approach where we endeavour to assemble all important issues into a slowly changing master list, and then off of that we attach news updates, centralized, evidence-based fact checking, public debate & voting, etc? Of course this is extremely far from easy, and is surely impossible to do perfectly, but it doesn't seem at all like a crazy idea to me...and yet, I don't think I've ever heard the idea mentioned.
I think the difference between now and the past is that everyone can exercise their constitutional right to free speech. Free speech used to be somewhat expensive -- by the time you've gone to journalism school and have been hired by someone with a media outlet, you've become the establishment. You want to tell a good story and hold those in power to account, but you know that you have a reputation and you can throw it all away if you don't think carefully about which stories you write and publish. All of this care has made free speech look pretty good and that's it's a must-have for society. (Using your words, to some extent this is "private companies getting to decide what's truthful and what's not"; Facebook doing it is not a whole lot different than the New York Times doing it. The Times doesn't publish every "letter to the editor", and Facebook doesn't have to either.)
What I think is happening now is that free speech is actually free. Thanks to tech companies, there is no cost to getting your ideas out there. The problem is, you have nothing to lose if your reputation is destroyed by poorly-thought-out speech. ("Cancel culture" seems to be the workaround for this, but it doesn't seem very good to me.) The result is that we have decided that we don't actually like this whole freedom thing. But, I think it's actually pretty okay; you have to take the bad with the good (or the very bad with the very good).
We should all be vigilant about calls for regulating speech. It looks like a very good short-term solution, but it won't be a very good long-term solution. To have the best possible society, we need to confront the underlying issues head-on. It's not "fake news" or that people are inflammatory on Facebook. It's that they don't have the educational background to think critically about what they read or hear, and can't actually distinguish a flame designed to manipulate them from writing that is designed to inform them. They are also often so isolated they can't even begin to understand other people's perspectives, and so have no mental model of how to even interpret writing they don't personally understand.
As a society, we have to make sure that we fix this problem. We need every human being to get a great education. We need people to interact with people that look different from them from an early age. It will be expensive, it will be hard, and it will take a long time. But I think looking out 200 years, it's where we want to go, and we should get started right now.
Resist the calls to sweep posts you don't like under the rug, or even to make them illegal. It won't fix any of the underlying problems.
What I think is happening now is that free speech is actually free. Thanks to tech companies, there is no cost to getting your ideas out there. The problem is, you have nothing to lose if your reputation is destroyed by poorly-thought-out speech. ("Cancel culture" seems to be the workaround for this, but it doesn't seem very good to me.) The result is that we have decided that we don't actually like this whole freedom thing. But, I think it's actually pretty okay; you have to take the bad with the good (or the very bad with the very good).
We should all be vigilant about calls for regulating speech. It looks like a very good short-term solution, but it won't be a very good long-term solution. To have the best possible society, we need to confront the underlying issues head-on. It's not "fake news" or that people are inflammatory on Facebook. It's that they don't have the educational background to think critically about what they read or hear, and can't actually distinguish a flame designed to manipulate them from writing that is designed to inform them. They are also often so isolated they can't even begin to understand other people's perspectives, and so have no mental model of how to even interpret writing they don't personally understand.
As a society, we have to make sure that we fix this problem. We need every human being to get a great education. We need people to interact with people that look different from them from an early age. It will be expensive, it will be hard, and it will take a long time. But I think looking out 200 years, it's where we want to go, and we should get started right now.
Resist the calls to sweep posts you don't like under the rug, or even to make them illegal. It won't fix any of the underlying problems.
First, I think this is a great comment and worth discussing.
Second, I'm not sure I agree with your assertion that we (entities with the capability and responsibility) should be required to allow something fundamentally dangerous to the nation's integrity to be an amplified message.
The reasoning is that to get to "every human being to get a great education", we need a phenomenal, unified, progressive nation that values education very highly. To get people to willingly interact with people that look different from them, we need a shared belief in the value of diversity. I believe we have evidence that large proportions of the population are readily influenced and manipulated by media, and of course peer-sourced media may have become even more powerful than what was once reputation-based journalism.
Now, I don't think cutting off the amplification of substantially dangerous ideas does fix the underlying problem, but it seems rational to believe it is currently contributing to the problem. It's in the causal chain. To reach the better society you envision, we need the same elements we hope to achieve - great education and humanity and valuing diversity. Basically, it's hoping that the majority of individuals flip a switch and embrace the changes we need, and from there we can continue to propagate the change.
I don't feel like I have the answers, because it's a difficult problem, and I don't believe the trajectory is currently positive. Spreading misinformation is getting easier. Accepting misinformation seems to be growing more prevalent. A once seemingly foregone conclusion of the inevitable ubiquitous acceptance of diversity appears to be tragically stalled. The entities we elected to solve these problems are no longer content to work together in civil discussion and compromise in order to discover and implement potential solutions.
If there's a choice between the band-aid of social media trying to put a finger in the dam to stop the flooding, and an effective remedy to the core problems, I'll gladly choose the remedy, but given the apparent non-existence of such a remedy, I'll begrudgingly accept the band-aid.
Second, I'm not sure I agree with your assertion that we (entities with the capability and responsibility) should be required to allow something fundamentally dangerous to the nation's integrity to be an amplified message.
The reasoning is that to get to "every human being to get a great education", we need a phenomenal, unified, progressive nation that values education very highly. To get people to willingly interact with people that look different from them, we need a shared belief in the value of diversity. I believe we have evidence that large proportions of the population are readily influenced and manipulated by media, and of course peer-sourced media may have become even more powerful than what was once reputation-based journalism.
Now, I don't think cutting off the amplification of substantially dangerous ideas does fix the underlying problem, but it seems rational to believe it is currently contributing to the problem. It's in the causal chain. To reach the better society you envision, we need the same elements we hope to achieve - great education and humanity and valuing diversity. Basically, it's hoping that the majority of individuals flip a switch and embrace the changes we need, and from there we can continue to propagate the change.
I don't feel like I have the answers, because it's a difficult problem, and I don't believe the trajectory is currently positive. Spreading misinformation is getting easier. Accepting misinformation seems to be growing more prevalent. A once seemingly foregone conclusion of the inevitable ubiquitous acceptance of diversity appears to be tragically stalled. The entities we elected to solve these problems are no longer content to work together in civil discussion and compromise in order to discover and implement potential solutions.
If there's a choice between the band-aid of social media trying to put a finger in the dam to stop the flooding, and an effective remedy to the core problems, I'll gladly choose the remedy, but given the apparent non-existence of such a remedy, I'll begrudgingly accept the band-aid.
This is the inevitable ruckus as more people realize that USA is a rigged democracy, and lose trust in the electoral system.
A plain and transparent democracy would be "everybody votes, the candidate with more votes wins". Instead USA has the electoral college (what for? it has to vote the same as its citizens), winning by districts (what for? districts only exist to allow gerrymandering), and vote by mail without strict controls.
I bet fewer people would complain if the system wasn't so evidently made for gaming numbers.
A plain and transparent democracy would be "everybody votes, the candidate with more votes wins". Instead USA has the electoral college (what for? it has to vote the same as its citizens), winning by districts (what for? districts only exist to allow gerrymandering), and vote by mail without strict controls.
I bet fewer people would complain if the system wasn't so evidently made for gaming numbers.
It would be much similar to other nations if instead of an electoral college, people would just vote for senate seats. The senate then vote on a senate president who then becomes the leader of the nation.
In order to not give small states too much power they then could do as the EU parliament and give seats based on degressive proportionality.
In order to not give small states too much power they then could do as the EU parliament and give seats based on degressive proportionality.
Ironically the Electoral College was designed in part to protect against populist lunatics like Trump, but it's he who has benefited from it.
I recommend Hate Inc by Matt Taibbi.
It's a fantastic book that brilliantly illuminates the false dichotomy of red team vs blue team politics and news media.
We should all be careful of the corporate press. Their purpose is to profit, not inform. This applies both to red team and blue team news media. Comfortable lies are profitable while difficult truths are not.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Silencing voices we don't like only give them credence and power, especially in the age of the internet and new media.
It's a fantastic book that brilliantly illuminates the false dichotomy of red team vs blue team politics and news media.
We should all be careful of the corporate press. Their purpose is to profit, not inform. This applies both to red team and blue team news media. Comfortable lies are profitable while difficult truths are not.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Silencing voices we don't like only give them credence and power, especially in the age of the internet and new media.
Note it is backwards to think that if a platform _fails_ to carry the regime's message then _the platform_ is impeding freedom rather than noting that it is _the government_ that is applying anti-freedom pressure on a dissenting _non government_ organization.
Youtube is _not_ the government but by reigning in falsehoods, is acting in _opposition_ to the government here. So what Youtube is doing is the very definition of _freedom_ of expression. A government pressuring them to carry pro-government messages is the crime, not the other way around.
You are now having the government and pro-government voices pressure non-government organizations to publish pro-government material while claiming that it "protects" freedom of speech. This the exact _opposite_ of freedom of speech, it is in fact forced propaganda.
So indeed there is no "but" because it is _the government_ that is in the wrong by pressuring publishers in what they must include.
Youtube is _not_ the government but by reigning in falsehoods, is acting in _opposition_ to the government here. So what Youtube is doing is the very definition of _freedom_ of expression. A government pressuring them to carry pro-government messages is the crime, not the other way around.
You are now having the government and pro-government voices pressure non-government organizations to publish pro-government material while claiming that it "protects" freedom of speech. This the exact _opposite_ of freedom of speech, it is in fact forced propaganda.
So indeed there is no "but" because it is _the government_ that is in the wrong by pressuring publishers in what they must include.
Finally, someone!
A private company doing content moderation & censorship is not a violation of the free speech amendment.
Freedom of expression is not freedom to use any platform or service -- it is protection against state level actors.
A private company doing content moderation & censorship is not a violation of the free speech amendment.
Freedom of expression is not freedom to use any platform or service -- it is protection against state level actors.
Whatever you think of Trump's politics, I think it's safe to say that his time in office has set a series of very bad precedents for the US political process. This is just the latest in that series. I agree that this is the "least worst" choice in the short term, but it fails to address what I think are the core problems with Youtube w.r.t. radicalization and fake news while setting a precedent for blocking political content in the future.
I fully agree. What YouTube is doing right now is perhaps the "least worst" to deal with radicalisation in the very short term - but if this increasing lie-based polarisation continues unchecked, I genuinely fear for the future of the US.
But what can realistically be done while maintaining freedom of speech, and especially when the "leader of the free world" is arguably the main culprit?
But what can realistically be done while maintaining freedom of speech, and especially when the "leader of the free world" is arguably the main culprit?
"But..."
YouTube viewers are not Google's customers.1 If it is to survive, Google must cater to the wishes of its clients.
1. Yes, I am aware that a small number of people pay Google to remove ads, but that is not a viable business model unless Google is also selling ad space.
YouTube viewers are not Google's customers.1 If it is to survive, Google must cater to the wishes of its clients.
1. Yes, I am aware that a small number of people pay Google to remove ads, but that is not a viable business model unless Google is also selling ad space.
It's all fine until they censor us. Sooner or later they'll go to far. In my opinion they already have.
When they censor medical doctors for talking about the facts around HCQ. Or I see PHDs censoring themselves on the subject of covid19 vaccinations instead of being able to have an open, honest conversation.
I don't like all the lies and fake news out there and how easily it sucks people in. But censorship isn't the answer in my opinion.
When they censor medical doctors for talking about the facts around HCQ. Or I see PHDs censoring themselves on the subject of covid19 vaccinations instead of being able to have an open, honest conversation.
I don't like all the lies and fake news out there and how easily it sucks people in. But censorship isn't the answer in my opinion.
Ummm this country is built upon free speech ... all free speech from the dawn of time has either been true or false!
Youtube getting involved and hushing any type of free speech that does not cause physical harm or threatening to one's life is vile and disgusting period!
I am independent who leans republican yet did not/could not vote for the maniac.
Youtube getting involved and hushing any type of free speech that does not cause physical harm or threatening to one's life is vile and disgusting period!
I am independent who leans republican yet did not/could not vote for the maniac.
Prefacing your attempted justification of censorship with "I don't like what YouTube is doing." doesn't add an ounce of validity to your statement.
I am absolutely no fan of Fox News, but for you to not mention other propaganda-producing, Fake News outlets like CNN and Bloomberg is a huge hit to your credibility.
I'll openly admit I am on the conservative side of politics, but my identity isn't wrapped up in politics; that's not how I identify myself or other people. I'm surrounded by conservatives; that's my world, and guess what? There's a lot of discontent with the way election fraud claims are being handled, and despite almost every single one of them having enough firearms to supply a small militia, nobody is even remotely close to even thinking about some sort of armed resistance.
You say it's dangerous? You need to stop letting mainstream media form your perception of the world. What's dangerous is constantly race-baiting people of color like myself and white people against each other.
To people who truly love and believe in freedom, your comment is disgusting.
Wrong information must be countered and corrected by right information -- not censorship, buddy!
I am absolutely no fan of Fox News, but for you to not mention other propaganda-producing, Fake News outlets like CNN and Bloomberg is a huge hit to your credibility.
I'll openly admit I am on the conservative side of politics, but my identity isn't wrapped up in politics; that's not how I identify myself or other people. I'm surrounded by conservatives; that's my world, and guess what? There's a lot of discontent with the way election fraud claims are being handled, and despite almost every single one of them having enough firearms to supply a small militia, nobody is even remotely close to even thinking about some sort of armed resistance.
You say it's dangerous? You need to stop letting mainstream media form your perception of the world. What's dangerous is constantly race-baiting people of color like myself and white people against each other.
To people who truly love and believe in freedom, your comment is disgusting.
Wrong information must be countered and corrected by right information -- not censorship, buddy!
Yeah, like that one time when Twitter and Facebook banned spreading of a mostly true article about Hunter Biden. Oh, wait, that rejects your point, man. Social networks are much more venomous.
They banned the spread of a story that lacked anything resembling coloration or basic standards of journalism.
"Mostly" is still completely unknown when it comes to the contents of that laptop, it's provenance, and the veracity of individual emails.
"Mostly" is still completely unknown when it comes to the contents of that laptop, it's provenance, and the veracity of individual emails.
Well, Hunter Biden smoking a pipe naked photo is legit.
> But...
There is no "buts" regarding freedom. I dont know if you have any experience with authoritarian measures but none of them starts like "This is a bad and permanent measure for no reason"... all of them are "exceptional", "to ensure public safety" ,"only valid as long as extraordinary circumstances are present"..all of them. The democrats were claiming fraud 4 years go due to a supposed Russian influence.The evidence was tenuous and circumstantial at best. I dont remember seeing a similar cry for censorship. The problem that America , and for extension a big part of the world has, is that the world is view through tribalism. People LOVE to say they are objective, but that is rarely rarely the case.
There is no "buts" regarding freedom. I dont know if you have any experience with authoritarian measures but none of them starts like "This is a bad and permanent measure for no reason"... all of them are "exceptional", "to ensure public safety" ,"only valid as long as extraordinary circumstances are present"..all of them. The democrats were claiming fraud 4 years go due to a supposed Russian influence.The evidence was tenuous and circumstantial at best. I dont remember seeing a similar cry for censorship. The problem that America , and for extension a big part of the world has, is that the world is view through tribalism. People LOVE to say they are objective, but that is rarely rarely the case.
> There is no "buts" regarding freedom
Explain the existence of a heavily militarized police force, then. And the war on drugs. And blue laws. And the existence of borders, and the notion of citizenship.
No, freedom has many limitations. Some of those limitations are justified by reducing or punishing harm to others. Some are justified by reducing or punishing harm to self. Some are naked authoritarianism.
We have a president who's a proud authoritarian who literally celebrates violence against the press and summary executions by the police. He's spreading virulent disinformation with the express intent to overrule the will of the people, and he's consistently signalling that insurrection is the remedy to his failure to do so. Does your "no 'buts' regarding freedom" go so far as to tear down democracy in favor of a would-be dictator's "freedom" to commit treason?
Explain the existence of a heavily militarized police force, then. And the war on drugs. And blue laws. And the existence of borders, and the notion of citizenship.
No, freedom has many limitations. Some of those limitations are justified by reducing or punishing harm to others. Some are justified by reducing or punishing harm to self. Some are naked authoritarianism.
We have a president who's a proud authoritarian who literally celebrates violence against the press and summary executions by the police. He's spreading virulent disinformation with the express intent to overrule the will of the people, and he's consistently signalling that insurrection is the remedy to his failure to do so. Does your "no 'buts' regarding freedom" go so far as to tear down democracy in favor of a would-be dictator's "freedom" to commit treason?
You can check my comnent history if you dont believe me, I am redder (as in commie) than 99.9% of the people here.
> who literally celebrates violence against the press and summary executions by the police.
He has never done that. Saying those thing undermines any good argument you may have. If you think I am being dense please provide a direct quotation of Trump cheering for summary execution by the police and I will shut my mouth. No, if you provide an actual quote of Trump celebrating a summary execution I will erase my account here and wont never return I promise you that.
> who literally celebrates violence against the press and summary executions by the police.
He has never done that. Saying those thing undermines any good argument you may have. If you think I am being dense please provide a direct quotation of Trump cheering for summary execution by the police and I will shut my mouth. No, if you provide an actual quote of Trump celebrating a summary execution I will erase my account here and wont never return I promise you that.
The speed at which people will find those quotes, and the speed at which you'll equivicate so you don't have to delete your account, is going to be fun to watch.
4 hours and still waiting, do you have any ?
It was literally provided below, and you equivocated by saying "well, THAT wasn't a summary execution!"
Which was entirely predictable.
Which was entirely predictable.
https://www.opb.org/article/2020/10/15/trump-rally-portland-...
Spoken at a rally.
Spoken at a rally.
That was a suspect for murder, 5 days on the run, who according to the reports shot first at the police, if that's your definition of a summary execution let's include every killing by the police or army ever.
"A summary execution is an execution in which a person is accused of a crime and immediately killed without the benefit of a full and fair trial."
So it's less HIS definition than the actual definition.
So it's less HIS definition than the actual definition.
Sure.
"The US Marshals killed him and I will tell you something, that's the way it has to be," Trump said, referring to Reinoehl. "There has to be retribution when you have crime like this."
"The US Marshals killed him and I will tell you something, that's the way it has to be," Trump said, referring to Reinoehl. "There has to be retribution when you have crime like this."
Well sure, Reinhoehl shot at the Marshals first (according to some witnesses at least) and fled arrest. That is what was reported immediately after the shooting. That's not a summary execution, that's serving a warrant for arrest. That's due process of law.
You are changing the goal posts substantially. Wikipedia defines a summary execution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summary_execution) as being accused and then immediately killed without trial. That is not what happened to Reinoehl. He was accused, a judge issued a warrant. He was given the opportunity to come and face justice. He did not. Instead he shot at police. They shot back.
In order for it to have been a summary execution, Reinoehl would have to have been captured and well under the Marshal's control and then killed. Or he would have had to indicate that he surrendered and been shot anyway. That is not what happened.
Ultimately, this situation would have been easily resolvable had Reinoehl turned himself into police, like Kyle Rittenhouse. Sad anyone had to die, most of all Reinoehl's victim, Aaron Danielson, who for some reason (that we all know) is completely ignored in all this.
You are changing the goal posts substantially. Wikipedia defines a summary execution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summary_execution) as being accused and then immediately killed without trial. That is not what happened to Reinoehl. He was accused, a judge issued a warrant. He was given the opportunity to come and face justice. He did not. Instead he shot at police. They shot back.
In order for it to have been a summary execution, Reinoehl would have to have been captured and well under the Marshal's control and then killed. Or he would have had to indicate that he surrendered and been shot anyway. That is not what happened.
Ultimately, this situation would have been easily resolvable had Reinoehl turned himself into police, like Kyle Rittenhouse. Sad anyone had to die, most of all Reinoehl's victim, Aaron Danielson, who for some reason (that we all know) is completely ignored in all this.
Some witnesses, yes, but afaict they've been recanted and refuted. More to the point, even the feds aren't saying that. All they're saying he did was point his gun. And that he was shot coming out of his apartment. And it doesn't sound like the cops announced themselves loudly enough for witnesses to hear.
Why why weren't there body cams and dash cams? Those readily-available evidence-gathering tools that are so necessary to deliver the accused to justice? Can we corroborate the police's accounts with hard evidence? No, for some reason, none of them thought that would be important. Ain't destruction of evidence if you don't collect it... no, you're not going to convince me that Reinoehl's death wasn't an execution.
Rittenhouse attempted to turn himself in, but was actually turned away. Reinoehl claimed self defense, but his victim was armed with a knife, not a plastic bag. It's true that Rittenhouse got hit by a skateboard later, but that was folks rightly defending themselves from an active shooter.
The problem with the cops isn't just racism, it's the whole authoritarianism thing too. Fascists love the cops and cops love them.
And the president celebrates the "hero" for murdering a person who threw a plastic bag.
Why why weren't there body cams and dash cams? Those readily-available evidence-gathering tools that are so necessary to deliver the accused to justice? Can we corroborate the police's accounts with hard evidence? No, for some reason, none of them thought that would be important. Ain't destruction of evidence if you don't collect it... no, you're not going to convince me that Reinoehl's death wasn't an execution.
Rittenhouse attempted to turn himself in, but was actually turned away. Reinoehl claimed self defense, but his victim was armed with a knife, not a plastic bag. It's true that Rittenhouse got hit by a skateboard later, but that was folks rightly defending themselves from an active shooter.
The problem with the cops isn't just racism, it's the whole authoritarianism thing too. Fascists love the cops and cops love them.
And the president celebrates the "hero" for murdering a person who threw a plastic bag.
[deleted]
Can you name a way in which Trump has exercised any power which could be characterized as 'proudly authoritarian'? The man has honestly done very little in office. He says outrageous things of course, but he has not praised 'summary executions' (he condemned the jacob blake killing) nor does he celebrate violence against the press. I understand not liking the man's policies, but the hyperbole surrounding him is just as bad as the stuff he says.
> Does your "no 'buts' regarding freedom" go so far as to tear down democracy in favor of a would-be dictator's "freedom" to commit treason?
The United States is not a democracy. It is a constitutionally limited republic, where the federal government is supposed to be highly constrained to protect the rights of the people, including nominally the right to disestablish it (see the declaration of independence). From the American perspective, tearing down a democracy that violates people's individual rights would be acceptable. Indeed, that is the American revolution in a nutshell if you ask the British, isn't it?
> Does your "no 'buts' regarding freedom" go so far as to tear down democracy in favor of a would-be dictator's "freedom" to commit treason?
The United States is not a democracy. It is a constitutionally limited republic, where the federal government is supposed to be highly constrained to protect the rights of the people, including nominally the right to disestablish it (see the declaration of independence). From the American perspective, tearing down a democracy that violates people's individual rights would be acceptable. Indeed, that is the American revolution in a nutshell if you ask the British, isn't it?
Other have rebutted the claim that the evidence of Russian influence was "tenuous" and "circumstantial", but one piece of information that they haven't mentioned is that the Republican led Senates' own intel report the coroborated the claims made by the Democrats.
Also, it was the Republican DoJ w/Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein that commissionned the Mueller report (Robert Mueller, a Republican as well).
To continue to believe otherwise and post these false claims online only makes you part of the problem, not actually looking for a solution.
I say this as someone who is generally not a fan of the approach that Twitter, Youtube etc. make in terms of censorship like this. I just think we all need to call a spade a spade when we see it though, and the evidence here is overwhelming.
Also, it was the Republican DoJ w/Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein that commissionned the Mueller report (Robert Mueller, a Republican as well).
To continue to believe otherwise and post these false claims online only makes you part of the problem, not actually looking for a solution.
I say this as someone who is generally not a fan of the approach that Twitter, Youtube etc. make in terms of censorship like this. I just think we all need to call a spade a spade when we see it though, and the evidence here is overwhelming.
What claims did the senate corroborate?
Have you tried googling for this information?
Yes, and it says republicans and democrats disagreed with the conclusions. The appendix written by each side is totally different.
Ok forget about trump Russia collusion. What about when they said Russia was trying to interfere with the Bernie campaign. What are we to believe? Who decides what to censor?
Ok forget about trump Russia collusion. What about when they said Russia was trying to interfere with the Bernie campaign. What are we to believe? Who decides what to censor?
>https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/press/senate-intel-relea...
>The ICA correctly found the Russians interfered in our 2016 election to hurt Secretary Clinton and help the candidacy of Donald Trump
>The Committee finds the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) presents a coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis for the case that Russia engaged in an attempt to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
I'm not sure why people go around saying that Russian interference was not a real thing? The REPUBLICAN senate confirmed this.
>The ICA correctly found the Russians interfered in our 2016 election to hurt Secretary Clinton and help the candidacy of Donald Trump
>The Committee finds the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) presents a coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis for the case that Russia engaged in an attempt to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
I'm not sure why people go around saying that Russian interference was not a real thing? The REPUBLICAN senate confirmed this.
[deleted]
There's inherently wrong with circumstantial evidence. A lot of the most conclusive evidence can be circumstantial. DNS evidence is almost always circumstantial, yet nobody would use that to cast doubt on a claim.
How is that the previous election under Obama was heavily compromised and this election under Trump is the most secure in the history of the country? What changed? Because in these 4 years foreign online attacks have become better and more sophisticated, not less/
It's not the actual election and it's machinations that were comprised in 2016. It was online discourse and disinformation tactics used to discredit Hilary in favour of Trump.
And, no one believes that 2020 was any different in that regard. They may have been more sophisticated this time around, but the force of COVID and Trump's utter ineptitude really broke through to a lot of people who sat out 2016.
I imagine that if you dive into the anti-COVID rhetoric, Stop the Steal etc. you'll find the same cast of characters responsible for Lock Her Up, and Emails etc.
And, no one believes that 2020 was any different in that regard. They may have been more sophisticated this time around, but the force of COVID and Trump's utter ineptitude really broke through to a lot of people who sat out 2016.
I imagine that if you dive into the anti-COVID rhetoric, Stop the Steal etc. you'll find the same cast of characters responsible for Lock Her Up, and Emails etc.
This dogmatic/fundamentalist interpretation of freedom doesn’t make you objective, it makes you an ideologue. There are well-known and widely accepted exceptions to freedom such as curbs on freedom of speech e.g. not yelling “fire” in a crowded space and inciting violence. There are trade-offs between freedom and curbs on freedoms (policies) that benefit the greater good of society. This is the so-called “social contract” between individuals and those that govern them. I highly recommend reading about this (e.g. even Wikipedia has a great explanation) and I don’t mean that as a condescending remark, I think it’s a fascinating topic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract
Edit: link
Edit: link
The "fire in a crowded moviehouse" argument is really bad. Ken White (the Popehat guy) does a much better job of explaining this than I could: https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...
Could you sum up the relevance here briefly? I didn't find it clear and it's not a simple to sum up article.
The link says:
> People tend to cite the "fire in a crowded theater" quote for two reasons, both bolstered by Holmes' fame. First, they trot out the Holmes quote for the proposition that not all speech is protected by the First Amendment. But this is not in dispute.
Which seems to be the reason the quote was used and backs it up? So what's the problem?
The link says:
> People tend to cite the "fire in a crowded theater" quote for two reasons, both bolstered by Holmes' fame. First, they trot out the Holmes quote for the proposition that not all speech is protected by the First Amendment. But this is not in dispute.
Which seems to be the reason the quote was used and backs it up? So what's the problem?
Agreed, I had the exact same reaction as you did, and I even made a comment in this thread quoting the same part of the article that you quoted.
Also, I share your sense of feeling like it would have been more constructive to summarize whatever the key argument is supposed to be and how it connects in this thread.
Also, I share your sense of feeling like it would have been more constructive to summarize whatever the key argument is supposed to be and how it connects in this thread.
Well it is a bait and switch. This is when one example for speech that is perceived as acceptable to censor is used to justify personal beliefs about other speech.
"Fire in a crowded theater, and therefore you cannot claim that the election is disputed". The claim that some speech is not protected is not the same as the claim that because of that some other particular speech is not protected. There has to be a fundamental similarity between two sets of circumstances such that they can both be prevented for the same reason. "Not all speech is protected, that is not in dispute, but the speech you're claiming isn't protected actually is" would be the problem.
"Fire in a crowded theater, and therefore you cannot claim that the election is disputed". The claim that some speech is not protected is not the same as the claim that because of that some other particular speech is not protected. There has to be a fundamental similarity between two sets of circumstances such that they can both be prevented for the same reason. "Not all speech is protected, that is not in dispute, but the speech you're claiming isn't protected actually is" would be the problem.
The link was posted in response to:
"This dogmatic/fundamentalist interpretation of freedom doesn’t make you objective, it makes you an ideologue. There are well-known and widely accepted exceptions to freedom such as curbs on freedom of speech e.g. not yelling “fire” in a crowded space and inciting violence. There are trade-offs between freedom and curbs on freedoms (policies) that benefit the greater good of society. "
To use the "fire" example to make the point that there must be a line somewhere sounds fine to me.
> "Fire in a crowded theater, and therefore you cannot claim that the election is disputed".
Who said that? Obviously you can't use the "fire" example to prove anything you want.
"This dogmatic/fundamentalist interpretation of freedom doesn’t make you objective, it makes you an ideologue. There are well-known and widely accepted exceptions to freedom such as curbs on freedom of speech e.g. not yelling “fire” in a crowded space and inciting violence. There are trade-offs between freedom and curbs on freedoms (policies) that benefit the greater good of society. "
To use the "fire" example to make the point that there must be a line somewhere sounds fine to me.
> "Fire in a crowded theater, and therefore you cannot claim that the election is disputed".
Who said that? Obviously you can't use the "fire" example to prove anything you want.
It was an example. You were asking how the "fire in a crowded theater" argument was being misused and I gave an explanation, that it is an example that some speech is not protected, which is not in dispute, but is often used as justification for not protecting other, unrelated speech.
What happens when the social contract goes a bit off the rails, perhaps warped by those with power and influence? I guess these things don't last forever, because we don't live in a perfect world, right? Maybe sometimes people fight over this stuff, because it's worth fighting over.
By no means am I arguing that it can’t go off the rails nor am I arguing that it hasn’t in this case. I am responding to the claim that there are zero exceptions (“buts” in this case) to freedom. That is simply not the case and there is widespread agreement on many exceptions to certain freedoms that are a net benefit to society. We can (and will) debate the specifics of these issues and their trade offs for the rest of time. I’m pushing back on the notion that there is nothing to debate because any exception to freedom is somehow equivalent to tyranny. This assertion is wildly simplistic and does not represent the reality of freedom in the US if we’re discussing facts (actual polity).
Bringing up "Social contract" is a weak argument to people that don't believe in it.
Hmm I’m guessing that you are thinking of a different theory? Not believing in it in this case would mean not believing in any system of government which, I think we can say with a high degree of confidence, is not the case for most people in this thread. You do agree that we have surrendered our right to steal or to murder? Those are examples of an individual’s social contract with the state. If the answer is yes, than you believe in “social contract” theory.
> You do agree that we have surrendered our right to steal or to murder?
Who has a right to steal or murder? Those are by definition violations of other people's rights.
Who has a right to steal or murder? Those are by definition violations of other people's rights.
You have surrendered your natural right to steal or to commit murder--rights that you would possess devoid of a system of governance. These liberties you and others have sacrificed are exchanged for common security and self-preservation. Whether or not your rights are limited to protect other people's rights (or for some other purpose) is irrelevant. You are forced to abide by these restrictions because of the social contract between yourself and the government which creates and enforces these laws.
> You have surrendered your natural right to steal or to commit murder--rights that you would possess devoid of a system of governance.
You don't possess the right to steal or murder, regardless of the existence or lack of a government.
> These liberties you and others have sacrificed are exchanged for common security and self-preservation.
I didn't "sacrifice" my "right" to murder someone because I never had such a right.
> You are forced to abide by these restrictions because of the social contract between yourself and the government which creates and enforces these laws.
People aren't forced to abide by these restrictions, they are punished for violating them. And they are punished because law enforcement has an interest in enforcing them, not because of any social fiction.
You don't possess the right to steal or murder, regardless of the existence or lack of a government.
> These liberties you and others have sacrificed are exchanged for common security and self-preservation.
I didn't "sacrifice" my "right" to murder someone because I never had such a right.
> You are forced to abide by these restrictions because of the social contract between yourself and the government which creates and enforces these laws.
People aren't forced to abide by these restrictions, they are punished for violating them. And they are punished because law enforcement has an interest in enforcing them, not because of any social fiction.
> You don't possess the right to steal or murder, regardless of the existence or lack of a government.
You absolutely do, because nothing is preventing you from doing so. Maybe you are referring to a moral right? We are discussing legal rights. These don't exist without a system of governance.
> I didn't "sacrifice" my "right" to murder someone because I never had such a right.
Absent of any political order, who is to say what rights you have or don't have? This is the entire point of government and the social contract. It is a universal and mutually agreed on pact, which takes the form of an exchange of certain individual rights for protection of other rights, that critically, everyone must abide by and that maximize the well-being and security of everyone. It formalizes which universal rights exist and also what limitations exist. This system is what dictates your rights.
> You are forced to abide by these restrictions because of the social contract between yourself and the government which creates and enforces these laws.
I'm not really sure how to respond to this. No, governments do not literally / physically force you to stop speaking in the case of your freedom of speech. Being "forced to" in this context would mean being compelled to abide by the laws of society. This relationship defines the social contract that you, and everyone else in society, has entered into with the ruling authority/government.
You absolutely do, because nothing is preventing you from doing so. Maybe you are referring to a moral right? We are discussing legal rights. These don't exist without a system of governance.
> I didn't "sacrifice" my "right" to murder someone because I never had such a right.
Absent of any political order, who is to say what rights you have or don't have? This is the entire point of government and the social contract. It is a universal and mutually agreed on pact, which takes the form of an exchange of certain individual rights for protection of other rights, that critically, everyone must abide by and that maximize the well-being and security of everyone. It formalizes which universal rights exist and also what limitations exist. This system is what dictates your rights.
> You are forced to abide by these restrictions because of the social contract between yourself and the government which creates and enforces these laws.
I'm not really sure how to respond to this. No, governments do not literally / physically force you to stop speaking in the case of your freedom of speech. Being "forced to" in this context would mean being compelled to abide by the laws of society. This relationship defines the social contract that you, and everyone else in society, has entered into with the ruling authority/government.
> You absolutely do, because nothing is preventing you from doing so.
Lack of obstruction is not the same as a right.
> Maybe you are referring to a moral right? We are discussing legal rights. These don't exist without a system of governance.
You're contradicting yourself. First you say I possess a right to murder and steal in the absence of a government. Then you say rights don't exist without a system of governance.
> Absent of any political order, who is to say what rights you have or don't have?
Thats an excellent question. Rights are a social construct that emerges on the basis of mutual cooperation and are continued through intentional participation. "who is to say" arises in the event of a dispute between rights-holders. This dispute can be resolved violently or by agreement. At one time, the disputants would take their dispute to an agreed-upon person who was acceptable to both and had a reputation for fair-decision-making. This created case law and is why, many times, the answer to "who is to say" is "precedent." Social order created this system and social order is sustained by it.
> This is the entire point of government and the social contract. It is a universal and mutually agreed on pact, which takes the form of an exchange of certain individual rights for protection of other rights, that critically, everyone must abide by and that maximize the well-being and security of everyone. It formalizes which universal rights exist and also what limitations exist. This system is what dictates your rights.
This is a series of popular misconceptions. Firstly the point of government differs according to who you ask. The social contract is a social myth that analogizes the process of government with an actual agreement as a way of sidestepping the uncomfortable fact that the hegemony of government is neither universal nor mutually agreed-upon. Thirdly, there is no right to commit murder (this would be a contradiction in terms) so there's not a way for me to exchange such a right for the benefit of murders being performed on my behalf. It is clear that well-being a security of everyone is not maximized by every government, so its equally possible that the purpose of government is something else, and government merely claims to maximize the well-being and security of everyone in order to do that something else, and tribalism (among other things) allows the various different governments to divide and conquer while the conquered are fraudulently persuaded that this is in their best interest and something they have agreed to anyway. Finally if government dictated the rights then there would be no logical way to criticize whichever incarnation of rights the government (in their wisdom and beneficence) deemed it appropriate to dictate. Such criticism is ubiquitous and demonstrates that while government may prohibit violations of and enforce upon a community a given concept of rights, the government is not the origin of those rights or that concept.
> Being "forced to" in this context would mean being compelled to abide by the laws of society.
People are not compelled to abide by the laws of society, they violate them every day. In fact violations are so numerous that there are millions of professionals whose sole occupation is to locate these violations, apprehend the perpetrators, and deal with them and their actions in a socially harmonious manner.
> This relationship defines the social contract that you, and everyone else in society, has entered into with the ruling authority/government.
Since we can agree that people are not compelled to obey the government, but choose to obey or suffer the consequences; can we also agree that the social contract is a mythos that relates the process of governance to an actual contract by way of analogy?
Lack of obstruction is not the same as a right.
> Maybe you are referring to a moral right? We are discussing legal rights. These don't exist without a system of governance.
You're contradicting yourself. First you say I possess a right to murder and steal in the absence of a government. Then you say rights don't exist without a system of governance.
> Absent of any political order, who is to say what rights you have or don't have?
Thats an excellent question. Rights are a social construct that emerges on the basis of mutual cooperation and are continued through intentional participation. "who is to say" arises in the event of a dispute between rights-holders. This dispute can be resolved violently or by agreement. At one time, the disputants would take their dispute to an agreed-upon person who was acceptable to both and had a reputation for fair-decision-making. This created case law and is why, many times, the answer to "who is to say" is "precedent." Social order created this system and social order is sustained by it.
> This is the entire point of government and the social contract. It is a universal and mutually agreed on pact, which takes the form of an exchange of certain individual rights for protection of other rights, that critically, everyone must abide by and that maximize the well-being and security of everyone. It formalizes which universal rights exist and also what limitations exist. This system is what dictates your rights.
This is a series of popular misconceptions. Firstly the point of government differs according to who you ask. The social contract is a social myth that analogizes the process of government with an actual agreement as a way of sidestepping the uncomfortable fact that the hegemony of government is neither universal nor mutually agreed-upon. Thirdly, there is no right to commit murder (this would be a contradiction in terms) so there's not a way for me to exchange such a right for the benefit of murders being performed on my behalf. It is clear that well-being a security of everyone is not maximized by every government, so its equally possible that the purpose of government is something else, and government merely claims to maximize the well-being and security of everyone in order to do that something else, and tribalism (among other things) allows the various different governments to divide and conquer while the conquered are fraudulently persuaded that this is in their best interest and something they have agreed to anyway. Finally if government dictated the rights then there would be no logical way to criticize whichever incarnation of rights the government (in their wisdom and beneficence) deemed it appropriate to dictate. Such criticism is ubiquitous and demonstrates that while government may prohibit violations of and enforce upon a community a given concept of rights, the government is not the origin of those rights or that concept.
> Being "forced to" in this context would mean being compelled to abide by the laws of society.
People are not compelled to abide by the laws of society, they violate them every day. In fact violations are so numerous that there are millions of professionals whose sole occupation is to locate these violations, apprehend the perpetrators, and deal with them and their actions in a socially harmonious manner.
> This relationship defines the social contract that you, and everyone else in society, has entered into with the ruling authority/government.
Since we can agree that people are not compelled to obey the government, but choose to obey or suffer the consequences; can we also agree that the social contract is a mythos that relates the process of governance to an actual contract by way of analogy?
Freedom from and freedom to are often in opposition. Saying there are no buts to freedom is paradoxical.
Wait, is Google our government? Google is exercising their freedom to moderate their content. If this were USAtube.gov maybe you'd have a point. Fortunately such a thing doesn't exist!
Not entirely true. If your business functions as a "public square" then it can be held to the 1A standard:
https://www.nytimes.com/1983/03/20/nyregion/right-to-distrib...
That was a state court talking about a state constitution, not a federal one. It had nothing to do with the first amendment to the US constitution.
[deleted]
So let me get this straight. Government is restricted from preventing the free exchange of ideas, but private industry is not. However, government is free to mandate us to stay in our homes and not see anybody, thus leaving us with privately owned telecommunications companies as the only way to communicate with others, and they are free to prevent speech.
Wow... funny how this all works out so convienently.
But really this is dystopia level rhetoric. "Your freedom to speech is not really being restricted. It's just that because you're locked in your house (since being outside talking to your friend is apparently not a fundamental freedom), you can't actually talk to anyone because your private sector companies say so."
Wow... funny how this all works out so convienently.
But really this is dystopia level rhetoric. "Your freedom to speech is not really being restricted. It's just that because you're locked in your house (since being outside talking to your friend is apparently not a fundamental freedom), you can't actually talk to anyone because your private sector companies say so."
Tech company executives are being summoned into congressional hearings about it and pressured by the government to censor speech. The fact that the government, congress no less, is pressuring a private entity to do this constitutes the government itself censoring speech. This is just the pressure we know about.
"But the hearing instead left Facebook, Google and Twitter facing conflicting pressures -- from Democrats who say they should patrol their sites and services more aggressively and Republicans who felt the companies should have a more hands-off role with most political speech."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/28/twitter...
"But the hearing instead left Facebook, Google and Twitter facing conflicting pressures -- from Democrats who say they should patrol their sites and services more aggressively and Republicans who felt the companies should have a more hands-off role with most political speech."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/28/twitter...
Anyone that wants to hear about how the election was a fraud can still watch any number of right leaning media outlets to get their fill. I'll be concerned when the government actually tries to shut down right or left leaning media outlets.
>I'll be concerned when the government actually tries to shut down right or left leaning media outlets.
Social media sites are shutting down left and right wing media outlets in the form of YouTube, Twitter, etc. These sites are getting pressure form the government to do so. The "press" was never supposed to be a large corporate entity with a cozy relationship with the government. The "press" is supposed to be a citizen press.
“Whatever a patron desires to get published is advertising; whatever he wants to keep out of the paper is news”
Social media sites are shutting down left and right wing media outlets in the form of YouTube, Twitter, etc. These sites are getting pressure form the government to do so. The "press" was never supposed to be a large corporate entity with a cozy relationship with the government. The "press" is supposed to be a citizen press.
“Whatever a patron desires to get published is advertising; whatever he wants to keep out of the paper is news”
> There is no "buts" regarding freedom.
I'm curious what you think about the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance.
I'm curious what you think about the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance.
So by letting some people live or say shit in youtube or marching or creating political parties, none of which affect or diminishes any of your right you are risking the new come of Hitler but this , by a mega corporation with an autochratic governance(who elects Google leadership) is great and deserve to be lauded:
> We also disallow content alleging widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of a historical U.S.
Why?
> . For example, we will remove videos claiming that a Presidential candidate won the election due to widespread software glitches or counting errors
Why? Are they going to remove videos like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrJzf6eUSWA or this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBYnJh45WS8
> Limiting the reach of borderline content and prominently surfacing authoritative information are important ways we protect people from problematic content that doesn’t violate our Community Guidelines.
Blessed the day you need "protection" from a corporation.What's next? Will I need protection about how Google Europe is based on Ireland? Or how are they egregiously violating the privacy of the user? Or how they most probable work with NSA?
I am curious what you think about that
> We also disallow content alleging widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of a historical U.S.
Why?
> . For example, we will remove videos claiming that a Presidential candidate won the election due to widespread software glitches or counting errors
Why? Are they going to remove videos like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrJzf6eUSWA or this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBYnJh45WS8
> Limiting the reach of borderline content and prominently surfacing authoritative information are important ways we protect people from problematic content that doesn’t violate our Community Guidelines.
Blessed the day you need "protection" from a corporation.What's next? Will I need protection about how Google Europe is based on Ireland? Or how are they egregiously violating the privacy of the user? Or how they most probable work with NSA?
I am curious what you think about that
YouTube has the freedom not to host your videos for free.
Oddly enough, the anarcho-libertarians that fill out the HN userbase don't want to talk about that at all.
Probably because there's too much of an inferential gap between anarchy-libertarians (who have discussed this extensively) and the rest of the hn userbase (who seem to have forgotten that section 230 of the CDA has been criticized for allowing companies to legally select which viewpoints to promote while shielding them from liability for promoting harmful messages).
There's also the notion that in a free society, companies shouldn't have the freedom to discriminate on the basis of someone's politics. People who oppose discrimination on the basis of certain protected categories have the opportunity to explain why political views are not one of those categories.
So yes there's a discussion to be had but its not easy to get off the ground floor on politically charged issues unless people have a well grounded and mutual understanding of the basics and demonstrate that understanding.
There's also the notion that in a free society, companies shouldn't have the freedom to discriminate on the basis of someone's politics. People who oppose discrimination on the basis of certain protected categories have the opportunity to explain why political views are not one of those categories.
So yes there's a discussion to be had but its not easy to get off the ground floor on politically charged issues unless people have a well grounded and mutual understanding of the basics and demonstrate that understanding.
> allowing companies to legally select which viewpoints to promote while shielding them from liability for promoting harmful messages
This is a spurious criticism. Websites are already liable for any illegal content they host if they don't make a good-faith effort to have it removed quickly. Fake news isn't illegal, this isn't something that would be improved by rescinding section 230.
> There's also the notion that in a free society, companies shouldn't have the freedom to discriminate on the basis of someone's politics
This has no practical meaning because literally anything can be framed as political issue. For example, the efficacy of masks and vaccines.
> People who oppose discrimination on the basis of certain protected categories have the opportunity to explain why political views are not one of those categories.
Protected classes are the few exceptions to the rule, the burden is on you to explain why politics should be added to the list.
This is a spurious criticism. Websites are already liable for any illegal content they host if they don't make a good-faith effort to have it removed quickly. Fake news isn't illegal, this isn't something that would be improved by rescinding section 230.
> There's also the notion that in a free society, companies shouldn't have the freedom to discriminate on the basis of someone's politics
This has no practical meaning because literally anything can be framed as political issue. For example, the efficacy of masks and vaccines.
> People who oppose discrimination on the basis of certain protected categories have the opportunity to explain why political views are not one of those categories.
Protected classes are the few exceptions to the rule, the burden is on you to explain why politics should be added to the list.
> This is a spurious criticism. Websites are already liable for any illegal content they host if they don't make a good-faith effort to have it removed quickly. Fake news isn't illegal, this isn't something that would be improved by rescinding section 230.
I'm not suggesting that all harmful content is illegal. I'm saying they can choose to spread baseless conspiracy theories when it benefits them with no legal consequence, but they can remove anything they like because they don't want to promote it while calling it a baseless conspiracy theory, also with no consequence. This is an extremely influential position that is created by law and gives them extraordinary latitude at shaping perceptions.
> This has no practical meaning because literally anything can be framed as political issue. For example, the efficacy of masks and vaccines.
Well those are political issues. I agree that "literally anything" can be framed as political, I don't agree that my criticism lacks practical meaning as a result. We don't like people discriminating on the basis of certain categories. I think political opinions are one of the categories. You may not, we can discuss this.
> Protected classes are the few exceptions to the rule, the burden is on you to explain why politics should be added to the list.
Gladly. Its unfair for people to discriminate on the basis of race, sex, gender, marital status, sexual orientation, religion. Because we think that all of those are aspects of being human that people shouldn't be punished for by refusal to hire or sell to. Political leanings are often matters of conscience, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, or sex. Political freedom involves the freedom to hold unpopular opinions. Permitting someone to discriminate their provision of services on the basis of someone's gay marriage is just as offensive as permitting them to discriminate on the basis of someone's support for the legality of gay marriage.
I'm not suggesting that all harmful content is illegal. I'm saying they can choose to spread baseless conspiracy theories when it benefits them with no legal consequence, but they can remove anything they like because they don't want to promote it while calling it a baseless conspiracy theory, also with no consequence. This is an extremely influential position that is created by law and gives them extraordinary latitude at shaping perceptions.
> This has no practical meaning because literally anything can be framed as political issue. For example, the efficacy of masks and vaccines.
Well those are political issues. I agree that "literally anything" can be framed as political, I don't agree that my criticism lacks practical meaning as a result. We don't like people discriminating on the basis of certain categories. I think political opinions are one of the categories. You may not, we can discuss this.
> Protected classes are the few exceptions to the rule, the burden is on you to explain why politics should be added to the list.
Gladly. Its unfair for people to discriminate on the basis of race, sex, gender, marital status, sexual orientation, religion. Because we think that all of those are aspects of being human that people shouldn't be punished for by refusal to hire or sell to. Political leanings are often matters of conscience, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, or sex. Political freedom involves the freedom to hold unpopular opinions. Permitting someone to discriminate their provision of services on the basis of someone's gay marriage is just as offensive as permitting them to discriminate on the basis of someone's support for the legality of gay marriage.
> I'm saying they can choose to spread baseless conspiracy theories when it benefits them with no legal consequence
This is akin to you saying "they choose to spread cat pictures when it benefits them with no legal consequences". Conspiracy theories, like cat pictures, are perfectly legal, there's no reason why there should be legal consequences for allowing them on the site.
> they can remove anything they like because they don't want to promote it while calling it a baseless conspiracy theory, also with no consequence
Yes, when you own a website you can pick and choose what appears on the site, that's just how property rights work. If I decide I want to create a social network that adheres to a policy of explicit partisan bias I should have that right, the users will decide if that is something they want to use.
> This is an extremely influential position that is created by law and gives them extraordinary latitude at shaping perceptions.
You can't legislate influence, it's not something that anybody owns, it's freely given by individual users and can be trivially revoked at any time. This dynamic is exactly the reason why YouTube is so sensitive to social issues, their influence among target demographics will suffer if they fail to appease certain values. Consider the recent collapse of Fox News' influence as another example of this effect on the opposite side of the spectrum.
> Well those are political issues. I agree that "literally anything" can be framed as political, I don't agree that my criticism lacks practical meaning as a result*
Yet they're not inherently political, the efficacy of masks and vaccines are well established from a medical perspective. The reason why it lacks practical meaning is because there is no agreed upon definition for what meets the standard of political.
> race, sex, gender, marital status, sexual orientation, religion.
The protected classes are discrete personal qualities of the individual, "political leaning" is an abstract idea without clear boundaries. You might as well say "I'm against discrimination of people based on their ideas", the concept is just too nebulous to be meaningful.
This is akin to you saying "they choose to spread cat pictures when it benefits them with no legal consequences". Conspiracy theories, like cat pictures, are perfectly legal, there's no reason why there should be legal consequences for allowing them on the site.
> they can remove anything they like because they don't want to promote it while calling it a baseless conspiracy theory, also with no consequence
Yes, when you own a website you can pick and choose what appears on the site, that's just how property rights work. If I decide I want to create a social network that adheres to a policy of explicit partisan bias I should have that right, the users will decide if that is something they want to use.
> This is an extremely influential position that is created by law and gives them extraordinary latitude at shaping perceptions.
You can't legislate influence, it's not something that anybody owns, it's freely given by individual users and can be trivially revoked at any time. This dynamic is exactly the reason why YouTube is so sensitive to social issues, their influence among target demographics will suffer if they fail to appease certain values. Consider the recent collapse of Fox News' influence as another example of this effect on the opposite side of the spectrum.
> Well those are political issues. I agree that "literally anything" can be framed as political, I don't agree that my criticism lacks practical meaning as a result*
Yet they're not inherently political, the efficacy of masks and vaccines are well established from a medical perspective. The reason why it lacks practical meaning is because there is no agreed upon definition for what meets the standard of political.
> race, sex, gender, marital status, sexual orientation, religion.
The protected classes are discrete personal qualities of the individual, "political leaning" is an abstract idea without clear boundaries. You might as well say "I'm against discrimination of people based on their ideas", the concept is just too nebulous to be meaningful.
> This is akin to you saying "they choose to spread cat pictures when it benefits them with no legal consequences". Conspiracy theories, like cat pictures, are perfectly legal, there's no reason why there should be legal consequences for allowing them on the site.
The problem is the undue influence created by the juxtaposition of the circumstances that you have chosen to respond to separately.
> Yes, when you own a website you can pick and choose what appears on the site, that's just how property rights work.
What if the ISP decides not to serve your website to people who want to visit it? Is that also how property rights work? What if the electric company decides not to sell you electricity? Is that how property rights work?
> You can't legislate influence, it's not something that anybody owns, it's freely given by individual users and can be trivially revoked at any time. This dynamic is exactly the reason why YouTube is so sensitive to social issues, their influence among target demographics will suffer if they fail to appease certain values. Consider the recent collapse of Fox News' influence as another example of this effect on the opposite side of the spectrum.
You can absolutely consider whether you're creating circumstances that put a small number of people in positions of disproportionate influence when you write legislation to regulate what they are and are not liable for.
> Yet they're not inherently political, the efficacy of masks and vaccines are well established from a medical perspective.
Medicine is also political and the efficacy of vaccines is not a thing that is established once and for all, each vaccine has to be tested to determine its effectiveness and those tests, how they are performed, and their outcomes are all inherently political. For example, see the allegations against Merck that they lied about the effectiveness of their MMR vaccine.
The effectiveness and allocation of masks is also political, look to earlier this year when the CDC recommended against wearing of masks by the general public.
> The reason why it lacks practical meaning is because there is no agreed upon definition for what meets the standard of political.
Thats not a barrier to practical meaning, it just means that anything could be found to be political. For example, two people could bring similar actions in court and one be rejected because there was no evidence that it was in fact political, whereas the other could be accepted because there was evidence that it was in fact political.
> The protected classes are discrete personal qualities of the individual, "political leaning" is an abstract idea without clear boundaries. You might as well say "I'm against discrimination of people based on their ideas", the concept is just too nebulous to be meaningful.
I am against discrimination of people based on their ideas, and I suppose we'll have to disagree and the meaningfulness of this concept.
I think my earlier example is clear:
>> Permitting someone to discriminate their provision of services on the basis of someone's gay marriage is just as offensive as permitting them to discriminate on the basis of someone's support for the legality of gay marriage.
The fact that people could conceivably disagree on whether a given issue is political and therefore disagree about whether it is a prohibited basis upon which to discriminate is immaterial. Discrimination suits already deal with this issue.
The problem is the undue influence created by the juxtaposition of the circumstances that you have chosen to respond to separately.
> Yes, when you own a website you can pick and choose what appears on the site, that's just how property rights work.
What if the ISP decides not to serve your website to people who want to visit it? Is that also how property rights work? What if the electric company decides not to sell you electricity? Is that how property rights work?
> You can't legislate influence, it's not something that anybody owns, it's freely given by individual users and can be trivially revoked at any time. This dynamic is exactly the reason why YouTube is so sensitive to social issues, their influence among target demographics will suffer if they fail to appease certain values. Consider the recent collapse of Fox News' influence as another example of this effect on the opposite side of the spectrum.
You can absolutely consider whether you're creating circumstances that put a small number of people in positions of disproportionate influence when you write legislation to regulate what they are and are not liable for.
> Yet they're not inherently political, the efficacy of masks and vaccines are well established from a medical perspective.
Medicine is also political and the efficacy of vaccines is not a thing that is established once and for all, each vaccine has to be tested to determine its effectiveness and those tests, how they are performed, and their outcomes are all inherently political. For example, see the allegations against Merck that they lied about the effectiveness of their MMR vaccine.
The effectiveness and allocation of masks is also political, look to earlier this year when the CDC recommended against wearing of masks by the general public.
> The reason why it lacks practical meaning is because there is no agreed upon definition for what meets the standard of political.
Thats not a barrier to practical meaning, it just means that anything could be found to be political. For example, two people could bring similar actions in court and one be rejected because there was no evidence that it was in fact political, whereas the other could be accepted because there was evidence that it was in fact political.
> The protected classes are discrete personal qualities of the individual, "political leaning" is an abstract idea without clear boundaries. You might as well say "I'm against discrimination of people based on their ideas", the concept is just too nebulous to be meaningful.
I am against discrimination of people based on their ideas, and I suppose we'll have to disagree and the meaningfulness of this concept.
I think my earlier example is clear:
>> Permitting someone to discriminate their provision of services on the basis of someone's gay marriage is just as offensive as permitting them to discriminate on the basis of someone's support for the legality of gay marriage.
The fact that people could conceivably disagree on whether a given issue is political and therefore disagree about whether it is a prohibited basis upon which to discriminate is immaterial. Discrimination suits already deal with this issue.
When we talk about a "free" society, we are talking about government intervention. We don't mean that every radio station has to play my song, every tv station has to play my show, and every billboard has to show my message.
You would think that with such a right-wing userbase, the aspect of Youtube's private property would emerge in the conversation. But that's not the issue, instead, the "CeNsOrShIp" crowd is more concerned about having white supremacist ideas widely marginalized in polite society.
You would think that with such a right-wing userbase, the aspect of Youtube's private property would emerge in the conversation. But that's not the issue, instead, the "CeNsOrShIp" crowd is more concerned about having white supremacist ideas widely marginalized in polite society.
> When we talk about a "free" society, we are talking about government intervention.
I'm not sure how to respond to this without venturing into semantics. When we talk about a free society, we are talking about the freedom of the people who make up that society to pursue their own interests and livelihood without oppression or undue interference. It doesn't make it ok to aggress upon or oppress people if you somehow define the perpetrator of that aggression or oppression to be "not government."
> We don't mean that every radio station has to play my song, every tv station has to play my show, and every billboard has to show my message.
However we do mean that everyone have access to the airwaves and that everyone have access to telecom infrastructure and other utilities. The reason section 230 of the CDA is at issue here is that companies like youtube are legally protected from liability for content that they display, but there are no legal consequences for their refusal to show any content. This creates the conditions for them to unaccountably promote one side of an issue to the exclusion of another. It doesn't take much imagination to see how this could be a bad thing.
> You would think that with such a right-wing userbase,
The userbase here is not right-wing.
> the aspect of Youtube's private property would emerge in the conversation.
Its been brought up numerous times. Almost every time section 230 reform is mentioned, in fact. Which is good because these issues need to be hashed out.
> But that's not the issue, instead, the "CeNsOrShIp" crowd is more concerned about having white supremacist ideas widely marginalized in polite society.
Poisoning the well doesn't advance the conversation, rather the opposite.
I'm not sure how to respond to this without venturing into semantics. When we talk about a free society, we are talking about the freedom of the people who make up that society to pursue their own interests and livelihood without oppression or undue interference. It doesn't make it ok to aggress upon or oppress people if you somehow define the perpetrator of that aggression or oppression to be "not government."
> We don't mean that every radio station has to play my song, every tv station has to play my show, and every billboard has to show my message.
However we do mean that everyone have access to the airwaves and that everyone have access to telecom infrastructure and other utilities. The reason section 230 of the CDA is at issue here is that companies like youtube are legally protected from liability for content that they display, but there are no legal consequences for their refusal to show any content. This creates the conditions for them to unaccountably promote one side of an issue to the exclusion of another. It doesn't take much imagination to see how this could be a bad thing.
> You would think that with such a right-wing userbase,
The userbase here is not right-wing.
> the aspect of Youtube's private property would emerge in the conversation.
Its been brought up numerous times. Almost every time section 230 reform is mentioned, in fact. Which is good because these issues need to be hashed out.
> But that's not the issue, instead, the "CeNsOrShIp" crowd is more concerned about having white supremacist ideas widely marginalized in polite society.
Poisoning the well doesn't advance the conversation, rather the opposite.
What does this have to do with freedom? Private companies can’t take away freedom, only the government can.
Companies can and do take freedoms away all the time - and sometimes we even let them. There's just not constitutional protections preventing companies from taking those freedoms away.
Can you provide an example?
I’m not sure how being able to use a specific app on a specific phone is a freedom
I's freedom to fight oppressive government by spreading information. Practically journalism.
Wouldn’t that mean the government took their freedoms away though?
How does it change the fact that Apple is on the oppressive side?
They can if they are monopolies providing essential services.
Really? YouTube is essential? Essential to what? And how was that service made available before YouTube existed?
> And how was that service made available before YouTube existed?
I mean, we used to have this thing called visiting friends or gathering in a public space, which the governments of most states have currently prevented us from doing, leaving the internet to be the only option to reach any audience.
So yes, insofar as the public square is an essential function and since it's been banned from physically being a reality, then the government must assure that there are alternatives, or undo the physical bans on gathering. There is no pandemic exception to basic civil rights.
Unfortunately, what we have here is a major double standard where leftists can freely gather in the streets to protest police brutality, but right wingers cannot without severe media criticism, and police action by governments.
I mean, we used to have this thing called visiting friends or gathering in a public space, which the governments of most states have currently prevented us from doing, leaving the internet to be the only option to reach any audience.
So yes, insofar as the public square is an essential function and since it's been banned from physically being a reality, then the government must assure that there are alternatives, or undo the physical bans on gathering. There is no pandemic exception to basic civil rights.
Unfortunately, what we have here is a major double standard where leftists can freely gather in the streets to protest police brutality, but right wingers cannot without severe media criticism, and police action by governments.
> There is no pandemic exception to basic civil rights.
This actually highlights a fundamental question which is at the heart of most disagreements on this issue. As a non-US-ian, looking at the US Constitution there does not seem to be an equivalent of Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states, "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person." In the UDoHR the right to life and the right to liberty are equated, so how do we manage situations where we have to trade off one or the other (as is the case here)? I recall the old saying, "your right to swing your fists, ends where my nose begins".
Therefore a blanket statement that there is no pandemic exception to civil rights, specifically, the right to free assembly and freedom of movement, elevates those rights above a right to "life" (which presumably provides a limit on others' behaviours that risk life).
Personally, I can't see that being viable, based on the "common sense" aphorism mentioned earlier. Therefore, there must be some balance. Clearly, achieving that balance is a politically quixotic exercise in the sense that you'll be pissing off one group or another. Consensus is probably key here. Good luck achieving that in the US.
EDITED: grammar. Seriously, I should learn to re-read before hitting submit.
This actually highlights a fundamental question which is at the heart of most disagreements on this issue. As a non-US-ian, looking at the US Constitution there does not seem to be an equivalent of Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states, "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person." In the UDoHR the right to life and the right to liberty are equated, so how do we manage situations where we have to trade off one or the other (as is the case here)? I recall the old saying, "your right to swing your fists, ends where my nose begins".
Therefore a blanket statement that there is no pandemic exception to civil rights, specifically, the right to free assembly and freedom of movement, elevates those rights above a right to "life" (which presumably provides a limit on others' behaviours that risk life).
Personally, I can't see that being viable, based on the "common sense" aphorism mentioned earlier. Therefore, there must be some balance. Clearly, achieving that balance is a politically quixotic exercise in the sense that you'll be pissing off one group or another. Consensus is probably key here. Good luck achieving that in the US.
EDITED: grammar. Seriously, I should learn to re-read before hitting submit.
Visiting friends = Skype/Zoom/Teams/etc != YouTube
Gathering in a public space = Facebook/Twitter/Mastodon/etc != YouTube
Broadcasting = YouTube
And your last sentence about leftists/right-wingers and double-standards is demonstrably false. There have been just as many protests by pro-Trump/anti-lockdown/stop-the-steal groups as there have about BLM/count-the-votes protests. Both have attracted varying levels of police action (BLM the most by my assessment), and both have had various levels of pro/anti discussion/criticism in the media (depending on which you read). On the last point, freedom of assembly does not equal freedom from criticism.
EDITED: to fix formatting.
Gathering in a public space = Facebook/Twitter/Mastodon/etc != YouTube
Broadcasting = YouTube
And your last sentence about leftists/right-wingers and double-standards is demonstrably false. There have been just as many protests by pro-Trump/anti-lockdown/stop-the-steal groups as there have about BLM/count-the-votes protests. Both have attracted varying levels of police action (BLM the most by my assessment), and both have had various levels of pro/anti discussion/criticism in the media (depending on which you read). On the last point, freedom of assembly does not equal freedom from criticism.
EDITED: to fix formatting.
> Broadcasting = YouTube
Youtube is a distributed (as in "many people") media, which is essential for democracy. In some countries, it's the only source of truth about the politics.
Youtube is a distributed (as in "many people") media, which is essential for democracy. In some countries, it's the only source of truth about the politics.
If it's truly essential then that company should be nationalized and run by the government.
That would be terrible and only monopolize everything further.
Essential services should be provided by multiple providers. That's called competition and ends up serving everyone better.
Essential services should be provided by multiple providers. That's called competition and ends up serving everyone better.
> monopolize everything further.
Were it for profit, yes.
> Essential services should be provided by multiple providers.
I don't think this is demonstratively true anywhere.
Were it for profit, yes.
> Essential services should be provided by multiple providers.
I don't think this is demonstratively true anywhere.
How do you propose having multiple electricity providers or multiple water/sewer providers? What about multiple emergency medial providers or multiple fire brigades? Sometimes the right move is in fact to put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.
Also, "competition" necessarily implies a company can refuse service to a customer, which is not what I (or most people) want with essential services like electricity, water, police, fire protection, etc.
Also, "competition" necessarily implies a company can refuse service to a customer, which is not what I (or most people) want with essential services like electricity, water, police, fire protection, etc.
Things like fire and police should be provided by the state due to the authority and access they require over civilians.
However we have multiple utilities already. They follow regulations to ensure a level of service and reliability, but are often entrenched by these very same regulations which is why others are prevented from serving the same area. If anything we should have even more competition so that we can actually see some progress instead of the regulatory gridlock and decaying infrastructure that exists.
This is similar to ISPs. You can consider network services as essential need in the modern era, but nobody wants a slow nationalized ISP service (look at how Australia screwed that up). Instead multiple local competitive organizations have always delivered the best outcome whenever that's been allowed and encouraged.
However we have multiple utilities already. They follow regulations to ensure a level of service and reliability, but are often entrenched by these very same regulations which is why others are prevented from serving the same area. If anything we should have even more competition so that we can actually see some progress instead of the regulatory gridlock and decaying infrastructure that exists.
This is similar to ISPs. You can consider network services as essential need in the modern era, but nobody wants a slow nationalized ISP service (look at how Australia screwed that up). Instead multiple local competitive organizations have always delivered the best outcome whenever that's been allowed and encouraged.
Am I understanding correctly that you think multiple companies should be allowed to run electric and telecom lines to every residence? So that every moderately dense city turns into https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Telefontornet_1890.j... ?
You're definitely misunderstanding. Why can't companies reuse infrastructure? Does every delivery company build their own road?
>If anything we should have even more competition so that we can actually see some progress instead of the regulatory gridlock and decaying infrastructure that exists.
Then how does competition address decaying infrastructure if not by running new lines?
Then how does competition address decaying infrastructure if not by running new lines?
By fixing the existing infrastructure. We're getting lost in the technicalities here but private companies providing services doesn't displace public infrastructure or eliminate the need for state ownership and oversight.
What I'm saying is that a single state-run provider isn't a great model for most things, even critical things like utilities. The state can own the rights and build the things that only the state can, while the rest can be leased, shared, operated and maintained by multiple private organizations that compete to offer the best service without the regulatory incumbency.
Allowing use in return for upkeep and updates is a well-known model in many industries, especially real estate. It can be applied to the public sector easily. We're slowly seeing things change as private enterprise finds new ways like hyperlocal co-ops and distributed infrastructure like solar power, but there's still much more progress that can be made.
What I'm saying is that a single state-run provider isn't a great model for most things, even critical things like utilities. The state can own the rights and build the things that only the state can, while the rest can be leased, shared, operated and maintained by multiple private organizations that compete to offer the best service without the regulatory incumbency.
Allowing use in return for upkeep and updates is a well-known model in many industries, especially real estate. It can be applied to the public sector easily. We're slowly seeing things change as private enterprise finds new ways like hyperlocal co-ops and distributed infrastructure like solar power, but there's still much more progress that can be made.
Food production is probably the most essential thing in society. Should all the farms be nationalized? It's been tried before many times in many places, and things went spectacularly wrong on each occasion.
There are massive farm subsidies and other market controls in agriculture in the USA, so the government already puts a massive thumb on the market "scale". I would argue farms in some sense are already nationalized.
Dailymotion, Vimeo, Facebook, etc.
That’s more a question of leverage rather than being private or public.
That is a very narrow definition of freedom. For a simple example of freedom being taken away without state involvement: a person who (illegally) locks up another person is absolutely taking away another person's freedom.
This idea that only freedom from the state counts is very pernicious, and it's at the root of the inordinate power corporations have in today's world.
Freedom is the ability to do what you want. Any conditions that don't let you do what you want are restraints on your freedom, even if they are being enforced by a private company.
This idea that only freedom from the state counts is very pernicious, and it's at the root of the inordinate power corporations have in today's world.
Freedom is the ability to do what you want. Any conditions that don't let you do what you want are restraints on your freedom, even if they are being enforced by a private company.
I wish somebody would give me millions of dollars. Until then my freedom to do what I want is being infringed.
This isn’t a very useful argument when balancing the rights of multiple entities in society though.
This isn’t a very useful argument when balancing the rights of multiple entities in society though.
I'll concede that defining freedom is a thorny subject, and there are limitations to the definition a I proposed. But I think that any definition of freedom that doesn't accept that private individuals can (and constantly do) limit each other's freedom regardless of the state is just as flawed.
That is an absolutist assertion that I'd argue is blatantly untrue. I'd like to hear your reasoning behind this statement.
Oh just like private companies who don't pay their employees a living wage can't take away freedom, because their employees are free to just work somewhere else, like Uber drivers right? Oh yeah, forgot about that.
> There is no "buts" regarding freedom.
This is clearly not true. You are an intelligent person and can probably think of half a dozen counters to this without trying too hard. You may wish this were the case, but it just isn't. Not under any conceivable society that we could structure.
This is clearly not true. You are an intelligent person and can probably think of half a dozen counters to this without trying too hard. You may wish this were the case, but it just isn't. Not under any conceivable society that we could structure.
Thanks for this. We could post stuff about previous commenter, based on literally nothing, doing bad stuff to little kiddies and they would be deleted by HN. That commenter would probably be alright with that because those types of comments are not ok. For some reason, however, these people are never ok with censorship by anyone if it impacts their beliefs.
I find this highly hypocritical.
The Reddit hunt for the Boston bomber is a perfect example of how this type of unbridled free for all posting can lead to very bad stuff happening.
I find this highly hypocritical.
The Reddit hunt for the Boston bomber is a perfect example of how this type of unbridled free for all posting can lead to very bad stuff happening.
Posting false statements about someone molesting children would be libel, so it would not be protected under the First Amendment.
Censorship of ideas, even demonstrably false ones, is completely different (and much more dangerous because you have to appoint a censor who decides what is false).
Censorship of ideas, even demonstrably false ones, is completely different (and much more dangerous because you have to appoint a censor who decides what is false).
How Censorship of lie A fundamentally different from Censorship of lie B?
Picking arbitrary facts as somehow political issues is very dangerous waters. I honestly have less problems with someone saying a Holocaust was a good idea than I do when people say they aren’t happening.
Picking arbitrary facts as somehow political issues is very dangerous waters. I honestly have less problems with someone saying a Holocaust was a good idea than I do when people say they aren’t happening.
People seem to be upset by my comment, but I am just stating what the actual law is regarding free speech about ideas and about libel. These rules are very well established in terms of what they encompass and don't.(IAAL, FWIW.)
I would recommend checking out Professor Volokh's series of YouTube videos on the First Amendment. [1]
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uWzNDKtp9w
I would recommend checking out Professor Volokh's series of YouTube videos on the First Amendment. [1]
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uWzNDKtp9w
That’s irrelevant to this discussion. Saying free speech excludes a limitation on free speech as defined by a specific country means anything that country excludes is therefore perfectly acceptable.
It’s the same Doublethink that defines income taxes as exclusive of payroll taxes by naming a subset of income taxes as income tax.
It’s the same Doublethink that defines income taxes as exclusive of payroll taxes by naming a subset of income taxes as income tax.
Wrong on both counts, actually (I am a former tax lawyer, so your second example is right in my area of expertise). The exception for libel is in the First Amendment in the US and in many other countries. This is not just about the US.
And as for payroll taxes, they are still taxes, but they are not applied on all income. For example, they do not apply to capital gains, or to income above ~$140k. Also, social security is (at least in theory) a forced savings plan, and people who pay into it more over their career then receive more out when they retire.
Income taxes, on the other hand, are not capped at a certain level, and you never get money back later based on how much income tax you paid in the past.
There are times where it is silly to refer to them in the aggregate, but it is not "Doublethink" to talk about them separately. They are different in important respects.
And as for payroll taxes, they are still taxes, but they are not applied on all income. For example, they do not apply to capital gains, or to income above ~$140k. Also, social security is (at least in theory) a forced savings plan, and people who pay into it more over their career then receive more out when they retire.
Income taxes, on the other hand, are not capped at a certain level, and you never get money back later based on how much income tax you paid in the past.
There are times where it is silly to refer to them in the aggregate, but it is not "Doublethink" to talk about them separately. They are different in important respects.
> they are not applied to all income.
To show why this is a logical fallacy.
The US definition of income taxes also excludes gifts received even though that’s also “income.” As such by your definition they aren’t income taxes. Of course you could just define gifts as not income and things are ok, except if you continue to define income taxes as taxes based on a specific system then the definition is only applicable to that system at a specific point in time.
For example, is money received by tax free investments income? That’s now undecided until you determine the specific source, time period, and country involved. And as soon as you have statements that are both true and false you have a problem.
Even if you want to stick with US definitions, the states and federal government have different rules. As such the exact same transaction can be both income and not income. Which is about the clearest example of Doublethink I can think of.
PS: Instead, if you say for purposes of X it’s defined as Y then you don’t have this issue. But, then it’s very clear that specific things are exceptions. (To be clear I kept adding to this comment.)
To show why this is a logical fallacy.
The US definition of income taxes also excludes gifts received even though that’s also “income.” As such by your definition they aren’t income taxes. Of course you could just define gifts as not income and things are ok, except if you continue to define income taxes as taxes based on a specific system then the definition is only applicable to that system at a specific point in time.
For example, is money received by tax free investments income? That’s now undecided until you determine the specific source, time period, and country involved. And as soon as you have statements that are both true and false you have a problem.
Even if you want to stick with US definitions, the states and federal government have different rules. As such the exact same transaction can be both income and not income. Which is about the clearest example of Doublethink I can think of.
PS: Instead, if you say for purposes of X it’s defined as Y then you don’t have this issue. But, then it’s very clear that specific things are exceptions. (To be clear I kept adding to this comment.)
So your good with active calls for mass murder?
Because denying something happened doesn’t physically hurt anyone. Mostly just dumb.
Asking for it to happen again means one is an evil monster that needs to be stopped.
Because denying something happened doesn’t physically hurt anyone. Mostly just dumb.
Asking for it to happen again means one is an evil monster that needs to be stopped.
You have just established that
> There is no "buts" regarding freedom.
Is false. People have freedom of speech, but -- "but" -- not freedom to libel people, for example.
> There is no "buts" regarding freedom.
Is false. People have freedom of speech, but -- "but" -- not freedom to libel people, for example.
Exactly. There's a familiar pattern to this debate. Someone categorically declares there can't be any exceptions to free speech.
Inevitably, someone brings up a counterexample.
Then the original person replies that it doesn't count, because it's not speech and there's a different word for what it is. Libel, incitement, terrorism, whatever word is needed to cover the example.
But in doing that, you've carved out a category for things that are excluded from protections afforded to speech.
Then the next thread comes around, someone declares there's no exceptions to speech, and the cycle continues.
Inevitably, someone brings up a counterexample.
Then the original person replies that it doesn't count, because it's not speech and there's a different word for what it is. Libel, incitement, terrorism, whatever word is needed to cover the example.
But in doing that, you've carved out a category for things that are excluded from protections afforded to speech.
Then the next thread comes around, someone declares there's no exceptions to speech, and the cycle continues.
>under the First Amendment.
If you're going to confine this conversation to the first amendment, then that's not relevant to youtube. For many the concept of speech in the sense pertinent here is broader than just U.S. law.
I've been on many HN threads where free speech absolutists make explicitly this point because they want to apply the concept of unfettered speech to private platforms, and they square the circle by insisting it's bigger than just the first amendment.
If you're going to confine this conversation to the first amendment, then that's not relevant to youtube. For many the concept of speech in the sense pertinent here is broader than just U.S. law.
I've been on many HN threads where free speech absolutists make explicitly this point because they want to apply the concept of unfettered speech to private platforms, and they square the circle by insisting it's bigger than just the first amendment.
It's not all about the First Amendment, but if someone is going to equate two things that are treated differently under both American and other (UK, for example) laws, it's a relevant point. Also, Google is a company headquartered in the US, so US law is somewhat more relevant than other law.
>but if someone is going to equate two things that are treated differently under both American and other (UK, for example) laws, it's a relevant point.
It's relevant insofar as legal distinctions between US and UK are relevant, which is to say, not relevant at all so far as I can tell. I don't think anyone's argument here hinged on such a distinction. If it did, and to that extent, it's relevant. But the heartland of this whole conversation has to do with a conception of speech as a principle that's broader than just U.S. law.
So we should be clear about the extent to which this is, or isn't, speaking to the conversation that everyone else is having.
It's relevant insofar as legal distinctions between US and UK are relevant, which is to say, not relevant at all so far as I can tell. I don't think anyone's argument here hinged on such a distinction. If it did, and to that extent, it's relevant. But the heartland of this whole conversation has to do with a conception of speech as a principle that's broader than just U.S. law.
So we should be clear about the extent to which this is, or isn't, speaking to the conversation that everyone else is having.
You still have to appoint a censor who decides what is false for libel, don't you?
Good point. We allow judges and juries to do this. It is much more tractable problem in the case of statements about individuals. Also, it avoids questions of legal standing (who has suffered injury and is allowed to sue).
What is the difference between libel and a demonstrably false idea?
Libel is a statement that damages the reputation of a person. Libelous statements are not protected under the First Amendment.
Ideas about election fraud do not fall into this exception to the First Amendment unless they refer to individuals and make defamatory statements about them.
For the record, I'm not saying there couldn't be a reason to ban these statements, just that a libelous statement is not a good comparison because it is one of the established exceptions to the First Amendment.
Ideas about election fraud do not fall into this exception to the First Amendment unless they refer to individuals and make defamatory statements about them.
For the record, I'm not saying there couldn't be a reason to ban these statements, just that a libelous statement is not a good comparison because it is one of the established exceptions to the First Amendment.
>exceptions to the First Amendment.
In other words, a but. Which is the whole point - the original statement was you can't have freedom of speech with "buts". We already have "buts", and most people would agree we have freedom of speech.
A functioning society can't have the unbridled "freedom of speech" op is insinuating we should have. You aren't free to lie in a court of law, that's infringing on your freedom of speech. You can't falsely accuse someone of a crime - also an infringement on freedom of speech. Add countless other exceptions to the rule. And all of that is ignoring the fact that "freedom of speech" doesn't mean: other people are forced to listen to you or repeat what you said.
In other words, a but. Which is the whole point - the original statement was you can't have freedom of speech with "buts". We already have "buts", and most people would agree we have freedom of speech.
A functioning society can't have the unbridled "freedom of speech" op is insinuating we should have. You aren't free to lie in a court of law, that's infringing on your freedom of speech. You can't falsely accuse someone of a crime - also an infringement on freedom of speech. Add countless other exceptions to the rule. And all of that is ignoring the fact that "freedom of speech" doesn't mean: other people are forced to listen to you or repeat what you said.
I used to live in China in the pre-Trump days when most westerners believed in free speech. Sometimes I would hear about "draconian" Chinese censorship. It seemed obviously bad by western standards. For example, they would prohibit industrial action in case it threatens some vital industry or prohibit protests in case it threatens the power of the government which could lead to unrest and violence. Or they prosecuted someone for spreading a rumor after Fukushima happened that iodized salt protects against cancer which led to supermarkets getting sold out of it. Or they would suppress anti-government talk like what Falun Gong and the Uyghurs were doing. In the case of the Uyghur, they did actually commit some terrorists acts because of the anti-government things they were telling each other. All that seemed like bad totalitarian censorship. But now American leftist believe similar censorship is OK for essentially the same reasons. "social harmony" was never seen as a valid reason for censorship by westerners before, but since Trump, they changed their mind.
You example of accusations of child abuse as a way to insult somebody is actually fine as long as the society can recognize unfounded accusations from actual reality. This is still acceptable for many other insults, like "you're stupid", but somehow, people seem to have elevated sexual abuse accusations to the status of truth. I'd say the antidote to that is to allow more open unfounded accusations so we're all immunized against their effects. We do have the justice system to address real allegations.
You example of accusations of child abuse as a way to insult somebody is actually fine as long as the society can recognize unfounded accusations from actual reality. This is still acceptable for many other insults, like "you're stupid", but somehow, people seem to have elevated sexual abuse accusations to the status of truth. I'd say the antidote to that is to allow more open unfounded accusations so we're all immunized against their effects. We do have the justice system to address real allegations.
There's a huge difference between government censorship/suppression, and a private entity deciding what they will and won't host.
I fail to see how massive global wealthy companies with immense influence and who by now control a sizable chunk of the places where public life and moreso public discourse takes place are so much different from governments in this context. Other than that we actually elect governments, meaning the mega corps are even less accountable to the general public. The Googles and Facebooks have more power (money, influence, etc) than a lot of actual nation states and their governments already, and they are constantly increasing their influence by means of lobbying (including keeping competitors at arm's length with regulatory capture), directing public discourse and quite often just "doing things" and waiting if anything bad will happen to them - which usually won't.
While the amount of wealth companies and a few individuals have is absolutely concerning and something we’d be crazy to ignore, it boggles my mind that you don’t see any differences between governments and companies when it comes to speech....
For one thing, governments can kidnap you, your family and anyone you’ve spoken and lock you in a cage. That’s one of many huge differences between the two.
We live in a time when the ability to find a platform for your ideas is significantly bigger than it’s ever been in history, even without the couple of tech giants.
And just to reiterate, we should be terrified of the power of some of these tech giants, but I’m skeptical of anyone who fails to see a difference between a company saying, “not on my servers” in a world where governments literally kill people who say things they don’t like.
For one thing, governments can kidnap you, your family and anyone you’ve spoken and lock you in a cage. That’s one of many huge differences between the two.
We live in a time when the ability to find a platform for your ideas is significantly bigger than it’s ever been in history, even without the couple of tech giants.
And just to reiterate, we should be terrified of the power of some of these tech giants, but I’m skeptical of anyone who fails to see a difference between a company saying, “not on my servers” in a world where governments literally kill people who say things they don’t like.
I do see a difference, sure. Just that the difference is getting slimmer and slimmer constantly, and already is too small for me to consider to be comfortable.
>For one thing, governments can kidnap you, your family and anyone you’ve spoken and lock you in a cage. That’s one of many huge differences between the two.
Companies used to do that already. Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it. That's why, in my humble opinion, the time is now to reign in the power of mega corps.
It also misses the point a bit by focusing on the most egregious things like kidnapping, imprisonment, killings. You don't have to kidnap, kill or "vanish" your opponents, there are many ways to repress them, scare them into obedience and so on.
>For one thing, governments can kidnap you, your family and anyone you’ve spoken and lock you in a cage. That’s one of many huge differences between the two.
Companies used to do that already. Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it. That's why, in my humble opinion, the time is now to reign in the power of mega corps.
It also misses the point a bit by focusing on the most egregious things like kidnapping, imprisonment, killings. You don't have to kidnap, kill or "vanish" your opponents, there are many ways to repress them, scare them into obedience and so on.
You fail to see it.
But the laws are very clear on it.
Perhaps you’re not looking?
I know it’s hip in the tech scene to wave off politics, but the rest of physical reality still exists.
But the laws are very clear on it.
Perhaps you’re not looking?
I know it’s hip in the tech scene to wave off politics, but the rest of physical reality still exists.
This is patent nonsense.
You can quit Google. You can quit Facebook. I know lots of people who have.
Try quitting your government. I don't even need to fill in the rest of this story because you know exactly how well it will go.
You can quit Google. You can quit Facebook. I know lots of people who have.
Try quitting your government. I don't even need to fill in the rest of this story because you know exactly how well it will go.
You cannot "quit" google when google is actively framing policy and the law for everybody.
You may say that so far google wasn't too bad, and I would agree. Regardless, I still find it concerning that they are able to concentrate that much unchecked power. "Don't be evil" was yesterday, "Don't be evil unless it hurts our margins too badly" is today, I think there is a possibility - but not a certainty of course - that tomorrow it might gonna be "Evil is quite alright if it helps our margins". And that's just google. Other companies with massive influence, like the Murdoch or Koch empires, haven't been as nice as google.
You may say that so far google wasn't too bad, and I would agree. Regardless, I still find it concerning that they are able to concentrate that much unchecked power. "Don't be evil" was yesterday, "Don't be evil unless it hurts our margins too badly" is today, I think there is a possibility - but not a certainty of course - that tomorrow it might gonna be "Evil is quite alright if it helps our margins". And that's just google. Other companies with massive influence, like the Murdoch or Koch empires, haven't been as nice as google.
> You cannot "quit" google
Yes, you absolutely can. Switch from YouTube to a different site, or host video yourself.
If you're complaining about lobbying, that's an entirely different matter, for an entirely different discussion. If you're complaining about monopolies or concentration of power, that's also an entirely different matter, for an entirely different discussion.
Right now we're talking about whether the people running a site, who own the servers on which the data lives, can choose what they host, or whether they're forced to host things against their will. Do you believe that the government should be able to force people to host content against their will?
Yes, you absolutely can. Switch from YouTube to a different site, or host video yourself.
If you're complaining about lobbying, that's an entirely different matter, for an entirely different discussion. If you're complaining about monopolies or concentration of power, that's also an entirely different matter, for an entirely different discussion.
Right now we're talking about whether the people running a site, who own the servers on which the data lives, can choose what they host, or whether they're forced to host things against their will. Do you believe that the government should be able to force people to host content against their will?
>If you're complaining about lobbying, that's an entirely different matter, for an entirely different discussion. If you're complaining about monopolies or concentration of power, that's also an entirely different matter, for an entirely different discussion.
I am doing both.
Also, switching hosting isn't a cure. Google/Youtube and Facebook and reddit and twitter, for better or worse, control much of the audience online. If they decided you do not exist then for the majority of people you do not exist. Not because those people chose to ignore you, but the companies made the decision for the audience. At the same time companies like google do everything to disrupt the "open market of ideas" and replace it with a "walled garden of ideas we can monetize and do not object to", so far mostly to gain a competitive advantage not to push their point of view, but that may well change.
Taking about hosting in isolation is in my opinion not helpful, one has to always consider the larger picture.
I am doing both.
Also, switching hosting isn't a cure. Google/Youtube and Facebook and reddit and twitter, for better or worse, control much of the audience online. If they decided you do not exist then for the majority of people you do not exist. Not because those people chose to ignore you, but the companies made the decision for the audience. At the same time companies like google do everything to disrupt the "open market of ideas" and replace it with a "walled garden of ideas we can monetize and do not object to", so far mostly to gain a competitive advantage not to push their point of view, but that may well change.
Taking about hosting in isolation is in my opinion not helpful, one has to always consider the larger picture.
> I am doing both.
In doing so, you have failed to answer the load-bearing question.
We're talking about whether the people running a site, who own the servers on which the data lives, can choose what they host, or whether they're forced to host things against their will. Do you believe that the government should be able to force people to host content against their will?
In doing so, you have failed to answer the load-bearing question.
We're talking about whether the people running a site, who own the servers on which the data lives, can choose what they host, or whether they're forced to host things against their will. Do you believe that the government should be able to force people to host content against their will?
Try quitting Amazon. I haven't ordered anything from them for over a decade. Easy peasy. Oh but my employer uses AWS. Damn. And so do untold websites that I use. Damn. And just this week, I bought something from good ol' BestBuy -- nothing wrong with that, right? Except they now have "marketplace" listings and my purchase was delivered by Amazon. Shit.
We have large body of dystopian fiction in all media (books, movies, TV, videogames, comics, etc.) about what might happen if the private entities accumulate more money and power than democratically elect governments.
I’m not saying we’re there just yet, but this Google’s stance is a step in that direction.
I’m not saying we’re there just yet, but this Google’s stance is a step in that direction.
You don't even have reach as far as dystopian fiction. Look at the history of the Hudson Bay Company and the India Trading Company, private companies which were in effect defacto governments.
When that private entity achieves a near-monopoly on search, then it becomes the arbiter of what does and does not get heard.
That's concerning enough in itself for free speech, but add in pressure from government to "self-regulate," and you arrive at effective government censorship/suppression. When Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai and Jack Dorsey are brought before Congress to testify about what they're doing to stop the spread of "fake news," the implicit threat is that if they don't pro-actively do what Congress wants, then Congress will force them to do so (or punish them in other ways).
That's concerning enough in itself for free speech, but add in pressure from government to "self-regulate," and you arrive at effective government censorship/suppression. When Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai and Jack Dorsey are brought before Congress to testify about what they're doing to stop the spread of "fake news," the implicit threat is that if they don't pro-actively do what Congress wants, then Congress will force them to do so (or punish them in other ways).
When will this meme die?
Yes but the difference shrinks when all the private entities that dominate the communication between people impose the same censorship and competition is effectively prevented by network effects. It's more of an anti-trust problem. Nobody would be complaining if it was just some small internet forum doing it.
YouTube (of Google), Facebook and Twitter are three different sources of (peer-propagated) information, and even combined do not constitute a centralized source of information.
It does seem like they are used for "news" way more than (in my personal opinion) is advisable, but they are still each independent organizations, and they do not hold (quite) all of the keys to information, and still want to preserve a reputation of impartiality, as difficult and impractical of a goal as that is.
It's certainly a problem when other sources of information loudly pronounce misinformation as fact. If you only compare YouTube and a single other competing news source, you might feel it's rather odd that YouTube is choosing to stop information of a certain nature. If you look widely enough, you are more likely to find that the information is false, and it was your original comparison source that was, in fact, problematic.
The point of all this is that there needs to be more sources of valid, factual information than sources of the same problematic false information, or we are all going to lose the ability to determine any reasonable facsimile of truth. The fact that is it peer-propagated certainly entangles a complexity that is reflected in the very divided opinion on this issue.
But I think in the end it will boil down to something simple. Like other things we've previously agreed should not be free to be amplified on peer networks, likewise demonstrably false information sourced from the government of the people should also not be free to find amplification on those peer networks.
It does seem like they are used for "news" way more than (in my personal opinion) is advisable, but they are still each independent organizations, and they do not hold (quite) all of the keys to information, and still want to preserve a reputation of impartiality, as difficult and impractical of a goal as that is.
It's certainly a problem when other sources of information loudly pronounce misinformation as fact. If you only compare YouTube and a single other competing news source, you might feel it's rather odd that YouTube is choosing to stop information of a certain nature. If you look widely enough, you are more likely to find that the information is false, and it was your original comparison source that was, in fact, problematic.
The point of all this is that there needs to be more sources of valid, factual information than sources of the same problematic false information, or we are all going to lose the ability to determine any reasonable facsimile of truth. The fact that is it peer-propagated certainly entangles a complexity that is reflected in the very divided opinion on this issue.
But I think in the end it will boil down to something simple. Like other things we've previously agreed should not be free to be amplified on peer networks, likewise demonstrably false information sourced from the government of the people should also not be free to find amplification on those peer networks.
Can google imprison me? Can they seize my assets? Can Google execute me?
Can Google imprison you? Not in the US, unless their lawyers find a nice way to make a prosecutor go e.g. for some fancy computer espionage charges (see Aaron Schwartz for example), but companies in the past had regimes in their bag and made people go to prison or vanish entirely, or perform forced labor for them.
Can they seize your assets? Not directly, but try getting sued by the legal department of a mega corp and see what you have left when it's all over. The end result is the same.
As somebody else pointed out, we already had companies that effectively acted as unelected governments in the past, like the East India Company. They used to execute people.
Can they seize your assets? Not directly, but try getting sued by the legal department of a mega corp and see what you have left when it's all over. The end result is the same.
As somebody else pointed out, we already had companies that effectively acted as unelected governments in the past, like the East India Company. They used to execute people.
Google can do bad things to you. Significantly less-bad things to you than imprisonment/asset seizure/execution, BUT they are not required to follow due process and are not answerable to anyone but themselves if they do something bad to you. They can also provide substantial amounts of incriminating evidence to the government (the ones who can execute you) and technically a warrant is not required. If the cops go to Google and ask for info about you that is stored on Google's computers, and Google gives it to them without a warrant, your rights as a US citizen have not been violated.
No, but they can effectively stop you from speaking online, which is what we're discussing.
They have your search history. Or they could make it if inclined. So for a lot of people, yes. They could easily put people in Jail.
More likely scenario would be exposing anyone That wants to be anonymous. Actually I think that happens in other countries all the time.
More likely scenario would be exposing anyone That wants to be anonymous. Actually I think that happens in other countries all the time.
Google cannot put me in jail.
What a low quality response. I'm done with you, please do not reply to me further, here or elsewhere.
What a low quality response. I'm done with you, please do not reply to me further, here or elsewhere.
No, but they can use their enormous power and influence to get politicians into office that could write new rules allowing such.
That's what we do nowadays, is it? Somebody walks and say something against our preferred political ideology and we throw vague threats of ruining that person's life with false accusations?
Like that guy who ran for president with vague threats of not accepting the outcome if he would lose. And then when they lost not accepting the outcome and making up a bunch of stories about wide-spread fraud?
If you were implying that I'd actually accuse anyone of doing stuff to kids, you throughly misunderstood the content of my comment.
If you were implying that I'd actually accuse anyone of doing stuff to kids, you throughly misunderstood the content of my comment.
>We could post stuff about previous commenter, based on literally nothing, doing bad stuff to little kiddies and they would be deleted by HN.
And nobody would believe it if it wasnt deleted. They'd just be irritated by it.
Nonetheless that's not political speech (unlike the YouTube vids) . It's basic libel.
Goebbels was in favor of free political speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of freedom of political speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise - whether that's Trump or whomever. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.
And nobody would believe it if it wasnt deleted. They'd just be irritated by it.
Nonetheless that's not political speech (unlike the YouTube vids) . It's basic libel.
Goebbels was in favor of free political speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you’re really in favor of freedom of political speech, then you’re in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise - whether that's Trump or whomever. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of free speech.
It's not "free speech" for the president to lie and accuse state governments of defrauding the country, without evidence.
This is beyond political speech. It is inherently dangerous.
This is beyond political speech. It is inherently dangerous.
He is absolutely exercising his first amendment rights to freedom of political speech by lying about what happened without evidence.
The first amendment isn't there to protect you from his lies though. It's to protect you so that you can speak the truth when he or somebody like him wants to stop you.
Be careful what you wish for. The same mechanisms that are used to shut him up will be used to silence you one day.
The first amendment isn't there to protect you from his lies though. It's to protect you so that you can speak the truth when he or somebody like him wants to stop you.
Be careful what you wish for. The same mechanisms that are used to shut him up will be used to silence you one day.
And Twitter is free to block him as it pleases
Provided they forgo legal common carrier protections they are, yes.
Once they do start censoring on that basis they become criminally liable for all content posted on the platform though.
If they're willing to take the same legal responsibility over all tweets that a publisher would over every page of its magazine id say let them. I'd like them to take legal responsiblity for the toxicity their platform generates.
Once they do start censoring on that basis they become criminally liable for all content posted on the platform though.
If they're willing to take the same legal responsibility over all tweets that a publisher would over every page of its magazine id say let them. I'd like them to take legal responsiblity for the toxicity their platform generates.
He's speaking as the POTUS not a private citizen. He has duties to the office and to the constitution that supersede your claim to 1A.
What Trump is doing right now is treason against the country. You can call it free speech if you like.
And I have zero worries that any of Trump's legal jeopardy will ever effect myself because I am not a career criminal as he is.
What Trump is doing right now is treason against the country. You can call it free speech if you like.
And I have zero worries that any of Trump's legal jeopardy will ever effect myself because I am not a career criminal as he is.
> without evidence.
we're talking about an election that was won with razor thin margins in a few specific swing states, with numerous statistical anomalies, hundreds of sworn affidavits, and a pending lawsuit to the scotus with 17 states attached.
prior to 2020 election, the democrats, CNN, NBC, and many others are _on record_ saying that Dominion Voting has the potential for massive fraud & shouldn't be used.
the problem is that they're effectively saying no one can question these anomalies, or the claims, and that "youtube" as the expert has adjudicated the election.
the truth is that it could take years of investigation to resolve whether or not some of the alleged evidence was credible or not, and neither youtube nor the claimants can say it's truth until then.
why does big tech get to decide who's right? that's the problem here & why it reeks Orwell.
we're talking about an election that was won with razor thin margins in a few specific swing states, with numerous statistical anomalies, hundreds of sworn affidavits, and a pending lawsuit to the scotus with 17 states attached.
prior to 2020 election, the democrats, CNN, NBC, and many others are _on record_ saying that Dominion Voting has the potential for massive fraud & shouldn't be used.
the problem is that they're effectively saying no one can question these anomalies, or the claims, and that "youtube" as the expert has adjudicated the election.
the truth is that it could take years of investigation to resolve whether or not some of the alleged evidence was credible or not, and neither youtube nor the claimants can say it's truth until then.
why does big tech get to decide who's right? that's the problem here & why it reeks Orwell.
Most people take your view, but I would be very careful to claim that it's actually impossible to not have limits on freedoms. There are some who believe that the state should not exist at all; those types would not concede the ground that there exist any reasonable restrictions on fundamental natural rights.
Whereas a statist (i.e. someone who is not an anarchist) would basically always concede that there are limits on rights. To use US jurisprudence as an example, even the very pro-2A supreme court justices have ruled that the state has a compelling interest in reducing gun violence and thus is allowed to take guns away from violent felons, etc.
Personally, I take the former position; I think it's better to have a society where property rights (which includes the right of self-ownership i.e. owning your own body) and other natural rights (speech, self defense [technically these are just derived from property rights but I digress]) cannot be infringed upon for any reason. I am very heavily in the minority with that position, and I'm aware of that fact.
---
Anyway, switching back to the original topic of censorship of supposed "disinfo", if you don't buy a natural rights argument at all, then from a utilitarian perspective I think it's still a bad idea. In places like Saudi Arabia or Iran, the idea that women should be able to choose what clothing to wear or not wear would be considered harmful to society and worthy of censorship. In Turkey the idea that the Armenian genocide occurred could be considered worthy of censorship. In America the notion that we should not have warrantless wiretapping of all communications between private citizens could be considered dangerous to society, etc etc.
It always starts with a "good" reason. It never ends with one.
Whereas a statist (i.e. someone who is not an anarchist) would basically always concede that there are limits on rights. To use US jurisprudence as an example, even the very pro-2A supreme court justices have ruled that the state has a compelling interest in reducing gun violence and thus is allowed to take guns away from violent felons, etc.
Personally, I take the former position; I think it's better to have a society where property rights (which includes the right of self-ownership i.e. owning your own body) and other natural rights (speech, self defense [technically these are just derived from property rights but I digress]) cannot be infringed upon for any reason. I am very heavily in the minority with that position, and I'm aware of that fact.
---
Anyway, switching back to the original topic of censorship of supposed "disinfo", if you don't buy a natural rights argument at all, then from a utilitarian perspective I think it's still a bad idea. In places like Saudi Arabia or Iran, the idea that women should be able to choose what clothing to wear or not wear would be considered harmful to society and worthy of censorship. In Turkey the idea that the Armenian genocide occurred could be considered worthy of censorship. In America the notion that we should not have warrantless wiretapping of all communications between private citizens could be considered dangerous to society, etc etc.
It always starts with a "good" reason. It never ends with one.
> I think it's better to have a society where property rights (which includes the right of self-ownership i.e. owning your own body) and other natural rights (speech, self defense [technically these are just derived from property rights but I digress]) cannot be infringed upon for any reason
In this YouTube situation, property rights and freedom of speech are mutually exclusive. Either the owners of YouTube have the right to censor whatever they want on their platform/property, or people have freedom of speech and YouTube can't remove speech from their platform/property. In this situation, you can't protect both property rights and freedom of speech - you can only protect one.
In this YouTube situation, property rights and freedom of speech are mutually exclusive. Either the owners of YouTube have the right to censor whatever they want on their platform/property, or people have freedom of speech and YouTube can't remove speech from their platform/property. In this situation, you can't protect both property rights and freedom of speech - you can only protect one.
If enough people demanded it though, we could make it socially unacceptable for Youtube to use their property rights in the pursuit of censorship. The problem really isn't the law, it's public opinion. We've lost sight of how important freedom of speech is, and we are by and large cheering on censorship where it hurts those we disagree with. It's short sighted and will ultimately cost us a lot more than it gains us... but it feels good for now.
Ultimately, if people didn't accept these draconian measures, advertisers would complain because there would be notable data showing a decline in consumer engagement.
I actually like that YouTube is announcing all of this stuff up-front, because it makes it far more clear and crystal that if you have an alternative viewpoint from the mainstream, you will have to build your own infrastructure to support your message. It's best that people learn this sooner, than later. Enough people have suffered by being too trusting of brands like YouTube.
I actually like that YouTube is announcing all of this stuff up-front, because it makes it far more clear and crystal that if you have an alternative viewpoint from the mainstream, you will have to build your own infrastructure to support your message. It's best that people learn this sooner, than later. Enough people have suffered by being too trusting of brands like YouTube.
I think you're missing the forest for all the trees. This isn't a tactical debate, it's a philosophical and foundational one. Until we all defend the right of people we despise to voice their opinion, everything else is playing at the margin.
People have forgotten that it's not just good for the people we detest, it's good for us to be able to listen to bad ideas and form rational and compelling counterarguments and defences against them. And since none of us is perfect, there will be times when it is _us_ that is espousing the bad idea, and it will be damn good for everyone that people are able to speak up and correct us.
There are indeed growing pains as the world comes online and starts being able to talk to each other. We're really in our adolescence as it pertains to life online. But we're making the most naive and expedient appraisals and supposed remedies to the discomfort its causing. My hope is that we're able to turn a corner and wrest control away from the reactionaries who currently control the narrative and the agenda.
People have forgotten that it's not just good for the people we detest, it's good for us to be able to listen to bad ideas and form rational and compelling counterarguments and defences against them. And since none of us is perfect, there will be times when it is _us_ that is espousing the bad idea, and it will be damn good for everyone that people are able to speak up and correct us.
There are indeed growing pains as the world comes online and starts being able to talk to each other. We're really in our adolescence as it pertains to life online. But we're making the most naive and expedient appraisals and supposed remedies to the discomfort its causing. My hope is that we're able to turn a corner and wrest control away from the reactionaries who currently control the narrative and the agenda.
> it's good for us to be able to listen to bad ideas and form rational and compelling counterarguments and defences against them.
I agree, and it's quite obvious that if you want this, then you should not go to YouTube.
> But we're making the most naive and expedient appraisals and supposed remedies to the discomfort its causing.
The only naivety being expressed here, is the idea that YouTube is the be-all-end-all online UGC video provider. Why are you placing YouTube on such a high pedestal, assigning such a non-deterministic fate to its decisions and outcomes? They're not even a little important to the dissemination of free ideas - perhaps they once were, but that ship sailed long ago.
Why are you so in love with YouTube? You clearly despise their choices; abandon the platform and don't look back.
> This isn't a tactical debate, it's a philosophical and foundational one.
I agree; you need to change your philosophy. Stop relying on YouTube to be the heroic service that you want it to be, and start realizing that it will never do what you want it to do.
I agree, and it's quite obvious that if you want this, then you should not go to YouTube.
> But we're making the most naive and expedient appraisals and supposed remedies to the discomfort its causing.
The only naivety being expressed here, is the idea that YouTube is the be-all-end-all online UGC video provider. Why are you placing YouTube on such a high pedestal, assigning such a non-deterministic fate to its decisions and outcomes? They're not even a little important to the dissemination of free ideas - perhaps they once were, but that ship sailed long ago.
Why are you so in love with YouTube? You clearly despise their choices; abandon the platform and don't look back.
> This isn't a tactical debate, it's a philosophical and foundational one.
I agree; you need to change your philosophy. Stop relying on YouTube to be the heroic service that you want it to be, and start realizing that it will never do what you want it to do.
YouTube is a specific company and they run an engine for recommending videos to people. YouTube doesn't prevent people from finding other hosting for their own videos and linking people to those videos. Do people have any more right to YouTube's megaphone than they do to any specific newspaper or TV channel's reach?
I despise people pushing anti-vaccination misinformation. Would it be good for us to fight for their right to have their message to be uncritically broadcast on say NBC? I might care if the government made a law that was ambiguously too broad that happened to make it so antivaxers couldn't possibly be broadcast on TV at all, and it was clear that antivaxers winning that fight against that overly-broad law would open things up for other groups I thought the law was too strict against, but if it's just the case that every TV station decided of their own will and probably specific reasons to not broadcast them, then even if I thought all the TV stations were generally too strict, I'd pick something I actually liked that they were being too strict against to support to convince the stations to change their opinions.
I despise people pushing anti-vaccination misinformation. Would it be good for us to fight for their right to have their message to be uncritically broadcast on say NBC? I might care if the government made a law that was ambiguously too broad that happened to make it so antivaxers couldn't possibly be broadcast on TV at all, and it was clear that antivaxers winning that fight against that overly-broad law would open things up for other groups I thought the law was too strict against, but if it's just the case that every TV station decided of their own will and probably specific reasons to not broadcast them, then even if I thought all the TV stations were generally too strict, I'd pick something I actually liked that they were being too strict against to support to convince the stations to change their opinions.
Nobody is suing YouTube over this though, they are just sharing the information about it so that people can decide whether to keep using YouTube to host their content, and encouraging people to stop using the service.
Also we are discussing the ethical issues surrounding this decision.
Also we are discussing the ethical issues surrounding this decision.
The bigger conversation isn't really about YouTube, it's that some people want these ideas suppressed from everywhere and some people don't. Youtube just happens to be more flexible than the government, but don't think for a second they're all going to draw the line if the government passes a law prohibiting saying those things. Legally enforced censorship is what many of them ultimately want.
On the other side of the coin, the anti-censorship people also want the government to prohit Youtube/FB/etc. from censoring their ideas. That's just as anti-freedom.
On the other side of the coin, the anti-censorship people also want the government to prohit Youtube/FB/etc. from censoring their ideas. That's just as anti-freedom.
Why would YouTube want legally-enforced censorship? The existence of that would make more work for them and would open them up to liability.
YouTube is specifically pushing back at propaganda coming from the government here, so I don't know how it makes any sense to assert that it's evidence they really want to allow government propaganda.
YouTube is specifically pushing back at propaganda coming from the government here, so I don't know how it makes any sense to assert that it's evidence they really want to allow government propaganda.
Property rights inherently derive from the state. Unless you subscribe to "might makes right", the idea of property rights is inherently a social construct which the state is a formalization of.
Limitations on rights is precisely the foundation of any society. To claim otherwise is just the semantic game of "oh, I don't mean those rights".
Limitations on rights is precisely the foundation of any society. To claim otherwise is just the semantic game of "oh, I don't mean those rights".
Property rights are intrinsic to our natural self-sovereignty (and agency). The State cannot grant rights.
Oh? I have an intrinsic right to the land that I currently own, the car in my driveway, and the computer I'm typing this on? How did that intrinsic right derive? And why don't I have an intrinsic right to, say, the land of the entire continent of North America?
Property rights are entirely a social construct. They are not intrinsic; they are created and granted solely via the formalizations of that social contract in the form of the state.
Property rights are entirely a social construct. They are not intrinsic; they are created and granted solely via the formalizations of that social contract in the form of the state.
> Property rights inherently derive from the state.
This is not true, property rights are the human incarnation of territoriality which is exhibited by many species.
> Unless you subscribe to "might makes right", the idea of property rights is inherently a social construct which the state is a formalization of.
The state is a formalization of a particular social construct that is not identical to property rights.
> Limitations on rights is precisely the foundation of any society.
Do you have any support for this statement? It seems to contradict your earlier assertions and despite that I'm not sure how it would be true on its own.
> To claim otherwise is just the semantic game of "oh, I don't mean those rights".
Well, I don't think its a meaningless semantic argument for people to discuss what specifically is referred to by "rights." If you think people have a right to steal food out of other people's homes then I can see why you would think the government was a necessary limitation on that "right." But I think its a reasonable response to say "there is no right to steal food from other people" and then we can discuss what is and is not a right, which is much closer to a necessary conversation than a game (when conducted by sincere interlocutors).
This is not true, property rights are the human incarnation of territoriality which is exhibited by many species.
> Unless you subscribe to "might makes right", the idea of property rights is inherently a social construct which the state is a formalization of.
The state is a formalization of a particular social construct that is not identical to property rights.
> Limitations on rights is precisely the foundation of any society.
Do you have any support for this statement? It seems to contradict your earlier assertions and despite that I'm not sure how it would be true on its own.
> To claim otherwise is just the semantic game of "oh, I don't mean those rights".
Well, I don't think its a meaningless semantic argument for people to discuss what specifically is referred to by "rights." If you think people have a right to steal food out of other people's homes then I can see why you would think the government was a necessary limitation on that "right." But I think its a reasonable response to say "there is no right to steal food from other people" and then we can discuss what is and is not a right, which is much closer to a necessary conversation than a game (when conducted by sincere interlocutors).
> This is not true, property rights are the human incarnation of territoriality which is exhibited by many species.
And those species lose their territory as soon as a bigger, meaner creature wants it. Their "right" to their territory is only as strong as their personal ability to protect it. No one else will help them.
Unless that's what your advocating for when you talk about property rights, then rights absolutely do come from the state. Most of us think property rights mean what's mine is mine no matter who wants it, not that I lose it as soon as someone takes it from me or hires someone to do so.
And those species lose their territory as soon as a bigger, meaner creature wants it. Their "right" to their territory is only as strong as their personal ability to protect it. No one else will help them.
Unless that's what your advocating for when you talk about property rights, then rights absolutely do come from the state. Most of us think property rights mean what's mine is mine no matter who wants it, not that I lose it as soon as someone takes it from me or hires someone to do so.
> And those species lose their territory as soon as a bigger, meaner creature wants it. Their "right" to their territory is only as strong as their personal ability to protect it. No one else will help them.
Indeed, and the same for the state.
> Unless that's what your advocating for when you talk about property rights,
I'm not advocating for anything, just correcting some misconceptions.
> then rights absolutely do come from the state.
No, they do not. Rights are a social fiction that arises from mutual cooperation and are continued through repetition and intentional performance. It is true that actors whose actions are colored by state power can participate disproportionately in this process of evolving norms.
> Most of us think property rights mean what's mine is mine no matter who wants it, not that I lose it as soon as someone takes it from me or hires someone to do so.
Yes because the norm of property requires that theft, robbery, and things of that nature are violations of that norm.
Indeed, and the same for the state.
> Unless that's what your advocating for when you talk about property rights,
I'm not advocating for anything, just correcting some misconceptions.
> then rights absolutely do come from the state.
No, they do not. Rights are a social fiction that arises from mutual cooperation and are continued through repetition and intentional performance. It is true that actors whose actions are colored by state power can participate disproportionately in this process of evolving norms.
> Most of us think property rights mean what's mine is mine no matter who wants it, not that I lose it as soon as someone takes it from me or hires someone to do so.
Yes because the norm of property requires that theft, robbery, and things of that nature are violations of that norm.
> Rights are a social fiction that arises from mutual cooperation
aka, the state. The formalization of the social fiction.
aka, the state. The formalization of the social fiction.
> aka, the state. The formalization of the social fiction.
No, rights. the state is distinguishable from rights. They are both social fictions but they are not the same social fiction.
No, rights. the state is distinguishable from rights. They are both social fictions but they are not the same social fiction.
> > Property rights inherently derive from the state.
> This is not true, property rights are the human incarnation of territoriality which is exhibited by many species.
Do you have proof for that? I mean that is a pretty sweeping statement, and I can think of a lot of counter examples.
> > Unless you subscribe to "might makes right", the idea of property rights is inherently a social construct which the state is a formalization of.
> The state is a formalization of a particular social construct that is not identical to property rights.
Sure but that isn't a contradiction to what the OP said. He did not say the state is identical to property rights.
> > Limitations on rights is precisely the foundation of any society.
> Do you have any support for this statement? It seems to contradict your earlier assertions and despite that I'm not sure how it would be true on its own.
> > To claim otherwise is just the semantic game of "oh, I don't mean those rights".
> Well, I don't think its a meaningless semantic argument for people to discuss what specifically is referred to by "rights." If you think people have a right to steal food out of other people's homes then I can see why you would think the government was a necessary limitation on that "right." But I think its a reasonable response to say "there is no right to steal food from other people" and then we can discuss what is and is not a right, which is much closer to a necessary conversation than a game (when conducted by sincere interlocutors).
But you don't specify what a right is either. In fact you earlier said it's incarnation of territoriality. How can that be a right? I mean maybe a desire, but a desire is very different to a right.
> This is not true, property rights are the human incarnation of territoriality which is exhibited by many species.
Do you have proof for that? I mean that is a pretty sweeping statement, and I can think of a lot of counter examples.
> > Unless you subscribe to "might makes right", the idea of property rights is inherently a social construct which the state is a formalization of.
> The state is a formalization of a particular social construct that is not identical to property rights.
Sure but that isn't a contradiction to what the OP said. He did not say the state is identical to property rights.
> > Limitations on rights is precisely the foundation of any society.
> Do you have any support for this statement? It seems to contradict your earlier assertions and despite that I'm not sure how it would be true on its own.
> > To claim otherwise is just the semantic game of "oh, I don't mean those rights".
> Well, I don't think its a meaningless semantic argument for people to discuss what specifically is referred to by "rights." If you think people have a right to steal food out of other people's homes then I can see why you would think the government was a necessary limitation on that "right." But I think its a reasonable response to say "there is no right to steal food from other people" and then we can discuss what is and is not a right, which is much closer to a necessary conversation than a game (when conducted by sincere interlocutors).
But you don't specify what a right is either. In fact you earlier said it's incarnation of territoriality. How can that be a right? I mean maybe a desire, but a desire is very different to a right.
> Do you have proof for that? I mean that is a pretty sweeping statement, and I can think of a lot of counter examples.
I'm not sure what proof (or evidence really) would be required. You can observe animal territoriality in the wild, or you can trust animal behaviorists to report on it accurately. They have areas they defend against other members of the same species. Behavior varies widely, solitary species don't like any other members of their species (except for sexual partners), social species have different arrangements. Sometimes an elder male will have several females and young that are permitted and when the young get big enough they either leave or fight. Sometimes the males will have a hierarchy and defend the territory against other members of the species who are not part of their group. Sometimes they even make war on another group for their territory. If you let me know what kind of evidence you're looking for I might be able to supply it.
> Sure but that isn't a contradiction to what the OP said. He did not say the state is identical to property rights.
He said that state is a formalization of the social construct of property rights. I'm saying the state is not a formalization of the social construct of property rights, but a social construct of nation and government; and that the two have relation but exist independently of each other.
> But you don't specify what a right is either. In fact you earlier said it's incarnation of territoriality. How can that be a right? I mean maybe a desire, but a desire is very different to a right.
Excellent question, thanks for asking. Rights are a social construct that emerges from mutual cooperation, essentially a social technology that allows people to co-exist and pursue their own interests and desires without needing to establish the same agreements with every individual and without generating unnecessary conflict. This is to say that rights are emergent and arise from individuals agreeing to respect each other.
Perhaps an example would help: I don't like to be the victim of violence. Neither do you. At some point we agree not to do violence to each other. A third person shows up and attacks me to steal my food. You make the rational choice to help me defend myself because if he kills me for my food he may do the same to you. Being that he is outnumbered he stops and we explain "don't do violence on people." He says "you contradicted yourself, you say you're against violence but you used violence to stop me." We say "You're correct, it must be the initiation of violence that is bad, and it would be ok to use violence on someone who has used violence on you." He says "ok that may be the case but you used violence on that gazelle I was trying to take from you." We eventually conclude that rights are a social arrangement between humans as a result of our preference for cooperation with humans and do not apply to inter-species relations.
> you earlier said it's incarnation of territoriality. How can that be a right?
Property is a human expression of territoriality. Property rights are a social arrangement where people customarily or by agreement avoid violating each other's territory. Rights are a social arrangement that allow people to minimize the amount of violence in a community.
This is already kind of long but let me know if you have more questions and thank you for the opportunity to discuss these issues.
I'm not sure what proof (or evidence really) would be required. You can observe animal territoriality in the wild, or you can trust animal behaviorists to report on it accurately. They have areas they defend against other members of the same species. Behavior varies widely, solitary species don't like any other members of their species (except for sexual partners), social species have different arrangements. Sometimes an elder male will have several females and young that are permitted and when the young get big enough they either leave or fight. Sometimes the males will have a hierarchy and defend the territory against other members of the species who are not part of their group. Sometimes they even make war on another group for their territory. If you let me know what kind of evidence you're looking for I might be able to supply it.
> Sure but that isn't a contradiction to what the OP said. He did not say the state is identical to property rights.
He said that state is a formalization of the social construct of property rights. I'm saying the state is not a formalization of the social construct of property rights, but a social construct of nation and government; and that the two have relation but exist independently of each other.
> But you don't specify what a right is either. In fact you earlier said it's incarnation of territoriality. How can that be a right? I mean maybe a desire, but a desire is very different to a right.
Excellent question, thanks for asking. Rights are a social construct that emerges from mutual cooperation, essentially a social technology that allows people to co-exist and pursue their own interests and desires without needing to establish the same agreements with every individual and without generating unnecessary conflict. This is to say that rights are emergent and arise from individuals agreeing to respect each other.
Perhaps an example would help: I don't like to be the victim of violence. Neither do you. At some point we agree not to do violence to each other. A third person shows up and attacks me to steal my food. You make the rational choice to help me defend myself because if he kills me for my food he may do the same to you. Being that he is outnumbered he stops and we explain "don't do violence on people." He says "you contradicted yourself, you say you're against violence but you used violence to stop me." We say "You're correct, it must be the initiation of violence that is bad, and it would be ok to use violence on someone who has used violence on you." He says "ok that may be the case but you used violence on that gazelle I was trying to take from you." We eventually conclude that rights are a social arrangement between humans as a result of our preference for cooperation with humans and do not apply to inter-species relations.
> you earlier said it's incarnation of territoriality. How can that be a right?
Property is a human expression of territoriality. Property rights are a social arrangement where people customarily or by agreement avoid violating each other's territory. Rights are a social arrangement that allow people to minimize the amount of violence in a community.
This is already kind of long but let me know if you have more questions and thank you for the opportunity to discuss these issues.
First let me say I appreciate your non-confrontational arguments (you have been admittedly much better than myself) in a thread which is really quite a "sh*tshow".
>> Do you have proof for that? I mean that is a pretty sweeping statement, and I can think of a lot of counter examples.
>I'm not sure what proof (or evidence really) would be required. You can observe animal territoriality in the wild, or you can trust animal behaviorists to report on it accurately. They have areas they defend against other members of the same species. Behavior varies widely, solitary species don't like any other members of their species (except for sexual partners), social species have different arrangements. Sometimes an elder male will have several females and young that are permitted and when the young get big enough they either leave or fight. Sometimes the males will have a hierarchy and defend the territory against other members of the species who are not part of their group. Sometimes they even make war on another group for their territory. If you let me know what kind of evidence you're looking for I might be able to supply it.
I agree that we can territoriality in the animal kingdom and I'm can also admit that we see territoriality in humans (at least some of the time). However, you claimed that property rights are an incarnation of the territoriality, which is a quite a leap from territoriality exists in humans. Maybe this is related to the discussion of what is a right. Just a side-note I do think it's drawing parallels and conclusions from behaviour in the animal kingdom is fraught with problems. Just one example, I think based on this principle one could make clear arguments that people are inherently egoistic or altruistic.
>> Sure but that isn't a contradiction to what the OP said. He did not say the state is identical to property rights.
>He said that state is a formalization of the social construct of property rights. I'm saying the state is not a formalization of the social construct of property rights, but a social construct of nation and government; and that the two have relation but exist independently of each other.
I somewhat disagree with you here, however I admit we are starting to discuss semantics. But I would argue (and this is how I understood the OP, that the state is a social construct/formalisation of our social interactions, which does guarantee property rights (and others). So property rights do not exist without a social organisational construct such as the state. Now, the argument becomes a bit of a question of how broadly do we define state. I would also argue btw, that the concept of nation is much more closely linked territoriality than the state.
>> But you don't specify what a right is either. In fact you earlier said it's incarnation of territoriality. How can that be a right? I mean maybe a desire, but a desire is very different to a right.
>Excellent question, thanks for asking. Rights are a social construct that emerges from mutual cooperation, essentially a social technology that allows people to co-exist and pursue their own interests and desires without needing to establish the same agreements with every individual and without generating unnecessary conflict. This is to say that rights are emergent and arise from individuals agreeing to respect each other.
>Perhaps an example would help: I don't like to be the victim of violence. Neither do you. At some point we agree not to do violence to each other. A third person shows up and attacks me to steal my food. You make the rational choice to help me defend myself because if he kills me for my food he may do the same to you. Being that he is outnumbered he stops and we explain "don't do violence on people." He says "you contradicted yourself, you say you're against violence but you used violence to stop me." We say "You're correct, it must be the initiation of violence that is bad, and it would be ok to use violence on someone who has used violence on you." He says "ok that may be the case but you used violence on that gazelle I was trying to take from you." We eventually conclude that rights are a social arrangement between humans as a result of our preference for cooperation with humans and do not apply to inter-species relations.
I quite like your definition and largely agree with it. But would you not agree that we need some sort of social organisation to guarantee these rights? If not rights are largely meaningless or one could argue non-existent, because there is not social entity/organisation to construct them. So this is how I understood the OP, when he said (paraphrasing) property rights derive their existence from the state.
>> you earlier said it's incarnation of territoriality. How can that be a right?
>Property is a human expression of territoriality. Property rights are a social arrangement where people customarily or by agreement avoid violating each other's territory. Rights are a social arrangement that allow people to minimize the amount of violence in a community.
So the way I understand this, is that territoriality might be the reason for forming/formalising property rights in society (I still don't fully agree on this, but that's a different argument), however to me that is very different to saying that property rights are an incarnation of territoriality. Maybe a formalisation of territoriality is a better word?
>This is already kind of long but let me know if you have more questions and thank you for the opportunity to discuss these issues.
I thank you, this is definitely an interesting discussion.
>> Do you have proof for that? I mean that is a pretty sweeping statement, and I can think of a lot of counter examples.
>I'm not sure what proof (or evidence really) would be required. You can observe animal territoriality in the wild, or you can trust animal behaviorists to report on it accurately. They have areas they defend against other members of the same species. Behavior varies widely, solitary species don't like any other members of their species (except for sexual partners), social species have different arrangements. Sometimes an elder male will have several females and young that are permitted and when the young get big enough they either leave or fight. Sometimes the males will have a hierarchy and defend the territory against other members of the species who are not part of their group. Sometimes they even make war on another group for their territory. If you let me know what kind of evidence you're looking for I might be able to supply it.
I agree that we can territoriality in the animal kingdom and I'm can also admit that we see territoriality in humans (at least some of the time). However, you claimed that property rights are an incarnation of the territoriality, which is a quite a leap from territoriality exists in humans. Maybe this is related to the discussion of what is a right. Just a side-note I do think it's drawing parallels and conclusions from behaviour in the animal kingdom is fraught with problems. Just one example, I think based on this principle one could make clear arguments that people are inherently egoistic or altruistic.
>> Sure but that isn't a contradiction to what the OP said. He did not say the state is identical to property rights.
>He said that state is a formalization of the social construct of property rights. I'm saying the state is not a formalization of the social construct of property rights, but a social construct of nation and government; and that the two have relation but exist independently of each other.
I somewhat disagree with you here, however I admit we are starting to discuss semantics. But I would argue (and this is how I understood the OP, that the state is a social construct/formalisation of our social interactions, which does guarantee property rights (and others). So property rights do not exist without a social organisational construct such as the state. Now, the argument becomes a bit of a question of how broadly do we define state. I would also argue btw, that the concept of nation is much more closely linked territoriality than the state.
>> But you don't specify what a right is either. In fact you earlier said it's incarnation of territoriality. How can that be a right? I mean maybe a desire, but a desire is very different to a right.
>Excellent question, thanks for asking. Rights are a social construct that emerges from mutual cooperation, essentially a social technology that allows people to co-exist and pursue their own interests and desires without needing to establish the same agreements with every individual and without generating unnecessary conflict. This is to say that rights are emergent and arise from individuals agreeing to respect each other.
>Perhaps an example would help: I don't like to be the victim of violence. Neither do you. At some point we agree not to do violence to each other. A third person shows up and attacks me to steal my food. You make the rational choice to help me defend myself because if he kills me for my food he may do the same to you. Being that he is outnumbered he stops and we explain "don't do violence on people." He says "you contradicted yourself, you say you're against violence but you used violence to stop me." We say "You're correct, it must be the initiation of violence that is bad, and it would be ok to use violence on someone who has used violence on you." He says "ok that may be the case but you used violence on that gazelle I was trying to take from you." We eventually conclude that rights are a social arrangement between humans as a result of our preference for cooperation with humans and do not apply to inter-species relations.
I quite like your definition and largely agree with it. But would you not agree that we need some sort of social organisation to guarantee these rights? If not rights are largely meaningless or one could argue non-existent, because there is not social entity/organisation to construct them. So this is how I understood the OP, when he said (paraphrasing) property rights derive their existence from the state.
>> you earlier said it's incarnation of territoriality. How can that be a right?
>Property is a human expression of territoriality. Property rights are a social arrangement where people customarily or by agreement avoid violating each other's territory. Rights are a social arrangement that allow people to minimize the amount of violence in a community.
So the way I understand this, is that territoriality might be the reason for forming/formalising property rights in society (I still don't fully agree on this, but that's a different argument), however to me that is very different to saying that property rights are an incarnation of territoriality. Maybe a formalisation of territoriality is a better word?
>This is already kind of long but let me know if you have more questions and thank you for the opportunity to discuss these issues.
I thank you, this is definitely an interesting discussion.
> I agree that we can territoriality in the animal kingdom and I'm can also admit that we see territoriality in humans (at least some of the time). However, you claimed that property rights are an incarnation of the territoriality, which is a quite a leap from territoriality exists in humans.
Perhaps I was unclear. Property is the human incarnation of territory. This is an observation based on their similarities, treating humans as animals. When one animal claims an area and reacts with hostility to the conduct of other members of the same species in that area, it is said that the animal defends a territory. Property rights are a social norm that some humans use as a means of defending their territory. Rights are merely norms that allocate to individuals certain activities, behaviors, or other social goods. The territory (or property) exists because an animal believes that it exists and acts as though it exists. Of course this can be violated, its just an idea in someone's mind that manifests as territorial behavior. Property rights are a social arrangement where people respect each other's property.
Please note that I'm not assigning any moral weight to this notion. I'm merely describing human behavior in these terms and letting the reader come to their own conclusions. Rights (and property rights) take different forms in different communities. Thats because norms are social constructs and therefore intersubjective.
> Just a side-note I do think it's drawing parallels and conclusions from behaviour in the animal kingdom is fraught with problems.
Perhaps so. I think it can be problematic to consider humans as separate from the animal kingdom. Probably both perspectives have strengths and weaknesses.
> But I would argue (and this is how I understood the OP, that the state is a social construct/formalisation of our social interactions, which does guarantee property rights (and others). So property rights do not exist without a social organisational construct such as the state. Now, the argument becomes a bit of a question of how broadly do we define state. I would also argue btw, that the concept of nation is much more closely linked territoriality than the state.
This is conflating norms with the state that enforces them. Norms exist in all communities, most of them are not state-enforced. Frequently communities have norms that conflict with the formal statutes. In fact, the idea that there are agents of the state who you "are supposed" to obey is itself a social norm. Sometimes those social norms change but the people with the guns still attempt to enforce statutes.
Just as a side note, I find formulations of the type "the state guarantees property rights" to be problematic. The state may enforce some laws and fail to enforce others. The state may enforce some norms and fail to enforce others. The state may engage in widespread and long-standing violations of property rights (civil asset forfeiture). People can resolve this by considering those rights to be "whatever the state says they are" but this equivocation leaves us with no basis on which to criticize state actions related to rights.
> So property rights do not exist without a social organisational construct such as the state.
Property rights do not require an organization to enforce them. They (can) exist as community norms. Organizations enable large-scale coordination of actions that can shape those norms.
> I would also argue btw, that the concept of nation is much more closely linked territoriality than the state.
I agree but this also depends on how one defines terms. Some scholars use "state" and "government" differently as well.
> But would you not agree that we need some sort of social organisation to guarantee these rights?
No I don't agree that is necessary in all cases. In some cases its clear that an organization would be necessary to enforce the norms that I prefer. Perhaps a criminal organization seeks to expropriate all the left-handed redheads in an area. But then how would someone respond logically if we considered the organization that seeks to expropriate as the government? They're enforcing a concept of rights, just not the one I like. If rights are just what the government says they are, and we have people ready to enforce a particular concept of rights, how are we justified in determining who is the government and who is the criminal? It does us no good in this case to define rights with respect to the rights-enforcers because we have no basis to criticize the rights-enforcers for enforcing a different concept of rights. It must be that norms exist independently of the enforcement organization.
> So this is how I understood the OP, when he said (paraphrasing) property rights derive their existence from the state.
Couldn't we equally consider the state to have been derived from property rights, if we imagine the state to have arisen in order to enforce those rights?
> So the way I understand this, is that territoriality might be the reason for forming/formalising property rights in society
Territoriality is human nature, the purpose of formalizing it and enforcing it is to enable large scale coordination and minimize the amount of violence. People are going to have territory and they are going to have territorial conflicts. Rights are a social construct that enables people to have similar theories of acceptable conduct without having to know each other or agree as individuals on everything. Property rights allow people to have their territory and then settle territorial disputes in a way that creates (non-binding) precedents. This allows people to live in greater densities and avoid coming to violence over trespasses.
> property rights are an incarnation of territoriality. Maybe a formalisation of territoriality is a better word?
Territoriality just means that people are built to have an idea that something belongs to them. The specific property norms of a society are what determines what specifically they consider to be property. Property rights are just the rights surrounding places and things. Rights are social arrangements that allow people to live inc lose proximity and make arrangements with a reasonable security and reasonable expectation without having to get everyone to agree to everything all the time. Someone has the right to life, that means if someone deprives them of their life we already know it was wrong, we don't have to wonder if they had some verbal agreement that made it ok or if it was ok for Arthur to kill Bradley because Bradley was "in the way." Many norms are tacit and not formal. We could say the body of law is a formalization of the social norms.
> I thank you, this is definitely an interesting discussion.
Likewise, thank you for replying.
> First let me say I appreciate your non-confrontational arguments (you have been admittedly much better than myself) in a thread which is really quite a "sh*tshow".
LOL no kidding, but thanks for your non-confrontational approach as well. The world may burn around us but if we can keep our heads perhaps we can set an example for the lost and hopeless.
Perhaps I was unclear. Property is the human incarnation of territory. This is an observation based on their similarities, treating humans as animals. When one animal claims an area and reacts with hostility to the conduct of other members of the same species in that area, it is said that the animal defends a territory. Property rights are a social norm that some humans use as a means of defending their territory. Rights are merely norms that allocate to individuals certain activities, behaviors, or other social goods. The territory (or property) exists because an animal believes that it exists and acts as though it exists. Of course this can be violated, its just an idea in someone's mind that manifests as territorial behavior. Property rights are a social arrangement where people respect each other's property.
Please note that I'm not assigning any moral weight to this notion. I'm merely describing human behavior in these terms and letting the reader come to their own conclusions. Rights (and property rights) take different forms in different communities. Thats because norms are social constructs and therefore intersubjective.
> Just a side-note I do think it's drawing parallels and conclusions from behaviour in the animal kingdom is fraught with problems.
Perhaps so. I think it can be problematic to consider humans as separate from the animal kingdom. Probably both perspectives have strengths and weaknesses.
> But I would argue (and this is how I understood the OP, that the state is a social construct/formalisation of our social interactions, which does guarantee property rights (and others). So property rights do not exist without a social organisational construct such as the state. Now, the argument becomes a bit of a question of how broadly do we define state. I would also argue btw, that the concept of nation is much more closely linked territoriality than the state.
This is conflating norms with the state that enforces them. Norms exist in all communities, most of them are not state-enforced. Frequently communities have norms that conflict with the formal statutes. In fact, the idea that there are agents of the state who you "are supposed" to obey is itself a social norm. Sometimes those social norms change but the people with the guns still attempt to enforce statutes.
Just as a side note, I find formulations of the type "the state guarantees property rights" to be problematic. The state may enforce some laws and fail to enforce others. The state may enforce some norms and fail to enforce others. The state may engage in widespread and long-standing violations of property rights (civil asset forfeiture). People can resolve this by considering those rights to be "whatever the state says they are" but this equivocation leaves us with no basis on which to criticize state actions related to rights.
> So property rights do not exist without a social organisational construct such as the state.
Property rights do not require an organization to enforce them. They (can) exist as community norms. Organizations enable large-scale coordination of actions that can shape those norms.
> I would also argue btw, that the concept of nation is much more closely linked territoriality than the state.
I agree but this also depends on how one defines terms. Some scholars use "state" and "government" differently as well.
> But would you not agree that we need some sort of social organisation to guarantee these rights?
No I don't agree that is necessary in all cases. In some cases its clear that an organization would be necessary to enforce the norms that I prefer. Perhaps a criminal organization seeks to expropriate all the left-handed redheads in an area. But then how would someone respond logically if we considered the organization that seeks to expropriate as the government? They're enforcing a concept of rights, just not the one I like. If rights are just what the government says they are, and we have people ready to enforce a particular concept of rights, how are we justified in determining who is the government and who is the criminal? It does us no good in this case to define rights with respect to the rights-enforcers because we have no basis to criticize the rights-enforcers for enforcing a different concept of rights. It must be that norms exist independently of the enforcement organization.
> So this is how I understood the OP, when he said (paraphrasing) property rights derive their existence from the state.
Couldn't we equally consider the state to have been derived from property rights, if we imagine the state to have arisen in order to enforce those rights?
> So the way I understand this, is that territoriality might be the reason for forming/formalising property rights in society
Territoriality is human nature, the purpose of formalizing it and enforcing it is to enable large scale coordination and minimize the amount of violence. People are going to have territory and they are going to have territorial conflicts. Rights are a social construct that enables people to have similar theories of acceptable conduct without having to know each other or agree as individuals on everything. Property rights allow people to have their territory and then settle territorial disputes in a way that creates (non-binding) precedents. This allows people to live in greater densities and avoid coming to violence over trespasses.
> property rights are an incarnation of territoriality. Maybe a formalisation of territoriality is a better word?
Territoriality just means that people are built to have an idea that something belongs to them. The specific property norms of a society are what determines what specifically they consider to be property. Property rights are just the rights surrounding places and things. Rights are social arrangements that allow people to live inc lose proximity and make arrangements with a reasonable security and reasonable expectation without having to get everyone to agree to everything all the time. Someone has the right to life, that means if someone deprives them of their life we already know it was wrong, we don't have to wonder if they had some verbal agreement that made it ok or if it was ok for Arthur to kill Bradley because Bradley was "in the way." Many norms are tacit and not formal. We could say the body of law is a formalization of the social norms.
> I thank you, this is definitely an interesting discussion.
Likewise, thank you for replying.
> First let me say I appreciate your non-confrontational arguments (you have been admittedly much better than myself) in a thread which is really quite a "sh*tshow".
LOL no kidding, but thanks for your non-confrontational approach as well. The world may burn around us but if we can keep our heads perhaps we can set an example for the lost and hopeless.
>I think it's better to have a society where property rights and other natural rights cannot be infringed upon for any reason.
So hypothetically, it should be your right to own nuclear weapons? (I realize this is not a practical concern today, but I'm trying to find out if anyone truly believes there are no lines to be drawn on property rights.)
So hypothetically, it should be your right to own nuclear weapons? (I realize this is not a practical concern today, but I'm trying to find out if anyone truly believes there are no lines to be drawn on property rights.)
That is a difficult issue. One potential resolution I see is to say that if you see someone making his own nuclear weapons without telling anyone about it, this is strong enough evidence that he's going to try to do something terrible (i.e. it looks like a crime in progress) that you would be justified in using force to stop him.
How does this generalize and fit into the framework of property rights in general? What makes, say, manufacturing guns not strong enough evidence of trying to do something terrible? Is it mere history, or is it the defensive uses of guns, or does the magnitude of the terribleness matter, or something else? (In practice, I think purifying U-235 takes huge facilities and no one can do it in their backyard—it's probably a few orders of magnitude more expensive and complex.) Also, if it's 100% established that this one guy making the nukes is a trustworthy pacifist who won't use them, but the problem is he won't keep them in a particularly secure location, can one defensibly call his actions illegal? ("Planning to be neglectful"? How about someone who will guard them as heavily as he can, but that's just not heavily enough?) There would be a lot to explore there, but I think it may be possible to resolve the issue of nuclear weapons while keeping a pure system of property rights.
How does this generalize and fit into the framework of property rights in general? What makes, say, manufacturing guns not strong enough evidence of trying to do something terrible? Is it mere history, or is it the defensive uses of guns, or does the magnitude of the terribleness matter, or something else? (In practice, I think purifying U-235 takes huge facilities and no one can do it in their backyard—it's probably a few orders of magnitude more expensive and complex.) Also, if it's 100% established that this one guy making the nukes is a trustworthy pacifist who won't use them, but the problem is he won't keep them in a particularly secure location, can one defensibly call his actions illegal? ("Planning to be neglectful"? How about someone who will guard them as heavily as he can, but that's just not heavily enough?) There would be a lot to explore there, but I think it may be possible to resolve the issue of nuclear weapons while keeping a pure system of property rights.
>One potential resolution I see is to say that if you see someone making his own nuclear weapons without telling anyone about it, this is strong enough evidence that he's going to try to do something terrible (i.e. it looks like a crime in progress) that you would be justified in using force to stop him.
Only 2 nuclear weapons out of the 10,000s made have ever been used. Almost no one announces they are building a nuclear weapon, it is usually done in secret. So this argument does not really hold.
What I think most people do is they see from a practical standpoint that having unrestricted access to nuclear weapons is extremely dangerous and work backwards to justify why it fits their ideological framework.
Only 2 nuclear weapons out of the 10,000s made have ever been used. Almost no one announces they are building a nuclear weapon, it is usually done in secret. So this argument does not really hold.
What I think most people do is they see from a practical standpoint that having unrestricted access to nuclear weapons is extremely dangerous and work backwards to justify why it fits their ideological framework.
> Only 2 nuclear weapons out of the 10,000s made have ever been used. Almost no one announces they are building a nuclear weapon, it is usually done in secret. So this argument does not really hold.
The entities that have, so far, made nuclear weapons are nation-states. I think most people would agree with the following statements on that: (a) it's hard to prevent nation-states from making them (not for lack of trying), (b) many of them already made them long ago (U.S., Russia, France, China, etc.) and we're not trying to say that was illegal, (c) the concept of "illegal" at the level of nation-state actors is ... to say the least, very different in implementation, and possibly in concept, from that of "illegal" at the level of individuals. Many people think that nations making more nukes is bad, and some are in favor of disarmament treaties, but I don't think they believe international law either does or should mandate disarmament for all nations. Some would say it's hypocritical for the nuclear club to try to prevent other nations from developing nukes; I suspect others agree it's hypocritical but also don't want those nations to develop nukes.
The question in this case was, "So, hypothetically, it should be your right to own nuclear weapons [personally]?" It would be impractically difficult for one person to make nuclear weapons by himself, without essentially buying or stealing all the important stuff from elsewhere. And if it were easy for one person to make nukes, then probably no ideological system could resolve that easily. There might be some middle ground of possible scenarios that's important to resolve—e.g. if a company wants to make a nuke to use for, I dunno, their own Project Orion or mining a mountain or doing an interesting underwater experiment, then should that be illegal?
We may end up facing the "one madman can create a superweapon" scenario with biotech. Perhaps, by that time, everyone will have their own hazmat suits and their houses will have UV decontamination chambers to fight off SARS-COV-5 or whatever.
> What I think most people do is they see from a practical standpoint that having unrestricted access to nuclear weapons is extremely dangerous and work backwards to justify why it fits their ideological framework.
Yep, I cheerfully admit this is what I'm doing. At least I stated it as "I think it may be possible to resolve the issue" after mentioning problems with my proposal, instead of asserting "my ideological framework resolves this easily". Though I probably should have made the "how would an individual get access to nukes anyway, and if that were easy, then what would any legal system be able to do about that?" point first.
The entities that have, so far, made nuclear weapons are nation-states. I think most people would agree with the following statements on that: (a) it's hard to prevent nation-states from making them (not for lack of trying), (b) many of them already made them long ago (U.S., Russia, France, China, etc.) and we're not trying to say that was illegal, (c) the concept of "illegal" at the level of nation-state actors is ... to say the least, very different in implementation, and possibly in concept, from that of "illegal" at the level of individuals. Many people think that nations making more nukes is bad, and some are in favor of disarmament treaties, but I don't think they believe international law either does or should mandate disarmament for all nations. Some would say it's hypocritical for the nuclear club to try to prevent other nations from developing nukes; I suspect others agree it's hypocritical but also don't want those nations to develop nukes.
The question in this case was, "So, hypothetically, it should be your right to own nuclear weapons [personally]?" It would be impractically difficult for one person to make nuclear weapons by himself, without essentially buying or stealing all the important stuff from elsewhere. And if it were easy for one person to make nukes, then probably no ideological system could resolve that easily. There might be some middle ground of possible scenarios that's important to resolve—e.g. if a company wants to make a nuke to use for, I dunno, their own Project Orion or mining a mountain or doing an interesting underwater experiment, then should that be illegal?
We may end up facing the "one madman can create a superweapon" scenario with biotech. Perhaps, by that time, everyone will have their own hazmat suits and their houses will have UV decontamination chambers to fight off SARS-COV-5 or whatever.
> What I think most people do is they see from a practical standpoint that having unrestricted access to nuclear weapons is extremely dangerous and work backwards to justify why it fits their ideological framework.
Yep, I cheerfully admit this is what I'm doing. At least I stated it as "I think it may be possible to resolve the issue" after mentioning problems with my proposal, instead of asserting "my ideological framework resolves this easily". Though I probably should have made the "how would an individual get access to nukes anyway, and if that were easy, then what would any legal system be able to do about that?" point first.
This sounds sensible and I agree with it. When we circle back to
> Property rights and other natural rights cannot be infringed upon for any reason
I am not squaring the circle. If we don't allow someone to build a nuke with materials they purchased, we are infringing on their property rights. If we say you can build a nuke only for mining a mountain we are infringing on their property rights. Which in my mind is a good thing. Property rights are not absolute, we just are just arguing about where to set that line. But as long as we decide to not let individual's own nukes I am fine with pretending property rights are absolute.
> Property rights and other natural rights cannot be infringed upon for any reason
I am not squaring the circle. If we don't allow someone to build a nuke with materials they purchased, we are infringing on their property rights. If we say you can build a nuke only for mining a mountain we are infringing on their property rights. Which in my mind is a good thing. Property rights are not absolute, we just are just arguing about where to set that line. But as long as we decide to not let individual's own nukes I am fine with pretending property rights are absolute.
Nuclear weapons present a threat to other people and a threat of violating their property rights, and threats are illegal.
By what measure do you put nuclear weapons on one side and other weapons on the other?
The scope of the effects. Firearms can be pointed, explosives have a damage/kill radius. It is not permissible to arrange so that a person is brought within the range of effects of a weapon without their consent.
In the case of explosives, that means you need enough property to contain the effects. In the case of nuclear weapons, it basically requires an entire planet.
In the case of explosives, that means you need enough property to contain the effects. In the case of nuclear weapons, it basically requires an entire planet.
We may have the freedom of speech, but that doesn't mean that Youtube has to give you a megaphone?
Why should YouTube have a megaphone to give in the first place? Last I checked, there are still laws on the books to handle companies with >90% market shares. [0]
[0]: https://www.statista.com/topics/2019/youtube/
[0]: https://www.statista.com/topics/2019/youtube/
Good, so we agree that this is not an anti-censorship issue but an anti-trust issue.
Private entities can't censor anything, anyhow. Independently and freely choosing which sentiments to platform on a private service is not censorship, no matter how far anyone tries to stretch the definition of the term.
Private entities can't censor anything, anyhow. Independently and freely choosing which sentiments to platform on a private service is not censorship, no matter how far anyone tries to stretch the definition of the term.
I just checked a couple of definitions in case my memory was failing me, but I don't see any definition of censorship that limits it to governmental action. YouTube can and does censor content on their platform, I don't understand why so many people seem have trouble with that word. All it means is (quoting Webster) "to examine in order to suppress ... or delete anything considered objectionable"
The way it's being used in public discourse is not necessarily the dictionary definition of the term. You have to meet people where they are when it comes to rhetoric, not try to force them to follow your version of what means what.
To repeat, it's not my version of what censorship means, it's the normative definition of what it means. YouTube censors content.
YouTube chooses not to display media uploaded to their servers. That is not censorship, that is discretion.
Censorship is going around to all the platforms and forcing them to remove content which has already been or is on the way to being displayed to the public.
Censorship is going around to all the platforms and forcing them to remove content which has already been or is on the way to being displayed to the public.
I'm not who you've been talking to, but I can't help but laugh at this exchange.
>Censorship is going around to all the platforms and forcing them to remove content which has already been or is on the way to being displayed to the public.
No, actually, that isn't the definition. You guys just had a back and forth on this. You're artificially trying to limit the definition of "censorship" to fit your sentiment because your sentiment is not based in objective reality.
While I would agree with you that YouTube should not be compelled by law to host any content and can censor whatever they want (and we can, and should, refuse to use YouTube to host our videos and inform ourselves), it is still censorship, plain and simple.
>Censorship is going around to all the platforms and forcing them to remove content which has already been or is on the way to being displayed to the public.
No, actually, that isn't the definition. You guys just had a back and forth on this. You're artificially trying to limit the definition of "censorship" to fit your sentiment because your sentiment is not based in objective reality.
While I would agree with you that YouTube should not be compelled by law to host any content and can censor whatever they want (and we can, and should, refuse to use YouTube to host our videos and inform ourselves), it is still censorship, plain and simple.
I hear net-neutrality is a common position around here. If you agree prima facia that Comcast should not be allowed to block simply or censor YouTube (they're a private company, its their own equipment, etc, etc), then why doesn't the same argument apply to Google?
>Censorship is going around to all the platforms and forcing them to remove content which has already been or is on the way to being displayed to the public.
That is your own personal definition. What happened to meeting people where they are?
>Censorship is going around to all the platforms and forcing them to remove content which has already been or is on the way to being displayed to the public.
That is your own personal definition. What happened to meeting people where they are?
The way "censorship" is being used in public discourse, in practice, seems to be that it's not censorship when it's applied to views the people driving the public discourse disagree with. Remember the controversy over LGBT content supposedly being removed or demonitised on YouTube - pretty mucn none of the mainstream discourse agreed with the idea that it wasn't censorship because YouTube was a private company, let alone the idea that - as I've seen pushed in other areas - that pressuring YouTube not to do it was actually the real attack on their free speech rights.
We must have different dictionaries?
1. the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security. 2. (in ancient Rome) the office or position of censor.
1. the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security. 2. (in ancient Rome) the office or position of censor.
Yes, but back then we had the party organ of the American Nazi Party and the party organ of the International Workers of the World, and a couple more in between. You could buy them, and you know what you would get. Now you just have Youtube. That is a problem.
It does if it uses public resources.
It very much should mean that.
Modern capitalism has replaced the public square and a huge number of face-to-face communication opportunities with communication mediated by private corporations, and it uses those (and they take liberties themselves to for their own purposes) to outsource censorship and stiffle public discussion...
The idea of restricting freedom of speech to the state is an antiquated idea, belonging to pre-internet times, when a huge part of social interaction didn't happen through social media...
Modern capitalism has replaced the public square and a huge number of face-to-face communication opportunities with communication mediated by private corporations, and it uses those (and they take liberties themselves to for their own purposes) to outsource censorship and stiffle public discussion...
The idea of restricting freedom of speech to the state is an antiquated idea, belonging to pre-internet times, when a huge part of social interaction didn't happen through social media...
Most people take your view, but I would be very careful to claim that it's actually impossible to not have limits on freedoms. There are some who believe that the state should not exist at all; those types would not concede the ground that there exist any reasonable restrictions on fundamental natural rights.
How are you defining "freedoms" and "fundamental natural rights"? This sounds good in theory, but once you start enumerating what they are for the purposes of encoding them in law, or if not a law, then some form of social contract other than "might makes right", the counterexamples immediately flood in, and for good reason.
How are you defining "freedoms" and "fundamental natural rights"? This sounds good in theory, but once you start enumerating what they are for the purposes of encoding them in law, or if not a law, then some form of social contract other than "might makes right", the counterexamples immediately flood in, and for good reason.
Anarcho-Libertarianism does not as far as I know have an answer to a basic real-world problem:
Humans are social and always form affinity groups.
Groups have more power (by any definition) than individuals.
Absent enforcement, groups will invariably infringe at will on the rights of individuals or minorities.
QED a defining purpose of any "state" is to defend individuals' liberties, on their behalf, against such actors.
There are many mechanisms and descriptions of this activity, but, the bottom line is always the same. This is as true for the "free market" as it is for the "free market of ideas" or the contemporary ordering of law and punishment.
The state has to be the ultimate authority, to prevent smaller aggregations from stripping minorities and individuals of their own liberty.
No proposed alternative system has so far demonstrated stable viability.
That the examples we live within are terrible does not mean they are not also the least bad viable alternatives.
Personally I may think this is a shame, but, oh well.
Heinlein loved to portray rationalist societies in which ad hoc aggregations formed just long enough to enforce a purported majority-recognized rational moral order, without need for formal constitutional law or persistent institutions with formal institutional memory.
When I was 15 I thought this was how things should be.
At 50 I am certain that it shall never be so, not with the limitations of our actual evolved embodiment.
Humans are social and always form affinity groups.
Groups have more power (by any definition) than individuals.
Absent enforcement, groups will invariably infringe at will on the rights of individuals or minorities.
QED a defining purpose of any "state" is to defend individuals' liberties, on their behalf, against such actors.
There are many mechanisms and descriptions of this activity, but, the bottom line is always the same. This is as true for the "free market" as it is for the "free market of ideas" or the contemporary ordering of law and punishment.
The state has to be the ultimate authority, to prevent smaller aggregations from stripping minorities and individuals of their own liberty.
No proposed alternative system has so far demonstrated stable viability.
That the examples we live within are terrible does not mean they are not also the least bad viable alternatives.
Personally I may think this is a shame, but, oh well.
Heinlein loved to portray rationalist societies in which ad hoc aggregations formed just long enough to enforce a purported majority-recognized rational moral order, without need for formal constitutional law or persistent institutions with formal institutional memory.
When I was 15 I thought this was how things should be.
At 50 I am certain that it shall never be so, not with the limitations of our actual evolved embodiment.
> QED a defining purpose of any "state" is to defend individuals' liberties, on their behalf, against such actors.
Not actually demonstrated. you should say "QED a state is a group organized to infringe at will on the rights of individuals and minorities."
Not actually demonstrated. you should say "QED a state is a group organized to infringe at will on the rights of individuals and minorities."
E.g. you cannot yell "Fire!" in a theater and expect "Freedom of Speech" to protect you from any repurcussions.
Please don't cite that example. Ken White, an attorney who focuses on first amendment issues, wrote a compelling argument for why: https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...
>First, they trot out the Holmes quote for the proposition that not all speech is protected by the First Amendment. But this is not in dispute.
The post doesn't appear to be disputing that the fire in a theater example is a legitimate illustration of the limits of speech under the first amendment. They just proceed from there to make a more general principle that this example can be invoked by people who intend to suppress speech. Which I also don't think is in dispute.
So I don't think that post has anything to do with anything, insofar as this comment thread is concerned.
The post doesn't appear to be disputing that the fire in a theater example is a legitimate illustration of the limits of speech under the first amendment. They just proceed from there to make a more general principle that this example can be invoked by people who intend to suppress speech. Which I also don't think is in dispute.
So I don't think that post has anything to do with anything, insofar as this comment thread is concerned.
It makes the point that saying "you can't shout 'fire' in a crowded theater" is not a helpful contribution to the discourse around free speech. And since this is a conversation about free speech, and the parent did exactly that, it is completely relevant. Using thought-terminating clichés should be avoided, even if they are technically correct in that particular circumstance.
>It makes the point that saying "you can't shout 'fire' in a crowded theater" is not a helpful contribution to the discourse around free speech.
It certainly does say that, and that's really broad and vague. And it's hard to keep track of this whole thread, but I'm pretty sure the branch we're on sprouted from a categorical claim that there are no "buts" when it comes to free speech. But your article doesn't dispute that there are exceptions, and so it's fair to invoke the fire in a crowded theater to illustrate the principle for that purpose.
For anything beyond that, the value and relevance will depend on what point is being made by whom and how well you are doing in your responsibility to interpret and respond to those charitably. But linking to a long blog post and vaguely warning that it's "bad" without doing any further work to connect that to a contention in any given comment is just confusing and unconstructive.
It certainly does say that, and that's really broad and vague. And it's hard to keep track of this whole thread, but I'm pretty sure the branch we're on sprouted from a categorical claim that there are no "buts" when it comes to free speech. But your article doesn't dispute that there are exceptions, and so it's fair to invoke the fire in a crowded theater to illustrate the principle for that purpose.
For anything beyond that, the value and relevance will depend on what point is being made by whom and how well you are doing in your responsibility to interpret and respond to those charitably. But linking to a long blog post and vaguely warning that it's "bad" without doing any further work to connect that to a contention in any given comment is just confusing and unconstructive.
This was originally a metaphor used by a judge to support restricting the speech of anti-draft/anti-war campaigners.
I don't think it's a good example of appropriate censorship.
and goto is considered harmful
I think these days you cannot operate a crowded theatre where people will get trampled if they're panicked by the thought of a fire. At least I hope not. That's the real problem with yelling fire. But people should stop using that example for other reasons others have mentioned anyway.
You should be able to.
And people should not be idiots to be panicking from someone yelling "fire" when they can't see one in the theater...
And people should not be idiots to be panicking from someone yelling "fire" when they can't see one in the theater...
This is a terrible argument.
There are definitely places in a theater, out of the view of spectators, but likely fire hazards, e.g. the projection room.
Most building fires cannot be seen until it is too late. Smoke is an early indicator of a fire, but it cannot be seen in a pitch dark room.
And even in perfect conditions to determine if there is a fire or not, the audience may not be capable to judge if there is one or not, e.g. children.
There are definitely places in a theater, out of the view of spectators, but likely fire hazards, e.g. the projection room.
Most building fires cannot be seen until it is too late. Smoke is an early indicator of a fire, but it cannot be seen in a pitch dark room.
And even in perfect conditions to determine if there is a fire or not, the audience may not be capable to judge if there is one or not, e.g. children.
"Should" is not a principle of law or of reality, for that matter.
I should be immortal, all knowing and beautiful but I'll have to make do with what nature gave me.
I should be immortal, all knowing and beautiful but I'll have to make do with what nature gave me.
>"Should" is not a principle of law or of reality, for that matter.
It can very well be a principle of law. In certain legal codes, it actually is.
As for reality, that's a pretty low bar.
We have many "shoulds" (e.g. you should not cross a red light lest you get a ticket / prison) that are not some inherent property of reality or physical law, but things we've decided upon.
In fact, those are the only things that makes sense to consider as "shoulds". The constraints of reality are not negotiable, so should there is superfluous.
It can very well be a principle of law. In certain legal codes, it actually is.
As for reality, that's a pretty low bar.
We have many "shoulds" (e.g. you should not cross a red light lest you get a ticket / prison) that are not some inherent property of reality or physical law, but things we've decided upon.
In fact, those are the only things that makes sense to consider as "shoulds". The constraints of reality are not negotiable, so should there is superfluous.
[deleted]
No, I am dumb, since clearly you are not like me I would love to know what are the 6 solid reasons to permanently deprive the whole population of basic freedoms.Because this is not the case of "I killed a burglar who pulled out a gun on me so he forfeited his right to freedom". Even if you strongly disagree with a position, if that position is censored, you are impoverished because of that, society is impoverished. Grievance must be vented openly, otherwise you push the fringe(and not so fringe) groups underground.
Here are 6 solid examples of "buts" we have on freedom of speech in the US.
1. You can't publish child porn.
2. You can't publish copyrighted work. [EDIT: For which you don't have the rights. I thought that was sufficiently implied.]
3. You can't defame another person.
4. You can't threaten someone.
5. You can't use your speech to invade someone's privacy.
6. You can't use obscenity freely.
And this is just freedoms of speech and isn't even including the whole controversial money is equal to speech opinion.
Freedoms and rights are rarely binary. There is often a spectrum and there are often complexities regarding where your rights end and mine begin. All of the above (with maybe the exception of number 6) involve one person using a right to take away someone else's rights. As a society, we have decided to side with that other person in these cases.
1. You can't publish child porn.
2. You can't publish copyrighted work. [EDIT: For which you don't have the rights. I thought that was sufficiently implied.]
3. You can't defame another person.
4. You can't threaten someone.
5. You can't use your speech to invade someone's privacy.
6. You can't use obscenity freely.
And this is just freedoms of speech and isn't even including the whole controversial money is equal to speech opinion.
Freedoms and rights are rarely binary. There is often a spectrum and there are often complexities regarding where your rights end and mine begin. All of the above (with maybe the exception of number 6) involve one person using a right to take away someone else's rights. As a society, we have decided to side with that other person in these cases.
1-> is a limitation on the freedom of speech. Speech is not absolute, and the US has limits set by the courts. This is a reasonable one and it's very narrowly limited. The United States and Japan are probably the two best countries when it comes to defending freedom of speech. Keep in mind, China has freedom of speech in their constitution, so the law doesn't have much by itself.
2-> This is a civil violation. The FBI poster before movies says it's criminal, but it's very rarely persued as such (unless you're Kim Dotcom).
3-> Civil, not criminal
4-> Reasonable limit to speech and it's specific. You have to threaten specific harm to a specific person (or group in a specific time frame). There's a lot of very complex case law here, test for 'call to action' ... a lot of it going back to the Red Scare
5-> Like publishing Trump's tax returns? That's a federal crime by the way.
6-> Obscenity has some very specific and narrow definitions (see #1). Although people like to throw around the "I'll know it when I see it," there are certain tests to determine obscenity in the US.
2-> This is a civil violation. The FBI poster before movies says it's criminal, but it's very rarely persued as such (unless you're Kim Dotcom).
3-> Civil, not criminal
4-> Reasonable limit to speech and it's specific. You have to threaten specific harm to a specific person (or group in a specific time frame). There's a lot of very complex case law here, test for 'call to action' ... a lot of it going back to the Red Scare
5-> Like publishing Trump's tax returns? That's a federal crime by the way.
6-> Obscenity has some very specific and narrow definitions (see #1). Although people like to throw around the "I'll know it when I see it," there are certain tests to determine obscenity in the US.
In the US, there is no prior restraint that prevents one from doing the things in your list.
If expressions are deemed unlawful after-the-fact and via due process, the speaker may be punished.
It is anti-freedom to bar expression w/o adjudication or due process. E.g., alleged threats or alleged defamation are protected speech until a court determines them to be unprotected. Emergency injunctions or the like may be temporarily enforced if the court feels it is likely that the expression in controversy will be found to be unprotected speech.
Also, courts can issue narrow and temporary gag orders but they are limited and specifically targeted for reasons unrelated to the viewpoint of the speech.
If expressions are deemed unlawful after-the-fact and via due process, the speaker may be punished.
It is anti-freedom to bar expression w/o adjudication or due process. E.g., alleged threats or alleged defamation are protected speech until a court determines them to be unprotected. Emergency injunctions or the like may be temporarily enforced if the court feels it is likely that the expression in controversy will be found to be unprotected speech.
Also, courts can issue narrow and temporary gag orders but they are limited and specifically targeted for reasons unrelated to the viewpoint of the speech.
1. You are not giving up any freedom for not being able to sexually abuse children. Jesus, dont be obtuse just to gain fake Internet points. When I talk about Freedom are things inherent to the dignity of human condition, usually written in documents like the universal declaration of human rights or the constitution.
2. You can, people do it all the time. You cannot publish it if you dont own the rights same way you cannot enter my house if you are not invited. What supposed freedom you are renouncing to?
3. Same as 2
4. Same as 2
5. I dont have any idea what is that supposed to mean.
6. In TV, I supposed you are not, at your home oh yes you can. In the street unless you are being a prick that is rarely if ever enforced.
Human freedom does not mean,"I will treat the universe like my personal minecraft game" it means, "These rights are universally agreed to be indispensable for the human condition and we will agree to gran them universally"
2. You can, people do it all the time. You cannot publish it if you dont own the rights same way you cannot enter my house if you are not invited. What supposed freedom you are renouncing to?
3. Same as 2
4. Same as 2
5. I dont have any idea what is that supposed to mean.
6. In TV, I supposed you are not, at your home oh yes you can. In the street unless you are being a prick that is rarely if ever enforced.
Human freedom does not mean,"I will treat the universe like my personal minecraft game" it means, "These rights are universally agreed to be indispensable for the human condition and we will agree to gran them universally"
1. The prohibition extends beyond cases of sexual abuse. Computer generated child porn without any actual victim is still illegal.
2, 3, 4 - I don't know how "people do it all the time" is supposed to be a defense. People jaywalk all the time too. It doesn't invalidate the law. The fact is these forms of speech are illegal and people get in trouble for them all the time.
5. People have a right to privacy and you can't use your freedom of speech to infringe on that. For example, I can't publish photos of you that I captured from a camera in a public restroom.
6. Yes, you are right this doesn't apply in your home. However it does apply in several public spheres. In most of this country, women can't even take off their shirt in public. You are right that obscenity laws aren't universally enforced, but this is a common charge levied against undesirables.
>Human freedom does not mean,"I will treat the universe like my personal minecraft game" it means, "These rights are universally agreed to be indispensable for the human condition and we will agree to gran them universally"
But these examples prove we don't "grant them universally". We grant them conditionally as long as you don't use them to interfere with the rights of others.
2, 3, 4 - I don't know how "people do it all the time" is supposed to be a defense. People jaywalk all the time too. It doesn't invalidate the law. The fact is these forms of speech are illegal and people get in trouble for them all the time.
5. People have a right to privacy and you can't use your freedom of speech to infringe on that. For example, I can't publish photos of you that I captured from a camera in a public restroom.
6. Yes, you are right this doesn't apply in your home. However it does apply in several public spheres. In most of this country, women can't even take off their shirt in public. You are right that obscenity laws aren't universally enforced, but this is a common charge levied against undesirables.
>Human freedom does not mean,"I will treat the universe like my personal minecraft game" it means, "These rights are universally agreed to be indispensable for the human condition and we will agree to gran them universally"
But these examples prove we don't "grant them universally". We grant them conditionally as long as you don't use them to interfere with the rights of others.
FYI for point 1 this is not true, in the US, pornographic images are only restricted when they document someone being abused, drawing, animation, and even role play are legal.
When talking about freedom of speech, we use the US as a gold standard simply because we aren't talking about what is legal, we are talking about what should be legal, and the US has the least restrictions on speech anywhere in the world (my above paragraph serves as an example of this).
Otherwise I'm just enjoying this back and forth, you're both making coherent points and it is a productive discussion.
When talking about freedom of speech, we use the US as a gold standard simply because we aren't talking about what is legal, we are talking about what should be legal, and the US has the least restrictions on speech anywhere in the world (my above paragraph serves as an example of this).
Otherwise I'm just enjoying this back and forth, you're both making coherent points and it is a productive discussion.
> in the US, pornographic images are only restricted when they document someone being abused
I don't think this is true. Since "child" means anyone under 18, "child porn" therefore includes teenagers sexting their boy/girlfriends; some of those relationships could be called abusive, but surely many could not be, unless you think a teenager taking pictures of him/herself is inherently (self-)abusive. But I'm sure no internet content moderation policy, nor likely any police raid, would look into the background of a nude picture of a 14-year-old and determine that no abuse was involved and therefore the picture is permissible.
See https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22144707/ . "The cases involved "youth-produced sexual images" that constituted child pornography under relevant statutes according to respondents. ... US law enforcement agencies handled an estimated 3477 cases of youth-produced sexual images during 2008 and 2009 ... Two-thirds of the cases involved an "aggravating" circumstance beyond the creation and/or dissemination of a sexual image. In these aggravated cases, either an adult was involved (36% of cases) or a minor engaged in malicious, non-consensual, or abusive behavior (31% of cases). An arrest occurred in 62% of cases with an adult involved, in 36% of the aggravated youth-only cases, and in 18% of the "experimental" cases (youth-only and no aggravating elements)."
I don't think this is true. Since "child" means anyone under 18, "child porn" therefore includes teenagers sexting their boy/girlfriends; some of those relationships could be called abusive, but surely many could not be, unless you think a teenager taking pictures of him/herself is inherently (self-)abusive. But I'm sure no internet content moderation policy, nor likely any police raid, would look into the background of a nude picture of a 14-year-old and determine that no abuse was involved and therefore the picture is permissible.
See https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22144707/ . "The cases involved "youth-produced sexual images" that constituted child pornography under relevant statutes according to respondents. ... US law enforcement agencies handled an estimated 3477 cases of youth-produced sexual images during 2008 and 2009 ... Two-thirds of the cases involved an "aggravating" circumstance beyond the creation and/or dissemination of a sexual image. In these aggravated cases, either an adult was involved (36% of cases) or a minor engaged in malicious, non-consensual, or abusive behavior (31% of cases). An arrest occurred in 62% of cases with an adult involved, in 36% of the aggravated youth-only cases, and in 18% of the "experimental" cases (youth-only and no aggravating elements)."
So the idea is that sexual activity with minors is coercive, and that trading in pornography is sexually exploitative and a minor cannot consent to be exploited. I would disagree with that on principle, however if it were to be established as precedent that it is not it would be a huge loophole for people actually exploiting people coercively, and I'm not entirely sure how to square that myself.
Er, you say sexual activity, but I was talking about sexting, which generally means partly or fully nude pictures of oneself—taken by oneself, alone—which don't depict sexual activity (except possibly masturbation). Those pictures will generally be classified as pornography—as my link said, they "constituted child pornography under relevant statutes according to respondents [law enforcement agencies]"—and producing them is an offense for which one can be and sometimes is arrested, and it is up to the police to decide not to enforce it (similar to speeding).
Then, if, say, someone still has naked pictures from age 15 (of herself in her bedroom alone) when she turns 18, and decides to start selling her own pictures online (or even posting them for free), and some guy buys them, and at some point the guy gets raided and the police find those pictures... I'm pretty sure the guy will get charged for possession of child pornography based on those pictures (assuming one can tell by looking that the girl was 15), and "no one abused this girl in the process" will not be accepted as a valid defense in court.
Then, if, say, someone still has naked pictures from age 15 (of herself in her bedroom alone) when she turns 18, and decides to start selling her own pictures online (or even posting them for free), and some guy buys them, and at some point the guy gets raided and the police find those pictures... I'm pretty sure the guy will get charged for possession of child pornography based on those pictures (assuming one can tell by looking that the girl was 15), and "no one abused this girl in the process" will not be accepted as a valid defense in court.
>FYI for point 1 this is not true, in the US, pornographic images are only restricted when they document someone being abused, drawing, animation, and even role play are legal.
The analysis I have seen in the past disagrees with this, but honestly I am not looking to plug the necessary keywords into a search engine to find a source. I believe the specific example was regarding deepfaking completely fake computer generated children's faces onto adult porn.
The analysis I have seen in the past disagrees with this, but honestly I am not looking to plug the necessary keywords into a search engine to find a source. I believe the specific example was regarding deepfaking completely fake computer generated children's faces onto adult porn.
1. That depends on the legislation of every country and it is a hotly debated topic, it is not black and white.
2,3,4. You misunderstood the point. I said people publish copyrighted material all the time (if they have the rights to it). Not at all what you are saying here.
5. You have no right to privacy in any public space. That's why paparazzi exists. In most civilised countries a public bathroom gives you total privacy so that is not even an issue.
> But these examples prove we don't "grant them universally". We grant them conditionally as long as you don't use them to interfere with the rights of others.
You are mistaken. Those are orthogonal concepts, universally just means: to everybody. And yes we grant them conditionally, with the unstated assumption you lose them temporarily if your actions stop other people rights. It certainly not the case of these youtube channels, they are not restricting anybody's freedom.
2,3,4. You misunderstood the point. I said people publish copyrighted material all the time (if they have the rights to it). Not at all what you are saying here.
5. You have no right to privacy in any public space. That's why paparazzi exists. In most civilised countries a public bathroom gives you total privacy so that is not even an issue.
> But these examples prove we don't "grant them universally". We grant them conditionally as long as you don't use them to interfere with the rights of others.
You are mistaken. Those are orthogonal concepts, universally just means: to everybody. And yes we grant them conditionally, with the unstated assumption you lose them temporarily if your actions stop other people rights. It certainly not the case of these youtube channels, they are not restricting anybody's freedom.
1. I'm not the one suggesting there are universal truths here. You are the one who established freedoms as binary. Something being "hotly debated" and "not black and white" is a point in support of my argument.
2, 3, 4. I thought not owning the rights was implied by my comment. I edited that to make it more specific. I don't know how potential for people owning a copyright and publishing their own works applies to issues 3 and 4.
5. You do have certain expectations of privacy even while in public. Laws against upskirt photos are one example.
>And yes we grant them conditionally, with the unstated assumption you lose them temporarily if your actions stop other people rights.
So do you know agree that there are "buts" on freedom?
> It certainly not the case of these youtube channels, they are not restricting anybody's freedom.
I have the right to vote and have my vote counted. These Youtube videos are trying to invalidate my vote from being counted.
2, 3, 4. I thought not owning the rights was implied by my comment. I edited that to make it more specific. I don't know how potential for people owning a copyright and publishing their own works applies to issues 3 and 4.
5. You do have certain expectations of privacy even while in public. Laws against upskirt photos are one example.
>And yes we grant them conditionally, with the unstated assumption you lose them temporarily if your actions stop other people rights.
So do you know agree that there are "buts" on freedom?
> It certainly not the case of these youtube channels, they are not restricting anybody's freedom.
I have the right to vote and have my vote counted. These Youtube videos are trying to invalidate my vote from being counted.
> I'm not the one suggesting there are universal truths here.
I never talked about truth, I talked about freedoms. I think you should revise your definition of "universal" it seems you dont understand it. The whole idea of my original point is that you cannot say OK this is an universal(for everybody) agreed upon freedom but.... No but here, restricting freedom to an specific subset of the population who has not commited a crime is a big no-no. I mean, did you actually read the post, it's bone chilling:
> Limiting the reach of borderline content and prominently surfacing authoritative information are important ways we protect people from problematic content that doesn’t violate our Community Guidelines.
They acknowledge the content doesnt violate any community guideline(even less any law) and yet they want to "protect" us from it. Sorry, I will be on the other side every single time. If that means to be next to Alex Jones, so be it.
Youtube says: " For example, while problematic misinformation represents a fraction of 1% of what's watched on YouTube in the U.S., we know we can bring that number down even more. " This is what I oppose to, to selectively curtailing universal rights. I dont care about any pedantic discussion on semantics, I will gift you them all.
> Laws against upskirt photos are one example.
Same case with fictional animated child pornography, this is not a settled issue(https://www.hindustantimes.com/world/top-us-court-rules-upsk.... Let me repeat that the point is not that. You could still argue for years what it is the best course of action. What you cannot do is selectively enforce those rights or prohibitions against certain sets of the population.That is the problem, that is the violation of the universality of a right, Not the complexity of a legislation.
> So do you know agree that there are "buts" on freedom?
If you call freedom do whatever the hell you want , yes there are buts. If you say freedom as universally granted rights, "But" let's stop this group of having them. There is no valid buts, sorry. I wont never ever be on favor of censoring people who has not commited any violation by expressing their points.
> I have the right to vote and have my vote counted. These Youtube videos are trying to invalidate my vote from being counted.
This a pretty weird, and frankly out of character for you, argument. Some loonies doubting the election, asking for recall or even a repeat are not violating your right at all. I am dumbfounded for such a jump of logic here anyway. Any decision about the election will be taken by the authorities not random youtubers. Go search in youtube "Trump should be impeached, jailed,judged" you will find thousands of videos, are those videos invalidating the votes of the people who vote for Trump. Because from my POV either your vote is safe and you have nothing to worry about or your vote is discarded and you will have to take that with the authorities, not Johnie P Schmuck in youtube, who ironically has many more things in common with you and me than with Larry Page or Mark Zuckerberg.
I never talked about truth, I talked about freedoms. I think you should revise your definition of "universal" it seems you dont understand it. The whole idea of my original point is that you cannot say OK this is an universal(for everybody) agreed upon freedom but.... No but here, restricting freedom to an specific subset of the population who has not commited a crime is a big no-no. I mean, did you actually read the post, it's bone chilling:
> Limiting the reach of borderline content and prominently surfacing authoritative information are important ways we protect people from problematic content that doesn’t violate our Community Guidelines.
They acknowledge the content doesnt violate any community guideline(even less any law) and yet they want to "protect" us from it. Sorry, I will be on the other side every single time. If that means to be next to Alex Jones, so be it.
Youtube says: " For example, while problematic misinformation represents a fraction of 1% of what's watched on YouTube in the U.S., we know we can bring that number down even more. " This is what I oppose to, to selectively curtailing universal rights. I dont care about any pedantic discussion on semantics, I will gift you them all.
> Laws against upskirt photos are one example.
Same case with fictional animated child pornography, this is not a settled issue(https://www.hindustantimes.com/world/top-us-court-rules-upsk.... Let me repeat that the point is not that. You could still argue for years what it is the best course of action. What you cannot do is selectively enforce those rights or prohibitions against certain sets of the population.That is the problem, that is the violation of the universality of a right, Not the complexity of a legislation.
> So do you know agree that there are "buts" on freedom?
If you call freedom do whatever the hell you want , yes there are buts. If you say freedom as universally granted rights, "But" let's stop this group of having them. There is no valid buts, sorry. I wont never ever be on favor of censoring people who has not commited any violation by expressing their points.
> I have the right to vote and have my vote counted. These Youtube videos are trying to invalidate my vote from being counted.
This a pretty weird, and frankly out of character for you, argument. Some loonies doubting the election, asking for recall or even a repeat are not violating your right at all. I am dumbfounded for such a jump of logic here anyway. Any decision about the election will be taken by the authorities not random youtubers. Go search in youtube "Trump should be impeached, jailed,judged" you will find thousands of videos, are those videos invalidating the votes of the people who vote for Trump. Because from my POV either your vote is safe and you have nothing to worry about or your vote is discarded and you will have to take that with the authorities, not Johnie P Schmuck in youtube, who ironically has many more things in common with you and me than with Larry Page or Mark Zuckerberg.
Universal has multiple meanings. I think freedoms are universal in that they apply to all people. I don't think they are universal in that they would apply in every situation. I have given you plenty of examples of situations in which people can be reasonably deprived of freedom of speech.
Governments get their power from the people. That is the foundation of the US political thinking. The larger the percentage of the population that supports overturning this election, the more pressure elected officials will feel to comply. Therefore allowing this misinformation to spread increases the odds that my right to vote will be infringed. Is it an immediate and direct relationship like in some of the other examples we have discussed? Obviously not. However there is a clear causal line from someone advocating that my rights be taken away to the potential of my rights actually be taken away.
Governments get their power from the people. That is the foundation of the US political thinking. The larger the percentage of the population that supports overturning this election, the more pressure elected officials will feel to comply. Therefore allowing this misinformation to spread increases the odds that my right to vote will be infringed. Is it an immediate and direct relationship like in some of the other examples we have discussed? Obviously not. However there is a clear causal line from someone advocating that my rights be taken away to the potential of my rights actually be taken away.
Posting this purely because of the hypocrisy displayed by the poster, Cambalache. Your arguments attempt (very poorly) to appeal to ethos, are littered with false equivocations, and jump to illogical, impossible conclusions based on flawed logic defined earlier in your "argument".
> You cannot publish it if you don't own the rights
Who gave YOU the right to take away MY ability to publish anything? Stay consistent with your arguments, at least.
> same way you cannot enter my house if you are not invited
Who gave YOU the right to take away MY right and freedom to enter a place?
----
Often times, when you find someone making such absurd claims, you must argue back with the same nonsense logic they use otherwise there will be no end
Would love to hear your answers to the above points I made please and thanks.
> You cannot publish it if you don't own the rights
Who gave YOU the right to take away MY ability to publish anything? Stay consistent with your arguments, at least.
> same way you cannot enter my house if you are not invited
Who gave YOU the right to take away MY right and freedom to enter a place?
----
Often times, when you find someone making such absurd claims, you must argue back with the same nonsense logic they use otherwise there will be no end
Would love to hear your answers to the above points I made please and thanks.
Your post amounts to asking "Who gave YOU the right to tell ME I can't fire my GUN wherever I want".
There are no good answers to a point that absurd.
There are no good answers to a point that absurd.
> Your post amounts to asking "Who gave YOU the right to tell ME I can't fire my GUN wherever I want".
There are no good answers to a point that absurd.
> Often times, when you find someone making such absurd claims, you must argue back with the same nonsense logic they use otherwise there will be no end
---
Thanks for proving my point!
> Often times, when you find someone making such absurd claims, you must argue back with the same nonsense logic they use otherwise there will be no end
---
Thanks for proving my point!
Sorry I got confused. I have no idea what you think "ethos" means. From there my mind wandered. Peace!
> Often times, when you find someone making such absurd claims, you must argue back with the same nonsense logic they use otherwise there will be no end
amazing! my technique works, as per usual. :) thanks for proving my point.
amazing! my technique works, as per usual. :) thanks for proving my point.
> 2. You can, people do it all the time. You cannot publish it if you dont own the rights same way you cannot enter my house if you are not invited. What supposed freedom you are renouncing to?
I think you know exactly what is meant. You even say it in the second sentence of your comment.
Free speech does not allow copyright infringement. Yes, "people do it all the time". That doesn't mean it's allowed.
I think you know exactly what is meant. You even say it in the second sentence of your comment.
Free speech does not allow copyright infringement. Yes, "people do it all the time". That doesn't mean it's allowed.
> Yes, "people do it all the time". That doesn't mean it's allowed.
People does it all the time. Disney does it, any editorial house does it. If you have the rights you can publish the material. Same as you have the right to enter your house. Not mine, yours.
People does it all the time. Disney does it, any editorial house does it. If you have the rights you can publish the material. Same as you have the right to enter your house. Not mine, yours.
When the other commenter said:
"You can't publish copyrighted work."
I thought it was very obviously implied that they meant "You can't publish copyrighted work that you don't have distribution rights to."
I find it hard to believe that you didn't actually know this and took a strong stance against an incorrect understanding of the comment because you want to be pedantic.
"You can't publish copyrighted work."
I thought it was very obviously implied that they meant "You can't publish copyrighted work that you don't have distribution rights to."
I find it hard to believe that you didn't actually know this and took a strong stance against an incorrect understanding of the comment because you want to be pedantic.
How about "shouting fire in a crowded theater"?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969 limited the scope of banned speech to that which would be directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless action (e.g. a riot). This seems reasonable.
Consider a hypothetical with the current election and baseless claims of fraud. A month from now as Biden is sworn in, the drumbeat of fraud continues. There are now collectives of militia groups who claim they cannot "stand by" anymore and the election must be overturned or they will secede from the union. Trump decamps to Mar-a-lago and continues to claim he won. Then one day, local county governments in northern Texas band together and take the side of the militias, saying they will not recognize the current federal government until Trump is declared the winner. This action spreads like wild fire and triggers the same revolt in most rural areas of the country. Trump incites them and declares himself leader in exile. Most red county governments back the militias and declare they will not recognize the current government, as they have no choice at this point. We are now at civil war.
Is this scenario likely to happen? In the current state if disinformation and cult-like following of Trump supporters, I honestly think it is. Look at how Kyle Rittenhouse is now a hero of the right.
So at what point does disinformation reach the level of "imminent lawless action" and should not be protected speech? The government is weak and severely limited here. Any action against disinformation will immediately back fire. It will not happen.
But YouTube as a private company can. And I think they should. It is fair that they see this disinformation campaign as getting very close to "shouting fire in a crowded theater" and are acting on this threat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969 limited the scope of banned speech to that which would be directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless action (e.g. a riot). This seems reasonable.
Consider a hypothetical with the current election and baseless claims of fraud. A month from now as Biden is sworn in, the drumbeat of fraud continues. There are now collectives of militia groups who claim they cannot "stand by" anymore and the election must be overturned or they will secede from the union. Trump decamps to Mar-a-lago and continues to claim he won. Then one day, local county governments in northern Texas band together and take the side of the militias, saying they will not recognize the current federal government until Trump is declared the winner. This action spreads like wild fire and triggers the same revolt in most rural areas of the country. Trump incites them and declares himself leader in exile. Most red county governments back the militias and declare they will not recognize the current government, as they have no choice at this point. We are now at civil war.
Is this scenario likely to happen? In the current state if disinformation and cult-like following of Trump supporters, I honestly think it is. Look at how Kyle Rittenhouse is now a hero of the right.
So at what point does disinformation reach the level of "imminent lawless action" and should not be protected speech? The government is weak and severely limited here. Any action against disinformation will immediately back fire. It will not happen.
But YouTube as a private company can. And I think they should. It is fair that they see this disinformation campaign as getting very close to "shouting fire in a crowded theater" and are acting on this threat.
Should child pornography be legal? Falsely yelling "fire" in a crowded theater? Doxing of private information? Those are all "positions", in your view.
[deleted]
Obscenity and alternative points of view are two different things. It is sad we live in a society that is unable to distinguish between the two.
There isn't a bright line between the merely offensive and the "obscene". Even the supreme court couldn't do any better than "I'll know it when I see it". And for that matter, different cultures define obscenity in very different ways. Which one is the objectively correct way?
Expressing an opinion is not obscenity. Showing images for provocation is obescenity. The I know it when I see it argument is ridiculous. The Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. California that obscenity is content that is without socially redeeming value to that which lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
Now you can argue the points of what has literary value, but the written word has always had literary value, no matter how grotesque.
We don't burn books in this country.
Now you can argue the points of what has literary value, but the written word has always had literary value, no matter how grotesque.
We don't burn books in this country.
If I draw a stick-figure and label it The Prophet Muhammad should that be banned? After all my drawing skills are terrible and it is likely to provoke people. But that doesn't seem very free to me.
Given the Supreme Court has said that would have artistic value, you can do what you want.
cambalache(1)
> The evidence was tenuous and circumstantial at best.
The evidence and conclusions were provided by more than a dozen US agencies, as well as from a bi-partisan investigation conducted in the Senate.
> The democrats were claiming fraud
"Fraud" is a strong word, especially when the Democratic candidate literally came out the same night as conceded. Sure, Russia influenced the election, I don't remember countless law suits after the election trying to change the will of the people.
> There is no "buts" regarding freedom
You say that, but Republicans are very much in favor of denying people their right to bear arms because of "buts".
The evidence and conclusions were provided by more than a dozen US agencies, as well as from a bi-partisan investigation conducted in the Senate.
> The democrats were claiming fraud
"Fraud" is a strong word, especially when the Democratic candidate literally came out the same night as conceded. Sure, Russia influenced the election, I don't remember countless law suits after the election trying to change the will of the people.
> There is no "buts" regarding freedom
You say that, but Republicans are very much in favor of denying people their right to bear arms because of "buts".
The issue with comments like this is that nobody was shouting when ISIS accounts were being banned from twitter or some of their execution videos were removed from platforms. Now I'm not advocating that ISIS videos should be allowed, but if you are in fact thinking "there are no buts" than you should have been shouting loudest at those times, because if you only shout when someone you agree with is being "censored" it suddenly seems much more that you only care about your freedom to say what you want, not the freedom for everyone to say anything.
"30% of what consists the US Federation make a plea in terms of electoral fraud, in the Supreme Court. And there is no coverage by the media.
Current front pages from CNN, Washington Post, New York Times, BBC (for future reference)." [0]
[0] https://twitter.com/_benoux_/status/1336788393884323849?s=20
Current front pages from CNN, Washington Post, New York Times, BBC (for future reference)." [0]
[0] https://twitter.com/_benoux_/status/1336788393884323849?s=20
Complaining about the media failing to cover something moments after it happened, while simultaneously describing it inaccurately, is bullshit. States filing amicus briefs do not constitute a plea. And the suit in question is not about electoral fraud.
News stories about this development have appeared by the time of writing this comment. This twitter poster, and you, seem to have forgotten that it takes time to write a story.
News stories about this development have appeared by the time of writing this comment. This twitter poster, and you, seem to have forgotten that it takes time to write a story.
It's a slippery slope for sure. I think a big concern is that if far-reaching conspiracy theories are allowed to flourish then it could lead to the development of more extremist groups using scapegoating tactics to influence violence on particular groups. I see both sides of the argument.
> There is no "buts" regarding freedom.
YouTube has the freedom to choose what content they stream on their website (to show ads/make money)
> The evidence was tenuous and circumstantial at best. True. But that’s a step up compared to the made up lies that go on nowadays.
> The evidence was tenuous and circumstantial at best. True. But that’s a step up compared to the made up lies that go on nowadays.
Well there are and should be. The classic example is shouting “fire!” in a crowded room. This is freedom, but causes chaos without the benefits that freedom of expression allows.
Pure freedom can be as bad as authoritarianism. Pure freedom is lawlessness and law of the most powerful. This is what fake news is moving towards, the law of those who can manipulate the truth the best. Like all things balance between both extremes is the answer, and the disagreement is where that balance point lies.
No “buts” except (legally):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_advertising
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_Holocaust_denial
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Communications_Decenc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_and_present_danger
And probably more...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_advertising
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_Holocaust_denial
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Communications_Decenc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_and_present_danger
And probably more...
[deleted]
>https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/press/senate-intel-relea...
>The ICA correctly found the Russians interfered in our 2016 election to hurt Secretary Clinton and help the candidacy of Donald Trump
>The Committee finds the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) presents a coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis for the case that Russia engaged in an attempt to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Why do you say "supposed Russian influence" when a Republican led senate confirmed this?
>The ICA correctly found the Russians interfered in our 2016 election to hurt Secretary Clinton and help the candidacy of Donald Trump
>The Committee finds the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) presents a coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis for the case that Russia engaged in an attempt to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Why do you say "supposed Russian influence" when a Republican led senate confirmed this?
In some circles Republicans are only trustworthy if they support President Trump. I think the Republican party is in for a hard time the next few years.
There was no influence. Attempt to interfere != influence. And the evidence for that is non-existing. And Steele dossier was created by russian drunk.
First, I'm not taking a hard position on anything here- I'm linking the Senate Intelligence Committee's findings. If you don't believe it? Well, that's your problem I'm just stating what's in there
>There was no influence
Go here again https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/press/senate-intel-relea... and open up the 4 PDF's Volume 1/2/3/4
Open Volume 2.
Search for the word "influence". You might notice you have about a billion matches. Here is one significant quote
>Arriving at a similar conclusion, an Oxford Internet Institute study-of 17 million tweets posted during the 2016 election found that bots "reached positions of measurable influence," and "did infiltrate the upper cores of influence and were thus jn a position to significantly influence digital communications during the 2016 U.S. election."
So, you are going to continue to state "there was no influence" even though hundreds of pages of reports from the Senate Intel say otherwise?
>There was no influence
Go here again https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/press/senate-intel-relea... and open up the 4 PDF's Volume 1/2/3/4
Open Volume 2.
Search for the word "influence". You might notice you have about a billion matches. Here is one significant quote
>Arriving at a similar conclusion, an Oxford Internet Institute study-of 17 million tweets posted during the 2016 election found that bots "reached positions of measurable influence," and "did infiltrate the upper cores of influence and were thus jn a position to significantly influence digital communications during the 2016 U.S. election."
So, you are going to continue to state "there was no influence" even though hundreds of pages of reports from the Senate Intel say otherwise?
You’re still free to speak on other people’s property (computer servers).
Just not YouTube’s.
America is built on private property rights.
Americans LOVE to go on about freedom while selling themselves, their time, body, ideas.
Say what you want. There is no physical law or social that obliges others to carry your message or submit to your expectations.
Change the ownership model.
Just not YouTube’s.
America is built on private property rights.
Americans LOVE to go on about freedom while selling themselves, their time, body, ideas.
Say what you want. There is no physical law or social that obliges others to carry your message or submit to your expectations.
Change the ownership model.
Is there a solution to diminish the value of misinformation from political actors? It doesn't matter what party they align to. The American people deserve clear unbiased information to make their decisions. If then, they choose to align with a tribe, then that is exercising their freedom.
This about as far removed from reality as there is.
There are always "buts" in all of human rights. No right is absolute because we don't live in a world of absolutes. Free speech, without any limits at all, becomes libel, harassment, hate speech, incitement to violence, sedition, etc.
Absolutism in rights is a thought-terminating cliché, evidenced by the fact that there are literal lifetimes of scholarship in regards to when rights begin and when they end, and which right to prioritize when multiple people's rights are conflicting with each other.
> The democrats were claiming fraud 4 years go due to a supposed Russian influence.The evidence was tenuous and circumstantial at best. I dont remember seeing a similar cry for censorship.
There was a claim that ended up in a Special Counsel investigation in which _multiple_ people associated with the Trump 2016 campaign ended up going in prison for, including Michael Flynn.
Comparing claims of potential fraud, followed up by investigation and mostly finished when such investigation discovered some things and disproved others, is an eminently healthy level of questioning over the complete insanity of fraud claims.
The current claims of fraud are not of anyone with a sound mind. Do not conflate one thing with the other; they're not anywhere near the same league.
There are always "buts" in all of human rights. No right is absolute because we don't live in a world of absolutes. Free speech, without any limits at all, becomes libel, harassment, hate speech, incitement to violence, sedition, etc.
Absolutism in rights is a thought-terminating cliché, evidenced by the fact that there are literal lifetimes of scholarship in regards to when rights begin and when they end, and which right to prioritize when multiple people's rights are conflicting with each other.
> The democrats were claiming fraud 4 years go due to a supposed Russian influence.The evidence was tenuous and circumstantial at best. I dont remember seeing a similar cry for censorship.
There was a claim that ended up in a Special Counsel investigation in which _multiple_ people associated with the Trump 2016 campaign ended up going in prison for, including Michael Flynn.
Comparing claims of potential fraud, followed up by investigation and mostly finished when such investigation discovered some things and disproved others, is an eminently healthy level of questioning over the complete insanity of fraud claims.
The current claims of fraud are not of anyone with a sound mind. Do not conflate one thing with the other; they're not anywhere near the same league.
And yet not for collusion[0]
>The report was the culmination of two years of investigation by Mr Mueller which saw some of the president's closest former aides prosecuted and, in some cases, imprisoned, although not on charges related to the alleged Russian collusion.
I am glad that we investigated and charged people with crimes that they would have otherwise gotten away with but if the same standard was applied the investigation would have been shutdown as a conspiracy.
[0]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47688187
>The report was the culmination of two years of investigation by Mr Mueller which saw some of the president's closest former aides prosecuted and, in some cases, imprisoned, although not on charges related to the alleged Russian collusion.
I am glad that we investigated and charged people with crimes that they would have otherwise gotten away with but if the same standard was applied the investigation would have been shutdown as a conspiracy.
[0]https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47688187
Why are you linking to a news report on the preliminary summary released by Barr? It was clearly crafted to drive an initial narrative of exoneration. The actual Mueller report is much more damning for Trump, including findings that were redacted for many months, after public attention had died down.
I would like to see a link. I just googled off of memory and used the least partisan link that I could see which was the BBC.
Edit to add: I have not followed the news that closely, so I am open to new information. But I think this exchange proves the overall point on censorship, there were extraordinary claims that were refuted for having no evidence. Investigations were had, preliminary reports said no misconduct but now you say that later reports are more damming.
If we treated the situation the same, the news and twitter would have not amplified the voices but silenced them and we would have had no investigation.
Edit to add: I have not followed the news that closely, so I am open to new information. But I think this exchange proves the overall point on censorship, there were extraordinary claims that were refuted for having no evidence. Investigations were had, preliminary reports said no misconduct but now you say that later reports are more damming.
If we treated the situation the same, the news and twitter would have not amplified the voices but silenced them and we would have had no investigation.
Here's the details from a popular online encyclopaedia website which I would expect to be factual and relatively neutral on important public subjects like this :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report
Note the second paragraph:
"... the report states that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was illegal and occurred "in sweeping and systematic fashion" but was welcomed by the Trump campaign as it expected to benefit from such efforts. It also identifies links between Trump campaign officials and individuals with ties to the Russian government, about which several persons connected to the campaign made false statements and obstructed investigations."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report
Note the second paragraph:
"... the report states that Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was illegal and occurred "in sweeping and systematic fashion" but was welcomed by the Trump campaign as it expected to benefit from such efforts. It also identifies links between Trump campaign officials and individuals with ties to the Russian government, about which several persons connected to the campaign made false statements and obstructed investigations."
Thank you!
That's interesting, because Youtube was never "free", in more ways than one. The content that reaches users is curated. It's no coincidence that conspiracy videos spread and show up on everyone's feed: Youtube propagates it.
This is the algorithm's job. It's built to make sure you're watching more videos and making sure you stay on the site as long as possible.
YT isn't propagating it. Its a result of people searching for, and watching conspiracy videos. If you watch a lot of Alex Jones videos, then the algorithm by design will recommend other conspiracy videos as well.
YT isn't propagating it. Its a result of people searching for, and watching conspiracy videos. If you watch a lot of Alex Jones videos, then the algorithm by design will recommend other conspiracy videos as well.
> It's built to make sure you're watching more videos and making sure you stay on the site as long as possible.
> YT isn't propagating it.
You contradict yourself.
I have never once searched for conspiracy content, ever, and was fed conspiracy videos in feeds for over a decade. That is by design. I imagine many other users would report the same.
The algorithm favors conspiracy videos and youtube is responsible. They have known this forever and chose to do nothing. Hysteria and insane tin-foil hat content pays out.
> YT isn't propagating it.
You contradict yourself.
I have never once searched for conspiracy content, ever, and was fed conspiracy videos in feeds for over a decade. That is by design. I imagine many other users would report the same.
The algorithm favors conspiracy videos and youtube is responsible. They have known this forever and chose to do nothing. Hysteria and insane tin-foil hat content pays out.
for clarification:
TY isn't propagating content - meaning there are no people who sit in front of a computer and choose what people are seeing in their "Feeds" or what they see when they land on the front page.
That is completely different than an algorithm specifically designed to recommend content to you based on what video's you have watched in the past to maximize your time on the site.
IF you have one, you don't need to the other.
Also, the content you see when you are logged in to google vs. logged out is also completely different for reasons that shouldn't require any elaboration.
TY isn't propagating content - meaning there are no people who sit in front of a computer and choose what people are seeing in their "Feeds" or what they see when they land on the front page.
That is completely different than an algorithm specifically designed to recommend content to you based on what video's you have watched in the past to maximize your time on the site.
IF you have one, you don't need to the other.
Also, the content you see when you are logged in to google vs. logged out is also completely different for reasons that shouldn't require any elaboration.
> based on what video's you have watched in the past
I think I made it clear that this is not what is happening, and not what the problem is.
I think I made it clear that this is not what is happening, and not what the problem is.
> The democrats were claiming fraud 4 years go due to a supposed Russian influence.The evidence was tenuous and circumstantial at best.
Every element of this sentence is incorrect. Democrats were not claiming fraud - they were claiming that Russians interfered in the election and Trump / members of his campaign participated in that effort. Russian interference is undeniable - Dutch intelligence literally has it on tape [1]. And the report issued by the Republican controlled senate concluded that members of Trumps campaign and other people in his orbit were exchanging information with Russian intelligence and coordinating with cutouts like Guccifer 2.0.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/ef3b036949174a9b98d785129a93428b
Every element of this sentence is incorrect. Democrats were not claiming fraud - they were claiming that Russians interfered in the election and Trump / members of his campaign participated in that effort. Russian interference is undeniable - Dutch intelligence literally has it on tape [1]. And the report issued by the Republican controlled senate concluded that members of Trumps campaign and other people in his orbit were exchanging information with Russian intelligence and coordinating with cutouts like Guccifer 2.0.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/ef3b036949174a9b98d785129a93428b
I acknowledge that the Russians were, are, and will continue to interfere in elections. Our federal government is the most powerful country in the world, everyone domestically and internationally want a piece of that - corporations, countries, and special interests. Our government does it to everyone else, also. I don't agree with any of it, but that's what happens.
The big irony to me is that supposedly the biggest Russian bit of mischief, involving the Guccifer person you mentioned above, was to expose the DNC emails showing the corruption going on there, how back-room deals screwed over Bernie and a lot of Democrat voters. I have a hard time understanding why this is not talked about more.
The big irony to me is that supposedly the biggest Russian bit of mischief, involving the Guccifer person you mentioned above, was to expose the DNC emails showing the corruption going on there, how back-room deals screwed over Bernie and a lot of Democrat voters. I have a hard time understanding why this is not talked about more.
Likely because the released emails didn't really show that.
I don't understand, I thought that was the biggest surprise out of that trove of emails? It was a surprise to me, anyways.
"The leaks resulted in allegations of bias against Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign, in apparent contradiction with the DNC leadership's publicly stated neutrality,[6] as several DNC operatives seemed to deride Sanders' campaign and discussed ways to advance Hillary Clinton's nomination. Later reveals included controversial DNC–Clinton agreements dated before the primary, regarding financial arrangements and control over policy and hiring decisions" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_National_Commi...
"A new leak of internal emails from the Democratic National Committee appears to support the long-held suspicions of some Bernie Sanders supporters that the DNC was working against him." - https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wikileaks-dnc-bernie-sanders_...
"DNC Apologizes to Bernie Sanders and Supporters Over Leaked Emails" - https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wikileaks-dnc-bernie-sanders_...
I'm not meaning to be partisan about this. My point was that everyone is trying to manipulate the American public - both political parties, big companies, other countries, etc.
"The leaks resulted in allegations of bias against Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign, in apparent contradiction with the DNC leadership's publicly stated neutrality,[6] as several DNC operatives seemed to deride Sanders' campaign and discussed ways to advance Hillary Clinton's nomination. Later reveals included controversial DNC–Clinton agreements dated before the primary, regarding financial arrangements and control over policy and hiring decisions" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_National_Commi...
"A new leak of internal emails from the Democratic National Committee appears to support the long-held suspicions of some Bernie Sanders supporters that the DNC was working against him." - https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wikileaks-dnc-bernie-sanders_...
"DNC Apologizes to Bernie Sanders and Supporters Over Leaked Emails" - https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wikileaks-dnc-bernie-sanders_...
I'm not meaning to be partisan about this. My point was that everyone is trying to manipulate the American public - both political parties, big companies, other countries, etc.
First, it wasn't really a surprise. Bernie Sanders isn't a Democrat, and doesn't have many/any allies in the party. So the notion the party, of which he isn't a member, would be derisive of him isn't controversial.
Second, if you read past the headlines, and look into the individual emails, you'll see the contents aren't all that shocking either, nor do they paint the elaborate picture of conspiracy against his campaign the headlines infer.
Of the thousands of emails that were leaked, only a handful of conversations even mentioned him, and none are evidence of any specific actions taken to thwart his campaign. Some idle chatter, sure, but nothing to the degree of "rigging!" that was often claimed at the time.
The whole story amounted to "The Democrats didn't like the not-Democrat that ran, and a few said so."
Second, if you read past the headlines, and look into the individual emails, you'll see the contents aren't all that shocking either, nor do they paint the elaborate picture of conspiracy against his campaign the headlines infer.
Of the thousands of emails that were leaked, only a handful of conversations even mentioned him, and none are evidence of any specific actions taken to thwart his campaign. Some idle chatter, sure, but nothing to the degree of "rigging!" that was often claimed at the time.
The whole story amounted to "The Democrats didn't like the not-Democrat that ran, and a few said so."
I think it was a bit more than what you describe, based on what the former chair of the DNC, Donna Brazile, wrote in her book:
“The agreement — signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and [Clinton campaign manager] Robby Mook with a copy to [Clinton campaign counsel] Marc Elias— specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised,”
“[Clinton’s] campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.”
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/2/16599036/d...
We found out about this thanks to Guccifer, and to a lot of people what the DNC did was a big deal.
My original point was that everyone is trying to pull a fast one over on the American public, not just the Russian's. Republican's also, in case you are offended that we are talking about Democrats at the moment.
Do you disagree?
“The agreement — signed by Amy Dacey, the former CEO of the DNC, and [Clinton campaign manager] Robby Mook with a copy to [Clinton campaign counsel] Marc Elias— specified that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised,”
“[Clinton’s] campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics, and mailings.”
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/2/16599036/d...
We found out about this thanks to Guccifer, and to a lot of people what the DNC did was a big deal.
My original point was that everyone is trying to pull a fast one over on the American public, not just the Russian's. Republican's also, in case you are offended that we are talking about Democrats at the moment.
Do you disagree?
> The democrats were claiming fraud 4 years go
This is incorrect. The Democrats alleged a Russian disinformation campaign to interfere in the 2016 election. The truth of this claim is beyond debate, and is different from alleging widespread voter fraud. Whether Trump was directly involved is the only part up for dispute, because he and so many witnesses refused to answer questions or lied to protect themselves and/or the president.
On the other hand, Trump has been complaining of election fraud since before he even became a politician. He claimed election fraud in the republican primary [1]. He complained of election fraud when he won the 2016 election. And finally, he complained of election fraud when he lost in 2020. He even alleged election fraud in 2012 [2]. A key difference here is he has absolutely no evidence to back up his claims.
The claims and their respective credibility are not equatable in good faith.
[1] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/69487990025635430... [2] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/26603550916230349...
This is incorrect. The Democrats alleged a Russian disinformation campaign to interfere in the 2016 election. The truth of this claim is beyond debate, and is different from alleging widespread voter fraud. Whether Trump was directly involved is the only part up for dispute, because he and so many witnesses refused to answer questions or lied to protect themselves and/or the president.
On the other hand, Trump has been complaining of election fraud since before he even became a politician. He claimed election fraud in the republican primary [1]. He complained of election fraud when he won the 2016 election. And finally, he complained of election fraud when he lost in 2020. He even alleged election fraud in 2012 [2]. A key difference here is he has absolutely no evidence to back up his claims.
The claims and their respective credibility are not equatable in good faith.
[1] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/69487990025635430... [2] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/26603550916230349...
[deleted]
[deleted]
There are plenty of counter examples, e.g. when rationing was in effect during WW2.
You can't say "the democrats" were claimed ng fraud. As far as I am aware, no major democrat questioned the legitimacy of the election or claimed widespread fraud. Iirc, the only notable person who claimed widespread fraud in 2016 was Trump himself, so stop claiming equivalency here.
I would say "Trump won only because Russia interfered in the election" is a direct, explicit claim that the election was illegitimate. I'm not saying I disbelieve it or that I believe the current claims of fraud, but there is a clear equivalency here.
Saying that Russian hacking influenced the election is demonstrably true. Whether it caused Trump to win is not. I don't remember anyone actually saying that Trump would not have won without Russia, though I could be wrong about that. This is still a big difference between that and calling millions of votes, lawfully cast, as illegitimate. Do you seriously not see the distinction between the two?
I don't see the distinction you're making. There are plenty of differences between the two scenarios, but "only one of those is a claim that the election is illegitimate" is not one of the differences IMO.
Are you in favor of allowing anti-vax and election fraud lies to be spread unchecked on FB, Google, YT, Twitter?
Talk all you want of freedom, but freedom is already reigning on these platforms, and SV's techno-libertarianism has clearly failed our democracy.
Talk all you want of freedom, but freedom is already reigning on these platforms, and SV's techno-libertarianism has clearly failed our democracy.
YouTube is not the US government. It is free to restrict speech as it pleases. If you think otherwise then you are limiting YouTube freedom as a private enterprise.
The dems cried fraud in 2016 but the difference is that Clinton conceded the night of the election. There is a big difference between claiming something but still doing the right thing vs. claiming something and then just double/triple downing on it which is what the Republicans and Trump are doing. It is dangerous, extremely dangerous. Trump margin of loss is bigger than Hillary's margin of loss from 2016 btw.
Brb... Gonna yell fire in a crowded theater.
You can find a crowded theater these times where ? And do you think you will be heard under your mask ?
Claims of Russian interference in the 2016 election made by our own intelligence community and parroted by Democrats don't even remotely compare to the outright lies Trump and his lackeys are peddling about the 2020 election. You didn't see Hilary Clinton refusing to concede. Her only post-election legal action was asking for recounts in the rust belt. California's AG didn't sue Pennsylvania and Wisconsin asking SCOTUS to throw out ballots they disagreed with.
This is just bad whataboutism.
This is just bad whataboutism.
This is by the textbook definition not "whataboutism."
Your argument distils to "saying something that is true and saying something that is false are clearly not the same thing"; you are basing your argument on your own belief that one is true and one is false. What we are getting at here is, regardless of whether either is true or false, they are fundamentally the same types of claims and yet one is amplified and another is banned.
Your argument distils to "saying something that is true and saying something that is false are clearly not the same thing"; you are basing your argument on your own belief that one is true and one is false. What we are getting at here is, regardless of whether either is true or false, they are fundamentally the same types of claims and yet one is amplified and another is banned.
I fail to see how "true information should be promoted, false information should be suppressed" is a controversial statement. I'm not talking about opinions here, just cold hard facts. If someone wandered into one of my communities and actively encouraged people to mix bleach and ammonia, and my users were falling for it, you bet your ass that person would get banned for violating my rules, and I would be making sticky posts warning about the dangers of what that user was promoting.
The idea that I can't regulate what goes on in my community because "free speech" is absurd. The same goes for Twitter and YouTube.
The idea that I can't regulate what goes on in my community because "free speech" is absurd. The same goes for Twitter and YouTube.
> The democrats were claiming fraud 4 years go due to a supposed Russian influence
I’m not a fan of either party in the US — they both have glaring fatal flaws — but this comment is an irresponsible level of whataboutism.
The folks commenting on Russian influence in 2016 were doing it with some basis in reality, and it turned out that the facts were confirmed by the current administration’s DoJ. I will add that Russian interference was not their top beef — Comey’s statements seemed to be more disconcerting for these people.
The crazy shit that Trump is saying is a figment of his own imagination and nothing more. There is no basis in reality. No one will come in later and confirm that any of his ramblings were actually correct.
Free speech has always had limits when it has had the potential to harm others. While the line is not always clear, undermining the mechanics of US democracy with verifiably false accusations can easily be seen as something that is harmful to others.
I’m not a fan of either party in the US — they both have glaring fatal flaws — but this comment is an irresponsible level of whataboutism.
The folks commenting on Russian influence in 2016 were doing it with some basis in reality, and it turned out that the facts were confirmed by the current administration’s DoJ. I will add that Russian interference was not their top beef — Comey’s statements seemed to be more disconcerting for these people.
The crazy shit that Trump is saying is a figment of his own imagination and nothing more. There is no basis in reality. No one will come in later and confirm that any of his ramblings were actually correct.
Free speech has always had limits when it has had the potential to harm others. While the line is not always clear, undermining the mechanics of US democracy with verifiably false accusations can easily be seen as something that is harmful to others.
Not sure why you are being downvoted. You take a hard stance but it seems factual.
Facts are disgusting. That's what makes them facts.
You do realize all the Russian 2016 influence turned out to be completely and totally false right? The CIA leaked information to Yahoo News and then used that news story based off their misinformation to get a FISA warrant.
False statements like yours should be moderated off this site.
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/press/senate-intel-relea...
>The ICA correctly found the Russians interfered in our 2016 election to hurt Secretary Clinton and help the candidacy of Donald Trump
>The Committee finds the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) presents a coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis for the case that Russia engaged in an attempt to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/press/senate-intel-relea...
>The ICA correctly found the Russians interfered in our 2016 election to hurt Secretary Clinton and help the candidacy of Donald Trump
>The Committee finds the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) presents a coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis for the case that Russia engaged in an attempt to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
treeman79(1)
It's not a false statement. Just look at the Carter Page liable lawsuit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qODProeRQ4c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qODProeRQ4c
mistermann(1)
I don't need Youtube to tell me what I should and shouldn't watch. It's not any more complicated than that. If you need someone to tell you what you should or shouldn't be watching, then that's your problem, and they should make a product specifically for you rather than forcing it on everyone that participated in building their product and participating in their business and making them money. This is a total slap in the face. It is amazing to me that there are so many people here discussing why they need Youtube to tell them which videos to watch.
As far as I know, youtube doesn't let me watch or upload porn on their site despite it being legal. Should they be forced to allow it?
Who are you talking to?
I was responding to your post. You mentioned
>I don't need Youtube to tell me what I should and shouldn't watch
I was wondering if that extended to youtube banning porn. If you don't want to engage that is fine I will go reply to some other comment.
>I don't need Youtube to tell me what I should and shouldn't watch
I was wondering if that extended to youtube banning porn. If you don't want to engage that is fine I will go reply to some other comment.
briefcomment(2)
> What is going on in the US just now is unprecedented in modern Western democracies - we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA. Mainstream news networks like Fox have talking heads spouting venomous lies that are demonstrably and trivially proven as such. The POTUS is lying on an hourly basis (many of those lies just brazenly, ridiculously false), and has millions of people believing his every word - he's personally profiting hugely, while brainwashing them and whipping them up into frenzy. It's fucking dangerous, especially with the US' lax gun laws.
Yeah, don't see a political slant here...
Yeah, don't see a political slant here...
Having a grasp on reality != political slant
You can be a conservative and acknowledge the President states falsehoods at an unseen pace.
You can be a conservative and acknowledge the President states falsehoods at an unseen pace.
Half truths are inherently half lies. Politicians lie. Some better than others. I'll take the bad liar over the good one myself.
You are talking about a president that is not accepting the result of a democrating election, exactly like he announced 4 years ago, and the republicans almost fully cooperating with him in trying to destroy the democratic system. That's way past the point of platitutes like politicians and good vs bad liars. This is Weimar.
> You are talking about a president that is not accepting the result of a democrating election, exactly like he announced 4 years ago, and the republicans almost fully cooperating with him in trying to destroy the democratic system. That's way past the point of platitutes like politicians and good vs bad liars. This is Weimar.
Oh, please. Following the constitutional process for disputing an election is Weimar now? Could this be more Godwin's law?
Oh, please. Following the constitutional process for disputing an election is Weimar now? Could this be more Godwin's law?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/arizona-gop-asks-fol... - This is not the constitutional process for disputing an election. There is no constitutional processor for disputing a fair election. And this literally reflects the instability of the end phase of Weimar.
Sometimes reality just reaches that point where Godwin's law references are not funny anymore.
Sometimes reality just reaches that point where Godwin's law references are not funny anymore.
> This is not the constitutional process for disputing an election. There is no constitutional processor for disputing a fair election. And this literally reflects the instability of the end phase of Weimar.
Therein lies the rub. If a court is not the venue, then what is the venue?
Therein lies the rub. If a court is not the venue, then what is the venue?
> If a court is not the venue, then what is the venue?
I think the parent poster was referring to the link they posted which says:
"Arizona GOP asks followers if they'd die to overturn Trump loss".
That seems to go well beyond a court challenge.
I think the parent poster was referring to the link they posted which says:
"Arizona GOP asks followers if they'd die to overturn Trump loss".
That seems to go well beyond a court challenge.
There's stupid on both sides. For example:
> In a three-minute video posted to her Facebook page, the Democrat from Detroit said "This is just a warning to you Trumpers... be careful. Tread lightly. We ain't playin' with you..." > Johnson then added "And for those of you who are soldiers... you know how to do it. Do it right. Be in order. Make them pay." [0]
[0]: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/make-them-pay-michigan-l...
> In a three-minute video posted to her Facebook page, the Democrat from Detroit said "This is just a warning to you Trumpers... be careful. Tread lightly. We ain't playin' with you..." > Johnson then added "And for those of you who are soldiers... you know how to do it. Do it right. Be in order. Make them pay." [0]
[0]: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/make-them-pay-michigan-l...
Pressuring state lawmakers to throw out the outcome of an election because you lost is the "constitutional process" now?
Filing frivolous lawsuits based on not one shred of evidence other than "too many Dems voted!" is the "constitutional process" now?
Filing frivolous lawsuits based on not one shred of evidence other than "too many Dems voted!" is the "constitutional process" now?
If you think this is the constitutional process for disputing an election, you're mistaken.
Trump is arguing that (a) SCOTUS should (b) order several states to have their legislatures appoint new electors (c) on the basis of a suit brought by Texas against several other states (d) alleging that state court rulings modifying electoral law (in accordance with state statutes) are unconstitutionally overruling state legislatures' ability to determine their electors. (See http://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163234/20201...)
There are 4 separate elements in that assertion that are each unprecedented in terms of disputing an election. SCOTUS is not the venue for election disputes; state courts are. No one has ever before argued that state legislators can appoint electors in lieu of popular vote, and as some briefs have pointed out, several state statutes (including some of the states involved here!) expressly forbid that. No state has ever before tried to challenge the election procedures of another state. And the legal basis for doing all of this is itself without precedent.
This is not normal.
Trump is arguing that (a) SCOTUS should (b) order several states to have their legislatures appoint new electors (c) on the basis of a suit brought by Texas against several other states (d) alleging that state court rulings modifying electoral law (in accordance with state statutes) are unconstitutionally overruling state legislatures' ability to determine their electors. (See http://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163234/20201...)
There are 4 separate elements in that assertion that are each unprecedented in terms of disputing an election. SCOTUS is not the venue for election disputes; state courts are. No one has ever before argued that state legislators can appoint electors in lieu of popular vote, and as some briefs have pointed out, several state statutes (including some of the states involved here!) expressly forbid that. No state has ever before tried to challenge the election procedures of another state. And the legal basis for doing all of this is itself without precedent.
This is not normal.
There is no constitutional process for disputing an election, there are only rules on the electing process itself. This is uncharted territory and will remain so unless the supreme court creates a new precedent.
The president and most of his party is spouting off complete lies. They claim massive fraud and say they have evidence, but every time they get an opportunity to prove it, they are unable to. Its not a half lie, its a full one.
There is definitely a political slant. It just turns out that one side is obviously factually true for all neutral observers, and the other side is in the equivalent of a collective psychotic break from reality.
The political party I agree with is factually correct! The other party is insane!
I wonder if the people you disagree with would say the exact same thing?
I wonder if the people you disagree with would say the exact same thing?
> The political party I agree with is factually correct! The other party is insane!
Yes buddy, sorry to be hard about it, but sometimes you're right and the other side is wrong. It's not about partisanship; it's about objective reality.
And the objective reality is that for anyone who's not stuck on the Fox/OANN spin cycle (which includes the billions of US outside the US watching from afar) the results are clear, conclusive and bright as day.
Yes buddy, sorry to be hard about it, but sometimes you're right and the other side is wrong. It's not about partisanship; it's about objective reality.
And the objective reality is that for anyone who's not stuck on the Fox/OANN spin cycle (which includes the billions of US outside the US watching from afar) the results are clear, conclusive and bright as day.
Certainly there are videos made by Democrats which include wild inaccuracies.
You have to draw the line somewhere. Imagine someone buying all the toilet paper in a town and then running targeted adds on-line to start panic buying. So they can sell theirs. At some point Google becomes an accessory to price gouging law.
What if Trump ends up in prison for violating the oath of the office? Does Google have no liability in helping him commit his crimes?
You have to draw the line somewhere. Imagine someone buying all the toilet paper in a town and then running targeted adds on-line to start panic buying. So they can sell theirs. At some point Google becomes an accessory to price gouging law.
What if Trump ends up in prison for violating the oath of the office? Does Google have no liability in helping him commit his crimes?
The problem here is that objective reality is being politicized. There are two parties claiming to have won the election, and one of those claims must be false. But the partisans of the losing side are creating a parallel set of beliefs not based in fact, and creating a media ecosystem around those lies, and it is entirely possible for believers in those lies to avoid all truthful sources of information.
What's more is that the language used by the losing party is extremely dangerous. Just yesterday, the verified Twitter account for the Arizona GOP asked its followers if they were ready to die for the cause of keeping Trump in power. Disinformation does not exist in a vacuum, and it is being used actively to cultivate violence.
What's more is that the language used by the losing party is extremely dangerous. Just yesterday, the verified Twitter account for the Arizona GOP asked its followers if they were ready to die for the cause of keeping Trump in power. Disinformation does not exist in a vacuum, and it is being used actively to cultivate violence.
CamperBob2(1)
linuxftw(1)
lol. you're brainwashed if you believe the lies of the legacy media. this election was stolen. there's so much evidence. video evidence, affidavits, forensic evidence of voting machines, proof of tens of thousands of underage people voting, and so much more.
Pennsylvania: 1.8 million ballots mailed out, 2.5 million ballots received. Hello?
Trump won and Biden stole it.
Pennsylvania: 1.8 million ballots mailed out, 2.5 million ballots received. Hello?
Trump won and Biden stole it.
Absolutely. Delusional.
https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-afs:Content:9787630...
I never truly understood how demagogues gained power until this election. I see history in a completely different light now. No matter what you say to these people, they'll either ignore it, or find some other lie to hang their hat on. If you point out the facts, they'll deny the source, or say, "How do YOU know? Did YOU count all the votes?" or some other nonsense.
What's the cure for this? (Not asking OP, he's one of the zombie hoards. He'll go to his deathbed convinced of his own delusions.) We used to just ignore these types of stubborn, brain washed conspiracy theory wackos, but now there's tens of millions of them.
It's truly frightening.
https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-afs:Content:9787630...
I never truly understood how demagogues gained power until this election. I see history in a completely different light now. No matter what you say to these people, they'll either ignore it, or find some other lie to hang their hat on. If you point out the facts, they'll deny the source, or say, "How do YOU know? Did YOU count all the votes?" or some other nonsense.
What's the cure for this? (Not asking OP, he's one of the zombie hoards. He'll go to his deathbed convinced of his own delusions.) We used to just ignore these types of stubborn, brain washed conspiracy theory wackos, but now there's tens of millions of them.
It's truly frightening.
Why should we believe you if you don't cite any evidence for your claims?
It's amazing that the evidence is so obvious, and yet none of Trump's lawyers cited it in any of their multiple lawsuits, where they would be jailed for perjury if they were lying.
Almost as if it isn't actually true.
Almost as if it isn't actually true.
Lawyers aren't under oath and wouldn't be jailed for perjury.
Now, they would be committing all kinds of other misconduct besides perjury, but then, Trump's (remaining) attorneys have been committing all kinds of other misconduct (that the campaign being waged requires that explains why so many have left.)
Now, they would be committing all kinds of other misconduct besides perjury, but then, Trump's (remaining) attorneys have been committing all kinds of other misconduct (that the campaign being waged requires that explains why so many have left.)
Case in point, should the HN mods ban this user for spreading deliberate disinformation?
Btw, 2 seconds of googling shows that PA sent out 3 million absentee ballots and received 2.5M.
Btw, 2 seconds of googling shows that PA sent out 3 million absentee ballots and received 2.5M.
OK, but is 2 seconds of googling before saying "deliberate disinformation" the standard we want to set for ourselves?
ah yes, look at all the court cases that Trump's legal team has won and all the evidence they presented. And you call someone else brainwashed, holly fuck.
> we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA
Who cares?! As you said, Fox is crappy news so they don't get my business. Same thing with (generally) MSNBC and others. To answer the next question: The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Shepard Smith
> it's one of those "least worst" choices I respectfully and completely disagree. This is policing thought. Things are not worse than they have been before. The communist witch hunts of the 50s is one example. A lot of the things FDR did were marginal (turned out alright though). Once you start controlling freedom of expression, you own all expression. No one is smart enough. The free market may suck in the short run, but in the long run it will work out.
One perfect example of this: > The POTUS is lying on an hourly basis Yep, and HE LOST! His lying was a significant factor in this loss. Come January he won't be the POTUS.
Who cares?! As you said, Fox is crappy news so they don't get my business. Same thing with (generally) MSNBC and others. To answer the next question: The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Shepard Smith
> it's one of those "least worst" choices I respectfully and completely disagree. This is policing thought. Things are not worse than they have been before. The communist witch hunts of the 50s is one example. A lot of the things FDR did were marginal (turned out alright though). Once you start controlling freedom of expression, you own all expression. No one is smart enough. The free market may suck in the short run, but in the long run it will work out.
One perfect example of this: > The POTUS is lying on an hourly basis Yep, and HE LOST! His lying was a significant factor in this loss. Come January he won't be the POTUS.
> Who cares?! As you said, Fox is crappy news so they don't get my business
I wish I could brush it off so easily, but the truth is that, well, the truth, does matter. You or I might choose to consume "news" from the likes of Fox, but many millions do. At that scale, the lies and fake news have an undeniable impact.
I wish I could brush it off so easily, but the truth is that, well, the truth, does matter. You or I might choose to consume "news" from the likes of Fox, but many millions do. At that scale, the lies and fake news have an undeniable impact.
So here’s what will happen. Ban the “fake news” from Google, FB etc. You will have a pristine, non-offensive safe space bubble. All the banned folks will create their own safe space bubble on Parler or some other yet to be created platform. This won’t be a fringe group. It could be 30-40% of the populous. Comity and public discourse is extinct and then we really do have problems.
I think we are much better off with the misinformation and lies out in the sunlight for all to see and refute.
I think we are much better off with the misinformation and lies out in the sunlight for all to see and refute.
> unprecedented in modern Western democracies - we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA.
Citation needed?
The founding fathers owned newspapers & regularly fabricated stories about opponents. Ben Franklin openly wrote about it and he was far from alone.
William Randolph Hearst controlled a significant portion of newspapers & blatantly used used that power to manipulate public opinion, frequently with suspect information.
We went through a whole era of questionable news -- referred to as "yellow journalism": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
The fake news around the Gulf of Tonkin escalated the conflict into a relatively minor to what the US would call the Vietnam War.
The fake news about Iraq WMDs led to the disastrous second golf war.
Bill Clinton stood before the camera & said "I did not have sex with that woman" and his wife, HRC, said it was all "a ring wing conspiracy."
Obama said "if you like your health plan, you can keep it", which several newspapers defended & fact-checked as true, as until much later rating it as lie of the year.
Don't get me wrong. I despise Trump, I despise what's he's doing, and I want to see him removed. But if we're too be critical of him playing loose with facts, we can't be ourselves. And saying this is "peak" when it's likely only a local maxima seems dubious at best.
Citation needed?
The founding fathers owned newspapers & regularly fabricated stories about opponents. Ben Franklin openly wrote about it and he was far from alone.
William Randolph Hearst controlled a significant portion of newspapers & blatantly used used that power to manipulate public opinion, frequently with suspect information.
We went through a whole era of questionable news -- referred to as "yellow journalism": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
The fake news around the Gulf of Tonkin escalated the conflict into a relatively minor to what the US would call the Vietnam War.
The fake news about Iraq WMDs led to the disastrous second golf war.
Bill Clinton stood before the camera & said "I did not have sex with that woman" and his wife, HRC, said it was all "a ring wing conspiracy."
Obama said "if you like your health plan, you can keep it", which several newspapers defended & fact-checked as true, as until much later rating it as lie of the year.
Don't get me wrong. I despise Trump, I despise what's he's doing, and I want to see him removed. But if we're too be critical of him playing loose with facts, we can't be ourselves. And saying this is "peak" when it's likely only a local maxima seems dubious at best.
You point out some good examples, though I'd argue some of those were politicians/governments lying and those lies simple being reported (admittedly, often with an editorial bias).
I think what we are seeing now is different. People like Trump don't need doctored satellite photographs and elaborately constructed propaganda that the press will fall for - they can use social media platforms as a very public podium from which to spew lies. And, perhaps because of the viral nature of social media, and perhaps because of the inherent terseness of Twitter, people are bombarded by these tiny nuggests of "truth" from "trusted" people who "obviously" wouldn't lie, and the become "truth" for those people.
I think the key difference now is that it's never been so easy to put out "news", and it's never been so easy to consume so very many sources of "news", or so frequently.
I think what we are seeing now is different. People like Trump don't need doctored satellite photographs and elaborately constructed propaganda that the press will fall for - they can use social media platforms as a very public podium from which to spew lies. And, perhaps because of the viral nature of social media, and perhaps because of the inherent terseness of Twitter, people are bombarded by these tiny nuggests of "truth" from "trusted" people who "obviously" wouldn't lie, and the become "truth" for those people.
I think the key difference now is that it's never been so easy to put out "news", and it's never been so easy to consume so very many sources of "news", or so frequently.
It's a matter of degree. The _degree_ of constant lying the current president does is absolutely insane.
I don't like what YouTube is doing either, but it's really hard to say what any other alternative is at this point.
I don't like what YouTube is doing either, but it's really hard to say what any other alternative is at this point.
For
"The POTUS is lying on an hourly basis (many of those lies just brazenly, ridiculously false), "
I've paid fairly close attention to Trump's statements since 2015 or so, and I have not seen any such, certainly not one a day or hour.
If there are such lies, then I'd sure like to know about them. As part of that, I'd like to see credible references, hopefully to primary sources, that is, just following common high school term paper writing standards.
I will grant that maybe Trump (1) exaggerates and (2) says things to gauge reactions, e.g., the common "run it up the flag pole to see if anyone salutes".
But actual lies, you have one an hour for four years, and so far I don't have even one.
As you are an HN contributor, I'd believe that you want to stick close to what you can document.
Maybe you could document three of his serious lies?
"The POTUS is lying on an hourly basis (many of those lies just brazenly, ridiculously false), "
I've paid fairly close attention to Trump's statements since 2015 or so, and I have not seen any such, certainly not one a day or hour.
If there are such lies, then I'd sure like to know about them. As part of that, I'd like to see credible references, hopefully to primary sources, that is, just following common high school term paper writing standards.
I will grant that maybe Trump (1) exaggerates and (2) says things to gauge reactions, e.g., the common "run it up the flag pole to see if anyone salutes".
But actual lies, you have one an hour for four years, and so far I don't have even one.
As you are an HN contributor, I'd believe that you want to stick close to what you can document.
Maybe you could document three of his serious lies?
"I will grant that maybe Trump exaggerates" is an immense exaggeration.
Extreme exaggeration is endemic to his character. It's not a maybe. He exaggerates everyday, all day.
"Nobody has more respect for women than Donald Trump!"
"Nobody has more respect for women than I do."
"Nobody has more respect for women than I do. Nobody."
“Nobody reads the Bible more than me.”
"Nobody loves the Bible more than I do"
"Nobody does self-deprecating humor better than I do. It’s not even close"
“Nobody knows more about taxes than I do, maybe in the history of the world.”
"Nobody knows more about trade than me"
"Nobody knows the (visa) system better than me. I know the H1B. I know the H2B. Nobody knows it better than me."
Extreme exaggeration is endemic to his character. It's not a maybe. He exaggerates everyday, all day.
"Nobody has more respect for women than Donald Trump!"
"Nobody has more respect for women than I do."
"Nobody has more respect for women than I do. Nobody."
“Nobody reads the Bible more than me.”
"Nobody loves the Bible more than I do"
"Nobody does self-deprecating humor better than I do. It’s not even close"
“Nobody knows more about taxes than I do, maybe in the history of the world.”
"Nobody knows more about trade than me"
"Nobody knows the (visa) system better than me. I know the H1B. I know the H2B. Nobody knows it better than me."
Wow! Good to see that that is what you
had in mind!!!
I count such statements as personality characteristics, unpolished, maybe gauche behavior, not welcome in country club society unless are worth > $5 billion!
I'm really sensitive to lying, but such statements don't even start to raise my fur.
Gee, I was worried that you'd found some actual lies, e.g., like we have heard nearly daily (I won't say hourly) from the FBI about Page, Flynn, and Manafort and from Pelosi and Schiff about Trump. For the mainstream media, I gave up on them after the gang up, pile, party talking point collection in
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1ab6uxg908&feature=youtu.be
That is from 1-2 years ago and fun to watch now.
For what the next few weeks holds, I'm finding some interesting reading in
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163215/2020...
with
Both you and Youtube might be circumspect about betting the farm on Biden taking office on 1/20/2021.
"It ain't over until ..." whatever that saying was!
I count such statements as personality characteristics, unpolished, maybe gauche behavior, not welcome in country club society unless are worth > $5 billion!
I'm really sensitive to lying, but such statements don't even start to raise my fur.
Gee, I was worried that you'd found some actual lies, e.g., like we have heard nearly daily (I won't say hourly) from the FBI about Page, Flynn, and Manafort and from Pelosi and Schiff about Trump. For the mainstream media, I gave up on them after the gang up, pile, party talking point collection in
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1ab6uxg908&feature=youtu.be
That is from 1-2 years ago and fun to watch now.
For what the next few weeks holds, I'm finding some interesting reading in
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163215/2020...
with
In the Supreme Court of the United
States
STATE OF TEXAS,
Plaintiff,
v.
COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA, STATE
OF GEORGIA, STATE OF MICHIGAN, AND
STATE OF WISCONSIN,
Defendants.
On Motion for Leave to File Bill of
Complaint
BRIEF OF STATE OF MISSOURI AND
16 OTHER STATES AS AMICI CURIAE IN
SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFF’S MOTION FOR
LEAVE TO FILE BILL OF COMPLAINT
Article II requires that each State
“shall appoint” its Presidential
electors “in such Manner as the
Legislature thereof may direct.” U.S.
CONST. art. II, § 1, cl. 4 (emphasis
added); see also id. art. I, § 4, cl.
2 (providing that, in each State, the
“Legislature thereof” shall establish
“[t]he Times, Places and Manner of
holding Elections for Senators and
Representatives”).
Both you and Youtube might be circumspect about betting the farm on Biden taking office on 1/20/2021.
"It ain't over until ..." whatever that saying was!
> I count such statements as personality characteristics
The problem is if you're going to move the goalposts so that lie means something else then what is there to say? The idea that Trump hasn't told a single lie in 5 years is so comically false that one scarcely knows where to begin. You are living in a fantasy world and it's not our job to cater to that and try to play by the rules that you are changing on the fly. It's the job of your family and friends who care about you to reach out to you and try to bring you back to reality. I wish them luck and I wish you all the best.
The problem is if you're going to move the goalposts so that lie means something else then what is there to say? The idea that Trump hasn't told a single lie in 5 years is so comically false that one scarcely knows where to begin. You are living in a fantasy world and it's not our job to cater to that and try to play by the rules that you are changing on the fly. It's the job of your family and friends who care about you to reach out to you and try to bring you back to reality. I wish them luck and I wish you all the best.
On
> "Nobody loves the Bible more than I do"
okay at
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/02/23/trump_cru...
is
"You know, when you hold up a Bible, and nobody loves the Bible more than I do, when you hold up a Bible, you don't then put it down and go around lying and doing a lot of things that are wrong," Trump scolded Cruz.
So, the source is not the best, but, still, the quote seems accurate.
Sorry, I don't call that a lie. It's not even as bad as "This car was driven by a little old lady only to church on Sundays."
The usual startup seed round pitch deck predictions are worse than the bible quote.
If you want to find an actual lie, maybe you can. I'm surprised the media apparently has not tried. One place to start is what he has said about spending money to rebuild the US military. IIRC he has mentioned some $trillions. I'd like to see the INCREASES over what the DoD has been getting right along, and those might not be $trillions. I.e., a significant fraction of the DoD budget, maybe his $trillions, went for just on-going, routine expenses and not rebuilding.
Even if I'm correct here, I still don't call that a 100% lie -- it's more like bending some definitions in budgeting and accounting.
But, again, much of the mainstream media seems eager to find Trump lies, so if Trump was wrong here the media should have gotten some headlines about it.
> The idea that Trump hasn't told a single lie in 5 years is so comically false that one doesn't even know where to begin.
I'm still willing to hear, wanting to hear, waiting to hear about three good lies.
I get it: You don't like Trump so attack me because I do like Trump.
So, why do I like Trump, a lot, regard him as by far the best POTUS since Washington. The main reasons are his policies and results. Here are some examples, from typing quickly:
He got a really good start on peace in the Mideast (a) among the Islamic states and (b) between Israel and some of the more progressive Islamic states.
He has Iran's international mischief calmed down.
Assad was really slow as a chemistry student, and Trump gave him a good chemistry lesson and a good repeat of the course. In this, no US people were harmed. For the second lesson, no US or Syrian people were harmed.
Trump got some US military leadership that used mostly existing US forces in Iraq to lead a joint US-Iraq attack on the ISIS land holdings. The US did the intel, operated the artillery and airplanes, and trained the Iraqis. Some ISIS fighters are still loose, but basically the ISIS landholdings have been cleaned of ISIS power.
Trump got head of ISIS, al Baghdadi. No US blood was shed.
Trump got Iran terrorist leader Soleimani. No US blood was shed. IIRC O. North said that the vehicle was hit by 4 Hellfire missiles -- IIRC one can kill a tank!
Supposedly the US was on the way to a shooting war with North Korea. Trump had some sit downs with Kim Ding Dong Dung Jong Un in Ping Pong Yang, and since then no nuke tests and no long range missile tests.
The US is energy independent now with quite a lot more energy on the way from the Permian Basin, offshore, various fracking sites, ..., ANWR.
Supposedly Foxconn will be building plants in the US after some state level politics settles out.
Trump seems to have slowed US companies and jobs moving out of the US and workers and products being shipped into the US -- that is all good for US workers.
The economy seems to have low interest rates, high growth, low inflation, high stock market. I'd like to see more details about the macro economy, but it looks good.
The Opportunity Zones sound like a good idea, but I don't know how far they have gotten so far.
The Warp Speed Covid vaccine development looks to me like some terrific, unique, world class Trump leadership. Also the early shutting down travel with China, where apparently Trump was the only one in the room ready to do this, looks like a prescient masterstroke. The attack that he was being xenophobic was dirty pool -- that looks like a lie.
Trump has gotten some really big rallies, truck parades, boat parades -- maybe CNN, NBC, NYT, ... and the Democrats don't like him, but a LOT of citizens do, a lot.
I like that Trump does emphasize Christmas again.
Trump gave long term funding for the Historically Black Colleges. I'm not Black, but that funding sounds like a good idea to me, better use of money than rushing to lock up Biden's "predators" and Hillary's "superpredators" -- details in
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/07/politics/biden-1993-speech-pr...
Trump worked hard, did what was necessary, and made a great start on The Wall which will help a LOT keeping criminals and illegal drugs out of the US. That illegal drug situation is big stuff, e.g., 72,000 US deaths in 2017 as in
https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/o...
E.g., those illegal drug deaths in a few years exceed the Covid deaths, maybe over the whole time of the Covid pandemic the illegal drug deaths will exceed the Covid deaths.
Trump got a lot of the NATO countries to put their ante in the pot.
I'm not Jewish, but I approve of Trump moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and getting the deal with the UAE, etc. done.
Apparently he has responded well to the various natural disasters, hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires (maybe from poor forest management), etc.
Trump claims to have rolled back a lot of excessive, absurd, wasteful regulations. I haven't seen a good list, but the anti-Trump mainstream media, e.g.,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1ab6uxg908&feature=youtu.be
which is eager to criticize him doesn't seem to contradict his claim on regulation rollbacks. His claim sounds good to me.
Apparently a LOT of voters like him: IIRC so far in all the House toss-up races, the Republicans have won them all. A bit amazing.
Boeing got into deep sticky stuff. We need Boeing. Apparently somehow Trump helped Boeing, and now their Max is about to fly again.
Trump wants to tweak FCC or some such Section 230 or some such. If Facebook, Twitter, Youtube are publishers, then they can be sued for libel, slander, etc. But if they are just a straight wire with gain, then they transmit nothing of their own but nearly everything their users send. Or some such. I suspect he is correct that 230 needs tweaking.
The US was in deep smelly stuff with our most important ally, England. Trump patched up the problem, got the bust of Churchill back in the Oval Office, etc.
I'm not a woman, but I like the idea of women leaving behind the pearl necklace twisting, the smelling salts, the delicate flower that needs to be cared for, etc., and Trump has a lot of very capable women around, Melania, Ivanka, DeVos, Kelly Conway, etc. Those are good examples for girls and women everywhere.
I typed this quickly. There's a lot more I like that he's done.
The list of policies and results I care about. The list of lies you gave don't bother me at all.
My reading of his intentions is that he really cares. Certainly he doesn't need the job.
> "Nobody loves the Bible more than I do"
okay at
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/02/23/trump_cru...
is
"You know, when you hold up a Bible, and nobody loves the Bible more than I do, when you hold up a Bible, you don't then put it down and go around lying and doing a lot of things that are wrong," Trump scolded Cruz.
So, the source is not the best, but, still, the quote seems accurate.
Sorry, I don't call that a lie. It's not even as bad as "This car was driven by a little old lady only to church on Sundays."
The usual startup seed round pitch deck predictions are worse than the bible quote.
If you want to find an actual lie, maybe you can. I'm surprised the media apparently has not tried. One place to start is what he has said about spending money to rebuild the US military. IIRC he has mentioned some $trillions. I'd like to see the INCREASES over what the DoD has been getting right along, and those might not be $trillions. I.e., a significant fraction of the DoD budget, maybe his $trillions, went for just on-going, routine expenses and not rebuilding.
Even if I'm correct here, I still don't call that a 100% lie -- it's more like bending some definitions in budgeting and accounting.
But, again, much of the mainstream media seems eager to find Trump lies, so if Trump was wrong here the media should have gotten some headlines about it.
> The idea that Trump hasn't told a single lie in 5 years is so comically false that one doesn't even know where to begin.
I'm still willing to hear, wanting to hear, waiting to hear about three good lies.
I get it: You don't like Trump so attack me because I do like Trump.
So, why do I like Trump, a lot, regard him as by far the best POTUS since Washington. The main reasons are his policies and results. Here are some examples, from typing quickly:
He got a really good start on peace in the Mideast (a) among the Islamic states and (b) between Israel and some of the more progressive Islamic states.
He has Iran's international mischief calmed down.
Assad was really slow as a chemistry student, and Trump gave him a good chemistry lesson and a good repeat of the course. In this, no US people were harmed. For the second lesson, no US or Syrian people were harmed.
Trump got some US military leadership that used mostly existing US forces in Iraq to lead a joint US-Iraq attack on the ISIS land holdings. The US did the intel, operated the artillery and airplanes, and trained the Iraqis. Some ISIS fighters are still loose, but basically the ISIS landholdings have been cleaned of ISIS power.
Trump got head of ISIS, al Baghdadi. No US blood was shed.
Trump got Iran terrorist leader Soleimani. No US blood was shed. IIRC O. North said that the vehicle was hit by 4 Hellfire missiles -- IIRC one can kill a tank!
Supposedly the US was on the way to a shooting war with North Korea. Trump had some sit downs with Kim Ding Dong Dung Jong Un in Ping Pong Yang, and since then no nuke tests and no long range missile tests.
The US is energy independent now with quite a lot more energy on the way from the Permian Basin, offshore, various fracking sites, ..., ANWR.
Supposedly Foxconn will be building plants in the US after some state level politics settles out.
Trump seems to have slowed US companies and jobs moving out of the US and workers and products being shipped into the US -- that is all good for US workers.
The economy seems to have low interest rates, high growth, low inflation, high stock market. I'd like to see more details about the macro economy, but it looks good.
The Opportunity Zones sound like a good idea, but I don't know how far they have gotten so far.
The Warp Speed Covid vaccine development looks to me like some terrific, unique, world class Trump leadership. Also the early shutting down travel with China, where apparently Trump was the only one in the room ready to do this, looks like a prescient masterstroke. The attack that he was being xenophobic was dirty pool -- that looks like a lie.
Trump has gotten some really big rallies, truck parades, boat parades -- maybe CNN, NBC, NYT, ... and the Democrats don't like him, but a LOT of citizens do, a lot.
I like that Trump does emphasize Christmas again.
Trump gave long term funding for the Historically Black Colleges. I'm not Black, but that funding sounds like a good idea to me, better use of money than rushing to lock up Biden's "predators" and Hillary's "superpredators" -- details in
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/07/politics/biden-1993-speech-pr...
Trump worked hard, did what was necessary, and made a great start on The Wall which will help a LOT keeping criminals and illegal drugs out of the US. That illegal drug situation is big stuff, e.g., 72,000 US deaths in 2017 as in
https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/o...
E.g., those illegal drug deaths in a few years exceed the Covid deaths, maybe over the whole time of the Covid pandemic the illegal drug deaths will exceed the Covid deaths.
Trump got a lot of the NATO countries to put their ante in the pot.
I'm not Jewish, but I approve of Trump moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and getting the deal with the UAE, etc. done.
Apparently he has responded well to the various natural disasters, hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires (maybe from poor forest management), etc.
Trump claims to have rolled back a lot of excessive, absurd, wasteful regulations. I haven't seen a good list, but the anti-Trump mainstream media, e.g.,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1ab6uxg908&feature=youtu.be
which is eager to criticize him doesn't seem to contradict his claim on regulation rollbacks. His claim sounds good to me.
Apparently a LOT of voters like him: IIRC so far in all the House toss-up races, the Republicans have won them all. A bit amazing.
Boeing got into deep sticky stuff. We need Boeing. Apparently somehow Trump helped Boeing, and now their Max is about to fly again.
Trump wants to tweak FCC or some such Section 230 or some such. If Facebook, Twitter, Youtube are publishers, then they can be sued for libel, slander, etc. But if they are just a straight wire with gain, then they transmit nothing of their own but nearly everything their users send. Or some such. I suspect he is correct that 230 needs tweaking.
The US was in deep smelly stuff with our most important ally, England. Trump patched up the problem, got the bust of Churchill back in the Oval Office, etc.
I'm not a woman, but I like the idea of women leaving behind the pearl necklace twisting, the smelling salts, the delicate flower that needs to be cared for, etc., and Trump has a lot of very capable women around, Melania, Ivanka, DeVos, Kelly Conway, etc. Those are good examples for girls and women everywhere.
I typed this quickly. There's a lot more I like that he's done.
The list of policies and results I care about. The list of lies you gave don't bother me at all.
My reading of his intentions is that he really cares. Certainly he doesn't need the job.
You need help.
You are attacking me personally and contributing nothing rational about the issues. So, you look like a troll.
There was E. Bernays and his idea of a narrative as the basis of a propaganda campaign. Well, the mainstream media (MSM), e.g., ABC, AP, Boston Globe, CBS, CNN, LAT, MSNBC, NBC, NYT, Reuters, The Atlantic, WaPo, WSJ, seem to have signed up to push the Bernays narrative. In a few words, the narrative is "Orange Man Bad". No meaningful data, no reasonable rationality, just an attack. Next there is the Nazi Minister of Propaganda Dr. Josef Goebbels with his
"If you tell a lie often enough, then people will believe it. Eventually even you will come to believe it."
So, the second part of the propaganda effort is to repeat the narrative lies over and over. Eventually a lot of people come to believe, or come to believe that others believe so that there must be something to it or that they must at least fit in. Here is an example of the media pushing the narrative with repeating lies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1ab6uxg908&feature=youtu.be
I hope that right away you saw that you were watching propaganda and refused to watch again. The MSM is desperate and about to go out of business. Apparently they sold out cheap.
Some people stand to get big money and power if Biden will actually do all he has proposed, e.g., sending US companies and jobs out of the country and bringing cheap products and labor into the country.
Really the people to get the benefits from Biden are under 1% of the population -- essentially everyone else in the US will be worse off, much worse off than with Trump. Still the MSM keep pushing the Bernays narrative with the Goebbels repetition.
Now a lot of people have bought into the propaganda or are just being paid off to be trolls for the propaganda.
Apparently there is a lot of money involved, enough to buy off the MSM and a lot of people.
If you are being paid to help destroy the US, it's not enough. If you are not being paid, it's time you woke up.
A lot of social media, sadly including HN, is fertile ground for trolls. It is important for the rest of us to down vote the trolls.
There was E. Bernays and his idea of a narrative as the basis of a propaganda campaign. Well, the mainstream media (MSM), e.g., ABC, AP, Boston Globe, CBS, CNN, LAT, MSNBC, NBC, NYT, Reuters, The Atlantic, WaPo, WSJ, seem to have signed up to push the Bernays narrative. In a few words, the narrative is "Orange Man Bad". No meaningful data, no reasonable rationality, just an attack. Next there is the Nazi Minister of Propaganda Dr. Josef Goebbels with his
"If you tell a lie often enough, then people will believe it. Eventually even you will come to believe it."
So, the second part of the propaganda effort is to repeat the narrative lies over and over. Eventually a lot of people come to believe, or come to believe that others believe so that there must be something to it or that they must at least fit in. Here is an example of the media pushing the narrative with repeating lies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1ab6uxg908&feature=youtu.be
I hope that right away you saw that you were watching propaganda and refused to watch again. The MSM is desperate and about to go out of business. Apparently they sold out cheap.
Some people stand to get big money and power if Biden will actually do all he has proposed, e.g., sending US companies and jobs out of the country and bringing cheap products and labor into the country.
Really the people to get the benefits from Biden are under 1% of the population -- essentially everyone else in the US will be worse off, much worse off than with Trump. Still the MSM keep pushing the Bernays narrative with the Goebbels repetition.
Now a lot of people have bought into the propaganda or are just being paid off to be trolls for the propaganda.
Apparently there is a lot of money involved, enough to buy off the MSM and a lot of people.
If you are being paid to help destroy the US, it's not enough. If you are not being paid, it's time you woke up.
A lot of social media, sadly including HN, is fertile ground for trolls. It is important for the rest of us to down vote the trolls.
>I will grant that maybe Trump (1) exaggerates and (2) says things to gauge reactions
You mean lies? They're called lies.
This is the crux of the issue and why Google's action are sadly necessary: The stereotype regarding Americans is mostly true; around half of them really are quite, quite stupid.
You mean lies? They're called lies.
This is the crux of the issue and why Google's action are sadly necessary: The stereotype regarding Americans is mostly true; around half of them really are quite, quite stupid.
> What is going on in the US just now is unprecedented in modern Western democracies - we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA. Mainstream news networks like Fox have talking heads spouting venomous lies that are demonstrably and trivially proven as such.
Agreed about Fox, but conversely - the three liberal networks supported the Russiagate conspiracy theory that alleged Trump had colluded which the Russia to win the 2016 election. Let's not pretend brazen lying is somehow a new thing created by Donald Trump.
Agreed about Fox, but conversely - the three liberal networks supported the Russiagate conspiracy theory that alleged Trump had colluded which the Russia to win the 2016 election. Let's not pretend brazen lying is somehow a new thing created by Donald Trump.
>we've reached "peak fake news" in the USA. Mainstream news networks like Fox have talking heads spouting venomous lies that are demonstrably and trivially proven as such
I think that mainstream news has been doing this for the past 4 years. Here are 3 examples:
1) Trump Russia collusion hoax.
2) Trump saying that neo-nazis and white supremacists are "fine people" hoax.
3) Trump recommending people "inject bleach" hoax.
I think that mainstream news has been doing this for the past 4 years. Here are 3 examples:
1) Trump Russia collusion hoax.
2) Trump saying that neo-nazis and white supremacists are "fine people" hoax.
3) Trump recommending people "inject bleach" hoax.
I watched live as Trump suggested during a Covid-19 briefing that injecting disinfectant might be an effective treatment.
That’s not some MSM lie, that’s just what he said. Why deny it?
That’s not some MSM lie, that’s just what he said. Why deny it?
America, please don’t put bleach inside yourself like the president says
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/24/america-p...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/24/america-p...
> Trump saying that neo-nazis and white supremacists are "fine people" hoax.
I have personally watched a press conference where Trump said that live on TV in front of millions of people. I don't understand how you can call this a "hoax" when it came from the mouth of the POTUS himself.
> Trump recommending people "inject bleach" hoax
I have personally watched a press conferences where Trump embarked on an embarrassing, demented, rambling adlib where he has suggested injecting bleach. I watch some of these, and I genuinely have to wonder about both his mental capacity and his mental faculties.
TBH, your comment is demonstrating the problem facing the US just now - you are asserting that easily demonstrable facts are a "hoax", even when they have been broadcast by Trump himself to millions of people.
I have personally watched a press conference where Trump said that live on TV in front of millions of people. I don't understand how you can call this a "hoax" when it came from the mouth of the POTUS himself.
> Trump recommending people "inject bleach" hoax
I have personally watched a press conferences where Trump embarked on an embarrassing, demented, rambling adlib where he has suggested injecting bleach. I watch some of these, and I genuinely have to wonder about both his mental capacity and his mental faculties.
TBH, your comment is demonstrating the problem facing the US just now - you are asserting that easily demonstrable facts are a "hoax", even when they have been broadcast by Trump himself to millions of people.
>I have personally watched a press conference where Trump said that live on TV in front of millions of people.
Thank you for bringing this up. This is the press conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmaZR8E12bs
At time 1:58 Pres. Trump specifically excludes neo-nazis and white nationalists from his 'fine people' description: "And I'm not talking about the neo-nazis and white nationalists because they should be condemned totally."
https://youtu.be/JmaZR8E12bs?t=118
You're experiencing a false memory, which is completely normal for anyone, even intelligent, well informed and accomplished people.
It's my personal opinion that this false memory was implanted in millions of people by corporate media and big tech.
Thank you for bringing this up. This is the press conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmaZR8E12bs
At time 1:58 Pres. Trump specifically excludes neo-nazis and white nationalists from his 'fine people' description: "And I'm not talking about the neo-nazis and white nationalists because they should be condemned totally."
https://youtu.be/JmaZR8E12bs?t=118
You're experiencing a false memory, which is completely normal for anyone, even intelligent, well informed and accomplished people.
It's my personal opinion that this false memory was implanted in millions of people by corporate media and big tech.
That's not the press conference I meant - he's used this "fine people" label numerous times.
1) the Meuller report is conclusive: there was collusion.
2) Trump did, in fact, say that. It’s recorded video.
3) Trump did, in fact, suggest that injecting disinfectant might be a treatment for COVID-19.
Regarding 2, I recently discovered https://finepeople.org.
You're missing the context that the people attending the Unite the Right rally heavily displayed Nazi iconography (swastikas and more obscure neo-Nazi symbols):
https://youtu.be/zcoYKuoiUrY?t=1862
If you're okay with marching alongside a swastika, are you really a "very fine person?" As Shaun puts it, "the acceptable number of swastikas at the rally is zero."
Another excerpt (https://youtu.be/zcoYKuoiUrY?t=2538):
Speaker: "Did Hitler do anything wrong?"
Crowd: "No!"
Speaker: "I love my people!"
Crowd: "I love my people!"
Speaker: "One more, one more. I want everyone to repeat after me, pay close attention because this is the first precept of the true alt-right. Remember it. Gas the [slur]s, race war now!"
Crowd: "Gas the [slur]s, race war now!" "Sieg Heil!" "Sieg Heil!" "Who brought the ovens?" "[Laughter]"
Do these people, or anyone who associates with them, seem like "very fine people?"
https://youtu.be/zcoYKuoiUrY?t=1862
If you're okay with marching alongside a swastika, are you really a "very fine person?" As Shaun puts it, "the acceptable number of swastikas at the rally is zero."
Another excerpt (https://youtu.be/zcoYKuoiUrY?t=2538):
Speaker: "Did Hitler do anything wrong?"
Crowd: "No!"
Speaker: "I love my people!"
Crowd: "I love my people!"
Speaker: "One more, one more. I want everyone to repeat after me, pay close attention because this is the first precept of the true alt-right. Remember it. Gas the [slur]s, race war now!"
Crowd: "Gas the [slur]s, race war now!" "Sieg Heil!" "Sieg Heil!" "Who brought the ovens?" "[Laughter]"
Do these people, or anyone who associates with them, seem like "very fine people?"
No one denies that those people were there. Trump condemns them unconditionally.
The issue is the denial of people like this who were also there:
>“Good people can go to Charlottesville,” said Michelle Piercy, a night shift worker at a Wichita, Kan., retirement home, who drove all night with a conservative group that opposed the planned removal of a statue of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/us/politics/trump-republi... NY Times Aug 17, 2017
And this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqXWhG6IZ50 Associated Press Aug 15, 2017
I think that all these people are misguided, but they aren't neo-nazis or white nationalists.
>If you're okay with marching alongside a swastika, are you really a "very fine person?"
Are people marching in the same area as looters or antifa 'very fine people'? Yes, of course they are. No one has control who shows up at these huge public demonstrations.
The issue is the denial of people like this who were also there:
>“Good people can go to Charlottesville,” said Michelle Piercy, a night shift worker at a Wichita, Kan., retirement home, who drove all night with a conservative group that opposed the planned removal of a statue of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/us/politics/trump-republi... NY Times Aug 17, 2017
And this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqXWhG6IZ50 Associated Press Aug 15, 2017
I think that all these people are misguided, but they aren't neo-nazis or white nationalists.
>If you're okay with marching alongside a swastika, are you really a "very fine person?"
Are people marching in the same area as looters or antifa 'very fine people'? Yes, of course they are. No one has control who shows up at these huge public demonstrations.
Trump's comments were clearly regarding the protesters at the original rally (as he mentions the violence), not people who came later. Every protester on the right was a neo-Nazi or complicit in marching with neo-Nazis. The rally explicitly invited white nationalist and neo-Nazi speakers. The stated goals of the rally was to unify the American white nationalist movement.
> No one has control who shows up at these huge public demonstrations.
This demonstration was intended to be a white-supremacist, neo-Nazi demonstration. End of story. If you disagree, I encourage you to watch the Shaun video I linked for more information, or to read the linked Wikipedia and Vox articles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally
https://www.vox.com/2019/4/26/18517980/trump-unite-the-right...
Trump praised these people. You may argue that he didn't mean to. But the fact is that Trump praised white supremacy, intentionally or unintentionally, and these white supremacists use that praise to justify the continuation of the movement. Even if Trump later condemned them, white supremacists interpret such a move as Trump merely "pretending" to condemn them.
> No one has control who shows up at these huge public demonstrations.
This demonstration was intended to be a white-supremacist, neo-Nazi demonstration. End of story. If you disagree, I encourage you to watch the Shaun video I linked for more information, or to read the linked Wikipedia and Vox articles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally
https://www.vox.com/2019/4/26/18517980/trump-unite-the-right...
Trump praised these people. You may argue that he didn't mean to. But the fact is that Trump praised white supremacy, intentionally or unintentionally, and these white supremacists use that praise to justify the continuation of the movement. Even if Trump later condemned them, white supremacists interpret such a move as Trump merely "pretending" to condemn them.
>Trump praised these people.
Trump is saying the people who don't want the statue taken down are fine people. He explicitly exludes neo-nazis and white nationalists. I am simply reading his words. No mind reading required.
>But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists by any stretch. Those people were also there because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue of Robert E. Lee.
>and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists — because they should be condemned totally.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-pres...
And in a previous post I showed you people who went to the rally with the removal of a statue in mind. Don't assume Trump knew everything about the event, and it's make up as it happened. The news will show the extremists because peaceful protesters don't get eye balls so selective coverage isn't proof of anything.
Trump is saying the people who don't want the statue taken down are fine people. He explicitly exludes neo-nazis and white nationalists. I am simply reading his words. No mind reading required.
>But not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists by any stretch. Those people were also there because they wanted to protest the taking down of a statue of Robert E. Lee.
>and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists — because they should be condemned totally.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-pres...
And in a previous post I showed you people who went to the rally with the removal of a statue in mind. Don't assume Trump knew everything about the event, and it's make up as it happened. The news will show the extremists because peaceful protesters don't get eye balls so selective coverage isn't proof of anything.
You mean the Trump-Russia collusion that ended up with Michael Flynn going to prison?
Micheal Flynn did not go to prison. Flynn pled guilty when threatened with the prospect of his son being charged and railroaded as well. Once he retained new legal council, he withdrew his guilty plea. The DoJ dropped the prosecution after exculpatory evidence came out that was being withheld by the FBI. Judge Sullivan decided to keep the case going instead of throwing it out- and eventually Trump pardoned Flynn.
Micheal Flynn was being charged for lying to FBI investigators about sanctions, when the transcripts of the calls were finally released by the FBI, it turns out he didn't even bring up sanctions with Kisylak at all. The FBI also withheld the original 302 from the interview with Flynn, and Peter Strzok, who was later fired for bias, had re-written the second 302 that was used to imply that Flynn had lied to investigators.
What's not proven, but suspected, is that the entire call to Kislyak was orchestrated by the Obama admin. Expelling the Russian diplomats/spies when Flynn was already under surveillance prompted the calls between Kislyak and Flynn. Flynn was in a foreign country when this happened, and given his place in the upcoming administration as well as his role under Obama's admin, it was a near guarantee that he would be in contact with Kislyak. He called Kislyak on an unsecured line while in a foreign country. Flynn would have known absolutely that the call was being surveilled, but he didn't believe he was doing anything untoward. What he didn't know was that the FBI would use this as a point to attack him. Comey even jokes about how sending agents to interview a WH staff member alone without legal counsel would never have been acceptable, but that Trump's young and inexperienced administration didn't realize it in time.
But that's all conjecture. What is not conjecture is fact that Flynn did not lie to the FBI, and should not have been charged as such.
Micheal Flynn was being charged for lying to FBI investigators about sanctions, when the transcripts of the calls were finally released by the FBI, it turns out he didn't even bring up sanctions with Kisylak at all. The FBI also withheld the original 302 from the interview with Flynn, and Peter Strzok, who was later fired for bias, had re-written the second 302 that was used to imply that Flynn had lied to investigators.
What's not proven, but suspected, is that the entire call to Kislyak was orchestrated by the Obama admin. Expelling the Russian diplomats/spies when Flynn was already under surveillance prompted the calls between Kislyak and Flynn. Flynn was in a foreign country when this happened, and given his place in the upcoming administration as well as his role under Obama's admin, it was a near guarantee that he would be in contact with Kislyak. He called Kislyak on an unsecured line while in a foreign country. Flynn would have known absolutely that the call was being surveilled, but he didn't believe he was doing anything untoward. What he didn't know was that the FBI would use this as a point to attack him. Comey even jokes about how sending agents to interview a WH staff member alone without legal counsel would never have been acceptable, but that Trump's young and inexperienced administration didn't realize it in time.
But that's all conjecture. What is not conjecture is fact that Flynn did not lie to the FBI, and should not have been charged as such.
> Micheal Flynn was being charged for lying to FBI investigators about sanctions, when the transcripts of the calls were finally released by the FBI, it turns out he didn't even bring up sanctions with Kisylak at all.
This is untrue. Specifically, "lying about sanctions" wasn't what he was charged with. He was charged with lying about asking Kisylak to refrain from escalating the situation, and a large part of his call was about sanctions and the Russian response to them.
Here's the Statement of Offense[1], and the direct quote is:
FLYNN falsely stated he did not ask Russia's ambassador to the United States to refrain from escalating the situation in response to sanctions the United States has imposed on Russia.
In the transcripts of the call[2] he says:
But I ask Russia to do is to not, if anything, I know you have to have some sort of action, to only make it reciprocal; don't go any further than you have to because I don't want us to get into something that have to escalate to tit-for-tat. Do you follow me?
and later:
I know, I -believe me, I do appreciate it, I very much appreciate it. But I really don't want us to get into a situation where we're going, you know~ where we do this and then you do something bigger, and then you know, everybody's got to go back and forth and everybody's got to be the tough guy here, you know?
and
And please make sure that its uh - the idea is, be -if you~ if you have to do something, do something on a reciprocal basis, meaning you know, on a sort of an even basis. Then that, then that is a good message and we'll understand that message. And, and then, we know that we're not going to escalate this thing, where we~ where because if we put out-ifwe send out 30 guys and you send out 60, you know, or you shut down every Embassy, r mean we have to get this to a -lefs, let's keep this at a level that uh is, is even-keeled, okay?
So it's pretty clear his original statement of offense is correct - he did talk Kisylak and ask him not to escalate, and then lied to the FBI about it.
[1] https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4320055/Flynn-Sta...
[2] https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2020/05/FlynnTr...
This is untrue. Specifically, "lying about sanctions" wasn't what he was charged with. He was charged with lying about asking Kisylak to refrain from escalating the situation, and a large part of his call was about sanctions and the Russian response to them.
Here's the Statement of Offense[1], and the direct quote is:
FLYNN falsely stated he did not ask Russia's ambassador to the United States to refrain from escalating the situation in response to sanctions the United States has imposed on Russia.
In the transcripts of the call[2] he says:
But I ask Russia to do is to not, if anything, I know you have to have some sort of action, to only make it reciprocal; don't go any further than you have to because I don't want us to get into something that have to escalate to tit-for-tat. Do you follow me?
and later:
I know, I -believe me, I do appreciate it, I very much appreciate it. But I really don't want us to get into a situation where we're going, you know~ where we do this and then you do something bigger, and then you know, everybody's got to go back and forth and everybody's got to be the tough guy here, you know?
and
And please make sure that its uh - the idea is, be -if you~ if you have to do something, do something on a reciprocal basis, meaning you know, on a sort of an even basis. Then that, then that is a good message and we'll understand that message. And, and then, we know that we're not going to escalate this thing, where we~ where because if we put out-ifwe send out 30 guys and you send out 60, you know, or you shut down every Embassy, r mean we have to get this to a -lefs, let's keep this at a level that uh is, is even-keeled, okay?
So it's pretty clear his original statement of offense is correct - he did talk Kisylak and ask him not to escalate, and then lied to the FBI about it.
[1] https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4320055/Flynn-Sta...
[2] https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2020/05/FlynnTr...
as the nazi minister of propaganda once said, "truth is the foundation of the press, and all we ask of it!"
You probably switched off your TV the last four years (and you were right to do so). But the likes of CNN and MSNBC have been pushing their own fake news continuously for 4 years, pretending that the election had been stolen, that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, etc.
I think all of this is bad, but I refuse to accept that this is a bad behavior that just came up and is the monopoly of a single side of the political aisle.
All this is, is Youtube picking a side in this fight.
By the way, on the back of the David Fincher's movie I re-watched Citizen Kane. I love the part where Kane's newspaper prepared two alternative front pages the night of the elections: "Kane elected governor" and "Massive fraud at the polls". 1942. Nothing new under the sun.
I think all of this is bad, but I refuse to accept that this is a bad behavior that just came up and is the monopoly of a single side of the political aisle.
All this is, is Youtube picking a side in this fight.
By the way, on the back of the David Fincher's movie I re-watched Citizen Kane. I love the part where Kane's newspaper prepared two alternative front pages the night of the elections: "Kane elected governor" and "Massive fraud at the polls". 1942. Nothing new under the sun.
> that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia
the mueller report stated "while the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign, the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges."
That and they also found many cases of obstruction of justice that could be charged and would have said that he was cleared if they could clear him. so obstruct justice numerous times and then the outcome of that obstruction makes it so that they can't find sufficient evidence of a crime. Reporting on that is not "fake news."
the mueller report stated "while the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign, the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges."
That and they also found many cases of obstruction of justice that could be charged and would have said that he was cleared if they could clear him. so obstruct justice numerous times and then the outcome of that obstruction makes it so that they can't find sufficient evidence of a crime. Reporting on that is not "fake news."
> the Mueller report stated "while the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign, the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges."
That covers a very large range of possible realities. It also describes the expected relationship between every US president and the Russians - diplomacy doesn't happen by telepathy. If there is a point there, it needs to be made more explicitly.
That covers a very large range of possible realities. It also describes the expected relationship between every US president and the Russians - diplomacy doesn't happen by telepathy. If there is a point there, it needs to be made more explicitly.
> It also describes the expected relationship between every US president and the Russians - diplomacy doesn't happen by telepathy.
this specifically was way before anyone held any power and it also covered many connections that were covered up and lied about to the investigators.
this specifically was way before anyone held any power and it also covered many connections that were covered up and lied about to the investigators.
Innuendo isn't an argument, it is a rather weak cover for the fact that insufficient evidence means evidence nobody cares about.
The only people I've seen bringing the Russia stuff up for the last year have been right wingers in a told-you-so style. It was a political dud because there was nothing there. The Muller report was so weak when Trump was impeached it was for a completely different made-up scandal.
And based on the Democrat response to the 2020 elections, it seems that under the Trump presidency has seen the voting system secured beyond all reproach. Without anyone making any actual changes for the better as far as I can tell. The whole thing was always frivolous.
The only people I've seen bringing the Russia stuff up for the last year have been right wingers in a told-you-so style. It was a political dud because there was nothing there. The Muller report was so weak when Trump was impeached it was for a completely different made-up scandal.
And based on the Democrat response to the 2020 elections, it seems that under the Trump presidency has seen the voting system secured beyond all reproach. Without anyone making any actual changes for the better as far as I can tell. The whole thing was always frivolous.
The media has been the propaganda division of military industrial complex for decades. Mainstream networks spouting lies is nothing new.
Regardless of what you believe to be 'The Truth', has suppression or censorship ever worked to quench dissonance or convince skeptical people, again, whether right or wrong, that there really is 'nothing to see here'.
I'm pretty anti-censorship; specifically I believe that sunshine/debate is the best disinfectant. However, we aren't having a healthy debate right now because the election fraud conspiratorialists are shouting their message without regard for the rebuttals. I think there's something to be said for bringing the volume down to manageable levels so that we can actually have a debate. That said, I'm not remotely convinced that there's any kind of evidence that will convince these people that there wasn't election fraud--it feels like arguing with flat-earthers or blank-slaters or whomever--which isn't so much to vindicate 'censorship' (in general or in particular) as it is to express sadness at the state of our collective intellectual and political well-being.
Sunshine only works as a disinfectant when there isn't a massive coordinated artificial amplification of disinformation.
It assumes that people are rational actors, and have good critical thinking skills, and care to apply those skills. None of those is true of Americans en masse.
It assumes that people are rational actors, and have good critical thinking skills, and care to apply those skills. None of those is true of Americans en masse.
>when there isn't a massive coordinated artificial amplification of disinformation
>It assumes that people are rational actors, and have good critical thinking skills, and care to apply those skills
This could always be true in reverse, and pretty un-recognizable no? Does not your statement itself reflect some assumption in the ability of people to be rational actors to determine which debate is and isn't true, artificial, astro turfed, propagandized etc.
Think of for example the Iraq war push, and evidence provided for it. There are always unknown unknowns, and so your "first principles" cannot be assumed to be true
https://commoncog.com/blog/how-first-principles-thinking-fai...
>It assumes that people are rational actors, and have good critical thinking skills, and care to apply those skills
This could always be true in reverse, and pretty un-recognizable no? Does not your statement itself reflect some assumption in the ability of people to be rational actors to determine which debate is and isn't true, artificial, astro turfed, propagandized etc.
Think of for example the Iraq war push, and evidence provided for it. There are always unknown unknowns, and so your "first principles" cannot be assumed to be true
https://commoncog.com/blog/how-first-principles-thinking-fai...
> None of those is true of Americans en masse.
None of those is true for people en masse.
None of those is true for people en masse.
"massive coordinated artificial amplification of disinformation."
Propaganda wasn't born yesterday, neither were people in the past more rational than today.
Propaganda wasn't born yesterday, neither were people in the past more rational than today.
>> Sunshine only works as a disinfectant when there isn't a massive coordinated artificial amplification of disinformation.
Agree in general, but where does it stop? What about articles? Web searches? Websites hosted on Google Cloud?
What about documented (albeit very limited) cases of voter fraud in favor of Biden?
What about documented (albeit very limited) cases of voter fraud in favor of Trump?
Agree in general, but where does it stop? What about articles? Web searches? Websites hosted on Google Cloud?
What about documented (albeit very limited) cases of voter fraud in favor of Biden?
What about documented (albeit very limited) cases of voter fraud in favor of Trump?
>we aren't having a healthy
So ultimately you prioritize what might be described as "collective health" over generalized notions of freedom. Is that "pretty anti censorship", as this question of negative externalities is always the point of contention for censoring anything is it not?
I'd agree with this framing, though if one goes down this route, all sorts of instances of "freedom" and individual choice would be called into question on grounds of it's effect on overall societal health. I think it means simple frameworks of censorship, free speech, and facts cannot be generalized or universalized, as ultimately many of these will run into value judgments that aren't easily answered by questions of objective truth.
>I'm not remotely convinced that there's any kind of evidence
And this calls into question the efficacy of "truth" and objective facts. At some point people simply have different value judgments about what is true, or for which other things to carve out exceptions which take precedence. Or which debates or opinions are healthy or which are off limits. We see this with COVID where it's hard enough to assess the specific health risks while balancing the trade-offs of other health risks and economic impacts of lock-downs etc. "true" is too broad to encompass all the variables.
So ultimately you prioritize what might be described as "collective health" over generalized notions of freedom. Is that "pretty anti censorship", as this question of negative externalities is always the point of contention for censoring anything is it not?
I'd agree with this framing, though if one goes down this route, all sorts of instances of "freedom" and individual choice would be called into question on grounds of it's effect on overall societal health. I think it means simple frameworks of censorship, free speech, and facts cannot be generalized or universalized, as ultimately many of these will run into value judgments that aren't easily answered by questions of objective truth.
>I'm not remotely convinced that there's any kind of evidence
And this calls into question the efficacy of "truth" and objective facts. At some point people simply have different value judgments about what is true, or for which other things to carve out exceptions which take precedence. Or which debates or opinions are healthy or which are off limits. We see this with COVID where it's hard enough to assess the specific health risks while balancing the trade-offs of other health risks and economic impacts of lock-downs etc. "true" is too broad to encompass all the variables.
> So ultimately you prioritize what might be described as "collective health" over generalized notions of freedom. Is that "pretty anti censorship", as this question of negative externalities is always the point of contention for censoring anything is it not?
I'm not falling hard on this. I'm presently living in the tension between free speech ideals and collective political health, and I don't purport to have any great answers.
> I'd agree with this framing, though if one goes down this route, all sorts of instances of "freedom" and individual choice would be called into question on grounds of it's effect on overall societal health.
Agree, I think this is completely valid and I think we see a lot of this already in the cancel culture movement--lots of perfectly reasonable, healthy debate is suppressed as "possibly harmful". It's a real concern.
> And this calls into question the efficacy of "truth" and objective facts. At some point people simply have different value judgments about what is true, or for which other things to carve out exceptions which take precedence.
I don't buy this. I think even conspiratorialists are perfectly capable of reasoning (reasonably) well when it doesn't conflict with their political allegiance. In my opinion, the issue is that some people know full well that they're being dishonest, but they simply don't care--they value the truth less than they value their political tribe. And please note that I think there are plenty of people on both sides of the aisle who put party above truth--this isn't me punching at Republicans or conservatives or whomever while pretending that my ideological compatriots are perfectly behaved (that would make me quite the hypocrite!)--although it wouldn't be appropriate to litigate that here.
I'm not falling hard on this. I'm presently living in the tension between free speech ideals and collective political health, and I don't purport to have any great answers.
> I'd agree with this framing, though if one goes down this route, all sorts of instances of "freedom" and individual choice would be called into question on grounds of it's effect on overall societal health.
Agree, I think this is completely valid and I think we see a lot of this already in the cancel culture movement--lots of perfectly reasonable, healthy debate is suppressed as "possibly harmful". It's a real concern.
> And this calls into question the efficacy of "truth" and objective facts. At some point people simply have different value judgments about what is true, or for which other things to carve out exceptions which take precedence.
I don't buy this. I think even conspiratorialists are perfectly capable of reasoning (reasonably) well when it doesn't conflict with their political allegiance. In my opinion, the issue is that some people know full well that they're being dishonest, but they simply don't care--they value the truth less than they value their political tribe. And please note that I think there are plenty of people on both sides of the aisle who put party above truth--this isn't me punching at Republicans or conservatives or whomever while pretending that my ideological compatriots are perfectly behaved (that would make me quite the hypocrite!)--although it wouldn't be appropriate to litigate that here.
Ugh. I'm very anti-censorship and I'm right there with you. It's hard to not acknowledge that we have a serious problem - half of the political establishment is hallucinating a different reality, far beyond the normal out of touch hubris pushed by both teams. I believe the raw energy is coming from being fed up with the looting and control by the plutocrats (like everyone), but they're being goaded in a completely nonsensical and destructive direction.
Every semi reputable editor (even Fox!) has put the brakes on this disinformation campaign, but it seems that doing so just makes the people believing it move on to even less credible feeds. Ultimately I think the hallucination can only die down on its own, but on the timescale of several years. Meanwhile the damage is being done right now. I just hope it's all just so Trump can continue grifting and developing political capital to try avoiding jail, rather than some larger plan like deliberately inciting a civil war.
Previously if one ventured into Internet conspiracy theory land, their new belief would be tempered by their social circle. Now whatever wild thing manages to get enough attention also creates its own social proof. We're essentially dealing with a violent mixture of the old and the new where digital non-natives are tuning into raw memetic noise while giving it the trust of the 1990's evening news.
I would be curious to see how this played out in a parallel universe where section 230 had never existed, the MITM business never gained popularity, new media ("tech") companies had to editorialize more like old media, and the anti-establishment action stayed on p2p nets with a higher barrier to entry.
Every semi reputable editor (even Fox!) has put the brakes on this disinformation campaign, but it seems that doing so just makes the people believing it move on to even less credible feeds. Ultimately I think the hallucination can only die down on its own, but on the timescale of several years. Meanwhile the damage is being done right now. I just hope it's all just so Trump can continue grifting and developing political capital to try avoiding jail, rather than some larger plan like deliberately inciting a civil war.
Previously if one ventured into Internet conspiracy theory land, their new belief would be tempered by their social circle. Now whatever wild thing manages to get enough attention also creates its own social proof. We're essentially dealing with a violent mixture of the old and the new where digital non-natives are tuning into raw memetic noise while giving it the trust of the 1990's evening news.
I would be curious to see how this played out in a parallel universe where section 230 had never existed, the MITM business never gained popularity, new media ("tech") companies had to editorialize more like old media, and the anti-establishment action stayed on p2p nets with a higher barrier to entry.
I think the actual issue is that the claims of fraud are not being evaluated. I've watched tens of hours of testimonies thus far, seen the evidence, reviewed the data myself, and there's definitely something to all this.
The issue, is that the concerns are not being evaluated, both sides are not being interviewed, etc. We really need a trial. Unfortunately, that has not happened yet, in almost any of these "hearings". The lawsuits are dismissed due to "standing" or procedural issues, not on the merits.
The issue, is that the concerns are not being evaluated, both sides are not being interviewed, etc. We really need a trial. Unfortunately, that has not happened yet, in almost any of these "hearings". The lawsuits are dismissed due to "standing" or procedural issues, not on the merits.
>The lawsuits are dismissed due to "standing" or procedural issues, not on the merits.
Maybe they should hire lawyers who actually have a single clue what they hell they're doing and not Rudy Giuliani, who hasn't been in a court room since 1992 and doesn't know literally the first week of constitutional law.
Maybe they should hire lawyers who actually have a single clue what they hell they're doing and not Rudy Giuliani, who hasn't been in a court room since 1992 and doesn't know literally the first week of constitutional law.
What do you think all these lawsuits have been doing?
They have literally been going to court and not won a single time. These are not partisan judges. These are not Democrat secretary of states. These are Republicans.
They are throwing out every lawsuit so far. None have been substantiated, zero.
Stop repeating lies.
They have literally been going to court and not won a single time. These are not partisan judges. These are not Democrat secretary of states. These are Republicans.
They are throwing out every lawsuit so far. None have been substantiated, zero.
Stop repeating lies.
Balanced reporting of news during the election and of current president actions (for instance peace efforts in the Middle East) would probably have been a long way to not give credit to the idea that "the system" is pushing a particular candidate. Some people are thinking their voices are being silented, so censoring actions taken by Youtube or Twitter (NYP incident) are not only an additional nail in the coffin, they are actual validation of the fact a whole political side is being canceled.
I actually agree that the media in general is shamelessly pushing a particular candidate (even though I also voted for that candidate), and that that has contributed significantly to the degradation of trust. I believe the media harmed its own cause (and also my cause) which is getting Trump out of office (which is to say I think--though I can't prove--Biden could have won more easily if the media simply let Trump discredit himself), but it also harmed our collective political health, and I hope Karma lays low those responsible.
However, that doesn't excuse conspiratorialism. We still have a responsibility to find reliable trust channels and to sift through evidence, and when it becomes apparent that we're incorrect (e.g., when evidence is presented that weakens or invalidates our claims), we ought to admit our error and critically evaluate our sources who led us astray.
To put a fine point on it, the media should have to answer for its sins, but those sins don't license the rest of us to behave badly.
However, that doesn't excuse conspiratorialism. We still have a responsibility to find reliable trust channels and to sift through evidence, and when it becomes apparent that we're incorrect (e.g., when evidence is presented that weakens or invalidates our claims), we ought to admit our error and critically evaluate our sources who led us astray.
To put a fine point on it, the media should have to answer for its sins, but those sins don't license the rest of us to behave badly.
There was election fraud and I’m happy to link you some concrete evidence if you don’t believe me. That’s not the issue though. The issue is whether there was coordinated, systemic, and purposeful electoral fraud. That’s a much more difficult question to answer (probably a no lol). I would say that people like you who say that there was 0 electoral fraud are just as ignorant as the people conclusively saying that there was 1000% coordinated systemic electoral fraud.
> I would say that people like you who say that there was 0 electoral fraud are just as ignorant as the people conclusively saying that there was 1000% coordinated systemic electoral fraud.
You seem to have misread my comment. I'm not arguing that there is zero fraud. I didn't even say in my post that there was no conspiracy (though I'll say here that there wasn't). I only said the conspiratorialists aren't arguing constructively. I'm probably pretty aligned with you--I wouldn't be surprised if there were a handful of fraudulent ballots on either side, but there's certainly no evidence for a conspiracy.
You seem to have misread my comment. I'm not arguing that there is zero fraud. I didn't even say in my post that there was no conspiracy (though I'll say here that there wasn't). I only said the conspiratorialists aren't arguing constructively. I'm probably pretty aligned with you--I wouldn't be surprised if there were a handful of fraudulent ballots on either side, but there's certainly no evidence for a conspiracy.
We are all eagerly awaiting your evidence. You may want to call up some news outlets as well, you are about to be famous.
To be fair, there are plenty of cases of _isolated, singular_ fraud (see the various people that tried to double vote and got caught). The OPs wording is quite deliberate.
Sure - where is this link?
So in your case “pretty anti-censorship” means censoring what you don’t agree with is fine?
“election fraud conspiratorialists” seem to have a case in court. It’s up to Supreme Court to decide whether something is true or not, not youtube.
About them being loud, how can they be “loud” when none of the media is representing their case?
This act of censorship is showcasing very grim future where absolute minority gets to decide what tune whole generations are playing to.
“election fraud conspiratorialists” seem to have a case in court. It’s up to Supreme Court to decide whether something is true or not, not youtube.
About them being loud, how can they be “loud” when none of the media is representing their case?
This act of censorship is showcasing very grim future where absolute minority gets to decide what tune whole generations are playing to.
> So in your case “pretty anti-censorship” means censoring what you don’t agree with is fine?
I like ideas that I don't agree with when debate is healthy. I don't like when people who hold those ideas just keep shouting the same thing over and over without actually engaging with the rebuttals presented--frankly I find that behavior reprehensible. I have sympathy for people who want to suppress that sort of behavior, which is what you're picking up on from my previous comment, but I'm far from convinced that it's a viable solution.
Mostly though, this conspiratorial content is so obviously damaging and in bad-faith, etc that I don't care so much about imperfections with respect to free speech ideals, just like I'm not very worked up that Germany bans holocaust denialism.
> About them being loud, how can they be “loud” when none of the media is representing their case?
Because social media exists, and because the POTUS is using his enormous platform to the same end?
> This act of censorship is showcasing very grim future where absolute minority gets to decide what tune whole generations are playing to
This has always been the case. Traditional media is exactly this model.
I like ideas that I don't agree with when debate is healthy. I don't like when people who hold those ideas just keep shouting the same thing over and over without actually engaging with the rebuttals presented--frankly I find that behavior reprehensible. I have sympathy for people who want to suppress that sort of behavior, which is what you're picking up on from my previous comment, but I'm far from convinced that it's a viable solution.
Mostly though, this conspiratorial content is so obviously damaging and in bad-faith, etc that I don't care so much about imperfections with respect to free speech ideals, just like I'm not very worked up that Germany bans holocaust denialism.
> About them being loud, how can they be “loud” when none of the media is representing their case?
Because social media exists, and because the POTUS is using his enormous platform to the same end?
> This act of censorship is showcasing very grim future where absolute minority gets to decide what tune whole generations are playing to
This has always been the case. Traditional media is exactly this model.
It seems like the health of the debate has a lot to do with your opinion of the arguments presented. See how this works? What you're talking about is viewpoint censorship with extra steps
You're mistaken. The health (or lack of health) of a dialogue is completely orthogonal to agreement (I would have thought this was obvious, but I guess not). I could agree with someone, but their discourse could be completely toxic (e.g., I can love Linux but nevertheless it would be toxic if someone were just shouting "I LOVE LINUX ITS THE BEST LA LA LA LA LA I CANT HEAR YOU!"). I could (and frequently do) also find myself civily disagreeing with someone, but understanding their arguments (and my own) better as a result--this is an example of healthy dialogue. In this particular case, I happen to disagree with conspiratorialists and also object to their discourse, but again, those are two distinct concerns.
Censorship has always worked quite well, unfortunately. I grew up believing certain things until, around 30, I went to look up the figures and noticed clichés and prejudices were more correct than teachers and journalists. What a world we live in. Not a situation I’d desire!
To start with, it seems Galileo didn’t say « Pero se mueve ». If you pull the string from there, he can’t possibly have been incarcerated for saying that the Earth wasn’t the center of universe, because Kepler more or less said the same before and wasn’t incarcerated. All of that, which I had been taught in school, is false. The king of France was guillotined because he wanted to organize a referendum for him, which he was confident to win, not because he was unpopular. And so it goes on to XXth century, and the to XXIth century, with the feminism and racism narratives. When you notice the ILO’s universal treaty of 1928 against slavery of every human on Earth...
...didn’t include males from 18 to 49. Who had to wait until the UN treaty of 1957 against forced labour, if I remember, to be included.
I’m praying every night for the world to pop out of this censorship of reality. But praying is less efficient than censorship.
To start with, it seems Galileo didn’t say « Pero se mueve ». If you pull the string from there, he can’t possibly have been incarcerated for saying that the Earth wasn’t the center of universe, because Kepler more or less said the same before and wasn’t incarcerated. All of that, which I had been taught in school, is false. The king of France was guillotined because he wanted to organize a referendum for him, which he was confident to win, not because he was unpopular. And so it goes on to XXth century, and the to XXIth century, with the feminism and racism narratives. When you notice the ILO’s universal treaty of 1928 against slavery of every human on Earth...
...didn’t include males from 18 to 49. Who had to wait until the UN treaty of 1957 against forced labour, if I remember, to be included.
I’m praying every night for the world to pop out of this censorship of reality. But praying is less efficient than censorship.
You’re right that the whole France’s history program in school (or what remains of it, why was it suppressed in high school scientific section?) is indeed a made up narrative trying to build a certain image of the world, often very far from the truth. It’s especially flagrant by the constant bashing of royal era, and constant praise of the republic with important facts conveniently untold like the Vendée massacre. I like reading things about history on Wikipedia, and things are a lot more nuanced than that. And like with Santa Klaus, once you know you’ve been fooled, you wonder about what else they lied... and why.
While censorship is certainly a real thing that happens, many of your examples seem to fall on the side of "History is written by the winners." Selective omission and censorship are not exactly the same thing (although the result can certainly be the same).
Yes, it has, to a degree. C.f. Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, etc. (These voices became much less prominent after their deplatforming.) There's also a deontological argument to be made for banning dangerous falsehoods on one's platform.
I can't necessarily argue the exact wording that you used "prominent", because the folks you listed are certainly no longer visible in the most mainstream venues, but do you really think Alex Jones has lost a lot of the audience that was deep into his content. If anything this just makes him into a martyr and gives his arguments additional fuel because "they don't want you to know the truth".
The problem is not the 100,000 people who have constructed their whole lives around Alex Jones, that's what Alex Jones had for 20 years of being a mostly harmless crank who makes a good living at it.
The problem was giving him access to a much broader public, to sow paranoia and FUD among tens or hundreds of millions of people who actually play important roles in society and don't have time to spend debunking everything they hear.
The problem was giving him access to a much broader public, to sow paranoia and FUD among tens or hundreds of millions of people who actually play important roles in society and don't have time to spend debunking everything they hear.
Yes, I absolutely believe that Alex Jones has lost some of his audience since being "deplatformed". Some of his audience will continue to follow him, some will continue to follow some other source of cray, and some will wander out of the fever swamps. I consider this a positive outcome, even if it's not a perfect one.
Also consider that he's lost a lot of his ability to grow his audience, which is no small thing.
Also consider that he's lost a lot of his ability to grow his audience, which is no small thing.
I do believe he has lost a lot of juice, but even if the hardcore viewers have stuck with him, he at least is not growing anywhere as fast anymore. If anything, this means he should've been deplatformed much sooner. The longer you wait, the more you are allowing them to grow their roots in.
Addressed your question here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25362065
Alex Jones seems more prominent now after the deplatforming.
Banning on platforms for whatever reason reduces the platforms reach and raises the platform the party moves too.
We use to separate people by race now we do it by idea. Now sure martin luther king or lennon would agree.
Banning on platforms for whatever reason reduces the platforms reach and raises the platform the party moves too.
We use to separate people by race now we do it by idea. Now sure martin luther king or lennon would agree.
Martin Luther King specifically said that he wanted people judged on the quality of their character, of which dishonesty is definitely a part.
I think both MLK and Lennon would be against the side calling for violence, considering how their lives ended.
I doubt MLK would object to the marginalization of Alex Jones. Certainly modern racial justice advocates are, by and large, not clamoring for his restoration. But, we can't know for sure, and, regardless, his hypothetical opinion on this question doesn't matter very much to me.
That's not the point. The point is that separating people based on their beliefs is nothing new, and generally frowned upon by history.
Forcible, violent segregation by race and declining to publish videos by content and truthfulness are far too dissimilar for me to reason about their relationship in the eyes of history.
It also worked in China when scientists were trying to get word of the virus out in January. Fooled most of the western media.
This analogy is so dishonest. These people are free to talk about all the conspiracies they want on their own websites, blogs and so on. They are not entitled to having their content hosted on other people's websites though. It's like if I complained that the NYT isn't talking about my coolest new invention and called that censorship.
That's very different than the government (not a private company) trying to shut you down from speaking anywhere.
That's very different than the government (not a private company) trying to shut you down from speaking anywhere.
Except I wasn't talking about the entity involved, I was talking about the efficacy of shutting down the 'misinformation'. Entity A shutdown covid info successfully, and Entity B wants to shutdown election info.
That's dishonest? What's dishonest is you misreading my comment and then blaming me for it.
That's dishonest? What's dishonest is you misreading my comment and then blaming me for it.
You are rewriting history. Western media was not 'fooled'. It's ironic that you are doing so in a thread about spreading misinformation on the internet.
January 8th - China identifies new virus causing phenomnia-like illness [1]
January 10th - China reports first death from new virus [2]
January 21st - The outbreak, which began in December in a seafood and poultry market in Wuhan, a city of 11 million, is spreading: Patients have been identified in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, as well as Taiwan, Japan, Thailand and South Korea. [3]
Don't blame our inability to react to the virus on China. The pandemic was raging for months, with news coverage of people being locked in their own apartments, doctors dying, makeshift hospitals getting set up in stadiums, before it exceeded more than a handful of cases in the West.
Hell, even after hundreds of thousands dead, we still don't have the political will to do what would have been necessary to stamp it out back in March - massive testing, massive contact tracing, enforced quarantine. If we were to go back in time, and do it again, I think we would arrive at pretty much the same outcome.
The 'China hid the facts' [4] narrative has little explanatory power, and its primary purpose is to shift the blame from our own failings.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/health/china-pneumonia-ou...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/world/asia/china-virus-wu...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/health/cdc-coronavirus.ht...
[4] It[5] did hide the facts, but it hid them so poorly that everyone who was paying any attention, both inside, and outside China was aware of how serious this pandemic is at the start of the year. It's hard to hide the facts about something when you put an entire city under lockdown (But don't cut the telephone and internet lines into it.)
[5] China isn't a monolith. To be exact, local government did its best to downplay the pandemic. National government was not very happy with how that went down, and purged their local and regional party branches for their mishandling of the outbreak.
January 8th - China identifies new virus causing phenomnia-like illness [1]
January 10th - China reports first death from new virus [2]
January 21st - The outbreak, which began in December in a seafood and poultry market in Wuhan, a city of 11 million, is spreading: Patients have been identified in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, as well as Taiwan, Japan, Thailand and South Korea. [3]
Don't blame our inability to react to the virus on China. The pandemic was raging for months, with news coverage of people being locked in their own apartments, doctors dying, makeshift hospitals getting set up in stadiums, before it exceeded more than a handful of cases in the West.
Hell, even after hundreds of thousands dead, we still don't have the political will to do what would have been necessary to stamp it out back in March - massive testing, massive contact tracing, enforced quarantine. If we were to go back in time, and do it again, I think we would arrive at pretty much the same outcome.
The 'China hid the facts' [4] narrative has little explanatory power, and its primary purpose is to shift the blame from our own failings.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/health/china-pneumonia-ou...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/world/asia/china-virus-wu...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/health/cdc-coronavirus.ht...
[4] It[5] did hide the facts, but it hid them so poorly that everyone who was paying any attention, both inside, and outside China was aware of how serious this pandemic is at the start of the year. It's hard to hide the facts about something when you put an entire city under lockdown (But don't cut the telephone and internet lines into it.)
[5] China isn't a monolith. To be exact, local government did its best to downplay the pandemic. National government was not very happy with how that went down, and purged their local and regional party branches for their mishandling of the outbreak.
Yep. UK based, and Katie Hopkins has thankfully become far less visible after deplatforming (seems to have removed most income streams post-bankrupcy).
Yes, it was notable that merely advocating crimes against humanity (shooting refugees) wasn't enough, and finally libelling a blogger who managed to crowd fund a lawsuit silenced her. Just like Alex Jones.
This will work wonderfully as long as Youtube, the near-monopolistic arm of a gigantic corporation that makes its money from analyzing what you see and read in order to influence your behaviour, never bans anything that's actually true in reality.
I'm sure we can trust our censors to never do something like that! They have our best interests at heart, right? Nothing like this could ever go wrong, there's no examples from history or fiction about anything like that. Nope, it's always Wonderful Good People that only ban things that Bad Evil People would like, and reality is totally black-and-white, and only Bad Evil People would think otherwise.
I'm sure we can trust our censors to never do something like that! They have our best interests at heart, right? Nothing like this could ever go wrong, there's no examples from history or fiction about anything like that. Nope, it's always Wonderful Good People that only ban things that Bad Evil People would like, and reality is totally black-and-white, and only Bad Evil People would think otherwise.
The "ideas" of Alex Jones and Milo are very much alive and well.
How do you know? Their voices might just be someplace where you (and people you know) don't hear them. The world of discourse is wider than our awareness.
You can't know anything, but you can form beliefs that have various levels of confidence. For example, there is reporting about the objective reach of Jones' properties post-deplatforming. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/technology/alex-jones-inf... This type of reporting, plus my priors about how viral media spreads, inform my belief that deplatforming these individuals was moderately efficient for decreasing their reach. But it is an empirical question that would benefit from further study.
They didn't count app/twitter or other views. So you are measuring two different datasets.
I don't need perfect evidence to form beliefs. It seems unlikely that Jones' reach increased on Twitter enough to offset his bans on other platforms. If it did, that doesn't seem consistent with the loss of traffic to his website. After he was banned on Twitter, it seems very unlikely that there was any other platform where his reach grew enough to offset that loss. Anything's possible, but it doesn't seem likely.
You don't need evidence to form a belief but you do need it if you want others to believe you.
If Alex moves to another platform wouldn't part of his following move to this platform? Wouldn't that grow others in that new platform.
Isn't deplatforming just replatforming. With every deplatform doesn't it leak more users to the new platform.
If they deplatform them one day it could be you.
If Alex moves to another platform wouldn't part of his following move to this platform? Wouldn't that grow others in that new platform.
Isn't deplatforming just replatforming. With every deplatform doesn't it leak more users to the new platform.
If they deplatform them one day it could be you.
> You don't need evidence to form a belief
Please don't put words in my mouth. I said I did not need "perfect evidence." I cited evidence, albeit imperfect. Whether it's strong enough to change someone's beliefs is between them and their epistemology. That's all I have to say on this subject.
Please don't put words in my mouth. I said I did not need "perfect evidence." I cited evidence, albeit imperfect. Whether it's strong enough to change someone's beliefs is between them and their epistemology. That's all I have to say on this subject.
Those are my words. You do not need evidence to form a belief.
But you need one to change hearts and minds.
But you need one to change hearts and minds.
We only see what is in our bubble.
Bring me information from outside my bubble and I'll happily incorporate it into my schema. Ominous pronunciations don't count, though. Is there some social media platform Jones is using that I haven't heard of that allows him to reach tens of millions of people and make up for his losses on FB, YT, and TW? Are his website stats wrong or irrelevant for some reason that is uniquely invisible in my bubble? These would be valuable bits of information to me.
They would be valuable to people who kicked people off visible platforms too, no?
Society can only function if those with opposing views at least agree on ground rules to debate on. Unchecked expression of view with no option for rebuttal from the other side will only destroy society. We have cases were US Senate candidates don't even show up for pre-election debates.
Why should they (rhetorical)? Many people vote based on political identity rather than actual positions or accomplishments anyways. (I hate those blanket options on the first page of the ballot to vote the entire ballot for one party or the other. People should at least go through and make sure the names are the ones they researched.)
I see 2 opposing arguments here:
Social media is engaging in censorship, which means our society is screwed.
Social media _has_ to engage in this type of censorship because if they _don't_, society is screwed.
I think both views are probably correct.
But if we're going to screw up our society, I'd at least like to be on the side that's acting in good faith. Maybe we can stave off the inevitable a little longer.
Social media is engaging in censorship, which means our society is screwed.
Social media _has_ to engage in this type of censorship because if they _don't_, society is screwed.
I think both views are probably correct.
But if we're going to screw up our society, I'd at least like to be on the side that's acting in good faith. Maybe we can stave off the inevitable a little longer.
>> has suppression or censorship ever worked to quench dissonance.
Yes. Absolutely it has. It's naive to think that censorship, propaganda and such never work. They're not absolutes, certainly. But thinking of these as impotent and doomed is a dangerous naivety.
Chris Hitchens had a great piece about banned literature like Orwell in Czechoslovakia: More people seemed to have read it than in the west. There are plenty of examples where censorship fails.
That said, thinking that it always fails is dangerous. There's a reason censorship exists by default unless it's explicitly banned. There's a reason why strong censorship (heresy bans) exists in all monotheistic religions. Not only have they had an effect, but it's a defining feature of the religion and (IMO) the reason why these have taken over the whole world.
It matters what the top papers print, top channels run, and what appears (or does not) on social media. It may not be a predictable and mechanical effect, but censorship is not inert.
That said, we tend to overuse the word "censorship." The difference between an editor and a censor is reach. If the editor of newspaper X edits all newspapers, they are a censor. Youtube is wading into the murky gray area of this dichotomy.
Yes. Absolutely it has. It's naive to think that censorship, propaganda and such never work. They're not absolutes, certainly. But thinking of these as impotent and doomed is a dangerous naivety.
Chris Hitchens had a great piece about banned literature like Orwell in Czechoslovakia: More people seemed to have read it than in the west. There are plenty of examples where censorship fails.
That said, thinking that it always fails is dangerous. There's a reason censorship exists by default unless it's explicitly banned. There's a reason why strong censorship (heresy bans) exists in all monotheistic religions. Not only have they had an effect, but it's a defining feature of the religion and (IMO) the reason why these have taken over the whole world.
It matters what the top papers print, top channels run, and what appears (or does not) on social media. It may not be a predictable and mechanical effect, but censorship is not inert.
That said, we tend to overuse the word "censorship." The difference between an editor and a censor is reach. If the editor of newspaper X edits all newspapers, they are a censor. Youtube is wading into the murky gray area of this dichotomy.
Why do you put "the truth" in quotes? Are you honestly questioning the validity of this election?
Taken in context "the truth" in quotes is alluding to the large number of people in the US who genuinely believe that the election was stolen, not the commenter's personal stance.
I put it in quotes because I observed people on both sides of the issue being convinced of "their" truths.
To me, the issue of how to effectively reach a general consensus in these matters is even more important than who is right or wrong. It is my personal opinion that this can only be achieved through transparency and openness, but, as always, I am my own harshest critic, so I entertain that I might be wrong.
To me, the issue of how to effectively reach a general consensus in these matters is even more important than who is right or wrong. It is my personal opinion that this can only be achieved through transparency and openness, but, as always, I am my own harshest critic, so I entertain that I might be wrong.
Honestly? Yes.
I think they were implying that when people advocate for censorship, they seem to be the ones that have a very secure concept on "the truth," when in reality there is no such thing.
For example, there HAS been voter fraud uncovered this election, because there is voter fraud EVERY election. The question is one of magnitude. Has the Trump administration been able to provide evidence sufficient to actually change the result of the election? No. Most conservative pundits I have seen are extremely clear about this distinction. But is this going to ban them discussing it, or discussing new evidence that is being brought forward?
As other users have mentioned, this country went through 3 years of hearing about Russian collusion during an investigation that ultimately provided no evidence of that having been an issue capable of unseating the president or delegitimizing that election. Throughout that period, I didn't hear any arguments saying that discussion of that topic should have been censored, and that is a good thing.
For example, there HAS been voter fraud uncovered this election, because there is voter fraud EVERY election. The question is one of magnitude. Has the Trump administration been able to provide evidence sufficient to actually change the result of the election? No. Most conservative pundits I have seen are extremely clear about this distinction. But is this going to ban them discussing it, or discussing new evidence that is being brought forward?
As other users have mentioned, this country went through 3 years of hearing about Russian collusion during an investigation that ultimately provided no evidence of that having been an issue capable of unseating the president or delegitimizing that election. Throughout that period, I didn't hear any arguments saying that discussion of that topic should have been censored, and that is a good thing.
I doubt it, but it _might_ help prevent radicalisation of newer people by making it harder to randomly encounter.
There's nothing "random" about how people encounter this stuff. Most engagement-driven recommendation engines seem to love suggesting inflammatory clickbait. Banning one specific subset of this kind of content will not solve the problem, the same people will just be radicalized by some new nonsense. This is pure CYA by Youtube.
...radicalizization meaning choosing to believe differently than you?
"Radicalization" in this context refers to participation in a currently active and well-known plot to overthrow democracy in the United States. It's not exactly a hypothetical here.
Yes, election fraud would be a plot to overthrow democracy wouldn't it.
What evidence have they put forth that makes you think they have a real case for meaningful amounts of fraud? Because from where I’m sitting, it’s really obvious they’re grasping at any straw they can find.
So would a coordinated effort to convince the populace that an honestly-elected president is illegitimate.
See, this is the kind of thing that makes it impossible for me to maintain my general opposition to censorship here. The president is publicly calling for the election to be overturned, reaching out to state governors and asking them to please over turn the election for him - and a lot of smart, well-meaning people are stuck in an information bubble where this is just a legitimate process raising legitimate concerns about election fraud. That has to be addressed, and I just haven't seen any suggestions for popping the bubble other than censoring it out of all the popular places.
I was sympathetic to the ideas floating around in early November, that the issue would go away once we let all the legal processes play out. But they have played out, the votes are all certified, and nothing's changed.
I was sympathetic to the ideas floating around in early November, that the issue would go away once we let all the legal processes play out. But they have played out, the votes are all certified, and nothing's changed.
in France you can get fined or go to jail for saying fascist stuff, works pretty well.
I don't know the details here, hopefully these laws are extremely tightly scoped. Being able to be put in jail for speech doesn't sound like something that is "working pretty well" to me.
Works great for those who define what "fascist stuff" is. And then I have to ask, why do you care if it doesn't work well for the fascists?
This goes so well that Mélenchon (far left) and Le Pen (far right) command about 50 per cent of the total vote together.
Or they did in the last presidential election.
Or they did in the last presidential election.
I wouldn't necessarily say it works well though..
The FN (yeah yeah they changed names, who cares) still spews its hatred behind closed doors, our police forces are amongst the worst offenders of any developed countries when it comes to racism and systemic issues (and consistently proving that even the police unions are a bunch of thugs), we have people like Zemmour on TV spewing hateful nonsense that even Fox News would probably frown at by now, and our own current government has been trying to get a law in place to prevent freedom of press so significantly that the UN and most of the world looking at those pieces of news have actually been ringing the alarms in every possible way.
While on a personal and biased level I certainly don't mind that daddy Le Pen was fined multiple times throughout the years for calling the Holocaust "a detail of history", we don't really have any proof that it does anything more than make people who dislike him (like me) happy to see him fined, and unfortunately give reasons for supporters of his bullshit to feel vindicated (i.e. rise of the extreme right everywhere with a very salient point regarding being "silenced", which crystallizes to the extreme in stuff coming from the US like Qanon).
Youtube is having a tough time because they're almost always pointed at first and foremost for being THE rabbit hole of misinformation/radicalization and other things, but they're stepping into a minefield by touching on one such hot subject without having a broader policy (extending beyond whatever the current US issue is at any moment), backed by an army of lawyers.
(I've stopped following the battles of up and downvotes on this message instead of any actual reply.. I'm only left to wonder how many of either are emotional responses over valuing the argument itself, and on this subject even HN isn't proving to be very different from reddit today)
The FN (yeah yeah they changed names, who cares) still spews its hatred behind closed doors, our police forces are amongst the worst offenders of any developed countries when it comes to racism and systemic issues (and consistently proving that even the police unions are a bunch of thugs), we have people like Zemmour on TV spewing hateful nonsense that even Fox News would probably frown at by now, and our own current government has been trying to get a law in place to prevent freedom of press so significantly that the UN and most of the world looking at those pieces of news have actually been ringing the alarms in every possible way.
While on a personal and biased level I certainly don't mind that daddy Le Pen was fined multiple times throughout the years for calling the Holocaust "a detail of history", we don't really have any proof that it does anything more than make people who dislike him (like me) happy to see him fined, and unfortunately give reasons for supporters of his bullshit to feel vindicated (i.e. rise of the extreme right everywhere with a very salient point regarding being "silenced", which crystallizes to the extreme in stuff coming from the US like Qanon).
Youtube is having a tough time because they're almost always pointed at first and foremost for being THE rabbit hole of misinformation/radicalization and other things, but they're stepping into a minefield by touching on one such hot subject without having a broader policy (extending beyond whatever the current US issue is at any moment), backed by an army of lawyers.
(I've stopped following the battles of up and downvotes on this message instead of any actual reply.. I'm only left to wonder how many of either are emotional responses over valuing the argument itself, and on this subject even HN isn't proving to be very different from reddit today)
What is "fascist" stuff? Earlier this year, people protesting coronavirus lockdowns were called "fascists." People protesting against government authority were called fascists.
Berkeley had to spend $600k in security to allow Ben Shapiro to speak, because "anti fascists" were accusing him of white supremacy, and being a fascist, and violently attempting to prevent him from speaking. And this was after they had successfully prevented him from speaking earlier in the year. Similar "anti fascists" pulled the fire alarm on Janice Fiamengo for speaking about men's issues. Warren Farrel had a similar experience, with people absolutely berating the attendants of one of his lectures for their support of fascism.
Berkeley had to spend $600k in security to allow Ben Shapiro to speak, because "anti fascists" were accusing him of white supremacy, and being a fascist, and violently attempting to prevent him from speaking. And this was after they had successfully prevented him from speaking earlier in the year. Similar "anti fascists" pulled the fire alarm on Janice Fiamengo for speaking about men's issues. Warren Farrel had a similar experience, with people absolutely berating the attendants of one of his lectures for their support of fascism.
Many universities will NOT spend the money. Several guest academic lectures were straight up cancelled at Univerisity of Waterloo because the forecast security costs were too high. Seems like the protest movements have learned Denial of Sevice is effective in pushing their own agendas. What a world.
>What is "fascist" stuff?
In France fascism is not illegal. There is only one thing that is really taboo, and it's badmouthing jews. Herve Ryssen, a French writer and film maker, is sleeping in jail right now because the contents of his books and documentaries was considered to be hateful.
Similarly, the only few websites that are censored by the French government are far-right websites that typically have antisemitic content (a prominent case is Democratie Participative, the French equivalent of the Daily Stormer).
That's for institutional censorship. In practice, there is an even stronger form of de-facto censorship in France (assassination) for people who draw or show caricatures of the prophet of Islam (Charlie Hebdo, and more recently a history teacher who has been beheaded; quite a few more people live under 24/7 police protection for similar reasons).
It's a pretty grim situation overall.
In France fascism is not illegal. There is only one thing that is really taboo, and it's badmouthing jews. Herve Ryssen, a French writer and film maker, is sleeping in jail right now because the contents of his books and documentaries was considered to be hateful.
Similarly, the only few websites that are censored by the French government are far-right websites that typically have antisemitic content (a prominent case is Democratie Participative, the French equivalent of the Daily Stormer).
That's for institutional censorship. In practice, there is an even stronger form of de-facto censorship in France (assassination) for people who draw or show caricatures of the prophet of Islam (Charlie Hebdo, and more recently a history teacher who has been beheaded; quite a few more people live under 24/7 police protection for similar reasons).
It's a pretty grim situation overall.
> What is "fascist" stuff?
Most people have absolutely zero idea what Fascism is/was; they have a Hollywood confabulation in their head, perhaps mixed images of Star Wars and Harry Potter bad guys, anyone in a uniform, etc. Zero historical understanding of what Italy was all about in the early 20th century, no understanding of the modernizations and cleanups Mussolini brought to his country. I would hardly defend his every act, but the idea of nationalism combined with an aesthetic informed by history and myth has proven to be a very powerful one for galvanizing a society into action.
Evola's "Critique of Fascism from the Right" is one very good place to get an understanding of what the underlying ideology of "real fascism" is, separate from the inevitably-flawed implementation. (We don't need to pretend that perfect implementations of anything are possible, of course, and we similarly forgive communists their lack of a proper implementation of their own idea, which at its heart still has the same impetus of improving the state of mankind by changing the structure of civilization.)
Nobody is bringing that back. In a young and multi-cultural country like the USA, the founding mythos is neither powerful enough, aesthetic enough, or common enough to be a driving force for change any longer. There may be small pockets of adherents, but numerically they are insignificant, non-violent, and not worth worrying about in comparison to other drivers of change.
Instead of that specific and mostly-dead political ideology, the word "fascism" has become a standing for "authoritarianism" of any kind - whether it's left-wing, right-wing, or even what I think is more properly labelled as Totalitarian Liberalism, which is the era we are heading into now.
Remember that term: Totalitarian Liberalism. It is only under this system that you're ostensibly free, except everything is controlled by corporations, and people who pretend to be left-wing and "of the people" will defend the rights of billion-dollar corporations to restrict freedoms that were enshrined in law hundreds of years ago.
This action by Youtube is a perfect example of this. Each precedent they set is met by a legion of comments on sites like HN and Reddit that defend their actions, because of course it's only Fake News badthinking idiots that are kicked off. Nobody seems to notice that the scope of control increases each time, slowly but continually restricting free speech on the platform, in concert with efforts to make it more difficult to host things elsewhere, more difficult for locked-down walled-garden devices to be able to access unapproved content, etc.
It takes a real fool to think that this will never be used to suppress something legitimate.
Most people have absolutely zero idea what Fascism is/was; they have a Hollywood confabulation in their head, perhaps mixed images of Star Wars and Harry Potter bad guys, anyone in a uniform, etc. Zero historical understanding of what Italy was all about in the early 20th century, no understanding of the modernizations and cleanups Mussolini brought to his country. I would hardly defend his every act, but the idea of nationalism combined with an aesthetic informed by history and myth has proven to be a very powerful one for galvanizing a society into action.
Evola's "Critique of Fascism from the Right" is one very good place to get an understanding of what the underlying ideology of "real fascism" is, separate from the inevitably-flawed implementation. (We don't need to pretend that perfect implementations of anything are possible, of course, and we similarly forgive communists their lack of a proper implementation of their own idea, which at its heart still has the same impetus of improving the state of mankind by changing the structure of civilization.)
Nobody is bringing that back. In a young and multi-cultural country like the USA, the founding mythos is neither powerful enough, aesthetic enough, or common enough to be a driving force for change any longer. There may be small pockets of adherents, but numerically they are insignificant, non-violent, and not worth worrying about in comparison to other drivers of change.
Instead of that specific and mostly-dead political ideology, the word "fascism" has become a standing for "authoritarianism" of any kind - whether it's left-wing, right-wing, or even what I think is more properly labelled as Totalitarian Liberalism, which is the era we are heading into now.
Remember that term: Totalitarian Liberalism. It is only under this system that you're ostensibly free, except everything is controlled by corporations, and people who pretend to be left-wing and "of the people" will defend the rights of billion-dollar corporations to restrict freedoms that were enshrined in law hundreds of years ago.
This action by Youtube is a perfect example of this. Each precedent they set is met by a legion of comments on sites like HN and Reddit that defend their actions, because of course it's only Fake News badthinking idiots that are kicked off. Nobody seems to notice that the scope of control increases each time, slowly but continually restricting free speech on the platform, in concert with efforts to make it more difficult to host things elsewhere, more difficult for locked-down walled-garden devices to be able to access unapproved content, etc.
It takes a real fool to think that this will never be used to suppress something legitimate.
I agree with you here, but I don't even think fascism is used interchangeably with authoritarianism. That would be a good start. Fascism has basically begun to mean "anything outside of the far left orthodoxy." People were calling Trump a fascist for his entire presidency, when the main thing that characterized his presidency was irresponsible ANTI-authoritarianism. His administration deregulated and defunded public institutions. Lowering taxes, pulling back business regulations, pulling out of climate agreements and pulling back restrictions on energy production. I'm not saying these things are good or bad, they're just explicitly anti-authoritarian, and the precise opposite of fascism. Questioning the election results were the first fascist-adjacent action taken that weren't policies shared by the left, such as trade regulations.
> People were calling Trump a fascist for his entire presidency, when the main thing that characterized his presidency was irresponsible ANTI-authoritarianism.
Yes! This is amazing. There is absolutely nothing fascist about Trump - from his complete lack of anything aesthetic, his terrible diction, his lackluster speeches (despite the big rallies, which show people are hungry for something better in this direction.)
> Lowering taxes, pulling back business regulations, pulling out of climate agreements and pulling back restrictions on energy production.
Whereas under fascism the exact opposite was in effect: new regulations, new control, and an early effort toward environmentalism was evident.
Yes! This is amazing. There is absolutely nothing fascist about Trump - from his complete lack of anything aesthetic, his terrible diction, his lackluster speeches (despite the big rallies, which show people are hungry for something better in this direction.)
> Lowering taxes, pulling back business regulations, pulling out of climate agreements and pulling back restrictions on energy production.
Whereas under fascism the exact opposite was in effect: new regulations, new control, and an early effort toward environmentalism was evident.
Censorship does work, that's why countries do it.
No, but it keeps it from spreading to other people and becoming part of the social consciousness.
People only believe there is "something" because they've been lied to.
Fascism and disallowing lying are the same thing.
Falsely calling fire in a crowded theatre is inciting panic and a crime.
Falsely calling someone a rapist is libelous and slanderous -- both crimes.
Not all types of lies need to fall under free speech.
Falsely calling someone a rapist is libelous and slanderous -- both crimes.
Not all types of lies need to fall under free speech.
Oh please shut up. I'm pretty up there on the scale as a free speech absolutist, but this is the sort of shit that makes people have no fucking clue what facism is, and why its used as a pejorative generic insult by all sides.
Reducing an entire movement with complex beliefs to a single talking point is not valid in the least.
Reducing an entire movement with complex beliefs to a single talking point is not valid in the least.
Only reason to be offended is if you are one.
I've noted your request!
I've noted your request!
> Regardless of what you believe to be 'The Truth', has suppression or censorship ever worked to quench dissonance or convince skeptical people, again, whether right or wrong, that there really is 'nothing to see here'.
I suppose that depends on if that dissonance was based in factual accounts of reality. If so, then yeah censorship probably wouldn't work. That's because opinions based in fact are consistent with the rest of the world and that tends to keep them in circulation. On the other hand, completely false and baseless lies don't last long without someone pouring energy into them. That's because they're in conflict with details that are readily observed. They might catch people's attention as a kind of entertainment. But, beyond that, they don't provide much practical value. When they're squelched, they'll just fall out of fashion like a cancelled Netflix series.
I suppose that depends on if that dissonance was based in factual accounts of reality. If so, then yeah censorship probably wouldn't work. That's because opinions based in fact are consistent with the rest of the world and that tends to keep them in circulation. On the other hand, completely false and baseless lies don't last long without someone pouring energy into them. That's because they're in conflict with details that are readily observed. They might catch people's attention as a kind of entertainment. But, beyond that, they don't provide much practical value. When they're squelched, they'll just fall out of fashion like a cancelled Netflix series.
Everything starts out as un-proven. If you use that measure to remove content you can justify any censorship.
I think the principle is a little different, it's more a question of at what point do you reign in potentially inflammatory arguments. It's not all disproven arguments: for example, there hasn't been a big push to silence people who insist the Earth is flat, as the potential for harm stemming from that kind of nonsense is limited.
"potentially inflammatory"
So, banning Salman Rushdie and any cartoon of Muhammad?
So, banning Salman Rushdie and any cartoon of Muhammad?
Well, they are both banned in, say, Iran or Saudi Arabia... but I see your side there, for example, if they were banned in France, that would have likely saved lives, but it would also have meant a long slide down the slippery slope. For my flat-earth example, it would require the backers of the discredited argument to be taking to the streets armed, which luckily they at least haven't shown much inclination to do (and presumably why no one has really called for them to removed from public platforms).
Yes, pretty frequently, actually. Despite the best efforts of a few folks, for instance, holocaust denial 'scholarship' has been suppressed incredibly effectively, and is not part of the common zeitgeist.
This isn't about convincing people there's nothing to see, it's about preventing more people from being onboarded to the idea that there's something to see.
Yes. Extreme communities banned from their favorite platform always reform with significantly smaller numbers in whatever replacement platform they decide to go to.
In Germany displays of Nazi symbols are forbidden, as well as any political expression that incites violence against a specific race or religion. I can readily believe than in an alternative reality where they were not forbidden, the Nazi movement would be alive and well (not that there is absolutely no Nazis in Germany, but I bet there would be many more, and in power, were it not for suppression and censorship)
I mean, historically it did worked. Suppresion actually works to suppress viewpoints. Just like with any power, violence tends to work too.
Spam filters worked plenty fine over email.
> has suppression or censorship ever worked to quench dissonance or convince skeptical people, again, whether right or wrong
Say this is true. How would you recommend measuring this?
Say this is true. How would you recommend measuring this?
To me it is not so much about quantifying the effectiveness as it is about qualifying the results. This is not a trivial question as democracy, which is in essence a non-violent system for transition of power, relies on a nearly unanimous acceptance of the process and the results.
So, for introspection, and I know it is not a perfect analogy, but imagine you are at a scientific presentation, and you're gut feeling tells you there is a flaw in the arguments presented. So you pose a question but instead of receiving an answer that might lay to rest your misgivings, the speaker just says "That question is not allowed. Next.". How likely is it that that response changed your mind in favor of the theories presented?
So, for introspection, and I know it is not a perfect analogy, but imagine you are at a scientific presentation, and you're gut feeling tells you there is a flaw in the arguments presented. So you pose a question but instead of receiving an answer that might lay to rest your misgivings, the speaker just says "That question is not allowed. Next.". How likely is it that that response changed your mind in favor of the theories presented?
I take it you also operate without a spam filter and an ad blocker on account of those being censorship?
There are many examples out of there of people ending up in some weird conspiracy theory rabbit hole, and often it starts with some youtube video, or post on facebook. Mothers who have lost sons, wives who have lost husbands. They have seen them turn into crazy people
(examples: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/09/14/qanon-f... )
If those videos are not as present on youtube to begin with, perhaps fewer people end up down these rabbit holes. Of course it won't do anything to convince people who are already falling down the hole.
(examples: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/09/14/qanon-f... )
If those videos are not as present on youtube to begin with, perhaps fewer people end up down these rabbit holes. Of course it won't do anything to convince people who are already falling down the hole.
Not sure why this is downvoted. The YouTube radicalization pathway is fairly well documented, e.g. [1][2][3]. Even if we can't all agree on the specific mechanism of action, the phenomenon certainly exists.
[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.11211
[2] https://mark-ledwich.medium.com/youtube-radicalization-an-au...
[3] https://www.wired.com/story/not-youtubes-algorithm-radicaliz...
[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.11211
[2] https://mark-ledwich.medium.com/youtube-radicalization-an-au...
[3] https://www.wired.com/story/not-youtubes-algorithm-radicaliz...
Conspiracy peddlers and those that follow them have been around long before YouTube and social media. Some extraordinarily bizarre ideas have been published on Xeroxed/mimeographed 'zines sent out via snail mail. While social media definitely makes it easier, it's not the only way for information to disseminate.
The difference is that mainstream platforming of those ideas exposes them to massive amounts of folks who stumble upon them, whereas you would have historically had to seek it out on purpose.
Nope. It basically fuels the Streisand effect, both for what is really true, and for what some people believe to be the hidden truth. This kind of censorship has the opposite effect of what it claims to do.
The real truth stands up to all scrutiny, and that scrutiny is an essential part in arriving at the truth.
The real truth stands up to all scrutiny, and that scrutiny is an essential part in arriving at the truth.
You’re right, people can make their own decisions. The justice warriors should not coddle people’s minds by shaping a narrative according to their own opinions of what radical/right/wrong mean.
Unless...they’re a publication in which case they need to be regulated and taxed accordingly.
Unless...they’re a publication in which case they need to be regulated and taxed accordingly.
Absolutely nothing about the USA is in danger of falling apart. These conspiracy theories would die by themselves in a month or two.
Lets be clear about what's happening here: Google/Facebook and the like are becoming targets of anti-trust regulatory lawsuits (privacy, data-gathering, monopolistic behavior, etc). This is just an attempt to build goodwill with the incoming administration so they can call in a favor later. It's as simple as that.
Lets be clear about what's happening here: Google/Facebook and the like are becoming targets of anti-trust regulatory lawsuits (privacy, data-gathering, monopolistic behavior, etc). This is just an attempt to build goodwill with the incoming administration so they can call in a favor later. It's as simple as that.
Absolutely nothing about the USA is in danger of falling apart. These conspiracy theories would die by themselves in a month or two.
Yes, totally normal to have armed militias running around state capitols, organizing kidnap plots of governors, retired generals calling for suspension of the Constitution etc., happens every election cycle.
/sarcasm
Yes, totally normal to have armed militias running around state capitols, organizing kidnap plots of governors, retired generals calling for suspension of the Constitution etc., happens every election cycle.
/sarcasm
Interesting that you chose those specific things, and not mobs rioting and looting, attempting to burn down public buildings, and taking over whole city blocks. All far more widespread and damaging.
The post I replied to addressed conspiracy theories in particular. Race riots, or more specifically riots over perceived racism in criminal justice, are not so historically unusual, nor tied to conspiracies. I have made many comments on that topic too, just not in this thread.
Those videos are fine apparently.
Those are all extremely biased ways to phrase current events that have comparatively little significance in the real world.
First, I clearly flagged my post as sarcastic.
Second, my phrasing was actually pretty neutral, such as describing Flynn as a 'retired general' rather than several less complimentary but wholly factual characterizations I could have made.
Thirdly, your assessment of their significance is an speculative opinion about the future rather than a fact. It might turn out to be correct, but if I had suggested such events happening in 2020 a few years back most people would have said I was being absurd.
Update: Here's a relevant story that was published after I had written my previous comment. While similar isolated incidents have occured in the past, I stand by my argument that their confluence these days is a political abnormality in the US, out of character with elections over the last several decades.
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/dec/09/police-investi...
Second, my phrasing was actually pretty neutral, such as describing Flynn as a 'retired general' rather than several less complimentary but wholly factual characterizations I could have made.
Thirdly, your assessment of their significance is an speculative opinion about the future rather than a fact. It might turn out to be correct, but if I had suggested such events happening in 2020 a few years back most people would have said I was being absurd.
Update: Here's a relevant story that was published after I had written my previous comment. While similar isolated incidents have occured in the past, I stand by my argument that their confluence these days is a political abnormality in the US, out of character with elections over the last several decades.
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/dec/09/police-investi...
This is the result of public pressure, not an attempt to cozy up to an administration. They've been doing this for years, it's not like this is some out of left field attempt to try and get a fruit basket from the Biden admin.
> These conspiracy theories would die by themselves in a month or two.
You mean like how the antivaxx and flat earth conspiracies naturally died out?
You mean like how the antivaxx and flat earth conspiracies naturally died out?
For God's sakes ... What underpins this need for social media companies to virtue signal about protecting 'election integrity' is the false notion that 2016 was stolen from Hillary by the Russians - a claim that had no evidential support (and no, that some trolls bought a minuscule amount of Facebook ads does not raise this claim to that level) but the entire Democratic party, with media allies, promulgated for the last 4 years and pressured social media leadership to adopt as well. And now social media companies are engaged in full-scale curation and editorial control over any content that even comes close to questioning or even having regular open discussion of unfolding events. Ridiculous.
> Since September, we've terminated over 8000 channels and thousands of harmful and misleading elections-related videos for violating our existing policies. Over 77% of those removed videos were taken down before they had 100 views.
Yay! Thank you YouTube interns for protecting me from making up my own mind about these dangerous ideas.
I also like that the authoritative sources are ... the same media companies, owned by multinational corporate conglomerates, that are always pushing for deplatforming of independent news sources. No self-serving policies here! Tell me again NYTimes how Philip DeFranco and Joe Rogan are a gateway to the alt-right.
> Since September, we've terminated over 8000 channels and thousands of harmful and misleading elections-related videos for violating our existing policies. Over 77% of those removed videos were taken down before they had 100 views.
Yay! Thank you YouTube interns for protecting me from making up my own mind about these dangerous ideas.
I also like that the authoritative sources are ... the same media companies, owned by multinational corporate conglomerates, that are always pushing for deplatforming of independent news sources. No self-serving policies here! Tell me again NYTimes how Philip DeFranco and Joe Rogan are a gateway to the alt-right.
You are mis-stating the assertion.
The Government said that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election. They didn't say it changed the results.
The Government said that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election. They didn't say it changed the results.
No, Democrats said Russia hacked the election results. For example Neera Tanden, Biden's OMB appointee, the President of a major liberal think-tank: https://twitter.com/neeratanden/status/817744398939197442
Trump claimed that "Voting machines were not touched" by Russians in the 2016 election. Tanden said that was a "lie." The media massively amplified claims of Russian election hacking that never panned out: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/us/politics/russia-electi.... They played fast-and-loose with terminology, saying that "Russia hacked the 2016 election" when they meant that Russia hacked and leaked DNC emails. (Part of the problem here is that the media has taken to regurgitating Democratic talking points. Saying "Russia hacked the 2016 election" is a clever way for an Democratic activist to describe what happened, but its misleading when that same "hacking" terminology is used by the media.)
Nalder said that, without impeachment, Trump would "rig" the 2020 election: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-08/nadler-sa...
And people believed them. Even as of 2018, 66% of Democrats believed that "Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump elected President": https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...
Trump claimed that "Voting machines were not touched" by Russians in the 2016 election. Tanden said that was a "lie." The media massively amplified claims of Russian election hacking that never panned out: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/01/us/politics/russia-electi.... They played fast-and-loose with terminology, saying that "Russia hacked the 2016 election" when they meant that Russia hacked and leaked DNC emails. (Part of the problem here is that the media has taken to regurgitating Democratic talking points. Saying "Russia hacked the 2016 election" is a clever way for an Democratic activist to describe what happened, but its misleading when that same "hacking" terminology is used by the media.)
Nalder said that, without impeachment, Trump would "rig" the 2020 election: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-08/nadler-sa...
And people believed them. Even as of 2018, 66% of Democrats believed that "Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump elected President": https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...
I follow politics pretty closely and this is literally the first time I've heard that anyone was alleging Russia actually hacked voting machines or switched votes. I had only heard about social media disinformation and social media disinformation campaigns.
I also never really heard many assertions that any of this was significant enough to have likely swayed the election.
I also never really heard many assertions that any of this was significant enough to have likely swayed the election.
So I think you're right in the literal sense, but rainer is accurate in the sentiment.
The media used the word 'interference' in an exaggerated and nefarious context, and they didn't seem very interested in clearing it up. Election interference--without context--is usually taken to mean vote interference.
Like many things, it isn't an outright lie. But I do think it was misleading. And while you might not have been mislead, enough people were--as evidenced by that poll.
The media used the word 'interference' in an exaggerated and nefarious context, and they didn't seem very interested in clearing it up. Election interference--without context--is usually taken to mean vote interference.
Like many things, it isn't an outright lie. But I do think it was misleading. And while you might not have been mislead, enough people were--as evidenced by that poll.
Russian "collusion" was the primary topic on twitter for most neoliberal pundits and party consultants in 2017
As someone who followed things fairly closely at the time, that's not true. There was talk of meddling with voter rolls, but changing of votes was basically not discussed and was quickly dismissed.
Well, that was found to be absolutely true. Just look at the emails released by Don Jr. himself.
They planned to meet with someone who they believed to be working for the Kremlin in order to get dirt on their opponent.
They planned to meet with someone who they believed to be working for the Kremlin in order to get dirt on their opponent.
The comment to which you're replying said "the government" didn't claim Russia tampered with the results. You can't rebut that with a cite of Neera Tanden, who was not in the government.
The 2 parties govern the US, for better or worse.
The good faith interpretation allows for more than the official press releases (eg Trump talking points), which are presented to be in dispute.
Fair point, I read "Democrats" rather than "Government."
I'm going to gently push harder, because I don't think you can reasonably compare what angry Democrats said and did in 2016 to what's happening in 2020. Nobody attempted to overturn any state's electors. The sitting Democratic president didn't directly lobby state governors and state house speakers to decertify results. For that matter: Democrats didn't deliberately fuck up tabulation processes to sow chaos to exploit later in the month.
Nor did nearly twenty Democratic-controlled states sue in federal court to overturn the results of the election, as just happened today!
Do you think such an action could ever be justified? What kind of evidence would you need in order to consider proceeding down such a path? Thousands of affidavits, tens of thousands of documented illegal votes, video evidence of illegal ballot counting?
You left out Spyder and his SpiderFoot scan indicating that Iran was voting directly in the election using its access to Dominion voting machines. How could this not reach SCOTUS?
Hah. I have no illusions that SCOTUS will take up the case. I personally think it still pales in comparison to the “pee-pee dossier” that Clinton cooked up to frame Trump.
Trust the plan, Q is coming!
There were many calls by Democrats for faithless electors to flip to Clinton.
See, for example, #UniteForAmerica video plea https://youtu.be/0z0iuWh3sek
They then spent the next few years making up conspiracy theories and trying to delegitimize his election. I’d gently suggest that there are no clean hands here, and what Dems did 2016-2019 was sufficiently reprehensible.
See, for example, #UniteForAmerica video plea https://youtu.be/0z0iuWh3sek
They then spent the next few years making up conspiracy theories and trying to delegitimize his election. I’d gently suggest that there are no clean hands here, and what Dems did 2016-2019 was sufficiently reprehensible.
You've met my example of the outgoing administration lobbying state legislatures to overturn their own votes with a hashtag.
You said, “Nobody attempted to overturn any state's electors.” I thought you might like to know that is not true.
I posted a video which calls for exactly that in 2016. It’s a pretty amusing piece of history actually.
To her credit, “Clinton’s team and the Democratic National Committee have steadfastly refused to endorse the efforts spearheaded by a group of electors in Colorado and Washington state.”
NY Mag wrote a piece on the eve of the electoral vote documenting the extent of the harassment campaign, including hundreds of thousands of emails, hate mail, and death threats. Of course it also mentions Russia.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/12/final-push-to-sway-e...
I posted a video which calls for exactly that in 2016. It’s a pretty amusing piece of history actually.
To her credit, “Clinton’s team and the Democratic National Committee have steadfastly refused to endorse the efforts spearheaded by a group of electors in Colorado and Washington state.”
NY Mag wrote a piece on the eve of the electoral vote documenting the extent of the harassment campaign, including hundreds of thousands of emails, hate mail, and death threats. Of course it also mentions Russia.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/12/final-push-to-sway-e...
Whatever argument you think it is we're having, you win. My point is that the 2016 Democrats and the 2020 Republicans aren't comparable, and that's obviously true.
A Youtube video, fantastic! Yet you'll blindly compare that to physical threats of violence that we continue to see over and over which have been instigated by misleading or false statements from our sitting President?
My reading of Tanden's tweet is that she's rebutting Trump's first sentence, not the second. Ie, Asserting that Russian hacking (in the form of releasing sensitive emails) was plainly sufficient to flip 70 kVotes (Donald Trumps cumulative margin in the states over the tipping point) and ignoring the question of whether "voting machines [were] touched".
Even if they meant Russian hacking influenced people enough to flips 70k votes, that's still unsupported conjecture worded in way that strongly implies actual hacking of votes.
Calling it 70k votes makes it sound small, but its more like 1% of voters. 1% of voters making their mind up based on TRUE stories about inside baseball at the DNC? Unrealistic. I bet 99% of voters couldn't even tell you what the emails were about.
And that's without considering the negative affects of the Democrats attacking Trump for being in bed with Russia, which probably cost him votes too.
Calling it 70k votes makes it sound small, but its more like 1% of voters. 1% of voters making their mind up based on TRUE stories about inside baseball at the DNC? Unrealistic. I bet 99% of voters couldn't even tell you what the emails were about.
And that's without considering the negative affects of the Democrats attacking Trump for being in bed with Russia, which probably cost him votes too.
Trump's second sentence clarifies and elaborates that the first sentence is referring to voting machines.
So what? I ask this very specifically because you're applying precisely the same rhetorical device that Tanden is.
Neera was clearly saying that she believes that Russia’s actions affected the election results.
Trump made two distinct and unrelated claims in that tweet. One claim was a lie, one was true. You dishonestly pretend there is only one claim. Neera was not addressing the true claim about voting machines being touched.
Trump has a habit of mixing in things he’s not accused of and running on them to acquit him of the things he is accused of. He consistently did it by attacking nonexistent and unprovable accusations of “collusion” (an imprecise term that is not a crime one can be charged for) when the actual investigations, hearings, and findings centered on Russian interference and any of the campaign’s coordination of it. This includes direct communication with Assange as well as the Trump Tower meeting over Magnitsky Act sanctions.
Your NYT article, in opposition to your stated conclusion, addresses infiltration attempts related to voting and voter registry systems, not the DNC hack.
Nadler’s claim is only unbelievable if you memory-hole Trump’s attempt two months ago to start another misinformation and character-smear campaign against Hunter Biden. The impeachment hearings specifically addressed and exposed the early stages of this campaign.
66% of democrats in that poll are wrong, so we agree there.
Trump made two distinct and unrelated claims in that tweet. One claim was a lie, one was true. You dishonestly pretend there is only one claim. Neera was not addressing the true claim about voting machines being touched.
Trump has a habit of mixing in things he’s not accused of and running on them to acquit him of the things he is accused of. He consistently did it by attacking nonexistent and unprovable accusations of “collusion” (an imprecise term that is not a crime one can be charged for) when the actual investigations, hearings, and findings centered on Russian interference and any of the campaign’s coordination of it. This includes direct communication with Assange as well as the Trump Tower meeting over Magnitsky Act sanctions.
Your NYT article, in opposition to your stated conclusion, addresses infiltration attempts related to voting and voter registry systems, not the DNC hack.
Nadler’s claim is only unbelievable if you memory-hole Trump’s attempt two months ago to start another misinformation and character-smear campaign against Hunter Biden. The impeachment hearings specifically addressed and exposed the early stages of this campaign.
66% of democrats in that poll are wrong, so we agree there.
That's not at all what people were screaming for the past four years. Even if Russian "meddled" in the US elections, so did Boeing, BASF, Microsoft, Facebook, Northrop Grumman, Softbank, YCombinator .. anyone who bought a fucking ad or funded one campaign.
What the Russian/2016 narrative really was: Americans are too stupid to make up their own minds and fall for propaganda. There has been a four year campaign to condemn every single Trump supporter as some kind of racist, white supremacist Nazi, and it's been big media and big tech (FOX/MSNBC/CNN/YouTube/Facebook/Twitter/NYTimes/etc.) that's literally been pouring petrol on the American people and the world.
What the Russian/2016 narrative really was: Americans are too stupid to make up their own minds and fall for propaganda. There has been a four year campaign to condemn every single Trump supporter as some kind of racist, white supremacist Nazi, and it's been big media and big tech (FOX/MSNBC/CNN/YouTube/Facebook/Twitter/NYTimes/etc.) that's literally been pouring petrol on the American people and the world.
Believe it or not, there's a whole host of laws around and against foreign involvement in American elections, going back basically forever. Comparing Boeing and Russia is pretty ludicrous.
I am curious what these laws are, and what constitutes involvement. Am I allowed to comment on American elections even if I am not American?
A lot of people here are talking about interference, which sounds like a very nefarious thing. But in reality, what they mean by 'interference' is just posting on the internet about why one candidate (let's be real, probably Trump) is better.
A lot of people here are talking about interference, which sounds like a very nefarious thing. But in reality, what they mean by 'interference' is just posting on the internet about why one candidate (let's be real, probably Trump) is better.
The two big categories in my mind are foreign campaign contributions (usually misdirected through others, so sometimes also fall out as fraud and money laundering charges) and failure to register as a foreign agent.
As a reminder, both of these categories have seen grand jury charges and subsequent guilty pleas by Trump associates. These have often paired nicely with 'lying to prosecutors' charges, which help clarify that they knew they were up to no good...
https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/1886-indictment-giul...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Flynn#Investigations_a...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Manafort#Indictments_and_...
As a reminder, both of these categories have seen grand jury charges and subsequent guilty pleas by Trump associates. These have often paired nicely with 'lying to prosecutors' charges, which help clarify that they knew they were up to no good...
https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/1886-indictment-giul...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Flynn#Investigations_a...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Manafort#Indictments_and_...
> Americans are too stupid to make up their own minds and fall for propaganda.
Don't we see history examples of lots of people falling for propaganda? Germany 1930-s comes to mind.
Don't we see history examples of lots of people falling for propaganda? Germany 1930-s comes to mind.
Godwin's Law and you're done.
But baring that, how do you know which side is propaganda? Is it FOX/CNN/MSNBC or is it Newsmax/DailyWire/NYPost/Blaze/Crowder? Which side is the propaganda and which is the capitol T Truth?
But baring that, how do you know which side is propaganda? Is it FOX/CNN/MSNBC or is it Newsmax/DailyWire/NYPost/Blaze/Crowder? Which side is the propaganda and which is the capitol T Truth?
Well, there are facts which are either hard to argue or everybody is agreeing upon, like the public presentations of politicians. Given those facts, sometimes - not always - it's a matter of values to choose sides.
It's not always easy, yes. But still critical thinking goes a long way.
Godwin's Law can be used as a tool to suppress valid comparisons. Don't fall for that.
It's not always easy, yes. But still critical thinking goes a long way.
Godwin's Law can be used as a tool to suppress valid comparisons. Don't fall for that.
I worked in Dem political tech. The Russian Troll Farm/Cambridge Analytica/social ads scandal is mostly noise and no signal. But you’re missing something important: Russian state sponsored hackers spearfished and stole data from the RNC, DNC, and the Clinton circle. They deliberately released the latter two and withheld the first. Those releases don’t define the entire election, but they had a demonstrable and empirically validated impact on voters. Those deliberate and asymmetric releases probably changed the outcome of the election.
Russia really did interfere in that election and you’ve ignored this crucial fact.
Russia really did interfere in that election and you’ve ignored this crucial fact.
> Those deliberate and asymmetric releases probably changed the outcome of the election.
How is it possible to draw a causation from the releases to the election outcome? I am curious if there are academic studies to support this claim.
How is it possible to draw a causation from the releases to the election outcome? I am curious if there are academic studies to support this claim.
the_optimist(2)
umvi(2)
That’s not very accurate and makes a lot of unproven assumptions. They found that an old, disused RNC domain from years prior was compromised. There’s no reason to believe they withheld anything material, and even if they did, it’s not really relevant. All they did was show the public authentic emails. If anyone actually changed their vote based on having additional facts, which I doubt happened in any significant way, then it was for the right reasons.
If your wife-to-be was having an affair and this was dumped before the wedding day, would you be mad at the hacker, or at your partner? Blaming Russia for showing truth never made any sense to me. Are we to believe that the process has more integrity when we cast our votes with less information?
If your wife-to-be was having an affair and this was dumped before the wedding day, would you be mad at the hacker, or at your partner? Blaming Russia for showing truth never made any sense to me. Are we to believe that the process has more integrity when we cast our votes with less information?
You are absolutely, factually incorrect. Your opinion is also unfortunate, to equate adversarial nation-state "meddling" with domestic corporate campaigns, though the latter is also woeful.
That Trump was elected is a harbinger of American decline, that so many people think his persona, "intellect" and view on leadership are worthy of consideration as leader of this country. It's an indictment of our electoral and voting systems, that any good faith Republicans felt they "had" to vote for such an awful leader in order to avoid the centrism of a Democratic administration.
But I don't think every Trump voter is a racist nazi. I think they were just okay with Trump being an awful human being and a terrible leader, so long as they could prevent poor people from getting health care or acknowledging climate change.
That Trump was elected is a harbinger of American decline, that so many people think his persona, "intellect" and view on leadership are worthy of consideration as leader of this country. It's an indictment of our electoral and voting systems, that any good faith Republicans felt they "had" to vote for such an awful leader in order to avoid the centrism of a Democratic administration.
But I don't think every Trump voter is a racist nazi. I think they were just okay with Trump being an awful human being and a terrible leader, so long as they could prevent poor people from getting health care or acknowledging climate change.
>That's not at all what people were screaming for the past four years.
Why would you feel the need to lie about something so clearly untrue? I'm sure you can find a group of people on the internet somewhere that might have made this claim, in the same way that you can find people claiming the earth is flat.
But this fabrication that everyone was claiming Russians hacked the votes is just nonsense.
Why would you feel the need to lie about something so clearly untrue? I'm sure you can find a group of people on the internet somewhere that might have made this claim, in the same way that you can find people claiming the earth is flat.
But this fabrication that everyone was claiming Russians hacked the votes is just nonsense.
"Meddled" is such an ambiguous term and we are part of an international community.
Using such loose terminology, couldn't you accurately say dozens of nations meddled with the majority of federal US elections in the past 50 years?
If you disagree, what do you think the function of AIPAC is?
Using such loose terminology, couldn't you accurately say dozens of nations meddled with the majority of federal US elections in the past 50 years?
If you disagree, what do you think the function of AIPAC is?
Yes, including Iran, so what's your point? A bipartisan commission found overwhelming evidence of a widespread, organized, and coordinated effort from several foreign agencies to spread misinformation during both the 2016 election and the 2020 election. What term do you want to use besides "meddling" then?
Would be great if they used a term that correlates to a specific crime. "Meddling" is pervasive and legal, so accusations of meddling seem like propaganda from the intelligence community.
This documentary got nominated for tons of awards. And it heavily insinuates that the election was stolen/cheated and the outcome could have been different.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Hack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Hack
The problem is the "regular open discussion", which has turned into a cesspool of fact-free ranting, and has created serious societal virality and negative impact.
You can rant against the mainstream media, but at least there is a modicum of fact checking and research there -- how many independent YouTube sources do the same?
You can rant against the mainstream media, but at least there is a modicum of fact checking and research there -- how many independent YouTube sources do the same?
> but at least there is a modicum of fact checking and research there
No. No there absolutely is not. The fact that you trust the Legacy Media at all is part of the problem. It's independent analysts who have been the only ones to do any real research.
Viva Frei does a great piece on how the New York Times contradicts their own headlines in their article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmgMu5sefzA
No. No there absolutely is not. The fact that you trust the Legacy Media at all is part of the problem. It's independent analysts who have been the only ones to do any real research.
Viva Frei does a great piece on how the New York Times contradicts their own headlines in their article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmgMu5sefzA
They absolutely do. They get things wrong sometimes. But by and large, they operate on journalistic principles and standards.
This is an unjustified statement, but also one that admits to tipping the scales upon mere convenience.
"The full source material is what keeps journalism honest," said a man who is now in prison somewhere.
"The full source material is what keeps journalism honest," said a man who is now in prison somewhere.
They choose how to spin stories based on biases to the point where they are effectively reporting different "facts".
The other week I posted the below, which are headlines for the same 3 stories on the same day from CNN and Fox, arguably 2 of the biggest "news" sources in the U.S. These headlines are effectively opinions with the aim of gaslighting their respective audience. It's not healthy.
FOX: Trump touts historic stock market jump as Dow tops 'sacred number,'
CNN: Dow tops 30,000 for the first time ever as Biden transition begins
FOX: Biden's pick for national security adviser defended anti-Trump Steele dossier
CNN: 'The team meets this moment:' Biden introduces top admin nominees
FOX: Happy Thanksgiving! State relaxes gathering limits ahead of holiday
CNN: Doctor fights back tears describing single day of heartbreaking losses
The other week I posted the below, which are headlines for the same 3 stories on the same day from CNN and Fox, arguably 2 of the biggest "news" sources in the U.S. These headlines are effectively opinions with the aim of gaslighting their respective audience. It's not healthy.
FOX: Trump touts historic stock market jump as Dow tops 'sacred number,'
CNN: Dow tops 30,000 for the first time ever as Biden transition begins
FOX: Biden's pick for national security adviser defended anti-Trump Steele dossier
CNN: 'The team meets this moment:' Biden introduces top admin nominees
FOX: Happy Thanksgiving! State relaxes gathering limits ahead of holiday
CNN: Doctor fights back tears describing single day of heartbreaking losses
Neither of those cable entertainment channels are what many would consider "journalism".
What process exists for fact-checking independent analysts? Most have zero accountability and have even less incentive to verify claims because 1) It takes time and money 2) Often does not serve their own political agendas and subscriber bases/income streams
Yes, placing our complete trust in a few major media outlets to accurately report the facts is naive. But believing that individuals with no independent fact checking department or an editor to enforce journalistic standards will somehow be less biased is even more naive.
Yes, placing our complete trust in a few major media outlets to accurately report the facts is naive. But believing that individuals with no independent fact checking department or an editor to enforce journalistic standards will somehow be less biased is even more naive.
Why should regular people trust the Bay Area perspective on what counts as "fact-free ranting"? Tech has no legitimate authority to decide what is true. The mindset and moral system that's overwhelmingly dominant in tech is abhorrent to much of the rest of the country and the world. Why should this prominent but fringe Bay Area mentality dominate?
It's simply not tech's place to be making these calls. It's arrogance and hubris and it's going to lead to a backlash.
It's simply not tech's place to be making these calls. It's arrogance and hubris and it's going to lead to a backlash.
Who, then, decides what is true? Random YouTube commenters? Joe Rogan? Rush Limbaugh? The QAnon Twitter-sphere? Perhaps we can just vote on whether gravity exists.
Why does anyone need to decide what is true? Each person can decide for himself in his own heart what he believes. We reach consensus through discussion. There is never, not once, in any situation whatsoever a justification for forcing a particular perspective on the public instead of letting the marketplace of ideas function and find the truth organically.
This idea that certain ideas are dangerous and must be suppressed is the mark of every insecure tyranny. Secure beliefs don't need to be propped up with censorship, and a belief isn't secure, it's because it's just not adequately backed up by facts.
This idea that certain ideas are dangerous and must be suppressed is the mark of every insecure tyranny. Secure beliefs don't need to be propped up with censorship, and a belief isn't secure, it's because it's just not adequately backed up by facts.
The marketplace is broken. A non-trivial amount of people believe the earth is flat. People are becoming immune to fact-based evidence, because they get to immerse themselves in an alternate universe which tells them that they're right. Soon the ramifications won't be restricted to people shooting up pizza parlors.
The marketplace is not broken merely because one party's goods aren't selling. If I make scratchy toilet paper and people don't buy it, it's my fault, not the market's. The fact is that the media elite have little credibility these days among the general public, their wares suck, and people are investigating alternatives. The solution isn't censorship. It's becoming more credible.
But all the little monkeys don't understand science.
Why should credibility matter? That is to say, how can the average person know that what they're reading is credible or not to make that determination and say "oh, CNN reported this and it's credible! Must mean that CNN is becoming more credible and I should watch it more because they have a better product" rather than "CNN is reporting this but it doesn't line up with what I want to believe, they must be wrong and not credible". Your metaphor doesn't make sense in a world where news stories are looked at skin deep, where someone doesn't even know that the toilet paper is scratchy it just _looks_ scratchy from the label or uncle Joe told me that it must be scratchy because it's made by Proctor & Gamble.
Credibility matters, because people really do want to base their opinions on facts. CNN existed for two decades before Fox News got popular. That wasn't the case because everyone agreed all the time back then. It was because the media respected its role in society and at least tried to be objective.
> people really do want to base their opinions on facts
Not really, confirmation bias is a real thing for all human beings. The issue here is that there's a fundamental disagreement about what constitutes a fact. Objectivity in reporting is also subjective, funnily enough. If I consider NPR to be very objective because the dead-pan monotonic voice of the announcer simply says a direct quote from a member of congress, I can talk to a relative who will tell me that same NPR story is biased because they reported on something they don't agree with.
> It was because the media respected its role in society and at least tried to be objective.
There are _plenty_ of news outlets that still respect their role in society. The difference is that 20-30 years ago, there wasn't a deluge of information or misinformation readily available to get those dopamine hits from confirming biases.
Not really, confirmation bias is a real thing for all human beings. The issue here is that there's a fundamental disagreement about what constitutes a fact. Objectivity in reporting is also subjective, funnily enough. If I consider NPR to be very objective because the dead-pan monotonic voice of the announcer simply says a direct quote from a member of congress, I can talk to a relative who will tell me that same NPR story is biased because they reported on something they don't agree with.
> It was because the media respected its role in society and at least tried to be objective.
There are _plenty_ of news outlets that still respect their role in society. The difference is that 20-30 years ago, there wasn't a deluge of information or misinformation readily available to get those dopamine hits from confirming biases.
> There are _plenty_ of news outlets that still respect their role in society.
Like?
Like?
I doubt that compiling a list will convince you, but NPR, the BBC, the Economist, the WSJ, the AP, National Review as a small snippet.
And a non-trivial number of people believed that the U.S. has spent decades slashing school funding. Or that Stacey Abrams "should be the governor of Georgia right now." Or that Citizens United was about campaign contributions. Or that we are 10 years away from the end of civilization due to climate change. As a life-long Democrat, I didn't realize how much false received wisdom I had internalized until I married a Republican.
I think it's fair to say that Republicans are somewhat more likely to believe in false information, but Democrats believe plenty of incorrect things as well. And I'd rather have a broken marketplace than one where Democrats just get to decide what's true.
Especially when its taken just 5 minutes for the perceived guard rails to evaporate! We're not talking about "the earth is flat" here. We are talking about Hunter Biden emails that still nobody has proven are inauthentic. We're talking about election fraud allegations which are the subject of ongoing court cases for god's sake. Even if I'm amenable to "fact checking" something like "Obama was born in Kenya" I'm sure as hell not going to support Google deciding something is true or untrue before the courts do.
I think it's fair to say that Republicans are somewhat more likely to believe in false information, but Democrats believe plenty of incorrect things as well. And I'd rather have a broken marketplace than one where Democrats just get to decide what's true.
Especially when its taken just 5 minutes for the perceived guard rails to evaporate! We're not talking about "the earth is flat" here. We are talking about Hunter Biden emails that still nobody has proven are inauthentic. We're talking about election fraud allegations which are the subject of ongoing court cases for god's sake. Even if I'm amenable to "fact checking" something like "Obama was born in Kenya" I'm sure as hell not going to support Google deciding something is true or untrue before the courts do.
Google is not deciding what is true or untrue. Google is deciding what they will host on their service.
The mods on this site make similar decisions every single day, but I've never seen you post about that. Why shouldn't youtube have the same ability to moderate their site as Hacker News?
The mods on this site make similar decisions every single day, but I've never seen you post about that. Why shouldn't youtube have the same ability to moderate their site as Hacker News?
Google is deciding what to host based on decisions about what is purportedly true or untrue.
> We're talking about election fraud allegations which are the subject of ongoing court cases for god's sake.
Does a case really count as "ongoing" if it gets dismissed pretty much as soon as the judge finishes reading the plaintiff's complaint?
Does a case really count as "ongoing" if it gets dismissed pretty much as soon as the judge finishes reading the plaintiff's complaint?
The media breathlessly reports allegations in complaints as fact all the time. Stacey Abrams' case against Brian Kemp over the 2016 election was voluntarily dismissed without the court ever reaching the merits. The media reported on the complaint, and an early ruling granting Abrams discovery, but of course never reported the quiet voluntary dismissal when nothing turned up.
Do you believe Google staff (or their outsourced contractors) can and should pre-judge the outcomes of US court cases?
Editing to make this a bit clearer:
As a matter of principle, do you believe Google staff (or their outsourced contractors) can and should pre-judge the outcomes of US court cases? I ask about principles because it's very easy to focus on the specific details of these particular cases, and the fact it's your political enemy pursuing them. But that may not be true next time, and certainly won't be true every time.
Editing to make this a bit clearer:
As a matter of principle, do you believe Google staff (or their outsourced contractors) can and should pre-judge the outcomes of US court cases? I ask about principles because it's very easy to focus on the specific details of these particular cases, and the fact it's your political enemy pursuing them. But that may not be true next time, and certainly won't be true every time.
It's not pre-judging when case after case has been dismissed and/or laughed out of the courtroom.
It is literally pre-judging. You are deciding the outcome of a case that has not occurred, based on cases that have.
I've replied in more detail to your other comment which said much the same thing.
I've replied in more detail to your other comment which said much the same thing.
> We are talking about Hunter Biden emails that still nobody has proven are inauthentic.
Have they been proven to be authentic?
Have they been proven to be authentic?
No, but if they were so obviously fraudulent so as to merit a media blackout, wouldn't we have established that by now? When there is actually a real dispute over authenticity, that's news.
Yes, by cryptographic signature. DKIM was verified. Some senders/recipients also provided human verification.
Censorship is why you didn't already know this. It should have been major news, being the headline story everywhere for a week. It passed by here quietly, on Hacker News, and was quickly flagged.
You're left with an incomplete view of the world that is very misleading. People everywhere are using this warped view of reality to make world-changing decisions.
Censorship is why you didn't already know this. It should have been major news, being the headline story everywhere for a week. It passed by here quietly, on Hacker News, and was quickly flagged.
You're left with an incomplete view of the world that is very misleading. People everywhere are using this warped view of reality to make world-changing decisions.
Here is the link https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/hunter-dkim/
> We're talking about election fraud allegations which are the subject of ongoing court cases for god's sake.
Except we're not. Guiliani said in one of the few courts that asked for an oral argument that it wasn't a fraud case[1]. Fraud requires specific proof which he/they do not have.
This is PR/fund raising disguised as comical legal filings.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/us/politics/trump-giulian...
Except we're not. Guiliani said in one of the few courts that asked for an oral argument that it wasn't a fraud case[1]. Fraud requires specific proof which he/they do not have.
This is PR/fund raising disguised as comical legal filings.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/us/politics/trump-giulian...
I think this is a good example of what happens when you wade into a nest of vipers. 'Fraud' can have different meanings, and sometimes what is used in common language is not the correct legal term.
So is it misleading to call it fraud? Or are you just nitpicking? Depends on who you ask.
So is it misleading to call it fraud? Or are you just nitpicking? Depends on who you ask.
As a life-long Democrat, I didn't realize how much false received wisdom I had internalized until I married a Republican.
As another left-leaning person who has also had this experience recently, and who is rather disturbed by the delusions and hypocrisy from “my team”, I’ve noticed that your posts lately seem to do an excellent job of offering a more complete picture. Often, completing the picture involves clarifying the right-leaning viewpoint. It’s unfortunate that you usually get downvoted for it, even when you aren’t inserting your own opinion and stating things that are objectively true.
Just curious, has the combination of the bad behavior by many on the left in conjunction with receiving additional context from the right, pushed you towards the center or even the right? Or are you merely trying to act as more of an ambassador for Republican views?
As another left-leaning person who has also had this experience recently, and who is rather disturbed by the delusions and hypocrisy from “my team”, I’ve noticed that your posts lately seem to do an excellent job of offering a more complete picture. Often, completing the picture involves clarifying the right-leaning viewpoint. It’s unfortunate that you usually get downvoted for it, even when you aren’t inserting your own opinion and stating things that are objectively true.
Just curious, has the combination of the bad behavior by many on the left in conjunction with receiving additional context from the right, pushed you towards the center or even the right? Or are you merely trying to act as more of an ambassador for Republican views?
The problem really is that many people know the truth but they choose the truth that feels right.
>Who, then, decides what is true?
Let me decide for me. I'm not outsourcing thinking to YouTube interns.
Let me decide for me. I'm not outsourcing thinking to YouTube interns.
The people. They should watch all of it, and decide for themselves. What's wrong with Rogan? His podcast is incredible.
Let's listen to everything. Hell, let's go outside and talk to each other again! This continual lockdown has deeply hurt our ability to actually communicate with one another in any meaningful way.
We're viewing the world through a straw.
Let's listen to everything. Hell, let's go outside and talk to each other again! This continual lockdown has deeply hurt our ability to actually communicate with one another in any meaningful way.
We're viewing the world through a straw.
> Hell, let's go outside and talk to each other again!
Once there's a viable vaccine, sure. I don't disagree about your point of the damage the lockdown has done, but USA governments and citizens haven't locked down consistently enough to provide the intended results.
Once there's a viable vaccine, sure. I don't disagree about your point of the damage the lockdown has done, but USA governments and citizens haven't locked down consistently enough to provide the intended results.
Individuals do not have the capacity to inspect facts. Do you inspect how the cake flour met the FDA standards? You trust authority, in this case, the FDA + Store Owner + Distributor + Manufacturer.
This is so ridiculous. I think you mean we need to have the information so if an individual wants to verify, they can and if they can spend the energy and rigor to know the research/data. Please stop requiring individuals to verify truth. Truth has always been escorted by authorities with checks and balances. Reputable media is an authority of similar civic responsibility.
Next time you buy a measuring tape, you're gonna sound ridiculous to ask for a NIST certificate at Home Depot.
This is so ridiculous. I think you mean we need to have the information so if an individual wants to verify, they can and if they can spend the energy and rigor to know the research/data. Please stop requiring individuals to verify truth. Truth has always been escorted by authorities with checks and balances. Reputable media is an authority of similar civic responsibility.
Next time you buy a measuring tape, you're gonna sound ridiculous to ask for a NIST certificate at Home Depot.
This is an absurd and breathtakingly dangerous argument. No, we don't expect people to inspect their own cake flour. But we do expect them to be able to evaluate the facts relevant to the basic political participation of voting. What you're advocating for is a kritarchy, with "reputable media" as the judges.
We've been trusting publishers of books for many decades before the internet. The internet has put in no checks and balances for publishing - any loud voice can rampantly go out and get 200,000k followers.
No one is taking away right to assemble in public. Twitter is a publisher with no quality checks in place.
No one is taking away right to assemble in public. Twitter is a publisher with no quality checks in place.
Who trusted book publishers? What American can even name 3 of them, or could in the 1970s? This doesn't seem like a serious argument, and it gets less serious the further back in time you go and the more all of publishing resembled the Weekly World News.
Doesn't matter. It is obvious to see that publishes (newspapers, books) were the "gatekeepers" of massive, worldwide distribution of information.
I am pointing out the difference between traditional media and internet media. One has checks and balances, and the other is wild wild west.
I am pointing out the difference between traditional media and internet media. One has checks and balances, and the other is wild wild west.
Tell me more about the checks and balances that exist in book publishing. Publishers --- often mainstream publishers --- published the first editions of Mein Kampf, Camp of the Saints, Architects of Conspiracy, Did Six Million Really Die, and all manner of medical pseudoscience.
Definitely. It is obvious that there is some:
- Time to publish, it’s not instant like the internet
- Allows people to editorialize and review, even if they allow publishing
- Allow critics to voice their opinions before the book blows up
I’m in no way saying we need to have a CCP level control over what gets published or not, but I am just pointing out the virality of social media that didn’t exist before the internet.
You can make many arguments around it, the fact is that the internet fundamentally changed the way conspiracy theories propagate.
Even if controversial books are published, someone is going to a bookstore and buying it. There are reviews on ebooks. There is so much discussion. No such thing is exists in echo chambers.
- Time to publish, it’s not instant like the internet
- Allows people to editorialize and review, even if they allow publishing
- Allow critics to voice their opinions before the book blows up
I’m in no way saying we need to have a CCP level control over what gets published or not, but I am just pointing out the virality of social media that didn’t exist before the internet.
You can make many arguments around it, the fact is that the internet fundamentally changed the way conspiracy theories propagate.
Even if controversial books are published, someone is going to a bookstore and buying it. There are reviews on ebooks. There is so much discussion. No such thing is exists in echo chambers.
Probably a digression from OP's point, but perhaps a useful one:
Suppose two long paths leading home are filled with people.
Path one is a park filled with people reading various physical copies of books, one of whom looks up from their copy of Mein Kampf to say something threatening to you.
Path two is filled with innocuous-looking people, all glued to the screens of essentially the same model of smartphone. One of them looks up from their device just long enough to tell you, "Samy is my hero."
Which path do you take and why?
Suppose two long paths leading home are filled with people.
Path one is a park filled with people reading various physical copies of books, one of whom looks up from their copy of Mein Kampf to say something threatening to you.
Path two is filled with innocuous-looking people, all glued to the screens of essentially the same model of smartphone. One of them looks up from their device just long enough to tell you, "Samy is my hero."
Which path do you take and why?
> But we do expect them to be able to evaluate the facts relevant to the basic political participation of voting.
Do we?
Let's address this on two levels: First do we really expect people to evaluate the facts relevant to who they choose to vote for? I mean on the one hand, the system does this, yes. But not because we have any particular amount of faith that everyone is ready to bear the responsibility. Instead, we're resigned to the fact that all the other options are worse. I mean the founders absolutely didn't trust the people to evaluate their leadership, unless you were willing to restrict the definition of "people" to "white male landowners".
Hell, even more, the constitution as written (and federalist 68 explicitly) suggested that the people themselves shouldn't select the president, but only select representatives who ultimately do the selection. The justification for this was that said representatives would hopefully be more capable than the average individual of weighing all of the requirements of the office.
So the founders certainly didn't share your faith. Nor, even today, does the constitution itself. Ultimately though, having a well informed populace is very different from having a kritarchy, and having reputable media is necessary for a well informed populace.
If you're bombarded with two contradictory pieces of information (which I'd argue is in many cases the explicitly strategy of some of the media), you either need to be an expert on the topic, or your only approach is to trust people. Like, are you really saying we expect the average American to be able to evaluate the facts relevant to economic policy? Nobel prize winners disagree!
But that's just the first layer. There's a second layer here:
At this point we're no longer talking about the political participation of voting. That's already happened. The votes are in. What we're talking about is asking people to evaluate the facts of obscure election law that's in most cases never been tested. The average American isn't a constitutional Judge. But, to use your word, the president has asked unelected judges to directly overrule the will of the people literally dozens of times. That's kritarchy (or just raw authoritarianism, your choice). The actual experts, the judges, have resoundingly said no. Like, among the experts, there is no controversy here. And yet the conspiracy theory persists. Why is that?
Do we?
Let's address this on two levels: First do we really expect people to evaluate the facts relevant to who they choose to vote for? I mean on the one hand, the system does this, yes. But not because we have any particular amount of faith that everyone is ready to bear the responsibility. Instead, we're resigned to the fact that all the other options are worse. I mean the founders absolutely didn't trust the people to evaluate their leadership, unless you were willing to restrict the definition of "people" to "white male landowners".
Hell, even more, the constitution as written (and federalist 68 explicitly) suggested that the people themselves shouldn't select the president, but only select representatives who ultimately do the selection. The justification for this was that said representatives would hopefully be more capable than the average individual of weighing all of the requirements of the office.
So the founders certainly didn't share your faith. Nor, even today, does the constitution itself. Ultimately though, having a well informed populace is very different from having a kritarchy, and having reputable media is necessary for a well informed populace.
If you're bombarded with two contradictory pieces of information (which I'd argue is in many cases the explicitly strategy of some of the media), you either need to be an expert on the topic, or your only approach is to trust people. Like, are you really saying we expect the average American to be able to evaluate the facts relevant to economic policy? Nobel prize winners disagree!
But that's just the first layer. There's a second layer here:
At this point we're no longer talking about the political participation of voting. That's already happened. The votes are in. What we're talking about is asking people to evaluate the facts of obscure election law that's in most cases never been tested. The average American isn't a constitutional Judge. But, to use your word, the president has asked unelected judges to directly overrule the will of the people literally dozens of times. That's kritarchy (or just raw authoritarianism, your choice). The actual experts, the judges, have resoundingly said no. Like, among the experts, there is no controversy here. And yet the conspiracy theory persists. Why is that?
"Truth has always been escorted by authorities with checks and balances."
This statement stands in direct opposition to the primary founding principals of liberal democracy.
This statement stands in direct opposition to the primary founding principals of liberal democracy.
How should we decide whether to believe your comment? By appeal to some authority?
Do you trust your doctor? Do you consider the court as a misplaced authority? They make judgements, often nuances of interpretation based on their moral compass - they arbitrage truth from application of laws against evidence. In many cases, there is subjective interpretation and the "spirit of the law".
Of course they have the capacity to check facts, the means to do so are found on the same network where the fact-to-be-checked was found in the first place. Some people will check those facts, many others won't. If what is written is patently false this will come out soon enough.
You call to "stop requiring individuals to verify truth" can be phrased in another, more honest way: support specific organisations to decide where the truth lies. For simple facts - the current temperature, the price of petrol at the pump, the energy content of a portion of a given food - this works. For disputed facts - nearly anything related to SARS2, nearly anything related to climate, nearly anything related to nuclear power, nearly anything related to migration, the veracity and validity of identity politics, the absence or presence of "systemic" racism - this patently fails since the gatekeeper gets to impose its own views on the public. When that gatekeeper happens to be the 500lbs gorilla in the field that means the public has to do exactly what you decry to be ridiculous: they have to go check whether the presented facts are true or just the result of the gatekeeper projecting its opinions, a task made harder by that gatekeeper - the 500lbs gorilla - blocking opposing views from its platform.
On your measuring tape comparison I can state that measuring tapes sold in e.g. the Netherlands clearly state that they are not to be used for trading purposes ("niet voor handelsdoeleinden") since they are not officially calibrated. Just like scales, pumps and other measuring equipment measuring tapes/sticks/etc. used for trading purposes need to be calibrated, get stamped that they are, complete with a calibration expiry date. So, yes, if it really matters you do ask for a calibrated measuring device.
You call to "stop requiring individuals to verify truth" can be phrased in another, more honest way: support specific organisations to decide where the truth lies. For simple facts - the current temperature, the price of petrol at the pump, the energy content of a portion of a given food - this works. For disputed facts - nearly anything related to SARS2, nearly anything related to climate, nearly anything related to nuclear power, nearly anything related to migration, the veracity and validity of identity politics, the absence or presence of "systemic" racism - this patently fails since the gatekeeper gets to impose its own views on the public. When that gatekeeper happens to be the 500lbs gorilla in the field that means the public has to do exactly what you decry to be ridiculous: they have to go check whether the presented facts are true or just the result of the gatekeeper projecting its opinions, a task made harder by that gatekeeper - the 500lbs gorilla - blocking opposing views from its platform.
On your measuring tape comparison I can state that measuring tapes sold in e.g. the Netherlands clearly state that they are not to be used for trading purposes ("niet voor handelsdoeleinden") since they are not officially calibrated. Just like scales, pumps and other measuring equipment measuring tapes/sticks/etc. used for trading purposes need to be calibrated, get stamped that they are, complete with a calibration expiry date. So, yes, if it really matters you do ask for a calibrated measuring device.
Most of the media isn't located in Silicon Valley
It is techs responsibility to moderate the forums they operate
It is techs responsibility to moderate the forums they operate
[deleted]
How did we get to the point where what we say needs to be factual?
Factually correct speech has its place. But when you're making Youtube videos, podcasts, writing comments, talking with friends, you don't need to be factual. That's not a necessary ingredient to a good conversation.
I have a Youtube channel where I sometimes talk about Space and Biology. I'm not educated in these subjects. No doubt a lot of what I say is factually incorrect. That doesn't mean my speech is misinformation, deceitful, or dangerous.
Factually correct speech has its place. But when you're making Youtube videos, podcasts, writing comments, talking with friends, you don't need to be factual. That's not a necessary ingredient to a good conversation.
I have a Youtube channel where I sometimes talk about Space and Biology. I'm not educated in these subjects. No doubt a lot of what I say is factually incorrect. That doesn't mean my speech is misinformation, deceitful, or dangerous.
It's even worse than you describe. Hyperbole is being flagged as "disinformation" or "lies". All the nuance of human communication is being squeezed into a lowest-common-denominator straight-jacket, based on what's easiest to censor. And the "progressives" are the cheerleaders this time. It's depressing.
> But when you're making Youtube videos, podcasts, writing comments, talking with friends
These things are not the same. When you talk with friends or when you write a comment, you have a limited audience and counter viewpoints are readily available. When you make a video or a podcast, you might have a pretty large audience and no immediate counterpoints. You should do your best to avoid spreading factually wrong statements.
These things are not the same. When you talk with friends or when you write a comment, you have a limited audience and counter viewpoints are readily available. When you make a video or a podcast, you might have a pretty large audience and no immediate counterpoints. You should do your best to avoid spreading factually wrong statements.
>When you make a video or a podcast, you might have a pretty large audience and no immediate counterpoints. You should do your best to avoid spreading factually wrong statements.
Here's a comment snippet you wrote 3 days ago: "Facebook basically wanted to take monetary sovereignty away from states and give control to private companies.
Are you really doing your 'best to avoid spreading factually wrong statements'? Because I'm sure you have no evidential basis for that statement and therefore promulgating misinformation. Alternatively, we can have YouTube Interns decide what you can and cannot say online.
Regardless, perhaps you should take your own advice?
Here's a comment snippet you wrote 3 days ago: "Facebook basically wanted to take monetary sovereignty away from states and give control to private companies.
Are you really doing your 'best to avoid spreading factually wrong statements'? Because I'm sure you have no evidential basis for that statement and therefore promulgating misinformation. Alternatively, we can have YouTube Interns decide what you can and cannot say online.
Regardless, perhaps you should take your own advice?
It's funny because I explicitly said that writing a comment and talking to friends is way different from making a video or a podcast because of the audience you might have and the presence of counterpoints, such as your comment.
And it's also fun that you took a comment that basically said "channels with big audiences should care about not saying wrong things" and took it as a support of censorship.
Finally, you took the one example where the evidential basis is exactly there!
- Facebook wanted to create a digital currency, and wanted it to be used by as much people as possible.
- Monetary sovereignty is the capacity of a state to control what currency is used as legal payment, how much of it is issued and how much of is it retired.
- If Libra became widespread in a country under the conditions that Facebook wanted (i.e., the Libra association controlling issuance and retirement), it would complete and (partially or completely) replace the state's currency and therefore the state would not have power to control its own currency, therefore losing monetary sovereignty to the Libra association.
- The Libra association was an association of private companies, QED.
And all of this brings me again to the point of how comments and videos are different. I made a comment, you made a comment, I made another one, and most people reading will watch the different viewpoints. If this was instead YouTube videos with millions of views, a lot of people would see the video title and take it as fact, another group would watch it and wouldn't care or wouldn't have the capacity to search for the opposing viewpoints, and only a minority (I think) would actually see the full debate. That's why I say that the standards should be different if your potential audience is bigger and they're less exposed to other viewpoints.
And it's also fun that you took a comment that basically said "channels with big audiences should care about not saying wrong things" and took it as a support of censorship.
Finally, you took the one example where the evidential basis is exactly there!
- Facebook wanted to create a digital currency, and wanted it to be used by as much people as possible.
- Monetary sovereignty is the capacity of a state to control what currency is used as legal payment, how much of it is issued and how much of is it retired.
- If Libra became widespread in a country under the conditions that Facebook wanted (i.e., the Libra association controlling issuance and retirement), it would complete and (partially or completely) replace the state's currency and therefore the state would not have power to control its own currency, therefore losing monetary sovereignty to the Libra association.
- The Libra association was an association of private companies, QED.
And all of this brings me again to the point of how comments and videos are different. I made a comment, you made a comment, I made another one, and most people reading will watch the different viewpoints. If this was instead YouTube videos with millions of views, a lot of people would see the video title and take it as fact, another group would watch it and wouldn't care or wouldn't have the capacity to search for the opposing viewpoints, and only a minority (I think) would actually see the full debate. That's why I say that the standards should be different if your potential audience is bigger and they're less exposed to other viewpoints.
>It's funny because I explicitly said that writing a comment and talking to friends is way different from making a video or a podcast because of the audience you might have and the presence of counterpoints
What is happening with YouTube, is happening with Twitter and Facebook, so your arbitrary distinction between video and text is a distinction without meaning. Twitter was built for off-the-cuff comment-type communication and Facebook was built for sharing posts and content with close relations. And yet the exact same 'curation' is being done there as well. So no, I don't agree there is some magic difference between video and text.
>Finally, you took the one example where the evidential basis is exactly there!
NO it's not. You saying it doesn't make it so. You're impugning a motive on Facebook that you have no evidential support for. But that's not the salient point in this discussion, because your opinion about the level of evidence that you feel you bring to the argument is immaterial to social media 'curation'. What matters is what the minimum-wage, 20-something intern that is making an editorial decision feels about your post.
What is happening with YouTube, is happening with Twitter and Facebook, so your arbitrary distinction between video and text is a distinction without meaning. Twitter was built for off-the-cuff comment-type communication and Facebook was built for sharing posts and content with close relations. And yet the exact same 'curation' is being done there as well. So no, I don't agree there is some magic difference between video and text.
>Finally, you took the one example where the evidential basis is exactly there!
NO it's not. You saying it doesn't make it so. You're impugning a motive on Facebook that you have no evidential support for. But that's not the salient point in this discussion, because your opinion about the level of evidence that you feel you bring to the argument is immaterial to social media 'curation'. What matters is what the minimum-wage, 20-something intern that is making an editorial decision feels about your post.
> so your arbitrary distinction between video and text is a distinction without meaning.
I did not make a distinction between video and text, I made a distinction based on audiences and availability of counterpoints. I used those examples because they were the ones that the parent comment used. I do not know why you're talking about video and text.
> What matters is what the minimum-wage, 20-something intern that is making an editorial decision feels about your post.
And at what point did I say I was in favor of social media curation? I said people should try to avoid saying wrong things in their own content when that content has a large audience with counterpoints not readily visible.
I did not make a distinction between video and text, I made a distinction based on audiences and availability of counterpoints. I used those examples because they were the ones that the parent comment used. I do not know why you're talking about video and text.
> What matters is what the minimum-wage, 20-something intern that is making an editorial decision feels about your post.
And at what point did I say I was in favor of social media curation? I said people should try to avoid saying wrong things in their own content when that content has a large audience with counterpoints not readily visible.
“Virtue signaling”
Being a good person? No one needs to tell you anything again, you got it right the first time.
Being a good person? No one needs to tell you anything again, you got it right the first time.
I guess the difference between 2016 and 2020 outcomes is that democrats at least didn't create any ruckus during the power transfer from Obama to Trump .
Plus, since the Democrats did it , the Republicans have a right to create a bigger ruckus is not justified.
Also the Russian interference was more about social media influence rather than raising questions on election or voter integrity.
A lot of Trump supporters are openly coming out with arms these days , hence propagating rigged election claims is or so more dangerous.
>I guess the difference between 2016 and 2020 outcomes is that democrats at least didn't create any ruckus during the power transfer from Obama to Trump
Crossfire Hurricane wasn't enough of a ruckus?
It came out recently that Eric Swalwell was targeted by a Chinese spy, but cut ties after a 'defensive briefing' by the FBI. Hillary's campaign also received a 'defensive briefing' in 2015 when a foreign government tried to influence her campaign through a campaign associate. Trump's campaign never got one, instead FBI ordered an investigation on the flimsies grounds and outright lies to the FISA courts (and what turned out to be opo-research funded by the Hillary campaign and promulgating actual Russian disinformation)..
And then the next four years had Hillary going around saying explicitly that Trump is not a legitimate president - a claim not challenged by media and echoed by the Democrats. The media itself kept pushing the discredit Steele dossier throughout that time. So I do roll my eyes when political activists in the Democratic party and media are now all about 'election integrity' after what they did to the trust in the system over the last 4 years. And I'm not really worried about Trump bitching on Twitter and putting out lawsuits (as is his right), as some threat to Democracy.
Crossfire Hurricane wasn't enough of a ruckus?
It came out recently that Eric Swalwell was targeted by a Chinese spy, but cut ties after a 'defensive briefing' by the FBI. Hillary's campaign also received a 'defensive briefing' in 2015 when a foreign government tried to influence her campaign through a campaign associate. Trump's campaign never got one, instead FBI ordered an investigation on the flimsies grounds and outright lies to the FISA courts (and what turned out to be opo-research funded by the Hillary campaign and promulgating actual Russian disinformation)..
And then the next four years had Hillary going around saying explicitly that Trump is not a legitimate president - a claim not challenged by media and echoed by the Democrats. The media itself kept pushing the discredit Steele dossier throughout that time. So I do roll my eyes when political activists in the Democratic party and media are now all about 'election integrity' after what they did to the trust in the system over the last 4 years. And I'm not really worried about Trump bitching on Twitter and putting out lawsuits (as is his right), as some threat to Democracy.
He has the right to put out lawsuits. He looks like a buffoon, but he has the right.
He does not have the right to ask state governors to ignore the election results and appoint electors who will vote for Trump. That is far beyond the legitimate exercise of Trump's rights.
He does not have the right to ask state governors to ignore the election results and appoint electors who will vote for Trump. That is far beyond the legitimate exercise of Trump's rights.
>He does not have the right to ask state governors to ignore the election results and appoint electors who will vote for Trump. That is far beyond the legitimate exercise of Trump's rights.
I want you to step back and really consider the reporting on this by taking into context the kind of reporting of the behind-the-scene Trump Administration actions that came out of the media. And given that, I have no idea how you can possibly take this interpretation at face-value.
For the last 4 years, there has been an egregious claim after another, each more bonkers than the next, unverified, stemming from some 'anonymous sources' against Trump that has time and time again proven to be without merit. Every.single.week.
Just recently, a news cycle was devoted to the claim that Trump will barricade himself in the office if Biden wins. Just prior to the election, multiple news cycles were devoted to reporting on Trump destroying postal boxes to prevent mail-in voting. A little before that, Trump was accused of ignoring Russian bounties on American soldiers (another meritless claim that was disavowed by the the Taliban, Russian, American Intelligence and Army with no evidence presented by NYTimes). Again, this occurred every single week for the last 4 years.
And you don't even have an ounce of skepticism of reporting that Trump in a private conversation asked governors to break the law, given how this kind of stuff has been reported, time and time again?
The gaslighting of the last 4 years has been insane and the media is simply incapable of objective straight reporting on Trump. I know how that sounds, but that's what it is.
I want you to step back and really consider the reporting on this by taking into context the kind of reporting of the behind-the-scene Trump Administration actions that came out of the media. And given that, I have no idea how you can possibly take this interpretation at face-value.
For the last 4 years, there has been an egregious claim after another, each more bonkers than the next, unverified, stemming from some 'anonymous sources' against Trump that has time and time again proven to be without merit. Every.single.week.
Just recently, a news cycle was devoted to the claim that Trump will barricade himself in the office if Biden wins. Just prior to the election, multiple news cycles were devoted to reporting on Trump destroying postal boxes to prevent mail-in voting. A little before that, Trump was accused of ignoring Russian bounties on American soldiers (another meritless claim that was disavowed by the the Taliban, Russian, American Intelligence and Army with no evidence presented by NYTimes). Again, this occurred every single week for the last 4 years.
And you don't even have an ounce of skepticism of reporting that Trump in a private conversation asked governors to break the law, given how this kind of stuff has been reported, time and time again?
The gaslighting of the last 4 years has been insane and the media is simply incapable of objective straight reporting on Trump. I know how that sounds, but that's what it is.
Is that true? Doesn't he have the right to ask the governors to do this, or to ask them to buy him an ice cream, or to sing him a love song? They have the right to decline - he can't compel them to do anything.
Whether he should do it is a different question.
Whether he should do it is a different question.
Generally no, because trying to convince a state actor to break his own state's laws is criminal conspiracy (though the details are specific to each state). These states have laws about how elections are run, most/all of them criminalize election fraud, and none of them allow the legislature to select electors directly.
The theory here is that the US Constitution, because of wording in Article II ("Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors [...]") that if interpreted hyperspecifically[1] implies that the legislature alone, and not Governor or state law, has the power to appoint electors. That has never been tested in practice.
But regardless, it would still be a state crime to do it. So no, he doesn't have the right.
[1] Obviously the reasonable interpretation of this line is "States decide for themselves how to choose electors", not something that makes assumptions about the structure of state government.
The theory here is that the US Constitution, because of wording in Article II ("Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors [...]") that if interpreted hyperspecifically[1] implies that the legislature alone, and not Governor or state law, has the power to appoint electors. That has never been tested in practice.
But regardless, it would still be a state crime to do it. So no, he doesn't have the right.
[1] Obviously the reasonable interpretation of this line is "States decide for themselves how to choose electors", not something that makes assumptions about the structure of state government.
Very interesting, thank you.
Well, the courts have the legitimate authority to hear the cases. The governors do not have the legitimate authority to grant Trump's request. So filing lawsuits in court is a legitimate action in a way that the requests to governors are not.
Whether people have the right to request governors to perform illegitimate actions... that probably depends on your definition of "right", and I don't care very much about having that debate.
Whether people have the right to request governors to perform illegitimate actions... that probably depends on your definition of "right", and I don't care very much about having that debate.
Fair enough, I shouldn't have argued the semantics. I agree with your general point.
rayiner(1)
This is satire, correct?
Obama did not obstruct or delay transition of power. It was quite peaceful.
Trump clearly has not facilitated a good faith, peaceful transition of power.
And this matters - the 9/11 commission noted that the rushed transition due to Bush v Gore contributed to the intelligence lapses that lead to the attack. And that wasn't even a bad actor harming the transition like we have today.
Trump clearly has not facilitated a good faith, peaceful transition of power.
And this matters - the 9/11 commission noted that the rushed transition due to Bush v Gore contributed to the intelligence lapses that lead to the attack. And that wasn't even a bad actor harming the transition like we have today.
[deleted]
I remember the Mueller Report being kind of a big deal...
Dems didn't delay transition of power, but they did spend a huge amount of political capital trying to convince the country that Trump's victory was invalid or fraudulent.
Dems didn't delay transition of power, but they did spend a huge amount of political capital trying to convince the country that Trump's victory was invalid or fraudulent.
The Mueller investigation uncovered plenty of actual criminality.
Manafort (plea deal and convictions), Roger Stone (convicted on all counts), Cohen (plead guilty and convicted on multiple counts), Flynn (plead guilty to lying to the FBI, pardoned) are the big names.
All direct associates of Donald Trump, and all their criminality was for his benefit.
The main reason Donald Trump hasn't been charged with anything himself is because he is using the office of the presidency to shield himself. We will soon see if he can survive without a scratch without that shield.
Manafort (plea deal and convictions), Roger Stone (convicted on all counts), Cohen (plead guilty and convicted on multiple counts), Flynn (plead guilty to lying to the FBI, pardoned) are the big names.
All direct associates of Donald Trump, and all their criminality was for his benefit.
The main reason Donald Trump hasn't been charged with anything himself is because he is using the office of the presidency to shield himself. We will soon see if he can survive without a scratch without that shield.
> Dems didn't delay transition of power, but they did spend a huge amount of political capital trying to convince the country that Trump's victory was invalid or fraudulent.
No, they spent a lot of political capital on the idea that Trump was corrupt and aided by foreign powers, basically no Democrats (in national office, at least) seriously advanced the case that Trump's election was either invalid or fraudulent (that his conduct, including conduct after the election, warranted impeachment and removal, yes, but that's a very different case than the election being fraudulent or invalid.)
As a parallel with subordinate offices, Democrats generally think Barr is a bad attorney-general, and his appointment was a result of improper motives, and some have made calls that he should be impeached, but none have claimed his appointment is invalid.
On the other hand, Chad Wolf’s appointment as Acting Secretary of Homeland Security has been described and challenged as invalid (and, in fact, found to be so by courts, invalidating official acts dependent on his appointment to that position.)
There is a difference between acheiving an office by unethical means, or having bad conduct warranting removal from office, on one hand and illegitimately claiming office on the other hand. You are improperly conflating accusations of the former with accusations of the latter.
No, they spent a lot of political capital on the idea that Trump was corrupt and aided by foreign powers, basically no Democrats (in national office, at least) seriously advanced the case that Trump's election was either invalid or fraudulent (that his conduct, including conduct after the election, warranted impeachment and removal, yes, but that's a very different case than the election being fraudulent or invalid.)
As a parallel with subordinate offices, Democrats generally think Barr is a bad attorney-general, and his appointment was a result of improper motives, and some have made calls that he should be impeached, but none have claimed his appointment is invalid.
On the other hand, Chad Wolf’s appointment as Acting Secretary of Homeland Security has been described and challenged as invalid (and, in fact, found to be so by courts, invalidating official acts dependent on his appointment to that position.)
There is a difference between acheiving an office by unethical means, or having bad conduct warranting removal from office, on one hand and illegitimately claiming office on the other hand. You are improperly conflating accusations of the former with accusations of the latter.
pupppet(2)
[deleted]
The content being taken down isn't just harmful in theory, or from the perspective of one political party. It kills people.
https://www.wired.com/story/christchurch-shooter-youtube-rad...
Of course, if YouTube (and others) actually cared about helping, they would change or remove their algorithmic feed, which is the real crux of the problem. But that hits their bottom line more than pulling down individual pieces of content does, so here we are.
https://www.wired.com/story/christchurch-shooter-youtube-rad...
Of course, if YouTube (and others) actually cared about helping, they would change or remove their algorithmic feed, which is the real crux of the problem. But that hits their bottom line more than pulling down individual pieces of content does, so here we are.
The problem is not just that the Russians tried to interfere with our election. It's that President Trump openly invited their illegal meddling and likely conspired with them and then tried to drop sanctions on then after the election
There was an investigation taking years and several million dollars that was politically motivated to prove that was true. The investigation couldn't prove it.
I know that for a lot of people the report ended up getting reduced down to a handful of 2-4 sound bites but there isn’t a single word in the parent post that is incorrect. The reality is that the report was almost 500 pages of nuance. This seems like an ok overview https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report
What underpins the visceral emotions you feel? If you're entitled to rant on the Internet, if you feel some payoff to that, don't you think someone is entitled to "virtue signal?" Isn't "virtual signaling" just, "someone else's passion about something, but that something is just not something I personally feel passionate about?"
The current Tech Companies news narratives makes no logical sense to me. Here is why:
We were told that Russia interfered in 2016 elections and helped to elect Trump. Now, we are told that 2020 elections were of the highest integrity. Why wouldn't Russia interfere in 2020 elections? Were they scared of Trump administration? But wait, we were told that Trump was Russian puppet, so they would be scared of him, right? So again, why wouldn't Russia interfere in 2020 elections? Or did Russia interfered in 2020 election, "just as they did in 2016", and elected Biden this time?
In short, Tech Media narrative does not make sense to me. And all censorship eventually fails, just take a look at the Fall of Socialism in the Soviet Union.
We were told that Russia interfered in 2016 elections and helped to elect Trump. Now, we are told that 2020 elections were of the highest integrity. Why wouldn't Russia interfere in 2020 elections? Were they scared of Trump administration? But wait, we were told that Trump was Russian puppet, so they would be scared of him, right? So again, why wouldn't Russia interfere in 2020 elections? Or did Russia interfered in 2020 election, "just as they did in 2016", and elected Biden this time?
In short, Tech Media narrative does not make sense to me. And all censorship eventually fails, just take a look at the Fall of Socialism in the Soviet Union.
> the entire Democratic party, with media allies, promulgated for the last 4 years and pressured social media leadership to adopt as well.
Democrats have claimed pretty every election for the last 20 years has been stolen, or at least could have been stolen, due to dominion's voting machines having the ability to flip votes undetected. Bev Harris's book Black Box Voting literally came out in 2003.[1]
Now apparently not only was this election the first not to have been stolen, but it's not even a possibility that something like that could happen. Go figure.
[1] https://blackboxvoting.org/
Democrats have claimed pretty every election for the last 20 years has been stolen, or at least could have been stolen, due to dominion's voting machines having the ability to flip votes undetected. Bev Harris's book Black Box Voting literally came out in 2003.[1]
Now apparently not only was this election the first not to have been stolen, but it's not even a possibility that something like that could happen. Go figure.
[1] https://blackboxvoting.org/
I'm with you bro. We are numbered 100-to-1 in forums like this where it's very kitschy to unknowingly assent to facist censorship.
I love that you mention Joe Rogan. He's one of the leading Progressives that is bringing up how hypocrticial censorship has in Big Tech.
Everybody knows how absurd censorship has gotten in the last decade –– most noticably since Trump was elected.
I love that you mention Joe Rogan. He's one of the leading Progressives that is bringing up how hypocrticial censorship has in Big Tech.
Everybody knows how absurd censorship has gotten in the last decade –– most noticably since Trump was elected.
It's weird to me that we still have people that still cling to the idea that censorship and curation of content is always evil and every site on the Internet should allow completely unmoderated speech, when we've seen over and over and over that such sites always devolve into festering echo-chambers of hatred and racism. Always. Every time.
Not only are you conveniently ignoring that reality, but you're also ignoring the fact that humans are humans. False information is much more powerful than true information, and "making up your own mind" is simply not possible when you are bombarded with orders of magnitude more false information that has been carefully constructed and self-selected to misinform you and appeal to your emotions.
Stop. Just stop. You're not helping. You're not enlightened. You're part of the problem.
Not only are you conveniently ignoring that reality, but you're also ignoring the fact that humans are humans. False information is much more powerful than true information, and "making up your own mind" is simply not possible when you are bombarded with orders of magnitude more false information that has been carefully constructed and self-selected to misinform you and appeal to your emotions.
Stop. Just stop. You're not helping. You're not enlightened. You're part of the problem.
"It's weird to me that we still have people that still cling to the idea that censorship and curation of content is always evil and every site on the Internet should allow completely unmoderated speech, when we've seen over and over and over that such sites always devolve into festering echo-chambers of hatred and racism. Always. Every time."
I'd find your comment much more interesting if you actually argued against the OP's point rather than this strawman.
I'd find your comment much more interesting if you actually argued against the OP's point rather than this strawman.
"False information is much more powerful than true information"
So apparently you believe individuals aren't capable of responsibly enjoying freedom, and thus should concede automomy of thought to the elite for what information they can consume or spread?
Some people can't handle their alchohol, but prohibiting the sale of alcohol didn't solve the probelm. Some individuals have problems, so the way to deal with that is at the individual level. Sorry the solution doesn't scale well. Freedom is great, but it's kind of expensive.
So apparently you believe individuals aren't capable of responsibly enjoying freedom, and thus should concede automomy of thought to the elite for what information they can consume or spread?
Some people can't handle their alchohol, but prohibiting the sale of alcohol didn't solve the probelm. Some individuals have problems, so the way to deal with that is at the individual level. Sorry the solution doesn't scale well. Freedom is great, but it's kind of expensive.
Targeted misinformation campaigns are capable of destroying freedom just as easily as any authoritarian government -- in fact the former is always a tool of the latter. Therefore I can rephrase your last sentence as "Freedom is great, but it comes at the cost of freedom."
People choose to consume alcohol knowing it will get them drunk. People do not choose to be lied to. A better analogy is saying that the government should not attempt to regulate what companies put in the food they sell, because then I must believe individuals aren't capable of self-determining what is or is not safe for them to eat. Correct: I do not believe in "buyer beware" for food nor for facts.
People choose to consume alcohol knowing it will get them drunk. People do not choose to be lied to. A better analogy is saying that the government should not attempt to regulate what companies put in the food they sell, because then I must believe individuals aren't capable of self-determining what is or is not safe for them to eat. Correct: I do not believe in "buyer beware" for food nor for facts.
> It's weird to me that we still have people that still cling to the idea that censorship and curation of content is always evil and every site on the Internet should allow completely unmoderated speech
No, not every site. But just as we have some public forums in the real world (not all, or even most "festering echo-chambers of hatred and racism"), we should have some on the internet.
> Not only are you conveniently ignoring that reality, but you're also ignoring the fact that humans are humans.
This reminds of arguing with objectivists who think that everything they believe flows from "A is A". I do agree that humans are humans, I'm glad we found some common ground here. Presumably you are human as well. But you are not concerned that what you believe is the result of "false information that has been carefully constructed and self-selected to misinform you and appeal to your emotions". It's only other humans who are vulnerable to this, and you need to protect them from it, for their own good.
> Stop. Just stop. You're not helping. You're not enlightened. You're part of the problem.
No, not every site. But just as we have some public forums in the real world (not all, or even most "festering echo-chambers of hatred and racism"), we should have some on the internet.
> Not only are you conveniently ignoring that reality, but you're also ignoring the fact that humans are humans.
This reminds of arguing with objectivists who think that everything they believe flows from "A is A". I do agree that humans are humans, I'm glad we found some common ground here. Presumably you are human as well. But you are not concerned that what you believe is the result of "false information that has been carefully constructed and self-selected to misinform you and appeal to your emotions". It's only other humans who are vulnerable to this, and you need to protect them from it, for their own good.
> Stop. Just stop. You're not helping. You're not enlightened. You're part of the problem.
And who determines what is true? Do I get to censor Obama when he claimed 'if you like your healthcare, you can keep it' (rated 'lie of the year' by politifact btw)?
When you start down this path, you will quickly find yourself amongst a nest of vipers.
You're comparing falsehoods with hate and racism--I don't think that's a fair comparison. YouTube has always had rules around hate speech, and that generally has not been controversial.
When you start down this path, you will quickly find yourself amongst a nest of vipers.
You're comparing falsehoods with hate and racism--I don't think that's a fair comparison. YouTube has always had rules around hate speech, and that generally has not been controversial.
Those are some extraordinary sweeping claims you've made with exactly zero evidence to back them up.
Can you show that a significant % of the public/swing voters or sitting out 'Dems' swayed by Russia?
Most Democratic political workers would tell you that Comey and the emails is the #1 factor. It amplified built in brand of Clinton corruption and Comey broke long standing policy at basically the perfect time to do perfect damage.
Sure some of this was amplified by Russia but I don't know a single professional that would say Russia had a larger impact than the emails/Comey.
Most Democratic political workers would tell you that Comey and the emails is the #1 factor. It amplified built in brand of Clinton corruption and Comey broke long standing policy at basically the perfect time to do perfect damage.
Sure some of this was amplified by Russia but I don't know a single professional that would say Russia had a larger impact than the emails/Comey.
You can’t separate the two easily because the DNC email hack and “DCLeaks” front group was attributed to Russia by the U.S. intelligence community, as extensively covered in the Mueller report, and a large amount of social media activity around both email stories and other topics was conducted by the Russian Internet Research Agency. Comey had more significance but the flurry of allegations had more than minor involvement of Russian assets and people weren’t reacting to just one detail but the whole barrage. Pizzagate is still around now and that started with the Russian spearphisher who got Podesta’s emails.
Sorry to be clear I was talking about Hillary Clinton's misuse of private email as SoS. Didn't involve Russia to my knowledge - though I would not be surprised most larger nation states hacked there way in.
Sure Russia probably amplified it but it was wall to wall across ALL media a few days before the election - when undecideds are going to vote. And the big damage from the first hit.
The corruption, thinks she is above the rules, tarmac with Lynch etc. That hit really hard with the small slice of swing voters and maybe more importantly reduced turnout from Ds
I don't think anyone who would believe pizza gate would ever vote for Hillary lol e.g. not a swing voter to begin with
Sure Russia probably amplified it but it was wall to wall across ALL media a few days before the election - when undecideds are going to vote. And the big damage from the first hit.
The corruption, thinks she is above the rules, tarmac with Lynch etc. That hit really hard with the small slice of swing voters and maybe more importantly reduced turnout from Ds
I don't think anyone who would believe pizza gate would ever vote for Hillary lol e.g. not a swing voter to begin with
Sorry, my response needed to better clarify with a complicated mess like this. The idea I was trying to get at with “both email stories” was the attempts to blur everything together - trying to use the DNC email acknowledgment to lend credibility to all of the other stories. There were a lot of self-proclaimed infosec experts posting about how disqualifying it was.
I completely agree that Comey bringing it back into the front page played a bigger role but I wouldn’t rule out all of the social media trolling having more than a little influence. It seemed to leave a lot of reporters covering non-stories lest they be accused of bias again.
I completely agree that Comey bringing it back into the front page played a bigger role but I wouldn’t rule out all of the social media trolling having more than a little influence. It seemed to leave a lot of reporters covering non-stories lest they be accused of bias again.
Since when is youtube the gatekeeper of truth? Why is it upon Youtube to intentionally choose to do this? Moral obligation? Road to hell is paved with good intentions.
If you scroll through the comments here, you will undoubtedly come across some that simply say, "[flagged]".
You probably won't see many claims that Hacker News is censoring anything. That's because what is happening is not "censorship", but "moderation".
That is also the case with YouTube removing content. It is not "censorship", but "moderation".
It doesn't feel like moderation though, does it?
YouTube is not like a forum where a short public list of users make the decision to remove a comment. We're talking about a private list of employees removing videos, probably even indirectly via algorithms; and very few alternative places to post videos.
Those who are worried about YouTube "censoring" political discourse should already be worried about YouTube "moderating" discourse in general. What we really need are alternative platforms, each with different moderation goals.
You probably won't see many claims that Hacker News is censoring anything. That's because what is happening is not "censorship", but "moderation".
That is also the case with YouTube removing content. It is not "censorship", but "moderation".
It doesn't feel like moderation though, does it?
YouTube is not like a forum where a short public list of users make the decision to remove a comment. We're talking about a private list of employees removing videos, probably even indirectly via algorithms; and very few alternative places to post videos.
Those who are worried about YouTube "censoring" political discourse should already be worried about YouTube "moderating" discourse in general. What we really need are alternative platforms, each with different moderation goals.
We are very fortunate to have the algorithms, employees & management of Youtube/Google watching out for us. We're not intelligent enough to view a video and decide for ourselves what is fact v. propaganda v. entertainment. Hopefully some day we will have the same protections the CCP gives its people with even more content moderation. Thank you Google - you're the nanny the American people and the world always hoped for.
Once again a thread about censorship invites comments that ignore the nuance of the situation. Having companies dictate what information is widely accessible is dangerous for democracy. Having the sitting president make completely baseless claims in an effort to delegitimize the results of an election because it didn’t go his way is also dangerous for democracy. That’s what we call a tricky situation. We don’t have an easy solution.
What's tricky about it?
Regarding the former situation, the president is one person with clear, self-serving motives. His actions are constantly examined under the critical eyes of the media and his political opposition. The public itself can also use social media to provide additional scrutiny (with varying degrees of quality and professionalism).
The public has to search through garbage to find the truth. It's all easy to access, but there's a lot to go through.
In the prior situation, businesses are trying to denying the public access to provide scrutiny based solely on the content of the message, regardless of quality. Those same businesses also happen to facilitate content discovery for the overwhelming majority of internet users. There are still political opponents and a few media organizations which might broadcast the message, but it will unquestioningly reach a much smaller audience.
The public still has to search through garbage to find the truth. Now, though, some of it is much harder to access.
Neither is good, but the prior situation sounds much worse to me.
Regarding the former situation, the president is one person with clear, self-serving motives. His actions are constantly examined under the critical eyes of the media and his political opposition. The public itself can also use social media to provide additional scrutiny (with varying degrees of quality and professionalism).
The public has to search through garbage to find the truth. It's all easy to access, but there's a lot to go through.
In the prior situation, businesses are trying to denying the public access to provide scrutiny based solely on the content of the message, regardless of quality. Those same businesses also happen to facilitate content discovery for the overwhelming majority of internet users. There are still political opponents and a few media organizations which might broadcast the message, but it will unquestioningly reach a much smaller audience.
The public still has to search through garbage to find the truth. Now, though, some of it is much harder to access.
Neither is good, but the prior situation sounds much worse to me.
> What's tricky about it? ... The public has to search through garbage to find the truth.
"The public" is not some perfectly rational collection of human beings. Rather, it's droves of people susceptible to propaganda and misinformation campaigns.
Let's be clear: there was no widespread election fraud, certainly not by large enough margins to overturn the election. Videos that purport otherwise are not improving public discourse; in fact, they're causing it to disintegrate.
I agree that Youtube should not have carte blanche to remove content that it finds objectionable per its own capricious standards. But that doesn't mean it should have no discretion at all. Truth seeking must be grounded in reality; these spurious claims of fraud are not.
"The public" is not some perfectly rational collection of human beings. Rather, it's droves of people susceptible to propaganda and misinformation campaigns.
Let's be clear: there was no widespread election fraud, certainly not by large enough margins to overturn the election. Videos that purport otherwise are not improving public discourse; in fact, they're causing it to disintegrate.
I agree that Youtube should not have carte blanche to remove content that it finds objectionable per its own capricious standards. But that doesn't mean it should have no discretion at all. Truth seeking must be grounded in reality; these spurious claims of fraud are not.
> "The public" is not some perfectly rational collection of human beings. Rather, it's droves of people susceptible to propaganda and misinformation campaigns.
Correct.
> Let's be clear: there was no widespread election fraud, certainly not by large enough margins to overturn the election.
I am not 100% committed to that being an impossibility, but I have yet to see any evidence to make me question the final outcome of the 2020 US election. I'm legitimately concerned about small scale voter fraud, but nothing significant enough to invalidate the final result.
> Videos that purport otherwise are not improving public discourse; in fact, they're causing it to disintegrate.
I agree. But far be it from me to determine what constitutes "quality public discourse". I have a history of being wrong about a great many things so I'd rather not have myself - or any individual or organization - arbitrate on what the public is allowed to discuss.
> I agree that Youtube should not have carte blanche to remove content that it finds objectionable per its own capricious standards. But that doesn't mean it should have no discretion at all.
Maybe I'd be less critical of Goolge if they actually had some sort of guidelines for objectively determining what content should be allowed on their platforms. This inconsistent "whatever we think is best" policy strategy is way too susceptible to abuse and Google hasn't proven themselves trustworthy.
Correct.
> Let's be clear: there was no widespread election fraud, certainly not by large enough margins to overturn the election.
I am not 100% committed to that being an impossibility, but I have yet to see any evidence to make me question the final outcome of the 2020 US election. I'm legitimately concerned about small scale voter fraud, but nothing significant enough to invalidate the final result.
> Videos that purport otherwise are not improving public discourse; in fact, they're causing it to disintegrate.
I agree. But far be it from me to determine what constitutes "quality public discourse". I have a history of being wrong about a great many things so I'd rather not have myself - or any individual or organization - arbitrate on what the public is allowed to discuss.
> I agree that Youtube should not have carte blanche to remove content that it finds objectionable per its own capricious standards. But that doesn't mean it should have no discretion at all.
Maybe I'd be less critical of Goolge if they actually had some sort of guidelines for objectively determining what content should be allowed on their platforms. This inconsistent "whatever we think is best" policy strategy is way too susceptible to abuse and Google hasn't proven themselves trustworthy.
> I am not 100% committed to that being an impossibility, but I have yet to see any evidence to make me question the final outcome of the 2020 US election.
It's impossible to be 100% certain about anything. Scientists often quote a 95% confidence interval. Why not the a 100% confidence interval? Because that would be the real number line.
> But far be it from me to determine what constitutes "quality public discourse".
Fortunately, you don't need to determine the cutoff. Fact-free conspiracies are so far removed from "quality public discourse" as to render the issue irrelevant.
> Maybe I'd be less critical of Google if they actually had some sort of guidelines for objectively determining what content should be allowed on their platforms.
I absolutely agree that transparency is the best practice here; but until there's evidence of abuse, I'm not going to assume the process is abusive. And even then, I'll weigh the harm done by YouTube vs the harm done by the conspiracy theorists.
It's impossible to be 100% certain about anything. Scientists often quote a 95% confidence interval. Why not the a 100% confidence interval? Because that would be the real number line.
> But far be it from me to determine what constitutes "quality public discourse".
Fortunately, you don't need to determine the cutoff. Fact-free conspiracies are so far removed from "quality public discourse" as to render the issue irrelevant.
> Maybe I'd be less critical of Google if they actually had some sort of guidelines for objectively determining what content should be allowed on their platforms.
I absolutely agree that transparency is the best practice here; but until there's evidence of abuse, I'm not going to assume the process is abusive. And even then, I'll weigh the harm done by YouTube vs the harm done by the conspiracy theorists.
> Fortunately, you don't need to determine the cutoff. Fact-free conspiracies are so far removed from "quality public discourse" as to render the issue irrelevant.
What bodies of evidence count as "facts" and how much is necessary to surpass the "fact free" threshold?
> I absolutely agree that transparency is the best practice here; but until there's evidence of abuse, I'm not going to assume the process is abusive.
Google has a sordid history of suppressing information and ideas. Suppressing critisisms of jihad[0] and of course project Dragonfly to name a couple examples offhand.
[0] https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/2017/08/02/google-mani...
What bodies of evidence count as "facts" and how much is necessary to surpass the "fact free" threshold?
> I absolutely agree that transparency is the best practice here; but until there's evidence of abuse, I'm not going to assume the process is abusive.
Google has a sordid history of suppressing information and ideas. Suppressing critisisms of jihad[0] and of course project Dragonfly to name a couple examples offhand.
[0] https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/2017/08/02/google-mani...
>I am not 100% committed to that being an impossibility, but I have yet to see any evidence to make me question the final outcome of the 2020 US election.
Are you also 100% not committed to the 1969 moon landing being an impossibility? Big Foot?
There's no evidence of wide spread voter fraud, there's lots of a wide spread fair election occurring.
The burden of proof is on the accuser, because "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." To say you can't be sure fraud didn't change the outcome of the election at this point is ridiculous, and is exactly why youtube is banning such opinions.
Are you also 100% not committed to the 1969 moon landing being an impossibility? Big Foot?
There's no evidence of wide spread voter fraud, there's lots of a wide spread fair election occurring.
The burden of proof is on the accuser, because "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." To say you can't be sure fraud didn't change the outcome of the election at this point is ridiculous, and is exactly why youtube is banning such opinions.
> Are you also 100% not committed to the 1969 moon landing being an impossibility? Big Foot?
There are obvious incentives and a huge, immediate payout for using voter fraud to overturn an election result. And voter fraud is an old, recurring phenomena - even if you only consider the history of the US elections[0].
On top of that, we're talking about an event from barely a month ago. The Russian collusion thing from the 2016 election went on for years.
While I would be astounded if the voter fraud investigations yielded sufficient evidence to overthrow the election results, you'll have to forgive me for not outright rejecting that potential. Of course, I would also be extremely skeptical if that did happen.
Besides, why do we have to be 100% committed to anything right now?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas
There are obvious incentives and a huge, immediate payout for using voter fraud to overturn an election result. And voter fraud is an old, recurring phenomena - even if you only consider the history of the US elections[0].
On top of that, we're talking about an event from barely a month ago. The Russian collusion thing from the 2016 election went on for years.
While I would be astounded if the voter fraud investigations yielded sufficient evidence to overthrow the election results, you'll have to forgive me for not outright rejecting that potential. Of course, I would also be extremely skeptical if that did happen.
Besides, why do we have to be 100% committed to anything right now?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas
I thought of the Russia collusion story too. It's pretty much this narrative in reverse: our election was stolen + invented facts. anybody who believes that the pee tape was real ought to be able to make the logical jump to believing that Biden stole the election because there's exactly the same amount of evidence for both.
The US has become so incredibly partisan though, that both sides literally experience different realities. The same people that believe the pee tape is real will scream for censorship of Trump's lies and vice versa.
The US has become so incredibly partisan though, that both sides literally experience different realities. The same people that believe the pee tape is real will scream for censorship of Trump's lies and vice versa.
Some theories are more falsifiable than others. The theory that there was fraud on a scale large enough to swing this election should be falsifiable in any sane, working electoral system. In parts of the US, however, I'm less confident, since in some cases it doesn't seem possible to disprove the theory that an individual vote was fraudulent. Hence the problem: anyone saying it's impossible is just as deluded as the person saying the election was stolen. The system is broken.
As a non American your voting process is insane, I am not sure how you all trust it. No ids, mailed ballots and not even identifiers after voting.
As an American, you're absolutely right.
Both parties have dumb justifications for why they think the voting system should stay the way it is, but the reality is simply that the person/party in charge has no incentive to overhaul the system that go them there. They call foul and make a big fuss when the system doesn't work in their favor, but then they don't have the power to fix it. They've realized it's easier to just undermine the legitimacy of the winner and just patiently wait for the next opportunity.
I wish I knew what it would take to get the support necessary to fix it without endorsement from a political party.
Both parties have dumb justifications for why they think the voting system should stay the way it is, but the reality is simply that the person/party in charge has no incentive to overhaul the system that go them there. They call foul and make a big fuss when the system doesn't work in their favor, but then they don't have the power to fix it. They've realized it's easier to just undermine the legitimacy of the winner and just patiently wait for the next opportunity.
I wish I knew what it would take to get the support necessary to fix it without endorsement from a political party.
My country had similar issues, it took a right man at the head of election commission to reform it. We lucked out, I think something similar would be the only way out.
As an Australian, I need no ID to vote in any elections. I can just turn up at any polling place, tell them my name & address, and they hand me the forms and mark me as having voted.
There is nothing stopping me doing this again at a different polling place on the same day, but it would trigger an investigation if my name was marked at multiple polling booths.
And yet, there is basically no electoral fraud at all. In each election, this happens less than 10 times nationally with a population of 25M ppl.
It turns out to be forgetful senior citizens more often than fraudulent voters.
There is nothing stopping me doing this again at a different polling place on the same day, but it would trigger an investigation if my name was marked at multiple polling booths.
And yet, there is basically no electoral fraud at all. In each election, this happens less than 10 times nationally with a population of 25M ppl.
It turns out to be forgetful senior citizens more often than fraudulent voters.
[deleted]
What happens if someone gives a fake name and address? or of a random person?
The electoral roll is simply made up of legal names and addresses in each electorate.
Your name must be on the roll, or you can't vote. So fake names wont work. Nor will a name without the correct address.
If you turn up and your name/address combo is already crossed out, you will be given some sort of provisional ballot, while an investigation is started.
It would be trivial to learn someones address and turn up at a booth in their electorate early to vote in their name, but the irregularity would be obvious.
Also, it is very difficult to stay off the electoral roll or have an incorrect address, because most interactions with a government agency will automatically update it. ie: get or change drivers license details or get a passport, or enroll you kids in school etc.
You may be purged from the roll if another person legitimately enrolls at an address you used to be enrolled at, but this will be picked up quickly in practice when you change your address for any official paperwork.
Your name must be on the roll, or you can't vote. So fake names wont work. Nor will a name without the correct address.
If you turn up and your name/address combo is already crossed out, you will be given some sort of provisional ballot, while an investigation is started.
It would be trivial to learn someones address and turn up at a booth in their electorate early to vote in their name, but the irregularity would be obvious.
Also, it is very difficult to stay off the electoral roll or have an incorrect address, because most interactions with a government agency will automatically update it. ie: get or change drivers license details or get a passport, or enroll you kids in school etc.
You may be purged from the roll if another person legitimately enrolls at an address you used to be enrolled at, but this will be picked up quickly in practice when you change your address for any official paperwork.
I can't find the comment now, but someone pointed out that misinformation and propaganda used to be a tool that only the local (national) government could use at scale, so teaching citizens how to identify misinformation and propaganda wasn't something prioritized in schools (lest you be considered 'anti-american'). With the internet and the current state of social media, suddenly anyone can broadcast any message they want at scale, including foreign governments.
I agree that humans and "the public" are not perfectly rational people. BUT, I don't know that any system that does not treat them as such is any better. Then systems put in place by people who think they DO know better are never sustainable and are corruptible by all influences that corrupt any form of power
> BUT, I don't know that any system that does not treat them as such is any better.
In all of the civilized world, people are assumed to not be knowledgable about a myriad of problem domains such that only licensed professional can exercises certain classes of judgement.
You are not considered to be rational enough to determine what kind of chemotherapy you get, just to name an example of all sorts of prescription medicines.
You are not assumed knowledgeable about architecting a building, a car, investing, or all licensed occupations where it turns out that bad opinions can kill people by the millions.
So no, effectively we assume by default that people are mostly dumb and dangerous and we raise high bars of qualification for anything in society where there is a potential for huge damage from bad decisions.
In all of the civilized world, people are assumed to not be knowledgable about a myriad of problem domains such that only licensed professional can exercises certain classes of judgement.
You are not considered to be rational enough to determine what kind of chemotherapy you get, just to name an example of all sorts of prescription medicines.
You are not assumed knowledgeable about architecting a building, a car, investing, or all licensed occupations where it turns out that bad opinions can kill people by the millions.
So no, effectively we assume by default that people are mostly dumb and dangerous and we raise high bars of qualification for anything in society where there is a potential for huge damage from bad decisions.
...but your examples are completely unrelated to the conversation we're having here. Censoring content to millions of people is in no way similar to requiring a dentist to be properly trained and licensed.
All are examples of social assumptions that people are not qualified enough to evaluate evidence at face value without a substantial background in specialized knowledge.
If you claim that there's voting fraud and it turns out I'm not knowledgeable enough to evaluate that claim at face value, as a society we have a problem, just like a lot of the misinformation that leads to the voting public to support policies for erroneous reasons.
That's pretty much the basis for representative democracies (disregarding whether they're effective at it or not): choosing experts who have the time and inclination to decide policies that you would otherwise not be able to evaluate effectively on your own.
Edit: to cite a clear example: climate science is not a field where laymen can make useful opinions, although it's a field where anyone with a high-school level education can follow the reasoning behind the conclusions reached by the experts. And yet we have a political party that attempts to deny and politicize this topic without even a hint of qualifications to do so, and nonexperts believing that their opinions are useful, or a reflection of reality.
If you claim that there's voting fraud and it turns out I'm not knowledgeable enough to evaluate that claim at face value, as a society we have a problem, just like a lot of the misinformation that leads to the voting public to support policies for erroneous reasons.
That's pretty much the basis for representative democracies (disregarding whether they're effective at it or not): choosing experts who have the time and inclination to decide policies that you would otherwise not be able to evaluate effectively on your own.
Edit: to cite a clear example: climate science is not a field where laymen can make useful opinions, although it's a field where anyone with a high-school level education can follow the reasoning behind the conclusions reached by the experts. And yet we have a political party that attempts to deny and politicize this topic without even a hint of qualifications to do so, and nonexperts believing that their opinions are useful, or a reflection of reality.
What if Youtube were a truly bad actor. (genuinely, a theoretical) and were working to actively censor the truth? What would be the right response here?
Were Youtube truly acting in bad faith, the correct response would be for the government to intervene (either by lawsuit or legislation). But of course, the government should respond to actual harms, not hypothetical harms.
That's an interesting response. I started my first comment by playing devil's advocate with myself. I'm almost a free speech absolutist, but I also really hate all the crazy, conspiratorial thinking that is so common these days. It puts me odds with myself. I can't say I'm sad when crazy and dangerous ideas are removed from the internet. However, I think it's clear to see how this could be abused. A system where the "right" ideas are allowed depends on the people in charge having the "right" ideas. When such things are possible, the pendulum swings quickly. (ie, if the government could really truly censor, imagine how the kind of censorship would differ between a red and blue administration.)
And, this is part of the problem: can you trust the government to decide what sort of speech is appropriate. I don't mean now, with regards to this particular issue. I mean every time this problem crops up for the next 50 to 100 years. It relies on the same theoretical. What if instead, it's the company which is telling the truth, but the government which is malicious, and wants to censor them?
And, this is part of the problem: can you trust the government to decide what sort of speech is appropriate. I don't mean now, with regards to this particular issue. I mean every time this problem crops up for the next 50 to 100 years. It relies on the same theoretical. What if instead, it's the company which is telling the truth, but the government which is malicious, and wants to censor them?
> What if instead, it's the company which is telling the truth, but the government which is malicious, and wants to censor them?
This is not hypothetical, you can see this in many countries today like North Korea, Iran, India, etc.
Government censorship is extremely dangerous because it is backed by the power of the state. ISP censorship is extremely dangerous because there are very few options and circumvention requires expensive physical infrastructure. YouTube not allowing certain videos on their site… doesn’t seem to me to warrant these histrionics, since there are multiple other channels for video distribution (Vimeo, Twitch, Dailymotion, BitChute, Periscope, Twitter, and Facebook all come to mind off the top of my head). And, if there were no other channels for video distribution, a $5/mo server gets you one of your own.
Is it a huge bummer that we can’t have nice things and that the ‘free marketplace of ideas’ concept is fraying at the edges? Yes. Is this the end of the world, or even a slippery slope to a dystopia? Seems pretty unlikely. Distributors have always been allowed to choose what they will and won‘t carry; Barnes & Noble won’t sell books published by Amazon[0], and you know what you can do? Just buy them at Amazon. YouTube won’t carry your video? Fine, post it somewhere else.
[0] https://business.time.com/2012/02/06/in-latest-moves-barnes-...
This is not hypothetical, you can see this in many countries today like North Korea, Iran, India, etc.
Government censorship is extremely dangerous because it is backed by the power of the state. ISP censorship is extremely dangerous because there are very few options and circumvention requires expensive physical infrastructure. YouTube not allowing certain videos on their site… doesn’t seem to me to warrant these histrionics, since there are multiple other channels for video distribution (Vimeo, Twitch, Dailymotion, BitChute, Periscope, Twitter, and Facebook all come to mind off the top of my head). And, if there were no other channels for video distribution, a $5/mo server gets you one of your own.
Is it a huge bummer that we can’t have nice things and that the ‘free marketplace of ideas’ concept is fraying at the edges? Yes. Is this the end of the world, or even a slippery slope to a dystopia? Seems pretty unlikely. Distributors have always been allowed to choose what they will and won‘t carry; Barnes & Noble won’t sell books published by Amazon[0], and you know what you can do? Just buy them at Amazon. YouTube won’t carry your video? Fine, post it somewhere else.
[0] https://business.time.com/2012/02/06/in-latest-moves-barnes-...
> I'm almost a free speech absolutist, but I also really hate all the crazy, conspiratorial thinking that is so common these days. It puts me odds with myself. I can't say I'm sad when crazy and dangerous ideas are removed from the internet. However, I think it's clear to see how this could be abused. A system where the "right" ideas are allowed depends on the people in charge having the "right" ideas.
On the other hand, I'm not a free speech absolutist (obviously) because I don't trust other people to behave reasonably. But if everyone were perfectly rational, I probably would be; and maybe you and I are rational enough that we can handle "dangerous" ideas without succumbing to emotional manipulation (but then again, maybe not). However, while perhaps we can watch a purposefully mis-informative video, evaluate the merits of those claims, and dismiss them out of hand, do you trust everyone else to do the same?
That isn't to say you or I should be the arbiter of truth, but there should be some bare minimum standard. In my mind, there are two pillars for public discourse:
1. Facts, upon which arguments are based.
2. Deductive/inductive arguments, which appeal to values.
Obviously different people will have different values, so they will evaluate the weight of the arguments differently; however, facts are facts -- those should be the common ground. When someone denies reality by positing conspiracies without meaningful evidence, public discourse is impossible.
> What if instead, it's the company which is telling the truth, but the government which is malicious, and wants to censor them?
If the government is malicious, the correct response is voting. Unlimited free speech won't help: a malicious government could censor free speech; or a malicious government could promote un-truths with as much weight as truths, transforming "matters of fact" into "matters of opinion".
(As an aside, I'm nearly a democracy absolutist despite my distaste for free speech absolutism. While that might seem contradictory, democracy thrives in public discourse, and unlimited free speech can hamper that: think Citizen's United, where money can give someone an outsized influence; or conspiracies, which deny facts.)
On the other hand, I'm not a free speech absolutist (obviously) because I don't trust other people to behave reasonably. But if everyone were perfectly rational, I probably would be; and maybe you and I are rational enough that we can handle "dangerous" ideas without succumbing to emotional manipulation (but then again, maybe not). However, while perhaps we can watch a purposefully mis-informative video, evaluate the merits of those claims, and dismiss them out of hand, do you trust everyone else to do the same?
That isn't to say you or I should be the arbiter of truth, but there should be some bare minimum standard. In my mind, there are two pillars for public discourse:
1. Facts, upon which arguments are based.
2. Deductive/inductive arguments, which appeal to values.
Obviously different people will have different values, so they will evaluate the weight of the arguments differently; however, facts are facts -- those should be the common ground. When someone denies reality by positing conspiracies without meaningful evidence, public discourse is impossible.
> What if instead, it's the company which is telling the truth, but the government which is malicious, and wants to censor them?
If the government is malicious, the correct response is voting. Unlimited free speech won't help: a malicious government could censor free speech; or a malicious government could promote un-truths with as much weight as truths, transforming "matters of fact" into "matters of opinion".
(As an aside, I'm nearly a democracy absolutist despite my distaste for free speech absolutism. While that might seem contradictory, democracy thrives in public discourse, and unlimited free speech can hamper that: think Citizen's United, where money can give someone an outsized influence; or conspiracies, which deny facts.)
>On the other hand, I'm not a free speech absolutist (obviously) because I don't trust other people to behave reasonably.
I don't either, but I still believe free speech is important, even if that means it certainly be abused, and cause some damage on a long enough timeline.
As a personal anecdote, I used to spend time on 4chan. (ie, within the last few months I finally blocked it.) I never picked up any of the crazier conspiracy theories that people might associate with the site. But, I was affected by reading all the extremist content. My intuitive sense for the likelihood of country-wide instability, as well as my sense for how bad that instability could be were well skewed. Having finally quit, I feel a bit silly now. I live in a very peaceful, suburban neighborhood, and it's the safest town in my whole state. I generally don't consider myself as susceptible to misinformation, but I think it's clear to me now that anyone can be affected, and everyone has a different blind spot for it.
Were I DO believe in censorship is in the home. ie, I believe it's ok to determine what media / ideas I ingest, since my abstinence won't prevent anyone else.
All of that said, I completely agree with you when it comes to facts and common ground. However, I believe that technology has fundamentally changed what it means to release and censor information. I haven't figured out a good way to articulate this yet. So I'll just say that pamphlets in the 1800s are obviously very different from youtube or social media now. I don't believe it's the same issues all over again, and I'm not sure what the right solutions are.
>If the government is malicious, the correct response is voting.
No doubt. The recent brush with populism has made me a bit nervous in this regard. It can be argued whether the founders really successfully produced enough bulwarks against populism, however I certainly agree with the intent of their efforts.
I don't either, but I still believe free speech is important, even if that means it certainly be abused, and cause some damage on a long enough timeline.
As a personal anecdote, I used to spend time on 4chan. (ie, within the last few months I finally blocked it.) I never picked up any of the crazier conspiracy theories that people might associate with the site. But, I was affected by reading all the extremist content. My intuitive sense for the likelihood of country-wide instability, as well as my sense for how bad that instability could be were well skewed. Having finally quit, I feel a bit silly now. I live in a very peaceful, suburban neighborhood, and it's the safest town in my whole state. I generally don't consider myself as susceptible to misinformation, but I think it's clear to me now that anyone can be affected, and everyone has a different blind spot for it.
Were I DO believe in censorship is in the home. ie, I believe it's ok to determine what media / ideas I ingest, since my abstinence won't prevent anyone else.
All of that said, I completely agree with you when it comes to facts and common ground. However, I believe that technology has fundamentally changed what it means to release and censor information. I haven't figured out a good way to articulate this yet. So I'll just say that pamphlets in the 1800s are obviously very different from youtube or social media now. I don't believe it's the same issues all over again, and I'm not sure what the right solutions are.
>If the government is malicious, the correct response is voting.
No doubt. The recent brush with populism has made me a bit nervous in this regard. It can be argued whether the founders really successfully produced enough bulwarks against populism, however I certainly agree with the intent of their efforts.
Could this be a scaling problem?
Governments continue to get bigger, with more power concentrated at the top. The president being the prime example, an office that was originally intended to be the top cop become an office invested with the hopes and desires of everyone in the country/world, looked towards to single-handedly address any problem.
Then there is the internet, where everyone has the opportunity to go viral, and we can all argue about everything.
Throw in huge multi-national corporations bigger than many nations, treated as people by law, and legally able to buy off politicians in the U.S...
So now in the U.S. we have two parties optimizing to stay in power moreso than act from principal, more manipulative media than ever, and implementing huge national programs based on the slim majority that voted for president that year.
I don't think censorship tweaks are going to fix this. A lot of people don't feel represented, and they are right.
Governments continue to get bigger, with more power concentrated at the top. The president being the prime example, an office that was originally intended to be the top cop become an office invested with the hopes and desires of everyone in the country/world, looked towards to single-handedly address any problem.
Then there is the internet, where everyone has the opportunity to go viral, and we can all argue about everything.
Throw in huge multi-national corporations bigger than many nations, treated as people by law, and legally able to buy off politicians in the U.S...
So now in the U.S. we have two parties optimizing to stay in power moreso than act from principal, more manipulative media than ever, and implementing huge national programs based on the slim majority that voted for president that year.
I don't think censorship tweaks are going to fix this. A lot of people don't feel represented, and they are right.
briefcomment(4)
> Let's be clear: there was no widespread election fraud, certainly not by large enough margins to overturn the election. Videos that purport otherwise are not improving public discourse; in fact, they're causing it to disintegrate.
I think there almost certainly was some fraud, but not enough to change the outcome. (Whether or not "some but not enough to change the outcome" counts as "widespread", I don't know.)
But I also think it is true that the US electoral system is very poorly organised, creating a lot more scope for fraud–or at least the appearance of fraud, or the appearance of the possibility of fraud–than in some other countries. In a number of other countries, national elections are fully run by an apolitical independent national agency (e.g. the Australian Electoral Commission), not by a hodgepodge of state and county officials many of whom are politicians or political appointees. That system provides a lot more professionalism and a lot less opportunities for suspicion of fraud than the American system does.
Yet, I think some people are so committed to "everything Trump says is 110% wrong" that they want to shut down discussion of the flaws in the US election system. It is possible that both there are real flaws in the election system, including flaws that permit fraud or the appearance of a possibility of fraud, and that simultaneously those flaws while very real and in need of being addressed didn't change the outcome this time around.
Possibly, one outcome of this election might be support from Republicans for some reforms in the way elections are carried out. Given America's toxic political polarisation, there is the risk that Democrats will oppose such reforms simply because it is Republicans proposing them.
I think there almost certainly was some fraud, but not enough to change the outcome. (Whether or not "some but not enough to change the outcome" counts as "widespread", I don't know.)
But I also think it is true that the US electoral system is very poorly organised, creating a lot more scope for fraud–or at least the appearance of fraud, or the appearance of the possibility of fraud–than in some other countries. In a number of other countries, national elections are fully run by an apolitical independent national agency (e.g. the Australian Electoral Commission), not by a hodgepodge of state and county officials many of whom are politicians or political appointees. That system provides a lot more professionalism and a lot less opportunities for suspicion of fraud than the American system does.
Yet, I think some people are so committed to "everything Trump says is 110% wrong" that they want to shut down discussion of the flaws in the US election system. It is possible that both there are real flaws in the election system, including flaws that permit fraud or the appearance of a possibility of fraud, and that simultaneously those flaws while very real and in need of being addressed didn't change the outcome this time around.
Possibly, one outcome of this election might be support from Republicans for some reforms in the way elections are carried out. Given America's toxic political polarisation, there is the risk that Democrats will oppose such reforms simply because it is Republicans proposing them.
> I think there almost certainly was some fraud, but not enough to change the outcome. (Whether or not "some but not enough to change the outcome" counts as "widespread", I don't know.)
Yea, that's what he said.
Regarding the rest of your comment: I don't think _anyone_ is arguing that the US electoral system is without flaw. A large system of any kind will have many flaws. Ask any software engineer.
Indeed, I'm also not aware of any person that wants to avoid, indefinitely, having a discussion about how we can improve the US election system. That being said, RIGHT NOW is decidedly not the right time. I'll be all for having an honest, bipartisan discussion as soon as there are no longer parties actively trying to steal an election. When it comes to election integrity, 100% of our focus needs to be on making sure that the results of _this_ election are respected. Then we can focus on improving things for future elections.
Yea, that's what he said.
Regarding the rest of your comment: I don't think _anyone_ is arguing that the US electoral system is without flaw. A large system of any kind will have many flaws. Ask any software engineer.
Indeed, I'm also not aware of any person that wants to avoid, indefinitely, having a discussion about how we can improve the US election system. That being said, RIGHT NOW is decidedly not the right time. I'll be all for having an honest, bipartisan discussion as soon as there are no longer parties actively trying to steal an election. When it comes to election integrity, 100% of our focus needs to be on making sure that the results of _this_ election are respected. Then we can focus on improving things for future elections.
> Yea, that's what he said.
Well, the two comments are not very far apart in substance, somewhat further apart in terms of emphasis. Often two people can be close to agreement on what the facts are, much further apart in which of those facts they think ought to be emphasised.
> Regarding the rest of your comment: I don't think _anyone_ is arguing that the US electoral system is without flaw. A large system of any kind will have many flaws. Ask any software engineer.
Every large system has flaws, yes. But how does the US electoral system compare to those of other countries? It is far from being the worst, but it is also far from being the best. If someone was pointing out flaws in one of the countries with the best organised election systems, then "A large system of any kind will have many flaws" may well be a decent response, but it is less so when pointing out flaws in a system which is at the best somewhere in the middle.
Imagine your product has lots of flaws which many of its competitors lack. In such a situation, the truism "a large system of any kind will have many flaws" is missing the point.
> That being said, RIGHT NOW is decidedly not the right time. I'll be all for having an honest, bipartisan discussion as soon as there are no longer parties actively trying to steal an election
I don't agree that anyone is trying to "steal an election". President Trump is being a sore loser, but I am certain he is leaving the White House peacefully come January 20th. His attempts to challenge the result in the courts have always been half-hearted. Back in 2000, each of Bush and Gore made sure they had the brightest legal minds of their respective parties on the case. Trump has not signed up the brightest legal minds of the GOP to challenge the result. I don't think he was ever really serious about it, he is just putting on a show. He can't steal an election, he doesn't even know how to pull that one off. But I think a lot of people – his supporters and detractors alike – fall too easily for Trump's shtick.
Well, the two comments are not very far apart in substance, somewhat further apart in terms of emphasis. Often two people can be close to agreement on what the facts are, much further apart in which of those facts they think ought to be emphasised.
> Regarding the rest of your comment: I don't think _anyone_ is arguing that the US electoral system is without flaw. A large system of any kind will have many flaws. Ask any software engineer.
Every large system has flaws, yes. But how does the US electoral system compare to those of other countries? It is far from being the worst, but it is also far from being the best. If someone was pointing out flaws in one of the countries with the best organised election systems, then "A large system of any kind will have many flaws" may well be a decent response, but it is less so when pointing out flaws in a system which is at the best somewhere in the middle.
Imagine your product has lots of flaws which many of its competitors lack. In such a situation, the truism "a large system of any kind will have many flaws" is missing the point.
> That being said, RIGHT NOW is decidedly not the right time. I'll be all for having an honest, bipartisan discussion as soon as there are no longer parties actively trying to steal an election
I don't agree that anyone is trying to "steal an election". President Trump is being a sore loser, but I am certain he is leaving the White House peacefully come January 20th. His attempts to challenge the result in the courts have always been half-hearted. Back in 2000, each of Bush and Gore made sure they had the brightest legal minds of their respective parties on the case. Trump has not signed up the brightest legal minds of the GOP to challenge the result. I don't think he was ever really serious about it, he is just putting on a show. He can't steal an election, he doesn't even know how to pull that one off. But I think a lot of people – his supporters and detractors alike – fall too easily for Trump's shtick.
> I don't agree that anyone is trying to "steal an election". President Trump is being a sore loser, but I am certain he is leaving the White House peacefully come January 20th. His attempts to challenge the result in the courts have always been half-hearted. Back in 2000, each of Bush and Gore made sure they had the brightest legal minds of their respective parties on the case. Trump has not signed up the brightest legal minds of the GOP to challenge the result. I don't think he was ever really serious about it, he is just putting on a show. He can't steal an election, he doesn't even know how to pull that one off. But I think a lot of people – his supporters and detractors alike – fall too easily for Trump's shtick.
This line of reasoning doesn't jive with me, for the same reason a person trying, and failing, to commit a crime like murder is still guilty of committing a crime. If I attempt to kill you, and fail, a defense of "I was just putting on a show" isn't going to go so well for me in court. In short, his ineptitude doesn't make him any less guilty for what he's actually attempting.
Too many people - his supporters and detractors alike - give him too much credit when it comes to his abilities, and not enough credit when it comes to what he's actually capable of trying.
I'll add that, "Trump has not signed up the brightest legal minds" is an absurd justification for the opinion that this isn't a legitimate attempt to steal an election. At what point during Trump's presidency has he EVER selected the "brightest minds" for any post. This is Trump being Trump.
People pretending like this isn't happening, frankly, should be ashamed of themselves. And if it ISN'T happening, pretending like feigning an attempt to subvert American democracy to steal an election isn't a big deal, is also a shameful act in my opinion.
This line of reasoning doesn't jive with me, for the same reason a person trying, and failing, to commit a crime like murder is still guilty of committing a crime. If I attempt to kill you, and fail, a defense of "I was just putting on a show" isn't going to go so well for me in court. In short, his ineptitude doesn't make him any less guilty for what he's actually attempting.
Too many people - his supporters and detractors alike - give him too much credit when it comes to his abilities, and not enough credit when it comes to what he's actually capable of trying.
I'll add that, "Trump has not signed up the brightest legal minds" is an absurd justification for the opinion that this isn't a legitimate attempt to steal an election. At what point during Trump's presidency has he EVER selected the "brightest minds" for any post. This is Trump being Trump.
People pretending like this isn't happening, frankly, should be ashamed of themselves. And if it ISN'T happening, pretending like feigning an attempt to subvert American democracy to steal an election isn't a big deal, is also a shameful act in my opinion.
If you have any proof of fraud at all there is a guy in the White House that wants to speak to you pronto.
And there's a guy (the Lt. Governor, no less!) in Texas[0] who will pay you USD$25,000 for information that leads to a conviction for voter fraud.
Go get 'em tigers!
[0] https://www.texastribune.org/2020/11/10/texas-dan-patrick/
Go get 'em tigers!
[0] https://www.texastribune.org/2020/11/10/texas-dan-patrick/
> And there's a guy (the Lt. Governor, no less!) in Texas[0] who will pay you USD$25,000 for information that leads to a conviction for voter fraud.
He figured out a great way of proving there was no widespread fraud seeing as he's not handing out free money by the busload.
He figured out a great way of proving there was no widespread fraud seeing as he's not handing out free money by the busload.
Your whole comment would have fallen apart if the election was overturned by a smart, capable president with authoritarian undertones.
Imagine if President X had military on their side, supressed courts, had many militias supporting them and spreading misinformation day in and day out.
And getting 100 million votes and had a trifecta (House, Executive Office, Senate) + Supreme Court. Can you imagine?
Imagine if President X had military on their side, supressed courts, had many militias supporting them and spreading misinformation day in and day out.
And getting 100 million votes and had a trifecta (House, Executive Office, Senate) + Supreme Court. Can you imagine?
Thank goodness Dorsey, Zuckerberg, Pichai and the Democrat party are here to save us from brainwashing and partisanship
Would you have considered book publishers as "gate keepers" of information before the internet? What has changed?
I'd like to think the current situation is (at least partially) a byproduct of people creating their own echo chambers then never leaving them - before the internet, national communication was very limited since it required a lot of resources, so your local newspaper and library would need to cover news and topics without partisanship in order to sell to everyone in town. Now, you can specifically look for sources (even outside of actual news companies) and other people that have your same political views and limit communication to them, only looking at other circles and opposing viewpoints in order to criticize them out of context.
That makes sense and you make some really good points.
I have one idea (usually these ideas are fragile and blow up in my own mind, but bear with me).
What if anyone that posts something on social media requires x ratio of likes/dislikes (before spreading) from anonymous users from a truly random selection of people. What would the information landscape look like?
What if we self-censor through some small but liberal consensus - the ratio threshold is up for debate.
I have one idea (usually these ideas are fragile and blow up in my own mind, but bear with me).
What if anyone that posts something on social media requires x ratio of likes/dislikes (before spreading) from anonymous users from a truly random selection of people. What would the information landscape look like?
What if we self-censor through some small but liberal consensus - the ratio threshold is up for debate.
Book publishers are.... publishers. Youtube is not a publisher, at least they claim they aren't. Rules apply differently to publishers.
They are in an abstract sense, publishers. Whether they're legally or not, doesn't take away from the fact that they take information from an individual and broadcast it (print it on computer monitors) for public to consume. Just that the editorialization piece is missing.
Yeah, good thing the noble gentlemen in charge of our social media are committed and powerful enough to save us from that dark future. That makes me feel so much safer.
I hear you. What do you suggest otherwise? The society will crumble with volume of misinformation and lies cranked to 11. Truth would drown, by a long shot because even if data is presented, people are brainwashed to ignore it because it doesn't fit their narrative.
Can you talk about the alternative? I hear you but I feel like there is no choice. We're in a shitty situation and it is natural to feel fear and have a knee-jerk reaction at any solution (not just the one Google proposed).
Can you talk about the alternative? I hear you but I feel like there is no choice. We're in a shitty situation and it is natural to feel fear and have a knee-jerk reaction at any solution (not just the one Google proposed).
I'm not convinced the misinformation thing is as big of a factor as many people believe. I think it's just a symptom of the real problem: echo chambers.
Every contentious issue in US politics gets divided into two major camps, each championed by one of the major political parties. Those parties use their resources to plant the seeds of powerful echo chambers, which eventually become self-perpetuating thanks to our natural tendencies for group preferences and confirmation bias. The misinformation crisis is just a result of an echo chamber throwing crap at the wall to avoid questioning itself.
The problem of echo chambers is a hard one to solve, especially when it comes to politics. However, I think an improved voting system would actually do a lot to help in the long term. By introducing a transferable vote, citizens could vote for third-party candidates without fear of "wasting" their vote. Over time, that should hopefully empower more moderate political groups and make the middle ground between echo chambers more accessible.
A more accessible middle ground should result in fewer echo chambers. Fewer echo chambers should result in less incentive to create and circulate misinformation. At least, that's my two cents.
Every contentious issue in US politics gets divided into two major camps, each championed by one of the major political parties. Those parties use their resources to plant the seeds of powerful echo chambers, which eventually become self-perpetuating thanks to our natural tendencies for group preferences and confirmation bias. The misinformation crisis is just a result of an echo chamber throwing crap at the wall to avoid questioning itself.
The problem of echo chambers is a hard one to solve, especially when it comes to politics. However, I think an improved voting system would actually do a lot to help in the long term. By introducing a transferable vote, citizens could vote for third-party candidates without fear of "wasting" their vote. Over time, that should hopefully empower more moderate political groups and make the middle ground between echo chambers more accessible.
A more accessible middle ground should result in fewer echo chambers. Fewer echo chambers should result in less incentive to create and circulate misinformation. At least, that's my two cents.
Agreed about echo chambers, I posted a similar comment along what you're saying here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25364097
Curious of your thoughts there.
Curious of your thoughts there.
I think you make an excellent point. When it comes to echo chambers, social media platforms like YouTube exacerbate the problem with algorithms designed to keep users "engaged" by feeding them whatever the platform thinks they'll watch ads on next.
Ironically, if YouTube really wanted to help, they could just stop trying to "engage" users based on their political preferences. As if that would ever happen.
Any time I watch a video from CNN, Fox, or NBC, YouTube suggests political crap for weeks afterwards. I bet political content is one of their most "engaging" subjects, so I doubt Google would ever do the responsible thing and put a stop to that.
Modifying the algorithm to show "both sides" instead might help, but I don't think that would do much to encourage a middle ground. I'm worried both sides would just get more and more extreme.
Ironically, if YouTube really wanted to help, they could just stop trying to "engage" users based on their political preferences. As if that would ever happen.
Any time I watch a video from CNN, Fox, or NBC, YouTube suggests political crap for weeks afterwards. I bet political content is one of their most "engaging" subjects, so I doubt Google would ever do the responsible thing and put a stop to that.
Modifying the algorithm to show "both sides" instead might help, but I don't think that would do much to encourage a middle ground. I'm worried both sides would just get more and more extreme.
> Ironically, if YouTube really wanted to help, they could just stop trying to "engage" users based on their political preferences. As if that would ever happen.
Yeah, that ain't happening. We need some FCC laws around targeted content to audience (spawning echo chambers) to optimize engagement.
Yeah, that ain't happening. We need some FCC laws around targeted content to audience (spawning echo chambers) to optimize engagement.
It is not "one person" it is 75% of one half of the population.
Basically none of those people have any standing because they are nowhere near the actual operations of the election process.
Please don't pretend that their voices carry equal weight to those who have authority on the matter.
Please don't pretend that their voices carry equal weight to those who have authority on the matter.
I don't think they're purporting that, but merely stating that's how many believe it. It's a significant problem, especially when it's meritless.
The two-party political dynamic depends upon hegemonizing more than 50% of the electorate by providing the least offensive political narrative and ideological pretext.
T's effectiveness has been through manipulating that ideological pretext beyond campaign politics and beyond the requirement of even narrative cohesion with reality. He wields his populism to coerce even the interests of power themselves, with little regard for the overall homeostasis of Republican party's ideological pretext[0].
If he continues his ideological schism off-the-rails from an oval room at Mar-A-Lago, he has the precisely the same leverage in 2022 elections which he is wielding today.
[0] see Loeffler's catch-22
T's effectiveness has been through manipulating that ideological pretext beyond campaign politics and beyond the requirement of even narrative cohesion with reality. He wields his populism to coerce even the interests of power themselves, with little regard for the overall homeostasis of Republican party's ideological pretext[0].
If he continues his ideological schism off-the-rails from an oval room at Mar-A-Lago, he has the precisely the same leverage in 2022 elections which he is wielding today.
[0] see Loeffler's catch-22
If you falsely yell "fire" in a crowded theater, you will be held responsible for the resulting consequences, even though the other theater patrons could verify your claim independently.
So the solution is to make it so that nobody can yell "fire" in a crowded theater? Hopefully there's never a fire.
They're trying very hard to create that fire using the stuffing in the seats as we speak. So far it hasn't worked because some people still have their heads screwed on. But it's not for lack of trying. About 10 people stand between a full blown attempt at dictatorship and a functioning democracy.
Are you arguing with bad faith, or do you think that's what parent commenter meant?
Are you arguing in bad faith, or do you actually think making it impossible for people to effectually accuse the winners of a election of election fraud is a good idea?
No, but they should have some evidence, especially being the sitting president, don't you think? This is a coup attempt.. and they have nothing to justify it.
So are YOU arguing in bad faith to ignore this very obvious problem?
No one is saying accusations with evidence and merit cannot be made. They are saying that after losing over 50 lawsuits and having substantiated exactly zero claims, then we are losing patience with offering good faith.
So are YOU arguing in bad faith to ignore this very obvious problem?
No one is saying accusations with evidence and merit cannot be made. They are saying that after losing over 50 lawsuits and having substantiated exactly zero claims, then we are losing patience with offering good faith.
You stated it far better than I could.
I don't understand how "bad faith" applies here.
The president might be one person, but he’s the most powerful person on earth, with the ability to control markets, launch nukes, call millions of followers to arms or order a coup (unlikely to succeed on that one).
I find likening fact-checking Trump to censoring a private citizen a disingenuous comparison that plays down the power of the office he holds. If he goes off the deep end doing any of those things, there won’t be much the media or the house can do to stop it, so I think some preemptive action is warranted. Whether YouTube have got it right here is another question.
I find likening fact-checking Trump to censoring a private citizen a disingenuous comparison that plays down the power of the office he holds. If he goes off the deep end doing any of those things, there won’t be much the media or the house can do to stop it, so I think some preemptive action is warranted. Whether YouTube have got it right here is another question.
I do not believe there was widespread election fraud, but having a private company control what information people are allowed to see & hear is also dangerous. YouTube has the right to do this as a private company, but it's also a dangerous precedent.
I think a better approach, instead of broad censorship, would be simply inserting warning statement(s), at least in front of the material. They already stick in ads, so the tech is there. That way, the material is still available, but with warnings. We "show but warn" with many other materials (sexually explicit, violence, etc.) - I think that would be the much better way to handle such materials.
I think a better approach, instead of broad censorship, would be simply inserting warning statement(s), at least in front of the material. They already stick in ads, so the tech is there. That way, the material is still available, but with warnings. We "show but warn" with many other materials (sexually explicit, violence, etc.) - I think that would be the much better way to handle such materials.
Private companies control what information they publish, not what information "people are allowed to see".
To the general audience: the rhetoric of the parent comment is designed to blur the lines and invite accusations of "censorship" where none apply.
To the general audience: the rhetoric of the parent comment is designed to blur the lines and invite accusations of "censorship" where none apply.
Is youtube a platform or a publisher?
Can you define what a "platform" is? And do you think there is a legal distinction between the two?
If this is regarding section 230, around which this dichotomy always seems to surface, then are you aware that the word "platform" does not appear in the text of said section?
If this is regarding section 230, around which this dichotomy always seems to surface, then are you aware that the word "platform" does not appear in the text of said section?
Platform is user uploaded content with minimal censorship and where the platform has minimal responsibility over the content. Publisher is curated content with arbitrary censorship and heavy responsibility over the content.
As a voter, I'd expect to be able to use the platform/publisher spectrum to determine how much censorship a service should have. If a service has censorship capabilities different from what a large enough part of the population thinks they should have then the law should be changed to rectify this.
My questions to you (and anyone else):
Where does YouTube lie on this idealized platform/publisher perspective? How much censorship ability should they have? To what degree does your expectations of their censorship ability differ from their actual censorship ability according to the law?
As a voter, I'd expect to be able to use the platform/publisher spectrum to determine how much censorship a service should have. If a service has censorship capabilities different from what a large enough part of the population thinks they should have then the law should be changed to rectify this.
My questions to you (and anyone else):
Where does YouTube lie on this idealized platform/publisher perspective? How much censorship ability should they have? To what degree does your expectations of their censorship ability differ from their actual censorship ability according to the law?
There is no legal basis for the false distinction you're making between platform and publisher.
The law explicitly allows YouTube (or Twitter, or HackerNews, for that matter) to do exactly that.
You are operating under at least one misconception. Perhaps this[0] can help.
[0]https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
The law explicitly allows YouTube (or Twitter, or HackerNews, for that matter) to do exactly that.
You are operating under at least one misconception. Perhaps this[0] can help.
[0]https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
[deleted]
The now somewhat controversial Section 230 of the CDA would classify YouTube as an "interactive computer service," and the actual text of the law says "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected." Videos pushing to delegitimize the entire democratic process could certainly be considered "otherwise objectionable". That would be subjective, to be sure, and perhaps challengeable, but I'm going to bet that Google had a lot of discussions with their legal team before taking this action.
tl;dr: being a "platform" is neither a Get Out of Lawsuits Free card nor a requirement for content to be unmoderated.
tl;dr: being a "platform" is neither a Get Out of Lawsuits Free card nor a requirement for content to be unmoderated.
I'm not particularly interested in what the law says. Leave that to the lawyers :)
As a voter/citizen it would be great if we had reasonable expectations about our what these services are and how we should set our own expectations for censorship. The platform/publisher spectrum is an easy jumping off point for a casual discussion.
Where is "Youtube" on this spectrum? What stops Youtube from marking all content associated with a particular religion/political party/national origin "otherwise objectionable"?
Many questions. I can state that as a citizen I view Youtube as a platform that should take a minimal approach to censorship. I view the attempts to control what the "plebians/proles" believe as excessively paternalistic and likely to be unhelpful. If the censorship causes these people to visit more radical sources of information then who is to blame when they get further radicalized? At least Youtube has washed their hands of the situation.
As a voter/citizen it would be great if we had reasonable expectations about our what these services are and how we should set our own expectations for censorship. The platform/publisher spectrum is an easy jumping off point for a casual discussion.
Where is "Youtube" on this spectrum? What stops Youtube from marking all content associated with a particular religion/political party/national origin "otherwise objectionable"?
Many questions. I can state that as a citizen I view Youtube as a platform that should take a minimal approach to censorship. I view the attempts to control what the "plebians/proles" believe as excessively paternalistic and likely to be unhelpful. If the censorship causes these people to visit more radical sources of information then who is to blame when they get further radicalized? At least Youtube has washed their hands of the situation.
You are free to set up a “free speech” alternative to YouTube if you think that is a better system. Unfortunately you will not be able to get many users because it will be full of porn and spam, and you won’t be able to fund it because advertisers won’t want to be associated with it.
>What stops Youtube from marking all content associated with a particular religion/political party/national origin "otherwise objectionable"?
Market forces? Advertiser pressure? Bad hair day?
They are under no obligation to host anything they choose not to host.
And that's a good thing too. If Google can be forced to host content they don't wish to host, then so can you, and so can I and so can HackerNews or Bernadette's Knitting website.
Market forces? Advertiser pressure? Bad hair day?
They are under no obligation to host anything they choose not to host.
And that's a good thing too. If Google can be forced to host content they don't wish to host, then so can you, and so can I and so can HackerNews or Bernadette's Knitting website.
Also
> otherwise objectionable
along with
> whether or not such material is constitutionally protected
gives them fairly broad leeway to pull down whatever they want.
> otherwise objectionable
along with
> whether or not such material is constitutionally protected
gives them fairly broad leeway to pull down whatever they want.
It does read that way, definitely. (I admit I was a little surprised at how broad that seemed when I was looking it up!)
Something else, which is the whole point of section 230 in the first place.
You may disagree with the law, but it doesn't mean I have to agree with a bullshit dichotomy that hasn't been the state of reality for the last 25 years. Instead you have to convince me that state of reality is a bad one to be in.
You may disagree with the law, but it doesn't mean I have to agree with a bullshit dichotomy that hasn't been the state of reality for the last 25 years. Instead you have to convince me that state of reality is a bad one to be in.
Pointless distinction, only meant to muddy the waters.
It is not pointless. A platform cannot be sued. A publisher needs to maintain journalistic integrity when it publishes. Can’t be both.
Youtube, at least up to now, is a platform not a publisher.
Part of the muddying is that it is very difficult for people to see information if it is not on one of these major publishers or platforms. Information that is legal to present, but no one will ever see, may as well not exist.
Part of the muddying is that it is very difficult for people to see information if it is not on one of these major publishers or platforms. Information that is legal to present, but no one will ever see, may as well not exist.
My personal opinion:
The answer to that question is "Yes."
A platform is a particular kind of publisher, and a publisher is a particular kind of platform. 'Publisher' and 'Platform' are two overlapping circles on a Venn diagram.
The answer to that question is "Yes."
A platform is a particular kind of publisher, and a publisher is a particular kind of platform. 'Publisher' and 'Platform' are two overlapping circles on a Venn diagram.
No. Under Section 230, they are treated mostly as a distributor, like a book store or a news stand.
Anyone making this point needs to explain why I'm supposed to accept their de jure interpretation of the situation, when de facto, large platforms monopolize distribution. Simply saying "private company" is so lazy, it's not even wrestling with the issue.
Based upon my existing preferences, I already never see these conspiracy theories on YouTube, nor Twitter or Facebook, for that matter. Yet I'm quite familiar with them via a panoply of other sources. So I think you have to do more then just baldly assert that these platforms monopolize information distribution. The fact that there are a lot of platforms with different editorial rules is the exact opposite of a monopoly.
Certainly, a quick search can show you that the overwhelming majority of video views occur on a small number of platforms, and that you are an outlier. If I am someone who has a message to share, far and away the most effective place to share that as a video would be YT, hands down. And that doesn't even begin to address the fact that all of these platforms are converging on the same definitions of safe speech anyhow, so the diversity is nominal.
Take it up with GP then, they're the one complaining about "private company".
Is there some information that people can see that a company chooses not to publish?
What even is this question?
I mean, absent further context, the answer is "obviously, yes."
I mean, absent further context, the answer is "obviously, yes."
Sorry, “can” was misleading there since you can obviously get information elsewhere. What I’m wondering is: If a company chooses not to publish something, how is that different than deciding what people are allowed to see?
It’s different because they can get it elsewhere. Government censorship makes any source illegal. Extreme government censorship puts you in jail for reading about a dangerous idea.
A company censoring information on their platform seems deeply different, no?
A company censoring information on their platform seems deeply different, no?
> A company censoring information on their platform seems deeply different, no?
Not necessarily; I think that is the crux of the discussion.
From a legal point of view it is deeply different. From a practical point of view it's not so clear. If a video isn't on Youtube, for many it's the same as not existing at all. For example, my Roku can show YouTube videos, but cannot access arbitrary urls.
In general, platforms are not supposed to discriminate, while Publishers do. This particular case makes that distinction far less obvious. I'd like to see some alternative, such as markings, instead of a simple include or not.
Not necessarily; I think that is the crux of the discussion.
From a legal point of view it is deeply different. From a practical point of view it's not so clear. If a video isn't on Youtube, for many it's the same as not existing at all. For example, my Roku can show YouTube videos, but cannot access arbitrary urls.
In general, platforms are not supposed to discriminate, while Publishers do. This particular case makes that distinction far less obvious. I'd like to see some alternative, such as markings, instead of a simple include or not.
Your points are related to user behavior, not platform-provider behavior.
If a publisher decides not to publish my book, they are not "deciding what people are allowed to see."
Yes, all publishers being equal, true. But what if the publisher controlled most of the book stores that only carried their books? Would they then decide what people see if they chose not to publish?
Google does not have operational control over humans' bodies.
If we're looking at what things have control over our bodies, the Youtube Sidebar cannot be dismissed as inconsequential.
[deleted]
> having a private company control what information people are allowed to see & hear is also dangerous. YouTube has the right to do this as a private company, but it's also a dangerous precedent.
Before YouTube, media was controlled by television channels, private companies who decided what they wanted to show.
Before TV, media was controlled by radio broadcasters, private companies who decided what they wanted to air.
And before that was print media, private companies who decide what is published.
So that ship has sailed. In fact it has been the norm for 99% of history. You can argue over whether we want to go back but you can't say this is some slippery slope to a dangerous future; that danger has arrived, and if anything it seems to be fuelled by the hyperdemocratisation of media.
Before YouTube, media was controlled by television channels, private companies who decided what they wanted to show.
Before TV, media was controlled by radio broadcasters, private companies who decided what they wanted to air.
And before that was print media, private companies who decide what is published.
So that ship has sailed. In fact it has been the norm for 99% of history. You can argue over whether we want to go back but you can't say this is some slippery slope to a dangerous future; that danger has arrived, and if anything it seems to be fuelled by the hyperdemocratisation of media.
There's a very old video about this exact topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwTCO4qa-RQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwTCO4qa-RQ
YouTube is already exerting immense control over what information people see and hear. That's the status quo. If you're arguing that YouTube should have no recommendation algorithm or any feature whatsoever that make it more likely for any person to see any one video than any other video, and should not censor any uploaded content, then that makes some sense. That would make YouTube essentially a web hosting service (many of which already exist, of course).
I would genuinely like to know why you are so confident about what claims are and aren’t baseless.
Do you have inside knowledge that the public doesn’t posses? Because I’ve been paying attention and I’m genuinely unsure what is happening ... default skeptical about all claims in every direction.
Edit: A lot of the responses here seem to be unaware of Texas’ lawsuit and the ramifications. I expect the conspiracy claims to be separated out from the genuine concerns if the Supreme Court chooses to hear that suit.
Do you have inside knowledge that the public doesn’t posses? Because I’ve been paying attention and I’m genuinely unsure what is happening ... default skeptical about all claims in every direction.
Edit: A lot of the responses here seem to be unaware of Texas’ lawsuit and the ramifications. I expect the conspiracy claims to be separated out from the genuine concerns if the Supreme Court chooses to hear that suit.
I think the side which is getting all their lawsuits dismissed (and with prejudice) is probably the one with the baseless claims.
I also think that the side on which the biggest (public) provable liar/narcissist of all time is on has a chance of having the most baseless claims.
Occam's Razor also applies. What is more likely: a massive conspiracy to rig the election, only in specific swing states, only for the presidency and nothing else on the ballot, requiring massive coordination and having no proof. Or... The president is a huge liar and the people in the GOP are afraid to go against him lest he turn his cult against them too.
> Because I’ve been paying attention and I’m genuinely unsure what is happening
I'm genuinely unsure how you're genuinely unsure, except if you attribute the same weight to Fox News / OANN and other propaganda networks as you do sources of information with actual credibility.
There is zero doubt to be had.
I also think that the side on which the biggest (public) provable liar/narcissist of all time is on has a chance of having the most baseless claims.
Occam's Razor also applies. What is more likely: a massive conspiracy to rig the election, only in specific swing states, only for the presidency and nothing else on the ballot, requiring massive coordination and having no proof. Or... The president is a huge liar and the people in the GOP are afraid to go against him lest he turn his cult against them too.
> Because I’ve been paying attention and I’m genuinely unsure what is happening
I'm genuinely unsure how you're genuinely unsure, except if you attribute the same weight to Fox News / OANN and other propaganda networks as you do sources of information with actual credibility.
There is zero doubt to be had.
Even if you support the President and his policies, I don't see how you could be surprised at his rather large loss in 2020.
He lost the popular vote in 2016 by around 3 million votes. And he was running against someone very unpopular.
He ran in 2020 against someone who is much more popular than his 2016 opponent.
His approval rating never touched 50%, IIRC.
The economy is terrible right now. Never a great sign for an incumbent.
And that's all to say nothing about the fervor of the people who oppose him.
There's absolutely no reason to believe that he wouldn't have lost by >3 million this time around.
He lost the popular vote in 2016 by around 3 million votes. And he was running against someone very unpopular.
He ran in 2020 against someone who is much more popular than his 2016 opponent.
His approval rating never touched 50%, IIRC.
The economy is terrible right now. Never a great sign for an incumbent.
And that's all to say nothing about the fervor of the people who oppose him.
There's absolutely no reason to believe that he wouldn't have lost by >3 million this time around.
What doesn't make sense to me are all the statistical anomalies everywhere. How did down ballot republicans outperform Trump everywhere, when Trump's approval ratings among republicans were incredibly high?
The bellweather counties perplexes me.
The crazy turnout in specific counties that far exceeded demographically similar counties that wouldn't have the impact to flip the election. The fact that Trump out performed himself with all demographics except white men, he had historic republican support from black and hispanic voters, except in specific key counties.
The fact that all of these counties all flipped the next morning was perplexing, especially since many of the flips came from ballot dumps that had statistically impossible ratios of votes for Biden. Or the massive number of ballots that were showing up for Biden, but had no downballot choices filled out at all.
Couple all of this with the thousands of witnesses that swore on strange activity during counting, and the absolute lack of security around the Dominion machines. I'm surprised HN hasn't been all over the Dominion machines, the HN of several years ago would have had several posts decrying the security of those machines.
There are reasons to doubt things. The doubt needs to be addressed with transparency and in court, and so far, all of the municipalities that are raising suspicion are fighting tooth and nail against transparency.
If the concerns are met with censorship and dismissal without real rebuttal, I don't see an optimistic future for this country.
The bellweather counties perplexes me.
The crazy turnout in specific counties that far exceeded demographically similar counties that wouldn't have the impact to flip the election. The fact that Trump out performed himself with all demographics except white men, he had historic republican support from black and hispanic voters, except in specific key counties.
The fact that all of these counties all flipped the next morning was perplexing, especially since many of the flips came from ballot dumps that had statistically impossible ratios of votes for Biden. Or the massive number of ballots that were showing up for Biden, but had no downballot choices filled out at all.
Couple all of this with the thousands of witnesses that swore on strange activity during counting, and the absolute lack of security around the Dominion machines. I'm surprised HN hasn't been all over the Dominion machines, the HN of several years ago would have had several posts decrying the security of those machines.
There are reasons to doubt things. The doubt needs to be addressed with transparency and in court, and so far, all of the municipalities that are raising suspicion are fighting tooth and nail against transparency.
If the concerns are met with censorship and dismissal without real rebuttal, I don't see an optimistic future for this country.
> What doesn't make sense to me are all the statistical anomalies everywhere. How did down ballot republicans outperform Trump everywhere, when Trump's approval ratings among republicans were incredibly high?
The general polls were super, duper, off. Biden was supposedly leading by 3 points in Florida and then lost by 3 points, for a net of 6 point error.
I'm not shocked by polls being wrong.
I think, if you accept that polls can be wrong, it's pretty easy to imagine the voters who were lifelong Republicans might have continued to vote R but left the top slot blank.
> The fact that Trump out performed himself with all demographics except white men, he had historic republican support from black and hispanic voters, except in specific key counties.
He BARELY won in 2016 because of a few thousand votes in three states. The geographic distribution of votes matters. Just because he picked up a few percentage points on minority demographics (still far behind Biden, just more than he had against Clinton) doesn't matter unless you tell me WHERE he picked up those margins. One of the places was south Florida and he won Florida. So there's nothing here that surprises me or seems suspicious at all.
> The fact that all of these counties all flipped the next morning was perplexing, especially since many of the flips came from ballot dumps that had statistically impossible ratios of votes for Biden. Or the massive number of ballots that were showing up for Biden, but had no downballot choices filled out at all.
No. We all knew for MONTHS that Trump would look better on election night than he would as the rest of the votes were tallied. We knew for MONTHS that Pennsylvania was not allowed to START counting mail in votes until AFTER polls closed on November 3rd. We knew it so well that they even coined a cutesy term for it: the "red mirage". We were repeatedly warned that we would see the red mirage on election night. You should not have been perplexed. I'm sorry.
The only statistically impossible ratio of votes for Biden are those that are over 100%.
> Couple all of this with the thousands of witnesses that swore on strange activity during counting, and the absolute lack of security around the Dominion machines. I'm surprised HN hasn't been all over the Dominion machines, the HN of several years ago would have had several posts decrying the security of those machines.
What lack of security, specifically? What thousands of witnesses? What activities were "strange"? All I've seen or heard is a bunch of people who are very ignorant of the election process pointing to video clips from the live streams and saying "OMG, this worker just filled out a ballot!" when the person in question was clearing performing "ballot curing".
Maybe HN wasn't exploding because there isn't anything to see here.
That's not to say that the election was perfect. No election is. I'm in Florida. We can't do an election to save our lives down here. But a nationwide conspiracy that would require thousands of individuals to coordinate in key counties in key states (many of which are run by Republicans) is basically "moon landing didn't happen" levels of conspiracy.
> If the concerns are met with censorship and dismissal without real rebuttal, I don't see an optimistic future for this country.
I've seen and read many real rebuttals against all kinds of claims. From "poll workers were ejected" to "suitcases full of ballots". Similarly I saw something about a Dominion machine that supposedly flipped Trump votes to Biden votes that was summarily debunked.
There was nothing surprising about the results except that Georgia flipped blue. But I think that says more about Trump and Georgia's demographics than it does about the election. Remember that 2016, when he eeked out his EC win, it was because he barely flipped the "blue wall" states. The fact that they went back blue this year is not at all surprising.
The general polls were super, duper, off. Biden was supposedly leading by 3 points in Florida and then lost by 3 points, for a net of 6 point error.
I'm not shocked by polls being wrong.
I think, if you accept that polls can be wrong, it's pretty easy to imagine the voters who were lifelong Republicans might have continued to vote R but left the top slot blank.
> The fact that Trump out performed himself with all demographics except white men, he had historic republican support from black and hispanic voters, except in specific key counties.
He BARELY won in 2016 because of a few thousand votes in three states. The geographic distribution of votes matters. Just because he picked up a few percentage points on minority demographics (still far behind Biden, just more than he had against Clinton) doesn't matter unless you tell me WHERE he picked up those margins. One of the places was south Florida and he won Florida. So there's nothing here that surprises me or seems suspicious at all.
> The fact that all of these counties all flipped the next morning was perplexing, especially since many of the flips came from ballot dumps that had statistically impossible ratios of votes for Biden. Or the massive number of ballots that were showing up for Biden, but had no downballot choices filled out at all.
No. We all knew for MONTHS that Trump would look better on election night than he would as the rest of the votes were tallied. We knew for MONTHS that Pennsylvania was not allowed to START counting mail in votes until AFTER polls closed on November 3rd. We knew it so well that they even coined a cutesy term for it: the "red mirage". We were repeatedly warned that we would see the red mirage on election night. You should not have been perplexed. I'm sorry.
The only statistically impossible ratio of votes for Biden are those that are over 100%.
> Couple all of this with the thousands of witnesses that swore on strange activity during counting, and the absolute lack of security around the Dominion machines. I'm surprised HN hasn't been all over the Dominion machines, the HN of several years ago would have had several posts decrying the security of those machines.
What lack of security, specifically? What thousands of witnesses? What activities were "strange"? All I've seen or heard is a bunch of people who are very ignorant of the election process pointing to video clips from the live streams and saying "OMG, this worker just filled out a ballot!" when the person in question was clearing performing "ballot curing".
Maybe HN wasn't exploding because there isn't anything to see here.
That's not to say that the election was perfect. No election is. I'm in Florida. We can't do an election to save our lives down here. But a nationwide conspiracy that would require thousands of individuals to coordinate in key counties in key states (many of which are run by Republicans) is basically "moon landing didn't happen" levels of conspiracy.
> If the concerns are met with censorship and dismissal without real rebuttal, I don't see an optimistic future for this country.
I've seen and read many real rebuttals against all kinds of claims. From "poll workers were ejected" to "suitcases full of ballots". Similarly I saw something about a Dominion machine that supposedly flipped Trump votes to Biden votes that was summarily debunked.
There was nothing surprising about the results except that Georgia flipped blue. But I think that says more about Trump and Georgia's demographics than it does about the election. Remember that 2016, when he eeked out his EC win, it was because he barely flipped the "blue wall" states. The fact that they went back blue this year is not at all surprising.
[deleted]
Credible by repetition only, at this point. They've shown themselves at the same level, and the most self-righteous networks have proven the most hypocritical, and they don't even seem to see it.
Don't forget, not only do they only care about the battleground states Trump lost, but also the congressional victories which were on the same ballot are not similarly being questioned.
Republicans picked up seats in the House. They did better in the Senate than expected. No one is questioning the results of those races.
Why?
Republicans picked up seats in the House. They did better in the Senate than expected. No one is questioning the results of those races.
Why?
This is a good overview why you should be skeptical.
https://spectator.us/reasons-why-the-2020-presidential-elect...
https://spectator.us/reasons-why-the-2020-presidential-elect...
zests(7)
The rules were changed prior to the election, in a way that clearly favours the democratic party. That should raise suspicion.
We also had :
1. Unusually low mail in ballot vote rejection rate (0.02 vs 6% previous elections)
2. Unusually many voters
3. Unusually high turnout in specific areas (90%+)
4. Delay in announcing results
5. Results that don't match (6000 votes flipped back to Trump after "glitch"
Vote rigging: How to spot the tell-tale signs https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-37243190
We also had :
1. Unusually low mail in ballot vote rejection rate (0.02 vs 6% previous elections)
2. Unusually many voters
3. Unusually high turnout in specific areas (90%+)
4. Delay in announcing results
5. Results that don't match (6000 votes flipped back to Trump after "glitch"
Vote rigging: How to spot the tell-tale signs https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-37243190
> The rules were changed prior to the election, in a way that clearly favours the democratic party. That should raise suspicion.
Meaning voting was made easier for millions, hence they voted. Meaning Republican suppression of Democratic voters was less effective, hence more voters.
There is one of the two parties fighting for election security and it's not the republicans. Mitch McConnell has a few election security bills on his desk that were never brought to a vote.
Meaning voting was made easier for millions, hence they voted. Meaning Republican suppression of Democratic voters was less effective, hence more voters.
There is one of the two parties fighting for election security and it's not the republicans. Mitch McConnell has a few election security bills on his desk that were never brought to a vote.
1. If huge swaths of Americans are forced to vote by mail, wouldn't you expect the rate to decrease?
2. Trump is incredibly polarizing, so, sure
3. What was the previous turnout / percentage increase?
4. The GOP specifically passed laws that disallowed counting ballots until election day in many districts, which, combined with lots of mail-ins, makes things much slower
5. This was an accident, and was corrected
2. Trump is incredibly polarizing, so, sure
3. What was the previous turnout / percentage increase?
4. The GOP specifically passed laws that disallowed counting ballots until election day in many districts, which, combined with lots of mail-ins, makes things much slower
5. This was an accident, and was corrected
1. No, I would expect people filling out a mail-in ballot for the first time to get it wrong (and thus have the ballot rejected) more often than people who have done it before. This would track with previous elections, where first-time mail-in voters are more likely to have their ballots invalidated.
Protections on mail-in ballots have unambiguously been reduced this election - many states skipped signature validation, for instance. This may be acceptable, but IMO should not have been implemented due to being easy fodder for conspiracy theorists. Yes, the mere appearance of illegitimacy is reason enough to not do something when it comes to potentially contested elections.
Protections on mail-in ballots have unambiguously been reduced this election - many states skipped signature validation, for instance. This may be acceptable, but IMO should not have been implemented due to being easy fodder for conspiracy theorists. Yes, the mere appearance of illegitimacy is reason enough to not do something when it comes to potentially contested elections.
2. This election turn out was 2 standard deviations above average. That has never happened in the past.
3. Detroit region of Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties. Oakland had a 15% increase in turnout compared to 2016 and Macomb was up 18%. More black people came out to vote for Biden than Obama in these historically Black counties.
https://www.mlive.com/politics/2020/11/see-2020-election-tur...
3. Detroit region of Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties. Oakland had a 15% increase in turnout compared to 2016 and Macomb was up 18%. More black people came out to vote for Biden than Obama in these historically Black counties.
https://www.mlive.com/politics/2020/11/see-2020-election-tur...
1) Didn't happen. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-georgia-rejecte...
2) Both Democrats and Republicans had greater turnout. This was expected since Trump is a highly polarizing figure. Not relevant to claims of fraud.
3) Like, say, Utah, which voted for Trump? https://www.fox13now.com/news/election-2020/utah-reports-90-... Please show relevance.
4) Expected, due to increased mail-in ballots and delay in counting mail-in ballots required by law in several states.
5) A glitch that was fixed. Relevance?
2) Both Democrats and Republicans had greater turnout. This was expected since Trump is a highly polarizing figure. Not relevant to claims of fraud.
3) Like, say, Utah, which voted for Trump? https://www.fox13now.com/news/election-2020/utah-reports-90-... Please show relevance.
4) Expected, due to increased mail-in ballots and delay in counting mail-in ballots required by law in several states.
5) A glitch that was fixed. Relevance?
1) "The total rejected ballots data is not yet available for 2020." from the fact check. So how can the fact check be used to disprove Trump's statements, or that it "Didn't happen".
More worrying, its been weeks since the election, and we still don't have definitive results. You don't find that suspicious? Most countries have final results on election night.
More worrying, its been weeks since the election, and we still don't have definitive results. You don't find that suspicious? Most countries have final results on election night.
Okay, so if the total rejected ballot data isn't available what is your basis for claiming that it did happen? The burden of proof rests on the accuser. In any case we know that the signature rejection rates for Georgia in past elections were low.
What do you mean we don't have definitive results? Biden's win was certified by the states in the last week, in accordance with the law. It will only get more definitive when the electoral college votes next week. This is nothing new in the U.S., it's the way the process works.
What do you mean we don't have definitive results? Biden's win was certified by the states in the last week, in accordance with the law. It will only get more definitive when the electoral college votes next week. This is nothing new in the U.S., it's the way the process works.
These seem to be the most up to date numbers.
"Rejected absentee/mail-in ballots as a percentage of total absentee/mail-in ballots returned, 2016-2020"
Georgia 2016 6.42%
Georgia 2020 .60%
Source https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2020:_Analysis_of_...
Which cites the official Georgia election website as source of the raw data.
Georgia 2016 6.42%
Georgia 2020 .60%
Source https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2020:_Analysis_of_...
Which cites the official Georgia election website as source of the raw data.
If you check the footnote there it seems Ballotpedia computed this rate themselves. It seems exceedingly unlikely this has anything to do with fraud, since other states handily won by Trump like Alaska and Iowa show similar large drops in 2020. I think fundamentally the data here is incomplete for 2020 and nothing meaningful can be said about it yet.
Is Google also going to ban all the people who pushed the baseless Russia-made-trump-win nonsense? What a giant waste of time and money that was.
Do it equally for everyone, or don't do it at all.
Do it equally for everyone, or don't do it at all.
We don't know if Russia made Trump win, we only know that they helped him.
Likewise, we don't know if Trump himself worked with Russians, we only know his campaign chairman Paul Manafort did.
These are both facts that have been verified by the Republican controlled Senate Intel Committee.
You are free to read their report yourself.
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
Likewise, we don't know if Trump himself worked with Russians, we only know his campaign chairman Paul Manafort did.
These are both facts that have been verified by the Republican controlled Senate Intel Committee.
You are free to read their report yourself.
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
>We don't know if Russia made Trump win, we only know that they helped him.
That's a bit like saying we know there is election fraud in 2020 because we found 2 voting irregularities. Minor voting irregularities happen in every election and are also facts.
Sorry, it goes both ways. Both sides need to provide evidence and prove it in court before making such statements. If you don't know, then the right thing to do is to say nothing unless it has been proven.
That's a bit like saying we know there is election fraud in 2020 because we found 2 voting irregularities. Minor voting irregularities happen in every election and are also facts.
Sorry, it goes both ways. Both sides need to provide evidence and prove it in court before making such statements. If you don't know, then the right thing to do is to say nothing unless it has been proven.
Have any democrats been implicated in voter fraud?
You are completely ignoring the high level of coordination that has been proven, between the Trump campaign and the Russians.
It's impossible to know what the effect was, but we know for sure they tried, which is illegal.
Can you find any example of a "voter irregularity" that has the same level of intent and coordination with an official of the Democratic party?
It only "goes both ways" when you are blatantly lying and discounting reality.
Many of the states in question are run by Republicans. Are you saying that Republicans conspired to steal the election from Trump?
You are completely ignoring the high level of coordination that has been proven, between the Trump campaign and the Russians.
It's impossible to know what the effect was, but we know for sure they tried, which is illegal.
Can you find any example of a "voter irregularity" that has the same level of intent and coordination with an official of the Democratic party?
It only "goes both ways" when you are blatantly lying and discounting reality.
Many of the states in question are run by Republicans. Are you saying that Republicans conspired to steal the election from Trump?
>You are completely ignoring the high level of coordination that has been proven, between the Trump campaign and the Russians.
No high level of co-ordination to steal the election was "proven". I don't know what kind of "news" you read.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/russiagate-is-wmd-times-a-mill...
>It's impossible to know what the effect was, but we know for sure they tried, which is illegal.
If you don't know what the effect was, what is your point again?
>It only "goes both ways" when you are blatantly lying and discounting reality.
Childish name-calling? Nice..
>Many of the states in question are run by Republicans. Are you saying that Republicans conspired to steal the election from Trump?
Actually, I'm claiming both sides are in their own bubble clutching their little (R) and (D) flags and waving them frantically.
No high level of co-ordination to steal the election was "proven". I don't know what kind of "news" you read.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/russiagate-is-wmd-times-a-mill...
>It's impossible to know what the effect was, but we know for sure they tried, which is illegal.
If you don't know what the effect was, what is your point again?
>It only "goes both ways" when you are blatantly lying and discounting reality.
Childish name-calling? Nice..
>Many of the states in question are run by Republicans. Are you saying that Republicans conspired to steal the election from Trump?
Actually, I'm claiming both sides are in their own bubble clutching their little (R) and (D) flags and waving them frantically.
To claim something false is lying. To point out lying is not "name calling".
> No high level of co-ordination to steal the election was "proven". I don't know what kind of "news" you read.
Here, try this:
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
Ctrl+F "manafort" if you are having trouble finding it.
> Actually, I'm claiming both sides are in their own bubble clutching their little (R) and (D) flags and waving them frantically.
Bro, is this not name calling? At least I am actually offering evidence. All you is your sense of superiority.
Also, the whole cover of partisanship is just so intellectually lazy. You can literally dismiss any evidence or reality just by claiming partisanship.
I am sure partisanship is involved, but that is not a rebuttal to the evidence presented.
What a poor use of time to have a conversation with you.
> No high level of co-ordination to steal the election was "proven". I don't know what kind of "news" you read.
Here, try this:
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
Ctrl+F "manafort" if you are having trouble finding it.
> Actually, I'm claiming both sides are in their own bubble clutching their little (R) and (D) flags and waving them frantically.
Bro, is this not name calling? At least I am actually offering evidence. All you is your sense of superiority.
Also, the whole cover of partisanship is just so intellectually lazy. You can literally dismiss any evidence or reality just by claiming partisanship.
I am sure partisanship is involved, but that is not a rebuttal to the evidence presented.
What a poor use of time to have a conversation with you.
So you keep posting the same old tired link claiming its "evidence". I don't think you understand what that document actually says.
I don't rebut evidence, I accept it, if courts accept it when used as evidence in a case. I don't know what rebutting evidence means, or what that would accomplish. After four years of nonsense investigations there were no indictments on this so called "collusion". This fact alone makes anyone involved in making those allegations look completely nutty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indictment
No indictment = no charges = no case = no conviction = innocent until proven guilty. Regardless of this report, if Dems had solid evidence to bring criminal charges, I'd bet my life savings that they'd have brought cases by now, and we'd know about it.
I don't rebut evidence, I accept it, if courts accept it when used as evidence in a case. I don't know what rebutting evidence means, or what that would accomplish. After four years of nonsense investigations there were no indictments on this so called "collusion". This fact alone makes anyone involved in making those allegations look completely nutty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indictment
No indictment = no charges = no case = no conviction = innocent until proven guilty. Regardless of this report, if Dems had solid evidence to bring criminal charges, I'd bet my life savings that they'd have brought cases by now, and we'd know about it.
> Edit: A lot of the responses here seem to be unaware of Texas’ lawsuit and the ramifications. I expect the conspiracy claims to be separated out from the genuine concerns if the Supreme Court chooses to hear that suit.
I'm not sure why you think that. I doubt any legally-minded individuals think there's any merit to that lawsuit.
1. It's dubious Texas even has standing. Texas has extremely limited influence, if any, over the manner in which other states manage their elections. If Pennsylvania wanted, they could divvy out their electoral votes via coin flip in future elections. As far as I'm aware (and I'm not a lawyer, so take this with a grain of salt), a state suing another state for the way it handles elections is entirely without precedent.
2. There's the issue of laches. If mail-in voting is unconstitutional, the time to make that argument was months ago. Courts are already hesitant to change election procedure near election day for fear of confusing voters. They are far less willing to disenfranchise tens of millions of voters after ballots have already been cast.
I'm not sure why you think that. I doubt any legally-minded individuals think there's any merit to that lawsuit.
1. It's dubious Texas even has standing. Texas has extremely limited influence, if any, over the manner in which other states manage their elections. If Pennsylvania wanted, they could divvy out their electoral votes via coin flip in future elections. As far as I'm aware (and I'm not a lawyer, so take this with a grain of salt), a state suing another state for the way it handles elections is entirely without precedent.
2. There's the issue of laches. If mail-in voting is unconstitutional, the time to make that argument was months ago. Courts are already hesitant to change election procedure near election day for fear of confusing voters. They are far less willing to disenfranchise tens of millions of voters after ballots have already been cast.
1. It is not dubious at all. The U.S. Constitution is actually quite clear about this.
2. Claims depend on damages. Judges tend to avoid ruling on hypotheticals.
I would say those claims based on the absence of evidence, or evidence that was proven fraudulent or incorrect would be baseless.
It's impossible to prove something didn't happen, so we need proof something did happen. None was provided, just look at all the lawsuits.
It's impossible to prove something didn't happen, so we need proof something did happen. None was provided, just look at all the lawsuits.
In the case of ballots, each ballot should have a recorded chain of custody, so it's actually not 'impossible' to prove something didn't happen. If the accusations are "There are a bunch of ballots that were entered into the counts without proper chain of custody" that can be easily proven or disproven.
If the accusation is "Signatures were required to be verified and bipartisan representatives were legally supposed to witness the process" which apparently is the case in many jurisdictions, that too would be easy to prove or disprove. There will be records associated with those observations and chain of custody records of those ballots.
Unfortunately, some ballot envelopes have already been 'thrown away' so they cannot be audited to see if counts match, to see how many ballots were indeed signed (sometimes a witness is required), or be able to be verified against other controls (such as numbering, ensuring the name on the ballot matches who it was sent to, etc).
The law says you must hold an election, and exactly what steps you need to take to hold such an election. If you didn't follow the steps, there wasn't a lawful election. That's more or less what some of the lawsuits are about.
Are these claims 'baseless'? I don't think so. There's no shortage of sworn affidavits and statements from election officials about how the processes weren't followed. There's also court cases (such as in Georgia) where the executive branch possibly unlawfully struck an agreement with Democrats to relax certain requirements.
The only remaining question is, how heavily should this evidence be weighed, and is it enough to affect the outcome of the process. TBD.
If the accusation is "Signatures were required to be verified and bipartisan representatives were legally supposed to witness the process" which apparently is the case in many jurisdictions, that too would be easy to prove or disprove. There will be records associated with those observations and chain of custody records of those ballots.
Unfortunately, some ballot envelopes have already been 'thrown away' so they cannot be audited to see if counts match, to see how many ballots were indeed signed (sometimes a witness is required), or be able to be verified against other controls (such as numbering, ensuring the name on the ballot matches who it was sent to, etc).
The law says you must hold an election, and exactly what steps you need to take to hold such an election. If you didn't follow the steps, there wasn't a lawful election. That's more or less what some of the lawsuits are about.
Are these claims 'baseless'? I don't think so. There's no shortage of sworn affidavits and statements from election officials about how the processes weren't followed. There's also court cases (such as in Georgia) where the executive branch possibly unlawfully struck an agreement with Democrats to relax certain requirements.
The only remaining question is, how heavily should this evidence be weighed, and is it enough to affect the outcome of the process. TBD.
>"There are a bunch of ballots that were entered into the counts without proper chain of custody" that can be easily proven or disproven."
And unfortunately due to the amount of bad faith in play, I would be concerned of the party hoping that there was a break in the chain of custody to employ an insider to perform a break in the chain of custody in order to get the result they want... throwing everything out in hopes of getting a different outcome. The conspiracies will never end. Sigh.
And unfortunately due to the amount of bad faith in play, I would be concerned of the party hoping that there was a break in the chain of custody to employ an insider to perform a break in the chain of custody in order to get the result they want... throwing everything out in hopes of getting a different outcome. The conspiracies will never end. Sigh.
In PA at least, they could have not kicked out GOP observers, literally cheering as they were thrown out. In other counties, observers had to stand far away for "COVID" reasons, while dozens or counters of DEM observers were crammed together at tables.
In Georgia, observers were told to go home, and then people continued to count behind closed doors, unobserved. There is video and no matter how many news sources yell "debunked" ... there is no reasonable explanation for it. There was no water pipe burst. It was a lie and it LOOKS TERRIBLE.
If you want an honest election, then people have to not make up this shit. But everyone sees every single GOP/Republican as some evil racist Nazi, so some of these things could have been totally on the books, but people threw out observers due to media fueled hate. The trouble is ... it's impossible to tell. The percentage of rejected mail-in ballots due to signatures is far far below what is has been before.
It looks bad. It stinks. Anyone who is in the center and is truly looking at everything is likely going to make the judgement, even if their party won, the election was shady as fuck.
In Georgia, observers were told to go home, and then people continued to count behind closed doors, unobserved. There is video and no matter how many news sources yell "debunked" ... there is no reasonable explanation for it. There was no water pipe burst. It was a lie and it LOOKS TERRIBLE.
If you want an honest election, then people have to not make up this shit. But everyone sees every single GOP/Republican as some evil racist Nazi, so some of these things could have been totally on the books, but people threw out observers due to media fueled hate. The trouble is ... it's impossible to tell. The percentage of rejected mail-in ballots due to signatures is far far below what is has been before.
It looks bad. It stinks. Anyone who is in the center and is truly looking at everything is likely going to make the judgement, even if their party won, the election was shady as fuck.
It only looks bad to people who have only gotten interested in politics in the past 4 years, and for many had never known the actual process, but without any past data claim that this year's process looks "shady".
A large problem is you've seen everyone else as the other group, and your group as persecuted, so to me, it looks like you are accepting right wing talking points without critical thought. I promise you I don't think every single GOP/Republican is a nazi, but some of them are feeding you misinformation.
For example, there were no observers kicked out in PA. This claim famously went to court where the Trump's lawyers were forced to admit that they had the same number of observers as democrats before having their case thrown out [1].
Likewise in GA, where you have a completely Republican controlled voter apparatus, you have come to believe that the governor, secretary of state and many of the republican workers for the state have decided to sloppily tilt the state in Biden's favor, for seemingly no reason.
Also consider, that in many of these cases, they are being presided over by Republican judges (or judges appointed by Republican presidents), as is the case with the majority of our judicial system. McConnell famously prevented Obama from making many court appointments, while Trump has made hundreds. The further you look into this, the voter fraud story would have required co-ordination between not only the democratic party across the country, but also with several Republican staffers and judges. Voter Fraud of this magnitude would require an incredible grand conspiracy but somehow that is more believable to many than the fact Trump lost.
Again, I don't believe every single GOP/Republican is a Nazi, but the media wing seems to be working incredibly hard to make you believe that there is something nefarious going on in this election when there hasn't been any credible proof there is. Maybe that's not what a Nazi would do, but I implore that you take an unbaised look at what is being said, and what is actually happening on the ground.
[1] https://twitter.com/kadhim/status/1324485343274557443
A large problem is you've seen everyone else as the other group, and your group as persecuted, so to me, it looks like you are accepting right wing talking points without critical thought. I promise you I don't think every single GOP/Republican is a nazi, but some of them are feeding you misinformation.
For example, there were no observers kicked out in PA. This claim famously went to court where the Trump's lawyers were forced to admit that they had the same number of observers as democrats before having their case thrown out [1].
Likewise in GA, where you have a completely Republican controlled voter apparatus, you have come to believe that the governor, secretary of state and many of the republican workers for the state have decided to sloppily tilt the state in Biden's favor, for seemingly no reason.
Also consider, that in many of these cases, they are being presided over by Republican judges (or judges appointed by Republican presidents), as is the case with the majority of our judicial system. McConnell famously prevented Obama from making many court appointments, while Trump has made hundreds. The further you look into this, the voter fraud story would have required co-ordination between not only the democratic party across the country, but also with several Republican staffers and judges. Voter Fraud of this magnitude would require an incredible grand conspiracy but somehow that is more believable to many than the fact Trump lost.
Again, I don't believe every single GOP/Republican is a Nazi, but the media wing seems to be working incredibly hard to make you believe that there is something nefarious going on in this election when there hasn't been any credible proof there is. Maybe that's not what a Nazi would do, but I implore that you take an unbaised look at what is being said, and what is actually happening on the ground.
[1] https://twitter.com/kadhim/status/1324485343274557443
I don't see in your [1] where they admitted to any such thing. It seems they came to an agreement in court, that from that point forward, each party could have 60 representatives present.
So, based on this thread alone (which was written as happening live on Nov 5), which you provided, we don't know if at any point election observers were previously kicked out, how many, when or where, or for what reasons. We also don't know if the observers were allowed to observe much of anything (there's something about not allowing them within 100 feet in that thread).
The rest of what you wrote is speculation. Nobody need be concerned with the 'why' someone did something, merely the facts. Were the elections carried out in accordance to the law, or weren't they. That's what's being litigated.
So, based on this thread alone (which was written as happening live on Nov 5), which you provided, we don't know if at any point election observers were previously kicked out, how many, when or where, or for what reasons. We also don't know if the observers were allowed to observe much of anything (there's something about not allowing them within 100 feet in that thread).
The rest of what you wrote is speculation. Nobody need be concerned with the 'why' someone did something, merely the facts. Were the elections carried out in accordance to the law, or weren't they. That's what's being litigated.
In some cases, the chain of custody records (allegedly) aren't even available, so what are you supposed to do about that situation?
In my mind, that begs the question, how can these elections even be 'certified?' What due diligence did election officials perform to ensure everything was fair and square?
In Georgia, I believe, there were reports of multiple USB drives found that weren't initially counted during the recount. Did anyone know how many people voted in those precincts and who was in charge of ensuring the numbers were square?
It seems like a complete circus.
In my mind, that begs the question, how can these elections even be 'certified?' What due diligence did election officials perform to ensure everything was fair and square?
In Georgia, I believe, there were reports of multiple USB drives found that weren't initially counted during the recount. Did anyone know how many people voted in those precincts and who was in charge of ensuring the numbers were square?
It seems like a complete circus.
If there is a truth to be gleamed here, it's that U.S. elections as they're presently conducted are a train wreck. Even the parties seeking to prove a fair election took place are being thwarted by incompetence.
That's really the entire point, IMO. If the people holding the election can't prove they did everything by the letter, how do they know they did everything by the letter? You're talking 100's or 1000's of different precincts across an entire state.
Some things have been claimed without a single shred of evidence. A complete lack of evidence points to claims as being baseless.
(That doesn't mean that YouTube's removal of those will help the situation. Though letting baseless claims be a part of polarizing the country does not appear to have been the correct solution, given where we are now.)
(That doesn't mean that YouTube's removal of those will help the situation. Though letting baseless claims be a part of polarizing the country does not appear to have been the correct solution, given where we are now.)
> I would genuinely like to know why you are so confident about what claims are and aren’t baseless.
Because he continues to lose in court time and time again, often to judges that were appointed during his administration and yet the rhetoric and allegations continue at the same pace.
Because he continues to lose in court time and time again, often to judges that were appointed during his administration and yet the rhetoric and allegations continue at the same pace.
So far, the vast majority of court cases are getting tossed out due to lack of evidence. The courts are asking for more evidence but there is none.
At what point would you be agree that the claims are baseless? Like, what has to happen for you are confident about it?
Texas' lawsuit is frivolous and will get denied.
At what point would you be agree that the claims are baseless? Like, what has to happen for you are confident about it?
Texas' lawsuit is frivolous and will get denied.
>Do you have inside knowledge that the public doesn’t posses? Because I’ve been paying attention and I’m genuinely unsure what is happening ... default skeptical about all claims in every direction.
No inside knowledge necessary. Just read the court decisions themselves. They are public documents.
I don't have the time or the inclination to dig up all 50+ court rulings, many of which explain in great detail, the deficiencies of the claims that have been made and/or are unsupported by evidence.
If you are unaware of these court rulings (along with the claims being made by both sides, the arguments for and against and the opinions of the judges), that's because you haven't looked. Each and every case is in the public record.
Don't believe anyone who tells you there was/wasn't widespread electoral fraud/irregularities. Look at the documents yourself. They are publicly available (yes, I know I'm repeating myself).
Hell, even a bunch of the ballot counting processes across the country were live-streamed.
No inside knowledge necessary. Just read the court decisions themselves. They are public documents.
I don't have the time or the inclination to dig up all 50+ court rulings, many of which explain in great detail, the deficiencies of the claims that have been made and/or are unsupported by evidence.
If you are unaware of these court rulings (along with the claims being made by both sides, the arguments for and against and the opinions of the judges), that's because you haven't looked. Each and every case is in the public record.
Don't believe anyone who tells you there was/wasn't widespread electoral fraud/irregularities. Look at the documents yourself. They are publicly available (yes, I know I'm repeating myself).
Hell, even a bunch of the ballot counting processes across the country were live-streamed.
I wrote https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25354086 to explain why Texas v Pennsylvania is going to be dismissed by SCOTUS. There are at least six reasons to dismiss that don't even involve any consideration of the merits, with standing far and away the most likely reason to dismiss.
This lawsuit: https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...
As a former resident of Texas, I'm particularly entertained by irregularity #2:
"Intrastate differences in the treatment of voters, with more favorable allotted to voters–whether lawful or unlawful–in areas administered by local government under Democrat control and with populations with higher ratios of Democrat voters than other areas of Defendant States."
Check out Tarrant, Dallas, Harris, and Travis counties:
https://redistricting.capitol.texas.gov/docs/19R0036_86th_Se...
As a former resident of Texas, I'm particularly entertained by irregularity #2:
"Intrastate differences in the treatment of voters, with more favorable allotted to voters–whether lawful or unlawful–in areas administered by local government under Democrat control and with populations with higher ratios of Democrat voters than other areas of Defendant States."
Check out Tarrant, Dallas, Harris, and Travis counties:
https://redistricting.capitol.texas.gov/docs/19R0036_86th_Se...
> I would genuinely like to know why you are so confident about what claims are and aren’t baseless.
I'm confident that no good explanations have been offered for certain claims, and my epistemology is that the truth value of claims depends on having good explanations for those claims. Someone might have a different epistemology which admits claims of the form "X is true despite there being no good explanation of X being true," but note that such an epistemology effectively allows for all claims being true (the existence of unicorns, the claim that the Universe's existence began 1 millisecond ago and will end in the next 1 millisecond, etc.).
I'm confident that no good explanations have been offered for certain claims, and my epistemology is that the truth value of claims depends on having good explanations for those claims. Someone might have a different epistemology which admits claims of the form "X is true despite there being no good explanation of X being true," but note that such an epistemology effectively allows for all claims being true (the existence of unicorns, the claim that the Universe's existence began 1 millisecond ago and will end in the next 1 millisecond, etc.).
The Supreme Court isn't going to hear Texas's suit. They've already strongly signaled that by rejecting the Pennsylvania suit without any dissents; Texas is basically trying to sue Pennsylvania for the same things, again.
You're mistaking the Pennsylvania Supreme Court with the U.S. Supreme Court. Don't feel bad, The New York Times is perpetuating this confusion.
No, you're misinformed. The (Federal) Supreme Court rejected the Pennsylvania case unanimously.
That's correct. It's the "Miscellaneous Order" on 12/08/20 here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/ordersofthecourt/20
Here's the direct PDF link: https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/120820zr_bq7...
Here's the direct PDF link: https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/120820zr_bq7...
No I believe it is true that a plaintiff from Pennsylvania who was suing Pennsylvania was denied in the SCOTUS, but this was after Texas files their suit which was more inclusive, so the two might relate.
Edit: SCOTUS declined to hear that case, possibly in anticipation of hearing the Texas one instead, possibly because they intend to hear neither.
Edit: SCOTUS declined to hear that case, possibly in anticipation of hearing the Texas one instead, possibly because they intend to hear neither.
You can believe what you want, it's (for now) a free country. But the SCOTUS has not ruled on anything yet.
Not what I said.
You edited your post. How about some good faith here?
To clarify. But I never said what you thought I said.
There’s nothing secret or private about any of this. Go read what the judges’ responses where to the Trump legal team’s claims were. Some of these judges were appointed by Trump. The Supreme Court has struck down multiple claims. Those are public too. Election officials have investigated and found to evidence of fraud. The people Trump is attacking in Georgia for example are Republicans. Barr’s investigation found no evidence of fraud that would have changed the election.
Every person that was actually involved in the election has said Biden won fairly. They made public statements. It’s all out there in the open available for you to see. If that doesn’t convince you I don’t know what evidence would.
Every person that was actually involved in the election has said Biden won fairly. They made public statements. It’s all out there in the open available for you to see. If that doesn’t convince you I don’t know what evidence would.
You're spreading misinformation. Should you be censored?
> "Some media outlets have incorrectly reported that the Department has concluded its investigation of election fraud and announced an affirmative finding of no fraud in the election," the spokesperson said. "That is not what the Associated Press reported nor what the Attorney General stated. The Department will continue to receive and vigorously pursue all specific and credible allegations of fraud as expeditiously as possible." [0]
[0]: https://www.newsmax.com/politics/doj-william-barr-fraud-ball...
> "Some media outlets have incorrectly reported that the Department has concluded its investigation of election fraud and announced an affirmative finding of no fraud in the election," the spokesperson said. "That is not what the Associated Press reported nor what the Attorney General stated. The Department will continue to receive and vigorously pursue all specific and credible allegations of fraud as expeditiously as possible." [0]
[0]: https://www.newsmax.com/politics/doj-william-barr-fraud-ball...
How is the person above spreading misinformation? They stated that no evidence of fraud has been found. No evidence of fraud has been found. The fact that the AG will pursue any evidence of it if it is found is doesn’t contradict that in any way?
The court case record is a decent barometer. The fact that the Trump campaign's cases have almost unanimously tossed out quickly tells us that reality is likely one of two:
1. They have approximately no evidence of anything substantive.
2. All of the courts in all of the states where this is happening are conspiring against the President. Including those with Republican-appointed judges.
Can I argue that it must be #1 the same way I can use the laws of physics to argue that a hammer will fall to the ground when I drop it? No. Is it WAY beyond my own reasonable doubt? Yep.
1. They have approximately no evidence of anything substantive.
2. All of the courts in all of the states where this is happening are conspiring against the President. Including those with Republican-appointed judges.
Can I argue that it must be #1 the same way I can use the laws of physics to argue that a hammer will fall to the ground when I drop it? No. Is it WAY beyond my own reasonable doubt? Yep.
Some courts are refusing to even allow lawyers to present evidence.
Additionally, many of the Trump cases reported by the media are not, in fact, Trump Campaign cases.
Additionally, many of the Trump cases reported by the media are not, in fact, Trump Campaign cases.
> Some courts are refusing to even allow lawyers to present evidence.
That is a misleading interpretation. The cases are being dismissed for procedural reasons, which (depending on the specific case) can amount to "you should have brought your suit sooner" or "your evidence is inadmissible in the court of law" or "even if everything you say is true, you have not demonstrated that you have been harmed." The lawyers aren't being allowed to present evidence because they haven't even managed to demonstrate that they have a reason to present evidence--which is a pretty low bar to clear.
That is a misleading interpretation. The cases are being dismissed for procedural reasons, which (depending on the specific case) can amount to "you should have brought your suit sooner" or "your evidence is inadmissible in the court of law" or "even if everything you say is true, you have not demonstrated that you have been harmed." The lawyers aren't being allowed to present evidence because they haven't even managed to demonstrate that they have a reason to present evidence--which is a pretty low bar to clear.
In some cases, it is a jurisdictional ruling. Meaning that the only solution is to appeal to a higher court until you get to the court with jurisdiction to rule on the case. This is largely why these rulings are happening in rapid succession, there's a procedure that must be followed and deadlines to meet.
The Texas Attorney General likely has short circuited this process by filing a claim that can only be resolved by a federal court. And now 11 other states (at my last count) have joined on as plaintiffs and the U.S. Supreme Court has placed it on the docket.
The Texas Attorney General likely has short circuited this process by filing a claim that can only be resolved by a federal court. And now 11 other states (at my last count) have joined on as plaintiffs and the U.S. Supreme Court has placed it on the docket.
> The Texas Attorney General likely has short circuited this process by filing a claim that can only be resolved by a federal court.
Having read the claim, there is no chance that SCOTUS will do anything other than deny it per curiam.
> And now 11 other states (at my last count) have joined on as plaintiffs
They have not joined as plaintiffs. They filed an amici brief. And it's actually 17. And reading the amici brief, they don't even attempt to justify why Texas has standing in the case, which is the biggest reason to dismiss the case.
> and the U.S. Supreme Court has placed it on the docket.
You're aware that means absolutely nothing? To be refused to be docketed is an exceptionally high bar that requires the court to think you a vexatious litigant. Several thousand cases are docketed a year, and yet there's only around 200-ish that are even considered petitions worthy of commentary, and only 70-ish are actually heard.
The actual bar you're looking for is if SCOTUS accepts the petition which, (for a leave to file motion in original jurisdiction) requires 5 justices to agree to hear the case, and will not be decided before the reply brief is filed tomorrow. I suspect it will be discussed at the regular Friday conference, and likely disposed of in the Monday orders list, although the justices may decide it's important enough to release in a Friday orders list.
I've said elsewhere why the case is likely to be go absolutely nowhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25353139.
Having read the claim, there is no chance that SCOTUS will do anything other than deny it per curiam.
> And now 11 other states (at my last count) have joined on as plaintiffs
They have not joined as plaintiffs. They filed an amici brief. And it's actually 17. And reading the amici brief, they don't even attempt to justify why Texas has standing in the case, which is the biggest reason to dismiss the case.
> and the U.S. Supreme Court has placed it on the docket.
You're aware that means absolutely nothing? To be refused to be docketed is an exceptionally high bar that requires the court to think you a vexatious litigant. Several thousand cases are docketed a year, and yet there's only around 200-ish that are even considered petitions worthy of commentary, and only 70-ish are actually heard.
The actual bar you're looking for is if SCOTUS accepts the petition which, (for a leave to file motion in original jurisdiction) requires 5 justices to agree to hear the case, and will not be decided before the reply brief is filed tomorrow. I suspect it will be discussed at the regular Friday conference, and likely disposed of in the Monday orders list, although the justices may decide it's important enough to release in a Friday orders list.
I've said elsewhere why the case is likely to be go absolutely nowhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25353139.
> They have not joined as plaintiffs. They filed an amici brief. And it's actually 17. And reading the amici brief, they don't even attempt to justify why Texas has standing in the case, which is the biggest reason to dismiss the case.
You are correct, they are not plaintiffs, but a third of U.S. states are now in support of this action.
I would argue that if a U.S. state has made unconstitutional election changes and thus has conducted an unconstitutional election then other U.S. states not in violation of the constitution have standing to dispute the election results with federal implications in accordance with the 12th Amendment.
This is not totally unprecedented, however, as the Election of 1824 resulted in a contingent election where the candidate with the popular vote lost. [0]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1824_United_States_presidentia...
You are correct, they are not plaintiffs, but a third of U.S. states are now in support of this action.
I would argue that if a U.S. state has made unconstitutional election changes and thus has conducted an unconstitutional election then other U.S. states not in violation of the constitution have standing to dispute the election results with federal implications in accordance with the 12th Amendment.
This is not totally unprecedented, however, as the Election of 1824 resulted in a contingent election where the candidate with the popular vote lost. [0]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1824_United_States_presidentia...
> I would argue that if a U.S. state has made unconstitutional election changes and thus has conducted an unconstitutional election then other U.S. states not in violation of the constitution have standing to dispute the election results with federal implications in accordance with the 12th Amendment.
The process you are talking about involves the US House of Representatives, not suing the states in SCOTUS.
The legal basis for claiming injury in the face of improper elections is the notion of "vote dilution." However, vote dilution cannot happen in the Electoral College by definition. Texas gets 38 of the 538 votes in the Electoral College, and that is true no matter how tight or loose the voting restrictions are in Pennsylvania. The voting power of Texas residents remains unaltered no matter what the voting power of residents in Pennsylvania is. Texas's brief did not persuade me that it had standing to sue (although it does appeal to vote dilution), and none of the other briefs have attempted to address the issue of standing at all.
That the House has had to decide the election is not unprecedented (it has done so on three occasions, 1800, 1824, and 1876, where it delegated its decision to accept the votes to a separate commission). What is unprecedented is a state asking SCOTUS to overturn the results of another state.
The process you are talking about involves the US House of Representatives, not suing the states in SCOTUS.
The legal basis for claiming injury in the face of improper elections is the notion of "vote dilution." However, vote dilution cannot happen in the Electoral College by definition. Texas gets 38 of the 538 votes in the Electoral College, and that is true no matter how tight or loose the voting restrictions are in Pennsylvania. The voting power of Texas residents remains unaltered no matter what the voting power of residents in Pennsylvania is. Texas's brief did not persuade me that it had standing to sue (although it does appeal to vote dilution), and none of the other briefs have attempted to address the issue of standing at all.
That the House has had to decide the election is not unprecedented (it has done so on three occasions, 1800, 1824, and 1876, where it delegated its decision to accept the votes to a separate commission). What is unprecedented is a state asking SCOTUS to overturn the results of another state.
Whichever way you slice it, and by whatever technicalities were employed, Bush v. Gore resulted in the Supreme Court deciding how a state could conduct their vote.
What you are saying is plausible, but I think it’s so silly to argue this when we will find out in a few short days whether the SCOTUS will hear it.
I for one will be surprised if they don’t.
What you are saying is plausible, but I think it’s so silly to argue this when we will find out in a few short days whether the SCOTUS will hear it.
I for one will be surprised if they don’t.
> Whichever way you slice it, and by whatever technicalities were employed, Bush v. Gore resulted in the Supreme Court deciding how a state could conduct their vote.
On the basis of an appeal from a state supreme court, itself an appeal from lower courts, challenging the procedure. Which is basically the process that Kelly v PA went through, although SCOTUS declined to hear it yesterday.
On the basis of an appeal from a state supreme court, itself an appeal from lower courts, challenging the procedure. Which is basically the process that Kelly v PA went through, although SCOTUS declined to hear it yesterday.
I'm sorry. But you appear to be ignorant of the legal processes in the United States.
I suggest you educate yourself, as you keep saying things that don't comport with reality.
I suggest you educate yourself, as you keep saying things that don't comport with reality.
So a lawsuit goes through some filters before it ever gets to the "presenting evidence" stage.
One of them is standing. If I sue Hawaii for not providing trueluk with a beach house, no evidence gets heard. It gets dismissed because I am not trueluk, nor am I a resident of Hawaii, and therefore I don't have standing to bring the suit. The courts are not going to hear cases where party A files suit, claiming that party B damaged party C.
Another is failure to state a claim for which relief can be granted. If I sue Nebraska for not granting AnimalMuppet an oceanfront villa, I never get to present evidence. Nebraska has no oceanfront villas to give away, and a court order can't make them have any. (A more typical form for this to take is that some forms of relief are beyond the authority of the court to grant.)
Then there's... I forget the name of it. But the complaint is supposed to give an overview of the evidence. If that claimed evidence, even if true, doesn't give reason for the court to grant the requested relief, then the court isn't going to bother to listen to the evidence.
Most of the Trump (or on behalf of Trump) cases are falling on these hurdles. It's not that the judges are suppressing the evidence. It's that the lawsuits aren't even good enough to make it to the point of presenting evidence.
Note well: IANAL. Some detail and nuance may be missing from this post, but I think it's close to right. Don't take it as legal advice, though, because it's not.
One of them is standing. If I sue Hawaii for not providing trueluk with a beach house, no evidence gets heard. It gets dismissed because I am not trueluk, nor am I a resident of Hawaii, and therefore I don't have standing to bring the suit. The courts are not going to hear cases where party A files suit, claiming that party B damaged party C.
Another is failure to state a claim for which relief can be granted. If I sue Nebraska for not granting AnimalMuppet an oceanfront villa, I never get to present evidence. Nebraska has no oceanfront villas to give away, and a court order can't make them have any. (A more typical form for this to take is that some forms of relief are beyond the authority of the court to grant.)
Then there's... I forget the name of it. But the complaint is supposed to give an overview of the evidence. If that claimed evidence, even if true, doesn't give reason for the court to grant the requested relief, then the court isn't going to bother to listen to the evidence.
Most of the Trump (or on behalf of Trump) cases are falling on these hurdles. It's not that the judges are suppressing the evidence. It's that the lawsuits aren't even good enough to make it to the point of presenting evidence.
Note well: IANAL. Some detail and nuance may be missing from this post, but I think it's close to right. Don't take it as legal advice, though, because it's not.
So if I sue the state of Hawaii on your behalf and claim your HN username is AnimalMuppet, they would throw that out (as I don’t have standing)?
Yes. You aren't me; you don't get to sue on my behalf (unless you're my guardian or something).
What would you learn from this, if it happened? Is it strong evidence that your name is not AnimalMuppet?
Yes.
> Some courts are refusing to even allow lawyers to present evidence.
Source?
> Additionally, many of the Trump cases reported by the media are not, in fact, Trump Campaign cases.
That doesn't really matter. The "denominator" is not the most important part. In other words, it's not so much that his campaign won 1/51 cases or if it was really 1/10 cases. I only care about how many his campaign won (1).
And are you being honest, or are you being technically truthful while trying to deceive me? In other words, if a case was brought by Rudy Giuliani or Sidney Powell, but not some legal entity called "The Trump Campaign", then it's all the same to me.
Source?
> Additionally, many of the Trump cases reported by the media are not, in fact, Trump Campaign cases.
That doesn't really matter. The "denominator" is not the most important part. In other words, it's not so much that his campaign won 1/51 cases or if it was really 1/10 cases. I only care about how many his campaign won (1).
And are you being honest, or are you being technically truthful while trying to deceive me? In other words, if a case was brought by Rudy Giuliani or Sidney Powell, but not some legal entity called "The Trump Campaign", then it's all the same to me.
I'm being honest. The Trump Campaign has filed only a handful of suits.
Here's their suit in Georgia:
https://publicrecordsaccess.fultoncountyga.gov/app/RegisterO...
2,560 felons voted 66,247 underage voters 2,423 votes from people not registered 1,043 individuals registered at PO boxes 4,926 individuals who voted in Georgia after registering in another state 395 individuals who voted in two states 15,700 votes from people who moved out of state before the election 40,279 votes of people who moved without re-registering in their new county 30,000 - 40,000 absentee ballots lacking proper signature matching and verification
Here's their suit in Georgia:
https://publicrecordsaccess.fultoncountyga.gov/app/RegisterO...
2,560 felons voted 66,247 underage voters 2,423 votes from people not registered 1,043 individuals registered at PO boxes 4,926 individuals who voted in Georgia after registering in another state 395 individuals who voted in two states 15,700 votes from people who moved out of state before the election 40,279 votes of people who moved without re-registering in their new county 30,000 - 40,000 absentee ballots lacking proper signature matching and verification
Bummer that I'd have to pay to read most of that.
Are the claims you listed actually supported with evidence? I don't know Georgia's laws, so maybe felons are allowed to vote under some circumstances.
How do you even get a ballot for someone who isn't registered? Also, could they have moved after casting their vote legitimately?
Votes from people who moved out of state before the election. When is "the election"? I hope and assume they mean "before mail in ballots could be requested and submitted" and not "before November 3rd".
And what is "proper" signature matching? Signature matching is tricky. Are they getting professionals to analyze the signatures? Probably not. I'm not sure some Joe Schmoe would be able to look at two of my signatures and confirm they match, so I'm not that interested in strict signature matching as a bar to clear.
Rest assured, that if these claims actually are true, I will be happy to see the issues resolved. But seeing as all of the claims so far have come up totally empty, I'm not holding my breath. Remember when Trump said that he had a TON of evidence that Obama wasn't born in this country? Forgive me if I remain skeptical.
Are the claims you listed actually supported with evidence? I don't know Georgia's laws, so maybe felons are allowed to vote under some circumstances.
How do you even get a ballot for someone who isn't registered? Also, could they have moved after casting their vote legitimately?
Votes from people who moved out of state before the election. When is "the election"? I hope and assume they mean "before mail in ballots could be requested and submitted" and not "before November 3rd".
And what is "proper" signature matching? Signature matching is tricky. Are they getting professionals to analyze the signatures? Probably not. I'm not sure some Joe Schmoe would be able to look at two of my signatures and confirm they match, so I'm not that interested in strict signature matching as a bar to clear.
Rest assured, that if these claims actually are true, I will be happy to see the issues resolved. But seeing as all of the claims so far have come up totally empty, I'm not holding my breath. Remember when Trump said that he had a TON of evidence that Obama wasn't born in this country? Forgive me if I remain skeptical.
If your world view is this simplistic, then you can argue anything.
> The law also blocks county election officials from rejecting absentee ballots because of mismatched signatures, and when information on a voter registration application doesn't match other government databases, the voter will remain on the rolls. [0]
That didn't age well...
[0]: https://www.npr.org/2019/04/04/709911541/georgia-governor-si...
> The law also blocks county election officials from rejecting absentee ballots because of mismatched signatures, and when information on a voter registration application doesn't match other government databases, the voter will remain on the rolls. [0]
That didn't age well...
[0]: https://www.npr.org/2019/04/04/709911541/georgia-governor-si...
It's not really "simplistic" to judiciously apply Occam's razor to extraordinary claims.
And what exactly is your claim? It's just not plausible that there was such a large amount of voter fraud in key states (a net of hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes for Biden. How many fraud votes for Trump are we willing to allow in this scenario?) and no tangible evidence for any of it. You have claim after claim from "internet sleuths" who think they saw something on video, but so far, it seems that all of these claims have only shown ignorance of the viewer (ballot curing being an example I saw).
And I'm not sure what point you're making with your link. Can you explain?
And what exactly is your claim? It's just not plausible that there was such a large amount of voter fraud in key states (a net of hundreds of thousands of fraudulent votes for Biden. How many fraud votes for Trump are we willing to allow in this scenario?) and no tangible evidence for any of it. You have claim after claim from "internet sleuths" who think they saw something on video, but so far, it seems that all of these claims have only shown ignorance of the viewer (ballot curing being an example I saw).
And I'm not sure what point you're making with your link. Can you explain?
[deleted]
Three more states have joined Texas.
And this is exactly why we need the social media companies to step in. Because Trump has successfully created uncertainty where there is in fact no question.
Trump didn't create the uncertainty. Statistically improbably events did that.
There is overwhelming evidence of fraud and breaking of rules. The media, including YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, are censoring the evidence.
https://hereistheevidence.com/
There is overwhelming evidence of fraud and breaking of rules. The media, including YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, are censoring the evidence.
https://hereistheevidence.com/
"evidence" sourced from tweets, gab dot com posts, infowars(!) and youtube videos aren't good enough for me, and they aren't good enough for the courts...
And I'm not dismissing them just because of their sources; a lot of those tidbits have been debunked or thrown out of courts on their merits already
Jesus Christ that website runs about 30 more scripts on my computer than it needs to. Under the root domain, no less.
You fell for a honeypot, bud.
You fell for a honeypot, bud.
Oh no... I got hacked and all my bank accounts are empty. Watamuhgunnado?!
Your IP address and associated shadow profile are recorded by multiple nation-state intelligence agencies, most likely. Or else by private groups who are interested in compiling an army of impressionable and easily-duped folks to continue using them as a weapon to subvert democracy.
This is not a far-fetched claim. If I was Russia, for example, I would do something exactly like this for exactly that reason. Not to mention that stuff exactly like this has happened and was later shown to be run by exactly the groups I'm referencing. It's Occam's razor.
This is not a far-fetched claim. If I was Russia, for example, I would do something exactly like this for exactly that reason. Not to mention that stuff exactly like this has happened and was later shown to be run by exactly the groups I'm referencing. It's Occam's razor.
pedroma(1)
The Supreme Court will absolutely hear that suit. Those four states bypassed thier legislatures in order to change their election laws.
To anyone willing to invest a few hours of his time, he'll find it's quite obvious this election was rife with fraud.
What's sad is that our officials refuse to audit the votes. What's sad is the GOP officials in Wayne County who tried to say there was a problem were doxed and threatened. After that, no one was willing to stand up for the truth. Is there anything more important than making sure every legal vote was counted and illegal votes are discarded? They don't want transparency. That's the issue.
To anyone willing to invest a few hours of his time, he'll find it's quite obvious this election was rife with fraud.
What's sad is that our officials refuse to audit the votes. What's sad is the GOP officials in Wayne County who tried to say there was a problem were doxed and threatened. After that, no one was willing to stand up for the truth. Is there anything more important than making sure every legal vote was counted and illegal votes are discarded? They don't want transparency. That's the issue.
> To anyone willing to invest a few hours of his time, he'll find it's quite obvious this election was rife with fraud.
And yet none of the president's lawyers have actually brought forth even 1 claim of fraud before a judge, despite their rhetoric. Every time when actually in court, they have shied away from claiming accusations of fraud.
So no, not only is it not obvious that the election was rife with fraud, it is in fact extremely obvious that no real amount of fraud has taken place at all (only using "real amount" instead of "any at all" because I'm certain that you'll find 1 or maybe 2 people somewhere who have stolen maybe a dozen votes).
And yet none of the president's lawyers have actually brought forth even 1 claim of fraud before a judge, despite their rhetoric. Every time when actually in court, they have shied away from claiming accusations of fraud.
So no, not only is it not obvious that the election was rife with fraud, it is in fact extremely obvious that no real amount of fraud has taken place at all (only using "real amount" instead of "any at all" because I'm certain that you'll find 1 or maybe 2 people somewhere who have stolen maybe a dozen votes).
> Those four states bypassed thier legislatures in order to change their election laws.
When these special measures were enacted in March to accommodate voting during a pandemic, ample time was given for public comment and legal challenge. Why weren't these suits raised at that time? It seems awfully suspicious that plantiffs had no issue with the mail balloting until they lost the election.
When these special measures were enacted in March to accommodate voting during a pandemic, ample time was given for public comment and legal challenge. Why weren't these suits raised at that time? It seems awfully suspicious that plantiffs had no issue with the mail balloting until they lost the election.
People did sue at the time
Dude...
There were multiple audits in a ton of states. Every time, it came out that the results were fair.
You're going to need to come up with much more than that.
There were multiple audits in a ton of states. Every time, it came out that the results were fair.
You're going to need to come up with much more than that.
What has anyone done that is explicitly illegal?
Cite the statutes and laws.
The fact is, those procedures (i.e., "bypassing legislatures") have been implemented precisely for situations like this. Don't get mad just because people actually use them.
Cite the statutes and laws.
The fact is, those procedures (i.e., "bypassing legislatures") have been implemented precisely for situations like this. Don't get mad just because people actually use them.
No there is no easy solution generally.
You tube has no obligation to carry anything. It has nothing to do with "Free Speech", that would be a very lazy characterisation.
Companies like Google can control what is easily available and discoverable next to the cat videos etc but they do not "...dictate what information is widely accessible"
Any website or even more so IP address is widely accessible. Why should Google sit around and let experienced psy ops operators have free reign on their platform?
So there is a easy solution for Google - remove it.
You tube has no obligation to carry anything. It has nothing to do with "Free Speech", that would be a very lazy characterisation.
Companies like Google can control what is easily available and discoverable next to the cat videos etc but they do not "...dictate what information is widely accessible"
Any website or even more so IP address is widely accessible. Why should Google sit around and let experienced psy ops operators have free reign on their platform?
So there is a easy solution for Google - remove it.
That’s the point. This might be acceptable if there was even one single thing about YouTube that was itself democratic in any way.
Since there isn’t, this is an inherently anti-democratic maneuver.
The corporate oligarchy is shedding yet a bit mote hesitation to fully realize itself. This is not a good thing.
The corporate oligarchy is shedding yet a bit mote hesitation to fully realize itself. This is not a good thing.
It is private property! Why do you expect it to be "democratic"?
Whilst the abolition of private property is a interesting idea, that is not, I expect, what you would advocate?
Whilst the abolition of private property is a interesting idea, that is not, I expect, what you would advocate?
When you're the ONLY* alternative for videos online you have a moral obligation of being impartial.
* Vimeo, Daily Motion, Lbry or whatever else have even less shares than desktop Linuxes vs Windows. YouTube is the only game in town.
* Vimeo, Daily Motion, Lbry or whatever else have even less shares than desktop Linuxes vs Windows. YouTube is the only game in town.
The popularity of other equally-good services should have no bearing on whether a service has a "moral obligation" to do something. There's nothing preventing all the conspiracy theorists from deciding en masse to move to Vimeo, or setting up their own video posting system on Gab or Parler.
I dunno, did that stop the previous loser form claiming Russia cost her the election? Did the media come out and condemn the "undermining of election results" as a consequence? Did the media, youtube, Google, Facebook, have to babysit us? Did they have to babysit the Steele Dossier too?
The previous loser was pretty quiet about it. There was a special prosecutor appointed based on credible evidence that kept it in the news.
According to the special prosecutor appointed by the Justice Department, there was a concerted effort on the part of the Russian government to influence the US election, the Trump campaign was aware of that effort, and expected to benefit from it.
Given those facts, I think the bulk of the coverage erred on the conservative side...
Given those facts, I think the bulk of the coverage erred on the conservative side...
> Having the sitting president make completely baseless claims in an effort to delegitimize the results of an election
The whole point is that this is a biased assumption. You can't prevent people from making counterpoints, and then say "completely baseless claims." For the conversation to be fair, you need to allow the claims to be made, and then disprove them.
This way of thinking is part of the problem.
The whole point is that this is a biased assumption. You can't prevent people from making counterpoints, and then say "completely baseless claims." For the conversation to be fair, you need to allow the claims to be made, and then disprove them.
This way of thinking is part of the problem.
> then disprove them
How many times? This is an exploitable plan. Simply refuse to accept all evidence disproving claims that the election was stolen and continue to demand additional debate forever. Your method would only work if people were actually spreading these ideas in good faith. "Debate" instead becomes a hijacked channel for people to spread propaganda until the rest of time.
How many times? This is an exploitable plan. Simply refuse to accept all evidence disproving claims that the election was stolen and continue to demand additional debate forever. Your method would only work if people were actually spreading these ideas in good faith. "Debate" instead becomes a hijacked channel for people to spread propaganda until the rest of time.
Forever. Infinite times. That's the point.
Neither you nor the media are in position to disprove or prove anything. If Trump (empty rhetoric aside) has any claims about the election he needs to ask the competent authorities to review the case, there are regular channels for that. If the authorities(not you, google or twitter) determine there is no case, then Trump has to leave no matter what he says on twitter. If he does not leave, the problem wont be his Twitter account.
> Neither you nor the media are in position to disprove or prove anything.
Then what do people want? I'm not hearing simultaneous complaints that it is important for youtube to host these. "debates" so that the social media community can address wild claims and also that it is a worthless effort.
If random internet commenters can't make productive change in the crazy beliefs held by some people then great! I actually agree that is the most likely outcome. This means that nothing is lost if youtube says "we don't want to be the home to this debate".
Then what do people want? I'm not hearing simultaneous complaints that it is important for youtube to host these. "debates" so that the social media community can address wild claims and also that it is a worthless effort.
If random internet commenters can't make productive change in the crazy beliefs held by some people then great! I actually agree that is the most likely outcome. This means that nothing is lost if youtube says "we don't want to be the home to this debate".
You are free to disagree but for me a company like Youtube who has a quasi-monopolistic dominion on internet video (yes people say go to dailymotion etc, they are being disingenuous, for many reasons youtube is the only good option) is playing a dangerous game by selectively enforcing what content to host. If tomorrow they start removing BLM videos or even worst any video critical of Google I expect you wont just shrug your shoulders and say "Well, they can go and create their own video service, nothing is lost"
> If tomorrow they start removing BLM videos or even worst any video critical of Google I expect you wont just shrug your shoulders and say "Well, they can go and create their own video service, nothing is lost"
That's right. I do believe that booting white supremacist content off youtube is good and booting blm content off youtube is bad. The merits of the content are meaningfully different. If people want to argue the white supremacist content is merited, they can certainly try.
The game is already dangerous, even if youtube decides to host literally everything its users upload.
That's right. I do believe that booting white supremacist content off youtube is good and booting blm content off youtube is bad. The merits of the content are meaningfully different. If people want to argue the white supremacist content is merited, they can certainly try.
The game is already dangerous, even if youtube decides to host literally everything its users upload.
Is Jordan Peterson white supremacism? What about Christopher Hitchens? Is Nigel Farage white supremacism? Trump? Marie Le Pen? Geert Wilders? Bolsonaro? Voyage a bout de la nuit from Celine? Lovecraft? How about Teddy Roosevelt? Churchill? Columbus? Music about the crusades? Nordic rock? Midsommer?
Thanks god you and google will take all those decisions for me.Thinking is hard , paraphrasing Barbie(oops more white supremacism).
Thanks god you and google will take all those decisions for me.Thinking is hard , paraphrasing Barbie(oops more white supremacism).
The person making the claims is responsible for providing evidence of them---specifically, evidence acceptable in the courts. Otherwise, you could continue making claims endlessly.
> The whole point is that this is a biased assumption
It's absolutely not. Whether the president's claims are true is another matter entirely. When he makes a claim with no specifics, no explanation of how it occurred, and no evidence, that's a baseless claim. And it does not deserve equal representation in the media merely by virtue of it having been said.
It's absolutely not. Whether the president's claims are true is another matter entirely. When he makes a claim with no specifics, no explanation of how it occurred, and no evidence, that's a baseless claim. And it does not deserve equal representation in the media merely by virtue of it having been said.
> For the conversation to be fair, you need to allow the claims to be made, and then disprove them.
These claims have been made on an ongoing basis for a month -- arguably more than a month, since Trump and his allies spent time before the election promoting the idea that Trump losing is itself de facto evidence of fraud. And they keep being disproven. Over, and over, and over.
At what point is it okay for a publisher -- or whatever we wish to call YouTube -- to say "enough is enough"? Must any and all arguments be endlessly re-litigated on any platform?
These claims have been made on an ongoing basis for a month -- arguably more than a month, since Trump and his allies spent time before the election promoting the idea that Trump losing is itself de facto evidence of fraud. And they keep being disproven. Over, and over, and over.
At what point is it okay for a publisher -- or whatever we wish to call YouTube -- to say "enough is enough"? Must any and all arguments be endlessly re-litigated on any platform?
> and then disprove them.
It is impossible to disprove conspiracy theories. No matter how many judges laugh Trump out of court millions of people will believe for the rest of their lives that their was massive voter fraud.
It is impossible to disprove conspiracy theories. No matter how many judges laugh Trump out of court millions of people will believe for the rest of their lives that their was massive voter fraud.
There _isn't_ nuance here. That's the entire point. It's an extreme slippery slope and this is already several steps down that slope. The earlier things were censorship of moon landing hoax videos and other such conspiracy theories. People didn't have an issue with censoring those as a tiny minority thought those. Now they're censoring things a significant double digit minority things (probably). Wait until they start censoring things that the political party alignment of the owners of Youtube disagree with, as that's the next step.
I also think some of the arguments against Google's actions here don't take into account the engagement algorithms. If this content is left up and people watch it, the algos will feed them more of it. I think if we're going to have the discussion about Google "censoring" content, we have to include in the discussion engagement algos.
There _isn't_ nuance here. That's the entire point. It's an extreme slippery slope and this is already several steps down that slope. The earlier things were censorship of moon landing hoax videos and other such conspiracy theories. People didn't have an issue with censoring those as a tiny minority thought those. Now they're censoring things a significant double digit minority things (probably). Wait until they start censoring things that the political party alignment of the owners of Youtube disagree with, as that's the next step.
At this point Youtube is no longer a "common carrier" of anything at all.
Also don't forget how terrible Youtube's algorithm is and how it bans people at random and deletes video streams at random.
At this point Youtube is no longer a "common carrier" of anything at all.
Also don't forget how terrible Youtube's algorithm is and how it bans people at random and deletes video streams at random.
> completely baseless claims
There have been countless hearings around America. There have been election observers pushed out of counting centers. In Georgia, people were told a pipe burst, sent observers home, and then people kept counting for hours (on video).
These are NOT baseless claims! They should be investigated.
Let me ask you, if they were baseless, would YouTube even need to ban videos? They are banning them because they're afraid. I've watched hours of the hearings and looked at a lot of the information. There are serious issues with this election and they need to be investigated fully.
There have been countless hearings around America. There have been election observers pushed out of counting centers. In Georgia, people were told a pipe burst, sent observers home, and then people kept counting for hours (on video).
These are NOT baseless claims! They should be investigated.
Let me ask you, if they were baseless, would YouTube even need to ban videos? They are banning them because they're afraid. I've watched hours of the hearings and looked at a lot of the information. There are serious issues with this election and they need to be investigated fully.
If they were not baseless, then they would have been used as evidence in any number of the dismissed court cases.
They haven't.
They haven't.
or the courts are so political and so corrurpt, and the media is so corrurpt, that the establishment will regain control through any means necessary.
The Sullivan/Flynn situation should be enough to prove the courts are weaponized for the elites and against any political adversaries.
The Sullivan/Flynn situation should be enough to prove the courts are weaponized for the elites and against any political adversaries.
This is the very definition of a conspiracy theory. So many courts would have to be involved that the coverup would be impossible to manage.
Have you been following Sullivan? He has committed insane amounts of Judicial misconduct in the Flynn case. It's not conspiracy. It's right there, in the record. Sullivan had ex parte e-mails sent to him entered into evidence! That's insane and unethical!
Viva does a great review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3i4hOPTYjk
Viva does a great review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3i4hOPTYjk
Even if true--and this is disputed, to put it mildly--none of that means that enough judges or elections are corrupt enough to flip the result of the election.
The judicial slap downs have come from many Trump appointed judges. There is no evidence that they are corrupt, but if they are corrupt, Trump has no one to blame but himself.
It is a flawed argument. Censorship may help democracy in the short term, but long term it effectively invites authoritarian rule. A good comparison may be forced ranking system. It can be used temporarily to 'get rid of dead wood', but long term use is asking for only biggest assholes to stick around.
Censorship is not that different. There is no nuance here. Person with power will determine what you can and cannot see. That kind of power does not allow for nuance.
Censorship is not that different. There is no nuance here. Person with power will determine what you can and cannot see. That kind of power does not allow for nuance.
> We don’t have an easy solution.
Which is why you keep it simple by allowing all speech. Once you start down the road of a little bit of this, not much of that, and who gets to decide what the complexity only goes up.
Not to mention the honest concern of where that censorship power is held.
Which is why you keep it simple by allowing all speech. Once you start down the road of a little bit of this, not much of that, and who gets to decide what the complexity only goes up.
Not to mention the honest concern of where that censorship power is held.
And that’s why he’s going to the courts instead of using all the other means and powers at his disposal. To ensure that the Democratic process is followed.
Do you pledge this to be nuanced because it currently favors your political view maybe?
Well, we teach kids how to use knives safely, we don't ban them.
I'm on the same boat as @whiddershins, please take a moment to explain your thoughts in detail.
It would seem to be incumbent on someone making claims of a crime, particularly a serious, disturbing crime against the fundamentals of the United States, to provide evidence of that crime. Real evidence, not just allegations.
The only unequivocal "evidence" I have seen has been eyewitness statements, but those eyewitnesses have repeatedly refused to testify under oath. That makes their allegations useless to the legal system.
The way that some people continue to make those allegations in spite of being unable to produce any evidence makes me suspect they are not interested in legal avenues, but rather in drumming up civil unrest and distrust in the foundations of the United States. That suspicion might be reason for YouTube's actions.
The only unequivocal "evidence" I have seen has been eyewitness statements, but those eyewitnesses have repeatedly refused to testify under oath. That makes their allegations useless to the legal system.
The way that some people continue to make those allegations in spite of being unable to produce any evidence makes me suspect they are not interested in legal avenues, but rather in drumming up civil unrest and distrust in the foundations of the United States. That suspicion might be reason for YouTube's actions.
How is it [the president making baseless claims] dangerous for democracy? What if the opposite is true? What if censoring thoughts is the real danger for democracy?
I am not saying I have proof for any of this. But I guess, that's true for your claim, too. I think it would be wise to rephrase it so that it doesn't sound like a fact.
I am not saying I have proof for any of this. But I guess, that's true for your claim, too. I think it would be wise to rephrase it so that it doesn't sound like a fact.
It's dangerous for democracy because he's using those baseless claims to support explicit calls for antidemocratic actions - he's asked multiple governors to throw out their states' election results for him.
Part of the democratic process is to defend itself against such attacks. If the defence is suppressing speech, then that might signal that democracy is not strong enough to deal with these issues. An easy win for the attacker.
It's a pity that we aren't capable of sustaining a situation like that without dismantling the very core of the democratic system: freedom of speech.
It's a pity that we aren't capable of sustaining a situation like that without dismantling the very core of the democratic system: freedom of speech.
You raise an interesting point and I upvoted because of it. Our democracy should be able to withstand this attack, yes. Having to resort to censorship would very clearly fuel the attackers.
At the same time, there's an awful lot at stake here and I'm not sure we can simply trust that the good side will win. A laissez-faire approach to some of this content may very credibly lead to violence the scale of which this country hasn't witnessed in 150 years.
At the same time, there's an awful lot at stake here and I'm not sure we can simply trust that the good side will win. A laissez-faire approach to some of this content may very credibly lead to violence the scale of which this country hasn't witnessed in 150 years.
Of course we cannot simply trust that the good side will win. The people that want to retain the democratic system have to defend it. And I count myself among these people. It's hard for me to watch what is happening, too.
All I'm saying is that democracy is built upon free speech. Without it, it cannot work.
You cannot defend a system by destroying its foundation. It's a trap.
All I'm saying is that democracy is built upon free speech. Without it, it cannot work.
You cannot defend a system by destroying its foundation. It's a trap.
It's a great insight that "You cannot defend a system by destroying its foundation."
Continuing along that line of thinking: the "good side" can't possibly be the one participating in a cover-up, trying to brush aside all the evidence of fraud.
The people who want to retain our republic have to defend it.
Continuing along that line of thinking: the "good side" can't possibly be the one participating in a cover-up, trying to brush aside all the evidence of fraud.
The people who want to retain our republic have to defend it.
> It's a pity that we aren't capable of sustaining a situation like that without dismantling the very core of the democratic system: freedom of speech.
What about Google's free speech?
What about Google's free speech?
What about it? The last time I looked up "freedom of speech" censorship was on the list of exact opposites.
Huh? Look it up again. Freedom of speech doesn't mean you have the right to say whatever you want any place you desire. Referring to the First Amendment, it protects from governmental repercussion. Google's censorship of its users presents no First Amendment implications as no governmental, or state, action is involved.
By censoring what is said on it's platform, Google is exercising it's own free speech. Google has a right to censor dangerous and shitty takes on it's platform. You have zero rights to be heard on Google's platforms.
By censoring what is said on it's platform, Google is exercising it's own free speech. Google has a right to censor dangerous and shitty takes on it's platform. You have zero rights to be heard on Google's platforms.
Yeah, for sure. Call it freedom of information, add a little bit of common sense to it, and your argument renders itself completely invalid.
Google demonstrates that it doesn't follow a revenue driven agenda with these actions. It involves itself in selecting political views that it deems acceptable to influence the opinions of a world wide audience. It is large enough to take on a quasi governmental role. If it was just acting as a neutral platform, I would buy your argument, but it obviously doesn't.
The internet has driven the pareto distribution of attention to such extremes that we now are in this mess. There is no getting out of this by engaging in the hairsplitting of an old legal text.
Google demonstrates that it doesn't follow a revenue driven agenda with these actions. It involves itself in selecting political views that it deems acceptable to influence the opinions of a world wide audience. It is large enough to take on a quasi governmental role. If it was just acting as a neutral platform, I would buy your argument, but it obviously doesn't.
The internet has driven the pareto distribution of attention to such extremes that we now are in this mess. There is no getting out of this by engaging in the hairsplitting of an old legal text.
> Yeah, for sure. Call it freedom of information, add a little bit of common sense to it, and your argument renders itself completely invalid.
No it doesn't. Obviously you aren't grasping the concept of free speech (and its limits).
> Google demonstrates that it doesn't follow a revenue driven agenda with these actions. It involves itself in selecting political views that it deems acceptable to influence the opinions of a world wide audience.
As is its legal right to do so.
> It is large enough to take on a quasi governmental role. If it was just acting as a neutral platform, I would buy your argument, but it obviously doesn't.
"Quasi government" is a meaningless word and doesn't really help your argument. Why would it have to act as a neutral platform?
No it doesn't. Obviously you aren't grasping the concept of free speech (and its limits).
> Google demonstrates that it doesn't follow a revenue driven agenda with these actions. It involves itself in selecting political views that it deems acceptable to influence the opinions of a world wide audience.
As is its legal right to do so.
> It is large enough to take on a quasi governmental role. If it was just acting as a neutral platform, I would buy your argument, but it obviously doesn't.
"Quasi government" is a meaningless word and doesn't really help your argument. Why would it have to act as a neutral platform?
Ok, I accept that you are not willing to look beyond the current state of legal affairs, regardless of whether Google/YouTube is so large it becomes an example of a de facto public space. And how to treat these kinds of platforms with regard to freedom of speech is an ongoing legal discussion — far from being over.
Let me make it simple for you: Sticking to your (in my opinion very limited) model of looking at the world, how do you make sure Google doesn't become a puppet of some government now or in the future? Do you really think the people in that organization are able to handle the amount of power they have over a reasonably long time without getting corrupted? Would it then fall into your narrow definition of freedom of speech?
Our current state of law is not equipped to deal with that kind of behemoth and needs to evolve.
Btw.: It would help your argument to avoid provocative statements like implying that I might not be grasping a concept. Your text looks like you are trying to defend a political position.
Let me make it simple for you: Sticking to your (in my opinion very limited) model of looking at the world, how do you make sure Google doesn't become a puppet of some government now or in the future? Do you really think the people in that organization are able to handle the amount of power they have over a reasonably long time without getting corrupted? Would it then fall into your narrow definition of freedom of speech?
Our current state of law is not equipped to deal with that kind of behemoth and needs to evolve.
Btw.: It would help your argument to avoid provocative statements like implying that I might not be grasping a concept. Your text looks like you are trying to defend a political position.
Low-effort what-if scenarios don't deserve much consideration.
Can you clarify your theory? Is it specifically the amount of effort that determines legal consideration?
It's the same concern that Google is addressing.
Anyone can make claims. No one is required to give them a platform if there's no reason to take anything they say seriously. Until they present well-reasoned and informed arguments, they should be and are ignored by rational people.
Anyone can make claims. No one is required to give them a platform if there's no reason to take anything they say seriously. Until they present well-reasoned and informed arguments, they should be and are ignored by rational people.
[deleted]
This is probably worth a read:
https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/09/mute-button.html
And we need to go back to... censorship at the government level, vs publicly traded or private companies.
The government having a huge megaphone that reaches basically everyone, and then that same government censoring (turning the volume/reach way down) on competing messages - that's a very dangerous thing. It puts an awful lot of power in the government.
When the government says lots of dishonest things, or things that completely lack evidence, it is the duty of anyone with some influence on spreading messages to counteract that problem. In fact, when the government tries to discredit all competing sources of information, that's a very dangerous thing.
The people arguing against (government) censorship should be well to do to realize that right now, President Donald Trump is the loudest voice in government, and he's trying to drown out all opposing messages, and have you only listen to him. Read about the history of censorship, and figure out what kind of message muting you want to fight!
And we need to go back to... censorship at the government level, vs publicly traded or private companies.
The government having a huge megaphone that reaches basically everyone, and then that same government censoring (turning the volume/reach way down) on competing messages - that's a very dangerous thing. It puts an awful lot of power in the government.
When the government says lots of dishonest things, or things that completely lack evidence, it is the duty of anyone with some influence on spreading messages to counteract that problem. In fact, when the government tries to discredit all competing sources of information, that's a very dangerous thing.
The people arguing against (government) censorship should be well to do to realize that right now, President Donald Trump is the loudest voice in government, and he's trying to drown out all opposing messages, and have you only listen to him. Read about the history of censorship, and figure out what kind of message muting you want to fight!
[deleted]
"Dangerous for democracy" sounds like one of those contentless phrases that can be used to justify anything. The late 2010s/2020s version of all the patriotic jingoism thrown around post 9/11.
What if his claims were true and this happened? Wouldn't that be a tricky situation too? I mean, really tricky?
At the same time I think Youtube has the right to do this (and whatever they want, basically). Currently there are no real alternatives to Youtube, that is the problem.
At the same time I think Youtube has the right to do this (and whatever they want, basically). Currently there are no real alternatives to Youtube, that is the problem.
Clearly election security is perfect when Democrats win, but if Republicans win then Russia stole it
//for the record I think both results are valid and we just see cry baby partisans in action on both sides, in 2016 and 2020. It is pure tribalism and I am not a member of either tribe
//for the record I think both results are valid and we just see cry baby partisans in action on both sides, in 2016 and 2020. It is pure tribalism and I am not a member of either tribe
No prominent Democrats actually argued that Donald Trump wasn't actually the president, or that the transition shouldn't happen, or that election officials should be shot.
"#NotMyPresident" was a statement of dissatisfaction, and a belief that Trump won the election unfairly, not a statement claiming that Trump was not legally the president. It was also never espoused by members of the government.
There's a difference between saying someone won by underhanded tactics and saying that someone didn't actually win and isn't legally the president. The two are not comparable.
"#NotMyPresident" was a statement of dissatisfaction, and a belief that Trump won the election unfairly, not a statement claiming that Trump was not legally the president. It was also never espoused by members of the government.
There's a difference between saying someone won by underhanded tactics and saying that someone didn't actually win and isn't legally the president. The two are not comparable.
It’s so easy to get unlucky with hashtags, am I right? I heard Twitter is working on a program to label hashtags that ignorant people keep taking too literally.
It’s baffling that #NotMyPresident would somehow give you the idea that Trump was not legally the president.
It’s baffling that #NotMyPresident would somehow give you the idea that Trump was not legally the president.
Did a single member of government or member of the DNC ever use that hashtag?
I don't care what some no-name Twitter account says, any more than we should attribute the many, many threats of violence towards Biden and his associates to the Republican party as a whole.
Bob in Connecticut using a hashtag is different from the President and many members of Congress baselessly stating, again and again, that his opponent literally faked 7 million ballots and disenfranchised the will of the American people.
I don't care what some no-name Twitter account says, any more than we should attribute the many, many threats of violence towards Biden and his associates to the Republican party as a whole.
Bob in Connecticut using a hashtag is different from the President and many members of Congress baselessly stating, again and again, that his opponent literally faked 7 million ballots and disenfranchised the will of the American people.
aside from your subjective view as to what constitutes a "prominent Democrat" Hilary Clinton her self stated multiple times that election was stolen from her.
Multiple News personalities dedicated billions of dollars in air time to the meh Russia Stole the election narrative for 3.5 years.
So miss me with your partisan moral grandstanding
Multiple News personalities dedicated billions of dollars in air time to the meh Russia Stole the election narrative for 3.5 years.
So miss me with your partisan moral grandstanding
Clinton gave her concession speech the day after the election. She said in it "We owe Donald Trump an open mind and a chance to lead."[1] She approved of Obama starting the transition process as soon as possible.
She didn't initiate a single court-case that tried to reverse the results of the election, or throw out votes. She didn't call up individual state electors to talk them into changing their vote.
There's a big difference in saying "my opponent may have broken the law/a foreign government tried to interfere in our election" vs. actually claiming that 7 million votes were fraudulently added and suing to overturn the results of a democratic election. I'm sorry if you can't see that the matter of scale is a serious distinction.
1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-clinton-concession-spee...
She didn't initiate a single court-case that tried to reverse the results of the election, or throw out votes. She didn't call up individual state electors to talk them into changing their vote.
There's a big difference in saying "my opponent may have broken the law/a foreign government tried to interfere in our election" vs. actually claiming that 7 million votes were fraudulently added and suing to overturn the results of a democratic election. I'm sorry if you can't see that the matter of scale is a serious distinction.
1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-clinton-concession-spee...
Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections
ICA 2017-01D 6 January 2017
Key Judgments
Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations.
We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments. ...
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf
ICA 2017-01D 6 January 2017
Key Judgments
Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations.
We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments. ...
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf
How many people involved in Trump's campaign went to prison or were otherwise convicted of doing shady shit with russians and money?
Wasn't it close to 20?
Wasn't it close to 20?
If the election was totally normal would Texas still be suing four other states?
Probably. Texas is crazy. I'm surprised they aren't also suing Tennessee or any of the other states that changed election laws in the last 20 years.
Source: Grew up in Texas. Took Texas government classes. (Justices of the Peace are responsible for determining cause of death in counties without suitable medical authorities. The only requirement for a JP is to be breathing. One recorded a body with a dozen or so bullet wounds as "suicide.")
This isn't the article I was looking for (trust me, the story of a state legislator crawling through transoms in the capitol to make off with early copies of legislation was hilarious), but it's pretty good. Go down to "ten worst".
https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-ten-best-and-the-t...
Source: Grew up in Texas. Took Texas government classes. (Justices of the Peace are responsible for determining cause of death in counties without suitable medical authorities. The only requirement for a JP is to be breathing. One recorded a body with a dozen or so bullet wounds as "suicide.")
This isn't the article I was looking for (trust me, the story of a state legislator crawling through transoms in the capitol to make off with early copies of legislation was hilarious), but it's pretty good. Go down to "ten worst".
https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-ten-best-and-the-t...
If Texas politics was totally normal right now, would Texas still be suing four other states?
Unfortunately normal and healthy are not the same. Seems Texas politics is normal for Texas politics at the moment.
It's not just Texas though. Like 10 other states have joined.
Zero states or other parties have joined, or filed to intervene, but seven states plus the president have indicated that they support and intend to do so.
Filings in the case are here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/...
No one but Texas has filed anything.
[EDIT: As noted downthread, things have moved on, and new filings are in.]
Filings in the case are here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/docket/docketfiles/html/public/...
No one but Texas has filed anything.
[EDIT: As noted downthread, things have moved on, and new filings are in.]
17 States are now supporting it.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163215/2020...
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163215/2020...
I think it's 9 indicating they want to join now. I don't have an official source.
Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Dakota, Missouri. They may get Indiana and Oklahoma as well is my understanding.
And they are (at least some of them) interested in joining.
https://www.newsweek.com/alabama-louisiana-ags-want-join-tex...
This is a big deal no matter what your political persuasion is.
It's not just some crazy people claiming voting machines are controlled by the Chinese using mind control and a local judge throwing it out.
If they take the case it's going to be a very historic event.
Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Dakota, Missouri. They may get Indiana and Oklahoma as well is my understanding.
And they are (at least some of them) interested in joining.
https://www.newsweek.com/alabama-louisiana-ags-want-join-tex...
This is a big deal no matter what your political persuasion is.
It's not just some crazy people claiming voting machines are controlled by the Chinese using mind control and a local judge throwing it out.
If they take the case it's going to be a very historic event.
> This is a big deal no matter what your political persuasion is.
Yes, attempted anti-democratic coups d'etats in powerful, established democracies are big deal.
> It's not just some crazy people claiming voting machines are controlled by the Chinese using mind control and a local judge throwing it out.
That's true; while not substantially different in the craziness of the claims, if it is thrown out, it won't be by a local judge.
> If they take the case it's going to be a very historic event.
If they refuse to take the case, its very historic.
If they take the case and then dismiss it on threshold grounds like standing or the political question / separation of powers doctrine, it will be very historic.
If they take the case and reach the merits, it will be very historic.
Yes, attempted anti-democratic coups d'etats in powerful, established democracies are big deal.
> It's not just some crazy people claiming voting machines are controlled by the Chinese using mind control and a local judge throwing it out.
That's true; while not substantially different in the craziness of the claims, if it is thrown out, it won't be by a local judge.
> If they take the case it's going to be a very historic event.
If they refuse to take the case, its very historic.
If they take the case and then dismiss it on threshold grounds like standing or the political question / separation of powers doctrine, it will be very historic.
If they take the case and reach the merits, it will be very historic.
Well I'm just delighted we agree on one thing!
Historic.
The problem I'm seeing is this. You (and millions of others) see this as a coup attempt.
Myself (and millions of others) see the election with hurried mail in ballots and little oversight and lack of external challengers as a coup attempt.
We are coming from two very different places obviously and there are a bunch of us. Too many to just say "screw those people they are wrong!" (which is the natural first inclination probably). So what happens? How do we work this out where we can share society together?
Historic.
The problem I'm seeing is this. You (and millions of others) see this as a coup attempt.
Myself (and millions of others) see the election with hurried mail in ballots and little oversight and lack of external challengers as a coup attempt.
We are coming from two very different places obviously and there are a bunch of us. Too many to just say "screw those people they are wrong!" (which is the natural first inclination probably). So what happens? How do we work this out where we can share society together?
> So what happens? How do we work this out where we can share society together?
What makes you think that's still even a reasonable expectation? Likely, there will be blood in the streets. Even if the leadership peacefully admits defeat to end the formal dispute, the radicalization on your side has, with the deliberate encouragement of rhetoric from the top, probably gone too far for there to be any reasonable expectation that that won't be where this ultimately ends for many of the foot soldiers.
And, the people on your side that have been seeking specifically a second civil and/or a race war may well still get what they have sought.
What makes you think that's still even a reasonable expectation? Likely, there will be blood in the streets. Even if the leadership peacefully admits defeat to end the formal dispute, the radicalization on your side has, with the deliberate encouragement of rhetoric from the top, probably gone too far for there to be any reasonable expectation that that won't be where this ultimately ends for many of the foot soldiers.
And, the people on your side that have been seeking specifically a second civil and/or a race war may well still get what they have sought.
The "people on my side" haven't been seeking a second civil war or race war. There may be a handful of Richard Spencer types but no one I know agrees with anything like that. What I know is a multi ethnic coalition that is anti-globalist, anti-bureaucratic, anti-war and nationalistic in the sense it believes in strong American identity and state and it believes in free and transparent elections.
The same "extremist" comments could be made about antifa types but it wouldn't be representative of all Democrats, many of whom are probably something like school teacher union and human resource members not communists with Molotov cocktails.
These are big coalitions but you are smart person who spends a lot of time over the years commenting on politics and you know that I'm sure.
I hope you are wrong about blood in the streets. I really do. But you might not be. Both sides have gotten a bit too extremist and utterly convinced of their righteousness so it might go to bad place no matter the outcome.
The same "extremist" comments could be made about antifa types but it wouldn't be representative of all Democrats, many of whom are probably something like school teacher union and human resource members not communists with Molotov cocktails.
These are big coalitions but you are smart person who spends a lot of time over the years commenting on politics and you know that I'm sure.
I hope you are wrong about blood in the streets. I really do. But you might not be. Both sides have gotten a bit too extremist and utterly convinced of their righteousness so it might go to bad place no matter the outcome.
> Both sides have gotten a bit too
it takes a lot of nerve to "both sides" the problems with the last US election, I'll give you that.
I suppose that the well-worn talking point is a comfort when you cannot defend the actions on their merits. It's facile, deceptive BS, though.
it takes a lot of nerve to "both sides" the problems with the last US election, I'll give you that.
I suppose that the well-worn talking point is a comfort when you cannot defend the actions on their merits. It's facile, deceptive BS, though.
1) it's a big deal for democracy, that's correct.
2) well, it is crazy claims from some crazy / cynical people.
3) no, it won't be thrown out by a _local_ judge. (1)
In reality, the election is long over and not close (2) Containing to fabricate an alternate reality via vexatious litigation isn't healthy.
1) https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/12/09/texas-supr...
2) https://twitter.com/wolfblitzer/status/1336760093313032192
2) well, it is crazy claims from some crazy / cynical people.
3) no, it won't be thrown out by a _local_ judge. (1)
In reality, the election is long over and not close (2) Containing to fabricate an alternate reality via vexatious litigation isn't healthy.
1) https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/12/09/texas-supr...
2) https://twitter.com/wolfblitzer/status/1336760093313032192
[deleted]
It was and they did, so lacking any other qualifiers, the answer is "yes".
> If the election was totally normal would Texas still be suing four other states?
Yes, because the election was normal and Texas (joined by 17 other states and the defeated candidate) are suing four other states hoping to overturn the manifest will of the people (both nationally and specifically in the target states.)
What's abnormal isn't the election but the radicalization of much of the GOP behind an administration that cannot accept defeat because its head, and much of its upper ranks, face potentially severe legal risk if and when they are no longer shielded by possession of the Office of the President.
A radicalization serving personal interest of the Leader above not only national interest (which is, sadly, perhaps not that uncommon) but even partisan interest (which is much less common), causing significant difficulty in the ongoing Senate runoff campaigns in Georgia.
Yes, because the election was normal and Texas (joined by 17 other states and the defeated candidate) are suing four other states hoping to overturn the manifest will of the people (both nationally and specifically in the target states.)
What's abnormal isn't the election but the radicalization of much of the GOP behind an administration that cannot accept defeat because its head, and much of its upper ranks, face potentially severe legal risk if and when they are no longer shielded by possession of the Office of the President.
A radicalization serving personal interest of the Leader above not only national interest (which is, sadly, perhaps not that uncommon) but even partisan interest (which is much less common), causing significant difficulty in the ongoing Senate runoff campaigns in Georgia.
Yes.
There is indeed no easy solution on what is “good for democracy”, but that ideal can be damned to me because the idea of voters making ”informed choices” is laughable and they will always primarily vote based on simple tribalist allegiance, not to mention that the concept is silly in a two-party state.
It has nothing to do with what is and isn't “good for democracy” and indeed simply that I find it scary that powerful companies play arbitrary referee on fact policing.
YouTube is of course constantly filled with videos that contain falsehoods and it's arbitrary to only police it here.
It has nothing to do with what is and isn't “good for democracy” and indeed simply that I find it scary that powerful companies play arbitrary referee on fact policing.
YouTube is of course constantly filled with videos that contain falsehoods and it's arbitrary to only police it here.
While the sarcasm is dripping, it's also true. There clearly are people that can view a video and realize that it's is 100% BS. Yet, at the same time, there are other people that will watch it and 100% believe it. If it wasn't effective, it wouldn't be used.
At the same time, getting used to curation of informal speech and having intermediaries censoring this type of content has its own, potentially greater risks.
First, Google is already heavily curating information on their platform. Don't kid yourself into thinking otherwise. Secondly, Youtube is not a public good. It is a product owned by a company who answers to their shareholders. Google is free (and should remain free) to censor whatever they want on the platform that they own, and users/content creators are free to leave for other platforms. Finally, before folks say that Youtube is a monopoly in video content on the internet, no they aren't. Are they the biggest? Sure. But by no means are they the only platform.
Yes, obviously.
The point is, we have a whole bunch of mores and law that work together to form a free society work that were formed in times when most interpersonal communications didn't go through a few concentrated intermediaries. This new equilibrium a really big concern for free communication and freedom of speech: just letting whatever dangerous stuff circulate at massive scale isn't good, but fully empowering corporate entities being able to squash and marginalize categories of speech isn't great either.
The point is, we have a whole bunch of mores and law that work together to form a free society work that were formed in times when most interpersonal communications didn't go through a few concentrated intermediaries. This new equilibrium a really big concern for free communication and freedom of speech: just letting whatever dangerous stuff circulate at massive scale isn't good, but fully empowering corporate entities being able to squash and marginalize categories of speech isn't great either.
I doubt most of the people (like myself) disagree with anything you say. We can still think it's absolutely ridiculous that they're doing it.
I don't think they should face legal sanctions or anything. I think they should step out of politics. But yeah, they don't have to.
I don't think they should face legal sanctions or anything. I think they should step out of politics. But yeah, they don't have to.
Generally, a company need not be the only one on the market in order to be considered dominant for the purpose of anti-trust laws. Anti-trust laws apply to non-monopolies as well.
> Google is free (and should remain free) to censor whatever they want on the platform that they own
So, since ISPs also own their platform, should they also be free to block content that competes with their services along with content they’re required to block by law?
So, since ISPs also own their platform, should they also be free to block content that competes with their services along with content they’re required to block by law?
If only we had a government mechanism for holding service providers to higher standards for neutral delivery of services to citizens regardless of economic incentives.
I see what you did there.
On the other hand, we have sufficiently large number of people believing that Trump actually won this year - enough for it to be a potential political issue. I wouldn't count out someone getting killed over this.
So, the relative merits and dangers of "censorship" should be evaluated against this. The bar for the censorship being "potentially greater risk" is reasonably high.
So, the relative merits and dangers of "censorship" should be evaluated against this. The bar for the censorship being "potentially greater risk" is reasonably high.
"Potentially saving lives" is a really dangerous way to choose whether censoring speech is ethical.
Squashing what one might think is dubious criticism of police potentially saves lives, too.
Not too long ago Youtube was removing videos criticizing the CDC for not advocating for masks... Squashing criticism of the CDC during a pandemic seems like an action that could potentially save lives, too.
Squashing what one might think is dubious criticism of police potentially saves lives, too.
Not too long ago Youtube was removing videos criticizing the CDC for not advocating for masks... Squashing criticism of the CDC during a pandemic seems like an action that could potentially save lives, too.
Maybe I chose a poor example - I didn't mean that "potentially saving lives" is the only important metric.
What I meant was that giving a platform to Trump's deranged claims is harming the fabric of society, eroding trust in each other and in the society itself, sowing discord, and widens the opportunity for an aspiring tyrant to seize the public's interest, declare a bunch of "undesirables" as enemy of the state, and infringe upon individual rights while his supporters cheer him on. (And also kill some lives along the way.)
Just like censorship could potentially lead to a similar kind of outcome.
So, the danger of "censorship", in our current context, should be gauged against the danger of "non-censorship" in the same context.
What I meant was that giving a platform to Trump's deranged claims is harming the fabric of society, eroding trust in each other and in the society itself, sowing discord, and widens the opportunity for an aspiring tyrant to seize the public's interest, declare a bunch of "undesirables" as enemy of the state, and infringe upon individual rights while his supporters cheer him on. (And also kill some lives along the way.)
Just like censorship could potentially lead to a similar kind of outcome.
So, the danger of "censorship", in our current context, should be gauged against the danger of "non-censorship" in the same context.
I just don't believe that having powerful intermediaries squashing views work well for democracy.
It doesn't work so well to stop dangerous ideas, and it has a whole lot of risk of being used against unpopular ones.
Trump's ideas are doing damage to democracy, but attempting to suppress them in this way adds credence to many peoples' belief that there's some dangerous tech/liberal cabal squashing the true majority conservative opinion, too. And even attempts to use these in a bright-line, careful fashion have often squashed the wrong speech and silenced the wrong people; this is before any actual malicious use which is sure to come if the precedent strengthens.
In our rush to get rid of the most repugnant ideas, too, we tend to lose our ability to discuss nuance. To avoid COVID quackery, we can't have an open discussion of the merits of specific policies and interventions. In our rush to squash the dangerous idea of election fraud, we can't have the discussion about how to make our actual election system robust and beyond reproach.
> So, the danger of "censorship", in our current context, should be gauged against the danger of "non-censorship" in the same context.
Yes, which is why I acknowledged those risks in my first comment and said that I believed that these risks are potentially greater.
Think about how much important speech from the past few centuries has seemed dangerous and repugnant at the time it was uttered.
It doesn't work so well to stop dangerous ideas, and it has a whole lot of risk of being used against unpopular ones.
Trump's ideas are doing damage to democracy, but attempting to suppress them in this way adds credence to many peoples' belief that there's some dangerous tech/liberal cabal squashing the true majority conservative opinion, too. And even attempts to use these in a bright-line, careful fashion have often squashed the wrong speech and silenced the wrong people; this is before any actual malicious use which is sure to come if the precedent strengthens.
In our rush to get rid of the most repugnant ideas, too, we tend to lose our ability to discuss nuance. To avoid COVID quackery, we can't have an open discussion of the merits of specific policies and interventions. In our rush to squash the dangerous idea of election fraud, we can't have the discussion about how to make our actual election system robust and beyond reproach.
> So, the danger of "censorship", in our current context, should be gauged against the danger of "non-censorship" in the same context.
Yes, which is why I acknowledged those risks in my first comment and said that I believed that these risks are potentially greater.
Think about how much important speech from the past few centuries has seemed dangerous and repugnant at the time it was uttered.
You have the potential of getting only curated information any time you only use one source for that information.
Here we have many social platforms effectively colluding and setting common standards for curation.
Concentrated power is scary. I'd agree it's mostly being used for good here...
Concentrated power is scary. I'd agree it's mostly being used for good here...
I have news for you. Radio, TV, movies, etc have been censored to hell and back since they were invented. The roof hasn't collapsed.
If anything, they're less censored than they used to be.
If anything, they're less censored than they used to be.
I'll take the potentially greater risks over the immediate risks in this context.
It is funny how short people memory is when YT was removing videos of people saying you should wear a mask and the YT Censorship gods said "no that is misinformation you can not say that"
This is correct.
> The Australian white supremacist who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand was radicalized by YouTube, according to a 792-page report on the March 2019 shooting.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/8/22162779/christchurch-sho...
> The Australian white supremacist who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand was radicalized by YouTube, according to a 792-page report on the March 2019 shooting.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/8/22162779/christchurch-sho...
I have a feeling he'd say that was ridiculous, based on this quote from his manifesto:
Q: Were you taught violence and extremism by video games, music, literature, cinema?
Yes, Spyro the dragon 3 taught me ethno-nationalism. Fortnite trained me to be a killer and to floss on the corpses of my enemies. No.
People are more intelligent than these criticisms give them credit for. Their beliefs come from opinions and thoughts, not just from above. See Ross Douthat's recent column, "Why Do So Many Americans Think the Election Was Stolen?"
"The potency of this belief has already scrambled some of the conventional explanations for conspiratorial beliefs, particularly the conceit that the key problem is misinformation spreading downward from partisan news outlets and social-media fraudsters to the easily deceived. As I watch the way certain fraud theories spread online, or watch conservatives abandon Fox News for Newsmax in search of validating narratives, it’s clear that this is about demand as much as supply. A strong belief spurs people to go out in search of evidence, a lot of so-called disinformation is collected and circulated sincerely rather than cynically, and the power of various authorities — Tucker Carlson’s show or Facebook’s algorithm — to change beliefs is relatively limited."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/opinion/sunday/trump-elec...
Q: Were you taught violence and extremism by video games, music, literature, cinema?
Yes, Spyro the dragon 3 taught me ethno-nationalism. Fortnite trained me to be a killer and to floss on the corpses of my enemies. No.
People are more intelligent than these criticisms give them credit for. Their beliefs come from opinions and thoughts, not just from above. See Ross Douthat's recent column, "Why Do So Many Americans Think the Election Was Stolen?"
"The potency of this belief has already scrambled some of the conventional explanations for conspiratorial beliefs, particularly the conceit that the key problem is misinformation spreading downward from partisan news outlets and social-media fraudsters to the easily deceived. As I watch the way certain fraud theories spread online, or watch conservatives abandon Fox News for Newsmax in search of validating narratives, it’s clear that this is about demand as much as supply. A strong belief spurs people to go out in search of evidence, a lot of so-called disinformation is collected and circulated sincerely rather than cynically, and the power of various authorities — Tucker Carlson’s show or Facebook’s algorithm — to change beliefs is relatively limited."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/opinion/sunday/trump-elec...
I invite you to read up on the psychological effect known as "priming."
Top-down disinformation primes the minds of the less-scrupulous, who then seek to rationalize and harden their half-baked beliefs through their everyday experiences.
Top-down disinformation primes the minds of the less-scrupulous, who then seek to rationalize and harden their half-baked beliefs through their everyday experiences.
When you read up on priming you will discover that it is something people want to believe in, but does not replicate scientifically.
https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-...
People used to believe in brainwashing too. We like to think people who disagree with us are easily swayed idiots. It keeps our opinions safe and justifies censoring their opinions instead of engaging with them.
https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-...
People used to believe in brainwashing too. We like to think people who disagree with us are easily swayed idiots. It keeps our opinions safe and justifies censoring their opinions instead of engaging with them.
Please do not quote a spree killer as an authoritative source.
He is an unreliable narrator, for sure. But more than his claim about whether he was brainwashed, does he sound like the kind of person who just mindlessly clicked from Youtube to Youtube, accepting every claim uncritically? Does he sound like the kind of person who can't be trusted to think for themselves? Engineer is a common profession for terrorists. Regular, thoughtful people can radicalize themselves, and censoring the masses to stop that is a power grab in search of a problem.
Everyone has to be trusted to think for themselves. We can put barriers in place to harmful actions resulting from those thoughts but I would not want to live in a world so dystopian and authoritarian that we intentionally take away someone's ability to think.
I find this grossly offensive. Please, please, stop quoting and attempting to normalise a serial killer.
I don't really get this. People regularly quoted Osama bin Laden's statements about how he did 9/11 to force the US into overreacting. It may have "normalised" him to see that he had rational reasons for what he did, rather than being a religious maniac. But it didn't make it right, and it didn't lead to people flocking to his cause. If it had been censored, we might have had more people believing the harmful "religious war" frame, just from not knowing any better.
"All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations" -- Osama bin Laden
"All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al Qaeda, in order to make generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations" -- Osama bin Laden
I don't get why you think it's insightful to repeatedly quote terrorists at all, spreading their preferred messages for them.
You are only confirming that terrorism allows someone to be powerfully heard.
You are only confirming that terrorism allows someone to be powerfully heard.
He is not trying to normalize a serial killer. He is trying to show that his action are not the results of watching youtube.
I do not think there is any reason to be offended.
I do not think there is any reason to be offended.
It's been pretty widely dissected and explained why he said and wrote all of that idiotic internet leetspeak in his "manifesto".
There is also a reason why many of these folks who finally decide to kill people also consume "alt-lite" content like Ben Shapiro / Jordan Peterson etc, it isn't a coincidence. Regulating that and keeping people from spreading racist propaganda, or content that just exists to undermine democracy is fine in my book.
There is also a reason why many of these folks who finally decide to kill people also consume "alt-lite" content like Ben Shapiro / Jordan Peterson etc, it isn't a coincidence. Regulating that and keeping people from spreading racist propaganda, or content that just exists to undermine democracy is fine in my book.
I tried googling "why did christchurch use leetspeak" and didn't get results. I presume it was to get more views from incels and because he found it funny. Not because he was radicalized by the Navy Seal copypasta.
With Peterson and Shapiro I feel like you're trending toward a standard of "anything terrorists like to read, but I don't, should be censored". They're close to as popular as, say, Rachel Maddow, which means almost all of their readers are peaceful.
With Peterson and Shapiro I feel like you're trending toward a standard of "anything terrorists like to read, but I don't, should be censored". They're close to as popular as, say, Rachel Maddow, which means almost all of their readers are peaceful.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/technology/facebook-youtu...
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/the-s...
https://www.wired.com/story/mosque-shooter-exploited-power-o...
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/3/16/18266930/christchurch-...
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/the-christchurch-sho...
Also Shapiro / Peterson should just be banned because they are racists and say racist things.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/the-s...
https://www.wired.com/story/mosque-shooter-exploited-power-o...
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/3/16/18266930/christchurch-...
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/03/the-christchurch-sho...
Also Shapiro / Peterson should just be banned because they are racists and say racist things.
Thanks for the Vox link, it really explains what you meant.
So, this is one example of many, many users who haven't killed anyone.
If "one incident is too many", then marijuana must stay strictly illegal and violent video games must be banned, because both have nonzero body count IRL. Remember Harris and Klebold?
If "one incident is too many", then marijuana must stay strictly illegal and violent video games must be banned, because both have nonzero body count IRL. Remember Harris and Klebold?
Yeah, I just don't know what to do anymore. It's clear that the idea of good information rising to the top of vigorous discourse among an informed populace just isn't working. We're tearing the country apart right now with lies.
Is this fixable at all? Do we just give up? Do we fight the lies directly by not spreading them? No good options as long as the lies are spreading.
I have a very hard time seeing Youtube or Twitter as the bad guys here. At least they're trying. Screaming about censorship as the civilization falls apart seems to really be missing the point.
If freedom of speech won't save us, what will?
Is this fixable at all? Do we just give up? Do we fight the lies directly by not spreading them? No good options as long as the lies are spreading.
I have a very hard time seeing Youtube or Twitter as the bad guys here. At least they're trying. Screaming about censorship as the civilization falls apart seems to really be missing the point.
If freedom of speech won't save us, what will?
If we take that position then how is that reconcilable with democracy?
Making some assumptions about what you mean by "democracy", that's actually a good question. We believe in freedom of expression because we don't want the government suppressing information for the purpose of manipulating us, but in the information age it has become obvious that one can manipulate people by spreading information just as easily as by suppressing it.
For this reason, I am forced to wonder if democracy can survive the information age at all.
For this reason, I am forced to wonder if democracy can survive the information age at all.
Hypothetically, you can think that you need institutions to properly frame and prioritize issues in public discourse, and only then is democracy ideal. And at some scale it's true: if a bunch of us were suddenly dropped into a locked room and told to discuss and then vote for the best mayor of Mumbai with no resources, we'd fail.
Democracy isn't looking too healthy nowadays though, I agree.
Democracy isn't looking too healthy nowadays though, I agree.
Traditionally, it's been extremely reconcilable. News agencies had a responsibility to be more accurate than not. The government itself keeps a very hands-off approach to that information flow, and the people reward papers that succeed with subscriptions and eyeballs. This detente is why the media has traditionally been referred to as "The fourth estate."
Unclear what the solution is as that system breaks down because the subscription-free ad-fueled Internet dwarfs the traditional model.
Unclear what the solution is as that system breaks down because the subscription-free ad-fueled Internet dwarfs the traditional model.
Ultimately, people (the audience) will go to sources that are credible and abandon sources that are not, regardless of how the source pays their bills.
You cant, that is why the US is not a democracy nor should it become one
The US is a constitutional republic who's institution where designed in a way that the ONLY democratic part of that system of governance was the US House of representatives
Unfortunately for those that like individual freedom and see democracy as mob rule (people like myself) there is a strong push for more and more democracy into the system which is a net negative for individual liberty. Things like abolishing of electoral collage, even past changes like Electing Senators via Popular vote have been a net negative for liberty
The US is a constitutional republic who's institution where designed in a way that the ONLY democratic part of that system of governance was the US House of representatives
Unfortunately for those that like individual freedom and see democracy as mob rule (people like myself) there is a strong push for more and more democracy into the system which is a net negative for individual liberty. Things like abolishing of electoral collage, even past changes like Electing Senators via Popular vote have been a net negative for liberty
Americans largely have trouble distinguishing facts from opinions, sadly.
https://www.journalism.org/2018/06/18/distinguishing-between...
>The main portion of the study, which measured the public’s ability to distinguish between five factual statements and five opinion statements, found that a majority of Americans correctly identified at least three of the five statements in each set. But this result is only a little better than random guesses. Far fewer Americans got all five correct, and roughly a quarter got most or all wrong.
https://www.journalism.org/2018/06/18/distinguishing-between...
>The main portion of the study, which measured the public’s ability to distinguish between five factual statements and five opinion statements, found that a majority of Americans correctly identified at least three of the five statements in each set. But this result is only a little better than random guesses. Far fewer Americans got all five correct, and roughly a quarter got most or all wrong.
That's a might broad brush you're painting with. "A frighteningly large percentage of people have trouble..." would be much more accurate. You make it sound like Europeans have never be hoodwinked by people with agendas. History is rife with examples of charismatic people duping followers.
Europeans are no better than Americans.
Source: am European, speak Czech, German and (worse, but usable) Polish. We are all human, with all the expected flaws.
Source: am European, speak Czech, German and (worse, but usable) Polish. We are all human, with all the expected flaws.
It's pretty accurate. I would never want a jury trial because of how easily the common American can be manipulated. Reports now indicate that 3/4 of GOP members won't accept the outcome even though the closest state is nowhere near the 500 vote margin Gore lost by in 2000. That's how the modern propaganda machine leads the gullible.
Okay, but the survey only surveyed Americans, I can't use it to make conclusions about Europeans.
fact or opinion:
there are two biological sexes?
do you want a corporation determining that for you and banning you from seeing anything otherwise? what if their view of the facts is different?
there are two biological sexes?
do you want a corporation determining that for you and banning you from seeing anything otherwise? what if their view of the facts is different?
It would be classified as a factual statement for the survey study even though it's an inaccurate statement (intersexed people exist)
As
>Respondents were asked to determine if each was a factual statement (whether accurate or not) or an opinion statement (whether agreed with or not).
I never gave my opinion on the matter, but since you asked, no, I don't personally care if corporations ban me because I disagree with their TOS (which had inaccurate statements of fact in it), that's their right. I probably wouldn't be doing business with them in the first place, though it's also my right to petition them to change it if I wanted to. Example: When I was a kid Walmart only sold censored CDs so everyone knew not to buy CDs from Walmart.
As
>Respondents were asked to determine if each was a factual statement (whether accurate or not) or an opinion statement (whether agreed with or not).
I never gave my opinion on the matter, but since you asked, no, I don't personally care if corporations ban me because I disagree with their TOS (which had inaccurate statements of fact in it), that's their right. I probably wouldn't be doing business with them in the first place, though it's also my right to petition them to change it if I wanted to. Example: When I was a kid Walmart only sold censored CDs so everyone knew not to buy CDs from Walmart.
Sex and gender aren't the same thing.
then go somewhere else for content
says the same people who cry if someone makes a mean tweet or a comedian tells an offcolor joke and calls for them to be deplatformed.
how about i argue for them not to censor, and you go to another platform if you want your safe space.
how about i argue for them not to censor, and you go to another platform if you want your safe space.
Remarkable to see this comment unironically on HN.
It’s a fact that a lot of people believe the misinformation. I don’t understand what’s so remarkable about pointing this out.
Who decides what information is
Why does the public get to decide what a private company hosts?
They do via proxy of government laws. The public vs megacorp is not a balanced relationship anyway and will eventually get regulated.
It often does. You want it to, in many cases.
Because this publically traded company (not private) invites the public to view and share content. Now the public is voicing concern over who they are censoring.
If Google doesn't like it they are free to shutdown the service.
If Google doesn't like it they are free to shutdown the service.
The same people who decide that 2+2=4 and that the sky is blue.
If only the virgin mary were contrary. Science has lost it's power. Someone will choose an interpretation that benefits themselves over the truth. It's normal. Too many tech people are coasting on the libertarian dream of the past.
So I was correct when I said you don't believe in science.
You are the person choosing your own interpretation.
I believe in science, what I don't believe is that people will listen to truth when it is presented. They are two different things. Science has lost its power to object to a higher cultural malaise.
If you understood what it meant for the virgin mary to be contrary, you would understand the words I wrote on the page and my meaning.
You were not correct, you didn't understand my post. Stop dreaming. There are real truths being expressed here.
I believe in science, what I don't believe is that people will listen to truth when it is presented. They are two different things. Science has lost its power to object to a higher cultural malaise.
If you understood what it meant for the virgin mary to be contrary, you would understand the words I wrote on the page and my meaning.
You were not correct, you didn't understand my post. Stop dreaming. There are real truths being expressed here.
Great, I agree on both those things and now I'm deciding that the election was frauded by Elvis.
Uncited fact?
Anyways, I honestly can't blame "them". Less than a year ago, the mainstream media was full of "information" like, masks don't work, it's racist to think that hugging a Chinese could make you infected, and people questioning the origin of the virus were deemed conspiracy theorists. Now some of these are suddenly considered "misinformation" or "COVIDiots" and you have "conspiracy theory" on front page of Washington Post
What's someone who's not 100% plugged in supposed to think?!
Anyways, I honestly can't blame "them". Less than a year ago, the mainstream media was full of "information" like, masks don't work, it's racist to think that hugging a Chinese could make you infected, and people questioning the origin of the virus were deemed conspiracy theorists. Now some of these are suddenly considered "misinformation" or "COVIDiots" and you have "conspiracy theory" on front page of Washington Post
What's someone who's not 100% plugged in supposed to think?!
Let this be a lesson that a lot of people are susceptible to all sorts of "remarkable" ideas, including objectively dangerous ones like believing that Covid is a hoax.
I'm unironically inclined to agree with it, but I'd be interested in reading a more substantial refutation.
There's no refutation because there's no argument to refute. It's always some form of "There are bad people doing bad things and we need to stop them."
Notice how every thread here is about acting against alleged disinformation agents? It's not about any argument at all. It's a generic outgroup argument.
Should we expect people to just never question elections? It's completely bizarre.
Notice how every thread here is about acting against alleged disinformation agents? It's not about any argument at all. It's a generic outgroup argument.
Should we expect people to just never question elections? It's completely bizarre.
Come on. That same group questioning elections 1) has spent 4 years decrying the questioning of an election 2) actively prevented measures being taken to secure elections and 3) hasn't come up with any proof of vote changes. We should expect people to come at things in good faith, which is clearly not the case in this discussion.
Why? Its true.
If you don't believe it's true, then explain to me how Measles, something that was more or less a solved problem, suddenly had a huge resurgence, leading to 50% increase in the number of deaths from 2016 to 2019?
While flat earthers are mostly harmless, other misinformation have real tangible cost. People are literally dying due to the anti-vaxx and anti-mask misinformation. Not blocking these videos is equivalent to having blood on your hands.
While flat earthers are mostly harmless, other misinformation have real tangible cost. People are literally dying due to the anti-vaxx and anti-mask misinformation. Not blocking these videos is equivalent to having blood on your hands.
You do realize that the largest outbreak of measles in 2019 was not because of Anti-Vax YouTube Videos or other misinformation right? It was directly linked to religious fundamentalism that barred a large group of people from getting vaccinated
So all the YT censorship in the world will not stop that unless you are going to advocate prohibition of religion as well which I feel you likely will not get as much support for
YT and online misinformation is a good scapegoat, much like Usenet was in the 1990's for people that do not understand the real, actual problem
you are not going to fix these problems by censorship
So all the YT censorship in the world will not stop that unless you are going to advocate prohibition of religion as well which I feel you likely will not get as much support for
YT and online misinformation is a good scapegoat, much like Usenet was in the 1990's for people that do not understand the real, actual problem
you are not going to fix these problems by censorship
> It was directly linked to religious fundamentalism that barred a large group of people from getting vaccinated
And it just happened to be perfectly in sync with the rise of anti-vaxx content on social media? You do realize these "religious fundamentalism" with fringe ideas also use Youtube, FB and other sites to share their anti-vaxx ideas and have their own ideas re-affirmed?
And it just happened to be perfectly in sync with the rise of anti-vaxx content on social media? You do realize these "religious fundamentalism" with fringe ideas also use Youtube, FB and other sites to share their anti-vaxx ideas and have their own ideas re-affirmed?
The issue is that people see it as a failure of YouTube, when it is in fact, a failure of our education system.
There's some role for education but Youtube driving tons of people to watch these kinds of videos is Youtube's mistake, not anyone else's.
Sure, but improvement to the education system won't come into effect for decades, and in the short term, real people are dying from anti-vaxx and anti-mask misinformation. I know 2020 has been wild, but let's not forget the huge surge in Measle deaths, something that was mostly solved beforehand. Blocking certain content now literally saves people's lives.
For sure, but I think it's important not to lose sight of the fact that YouTube is merely dealing with the symptoms of a much broader societal problem. We can't truly fix the issue until we address the root cause. Everything else is whack-a-mole.
Again, why not both? This is a short term solution, while we work in parallel in improving the education system. Youtube itself can be a great source of education if you promote scientific videos over trashy conspiracy videos.
Correct, the exact same way "some people" think indenting with tab is 100% BS. Yet, at the same time, there are "other people" that will indent TAB + 2 spaces every new line.
> there are "other people" that will indent TAB + 2 spaces every new line.
I hope I never encounter these psychopaths!
I hope I never encounter these psychopaths!
> Yet, at the same time, there are other people that will watch it and 100% believe it
When has that ever not been the case? Fortunately there are natural barriers preventing most people with wild ideas from gaining enough support to be a detriment to society. Should I really care if someone else chooses to believe x, y, or z in the face of contradictory evidence? If they try and do something public with a wrong idea, their failure will be the teacher, not me.
When has that ever not been the case? Fortunately there are natural barriers preventing most people with wild ideas from gaining enough support to be a detriment to society. Should I really care if someone else chooses to believe x, y, or z in the face of contradictory evidence? If they try and do something public with a wrong idea, their failure will be the teacher, not me.
> Fortunately there are natural barriers preventing most people with wild ideas from gaining enough support to be a detriment to society.
The internet has all but nullified these barriers. Just look at all the QAnon garbage. That would have gone nowhere 30 years ago, but today a sizable portion of this country believes it because there is no real difference in authority between one Facebook post, Youtube video, or Tweet and another.
>Should I really care if someone else chooses to believe x, y, or z?
You shouldn't, unless that view is harmful to society. I don't care if you think the COVID vaccine has a microchip in it. But if you delay our return to a normally functioning society because you refuse to get that vaccine, your stupidity is starting to infringe on my rights.
The internet has all but nullified these barriers. Just look at all the QAnon garbage. That would have gone nowhere 30 years ago, but today a sizable portion of this country believes it because there is no real difference in authority between one Facebook post, Youtube video, or Tweet and another.
>Should I really care if someone else chooses to believe x, y, or z?
You shouldn't, unless that view is harmful to society. I don't care if you think the COVID vaccine has a microchip in it. But if you delay our return to a normally functioning society because you refuse to get that vaccine, your stupidity is starting to infringe on my rights.
"That would have gone nowhere 30 years ago"
Oh, the entire history of religious and pseudoreligious movements begs to differ.
A relatively recent, but decidedly pre-Internet example with a high death toll: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Rebellion
Oh, the entire history of religious and pseudoreligious movements begs to differ.
A relatively recent, but decidedly pre-Internet example with a high death toll: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Rebellion
I don't understand the comparison you are making. How are those equivalent to QAnon?
"The Boxers, armed with rifles and swords, claimed supernatural invulnerability towards blows of cannon, rifle shots, and knife attacks."
The combination of absurdity of the core claims of the movement and width of audience gained seems fairly similar to me.
The combination of absurdity of the core claims of the movement and width of audience gained seems fairly similar to me.
So really you are just lumping in QAnon with all religion. I'm not sure who would be more upset with that QAnon folks or religious non-QAnon folks.
I know a lot of religious people, but none of them think themselves exempt from basic laws of nature (e.g. immune to artillery fire). This kind of belief goes way beyond usual religion.
Does it really matter if some people believe in QAnon?
If enough people decide that the COVID vaccine is important enough for everyone to receive (regardless of their personal beliefs), then that will be codified into law. No need for censorship to try and manipulate public perception.
If enough people decide that the COVID vaccine is important enough for everyone to receive (regardless of their personal beliefs), then that will be codified into law. No need for censorship to try and manipulate public perception.
>Does it really matter if some people believe in QAnon?
When it starts to get dangerous, yes. People are inspired toward violence when they believe that other people are killing children to drink their blood. For those unaware, that is at the heart of QAnon beliefs.
>If enough people decide that the COVID vaccine is important enough for everyone to receive (regardless of their personal beliefs), then that will be codified into law. No need for censorship to try and manipulate public perception.
Do you realize this is an exact analogy to what Youtube is doing here? They tried to let the people decide. We ended up with a result that was bad for society. So they instead tried to codify the "right" choice into the laws of their platform.
When it starts to get dangerous, yes. People are inspired toward violence when they believe that other people are killing children to drink their blood. For those unaware, that is at the heart of QAnon beliefs.
>If enough people decide that the COVID vaccine is important enough for everyone to receive (regardless of their personal beliefs), then that will be codified into law. No need for censorship to try and manipulate public perception.
Do you realize this is an exact analogy to what Youtube is doing here? They tried to let the people decide. We ended up with a result that was bad for society. So they instead tried to codify the "right" choice into the laws of their platform.
> When it starts to get dangerous, yes. People are inspired toward violence when they believe...
I see this argument a lot, but it fails to address the clear distinction between beliefs and actions. If people are actually violent, we have clear laws to deal with those actions.
If the argument is that certain beliefs shouldn't be allowed because they could be construed as "inspiring violence", then I'd love to hear about how tolerant you are towards Islam's idea of jihad or countless others who believe violence is justified in circumstances that you disagree with.
I see this argument a lot, but it fails to address the clear distinction between beliefs and actions. If people are actually violent, we have clear laws to deal with those actions.
If the argument is that certain beliefs shouldn't be allowed because they could be construed as "inspiring violence", then I'd love to hear about how tolerant you are towards Islam's idea of jihad or countless others who believe violence is justified in circumstances that you disagree with.
>I see this argument a lot, but it fails to address the clear distinction between beliefs and actions. If people are actually violent, we have clear laws to deal with those actions.
Why outlaw threats and fighting words then? They aren't violence.
Some of us want to stop easily predictable violence before it gets to the point of actual violence.
>If the argument is that certain beliefs shouldn't be allowed because they could be construed as "inspiring violence", then I'd love to hear about how tolerant you are towards Islam's idea of jihad or countless others who believe violence is justified in circumstances that you disagree with.
It is curious that you use Islam as your example here. Various religions preach violence. The Old Testament establishes the death penalty for people who break the Sabbath. What matters is the actual practice and how likely they are to inspire violence. The QAnon conspiracies are more dangerous in this regard than thousand plus year old religions.
Why outlaw threats and fighting words then? They aren't violence.
Some of us want to stop easily predictable violence before it gets to the point of actual violence.
>If the argument is that certain beliefs shouldn't be allowed because they could be construed as "inspiring violence", then I'd love to hear about how tolerant you are towards Islam's idea of jihad or countless others who believe violence is justified in circumstances that you disagree with.
It is curious that you use Islam as your example here. Various religions preach violence. The Old Testament establishes the death penalty for people who break the Sabbath. What matters is the actual practice and how likely they are to inspire violence. The QAnon conspiracies are more dangerous in this regard than thousand plus year old religions.
> Some of us want to stop easily predictable violence before it gets to the point of actual violence.
Are you being serious? I honestly can't tell. This has played out in countless movies and books, and the result is never good. It has also played out in real life, and the result is even worse.
> What matters is the actual practice...
Bingo! Sounds like maybe you're beginning to see the error in trying to police thoughtcrime. It's the actions that matter, not the beliefs alone.
Are you being serious? I honestly can't tell. This has played out in countless movies and books, and the result is never good. It has also played out in real life, and the result is even worse.
> What matters is the actual practice...
Bingo! Sounds like maybe you're beginning to see the error in trying to police thoughtcrime. It's the actions that matter, not the beliefs alone.
Yes, I am serious. The problem is there is no clear delineated line between "thoughtcrime" and plain old crime prevention. Where is the line for you when a threat of violence is equivalent to violence? When does a thought become a plan? Threats are just words, so I imagine I can threaten to kill you. What about if those threats are through deliberate and premeditated actions like mailing you a death threat? Is it any different if I tell other people to attack you? Those are just words, right? Is it different if I pay them? Can I brandish a knife if I am 20 feet away from you? I don't pose an immediate threat in that instance. Can I pull a gun on you without any fear of reprisal? That isn't a direct act of violence either yet. Do I need to pull the trigger before you respond?
> Where is the line for you when a threat of violence is equivalent to violence?
The line is "imminent lawless action" [1], with case law clarifying that "advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time" is not considered "imminent" (and therefore protected free speech). It's a pretty clear line, and one that most of the censored material being discussed objectively does not cross.
Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc. are within their rights as private companies to enforce content rules as they wish, but these recent censorship actions have strong implications as to their protections under Section 230, and are alarming insofar as they represent a trend that crosses the line of free speech protections normally recognized by the government and content platforms.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action
The line is "imminent lawless action" [1], with case law clarifying that "advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time" is not considered "imminent" (and therefore protected free speech). It's a pretty clear line, and one that most of the censored material being discussed objectively does not cross.
Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc. are within their rights as private companies to enforce content rules as they wish, but these recent censorship actions have strong implications as to their protections under Section 230, and are alarming insofar as they represent a trend that crosses the line of free speech protections normally recognized by the government and content platforms.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action
> Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc. are within their rights as private companies to enforce content rules as they wish, but these recent censorship actions have strong implications as to their protections under Section 230,
No, they don't; 230 exists to promote censorship, it does not involve a bar to it.
> and are alarming insofar as they represent a trend that crosses the line of free speech protections normally recognized by the government and content platforms.
They aren't the government, and there has never been a set of free speech protections “normally recognized by content platforms”, especially since 230 was adopted specifically to remove legal disincentives to active moderation.
No, they don't; 230 exists to promote censorship, it does not involve a bar to it.
> and are alarming insofar as they represent a trend that crosses the line of free speech protections normally recognized by the government and content platforms.
They aren't the government, and there has never been a set of free speech protections “normally recognized by content platforms”, especially since 230 was adopted specifically to remove legal disincentives to active moderation.
I wasn't asking you a legal question. We all know that QAnon isn't literally illegal. I was asking you a series of moral questions, many of which can't be answered with "imminent lawless action". For example, is it considered a "thoughtcrime" if the danger isn't imminent? If someone is working on detailed plans to kill the president, but the plan would take multiple years, should this person be stopped or should they be allowed to continue their plans until the danger is imminent?
We've got to this place because the people with wrong ideas were succeding.
And if the wrong idea is censorship itself?
> We've got to this place because the people with wrong ideas were succeding.
Hate to break it to you, but if those ideas are succeeding, maybe they weren't wrong after all...
Hate to break it to you, but if those ideas are succeeding, maybe they weren't wrong after all...
The marketplace of ideas can remain irrational longer than free society can remain solvent.
History is full of people with very clearly wrong ideas who were succeeding at the time. Something something, Godwin's law.
History is more full of examples where censorship has lead to tyranny and the downfall of civilizations.
Government censorship, yes. Fortunately, that is not happening here.
Godwin's law, but Hitler succeeded for a very long time in the decade before WW2. This isn't a useful metric for determining whether ideas are right or wrong.
Until their actions affect you. Like shooting up a pizza place, or voting in a region that also contains you.
All of recorded human history is evidence that this is false. Consider the Holocaust, the Salem Witch Trials, Lysenkoism, The Great Leap Forward, Aztec human sacrifices, and so many others. Even if you just consider the relatively modern United States just look at Prohibition, the War on Drugs, Jim Crow Laws, and so many others.
I am against censorship, but not because I believe that bad ideas can't take hold and cause enormous damage. I just believe that the benefits of living in a society with free speech outweigh the costs.
I am against censorship, but not because I believe that bad ideas can't take hold and cause enormous damage. I just believe that the benefits of living in a society with free speech outweigh the costs.
You say this while half the country believes random people on Youtube and Facebook, refuse to wear masks in a pandemic that is killing people by the thousands.
I was young and believer in open internet once (and still am mostly) but the society as a whole has underestimated how much people are susceptible to being deceived and the cost differential between spreading and refuting false information.
I don't see this as anything other than an extension of anti-spam over email efforts of early 2000s.
I was young and believer in open internet once (and still am mostly) but the society as a whole has underestimated how much people are susceptible to being deceived and the cost differential between spreading and refuting false information.
I don't see this as anything other than an extension of anti-spam over email efforts of early 2000s.
Marketing works and that means propaganda works. Constant messaging can and will influence people's behavior.
Consumer Reports studies consumer products, product marketing claims, and real-world use. That enables consumers to make more educated purchase decisions. Is there anything like that for political news or news in general? If news is a form of entertainment which is a product, then it deserves some level of critique to measure its accuracy.
Consumer Reports studies consumer products, product marketing claims, and real-world use. That enables consumers to make more educated purchase decisions. Is there anything like that for political news or news in general? If news is a form of entertainment which is a product, then it deserves some level of critique to measure its accuracy.
So if that is the mental state of half the country - is democracy worth defending? Why not just ban wrong-think and come out and admit that authoritarianism is the best, since too many people are too stupid to make the right decisions?
Because we are faulty creatures with faulty institutions. Let us work with what we have. Authoritarianism is mostly never better than democracy. Absolute democracy isn't always better than authoritarianism. And in this case it is largely irrelevant because the government is not the one censoring people.
The arguments about if and when companies can exercise these rights are good to have otherwise we may end up in one of the extremes.
The arguments about if and when companies can exercise these rights are good to have otherwise we may end up in one of the extremes.
"The idea that half the population has lost its mind while you have retained a perfect grasp of reality is unlikely."
That quote would work with "the entire population".
Instead, now he's not alone, the other half of the population supports him and holds the opposite opinion and I'm quite sure the first half the grand parent comment mentions (Covid denying crowd) has lost its grasp on reality. Or they have other motives to deny it... Which makes things worse.
Instead, now he's not alone, the other half of the population supports him and holds the opposite opinion and I'm quite sure the first half the grand parent comment mentions (Covid denying crowd) has lost its grasp on reality. Or they have other motives to deny it... Which makes things worse.
Would you prefer:
1) YT and Google employees watching over us OR
2) the Koch Brothers, paid actors from Russia and Saudi and hyper-partisan US groups, etc. all flooding our information platforms with trash and noise, completely UNCHECKED, in the name of "freedom"?
I think there's solid evidence that option 2 is terrible for us, the USA has had a disastrous COVID response, for instance. Meanwhile, we haven't really tried option 1, we are just at the beginning of this censorship of trash information.
In general, I find many talking of "freedom" in US history are using it as a shield to ignore sticky issues and allow bad solutions to reign...freedom to own slaves, freedom to expand wherever and kill any natives there, freedom of pollution, freedom of marketing with harmful lies...freedom is an over-used and intellectually lazy concept.
1) YT and Google employees watching over us OR
2) the Koch Brothers, paid actors from Russia and Saudi and hyper-partisan US groups, etc. all flooding our information platforms with trash and noise, completely UNCHECKED, in the name of "freedom"?
I think there's solid evidence that option 2 is terrible for us, the USA has had a disastrous COVID response, for instance. Meanwhile, we haven't really tried option 1, we are just at the beginning of this censorship of trash information.
In general, I find many talking of "freedom" in US history are using it as a shield to ignore sticky issues and allow bad solutions to reign...freedom to own slaves, freedom to expand wherever and kill any natives there, freedom of pollution, freedom of marketing with harmful lies...freedom is an over-used and intellectually lazy concept.
>"I think there's solid evidence that option 2 is terrible for us, the USA has had a disastrous COVID response, for instance."
So you are blaming Koch, Russia, information platforms, etc for Government fuckup?
Does your Government decide their actions based on youtube videos? Somehow I doubt and if it does then it only has itself to blame.
So you are blaming Koch, Russia, information platforms, etc for Government fuckup?
Does your Government decide their actions based on youtube videos? Somehow I doubt and if it does then it only has itself to blame.
It's a private company. If you don't like their slant, use another private company.
I swear, it's like people have never had to cancel a newspaper subscription before.
I swear, it's like people have never had to cancel a newspaper subscription before.
This argument doesn't really hold when you're discussing a monopoly/social network.
Referring to youtube as "just a private company" or "just a video hosting service" is almost to the point of being disingenuous. There are no alternatives that come even close to what youtube offers. You can't just replicate a social network, and even if you could, who has the hardware and resources to do what youtube does?
Vimeo is niche/specialized, it's not for general video uploads. Selfhosting via e.g. Peertube only really works in smallish communities, due to hardware limitations and word of mouth discovery. No other service has the social aspect that youtube does.
The reality is that this is a much more complicated discussion than "oh, merely switch to another private company".
> I swear, it's like people have never had to cancel a newspaper subscription before
This is such a blithe comment that I'm not sure if you actually use youtube to any degree. It is -the- place to put videos and content. Nowhere else has the sheer amount of educational content, etc, all in one place. There's an extreme wealth of content that is not replicated anywhere else on the internet, much less spread across random websites.
Youtube not only allows for discovery via topics/related youtubers, but it also incentivizes people to make content due to income both internally on youtube and externally as they build a brand. I'm not trying to be a shill here, but without youtube I wouldn't have been able to learn about topics like woodworking, chess, bass guitar, music theory, cooking, programming, etc, to the degree that I have , and discover great content makers as well. Not to mention discovering music that isn't necessarily on spotify/etc.
So it's not so easy as to say "just use a different site/company/etc". What site...?
Referring to youtube as "just a private company" or "just a video hosting service" is almost to the point of being disingenuous. There are no alternatives that come even close to what youtube offers. You can't just replicate a social network, and even if you could, who has the hardware and resources to do what youtube does?
Vimeo is niche/specialized, it's not for general video uploads. Selfhosting via e.g. Peertube only really works in smallish communities, due to hardware limitations and word of mouth discovery. No other service has the social aspect that youtube does.
The reality is that this is a much more complicated discussion than "oh, merely switch to another private company".
> I swear, it's like people have never had to cancel a newspaper subscription before
This is such a blithe comment that I'm not sure if you actually use youtube to any degree. It is -the- place to put videos and content. Nowhere else has the sheer amount of educational content, etc, all in one place. There's an extreme wealth of content that is not replicated anywhere else on the internet, much less spread across random websites.
Youtube not only allows for discovery via topics/related youtubers, but it also incentivizes people to make content due to income both internally on youtube and externally as they build a brand. I'm not trying to be a shill here, but without youtube I wouldn't have been able to learn about topics like woodworking, chess, bass guitar, music theory, cooking, programming, etc, to the degree that I have , and discover great content makers as well. Not to mention discovering music that isn't necessarily on spotify/etc.
So it's not so easy as to say "just use a different site/company/etc". What site...?
So under what philosophical model do we justify forcing YouTube to host content that they find objectionable just so that content is more easily discovered using their algorithm?
I'm certainly not arguing that. What I'm saying is it's complicated, and we (the people & our governments) need to have a discussion around youtube/facebook/twitter and private companies that are basically used like public utilities. It's not their fault, but the fact is there is no real alternative to yt/fb/twitter unless one wishes to avoid a large part of the human population.
Of course youtube can remove whatever it wants, it's a private company. This doesn't mean that people can't find this objectionable, and it doesn't mean the only argument has to be "well, just use another company/site/provider".
I think people here are -reasonably- concerned about YT censoring particular information and the precedent it sets. In this case you and I might agree with YT's stance. Will we agree the next time YT decides to take a stance and censors a topic?
Of course youtube can remove whatever it wants, it's a private company. This doesn't mean that people can't find this objectionable, and it doesn't mean the only argument has to be "well, just use another company/site/provider".
I think people here are -reasonably- concerned about YT censoring particular information and the precedent it sets. In this case you and I might agree with YT's stance. Will we agree the next time YT decides to take a stance and censors a topic?
YT already flagged LGBTQ content as objectionable and demonitized it years ago, and I, for one, never questioned their right to do so. I think it's a bad look for them and will have consequences, but most of those consequences are of the form "LGBTQ companies are going to think twice about tossing ad dollars your way" and "People have solid questions about your actual dedication to LGBTQ inclusivity," not "We should modify the law to take away your right to flag that content objectionable."
I agree that ad dollars are where YT is hurt the most, and them making bad decisions ought to lead to corrections via advertisers pulling out.
However, a lot of people making content on yt are facing demonetization due to the same thing: advertiser pressure. For things like swearing, any sort of violence, etc. A lot of people have issues in some game communities for example.
So I don't think relying on the benevolence of Coca-Cola is the best solution either. Until relatively recently it would not have cared about appearances regarding LBGTQ+ issues either.
However, a lot of people making content on yt are facing demonetization due to the same thing: advertiser pressure. For things like swearing, any sort of violence, etc. A lot of people have issues in some game communities for example.
So I don't think relying on the benevolence of Coca-Cola is the best solution either. Until relatively recently it would not have cared about appearances regarding LBGTQ+ issues either.
We prohibit discriminating customers on the basis of color. religion etc. Add one more clause: discrimination based on political/social beliefs or something along those lines however stupid those might be.
That's a terrible clause. Half the point of free exchange of information is so we can find which deeply-held beliefs (which are maleable, unlike color) are incorrect, detrimental, or even dangerous when acted on.
Black people and pedophiles don't deserve the same legal protections to have access to a playground or a private school.
Black people and pedophiles don't deserve the same legal protections to have access to a playground or a private school.
I don't think it would make much of a difference. Are there pedophiles who publicly post controversial views without the cover of anonymity? How would you even know what their views are?
So you're whining that you can't make Youtube host your conspiracy theories for free? And that you can't ride of the back of their massive CDN infrastructure? Your biggest issue is that you are being excluded from someone else's assets and that you can't reach as many people through other alternatives at the same price point.
I don't believe I'm "whining" about anything.
"host your conspiracy theories"
I don't even watch anything political on youtube. I use youtube for music and learning about hobbies.
I still think it's worth talking about the precedent that youtube is setting here, and it's not productive to be combative about it. Of course youtube can censor or remove whatever it wants.
My main point, anyway, was that I dislike the "just use a different platform/site/company" argument, for the reasons I outlined above. Not because I think youtube -has- to host any sort of content, nor did I ever state that.
"host your conspiracy theories"
I don't even watch anything political on youtube. I use youtube for music and learning about hobbies.
I still think it's worth talking about the precedent that youtube is setting here, and it's not productive to be combative about it. Of course youtube can censor or remove whatever it wants.
My main point, anyway, was that I dislike the "just use a different platform/site/company" argument, for the reasons I outlined above. Not because I think youtube -has- to host any sort of content, nor did I ever state that.
I feel like YouTube is much less of a monopoly than Facebook. Facebook has strong network effects (i.e. everyone you know is already on it and you want to see what your friends post) whereas YouTube has much less of a social network element. Can't someone just host their videos elsewhere? I understand most random viewers are on YouTube, but if there was a niche video site for woodworking, chess, or bass guitar I don't think it would be too hard to convince YouTubers to go check out those sites
The way I see it, youtube is the facebook/twitter of generalized video sharing. There isn't any other site that people use to the same degree.
Sure, one -could- host their own peertube instance for a community. However the discovery probability drops immensely. One of the main benefits of youtube (at least for me) is easily discovering new content/creators. Also, having high-quality videos in one central location versus multiple different sites for cooking videos, woodworking videos, etc. Having something like a global search across federated peertube instances could work though.
At that point you also run into the issue of who has the hardware to power these new communities? Few people have that sort of data storage available, and fewer still have enough powerful servers + cdns across the world. The new owners of an instance could easily just as well decide to censor whatever they want, and if I had to trust a random person over youtube I'd most likely choose youtube. At least it faces public scrutiny, etc.
Sure, one -could- host their own peertube instance for a community. However the discovery probability drops immensely. One of the main benefits of youtube (at least for me) is easily discovering new content/creators. Also, having high-quality videos in one central location versus multiple different sites for cooking videos, woodworking videos, etc. Having something like a global search across federated peertube instances could work though.
At that point you also run into the issue of who has the hardware to power these new communities? Few people have that sort of data storage available, and fewer still have enough powerful servers + cdns across the world. The new owners of an instance could easily just as well decide to censor whatever they want, and if I had to trust a random person over youtube I'd most likely choose youtube. At least it faces public scrutiny, etc.
Any attempt at making a youtube competitor for these reasons will get you banned by paypal and patreon. Any attempt at replacing paypal and patreon them will get you banned by visa and mastercard. Basically you have to start from first principles and create a new global banking system first.
That neutral money and banking system exists today. It's Bitcoin. There are caveats but fundamentally if fulfills this purpose.
Why would you get banned from PayPal, Patreon, VISA, and Mastercard?
This is a subject I've been following for a while.
Basically any content that is controversial for any reason, be it porn, government criticism in china or unpopular opinions, makes VISA and Mastercard wary that it will be bad PR for them, so there is some evidence that the pair is basically threaning to cut service to any of their downstream partners, for example if you google a bit there is some (sadly murky) evidence that they been threatening Patreon if they allow certain kinds of content (for example incest porn).
So people noticed many particularly sensitive political videos, can only be hosted safely on outright porn hosting sites, even self-hosting is not safe unless you also own everything else needed, because the CC providers have firepower to threaten almost any company they wish to, including ISP, DNS providers, etc...
Basically any content that is controversial for any reason, be it porn, government criticism in china or unpopular opinions, makes VISA and Mastercard wary that it will be bad PR for them, so there is some evidence that the pair is basically threaning to cut service to any of their downstream partners, for example if you google a bit there is some (sadly murky) evidence that they been threatening Patreon if they allow certain kinds of content (for example incest porn).
So people noticed many particularly sensitive political videos, can only be hosted safely on outright porn hosting sites, even self-hosting is not safe unless you also own everything else needed, because the CC providers have firepower to threaten almost any company they wish to, including ISP, DNS providers, etc...
We've seen wikileaks deplatformed and there are many more instances that don't come with a legal power.
Not hard to imagine the same happening to "a platform promoting dangerous misinformation" as is the justification from YouTube.
Ah, now I follow.
But that's actually predictable. Banking is built on trust. Trust is a societal construct. "It's hard to open my porn shop because the banks won't give me a loan and the town won't zone for it" is an issue older than the Internet.
But that's actually predictable. Banking is built on trust. Trust is a societal construct. "It's hard to open my porn shop because the banks won't give me a loan and the town won't zone for it" is an issue older than the Internet.
I remember reading an article about a patreon competitor that had visa etc refuse to do business with them.
Newspapers typically did not enjoy monopoly positions in the markets they served, and even for those that did, rarely did those translate into worldwide monopolies.
Also, because newspapers have an editor, they are liable for what they print. Google enjoys protections from these liabilities, even though they're clearly willing and capable of editing their users content.
The two situations are entirely different.
Also, because newspapers have an editor, they are liable for what they print. Google enjoys protections from these liabilities, even though they're clearly willing and capable of editing their users content.
The two situations are entirely different.
> Newspapers typically did not enjoy monopoly positions in the markets they served
On average, newspapers definitely did. Most major cities have at most two primary newspapers. The difference between them and YouTube was geographic reach.
... even still, YT's size doesn't obligate them to provide hosting for high-bandwidth data. It definitely doesn't obligate them to put any specific videos in people's field-of-view. People with alternative viewpoints can buy cloud storage if they desperately need a place to host videos.
The "Is YouTube an editor" question is a good one, but I have a hard time reconciling the notion that they're taking on new editorial behavior with the fact that they've always had both community standards and full control of their curation algorithm. Haven't they always been an editor in that sense, and the new concern is some people don't like how they're using that power?
On average, newspapers definitely did. Most major cities have at most two primary newspapers. The difference between them and YouTube was geographic reach.
... even still, YT's size doesn't obligate them to provide hosting for high-bandwidth data. It definitely doesn't obligate them to put any specific videos in people's field-of-view. People with alternative viewpoints can buy cloud storage if they desperately need a place to host videos.
The "Is YouTube an editor" question is a good one, but I have a hard time reconciling the notion that they're taking on new editorial behavior with the fact that they've always had both community standards and full control of their curation algorithm. Haven't they always been an editor in that sense, and the new concern is some people don't like how they're using that power?
Maybe prior to the 2000s that might be true, but there are plenty of major metro areas that are served by a single print newspaper.
> If you don't like it, use another private company.
Who are YouTube's comparable competitors?
Who are YouTube's comparable competitors?
[deleted]
You're comparing a nearly perfectly competitive marketplace (newspapers) with an oligopoly due to network effects (social media). The customer has free choice in the former but very little in the latter.
> You're comparing a nearly perfectly competitive marketplace (newspapers)
Ever tried to start a new one? The network effects are real in print media too.
Ever tried to start a new one? The network effects are real in print media too.
I'm not sure that newspapers have ever been perfectly competitive. Even in my midwest, midsized city, there has really only been one or two newspapers that achieve enough circulation.
Similarly, major television media has always locked out socialist and communist points of view in the United States.
This idea that only Google suddenly has a point of view in their editing what they allow on the platform seems really strange to me.
Similarly, major television media has always locked out socialist and communist points of view in the United States.
This idea that only Google suddenly has a point of view in their editing what they allow on the platform seems really strange to me.
I agree they're not perfectly competitive but they come close (which was my claim). I view them similarly to the soft drinks market, you have moats due to brand such as Coca Cola, but vigorous competition with a heterogeneity of choices for the consumer. If I'm a socialist I can read Jacobin and if I'm very right wing I can read OANN, no matter my perspective I can find print media to suit. TV networks aren't a good comparison to newspapers/print media since they have very high fixed costs and as a result will only cater to markets that represent a sizeable proportion of the populace.
[deleted]
"We want freedom - except for companies": people who don't realize free speech cuts both ways, without irony.
What do you think is hypocritical about not believing the rights of the individual should automatically translate to businesses? It seems obvious that they should not.
Because in my opinion, freedoms should extend to every person: natural or legal, especially when promoting a absolutist view point.
If you are going to measured/weigh rights against the rights of other persons, then those limitations ought to be extended to natural persons too.
If you are going to measured/weigh rights against the rights of other persons, then those limitations ought to be extended to natural persons too.
So, since we do not have laws over atoms, neither should we over molecules, etc until we reach humans -- clearly I'm taking your argument to absurd levels, but it does illustrate my point. Something something seeing the forest for the trees.
I don't quite get your point regarding atoms. What I was trying to say is humans are not the only "person" before the law - corporates, trust, clubs and other bodies are also persons, and should have similar rights (including free speech).
If you can get congress/a court to designate an atom as a "person", then sure, the rights would extend to atoms too.
If you can get congress/a court to designate an atom as a "person", then sure, the rights would extend to atoms too.
Businesses are made up of people, who have rights
The real irony is wanting the leader of your government, the President, to have absolute power over speech, but then throw up complaints about private organizations trying to combat the dangerous messages coming from the government, because that's censorship.
I wholeheartedly agree. Private companies should be free of regulation and be free to do whatever they want, like refusing service to whoever they want - nazis, flat-earthers, homosexuals, anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, blacks, etc.
The reason we have specific protected-class carve-outs is because the default, outside of the need for protected classes, is exactly that. Private companies are free to discriminate except in cases where society has determined that discrimination is harmful to society.
Now, if one wants to have a conversation about the societal benefits of QAnon, or broadcasting information that is re-enforcing the President's overt attempt to thwart the American election for his own benefit, we can go through the front door and have that conversation. But if one wants to fall back on general principles of "Businesses should be required to associate with everyone, all the time, forever!" we quickly find society has never actually agreed with that line.
No shirt, no shoes, no service.
Now, if one wants to have a conversation about the societal benefits of QAnon, or broadcasting information that is re-enforcing the President's overt attempt to thwart the American election for his own benefit, we can go through the front door and have that conversation. But if one wants to fall back on general principles of "Businesses should be required to associate with everyone, all the time, forever!" we quickly find society has never actually agreed with that line.
No shirt, no shoes, no service.
"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."
That's the problem. Propaganda is more effective than education. If people were rational actors, you'd have a point. But they are not.
That's the problem. Propaganda is more effective than education. If people were rational actors, you'd have a point. But they are not.
This is completely within Google's deeply held belief that they are smarter than everyone else.
One tend to think that what is good/bad for one will be like that for everyone. In this case, stopping misinformation, is better for the average citizen and then better for the society.
What a crap comment.
Instead, yes, let's be happy that there are at least some entities out there that will not let themselves be willingly used to subvert a democracy.
Instead, yes, let's be happy that there are at least some entities out there that will not let themselves be willingly used to subvert a democracy.
Partisanship has leaked into this thread.. What if the tables were turned? As a non-American, it disappoints me to read some of these comments. Defending your side at all costs. I wish there was more balanced comments, acknowledging points on each side. The inability to concede to anything makes for ugly discussion. Whatever side you are on, stubbornness and hostility is not a good strategy to convince the other side.
"The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence." -Richard Feynman
"The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence." -Richard Feynman
You make a fine point about partisan hostility leaking into every crack and crevice these days. It really does get tiring. Its as if we in the US are all Sports Fans rooting for The Home Team without regard to inconvenient facts or anything that challenges the outcome desired. America is in a sad state for sure.
"What if the tables were turned?" - Is it really a "What If" kind of question? Maybe the tables have in fact turned?
YouTube certainly has no problem hosting videos that purport the idea of a rigged 2016 election.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Russian+collusi...
For a solid 4 years one party accused the other of rigging an election and it was considered news and reported on nearly non-stop. Now the tables are turned and the formerly accused party is claiming the other one rigged the election.
4 years ago one party went with a Boogey Man kind of narrative where a nebulous and hostile foreign power used untold influences and means to change the course of the election.
Today one party is going with the narrative that laws were broken regarding the conduct of elections.
These 2 things are similar but I put forth the idea they are not exactly the same. The TX vs. PA suit presents evidence and makes specific claims. Maybe I missed something along the way but I never saw anything but innuendo regarding what specific crimes were committed in the "Russian Rigging" of the 2016 election. Im open to reading up if anyone cares to drop a relevant link or two.
"What if the tables were turned?" - Is it really a "What If" kind of question? Maybe the tables have in fact turned?
YouTube certainly has no problem hosting videos that purport the idea of a rigged 2016 election.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Russian+collusi...
For a solid 4 years one party accused the other of rigging an election and it was considered news and reported on nearly non-stop. Now the tables are turned and the formerly accused party is claiming the other one rigged the election.
4 years ago one party went with a Boogey Man kind of narrative where a nebulous and hostile foreign power used untold influences and means to change the course of the election.
Today one party is going with the narrative that laws were broken regarding the conduct of elections.
These 2 things are similar but I put forth the idea they are not exactly the same. The TX vs. PA suit presents evidence and makes specific claims. Maybe I missed something along the way but I never saw anything but innuendo regarding what specific crimes were committed in the "Russian Rigging" of the 2016 election. Im open to reading up if anyone cares to drop a relevant link or two.
> For a solid 4 years one party accused the other of rigging an election and it was considered news and reported on nearly non-stop. Now the tables are turned and the formerly accused party is claiming the other one rigged the election.
Except that's not what the Russian collusion accusations were about. I still find it hard to believe when I see polls that actively suggest people believe votes or voting machines were directly manipulated in 2016. This is not the narrative I experienced while following the election and subsequent Mueller investigation.
The information I consumed made it clear that there were questionable staffing, unusual meetings, and a foreign disinformation campaign associated mostly with benefiting Trump's campaign. In any case the current admin knew the stakes, and knew the issues but failed to safeguard against it. Still they claim there is widespread fraud, but fail to provide convincing evidence. Now they have pivoted to suggesting changes made during a pandemic could invalidate votes.
The specific crimes are laid out in the Mueller report [0]. A bipartisan Senate committee confirmed the intelligence findings that lead to the Mueller report even while Senators were publicly denying it [1]. Again I don't understand the claim of "rigging". This wasn't pushed in the circles I frequent or I considered it hyperbole at the time. There was a clear disinformation campaign, hacking attempts, and questionable contacts with the Trump campaign.
[0] https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf (the 6-page executive summary is an adequate reading if you want the gist of it)
[1] https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/493889-bipartisan-s...
Except that's not what the Russian collusion accusations were about. I still find it hard to believe when I see polls that actively suggest people believe votes or voting machines were directly manipulated in 2016. This is not the narrative I experienced while following the election and subsequent Mueller investigation.
The information I consumed made it clear that there were questionable staffing, unusual meetings, and a foreign disinformation campaign associated mostly with benefiting Trump's campaign. In any case the current admin knew the stakes, and knew the issues but failed to safeguard against it. Still they claim there is widespread fraud, but fail to provide convincing evidence. Now they have pivoted to suggesting changes made during a pandemic could invalidate votes.
The specific crimes are laid out in the Mueller report [0]. A bipartisan Senate committee confirmed the intelligence findings that lead to the Mueller report even while Senators were publicly denying it [1]. Again I don't understand the claim of "rigging". This wasn't pushed in the circles I frequent or I considered it hyperbole at the time. There was a clear disinformation campaign, hacking attempts, and questionable contacts with the Trump campaign.
[0] https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf (the 6-page executive summary is an adequate reading if you want the gist of it)
[1] https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/493889-bipartisan-s...
Given how perilous the balance of power in the United States is and that the popular vote is not respected it isn't all that strange a thought that someone would do to the United States what the United States has done to untold other countries in the past: attempt to install a friendly regime. Who knows, it may have succeeded. At best, an election was influenced without results. At worst the attempt worked.
I'm not sure if we will ever know what exactly transpired, for me the off-the-books attempt to set up a direct line of communication between Kushner and the Kremlin looked extremely bad and is one of the strongest bits of outward visible proof that there really was something extremely dirty going on. Besides all the circumstantial evidence the direct evidence by itself is telling and I can not imagine any previous - and hopefully future - US administration caught with their pants down to that extent.
I'm not sure if we will ever know what exactly transpired, for me the off-the-books attempt to set up a direct line of communication between Kushner and the Kremlin looked extremely bad and is one of the strongest bits of outward visible proof that there really was something extremely dirty going on. Besides all the circumstantial evidence the direct evidence by itself is telling and I can not imagine any previous - and hopefully future - US administration caught with their pants down to that extent.
I agree with your post and I dont mean to tell you things you may already know but the phrasing of your comment strikes me - "the popular vote is not respected". In an effort to explain rather than talk down, and knowing no more than I do from the comment ...
The popular vote is not a criteria for the winner/loser of an election - never has been here - instead its a component to a larger outcome.
The US has about 327M people and by the nature of our geography they tend to be somewhat more concentrated around coastal areas. Big cities, small farms so to speak.
The reason for the existence of the Electoral College is specifically to prevent any one region/geographic faction of the country from asserting control of the nation via the popular vote.
The lack of respect for the popular vote is no accident. Its a feature, not a bug. "Every vote counts" is absolutely untrue in the US and thats by design.
The evils brought about by counting each vote towards an election are thought to be outweighed by the evils of allowing one regional/socio-economic faction of the population dictate the government for all by virtue of their popular vote capability.
Now lets get real - this is precisely what happens anyhow despite the Electoral College - the battle lines are not regional in nature but economic/religious/cultural. One foreseen evil has been prevented while allowing another situation to thrive. Both sides play this divide and attempt to sway things their own direction.
America has been subdivided into two groups - "Us" and "Them". Things aren't going to get better anytime soon.
The popular vote is not a criteria for the winner/loser of an election - never has been here - instead its a component to a larger outcome.
The US has about 327M people and by the nature of our geography they tend to be somewhat more concentrated around coastal areas. Big cities, small farms so to speak.
The reason for the existence of the Electoral College is specifically to prevent any one region/geographic faction of the country from asserting control of the nation via the popular vote.
The lack of respect for the popular vote is no accident. Its a feature, not a bug. "Every vote counts" is absolutely untrue in the US and thats by design.
The evils brought about by counting each vote towards an election are thought to be outweighed by the evils of allowing one regional/socio-economic faction of the population dictate the government for all by virtue of their popular vote capability.
Now lets get real - this is precisely what happens anyhow despite the Electoral College - the battle lines are not regional in nature but economic/religious/cultural. One foreseen evil has been prevented while allowing another situation to thrive. Both sides play this divide and attempt to sway things their own direction.
America has been subdivided into two groups - "Us" and "Them". Things aren't going to get better anytime soon.
Partisanship has nothing to do with destroying your country in order to get ahead. Any time the importance of a party is placed above the importance to the country everybody loses.
Unfortunately, we are witnessing one of the parties in the US doing this, repeatedly I might add.
If the democrats were doing this sort of thing I would be just as much against it. The point is: there actually is a party that is doing this, it is not 'some party' but a specific one.
Unfortunately, we are witnessing one of the parties in the US doing this, repeatedly I might add.
If the democrats were doing this sort of thing I would be just as much against it. The point is: there actually is a party that is doing this, it is not 'some party' but a specific one.
This is such an empty comment. All it does is whine about "partistanship" without addressing the fact that we have an ideology that has firmly become detached from reality.
Looking from outside, it is both parties, in different areas and to different degrees, but firmly both.
Not even close.
If Dems were making claims in courts and getting shot down at a rate close to 99%, a lot of people would feel exactly the same way they feel now.
Stop with your straw-mans.
Stop with your straw-mans.
As a Canadian, the republican "side" of politics in the US has made it so that debating with them is no longer necessary.
When the moment arrived that facts were no longer on their side, they chose to alter the perception of reality of their voters instead of changing their behavior. They band together and adopt a narrative which they then spread through the networks which are aligned with them and in other public tools like youtube and twitter.
This is so incredibly successful that the only thing guiding their behavior is a change in polling with their base, rather than any philosophy based on values, convictions or general sense of morality.
Hell yes their outright lies should be banned from places like Youtube. They have no basis in reality and contrary to other types of false information, their information has the single goal of maintaining or increasing their power and delegitimizing democracy in the US.
Now from the point of view of the brainwashed conservatives, people like me are the brainwashed ones. There's pretty much nothing we can say to them to convince them otherwise. We can try and prevent the bad actors from saying the things which lead them down the path to dismissing reality.
When the moment arrived that facts were no longer on their side, they chose to alter the perception of reality of their voters instead of changing their behavior. They band together and adopt a narrative which they then spread through the networks which are aligned with them and in other public tools like youtube and twitter.
This is so incredibly successful that the only thing guiding their behavior is a change in polling with their base, rather than any philosophy based on values, convictions or general sense of morality.
Hell yes their outright lies should be banned from places like Youtube. They have no basis in reality and contrary to other types of false information, their information has the single goal of maintaining or increasing their power and delegitimizing democracy in the US.
Now from the point of view of the brainwashed conservatives, people like me are the brainwashed ones. There's pretty much nothing we can say to them to convince them otherwise. We can try and prevent the bad actors from saying the things which lead them down the path to dismissing reality.
Also worth noting is are they censoring content that is at the level of "Democrats rigged the election". Or are they censoring all content relating to the election that mentions anything to do with out-of-state voters, dead voters, or unusual voting patterns. The former might be justifiable, the latter seems to censor uncomfortable truths. I personally think the total level of fraud was not nearly large enough to decide the election but a non-zero amount of fraud exists. If we censor any amount of coverage of that fraud how do we improve the system so that dead people and out of state people no longer vote?
I think Google would be more than happy to take a hands off approach. The issue is that the PR hit for being alleged to "radicalize" people or promote fringe views had becomes smaller than the PR hit of censorship.
I have a hard time understanding how this view can be held when we know that there is "censorship" and "moderation" happening in EVERYTHING we do online.
There is a reason you can't find snuff films, pornography, abuse or other exceptionally offensive videos on YouTube. You have to go on some shady websites to get to that kind of content and I'm sure even there some censorship happens so the admins are not legally liable for content.
How about text? Highly classified government information and informant data can put peoples' lives at risk so some text must be "moderated".
There is a reason you can't find snuff films, pornography, abuse or other exceptionally offensive videos on YouTube. You have to go on some shady websites to get to that kind of content and I'm sure even there some censorship happens so the admins are not legally liable for content.
How about text? Highly classified government information and informant data can put peoples' lives at risk so some text must be "moderated".
> Hopefully some day we will have the same protections the CCP gives its people
Do you not see the contradiction inherent in this? Your implied argument is that people are smart enough to see through propaganda, and your example is China, a society shaped by an extremely effective propaganda machine.
Do you not see the contradiction inherent in this? Your implied argument is that people are smart enough to see through propaganda, and your example is China, a society shaped by an extremely effective propaganda machine.
The fact is that people believe and watch misinformation promoted by Youtube algorithms in the first place.
It's probably not intelligence either, given that people believe in what they want to hear rather than not.
It's probably not intelligence either, given that people believe in what they want to hear rather than not.
This, but unironically.
It is unsettling, but look at where we are in 2020, when deepfakes are not yet zero-effort. Imagine a world where every mobile device can deepfake any activity with any person's face. Now think of how places like Newsmax, Fox and Infowars have no scruples spreading lies or dancing around the truth.
We need institutions to trust. Trust in authoritative journalism is all we will have in the future.
It is unsettling, but look at where we are in 2020, when deepfakes are not yet zero-effort. Imagine a world where every mobile device can deepfake any activity with any person's face. Now think of how places like Newsmax, Fox and Infowars have no scruples spreading lies or dancing around the truth.
We need institutions to trust. Trust in authoritative journalism is all we will have in the future.
Why should their algorithm amplify every message? You can go roll your own hosting and host your own video and send the link to whoever you want.
Precisely. Youtube is a hosting service first and foremost but increasingly it is used as the propaganda arm of some of the most despicable entities in politics who are aiming for the audience, not the hosting as their main reason for dumping content there. They are freeriding on the youtube brand and do incalculable damage to some very precious concepts and societal structures.
You can't though. Bitchute was banned on Twitter for a long time. The barriers to entry for a new competitor, including network effects in addition to hostility from other platforms, is incredible. YT have a monopoly in their domain.
I'm sure the folks who died at the Christchurch shooting think differently, since the shooter was radicalized on youtube.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/8/22162779/christchurch-sho...
https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/8/22162779/christchurch-sho...
Google can either do this or fix the American public school system and wait a couple decades. One seems easier than the other.
>We're not intelligent enough to view a video and decide for ourselves what is fact v. propaganda v. entertainment.
You're being sarcastic but growing up we used to joke around saying "I saw it on the internet so it must be true" and now a significant portion of the population actually uses this as a guideline for truth.
You're being sarcastic but growing up we used to joke around saying "I saw it on the internet so it must be true" and now a significant portion of the population actually uses this as a guideline for truth.
yes, as we have seen over the course of history, people are completely impervious to misinformation and propaganda.
YouTube gets to make the call. That's the difference between it and the CCP.
If they are losing money to wasting bandwidth on unadvertisable content, why shouldn't they be able to decide to drop it?
Ironically, I'd say your alternative is closer to the CCP. The private entity gets to decide.
If they are losing money to wasting bandwidth on unadvertisable content, why shouldn't they be able to decide to drop it?
Ironically, I'd say your alternative is closer to the CCP. The private entity gets to decide.
Does this same logic apply to financial instruments, cigarettes, alcohol, unhealthy food, etc?
Youtube's content delivery algorithm is also a kind of nanny, don't you think?
>We're not intelligent enough to view a video and decide for ourselves what is fact v. propaganda v. entertainment
Um, it's pretty clear that this is literally true. Most people are too ignorant to reject absurd conspiracy theories.
Um, it's pretty clear that this is literally true. Most people are too ignorant to reject absurd conspiracy theories.
I'd argue that many humans think too highly of their intelligence and are not intelligent enough to decide correctly for themselves.
Watching a video or reading an article is, at least, second hand information that you can't verify. If you don't have enough verified data then you cannot make an informed decision anyway.
Many people simply feel they "trust" a source. What is that? Your brain taking input and deciding it "likes" the pattern it concocts? That's okay for lesser decisions but not major nation changing ones.
If you cannot form a consistent logical chain of events that you can extrapolate a decision from then what you are really doing is guessing or gambling. No matter what your "feelings" may tell you.
A non-insignificant proportion of your population believes the earth is as young as 6,000 years old.
A non-insignificant proportion of your population believes Obama is a Muslim anti-christ who wasn't born in the U.S.. Fun fact, the current president is one of the people who participated in stirring up that last part.
A non-insignificant proportion of your population believes Joe Biden defrauded himself into the position of president elect.
Providing a platform every fringe/crackpot conspiracy theory has legitimised some increasingly insane viewpoints in the U.S. and social media appears to be pushing these to even greater extremes than we've seen in the past.
Edit:
We're seeing the same thing in Europe with Q-Anon/Coronavirus/Anti-vaxx conspiracies taking hold as well.
A non-insignificant proportion of your population believes Obama is a Muslim anti-christ who wasn't born in the U.S.. Fun fact, the current president is one of the people who participated in stirring up that last part.
A non-insignificant proportion of your population believes Joe Biden defrauded himself into the position of president elect.
Providing a platform every fringe/crackpot conspiracy theory has legitimised some increasingly insane viewpoints in the U.S. and social media appears to be pushing these to even greater extremes than we've seen in the past.
Edit:
We're seeing the same thing in Europe with Q-Anon/Coronavirus/Anti-vaxx conspiracies taking hold as well.
If I created a massively popular social media platform, and a large volume of posts found there were outright lies about you, would that be okay?
We’re not. Propaganda works.
We’ll probably end up with almost a million Americans dead from COVID, largely because “the big lie” is effective.
We’ll probably end up with almost a million Americans dead from COVID, largely because “the big lie” is effective.
As they say, "sarcasm is the wit of the fools." Your comment brings nothing to the discussion.
[deleted]
I know its weird, but if I don't like YouTube here in the USA, I can choose to watch videos somewhere else, it isn't my only choice. Except in China, YouTube isn't a choice at all (even via a flaky VPN, video streaming is iffy).
As another analogy, there have been resemblances made between Trump and Xi as both being authoritarians. However, one was unelected, and one declared himself president for life. Huge difference (and if Trump overturns the election, that difference will be gone, but that's a huge "if").
As another analogy, there have been resemblances made between Trump and Xi as both being authoritarians. However, one was unelected, and one declared himself president for life. Huge difference (and if Trump overturns the election, that difference will be gone, but that's a huge "if").
You can't just declare it. You have to have the political power for people to respect it. Even after Xi became president, he didn't have that power until he purged his opponents. Trump certainly never will.
[deleted]
All praise to our information gatekeepers!
This is directly in line with the future as prophetically described in Fahrenheit 451.
You should re-read that book, you haven't understood it at all.
It's so excellent that they've streamlined things for us here. I wish we had something like this here on Hacker News, to tame the ne'er-do-wells who disagree with Mother TV.
https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...
The AG of Texas has alleged wrongdoing officially in the form of a suit. I wonder what YouTubes policy would be of someone reading this document on video?
The AG of Texas has alleged wrongdoing officially in the form of a suit. I wonder what YouTubes policy would be of someone reading this document on video?
This is slippery slope fallacy. I don't think YouTube removing genuially harmful and false content is really comparable to CCP's suppression of opposing views.
Conversely, others could say that the CCPs removing of generally harmful and false content isn't really comparable to YouTube’s suppression of opposing views.
The difference isn't that some third party observer thinks that what YouTube is suppressing is “harmful and false” while what the CCP is suppressing is opposing views that are neither, in that estimation, harmful nor false, but that YouTube isn't the state and people in the geographic region served by YouTube have alternate sources of content that are not subject to YouTube’s editorial decisions, while those in the region “served” by the CCP have all information sources subjected to (at least by policy, if not always completely successful) the same editorial oversight.
The difference isn't that some third party observer thinks that what YouTube is suppressing is “harmful and false” while what the CCP is suppressing is opposing views that are neither, in that estimation, harmful nor false, but that YouTube isn't the state and people in the geographic region served by YouTube have alternate sources of content that are not subject to YouTube’s editorial decisions, while those in the region “served” by the CCP have all information sources subjected to (at least by policy, if not always completely successful) the same editorial oversight.
What if CCP believes that opposing views are false and harmful?
Especially the "harmful" part is bendable beyond belief.
Especially the "harmful" part is bendable beyond belief.
Why should a private company be forced to host conspiracy theories for free?
"genuinely harmful" and that's how it's sold
It seems like a poor business decision to be so heavy handed on this. They have made it black and white where a shade of gray would've been much better. For instance, they could leave the videos accessible but exclude them from their recommendations engine or apply a "misinformation" ranking factor that will be in effect for those videos.
Now that they're disallowing videos containing this information, why wouldn't broader Google exclude from web search webpages containing the same misinformation? What is the principle that applies to videos about this topic that doesn't apply to webpages about this topic?
I don't agree at all that the US election was rigged, but removing this content entirely still feels heavy handed when they could continue to be a platform for it, but without pushing/recommending it.
Now that they're disallowing videos containing this information, why wouldn't broader Google exclude from web search webpages containing the same misinformation? What is the principle that applies to videos about this topic that doesn't apply to webpages about this topic?
I don't agree at all that the US election was rigged, but removing this content entirely still feels heavy handed when they could continue to be a platform for it, but without pushing/recommending it.
If we don't have a meaningful signature match, than we don't have a meaningful way to prevent fraud with mail in ballots. Period.
Bad ballot Rejection rate of 6% in previous election to now 0.02%, with mail in ballots. Mismatched signatures resulted in a rejection for only 0.02% of all absentee ballots cast. How is that even possible. They counted almost everything. For those of you that think its unfair to reject ballots. Well how do you verify that the person cast the ballot is the one that sent it in?
Bad ballot Rejection rate of 6% in previous election to now 0.02%, with mail in ballots. Mismatched signatures resulted in a rejection for only 0.02% of all absentee ballots cast. How is that even possible. They counted almost everything. For those of you that think its unfair to reject ballots. Well how do you verify that the person cast the ballot is the one that sent it in?
You're right. It was interesting to learn that Obama won his first election in Chicago by getting his opponents disqualified due to signature issues:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_Senate_elections_of_B...
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2007-04-04-070403...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_Senate_elections_of_B...
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2007-04-04-070403...
Is there any evidence that signature matching is an accurate way to ensure correctness? As a useless anecdote, my current signature looks _nothing_ like the one on my state issued ID from 10 years ago.
Something that someone else said is quite important here: the time to fix these things is before an election, not afterwards. It doesn't take much imagination to see how invalidating large quantities of ballots after-the-fact is a dangerous road for a democracy. Put the rules and methods in place prior, in a bipartisan way.
Something that someone else said is quite important here: the time to fix these things is before an election, not afterwards. It doesn't take much imagination to see how invalidating large quantities of ballots after-the-fact is a dangerous road for a democracy. Put the rules and methods in place prior, in a bipartisan way.
> the time to fix these things is before an election, not afterwards.
Mail-in ballots were not approved by state legislature which what what the constitution defines.
Mail-in ballots were not approved by state legislature which what what the constitution defines.
> Is there any evidence that signature matching is an accurate way to ensure correctness?
In these cases, I don't think that matters as much as the fact that the laws were not followed.
"Is there any evidence that me abiding by the speed limit would have been any safer?" is not a good defence to accusations of "you broke the speed limit".
In these cases, I don't think that matters as much as the fact that the laws were not followed.
"Is there any evidence that me abiding by the speed limit would have been any safer?" is not a good defence to accusations of "you broke the speed limit".
> "Is there any evidence that me abiding by the speed limit would have been any safer?" is not a good defence [sic] to accusations of "you broke the speed limit".
Yet another comfortable sounding yet simplistically false untruth. Depending on the jurisdiction, of course.
Yet another comfortable sounding yet simplistically false untruth. Depending on the jurisdiction, of course.
If you'd indulge me, which part of the supposed untruth was blatantly false?
Although I am not sure how fruitful an engagement this will be, given the pedantry[1] you've displayed against users of British English.
[1] https://www.grammarly.com/blog/defence-defense/
Although I am not sure how fruitful an engagement this will be, given the pedantry[1] you've displayed against users of British English.
[1] https://www.grammarly.com/blog/defence-defense/
There are states where the posted number isn't actually a hard limit but rather a recommendation of what's considered safe. And so arguing that you were still driving safely despite exceeding the posted limit can be a worthwhile defense. For example: https://malegislature.gov/laws/generallaws/parti/titlexiv/ch...
(I added sic because I don't like propagating misspellings. But I didn't know "defence" was British spelling! Sorry, TIL)
(I added sic because I don't like propagating misspellings. But I didn't know "defence" was British spelling! Sorry, TIL)
I am sure there are places like that, but I don't think you'd be charged with "exceeding the speed limit" in those places, correct? You would be charged with unsafe driving or something similar, in which case you could make the argument that driving slower would not necessarily have been safer. I believe that is splitting hairs and I am sure you understand the basis of my argument when it comes to election workers following the laws set in place by the legislature.
> Sorry, TIL
Apology accepted and apologies for assuming you were being pedantic about it.
> Sorry, TIL
Apology accepted and apologies for assuming you were being pedantic about it.
Well charges would simply be the legal citation numbers, and if you look at that link it's indeed titled "speed limits".
I get your abstract argument, but you don't see to be applying it to a specific situation. Is there an actual case that's raising this argument? I've yet to see any cases with arguments that make me worry, so it would be something new.
In general I can't see a signature "verification" law as anything but an attempt at disenfranchisement. Many people have repeatable signatures, and many do not. A signature is not a method of technical verification, but rather legal authorization with a possibility to argue authenticity based on stroke angles etc. If I usually make a half-attempt at writing my name, but sign my ballot with an X, that's legit. The best way to prevent a person from filling out multiple ballots is to make sure everyone votes so there are few unused ballots to steal in the first place.
I get your abstract argument, but you don't see to be applying it to a specific situation. Is there an actual case that's raising this argument? I've yet to see any cases with arguments that make me worry, so it would be something new.
In general I can't see a signature "verification" law as anything but an attempt at disenfranchisement. Many people have repeatable signatures, and many do not. A signature is not a method of technical verification, but rather legal authorization with a possibility to argue authenticity based on stroke angles etc. If I usually make a half-attempt at writing my name, but sign my ballot with an X, that's legit. The best way to prevent a person from filling out multiple ballots is to make sure everyone votes so there are few unused ballots to steal in the first place.
> Is there an actual case that's raising this argument?
There are several cases, but off the top of my head I can give you Trump v. Raffensperger [1] filed in the superior court of Fulton County, state of Georgia. Beginning around paragraph 139 of the petition, you can see arguments that the Trump legal team have brought which talk about various violations of state mandates regarding signatures.
> I can't see a signature "verification" law as anything but an attempt at disenfranchisement
You may argue that these laws or mandates could disenfranchise some voters, but I think it's unfair to suggest that it's their sole (or even primary) purpose.
> make sure everyone votes
Even in countries where voting is mandatory you do not get full voter turnout. There would certainly be enough left over to turn the tide of many elections.
[1] https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/...
There are several cases, but off the top of my head I can give you Trump v. Raffensperger [1] filed in the superior court of Fulton County, state of Georgia. Beginning around paragraph 139 of the petition, you can see arguments that the Trump legal team have brought which talk about various violations of state mandates regarding signatures.
> I can't see a signature "verification" law as anything but an attempt at disenfranchisement
You may argue that these laws or mandates could disenfranchise some voters, but I think it's unfair to suggest that it's their sole (or even primary) purpose.
> make sure everyone votes
Even in countries where voting is mandatory you do not get full voter turnout. There would certainly be enough left over to turn the tide of many elections.
[1] https://www.democracydocket.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/...
If I'm reading it correctly, the actual argument put forth there seems to be that three people were checking each signature, rather than a single one (due to a previous consent decree over disenfranchisement). State law certainly doesn't mandate that each registrar has to personally review every ballot themselves. And so just as a registrar can deputize a single employee to do the job, I would think they have the power to deputize multiple people to do the job collaboratively.
I think you may have read from where I linked and then into the following complaint. The complaint supported by paragraphs 139 - 141 is "RESPONDENTS FAILED TO COMPLY WITH GEORGIA LAW PROVISIONS FOR MATCHING SIGNATURES AND CONFIRMING VOTER IDENTITY FOR ELECTORS SEEKING TO VOTE ABSENTEE".
The following paragraphs talk about a different issue (which also happens to relate to signature verification).
The following paragraphs talk about a different issue (which also happens to relate to signature verification).
By my reading, 139-141 just factually cite Georgia law. I don't see where it is alleged how the law was specifically not followed, apart from continuing to read into the next complaint.
The Trump team did take this to court before the election, but they were denied on the basis of the "injury" only being hypothetical at that time...
So they couldn't successfully sued before, and now they are told that its too late. Something very dishonest from the courts about that.
Your own personal anecdote confirms that people's signatures change overtime. Hence more should have been rejected.
So they couldn't successfully sued before, and now they are told that its too late. Something very dishonest from the courts about that.
Your own personal anecdote confirms that people's signatures change overtime. Hence more should have been rejected.
Relying on—and rejecting votes using—a poor method of voter identification is voter suppression.
A signature shouldn't be used for identification matching but rather as akin to the signing of an affidavit.
A signature shouldn't be used for identification matching but rather as akin to the signing of an affidavit.
Accepting votes that do not have matching signatures, is diluting the votes that do have matching signatures.
Why should a person that voted in person, in a more secure way, have their votes diluted by a mailed in ballot that does not meet a minimum standard of security, and consequently are much more likely to be fraudulent.
1. Signature match is the minimum filter to prevent outright fake ballots.
2. I believe there was a procedure for rectifying a rejected mail-in ballot. The person still could have voted, if they sent in their ballot on time, and rectified any mistakes.
3. Mail-in ballots are really an assault on the right to a "secret ballot". There really is no guarantee that the mail-in ballot was filled out in secret. An abusive husband could for example coarse his wife to vote a certain way. A union boss, could coarse his workers to vote a certain way...and so on. This has happened in the past.
1. Signature match is the minimum filter to prevent outright fake ballots.
2. I believe there was a procedure for rectifying a rejected mail-in ballot. The person still could have voted, if they sent in their ballot on time, and rectified any mistakes.
3. Mail-in ballots are really an assault on the right to a "secret ballot". There really is no guarantee that the mail-in ballot was filled out in secret. An abusive husband could for example coarse his wife to vote a certain way. A union boss, could coarse his workers to vote a certain way...and so on. This has happened in the past.
As others have noted, the statistics you listed are recklessly inaccurate.
That said: even if they were accurate, we'd still need to examine how may signature match failures result in detecting actual fraudulent voting, and how many signature match failures don't (ie they are false positives that serve to disenfranchise voters).
It turns out that the vast majority (97%) of ballots rejected due to signature match issues are likely valid. IOW: we'd disenfranchise 32 people for every case of fraud occurring. I have personal doubts that the rate for fraud was even that high (3% of the % of ballots rejected for sig mismatch), as you'd expect some type of criminal charges resulting from it.
Even assuming the 3% of sig rejects number, because that's already a % of sig rejects, it comes out to 3% of 0.2% (the actual number of sig mismatch rejections). This is 0.006% of the total vote.
Additionally, signature match checking disproportionately rejects votes from specific groups, while accepting votes from other groups. In other words, having a signature check (or making it "stricter") allows tuning which demographics you accept votes from. Allowing this type of targeted disenfranchisement is not good
That said: even if they were accurate, we'd still need to examine how may signature match failures result in detecting actual fraudulent voting, and how many signature match failures don't (ie they are false positives that serve to disenfranchise voters).
It turns out that the vast majority (97%) of ballots rejected due to signature match issues are likely valid. IOW: we'd disenfranchise 32 people for every case of fraud occurring. I have personal doubts that the rate for fraud was even that high (3% of the % of ballots rejected for sig mismatch), as you'd expect some type of criminal charges resulting from it.
Even assuming the 3% of sig rejects number, because that's already a % of sig rejects, it comes out to 3% of 0.2% (the actual number of sig mismatch rejections). This is 0.006% of the total vote.
Additionally, signature match checking disproportionately rejects votes from specific groups, while accepting votes from other groups. In other words, having a signature check (or making it "stricter") allows tuning which demographics you accept votes from. Allowing this type of targeted disenfranchisement is not good
Banks not accepting monopoly money also disenfranchises poor people. If banks did start accepting monopoly money, real money would become worth less. Having even a basic standard of verifiability and security is where the worth of money comes from.
Also rights come with responsibilities. If you can't sing your signature in a consistent way, than maybe you should not vote by mail in ballot. Vote in person.
Most up to date stats on the rejection rates that I found. 0.6% vs 6.4% in Georgia.
https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2020:_Analysis_of_...
Also rights come with responsibilities. If you can't sing your signature in a consistent way, than maybe you should not vote by mail in ballot. Vote in person.
Most up to date stats on the rejection rates that I found. 0.6% vs 6.4% in Georgia.
https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2020:_Analysis_of_...
Others have previously responded to you reposting this link with this commentary, noting that the numbers included there are the result of a tabulating error.
Continuing to attempt to use it to push misinformation after being informed is not acceptable.
Continuing to attempt to use it to push misinformation after being informed is not acceptable.
Ballot tabulation website has an update date of today.
Fact check article is from November 20th.
The election results have been finalized/certified. Therefore its reasonable to assume that the number of rejected ballots is now known. (How could it be otherwise. ) So I'm going to go with the Tabulation website over a fact check article from last month.
The election results have been finalized/certified. Therefore its reasonable to assume that the number of rejected ballots is now known. (How could it be otherwise. ) So I'm going to go with the Tabulation website over a fact check article from last month.
As others have already told you, the article [1] specifically addresses the distinction here. The "6%" is total rejections, including those that are from, for example, ballots arriving late. Nothing is out of date about it.
The total number of rejected ballots is not known because it isn't necessary to count rejected ballots to determine the election result (ie: they are simply not included in the count).
Again, stop spreading misinformation. Continuing to do so would be malicious.
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-georgia-rejecte...
The total number of rejected ballots is not known because it isn't necessary to count rejected ballots to determine the election result (ie: they are simply not included in the count).
Again, stop spreading misinformation. Continuing to do so would be malicious.
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-georgia-rejecte...
Fact check article is BS.
In the Supreme Court of the United States STATE OF TEXAS, COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA, STATE OF STATE OF GEORGIA, STATE OF MICHIGAN, AND STATE OF WISCONSIN
Page 5 aND 6.
"Georgia argues that the “[r]ejection rates for signatures on absentee ballots remained largely unchanged” as between the 2018 and 2020 elections, referring the Court to Wood v. Raffensperger, No. 1:20- cv-04651-SDG, 2020 WL 6817513, at *10 (N.D. Ga. Nov. 20, 2020) (“Wood”). Georgia Br. 4. Georgia’s reliance on Wood is misplaced because the analysis therein related to rejection rates for absentee ballots—as opposed to the mail-in ballots analyzed by Dr. Cicchetti"
"Indeed, in 2018, the rejection rate for mail-in ballots was actually 3.32% or more than twenty times higher than the rejection rate for the absentee ballots that Georgia incorrectly compares to dispute"
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163493/2020...
In the Supreme Court of the United States STATE OF TEXAS, COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA, STATE OF STATE OF GEORGIA, STATE OF MICHIGAN, AND STATE OF WISCONSIN
Page 5 aND 6.
"Georgia argues that the “[r]ejection rates for signatures on absentee ballots remained largely unchanged” as between the 2018 and 2020 elections, referring the Court to Wood v. Raffensperger, No. 1:20- cv-04651-SDG, 2020 WL 6817513, at *10 (N.D. Ga. Nov. 20, 2020) (“Wood”). Georgia Br. 4. Georgia’s reliance on Wood is misplaced because the analysis therein related to rejection rates for absentee ballots—as opposed to the mail-in ballots analyzed by Dr. Cicchetti"
"Indeed, in 2018, the rejection rate for mail-in ballots was actually 3.32% or more than twenty times higher than the rejection rate for the absentee ballots that Georgia incorrectly compares to dispute"
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163493/2020...
No, it isn't. It states the issue at hand and gives the facts available to us.
The item you've linked (the filing by the Texas AG against Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin) is weird.
It seems to think there's some serious difference between mail-in and absentee voting in GA. In GA, the term absentee voting encompasses both early voting and mail in voting. The only absentee voting that has signature verification is the mail-in component (IDs are checked instead for early voting).
And it appears to make the same "error" you've continued to make: it conflates rejection for signature mismatch and rejection for all reasons, when the signature mismatch rejections are a subset of all reasons.
The item you've linked (the filing by the Texas AG against Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin) is weird.
It seems to think there's some serious difference between mail-in and absentee voting in GA. In GA, the term absentee voting encompasses both early voting and mail in voting. The only absentee voting that has signature verification is the mail-in component (IDs are checked instead for early voting).
And it appears to make the same "error" you've continued to make: it conflates rejection for signature mismatch and rejection for all reasons, when the signature mismatch rejections are a subset of all reasons.
> If we don't have a meaningful signature match, than we don't have a meaningful way to prevent fraud with mail in ballots. Period.
This isn't true at all.
We've had mail-in voting in Australia for decades, and there is no signature matching.
Some US states do use it at all.
Signature verification is error prone and becoming more-so as less people use their signatures regularly.
> Bad ballot Rejection rate of 6% in previous election to now 0.02%, with mail in ballots.
Wikipedia says in the 2016 election 1% of mail ballots were rejected[1]. I'd expect that to be a lot less this year because of the increased emphasis on it and the much higher numbers, but I haven't verified your 0.02% number. But going from 1% to 0.02% shouldn't be surprising based on the completely different voting behavior this year.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_voting_in_the_United_St...
This isn't true at all.
We've had mail-in voting in Australia for decades, and there is no signature matching.
Some US states do use it at all.
Signature verification is error prone and becoming more-so as less people use their signatures regularly.
> Bad ballot Rejection rate of 6% in previous election to now 0.02%, with mail in ballots.
Wikipedia says in the 2016 election 1% of mail ballots were rejected[1]. I'd expect that to be a lot less this year because of the increased emphasis on it and the much higher numbers, but I haven't verified your 0.02% number. But going from 1% to 0.02% shouldn't be surprising based on the completely different voting behavior this year.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_voting_in_the_United_St...
Can you expend on how the process works in Australia. Genuinely curious.
The 0.02% or the more recent 0.06% rejection rate is very low. Think of it this way. Out of 1000 people taking a test that needed two signatures, that matched. Only 2-6 did not not match. Thats an extremely low number.
This is why teachers are always reminding students not to forget to sign their test, in a class of 30, and that only requires one signature.
If you worked with the general public, and you asked them to tie their shoes, I honestly believe you would have a higher failure rate than 0.02%
The 0.02% or the more recent 0.06% rejection rate is very low. Think of it this way. Out of 1000 people taking a test that needed two signatures, that matched. Only 2-6 did not not match. Thats an extremely low number.
This is why teachers are always reminding students not to forget to sign their test, in a class of 30, and that only requires one signature.
If you worked with the general public, and you asked them to tie their shoes, I honestly believe you would have a higher failure rate than 0.02%
> Out of 1000 people taking a test that needed two signatures, that matched. Only 2-6 did not not match. Thats an extremely low number.
No that's not what it means. It means 2-6 were rejected.
"Signature matching" is a junk process and should be ignored.
In the AZ random sampling that the Judge asked for, 6/100 signatures were inconclusive, and this was on verified voters.
> Can you expend on how the process works in Australia. Genuinely curious.
https://www.aec.gov.au/faqs/postal-voting.htm
You control the voting envelopes and ballot papers which is actually how fraud is controlled in the US too. The signature verification thing is nothing but ineffective security theatre.
No that's not what it means. It means 2-6 were rejected.
"Signature matching" is a junk process and should be ignored.
In the AZ random sampling that the Judge asked for, 6/100 signatures were inconclusive, and this was on verified voters.
> Can you expend on how the process works in Australia. Genuinely curious.
https://www.aec.gov.au/faqs/postal-voting.htm
You control the voting envelopes and ballot papers which is actually how fraud is controlled in the US too. The signature verification thing is nothing but ineffective security theatre.
> If we don't have a meaningful signature match, than we don't have a meaningful way to prevent fraud with mail in ballots. Period.
We can check for duplicate votes. Submitting fraudulent ballots in quantities necessary to change the results while avoiding submitting duplicate ballots (which would be caught, as we saw with the Jill Stokke) would require either:
1. Extremely good data about who had voted and who had not.
OR
2. Some faction in the ballot-processing chain with the ability to secretly discard the legitimate ballots.
Is there evidence that either of these things happened?
We can check for duplicate votes. Submitting fraudulent ballots in quantities necessary to change the results while avoiding submitting duplicate ballots (which would be caught, as we saw with the Jill Stokke) would require either:
1. Extremely good data about who had voted and who had not.
OR
2. Some faction in the ballot-processing chain with the ability to secretly discard the legitimate ballots.
Is there evidence that either of these things happened?
You can vote on election day even though you sent a mail in ballot earlier right? They just destroy the mailed in one.
That is correct, and is precisely what happened with Stokke. Stokke came to the polling place was told that her mail-in ballot had already been received. She was given the choice to sign an affadavit claiming that she had not voted by mail, which would allow her to vote in person. She refused to sign the affadavit and then began to peddle her story as evidence of fraud. Really makes you think...
I think in most cases, your in-person vote in that situation is provisional -- meaning it will only count if your mail-in vote doesn't arrive
Jill Stokke was explicitly given the option to have her mail-in vote invalidated so she could vote in person. That was in Nevada; Procedures elsewhere may be different.
This is state dependent. In some states, voting in person after sending a mail in ballot is a felony.
>Some faction in the ballot-processing chain with the
>ability to secretly discard the legitimate ballots.
This video does not instil confidence that 2 did not happen.
Dominion Voting Machine Flaws -- 2020 Election Coffee County, Georgia Video 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46CAKyyObls&feature=emb_titl...
This video does not instil confidence that 2 did not happen.
Dominion Voting Machine Flaws -- 2020 Election Coffee County, Georgia Video 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46CAKyyObls&feature=emb_titl...
After watching the video more closely, I have no idea what the point is. Overvoting causes the ballot to go to adjudication. At that point the person adjudicating gets to choose which results are submitted and tabulated.
Is that supposed to be evidence of fraud? That's exactly what I expect from adjudication: A human has to read the ballot and choose whether to disambiguate it or remove it from the tabulation.
Not to mention the physical ballots are not changed. Unless the same person adjudicates the same ballots the same way, this kind of tampering is incredibly easy to catch.
Is that supposed to be evidence of fraud? That's exactly what I expect from adjudication: A human has to read the ballot and choose whether to disambiguate it or remove it from the tabulation.
Not to mention the physical ballots are not changed. Unless the same person adjudicates the same ballots the same way, this kind of tampering is incredibly easy to catch.
Didn't Georgia do a hand recount? The video seems to show the process of scanning the ballots, not a way that massive numbers of physical ballots could be discarded.
I don't think it's that hard if you harvest ballots from places unlikely to vote, e.g., nursing homes.
My understanding is the following two facts are true
- Georgia has a historically low mail-in ballot rejection rate
- Georgia is not allowing an independent review of the signatures on the envelopes
That alone in my mind is an extremely strong reason to be suspicious of the results.
Not to even mention the very-strange goings-on in the State Farm Arena in Atlanta...
My understanding is the following two facts are true
- Georgia has a historically low mail-in ballot rejection rate
- Georgia is not allowing an independent review of the signatures on the envelopes
That alone in my mind is an extremely strong reason to be suspicious of the results.
Not to even mention the very-strange goings-on in the State Farm Arena in Atlanta...
There were 22,894 nursing facility residents in Georgia in 2019. [1]
How many of them do you think had their ballots harvested?
I think it's far harder to harvest ballots without getting caught than you seem to think it is.
[1] : https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/number-of-nursing-...
How many of them do you think had their ballots harvested?
I think it's far harder to harvest ballots without getting caught than you seem to think it is.
[1] : https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/number-of-nursing-...
Sure, you might be right. I wouldn't say I'm confident it would be easy or confident it would be hard.
Let's say that you brought in signature experts to look for fraudulent ballots, based on detecting forged signatures. What do you think their false positive / false negative rates would look like?
Beats me; given the historically low rate & the allegations of fraud, it seems to be you should do the review so that everyone can be confident in the results (in the event there was not significant fraud) or so that the fraud can be exposed (in the event there was).
One data point is in Arizona where the judge allowed 100 randomly-sampled envelopes to be reviewed for a signature, the democratic expert witness said 16 of them were inconclusive. However, the Judge ruled that that was not evidence of fraud. I'm not really sure how exactly you can conclude that, and the fact that we are apprently counting votes in AZ with signatures that don't match certainly doesn't make me particularly confident in the results.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020...
One data point is in Arizona where the judge allowed 100 randomly-sampled envelopes to be reviewed for a signature, the democratic expert witness said 16 of them were inconclusive. However, the Judge ruled that that was not evidence of fraud. I'm not really sure how exactly you can conclude that, and the fact that we are apprently counting votes in AZ with signatures that don't match certainly doesn't make me particularly confident in the results.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020...
The whole point is that signature verification isn't a reliable indicator of fraud or anything.
It never has been, and should never have been relied on. The ballots and the envelopes and the protection of them is the key.
It never has been, and should never have been relied on. The ballots and the envelopes and the protection of them is the key.
In that case, what protects against fraud? Anything?
I personally know of two ballots, not mine, that I could have filled and out returned, if I'd been so inclined. (People in apartment buildings I have access to who have moved out of state, but still got sent ballots, which were just setting in the foyer; I'm sure there are gazillions of other ways to get ballots.)
If you're not even going to require the signatures to match, it seems like committing vote fraud would be ridiculously easy.
(Of course, if you really want to have a secure election, make people vote in person and have a continuous chain of custody of those votes; use the ink-on-your-finger trick to prevent double-voting.)
I personally know of two ballots, not mine, that I could have filled and out returned, if I'd been so inclined. (People in apartment buildings I have access to who have moved out of state, but still got sent ballots, which were just setting in the foyer; I'm sure there are gazillions of other ways to get ballots.)
If you're not even going to require the signatures to match, it seems like committing vote fraud would be ridiculously easy.
(Of course, if you really want to have a secure election, make people vote in person and have a continuous chain of custody of those votes; use the ink-on-your-finger trick to prevent double-voting.)
> In that case, what protects against fraud?
Yes, controlled ballot papers and envelopes.
> I'm sure there are gazillions of other ways to get ballots.
You need gazillions of ballots going to someone who is the dedicated to committing fraud. There is no evidence that occurred, and it's easy to detect. Ballots are numbered, so if a bunch of sequential ones all are the same you can see it.
The process for this was all decided before the election. There's zero evidence that fraud occurred, and all people are pointing to is parts of the process they don't like.
Yes, controlled ballot papers and envelopes.
> I'm sure there are gazillions of other ways to get ballots.
You need gazillions of ballots going to someone who is the dedicated to committing fraud. There is no evidence that occurred, and it's easy to detect. Ballots are numbered, so if a bunch of sequential ones all are the same you can see it.
The process for this was all decided before the election. There's zero evidence that fraud occurred, and all people are pointing to is parts of the process they don't like.
> Ballots are numbered, so if a bunch of sequential ones all are the same you can see it.
Who could see it, specifically?
> The process for this was all decided before the election.
The Texas lawsuit is about exactly this; they allege that the process (including things like signature verification) was not in fact followed.
(Or at least that's my understanding. I claim no expertise!)
Who could see it, specifically?
> The process for this was all decided before the election.
The Texas lawsuit is about exactly this; they allege that the process (including things like signature verification) was not in fact followed.
(Or at least that's my understanding. I claim no expertise!)
The fact that it's quite obvious if someone votes multiple times. To sway an election, you would need to submit a significant number of fraudulent ballots. This is likely to result in an extremely high number of detected duplicates. It is also extremely hard to pull off without involving a large number of people, any of whom could blow the entire conspiracy wide open.
> who have moved out of state
The governments of both states know they moved. The voter registrations were adjusted accordingly.
If you had tried to send in their ballots, your attempt to vote unregistered voters would have been detected.
You describe it as "ridiculously easy," but you seem to be unaware of the protections that are in place.
The governments of both states know they moved. The voter registrations were adjusted accordingly.
If you had tried to send in their ballots, your attempt to vote unregistered voters would have been detected.
You describe it as "ridiculously easy," but you seem to be unaware of the protections that are in place.
Is that true? I've never heard of any such system; I don't think states in general communicate with each other and do automatic unregistrations like this.
Googling, I found this:
> Since the U.S. has a very mobile population and voters rarely inform election officials when they move, voters can often be on the voter rolls in two (or more) different states at one time. Unless states have an efficient way of communicating with one another, it’s possible that they may not be able to identify an individual who is on the rolls in two different states.
https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/double...
> You describe it as "ridiculously easy," but you seem to be unaware of the protections that are in place.
It is true I have never actually tried it, so I should say it seems like it would be ridicuously easy. I've still not seen any convincing arguments that protections beyond signature matches would prevent this.
Googling, I found this:
> Since the U.S. has a very mobile population and voters rarely inform election officials when they move, voters can often be on the voter rolls in two (or more) different states at one time. Unless states have an efficient way of communicating with one another, it’s possible that they may not be able to identify an individual who is on the rolls in two different states.
https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/double...
> You describe it as "ridiculously easy," but you seem to be unaware of the protections that are in place.
It is true I have never actually tried it, so I should say it seems like it would be ridicuously easy. I've still not seen any convincing arguments that protections beyond signature matches would prevent this.
Well, as that link discusses, states are in charge of managing why and how voters are removed from their rolls. In 2016, upwards of 4.5m names were removed due to cross-jurisdiction change of address (p. 48). https://www.eac.gov/sites/default/files/eac_assets/1/6/2016_...
> How is that even possible.
It's not true.
This is a myth that's been spreading online about Georgia absentee ballots. Long story short:
* The 6% number from 2016 comes from taking into account ballots that arrived late.
* The 0.02% number from 2020 is actually 0.2%, and only takes into account ballots that arrived on time.
The signature rejection rate in 2020 was actually very similar to the rates in 2018 and 2016.
So as usual, these claims are simply bogus. But even if there were problems with the signature matching system, the time to raise objections would have been before the election. Attempting to throw out millions of ballots after the election over these issues is absurd and anti-democratic.
1. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-georgia-rejecte...
It's not true.
This is a myth that's been spreading online about Georgia absentee ballots. Long story short:
* The 6% number from 2016 comes from taking into account ballots that arrived late.
* The 0.02% number from 2020 is actually 0.2%, and only takes into account ballots that arrived on time.
The signature rejection rate in 2020 was actually very similar to the rates in 2018 and 2016.
So as usual, these claims are simply bogus. But even if there were problems with the signature matching system, the time to raise objections would have been before the election. Attempting to throw out millions of ballots after the election over these issues is absurd and anti-democratic.
1. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-georgia-rejecte...
How does the claim that thins are very similar to 2016 work together with the claim that the 2020 was the most secure election in history?
An election is either more secure, less secure or equally secure. It can't be all three at the same time.
Personally I suspect this elect was very similar to 2016, and unless it too was the most secure election in history then we got a small problem.
An election is either more secure, less secure or equally secure. It can't be all three at the same time.
Personally I suspect this elect was very similar to 2016, and unless it too was the most secure election in history then we got a small problem.
I have no idea what the claim about "most secure election in history" is based on.
I'm responding to the false claim made by Trump and others about numbers of absentee ballots rejected in Georgia. The rate of rejections is similar this year as in previous years.
I'm responding to the false claim made by Trump and others about numbers of absentee ballots rejected in Georgia. The rate of rejections is similar this year as in previous years.
What's the 2020 number if we take into account ballots that arrived late? Is it near to 6 percent?
>The time to raise objections would have been before the
>election.
Trump lawyers did try to prevent these election changes, by taking them to court. The lawsuits were rejected at the time, on the basis on not being able to prove injury/damage, because no damage has occurred yet, only hypothetically.
Now that the damage has occurred, they are told that they should have sued before.
Thats a very sneaky/dishonest way of being treated by the courts.
The fact check does not prove a lie. At most it proves that Trump is not making the statement based on publicly available data. Since the final rejection rate for 2020 have not yet been released.
From the fact check:
"Georgia rejected 6.42% of mail-in ballots in total in the 2016 general election "
"The higher percentage he mentions for past years is likely based off the total rejected ballots (here) which can not be compared with 2020, as this information is not available."
>election.
Trump lawyers did try to prevent these election changes, by taking them to court. The lawsuits were rejected at the time, on the basis on not being able to prove injury/damage, because no damage has occurred yet, only hypothetically.
Now that the damage has occurred, they are told that they should have sued before.
Thats a very sneaky/dishonest way of being treated by the courts.
The fact check does not prove a lie. At most it proves that Trump is not making the statement based on publicly available data. Since the final rejection rate for 2020 have not yet been released.
From the fact check:
"Georgia rejected 6.42% of mail-in ballots in total in the 2016 general election "
"The higher percentage he mentions for past years is likely based off the total rejected ballots (here) which can not be compared with 2020, as this information is not available."
The fact check shows that Trump is conflating two different numbers: the number of ballots that arrive late and the number that are rejected due to signature mismatch. If Trump has any idea what he's talking about, I'm comfortable calling that level of dishonesty a "lie." My view is that he just doesn't care what's true or not, and he probably knows that much of what he's saying is false.
> Trump lawyers did try to prevent these election changes, by taking them to court.
Which changes?
State election laws are set by the state legislature. In Georgia, the Republicans control both houses, plus the governorship. It's hard to believe that the Republican party would have set the rules to disadvantage their own Presidential candidate.
> Trump lawyers did try to prevent these election changes, by taking them to court.
Which changes?
State election laws are set by the state legislature. In Georgia, the Republicans control both houses, plus the governorship. It's hard to believe that the Republican party would have set the rules to disadvantage their own Presidential candidate.
I believe the state of Texas lawsuit currently before the supreme court, (joined by 16 other states) contradicts this. I believe some of the rule changes were made by state election officials, without legislature. Also some counties had different rules than other counties. Which is not legal.
One of his court cases about state election changes made it to the supreme court on appeal before the election..it was turned dow.
But I won't be able to find an article about it now, because when I google things now, it just returns news about the recent court cases.
Stats: https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2020:_Analysis_of_...
One of his court cases about state election changes made it to the supreme court on appeal before the election..it was turned dow.
But I won't be able to find an article about it now, because when I google things now, it just returns news about the recent court cases.
Stats: https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2020:_Analysis_of_...
[deleted]
can you link me a source that proves that the rejection rate of 6% went down to 0.02%? thank you!
These seem to be the most upto date numbers.
"Rejected absentee/mail-in ballots as a percentage of total absentee/mail-in ballots returned, 2016-2020"
Georgia 2016 6.42%
Georgia 2020 .60%
Source https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2020:_Analysis_of_...
Which cites the official Georgia election website as source of the raw data.
Georgia 2016 6.42%
Georgia 2020 .60%
Source https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2020:_Analysis_of_...
Which cites the official Georgia election website as source of the raw data.
6.42% was the total rejection rate for all causes. Most ballots are rejected because they arrive late. Those are not yet included in the 2020 reject numbers.
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/11/trump-misinformation-on-ge...
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/11/trump-misinformation-on-ge...
The factcheck article is from November 20th.
The Ballot tabulation website page says it has been updated December 9th (today)
Its been weeks since the election, We don't even know how many votes have been cast still? This seems ridiculous. Most countries have final results on election night.
Its been weeks since the election, We don't even know how many votes have been cast still? This seems ridiculous. Most countries have final results on election night.
Let me tell you a story.
There once was a company that made a social media platform for sharing video content. The platform was monetized by ads. The company noticed that its users watched more ads so long as they were being shown content which appealed to their personal preferences and opinions. The company dubbed this phenomena "engagement" and quickly introduced an algorithm to maximize engagement by constantly suggesting content which appealed to each individual user.
People loved the company's social media platform and it quickly grew larger than any of its alternatives. Luckily, the company already controlled the world's most popular search engine, web browser, and mobile operating system, so it was easy to make their platform and its addicting algorithm as accessible as possible. A few competitors still existed, but none came anywhere close to the scale and accessibility of the company's platform.
But something happened.
The algorithm which helped the platform grow and made so much money was having an adverse affect on the platform's users. The users were only being exposed to content they liked, which helped establish echo chambers. People were coddled by content which helped reinforce their existing opinions - never challenge them. As people became more and more established in their echo chambers, misinformation began to spread like wild fire. Users were desperate and the algorithm rewarded creators who provided content to help them avoid challenging their own opinions - regardless of whether it was true or not.
What was the company to do? The algorithm was too profitable for them to simply turn it off - especially when it came to political content. They tried demonetizing content about particular subjects and adding "fact check" bubbles to combat the spread of misinformation but it wasn't enough. They eventually started trying to identify and remove the content with misinformation altogether, but even that wasn't enough.
But then something amazing happens and th- oh my look at the time! I need to go now. Maybe we can finish this story some other day.
There once was a company that made a social media platform for sharing video content. The platform was monetized by ads. The company noticed that its users watched more ads so long as they were being shown content which appealed to their personal preferences and opinions. The company dubbed this phenomena "engagement" and quickly introduced an algorithm to maximize engagement by constantly suggesting content which appealed to each individual user.
People loved the company's social media platform and it quickly grew larger than any of its alternatives. Luckily, the company already controlled the world's most popular search engine, web browser, and mobile operating system, so it was easy to make their platform and its addicting algorithm as accessible as possible. A few competitors still existed, but none came anywhere close to the scale and accessibility of the company's platform.
But something happened.
The algorithm which helped the platform grow and made so much money was having an adverse affect on the platform's users. The users were only being exposed to content they liked, which helped establish echo chambers. People were coddled by content which helped reinforce their existing opinions - never challenge them. As people became more and more established in their echo chambers, misinformation began to spread like wild fire. Users were desperate and the algorithm rewarded creators who provided content to help them avoid challenging their own opinions - regardless of whether it was true or not.
What was the company to do? The algorithm was too profitable for them to simply turn it off - especially when it came to political content. They tried demonetizing content about particular subjects and adding "fact check" bubbles to combat the spread of misinformation but it wasn't enough. They eventually started trying to identify and remove the content with misinformation altogether, but even that wasn't enough.
But then something amazing happens and th- oh my look at the time! I need to go now. Maybe we can finish this story some other day.
One day it will be commonly accepted that these ML recommenders have played the same role in this social crisis as the Gaussian copula did in the financial crisis.
Stop worshiping these websites like they are the only things on the internet that matter. It's ok if stuff gets removed from YouTube, it's one website and it's not obligated to host your HD videos for free for any reason. Get over it. Pay for the hosting if you want to project controversial content on the internet that people don't want to host for free.
> Pay for the hosting if you want to project controversial content on the internet that people don't want to host for free.
But what's to stop the private company that's hosting me from de-platforming me if a twitter mob pressures them to do so? It's private companies all the way down. Free speech is impossible on the private company controlled internet.
But what's to stop the private company that's hosting me from de-platforming me if a twitter mob pressures them to do so? It's private companies all the way down. Free speech is impossible on the private company controlled internet.
The financial incentives are completely different, it's all about the money. YouTube is sensitive to public opinion because advertisers are sensitive to public opinion and they are the only way YouTube makes any money. Hosting companies are incentivized NOT to care about the type of content being hosted because this approach makes them more money. Further, paying for a service usually implies some guarantees about services rendered and discourages capricious enforcement of business policies.
I used to think that, but Cloudflare de-platforming Daily Stormer[0] is a counter example to your claim. I still maintain twitter mobs can pressure any private company to de-platform speech they don't like.
[0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/
[0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/
This is not a typical situation. If you're a certain type of asshole very few people are going to want to do business with you, this can't be helped, but there is always someone out there willing to do the job if there's money to be made.
However, I will add that I don't disagree about your fundamental premise with respect to corporate ownership of the internet and I support the idea of publicly owned or decentralized spaces on the internet.
However, I will add that I don't disagree about your fundamental premise with respect to corporate ownership of the internet and I support the idea of publicly owned or decentralized spaces on the internet.
IMO the post should link to YouTube's blog post at https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/supporting-the-2020-us-... rather than a news article about a blog post
This policy is wicked and wrong. There are no other words for this policy. YouTube is deciding what of true and enforcing its perspective on the rest of the population.
And you know it won't stop here. From now on, every time a controversy emerges between the media-tech-academia elite view of the world and the views of regular people, tech will use hard censorship to enforce the elite perspective. There is no natural stopping point or limiting principle.
It is not the place of a few Bay Area policy people to decide for the whole world what is true and what is false. They are not God. Nobody voted for them. They have no power except the brute force of a natural monopoly's market share. Infrastructure companies must be part of the neutral background of technological society, not enforcers of a specific worldview.
And you know it won't stop here. From now on, every time a controversy emerges between the media-tech-academia elite view of the world and the views of regular people, tech will use hard censorship to enforce the elite perspective. There is no natural stopping point or limiting principle.
It is not the place of a few Bay Area policy people to decide for the whole world what is true and what is false. They are not God. Nobody voted for them. They have no power except the brute force of a natural monopoly's market share. Infrastructure companies must be part of the neutral background of technological society, not enforcers of a specific worldview.
They are the ministry of truth that Orwell warned about. It's not government, it's the combination of government and corporate interests.
Y'all should read "Manufacturing Consent" (to me it seems like a lot of folks in this thread haven't read it):
"Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media" is a 1988 book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky arguing that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion", by means of the propaganda model of communication.[1] The title refers to consent of the governed, and derives from the phrase "the manufacture of consent" used by Walter Lippmann in Public Opinion (1922).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
What we're seeing is the system reasserting itself.
"Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media" is a 1988 book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky arguing that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion", by means of the propaganda model of communication.[1] The title refers to consent of the governed, and derives from the phrase "the manufacture of consent" used by Walter Lippmann in Public Opinion (1922).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
What we're seeing is the system reasserting itself.
[deleted]
Imo they should instead put one of those disclaimers on all election related videos, linking out to a set of reputable sources for election results. Removing it just fuels conspiracy theories and directs people to more extreme platforms, downranking and adding proper sources at least has some chance of helping well-intentioned people get to accurate information.
This has nothing to do with "Free Speech", that would be a very lazy characterisation. Thi sis no threat to democracy.
Youtube is not the Internet, not even the Web. Any nutter is still free to put up a website - or some other new machine behind a IP address and carry on exercising their free speech.
Google has no obligation to let its platform be used by any idiot who wants to, and in hopefully less frequent cases, by experienced psy ops crews waging low level information warfare.
Youtube is not the Internet, not even the Web. Any nutter is still free to put up a website - or some other new machine behind a IP address and carry on exercising their free speech.
Google has no obligation to let its platform be used by any idiot who wants to, and in hopefully less frequent cases, by experienced psy ops crews waging low level information warfare.
Where is this kind of comment in threads about Google randomly banning someone’s Gmail or randomly suspending someone’s developer account?
This is not a black and white issue. Although I am not a supporter of censorship on the internet, I do agree with others here that misinformation on social media is a present threat democracy.
There are tree pillars to our democracy: government, the media and voters. The role of media is to stay independent neutral and to inform the people, the role of voters is to seek information, and actively participate in the democracy. Nowadays, social media has largely taken over the role of the media, and self-feeding recommendation algorithms have only exacerbated the problem. Nevertheless, the greater problem and the true cause of our current division is the failure of our education system. People are simply not trained to think critically, and seek out arguments that oppose their own.
Unfortunately, fixing our education system will take many years, or even a generation. It may be putting the horse before the cart, but for now I think the simpler fix is at the level of social media. Have any of you noticed how greedy the YouTube algorithm is? I watch one video on conspiracy theories, just out of curiosity, and suddenly I have like half a dozen similar recommendations on my homepage. This can only have the effect of boxing people into their own belief system...
There are tree pillars to our democracy: government, the media and voters. The role of media is to stay independent neutral and to inform the people, the role of voters is to seek information, and actively participate in the democracy. Nowadays, social media has largely taken over the role of the media, and self-feeding recommendation algorithms have only exacerbated the problem. Nevertheless, the greater problem and the true cause of our current division is the failure of our education system. People are simply not trained to think critically, and seek out arguments that oppose their own.
Unfortunately, fixing our education system will take many years, or even a generation. It may be putting the horse before the cart, but for now I think the simpler fix is at the level of social media. Have any of you noticed how greedy the YouTube algorithm is? I watch one video on conspiracy theories, just out of curiosity, and suddenly I have like half a dozen similar recommendations on my homepage. This can only have the effect of boxing people into their own belief system...
There wouldn't be a problem if there were three or four competitors on each social media platform. Instead we have near monopolies on status sharing (facebook), opinion sharing (twitter), video sharing (youtube), photo sharing (instagram), resumee sharing (linkedin), etc. If these platforms would decouple from their brands and allow competition, nobody would ask for censorship.
This isn't censorship. It's YouTube deciding what it wants to host on it's platform. The information is freely available across the media spectrum but it violates YouTubes Code of Conduct so to speak
As a person trying to deal with parents already on the ledge, I can’t tell you how detrimental this is to an already fragile situation.
Corporations with monetary incentives (i.e. all corporations) should not be the entities responsible for deciding what information can and cannot spread within a democracy. I don't care what side of the fence you're on when it comes to censorship - allowing corporations to wield power previously solely held by the government is a step in a dangerous direction.
What to do about it? This is very tricky. The best solution I have been able to think of, is inline with "anti-discrimination" laws that exist with hiring. Corporations should not be able to discriminate in terms of what information is spread via their platform. If the government can enforce that law when it comes to hiring (even if that restricts a private company's "freedom") then they can certainly do it for information.
What to do about it? This is very tricky. The best solution I have been able to think of, is inline with "anti-discrimination" laws that exist with hiring. Corporations should not be able to discriminate in terms of what information is spread via their platform. If the government can enforce that law when it comes to hiring (even if that restricts a private company's "freedom") then they can certainly do it for information.
It's interesting to me that YouTube doesn't have any credible broad competitor. The only real competition is very small subsets of what YouTube does, things like Twitch and Vimeo. Is it just that YouTube gets the high-end Google network/bandwidth at rock bottom cost?
This is the same platform that is the backbone of the information for flat earth and every other conspiracy theory based on ignorance that becomes widespread. But when they decide they don't like people to know about some some legitimate ongoing litigation they take it down.
It's been sad watching Silicon Valley evolve from Apple's 1984 Super Bowl commercial to this.
I think that anyone who doesn't believe that the election was legitimate - i.e. that no meaningful fraud occurred - should be banned from the HN community.
Their "arguments" are full of shit and are a bunch of pseudo-philosophical, pseudo-analytical, pseudo-objective cant.
Their "evidence" is literally disinformation / propaganda.
They act exactly like those crypto-racists who knows that their true belief would be deemed unpalatable or unacceptable by the community so they'll blow as much smoke around as possible without ever stepping out to say what they're actually driving towards.
Enough is enough. It's clearly dangerous to allow these views the shroud of legitimacy by giving them space in the public square. Otherwise HN is just enabling them.
Their "arguments" are full of shit and are a bunch of pseudo-philosophical, pseudo-analytical, pseudo-objective cant.
Their "evidence" is literally disinformation / propaganda.
They act exactly like those crypto-racists who knows that their true belief would be deemed unpalatable or unacceptable by the community so they'll blow as much smoke around as possible without ever stepping out to say what they're actually driving towards.
Enough is enough. It's clearly dangerous to allow these views the shroud of legitimacy by giving them space in the public square. Otherwise HN is just enabling them.
This just adds to 2020 being a depressing year. If we are going to go down the path of political censorship, we may as well have effective government too. But we have the worst of all worlds. We have the combination of political censorship and ineffective government.
Youtube is the problem. Anyone can put whatever shit they want online, which is fine in itself, but put your snake oil on Youtube and Google's Skynet will expertly find rubes to sell for you and show it to them.
But on a few occasions, like this one, advertisers get nervous.
But on a few occasions, like this one, advertisers get nervous.
I'm glad that the HN consensus is against government censorship.
I also really wish we collectively put more effort into solving the underlying problem of mass disinformation in the internet age. It's a real problem, and while ham-fisted censorship isn't the right solution, clearly _some_ solution is necessary.
Working on how to solve the problem without censorship is more likely to lead to a successful outcome, and is also more suited to technologist's capabilities than just yelling "censorship!" as if the disinformation problem is just going to go away on it's own. It's not.
I also really wish we collectively put more effort into solving the underlying problem of mass disinformation in the internet age. It's a real problem, and while ham-fisted censorship isn't the right solution, clearly _some_ solution is necessary.
Working on how to solve the problem without censorship is more likely to lead to a successful outcome, and is also more suited to technologist's capabilities than just yelling "censorship!" as if the disinformation problem is just going to go away on it's own. It's not.
Some solution is a slippery slope... justifying censorship or some form of it due to “unique circumstances” is so dangerous because there will always be a unique circumstance. The internet was built on the idea that information should be open and ever since then we’ve been coming up with new ways to suppress that defining characteristic.
I have an amusing idea: an independent amateur journalist network, composed of people doing the field work, in their free time. I'm not confident it will ever come true, but it's good to fantasize, at the minimum.
YouTube's justification here is actually kind of fascinating. They note that since there is no longer a legal path to modifying the results of the election, they're taking the outcome of the US legal structure as a factual indicator of the status of the election results and justifying the takedowns on the basis that they lie about the historical outcome of the election. In essence, they are saying that the federal government is a primary source and they are deferring to the federal government.
I think it's obviously bending the spirit of their policy, but not technically wrong.
I think it's obviously bending the spirit of their policy, but not technically wrong.
> They note that since there is no longer a legal path to modifying the results of the election
Isn’t there a Supreme Court case that Texas filed and 18 states added on with amici curiae? It won’t be heard, and it wouldn’t be positively ruled, but it “is” a possibly isn’t it?
Also, isn’t it possible if there was fraud that it was discovered later? Shouldn’t that be “allowed”?
(I’m not in any way facetiously asking, I really don’t know)
Isn’t there a Supreme Court case that Texas filed and 18 states added on with amici curiae? It won’t be heard, and it wouldn’t be positively ruled, but it “is” a possibly isn’t it?
Also, isn’t it possible if there was fraud that it was discovered later? Shouldn’t that be “allowed”?
(I’m not in any way facetiously asking, I really don’t know)
The court has already unanimously declined to interfere in the election in the PA case. The TX case isn’t going to be suddenly different.
The court decided not to approve an injunction to stop certification in the PA case. They have not dismissed the case, they have not indicated they will not hear the case.
Also, don’t mistake the lack of an opinion or dissent as unanimous. Court vote was not disclosed. No one dissented, which is interesting given Alito’s push in PA for them to segregate ballots prior to this.
The Texas case is not asking for any injunction. Now with 18-20 additional states added on it (amici curiae) is making a 14th amendment argument that the four defendants changed election laws without going through their legislatures, a direct and indisputable violation of Article 2. That this damages Texans, that if the states aren’t held to the constitution, then what is the point?
But I don’t think the cases will be heard, I have no idea, my point isn’t what the percentage chance is, it’s that it is not zero.... as I understand it.
Also, don’t mistake the lack of an opinion or dissent as unanimous. Court vote was not disclosed. No one dissented, which is interesting given Alito’s push in PA for them to segregate ballots prior to this.
The Texas case is not asking for any injunction. Now with 18-20 additional states added on it (amici curiae) is making a 14th amendment argument that the four defendants changed election laws without going through their legislatures, a direct and indisputable violation of Article 2. That this damages Texans, that if the states aren’t held to the constitution, then what is the point?
But I don’t think the cases will be heard, I have no idea, my point isn’t what the percentage chance is, it’s that it is not zero.... as I understand it.
Also dropped in a no-nonsense 9-0 opinion.
There's really no basis for these lawsuits.
There's really no basis for these lawsuits.
> Also, isn’t it possible if there was fraud that it was discovered later? Shouldn’t that be “allowed”?
No, a finding of fraud isn't allowed because all the results of the election have been certified as not fraudulent by authorities beyond question.
No, a finding of fraud isn't allowed because all the results of the election have been certified as not fraudulent by authorities beyond question.
This leaky bucket approach seems ineffective, ignores the root cause, and likely emboldens people adhering to these ideas. As bizarre as it sounds, I think the root cause for the rise in supply and demand for misinformation is the decline of the church/religion. Couple that with technology and it's uncharted territory. Many people need something to believe in, whether it's luck, god, nature, whatever, beliefs are complex frameworks that order a chaotic world. They help people handle a number of difficult circumstances from inequality and injustice to fear and uncertainty, to loss and sadness, to dealing with difficult people, finding motivation, the list goes on.
Like religion, conspiracy theories fill many of those voids, but they are much better equipped to thrive in the 21st century. Where churches build communities in buildings, conspiracy theories form communities on social media and internet forums. Where churches hold the carrot of an afterlife or ultimate application of fairness, the conspiracy theory holds the carrot of a future leak or whistleblower leading to your team's ultimate victory and subsequent righting of wrongs. Where church uses god as the reason for everything, conspiracy theories use mini-gods arising from issues, responsible for all sorts of machinations and plots. Where churches use imperfect human leaders capable of hypocrisy and moral shortcomings, conspiracy theories often lack formal leaders, and when they are present, the bar for morality is low compared to the alleged crimes of the conspirators. Churches ask for money, conspiracy theories ask for time. Churches offer boring lectures on people who lived thousands of years ago, conspiracy theories are engaging and tie directly to real world events.
Whack-a-mole with ideas that keep popping up does nothing to solve the underlying issues: there are many people out there who feel empty in some way and they are desperate to fill that void with just about anything. Containment of misinformation has failed and will continue to fail, just like prohibition of drugs fails, and abstinence only sex education fails, and religious persecution fails.
I think the best approach is to ignore, minimize, monitor real-world impact, and organically counter. With that approach you avoid creating martyrs, and you can exploit a major weakness conspiracy theories possess compared to formal religion: Conspiracy theories operate in the realm of the living, there is no promise of truth in death as with many religions. Because of this, very few conspiracy theories truly stand the test of time, eventually they're either disproven, evolve to become too outlandish, or simply become boring and fizzle out.
Like religion, conspiracy theories fill many of those voids, but they are much better equipped to thrive in the 21st century. Where churches build communities in buildings, conspiracy theories form communities on social media and internet forums. Where churches hold the carrot of an afterlife or ultimate application of fairness, the conspiracy theory holds the carrot of a future leak or whistleblower leading to your team's ultimate victory and subsequent righting of wrongs. Where church uses god as the reason for everything, conspiracy theories use mini-gods arising from issues, responsible for all sorts of machinations and plots. Where churches use imperfect human leaders capable of hypocrisy and moral shortcomings, conspiracy theories often lack formal leaders, and when they are present, the bar for morality is low compared to the alleged crimes of the conspirators. Churches ask for money, conspiracy theories ask for time. Churches offer boring lectures on people who lived thousands of years ago, conspiracy theories are engaging and tie directly to real world events.
Whack-a-mole with ideas that keep popping up does nothing to solve the underlying issues: there are many people out there who feel empty in some way and they are desperate to fill that void with just about anything. Containment of misinformation has failed and will continue to fail, just like prohibition of drugs fails, and abstinence only sex education fails, and religious persecution fails.
I think the best approach is to ignore, minimize, monitor real-world impact, and organically counter. With that approach you avoid creating martyrs, and you can exploit a major weakness conspiracy theories possess compared to formal religion: Conspiracy theories operate in the realm of the living, there is no promise of truth in death as with many religions. Because of this, very few conspiracy theories truly stand the test of time, eventually they're either disproven, evolve to become too outlandish, or simply become boring and fizzle out.
Speaking anecdotally, I know and know of many people who believe the election was stolen from the president by a conspiracy, 100% of whom are devout evangelicals.
Yet another sign that Google has too much power.
Only 1/4 of Republicans surveyed believe the election wasn't fraudulent according to a poll today. Clearly, not objective reality. Do you think that this is
a) the result of Google or
b) the result of FoxNews, and other Mercer/Koch/Murdoch owned media/radio continuously amplifying and echoing these claims?
If Google has so much power, why can't they convince 3/4s of Republicans that water is wet? Like literally, 42 lost court cases, court dockets where the Republican governors and secretaries of states conducted investigations and debunked all of the specious "evidence" (e.g. the "suitcases from under the table" video), and yet this gaslighting continues.
The Trump administration has undermined the credibility of all of our institutions, the latest being the scientific / medical community and democratic institutions. He does this by spreading baseless lies on social media with made up facts, some of them so preposterous that they've essentially 8chan/8kun posts. This then gets spread far and wide on social media and conservative TV and Radio as a mind virus.
And yet, the problem is Google has too much power to fact check this motherlode of bullshit.
Well clearly, this power sucks, because for all of its scary capability, it clearly can't burst the bubble of people who have been gaslit into a shitgibbon's cult.
a) the result of Google or
b) the result of FoxNews, and other Mercer/Koch/Murdoch owned media/radio continuously amplifying and echoing these claims?
If Google has so much power, why can't they convince 3/4s of Republicans that water is wet? Like literally, 42 lost court cases, court dockets where the Republican governors and secretaries of states conducted investigations and debunked all of the specious "evidence" (e.g. the "suitcases from under the table" video), and yet this gaslighting continues.
The Trump administration has undermined the credibility of all of our institutions, the latest being the scientific / medical community and democratic institutions. He does this by spreading baseless lies on social media with made up facts, some of them so preposterous that they've essentially 8chan/8kun posts. This then gets spread far and wide on social media and conservative TV and Radio as a mind virus.
And yet, the problem is Google has too much power to fact check this motherlode of bullshit.
Well clearly, this power sucks, because for all of its scary capability, it clearly can't burst the bubble of people who have been gaslit into a shitgibbon's cult.
I don't disagree about Republicans. I am just stating a fact. Google has too much power.
But you have to realize something about how conservatives get their news. They are extremely loyal to a small number of sources and rely heavily on peer-to-peer amplification of right-wing memes. Google has nothing on the Facebook and good-ole-boy networks. They inherently distrust Google and the internet and any "mainstream" media. All Trump has to do is say "The left-wing Google" and it sticks in their heads like a thorn. They trust people they know in real life, and as soon as their friends are repeating they catchphrases, they believe it.
But you have to realize something about how conservatives get their news. They are extremely loyal to a small number of sources and rely heavily on peer-to-peer amplification of right-wing memes. Google has nothing on the Facebook and good-ole-boy networks. They inherently distrust Google and the internet and any "mainstream" media. All Trump has to do is say "The left-wing Google" and it sticks in their heads like a thorn. They trust people they know in real life, and as soon as their friends are repeating they catchphrases, they believe it.
Whether or not you think it's true that Joe Biden won (which I'm pretty sure he did) This sets a bad precedent about wrongthing on the platform. There is literally no way to prove whether or not the election was fraudulent. The only thing you can do is look at the available evidence and draw conclusins.
To make it against the rules to look at the evidence and have a wrong opinion on what conclusions can be drawn from it is very dangerous. Think about how a policy like this would have been used in the past or how it can be used now and in the future.
"We will remove anything alleging that The President Donald Trump colluded with russia"
"We will remove anything alleging that the Chinese government is interning Uyghurs."
"We will remove anything alleging that the CIA has conducted experiments on American Citizens"
"We will remove anything alleging that President Bill Clinton had sex with anyone other than his wife"
"We will remove anything alleging that Jeffery Epstein did not commit suicide"
To make it against the rules to look at the evidence and have a wrong opinion on what conclusions can be drawn from it is very dangerous. Think about how a policy like this would have been used in the past or how it can be used now and in the future.
"We will remove anything alleging that The President Donald Trump colluded with russia"
"We will remove anything alleging that the Chinese government is interning Uyghurs."
"We will remove anything alleging that the CIA has conducted experiments on American Citizens"
"We will remove anything alleging that President Bill Clinton had sex with anyone other than his wife"
"We will remove anything alleging that Jeffery Epstein did not commit suicide"
“If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm
― George Orwell, Animal Farm
Youtube has no more obligation to host these videos than your local coffee shop has an obligation to host an oral reading of Chairman Mao's Little Red Book. This lack of obligation is not censorship -- it's private property rights and the free market in action. If you want to hear a recitation of the Little Red Book while you sip coffee, you are free to patronize a coffee shop that will do so, or even start your own coffee shop. Likewise, you're free to use a different video platform, or start your own.
I wonder if Google will apply this same "it's settled per the courts" standard to the Bush v. Gore election. I've encountered a number of videos claiming it was stolen.
YouTube removes content from their platform every single hour of every single day. Those of you who are upset by this action should reflect on why this is different than any other content policy or removal they perform. Just like those of you who are upset with private businesses requiring you to wear a mask have never been upset with a "no shoes, no shirt" policy. Stop hiding behind some supposed principles here. Just admit what is really bothering you here.
It's heartening to see Google finally taking steps towards curbing the spread of disinformation on their platforms recently. Now if only Facebook would do the same.
Regardless of where you stand, this is _blatant_ political bias (democrats) towards an equally valid opposing viewpoint (republican)
This is literally definition of a slippery slope where Google is going and would have caused an absolute outrage had it happened with the whole Russian election meddling 4 years ago. Let the freedom of expression take course, trying to control the narrative is exact opposite of democracy that Google screams they are trying to protect.
This is literally definition of a slippery slope where Google is going and would have caused an absolute outrage had it happened with the whole Russian election meddling 4 years ago. Let the freedom of expression take course, trying to control the narrative is exact opposite of democracy that Google screams they are trying to protect.
Bet you thought that the slippery slop would stop at the "deniers" and the "anti-vaxers".
It will only stop at 1984 levels when the only opinions you can have are the government mandated ones
You think that would never fly, but I bet people thought censorship on the internet on this scale would never work 20 years ago
You think that would never fly, but I bet people thought censorship on the internet on this scale would never work 20 years ago
[deleted]
So, maybe I'm not understanding something, but there are numerous reports from what appear to be reputable sources -- a few listed below -- claiming that there were uncovered missing votes during recounts in Georgia. However, there isn't a word said about this on CNN, MSNBC or any other heavily left-leaning media sources. The only sources that I hear talking about this are on YouTube. I don't give a shit if I get downvoted for saying this, but when the damn Atlanta news channel says there are uncounted votes how the hell does the left not take an issue with this? My goodness, this is the beginnings of a banana republic.
[1] https://www.ajc.com/politics/recount-finds-thousands-of-geor...
[2] https://www.wsbtv.com/news/politics/another-georgia-county-h...
[1] https://www.ajc.com/politics/recount-finds-thousands-of-geor...
[2] https://www.wsbtv.com/news/politics/another-georgia-county-h...
> However, there isn't a word said about this on CNN, MSNBC or any other heavily left-leaning media sources.
That's untrue, nor are those "heavily left-leaning" sites [1]. With a quick google search, I can already see that CNN did report on it [2]. There's no reason for it to be a "huge news story" because they caught it, it wasn't malicious, and it didn't affect the vote tally in any meaningful way.
[1] https://www.adfontesmedia.com/
[2] https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/biden-trump-us-el...
That's untrue, nor are those "heavily left-leaning" sites [1]. With a quick google search, I can already see that CNN did report on it [2]. There's no reason for it to be a "huge news story" because they caught it, it wasn't malicious, and it didn't affect the vote tally in any meaningful way.
[1] https://www.adfontesmedia.com/
[2] https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/biden-trump-us-el...
The "missing votes" were found during the recount, and added t the eventually certified totals. So yeah, the system works. Whats the issue again?
>So, maybe I'm not understanding something
You're right about that. Most claims about election fraud have absolutely nothing to do with the two links you are shared.
And your links don't show fraud. And your links don't show anything that would change the outcome in Georgia let alone the election as a whole.
You're right about that. Most claims about election fraud have absolutely nothing to do with the two links you are shared.
And your links don't show fraud. And your links don't show anything that would change the outcome in Georgia let alone the election as a whole.
Because the recount did exactly what was intended (found missing votes) and the result didn’t change?
Results of the election not changing isn't the point. It is the lack of retraction of the earlier "there was no election fraud" claim. Just because the number of missing votes found during the recount ended up not changing the outcome doesn't mean that the earlier claims of "there was no election fraud and missing votes" were correct, because they, according to the recount, are factually incorrect.
But missing votes isn’t even evidence of fraud. Could be just an error. And from my knowledge I know for a fact that at least NPR reported the change in votes and discussed it in commentary.
>But missing votes isn’t even evidence of fraud. Could be just an error.
Important clarification, agreed, but that wasn't the point of my comment. The point was the retraction of "there are no missing votes, it is nonsense", and that is yet to happen afaik.
I wasn't aware that NPR did it already, which is good. But I am still salty that it doesn't get nearly as much attention as the initial "we know for a fact there were no missing votes despite zero evidence one way or another" from a bit more "mainstream" publications like CNN and such. But I guess I am moving the goalpost at this point, because you are correct that one of the somewhat mainstream media publications indeed retracted their earlier statement.
Important clarification, agreed, but that wasn't the point of my comment. The point was the retraction of "there are no missing votes, it is nonsense", and that is yet to happen afaik.
I wasn't aware that NPR did it already, which is good. But I am still salty that it doesn't get nearly as much attention as the initial "we know for a fact there were no missing votes despite zero evidence one way or another" from a bit more "mainstream" publications like CNN and such. But I guess I am moving the goalpost at this point, because you are correct that one of the somewhat mainstream media publications indeed retracted their earlier statement.
If the point of your statement not about fraud, then why did you use the word “fraud” in your initial example?
“Results of the election not changing isn't the point. It is the lack of retraction of the earlier "there was no election fraud" claim.”
“Results of the election not changing isn't the point. It is the lack of retraction of the earlier "there was no election fraud" claim.”
[deleted]
No one is seriously claiming that none of the elections have any errors. That would be insane; all human activity is full of errors.
What we are saying is that literally all experts and the people who run the elections themselves — from both political parties — have stated that they don’t believe that there is any organized fraud, and that any error they have isn’t significant.
The fact that several recounts didn’t change the results shows exactly that: the detected errors did not make a significant impact on the results. The election was safe to call because Biden was ahead by more than the margin of error.
There is one man who has objectively lied constantly for his entire life in the public record, who had lied about his results in polls (both political and entertainment related) his entire life, and who has repeatedly stated that he will not admit defeat. (In the past, he even called magazines under a fake name to try to convince them that he should be higher in their “richest people” rankings!) On the other side, we have literally every election official in the country across party lines.
What we are saying is that literally all experts and the people who run the elections themselves — from both political parties — have stated that they don’t believe that there is any organized fraud, and that any error they have isn’t significant.
The fact that several recounts didn’t change the results shows exactly that: the detected errors did not make a significant impact on the results. The election was safe to call because Biden was ahead by more than the margin of error.
There is one man who has objectively lied constantly for his entire life in the public record, who had lied about his results in polls (both political and entertainment related) his entire life, and who has repeatedly stated that he will not admit defeat. (In the past, he even called magazines under a fake name to try to convince them that he should be higher in their “richest people” rankings!) On the other side, we have literally every election official in the country across party lines.
I'm not sure I understand the aim of your message -- the recount did what it is supposed to (well, count again). What does that have to do with the press-release from YouTube?
[deleted]
That's not true at all. Every recount changes the results by a little bit, and that's exactly what happened and exactly what was reported in the recounts in Georgia and Wisconsin.
What was not seen was "fraud", nor any reason to suspect the end result of the election (Biden victories in those states) was incorrect.
What was not seen was "fraud", nor any reason to suspect the end result of the election (Biden victories in those states) was incorrect.
Yeah this bothers me, whether Trump won or lost is kind of besides the point, the real issue is that clearly the media “wants” a specific outcome and has been doing as much as they can to make that outcome more probable starting even way before the day of the election.
I think is a perfect encapsulation of the muddled thinking that is caused by this kind of misinformation. This is a really narrow example, and it doesn't generalize any conclusions about to the entire electoral system the way you are suggesting it might.
For some reason, consumers of misinformation take these small fragments and use them to cast doubt on the entire system, which is a conclusion totally out of proportion to the evidence. But if you say that out loud, all you will get is a blank stare.
For some reason, consumers of misinformation take these small fragments and use them to cast doubt on the entire system, which is a conclusion totally out of proportion to the evidence. But if you say that out loud, all you will get is a blank stare.
You are attributing to malice what can be easily explained by bad processes and incompetence (we see this all the time in tech with bugs that make it through to production!).
The missing votes weren't much, and changed the nature of the race by less than 500 votes. Trump still lost Georgia by about 13,000.
The banana republic part of this is a man who lost the election by more than 7 million votes trying to steal the election. Trump didn't come close to winning. Trump got straight up thumped, and he is still trying to sue to get millions of votes thrown out. Millions of American votes.
If you are concerned with why voting isn't smoother in this country with less errors, you need to support creating national standards and funding to help make voting easier and more modern. This is an artifact of an incredibly balkanized voting processes. A lot of Americans would support easy, modern, universal voting.
The election is long since past, and Trump lost. The reason you don't see national news orgs covering small-scale election issues in individual counties is that they aren't national news stories. It's really that simple.
The fact that a recount found additional votes -- the point of a recount -- and that the additional votes didn't impact the election is not news. It's just not news.
The missing votes weren't much, and changed the nature of the race by less than 500 votes. Trump still lost Georgia by about 13,000.
The banana republic part of this is a man who lost the election by more than 7 million votes trying to steal the election. Trump didn't come close to winning. Trump got straight up thumped, and he is still trying to sue to get millions of votes thrown out. Millions of American votes.
If you are concerned with why voting isn't smoother in this country with less errors, you need to support creating national standards and funding to help make voting easier and more modern. This is an artifact of an incredibly balkanized voting processes. A lot of Americans would support easy, modern, universal voting.
The election is long since past, and Trump lost. The reason you don't see national news orgs covering small-scale election issues in individual counties is that they aren't national news stories. It's really that simple.
The fact that a recount found additional votes -- the point of a recount -- and that the additional votes didn't impact the election is not news. It's just not news.
I think these should be kept in some form for the simple reason of history. Videos of the behavior of past presidents (e.g "Mission Accomplished") is a powerful reminder.
I would like to think youtube could serve as that public digital archive of the past, to do some slight good alongside their mission of profit. The power of being able to find video proof of past behavior in a moment is an essential tool to our collective discussion process.
I would like to think youtube could serve as that public digital archive of the past, to do some slight good alongside their mission of profit. The power of being able to find video proof of past behavior in a moment is an essential tool to our collective discussion process.
I'm not happy that it's come to this, but I can't say I blame Youtube for doing it. Everything's a mess from everybody's point of view, and Youtube has a big share of responsibility for the way things are, so I guess they chose to do something.
Is this the best way forward? Probably not. But atleast it's a firm, consistent, unambiguous stance, and not an entirely arbitrary one. Unless I'm mistaken, we've never had an election reach this point and then be overturned. Youtube is making a bet that this won't be the first, rather than sit around and abide the moving goalposts that will lead us to January 20th (and possibly even further than that).
Again, it's weird and awful that we've reached a point in society where a video hosting service feels the need to intervene on matters of "what's true" on behalf of the nation. And it's simultaneously weird and awful that our internet is such a monoculture that it's hard to find a high-quality service that exists in competition to this one.
But of the weird and awful things that have happened this year, this is pretty low on my list.
Is this the best way forward? Probably not. But atleast it's a firm, consistent, unambiguous stance, and not an entirely arbitrary one. Unless I'm mistaken, we've never had an election reach this point and then be overturned. Youtube is making a bet that this won't be the first, rather than sit around and abide the moving goalposts that will lead us to January 20th (and possibly even further than that).
Again, it's weird and awful that we've reached a point in society where a video hosting service feels the need to intervene on matters of "what's true" on behalf of the nation. And it's simultaneously weird and awful that our internet is such a monoculture that it's hard to find a high-quality service that exists in competition to this one.
But of the weird and awful things that have happened this year, this is pretty low on my list.
> but I can't say I blame Youtube for doing it
I do blame them, the same way I blame all social networks. People have always been ready to spread fringe content, but usually that content didn't go too far. What has changed now? Easy: the interest of social networks and platforms in having interactions above all. They have created the algorithms that give relevance to anything that creates activity, no matter what kind of activity (criticism and praise are evaluated the same). They have created the platforms that give a massive reach to anyone, real or not, with a single identity or with a hundred ones. They have created the incentives to favor views above content. They have created the models that will spam you with the "next thing you need to see" no matter what effect that has on you.
Now all of this is just a patch. The next conspiracy theory will come along, and the slightest effort at fighting it will just give it more relevance. The problem here is them. If they want to be serious about this, they should start by removing the mechanisms that are being abused. Of course, that would hurt their income and they don't care that much about the issue of misinformation.
I do blame them, the same way I blame all social networks. People have always been ready to spread fringe content, but usually that content didn't go too far. What has changed now? Easy: the interest of social networks and platforms in having interactions above all. They have created the algorithms that give relevance to anything that creates activity, no matter what kind of activity (criticism and praise are evaluated the same). They have created the platforms that give a massive reach to anyone, real or not, with a single identity or with a hundred ones. They have created the incentives to favor views above content. They have created the models that will spam you with the "next thing you need to see" no matter what effect that has on you.
Now all of this is just a patch. The next conspiracy theory will come along, and the slightest effort at fighting it will just give it more relevance. The problem here is them. If they want to be serious about this, they should start by removing the mechanisms that are being abused. Of course, that would hurt their income and they don't care that much about the issue of misinformation.
If this were the early 1900s, I wonder if people would be cheering YouTube for blocking kooks who claimed cigarettes weren't good for your health.
Youtube suffers from the same pitfalls as FB: they actively promote tinfoil hat content, by design, because it makes money.
Removing individual videos is a red herring. They will persist to profit from promoting conspiracy content, and so they will. Cherry-picking a few things will just make this worse.
They're going this direction to pay lip service while avoiding changing their algorithms. Fuels the fire.
Removing individual videos is a red herring. They will persist to profit from promoting conspiracy content, and so they will. Cherry-picking a few things will just make this worse.
They're going this direction to pay lip service while avoiding changing their algorithms. Fuels the fire.
Well that certainly brings any of their other recent acts of censorship under greater suspicion. This validates what they censored somewhat.
The United States has been geopolitically blessed. No country has seriously threatened the American heartland since 1812.
Bringing up foreign interference (in elections, Covid-denial and elsewhere) upsets certain factions, but the fact is that Facebook, Twitter, various commenting platforms and YouTube have allowed the enemies of the United States a direct route into the heartland of the US. Coupled with free speech absolutism and low touch regulation, it makes a tempting vector to disrupt a previously impregnable foe.
If I were a strategist for a rival power, it would be almost criminally negligent to not exploit this conduit into the American heartland, and spread disinformation and generally sow chaos.
It looks like the geek gods have finally realized this and are pushing back. It wouldn’t surprise me if US companies started severely curtailing anonymous/unverified speech for foreign accounts at least.
Bringing up foreign interference (in elections, Covid-denial and elsewhere) upsets certain factions, but the fact is that Facebook, Twitter, various commenting platforms and YouTube have allowed the enemies of the United States a direct route into the heartland of the US. Coupled with free speech absolutism and low touch regulation, it makes a tempting vector to disrupt a previously impregnable foe.
If I were a strategist for a rival power, it would be almost criminally negligent to not exploit this conduit into the American heartland, and spread disinformation and generally sow chaos.
It looks like the geek gods have finally realized this and are pushing back. It wouldn’t surprise me if US companies started severely curtailing anonymous/unverified speech for foreign accounts at least.
"We recognize there's always more to do. For example, while problematic misinformation represents a fraction of 1% of what's watched on YouTube in the U.S., we know we can bring that number down even more."
Is this really the best phrasing Youtube could come up with?
I'm betting this will not work out well long-term.
Is this really the best phrasing Youtube could come up with?
I'm betting this will not work out well long-term.
Silicon valley is lost. They're all-in on chinese style censorship, and the DNC is cheering them on.
The posts about censorship on hn continue to baffle me. Any large media provider (YouTube, Netflix) is already censoring literally everything you see on their sites. There is simply too much content on their sites, that being truly unbiased (chronological order) would be unusable from the perspective of a single user. Given I don’t agree that a blanket ban on certain content (lies) is acceptable, I think what the issue is here is letting this content disseminate virally to millions. This absolutely can be controlled and maybe the ability of posts to go viral should be the middle ground between censorship and total free speech anarchy. I don’t think corporations will ever do this though because viral content is what makes money.
There's a lot of interesting take-aways in this post.
1. YouTube "prominently surfaces authoritative information" (i.e. promotes their corporate partners' content).
2. YouTube "limits the reach of borderline content" (i.e. suppresses content which does not violate its rules).
3. YouTube is trying to prevent third party content aggregators from linking to "borderline" content.
YouTube clearly has a preferred content source. I still remember the days when videos from Fox News or CNN would have 500 views. Those days are long gone now. Can't help but see them recommended on any political video.
All in all, a good day for some keen entrepreneurs. People joined "You"Tube not "Video"Tube. I hope this encourages disruption in the space.
1. YouTube "prominently surfaces authoritative information" (i.e. promotes their corporate partners' content).
2. YouTube "limits the reach of borderline content" (i.e. suppresses content which does not violate its rules).
3. YouTube is trying to prevent third party content aggregators from linking to "borderline" content.
YouTube clearly has a preferred content source. I still remember the days when videos from Fox News or CNN would have 500 views. Those days are long gone now. Can't help but see them recommended on any political video.
All in all, a good day for some keen entrepreneurs. People joined "You"Tube not "Video"Tube. I hope this encourages disruption in the space.
Where is the evidence?
Https://hereistheevidence.com
Https://hereistheevidence.com
these are minor problems and more importantly they don't have any proof that they would have changed the outcome. For example, 9500 people were dead. What was the breakdown of Trump/Biden in those votes? I don't understand how we can fix that. Do you have a crystal ball we can all look into to find out if we will die between the day we mail in our ballot and the day of the election?
I totally agree with you, but the thing is even these small, isolated cases that are backed by some evidence won't be allowed on YouTube.
That is not what YouTube said. They will not take down a video where you say that some people died between the time that they mailed in their vote and the time that the votes were counted, so those votes shouldn't and didn't count.
They will take down a video that says that foreign countries stole the election for Biden, because all of the evidence points to that not being true at all.
They will take down a video that says that foreign countries stole the election for Biden, because all of the evidence points to that not being true at all.
So, we are left to wonder why YT suddenly cares so very much about foreign countries being accused of meddling in the US election.
We are also left to wonder why people think Trump gives a single fuck about this country or the republican party.
Is there any evidence that removal of content one believes to be false actually achieves the remover's goals of changing the opinions of the potential viewers?
I would personally be quite upset if I found platforms deleting content that I wanted to read and learn about, I don't think anyone wants someone else to choose what they can and can't learn about, regardless of its veracity.
Again, I'm sure Google starts with good intentions here, but I'm not sure they have thought this all the way through. We'll see in the coming years.
I would personally be quite upset if I found platforms deleting content that I wanted to read and learn about, I don't think anyone wants someone else to choose what they can and can't learn about, regardless of its veracity.
Again, I'm sure Google starts with good intentions here, but I'm not sure they have thought this all the way through. We'll see in the coming years.
> Is there any evidence that removal of content one believes to be false actually achieves the remover's goals of changing the opinions of the potential viewers?
Yes, recently in fact: Rasmussen polled Biden voters about the Hunter Biden laptop story that was suppressed on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (and legacy media), and 9.4% said they would not have voted for Biden if they had known prior to voting (IIRC ~50% of them had not heard about it). That's enough votes to get Trump elected in spite of the changes to how elections were conducted in the four swing states Texas sued earlier this week.
Suppression works really, really well. Expect to see more of it in the future.
Yes, recently in fact: Rasmussen polled Biden voters about the Hunter Biden laptop story that was suppressed on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (and legacy media), and 9.4% said they would not have voted for Biden if they had known prior to voting (IIRC ~50% of them had not heard about it). That's enough votes to get Trump elected in spite of the changes to how elections were conducted in the four swing states Texas sued earlier this week.
Suppression works really, really well. Expect to see more of it in the future.
[deleted]
If you read a comment in here, and you see the words "obviously" or "clearly", and that's the whole argument... That person is likely experiencing cognitive dissonance.
Does no-one else notice that the argument to "allow them all to speak" is completely isomorphic to the Creationist vs argument to "teach the controversy" (1) in their bid to suppress the long settled science of Evolution?
Does anyone think that "teach the controversy" is a good idea and was done in good faith? (hint: no and no)
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_the_Controversy
Does anyone think that "teach the controversy" is a good idea and was done in good faith? (hint: no and no)
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_the_Controversy
[deleted]
[deleted]
Is there any article or video out there that outlines a compelling case of how massive election fraud could have even occurred ?
I do believe some election fraud happened, how could it not with 150MM voters in this past election. But I have yet to read a single article that could outline any explanation for how democrats stole 8MM votes so Trump lost, but did not change down-ballot votes so that they also lost house seats and other smaller elections (that matter for re-districting etc).
I do believe some election fraud happened, how could it not with 150MM voters in this past election. But I have yet to read a single article that could outline any explanation for how democrats stole 8MM votes so Trump lost, but did not change down-ballot votes so that they also lost house seats and other smaller elections (that matter for re-districting etc).
The Texas Supreme Court lawsuit has a concise summary of the actual problems with the 2020 presidential election alleged by Republicans:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163215/2020...
To the best of my knowledge, the facts discussed in the lawsuit are not in dispute by Democrats. Instead, Republicans are alleging that the way the election itself was conducted in four swing states violated the Constitution.
The election changes were made due to the COVID pandemic, and the number of votes affected by the changes were obtained by the certified election results in each state, those vote totals are not in dispute, and those vote totals are large enough to put the results in each state in doubt.
So what the Supreme Court is being asked to do is declare those votes invalid. Whether they will take the case or rule in favor of Republicans is extremely unlikely according to virtually all legal and media experts…but the same was true for Bush v. Gore and we all know how that turned out.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163215/2020...
To the best of my knowledge, the facts discussed in the lawsuit are not in dispute by Democrats. Instead, Republicans are alleging that the way the election itself was conducted in four swing states violated the Constitution.
The election changes were made due to the COVID pandemic, and the number of votes affected by the changes were obtained by the certified election results in each state, those vote totals are not in dispute, and those vote totals are large enough to put the results in each state in doubt.
So what the Supreme Court is being asked to do is declare those votes invalid. Whether they will take the case or rule in favor of Republicans is extremely unlikely according to virtually all legal and media experts…but the same was true for Bush v. Gore and we all know how that turned out.
This is what someone who believe the election was stolen would say in response to what you've said:
(1) It's not 8mm votes (popular vote disparity) that needed to be flipped, it's only the disparity in swing states that needs to be flipped.
(2) If election voting systems were hacked, that could explain a large number of votes specifically in swing states. You can check the time series data from Edison Research which is publicly available on the NYT static data page to see the irregularities for yourself. For example you can see the Trump N votes decrement by X000s in MI and PA when it should be monotonically increasing. This might be an API glitch, it might be fraud, or it might have an innocuous explanation. Mainstream news doesn't report on these irregularities.
(3) Widespread fraud isn't alleged. Targeted fraud at swing states is the claim.
(4) Fraudulent ballots or vote switching by voting machines might have only flipped the POTUS choice. Dr Shiva had allegations on this which he's detailed in a YT video alongside data that he believes supports this hypothesis. Again, the mainstream media has not reported on this.
I've personally looked into (2) and (4) in some detail. I find (4) to be meritless and an artefact of the way they've presented the data. I find (2) to be totally real, but an innocuous explanation such as an API error to be much more likely than fraud.
(1) It's not 8mm votes (popular vote disparity) that needed to be flipped, it's only the disparity in swing states that needs to be flipped.
(2) If election voting systems were hacked, that could explain a large number of votes specifically in swing states. You can check the time series data from Edison Research which is publicly available on the NYT static data page to see the irregularities for yourself. For example you can see the Trump N votes decrement by X000s in MI and PA when it should be monotonically increasing. This might be an API glitch, it might be fraud, or it might have an innocuous explanation. Mainstream news doesn't report on these irregularities.
(3) Widespread fraud isn't alleged. Targeted fraud at swing states is the claim.
(4) Fraudulent ballots or vote switching by voting machines might have only flipped the POTUS choice. Dr Shiva had allegations on this which he's detailed in a YT video alongside data that he believes supports this hypothesis. Again, the mainstream media has not reported on this.
I've personally looked into (2) and (4) in some detail. I find (4) to be meritless and an artefact of the way they've presented the data. I find (2) to be totally real, but an innocuous explanation such as an API error to be much more likely than fraud.
Thanks! - I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted for asking a question that is not politically motivated ...I was just generally curious.
I wouldn't regard those downvotes as valid. There is a large and vocal group on this thread with no apparent regard for HN's culture. They appear to be from "out of town".
How do you explain away (4) when a dominion machine in Ware County GA was fed equal number of Trump/Biden votes and produced a 26% lead for Biden?
https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2020/12/07/what-to-make-o...
References investigation mentioned by this congressman,
https://twitter.com/CongressmanHice/status/13349196303396413...
https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2020/12/07/what-to-make-o...
References investigation mentioned by this congressman,
https://twitter.com/CongressmanHice/status/13349196303396413...
It didn't happen: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/09/jody-hice/...
Georgia election officials who were caught illegally shredding ballots have called the claim misinformation. Okay. That makes sense.
https://twitter.com/JohnBasham/status/1331279506519289867
https://twitter.com/JohnBasham/status/1331279506519289867
That's one I haven't heard, do you have a primary source for that beyond the tweet (which doesn't link anywhere)?
It didn't happen (of course).
Here's a check, with links: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/09/jody-hice/...
Here's a check, with links: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/09/jody-hice/...
Can I assume that I am being downvoted because I suggested that "some" fraud occurred?
I hope not since that isn't disputed in the least. There's loads of convictions, over 1000, for small scale election fraud. What's disputed is fraud sufficient to meaningfully change the outcome in a single state.
Devil's advocate:
Clearly, they didn't change downballot races, because that would be suspicious. Any group smart enough to cheat at this scale would be smart enough to not make it obvious.
Clearly, they didn't change downballot races, because that would be suspicious. Any group smart enough to cheat at this scale would be smart enough to not make it obvious.
Not an article, but a large amount of well-organised evidence (not great on mobile):
https://hereistheevidence.com
CodeMonkeyZ on Twitter is biased, but links to interesting material nonetheless, such as excerpts from Dominion software manuals describing such oddities as vote tallies stored as floating point rather than integer values (seriously?).
https://hereistheevidence.com
CodeMonkeyZ on Twitter is biased, but links to interesting material nonetheless, such as excerpts from Dominion software manuals describing such oddities as vote tallies stored as floating point rather than integer values (seriously?).
[deleted]
There has been election fraud. To the extent it was organized has yet to be determined, I'm very skeptical of conspiracy. The fact YouTube will delete complaints, and evidence is very scary. This should scare everyone.
How do we know it isn't true if they decided what the truth is?
You might agree with Google, on this issue, but wait until they have interest in something that kills people, and Google decides to take down evidence to persuade the public.
Apple does this crap all of the time.
How do we know it isn't true if they decided what the truth is?
You might agree with Google, on this issue, but wait until they have interest in something that kills people, and Google decides to take down evidence to persuade the public.
Apple does this crap all of the time.
> There has been election fraud.
Has there been election fraud? What evidence supports this claim?
Has there been election fraud? What evidence supports this claim?
Video evidence (which is being taken down), eye witness testimont (affadavits), statistical anomilies.
The video evidence might be wrong, the witnesses might by lying, the statistical evidence might be able to be explained, but I don't need Google hiding the information from me.
This just makes it look like there is something to hide.
The video evidence might be wrong, the witnesses might by lying, the statistical evidence might be able to be explained, but I don't need Google hiding the information from me.
This just makes it look like there is something to hide.
> Video evidence (which is being taken down)
Bullshit.
> eye witness testimont
Literally the lowest rung of evidence that is, in studies, increasingly shown to be unreliable.
> statistical anomilies
Already thoroughly debunked:
https://twitter.com/chadmbol/status/1325874395978616839
> but I don't need Google hiding the information from me.
Google is in fact making it easier to arrive at this conclusion rather than allowing SEO trickery to run the show here.
Bullshit.
> eye witness testimont
Literally the lowest rung of evidence that is, in studies, increasingly shown to be unreliable.
> statistical anomilies
Already thoroughly debunked:
https://twitter.com/chadmbol/status/1325874395978616839
> but I don't need Google hiding the information from me.
Google is in fact making it easier to arrive at this conclusion rather than allowing SEO trickery to run the show here.
Bullshit? You apparently don't understand, or haven't read the definition of evidence.
Who has debunked what? Show your evidence.
Who has debunked what? Show your evidence.
[deleted]
[deleted]
Does this apply for all countries?
This shows once again how wise China has been not letting Google in. Google controls what contents should or should not be seen by the people. How scary is that?
Texas Lawsuit
In the Supreme Court of the United States STATE OF TEXAS, Plaintiff, v. COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA, STATE OF STATE OF GEORGIA, STATE OF MICHIGAN, AND STATE OF WISCONSIN
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163493/2020...
In the Supreme Court of the United States STATE OF TEXAS, Plaintiff, v. COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA, STATE OF STATE OF GEORGIA, STATE OF MICHIGAN, AND STATE OF WISCONSIN
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163493/2020...
Freedom of speech is not a right to other people's property: you have no right to force any one to publish what you want but you have the right to start your own newspaper,tv station or a web site and publish whatever you want.
YouTube is private. It's owners have the right to decide what is on it and they did. This is not a violation of free speech as some comments suggest.
Many comments about whether there was fraud or not, the Democrats did the same or not etc...whole the while point here is:
is it YouTube's role to decide what content has merit and what has not?
I don't think so.
It opens the door to even more abuse.
If we had several competing platforms we wouldn't be in this mess.
If we had several competing platforms we wouldn't be in this mess.
The conclusion o draw from this is not YouTube / Google are bad for censoring, but near monopolies are bad, especially in the field of news and information delivery. And the solution is to use existing antitrust law to break up the monopolies and require them to support a common api, like Open Social.
I think for a host the question is. Do I host content in the name of freedom of speech ... that could conceivably lead to anti democratic type content / action that ... inherently restricts speech / worse.
I don't find such a scenario easy to answer at all.
I don't find such a scenario easy to answer at all.
As someone who is multilingual and often watches political commentary about US issues by non-US creators, for non-US audiences, in non-English languages—I wonder if this new policy will extend to material that is not primarily for US audiences.
This is now the first thing the conspiracy folks I know mention.
In their mind, this action by YouTube has verified the validity of their claims.
If this event makes it easier to spread misinformation, then YouTube’s actions were counterproductive.
In their mind, this action by YouTube has verified the validity of their claims.
If this event makes it easier to spread misinformation, then YouTube’s actions were counterproductive.
[deleted]
I'm confused by some of the more inflamed reactions here.
YouTube is a private company. They should be able to cater to their customers as they wish. Anything else would be evil government meddling. In a nutshell: freedoms!
YouTube is a private company. They should be able to cater to their customers as they wish. Anything else would be evil government meddling. In a nutshell: freedoms!
An interesting step to be sure, and the responses here reflect similar sentiments elsewhere (some think it's censorship, some think it's stewardship, and still others think it's Google's pool so they get to decide who is allowed into it)
I find the meta question fascinating. That question is "If you have a tool that can influence millions any way you choose to influence them, what role should the state play in regulating that tool?"
With things like, say, nuclear weapons. It seems really easy to say "I don't want just anyone in the country to be able to go out and buy a nuclear weapon and possibly put their entire city at risk of annihilation if they decide to set it off!" And in many conversations we get to that perspective because the "innocent" bystanders who would be killed by this act have no way to realistically protect themselves from that threat. Thus we accept that the state, which has community support to protect the community, is given the right to say who can and who cannot "own" a nuclear weapon. It isn't even all that controversial in the general public even though there will always be people who take the position that the 2nd amendment "right to bear arms" does not exclude any "arms" it's a blanket right. And yet for most people, keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of just any individual seems a reasonable limitation.
But what about media? We have seen first hand the destructive effects of coordinated campaigns of disinformation. In the hands of a skilled operator, millions of individuals can be manipulated into actions that they would not have contemplated. Whether it is for giving power to criminals, or killing themselves and their children by drinking cyanide laced Kool-aid.
When it becomes possible for a small group to do great harm to a much larger "innocent" group, what is the right action to take? What consensus does the community come to which supports governance for everyone versus rights for the individual?
I believe it to be a much more complex question than simply "censorship" / "no censorship" and letting individuals protect themselves from these sorts of operators. Just as I believe it is unreasonable for individuals to be held responsible for protecting themselves from one of their neighbors possibly setting off a nuclear weapon, or spraying them with a machine gun.
From what I have read, in the US the sense of "justice" is tied to the perpetrators of an act of harm being suitably punished for that act. And I certainly feel harmed by the egregious disinformation that has made my relationship with my parents much more difficult. But how do I get justice for that harm? I really don't have a good sense of the right and just answer here.
I find the meta question fascinating. That question is "If you have a tool that can influence millions any way you choose to influence them, what role should the state play in regulating that tool?"
With things like, say, nuclear weapons. It seems really easy to say "I don't want just anyone in the country to be able to go out and buy a nuclear weapon and possibly put their entire city at risk of annihilation if they decide to set it off!" And in many conversations we get to that perspective because the "innocent" bystanders who would be killed by this act have no way to realistically protect themselves from that threat. Thus we accept that the state, which has community support to protect the community, is given the right to say who can and who cannot "own" a nuclear weapon. It isn't even all that controversial in the general public even though there will always be people who take the position that the 2nd amendment "right to bear arms" does not exclude any "arms" it's a blanket right. And yet for most people, keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of just any individual seems a reasonable limitation.
But what about media? We have seen first hand the destructive effects of coordinated campaigns of disinformation. In the hands of a skilled operator, millions of individuals can be manipulated into actions that they would not have contemplated. Whether it is for giving power to criminals, or killing themselves and their children by drinking cyanide laced Kool-aid.
When it becomes possible for a small group to do great harm to a much larger "innocent" group, what is the right action to take? What consensus does the community come to which supports governance for everyone versus rights for the individual?
I believe it to be a much more complex question than simply "censorship" / "no censorship" and letting individuals protect themselves from these sorts of operators. Just as I believe it is unreasonable for individuals to be held responsible for protecting themselves from one of their neighbors possibly setting off a nuclear weapon, or spraying them with a machine gun.
From what I have read, in the US the sense of "justice" is tied to the perpetrators of an act of harm being suitably punished for that act. And I certainly feel harmed by the egregious disinformation that has made my relationship with my parents much more difficult. But how do I get justice for that harm? I really don't have a good sense of the right and just answer here.
This is the same platform that runs obviously scammy ads of Vitalik Butherin Ethereum giveaways for months at the time.
Ads, not even content.
I wonder how they plan to monitor elections claims.
You know your viewpoints are correct when you gleefully engage in literal book burning to erase opposing ideas.
Where one political party controls nearly all mass media and chooses what history is, memory holes any opposing ideas, where anyone with an opposing idea is dehumanized and branded as evil, de-platformed, banned, censored, fired, (and eventually, worse).
It's straight out of 1984 and the playbook of every evil regime. And just like every evil regime in the past, it has wide support and the citizens cheer it on and support it and ignore the evil, because they're told it's evil for a good cause. They cheer it on because they've been brainwashed to hate the other half of the population and believe it's OK to do evil to "bad" people. For a party so concerned about stopping the next "Hitler" and how Nazi Germany could have ever happened, they sure love following in the same exact footsteps.
Where one political party controls nearly all mass media and chooses what history is, memory holes any opposing ideas, where anyone with an opposing idea is dehumanized and branded as evil, de-platformed, banned, censored, fired, (and eventually, worse).
It's straight out of 1984 and the playbook of every evil regime. And just like every evil regime in the past, it has wide support and the citizens cheer it on and support it and ignore the evil, because they're told it's evil for a good cause. They cheer it on because they've been brainwashed to hate the other half of the population and believe it's OK to do evil to "bad" people. For a party so concerned about stopping the next "Hitler" and how Nazi Germany could have ever happened, they sure love following in the same exact footsteps.
[deleted]
Time for a new nickname: The truth.
"Pravda" in russian.
[deleted]
Makes me think of this quote (not sure where it came from):
"There is no principled argument for censorship only argument from power"
Comes to my mind after reading the latest blog post.
"There is no principled argument for censorship only argument from power"
Comes to my mind after reading the latest blog post.
But if the deleted content turns out to be true after SCOTUS ruling, it would be Google who undermined the 2020 US Election Results. Its a double-edged sword.
Disfavored and inaccurate dissenting views are to be censored? What could possible go wrong with suppressing diverse - even if entirely refutable - speech?
Its unfortunate we can't independently verify the results of the election... imagine being able to run an election node and run the numbers yourself.
YouTube should create a plurality of filters/rankings and empower people to select their poison. Controversial issues could have a disclaimer.
This is ridiculous, both sides should be left up so people can make up their own minds - even if one side happens to be total bullshit.
Well, after reading thru the comments I am clearly not the target audience. It was fun while it lasted. Anyone know how I can delete my account? I need to add it to all the other accounts that I have deleted.
Good luck to you all. I thought this was a tech news site but apparently most people here seem to be actively working in the investigation process.
I don't know WTF has gotten in to everyone but I don't want any part of it anymore.
Like, for real, let me know if there is a way to delete my account.
Good luck to you all. I thought this was a tech news site but apparently most people here seem to be actively working in the investigation process.
I don't know WTF has gotten in to everyone but I don't want any part of it anymore.
Like, for real, let me know if there is a way to delete my account.
Contact information on the bottom of the page.
Usually they don't delete content, but if there's personally identifiable information in your username or any of your post I think it might be possible to have them rewrite it.
Usually they don't delete content, but if there's personally identifiable information in your username or any of your post I think it might be possible to have them rewrite it.
Cool thanks.
That said I just read through your comments and I'd prefer if you stuck around :-)
[deleted]
I was opposed to removing Confederate statues. I felt they should be left in place but the plaques should be replaced to merely mention their birth and death dates and that they had committed treason against the United States but were forgiven after the Civil War.
I would suggest the same for these videos. Place an non-editable and non-removable preface that states none of the assertions in this video are verifiably factual and the video should be considered as a work of fiction...
I would suggest the same for these videos. Place an non-editable and non-removable preface that states none of the assertions in this video are verifiably factual and the video should be considered as a work of fiction...
Wildly different comparison you're trying to make there my friend. Statues on public land very different than a private business doing whatever it wants.
I think the idea is the same. Instead of censorship, simply attach an indelible warning. Free speech but not without informed comment...
The tighter they squeeze, the more likely is the mergence of a platform that cannot be controlled by anyone for any purpose.
[deleted]
HN user's have an interesting mix of free-speech absolutism and progressive/liberal lean. It's unfortunate that partisan invective seems to have overwhelmed more nuanced arguments of platform moderation...
I think it will be interesting to see how higher degrees of intervention and moderation break some of the assumptions of the network effect. Services may not be winner take all if there are big ideological wedges that companies can serve.
And just as a personal note on US politics, I would encourage more GOP-leaning folks to consider one important difference between a 2016-Russia and 2020-Fraud comparison. For 2016, Hillary conceded after two days, Obama welcomed Trump, there was no widespread opinion of a stolen election by the Democratic Executive or voiced by Dem US House/Senate members. The smoke focusing on "personal collusion with Russia by Trump" was by the media after the fact. The Mueller investigation was appointed by the DoJ from a bipartisan committee to investigate specifically Russian interference.
For 2020, the sitting President is loudly pushing a narrative of voter fraud and deep-state conspiracy from views he has always held. Paraphrasing: "I would have won the 2016 popular vote if 5 million people didn't vote illegally". He called the 2020 election rigged multiple times before it even happened! Like the word slippery slope gets tossed around a lot, but this really is an instance of a slope that's very slippery.
I think it will be interesting to see how higher degrees of intervention and moderation break some of the assumptions of the network effect. Services may not be winner take all if there are big ideological wedges that companies can serve.
And just as a personal note on US politics, I would encourage more GOP-leaning folks to consider one important difference between a 2016-Russia and 2020-Fraud comparison. For 2016, Hillary conceded after two days, Obama welcomed Trump, there was no widespread opinion of a stolen election by the Democratic Executive or voiced by Dem US House/Senate members. The smoke focusing on "personal collusion with Russia by Trump" was by the media after the fact. The Mueller investigation was appointed by the DoJ from a bipartisan committee to investigate specifically Russian interference.
For 2020, the sitting President is loudly pushing a narrative of voter fraud and deep-state conspiracy from views he has always held. Paraphrasing: "I would have won the 2016 popular vote if 5 million people didn't vote illegally". He called the 2020 election rigged multiple times before it even happened! Like the word slippery slope gets tossed around a lot, but this really is an instance of a slope that's very slippery.
People who see other people as incapable of judging for themselves somehow never count themselves into this category. This is a definite turning point towards more and more content curation and away from being a platform, lets just hope other p2p projects fill that void and that Youtube loses its legal protections based on its status as a platform.
So what exactly is the problem here? Youtube (and capital in general) don't like the idea of a contested election leading to political uncertainty and they're using their platforms to advocate for that position. DoorDash and Uber did effectively the same thing with Prop 22 in California; if that's OK then so is this.
I feel that since Citizens United case was upheld, all companies can be politically motivated, and YouTube is no exception.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
> Yesterday was the safe harbor deadline for the U.S. Presidential election and enough states have certified their election results to determine a President-elect. Given that, we will start removing any piece of content uploaded today (or anytime after) that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election...
This is likely going to make a lot of conservatives in the US unhappy, since a number of elected officials in Congress (!) are openly questioning the election results. Also seems a lot more severe than Twitter’s approach, where Twitter is labeling “disputed claims” rather than taking them down.
I don’t believe that the 2020 US presidential election was rigged, but I think it’s heavy-handed to take these videos down outright. After the 2016 election, many people went wild with Russian conspiracy theories that proved to mostly be bogus, and that content never got this level of platform scrutiny or censorship.
This is likely going to make a lot of conservatives in the US unhappy, since a number of elected officials in Congress (!) are openly questioning the election results. Also seems a lot more severe than Twitter’s approach, where Twitter is labeling “disputed claims” rather than taking them down.
I don’t believe that the 2020 US presidential election was rigged, but I think it’s heavy-handed to take these videos down outright. After the 2016 election, many people went wild with Russian conspiracy theories that proved to mostly be bogus, and that content never got this level of platform scrutiny or censorship.
As far as I know, no senator is seriously contesting the results. The House always has at least a few crackpots in it, now including a Q believer.
I'm not sure why YouTube should cater to conspiracy theorists just because they'll get upset that their conspiracies are not blasted from YouTube's megaphone. YT is within its rights, and there are thousands of other video sharing services (including Mega, which is totally unregulated) for them to share their content on. They can and do self-host as well.
I'm not sure why YouTube should cater to conspiracy theorists just because they'll get upset that their conspiracies are not blasted from YouTube's megaphone. YT is within its rights, and there are thousands of other video sharing services (including Mega, which is totally unregulated) for them to share their content on. They can and do self-host as well.
Ted Cruz is at least one Senator fighting the election results: https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/529146-cruz-offers-to-ar...
The Supreme court declined to hear that case yesterday.
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/529334-supreme-...
That is false.
The Supreme Court denied a request for emergency injunctive relief. They did not deny certiorari.
The Supreme Court denied a request for emergency injunctive relief. They did not deny certiorari.
That is false. The request for emergency injunctive relief was also the request for certiorari. In denying the relief, they closed out the docket and denied certiorari in the process.
And yes, I did look through SCOTUS's docket to find any other docketed case referring to Kelly v PA.
And yes, I did look through SCOTUS's docket to find any other docketed case referring to Kelly v PA.
Kelly was discussing that this morning on the radio still had it pending at SCOTUS. They believe it may be merged with the Texas case.
So, unless I'm missing something, the former comment appeared correct.
So, unless I'm missing something, the former comment appeared correct.
This is the link to the actual docket of the case:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/do...
There's no indication in the docket that anything about the case is still live.
If you read the original brief, this is what it requests:
> Petitioners also ask the Court to consider this Application as a petition for certiorari, grant certiorari on the questions presented, treat the Application papers as merits briefing, and issue a merits decision as soon as practicable.
In denying the application, it is by proxy denying the request for certiorari, although I believe it would be theoretically possible to actually reapply for certiorari. (Looking through SCOTUS's rules, it does seem that Rule 22.4 suggests that this is the case)
https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/do...
There's no indication in the docket that anything about the case is still live.
If you read the original brief, this is what it requests:
> Petitioners also ask the Court to consider this Application as a petition for certiorari, grant certiorari on the questions presented, treat the Application papers as merits briefing, and issue a merits decision as soon as practicable.
In denying the application, it is by proxy denying the request for certiorari, although I believe it would be theoretically possible to actually reapply for certiorari. (Looking through SCOTUS's rules, it does seem that Rule 22.4 suggests that this is the case)
No, that's a different case. The case Cruz has promised to assist is one in which the state of Texas (yes, the whole thing) is suing other states over alleged election irregularities. When one state sues another, the case goes directly to the supreme court.
And the Texas case is very sound. It gets directly into specific cases and doesn't go down any of the silly Q/Conspiracy routes. Viva does a great analysis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-tb11okydc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-tb11okydc
If you find this convincing I weep for the people who have to interact with you on the daily. The Texas suit is completely bananas and relies on ten pages of complete gibberish from a 75-year-old energy economist consultant. Please read the appendix of the suit. If you know anything about statistics, you'll find it to be total nonsense.
Do you have a link? This is the filing but doesn't seem to have the appendix: https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...
It's at https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163048/2020...
Look for "Declaration of Charles J. Cicchetti"
Look for "Declaration of Charles J. Cicchetti"
Oh wow. Too quote:
The probability of former Vice President Biden winning the popular vote in the four Defendant States—Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—independently given President Trump’s early lead in those States as of 3 a.m.on November 4, 2020,is less than one in a quadrillion, or 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000.For former Vice President Biden to win these four States collectively, the odds of that event happening decrease to less than one in a quadrillion to the fourth power (i.e., 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,0004).
This - of course - is only true assuming votes are evenly distributed though out each state, and urban centers vote the same as country areas. He doesn't even mention that in his affidavit.
And he tries to use Z-scores to claim that it's impossible this mean people voted differently compared to 2016! That's ridiculous and - very notably - he fails to to do the same for eg Trump vs Romney or Obama vs Clinton.
No wonder trust in science is decreasing with people asking us to take this crap seriously.
The probability of former Vice President Biden winning the popular vote in the four Defendant States—Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—independently given President Trump’s early lead in those States as of 3 a.m.on November 4, 2020,is less than one in a quadrillion, or 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000.For former Vice President Biden to win these four States collectively, the odds of that event happening decrease to less than one in a quadrillion to the fourth power (i.e., 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,0004).
This - of course - is only true assuming votes are evenly distributed though out each state, and urban centers vote the same as country areas. He doesn't even mention that in his affidavit.
And he tries to use Z-scores to claim that it's impossible this mean people voted differently compared to 2016! That's ridiculous and - very notably - he fails to to do the same for eg Trump vs Romney or Obama vs Clinton.
No wonder trust in science is decreasing with people asking us to take this crap seriously.
I'll link to what I said last night about the case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25354086
There are 6 reasons for SCOTUS to dismiss it before it even considers the merits. Anyone who thinks the case has a chance does not understand SCOTUS.
There are 6 reasons for SCOTUS to dismiss it before it even considers the merits. Anyone who thinks the case has a chance does not understand SCOTUS.
Thank you for this. I was about to link to a Twitter thread laying out the same reasoning.
The Texas case is an insane attack on democracy that isn't going anywhere
But just because it isn't doesn't excuse the Republicans that are attacking our democracy just to soothe an old narcissists ego
But just because it isn't doesn't excuse the Republicans that are attacking our democracy just to soothe an old narcissists ego
Texas v. is a great case to put in front of a bunch of originalists. You should definitely brace yourself for a ruling that state courts illegally changed election rules because the constitution solely grants that power to the legislatures of the states.
Edit: if they do the states in question will probably call special legislative sessions to repair the defect.
Edit: if they do the states in question will probably call special legislative sessions to repair the defect.
You should prepare yourself for a ruling that a state cannot challenge another state's laws before SCOTUS.
Not sure how you can be so confident, considering how many times the SCOTUS has previously decided interstate disputes? [0]
[0]: https://law.justia.com/constitution/us/article-3/29-suits-be...
[0]: https://law.justia.com/constitution/us/article-3/29-suits-be...
Because the interstate disputes SCOTUS has heard and decided are not about states challenging other states' interpretations of their own laws, but almost entirely about who actually has various water rights? Because the suit alleged here is almost exactly the kind of interstate dispute that SCOTUS has rejected to hear as recently as 2016 (Nebraska v Colorado)?
I'm not a lawyer, but thankfully the constitution is actually a pretty easy read from the originalist perspective that now has significant influence on the court and in this case I don't need to worry about case law and so on, so I'm comfortable speculating a bit.
Here's the relevant text: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector."
This means that the legislatures of the state have total and exclusive power over the manner in which their electors are chosen. Plainly read, no other body, including that state's judiciary or executive, has the power to direct how electors are chosen. This power is so broad the state could select electors by lottery, or even a poll on hackernews and it wouldn't be subject to any oversight other than a constitutional amendment.
So, you can see that this isn't about a state following its own laws, it's about a state following the constitution. Since the constitution is a pact between the fifty sovereign states, like any other binding pact when another party doesn't follow the rules of the pact they can be sued in the appropriate venue which is the Supreme Court of the United States, or otherwise acted against. Let us hope it doesn't come to the otherwise option anytime soon, because the last time was a real mess.
I think the best, if not necessarily the most likely outcome, is that the court orders the lawbreaking states to fix things, which is as simple as calling a special legislative section and passing a resolution selecting a slate of electors. Presumably states with Democratic legislatures will pick Biden and those with Republican legislatures will pick Trump, but no matter what it will be up to the democratically elected legislatures of the state in question, which in a sane world would be acceptable to both sides.
Here's the relevant text: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector."
This means that the legislatures of the state have total and exclusive power over the manner in which their electors are chosen. Plainly read, no other body, including that state's judiciary or executive, has the power to direct how electors are chosen. This power is so broad the state could select electors by lottery, or even a poll on hackernews and it wouldn't be subject to any oversight other than a constitutional amendment.
So, you can see that this isn't about a state following its own laws, it's about a state following the constitution. Since the constitution is a pact between the fifty sovereign states, like any other binding pact when another party doesn't follow the rules of the pact they can be sued in the appropriate venue which is the Supreme Court of the United States, or otherwise acted against. Let us hope it doesn't come to the otherwise option anytime soon, because the last time was a real mess.
I think the best, if not necessarily the most likely outcome, is that the court orders the lawbreaking states to fix things, which is as simple as calling a special legislative section and passing a resolution selecting a slate of electors. Presumably states with Democratic legislatures will pick Biden and those with Republican legislatures will pick Trump, but no matter what it will be up to the democratically elected legislatures of the state in question, which in a sane world would be acceptable to both sides.
It's unclear if you realise, but this isn't the same thing at all.
SCOTUS settles interstate disputes all the time. But one of the things they look at before they hear a dispute is if the dispute can be settled in a lower court.
In this case, Texas is complaining about the way otehr states conduct their affairs. The normal course to do this would be via the states courts (that is literally what they exist for).
It's very unclear why SCOTUS would hear this instead of directing Texas to file in the state courts.
(There's also the question of standing, but that's another hurdle Texas would have to overcome)
SCOTUS settles interstate disputes all the time. But one of the things they look at before they hear a dispute is if the dispute can be settled in a lower court.
In this case, Texas is complaining about the way otehr states conduct their affairs. The normal course to do this would be via the states courts (that is literally what they exist for).
It's very unclear why SCOTUS would hear this instead of directing Texas to file in the state courts.
(There's also the question of standing, but that's another hurdle Texas would have to overcome)
I'm not a lawyer, but I would argue that other parties have already attempted to dispute the unconstitutional election changes in those state courts, including their supreme courts, and they've been unanimously dismissed for jurisdictional or procedural reasons. For example, I believe the application of laches in Pennsylvania to be improper because Republicans had sought a stay of the election changes prior to the election. Thus far, it appears the Pennsylvania courts refuse to adjudicate the constitutionality of these election changes.
The Texas case isn't sound at all.
UTexas Law Professor says about it: "It looks like we have a new leader in the “craziest lawsuit filed to purportedly challenge the election” category" and "o chalk this up as mostly a stunt — a dangerous, offensive, and wasteful one, but a stunt nonetheless."[1]
[1] https://twitter.com/steve_vladeck/status/1336312379408322560
UTexas Law Professor says about it: "It looks like we have a new leader in the “craziest lawsuit filed to purportedly challenge the election” category" and "o chalk this up as mostly a stunt — a dangerous, offensive, and wasteful one, but a stunt nonetheless."[1]
[1] https://twitter.com/steve_vladeck/status/1336312379408322560
So a liberal professor in Austin, who is also a CNn analyst, thinks it's a "crazy stunt" with no actual law analysis? [0] And his peers are on the Biden transition team? [1]
Well, I'm convinced.
[0]: https://law.utexas.edu/faculty/stephen-i-vladeck [1]: https://www.kvue.com/article/news/education/university-of-te...
Well, I'm convinced.
[0]: https://law.utexas.edu/faculty/stephen-i-vladeck [1]: https://www.kvue.com/article/news/education/university-of-te...
After a cursory search, it looks like you can add Lindsay Graham [0] as a Republican senator questioning election results, as well as Mitch McConnell [1] and Perdue and Loeffler [2].
0 - https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/...
1 - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-electio...
2 - https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/georgia-s-republican-s...
0 - https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/...
1 - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-electio...
2 - https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/georgia-s-republican-s...
Yeah.. In court. Trump campaign and the party has a right to challenge results in court (if they don't have standing the lawsuit will be thrown out immediately). That's working within the system.
Are you arguing that candidates and parties should not be allowed to challenge various aspects of elections in a court of law? You think that had Trump been barred from filing lawsuits, that that would improve trust in the election system?
Are you arguing that candidates and parties should not be allowed to challenge various aspects of elections in a court of law? You think that had Trump been barred from filing lawsuits, that that would improve trust in the election system?
Valid lawsuits
Most of the lawsuits Trumps lawyers and other supporters have produced are batshit and people are trying to get the lawyers sanctioned for frivolous lawsuits. These suits are failing in court, the only thing they're good for is as a justification for conspiracy theories
Most of the lawsuits Trumps lawyers and other supporters have produced are batshit and people are trying to get the lawyers sanctioned for frivolous lawsuits. These suits are failing in court, the only thing they're good for is as a justification for conspiracy theories
I don’t understand why you’re downvoted for this either.
YouTube isn’t a public utility and they don’t have to publish things they don’t like.
Disclaimer: I don’t really like YouTube and I think it would indeed be better if the internet was less centralised for this very reason.
YouTube isn’t a public utility and they don’t have to publish things they don’t like.
Disclaimer: I don’t really like YouTube and I think it would indeed be better if the internet was less centralised for this very reason.
>YouTube isn’t a public utility and they don’t have to publish things they don’t like.
They are protected under safe harbor provisions. The question arises, once they start taking direct editorial control over content, should they be?
They are protected under safe harbor provisions. The question arises, once they start taking direct editorial control over content, should they be?
Should a website dedicated to supporting women who have been sexually abused, be allowed to censor content telling them they deserved it?
Are you trying to make the point that YouTube is a special interest site and not a platform? Or are you trying to make the point that YouTube should have its cake and eat it too by being protected as a platform, and at the same time play the role of a curator and publisher?
>are you trying to make the point that YouTube should have its cake and eat it too by being protected as a platform, and at the same time play the role of a curator and publisher?
I could waste everyone's time and explain why that's flat wrong. Instead, I'll refer you here[0] which will explain, in detail, why you're wrong about Section 230.
[0] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
I could waste everyone's time and explain why that's flat wrong. Instead, I'll refer you here[0] which will explain, in detail, why you're wrong about Section 230.
[0] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
I'm likely banned from HN now from all the downvotes I received for the perfectly legit response, yet some people appear to not like facts so much that they just downvote to censor (which HN does).
The entire point of the safe harbor, the explicit purpose of section 230 of the CDA, is that a site exercises editorial control and moderation and still enjoys the safe harbor.
The safe harbour deadline is mostly procedural anyway. Justice Ginsburg even said something along the lines that the only real date that matters is when Congress actually certifies the electoral college votes - in January.
She said that... in a MINORITY opinion. The majority of justices disagreed and gave it much weight.
It would be a catastrophe if the current US administration indeed was unable to ensure free and fair elections in their country - for the first time in US history, unless previous elections such as the 2016 election were fraudulent, too!
Right... if this election was fraudulent, then might as well cancel the 2016 elections as well. They also had 4 years to help improve election security, which conservatives waited until after they lost to cry fraud.
Openly questioning in bad faith. They've gotten way more attention for it than they ever should have, time to move on.
YouTube is run by a private company, they can do what they like with the content they own.
If they don’t want to show the content, tough luck.
Don’t like the content? Don’t watch it.
Don’t agree with their ethics ? Don’t use their product.
It’s simple.
If they don’t want to show the content, tough luck.
Don’t like the content? Don’t watch it.
Don’t agree with their ethics ? Don’t use their product.
It’s simple.
> YouTube is run by a private company
Sigh. YouTube is run by a public company, has been for many years.
Sigh. YouTube is run by a public company, has been for many years.
Freedom for me, but not for thee.
> Freedom for me, but not for thee.
You mean that you wish to require others to say or host the things that you want, and if they don't they should be forced to do so?
That's freedom for you but not for others, not the other way around.
You mean that you wish to require others to say or host the things that you want, and if they don't they should be forced to do so?
That's freedom for you but not for others, not the other way around.
Anyone who hasn't seen the video of the 2016 post-Trump-election meeting at Google should watch it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRf9UxsM-NE
It should give you an idea about what kind of ideological bias you can expect from this company.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRf9UxsM-NE
It should give you an idea about what kind of ideological bias you can expect from this company.
[deleted]
Mass censorship never ends well, regardless of the justifications given.
Please don’t sue me like you are doing with Facebook. Pretty please!
I don't think that platforms can be neutral, or unbiased.
Translation: Youtube employees became jealous of the truth-labeling employees of twitter, and management gave them the same powers.
These "truth bureaus" that networks are building will end up becoming truly major disasters
These "truth bureaus" that networks are building will end up becoming truly major disasters
[deleted]
I would really like to hear from someone, who thinks this is censorship and freedom of speech trumps everything. Why were you not shouting when ISIS accounts were being banned by twitter? Why now?
I don’t see how this is a sensible decision for YouTube. Nearly half the voters voted for Trump. YouTube is gambling with those folks boycotting leaving the platform (BitChute?). It’s just not sensible and quite risky from business perspective.
I find this action very alarming and ominous.
There's nothing wrong with this. I'm glad they're doing it. I've seen too many people go feral and insane over misinformation. Good riddance.
[deleted]
Disgusting. YouTube has profiteered via ad revenue on these videos for over a month and now that it's dying down they want to be the last ones through the door and say "hey we're against this stuff we're the good guys."
They stand for free speech as long as it suits them and they stand against misinformation when it doesn't, the fucking sociopaths.
They stand for free speech as long as it suits them and they stand against misinformation when it doesn't, the fucking sociopaths.
Nope, not how it works.
Free speech is not applicable to private companies.
Free speech is not applicable to private companies.
That's not my point at all. YouTube stands for the principle of free speech when it suits them and then pretends to stand against misinformation when it doesn't.
Cue all the champions of capitalism and small government begging the government step in to force a private business to do something.
[deleted]
So... that whole Russia thing for the past 4 years--are we scrubbing YouTube of those too?
Let's talk about the root of the disagreement. There are two "models" of reality, that explain the two viewpoints on this.
One, I'd call it the libertarian model, is that people are rational, more information is always good, videos only contain information, and that all information should be available to everybody.
The other, let's call it the fascist model, is that people are not rational, people can easily be emotionally manipulated en-masse (e.g. Hitler), masses of emotionally manipulated people are a risk to democracy, and therefore any functional system requires punishing and suppressing misinformation.
People in the first came make a bunch of meaningless comments "This is censorship and encroaching on my rights!" and the second camp says "Boy we're lucky, and it's crazy how much of the US didn't understand Trump lost. Yikes." Neither comment convinces anybody.
The only way to move people over, would be to present evidence that the libertarian model is true, or the fascist model is true. Everything besides evidence is mere drum-beating.
One, I'd call it the libertarian model, is that people are rational, more information is always good, videos only contain information, and that all information should be available to everybody.
The other, let's call it the fascist model, is that people are not rational, people can easily be emotionally manipulated en-masse (e.g. Hitler), masses of emotionally manipulated people are a risk to democracy, and therefore any functional system requires punishing and suppressing misinformation.
People in the first came make a bunch of meaningless comments "This is censorship and encroaching on my rights!" and the second camp says "Boy we're lucky, and it's crazy how much of the US didn't understand Trump lost. Yikes." Neither comment convinces anybody.
The only way to move people over, would be to present evidence that the libertarian model is true, or the fascist model is true. Everything besides evidence is mere drum-beating.
I don’t think the libertarian model requires people to be rational, it rather give people the room to develop their rationality ... to be adults exercising choice, which includes sometimes being biased or just wrong.
I have mixed feelings about this subject. On the one hand I would like Google/FB to remove antivax content on all of their platforms as it's immediately dangerous to people and unanimously debunked by scientists. On the other hand I know once the big tech gets comfortable with the idea of censorship they gradually start expanding their editorial reach and start censoring things left and right with double standards as I believe applies in this case. You can find a ton of videos on YouTube claiming Russians made Trump president, one could argue this is equal to claiming voter fraud got Biden elected. I happen to think both are completely false conspiracy theories. There's so much fabricated information on internet and YouTube that the idea of censorship based on truthfulness seems crazy to me. Google, FB, and other big tech should come up with clear red lines for what's acceptable and apply it consistently across the board. Immediately dangerous information and unanimously debunked could be a good red line.
It is interesting that YouTube refers to historical charges of voter fraud. In 1876 we had a similar situation where there were charges by Republican's against Democrats of electoral irregularities. This was resolved by a 15 member committee from the house, senate and supreme court who effectively appointed the Republican candidate the winner after an 8-7 vote. If this was to happen again and Trump was appointed President would YouTube remove any content that questioned whether this was a legal practice or whether the result of the election was fair. If I was a Democrat and this happened I would certainly be concerned that I was wronged and I think it would be entirely inappropriate for content questioning whether this was the correct decision to be removed.
It's actions like that that give me reason to doubt the results of the 2020 election. People weilding the truth don't need to censor people. They let the facts speak for themselves, and they let free discussion sort things out.
Youtube doesn't censor Holocaust denial videos, Chinese propaganda, people claiming Hillary is still the rightful winner of the 2016 election, and a host of horrible things. Nor should they. People should be free to discuss what they want, not what a Youtube CEO things they should want.
But people complaining about 2020 election fraud is where they draw the line? This really smacks of Orwellianism. "Say Biden is the President, or we'll ban you." What the hell is happening at Youtube?
Youtube doesn't censor Holocaust denial videos, Chinese propaganda, people claiming Hillary is still the rightful winner of the 2016 election, and a host of horrible things. Nor should they. People should be free to discuss what they want, not what a Youtube CEO things they should want.
But people complaining about 2020 election fraud is where they draw the line? This really smacks of Orwellianism. "Say Biden is the President, or we'll ban you." What the hell is happening at Youtube?
To highlight to you how absolutely insane this move is by google:
When the Hunter Biden story broke, it seemed as though every social media company, nearly in tandem, worked to censor it in the name of "stopping the spread of misinformation".
Today: it was announced that there is a federal criminal investigation into Hunter Biden's business dealings in China. (https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/09/politics/hunter-biden-tax-inv...)
These people are not, and should NEVER be the arbiters of truth. They are ideologically driven, obviously, since they are human.
When the Hunter Biden story broke, it seemed as though every social media company, nearly in tandem, worked to censor it in the name of "stopping the spread of misinformation".
Today: it was announced that there is a federal criminal investigation into Hunter Biden's business dealings in China. (https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/09/politics/hunter-biden-tax-inv...)
These people are not, and should NEVER be the arbiters of truth. They are ideologically driven, obviously, since they are human.
> When the Hunter Biden story broke, it seemed as though every social media company, nearly in tandem, worked to censor it in the name of "stopping the spread of misinformation".
That (fake) story was the Hunter Biden got Joe Biden to intervene in a Ukrainian commercial deal.
This is a completely different story, and no one had censored the lead up to it. Here's a fact check on it from October with plenty of links: https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/oct/19/fact-checking...
Notably this investigation is a tax investigation into Hunter, not a "selling political influence" investigation.
That (fake) story was the Hunter Biden got Joe Biden to intervene in a Ukrainian commercial deal.
This is a completely different story, and no one had censored the lead up to it. Here's a fact check on it from October with plenty of links: https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/oct/19/fact-checking...
Notably this investigation is a tax investigation into Hunter, not a "selling political influence" investigation.
>That (fake) story was the Hunter Biden got Joe Biden to intervene in a Ukrainian commercial deal.
No it wasn't. https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/elections/202...
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/joe-biden-must-clear-a...
No it wasn't. https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/elections/202...
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/joe-biden-must-clear-a...
Sorry, you are right - too many allegations.
The clarify, the fake story was that Hunter Biden tried to get Joe Biden to intervene in a Chinese commercial deal. To quote your link:
Bobulinski’s overarching claim is that Joe Biden was involved in, and may have profited from, his son and brother’s business dealings in China.
To also quote your link:
The Wall Street Journal reviewed his documents and found no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden — or that he was active in his family’s foreign business endeavors, as Bobulinski claimed.
This new investigation is about Hunter's tax affairs in China. No one has ever disputed or censored the idea that Hunter Biden has business affairs in China (or in Ukraine, hence my original confusion).
The clarify, the fake story was that Hunter Biden tried to get Joe Biden to intervene in a Chinese commercial deal. To quote your link:
Bobulinski’s overarching claim is that Joe Biden was involved in, and may have profited from, his son and brother’s business dealings in China.
To also quote your link:
The Wall Street Journal reviewed his documents and found no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe Biden — or that he was active in his family’s foreign business endeavors, as Bobulinski claimed.
This new investigation is about Hunter's tax affairs in China. No one has ever disputed or censored the idea that Hunter Biden has business affairs in China (or in Ukraine, hence my original confusion).
Will they remove also allegations of Russia tampering 2016 elections?
When Trump got elected the idea of an election being rigged was acceptable.
Thank you Google for telling us what to think.
When Trump got elected the idea of an election being rigged was acceptable.
Thank you Google for telling us what to think.
I wonder if they would remove content from 2003 claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
Or - the endless repetition in some media channels in recent years that Trump was colluding with Russia.
This kind of censorship is bad. Yes, YouTube is privately owned, but that in itself is problematic, seeing how it effectively has a public function. More and more, we live by the rules and internal judicial systems of the large corporations, especially tech companies.
Or - the endless repetition in some media channels in recent years that Trump was colluding with Russia.
This kind of censorship is bad. Yes, YouTube is privately owned, but that in itself is problematic, seeing how it effectively has a public function. More and more, we live by the rules and internal judicial systems of the large corporations, especially tech companies.
Can only real comment is two part:
1) Good.
2) can other sites follow suit? Tired of all this unending nonsense without evidence about voter fraud.
1) Good.
2) can other sites follow suit? Tired of all this unending nonsense without evidence about voter fraud.
The OP has:
"Yesterday was the safe harbor deadline for the U.S. Presidential election and enough states have certified their election results to determine a President-elect. Given that, we will start removing any piece of content uploaded today (or anytime after) that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, in line with our approach towards historical U.S. Presidential elections."
I've paid fairly close attention to the claims of fraud, and nowhere have I seen claims of "widespread fraud".
It is simply that, just from some simple arithmetic, "widespread fraud" was not necessary to have "changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election".
Instead it was quite sufficient to have fraud in one or two cities in just the six swing states PA, MI, WI, AZ, NV, and GA. Just 10 cities is enough, and that is not "widespread".
For
"Yesterday was the safe harbor deadline for the U.S. Presidential election and enough states have certified their election results to determine a President-elect."
That statement is not the most important possible: Instead, what the states do to "certify" is not the last word. Instead there is in the Constitution:
"Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, ..."
So, in each state, the legislature STILL has the final authority. Supposedly this point was tested in the SCOTUS in 1892 and 2000 or some such.
Mayor Giuliani claims to have lots of solid evidence of fraud in the form of hundreds of signed affidavits in each of several of the six states and with enough fraud to have converted a Trump win to an apparent Biden win. By now legislatures in several of the six states have seen at least an overview of Giuliani's evidence. Still, AFAIK, no legislature has taken the Constitutional power to "direct" and "appoint" their state's electors. Some of those legislatures still could "direct" and "appoint".
It appears that going directly to the state legislatures, that is, just f'getting about all the courts except possibly the SCOTUS, could be sufficient.
The way I read the Constitution, each state legislature can take the power to "direct" and "appoint" without regard for the state constitution, the state laws, the state governor, secretary of state, AG, or board of elections and without need for the governor to *call the legislature into session". Net, anytime before the Electoral College votes, some states legislatures could still "appoint" electors that could cause Trump to win.
If there was fraud that threw the election, then as citizens we darned better well get to the bottom of it before 1/20/2021.
Some of the alleged fraud is just old fashioned ballot box stuffing. We really SHOULD be able to settle such claims solidly, for or against.
Fraud that changes an election for POTUS is a threat to our rule of law, Constitution, democracy, and country. We need a solid answer.
IMHO, Youtube should encourage full debate of these points. As it is, it appears that Youtube doesn't want videos of Trump, Giuliani, or Justices of the SCOTUS -- not so good.
"Yesterday was the safe harbor deadline for the U.S. Presidential election and enough states have certified their election results to determine a President-elect. Given that, we will start removing any piece of content uploaded today (or anytime after) that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, in line with our approach towards historical U.S. Presidential elections."
I've paid fairly close attention to the claims of fraud, and nowhere have I seen claims of "widespread fraud".
It is simply that, just from some simple arithmetic, "widespread fraud" was not necessary to have "changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election".
Instead it was quite sufficient to have fraud in one or two cities in just the six swing states PA, MI, WI, AZ, NV, and GA. Just 10 cities is enough, and that is not "widespread".
For
"Yesterday was the safe harbor deadline for the U.S. Presidential election and enough states have certified their election results to determine a President-elect."
That statement is not the most important possible: Instead, what the states do to "certify" is not the last word. Instead there is in the Constitution:
"Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, ..."
So, in each state, the legislature STILL has the final authority. Supposedly this point was tested in the SCOTUS in 1892 and 2000 or some such.
Mayor Giuliani claims to have lots of solid evidence of fraud in the form of hundreds of signed affidavits in each of several of the six states and with enough fraud to have converted a Trump win to an apparent Biden win. By now legislatures in several of the six states have seen at least an overview of Giuliani's evidence. Still, AFAIK, no legislature has taken the Constitutional power to "direct" and "appoint" their state's electors. Some of those legislatures still could "direct" and "appoint".
It appears that going directly to the state legislatures, that is, just f'getting about all the courts except possibly the SCOTUS, could be sufficient.
The way I read the Constitution, each state legislature can take the power to "direct" and "appoint" without regard for the state constitution, the state laws, the state governor, secretary of state, AG, or board of elections and without need for the governor to *call the legislature into session". Net, anytime before the Electoral College votes, some states legislatures could still "appoint" electors that could cause Trump to win.
If there was fraud that threw the election, then as citizens we darned better well get to the bottom of it before 1/20/2021.
Some of the alleged fraud is just old fashioned ballot box stuffing. We really SHOULD be able to settle such claims solidly, for or against.
Fraud that changes an election for POTUS is a threat to our rule of law, Constitution, democracy, and country. We need a solid answer.
IMHO, Youtube should encourage full debate of these points. As it is, it appears that Youtube doesn't want videos of Trump, Giuliani, or Justices of the SCOTUS -- not so good.
I think it's interesting that some folks are calling this government censorship. Obviously, companies can decide what they want to spend money/computing resources/ storage/bandwidth on. I'm not sure why that appears to be contentious.
As for senators sending "a strongly worded request" that this material be removed, I'm also puzzled by why people would conflate that with actual governmental censorship.
From where I'm sitting, I'd guess that Google's algorithm has decided that the whole "stolen election" narrative produces fewer ad dollars than its counter argument. Maybe "the election wasn't stolen" is more widely accepted as consensus and therefore, there's less risk of companies reducing their YouTube ad buys.
I genuinely don't understand people's outrage when in order to accept this move by YouTube as either being ideological ("they're doing what they think is right! And they're wrong!") or motivated by being afraid of Congress ("those handful of senators in a party that doesn't control the majority are strongarming a multibillion dollar corporation. They couldn't possibly pour an unimaginable amount of money into lobbying for policies and candidates that are favorable to them. They're helpless!")
I genuinely do not care what editorial decisions YouTube makes. I do not rely on YouTube for my worldview, and I don't rely on it shaping other people's worldviews.
It seems that some of the people that are mad about this aren't mad that YouTube holds so much sway over so many people, but rather some are angry that that power isn't being used to further their interests.
As for senators sending "a strongly worded request" that this material be removed, I'm also puzzled by why people would conflate that with actual governmental censorship.
From where I'm sitting, I'd guess that Google's algorithm has decided that the whole "stolen election" narrative produces fewer ad dollars than its counter argument. Maybe "the election wasn't stolen" is more widely accepted as consensus and therefore, there's less risk of companies reducing their YouTube ad buys.
I genuinely don't understand people's outrage when in order to accept this move by YouTube as either being ideological ("they're doing what they think is right! And they're wrong!") or motivated by being afraid of Congress ("those handful of senators in a party that doesn't control the majority are strongarming a multibillion dollar corporation. They couldn't possibly pour an unimaginable amount of money into lobbying for policies and candidates that are favorable to them. They're helpless!")
I genuinely do not care what editorial decisions YouTube makes. I do not rely on YouTube for my worldview, and I don't rely on it shaping other people's worldviews.
It seems that some of the people that are mad about this aren't mad that YouTube holds so much sway over so many people, but rather some are angry that that power isn't being used to further their interests.
> As for senators sending "a strongly worded request" that this material be removed, I'm also puzzled by why people would conflate that with actual governmental censorship.
Because Google is under heavy scrutiny and many Republicans want to push for anti-trust and monopoly investigations: a group of Dem politicians saying that they should strongly consider doing what the Dems want sounds similar to when the mob says a business should strongly consider buying their fire-insurance.
Because Google is under heavy scrutiny and many Republicans want to push for anti-trust and monopoly investigations: a group of Dem politicians saying that they should strongly consider doing what the Dems want sounds similar to when the mob says a business should strongly consider buying their fire-insurance.
I could understand that if in this case the situation resembled the power imbalance inherent between an organized mafia and a small shop owner, but I find this situation to be materially different.
In the scenario you've referenced, the shop owner has no recourse and in theory acquiescence could be a rational course of action for survival. However if the shop owner had lucrative infrastructure-nontrivial contracts with the mafia that would be mutually harmful if dissolved, and the resources and information necessary to apply real pressure to the policies and personnel of mafia leadership, then the new picture we've painted barely resembles its original form as you depicted in any meaningful way.
In the scenario you've referenced, the shop owner has no recourse and in theory acquiescence could be a rational course of action for survival. However if the shop owner had lucrative infrastructure-nontrivial contracts with the mafia that would be mutually harmful if dissolved, and the resources and information necessary to apply real pressure to the policies and personnel of mafia leadership, then the new picture we've painted barely resembles its original form as you depicted in any meaningful way.
Rumble has been positioning themselves as a censorship-free alternative to youtube. Granted, they have a very long way to go, but it's definitely a start.
Why should "alleging" anything be policed? I concur that painting widespread fraud as "definite" seems like a false claim (at least with current evidence), but let's leave that aside for now. Exploration of election fraud would have to begin with speculation ("alleging"), just like challenging any prevailing thought begins with speculation. For example, imagine if no one was permitted to challenge the WHO's claim earlier this year that there was no human to human transmission of the coronavirus. Furthermore, if there WERE fraud happening, there aren't any great avenues by which outsiders could detect it to offer up evidence. The system is too opaque, proprietary in its implementation, and varied across jurisdictions to allow gathering of evidence. So the notion that there must be hard proof before people can talk about a problem doesn't make sense to me in this instance.
Some thoughts on content curation and censorship by big tech platforms: YouTube is not a small backwaters website. It is one of the most influential and popular websites, with reach greater than most countries' governments, and it is therefore a digital public square. YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook should not be allowed to implement restrictions on content beyond what the law minimally requires, since doing so effectively curtails practical access to the right to free speech. And I am not talking about legal technicalities of free speech as enshrined in current US law, but rather the fundamental principle of free speech - something worthy of aspiring to regardless of what the law allows right now.
Lastly, a word on elections: elections need to implement the law strictly and be tightly controlled. There should be nothing left to chance. This means there needs to be multiple cross-checked counts by default, with a variety of organizations involved (observers and counters from parties, media outlets, etc.). There should be random sampling of ballots where citizens are asked to vote a second time to validate their initial ballot. There should be strong voter verification to disallow any illegal voting. All machines and software must be open source and audited by third parties. People should be able to verify their ballot's choices were recorded as expected online. And so on. I realize some of this may run into limitations of secret ballots, but we can perhaps come up with technical solutions to allay those fears (like issuing one-time use logins for each election that have no PII tying a ballot back to a specific individual).
Some thoughts on content curation and censorship by big tech platforms: YouTube is not a small backwaters website. It is one of the most influential and popular websites, with reach greater than most countries' governments, and it is therefore a digital public square. YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook should not be allowed to implement restrictions on content beyond what the law minimally requires, since doing so effectively curtails practical access to the right to free speech. And I am not talking about legal technicalities of free speech as enshrined in current US law, but rather the fundamental principle of free speech - something worthy of aspiring to regardless of what the law allows right now.
Lastly, a word on elections: elections need to implement the law strictly and be tightly controlled. There should be nothing left to chance. This means there needs to be multiple cross-checked counts by default, with a variety of organizations involved (observers and counters from parties, media outlets, etc.). There should be random sampling of ballots where citizens are asked to vote a second time to validate their initial ballot. There should be strong voter verification to disallow any illegal voting. All machines and software must be open source and audited by third parties. People should be able to verify their ballot's choices were recorded as expected online. And so on. I realize some of this may run into limitations of secret ballots, but we can perhaps come up with technical solutions to allay those fears (like issuing one-time use logins for each election that have no PII tying a ballot back to a specific individual).
I saw this the other day and it's still up...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG2RkKBHX0M
The accounts of these people sound reasonably trustworthy but they're not alleging massive fraud, just problems at the polling place that led to overcounting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG2RkKBHX0M
The accounts of these people sound reasonably trustworthy but they're not alleging massive fraud, just problems at the polling place that led to overcounting.
I don't see anyone talking about the gap in the market and the millions of dollars youtube is putting on the table for some other company (or companies for that matter).
"We also disallow content alleging widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of a historical U.S. Presidential election."
I guess it's a good thing there could never possibly be fraud or errors in a U.S. election.
I guess it's a good thing there could never possibly be fraud or errors in a U.S. election.
will they be taking all evidence of fraud shared on their platform or only that with commentary siggesting that it was widespread?
>Connecting people to authoritative information
Top channels from picture. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com
ABC: Left of Center
NBC: Left of Center
USA today: Left of Center
CNN: Left
CBS: Left of Center
The "Authoritative Sources" are all Left-wing news agencies. So in other words they have done like Wikipedia. They have determined that Left of Center is authoritative and have limited the reach of alternative viewpoints.
Their right to control political speech on their platform.
Top channels from picture. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com
ABC: Left of Center
NBC: Left of Center
USA today: Left of Center
CNN: Left
CBS: Left of Center
The "Authoritative Sources" are all Left-wing news agencies. So in other words they have done like Wikipedia. They have determined that Left of Center is authoritative and have limited the reach of alternative viewpoints.
Their right to control political speech on their platform.
Or alternatively, the center in the US is so far right that media naturally falls to the left of that.
To the right under what rubric? In Germany, I have a legal right to have my kid given religious education in public schools. Bavaria can put crosses on public buildings. Abortion is only decriminalized, generally illegal after 12 weeks, and is subject to waiting periods and mandatory counseling. The governing center-right party declared accepting Muslim refugees "a mistake" that they would not repeat.
The American media demonized Amy Coney Barrett as a "Handmaid" because of the possibility that she could rule that elective abortion is a matter for the legislature, not a constitutional issue of fundamental rights. Which is the law of the land in Canada, France, Italy, Austria, and the EU Human Rights Court.
At least on social issues, the American media is significantly to the left of even moderately liberal EU countries.
The American media demonized Amy Coney Barrett as a "Handmaid" because of the possibility that she could rule that elective abortion is a matter for the legislature, not a constitutional issue of fundamental rights. Which is the law of the land in Canada, France, Italy, Austria, and the EU Human Rights Court.
At least on social issues, the American media is significantly to the left of even moderately liberal EU countries.
The American media accurately described Barrett's publicly stated opinion on religious issues and abortion.
You're purposefully diminishing the impact that opinion has, though. It would be a different matter if the legislature was prepared for that, but it's not.
Like it or not, the battle for abortion was fought with the Supreme Court. Saying "she just has a different view on where it should be fought" ignores the fact that it would essentially set us back 50 years in terms of reproductive rights.
Like it or not, the battle for abortion was fought with the Supreme Court. Saying "she just has a different view on where it should be fought" ignores the fact that it would essentially set us back 50 years in terms of reproductive rights.
> It would be a different matter if the legislature was prepared for that, but it's not.
Plenty of states allowed abortion before Roe v. Wade. If legislature isn't prepared, what are they waiting for? Just pass the relevant bills already, so that impact of a potential Supreme Court verdict that returns the control to legislatures has absolutely zero consequences, because the state legislature already has enshrined the current status quo into law. What's the problem?
> Like it or not, the battle for abortion was fought with the Supreme Court.
Yes, and this is fundamentally wrong approach to issues on which there is no broad public agreement.
> Saying "she just has a different view on where it should be fought" ignores the fact that it would essentially set us back 50 years in terms of reproductive rights.
So would moving to, say, Canada or Sweden, which hardly makes it sound like a disaster.
Plenty of states allowed abortion before Roe v. Wade. If legislature isn't prepared, what are they waiting for? Just pass the relevant bills already, so that impact of a potential Supreme Court verdict that returns the control to legislatures has absolutely zero consequences, because the state legislature already has enshrined the current status quo into law. What's the problem?
> Like it or not, the battle for abortion was fought with the Supreme Court.
Yes, and this is fundamentally wrong approach to issues on which there is no broad public agreement.
> Saying "she just has a different view on where it should be fought" ignores the fact that it would essentially set us back 50 years in terms of reproductive rights.
So would moving to, say, Canada or Sweden, which hardly makes it sound like a disaster.
> Yes, and this is fundamentally wrong approach to issues on which there is no broad public agreement.
Two important things here:
1. The judiciary exists to protect the rights of the people protected by the constitution, even when there may not be broad public support for those rights, even when those rights are unpopular. That's what happened with Brown v. BoE
2. 61% of Americans think that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. That is, 39% think it should be illegal. To compare, 49% think that burning the American Flag should be illegal, which the court has had no problem defending, and no one seems to consider was wrong for the court to decide.
> So would moving to, say, Canada or Sweden, which hardly makes it sound like a disaster.
Huh? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Morgentaler)
Two important things here:
1. The judiciary exists to protect the rights of the people protected by the constitution, even when there may not be broad public support for those rights, even when those rights are unpopular. That's what happened with Brown v. BoE
2. 61% of Americans think that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. That is, 39% think it should be illegal. To compare, 49% think that burning the American Flag should be illegal, which the court has had no problem defending, and no one seems to consider was wrong for the court to decide.
> So would moving to, say, Canada or Sweden, which hardly makes it sound like a disaster.
Huh? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Morgentaler)
As to your first point: you’re begging the question by presupposing that there is a “right” to kill and extract a fetus under various circumstances. Where does that right originate, and who gets to decide what those circumstances are?
Liberals tend to believe that the constitution is a living document and can protect rights even when those rights didn’t exist at the time of the founding. Even if you accept that, you’re only halfway there. The right must still come from somewhere. Where does the right to an abortion, as defined by Roe—which conceives of a right to an abortion all the way to the point of viability—come from? If you can’t find it in the text of the Constitution, and you can’t find it in the history books of what rights the framers thoughts were fundamental, it has to derive from broad public recognition, correct?
Going to your second point—the right protected by Roe is very different than the version of abortion that has broad public support. Roe invalidates any law that bans abortion generally before viability (22-24 weeks), even if the law has exceptions for health of mother, etc.
That, however, is a much broader right than either Americans or most people in the rest of the developed world support. Support for “generally legal” abortion falls off a cliff after the first trimester: https://news.gallup.com/poll/235469/trimesters-key-abortion-.... Just 28% of people think abortion should be “generally legal” in the second trimester. There is a biological basis for why any parent who has had a 12-week anatomy scan might think that should be an upper limit on elective abortion: https://www.parents.com/pregnancy/week-by-week/12/your-growi.... Not surprisingly, in Europe, 10-14 weeks is a very common time limit for elective abortions. Under Roe, the abortion laws of France and Denmark would be unconstitutional. This is not a theoretical issue: 1 in 10 US abortions happen after 13 weeks, and birth defects are not common enough to explain most of them.
So where does Roe come from, even within a liberal theory of what’s protected by the constitution?
Liberals tend to believe that the constitution is a living document and can protect rights even when those rights didn’t exist at the time of the founding. Even if you accept that, you’re only halfway there. The right must still come from somewhere. Where does the right to an abortion, as defined by Roe—which conceives of a right to an abortion all the way to the point of viability—come from? If you can’t find it in the text of the Constitution, and you can’t find it in the history books of what rights the framers thoughts were fundamental, it has to derive from broad public recognition, correct?
Going to your second point—the right protected by Roe is very different than the version of abortion that has broad public support. Roe invalidates any law that bans abortion generally before viability (22-24 weeks), even if the law has exceptions for health of mother, etc.
That, however, is a much broader right than either Americans or most people in the rest of the developed world support. Support for “generally legal” abortion falls off a cliff after the first trimester: https://news.gallup.com/poll/235469/trimesters-key-abortion-.... Just 28% of people think abortion should be “generally legal” in the second trimester. There is a biological basis for why any parent who has had a 12-week anatomy scan might think that should be an upper limit on elective abortion: https://www.parents.com/pregnancy/week-by-week/12/your-growi.... Not surprisingly, in Europe, 10-14 weeks is a very common time limit for elective abortions. Under Roe, the abortion laws of France and Denmark would be unconstitutional. This is not a theoretical issue: 1 in 10 US abortions happen after 13 weeks, and birth defects are not common enough to explain most of them.
So where does Roe come from, even within a liberal theory of what’s protected by the constitution?
> As to your first point: you’re begging the question by presupposing that there is a “right” to kill and extract a fetus under various circumstances.
And you're presupposing that a nonviable fetus is alive.
As I understand it, the conservative view is that rights are not granted by the government, they are only restricted, hence the 10th amendment. The right to freedom of movement is not granted to me by anyone, yet I have it because it is not explicitly restricted. The constitution puts guardrails on when, and how, the government is allowed to restrict my rights.
> Liberals tend to believe that the constitution is a living document and can protect rights even when those rights didn’t exist at the time of the founding.
This depends on right in question. For example the right to donate to political candidates is not explicitly enumerated in the constitution (and is heavily restricted in many other nations), but is seen as protected via a combination of rights enumerated in the 1st amendment.
> If you can’t find it in the text of the Constitution, and you can’t find it in the history books of what rights the framers thoughts were fundamental, it has to derive from broad public recognition, correct?
No, I refer you again to Brown v. BoE. There was at the time no broad public recognition that Separate but Equal wasn't constitutional, and the people who wrote the amendment certainly felt segregation was A-OK.
> Where does the right to an abortion, as defined by Roe
As I understand, in this case the Justices found that an individual's right to privacy prevented the government from meddling with the medical procedures that person chose to get, without. But then you knew that already. It appears that you disagree with this, even though 15 (and a half) Supreme court justices have found that the text of the constitution supports this protection. (notably compared to 8, likely soon 9, who did not)
And you're presupposing that a nonviable fetus is alive.
As I understand it, the conservative view is that rights are not granted by the government, they are only restricted, hence the 10th amendment. The right to freedom of movement is not granted to me by anyone, yet I have it because it is not explicitly restricted. The constitution puts guardrails on when, and how, the government is allowed to restrict my rights.
> Liberals tend to believe that the constitution is a living document and can protect rights even when those rights didn’t exist at the time of the founding.
This depends on right in question. For example the right to donate to political candidates is not explicitly enumerated in the constitution (and is heavily restricted in many other nations), but is seen as protected via a combination of rights enumerated in the 1st amendment.
> If you can’t find it in the text of the Constitution, and you can’t find it in the history books of what rights the framers thoughts were fundamental, it has to derive from broad public recognition, correct?
No, I refer you again to Brown v. BoE. There was at the time no broad public recognition that Separate but Equal wasn't constitutional, and the people who wrote the amendment certainly felt segregation was A-OK.
> Where does the right to an abortion, as defined by Roe
As I understand, in this case the Justices found that an individual's right to privacy prevented the government from meddling with the medical procedures that person chose to get, without. But then you knew that already. It appears that you disagree with this, even though 15 (and a half) Supreme court justices have found that the text of the constitution supports this protection. (notably compared to 8, likely soon 9, who did not)
> 1. The judiciary exists to protect the rights of the people protected by the constitution, even when there may not be broad public support for those rights, even when those rights are unpopular. That's what happened with Brown v. BoE
That's correct, but I think the legal argument from Equal Protection Clause in Brown v. Board of Education is rather straightforward, compared to "emanations of penumbras" that form the constitutional basis for Roe v. Wade. As much as I support right to contraceptives, and right to abortion, I believe that the Supreme Court arguments for constitutional basis of these are, to put it bluntly, full of shit.
> 2. 61% of Americans think that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. That is, 39% think it should be illegal. To compare, 49% think that burning the American Flag should be illegal, which the court has had no problem defending, and no one seems to consider was wrong for the court to decide.
That's a very good point. I think if you ask American public whether they support constitutional right to free speech, overwhelming majority will be for it. I think the contradiction stems from the fact that their moral responses are rather automatic, and not based on careful moral reasoning. When you actually connect flag burning to free speech in their minds, I suspect that the support for making flag burning a crime will fall. I think it's much easier to make such connection than to argue that such right stems from the right to privacy, which in turn stems from the right to due process.
I don't like the methods, even if the outcome is to my liking. The same motivated arguments could be used to argue anything the judges want, and one day the judges will decide something I do not like using the same motivated arguments. For example, it was ruled that right to privacy prevents banning contraceptive drugs. However, recreational psychoactive drugs are banned just fine, and there are hardly any voices arguing unconstitutionality of the practice. Why is it? Clearly, the answer cannot be based on the differences enumerated in the text of clause in the constitution defining right to privacy, because there simply is no such text: it's all emanated penumbras. I think the answer is rather very simple: the judges preferred one outcome in contraceptive case, and opposite outcome in the other case. This ain't so bad, but if we just decide cases based on the outcome judges want, why we even have the law and the constitution in the first place? What's the point?
The real reason for concern of liberal Americans with respect to Roe v. Wade, and in general with respect to Trump appointments of judges to the Supreme Court, is that it is tacitly recognized that the US Constitution is dead, is just words on the old parchment, and it's the judges personal opinion that's the actual defining law of the country. This arrangement worked just fine for as long as the Supreme Court made decisions to the liking of liberal Americans, but as that era is coming to the end, they see that there's nothing to protect them anymore now that the Constitution has been killed.
> Huh? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Morgentaler)
Oh, I'm sorry, I incorrectly assumed that Canada's abortion laws are similar to those in the rest of the western world, however they seem to be sitting in rather exceptional bucket alongside US.
That's correct, but I think the legal argument from Equal Protection Clause in Brown v. Board of Education is rather straightforward, compared to "emanations of penumbras" that form the constitutional basis for Roe v. Wade. As much as I support right to contraceptives, and right to abortion, I believe that the Supreme Court arguments for constitutional basis of these are, to put it bluntly, full of shit.
> 2. 61% of Americans think that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. That is, 39% think it should be illegal. To compare, 49% think that burning the American Flag should be illegal, which the court has had no problem defending, and no one seems to consider was wrong for the court to decide.
That's a very good point. I think if you ask American public whether they support constitutional right to free speech, overwhelming majority will be for it. I think the contradiction stems from the fact that their moral responses are rather automatic, and not based on careful moral reasoning. When you actually connect flag burning to free speech in their minds, I suspect that the support for making flag burning a crime will fall. I think it's much easier to make such connection than to argue that such right stems from the right to privacy, which in turn stems from the right to due process.
I don't like the methods, even if the outcome is to my liking. The same motivated arguments could be used to argue anything the judges want, and one day the judges will decide something I do not like using the same motivated arguments. For example, it was ruled that right to privacy prevents banning contraceptive drugs. However, recreational psychoactive drugs are banned just fine, and there are hardly any voices arguing unconstitutionality of the practice. Why is it? Clearly, the answer cannot be based on the differences enumerated in the text of clause in the constitution defining right to privacy, because there simply is no such text: it's all emanated penumbras. I think the answer is rather very simple: the judges preferred one outcome in contraceptive case, and opposite outcome in the other case. This ain't so bad, but if we just decide cases based on the outcome judges want, why we even have the law and the constitution in the first place? What's the point?
The real reason for concern of liberal Americans with respect to Roe v. Wade, and in general with respect to Trump appointments of judges to the Supreme Court, is that it is tacitly recognized that the US Constitution is dead, is just words on the old parchment, and it's the judges personal opinion that's the actual defining law of the country. This arrangement worked just fine for as long as the Supreme Court made decisions to the liking of liberal Americans, but as that era is coming to the end, they see that there's nothing to protect them anymore now that the Constitution has been killed.
> Huh? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Morgentaler)
Oh, I'm sorry, I incorrectly assumed that Canada's abortion laws are similar to those in the rest of the western world, however they seem to be sitting in rather exceptional bucket alongside US.
Not if you live in a blue state. Michigan, Wisconsin, and New Mexico are the only sometimes blue states where abortion would become illegal if Roe were overturned.
>Or alternatively, the center in the US is so far right that media naturally falls to the left of that.
I provided the website which indicates the bias. You can use the same site to find right of center or right biased news.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/forbes/
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/new-york-post/
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/fox-news/
The point I am making. Youtube clearly have a Left of Center bias and have indicated they are restricting other viewpoints.
This is intentional and you get to decide if you like them doing this.
I provided the website which indicates the bias. You can use the same site to find right of center or right biased news.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/forbes/
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/new-york-post/
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/fox-news/
The point I am making. Youtube clearly have a Left of Center bias and have indicated they are restricting other viewpoints.
This is intentional and you get to decide if you like them doing this.
For people who doubt your characterization of where the "center" is, consider this: 2/3 of Americans oppose the Supreme Court decision banning school prayer. Is your idea of a "centrist" person someone who believes school prayer would be a good idea if the law were different?
The median voter also supports single payer healthcare and [insert lots of extreme opinions supported by the median voter here]. Centrist designates something approximating "elite public opinion," not any actual idealized voter who falls in the middle in all his attitudes.
And once you accept that centrist is simply the designator for elite public opinion, most corporate media is clearly centrist, because they're basically clearinghouses for elite public opinion.
And once you accept that centrist is simply the designator for elite public opinion, most corporate media is clearly centrist, because they're basically clearinghouses for elite public opinion.
>For people who doubt your characterization of where the "center" is, consider this: 2/3 of Americans oppose the Supreme Court decision banning school prayer. Is your idea of a "centrist" person someone who believes school prayer would be a good idea if the law were different?
I provided the website from which I got those details. I don't know how they come to these conclusions but I would tend to find that they are correct.
I provided the website from which I got those details. I don't know how they come to these conclusions but I would tend to find that they are correct.
Well, if you had checked your source before spreading it, you'd know they just make it up. It's completely subjective, it's just whatever the owners feel like.
For instance, here's something they don't do: take a random sample of a source's news articles, anonymize the source, ask random people to rate them, and collate the ratings into an overall rating. I'm not saying that'd be a good way to do it, but at least it'd be something.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/methodology/
For instance, here's something they don't do: take a random sample of a source's news articles, anonymize the source, ask random people to rate them, and collate the ratings into an overall rating. I'm not saying that'd be a good way to do it, but at least it'd be something.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/methodology/
There is no Supreme Court decision banning school prayer. There is a Supreme Court decision[1] that upheld the traditional separation of church and state and interpreted the First Amendment to mean that state-run schools cannot force children to participate in a prayer. In particular, state legislation mandating prayer violated the Establishment Clause.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engel_v._Vitale
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engel_v._Vitale
The Constitution doesn't say anything about "separation of church and state." The Establishment Clause says: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."
This is one of those funny areas where liberals get originalist and turn to the writings of Thomas Jefferson. The "separation of church and state" view derives from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1802. Of course, TJ wasn't even in the United States at the time the Constitution was written, and he was a bit of a kook even in his day. The thing you have to remember is that "establishment" had a specific meaning back then--several states had "established" churches: https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/801/established.... Given that, the most sensible reading is that the Establishment Clause prohibits Congress from regulating those established churches: https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl....
The "separation of church and state" view is odd because several states had official established churches until long after the Constitution was adopted: "New Hampshire kept its establishment until 1817; Connecticut kept its establishment until 1818; and Massachusetts did not abandon its state support for Congregationalism until 1833."
You're incorrect to characterize Engel v. Vitale as saying schools "cannot force children to participate in a prayer." That would be a straightforward violation of the first amendment Free Exercise Clause. The New York law in that case was voluntary--it encouraged but did not require students to participate in prayer. The case banned prayer in schools with any sort of official sanction.
Engel is odd even leaving aside the original meaning of the Establishment Clause. Public support for religion is the norm, and sometimes even a constitutional right, throughout Europe. Several European countries, such as the Germany, Italy, and Spain, guarantee that parents can access religious education in public schools. The U.K. goes further and mandates daily school prayer "of a broadly Christian character." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_worship_in_schools. (Funnily enough, Spain has a constitutional provision that says "no religion shall have a state character." Nobody reads that to preclude teaching religion in public schools.)
This is one of those funny areas where liberals get originalist and turn to the writings of Thomas Jefferson. The "separation of church and state" view derives from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1802. Of course, TJ wasn't even in the United States at the time the Constitution was written, and he was a bit of a kook even in his day. The thing you have to remember is that "establishment" had a specific meaning back then--several states had "established" churches: https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/801/established.... Given that, the most sensible reading is that the Establishment Clause prohibits Congress from regulating those established churches: https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl....
The "separation of church and state" view is odd because several states had official established churches until long after the Constitution was adopted: "New Hampshire kept its establishment until 1817; Connecticut kept its establishment until 1818; and Massachusetts did not abandon its state support for Congregationalism until 1833."
You're incorrect to characterize Engel v. Vitale as saying schools "cannot force children to participate in a prayer." That would be a straightforward violation of the first amendment Free Exercise Clause. The New York law in that case was voluntary--it encouraged but did not require students to participate in prayer. The case banned prayer in schools with any sort of official sanction.
Engel is odd even leaving aside the original meaning of the Establishment Clause. Public support for religion is the norm, and sometimes even a constitutional right, throughout Europe. Several European countries, such as the Germany, Italy, and Spain, guarantee that parents can access religious education in public schools. The U.K. goes further and mandates daily school prayer "of a broadly Christian character." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_worship_in_schools. (Funnily enough, Spain has a constitutional provision that says "no religion shall have a state character." Nobody reads that to preclude teaching religion in public schools.)
> The "separation of church and state" view is odd because several states had official established churches until long after the Constitution was adopted: "New Hampshire kept its establishment until 1817; Connecticut kept its establishment until 1818; and Massachusetts did not abandon its state support for Congregationalism until 1833."
That's not odd. The bill of rights originally did not apply to state governments. It was only after the 14th amendment that the Supreme Court started incorporating the rights on state governments. Of course some states had similar language in their own constitutions before that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_R...
That's not odd. The bill of rights originally did not apply to state governments. It was only after the 14th amendment that the Supreme Court started incorporating the rights on state governments. Of course some states had similar language in their own constitutions before that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_R...
Engel did absolutely strike down forcing children to pray in public schools.
> This is one of those funny areas where liberals
Can we please not do this "liberals" / "conservatives" read-team/blue-team stuff? Because then I'll just turn around and say "conservatives love to point out that phrase 'separation of church and state'" doesn't appear in the constitution and I'll just point you to Everson[1] that absolutely interpreted the First Amendment this way, and even quoted TJ himself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everson_v._Board_of_Education
> This is one of those funny areas where liberals
Can we please not do this "liberals" / "conservatives" read-team/blue-team stuff? Because then I'll just turn around and say "conservatives love to point out that phrase 'separation of church and state'" doesn't appear in the constitution and I'll just point you to Everson[1] that absolutely interpreted the First Amendment this way, and even quoted TJ himself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everson_v._Board_of_Education
WSJ minus the editorial pages is pretty good
Who's fault is it that the conserative movement has become more and more detached from facts?
Who's fault is it that the conserative movement has become more and more detached from facts?
>Who's fault is it that the conserative movement has become more and more detached from facts?
This is a very interesting subject. I read an article like: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/26/opinion/republican-disinf...
The interesting thing is that the assertion is that the right-wing have been detached from reality. An epistemological crisis wherein the the blame is on the internet. Thus we have situation where Internet entities like Youtube and Twitter are actively censoring right-wing views. While allowing left-wing misinformation.
So the way forward to fixing wrong-think is to deprive people of viewpoints? This doesn't seem quite right.
What's also quite interesting, it's the left-wing who are at odds. The median democrat has moved left and has created a political divide.
Makes me wonder if perhaps it's not the rightwing who became detached from reality.
If the left-wing are the ones detached. Then their need to censor other viewpoints to maintain their bubble makes complete sense.
This is a very interesting subject. I read an article like: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/26/opinion/republican-disinf...
The interesting thing is that the assertion is that the right-wing have been detached from reality. An epistemological crisis wherein the the blame is on the internet. Thus we have situation where Internet entities like Youtube and Twitter are actively censoring right-wing views. While allowing left-wing misinformation.
So the way forward to fixing wrong-think is to deprive people of viewpoints? This doesn't seem quite right.
What's also quite interesting, it's the left-wing who are at odds. The median democrat has moved left and has created a political divide.
Makes me wonder if perhaps it's not the rightwing who became detached from reality.
If the left-wing are the ones detached. Then their need to censor other viewpoints to maintain their bubble makes complete sense.
This is such an unbelievably bad idea, especially if they are trying to avoid regulation.
Even if we agreed, for some reason, that widespread fraud did not possibly happen and no possible evidence could ever be discovered to suggest it might have, they are going to have a ton of collateral damage that will effectively ban legitimate inquiry and discussion of the topic, including any neutral or objective attempts to analyze the data if it even leaves open questions.
Previous elections, particularly the Florida debacle, were the subject of a ton of statistical analysis and voting machine security research for years after the election. This is useful.
In this election, there were a lot of things that looked odd at first glance. I’m sure many people saw the huge vertical spike in Biden votes. A reasonable person would see that and say it looks suspicious, we should find out why. And as part of that process, an explanation was found, and this served a useful purpose in giving us confidence that this anomaly was nothing nefarious and was not cause for concern. What exactly do you think happens when you suppress our ability to do that?
All of this because our youtube nannies want to decide what we should or shouldn’t see? If Trump is being a moron, I have the right to watch him be one first hand. I want to know how dumb my president is. Why would anyone want Youtube deciding this for me?
Such an utterly stupid move youtube.
Even if we agreed, for some reason, that widespread fraud did not possibly happen and no possible evidence could ever be discovered to suggest it might have, they are going to have a ton of collateral damage that will effectively ban legitimate inquiry and discussion of the topic, including any neutral or objective attempts to analyze the data if it even leaves open questions.
Previous elections, particularly the Florida debacle, were the subject of a ton of statistical analysis and voting machine security research for years after the election. This is useful.
In this election, there were a lot of things that looked odd at first glance. I’m sure many people saw the huge vertical spike in Biden votes. A reasonable person would see that and say it looks suspicious, we should find out why. And as part of that process, an explanation was found, and this served a useful purpose in giving us confidence that this anomaly was nothing nefarious and was not cause for concern. What exactly do you think happens when you suppress our ability to do that?
All of this because our youtube nannies want to decide what we should or shouldn’t see? If Trump is being a moron, I have the right to watch him be one first hand. I want to know how dumb my president is. Why would anyone want Youtube deciding this for me?
Such an utterly stupid move youtube.
YouTube staff is a gang of bullies, and they are pushing our country toward civil war.
“The First Amendment is first for a reason. Second Amendment is just in case the First one doesn’t work out.”
- Dave Chappelle
“The First Amendment is first for a reason. Second Amendment is just in case the First one doesn’t work out.”
- Dave Chappelle
I have looked into a couple datasets purporting evidence of fraud, but they are fallacious. This is much more effective at disabusing me of election fraud conspiracies than censorship. YouTube's latest move has raised my skepticism all over again.
Furthermore, YouTube must know this so there must be some really damning material they are censoring to make this risky move, which ultimately leads me to conclude there is widespread fraud.
Furthermore, YouTube must know this so there must be some really damning material they are censoring to make this risky move, which ultimately leads me to conclude there is widespread fraud.
bmarquez(2)
guscost(3)
swiley(2)
whateveracct(3)
He YouTube since you start "cleaning" up your platform can you do the same for:
-Flatearth
-Moon-landing denier
-Gate's chip vaccines
-Everything false advertisement like NordVPN
-Hillary etc is a reptile
-Nearly every Trump video when he lies
-All the fake UFO sightings
and so on...it will save you petabytes :)
-Flatearth
-Moon-landing denier
-Gate's chip vaccines
-Everything false advertisement like NordVPN
-Hillary etc is a reptile
-Nearly every Trump video when he lies
-All the fake UFO sightings
and so on...it will save you petabytes :)
Imagine how much space they could save if they just deleted all videos.
No sure if that's in youtube's interests, but would be a interesting question.
This seems evil.
This is actually quite bad.
It creates bubbles and divide between people if there are no common ground on de facto monopolies like Reddit, Facebook or Youtube.
Reddit banned Trumps fanclub on Reddit and they reopened on a their own server with far more relaxed rules concerning incitement to violence. Pushing people out of common ground is not a very good longterm solution ...
It creates bubbles and divide between people if there are no common ground on de facto monopolies like Reddit, Facebook or Youtube.
Reddit banned Trumps fanclub on Reddit and they reopened on a their own server with far more relaxed rules concerning incitement to violence. Pushing people out of common ground is not a very good longterm solution ...
I noticed this too. I am a casual observer in politics, but see what both sides are up to typically via r/politics and thedonald. /r/thedonald was mostly memes and some disillusionment. The new site is a call for absolute civil war.
[deleted]
So there goes OANN and Newsmax alternative reality business model.
Freedom of speech does NOT mean freedom of misinformation.
These companies (Fox is an example) get sued in court and admit they were lying, and claim freedom of speech as the right to say anything including spreading damaging lies, and get away with it and are not condemned.
I'm all for freedom of speech, but seriously this is getting to Nazi Germany "we lost the war because of the jews" lunacy level.
Freedom of speech does not mean being able to say anything at anytime, independently of the consequences, including lies and be guaranteed to get away with it.
No, some things that people say can get them into legal trouble, and rightfully so. Our freedom ends where another person's freedom begins.
For example, people can get sued and convicted for defamation, for saying something that negatively affected someone else.
The US might not be a democracy in 10 years if this goes on, it has to stop.
Freedom of speech does NOT mean freedom of misinformation.
These companies (Fox is an example) get sued in court and admit they were lying, and claim freedom of speech as the right to say anything including spreading damaging lies, and get away with it and are not condemned.
I'm all for freedom of speech, but seriously this is getting to Nazi Germany "we lost the war because of the jews" lunacy level.
Freedom of speech does not mean being able to say anything at anytime, independently of the consequences, including lies and be guaranteed to get away with it.
No, some things that people say can get them into legal trouble, and rightfully so. Our freedom ends where another person's freedom begins.
For example, people can get sued and convicted for defamation, for saying something that negatively affected someone else.
The US might not be a democracy in 10 years if this goes on, it has to stop.
We've seen this hundreds of times throughout history. The Salem Witch Trials come to mind. Conspiracy theories need to burn their way through the population, reaching a crescendo until saner minds take sway.
These are the natural ebbs and flows of popular opinion. It's seldom rational even without conspiracy theories being involved. Trying to control this back-and-forth by shutting down one side of the conversation is just going to increase the pressure until the natural cycle continues.
I think _maybe_ YT has some sort of long-game in mind where they come out with a business model, but this doesn't appear to end well for them or any of us. Treating complex and sometimes chaotic systems as if they were simple ones doesn't make for good results. If you think the question is whether or not the claims are true, you're not even close to the critical conversation society needs to have right now.
These are the natural ebbs and flows of popular opinion. It's seldom rational even without conspiracy theories being involved. Trying to control this back-and-forth by shutting down one side of the conversation is just going to increase the pressure until the natural cycle continues.
I think _maybe_ YT has some sort of long-game in mind where they come out with a business model, but this doesn't appear to end well for them or any of us. Treating complex and sometimes chaotic systems as if they were simple ones doesn't make for good results. If you think the question is whether or not the claims are true, you're not even close to the critical conversation society needs to have right now.
Is there anyone that doesn't see what's going on at this point?
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
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. President Trump using Twitter has spread conspiracy theories more than 1700 times to his 67 million followers.
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.
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. President Trump using Twitter has spread conspiracy theories more than 1700 times to his 67 million followers.
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.
What views are these pedophiles espousing? How common is this? I see many people who would be considered bigots, but I have yet to encounter truly pedophilic views on any mainstream media.
What I see, rather are experts being accused of being pedophiles, for pushing controversial ideas about how to prevent pedophiles from committing crimes, and being censored accordingly.
What I see, rather are experts being accused of being pedophiles, for pushing controversial ideas about how to prevent pedophiles from committing crimes, and being censored accordingly.
Why do we allow the political class to have so much control of what is said and shared?
What a piece of shit decision. For all of you who don't run ublock please do so, take away their revenue and cost them bandwidth.
'do not be evil' was thrown away by google a few years ago.
it's a shame high tech now acts as the censorship government.
too big to be neutral? time to change the law.
it's a shame high tech now acts as the censorship government.
too big to be neutral? time to change the law.
It was thrown away because apparently everyone disagrees about what “evil” is. Congress brings tech ceos and then subjects them to partisan grilling where every action is alternately praised and condemned depending on party.
Will Youtube also remove all videos claiming that there was Russian Collusion, Obstruction of Justice which were investigated and proved as being false?
Mod: In trying to be a good contributor to this HN thread, I've been attacked by the trolls and lost 8 points of karma.
I will give the thread to the trolls.
Please delete all my posts to this thread.
I will give the thread to the trolls.
Please delete all my posts to this thread.
Great, maybe now we can stop considering them a platform and hold them liable for their content, while other p2p video platforms can provide services Youtube used to provide.
So because you don't like them you want the goverment to censor them?
"Don't be evil" - Google, 1999 - Present [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil
I have no issues with this. Cable networks have been spouting false information for several years now, hurting the very foundations of democracy. Banning obvious and pernicious lies from a platform is, in fact, a step forward.
So, after 4 years of constant unfounded public "Russia gate" allegations, now it is too much to look into hundreds of sworn wittness statements, video footage, statistical anomalies, and whatnot, for even a few weeks?
That type of behaviour is what is fishy.
That type of behaviour is what is fishy.
Over the past 4 years, MSNBC spread conspiracy theories that the Russians "hacked" the 2016 election. Will their content also be taken down?
For the free speech absolutists out there, how can that ideology be sustainable in the long run? Lack of moderation gets blamed a lot of lack of moderation. Even if it's untrue, this will drive people to demand additional moderation or censorship. Unconditional free speech is entirely self-defeating.
Jeez. They could have been doing this for the last month before it became endemic. How much damage did the Trump team do to America's democracy with a month of sore-losership?
Probably the same amount of damage that Gore did in about 1.5 months of sore-losership.
? That was very much closer, and subject to reasonable recounts. This egregious slandering of any state that voted for Biden is of a different nature altogether.
306 to 232 - I mean, get real. Recounts at this stage (or really, any stage since election night) are rabble rousing pointless grandstanding.
306 to 232 - I mean, get real. Recounts at this stage (or really, any stage since election night) are rabble rousing pointless grandstanding.
Yeah, recounts are pretty silly at this point since it is virtually impossible that they could change anything. On the other hand this election has yet again (just like when Al Gore lost) highlighted how bad some US states are at holding elections and counting votes. Why is it so hard? There are many states and countries who can hold an election without this chaos.
You're right, but this one was worse than usual because of Covid. Far more mail-in ballots, more spacing between observers and workers, fewer observers, and some of it having to be figured out on the fly. That makes this one messier than normal. Don't judge their ability to run elections by this election - it's not a fair test of normal circumstances.
That was a 500 vote difference out of 6 million votes, a 0.009% difference, in a single state, where there were known to have been severe issues with the ballots.
Both sides agreed that there were serious issues with the ballots and counting, with the only dispute being how to address them because the issues made it pretty much impossible to determine who actually would have won if the system had been able to correctly register the intended vote of every voter.
There were no serious allegations that anyone did anything illegal or tampered with the votes.
I have a hard time believing that you are seriously comparing that to 2020, where those trying to overturn the election are alleging intentional widespread fraud in multiple states, without being able to offer any creditable evidence that it happened. All the evidence they offer generally falls into three categories:
1. Things that are outright factually incorrect. For example, that video of vote counting in Pennsylvania (I think that was the state...) that supposedly shows suitcases of fake ballots being snuck in and opened late at night.
If you watch the full surveillance video, instead of just that short extract, you see that (1) those are the standard containers they use to store ballots when they are not actively working with them, and (2) those particular ballots were ballots they were working with earlier and put in those containers when they stopped. In other words, all the excerpt is actually showing is the normal resumption of processing after a break.
Another example is the claims that votes were counted without Republican observers allowed in the room, usually based on Republican observers being turned away. Some observers were in fact turned away--because there were already the maximum number of legally allowed observers from their party in the room.
2. Things that are true, but are not evidence of fraud or error. For example, various statistical measures of a candidate's votes look different between the winner and loser in districts where one candidate receives a lot more votes than the other.
They point to these in heavy Biden districts, saying the differences indicate tampering. But if you look at heavy Trump districts, you see the same thing but going the other way.
3. Actual mistakes, such as ballots lost or miscounted. You get some of these in every big election, and no one has found any evidence that these mistakes were more frequent in this election, and even if every single one of this kind of mistake went in Biden's favor, it would not be anywhere near enough to change the outcome in any state.
Both sides agreed that there were serious issues with the ballots and counting, with the only dispute being how to address them because the issues made it pretty much impossible to determine who actually would have won if the system had been able to correctly register the intended vote of every voter.
There were no serious allegations that anyone did anything illegal or tampered with the votes.
I have a hard time believing that you are seriously comparing that to 2020, where those trying to overturn the election are alleging intentional widespread fraud in multiple states, without being able to offer any creditable evidence that it happened. All the evidence they offer generally falls into three categories:
1. Things that are outright factually incorrect. For example, that video of vote counting in Pennsylvania (I think that was the state...) that supposedly shows suitcases of fake ballots being snuck in and opened late at night.
If you watch the full surveillance video, instead of just that short extract, you see that (1) those are the standard containers they use to store ballots when they are not actively working with them, and (2) those particular ballots were ballots they were working with earlier and put in those containers when they stopped. In other words, all the excerpt is actually showing is the normal resumption of processing after a break.
Another example is the claims that votes were counted without Republican observers allowed in the room, usually based on Republican observers being turned away. Some observers were in fact turned away--because there were already the maximum number of legally allowed observers from their party in the room.
2. Things that are true, but are not evidence of fraud or error. For example, various statistical measures of a candidate's votes look different between the winner and loser in districts where one candidate receives a lot more votes than the other.
They point to these in heavy Biden districts, saying the differences indicate tampering. But if you look at heavy Trump districts, you see the same thing but going the other way.
3. Actual mistakes, such as ballots lost or miscounted. You get some of these in every big election, and no one has found any evidence that these mistakes were more frequent in this election, and even if every single one of this kind of mistake went in Biden's favor, it would not be anywhere near enough to change the outcome in any state.
chrisco255(2)
I generally agree with you, but I doubt YT did a significant amount of damage compared to all the mainstream news coverage of Trump himself.
If Trump were a no-name fringe conspiracist, YT could be blamed for amplifying him. But he has Twitter, every news org, and his campaign's mailing list that (combined) are probably far more influential.
If Trump were a no-name fringe conspiracist, YT could be blamed for amplifying him. But he has Twitter, every news org, and his campaign's mailing list that (combined) are probably far more influential.
How stupid is Youtube to think this will do anything but make people believe all the lies they're hearing? "Would Youtube do this unprecedented thing unless it was true?"
Why not just let the marketplace of ideas shake things out? They can't magic away people's beliefs, they aren't the CCP. So they might as well let people hash it out.
Why not just let the marketplace of ideas shake things out? They can't magic away people's beliefs, they aren't the CCP. So they might as well let people hash it out.
This is a gross violation of the right to free speech. Youtube is no longer just a private company. They're more of a public square where masses of people from all over the world communicate ideas. Now Youtube is stating that many of those ideas are not allowed. This is a fascist action by nature. Big Tech needs to be regulated if they are going to be so blatantly political and partisan.
> Youtube is stating that many of those ideas are not allowed
Not really, no. People can post all the ideas they want, you just can't make claims without evidence to back them up. Personally, I'd love to see this extended.
Forget politics, we could extend this to obvious nonsense like homeopathy, creationism, holocaust denial or Nickelback fans.
> Big Tech needs to be regulated if they are going to be so blatantly political and partisan.
So your solution to politics and partisanship is regulation by partisan politicians?
Not really, no. People can post all the ideas they want, you just can't make claims without evidence to back them up. Personally, I'd love to see this extended.
Forget politics, we could extend this to obvious nonsense like homeopathy, creationism, holocaust denial or Nickelback fans.
> Big Tech needs to be regulated if they are going to be so blatantly political and partisan.
So your solution to politics and partisanship is regulation by partisan politicians?
Dominion Voting Machine Flaws -- 2020 Election Coffee County, Georgia Video 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46CAKyyObls&feature=emb_titl...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46CAKyyObls&feature=emb_titl...
America has such a secure and strong democracy, that an internet video platform has to take steps just so it will not unwillingly help incite a civil war in the country they operate out of. Internet blackouts are literally "developing world unstable democracy" tier measures.
I feel sorry for you guys out there. I wish you had a political system that was immune to events like this so online video companies wouldn't have to stand up. An online video site is literally doing the job of politicians.
I feel sorry for you guys out there. I wish you had a political system that was immune to events like this so online video companies wouldn't have to stand up. An online video site is literally doing the job of politicians.
> We also disallow content alleging widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of a historical U.S. Presidential election.
I'd be honestly curious if this includes the 1876 presidential election, in which 101% of eligible voters in South Carolina had their ballot counted, and the dispute over the proper way to count disputed electoral college votes was vigorous and deadlocked enough that the Democratic party got the end of Reconstruction as a concession in the Compromise of 1877 as compensation for allowing a Republican president.
I'd be honestly curious if this includes the 1876 presidential election, in which 101% of eligible voters in South Carolina had their ballot counted, and the dispute over the proper way to count disputed electoral college votes was vigorous and deadlocked enough that the Democratic party got the end of Reconstruction as a concession in the Compromise of 1877 as compensation for allowing a Republican president.
If there was a giant disinformation campaign about that election claiming that the historically attested fraud did not occur, that Tilden was actually the legitimate 19th president, and this was directly weakening the fabric on which we've built our democracy? Sure, I guess.
Obviously it isn't, so no one cares. The point here is clearly to combat deliberate spreading of lies about an election. Now, you can argue that it won't work or will backfire, but there's no significant question about the purpose here.
Obviously it isn't, so no one cares. The point here is clearly to combat deliberate spreading of lies about an election. Now, you can argue that it won't work or will backfire, but there's no significant question about the purpose here.
If Trump was appointed President in a similar fashion to Hayes then we would suddenly care if YouTube or any other platform was censoring content that questioned whether this was legitimate or not.
I for one am not comfortable with Youtube and the likes of people like that controlling what is allowed to spread on the internet. I also seriously doubt any competitor will ever outdo them, due to the nature of their monopoly.
I did not vote for the people at Youtube to control anyones election. Even if what they are doing now is good, this kind of control over media and information will be used for catastrophic consquences in the future.
When the political climate swings from it's current position to another, the people in control at Youtube are going to have a very hard case to make in court at what they are doing right now.
I did not vote for the people at Youtube to control anyones election. Even if what they are doing now is good, this kind of control over media and information will be used for catastrophic consquences in the future.
When the political climate swings from it's current position to another, the people in control at Youtube are going to have a very hard case to make in court at what they are doing right now.
Judging mostly from the way the US government and Big Tech is handling this, I am now almost certain that widespread election fraud did occur. It does not differ one bit from the way Russia and Turkey handle their election frauds.
I haven't done any actual research on the topic myself, just sharing how it looks from the outside. I live half a world apart and have never been to the US.
I haven't done any actual research on the topic myself, just sharing how it looks from the outside. I live half a world apart and have never been to the US.
Let’s be real for a moment; why didn’t YouTube do the same for the russian collusion charade? How about the many video clips used out of context to manipulate the public? YouTube, google, facistbook etc are all surrogates for the DNC.
the idea of a safe harbor date is also one which we will see shorty, has little relevance.
https://hereistheevidence.com/
the idea of a safe harbor date is also one which we will see shorty, has little relevance.
https://hereistheevidence.com/
I would argue that the difference lies mostly with evidence: there is hard evidence of Russian propaganda campaigns via social media, and many lengthy (and non-partisan) investigations and reports backing it up. Not so for claims of election fraud this year, which we can tell by the scores of cases which have been lost or thrown out because the claims have no foundation in reality.
If there is fraud, I want to get to the bottom of it. Which is why I’ve been watching the court cases (plenty which have come before trump appointees), none of which are making progress.
The reality is that the election feels less secure this year because of the efforts by Trump et al to make it seem so. This is not normal and is not at all like the Democratic response in 2016. Hilary Clinton conceded the night of the election. The election is turning out to be significantly less close this year than it was in 2016. Trump’s response to loosing is to make it feel like he lost unfairly, by spouting nonsense and not following the norms of his predecessors. The norm of conceding when the election becomes clear is an important part of the process which helps people trust the results.
Trumps refusal to do so and resulting disinformation campaign is the reason the election isn’t trusted by some people this year. It’s disinformation: lies spread with the intent of misleading people.
In 2016, Democrats didn’t complain that widespread fraud occurred in the election and that it should be overturned. The general feeling was that it sucked to loose and a few figures even said we should at least give trump a chance. There wasn’t a disinformation campaign.
As it became more clear that Russian social media propaganda was fairly influential in polarizing voters in a certain direction, there was a lot of outcry about it. The fact that Trump never did anything about it is partly why it seems like there was collusion.
The reason why it may make sense for YouTube to make this move is just given how things have played out. The campaign has had a chance to prove that there was fraud, and it couldn’t provide any proof. These theories have had their day in the courts. Are we really loosing anything specifically by deplatforming it at this point? It’s had a chance to prove itself.
At this point in time, the disinformation is very hurtful to our society.
All of that said, I’m really not sure we should be ok with YouTube’s deplatforming abilities. It’s a tough situation since large media sites are becoming much more like public places than private. And obviously we have some laws against, e.g., causing unwarranted panic in public places because of the harm it can cause.
But I think this is a totally different situation than what you’re comparing it to.
If there is fraud, I want to get to the bottom of it. Which is why I’ve been watching the court cases (plenty which have come before trump appointees), none of which are making progress.
The reality is that the election feels less secure this year because of the efforts by Trump et al to make it seem so. This is not normal and is not at all like the Democratic response in 2016. Hilary Clinton conceded the night of the election. The election is turning out to be significantly less close this year than it was in 2016. Trump’s response to loosing is to make it feel like he lost unfairly, by spouting nonsense and not following the norms of his predecessors. The norm of conceding when the election becomes clear is an important part of the process which helps people trust the results.
Trumps refusal to do so and resulting disinformation campaign is the reason the election isn’t trusted by some people this year. It’s disinformation: lies spread with the intent of misleading people.
In 2016, Democrats didn’t complain that widespread fraud occurred in the election and that it should be overturned. The general feeling was that it sucked to loose and a few figures even said we should at least give trump a chance. There wasn’t a disinformation campaign.
As it became more clear that Russian social media propaganda was fairly influential in polarizing voters in a certain direction, there was a lot of outcry about it. The fact that Trump never did anything about it is partly why it seems like there was collusion.
The reason why it may make sense for YouTube to make this move is just given how things have played out. The campaign has had a chance to prove that there was fraud, and it couldn’t provide any proof. These theories have had their day in the courts. Are we really loosing anything specifically by deplatforming it at this point? It’s had a chance to prove itself.
At this point in time, the disinformation is very hurtful to our society.
All of that said, I’m really not sure we should be ok with YouTube’s deplatforming abilities. It’s a tough situation since large media sites are becoming much more like public places than private. And obviously we have some laws against, e.g., causing unwarranted panic in public places because of the harm it can cause.
But I think this is a totally different situation than what you’re comparing it to.
Because it wasn't a charade. The US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found that collusion occurred between Russian nationals, and possibly Russian intelligence, and the Trump campaign.
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/512487-senate-p...
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/512487-senate-p...
From the article II of the constitution:
> Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
Governors have outstepped their authority by allowing mail-in ballots which changes election rules. Which led us into the mess we're currently are.
> Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
Governors have outstepped their authority by allowing mail-in ballots which changes election rules. Which led us into the mess we're currently are.
> Governors have outstepped their authority by allowing mail-in ballots which changes election rules.
Don't most states have laws on the books that delegate much of the authority of administering elections to their respective executive branches?
Don't most states have laws on the books that delegate much of the authority of administering elections to their respective executive branches?
The cynic in me sees this, which is just the latest move in a series of overreaching actions being taken by the big social media giants, as an effort to get Section 230 repealed.
The more blatant they are in their partisan actions, the more they rile up the opposition and the more the pressure on lawmakers to repeal Section 230.
Once that happens, they get to have full control over the content on their platforms "because the law makes them liable", and they never have to worry about competition ever rising up against them ever again. They basically got to ride the coattails of Section 230 to the point of a monopoly; repealing it just gives them everything they want.
Ah whatever, censorship is not the answer in a free democracy. Freedom of speech has to be more than just a law written on some paper somewhere for it to mean something; it has to be something the people believe in their day-to-day interactions with their fellow countrymen. I suppose that's gone at this point...
The more blatant they are in their partisan actions, the more they rile up the opposition and the more the pressure on lawmakers to repeal Section 230.
Once that happens, they get to have full control over the content on their platforms "because the law makes them liable", and they never have to worry about competition ever rising up against them ever again. They basically got to ride the coattails of Section 230 to the point of a monopoly; repealing it just gives them everything they want.
Ah whatever, censorship is not the answer in a free democracy. Freedom of speech has to be more than just a law written on some paper somewhere for it to mean something; it has to be something the people believe in their day-to-day interactions with their fellow countrymen. I suppose that's gone at this point...
Can you really call these "partisan actions"?
They are removing videos containing provable, obvious lies. An unabated, huge volume of lies and deceit, that altogether is potentially dangerous.
Those lies happen to favour a political party, and are even instigated by the leader of that party, but I don't agree that the action of removing them is "partisan"; these actions would be taken regardless of which party was benefiting.
They are removing videos containing provable, obvious lies. An unabated, huge volume of lies and deceit, that altogether is potentially dangerous.
Those lies happen to favour a political party, and are even instigated by the leader of that party, but I don't agree that the action of removing them is "partisan"; these actions would be taken regardless of which party was benefiting.
I really hope something is done against Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai's content. He's been posting highly misleading/disingenuous election fraud material in order to gain a following, and people are believing it because he touts his PhD from MIT. Honestly at this point between his senate run and "Inventor of Email" scandal I'm surprised MIT hasn't had a response.
For example, here's a video that debunks many of his claims: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aokNwKx7gM8
For example, here's a video that debunks many of his claims: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aokNwKx7gM8
If that video debunks his claims it means something has been done against him.
Yes, in a perfect world where all of his followers fact-check everything he says, that would be enough to discredit him. Sadly this is not the case.
Do you think they'll change their minds if Google censors it? It'll make the opposite effect.
Cognitive dissonance is a thing, it happens to everybody to some degree but you don't fight it with censorship.
Cognitive dissonance is a thing, it happens to everybody to some degree but you don't fight it with censorship.
It's kind of amazing to me that a bunch of people who work in tech, and are ostensibly very smart, seem to think that elections in the United States are somehow uniquely immune to fraud. We believe this despite the fact that on any given day there's an article (several, sometimes) about some event driven by fraud in basically any other human endeavor that goes on in this country or the world that gets upvoted to the front page. Elections in this country are basically based on the honor system. We don't enforce any nation-wide robust protocols to verify anything. We just trust that everything that happens is on the up-and-up at the local level. That's fine, in my book, but it's also fine to be suspicious that there should be more scrutiny.
Is claiming the election was "stolen" part of that scrutiny? Well, I don't know. And neither does YouTube. Tech has made it super easy to amplify claims of scrutiny, but it's really uncomfortable to me that Google gets to decide what kind of scrutiny is okay. This is the company that has a business model that is literally based constant and universal surveillance of its users. Whey the hell should I trust them?
Feels like we should all take a break from the internet for a while after reading this thread.
Is claiming the election was "stolen" part of that scrutiny? Well, I don't know. And neither does YouTube. Tech has made it super easy to amplify claims of scrutiny, but it's really uncomfortable to me that Google gets to decide what kind of scrutiny is okay. This is the company that has a business model that is literally based constant and universal surveillance of its users. Whey the hell should I trust them?
Feels like we should all take a break from the internet for a while after reading this thread.
It's particularly amazing given those same people come out in droves to complain about voting machines being insecure on any article about electronic voting, yet the Dominion electronic voting system was used in all the disputed states.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25359003&p=2
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25359003&p=3
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25359003&p=4
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25359003&p=5
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25359003&p=6
Corporate press releases tend to be an exception to HN's rule about original sources (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...) because they are invariably self-serving and usually obscure. This one seems ok, but I think I'll pilfer the title from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25361291, which gets to the point more directly.