I don't want to get too political here, but the propagation of Alex-Jones-esque conspiracy can be very influential to a larger-than-it-should-be percentage of the population, who will vote in demagogues who perpetuate these narratives.

If you have such little faith in your fellow citizens' decision making capabilities, isn't your argument really just a criticism of democracy?

You only trust them to vote, if they're going to vote according to a narrow band of acceptable thought. At that point, you're really just tyrannical, the democracy is an illusion.

Democracy requires a functional education system. It's not about "a narrow band of acceptable thought". The truth matters.

I didn't realize the truth was so simple, and a matter of education.

Is an unborn fetus a person or a cluster of cells?

Is a transgender woman a woman or a man approximating phenotypical gender characteristics of a woman?

Is sex under 18 capable of consent? Under 16? Under 14? In Spain it was 13 until only a few years ago, where is "the truth?"

Prostitution, gambling, drugs? Truth?

Almost all of the most contentious issues are not unresolved because of a lack of education, they're unresolved because of inherent moral conflicts worthy of negotiation. (Age of consent isn't really contentious, I just wanted to show something that most people consider to be obvious or a given not being necessarily resolvable). If we were to simply convince more people that a woman's right to bodily autonomy supercedes the unborn's right to live, or vice versa, we would have only really succeeded in indoctrination. Neither position is "truthful," it's always just an arbitrary moral elevation of one violation of consent over another.

I think the only issue even close to approximating the simplicity you've described would be climate change, but even then there is a wide chasm between the role people believe that the state should play.

That's their choice then. We have to have believe that a majority of our fellow citizens are by and large capable of overcoming such views otherwise democracy itself is a failed concept.

Censoring their content to bias their political views in a way you like is... extremist at best.

Ok, I'm a little tired of this constantly coming up; it's not a political position to rebut something that is objectively incorrect. If Party A bases its platform on the idea that "All Circles Are Secretly Squares", this is objectively false, and me saying so isn't me "biasing their political views in a way I like", it's a simple matter of fact.

The earth is not flat. This is relatively easy to prove, but people can be influenced by the right rhetoric, and they vote.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't be allowed to believe in dumb things from a legal perspective, I just don't think they're entitled to a platform.

Would you apply this logic to ISIS recruitment videos? "It's their choice! YouTube shouldn't pull their videos because if they do democracy has failed as a concept!"

> I'm a little tired of this constantly coming up

Perhaps then you shouldn't have made it into a political position by suggesting that they'd all vote for a specific candidate.

> This is relatively easy to prove, but people can be influenced by the right rhetoric, and they vote.

It's a bit of a trusting trust exercise - you can prove it in a way that satisfies you, but that doesn't necessarily satisfy everyone.

> Would you apply this logic to ISIS recruitment videos?

Much more debatable because ISIS videos encourage outright violence.

I didn't say they'd all vote for a specific candidate, but based on what you're telling me, this is the logical conclusion:

1) People don't vote based on their beliefs, 2) Beliefs can't be wrong, 3) A vote based on a wrong belief can't lead to an undesirable candidate.

That's a complete and utter misrepresentation of what I said and I have no interest in engaging it.

I didn't say that's what you said, I said that's the logical conclusion.

If we expose people to the most sophisticated system of disinformation ever created in the history of mankind, with no restrictions or supervision of any kind, and then watch democracy collapse, it's not enough to to say "Welp! Democracy is a failed concept".

This is not about censorship. This is about each of use trying to help educate, uplift and enlighten those around us. In other words, it's up to us to help our fellow citizens. If you want to punt on that project, then so be it. But not all of us have given up.

> the most sophisticated system of disinformation ever created in the history of mankind

The exact same system is used for spreading that information too. Adding your personal bias into the system is not a "fix" for disinformation.

It's not censoring as much as school is not censoring. Some things are just factually, objectively wrong and unsupported by evidence.

No, it is absolutely necessary to control the spread of racial slander and similar forms of hate, because those have got people killed. From the Holocaust to Rwanda to Myanmar, once the lies about the evil of X racial group reach a critical level the violence starts and can be inflamed into a self-sustaining cycle of violence.

This is off topic as we're talking about flat earth here, but I'll engage it anyways: Are you suggesting that a lack of access to such information is the only thing stopping such genocides from occurring? You think this is a realistic level of faith in humanity to hold?

Why is it unreasonable to think that people act on the information they receive? That is after all how normal politics works. If people talk about how bad the potholes are in the roads, someone will demand that something is done about the potholes. If people talk about how Jews eat the blood of children, someone will demand that something is done about the Jews.

It's not sensible to say "lack of information about X is the only thing stopping Y from happening" because that can be true of an infinite number of falsehoods. Lack of information about the riches of Atlantis is a major factor in people not setting off into the sea. And so on.

Isn't it also reasonable to think that people consider the information they take in? Testability is key to most strong beliefs and I like to think that the majority of the population is not so firmly rooted that they refuse to update their views based on evidence to the contrary.

Sure, a few crazy people may choose to believe that Jews eat the blood of children, but I hope that in a free society where information to the contrary is readily available it will not impact a significant enough portion of the population to cause the sorts of genocides you're suggesting.

> Isn't it also reasonable to think that people consider the information they take in?

We started this conversation talking about people who believe the earth is flat.

Yes and the number of people who believe in something like that is actually rather small. That's kind of my point. These things get treated as way more serious than they are given actual belief rates.

This is measurably false. Climate change denial is a pretty obvious example that hurts everyone. The facts are available, relatively easy to find, but people still tow their party lines about it being a "hoax from China", or some such nonsense.

Is it measurably false? I seem to remember seeing statistics that showed those convinced it very much is happening were over 50% and rising of even the US population while those who were convinced it was NOT were under 7% and dropping. I would suggest that this is in fact an example to the contrary.

Do you have any evidence to suggest that these beliefs are so widespread as to influence a majority of the population and require intervention for a properly functioning democracy as the parent was suggesting?

Well, first off, you don't need a "majority" for it to cause damage. The Nazis didn't have more than 30% of the vote, but they caused damage. Currently in the US, we have a president who has said, multiple times, that climate change was a hoax made up by China to make us weaker in manufacturing [1], and has dismantled the EPA to make sure they explicitly don't do anything about climate change [2].

Second, I'm going to need some sources for your stats. It looks like in the Gallup polls, we still have roughly 69% of Republicans who claim that climate change is greatly exaggerated [3], with only 35% of Republicans who think humans are the cause of it, and only 18% or Republicans that think it will cause any problems in their lifetime.

[1] https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jun...

[2] https://mashable.com/2017/02/03/trump-epa-climate-website-ch...

[3] https://news.gallup.com/poll/231530/global-warming-concern-s...

While there may be truth there, those numbers don't take into account the strength of those beliefs, also note that if I'm not mistaken, it's not counting independents who may vote republican, so the pool is actually much smaller in terms of overall Americans. I think this was the study I'd seen if you're interested:

https://e360.yale.edu/digest/americans-who-accept-climate-ch...

Sorry, what's the opposing-political-side of "Sandy Hook was a hoax"? Or "Hillary Clinton is a pedophile operating out of the basement of a pizza restaurant"? The notion that all speech has an opposite but equally-biased counterpart is simply not correct.

And frankly, I'm not convinced it's gaining any kind of new followers at all. 20 years ago it was virtually unheard of to encounter a flat earth believer, but thanks to Youtube and the Internet at large all kinds of fringe beliefs are brought to the masses' consciousness. That doesn't mean that those beliefs are finding new adherents. It doesn't give fascists license to crack down on anyone's beliefs either. Google/Youtube censoring anyone over this is literally doing more harm than good in every conceivable way.

But it is. No matter how stupid you think a belief is, giving it an audience does give it new followers. The more stupid it is, the more of an audience it needs to gain significant amounts of new followers… but thanks to youtube, you can have hundreds of thousands of people watching a video and that's a drop in the ocean. And it's not flat-earth BS that's actually harmful, it's the spread of other kinds of political propaganda which radicalizes people.

For some reason, it's not controversial to say "we're banning ISIS propaganda videos which radicalize young muslims", but it is controversial to say "we're banning political propaganda videos which radicalize young americans".

Young or old, actually.

I spoke to a flat earther once. Trying to convince her via science - explaining how GPS works, showing her images from space, etc, was not convincing her.

So I tried to understand her mindset, and just talked about her life. Turned out she was abused by a parent who was "doing it for her own good" - it was a horrible story. Her whole childhood was a lie, she was trained by the parent not to trust her instincts, and to believe something false so the parent could benefit.

My takeaway was that her childhood experience taught her that you can't trust people and that "big lies" are possible, and so she latched onto the flat earth thing due to that.

This reminds me of something I read of Thich Nhat Hanh's - don't answer the question, answer the questioner. The belief they're espousing is really secondary to the attitude that leads them to buy into it. I find your approach as not only more likely to effect positive change with that, it's just more compassionate and respectful.

There's an almost palpable element of dehumanisation among those ridiculing them and wanting to silence them, as if holding on to untruths makes them unworthy to exist in our society.

Doesn't have to be political propaganda, the anti-vax movement wouldn't be as big without the publicity it gets on social media.

The way to truth is never censorship. SV/Google employees have become the book burning church of the 60's and 70's, complete with shoving their morality down everyone's throats by any means necessary.

So you're going to try to silence, or censor, a company into not choosing a more relevant algorithm? Their original algo changed and it "censored" more relevant content. I had a few videos on youtube giving my own personal experience of 9/11 but they quickly got overshadowed once the algo changed to prefer dramatic conspiracy content over regular content, even if it is more relevant. I don't like being "censored" either and I'd rather youtube change the algo.

It's easy for scientifically-minded people who inhabit communities of similar thinkers to underestimate the power of propaganda.

Human psychology hasn't changed, though, and propaganda is still powerful.

Yes. People are remarkably dumb and gullible.

It's mostly a fault of the education system, countries with better education such as Japan do not have it this many gullible people (per capita), USA and other countries do not teach even the most basic skepticism going as far as teaching completely ridiculous things such as creationism inside the schools themselves under the guise of "tolerance" and "teach both sides".

Back up, before you crap all over American schools, public schools don't teach creationism, and the attempt to do so resulted in court case ruling it unconstitutional.

Also, do you have any direct evidence in your claim that Japanese are more skeptical? The Aum Shinrikyo death cult got almost 10% of the vote in the mid-90's.

The amount of studies about skeptisim and gullibility around the world are near none, but there is some data about US highschoolers consider true and it shows dangerous trends such as 1 every 4 students believing astrology is real: https://www.questia.com/magazine/1G1-148278044/skepticism-in...

I would need to see comparisons with the rest of the world before that has any relevance to my point. Kids will believe lots of stupid things.

According to todayifoundout, US schools aren't nearly as bad as the meme likes to portray them [1].

[1] https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2015/01/kids-get-su...

The thing is that we don't know how related the other areas of education are with skepticism; if I would have to guess I would say reading and science are the most related but that's just a guess, the best path forward would be to actually measure skepticism, stuff like how good are people at spotting fake news from the real ones and such.

I live in Japan and I'm shocked at how many people here believe in patently absurd nonsense. I wouldn't be surprised if someone mentions to me, for example, that they saw a ghost recently, or went to a fortune teller.

At least for the ghosts thing, belief in ghosts, demons and spirits has been deep-rooted in Japanese folklore throughout history[0]. Also there is different kinds of "believe", for example if some Japanese lady said a ghost got her pregnant I think nobody would believe her, my guess is that they believe to a point but not to the point to spark risky behavior from it (e.g. antivaxxers)

[0] http://www.asianart.com/articles/rubin/

You don't believe modern Japanese believe in absurdities from the past because it's part of folklore but it's not okay for Americans to believe in absurdities from the past because… the Japanese have a better education system? (Which I'd also count as an absurd belief because I only hear complaints about it.)

And are you really going to give lessons on the mythology of Japan to people who live in Japan? That's perhaps a tad presumptuous, especially considering it's like telling people living in Britain that witches are part of British folklore.

I mean, please.

You miss-represented all the points, AND skipped the one where I said they don't take such superstitions as seriously as their American counterparts.

An anecdote: A friend of a friend's son was very sick in the stomach. She went to see a fortune teller to ask what was wrong. The fortune teller took her money, did a reading, and told her she needed to take her son to a doctor.

I found that amusing. I have tons of these, most of them amuse me. Try living here and (among the many other notions you have of the place that are no doubt wrong) you'll see there's a huge amount of superstition, regardless of education level.

If you can't afford to come, https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/ is a good resource. It's amazing how much that sounds absurd is true.

I think flat eartherism is stupid but I really don’t want YouTube start censoring stuff. That’s a dangerous path.

Has Youtube actually started censoring anything but the most extreme voices? They still allow race-baiting idiots like Stefan Molyneux on their platform, so I doubt they have some "evil liberal agenda".

They took off Alex Jones, not for ideological reasons, but because he was blatantly lying about people being pedophiles; this was after years of accusing school shooting victims of being liars . If you can't see how that's a violation of a terms of service, I really don't know what it would take to convince you.

They already effectively censor via algorithm. They are a monopoly that should be broken up.

How, exactly, would you ‘break up’ YouTube? How do you divide the whole into reasonable parts?

You start by separating it from Google, so that it needs to compete with other video-sharing sites on a more-level playing field.

YouTube is the 900lb gorilla. How would breaking apart from Google (which is not what was suggested) help other video sites?

YouRube is FAR past critical mass. It IS online video. And I can’t think of anything you could do short of shutting the site down that would fix that and give competitors a level playing field.

A big chunk of YouTube's dominance comes from Google's other lines of business including online search and online ads. See the other post today from a former competitor[0] for an example.

The reasoning is that stripping YouTube of Alphabet's deep pockets from advertising would give competitors a chance to monetize as well as YouTube, without fearing that Google will choke off their air supply to preserve YouTube's dominance.

It might not be enough, but it would be a start.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20472351

I'm afraid of real conspiracies, but the main stream media seems far less interested in them than this nonsense that I've yet to be convinced is any more harmful than any other weird hobby.