In addition other democratic states have strict limits on free speech such as Singapore: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_14_of_the_Constituti...
After all even “democracy” is nuanced here in the states. Obvious examples from our past include the wholesale disenfranchisement of women until 100 years ago, Jim Crow era laws, poll taxes, and more. Did we have democracy then? Do we have democracy now?
Did we have free speech when broadcasters in the USA had to abide by the Fairness Doctrine? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine. Our system has it’s faults. But one can’t say that we ever had unfettered democracy or free speech, ever.
At what point is speech considered abuse? If you make the analogy between speech and network traffic, we intentionally censor “abusive” traffic to save our networks from collapse. Could one make the argument that entities with an interest in destabilizing our democracy should not be able to inject propaganda into our discourse because “free speech”? I think it’s a valid argument to have and a nuance that we have to contend with.
There are no absolutes. Trivializing this with a snappy trope of “democracy can’t survive without free speech” is disingenuous IMO.
The democracy index rates Singapore at 6.02/10. About 0.03 away from being a "hybrid regime" and currently rated a "flawed democracy." It's ranked as worse than places such as Ukraine (currently in a civil war), Thailand (run by a military dictatorship), etc.
Having been stuck in the lockdown they imposed earlier this year, which was widely unpopular with the city's residents and which lead to the biggest support for the opposition in the country's history, I would not at all call Singapore a democracy.
Lovely place, but I definitely wouldn't want to live there.
One could also argue that censoring one side of politics deepens divisions and drives people to polical extremes. I would rephrase "democracy can’t survive without free speech" as "democracy can’t survive without free political speech"
Firstly, the op like myself would have been against all those disasters of democracy as well.
Secondly, you're using things we deemed reprehensible enough to stop doing, outlaw, or repeal as an excuse to now do something in kind.
Op seems to have learned from those mistakes, why are you trying to use them to justify making new ones?
> Why is it that we have to ignore nuances in these arguments?
I very much agree. Why can't you understand that just because we've never had perfectly free speech, that maybe it's still worth fighting for most of the time. And that a few counter examples do not therefore equate to free speech being something unworthy of protecting.
The reason this becomes an absolute is, unlike with traffic, the decision about which speech is abusive is objective and itself easy to abuse. When there's no way to talk about the abuse (a situation the abuser would create) then it will continue until the abuser's ability to censor speech is removed. In the real world this ability is often removed as the result of some serious violence and so most people don't like to create conditions that could lead to such a situation.
People sometimes say that speech in a democracy is a nicer alternative to violence.
Key point related to your comment:
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
By mentioning child porn, he/she shows that there is actually a line and now we can discuss where it should lie.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Human brains are hackable, more so if you can control their inputs. Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, they all found the attack vector.
So democracy and truth are more related to each other than democracy and speech. We tend to think that speech is truth, but it is not, and people over time have voted themselves out into dictatorships over and over.
(edit: typos, many)
What I wanted to focus on is that it is not true that free speech is the solution to all democratic problems, it's not an absolute good. We limit speech already, you can't advocate for the killing of other people, races, etc...
Also, about free speech, if you can say what you want but there are very large entities controlling who gets to hear what you say, then in a way censorship might be already happening. In this case non-arousing messages are being suppressed because they don't make money, so we all feel like everybody is either pro-this or against-this, and they're all really mad and or dangerous.
This is not an easy problem to solve.
Actually, not that I support such behavior but (at least in the US) you can generally advocate for it. People usually don't (thankfully) so I don't have any examples immediately to hand, but my understanding is that the legal test is "imminent lawless action". (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio)
> free speech is the solution to all democratic problems, it's not an absolute good
Rather than an absolute good, I would argue that it ought to be viewed as an absolute right. I would also argue that, whether used for good or ill, free political speech is a functional necessity of any democracy. (Necessary but not sufficient and all that.)
> in a way censorship might be already happening. In this case non-arousing messages are being suppressed
Agreed, but it's a separate issue and I've no idea what anyone is actually supposed to do about it.
I'm of the opinion that people are not rational most of the time, but operate on habit and reason by use of heuristics. My evidence for this is that rational thought is costly and in psychology they teach this (that people aren't usually rational, merely motivated and economical with their attention).
> Human brains are hackable, more so if you can control their inputs. Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, they all found the attack vector.
This is a good reason why gatekeeping information is so dangerous.
> So democracy and truth are more related to each other than democracy and speech. We tend to think that speech is truth, but it is not, and people over time have voted themselves out into dictatorships over and over.
Unfortunately there is no test for truth. However if you control people's sources of information you can keep them from figuring out that they have been lied to.
How are we to ensure that the gatekeepers of information are honest and wise?
Now tear down the pieces of propaganda and burn them. Is this censorship?
I think human brains are sufficiently able to be hacked by the right information. With certain kinds of information, those people could end up causing material harm to someone who is completely uninvolved. That is the ultimate danger that I believe YouTube and the like are trying to avoid, and if true it would be an admittance of a sort that some kinds of information are dangerous to some kinds of people. The name "psychological warfare" implies that communication can be weaponized, in a sense. Certain people do not change their ways regardless of what you try to tell them.
I think the issue is centered not around people trying to have a reasoned debate, but those who have been lost to debate more or less permanently. Previously, you couldn't scatter this kind of information about on the scale were seeing today, and also recommend similar content using very effective algorithms. The more millions of people the content reaches, the more latent believers it will reach and end up converting, even if the conversion rate is a fraction of a percent. And many of these people are very vocal.
In a sense, the content takedown seems like an attempt to counteract the fact that the algorithms are too effective of a medium for misinformation. I don't think we would have seen this kind of scale with books or flyers.
you and I couldn't. Oligarchs and their governments could and did. The difference is that now their position is threatened by the democratization of information warfare.
It also looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle, which is exactly what the site is not for, and which destroys what it is for (thoughtful conversation on intellectually curious topics).
We've warned you many times about this in the past. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and fix this going forward, we'd appreciate it.
(I hate this but...)
...and Hitler before them.
I mean, the American founders already rejected a lot of ideas about the people governing themselves, because they knew from history that the people often can't check their worst impulses.
> Democracy and free speech are intrinsically linked.
Yeah, but what kinds of free speech work and what kinds don't? I used to be a free speech fundamentalist, but now I'm getting more skeptical of that position. Sort of like how radical Athenian-style direct democracy doesn't work, maybe radically giving everyone near-unchecked access to nationwide broadcasting doesn't work, either.
Now, I'm not advocating for some kind of universal censorship apparatus, but maybe it's would be best if broadcast speech at least passed through some kind of editor (and I mean editor, making editorial decisions, not a censor) to build more judgement into the system.
As software engineers, we understand the value of code reviews. That kind of thing shouldn't be anathema.
It’s the first line in our enumerated rights.
This isn’t “oh we should rethink things” this is a matter of natural rights and precedes anything we’ve constructed.
But, and perhaps more importantly, relatively few people at the time could vote - in 1789 it was about 6% of the population as a whole. On the federal level, there was basically no protection of the right to vote at all - there was that bit about states having to have a "republican form of government", but it wasn't codified, and the broad understanding was that property requirements, poll taxes etc are all compatible with it. So, it was a very different environment overall.
(I'm not disagreeing with your basic premise - I support, it actually. But US is not a good historical model for it. I don't think there's any country that really is, or ever was. Those of us who believe that democracy is dead without radical free speech, have to figure out how to make it all work in a way that is, at least, tolerable to those who disagree with us.)
So what if the writers didn't always practice it? If it's been unequally applied - there's no stronger case than to hold people to account with the law of the land.
> It’s the first line in our enumerated rights.
> This isn’t “oh we should rethink things” this is a matter of natural rights and precedes anything we’ve constructed.
I never said anyone shouldn't have the right to express themselves. Do you think it's in the Constitution that you have the unalienable right post any lie you want to YouTube? I don't remember that being in there.
IMHO, lies are toxic to free speech, and it's in everyone's interest (and moral obligation) to do their best to limit their spread.
IMHO you're not interested in free speech unless you're willing to defend speech you find repugnant.
You don't need to protect speech everyone finds unobjectionable.
You need to protect speech that is almost universally opposed.
Minorities need protection, majorities don't, and this the basis of the American notion of freedom - insofar as the individual is the smallest minority.
> Do you think it's in the Constitution that you have the unalienable right post any lie you want to YouTube? I don't remember that being in there.
Clearly it isn't and I believe in freedom of association completely too. If a business wants to not serve anyone for any reason, I recognize that - clearly law has developed to qualify this.
This notion of freedom of association has no bearing on my ability to criticize Youtube for doing something I find wrong.
I can simultaneously believe that what Youtube is doing is wrong and they're completely allowed to do it.
Defending speech I find repugnant is not the same thing as defending a nonexistent right to post lies on Youtube.
Host the lies on your own website. Create flyers and pass them out. Talk to people in public settings. Write to the newspaper (they might not post your lies, but you're free to try to get them). Hold conferences. Do whatever you want. As long as the lies don't violate a few well-established exceptions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...
But the right to have your lies hosted for free (and given a valuable, far-reaching audience) on a private platform, no matter the consequences to others or to the platform itself? It doesn't exist.
I recognize they have a right to do it, but I have a right to make noise about it and criticize them.
We got so many pop-ups, accounts suspended, etc. around the Hunter Biden stuff, and what do you know - it turns out there was substance to the story.
This never happened around the Russian collusion stuff and I suspect most of the city lib elite that inhabits tech companies wouldn't find that a sanctimonious.
Nobody suggested otherwise, and your statement that "you're not interested in free speech unless you're willing to defend speech you find repugnant" is clearly a sidestep. You can support free speech without supporting the nonexistent (and unrelated) right to post lies on Youtube.
I am extremely confident that I can find examples of speech you wouldn't defend. How do you feel about false advertisement? Sharing of confidential military secrets?
Since you aren't willing to defend that speech and fight to make it legal, are you not interested in free speech?
Like, eugenicists in the 1920s would have a whole host of horrid “truths” they thought were scientifically supported at the time. Imagine the hurdles opposition would have in trying to voice their “factual truth.”
General restrictions on state power don't work. Capitalism crushes people. When that state power turns on the majority, the majority complains that their voices are silenced and then they go right back to ignoring the continued problems of the minority.
Perhaps the solution is to approach each situation on a case by case process. Protest and agitate when the state harms people and celebrate when the state protects people. Make harm reduction the goal.
In software people often point to how focusing on metrics can make you fail to achieve your true goal. Similarly, we should focus on the thing that free speech is intending to achieve rather than free speech itself.
I don't believe that the intention of the framers was that free speech was a good in-and-of itself but that making it difficult (but not impossible) to restrict speech has positive outcomes. At the very least, that is my read of things.
I wasn't talking about objectionable opinions or perspectives. I was talking about lies and falsehoods, which are becoming alarmingly widespread. Even now those things don't full First Amendment protections, which is why there can be laws against fraud and defamation, and the Supreme Court has even said "false statements of fact" do not enjoy protection [1].
You've recited many slogans, but it's important to consider what free speech is supposed to achieve, which, IMHO, is to allow progress towards truth. It's also important to keep other considerations in mind, and balance them. If you but too much focus on too small an area, you can easily find yourself becoming a Paperclip Maximizer.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
Or, a better quote from the syllabus:
> Although the Court has frequently said or implied that false factual statements enjoy little First Amendment protection, see, e.g., Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U. S. 323, 340, those statements cannot be read to mean “no protection at all.”
Go is arguing that free speech is required for democracy, and that democracy is why we want free speech.
The founders didn't like democracy all that much though
We don't "want free speech," it exists and a government that represents free people will recognize that.
The founders arrived at a consensus with representative democracy. They realized the dangers of democracy.
That there's a conversation about YouTube censoring people says that it is perfectly possible for free speech to not exist. It's not a physical law of the universe
Yet you can still release bad code. Code review is people looking at your idea/code and judging for themselves. Giving feedback.
Here we're trying to prevent that code from even being seen by others.
Ah yes, because Switzerland is such a hell hole.
What I'm saying is that the US is huge. And diverse. It's a scaling issue.
I hear that every time Switzerland is mentioned. I've yet to see a strong argument to suggest why it wouldn't scale in this day and age.
What I think doesn't scale is centralized systems like France, where all money flows to Paris and rarely any back. Switzerland on the other hand is extremely federated, to the point each canton, often smaller than average cities, have their own school system. Most tax money stays on the local level and didn't go to Bern. This independence IMHO is the critical factor for scaling that would work for moch larger countries.
As to the homogeneity: US has one language any natively born American speaks. Switzerland has 3, with a considerable political divide between the French and German spanking areas. Finally Switzerland has 20% Foreigners vs 10% in US. So again I would very much challenge you there.
It's funny you mention the school systems. They aren't centralized in the US. Heck, they aren't even necessarily centralized by the states! In the areas I've attended school, it's been by county. And even the one I graduated high school under was administratively treated as three separate school systems (because even at the county level, it was pretty large). It's one of the few areas left that haven't been completely taken over by the Federal government.
Yes, English is widely spoken in the US, but there are areas where it's a distant second. It may surprise you to learn that the US has no official language. I live in South Florida and it's not rare to encounter areas were on Spanish is spoken. There's an older dialect of German still spoken in parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. And there are areas on the West Coast where Vietnamese, Japanese and Mandarin (I think it's Mandarin is the most widely spoken Chinese language) are spoken.
I am surprised at the 20% (I found figures saying it was as high as %24) in Switzerland, but I would still contend that the US is still diverse. There are cultural differences between New England, the South, Texas, the Midwest, the Southwest and the West Coast that are probably just as deep as the French/German divide in Switzerland.
[1] Just prior the the US Civil war.
[2] Just after the Great Depression and World War II.
[3] And for all my voting life time, Congress has had lower polling numbers than any President, yet we keep electing the same yo-yos to office ("Congresscritter X is an idiot, but X is my idiot!").
Calling Switzerland homogeneous because everyone there is white is as racist as saying that China and Japan are the same because they are all yellow.
The US is less diverse than Switzerland and using the current system when it was half the population of Switzerland. The only reason why we do not have direct democracy is because it's a lot harder to rob a country blind when everyone is involved in the decisions.
With the vast amount of information on social media, which is where more and more people are getting most of their information nowadays, and the way social media algorithms are designed to maximize engagement, and the way human cognitive biases work, the result is you almost never get a balanced view presenting arguments for all sides even if all sides offering information are acting in good faith.
Then add in all those who are not acting in good faith, who have a much easier time generating vast quantities of low quality information than the people arguing in good faith have for generating high quality information, and it is even worse.
There was a recent article in Scientific American that covered research into this. Here was the HN discussion of it [1].
It is a question of intelligence, information, expertise and meta-expertise, all of those things. Privileging any of those components of sense-making is myopia of different sorts depending on what claims people are actually wanting to forward.
For instance if you want to look like a centrist while avoiding calling people dumb you say they're low-information voters, change the news, make them listen to these experts, give person X more control or say, when the news and those experts and that person all have problems of different sorts. Not one-dimensional.
By banning allegations of election fraud you could change "almost never" to "never".
There's always been an expectation of truthfulness in communication: We don't allow people to go around claiming that Pepsi causes AIDS, or cures cancer. You're not allowed to claim you're collecting for a charity, and then keep all the money for yourself. I doubt you'd be terribly okay with me claiming that you're a murderer and asking how much that biases your stance.
(Genuinely trying to understand if there is something that makes this different from any other sort of fraudulent communication - I don't see people defending the other stuff under the guise of "Free Speech", and I'm not clear why this would be different)
This does two things. First, it makes it so that if someone feels strongly enough that they're right to be willing to risk the penalty, the public still gets the information. This is important. It's a check on the courts getting it wrong.
And the second is that in order to punish someone for speech, you have to prove it in court in a public adversarial proceeding where the person being punished has an opportunity to defend themselves and the claim is aired as part of the court record in a context where everybody knows that it's in dispute but the media and any interested party still gets to find out what it is.
This is obviously not what happens when you implement a general prohibition against all claims of election fraud with no meaningful opportunity for anyone to view the material being censored or make their case that it shouldn't be prior to its removal.
People are not defending fraudulent communication. They are observing that the same factors that make audiences vulnerable to misinformation affect the censors and the process by which censors determine which information is harmful.
If we had a test for truth or sincerity we could use it to determine which information was false or put forth in bad faith. We don't, so any person who acts as an information gatekeeper could be one of those people who is lying or deceived and they would then be able to corrupt the discourse by censoring the information that exposes their lies or misunderstandings.
There is no US law that would stop someone from making expressions that are later determined to be fraudulent.
Note, commercial speech (e.g., advertisement) is considered a less protected species of speech and may be subject to prior restraint in limited viewpoint neutral circumstances.
I'm pretty certain you're 100% allowed to do this, though Pepsi inc may sue for damages.
But no US law can prevent you from saying it in the first place.
neither does youtube removing videos.
But more importantly, I don't even think your charity example works. Like you can be charged with fraud if you just put the money into your bank account, but if you collect for a charity and charge a 75% collecting and handling fee? Are you then collecting to a charity?
In this case it is more that somebody claims you are not collecting for the charity, you show the bank statements that conclusively prove (according to yourself) that you were collecting to a charity. Then somebody starts looking into it and claims they have evidence that you play golf with the bank teller. And that their manager is your college buddy.
And now you try to suppress the (alleged) photos.
To be clear, I don't think there was widespread fraud or voter suppression in favor of Biden. But the key difference is that normally there are disinterested parties (in particular courts) that can rule on the evidence, in politics there are by definition no disinterested parties in the US. And because of the superpower status of the US, it is even worse outside it.
There are infinitely many interpretations of "democracy" and "free speech" and it's hardly a simple yes/no question. We should be free/democratic society as much as possible, and it's an ongoing (while not always successful) effort. We should discuss concrete steps.
You cannot simplify trust to a single variable; you have to go case by case. And trust in the masses is partial; finding where it is and where it is not is critical.
A system where the most trusted people had 10 votes and least trusted people had 0.1 vote might make sense in a society of nerds voting on a software project, but not in general political application.
I’ve been to a country with a dictatorship with a faux democracy and no free speech. I asked the minister of journalism & communications whether he believes that free speech is possible in a democracy. He unabashedly said no, as there is no guarantee the “consensus” will be “correct”, especially given the influence of its adversaries.
Dogmatic arguments suck. Is Android/Apple better?
We don't live in a democratic utopia. Instead, belief in democracy and associated values has provided maximal value creation and competitiveness generated by knowledge economies when compared to other current operating models.
That half the country is willing to dismantle what's responsible for their quality of life would be funny, if it wasn't the joy of dictators everywhere. They can point to the absurdity of mob rule as half of us bite the hand that feeds. Clearly, something is already broken.
The ability to address a snug fit tailored messaging to specific audiences is a completely new level of "talking". It subverts the traditional democratic communication, where all participants realistically had a comparable and diverse data/information set. In contrast, given sufficient targeting advertisement budget, you can very deliberately dissimimate messages which shift the electorates decisions just enough that you get the political climate and outcome you want.
That's no longer the free speech of the constitution. That's mass manipulation. Brain hacking it was called elsewhere in the discussion.
What can yt, twitter, fb do?
Banning certain content feels bad, but how can they nudge us with the tweets, videos and posts that challenge us a little, like the old news stand always carried the paper we normally wouldn't read. Until we did, once in a while. And of course the paper was not 95% letters to the editor, unredacted.
How can the fb, google ai help us to structure the flood of information in a more nuanced way? Instead of a plump ban?
Until then, I reluctantly take the ban.
Not really. UK has far more limits on speech than the US but is just as much of a Democracy as the US.
"Free" speech has be weaponized in the internet age. It is a cancer that is actively destroying democracy.
And, frankly, stuff like ASBO makes it hard to take UK as a good example of a free society.
More information with less analysis of it will make less meaningful votes
There was lots of information about Brexit for example but a good portion of it was made up
They have a literal "House of Lords" which is "... by appointment or by heredity or official function."[1]
The house of lords can not create bills nor stop them. They can look over the elected parliament's shoulders and whine, that's it. It is a vestigial leaving of the monarchy system that, like the Monarchs themselves, the UK keeps because it's cute.
While in the US, un-elected corporations do very much the same thing, except when they whine, they get their way.
Thanks god that never happens in Britain.
Let's get real, it isn't the fact that corps lobby goverments that is the problem, there problem is when they can give unlimited cash bribes, like that can in the US. But they can not in the UK.
When you really start examining it, the US democrazy(sic) doesn't seem all that exceptional.
Yes, really, because an important part of the democratic process is that the opposition can express their ideas, criticism and disagreement without fearing fines or prison.
Yes, in the UK, this verbal playing field is narrower than in the US, but still fairly wide. Corbynistas could advocate for nationalization and open borders without being jumped on by uniformed thugs.
Look to places like Russia and Turkey to see a severely constricted field, with the opposition risking their freedom by doubting the Dear Leader.
Otherwise, you run out of words to describe most other countries.
Any argument advocating censorship is ultimately arguing for dictatorship.
Clearly smart people will discover smart videos on any web site they are located on, and there's no reason for anyone to need Youtube to find an audience.
Moreover, this isn't censorship by the government, but by Google. Why should a private company be made to disseminate disinformation when it doesn't want to? A key part of freedom of speech is the freedom not to speak, and mandating that a company publish information it doesn't want to is surely just as bad as forcing it to censor information it does want to publish.
-- Erich Fromm
He said that 1958, in an interview with Mike Wallace. Since then the gap between rich and poor (and between rich and mega-rich) kept exploding, media have been consolidated further, people have been uprooted even more, have been shit on and lied to even more, and have even less stakes in the outcome. Just doing more of the same will never lead to different results, yet by now many use current the state of things to argue for exactly that.
Likewise, no government should allow for parties that would destroy itself - yet here America is, falling apart.
Yes but the only "free speech" that's realistically able to be implemented is freedom of speech without fear of the government putting you jail for criticizing the government.
The other idealism of free speech implemented by commercial businesses is not possible because we (the collective "we") won't allow it to happen.
There is no broadcasting medium (including websites) in any country that doesn't have interference and pressure to remove/ban content via consumer boycotts, advertiser influence, subscribers, business' self-discretion, or decrees from government officials.
The above list of actors in society is the collective "we" that makes absolute free speech an unattainable goal. There is no business with an infinite bank account that can withstand all outside pressures to censor information. Apple has $200 billion in the bank and yet they bowed to China pressure to remove podcasts that supported Hong Kong.
If a successful/influential giant like Apple can't implement absolute free speech, what's the proposed alternative corporate structure that can do it? Nobody ever lays out a concrete plan that makes free speech possible.
[I don't mind the downvotes but I would really appreciate some replies with constructive comments explaining how commercial businesses can realistically implement free speech.]
Which business with UGC is censorship proof?
Isn't that the issue? Nobody has come up with a way to accomplish that. Does anyone have any constructive ideas on this?
Elegantly put. It seems you've triggered an avalanche of replies looking to stick asterisks or [#] footnotes and caveats to this statement to suit their biases of the day.
Bang some caveats in there and you put universal suffrage as a concept in question.
"[We need] a set of guiding principles to inform the types of speech that should be permitted in digital town squares"
Lets say that I'm an intelligent person that firmly believes in "rugged individualism" to the point where I'm an anarcho-georgist [1] and do not recognize the state as an authority for real property allocation based on a well reasoned moral philosophy.
Given the fact that there is no unclaimed territory for which I could live without falling under the purview of a state's thumb, and hence would not be allowed to "govern myself", how would I then govern myself consistent with my political philosophy?
This is obviously a hyperbolic example, but it's IMO an important exercise to explicate how a large group of people with heterogeneous values, is supposed to act/behave when a prime mover state system is (in effect) demanding no values be higher than it.
People are not intimate with the details of most government bureaucracies, they are not expected to be, and they're no expected to grasp such details in a way that they can make informed decisions.
And frankly that is absolutely correct. We believe in democracy to be the best system despite its flaws, and one of its flaws is that it's evident that most people have no freaking clue about how government works.
If you believe in speech for the purpose of government then you have to reject outright lies design with the intent of deligitimizing democracy.
I don't have time to listen to million bullshit peddlers with an agenda.
A bullshit peddler named Dr. Atkins was the only guy in the 90's saying that eggs were good for you. The rest of the establishment physicians said eggs were bad for you, guacamole was bad for you, all fat was bad, eat more pasta.
They were all wrong, Atkins was right (when it comes to eggs.) But if Youtube had existed, people like you would have said he was dangerous and demanded he be removed. That's the problem: How do you know the people you think are quacks are actually quacks? What about when the establishment is wrong. The Australian doctor who claimed ulcers were caused by bacteria was silenced, mocked, and ridiculed for decades. He was right, as we know now.
Yann LeCunn was mocked and ridiculed for his neural networks. He was outright rejected from conferences, and papers ignored, despite having groundbreaking results that set new benchmarks, because the established CS folks had decided that neural nets were garbage in the 80's. They were wrong, he was right.
But it's cool, I trust you to make decisions for me on what I can hear.
There is a lot of things we do not know, even on seemingly simple topics such as nutrition.
Just watch the "calorie is a calorie" crowd crashing with "sugar is chronic toxin" crowd. Not surprisingly, Coca-Cola pushes the former view. And in a curated YouTube world, who is going to get removed for spreading misinformation?
Not Coca-Cola, they are too rich for that.
Democracy requires trusting people to not be complete morons. Unfortunately, the polarized nature of political discourse in the US has caused people to think that the 50% of the country that doesn't think like them is too stupid to be trusted with speech and videos.
Despite the fact that my brother has been sucked into the world of Alex Jones, I don't think most Americans are too stupid to resist dumb conspiracy theories. In decades past, this brother was a radical leftist, regularly arrested for trespassing in the late 80's at nuclear power plant protests, and later a radical in Greenpeace in the early 90's. This was long before the internet. He didn't believe the moon landing was real, and always believed in dumb ass conspiracy theories. (He's 11 years older than me, and by the time I was 11, I knew he was a moron.) My other 4 siblings aren't like him.
His new shift was, honestly, not that weird. He happened to shift to the right, but it's a horseshoe as you know, and crazy is crazy.
There have been, and always will be, highly illogical people looking to indulge their desperate desire to have symmetrical, orderly views of the universe that aren't real. The big, disastrous outcomes must always have been carefully plotted, large, grand plans (like 9/11 being a false flag operation, which my brother also believed then). My brother is one of these people, but most people aren't like that.
This huge drive for censorship didn't occur when a large portion of the American left thought that 9/11 was an inside job, because the normal people on the left knew that it was a large, but still fringe, group within their own sphere. The problem is that the same normal people on the left don't know normal people on the right. Why? Because they don't know ANY people on the right. They are in bubbles now. So they are unable to draw the same conclusion that people like my brother are a fringe on the right. To them, voting for Donald Trump is evidence of a massively delusional person, rather than the grim reality that the vast majority of Trump's voters don't like him, and simply chose a lesser of two evils in their worldview, due to a corrupt, oligarchical class at the top of both major political parties resulting in highly polarized policy positions that force them to do this.
> This huge drive for censorship didn't occur when a large portion of the American left thought that 9/11 was an inside job, because the normal people on the left knew that it was a large, but still fringe, group within their own sphere. The problem is that the same normal people on the left don't know normal people on the right. Why? Because they don't know ANY people on the right.
I think to at least some degree, this is a difference between 2001 and 2020. Normal people on the left knew people on the right, and now they don't.
I will add, targeting a specific genre of videos looks bad, sure. It's only that we are talking about that genre and not all the others of topics YouTube has removed.
I would like to uphold that ideal by putting a political bumper sticker on your car. Can you give me your address so I can send it to you?
If you don't have a car, I can send you a sign to put in your window or a t-shirt with a slogan for you to wear.
I appreciate your cooperation in upholding this important ideal.
Alternatively this could be your next great side hustle: live ad and t-shirt marketing in the gig economy.
But this is also about the practice of ideals. I watched a Chris Martinson video (PhD neurotoxicology, runs something of a prepping channel on YouTube because he doesn't see how the current US approach will resolve comfortably for people who trust the government) on Vimeo the other day because they'd yanked it from YouTube (it discussed the coronavirus). If it has reached the point where YouTube won't let a medical PhD talk about medical research, what use is this platform to me? Music videos, I suppose.
The reason free speech is ideal happens to be because it is better - YouTube is less fit for purpose as an information distributor, it doesn't represent a full spectrum of opinions. I already know what the official government message is - they have a website. I read it on occasion.
Is this self evident? Specifically google, or all and any private platforms? It's not obvious to me that every private entity should hold the ideal of free speech -- particularly a version of free speech that means something different than protection from persecution by the state.
They have their own free speech rights, as well as free association and the rights of free enterprise.
Ideally, discrimination should not exist in something that is promoted as a public forum.
If YouTube only wanted to serve a certain type of genre or they had the same censorship policies from the beginning then that is one thing. But they promoted themselves as open and free speech and then once they achieved critical mass they changed their mind to push their own agenda.
That is dishonest and an abuse of public trust.
As a contrasting example, censoring porn, while still not free speech, would be fine for YouTube to continue to do since they had this stance from the beginning and people chose to join the platform knowing this.
Was this before or after Google? Because Google's interest in the platform is definitely maximizing revenue and competing with first party streaming services.
Advertisers are attacked relentlessly if they advertise on non-liberal media. Been at ad-tech companies and seen this happen in person.
Even 20 years ago this was common pattern for talk radio.
They're certainly possible for alternatives to, say, reddit. These sites already exist. Are you referring to the high costs of serving video?
Forums are one thing.
Hosting huge amounts of videos, adding in all the security to keep DOS from taking out the system is a lot of money.
Oh and since most sites do this all for free, you can’t really change anything either.
Rush used to talk all the time about the nasty calls his clients got.
It was routine for them to get flooded with hate calls.
While I’m sure Textualist/Originalists on the court will find innovations to legislate FB “yelling freedom” rights it has not been a historical norm.
Some services are so large and entrenched that they have become natural monopolies that need to be regulated. We place restrictions on what natural monopolies can do because of the effects on society as a whole.
The question that needs to be debated is if YouTube has reached the status of a natural monopoly or not. I think it probably has, but I am open to evidence on the other side.
Why not use the more natural example? “What if a television network decided the same thing? We will watch your publicly broadcast television show and if you say something we don’t like we will cancel your show.” It’s a lot closer to what’s actually happening in this case, right? And it doesn’t needlessly mix in the hot-button topic of privacy violations.
The parallel is phone companies in the past did listen in to people’s conversation, but this was recognised as an abuse of a monopoly power. Regulations were introduced to stop this sort of activity.
What we should be discussing is how to regulate natural monopolies like YouTube, not if they should be able to just do whatever they like. Like all regulation there will need to be a balance, but society has a vested interest in ensuring natural monopolies are not abusing their power.
Even if YouTube is not abusing its power, the fact it can is a concern.
For Example, Holocaust denial is shitty and something that anyone should be allowed to ban just because they don't want to be associated with it. The problem is that you have to draw the line somewhere between "The Jews faked the Holocaust and none of it ever happened" and " The exact number of deaths in the Holocaust will never been known but it was in the millions". The first statement is clearly false, the second statement could be an attempt to downplay the magnitude of the event, but it is hard to say without context and you may never know the intent of the person who said it.
So? There is a certain revulsion that a lot of engineers have for situational decision making, but that's how we've been doing the law for centuries. Virtually every line that matters is hard to draw. Yet we don't paralyze ourselves by refusing to act.
My idiot brother got twice as radicalized when they kicked Alex Jones's crazy ass off YouTube.
It made people feel better and more morally superior, especially employees. It hurt my brother. Now when he watches that asshole, he's on a website where he is guaranteed to never get the other side.
If you support this, then you don't know anything about how humans react to censorship.
I was a very big proponent of wearing mask in the beginning of the pandemic back when the WHO and Dr Fauci had advised against it not because it was true but to manipulate the public for the purpose of preventing a rush on n95 masks.
If I had stated in a video the truth which was that the public was being manipulated to protect the masks, I would have been contradicting WHO and the video could have been banned. That's a problem.
People need to realize that ANY website where a user submits content for is not classified as free speech. A tweet isn’t free speech. A post on Reddit isn’t free speech. These are “articles and or content provided by the public for enhancements to our platform” or whatever EULA legalese they use.
Yeah, like I said, banning a bunch of videos from one genre right now looks bad and people have a right to be upset over it. It’s still YouTube’s legal right to choose which content they want to showcase on their platform.
They hold all the power here. Content creators are at their mercy as far as compensation, views, inclusion in the recommendation engine, etc. then cry foul when the company moves in another direction. Down-leg economics. Specialized businesses based on a supply of value from another business. It’s not a sustainable model for anyone on the 3rd rung.
I've decided that I don't like believing incorrect things, so I've thought a lot about epistemology and embraced a mixture of pragmatism and empiricism (where possible). I try to independently verify suspicious claims, but it took me a long time to become a competent data scientist, I'm willing to spend far more time searching for good data/signals and analyzing them than most other people, and I still can't be informed on everything which necessitates reliance on sub-optimal heuristics. Most people don't even attempt the rigor I aspire to, preferring a tribal epistemology, where they outsource opinion-forming to the thought-leaders of their tribe. If those tribal thought-leaders are telling people things like
* "Hillary Clinton is running a pedophilia ring out of the basement of this pizza restaurant" or * "COVID-19 is a librul hoax so don't wear a mask or embrace any hard-won public health advice" or * "Joe Biden's landslide victory isn't real, and even though we can't prove it, despite the fact that electoral systems are designed so that malfeasance would be easily detectable, you should ignore reject the result of a DEMOCRATIC ELECTION, EVEN IN STATES WHERE THE OUTCOME WAS CONFIRMED BY A HAND RECOUNT"
you'll see behavior from individuals in that tribe that's consistent with the signals those individuals perceive, but the behavior won't produce the expected outcome, because the signals don't reflect reality. Instead, it will produce mayhem, death, destruction, pain, and loss. This is empirically undeniable.
TL,DR: Democracy depends on the votes of people. People form opinions only from the information that passes through their senses and into their mind. Garbage in, garbage out. It's possible to solve problems through rational analysis of sufficiently accurate models of reality, but models that don't reflect reality can be extremely, devastatingly destructive. If the signal "Donald Trump actually won the election and it is being stolen from him" was an accurate description of reality, it would rational to use violence to repel the usurpers trying to steal your country. But that signal is false, and spreading that signal both is eroding belief in democracy among the communities where enough members embrace that false signal, and it will in lead to unjustified murders.
It's fine to investigate a hypothesis if you're willing to accept the hypothesis is false. But if you continue asserting your hypothesis is true after many competent investigators, including investigators ideologically aligned with yourself and your desired outcome, investigate the system and find no evidence to support said hypothesis, instead finding evidence that repudiates your hypothesis, well, it's bad for democracy to continue pushing that hypothesis.
Witness affidavits suggest some counties in some states did not follow their own laws.
Now, unfortunately, there is no legal remedy because in most cases the irregular ballots cannot be separate from the regular ballots once they are pooled together.
A lot of election laws define the rules, but few define the remedy if they are broken.
What irregular ballots are you talking about?
I might be okay with “every informed person should vote”. But that “informed” part can be heavily politically interpreted.
People have largely missed the fact that politics used to be the domain of informed groups fighting for power blocs. Now it’s been “decentralized” and radicalized on Twitter and Reddit and made into glorified reality Tv entertainment by the mass media (who are clearly serving a market with high demand who treat politics like sports teams).
I’d rather have way less people voting and it go back to being mostly boring educated people topic than it’s below common denominator mess it is today.
But I’m unabashedly elitist and understand that there are plenty of well funded groups who want dumb malleable voters and as many as possible.
YouTube has chosen to deny associating itself with certain views, as is their right. It is no different than how Fox, CNN and others may choose what to broadcast.
Don't like that? Use BitChute or PeerTube or similar.
Don't confuse them.
The same allegory of the cave justifications for why the average individual is too stupid to rule and shouldn't be allowed to are made today. Oh, you aren't well enough educated or experienced enough? You should not govern, and move aside for those who are educated or experienced...
So I'm not sure if it's even meaningful to say that we do reject the idea. The original designers did (mostly; they weren't a hivemind, either), but we aren't them; and they weren't really representative of their entire society, either.
Democracy and free speech are intrinsically linked.