In a week or so whatever they claimed to be 'misinformation' will likely be the new talking point of the CDC and another group of users will have moved on to rumble, gettr, etc. Keep it up Google....
He said masks were useless. That's why he was banned. The US chief medical advisor said the same thing. But that's ok because he didnt believe it and only said it to deceive the public.
It may have initially been an attempt to avoid political topics. It may also have been because a moderator and users may have expected there will be a lot of non productive comments because people from both sides tend to be passionate.
User flags can do that. There’s also a flamewar response algorithm that reacts poorly to, for example, ideological wars between differing groups. You could email the mods using the page footer’s contact link and let them know that you’re seeing unusual behavior in the site; they can look into further, but might otherwise miss your comment here without the email.
In case you haven't seen the guidelines in a bit. I assume it is people mass flagging because people believe it's off topic for being political. And maybe that the comments won't be an on topic and productive discussion even if the article does fit from a perspective.
This article is gone again.
It's not censorship. People just don't want to discuss it. I imagine it's the same for some other topics mentioned in this comment thread.
"Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did."
"What to Submit
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic"
Interesting. I like Hacker News because its community is so great compared to nearly every other platform I know. Too bad that we can't talk about stuff like this.
Certainly we can and do talk about stuff like this. The issue is the other way around: there have been tons of threads about topics just like this already. That leads to having the same discussion over and over again. Since the core principle of HN is intellectual curiosity, it's important to avoid too much repetition (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...). That's particularly important when it's repetition of a high-indignation topic, since indignation shuts down curiosity even faster than repetition does.
BigTech bannage in the eras of Trump and Covid is a classic Major Ongoing Topic (MOT). Such topics have a way of appearing over and over again and getting upvoted a lot, because people feel strongly about them. The problem is that there's little curiosity value to be gained from having them repeat so much—they tend to be generic and to metastasize into flamewars. Yet sometimes the MOT mutates in an interesting way. What's best for HN is if the interesting milestones in a MOT saga get front page threads, but not all the garden-variety instances.
Over the years, we worked out a heuristic for this which turns out to work well: it's called SNI (Significant New Information). Each time there's SNI, it makes sense to have a fresh discussion because there's something fresh to discuss. Each time there isn't SNI, it makes sense not to have a frontpage discussion, because that discussion has already taken place, usually many times. We came up with this approach after the Snowden MOT of 2013, in which users were rightly complaining when one article after another would show up on the front page repeating things that had already been reported and discussed.
Moderators haven't touched this post, btw—users flagged it. We sometimes turn off flags when the article is interesting, contains SNI, and is able to support a substantive HN thread. But I don't think this story really clears that bar. It's a yet-another case in a long sequence. People already know how they feel about it and even already know what they have to say about it. That makes for HN badness.
Because people flagged it. Quite a few people likely think that someone violating YouTube's terms of service (circumventing a suspension by posting on a second channel) and being banned for said violation isn't something that fits Hacker News.
Name one time in history the people on the side of censorship been in the right. If someone says something you disagree with then you debate it to convince people that you're right. You don't censor them. The only censorship that should happen is when something illegal is said. If you don't want someone saying something, get a law passed. I'd love to hear counterexamples.
And for those of you who think it's okay because "free market" and "private corporation", you're naive to think the government isn't heavily influencing social media censorship.
They value their bottom line, and censorship is being done because they think it will help their bottom line, not because of some belief in being right. They're just trying to avoid controversy because it's bad for business.
You are correct and I believe that it therefore falls on government to effectively manage that situation.
Youtube is basically a monopoly and without trying to debate the ethics or correctness of how they got there, the message should be that they can choose to uphold certain principles like free speech or they can choose to be broken up.
That's literally the argument of "Repressive Tolarence". And no, people taking a principled stand would have been best as soon as the scapegoating and othering started.
If robust speech against Hitler had been possible that would be good too. But opposition was censored, wasn't it...
The mistaken premise in these debates is the implication that we're all equal in the public forum.
Of course we aren't. That's why newspapers and media outlets of all kinds should be regulated. Any one individual's views are insignificant compared to the fourth estate firepower of think tank funders and media billionaires of all varieties.
There is no equivalence here. The latter can dominate and define public conversations and opinions in a way that most of us can't even imagine, never mind match.
Free speech and monopolistic concentrations of money and media power simply cannot co-exist. You can have one or you can have the other, but there is no way you can have both together.
And without free speech all you have are distortions generated by very powerful people with very loud bullhorns, who will be front and centre about their views some of the time, but deniably covert the rest of the time.
In that kind of environment the concept of censorship is a distraction, because the "freedom" to say what you want - as if it has any real influence at all - is an illusion anyway.
What Hobbes appears to want is Free Speech, but only for the greatest denominator. That is not Free Speech. Free Speech is the open forum, where we trust in our fellow men and women to observe the voices of others, make up their minds, come to their own conclusions in good faith, and contribute where they can. If certain voices are louder than others, that is something we have to live with. It is not Free Speech to shut them up.
Alex Jones and his ilk strongly reflect opinions that are incredibly widely held by tens of millions of Americans. That's his entire business model after all, he just says what his viewers think back to them so they feel happy someone famous agrees with them.
If you disagree with Alex Jones, the only ultimate solution is to try and shift the opinions that tens of millions of his viewers hold.
People complain a lot about Alex Jones style thought these days. But what it actually is is the spread of the opinions and views millions of "salt of the earth" folk have always held.
The internet is forcing us to address the thoughts, beliefs and emotions of millions of non-college educated folk worldwide. Ultimately I think it's a very good thing.
Back when journalism was still a thing, "non-college educated folk" were very much part of the readership. And they were treated in a far less patronising way than they are today, by outlets like Fox - which wind them up for profit and political gain, but secretly have nothing but contempt for them.
What you say must be correct some degree, but to what extent?
I seriously wonder what percentage of US households in say, 1975, did not receive any newspaper subscription for example, what's the dataset you look at for that?
Or even adult literacy in the United States. You could apply this same thinking to many non US parts of the world, but lets confine it to the US.
I feel like it's stating the obvious that most major newspapers and media in 1975 did not reflect the true opinions of a blue collar, rural family in most parts of the United States.
Setting bigotry aside, popular support for isolationism and far too many other issues ran extremely deep.
My feeling is that generally speaking society as of 1975 was entirely predicated on a bottleneck of information flows. If your view was out of step with what the Ivy-League or flagship university educated editor was willing to publish, your views didn't make it into any form of mainstream media.
Nowadays, we directly have to confront those blue collar views, whatever their form.
I reckon that's probably good for humanity in the long term. 100-200 years from now addressing this information and political bottleneck will be good for society. But for now we are being directly exposed to the consequences.
I agree, but I also I don't think that's the point OP was trying to make. My reading was that the censorship that they are taking immediate issue with is the censorship that isn't a direct result of a law. Whether a certain thing should be legally censored or not is a separate (but related) issue.
But its not like CP wasn't censored before it was illegal. The reason CP was sold through the mail in the first place is that reputable and moral private businesses wouldn't sell it in brick and mortar shops, even after porn as a whole became mainstream enough to sell in a storefront.
Child pornography isn't allowed because we believe that pornography requires consent of the involved parties and children are inherently incapable of consenting.
WTF? It is censored inherently with laws directed at it specifically, with crimes against production, distribution, and possesion. It is censored culturally as nearly any tech goon or housekeeper that finds it will report you (contrast with fraud or drugs).
In plenty of U.S. states the age of consent is below the age at which pornographic images are legal. I really have no idea what point you're making.
I'm sure what 'censored inherently' means. It sounds like word salad to me. What does that mean?
You're understanding of the legal framework under which CP is censored and banned is incorrect, which might be indicative of a larger lack of understanding of what censorship means and how its used on a daily basis.
using prohibition of CP as an example is a very weak argument, generally speaking nude photos are said to be the speech of the person in the photo's they give the permission for them to be distributed (or not), children are incapable to give this consent thus the prohibition of CP is not censorship in the way you are attempting to conflate it here.
this si also why "revenge porn" is illegal, the person distributing the porn is NOT the speaker, the person in the photo;s is, and it is for them to control how that is distributed.
As to Germany's censorship of Nazi imagery, and holocaust denial, I believe the better path is the path the OP outlines where debate and open dialog is a better path and government laws. so I disagree that is an example of "good censorship"
I 100% agree w/r/t the CP argument (I basically posted the same thing at the same time, lol) but the Nazi/Holocaust one I'm not as sure about honestly.
I think, in post-war Germany, that type of censorship had a role and was necessary. It probably does do more harm than good today.
Do you have a source for that? My understanding is that photos generally belong to the person who took them.
>As to Germany's censorship of Nazi imagery, and holocaust denial, I believe the better path is the path the OP outlines where debate and open dialog is a better path and government laws. so I disagree that is an example of "good censorship"
you can't "debate" people who are firmly detached from reality. We can see that with COVID-19 misinformation. Allowing them to parade around in Nazi costumes only helps them, it does nothing for society to let them dress like that and goodstep around.
Another example of positive censorship is when Reddit banned /r/jailbait. Do you agree with that? The pictures weren't illegal.
Are you seriously making an equivalency between child pornography and raising objections to masks?
Given the rapid and profound spread of Omicron against all efforts, I also question the effectiveness of masks and other containment measures being used. Should I be blocked for typing these words on HN?
How long ago was it prohibited to talk about the lab leak origin theory? Kyle Rittenhouse, who was ultimately acquitted by a jury, was blocked from discussion on Facebook and couldn't raise money for his defense on GoFundMe. Numerous news outlets wrongly asserted over and over that he chased his assailant, when the video plainly showed otherwise.
Is this really the world we want, in which everything held up by one side is sacred and anything said by the other is heresy?
>Given the rapid and profound spread of Omicron against all efforts, I also question the effectiveness of masks and other containment measures being used. Should I be blocked for typing these words on HN?
Which words? Just what you posted? No. Now, if you want to make up lies and misinformation, sure. Masks are effective. Youtube has a policy on lying on that subject. If you don't like that, don't use Youtube.
>Is this really the world we want, in which everything held up by one side is sacred and anything said by the other is heresy?
You can still find plenty of whatever right wing misinformation you want on Facebook/Instagram/Nextdoor/Youtube. Do you really think your statement is the realm of reality at all?
You do know that left wing misinformation is a thing too, right? You understand that both ideologies can be taken too far and that they both have elements engaging in misinformation. You understand that, right?
>You do know that left wing misinformation is a thing too, right? You understand that both ideologies can be taken too far and that they both have elements engaging in misinformation. You understand that, right
I guess it depends on what you are talking about. The US left has no equivalent to Fox News, OAN, Ben Shapiro, Alex Jones, QAnon, etc..
The right-wing misinformation machine is massive. Millions of people think the election was stolen because of how effective the right-wing misinformation machine is. Part of the right-wing misinformation machine is indoctrinating viewers into believe that there is a left-wing indoctrination machine, which is probably why you are 'both-sides'ing something that is clearly a much bigger problem for the right-wing of America.
> Today, despite the "crowded theater" quote's legal irrelevance, advocates of censorship have not stopped trotting it out as thefinal word on the lawful limits of the First Amendment. As Rottman wrote, for this reason, it's "worse than useless in defining the boundaries of constitutional speech. When used metaphorically, it can be deployed against any unpopular speech." Worse, its advocates are tacitly endorsing one of the broadest censorship decisions ever brought down by the Court. It is quite simply, as Ken White calls it, "the most famous and pervasive lazy cheat in American dialogue about free speech."
It's illegal to say "I will shoot you if you don't leave this theater."
The quote may be wrong, but the concept remains: there are legal limitations on speech. They exist and are more or less universally supported. The question is what those limits are, but few people believe that there shouldn't be any.
We ordinarily use libel laws and the fear of a libel lawsuit to censor people all the time. I don't know if that's what you meant by "illegal" but it's our mechanism to ensure accuracy in the media.
> The only censorship that should happen is when something illegal is said.
If I own a public pool, and a minority of my patrons decide to ridicule another minority of my patrons, should I be able to have rules against making fun of people?
I mean, the first group isn't doing anything illegal. I guess they have a _right_ to be nasty, at my pool, just because I normally let in anyone who will pay $5?
Even more naive if you think corporations and media owners aren't influencing governments, and aren't carpet bombing social media platforms with views and comments to try to suppress views that don't benefit them.
Overt de-platforming is just the most obvious kind of censorship. Inexplicably, those who label themselves free speech advocates rarely seem genuinely concerned about the more covert kinds of influencing.
“Influencing” is the right word. YouTube corporate is probably the most powerful influencer there ever was.
After the lab leak ban fiasco you would think they would quietly abandon this. But no, it’s all laid completely bare now. YouTube has a political agenda to push and they’re pushing it.
You're mistaking what Youtube is. Not being on Youtube isn't censorship, it's the other way around. Being on Youtube is being given a pedestal. you also got your lesson about censorship backwards, tell me one time in history when giving a megaphone to the loudest voice to spread their bullshit was a good idea. If Hilter hadn't been given a pedestal to spread his hateful message, the world would've been a better place.
No one is entitled to be given a "platform" to spread their message. Youtube is a megaphone and they have all the rights to control which messages they don't want to amplify. It also very much reasonable to refuse to amplify messages that literally lead to real human beings dying.
People who listen to Fox News have a 3x higher chance of dying of COVID than people who don't [0]. Killing your own users is the stupidest thing a business can do.
> No one is entitled to be given a "platform" to spread their message. Youtube is a megaphone and they have all the rights to control which messages they want to amplify.
Exactly, and this is what so many discussions of social media "censorship" miss. You have a right to say whatever you want. You don't have a right to have whatever you say automatically broadcast (and algorithmically surfaced to) millions of users.
It would be like arguing that a newspaper should be required to publish anything anyone wrote.
When YouTube is on the same level with utility companies, then your argument does not hold. The size and specificity of YouTube service makes it an utility company, not a small country club that can select the customers as they want.
> When YouTube is on the same level with utility companies
Well that day is not today, and you can live just fine without being able to post to Youtube. The majority of Americans don't post to Youtube and they live just fine. Also, for the majority of human history, it was literally impossible to have your opinions broadcasted to millions of people across the globe, let alone do it for free. So no, nothing about being able to post a video on Youtube is a "right" or a "necessity". Nor is it in any shape of form comparable to utilities.
Name one time in history your question is relevant. Until recently, bans were either by law and effectively total, or the 'speech' in question is quite limited in reach. When was there ever a social network-like thing in the past?
But, I'll play your game. "Any newspaper in history". They all have or had a policy that they'd only post those letters sent in that were interesting, and would never post outright lies or inflammatory stuff just to get a kick out of things, unless they posted it with a boatload of editorializing around it. Or they WOULD post such things, but only because they were actively attempting to espouse that logic (fox news is certainly not the first channel that is fairly nakedly attempting to steer the conversation towards an entire party's worth of political viewpoints - that's been something newspapers have been doing for a long time, read some editorials of 1900s newspapers for a few laughs).
You really think a newspaper that adopted a system where they'd post every letter verbatim regardless of content (as long as the content wasn't illegal on its own) or some sort of lottery system where they'd post randomly selected content, regardless of what it was? - that such a newspaper would have flourished, or that a society that likes that kind of newspaper would have? That's.. crazy talk.
I can hear you say; Nah, that does not apply - not what I'm talking about. Okay. So, then - what? Name me _anything_ in history that is neither directly governmental or otherwise 'total' (a ban or other pressure to eliminate a certain kind of discourse means virtually nobody hears it, no matter what the one wanting to say it tries to do about it - usually an outright government-backed ban on something - which is not relevant here. There are plenty of other platforms out there).
> Name one time in history the people on the side of censorship been in the right.
Using what definition of "censorship"?
If you're going to define any removal action by a private company as "censorship", consider the following types of content which YouTube routinely "censors":
* Scam / spam content, like fake "double your cryptocurrency" streams
* A wide range of content "harmful to children", like violent cartoons featuring popular characters, or videos urging children to perform dangerous acts
* Videos containing nudity, hate speech, or excessive vulgar language
* Videos promoting or praising criminal / terrorist groups
Where we are heading, It will only get worse for the users on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc since anyone can get their accounts banned or suspended under the disguise for so-called ‘misinformation’ in their ‘guidelines’ even with users abusing the report button or a bot doing it.
The suspension will be vague, near-instant and can be for any random reason. Good luck if you encounter a human to recover your account, unless you are a fortunate famous user or know someone who works at those companies.
If not, just scream loud enough everywhere about it to cause outrage. Since only when it happens to them or to someone they know, they will do that and complain here about it, proving my whole point.
Did any of the people banned for wondering aloud if the Covid-19 virus could have escaped from a research lab even get an apology? YouTube censors are a joke.
The problem was never with that. It's OK to speculate and ask.
Most of these people Trump included, used this as a typical persuasion tactic to stop conversation. Similar to a child instinctively opening a different debate front to hide his misdeeds. This is actually very effective as people ended up debating if the virus was man made (which has ramifications but requires evidence). Instead of debating important short term policies (distancing, masks etc.). This type of debate was a precursor to the relatively strong anti-vaxx movement which is responsible for our current predicament.
There's a way to have public discourse. they weren't they were acting as a propaganda machine. They have freedom of speech but not of amplification by commercial entities.
> Biden said that if we take the vaccine, we won't catch coronavirus. This was misinformation. Why hasn't YouTube banned the White House's channel?
Honestly? Because Biden is trying to tackle a real problem, while people like Bongino are working to sabotage those efforts (usually due to incompetence or a kind of "malicious indifference").
Who is to judge if Biden is actually trying to solve the problem? He said something that was false, that's misinformation. How do you know he didn't know it was false when he said it?
> Who is to judge if Biden is actually trying to solve the problem?
I am. It's the difference between advocating or taking specific actions to address a problem and reflexively arguing against and resisting every action proposed.
> He said something that was false, that's misinformation.
Misinformation does not simply mean "false statement." I'm no dictionary writer, but it has strong connotations along the lines of "misleading to bad ends."
> How do you know he didn't know it was false when he said it?
Honestly, I don't give your report much credence, so I wouldn't go so far as the say he even said what you claim. Given the presentation, I judge there's quite a high chance he either said no such thing, or your report is distorted (like through a game of telephone). And even if you did quote him correctly, your line of questioning gives the impression of either being sophomoric or deliberately obtuse. The most reasonable course of action is to leave it up to you to figure out how to evaluate (without telepathy) when something is honest misstatement vs a deliberate lie.
> Trusting what politicians say at face value is so naive I don't even know how to respond to you.
Is that what you think I said? I said no such thing, and I didn't even say anything close to that.
>>> How do you know he didn't know it was false when he said it?
>> The most reasonable course of action is to leave it up to you to figure out how to evaluate (without telepathy) when something is honest misstatement vs a deliberate lie.
Also that link is crap. Chronology is important, and when you link to some rando's video with 500 views, it makes it unnecessarily difficult to determine the actual date of the event.
> YouTube suspended [...] after he posted a video where he questioned the effectiveness of using masks against the coronavirus, a violation of the company's pandemic-related misinformation policy
Is this true? How does this make sense, questioning is misinformation? (Am I already breaching a misinformation policy by asking these questions?).
Actions like what? Receiving a temporary ban for spreading harmful misinformation and then receiving a permanent ban after evading that ban.
> YouTube suspended one of Bongino's YouTube channels on Jan. 20 after he posted a video where he questioned the effectiveness of using masks against the coronavirus, a violation of the company's pandemic-related misinformation policy. His later attempt to circumvent that one-week suspension by posting from another channel triggered a permanent ban, YouTube said.
The problem is that the mouthpiece is assuming a monopoly over truth. It is utterly arrogant for any entity to do so. Let the talking heads debate, and the minds of men and women in the world decide. If we abandon faith in each other to discern for each his or her own self what truth is to be, we run the risk of traveling down the path whereon Free Thought and discourse is no longer celebrated but discouraged by ever-present and ever-domineering structures of power, damning future generations to totalitarianism.
You are free to question the initial suspension but the permanent is the topic of discussion here as the result of the ban evasion. Violating Terms of Service is not a partisan issue. Might I direct you to the Paradox of Tolerance[1] in the meantime.
Very sad. The internet was crafted and promoted in a spirit of radical social experimentation, where all kinds of ideas could be shared at light-speed all over the world, each man could have a mouthpiece, and we'd have access to the greatest library of unfiltered information ever devised.
These internet companies have ridden the crest of this wave of revolution in human thinking, many glorifying their interest in human revolutions along the way.
As private enterprises these companies have the right to police their platforms, but they betray the spirit that gave wind to this experiment in human Idea.
And now we are seeing the grand experiment failing.
The last 245 years have seen a great experiment in society and freedom, with the society to speak freely, and that the Market of Ideas might itself guide truth, arbitration by the few kept to a minimum. The Internet has been the culmination of this experiment. We are in danger of failing it today.
I say WE, because it is ultimately us today collectively, with however much influence we can afford to effect, many Americans and also citizens of the world, that hold within our power to determine for good or for ill the course of our time in the span of the generations. It is US: We are the ones who are fated to determine whether a world society can truly withstand free discourse or crumble utterly beneath it, that the individual of society today might have in his ability in the greater average to discern Truth where the matter is up to his faculties, and that this Truth may will out from the collective good minds and hearts of all men upon this Earth. This is the moment in history, let us not fail this chance to today together continue to craft the free societies of tomorrow with good faith in the heart of mankind. If enough of us do our part honestly, there is a good chance that the generations of tomorrow might look on this moment and say, "In this time, the goodness of humanity prevailed." WBS
Meh. YouTube is only one site among millions. They're a profit-seeking business, not a charity. They're under no obligation to host Dan Bongino's video content, given that they have clear policies against posting health-related content that's widely discredited as misinformation.
The problem is their betrayal of the spirit of the internet. We built the internet with a vision of optimism, but now that the vision is in danger. When things become difficult for only a moment, we abandon that spirit altogether. For shame. It'd be much better if their service didn't abandon it. The Internet has been the great social experiment of our time. I'll take any opportunity to speak out against actions that diminish free and open discourse.
I'm disinclined to think that a world in which we do not speak against the consolidation of the arbitration of truth to small groups of individuals is a good one, and its a particularly icy form of irony where such groups of individuals gained power on the back of the wave of freedom of information.
They're doing nothing illegal, I'll still speak out what I observe to be sad unfolding of events.
The thing is social media, including YouTube, is the new public square. Exercising our fundamental civil liberties like free speech means exercising them on places like social media. Otherwise those rights are simply not as useful. Social media has a massive impact on our society, including on politics. If it doesn't have that impact, then why bother censoring someone at all? I also think platforms above some size simply should not be able to ban people in order to make Democracy work.
Another angle here is that social media companies are ultimately just plain old telecom companies. We regularly regulate private businesses and limit the ways in which they conduct business. Your electrical utility is not allowed to deny you service based on your political opinion. These companies shouldn't be able to do so either, as they are common carriers (https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/16/conclusion-social-media...).
Additionally, social media is built on network effects (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect). The larger the network, the stronger the service, but also the higher the barriers to entry. Businesses built on network effects inherently face limited competition and must be regulated since they do not face competition as much.
Finally, our government is already censoring speech by hiding their influence through these social media companies. Tech companies have an incentive to play nicely with the government, since they might otherwise face difficulties like anti-trust action. Glenn Greenwald had written extensively about this proxy censorship:
Some social media companies could indeed have their "platform" components broken off from the rest and run in a 'fair and neutral' way, but not YouTube. The whole value of that "platform" is in the algorithmic content promotion and curation they do, and that promotion relies critically on "harmonious community" policies. Otherwise, they're not inherently different than Rumble.
yeah, you're right. Maybe we should socialize all internet companies. Capitalism has failed, no?/s (some, I'd love more socialism personally, or at least worker-owned co-ops or worker/content-producer in this instance)....
but I mean you need some censureship else you get child porn up there. which makes immutable blockchain horrible for video ...
I think though a more democratic org that all it's users can vote on bans, etc could be more fair...
That's a good idea. I'm not for the socialization of internet companies. What Youtube and other companies are doing is not illegal and well within their rights as the law is currently.
But it is a betrayal. It is a betrayal of the promise of the internet as a forum of open discourse, and signifies a loss of faith in humankind's ability to discern truth, in humankind's ability to reason, for individual's to make up their own minds.
Indeed we need some censorship for things like what you described, it's a matter of what is reasonable, and what is reasonable is to be determined collectively in the discourses of society. Again, what Youtube and other companies are doing is not illegal, but it runs counter to every notion of what the open forum is meant to be. It's a sad sign. A line is being tiptoed across, and it is important that we openly argue the points and consequences.
> The last 245 years have seen a great experiment in society and freedom, with the society to speak freely, and that the Market of Ideas might itself guide truth, arbitration by the few kept to a minimum. The Internet has been the culmination of this experiment. We are in danger of failing it today.
Since that date seems to be calibrated to refer to the existence of the US, I am assuming that this means you believe that the US has been the leading paragon for tolerance of speech.
At which point, I have to ask... have you really never heard of the Alien and Sedition Acts? If you're unfamiliar, this is US legislation that criminalized criticism of the US government (bonus points for being largely the same people to have written the First Amendment). Or have you not heard of Schenck v. US, which immortalized the popular refrain "shouting fire in a crowded theater"... upholding a prosecution for criticizing the draft in WWI.
The broad reading of the First Amendment to forbid really any inhibition of any form of speech actually doesn't really start until the 1930s.
Indeed those are altogether terrible. Truly, utterly bad things have happened. The United States has not always been that paragon, for how could it? No one person is without fault, how could any country or people not have committed inexcusable actions? It' deplorable.
But today, where it is in my power, I'll take up the mantle of the good if I can, as well as I can, with the best arguments I can muster, to argue reasonably what I think is correct. Free speech, with its ups and downs, if its a thing we cherish today, let it be a thing we today cherish, and let us who cherish it do what we can to ensure that those who inherit the world we today create have greater access to the cherishable thing.
The second paragraph of this comment works especially well if you read it aloud (maybe just in your head) in Mayor Quimby's voice. I'm serious, try it!
> Very sad. The internet was crafted and promoted in a spirit of radical social experimentation, where all kinds of ideas could be shared at light-speed all over the world, each man could have a mouthpiece, and we'd have access to the greatest library of unfiltered information ever devised.
"The greatest library of unfiltered information ever devised," is only a marginal improvement on the Library of Babel (e.g. an impressive but useless thing that causes its enthusiasts to go mad).
> These internet companies have ridden the crest of this wave of revolution in human thinking, many glorifying their interest in human revolutions along the way.
> As private enterprises these companies have the right to police their platforms, but they betray the spirit that gave wind to this experiment in human Idea.
> And now we are seeing the grand experiment failing.
That experiment is failing just as much due to its own internal contradictions as it is to any kind action by internet companies.
I know I'll get thumped for this. But, youtube is only de-facto a commons. its actually not the commons, its a contract-enforced space, with T&C and its about as far from "the public forum" that free-speech rights attach to as its possible to be.
Now, we can talk about how in practice these places are the only commons we have and sure, if you want to do that, we can talk about google, the monopoly, regulation of effective public spaces, free speech.
But its property. Its google's property. They can pay groundskeeper willie to yell "get off my lawn" and not be un-constitutional.
121 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 37.7 ms ] threadEither way I see it now.
Edit Now I don't.
[1]: https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented
This article is gone again.
It's not censorship. People just don't want to discuss it. I imagine it's the same for some other topics mentioned in this comment thread.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did."
"What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic"
BigTech bannage in the eras of Trump and Covid is a classic Major Ongoing Topic (MOT). Such topics have a way of appearing over and over again and getting upvoted a lot, because people feel strongly about them. The problem is that there's little curiosity value to be gained from having them repeat so much—they tend to be generic and to metastasize into flamewars. Yet sometimes the MOT mutates in an interesting way. What's best for HN is if the interesting milestones in a MOT saga get front page threads, but not all the garden-variety instances.
Over the years, we worked out a heuristic for this which turns out to work well: it's called SNI (Significant New Information). Each time there's SNI, it makes sense to have a fresh discussion because there's something fresh to discuss. Each time there isn't SNI, it makes sense not to have a frontpage discussion, because that discussion has already taken place, usually many times. We came up with this approach after the Snowden MOT of 2013, in which users were rightly complaining when one article after another would show up on the front page repeating things that had already been reported and discussed.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
Moderators haven't touched this post, btw—users flagged it. We sometimes turn off flags when the article is interesting, contains SNI, and is able to support a substantive HN thread. But I don't think this story really clears that bar. It's a yet-another case in a long sequence. People already know how they feel about it and even already know what they have to say about it. That makes for HN badness.
And for those of you who think it's okay because "free market" and "private corporation", you're naive to think the government isn't heavily influencing social media censorship.
Youtube is basically a monopoly and without trying to debate the ethics or correctness of how they got there, the message should be that they can choose to uphold certain principles like free speech or they can choose to be broken up.
I’m ok with bars throwing out rude patrons, and I’m ok with YouTube banning nutjobs. Nutjobs can pay for their own video hosting.
Until the hosting providers throw them out too, like AWS does.
I think maybe censoring Hitler would have been a good idea, too, but what do I know.
Censoring Hitler looks like a great idea in hindsight but what babys would have gone out with that bathwater?
If robust speech against Hitler had been possible that would be good too. But opposition was censored, wasn't it...
Think about it.
Of course we aren't. That's why newspapers and media outlets of all kinds should be regulated. Any one individual's views are insignificant compared to the fourth estate firepower of think tank funders and media billionaires of all varieties.
There is no equivalence here. The latter can dominate and define public conversations and opinions in a way that most of us can't even imagine, never mind match.
Free speech and monopolistic concentrations of money and media power simply cannot co-exist. You can have one or you can have the other, but there is no way you can have both together.
And without free speech all you have are distortions generated by very powerful people with very loud bullhorns, who will be front and centre about their views some of the time, but deniably covert the rest of the time.
In that kind of environment the concept of censorship is a distraction, because the "freedom" to say what you want - as if it has any real influence at all - is an illusion anyway.
If you disagree with Alex Jones, the only ultimate solution is to try and shift the opinions that tens of millions of his viewers hold.
People complain a lot about Alex Jones style thought these days. But what it actually is is the spread of the opinions and views millions of "salt of the earth" folk have always held.
The internet is forcing us to address the thoughts, beliefs and emotions of millions of non-college educated folk worldwide. Ultimately I think it's a very good thing.
What you say must be correct some degree, but to what extent?
I seriously wonder what percentage of US households in say, 1975, did not receive any newspaper subscription for example, what's the dataset you look at for that?
Or even adult literacy in the United States. You could apply this same thinking to many non US parts of the world, but lets confine it to the US.
I feel like it's stating the obvious that most major newspapers and media in 1975 did not reflect the true opinions of a blue collar, rural family in most parts of the United States.
Setting bigotry aside, popular support for isolationism and far too many other issues ran extremely deep.
My feeling is that generally speaking society as of 1975 was entirely predicated on a bottleneck of information flows. If your view was out of step with what the Ivy-League or flagship university educated editor was willing to publish, your views didn't make it into any form of mainstream media.
Nowadays, we directly have to confront those blue collar views, whatever their form.
I reckon that's probably good for humanity in the long term. 100-200 years from now addressing this information and political bottleneck will be good for society. But for now we are being directly exposed to the consequences.
From what I understand from Bongino is that he is a really popular conservative and was talking about a specific book that Youtube doesn't like.
Can't find him removed for spreading hatespeech, nor inciting violence.
And if it's true then that's incredibly disturbing to me.
YouTube is so big that they really must try to refrain to remove people for their opinions etc.
"Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it Treason."
Germany's current censorship of Nazi imagery and holocaust denial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafgesetzbuch_section_86a#:~....
The US (and most countries) ban on child pornography's is also an extremely valuable and effective form of censorship.
I enjoy this tautological directive. By OP's logic, China's censorship is totally fine because it's illegal to criticize the government there.
Child pornography isn't allowed because we believe that pornography requires consent of the involved parties and children are inherently incapable of consenting.
In plenty of U.S. states the age of consent is below the age at which pornographic images are legal. I really have no idea what point you're making.
You're understanding of the legal framework under which CP is censored and banned is incorrect, which might be indicative of a larger lack of understanding of what censorship means and how its used on a daily basis.
this si also why "revenge porn" is illegal, the person distributing the porn is NOT the speaker, the person in the photo;s is, and it is for them to control how that is distributed.
As to Germany's censorship of Nazi imagery, and holocaust denial, I believe the better path is the path the OP outlines where debate and open dialog is a better path and government laws. so I disagree that is an example of "good censorship"
I think, in post-war Germany, that type of censorship had a role and was necessary. It probably does do more harm than good today.
>As to Germany's censorship of Nazi imagery, and holocaust denial, I believe the better path is the path the OP outlines where debate and open dialog is a better path and government laws. so I disagree that is an example of "good censorship"
you can't "debate" people who are firmly detached from reality. We can see that with COVID-19 misinformation. Allowing them to parade around in Nazi costumes only helps them, it does nothing for society to let them dress like that and goodstep around.
Another example of positive censorship is when Reddit banned /r/jailbait. Do you agree with that? The pictures weren't illegal.
Given the rapid and profound spread of Omicron against all efforts, I also question the effectiveness of masks and other containment measures being used. Should I be blocked for typing these words on HN?
How long ago was it prohibited to talk about the lab leak origin theory? Kyle Rittenhouse, who was ultimately acquitted by a jury, was blocked from discussion on Facebook and couldn't raise money for his defense on GoFundMe. Numerous news outlets wrongly asserted over and over that he chased his assailant, when the video plainly showed otherwise.
Is this really the world we want, in which everything held up by one side is sacred and anything said by the other is heresy?
Which words? Just what you posted? No. Now, if you want to make up lies and misinformation, sure. Masks are effective. Youtube has a policy on lying on that subject. If you don't like that, don't use Youtube.
>Is this really the world we want, in which everything held up by one side is sacred and anything said by the other is heresy?
You can still find plenty of whatever right wing misinformation you want on Facebook/Instagram/Nextdoor/Youtube. Do you really think your statement is the realm of reality at all?
I guess it depends on what you are talking about. The US left has no equivalent to Fox News, OAN, Ben Shapiro, Alex Jones, QAnon, etc..
The right-wing misinformation machine is massive. Millions of people think the election was stolen because of how effective the right-wing misinformation machine is. Part of the right-wing misinformation machine is indoctrinating viewers into believe that there is a left-wing indoctrination machine, which is probably why you are 'both-sides'ing something that is clearly a much bigger problem for the right-wing of America.
> Today, despite the "crowded theater" quote's legal irrelevance, advocates of censorship have not stopped trotting it out as thefinal word on the lawful limits of the First Amendment. As Rottman wrote, for this reason, it's "worse than useless in defining the boundaries of constitutional speech. When used metaphorically, it can be deployed against any unpopular speech." Worse, its advocates are tacitly endorsing one of the broadest censorship decisions ever brought down by the Court. It is quite simply, as Ken White calls it, "the most famous and pervasive lazy cheat in American dialogue about free speech."
The quote may be wrong, but the concept remains: there are legal limitations on speech. They exist and are more or less universally supported. The question is what those limits are, but few people believe that there shouldn't be any.
If I own a public pool, and a minority of my patrons decide to ridicule another minority of my patrons, should I be able to have rules against making fun of people?
I mean, the first group isn't doing anything illegal. I guess they have a _right_ to be nasty, at my pool, just because I normally let in anyone who will pay $5?
Overt de-platforming is just the most obvious kind of censorship. Inexplicably, those who label themselves free speech advocates rarely seem genuinely concerned about the more covert kinds of influencing.
After the lab leak ban fiasco you would think they would quietly abandon this. But no, it’s all laid completely bare now. YouTube has a political agenda to push and they’re pushing it.
No one is entitled to be given a "platform" to spread their message. Youtube is a megaphone and they have all the rights to control which messages they don't want to amplify. It also very much reasonable to refuse to amplify messages that literally lead to real human beings dying.
People who listen to Fox News have a 3x higher chance of dying of COVID than people who don't [0]. Killing your own users is the stupidest thing a business can do.
[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/12/05/1059828...
Exactly, and this is what so many discussions of social media "censorship" miss. You have a right to say whatever you want. You don't have a right to have whatever you say automatically broadcast (and algorithmically surfaced to) millions of users.
It would be like arguing that a newspaper should be required to publish anything anyone wrote.
Well that day is not today, and you can live just fine without being able to post to Youtube. The majority of Americans don't post to Youtube and they live just fine. Also, for the majority of human history, it was literally impossible to have your opinions broadcasted to millions of people across the globe, let alone do it for free. So no, nothing about being able to post a video on Youtube is a "right" or a "necessity". Nor is it in any shape of form comparable to utilities.
But, I'll play your game. "Any newspaper in history". They all have or had a policy that they'd only post those letters sent in that were interesting, and would never post outright lies or inflammatory stuff just to get a kick out of things, unless they posted it with a boatload of editorializing around it. Or they WOULD post such things, but only because they were actively attempting to espouse that logic (fox news is certainly not the first channel that is fairly nakedly attempting to steer the conversation towards an entire party's worth of political viewpoints - that's been something newspapers have been doing for a long time, read some editorials of 1900s newspapers for a few laughs).
You really think a newspaper that adopted a system where they'd post every letter verbatim regardless of content (as long as the content wasn't illegal on its own) or some sort of lottery system where they'd post randomly selected content, regardless of what it was? - that such a newspaper would have flourished, or that a society that likes that kind of newspaper would have? That's.. crazy talk.
I can hear you say; Nah, that does not apply - not what I'm talking about. Okay. So, then - what? Name me _anything_ in history that is neither directly governmental or otherwise 'total' (a ban or other pressure to eliminate a certain kind of discourse means virtually nobody hears it, no matter what the one wanting to say it tries to do about it - usually an outright government-backed ban on something - which is not relevant here. There are plenty of other platforms out there).
Using what definition of "censorship"?
If you're going to define any removal action by a private company as "censorship", consider the following types of content which YouTube routinely "censors":
* Scam / spam content, like fake "double your cryptocurrency" streams
* A wide range of content "harmful to children", like violent cartoons featuring popular characters, or videos urging children to perform dangerous acts
* Videos containing nudity, hate speech, or excessive vulgar language
* Videos promoting or praising criminal / terrorist groups
The suspension will be vague, near-instant and can be for any random reason. Good luck if you encounter a human to recover your account, unless you are a fortunate famous user or know someone who works at those companies.
If not, just scream loud enough everywhere about it to cause outrage. Since only when it happens to them or to someone they know, they will do that and complain here about it, proving my whole point.
https://www.amazon.com/Red-Handed-American-Elites-Helping-Ch...
Most of these people Trump included, used this as a typical persuasion tactic to stop conversation. Similar to a child instinctively opening a different debate front to hide his misdeeds. This is actually very effective as people ended up debating if the virus was man made (which has ramifications but requires evidence). Instead of debating important short term policies (distancing, masks etc.). This type of debate was a precursor to the relatively strong anti-vaxx movement which is responsible for our current predicament.
There's a way to have public discourse. they weren't they were acting as a propaganda machine. They have freedom of speech but not of amplification by commercial entities.
Honestly? Because Biden is trying to tackle a real problem, while people like Bongino are working to sabotage those efforts (usually due to incompetence or a kind of "malicious indifference").
I am. It's the difference between advocating or taking specific actions to address a problem and reflexively arguing against and resisting every action proposed.
> He said something that was false, that's misinformation.
Misinformation does not simply mean "false statement." I'm no dictionary writer, but it has strong connotations along the lines of "misleading to bad ends."
> How do you know he didn't know it was false when he said it?
Honestly, I don't give your report much credence, so I wouldn't go so far as the say he even said what you claim. Given the presentation, I judge there's quite a high chance he either said no such thing, or your report is distorted (like through a game of telephone). And even if you did quote him correctly, your line of questioning gives the impression of either being sophomoric or deliberately obtuse. The most reasonable course of action is to leave it up to you to figure out how to evaluate (without telepathy) when something is honest misstatement vs a deliberate lie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP_Uuj_ABew
Is that what you think I said? I said no such thing, and I didn't even say anything close to that.
>>> How do you know he didn't know it was false when he said it?
>> The most reasonable course of action is to leave it up to you to figure out how to evaluate (without telepathy) when something is honest misstatement vs a deliberate lie.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP_Uuj_ABew
So, honest misstatement or deliberate lie?
Also that link is crap. Chronology is important, and when you link to some rando's video with 500 views, it makes it unnecessarily difficult to determine the actual date of the event.
Is this true? How does this make sense, questioning is misinformation? (Am I already breaching a misinformation policy by asking these questions?).
> YouTube suspended one of Bongino's YouTube channels on Jan. 20 after he posted a video where he questioned the effectiveness of using masks against the coronavirus, a violation of the company's pandemic-related misinformation policy. His later attempt to circumvent that one-week suspension by posting from another channel triggered a permanent ban, YouTube said.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
These internet companies have ridden the crest of this wave of revolution in human thinking, many glorifying their interest in human revolutions along the way.
As private enterprises these companies have the right to police their platforms, but they betray the spirit that gave wind to this experiment in human Idea.
And now we are seeing the grand experiment failing.
The last 245 years have seen a great experiment in society and freedom, with the society to speak freely, and that the Market of Ideas might itself guide truth, arbitration by the few kept to a minimum. The Internet has been the culmination of this experiment. We are in danger of failing it today.
I say WE, because it is ultimately us today collectively, with however much influence we can afford to effect, many Americans and also citizens of the world, that hold within our power to determine for good or for ill the course of our time in the span of the generations. It is US: We are the ones who are fated to determine whether a world society can truly withstand free discourse or crumble utterly beneath it, that the individual of society today might have in his ability in the greater average to discern Truth where the matter is up to his faculties, and that this Truth may will out from the collective good minds and hearts of all men upon this Earth. This is the moment in history, let us not fail this chance to today together continue to craft the free societies of tomorrow with good faith in the heart of mankind. If enough of us do our part honestly, there is a good chance that the generations of tomorrow might look on this moment and say, "In this time, the goodness of humanity prevailed." WBS
The problem is their betrayal of the spirit of the internet. We built the internet with a vision of optimism, but now that the vision is in danger. When things become difficult for only a moment, we abandon that spirit altogether. For shame. It'd be much better if their service didn't abandon it. The Internet has been the great social experiment of our time. I'll take any opportunity to speak out against actions that diminish free and open discourse.
They're doing nothing illegal, I'll still speak out what I observe to be sad unfolding of events.
Another angle here is that social media companies are ultimately just plain old telecom companies. We regularly regulate private businesses and limit the ways in which they conduct business. Your electrical utility is not allowed to deny you service based on your political opinion. These companies shouldn't be able to do so either, as they are common carriers (https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/16/conclusion-social-media...).
Additionally, social media is built on network effects (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect). The larger the network, the stronger the service, but also the higher the barriers to entry. Businesses built on network effects inherently face limited competition and must be regulated since they do not face competition as much.
Finally, our government is already censoring speech by hiding their influence through these social media companies. Tech companies have an incentive to play nicely with the government, since they might otherwise face difficulties like anti-trust action. Glenn Greenwald had written extensively about this proxy censorship:
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/how-silicon-valley-in-a-sho...
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/congress-in-a-five-hour-hea...
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/democrats-and-media-do-not-...
but I mean you need some censureship else you get child porn up there. which makes immutable blockchain horrible for video ...
I think though a more democratic org that all it's users can vote on bans, etc could be more fair...
Nobody here objects to websites taking down illegal content. We're complaining about when they take down content that's perfectly legal.
But it is a betrayal. It is a betrayal of the promise of the internet as a forum of open discourse, and signifies a loss of faith in humankind's ability to discern truth, in humankind's ability to reason, for individual's to make up their own minds.
Indeed we need some censorship for things like what you described, it's a matter of what is reasonable, and what is reasonable is to be determined collectively in the discourses of society. Again, what Youtube and other companies are doing is not illegal, but it runs counter to every notion of what the open forum is meant to be. It's a sad sign. A line is being tiptoed across, and it is important that we openly argue the points and consequences.
Since that date seems to be calibrated to refer to the existence of the US, I am assuming that this means you believe that the US has been the leading paragon for tolerance of speech.
At which point, I have to ask... have you really never heard of the Alien and Sedition Acts? If you're unfamiliar, this is US legislation that criminalized criticism of the US government (bonus points for being largely the same people to have written the First Amendment). Or have you not heard of Schenck v. US, which immortalized the popular refrain "shouting fire in a crowded theater"... upholding a prosecution for criticizing the draft in WWI.
The broad reading of the First Amendment to forbid really any inhibition of any form of speech actually doesn't really start until the 1930s.
But today, where it is in my power, I'll take up the mantle of the good if I can, as well as I can, with the best arguments I can muster, to argue reasonably what I think is correct. Free speech, with its ups and downs, if its a thing we cherish today, let it be a thing we today cherish, and let us who cherish it do what we can to ensure that those who inherit the world we today create have greater access to the cherishable thing.
"The greatest library of unfiltered information ever devised," is only a marginal improvement on the Library of Babel (e.g. an impressive but useless thing that causes its enthusiasts to go mad).
> These internet companies have ridden the crest of this wave of revolution in human thinking, many glorifying their interest in human revolutions along the way.
> As private enterprises these companies have the right to police their platforms, but they betray the spirit that gave wind to this experiment in human Idea.
> And now we are seeing the grand experiment failing.
That experiment is failing just as much due to its own internal contradictions as it is to any kind action by internet companies.
Now, we can talk about how in practice these places are the only commons we have and sure, if you want to do that, we can talk about google, the monopoly, regulation of effective public spaces, free speech.
But its property. Its google's property. They can pay groundskeeper willie to yell "get off my lawn" and not be un-constitutional.