The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire

I find it really disconcerting how many people on <i>Hacker</i> News want a corporate entity to decide what information is deemed acceptable to know. Do you even know where that word came from? The irony is almost overwhelming. But I digress...<p>The idea that banning certain information will somehow result in it disappearing has been shown repeatedly to not work. A cursory reading of history should make this clear. You cannot turn the entire world into West Coast USA by banning everyone that disagrees with you. You’ll only create further echo chambers, both on your own platform and on the (new) platforms inevitably created by the exiled.

These types of articles are always insane to me. YouTube is a private company. They&#x27;re pretty much allowed to moderate the content on their platform in an arbitrary way. I would argue that this is a good thing.<p>We can&#x27;t have it both ways, but we want it both ways. We want a non-government controlled way to communicate, but we want to mandate that they&#x27;re liable to uphold the same First Amendment protections that the government has to provide. That&#x27;s insane, that&#x27;s not a good standard to pursue, and we should rather focus on the cost-benefit and pros and cons of either reinstating the Fairness Doctrine or creating a government-run social media website where information can be freely shared and subjected uniformly to First Amendment protections.

If I were a foreign actor with malign intent towards the US, I would be very pleased with how things are playing out.<p>1. Corrosion of formerly stalwart American Institutions 2. The majority of Americans being habituated to mistrust their fellow American 3. The ability for a few entities with concentrated power to harness and control the nervous systems of millions of Americans

To anyone reading these threads who is disconcerted by all the apologists, rationalizations, and blindness: Hello, this is what modern totalitarianism looks like. The whole point is to shake the foundations of your principles, and make you doubt yourself.<p>Corporations that control 90% of the internet, and therefore public discourse, are hiding behind the technicality of being private entities, and therefore can enforce whatever rules they want. This can&#x27;t really be disputed, but it&#x27;s obviously unethical, and obviously used in bad faith. They are no longer just companies, but quasi-states.<p>Some people saw this coming in the early 2010&#x27;s, but no one really cared. We saw people&#x27;s indifference to being tracked by these companies and governments with Snowden&#x27;s leaks. We saw the transformation of Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter from supposedly &quot;open platforms&quot; to editorialized publishers, and arbiters of truth.<p>This is exactly what we all signed up for, without caring about the consequences. This is only going to get worse.<p>Some people have called for a decentralized internet, where there is no overlord, but truly open platforms. That&#x27;s the modern counter-culture, or modern activism. Decentralization won&#x27;t solve all our problems, but it would make it easier to work on them in good faith.<p>Things I&#x27;d like to encourage, from a pragmatic view:<p>- Stop using the corporate internet.<p>- We must hear people out, even if they&#x27;re wrong.<p>- We need to remove the addictive and exploitative systems currently ingrained in social media design.<p>- Move from a perspective of &quot;us versus them&quot; into a mindset of compassion for others who have valid grievances that are not being addressed.

In one post you might have everyone absolutely berating Facebook for allowing the platform to be used to spread misinformation, in another you have everyone berating Google for trying to disallow it. :&#x2F; Is there anyone discussing what to do about this trade off and not just yelling? How do you protect people from weaponized information, should you, can you? It seems like there should be consequences to lying and spreading invalid information as fact, but who should do it and how?

Though I too am surprised that YouTube is setting such a precedent for fine-grained moderation, we cannot pretend as if this is an &quot;infringement of our rights.&quot; YouTube is running a for-profit website, you don&#x27;t have the &quot;right&quot; to a spot on their platform.<p>YouTube has made the careful calculation that the people who are turned off by this ban are far outweighed by public support, and will reduce their contribution to toxic behavior and instability in the country.

A lot of discussion about whether YouTube censorship is valid or not, carries an implicit assumption that the marketplace of ideas is up to the task of sorting fact from fiction.<p>It isn&#x27;t, at least not right now, because of technologies like YouTube&#x27;s recommendation engine. When everyone thinks that virality is a signal of truthiness, an algorithm which amplifies outrage to generate virality undermines the marketplace of ideas.<p>YouTube isn&#x27;t going to address the source of the problem because they would go out of business, or at least have a few very bad quarters. What they can do however, is pretend to moderate the marketplace and do it poorly enough that we stay focused on one another; instead of on their algorithm that literally converts outrage into money.

It is amazing to me that there are so many people, smart people even, that are adamant that we shouldn&#x27;t have free speech in society.

Thank god for all of the people at Youtube working on censoring misinformation. They are so much smarter than me and obviously better than me at figuring out what is true and what isn&#x27;t! And isn&#x27;t it great that they always act selflessly in favor of the truth and never in the narrow interest of Google? I don&#x27;t know what I would do if I didn&#x27;t have them there to protect me from the dangerous misinformation. I am so helpless on my own.

Then what? Allowing false information to fester is wrong, censorship is wrong. The way forward is to ban recommendation algorithms and go back to <i>personal</i> (as in, from other humans you know) recommendation systems.

“If you want a population of people to stop thinking an election was stolen from them, it’s hard to think of a worse method than ordering a news blackout after it’s just been demonstrated that the last major blackout was a fraud.“<p>Great quote.

This might seem extreme, but I think we should allow people to make up their own minds about what is truth and what is not. They are very clear cases for censorship (direct threats of violence for example) but Questioning the outcome of an election should not be one of them. Somehow we’ve allowed corporations to be the arbiters of truth in this nation, enter control the reins of communication.

A lot of gymnastics in the comments here trying to justify the Youtube decision. Take a step back: If things are free-and-fair, then let transparency prove your point. As Taibbi correctly points out in his article, bending over backwards to STOP transparency and debate is simply fuel to the fire of the people who believe otherwise than you do.

Noam Chomsky on Anti-Americanism: &quot;In Soviet Union, people calling out crimes of the state against it&#x27;s own people were called anti-russian: Sakharov, Solzhanitsin. That&#x27;s a sign of totalitarianism. America is the only other country that does that. Imagine someone calling someone anti-italian -- they would be laughed at.&quot; (paraphrasing)<p>Every time I hear &quot;anti-American&quot;, I&#x27;m reminded of this<p>Source: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=QnVVxN3FPEg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=QnVVxN3FPEg</a>

I hate politics in general... that said this is such a dumb precedence imo and anyone cheering it on I feel is short sighted.<p>There was some quote about how unfortunately when you defend free speech, you&#x27;re mostly sticking up for the worst of the worst.<p>Same thing here.<p>Personally, I hate how hard it is to find the really crazy conspiracy stuff these days on youtube. I remember you could fall down some rabbit holes and I loved that. I didn&#x27;t believe a word of it... but all the same, it was fascinating to see these far out takes.

Russia has every right to spread disinformation in our country via an administration which was never brought to proper trial because witnesses were silenced. It’s a free country!

This is all the result of confusing 1st amendment rights with the right to access the audience that gathers at a particular URL.<p>What Taibbi is asking for is that the guy who tells you that drinking rat poison is good for you should be allowed an audience and that even putting a warning alongside the video would be an infringement on his rights.<p>Looking at the comments here I have to conclude that HN is no longer on board critical thinking much less common sense.

I have a few past comments on HN about how electronic voting was a recipe for civil unrest for the precise reasons that are playing out right now and that Taibbi gives examples of.<p>Google, Facebook and Apple are becoming less American companies as they are a kind of post-national versions of the British East India Company where they operate mainly as the arms of an empire, and instead of opium, they traffic in attention. Their interests are inseparable from those of the permanent state, and this year has been the moment when they have taken on that role in earnest.<p>The recent bans are tripling down on the wrong side of the issue, and what&#x27;s most frustrating to me is that in over 100 years never have there been so many who were at once so wealthy and so wrong, and I can&#x27;t see what the trade is.

The author theorizes that this ban will inflame tensions, but I don&#x27;t believe that&#x27;s true. Look at Reddit&#x27;s ban on toxic subreddits. They found that banning toxic subreddits reduced the toxicity in the website as a whole, and that &quot;post-ban, hate speech by the same users was reduced by as much as 80-90 percent.&quot; [1]<p>Reddit is just a closed system of communities; YouTube is one such community in the larger system of social media. I think YouTube made the right calculation that this will in fact _reduce_ tension and slow the momentum of this destabilizing movement.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;09&#x2F;11&#x2F;study-finds-reddits-controversial-ban-of-its-most-toxic-subreddits-actually-worked&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2017&#x2F;09&#x2F;11&#x2F;study-finds-reddits-contro...</a>

The real problem here is that YouTube is a monopoly and needs to be anti-trusted down to allow competition.

If people disagree with YouTube&#x27;s normative choices they can (a) wage a boycott, (b) create a new platform that follows the desired norms, (c) attempt political action to regulate private companies.<p>I don&#x27;t think (a) is very effective due to the practicality of network effects and also that video hosting is quite expensive. A distributed system may solve the money issues of (b), but the legal ramifications of child exploitation will chill any unmoderated distributed system. For (c), because of the first amendment, I&#x27;m not sure what political regulation is possible (see Citizen&#x27;s United). The government probably can&#x27;t regulate YouTube&#x27;s free speech (hosting videos) even if that limits other peoples speech (on their platform).<p>I think one solution would be a distributed but <i></i>not private<i></i> video peer-to-peer hosting system. Perhaps like a public IPFS? Speech would protected against government intervention, but without privacy it could be easily policed. I don&#x27;t think a peer-to-peer system will gain any traction if it is possible to host illicit content that the government could punish you over, so that&#x27;s why I raise those points.

Well, the problem is that there are all these intertwined concepts so that for the most part we have:¹<p>* We want individuals to be able to express themselves so long as they are not explicitly deceiving people or hurting them<p>* We believe groups of individuals should have the freedoms individuals do<p>* We believe that individuals whose sole purpose is to act to provide a service to individuals expressing shouldn&#x27;t be liable for the expression under some conditions. e.g. if I let you rent my sound equipment, I shouldn&#x27;t be liable because you use it to call for violence against some dude and likewise for online platforms provided they take some reasonable measures<p>* We believe that picking and choosing what people can use your platform to express is expression in itself, but sometimes you are <i>obligated</i> to suppress some expression<p>So YouTube is one of these platforms. They should be allowed to pick and choose what people can use them to express because that&#x27;s a freedom one person has, and therefore that they have as a group of people who individually have it. So the defence rests on it being expression.<p>However, the defence for them not being liable for expression on their platform is that they&#x27;re &quot;just the platform&quot;. By choosing not to enforce on other things and choosing to enforce on these things they&#x27;re not &quot;just the platform&quot; - the expression they permit is their expression.<p>It&#x27;s a bit hazy, but it feels to me like you forfeit some of your &quot;just a platform&quot; defence when you exercise your &quot;it&#x27;s my right to expression&quot; defence. Morally, of course, not legally. IANAL and this isn&#x27;t a court so who gives a damn about the law on its own.<p>¹ If you don&#x27;t hold these beliefs, then you&#x27;re not in the audience for the comment. Skip safely.

From for-profit perspective, YT should have done flagging banned videos as UNTRUSTED! and benefit from both free speech supporting and outraging everyone “far” and vocal into epileptic ads seizures.

I&#x27;m for one glad YouTube is doing this. I&#x27;ve heard so many times from friends and such &quot;I watched this doctor on youtube and he says&quot;<p>People don&#x27;t fact check and yes, I agree people should be free to post what they want, but come on. The only people really fighting against this are the ones benefiting from the misinformation being spread. If they wanted to really argue why it&#x27;s a bad thing they should start discrediting people instead of using it to their advantage.

The problem is that YouTube, Twitter, Facebook et al. want to have the protections of social networking platforms (e.g not being accountable for the content), while at the same time be able to autonomously remove&#x2F;censor content outside the existing legal system. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. (well, apparently you can in this day and age but you shouldn’t be able to in a fair society)

Youtube is a private company and can therefore do what it wants with its property - the Youtube platform. However, it may be a bad decision to act as a Ministry of Truth while a number of court cases are still ongoing. Especially since the evidence presented in court proves electoral fraud - even if it is not entirely clear whether it is relevant enough to impact the outcome of the election.

YouTube is a technology company, and deciding what is and what isn&#x27;t acceptable speech is not their prerogative - that&#x27;s what constitutions and law courts are for.<p>Once they start down this censorship road there&#x27;s no turning back until either all their users leave and they&#x27;re forced to shut up shop or they end up as a defacto department of governments.

for folks with a strong opinion on this, how do you square your opinion on youtube censorship with your opinion on net neutrality? youtube censorship is okay but isp censorship is bad? i have multiple isps available to me without any change to the quality of my life, but no comparable alternative to youtube.

Perhaps people should refrain from using the term &quot;un-American&quot; for a while. That term didn&#x27;t age well during the last 4 years. It doesn&#x27;t mean anything right now.

There is one positive side, that this will further erode the trust to social media, with youtube becoming official part of conspiracies. People will adapt, they ll find new venues

I am curious what the comments will now be when the next (insert official, by America, despotic regime) censorship story breaks out in the front page.

IMO if a person isn&#x27;t satisfied with a business they take their money elsewhere. The market will decide if the business is right or wrong.

If this is your introduction to Matt Taibbi, it&#x27;s worth knowing he has a dog in the race when it comes to &quot;cancel culture&quot;: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;outlook&#x2F;the-two-expat-bros-who-terrorized-women-correspondents-in-moscow&#x2F;2017&#x2F;12&#x2F;15&#x2F;91ff338c-ca3c-11e7-8321-481fd63f174d_story.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.washingtonpost.com&#x2F;outlook&#x2F;the-two-expat-bros-wh...</a>.

Every online forum has moderation policies. The &quot;law and order&quot; brigade doesn&#x27;t seem to like &quot;order&quot; when it is imposed on them. And if that order is to stop posting misinformation in the form of crazy conspiracy theories that encourage stochastic terrorism, or racist violence, etc then online forums are well within their rights to moderate that content.<p>Taibbi doesn&#x27;t even talk about the biggest problem with these conspiracy videos: reinforcement bubbles. If you watch one, you will be shown more, and more and more, deep down the rabbit hole. I&#x27;m pretty sure if tech companies changed their algorithm to de-rank subsequent video suggestions of MOAR conspiracy theories, he&#x27;d again claim that they were putting their finger on the scale and that this would enrage Trump voters.<p>The thing is, social media is creating reinforcing but non-intersecting world view bubbles through AI suggestion mechanisms in their feeds, and unless that problem is fixed, you can&#x27;t just allow an infinite amount of this shitty propaganda to be posted, because it will have damaging effects, and none of the viewers will see any counter-claims, and by the time they finally get served a counter-claim, they&#x27;ll be so inside the bubble, they won&#x27;t watch it. Instead, they&#x27;ll go watch a reaction to it, that confirms to their existing opinion and soothes any triggering. There there now, your worldview is safe.

What are they so afraid of?

If you don&#x27;t like YouTube&#x27;s content policy then use something else; as many other people are now doing.<p>Vimeo, DailyMotion, PeerTube, BitChute and so on and so forth.<p>I&#x27;d hazard to say that this marketplace of providers and their variety of policies is quite American.

rumble.com is better about free speech than YouTube, although they don&#x27;t yet support live streaming as far as I&#x27;ve seen.

It really does seem out of line for much of the media to have dismissed or delayed accurate information about Hunter Biden prior to the election. It seems pretty clear this effort was designed to avoid upsetting the election.

You don&#x27;t appease fascists.

When Trump got elected I had to listen to my friends freak out about a &quot;Hitler&quot; &quot;Fascist&quot; crazy-man. I silently rolled my eyes.<p>Then when he lost the election, and lied about it, and confused more than a third of the country in the process, I realized I was wrong.<p>I had <i>wanted</i> to believe (though never based on any evidence), that more information was always better, and that people are smarter than TV assumes. I wanted to believe that a pre-selected, pre-digested set of channels was ludicrous, and removing the gatekeepers would force a radically more efficient system. I wanted to believe that because I &quot;knew&quot; <i>I</i> personally didn&#x27;t need such pabulum.<p>Perhaps we&#x27;ll grow into it. Personally, I&#x27;d rather not risk it right now.

The main problem is that debunking conspiracy theories takes far more effort than spreading them. Not sure if YT has the right balance of rejecting things outright, but I do think there is a line. For example, most people wouldn&#x27;t criticize YT for taking down holocaust denial theories so they should at least do that much.<p>However, they should probably avoid being the arbiter of truth except where truly necessary. I voted for Biden, but I&#x27;m not sure if we have hit the threshold quite yet where you should stop discourse on fraud. This should be done after the EC votes, but right now feels a little early.

Surely the conservatives will believe in the freedom of private enterprise.<p>YouTube can do whatever they want on their platform. For example, they can ban model train enthusiasts for no reason at all.<p>Love it or hate it, there&#x27;s nothing un-American about a private company doing whatever they want inside their area of control. That&#x27;s kind of the definition of America.

If you reject the idea that people are intelligent enough to think about politics for themselves then you reject the idea that they&#x27;re intelligent enough to govern themselves.<p>Democracy and free speech are intrinsically linked.

I actually agree somewhat and hear me out. I think these people don&#x27;t realize the juggernaut they are creating. I&#x27;m a political centrist but even I see it. Suppression of the message will only amplify it.<p>Prediction:<p>Trump will run again in 2024, no doubt. Consider the implications of that for a second. He already said he will be holding a major 2024 rally in DC during the Biden inauguration. Imagine the shadow that will cast on Biden Day 1, especially if half the population thinks the election was stolen and no outlet for that opinion (even Fox News). Coupled that with the current infighting within the DNC between progressives vs the corporate establishment elitist liberals that they accuse Biden of being, and they are essentially giving Trump all the foundation he needs to become the underground anti-establishment anti-DC-swamp anti-deep-state no-lobbyist no-China-influence anti-MSM anti-big-tech real-middle-east-peace i-already-was-president anti-hunter-biden-corruption and even anti-fox-news candidate which will go viral and make him even more of outlier then he was in 2016. Trump will use all of this and more (Hunter Biden story suppression especially) as real a boogyman to point to. The totalitarian dictator analogies will no longer hold any water when it turns out he steps down peacefully but not quietly on Nov 3rd, albeit with a huge legal fuss that fizzled out. He will aggrandize himself and play that as him being a fighter to the bitter end to his base. I don&#x27;t think the GOP can primary anyone good enough to beat that version of Trump and you will see a massive blue collar class vote swap from DNC to GOP.<p>The writing is on the wall, eventually there will be bifurcation in Big Tech and Twitter and Youtube will become the walled garden for the left of center only and largely irreverent with conservatives with things like Parlor and BitChute and others taking the exodus. It will turn into a battle for the centrists eyeballs to come to their sides platform or straddle both. The analogy of Reddit banning toxic subs only holds if everyone is ACTUALLY on reddit, most simply left. There is already talk among conservatives of alternative Reddits and Facebooks, alternatives Netflix&#x2F;Hollywood companies, alternative Fox News even. Many will say &quot;but those will be subject to the same problems of early Twitter and Reddit, how to excise the toxic elements and keep the real discussion.&quot; I would say that can EASILY be done without going down the censorship rabbit hole by simply knowing where to stop. Get rid of the illegal stuff, the spam and pornography, and leave the rest regardless of how distasteful it is. Its an Overton Window problem, you just need slightly looser boundary condition on discourse. Stop pretending to be platforms and admit you are indeed publishers to an extent. Give users the ability to filter what they don&#x27;t want to see and pledge to never bias your algorithms. The cries of the left will be largely irrelevant, they will simply tell you to &quot;go back to Twitter if you don&#x27;t like it&quot;. Once the public loses faith and trust in your company or institution due to your sacrifices in credibility in the name of censorship of one sides information, there wont be any coming back from that loss of face. I&#x27;m not saying this is a good or healthy thing for public discourse, but I do think ti will come to pass.<p>Its questionable whether Biden will make it all the way through his term due to age and decline, and he has already said he will step down after one term. That means the DNC will likely roll with Kamala next (If they are smart they would re-primary her, but I dont think they have the will to, the backlash and collectivist guilt will be huge). Kamala who couldn&#x27;t get 2% of her parties own primary vote in 2020, up against juggernaut viral version of Trump holding mega rallies and creating an alternative media empire he has already dropped hints at.<p>I predict the headlines of the future will largely revolve around how the MSM and Big Tech blew it and need find a way to outreach and repair their reputations and faith to the general public - and will look back at this move as a huge mistake compounding others. The landscape will look totally different.<p>I welcome anyones disagreement with my prediction. I will say it hinges on Trump pivoting correctly.

First off, I don&#x27;t think I will ever be convinced by someone calling something &quot;un-American&quot; or &quot;American.&quot; That is almost always lazy thinking that tries to wrap up an emotional sentiment into some kind of conclusion. America and what it is to be American has changed and it will continue to change. We&#x27;d better hope that change is guided by reasoning about what is good or bad for this country instead of appeals to what is &quot;American&quot; or not.<p>Second, I&#x27;m rather disappointed by the defenses of free speech we see these days. They are flimsy, lack substance, and at times seem unwilling to actually argue for free speech. Is free speech actually good for anything? Is the only reason we attack attempts by people to encroach on it because it is &quot;American&quot;? I, for one, would like an argument for its value.<p>This piece is flimsy. The discussion is about youtube getting removing election misinformation. Ok, controversial. I get it.<p>It brings up Hunter Biden&#x27;s laptop as a case where<p>&gt; That news was denounced as Russian disinformation by virtually everyone in “reputable” media, who often dismissed the story with an aristocratic snort, a la Christiane Amanpour<p>with those lovely scare quotes around &quot;reputable&quot;. I&#x27;m not sure what to say here. Is it better for the media to run around screaming after every single lead? Even the ones that look flimsy to them? Is it better for the US media to be so willing to report and investigate on anything and everything these days when the media making a hubub about anything is enough to have an effect?<p>Taibbi proceeds to ask us to indulge in a hypothetical, one where<p>&gt; what would have happened if Facebook and Google had banned 9&#x2F;11 Truth on the advice of intelligence officials in the Bush years<p>and the natural result of this is that<p>&gt; it will start to make sense that Trump voters in Guy Fawkes masks are now roaming the continent like buffalo.<p>I&#x27;m sorry but this is incredibly lazy thinking. I&#x27;m going to stop quoting the piece because I&#x27;m tired and I have things to say. Things have changed. We&#x27;ve had Trump in office and he was most assuredly different than other presidents -- in good ways and bad. We&#x27;ve had the rise of the internet, of smartphones, of digital technology, and social media. Information flows freely. Nowadays we don&#x27;t risk not having access to information, we risk being drowned in it. The &quot;echos&quot; in our echo chambers aren&#x27;t some soft faint whispers we can&#x27;t see beyond, they are roaring deluges that drown out everything else.<p>I&#x27;m sorry for the longer post, but the truth is that I hate these kinds of articles. They seem to just gawk at the problems we face today and do little to inform or provide perspective or argue. Taibbi in this case seems to think it&#x27;s enough to post a tweet or some headlines; the reader will draw the right conclusions for themselves. It&#x27;s obvious after all. Isn&#x27;t it? But then that&#x27;s exactly the problem we face, where everything is obvious but somehow the other guy&#x27;s come to a different conclusion and but it&#x27;s all wrong!<p>Offer some damn arguments. Try to convince people. If free speech is worth fighting for it isn&#x27;t because it&#x27;s some kind of &quot;American&quot; ideal, it&#x27;s because its a <i>good</i> thing, a worthwhile ideal to practice, a civic habit that improves our democracy and secures it for the future. People deal with information differently these days; that landscape has most assuredly changed. Is it any surprise that free speech will need to fought for again?

I would only say that I FAR prefer an online landscape like the one we have right now, with loonies in the far right and left to be able to express themselves in all platforms, that a corporate controlled, sanitized, heavily censored Internet, it is not even close.

No, it is very likely that it won&#x27;t backfire.<p>If you look throughout history, for every anti-establishment movement that succeeds, they&#x27;re are many many more that are curbed in various stages.<p>History has selection bias which may suggest that anti-establishment movements do well. It has happened a lot of times, but if you look at the probability of an individual movement, it is very low.<p>My prediction is that this will only make the establishment much stronger and they&#x27;ll be able to curb even more dissidents way before they become a thing.

Democracy will eventually die.<p>“In sum, the majority of Americans are generally unable to understand or value democratic culture, institutions, practices or citizenship in the manner required”.<p>“To the degree to which they are required to do so, they will interpret what is demanded of them in distorting and inadequate ways. As a result they will interact and communicate in ways that undermine the functioning of democratic institutions and the meaning of democratic practices and values.”<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;escholarship.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;qt8806z01m&#x2F;qt8806z01m_noSplash_eef039c0e7aa9b1263a0d0b757d3d886.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;escholarship.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;qt8806z01m&#x2F;qt8806z01m_noSpl...</a>

Oh for God’s sake—-attempting to execute a coup to end democracy in America is pretty darn unamerican too, don’t ya think?

“Only paid subscribers can post.”<p>That certainly is American.

&quot;There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that &quot;my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.&quot; -Isaac Asimov<p>or more to the point<p>&quot;Reality has a well-known liberal bias&quot; - Colbert<p>You&#x27;re not entitled to be heard. That isn&#x27;t a tenement of Democracy or Liberty. You&#x27;re entitled to be able to speak (as long as you don&#x27;t hurt others rights).<p>So what is un-american thinking that Youtube needs to allow conspiracies and crazy un-proven, and way out there content.

This is an extraordinary step for YouTube to take.<p>But we live in extraordinary times; or a least, this is an extraordinary circumstance.<p>The president is unwilling to concede his loss. He baselessly claims the election was stolen, alleging massive fraud with no supporting evidence.<p>This claim of a stolen election is a form of government propaganda. It&#x27;s a lie issued by government officials: the president, his administration, and his allies in federal and state offices. This propaganda is designed as cover for a naked power grab. Either to keep the president in office; or to radicalize his base to support further restrictions on the franchise, which aids minority Republican power.<p>Censoring government propaganda is the right thing to do. Especially this most noxious type that is designed to attack and destroy democracy. The failure of the president and his allies to respect democracy means this responsibility must fall on other actors, such as YouTube. Or at the very least these actors should refrain from promulgating the government&#x27;s destructive propaganda.<p>Taibbi&#x27;s concern that this will lead to more radicalization is exactly that: a worry and a concern. Yet the uncritical spreading of these government lies is causing damage here and now, in real time. It&#x27;s bizarre that Taibbi is so focused on theoretical downsides, yet seems to discount the damage that has been done and will multiply should the lie fester.<p>What about free speech?<p>First; Free speech does not exist for itself. The purpose of free speech is truth. Free speech is a guarantor of discourse, of our ability to have free and open conversations that reveal some truth about our universe or about ourselves. And the ability for us to agree or disagree about what the truth is, what is right and what is wrong, and what is true and what is false.<p>Propaganda and bald-faced lies are anathema to free speech. Trump&#x27;s claims are baseless self-serving lies. They shed no light, they are designed to mislead, and they hide the truth. The national discourse now centers on this big lie. In this context lies are bad not just because they are lies, but because they narrow and constrain the discourse. I&#x27;m not talking about lies that come from misinformation or misunderstanding or mistake - the goal of free discourse is to correct these kind of lies. Instead I&#x27;m speaking of the deliberate lie designed to achieve some goal, the knowing lie. If the goal of discourse is to uncover truth, the goal of the knowing lie is to preempt discourse, and by extension the truth itself.<p>Second; Free speech has always been bridled. Consider holocaust denial and the flat earth hypothesis. Both have approximately the same amount of supporting evidence (none or close to zero). But only holocaust denial is banned from YouTube. Why? Because there is a nexus of holocaust denial, anti-semitic violence, white supremacist groups, and racism. Flat earthers are benign by comparison (unless they start blowing up NASA buildings). Holocaust denial is dangerous because it&#x27;s part of larger violent white nationalist movement.<p>Trump&#x27;s lies about the election are of this latter type; not that they are white nationalist; but that they are part of a larger effort to subvert democracy. And have already stoke death threats an calls to violence. Individuals and corporations (like YouTube) should actively rebut and censor these lies.

I never understood why American conservatives want more government oversight over private companies that offer services for free

I would argue that YouTube is behaving _more american_, in that they&#x27;re a private business that&#x27;s doing whatever they want within their rights (taking down content they deem inappropriate).<p>The government isn&#x27;t censoring YouTube. Any Trump supporter that believes that YouTube is over-moderating is free to create their own website from which they can spawn whatever garbage content they want.<p>Spoiler, though: They won&#x27;t. It turns out the only reason most nutjobs on Facebook&#x2F;YouTube&#x2F;Reddit amounted to anything at all is because they were given a free megaphone and millions of listeners. I&#x27;m not sure why private businesses have to allow such behavior?<p>Until slander and libel get enforced on social media sites, which would solve most of these problems anyway (I think), why does anyone think these websites _have to_ cater to every single subculture? If I were at the helm of any reasonably sized social media company I certainly would not want my site attached with fascist propaganda.

A phrase that comes to mind: Make Orwell Fiction Again

The Palmer Report is probably an even better example of just how cynical and partisan this push by social media sites to purge claims of election fraud is than the article makes clear. Back when their anti-Trump articles started to spread across social media, I did some quick searching (y&#x27;know, just basic old-school internet literacy stuff when seeing sensational articles from a publication you haven&#x27;t heard of spreading virally online) and concluded their main claim to fame seemed to be having their own Snopes tag due to the bullshit they&#x27;d published. No detectable presence on respected or independent sites beyond that, not even a Wikipedia entry. All the normal hallmarks of your classic fake news site, in the pre-2016 sense of the term.<p>In no time at all after they started saying what Trump&#x27;s opponents wanted to hear, though, Twitter had given them a verified account, their Wikipedia entry was glowing and featured prominently when searching for them, and they&#x27;d been granted a veneer of respectability by big tech companies and were being spread by the personal but work-associated social media accounts of those who worked for big tech. There was no fearmongering about social media sites spreading disnformation that undermined democracy, even though the articles were strikingly like what Trump and his supporters are pushing now, down to the specific arguments even, and every bit as dubious.

It seems that there&#x27;s a strong component to this argument that such moves inflame Trump supporters. The problem with this is that it has been established that a substantial part of Trump supporters will be inflamed no matter whether the subject at hand corresponds to a real issue, or a completely fabricated one.<p>Thus the people who should be concerned here are the ones who try to take reality into consideration when judging news, in which case the issue here is really no worse than the coverage and editorial lines that most need media currently hold. Looking from that perspective, YouTube&#x27;s policy allows by far the broadest expression of opinions in an online property without having to go with less mainstream forums.<p>For Taibbis argument to be taken seriously, he should address the problems that stem from a section of society to be completely dissociated from reality.

Taibbi and Greenwald are two people on the left that still have a healthy attitude to question things, and not to follow the left echo chamber.

“Cutting down the public’s ability to flip out removes one of the only real checks on the most dangerous kind of fake news, the official lie.&quot; Perfect summary of the article.

The author mainly belittles the misinformation problem and doesn&#x27;t get at all that we&#x27;re in real trouble here. The internet is being flooded with wrong information and it gets increasingly harder for people to tell truth from fiction. Something _has to_ be done, YT can&#x27;t sit and just watch it&#x27;s Plattform be used to destroy democracy.

I really don&#x27;t agree that this is &quot;the latest salvo in the fight against &#x27;domestic anti-democracy information&#x27;&quot;. Youtube&#x27;s generally had a very permissive stance on information they don&#x27;t think is accurate; they&#x27;re taking this one, targeted action against a uniquely dangerous threat.

&gt;One of the most critical to-do items for the American democracy movement over the next four years will be to more effectively counter domestic anti-democracy disinformation. If possible, it should be done on both the supply and demand sides. We can&#x27;t ignore this issue any longer.<p>Hmmm...<p>I can think of some historical examples where governments used rhetoric oddly reminiscent of that rhetoric spoken by the ex-cia officer that tried to run for president the quote&#x27;s taken from.<p>Germany during the 1930&#x27;s<p>The Soviet Union during the 1920&#x27;s...well...most of time existing I guess<p>Cambodia in the 1970&#x27;s<p>China....currently

It&#x27;s crazy what&#x27;s getting banned.<p>If you believe in science, then you believe that experts and authorities can be wrong, and likely are wrong about some things. You believe that it is important to question those beliefs. What youtube is doing is against science.<p>If you believe in liberty, then you know that more than one thing can be right at the same time. That there is more than one way to do things. What youtube is doing is against liberty.

This is a solved problem : don&#x27;t BAN, but FLAG conspiracy theories and dangerous memes with a notice citing links to facts.<p>I&#x27;ve enjoyed the somewhat balanced weekly covid discussions of youtuber Dr Chris Martenson &#x2F; PeakProsperity. He generally backs up his opinions with links to science studies and data, but has been censored by youtube for mentioning controversially that &quot;HCQ has some efficacy as a prophylactic before exposure to Covid&quot;. ( He has also covered topics such as less severe Covid outcome for those taking Vitamin-D, for which there now seems to be a lot of evidence... yet why are we not seeing governments recommend and supply it more widely ? )<p>Are we still able to rationally discuss on youtube topics such as : Did SARS-CoV2&#x2F;Covid originate elsewhere than at the seafood market in Wuhan [ there are a handful of data with earlier cases in distant locales ] ?<p>Are we allowed to make videos discussing the cause of collapse of WTC building 7 on 911 ? Engineering Professor Leroy Hulseys structural study at Fairbanks University argues that the canonical explanation of fire damage leading to failure of a weak point followed by cascading collapse is &#x27;unlikely&#x27;.<p>Will we be able to share videos that say fracking for oil produces so much extra methane as to render the proponents criminally liable for the acceleration of global warming ?<p>Will we be able to discuss on youtube.com whether google.com should pay more tax than they currently do ? What body decides this ?