How many flat-earther videos would you have to watch before you started to believe that the earth was flat?
If your answer is "No amount of flat-earther videos would convince me the earth is flat":
1. Thank goodness
2. Why do you care that they (or any other weird conspiratorial videos) exist at all?
Clearly since flat earthers continue to exist, your logic is broken.
They think their judgement is better than people they disagree with. Therefore someone should exercise paternalistic control over those they disagree with, so those wrong people will stop disagreeing with their obviously-right opinions so darn much.
They also don't foresee the resentment this will generate among the scolded and/or think they can contain that resentment. Which tells me their judgement was actually untrustworthy all along, and regardless of the advisability of censorship they should not be allowed to wield it.
I'm not arrogant enough to think that I'm immune to misreporting of facts, or that I and millions of others couldn't be damaged by people arguing in bad faith.
And "arguing in bad faith" covers a lot of the most objectionable content.
You are reading way too far into my post, which is only about whether some videos are harmful, not what to do about it, and not how you determine which ones.
Same here in this thread and even top comment: HN crowd so its "obvious" that we should ban alt-right and "people like video x or y because it is controverial"
Well no. Some people just thing its ok and want to watch it and the line between fighting hate speech and censorship is very hard to draw
Having said that, fake news and conspiracy theories have played a major role in setting the groundwork for the Holocaust, so there's a valid argument to be made there. I wouldn't want the people writing/reading Vox to make the call though.
Just as most people believe they are above average drivers, most people probably believe they are above-average at filtering out internet propaganda. Even in a media-savvy forum like HN, I would be willing to bet that most of us, myself obviously included, have at least liked/up voted/whatever'd a modest number of maliciously spread memes/posts/etc.
To a lesser extent I care about them showing up in other people’s recommendations a lot. Propaganda does work.
"Won't somebody please think of the children?"
Case in point, the moment you start educating about conspiracy theories, you're part of the conspiracy. You can't win.
If you acknowledge what it is, how it went wrong and the interactions with it go on. You can teach people how to spot it.
Often times, it is.
Many people who fall into conspiratorial thinking believe themselves to be the victims of elaborate campaigns of propaganda, mind control, gaslighting, etc. Many also reject the mainstream rationales behind arguments against their beliefs as being fallacious or misinformation, and interpret attempts to convince them otherwise as validation of their fears.
Such people don't arrive at their beliefs by logical inference, their conspiracies serve an emotional need, similar to belief in cults or extremist religion. It can be comforting to "realize" there are puppetmasters pulling the strings behind the mundane chaos of the world, and that you alone can see the facade. Even if those puppetmasters are malicious, you know they're there, you know there's a plan.
Conspiracies are about making sense of a senseless world, and that's why it can be difficult to turn people away from them. No one wants to live a meaningless life in a world of arbitrary and ultimately purposeless cruelty.