Hacker News Reader

Comment by coinward | Hacker News Reader

Censorship bad

The actual rules is very impartial (btw, [1] should be the actual link):

> Today, we're taking another step in our hate speech policy by specifically prohibiting videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status.

If they apply this rule to every instance of allegation of superiority (regardless of age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status) it is a very sensible rule and not censorship at all.

The problem is when there is some "asymmetry" in what kind of (otherwise identical) behaviour is allowed and what is forbidden based on the exact characteristics they outlined above. Then it just becomes "picking favourites" and, yes, full blown censorship (which, to preempt the usual retort, can yes be practiced by private corporations, as opposed to "violations of first amendment rights" that, yes, can only be done by US jurisdictional governments)

[1] https://youtube.googleblog.com/2019/06/our-ongoing-work-to-t...

Hate speech is free speech. We know this both through logical deduction and through multiple different Supreme Court rulings. The "impartial" label just obscures the fundamental problem of it being absurd to consider any speech harmful to anyone, ever, especially within the context of an online content platform that isn't meant to be a publisher with a prerogative to edit said content.

>logical deduction

How can logical deduction flawlessly relate such subjective terms?

Germany does fine not allowing for nazi ideology to be espoused. Commoditizing the spread of bad ideas is not, in fact, a public good.

The U.S. isn't Germany. The U.S. has a first amendment.

Which deals specifically with preventing the government from censoring your speech. You are not obligated to use YouTube, nor is YouTube obligated to host your speech.

Germany isn't the U.S. Germany has a 5th article[1].

Germany acknowledges that there are human rights (plural), that they occassionally conflict and that there are tradeoffs that must be made to achieve some balance and maintain all human rights in some reasonable form.

[1]: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_gg/englisch_gg.h...

Thank goodness for that. If not, YouTube might be forced to publish extremist content that they find to be harmful.

Please cite your source.

> According to the annual report of Germany's interior intelligence service (Verfassungsschutz) for 2012, at the time there were 26,000 right-wing extremists living in Germany, including 6,000 neo-Nazis.

> The National Socialist Movement (NSM), with about 400 members in 32 states,[195] is currently the largest neo-Nazi organization in the United States.

It seems the right to free speech and the right to association has led to FEWER Neo Nazis in America than Germany despite America's population being 4 times larger than Germany's.

The "Unite the Right" rally held in Charlottesville, the rally in which Heather Heyer was killed by a white supremacist, had ~20-40 attendees.

There were several thousand counter-protestors.

This is a Neo-Nazi rally in Germany: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0ZPs48rKhw

Please describe, in your own words, how the restriction of free speech and association has curtailed the organization of Neo-Nazi movements.

https://xkcd.com/1357/

The problem with this is that mediums like facebook and youtube have completely monopolized the attention of the masses. You basically have to use them. So either play along or be irrelevant. No alternative.

Freedom of speech is not entitlement to an audience. People can always make a sign and shout in the park.

You don't really have a chance at an audience without using the platform..

No one said you are entitled to one.

If Youtube deems your content inappropriate for whatever reason then they remove you. This is a problem when they control the channel for the vast majority of content. You can't apply the simple ideology to it anymore. It is its own government at this point.

I don't think the other poster misses your point at all, but simply disagrees with it (as do I).

Then they can build their own YouTube so you don't have to watch their bile.

Hey coinward, according to HN, that's not the case ;)

He's being downvoted because his comment is not constructive and is a knee jerk reaction to reading the title of the post, not because people disagree with him

I would've said that 20 years ago saying "Censorship Bad" wouldn't have been constructive, but these days with all these people against free speech, I would say it's a very constructive comment.

Are you sure? I've seen quite a few "censorship is good if it censors bad things" comments upvoted while free speech absolutists generally get downvoted into the ground.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com