company says it's taking action to prevent conspiracy videos from reaching large numbers of people
I'm not afraid of conspiracies. Are you?
I'm not afraid of conspiracies. Are you?
You only trust them to vote, if they're going to vote according to a narrow band of acceptable thought. At that point, you're really just tyrannical, the democracy is an illusion.
Is an unborn fetus a person or a cluster of cells?
Is a transgender woman a woman or a man approximating phenotypical gender characteristics of a woman?
Is sex under 18 capable of consent? Under 16? Under 14? In Spain it was 13 until only a few years ago, where is "the truth?"
Prostitution, gambling, drugs? Truth?
Almost all of the most contentious issues are not unresolved because of a lack of education, they're unresolved because of inherent moral conflicts worthy of negotiation. (Age of consent isn't really contentious, I just wanted to show something that most people consider to be obvious or a given not being necessarily resolvable). If we were to simply convince more people that a woman's right to bodily autonomy supercedes the unborn's right to live, or vice versa, we would have only really succeeded in indoctrination. Neither position is "truthful," it's always just an arbitrary moral elevation of one violation of consent over another.
I think the only issue even close to approximating the simplicity you've described would be climate change, but even then there is a wide chasm between the role people believe that the state should play.
Censoring their content to bias their political views in a way you like is... extremist at best.
The earth is not flat. This is relatively easy to prove, but people can be influenced by the right rhetoric, and they vote.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't be allowed to believe in dumb things from a legal perspective, I just don't think they're entitled to a platform.
Would you apply this logic to ISIS recruitment videos? "It's their choice! YouTube shouldn't pull their videos because if they do democracy has failed as a concept!"
Perhaps then you shouldn't have made it into a political position by suggesting that they'd all vote for a specific candidate.
> This is relatively easy to prove, but people can be influenced by the right rhetoric, and they vote.
It's a bit of a trusting trust exercise - you can prove it in a way that satisfies you, but that doesn't necessarily satisfy everyone.
> Would you apply this logic to ISIS recruitment videos?
Much more debatable because ISIS videos encourage outright violence.
1) People don't vote based on their beliefs, 2) Beliefs can't be wrong, 3) A vote based on a wrong belief can't lead to an undesirable candidate.
This is not about censorship. This is about each of use trying to help educate, uplift and enlighten those around us. In other words, it's up to us to help our fellow citizens. If you want to punt on that project, then so be it. But not all of us have given up.
The exact same system is used for spreading that information too. Adding your personal bias into the system is not a "fix" for disinformation.
It's not sensible to say "lack of information about X is the only thing stopping Y from happening" because that can be true of an infinite number of falsehoods. Lack of information about the riches of Atlantis is a major factor in people not setting off into the sea. And so on.
Sure, a few crazy people may choose to believe that Jews eat the blood of children, but I hope that in a free society where information to the contrary is readily available it will not impact a significant enough portion of the population to cause the sorts of genocides you're suggesting.
We started this conversation talking about people who believe the earth is flat.
Do you have any evidence to suggest that these beliefs are so widespread as to influence a majority of the population and require intervention for a properly functioning democracy as the parent was suggesting?
Second, I'm going to need some sources for your stats. It looks like in the Gallup polls, we still have roughly 69% of Republicans who claim that climate change is greatly exaggerated [3], with only 35% of Republicans who think humans are the cause of it, and only 18% or Republicans that think it will cause any problems in their lifetime.
[1] https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jun...
[2] https://mashable.com/2017/02/03/trump-epa-climate-website-ch...
[3] https://news.gallup.com/poll/231530/global-warming-concern-s...
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/americans-who-accept-climate-ch...
For some reason, it's not controversial to say "we're banning ISIS propaganda videos which radicalize young muslims", but it is controversial to say "we're banning political propaganda videos which radicalize young americans".
Young or old, actually.
So I tried to understand her mindset, and just talked about her life. Turned out she was abused by a parent who was "doing it for her own good" - it was a horrible story. Her whole childhood was a lie, she was trained by the parent not to trust her instincts, and to believe something false so the parent could benefit.
My takeaway was that her childhood experience taught her that you can't trust people and that "big lies" are possible, and so she latched onto the flat earth thing due to that.
There's an almost palpable element of dehumanisation among those ridiculing them and wanting to silence them, as if holding on to untruths makes them unworthy to exist in our society.
Human psychology hasn't changed, though, and propaganda is still powerful.
Also, do you have any direct evidence in your claim that Japanese are more skeptical? The Aum Shinrikyo death cult got almost 10% of the vote in the mid-90's.
According to todayifoundout, US schools aren't nearly as bad as the meme likes to portray them [1].
[1] https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2015/01/kids-get-su...
And are you really going to give lessons on the mythology of Japan to people who live in Japan? That's perhaps a tad presumptuous, especially considering it's like telling people living in Britain that witches are part of British folklore.
I mean, please.
I found that amusing. I have tons of these, most of them amuse me. Try living here and (among the many other notions you have of the place that are no doubt wrong) you'll see there's a huge amount of superstition, regardless of education level.
If you can't afford to come, https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/ is a good resource. It's amazing how much that sounds absurd is true.
They took off Alex Jones, not for ideological reasons, but because he was blatantly lying about people being pedophiles; this was after years of accusing school shooting victims of being liars . If you can't see how that's a violation of a terms of service, I really don't know what it would take to convince you.
YouRube is FAR past critical mass. It IS online video. And I can’t think of anything you could do short of shutting the site down that would fix that and give competitors a level playing field.
The reasoning is that stripping YouTube of Alphabet's deep pockets from advertising would give competitors a chance to monetize as well as YouTube, without fearing that Google will choke off their air supply to preserve YouTube's dominance.
It might not be enough, but it would be a start.