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Comment by stolen_biscuit | Hacker News Reader

Actually it's been pretty conclusively shown that removing extremist content from mainstream channels pretty much prevents the ideas from propagating in the mainstream. If the cockroaches want to crawl under the fridge there's not much you can do to stop them but you can stop them from breeding on the table.

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What if that 'extremist content' is pro-LGBT content somewhere else? What if it's criticism of religion? There's no consensus that those aren't equivalent to extremist content around the world, so such censorship does just as good a job at stopping what we once, in the West, considered abhorrent and obscene, as whatever we consider abhorrent today. I don't get how you can consistently square that circle.

What is the point of arguing that? In places that do designate pro-LGBT content as extremist such as Russia, they already perform censorship.

Yet in places such as UK which does have censorship and hate speech laws, they don't.

Well, rascist content tends to denigrate and harm people, it causes people to get killed and injured, while pro-LGBT content tends to call for love and allow people to love who they want.

I can see the difference, can you?

You make it sound like some slippery slope fallacy, but it's not the same speech. Calling for hate is wrong and should be shuttered in the darkness.

As everyone knows, nobody propagated strange conspiracy theories before the invention of YouTube and Twitter.

Perhaps you are genuinely not old enough to remember a time before YouTube and Twitter, but there were way fewer conspiracy theories floating around, and they didn't have nearly the social impact that they do today. A coordinated misinformation campaign could never have swayed elections in the US and UK before social media. Why? Because there were institutions in place that acted as a filter. Say what you will about that arrangement, it was more effective and suppressing Crazy than whatever it is we've got now.

Yes the media has many ways of getting wacky stories out there.

One of the old favorites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_Sport Still didn't stop some people believing it completely though, human nature.

> there were way fewer conspiracy theories floating around, and they didn't have nearly the social impact that they do today

I remember a whole bunch of crazies on usenet in the early-mid 90s but that was an extremely effective filter at keeping them from the rest of the world.

David Icke rose to fame long before the Internet.

Mormons.

Scientologists.

The benefits of smoking tobacco. The danger of smoking marijuana. (And vice versa, depending on decade.)

The aberrancy/normalcy of homosexuality (take your pick... depends on the decade.)

The vast conspiracy theory that is the Red Mensce. The vast conspiracy that is evil capitalism. (Once again, depends on the decade and locale as to which disinformation campaign is at work.)

Etc.

All of these -- and dozens of others -- thrived pre-internet.

Youtube -- like newspapers before it -- is dying. The ability to host, index, and disseminate video content is spreading st breakneck speed. Youtube is at the point that magazines were several years ago: becoming more and more sanctimonious until it will awake to discover nobody is using their content.

Where are people going in lieu of Youtube?

NASA faked the moon landings, UFOs, Elvis is not dead, JFK second shooter, Marilyn Monroe murdered by FBI/CIA. These are examples of some of the most popular conspiracy theories from the US from over half a century ago. Apparently early 19th century US politics was also rife with conspiracy theories.[0] This even happened in Rome: Mark Antony and Octavian battled with each other using misinformation. [1]

[0] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/conspiracy-theories-a...

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/aaf2bb08-dca... (amp link bypasses paywall)

You didn't used to be able to find communities of like-minded David Icke fans, either. My father was a big David Icke fan, and he talked to my brother and me about it all the time; I can't even imagine how all-consuming it would have been for him if he'd ever have been able to get on a forum and talk to people about it.

They attempted, but they generally didn't have multi-billion-dollar corporations helping them spread their message.

And that's ok. They don't need that today either.

Oh, yes, those lunatics claiming Earth is circling the Sun, and claiming thousands of worlds are out there, similar to our God-chosen . Heretics, society is better without them spreading their nonsense ; deny them their voice, or burn them at stake

Could you explain the argument that you are trying to make?

I'm not sure how scientifically confirmed theories are equivalent to, in many cases overtly disproven, conspiracy theories.

When you say something that is inconvenient to those in power then one way for them to deal with is to label you as a conspiracy theorist. These confirmed scientific theories weren't always confirmed and there was a time when they were quite inconvenient to those in power (the church). The parent poster is making the argument that it's easy to label true information as a conspiracy theory too. Even to this day there are many people who think evolution is a lie. What do you think it was like when Darwin was alive? Now think about the fact that many people have been killed because they were accused of practicing witchcraft.

Yeah, I'll take 9/11 truthers over that.

It might not be as relevant what the specific media is (internet, TV, print, etc.) so much as how dominant that media is.

So it could be the case that in the past conspiracy theorists didn't have access to the most dominant media (e.g. broadcast TV) while today they do.

Just be aware that it's a double edged sword. Mass acceptance of censorship makes it easy to stifle societal progress by designating ideas which you disagree with as extremist content. We are lucky that the people currently at the helm of tech industry happen to hold mostly liberal views that we broadly agree with. If that was not the case, the same argument could have been used by them to suppress many left-wing/progressive ideas that you may hold dear.

If you prove that views are damaging, you are not entitled to protections in any shape or form.

And who decides what’s damaging?

A court of your peers.

We live in a society.

Have you seen Twitter? The mass flagging of banalities as offensive? Online shaming? This isn't as practical as stated.

I mean, there is so much wrong with this statement, and not like thorny philosophical problems to be teased apart with careful interrogation, but just basic definitional problems as well as issues that would make its implementation impossible that are so obvious a kid repeating the fourth grade could spot them toot suite.

Historic hypothetical: Do you think Nancy Reagan could have convinced damn near every conceivable jury in the country in that rap music and the views therein caused damage? What does that do your little draft constitutional amendment there?

I think it would not bebhard to find your view damaging, I'm fact your expression of that view gas already caused specific damage to me because you made me sad for you. As well, such pro-censorship expressions threaten the very core of America The Idea, which idea brings a great many positive things and clarity to the world, the loss of which would be obviously damaging to millions.

How would your subversive and damaging views survive in the dystopia you seek?

Are you making a moral statement, or asserting the current state of the law in the US, which is the jurisdiction at issue?

This comment would feel so natural to a Putinist apparatchik.

Exactly. Don't rock the boat is an ongoing meme in Russia

You make the mistake of presuming that these human beings are all cockroaches. That's pure arrogance. It's not all 5G Holocaust deniers you're turning away.

You think this is better or worse for a country that is sharply and almost exactly evenly polarized across party lines?

> Actually it's been pretty conclusively shown that removing extremist content from mainstream channels pretty much prevents the ideas from propagating in the mainstream.

Actually, no it hasn't. And for anyone that holds such a viewpoint, I'd strongly suggest reading J. S. Mill's classic, On Liberty[1] -- a foundational document of Western political thought.

[1] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm

As I write my reply, this comment is currently grayed-out from downvotes. I find this absurd. Anyone who has read Mill knows Mill was a utilitarian. He didn't support freedom of speech for dogmatic reasons but for practical ones. Mill didn't really care about the rights of the speaker to speak or write. He cared about the right of others to hear and read. From chapter 2 of On Liberty[1]:

> But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

Mill's point is this: Every time you silence someone, you are preventing others from hearing what that person has to say. Maybe those people want to listen so they can entertain an idea and become convinced. Maybe they want to listen so they can better understand and refute the speaker. Maybe they just find the rantings of a crazy person amusing. Whatever their reasons, the "cure" of censorship is worse than the "disease" caused by letting people communicate. (Note that this formulation also makes it easy to distinguish speech from "speech" such as air horns designed to disrupt a speaker from spreading their ideas to those who want to listen.)

Moreover, censorship requires designating a censor. Is there any person or group who you would grant the power of deciding what you're allowed to read or hear? I certainly can't think of one. I'm an adult and I can decide for myself what is acceptable for me to consume, thank you very much.

Of course YouTube is not a government and they shouldn't be forced to host things that they don't want to host, but following the free speech norm is almost certainly more beneficial to society. Every once in a while, one of those crazy ideas that must be censored— one of those ideas turns out to be true. Just like slavery and the subjugation of women in the past, there are moral errors we are committing that future societies will condemn us for. Censorship prevents those ideas from coming to light sooner and impedes moral progress.

Warning messages before viewing something? Sure. Add links to rebuttals? Fine. Demonetize? OK. But deletion? I'd prefer you didn't.

1. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_Liberty/Chapter_2

I think it's funny how people will downvote arguments favoring free speech. At least they're being consistent.

What's Mill's position on filter bubbles?

The very idea of a "filter bubble" is definitionally impossible given a Millian open market of ideas. IMO, it's an ideal worth striving for. Maybe it's easy to draw the line with crazy racists or flat-Earthers, but what about complex social issues: abortion, euthanasia, religions values?

What's wrong with YouTube and Facebook exercising a bit of "benevolent despotism"?

The classic problem - who decides what behavior is benevolent?

"$INSERT_POSITIVE_ADJECTIVE despotism" is still despotism.

So it comes down to each person's belief set - do they believe that despotism is unfortunate when misapplied but is a force for good in the right hands? Or do they instead believe that all forms of control inevitably will get seized by corrupt forces? Or more radically, that the entire concept of control is inherently contradictory when seen in the broader context of us having brains with limited computational power, limited knowledge, forever bounded by time in a locally deterministic universe, and thus any attempt to seize control just furthers the propagation of ignorance that the "benevolent despotists" are ironically trying to eradicate?

The answer is left as an exercise to the reader.

Ah yes, and, if I remember my Mill, we must be the barbarians?

Or we can look at modern evidence, not centuries old political philosophy.

I'd be careful with dismissing the giants whose shoulders we straddle. If it weren't for the Magna Carta, the French and American Revolutions, and the Declaration of Independence, most of us would still be living under despotic rule.

The manga carts basically gave power to landlords, the American revolution protected slavery, the Declaration of Independence explicitly stated the slaves were not people.

No one should be beholden to the “giants whose shoulders we straddle”. Note that that phrase is actually applied to scientists who developed evidence based theories rather than old “pure thought” silliness.

As far as despotic rule - England had an elected government at the time of the American revolution (not saying that America wasn’t justified), but it’s also worth noting that a large number of the early English colonists left England because they wanted to enforce religious domination that wasn’t legal in England.

> the Declaration of Independence explicitly stated the slaves were not people.

That is categorically not true. It said some problematic things about Native Americans for sure, but they could never have gotten away with pro-slavery language in the Declaration. It's a propaganda document that had to unite wide swaths of revolutionary ideologies; abolitionists included.

I assume that you are actually thinking of the 3/5ths compromise in the Constitution, which is still more complicated than just "saying slaves aren't people." Counting slaves as people was the slave-owner position, because being counted wasn't about rights or freedom, it was about State power. It was the abolitionist arguing that slaves shouldn't count as people, not to de-humanize them, but to keep the slave-owners from being able to have it both ways.

You're right, it's an implicit assumption in the declaration, made explicit in the Constitution.

> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

Rests on the assumption that slaves are not "men". But something else.

The DoI did not release slaves, which is fairly explicit statement that slaves are people. Of course Deciding that slaves were 3/5th of a person, and slavery was legal is an explicit statement the “all men are created equal” was not something believed by the signatories of the DoI.

That said the “State power” argument in this case has always been the justification for the treason committed by the confederacy. When faced with a legally elected president, making a legal change that they didn’t like, the confederate states mutinied.

They have retroactively tried to call it the “war of northern aggression” (hint, you committed treason, so it’s not). Then they’ve claimed it was about states rights - if it was, then the Supreme Court would have ruled it unconstitutional, they’ve also never mutinied over anything else.

>The DoI did not release slaves, which is fairly explicit statement that slaves are people. Of course Deciding that slaves were 3/5th of a person, and slavery was legal is an explicit statement the “all men are created equal” was not something believed by the signatories of the DoI.

You're treating two different documents that were written 14 years apart by two diffent, though strongly overlapping, groups of people as if they were statements someone made back to back. Did Thomas Jefferson believe the words "All Men" included the slaves he owned when he penned those words? Fuck no! But he still wrote the words in a way that men who did believe that "All Men" meant ALL men could get behind it. Compare this to how he describes the Natives.

"He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions."

By examining the nuance, you can start to see a fuller shape of the society. Slavery was a hot button issue that was left unspoken until the moment it unquestionably has to be addressed. The Native Americans are considered savage and warlike, and that is an uncontroversial view.

I understand the impulse to fight back against whitewashed history, but throwing out all nuance isn't helpful no matter what cause it is in service to.

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