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Comment by 12elephant | Hacker News Reader

Is it really that they don't want people to criticize their bullshit?

Or is it that they don't want their bullshit to be censored off the face of the planet? Whether or not we agree with their views, should they not be able to express themselves, and how they truly feel?

Imagine if your criticism of their viewpoints was being censored instead, so they got to speak un-opposed and un-criticized.

I constantly hear that people should "be themselves", and "should not be made ashamed of who they are". It appears this advice falls down when the people aren't who we want them to be, or hold views we consider "wrong".

If I hate a specific ethnic group, how else do you expect me to change, if not through sharing my views and then being challenged on those views. If you censor such a person, would you not then further radicalize them?

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> Is it really that they don't want people to criticize their bullshit?

Yes. Specifically the idea is to insist on the usual "balance" argument. If this BLM activist can say that police shot the unarmed black man in the back seven times for no apparent reason then a 9/11 Truther ought to be able to say that Jews blew up the Twin Towers using mind control.

If you say wait a second, but one of those is a fact about the world and the other is an insane conspiracy theory, then to them you're now a censor, an opponent of Free Speech.

They actually give the example of fact checking interventions from popular social media sites. In their opinion this fact checking is biased against them. If you watch a typical Flat Earth conspiracy video on Youtube for example it will add a fact checking piece to the UI that explains that er, no, it isn't and here's how we know.

People like Toby think that ought not to happen, because who are we to go around dismissing things as untrue just because of all the evidence against them?

Now, a cynic might think that professional contrarian Toby Young, who makes his living saying stuff that's obviously wrong benefits enormously from this useless "balance" and that's why he is in favour of it.

But who am I to assume such base motives. Maybe Toby is just very stupid and actually believes every word he says.

> If you say wait a second, but one of those is a fact about the world and the other is an insane conspiracy theory, then to them you're now a censor, an opponent of Free Speech.

No, if you remove the video from YouTube on the grounds of "removing false information" you're a censor. This is what has happened to e.g. Alex Jones, Milo, and many others for example.

By all means, leave a comment denouncing their idiocy. Make a response video showing why they're wrong. Whatever. But don't remove the video FFS. It just makes them believe it more.

You said it yourself: "the other is an insane conspiracy theory". That's obvious to you, and its obvious to 99% of people. So why do you feel the need to remove it?

False information spreads fast [0] and has real world consequences [1]

[0] https://news.mit.edu/2018/study-twitter-false-news-travels-f...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-c... edit: to be clear, I think some lives could've been saved if we took it more seriously.

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