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Comment by floor2 | Hacker News Reader

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I've watched a few of them. A narrator gives an opinion on another persons motivation or credibility based on their behavior.

I don't care for the videos personally, but aren't we all entitled to watch what we like, have an opinion, and share that opinion with others?

I hear a lot of opinion on youtube, and other hosts of user contributed content such as HN that I don't agree with, and yet I would prefer youtube and HN let me hear that it then decide for myself if it's credible, insightful, or otherwise useful to me.

That's an adult's perspective, but most people are mentally toddlers, they haven't learnt yet to reason, and they can't tell what's an opinion and what's gospel. If you were babysitting a hundred toddlers, and some dude would start telling them about benefits of eating random berries found in the wild, would you defend freedom of speech or would you embrace censorship?

The only reasonable option I have is to give others the benefit of the doubt, as I expect others to give me.

The videos in question are clearly not directed at children. Do you not see the hypocrisy of your appeal ban one mans commentary on the mental state of adult subjects in these videos based on your own unsubstaintiated commentary of the mental capacity of other adults who are merely viewers of the former?

At least the videos we are talking about comment on the movements and words of the subjects therein, flawed as that limited view may be. At least that is something that can be discussed. You offer absolutely no evidence to support your claim that the video viewers are "mentally toddlers", as you don't even know who they are, and yet you have the gall to question the expertise of the publisher.

I do not want my access to information (correct or incorrect) to be limited due to others attempts to protect "mental toddlers" from themselves.

Do you think these people who you deem to be toddlers mentally should have the right to vote?

That's the real question. Societies of toddlers do better under monarchy if the monarch is an adult. However in societies of adults, where noone is wiser than others, a democracy is a better choice. So, letting toddlers choose one of theirs as a 'ruler' would be madness. All the social strife these days comes from the fact that both adults and toddlers live on one land and must have one ruler.

I am pretty sure I've seen a few of these videos and completely agree with the speciousness of reasoning and liberties to jump to conclusions.

I am less certain that it is actually salutary to hide or remove humbug from the eyes and ears of people. Someone in power is deciding what is humbug what is not, and what is tolerable humbug. Plenty of other videos on YouTube have sponsored sections hawking Nord VPN, making all manner of potentially injurious claims about privacy.

Sunlight, not darkness, is the best disinfectant.

How is that different than CNN and MSNBC do? It's not unusual to tune into either network and see people and groups smeared as racists, sexist, transphobes, bigots, etc based upon "dog whistles" which only they can hear and only they are qualified to interpret, and "context" that only they find rational or compelling.

Yet, YouTube hasn't any problems with that and gladly hosts such content, despite it undoubtedly causing much, much more damage to society.

That is extremely paternalistic. I think this is a good example of how the often dismissed "slippery slope" argument had a point.

Your comment reads the same way to me that I suppose vaccine misinformation, Russian propaganda, or QAnon conspiracies must sound to you.

Yes, the videos are amateur and I highly doubt the guy is credentialed in psychology. But they are not in any way similar to the calculated disinformation campaigns you offer as comparison.

They're entertaining. They're fun to watch. They're not being used as police training videos. If they're influencing jurors, I don't see how this is any different than the thousands of unconscious (or conscious) biases already inherent in the justice system.

By this logic we should ban all true-crime shows and law enforcement dramas because they might contain "misinformation". The show Lie to Me comes to mind as an example of similar pseudo-psychology in entertainment. I'd recommend giving it a watch if you've never seen it, Tim Roth is great.

Since when is random, blatant censorship hailed as "obvious good"? What timeline is this?

The meek shall inherit the Earth, and then turn out to be just as corrupted by power as anyone else.

The same could be said of Law & Order or any other police procedural. One of the tasks jurors have is specifically to assess the credibility of witnesses. But they can't act as an expert witness in the jury room and present their own testimony to fellow jurors.

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