Hacker News Reader

Comment by awb | Hacker News Reader

Soave (co-host of The Hill’s morning show: Rising) wrote an article about it here:

https://reason.com/2022/03/03/youtube-rising-the-hill-electi...

> YouTube has taken the position that merely acknowledging an utterance of the false claim is the same thing as making the claim yourself unless you correct and disavow it elsewhere in the video. It is also sufficient to post a warning label in the video's description that a false election claim makes an appearance.

Not saying it’s a smart policy, but just to be clear, YouTube does allow you to play a video of Trump saying the election was rigged, provided you warn viewers about it.

View on HN

What nonsense from YouTube. Do they really think putting in such disclaimers is actually going to change anyone's mind?

I sense the goal isn’t to change anyone’s mind from “the election was stolen” to “the election was fair”. Rather, it serves to enforce the notion that believing the former is considered unacceptable.

That's interesting. If they're not trying to persuade (and it doesn't appear so), then is the point of that to flex their power or what?

No it's more about the importance of challenging bad ideas with good ones. All the justifications for spreading what we agree are lies are under the assumption that the value is in debunking them.

Pragmatically, you can persuade indirectly by means of not allowing the opposing side to express itself. I’m not talking about persuading partisans, but rather the people who aren’t invested and aren’t engaged on the topic.

The dominant message they will see is the notion that the election was fully legitimate and had nothing substantial occur that would question its legitimacy. Any compelling or specific counter arguments are simply not visible. So that unengaged person is learning the accepted stance is correct, the unacceptable stance must have a disclaimer because it is so wrong/dangerous, and that if they take that stance they also risk being labeled as crazy or expelled from the platform.

Is there a reason to think one way or the other? I would think having something contradicting it in the same time that it is said would affect at least a portion of people.

It definitely would have an affect on someone who otherwise has no opinion. Or someone on the fence. It adds to the cost of deciding to believe Trump's big lie.

>It is also sufficient to post a warning label in the video's description that a false election claim makes an appearance.

Why not just stick it in every video you make regardless of content if the alternative is potentially the loss of your career?

They can have whatever policy they want. The problem though is that what they are doing is unethical and antithesis to their own stated beliefs. Less than 6 months ago their CEO said free speech was a "core value." The thing is it shouldn't ever even need to be said that something on the internet could be a lie but apparently that is not taught in schools and YouTube feels everyone is too stupid to decide for themselves. Frankly it should be included in their terms of service or on every single video on their platform that what is said might not be true, manipulated, or omitting facts. Maybe we need nutrition labels of the internet so that before you visit YouTube it states clearly how much banning of information they are doing. We don't need a platform to be the judge, jury, and executioner for misinformation but if they want to be I want to see big bold text at the top of their website saying "We ban channels and information we deem to be false. Videos with a checkmark are deemed to contain 100% true facts and if a video is found to reference untrue facts, it will be banned upon review." Everyone needs to know this before people are tricked into thinking it is a neutral platform where judgement of information and misinformation is the responsibility of the individual.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com