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Comment by cryptonector | Hacker News Reader

> If it's instructions on drinking bleach, why censor it?

Not comparable.

That's fair. Instructions on drinking bleach might cause others to be harmed. This is different because nobody has ever come to harm because of this. I'd imagine if people believed this, there would have been some kind of violence on say, January 6th the day of the insurrection-- sorry, inauguration.

Please let me know if you know how to fix this unfortunate typo.

>” Please let me know if you know how to fix this unfortunate typo.”

You can click the edit button. But you’re probably trying to make a snarky point.

If we are going to say that censorship is justified because you want to prevent violence or insurrections, we open the floodgates to some seriously bad things. Here’s a scenario:

Claiming that people are being systematically discriminated against could lead to violence and death. Saying that police officers kill minorities could lead to another CHAZ/CHOP, which was also an insurrection where people died. As a result, we need to silence ACAB and anyone who delegitimizes our police.

We don't do prior restraint on speech in the U.S. Only if there's an imminent threat of violence (and that imminence is not interpreted liberally) do we allow the government to stop a speaker. If speech eventually leads to violence, we expect law enforcement to deal with it, and there can be consequences after the fact, but not before.

> You can click the edit button.

Don't think so.

> If we are going to say that censorship is justified because you want to prevent violence

Nope. Just agreeing with my parent comment that there is a significant difference between harm-causing misinformation and this very good election business.

>>If we are going to say that censorship is justified because you want to prevent violence or insurrections, we open the floodgates to some seriously bad things<<

If it were just as bad as "The censors want to prevent the bad things", I think I might feel that it would be justifiable. This type of thinking also robs the broader public of its agency to reason. The broader public is not comprised of petulant children, regardless of what the media outlets would tell you and what the behavior of Twitter might show (very few of those people display that sort of behavior in actual life, where consequences happen).

This "moral highgrounding", to protect us from the corruption of verbiage that may occur on one platform or another is a ridiculous idea to think that functional adults might need. We are not so weak as to be protected from ideas that "must not be named". Words are not magic, and people cannot be enchanted by their mere utterances. They can be enticed by them being outlawed and the verboten mystique that makes the forbidden seem so savory.

People may be uneducated, but it is impossible to educate them through silence and the silencing of ideas. These verboten ideas will get spread around, major platform or no. They'll spread without any kind of resistance or discussion and no disinfectant light of truth by debate will be shone on them because they will be pushed down to the nooks and crannies, off of the popular platforms where the light of day can show them to be the BS that they are. They'll find their place in small groups and factions, I felt and grow and split people apart. They'll make people not talk to each other and they'll make us a weaker country and a less educated one. A country that tries to run away from hard questions and conversations because it's easier to tell someone or some group to shut up and don't talk about that, rather than address a topic with an open and honest conversation with facts and dialogue.

You realize this is YouTube's position right? They're fine with the exact clip The Hill used if it's to criticize those ideas. To oppose YouTube's stance is to argue we shouldn't pair false claims with the evidence that refutes it.

I'm not sure I represented myself well at all. I'm not for censorship or any form of "Ministry of Truth". Those ideas will be paired with videos naturally by people who would choose to refute the ideas put forth. And I think fair use should cover rebuttal videos (though I'm unsure how copyright works in that way). I don't think anyone needs to be banned for showing a video discussing any topic... it's legal, and a private platform. They have the right, but it seems a bit tacky. I don't see how I could have been misconstrued as for not rebutting poor arguments or false information with facts, good arguments and critical thinking skills. I apologize if I did - I got a little long winded and should have kept it shorter and to the point.

> I don't see how I could have been misconstrued as for not rebutting poor arguments or false information with facts, good arguments and critical thinking skills.

Again, you're agreeing with YouTube on that point. The Hill's ban was because they didn't contextualize the false information they shared.

Here's Kim Iverson breaking down the criteria for Political Disinformation and what they might have done to break said policy:

https://youtu.be/t-oEaACklrc

EDIT: and I think I see where we're breaking down in our communications. We are basically agreeing (I think). I don't think YouTube's need for an immediate tag or rebuttal around "misinformation" leads to further discourse. I think rebuttal videos which would be linked, by way of the shared interest algorithm, would further discourse. Instead of scrounging for ad revenue and pushing people down into their own little bubble, YouTube has an obligation to offer up rebuttal videos, videos which offer an alternative to supposed misinformation, not to outright ban something like raw footage of political figures putting their foots in their mouths.

A similar claim of "clear and present danger" was used in 1919 to prosecute anti-war protestors for handing out pamphlets which advocated draft resistance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States

While there is certainly a case for criminalizing direct prompts to imminent violence, attaching consequentialism to ideas is a very slippery slope, given enough creative hermeneutics by whoever currently wields state power. (I recall no shortage of conservatives circa 2004 who genuinely believed Michael Moore was guilty of treason.)

You tell me: is this comedy sketch satire, or an explicit call to violence? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhWCk2f2alI

See, THIS is incomparable because anti-war pamphlets are ideas being banned. This policy from YouTube is not doing that. It's saying that ideas based on misinformation must be paired with the evidence to contextualize it.

Obviously the context is different (particularly in the difference between a state and a private corporation, quasi-monopolistic or not).

The key comparison is this: who decides what is misinformation? who decides what information/disinformation is "dangerous"? The right consequentialist narrative can frame any idea as dangerous.

Obviously it's dangerous to advise people to drink bleach. But you can find millions who'd make the same claim of vaccines (both "the jab", or pre-COVID childhood vaccinations); or, of ivermectin (while claims of its COVID efficacy are dubious, neither is it categorically unsafe for humans).

I'm not going to lose much sleep over YouTube attaching "The more you know..." links on controversial subjects, paternalism and "the backfire effect" notwithstanding. The concern is algorithmically putting their thumbs on the scale of discourse (and with second-order self-censorship effects). Even if/when they're mostly right (COVID vaccines work; global warming is anthropogenic), that is a disturbing level of unaccountable power.

> > If it's instructions on drinking bleach, why censor it?

>Not comparable.

Nor did it ever actually happen.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/fact-check-no-trump-did-not-t...

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jul/11/joe-biden/...

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/live-blog/202...

Not anywhere will you find Trump saying to “inject bleach”. That was the media narrative, completely their words.

> And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you’re going to test that too. Sounds interesting. And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning?

Seems to me like he is very clearly talking about the viability of injecting disinfectant.

The Politifact article even clarifies that Joe Biden's error was saying Trump advised "drinking bleach", as opposed to "express interest in exploring whether disinfectants could be applied to the site of a coronavirus infection".

You admit his is talking clearly then? Many people seem to chose when to give him that consideration.

You have to forgive his genius occasionally overwhelming the average human’s ability to comprehend speech.

> “Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart —you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you’re a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.”

His cognitive ability was off the charts - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Uvwbd75ujU

> Many people seem to chose when to give him that consideration.

You mean everyone, from either tribe, when it suits them?

Personally I always try to figure out what a politician is intending to say, even if they are only semi-coherent in conveying it. This is the leader of the free world, after all, with his finger on the button...

He was talking about the viability of injecting UV disinfectant, not bleach.

https://www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/cedars-sinai-statement...

This was released 3 days prior to his statement: https://irdirect.net/prviewer/release/id/4294930

> Our team has shown that administering a specific spectrum of UV-A light can eradicate viruses in infected human cells (including coronavirus) and bacteria in the area while preserving healthy cells

UV light was mentioned prior in the presser. Trump wasn't specific, but you can't say he said inject bleach, read the transcript for yourself:

https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-coronaviru...

It's disingenuous to say he was suggesting for people to inject bleach or disinfectant.

Even if he didn't clarify what disinfectant, he sure as hell didn't tell people to do anything, he was talking about research.

I don't really want to defend Trump, who is proudly stupid and mean spirited. But at bottom, it was a question about whether it was feasible, not a suggestion.

And "something like that" in his statement is not necessarily just filler. Read charitably, he could be asking if a similar effect can be achieved with something else. We use some types of disinfectants for broadly similar effects--like mouth wash. In the past, we've used iodine to disinfect water for drinking, which was ingested.

I'm not saying its a plausible strategy, but its not pants on fire stupid to wonder out-loud if you can get something like a disinfectant inside. I'd imagine you can't, but I can't articulate why you can't beyond the likelihood the required concentrations would destroy your bodies' cells too.

I watched that press conference on tv when it aired. It wasn't even the top 20 dumbest things he said in that conference.

This is the good faith interpretation.

The more people learn to do this, the further we'll get in our discourse.

I'd love to watch a breakdown of current news stories done with charitable interpretations only. Does anyone know of a news source that doesn't drop down into mischaracterizations of every opposing viewpoint?

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