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Comment by mathogre | Hacker News Reader

Fuck YouTube. If they're going to control what news I get, I'll choose other than YouTube. I do not need them. I have read from both hard left and hard right, and am intelligent enough to make my own decisions about what makes sense. Let them play their games, whether silly or dangerous. I form my own opinions. Losers!

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This isn't about you, it's about the 30-40% of YouTube users who don't have that skill, and become radicalized and violent when stupid bullshit like this starts gaining traction.

YouTube isn't a news network. It's a video platform catering to a global audience, many of whom are really really bad critical thinking. Same with Facebook. We all know what happens when content isn't curated, and it's really, really bad.

I'm glad that you're an adult and can make your own grown up decisions, and actually get news from a wide range of sources, and curate it yourself. I obviously wish everyone had that skill, but they don't, and it's actually really really dangerous to take that privilege you've earned for granted.

Basically the only news that should be allowed is news that satisfies the mainstream political narrative so that folks are kept fully sanitized. This is far more important than silly things like freedom of speech. Any critical questioning of the "facts" is "misinformation".

Who cares later if the "misinformation" later is found to be true ? The most important thing is to obey and follow the will of the collective - set by the whatever the media overlords and political masters judge as "correct thinking". Any attempt to deviate from the same is "radicalization" and must be suppressed by any and all means.

We’re talking about Trump denying the election results, which ended with a lot of violence in the Capitol.

This is absolutely misinformation that did lead to radicalization.

What's "a lot?" A lot relative to a normal day? A lot relative to a BLM rally?

So did Clinton about the 2016 election and she still claims the same. Along with her consistent hardline that Trump is a Putin Puppet - which is misinformation that has been proved false again & again at great expense to the taxpayer - but still gets published. Zero bans for her - since she is a cherished member of the political mainstream.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hillary-clinton-trum...

https://news.yahoo.com/hillary-clinton-labels-trump-illegiti...

https://news.yahoo.com/hillary-clinton-maintains-2016-electi...

Technically videos of Clinton Making such claims violate the YouTube policy stated below, but, as you said, YouTube selectively enforces their policies only against those that are not part of the mainstream narrative.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/10835034?hl=en#zip...

“Election integrity: Content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome of select past national elections, after final election results are officially certified. This currently applies to: Any past U.S. Presidential election The 2021 German federal election”

We have proof that Trump tried to blackmail Zelensky into framing his political opponents by witholding aid they needed to defend themselves from Russia.

When Putin started his invasion, Trump praised him for being smart, then praised him again, suggesting he'd captured a whole country for a small cost in sanctions.

What do you think you're expressing when you say that Trump isn't a Putin puppet? That he's not made of wood?

You mean the claim that the Ukrainian President himself denied ?

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/10/ukraine-volodymyr-zelensky-s...

And what about Joe Biden's proud public boast that he threatened to withhold aid if a Ukrainian prosecutor wasn't fired ? (who was investigating Burisma - the company whose board Hunter biden was on.)

https://www.wsj.com/video/opinion-joe-biden-forced-ukraine-t...

Anyways, it's pretty clear that there are different standards for different people for news that gets published/censored/suppressed and most importantly amplified.

As Elon Musk said just today: "All news sources are partially propaganda, some more than others" - when he was told by governments (not Ukraine) that Starlink should block Russian news.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1499982913949081600

Yes, the person being blackmailed, said that the person blackmailing him, who was still in a position to blackmail him about the (now realised) invasion of his country, which is likely to end with his and his family's death, and potentially could be in the same position for four more years said there was no blackmail and specifically said

"“I don’t want to interfere in U.S. elections,”"

I don't find that decisive on the facts given everything else.

Stormy Daniels denied sleeping with Trump, because someone threatened the life of her child. It was and is still a true thing that happened.

The transcript was released by the White House and there are no threats made to withdraw Ukrainian aid - quite unlike the explicit and damning public statement made by Biden to withdraw aid, which is also captured on Video - but fails to get any publicity whatsoever as its deeply embarrassing for the favoured media darling. You can continue to speculate further but evidence doesn't fit your claim.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/09/25/trum...

> Although the United States did withhold government aid to pressure Ukraine into removing the prosecutor,[5] this was the official and bipartisan policy of the federal government of the United States, which, along with the European Union, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, believed the prosecutor to be corrupt and ineffective, and too lenient in investigating companies and oligarchs, including Burisma and its owner.

You've got the vice-president on tape repeating the official government line in public? And you want this to be front page news? Why?

And why did Trump disagree with all those people, in the blackmail transcript you posted he seems a real fan of this person who is linked to Oligarchs and corruption. What's that all about?

I want this to be front-page news because Biden explicitly threatened the withdrawal of aid unless a prosecutor of a sovereign nation investigating his son's company was fired. This was the same threat that you accused Trump of and everyone castigated Trump for - which was proven false. But Biden gets a complete media-free pass for the same bald faced threat.

Biden's own words below:

In December 2015 -- he told Ukrainian officials: "We're leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor's not fired, you're not getting the money."

"Well, son of a bitch," Biden continued. "He got fired."

A classified US State Department email from 2016 shows a leading diplomat warning that Hunter Biden’s lucrative job with a Ukrainian energy company “undercut” American efforts to fight corruption in the Eastern European country.

https://nypost.com/2022/02/02/us-diplomat-warned-about-hunte...

I don't care what Trump agrees/disagrees with or who he is a fan of. Irrelevant to this discussion which started with a verifiably false accusation. The media has noticeably different amplification standards depending on who they do or do not favour.

>I want this to be front-page news because Biden explicitly threatened the withdrawal of aid unless a prosecutor of a sovereign nation investigating his son's company was fired. This was the same threat that you accused Trump of and everyone castigated Trump for - which was proven false.

Do you legitimately not understand that it was the perceived motivation and not the action that people dislike? No one cares about the Biden scenario because it takes five minutes of Googling to find out that the whole thing was over the British being mad the prosecutor didn't turn over documents potentially indemnifying Burisma to UK authorities when requested. Why would Biden be personally mad at a prosecutor for NOT indemnifying his son's employer?

>A classified US State Department email from 2016 shows a leading diplomat warning that Hunter Biden’s lucrative job with a Ukrainian energy company “undercut” American efforts to fight corruption in the Eastern European country.

I mean, yeah, I don't think anyone has ever claimed that Hunter Biden is someone who only makes smart choices that help advance his father's aims. Unless you're aiming to criticize Joe Biden as a parent instead of as a political figure, that's not relevant by itself.

Whatever Trump was doing to handle Putin certainly seemed to prevent Putin from doing any Ukrainian invading. I think Zelensky and the entire world would prefer more Trump phone calls and less Putin aggression right about now.

You know that the Russian army have been in Ukraine for Trump's entire term, right? One of his early big gaffes when running was to say "Russia won't invade Ukraine if he wins" and the journalist pointed out they already had.

Putin invaded in 2014 and 2022. Putin did not do additional invasions when Trump was president, he remained in the part of Ukraine he took when Biden was vice president.

You know that’s not what I meant (and likely not what Trump meant either) by “invasion” right?

You can prove anyone “wrong” by playing with definitions or getting super technical about things.

According to Bolton, he believed that Trump would withdraw the US from NATO in a second term and that is what Putin was waiting for.

https://news.yahoo.com/john-bolton-putin-waiting-possible-13...

Yes, because Putin was too busy enjoying the other things President Trump let him do.

Taken from someone else:

Trump had the US military abandon their bases in Syria and Russia promptly captured them.

Russia was caught paying bounties in Afghanistan for killing American soldiers. Trump did nothing.

After Putin seized Crimea, Obama put sanctions on Russia. Trump promptly got rid of those sanctions for his buddy, then declared that Crimea belonged to Russia, recognizing the legitimacy of their invasion.

Russia keeps creeping advancing the border with Georgia. They just literally move fences and markers at night and take land a few hundred meters at a time.

This happened during Trump's administration. Trump did nothing.

Belarus, which is a puppet for Putin, as he wants Ukraine to be, is run by his puppet dictator Lukashenko. Lukashenko won a clearly rigged election in 2020, leading to mass protests. A similar situation happened in Ukraine during Obama's administration, and we backed the protests and they ousted Yanukovych, and Ukraine was able to elect a free government that wasn't Putin's puppet. So when a similar situation arises while Trump was President, guess what he did?

The Trump Administration has gone AWOL on Belarus.

Guess who ran Putin's puppet, Yanukovych's campaign in Ukraine? Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. Then they became Trump's campaign manager and deputy campaign manager.

Putin invades Ukraine, Trump calls him a genius.

He's a Putin puppet. Putin had a puppet President of the US. It's fucking insane that this happened. But it did. Wake the fuck up.

"We don't rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia." -Eric Trump, 2014

Sorry, what administration did Putin start a war with Ukraine under? Interesting that the one who was Putin’s supposed puppet, ended up being a better puppet master than the elder experienced statesman we supposedly have in office currently.

I repeat: I think Ukraine, and the world, could do well with some mean tweets and mean phone calls in place of what we have now!

Cool, so we 100% attribute problems to whomever was President at the time? So George W. Bush is entirely to blame for 9/11, and Donald Trump is entirely to blame for Covid-19. Glad we cleared that up.

Or, maybe, prior administrations are at least partly to blame? And maybe you didn't even bother to read the list I gave you, of things Trump allowed Putin to do?

Cheers.

Trump was useful to Putin, sure, but the amount of actual leverage Putin has over the leader of a rival nation is vastly less than he does over his smaller neighbors who share land borders.

The obvious gulf between how Trump was useful to Putin and how his actual puppets are useful to Putin is all people not disposed to agree with you can see. It doesn't matter that your tangible points are correct if people immediately discard it over your emotional appeal.

Latest update: Trump's National Security Advisor says that Putin was waiting for Trump's second term, as after being re-elected he was going to withdraw the US from NATO:

https://www.businessinsider.com/bolton-putin-waiting-for-tru...

A lot of people deny the 2000 and 2016 elections. Should we ban anybody who questions those election results as well?

> the 30-40% of YouTube users who don't have that skill,

Who are you or YouTube to make this judgement?

More often than not, the "I'm smarter than the average person" types are the ones making the worst decisions.

The problem is not that these people aren’t smart. It’s a good bet that they are. The problem is that they aren’t sufficiently benevolent. Their narratives are fundamentally optimized to benefit themselves first, and then others.

Free speech limits power and increases competition, which is the most effective way to decrease rent seekers.

There is plenty of research supporting this thesis.

And you don't need to do any research harder than reading history to see this in LBJ's prosecution of the Vietnam war with the "best and brightest" he inherited from JFK.

When will the egotistical narcissism stop? This type of “I’m better than you” talk is not acceptable when it comes to race, how come it’s acceptable when the subject is intelligence?

If we extrapolate this, these narcissists would be asking for an end to the Universal adult franchise and say that only the "properly informed" people should be allowed to vote.

I've heard this argument in my country already from certain circles

Always keep in mind that 50% of all people are dumber than average.

The smarter-than-the-average people aren't the problem

The people who are very sure that they're way smarter than the average are often not very smart.

That’s also what YouTube viewers think. Not making a decision, is also making a decision. Develop your own news curation source and stop relying on a corporation to do it.

If that is too difficult, perhaps consider the challenge the news org faces.

Everyone makes bad decisions. While you are angry at YT for what they have removed, are you also praising them for each thing they did not action? If not, you are getting upset about a very small percentage. That may be valid for your own issues, but it does not make it representative

If you ever wonder why other humans don’t support your issue, and your issue is not representative, perhaps that is your answer to make more sense of things.

I see you countering a bunch of right wing talking points which I have not even made.

I was referring to GP's overt arrogance in justifying YouTube's intervention here.

People can generally duduce for themselves what the truth is.

> 30-40% of YouTube users who don't have that skill, and become radicalized and violent when stupid bullshit like this starts gaining traction.

Taking away their ability to hear different viewpoints especially those they believe to be true just drives these people to radicalize even further. I’m not even touching the matter of dismissing almost half of a country. Very shortsighted perspective.

I don't think that's true. They're probably referring to the people who fall down into alt-right/whatever radical group "rabbit holes." These people aren't radical from the outset. I'd say the real issue is the youtube algorithm, which causes the radicalization "highway" in the first place, but apparently youtube can't be bothered to fix their harmful algorithm, and would rather delete the content that is being promoted by it.

I guess you are not a humanist. Your perspective is that people are easily manipulated and need to be told by other people whom are easily manipulated how they should think.

It strikes me that the effort that goes into trying to outright suppress disinformation is also a waste of time. It leaks through anyway and the consequences of being seen to suppress it leads to distrust.

All that you can hope is that the person reading it is open to information and changing their mind. If they are not then there is nothing that can be done anyway.

I have been drawn into trying to evaluate this claim that the Czech Republic / Czechia has had a statement issued by its "Supreme Prosecutor" that anyone supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine will face criminal penalties. I would love to be able to go to a reputable media source to evaluate it. It is inordinately difficult to judge. I would prefer that the BBC/CNN/LA Times spent time debunking this sort of thing or confirming it. As it is I am on my own with nothing but a wall of flag-waving and emotional condemnation instead of investigative journalism -- that's what I want from the media -- not opinion pieces: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30560672

In looking at that story it was fascinating to see the struggle within the Czech Republic with various sides accused of being Russian mouthpieces and the establishment of state censorship apparatuses well in advance of this phase of the conflict with Russia.

Have you thought about the implications of your opinion for democracy? Is it only acceptable as long as people are properly brainwashed?

As is being more and more noted, this "democracy" thing only seems to function "properly" when a great deal of censorship is used.

A lot of people should be outright admitting democracy only "works" when their side wins.

> We all know what happens when content isn't curated, and it's really, really bad.

Not true because law enforcement is still in place to take care of crime. Some amount of crime and confusion are also the price you pay to get the benefits of freedom.

Could this have been more arrogant or condescending?

How about you type up a response to them, and if you phrase it better than I did, and get the message across more clearly that I did, then I'll delete my post and you can get all the attention?

I did my darnedest when writing that post, and I don't really think your meta-commentary is adding to the discussion.

People should be able to watch what they want without a midwit nanny policing their thoughts. Have you submitted your application to run the ministry of truth yet?

If you don’t understand how this kind of thinking is bad for the people and good for those in power I suggest you go and do some reading.

The current "moderation" is in line with their opinion and they don't want to imagine what will happen when that changes.

And YouTube gets no love because they also removed the dislike button (which is a much more robust way of moderation) because they didn't like the outcome

It's not about the phrasing but about the message.

How can it not be condescending to say "30% to 40% of people don't have enough intelligence to filter propaganda". Whether that's true or not is debatable but there's no phrasing it better.

Perhaps if you dropped your arrogance you would realise that other people in the thread don't share your opinion and don't want to get the same message across more clearly?

You and YouTube seem to share the same sentiment that you somehow are smarter in every way than the said 30-40% of the population.

What about all the times that YouTube banned videos that turned out to be correct?

Why would you assume that some machines at Google would always be better at weeding out misinformation than actual humans? There are obviously going to be a lot of false positives, but there are systems to compensate for that, and they seem to work well enough.

Everything that you, or the YouTube moderators at California, disagree with is not misinformation.

And the COVID situation showed how bad it was. I can't imagine why someone would think it works "well enough"

Actually, you're right. You made very good points here. I always assume other people are rational. While many are, many are not, and I often forget the latter. Thank you.

> "We all know what happens when content isn't curated"

Curation is about selection, not exclusion. As in selecting art for an exhibition on the basis of its value or quality. Curating is not about excluding or banning content via clumsy and vague censorship.

> "and it's really, really bad."

When trigger-happy censorship is the norm, really really really really bad things can happen.

> "become radicalized and violent when stupid bullshit like this starts gaining traction".

Bullshit like what? They (The Hill) were discussing and analyzing news, not propagandizing vulnerable youtube viewers.

It's disappointing you imply we need mandatory shielding from information, including analysis of news and events, with penalties for those not falling in line. Putin would agree with you. He threatens and shuts down media outlets for mentioning the word "war".

Mindless youtube viewers are not the tipping point to society meltdown.

I've watched a few 'The Hill' clips on youtube before, and I noticed they disagree with each other and provide alternate views. It's not a propaganda machine, so shouldn't be treated like one.

You may want your news and analysis to be grounded in loyalty to a monolith narrative and distributed via sanctioned memes. Others want more than that, such as counter-points, alternate views, robust debate, transparency and discussion. We learn more that way.

In my country Australia, we have a national "Q&A" TV panel show on the public broadcaster, covering news and politics. The idea is discussion, yet on the recent episode a young Russian Australian man was booted out of the studio audience because he mentioned he supported Putin's action in Ukraine. Instead of challenging the man's views, he was booted out live on air.[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqPIxtJd2uU&t=304s

This isn't how civil discourse should operate.

Then why do they censor stupid bullshit only when it's right-wing?

> Hate speech, predatory behavior, graphic violence, malicious attacks, and content that promotes harmful or dangerous behavior isn't allowed on YouTube.

Is Pro-suicide or self-harm content right-wing? Because it's not allowed on YouTube.

That's not what we're talking about here.

The proper solution is either to educate that 40% of kick them off the internet (and hopefully out of voting booths, too)

Agree - I don’t need some “ministry of truth”. Figured out for myself that these “alternative” news shows on YouTube (The Hill, Breaking Points etc.) are populist garbage. This isn’t journalism, but sensationalist cherry-picking of facts with an unhealthy dose of opinion sprinkled on top.

All that being said: i think that censorship does way more harm than whatever nonsense these channels put out.

It’s an advertising business. They sell advertising. Everything else is filler between the ads.

Network news runs on the same model.

Sometimes the filler (news or other content) is good but not always.

My understanding is that Breaking Points at least is mostly funded by direct donations to purposely protect them from censorship by YouTube. I take their perspectives with a grain of salt and their discussions can get long winded. However, in comparison to main stream media, these programs provide far more detail and context than a 2 minute soundbite of talking points straight from the White House or the CIA.

While good for you to figure things out - I’m surrounded by people who don’t have the skills for that.

How do you solve that? Education? Too late - they’re adults.

You form fewer of your opinions than you think. YouTube is taking responsibility for their platform, and I encourage you to show your displeasure to them.

I also encourage them to form their own opinions.

If you form your own opinions through a mediator, you will be deceived. If you form it via direct connection, you will be overwhelmed. Nothing is new or old, here. It is just difficult to have good opinions while also not letting your platform be abused.

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