Hacker News Reader

Comment by pstuart | Hacker News Reader

> We need a politically uncensored version (within the law) of YouTube

What does that mean "politically uncensored within the law"?

Means for example, that this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnR4Xw74_is had only <0.1% of YouTube algorithmic views (like 7 total), all the rest were "direct" link. All other videos in the same channel had >70% of the algorithmic views (YouTube "suggestions" or "related content").

They did not ban it outright, so you cannot complain or rigorously prove their bias, but they algorithmically suppress dissenting content.

I don't know how you can draw any statistical conclusions from a very small channel with 76 subscribers and videos that all have very low view counts.

Even if that's true it's not censorship, stop misusing the word.

"to examine in order to suppress (see suppress sense 2) or delete anything considered objectionable"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censoring

Yet you can link to it from anywhere else on the internet, including from other pages on youtube, and anyone with access to youtube can watch it. A lack of free promotion is not censorship.

Ad absurdum, if the video was banned outright upon upload, it wouldn't be considered censorship under your definition, since upload and storage are also "free."

However, the contrast between a 70% average recommendation rate and a 0.1% recommendation rate for this video shows the algorithm's bias, fitting the definition of suppression of dissemination. According to Merriam-Webster, censorship includes "suppressing" content by restraining its usual course or inhibiting its reach.

There are what, 3 billion people on the internet? You are not owed people's/the algo's attention.

FFS, algo tweaking is not censorship. Censorship would be prohibiting the speech at all.

And what is the political part of this? That "illegal immigrants" are coming in to your country? To amp up anger and fear over that?

This is what I detest about "politics" -- when it is just emotional manipulation via hate and fear to cow people into voting for whoever claims title to that hate and fear.

Immigration has challenges but humanity is defined by immigration -- we're all immigrants either directly or indirectly. We have arrived at what could be a post-scarcity world and need to start acting like it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com