Yeah, I fear that some people will see massive dislike ratio on vaccination related videos and think "oh, yeah, vaccination is really unpopular. Maybe I should be listening to what people are saying against it. I don't want to get singled out. No one is getting vaccinated" etc. It seems like it becomes a circle jerk, and a way to "protest", rather than it being an actual signal.
Disclaimer: These views are entirely my own, and not of my employer.
Is it a good thing that an average person is getting fewer and fewer ways to participate in the exchange of ideas? Has this ever worked well in history where less speech was enabled was actually progress?
Is the future of humanity only that corporate-approved ideas and protests are allowed in the public square? Could this ever backfire in the future?
An average person might get their speech silenced when they get some fact wrong. Does the mass media suffer that same fate when they get something wrong? What are the consequences of effectively creating unequal classes of people?
Just a few random questions and thoughts that this line of thinking leads to, in my opinion.
In this thread, a number of posts seem to be some people hyperventilating at the thought of "hate speech" and "misinformation" being allowed on the Internet.
Short of building a time machine and going back and heeding Senator McCarthy's warning, the solutions are very simple in my opinion.
1) Really teach people that words have no power over you unless you let them.
> Sticks and stones may break my bones
> But words shall never hurt me.
Internalize this and voila: any "hate speech" that exists is de facto powerless to harm you.
Society has unfortunately taken the opposite approach and acts as if the existence of hate is harmful by itself and magnifies it to an extreme.
2) Teach people that everything you read online should be considered fake news until you verify it.
Voila. You're immune to fake news, medical misinformation, authoritarian government propaganda, and anything else that's not real.
Society has unfortunately taken the opposite approach and wants to have the political establishment "fact check" and decide what's true for you.
This post comes off as being sarcastic. Here is a question: are you OK with hate speech on social media? If yes, then I don't think we can agree on much. If no, then please re-read your statement and see how it applies to hate speech.
>"Here is a question: are you OK with hate speech on social media? If yes, then I don't think we can agree on much."
And now we circle back to the classic question, who determines what constitutes hate-speech and who is responsible for making the judgement? The kinds of people who end up as censors tend to be the most sensitive and the false-positive rate is very high. There is no shortage of partisan activists willing to indiscriminately label things as racist or hateful these days.
Additionally, what constitutes misinformation that costs lives? I remember back when claiming sanitizing surfaces did not reduce the spread of COVID was misinformation and grounds for a ban on social media platforms. Turns out, sanitizing surfaces really doesn't slow Covid at all. So much of what we know to be 'true' is actually in-flux and subject to change as more time and research goes on.
My point is, wanting to restrict hate-speech and misinformation is not a dangerous thing in and of itself, but it should be done with great caution and hesitancy because you run the risk of censoring true information and preventing people from expressing ideas that run against the orthodoxy of the censors. I hope that people don't view things as black and white as 'allow hate-speech, yes or no?'
> and health misinformation is costing a lot of lives today
Thats a pretty cynical view of humanity - should we ban motorcycles because they are costing peoples lives? What is so bad about letting people make their own choices?
> are you OK with hate speech on social media
I believe in "free speech".
For example, is it even possible for you to tell me an objective definition of "hate" speech or "misinformation"? I bet you can't since it ends up being whatever Alphabet, or Meta's truth and morality departments agree on.
Without ways to express yourself the internet will just turn into TV - where people who agree with the megacorps get to hear their own echos all day.
> Thats a pretty cynical view of humanity - should we ban motorcycles because they are costing peoples lives? What is so bad about letting people make their own choices?
Ridiculous analogy. We're talking about preventing the spread of a lethal contagious disease. If driving a motorcycle made everyone around them unsafe then it would be a valid comparison.
> driving a motorcycle made everyone around them unsafe
Not totally untrue
> We're talking about preventing the spread of a lethal contagious disease
Getting vaccinated doesn't stop the spread... if you believe everything you hear our government officials say then I have a war in Iraq and a truck-load of cloth masks to sell you.
Lets bring it back to that specific example someone brought up, which is vaccination. Do you think it a good thing, personally, for less people to be vaccinated?
Do you think censoring people would help encourage vaccines?
The key point here is the treatment of those opposing certain views as clearly stupid and in need of protecting is toxic and non-productive. Is Joe Rogan a mindless Trump-voting retard?
You're not going to reach people by silencing creators - you're just going to make their viewers feel prosecuted, angry, and confused. They'll just move to other platforms and probably vote for Trump again...
The way to reach them would be through dialog etc. which is getting more impossible by the day.
It was a simple question. Do you want less people to be vaccinated?
The other person suggested that less people might be vaccinated, and your response was to talk about "bad think", and "changes or influences others", where the specific topic is "changes or influences others" to cause less people to be vaccinated.
This implies that you, for some reason want less people to be vaccinated, and that it was a good thing to "changes or influences others", in such a way as less people get vaccinated.
> other person suggested that less people might be vaccinated
And I am suggesting more people might get vaccinated if they are treated as intelligent and allowed to engage in dialog instead of being shadow-banned and removed.
I am saying its a good thing that videos are allowed which encourage people to not get vaccinated or contain information about vaccines not coming from a news network, because the alternative (censorship) is barbaric and unhelpful.
But that would be bad if that happened right? If people got encouraged to not get vaccinated, that would be bad?
> is barbaric and unhelpful.
You think that it is barbaric that a dislike button is not available on one single platform? Because that is what the other comment was about. It was about the dislike button.
It was not about videos being removed en-mass. Instead it was about a dislike button, on one platform.
> If people got encouraged to not get vaccinated, that would be bad?
Yea of course, and thats my point. I think banning these videos and the ability to show discontent makes the problem worse and further divides us on political lines. What exactly is your argument here?
> You that that it is barbaric that a dislike button is not available on one platform?
The removal of the dislike button is another step in an undeniable trend toward censorship against anything mega corps and governments decide is not moral or truthful.
People can tell when they are being herded around and silenced, and they dislike it.
Great, so then you would agree then, if someone's "opinions especially if it changes or influences others." caused other people to not get vaccinated, that that would be very bad, and that it would be a good idea to make sure this person is less successful, in their ability to influence others to do that.
No. I would not agree with that. I am opposed to limiting peoples' "ability to influence". People need to have a voice and debates and discussion need to be allowed to happen.
Otherwise you are not changing people's minds, you are simply making their voices disappear from your computer screen.
I think my above question was just answered here. I think YouTube is more aligned with the cultural movement of "positive things only" and only with certain ideas, i.e. COVID vaccine. I think it is a smart business idea for them.
> I think YouTube is more aligned with the cultural movement of "positive things only" and only with certain ideas, i.e. COVID vaccine.
I don't think you can conclude that from the above. My point was that dislike ratios attacks basically abuse the feature that previously provided valuable signal to the user on whether the video was of good quality. Now, this removes the incentive for dislike ratio attacks to abuse this feature.
Disclaimer: My views are my own, and not of my employer.
