Honestly boring. Likely just it got flagged as violence, and an underpaid 3rd world worker clicked a button.
Sorry about the inconvenience to this guy, but at the same time, it got 14 million views and I'm sure he made some cash. He can probably not whine so much. It's likely an honest mistake by someone overworked.
How can you support free speech but prevent a company from exerting that speech?
YouTube banning antivax content is speech.
You want the government to start mandating that a company can't take a stance on important issues of healthcare? Churches spend all day every day taking stances on abortion. You want to the government to tell them they can't take a side?
> How can you support free speech but prevent a company from exerting that speech?
I can be deeply disappointed by youtube's moderation decisions without suggesting that the company be compelled to allow certain content. as an aside, I find it frustrating to see people constantly swapping between "free speech" as a legal concept and "free speech" as an abstract ideal in these threads. we talk past each other the same way every time the debate comes up. just because the law is written the way it is doesn't mean that's necessarily the way it should be. and even if we can't write the law "just right", we can still advocate for higher principles to be followed.
anyways, I generally agree with the "companies can manage their properties as they see fit" line of thought. but it becomes problematic when our public spaces are increasingly controlled by a small number of huge companies that mostly share the same politics. I'm not really sure what the solution is, but it sucks to watch it unfold.
> You want the government to start mandating that a company
There is already an established history of requiring certain large communication platforms, to act a certain way.
They are called common carrier laws, and already apply to things like the telephone network.
Sure, they don't currently apply to other things, but the law could be updated, so that they do.
Philosophically, common carrier laws are uncontroversial, and already apply to major communication platforms, so you don't get to pretend like this is unprecedented.
I like the free market. If a store who also likes the free market decided to raise their price significantly because they claim to be better than everyone else then I will still think that is their right in the free market. However, since I value the free market so much I won't buy from them. Similarly, if YouTube wants to exercise their right of freedom of expression to censor content then I, as someone who values freedom of expression will use them less. Unfortunately, while in the first example many people would behave like me and cause the store to lower their price, not that many people value freedom of expression for YouTube to care about loosing those people.
I think discussions of the free market need to include scale. Scale absolutely matters when it comes to "voting with your wallet", or I suppose, in this case, your usage of a platform.
I think our notions on the merits of a free market, and indeed, the very understanding of a free market itself, come from a time before the network effect and the de-facto digital monopolies we see today.
> You want the government to start mandating that a company can't take a stance . . .
I, for one, want less monopolistic media so that the people can exert viewership pressure; they can get their media elsewhere and the ad money will follow. The content being stopped is not the only loss of people's voices happening here.
As Thiel says, (in whatever form it ultimately takes) the free market is a selector for monopolies. At peak capitalism, you still have start ups competing with an increasingly low chance of success excepting scandals...which are inevitable in large organizations.
The biggest companies are basically utilities and that will not change anytime soon. The market has resulted in this condition. The government has to play catchup, as usual.
Youtube is a monopoly, and monopolies should be limited in the same way the government is, and for the same reason. This also applies to groups of otherwise independent businesses that operate in concert.
That, and adding political beliefs to the list of protected classes, is what is necessary to start the US healing processes. Until there is no other option but to talk with the people you despise, neither side will start doing it.
The problem is that Youtube is big enough, and carries enough of the global conversation, that we think it should be a common carrier. (Think of the phone company back in the day. They didn't care if you were literally the Nazi Party of America, they carried your phone calls just like everybody else's.) People kind of think of Youtube that way, even though, legally, Youtube isn't playing by those rules.
But there's also this two-faced evaluation of Youtube. When Youtube blocks the other side, people say "private company, First Amendment, they can carry what they want". But when Youtube blocks their side, people at least feel the violation of the "common carrier" expectation, and get upset.
So maybe it's time for us as a society to decide: Has Youtube (and Facebook, and Twitter, and Google) gotten big enough and important enough that they should be regulated into some kind of "common carrier" status? Or do we want them to continue as they are?
> "How can you support free speech but prevent a company from exerting that speech?"
Corporations are not humans (regardless of the "corporate personhood" doctrine) and thus should not be entitled to the full rights of humans. Semi-monopolies like Youtube are especially not entitled to use their dominance to manipulate public opinion, given how easily it can be abused.
Ask yourself, if YouTube were pushing conspiracy content and suppressing pro-vaccination content instead would the parent poster and those like them still be saying what they are saying? Fair-weather friends indeed.
> "You want to the government to tell them they can't take a side?"
> Corporations are not humans (regardless of the "corporate personhood" doctrine) and thus should not be entitled to the full rights of humans.
True, but corporations are just connections of people with shared goals. Should groups of people lose "fundamental" rights when they organize?
> Fair-weather friends indeed.
Yes, I fully support the rights of platforms to do stupid things. Use rumble or whatever if you want. I'll mock those platforms, but I don't think the government should ban them.
> Semi-monopolies like Youtube are especially not entitled to use their dominance to manipulate public opinion, given how easily it can be abused.
So, you think that we should circumstantially limit constitutionally protected rights, for the greater good? Fair weather friends indeed.
> So, you think that we should circumstantially limit constitutionally protected rights
According to your logic, you should think that common carrier laws should be repealed entirely.
Think, the telephone company blocking certain political groups, or the only water company in town, refusing to deliver water to certain people who say things that they don't like.
It is pretty similar, philosophically. Common carrier laws are pretty uncontroversial.
So it feels weird for you to be making these types of arguments, when it is already established, that there are major counter examples.
So you'd have to either recognize the contradiction, or admit that your position is at odds with other established, and uncontroversial laws.
I didn't take any particular position, I pointed out the incongruence in the one they espoused.
I'm admittedly mixed on common carrier laws, I think that they are "impure" in a sense, but I also think the benefits are greater than the costs, even taking into account the potential theoretical erosion of our rights.
I absolutely agree that there are major counterexamples, and I'm overall fine with that, but I'll also freely admit that I'm not a free speech absolutist of any form.
> "So, you think that we should circumstantially limit constitutionally protected rights, for the greater good?"
Why, yes, I do. Ask yourself: what was the various civil rights victories and legislation for minorities, women, LGBTQ other than saying "We are circumscribing your rights, including ones formerly interpreted as constitutionally protected, so that these protected classes may be treated equally, for the greater good"? Sounds like you'd argue against that.
I mean, yes. I think that's fine. But that goes in both directions: if you're willing to sacrifice the speech of some for the speech of others, clearly either you aren't a free speech maximalist, or there is some inherent contradiction in what free speech is. Because if my free speech requires limiting yours, well...how do we decide whose speech is more important?
I think a modern formulation of freedom of speech, like Article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, is clearer about what freedom of speech is: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Note that this formulation doesn't have to descend into some sort of free speech maximalist apocalypse; spam is unprotected because it's not something anyone wants to receive, incitements to imminent violence are violations of other human rights and laws, etc. so moderation is still possible. There is a difference between interfering with parties who are mutually voluntarily communicating and helping parties not receive communications they voluntarily have decided that they don't want to receive.
(I was about to say that free speech maximalists are a myth but I do recall seeing at least one person on HN advocate such a view.)
And I agree there's a tension between the rights of different individuals/entities but the same tension exists for other civil and human rights. The compromise used for other civil rights seems reasonable here: everyone should be treated evenhandedly and impartially and, the larger the corporation/organization, the greater the responsibility to do so.
> Note that this formulation doesn't have to descend into some sort of free speech maximalist apocalypse; spam is unprotected because it's not something anyone wants to receive, incitements to imminent violence are violations of other human rights and laws, etc. so moderation is still possible. There is a difference between interfering with parties who are mutually voluntarily communicating and helping parties not receive communications they voluntarily have decided that they don't want to receive.
Sure I accept this (note though, that the UDHR definition is incompatible with the US constitutional definition, but let's work with this one because I prefer it anyway).
You mention mutually voluntary communication. So the vital question is then: is you posting a video on youtube a voluntary communication with me? I don't see how it is. I can see this argument for email, but I don't see how you can claim that this is the case for Youtube without an apparent contradiction in that even if you and I want to communicate via youtube, Fred over there thinks that the video you posted is spam/inappropriate and should be blocked. That is, if you need mutual consent from all parties, there will always be people who don't want to watch a video, but it is shown to. Therefore I don't think your framing works either way. Either You and I aren't the mutual parties to the communication, in which case Youtube can withdraw its consent, or everyone is party to the communication, in which case Youtube has a responsibility to block the content on behalf of those other people.
> everyone should be treated evenhandedly and impartially
Are you claiming that people aren't? Who is being treated differently? As far as I can tell, the discrimination, insofar as it exists, is based on an idea that isn't specifically called out elsewhere in the UDHR (such as religion or race, in Article 18 or 2).
I'm sorry but I'm not sure I follow the reasoning here. If we say that I posted the video (which falls under "imparting") and you intentionally searched for that video and viewed it (which falls under "seeking and receiving"), that seems like voluntary communication between us I would think. Fred may not want to see that video but that's a separate interaction between myself and him; I would wholeheartedly support Fred being offered tools to prevent my hypothetical video from being shown or offered to him. But blocking/removing the video so nobody can see it based on Fred's preference (or even the preferences of many like Fred or YouTube's preferences), how is that fair to you, who wanted to see it, and how is that fair to I who wanted my audience to find it if they looked for it? Fred might judge the video harmful but that gives Fred no standing to interfere any more than a stranger has a right to interfere with you purchasing a book from a bookstore because it's harmful.
Well but did I intentionally search for that video, or did I search for, say, content about vaccines?
If you're saying the video is unlisted/private and sent to people on a mailing list over email, that's one thing, but I think you're arguing that YT should act as a distributor as well, and there's no way to "impartially" order search results.
Nobody is forcing the searcher to view any of the content presented as search results and I think it's hard to make the case that mere exposure to unwanted search results is anything other than a minor irritation.
I think we would be in agreement that improvements in search and algorithmic identification of content would be a great thing so that people who don't want to see fringe content can be helped to avoid receiving it in their search results?
Let me rephrase: what, in your opinion, is wrong with Youtube's search algorithm making antivaxx content appear "last"?
This is "just" a choice about how they order search results, but is functionally equivalent to delisting the content. Is that okay? If not, what makes today's ordering "more okay", and broadly, how do we delineate between acceptable search algorithms, and unacceptable ones?
You can just look up their terms of service which I'm fairly sure leave a carve out for news items ...
But you are making an assumption that the average worker (probably from India) making $1 an hour, can tell the difference between newsworthy war crimes, and a snuff film.
I don't think anyone is going to get that right 100% of the time. So no, I don't really see it as a problem.
Obviously not enough people are shutting up, given the way that antivax content is the #1 propagator on Facebook.
There is money to be made from lying to people. That's why it's being banned. It should have been done last year honestly, but social media companies were afraid to anger Trump. They took the barest actions to add warnings, and no surprise, no one reads them.
No we don't. The question we have to ask is whether allowing this content is worse for society than any stifling of moderate voices.
And the answer is obviously yes. Covid-hoaxers represent millions of people who are causing a national health crisis that doesn't need to be happening anymore. Fuck moderate voices who are "just asking questions". They can deal with playing a little less devil's advocate, and getting more in board with the obvious health benefits of vaccination.
STFU is not going to work to build trust in government and medical institutions. Frankly, believing it will is one of the reasons why things go downhill these days. "My way or the highway" has never really done anything good to make people understand eachother. I hear that you are frustrated, but your attitude is not going to help anyone except yourself.
> causing a national health crisis that doesn't need to be happening anymore
This just isn't true, it's never going away and nothing can stop it, this is it for the rest of your life. It'll get less deadly over time but you will get covid at some point in your life and you will get it again and again as it mutates over the years. Same with flu it was initially deadly, now it's just bad but it's never going away.
Hard agree. I've had it with moderate voices on this issue, it's a matter of life and death. Would we not push someone out of the way of an oncoming train? Do we not have lights, gates, and bells that ring when a train is going to come through? Should we take those down, and just leave it up to each individual and their opinion? Fuck their idiotic opinions.
A pandemic is a natural disaster akin to a forest fire. Once a disease reaches pandemic level there is very little that can be done to control or extinguish it. There is no going back to before no matter how hard we try.
So, we learn how to live with a new disease without letting fear dictate our behavior.
What does that statement even mean? So we walk into the path of the speeding train? We have at this point billions of data points showing that these vaccines save your life. Refusal to use them is both illogical and irrational. Their use should be globally enforced, just like MMR, Polio, and the other 30+ immunizations. Again, fuck your idiotic feelings.
It means we shouldn't fall for the promise of safety at the expense of freedom because we are afraid. Diseases are part of life like forest fires. Many totalitarian dictatorships of the past were welcomed in with thunderous applause because they promised to keep the population safe.
The promise of safety from infection is not something than any human can guarantee. The COVID vaccine does not prevent infection and does not stop the spread. The desire to force people to take a vaccine in the name of population safety is rooted in fear. Fear leads to the fearful cheering when the police beat someone for not wearing a mask. Fear leads to the fearful begging for a "leader" to keep them safe at all cost. Fear is used by megalomaniacs to expand their power and control. We should not be fearful.
This is not a slippery slope. Enforcement of basic health standards does not lead logically to some kind of fascist state. If anything, we are currently all victims of the forces of anti-science and anti-civilization. I had Chicken Pox when I was young, and I survived, although my fever went to 105 degrees F. My sons both skipped that particular disease. Good for them! This is called progress, and it does not lead automatically to Brave New World. You need to read more Heinlein, and less Internet.
The articles premise that Americans acted kinder for a little while after doing some Buddhist meditation.... Completely ignoring the fact that Buddhism has extremists just like other religions...
The people didn't act kinder because of Buddhism. The experimental setup primed them to act in a certain way.
Ancient stats are a little hard to come by and different groups were more or less warlike losing between an estimated 1 in 100 to 1 in 3000
Big events like WW2 are very noticeable but ancient people were in fact very violent because not shockingly people are violent.
As importantly is the context in which violence appears in ancient society driven not my large scale political movements but by resource scarcity. A continually expanding human population in the absence of modern civilization would not have achieved present population size but they would certainly have continued to grow leading to greater scarcity and increasing conflict. That is to say that they were more violent on average already and they would be more so in the modern context.
It's a lot of facts and figures, but it kind of misses the mark. Wars today are also from resource scarcity.
Leibingsraum was explicitly part of the reasoning for invading France.
I know it's a natural instinct to defend modern living as more peaceful, and to some extent that may be true. But modern society has also created atrocities that ancient people could never dream of.
> After only eight weeks of study with a Buddhist lama, 50 percent of those who we randomly assigned to meditate daily spontaneously helped a stranger in pain.
I'm waiting for the follow up study after 520 weeks, where a certain percentage of them become radicalized zealots.
> Secular philosophy has failed to produce enough value for ordinary people living ordinary lives
Consider the situation: you want to get an abortion. Or you know someone who does.
I don't think I need to spell out the debate. But the secular world view is producing value for people who don't want to be afraid that they will spend literally INFINITY TIME being tortured. (And arguably it produces value for the religious, who do utilize secular services even when their religion forbids it).
The secular world view offers you freedom from judgement, both mortal and immortal. Many people find value in the freedom to not worry about superstition.
I don't like abortion. Nobody likes abortions. Women who feel that they need to get an abortion don't like it either. It's a horrible, traumatic procedure.
But it's a reality that it needs to be legal, regulated, and safe.
It's absolutely critical to civilization that women have a choice to undergo an abortion if they choose to. It's their body, their life, their future. Nobody else's business, especially not the government's.
The government should never require them to carry a pregnancy to term in much the same way that it shouldn't force you to give an organ (and it doesn't).
I am not pro abortion, I am pro choice.
People opposed to abortions are not pro life, they are anti choice.
If it's a choice between the mother's life and the baby's life, because of the medical condition, I would say let the mother make the choice.
But if it's a choice between the mother's feeling / opinion and the baby's life, I would say the baby's life overwrites the mother's feeling / opinion. The reason is simple, nobody gets to decide to kill the other person just because he/she doesn't like it. And the existing of the baby is the consequence of the mother's behavior.
The only exception is the that the conception is a result of rape, in this case the conception is not a consequence of the mother's voluntary behavior. But I still struggle with this, because the baby does not become less human because it's a result of rape.
I don't think there is a valid choice between someone's life and someone's feeling / opinion. And remember, pregnancy is something totally normal for women to do. And many women do several times in their life. It's not a punishment, nor a definite suffering or torture.
Also the "nobody else's business" argument is wrong, murder is the government's business.
As for when is the OK time to conduct the abortion, this is the question for people who support abortion. I don't really see the point here. The development is a continuum process. I don't believe there is a definite cut point where the humanness changes from zero to non-zero. Even when it's a embryo, it's a human embryo living in its natural environment, with the full potential to grow to a full human. I also don't see the need of a spiritual concept like soul or whatever.
Typing the above paragraph leads me to think about lab-grown human embryo. Google leads me to this webpage: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02343-7 "Researchers are now permitted to grow human embryos in the lab for longer than 14 days." Of course I don't believe humanness changes from zero to non-zero on day 14. Also I don't believe it's ethical to experiment on some human to gain knowledge to save other human.
> But if it's a choice between the mother's feeling / opinion and the baby's life, I would say the baby's life overwrites the mother's feeling
You are avoiding 100 percent of the actual dilemma. Nobody is OK with murder they disagree on what constitutes a human life. That is as they say the entire ball game which you have neatly sidestepped as if it were irrelevant. I suggest we return to it shortly.
> The only exception is the that the conception is a result of rape
This is a profoundly illogical position. It cannot possibly be OK to murder a baby regardless of whether its existence is the result of free choice of its mother. You say you "struggle with it" but how can you possibly struggle with the decision to allow infanticide? If its a person you can't kill it for your convenience.
> And many women do several times in their life. It's not a punishment, nor a definite suffering or torture.
Many people get kidney stones often multiple times. The fact that its natural doesn't mean that the experience isn't even when planned and desired torturous. Only the mother is in a position to make that judgment. Many people choose to live in small domiciles from which they only but rarely leave. This doesn't mean that for example prison isn't punitive. It is in many ways the denial of free exercise of the will over ones own person that is in fact punitive.
Let us return to the most important point.
At what point do you consider it a child and why? I think a reasonable person would agree that an unfertilized egg isn't a child but calling it a person 2 seconds after conception is very nearly as absurd. Any given egg and sperm has the potential to create life so potential wont serve as a dividing line. Some harking back to pre-scientific understanding would like to set the milestone at a heart beat but no matter how essential it may be to our existence a heart doesn't make you human. A mouse whose neck you snap in a trap to keep it from your larder has one.
There is one singular thing without which all characteristics that make you human are moot the brain. In fact one particular segment of the brain without which you would display zero meaningful human behavior, the cerebral cortex. Prior to the third trimester your brain is less meaningfully you than a squirrel. In the third trimester the surface area of the cerebral cortex increases by 30 times.
> As for when is the OK time to conduct the abortion, this is the question for people who support abortion. I don't really see the point here. The development is a continuum process. I don't believe there is a definite cut point where the humanness changes from zero to non-zero.
This is a complete cop out. As human beings we deal with situations where there is a continuum all the time. There are reasonable strategies to deal with such. Given a situation where one must pick a hard line in a complex situation where one side of the line is safe and the other dangerous you select a position far enough towards the safe side as to be certain to avoid negative consequences. This is how we are able to hire some, fire others, declare some doctors, others dropouts.
For example if nearly all fetal brain development happens between week 27 and week 38 if you select week 24 as the limit or for example week 14 by which 92% of abortions that are going to happen, happen you won't be offing what we would properly think of a human.
I hold that a fertilized egg is zero on the humaness scale. Agree or disagree? I hold that a baby viable outside of the womb is a 1. Agree or disagree? I hold that a fetus in the 27th week of development is still nearly indistinguishable from zero with a nearly nonfunctional brain incapable of consciousness or thought as we know it.
I believe that it goes from near zero to 1 almost entirely between week 27 and 38 ergo someone taking a pill to stop their pregnancy from progressing at 9 weeks is unambiguously moral.
I think the most interesting statement in your post is the statement
> in this case the conception is not a consequence of the mother's voluntary behavior.
This hints at a moralistic view as opposed to a logical one.
I suggest if you intend to defend the position that life begins at conception without benefit of the fig leaf of the fiction of the human soul you need to beg borrow or steal a different argument than life is a continuum so we can't possibly apply argumentative tools developed over thousands of years to crack that egg.
It seems you are trapped in the idea that humanness is defined by brain function. Which is obviously wrong to me, but I am not interested in expanding the discussion.
Also it is important whether it is a consequence of the mother's voluntary behavior, because if it is not then the human embryo would not have end up inside her body. So yes, it matters.
Thanks, I am just saying atheist can be against abortion. No more argument with me is needed.
As an atheist it would seem dualism would be out of bounds so given that your brain is you in a very literal sense what other factor do you believe defines humanness? I think therefore I am seems like the strongest possible argument here.
A fully functional lab grown brain would BE a human regardless of how it would be treated.
If the baby or the human had a sufficiently damaged or deficient brain it WOULD be a pile of meat. If they weren't treated as such it would be because of an emotional connection as opposed to a logical reason. This is all you've posited in this comment. Emotional situations designed to confuse the issue. I am using my brain, specifically to cut through the fog.
This is interesting insofar as most arguments against addiction seem to be philosophically connected with either spiritual guilt or assigning a clump of cells person status at conception due to the presumed presence of a soul. How precisely do you arrive at your stance in the absence of a soul?
Virtually all the actual brain development happens very late in the game and almost all abortions happen in the first or early second.
To be fair everyone said stupid things when they were younger. The problem with Zuck is that he hasn't changed a bit considering his entire business is just getting "dumb fucks" (his words) to trust him at large scale despite a proven track record of abusing this trust.
Sorry about the inconvenience to this guy, but at the same time, it got 14 million views and I'm sure he made some cash. He can probably not whine so much. It's likely an honest mistake by someone overworked.