[craigc]

> Do we reserve judgment on these topics just because someone sued someone else over them?

No, but we also shouldn’t censor people for making those claims. It seems to be the attitude of many big tech companies that their users are too dumb to look at information and decide for themselves what is and isn’t true.

[rebelos]

> It seems to be the attitude of many big tech companies that their users are too dumb to look at information and decide for themselves what is and isn’t true.

This seems demonstrably true for vast swathes of users, who have become enamored with Flat Eartherism and other such nonsense. Not saying censorship is necessarily the right solution, but arguing on behalf of the reasoning capabilities of the user base is clearly misguided.

[pie_flavor]

Swathes how vast? Have you checked? Everyone seems to know of one, nobody seems to know one. And what happens when the big tech companies start pushing wrong information, or censoring right information? Or, a better question, how do you know they haven't started already?

[totony]

>This seems demonstrably true for vast swathes of users, who have become enamored with Flat Eartherism and other such nonsense.

The alternative you're condoning is to make decisions for these people and tell them what to think; that is tyranny.

E.g. By not assuming good cognitive ability for people, you are setting them up to be controlled, that you agree with censorship or not.

[ardy42]

> The alternative you're condoning is to make decisions for these people and tell them what to think; that is tyranny.

TIL not repeating lies is tyranny.

[totony]

You're being disingenuous. But I think you know that.

[ardy42]

> You're being disingenuous. But I think you know that.

No I'm not. Transmission is a kind of repetition, but some people seem to think that YouTube has some obligation to transmit (i.e. repeat) their lies about "widespread election fraud." It's not a government service, so there's no First Amendment aspect to this at all, and the allegations themselves are disingenuous lies, so YouTube's moral obligation is on the side of removal.

[totony]

Youtube has been bullied by governement officials into adopting this policy. This is hardly about "forcing someone to repeat lies".

Also my argument wasn't even about this, it was that if you assume stupidity of a big portion of the population, you have no alternative but to turn to tyranny.

[rebelos]

I rather categorically did not condone anything. You've made some truly astounding logical leaps here.

[totony]

Is it such a big leap? How do you propose we deal with people who cannot think for themselves but to tell them what to think?

[ecf]

A couple hundred years ago these people never would have a platform and would be relegated to the depths of society, as their idiocracy rightly deserved.

Now the uneducated masses can yell and yell and yell, which gives other uneducated masses the false belief that their opinions are to be respected.

[totony]

Yes, and the superior, educated mass (that agree with me) should have all the say?

[mxcrossb]

> No, but we also shouldn’t censor people for making those claims.

This is not the same argument as

> These same claims are being made in ongoing court cases.

I think your argument is definitely worth considering, but the “there are court cases” is clearly wrong.

[picklesman]

While in theory this is true, in practice we have seen in recent years that misinformation has as much weight (if not more) as true information in our fragmented global media landscape.

I see it more as doing their part to reduce the noise rather than contribute to the problem. And it’s a big problem.

[sixothree]

It's not that their users are too dumb. It's that weapons grade psychological tactics work and they don't want to be a part of that.

[razius]

But what if they are?

[sixothree]

That's the problem here. I'm guessing you think you are too analytical to succumb to such tactics. But you aren't. None of us are. We are all human.

[ecf]

For the most part, people ARE too dumb.

[azernik]

I can also claim in court that I have been wronged by an ethnic group, and that the proper remedy for that is genocide. Again - "there's a pending court case alleging this" is not a reason not to take down that kind of content. The decision needs to be on the merits of the actual content.