[jonbronson]

The facts aligning in the Senator's favor does not make the request partisan. Nor are they the only political figures to reference the widely acknowledged facts that there was no spread widespread voter fraud. Prominent Republican politicians in positions of oversight have agreed with this outcome.

[hartator]

> The facts aligning in the Senator's favor does not make the request partisan.

Politics requesting censorship is always partisan.

[_RPL5_]

I am curious how something like this would have been handled 50, 100, 200 years ago.

Let's say you have a newspaper spreading misinformation that is hurting an important social institution. What do you do? Close it down? Sue the editor for defamation, then close it down? There must have been precedent.

[caseysoftware]

100 years ago, most newspapers were party organs. Local political parties wanted "their guy" getting favorable coverage.

Later on, once ads became a major source of revenue, most newspapers realized that being completely one sided hurt ad revenue. After all, if you want to advertise your furniture store, don't you want to sell to everyone in your area regardless of their party?

Now with intelligent/micro-targeted ad systems and minimal geographic limitations, those previously "too small to matter" niches are suddenly worldwide and large enough to be a useful segment on their own.. so many organizations can say/do what they want up to the line of defamation/slander protections, if any.

[splintercell]

In America? You do nothing. These are cases of government trying to control things and losing.

[zamfi]

> I am curious how something like this would have been handled 50, 100, 200 years ago.

The idea that the press should be politically neutral is a pretty new one -- historically there were highly partisan newspapers, alongside "impartial" ones.

But I think the lies, etc., were more likely to be litigated on charges of slander, defamation, etc., at least when they were about individuals.

Now they're all about "socialism" or whatever, and unfortunately socialism doesn't have any lawyers.

[snowwrestler]

It has always worked the same way: people ask publishers to change what they publish, and the publishers decide whether to make a change or not, based on their own opinions and sense of self-interest.

[Pils]

Censorship measures often have bipartisan support.

[bordercases]

Except when they don't.

[thomastjeffery]

Politics in a two-party system is always divided by party lines, but that does not make it necessarily partisan.

You can say that it's the Democrats who want censorship, but the other side of the coin is that Republicans want to freely spread a false narrative.

[adamsea]

> Politics requesting censorship is always partisan.

Extremely general statements are always applicable.

[meragrin]

If YouTube does as good a job as Facebook, then I have zero faith it won't just become partisan censorship. I have seen "False Information" labels on Facebook posts which were linked to "fact checking articles" which confirmed the post as true rather than false.

[cjohnson318]

Can you share examples?

[umvi]

Hunter Biden story suppression comes to mind a few months back. Stories were technically true (or at least mostly true) but fact checkers were going crazy labelling stories as false to suppress propagation.

[cjohnson318]

Saying something is "technically true" or "at least mostly true" is a red flag. Try saying these out loud:

  1. Try this sushi, it's mostly fresh.
  2. Sure, I'll give you a ride, I'm mostly sober.
  3. I know what I'm doing, I'm technically a doctor.

[umvi]

Every article is going to have some statements not 100% true. Would you rather fact checkers flag mostly true articles or mostly false articles? If one grain of rice in the bag is bad, is the whole bag bad? How about 2 grains of rice? 20 grains? Where is the line drawn at which a fact checker should label the article as false or partly false?

What I've seen this last election on Facebook is partisan fact checkers hunting for that one bad grain of rice so they can use it to label the whole article as "false" or "partly false" in an effort to protect Biden/Harris. I'm having trouble finding them now because facebook isn't super searchable but I remember thinking a lot of them were really nit-picky, similar to this one from 2018[0]. It got so bad I started seeing various viral memes complaining about it[1]

[0] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hillary-clinton-smash-phon...

(Context: Trump tweeted that "crooked Hillary destroyed her phones with a hammer", Snopes labels his tweet as partly false because Hillary personally didn't destroy her phones with a hammer, her aide did)

[1] https://imgur.com/a/1Job9xX

[cjohnson318]

Regarding rice, if your serving is sufficiently rancid to make you sick, then the bag is bad.

And yet, you were able to read on Snopes why they flagged something as "partially true", and you were able to make an informed decision.

When someone says "Hillary Clinton is using private email servers and unauthorized phones," that's technically true, and it sounds really, very bad. But when you learn that previous officials, like Colin Powell, and current officials, like members of the Trump family, did the same thing, then it provides more context, and it makes you wonder just how egregious the original charge is.

The point is, "technically true" things are often intentionally misleading; the fact that something is "technically true" should arouse more suspicion than trust.

I hear you calling out fact checkers that provide insight into why something is flagged true or false, but I don't hear you calling out officials that make misleading "technically true" statements, or totally false statements. What's up with that? Are fact checkers really the root of this problem, or are they a symptom?

[meragrin]

There was a post remarking about how China did not need a vaccine to get covid under control. Facebook flagged it as false information. They linked to an article which talked extensively about how China used lockdowns, contact tracing, masks, hand washing, and other things which were clearly not vaccines to get covid under control. Most of the vaccine talk was about anti-vaxxers and how Chinese weren't like that. There was a short blurb about how Chinese vaccines were still in phase 3 trials with several hundred thousand people given the vaccine. That's not going to make a big dent in California let alone China. None of the articles the "fact checking" article linked to even mentioned vaccines when talking about how China got it under control.

[cable2600]

Who fact-checks the fact-checkers?

YouTube had security camera videos posted by members that showed taking mail in ballots from under the table rather than the counting bins. Stuff like that was called false or inaccurate. I cannot say if this mail in vote did the same across the USA, but it shows that the voting process is flawed that and the Dominion software flipping votes from Trump to Biden by mistake.

[malcolmgreaves]

Jesus christ, it's because they opened the envelopes, but needed to go on a break, so they put them in secured bins.and put those under the table.

[splintercell]

That's not what happened though, there's a 14 hour video feed.

These workers announced that they're closing the count for the night and that everyone must leave. You can see them in the video just sitting still not doing anything until everyone leaves. Then when poll watchers leave they spring into action pull out the ballots from under the table and start counting for three more hours.

[throwmeaway4853]

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/12/video-doesnt-show-suitcase...

>state officials told us that the full video shows the supposed “suitcases” were actually standard containers used to secure ballots, and that the ballots in question were opened and prepared for counting earlier in the night in full view of observers.

>On Dec. 5, Frances Watson, the chief investigator for the secretary of state’s office, said in an affidavit that after reviewing the video and conducting interviews, her investigators found “that observers and media were not asked to leave” but “simply left” after they saw workers, whose job was to open the ballots, leave. She said the investigation remains open.

[SV_BubbleTime]

> Frances Watson, the chief investigator for the secretary of state’s office

We investigated ourselves and found no wrong doing.

The Secretary was DIRECTLY involved in the purchase and deployment of the Dominion machines. He is refusing any signature audits. He is now being sued by GA Legislature members.

Despite what FactCheck dot org says (and how could that possibly not be trustworthy!?) I don’t think a statement from this office is going to sway anyone.

How about this, here is footage from a GA official showing just how ridiculously insecure and awful the dominion software is.

This changed my opinion on the whole mess:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46CAKyyObls&feature=youtu.be

[ghostwriter]

> On Dec. 5, Frances Watson, the chief investigator for the secretary of state’s office, said in an affidavit that after reviewing the video and conducting interviews, her investigators found “that observers and media were not asked to leave” but “simply left” after they saw workers, whose job was to open the ballots, leave.

That's a futile affidavit. Where are affidavits from the investigators and the precinct staff members themselves, where they say that observers and media were not asked to leave.

[stickyricky]

Its possible to censor incorrect information. Recognizing false information is not equivalent to calling for it to be suppressed.

[briandear]

Who determines “correct?”

[495636483]

This. The world will end, if we treat every fucking word like an "opinion", which deserves to be heard.

"Covid19 is a lie!1!!" isn't an opinion. It's ignorant non-sense at best, likely malicious, indirect interest-driven misinformation. It absolutely does not deserve the same, attention, platform and range as scientific, or reasonably political debate.

Naive unconditional free speech, "attention communism", if you want lol, is an ignorant and anti-democratic idea. The only reason that hasn't hurt us like this before, was the cost of spreading information effectively, pre-www.

[AmericanChopper]

The facts of this case are quite clearly in dispute, so to make a judgement about which of those facts are accurate and which aren’t is rather clearly taking a partisan political position.

This whole fact obsession has gotten completely out of hand. Presiding over disputed matters of fact is pretty much the core purpose of our entire court system. You can’t just call something a fact and be done with it. What you’ve actually described is a collection of opinions, and then declared them settled facts by referencing some of the people that hold them.

I know people get terribly riled up by politics, but they’re just losing sight of any form of reasonableness. Having an unaccountable central authority decide what’s true and what’s not is literally one of the most canonical forms of dystopia that exists.

[monsieurbanana]

I thought many (most?) US courts had already ruled against widespread voting fraud, and that so far there was no evidence presented.

How is it still "quite clearly in dispute"?

> Having an unaccountable central authority decide what’s true and what’s not

This part of your comment is highly ironic.

[AmericanChopper]

For reasons such as "should have filed before the election". There is a significant volume of claims pending action before the supreme court, including one rather large case filed by the Texas AG, and joined by a number of other state AGs. This rule prohibits the discussion of unapproved narratives about the merits of any of those cases. In any case, anybody who believes they have no merits can happily wait for the supreme court to confirm that. No need for mass partisan political censorship.

I'm not at all sure why you think my comment is so ironic either, so please feel free to explain.

[monsieurbanana]

I googled "court ruling against voting fraud" and read through articles Nevada, Pensylvannia and Michigan. None of those fit your "should have filed before the election" narrative. The closest thing I found was:

> Pennsylvania’s top court on Nov. 28 dismissed the challenge, saying that the lawsuit was not filed in a timely manner when the mail-in voting law was first enacted. It threw out a lower court ruling that had ordered the state not to certify the election pending a hearing.

But this is not about widespread fraud, this is about mail-in voting laws.

I don't know what's a reputable website for USA political news, feel free to tell me if I'm reading overly biased junk:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2020/12/09/nevada-...

https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-election-court-pennsylva...

https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/12/...

> I'm not at all sure why you think my comment is so ironic either, so please feel free to explain.

Trump calling it a win the night of the election is, no matter how you spin it, very close to your "unaccountable central authority" deciding what’s true and what’s not. So your final point seems correct, just pointed in the wrong direction.

[AmericanChopper]

Minnesota and Pennsylvania both dismissed cases saying they should have been filed before the election. Essentially kicking them to the Supreme Court to rule on constitutionality, should the plaintiffs choose to pursue it that far. I’d also like to remind everybody that Bush’s election was potentially decided by the Supreme Court over ruling the Florida Supreme Court, so trying to claim that matters like these are settled in lower courts is really just ignorant of how our justice system works. It’s probably also worth mentioning that many people claimed at the time (and still do) that Gore was the true winner of that election. I’ve never heard anybody claim people with those opinions were spreading misinformation, nor that they needed large tech companies to censor the debates they were having about the topic.

> Trump calling it a win the night of the election is, no matter how you spin it, very close to your "unaccountable central authority" deciding what’s true and what’s not.

Your mistake to presume that I am defending Trump really backs my point here. I have made no comments defending him or any of his court action, or public statements, or any action or statements from his allies. I have only made comments in defence of reasonableness and common sense, and against mega-corps like google using their influence to control the internet in a way that suits their political agendas. The merits of his claims will be decided by our justice system, not by Google. But if you’re ok with Google dictating to the internet which sides of a political debate are allowed to exist on the internet, then I guess you and I just have very different values. It's also a bit of a false equivalence, as the president is accountable to both the law and the electorate, opposed to Google, which is accountable to what exactly? Shareholders (theoretically)?

[monsieurbanana]

Your comment being ironic does not depend on whether you support Trump or not. You're arguing against Trump opponent's with a phrase that describes Trump's actions to a tee. You might abhor him with all your heart, it's still ironic.

You're the one misrepresenting what I've said. I'm not ok with a corporation "dictating to the internet which sides of a political debate are allowed to exist" and whatever else you're accusing me of. I'm telling you, widespread fraud is not "quite clearly in dispute".

[dbbk]

The people disputing the facts are doing it in bad faith because they want to steal the election. There is not a genuine argument to be made for widespread voter fraud.

[downandout]

The facts aligning in the Senator's favor does not make the request partisan.

Of course it's partisan. Had Trump won, and Biden voters were publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence, do you believe that Democratic senators would still be urging YouTube to take it down in the interest of fairness to Trump? I think you know the answer to that.

The scary part of this is that elected officials, who were presumably elected by people that thought they were going to protect the freedoms granted to them by the Constitution, and who must take an oath upon taking office to "support and defend the Constitution," sat down and wrote a letter that gleefully trampled all over one of our most fundamental constitutional rights. Since they were successful in this endeavor, it will happen again, on other, more expansive, partisan issues. Down the slippery slope we go.

The simple fact of the matter is that people are entitled to their opinions, and in the United States, they have a constitutional right to express those opinions in the same way and on the same platforms as those that disagree with them. The only problem is that now we have politicians who believe that those rights should only be extended to those who are on their side. Both sides of the political aisle are acting this way, and it does not bode well for our future as a country.

[tzs]

> The simple fact of the matter is that people are entitled to their opinions, and in the United States, they have a constitutional right to express those opinions in the same way and on the same platforms as those that disagree with them.

You've never had a constitutional right to a particular platform for your opinions. E.g., if a magazine or newspaper published an opinion that disagreed with yours, you do not have a constitutional right to have your opinion published in that same magazine or newspaper.

[rendall]

> "You've never had a constitutional right to a particular platform for your opinions."

While this is true, it's a distracting non-sequitur.

US senators (of any political persuasion) asking any platform to take down any information, correct or not, is chilling. That's not their role in government. That's not their job.

Also distraction: the content is false and misleading

Also distraction: the content is "political"

The important part, that I wish every American regardless of party would understand deeply in their bones, is that once it's easy for "our guys" to do this illegal, rights-trampling thing, then it becomes easier for "their guys" to do it.

This is creeping authoritarianism. Not Trump, not Obama, not Democrats, not Republicans, not this or that party engaging in skullduggery.

Someday, a group of senators will ask the platform-du-jour to take down something that you agree with and that you think is important for people to know. Perhaps about actual election fraud, on a candidate you like. Imagine it. Inhabit that idea.

American complacency in the face of "our guys can use this new awesome power for good, so it's OK" is how we have secret Presidential assassination lists (Disposition Matrix), secret courts where the accused cannot see the evidence against them (FISA courts), gag orders on civilians, and so forth

Do not applaud senators using the weight of the government to suppress speech that you do not like, even if you believe that speech is false. It's about protecting your rights.

[6510]

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/06/faceb...

[briandear]

True. However YouTube isn’t a publisher, according to them. They want the Section 203 exemption, but they are acting as a publisher. If they want to be indemnified from libel liability, they can’t pick and choose what to publish as that is a tacit endorsement of what does get published. They can have it both ways.

[triceratops]

> They want the Section 203 exemption, but they are acting as a publisher

You keep saying this over and over but you're wrong.

According to Section 230 they're allowed to "censor" all they want. It doesn't make them a publisher. That's literally the point of Section 230.

Repeating a lie doesn't make it true.

[downandout]

The are allowed to censor in good faith. That generally means that they need to follow their own guidelines, which does not appear to have happened in this case.

[triceratops]

"Good faith" can mean anything at all. And you should be thankful Section 230 exists. If everyone and his dog could sue a company for libelous content posted by a user, you know what would happen? More moderation, real name requirements, and "censorship".

[frogpelt]

Let's forget constitutional rights for a second.

The fact that Youtube is removing content about election fraud while leaving up much more egregiously false information is a huge red flag about their bias.

Have they taken down videos that blame George W. Bush and the federal government for the 9-11 attack?

[downandout]

Newspapers are static publications, and are not primarily engaged in the business of distributing third party content, so the comparison doesn't work. But if the newspaper had interactive functions, and had billed itself as an open platform where opinions of any kind could be published (as is the case with YouTube), then yes, censorship would become a thorny legal issue for them.

Further, one of the big problems here is that YouTube didn't do this of its own accord. Agents of the government - Democratic Senators in this case, who signed the letter in their official capacity - pressured the company into suppressing free speech that they simply didn’t like. That is a clear violation of the Constitution.

[csnover]

If you want to be pedantic about it, YouTube is a distributor, like a book store or a news stand, not a publisher like a newspaper. Distributors are in the business of distributing third party content. You can’t force a distributor to carry your content, and it would not become a “thorny legal issue” for them to stop carrying your product unless they violate your contract with them.

Speaking of contracts, when someone sign up for YouTube, they agree to their terms of service, which don’t say “we’re an open platform where opinions of any kind can be published”. They say “YouTube is under no obligation to host or serve Content” and “you understand and agree that there will be times when we make […] changes without notice” and “If we reasonably believe that any Content is in breach of this Agreement or may cause harm to YouTube, our users, or third parties, we may remove or take down that Content in our discretion”.

[downandout]

If you want to be pedantic about it

I don’t want to be pedantic about anything. The terms can say whatever they want - they write them. But regardless of what the TOS say, when you advertise yourself as an open platform for free speech, which YouTube certainly does, it opens you up to liability when you prove not to be that open platform. Further, if they go too far with moderation and begin censoring content over and above clear, previously set guidelines, they can lose their immunity to libel/slander lawsuits under the CDA (Communications Decency Act).

[csnover]

Normally I would ask you for you to please show me where in the law it says what you claim, but I am instead going to speak directly because I think it is important to be super clear on this: Wherever you are getting your information, it is a garbage source, they are lying to you, and you should find a better one.

Section 230 (which is essentially the only surviving part of the CDA; the rest was found to be unconstitutional in 1997[0]) gives interactive computer services immunity from civil claims (not just defamation) when removing material that they find objectionable, regardless of whether or not it is constitutionally protected, so long as it is done in good faith. The law is short and unambiguous[1]. There is no provision that says providers lose immunity if they go “above clear, previously set guidelines”. That is some straight made up garbage.

If what you were saying were true (again, it is not!), the “clear, previously set guidelines” are right in YouTube’s Terms. Those Terms explicitly say that they have no obligation to host your content, might change the rules, might remove your stuff, and you’re OK with that. And, even better, the issue of whether or not a provider can lose their S230 immunities through harm due to the reliance on misrepresentation of material fact was adjudicated in Green v America Online[2] and the answer was no! In that case, AOL’s member agreement was clear and binding. YouTube’s member agreement is similarly clear and binding. YouTube cannot lose their immunity in the way you claim.

[0] https://www.lawfareblog.com/whats-name-quite-bit-if-youre-ta...

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230

[2] https://www.eff.org/files/green-v-aol.pdf

[thomastjeffery]

> Of course it's partisan. Had Trump won, and Biden voters were publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence, do you believe that Democratic senators would still be urging YouTube to take it down in the interest of fairness to Trump? I think you know the answer to that.

The answer that it feels like I would have is, "No"; but it only feels that way because I can't even imagine them doing that in the first place. In order to even enter your thought experiment, I must put Biden and the Democrats in the shoes of Trump and the Republicans, and imagine that they have done something I don't believe they would do; and that is where the entire thing falls apart.

> The simple fact of the matter is that people are entitled to their opinions, and in the United States, they have a constitutional right to express those opinions in the same way and on the same platforms as those that disagree with them.

False. Everyone has the right to express whatever they want, but they don't have the right to do so using someone else's platform. For example, I have the right to express my criticisms of The Bible, but I don't have the right to walk into a church, walk up to the pulpit, and start a TED talk about the lack of evidence for Noah and the great flood, Moses and Hebrew slaves in Egypt, New Testament authorship, etc.

What keeps getting called "censorship" here is really "moderation". The reason it's such a big deal is that YouTube is a huge monolithic platform, so moderation on that platform is inherently a big deal.

If we want to remove the power YouTube has over public discourse, we need to create real competitors. The same goes for Facebook, Twitter, et al.

[jakelazaroff]

> Had Trump won, and Biden voters were publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence, do you believe that Democratic senators would still be urging YouTube to take it down in the interest of fairness to Trump? I think you know the answer to that.

The premise here is that both sides are just as likely to push misinformation on behalf of their team. The Democrats aren't perfect, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking that they would engage in the exact same tactics and rhetoric as the GOP if the shoe were on the other foot.

I'll flip the question around. Had Trump won, would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence? I think you know the answer to that.

[cjohnson318]

In the 2000 election, results disputed in Florida, but at the end of the day, Gore conceded and that was that. There is exactly 44 examples of successful, non-dumpster fire, transfers of power in this country.

[rayiner]

No he absolutely did not. He tried to cheat through an outrageous request for hand recounts but only in counties he had won: https://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/files/publications/working_pa...

Specifically, he demanded recounts of under votes, where the machine hadn’t registered any pick for President. But he did so only in counties where he had won a large majority. Theoretically, this wouldn’t help. Statistically, Bush voters should have been as likely as Gore voters to fail to completely punch a ballot. But by only requesting recounts in counties he had won solidly—I.e. the base rate in the data set heavily favored Gore—newly discerned votes would break in heavily his favor. If he had won the county 2-1, he’d get two newly discernible votes for every one that Bush got.

This was an obvious attempt at cheating. So obvious that the Florida Supreme Court smacked Gore down and ordered a statewide recount. And the Supreme Court agreed 7-2 that recount was still unconstitutional because under votes were being counted using different standards in different counties.

Imagine if Trump had demanded hand recounts of under votes in this election in Wisconsin, but only those votes that were made in person on Election Day. This would be obvious cheating, since the pool of Election Day voters went heavily for Trump to begin with, so newly discernible votes would break for him as well. Gore did the exact same thing. And it would have been a huge news story if the media understood basic Bayesian probability.

[sudosysgen]

I'm going to be a pedantic HN type, but 43. See the 1876 elections.

This is important, because you could get an idea of what has to be done to fix the issues and what repercussions it might have by looking at historical precedence.

[cjohnson318]

Great catch, thank you!

[briandear]

Gore conceded 37 days after the election. And only after the courts struck down his final challenge. And Hillary Clinton still calls the 2016 election illegitimate.

Pot meet Kettle.

[kthxbye123]

Frankly, Gore should not have conceded - allowing the Bush campaign to steal that election set the stage for the unprecedented abuses of power that followed.

The current attempt to steal the election is bound to fail, but it's setting up the GOP playbook for stealing a closer, more plausibly contested presidential election.

[meanderer]

Do people remember the Dems crying large scale voter fraud in 2016? I don’t too.

[nicky0]

Yeah it's not like the Democrats to do something like that. I certainly don't remember them spending three years and hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars pursuing an an investigation alleging Trump colluded with Russia to win that election, at the end of which the conclusion was that there was no evidence of it at all.

[triceratops]

> No evidence

You're making it sound like a witchhunt but it was in fact extremely fishy.

"The investigation found there were over 100 contacts between Trump campaign advisors and individuals affiliated with the Russian government, before and after the election, but the evidence was insufficient to show an illegal conspiracy."[1]

I'd encourage you to at least read through the Wikipedia articles on the Mueller report before shouting "zero evidence" so loudly.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report#Russian_interfe...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Tower_meeting

[kneel]

Russiagate was the greatest psyops in the history of media.

[rayiner]

No. They were crying large scale Russian hacking and how Trump was a “Russian asset.” As a result of that rhetoric, 2/3 of Democrats believed that Russians had altered the vote tallies to help Trump win: https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...

Is it as bad as what Trump is doing? No. Is it as bad as what Democrats did in 2000, 2004, and 2016 put together? Well my schadenfreude meter is pretty pegged.

[tptacek]

Exactly what is it that the Democrats did in 2004? I worked that election, in Ohio. It was over early morning of election night, and I don't remember anyone litigating anything.

[rayiner]

The House held hearings on supposed voting irregularities in Ohio: https://www.c-span.org/video/?184728-1/voting-irregularities.... (Jerry Nadler remarked in this hearing that “my experience in New York is that paper ballots are extremely susceptible to fraud.”)

Democrats on the House Judiciary committee released a report claiming that claimed Republicans cheated in the Ohio recount: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/something-rotten-o...

A fun thing about the 2004 theories is that they were based mainly on exit polls showing Kerry won. (Bush was ahead by 2 points in the actual vote.) Today we know that exit polls are probably unreliable and may well underestimate conservative votes.

[jakelazaroff]

That’s an odd rebuttal, because the first is true and the second has large grains of truth.

There was Russian hacking, — as best we can tell, that’s where the Podesta emails came from. No one serious alleges that they tampered with the vote tallies, but we can credibly say they swung the election.

“Asset” is frustratingly vague word for Democrats to use, but a lot of the collusion narrative has panned out. The Mueller report revealed that the Trump campaign welcomed Russian interference, stopping just short of alleging outright collusion.

Meanwhile — basically everything Republicans allege now is laughably false, and many are outright calling for a coup.

[eggy]

Not to mention but Russian (Soviet) collusion seems to be a move out of the Democrat's own playbook when Ted Kennedy solicited Soviet intervention to foil the reelection of Ronald Reagan [1]. When you point your finger at something there's usually three more pointing straight back at you.

Hillary said the election was fraudulent from day one all the way up to current election.

Or how on October 26, 2020, PBS (hardly a right-wing or conservative news agency), aired a documentary [2] on the problems with the Dominion voting machines showing how you could just copy the QR codes and they could be re-scanned and count as a legitimate vote, no major hacking needed here. Here's an excerpt: -

"J. Alex Halderman:

By analyzing the structure of the Q.R. codes, I have been able to learn that there's nothing that stops an attacker from just duplicating one, and the duplicate would count the same as the original bar code.

Miles O’Brien:

And in late September, another concern came to light. During testing, election workers found half the names of the 21 candidates for Senate intermittently disappeared from screens during the review phase.

Dominion sent out a last-minute software patch.

J. Alex Halderman:

I'm worried that the Georgia system is the technical equivalent to the 737 MAX. They have just made a last-minute software change that might well have unintended consequences and cause even more severe problems on Election Day."

For me, it's the individual states changing their own election laws via unconstitutional methods right before the election. I think that is widespread fraud without a doubt, and those votes need to be audited or discounted.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/27/ted-kennedy-soviet-union-r...

[2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/will-georgias-new-voting-m...

[GreenHeuristics]

Yes they did. Democrats cried about Bernie Sanders getting defrauded of his election by other Democrats.

https://evidence2020.wordpress.com/2020/11/17/strong-evidenc...

Hillary is still going around claiming they stole the election from her.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/26/four-years-later-bitter...

[jakelazaroff]

The best evidence you can provide for widespread Democratic allegations of cheating is… a random WordPress blog post and an outragebait Federalist article that doesn’t support its own headline?

[cicero]

Clinton is quoted in the second line: “I was the candidate that they basically stole an election from,” Clinton said Monday on the New York Times podcast “Sway.”

[downandout]

I'll flip the question around. Had Trump won, would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence?

I just listened to 4 years of CNN, MSNBC, and virtually every other media outlet claiming that the previous election was rigged, with similarly sparse evidence. So yes, not only do I believe that they would, but they have already done it, 24/7, for the last 4 straight years.

[rootusrootus]

I would feel entirely different about Fox News claiming election malfeasance than I do about the President of the United States claiming it.

[pnw_hazor]

More recently, the pre-election suppression of the Hunter Biden scandals that are now okay to talk about openly for some reason.

[adamsea]

You're assuming equivalence between the two.

What matters is evidence. Facts. Logic. Reason.

The two simply are not equivalent. Check out what Wikipedia says about the Mueller Report:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report

I'm not claiming the Democrats are perfect or that there aren't mixed motives.

But it's obvious to any thinking person not living in a poisoned media ecosystem that all of these election fraud claims are baseless and ridiculous.

The same is not true about Russian influence operations during the 2016 election and the Trump campaigns, let's say, benign support of them.

[downandout]

There is no evidence that Russian influence changed the outcome of the election. A few thousand dollars worth of Facebook ads, mostly written in broken English, is unlikely to have caused a massive swing in voter turnout or opinions. It seems clear from the Mueller report that Russians attempted to engage in election interference. There is zero evidence that it had any effect on even a single vote.

If you turn on CNN for a second or two today, you'll hear them use the phrase "no widespread voter fraud occurred". In other words, there is evidence that some fraud occurred, as it does in every election. Just not enough to have swayed the results. The same can be said about any Russian interference.

So the two things are equivalent, because both happened to some degree, and it is extremely unlikely that either had any effect on the outcome.

[_RPL5_]

To me the DNC leak stood out as more damaging than Facebook ads / twitter bots.

That being said, if anyone has an unbiased academic paper that looked in-depth at Russia's Twitter/Facebook shenanigans, please cite. I'd like to read it.

[rthomas6]

While you're maybe not wrong about it not changing the election outcome, I just wanted to say that it was more than a few Facebook ads. Russia was the likely source of the DNC email leak. Also, it was a lot of sock puppeting and co-opting large groups on Facebook and also Twitter and Reddit. Hundreds of people, masquerading as thousands, playing both sides off each other, all day long every day for months. There were groups for every demographic imaginable, swaying them, as appropriate, to stay home because Hillary doesn't care about [ethnic group], or to vote for Jill Stein because Hillary is just a neocon in disguise. Or to vote for Trump in protest. Or to vote for Trump because conservative.

It was a well funded and coordinated effort by a nation state. Not a few thousand dollars on bad english ads.

[triceratops]

> There is no evidence that Russian influence changed the outcome of the election

The alleged Russian actions are by themselves criminal. It makes no difference whether they had any impact. An attempted theft is still a crime.

[adamsea]

You’re missing my point. A Russian influence operation to support the Trump campaign actually happened. This is a fact supported by evidence which bears up under examination.

There is no evidence of electoral fraud or whatever nonsense is currently being claimed. It did not happen. It is, in fact, a deliberate lie.

Someone saying stuff on CNN is not reliable information. Are you really going to compare that to the Mueller report?

In fact, what is reliable right now is how courts have been deciding these ridiculous claims. And they’ve all been universally rejected because the claims have no evidence, make no sense, and are basically asking for something that’s actually illegal.

So we are talking about two completely different things. Something that really happened, based on evidence, and something that is a bunch of lies and distortions. That is my point.

And, I’d really encourage you to learn how to better judge things. Or, to stop participating in this anti-democratic bullshit.

[1958325146]

Didn't we see the shoe on the other foot, roughly, in 2016 with the Russia collusion thing?

[Dylan16807]

No. That was not allegations that the votes themselves were tampered with.

[downandout]

Here [1] is a 2016 article from CNN, titled Computer scientists urge Clinton campaign to challenge election results. The articles says that "they have found evidence that vote totals in the three states could have been manipulated or hacked". Of course no such evidence existed, but it was most certainly among the allegations that Democrats were making in the wake of their loss.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/22/politics/hillary-clinton-chal...

[cjohnson318]

Here are examples of Hillary tweeting that the election was rigged multiple times, every day, for over a month.

...

[wstuartcl]

I guess, if you are comparing -- 54 or so election fraud court cases lost, many with republican judges and vote systems run by republicans vs impeachment, fbi report findings that would have been enough to charge any normal citizen and but because a sitting president can't be proscicuted not acted on, what 12-18 of his close circle either pleading or found guilty of charges. Yeah seems close.

There is something seriously wrong with the republican party watching the destruction of core values -- I for one will never vote for them again. But I guess folks like me who were life long republicans until Trump are just silly dems.

The fact that Trump has the party on a leash is just insane. Republicans watching idly as he actively subverts all norms of transfer of power and millions choosing to grasp at theories that would be espoused by drunkards on city corners 5 or 6 years ago is insane.

[cicero]

Trump did win 4 years ago, and Hilary Clinton claimed the election was stolen from her and that there is a specter of illegitimacy over his presidency. This is the exact kind of talk that people are now saying is dangerous and must be suppressed.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/26/four-years-later-bitter...

[asabjorn]

> I'll flip the question around. Had Trump won, would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence? I think you know the answer to that.

After his win in 2016 we had Russia collusion claims about election collusion that is still ongoing, it even led to the Mueller investigation that extended beyond the 2018 election, so yes absolutely the Democrats would do this.

[p1necone]

I'm not sure how you can read the Mueller report and come away with the conclusion that there's a lack of evidence.

[rayiner]

Lack of evidence for what? Democrats were claiming Trump was a “Russian asset.” The rhetoric convinced 2/3 of Democrats that Russia had altered vote tallies: https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/inline.... There was talk of impeaching Trump before he took office. Heck, Hilary Clinton called Tulsi Gabbard, a fellow Democrat, a “Russian asset.”

This partisan dichotomy about all this is extremely hard to credit. For two years we were subjected to Rachel Maddow dropping one “bombshell” after the other about how Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election. What was proven in the Mueller Report was a fraction of that, with scant evidence linking Trump himself to wrongdoing.

What’s worse, a story that’s 90% made up or one that’s 100% made up? The latter, obviously, but I have zero sympathy for partisans trying to make hay out of that distinction.

[kthxbye123]

106 House Republicans have just joined in a lawsuit by 18 Republican AGs to overturn the results of the election. The Trump administration of course followed eight years of ferociously racist conspiracy-mongering about Obama's illegitimate birth. The GOP is a minority party that simply rejects the legitimacy of their political opponents to hold office. Why do you persist in these ridiculous false equivalences? They're not even 10% different, they're 100% different.

[asabjorn]

Declassified FBI documents indicate otherwise. Flynn actually notified FBI of all meetings with Russians and debriefed with them afterwards.

There is much that is puzzling about the judges treatment of this case considering: 1) The FBI agents in charge of the Flynn case wrote a 'case closure memo' on Jan. 4, 2017, concluding he had found "no derogatory" evidence that Flynn committed a crime or posed a national security threat. FBI management then ordered the closure to be rescinded and pivoted toward trying lure Flynn into an interview. 2) In an extraordinary interview with prosecutors this fall, the FBI agent who led the Flynn case, William Barnett, admitted there was never evidence of wrongdoing by the retired general or Russian collusion by Trump, but the probe was kept open by Special Counsel Robert Mueller because his team was obsessed with punishing the president. [2]

And there are a long list of other odd facts about the case that put into question Judge Sullivans extraordinary actions by acting as a prosecutor in this case. [3]

[1] https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-04/FBIFlynn...

[2] https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-09/04518073...

[3] https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-sc...

[TMWNN]

> Declassified FBI documents indicate otherwise. Flynn actually notified FBI of all meetings with Russians and debriefed with them afterwards.

My "favorite" example of this is Carter Page, whose name was raked over the coals for years because a FBI lawyer intentionally altered evidence (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/us/politics/fbi-ig-report...) showing that far from being a Russian asset, Page had for years briefed the CIA every time he met with suspicious Russians. (Got to love how the Times describes said altering evidence as a "serious error".) For those who want an actual Russiagate-related indictment and guilty plea by an American, Kevin Clinesmith—said FBI lawyer—is your man.

[hcnews]

Mueller expressly said that Justice Dept doesn't go after a sitting President. Hopefully, he will get his day in court after Jan 20, 2021 (no resign + pardon shenanigans). That should set the record straight whether 2016 and 2020 are the same allegations (they are not!).

[meanderer]

If there wasn’t something fishy going on, Flynn and Stone wouldn’t need to be pardoned.

[asabjorn]

Declassified evidence and interviews of the FBI agents in charge of the case corroborate that they thought Flynn was innocent, and actually tried to close the case in January 2017. [1 - contains links to declassified evidence] FBI management overrode their decision, and tried to arrange another meeting to fish for something to nail him on.

Here is the declassified note of the agents in charge of case trying to close it from Jan 4 2017. [2]

[1] https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-sc...

[2] https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2020-04/FBIFlynn...

[adamsea]

You're assuming equivalence between the two.

What matters is evidence. Facts. Logic. Reason.

The two simply are not equivalent. Check out what Wikipedia says about the Mueller Report:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report

I'm not claiming the Democrats are perfect or that there aren't mixed motives.

But it's obvious to any thinking person not living in a poisoned media ecosystem that all of these election fraud claims are baseless and ridiculous.

The same is not true about Russian influence operations during the 2016 election and the Trump campaigns, let's say, benign support of them.

[asabjorn]

> But it's obvious to any thinking person not living in a poisoned media ecosystem that all of these election fraud claims are baseless and ridiculous.

If so, the facts around it should be freely discussable like the Russian collusion case was. Censoring the opposition seems fishy and anti-freedom.

[adamsea]

Facts are being discussed. They’re being discussed on CNN. The New York Times. Fox News. In courts of law.

And actually, when the facts are discussed in courts of law what we find every time is that there is no evidence of fraud in any meaningful way. And, that the legal arguments being made don’t make any sense and may actually be asking for something illegal.

The question of a private company choosing to censor right wing anti-democratic propaganda (I think that’s a precise description even if it’s an unpalatable one to you) at the urging of some politicians is a different and tricky question.

I think it’s important to note that there have been threats of violence against state-level civil servants and their families. Threats which YouTube videos like the ones we are discussing foment.

But to say it’s not being discussed is just another lie.

[fennecfoxen]

> would the Democratic party be publishing content like this with the same lack of evidence?

0) Biden totally won and the Trump cases are ill-founded and wrong, but

1) One can make the case that the Democratic establishment has been pushing disinformation since the first time Trump was elected, insinuating that the election was invalidated by Russian interference. The Washington Post, as late as September 21, 2020, ran the following article: "The unanswered question of our time: Is Trump an agent of Russia?"

In what manner is this new material qualitatively different? If it is a simple question of fact, to what extent is YouTube really qualified to determine facts?

2) It is eminently within reason for a human to believe that if Biden had lost, we'd be hearing cries of "voter suppression!" Hillary Clinton herself advised Biden not to concede if it came down to it, and we have other historical cases to look at, like Bush v Gore, and Stacey Abrams (D-GA) still hasn't conceded the 2018 election for governor of Georgia.

I do not ask you to litigate the matter itself, as HN is ill suited for such a dispute. I ask you instead: Is there some clear and indisputable factual evidence that would demonstrate to all comers the indicators above are not meaningful, such that it is unreasonable for your fellow man to rely on them? If not, why is the cynical position such a wrong one to take here?

Postscript: I see the score comment wobbling! Lots of fun! The -1 Insufficiently Supportive of Groupthink vote is coming through loud and clear <3

[tzs]

I did not downvote you but I was tempted to for the ridiculous Bush v. Gore remark. Bush v. Gore was a 0.009% difference in a state where both sides agreed that there were problems with a large number of ballots. The poorly designed ballots made it impossible to ever determine who a large number of voters intended to vote for. The dispute was over how to handle that. This is not even remotely like any other major disputed election.

[rayiner]

No, that’s whitewashing what happened: https://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/files/publications/working_pa...

Bush won Florida in the first machine count. There was an automatic recount, and Bush won again. Gore then proceeded to create a cluster—k by demanding a hand recount of under votes only in counties he had won.

> Bush won the initial count by 1,784 votes, and he was still ahead by 327 votes after the automatic statewide machine recount. Gore then filed “protests,” demanding a hand recount of the ballots in four heavily Democratic counties, only three of which are relevant to the following discussion: Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade. Gore apparently chose these counties for one or both of two reasons. First, to the extent that errors by the counting machines were randomly distributed, Gore could expect to be a net gainer in these most heavily Democratic jurisdictions. Second, the hand recounts would be supervised by local elected officials, and the chances that such officials would be biased in Gore’s favor (or at least not biased in Bush’s favor) would be highest in the most heavily Democratic counties.

It’s a simple trick that leverages the large number of under votes (1-2% of all votes) generated by these punch machines. The machine can’t read cards that aren’t fully punched out, so there is a large pool of potentially discernible but uncounted ballots. If you only recount ballots in counties that went say 2-1 for Gore as the base rate, then when hand counters look at markings on the ballot to identify “voter intent” you’ll get 2 new Gore votes for every new Bush vote. Not only that, but there was some insane maneuvering by Gore to include partial recounts in the results. The Florida Supreme Court found this unconstitutional and ordered a statewide recount. 7 to 2, the Supreme Court found that recount unconstitutional as well. (The Court split 5-4 on what to do with the mess. But people overlook that Gore precipitated the mess, burning a ton of time before the safe harbor deadline, with his partial recount strategy.)

[Dylan16807]

> It is eminently within reason for a human to believe that if Biden had lost, we'd be hearing cries of "voter suppression!" Hillary Clinton herself advised Biden not to concede if it came down to it

Voter suppression is real and has been happening for a long time. Biden winning or losing doesn't change that. So those cries wouldn't demonstrate much.

> Hillary Clinton herself advised Biden not to concede if it came down to it

She said not to concede on the night of the election, because of factors like mail-in voting. Someone that thinks she said not to concede at all, at any point, is just wrong.

[caseysoftware]

I'm not seeing your "on the night of the election" qualification and she may have said it in other interviews but the "under any circumstances" bit is true:

“Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances, because I think this is going to drag out, and eventually I do believe he will win if we don't give an inch, and if we are as focused and relentless as the other side is,” Clinton said in an interview with her former communications director Jennifer Palmieri for Showtime's “The Circus,” which released a clip Tuesday.

Ref: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/hillary-clint...

[fennecfoxen]

Even if she did qualify it, it's reasonable to expect that hundreds of millions didn't see it either, and they might quite reasonably default to cynicism on the matter.

As a pragmatic matter, running any party on Not As Bad As The Other Guys™ rules will not earn you respect, at least not outside those who were already voting for you; it's impossible to send virtue signals if they don't meaningfully cost you.

[Dylan16807]

And immediately preceding that in the video is:

"They have a couple of scenarios that they're looking toward. One is messing up absentee balloting, so that they then get maybe a narrow advantage in the electoral college, on election day."

[p1necone]

Wow, I've seen plenty of whataboutism before, but I've never seen hypothetical whataboutism until this comment...

[xupybd]

Well not really. The argument is that if this is a non partisan effort then this would have caused the same outcome if the political motivations were reversed. The parent comment is suggesting that is not true. I don't know if that has been well argued by the parent but I don't think this is an attempt at mud slinging.

A better argument would be to point out that a non partisan motion should gain some Republican support and it has not.

Additionally you could point out that it would be unlikely to gain support from the right due to the current incarnation of right wing politicians tending to support freedom of speech and would be opposed to this action on a partisan basis.

[jessaustin]

Helpful info: https://theoutline.com/post/8610/united-states-russia-whatab...

[xupybd]

I loved this part:

What if a man comes home, and says to his wife:

“Susan, you didn’t take out the trash!” he says.

“Brad, you have never taken out the trash once in your life,” she replies.

Would it be fair for him to turn, smugly clutching a copy of The Economist, and say, “Susan, this is not about me. I can’t believe you are doing whataboutism”?

[brongondwana]

Without reading the context and just looking at that quote... yeah, probably! If he's really never taken the trash out once in his life and they're married, then either they have an arrangement where she's the one taking out the trash, or they'd be totally covered in trash.

... getting in before the "maybe they've only been married a couple of days and this is the first load of trash" - then how does she know he's never taken the trash out in his life?

I call shenanigans.