[core-questions]

Zoom out. This action is YouTube controlling the dialogue and acting as though they're the Ministry of Truth.

Here's an amazing suggestion for you: if you don't like someone's opinion, don't watch their videos. Amazing. Super easy to do. Just click that little X button at the top right and move on with your life. No draconian censorship, no 1984 bullshit required. Just walk away.

Adults who can handle contrasting opinions should be allowed to see, read, share, and issue them to their hearts' content. Even if you think they're wrong. It's kind of the whole damned point of free speech, which is being pissed away by childish morons who never understood why people fought and died for it to start with.

[ben_w]

It’s not about what we like, it’s not about “Adults who can handle contrasting opinions”, it’s about a literal mob of armed people who broke into a government building while it was in the process of certifying the results of an election that the armed mob believed was stolen because of videos they watched and believed.

I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but there is a story behind that analogy — it isn’t bubblebath that hides medieval infants in a washtub’s waste water.

[core-questions]

Pretty sure the mob wasn't armed; you can't go around armed in DC. The property damage was minimal, especially compared to the BLM riots of last summer; did you post vociferously about how misinformation started those?

[ben_w]

"""Five of the arrests were related to guns and two were for illegal possession of other weapons, including metal knuckles and a blackjack-like weapon."""

"""Police Chief Robert J. Contee says two pipe bombs and a cooler with Molotov cocktails were also found near Capitol grounds."""

- https://www.fox5dc.com/news/over-50-people-arrested-14-offic...

Normally I consider Fox to be right-wing.

> did you post vociferously about how misinformation started those?

My argument would apply to all riots caused by disinformation regardless of if I recognise the disinformation as false rather than true.

As it happens, I believe those riots were triggered by people who believe their lives do not matter to the police on the basis of personal experience. You believe I am wrong about that? Sure, ok, now tell me: why does being wrong about that change my argument that misinformation can cause real harm? You consider the BLM riots to be a bigger event, and that it was based on untruths, so tell me: on what basis does your claim mean that I should stop being concerned about mobs being goaded into action by lies?

You don’t need to convince me I’m wrong about the BLM movement to do that.

[core-questions]

Thank you for the information about the armed people. Certainly I don't support anything like that - but then, I'm Canadian, I don't support people being armed in general.

> The same argument would apply to all riots caused by disinformation regardless of if I recognise the disinformation as false rather than true.

You make a fair point about the misinformation from a purely argument-logic standpoint (both classes of events being spurred on by some amount of misinformation).

The greater gestalt of my argument is that it's asinine to consider any side of the mainstream media in the USA to somehow not be a biased source of misinformation, malicious and deliberate or otherwise. You can pick your side, Fox or MSNBC or anything else, and get the bias you "prefer", but no matter what you're getting bias, denial of reality when it's inconvenient for the narrative, and propaganda designed to spur you into particular thoughts and actions. If you're going to get mad about it for this event, if you're a principled person, you should have been mad about it for prior events too, even if the results don't run in favour of your own priors.

We can fight about the particulars of the situation, or work together to understand how we're being manipulated into arguing about particulars instead of looking at who's manipulating us, how, why, and in what overall direction.

[km3r]

As another commenter mentioned, we are adjusting to a new form of information flow now in the post social media age. What was easily disproven and dismissed 20 years ago, now is amplified by radicals. I don't think banning the speech is the right choice but we need someway to counter misinformation. Its 100x easier to come up with these lies then it is to dispel them. The information war is already heavily on the side of misinformation. Clearly with the rise of Qanan, antifa, and even yesterdays events, our current approach is not work. I am all ears to hear better solutions but trusting people to be able to navigate the sea of misinformation to the island of truth leads to many shipwrecks.

[mistermann]

> I am all ears to hear better solutions

I've offered an idea for an experiment that could plausibly lead to a (partial) solution here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25662949

[core-questions]

What if I think it doesn't matter at all whether people believe the correct, government-approved, blue-checkmark truth vs. their own interpretation? Since when do we all have to believe the same things for the world to function?

You sound like a high-church advocate getting mad that angry parishioners have started to question the orthodoxy. You should understand that America was founded on that kind of questioning and that kind of rejection of power in favour of open discourse, even by people who are wrong.

> amplified by radicals

Meanwhile the propaganda side is amplified by the people who own the media; ten thousand times louder than any dissident.

I pray this sort of thing just ends up pushing people towards decentralized platforms where they can speak their mind without censors, moderators, and goody-two-shoes apparatchiks complaining about "misinformation". It's so patronizing.

[chillwaves]

I agree, hopefully they will leave the social media sites into their own decentralized camps. Sounds like a win for all sides. No more megaphone amplifying ideas that don't have the native support to deserve it.

The rest of us will stay secure in our belief that Coronavirus is real, that 5G isn't a government conspiracy, and that Donald Trump lost the election.

Each of those three items have very specific dangerous implications for the people spreading disinfo about them.

Seems like an easy wedge to exploit if you were a hostile country looking to conduct psyops on America. Did you consider the wider security implications of half the country no longer believing in fair elections?

[core-questions]

> the rest of us will stay secure in our belief that Coronavirus is real, that 5G isn't a government conspiracy, and that Donald Trump lost the election.

Saying this demonstrates the false dichotomy. I believe all of those things, too. Guess what: I also believe that flyover Americans deserve a shot at the world their forefathers were working toward. Wedges have been put into place to make it difficult to hold a position like this politically; who represents me?

> Seems like an easy wedge to exploit if you were a hostile country looking to conduct psyops on America.

Which country is that, and why make the assumption that it comes from outside your own borders?

> Did you consider the wider security implications of half the country no longer believing in fair elections?

Seems like this is a mandate to produce a more secure election. Shouldn't that make both sides happier? Isn't it possible to believe that the election systems are rife with opportunities for fraud and miscounts? Did you live through the 2000 Gore/Bush election? America can do better.

[AgentME]

People just stormed the capitol yesterday based on misinformation and propaganda. People avoid masks and vaccines based on propaganda and cause countless deaths.

If I can criticize a tv channel for running dumb shows, then I sure as shit can criticize a website that knowingly chooses to spread lies that predictably get people killed and destabilize democracy.

[tylersmith]

I agree with you 100%, but the people that push for these kinds of policies are not concerned with what they choose to watch, they want to limit what others watch. Simply being able to not watch a video won't be sufficient for them.