How is it "democratic discourse" to ignore statements of certain people? Last time I read a dictionary, democracy did not make a difference between citizens.
To quote Karl Popper: "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."
Democracy needs provable facts to work, it ceases to work when the electorate gets flooded by destructive lies.
Karl Popper sounds like a real winner.
I’m OK with this if Google takes full responsibility for the veracity of its search results and liability for any consequences of someone being misled.
They won’t do that of course, they want the power without the responsibility.
Yet the human experience is subjective and fallible.
Any durably functioning society has means to shun & shed liars & those who work to destroy the society. Treating rules as absolute rarely works well.
Further even factual "truth" should always questioned, debated, and explored, no one gave Google the power to say what is "Truth" and then to expel any other idea that challenges said "Truth" that is dangerous for society
Of course truths should be debated, there is a difference between useful debate and shouting or deceit.
To paraphrase Asimov, we should well remember that democracy does not mean that Alan's ignorance is equal to Bob's truth.
It has been well demonstrated that trolls can easily and consistently derail even sound scientific discussions, destroying the discussion and even the forum, if allowed. One only need to look her at HN to see how much filtering & moderation work is required to maintain a valid discussion.
Individuals have better discussions than mobs. There is no basis to think that large scale discussions need less filtering & moderation than tight communities, yet even this obvious concept is fought here...
YouTube is an amplifier and while they give anyone a voice they're not forced by any law lo amplify its reach. Just like you won't go share my opinion with all your discussion partners.
#is it anti-democratic if someone flags or downvotes a comment on HN? Are you or HN acting in an anti-democratic fashion by hiding and censoring that opinion? (obvious answer: no) Freedom and democracy are seriously misinterpreted these days.
How so? The video is there and it can be viewed. That is 1. That is your voice. It just gets no amplification while other voices do. Did you ever see Breitbart putting an anti-Breitbart opinion on the front page? Are they being anti-democratic by doing this?
So I'll ask again, if you downvoted/flagged my comment thus making it less readable (factor < 1) did you act in an anti-democratic way? And if so how do you reconcile your actions with your words?
No, because I only have a limited amount of power in this regard. If I was HN the platform and I systematically silenced your comments simply on the basis that they were coming from you (and you were not rude and/or an obvious spammer), then I would be censoring you. While this is not necessarily anti-democratic since HN is not a government institution, it does get unsavoury rather quickly. And like it or not, it is more unsavoury the larger the entity (in terms of audience) doing it.
Agreed, it's not anti-democratic (I guess we're actually talking about freedom of speech) to ignore or refuse to amplify someone's opinion.
> because I only have a limited amount of power
That only changes the scale. You and a few other users are enough to completely censor someone's opinion and you do it all the time. A moderator can wipe a comment, a submission, or a user without any suspicion that they are anti-democratic. And whether it's unsavory or not is a matter of taste.
> HN is not a government institution
Indeed, private companies have no legal duty to let your voice be heard at all. It is not my right to post on HN or YouTube.
People overestimate what "freedom" means: you are allowed to say your piece but your freedom ends where someone else's freedom begins. YouTube doesn't have to promote your opinion more than you have to promote mine.
Let's put it another way. What's a good example of a "democratic" site, paper, etc. that you know of? Together we will ask them to publish something that goes against every value they hold dear to test out your theory.
Yes, but scale is important. After all, the only difference between a government and a corporation is scale. The scale of power, the scale of leverage, the scale of trust that people put in it.
I'm of the opinion that a large platform like Youtube should not be allowed to police the content hosted there completely according to its own arbitrary whim precisely because of scale.
Far from it and I'm surprised anyone would see it this way. In a democracy the government is the people's representative looking out for all of their interests from a unique position of power. A corporation is one of the many private entities that provide a product or service. I have a say in who is leading my country but once the decision is made I have no choice but to live under it. I have no say in who is leading your company but I can always choose the services of another.
> Youtube should not be allowed
You're suggesting that size should be the difference between getting to enjoy the benefits of freedom and democracy or not. Should wealth be treated the same way? Or general influence of social media influencers with millions of people hanging on their every word? You're negotiating when and to whom should freedom and democracy apply.
Then again maybe there is a way to regulate this in a fair way. Then again even if hate speech laws exist they are more or less only enforced by platforms who don't want their image associated with that. If private entities weren't tasked with enforcing laws maybe the pressure would be relieved.
Not listening to an opinion, and declaring it invalid without actually addressing it, are two very different things. Reducing the visibility for others so they don't even get to make up their mind is a step beyond even that.
> To hold different opinions and to be aware that other people think differently on the same issue shields us from Godlike certainty which stops all discussion and reduces social relationships to those of an ant heap. A unanimous public opinion tends to eliminate bodily those who differ, for mass unanimity is not the result of agreement, but an expression of fanaticism and hysteria.
-- Hannah Arendt