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Comment by ehsankia | Hacker News Reader

There are 3 scenarios:

1. Someone who is radicalized digging deeper

2. Someone who is radicalized changing their mind

3. Someone who is not radicalized getting radicalized

#1 is bound to happen, #2 has no chance of happening, so at this point, preventing #3 is the way to go. Keeping these already radicalized people on Youtube achieves nothing. On the other hand, keeping them on Youtube gives these them a huge platform to spread misinformation. Newsmax nad OANN don't have anywhere near the reach Youtube does, especially outside the existing bubble.

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#2 can happen. It happens when a person is shown that whatever they are feeling isn't the result of something inevitable

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C22&q=red...

Honestly if the choice is between no bans and allowing the current trends of radicalization continue, almost any outcome is preferable than what we've seen happen the last 5-10 years.

Really? Things only really hit the fan when the bans scaled up. I don't ever remember things being this bad 5 years ago.

unprovable/unknowable and subjective analysis. Youtube banning people doesn't radicalize them, radicalizing content delivered to million of people on youtube radicalizes them.

A point so simple it feels silly to point it out, but here we are.

Radicalization doesn’t just happen it has to make deep intuitive sense to that person based on their own prejudice. You can’t convince a normal person to kill people by showing them a bunch of videos but you can convince people not to believe hanlon’s razor and therefore deepen their hatred by false attribution of malice where none exists

Most content is "delivered" in the form of suggested videos from within youtube itself and other social graphs that seem unwilling to concede that they might be part of the problem itself.

The rate of spread is a problem of YouTube's own devising based on clicks, views and likes. Remove this gamification and you'll see less engagement, hence less scale of radicalization.

With youtube labeling people "radicals" is a deliberate polarising term designed to do little more than tar and feather people into a specific box. Just like segregation, just like Protestants, just like the German Jews... Etc. It's very unflattering.

Antivaxx and other conspiracy theories on the internet weren't anywhere as big anywhere else either, you're trying to assign causation where there is none. Youtube didn't start banning antivaxx until way way after it was already massive and out of control.

How is newsmax “radicalized”?

They're a firehose of hyper-partisan swill not supported by facts.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/newsmax/

"Overall, we rate Newsmax Right Biased and Questionable based on the promotion of conspiracy theories and pseudoscience as well as numerous failed fact checks. (M. Huitsing 10/8/2017) Updated (11/12/2020)"

Neither is MSNBC, CNN, or FOX and they havent been for quite sometime.

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