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Comment by causi | Hacker News Reader

This is not a bad thing per se, but I'm growing increasingly tired of companies like Google having a policy of "we will do and allow anything that makes us more money than it costs us." Sure, today I'm protected by Google's rules against racist ads and climate denial ads and holocaust denial ads, but what about tomorrow? I don't like the rules of public discourse being controlled by whatever is popular or unpopular. Am I allowed to purchase ads decrying the ongoing war in Yemen? How about advocating for gun rights or gun control? Denying climate science is banned but selling snake oil and pyramid schemes is allowed?

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It's not popular vs unpopular, it's politics. Climate science is super politicized in this country. Google is a progressive entity who claims to offer a balanced view but instead works as a bad actor and favors one point of view as "truth". They are turning into another New York Times.

Climate science is politicized because moneyed interests have a strong incentive to continue to deny the science and conservative individuals have both a shared financial interest with liberals to conspire with those interests and a unique political interest in drawing a contrast between themselves and progressives by spreading propaganda and lies.

Thus while Democrats and Republicans both vote against all of our interests only Republicans because of their unique interests have an incentive to spread lies. Insofar as popularity, these lies like smoking doesn't cause cancer are becoming increasingly unbelievable.

Specifically people used to literally argue that warming wasn't even real and now 2/3 of people in the US hold that its an issue and that government isn't doing enough to address it.

https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/06/23/two-thirds-of...

Interestingly among Democrats the belief that humans have a large effect on climate change is highly correlated with education with HS or less being 58%, some college being 73%, college grad 83%, and finally postgraduate 86%. Meanwhile among Republicans the breakdown is 21, 22, 22, 25. Among Republicans the politics is vastly more important than the science.

When google agrees to stop supporting harmful lies they aren't inherently taking a political stance. The republicans have merely politicized the truth. Bowing to this misdirection would itself be the political act. Lets take a stand for just worrying about the facts instead of the politics. This stand in my mind must necessarily include talking about the side which is spreading harmful lies.

> Climate science is politicized because moneyed interests have a strong incentive to continue to deny the science and conservative individuals have both a shared financial interest with liberals to conspire with those interests and a unique political interest in drawing a contrast between themselves and progressives by spreading propaganda and lies.

Except that climate change is funded and backed by wall street, banks, media, etc. The real monied interests are on the side of climate change.

> Thus while Democrats and Republicans both vote against all of our interests only Republicans because of their unique interests have an incentive to spread lies.

But monied interests back both democrats and republicans.

> Specifically people used to literally argue that warming wasn't even real and now 2/3 of people in the US hold that its an issue and that government isn't doing enough to address it.

Wonder why that is? Oh that's right, the monied interests are backing neverending ads pushing climate change.

It's funny how everyone from the world bank, goldman sachs and google is backing climate change and you are saying it's the "monied interests" who are against climate change.

Think about it. If monied interests were against climate change, then google wouldn't be banning anti-climate change ads...

At some point public interest turned against cigarettes too despite moneyed interests being in favor of poisoning millions of people forever to keep the money flowing and it became desirable to be seen to sacrifice something while actually leaving society dealing with most of the costs of obtaining that profit.

Climate change has become so overwhelmingly obvious that most people can't be persuaded that its not real so the moneyed interests are focusing on proclaiming that they are on the right side of history while trying to blunt any effective change that would hurt their pockets.

That is why for example that its super important for you to recycle that coke bottle but not important for companies to stop poisoning the planet or paying for it to be poisoned elsewhere.

Climate change is a real issue and the overwhelming fact is we have a huge hand in the multitude of maladies that plague our planet and if we don't do something beyond trivial tokens like recycling a coke bottle we are all fucked. Few with substantial wealth to be gained in the short term are considering the long term effects and they are funding both sides to keep those costs from hitting close to home.

The difference to return to the first analogy is Democrats are trying to keep cigarette taxes low while Republicans are proudly proclaiming that manly men smoke and their grandad lived to 95 smoking on whiskey and bacon and 2 packs a day!

Democrat inaction may rob us opportunities to preserve our health, wealth, prosperity, and lives but Republican lies stand to rob us of even the awareness of an actual problem that is a necessary precondition for any sort of action.

Pretending these things are the same would be a mistake.

These things can never be black and white. The spectrum of ideas is too grey.

There are many controversial subjects in humanity where free expression of ideas may cause harm but ultimately freedom is more worthwhile than what it restricts.

But there are exceptions:

* GLobal pandemics with successful vaccinations where the choices we make affect the lives of millions

* Global climate change, inaction (or wrong action) will affect the lives of BILLIONS.

Why should those things be exceptions? And who should be in charge of deciding which viewpoints get censored?

All reasonable people must make their own judgement about which actions they take will result in harming others. If you don't like the choices that Google execs make support Microsoft or Yahoo. If all trees are bending to the same wind ask yourself if it is because this is reasonable and just and decide what you yourself will do if you don't believe it is.

Agreed that a black and white approach here doesn't suffice. You can be concerned about over-reach and censorship, and concerned about the propagation of harmful information or misinformation.

My question to those screaming censorship, which I have yet to receive a good answer on, is where they draw the line. The well known line for traditional free speech is incitement to violence or shouting fire in a crowded theater. If controlling vaccine misinformation for the sake of public health is censorship, what are the cases where controlling the propagation of patently false information isn't censorship?

The internet has opened the floodgates for bad actors to flood the airwaves with bad information, whether for their own gain or for malicious purposes – to the point where the sheer volume of bad information being pumped out makes "countering bad speech with better speech" a losing battle. The algorithmic bias towards controversial topics inherent in the systems we have created are only exacerbating the issue.

Are we proposing to force private companies to serve content they consider false and/or harmful?

It's all fun and games until someone creates a pandemic for political reasons and you're denied the ability to question it at all. Don't read too much into that statement, I'm not referring to the current pandemic but give a sociopath (which most politicians are) a tool of great power and they will abuse it. Give them a tool with no check on that power and you're begging to be squashed by it. Creating a "Pandemic Exception" is all they need to wield that powerful tool and never ever give up power ever again.

Zooming out I think this is a fundamental question of common sense that is not common.

The American philosophy has always been to optimize for rebelling against a "tyrannical" government. That the freedom in the system must be such that if a dictator comes along, you have the guns and the freedom of speech to resist.

That's all well and good [citation needed], but it's not the only way. Most of the rest of the "progressive" "western" world (quotes because these words don't mean the same thing to everyone, but i'm using here to guide our understanding of what countries we are discussing) take the perspective that optimizing a society for the worst case scenario all the time means that people will die in the streets while billionaires get wealthier. This isn't abstract, the US is the richest country in the world by a lot, but is the worst western country in the world to be poor (assuming you like to be alive)

So, yes, your point is valid. There have been fascist governments. And state-manufactured famines. And all of the sorts.

But i feel like your hypothetical extends the norms past their breaking point. We have solutions for these things. It can't be up to a single leader to deem a pandemic in place and be the final word on it. There must scientific consensus and multiple people elected (not appointed) to positions where they can make this judgement through science not politics.

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