<story><title>YouTube&apos;s tendency to push everyday users toward politically extreme content</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/world/europe/youtube-far-right-extremism.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>atlantic</author><text>&amp;gt; Hate speech is not free speech any more than contract killing is just a financial transaction.&lt;p&gt;Personal anecdote.&lt;p&gt;When I moved to the UK in the 1970, there was a little platform in Hyde Park called Speaker&amp;#x27;s Corner. Anyone could step onto it and make a speech about anything, anything at all; they could do so in the strongest terms, without being bothered; there was always a small audience standing around, and often lively debate would result.&lt;p&gt;Most of what was said on that platform would now be characterized as &amp;quot;hate speech&amp;quot; by people of your ilk. And the times were not exactly peaceful; there were IRA bombs going off in England at least once a week. Yet the authorities made a point of not interfering, because memories of WWII were still recent, and the right to free speech was considered sacrosanct.&lt;p&gt;Draw your own conclusions.</text></item><item><author>close04</author><text>In the Solomon story one woman was 100% right and one was 100% wrong. Are there many social issues where the 2 sides that meed this criterion?&lt;p&gt;I think a better visualization of the problem is &amp;quot;you can&amp;#x27;t cross a canyon in less than a single bound&amp;quot;. Sometimes there is no meeting half way.&lt;p&gt;Last but not least, compromising is sometimes not an option. It&amp;#x27;s like the paradox of tolerance where the only thing you have to be intolerant to is &lt;i&gt;intolerance&lt;/i&gt;. Because allowing that is basically killing your options. It&amp;#x27;s like allowing bacteria to kill you because you are pro-life and not willing to kill them.&lt;p&gt;In the case of free speech, anything that would lead to someone else losing their freedom for the same should not be allowed just to have &amp;quot;a compromise&amp;quot;. Hate speech is not free speech any more than contract killing is just a financial transaction. And just like contract killing, hate speech should be punished the same as the crime it instigated to. You instigate violence, you have to be put in the same jail cell as the people who threw the punch.</text></item><item><author>tmorton</author><text>&amp;gt; For a lot of social issues, being given the midpoint solution is like being given half a baby.&lt;p&gt;I think this cuts to the heart of the issue - and demonstrates the problem with this line of thinking.&lt;p&gt;I also think you&amp;#x27;re missing the point of the Solomon story.  When Solomon proposed that solution, one woman said &amp;quot;No, no - give her the baby.&amp;quot;  That woman was willing to compromise.  She was willing to compromise all the way, to lose the entire dispute, to preserve the important thing they were fighting over.&lt;p&gt;Solomon didn&amp;#x27;t actually plan to cut the baby in half.  On many social issues, there is a negative-sum, &amp;quot;burn it all down&amp;quot; solution that leaves both sides worse.  Which side reaches for that option?  Which side is willing to sacrifice the deeper issue in order to &amp;quot;win&amp;quot;?  That&amp;#x27;s the side that deserves to lose.</text></item><item><author>pjc50</author><text>As has been pointed out, in lots of areas a &amp;quot;balanced&amp;quot; view doesn&amp;#x27;t make sense. I&amp;#x27;m reminded of the judgement of Solomon dictating that, to settle a dispute between two women as to whom a baby belonged to, it should be cut in half and they be given half each. For a lot of social issues, being given the midpoint solution is like being given half a baby.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;All humans are created equal and endowed with rights&amp;quot; is a radical proposition which we are still working out all the implications of after several hundred years; any deviation from that (ie &amp;quot;some humans are intrinsically (not as a result of their actions) inferior&amp;quot;) starts you down the road of partitioning society and justifying worse and worse treatment of those deemed inferior.</text></item><item><author>b0rsuk</author><text>This was addressed more broadly in &amp;quot;We&amp;#x27;re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads&amp;quot; by Zeynep Tufekci on TED.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=15891014&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=15891014&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;She remarked that Youtube&amp;#x27;s recommendation system invariably pushes people towards more extreme views on &lt;i&gt;anything&lt;/i&gt;, not just politics. Interested in vegetarianism? Here&amp;#x27;s something about veganism. She has a hypothesis it works this way because the goal is to make people spend as much time on a site as possible, and feeding people progressively more extreme content works for that.&lt;p&gt;My comment: what does it say about us humans that we fall for progressively more extreme stuff? Perhaps that few people actually hold balanced views and nowadays a compromise is looked down upon and a mark of a weak character?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dang</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;people of your ilk&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately you set off a flamewar with that personal swipe. Please don&amp;#x27;t do that. Your comment would have been great without that bit, and there would have been no need for the nasty tit-for-tat of the below.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;newsguidelines.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;newsguidelines.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>YouTube&apos;s tendency to push everyday users toward politically extreme content</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/world/europe/youtube-far-right-extremism.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>atlantic</author><text>&amp;gt; Hate speech is not free speech any more than contract killing is just a financial transaction.&lt;p&gt;Personal anecdote.&lt;p&gt;When I moved to the UK in the 1970, there was a little platform in Hyde Park called Speaker&amp;#x27;s Corner. Anyone could step onto it and make a speech about anything, anything at all; they could do so in the strongest terms, without being bothered; there was always a small audience standing around, and often lively debate would result.&lt;p&gt;Most of what was said on that platform would now be characterized as &amp;quot;hate speech&amp;quot; by people of your ilk. And the times were not exactly peaceful; there were IRA bombs going off in England at least once a week. Yet the authorities made a point of not interfering, because memories of WWII were still recent, and the right to free speech was considered sacrosanct.&lt;p&gt;Draw your own conclusions.</text></item><item><author>close04</author><text>In the Solomon story one woman was 100% right and one was 100% wrong. Are there many social issues where the 2 sides that meed this criterion?&lt;p&gt;I think a better visualization of the problem is &amp;quot;you can&amp;#x27;t cross a canyon in less than a single bound&amp;quot;. Sometimes there is no meeting half way.&lt;p&gt;Last but not least, compromising is sometimes not an option. It&amp;#x27;s like the paradox of tolerance where the only thing you have to be intolerant to is &lt;i&gt;intolerance&lt;/i&gt;. Because allowing that is basically killing your options. It&amp;#x27;s like allowing bacteria to kill you because you are pro-life and not willing to kill them.&lt;p&gt;In the case of free speech, anything that would lead to someone else losing their freedom for the same should not be allowed just to have &amp;quot;a compromise&amp;quot;. Hate speech is not free speech any more than contract killing is just a financial transaction. And just like contract killing, hate speech should be punished the same as the crime it instigated to. You instigate violence, you have to be put in the same jail cell as the people who threw the punch.</text></item><item><author>tmorton</author><text>&amp;gt; For a lot of social issues, being given the midpoint solution is like being given half a baby.&lt;p&gt;I think this cuts to the heart of the issue - and demonstrates the problem with this line of thinking.&lt;p&gt;I also think you&amp;#x27;re missing the point of the Solomon story.  When Solomon proposed that solution, one woman said &amp;quot;No, no - give her the baby.&amp;quot;  That woman was willing to compromise.  She was willing to compromise all the way, to lose the entire dispute, to preserve the important thing they were fighting over.&lt;p&gt;Solomon didn&amp;#x27;t actually plan to cut the baby in half.  On many social issues, there is a negative-sum, &amp;quot;burn it all down&amp;quot; solution that leaves both sides worse.  Which side reaches for that option?  Which side is willing to sacrifice the deeper issue in order to &amp;quot;win&amp;quot;?  That&amp;#x27;s the side that deserves to lose.</text></item><item><author>pjc50</author><text>As has been pointed out, in lots of areas a &amp;quot;balanced&amp;quot; view doesn&amp;#x27;t make sense. I&amp;#x27;m reminded of the judgement of Solomon dictating that, to settle a dispute between two women as to whom a baby belonged to, it should be cut in half and they be given half each. For a lot of social issues, being given the midpoint solution is like being given half a baby.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;All humans are created equal and endowed with rights&amp;quot; is a radical proposition which we are still working out all the implications of after several hundred years; any deviation from that (ie &amp;quot;some humans are intrinsically (not as a result of their actions) inferior&amp;quot;) starts you down the road of partitioning society and justifying worse and worse treatment of those deemed inferior.</text></item><item><author>b0rsuk</author><text>This was addressed more broadly in &amp;quot;We&amp;#x27;re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads&amp;quot; by Zeynep Tufekci on TED.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=15891014&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&amp;#x2F;item?id=15891014&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;She remarked that Youtube&amp;#x27;s recommendation system invariably pushes people towards more extreme views on &lt;i&gt;anything&lt;/i&gt;, not just politics. Interested in vegetarianism? Here&amp;#x27;s something about veganism. She has a hypothesis it works this way because the goal is to make people spend as much time on a site as possible, and feeding people progressively more extreme content works for that.&lt;p&gt;My comment: what does it say about us humans that we fall for progressively more extreme stuff? Perhaps that few people actually hold balanced views and nowadays a compromise is looked down upon and a mark of a weak character?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rjplatte</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s healthy, and we need more of that, especially face-to-face</text></comment>