Google CEO Admits Company Must Better Address the Spread of Conspiracy Theories on YouTube (techcrunch.com) 328
Google CEO Sundar Pichai admitted today that YouTube needs to do better in dealing with conspiracy content on its site that can lead to real-world violence. From a report: During his testimony on Tuesday before the House Judiciary Committee, the exec was questioned on how YouTube handles extremist content that promotes conspiracy theories like Pizzagate and, more recently, a Hillary Clinton-focused conspiracy theory dubbed Frazzledrip. According to an article in Monday's Washington Post, Frazzledrip is a variation on Pizzagate that began spreading on YouTube this spring. In a bizarre series of questions, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) asked Pichai if he knew what Frazzledrip was.
Pichai replied that he was "not aware of the specifics about it." Raskin went on to explain that the recommendation engine on YouTube has been suggesting videos that claim politicians, celebrities and other leading figures were "sexually abusing and consuming the remains of children, often in satanic rituals." He said these new conspiracist claims were echoing the discredited Pizzagate conspiracy, which two years ago led to a man firing shots into a Washington, D.C. pizzeria, in search of the children he believed were held as sex slaves by Democratic Party leaders.
Pichai replied that he was "not aware of the specifics about it." Raskin went on to explain that the recommendation engine on YouTube has been suggesting videos that claim politicians, celebrities and other leading figures were "sexually abusing and consuming the remains of children, often in satanic rituals." He said these new conspiracist claims were echoing the discredited Pizzagate conspiracy, which two years ago led to a man firing shots into a Washington, D.C. pizzeria, in search of the children he believed were held as sex slaves by Democratic Party leaders.
Believe anything (Score:5, Insightful)
that claim politicians, celebrities and other leading figures were "sexually abusing and consuming the remains of children, often in satanic rituals.
Seriously, if you think this is true then really isn't it a case of not getting your medication more than a problem with youtube?
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It's usually more a case of not having reported being abused by somebody in the first place.
Re:Believe anything (Score:5, Insightful)
A few years ago, I would have been hard pressed to believe Allison Mack of Smallville fame would be 2nd in command of a sex trafficking operation.
Yet here we are.
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Weird stuff, didn't realize that NXIVM [rollingstone.com] was the same thing that Nicki Clyne [torontosun.com] (from BSG) got involved with.
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There are also some people who are just susceptible to conspiracy stories because they want to believe in fantastical stories. The problem is that by trying to censor these videos or remove them from YouTube you just reinforce their idea that they must be on to something because Google (or the government who must r
Re:Believe anything (Score:4, Insightful)
The Pizzagate claims were so ridiculous, that trying to expose or disprove it would have made anyone who tried look like a nutter himself. It's like trying to disprove the claim that gravity stopped working last thirsday between 3 and 5 pm. Where would you start when you even can't find a single person who would recall such an event? And even mentioning that would just be switched over as evidence on how powerfull the cover-up has to be if "they" manage to delete everyone's memories....
Yes, people you would need their medication posting on youtube IS a problem. But neither stopping them from posting would be an solution, nor would trying to sensibly counter them be.
Even before the internet every village had the village idiot. But they were isoplated, everyone else knew to ignore him and most important: He couldn't team up with thousands of other village's village idiots for confirmation.
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I think the problem is worse that you indicated. I bought the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders merely because I kept running into people who...uh...orbited around different planets than the Earth. I needed a way to understand the issues with these people. There are cases where you can say, "Yup, needs meds.". Good luck getting them to take the meds. There are many borderline disorders where meds will help but good luck getting those people on meds as well.
The biggest problem though is
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Well I was using "in need of their meds" not as an actual medical diagnosis but as a general catch-all of having lost all contact with reality or posting claims with no connection to it.
As such and as a not medically trained person, people may indeed be better off with advice from the Swedish Chef than mine...
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Instead:
1. The earth is accelerating 'upwards' at 9.8 m/s^2. We are held in place by the acceleration
2. Or (since this mean the earth is now moving at relativistic speeds) we are held to ground by density. That's right, density.
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"Flat Earthers" who believe #1 are just pulling your legs. What kind of a crazy person doesn't believe that the Earth is round but believes in Einstein's equivalence principle?
Re: Believe anything (Score:2)
I am amazed, shocked even, how easy it is for those folks to troll argument-from-authority "but muh SCIENCE(tm)!!" bros.
Let me give it a try. Okay, okay, here's a real deplorable one: I BELIEVE... that millions and millions of acres in America are covered with BURRITO TREES!! That's right, trees with delicious burritos growing on them. And the gub'mint doesn't want you to know about it! Artificial burrito scarcity! It's a conspiracy!!!
Okay, Progressive muh-science bros, wig out!! Decry the ignorance of y
Re: Believe anything (Score:3)
Wrong answer. Correct answer is (Score:5, Insightful)
"Dear representative, surely you're not trying to apply pressure from position of governmental authority on me, the private entity in violation of my first amendment rights? Are you at all aware of the principles outlined in constitution, and why they were put there?"
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As far as the politicians know, the Constitution was superseded by the Patriot Act in 2001.
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conflating the rights of individual companies to censor their own platform as they wish as if that conflicted with the Constitution, you're an idiot.
Individual companies should be able to censor their own platforms as they wish. The problem here is some representatives apparently want to compel Google to censor it as the representatives wish. See the difference? Compulsion of speech is just as much of a violation of freedom of speech as censorship is.
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Which is why the second follow up question is in my opener:
>Are you at all aware of the principles outlined in constitution, and why they were put there?
Do you see the word "principles" in that sentence? It's there for a reason specifically to pre-empt the very angle of demagoguery you're engaging in.
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I should be believed because I'm so right, that one of the people who was wrong is butthurt enough to stalk me on slashdot obviously.
Re: Luckyo, the known liar who eats plastic though (Score:2)
One can know a man but his enemies. If the faggottroll farm is stalking you, you must have said _something_ that was true.
Re: Wrong answer. Correct answer is (Score:2)
Corporations have NO rights.
Re: Wrong answer. Correct answer is (Score:2)
No. Sorry. First Amendment only applies in restricted form to commercial speech and this is commercial, not private. The SCOTUS has also ruled that exceptions exist in which 1A doesn't apply at all.
So, no.
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Have you tried reading the second sentence in my initial post yet? It addresses this particular line of demagoguery.
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Leaving aside a needlessly combative tone, there are a lot of issues with that response that make it pretty dumb.
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I'm genuinely amazed how few people answering my post cannot even read two sentences before typing out a reply.
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There is no first amendment right to libel or slander,
There is absolutely a First Amendment right to libel and slander! The government cannot block such speech. You can be sued after the fact, but that's very different from prior restraint, and is an action between citizens, the government is not a party.
YouTube claims no editorial control over videos, and therefore it has no expression that would be infringed upon
YouTube consistently exercises editorial control over videos. They ban, hide, and demonitize videos based on Google's political biases, and they do it constantly. Currently, they have every legal right to do so, but they shouldn't. They should be forced t
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Not according to the Supreme Court. For example, in NYT vs. Sullivan, the SC modified NY's libel laws because of the first amendment (demonstrating that just calling it a civil action doesn't remove it from the first amendment), but libel is still actionable (demonstrating that libel itself is not protected.) Prior restraint is a different issue, and could be used to prevent publication of a serious enough libel. But, in general, prior restr
Re: Wrong answer. Correct answer is (Score:2)
"algorithms promoting/demoting/demonetizing is not editorial control"
No no, we totally don't deny groups we dislike equal access to public accommodation. It's the ALGO - you know, the one we wrote - that discriminates against them, not us. .
'Cuz when an algorithm does it, it's all okay.
Re:Dear moron plastic-eater Luckyo (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet.
Like it or not, at some point many of these sites are going to be regulated under "privately owned public space" type laws, or perhaps even as utilities.
I'm not calling for it, it's just an obvious result of the degree of power these companies have over so much communication, and the arbitrary nature their policies are enforced.
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What does such a designation require of the site though? Say for example YouTube had to host the videos, would it also be required to include them in search results? How about promoting them as "trending" or as recommendations? I guess the real world example would be giving everyone equal billing at a venue.
Re:Dear moron plastic-eater Luckyo (Score:4, Interesting)
I would expect such a law would require equal treatment under the 'policies' in place, as well as an abolishment of 'hate speech' rules.
Over the weekend we saw a prominent youtuber kicked off Patreon for having used a racial slur when mocking the alt-right, on a video from 10 months ago, that was on someone elses channel and was never posted to Patreon.
They week before they kicked someone off because of a *previous* association with a group which a third party has labeled a 'hate group'.
Conversely, they apparently had no problem with a popular left-leaning podcast telling viewers/listeners (rather emphatically) to kill themselves and those around them... which was posted to the site.
Up until recently a 'journalist' on the site was quite up front that they were not only seeking to start a (non political revolution, and mentioned the use of firearms to achieve it (since edited).
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Attention span too short to be able to read the second sentence?
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There's a huge difference between writing a letter to some company urging them to repudiate an employee's offensive remark, and convening a congressional committee to investigate a company's perceived editorial slant.
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Google and Facebook try to have it both ways.
Only because AT&T, Comcast and Verizon want it both ways as well. Google and Facebook are just playing catch-up.
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Google and Facebook try to have it both ways. They want the indemnity of being a service provider, while simultaneously being able to pursue their politics-- promoting what they prefer, while banning what they don't.
At the same time, gouvernments all over the world try to regulate them both ways as they see fit today. They also need to make their minds up what Google is and stick to that.
I watched large parts of the hearing today. Much of it was about bias and Senators wanted them to have an unbiased algorithm, but a balanced result, despite biased input. Also politicians need to understand that they can't have it both ways.
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They've moved far away from being a pure content provider. When you prioritize their favorite sites, they're choosing the content that they want you to look at to make them more revenue. If it was a simple matter of providing search results based upon the most popular sites, it might be a different matter.
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Second sentence pre-empted this line of demagoguery.
Or Perhaps... (Score:5, Insightful)
... they should just stop trying to be the gatekeepers on speech, and let ideas live and die on their merits.
Re:Or Perhaps... (Score:4, Insightful)
The only way to stop being the gatekeepers of speech here is to remove the search box and recommended links, and only allow people to subscribe to channels / watch videos that they can directly link to outside of their platform.
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The autoplay feature in particular amplifies the stupid by providing an endless stream of conspiracy bullshit if you simply do nothing after seeing one of these videos.
That would be fine if that's how it worked (Score:3, Insightful)
Put another way, there is no such thing as a "Free Marketplace of Ideas" anymore than there's a free marketplace anywhere or any time. In the absence of anti-trust laws you get robber barons, but I'd hardly call a regulated economy a "free marketplace".
So you make trade offs between protecting vulnerable groups and having freedom and innovation. Google's done an alright job so far. The only folks I've seen completely deplatformed ere
Re: That would be fine if that's how it worked (Score:2)
They only discriminate against people I don't like, so it's all good!!
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Our anti-trust laws are in severe need of enforcement and/or reform. I'm very much a free market advocate up to the point where there's very little competition. And, that can be at the local levels...think ISP local monopolies. Without competition, you don't have a free market.
Re: Or Perhaps... (Score:2)
Doesn't work.
If it did, you wouldn't need a Constitution, as different ideas would live or die on their own merit.
Problem is, ideas aren't alive. Mind you, humans are only 45% human and bacteria control much of the brain.
The thing is, it simply doesn't work. Ideas are more like viruses, spreading wildly out of control, dying back into reservoirs to mutate and emerge again from their carriers.
There us no logic. Humans don't do logic. Hunans are just hairless chimps with only marginally more brain. We're as v
Re: Or Perhaps... (Score:2)
Everyone is an idiot! Please, Big Brother Google, save us from ourselves! what
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In real life, when someone says stuff like that, they can be publicly shamed - on the internet, it's almost a badge of honor.
No catual comment on that, but I just wanted to repeat that :-)
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FB can't even police the websites that offer for sale a $700 3dPrinter for $60, and change their website daily, sometimes more often.
You expect them, and Google, and the rest, to figure out what is a wild eyed fabricated conspiracy theory? Ha.
And then if you expect them to censor content, you've made them publishers. Responsible. And if they do, in fact, happen to not like you very much, you disappear from their pages. Poof. You're not anything at all.
I actually can tell the difference between wacko conspir
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I know, It's Noory. Don't that piss off the jerks, huh?
Re:Or Perhaps... (Score:4, Insightful)
Google recommendations are pretty straightforward, though. If you watch X, they'll recommend what other people clicked on after watching X. It's a bit more subtle than that, but that's the essence. What you're complaining about is "clickbait works", which is a sad commentary on human nature more than anything else.
Snowden revelations, then and now (Score:5, Insightful)
Then: "Holy shit, the NSA is reading everything! Start encrypting more!"
Now: "The NSA is reading everything? Ridiculous! Another stupid conspiracy theory, bury it."
Re:Snowden revelations, then and now (Score:4, Insightful)
This is pretty much to goal of the Kremlin-backed conspiracy theories. They know the truth about X is going to come out, but they just want 50 falsehoods about X for it to get lost in.
Allow Explicit Response Videos (Score:2)
The problem is that YouTube wants to be the arbitrator of truth rather than let the community handle it. Add a link to videos that simply says "upload a response" and when someone uploads a video, that video is linked to under the original video and the video being responded to is linked on the response page. The community can then vote on the original and response so that garbage responses are voted down and good responses have a chance to be voted up.
YouTube wants to rule by tyranny rather than by encou
A search engine is not a publisher (Score:2)
Let the rest of the internet publish what it wants and show "search" results for the users who expect to find content.
Censorship is not a result users want to pay for with ads.
Censorship opens the marketplace to competition who can actually "search" the internet without the constant party political removal of results.
Make America Gullible Again (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't they teach critical thinking in grade school? I don't understand why there are so many gullible people in the USA who want to stay that way. Maybe preachers are spreading it, and people believe their preacher because of family/town habit? I'm very uncomfortable sharing a country with so many idiots. Large quantities of such people are dangerous. They will get us poisoned, nuked, and/or locked up in Comcast Central Prison one of these days.
Re:Make America Gullible Again (Score:4, Insightful)
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> and/or locked up in Comcast Central Prison
What the fuck is that???
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That's where you have Comcast as your ISP, but it doesn't work well, and you cannot get past the bots to get a repair person out to fix their problem. If they did send someone, they'd have to swear you to secrecy so you don't tell the neighbors how you managed it. Too big of a risk, better that you remain screwed in a loop and remit their well-deserved payment every month.
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ALWAYS "escalate" the issue to have a Tech come out. Why?
1. That costs them time and money so they are motivated to fix it.
2. They keep a record of every maintenance so they will be motivated to fix it if there is an on-going history of problems.
If you don't request a tech they don't have a history to keep track of and they aren't motivated to fix "non-existent" issues.
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Why don't they teach critical thinking in grade school?
Even if they did I don't think it would matter, because as soon as they get to college it's indoctrination time!!! (At least for the social "sciences," that is).
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Lots of people don't want their kids to think too critically. They want them to follow their parent's religion, or political leanings.
Re:Make America Gullible Again (Score:5, Interesting)
Think of it like herd immunity for vaccines. As much as I love the internet, it broke through all of the barriers that used to protect us from the spread fake news, and society hasn't yet figured out how to fix it.
There have always been lots of crazy people spread throughout society, but before the internet, your social interactions were limited to your local community groups. If you didn't want to be ostracized, you had to at least pretend to blend in with local norms. Your choice of media were limited to things like TV, radio, and newspapers which had to appeal to a geographic market rather than a particular bias or viewpoint. These factors acted like herd immunity, protecting these vulnerable crazy people and helping to contain fake news before it could spread.
Enter the internet. Every crazy and/or dishonest person can now make a direct connection with millions of vulnerable people without geographic, political, or financial barriers. Media outlets can now specialize in highly tailored viewpoints without any consideration for geographic appeal, and have to constantly out-extreme each other to maintain a shrinking slice of viewers. Instead of local social groups helping to contain the spread of misinformation, we now have a positive re-enforcement cycle: the bolder and crazier your fake news, the bigger your audience of gullible people eager to consume more and more outlandish ideas, and the faster it spreads. It's like a virus spreading rapidly through a population that lacks natural immunity.
Religious institution are directly opposed to it (Score:3)
I'm inclined to think it has less to do with religion and more to do with the ruling class wanting to keep a lid on the working class. Too much education and critical thinking will get folks to start demanding better pay and working conditions.
Fucking flat-earthers and moon-landing hoaxers (Score:2)
Yes, please. get rid of those fucking flat-earthers and moon landing hoaxers. Seriously, they are not just people with "differing viewpoints". They are a concerted, well organized plague of trolls and con-artists who's goal if solely to flood every single channel about science, astronomy, space-exploration, etc, to infuriate people and direct them to their innane and pathetic videos, in order to generate views and ad revenue.
They are a disease, a cancer of youtube.
Conspiracy theories? (Score:5, Insightful)
Term limits in China?
Celebrities want their good movie reviews found and bad movie reviews banned?
Big brands want no results on their DRM efforts?
Repairing a computer is now a trade in counterfeit parts?
Time to help Spain with all results about anything to do with any Catalan declaration of independence.
Not find results about French protester?
Only find what a German government approves of politically?
Time for a real search engine again.
Removing content for the politics of NGO, nations, think tanks, European bureaucrats, faith groups, cults, celebrities will not result is a useful search product.
Users know what they enjoy search for. Provide that search service to the users and show them some ads. A search engine is not a publisher of content.
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The search brand wants results curated for its users.
A party political filter over all results.
Ignorance (Score:2)
During his testimony on Tuesday before the House Judiciary Committee [...] Pichai replied that he was "not aware of the specifics about it."
How does a CEO of a company worth almost a trillion dollars go into a high profile meeting with the US House Judiciary Committee and _not_ already know about the things they're likely to ask about?
Maybe Pichai is in too much of a billionaire bubble to know about it directly, but he has people that ought to have informed him about probable topics long before the meeting itself. The implication is that either no one in the company is actually aware of what YouTube is recommending to people, no one in the c
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How does a CEO of a company worth almost a trillion dollars go into a high profile meeting with the US House Judiciary Committee and _not_ already know about the things they're likely to ask about?
I guess because the hearing was not about getting answers from Pichai but more about the Senators talking.
It was usually "Bla Bla Bla Blah Blah" - "Unrelated question" - "Yes or No?" - "Huh?" - "YES OR NO!!?!"
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Senators rarely speak in the House.
To answer GP, it was a question about some new conspiracy theory. If it was about pizzagate, he probably could have answered, but this could just be too damn new.
How about this . . . (Score:2)
Be nice if we saw more of the obvious facts such as the profits from stock speculation on 9/11 (on the airlines involved, and businesses residing in the WTC Twin Towers) went into an account with investment firm, Alex. Brown and Sons, a subsidiary of the Deutsche Bank, and that an inactive partner with Alex. Brown was CIA executive director, Buzz Krongard, whose wife was a partner with Apollo Asset Management which ow
2FacedGOP (Score:2)
Further, Republican Rep. Lamar Smith cited a debunked study ( https://www.politifact.com/tru... [politifact.com] ) to claim Google provides biased results for searches about President Donald Trump. Smith accused Google of having a liberal bias "programmed into the
Maybe decide if you're a platform or a publisher? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're a platform, then you're just the delivery device.
Of course, you'd have to stop with the fucking editing, censoring everyone that doesn't follow your religion, stop trying evangelize your creed and just serve up videos.
Hint: 2018 rewind, where was your BIGGEST SUBSCRIBER youtuber Pewdiepie?
If you're a publisher, then understand the moment you start to pick winners and losers, when you put your finger on the scales (even if it's for a cause you really really believe in!) you are now RESPONSIBLE for the message.
IMO you should lose your section 230 exemption too, then. The EFF's position that Sec 230 allows basically any modding at all is hypocritical; they would certainly change the moment someone started to censor out EFF 'freedom' posts.
Oh Fuck YouTube. (Score:2)
Basically it's another excuse to label anything against the company's ideological bent as "conspiracy".
Self Serving Much (Score:2)
Isn't it a bit self serving that a politician would be advocating for a private company to censor content which makes his type look worse?
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Plenty of Ancient Alien's episodes on YouTube, which come from the History Channel (which is usually legit).
Where would they go? They seem popular enough to run for 13 seasons.
Those are just innocent conspiracy theories? Ever stop to think about the racism of them? Suggesting that PoC wouldn't have been able to build the pyramids and other ancient structures on their own... but only with the help of aliens was it possible.
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Central/south Americans & Egyptians... not exactly white folks, long ago built great structures... yet the Europeans didn't. Apparently the ancient aliens didn't like them?
I brought race into it to demonstrate the silliness
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I looked at ACFAU... It's all just clickbait and Illuminati nonsense. They really love ALL CAPS. Is this really your idea of "hard truth"?
Re:Only Approved Conspiracy Theories Are Allowed (Score:4, Insightful)
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The Pirate Bay is over 15 years old and still going strong.
What the freeze peach crowd really want is to be promoted on the popular platforms. Some want the money, some want the exposure.
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Re: Only Approved Conspiracy Theories Are Allowed (Score:2)
"freeze peach"
As one who holds and loudly expresses extremist views that are considered deplorable by the vast majority of your countrymen, I'm surprised you hold in such low regard the freedom that allows you to express those views.
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It's easy to rant about this stuff in ALL CAPS, but do you have any specific criticisms of the rules that Macron is proposing, for example?
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Only Approved Conspiracy theories, like Hillary clinton would have won 100% of the vote
Funny, I get a lot of political news and I've never even heard that. Maybe you ought to check your subscriptions.
Re:Only Approved Conspiracy Theories Are Allowed (Score:5, Insightful)
Those aren't "Approved Conspiracy theories". They're just a bunch of straw men you invented to represent everyone who pisses you off.
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even better (Score:2)
Re:Probably just had the wrong pizza joint (Score:5, Insightful)
Notice the summary said "discredited" and not "disproven." Pizzagate was never investigated. Police never bothered looking into the claims. We have no idea what happened with it. It may be "discredited" in that the media claims it's false, but it's never been disproven because no one has ever seriously looked into it.
This is a bit like saying nobody has disproven my theory that you molest sea anemones by candlelight. After all, there's no evidence that it doesn't happen, and nobody has really investigated it...
Of course, there's no evidence that my theory is correct, or even enough evidence to launch an investigation, but let's not worry about that....
I have to ask though: why sea anemones?
Re: Probably just had the wrong pizza joint (Score:2)
https://www.gocomics.com/pearl... [gocomics.com]
This explains everything.
Re: Probably just had the wrong pizza joint (Score:2)
Yes it has. The Republicans aren't interfering in the least in his use of illegal immigrants for slave labour.
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Except the servers have been wiped with a clothe!
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Bingo! I talked to one of these nutters once, and that was before I read the Popular Mechanics book on 9/11 (they used real scientists and engineers rather than some guys on the internet). This fellow spouted about how the fire wasn't hot enough to melt steel. My response was that it didn't need to be hot enough to melt steel, it only needed to be hot enough to weaken steel...and that steel was under a load. It was as though I said nothing, he couldn't get his head around the fact that the fire wasn't hot e
Re: How about things like 9/11? (Score:2)
The scientists and engineers wete the ones who put forward the official version. And they don't disagree with it at all.
They would, however, doubtless love to throw you into a pig sty for debasing them.
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Some men just want to watch the world burn.
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I'm pretty sure YouTube has taken the exact opposite route. You know how so many YouTube creators encourage you to leave comments ("Tell us what you think" at the end of videos)? The ubiquity of such encouragements lead me to think they've been coached to do that, like at CreatorFest or something.