YouTube To Curb Conspiracy Theory Video Recommendations (venturebeat.com) 271
YouTube said today that it is retooling its recommendation algorithm that suggests new videos to users in order to prevent promoting conspiracies and false information, reflecting a growing willingness to quell misinformation on the world's largest video platform after several public missteps. From a report: These recommendations all too often serve up unsavory content: ludicrous conspiracy theories about mass-shooting events being staged, far-fetched proclamations that the moon landing never happened, and hare-brained notions that the Earth on which we live is, well, flat. Moving forward, YouTube promises that you'll see less of those kinds of videos. This is similar to moves it's made in the past to reduce clickbaity recommendations, or videos that are slight variations on something else you've watched.
"We'll continue that work this year, including taking a closer look at how we can reduce the spread of content that comes close to -- but doesn't quite cross the line of -- violating our Community Guidelines," YouTube said in a blog post. "While this shift will apply to less than one percent of the content on YouTube, we believe that limiting the recommendation of these types of videos will mean a better experience for the YouTube community."
"We'll continue that work this year, including taking a closer look at how we can reduce the spread of content that comes close to -- but doesn't quite cross the line of -- violating our Community Guidelines," YouTube said in a blog post. "While this shift will apply to less than one percent of the content on YouTube, we believe that limiting the recommendation of these types of videos will mean a better experience for the YouTube community."
And soon enough on some growing PHPBB forum... (Score:5, Funny)
"See? NASA made youtube to DELETE all the flat earth videos to hide the truth!"
Re:And soon enough on some growing PHPBB forum... (Score:5, Funny)
I wouldn't mind if youtube would be a little more picky on its recommendations. Not to just base them off one video that I watch. I watched, really didn't even watch, more like flipped through, one flat earth video. Next thing you know I'm on the "youtube nutball" list. Everything from bigfoot raped my dog to Elvis is pumping gas down at the 7-11.
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I think the ideal solution would be to well, use the recommendation list to show debunking videos, so you can get the people "on the edge".
But i would be smarter and pick videos debunk videos from people with close opinions to the user, rather than getting the complete opposite.
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I think the ideal solution would be to well, use the recommendation list to show debunking videos, so you can get the people "on the edge".
Since we have decided to be social constructionists......
You get to put anti-flat-earth stuff on my recommended list if I get to put anti-child-rape stuff on yours.
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It's a much better option than what youtube will most likely do, maybe even due the advertisers being assholes.
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I mean, some are obvious of course, like flat earth and moon landing hoax BS.
But there are many others which are not so clear-cut, and Google uses known biased sources (like Politico and Snopes) as its determiners of "truth".
It's really not Google's job to decide what is correct and deserving of your attention. That's very definitely your business, not theirs.
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Did you dislike the video? That's how you tell YouTube's recommendation engine not to recommend more of the same.
The abuse of free speech. (Score:5, Insightful)
My opinion is there is problem as I see it is there is a big abuse on free speech.
The line where someone is stating an opinion, is stating a fact, or is stating parody has gotten very blurred.
Back in the 1990's I have (as I expect others would have too) posted some parody posts about a flat earth mainly to show the arguments against evolution (as Kansas blocking evolution from text books was an issue then).
What seemed to have happened was this parody had been passed with the pseudoscience and half baked conclusions got read by someone who just didn't see this as parody but as fact. And then increased on this topic, and combing with their belief of grand conspiracies to show the topic. Then it just grew further.
Before the internet we had our opinions which can be published in the opinion section of the news papers. People read it and know it was just our opinion. Parody was well defined as such, and fact had a lot of official backing behind it.
Now with the internet we are flooded with too much info, and need more skills to separate truth from fiction. And conspiracy logic will always seem to be a strong counter argument to official channels, to a point today where conspiracy theories are now on the official channels as well, muddying the water even further.
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On a serious note, we need to educate people to think critically. It's a long game and you'll have to fight the urge to drop into the fetal position when you fully understand that the vote of flat earth guy, who you've calmly
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"My opinion is there is problem as I see it is there is a big abuse on free speech."
I totally agree. After the Las Vegas mass shooting, I spent most of two days watching youtube conspiracy theories about it. It was pretty clear that they were wrong, but nonetheless, I found them fascinating. Since when is all entertainment required to be educational? And what if the videos had turned out to be correct?
The authorities "knew" that Galileo was wrong back in the 17th century, but that didn't make their cens
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goodbye to all the flat earth, 9/11 conspiracies, ufo & ghosts/paranormal crap
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They will just get stronger, as i pointed out, the LAST thing you want to do is to give conspiracy nuts an "official validation", some authority trying to shut em up.
You need to ridicule em, make their shit sound like things that only really nutty people believe, which well it IS actually the case.
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Burying is giving em validation, which is what i'm against.
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goodbye to all the flat earth
Dammit. That's my source for youtube lolz...
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At this point, the Round Earth Conspiracy has to be so large that it pretty much encompasses everyone who isn't a Flat Earther.
Either you know the Earth is flat because you're part of the conspiracy, or you don't believe the conspiracy anyway. Simultaneously the most successful and least successful conspiracy ever, encompassing the entire globe (pun intended) yet at the same time entirely ineffective.
I always preferred the Great Iceball Earth [i2.yuki.la] anyway.
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You misunderstood my point.
There are many, many jobs/professions where you must take into account the curvature of the Earth. All those people must be in on it.
For example, when Civil Engineers design a bridge above a certain length (not even really that long), they must account for the fact that the Earth curves. If they don't, the ends of the bridge will literally miss each other by a non-trivial amount (this has actually happened before). So the entire profession of Civil Engineering is in on the Round E
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Unfortunate (Score:2)
I always enjoyed watching the 911 Truter idiots with thier stupid stunts.
Especially entertaining was the idiot who lite a fire under chicken wire then jumped up and down on it.
Nothing to see here... (Score:2)
Move along...
Who determines what is unsavory? (Score:5, Insightful)
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That is always the question, isn't it? And in the end, it is the only question that matters.
And it's not like YouTube doesn't have a track record of bias.
But if you're naïve (or stupid) enough to pay attention to YouTube's recommendations in the first place, unsavory recommendations aren't the problem.
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And it's not like YouTube doesn't have a track record of bias.
Yes, their bias is profit. If they are excluding content, it's because doing so makes them more $.
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And what does make them money? Is it ads? Is it not losing a brilliant executive to a competitor? Not raising a generation of critical thinkers? Political donations? Cozying up to an authoritarian government in the USA? Cozying up to a foreign government?
Google is a publicly traded company and you and I don't have any voting rights on that. Why should an entity which doesn't give us voting rights should have any authority on what we want to consume? It seems we have forgotten what is that Youtube is selling
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Comrade, extra Vodka ration for you tonight for trolling job well done.
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Not everything in the world is economics.
In the world of corporations, it is. Youtube exists to sell ads to Coke, Honda, Marriott and the like. Those companies aren't keen on having their ads shown inline with any sort of controversial content. They just want happy people buying their products. They don't want headlines "COKE SUPPORTS RACIST CONTENT" because they paid to have an ad shown inline with it.
That's the whole ad-apocalypse on Youtube. Advertisers woke up to the fact that Youtube was showing their ads with racy content, and they told Yout
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I feel so much better about the world now.
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Absolutely.... what Youtube should do is look at active users who've been active a year or more commenting and
rating videos, and if the person hasn't done Thumbs Up on any Flat earth or similar conspiracy videos or had comments marked
down as spam/crap... grant these people a user tag and a feature to suggest tag/moderate videos as "Satire", "NSFW", "Conspiracy Theory", "Fake News", etc --- such tags should appear prominently and obviously in the title and before the video can be played, and anyw
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Negative tags such as Conspiracy/Fake should prevent the video showing up on any of other users' 'Recommended Videos' or 'Top Videos' pages
I get as much entertainment out of watching conspiracy theory videos as the morons who spend hours every day watching cute kitten videos. Why would you prevent YouTube from recommending the latest ones when it clearly can see from my history that I want to watch them?
The problem with a company doing this kind of thing based on "revenue" and demands that certain kinds of things not be viewed is that it can often extend to the things that YOU want to view. You know, "I wasn't X so I didn't object when they
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See, right in front of your eyes - an example of actual fake news. (There are definitely no normal people - I have looked on the Internet, and every one there is DEFINITELY freak.).
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Normal people.
So, groupthink?
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But can normal people tell the difference between a blue and black dress versus a white and gold dress?
Of course they can, its blue and black, duh!
Re:Who determines what is unsavory? (Score:4, Insightful)
But what if I find flat-earth conspiracy videos HILARIOUS!? Does it even occur to the censors-that-be that some people find conspiracy theories entertaining? As in, enjoying people making an ass of themselves, like the white collar equivalent of stupid redneck videos?
There's an important, unspoken assumption here: that people who watch videos agree with the content. This is a very dangerous assumption to make, because the fact that people will assume you hold a set of positions based on what you watch has the effect of shutting down discourse. The American experiment was an experiment in determining if differing peoples - diverse cultures, ethnicities, etc... could come together and form a country united by a common creed - the Constitution. If we have to shelter people from unfamiliar or uncomfortable ideas, we've essentially admitted that the American experiment has failed; that multiculturalism and diversity are a sham and unworkable. In such a case, tribalism is justified, and ethnic nationalism required, if only for the survival of "your" kind.
What Youtube should be doing is encouraging people to seek out the different, the bizarre, the intransigent evangelists and propaganda to further prepare themselves to interact with the ever increasing diversity of America. What they are doing is quite the opposite; by sheltering people from extreme views, even moderate disagreement - the par for civil discourse in ages past, an inevitable part of making compromises for the public good - is now seen as hatred, and labelled as such (witness the Covington Catholic junior who was called a racist for having smiled at a minority person).[https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/19/us/teens-mock-native-elder-trnd/index.html]
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Who determines what is unsavory? (Score:5, Insightful)
What Youtube should be doing is encouraging people to seek out the different, the bizarre, the intransigent evangelists and propaganda to further prepare themselves to interact with the ever increasing diversity of America.
Youtube isn't a person. It isn't a government entity. It isn't a prophet, or a teacher. The only thing it does is optimize for profit. Saying it should do this or that for the betterment of society is like saying a squirrel should see a psychiatrist. Don't expect Youtube to be anything other than what keeps people watching the longest and causes the least friction in society.
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When Kathy held up a Trump head, the right wing headed out to silence her and get her sacked. Fuck all care for free speech there.
Threatening to kill the president isn't covered by free speech. It's a felony under US law:
Threatening the President of the United States is a federal felony under United States Code Title 18, Section 871. It consists of knowingly and willfully mailing or otherwise making "any threat to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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The best way to optimize for profit is to hold people at gun point. Very few companies operate that way.
Sorry, let me correct myself then:
"The only thing it does is optimize for profit, within the laws of the countries in which it operates."
That's a working capitalistic system: corporations maximizing profit but being kept in check by laws and regulations.
What keeps people watching the longest are videos which invoke emotions and confrontations, which is what the conspiracy and false facts videos do.
You have a good point. What I should have said was Youtube does what results in the most advertiser dollars. Those videos may get eyeballs, but they can't sell ads for them so it's just a drain on their resources.
Of course, almost nothing actually gets banne
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A search for "flat earth" still gets the same results. It's just the recommendation system that doesn't throw them up when you are watching non-conspiracy stuff now.
They try to game the system with SEO techniques to get seen by people looking at NASA videos.
In other words they made the recommendations better by filtering spam and bullshit.
Google does (Score:5, Insightful)
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Which overlord(s) will determine for the algorithm what is considered "unsavory"?
Google? As they own every aspect of what is Youtube, they can do what they like. If you don't like that, use another service. Vote with your eyeballs.
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"These recommendations all too often serve up unsavory content:" Which overlord(s) will determine for the algorithm what is considered "unsavory"?
Just science. A a crap pot hypothesis is hilariously easy to spot even for machine learning.
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Just a small anecdote: I was banned from science subreddit for posting that we all originated from Africa for "mild racism" (I was defending Watson, the discoverer of DNA structure, from excessively harsh overreaction from CSHL).
The SJW progression of intolerance to scientific statements (I am not even speaking about scientific hypotheses, I am talking about confirmed scientific theories) has no limits
Well there goes 10% of their content (Score:4, Insightful)
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I don't think they said they were going to delete it. They said they were trying to recommend it less often, which I suppose is pretty stupid if you are someone looking for that kind of thing. A better question is, are most people? Is the algorithm helping people find what they want and google intentionally hindering that for political / philosophical purposes, or are they trying to make there recommendations more closely match what they believe you will be most interested in watch ( which is to say actua
So youtube is going to fight conpiracies (Score:5, Interesting)
about cabals trying to control what you can see and hear by forming one of their own ?
Well bitchute https://www.bitchute.com/ [bitchute.com] will be happy for the traffic, and seeing as they are distributed and powered by bit torrent it should make a nice alternative to the company that used to "Do No Evil"
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How long till bitchute goes the way of gab.ai and subscribestar? It's not so much a "cabal" as an "open collusion of vertical monopolies to preserve their monopoly status". What ever happened to trust-busting?
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Subscribestar isn't even pining for the fjords they are up and running.
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Unknown, but bitchute already has been deplatformed by all the same familiar actors with far left activists dictating the ideological persecution a few months ago.
It appears to be still up and running fine, which suggests that they successfully secured funding via means that aren't as vulnerable to far left activist pressure.
We will know how this is going once (Score:2)
Just my 2 cents
Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be True (Score:5, Interesting)
It is not even close to the top of my list to listen to Conspiracy Theories. Hell, I usually tell people to wrap that tin foil hat a little tighter. But it is a fact that there are Conspiracy Theories that have turned out to be true. Who the fuck is google(notice my link is youtube) to say what is true and what is not.
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it is a fact that there are Conspiracy Theories that have turned out to be true.
This is correct. However, if you are turning to YouTube to expose a conspiracy then you are doing it wrong.
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There is a difference between a particular conspiracy theory and conspiracies as a class of human activity.
By definition any particular conspiracy theory is something you believe in without scientific basis (fact nitpicking, and all kinds of other logical fallacies). It does not matter if it becomes true or not later on. The problem is an approach to such kind of thing. So any guy who believes in a particular conspiracy theory is either an imbecile or crazy.
From the other hand there are plenty of people who
Who gets cut? (Score:2)
Can I just turn recommendations off? (Score:2)
Rabbit hole leading to an echo chamber ... (Score:3)
Youtube recommendations is horrible.
I am into astronomy, and one time, out of curiosity, I wanted a video 'proving' the the earth is flat and 'refuting' the usual proofs for it being round and rotating.
What happened next is that I was bombarded with similar videos all refuting that the earth is spherical, from someone doing laser over a frozen lake, to observing Toronto's skyline from across lake Ontario, ...etc.
This kept happening for months before it subsided, maybe because I hit enough 'Not interested' links, or maybe simple not clicking on the recommended videos. But it was very annoying for that duration.
The arguments presented range from blatant conspiracy theory (NASA is promoting that the earth is round to maintain funding), to ignoring science (atmospheric refraction causing skylines to be visible).
This is not about politics, this is not opinion.
The Greeks knew the earth was round (and probably other civilizations before them, in Mesopotamia). Eratosthenes measured the circumference of the earth (before 200 B.C.E.). So did the Arabs in 800 C.E., by a committee formed on the orders of the Abassid Caliph in Baghdad.
Why are we (as a species, and civilization) regressing to such low levels?
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Why are we (as a species, and civilization) regressing to such low levels?
We're not. The bottom quintile of intelligence has always been with us. They were never visible before because they were surrounded by people smarter than them and had no way to reliably connect with other people as feeble-minded as them. Now they do.
They're still human. They still have human rights, including all their Constitutional rights. And they need adult supervision. They're not going to get adult supervision. I'm certainly not volunteering, and I don't really want to pay taxes to support adu
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It's not just the people who are least smart. The old saying goes that "intellect falls in love with it's own conclusions". People who are very smart and know it are as susceptible to various conspiracy theories as the least intelligent ones. Examples include things like anti-vaccination movement having rooted itself in some of the most intelligent communities in Silicon Valley.
The deciding factor appears to be not intelligence but tightness of social bubble created by like minded people around you. It's wh
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I'd mod you up. But then I'd lose all my 'In Soviet Russia ..' comments.
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The harm that is done by this way of thinking is beyond self harm.
Think of vaccination vs. anti-vaxxers. There are now outbreaks in the USA and Canada on almost extinct diseases (Measles and Mumps for example). First worlds countries, developing world problems.
A similar situation with flouridation of drinking water. It has been done for a long time, until the pseudo skeptics objected. Votes were held and it was stopped. Now dentists say dental decay are up.
And it goes on and on, whether it is earth is flat,
Don't censor, but at least minimally editorialize (Score:2)
The problem is not so much that this content is available by search on demand; it is that it is often amplified and promoted on the landing page if you watch a few videos of this nature, initially only out of curiosity (yes, I am aware that you can tell Youtube to not show similar content). I am now in a developing country. All the landing page content is utter junk and the people (especially the low information users who know Internet only through their phones that form the majority) know no better. People
People make content (Score:2)
A video site then steps in with its recommendation algorithm to define what content will be found?
A video site should be a utility as they are not the publisher of the user created content.
Want a video site to be news reporters? Create your own news under a brand and publish that.
Let people have their freedom to publish, the freedom to search, the freedom to link, the freedom to comment on other users content.
Its their content and their comments. Their
It's censorship (Score:2)
Pure and simple.
Look, if the material is so outrageous that Google's better than you employees do not believe it then why are they so hellbent on removing it from sight?
If it is patently false, why should they care?
They care because it conflicts with their personal view of the world.
And when it conflicts with their view of the world they want to remove it from view. Which is ..... wait for it ..... censorship.
But it moves ... (Score:2)
Sometimes conspiracy theories turn out to be true.
Now, whether rantings of madman or insight of genii, all will be banned.
All Hail Mediocrity!
Need to be careful (Score:2)
I remember the "crackpot conspiracies" like the FBI is keeping dossiers on social activists like MLK and John Lennon, or the CIA is testing LSD as an interrogation tool by slipping it to unsuspecting subjects, or the NSA has a secret room where they tap into the phone system and monitor whatever calls they think are interesting,
The truth of all of those is now a matter of public record along with testing radioactive substances on mentally handicapped children and poor pregnant women, and providing sham trea
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My tinfoilometer is going nuts at this post. Show me examples of these videos.
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Oh, US government apologists, those aren't the same thing.
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People who make those claims tend to overwhelmingly oppose current American government for ideological reasons.
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One of the great ironies about the fake news crisis since the 2016 election has been the fact that there was no urgency to combat fake news prior to Trump...
I think the wake-up call was when it became apparent that a great deal of disinformation was part of an orchestrated campaign by an enemy state for the purpose of undermining American democracy.
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The most-viewed version of the Loose Change "documentary"
To me, these so-called "documentaries" are different than fake news. I'm old enough to remember the Alien Autopsy "documentary" on TV 25 years ago - These things have been around forever.
By contrast, fake news purports to be "real" news - Inforwars running "news" stories about a Democrat-led pedophilia ring operating out of a pizza restaurant, stories on "news" web sites about the Clintons having Seth Rich killed, YourNewsWire posting that 25 m
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I'm old enough to remember the Alien Autopsy "documentary" on TV 25 years ago
Heh. I remember seeing "Alternative 3" when it was broadcast on TV and that was over forty years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Decades later I saw crappy-quality videotapes of the show on sale in places like SF conventions, labelled as "fact." It was really well done for the time, a docudrama expose of a combined US/Russian plan for elites to escape to the Moon and Mars as Earth's biosphere collapsed. Apparently ther
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yes, the big difference is what kind of politics you want to promote ;)
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you latch onto one thing and extrapolate from that. Normal, logical people don't do that.
Normal, logical people do that all the time. Extrapolation is necessary for daily life. Science requires extrapolation. We like to think it does not, but it actually depends on it.
There's a book: Getting Science Wrong [amazon.com] that talks about this. You may not agree with all the conclusions he makes, but it does point out a lot of assumptions about the philosophy behind "science". One of those is that we can extrapolate to tomorrow based on observations from today.
Re:9/11 truther video Loose Change is 6 years old (Score:5, Informative)
There is no opportunity to learn if you censor someone you disagree with.
--
Censorship is NEVER the solution. It is PRECISELY the PROBLEM.
This isn't censorship, its simply not promoting crap conspiracies. Cretins can still post them to YouTube if they want.
Learning stupid is much worse than sitting idle, not every harebrained idea deserves mindshare.
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This isn't censorship, its simply not promoting crap conspiracies. Cretins can still post them to YouTube if they want.
There's a place with ten million videos. All categorized and tagged. But no, they won't tell you about other videos similar to the ones you've already watched because you might believe them. They aren't preventing you from finding them, they're just making it harder.
It would be like a vast library of books put on the shelves in some random order with no card catalog to help you find anything. The library isn't preventing you from finding the one book you want, it's just making it harder to do so. ("Like" i
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The _concern_ is that they will simply start deleting them.
As much as I despise Alex Jones censoring him off their platform is the "tell" of Google's intentions.
Who knows what unpopular opinion will be gone tomorrow.
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[[Citation]]
_Which_ law(s) state that?
Re:9/11 truther video Loose Change is 6 years old (Score:5, Informative)
Censorship is NEVER the solution. It is PRECISELY the PROBLEM.
Except there's no censorship here. The creators of those videos are free to move them to another platform, or host them on their own servers, or share them via peer-peer, or whatever. Nobody is stopping them.
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Beware of the leopard.
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They are also free to publish them on YouTube. People are missing the point.
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Then they attacked the paymemt processors for gab and gab is no more.
Again, private companies or individuals refusing to promote your speech isn't an erosion of free speech. Private companies and individuals also have the right to not be coerced to support things in which they disagree.
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You're not very bright, are you?
Probably not, but I can read.
The First Amendment's constitutional right of free speech, which is applicable to state and local governments under the incorporation doctrine,[1] only prevents government restrictions on speech, not restrictions imposed by private individuals or businesses unless they are acting on behalf of the government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Monopolies are stopping them. When you will reach a tenth of the public or less by sharing it on a different platform, the value of sharing it is reduced to a tenth or less. Your can say then it is not censorship, not entirely, it is only 90%+ censorship.
You do not understand what free speech means. It doesn't mean equal access to private resources to promote your speech. It means you have the right to speak within your own means to do so without fear of reprisal.
Sounds like you are suggesting a world where every crackpot is guaranteed equal distribution of their ideas. One where private companies and individuals are coerced by law to promote all theories equally. For example, you have a "MAGA" sign on your lawn, but I'm going to force you to also have one
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Yeah, keep telling yourself that.
The constitution and the supreme court tells me that.
As soon as I move my videos to some other platform, nobody will be able to find them anymore and it will be effectively memory holed.
I don't think you understand free speech. Free speech does not guarantee you an audience. It gives you the right to speak without fear of reprisal from the government, and legal protections against reprisal from private citizens. Nobody is going to buy you a megaphone and gather people in the town square to listen to you. That's not how it works.
Instead of generating revenue for me, it will start COSTING me revenue for all the bandwidth hosting fees, especially if it were to get popular.
Nowhere in the concept of free speech is the right to earn a profit from it.
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Well, anyone who has sources they can cite, for a start.
Here's a handy tip for distinguishing between truth and lies. They both come with a price, but truth demands its payment up front.
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Well, anyone who has sources they can cite, for a start.
This is how the 9/11 conspiracies made it to the top of search results. All of the web sites claiming that our own government did it pointed to other websites substantiating the same claims. Eventually, they all came around in a big loop. Gaming search engines is an old sport.
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Actually, paying for your news [wikipedia.org] is a good first step, although of course you don't believe that news uncritically. If you aren't paying people for the information you're consuming, the people feeding it to you definitely are working for someone else.
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Never trust a man that is entirely harmless in a physical sense yet requires two squads of SWAT and an early morning televised assault to apprehend. That dastardly scoundrel was dangerous I say.
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modded down for making a joke that violates the accepted belief system
My apologies, comrade, for not being properly educated in the 'proper belief system'. I will accept my inevitable assignment to a re-education camp. Until my thinking is correct.
infiltrated by persistent anti-freedom posters
Mod that +5 Funny. Because I don't think my attempt at humor came anywhere near satirizing the problem of information control that the Internet now faces.
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Human biology, evolution, mental illness rates and outcomes of people diagnosed with that particular mental disorder.
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Youtube tailors your recommendations based on your watching history.
I never get those on recommendations, because I just don't watch them. If you keep getting them, it suggests you're already interested in them.
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They develop critical thinking skills. Like: How do we know that the earth is flat, round or spherical? What observations support each theory? And perhaps the most important question: Why don't the proponents of hive mind thinking want us to think critically?
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Ah, I see we have a regular youtube commenter posting on slashdot.
How charming.
Another motherfucker in a motorcade (Score:2)
Either those are Sisters Of Mercy lyrics or they should be.