I never said that anywhere was any better. I'd like to think Hacker News is a place where fewer people would be fooled, because this is a place specifically for critical thought and discussion.
YouTube is not. It's a website that everyone uses, and where the most impressionable or least politically aware members of the population are the most numerous, easiest targets.
And most importantly: YouTube lacks a dang. The volume of comments that are processed vastly exceeds what human moderation could possibly do, and community up-or-down-flag moderation of comments has massive known vulnerabilities to sock-puppeteering and signal-jamming. It's an extremely ripe target for this type of manipulation.
If YouTube cared about anything aside from "user engagement", they could quite easily whip their comments into shape. They're not really trying.
> The volume of comments that are processed
> vastly exceeds what human moderation could possibly do
For every 500 comments, there is one video. For every 50 videos, there is one Channel with a Google user behind it. Force creators to handle the complaints about comments on their videos... an order of magnitude less work.
I've gone into this before and there really seems to be total buy-in here to the idea that these companies couldn't possibly manage to weed the toxicity off their platforms. I don't believe it for an instant. It's true only if you refuse to entertain any decrease of "user engagement". If you are willing to lose some eyeballs, the problem is manageable.
And that sacrifice, in the case of YouTube, isn't even a sacrifice! YouTube would wind up with more users if the comments weren't so toxic. Susan et al just don't have the courage to change anything.
YouTube is not. It's a website that everyone uses, and where the most impressionable or least politically aware members of the population are the most numerous, easiest targets.