Thailand's Youtubers and the selective deletion of comments

[Craig krup]

I know before I even start that raising this issue is a big fat waste of time. Nobody will look at what I'm actually saying; they'll attack a straw man. 

 

Two things 1) People with Youtube channels should be able to delete trolling comments. 2) People with Youtube channels should be able to delete trolling comments. 

 

Now I appreciate that strictly speaking that's only one thing, but it's such an important thing I thought it was worth mentioning twice. So I'm not saying they shouldn't be able to do this. They should. Absolutely. But what many of Thailand's farang Youtubers do is delete any comment which doesn't consists of "Woo hoo". Now this wouldn't matter if you could see that comments had been deleted. But what happens is that comments disappear entirely, so the impression is given that nobody in the entire online world is in anything but total agreement with what is being said. So, for example, if a Youtuber says that Nong Khai is Venice with better weather, and I spend a summer there, you'd think that my temperate and considered "On the one hand, and on the other hand" stuff would be allowed. But it isn't: it gets deleted.  

 

"Comments are disabled for this video" is an ethical position.

Enabling comments and deleting out-and-out abuse is an ethical position. 

If Youtube allowed channel hosts to delete comments, but the fact that deletions had taken place was obvious, that would be ethical. 

 

But creating an entirely misleading impression through selective deletions is a piece of nonsense. 

 

Now none of this would matter is folk weren't making decisions based on what they are watching and hearing. I remember the "Singingpig" website, and Amanda Lamb's "Place in the Sun" TV program during the run up to the banking crisis. If gullible people see piffle about (for example) online working then real harm can result. 

 

What do you think? If you say, "It's none of your business, and it doesn't affect you", then you're subscribing to the mindset that produces failing societies. It's precisely the failure to take ownership of social problems that results in poverty and chaos. True, lots of people are social baggage. They coast. They hitch a ride. They're parasites. They think, "If I oppose this I get all the aggravation and a tiny share of the benefit, if I leave it to others I get any benefit they produce and none of the cost, so I'll be a parasite". 

 

But If Chiang Mai is filling up with rubes and tubes - all of them 'informed' by a PT Barnum with a crowd of straight men - I think we should blow a whistle. 

[KittenKong]

8 hours ago, Craig krup said:

But what many of Thailand's farang Youtubers do is delete any comment which doesn't consists of "Woo hoo". Now this wouldn't matter if you could see that comments had been deleted. But what happens is that comments disappear entirely, so the impression is given that nobody in the entire online world is in anything but total agreement with what is being said.

 

The whole of Thailand runs like this.