[HN Gopher] YouTube's rules are used to silence human rights act...
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YouTube's rules are used to silence human rights activists
Author : headalgorithm
Score : 313 points
Date : 2021-06-24 10:34 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.technologyreview.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.technologyreview.com)
| everyone wrote:
| YouTube is absolutely not the place for serious content like
| this. Why is he even using it?
| junon wrote:
| Where, exactly, is "the place" for "serious content" like this?
| izacus wrote:
| > Where, exactly, is "the place" for "serious content" like
| this?
|
| In a place the creator is in full control and isn't funded by
| advertisers which will pull their funding for anything they
| dislike.
|
| That's pretty much the nature of publishing content - if
| you're not independent there's always the tension of your
| funding source dictating the content.
| junon wrote:
| Do you use youtube? Most creators have independent
| sponsorships.
| everyone wrote:
| Youtube is the home of auto-generated kids videos and content
| farms. Thats the content they seem to want there. Anything
| else is randomly taken down.
|
| Literally any other site where one can upload videos would be
| better.
| NoOneNew wrote:
| While I agree yt has lots of flaws, you need to curate your
| feed a bit. 95% of my feed is engineering, dev, history and
| super niche music. "Dont Recommend Channel" was literally
| the greatest feature they ever created.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| >Literally any other site where one can upload videos would
| be better.
|
| You can make that case, but it's hard to beat youtube. It's
| not just a matter of the amount of content, but also
| support on settop boxes/devices, quality of playback,etc.
|
| Having said that, I'm starting to go to the effort of
| building an offline library. To me, the youtube death of a
| thousand cuts is happening because of their increasingly
| heinous ads (like google search) and strengthening
| copyright enforcement (since their position is now in
| place).
| jowsie wrote:
| This sounds a lot like you don't use YouTube at all, as
| I've not seen auto-generated kids videos or content farm
| trash in a long time, and YouTube is my primary
| entertainment/educational video source.
| dathinab wrote:
| Yay, content personalization works.
|
| But putting that aside from a person using YT often from
| incognito mode and similar:
|
| - there is a overlap between "content farm trash" and
| "entertainment visdeos" what you might seem as "content
| trash" other might see as "short simple entertainment".
|
| - there is _a lot_ of educational content on YT, sadly it
| is often not featured that much on a "incognito" front
| page
|
| - there is _a lot_ of entertainment content with a bit of
| educational content on it.
|
| - there is even more purely entertainment content on it
|
| - there is questionable kids content on it (but YT
| explicitly split out YT Kids because it (at least
| officially) doesn't want kids on the normal YT (kids !=
| teens/young adults)
|
| - there is questionable "content farm trash" it also
| tries most to "play to algorithm" so it might seem that
| there is a lot of it when you visit YT in incognito
| mode/without personalized YT preferences. But it's not
| what keeps the platform alive.
|
| - there is a lot of TV content on it (at least in some
| countries) (e.g. a recordings of TV news programs
| uploaded by the TV channels which produced it).
|
| - there is quite a bit of serious content, discussions,
| etc. on it sadly mostly demonetized.
|
| - there is a bit of more then just a bit of very very
| wrong and misleading content on it.
|
| Or in other words YT is a platform for all content, from
| extremely serious discussions over good entertainment,
| grate educational material to pointless 5 minute craft
| videos and ending with conspiracy theories.
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| YouTube is the most accessible place for content like this.
| They may be running the site into the ground lately but the
| initial implementation of a site that allows easy uploading,
| sharing and discovery of video content still has a lot of merit
| and is miles beyond anything else if only for the fact that it
| has the largest market share.
| junon wrote:
| This biggest problem any competitor faces is cost. YouTube
| has a monopoly on this space, unfortunately.
| silon42 wrote:
| The only alternative would be some kind of distributed
| torrent index. But would need to work in a browser to be
| accessible to people. So, unless browsers add first class
| support for this, this means a web site with ads, probably
| and then you have the same problems again.
| anticensor wrote:
| PeerTube? LBRY?
| junon wrote:
| There's no way the average content creator would seed
| videos indefinitely. The whole point of a video hosting
| service is to not host it yourself.
| testific8 wrote:
| I doubt this. People are willing to reupload videos that
| they like, so why wouldn't they seed? for example this
| video has been reuploaded quite a few times because
| people like it so much:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhu-EA1ruNk
|
| The whole point of a video hosting service is to act as
| an easy directory for finding videos you like. The fact
| that the same service happens to host the videos in this
| case is inconsequential.
| slumdev wrote:
| Keep in mind as you comment here, on this anonymous forum, that
| China has a well-documented policy of paying people (wu mao) to
| post positive comments about the Chinese Communist Party and
| derail any criticism of it:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
| einpoklum wrote:
| It doesn't seem to be well-documented. Examining the links,
| there's talk about such practices, rumors, a scientific paper
| about trying to identify "wu mao" posts (which concludes it's
| difficult to identify them for certain) etc. It is perhaps more
| accurate to say there is some evidence to indicate this may be
| happening.
| perihelions wrote:
| I'm stunned. YouTube removed testimonial accounts of families of
| people currently in Xinjiang concentration camps -- because the
| speakers showed ID cards of their family member, _violating
| YouTube 's harassment policies on personally-identifiable
| information_. That's not speculative inference -- the YT
| representative flat out *tells* the author:
|
| > _" We welcome responsible [sic] efforts to document important
| human rights cases around the world. We also have policies that
| do not allow channels to publish Personally Identifiable
| Information in order to prevent harassment."_
| roenxi wrote:
| I dunno, this seems to be pretty consistent with YouTube's
| other policies. They aren't crossing any new boundaries here.
| Note:
|
| 1) YouTube isn't doing anything wrong. They obviously support
| in principle the rights of humans.
|
| 2) They are consistently applying their policies. This could
| reasonably be used to dox people (eg, holding up ID of your
| enemies so maybe they get rounded up eventually).
|
| 3) They are probably going to be forced to do stuff like this
| anyway in compliance with local government rules, so there
| isn't much they can practically do.
|
| You might (quite reasonably!) want YouTube to be active in
| promoting some combination of human rights and/or free speech.
| But YouTube has made their in-practice policy quite clear. They
| are also going to defer to what the local authorities believe
| is acceptable.
| finnthehuman wrote:
| >1) YouTube isn't doing anything wrong. They obviously
| support in principle the rights of humans.
|
| YouTube is a company. The default for a company is
| indifference to every topic. And that's fine. YouTube doesn't
| "obviously support in principle" anything.
|
| The people there will support things, but companies are not
| just the mathematical average of the people there. It's
| specifically about how those people choose to act when
| they're acting in the name of the company. Nothing about
| YouTube makes me think it's interested in using the platform
| supporting the rights of humans.
|
| If there was some clickable and advertiser friendly content
| produced by people promoting human rights, I'm sure YouTube
| would be happy to host that. But they're happy to host almost
| all flavors of advertiser friendly content. I'm sure they
| would take credit for hosting that video as if YouTube itself
| was doing something that moved the needle on human rights.
| When all they're really doing is not prohibiting the content
| on their default-allow platform.
|
| It's been known for years that YouTube removes evidence of
| warcrimes because those videos are too graphic.
|
| >2) They are consistently applying their policies.
|
| When videos about a topic they "obviously support in
| principle" runs up against the general purpose policies, what
| would "support" look like other than creating a special case
| in their policies?
|
| >3) They are probably going to be forced to do stuff like
| this anyway in compliance with local government rules
|
| What government is telling YouTube to make videos about human
| rights abuses unavailable worldwide? And why would a company
| that "obviously support in principle the rights of humans"
| choose to do business within that government's jurisdiction?
|
| yeah, I get that I'm being really critical and holding
| youtube to a high standard. But it's also totally fine if
| YouTube chooses not to meet that standard. Most companies
| barley have the manpower and expertise to execute on a signal
| focus. YouTube doesn't have to try to move the needle on
| human rights issues. All I really mean is that we shouldn't
| default to giving them even a single ounce of unearned
| goodwill on their human rights record.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > 3) They are probably going to be forced to do stuff like
| this anyway in compliance with local government rules, so
| there isn't much they can practically do.
|
| Isn't YouTube banned in China? What "local government rules"
| are you thinking of, specifically?
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Isn't YouTube banned in China? What "local government
| rules" are you thinking of, specifically?
|
| Google has tons of offices in China, and RnD sweatshops
| roenxi wrote:
| I was thinking Chinese ones. Didn't realise YouTube was
| banned. But nevertheless, as a principle, they have made it
| clear that they don't want misinformation on their platform
| and the local government will be pretty clear that this is
| misinformation.
|
| That wouldn't be a radical departure from policy for
| YouTube. This is well trod ground.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > ...they have made it clear that they don't want
| misinformation on their platform and the local government
| will be pretty clear that this is misinformation.
|
| Come on. "not wanting misinformation on their platform"
| != kowtowing to authoritarian regimes outside of their
| jurisdiction.
| roenxi wrote:
| How, as a matter of policy, do you expect them to make
| that distinction?
|
| The obvious way to do it is to ask the local government
| what is misinformation. Google isn't an expert on the
| truth of everything, for all that their search index
| being impressive.
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| This doesn't sound bad or wrong at all. Can someone help me
| understand the outrage? We all know China likes to disappear
| people and YouTube would be complicit in that if they allowed
| these people showing their ids to stay up. Sounds like a common
| sense security step designed to at worst protect YouTube from
| the liability of being complicit in those people's deaths and
| at best an attempt to help them.
| jkingsbery wrote:
| > Atajurt has collected thousands of video testimonies from
| family members of Turkic Muslims who have disappeared in
| Xinjiang. Witnesses show their identification to prove they
| are real people.
|
| Given that these people are giving their testimony to Atajurt
| (and not the Chinese government), these are people trying to
| share their story so the rest of the world knows how bad
| things are. As the article says, this knowledge is either
| shared directly (the videos themselves are shared), or
| indirectly ("the information in the videos is then used by
| other organizations..., which documents [sic] where
| detentions are occurring, which communities are most
| affected, and who has disappeared."). YouTube is therefore
| _preventing one of the most oppressed groups in the world
| from explaining how they are oppressed._
|
| That sounds pretty bad to me.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Get that [sic] out of here. The information is (information
| which is documentation of ((where detentions occur) &
| (which communities are affected)).
| wfleming wrote:
| If the victims can't document their own identities (and their
| still-victimized family members), it's harder to apply real
| political pressure to the CCP about the camps. They can keep
| claiming theyre not really camps, the escaped victims are
| paid actors, not real people, etc. This isn't doxxing - these
| are victims voluntarily documenting their experiences.
|
| The Google policy on PII linked from YouTube's response
| quoted in the article is intentionally a bit broad and vague
| and considers "full name" PII, but lots of people say their
| full name on YouTube videos. Showing ID cards isn't mentioned
| in the policy - those could violate the rules about
| addresses, but the ID documentation being shown certainly
| isn't accurate anymore: the people in the videos escaped the
| camps and I presume aren't in China anymore.
|
| Maybe it's the documenting of the relatives still in the
| camps YouTube objects to. If this is a violation, would a
| news clip about a missing child that includes the child's
| name and photo also be a violation? Seems like it should be.
| If YouTube takes that down, are they trying to help the
| missing child?
| Aunche wrote:
| >Maybe it's the documenting of the relatives still in the
| camps YouTube objects to. If this is a violation, would a
| news clip about a missing child that includes the child's
| name and photo also be a violation?
|
| The difference is that a missing child is unlikely to be
| punished for appearing on YouTube. The same can't be said
| for a detained political prisoner.
| wfleming wrote:
| If they're in the camps, they are _already_ being
| punished and abused. Might there be some retaliation?
| Yes, that 's possible. But never calling out abusive
| behavior because then the abuser might escalate their
| abuse is a great way to encourage abusers.
| Aunche wrote:
| They're free post whatever content they want on their own
| servers. YouTube doesn't want to be blamed for any
| retaliation that occurs. It's disingenuous to suggest
| that they're intentionally silencing human rights just as
| it would be disingenuous to blame YouTube for any
| retaliation if they had left the videos up. It's called
| having a different value system. People these days are
| seem to react with any sort of action that they disagree
| with the worst possible interpretation possible.
| LocalH wrote:
| They should also be worried about being blamed for
| _preventing the victims from speaking out_
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| Dude these are basically Holocaust victims pleading for help
| and you're saying they shouldn't be allowed to prove they
| have real identities?
| lessname wrote:
| afaik these are testimonials for people who are disappeared
| now, so they are already in the hands of the chinese regime
| hibbelig wrote:
| The id cards are shown to help prevent China from
| disappearing these people. So YT taking the videos down is
| the opposite of what YT claims to want.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| In what way does that help prevent China from disappearing
| these people?
| tablespoon wrote:
| > In what way does that help prevent China from
| disappearing these people?
|
| Because the disappearance would be more visible to
| foreigners, and therefore more embarrassing to China.
| It's bad PR.
|
| IIRC, some Soviet dissidents were merely harassed for an
| extended period time and/or offered the option of exile,
| because they were so well known in the West.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Not to sound too stark, but... have the CCP not made it
| abundantly clear that they don't give a fuck about
| "embarrassment" and "visibility to foreigners" in the
| last several years? They will do what they want to
| whomever they want if there's a serious enough need to do
| it in their eyes. Uygur, Hongkonger, foreigner, doesn't
| matter. The current party leadership are _way_ beyond the
| point where visibility /embarrassment in Western press
| means anything.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Not to sound too stark, but... have the CCP not made it
| abundantly clear that they don't give a fuck about
| "embarrassment" and "visibility to foreigners" in the
| last several years?
|
| At least with Xinjiang, they deny all the negative
| stories and have invested quite a bit of effort to push
| unbelievable "positive" propaganda about it. Disappearing
| someone who's known outside of China undermines that
| propaganda effort. That doesn't mean they won't do it,
| but clearly identifying yourself like these people did
| makes such actions more costly, which can tip the scales
| (e.g. it might save you from a bullet and land you in
| prison instead).
|
| If you stay anonymous, no one may know unless the pile of
| bodies gets too big to deny.
| jandrese wrote:
| The CCP isn't a big monolith. It's thousands of people
| with different levels of callousness. Even if some people
| are willing to damn the torpedoes and flat out execute
| potential political rivals, there are still people who
| care about appearances.
| hibbelig wrote:
| It helps to increase awareness, and that helps with
| pressure on China's regime.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| Not to mention genuine scientific inquiry as demonstrated by the
| Ivermectin scandal. A harsh reckoning is due, but will it come?
| justaman wrote:
| Not as long as Google/Alphabet has the market dominance it
| currently has.
| deadalus wrote:
| Youtube Alternatives :
|
| Centralized : Bitchute, Rumble, DTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo, Vidlii
|
| Decentralized : Odysee(LBRY), Peertube
| ctrlp wrote:
| It would be great to hear some inside baseball from some peers
| working on Youtube content moderation. Not just tech and policy,
| but whether there is any internal dissent about policy and who
| decides. Surely there are some on HN?
| LatteLazy wrote:
| People spend half the time complaining YT etc are censoring
| content, and then the other half complaining they don't censor
| content (conspiracy theories, fake news, isis.
|
| I'm honestly not sure what anyone expects here. It's like they
| just want to be outraged and big tech is a convenient target
| mkr-hn wrote:
| >> _" I'm honestly not sure what anyone expects here."_
|
| Discernment.
| specialist wrote:
| Yes and: authenticity.
|
| Right now we can't _discern_ gossip, propaganda,
| whistleblowing, journalism, etc. Because we can 't _discern_
| authenticity.
|
| Say whatever you want. Sign your name if you want.
|
| Those choices are important signals for viewers evaluating
| new information.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Youtube make pennies per video, if you can provide
| "discernment" at that price, I'm sure they'll take you call.
| Until then, it's hammers missing nails and smashing walnuts.
|
| And that's without worrying that your definition might not
| match anyone else's...
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "Youtube make pennies per video, if you can provide
| "discernment" at that price"
|
| Thats their problem. Alternatively,maybe they don't give a
| fuck because they have a monopoly and they have nonreason
| to spend more money
| LatteLazy wrote:
| It's really not their problem though, is it. Because
| there are 2 fixes:
|
| * do nothing and have fake news etc everywhere.
|
| * make it much much harder for users to submit material
|
| Both of those have serious impacts on us. So it's our
| problem really isn't it?
|
| Before you reply, ask yourself: would I pay a dollar to
| reply? If the answer is no, you can't really expect YC to
| spend money on "discernment" for every
| thread/article/text post can you?
| mkr-hn wrote:
| HN at least has a mod who I assume is paid who'll hear
| you out if you think something was removed/flag killed
| without merit.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "It's really not their problem though, is it. Because
| there are 2 fixes"
|
| That party is not gonna continue for long, we clearly
| have laws coming down the pipe
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Yeah, then what? Either more censorship or less, neither
| will be the discernment you want.
|
| This issue has no practical solution.
| afarrell wrote:
| Discernment that aligns with their values and is scalable
| enough to be cheap.
|
| Google promised to not be "evil", which is only as reliable a
| promise to the degree that "evil" is well-defined.
| macspoofing wrote:
| Based on my personal standards?
| aww_dang wrote:
| I'd prefer no censorship and a robust discussion of content. I
| see nothing inconsistent in this policy.
| [deleted]
| Shorel wrote:
| YouTube rules only exist to protect YouTube.
| thejackgoode wrote:
| A thought experiment. What'd happen if companies as Google,
| Facebook, Twitter etc would be banned from any form of
| censorship?
|
| I mean, having best-years-of-4chan-like content everywhere. With
| some form of self-moderation, like subreddits, for sure.
|
| Might it be for the better? More honest and real world feel? No?
|
| It just seems very strange, the situation that platforms that
| have become truly global can silence people without any
| enforceable appeal system, using a weird mix of western moral and
| eastern business incentives in deciding to do so.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I think for a while BitChute [1] was like what you describe.
| There are probably other platforms created in response to
| censorship and I suspect they stay mostly uncensored until they
| get popular and/or try to monetize videos. Eventually they get
| enough pressure from their local governments, investors,
| financial institutions and will take the same path as YT or get
| taken down. To add to your thought experiment, maybe the
| platform would remain less censored for some time if it were
| started by an incredibly wealthy philanthropist and had no
| desire to make money from it. The ties to financial
| institutions make it hard to be a neutral platform as they will
| have their own policies for what content investors and
| advertisers find acceptable. The financial institutions are
| heavily inter-connected internationally. So maybe the answer is
| to keep the monetized content on YT and just accept that their
| content is heavily regulated. Then create a similar platform
| that is not tied to any financial institutions at all.
| Incorporate the company and put their headquarters and servers
| in a country that has minimal content regulations. The
| remaining challenges will be finding CDN's, DNS providers and
| ISP's that can also remain neutral.
|
| [1] - https://www.bitchute.com/
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| So how do you architect a system that doesn't have a single
| point of failure on all axis, storage/delivery/financial?
|
| It's funny how the early web thinking encompassed nuclear war
| but not the presence of authoritarian government in the East
| and a zealotic secular religion in the West.
| btdmaster wrote:
| PeerTube is pretty close to that, given its
| interoperability between instances. But you could easily
| argue it's not free (as in beer) to run a server.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| That is a great question and I think some site creators
| have shared your thoughts on this. I don't believe there is
| a single simple answer. The internet is not as distributed
| as some think it is. IP allocation is still controlled by a
| small number of governments _ARIN, APNIC, RIPE NCC,
| AFRINIC._ ISP 's, DNS providers, CDN's are subject to their
| governments regulations and political influence. Every
| proposed solution I have seen ends up down some rabbit
| holes and obscure technologies that are generally too hard
| for the masses to adopt.
| netr0ute wrote:
| Who says we have to listen to ARIN, APNIC, and the
| others?
| ByteJockey wrote:
| You don't, but you need to set up parallel infrastructure
| then that routes things in a different way.
| indigochill wrote:
| > Every proposed solution I have seen ends up down some
| rabbit holes and obscure technologies that are generally
| too hard for the masses to adopt.
|
| There's an implicit circle in this logic. Manually
| crafting IP packets is unwieldy to the masses, too, but
| some kind souls came along and made web browsers to make
| the crafting of IP packets for the purpose of browsing
| the web easy.
|
| The only thing stopping us from doing the same for better
| "obscure technologies" is willpower.
| thejackgoode wrote:
| It's a very good point.
|
| I believe the network effects are stronger than the free
| speech incentive for most people, after all, that is what
| current leading platforms bet on when deciding about
| censorship.
|
| This can be in theory only resolved by the state. Advertisers
| will adjust, marketing is the most adjustable business there
| is.
|
| It's a big point of dispute if a state should be able to
| censor someone, of course, but IMO state should not allow
| censorship within a global privately owned platform.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| The state is one piece of the puzzle for sure. I have a
| theory that if a very wealthy philanthropist _not
| entrepreneur_ were to create a new platform, we may find
| that it remains far less censored even if /when it gets
| popular. Money talks _too much sometimes_ and if the only
| regulations on a platform were state /federal laws then I
| suspect there would be far less censorship. This _may_ be
| especially true if run in a country that tries to remain
| politically neutral. There would still be pressure to
| remove content that embarrasses politicians. Short of
| content that explicitly breaks laws, there would be no
| financial incentive to remove content. Oppressive countries
| would still block the site, but people are adaptive and
| will find a way to get the news out to the world.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| >I mean, having best-years-of-4chan-like content everywhere.
| With some form of self-moderation, like subreddits, for sure.
|
| It's an interesting thought. I rather like the idea as the
| different political kinks of the big companies are rather
| obvious. You'd still have the problem of moderation in terms of
| various types of pornography (country specific), automated
| cruft/spam and the edge conditions of various degrees of
| violence in videos. Of course, Usenet seemed to manage just
| fine.
|
| Maybe the problem is that a system like youtube or Facebook is
| monolithic. Placing responsibility in one groups' lap can't be
| a healthy thing in the long run. That, and people shouldn't get
| so triggered by what they see on a little screen.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Of course, Usenet seemed to manage just fine.
|
| The amount of Usenet servers allowing binary-containing posts
| is next to zero because of piracy and child porn issues, and
| the text-only stuff never became mass-market enough to show
| up on the attention radar of media and wide society.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| I think this last point is key.
|
| The problem, I think - and this is pure supposition on my
| part - is that the algorithm that optimises for
| "engagement" (i.e. emotional reaction) also kinda
| accidentally optimises for the shady shit.
|
| You could always find shady shit on Usenet if you wanted
| it. But you have to go looking for it. Because there wasn't
| an algorithm feeding you whatever it thought would keep you
| interested, it wasn't front and centre.
|
| As you say, it never became mass-market enough. Because
| most people aren't really into the shady shit. Everyone
| might google for 2 girls 1 receptacle once for kicks, but
| it's not what most people want to see all day. Without the
| algorithm, it dies in user sub and most people don't even
| see it.
| jandrese wrote:
| > Of course, Usenet seemed to manage just fine.
|
| Usenet collapsed under the weight of spam and trolls. People
| tried to keep it going with some bolted on moderation tools
| but they never worked very well and eventually people moved
| on to more moderated platforms.
|
| Even if you remove alt.binaries the rest of the Usenet had a
| massive spam problem that was never fully solved. Once a
| community grows large enough you can't get around the need
| for moderation, it takes far too few bad faith actors to
| increase the noise level beyond the point that the average
| person can tolerate. It doesn't take long for the quality
| people to leave in search of a less noisy venue.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Firstly, that's a false dichotomy, secondly, sensorship and
| moderation are distinct terms; removing pornography is not
| censorship.
|
| Thirdly, media firms are conducting sensorship under false
| pretences. So there are at least 3 degrees of separation
| between "you cant arbitrarily sensor invonvenient speech" and
| "everything turns into 4chan/b"
| thejackgoode wrote:
| Honestly, I don't know the distinction, please explain how
| you see it.
|
| In both censorship and moderation, there is an authority
| within some platform with some autonomy (like a country or a
| social network or house owners meeting etc) which decides
| which information is acceptable and which is not.
|
| About degrees of separation: I agree, I just did a bit
| overdramatic illustration of outcomes.
| yy727 wrote:
| User-level subscribable mute and block lists. The platforms
| could even offer their own mute and block lists for those who
| wish to have the same experience as now (which would have the
| advantage of being completely auditable).
|
| This allows each user to tailor their experience as they feel
| comfortable. Outraged communities can have their moderated
| bubbles. Those open to alternative viewpoints are free to
| peruse an unmoderated stream.
| foxhop wrote:
| A lot of Truth would be freed at the expense of a lot of noise.
|
| Information wants to be free. Privacy is equally important.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| On twitter, in the lawsuit below, it was basically government
| censorship, disguised by one step, through a consulting firm
| working for the government.
|
| https://www.thedesertreview.com/news/u-s-senator-alex-padill...
| esyir wrote:
| It's more interesting because the two have areas where they're
| clearly opposed.
|
| Then you watch them twist themselves into pretzels with things
| like Blizzard's Blitzchung fiasco. Or the NBA's position on
| political issues around China.
| [deleted]
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > What'd happen if companies as Google, Facebook, Twitter etc
| would be banned from any form of censorship?
|
| Just the same what happened to 4chan and its more shady
| copycats: it's going to be immediately overrun by far-right
| extremism, misogyny, gore, violence and a _lot_ of pedophiles.
|
| > More honest and real world feel?
|
| When I go onto the city plaza and shout a Hitler salute or that
| women belong in the kitchen, I'm going to be beat up or
| arrested. On a "censorship" or rather moderation-free platform,
| there are no mechanisms to enforce social norms and laws.
| danaris wrote:
| The trouble is, we already know more or less what would happen:
|
| They would become even bigger breeding grounds for alt-right
| conspiracy theories and outright hate speech.
|
| We know this because _this has already been happening_. Even
| with the ability to remove hate speech from their platforms,
| this sort of content gets surfaced by their algorithms with
| horrifying regularity.
| wussboy wrote:
| There is an idea in human culture that we make decisions by
| looking at the evidence and then changing our minds to
| coincide with the truth. In this world unlimited Free Speech
| makes sense.
|
| But humans do not do this. We make decisions based on what
| others around us are doing, on what the people we see as our
| team are doing, to show that we belong, no matter how stupid
| or ignorant those decisions are. In this world, unlimited
| Free Speech creates chaos. And that is the world we live in
| now.
|
| Free Speech is a good. But it is not the highest good. And
| the sooner we realize that the better off all humans will be.
| barbacoa wrote:
| The key thing here to recognize is that this unlimited free
| speech on platforms ended the day Trump was elected. It's
| presented as about hate speech or preventing misinformation
| but it's really about class and culture. The top 20% or so
| of the population, those that are employed by and control
| all the American mega corporations comprise the
| professional managerial class. There is nothing they
| despise more than the cultural values of the Walmart-
| shopping working class. When those people elected that
| insane clown as president is the day the professional
| managerial class decided they need to play a more active
| role in projecting their moral and cultural values onto
| everyone else.
|
| Incidents like the one in the article are collateral damage
| to this policy.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Facebook never allowed porn or even artistic nudes.
| YouTube only sometimes allows nudity/sex. Twitter and
| YouTube started scrubbing media drops from ISIS and other
| violent Islamist groups before Trump even had the
| nomination. They did so after bipartisan calls for social
| media to deplatform terrorist propaganda.
|
| Reddit also cracked down on Syrian civil war media around
| this time. The videos were often gruesome propaganda
| _and_ evidence of war crimes at the same time.
|
| The reason people called on social media to remove this
| material instead of making it a job for law enforcement
| is that First Amendment protections are very broad.
| Praising ISIS or sharing "inspirational" videos of them
| killing government soldiers is not a crime if it doesn't
| also call for imminent lawless action. But few Americans
| of any political affiliation want such material to spread
| freely online, so it has been suppressed by other means
| on major platforms.
|
| I'm not endorsing or condemning how these platforms
| behave. I'm just pointing out that they have long
| suppressed material that the First Amendment protects.
| The timeline of moderation well predates the Trump
| presidency.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "top 20% or so of the population, those that are employed
| by and control all the American mega corporations"
|
| Dont the top 2% that actually own these corporation
| control them?
| barbacoa wrote:
| It's the rank-and-file employees demanding these
| moderation policies too.
| savingsPossible wrote:
| It is also trivially the case that "due process is good,
| but not the highest good". Or, to take a less charged
| example, freedom of contracts
|
| I don't mean to be snarky, but to try to draw a line. There
| are goods and rights that are intrinsically important (say
| food, water, social life, freedom from crime) and some that
| are important for the maintaining of a society (contracts
| are a good example here).
|
| One of these "to maintain a society" freedoms is due
| process. Another, free speech. Both are important for their
| own sake, but also to check and control power.
|
| You can say, and it is reasonable to say, that not
| suffering the ill effects of crime is more important than
| having good due process. But, given that due process is an
| important check on those in power, whenever they say "we
| need to reduce due process to get better law enforcement",
| you should be wary.
|
| To sum up: some seemingly rational trades between values
| are dangerous, especially since they reduce our ability to
| influence society/to undo those trades.
| EricE wrote:
| "Free Speech is a good. But it is not the highest good. "
|
| Sunlight is ALWAYS the best disinfectant. Free speech is
| the first amendment in the US Constitution because those
| that wrote it had first hand experience what life is like
| without it.
| danaris wrote:
| That's an argument for _transparency_ , not for
| _unlimited free speech_. It is, in fact, somewhat the
| opposite of what 's been pushed for recently, with people
| like Zuckerberg wanting "privacy for me, but not for
| thee".
|
| Transparency allows us to see what's going on inside
| companies, and make sure that they're not making
| decisions that are to the detriment of our society as a
| whole.
|
| Unlimited free speech allows bigots and fascists to
| spread their poison unobstructed, which demonstrably
| helps them to recruit more people into their white
| supremacist, genocidal, and anti-democratic movements.
| Meanwhile, as a cost to maintain this "principle",
| thousands (and more) of real people are being hurt or
| killed, or having their livelihoods destroyed, simply
| because of the way they were born.
| godshatter wrote:
| >Unlimited free speech allows bigots and fascists to
| spread their poison unobstructed, which demonstrably
| helps them to recruit more people into their white
| supremacist, genocidal, and anti-democratic movements.
| Meanwhile, as a cost to maintain this "principle",
| thousands (and more) of real people are being hurt or
| killed, or having their livelihoods destroyed, simply
| because of the way they were born.
|
| In my opinion, the best way to give credence to these
| kinds of beliefs is to drive them underground. Now you
| have people whispering from the bushes about the topic to
| people they think might be swayed to join them and no one
| is around to counter what they are saying. The best way
| to keep people from believing these kinds of things is to
| let their proponents speak, and then call them on it. Joe
| Gullible will at least be able to see both sides.
|
| Similarly, the best way to unlearn bigotry is to converse
| with people you are bigoted towards about a range of
| topics. Eventually you learn that they are just people,
| like everyone else. The same thing could happen with
| politics if we stopped being shoved into bubbles (or
| willingly building them up).
|
| Unfortunately, advertisers don't want to place ads where
| contentious discussions occur and big companies don't
| want to lose advertising revenue, so here we are.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| You're making the appeal again that people actually
| respond to new information and change their opinions
| based on evidence. This isn't true so the argument that
| driving something underground is bad because there's no
| one to argue against it is a moot argument- people
| wouldn't respond to rational evidence-based reasoning
| anyways.
| godshatter wrote:
| Why do you say that people don't change their opinions
| based on evidence? I've seen it happen. Hell, I've done
| it myself. Even the people posting in favor of these
| sorts of topics cite "evidence", for different values of
| the word "evidence". White supremacists talk about
| "color" on "color" crime stats, flat earthers mention the
| horizon not appearing curved (had to look one up),
| climate "deniers" point to sunspot cycles, anti-vaxxers
| reference that one autism study, etc, etc. Obviously
| people do change their opinions based on evidence. They
| just don't necessarily look for evidence against the
| topic, mainly, or don't question the evidence provided.
| These are things they might be exposed to if the
| conversations weren't banned or relegated to "bubbles".
|
| There is also the potential problem of censoring people
| who actually do hold a valid evidence-based opinion on a
| topic, it's just not one that's politically en vogue
| currently. Not to mention all the topics where it isn't
| clear what the truth is, despite a plethora of evidence
| for and against, and the person in charge holds a strong
| opinion on it.
|
| What I'm saying, I guess, is "citation needed". Show me
| your evidence that people don't change their opinions
| based on evidence and maybe I'll change my opinion on
| this topic :)
| seventytwo wrote:
| It's just happenstance that the "altright" is what has been
| taking advantage of places with light moderation. In the
| future, it just as easily could be another extremist group -
| maybe communists? Or fundamentalist Muslims?
|
| Of course, those currently a part of the Christian, American
| far right would be pleading for more regulation on free
| speech.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > Might it be for the better? More honest and real world feel?
| No?
|
| Nope, it'd be a shithole of the worst of the internet;
| advertisers would stay well away, ISPs would ban it, and it
| would quickly go away.
|
| Nobody wants "true" freedom. I mean Reddit tried to be a
| bastion of free speech and had to rein it wayyy back in, first
| with hate subreddits, then more recently delisting NSFW
| subreddits, making them much harder to discover - instead of
| creating filters or adding additional ways to specify why
| something is not safe for work.
|
| Parler likes to pretend it's a bastion of free speech, but it
| actively bans any LGBTQ+ content and had to start moderating or
| be deplatformed by the likes of Apple, Google, and their
| hosting party.
| jdsully wrote:
| Reddit also grew to be one of the biggest sites on the
| internet with their low censorship policy before they started
| the crackdown. It's not evidence crackdowns are necessary
| because they got successful first.
| root_axis wrote:
| Censorship is the quintessential differentiating factor of
| reddit's success, they simply offloaded the censoring to
| the users. Later on they added some global site guidelines,
| but reddit has _always_ been about censorship.
| jdsully wrote:
| Early Reddit had a large number of communities with their
| own rules. Before that you had message boards that had
| mostly homogeneous moderation. The moderation for
| /r/askhistorians was different from /r/humor and that was
| a key part of the design.
|
| Without this I doubt Reddit would have progressed much
| from its early programmer audience. It's not accidental
| they took a light touch and let communities self moderate
| in the beginning.
| h_anna_h wrote:
| Why would it be a shithole? Just advertisers staying away
| would make it worth it.
|
| Reddit was much better in the past.
| ByteJockey wrote:
| I tend to agree with you on the desirability of sites that
| mostly leave people alone.
|
| But you do still need to solve the monetization issue as
| the site scales. Paying for accounts/to get rid of ads like
| old SA?
| andrekandre wrote:
| once you scale up past a certain size, some kind of open
| democratic/lawful process seems the only fair way to do these
| things... though that goes against the recent trend of
| privitization/marketization of everything...
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| Could you design a distributed Facebook? Perhaps no scale is
| really needed, at least in some cases.
| swiley wrote:
| I haven't used Facebook in 10 years but my friends have
| shown me it. What's there to distribute? The chat
| functionality? The main feed is just a heavily curated
| stream of garbage that's vaguely influenced by your
| friend's list. It looks like there's nothing there other
| than this bizarre social pathology that's been continuously
| optimized and iterated to be as addictive as possible.
|
| For chat you have XMPP, for feeds you have RSS and webpub
| (mastodon.) There's ical for sharing events of course.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| The garbage is addictive.
|
| It seems to me that a distributed (and more secure)
| version needs to have something in it that would cause a
| network effect. The idea of Facebook seems sound, it's
| just hard to get everyone to agree on one and when they
| do it's hard to break them free.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| It doesnt need to be distributed,just needs oversight thats
| not commercially or politically biased
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| >oversight thats not commercially or politically biased
|
| My firm belief is that that is impossible.
| Jcowell wrote:
| Exactly. Unless it's run by a state actor it has to be
| commercialized (or subsidized which means money has to
| get in anyway) but by being run by a state actor is it
| evidently politicized.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| We have ofcom, and theyve been doing a decent job
|
| https://www.ofcom.org.uk/home
| EricE wrote:
| Well that's the real trick now, isn't it? :p
| EricE wrote:
| Sure - we had it pre-internet with BBS's. There was even a
| standard for sharing message forums across them - FidoNET.
|
| It may look crude from todays perspective, but there is
| zero reason the same concepts couldn't take root today. The
| big problem is friction. Just logging into to some "free"
| service that someone else runs for you is all most people
| want to think about.
|
| I think there is a huge opportunity for a modern revival of
| concepts like BBS's and FidoNET, but with a modern spin on
| UI and communications. instead of the master nodelist like
| FidoNET had use a distributed directory along the lines of
| DNS. Heck why invent a new protocol - just adopt DNS with a
| few tweaks.
| aww_dang wrote:
| If people can't be trusted to consume information without
| censorship, is that a problem with the platform or the
| consumer?
|
| If we accept the premise that individuals cannot be trusted
| with information, where does that lead us?
|
| There will always be problems in society. Taking a narrow view
| of exceptional circumstances, characterizing it as dangerous or
| "an emergency" ignores the larger picture. Given a chance for
| rational, open dialog, people equipped to do so can come to
| conclusions based upon reason. It is the natural course of the
| dissemination of information.
|
| I remember when the rallying cry of the hacker movement was:
| "Information wants to be free"
|
| Somewhere along the line we've supplanted that with gatekeeping
| and walled gardens. Cynics will observe that there is no
| gatekeeping without walled gardens. Therefore, if there was a
| motive for censorship and gatekeeping, walled gardens satiated
| the need.
|
| Can we say that there was not a pre-existing structure for
| censorship?
|
| The Internet may have temporarily disrupted censorship for
| some, but it has been a case of solve et coagula. Dissolve and
| reform. Where before there was a limited conduit of information
| via mainstream presses and televised talking heads, there is
| now a curated garden of content. Simulated peer groups share
| their views. Those that step outside of the prescribed
| narrative can be removed. Thus the individual need not solely
| trust their taking head, they can look to their peers and
| fulfill their desire to conform to social norms.
|
| You ask "What if it [insert-platform] wasn't censored?". As a
| cynic I must conclude that there would be no point to these
| platforms without censorship. They either wouldn't be created,
| or an overriding need to censor them would naturally arise.
| Censorship is the feature.
| sneak wrote:
| Editorial control over their own website is a first amendment
| protected right. Such a law denying them the right to determine
| what is on their own webpage would be unconstitutional.
| aww_dang wrote:
| Your assertion is correct. They have editorial control over
| their website as a matter of free-speech. However, when the
| YouTube sponsored "Freedom Forum" gives the YouTube CEO,
| Susan Wojcikci a "free expression award" for censoring
| content, that's hypocritical.
|
| >@YouTube CEO @SusanWojcicki has been at the forefront of
| fighting hate speech and misinformation online. She'll be
| honored at this year's Free Expression Awards.
|
| https://twitter.com/1stforall/status/1378505352715571206?lan.
| ..
|
| It is possible to agree with the right of a private company
| to control their own platform how they see fit, while
| disagreeing with the choices they make.
|
| That said, there are cases where platforms have censored
| content at the behest of government officials. In these cases
| it is alleged that 1st amendment rights are violated and
| platforms are acting as agents of the government.
|
| >These documents blow up the big lie that Big Tech censorship
| is 'private' - as the documents show collusion between a
| whole group of government officials in multiple states to
| suppress speech about election controversies.
|
| >The document shows that California state officials contacted
| YouTube directly to remove the video on September 24, 2020,
| and that YouTube seemed to respond by deleting the video on
| September 27, 2020
|
| https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/ca-big-tech-biden-
| cen...
|
| These instances were uncovered by FOIA requests to the US
| government. Unfortunately, the CCP does not honor such
| requests.
| markzzerella wrote:
| Having the back end uncensored and the front end moderated
| freely seems reasonable.
| sumedh wrote:
| Do you want terrorist to live stream their terror attacks like
| what NZ terrorist did?
| EricE wrote:
| No, but I think the evidence is clear that the alternatives
| are far worse in totality.
|
| Bad stuff happens. Thinking you can filter it out is a fools
| errand.
| sumedh wrote:
| > Thinking you can filter it out is a fools errand.
|
| In that case someone should build an streaming platform
| where there is no censorship, let the market decide.
| zionic wrote:
| How is the "market deciding" when men with guns will show
| up to your server room and shut you down?
| quantumwannabe wrote:
| Facebook's censorship didn't stop that though. It also didn't
| stop the torturers of a disabled kid in Chicago from live-
| streaming their brutal crime.
| sumedh wrote:
| It did not stop the live stream but after they took it
| down, it could not spread further. If we remove censorship
| such tragic events will spread easily.
| weimerica wrote:
| Yes. I, as a student of violence, gained incredibly useful
| information from analysis of that video.
|
| The ways in which people, moved, hid, fled, Red Sweater Guy's
| failed counter-attack. Those were all incredibly valuable
| things to watch. Being involved in security planning, IT and
| otherwise, I have to bring the best possible information from
| the real-world to help mitigate and plan.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| I'm not sure how you can compare trying to bring awareness to
| the world of people suffering, vs someone carrying out
| criminal activity via live stream.
| sumedh wrote:
| OP's point was to remove any form of censorship.
| thejackgoode wrote:
| Who am I to judge that? My point of view is that such
| livestreams are currently banned for a wrong reason -- for
| fear of loss of advertising revenue
| jfengel wrote:
| To me, that sounds like exactly the right reason. Let the
| market decide.
|
| If somebody else wants to spend their money to host such
| things, they're free to do it.
| ronsor wrote:
| Does that even matter? Whether or not an attack is live
| streamed, it still happened.
| sneak wrote:
| Yes. Everyone, including criminals, deserves human rights.
| seventytwo wrote:
| How would a completely rule-free economy work out?
|
| How about a completely law-free society?
|
| Tell me, in what other system of human interaction is a total
| lack of rules and regulations ever the optimal?
| fouric wrote:
| None of those things are equivalent to each other. In
| particular, the difference between complete free speech and a
| lassez-faire economy or anarchism is so massive as to not be
| comparable.
| baryphonic wrote:
| Honestly, I wouldn't mind some form of content moderation. But
| I'd prefer some honesty and objectivity in the enforcement.
|
| I've had a couple of accounts banned from social media (one on
| Twitter, one on YouTube). In both cases, I had no idea what
| policy I had supposedly violated until after I appealed, which
| is less transparent than a Soviet show trial. In the case of
| YouTube, the appeal itself got stuck in limbo, and someone at
| Google briefly locked my main account (rather than the "brand
| account" sub-account associated with the channel). The thought
| of having all email since 2004, my family's TV service and my
| domain names all ripped away from me for arbitrary, capricious
| and clumsy enforcement of vague policies was like an ice bath.
|
| I've migrated most of my stuff away from Google now, or at
| least have accounts I don't care about losing.
| Jcowell wrote:
| Exactly , there is nothing wrong with Moderation. The problem
| comes there's inconsistent enforcement and the inability to
| appeal and reform moderation rules in light of mistakes.
| Transparent moderation is probably the best.
| duxup wrote:
| >More honest and real world feel?
|
| What would be more real about it?
| williesleg wrote:
| No shit, same as hacker news. I can't wait for when they start
| banning the communists. That's gonna be a festive shitshow!
| [deleted]
| Black101 wrote:
| "Atajurt has collected thousands of video testimonies from family
| members of Turkic Muslims who have disappeared in Xinjiang.
| Witnesses show their identification to prove they are real
| people."
|
| We are truly living in the future
| aww_dang wrote:
| I was watching MSM coverage of US politics on YouTube when this
| channel was advertised.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpmYGObyCW3xgkpY2cFlacQ
|
| "Peace and Order in China", and sensationalized coverage of
| violence against Asians in the US.
|
| Clearly propaganda. For all of the demonitization and sometimes
| outright removal of anti-CCP content, YouTube seems perfectly
| content to promote CCP propaganda.
|
| Twitter is similar. Under suggested accounts to follow, there are
| promoted accounts presenting China as an utopian dream.
|
| Say what you will about Big Tech censoring conservatives, or even
| CCP human rights abuses. Various rationales exist, and we can
| disagree on those premises. However, when the shoe is on the
| other foot, these same companies are willing to take advertising
| dollars to promote CCP propaganda.
|
| Without attributing motive there is an obvious, glaring
| inconsistency here. If you had to attribute motive, how would you
| characterize it?
| syshum wrote:
| The irony in your comment is you seem to only be able to
| recognize a problem when it impacts people you deem to be
| victims and.or agree with politically, but when it impacts
| people you disagree with it is "we can disagree on those
| premises"
|
| Censorship by these platforms is real, ever present and has
| been highlighted for many years by many groups only to be meet
| with "mah private platform".
|
| People like me has been warning that censorship is never the
| solution, but as usual as long as the people being censored
| where deemed "wrong thinkers" it is perfectly fine
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Right, it is met with "mah private platform" because it _is_
| a private platform, and this _is_ a good argument.
| Covzire wrote:
| I wonder how proponents of this argument would feel if
| another industry was squarely in the hands of the right,
| like education. Let's say all the best educations were in
| private colleges and they didn't tolerate much in the way
| of left wing speech.
|
| Everyone knows that 3 SV companies have a politically
| charged uber-monopoly that they are exploiting to silence
| the political enemies of the DNC and increasingly enemies
| of the CCP. Everyone.
| textgel wrote:
| No it isn't. We've had years of progressives screaming that
| private companies aren't allowed to just do as they please
| simply because they are private. You aren't permitted to
| suddenly become an ardent liberty advocate simply because
| it suits you when you've been demanding regulation and
| authoritarianism previously.
| aww_dang wrote:
| >when it impacts people you disagree with it is "we can
| disagree on those premises"
|
| I'm not sure what gave you that impression. For clarity's
| sake I'm opposed to censorship across the board. If
| information is incorrect or misleading, it should be exposed
| in the clear light of day.
|
| I was trying to avoid opening up a partisan quagmire.
| pkphilip wrote:
| Is it that difficult for Youtube to differentiate between someone
| doxing someone vs someone volunteering identifying information
| about themselves or their family members with absolutely no
| malice?
|
| Surely for a company which prides itself in having AI which can
| determine emotions, do natural language analysis etc, this is
| pathetic.
| ctrlp wrote:
| There was a rumor that YT, FB, and Twitter have a deal with the
| Gov't regulators to leave them unregulated if they give a back
| channel of control to state censors. There were some leaked
| documents about internal government "partner" programs. Did
| anything come of that? It read to me like they were outsourcing
| some of their censorship to state agents, or perhaps they were
| setting up rapid response customer service teams to implement
| state censorship policies (e.g., question the election, vaccine
| safety, pandemic origins, etc...)
|
| I had thought they "just knew" what content to prohibit based on
| where the political winds were blowing, but maybe it was more
| coordinated.
| sneak wrote:
| I imagine it would become formalized real quickly in wartime,
| too, even if it isn't yet today.
|
| Centralized censorship platforms are an existential threat to a
| free society, an accident waiting to happen.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| If you believe that YouTube is simply an open and neutral
| "village square" for information and ideas then I have a bridge
| to sell you. Same goes for all the large platforms.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| Censorship is censorship is censorship, no matter how hard you
| try to explain, justify or deny it, regardless if it's about
| prisoners, Covid, fake news or whatever someone somewhere decided
| it should not be accessible by a wide auditorium.
|
| But it's not only Google at fault here, it's the voter that
| allowed government to push such censorship laws upon Google.
| anovikov wrote:
| Question is - what is the fuss about? Everyone and their dog
| knows that Communism is a torturous system that can't exist
| without killing lots of people. I was born in the Soviet Union
| and i know it and everyone out of the couple billion people who
| lived in the Soviet bloc knows, there is no need to prove it time
| and again.
|
| What is the value of these videos since we can't do anything with
| China anyway?
| jkingsbery wrote:
| I personally don't know what to do about it. But it seems like
| it's worth establishing what at least the truth is before we do
| something (either by deciding to, or by deciding not to do
| anything).
|
| I wish it were so that everyone knew that "Communism is a
| tortuous system," but it unfortunately does not seem to be the
| case anymore. People who were born and never lived in a world
| with the Soviet Union or the Berlin Wall are now voting age,
| and they don't have an aversion to communism. Even before the
| Soviet Union fell, a lot of people in the west were sympathetic
| to the Soviet Union. Fortunately we had people like
| Solzhenitsyn who documented how bad it was. Atajurt and the
| Uigher witnesses are giving us what may become our generation's
| equivalent of "In the First Circle."
| pverghese wrote:
| You are asking a free site to comply with rules in each country
| and not piss off all members of said countries. The outrage
| should be directed at your governments who have done nothing
| substantial regarding the China situation or any other humar
| rights situation around the world. It is not the duty of a
| private company to be at the forefront of foreign policy.
| fouric wrote:
| This comment isn't remotely related to the article. Nobody is
| asking YouTube to comply with any rules - instead, this is
| YouTube using a contorted reading of their own rules (which
| they inconsistently apply) to do something that people
| generally agree is bad.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Like, say, the railroads or the phone network, a mass-membership
| video platform is something which has too many "res publica"
| aspects to just let it be the property of / in control of a
| private corporation; but which developed within, or was developed
| by, one or more such private corporations.
|
| The solution seems to be one of:
|
| 1. Let said corporations exert such control over public life.
|
| 2. Have nation-states nationalize it.
|
| 3. Have the UN internationalize it.
|
| 4. Have nation-states, perhaps in collaboration, strongly
| regulate it.
|
| 5. Force it (e.g. via regulation) to become distributed, so that
| no single entity can exert significant control.
|
| Option (1.) is the status quo and is the worst. The others each
| have pros and cons.
| swiley wrote:
| Eventually people will get fed up with youtube. Peertube is
| already beginning to become popular and many youtubers are
| posting there and odesy. Google has become like most large
| American companies with a self destructive management layer,
| eventually that will eat Youtube as well. I'd certainly prefer
| we get a free/distributed alternative to nationalizing and
| cementing a terrible monopoly.
| einpoklum wrote:
| I tend to agree with your conclusion, but not necessarily
| with your argument. That is, yes, people might be "fed up
| with YouTube", but the point is that at any one time there
| can only be one video platform which hosts most videos... it
| doesn't really matter whether it's YouTube or NotYouTube by
| some other corporation; and the amount of material on YouTube
| is so staggering that I doubt we would see a distributed
| version of it being comparable any time soon. We don't even
| have a good distributed search engine (that I know of).
| spaceribs wrote:
| Even worse for Google, when people get banned off YouTube,
| they get banned across all of Google's services.
|
| Every time you upload what is arbitrarily controversial, that
| outcome has to be weighed, and if PeerTube provides a viable
| alternative, why not use it?
| jasode wrote:
| _> 2. Have nation-states nationalize it._
|
| I didn't downvote your comment but having governments own the
| media would _increase censorship_ instead of decrease it. We
| 're not just talking about China CCP censorship but also
| democratic nations such as UK. See examples of BBC censorship:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_United_Kingd...
|
| _> 3. Have the UN internationalize it._
|
| This idea is underspecified because it does not explain
| _implementation of how the video website is funded_. This is
| key because censorship happens by proxy via _money_. If the
| implementation is to get governments to collectively chip in to
| fund a global video website, you will get _more censorship_ --
| not less. Politicians like to exercise government 's power to
| censor.
| einpoklum wrote:
| jasode: I didn't say I support option 2, I just laid out the
| options; and I did say there are pros and cons. I actually
| agree with you.
|
| Pro option 2: There will be an official mechanism for people
| to influence how such a platform is managed.
|
| Con for option 2: Governments are typically not very
| answerable to people, and definitely exploit the possibility
| of manipulating mass media or media platforms. Also, they
| have a natural symbiosis with large business interests, so
| it's possible they'll just be ok with the way things stand.
|
| As for option 3 - it's true that this is underspecified, and
| I'm not even sure there's a relevant precedent for anything
| like that. I mean, even something like ISO is independent of
| the UN. Although that suggests the possibility of a group of
| nation-states setting something like that up voluntarily, not
| necessarily going through the UN. Also, you'd need nation-
| states to want this bad enough, and I'm not at all sure
| enough of them do.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "examples of BBC censorship"
|
| That's not a big list, more people are censored on youtube
| daily than BBC did in it's lifetime. This does not support
| your point.
|
| "Politicians like to exercise government's power to censor."
|
| And CEO's don't? Abusing political office for sensorship is a
| crime, abusing CEO position is ordinary business. Who is
| going to hold them accountable ?
|
| Are you free to show the world your company's dirty business?
| In contrast, I can submit a freedom of information request
| and get access to lots of information from mutiple government
| departments.
| roenxi wrote:
| > Who is going to hold them accountable?
|
| What instance can you think of where governments have been
| held accountable for their censorship? There aren't a lot
| of high profile cases there.
|
| > Option (1.) is the status quo and is the worst. The
| others each have pros and cons.
|
| Based on what evidence? Where have alternatives been tried?
| Why aren't those alternatives in general use if they are so
| good? Is this a comparison of messy reality with
| unattainable theory?
|
| Trading a thing we can choose not to use for a thing must
| use and that is integrated with military force. is always a
| bad trade. However bad Google is, government control of the
| media is worse.
|
| The only exception I make to that rule is foreign ownership
| of media, which is probably worse than government control.
| But both are pretty bad.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| >" Where have alternatives been tried? Why aren't those
| alternatives in general use if they are so good?"
|
| Did you live under a rock for the past hundred years? We
| have actual regulation of newspapers, radio and
| television. They dont need to be owned by the government,
| but we have media regulators thay set standards, and
| where you can complain
| roenxi wrote:
| I suppose my response to that is you're waving your hand
| and saying "there is hundreds of years of evidence"
| without actually pointing to any.
|
| Social media is still a far better platform for getting
| out an unpopular message than newspapers, radio and
| television. The past hundred years of those media have
| been marked by minority groups (political, but also in
| the common sense of the word) really struggling to get a
| voice.
| root_axis wrote:
| I think it's absurd that we're talking about nationalizing
| entertainment websites like YouTube while the topic of
| nationalizing big pharma or big real-estate or big agriculture
| is never discussed.
| FlacoJones wrote:
| Yet another case of big tech applying the letter of their law
| over the spirit of their law.
|
| People who have disappeared can't exactly be harassed as a result
| of a YouTube video...
| mc32 wrote:
| A picture is PII.
|
| I doubt they would take down pictures of the Jan rioters just
| because PII.
|
| If that's not the case, I will admit they are being pedantically
| consistent but socially irresponsible for erasing evidence of
| systemic and illegal harassment and imprisonment of their own
| people.
| hfdrghbc wrote:
| YouTube is obviously carrying water for the CCP. Now think
| about all those videos they said were election or pandemic
| related propaganda, like the videos about ivermectin from Bret
| Weinstein, and ask yourself what makes those situations
| different?
| argomo wrote:
| Fear of government-enforced market shut-out vs fear of civil
| liability for facilitating medical fraud. The fundamentals of
| Google's decisionmaking are the same, but the legal,
| societal, and ethical contexts in which it occurs can lead
| reasonable people to widely different value judgements of the
| outcome.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Sundarajan Pichai studied in IIT Kharagpur. FYI.
| chroem- wrote:
| I have seen Indian posters allude to this before, but I'm
| not familiar with what the connection is. Could you please
| elaborate?
| baybal2 wrote:
| Kharagpur IIT was the most Maoist/extreme left of all
| IITs. Even Jyoti Basu wanted to shut it down. I read once
| somewhere that back in seventies, they had Mao, Zhou, and
| Enver Hoja portraits hanging in their halls.
|
| The whole Kharagpur area was a Maoist hotbed, and I
| believe still is to lesser extend to this day.
| advisedwang wrote:
| Sundar is worth $600b, did an MBA at Wharton, and is CEO
| of a trillion dollar multinational. It's pretty funny to
| me that people would be implying he's Maoist.
| dominotw wrote:
| > censorship
|
| > private company something something
|
| > society, ethical standards something something
|
| > whose standards
|
| summary every single thread on topics like this
| devwastaken wrote:
| Google wants in the china market bad, and have changed their "do
| no evil" policy to reflect that. To be in the Chinese market
| requires compliance with the CCP.
| root_axis wrote:
| Stop relying on corporate ad delivery networks to host your
| videos for free. YouTube, like all big businesses, cares only
| about money, they would slap ads onto everything on the website
| if advertisers would permit it. When advertisers pay for your
| hosting they are the ones that determine whether or not it stays
| online.
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