[HN Gopher] Germany fines YouTube for removing video of anti-loc...
___________________________________________________________________
Germany fines YouTube for removing video of anti-lockdown protest
Author : sbuttgereit
Score : 331 points
Date : 2021-07-14 18:35 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.mediaite.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.mediaite.com)
| neom wrote:
| Curious: Why can Germany fine YT for something that happened in
| Switzerland?
| MauranKilom wrote:
| Just that the video was _taken_ in Switzerland does not mean
| that a German court has no jurisdiction over a user uploading
| said video (presumably from Germany - not clear from this
| article or a German source version).
| neom wrote:
| I understand, I was searching around myself for the answer,
| but I'm not at all versed in EU or German law. Only thing I
| could think of is it doesn't matter where it was filmed or
| who uploaded it, if was removed from german audience of
| youtube? Or it was filmed in Switzerland and uploaded by a
| German? I can't find anything in the news and I'd love to
| know the answer to this :)
| zionic wrote:
| Germany has a military/police force and Google doesn't, yet.
| [deleted]
| notquitehuman wrote:
| It looks and sounds like imperialism, but perhaps there's a
| more benign reason?
| boring_twenties wrote:
| I'm not sure I like the notion of a private entity being forced
| to host content they don't want to host.
|
| If it only applied to effective monopolies like YouTube, I would
| be more inclined to agree with it, but the article doesn't seem
| to know anything about that.
| xdennis wrote:
| There's nothing unusual about it. For example, in some places,
| if you want to open a store, you have to have X amount of
| parking spots available depending on the store size. It doesn't
| matter than you don't want to rent extra space to create a
| parking lot. You have to!
|
| There are millions of other ways this is done. It's not unusual
| to have to host some files.
| ipaddr wrote:
| They are not forced to do anything but live up to the contract
| they signed.
| ErikCorry wrote:
| Google signed a contract? Do you have the text of this
| contract?
| flutas wrote:
| It's the TOS.
|
| When you agree to it, you are entering into a contract with
| that company. In exchange for agreeing to their terms, you
| get access to their services.
| boring_twenties wrote:
| Do you have some more details about this? Because there's
| nothing informative in the article.
|
| I find it extremely difficult to believe that Google signed a
| contract obligating it to host any and all content uploaded
| by the user, regardless of what it is. But hey, I've been
| surprised before.
| red_trumpet wrote:
| IANAL, but if I understand this German article [1]
| correctly, then the changes in Youtube's ToS were not
| contractually effective, because the user was not asked to
| comply.
|
| The fine was then imposed because Youtube took > 3 weeks to
| comply with the court's order to make the video accessible.
|
| [1] https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article23242196
| 1/OLG...
| deadalus wrote:
| Youtube Alternatives :
|
| Centralized : Dailymotion, Bitchute, Rumble, DTube, Vimeo, Vidlii
|
| Decentralized : Odysee(LBRY), Peertube
| rickstanley wrote:
| How does one contribute to these (de)centralized alternatives?
| Apart from sharing links?
| deadalus wrote:
| You can upload videos and help seed videos too.
|
| Other ways to help are here : https://lbry.tech/contribute
| ravenstine wrote:
| All the alternatives are far-far-right as far as "trusted
| sources" are concerned. What is anyone supposed to do if even
| LBRY is considered a tool of radical right wing extremists? If
| you cant get your family and friends on it then its near
| worthless.
| ntrz wrote:
| > The German court held that YouTube failed to make its
| enforcement authority clear in its contract with the account
| operator who posted the video.
|
| Does YouTube's TOS really not contain statements giving them the
| ability to stop hosting any video, at any time, for any reason?
|
| Edit: I guess not: the only content removal clause I see is this
| one, which is definitely not "we can remove your video for any
| reason, as long as we feel like it." I'm a little surprised they
| don't seem to have included anything like that.
|
| > If we reasonably believe that any Content is in breach of this
| Agreement or may cause harm to YouTube, our users, or third
| parties, we may remove or take down that Content in our
| discretion. (from https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms)
| beezischillin wrote:
| They probably do.
|
| Powerful enough governments can just choose to ignore or re-
| interpret things any way they like and act on them, though.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| The original meaning of "...the pen is mightier than the
| sword."
|
| The clause in the sentence before that part reads "Beneath
| the rule of men entirely great,..." It was referring to
| authoritarian government.
| gruez wrote:
| >Powerful enough governments can just choose to ignore or re-
| interpret things any way they like and act on them, though.
|
| Seems like a common trend in many countries around the world.
| Tech companies tend to be american, so they're a popular
| punching bag/scapegoat when it comes to enforcement actions.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| Isn't it kind of implied that if you own a platform, you retain
| the discretion to remove stuff at any time, unless otherwise
| prohibited? The YouTube terms of service can be updated at any
| time, and will never include language promising to never take
| down content.
| realityking wrote:
| That argument would imply that the terms of service are
| worthless as the platform owner can do whatever they want.
| That's not how contracts work, at least not in Germany.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| Imagine being responsible for writing the individual ToS
| for ever nation on Earth. That sounds hard.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Imagine doing business and getting revenue in every
| nation on the Earth. That sounds hard.
| josefx wrote:
| They probably didn't bother at all. Not long ago Apple
| got fined because they implied that they would only
| provide one year warranty unless you paid for more, in
| the EU two years are the absolute minimum and telling
| your customers otherwise is not an option. As far as I
| could tell they just wrote the US version and translated
| that for every non English speaking country.
|
| Google might also be intentionally lazy, the Google Play
| licensing terms for example generally fail in front of a
| court when they are challenged, as they actively violate
| every law on anti competitive behavior you could think
| up. Whenever that happens Google just carves out a new
| licensing region for that courts jurisdiction and keeps
| the terms unchanged for the remaining world.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Apple's Finnish warranty conditions still say that they
| offer a limited one (1) year warranty on their products.
| However, the warranty terms start with a bolded section
| about consumer protection laws and how this limited one
| (1) year warranty is an additional protection offered
| voluntarily by the manufacturer, and that it does not
| replace the rights given to consumers by these laws or in
| fact apply in claims made under consumer protection laws.
| anonymousab wrote:
| Many ToS often contain disclaimers all over the place to
| the effect of "this doesn't apply in
| cities/states/provinces/countries where the law says
| otherwise" and catch-alls to that effect. Sometimes
| that's enough, sometimes not; if the company still tries
| to enforce rules in a region where they are invalid then
| the ToS is simply even more meaningless.
| xdennis wrote:
| I think it's just an American thing to treat private
| companies like the Wild West.
|
| Companies have obligations too, and I think that in Europe
| (compared to the USA) more people would agree that it's
| better to limit companies if it benefits people.
|
| Certainly, in this case, it's better for people to have their
| protests heard than for Google to flex it's censorious whims.
| [deleted]
| fnmall wrote:
| Terms and conditions are invalid in Germany (and probably
| much of Europe) if they run counter to established civil or
| criminal law. They are regularly thrown out in court.
|
| For consumers, it is even better _not_ to read the terms,
| because then they can say that they have been taken advantage
| of (it is harder to do that if you change a passage manually
| in a written contract).
| tylersmith wrote:
| > YouTube unsuccessfully argued the video violated its policies
| on Covid-19 "misinformation."
|
| It sounds like YouTube's stance is that the video may cause
| harm to their users; one of their criteria for removal.
| josteink wrote:
| > the video may cause harm
|
| Or let me try, is "hateful"?
|
| Yeah. That about clears it up, I guess. Clear as mud.
| cronix wrote:
| > may cause harm
|
| Literally anything can be argued to be "harmful."
| tylersmith wrote:
| Maybe that's why their challenge failed.
| rzzzt wrote:
| As an example, some people consider GOTO statements to be
| harmful.
| brink wrote:
| Or more precisely; some people don't. /s
| takeda wrote:
| Actually that's a good analogy.
|
| If there weren't people that blindly accepting it as the
| truth and verified everything this wouldn't be bad, in
| fact would be good because it could drive attention to
| something that perhaps was ignored.
|
| Unfortunately large part of population has no idea how to
| do fact checking, and what's worse many take their news
| from the Facebook.
| sharikone wrote:
| I imagine YouTube removing C tutorials because they
| "encourage harmful behaviors"
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Well at least the government isn't mandating that all
| "harmful" content be taken off the web...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/dec/15/online-
| ha...
|
| (For what it's worth, the proposed law now refers to
| "safety" rather than "harms").
| 31758329051230 wrote:
| >Germany
|
| >UK
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| A knife can do even more harm to the user, but they are still
| sold. "Can do harm" is a slippery slope.
| effie wrote:
| Recipe for chilli sauce may cause harm. It's not a good
| argument.
| tylersmith wrote:
| Yeah that's probably why it lost.
| Phil_Latio wrote:
| > Does YouTube's TOS really not contain statements giving them
| the ability to stop hosting any video, at any time, for any
| reason?
|
| The highest court in Germany (for civil and criminal
| proceedings) wrote this in one of their rulings:
|
| > Depending on the circumstances, especially if private
| companies - as in this case - move into a dominant position and
| take over the provision of the framework conditions of public
| communication themselves, the fundamental rights obligation of
| private parties can in fact be close to or even equal to a
| fundamental rights obligation of the state.
|
| So as long as YouTube, Twitter etc. are open to "the public",
| they could write "we reserve the right to remove any content
| for any or no reason at any time" in their TOS and it wouldn't
| be valid in Germany.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| This is as it should be IMO. When you position yourself to be
| a de-facto public square, you shouldn't get to selectively
| operate like a private club when it suits you.
| deminature wrote:
| Isn't this punishing Youtube for their own success at
| achieving a dominant market position? They didn't position
| themselves as the de-facto public square so much as became
| one due to lack of competition.
| xdennis wrote:
| > Isn't this punishing Youtube for their own success at
| achieving a dominant market position?
|
| Yes, and that's a good thing because it encourages
| competition. No market should have a player with such a
| dominant position.
| LegitShady wrote:
| its not punishing youtube its making sure private market
| forces don't distort speech rights across the entire
| country, as they are doing in the US.
|
| Companies exist to benefit the state and the people. If a
| company is so successful it distorts rights for everyone
| and puts fundamental rights at risk, it's not 'punishing'
| the company even though it might feel like it. It's
| making sure the conditions that created success for
| youtube remain in place for future generations - free
| speech to some degree, competition, etc.
|
| I think corporate personhood and corporate rights are a
| cancer on society and the corporatism/corporate
| state/fascism-lite that the west is already deep into is
| destroying the fundamental freedoms in the country.
| Disney will always have more money than you to argue for
| their corporate rights against your personal rights.
|
| This ruling is wisdom.
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| "Punishing" isn't really the right word, although it
| certainly feels that way from their position. As
| democratic societies, we've long felt it necessary to
| restrict and regulate monopolies and oligoplolies.
|
| I've recently had to talk to my internet provider, and
| that certainly increased my citizen's fervor in
| regulating companies in dominant positions, because every
| company will immediately turn around to milk/punish
| consumers, and try to influence politics for their
| benefit.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| YouTube's very "success" is "rewarding".
|
| But to me, it's not a punishment. It's a natural
| consequence of YouTube's dominant position: they have to
| start acting like it.
| mapt wrote:
| Yes. This is antitrust targeted at _practical impacts to
| everyday life_ rather than at narrowly defined, hard to
| prove classes of "anticompetitive behavior", which is
| the route that the US has taken.
|
| An attempt at practical antitrust regulation might mean,
| for example, that if a Walmart replaces every other
| business in your town through the sheer merit of its
| business model, that Walmart doesn't get to refuse to do
| business with you on the grounds that the manager hasn't
| liked you since high school. It might even mean that you
| reserve Constitutional rights like assembly/protest
| within the area that is functionally the public square,
| which is the private sidewalk in front of the Walmart.
|
| I know which approach I would prefer.
| dnate wrote:
| Sure, but it's also the job of the government to oversee
| the power corporations have and how they wield it. No
| single corporation should be allowed to actively shape
| and censor information just because they are successful /
| a monopoly.
| [deleted]
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > became one due to lack of competition.
|
| By phrasing what happened in the passive voice, you are
| downplaying the fact that Google actively strove to make
| it hard for new competitors to become established.
|
| Of course there still are competitors to YouTube,
| depending on how we define the market for online video
| sharing, and Google didn't invent Metcalfe's Law, but nor
| should they be surprised that it was hard for alternative
| sites to compete. That is, after all, why they bought
| YouTube in the first place and discontinued Google
| Videos.
| tjs8rj wrote:
| Yes. Not so much a punishment as a responsibility that
| comes with the position. The state isn't special: if you
| have deep and fundamental influence over the lives of
| others, you are burdened with certain responsibilities.
| Who cares if youtube is a private company, and it's not
| liking forcing them to respect rights is hurting their
| pocket book: if you have that much power over people, you
| are held accountable.
|
| This idea that private companies earn special privileges
| in this regard because they were started by individuals
| needs to die.
| bobthechef wrote:
| Absolutely. It isn't collectivism to regulate industries
| and companies that have enormous power to do good or
| harm. This idea that private property is unconditionally
| off limits is radically individualist and libertarian and
| just as bad as collectivism. We aren't atomized
| individuals. We all live in a society with a proper order
| and a common good. When a company begins to do harm to
| the common good, it must be regulated (or at least
| certain activities should be criminalized which is
| probably a better default in general than regulation).
| The notion that "I can do what I want" as long as it
| takes place in the private sphere is absurd. The private
| is distinct from the public, but it also affects the
| public and vice versa. Thus the presumption is in favor
| of not regulating private activity, but not an absolute
| and universally binding one.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _The notion that "I can do what I want" as long as it
| takes place in the private sphere is absurd._
|
| So what's your take on Lawrence v. Texas?
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Not the OP, but I think "companies" and "individuals" are
| very different, and discussions around corporate
| responsibility and society are different from regulating
| social behavior between two individuals.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| So what about regulating it between three individuals? Or
| four? Or four hundred? At what point does collective
| social behavior become (y)our concern?
| bostonsre wrote:
| They made an app that has the power to sway public
| opinion and they reap billions of dollars of profit from
| it. They can afford the burden that they took. If they
| want to participate in the economy and society, it seems
| only logical and right that they are required to not have
| a detrimental impact on society. We don't allow companies
| to do whatever they can do when chasing profits. We don't
| allow companies to pollute however much they want so they
| can make more money, we don't allow car companies to make
| death trap cars, etc.
| christkv wrote:
| I'm not sure its punishment as long as they keep making
| their pound of gold. In fact it probably makes it easier
| for them since they can just say sorry it was x country
| who made us do it allowing them to deflect any
| responsibility.
| lhorie wrote:
| The way I interpret it is that wording an agreement in
| terms of "we can delete whatever for whatever reason"
| doesn't specify in advance exactly what is fair game and
| what isn't. This is similar to Rossmann's complaints that
| NYC shouldn't get to fine a business for an alleged
| violation if they themselves cannot explain what the
| rules are in the first place.
|
| So ideally if a video is to be taken down, it ought be
| under a rationale along the lines of "you agreed to not
| doing [very specific thing] and this video does it,
| therefore we took it down", not "technically by clicking
| on a link in our site, you agreed to fine print that says
| you'll sell us your soul, so suck it"
| pionar wrote:
| Hmm, when did they do this?
|
| I actually think Germany has it backwards here. If the
| German government wants to provide a free-speech "safe
| zone", they should provide it themselves.
|
| You're encouraging government coercion of action.
| username90 wrote:
| > If the German government wants to provide a free-speech
| "safe zone", they should provide it themselves.
|
| But that is what they are doing here, no? They just use
| Youtube as the way to provide it. Governments doesn't
| have to run businesses themselves, private actors are
| much better at running the day to day stuff usually.
|
| Similarly if you own a huge amount of land and build a
| city there and let lots of people move in, don't get
| surprised when the government seizes your square and
| roads and make them public, or at least force you to let
| people move there as if they were public roads.
| travismark wrote:
| but the government isn't paying YouTube to host videos.
| eminent domain and related takings require compensation
| eqvinox wrote:
| This isn't eminent domain, the government didn't decide
| to build a video service that they need to evict Youtube
| for. Apparently Youtube decided to remove a video without
| proper support in their terms of service, so they're
| being judged to be in violation of their contract with
| the user.
|
| Whether or not Youtube should have a clause in their
| terms allowing them to remove arbitrary content is a
| different question, and yet another is whether they
| should be _allowed to_ have such a clause.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Perhaps in your jurisdiction, but in this hypothetical
| example, I guess not.
| josefx wrote:
| Think about it this way, you build something that looks
| like a pub, provides the services of a pub and say you
| are open for business. Would it be really that surprising
| that the state enforces laws that apply to pubs on your
| business or would you tell the health inspector to fuck
| off and open his own pub if he has problems with it?
| eli wrote:
| Seems more like the government ordering you to serve a
| disorderly patron you previously ejected
| fnmall wrote:
| I don't see any similarities here: A really disorderly
| patron is hard to avoid in a restaurant but easy to avoid
| on YouTube.
|
| Then, on YouTube (or woke mailing lists) there are mostly
| two sides, only one of which gets censored: The one that
| opposes the dominant clique.
|
| YouTube is full of filth that is kept up because it is
| non-political and makes money for Google. If Google were
| really woke, it would take down all videos that are
| demeaning to women (according to their ideology). They
| don't, because these videos are a cash cow.
| yorwba wrote:
| If you want a real analogy, it's more like a pub where
| most drinks are free because they're served by other
| customers and the owner makes money by auctioning ad
| space on the glasses. Anyone can go there to hand out
| free drinks, provided they follow the rules, like no
| alcohol in the kids corner and no coca wine. If someone's
| drink is very popular, they get a cut of the pub's
| advertising revenue.
|
| Now someone walks in and starts offering Corona. It's not
| everyone's favorite, but still decently popular, and the
| owner has no problem with that.
|
| Until a few hours later, when a new line is added to the
| list of rules on the door: "no Corona". Then the owner
| tells the person handing out free Corona that they're
| breaking the rules and kicks them out.
|
| Is that fair? Not in this case, says the court. Everyone
| agrees to the rules when they walk through the door, but
| the owner can't just willy-nilly change them after the
| fact.
|
| (If you want to really understand the decision, you'll
| have to read the original instead of relying on
| analogies.)
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| Yeah, but it's still my property and you can't make me
| serve a beer I don't like.
| josefx wrote:
| But you will be required to serve non alcoholic drinks.
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| If your pub, for example, refuses to serve people of
| color, then yes, the government will come in and shut it
| down.
| [deleted]
| eli wrote:
| Seems like Germany should simply nationalize the platform
| if that's what they want.
| neom wrote:
| Sad you're getting downvoted, I was thinking about this
| the other day, if nations really want to limit
| applications on the internet, they need to create a free
| to use high quality national alternative, and personally
| I don't think this is an awful idea. Canadian "twitter"
| provided by a gov entity? I would for sure be interested
| in that. The ability to use a home grown twitter that I
| needed to use some government ID to log into and had been
| thought about sensibility, at least then I'd know what
| I'm getting myself into. I'm not saying it should replace
| regular internet, just that I wouldn't be apposed to more
| controlled nationalized alternatives. I'd like to talk to
| fellow Canadians, in the "comment section", in a manner
| that I know with over 80% confidence they're actually in
| Canada.
| whbrown wrote:
| It's not theirs to take.
|
| And anyhow, the GDR dissolved over 30 years ago, I should
| think their economic policies died with them.
| eli wrote:
| Is it theirs to force them to host content Google wishes
| to delete?
| whbrown wrote:
| It's theirs to host the videos themselves if they deem
| them worthy of being hosted.
| eli wrote:
| The German government? Yeah I think they should host
| videos themselves if they want them to be online and
| google doesn't.
| zucker42 wrote:
| Do you think Germany "nationalizing" YouTube is less
| extreme than this ruling?
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| Forcing Google to host content against their will is
| pretty close. I guess in this case it's better than
| nationalizing though, Google has to pay for the hosting,
| and you get to tell Google they're not allowed to delete
| videos.
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| I require guests in my house to take their shoes off.
| They don't have to do it, they can just leave. But if
| they want to stay in my house they need to take their
| shoes off.
|
| No one is holding a gun to YouTube's head and telling
| them they have to serve video content to Germans. They
| want to be in Germany serving video content, so it's only
| fair and just that they should listen to the Germans and
| do what they say or leave.
| eli wrote:
| A country isn't really like your house though, is it?
|
| Germany could probably tell Google not to host any videos
| from the opposition political party under penalty of fine
| or expulsion. Hopefully we agree that that would be bad?
| meltedcapacitor wrote:
| They did not delete it because it was unprofitable to
| host.
|
| If they want to diminish the impact legally and
| profitably, they can just drown it in in more intrusive
| ads.
| miiir0 wrote:
| Law overwrites contracts
| ghayes wrote:
| Is this not in direct conflict with the quote from the
| article / OP. The summary should have this been "regardless
| of the the contract, we hold that ..." which is different
| from the aforementioned quote:
|
| > The German court held that YouTube failed to make its
| enforcement authority clear in its contract with the account
| operator who posted the video.
| yorwba wrote:
| It's a multi-layered argument and a bit of it probably got
| lost in the process of summarizing it for news reporting
| and the subsequent translation. You can find the original
| decision from April 2021 where YouTube was ordered to put
| the video back up here
| https://www.justiz.sachsen.de/esamosplus/pages/index.aspx
| by searching for Aktenzeichen "4 W 118/21" and then
| clicking on ,,Dokument offnen".
|
| It does contain language quite similar to "regardless of
| the contract, we hold that ...":
|
| _Dahingestellt bleiben kann dabei, ob die
| Nutzungsbedingungen bzw. die ,,Richtlinie zur medizinischen
| Fehlinformation uber COVID-19" einer AGB-rechtlichen
| Kontrolle standhalten, insbesondere, ob sie dem
| Transparenzgebot genugen bzw. den Nutzer nicht unangemessen
| benachteiligen (SS307 BGB). Denn die Inhalte des
| streitgegenstandlichen Videos verstossen bereits nicht
| gegen die Ende Januar 2021 gultige ,,Richtlinie zu
| medizinischen Fehlinformation uber COVID-19" (aa).
| Bezuglich der Neufassung der vorgenannten Richtlinie hat
| die Beklagte dagegen nicht glaubhaft gemacht, dass diese
| wirksam in den Vertrag einbezogen ist (bb)._
|
| "The question whether the terms of use resp. the
| "guidelines regarding medical disinformation about
| COVID-19" would withstand a check under ToS-law, especially
| whether they are sufficiently transparent resp.
| inappropriately disadvantage the user (SS307 BGB) can be
| left aside. Because the content of the video under dispute
| already does not run counter to the "guidelines regarding
| medical disinformation about COVID-19" that were in effect
| at the end of January 2021 (aa). As for the revised version
| of the aforementioned guidelines, the accused has not
| convincingly argued that it has been effectively
| incorporated into the contract (bb)."
| Phil_Latio wrote:
| The OP is about the ruling of a lower court though. I guess
| they didn't even reach the fundamental question.
| remarkEon wrote:
| >wrote this in one of their rulings:
|
| Which ruling? Have a link (in German is fine)?
| Phil_Latio wrote:
| https://openjur.de/u/2271157.html Absatz 110
| bsd44 wrote:
| That's very encouraging. We should make this a law on the EU-
| level.
| anm89 wrote:
| Naval Ravikant seems to be a divisive figure here but I think he
| made a profound point when he discussed this topic on Joe Rogan's
| podcast.
|
| The point was that, as a platform, you cross a line which is very
| difficult to ever revert when you optionally censor your platform
| in response to political pressure because both sides are then
| forced from a game theory perspective to aggressively pursue
| censoring your platform in their favor lest the other does it
| first. The platform ends up being collateral damage in some
| political war they never cared about in the first place and they
| can never win because no matter who they bend too, it
| automatically enrages the other side.
|
| This seems like where youtube and twitter and facebook are at
| now. They caved to censoring things that were reasonable, but now
| anyone can make them censor anything as long as they have some
| poltical power somewhere. It's not going to end well for them.
| Their only winning move was to stay neutral and do nothing but
| comply with legal requests.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| How does "staying neutral" prevent people from pressuring you?
| Is there any doubt that YouTube et al have and always had the
| ability to remove anything they wanted from their platforms?
| saurik wrote:
| I was with you until the very end, when I feel like you threw
| away the argument by seemingly being open to "legal requests";
| the "political wars" you get dragged into tend to be from
| politicians that are certainly making "legal requests": hell,
| if they aren't legal, they change the law!
|
| I feel like the core problem in many cases was building a
| system where someone gets to be arbiter of content in the first
| place: Apple claims they take software down due to "legal
| requests" by/in various countries (though this is a lie as they
| also do it anti-competitively or for market perception reasons,
| but even taking them at their word here) and yet they _caused_
| the ability to do that as somehow Android devices sold in the
| same jurisdictions support installing arbitrary software
| without issue.
|
| Platforms like Twitter and YouTube make their problems worse by
| recommending content--which is entirely their editorial
| decision and should be seen as such: any benefits or costs,
| moral or legal, should fall squarely on their shoulders--and
| then conflating that with having the ability to publish, but
| they would be in a much more morally (and often legally)
| defensible position if they simply didn't actively recommend
| content they disliked but still let it be found by people who
| actively followed the publisher.
|
| Regardless, as usual, I will now link to my heavily-cited talk
| (every single slide is inherently a citation from a reputable
| news source) that I gave in 2017 (maybe 2018? the video was
| unlisted and I only just recently made it public as someone
| noted I had never done that, and now the upload date is weirdly
| set to last week ;P) at Mozilla Privacy Lab--"That's How You
| Get a Dystopia"--wherein I push hard at the idea that
| centralized systems and the arbiters they empower are the core
| problem and never work out, even if you like some of their
| decisions for some of the time.
|
| https://youtu.be/vsazo-Gs7ms
| vbezhenar wrote:
| If a website does not honour legal request, it'll get
| blocked, so its entire content will be effectively removed
| for all citizens.
|
| The proper approach IMO is to honour legal requests, but
| provide transparency and display some information about
| blocked content, like who made the request to block it and so
| on. Of course content must only be blocked for requests
| originating from that specific country.
| saurik wrote:
| But that doesn't solve the problem, as the "political wars"
| the person I was responding to described all work in the
| world of increasingly tight laws; you have to avoid being a
| target in the first place by correctly navigating the space
| of solutions for how content is distributed in the first
| place. Take the Apple iPhone example: if Apple is forced to
| remove an app from their app store by China, it doesn't
| matter if the user can install it on the side... and
| somehow China has _not_ managed to force companies to not
| provide that functionality: Apple going out of their way to
| centralize both app distribution and even API access (VPN
| functionality, as a specific example, is hidden behind an
| entitlement that they don 't give to casual developers) is
| work they _chose_ to do that directly enables the ability
| to even make "legal requests" quickly and easily.
|
| I maintain the moral equivalent of this for platforms like
| Twitter and YouTube is to stop conflating their centralized
| recommendation systems (which should be considered "their
| speech") with the functionality to publish at all (which
| should be considered "someone else's speech"): it is going
| to be way less controversial to stop recommending something
| that someone else likes if it is still accessible to people
| who know about it (as they externally discovered the
| content or author and were directly linked to it/them), and
| it is also going to be way less controversial to allow
| people to publish something that someone else doesn't like
| to their own audience if it isn't being actively
| recommended to third parties. These recommendation systems
| have started to conflate "being able to say what you want"
| with "being able to be granted a large audience" so well
| that the feature set for moderation fails to separate them,
| and that's bad for everyone: there is a reason why we talk
| about "the right to free speech" instead of "the right to
| be heard".
| jMyles wrote:
| > If a website does not honour legal request, it'll get
| blocked
|
| If that is happening, then the architecture of the internet
| needs to take more evolutionary steps.
|
| If the state can censor the internet, there's nothing
| 'inter' about it. It's just a network, subject to the whims
| of its flailing predecessor.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| > If that is happening
|
| Yes, that is happening for many years. China being the
| most known state, but AFAIK even well-recognized first-
| world democratic countries like UK block some websites.
|
| > then the architecture of the internet needs to take
| more evolutionary steps.
|
| Adoption of IPv6 is a good example that architecture of
| the Internet is pretty much set in stone at this moment.
| We can put more layers on top of it, like Tor network,
| but underlying protocols are still IPv4/IPv6 with enough
| meta-information to allow efficient blocking of protocols
| or resources.
|
| I have some hopes that new TLS standards with hostname
| encryption (ECH) along with CDN networks will make
| blocking impossible. But even that is easily circumvented
| with government MITM. Kazakhstan already deployed all the
| necessary hardware and did some successful tests on
| scale. Browsers blocked its root certificate, but will
| they block (imaginary) China root certificate, losing
| 1.5B users?
| clairity wrote:
| > "...centralized systems and the arbiters they empower are
| the core problem and never work out, even if you like some of
| their decisions for some of the time."
|
| centralization is merely a necessary but not sufficient
| ingredient for dystopianism. you also need a ratcheting
| consolidation of power, especially money (provided by
| advertisers in this case) and attention/influence (provided
| by viewers). centralization is simply one of those (key)
| ratchets that can be leveraged to further consolidate power
| for the benefit of directors and executives.
|
| relatedly, the american constitution is an experiment in
| crafting a centralized system with checks and balances stable
| enough to withstand assaults of power consolidation. the jury
| is still out, but it's looking somewhat bleak at the moment,
| given a runaway executive branch fueled by an unhinged
| fed/central bank. we seem to be stomping on the gas pedal
| even as the brick wall looms ahead.
|
| in any case, i've long been an advocate of right-sizing
| organizations of all sorts, especially governments and
| companies. we've concretely learned over the past many
| decades that the negatives of large (and small, but those
| tend to self-regulate away) entities eventually far outweigh
| the benefits, and are better substituted by a more diverse
| and specialized collection of medium-sized ones.
| saurik wrote:
| It is not merely a "key" one, though, as it is (as you
| admit) a "necessary" one: we see centralized systems abused
| for reasons both lofty and petty by organizations both
| large and small; but, if you don't have (or _at least_ make
| obvious... like, "come on", right?! these companies seem
| to have a giant "come at us" sign they wave around) some
| centralized chokepoint, then the problem disappears. At
| best, I would argue that these other influences you list
| are themselves centralizations that attempt to push
| platforms to be more centralized (whether for political,
| monetary, or whatever else gain). (Also, ancillary point: I
| would argue the explicit goal of the design of the US
| government is that it isn't centralized... those checks and
| balances come from how there isn't a centralized chokepoint
| of power; we are at our worst when we allow people to--when
| times seem good--undermine this decentralization by
| consolidating more power in one of the branches over the
| others.)
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Its pretty clear these platforms are not Neutral.
|
| Facebook literally set up vote drop boxes to maximize number of
| votes in precincts that heavily favour democrats in last
| election. They also banned a sitting president. So why even
| bother pretending they are neutral, when the evidence is pretty
| clear that they set out to sway elections. You can watch the
| Sergey Brim upset video after Trump won in 2016.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/videos/cnnmoney/2018/09/13/google-video-...
|
| I don't have problem with them having a side. And acting
| honestly and openly or even making one sided campaign
| contributions.
|
| I have a problem with a reinforcing circle, where they censor
| to help elect a government which then rewards their censorship
| with contracts. At that point they become state actors,
| censoring on behalf of the state. and I think this is the real
| issue. And I think we are pretty much there.
| eli wrote:
| > _They caved to censoring things that were reasonable, but now
| anyone can make them censor anything as long as they have some
| poltical power somewhere._
|
| Can you define "reasonable" here in an objective way that we
| could all agree on?
|
| There's no such thing as neutrality. Leaving up a popular anti-
| vax video is just as political a decision as taking it down.
| syshum wrote:
| Platforms that claim to be open content systems (i.e it is
| not topic limited like say a Mac Forum) should only remove
| content that is illegal in nature, i.e Sexual Exploitation of
| minors, True Threats, etc.
|
| > popular anti-vax
|
| since Anti-Vax has now been refined to include anyone that
| opposes government mandated vaccinations, I am a Vaxxed Anti-
| Vaxer as I oppose all government mandates. People should be
| free to choose on their own if they want a vaccine or any
| other medical treatment.
|
| So should a video of me expressing this position be removed
| under an "anti-vaxx" policy?
| namlem wrote:
| You would never want to use a big platform that had no
| moderation, the quality would be shit. For a small, niche
| platform, it's fine, but as platforms grow they get filled
| with 13 year-olds posting garbage, which someone has to
| clean up to avoid driving away other users.
| cratermoon wrote:
| See, for example, the Eternal September
| syshum wrote:
| I do not want to, nor do I use any of the big platforms
| now... I have no twitter account, no facebook account, no
| insta account, no tiktok account, etc...
|
| I have locals.com account, reddit accounts (which is
| diminishing amount of my usage as they continue to
| "mainstream" aka censor the site) , and HN, that is
| pretty much it for me
| namlem wrote:
| The quality decline from mainstreaming isn't due to
| censorship, it's due to the increased presence of normies
| and children. Meanwhile the heavy-handed censorship of
| subreddits like AskHistorians has resulted in the
| preservation of high quality standards.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I don't agree that decent conversation can only exist
| with heavy moderation.
|
| If you haven't seen the issue with echo chambers by
| now... you're in one.
| eli wrote:
| You are of course free to create a platform that only
| removes illegal content, just as Twitter or YouTube is free
| to to remove content they don't like.
|
| But I think you'd find two problems: determining what could
| be illegal is really hard (what's a "true threat" and
| what's a tasteless joke?), and also you'd end up with a
| community that looks a lot like 4chan or parler. Not a
| place I would choose to hang out.
| fulafel wrote:
| Many well regarded distributed platforms are like that
| too (the web and blogosphere, email, mastodon,
| xmpp&matrix). The common feature is federated islands
| that can somewhat form filtered views of the global
| system.
| syshum wrote:
| I think we have proven time and time again that you can
| not actually create your own platform, if you try then
| come after your hosting providers, your network provider,
| your advertisers, your payment processors, and if that
| fails they find your family to go after their employers,
| etc etc etc
|
| So the "just create your own platform" trope has be tried
| and failed.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > Not a place I would choose to hang out.
|
| While that may be true.. do you not believe that the
| exceptional openness of either of those two platforms has
| an impact on places outside of them? Do you think there's
| no intangible benefits to you by these places merely
| existing?
| rodgerd wrote:
| > do you not believe that the exceptional openness of
| either of those two platforms has an impact on places
| outside of them?
|
| Oh, there's definitely an impact.
|
| > Do you think there's no intangible benefits to you by
| these places merely existing?
|
| Yeah, the campaigns to harass a game emulator developer
| to suicide because "40% is a good start" are a fantastic
| benefit to society, obviously.
| eropple wrote:
| The primary export of places like that has proven to be
| brigading, harassment, and bigotry in the form of memes,
| so...no, not really.
|
| I have yet to hear a positive argument for their
| existence, and "well it collects the dirtbags!" is
| actually _not one_. I spent years tracking reactionary
| and fascist movements on the internet and how they
| interrelate and spread information; these sites more or
| less exist to do exactly that. The targeted harassment
| campagins that target random people they 've decided not
| to like--that's just "for the lulz".
| CrazyPyroLinux wrote:
| > bigotry in the form of memes
|
| _gasps and clutches pearls_
| eropple wrote:
| The norming of bigotry should be recognized and acted
| against when it occurs. When that norming is done through
| (shitty) humor, it should be pointed out as such. Did you
| have a point to make?
| eli wrote:
| What places? Like a hypothetical anti-censorship
| platform, or are you thinking of something that already
| exists like 4chan (if that even counts)?
| anm89 wrote:
| I'm subjectively inserting that comment. I think that a lot
| of it was reasonable. I'm not arguing that it was objectively
| reasonable. I'm writing my thoughts on the internet. I'm not
| obligated by the burden of proof to justify my subjective
| opinions.
|
| >There's no such thing as neutrality. Leaving up a popular
| anti-vax video is just as political a decision as taking it
| down.
|
| Nonsense. We don't apply this standard to anything else in
| life.
| eli wrote:
| That's my point. There is no objectively reasonable way to
| do this. What you think is reasonable to take down and what
| I think is reasonable to take down are not going to always
| agree.
|
| I'm not sure what "elsewhere in life" means, but bookstores
| choose what books they will sell while also not necessarily
| endorsing every book they carry.
| ergocoder wrote:
| Unless it is the only book store in town, banning certain
| books would be problematic.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > I refuse to take down anything that doesn't come with
| the force of law to take it down
|
| and
|
| > I refuse to take down this video, because I do not
| think it needs to be taken down
|
| are two VERY different things. The first one is a
| political choice about taking down videos in general. The
| second one is a political choice about a specific topic.
| The second one is more or less similar to taking down the
| video because you think it needs to be taken down (same
| topic, different political decision)... the first one is
| absolutely nothing like that.
|
| Edit: In case it wasn't clear (because I replied in the
| wrong place), this is the comment I was discussing
|
| > There's no such thing as neutrality. Leaving up a
| popular anti-vax video is just as political a decision as
| taking it down.
|
| While it may be "just as political", it's a political
| about a totally different thing.
| eli wrote:
| I get what you're saying, but I just don't agree. They're
| only different in the abstract. At some point an
| incredibly noxious (but legal) video gets posted,
| complaints pour in, and you are either continuing to host
| it or you aren't. That's a decision and having a policy
| of "we never remove legal videos" doesn't absolve you.
|
| Anyway, a social platform that only removes illegal
| content (not even spam?) sounds absolutely dreadful and I
| would not use it and no one would pay to advertise on it.
| toast0 wrote:
| On a social platform where I'm only seeing content posted
| by my friends (or maybe content my friends interact
| with), anything dreadful I see is brought to me by my
| friends.
|
| If my friends bring me dreadful content that I don't
| like, I'm not sure we'll stay friends. If my friends are
| spamming, I'll ask them to stop and if they continue, I'm
| not going to stay friends (or at least I'll unfollow them
| where they're spamming).
|
| If people post garbage to my posts, I'll delete their
| garbage and restrict access to my posts.
|
| There's no need for the social platform to do moderation,
| until it starts putting unrelated people's content in
| front of me; which is something I don't really want from
| a social platform.
| eli wrote:
| I mean sure, but I don't see how that concept maps to
| YouTube.
|
| It would be interesting to have a social platform where
| you can only see mutual connections. I imagine it'd have
| a hard time competing with email and group texts and all
| the other ways people who already know each other can
| stay in touch.
| toast0 wrote:
| Well, in my head (which I'll admit doesn't really match
| reality), YouTube is a video hoster only, it's not social
| at all. If something I'm reading or someone I'm talking
| with links to a video, it's likely there. I might watch
| that video, but I certainly don't read the comments and I
| try not to look at the recommendations because both of
| those areas are a cesspool.
|
| If I'm searching for a video, I try to do it in a web
| search, and likely it'll lead to YouTube, and hopefully
| it'll actually be useful content (or Rick Astley, I
| actually like that song).
|
| Anyway, if I were YouTube, I would turn off comments
| everywhere, and review videos before including them in
| recommendations (which would leave a lot of videos out of
| that section) and probably have a lot lower views.
| yunohn wrote:
| Have you read the HN guidelines? Most rules have nothing
| to do with legality, and @dang moderates HN on a best-
| effort basis to ensure quality discussion.
|
| Presumably, you don't notice you're on a moderated
| platform, but HN is very much not an unmoderated free-
| for-all.
| toast0 wrote:
| HN isn't really a social platform, IMHO. I'm not
| connecting with my friends here, I'm talking with all
| sorts of random people. I absolutely notice it's
| moderated, and I wouldn't be here if it wasn't.
| yunohn wrote:
| If this is your "line in the sand", why are we arguing
| about YouTube? I cannot believe you connect with your
| friends there...
| akira2501 wrote:
| > Leaving up a popular anti-vax video is just as political a
| decision as taking it down.
|
| Why is it political? They didn't commission the content or
| request that it be created and hosted on their platform in
| any way. They're offering the same reasonable self-hosting
| process that they offer to anyone who shows up with an email
| address.
|
| It only seems to become political when you decide to take
| action and either protect or remove the material. You're now
| no longer a disinterested third party, you're making
| editorial decisions and it's hard to believe they've taken
| this step without considering the impact of those decisions.
| notJim wrote:
| The idea that the service is a neutral 3rd party who hosts
| any video _is a political idea_ , in other words it is a
| _choice_ made by platforms that both influences and is
| influenced by _politics_. Note, because people get confused
| on here, this doesn 't mean that it's a _bad idea_.
|
| Other publishing media do not have this standard. For
| example, the radio waves are another medium where the FCC
| (which regulates them) could say that only certain things
| are allowed, or they could say you can broadcast whatever
| you want. (In fact I think they regulate content, re:
| obscenity, but I don't want to look it up right now.)
|
| So again, the idea of being only a neutral 3rd party who
| hosts videos for all-comers is _a choice_ , which has
| _political implications_.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > For example, the radio waves are another medium where
| the FCC (which regulates them) could say that only
| certain things are allowed, or they could say you can
| broadcast whatever you want.
|
| They can only do so because there is a limited number of
| them and users cannot share the space, so it must be
| licensed to be practically useful.
|
| Also, the FCC cannot dictate to a station what it can and
| cannot air, the FCC can enforce _community standards_ of
| the community which is being served by that radio
| station. They're not in a position to go searching for
| violations and then act upon them, they merely respond to
| complaints from the communities themselves.
|
| > So again, the idea of being only a neutral 3rd party
| who hosts videos for all-comers is a choice, which has
| political implications.
|
| Yes, but the service clearly exists to make money.. not
| to make a political statement; which I agree may be
| incidental, but that shouldn't be the basis for
| interpreting their actions.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| > Why is it political? They didn't commission the content
| or request that it be created and hosted on their platform
| in any way. They're offering the same reasonable self-
| hosting process that they offer to anyone who shows up with
| an email address.
|
| And profiting from it. The scope changes slightly when you
| realize your business could get sued repeatedly because you
| promoted misinformation (which is how it would be spun) and
| someone died because they followed that misinformation.
|
| This is risk, and few of these businesses want to tackle
| that risk apparently.
|
| It's a testament to how well marketers over the decades
| have sold the idea that companies care about anything other
| than their shareholders that people mistake profit-driven
| motivation for political stances.
| yunohn wrote:
| > There's no such thing as neutrality. Leaving up a popular
| anti-vax video is just as political a decision as taking it
| down.
|
| A lot of the replies to your comment fixate on this, since
| they take issue with "everything is political". But I think
| it's very true, and agree with you.
|
| Why should YouTube host anything and everything that random
| anonymous users decide to upload? Why is this /holy/ act of
| uploading deemed undoable and unrevocable?
|
| It's a very weird way of thinking that it's political only if
| the video is removed, but not if it is kept online.
| orangecat wrote:
| _It's a very weird way of thinking that it's political only
| if the video is removed, but not if it is kept online._
|
| Because keeping it up is the default, while you have to go
| out of your way to remove it.
|
| If I own a store, is it as much of a political act to allow
| Trump supporters to shop there as it is to ban them?
| spoonjim wrote:
| True, once you start deleting videos, then leaving any up is
| a political decision. That's why, as a platform, you should
| not be deleting any videos, other than those that violate the
| law.
| eli wrote:
| Not deleting videos is also a political decision.
| yunohn wrote:
| The law is also subjective, there is no fixed law. There is
| ever-updating case law and dynamic precedence, and it
| differs by county<state<country.
| nradov wrote:
| It's not always clear whether a particular video violates
| the law. If a video is in the legal gray area of, let's
| say, advocating violence against a particular person then
| should it be left online until a court specifically orders
| removal?
| ergocoder wrote:
| Yes, that seems reasonable.
|
| It is like getting a warrant to search your house. It can
| be expedite if someone is in grave danger.
| throwawayswede wrote:
| > Leaving up a popular anti-vax video is just as political a
| decision as taking it down
|
| That's a misconception, and basically what the whole trolley
| problem is all about. Doing nothing is not the same as doing
| something. Each have their own ethical consequences and it's
| not as easy as you think to spurt out the "right" answer.
| Sure, you might have a preference that's difficult for others
| to argue against or for, but others also have the right to
| reach a different conclusion.
|
| With that being said, may I ask you what you know about
| vaccination? Are you using information from articles you've
| read online from "authorized" sources, or are you an expert
| on the matter? Again my point here is not to say that you're
| wrong or right, you're absolutely free to reach whatever
| conclusion you desire, but it's really difficult even for
| actual experts in the medical field to know what's going on
| currently, who's motivated by altruism, greed, selfishness,
| or cronyism. Taking up these stands and pretending it's
| "science" is an insult to science, because "science" is ever
| evolving and there's no such thing as consensus in the
| scientific process.
| elmomle wrote:
| Science isn't politics and the truth about scientific issues
| isn't political, but misinformation about issues in which
| there exists a scientific consensus is very definitely
| political.
| walkedaway wrote:
| > Their only winning move was to stay neutral and do nothing
| but comply with legal requests
|
| They could have enforced their policies consistently across all
| accounts instead of their strong anti-right/anti-conservative
| bias. It's their selective enforcement that created issues for
| them.
| Zak wrote:
| I think it was inevitable that these platforms would start
| having content restrictions once they shifted to using machine-
| learning algorithms tuned to maximize each user's engagement.
|
| For a significant fraction of users, the most engaging content
| will be psychologically manipulative - conspiracy theories,
| racism, political intrigue, and the like. I see the combination
| of an engagement machine and such content ethically
| problematic, but I don't think they're going to turn off the
| extremely-profitable engagement machine unless forced to, so
| they restrict content instead.
|
| The trouble is the engagement machine is sophisticated, while
| the content restrictions are crude. This probably isn't
| sustainable in its current form, but there aren't easy answers
| to the problem. A _sophisticated_ "bad" content suppression
| algorithm sounds pretty dystopian to me.
| iamdbtoo wrote:
| > The platform ends up being collateral damage in some
| political war they never cared about in the first place and
| they can never win because no matter who they bend too, it
| automatically enrages the other side.
|
| To me, the fact that they don't care about it is the problem.
| Those companies are having issues because they have no moral or
| ethical compass. It's become untenable for them to remain
| neutral because there is no neutral actor in this scenario.
| There's never going to be a service that's not held to a moral
| standard for their content regardless of what the law says.
| anm89 wrote:
| You seem to assume that if they cared, they'd be on your
| side. What makes you think that that's the case? They are
| first and foremost accountable to shareholders who want
| profit. It's unlikely that they view the world the same way
| you do. You probably don't want them throwing their weight
| around
|
| You can argue that you don't like that they are accountable
| to their shareholders but it is true.
| iamdbtoo wrote:
| No, I don't assume that. That's a very wrong assumption on
| your part.
| anm89 wrote:
| But if you know in advance, that their actions would be
| against your goals, why do you want them more active not
| less?
| throwawayswede wrote:
| > They caved to censoring things that were reasonable, but now
| anyone can make them censor anything as long as they have some
| poltical power somewhere.
|
| On some level, we have to acknowledge that whoever is running
| the shitshow at youtube and twitter are actually responsible as
| well, in that they believe they know enough to literally
| dictate what everyone in the world should see and read.
|
| For example banning Trump from Twitter is a great example of
| this. Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of his politics (or
| Biden's, or any of them, same shit different smell i say), but
| who the hell do Twitter people think they are that they feel
| confident enough to ban him? Not talking in the sense of a
| private company here, sure it's their business and they can do
| whatever the heck they want, but does anyone really think that
| by banning him they prevented whatever ideas of his that think
| should not be encouraged to stop? At best, this shows
| tremendous life inexperience, which I expect from kids who read
| a couple of books and think that they understand everything,
| the typical example of a tech company worker in a company like
| Twitter.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The thing about Twitter is that they had rules that Trump was
| breaking regularly; and invented an entirely new "world
| leaders policy"[0] and "public interest policy"[1] to justify
| _not_ banning him. They even exempted him from DMCA repeat-
| infringer policies[2] when music artists started taking down
| his tweets with their music in them. Had Twitter not
| intervened on January 9th, Trump would have been gotten
| banned _anyway_ when he left office, purely because of him
| _no longer being an elected politician_.
|
| My personal opinion is that even if the thing that gets
| banned or removed finds an audience (and it will), it's still
| a good idea for any platform - from a tiny webforum to a
| billions-strong social network - to have speech rules that
| are fair and reasonably enforced. It's _not fun_ to be on a
| platform where a handful of celebrities and politicians
| (incl. Trump) are regularly flouting rules you have to
| follow.
|
| Furthermore, I'd much rather be in a community in which the
| loudest and most obnoxious users are shown the door, purely
| for my own sanity. Free-for-alls stop being fun when they
| outgrow their original userbase.
|
| [0] https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2019/worldl
| ead...
|
| [1] https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/public-
| intere...
|
| [2] https://torrentfreak.com/could-trumps-twitter-account-be-
| dmc...
| kthejoker2 wrote:
| There is a ton of actual evidence that removing bad actors
| improves the quality of information on social networks:
|
| https://www.axios.com/reddit-hate-speech-policies-
| reduction-...
|
| https://www.vox.com/2021/1/16/22234971/trump-twitter-
| faceboo...
| throwawayswede wrote:
| That's not what I said. To reiterate, what I'm saying is:
| Shady ideas fester in the dark. Banning won't help society.
| Exposure and discussion does.
|
| But the new and very different point that you're making,
| which is "removing bad actors improves the quality of
| information on social networks", is also very disputable
| and shaky.
|
| - First link is "Reddit says that the rules Reddit made
| helped Reddit." is not exactly impartial, so forgive me to
| mistrust it.
|
| - Felt bad opening a Vox link (since so very obviously
| biased, but whatever, opened it for a laugh). The say:
| "misinformation slowed, the research indicates online
| discussion around the topics that motivated the Capitol
| riot has also diminished" if you don't see it (or if it
| doesn't happen online) it doesn't mean it diminished
| overall. The whole article is full of bias honestly. Sad
| that you feel it's worthy enough to source.
| namlem wrote:
| The "marketplace of ideas" is a fiction that has long
| since been debunked. The best ideas arent the ones that
| win out, it's the loudest ones and the ones that appeal
| to our most base emotions that win. Only a small
| percentage of people actually possess intellectual
| curiosity. Most just mindlessly follow social trends.
| throwawayswede wrote:
| > The "marketplace of ideas" is a fiction that has long
| since been debunked
|
| I don't think it's been "debunked" as you say. Provide
| evidence. A few examples is not evidence to make such a
| blanket statement.
|
| > The best ideas arent the ones that win out, it's the
| loudest ones and the ones that appeal to our most base
| emotions that win.
|
| Again, very much disagree with this. If you look short
| term that may be true, but long term historically
| speaking at least that has not been the truth.
| namlem wrote:
| Oh really? Then why is the number of people who believe
| the earth is flat on the rise? Why do people still
| believe in ancient mythologies that contradict scientific
| knowledge that has been available for centuries?
|
| Maybe on the scale of millenia ideas based in truth are
| more likely to dominate, but I don't see how you could
| make that claim about history when our current paradigm
| of empirical knowledge is only a few centuries old, and
| already it seems as though cracks are starting to form.
| throwawayswede wrote:
| > Then why is the number of people who believe the earth
| is flat on the rise?
|
| Why do you say it's on the rise? Have you considered that
| there's lot more people, or that that the internet and
| various "communities" on the web just gave extra
| amplification to all sort of ideas? This is exactly why
| nothing should be banned. If you want wrong ideas to be
| corrected, you let them be discussed in the open. If you
| start pulling down videos that talk about flat earth
| you're gonna end up with grouping all people who think
| like that in a community where they only get exposed to
| ideas that affirm their erroneous belief.
|
| > and already it seems as though cracks are starting to
| form.
|
| again, provide examples or evidence for how and where you
| see this.
| namlem wrote:
| >you're gonna end up with grouping all people who think
| like that in a community
|
| That's exactly what not banning them is doing! Not that I
| think flat earth content should be banned, as it seems to
| be mostly harmless. Before the internet, people who
| believed in fringe conspiracy theories didn't have a good
| way to coordinate and group together at scale.
|
| Hell, even in the mid 2000s, after the internet had been
| around for a while, fringe communities tended to self-
| segregate in their own forums. They group together and
| formed echo chambers, yes, but they were also insulated
| from broader society, and therefore had little ability to
| acquire new converts. It was recommendation algorithms
| that popularized fringe ideas, by pushing them to bigger
| audiences that otherwise never would have been exposed to
| them.
|
| I think that's really the core of the problem,
| recommendation algorithms. The algorithms don't know how
| reliable or accurate the content they push is, they just
| push whatever the machine learning model predicts will
| keep the user engaged. I would much rather group the
| people at the fringes into online ghettos than have them
| roaming the broader web and spewing their nonsense to
| anyone the algorithm recognizes to be vulnerable to
| conspiratorial thinking.
|
| As to examples of cracks in the paradigm is respect for
| empirical knowledge, I don't think you have to look far.
| The rise of political extremism has resulted in more
| people on the far right and far left, ideologies that are
| hostile to the notions of nuance and cool headed
| reasoning, and thrive on emotionally driven messaging.
| More than 15% of Americans believe in QAnon, and nearly a
| third believe in the election conspiracy.
|
| Meanwhile on the left, you have rhetoric that is
| increasingly hostile to data-driven approaches to
| problems, instead preferring "lived experience", ie
| anecdotes. You have cases like David Shor's firing for
| daring to tweet a study from a respected scholar that
| appeared to challenge the zeitgeist at the time. Many of
| these people are highly educated, or even academics
| themselves.
|
| And that's to say nothing of regular old snake oil that
| has nothing to do with politics. Essential oils, healing
| crystals, you name it. Misinformation is on the rise, and
| most of the population is not equipped to deal with it.
| Maybe this is a temporary growing pain, maybe not. I
| don't think there's any way to know for sure right now.
| But we do know that for most of human history we have
| lived in the darkness, so it wouldn't be terribly
| surprising if we end up returning to it.
| travismark wrote:
| practicing the 'marketplace of ideas' led to the single
| most important idea/practice/accomplishment in history -
| the constitution of knowledge. just read jonathan rauch's
| new book. sure there are threats to this way of learning
| and understanding, and it isn't perfect. but it's the
| best we have, and it has not been debunked
| namlem wrote:
| To clarify, I belive that the marketplace of ideas is
| still a useful principle, and I absolutely am worried
| about censorship in certain domains. However, like any
| market, the marketplace of ideas is vulnerable to market
| failures. The idea that _everywhere_ should be a
| marketplace of ideas is deeply unwise in my view. There
| should be areas where people can discuss any ideas
| freely, but I think it is foolish to deny the idea that
| information can be dangerous in some contexts. Look no
| further than the needless deaths caused by anti-vaxx
| conspiracy theories. To have a healthy marketplace for
| ideas, you need some degree of structure.
| sofixa wrote:
| > To reiterate, what I'm saying is: Shady ideas fester in
| the dark. Banning won't help society. Exposure and
| discussion does
|
| Are you sure? That hasn't helped flat earthers or anti-
| vaxxers ( of the vaccines cause autism camp), why do you
| think it's true?
| [deleted]
| tvirosi wrote:
| *Naval Ravikant (I thought there was something off with your
| version.)
| anm89 wrote:
| Ha wow, I read that like 5 times and didn't catch that. Good
| catch. Fixed
| duxup wrote:
| There's no avoiding this even if you don't " censor your
| platform in response to political pressure " because everyone
| assumes that is the case and the game is on...
|
| It's not a case of deciding to:
|
| >optionally censor your platform in response to political
| pressure
|
| Because so many people assume that if some content is removed
| and it is <content I think should be permissible / like> well
| then that must have been because of political pressure or views
| at that company or something like that.
|
| So by default:
|
| > The platform ends up being collateral damage in some
| political war
|
| Even if the content removed wasn't removed due to political
| pressure the accusations fly and the game begins.
|
| Nobody is forced by a platform's actions to play the game, the
| sad truth is people will believe the game is on all the times
| to explain anything they don't like / don't understand.
|
| Rudy Giuliani thought that Twitter was 'allowing' someone to
| post content to his account without his permission ... but
| really he had posted a link to a domain that didn't exist, then
| someone registered and had some fun with him.
|
| Rudy of course just filled in the blanks of his ignorance with
| concerns of bias by Twitter... and there's A LOT of people who
| do that (with all sorts of political views).
|
| We had an article here on HN where up and down votes changed on
| YouTube ... it was interpreted by some immediately as some sort
| of political bias.
|
| Have a platform? You're in the game...
| anm89 wrote:
| Right this is the entire point about how crossing the line
| poisons the well.
|
| Which is why they would have to be very clear that their
| policy is to only respond to legal orders for takedowns and
| nothing else.
| duxup wrote:
| I think the issue then is that the platform becomes ...
| unusable.
|
| The scale of spam of all kinds would render the service
| useless. Even inaction would be interpreted as part of the
| game ... and you're in the game again.
| anm89 wrote:
| You could ultimately be right that they took the better
| of the two options and that this path would have killed
| them. I personally disagree.
|
| I think there is also more Grey here. They could have de
| prioritized things in the algorithm to encourage the
| direction of the community without explicitly
| depltforming anyone or blocking\removing content. I think
| its possible that they could have achieved a lot of what
| they wanted with this method while avoiding poisoning the
| well.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _Their only winning move was to stay neutral and do nothing
| but comply with legal requests._
|
| No? This narrative is a bit ahistorical - and it's fueled by
| this idea that hyperliberal boogeyman started censoring
| everything.
|
| If you look at what happened in 2017, Google started
| "censoring" things because _advertisers threatened to boycott_.
| The platforms couldn 't stay neutral because advertisers became
| more and more concerned with staying out of any potential
| scandal.
| nomemerror wrote:
| So people on HN suffer from memory loss?
|
| 'hyoerliveral boogeyman' is actually a very accurate
| description of the pervasive and ongoing censorship across
| platforms, service providers, and many others.
|
| What else do you call the complete removal of parler?
|
| The on going suppression of covid news?
|
| The ongoing suppression of even discussing the 2020 election
| fraud?
|
| Facebook warning people that they are being exposed to
| extremism?
|
| There are many more to list, in sure I'll get nitpicks, and
| silent down votes -- my comment is likely auto dead because
| HN canceled my opinion long ago, and not for any policy
| violation, simply because I speak with truth and conviction.
|
| HN is mostly propaganda.
| eropple wrote:
| _> What else do you call the complete removal of parler?_
|
| Failure to adhere to terms and services or to express
| intent to adhere to them going forward.
|
| Parler couldn't or wouldn't stop people from breaking their
| providers' terms of service and didn't show a good-faith
| effort towards doing so. Other right-wing outlets _do_ do
| those things, and have not gotten drilled despite their
| odious beliefs.
| re-al wrote:
| at nomemerror (I cannot reply directly)
|
| I don't understand why your comment is flagged and dead!
| You are making a perfectly reasonable point. HN admins,
| what is unacceptable about what is being stated - I
| genuinely do not see it.
| eropple wrote:
| If you start going on about "election fraud", as that
| poster did, I'll usually flag the post.
|
| In this case, with my reply, I preferred to point out the
| obvious mischaracterization and leave addressing the
| mendacious falsehoods to others, but it looks like others
| decided to do something about it.
| re-al wrote:
| Is it not possible to talk about election fraud? I
| believe that this really has happened historically.
|
| I would be fine to agree with you if you have proven that
| there is not election fraud, but obviously having a
| different opinion is not proof.
| handrous wrote:
| They (Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, even Reddit) act so very
| much like publishers that it seems to me the mistake was
| granting "platform" protections to sites that: claim broad
| rights over posted content; use complex logic to decide what
| to promote (that they promote anything is alarming, for a
| "platform"!) and what a visitor sees while also _hosting and
| distributing_ that content they 're highlighting or promoting
| (which makes them distinct from some rando's best-of lists on
| their personal website, linking to content hosted elsewhere);
| place ads alongside content _but sometimes choose not to_ ;
| and, at times, engage in revenue sharing. And that's before
| we even get into the censorship.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Unless you know of a way to do moderation 100%, liability
| for user-generated content is infeasible.
|
| The fulfillment of this fantasy of forcing platforms to
| abandon their efforts will just lead to all of social media
| degenerating into cesspits as they fill up with porn and
| swastikas and all normal people leave.
| handrous wrote:
| > Unless you know of a way to do moderation 100%,
| liability for user-generated content is infeasible.
|
| I agree that highly-public social media anything like
| what we see now wouldn't work anymore.
|
| I don't even necessarily think that we should kill 230,
| but I don't think you should be able to curate and
| promote content, and claim strong rights to posted
| content, and still enjoy its protections. Yes, this means
| "algorithm-curation" social media with broad public
| visibility of content and that claims significant
| ownership of posted content, would be in trouble. I think
| services like that _should_ struggle to operate that way.
| Take ownership or don 't, none of this pretending to be
| one thing while doing another stuff. That doesn't mean we
| have to crack down on web hosts or ISPs or email
| providers or anything like that, since they're not doing
| most of that stuff.
| eli wrote:
| This "platform vs publisher" thing is a myth based on a
| misunderstand of how Section 230 works. The law doesn't
| actually distinguish between the two.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Perhaps the most relevant distinction is between
| "moderation that the users have a choice about" versus
| "moderation that the users don't have a choice about".
|
| If a site wants to hide all posts/videos that promote
| some unpopular political belief, or use offensive words,
| then implementing that censorship as the default user
| experience is perfectly acceptable, as long as users can
| choose to opt out of that censorship.
|
| There might be multiple reasons why a given post/video
| could be censored, and perhaps there is a small burden on
| sites to tag every single reason rather than mark it for
| censorship at the first excuse, but I think that a lot of
| the tagging work could be made the responsibility of the
| user who uploaded it.
|
| Such a system would hopefully make moot the slightly
| disingenuous argument that "If sites can't ban political
| opinions I don't like then they also won't be able to ban
| spam". Obviously sites would be allowed to put neutral
| resource limits on users, to prevent DoS attacks.
| handrous wrote:
| It distinguishes between _something_ and a publisher, in
| that it says whatever-you-want-to-call-that-something can
| 't be treated as the publisher (it uses that word) of
| information it's distributing.
| eli wrote:
| It distinguishes between the person who _uploaded_ the
| video and YouTube hosting the video. How YouTube exerts
| editorial control to promote some videos or delete others
| is not relevant. This is a good rule. HN couldn't
| possibly exist without it.
|
| There's been a lot of really bad information on 230 from
| people who ought to know better.
| infamouscow wrote:
| The law is written by people, so it frankly doesn't
| matter what it says currently because it can (and
| probably will) change.
| eli wrote:
| I mean, sure, but parent comment was implying platforms
| have special legal protections currently, which isn't
| really the case.
| pindab0ter wrote:
| It's an international issue that not only U.S. law
| applies to. And even if it did, it's still worth
| discussing.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| The whole point of section 230 was to make imperfect
| moderation legal. It wasn't enacted because some random
| personal sites got sued. It got enacted because some very
| large companies got sued and congress thought the results
| of the court cases were illogical.
|
| It sounds like it's doing its job.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| A few points:
|
| 1. Google definitely censors things on their own as well.
| Their own search engine turns up a long list of examples, so
| I won't rehash them all here, but one illustrative example is
| their censorship of the dissenter plug-in
| (https://reclaimthenet.org/google-chrome-web-store-bans-
| disse...), which also seems to be an example of censorship
| collusion within the tech industry.
|
| 2. Google has a long history of internal activism that is
| highly progressive, and regularly applies pressure on the
| company, and creates a culture of fear for employees who are
| either conservative, centrist, or even moderately left-
| leaning. The James Damore fiasco is a great example of the
| internal political culture rearing its head and how it
| impacts who's comfortable speaking up and steering the
| company's culture (https://www.inc.com/suzanne-lucas/google-
| fires-employee-for-...).
|
| 3. Why do you think advertisers became "more and more
| concerned"? It's because of left-leaning activist pressure
| from groups like Sleeping Giants who have made it their
| mission to organize activists and create a false sense of
| societal pressure on advertisers
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_Giants). It's the
| same as Google censoring things, because typically activist
| employees will draw attention internally to these activist
| campaigns, and try to alter the company's otherwise neutral
| stances. There's also a pipeline from internal activist
| employees to certain members of the press (like Geekwire) to
| try to use external pressure to move company stances.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _The James Damore fiasco is a great example of the
| internal political culture rearing its head and how it
| impacts who 's comfortable speaking up and steering the
| company's culture_
|
| I'm willing to accept the premise that Google could have
| neoliberal pressure on the company (I don't know if I would
| consider the pressure you allude to be progressive or left
| leaning). That said, James Damore's memo, if you've read it
| is not a good example of it and I believe he was rightly
| exiled for it. The memo is poorly sourced _and_ poorly
| argued. It reads like someone who doesn 't understand
| Dunning-Kruger is.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Those threats were never serious though, because YT is too
| big, but also because advertisers know they can advertise on
| certain subsets of content that is not offensive.
| danenania wrote:
| The advertisers are bluffing when they threaten these
| boycotts. They're not going to stop advertising on google,
| facebook, twitter, etc., which these days probably represents
| a majority of their advertising budget and even more of their
| ROI. They'll make threats because it costs them nothing, but
| all the platforms need to do is say "no" and that would be
| the end of it. Even better: immediately ban the accounts of
| companies that make these threats. They won't receive any
| more of them.
| addicted wrote:
| They don't need to stop all advertising. They can simply
| stop advertising on Youtube and focus advertising on
| Facebook, or stop on Twitter and focus on Tik Tok.
|
| They can pit the providers against each other. And that's
| basically how a free market works.
| eli wrote:
| Yeah I don't think Facebook is going to ban Coca Cola
| voxic11 wrote:
| Google's response to pressures from advertisers wasn't to
| censor anything. They just demonetized videos that the
| advertisers didn't want to be associated with. Hosting
| someone's video for free without even interrupting it with
| ads seems like the opposite of censorship to me. There may be
| something interesting to say about how the desires of
| advertisers shapes our discourse, but its not censorship (in
| this case at least).
| alpaca128 wrote:
| > Hosting someone's video for free without even
| interrupting it with ads seems like the opposite of
| censorship to me.
|
| Doesn't demonetization on YT just mean the ads still run
| but the money doesn't flow to the creator anymore?
| Considering YouTube does it that way with copyright claims
| and also automatically added ads to previously ad-free
| videos just because they could, it would surprise me if
| they'd remove video ads by themselves.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| No, because the whole issue is advertisers refuse to have
| their ads shown with certain types of videos. The ads go
| away. Johnson and Johnson doesn't want their ads shown
| next to Nazi propaganda, so demonetization pulls
| advertising entirely.
| [deleted]
| Aunche wrote:
| They both censored and demonetized. You're going to have a
| much more difficult time trying to find Elsagate videos on
| YouTube anymore.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Google doesn't just demonitize videos, they make videos
| impossible to find by unlisting them from search results[1]
| and shadowbanning creators:
|
| > _One of the videos that had been restricted was a trailer
| for one of his short films; another was an It Gets Better
| video aimed at LGBTQ youth. Sam had been shadow-banned,
| meaning that users couldn't search for it on YouTube. None
| of the videos were sexually explicit or profane._
|
| > _... five YouTube channels alleged that the platform had
| unfairly targeted LGBTQ content creators with practices
| similar to those described by Bardo: demonetizing videos,
| placing them in restricted mode without warning, and hiding
| them from search results._
|
| [1] https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-
| features/lgbtq-...
| takeda wrote:
| Doesn't matter, they still used this as censoring (claiming
| YouTube cut funds to kill them).
|
| I even saw (this mostly was Facebook, but also was done on
| YouTube) where the channel/fan page purposefully switching
| videos to private while talking they are being censored.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _purposefully switching videos to private_
|
| Sometimes channels will do this because they have
| "strikes" shown on their creator pages, so they hide
| their videos to avoid having so many strikes they get
| shut down. Some science and engineering channels I watch
| have run into this problem.
| neverminder wrote:
| So now they are demonetizing videos that want to be
| monetized and vice versa. Time for YouTube's demise is long
| overdue. I hope Peertube, decentralization and finger to
| censorship is the future.
| [deleted]
| jayspell wrote:
| What about telling advertisers that if they want to boycott,
| go ahead, find another Youtube to advertise on. They make 15
| billion a year in advertising and 3 billion on subscriptions.
| I'm willing to bet with that much advertising it would be
| very unlikely any advertising boycott could make a
| significant difference.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _What about telling advertisers that if they want to
| boycott, go ahead, find another Youtube to advertise on._
|
| Yeah, it's called Facebook. Regardless these weren't some
| no names who were boycotting, it was pretty much the whales
| like P&G and CocaCola who were complaining. (Just those 2
| spend $8BN/year). At the very least having any of them pull
| out would cratered at least one exec's bonus.
| listless wrote:
| In the beginning, but now both sides see them as the enemy of
| the people. One side thinks they censor too much and the
| other thinks not enough. So YouTube is now caught in a
| political game of trying to appease whichever party is in
| power lest they get regulated. Hence why Trump stayed on
| Twitter until he was out of office.
| syshum wrote:
| And why did "advertisers threatened to boycott" due to
| pressure from "hyperliberal's" that are prputally offended by
| everything.
|
| They tried to get YT to do it, when YT ignored them they went
| after the money... It is right from the liberal playbook
| SamBam wrote:
| Consumers objecting to content is as old as television, and
| even older, and is certainly not owned by "hyperliberals."
|
| For example, Conservatives demanded radio stations stop
| playing the Beatles, and, only slightly more recently, the
| Dixie Chicks. They called up advertisers as well.
|
| You could probably find people complaining to artists'
| patrons in Medieval texts, if you looked.
| spfzero wrote:
| If you look at people on an axis other than
| liberal/conservative, you find that the people that
| object are the same people regardless of their politics.
| They're the people that can't stand the idea of other
| people seeing reading/hearing/seeing things, that they
| themselves wouldn't want to. It's the people that are
| hurt and scared when they see behavior that is actually
| harmless to them, but maybe spotlights a difference they
| don't want to be aware of.
|
| Saying that liberals or conservatives have this to a
| greater or worse extent is looking at it through the
| wrong lens.
| hospadar wrote:
| Amen! Turns out people are complicated and
| brains/thoughts/ideas don't exist on a single purple
| spectrum from red to blue.
| syshum wrote:
| Nice what-aboutism... Yes Conservatives used to be just
| as bad, I was out there in the 90's complaining about
| authoritarian conservatives.
|
| We libertarians did not mind our flank and Authoritarian
| liberals today are about 10000000x more of an issue than
| even the most extreme bible thumping conservative from
| the 90's ever was
| cratermoon wrote:
| > used to be just as bad
|
| https://truthout.org/articles/right-wingers-are-taking-
| over-...
| SamBam wrote:
| I was thinking historical examples would be an
| interesting context in part because I didn't think anyone
| needed reminding of all the times in recent days and
| weeks that conservatives have tried to boycott or cancel
| things, but others have provided some examples of that if
| you're interested.
|
| And "what-aboutism" was exactly the point, I was
| specifically pointing out that boycotting based on morals
| isn't in any way only the domain of "hyperliberals."
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _only slightly more recently, the Dixie Chicks. They
| called up advertisers as well._
|
| If you want recent examples, look at WAP, its Super Bowl
| and Grammy's performances, Lil Nas X, or the NFL and
| Colin Kaepernick. There's also the witch hunt and boycott
| on teachers, companies and anyone else they believe are
| part of a nationwide critical race theory conspiracy.
| namlem wrote:
| The first Adpocalypse preceded that. Rather, it was part of
| an internal drive to focus on more "family-friendly"
| content. Iirc, it was actually the presence of Islamic
| State propaganda on the site that was part of the
| motivation.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _It is right from the liberal playbook_
|
| Yep the liberal playbook that was kicked off by an
| investigation by the progressive news outlet... The
| Times[1]... which is owned by Hyperliberal Billionaire...
| Rupert Murdoch.
|
| Do you even bother to do a small amount of research into
| your biases? It blows my mind that people think the world
| is controlled by a couple of megalomaniacs on Liberal
| Twitter.
|
| [1] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/youtube-hate-
| preachers-sh...
| sureglymop wrote:
| The advertisers threatened to boycott because otherwise
| they would have risked being scrutinized and potentially
| making less profit.
|
| What actually happened isn't that one side of the political
| spectrum "censored" the other side in some sort of targeted
| attack.. it's that advertisers and private companies
| optimized for generating as much profits as possible by
| (obviously) pondering to the majority of potential
| customers.
|
| Ironically.. such is the nature of capitalism.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Hardly. The opposition was from flag-wearing jingoists
| upset at Islamic terrorist videos on YouTube.
| nradov wrote:
| Facebook is also censoring as misinformation this article about
| the effects of face masks on children published by the American
| Medical Association. Now the findings might be right or they
| might be wrong; we won't know until the experiment is
| reproduced. But it's bizarre and inappropriate for Facebook to
| "fact check" legitimate scientific research when the actual
| facts aren't even known yet.
|
| Walach H, Weikl R, Prentice J, et al. Experimental Assessment
| of Carbon Dioxide Content in Inhaled Air With or Without Face
| Masks in Healthy Children: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA
| Pediatr. Published online June 30, 2021.
|
| https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...
| pbreit wrote:
| "They caved to censoring things that were reasonable"
|
| I'd argue that much of their censorship was not reasonable at
| all. None of it was illegal. Mostly just differences of
| opinion. My "information" is your "misinformation".
| neverminder wrote:
| They've opened Pandora's box, because now every Joe and Karen
| realized they can weaponize censorship by being offended by
| everything.
| partiallypro wrote:
| I think OP means they were censoring things that weren't
| objectionable (offensive, etc,) and they were removing
| "reasonable" things that were opinions, etc. Maybe I'm wrong,
| but that is where Twitter/Facebook/etc have lost me; by
| censoring things that aren't harmful they've opened pandora's
| box.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Right. Nothing these platforms censor or began censoring
| early on was anywhere near reasonable. It was all political
| grandstanding to show those in power that big tech are the
| good guys. They'll do the political bidding of the elites and
| politicians will only threaten to hold companies responsible
| to gain points with their constituents. All the while the
| politicians and big tech are in bed with each ensuring the
| information they don't want shared isn't shared.
|
| People who think any platform has the right to censor
| information scare the shit out of me. Save for things that
| are illegal, every platform should be neutral. Moderation
| should algorithmically be tied to the law.
| namlem wrote:
| So users who troll and harass other users, spam, post
| hateful content, etc. should never be banned? That's just
| leads to a precipitous decline in quality and drives other
| users away. Why would I want to spend my leisure time on a
| platform filled with 13 year-old shouting racial slurs?
| ryanSrich wrote:
| Let the people decide. HN deals with this well enough.
| [deleted]
| namlem wrote:
| Comments can and do get removed for violating the rules
| here. As they should.
| didibus wrote:
| Isn't "political pressure" here really means "user pressure" ?
|
| My understanding is that users of YouTube pressure YouTube to
| censor some things, YouTube wants to appeal to its user base,
| because customers are important for profit.
|
| Now Germany says that maybe in their position censoring things
| for profit is not legal or something like that and fines them.
| anm89 wrote:
| Valid point. Just pressure in general is probably more
| accurate. Once you bow to user pressure, you still open
| yourself up to political pressure. The political pressure
| probably comes masqueraded as user pressure anyway.
| villgax wrote:
| Pretty similar to what India govt did with farmer protests by
| acting as if it didn't happen & anyone contradicting the govt was
| branded as anti-national for stupid reasons
| pySSK wrote:
| This is the opposite however, where Germany is standing up for
| the rights of people opposed to the the government. I can't
| imagine Modi government doing anything like that.
|
| It would have been similar had India fined YouTube for removing
| videos of farmer protests.
| holoduke wrote:
| A good move. Everything so big as YouTube should follow national
| laws. Otherwise private terms of policies become more part of
| society than national ones. Then the hundreds of years of
| fighting becomes nothing and we are back in a modern kingdom
| based society.
| chomp wrote:
| What's the law in question? If someone posts something that (in
| my opinion alone) is ridiculous as a comment on my blog and I
| remove it, would I have to pay a fine in Germany? Why is it okay
| for the government to compel speech?
|
| Edit: Looks like it's for not upholding its terms of service.
| dqpb wrote:
| What would you think about a telecom that prevents you from
| calling someone because of the things they've been saying over
| the phone?
| chomp wrote:
| I'd say I'd find a new telecom. Or I'd start or invest in a
| competitor. At what size and revenue does one lose the
| ability to remove speech they don't agree with? If someone
| posts publicly viewable speech, is it my rite to bear that
| speech forever?
| Navarr wrote:
| What's the law they ran afoul of here?
|
| I'm getting the impression from the Google Translate'd version of
| this[1] article, that they violated a contract with the company?
|
| [1]:
| https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article232421961/OLG...
| er4hn wrote:
| It looks like the issue was the amount of time that Google took
| to comply. Per the article:
|
| > "With the historically high fine, the Higher Regional Court
| makes it very clear that court decisions must be observed
| without restriction, regardless of whether YouTube assumes a
| violation of its guidelines or not,"
| red_trumpet wrote:
| If I understand correctly, the fine was imposed because Youtube
| failed to comply with the order of the court to make the video
| accessible again, which took them several weeks (20. April -
| 14. May 2020).
|
| What confuses me is that the article states the video was
| removed in January, which would only make sense if it was
| January 2021, because January 2020 there were no restrictions
| in Switzerland. Maybe the above date should be May 2021.
|
| I think the relevant piece from the Welt article is this:
|
| > Es [the court] kam unter anderem zu dem Schluss, die
| geanderten Richtlinien seien nicht wirksam in den Vertrag mit
| dem Accountbetreiber einbezogen worden. Hierzu sei ein
| Anderungsvertrag erforderlich. Der blosse Hinweis, dass es
| kunftig Anderungen geben konne, genuge nicht.
|
| Roughly translated, the changed ToS of Youtube were not
| contractually effective, because the user was not asked to
| accept them. Stating that changes can happen any time is not
| enough.
| onli wrote:
| Should be about something else than ToS, the quote is talking
| about a contract. The news is not sufficient to understand
| what supposedly happened there. That the Youtuber had a
| contract with Youtube, is that common? Maybe the court judged
| the partner program agreements as one?
|
| That "future changes may apply without notice" is invalid in
| Germany, that's evident. Companies writing bullshit like that
| in AGBs (ToS) or contracts don't realize Germany is not the
| US, they need a new legal team.
|
| If the news is correct you are right about the fine being
| about ignoring the court, not about removing the video in the
| first place. With a fine that high it has to be about that,
| there is no way removing a regular video could cause this.
| Basically the court saw youtube in contempt of the court,
| kinda.
|
| Might also be politically charged though, East Germany is
| highly penetrated by Nazis and with a high percentage of
| corona deniers. Depends on the judge of course whether that
| was a factor here.
| Navarr wrote:
| Yeah, it's pretty clear the fine is about not obeying the
| court.
|
| But I was asking why the court was forcing them to re-
| instate a video in the first place.
| onli wrote:
| Right, that part makes no sense at all to me. Even if the
| ToS did not include a fitting clause for the
| misinformation removal I see no binding right for the
| user to have his video hosted. That's why I added the
| tangent about the political environment in Dresden.
| yorwba wrote:
| The ToS provide the binding right for the user to have
| the video hosted. It's in the name "terms of service":
| you follow the terms and in return you're provided with a
| service. In this case, the plaintiff complied with the
| terms but was denied service. The court didn't approve of
| that. I doubt it has anything to do with their political
| alignment.
| onli wrote:
| You're probably right. I assumed that there is a clause
| in the AGB permitting Youtube to in general not host a
| video if they don't want to. Or that there is something
| creating a Hausrecht in there, given them the right to
| chose a customer. Doesn't seem to be the case.
| eqvinox wrote:
| > What's the law they ran afoul of here?
|
| None. They violated their civil contract with the user AND
| failed to fix it within 3 months. cf. toplevel post:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27838603
| partiallypro wrote:
| Merkel has stated that she didn't believe it was good that
| Facebook/Twitter banned Trump from their platforms fwiw.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| It's a common idea in Europe, many dissidents like Navalny were
| disappointed. American left lives in their own bubble and
| cherry picks things from Europe they like and ignore the rest.
| jacob2484 wrote:
| She also very strongly condemned what happened on Jan 6 and
| blamed Trump for it. She's right on both fronts.
| nnamtr wrote:
| Merkel grew up in a country where you could be "banned" for
| anything. I'm not surprised that she doesn't like the idea of
| private companies deciding according to their own (not
| democraticly chosen) rules who should speak and who shouldn't.
| namlem wrote:
| I don't see why Trump should be above the terms of service that
| all other users have to abide by.
| supergirl wrote:
| it's not really about TOS though. it's about Twitter being
| legally allowed to remove any content from their website for
| whatever reason. the question is should they be allowed to do
| this given the monopoly they have.
|
| But I find it hilarious that Twitter/Google/etc. champion
| "free speech" in Russia, China, etc. yet in US they literally
| censored the sitting president and many people are OK with
| this.
| namlem wrote:
| There is certainly an argument to be made against arbitrary
| removals of content. I agree that perhaps there should be
| limits on networks above a certain size. However, Twitter
| banning Trump was anything but arbitrary. The fact that
| they didn't ban him sooner despite his frequent violations
| of their TOS is evidence that they were biased in his
| favor, if anything.
| bellyfullofbac wrote:
| Sure he was "sitting president" but he was actually stoking
| flames of violence the day he got banned.
|
| In general Twitter was a terrible enabler for Trump, he's
| such a coward that he didn't dare firing people face to
| face, he fired people with tweets. And it made him a
| keyboard hero conveniently attacking people using it, if he
| had to go in front of the press to spout his bullshit he
| surely would've been more reserved, because there'd be
| direct pushback for everything he said.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| You're right the tos should be equally applied across the
| board. However, they're not. Twitter and other social media
| sites do not apply tos fairly.
| elevenoh wrote:
| Is youtube really that willing to kill their reputation in the
| eyes of all truth seekers?
| yreg wrote:
| Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I believe a website should be
| able to choose what videos it hosts.
|
| If it wants to host anything legal, liveleak-style - then that's
| fine.
|
| But if it decides to remove whatever video it wants then that
| also should be fine.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| It's not a website, it's almost every video on the internet and
| competitors can't exist because of network effects
| eli wrote:
| Sounds like an antitrust problem not a content policy problem
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Yes, you are right, but until the antitrust problem is
| solved, it is a content policy problem.
| FabHK wrote:
| It should still stick to the contract it has made with its
| users (ToS). So just say that you reserve that right upfront.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| That's fine until a business monopolizes the entire industry
| and starts working in collusion with other tech companies to
| remove content they deem inappropriate.
| rocqua wrote:
| This would work so much better in a federated model.
|
| One where there are multiple mutually compatible YouTube
| providers. If your current provider has a weird content policy,
| then you move. If all providers have a policy you don't like,
| then either you start your own, or you happen to be at the
| fringe of society.
|
| People so far at the fringe that they cannot gather momentum
| (especially on the internet) are either clearly wrong, or
| illegal. The second option still gives avenues for censorship.
| But hopefully democratic principles keep that under control.
| [deleted]
| supergirl wrote:
| the fine is for not obeying the court order to put back the
| video:
|
| > "With the historically high fine, the Higher Regional Court
| makes it very clear that court decisions must be observed without
| restriction, regardless of whether YouTube assumes a violation of
| its guidelines or not," an attorney for the plaintiff, Joachin
| Steinhoefel, said in a statement on Twitter.
| johnnyApplePRNG wrote:
| Anyone have a link to the actual video in question?
| eqvinox wrote:
| I've tried to find the actual court decision, best match seems to
| be 4 W 118/21 (enter on
| https://www.justiz.sachsen.de/esamosplus/pages/index.aspx under
| "Aktenzeichen" & click "suchen", can't see any obvious way to
| link the PDF...)
|
| However, that document does not actually order a fine. It warns
| about imposing one ("up to 250'000EUR") if Youtube doesn't remedy
| the problem. Considering it's now exactly 3 months later
| (decision dates April 13th), that lines up.
|
| From what I understand (not a lawyer, yadda yadda) this is a
| purely civil matter and doesn't really go as far as some
| statement on free speech. The issue discussed mostly seems to
| revolve around which terms of service are valid and how they can
| be changed.
| FabHK wrote:
| IANAL. But reading the "Urteil", it seems that it is rather
| technical in nature. In particular, someone uploaded a video. YT
| said that it violated its COVID-19 guidelines and removed it.
| Plaintiff said, listen, we had a contract, you can't just delete
| my stuff. YT said, well, the movie contravenes the current
| COVID-19 guidelines. Plaintiff said, well, but it doesn't
| contravene the guidelines you had at the time we made the
| contract. YT says, fair enough, but we changed the guidelines.
| Court says, you can't just unilaterally change the ToS unless you
| make a new contract. YT said, well, we said we could change the
| guidelines. Court says, yeah, but just saying that the guidelines
| might change does not give you the right to change the guidelines
| unilaterally unless you say in the ToS not only that you might
| change the ToS but that you reserve the right to unilaterally
| change the ToS and then notify the user of the changed ToS and
| then have the user agree to the new ToS (either explicitly or
| implicitly by continuing to use the service). Thus, old ToS
| apply. So, don't remove the video that was in line with old
| guidelines.
|
| TLDR:
|
| - YT has to pay a fine because the court says, look, there was a
| contract, stick to it, and they didn't stick to it.
|
| - This has nothing to do with COVID-19, or free speech. It's
| purely contract law.
|
| - My prediction: YT will change its ToS and include the pertinent
| clauses, we'll all agree to the new ones, and then they'll be
| able to delete anything they want anytime they want (in
| accordance with their new ToS).
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| > "We have a responsibility to connect our users with trustworthy
| information and to combat misinformation during Covid-19."
|
| Who gave them that responsibility? I didn't. If no one did, why
| do they think they have that responsibility? Do they feel that
| they are the final authority on all matters that they forget that
| their users are humans capable of coming to their own
| conclusions?
| bjoli wrote:
| Do you believe that a central part in how many people interact
| with the internet doesnt have any moral responsibilities?
| [deleted]
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| We blame Youtube/Google management, but in reality it's as much a
| tyranny of the company's employees and their political leanings.
|
| We've done a terrible job the last 30 years promoting national
| security literacy and constitutional integrity preservation to
| our youth.
|
| It may well be this country's undoing. No exaggeration.
| jacob2484 wrote:
| Couldn't agree more
| [deleted]
| throwawayswede wrote:
| Good. I'd rather live in chaos than a world controlled by these
| technocrats.
|
| Let's do Twitter while we're at it.
| strogonoff wrote:
| Losing control is what big social wants. The more they are
| regulated, the more intimate they are with the government, the
| safer and more entrenched their status. They already enjoy
| network effects and lock-in of their users; more rules widen
| the moat around the established players who got huge in the
| early unregulated days.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Saying things like "big social" does not make your argument
| more persuasive. It just makes you sound like part of the
| lunatic fringe. It also leaves people like me rather confused
| about what your point was in the first sentence.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| So it's proper behavior for you to go around calling names
| because you're confused? Get a grip.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I don't think "big social" is a term used by any group of
| people, including people you disagree with. I think it's a
| neologism and it's a comprehensible one. I interpret it as
| a big business doing social media.
| the_optimist wrote:
| Certainly not all forms of regulation result in regulatory
| capture. Simply following this German model where
| Google/Youtube isn't allowed to censor certain ideas doesn't
| lend itself to regulatory capture.
| rocqua wrote:
| The advantage is not just 'regulatory capture'. There is
| also an inherent moat in being a regulated industry.
|
| Any new players will need to figure out the regulations,
| compliance, licenses and pitfalls before they can start to
| challenge you. That is a lot of upfront costs that will
| take a long time to recoup. Hence helping the old players
| remain entrenched.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| And the more compliance becomes a cost, the harder it is for
| underfunded upstarts to sneak in & grab marketshare.
| chapium wrote:
| I don't understand this, is controlling youtube's database that
| google hosts equivalent to controlling the "world"?
| rolobio wrote:
| Not yet, but its close. How many people know how to search
| the internet without Google? Google has become so ubiquitous
| that people are totally reliant on them. Look at Tulsi
| Gabbard, her advertising account was "accidentally" taken
| down after a successful presidential debate, making it so
| people couldn't find her.
|
| Sure they're a private company, and they made a mistake. But
| the direction of the mistakes are always in the direction the
| people running the company lean politically.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210322220851/https://www.nytim.
| ..
| xxpor wrote:
| State violence is being used to force a private company to host
| content it finds objectionable. Who's the technocrat here?
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either Youtube needs
| to stop censoring videos or it needs to go through every
| single video it has and that gets uploaded
| scotty79 wrote:
| Platform shouldn't have the right to an opinion on content.
|
| Same way that when you open a store you can't pick and choose
| your customers.
|
| Platforms should just obey law and at most create a process
| where users and lawmakers can express and enforce their
| opinion on content.
| root_axis wrote:
| > _Platform shouldn 't have the right to an opinion on
| content._
|
| Why?
|
| > _Same way that when you open a store you can 't pick and
| choose your customers._
|
| Of course you can, you just can't refuse service based on
| legally protected classes, that's the exception not the
| rule.
|
| > _Platforms should just obey law and at most create a
| process where users and lawmakers can express and enforce
| their opinion on content._
|
| Platforms should operate their sites however they like
| within the confines of the law and individual users can
| decide which sites they prefer to use based on how those
| sites operate.
| scotty79 wrote:
| >> Platform shouldn't have the right to an opinion on
| content.
|
| > Why?
|
| Because if it has that right it should have the full
| responsibility for everything it publishes. With no
| leeway.
|
| >> Same way that when you open a store you can't pick and
| choose your customers.
|
| > Of course you can, you just can't refuse service based
| on legally protected classes, that's the exception not
| the rule.
|
| Depends on the local law. For example in Poland if you
| have a store and you put up some good for sale and mark
| it with a price, you can't refuse it to sell it to anyone
| that is willing to pay that price. No special classes,
| just a simple rule. If you are selling, you are selling.
|
| > Platforms should operate their sites however they like
| within the confines of the law and individual users can
| decide which sites they prefer to use based on how those
| sites operate.
|
| Right, and the law should say that they can't have an
| opinion about the content they publish, and they can't
| take down or promote stuff based on that opinion.
| tedunangst wrote:
| Should movie theaters be allowed to select which movies
| they show?
| bobthechef wrote:
| Not absolutely. They shouldn't be able to show porn, for
| example, or some other destructive content. (And no, it's
| not a question of taste or opinion. That relativist claim
| is worthless and tired. We're not talking about vanilla
| or chocolate ice cream here.) I suppose in this
| particular case (and that matters: things like this can
| be particular) you would just criminalize those sorts of
| movies.
|
| The idea that we shouldn't do such things because
| government could be used to impose horrible things is a
| bad one. Driving a car could kill you, but you wouldn't
| ban cars for that reason because cars are not bad in
| principle nor are they so dangerous that they should be
| banned. They are regulated, however, and this is good.
| Const-me wrote:
| There're many movie theaters, but only one youtube in the
| whole world.
|
| Youtube and facebook are natural monopolies due to their
| network effect.
|
| All the older natural monopolies, water networks,
| electricity networks, landline phone networks, railroad
| networks, and the rest of them are either nationalized,
| or regulated heavily.
|
| It's long overdue to add social networks to the list.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| There's only one YouTube, but lots of video sharing
| sites. You can put your material on Bitchute, Vimeo, ....
| Const-me wrote:
| Youtube's monopoly is not video hosting, there're many
| ways to do that.
|
| Their monopoly is their social network. People want to
| publish video where the audience is, the global audience
| happen to be on youtube, and going to stay there because
| that's where most videos are.
| rhcom2 wrote:
| > Same way that when you open a store you can't pick and
| choose your customers.
|
| But you can mostly pick and choose your customers outside
| of discriminating against a protect class (in the US). If
| you don't want to do business with people with brown hair,
| no one is stopping you.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| _> Same way that when you open a store you can 't pick
| and choose your customers. But you can mostly pick and
| choose your customers outside of discriminating against a
| protect class (in the US). If you don't want to do
| business with people with brown hair, no one is stopping
| you._
|
| "genetic information" is a protected class, so you could
| not discriminate against anyone based on their natural
| hair color. You could however ban people with blue hair.
|
| edit: Even if genetic information doesn't work for hair
| color. "Color" is already a protected class, so it's a
| moot point.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Are you sure about that? Suppose I have a store and wish
| to ban redheads.
| gowld wrote:
| Has that been tested in court?
| tynpeddler wrote:
| > Same way that when you open a store you can't pick and
| choose your customers.
|
| The same way a store can't kick someone out who's running
| around saying racial slurs to everyone?
|
| The same way the New York Times is required to print every
| letter to the editor that is sent to them?
|
| The store example doesn't hold up at all for a number of
| reasons and online communities have had extra legal
| standards since the beginning of the internet.
| scotty79 wrote:
| > The same way a store can't kick someone out who's
| running around saying racial slurs to everyone?
|
| They can but not because the store has negative opinion
| about this behavior but because that behaving disorderly
| in public place is against the law. Actually they should
| just call the cops.
| jacob2484 wrote:
| NY Times is not a platform
| throwawayswede wrote:
| NYT Opinion page (essence bullshit basically) is.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Are you arguing (consistent with your comment above) that
| NYT-O must publish all submissions?
| scotty79 wrote:
| If NYT does the selection and curation then it's not.
| Same way opinion piece inspired by what author heard from
| other people is not a platform for those people.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| NYT Opinion page is not a "public square"
|
| In America at least, there are different sets of rules
| for different types of business.
|
| A curated opinion piece, carefully chosen by experienced
| editors, is vastly different from a public swimming pool.
| For the first, that filter, that exclusivity, that
| editorializing is part of the draw. It's good because
| it's a filter, not a platform. The public pool should not
| be a filter, and yes, sometimes there are weird things
| that float in there, and it takes effort to clean up, but
| that's the cost of being open to the public.
| username90 wrote:
| > The same way a store can't kick someone out who's
| running around saying racial slurs to everyone?
|
| They can't kick out whoever they want, governments
| regulate that. And here Germany decided that Youtube
| can't kick out people for a particular reason. It is the
| same concept.
| [deleted]
| lovich wrote:
| You can pick and choose your customers in the US at least?
|
| There's a carve out of protections against discriminating
| based on membership in a protected class, but you can
| totally decide to get up one day and not provide service to
| anyone whose ever worn a hat for instance
| charonn0 wrote:
| Stores can pick and choose their customers. It all depends
| on the basis for the decision.
| ihumanable wrote:
| If YouTube is a store, them taking down a video isn't them
| picking and choosing their customers it's them picking and
| choosing the product they put on their shelf.
|
| Which is generally a thing left up to the store owner and
| not the government.
| username90 wrote:
| No, whitelists vs blacklists. A store blacklists some
| customers from entering, but in general most can enter. A
| store doesn't let most people put wares on its shelves,
| that is a whitelist. Youtube blacklists video uploads and
| otherwise allows everything, so it follows the same logic
| as customers entering a store.
| verall wrote:
| > Same way that when you open a store you can't pick and
| choose your customers.
|
| In America, you can, as long as it is not based on a
| protected class. The "burden of proof" (either "beyond a
| reasonable double" for criminal or "a preponderance of
| evidence" in civil) is not on the business, but on the
| rejected customer.
|
| Further, as this is talking about content that they are
| required to host, rather than restricting who is viewing a
| video, a more accurate analogy is a store picking their
| distributors. Which they obviously do.
| throwawayswede wrote:
| The company doesn't find anything objectionable. It's the Who
| (a political org that has nothing to do with science) that is
| dictating what YouTube should do. YouTube and other
| technocrats believe that can tell people how and what they
| should think. With that being said, forcing a private company
| with state violence is not good either, unfortunately there's
| no magic wand to wave and reset everything. We shouldn't be
| pragmatic, but we have to be practical.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I see where you're coming from but I disagree that the WHO
| is the source or the holder of power. They don't have
| enough money for that.
|
| The WHO is probably just another puppet in the hands of
| richer state actors, as the infamous Taiwan Skype Interview
| show us: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fASh2_RzMuE
|
| Besides, I don't even think the people involved in YouTube
| and on a similar level are directly influenced by anyone.
| They're just a liberal company parroting their party's
| political line and not noticing how totalitarian these
| measures are.
|
| It's people higher up setting the party line that are
| probably on the payroll of richer state actors. Most likely
| they also own the opposition to make sure nothing happens
| whoever is elected.
| mousepilot wrote:
| >YouTube and other technocrats believe that can tell people
| how and what they should think.
|
| If you go to youtube to be told what to think then you're
| probably using the internet for things it wasn't designed
| for lol
| ModernMech wrote:
| > It's the Who (a political org that has nothing to do with
| science) that is dictating what YouTube should do.
|
| How are they dictating this? What power does the WHO have
| over YouTube to force them to make this decision?
| xdennis wrote:
| Google hosts billions of hours of video. It doesn't mind a
| few videos. They never argued that the costs are an issue.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| What are your thoughts on net neutrality?
| bobthechef wrote:
| What about private industry violence? Don't make Google out
| to be some victim. Private industry is pushing social changes
| that the US government could never dream of doing, not at
| this scale. Fear of government overreach needs to be balanced
| with fear of oligarchic overreach and corporate power.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| I wonder if you would agree to the following equivalent:
|
| > State violence is being used to force a christian bakery to
| bake (gay/muslim/etc) cakes it finds objectionable. Who's the
| villain here?
|
| The more you open service to the public, the more control
| over your output you lose because then it becomes a matter of
| discrimination.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| Why are they equivalent?
| vageli wrote:
| Both are instances of the state compelling a private
| enterprise to act in a way that is against the
| enterprise's interests.
| bobthechef wrote:
| But isn't it coercive to force the baker to make something
| against his ethical and religious beliefs?
|
| Relativism doesn't really work, does it. There must be
| objective standards. Otherwise, power is all that matters.
| hvac wrote:
| Having a certain political opinion is not a protected class
| in the US
| throwawayswede wrote:
| That's not what this is about. In both cases, the state
| is forcing an company to do something they don't want.
| The only difference is that you agree with the one but
| not the other.
| hvac wrote:
| Yes, because the difference is that they are essentially
| immutable personal traits. The parent was presenting this
| scenario as an equivalent one and I don't think they are.
| throwawayswede wrote:
| Personal traits are always mutable. What seems (and may
| be) immutable to you could be mutable to others.
| hvac wrote:
| It's technically true that you could find some way to dye
| your skin a different colour, but I don't think most
| people would find that to be a realistic solution to
| anything.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| How is religion any more or less immutable from political
| beliefs? In my view both are fully equivalent.
| hvac wrote:
| In some cases (e.g. Jews, Amish) the lines between
| race/religion/national origin become pretty blurry. I
| agree that it's the most ambiguous of the classes,
| though.
| username90 wrote:
| Religion is a protected class to stop zealots from waging
| wars on each other, got to nip it in the bud before
| tension builds up. It is a very rational reason even if
| the protection shouldn't be needed in theory.
| xdennis wrote:
| It is in some cases (such as employment) in certain
| states. Ironically they were often enacted by left wing
| legislators, but are now being used to defend right
| wingers.
| charonn0 wrote:
| Youtube isn't making the videos, though.
| contravariant wrote:
| Perhaps more importantly, _what_ is 'technocrat' here?
|
| Because I'm fairly sure none of the accepted meanings make
| any sense.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Really? You'd rather your children died of a preventable
| disease than YT ban antivax lies? Really?
| byset wrote:
| Can't one frame either side of any controversy using these
| sorts of histrionics? This makes us all stupider.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| That's sort of my point: people make histrionic statements
| about freedom and chaos. Then you point out what those
| actually mean...
| philovivero wrote:
| Just stop. Repeat after me: "My apologies. I got a bit
| angry and said some things I didn't mean."
| bobthechef wrote:
| That's a false dichotomy. No society has ever been on any
| extreme, certainly not a livable one.
|
| While there are inviolable limits to what is morally
| acceptable, and things you should never do, you cannot decide
| everything beforehand because some things are highly contingent
| on circumstances. So this is a never-ending process of
| determining those things. It's called prudence.
| cauliflower2718 wrote:
| The article calls this a "historically high fine". It's also
| _really_ small compared to the scale of YouTube dollars, i.e. for
| YouTube to care (about this fine in isolation).
| throwawayswede wrote:
| True. It's definitely not enough to send people off their
| loops. But hopefully it's a step in the right direction. My
| prediction is that in the next 2 to 3 years more detail will
| emerge on the massive scam that is lockdowns. I don't expect
| people to go back and evaluate their behavior towards others
| who did not believe the media scam (from people being
| aggressive towards people deciding not to wear mask for
| example), but I hope that it'll be a step in the reversion of
| group-think.
|
| Edit: People continuously downvote my negative comments about
| lockdowns. I leave you with this before you downvote:
|
| https://twitter.com/janesays22/status/1415354369126457346
|
| > I turned 18 in Feb 2020. I lost my friends, my education, the
| first year of my adult life, my mental health, and 20lbs.
|
| > I didn't make sacrifices.
|
| > I was sacrificed.
|
| Look up: https://gbdeclaration.org/ - http://pandata.org/
| ipaddr wrote:
| Youtube classified this as "misinformation". They have the
| power to crush any voice and they are.
|
| I hope a crisis takes some power away from them.
| throwawayswede wrote:
| In a sense, if people don't stop bullshit, no one will stop
| it for them. The state can't and shouldn't (ideally) stop
| YouTube from removing what they don't want to host, but
| people should hold YouTube accountable. If people don't
| stop using YouTube to make a point to them that their
| arbitrary decisions are not ok with them, nothing will
| really stop them. With that being said, I'm always hopeful
| that people will eventually see that forcefully removing
| something from the conversation (aka banning it, like
| banning doctors talking their successful experiences with
| hydroxychloroquine very early because some kids at youtube
| believe that a political org like WHO is more credible than
| actual experienced doctors) won't eliminate it, it'll just
| make it grow in the shadows, allowing other scammers to
| make use of the situation. And the cycle continues.
| kristofferR wrote:
| Misinformation is a really dangerous concept. Sure, bad
| information certainly exists, but a lot of things
| throughout history have been labeled "misinformation"
| before it became confirmed information.
| djrogers wrote:
| > a lot of things throughout history have been labeled
| "misinformation" before it became confirmed information.
|
| Heck, we don't even need to go back too far in history -
| a lot of COVID-19 information was labeled
| "misinformation" before being proven correct/possibly
| true.
| throwawayswede wrote:
| Lab theory people were called conspiracy theorists this
| exact same time last year. Now they're on mainstream
| fucking tv. And don't you dare mention china or you'd be
| labelled a trump fan. Now that's cool cuz uncle joe
| okayed it.
|
| If anything, this shows the zombies that the people are.
| Anything TV says is truth. A stupid short report from an
| online magazine made some late show host make a short
| skit about it and boom, like wild fire. I call total bs
| on that whole thing. This entire COVID response has been
| political from DAY 1. Western countries response has not
| only been shameful, but absolutely reprehensibly.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| Totally different case, totally different country, but FYI :
| France this week condemned Google for not reaching an agreement
| with newspapers. 500MEUR. They have 2 months to negotiate more
| earnestly, failing that they will get a further fine of 900kEUR
| / day. Until they reach an agreement.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| So generally what has been happening is there's a fine that's
| meager by Google's standards, but also a demand for a change in
| behavior. If compliance isn't met, the government will start
| fining them _daily_. I believe the announcement France made
| yesterday came with a large single fine, a window for
| compliance, and then a daily fine of nearly a million Euros
| _per day_ if they don 't comply in time.
|
| The goal is to incentivize change, not extract financial
| benefit for the country. So your first penalty isn't huge in
| itself, but it's designed to make it clear that noncompliance
| in the long run will be less profitable.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| Great! Time to bring this ideological principles to the US.
| the_optimist wrote:
| Does anyone have a link to the argument from Youtube/Google on
| why they chose to remove videos of this documentary information?
|
| Was there some philosophy that they claimed to be representing?
| What was the basis?
|
| Can this be interpreted in any way other than a vulgar attempt to
| misrepresent historic reality?
| spfzero wrote:
| I believe they'd say it fell under their "covid misinformation"
| ban. I don't know how they can say that some video of a thing
| that actually happened, as it was happening, could be
| "misinformation", but that term gets to be interpreted however
| anyone wants these days.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-07-14 23:01 UTC)