You'd be surprised by how many people think their First Amendment rights are trampled on by Twitter/Facebook/Google...

If so they're wrong, but that doesn't change the fact that as users of Youtube, we have an absolute right to exercise our actual First Amendment rights of free speech and assembly, by complaining about Youtube's unsatisfactory service and moving to other platforms. The fact that Youtube has a legal right to do what they're doing is completely beside the point.

Is that more than the people who think that without Net Neutrality, Comcast, Cox, ATT will trample their First Amendment rights?

Is that common? My impression is that most people are basically worried that lack of net neutrality regulation means they might eventually get charged more for Netflix.

There are two relevant concepts here, and it's not surprising people get them a little confused. One is the natural right of free expression, the other is the First Amendment. The latter is a law meant to protect the former against a particularly powerful organization, the US Government. It wasn't even originally part of the constitution because founders thought free expression was an inalienable right retained by the people, so explicitly guaranteeing it was redundant. So, I think it's a forgivable offense when someone complains that their "First Amendment" rights are being violated when their free expression rights are being violated by a particularly powerful organization that's not the US government.

There are plenty of other platforms out there for the people who believe their first amendments are being violated. Youtube is going to do whatever it must to protect itself from losing money and consumers. If it turns out the majority of the population is disgusted by gun rights propaganda, and that content starts littering youtube, people are going to start moving away from the platform. Logically, they are going to remove the content that reduces their revenue. This is just a hunch though.

People calling it censorship yesterday (on this forum) don't seem to understand the meaning of the word.

Censorship is the correct term for any organization restricting content. E.g. a parent restricting a child's TV is censorship. The First Ammendment only deals with censorship by the US Government.

OK then the word has no meaning because every community has rules and the right to organize and self moderate.

That is what is happening. You do not get to force your voice on another person's platform.

How is that justice?

How is it not censorship? It is legal, and they're not violating anything, but it is still censorship, because they are censoring something. It doesn't have to be illegal for it to be censorship.

It is a definitional thing. We're talking about law; definitions are important. Here is a somewhat useful starting point:

https://www.aclu.org/other/what-censorship

Because Google is a private company is why it is NOT censorship.

The word "censor" doesn't exclusively apply to government actions though.

yeah I don't think that the definition of censorship has any caveats to it to indicate the actor must be a public entity.

It's censorship, it's just legal censorship because it's not the government doing it.

That's not what censorship means.

Here's what Merriam Webster says censorship means:

>1 a : the institution, system, or practice of censoring

>"They oppose government censorship."

The example use calls out government censorship as a specific type of censorship. If "censorship" meant "the government censoring things" you would not need to specify "government censorship" in that sentence.

Yes, I know that dictionary definitions are not necessarily the final word on what something means, but they're absolutely correct here. It is a broad word and it is widely used in other contexts. People other than the government can censor things.

For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_censorship

I think that’s kind of ignoring the outsized impact these huge companies have on our lives.

Youtube holds a pretty dominating market share of video sharing but there are 10+ other relatively large sites that you could host the content in question on. There's a difference between access and an audience - youtube shouldn't be obligated to give an audience to content they don't like. People are free to migrate to other platforms (case in point - phub) if they so choose.

people are basically complaining about market share through the lens of oppression and it is sickening.

Actually, I think what you meant to say is that the definition of the word censor has nothing to do with the first amendment or even government. Censorship is the "official" capacity of someone to prevent someone else from publishing. The official person could be an official of government or a private company as far as the definition is concerned.

define censor - https://www.google.com/search?q=define+censor

1. an official who examines material that is about to be released, such as books, movies, news, and art, and suppresses any parts that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.

2. (in ancient Rome) either of two magistrates who held censuses and supervised public morals.

3. examine (a book, movie, etc.) officially and suppress unacceptable parts of it.

So, Youtube and others are indeed censoring you when they do not allow you to publish certain videos.

Great, but every content platform has rules and censorship. The term doesn't mean much in that context.

A private platform saying "You cannot say whatever you want on my microphone" is not censorship in any meaningful sense when you are free to pick up your own microphone.

No one says you have a right to the users on a specific platform. I can't go on CNN and start ranting, so why should I be able to say anything I want with Youtube not able to moderate the content?

It doesn't make sense. You cannot force private platforms to accept views against their economic interests and call that freedom.

If someone says you will go to jail for saying something, that is censorship.

> So, Youtube and others are indeed censoring you when they do not allow you to publish certain videos.

Except YouTube does not prevent you from publishing your videos. They only prevent you from publishing them on YouTube. You can publish them on another platform, or self-publish them.

Censorship is usually taken to mean suppressing or attempting to suppress a work from being published at all across some reasonably large population, which is generally something only governments have the power to do.

One might make a case that a private organization that has acquired a monopoly or near monopoly could do so, but YouTube is not yet there.

Censorship becomes an interesting tag, plausibly accurate, if the US Government regulates platforms further to such a degree that they make competing with them a lot more difficult, due to compliance cost & risk. That is, if the government effectively protects & entreches the existing giant platforms through regulatory action. Then these entities become something a lot closer to regulated broadcast platforms akin to radio or TV with ABC, NBC, etc. before the advent of expanded media thanks to the Internet.

Hasn't happened so why speculate?

This. Non-nerds don't, as a rule, understand the distinction.

I have had to explain why it is a category error so many times that I have it down to a quick patter now, in a couple of forms - one for quick explanation, one as a socratic QA. The latter seems to work better for people who shout loudly about their Constitutional rights.

The non-nerds are right and the nerds are being weird pedants.

Going all well-actually and giving people the verbal equivalent of xkcd 1357 lets everyone know you're one of those people.

Law is a pedantic field.

If I'm bullshitting over a beer, no I don't do that. If I'm having a serious conversation about real things, yes; I prefer to talk about reality. I take it you don't?