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A comment on YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views. Parent comment

Re:YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views by ravenstine on Thursday June 06, 2019 @10:08AM (#20114675)
Yet you say that "they can do what they want to an extent." I'm not sure that we disagree at all. I support private businesses right to do what they want, until they become large enough that they've reached "escape velocity", if you will, where they have become so large that it's unlikely that any meaningful competition can come close to matching them in budget or influence. Companies of Google's size should see even fewer freedoms when they get massive kickbacks from the government; Google receives millions in public money but has nebulous "rules" they arbitrarily enforce over the public.

I don't know if breaking up these massive "tech" companies is a good approach, but something has to be done at some point, and there needs to be rules over how YouTube can regulate its platform. At the very least, YouTube needs to be forced to make all of its rules explicit and to not insta-ban entire channels while deleting all their data.

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Re:YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views by CodiePetersen on Thursday June 06, 2019 @01:31PM (#20116857)
I think it's going to be weird and messy whichever way it goes. If it is under government oversight, politics is just going to ruin the whole purpose maybe make it worse. Me and you can have a debate about whether or not neo nazis should have the right to speak their hateful messages without calling eachother nazis. But voters aren't so calm when their elected official slings mud suggestion someone is one because they don't want to ban their speech.

I'll admit though. I'm not so sure what the effect of breaking them up will be. How many services would be lost, how many sites would go down because of lost services, how much money would be lost due to search ranking being ineffective or businesses needing to buy ads from multiple companies. It would hurt a lot of people at least temporarily. But I think long term the Internet and business would thrive after a short term pain. It would definitely have to happen in stages though. Each part of the business broken up into a few.

But yeah I agree, the escape velocity companies you mentioned need to be put in check somehow.

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