Youtube is part of a public, non-state-controlled entity. As such, it has close to nothing to do with democracy as a form of government. It does have a social impact, which then influences democracy. As such, Youtube, and FB and Twitter and all the others, do have a responsibility for all of us. And they have to be held accountable for their actions, up to know they just raked in the profits and gave shit about anything else. Them now changing that is a good thing.

What I don't see in your response is an actual argument for how YouTube doing something which not democratic is good for democracy.

> up to know they just raked in the profits and gave shit about anything else. Them now changing that is a good thing.

Censoring unpopular and controversial views on their platform makes it more attractive for advertisers, which is good for YouTube's bottom line. This action in no way indicates an renunciation of a profit motive.

I think the idea is to censor untrue and dangerous ideas rather than unpopular ideas. Yes, determining that is challenging. But denying COVID, for example, is very dangerous to all of society. Thousands of people are dying because of COVID deniers.

To me, this is theoretically similar as if a massive video campaign was messaging you to drink bleach. I’m sure that sort of video is against YouTube’s terms of service — at least, I would hope that it is!

The difference is really that some lunatic could stand in Times Square and scream that we should all drink bleach. But in that public forum, no one would take them seriously, and plenty would deride them. But with a great production value, paid influencers, just the right wording and messaging, you can manipulate social networks into spreading very dangerous information and actually making people believe things that can kill them. I think that problem, gone unchecked, leads to serious consequences and it would be in the best interest of society as a whole to fix it.

> But with a great production value, paid influencers, just the right wording and messaging, you can manipulate social networks into spreading very dangerous information and actually making people believe things that can kill them.

Clearly, you’d need an arbiter that is immune to such influences. Someone who knows what’s really true and can sensor the misinformation despite its high production values. I think the interesting question is where you’d find such an oracle, and how you’d convince it to work for YouTube.

Someone not human then I guess??

> I think the idea is to censor untrue and dangerous ideas rather than unpopular ideas.

I would definitely agree that if all viewpoints except mine were eliminated the world would be a better place.

I'd say this way of thinking is un-democratic, and deeply dangerous.

Maybe it would help if I thought all viewpoint except mine were untrue and dangerous.

Quite the contrary. Because that would make the underlying idea, but not the specific legalities, of free speech completely useless for you.

The point being, nothing Youtube does is un-democratic to beginn with.

And up to now, Youtube and FB gained from contrversial content, not the other way round.

You are entitled to your opinion and to say it in public. You are not entitled to be protected from the social consequences. And if what you say is true, that this move drives the add revenue, that is only because people want to distance themselves from these views. Which would tell us something about public views. I just don't thin that is the case.

Holding them accountable by giving them more power sounds like a losing strategy. Because that is exactly what the "pressure on big tech" has done in favor of classical publishers that thank them by favoring their censorious actions in articles.

They already have all the power you can think of when it comes to the content on their platforms. They just use it differently now.

There was an understanding that they don't remove content they disagree with and would get criticism in return if they do. Now people want them to do exactly that. That is far worse in my opinion, especially for those without power.

> Them now changing that is a good thing.

I agree but it's not selfless or altruism. In the EU they are one law away from being effectively shut down.

The EU commission is eyeing the behavior of social media networks for a while now and the increasing misinformation and radicalization of groups like white supremacists or QAnon pose a very real threat to democracy and society.

If the social media giants like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. don't do anything against this, the EU will make a law that will make the social networks check each and every post for unlawful content.

Oh, I would never go as far as thinking they did this for some altruistic reason. Rather that they finally reached a point where the benefit-risk equation tipped to the other side.

YouTube choosing who gets to manipulate what you are going to see is another reframing of this, that might make more sense.

Since we've seen a considerable amount of what you get when somebody is able to pay YouTube, and pay Facebook, to specify what you're going to see, on a very granular and Big Data level, in a targeted way.

In a real and practical sense YouTube having access to extremely effective social media tools and just hiring them out to any bozo offering money, with no accountability for who's trying to accomplish what, is the thing that's as far from democracy as you can get.

I feel that the people most hot to argue for a 'unmediated' world, and most freaked out if this is challenged, are the people who are in fact putting a lot of time, money and effort into mediating and manipulating this 'unmediated' world to be unrepresentative of reality in a way that benefits them and their intentions.

Then if you do challenge them, they simply lie to your face and say it's all about freedom versus censorship… because to win, they need to retain the ability to mediate the world to their liking, and even to acknowledge that this is possible suggests the possibility that they are already doing it as hard as they can, and know it.

But this is how it's always been, before the web people got their news from a different set of media companies NBC/ABC/CBS. 20th century media conglomerates didn't have the problem of having to censor viral user generated content but they were still censors, and much stricter censors than the social media companies because their channels had more limited information bandwidth so they had to be much more selective about what to broadcast.

Slavery was how it's always been until it stopped being how it's always been. Saying something is how it is is not a reason why it should be the way it is.

If you want to support it, you actually have to make an argument for it.