I would like to uphold that ideal by putting a political bumper sticker on your car. Can you give me your address so I can send it to you?
If you don't have a car, I can send you a sign to put in your window or a t-shirt with a slogan for you to wear.
I appreciate your cooperation in upholding this important ideal.
Alternatively this could be your next great side hustle: live ad and t-shirt marketing in the gig economy.
But this is also about the practice of ideals. I watched a Chris Martinson video (PhD neurotoxicology, runs something of a prepping channel on YouTube because he doesn't see how the current US approach will resolve comfortably for people who trust the government) on Vimeo the other day because they'd yanked it from YouTube (it discussed the coronavirus). If it has reached the point where YouTube won't let a medical PhD talk about medical research, what use is this platform to me? Music videos, I suppose.
The reason free speech is ideal happens to be because it is better - YouTube is less fit for purpose as an information distributor, it doesn't represent a full spectrum of opinions. I already know what the official government message is - they have a website. I read it on occasion.
Is this self evident? Specifically google, or all and any private platforms? It's not obvious to me that every private entity should hold the ideal of free speech -- particularly a version of free speech that means something different than protection from persecution by the state.
They have their own free speech rights, as well as free association and the rights of free enterprise.
Ideally, discrimination should not exist in something that is promoted as a public forum.
If YouTube only wanted to serve a certain type of genre or they had the same censorship policies from the beginning then that is one thing. But they promoted themselves as open and free speech and then once they achieved critical mass they changed their mind to push their own agenda.
That is dishonest and an abuse of public trust.
As a contrasting example, censoring porn, while still not free speech, would be fine for YouTube to continue to do since they had this stance from the beginning and people chose to join the platform knowing this.
Was this before or after Google? Because Google's interest in the platform is definitely maximizing revenue and competing with first party streaming services.
Advertisers are attacked relentlessly if they advertise on non-liberal media. Been at ad-tech companies and seen this happen in person.
Even 20 years ago this was common pattern for talk radio.
They're certainly possible for alternatives to, say, reddit. These sites already exist. Are you referring to the high costs of serving video?
Forums are one thing.
Hosting huge amounts of videos, adding in all the security to keep DOS from taking out the system is a lot of money.
Oh and since most sites do this all for free, you can’t really change anything either.
Rush used to talk all the time about the nasty calls his clients got.
It was routine for them to get flooded with hate calls.
While I’m sure Textualist/Originalists on the court will find innovations to legislate FB “yelling freedom” rights it has not been a historical norm.
Some services are so large and entrenched that they have become natural monopolies that need to be regulated. We place restrictions on what natural monopolies can do because of the effects on society as a whole.
The question that needs to be debated is if YouTube has reached the status of a natural monopoly or not. I think it probably has, but I am open to evidence on the other side.
Why not use the more natural example? “What if a television network decided the same thing? We will watch your publicly broadcast television show and if you say something we don’t like we will cancel your show.” It’s a lot closer to what’s actually happening in this case, right? And it doesn’t needlessly mix in the hot-button topic of privacy violations.
The parallel is phone companies in the past did listen in to people’s conversation, but this was recognised as an abuse of a monopoly power. Regulations were introduced to stop this sort of activity.
What we should be discussing is how to regulate natural monopolies like YouTube, not if they should be able to just do whatever they like. Like all regulation there will need to be a balance, but society has a vested interest in ensuring natural monopolies are not abusing their power.
Even if YouTube is not abusing its power, the fact it can is a concern.
For Example, Holocaust denial is shitty and something that anyone should be allowed to ban just because they don't want to be associated with it. The problem is that you have to draw the line somewhere between "The Jews faked the Holocaust and none of it ever happened" and " The exact number of deaths in the Holocaust will never been known but it was in the millions". The first statement is clearly false, the second statement could be an attempt to downplay the magnitude of the event, but it is hard to say without context and you may never know the intent of the person who said it.
So? There is a certain revulsion that a lot of engineers have for situational decision making, but that's how we've been doing the law for centuries. Virtually every line that matters is hard to draw. Yet we don't paralyze ourselves by refusing to act.
My idiot brother got twice as radicalized when they kicked Alex Jones's crazy ass off YouTube.
It made people feel better and more morally superior, especially employees. It hurt my brother. Now when he watches that asshole, he's on a website where he is guaranteed to never get the other side.
If you support this, then you don't know anything about how humans react to censorship.
I was a very big proponent of wearing mask in the beginning of the pandemic back when the WHO and Dr Fauci had advised against it not because it was true but to manipulate the public for the purpose of preventing a rush on n95 masks.
If I had stated in a video the truth which was that the public was being manipulated to protect the masks, I would have been contradicting WHO and the video could have been banned. That's a problem.
People need to realize that ANY website where a user submits content for is not classified as free speech. A tweet isn’t free speech. A post on Reddit isn’t free speech. These are “articles and or content provided by the public for enhancements to our platform” or whatever EULA legalese they use.
Yeah, like I said, banning a bunch of videos from one genre right now looks bad and people have a right to be upset over it. It’s still YouTube’s legal right to choose which content they want to showcase on their platform.
They hold all the power here. Content creators are at their mercy as far as compensation, views, inclusion in the recommendation engine, etc. then cry foul when the company moves in another direction. Down-leg economics. Specialized businesses based on a supply of value from another business. It’s not a sustainable model for anyone on the 3rd rung.
I will add, targeting a specific genre of videos looks bad, sure. It's only that we are talking about that genre and not all the others of topics YouTube has removed.