It's okay if the East India Company enslaves and exploits the savages and mongrels, murders opponents, rigs elections, installs corrupt politicians and destroys communities; it's a private company and it only hurts stupid people! Just stop buying their tea if you don't like it, amirite? Start your own company!
If we're talking about regulating large corporations because they're monopolizing resources I'd much rather start in the energy sector to set some precedent before we just force youtube and facebook to allow nazis and anti-vaxxers to spout off whatever they want during a global crisis.
I can't speak for what you're paying attention to, but plenty of people are wary of big cats in corporations and big cats in government. You can be against both.
The real false narrative is that choosing team red or team blue is the only interesting question and then you can turn your skepticism off.
I'd rather have an honest discussion about dealing with a global crisis instead of having some asshole decide he's right and shut everyone else out - surely you can imagine the damage caused by a dictator who's wrong?
You do know that those in many places are called "utilities" and they <<are>> nationalized, right?
Censor. The word you're looking for is censor.
Google has immense power, far more than most governments. Governments all around the world are often manipulated by corporations like Google, laws are written based off these influences of power, shaping democracy, all the time.
If they really wanted to they could do almost anything to you. They could easily steal your identity, they could frame you, they could put you in prison, they could do basically anything. Is this legal? Obviously not, but power extends further than what is legal.
The fact is that states and corporations collude and compete with each other for political control internationally, and corporate power outranks the vast majority of state powers. Weirdly though, I can't find Alphabet Inc. in the power rankings.
the same things are said about twitter or facebook, its absurd.
If you want to nationalize all social media and force it to be a public square, that's fine, we can have that conversation. But that's not what people generally argue for, they instead expect private entities to be themselves subject to the requirements of the first amendment. But that isn't how it works. And I think that is a good thing, even when I disagree with the outcome.
https://babylonbee.com/news/skynet-is-a-private-company-they...
YouTube is the profit-driven canary in the coalmine. YouTube's business model naturally incentivizes more speech of all kinds. This crackdown indicates there is mounting pressure - from democratically elected governments, from HN commentators, from our friends and neighbors that regulate & patronize YouTube - to stop being tolerant of certain kinds of speech like antivax.
No other platform offers a competitive audience.
Stay and home and start knitting? If your job or your desire is to be in media, what's your proposed alternative?
At least you admit it.
> You are more than able to start your own company and let whatever you want on that site.
"If you don't like YouTube, build your own" is a really shitty take. It's very obvious the role that YouTube has right now and why massive censorship is a problem.
If we take a equitable view of the situation, the vast majority of content that they're removing is simply being removed for wrong-think according to the DNC. This gives the Democratic party a leg up through overt censorship and information warfare of a sort they couldn't possibly have achieved through direct government action.
Whether that's legal or not is immaterial to me, they are stifling legal free speech of the de-facto public square, and those who cheer it on now won't be so happy in the future when the alignment of special interests shifts against them, I promise you it will happen and sooner than anyone thinks.
Google is a cancer on public discourse, how many fake media narratives have to collapse before people realize censorship of wrong-think is not a good idea for a healthy society?
Edit: Looks like Twitter finally removed their ridiculous propaganda from the trending section.
You are more than able to start your own company and let whatever you want on that site. Or just go to your local city center with a megaphone and give people your thoughts - perfectly legal.
If YouTube is THAT essential to getting your views heard, you need to take a lesson from business - don't rely on anyone else for critical infrastructure.