Unfortunately there are a lot of people who are so bought into the tribalistic dialectic that, in the more recent version, they heard about all the censoring, they saw the people being censored were "those evil others" and said "yeah thats ok with me!", failing to understand the lack of principle would/will come for them next.
The beauty of it all is that I think the oligarchs are overplaying their hand to the point they are going to force a pendulum swing back the other way at some point. The counter-point to that is that with techno-tyranny at some point the oligarchs are going to be able to stop the pendulum swing.
1. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
bonus: Hitchens on freedom of speech, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z2uzEM0ugY&t=0
Interesting to watch this with hindsight and see how wrong he was about Religion and why they were censorious.
If you look at how society has evolved over the last 15 years, the opposite has come true. Activists are successfully limiting speech they find offensive through legislation and intimidation, and one of the strongest defenders of "full" freedom of speech has now become the religious far-right.
I'm not saying I necessarily agree with the notion of "full" freedom of speech (which we don't actually have in Australia; only an implied right to freedom of political communication to the extent that is necessary to keep democracy running), but you can't deny that religion is no longer the enemy of free speech.
Google isn't the only company that owns the field of information retrieval. They just came the right place/right time after the .com crash.
Time it right and you can have a set of regulations tailored to your competitors that only minimally impact you and then, when the next party gets its turn at power and all of your competitors are dead, get those regulations removed in the next big wave of corporate deregulation.
It really is a sweet game. Too bad we'll never get to play it.
It's worth noting that I'm loosely parroting the content of a Folding Ideas video[1] that covers the discussion of the creator vs platform relationship overall.
For online ads? Sure you can make that case.
Their business in the end is based on delivering relevant content. If there is a market for the traffic Google refuses to host, then there are probably market opportunities there.
1. When you buy an Android phone there's a good chance that YouTube app is preinstalled.
2. If you search the net for "how to do XYZ" or for any song you'll get 99% video results from YouTube.
3. Almost every company/celebrity/influencer/... has a YouTube account and until recently (TikTok, Odysee, BitChute,...) alternative platforms (Vimeo, Dailymotion,...) were mostly a niche market.
Perhaps but that doesn't preclude criticizing those editorial choices as harmful (false narratives, ideological bubbles, general free-speech principles).
YouTube has only recently started making a profit. If they didn't censor videos they'd be unable to pay for the servers, storage and bandwidth that everyone seem to feel entitled for.
How is this sinister, it seems trivially correct
It course Google and other companies will mess up with their moderation and should be called on it when they do but what exactly is wrong with them moderating in general?
A lot of people will defend google ability to do that because they have a "first amendment right".
Adding air quotes or actual quotes doesn't change that..
People didn't merely defend Google to gatekeep information, they demanded it. A decade ago, Youtube, along with other social media companies, was happy to be pro-free speech. It's not like they have any reason to cut engagement and ad revenue. However, they after two adpocapyses and even the President demanding that they censor more misinformation, they have been pushed into the position of the gatekeeper of the internet. Given that they aren't paid for this position, they will obviously choose most cost effective-route possible, hence why they censor whatever they think will be controversial.
Such ingratiation has also poisoned the well against even considering options like having a strong/big government step in, handing Google over to the people, etc.
As long as greed is good, cash is king, and stock prices are equated with the economy, you're not going to see anyone challenge the status quo of a corporation acting in their own best interest, not mine or yours or ours.