I think there is more nuance to this. The problem is that YouTube literally claim "Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world." not the selectively suppress the views of certain groups. So I think it's closer to false advertising.
only if the wiews of others are HaTEfuL!!1!11! we must censor hAteFUl11!1!!1 content because members of ProTEcTeD gROupS are not mentally fit to deal with other people's opinions cough I mean because this kind of content is violent and harmful.
You're being snarky, but this is essentially true (as I understand it).
In the US, outside of a few legally protected characteristics, a company is free to exercise its speech to choose not to provide service to customers it does not wish to.
The government forcing companies to provide service would be a violation of their speech rights.
Some companies go out of their way to try to be better than that because they recognize the influence they have on public access to platforms. (Zuckerberg cares a lot about this: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/16/mark-zuckerberg-and-f...), but ultimately all of that is above and beyond what the legal expectations are.
In FB's case it wasn't so much a policy change that lead to them shutting down Trump's account, but that USG's position as a rule of law nation was in question after 1/6 and it no longer met their own policy requirements that give elected politicians in rule of law democracies a special pass to violate their moderation rules.
The irony is this is a variant of the same argument made in the gay cake case, but with the political partisanship reversed. The notable difference in that case is that sexual orientation is a protected characteristic.
"The government forcing companies to provide service would be a violation of their speech rights."
-- True, but the government can institute a bill of rights for digital platforms, and make it mandatory for companies that want to have section 230 protection.
Youtube will be free to choose between following the bill of rights, or becoming a regulated media like the TV, or being prone to defamation lawsuits and be responsible for its content.
What that bill of rights would look like? That's a different story... but google, or any tech company, having the power to just delete your gmail/email account, and erase all your stored data at will it is kinda scary.
There should be a happy medium. We do this for evictions already (i.e. there is a process for the eviction, we should do something lightweight for the digital space as well). Eg, if google has determined you have abused on your email, you will have 30 days to retrieve your data, and contacts and transfer them somewhere else. Losing access altogether is very disruptive.
> the government can institute a bill of rights for digital platforms, and make it mandatory for companies that want to have section 230 protection.
Social Media companies actually want this as well because then they can just deflect all unpopular decisions to this bill of rights. That's why Facebook spent $700 million to create their own content moderation "supreme court."
Congress had every opportunity to explore this issue further during the Congressional hearings about section 230. Unfortunately, they were more interested in whining about why this specific issue should be censored or why this specific issue should not be censored.
> Some companies go out of their way to try to be better than that because they recognize the influence they have on public access to platforms.
If they have that amount of public influence they should be broken up, or heavily regulated as public utilities, so that they uphold freedom of speech online in the new digital public town square.
It wasn't always like that. We used to have rules like common carrier restricting the phone company, the fairness doctrine restricting television networks, and campaign finance rules restricting other media.
We truly live in the golden age of corporate power.
It's basically an application of freedom vs liberty. You are less free as a result of having to follow the rules of the road but have greater liberty by being able to travel safely and efficiently.
This balance is governance's equivalent of "three hard problems."
When it comes to platform moderation it seems like HN at large overwhelmingly holds the opinion that for speech liberty is maximized with freedom. Which might be right but for me personally I've experienced the reality not being able myself on the internet because of all the hate I've received. The solution has been for my whole life has boiled down to "just pretend to be a straight white cis American man" to the point of having to use a voice-changer to play videogames online. Like it does work and solves the immediate problem. But the truth is also that it has gotten a lot better in recent years. We're finally out of the "there are no girls on the internet" dark ages and I don't know if the ends justify the means but something is working.
The irony is this is a variant of the same argument made in the gay cake case, but with the political partisanship reversed. The notable difference in that case is that sexual orientation is a protected characteristic.
The other far more notable difference is the baker didn't own all the cake shops.
And the "gay cake case" would also be closer to not just providing cork board space for people to stick pins and messages in; but also to require the engineers or CEO herself to write down the words that they put on the bulletin board, after they're orated to her.
The debate is not whether there is a legal requirement for YouTube to provide freedom of speech (categorically, there is not) but whether that is harmful to society. The concept of freedom of expression extends beyond the bound of US law.
Exactly. It makes me uneasy to see all these people who seem to have no idea that freedom of speech is or could be anything other than a particular law. (That there are benefits to having an unrestricted exchange of ideas in public, and that censoring some ideas is a slippery slope to censoring others.) If that law didn't exist, would it occur to them to create it?
The government compelling speech from private companies is a speech violation.
Arguably private companies and individuals should adapt to choose better services that suit their interests. I'm not sure that compelling company speech is a good idea and gets messy quickly (particularly around moderation).
I'm a fan of Urbit which I think is a clever model that makes all of this largely unnecessary.
I see. Then I think you're misunderstanding the position of those you're arguing against. Well, I don't know exactly what throwaway1959 believes, but he criticized Youtube's CEO for "censoring opinions of other people that she does not agree with". He did not say that the government should do anything about it; that was something you mentioned.
I don't know if this is a common misconception or if something else is going on, but it's fairly common for one person to say it's bad for a company to suppress free speech, and someone else to reply that it's not illegal for the company to do that, as if that were a counterargument. Is it believed that saying something is bad = saying it should be illegal? Not only is that a bad policy, it contradicts the ideal of freedom of speech itself: that bad speech should be allowed. I don't understand how someone could believe a free speech advocate would think that (other than by understanding them poorly or having a low opinion of their logical consistency).
For illustration, here's an entire article titled "The YouTube Ban Is Un-American, Wrong, and Will Backfire", 2300 words—none of which says that Youtube's actions are illegal, or should be, or even mentions the First Amendment. I think this is the position of free speech advocates generally: that suppressing free speech is bad and that those who do it should be criticized and shamed but not punished (unless it's the government, in which case it may be illegal). https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-youtube-ban-is-un-american...
I think I understand the position, but the implication is often that it should not be allowed or that it is bad.
The core idea is I think YouTube should have the power to moderate their platform and that that is a form of legally protected speech (a private company deciding how to run itself).
People can disagree with YouTube's policies or moderation, but that's a personal opinion about their policies with regard to what they allow on their platform. I don't think it's that big of a deal for them to block stuff that makes the platform a worse place to be and they have the power to determine what that is.
If they block stuff I find interesting, for example if they blocked videos about cryptocurrencies, I would think that's a dumb rule and I wouldn't want to support them on that, but they should have the ability to make that decision. If they blocked critical videos about China I would think that's unethical and wrong. Their ability to Block/moderate in general though? That's a tool they should have and should use.
Private companies setting policy on what's allowed on their platforms is exercising a form of speech. I don't think private companies should be forced to allow any speech from any users or that that is even desirable. Communities without moderation suck.
The government should not compel speech - compelling companies to provide services is a form of violating free speech. I find this more objectionable than YouTube blocking stuff that violates their ToS.
I also think "censoring opinions of people that she does not agree with" is misleading enough to be false. Banning people like Steve Bannon or Alex Jones is not some sort of ban of good faith intellectual disagreement - it's just banning trolls.
Well, we agree that the company should be allowed to set whatever policies they want, ban whoever they want, etc., and that it would violate their rights—arguably speech rights—for the government to compel them to unban anyone in particular (unless they signed a contract and the banning violated that contract, but I'm sure they have all the necessary CYA clauses in anything they sign).
That said...
> I think I understand the position, but the implication is often that it should not be allowed or that it is bad.
I just said that "it should not be allowed" and "it is bad" are very different things, and I think it's important to maintain that distinction. It's not entirely clear to me whether you do. (If you do, then I think you'd agree that it's a rather uncharitable assumption to make of one's interlocutor that his criticism was meant to imply "and the law should stop them" when it could just as easily have meant "they suck and I want everyone to know that".)
Here's an incomplete list of things that are bad but that the law should never disallow: mediocre parenting, getting unhealthily fat, insulting strangers for no reason, getting into a romantic relationship with someone you know wants something long-term and planning to dump them soon, cutting corners in products, making bloated websites, supporting political causes I don't like, encouraging people to invest in programming languages I don't like, etc.
There are pragmatic reasons to not disallow those things. In many cases, enforcement would necessarily be (a) very subjective, and therefore open to abuse, (b) require a very powerful police state, and/or (c) create a slippery slope of "Well, if we already disallow that, then surely also ..." that tends toward totalitarianism. (I suspect those who think "bad" = "should be disallowed" will end up convincing themselves either that a lot of these things should be outlawed, and become totalitarian morality police, or that a lot of these things aren't really bad, and become amoral. I suspect that this actually happens to some degree, but that the damage is limited because many people don't think very much about their beliefs.)
However, if that's your only defense against such policies, then you're vulnerable to special pleading. "This particular description of 'bad behavior' sounds objective, and at least the first step towards policing it doesn't require any significant police state growth, and of course we have no intention of extending the policy further [or of getting replaced in the next election by those who would]." If you're not as sophisticated as your opponent, or less prepared on a particular issue, or if your audience finds the concept of police state growth laughable rather than scary, then you may be caught flat-footed in a debate.
Instead, we have a conception of legal property rights and what counts as "violence" that more or less decides all these issues. Legal encroachments on these rights are bad, and at the very least they require extremely rigorous justification, which should be rarely achieved in practice. I think this is the only stance that is likely to hold up long-term against special pleading; though I think the majority of people aren't properly educated about the merits of this stance, and they tend to elect politicians that cheerfully grab power to fight the villains of the quarter (Terrorists! Copyright pirates! Child abusers! Insurrectionists! Rioters!).
> If they blocked critical videos about China I would think that's unethical and wrong.
I agree, but do you think that should be illegal? (I don't.) And if not, then what recourse do people have? Publicly complaining about it to try to change Youtube's mind seems like an obvious thing to try; beyond that, make or join an alternative to Youtube and try to convince others to do so. This...
This presumed that private corporations have rights. I’d posit that they do not. They are legal, government created entities, which is different than the individual persons the Bill of Rights was written for. Furthermore, why would we want to grant the power to limit speech to private corporations when we don’t allow governments to do so? The latter is a democratically elected group while the former is almost the complete opposite.
These corporations are as big as governments, but y’all want to give them the rights of individuals. Only they’re run like top-down oligarchies with little to no accountability for their actions.
Your platform may be legally allowed to censor everything, but it's clear it doesn't take freedom of expression seriously.
If we add some more mental gymnastics, we can say the Chinese government supports all legal freedom of speech as well. If this sounds ridiculous
but the former does not, we should evaluate why one type of censorship means freedom but another means oppression.
That element has already been evaluated, and is re-evaluated every time this argument is made.
A private platform is free to censor users as they see fit, as the users are free to A) not use their platform at all, B) use a competing platform, or C) create a competing platform. You are not compelled to post your thoughts on FB, or Hackernews, or anywhere else, nor are you entitled to a platform to do so there.
The flip-side, censorship by gov't, is platform independent. This is where the 1st amendment protects come into play, defending you (and the hosting platform) from gov't suppression regarding political or religious speech. If the USA hosted an official message board, then we could argue comparisons to China.
I always wonder what makes YouTube/Twitter, in particular its so-called reviewers or fact-checkers, think that they are on the right side of the history? They are not necessarily better informed, they are not necessarily better educated, and they are not necessarily better at research, they are not necessarily better at interpreting stats. In fact, I question if many of them understand scientific research at all. Yet they had no problem banning a person for citing a research from Stanford that questions the effectiveness of masks. Yet they had no problem declaring Florida's governor was spreading misinformation in a round-table discussion. Yet they had no problem shutting down anyone a year ago who supported wearing mask or staying at home, and shutting down anyone now who claims the opposite now.
In fact, YouTube, according to BBC, bans any coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts World Health Organization (WHO) advice. Yet isn't it true that WHO gave really bad advice in the early days of Covid-19? Isn't true that Taiwan ignored WHO's advice and implemented strict containment policy to a great success? Isn't Thailand representative harshly criticized WHO for their dubious corroboration with Chinese government? What makes YouTube think that they possess moral superiority over other people?
They know they're frauds pushing a political agenda, and they know if they and their conspirators repeat the same lies over and over, the masses will believe them.
I think the reviewers are mostly low on the tech totem pole young people, as ignorant of history or anything outside of their neighborhoods as they are certain about their virtue. You know, as young people have always been. That they get to police what everybody else can say is a serious problem.
The quotes are just to indicate its the general concept of tragedy of the commons.
The parent comment reads as if they are appalled by a decline in virtue these days. And looking at America through the lens of the internet I tend to agree that things are not that great for the median person.
Mass consumer debt is a recent invention. I call it a tragedy of the common because every lender wanted to get in on it ( Its very profitable after all ). Having a saturated pool drives lenders not to compete on price, but on their ability to enlarge the pool of people to lend money to.
I don't believe people are naturally entitled, but (money) stress shortcircuits the brain. It allows people to do things that they know suck for other people. ( And it makes them dumber overall, but that's another discussion entirely )
And i know, one sentence isn't going to cover the infinity complex situation. But i feel that push to normalize consumer debt but the US on an inevitable path of normalizing individual greed. That what andrewstuart noticed.
The citizenry support this stance. The cult of personality around people like Trump on the right, even center-left has a catch phrase "<center/left politician> doesn't owe you anything!" -- uh no, they do: they are public servants!
We live in the through the looking glass world, where things are also upside down. What's next? Google and Facebook receiving Defenders of the Privacy awards?
Be more specific. Are you saying there are left-wing YouTubers who should be suspended who aren't? If so that's a decent conversation to have, misapplication of policy to suit political ends. But looking at that list, I'm not seeing the injustice here.
I think left wing thinkers are not censored as much because they are not as successful on YouTube. My pet theory on why right leaning channels are more successful in terms of viewers on YouTube than left leaning is similar to what happened with talk radio. Currently, most conventional news media has a distinctly left leaning flavor to it. Left leaning thinkers (not liberal per se but what is currently the trendy left leaning thinking) has to compete with these conventional news organizations. There is a demand for alternative voices on the right which is why I think you see many more right wing thinkers on YouTube who are successful. My point is that if left wing thinkers were successful on YouTube to the extent of Crowder et al they would likely be censored as well as they would conflict with the narrative of traditional media. Not sure if this is correct but a glance at top YouTube channels include Tim Pool, Ben Shapiro, and Steven Crowder.
YouTube certainly allows for a heck of a lot of expression that could reach a lot of people...
As for industry awards I worked at a company that were members of a number of industry award groups. When we were acquired by another company maybe half a floor of people were left in what was a five floor building.
I and some others gathered up all the awards scattered across the building (there were a lot) and decorated our desks with them. To their credit when the acquiring company's CEO showed up, he thought it was pretty hilarious.
For the record, as long as I worked there I held the record for the most "President's Club" awards held by any given employee... at least if you count the trophies at my desk.
As utterly brazen, shameless and just completely and utterly unself-aware as this is, look on the bright side. A quick glance at the like/dislike ratio and comments shows, most people are not impressed with that kind of bullshit.
People aren't buying it and overwhelmingly seem to recognize what shitty hypocritical utterly bullshit behaviour youtube engages in.
I'm honestly surprised the comments have been allowed to remain on for this video. At this point, they're kinda damned if they do, damned if they don't. Turning off dislikes and comments on the video would prove their hypocrisy, but leaving it on shows just how much people hate it.
I've never seen that list before...apparently people really hate cocomelon nursery rhymes...it shows up 11 times in that list.
I have nothing nice to say about any Google-owned company but is this really all that different from $city’s Best $business or literally any other corporate “award” that’s nothing more than thinly-veiled advertising? At least YouTube had the good sense to cut out the marketing middle man and just award it to themselves.
Usually when that kind of corporate feelgood bullshit happens though, it's not publicized and isn't done in such an in your face, 'lol fuck you everybody' kind of way.
Like literally describes while receiving the award how censorship and pandering to corporate advertisers is free speech.
Also, typically, most of the time, the thousands of people directly negatively affected by the reason for the award aren't able to publicly display their disgust.
So they're afraid people will think YT has no freedom of expression, I guess.
Don't they realize this is just them broadcasting an insecurity? Nobody who is really XYZ goes around saying "hey everyone, I'm XYZ :D", it instantly reduces your cred.
*:just to clarify, I neither agree nor disagree with the award, I think it's between really, some areas of YT have nice features, others need work.
Why in the world are you still throwing that line out like it means anything?
1. The world was desperately trying to get normal folks to stop buying up all the masks to save them for healthcare professionals.
2. Society didn't figure out the homemade mask trend for a while, nor did we figure out whether or not homemade masks would even work against covid for a while given all the factors, including people touching their face with the mask or feeling more empowered to interact with people with masks on.
3. At the time, it wasn't known how widespread covid was for the general public. Healthcare providers were massively more at risk and were reusing N95s for months.
Could the orgs have done better with their messaging? Sure. But fuck off with this line. It's straight up disinformation to suggest that this is a reason not to trust the CDC or WHO or whatever.
Let me get this straight: you support Youtube's decision to censor accurate criticism of WHO guidelines, because you think spreading lies and disinformation served a useful purpose? That's despicable.
I am saying: what are other options besides the two I mentioned, and the one that they're using?
I'm saying that the two I mentioned are absolutely absurd. Not even worth a conversation.
The one they're using is deferring their decision making to a source that, even if they're a bit flawed, is WAY WAY WAY better than themselves when figuring out what is worth keeping online.
> The one they're using is deferring their decision making to a source that, even if they're a bit flawed, is WAY WAY WAY better than themselves when figuring out what is worth keeping online.
Ok, fair enough. However, in your original post (which appears to be no longer visible) you stated that Youtube made this particular decision to censor accurate information in order to spread lies (with a "common good" purpose). I don't like that.
> Are you saying that YouTube should be the arbiter of whether or not a video is a fair criticism of WHO guidelines?
No, I don't think YouTube should be in the "arbiter of truth" business at all! That said, I do understand the argument some people make, that misinformation should be censored. Note that you didn't make this argument. You made the argument that misinformation should (in some cases) be promoted, while truthful information should be censored.
I don't disagree with any of those points. WHO decided to burn their credibility in order to try and keep masks available for healthcare workers. Okay, fine. But that credibility is actually burnt. They can't un-burn it.
As soon as it was apparent that they had ulterior motives by downplaying mask effectiveness, I wrote them off as a trustworthy source of data or advice.
And they sure as hell don't deserve to be the arbiter of scientific speech. By choosing to rely on WHO's advice, YouTube's credibility caught flame as well.
And how many people died from COVID because they received this message: "Masks aren't needed. WHO said so. Now they're backtracking because they want to control us."?
Whatever benefit WHO created for healthcare workers early on by lying about masks was probably more than offset by the harm they caused with that loss of public trust.
> And how many people died from COVID because they received this message: "Masks aren't needed. WHO said so. Now they're backtracking because they want to control us."?
You're literally contributing to that message by discounting WHO as a valuable resource.
> I wrote them off as a trustworthy source of data or advice.
I refuse to believe that you both understand the reason behind telling people not to wear masks at the very beginning and yet lack the critical thinking skills to realize they're one of the best resources for covid recommendations in the world.
Are you just being petty? Are you lying for fun? Something else?
> I refuse to believe that you both understand the reason behind telling people not to wear masks at the very beginning and yet lack the critical thinking skills to realize they're one of the best resources for covid recommendations in the world.
I understand their reasoning for trying to downplay masks. It wasn't good reasoning, but I see what their thought process probably was. But they didn't think ahead to the 2nd-order affects of ruining their credibility like that. Once they demonstrated that they're willing to put neutral data under the heel of PR concerns, then it is perfectly fair to see subsequent messaging from them as more of the same. I updated my priors.
I'm not saying WHO is wrong now. I'm just saying they're not reliable. They are valuable if you're looking for data, but you better verify it and cross-check it. And you have to now consider possible alternative explanations for any message they put out there. That's my critical thinking skills at work.
My trust in public figures and institutions (and NGOs) will return when I see them speaking more transparently. For example, "We don't know enough yet to determine if face masks reduce Covid risk, for the wearer or for others around them."
Oh, and trying to save masks for healthcare workers by denying their effectiveness could never have worked anyway. As soon as it was apparent the workers all were masked up 24/7, the public would simply ask, "Why?".
WHO's responsibility is not to a single person. Their policies are designed for the society as a whole. Minimizing the possibility of infection for critical jobs is much more valuable than minimizing the infection probability to a single person. Society is more than just me or you or our families.
They could have taken the path you are suggesting (possibly under inconclusive benefits of other types of masks) but that could have backfired and caused a lot more dmg than good.
You can't expect an entity like WHO to solely care about you as a person.
I re-read my comment and do see a lot of "my" and "I" in there. I should have thought about that more.
WHO failed in their societal obligation by diminishing their credibility. The misinformation may have increased mask supply to critical workers for a short period, but at the cost of strengthening the anti-maskers' message in the long run. And that cost was much larger IMO.
They created a long-term problem in order to fix a short-term one.
> You can't expect an entity like WHO to solely care about you as a person.
No, of course not. My whole point here is that WHO did the PR equivalent of that CEO who chases quarterly earnings at the expense of their company's future. Except instead of money, they did it with public confidence.
Do you just look for headlines that confirm what you want to be true?
"The findings are consistent with previous research. Health experts have long said a mask provides only limited protection for the person wearing it, but can dramatically reduce the risk to others if the wearer is infected, even when showing no symptoms."
Whether or not someone is "healthy" is completely irrelevant when you count that last part, "even when showing no symptoms".
What a bizarre, two faced world we live in. On one level, the fact that an organization exists to give a "freedom of expression" award is peculiar in-and-of-itself. But that same organization which claims to champion freedom of expression doesn't actually do anything to advance the cause of free speech on platforms. In fact, it is awarding a CEO of a platform that expressly forbids the discussion of anything related to possible fraud or lack of integrity in the 2020 election. You can't even talk about it. So on the one hand, they believe YouTube "protect freedoms “in all possible ways” while also "noted that there must be certain limits". How can a contradiction be so blatant?
Ultimately, what is the point of this? Is it some kind of Potemkin award meant to normalize censorship as free expression? Is it some silly thing apologists of YouTube can point to when YouTube is criticized as restricting free speech?
Edit: Even if you despise the people who think the election was stolen, preventing those people from discussing it on your platform directly contradicts the principle of free expression.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 192 ms ] threadIn the US, outside of a few legally protected characteristics, a company is free to exercise its speech to choose not to provide service to customers it does not wish to.
The government forcing companies to provide service would be a violation of their speech rights.
Some companies go out of their way to try to be better than that because they recognize the influence they have on public access to platforms. (Zuckerberg cares a lot about this: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/06/16/mark-zuckerberg-and-f...), but ultimately all of that is above and beyond what the legal expectations are.
In FB's case it wasn't so much a policy change that lead to them shutting down Trump's account, but that USG's position as a rule of law nation was in question after 1/6 and it no longer met their own policy requirements that give elected politicians in rule of law democracies a special pass to violate their moderation rules.
The irony is this is a variant of the same argument made in the gay cake case, but with the political partisanship reversed. The notable difference in that case is that sexual orientation is a protected characteristic.
-- True, but the government can institute a bill of rights for digital platforms, and make it mandatory for companies that want to have section 230 protection.
Youtube will be free to choose between following the bill of rights, or becoming a regulated media like the TV, or being prone to defamation lawsuits and be responsible for its content.
What that bill of rights would look like? That's a different story... but google, or any tech company, having the power to just delete your gmail/email account, and erase all your stored data at will it is kinda scary.
There should be a happy medium. We do this for evictions already (i.e. there is a process for the eviction, we should do something lightweight for the digital space as well). Eg, if google has determined you have abused on your email, you will have 30 days to retrieve your data, and contacts and transfer them somewhere else. Losing access altogether is very disruptive.
Social Media companies actually want this as well because then they can just deflect all unpopular decisions to this bill of rights. That's why Facebook spent $700 million to create their own content moderation "supreme court."
Congress had every opportunity to explore this issue further during the Congressional hearings about section 230. Unfortunately, they were more interested in whining about why this specific issue should be censored or why this specific issue should not be censored.
If they have that amount of public influence they should be broken up, or heavily regulated as public utilities, so that they uphold freedom of speech online in the new digital public town square.
It wasn't always like that. We used to have rules like common carrier restricting the phone company, the fairness doctrine restricting television networks, and campaign finance rules restricting other media.
We truly live in the golden age of corporate power.
We seriously need that one back
Media partisanship is misinforming and dividing Americans.
This balance is governance's equivalent of "three hard problems."
When it comes to platform moderation it seems like HN at large overwhelmingly holds the opinion that for speech liberty is maximized with freedom. Which might be right but for me personally I've experienced the reality not being able myself on the internet because of all the hate I've received. The solution has been for my whole life has boiled down to "just pretend to be a straight white cis American man" to the point of having to use a voice-changer to play videogames online. Like it does work and solves the immediate problem. But the truth is also that it has gotten a lot better in recent years. We're finally out of the "there are no girls on the internet" dark ages and I don't know if the ends justify the means but something is working.
The other far more notable difference is the baker didn't own all the cake shops.
FB isn’t the internet and there are a lot of social media companies with social media apps.
The protected characteristic is the relevant bit.
The government compelling speech from private companies is a speech violation.
Arguably private companies and individuals should adapt to choose better services that suit their interests. I'm not sure that compelling company speech is a good idea and gets messy quickly (particularly around moderation).
I'm a fan of Urbit which I think is a clever model that makes all of this largely unnecessary.
I don't know if this is a common misconception or if something else is going on, but it's fairly common for one person to say it's bad for a company to suppress free speech, and someone else to reply that it's not illegal for the company to do that, as if that were a counterargument. Is it believed that saying something is bad = saying it should be illegal? Not only is that a bad policy, it contradicts the ideal of freedom of speech itself: that bad speech should be allowed. I don't understand how someone could believe a free speech advocate would think that (other than by understanding them poorly or having a low opinion of their logical consistency).
For illustration, here's an entire article titled "The YouTube Ban Is Un-American, Wrong, and Will Backfire", 2300 words—none of which says that Youtube's actions are illegal, or should be, or even mentions the First Amendment. I think this is the position of free speech advocates generally: that suppressing free speech is bad and that those who do it should be criticized and shamed but not punished (unless it's the government, in which case it may be illegal). https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-youtube-ban-is-un-american...
The core idea is I think YouTube should have the power to moderate their platform and that that is a form of legally protected speech (a private company deciding how to run itself).
People can disagree with YouTube's policies or moderation, but that's a personal opinion about their policies with regard to what they allow on their platform. I don't think it's that big of a deal for them to block stuff that makes the platform a worse place to be and they have the power to determine what that is.
If they block stuff I find interesting, for example if they blocked videos about cryptocurrencies, I would think that's a dumb rule and I wouldn't want to support them on that, but they should have the ability to make that decision. If they blocked critical videos about China I would think that's unethical and wrong. Their ability to Block/moderate in general though? That's a tool they should have and should use.
Private companies setting policy on what's allowed on their platforms is exercising a form of speech. I don't think private companies should be forced to allow any speech from any users or that that is even desirable. Communities without moderation suck.
The government should not compel speech - compelling companies to provide services is a form of violating free speech. I find this more objectionable than YouTube blocking stuff that violates their ToS.
I also think "censoring opinions of people that she does not agree with" is misleading enough to be false. Banning people like Steve Bannon or Alex Jones is not some sort of ban of good faith intellectual disagreement - it's just banning trolls.
That said...
> I think I understand the position, but the implication is often that it should not be allowed or that it is bad.
I just said that "it should not be allowed" and "it is bad" are very different things, and I think it's important to maintain that distinction. It's not entirely clear to me whether you do. (If you do, then I think you'd agree that it's a rather uncharitable assumption to make of one's interlocutor that his criticism was meant to imply "and the law should stop them" when it could just as easily have meant "they suck and I want everyone to know that".)
Here's an incomplete list of things that are bad but that the law should never disallow: mediocre parenting, getting unhealthily fat, insulting strangers for no reason, getting into a romantic relationship with someone you know wants something long-term and planning to dump them soon, cutting corners in products, making bloated websites, supporting political causes I don't like, encouraging people to invest in programming languages I don't like, etc.
There are pragmatic reasons to not disallow those things. In many cases, enforcement would necessarily be (a) very subjective, and therefore open to abuse, (b) require a very powerful police state, and/or (c) create a slippery slope of "Well, if we already disallow that, then surely also ..." that tends toward totalitarianism. (I suspect those who think "bad" = "should be disallowed" will end up convincing themselves either that a lot of these things should be outlawed, and become totalitarian morality police, or that a lot of these things aren't really bad, and become amoral. I suspect that this actually happens to some degree, but that the damage is limited because many people don't think very much about their beliefs.)
However, if that's your only defense against such policies, then you're vulnerable to special pleading. "This particular description of 'bad behavior' sounds objective, and at least the first step towards policing it doesn't require any significant police state growth, and of course we have no intention of extending the policy further [or of getting replaced in the next election by those who would]." If you're not as sophisticated as your opponent, or less prepared on a particular issue, or if your audience finds the concept of police state growth laughable rather than scary, then you may be caught flat-footed in a debate.
Instead, we have a conception of legal property rights and what counts as "violence" that more or less decides all these issues. Legal encroachments on these rights are bad, and at the very least they require extremely rigorous justification, which should be rarely achieved in practice. I think this is the only stance that is likely to hold up long-term against special pleading; though I think the majority of people aren't properly educated about the merits of this stance, and they tend to elect politicians that cheerfully grab power to fight the villains of the quarter (Terrorists! Copyright pirates! Child abusers! Insurrectionists! Rioters!).
> If they blocked critical videos about China I would think that's unethical and wrong.
I agree, but do you think that should be illegal? (I don't.) And if not, then what recourse do people have? Publicly complaining about it to try to change Youtube's mind seems like an obvious thing to try; beyond that, make or join an alternative to Youtube and try to convince others to do so. This...
Thanks for taking the time to write out your thoughts/argument.
These corporations are as big as governments, but y’all want to give them the rights of individuals. Only they’re run like top-down oligarchies with little to no accountability for their actions.
Your platform may be legally allowed to censor everything, but it's clear it doesn't take freedom of expression seriously.
If we add some more mental gymnastics, we can say the Chinese government supports all legal freedom of speech as well. If this sounds ridiculous but the former does not, we should evaluate why one type of censorship means freedom but another means oppression.
A private platform is free to censor users as they see fit, as the users are free to A) not use their platform at all, B) use a competing platform, or C) create a competing platform. You are not compelled to post your thoughts on FB, or Hackernews, or anywhere else, nor are you entitled to a platform to do so there.
The flip-side, censorship by gov't, is platform independent. This is where the 1st amendment protects come into play, defending you (and the hosting platform) from gov't suppression regarding political or religious speech. If the USA hosted an official message board, then we could argue comparisons to China.
On Second Thought, JPMorgan Executive Won’t Advise Commodities Regulator
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-02-07/jpmorgans...
In fact, YouTube, according to BBC, bans any coronavirus-related content that directly contradicts World Health Organization (WHO) advice. Yet isn't it true that WHO gave really bad advice in the early days of Covid-19? Isn't true that Taiwan ignored WHO's advice and implemented strict containment policy to a great success? Isn't Thailand representative harshly criticized WHO for their dubious corroboration with Chinese government? What makes YouTube think that they possess moral superiority over other people?
And please explain what's going on with those quotes.
The parent comment reads as if they are appalled by a decline in virtue these days. And looking at America through the lens of the internet I tend to agree that things are not that great for the median person.
Mass consumer debt is a recent invention. I call it a tragedy of the common because every lender wanted to get in on it ( Its very profitable after all ). Having a saturated pool drives lenders not to compete on price, but on their ability to enlarge the pool of people to lend money to.
I don't believe people are naturally entitled, but (money) stress shortcircuits the brain. It allows people to do things that they know suck for other people. ( And it makes them dumber overall, but that's another discussion entirely )
And i know, one sentence isn't going to cover the infinity complex situation. But i feel that push to normalize consumer debt but the US on an inevitable path of normalizing individual greed. That what andrewstuart noticed.
https://www.freeexpressionawards.org/
However, I searched but found nothing about the award for Susan Wojcicki, the YT CEO ( she is listed prominently on the site ).
notably, the title of that post was changed to omit the fact that it was sponsored by youtube.
wow why are more right wing people being suspended. its like they promote really shitty things like white supremacy conspiracy theories
there have been tons of minorities who have had their channels taken down, they just don't reach wikipedia level of notoriety
I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.
https://archive.md/Wy4GT
https://archive.md/wrEXO
https://archive.is/AqkNf
http://archive.is/HNgc9
As for industry awards I worked at a company that were members of a number of industry award groups. When we were acquired by another company maybe half a floor of people were left in what was a five floor building.
I and some others gathered up all the awards scattered across the building (there were a lot) and decorated our desks with them. To their credit when the acquiring company's CEO showed up, he thought it was pretty hilarious.
For the record, as long as I worked there I held the record for the most "President's Club" awards held by any given employee... at least if you count the trophies at my desk.
> freedom of expression
is that a joke? this gotta be some kind of prank right?
People aren't buying it and overwhelmingly seem to recognize what shitty hypocritical utterly bullshit behaviour youtube engages in.
Also, somewhat interestingly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-disliked_YouTube_...
I've never seen that list before...apparently people really hate cocomelon nursery rhymes...it shows up 11 times in that list.
There's a really plausible explanation for huge dislike ratios on videos for children:
Very young children don't understand the UI, they just randomly mash buttons.
So a 50/50 like/dislike ratio would represent that randomness.
Like literally describes while receiving the award how censorship and pandering to corporate advertisers is free speech.
Also, typically, most of the time, the thousands of people directly negatively affected by the reason for the award aren't able to publicly display their disgust.
Don't they realize this is just them broadcasting an insecurity? Nobody who is really XYZ goes around saying "hey everyone, I'm XYZ :D", it instantly reduces your cred.
*:just to clarify, I neither agree nor disagree with the award, I think it's between really, some areas of YT have nice features, others need work.
"Anything that would go against World Health Organization recommendations would be a violation of our policy." """
April 2020.
https://www.verdict.co.uk/youtube-coronavirus-ban-who/
1. The world was desperately trying to get normal folks to stop buying up all the masks to save them for healthcare professionals.
2. Society didn't figure out the homemade mask trend for a while, nor did we figure out whether or not homemade masks would even work against covid for a while given all the factors, including people touching their face with the mask or feeling more empowered to interact with people with masks on.
3. At the time, it wasn't known how widespread covid was for the general public. Healthcare providers were massively more at risk and were reusing N95s for months.
Could the orgs have done better with their messaging? Sure. But fuck off with this line. It's straight up disinformation to suggest that this is a reason not to trust the CDC or WHO or whatever.
Are you saying that YouTube should be the arbiter of whether or not a video is a fair criticism of WHO guidelines?
Or are you saying that YouTube should allow complete bullshit, lies, and misinformation mixed in with the few bits of fair criticism?
Both options are completely absurd.
I'm saying that the two I mentioned are absolutely absurd. Not even worth a conversation.
The one they're using is deferring their decision making to a source that, even if they're a bit flawed, is WAY WAY WAY better than themselves when figuring out what is worth keeping online.
Ok, fair enough. However, in your original post (which appears to be no longer visible) you stated that Youtube made this particular decision to censor accurate information in order to spread lies (with a "common good" purpose). I don't like that.
No, I don't think YouTube should be in the "arbiter of truth" business at all! That said, I do understand the argument some people make, that misinformation should be censored. Note that you didn't make this argument. You made the argument that misinformation should (in some cases) be promoted, while truthful information should be censored.
As soon as it was apparent that they had ulterior motives by downplaying mask effectiveness, I wrote them off as a trustworthy source of data or advice.
And they sure as hell don't deserve to be the arbiter of scientific speech. By choosing to rely on WHO's advice, YouTube's credibility caught flame as well.
And how many people died from COVID because they received this message: "Masks aren't needed. WHO said so. Now they're backtracking because they want to control us."?
Whatever benefit WHO created for healthcare workers early on by lying about masks was probably more than offset by the harm they caused with that loss of public trust.
You're literally contributing to that message by discounting WHO as a valuable resource.
> I wrote them off as a trustworthy source of data or advice.
I refuse to believe that you both understand the reason behind telling people not to wear masks at the very beginning and yet lack the critical thinking skills to realize they're one of the best resources for covid recommendations in the world.
Are you just being petty? Are you lying for fun? Something else?
> I refuse to believe that you both understand the reason behind telling people not to wear masks at the very beginning and yet lack the critical thinking skills to realize they're one of the best resources for covid recommendations in the world.
I understand their reasoning for trying to downplay masks. It wasn't good reasoning, but I see what their thought process probably was. But they didn't think ahead to the 2nd-order affects of ruining their credibility like that. Once they demonstrated that they're willing to put neutral data under the heel of PR concerns, then it is perfectly fair to see subsequent messaging from them as more of the same. I updated my priors.
I'm not saying WHO is wrong now. I'm just saying they're not reliable. They are valuable if you're looking for data, but you better verify it and cross-check it. And you have to now consider possible alternative explanations for any message they put out there. That's my critical thinking skills at work.
My trust in public figures and institutions (and NGOs) will return when I see them speaking more transparently. For example, "We don't know enough yet to determine if face masks reduce Covid risk, for the wearer or for others around them."
Oh, and trying to save masks for healthcare workers by denying their effectiveness could never have worked anyway. As soon as it was apparent the workers all were masked up 24/7, the public would simply ask, "Why?".
They could have taken the path you are suggesting (possibly under inconclusive benefits of other types of masks) but that could have backfired and caused a lot more dmg than good.
You can't expect an entity like WHO to solely care about you as a person.
WHO failed in their societal obligation by diminishing their credibility. The misinformation may have increased mask supply to critical workers for a short period, but at the cost of strengthening the anti-maskers' message in the long run. And that cost was much larger IMO.
They created a long-term problem in order to fix a short-term one.
> You can't expect an entity like WHO to solely care about you as a person.
No, of course not. My whole point here is that WHO did the PR equivalent of that CEO who chases quarterly earnings at the expense of their company's future. Except instead of money, they did it with public confidence.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-facema...
"The findings are consistent with previous research. Health experts have long said a mask provides only limited protection for the person wearing it, but can dramatically reduce the risk to others if the wearer is infected, even when showing no symptoms."
Whether or not someone is "healthy" is completely irrelevant when you count that last part, "even when showing no symptoms".
It's not good advice.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7010e3.htm
Youtube unironically, whole-heartedly believes that "Censorship is Expression". Now the award makes sense. Add it to the "War is Peace" list.
Ultimately, what is the point of this? Is it some kind of Potemkin award meant to normalize censorship as free expression? Is it some silly thing apologists of YouTube can point to when YouTube is criticized as restricting free speech?
Edit: Even if you despise the people who think the election was stolen, preventing those people from discussing it on your platform directly contradicts the principle of free expression.