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On much of this, it's not Google's political agenda here from what I see... it's advertisers in general. You are aware that Youtube faced a huge backlash earli

On much of this, it's not Google's political agenda here from what I see... it's advertisers in general. You are aware that Youtube faced a huge backlash earlier this year from large scale advertisers over "hate videos" and "extremist content": https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/24/15053990/google-youtube-advertising-boycott-hate-speech https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/24/15053990/google-youtube-a... Defining what a "hate video" and is "extremist" can be vague, so it's not surprising that some strong political channels are caught in the crosswinds, even if they are not necessarily "hate speech" or "extreme". (After all, Youtube is probably relying heavily on user feedback to determine what to flag). It's also not surprising that other things are caught in the crosswind (as the Ars Technica article mentions, LGBT content was also caught in the crosswinds.) Youtube's most recent advertiser-drive purgek came over "inappropriate" videos aimed at children. Again, advertisers are driving what some might call "censorship". https://www.cnet.com/news/youtube-deletes-150000-videos-following-boycott/ https://www.cnet.com/news/youtube-deletes-150000-videos-foll... Basically, I feel like strong advertiser presence in the future is going to heavily focus Youtube towards more "mainstream" oriented material in the future, especially on what can be monetized. Is it censorship? Not really -- no one is going to force companies to spend money to advertise where they don't want to. Feel free to start your own video platform that doesn't have Youtube's current corporate advertisement pressure. At this point, in my opinion, the energy some are spending in fighting Youtube's monetization policy ("1st Amendment" lawsuits against Youtube are going to fail, in my opinion) would be better spent in making sure the web remains open. So that any Youtube competitors, some of which might focus on hosting "non-mainstream" content that Youtube might ignore in the future, actually have a chance.

StreamBright 9y ago
I disagree. You are mixing together two categories: legitimately bad content (like the scary kid videos) and content does not fall in line with Google's political stance. As an advertiser you are targeting a very specific narrow population anyways and it is super easy to exclude your ads showing up in videos that you do not approve. And just a counter example to your point: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/facebook-halts-potential-anti-semitic-ads-following-report-n801566 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/facebook-halts-potenti... This was in production for god knows how long. "Feel free to start your own video platform that doesn't have Youtube's current corporate advertisement pressure." Well I do not use Youtube as much as I can. I use alternative video content providers. Anyways, this argument is silly at the very least.
- soundwave106 9y ago
  Why is the argument silly? Any "solution" to this that I can think of would be awful. Let's throw a counter example on another platform. Most American talk radio is conservative. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2015/07/13/why-all-the-talk-radio-stars-are-conservative/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2015/07/13/why-all-t...) IMHO the reasons for this are largely demographic oriented as specified in the Forbes article -- consequently, liberal specific talk radio has not done as well as a business model since, say, the 1980s. Conservative specific talk radio has. It's pretty easy to Google grumbling from liberals about Clear Channel being conservative and crowding out liberal talk and whatnot. These arguments seem as silly to me as the arguments about the political stance of Google (which I also think is more driven by business dollars and cents, not explicit political lean). At any rate, what's the solution here? Force Clear Channel to host liberal political talk via government decree? That would be about as awful as forcing Youtube to monetize conservative videos via government decree. The only arguments that make sense in this direction to me is that American radio, in effect, is a monopoly. It might be difficult to start a "liberal specific talk radio" format even if there was a solid business case for it, because the airwaves are dominated by only a few corporations. (I would argue that this actually played itself out more in the world of music -- a lot of music never crossed into the playlists of corporate radio or MTV, because of various reasons. Which is why Napster was so heavily embraced by many once it showed up.) Likewise with Google / Youtube: I would be much more receptive to arguments along these lines. If they became a defacto monopoly (I don't think they are there yet, but this is a danger these days), only one "content policy" would exist. And that definitely would be a problem. Hence why I think the real issue here is keeping the web open and competitive.

StreamBright 9y ago

I disagree. You are mixing together two categories: legitimately bad content (like the scary kid videos) and content does not fall in line with Google's political stance. As an advertiser you are targeting a very specific narrow population anyways and it is super easy to exclude your ads showing up in videos that you do not approve. And just a counter example to your point: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/facebook-halts-potential-anti-semitic-ads-following-report-n801566 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/facebook-halts-potenti... This was in production for god knows how long. "Feel free to start your own video platform that doesn't have Youtube's current corporate advertisement pressure." Well I do not use Youtube as much as I can. I use alternative video content providers. Anyways, this argument is silly at the very least.

soundwave106 9y ago
Why is the argument silly? Any "solution" to this that I can think of would be awful. Let's throw a counter example on another platform. Most American talk radio is conservative. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2015/07/13/why-all-the-talk-radio-stars-are-conservative/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2015/07/13/why-all-t...) IMHO the reasons for this are largely demographic oriented as specified in the Forbes article -- consequently, liberal specific talk radio has not done as well as a business model since, say, the 1980s. Conservative specific talk radio has. It's pretty easy to Google grumbling from liberals about Clear Channel being conservative and crowding out liberal talk and whatnot. These arguments seem as silly to me as the arguments about the political stance of Google (which I also think is more driven by business dollars and cents, not explicit political lean). At any rate, what's the solution here? Force Clear Channel to host liberal political talk via government decree? That would be about as awful as forcing Youtube to monetize conservative videos via government decree. The only arguments that make sense in this direction to me is that American radio, in effect, is a monopoly. It might be difficult to start a "liberal specific talk radio" format even if there was a solid business case for it, because the airwaves are dominated by only a few corporations. (I would argue that this actually played itself out more in the world of music -- a lot of music never crossed into the playlists of corporate radio or MTV, because of various reasons. Which is why Napster was so heavily embraced by many once it showed up.) Likewise with Google / Youtube: I would be much more receptive to arguments along these lines. If they became a defacto monopoly (I don't think they are there yet, but this is a danger these days), only one "content policy" would exist. And that definitely would be a problem. Hence why I think the real issue here is keeping the web open and competitive.