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It's really chilling to see these platforms, within a matter of months, go from shouting from the rooftops to promote net neutrality, to censoring and editorial
by cezar2 9y ago
It's really chilling to see these platforms, within a matter of months, go from shouting from the rooftops to promote net neutrality, to censoring and editorializing legal content.
- tzs 9y agoHow so? Net neutrality concerns ISPs not interfering with legal content. It has nothing whatsoever to say about or do with what content sites that host or provide content chose to host or provide. Transportation provides a good analogy. Net neutrality is about the roads, not about what goods and services the places you drive to on those roads do and do not offer.
- hungerstrike 9y agoThese services own their platform. So, they are justified in doing what they want right? Likewise, the ISPs own the infrastructure and they can do what they wish as well. The Internet is not made up of public roadways. So what's the difference? I think it's just that you want the ISPs to not own the roads. If you separate what you personally want ISPs to be from the rest of your argument, I think you can see that the ISPs and these tech platforms are pretty much the same - they both own their product and should be able to do what they want to.
- Spivak 9y agoThe difference I imagine is that YouTube is not infrastructure, they are a publisher that takes full responsibility for the content present on their site. It's not 'X's videos are hosted on YouTube' it's 'X is a YouTuber'. I think you would have a much stronger argument if someone like Amazon said you couldn't host gun videos on AWS.
- tzs 9y agoThere are several differences between ISPs and websites. 1. ISPs generally require licenses or leases from the government in order to build and maintain their infrastructure. Wireless ISPs, for example, need to license RF spectrum. Wired ISPs generally need to run their wires on public land. You can't just start a new ISP, like you can a new website. 2. Broadband ISPs are generally monopolies or near monopolies in a given area, especially wired ISPs. This is related to #1. 3. Telecommunications services fall under the Telecommunications Acts of 1934 and 1996. Websites do not.
- jlebar 9y agoIsn't the fear that if we don't have net neutrality, it will be harder for upstart sites (like videosofthingsthatgoboom.com) to compete with incumbents like YT? Net neutrality is largely about protecting the ability for small players to disrupt the big sites, who might be making bad decisions...
- ebbv 9y agoOne has absolutely nothing to do with the other, dude.
- hungerstrike 9y agoIt's not absolute. You just didn't think about it enough. Also, I think you were a bit rude.
- SlowRobotAhead 9y agoAgreed. While they aren’t directly related the arguments for NN were basically “you don’t get to decide what the internet is for everyone!” when what they really meant is ”oh we’re totally going to do that” I think it’s interesting seeing these companies be emboldened in their self-censorship of legal things, in terms of guns it’s all directly linked to one nanny state billionaire who finds the entire gun control “movement”. That won’t play well at polls as it does in canned media responses.