4 ms·

It's not your right to have access to YouTube's audience. Promote it yourself.

wallace_f 9y ago
Is it your right to have access to purchase services from your water/sewer utility? What about the offices of the NRA, or those of the ACLU, or you're another civil rights org and the water company's ownership doesn't agree with their movement? At what point does a business/service used by the public actually need to serve the public? If Google has a virtual monopoly on a service, why should they not be regulated as such?
- toofy 9y ago
  First thing first, this is a shining example why we should be trying to decentralize and why we should be trying to build diversity in how many providers we use to distribute content. This said, I dont think any of us have some inherent right to an audience which someone else built. And I’m not sure where this mistaken belief started. We have the right -in the US- to stand on a street corner and say stuff, but not the right that someone else has to go and round up 30,000 people and force them to listen to us. I think the right to utility services usually comes from contractual agreements between companies and the localities they serve in exchange for those companies usually exclusive roles in servicing those areas and they usually agree to being heavily regulated. If we’re going to be a country which is heavily invested in private property rights, the companies will _almost_ always have a choice in what products they decide to distribute and which products they choose to not distribute. I find it strange to imply google has a monopoly on serving videos, they may have a large and readily available audience, but they’ve spent a rather large amount of time and energy building this audience and the infrastructure needed to accommodate. It’s not like it’s difficult to go set up a website and serve videos, it’s trivial in labor and trivial in cost. People seem to be implying they feel like they’re entitled to an audience that someone else built and I think that’s a strange thing to believe. Again, let’s make other video services more popular rather than pretend YouTube is somehow the only way on the entire internet to serve videos.
  - cloakandswagger 9y ago
    > Again, let’s make other video services more popular rather than pretend YouTube is somehow the only way on the entire internet to serve videos. That ship has already sailed I'm afraid. Nearly every common internet service now has a single provider that dwarfs the few competitors it has, both in actual usage and mindshare. Oftentimes that mind-boggling success was fueled by easy treatment from regulators/the government as well as fate and circumstance, not from any groundbreaking ingenuity from the company that made it. It may sound strange today to think of social media, internet search, etc as a public utility, but within a decade or two it will seem like common sense. Google, Facebook, YouTube and others are censoring their way towards nationalization.
    - toofy 9y ago
      > It may sound strange today to think of social media, internet search, etc as a public utility, but within a decade or two it will seem like common sense. Google, Facebook, YouTube and others are censoring their way towards nationalization. What makes you think having content standards has anything to do with whether or not a content company would be nationalized? Wouldn’t the first thing to happen under a heavy regulation be something close to television licensing? They have far far stricter standards of what can be shared than any relevant social media platform.
omw192168 9y ago
What about the f1rst amendment !!1111!!
noobermin 9y ago
The government does not have a right to stop someone shouting on a street corner. However, Youtube and reddit and other private sites are essentially the "street corner" these days. That's why people talk about freedom of speech concerns when talking about posting to privately owned forums because they are, for better or for worst, today's public spaces. Also, it is worth noting that these actions are a result of a law enacted by the government, so even if the government isn't expressly curbing anyone's speech, it is having the chilling effect that opponents of sesta/fosta said it would.
- veidr 9y ago
  That analogy is flawed. YouTube and Facebook are like the local privately-owned shopping mall, not the street corner. They've both always had the equivalent of the security guard in the golf cart, who kicks people out for violating the mall's rules, and is often wrong.
  - Digory 9y ago
    Interestingly, the states might be able to require a freedom of speech in malls. I’d settle for a modern version of Pruneyard for Google and Facebook. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._Robins https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v....
  - candiodari 9y ago
    I wonder about this argument. This argument seems strongly at odds with the "fake news" efforts, which clearly push the need for government regulations to prevent specific content from being spread by private companies.
  - comex 9y ago
    If YouTube is a shopping mall, it’s a mall in some libertarian ‘utopia’ where there are no public sidewalks at all - no government-owned forum which is freely available to all. Not only that, individual property ownership is rare as well: businesses typically own their property, but for your average citizen it’s too difficult and expensive a process to go through with unless there’s a good reason. So even if you only want to share your beliefs with friends, people who will specifically visit your house to listen to you (rather than the random passerby who might hear you on the sidewalk)… you’re going to have to acquire a house first. Actually, for some reason, you can obtain housing relatively cheaply if you promise to only communicate by handing out written text; but most people just want to talk face-to-face (i.e. with video), which is much more expensive. (Oh, and there aren’t public roads, either. There’s just one big private road network, which finances itself by placing billboards on the roads. For the most part, they’ll build out roads to any location, big or small, without worrying about what kind of activity goes on in those locations. But only for the most part…) Luckily, most people never need to deal with these difficulties! There‘s one big shopping mall chain that dominates the whole country - most of the world, even. (It’s owned by the same company as the road network.) And it has a really nice offer for everyone: you can have all the space you want to engage in everything from idle chitchat to grave political lectures, from science demos to showing off your video game skills - all for free. Plus, the mall staff takes care of efficiently guiding people around to speakers that might interest them, so it’s really easy to spend hours bouncing from one interesting session to the next, with all your needs taken care of. Altogether, a highly engaging, communal, even productive environment. Much nicer than going to someone’s house. The only catch is that the staff will never recommend anything outside the mall, no matter how relevant. Oh, and... there is that mall cop. He mostly stays out of sight, though. There are only a few things that bother him, so just make sure to steer clear of those and he’ll leave you alone. Although, he does sometimes change the rules at a whim… and if he does kick you out, there’s almost nowhere else to go…
drtz 9y ago
> It's not your right to have access to YouTube's audience. This raises an interesting question: who built that audience? YouTube or its users?

Is it your right to have access to purchase services from your water/sewer utility? What about the offices of the NRA, or those of the ACLU, or you're another civil rights org and the water company's ownership doesn't agree with their movement? At what point does a business/service used by the public actually need to serve the public? If Google has a virtual monopoly on a service, why should they not be regulated as such?

toofy 9y ago
First thing first, this is a shining example why we should be trying to decentralize and why we should be trying to build diversity in how many providers we use to distribute content. This said, I dont think any of us have some inherent right to an audience which someone else built. And I’m not sure where this mistaken belief started. We have the right -in the US- to stand on a street corner and say stuff, but not the right that someone else has to go and round up 30,000 people and force them to listen to us. I think the right to utility services usually comes from contractual agreements between companies and the localities they serve in exchange for those companies usually exclusive roles in servicing those areas and they usually agree to being heavily regulated. If we’re going to be a country which is heavily invested in private property rights, the companies will _almost_ always have a choice in what products they decide to distribute and which products they choose to not distribute. I find it strange to imply google has a monopoly on serving videos, they may have a large and readily available audience, but they’ve spent a rather large amount of time and energy building this audience and the infrastructure needed to accommodate. It’s not like it’s difficult to go set up a website and serve videos, it’s trivial in labor and trivial in cost. People seem to be implying they feel like they’re entitled to an audience that someone else built and I think that’s a strange thing to believe. Again, let’s make other video services more popular rather than pretend YouTube is somehow the only way on the entire internet to serve videos.
- cloakandswagger 9y ago
  > Again, let’s make other video services more popular rather than pretend YouTube is somehow the only way on the entire internet to serve videos. That ship has already sailed I'm afraid. Nearly every common internet service now has a single provider that dwarfs the few competitors it has, both in actual usage and mindshare. Oftentimes that mind-boggling success was fueled by easy treatment from regulators/the government as well as fate and circumstance, not from any groundbreaking ingenuity from the company that made it. It may sound strange today to think of social media, internet search, etc as a public utility, but within a decade or two it will seem like common sense. Google, Facebook, YouTube and others are censoring their way towards nationalization.
  - toofy 9y ago
    > It may sound strange today to think of social media, internet search, etc as a public utility, but within a decade or two it will seem like common sense. Google, Facebook, YouTube and others are censoring their way towards nationalization. What makes you think having content standards has anything to do with whether or not a content company would be nationalized? Wouldn’t the first thing to happen under a heavy regulation be something close to television licensing? They have far far stricter standards of what can be shared than any relevant social media platform.

omw192168 9y ago

What about the f1rst amendment !!1111!!

noobermin 9y ago

The government does not have a right to stop someone shouting on a street corner. However, Youtube and reddit and other private sites are essentially the "street corner" these days. That's why people talk about freedom of speech concerns when talking about posting to privately owned forums because they are, for better or for worst, today's public spaces. Also, it is worth noting that these actions are a result of a law enacted by the government, so even if the government isn't expressly curbing anyone's speech, it is having the chilling effect that opponents of sesta/fosta said it would.

veidr 9y ago
That analogy is flawed. YouTube and Facebook are like the local privately-owned shopping mall, not the street corner. They've both always had the equivalent of the security guard in the golf cart, who kicks people out for violating the mall's rules, and is often wrong.
- Digory 9y ago
  Interestingly, the states might be able to require a freedom of speech in malls. I’d settle for a modern version of Pruneyard for Google and Facebook. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._Robins https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v....
- candiodari 9y ago
  I wonder about this argument. This argument seems strongly at odds with the "fake news" efforts, which clearly push the need for government regulations to prevent specific content from being spread by private companies.
- comex 9y ago
  If YouTube is a shopping mall, it’s a mall in some libertarian ‘utopia’ where there are no public sidewalks at all - no government-owned forum which is freely available to all. Not only that, individual property ownership is rare as well: businesses typically own their property, but for your average citizen it’s too difficult and expensive a process to go through with unless there’s a good reason. So even if you only want to share your beliefs with friends, people who will specifically visit your house to listen to you (rather than the random passerby who might hear you on the sidewalk)… you’re going to have to acquire a house first. Actually, for some reason, you can obtain housing relatively cheaply if you promise to only communicate by handing out written text; but most people just want to talk face-to-face (i.e. with video), which is much more expensive. (Oh, and there aren’t public roads, either. There’s just one big private road network, which finances itself by placing billboards on the roads. For the most part, they’ll build out roads to any location, big or small, without worrying about what kind of activity goes on in those locations. But only for the most part…) Luckily, most people never need to deal with these difficulties! There‘s one big shopping mall chain that dominates the whole country - most of the world, even. (It’s owned by the same company as the road network.) And it has a really nice offer for everyone: you can have all the space you want to engage in everything from idle chitchat to grave political lectures, from science demos to showing off your video game skills - all for free. Plus, the mall staff takes care of efficiently guiding people around to speakers that might interest them, so it’s really easy to spend hours bouncing from one interesting session to the next, with all your needs taken care of. Altogether, a highly engaging, communal, even productive environment. Much nicer than going to someone’s house. The only catch is that the staff will never recommend anything outside the mall, no matter how relevant. Oh, and... there is that mall cop. He mostly stays out of sight, though. There are only a few things that bother him, so just make sure to steer clear of those and he’ll leave you alone. Although, he does sometimes change the rules at a whim… and if he does kick you out, there’s almost nowhere else to go…

drtz 9y ago

> It's not your right to have access to YouTube's audience. This raises an interesting question: who built that audience? YouTube or its users?