5 ms·
Who is YouTube to decide what I can and can't watch?
by xstephen95x 8y ago
Who is YouTube to decide what I can and can't watch?
- butterfi 8y agoThe owners of the platform. They are not a public service nor to they have to pretend to be one.
- politician 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privately_owned_public_space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privately_owned_public_space YouTube essentially has a monopoly on video. Monopolies and other actors can be forced to comply with public space laws or to respect principles that normally apply only to the government.
- foota 8y agoQuoting from that article: These spaces are usually the product of a deal between cities and private real estate developers in which cities grant valuable zoning concessions and developers provide in return privately owned public spaces in or near their buildings.
- akvadrako 8y agoThey don't have a monopoly - what an absurd idea. You can just publish videos on your own site.
- politician 8y agoMicrosoft didn't abuse a monopoly on Windows in the 90s either, as you could just run a Linux distribution on your own machine. Right? Wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor.... Just because someone can run a small-time operation out of their garage, doesn't mean another company doesn't have a monopoly.
- akvadrako 8y agoMs had a monopoly because of market forces - but it's very easy to not use youtube.
- politician 8y agoAs a contributor or as a visitor?
- tptacek 8y agoHow exactly does Youtube have a monopoly on video? What's the underlying scarcity they're exploiting?
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoWell, they are the de-facto curator of the bulk of our civilizations videos. Lets be honest, if you aren't on YouTube your chances of being searched/promoted/seen are greatly diminished. Maybe to nearly zero.
- reitanqild 8y agoThe only video content I can remember paying for has been on vimeo and udemy. But then again I'm old fashioned and like to read about stuff on some web site and then click to whatever video hosting site they use.
- politician 8y agoAd placement via search results dominance.
- Tushon 8y agoThat's so far from true. A "video hosting services" search away is >10 results, of which I recognize at least 3 as professional level excluding Youtube (Vimeo, Ooyala, and Wistia). They may not have the entire ecosystem around it, but you need to be a little specific if you want anything approaching a valid claim for "monopoly on video" _hosting_. If you're talking about traffic, that's a separate story and is only a sign they are generally providing a usable product.
- politician 8y agoWhen I search for video on search engines, I only see hits to YouTube and far far fewer hits to Vimeo. I never see hits for Ooyala and Wistia; honestly, you could be making those sites up for all I know.
- s73v3r_ 8y agoAnd the other ones won't ever see more popularity if everyone keeps saying that YouTube is the only game in town, and doesn't start using the other sites.
- risotto_groupon 8y agoGoogle, who owns Youtube, are distributors at best, and distributors who didn't come by their trade first hand. They bought into it. They are pretenders who, for the first time in recorded history, are able to perform a massive product recall in the name of censorship without incurring backlash on a scale that would cause bankruptcy or riots. To wish away all that context in the name of "digital" is a fool's errand.
- gaius 8y agoThey are not a public service nor to they have to pretend to be one. But they do pretend that, all the time. They are a common carrier when it suits them and a publisher with editorial control when it suits them. That’s not reasonable and they must be forced to choose one or the other.
- dragonwriter 8y agoYouTube isn't deciding what you can watch, they are deciding what they are going to use their resources to show you. You can still watch whatever you want, provided you don't use YouTube's resources. As to who YouTube is to make that decision: they are the entity providing the resources.
- joew42k 8y agoYou can decide to not watch youtube. TV stations decide what shows they want to air, and which ones they don't. And nobody calls it censorship. Youtube feels like public infrastructure. But legally, it's no different than a TV station deciding to cancel a show.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoA TV station has limited bandwidth. They have a constant ongoing algorithm to choose what to fit in there. YouTube could keep all videos forever. There can be no commercial reason to 'cancel' a YouTube video. So we know that this decision is almost completely unrelated to the TV Station reasons.
- joew42k 8y ago1. Hosting videos costs Youtube money. It's probably a tiny amount per video. But that doesn't mean they can host every video forever. 2. They have a commercial reason to cancel these videos. Maybe they think the use of these drugs is risky, and gives their website an unsavory reputation. That hurts their brand (and potentially their bottom line). This is not unlike a TV show canceling a successful show when it's star actor becomes embroiled in controversy.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoNumber 1 is pretty much yes, they can. It's a diminishing cost, and the price of storage is very likely diminishing faster than the rate of video production is rising. Number 2, agreed, we in fact know it can only be censorship (and not competing viewership) that drives the decision. That's my whole point.
- rrdharan 8y agoI disagree. https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-cost-per-gigabyte/ https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-cost-per-gigabyte/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/259477/hours-of-video-uploaded-to-youtube-every-minute/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/259477/hours-of-video-up... As far as I can tell, YouTube video content is growing exponentially, and hard drive costs are dropping linearly.