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I'm so tired of people calling the regulation of hate speech and violent speech on private platforms "censorship." These people are more than free to express th

I'm so tired of people calling the regulation of hate speech and violent speech on private platforms "censorship." These people are more than free to express themselves in any public platform or their own platform. They are not censored in any way. They are being removed from a private platform for not complying with the rules of the platform. You wouldn't say that a drunk who walked into a nice restaurant yelling hateful things was being censored when they are asked to leave. Neither would you say that a man trying to convince kids to get into his van outside of McDonalds was being censored for being kicked out of the McDonalds. Both of those are private businesses regulating the behavior of their customers, and not in any way censorship. > Randomly clicking on videos The entire point is that people don't click on random videos, they click on videos they think are interesting. Call it "rage clicks", curiosity, or some people are just bad people and want to see bad things, just don't call it random, because thats obviously wrong.

dwiguy 8y ago
the act of censoring something can be done by private entities, not just the government. Is it their right to do so? absolutely.
- manfredo 8y ago
  Where in my comment did I say that YouTube doesn't have the right to ban content? Nowhere. It always puzzles me why this response always crops up, even when I never even remotely try to claim that platforms have any legal obligation to host content. I did claim that making their site have a partisan recommendation algorithm is not a good idea and may be bad for society. I have zero doubt that this is their right, but people and companies have the right to do plenty of things that aren't good for society. Saying that it's bad for society to implement a partisan recommendation algorithm is not at all the same thing as saying it is or should be illegal.
  - 4werfaw34r 8y ago
    I sympathize with your frustration. My theory of HN comments: People prefer to respond to familar arguments, rather than the arguments you make in your comments. People prefer to discuss topics that they are familiar or passionate about, rather than the specific topics addressed in the articles or parent comments. Posting Fast and Slow
  - mbesto 8y ago
    > I did claim that making their site have a partisan recommendation algorithm is not a good idea and may be bad for society. So who gets to decide what is good and bad for society?
    - manfredo 8y ago
      I do because I'm stating my own personal views. You do as well, when you are stating your own views. Why do people keep trying to depict people stating their opinions as advocating some sort of government sponsored program forcing their opinions on others? Has discourse really gotten to the point where we just assume that when people state their views they are always implying that they want these views enforced on others? It's entirely valid to say that tech companies' censorship or forms of manipulating views is bad while acknowledging that this is their legal right. This comment applies just as much to you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19525998 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19525998
    - stale2002 8y ago
      > So who gets to decide what is good and bad for society? Everyone does. Everyone makes their own decisions about what is right or wrong.
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Pharmakon 8y ago
I’m at the point where dishonest discussions about “free speech” online are a non-starter (Having had an illuminating exchange on this very site two days ago). It’s not as though these anonymous chats matter in the slightest, they’re had in bad faith and most of all are intellectually stultifying. The only winning move is not to play. You won’t convince anyone of your position who has made the conscious choice to adopt a dynamic series of positions to support their unstated agenda. It’s like arguing with creationists, the best you can hope for is changing their declared position of the day. Meanwhile they win just by having an audience and the semblance of legitimacy, not to mention dominating and railroading ever comment section they can to quash reasonable debate. This is setting aside issues with bots, trolls, and brigades. In real life with people you know and can talk to there can be value in these discussions, but never anonymously and never online. It’s pseudointellectual wank dressed up as reasonable talk. There is nothing wrong with simply saying, “I’m not interested in having this conversation with you, sorry.” and moving on.
- malvosenior 8y ago
  Do you really not accept that some people (many) may just actually believe in free speech and not be arguing in bad faith, be a bot, brigade...? That was a pretty normal position to hold on the US until about 5 years ago and I’d say it still is.
  - tombert 8y ago
    It's still a pretty normal position; I think a vast majority of Americans openly support free speech. Fear-mongering idiots like Sargon of Akkad and Ben Shapiro and Stephen Crowder and Stefan Molyneux and Jordan Peterson work very hard to make you feel like "all the SJWs are trying to regulate everything you say OMG!" because that's how they get their Patreon money, but in reality it's a lot more nuanced. I personally think that you should be allowed to say whatever the hell you want, and I do think it's a little BS when YouTube bans people for ideological reasons. That said, I also don't really get mad at YouTube for it, because it is a private platform, and frankly I don't think most people here would argue that YouTube should be classified as a utility.
throwaway284721 8y ago
The comparison between a platform with a huge network effect and a restaurant is absolutely ridiculous.
manfredo 8y ago
Perhaps you missed the point I'm making. YouTube does not allow hate speech on it's platform. How well it polices and enforces those rules is a valuable point of discussion, but not the one that is at hand. The concern is that people are able to click through to the extremes of what _is_ allowed on YouTube. My point is that this is not in and of itself a valuable thing to be concerned about. Even if YouTube actively tweaked their algorithms to push people towards the center, it'd still be possible to click through to the extremes - unless YouTube totally stops all recommendations that don't lead closer to the center.
- wbronitsky 8y ago
  I disagree. YouTube obviously allows hate speech and violent images on its platform. Did you follow their struggles in removing the NZ video? If they wanted to have systems to prevent what happened, they could have built them. It is not a stretch, in any way, to think that one day there would be a viral video that they HAD to remove for one reason or another. In fact, they do it every day for the RIAA. Its not like YouTube is bound by some cosmic constant that makes it hard to police the content on their platform. They are Alphabet for god sakes, they have so much money they don't know what to do with it. They can, and should, solve these problems, and we can, and should, hold them to account until they do.
  - manfredo 8y ago
    The "struggles" of tech companies blocking the NZ video is not giving them enough credit. I only know about Facebook's 80% preemptively blocked rate but to be frank, that figure is impressive. A new video, with millions of not tens of millions of people posting it, editing it, cropping it, flipping the image and doing everything they can to avoid the filtering algorithms and Facebook still managed to preemptively block 80% of attempted uploads. To me, that's an impressive feat and a sign of just how much investment the company had made to block bad content. Copyright filtering isn't a good example IMO. Lots of people consistently claim that the content ID algorithms are crappy and have high rates of false positives.
    - 8y ago
papermill 8y ago
You would also be fine with LGBT or leftist "hate speech" being banned? Lets say china or saudi arabia tells youtube to remove content they find "hateful", would you support it? Youtube can censor since it is a private company. But we are talking about the liberal cultural love of free speech, not a legal one. Especially in the US where we have defended speech for nearly 250 years. Now, we have a strong leftist authoritarian push to censor which I find abhorrent and dangerous. What ever happened to the american ( and western? ) ideal of if you don't like it, don't consume it? As a person of color, I find people like you extremely dangerous and a threat to the american way of life. And it's ridiculous that you claim "they are not censored in any way". They are by definition, being censored. Not by government, but by monopoly tech companies. Do you really want to live in a world where a handful of companies decide what we can see, hear and watch? I can't stand the insane contradictory leftist rhetoric. On the one had, you claim tech companies are too powerful and evil and shouldn't be trusted. On the other hand, you want to give tech companies power to censor.
- fzeroracer 8y ago
  The claim that we've defended free speech for over 250 years is just wrong, unless you strictly look at white landowners. In reality, the people that oft benefitted from free speech were the slave owners and the white supremacists while others were censored, beaten, killed and so forth. This isn't to advocate for full governmental control over speech, but rather to show the American ideal of free speech has never existed or been equally applied.
  - thirtyplusgamer 8y ago
    >Muh white supremacy!!! God you people are as predictable as you are pathetic.
- mullingitover 8y ago
  > I can't stand the insane contradictory leftist rhetoric. On the one had, you claim tech companies are too powerful and evil and shouldn't be trusted. On the other hand, you want to give tech companies power to censor. This is actually a right-wing authoritarian stance: you're advocating that the government (or do you mean some other entity?) force private businesses to publish speech that they disagree with. You're conflating private entities freedom to publish or not publish what they wish with censorship, which only comes from a legal authority.
weberc2 8y ago
I generally agree, but these networks are the conduit for so much speech that I'm sympathetic to the idea that it constitutes censorship, especially when we're not talking about "hateful views" but moderate views (e.g., advocating for tighter border control) which are deemed 'hateful' as an excuse to justify censoring/deplatforming/etc. Doubly so when bonafide hate speech ("cancel white men") goes unpunished altogether.
justsee 8y ago
Why get tired of correct usage of a term? You can simply reduce you complaint from ‘hate speech’ and ‘violent speech’ to ‘speech’ to reveal the nuanced perspective of grey thinkers. Dismissing the societal effect of censorship by dominant public mediums because their profit structure is private is - regardless of your position on said censorship - a very incurious and unserious to adopt. The contrived examples to support your position are unlikely to resonate with anyone who spends the briefest moment in consideration of all the game theoretic outcomes that are possible with your attitude. I presume in your world it is okay for telecommunication companies to deny cell phone access to individuals based on arbitrary, internal and opaque reasons because they’re privately held. Attempting to deny the reality of societal responsibilities when a service hits societal scale is just silly.
- ams6110 8y ago
  > Attempting to deny the reality of societal responsibilities when a service hits societal scale is just silly. Indeed, especially when the primary purpose of the service is to be a platform for speech. Hotels don't get to violate peoples rights just because they are private businesses.
  - Pharmakon 8y ago
    An advertising platform that makes their money selling and targeting ads owns a video platform funded by advertising, but the purpose of the service is speech and not ads? Hm. I see some obvious holes in that line of thought. I feel that the answer to “why is this advertising company so much more interested in selling ads than promoting free speech?” is more obvious than some give credit for, as is the answer to “why isn’t this massive for profit advertiser not on board with my narrow absolutist view on speech?!”
    - ams6110 8y ago
      Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world. We believe that everyone deserves to have a voice, and that the world is a better place when we listen, share and build community through our stories. Our values are based on four essential freedoms that define who we are. Freedom of Expression We believe people should be able to speak freely, share opinions, foster open dialogue, and that creative freedom leads to new voices, formats and possibilities. Freedom of Information We believe everyone should have easy, open access to information and that video is a powerful force for education, building understanding, and documenting world events, big and small. Freedom of Opportunity We believe everyone should have a chance to be discovered, build a business and succeed on their own terms, and that people—not gatekeepers—decide what’s popular. Freedom to Belong We believe everyone should be able to find communities of support, break down barriers, transcend borders and come together around shared interests and passions. https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/ https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/
gambler 8y ago
>These people are more than free to express themselves in any public platform or their own platform. I don't take this position seriously anymore, because I've seen time and time again that people who espouse it immediately flip 180 degrees when some large platform starts censoring content they want to post or see. The opposite is also true. Some people who speak against censorship flip 180 degrees when they don't like some content. (Though a bit less often, it seems.) My conclusion: before saying anything of this sort, you have to be able to present a clear general rule (that other people can apply without asking you) that distinguishes between cases of censorship you're okay with from other cases. That's the only way such conversation can start in a rational manner. Realistically, very few people truly believe that big companies should be home free to delete anything they want, solely their own discretion (including content from human right activists, opposition parties, corporate whistle-blowers, scientists and critics of the platform in question).
- amanaplanacanal 8y ago
  > very few people truly believe that big companies should be home free to delete anything they want, solely their own discretion Of course they are. If they start showing stuff that scares off advertisers, they will be out of business. Don't see a lot of porn on youtube, do you? If you think that platforms like youtube, twitter, and facebook should be forced to show all legal content, I think you will find yourself to be in a very small minority position. And it's a position there is no way the US Supreme Court will back you up on.
cwkoss 8y ago
They call it censorship because that is the correct word for what the platforms are doing. Censorship does not require it being done by the government or be morally or legally wrong.
- amanaplanacanal 8y ago
  Well sure, but in that case the Washington Post is performing censorship when it decides which "letters to the editor" it chooses to print. I suspect that is not what most people have in mind when they use the word "censorship".
umvi 8y ago
> These people are more than free to express themselves in any public platform or their own platform. Let me know if this is free speech: - I have an extreme view I want to share - I tried sharing on facebook but it got banned - So I hosted it on my own website but then Cloudflare and AWS dropped me - So then I hosted it on my own physical box in my house but then Comcast disconnected my service Do I still have free speech?
- 4werfaw34r 8y ago
  IMHO > I tried sharing on facebook but it got banned You still have free speech. > So I hosted it on my own website but then Cloudflare and AWS dropped me You still have free speech > So then I hosted it on my own physical box in my house but then Comcast disconnected my service Now you don't. Is that legal? If it is, we should consider regulating ISPs in the manner we do phone companies. Someone call Ajit pai.
  - umvi 8y ago
    I don't see why it wouldn't be legal, it's Comcast's infrastructure, right? If the public says "Hey Comcast, why are you letting extremists use your network to connect themselves to the world and transmit dangerous ideas?" I don't see why Comcast wouldn't be allowed to decide to cave under the pressure and disconnect me.
    - mbesto 8y ago
      > it's Comcast's infrastructure, right? Which was subsidized, made scarce, and then sold to Comcast by the government. There's a reason people are calling for broadband providers to be considered common carriers, because the market isn't "free" (as in competitive).
    - livueta 8y ago
      I think an interesting lens to view this issue through is that of Marsh vs Alabama: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama Money quote: > The State attempted to analogize the town's rights to the rights of homeowners to regulate the conduct of guests in their home. The Court rejected that contention, noting that ownership "does not always mean absolute dominion." The court pointed out that the more an owner opens his property up to the public in general, the more his rights are circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who are invited in. Another phrase I've heard recently is along the lines of "a company's ability to refuse to do business with you should be proportional to your ability to refuse to do business with them". It's not too much of a stretch to liken some of the big platforms and service providers we have today to company towns. While, strictly speaking, one doesn't have to (live in a company town)|(subscribe to Comcast), for some large segments of the population who (live in economically disadvantaged regions where the only jobs are available via the Company)|(are forced to choose between dealing with Comcast and cutting themselves off from social and economic activity), that's not much of a choice in practice. For the moment, I think that line of "inescapable enough to warrant restriction of property rights" falls to include infra providers (think cartel ISPs, some PAAS, DNS, maybe CloudFlare if you squint) but not platforms like YT/FB. That's probably down to my bias towards technical solutions over regulatory intervention - there's at least a reasonable hope of displacing YT/FB with decentralized platforms, but short of mesh radio you're SOL if your only ISP that offers >56k doesn't want you.
d1zzy 8y ago
> I'm so tired of people calling the regulation of hate speech and violent speech on private platforms "censorship." These people are more than free to express themselves in any public platform or their own platform. They are not censored in any way. What exactly is "their own platform"? If I post to a blog site, that's not my platform and can be censored. If I host my own blogging software on a kubernetes service that's not my platform and I can be censured (AFAIK all providers have TOS on the type of content allowed and largely reserve the right to remove content for any reason). If I host my own OS with blogging software on a IaaS provider again I may be shutdown/refused to do business with. If I host my own hardware, with own OS with blogging software in a colocation datacenter it may also be removed for TOS violation. Same for simply hosting it on my own computer connected to an ISP, the ISP has TOS for the types of content allowed through their networks. So how exactly do I setup this (mythical?) "own platform" where I can post anything that I am constitutionally/legally allowed to and how do I make it available over the Internet?
- tombert 8y ago
  I would say it should stop at the ISP level. ISPs are (or at least should be) a utility, and as a consequence completely non-disciminatory in who they host, similar to how phone lines are run. So, in theory (at least in my perfect world), you could run a server in your basement and host your controversial views there.
  - RandomTisk 8y ago
    No doubt someone at the founding of the US Constitution had the same ideals of such a perfect world, where criticism of Christianity would only be permitted from their basement.
thatoneuser 8y ago
People say Jordan peterson is "hate speech". If you're tired of people defending speech then get pissed at the people who are abusing the concept of violent speech by slapping the label on everything they dislike.
lackbeard 8y ago
> You wouldn't say that a drunk who walked into a nice restaurant yelling hateful things was being censored when they are asked to leave. This seems like a bad analogy to me. No loud drunks are forcing anyone to listen to them on YouTube. Yet some people are angry that YouTube lets loud drunks post videos of themselves yelling hateful things, and angry that YouTube lets some people who want to listen that do so?
tyscorp 8y ago
> These people are more than free to express themselves in any public platform or their own platform. I think we're at a point (or fast approaching it) where these huge platforms are so integrated into our society that perhaps we _should_ consider them public platforms. >You wouldn't say that a drunk who walked into a nice restaurant yelling hateful things was being censored when they are asked to leave. I don't think this analogy holds up because of the sheer magnitude of difference in size. These platforms are bigger than most countries. Countries have governments and laws that serve the citizens and keep society running. Imo, the users of these platforms should be treated like citizens of that platform. I don't want to be a citizen of a dictatorship.

dwiguy 8y ago

the act of censoring something can be done by private entities, not just the government. Is it their right to do so? absolutely.

manfredo 8y ago
Where in my comment did I say that YouTube doesn't have the right to ban content? Nowhere. It always puzzles me why this response always crops up, even when I never even remotely try to claim that platforms have any legal obligation to host content. I did claim that making their site have a partisan recommendation algorithm is not a good idea and may be bad for society. I have zero doubt that this is their right, but people and companies have the right to do plenty of things that aren't good for society. Saying that it's bad for society to implement a partisan recommendation algorithm is not at all the same thing as saying it is or should be illegal.
- 4werfaw34r 8y ago
  I sympathize with your frustration. My theory of HN comments: People prefer to respond to familar arguments, rather than the arguments you make in your comments. People prefer to discuss topics that they are familiar or passionate about, rather than the specific topics addressed in the articles or parent comments. Posting Fast and Slow
- mbesto 8y ago
  > I did claim that making their site have a partisan recommendation algorithm is not a good idea and may be bad for society. So who gets to decide what is good and bad for society?
  - manfredo 8y ago
    I do because I'm stating my own personal views. You do as well, when you are stating your own views. Why do people keep trying to depict people stating their opinions as advocating some sort of government sponsored program forcing their opinions on others? Has discourse really gotten to the point where we just assume that when people state their views they are always implying that they want these views enforced on others? It's entirely valid to say that tech companies' censorship or forms of manipulating views is bad while acknowledging that this is their legal right. This comment applies just as much to you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19525998 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19525998
  - stale2002 8y ago
    > So who gets to decide what is good and bad for society? Everyone does. Everyone makes their own decisions about what is right or wrong.
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Pharmakon 8y ago

I’m at the point where dishonest discussions about “free speech” online are a non-starter (Having had an illuminating exchange on this very site two days ago). It’s not as though these anonymous chats matter in the slightest, they’re had in bad faith and most of all are intellectually stultifying. The only winning move is not to play. You won’t convince anyone of your position who has made the conscious choice to adopt a dynamic series of positions to support their unstated agenda. It’s like arguing with creationists, the best you can hope for is changing their declared position of the day. Meanwhile they win just by having an audience and the semblance of legitimacy, not to mention dominating and railroading ever comment section they can to quash reasonable debate. This is setting aside issues with bots, trolls, and brigades. In real life with people you know and can talk to there can be value in these discussions, but never anonymously and never online. It’s pseudointellectual wank dressed up as reasonable talk. There is nothing wrong with simply saying, “I’m not interested in having this conversation with you, sorry.” and moving on.

malvosenior 8y ago
Do you really not accept that some people (many) may just actually believe in free speech and not be arguing in bad faith, be a bot, brigade...? That was a pretty normal position to hold on the US until about 5 years ago and I’d say it still is.
- tombert 8y ago
  It's still a pretty normal position; I think a vast majority of Americans openly support free speech. Fear-mongering idiots like Sargon of Akkad and Ben Shapiro and Stephen Crowder and Stefan Molyneux and Jordan Peterson work very hard to make you feel like "all the SJWs are trying to regulate everything you say OMG!" because that's how they get their Patreon money, but in reality it's a lot more nuanced. I personally think that you should be allowed to say whatever the hell you want, and I do think it's a little BS when YouTube bans people for ideological reasons. That said, I also don't really get mad at YouTube for it, because it is a private platform, and frankly I don't think most people here would argue that YouTube should be classified as a utility.

throwaway284721 8y ago

The comparison between a platform with a huge network effect and a restaurant is absolutely ridiculous.

manfredo 8y ago

Perhaps you missed the point I'm making. YouTube does not allow hate speech on it's platform. How well it polices and enforces those rules is a valuable point of discussion, but not the one that is at hand. The concern is that people are able to click through to the extremes of what _is_ allowed on YouTube. My point is that this is not in and of itself a valuable thing to be concerned about. Even if YouTube actively tweaked their algorithms to push people towards the center, it'd still be possible to click through to the extremes - unless YouTube totally stops all recommendations that don't lead closer to the center.

wbronitsky 8y ago
I disagree. YouTube obviously allows hate speech and violent images on its platform. Did you follow their struggles in removing the NZ video? If they wanted to have systems to prevent what happened, they could have built them. It is not a stretch, in any way, to think that one day there would be a viral video that they HAD to remove for one reason or another. In fact, they do it every day for the RIAA. Its not like YouTube is bound by some cosmic constant that makes it hard to police the content on their platform. They are Alphabet for god sakes, they have so much money they don't know what to do with it. They can, and should, solve these problems, and we can, and should, hold them to account until they do.
- manfredo 8y ago
  The "struggles" of tech companies blocking the NZ video is not giving them enough credit. I only know about Facebook's 80% preemptively blocked rate but to be frank, that figure is impressive. A new video, with millions of not tens of millions of people posting it, editing it, cropping it, flipping the image and doing everything they can to avoid the filtering algorithms and Facebook still managed to preemptively block 80% of attempted uploads. To me, that's an impressive feat and a sign of just how much investment the company had made to block bad content. Copyright filtering isn't a good example IMO. Lots of people consistently claim that the content ID algorithms are crappy and have high rates of false positives.
  - 8y ago

papermill 8y ago

You would also be fine with LGBT or leftist "hate speech" being banned? Lets say china or saudi arabia tells youtube to remove content they find "hateful", would you support it? Youtube can censor since it is a private company. But we are talking about the liberal cultural love of free speech, not a legal one. Especially in the US where we have defended speech for nearly 250 years. Now, we have a strong leftist authoritarian push to censor which I find abhorrent and dangerous. What ever happened to the american ( and western? ) ideal of if you don't like it, don't consume it? As a person of color, I find people like you extremely dangerous and a threat to the american way of life. And it's ridiculous that you claim "they are not censored in any way". They are by definition, being censored. Not by government, but by monopoly tech companies. Do you really want to live in a world where a handful of companies decide what we can see, hear and watch? I can't stand the insane contradictory leftist rhetoric. On the one had, you claim tech companies are too powerful and evil and shouldn't be trusted. On the other hand, you want to give tech companies power to censor.

fzeroracer 8y ago
The claim that we've defended free speech for over 250 years is just wrong, unless you strictly look at white landowners. In reality, the people that oft benefitted from free speech were the slave owners and the white supremacists while others were censored, beaten, killed and so forth. This isn't to advocate for full governmental control over speech, but rather to show the American ideal of free speech has never existed or been equally applied.
- thirtyplusgamer 8y ago
  >Muh white supremacy!!! God you people are as predictable as you are pathetic.
mullingitover 8y ago
> I can't stand the insane contradictory leftist rhetoric. On the one had, you claim tech companies are too powerful and evil and shouldn't be trusted. On the other hand, you want to give tech companies power to censor. This is actually a right-wing authoritarian stance: you're advocating that the government (or do you mean some other entity?) force private businesses to publish speech that they disagree with. You're conflating private entities freedom to publish or not publish what they wish with censorship, which only comes from a legal authority.

weberc2 8y ago

I generally agree, but these networks are the conduit for so much speech that I'm sympathetic to the idea that it constitutes censorship, especially when we're not talking about "hateful views" but moderate views (e.g., advocating for tighter border control) which are deemed 'hateful' as an excuse to justify censoring/deplatforming/etc. Doubly so when bonafide hate speech ("cancel white men") goes unpunished altogether.

justsee 8y ago

Why get tired of correct usage of a term? You can simply reduce you complaint from ‘hate speech’ and ‘violent speech’ to ‘speech’ to reveal the nuanced perspective of grey thinkers. Dismissing the societal effect of censorship by dominant public mediums because their profit structure is private is - regardless of your position on said censorship - a very incurious and unserious to adopt. The contrived examples to support your position are unlikely to resonate with anyone who spends the briefest moment in consideration of all the game theoretic outcomes that are possible with your attitude. I presume in your world it is okay for telecommunication companies to deny cell phone access to individuals based on arbitrary, internal and opaque reasons because they’re privately held. Attempting to deny the reality of societal responsibilities when a service hits societal scale is just silly.

ams6110 8y ago
> Attempting to deny the reality of societal responsibilities when a service hits societal scale is just silly. Indeed, especially when the primary purpose of the service is to be a platform for speech. Hotels don't get to violate peoples rights just because they are private businesses.
- Pharmakon 8y ago
  An advertising platform that makes their money selling and targeting ads owns a video platform funded by advertising, but the purpose of the service is speech and not ads? Hm. I see some obvious holes in that line of thought. I feel that the answer to “why is this advertising company so much more interested in selling ads than promoting free speech?” is more obvious than some give credit for, as is the answer to “why isn’t this massive for profit advertiser not on board with my narrow absolutist view on speech?!”
  - ams6110 8y ago
    Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world. We believe that everyone deserves to have a voice, and that the world is a better place when we listen, share and build community through our stories. Our values are based on four essential freedoms that define who we are. Freedom of Expression We believe people should be able to speak freely, share opinions, foster open dialogue, and that creative freedom leads to new voices, formats and possibilities. Freedom of Information We believe everyone should have easy, open access to information and that video is a powerful force for education, building understanding, and documenting world events, big and small. Freedom of Opportunity We believe everyone should have a chance to be discovered, build a business and succeed on their own terms, and that people—not gatekeepers—decide what’s popular. Freedom to Belong We believe everyone should be able to find communities of support, break down barriers, transcend borders and come together around shared interests and passions. https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/ https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/

gambler 8y ago

>These people are more than free to express themselves in any public platform or their own platform. I don't take this position seriously anymore, because I've seen time and time again that people who espouse it immediately flip 180 degrees when some large platform starts censoring content they want to post or see. The opposite is also true. Some people who speak against censorship flip 180 degrees when they don't like some content. (Though a bit less often, it seems.) My conclusion: before saying anything of this sort, you have to be able to present a clear general rule (that other people can apply without asking you) that distinguishes between cases of censorship you're okay with from other cases. That's the only way such conversation can start in a rational manner. Realistically, very few people truly believe that big companies should be home free to delete anything they want, solely their own discretion (including content from human right activists, opposition parties, corporate whistle-blowers, scientists and critics of the platform in question).

amanaplanacanal 8y ago
> very few people truly believe that big companies should be home free to delete anything they want, solely their own discretion Of course they are. If they start showing stuff that scares off advertisers, they will be out of business. Don't see a lot of porn on youtube, do you? If you think that platforms like youtube, twitter, and facebook should be forced to show all legal content, I think you will find yourself to be in a very small minority position. And it's a position there is no way the US Supreme Court will back you up on.

cwkoss 8y ago

They call it censorship because that is the correct word for what the platforms are doing. Censorship does not require it being done by the government or be morally or legally wrong.

amanaplanacanal 8y ago
Well sure, but in that case the Washington Post is performing censorship when it decides which "letters to the editor" it chooses to print. I suspect that is not what most people have in mind when they use the word "censorship".

umvi 8y ago

> These people are more than free to express themselves in any public platform or their own platform. Let me know if this is free speech: - I have an extreme view I want to share - I tried sharing on facebook but it got banned - So I hosted it on my own website but then Cloudflare and AWS dropped me - So then I hosted it on my own physical box in my house but then Comcast disconnected my service Do I still have free speech?

4werfaw34r 8y ago
IMHO > I tried sharing on facebook but it got banned You still have free speech. > So I hosted it on my own website but then Cloudflare and AWS dropped me You still have free speech > So then I hosted it on my own physical box in my house but then Comcast disconnected my service Now you don't. Is that legal? If it is, we should consider regulating ISPs in the manner we do phone companies. Someone call Ajit pai.
- umvi 8y ago
  I don't see why it wouldn't be legal, it's Comcast's infrastructure, right? If the public says "Hey Comcast, why are you letting extremists use your network to connect themselves to the world and transmit dangerous ideas?" I don't see why Comcast wouldn't be allowed to decide to cave under the pressure and disconnect me.
  - mbesto 8y ago
    > it's Comcast's infrastructure, right? Which was subsidized, made scarce, and then sold to Comcast by the government. There's a reason people are calling for broadband providers to be considered common carriers, because the market isn't "free" (as in competitive).
  - livueta 8y ago
    I think an interesting lens to view this issue through is that of Marsh vs Alabama: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama Money quote: > The State attempted to analogize the town's rights to the rights of homeowners to regulate the conduct of guests in their home. The Court rejected that contention, noting that ownership "does not always mean absolute dominion." The court pointed out that the more an owner opens his property up to the public in general, the more his rights are circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who are invited in. Another phrase I've heard recently is along the lines of "a company's ability to refuse to do business with you should be proportional to your ability to refuse to do business with them". It's not too much of a stretch to liken some of the big platforms and service providers we have today to company towns. While, strictly speaking, one doesn't have to (live in a company town)|(subscribe to Comcast), for some large segments of the population who (live in economically disadvantaged regions where the only jobs are available via the Company)|(are forced to choose between dealing with Comcast and cutting themselves off from social and economic activity), that's not much of a choice in practice. For the moment, I think that line of "inescapable enough to warrant restriction of property rights" falls to include infra providers (think cartel ISPs, some PAAS, DNS, maybe CloudFlare if you squint) but not platforms like YT/FB. That's probably down to my bias towards technical solutions over regulatory intervention - there's at least a reasonable hope of displacing YT/FB with decentralized platforms, but short of mesh radio you're SOL if your only ISP that offers >56k doesn't want you.

d1zzy 8y ago

> I'm so tired of people calling the regulation of hate speech and violent speech on private platforms "censorship." These people are more than free to express themselves in any public platform or their own platform. They are not censored in any way. What exactly is "their own platform"? If I post to a blog site, that's not my platform and can be censored. If I host my own blogging software on a kubernetes service that's not my platform and I can be censured (AFAIK all providers have TOS on the type of content allowed and largely reserve the right to remove content for any reason). If I host my own OS with blogging software on a IaaS provider again I may be shutdown/refused to do business with. If I host my own hardware, with own OS with blogging software in a colocation datacenter it may also be removed for TOS violation. Same for simply hosting it on my own computer connected to an ISP, the ISP has TOS for the types of content allowed through their networks. So how exactly do I setup this (mythical?) "own platform" where I can post anything that I am constitutionally/legally allowed to and how do I make it available over the Internet?

tombert 8y ago
I would say it should stop at the ISP level. ISPs are (or at least should be) a utility, and as a consequence completely non-disciminatory in who they host, similar to how phone lines are run. So, in theory (at least in my perfect world), you could run a server in your basement and host your controversial views there.
- RandomTisk 8y ago
  No doubt someone at the founding of the US Constitution had the same ideals of such a perfect world, where criticism of Christianity would only be permitted from their basement.

thatoneuser 8y ago

People say Jordan peterson is "hate speech". If you're tired of people defending speech then get pissed at the people who are abusing the concept of violent speech by slapping the label on everything they dislike.

lackbeard 8y ago

> You wouldn't say that a drunk who walked into a nice restaurant yelling hateful things was being censored when they are asked to leave. This seems like a bad analogy to me. No loud drunks are forcing anyone to listen to them on YouTube. Yet some people are angry that YouTube lets loud drunks post videos of themselves yelling hateful things, and angry that YouTube lets some people who want to listen that do so?

tyscorp 8y ago

> These people are more than free to express themselves in any public platform or their own platform. I think we're at a point (or fast approaching it) where these huge platforms are so integrated into our society that perhaps we _should_ consider them public platforms. >You wouldn't say that a drunk who walked into a nice restaurant yelling hateful things was being censored when they are asked to leave. I don't think this analogy holds up because of the sheer magnitude of difference in size. These platforms are bigger than most countries. Countries have governments and laws that serve the citizens and keep society running. Imo, the users of these platforms should be treated like citizens of that platform. I don't want to be a citizen of a dictatorship.