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You asked what kind of bad actors an open platform might have to deal with and I gave you an example with a very small platform. Now you scale that up to match

You asked what kind of bad actors an open platform might have to deal with and I gave you an example with a very small platform. Now you scale that up to match YouTube and it becomes a nightmare. YouTube is being pressured to take action by it's users because what's happening is exactly what I was talking about: They have bad actors taking advantage of your platform. That's where Elsagate came from or the more recent reveal of pedophiles using the platform to groom kids. There is no unbiased way of solving this problem. Because you have to establish certain things as being bad for your platform, which means you are going to be biased against them. Youtubes reaction is in turn them trying to solve issues at scale when they clearly didn't consider how the platform would scale in the first place.

noego 8y ago
The "bad actors" that you're referring to on YouTube aren't harassing anyone or inciting violence or breaking the YouTube community guidelines in any way. They are simply espousing opinions that you dislike and disagree with. Sure, YouTube is allowed to do anything they want. But suppressing an open marketplace of ideas isn't in society's best interests. If unpopular opinions were suppressed in the past, the movements for women's rights and gay rights and civil rights would have faced a massive setback. And let's not even get into the question of whether it's in society's best interests for a handful of corporations to arbitrarily decide how to censor the marketplace of ideas.
- fzeroracer 8y ago
  I'd like you to take a minute and go visit sites like Voat or Gab. Just, hover around there for a bit if you haven't. Those are sites that are exactly what you want: A pure and open marketplace of ideas without any sort of censorship or rules. This is to prove a point. Which is that an open marketplace of ideas has no value in itself, because the marketplace can be very easily taken over by bad actors if you don't exert some control over your userbase.
  - noego 8y ago
    Clearly YouTube has been extremely valuable even before they felt the public pressure to penalize "low quality content". Your comment about an "open marketplace of ideas having no value in itself" is very curious. The very idea of freedom of speech being a good thing is predicated on the idea that an open marketplace of ideas is a good thing. If it isn't, you may as well lobby the government to ban any and all speech which you consider corrosive. "When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas--that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes can be carried out. That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment." ― Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
    - fzeroracer 8y ago
      Did you actually visit Gab or Voat? I'm asking you this because if you haven't, then you can't actually argue in favor of the 'marketplace of ideas' very well. Either that or you're not willing to argue in the defense of such sites. Or you're possibly being disingenuous, considering we've switched from corporate curation/censorship of their content towards government censorship which are two very different topics. As I mentioned, places with zero censorship and zero moderation can and are very quickly overtaken by malicious actors. Either way, if you're willing to defend Gab and Voat on their merits of being an 'open marketplace of ideas' after having gone there then we can continue our argument.
      - noego 8y ago
        The concept of "marketplace of ideas" goes far beyond Gab and Voat. Two bad apples and cherry picked examples do not make for a counter argument.

noego 8y ago

The "bad actors" that you're referring to on YouTube aren't harassing anyone or inciting violence or breaking the YouTube community guidelines in any way. They are simply espousing opinions that you dislike and disagree with. Sure, YouTube is allowed to do anything they want. But suppressing an open marketplace of ideas isn't in society's best interests. If unpopular opinions were suppressed in the past, the movements for women's rights and gay rights and civil rights would have faced a massive setback. And let's not even get into the question of whether it's in society's best interests for a handful of corporations to arbitrarily decide how to censor the marketplace of ideas.

fzeroracer 8y ago
I'd like you to take a minute and go visit sites like Voat or Gab. Just, hover around there for a bit if you haven't. Those are sites that are exactly what you want: A pure and open marketplace of ideas without any sort of censorship or rules. This is to prove a point. Which is that an open marketplace of ideas has no value in itself, because the marketplace can be very easily taken over by bad actors if you don't exert some control over your userbase.
- noego 8y ago
  Clearly YouTube has been extremely valuable even before they felt the public pressure to penalize "low quality content". Your comment about an "open marketplace of ideas having no value in itself" is very curious. The very idea of freedom of speech being a good thing is predicated on the idea that an open marketplace of ideas is a good thing. If it isn't, you may as well lobby the government to ban any and all speech which you consider corrosive. "When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas--that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes can be carried out. That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment." ― Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
  - fzeroracer 8y ago
    Did you actually visit Gab or Voat? I'm asking you this because if you haven't, then you can't actually argue in favor of the 'marketplace of ideas' very well. Either that or you're not willing to argue in the defense of such sites. Or you're possibly being disingenuous, considering we've switched from corporate curation/censorship of their content towards government censorship which are two very different topics. As I mentioned, places with zero censorship and zero moderation can and are very quickly overtaken by malicious actors. Either way, if you're willing to defend Gab and Voat on their merits of being an 'open marketplace of ideas' after having gone there then we can continue our argument.
    - noego 8y ago
      The concept of "marketplace of ideas" goes far beyond Gab and Voat. Two bad apples and cherry picked examples do not make for a counter argument.