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Not anymore a conspiracy theory. This is the actual big brother modeling our futures, a group of people powerful enough, with their own interests and their own

Not anymore a conspiracy theory. This is the actual big brother modeling our futures, a group of people powerful enough, with their own interests and their own agenda with access to most peoples minds/lives, and who already publicly explained how they plan to influence on global geopolitics and society building. I find it disturbing this level of censorship. At first, it was pedophiles, murders and violent criminal acts, then terrorism and copyright... even without the need of a lawsuit or proper request from a court it is hard to argue against this sort of censorship. But now they started banning and censoring everything they find immoral and the definition of morals is subjective and not even philosophers could argue that there is any common moral, not even among the most uniform society. Good luck to everyone, sooner than later they will change their definition of morality and we all gonna pay with our freedom. I think it is a better win for everyone to defend individual rights over the supposed benefit of collectives as history proved because no one is authorized or qualified enough to decide our collective destiny. But many are the ones who feel entitled to do it.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jrockway 7y ago
I don't think anyone is stopping you from putting your hacking video on your own website and letting users download it. That would be censorship. This is merely an aggregator/community that doesn't want to pay to distribute your content. So pay someone else!
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- nudpiedo 7y ago
  Try to make viral anything you want without the cooperation of silicon valley big tech club. Unfortunately, I lack the data but I am sure these companies are covering the biggest part of the mass distribution channels and current personal telecommunications, especially since whatsapp surpassed phone calls and texts. In the other hand, they built a social image and I wouldn't wonder that the ones out of the most' platform will become the new parias and they will be less trusted and less accessible, harder to find etc.
- chrshawkes 7y ago
  Hacking is a very broad term with positive meanings in most cases, at least spoken from one programmer to another. It seems too broad to say, hacking videos are not allowed. Hacking together a Node SPA? Is that hacking? No, but it will result in the video immediately being flagged as not eligible for monetization etc. Google's morals and ethics should not be pushed on the entire world's only video platform (realistically speaking). The world needed competitors years ago.
  - jrockway 7y ago
    I am not sure why we're having a debate about what "hacking" is when the original article is entitled 'YouTube bans content “showing users how to bypass secure computer systems”'. Making a Node SPA is not bypassing secure computer systems. You are getting mad at Google for something they have neither said nor done. The point of my original post was to say, no matter what YouTube's guidelines are, they're not censorship any more than NBC not wanting to broadcast some random TV show you just produced. There are other means to get your message out there. Not having access to easy ones doesn't mean you're being oppressed. It just means you have to work harder.
- ravenstine 7y ago
  That is until your web host decides to play by the same game, or is scared into doing so by activist mobs. Even if you do host your own videos, good luck getting anywhere near the same amount of traffic that you'd get by hosting it on a site like YouTube. I suppose the next answer would be to host on one's own servers. Well, great. Up until the ISP, domain registrar, or payment processor decides it doesn't like what you're saying and won't even take your money to do so.
  - raisedbyninjas 7y ago
    I suppose you're alluding to issues like Cloudflare dumping literal Nazis off their service. The same issue still applies with all of those entities. Political party is not a protected class and nobody is guaranteed any internet service until internet service is deemed a human right. Until that time, Nazis are free to preach and prattle on physical town squares instead of virtual ones.
    - ravenstine 7y ago
      No, I've never heard of that, and just a suggestion, but you should think twice before assuming what someone might be implying, especially if it can any way be insinuated as a defense of "literal Nazis". (versus, what, figurative nazis?) My point is that it logically follows that people being banned from YouTube is fundamentally the same thing as being banned from another layer of the communication stack, whether it be the web host, the ISP, the telecom, the payment processor, etc. Hell, why even stop at the technology stack? Maybe apartment complexes shouldn't rent to people with unpopular views. Perhaps grocery stores should refuse to sell food to those who say bad things about the LGBTQ+ community. /s > Political party is not a protected class and nobody is guaranteed any internet service until internet service is deemed a human right. Do you see the problem with this? When the internet is the virtual town square and the way to mass communicate, having no protections for free speech by either individuals or groups is a recipe for tyranny. Maybe this doesn't feel concerning to those whose views are currently the popular ones, but with the centralization of the internet and our increasing dependence on it for everything, that's a fascistic situation waiting to develop. Just as we allow private businesses to have their own rules and practices, while simultaneously forbidding privately-owned cities from violating the US Constitution, there should come a point where the "private business" excuse is no longer valid once a small group of corporations have a stranglehold over the way that everyone communicates.
- intricatedetail 7y ago
  The regulation is getting more and more expensive to be compliant with and soon only the wealthy will be able to afford hosting their own uncensored videos. Governments then will take care of that too.
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  > I don't think anyone is stopping you from putting your hacking video on your own website Yet.
tartrate 7y ago
sooner than later they will change their definition of morality and we all gonna pay with our freedom Just wanted to point out that I found this to be a powerful quote. Well said.
- jerf 7y ago
  It's sooner. If you dig it's not hard to find videos of highly-placed employees of these companies talking about how they plan on manipulating future elections. It goes far beyond anything that Russia has even been accused of doing in the past three years, but it's the "right people" saying it, so it's not a scandal.
  - jjulius 7y ago
    Can you cite your sources?
    - corndoge 7y ago
      He's citing Project Veritas: https://spectator.org/google-removes-project-veritas-video-from-youtube/ https://spectator.org/google-removes-project-veritas-video-f... https://www.theverge.com/interface/2019/6/27/18760463/project-veritas-youtube-sting-james-okeefe https://www.theverge.com/interface/2019/6/27/18760463/projec... Just a couple google results, cbf to find the actual video, I'm not promoting any particular viewpoint etc
      - jjulius 7y ago
        Thank you. If Project Veritas is indeed what OP was referencing, then the claim can be easily dismissed without viewing the "source" footage, given Veritas' and O'Keefe's extensive history of selective editing, fraudulent claims, dubious methods and borderline entrapment[1]. Edit: If you're going to downvote me, note that I have no problem discussing why we should lend credence to claims from an individual with a long history of fraudulent claims. I am genuinely interested in hearing why we should trust anything PV produces going forward. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_O%27Keefe#Major_works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_O%27Keefe#Major_works
rubicon33 7y ago
I could definitely get behind your point if the subject were the government. It's not, though I understand the sentiment is the same. At the end of the day YouTube is a private company. Yea, a very big one with huge reach, but private nonetheless. Taking a subjective moral position is something companies have been doing for a long time. If you disagree with them, don't give them your $ (don't use youtube).
- insickness 7y ago
  Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501 (1946), was a case decided by the United States Supreme Court, in which it ruled that a state trespassing statute could not be used to prevent the distribution of religious materials on a town's sidewalk, even though the sidewalk was part of a privately owned company town. The Court based its ruling on the provisions of the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama > "Ownership does not always mean absolute dominion. The more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it."
  - intopieces 7y ago
    The correlation between the digital town square and the physical one is often cited but tenuous at best. Other video streaming sites exist. Moving to them is a click away - no need to pack up your family and put a deposit down.
    - homonculus1 7y ago
      The digital town square is where the people are at. Moving to other streaming sites is more like having your expression relegated to some dusty back road. If YouTube wants to be editor over the content they host, then they ought to be subject to the same liabilities as a publisher. If they want to be considered a platform then should be forced to remain neutral. The conflation of these mutually exclusive roles serves money at the expense of everyone else.
chrshawkes 7y ago
As a YouTuber with 125k subscribers, it's stuff like this that makes me look forward to quitting one day (it does pay bills). YouTube won't be able to keep creators like me around at this rate. You can add this to a very long list of bad decisions by YouTube. It's almost second nature for them at this point. They need at least one competitor and there are none.
notinversed 7y ago
Yeah you really nailed it, it's too surreal and upsetting on a visceral level to be told by Google that information about how computers work is too dangerous for me to watch videos about. I can't even process this on a rational level. This is on the same day I am seeing images of tanks being prepped for a military parade in Washington and standing room only concentration camps on the border. I don't know which words to use now in this new era, but we're certainly not Americans any more, and we're definitely not free. This is something else entirely new.
ryanmercer 7y ago
>Not anymore a conspiracy theory. This is the actual big brother modeling our futures, No. This is a company that gets 99% of its income from selling ad space doing what they need to do to keep advertisers, their customers, happy. It is not a conspiracy, Big Brother isn't trying to censor you, YouTube is trying to keep their customers happy to keep money flowing in. I'm tired of people complaining YouTube demonetizing, or removing, videos is some sort of state-sponsored censorship. We had this exact same thing happen to many firearm channels in the past couple of years and it had nothing to do with guns being evil and everything to do with some of the channels were doing outright dangerous things and that advertisers did not want to be associated with home-made ammunition (taofledermaus exists solely to shoot home made ammunition, stuff like lego heads/nails/pennies/wax/anything you can think of), bumpstocks (JerryRigEverything showed one when it was in the news, DemolitionRanch showed how to bumpfire without a bumpstock), what happens if I put the wrong caliber ammunition in a firearm (Demolition Ranch, also I believe King of Everything did this as well he also was in the news for at least two of his videos and had legal action taken against him for making explosives around the same time) and video series like: "what happens if I shoot OBJECT with a 50 cal" DemolitionRanch 50-cal Fridays "what happens if I microwave ammunition/loaded firearms/full magazines" DemolitionRanch Etc. People screamed this was some Orwellian, big brother, gotta oppress people, conspiracy and it was nothing more than YouTube doing CYA and attempting to keep their customers (the advertisers) happy. As a creator or viewer you are NOT a customer of YouTube, you are the product.
- nudpiedo 7y ago
  When they have more influence on citizens than governments, perhaps we should revisit our definition of what public means. In the other hands, there has been already ideology ban and promotion of their own, and recently in a leaked video, they affirmed how they will stop promoting certain political views and promote the ones they find correct for the 2020 elections. Laugh now at the leolingua described by George Orwell, what is freedom and what is public?
  - vangelis 7y ago
    Why do you want the government to intervene in the affairs of private business?
ianstallings 7y ago
Agreed. Being of the Libertarian mindset, I was at first completely okay with it under the argument of personal liberty and personal property. It's a private company and they can do what they want. But the closer I looked at it the more I realized that it truly is a public space. And then when powerful political figures started influencing what was okay to censor on it I realized they are trying to do an end-run around the actual law via technicality. No need for the government to censor anything when they can just get the technocrats to do it for them. And everyone seems okay with it, so long as it's not them.
- kd0amg 7y ago
  Past thought about free speech seems to be based on the assumption that people can communicate without having some third party approve the sender/receiver/message. Now we mostly use a communication medium that involves a lot of third parties. How many private companies carried this comment to your screen? The bakery whose WiFi I'm using now, their ISP, some unknown backbone carrier, YCombinator, your ISP. Maybe a CDN provider and some others I can't think of. We already have an answer about a government-operated communication medium: the government (including those acting on its behalf) must uphold our rights. That implies an obligation to keep storing/hosting/delivering things we say. It costs money, but society is more or less ok with the idea of a government having a legal obligation to spend resources on something. But what do we do with a private entity which spends a lot of money to operate and maintain a communication medium?
- xnxn 7y ago
  Having a lot of people in a space doesn't make it a "public space". These terms are well defined, and we should stick to them when discussing, or we'll all talk past each other. YouTube is not even a "privately owned public space" because it isn't legally required to be open to the public. If you believe video hosting is critical public infrastructure, nationalize it.
hellbanner 7y ago
WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRACTIONS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdaPJLJCK1M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdaPJLJCK1M
jquery 7y ago
EDIT: Removing my uncivil post. I'm happy to see your well-articulated post at the top.
- zcid 7y ago
  Or maybe instead of this being a conspiracy of brigades, more people are waking up the dangers of too much control in the hands of a few powerful people?
  - jquery 7y ago
    Thank you for this cold slap in the face. I needed it. I am of course very happy to see more people waking up to the dangers of too much control in the hands of powerful people. I'll edit my other post to remove the accusation, it poisons the well. I've been whinging on about this for years and it's definitely worn on my ability to be civil about it when we're at the "I told you so" stage of censorship.
peterwwillis 7y ago
Is YouTube stopping you from buying a camcorder, recording a bit, buying a server, and putting it on the internet? No, they aren't. They're stopping you from doing it on their servers. It's their product, so they get to choose who can use it and how. You not entitled to tell them what to do with their product. On their platform, they can censor whatever they want. You don't even pay them any money, and here you are pretending that you have some right to tell them what to do, that this is about your freedom, not theirs. If this were like, a water, power, telephone, or other utility, you might have some expectation of ability to express free speech on their platform. But YouTube is not an inalienable right.
jonas21 7y ago
Oh come on, YouTube isn't banning content "showing users how to bypass secure computer systems or steal user credentials and personal data" because it somehow offends their moral sensibilities. They're doing it because they know that if there was a major hack and whoever did it learned from YouTube videos, there would be widespread outrage. The headlines would be "YouTube teaches hackers how to steal your private data", and there would be calls for more regulation on what YouTube can and cannot do, which is something that they probably want to avoid at all costs. So we end up with rules like these. You and I might disagree with them, but they come about because it's what we (collectively as a society) have demanded.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

jrockway 7y ago

I don't think anyone is stopping you from putting your hacking video on your own website and letting users download it. That would be censorship. This is merely an aggregator/community that doesn't want to pay to distribute your content. So pay someone else!

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
nudpiedo 7y ago
Try to make viral anything you want without the cooperation of silicon valley big tech club. Unfortunately, I lack the data but I am sure these companies are covering the biggest part of the mass distribution channels and current personal telecommunications, especially since whatsapp surpassed phone calls and texts. In the other hand, they built a social image and I wouldn't wonder that the ones out of the most' platform will become the new parias and they will be less trusted and less accessible, harder to find etc.
chrshawkes 7y ago
Hacking is a very broad term with positive meanings in most cases, at least spoken from one programmer to another. It seems too broad to say, hacking videos are not allowed. Hacking together a Node SPA? Is that hacking? No, but it will result in the video immediately being flagged as not eligible for monetization etc. Google's morals and ethics should not be pushed on the entire world's only video platform (realistically speaking). The world needed competitors years ago.
- jrockway 7y ago
  I am not sure why we're having a debate about what "hacking" is when the original article is entitled 'YouTube bans content “showing users how to bypass secure computer systems”'. Making a Node SPA is not bypassing secure computer systems. You are getting mad at Google for something they have neither said nor done. The point of my original post was to say, no matter what YouTube's guidelines are, they're not censorship any more than NBC not wanting to broadcast some random TV show you just produced. There are other means to get your message out there. Not having access to easy ones doesn't mean you're being oppressed. It just means you have to work harder.
ravenstine 7y ago
That is until your web host decides to play by the same game, or is scared into doing so by activist mobs. Even if you do host your own videos, good luck getting anywhere near the same amount of traffic that you'd get by hosting it on a site like YouTube. I suppose the next answer would be to host on one's own servers. Well, great. Up until the ISP, domain registrar, or payment processor decides it doesn't like what you're saying and won't even take your money to do so.
- raisedbyninjas 7y ago
  I suppose you're alluding to issues like Cloudflare dumping literal Nazis off their service. The same issue still applies with all of those entities. Political party is not a protected class and nobody is guaranteed any internet service until internet service is deemed a human right. Until that time, Nazis are free to preach and prattle on physical town squares instead of virtual ones.
  - ravenstine 7y ago
    No, I've never heard of that, and just a suggestion, but you should think twice before assuming what someone might be implying, especially if it can any way be insinuated as a defense of "literal Nazis". (versus, what, figurative nazis?) My point is that it logically follows that people being banned from YouTube is fundamentally the same thing as being banned from another layer of the communication stack, whether it be the web host, the ISP, the telecom, the payment processor, etc. Hell, why even stop at the technology stack? Maybe apartment complexes shouldn't rent to people with unpopular views. Perhaps grocery stores should refuse to sell food to those who say bad things about the LGBTQ+ community. /s > Political party is not a protected class and nobody is guaranteed any internet service until internet service is deemed a human right. Do you see the problem with this? When the internet is the virtual town square and the way to mass communicate, having no protections for free speech by either individuals or groups is a recipe for tyranny. Maybe this doesn't feel concerning to those whose views are currently the popular ones, but with the centralization of the internet and our increasing dependence on it for everything, that's a fascistic situation waiting to develop. Just as we allow private businesses to have their own rules and practices, while simultaneously forbidding privately-owned cities from violating the US Constitution, there should come a point where the "private business" excuse is no longer valid once a small group of corporations have a stranglehold over the way that everyone communicates.
intricatedetail 7y ago
The regulation is getting more and more expensive to be compliant with and soon only the wealthy will be able to afford hosting their own uncensored videos. Governments then will take care of that too.
commandlinefan 7y ago
> I don't think anyone is stopping you from putting your hacking video on your own website Yet.

tartrate 7y ago

sooner than later they will change their definition of morality and we all gonna pay with our freedom Just wanted to point out that I found this to be a powerful quote. Well said.

jerf 7y ago
It's sooner. If you dig it's not hard to find videos of highly-placed employees of these companies talking about how they plan on manipulating future elections. It goes far beyond anything that Russia has even been accused of doing in the past three years, but it's the "right people" saying it, so it's not a scandal.
- jjulius 7y ago
  Can you cite your sources?
  - corndoge 7y ago
    He's citing Project Veritas: https://spectator.org/google-removes-project-veritas-video-from-youtube/ https://spectator.org/google-removes-project-veritas-video-f... https://www.theverge.com/interface/2019/6/27/18760463/project-veritas-youtube-sting-james-okeefe https://www.theverge.com/interface/2019/6/27/18760463/projec... Just a couple google results, cbf to find the actual video, I'm not promoting any particular viewpoint etc
    - jjulius 7y ago
      Thank you. If Project Veritas is indeed what OP was referencing, then the claim can be easily dismissed without viewing the "source" footage, given Veritas' and O'Keefe's extensive history of selective editing, fraudulent claims, dubious methods and borderline entrapment[1]. Edit: If you're going to downvote me, note that I have no problem discussing why we should lend credence to claims from an individual with a long history of fraudulent claims. I am genuinely interested in hearing why we should trust anything PV produces going forward. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_O%27Keefe#Major_works https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_O%27Keefe#Major_works

rubicon33 7y ago

I could definitely get behind your point if the subject were the government. It's not, though I understand the sentiment is the same. At the end of the day YouTube is a private company. Yea, a very big one with huge reach, but private nonetheless. Taking a subjective moral position is something companies have been doing for a long time. If you disagree with them, don't give them your $ (don't use youtube).

insickness 7y ago
Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.S. 501 (1946), was a case decided by the United States Supreme Court, in which it ruled that a state trespassing statute could not be used to prevent the distribution of religious materials on a town's sidewalk, even though the sidewalk was part of a privately owned company town. The Court based its ruling on the provisions of the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama > "Ownership does not always mean absolute dominion. The more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it."
- intopieces 7y ago
  The correlation between the digital town square and the physical one is often cited but tenuous at best. Other video streaming sites exist. Moving to them is a click away - no need to pack up your family and put a deposit down.
  - homonculus1 7y ago
    The digital town square is where the people are at. Moving to other streaming sites is more like having your expression relegated to some dusty back road. If YouTube wants to be editor over the content they host, then they ought to be subject to the same liabilities as a publisher. If they want to be considered a platform then should be forced to remain neutral. The conflation of these mutually exclusive roles serves money at the expense of everyone else.

chrshawkes 7y ago

As a YouTuber with 125k subscribers, it's stuff like this that makes me look forward to quitting one day (it does pay bills). YouTube won't be able to keep creators like me around at this rate. You can add this to a very long list of bad decisions by YouTube. It's almost second nature for them at this point. They need at least one competitor and there are none.

notinversed 7y ago

Yeah you really nailed it, it's too surreal and upsetting on a visceral level to be told by Google that information about how computers work is too dangerous for me to watch videos about. I can't even process this on a rational level. This is on the same day I am seeing images of tanks being prepped for a military parade in Washington and standing room only concentration camps on the border. I don't know which words to use now in this new era, but we're certainly not Americans any more, and we're definitely not free. This is something else entirely new.

ryanmercer 7y ago

>Not anymore a conspiracy theory. This is the actual big brother modeling our futures, No. This is a company that gets 99% of its income from selling ad space doing what they need to do to keep advertisers, their customers, happy. It is not a conspiracy, Big Brother isn't trying to censor you, YouTube is trying to keep their customers happy to keep money flowing in. I'm tired of people complaining YouTube demonetizing, or removing, videos is some sort of state-sponsored censorship. We had this exact same thing happen to many firearm channels in the past couple of years and it had nothing to do with guns being evil and everything to do with some of the channels were doing outright dangerous things and that advertisers did not want to be associated with home-made ammunition (taofledermaus exists solely to shoot home made ammunition, stuff like lego heads/nails/pennies/wax/anything you can think of), bumpstocks (JerryRigEverything showed one when it was in the news, DemolitionRanch showed how to bumpfire without a bumpstock), what happens if I put the wrong caliber ammunition in a firearm (Demolition Ranch, also I believe King of Everything did this as well he also was in the news for at least two of his videos and had legal action taken against him for making explosives around the same time) and video series like: "what happens if I shoot OBJECT with a 50 cal" DemolitionRanch 50-cal Fridays "what happens if I microwave ammunition/loaded firearms/full magazines" DemolitionRanch Etc. People screamed this was some Orwellian, big brother, gotta oppress people, conspiracy and it was nothing more than YouTube doing CYA and attempting to keep their customers (the advertisers) happy. As a creator or viewer you are NOT a customer of YouTube, you are the product.

nudpiedo 7y ago
When they have more influence on citizens than governments, perhaps we should revisit our definition of what public means. In the other hands, there has been already ideology ban and promotion of their own, and recently in a leaked video, they affirmed how they will stop promoting certain political views and promote the ones they find correct for the 2020 elections. Laugh now at the leolingua described by George Orwell, what is freedom and what is public?
- vangelis 7y ago
  Why do you want the government to intervene in the affairs of private business?

ianstallings 7y ago

Agreed. Being of the Libertarian mindset, I was at first completely okay with it under the argument of personal liberty and personal property. It's a private company and they can do what they want. But the closer I looked at it the more I realized that it truly is a public space. And then when powerful political figures started influencing what was okay to censor on it I realized they are trying to do an end-run around the actual law via technicality. No need for the government to censor anything when they can just get the technocrats to do it for them. And everyone seems okay with it, so long as it's not them.

kd0amg 7y ago
Past thought about free speech seems to be based on the assumption that people can communicate without having some third party approve the sender/receiver/message. Now we mostly use a communication medium that involves a lot of third parties. How many private companies carried this comment to your screen? The bakery whose WiFi I'm using now, their ISP, some unknown backbone carrier, YCombinator, your ISP. Maybe a CDN provider and some others I can't think of. We already have an answer about a government-operated communication medium: the government (including those acting on its behalf) must uphold our rights. That implies an obligation to keep storing/hosting/delivering things we say. It costs money, but society is more or less ok with the idea of a government having a legal obligation to spend resources on something. But what do we do with a private entity which spends a lot of money to operate and maintain a communication medium?
xnxn 7y ago
Having a lot of people in a space doesn't make it a "public space". These terms are well defined, and we should stick to them when discussing, or we'll all talk past each other. YouTube is not even a "privately owned public space" because it isn't legally required to be open to the public. If you believe video hosting is critical public infrastructure, nationalize it.

hellbanner 7y ago

WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRACTIONS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdaPJLJCK1M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdaPJLJCK1M

jquery 7y ago

EDIT: Removing my uncivil post. I'm happy to see your well-articulated post at the top.

zcid 7y ago
Or maybe instead of this being a conspiracy of brigades, more people are waking up the dangers of too much control in the hands of a few powerful people?
- jquery 7y ago
  Thank you for this cold slap in the face. I needed it. I am of course very happy to see more people waking up to the dangers of too much control in the hands of powerful people. I'll edit my other post to remove the accusation, it poisons the well. I've been whinging on about this for years and it's definitely worn on my ability to be civil about it when we're at the "I told you so" stage of censorship.

peterwwillis 7y ago

Is YouTube stopping you from buying a camcorder, recording a bit, buying a server, and putting it on the internet? No, they aren't. They're stopping you from doing it on their servers. It's their product, so they get to choose who can use it and how. You not entitled to tell them what to do with their product. On their platform, they can censor whatever they want. You don't even pay them any money, and here you are pretending that you have some right to tell them what to do, that this is about your freedom, not theirs. If this were like, a water, power, telephone, or other utility, you might have some expectation of ability to express free speech on their platform. But YouTube is not an inalienable right.

jonas21 7y ago

Oh come on, YouTube isn't banning content "showing users how to bypass secure computer systems or steal user credentials and personal data" because it somehow offends their moral sensibilities. They're doing it because they know that if there was a major hack and whoever did it learned from YouTube videos, there would be widespread outrage. The headlines would be "YouTube teaches hackers how to steal your private data", and there would be calls for more regulation on what YouTube can and cannot do, which is something that they probably want to avoid at all costs. So we end up with rules like these. You and I might disagree with them, but they come about because it's what we (collectively as a society) have demanded.