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Or thinkspot becomes the youtube killer and we all continue on https://www.ts.today/ https://www.ts.today/ edit: I have no idea how thinkspot is going to play

Or thinkspot becomes the youtube killer and we all continue on https://www.ts.today/ https://www.ts.today/ edit: I have no idea how thinkspot is going to play out. But if I know one thing about the internet it's that it's really hard to stop people from using it however they please. Attempts to squash mostly just result a shift of where it occurs, not the fact that it occurs.

Zak 7y ago
> I have no idea how thinkspot is going to play out. I do. The uncensored alternative to a popular platform consistently attracts all the toxic users, making it a place nobody else wants to go. Voat is a relatively recent high-profile example.
- jerf 7y ago
  That balance can be shifted if enough normal people get evicted, especially if the normal people tend to end up on some particular service, at least to start with. Probably the best reason Silicon Valley can understand to start thinking twice about whether they want to deplatform all the non-SV-liberals. (I initially said "conservatives" there, but given the discussion elsewhere on this page for someone who was deplatformed on Vimeo for reviewing animal traps because they said it was 'cruelty to animals', it's going well beyond that.)
  - ravenstine 7y ago
    > Probably the best reason Silicon Valley can understand to start thinking twice about whether they want to deplatform all the non-SV-liberals. I suspect that YouTube's long-term strategy is to morph into a hybrid of Netflix and cable, and YouTubers who broadcast opinions outside the range of acceptable opinions to SV and advertisers are just an impedance to that goal. What they will do is boil the frog by making small changes over a period of time that all appear "reasonable" on their own. Demonetization was one step in boiling the frog, but hard to argue against because it's in the best interest of advertisers and videos weren't being deleted. Then came changes to the algorithm that promotes videos, and now YouTube believes I "want" to watch more cable news and significantly less of Tim Pool or Joe Rogan. I'm surprised they haven't done more shadow-banning, and maybe that will be one of the following steps. More incremental changes will be made, probably over several years, until all the interesting voices are gone and no one can point to any one event that made everyone except the left-wing and Rated-G channels leave. And the bulk of users probably won't care since they've been transitioned and conditioned to the resurgence of mainstream blather they'll be selling.
- AWildC182 7y ago
  Unless they themselves are also terrible people, I can't imagine that they don't have some plan to combat this given how obvious of a problem it's been. They mention respect in the header at least...
  - tasty_freeze 7y ago
    How do they combat that without being accused, as youtube is here, of censorship? Will they disallow child porn? How about videos advocating violence against specific people? How about obviously libelous videos, like ones claiming, say, Donald Trump is running a child prostitution ring from the basement of a pizza parlor? When they get sued for hosting such content, who is going to pay their legal bills?
    - zcid 7y ago
      How about they disallow all the illegal content you are using as examples? Legal speech should not be censored.
      - root_axis 7y ago
        What if I decide that the goal of my business is to create a platform that excludes particular perspectives I disagree with? Why should the government force me to host things I don't want to for free?
        zcid 7y ago
        No problem. I don't see a problem with exclusionary platforms as long as they aren't using their extreme dominance in multiple areas to maintain a monopoly. I guess what I am looking for is a cap on wealth and power.
      - Zak 7y ago
        Safe harbor laws make it generally legal for a platform to host such content until certain notification provisions are met. There's a specific process for handling child porn in the US, which you can easily find if you want that in your search history. Advocating violence against specific people is not illegal in the US unless it is likely to produce imminent lawless action. Saying "[racial slur] should be exterminated" doesn't rise to that standard. A live video saying "everybody get your guns and meet me at [location] - we're gonna slaughter those [racial slur]" probably does, but would be subject to safe harbor protections for the platform. Libel also falls under safe harbor. The platform could eventually be ordered by a court to remove the content, but not until many people have had the opportunity to see it.
- OCASM 7y ago
  And who defines who's toxic and who's not? That's right: the censors.
  - Zak 7y ago
    Or in the censorship-free scenario, the other potential users who stay away because most people find hate speech distasteful (for example) and don't want to spend time somewhere they're exposed to it frequently.
    - OCASM 7y ago
      Another buzzword used and defined by censors: hate speech.
deanCommie 7y ago
I know this is just going to be an opportunity for someone to post the "first they came for the <blank> and I didn't speak out because I wasn't <blank>" copyasta, but.. I wish the only people fighting against censorship by trying to build their own platforms weren't actual white supremacists and bad-faith pseudo-intellectual charlatans. (Note, I"m only placing Peterson in the second category. He's not a white supremacist. He IS however a reductive, regressive male-supremacist, wearing the mask of a classic liberal free speech advocate). He claims to fight for a free marketplace of ideas, but only because his religious conservative dogma about men, women, gay marriage, and trans people does not hold up to scrutiny, and people have gotten tired of debating him. Let's be clear: * Google and YouTube do not owe the internet the right to access to an expensive video hosting content platform. They are a business and they are free to prioritize the content that enables them to make money * ThinkSpot has two agendas - one to promote "unpopular" free speech ideas in a "safe space" free from criticism, which is hilariously ironic. Two - to make Jordan Peterson money. If you don't think that's part of the goal, you haven't been paying attention to all of his Patreon activity and motivations for the last several years. These are not the droids we are looking for. What is the alternative? Honestly, here is a hot take: Kazaa We need to get back to distributed peer-to-peer file hosting. But this time with more security, encryption, access control, categorization of content that you can choose to host on your node.
- mAEStro-paNDa 7y ago
  This is probably one of the more sound takes on both ThinkSpot and the right way to address what is happening on these massive platforms. Thanks for this.
- jquery 7y ago
  I've been saying for a while that we'll get to the point where anyone fighting for Free Speech will get painted as a racist because the censors will claim "free speech is a racist idea" and it appears we're pretty close. How much of our classic liberty are we willing to lose in the pursuit of tribalism? The retort I hear when I complain about censorship is "haha you conservatives used to love the free market", not realizing not everyone who supports free speech and is anti-corporate is a conservative! EDIT: These corporations cynically manipulated society's tribalistic nature to impose something that should've had bipartisan opposition. The good news about things like this is it's a great way to develop that bipartisan opposition, many people who've been wearing blinders will say, "hey wait a minute, that's my voice you're shutting down, and I'm not a bad person." EDIT 2: I'm not here to defend Jordan Peterson or white supremacists. Just saying that moves like this will at least drive more than just two kinds of people away from YouTube, which was "people who love liberty and white supremacists" which of course makes the liberty people miserable.
rolltiide 7y ago
honestly people have just been uploading to pornhub and similar sites. they have practically no content restrictions. the meme has been to add pornographic industry titles to benign non sexual videos. that part is just for fun and views
- nkurz 7y ago
  I wasn't aware of that, but it's charming to think of Pornhub deleting videos for being "Insufficiently Pornographic", and then for the uploader to argue that anything can be pornographic to someone. Eventually culminating in a court case based on the "I know it when I don't see it" principle.
  - rolltiide 7y ago
    lol or more likely just rebrand once enough people have moved over Hope they keep the adult ad networks though. Thats key infrastructure

Zak 7y ago

> I have no idea how thinkspot is going to play out. I do. The uncensored alternative to a popular platform consistently attracts all the toxic users, making it a place nobody else wants to go. Voat is a relatively recent high-profile example.

jerf 7y ago
That balance can be shifted if enough normal people get evicted, especially if the normal people tend to end up on some particular service, at least to start with. Probably the best reason Silicon Valley can understand to start thinking twice about whether they want to deplatform all the non-SV-liberals. (I initially said "conservatives" there, but given the discussion elsewhere on this page for someone who was deplatformed on Vimeo for reviewing animal traps because they said it was 'cruelty to animals', it's going well beyond that.)
- ravenstine 7y ago
  > Probably the best reason Silicon Valley can understand to start thinking twice about whether they want to deplatform all the non-SV-liberals. I suspect that YouTube's long-term strategy is to morph into a hybrid of Netflix and cable, and YouTubers who broadcast opinions outside the range of acceptable opinions to SV and advertisers are just an impedance to that goal. What they will do is boil the frog by making small changes over a period of time that all appear "reasonable" on their own. Demonetization was one step in boiling the frog, but hard to argue against because it's in the best interest of advertisers and videos weren't being deleted. Then came changes to the algorithm that promotes videos, and now YouTube believes I "want" to watch more cable news and significantly less of Tim Pool or Joe Rogan. I'm surprised they haven't done more shadow-banning, and maybe that will be one of the following steps. More incremental changes will be made, probably over several years, until all the interesting voices are gone and no one can point to any one event that made everyone except the left-wing and Rated-G channels leave. And the bulk of users probably won't care since they've been transitioned and conditioned to the resurgence of mainstream blather they'll be selling.
AWildC182 7y ago
Unless they themselves are also terrible people, I can't imagine that they don't have some plan to combat this given how obvious of a problem it's been. They mention respect in the header at least...
- tasty_freeze 7y ago
  How do they combat that without being accused, as youtube is here, of censorship? Will they disallow child porn? How about videos advocating violence against specific people? How about obviously libelous videos, like ones claiming, say, Donald Trump is running a child prostitution ring from the basement of a pizza parlor? When they get sued for hosting such content, who is going to pay their legal bills?
  - zcid 7y ago
    How about they disallow all the illegal content you are using as examples? Legal speech should not be censored.
    - root_axis 7y ago
      What if I decide that the goal of my business is to create a platform that excludes particular perspectives I disagree with? Why should the government force me to host things I don't want to for free?
      - zcid 7y ago
        No problem. I don't see a problem with exclusionary platforms as long as they aren't using their extreme dominance in multiple areas to maintain a monopoly. I guess what I am looking for is a cap on wealth and power.
    - Zak 7y ago
      Safe harbor laws make it generally legal for a platform to host such content until certain notification provisions are met. There's a specific process for handling child porn in the US, which you can easily find if you want that in your search history. Advocating violence against specific people is not illegal in the US unless it is likely to produce imminent lawless action. Saying "[racial slur] should be exterminated" doesn't rise to that standard. A live video saying "everybody get your guns and meet me at [location] - we're gonna slaughter those [racial slur]" probably does, but would be subject to safe harbor protections for the platform. Libel also falls under safe harbor. The platform could eventually be ordered by a court to remove the content, but not until many people have had the opportunity to see it.
OCASM 7y ago
And who defines who's toxic and who's not? That's right: the censors.
- Zak 7y ago
  Or in the censorship-free scenario, the other potential users who stay away because most people find hate speech distasteful (for example) and don't want to spend time somewhere they're exposed to it frequently.
  - OCASM 7y ago
    Another buzzword used and defined by censors: hate speech.

deanCommie 7y ago

I know this is just going to be an opportunity for someone to post the "first they came for the <blank> and I didn't speak out because I wasn't <blank>" copyasta, but.. I wish the only people fighting against censorship by trying to build their own platforms weren't actual white supremacists and bad-faith pseudo-intellectual charlatans. (Note, I"m only placing Peterson in the second category. He's not a white supremacist. He IS however a reductive, regressive male-supremacist, wearing the mask of a classic liberal free speech advocate). He claims to fight for a free marketplace of ideas, but only because his religious conservative dogma about men, women, gay marriage, and trans people does not hold up to scrutiny, and people have gotten tired of debating him. Let's be clear: * Google and YouTube do not owe the internet the right to access to an expensive video hosting content platform. They are a business and they are free to prioritize the content that enables them to make money * ThinkSpot has two agendas - one to promote "unpopular" free speech ideas in a "safe space" free from criticism, which is hilariously ironic. Two - to make Jordan Peterson money. If you don't think that's part of the goal, you haven't been paying attention to all of his Patreon activity and motivations for the last several years. These are not the droids we are looking for. What is the alternative? Honestly, here is a hot take: Kazaa We need to get back to distributed peer-to-peer file hosting. But this time with more security, encryption, access control, categorization of content that you can choose to host on your node.

mAEStro-paNDa 7y ago
This is probably one of the more sound takes on both ThinkSpot and the right way to address what is happening on these massive platforms. Thanks for this.
jquery 7y ago
I've been saying for a while that we'll get to the point where anyone fighting for Free Speech will get painted as a racist because the censors will claim "free speech is a racist idea" and it appears we're pretty close. How much of our classic liberty are we willing to lose in the pursuit of tribalism? The retort I hear when I complain about censorship is "haha you conservatives used to love the free market", not realizing not everyone who supports free speech and is anti-corporate is a conservative! EDIT: These corporations cynically manipulated society's tribalistic nature to impose something that should've had bipartisan opposition. The good news about things like this is it's a great way to develop that bipartisan opposition, many people who've been wearing blinders will say, "hey wait a minute, that's my voice you're shutting down, and I'm not a bad person." EDIT 2: I'm not here to defend Jordan Peterson or white supremacists. Just saying that moves like this will at least drive more than just two kinds of people away from YouTube, which was "people who love liberty and white supremacists" which of course makes the liberty people miserable.

rolltiide 7y ago

honestly people have just been uploading to pornhub and similar sites. they have practically no content restrictions. the meme has been to add pornographic industry titles to benign non sexual videos. that part is just for fun and views

nkurz 7y ago
I wasn't aware of that, but it's charming to think of Pornhub deleting videos for being "Insufficiently Pornographic", and then for the uploader to argue that anything can be pornographic to someone. Eventually culminating in a court case based on the "I know it when I don't see it" principle.
- rolltiide 7y ago
  lol or more likely just rebrand once enough people have moved over Hope they keep the adult ad networks though. Thats key infrastructure