2 ms·

The issue is a bar isn't an embedded monopoly, but Facebook is. Want a social network? Facebook's the only real game in town. Videos? You have to use YouTube. P

The issue is a bar isn't an embedded monopoly, but Facebook is. Want a social network? Facebook's the only real game in town. Videos? You have to use YouTube. Photos? Instagram (Facebook). Microblogging? Twitter. There's Diaspora, and Vimeo, and Mastodon, but these are basically non-factors statistically, and they serve different, less common niches. Not to say a company needs to permit all content, no matter how racist or bad, just because it's a monopoly and a sort-of-carrier. But things definitely get trickier. If you're banned from YouTube, you basically can't upload videos anymore, period, at least if you want anyone to look at them. These companies don't fit the classical mode of a carrier, like a telephone provider, because they carry content to be consumed openly by the public. I think Discord is probably the closest thing to a more traditional carrier, though it's still not totally comparable. There's no good solution here other than debating a reasonable middle ground. These companies probably do need to be more open with what they allow compared to a small business, but they should still also have leeway to make their own decisions. That's a pretty wishy-washy answer, but I think it's the only alternative to avoid the extremes of either full public utility regulation with government-enforced free speech, or super nitpicky and biased content curation. They can't be treated like either a standard business or a public service. They're in between.

jakelazaroff 7y ago
Let me preface this by saying I am sympathetic to breaking up monopoly-esque companies that amass too much power. That said, I think this sentence is the crux of your comment: > If you're banned from YouTube, you basically can't upload videos anymore, period, at least if you want anyone to look at them. There's a pithy statement that applies here: "freedom of speech is not freedom of reach". Because there are plenty of other ways to upload videos — Vimeo and PeerTube and your own server — but none have YouTube's killer feature, which is distribution to a built-in audience. Let's back up a few decades and say you want to promote Nazism, which is legal. Your options are pretty limited! No major newspaper will publish your article, no major radio station will let you speak and no major TV channel will give you a show. You can distribute your own newsletter, get on public access TV, transmit on unused radio frequencies, or maybe even find a small company that will allow you. But for the most part, you can't distribute to large audiences, and no one has a problem with this. Enter the Internet. Now anyone can publish things consumable by anyone in the world… but all of a sudden that's not enough, and it's imperative that it's just as easy for Nazis to reach a huge audience as anyone else? What is so fundamentally different about YouTube vs. TV networks that we need to revisit this? Granted, Nazism is an extreme example; it's more likely that people are concerned about e.g. alleged censorship of conservative views. But it's difficult for me to really care about this, because these are still mainstream views! Even if you don't think you're welcome on Twitter, you can go to Gab or Voat. You can read about it on Breitbart and The Daily Caller. You can get it delivered in the Wall Street Journal. You can watch it on Fox News. For speech that is being "censored", it sure is easy to find. I'll finish by reiterating my support for breaking up giant companies that effectively control a large part of discourse. Concentrated power is never a good thing. But I think it's a gross violation of free speech to force networks to distribute content they don't want to — especially when there are always options for people to get their speech out.
- meowface 7y ago
  I think there should only be some tiny degree of forcing. A provider like Facebook and YouTube have immense power to influence elections, for example. This is super exaggerated, but if, say, every pro-Republican video is removed or hidden behind an adult/extreme/offensive warning, while most pro-Democrat videos are left untouched, think about what effect that may have on current generations, and generations in 10 and 20 years from now, who grow up on YouTube content essentially. It'll probably influence your thinking. I definitely don't want them to be classified as public utilities or even broken up. I think very minimal regulation similar to the "equal-time rule" should be used instead, applied only to certain narrow forms of content. I think Steve Huffman of reddit did it right: he's clearly no fan of Trump or his supporters, but he refused all the calls to delete Trump's subreddit. Half the site calls him a Nazi and the other half calls him a libcuck, but I think he made the right move. I think YouTube should absolutely have a right to remove videos promoting white nationalism or advocating bigotry and such. I just think they shouldn't have absolute free reign to remove anything, due to the fact that they're now kind of more like TV in general, rather than a single TV network.

jakelazaroff 7y ago

Let me preface this by saying I am sympathetic to breaking up monopoly-esque companies that amass too much power. That said, I think this sentence is the crux of your comment: > If you're banned from YouTube, you basically can't upload videos anymore, period, at least if you want anyone to look at them. There's a pithy statement that applies here: "freedom of speech is not freedom of reach". Because there are plenty of other ways to upload videos — Vimeo and PeerTube and your own server — but none have YouTube's killer feature, which is distribution to a built-in audience. Let's back up a few decades and say you want to promote Nazism, which is legal. Your options are pretty limited! No major newspaper will publish your article, no major radio station will let you speak and no major TV channel will give you a show. You can distribute your own newsletter, get on public access TV, transmit on unused radio frequencies, or maybe even find a small company that will allow you. But for the most part, you can't distribute to large audiences, and no one has a problem with this. Enter the Internet. Now anyone can publish things consumable by anyone in the world… but all of a sudden that's not enough, and it's imperative that it's just as easy for Nazis to reach a huge audience as anyone else? What is so fundamentally different about YouTube vs. TV networks that we need to revisit this? Granted, Nazism is an extreme example; it's more likely that people are concerned about e.g. alleged censorship of conservative views. But it's difficult for me to really care about this, because these are still mainstream views! Even if you don't think you're welcome on Twitter, you can go to Gab or Voat. You can read about it on Breitbart and The Daily Caller. You can get it delivered in the Wall Street Journal. You can watch it on Fox News. For speech that is being "censored", it sure is easy to find. I'll finish by reiterating my support for breaking up giant companies that effectively control a large part of discourse. Concentrated power is never a good thing. But I think it's a gross violation of free speech to force networks to distribute content they don't want to — especially when there are always options for people to get their speech out.

meowface 7y ago
I think there should only be some tiny degree of forcing. A provider like Facebook and YouTube have immense power to influence elections, for example. This is super exaggerated, but if, say, every pro-Republican video is removed or hidden behind an adult/extreme/offensive warning, while most pro-Democrat videos are left untouched, think about what effect that may have on current generations, and generations in 10 and 20 years from now, who grow up on YouTube content essentially. It'll probably influence your thinking. I definitely don't want them to be classified as public utilities or even broken up. I think very minimal regulation similar to the "equal-time rule" should be used instead, applied only to certain narrow forms of content. I think Steve Huffman of reddit did it right: he's clearly no fan of Trump or his supporters, but he refused all the calls to delete Trump's subreddit. Half the site calls him a Nazi and the other half calls him a libcuck, but I think he made the right move. I think YouTube should absolutely have a right to remove videos promoting white nationalism or advocating bigotry and such. I just think they shouldn't have absolute free reign to remove anything, due to the fact that they're now kind of more like TV in general, rather than a single TV network.