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The natural outcome of this line of thought is complete destruction of all online platforms. Without moderation things quickly become a cesspool. Whether spam,

The natural outcome of this line of thought is complete destruction of all online platforms. Without moderation things quickly become a cesspool. Whether spam, or child porn, or scams, or just extremely toxic behavior that scares off 99% of users the end result is the same. Moderation of content - some form of censoring - is a feature, not a bug. Nothing is stopping you from providing your own video platform that doesn't censor content (or at least doesn't censor any legal content). The free market, however, is unlikely to support you in that effort. Advertisers have always refused to sponsor content they find objectionable, and most people won't pay, so that leaves you with rather thin margins for such a service.

thu2111 7y ago
Nothing is stopping you from providing your own video platform that doesn't censor content I agree this is true in theory, with the internet as it is today. PragerU can and should host their own videos if Google doesn't want to (edit: though in this case the problem is not related to hosting but advertising, it seems?). Anyway, we can and should criticise Google for their partisan stances and they shouldn't be treated with much sympathy if a conservative government retaliates in some way either, but that's by the by. The problem is that this sort of thing doesn't have any limits. People were making the exact same argument when Google seized the domain of a source of unpopular speech such that the owners were not only unable to use Google's services, but in fact, were unable to host themselves too. It was basically a DoS attack by a corporation on that site. The internet is run entirely by private companies. What happens to your argument when someone does in fact stop PragerU from providing their own video platform that doesn't censor content? For instance because an angry mob tries to shut down your ISP, or a DNS provider steals your domain, or a DDoS protection firm decides not to protect you anymore and then lets an anonymous mob take your servers offline? Nobody at any point has violated the constitution, but the outcome is identical. Digital technology requires private sector collaboration. If an increasingly partisan set of tech firms systematically try to wipe conservative thought out - which is what they are doing - despite that this political philosophy represents about half the voting population, then they are going to end up regulated so strictly it'll make banks look like free-wheeling anarchists in comparison. This will happen slowly because conservatives don't want to do that, but it will happen, especially as actual shrink-the-state conservatives don't tend to get into leadership positions in the west. Ultimately the right to criticise the government is a right to criticise those who have power. The arguments for it don't change if the government outsources suppression of speech to contractors, and don't change if a bunch of political allies manage to take control of organisations required to engage in speech. It's the right itself that matters.
- shadowgovt 7y ago
  Nobody's infringed PragerU's right to criticize the government, and a private company uplifting other content above Prager's doesn't imply Prager's has been suppressed.
  - thu2111 7y ago
    No, clearly. I'm talking about the extrapolation of a trend, not this specific case.

thu2111 7y ago

Nothing is stopping you from providing your own video platform that doesn't censor content I agree this is true in theory, with the internet as it is today. PragerU can and should host their own videos if Google doesn't want to (edit: though in this case the problem is not related to hosting but advertising, it seems?). Anyway, we can and should criticise Google for their partisan stances and they shouldn't be treated with much sympathy if a conservative government retaliates in some way either, but that's by the by. The problem is that this sort of thing doesn't have any limits. People were making the exact same argument when Google seized the domain of a source of unpopular speech such that the owners were not only unable to use Google's services, but in fact, were unable to host themselves too. It was basically a DoS attack by a corporation on that site. The internet is run entirely by private companies. What happens to your argument when someone does in fact stop PragerU from providing their own video platform that doesn't censor content? For instance because an angry mob tries to shut down your ISP, or a DNS provider steals your domain, or a DDoS protection firm decides not to protect you anymore and then lets an anonymous mob take your servers offline? Nobody at any point has violated the constitution, but the outcome is identical. Digital technology requires private sector collaboration. If an increasingly partisan set of tech firms systematically try to wipe conservative thought out - which is what they are doing - despite that this political philosophy represents about half the voting population, then they are going to end up regulated so strictly it'll make banks look like free-wheeling anarchists in comparison. This will happen slowly because conservatives don't want to do that, but it will happen, especially as actual shrink-the-state conservatives don't tend to get into leadership positions in the west. Ultimately the right to criticise the government is a right to criticise those who have power. The arguments for it don't change if the government outsources suppression of speech to contractors, and don't change if a bunch of political allies manage to take control of organisations required to engage in speech. It's the right itself that matters.

shadowgovt 7y ago
Nobody's infringed PragerU's right to criticize the government, and a private company uplifting other content above Prager's doesn't imply Prager's has been suppressed.
- thu2111 7y ago
  No, clearly. I'm talking about the extrapolation of a trend, not this specific case.