6 ms·

YouTube has the right to censor anything it likes. It's their platform. If you don't like it, don't use YouTube.

crazy1van 6y ago
> It's their platform But the real question is at what level of censorship to the cease to be a platform and become a publisher?
dilap 6y ago
Should they have that right though? YouTube is owned by a Google, a massive, publicly-traded corporation with near-monopoly power. Are the best interests of society served by allowing it to be governed in an authoritarian, totalitarian fashion, or would it make sense, considering it is one of the most powerful mediums of speech ever created, to let it be governed by rules somewhat approximating the much-lauded, traditional, western liberal values of free speech?
- balls187 6y ago
  > Should they have that right though? Yes. Free speech does not grant the right for anyone to say whatever they want. The US Surpreme court has, as a matter of case law, ruled in specific areas to restrict free speech. These two doctors, under the pretense of medical expertise, provided false information, and used Youtube to do it. Google being a large massive publicly traded entity does not have any bearing as to it's responsibility to guard against violations on it's platform.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    The way I think of it is. Say my company makes high voltage transformers. And I get wind that one customer is using them to manufacture interrogation devices. I sure as shit can tell them to take their business elsewhere.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      But if you're selling electricity you generally don't get to refuse service to anyone.
      - balls187 6y ago
        Google doesn't sell ip packets.
        Gibbon1 6y ago
        Also much of the world right now is operating under a state of emergency.
  - JackFr 6y ago
    > These two doctors, under the pretense of medical expertise, provided false information, and used Youtube to do it. Not according to the article. The local TV station interviewed them and the local TV station put the video on YouTube. Presumably as they are licensed to practice medicine in the State of California they do have some expertise greater than those of us without MDs so it's hardly 'pretense'. Is wearing scrubs on camera a ridiculous rhetorical device? Yes. Were these guys wrong on some facts? Absolutely. Were they wrong on policy recommendations? Much, much harder to say. What's astonishing though is the ease with which people seem to be willing to turn over their civil liberties and place themselves under house arrest. We have to sit through three years of the echo chamber telling us Donald Trump is a fascist, and then finally when our freedom to assemble is literally stripped from us by the police power of the state, people are complaining that he's not fascist enough. Geez.
    - balls187 6y ago
      > Not according to the article. The local TV station interviewed them and the local TV station put the video on YouTube. As noted in another comment, the article does not touch on the veracity of the claims of these two doctors. "In a rare statement late today, the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine declared they “emphatically condemn the recent opinions released by Dr. Daniel Erickson and Dr. Artin Messihi. These reckless and untested musings do not speak for medical societies and are inconsistent with current science and epidemiology regarding COVID-19. As owners of local urgent care clinics, it appears these two individuals are releasing biased, non-peer reviewed data to advance their personal financial interests without regard for the public’s health.”" Source: https://www.dailynews.com/2020/04/28/california-doctors-with-dubious-covid-conclusions-debunked/ https://www.dailynews.com/2020/04/28/california-doctors-with... > We have to sit through three years of the echo chamber telling us Donald Trump is a fascist, and then finally when our freedom to assemble is literally stripped from us by the police power of the state, people are complaining that he's not fascist enough. Geez. You're making a false analogy; US Government in times of emergency has used it's authority to curtail civil liberties; I'm sure you are well aware of the gist of the War Times Power Act. And perhaps most famously (and more controversialy) when Habeas Corpus was suspended. That said, I think it's our responsibility (duty) as citizens to continually challenge attacks on the 1st Amendment, and other curtails of constitutional protected freedoms, but it's also on us to hold accountable those who seek to use the rights granted by the Bill of Rights in ways that harm the public. It is my pov that the opinions, presented as medical facts by these two doctors, were harmful to the public, and should be censored.
  - lucio 6y ago
    Free speech DOES grant the right for anyone express opinions without interference from the government. SCOTUS limitations for freedom of speech are very narrow, and being wrong or against the mainstream opinion is not one of them.
    - dependenttypes 6y ago
      > SCOTUS limitations for freedom of speech are very narrow Are they though? I can think of all kinds of limitations of the freedom of speech in both the US and in Europe. Copyright, gag orders, company and military secrets, illegal numbers, etc.
      - robdachshund 6y ago
        Freedom of speech is not a protected right in European countries. It is a solely american concept
    - balls187 6y ago
      > and being wrong or against the mainstream opinion is not one of them. False statement of Fact is absolutely an Exception to Free Speech.
    - skuthus 6y ago
      >without interference from the government. Exactly. Youtube isn't the government.
- montroser 6y ago
  The idea a private company should be forced to use their resources to host content they deem harmful to humanity seems obviously wrong. Of course they should have the right. YouTube is not a public service. "Free speech" does not mean you also are entitled to a platform and an audience.
  - autoexec 6y ago
    > "Free speech" does not mean you also are entitled to a platform and an audience. "Free speech" is a right but also an ideal. When speech is being silenced (de-platformed) or people (the audience) are forbidden from hearing it even when they want to, it violates those principles. > YouTube is not a public service. Youtube is a powerful and unique resource without meaningful competition which I think does give them a certain level of responsibility to uphold the ideals of free speech. Personally, I think that education is always better than suppression. Rather than remove these videos, a better option would simply be to inform users that the video contains false information and where they can find the truth.
    - snowwrestler 6y ago
      > When speech is being silenced (de-platformed) This is a ludicrous equivalency; by this standard YouTube is also “silencing (deplatforming)” people who don’t have computers because it’s not giving them resources to help them make and post videos. Deplatforming is not silencing. The default state of an individual in society is no platform. People who want platforms should build them. > Personally, I think that education is always better than suppression. You do not need to give people bad information to educate them. You only need to give them good information. I can teach you that 2+2=4 without spending hours belaboring all the numbers that 2+2 does not equal.
      - stOneskull 6y ago
        These doctors have good points and common sense. They aren't motivated by money and power like most media, the WHO, and youtube.
      - 6y ago
- shkkmo 6y ago
  > the much-lauded, traditional, western liberal values of free speech? Such as stopping people from saying bad words on radio/tv or stopping women from even accidentally showing a specific small part of their chest? We have a long history of direct censorship by liberal western governments for far worse reasons than saving lives. I don't see all these "free speech" advocates stepping up to stop the ongoing suppression of comparatively harmless expression like showing the female nipple. Yet, somehow the suppression of this actively harmful content is the rallying cry that pulls in so much attention. I am a free speech advocate, and I don't personally support the removal of this video, as I think the aims would be better served by alternate means, such as placing a strong disclaimer of inaccuracy alongside links to accurate rebuttals. However, I don't see how you stop Google from removing whatever content they want without creating laws that curtail other important aspects of free speech (e.g. creating a regulatory body that decides which groups do and do not have the right to control the content they publish).
  - stOneskull 6y ago
    I hope they do that with videos by cnn, fox, and the world health organisation too. This video by the doctors could be a refutation to certain pieces by others, even.
- asdff 6y ago
  Of course they should. Youtube isn't bound by any law to be the standard video hosting site. They are simply the most popular over the past 10 years. Zero government mandate or anything. They can remove all hosted content tomorrow if they'd like, entirely up to them. If you don't like it, feel free to build your own platform. That's the beauty of disseminated knowledge of computer science and the internet, after all.
  - dependenttypes 6y ago
    > If you don't like it ... feel free to discuss about it on hacker news. Regardless, would you say the same if someone was banned from a super market over being gay?
    - skuthus 6y ago
      According to the current interpretation of the Civil Rights Act, you would not be able to prevent them from shopping
      - dependenttypes 6y ago
        I am not in the USA, here it is legal to kick a gay person out. But the question is not if it is legal or not, but if it is moral.
    - asdff 6y ago
      No, because there are laws against discriminating protected classes (although sexuality is not quite a protected class per se and laws can vary between states). There are no laws against discriminating bigoted content or propaganda, these aren't protected classes.
      - dependenttypes 6y ago
        See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23030141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23030141
- snowwrestler 6y ago
  Traditional western liberal values of free speech permit and require private citizens to make decisions about which points of view they will support and which they will not support. Which is what YouTube just did. There is not a “everyone likes your software platform so you’re not allowed to have an opinion” exception to the traditional western liberal values of free speech.
  - dependenttypes 6y ago
    I do not think that stopping me from viewing what they said is an opinion.
GuiA 6y ago
I look forward to a world where platforms are less afraid to kick off the voices they don’t like. The world would be better with 50 YouTubes rather than just one.
- RonanTheGrey 6y ago
  If there were 50 YouTubes, that would be amazing. I wouldn't care ONE BIT if someone got kicked off RandomTube. It'd be hard to argue that their voice was being silenced. The 2nd player to YouTube, however, is a very distant second. YouTube has the power to decide if billions see a message. That's.... a power most governments would salivate to have. Personally I feel like the perspective that "they're privately owned so they can do what they want" while technically true, intentionally and dishonestly misses the point.
dredmorbius 6y ago
There are arguments that don't involve "private property, absolute authority" which permit both some censorship (in the public interest), and some guarantees of access most especially to under-served, unprivileged, and minority viewpoints (also in the public interest). That argument is public interest.
dependenttypes 6y ago
Just like a bakery has the right to refuse service to whoever they feel like, it is their shop after all, right? Anyway, they may be able to legally do what they want but this is not a free "get out of jail" card against any criticism.
camccar 6y ago
Bitchute is getting really nice and they don't censor stuff like this. I personally recommend it.

> It's their platform But the real question is at what level of censorship to the cease to be a platform and become a publisher?

dilap 6y ago

Should they have that right though? YouTube is owned by a Google, a massive, publicly-traded corporation with near-monopoly power. Are the best interests of society served by allowing it to be governed in an authoritarian, totalitarian fashion, or would it make sense, considering it is one of the most powerful mediums of speech ever created, to let it be governed by rules somewhat approximating the much-lauded, traditional, western liberal values of free speech?

balls187 6y ago
> Should they have that right though? Yes. Free speech does not grant the right for anyone to say whatever they want. The US Surpreme court has, as a matter of case law, ruled in specific areas to restrict free speech. These two doctors, under the pretense of medical expertise, provided false information, and used Youtube to do it. Google being a large massive publicly traded entity does not have any bearing as to it's responsibility to guard against violations on it's platform.
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  The way I think of it is. Say my company makes high voltage transformers. And I get wind that one customer is using them to manufacture interrogation devices. I sure as shit can tell them to take their business elsewhere.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    But if you're selling electricity you generally don't get to refuse service to anyone.
    - balls187 6y ago
      Google doesn't sell ip packets.
      - Gibbon1 6y ago
        Also much of the world right now is operating under a state of emergency.
- JackFr 6y ago
  > These two doctors, under the pretense of medical expertise, provided false information, and used Youtube to do it. Not according to the article. The local TV station interviewed them and the local TV station put the video on YouTube. Presumably as they are licensed to practice medicine in the State of California they do have some expertise greater than those of us without MDs so it's hardly 'pretense'. Is wearing scrubs on camera a ridiculous rhetorical device? Yes. Were these guys wrong on some facts? Absolutely. Were they wrong on policy recommendations? Much, much harder to say. What's astonishing though is the ease with which people seem to be willing to turn over their civil liberties and place themselves under house arrest. We have to sit through three years of the echo chamber telling us Donald Trump is a fascist, and then finally when our freedom to assemble is literally stripped from us by the police power of the state, people are complaining that he's not fascist enough. Geez.
  - balls187 6y ago
    > Not according to the article. The local TV station interviewed them and the local TV station put the video on YouTube. As noted in another comment, the article does not touch on the veracity of the claims of these two doctors. "In a rare statement late today, the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine declared they “emphatically condemn the recent opinions released by Dr. Daniel Erickson and Dr. Artin Messihi. These reckless and untested musings do not speak for medical societies and are inconsistent with current science and epidemiology regarding COVID-19. As owners of local urgent care clinics, it appears these two individuals are releasing biased, non-peer reviewed data to advance their personal financial interests without regard for the public’s health.”" Source: https://www.dailynews.com/2020/04/28/california-doctors-with-dubious-covid-conclusions-debunked/ https://www.dailynews.com/2020/04/28/california-doctors-with... > We have to sit through three years of the echo chamber telling us Donald Trump is a fascist, and then finally when our freedom to assemble is literally stripped from us by the police power of the state, people are complaining that he's not fascist enough. Geez. You're making a false analogy; US Government in times of emergency has used it's authority to curtail civil liberties; I'm sure you are well aware of the gist of the War Times Power Act. And perhaps most famously (and more controversialy) when Habeas Corpus was suspended. That said, I think it's our responsibility (duty) as citizens to continually challenge attacks on the 1st Amendment, and other curtails of constitutional protected freedoms, but it's also on us to hold accountable those who seek to use the rights granted by the Bill of Rights in ways that harm the public. It is my pov that the opinions, presented as medical facts by these two doctors, were harmful to the public, and should be censored.
- lucio 6y ago
  Free speech DOES grant the right for anyone express opinions without interference from the government. SCOTUS limitations for freedom of speech are very narrow, and being wrong or against the mainstream opinion is not one of them.
  - dependenttypes 6y ago
    > SCOTUS limitations for freedom of speech are very narrow Are they though? I can think of all kinds of limitations of the freedom of speech in both the US and in Europe. Copyright, gag orders, company and military secrets, illegal numbers, etc.
    - robdachshund 6y ago
      Freedom of speech is not a protected right in European countries. It is a solely american concept
  - balls187 6y ago
    > and being wrong or against the mainstream opinion is not one of them. False statement of Fact is absolutely an Exception to Free Speech.
  - skuthus 6y ago
    >without interference from the government. Exactly. Youtube isn't the government.
montroser 6y ago
The idea a private company should be forced to use their resources to host content they deem harmful to humanity seems obviously wrong. Of course they should have the right. YouTube is not a public service. "Free speech" does not mean you also are entitled to a platform and an audience.
- autoexec 6y ago
  > "Free speech" does not mean you also are entitled to a platform and an audience. "Free speech" is a right but also an ideal. When speech is being silenced (de-platformed) or people (the audience) are forbidden from hearing it even when they want to, it violates those principles. > YouTube is not a public service. Youtube is a powerful and unique resource without meaningful competition which I think does give them a certain level of responsibility to uphold the ideals of free speech. Personally, I think that education is always better than suppression. Rather than remove these videos, a better option would simply be to inform users that the video contains false information and where they can find the truth.
  - snowwrestler 6y ago
    > When speech is being silenced (de-platformed) This is a ludicrous equivalency; by this standard YouTube is also “silencing (deplatforming)” people who don’t have computers because it’s not giving them resources to help them make and post videos. Deplatforming is not silencing. The default state of an individual in society is no platform. People who want platforms should build them. > Personally, I think that education is always better than suppression. You do not need to give people bad information to educate them. You only need to give them good information. I can teach you that 2+2=4 without spending hours belaboring all the numbers that 2+2 does not equal.
    - stOneskull 6y ago
      These doctors have good points and common sense. They aren't motivated by money and power like most media, the WHO, and youtube.
    - 6y ago
shkkmo 6y ago
> the much-lauded, traditional, western liberal values of free speech? Such as stopping people from saying bad words on radio/tv or stopping women from even accidentally showing a specific small part of their chest? We have a long history of direct censorship by liberal western governments for far worse reasons than saving lives. I don't see all these "free speech" advocates stepping up to stop the ongoing suppression of comparatively harmless expression like showing the female nipple. Yet, somehow the suppression of this actively harmful content is the rallying cry that pulls in so much attention. I am a free speech advocate, and I don't personally support the removal of this video, as I think the aims would be better served by alternate means, such as placing a strong disclaimer of inaccuracy alongside links to accurate rebuttals. However, I don't see how you stop Google from removing whatever content they want without creating laws that curtail other important aspects of free speech (e.g. creating a regulatory body that decides which groups do and do not have the right to control the content they publish).
- stOneskull 6y ago
  I hope they do that with videos by cnn, fox, and the world health organisation too. This video by the doctors could be a refutation to certain pieces by others, even.
asdff 6y ago
Of course they should. Youtube isn't bound by any law to be the standard video hosting site. They are simply the most popular over the past 10 years. Zero government mandate or anything. They can remove all hosted content tomorrow if they'd like, entirely up to them. If you don't like it, feel free to build your own platform. That's the beauty of disseminated knowledge of computer science and the internet, after all.
- dependenttypes 6y ago
  > If you don't like it ... feel free to discuss about it on hacker news. Regardless, would you say the same if someone was banned from a super market over being gay?
  - skuthus 6y ago
    According to the current interpretation of the Civil Rights Act, you would not be able to prevent them from shopping
    - dependenttypes 6y ago
      I am not in the USA, here it is legal to kick a gay person out. But the question is not if it is legal or not, but if it is moral.
  - asdff 6y ago
    No, because there are laws against discriminating protected classes (although sexuality is not quite a protected class per se and laws can vary between states). There are no laws against discriminating bigoted content or propaganda, these aren't protected classes.
    - dependenttypes 6y ago
      See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23030141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23030141
snowwrestler 6y ago
Traditional western liberal values of free speech permit and require private citizens to make decisions about which points of view they will support and which they will not support. Which is what YouTube just did. There is not a “everyone likes your software platform so you’re not allowed to have an opinion” exception to the traditional western liberal values of free speech.
- dependenttypes 6y ago
  I do not think that stopping me from viewing what they said is an opinion.

GuiA 6y ago

I look forward to a world where platforms are less afraid to kick off the voices they don’t like. The world would be better with 50 YouTubes rather than just one.

RonanTheGrey 6y ago
If there were 50 YouTubes, that would be amazing. I wouldn't care ONE BIT if someone got kicked off RandomTube. It'd be hard to argue that their voice was being silenced. The 2nd player to YouTube, however, is a very distant second. YouTube has the power to decide if billions see a message. That's.... a power most governments would salivate to have. Personally I feel like the perspective that "they're privately owned so they can do what they want" while technically true, intentionally and dishonestly misses the point.

dredmorbius 6y ago

There are arguments that don't involve "private property, absolute authority" which permit both some censorship (in the public interest), and some guarantees of access most especially to under-served, unprivileged, and minority viewpoints (also in the public interest). That argument is public interest.

dependenttypes 6y ago

Just like a bakery has the right to refuse service to whoever they feel like, it is their shop after all, right? Anyway, they may be able to legally do what they want but this is not a free "get out of jail" card against any criticism.

camccar 6y ago

Bitchute is getting really nice and they don't censor stuff like this. I personally recommend it.