6 ms·

Yes, as the parent mentions, YouTube can do the same kind of content curation from a legal point of view. The question is whether YouTube is a platform where we

Yes, as the parent mentions, YouTube can do the same kind of content curation from a legal point of view. The question is whether YouTube is a platform where we should advocate for less censorship/more freedom. I think that since YouTube is a general platform and that no serious alternatives exist, we should advocate for less censorship. YouTube is different from Hacker News because YouTube is more of a general platform (not focused on a particular topic). In contrast with Hacker News, less censorship on YouTube would not significantly degrade the experience. You can still go subscribe to the channels you like and be completely unaware of the content you don't want to see. On Hacker News, the whole point is that it is focused on particular subjects (I suppose it would be analogous to a curated list of YouTube channels), and its rules keep it that way. Another factor to consider is what alternatives exist. As far as I know, YouTube is the only serious option at the moment for general video content. YouTube content includes news and politics, and many people use it as their primary source of information. No matter what your politics are, they will likely differ from Google's in some way, and if YouTube begins to aggressively censor opinions they disagree with, you'll find yourself without a platform since no serious alternatives exist.

fragmede 6y ago
For one, Facebook's trying to give YouTube a run for their money. There's an entire tab in their mobile app dedicated to small bite-size videos like are watched on YouTube, and Facebook Live is all about connecting small video producers directly to their audiences. Outside of that, there are lesser known sites. Vimeo, Metacafe, Dailymotion, Twitch, Veoh. YouTube has the brand recognition, but simply hosting video online isn't that hard. It's way harder if you have to build your own colo though. For the casual viewer, YouTube has unbeatable brand recognition, and if I was trying to build an audience for a mainstream idea, that's the obvious place. However, for dedicated fans of a specific ideology, with YouTube deplatforming that ideology, the usual considerations are fewer. Normally, the friction associated with getting viewers to install an app would be enough to dissuade a large number of users. For users who believe the government lies and that they're seeking the truth, and only the RushLimbaughTube app can expose them to it, I don't know if there's the same friction.
- t0ughcritic 6y ago
  Vimeo,veoh, metacafe et al need to all merge into one and realize they have failed as individual companies more or less. Secondly rush’s app will be removed, if he says anything that upsets big bro. Lastly Facebook video will be just like YouTube in terms of enforcement.
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    have they failed? What are their financials like?
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  Facebook is unusable without a FB account. A walled garden can't supplant YouTube.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    Except if people trivially can make (or already have) FB accounts, and for them it's not an issue whether it's a "walled garden" or not.
mschuster91 6y ago
> As far as I know, YouTube is the only serious option at the moment for general video content. Are they? There's Vimeo, Facebook, Pornhub's SFW option, Twitter can host short videos, there's a metric shitload of porn hosts, and if you're in for premium service every major CDN offers video hosting/distribution.
- benbristow 6y ago
  David Icke seems to have moved to BitChute https://www.bitchute.com/channel/weBLW8e6mgIB/ https://www.bitchute.com/channel/weBLW8e6mgIB/
- iso947 6y ago
  And a video tag in your own website on a raspberry pi. There’s no problem hosting wacky content. What people complain is they don’t get free hosting and advertising.
  - PureParadigm 6y ago
    You're absolutely right with the advertising aspect. YouTube is not simply a video hosting platform. It is also an advertising platform. YouTube's dominance is not because video is impossible to host but because YouTube takes care of the advertising/revenue aspect for content creators. Any competitor would need to provide a similar service, and that's hard to do at the same level when you're not run by the world's largest advertising company. A serious alternative to YouTube would need to draw creators like YouTube does, and you need some sort of built-in way to (probably economically) incentivize them to create videos and put them on your platform.
    - ianbooker 6y ago
      Or like https://watchnebula.com/ https://watchnebula.com/ be owned by creators in the first place and try to finance by subscriptions without ads. But this obviously will not scale like Youtube..
      - 6y ago
MaxBarraclough 6y ago
> since YouTube is a general platform and that no serious alternatives exist, we should advocate for less censorship. Disagree. Online misinformation can kill people [0] and act as a recruitment tool for Nazis [1]. Less seriously, it can result in people burning down 5G towers. There's plenty to lose by YouTube hosting this stuff, and they're under no obligation to do so in the name of free speech. It strikes me as odd that more people seem to want YouTube to permit far-right propaganda on their platform, than want YouTube to permit 'adult content', which just about no-one advocates. > YouTube is the only serious option at the moment for general video content People don't have a positive right for their poisonous nonsense to be hosted by, and discoverable on, YouTube. Such content should be forced off mainstream platforms. > if YouTube begins to aggressively censor opinions they disagree with 'Disagree with' is trivialising the problem. This stuff is serious. [0] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/iran-700-dead-drinking-alcohol-cure-coronavirus-200427163529629.html https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/iran-700-dead-drinkin... edit It's not clear to me whether [0] was the result of online misinformation. [1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbzzzx/youtube-decides-to-leave-neo-nazi-propaganda-online https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbzzzx/youtube-decides-to...
- italicbold 6y ago
  And then you wake up one day to Brexit and Trump being elected. Forcing content/ideas underground doesnt stop it spreading, you just become totally unaware of the spread, its not even talked about in social settings. But still it silently spreads. Do you want a situation when it becomes vacine time, half your country revolts? Do you just not care about these people? If thats the case why bother supressing it at all. The time to address these ideas is now, but no its all too easy to stick your head in the sand and exclaim shock after the fact.
  - zimpenfish 6y ago
    > you wake up one day to Brexit and Trump being elected > Forcing content/ideas underground doesnt stop it spreading In what way were Brexit or Trump "forced underground"? Trump got millions of dollars worth of free advertising from the second he announced he was running because the media could not stop covering him. CNN, MSNBC, and Fox aired 30 minutes of an empty podium for him! And Brexit was constantly in the media in the UK. There was no "underground" at all. The BBC were almost a full-on propaganda arm with their fawning over Farage and terror that any even slight non-worship of the Tories would be reflected in yet more license fee beatings by ukgov.
ethbro 6y ago
> [On YouTube] You can still go subscribe to the channels you like and be completely unaware of the content you don't want to see Generalized, therein lies the crux of the tension. It's not about the existence or accessibility of content, but rather its discoverability. That YouTube's recommendation algorithm is so psychopathically ammoral that they had to rig it (several months back) not to suggest conspiracy video after conspiracy video should have been the alarm bell. Content + discoverability composes the potential danger to society, and YouTube wholly controls one of those levers.

fragmede 6y ago

For one, Facebook's trying to give YouTube a run for their money. There's an entire tab in their mobile app dedicated to small bite-size videos like are watched on YouTube, and Facebook Live is all about connecting small video producers directly to their audiences. Outside of that, there are lesser known sites. Vimeo, Metacafe, Dailymotion, Twitch, Veoh. YouTube has the brand recognition, but simply hosting video online isn't that hard. It's way harder if you have to build your own colo though. For the casual viewer, YouTube has unbeatable brand recognition, and if I was trying to build an audience for a mainstream idea, that's the obvious place. However, for dedicated fans of a specific ideology, with YouTube deplatforming that ideology, the usual considerations are fewer. Normally, the friction associated with getting viewers to install an app would be enough to dissuade a large number of users. For users who believe the government lies and that they're seeking the truth, and only the RushLimbaughTube app can expose them to it, I don't know if there's the same friction.

t0ughcritic 6y ago
Vimeo,veoh, metacafe et al need to all merge into one and realize they have failed as individual companies more or less. Secondly rush’s app will be removed, if he says anything that upsets big bro. Lastly Facebook video will be just like YouTube in terms of enforcement.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  have they failed? What are their financials like?
kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
Facebook is unusable without a FB account. A walled garden can't supplant YouTube.
- coldtea 6y ago
  Except if people trivially can make (or already have) FB accounts, and for them it's not an issue whether it's a "walled garden" or not.

mschuster91 6y ago

> As far as I know, YouTube is the only serious option at the moment for general video content. Are they? There's Vimeo, Facebook, Pornhub's SFW option, Twitter can host short videos, there's a metric shitload of porn hosts, and if you're in for premium service every major CDN offers video hosting/distribution.

benbristow 6y ago
David Icke seems to have moved to BitChute https://www.bitchute.com/channel/weBLW8e6mgIB/ https://www.bitchute.com/channel/weBLW8e6mgIB/
iso947 6y ago
And a video tag in your own website on a raspberry pi. There’s no problem hosting wacky content. What people complain is they don’t get free hosting and advertising.
- PureParadigm 6y ago
  You're absolutely right with the advertising aspect. YouTube is not simply a video hosting platform. It is also an advertising platform. YouTube's dominance is not because video is impossible to host but because YouTube takes care of the advertising/revenue aspect for content creators. Any competitor would need to provide a similar service, and that's hard to do at the same level when you're not run by the world's largest advertising company. A serious alternative to YouTube would need to draw creators like YouTube does, and you need some sort of built-in way to (probably economically) incentivize them to create videos and put them on your platform.
  - ianbooker 6y ago
    Or like https://watchnebula.com/ https://watchnebula.com/ be owned by creators in the first place and try to finance by subscriptions without ads. But this obviously will not scale like Youtube..
    - 6y ago

MaxBarraclough 6y ago

> since YouTube is a general platform and that no serious alternatives exist, we should advocate for less censorship. Disagree. Online misinformation can kill people [0] and act as a recruitment tool for Nazis [1]. Less seriously, it can result in people burning down 5G towers. There's plenty to lose by YouTube hosting this stuff, and they're under no obligation to do so in the name of free speech. It strikes me as odd that more people seem to want YouTube to permit far-right propaganda on their platform, than want YouTube to permit 'adult content', which just about no-one advocates. > YouTube is the only serious option at the moment for general video content People don't have a positive right for their poisonous nonsense to be hosted by, and discoverable on, YouTube. Such content should be forced off mainstream platforms. > if YouTube begins to aggressively censor opinions they disagree with 'Disagree with' is trivialising the problem. This stuff is serious. [0] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/iran-700-dead-drinking-alcohol-cure-coronavirus-200427163529629.html https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/iran-700-dead-drinkin... edit It's not clear to me whether [0] was the result of online misinformation. [1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbzzzx/youtube-decides-to-leave-neo-nazi-propaganda-online https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbzzzx/youtube-decides-to...

italicbold 6y ago
And then you wake up one day to Brexit and Trump being elected. Forcing content/ideas underground doesnt stop it spreading, you just become totally unaware of the spread, its not even talked about in social settings. But still it silently spreads. Do you want a situation when it becomes vacine time, half your country revolts? Do you just not care about these people? If thats the case why bother supressing it at all. The time to address these ideas is now, but no its all too easy to stick your head in the sand and exclaim shock after the fact.
- zimpenfish 6y ago
  > you wake up one day to Brexit and Trump being elected > Forcing content/ideas underground doesnt stop it spreading In what way were Brexit or Trump "forced underground"? Trump got millions of dollars worth of free advertising from the second he announced he was running because the media could not stop covering him. CNN, MSNBC, and Fox aired 30 minutes of an empty podium for him! And Brexit was constantly in the media in the UK. There was no "underground" at all. The BBC were almost a full-on propaganda arm with their fawning over Farage and terror that any even slight non-worship of the Tories would be reflected in yet more license fee beatings by ukgov.

ethbro 6y ago

> [On YouTube] You can still go subscribe to the channels you like and be completely unaware of the content you don't want to see Generalized, therein lies the crux of the tension. It's not about the existence or accessibility of content, but rather its discoverability. That YouTube's recommendation algorithm is so psychopathically ammoral that they had to rig it (several months back) not to suggest conspiracy video after conspiracy video should have been the alarm bell. Content + discoverability composes the potential danger to society, and YouTube wholly controls one of those levers.