> It would be great if YouTube adopted easy to follow policies and would terminate accounts based on clear breaches of policy, rather than just playing whack-a-

> It would be great if YouTube adopted easy to follow policies and would terminate accounts based on clear breaches of policy, rather than just playing whack-a-mole with whatever topic is hot at the moment. The thing is it's impossible to devise effective policies that are "clear cut" to the point where an entity like youtube can apply them effectively over a media platform with the scope and throughput of Youtube. It's always going to be a game of wack-a-mole. It's wack-a-mole even on HN. These platforms should be free to yank stuff and be responsible to some extent if harmful content is spread through them. As it is now, the threshold for being deplatformed is too high. Conspiracy peddlers are totally free to choose another platform for their garbage or create one for themselves. Info Wars is still up and running through their own website. They would be far smaller, however, if Youtube had done the right thing and pulled the plug early-- like when Info Wars started spreading Sandy Hook conspiracies. We're talking like facebook and google ARE the internet. They are not. They're merely platforms analogous to a "hyper newspaper". Like any news paper, they should have the right to put content of their choosing on it and be held accountable for harm spread through it. No one is going to stop maniacs or anyone else with strange viewpoints from printing up xeroxes and handing them out on a public corner -or- putting together a weird website, that's their first amendment right.