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> I don’t want youtube to be in charge of deciding what is credible or not This point is often repeated during discussions on these topics but I believe this i

> I don’t want youtube to be in charge of deciding what is credible or not This point is often repeated during discussions on these topics but I believe this is an inaccurate characterization. YouTube is not "in charge of deciding what is credible" in the fashion that kind of phrasing suggests; they are moderating the content on their platform with respect to their business process and company values, those decisions are not a reflection of credibility. YouTube is a corporate product and we should not encourage the narrative that this product is the zenith of knowledge even though there are knowledgeable people who put content on YouTube.

spiderfarmer 6y ago
A lot of people who blame Youtube for oppressing their right to disinform other people, would immediately oppress other people if they had the chance.
- JungleGymSam 6y ago
  Sounds so scary! I'm shivering with fear. Thank you, YouTube! I'm too stupid to think for myself.
AbrahamParangi 6y ago
I’ll reiterate a point I’ve made before: the ultimate question is whether YouTube (and other social media platforms) should be permitted both the power to control on their platform as well as the freedom from liability of a common carrier. They exist in a limbo where they have their cake and eat it too- which I think is ultimately untenable.
- Justsignedup 6y ago
  The problem we face is that social media is about echoing information, not validity, which is how misinformation spreads so rapidly, because it sounds like what people want to hear. There is no precedent in human history in such a thing. A private entity which controls so much public understanding and opinion. Making YouTube liable for content would go a long way in helping keep YT content honest, and solve the moderator problem. YT will either moderate or die. The reason YT could get so popular is because they neither have to moderate, nor fact check, but still get the benefits of being informational. This is true for ALL social media, unfortunately. How would one go about moderating the thousands of hours of content produced every hour in TikTok? Etc.
  - AbrahamParangi 6y ago
    For what it's worth, I do not think people in the past were more informed than people today. If anything, more people are more informed today than at any time in history. What we're seeing is the breakdown of consolidated narratives. It used to be that people's beliefs were all wrong in the same way. You'll note that this looks basically identical to everyone being well informed. Now that we've moved into a regime of information abundance it looks like the world's gone crazy, when really it's just decohered. That said, youtube as a vector is spreading the most virulent memetic viruses we've ever seen. Hard to say how it shakes out though, memes aren't all bad. Everything good we've ever done started off as a meme too.
    - int_19h 6y ago
      The problem is that memes themselves undergo natural selection, which favors the "bad" ones overall. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
      - AbrahamParangi 6y ago
        I don't think this is true in the long run, any more than genes which favor their propagation are bad in the long run. In the short term, viruses, cancers, shitty memes, doomsday cults and other low-sophistication replicators are favored. But long term you get things like multicellularity, complex nervous systems, the scientific method, civilization and art. The road may be rocky but I see no reason for it to be any different here.
        int_19h 6y ago
        It's "bad" for us as individuals with our cultural background. It's not necessarily "bad" for the memes themselves, especially since the ultimate score in this game is to have an entire civilization proactively spreading the meme to others. Christianity, Islam, and other proselytizing religions are a good example.
- root_axis 6y ago
  > the ultimate question is whether YouTube (and other social media platforms) should be permitted both the power to control on their platform as well as the freedom from liability of a common carrier I disagree that this is the ultimate question or that this is in any way a problem that merits a changing of the laws (as current law explicitly permits this). Websites aren't common carriers, and I don't see a compelling reason to force websites to host content that they disagree with for any reason. I don't see any connection between the idea between popularity and the loss of editorial control of your own website. > They exist in a limbo where they have their cake and eat it too- which I think is ultimately untenable. Moderation is part of the product. I would argue that the idea that we can effectively constrict companies into a specific type of moderation behavior is what's untenable because it strikes at the heart of the creative freedom to build a website and online community with respect to your own ideals.
  - AbrahamParangi 6y ago
    To be clear, I think either position is fine. If you want control over what people say that's okay - but maybe then you should be accountable for what they say like a publisher. If you don't want to be accountable for what people say, that's fine - but maybe then like a traditional common carrier you shouldn't get to control what people say. The asymmetry of "I control everything you can say but am accountable for none of it" is wrong, in my eyes.
_vertigo 6y ago
> they are moderating the content on their platform with respect to their business process and company values, those decisions are not a reflection of credibility. YouTube is a corporate product This is such a tired argument. YouTube is ubiquitous - it is the primary (read: effectively only) platform for video hosting, which today comprises a large proportion of all information transfer between humans. Companies like Facebook and YouTube are central to social discourse, at least in the west. When a medium of communication is that ubiquitous, the fact that it is owned by a private company is not an excuse to throw up one's hands and say "Well, I guess they own it - they can censor what they want". The fact that it is so widely used and owns such a significant share of the "ways to spread information" market outweighs the fact that the company is private.
- 60secz 6y ago
  > The fact that it is so widely used and owns such a significant share of the "ways to spread information" market outweighs the fact that the company is private. That argument seems a slippery slope towards reverse privitization. Who determines what companies are allowed to censor? Who censors the censors? Companies censor content because they are primarily afraid of liability (legal, political, cultural). There are other video sites out there. Just because youtube is popular doesn't prevent people from hosting content on other platforms.
  - hrktb 6y ago
    It’s not unprecedented to have different rules apply to private company passed a given reach. We could see it the same way we see banks. Banks are private entities but tightly regulated and their activity is overseen by their operating country. Applying a given set of restrictions and requiremnts to services used by more than 50% of the population for instance could be a thing. In the US I know people would call bloody murder, but other countries could do with sensible rules of that kind.
    - int_19h 6y ago
      One thing that really bothered me was how Australian ISPs handled censorship of the Christchurch shooting videos. They have started proactively blocking not just websites that hosted it, but also those that linked to it - even forums, where it was posted by the users, and the moderators have a general hands-off policy. It was strictly private censorship at the time - Australia didn't pass legislation to censor it yet. But it was coordinated across the entire industry - basically all ISPs used the same list, so the customers had no choice. It was also completely non-transparent - the blacklist was secret, and they wouldn't even confirm or deny whether any given website doesn't open because it's on that blacklist. Yet, since the government was not (officially) involved in any of that, there was no review and no appeal...
djsumdog 6y ago
YouTube/Google/Alphabet have repeatedly said they are removing things about COVID19 from non-government sources. They cannot simply be written off as a private agents who can do what they want with their platform, considering their dominance and monopoly on content. This is textbook definition of Orwell's Ministry of Truth. Google is either becoming the Ministry of Truth, or by its policy, allowing governments to be the Ministers of Truth, with no room of any dissent. This should be greatly troubling.
- root_axis 6y ago
  YouTube is not the ministry of truth, it is a popular entertainment website that people visit voluntarily. People very incorrectly treating YouTube like it's some kind of authoritative source of knowledge is the problem, not YouTube.
  - theandrewbailey 6y ago
    Youtube is treating Youtube like an authoritative source of knowledge.
    - root_axis 6y ago
      Marketing is not reality, this should be pretty obvious on HN.
      - thu2111 6y ago
        They're not doing this for marketing reasons. They're doing it because they believe by controlling YouTube they control what people think. Even if they're wrong it's dystopian and suggests a megalomanic attitude. Remember this is the same company that controls Chrome. It's all fun and games right up until people start discovering their Chromebooks and Androids are blocking web sites on the grounds of "misinformation"
- iso947 6y ago
  Use dailymotion, or vimeo, or host your own site.
hartator 6y ago
> they are moderating the content on their platform with respect to their business process and company values, those decisions are not a reflection of credibility. There is a difference between morality and legality. It might be legal for ATT to cut your Internet because they don't like you but it will be immoral for sure.
- root_axis 6y ago
  Having your video removed from someone's website isn't the same thing as having your internet cut off.
  - hartator 6y ago
    How so? Both are private properties.
    - root_axis 6y ago
      Do you really not see the critical differences between having your internet cut off and having a website owner remove something you posted to their website? I am honestly having difficulty believing that.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
picometer 6y ago
The essential, underlying problem here is that YouTube is a corporate product, just as you say, and yet still has a major influence on the population's aggregate belief, due to its scale of adoption. This is an emergent phenomenon, not a narrative.
- root_axis 6y ago
  > YouTube is a corporate product, just as you say, and yet still has a major influence on the population's aggregate belief What is your evidence for this? There are so many other sources of influence in this world that I find this idea completely at odds with reality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-subscribed_YouTube_channels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-subscribed_YouTub... Considering the content of YouTube's top channels I think the evidence isn't in favor of that suggestion that YouTube has a noteworthy impact on "the population's aggregate belief"
Vysero 6y ago
There's only one grocery store in town and I need to buy food, but their prices are too high!! Oh well, guess I will just have to drive to this other town to buy food where the prices aren't so high. ..walks outside to car ..sees local grocery store owner has flattened his tire
- root_axis 6y ago
  This is such a deeply flawed and disingenuous analogy that I find it difficult to imagine you're commenting in good faith.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
ggrrhh_ta 6y ago
Well, they roll out a platform where people can upload content. That is the one of the main services they offer, YT should be subject to the local regulations for uploaders and viewers, applying no other discretionary/arbitrary limits than those imposed by regulations or by technical reasons. Imagine a content platform would consider that videos created by <insert group of people> do not align with their values.

spiderfarmer 6y ago

A lot of people who blame Youtube for oppressing their right to disinform other people, would immediately oppress other people if they had the chance.

JungleGymSam 6y ago
Sounds so scary! I'm shivering with fear. Thank you, YouTube! I'm too stupid to think for myself.

AbrahamParangi 6y ago

I’ll reiterate a point I’ve made before: the ultimate question is whether YouTube (and other social media platforms) should be permitted both the power to control on their platform as well as the freedom from liability of a common carrier. They exist in a limbo where they have their cake and eat it too- which I think is ultimately untenable.

Justsignedup 6y ago
The problem we face is that social media is about echoing information, not validity, which is how misinformation spreads so rapidly, because it sounds like what people want to hear. There is no precedent in human history in such a thing. A private entity which controls so much public understanding and opinion. Making YouTube liable for content would go a long way in helping keep YT content honest, and solve the moderator problem. YT will either moderate or die. The reason YT could get so popular is because they neither have to moderate, nor fact check, but still get the benefits of being informational. This is true for ALL social media, unfortunately. How would one go about moderating the thousands of hours of content produced every hour in TikTok? Etc.
- AbrahamParangi 6y ago
  For what it's worth, I do not think people in the past were more informed than people today. If anything, more people are more informed today than at any time in history. What we're seeing is the breakdown of consolidated narratives. It used to be that people's beliefs were all wrong in the same way. You'll note that this looks basically identical to everyone being well informed. Now that we've moved into a regime of information abundance it looks like the world's gone crazy, when really it's just decohered. That said, youtube as a vector is spreading the most virulent memetic viruses we've ever seen. Hard to say how it shakes out though, memes aren't all bad. Everything good we've ever done started off as a meme too.
  - int_19h 6y ago
    The problem is that memes themselves undergo natural selection, which favors the "bad" ones overall. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
    - AbrahamParangi 6y ago
      I don't think this is true in the long run, any more than genes which favor their propagation are bad in the long run. In the short term, viruses, cancers, shitty memes, doomsday cults and other low-sophistication replicators are favored. But long term you get things like multicellularity, complex nervous systems, the scientific method, civilization and art. The road may be rocky but I see no reason for it to be any different here.
      - int_19h 6y ago
        It's "bad" for us as individuals with our cultural background. It's not necessarily "bad" for the memes themselves, especially since the ultimate score in this game is to have an entire civilization proactively spreading the meme to others. Christianity, Islam, and other proselytizing religions are a good example.
root_axis 6y ago
> the ultimate question is whether YouTube (and other social media platforms) should be permitted both the power to control on their platform as well as the freedom from liability of a common carrier I disagree that this is the ultimate question or that this is in any way a problem that merits a changing of the laws (as current law explicitly permits this). Websites aren't common carriers, and I don't see a compelling reason to force websites to host content that they disagree with for any reason. I don't see any connection between the idea between popularity and the loss of editorial control of your own website. > They exist in a limbo where they have their cake and eat it too- which I think is ultimately untenable. Moderation is part of the product. I would argue that the idea that we can effectively constrict companies into a specific type of moderation behavior is what's untenable because it strikes at the heart of the creative freedom to build a website and online community with respect to your own ideals.
- AbrahamParangi 6y ago
  To be clear, I think either position is fine. If you want control over what people say that's okay - but maybe then you should be accountable for what they say like a publisher. If you don't want to be accountable for what people say, that's fine - but maybe then like a traditional common carrier you shouldn't get to control what people say. The asymmetry of "I control everything you can say but am accountable for none of it" is wrong, in my eyes.

_vertigo 6y ago

> they are moderating the content on their platform with respect to their business process and company values, those decisions are not a reflection of credibility. YouTube is a corporate product This is such a tired argument. YouTube is ubiquitous - it is the primary (read: effectively only) platform for video hosting, which today comprises a large proportion of all information transfer between humans. Companies like Facebook and YouTube are central to social discourse, at least in the west. When a medium of communication is that ubiquitous, the fact that it is owned by a private company is not an excuse to throw up one's hands and say "Well, I guess they own it - they can censor what they want". The fact that it is so widely used and owns such a significant share of the "ways to spread information" market outweighs the fact that the company is private.

60secz 6y ago
> The fact that it is so widely used and owns such a significant share of the "ways to spread information" market outweighs the fact that the company is private. That argument seems a slippery slope towards reverse privitization. Who determines what companies are allowed to censor? Who censors the censors? Companies censor content because they are primarily afraid of liability (legal, political, cultural). There are other video sites out there. Just because youtube is popular doesn't prevent people from hosting content on other platforms.
- hrktb 6y ago
  It’s not unprecedented to have different rules apply to private company passed a given reach. We could see it the same way we see banks. Banks are private entities but tightly regulated and their activity is overseen by their operating country. Applying a given set of restrictions and requiremnts to services used by more than 50% of the population for instance could be a thing. In the US I know people would call bloody murder, but other countries could do with sensible rules of that kind.
  - int_19h 6y ago
    One thing that really bothered me was how Australian ISPs handled censorship of the Christchurch shooting videos. They have started proactively blocking not just websites that hosted it, but also those that linked to it - even forums, where it was posted by the users, and the moderators have a general hands-off policy. It was strictly private censorship at the time - Australia didn't pass legislation to censor it yet. But it was coordinated across the entire industry - basically all ISPs used the same list, so the customers had no choice. It was also completely non-transparent - the blacklist was secret, and they wouldn't even confirm or deny whether any given website doesn't open because it's on that blacklist. Yet, since the government was not (officially) involved in any of that, there was no review and no appeal...

djsumdog 6y ago

YouTube/Google/Alphabet have repeatedly said they are removing things about COVID19 from non-government sources. They cannot simply be written off as a private agents who can do what they want with their platform, considering their dominance and monopoly on content. This is textbook definition of Orwell's Ministry of Truth. Google is either becoming the Ministry of Truth, or by its policy, allowing governments to be the Ministers of Truth, with no room of any dissent. This should be greatly troubling.

root_axis 6y ago
YouTube is not the ministry of truth, it is a popular entertainment website that people visit voluntarily. People very incorrectly treating YouTube like it's some kind of authoritative source of knowledge is the problem, not YouTube.
- theandrewbailey 6y ago
  Youtube is treating Youtube like an authoritative source of knowledge.
  - root_axis 6y ago
    Marketing is not reality, this should be pretty obvious on HN.
    - thu2111 6y ago
      They're not doing this for marketing reasons. They're doing it because they believe by controlling YouTube they control what people think. Even if they're wrong it's dystopian and suggests a megalomanic attitude. Remember this is the same company that controls Chrome. It's all fun and games right up until people start discovering their Chromebooks and Androids are blocking web sites on the grounds of "misinformation"
iso947 6y ago
Use dailymotion, or vimeo, or host your own site.

hartator 6y ago

> they are moderating the content on their platform with respect to their business process and company values, those decisions are not a reflection of credibility. There is a difference between morality and legality. It might be legal for ATT to cut your Internet because they don't like you but it will be immoral for sure.

root_axis 6y ago
Having your video removed from someone's website isn't the same thing as having your internet cut off.
- hartator 6y ago
  How so? Both are private properties.
  - root_axis 6y ago
    Do you really not see the critical differences between having your internet cut off and having a website owner remove something you posted to their website? I am honestly having difficulty believing that.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

picometer 6y ago

The essential, underlying problem here is that YouTube is a corporate product, just as you say, and yet still has a major influence on the population's aggregate belief, due to its scale of adoption. This is an emergent phenomenon, not a narrative.

root_axis 6y ago
> YouTube is a corporate product, just as you say, and yet still has a major influence on the population's aggregate belief What is your evidence for this? There are so many other sources of influence in this world that I find this idea completely at odds with reality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-subscribed_YouTube_channels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-subscribed_YouTub... Considering the content of YouTube's top channels I think the evidence isn't in favor of that suggestion that YouTube has a noteworthy impact on "the population's aggregate belief"

Vysero 6y ago

There's only one grocery store in town and I need to buy food, but their prices are too high!! Oh well, guess I will just have to drive to this other town to buy food where the prices aren't so high. ..walks outside to car ..sees local grocery store owner has flattened his tire

root_axis 6y ago
This is such a deeply flawed and disingenuous analogy that I find it difficult to imagine you're commenting in good faith.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

ggrrhh_ta 6y ago

Well, they roll out a platform where people can upload content. That is the one of the main services they offer, YT should be subject to the local regulations for uploaders and viewers, applying no other discretionary/arbitrary limits than those imposed by regulations or by technical reasons. Imagine a content platform would consider that videos created by <insert group of people> do not align with their values.