3 ms·

> 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

by 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...
istjohn 6y ago
We could have antitrust enforcement that prevents companies like Alphabet and Facebook from becoming so dominant in our society, but if we are going to have such dominant corporations, we cannot allow unbridled censorship of speach on their platforms without undermining a pillar of societal strength, prosperity, and happiness: the marketplace of ideas.
scottLobster 6y ago
And just because your house is already hooked up to your electric utility doesn't mean you can't build your own generator and and source your own fuel! Clearly the utility should have near complete immunity and let an automated algorithm cut off your power indefinitely for vague, unspecified reasons.

by 60secz 6y ago

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...

istjohn 6y ago

We could have antitrust enforcement that prevents companies like Alphabet and Facebook from becoming so dominant in our society, but if we are going to have such dominant corporations, we cannot allow unbridled censorship of speach on their platforms without undermining a pillar of societal strength, prosperity, and happiness: the marketplace of ideas.

scottLobster 6y ago

And just because your house is already hooked up to your electric utility doesn't mean you can't build your own generator and and source your own fuel! Clearly the utility should have near complete immunity and let an automated algorithm cut off your power indefinitely for vague, unspecified reasons.