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There are a million options for video hosting. You are performing some sleight of hand here - claiming they are the only way to share your view - when what you

There are a million options for video hosting. You are performing some sleight of hand here - claiming they are the only way to share your view - when what you are really referring to is that they have the most viewers, and that they have tools for promoting content in front of that audience. "I deserve access to an audience on their system" is a very weak claim compared to the (untrue) "they are the only place I can share my views." Personally, I say kill the era of algorithmic search and recommendation. Then you'd have to convince people with compelling content to link out to you, not just be clickbait that plays well in the naive algorithmic feedback loops. Good luck!

im3w1l 6y ago
More and more social interaction becomes intermediated. And especially during this time of quarantine. It's not as easy as convincing people. Because people are now all on ban-happy platforms. And these platforms synchronize their bans. Let's say your video has some modicum of success on no-name-host.com. Suddenly facebook, youtube, reddit, discord all ban links to that host to reduce spread. They do this intentionally. They brag about it to politicians. They get rewarded for acting as a block... by the state. It's a nice little proxy arrangement.
unethical_ban 6y ago
Youtube Vimeo Name the next five that are discoverable, host your videos for free, and can stream that to millions of people in a single day.
- gknoy 6y ago
  As a contrarian view, do our rights require it to be _cheap_? AWS + a domain name (`www.the-moon-really-is-made-of-cheese.com`) seems like something that is available to everyone. - It's not cheap - It's not easy However, it's a platform of speech that is available to everyone, and if you want to scale to millions, one can add the same caching layers etc that FAANG can. We've seen this kind of thing when people were banned from twitter or whatever, and ended up migrating to other twitter-competitors. Newspapers are not required to post our opinions, and I don't think youtube is either.
  - majewsky 6y ago
    > AWS + a domain name [for video hosting] Have fun with that egress bill when your video goes viral.
    - polynomial 6y ago
      "that's a good problem to have" doesn't really work when it bankrupts you/your company.
- sangnoir 6y ago
  > ... discoverable, host your videos for free, and can stream that to millions of people in a single day No one has an inalienable right to any of these features, let alone to all of them in a neat package. The organizations that invest ingenuity, capital and labor to create platforms with those features do have a right to set terms on how their platforms is used. I don't get how the solution to what is seen as corporate authoritarianism (on private property) is asking for more authoritarianism (by the government) to force persons to host content they'd rather not.
  - polynomial 6y ago
    TBF, these are more like entitlements than rights.
- Cyph0n 6y ago
  We’ve already covered discoverability: you have no right to an “audience”. As far as being able to reach millions of people per day for free, why do you think that’s a right, exactly? The fact that the websites you listed are footing the bill for you doesn’t mean that serving content (i.e., bandwidth) in general is “free”.
  - unethical_ban 6y ago
    I don't think there is a right, but don't act like there are a million equivalents to Youtube.
scottLobster 6y ago
Access to an audience is part of speech IMO. If most of the world's population was on one continent-sized piece of private property, and because it was private property the owners were allowed to censor whoever they wanted, "you can go talk freely on the almost empty island over there, maybe someone from the continent will come listen!" doesn't sound like free speech to me. I agree that getting rid of algorithmic search/recommendation/promotion would be a big step forward, but platforms for speech of a certain massive size like Youtube/twitter/facebook/etc should also be heavily regulated and their ability to censor limited. They are, due to their overwhelming size, de-facto custodians of speech.

im3w1l 6y ago

More and more social interaction becomes intermediated. And especially during this time of quarantine. It's not as easy as convincing people. Because people are now all on ban-happy platforms. And these platforms synchronize their bans. Let's say your video has some modicum of success on no-name-host.com. Suddenly facebook, youtube, reddit, discord all ban links to that host to reduce spread. They do this intentionally. They brag about it to politicians. They get rewarded for acting as a block... by the state. It's a nice little proxy arrangement.

unethical_ban 6y ago

Youtube Vimeo Name the next five that are discoverable, host your videos for free, and can stream that to millions of people in a single day.

gknoy 6y ago
As a contrarian view, do our rights require it to be _cheap_? AWS + a domain name (`www.the-moon-really-is-made-of-cheese.com`) seems like something that is available to everyone. - It's not cheap - It's not easy However, it's a platform of speech that is available to everyone, and if you want to scale to millions, one can add the same caching layers etc that FAANG can. We've seen this kind of thing when people were banned from twitter or whatever, and ended up migrating to other twitter-competitors. Newspapers are not required to post our opinions, and I don't think youtube is either.
- majewsky 6y ago
  > AWS + a domain name [for video hosting] Have fun with that egress bill when your video goes viral.
  - polynomial 6y ago
    "that's a good problem to have" doesn't really work when it bankrupts you/your company.
sangnoir 6y ago
> ... discoverable, host your videos for free, and can stream that to millions of people in a single day No one has an inalienable right to any of these features, let alone to all of them in a neat package. The organizations that invest ingenuity, capital and labor to create platforms with those features do have a right to set terms on how their platforms is used. I don't get how the solution to what is seen as corporate authoritarianism (on private property) is asking for more authoritarianism (by the government) to force persons to host content they'd rather not.
- polynomial 6y ago
  TBF, these are more like entitlements than rights.
Cyph0n 6y ago
We’ve already covered discoverability: you have no right to an “audience”. As far as being able to reach millions of people per day for free, why do you think that’s a right, exactly? The fact that the websites you listed are footing the bill for you doesn’t mean that serving content (i.e., bandwidth) in general is “free”.
- unethical_ban 6y ago
  I don't think there is a right, but don't act like there are a million equivalents to Youtube.

scottLobster 6y ago

Access to an audience is part of speech IMO. If most of the world's population was on one continent-sized piece of private property, and because it was private property the owners were allowed to censor whoever they wanted, "you can go talk freely on the almost empty island over there, maybe someone from the continent will come listen!" doesn't sound like free speech to me. I agree that getting rid of algorithmic search/recommendation/promotion would be a big step forward, but platforms for speech of a certain massive size like Youtube/twitter/facebook/etc should also be heavily regulated and their ability to censor limited. They are, due to their overwhelming size, de-facto custodians of speech.