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These types of censorship patterns are identical to that employed by China in intent. The practical consequences are the same as well. In China information cen

These types of censorship patterns are identical to that employed by China in intent. The practical consequences are the same as well. In China information censorship is due to the government trying to promote peace and harmony. Aka, the government thinks it knows what’s best for people and forces it on people. Facebook et al also encounter these same problems, where they see people spreading “misinformation.” It’s a hard problem to solve, but they essentially resort to taking the same types of censorship as China that everyone so easily criticizes. The irony is Google is now doing it too after claiming to have left the market due to forced censorship. Some people may cite China’s censorship/banning of Falun Gong. What people don’t bother to look into is that Falun Gong is an anti-gay, really out there cult. Their censorship justifications of that is not unlike censoring “fake news” like this “doctor.” While it may be right (of course their methodology may be questionable), it completely short circuits the ability for critical thinkers to actually analyze all content. It’s done supposedly for the greater good.

bilekas 6y ago
> These types of censorship patterns are identical to that employed by China in intent. The practical consequences are the same as well. They're not identical, the state doesn't determine YouTubes actions.
- the8472 6y ago
  Legislators puts pressure on them. E.g. by threatening to repeal CDA or bring other regulation if they do not self-regulate and "do something" about content they deem problematic for one reason or another.
  - bilekas 6y ago
    Thats funny, I always thought it was business' lobbying the government to change policies..
    - the8472 6y ago
      Those things are not mutually exclusive. Politicians ask for things that make them look good, companies ask for things that benefit their bottom line. As long as conspiracy theorists are not youtube's cashcow and tax cuts can be sold as improving the economy for everyone both sides benefit.
logicslave 6y ago
You have to wonder if there are Chinese actors within Google influencing these censorships...
- dagnabbit 6y ago
  No, you really don' have to wonder that. That's a deeply stupid and racist conspiracy theory that you're promoting with no evidence or logical reasoning at all.
  - blisterpeanuts 6y ago
    How is it racist?
  - pluto9 6y ago
    "Chinese" in this context pretty obviously means "acting on behalf of the Chinese government", not "having Chinese heritage".
  - mmm_grayons 6y ago
    The dragonfly debacle provides at least some credibility to such an idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine) It's impossible to produce a search engine compatible with the Chinese market without having some fairly high-placed contacts in the Chinese government, because it would take some very high-level approval to allow such a product.
- chiefalchemist 6y ago
  Given Google's size and power it's only natural the Chinese and plenty of others would have insiders. How far up the influence ladder they've climbed is another matter. Just the same, the US is doing it as well, abroad as well as at home.
- CyanBird 6y ago
  Please avoid making bad jokes, take it to reddit
bachmeier 6y ago
> These types of censorship patterns are identical to that employed by China in intent. The practical consequences are the same as well. True, if you ignore the fact that China is a government and YouTube is an internet video portal. And that there are sites like HN that can point it out. And that YouTube isn't taking steps to cover up what they've done. But yeah, let's compare the policing of bad information in a pandemic that gets people killed, where YouTube doesn't benefit from the "censorship", to what China's government is doing. At least you get to feel good about your purity when you're posting comments on HN, secure in the knowledge that you don't have a teenager or a parent that might die as a result.
- naasking 6y ago
  > where YouTube doesn't benefit from the "censorship" Of course they do. You think they're spending all that money out of the kindness of their hearts? Way to dodge actually engaging with the principles at play here. You can certainly assert your consequentialist/utilitarian arguments, but not everyone agrees with that ethical framework.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    What ethical framework yields non insane results that isn't consequentialist/utilitarian?
    - naasking 6y ago
      Consequentialism also yields insane results. Look up "the repugnant conclusion". If ethics were settled, it would no longer be a philosophy but a science.
      - michaelmrose 6y ago
        Thanks for that topic its very interesting. It will take some time to digest.
lopmotr 6y ago
Yep. It seems to have started with the 2016 election which left popular opinion being that there's a huge part of the population who are too stupid to think for themselves and must be shielded from bad ideas in case they believe them and harm the rest of us with them. Now that such an idea is readily accepted, censorship is easily seen as the morally right thing to do in lots of cases. The feeling is that we're protecting ourselves from real harm by people who really don't have the ability to correctly evaluate the information they receive. Just like China doing it for social harmony. It's not just terrorism and child porn that people tolerate censorship for anymore, it's for 5G and flat earth conspiracy theories, anti-religious ideas, nationalism, and all sorts of "misinformation".
- darkwater 6y ago
  That a huge part of the population choose unwisely and footgun themselves and the rest it's quite obvious. But the real, longterm solution is education, not censorship. But we have to admit that we are in an ultra-connected world like never before and fake, easy news are even more easily spread. So, critical thinking is a necessary skill to be taught.
  - chiefalchemist 6y ago
    > That a huge part of the population choose unwisely and footgun themselves and the rest it's quite obvious. Twitter and media hyperbole aside how exactly is the current admin that much different than the previous? Bush #2 had fake WMDs and leveraged that to go to war. A war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives and a ridiculous amount of money. The last admin bailed out Wall Street (with few concessions), re-signed and expanded the Patriot Act, floated the Paris Climate Accord as a victory (but Naomi Klein tells otherwise). Over both of these admins and prior income inequality has increased. We've been getting shot in the foot, the head, the arse, etc. I'm not a DJT voter or fan but the idea that he's the problem is naive. If W.DC had been doing their job there would have been no opportunity for DJT to rise. Trump is a symptom. Let's not be foolish and blame the symptom.
    - pertymcpert 6y ago
vbezhenar 6y ago
As long as you can host your video on your own website, that's not the same. If you own website, you have all rights to do any censorship you want. Now if your government will try to fine or arrest you because you hosted some video on your website, that's censorship. You can avoid youtube, but you can't avoid your government. That said, I agree that huge websites like youtube, facebook, instagram are something more than just another web resource and probably some regulations should be applied to them. But it's very sensitive subject.
- majewsky 6y ago
  > As long as you can host your video on your own website, that's not the same. Very few people even within this peer group have the capability of hosting videos on their own website unless the video is intended for a very small audience (say, less than 1000 viewers per day). If you want to reach any significant number of people, you absolutely need to go through one of the major video hosters or pay for a CDN. And that's before you consider the network effects of YouTube.
  - joefourier 6y ago
    Video hosting scalability is not the problem it was if you use a technology like Webtorrent, allowing peer-to-peer distribution of your video files. See PeerTube for a relatively easy platform for your private video hosting. Even putting Webtorrent aside, a simple server with a gigabit connection allows you to handle a hundred simultaneous viewers at once with a reasonable bitrate, all day long. If you're constantly getting more than that, you can surely afford a CDN or a proper infrastructure. I do agree that the network effects of YouTube are very hard to compete with, however.
    - t-writescode 6y ago
      I'm not a lawyer; but, relentlessly downloading and then assisting in the distribution of content I've not personally validated sounds like a legal minefield filled mostly with mines and very little green space.
  - 6y ago
Benmcdonald__ 6y ago
Next month Google will have reeducation camps for Uyghur involving rape and torture. Google is _exactly_ like the CCP in intent and its cover ups Edit: was /s. The parent comment is a ridiculous comparison
pornel 6y ago
> The practical consequences are the same as well. Is YouTube sending people to "re-education camps" now? If a private platform kicks you out, you can host your stuff elsewhere. If a state censors you, it can use lethal force to silence you. Pretty big difference.
- pacala 6y ago
  In the good old times of Soviet power, there were other oppression mechanisms besides lethal force. In fact lethal force was only rarely used, especially after Stalin. A couple of examples: * Send dissenters to perform menial jobs in some remote small city with little impact on the national scale. Technically, the Gulag itself was an application of this strategy, with a particularly harsh destination and a particularly dangerous occupation. * House arrest. Keep dissenters in their homes, and carefully control whom they get into contact. The end effect is the same: drastically limit the platform available to dissenters, without outright murdering them.
  - ojnabieoot 6y ago
    And those pale in comparison to the worst crimes of YouTube: - demonetizing videos that advertisers don't want to be associated with - age-restricting highly questionable content - deleting videos which I, like, worked really hard on, and which I didn't even say anything directly violent - ARTIFICIALLY DEFLATING FluoridePoison777's subscriber counts Seriously: your argument is offensive to victims of totalitarian oppression.
    - pacala 6y ago
      ? There is only the simple observation that there is a spectrum: free speech -> deplatforming [ban from youtube & co] -> deinfrastructuring [ban from paypal / aws & co] -> depersoning [physical exile to periphery] -> lethal force. I seem to remember a time of nuanced conversations. But perhaps online discourse was always an adversarial contest between two strident extremes. Enjoy.
      - 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
chvid 6y ago
Why on earth does this have to be compared to China? And Falun Gong?! This is long form journalism with establishment figures such as university professors. YouTube censors clearly overstepped their "mandate" here. And Unherd has other ways of publicising this particular interview and drawing attention to YouTube's censorship.
Aunche 6y ago
>These types of censorship patterns are identical to that employed by China in intent. At the end of the day, Youtube's intent is to make as much money as possible. If Youtube didn't censor a lot of misinformation videos, people would get mad and demand advertisers to stop advertising on Youtube.
lordlic 6y ago
I'm sympathetic to Chinese-style censorship, at least in theory before it degenerates into the state trying to suppress anything it considers embarrassing to itself. "The government thinks it knows what’s best for people" because it does know better than most people. Facebook, as the lowest common denominator for American public discourse, is a cesspool of misinformation, pseudoscience, hate, deceptive advertising, and people losing their skin in MLM scams. In India, fake stories on WhatsApp have whipped up violent mobs into a frenzy of xenophobia, resulting in tragic murders of innocent migrants. We should be more aware of the enormous costs associated with a lassie-faire attitude toward speech, even if we decide it's worth the cost. "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it." All that being said, the practical consequences of YouTube moderation are not even remotely the same as those of the Chinese censorship that everyone criticizes. The worst thing that can happen to you on YouTube is that you can't comment or upload videos anymore. YouTube is not sending people to prison or calling up your employer to tell them you're a dangerous agitator.
- jaspax 6y ago
  > YouTube is not sending people to prison or calling up your employer to tell them you're a dangerous agitator. Correct. This function is outsourced to Twitter mobs.

bilekas 6y ago

> These types of censorship patterns are identical to that employed by China in intent. The practical consequences are the same as well. They're not identical, the state doesn't determine YouTubes actions.

the8472 6y ago
Legislators puts pressure on them. E.g. by threatening to repeal CDA or bring other regulation if they do not self-regulate and "do something" about content they deem problematic for one reason or another.
- bilekas 6y ago
  Thats funny, I always thought it was business' lobbying the government to change policies..
  - the8472 6y ago
    Those things are not mutually exclusive. Politicians ask for things that make them look good, companies ask for things that benefit their bottom line. As long as conspiracy theorists are not youtube's cashcow and tax cuts can be sold as improving the economy for everyone both sides benefit.

logicslave 6y ago

You have to wonder if there are Chinese actors within Google influencing these censorships...

dagnabbit 6y ago
No, you really don' have to wonder that. That's a deeply stupid and racist conspiracy theory that you're promoting with no evidence or logical reasoning at all.
- blisterpeanuts 6y ago
  How is it racist?
- pluto9 6y ago
  "Chinese" in this context pretty obviously means "acting on behalf of the Chinese government", not "having Chinese heritage".
- mmm_grayons 6y ago
  The dragonfly debacle provides at least some credibility to such an idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine) It's impossible to produce a search engine compatible with the Chinese market without having some fairly high-placed contacts in the Chinese government, because it would take some very high-level approval to allow such a product.
chiefalchemist 6y ago
Given Google's size and power it's only natural the Chinese and plenty of others would have insiders. How far up the influence ladder they've climbed is another matter. Just the same, the US is doing it as well, abroad as well as at home.
CyanBird 6y ago
Please avoid making bad jokes, take it to reddit

bachmeier 6y ago

> These types of censorship patterns are identical to that employed by China in intent. The practical consequences are the same as well. True, if you ignore the fact that China is a government and YouTube is an internet video portal. And that there are sites like HN that can point it out. And that YouTube isn't taking steps to cover up what they've done. But yeah, let's compare the policing of bad information in a pandemic that gets people killed, where YouTube doesn't benefit from the "censorship", to what China's government is doing. At least you get to feel good about your purity when you're posting comments on HN, secure in the knowledge that you don't have a teenager or a parent that might die as a result.

naasking 6y ago
> where YouTube doesn't benefit from the "censorship" Of course they do. You think they're spending all that money out of the kindness of their hearts? Way to dodge actually engaging with the principles at play here. You can certainly assert your consequentialist/utilitarian arguments, but not everyone agrees with that ethical framework.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  What ethical framework yields non insane results that isn't consequentialist/utilitarian?
  - naasking 6y ago
    Consequentialism also yields insane results. Look up "the repugnant conclusion". If ethics were settled, it would no longer be a philosophy but a science.
    - michaelmrose 6y ago
      Thanks for that topic its very interesting. It will take some time to digest.

lopmotr 6y ago

Yep. It seems to have started with the 2016 election which left popular opinion being that there's a huge part of the population who are too stupid to think for themselves and must be shielded from bad ideas in case they believe them and harm the rest of us with them. Now that such an idea is readily accepted, censorship is easily seen as the morally right thing to do in lots of cases. The feeling is that we're protecting ourselves from real harm by people who really don't have the ability to correctly evaluate the information they receive. Just like China doing it for social harmony. It's not just terrorism and child porn that people tolerate censorship for anymore, it's for 5G and flat earth conspiracy theories, anti-religious ideas, nationalism, and all sorts of "misinformation".

darkwater 6y ago
That a huge part of the population choose unwisely and footgun themselves and the rest it's quite obvious. But the real, longterm solution is education, not censorship. But we have to admit that we are in an ultra-connected world like never before and fake, easy news are even more easily spread. So, critical thinking is a necessary skill to be taught.
- chiefalchemist 6y ago
  > That a huge part of the population choose unwisely and footgun themselves and the rest it's quite obvious. Twitter and media hyperbole aside how exactly is the current admin that much different than the previous? Bush #2 had fake WMDs and leveraged that to go to war. A war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives and a ridiculous amount of money. The last admin bailed out Wall Street (with few concessions), re-signed and expanded the Patriot Act, floated the Paris Climate Accord as a victory (but Naomi Klein tells otherwise). Over both of these admins and prior income inequality has increased. We've been getting shot in the foot, the head, the arse, etc. I'm not a DJT voter or fan but the idea that he's the problem is naive. If W.DC had been doing their job there would have been no opportunity for DJT to rise. Trump is a symptom. Let's not be foolish and blame the symptom.
  - pertymcpert 6y ago

vbezhenar 6y ago

As long as you can host your video on your own website, that's not the same. If you own website, you have all rights to do any censorship you want. Now if your government will try to fine or arrest you because you hosted some video on your website, that's censorship. You can avoid youtube, but you can't avoid your government. That said, I agree that huge websites like youtube, facebook, instagram are something more than just another web resource and probably some regulations should be applied to them. But it's very sensitive subject.

majewsky 6y ago
> As long as you can host your video on your own website, that's not the same. Very few people even within this peer group have the capability of hosting videos on their own website unless the video is intended for a very small audience (say, less than 1000 viewers per day). If you want to reach any significant number of people, you absolutely need to go through one of the major video hosters or pay for a CDN. And that's before you consider the network effects of YouTube.
- joefourier 6y ago
  Video hosting scalability is not the problem it was if you use a technology like Webtorrent, allowing peer-to-peer distribution of your video files. See PeerTube for a relatively easy platform for your private video hosting. Even putting Webtorrent aside, a simple server with a gigabit connection allows you to handle a hundred simultaneous viewers at once with a reasonable bitrate, all day long. If you're constantly getting more than that, you can surely afford a CDN or a proper infrastructure. I do agree that the network effects of YouTube are very hard to compete with, however.
  - t-writescode 6y ago
    I'm not a lawyer; but, relentlessly downloading and then assisting in the distribution of content I've not personally validated sounds like a legal minefield filled mostly with mines and very little green space.
- 6y ago

Benmcdonald__ 6y ago

Next month Google will have reeducation camps for Uyghur involving rape and torture. Google is _exactly_ like the CCP in intent and its cover ups Edit: was /s. The parent comment is a ridiculous comparison

pornel 6y ago

> The practical consequences are the same as well. Is YouTube sending people to "re-education camps" now? If a private platform kicks you out, you can host your stuff elsewhere. If a state censors you, it can use lethal force to silence you. Pretty big difference.

pacala 6y ago
In the good old times of Soviet power, there were other oppression mechanisms besides lethal force. In fact lethal force was only rarely used, especially after Stalin. A couple of examples: * Send dissenters to perform menial jobs in some remote small city with little impact on the national scale. Technically, the Gulag itself was an application of this strategy, with a particularly harsh destination and a particularly dangerous occupation. * House arrest. Keep dissenters in their homes, and carefully control whom they get into contact. The end effect is the same: drastically limit the platform available to dissenters, without outright murdering them.
- ojnabieoot 6y ago
  And those pale in comparison to the worst crimes of YouTube: - demonetizing videos that advertisers don't want to be associated with - age-restricting highly questionable content - deleting videos which I, like, worked really hard on, and which I didn't even say anything directly violent - ARTIFICIALLY DEFLATING FluoridePoison777's subscriber counts Seriously: your argument is offensive to victims of totalitarian oppression.
  - pacala 6y ago
    ? There is only the simple observation that there is a spectrum: free speech -> deplatforming [ban from youtube & co] -> deinfrastructuring [ban from paypal / aws & co] -> depersoning [physical exile to periphery] -> lethal force. I seem to remember a time of nuanced conversations. But perhaps online discourse was always an adversarial contest between two strident extremes. Enjoy.
    - 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

chvid 6y ago

Why on earth does this have to be compared to China? And Falun Gong?! This is long form journalism with establishment figures such as university professors. YouTube censors clearly overstepped their "mandate" here. And Unherd has other ways of publicising this particular interview and drawing attention to YouTube's censorship.

Aunche 6y ago

>These types of censorship patterns are identical to that employed by China in intent. At the end of the day, Youtube's intent is to make as much money as possible. If Youtube didn't censor a lot of misinformation videos, people would get mad and demand advertisers to stop advertising on Youtube.

lordlic 6y ago

I'm sympathetic to Chinese-style censorship, at least in theory before it degenerates into the state trying to suppress anything it considers embarrassing to itself. "The government thinks it knows what’s best for people" because it does know better than most people. Facebook, as the lowest common denominator for American public discourse, is a cesspool of misinformation, pseudoscience, hate, deceptive advertising, and people losing their skin in MLM scams. In India, fake stories on WhatsApp have whipped up violent mobs into a frenzy of xenophobia, resulting in tragic murders of innocent migrants. We should be more aware of the enormous costs associated with a lassie-faire attitude toward speech, even if we decide it's worth the cost. "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it." All that being said, the practical consequences of YouTube moderation are not even remotely the same as those of the Chinese censorship that everyone criticizes. The worst thing that can happen to you on YouTube is that you can't comment or upload videos anymore. YouTube is not sending people to prison or calling up your employer to tell them you're a dangerous agitator.

jaspax 6y ago
> YouTube is not sending people to prison or calling up your employer to tell them you're a dangerous agitator. Correct. This function is outsourced to Twitter mobs.