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The now somewhat controversial Section 230 of the CDA would classify YouTube as an "interactive computer service," and the actual text of the law says "No provi

The now somewhat controversial Section 230 of the CDA would classify YouTube as an "interactive computer service," and the actual text of the law says "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected." Videos pushing to delegitimize the entire democratic process could certainly be considered "otherwise objectionable". That would be subjective, to be sure, and perhaps challengeable, but I'm going to bet that Google had a lot of discussions with their legal team before taking this action. tl;dr: being a "platform" is neither a Get Out of Lawsuits Free card nor a requirement for content to be unmoderated.

zests 6y ago
I'm not particularly interested in what the law says. Leave that to the lawyers :) As a voter/citizen it would be great if we had reasonable expectations about our what these services are and how we should set our own expectations for censorship. The platform/publisher spectrum is an easy jumping off point for a casual discussion. Where is "Youtube" on this spectrum? What stops Youtube from marking all content associated with a particular religion/political party/national origin "otherwise objectionable"? Many questions. I can state that as a citizen I view Youtube as a platform that should take a minimal approach to censorship. I view the attempts to control what the "plebians/proles" believe as excessively paternalistic and likely to be unhelpful. If the censorship causes these people to visit more radical sources of information then who is to blame when they get further radicalized? At least Youtube has washed their hands of the situation.
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  You are free to set up a “free speech” alternative to YouTube if you think that is a better system. Unfortunately you will not be able to get many users because it will be full of porn and spam, and you won’t be able to fund it because advertisers won’t want to be associated with it.
- nobody9999 6y ago
  >What stops Youtube from marking all content associated with a particular religion/political party/national origin "otherwise objectionable"? Market forces? Advertiser pressure? Bad hair day? They are under no obligation to host anything they choose not to host. And that's a good thing too. If Google can be forced to host content they don't wish to host, then so can you, and so can I and so can HackerNews or Bernadette's Knitting website.
matwood 6y ago
Also > otherwise objectionable along with > whether or not such material is constitutionally protected gives them fairly broad leeway to pull down whatever they want.
- chipotle_coyote 6y ago
  It does read that way, definitely. (I admit I was a little surprised at how broad that seemed when I was looking it up!)

zests 6y ago

I'm not particularly interested in what the law says. Leave that to the lawyers :) As a voter/citizen it would be great if we had reasonable expectations about our what these services are and how we should set our own expectations for censorship. The platform/publisher spectrum is an easy jumping off point for a casual discussion. Where is "Youtube" on this spectrum? What stops Youtube from marking all content associated with a particular religion/political party/national origin "otherwise objectionable"? Many questions. I can state that as a citizen I view Youtube as a platform that should take a minimal approach to censorship. I view the attempts to control what the "plebians/proles" believe as excessively paternalistic and likely to be unhelpful. If the censorship causes these people to visit more radical sources of information then who is to blame when they get further radicalized? At least Youtube has washed their hands of the situation.

amanaplanacanal 6y ago
You are free to set up a “free speech” alternative to YouTube if you think that is a better system. Unfortunately you will not be able to get many users because it will be full of porn and spam, and you won’t be able to fund it because advertisers won’t want to be associated with it.
nobody9999 6y ago
>What stops Youtube from marking all content associated with a particular religion/political party/national origin "otherwise objectionable"? Market forces? Advertiser pressure? Bad hair day? They are under no obligation to host anything they choose not to host. And that's a good thing too. If Google can be forced to host content they don't wish to host, then so can you, and so can I and so can HackerNews or Bernadette's Knitting website.

matwood 6y ago

Also > otherwise objectionable along with > whether or not such material is constitutionally protected gives them fairly broad leeway to pull down whatever they want.

chipotle_coyote 6y ago
It does read that way, definitely. (I admit I was a little surprised at how broad that seemed when I was looking it up!)