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Naval Ravikant seems to be a divisive figure here but I think he made a profound point when he discussed this topic on Joe Rogan's podcast. The point was that,

by anm89 5y ago

Naval Ravikant seems to be a divisive figure here but I think he made a profound point when he discussed this topic on Joe Rogan's podcast. The point was that, as a platform, you cross a line which is very difficult to ever revert when you optionally censor your platform in response to political pressure because both sides are then forced from a game theory perspective to aggressively pursue censoring your platform in their favor lest the other does it first. The platform ends up being collateral damage in some political war they never cared about in the first place and they can never win because no matter who they bend too, it automatically enrages the other side. This seems like where youtube and twitter and facebook are at now. They caved to censoring things that were reasonable, but now anyone can make them censor anything as long as they have some poltical power somewhere. It's not going to end well for them. Their only winning move was to stay neutral and do nothing but comply with legal requests.

iamdbtoo 5y ago
> The platform ends up being collateral damage in some political war they never cared about in the first place and they can never win because no matter who they bend too, it automatically enrages the other side. To me, the fact that they don't care about it is the problem. Those companies are having issues because they have no moral or ethical compass. It's become untenable for them to remain neutral because there is no neutral actor in this scenario. There's never going to be a service that's not held to a moral standard for their content regardless of what the law says.
- anm89 5y ago
  You seem to assume that if they cared, they'd be on your side. What makes you think that that's the case? They are first and foremost accountable to shareholders who want profit. It's unlikely that they view the world the same way you do. You probably don't want them throwing their weight around You can argue that you don't like that they are accountable to their shareholders but it is true.
  - iamdbtoo 5y ago
    No, I don't assume that. That's a very wrong assumption on your part.
    - anm89 5y ago
      But if you know in advance, that their actions would be against your goals, why do you want them more active not less?
nemothekid 5y ago
>Their only winning move was to stay neutral and do nothing but comply with legal requests. No? This narrative is a bit ahistorical - and it's fueled by this idea that hyperliberal boogeyman started censoring everything. If you look at what happened in 2017, Google started "censoring" things because advertisers threatened to boycott. The platforms couldn't stay neutral because advertisers became more and more concerned with staying out of any potential scandal.
- listless 5y ago
  In the beginning, but now both sides see them as the enemy of the people. One side thinks they censor too much and the other thinks not enough. So YouTube is now caught in a political game of trying to appease whichever party is in power lest they get regulated. Hence why Trump stayed on Twitter until he was out of office.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  Those threats were never serious though, because YT is too big, but also because advertisers know they can advertise on certain subsets of content that is not offensive.
- voxic11 5y ago
  Google's response to pressures from advertisers wasn't to censor anything. They just demonetized videos that the advertisers didn't want to be associated with. Hosting someone's video for free without even interrupting it with ads seems like the opposite of censorship to me. There may be something interesting to say about how the desires of advertisers shapes our discourse, but its not censorship (in this case at least).
  - takeda 5y ago
    Doesn't matter, they still used this as censoring (claiming YouTube cut funds to kill them). I even saw (this mostly was Facebook, but also was done on YouTube) where the channel/fan page purposefully switching videos to private while talking they are being censored.
eli 5y ago
> They caved to censoring things that were reasonable, but now anyone can make them censor anything as long as they have some poltical power somewhere. Can you define "reasonable" here in an objective way that we could all agree on? There's no such thing as neutrality. Leaving up a popular anti-vax video is just as political a decision as taking it down.
- anm89 5y ago
  I'm subjectively inserting that comment. I think that a lot of it was reasonable. I'm not arguing that it was objectively reasonable. I'm writing my thoughts on the internet. I'm not obligated by the burden of proof to justify my subjective opinions. >There's no such thing as neutrality. Leaving up a popular anti-vax video is just as political a decision as taking it down. Nonsense. We don't apply this standard to anything else in life.
  - eli 5y ago
    That's my point. There is no objectively reasonable way to do this. What you think is reasonable to take down and what I think is reasonable to take down are not going to always agree. I'm not sure what "elsewhere in life" means, but bookstores choose what books they will sell while also not necessarily endorsing every book they carry.
    - RHSeeger 5y ago
      > I refuse to take down anything that doesn't come with the force of law to take it down and > I refuse to take down this video, because I do not think it needs to be taken down are two VERY different things. The first one is a political choice about taking down videos in general. The second one is a political choice about a specific topic. The second one is more or less similar to taking down the video because you think it needs to be taken down (same topic, different political decision)... the first one is absolutely nothing like that. Edit: In case it wasn't clear (because I replied in the wrong place), this is the comment I was discussing > There's no such thing as neutrality. Leaving up a popular anti-vax video is just as political a decision as taking it down. While it may be "just as political", it's a political about a totally different thing.
throwawayswede 5y ago
> They caved to censoring things that were reasonable, but now anyone can make them censor anything as long as they have some poltical power somewhere. On some level, we have to acknowledge that whoever is running the shitshow at youtube and twitter are actually responsible as well, in that they believe they know enough to literally dictate what everyone in the world should see and read. For example banning Trump from Twitter is a great example of this. Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of his politics (or Biden's, or any of them, same shit different smell i say), but who the hell do Twitter people think they are that they feel confident enough to ban him? Not talking in the sense of a private company here, sure it's their business and they can do whatever the heck they want, but does anyone really think that by banning him they prevented whatever ideas of his that think should not be encouraged to stop? At best, this shows tremendous life inexperience, which I expect from kids who read a couple of books and think that they understand everything, the typical example of a tech company worker in a company like Twitter.
- kthejoker2 5y ago
  There is a ton of actual evidence that removing bad actors improves the quality of information on social networks: https://www.axios.com/reddit-hate-speech-policies-reduction-72fa6b6b-7774-409a-9e91-ced3b3d90d4b.html https://www.axios.com/reddit-hate-speech-policies-reduction-... https://www.vox.com/2021/1/16/22234971/trump-twitter-facebook-social-media-ban-election-misinformation-zignal https://www.vox.com/2021/1/16/22234971/trump-twitter-faceboo...
  - throwawayswede 5y ago
    That's not what I said. To reiterate, what I'm saying is: Shady ideas fester in the dark. Banning won't help society. Exposure and discussion does. But the new and very different point that you're making, which is "removing bad actors improves the quality of information on social networks", is also very disputable and shaky. - First link is "Reddit says that the rules Reddit made helped Reddit." is not exactly impartial, so forgive me to mistrust it. - Felt bad opening a Vox link (since so very obviously biased, but whatever, opened it for a laugh). The say: "misinformation slowed, the research indicates online discussion around the topics that motivated the Capitol riot has also diminished" if you don't see it (or if it doesn't happen online) it doesn't mean it diminished overall. The whole article is full of bias honestly. Sad that you feel it's worthy enough to source.
pbreit 5y ago
"They caved to censoring things that were reasonable" I'd argue that much of their censorship was not reasonable at all. None of it was illegal. Mostly just differences of opinion. My "information" is your "misinformation".
- partiallypro 5y ago
  I think OP means they were censoring things that weren't objectionable (offensive, etc,) and they were removing "reasonable" things that were opinions, etc. Maybe I'm wrong, but that is where Twitter/Facebook/etc have lost me; by censoring things that aren't harmful they've opened pandora's box.
- ryanSrich 5y ago
  Right. Nothing these platforms censor or began censoring early on was anywhere near reasonable. It was all political grandstanding to show those in power that big tech are the good guys. They’ll do the political bidding of the elites and politicians will only threaten to hold companies responsible to gain points with their constituents. All the while the politicians and big tech are in bed with each ensuring the information they don’t want shared isn’t shared. People who think any platform has the right to censor information scare the shit out of me. Save for things that are illegal, every platform should be neutral. Moderation should algorithmically be tied to the law.
  - namlem 5y ago
    So users who troll and harass other users, spam, post hateful content, etc. should never be banned? That's just leads to a precipitous decline in quality and drives other users away. Why would I want to spend my leisure time on a platform filled with 13 year-old shouting racial slurs?
    - pbreit 5y ago
      Mostly no, they should not be banned. You'll almost never see it. It's really not a big deal. Would need to get into unlawfulness before considering to censor (slander, doxing, imminent threat to harm, etc).
tvirosi 5y ago
*Naval Ravikant (I thought there was something off with your version.)
- anm89 5y ago
  Ha wow, I read that like 5 times and didn't catch that. Good catch. Fixed
duxup 5y ago
There's no avoiding this even if you don't " censor your platform in response to political pressure " because everyone assumes that is the case and the game is on... It's not a case of deciding to: >optionally censor your platform in response to political pressure Because so many people assume that if some content is removed and it is <content I think should be permissible / like> well then that must have been because of political pressure or views at that company or something like that. So by default: > The platform ends up being collateral damage in some political war Even if the content removed wasn't removed due to political pressure the accusations fly and the game begins. Nobody is forced by a platform's actions to play the game, the sad truth is people will believe the game is on all the times to explain anything they don't like / don't understand. Rudy Giuliani thought that Twitter was 'allowing' someone to post content to his account without his permission ... but really he had posted a link to a domain that didn't exist, then someone registered and had some fun with him. Rudy of course just filled in the blanks of his ignorance with concerns of bias by Twitter... and there's A LOT of people who do that (with all sorts of political views). We had an article here on HN where up and down votes changed on YouTube ... it was interpreted by some immediately as some sort of political bias. Have a platform? You're in the game...
- anm89 5y ago
  Right this is the entire point about how crossing the line poisons the well. Which is why they would have to be very clear that their policy is to only respond to legal orders for takedowns and nothing else.
  - duxup 5y ago
    I think the issue then is that the platform becomes ... unusable. The scale of spam of all kinds would render the service useless. Even inaction would be interpreted as part of the game ... and you're in the game again.
    - anm89 5y ago
      You could ultimately be right that they took the better of the two options and that this path would have killed them. I personally disagree. I think there is also more Grey here. They could have de prioritized things in the algorithm to encourage the direction of the community without explicitly depltforming anyone or blocking\removing content. I think its possible that they could have achieved a lot of what they wanted with this method while avoiding poisoning the well.
didibus 5y ago
Isn't "political pressure" here really means "user pressure" ? My understanding is that users of YouTube pressure YouTube to censor some things, YouTube wants to appeal to its user base, because customers are important for profit. Now Germany says that maybe in their position censoring things for profit is not legal or something like that and fines them.
- anm89 5y ago
  Valid point. Just pressure in general is probably more accurate. Once you bow to user pressure, you still open yourself up to political pressure. The political pressure probably comes masqueraded as user pressure anyway.
dukeofdoom 5y ago
Its pretty clear these platforms are not Neutral. Facebook literally set up vote drop boxes to maximize number of votes in precincts that heavily favour democrats in last election. They also banned a sitting president. So why even bother pretending they are neutral, when the evidence is pretty clear that they set out to sway elections. You can watch the Sergey Brim upset video after Trump won in 2016. https://www.cnn.com/videos/cnnmoney/2018/09/13/google-video-trump-election-2016-breitbart-orig-js.cnn https://www.cnn.com/videos/cnnmoney/2018/09/13/google-video-... I don't have problem with them having a side. And acting honestly and openly or even making one sided campaign contributions. I have a problem with a reinforcing circle, where they censor to help elect a government which then rewards their censorship with contracts. At that point they become state actors, censoring on behalf of the state. and I think this is the real issue. And I think we are pretty much there.
saurik 5y ago
I was with you until the very end, when I feel like you threw away the argument by seemingly being open to "legal requests"; the "political wars" you get dragged into tend to be from politicians that are certainly making "legal requests": hell, if they aren't legal, they change the law! I feel like the core problem in many cases was building a system where someone gets to be arbiter of content in the first place: Apple claims they take software down due to "legal requests" by/in various countries (though this is a lie as they also do it anti-competitively or for market perception reasons, but even taking them at their word here) and yet they caused the ability to do that as somehow Android devices sold in the same jurisdictions support installing arbitrary software without issue. Platforms like Twitter and YouTube make their problems worse by recommending content--which is entirely their editorial decision and should be seen as such: any benefits or costs, moral or legal, should fall squarely on their shoulders--and then conflating that with having the ability to publish, but they would be in a much more morally (and often legally) defensible position if they simply didn't actively recommend content they disliked but still let it be found by people who actively followed the publisher. Regardless, as usual, I will now link to my heavily-cited talk (every single slide is inherently a citation from a reputable news source) that I gave in 2017 (maybe 2018? the video was unlisted and I only just recently made it public as someone noted I had never done that, and now the upload date is weirdly set to last week ;P) at Mozilla Privacy Lab--"That's How You Get a Dystopia"--wherein I push hard at the idea that centralized systems and the arbiters they empower are the core problem and never work out, even if you like some of their decisions for some of the time. https://youtu.be/vsazo-Gs7ms https://youtu.be/vsazo-Gs7ms
- vbezhenar 5y ago
  If a website does not honour legal request, it'll get blocked, so its entire content will be effectively removed for all citizens. The proper approach IMO is to honour legal requests, but provide transparency and display some information about blocked content, like who made the request to block it and so on. Of course content must only be blocked for requests originating from that specific country.
  - saurik 5y ago
walkedaway 5y ago
> Their only winning move was to stay neutral and do nothing but comply with legal requests They could have enforced their policies consistently across all accounts instead of their strong anti-right/anti-conservative bias. It's their selective enforcement that created issues for them.
IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago
How does “staying neutral” prevent people from pressuring you? Is there any doubt that YouTube et al have and always had the ability to remove anything they wanted from their platforms?
nradov 5y ago
Facebook is also censoring as misinformation this article about the effects of face masks on children published by the American Medical Association. Now the findings might be right or they might be wrong; we won't know until the experiment is reproduced. But it's bizarre and inappropriate for Facebook to "fact check" legitimate scientific research when the actual facts aren't even known yet. Walach H, Weikl R, Prentice J, et al. Experimental Assessment of Carbon Dioxide Content in Inhaled Air With or Without Face Masks in Healthy Children: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Pediatr. Published online June 30, 2021. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2781743 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...
- scythe 5y ago
  That might be because those authors are regular purveyors of misinformation: https://www.proquest.com/openview/2bb682ad7b07de8051e51873c4bd9a64/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=2043523 https://www.proquest.com/openview/2bb682ad7b07de8051e51873c4...
Zak 5y ago
I think it was inevitable that these platforms would start having content restrictions once they shifted to using machine-learning algorithms tuned to maximize each user's engagement. For a significant fraction of users, the most engaging content will be psychologically manipulative - conspiracy theories, racism, political intrigue, and the like. I see the combination of an engagement machine and such content ethically problematic, but I don't think they're going to turn off the extremely-profitable engagement machine unless forced to, so they restrict content instead. The trouble is the engagement machine is sophisticated, while the content restrictions are crude. This probably isn't sustainable in its current form, but there aren't easy answers to the problem. A sophisticated "bad" content suppression algorithm sounds pretty dystopian to me.
krick 5y ago
Yeah, I remember that podcast, and I remember thinking that it sounds like it should be, but will it be so? Since then a little has happened to calm my doubts. Like, it wasn't Twitter that got bullied by Trump back when he was USA president, but very much otherwise. (You can say TikTok almost got bullied, but in the end it wasn't, and even then, it almost got bullied into something that some other tech-giants would love.) And while €100,000 might sound significant for some random citizen, is it for Google, really? Heck, is it even a nuisance? (BTW, this is what I felt about many of Ravikant's statements: he sounds so wise, so believable, and I want to agree with him, because it fits my own philosophy so much, but as soon as I get distracted from the magic of his voice for a moment, I start doubting if all of it has any ground whatsoever or is it just make believe.) Edit: However, I think I have to clarify that your interpretation isn't exactly how I remember his point. As I remember, the point was that openly censoring the content for any reason other than the court order is basically the moment where they lose the "plausible deniability" of being responsible for their content, i.e. they cannot be seen as "just a middleman" anymore (this is how they want to be seen). But it is close enough for the matter we are discussing right now.

by anm89 5y ago

iamdbtoo 5y ago

> The platform ends up being collateral damage in some political war they never cared about in the first place and they can never win because no matter who they bend too, it automatically enrages the other side. To me, the fact that they don't care about it is the problem. Those companies are having issues because they have no moral or ethical compass. It's become untenable for them to remain neutral because there is no neutral actor in this scenario. There's never going to be a service that's not held to a moral standard for their content regardless of what the law says.

anm89 5y ago
You seem to assume that if they cared, they'd be on your side. What makes you think that that's the case? They are first and foremost accountable to shareholders who want profit. It's unlikely that they view the world the same way you do. You probably don't want them throwing their weight around You can argue that you don't like that they are accountable to their shareholders but it is true.
- iamdbtoo 5y ago
  No, I don't assume that. That's a very wrong assumption on your part.
  - anm89 5y ago
    But if you know in advance, that their actions would be against your goals, why do you want them more active not less?

nemothekid 5y ago

>Their only winning move was to stay neutral and do nothing but comply with legal requests. No? This narrative is a bit ahistorical - and it's fueled by this idea that hyperliberal boogeyman started censoring everything. If you look at what happened in 2017, Google started "censoring" things because advertisers threatened to boycott. The platforms couldn't stay neutral because advertisers became more and more concerned with staying out of any potential scandal.

listless 5y ago
In the beginning, but now both sides see them as the enemy of the people. One side thinks they censor too much and the other thinks not enough. So YouTube is now caught in a political game of trying to appease whichever party is in power lest they get regulated. Hence why Trump stayed on Twitter until he was out of office.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
Those threats were never serious though, because YT is too big, but also because advertisers know they can advertise on certain subsets of content that is not offensive.
voxic11 5y ago
Google's response to pressures from advertisers wasn't to censor anything. They just demonetized videos that the advertisers didn't want to be associated with. Hosting someone's video for free without even interrupting it with ads seems like the opposite of censorship to me. There may be something interesting to say about how the desires of advertisers shapes our discourse, but its not censorship (in this case at least).
- takeda 5y ago
  Doesn't matter, they still used this as censoring (claiming YouTube cut funds to kill them). I even saw (this mostly was Facebook, but also was done on YouTube) where the channel/fan page purposefully switching videos to private while talking they are being censored.

eli 5y ago

> They caved to censoring things that were reasonable, but now anyone can make them censor anything as long as they have some poltical power somewhere. Can you define "reasonable" here in an objective way that we could all agree on? There's no such thing as neutrality. Leaving up a popular anti-vax video is just as political a decision as taking it down.

anm89 5y ago
I'm subjectively inserting that comment. I think that a lot of it was reasonable. I'm not arguing that it was objectively reasonable. I'm writing my thoughts on the internet. I'm not obligated by the burden of proof to justify my subjective opinions. >There's no such thing as neutrality. Leaving up a popular anti-vax video is just as political a decision as taking it down. Nonsense. We don't apply this standard to anything else in life.
- eli 5y ago
  That's my point. There is no objectively reasonable way to do this. What you think is reasonable to take down and what I think is reasonable to take down are not going to always agree. I'm not sure what "elsewhere in life" means, but bookstores choose what books they will sell while also not necessarily endorsing every book they carry.
  - RHSeeger 5y ago
    > I refuse to take down anything that doesn't come with the force of law to take it down and > I refuse to take down this video, because I do not think it needs to be taken down are two VERY different things. The first one is a political choice about taking down videos in general. The second one is a political choice about a specific topic. The second one is more or less similar to taking down the video because you think it needs to be taken down (same topic, different political decision)... the first one is absolutely nothing like that. Edit: In case it wasn't clear (because I replied in the wrong place), this is the comment I was discussing > There's no such thing as neutrality. Leaving up a popular anti-vax video is just as political a decision as taking it down. While it may be "just as political", it's a political about a totally different thing.

throwawayswede 5y ago

> They caved to censoring things that were reasonable, but now anyone can make them censor anything as long as they have some poltical power somewhere. On some level, we have to acknowledge that whoever is running the shitshow at youtube and twitter are actually responsible as well, in that they believe they know enough to literally dictate what everyone in the world should see and read. For example banning Trump from Twitter is a great example of this. Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of his politics (or Biden's, or any of them, same shit different smell i say), but who the hell do Twitter people think they are that they feel confident enough to ban him? Not talking in the sense of a private company here, sure it's their business and they can do whatever the heck they want, but does anyone really think that by banning him they prevented whatever ideas of his that think should not be encouraged to stop? At best, this shows tremendous life inexperience, which I expect from kids who read a couple of books and think that they understand everything, the typical example of a tech company worker in a company like Twitter.

kthejoker2 5y ago
There is a ton of actual evidence that removing bad actors improves the quality of information on social networks: https://www.axios.com/reddit-hate-speech-policies-reduction-72fa6b6b-7774-409a-9e91-ced3b3d90d4b.html https://www.axios.com/reddit-hate-speech-policies-reduction-... https://www.vox.com/2021/1/16/22234971/trump-twitter-facebook-social-media-ban-election-misinformation-zignal https://www.vox.com/2021/1/16/22234971/trump-twitter-faceboo...
- throwawayswede 5y ago
  That's not what I said. To reiterate, what I'm saying is: Shady ideas fester in the dark. Banning won't help society. Exposure and discussion does. But the new and very different point that you're making, which is "removing bad actors improves the quality of information on social networks", is also very disputable and shaky. - First link is "Reddit says that the rules Reddit made helped Reddit." is not exactly impartial, so forgive me to mistrust it. - Felt bad opening a Vox link (since so very obviously biased, but whatever, opened it for a laugh). The say: "misinformation slowed, the research indicates online discussion around the topics that motivated the Capitol riot has also diminished" if you don't see it (or if it doesn't happen online) it doesn't mean it diminished overall. The whole article is full of bias honestly. Sad that you feel it's worthy enough to source.

pbreit 5y ago

"They caved to censoring things that were reasonable" I'd argue that much of their censorship was not reasonable at all. None of it was illegal. Mostly just differences of opinion. My "information" is your "misinformation".

partiallypro 5y ago
I think OP means they were censoring things that weren't objectionable (offensive, etc,) and they were removing "reasonable" things that were opinions, etc. Maybe I'm wrong, but that is where Twitter/Facebook/etc have lost me; by censoring things that aren't harmful they've opened pandora's box.
ryanSrich 5y ago
Right. Nothing these platforms censor or began censoring early on was anywhere near reasonable. It was all political grandstanding to show those in power that big tech are the good guys. They’ll do the political bidding of the elites and politicians will only threaten to hold companies responsible to gain points with their constituents. All the while the politicians and big tech are in bed with each ensuring the information they don’t want shared isn’t shared. People who think any platform has the right to censor information scare the shit out of me. Save for things that are illegal, every platform should be neutral. Moderation should algorithmically be tied to the law.
- namlem 5y ago
  So users who troll and harass other users, spam, post hateful content, etc. should never be banned? That's just leads to a precipitous decline in quality and drives other users away. Why would I want to spend my leisure time on a platform filled with 13 year-old shouting racial slurs?
  - pbreit 5y ago
    Mostly no, they should not be banned. You'll almost never see it. It's really not a big deal. Would need to get into unlawfulness before considering to censor (slander, doxing, imminent threat to harm, etc).

tvirosi 5y ago

*Naval Ravikant (I thought there was something off with your version.)

anm89 5y ago
Ha wow, I read that like 5 times and didn't catch that. Good catch. Fixed

duxup 5y ago

There's no avoiding this even if you don't " censor your platform in response to political pressure " because everyone assumes that is the case and the game is on... It's not a case of deciding to: >optionally censor your platform in response to political pressure Because so many people assume that if some content is removed and it is <content I think should be permissible / like> well then that must have been because of political pressure or views at that company or something like that. So by default: > The platform ends up being collateral damage in some political war Even if the content removed wasn't removed due to political pressure the accusations fly and the game begins. Nobody is forced by a platform's actions to play the game, the sad truth is people will believe the game is on all the times to explain anything they don't like / don't understand. Rudy Giuliani thought that Twitter was 'allowing' someone to post content to his account without his permission ... but really he had posted a link to a domain that didn't exist, then someone registered and had some fun with him. Rudy of course just filled in the blanks of his ignorance with concerns of bias by Twitter... and there's A LOT of people who do that (with all sorts of political views). We had an article here on HN where up and down votes changed on YouTube ... it was interpreted by some immediately as some sort of political bias. Have a platform? You're in the game...

anm89 5y ago
Right this is the entire point about how crossing the line poisons the well. Which is why they would have to be very clear that their policy is to only respond to legal orders for takedowns and nothing else.
- duxup 5y ago
  I think the issue then is that the platform becomes ... unusable. The scale of spam of all kinds would render the service useless. Even inaction would be interpreted as part of the game ... and you're in the game again.
  - anm89 5y ago
    You could ultimately be right that they took the better of the two options and that this path would have killed them. I personally disagree. I think there is also more Grey here. They could have de prioritized things in the algorithm to encourage the direction of the community without explicitly depltforming anyone or blocking\removing content. I think its possible that they could have achieved a lot of what they wanted with this method while avoiding poisoning the well.

didibus 5y ago

Isn't "political pressure" here really means "user pressure" ? My understanding is that users of YouTube pressure YouTube to censor some things, YouTube wants to appeal to its user base, because customers are important for profit. Now Germany says that maybe in their position censoring things for profit is not legal or something like that and fines them.

anm89 5y ago
Valid point. Just pressure in general is probably more accurate. Once you bow to user pressure, you still open yourself up to political pressure. The political pressure probably comes masqueraded as user pressure anyway.

dukeofdoom 5y ago

Its pretty clear these platforms are not Neutral. Facebook literally set up vote drop boxes to maximize number of votes in precincts that heavily favour democrats in last election. They also banned a sitting president. So why even bother pretending they are neutral, when the evidence is pretty clear that they set out to sway elections. You can watch the Sergey Brim upset video after Trump won in 2016. https://www.cnn.com/videos/cnnmoney/2018/09/13/google-video-trump-election-2016-breitbart-orig-js.cnn https://www.cnn.com/videos/cnnmoney/2018/09/13/google-video-... I don't have problem with them having a side. And acting honestly and openly or even making one sided campaign contributions. I have a problem with a reinforcing circle, where they censor to help elect a government which then rewards their censorship with contracts. At that point they become state actors, censoring on behalf of the state. and I think this is the real issue. And I think we are pretty much there.

saurik 5y ago

I was with you until the very end, when I feel like you threw away the argument by seemingly being open to "legal requests"; the "political wars" you get dragged into tend to be from politicians that are certainly making "legal requests": hell, if they aren't legal, they change the law! I feel like the core problem in many cases was building a system where someone gets to be arbiter of content in the first place: Apple claims they take software down due to "legal requests" by/in various countries (though this is a lie as they also do it anti-competitively or for market perception reasons, but even taking them at their word here) and yet they caused the ability to do that as somehow Android devices sold in the same jurisdictions support installing arbitrary software without issue. Platforms like Twitter and YouTube make their problems worse by recommending content--which is entirely their editorial decision and should be seen as such: any benefits or costs, moral or legal, should fall squarely on their shoulders--and then conflating that with having the ability to publish, but they would be in a much more morally (and often legally) defensible position if they simply didn't actively recommend content they disliked but still let it be found by people who actively followed the publisher. Regardless, as usual, I will now link to my heavily-cited talk (every single slide is inherently a citation from a reputable news source) that I gave in 2017 (maybe 2018? the video was unlisted and I only just recently made it public as someone noted I had never done that, and now the upload date is weirdly set to last week ;P) at Mozilla Privacy Lab--"That's How You Get a Dystopia"--wherein I push hard at the idea that centralized systems and the arbiters they empower are the core problem and never work out, even if you like some of their decisions for some of the time. https://youtu.be/vsazo-Gs7ms https://youtu.be/vsazo-Gs7ms

vbezhenar 5y ago
If a website does not honour legal request, it'll get blocked, so its entire content will be effectively removed for all citizens. The proper approach IMO is to honour legal requests, but provide transparency and display some information about blocked content, like who made the request to block it and so on. Of course content must only be blocked for requests originating from that specific country.
- saurik 5y ago

walkedaway 5y ago

> Their only winning move was to stay neutral and do nothing but comply with legal requests They could have enforced their policies consistently across all accounts instead of their strong anti-right/anti-conservative bias. It's their selective enforcement that created issues for them.

IfOnlyYouKnew 5y ago

How does “staying neutral” prevent people from pressuring you? Is there any doubt that YouTube et al have and always had the ability to remove anything they wanted from their platforms?

nradov 5y ago

Facebook is also censoring as misinformation this article about the effects of face masks on children published by the American Medical Association. Now the findings might be right or they might be wrong; we won't know until the experiment is reproduced. But it's bizarre and inappropriate for Facebook to "fact check" legitimate scientific research when the actual facts aren't even known yet. Walach H, Weikl R, Prentice J, et al. Experimental Assessment of Carbon Dioxide Content in Inhaled Air With or Without Face Masks in Healthy Children: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Pediatr. Published online June 30, 2021. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2781743 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...

scythe 5y ago
That might be because those authors are regular purveyors of misinformation: https://www.proquest.com/openview/2bb682ad7b07de8051e51873c4bd9a64/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=2043523 https://www.proquest.com/openview/2bb682ad7b07de8051e51873c4...

Zak 5y ago

I think it was inevitable that these platforms would start having content restrictions once they shifted to using machine-learning algorithms tuned to maximize each user's engagement. For a significant fraction of users, the most engaging content will be psychologically manipulative - conspiracy theories, racism, political intrigue, and the like. I see the combination of an engagement machine and such content ethically problematic, but I don't think they're going to turn off the extremely-profitable engagement machine unless forced to, so they restrict content instead. The trouble is the engagement machine is sophisticated, while the content restrictions are crude. This probably isn't sustainable in its current form, but there aren't easy answers to the problem. A sophisticated "bad" content suppression algorithm sounds pretty dystopian to me.

krick 5y ago

Yeah, I remember that podcast, and I remember thinking that it sounds like it should be, but will it be so? Since then a little has happened to calm my doubts. Like, it wasn't Twitter that got bullied by Trump back when he was USA president, but very much otherwise. (You can say TikTok almost got bullied, but in the end it wasn't, and even then, it almost got bullied into something that some other tech-giants would love.) And while €100,000 might sound significant for some random citizen, is it for Google, really? Heck, is it even a nuisance? (BTW, this is what I felt about many of Ravikant's statements: he sounds so wise, so believable, and I want to agree with him, because it fits my own philosophy so much, but as soon as I get distracted from the magic of his voice for a moment, I start doubting if all of it has any ground whatsoever or is it just make believe.) Edit: However, I think I have to clarify that your interpretation isn't exactly how I remember his point. As I remember, the point was that openly censoring the content for any reason other than the court order is basically the moment where they lose the "plausible deniability" of being responsible for their content, i.e. they cannot be seen as "just a middleman" anymore (this is how they want to be seen). But it is close enough for the matter we are discussing right now.