5 ms·

I think this comment misses the point. Should youtube be the arbiter?

p1necone 5y ago
Youtube should be the arbiter of content that's allowed to be posted on Youtube, yes. The government forcing companies to host content that they don't want to host would actually be a violation of freedom of speech. Youtube taking down content on their own platform is not.
- busymom0 5y ago
  The whole private sector censorship reminds me of a very good piece by Matt Taibbi: > "People in the U.S. seem able to recognize that China’s censorship of the internet is bad. They say: “It’s so authoritarian, tyrannical, terrible, a human rights violation.” Everyone sees that, but then when it happens to us, here, we say, “Oh, but it’s a private company doing it.” What people don’t realize is the majority of censorship in China is being carried out by private companies. > Rebecca MacKinnon, former CNN Bureau chief for Beijing and Tokyo, wrote a book called Consent of the Network that lays all this out. She says, “This is one of the features of Chinese internet censorship and surveillance—that it's actually carried out primarily by private sector companies, by the tech platforms and services, not by the police. And that the companies that run China's internet services and platforms are acting as an extension of state power.” > The people who make that argument don’t realize how close we are to the same model. There are two layers. Everyone’s familiar with “The Great Firewall of China,” where they’re blocking out foreign websites. Well, the US does that too. We just shut down Press TV, which is Iran’s PBS, for instance. We mimic that first layer as well, and now there’s also the second layer, internally, that involves private companies doing most of the censorship." https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-censored-matt-orfalea https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-censored-matt-orfalea This is even more applicable considering the current administration, press secretary have all openly admitted to forcing tech companies to censor viewpoints under the guise of "misinformation".
  - yorwba 5y ago
    It's actually a bad piece. Let me explain why. Given that Taibbi is writing in English, most of his audience has not directly experienced censorship in China, even though they might have experienced censorship in America. So what he's doing is taking something people understand through experience (censorship in America) and drawing an analogy to something they don't understand, because they've never experienced it (censorship in China), in order to use that analogy to make an argument about the thing people already understand. That's the opposite of a good explanation, where you take something that people don't understand and illustrate it by analogy with something they do understand. Since Taibbi wants to talk about censorship in America being bad to an audience already familiar with censorship in America, he should've cut the circuitous "censorship in America is like censorship in China, which is bad because (insert half-remembered news report here), therefore censorship in America is bad" because it is much less illuminating than "censorship in America includes censoring Matt Orfalea, which is bad, therefore censorship in America is bad." A lot of reporting about China is like that, where a bunch of people who've never been to China use "China" as a symbol for "things we don't like about America." Case in point, censorship in China isn't like censorship in America. Yes, in both cases removing a social media post requires the social media company in question to do the censoring. But Chinese companies do it because every time they try to censor less, the government steps in and shuts them down. https://www.whatsonweibo.com/tuber-app-that-promises-access-to-blocked-sites-in-china-is-now-blocked/ https://www.whatsonweibo.com/tuber-app-that-promises-access-... If the Chinese government were to be miraculously replaced tomorrow, the social media giants would stop censoring most content. If the US government were to be replaced... Well, electing a Republican president didn't stop social media companies from censoring him, because their leaders and most of their employees thought that was the right thing to do. So combating censorship in America is much harder, because it would require replacing large parts of the technology landscape. And that doesn't seem to be realistic, since e.g. Parler is so dependent on being in the Apple store that they censor content just for Apple users: https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/apple-requires-particular-kind-of-content-censorship-to-reinstate-parler-on-app-store-interim-ceo-meckler https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/apple-requires-partic...
    - amadeuspagel 5y ago

Youtube should be the arbiter of content that's allowed to be posted on Youtube, yes. The government forcing companies to host content that they don't want to host would actually be a violation of freedom of speech. Youtube taking down content on their own platform is not.

busymom0 5y ago
The whole private sector censorship reminds me of a very good piece by Matt Taibbi: > "People in the U.S. seem able to recognize that China’s censorship of the internet is bad. They say: “It’s so authoritarian, tyrannical, terrible, a human rights violation.” Everyone sees that, but then when it happens to us, here, we say, “Oh, but it’s a private company doing it.” What people don’t realize is the majority of censorship in China is being carried out by private companies. > Rebecca MacKinnon, former CNN Bureau chief for Beijing and Tokyo, wrote a book called Consent of the Network that lays all this out. She says, “This is one of the features of Chinese internet censorship and surveillance—that it's actually carried out primarily by private sector companies, by the tech platforms and services, not by the police. And that the companies that run China's internet services and platforms are acting as an extension of state power.” > The people who make that argument don’t realize how close we are to the same model. There are two layers. Everyone’s familiar with “The Great Firewall of China,” where they’re blocking out foreign websites. Well, the US does that too. We just shut down Press TV, which is Iran’s PBS, for instance. We mimic that first layer as well, and now there’s also the second layer, internally, that involves private companies doing most of the censorship." https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-censored-matt-orfalea https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-censored-matt-orfalea This is even more applicable considering the current administration, press secretary have all openly admitted to forcing tech companies to censor viewpoints under the guise of "misinformation".
- yorwba 5y ago
  It's actually a bad piece. Let me explain why. Given that Taibbi is writing in English, most of his audience has not directly experienced censorship in China, even though they might have experienced censorship in America. So what he's doing is taking something people understand through experience (censorship in America) and drawing an analogy to something they don't understand, because they've never experienced it (censorship in China), in order to use that analogy to make an argument about the thing people already understand. That's the opposite of a good explanation, where you take something that people don't understand and illustrate it by analogy with something they do understand. Since Taibbi wants to talk about censorship in America being bad to an audience already familiar with censorship in America, he should've cut the circuitous "censorship in America is like censorship in China, which is bad because (insert half-remembered news report here), therefore censorship in America is bad" because it is much less illuminating than "censorship in America includes censoring Matt Orfalea, which is bad, therefore censorship in America is bad." A lot of reporting about China is like that, where a bunch of people who've never been to China use "China" as a symbol for "things we don't like about America." Case in point, censorship in China isn't like censorship in America. Yes, in both cases removing a social media post requires the social media company in question to do the censoring. But Chinese companies do it because every time they try to censor less, the government steps in and shuts them down. https://www.whatsonweibo.com/tuber-app-that-promises-access-to-blocked-sites-in-china-is-now-blocked/ https://www.whatsonweibo.com/tuber-app-that-promises-access-... If the Chinese government were to be miraculously replaced tomorrow, the social media giants would stop censoring most content. If the US government were to be replaced... Well, electing a Republican president didn't stop social media companies from censoring him, because their leaders and most of their employees thought that was the right thing to do. So combating censorship in America is much harder, because it would require replacing large parts of the technology landscape. And that doesn't seem to be realistic, since e.g. Parler is so dependent on being in the Apple store that they censor content just for Apple users: https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/apple-requires-particular-kind-of-content-censorship-to-reinstate-parler-on-app-store-interim-ceo-meckler https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/apple-requires-partic...
  - amadeuspagel 5y ago