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Is there any "real free speech" that you think YouTube should be allowed to block? People advocating for shooting the president? People describing how to make

Is there any "real free speech" that you think YouTube should be allowed to block? People advocating for shooting the president? People describing how to make a nuclear bomb? People advocating for killing cops? People sharing people's social security numbers? People explaining the best suicide methods? People trying to organize terrorist attacks? People threatening violence on other people? Anything?

godshatter 5y ago
In my opinion, they should be allowing anything they are not required by law to remove.
- robbrown451 5y ago
  Which will result in them getting regulated. After being dragged before Congress over and over and being asked "why aren't you doing something about this?" And by the way, not sure what you mean by "required by law." Does that include when corporate lawyers say "if we leave this up, we are at risk of a judge fining us (or awarding someone suing us) a billion dollars." The law isn't crystal clear and black and white, until you end up in front of a judge or jury. The legal system in the US isn't all statutory, it is left for courts to decide based on precedent and, when there is none to draw from, higher and higher courts. It all seems simple until you actually think about these things.
  - godshatter 5y ago
    > And by the way, not sure what you mean by "required by law." Does that include when corporate lawyers say "if we leave this up, we are at risk of a judge fining us (or awarding someone suing us) a billion dollars." I was thinking more along the lines of removing posts when ordered to by the government they are incorporated under or by one in whose country to they do business. And if someone finds child porn or something on their servers, point them at the user that posted it. Which might work if they didn't mess with user's posts unless they absolutely had to. They are only in this current mess because they voluntarily curate, often aggressively.
    - robbrown451 5y ago
      > They are only in this current mess because they voluntarily curate, often aggressively. Does "make videos with lots of upvotes more visible" count as voluntary curation? Even in the absence of that, hopefully you can see why they'd want to remove content as described in the points I listed above. I'm not all the comfortable with all curation/moderation/censoring/etc being based on "government orders." That means that government will get more involved in this process, and corrupt governments will have more ability to control the narrative. Not sure you've thought this through. It also is a very costly process currently for YouTube and facebook (etc). Do you want taxes to pay for that?
llcoolv 5y ago
Uhm, each of those things is on Twitter, however it is tolerated selectively on an ad-hominem basis. Maybe except for the nuke construction tutorial, but it would be useless anyway.
nomel 5y ago
In the end, the revenue stream dictates the content. The revenue stream is ads. Advertisers don't want to be involved in some Wild West of content, as has been proven several times now. I don't think Youtube would survive as an ad free paid service.
- robbrown451 5y ago
  If advertisers don't want to be involved (presumably because they think it would be bad for the brand), YouTube themselves might not want to be involved for the same reasons. You seem to be implying that YouTube themselves -- shareholders, executives, employees -- has no moral compass, but the advertisers do. And (I guess) the advertisers only do because their potential customers do. I'd say a more likely case is that morality (or "aversion to Wild West content" or "aversion to unnecessary deaths" or whatever) is something spread fairly evenly among humans, whatever role they have. Seems rather simplistically cynical to assume that YouTube is the only entity that doesn't actually care about anything but money.

godshatter 5y ago

In my opinion, they should be allowing anything they are not required by law to remove.

robbrown451 5y ago
Which will result in them getting regulated. After being dragged before Congress over and over and being asked "why aren't you doing something about this?" And by the way, not sure what you mean by "required by law." Does that include when corporate lawyers say "if we leave this up, we are at risk of a judge fining us (or awarding someone suing us) a billion dollars." The law isn't crystal clear and black and white, until you end up in front of a judge or jury. The legal system in the US isn't all statutory, it is left for courts to decide based on precedent and, when there is none to draw from, higher and higher courts. It all seems simple until you actually think about these things.
- godshatter 5y ago
  > And by the way, not sure what you mean by "required by law." Does that include when corporate lawyers say "if we leave this up, we are at risk of a judge fining us (or awarding someone suing us) a billion dollars." I was thinking more along the lines of removing posts when ordered to by the government they are incorporated under or by one in whose country to they do business. And if someone finds child porn or something on their servers, point them at the user that posted it. Which might work if they didn't mess with user's posts unless they absolutely had to. They are only in this current mess because they voluntarily curate, often aggressively.
  - robbrown451 5y ago
    > They are only in this current mess because they voluntarily curate, often aggressively. Does "make videos with lots of upvotes more visible" count as voluntary curation? Even in the absence of that, hopefully you can see why they'd want to remove content as described in the points I listed above. I'm not all the comfortable with all curation/moderation/censoring/etc being based on "government orders." That means that government will get more involved in this process, and corrupt governments will have more ability to control the narrative. Not sure you've thought this through. It also is a very costly process currently for YouTube and facebook (etc). Do you want taxes to pay for that?

llcoolv 5y ago

Uhm, each of those things is on Twitter, however it is tolerated selectively on an ad-hominem basis. Maybe except for the nuke construction tutorial, but it would be useless anyway.

nomel 5y ago

In the end, the revenue stream dictates the content. The revenue stream is ads. Advertisers don't want to be involved in some Wild West of content, as has been proven several times now. I don't think Youtube would survive as an ad free paid service.

robbrown451 5y ago
If advertisers don't want to be involved (presumably because they think it would be bad for the brand), YouTube themselves might not want to be involved for the same reasons. You seem to be implying that YouTube themselves -- shareholders, executives, employees -- has no moral compass, but the advertisers do. And (I guess) the advertisers only do because their potential customers do. I'd say a more likely case is that morality (or "aversion to Wild West content" or "aversion to unnecessary deaths" or whatever) is something spread fairly evenly among humans, whatever role they have. Seems rather simplistically cynical to assume that YouTube is the only entity that doesn't actually care about anything but money.