5 ms·

The banning of politicians from any public platform raises questions about the level of influence these platforms hold and their impact on democracy. I'm not su

by xupybd 5y ago

The banning of politicians from any public platform raises questions about the level of influence these platforms hold and their impact on democracy. I'm not sure where things will land but this is a bold move by YouTube. I'm surprised they picked Ron Paul to test this on.

gibba999 5y ago
They didn't pick Ron Paul to test this on, and it's not a bold move. YouTube has been in the censorship game for a long, long time. A lot of content creators -- of documentaries -- created Nebula because they were sick and tired of getting censored. https://nebula.app/videos?category=history https://nebula.app/videos?category=history These aren't wackos. These are mostly serious scholars, tired of a serious problem with Google. I'm giving this as an example; this has been a problem for a lot of people for a long time.
- xupybd 5y ago
  For sure this is not the first instance of censorship but I'm not aware of any famous American politicians getting censored before, are there any?
  - hagbard_c 5y ago
    I seem to remember your former president getting banned? His shtick may have been that he entered politics as an outsider but once he was in he surely was a politician, and a famous one at that.
    - xupybd 5y ago
      I'm not American but think it's significant because they're American companies. I thought that was Twitter not YouTube. I could be wrong.
      - hagbard_c 5y ago
        As far as I know he was banned more or less across the board - Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, Snapchat, Shopify, Reddit and possibly others [1]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/11/trump-banned-social-media/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/11/trump-b...
        xupybd 5y ago
        The more you know. That does make this less significant.
        hagbard_c 5y ago
        It certainly does not, it makes it all the more clear that it is foolhardy to rely on these centralised corporate entities to carry your message for you unless that message happens to coincide with the current desired narrative - and even in that case it would be wise to not rely on them given that the narrative can and will change. Every grain of sand leaking from their hands adds to the viability of a decentralised 'net so the more they censor, the more they'll lose. I say let them lose everything, let Youtube become a wasteland of cat videos interspersed with government broadcasts and kitschy music videos, let it become the online equivalent of a shopping mall past its heyday where elevator music echoes through empty galleries, let interesting material migrate to alternative distribution channels. All that is needed for that is a reliable CDN, a problem which might be solvable using p2p distribution like Peertube and LBRY do. Once this is established there will be another fight, this time led by copyright holders who insist on blocking these channels so the system needs to be robust against such attempts. Will there be fewer 'Youtube millionaires'? Sure, that was a short-lived fad which is unlikely to survive in a decentralised 'net. Is this something to mourn over? Not in my opinion.
- AnEro 5y ago
  Comparing messy AI that will demonetize/remove historic retellings of traumatic events, wars, and hate crimes to 'censoring' Ron Paul is ridiculous. Most of them moved to because of demonetization... Where swearing can demonetize a video as well as mentioning rape or murder in contexts explicitly. Yes that is horrible to punish literal historians talking about these events that really happened that we should be educated on but, how do you separate those from actually hateful content so charmin/coke/corporation still will pay you to run ads? Letting people think the vaccine is dangerous without scientific proof when they could die without it, isn't government regulation friendly. edit: to day I learned there's a down vote feature lol. Didn't know acknowledging a private company has interests beyond letting people saying w/e when want when it can negatively impact their bottom line would be so controversial. Also banning him for being conservative is very different from banning spreading vaccine misinformation. Then grouping that with removing historians incomes due to messy AI implementation to save YouTube's ad friendliness to keep their bottom line is just a victim complex.
  - gibba999 5y ago
    If it's just AI, you separate them with actual human oversight. From what I understand, they moved less because of demonetization, and more because of the chilling effect it had on free speech. They needed to be super-careful in script writing to make sure they didn't anger the YouTube algorithm. I'll also mention another darker side of this: Google is almost entirely liberal inside. If a liberal channel is wrongly banned, an army of Googlers quickly rushes to fix it. If a conservative channel is wrongly banned, there's internal snickering. AIs are not neutral, and Google's reflects the biases of the people who keep tweaking it.
    - AnEro 5y ago
      > chilling effect it had on free speech I think comparing this to free speech is just a losing argument cause legally free speech is for criticizing the government non-violently. They are private companies that have a monopoly, making a new platform focused on enabling creator's means of revenue is the ideal approach. >If a liberal channel is wrongly banned, an army of Googlers quickly rushes to fix it. If a conservative channel is wrongly banned, there's internal snickering. Conservatives unironically have a victim complex for this because lefties have the same issue because they are saying the centerist thing. Democrats or what conservatives call 'liberal' right now are mostly a centerist party, trying to be palatable to the largest audience. The same social media companies want to keep the largest ad consumer base as well as advertiser pool. > another darker side of this I honestly think it is a societal shift of the vanilla of politics, I'm sorry conservatism is no longer vanilla and is actually the rocky road of politics and isn't as friendly. Edit: I challenge anyone offended by this point of view, to look into conservatives that have been 'cancelled'/'silenced' viewership and numbers before and after. It usually helps them get more of a following across the board, they inflate this issue beyond how bad it is to get more attention for a possible loss in revenue.
krapp 5y ago
>The banning of politicians from any public platform raises questions about the level of influence these platforms hold and their impact on democracy. While the debate about the influence of social media platforms may or may not be relevant (I personally think their influence is all too often overblown to push a political agenda,) these are not and have never been public platforms.
- josephcsible 5y ago
  Can you give a non-hypothetical example of something that is a public platform?
  - mixmastamyk 5y ago
    WWW. There could be wide-access public radio and tv, but in practice it isn't used much.
  - krapp 5y ago
    On the internet? Not really - every site is privately owned and controlled by some entity with the right to decide what does and doesn't get published on their servers. Even laissez-faire "free speech maximalist" platforms like Gab and Parler are in theory entirely private and centralized, they just choose to allow public access (under their terms of service) and lax moderation. But in practice that decision is entirely arbitrary.
  - hagbard_c 5y ago
    It is called 'the Internet' and can be used to disseminate whatever you want, within or (to a limited extent) outside of the bounds of the law of the land. As long as you remain within those bounds it is generally possible to say what you want although you might have to erect your own platform - in the form of a website, netcast, 'radio' station or video streaming service like Peertube - to be able to speak freely. Centralised corporate platforms like Youtube, Twitter and Facebook are not public platforms and should not be treated as such. The 'net is the platform and should be treated as such. Just like the old telcos were not allowed to censor the phone lines it should not be allowed for internet access providers and backbone providers to refuse access or transit because they happen to dislike the message. There is a discussion to be had on whether service providers like AWS should fall under this regime, personally I see more in a decentralised approach but there are arguments to be made for including them.
AnEro 5y ago
> I'm surprised they picked Ron Paul to test this on. It's the perfect way to approach it. If what is being said is verifiably false and causes tremendous harm to people why should politicians get treated differently? What other policies should they be exempt from because they are trying to build a brand for politics?
- xupybd 5y ago
  I'm assuming they have a profit motive not a moral one. I could be wrong but I'm very cynical when it comes to the motives of big companies.
  - AnEro 5y ago
    Yea, this one is to make sure that there isn't going to be regulations on youtube or other social media. Since no regulator would touch social media regulation because of how that looks, however if it enables people dieing at a unprecedented rate then regulators may feel their hand is forced to do something.(facebook/instagram right now is in hot water with regulators too) I doubt anything regulation wise would help or even be good, this is just youtube making sure it looks like the market is regulating itself. I think also this is to signal to other users 'see we don't pick favourites anyone can get banned'
  - Zandikar 5y ago
    They most certainly have a profit motive, they're a for profit business. It's not their only motive, but it's their primary one, and all other decisions they make are judged against their impact on the bottom line, this decision included. They may take risks that they know could negatively impact that profit if (keyword, if) it goes south, but there is still a very clear consideration for cost and profit there.
- gowld 5y ago
  > what is being said is verifiably false and causes tremendous harm to people What was being said that is verifiably false and causes tremendous harm to people? I don't know, and YouTube won't say. They just say that "something" was wrong, but not what was wrong.
rhizome 5y ago
The bar kicked me out because I vomited on a woman I had just punched in the stomach for telling me to put on a mask. I thought I lived in a free country.
pupppet 5y ago
It's funny how we all begrudgingly accept them booting people off for copyright infringement, but when it comes to personal free speech that affects you and I, people want to hold the line. Everyone has been subtly programmed that lines must be crossed to protect the mega-corp, but if joe sixpack harms himself, hey that's the price of freedom.
- worrycue 5y ago
  Well, I think most people accept it because they really don’t have a choice when it comes to copyright, IP holders will bury them in lawsuits and YouTube will lose most of them.
neonate 5y ago
https://twitter.com/RonPaul/status/1443643765567143950 https://twitter.com/RonPaul/status/1443643765567143950 suggests that this is not a political ban. If it were political, they'd have banned his main channel, not a "seldom used" one. > To clarify: The Ron Paul Liberty Report YouTube account is still available. The Ron Paul Institute's YouTube account has been terminated. It is a seldom-used account and its termination is perplexing.
- drcongo 5y ago
  Suspended, not terminated. And actually unsuspended 12 hours ago too - https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1443662425790816262 https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1443662425790816262

by xupybd 5y ago

gibba999 5y ago

They didn't pick Ron Paul to test this on, and it's not a bold move. YouTube has been in the censorship game for a long, long time. A lot of content creators -- of documentaries -- created Nebula because they were sick and tired of getting censored. https://nebula.app/videos?category=history https://nebula.app/videos?category=history These aren't wackos. These are mostly serious scholars, tired of a serious problem with Google. I'm giving this as an example; this has been a problem for a lot of people for a long time.

xupybd 5y ago
For sure this is not the first instance of censorship but I'm not aware of any famous American politicians getting censored before, are there any?
- hagbard_c 5y ago
  I seem to remember your former president getting banned? His shtick may have been that he entered politics as an outsider but once he was in he surely was a politician, and a famous one at that.
  - xupybd 5y ago
    I'm not American but think it's significant because they're American companies. I thought that was Twitter not YouTube. I could be wrong.
    - hagbard_c 5y ago
      As far as I know he was banned more or less across the board - Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, Snapchat, Shopify, Reddit and possibly others [1]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/11/trump-banned-social-media/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/11/trump-b...
      - xupybd 5y ago
        The more you know. That does make this less significant.
        hagbard_c 5y ago
        It certainly does not, it makes it all the more clear that it is foolhardy to rely on these centralised corporate entities to carry your message for you unless that message happens to coincide with the current desired narrative - and even in that case it would be wise to not rely on them given that the narrative can and will change. Every grain of sand leaking from their hands adds to the viability of a decentralised 'net so the more they censor, the more they'll lose. I say let them lose everything, let Youtube become a wasteland of cat videos interspersed with government broadcasts and kitschy music videos, let it become the online equivalent of a shopping mall past its heyday where elevator music echoes through empty galleries, let interesting material migrate to alternative distribution channels. All that is needed for that is a reliable CDN, a problem which might be solvable using p2p distribution like Peertube and LBRY do. Once this is established there will be another fight, this time led by copyright holders who insist on blocking these channels so the system needs to be robust against such attempts. Will there be fewer 'Youtube millionaires'? Sure, that was a short-lived fad which is unlikely to survive in a decentralised 'net. Is this something to mourn over? Not in my opinion.
AnEro 5y ago
Comparing messy AI that will demonetize/remove historic retellings of traumatic events, wars, and hate crimes to 'censoring' Ron Paul is ridiculous. Most of them moved to because of demonetization... Where swearing can demonetize a video as well as mentioning rape or murder in contexts explicitly. Yes that is horrible to punish literal historians talking about these events that really happened that we should be educated on but, how do you separate those from actually hateful content so charmin/coke/corporation still will pay you to run ads? Letting people think the vaccine is dangerous without scientific proof when they could die without it, isn't government regulation friendly. edit: to day I learned there's a down vote feature lol. Didn't know acknowledging a private company has interests beyond letting people saying w/e when want when it can negatively impact their bottom line would be so controversial. Also banning him for being conservative is very different from banning spreading vaccine misinformation. Then grouping that with removing historians incomes due to messy AI implementation to save YouTube's ad friendliness to keep their bottom line is just a victim complex.
- gibba999 5y ago
  If it's just AI, you separate them with actual human oversight. From what I understand, they moved less because of demonetization, and more because of the chilling effect it had on free speech. They needed to be super-careful in script writing to make sure they didn't anger the YouTube algorithm. I'll also mention another darker side of this: Google is almost entirely liberal inside. If a liberal channel is wrongly banned, an army of Googlers quickly rushes to fix it. If a conservative channel is wrongly banned, there's internal snickering. AIs are not neutral, and Google's reflects the biases of the people who keep tweaking it.
  - AnEro 5y ago
    > chilling effect it had on free speech I think comparing this to free speech is just a losing argument cause legally free speech is for criticizing the government non-violently. They are private companies that have a monopoly, making a new platform focused on enabling creator's means of revenue is the ideal approach. >If a liberal channel is wrongly banned, an army of Googlers quickly rushes to fix it. If a conservative channel is wrongly banned, there's internal snickering. Conservatives unironically have a victim complex for this because lefties have the same issue because they are saying the centerist thing. Democrats or what conservatives call 'liberal' right now are mostly a centerist party, trying to be palatable to the largest audience. The same social media companies want to keep the largest ad consumer base as well as advertiser pool. > another darker side of this I honestly think it is a societal shift of the vanilla of politics, I'm sorry conservatism is no longer vanilla and is actually the rocky road of politics and isn't as friendly. Edit: I challenge anyone offended by this point of view, to look into conservatives that have been 'cancelled'/'silenced' viewership and numbers before and after. It usually helps them get more of a following across the board, they inflate this issue beyond how bad it is to get more attention for a possible loss in revenue.

krapp 5y ago

>The banning of politicians from any public platform raises questions about the level of influence these platforms hold and their impact on democracy. While the debate about the influence of social media platforms may or may not be relevant (I personally think their influence is all too often overblown to push a political agenda,) these are not and have never been public platforms.

josephcsible 5y ago
Can you give a non-hypothetical example of something that is a public platform?
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  WWW. There could be wide-access public radio and tv, but in practice it isn't used much.
- krapp 5y ago
  On the internet? Not really - every site is privately owned and controlled by some entity with the right to decide what does and doesn't get published on their servers. Even laissez-faire "free speech maximalist" platforms like Gab and Parler are in theory entirely private and centralized, they just choose to allow public access (under their terms of service) and lax moderation. But in practice that decision is entirely arbitrary.
- hagbard_c 5y ago
  It is called 'the Internet' and can be used to disseminate whatever you want, within or (to a limited extent) outside of the bounds of the law of the land. As long as you remain within those bounds it is generally possible to say what you want although you might have to erect your own platform - in the form of a website, netcast, 'radio' station or video streaming service like Peertube - to be able to speak freely. Centralised corporate platforms like Youtube, Twitter and Facebook are not public platforms and should not be treated as such. The 'net is the platform and should be treated as such. Just like the old telcos were not allowed to censor the phone lines it should not be allowed for internet access providers and backbone providers to refuse access or transit because they happen to dislike the message. There is a discussion to be had on whether service providers like AWS should fall under this regime, personally I see more in a decentralised approach but there are arguments to be made for including them.

AnEro 5y ago

> I'm surprised they picked Ron Paul to test this on. It's the perfect way to approach it. If what is being said is verifiably false and causes tremendous harm to people why should politicians get treated differently? What other policies should they be exempt from because they are trying to build a brand for politics?

xupybd 5y ago
I'm assuming they have a profit motive not a moral one. I could be wrong but I'm very cynical when it comes to the motives of big companies.
- AnEro 5y ago
  Yea, this one is to make sure that there isn't going to be regulations on youtube or other social media. Since no regulator would touch social media regulation because of how that looks, however if it enables people dieing at a unprecedented rate then regulators may feel their hand is forced to do something.(facebook/instagram right now is in hot water with regulators too) I doubt anything regulation wise would help or even be good, this is just youtube making sure it looks like the market is regulating itself. I think also this is to signal to other users 'see we don't pick favourites anyone can get banned'
- Zandikar 5y ago
  They most certainly have a profit motive, they're a for profit business. It's not their only motive, but it's their primary one, and all other decisions they make are judged against their impact on the bottom line, this decision included. They may take risks that they know could negatively impact that profit if (keyword, if) it goes south, but there is still a very clear consideration for cost and profit there.
gowld 5y ago
> what is being said is verifiably false and causes tremendous harm to people What was being said that is verifiably false and causes tremendous harm to people? I don't know, and YouTube won't say. They just say that "something" was wrong, but not what was wrong.

rhizome 5y ago

The bar kicked me out because I vomited on a woman I had just punched in the stomach for telling me to put on a mask. I thought I lived in a free country.

pupppet 5y ago

It's funny how we all begrudgingly accept them booting people off for copyright infringement, but when it comes to personal free speech that affects you and I, people want to hold the line. Everyone has been subtly programmed that lines must be crossed to protect the mega-corp, but if joe sixpack harms himself, hey that's the price of freedom.

worrycue 5y ago
Well, I think most people accept it because they really don’t have a choice when it comes to copyright, IP holders will bury them in lawsuits and YouTube will lose most of them.

neonate 5y ago

https://twitter.com/RonPaul/status/1443643765567143950 https://twitter.com/RonPaul/status/1443643765567143950 suggests that this is not a political ban. If it were political, they'd have banned his main channel, not a "seldom used" one. > To clarify: The Ron Paul Liberty Report YouTube account is still available. The Ron Paul Institute's YouTube account has been terminated. It is a seldom-used account and its termination is perplexing.

drcongo 5y ago
Suspended, not terminated. And actually unsuspended 12 hours ago too - https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1443662425790816262 https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1443662425790816262