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Civil society to YouTube: stop helping Russia suppress free speech
- superkuh 2y agoGoogle will do whatever makes them profit. They've made it pretty clear that nothing controversial in any way is allowed on youtube. Best find some place else to distribute information.
- ivan_gammel 2y agoUnfortunately the audience matters. In the internet of platforms indie websites are visited by those who already have good awareness of the cause. The hope is to reach people who watch entertainment content and the bet is that getting YouTube banned will attract some attention to the forbidden content.
- speeder 2y agoPeople want YouTube to censor Russians in EU but not censor Russians in Russia...
- bee_rider 2y agoWhich people? Not everyone has the same opinion.
- Log_out_ 2y agoOne guy in moscow and his minions and gpt instances, thats what i want censored and silenced.
- uyzstvqs 2y agoYes. It's important to have the ability to listen to all sides, that's the only way truth prevails. Even if one side is full of lies, some bureaucrat deciding that for you is not okay, that is generally what a government full of lies does.
- simion314 2y ago[flagged]
- ajuc 2y agoPeople want youtube to censor totalitarian propaganda and allow free speech. It's not surprising when you thing about it.
- eimrine 2y agoAnti-Russian channels scattered on Earth anywhere except of Russia are complaining about that right now.
- stanleykm 2y ago[flagged]
- dingnuts 2y ago[flagged]
- megous 2y agoSo what do you actually know about the origin of the "covenant", since you're quoting it. Who made it? What's the story behind it? Was it controversial among the group at the time? Is it still relevant? Etc. etc. Please enlighten.
- stanleykm 2y agoalright buddy calm down
- mardifoufs 2y agoWhat does this have to do with Hamas? And you realize actually killing tens of thousands of civilians is worse than words written somewhere right? Yet you have no issues supporting Israel openly.
- kleiba 2y agoAre they shutting down pro-palestine protests or pro-Hamas protests? Is that a distinction worth making?
- megous 2y agoShow me one instance when Google changed anything significant like this (say something that risks it getting blocked in a coutnry with > 100 mil. people) after a simple public appeal.
- norwalkbear 2y ago[flagged]
- constantcrying 2y agoEvery corporation has to deal with the laws of the country they are operating in. Most European countries have significant restrictions on what is "free speech", Google will censor those as well to follow local laws.
- nullserver 2y agoSometimes laws need to be broken. Censoring ability to talk about government crimes is quick path to genocide.
- constantcrying 2y agoI don't think you understand the situation. The alternative is no Google in Russia. You can not ask a corporation to act criminally, that is an absurd demand.
- nullserver 2y agoLike the rail companies legally sending Jews like cattle to deathcamps?
- ein0p 2y agoBros, they “suppress free speech” in the US too. Try protesting that maybe?
- jmyeet 2y agoYoutube isn't your friend. It's not going to act in its own interests and those interest will rarely align with yours. This includes willing cooperation with any government they want to do business with, including Russia. This is one reason why I think China banning Youtube is a policy mistake (for them): they could exert more control over Youtube if they allowed it in mainland China. I feel like every story like this is like Charlie Brown, Lucy and the football. Just how many times do we need to do a surprised Pikachu face? Youtube, Meta and Twitter all suppress content related to a certain current Middle East conflict [1] and they do so largely to keep the US State Department happy. My point here is that this "free speech" and "censorship" tends to get used very selectively by people in a way that oddly coincides with their world view on certain topics. If you're against Youtube censoring anti-Russian content as per this post (as I am) you should also be against suppression of Middle Eastern news and content too yet I so often find a complete double standard here. Oh and literally nobody is a free speech absolutist (including me, except arguably for Noam Chomsky) yet many pretend to me but again, this tends to be self-serving in a way aligned with their own views on things. [1]: https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/systemic-censorship-palestine-content-instagram-and https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/12/21/metas-broken-promises/...
- pphysch 2y ago> This is one reason why I think China banning Youtube is a policy mistake China didn't ban YouTube, Google just refused to comply with the strict regulations. So China tried to do exactly what you said, but they can't exactly force YouTube to stay (it would involve a lot more than just seizing local physical assets).
- jmyeet 2y agoWell there's banning and there's effective banning. If you make the regulatory structure so cumbersome that no one wants to participate, that's an effective ban, whether you intend it or not, whether you realize it or not. Given the almost complete lack of foreign Internet companies in China, I'd say there's good evidence the effective ban is intentional. That's really what I mean when I say "China banned Youtube". Also, Google has shown prior willingness to comply with Chinese regulation (eg participation before the pullout in ~2010 and Dragonfly [1]). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine)
- aftbit 2y agoGoogle wants YouTube to be a place for cat videos and shitty listicals, where people escape from their lives to laugh and be influenced by advertisers. If your content is even remotely confronting, advertisers don't want it, and Google doesn't want it. We really have nobody to blame but ourselves for this. Sure, video hosting is expensive, and most people can't be bothered to visit more than their default 6 or 7 apps, but we've had a decade of people shouting that from the wings and nobody has managed to fix it yet.
- chongli 2y agomost people can't be bothered to visit more than their default 6 or 7 apps I don't think it's fair to blame network effects on the user. If you're a popular YouTuber it's very difficult to convince your audience to move to another platform just to see your videos there. What's in it for them? It's much easier for an audience to switch to another video creator than it is for a creator to find a new audience. In other words, YouTube makes it a viewer's market by commoditizing content producers. This is the exact opposite of the old TV model where networks were king and viewers had to put up with whatever shows they decided to run. Unfortunately, this means it's very hard for content producers to do anything to unseat YouTube's stranglehold on the market. Google wants YouTube to be a place for cat videos and shitty listicals I think you're being unfair with this remark though. YouTube has tons and tons of educational and hobby-related content which makes it an incredibly valuable resource for anyone who wants to learn pretty much anything!
- ramon156 2y agoYour argument doesn't change on who's to blame. Even if it's expected behavior, the users are the ones responsible for not switching
- talldayo 2y ago> YouTube has tons and tons of educational and hobby-related content I think the parent's comment is about how a lot of this (even well-meaning) content is not aligned with Google's advertising profile and won't be promoted in order to increase ad-revenue. On a platform that is reliant on advertising to offset the cost of video storage, it's a sinister but logical move. The struggle really does revolve around the network effect, and how inadvertently helpless the average user has made themselves. We have no choice but to play by Google's rules because we don't know of a better way. We swipe down to search something on our iPhone, and we get a YouTube video in response. What, are we going to ideologically oppose the default response? Are we "too good" for the ordinary privacy-destroying, time-disrespecting vehicle of YouTube? No, we watch a 15 second bumper ad and then someone shows us how to fix our sink. And you can damn-well bet nobody will ever know what DailyMotion is because they're not paying phone OEMs a king's ransom to show up before everyone else.
- _heimdall 2y agoDidn't YouTube (and many others) make it clear that they're plenty willing to work with government officials to censor free speech that the officials don't like? Don't get me wrong, YouTube is well within its rights to decide what content they do and don't want to host and distribute. Its clear that these companies are, in fact, for profit businesses though. They aren't going to stand behind free speech and wouldn't even touch the idea of "absolute free speech" which is itself a confusing and misunderstood argument that we can somehow have free speech with limitations. At best, YouTube will inconsistently protect free speech in some areas and censor it in others. The only real answer is for users to go elsewhere, ideally to something they themselves control, if they want to avoid most risks of censorship.
- geodel 2y agoYeah we need a CivilTube, that will work very well.
- fsflover 2y agoThere is PeerTube already.
- dylan604 2y agoIf you are an international company, you play by their rules. If you are dealing with a totalitarian dictator, then expect you're going to have some unsavory rules to contend with and have a PR team ready for any blow back. This is some groups unhappy with mean person in charge being mean. Civil society would be better if people were not taking advantage of free speech and posting whatever non-sense that gets passed as legit causing chaos and turmoil within the masses.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- medo-bear 2y agoWhat is Civil Society? Is it Civil in the way North Korea is Democratic? What does Civil Society say about Julian Assange?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- josephstalinOk 2y ago[flagged]
- Conasg 2y agoWell, the username certainly checks out
- lupusreal 2y agoRussian media may be banned in Europe, but it isn't banned in America. You're not wrong about "civil society" seeming very euphemistic though.
- josephstalinOk 2y agoRT.com is banned from my work computer, while any other news website is not.
- lxgr 2y agoMaybe you should check with your employer then?
- ivan_gammel 2y agoRT isn’t even close to a news website. I’m sure you have access to all Russian media that justify this name (kommersant.ru and other business media are probably one of the most objective ones there).
- lupusreal 2y agoThat's your employer's doing. I can access RT just fine, from both my work and personal connections.
- nitwit005 2y agoPeople constantly criticize the US, and no one censors them. You're doing it now.
- 2y ago
- reactDev05 2y agoI'm from Russia and I watch pro Ukraine videos on YouTube without any problems. Yes, it may have blocked some videos, but if it didn't, it could get blocked in Russia completely, and then what? Me and all the other people who wants to see content from other countries won't be able to do that, which will only make things worse.
- eenokentee 2y ago[dead]
- orloffm 2y agoIf anything, YouTube search in Russian context is extremely West-biased. It's impossible to find any original source of Putin saying anything, for example. Yesterday he was talking about Zelensky not being legitimate. The search results are literally: Radio Liberty, some Azerbajani channel, Ukrainian channel called FREEДОМ - obvious pro-western vibes, DW, Ukrainian UNIAN, BBC etc. It's one thing if they were blocking these and only showing goverment propaganda, but it's actually the other way around.