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My refusing to distribute your work is not "silencing." Silencing would be me preventing you from distributing it. Have we all lost the ability to reason? Seri

My refusing to distribute your work is not "silencing." Silencing would be me preventing you from distributing it. Have we all lost the ability to reason? Seriously, this isn't hard. No one owes you distribution unless you have a contract saying otherwise.

sterlind 1y ago
I'd certainly consider an ISP refusing to route my packets as silencing. is YouTube so different? legally, sure, but practically?
- michaelt 1y ago
  If we were still in the age of personal blogs and phpbb forums, where there were thousands of different venues - the fact the chess forum would ban you for discussing checkers was no problem at all. But these days, when you can count the forums on one hand even if you're missing a few fingers, and they all have extremely similar (American-style) censorship policies? To me it's less clear than it once was.
- jabwd 1y ago
  yes... coz youtube is not your ISP. A literal massive difference. RE: net neutrality.
- scarface_74 1y ago
  No because you are perfectly technically capable of setting your own servers in a colo and distributing your video.
hn_throw_250915 1y ago
[dead]
justinhj 1y ago
So you're saying that YouTube is a publisher and should not have section 230 protections? They can't have it both ways. Sure remove content that violates policies but YouTube has long set itself up as an opinion police force, choosing which ideas can be published and monetized and which cannot.
- krapp 1y ago
  https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/ https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...
  - justinhj 1y ago
    Thank you. I was completely wrong about section 230.
- bee_rider 1y ago
  YouTube’s business model probably wouldn’t work if they were made to be responsible for all the content they broadcasted. It would be really interesting to see a world where social media companies were treated as publishers. Might be a boon for federated services—smaller servers, finer-grained units of responsibility…
- tzs 1y ago
  Section 230 does not work like you think it does. In fact it is almost opposite of what you probably think it does. The whole point was to allow them to have it both ways. It makes sites not count as the publisher or speaker of third party content posted to their site, even if they remove or moderate that third party content.
timmg 1y ago
It's interesting how much "they are a private company, they can do what they want" was the talking point around that time. And then Musk bought Twitter and people accuse him of using it to swing the election or whatever. Even today, I was listening to NPR talk about the potential TikTok deal and the commenter was wringing their hands about having a "rich guy" like Larry Ellison control the content. I don't know exactly what the right answer is. But given their reach -- and the fact that a lot of these companies are near monopolies -- I think we should at least do more than just shrug and say, "they can do what they want."
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
Jensson 1y ago
> No one owes you distribution unless you have a contract saying otherwise. The common carrier law says you have to for for some things, so it makes sense to institute such a law for some parts of social media as they are fundamental enough. It is insane that we give that much censorship power to private corporations. They shouldn't have the power to decide elections on a whim etc.
- AfterHIA 1y ago
  I 100% agree with your sentiment here Jensson but in Googling, "common carrier law" what I get are the sets of laws governing transportation services liability: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier Is there perhaps another name for what you're describing? It piques my interest.
  - Jensson 1y ago
    Common carrier also applies to phones and electricity and so on, it is what prevents your phone service provider from deciding who you can call or what you can say. Imagine a world where your phone service provider could beep out all your swear words, or if they prevented you from calling certain people, that is what common carrier prevents. So the equivalent of Google banning anyone talking about Covid is the same as a phone service provider ending service for anyone mentioning covid on their phones. Nobody but the most extreme authoritarians thinks phone providers should be allowed to do that, so why not apply this to Google as well?
    - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
      This is essentially the free speech maximalist position: allow any legal content. If they did that, people would leave the service in droves for a competitor with reasonable moderation. Nobody wants to use a site that is overrun with spam and porn.
      - Jensson 1y ago
        > If they did that, people would leave the service in droves for a competitor with reasonable moderation. Did people leave Google in droves in favor of a competitor that censors out all porn from search results? No, people had no issue that you can find porn on Google, they still used it. Youtube providing porn to those who want it does not cause problems for anyone, just like it doesn't for Google search, and Google even run both so they can easily apply this same feature on Youtube. > Nobody wants to use a site that is overrun with spam and porn. The internet is overrun by spam and porn yet people still use it, so you are clearly wrong. Google already manages as search engine over the internet that is capable of not showing you porn when you don't search for it, but you can find it if you do, so Google has already solved that problem and could just do the same in Youtube.
pfannkuchen 1y ago
I think the feeling of silencing comes from it being a blacklist and not a whitelist. If you take proposals from whoever and then only approve ones you specifically like, for whatever reason, then I don’t think anyone would feel silenced by that. If you take anything from anyone, and a huge volume of it, on any topic and you don’t care what, except for a few politically controversial areas, that feels more like silencing. Especially when there is no alternative service available due to network effects and subsidies from arguably monopolistic practices.
- mock-possum 1y ago
  Also allowing it to be posted initially for a period of time before being taken down feels worse than simply preventing it from ever being published on your platform to begin with. Of course they would never check things before allowing them to be posted because there isn’t any profit in that.
ultrarunner 1y ago
At some level these platforms are the public square and facilitate public discussion. In fact, Google has explicitly deprioritized public forum sites (e.g. PHPbb) in preference to forums like YouTube. Surely there is a difference between declining to host and distribute adult material and enforcing a preferred viewpoint on a current topic. Sure, Google doesn't need to host anything they don't want to; make it all Nazi apologia if they thing it serves their shareholders. But doing so and silencing all other viewpoints in that particular medium is surely not a net benefit for society, independent of how it affects Google.
- Scoundreller 1y ago
  “Covid” related search results were definitely hard-coded. Wikipedia was landing on the 2nd or 3rd page which never happens. I’d even search for “coronavirus” and primarily get “official” sites about Covid-19 even tho that’s just one of many coronaviruses. At least Wikipedia makes the front page again, with the Covid-19 page outranking the coronavirus page…
- Scoundreller 1y ago
  “Covid” related search results were definitely hard-coded or given a hand-tuned boost. Wikipedia was landing on the 2nd or 3rd page which never happens for a general search term on Google. I’d even search for “coronavirus” and primarily get “official” sites about Covid-19 even tho that’s just one of many coronaviruses. At least Wikipedia makes the front page again, with the Covid-19 page outranking the coronavirus page…
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
typeofhuman 1y ago
Not OP, but we did learn the US federal government was instructing social media sites like Twitter to remove content it found displeasing. This is known as jawboning and is against the law. SCOTUS. Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, holds that governments cannot coerce private entities into censoring speech they disfavor, even if they do not issue direct legal orders. This was a publicly announced motivation for Elon Musk buying Twitter. Because of which we know the extent of this illegal behavior. Mark Zuckerberg has also publicly stated Meta was asked to remove content by the US government.
- brookst 1y ago
  Crazy how fast we got from “please remove health misinformation during a pandemic” (bad) to “FCC chair says government will revoke broadcast licenses for showing comedians mocking the president” (arguably considerably worse).
  - themaninthedark 1y ago
    >On July 20, White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield appeared on MSNBC. Host Mika Brzezinski asked Bedingfield about Biden's efforts to counter vaccine misinformation; apparently dissatisfied with Bedingfield's response that Biden would continue to "call it out," Brzezinski raised the specter of amending Section 230—the federal statute that shields tech platforms from liability—in order to punish social media companies explicitly. >In April 2021, White House advisers met with Twitter content moderators. The moderators believed the meeting had gone well, but noted in a private Slack discussion that they had fielded "one really tough question about why Alex Berenson hasn't been kicked off from the platform." Is there a difference between the White House stating they are looking at Section 230 and asking why this one guy has not been banned?
    - slater 1y ago
      from your paste, it looks like Mika B. brought up the section 230 thing? Also, spreading disinformation about covid has real-world implications. Orange man getting his feelings hurt because comedian said something isn't even in the same ballpark
jhbadger 1y ago
It's not that simple. For example, when libraries remove books for political reasons they often claim it isn't "censorship" because you could buy the book at a bookstore if you wanted. But if it really would have no effect on availability they wouldn't bother to remove the book, would they?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- amanaplanacanal 1y ago
  Libraries are typically run by the government. Governments aren't supposed to censor speech. Private platforms are a different matter by law.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
joannanewsom 1y ago
Jimmy Kimmel wasn't being silenced. He doesn't have a right to a late night talk show. Disney is free to end that agreement within the bounds of their contract. Being fired for social media posts isn't being silenced. Employment is for the most part at will. Getting deported for protesting the Gaza war isn't being silenced. Visas come with limitations, and the US government has the authority to revoke your visa if you break those rules. /s You seem to think there's a bright line of "silenced" vs "not silenced". In reality there's many ways of limiting and restricting people's expressions. Some are generally considered acceptable and some are not. When huge swaths of communication are controlled by a handful of companies, their decisions have a huge impact on what speech gets suppressed. We should interrogate whether that serves the public interest.
- amanaplanacanal 1y ago
  The US has pretty much given up on antitrust enforcement. That's the big problem.
- scarface_74 1y ago
  The federal government was literally pressuring ABC to take Kimmel off the air. Even Ted Cruz and other prominent republicans said that was a bridge too far.
  - joannanewsom 1y ago
    The federal government was literally pressuring YouTube to remove certain COVID content that did not violate its policies. It's said explicitly in the story. What I'm trying to get at is it's possible to stifle people's freedom of expression without literally blocking them from every platform. Threatening their livelihood. Threatening their home. Kicking them off these core social media networks. All of these things are "silencing". And we should be wary of doing that for things we simply disagree about.
    - rendall 1y ago
      This is such an important idea. I'm afraid that most people do not think beyond "bad opinions should be legally suppressed" and unfortunately that includes many of the purported guardians of our social morals.
unyttigfjelltol 1y ago
> My refusing to distribute your work is not "silencing." That distinction is a relic of a world of truly public spaces used for communication— a literal town square. Then it became the malls and shopping centers, then the Internet— which runs on private pipes— and now it’s technological walled gardens. Being excluded from a walled garden now is effectively being “silenced” the same way being excluded from the town square was when whatever case law you’re thinking was decided.
Ekaros 1y ago
If you refuse to distribute some information you are making editorial decision. Clearly you are reviewing all of the content. So you should be fully liable for all content that remains. Including things like libel or copyright violation. To me that sounds only fair trade. You editorialize content. You are liable for all content. In every possible way.

sterlind 1y ago

I'd certainly consider an ISP refusing to route my packets as silencing. is YouTube so different? legally, sure, but practically?

michaelt 1y ago
If we were still in the age of personal blogs and phpbb forums, where there were thousands of different venues - the fact the chess forum would ban you for discussing checkers was no problem at all. But these days, when you can count the forums on one hand even if you're missing a few fingers, and they all have extremely similar (American-style) censorship policies? To me it's less clear than it once was.
jabwd 1y ago
yes... coz youtube is not your ISP. A literal massive difference. RE: net neutrality.
scarface_74 1y ago
No because you are perfectly technically capable of setting your own servers in a colo and distributing your video.

hn_throw_250915 1y ago

[dead]

justinhj 1y ago

So you're saying that YouTube is a publisher and should not have section 230 protections? They can't have it both ways. Sure remove content that violates policies but YouTube has long set itself up as an opinion police force, choosing which ideas can be published and monetized and which cannot.

krapp 1y ago
https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/ https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...
- justinhj 1y ago
  Thank you. I was completely wrong about section 230.
bee_rider 1y ago
YouTube’s business model probably wouldn’t work if they were made to be responsible for all the content they broadcasted. It would be really interesting to see a world where social media companies were treated as publishers. Might be a boon for federated services—smaller servers, finer-grained units of responsibility…
tzs 1y ago
Section 230 does not work like you think it does. In fact it is almost opposite of what you probably think it does. The whole point was to allow them to have it both ways. It makes sites not count as the publisher or speaker of third party content posted to their site, even if they remove or moderate that third party content.

timmg 1y ago

It's interesting how much "they are a private company, they can do what they want" was the talking point around that time. And then Musk bought Twitter and people accuse him of using it to swing the election or whatever. Even today, I was listening to NPR talk about the potential TikTok deal and the commenter was wringing their hands about having a "rich guy" like Larry Ellison control the content. I don't know exactly what the right answer is. But given their reach -- and the fact that a lot of these companies are near monopolies -- I think we should at least do more than just shrug and say, "they can do what they want."

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

Jensson 1y ago

> No one owes you distribution unless you have a contract saying otherwise. The common carrier law says you have to for for some things, so it makes sense to institute such a law for some parts of social media as they are fundamental enough. It is insane that we give that much censorship power to private corporations. They shouldn't have the power to decide elections on a whim etc.

AfterHIA 1y ago
I 100% agree with your sentiment here Jensson but in Googling, "common carrier law" what I get are the sets of laws governing transportation services liability: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier Is there perhaps another name for what you're describing? It piques my interest.
- Jensson 1y ago
  Common carrier also applies to phones and electricity and so on, it is what prevents your phone service provider from deciding who you can call or what you can say. Imagine a world where your phone service provider could beep out all your swear words, or if they prevented you from calling certain people, that is what common carrier prevents. So the equivalent of Google banning anyone talking about Covid is the same as a phone service provider ending service for anyone mentioning covid on their phones. Nobody but the most extreme authoritarians thinks phone providers should be allowed to do that, so why not apply this to Google as well?
  - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
    This is essentially the free speech maximalist position: allow any legal content. If they did that, people would leave the service in droves for a competitor with reasonable moderation. Nobody wants to use a site that is overrun with spam and porn.
    - Jensson 1y ago
      > If they did that, people would leave the service in droves for a competitor with reasonable moderation. Did people leave Google in droves in favor of a competitor that censors out all porn from search results? No, people had no issue that you can find porn on Google, they still used it. Youtube providing porn to those who want it does not cause problems for anyone, just like it doesn't for Google search, and Google even run both so they can easily apply this same feature on Youtube. > Nobody wants to use a site that is overrun with spam and porn. The internet is overrun by spam and porn yet people still use it, so you are clearly wrong. Google already manages as search engine over the internet that is capable of not showing you porn when you don't search for it, but you can find it if you do, so Google has already solved that problem and could just do the same in Youtube.

pfannkuchen 1y ago

I think the feeling of silencing comes from it being a blacklist and not a whitelist. If you take proposals from whoever and then only approve ones you specifically like, for whatever reason, then I don’t think anyone would feel silenced by that. If you take anything from anyone, and a huge volume of it, on any topic and you don’t care what, except for a few politically controversial areas, that feels more like silencing. Especially when there is no alternative service available due to network effects and subsidies from arguably monopolistic practices.

mock-possum 1y ago
Also allowing it to be posted initially for a period of time before being taken down feels worse than simply preventing it from ever being published on your platform to begin with. Of course they would never check things before allowing them to be posted because there isn’t any profit in that.

ultrarunner 1y ago

At some level these platforms are the public square and facilitate public discussion. In fact, Google has explicitly deprioritized public forum sites (e.g. PHPbb) in preference to forums like YouTube. Surely there is a difference between declining to host and distribute adult material and enforcing a preferred viewpoint on a current topic. Sure, Google doesn't need to host anything they don't want to; make it all Nazi apologia if they thing it serves their shareholders. But doing so and silencing all other viewpoints in that particular medium is surely not a net benefit for society, independent of how it affects Google.

Scoundreller 1y ago
“Covid” related search results were definitely hard-coded. Wikipedia was landing on the 2nd or 3rd page which never happens. I’d even search for “coronavirus” and primarily get “official” sites about Covid-19 even tho that’s just one of many coronaviruses. At least Wikipedia makes the front page again, with the Covid-19 page outranking the coronavirus page…
Scoundreller 1y ago
“Covid” related search results were definitely hard-coded or given a hand-tuned boost. Wikipedia was landing on the 2nd or 3rd page which never happens for a general search term on Google. I’d even search for “coronavirus” and primarily get “official” sites about Covid-19 even tho that’s just one of many coronaviruses. At least Wikipedia makes the front page again, with the Covid-19 page outranking the coronavirus page…

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

typeofhuman 1y ago

Not OP, but we did learn the US federal government was instructing social media sites like Twitter to remove content it found displeasing. This is known as jawboning and is against the law. SCOTUS. Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, holds that governments cannot coerce private entities into censoring speech they disfavor, even if they do not issue direct legal orders. This was a publicly announced motivation for Elon Musk buying Twitter. Because of which we know the extent of this illegal behavior. Mark Zuckerberg has also publicly stated Meta was asked to remove content by the US government.

brookst 1y ago
Crazy how fast we got from “please remove health misinformation during a pandemic” (bad) to “FCC chair says government will revoke broadcast licenses for showing comedians mocking the president” (arguably considerably worse).
- themaninthedark 1y ago
  >On July 20, White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield appeared on MSNBC. Host Mika Brzezinski asked Bedingfield about Biden's efforts to counter vaccine misinformation; apparently dissatisfied with Bedingfield's response that Biden would continue to "call it out," Brzezinski raised the specter of amending Section 230—the federal statute that shields tech platforms from liability—in order to punish social media companies explicitly. >In April 2021, White House advisers met with Twitter content moderators. The moderators believed the meeting had gone well, but noted in a private Slack discussion that they had fielded "one really tough question about why Alex Berenson hasn't been kicked off from the platform." Is there a difference between the White House stating they are looking at Section 230 and asking why this one guy has not been banned?
  - slater 1y ago
    from your paste, it looks like Mika B. brought up the section 230 thing? Also, spreading disinformation about covid has real-world implications. Orange man getting his feelings hurt because comedian said something isn't even in the same ballpark

jhbadger 1y ago

It's not that simple. For example, when libraries remove books for political reasons they often claim it isn't "censorship" because you could buy the book at a bookstore if you wanted. But if it really would have no effect on availability they wouldn't bother to remove the book, would they?

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
amanaplanacanal 1y ago
Libraries are typically run by the government. Governments aren't supposed to censor speech. Private platforms are a different matter by law.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

joannanewsom 1y ago

Jimmy Kimmel wasn't being silenced. He doesn't have a right to a late night talk show. Disney is free to end that agreement within the bounds of their contract. Being fired for social media posts isn't being silenced. Employment is for the most part at will. Getting deported for protesting the Gaza war isn't being silenced. Visas come with limitations, and the US government has the authority to revoke your visa if you break those rules. /s You seem to think there's a bright line of "silenced" vs "not silenced". In reality there's many ways of limiting and restricting people's expressions. Some are generally considered acceptable and some are not. When huge swaths of communication are controlled by a handful of companies, their decisions have a huge impact on what speech gets suppressed. We should interrogate whether that serves the public interest.

amanaplanacanal 1y ago
The US has pretty much given up on antitrust enforcement. That's the big problem.
scarface_74 1y ago
The federal government was literally pressuring ABC to take Kimmel off the air. Even Ted Cruz and other prominent republicans said that was a bridge too far.
- joannanewsom 1y ago
  The federal government was literally pressuring YouTube to remove certain COVID content that did not violate its policies. It's said explicitly in the story. What I'm trying to get at is it's possible to stifle people's freedom of expression without literally blocking them from every platform. Threatening their livelihood. Threatening their home. Kicking them off these core social media networks. All of these things are "silencing". And we should be wary of doing that for things we simply disagree about.
  - rendall 1y ago
    This is such an important idea. I'm afraid that most people do not think beyond "bad opinions should be legally suppressed" and unfortunately that includes many of the purported guardians of our social morals.

unyttigfjelltol 1y ago

> My refusing to distribute your work is not "silencing." That distinction is a relic of a world of truly public spaces used for communication— a literal town square. Then it became the malls and shopping centers, then the Internet— which runs on private pipes— and now it’s technological walled gardens. Being excluded from a walled garden now is effectively being “silenced” the same way being excluded from the town square was when whatever case law you’re thinking was decided.

Ekaros 1y ago

If you refuse to distribute some information you are making editorial decision. Clearly you are reviewing all of the content. So you should be fully liable for all content that remains. Including things like libel or copyright violation. To me that sounds only fair trade. You editorialize content. You are liable for all content. In every possible way.