Google, Facebook quietly move toward automatic blocking of “extremist” videos

"This company is legally allowed to deny random user #24232's attempts to get us to stream video #198284, but I don't agree with that; I think they should be allowed to upload it". Well, so what? Who cares?

If you felt that strongly about it - not just "i'm going to type a really angry comment about it" strongly but "actually do something about it" strongly then you'd be hosting content yourself. Or at the very least trying to show why it's so important that this particular company should be hosting it. Or you could find another company which would host it and tell people they should be using that site instead. A lot of the complaints I read about freedom and censorship just seems like empty posturing about what companies should or shouldn't do. It's just lazy. These companies only do it at all to make money. Your statements about whether a company should or shouldn't host something would be better phrased as "this company should be hosting this video because it will make them more money". Of course, with a lot of this content the opposite is likely true; complaints from advertisers, users etc will cost them more money (and hassle) than any money they'd make from the average video. It's time to stop thinking of facebook, youtube etc as being a social media version of the First Amendment and more like a conservative pension fund.

And they were only doing that when what they were doing was going along with the cultural democratic zeitgeist at the time.

If they were more open about "Hey, we're providing you a free service, we can shut you down if you don't conform to public opinion" that's fine also. But you can't have it both ways.

Either you support the free expression of unpopular opinions, or you reserve the right to censor anything at all you find objectionable. You can't say "I support expressing opinions, as long as I approve of them, and I support freedom!"

Sure, information wants to be free, and all that cyberpunk jazz. At what cost? Apparently at the cost of innocent lives. These companies are directly responsible for giving these terrorists a platform. The free speech-apologists are indirectly responsible for fostering fertile ground for these terrorists.

Yes... blocking this information will also block innocent information. But I rather see that, than see more innocent lives lost. I say: chase them underground. This makes more clear the difference between a real jihadist with bad intentions, and a pious person slowly being brainwashed, because their feeds show nothing but dead children being pulled from rubble, Anwar al-Awlaki propaganda, and anti-Semitic hoaxes.

Or one could exploit the technicals of such platforms and while increasing the costs for such platforms in engaging in such behavior. Like exploiting oauth keys, public wifi networks, shoddy encryption, etc, to upload/modify content on behalf of "acceptable" users/accounts or engage in a number of interactions on such platforms in ways one wants to without the explicit permission that is not protected or enforced by such technical implementations. There's a lot of creativity to be had beyond self hosting.

The companies just want to make a profit, sure, but not every "user" has to care about that just as the companies don't give shit about the users freedoms. Plenty of jurisdictions where IP addrs are assigned in the world that would turn a blind eye to such actors who are acting agaisnt such platforms.