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YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

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Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are all sorts of flaws in the analogies here; that's why they're analogies, not identities. That said, I'm not quite sure I understand your point. A speaker in physical space can pretty easily take their speech elsewhere; most obviously to the nearest public street corner. So moving away from a private venue typically does not require anything nearly as drastic as "moving to another state/region". I'd really li…

The crux is that digital space is infinite -- anyone can create a space for their own speech. In the physical world, people own very little space, and free speech almost always needs to impose on someone else's property. I think because of that, any comparisons between online speech and IRL speech are inherently flawed and not very useful.

Thank you, that explanation helps.

I think there's a difference between "you can speak" and "you can speak in such a way that interested people can hear". The former is not very useful in terms of the right people usually think of as "freedom of speech"; the limiting case of it in the physical world is "you can speak, but only in your own home". So what, if anything, makes for an online version of the public square, where one can go to present speech for consideration by others?

Also, I think online speech is more similar to physical-world speech than you make it out to be. You can't speak online without "imposing" on your hosting provider, their ISP, etc. If you self-host, you "impose" on your own ISP (and probably violate their ToS, if you have a residential connection). You "impose" on your domain registrar. These are all private entities, so you have the same sorts of issues as you allude to for the physical world. And these private entities have been known to restrict the speech of people relying on their services, so this is not a hypothetical risk.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems probable, yes. What if you set up a booth in a shopping mall in the spring of 2016 in California or Massachusetts and gave away pro-Trump stickers? I assure you there are plenty of people out there in both states, many of them likely working on YouTube, who view that as equivalent to your hypothetical. I know a number of them personally. Trust me, I'm not a fan of the sort of rhetoric you describe. But I a…

Is YouTube calling simply supporting Trump an extreme view?

A literal reading of their new restrictions as quoted in the article would in fact make a bunch of Trump's campaign speeches fall under the restrictions. And while I'd much rather he had not made those speeches or that people had not listened, or both, it's not clear to me that refusing to broadcast them would have been the right call either.

Now very likely Youtube plans to do extremely selective enforcement. I'm not sure that over-broad rules with ensuing very selective enforcement, applied only against the powerless and unpopular, is the right direction to head in, but that's what I see going on here.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#683
post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a huge proponent of this in the early days of the web and was leading the crusade for reader engagement, championing the idea of anonymous commentary and a pure marketplace of ideas. Well, it turns out I had an over-optimistic view of people.

What no one really wants to admit here on YC is that the userbase here is something like the top .01% of (intelligence / literacy / analytical skills). Hell, even reddit, as low-brow as that has gotten, is still top 1% easily. But there are still plenty of staggeringly oblivious views in both places. It's hard to admit that dichotomy, because when we realize that the top 1% or .01% can still be so ignorant, we also g…

> userbase here is something like the top .01% of (intelligence / literacy / analytical skills).

If this were true, I would have lost whatever little faith in humanity I had left. But I very much doubt it, being good at some "hackery" thing is completely orthogonal to being intelligent/smart in any normal meaning of the word.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Good joke. First of all, this site actively tries to ban political discussion Yet here we are. Are you banned yet? YouTube also bans certain types of political discussion as you are well aware... so what? > . Second, it's tiny in comparison to YouTube. So you think the uninformed conversations occurring in a video entertainment cesspool are more impactful than the discourse between the engineers, founders and inves…

>Are you banned yet? Who, me? Never. >So you think the uninformed conversations occurring in a video entertainment cesspool are more impactful than the discourse between the engineers, founders and investors that actually built, maintain, understand and operate these platforms on a day to day? That's totally absurd. You're so hung up on popularity that you seem to have lost sight of relevance. Each of those people en…

> Each of those people engaging in uninformed conversations gets a vote that matters just as much as the vote of the people that built these platforms.

I agree. Getting banned from YouTube doesn't prevent you from voting. YouTube is wholly irrelevant to the civic imperative, it's just a video sharing site, yes, the most popular video sharing site on the web where people also happen to discuss politics, but its popularity doesn't change its fundamental nature.

> I don't think many people are overwhelmingly concerned with making sure their message reaches the tiny number of people on this site.

Right. Exactly my point. That's a mistake. Despite being orders of magnitude less popular than YouTube, this site has catered to an audience that is wealthy and well-connected relative to the YouTube audience and the political discussions on this site have a ripple effect in the tech community and thus the tech industry and people's livelihoods. My only point here is to illustrate that "popular" doesn't necessarily mean "important".

> it doesn't matter.

It does matter. The primary function of the site is a business built around video entertainment, just because some fraction of the site's users decided to have political discussions on YouTube doesn't mean that the fundamental nature of YouTube has changed into something that should now be owned by the commons. The creators and owners of YouTube still have rights to, and creative control over the product they created, even if that control resulted in a blatantly partisan culling of political content. If YouTube's behavior displeases the people they should seek redress with the platform's owners or abandon it. The reasoning you describe is a strange kind of mob tyranny where a corporation becomes obligated to give up creative control over its products because a bunch of people decided to start squatting political banners on the front lawn.

YouTube is not a political forum, it's a place where people shoot the shit about every topic under the sun, and there are plenty of places to do that on the internet.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#685
post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that most trans women don't want to be identified as such, and that "passing" is a really big deal. "Tall" is an acceptable descriptor for a person, obvious to all and not usually very sensitive. "Trans" isn't like this and remarking on "how trans" someone is carries a very different meaning than remarking on "how tall" someone is. Maybe it's still acceptable or useful to accept "trans women" as t…

I'm a trans woman, so I'm gonna go ahead and be gentle when I say that my understanding does not match yours. Some trans women are as you describe, preoccupied with passing and going stealth, especially for safety reasons. Many aren't. You can speculate on if the term is gonna go away, but right now it's the best adjective to describe trans people. It's not offensive or a slur, it's literally the community's chosen l…

And there it is.

You are a man. Until you admit that, you are living a lie. Worse, you inflict harm on others by compelling them to agree with this lie.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#688
post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But "trans women cannot (yet?) bear children" shouldn't be an anti-trans stance, either.

Is anyone saying otherwise? I haven't heard of anyone being banned for that. N.B: what somebody says they are banned for and what they were actually banned for often differ.

> what somebody says they are banned for and what they were actually banned for often differ

Based on our experience at HN (not that it generalizes) I'd even say they usually differ.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#689
post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the analogy fits. Those individuals are protected classes and refusing them access like this would be discriminatory behavior. Likely not illegal in USA but it would be illegal elsewhere. Racists are not a protected class of people. They aren't afforded those same rights. And on some grounds their disruption of society actually puts an onus on you as a platform to restrict their access.

They weren't protected classes when the political pressure would have been against them. "Protected class" basically means politically favored group, and as GP points out, that changes.

Yes it does, but to attempt and claim that White Supremacy could ever be considered a "protected class" is absurd.

This isn't my bias speaking here, this is a contextual reality, the world has constraints and there isn't any iteration of what we have that would allow this reality to evolve.

The only wiggle room you have here is on free speech grounds but we have already figured out, that this does not apply here.

Re: YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views

#690
post #659
post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Porn isn't illegal, but has always been banned on youtube.

Are you going to answer my questions or just keep repeating strawmans?

Could you please stop posting uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? You've done it repeatedly, it's not what this site is for, and we eventually ban accounts that do that.

It would be great if you would review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the spirit of this site to heart when posting here.

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