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Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

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Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#741

Post by elefanten »

jshevek wrote: post #74
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #36

From the actual Google Support question, this was posted on 11/10/19. Why are we only now just noticing? Was it previously confined to China and has now just rolled out globally?

Viral noticing is fed by widespread predispositions, which change over time like fashion. There is a critical mass of people paying attention to censorship in general, and recently a critical mass of people attentive to the evils of the CCP. Also, seems to have been at least since 2012 https://en.greatfire.org/blog/2012/jun/all-blocked-keywords-...

How far Google has fallen. From proactively fighting political censorship to silently facilitating it.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#742

Post by supermatt »

three_seagrass wrote: post #633
SilasX wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At risk of nitpicking, why do say "controls" rather than e.g. "services" or "handles"? When you say "controls" it's like you're saying Google has some kind of monopoly power that makes it hard to switch. And yet anyone can easily switch to e.g. DuckDuckGo. If that's a monopoly, it's not quite the kind of a monopoly we should generally be worried about. Browsers would be a different issue. In that case, there are netw…

This is the perennial discussion on HN as HN'ers get popularity confused with monopoly. I get the anti-Google sentiment but outside of the Play services agreements that Google got dinged for with Android manufacturers, they're not being anti-competitive. If Google were to block search results to DuckDuckGo for example, that would be monopolistic and warrant antitrust action. As it is now, Google isn't blocking compet…

And conversely, other HN'ers get confused by a very narrow definition of what constitutes a market. It is this very definition that is under scrutiny.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#743

Post by himinlomax »

che_shirecat wrote: post #399
Swenrekcah wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, but there is a pretty clear difference between censorship to protect an individual and censorship of critisising a government.

Are we playing "what censorship is OK censorship" now? Who determines that "pretty clear difference?" Isn't the point of being against censorship is that nothing is above the interests of public scrutiny? Partial censorship seems fundamentally contradictory in terms of the underlying moral justification.

If you interpret freedom of speech as freedom of opinion, the sentence fragment "communist bandit" is a statement of opinion that should unequivocally be protected, whereas that isn't quite as clear cut for the name as such of a specific person. (Note that I think that the prohibition on the name is at this point completely moot anyway)

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#744

Post by im3w1l »

subsubzero wrote: post #560
giancarlostoro wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly about a year ago I decided to switch to an iPhone once the "contract" is up. I have used iOS and I didnt find it anymore special, but it isn't really that much different to me to be bothered by using either one. I will also take that moment to ungooglify my life including email and such.

I did the same a few years back, use duck duck go for search, iphone for phone, apple maps for directions, firefox|safari|brave for browser, it is really easy to get google out of your life, only thing I am still looking to replace is mail, if anyone has found something that is free(or relatively cheap) and is reliable I'd love to know.

A lot of webhost + domain offers come with complimentary email. Just remember to pay your renewals or all hell breaks loose.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#745

Post by himinlomax »

leoh wrote: post #601
mikaeluman wrote: post #57

Imagine you posting “nazi bandits” on a WW2 video and seeing it vanish after 15s. We in the IT community need to disassociate with google as much as we possibly can. Free speech is more important than ever.

It's more complex than that. Imagine that you are a US company operating in Germany that provides German citizens with an incredible amount of information that wouldn't otherwise be available. You have thousands of people working in Germany. Occasionally, the Nazis ask you to censor things, If you don't, your entire team is at risk and will all loose their employment and citizens of Germany will loose access to an in…

A more fitting parabole would be, a US company banned from operating in Germany that could provide German citizens with an incredible amount of information if only the German government didn't block any access to its service.

Because in case you hadn't noticed, Google is entirely blocked in communist China.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#746

Post by renewiltord »

dylan604 wrote: post #682
three_seagrass wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the perennial discussion on HN as HN'ers get popularity confused with monopoly. I get the anti-Google sentiment but outside of the Play services agreements that Google got dinged for with Android manufacturers, they're not being anti-competitive. If Google were to block search results to DuckDuckGo for example, that would be monopolistic and warrant antitrust action. As it is now, Google isn't blocking compet…

>consumers are choosing to use Google despite the privacy-oriented preferences here on HN. I'm not sure I'd agree with the word "despite". I still think the majority of the non-tech world is still oblivious to the privacy implications of G,FB,etc. Sure, I'm sure there's a percentage of people that have made the decision they don't care and are fine with it, but there are definitely don't know/understand.

No. It's in all the news. But the truth is people love Google. Google gives them so many services for free that they didn't have before.

In many 3rd world countries, smartphones were the "couple months salary" iPhone or an Android that's literally a tenth the cost.

To most of these people, Google has been an unalloyed good. Google is probably one of the most resilient brands worldwide. Even in America it's well trusted. For good reason.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#747

Post by kilo_bravo_3 »

koheripbal wrote: post #112

I think a more fundamental problem is a single private company having a near-monopoly on various public communication channels, and having financial interests in various global dictatorships. The Founding Fathers could not have predicted this. Google's "We're a private company" get-out-jail-free card cannot continue to apply.

>The Founding Fathers could not have predicted this.

The Founding Fathers used this to their advantage.

They colluded with the handful of major publishers of the time to orchestrate a rolling, synchronized release of the Federalist Papers, saturating the already-monopolized (due to the massive expense of presses and paper) media market with their ideas.

The authors of the Anti-Federalist Papers had no such deal. They had to print out their responses on their own and distribute them by hand.

The country probably would not have even gotten to the point of needing a debate about a constitution, one-sided as it was, if it hadn't been for publishers telling non-conforming opinions to fuck off.

And please, nobody chime in with "publisher v. platform": it is irrelevant, you're wrong.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#748

Post by drak0n1c »

acituan wrote: post #424
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’d recommend just breaking Google’s monopoly Would an independent YouTube be less susceptible to these requests?

We don’t know, because right now youtube is one black box in Google’s finance sheets. We don’t know if it is a loss leader, which I think is very likely. Imagine youtube was a separate company that always ran in the red and another private company solely footed their bill. Would you trust YouTube’s neutrality then? Wouldn’t that explicate why competition is having difficulty emerging? Or imagine YouTube were to split…

YouTube was much more profitable before the current era of partisan activists engaging in targeted campaigns of harassment against specific brands when their ads appear next to controversial content.

Before, industry players, YouTubers, and users largely didn't mind. Now, there is a systemic chilling effect in the form of demonetization, algorithm shenanigans, and banning.

To recover revenue under this new paradigm, YouTube is catering to "brand-safe" corporate media productions and surfacing their videos much more highly than those of independent creators. There's likely media money involved as well, much like how Yelp and food delivery apps rank restaurants.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#749

Post by Rerarom »

SilasX wrote: post #582
subsubzero wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are some numbers to keep you up at night, they are very scary: Google controls 91.89% of the search market [1] G controls 68% of the browser market [2] G's android is on 84% of phones operating systems [3] G has 73% of the search advertising market [4] [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/544400/market-share-of-i... [3] https://beta.trimread.com/articl…

At risk of nitpicking, why do say "controls" rather than e.g. "services" or "handles"? When you say "controls" it's like you're saying Google has some kind of monopoly power that makes it hard to switch. And yet anyone can easily switch to e.g. DuckDuckGo. If that's a monopoly, it's not quite the kind of a monopoly we should generally be worried about. Browsers would be a different issue. In that case, there are netw…

I can't switch to duckduckgo. I do the kind of intricate searches that don't find what I need there.

Re: Google deletes “communist bandits” from comments on Youtube

#750

Post by anticensor »

sio8ohPi wrote: post #537
koheripbal wrote: post #112

I think a more fundamental problem is a single private company having a near-monopoly on various public communication channels, and having financial interests in various global dictatorships. The Founding Fathers could not have predicted this. Google's "We're a private company" get-out-jail-free card cannot continue to apply.

The founding fathers gave the USPS a monopoly on the major communication channel of the time. Maybe it's time to update those laws to give them a monopoly over online communication, too? I see no way this could go wrong.

US Telecom?
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