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YouTube takes down Xinjiang videos, forcing rights group to seek alternative

reuters.com

41–50 of 269 posts

Re: YouTube takes down Xinjiang videos, forcing rights group to seek alternative

#41
post #22

No worries, Google will just sponsor a human rights award and award it to themselves to help them feel better about enabling human rights violations. They have the playbook perfected. [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26880262

Or blame on human error like Microsoft did after the Tank Man/Bing issue.

Re: YouTube takes down Xinjiang videos, forcing rights group to seek alternative

#43
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course Russia and China are spreading it. If they’re not spreading disinformation in the US, then what in the world are their intelligence services doing to earn their paychecks? The US needs to IP blacklist Russia and China. If you do business in the US, you shouldn’t be able to connect to a network that is connected to Russia or China. Let the European and Asian backbone providers choose, do business with US bus…

> Of course Russia and China are spreading it. You know the US has and does do this too right?

Of course - I’m not making any sort of moral declaration. I’m just amused at those who aren’t sure if Russia and China are poisoning Facebook - if they aren’t some apparatchik should be getting fired.

Re: YouTube takes down Xinjiang videos, forcing rights group to seek alternative

#44
post #3

I can understand the copyright stuff because Google can’t possibly afford the fight against the MPAA/RIAA. Why wade into politics though? What gain does Google obtain through political censorship?

I’m going to take a guess that perhaps it has to do with Google’s ability to continue to commercially operate in China. Perhaps X leadership from Google spoke with Y leadership from China and reached this compromise in order to avoid a potential all-out ban of Google’s services in China, similar to - though nowhere close to the same reasoning behind - the US’ ban of Huawei telecommunications equipment. PLEASE NOTE th…

I would guess also that it has to do with "normalizing" relationships with China as well. Every country has skeletons in its closet. And every government seeks to rationize and minimize those skeletons as much as possible. As a country gains stake in mefia institutions, those institutions internalize some of the propaganda of that country.

Re: YouTube takes down Xinjiang videos, forcing rights group to seek alternative

#47
post #41
post #22

No worries, Google will just sponsor a human rights award and award it to themselves to help them feel better about enabling human rights violations. They have the playbook perfected. [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26880262

Or blame on human error like Microsoft did after the Tank Man/Bing issue.

If anybody wants there to be desktop OS options, they should consider donating to Debian, the fsf, gnome, and/or some other foss project

Re: YouTube takes down Xinjiang videos, forcing rights group to seek alternative

#48
Predictable outrage towards big tech is predictable. HN doesn't care when YouTube host thousands of videos from a human rights group with over a hundred million views. However, when they remove a dozen of them and promise to reinstate them if they blur out some PII, HN treats it like it's 1984.

Re: YouTube takes down Xinjiang videos, forcing rights group to seek alternative

#49
post #7

I'm sure YT is going to trot out some stock reason for not re-instating the videos. But this is pathetic. When YT goes on a bandwagon for some cause or other, this doesn't happen, but it appears to happen when the politics don't align with either their own politics or may offend one of their markets or their sponsors. So, I guess it's their platform and they can do what they want, but there is a danger that this will…

> it's their platform and they can do what they want this is not true for monopolies, AT&T can't disconnect your line because they don't like what you're saying on your calls.

I’m certain they can for your Internet if they don’t like your packets.

But in either situation, phone calls are not analogous because they’re 1:1. YouTube is about public broadcast. You also don’t pay for their service to host your videos.

Re: YouTube takes down Xinjiang videos, forcing rights group to seek alternative

#50
post #3

I can understand the copyright stuff because Google can’t possibly afford the fight against the MPAA/RIAA. Why wade into politics though? What gain does Google obtain through political censorship?

I’m going to take a guess that perhaps it has to do with Google’s ability to continue to commercially operate in China. Perhaps X leadership from Google spoke with Y leadership from China and reached this compromise in order to avoid a potential all-out ban of Google’s services in China, similar to - though nowhere close to the same reasoning behind - the US’ ban of Huawei telecommunications equipment. PLEASE NOTE th…

Is any part of Google still operating in China? All Google domains are blocked in China. If you use an Android device in China with Google Play Services (or microG), you will not receive any push notifications through Firebase Cloud Messaging unless you use a VPN (or equivalent), and many VPNs are blocked or throttled to an unusable level. Even Android's internet connectivity check is broken in AOSP, since the Great Firewall blocks the android.com domain, which hosts the test page.
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