121–130 of 269 posts
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.
What a completely facile comparison. They earn money by plastering ads over user submitted content. Hosting those videos is hardly some act of social conscience, why would they be owed praise in addition to the advertising revenues they receive. It's hardly prescient to predict outrage when one of the largest companies in the world that wields almost unparalleled control over the information consumed by people decide…
If you treat them as neutral pursuers of profit for doing something "good", then, it's only fair to treat them as neutral pursuers of profit when they do something "evil".
Let me remind that that early on, internet companies were all almost completely pro-free speech. It's the viewers that demanded that YouTube censor things or else they would tweet bomb companies into pulling ads from them. They wanted a nanny, so they shouldn't react surprised when Google acts like a nanny.
So the censorship on China is fine on HN while censorship on Palestine is flagged? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27638871
Just to be clear, [flagged] on a submission means users flagged it, not moderators. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. Users flagged your submission (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27638871), then someone else reposted the article. We turned off flags on the latter.
Since yours was the earliest submission of the article, we'd normally have preferred to restore that one, but by the time we saw it that thread was such a wretched tire fire that it was unsalvageable. I explained that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27646075.
Generally it would be best not to rush to dramatic conclusions like "So the X is ok while the Y is Z?" without having all the relevant information. It makes for dramatic internet comments, but they're nearly always wrong.
Honest question- what is Google's exposure here? Both Youtube and Google (Youtube's parent company) are blocked in China; those revenue streams were cut off a long time ago. What does Google have to lose by letting Youtube keep the videos up? I'm sure the exposure exists; I recognize that Googlers aren't stupid. I honestly am just curious what that risk is. Having lived in Shanghai for 5 years, I don't see China reve…
Google might not be currently much active in China but continuing to do these "gestures" is basically trying to please the CCP for future. These are all moves being made for many years in advance. John Cena for example didn't just learn fluent mandarin to apologize to CCP over night. He had been learning it for many years because he knows the 1.5 billion population in China is going to make them more money than whatever they have in US.
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…
Doesn't have to be particularly good either. They could adapt the one GOG used to censor a Taiwanese game developer:
"After receiving many messages from users, we have decided not to list the Xianjiang videos on our service."
That blew over quickly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
AT&T is a common carrier. You'd have to, I don't know, get Youtube categorized as a common carrier. It's not like that's controversial a fight that Google has won every time it's come up. It's not like there are laws in places like NY that explicitly exempt information systems from being considered common carriers. We're a long way from being able to casually make a comparison between AT&T and Youtube that will be ta…
But since the issue at hand is that people often believe people should get to behave however they want with their own platforms, you only need to point to one high-profile counter example to disprove that that's some universal maxim: that the law currently usually sides with Google doesn't mean the "it's their platform" argument is sufficient.
It's sad to see big tech aligning more and more with this generation's nazis. I guess nazis have more money this time?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Ideally the parent's comment is forward hopeful. As in, in the near future big tech will be shackled as Ma Bell was, and then carved up. Several of the big tech monsters started a fight they can't win with half of the country that now absolutely hates them (and will at one time or another control vast amounts of political power), and the other half which still wants to see them restricted anyway. The question is how…