Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Germany fines YouTube for removing video of anti-lockdown protest

mediaite.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 471 posts

Re: Germany fines YouTube for removing video of anti-lockdown protest

#171

Post by ocdtrekkie »

alpaca128 wrote: post #112
voxic11 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's response to pressures from advertisers wasn't to censor anything. They just demonetized videos that the advertisers didn't want to be associated with. Hosting someone's video for free without even interrupting it with ads seems like the opposite of censorship to me. There may be something interesting to say about how the desires of advertisers shapes our discourse, but its not censorship (in this case at lea…

> Hosting someone's video for free without even interrupting it with ads seems like the opposite of censorship to me. Doesn't demonetization on YT just mean the ads still run but the money doesn't flow to the creator anymore? Considering YouTube does it that way with copyright claims and also automatically added ads to previously ad-free videos just because they could, it would surprise me if they'd remove video ads…

No, because the whole issue is advertisers refuse to have their ads shown with certain types of videos. The ads go away. Johnson and Johnson doesn't want their ads shown next to Nazi propaganda, so demonetization pulls advertising entirely.

Re: Germany fines YouTube for removing video of anti-lockdown protest

#172

Post by vbezhenar »

saurik wrote: post #159
anm89 wrote: post #8

Naval Ravikant seems to be a divisive figure here but I think he made a profound point when he discussed this topic on Joe Rogan's podcast. The point was that, as a platform, you cross a line which is very difficult to ever revert when you optionally censor your platform in response to political pressure because both sides are then forced from a game theory perspective to aggressively pursue censoring your platform i…

I was with you until the very end, when I feel like you threw away the argument by seemingly being open to "legal requests"; the "political wars" you get dragged into tend to be from politicians that are certainly making "legal requests": hell, if they aren't legal, they change the law! I feel like the core problem in many cases was building a system where someone gets to be arbiter of content in the first place: App…

If a website does not honour legal request, it'll get blocked, so its entire content will be effectively removed for all citizens.

The proper approach IMO is to honour legal requests, but provide transparency and display some information about blocked content, like who made the request to block it and so on. Of course content must only be blocked for requests originating from that specific country.

Re: Germany fines YouTube for removing video of anti-lockdown protest

#173

Post by cratermoon »

namlem wrote: post #98
syshum wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Platforms that claim to be open content systems (i.e it is not topic limited like say a Mac Forum) should only remove content that is illegal in nature, i.e Sexual Exploitation of minors, True Threats, etc. > popular anti-vax since Anti-Vax has now been refined to include anyone that opposes government mandated vaccinations, I am a Vaxxed Anti-Vaxer as I oppose all government mandates. People should be free to choose…

You would never want to use a big platform that had no moderation, the quality would be shit. For a small, niche platform, it's fine, but as platforms grow they get filled with 13 year-olds posting garbage, which someone has to clean up to avoid driving away other users.

See, for example, the Eternal September

Re: Germany fines YouTube for removing video of anti-lockdown protest

#174

Post by spfzero »

the_optimist wrote: post #149

Does anyone have a link to the argument from Youtube/Google on why they chose to remove videos of this documentary information? Was there some philosophy that they claimed to be representing? What was the basis? Can this be interpreted in any way other than a vulgar attempt to misrepresent historic reality?

I believe they'd say it fell under their "covid misinformation" ban. I don't know how they can say that some video of a thing that actually happened, as it was happening, could be "misinformation", but that term gets to be interpreted however anyone wants these days.

Re: Germany fines YouTube for removing video of anti-lockdown protest

#175

Post by toast0 »

eli wrote: post #124
RHSeeger wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I refuse to take down anything that doesn't come with the force of law to take it down and > I refuse to take down this video, because I do not think it needs to be taken down are two VERY different things. The first one is a political choice about taking down videos in general. The second one is a political choice about a specific topic. The second one is more or less similar to taking down the video because you t…

I get what you're saying, but I just don't agree. They're only different in the abstract. At some point an incredibly noxious (but legal) video gets posted, complaints pour in, and you are either continuing to host it or you aren't. That's a decision and having a policy of "we never remove legal videos" doesn't absolve you. Anyway, a social platform that only removes illegal content (not even spam?) sounds absolutely…

On a social platform where I'm only seeing content posted by my friends (or maybe content my friends interact with), anything dreadful I see is brought to me by my friends.

If my friends bring me dreadful content that I don't like, I'm not sure we'll stay friends. If my friends are spamming, I'll ask them to stop and if they continue, I'm not going to stay friends (or at least I'll unfollow them where they're spamming).

If people post garbage to my posts, I'll delete their garbage and restrict access to my posts.

There's no need for the social platform to do moderation, until it starts putting unrelated people's content in front of me; which is something I don't really want from a social platform.

Re: Germany fines YouTube for removing video of anti-lockdown protest

#176

Post by yorwba »

ghayes wrote: post #120
Phil_Latio wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does YouTube's TOS really not contain statements giving them the ability to stop hosting any video, at any time, for any reason? The highest court in Germany (for civil and criminal proceedings) wrote this in one of their rulings: > Depending on the circumstances, especially if private companies - as in this case - move into a dominant position and take over the provision of the framework conditions of public commu…

Is this not in direct conflict with the quote from the article / OP. The summary should have this been “regardless of the the contract, we hold that …” which is different from the aforementioned quote: > The German court held that YouTube failed to make its enforcement authority clear in its contract with the account operator who posted the video.

It's a multi-layered argument and a bit of it probably got lost in the process of summarizing it for news reporting and the subsequent translation. You can find the original decision from April 2021 where YouTube was ordered to put the video back up here https://www.justiz.sachsen.de/esamosplus/pages/index.aspx by searching for Aktenzeichen "4 W 118/21" and then clicking on „Dokument öffnen“.

It does contain language quite similar to "regardless of the contract, we hold that ...":

Dahingestellt bleiben kann dabei, ob die Nutzungsbedingungen bzw. die „Richtlinie zur medizinischen Fehlinformation über COVID-19“ einer AGB-rechtlichen Kontrolle standhalten, insbesondere, ob sie dem Transparenzgebot genügen bzw. den Nutzer nicht unangemessen benachteiligen (§307 BGB). Denn die Inhalte des streitgegenständlichen Videos verstoßen bereits nicht gegen die Ende Januar 2021 gültige „Richtlinie zu medizinischen Fehlinformation über COVID-19“ (aa). Bezüglich der Neufassung der vorgenannten Richtlinie hat die Beklagte dagegen nicht glaubhaft gemacht, dass diese wirksam in den Vertrag einbezogen ist (bb).

"The question whether the terms of use resp. the "guidelines regarding medical disinformation about COVID-19" would withstand a check under ToS-law, especially whether they are sufficiently transparent resp. inappropriately disadvantage the user (§307 BGB) can be left aside. Because the content of the video under dispute already does not run counter to the "guidelines regarding medical disinformation about COVID-19" that were in effect at the end of January 2021 (aa). As for the revised version of the aforementioned guidelines, the accused has not convincingly argued that it has been effectively incorporated into the contract (bb)."

Re: Germany fines YouTube for removing video of anti-lockdown protest

#177

Post by namlem »

syshum wrote: post #122
namlem wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would never want to use a big platform that had no moderation, the quality would be shit. For a small, niche platform, it's fine, but as platforms grow they get filled with 13 year-olds posting garbage, which someone has to clean up to avoid driving away other users.

I do not want to, nor do I use any of the big platforms now... I have no twitter account, no facebook account, no insta account, no tiktok account, etc... I have locals.com account, reddit accounts (which is diminishing amount of my usage as they continue to "mainstream" aka censor the site) , and HN, that is pretty much it for me

The quality decline from mainstreaming isn't due to censorship, it's due to the increased presence of normies and children. Meanwhile the heavy-handed censorship of subreddits like AskHistorians has resulted in the preservation of high quality standards.

Re: Germany fines YouTube for removing video of anti-lockdown protest

#178

Post by throwawayswede »

jacob2484 wrote: post #115
tynpeddler wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Same way that when you open a store you can't pick and choose your customers. The same way a store can't kick someone out who's running around saying racial slurs to everyone? The same way the New York Times is required to print every letter to the editor that is sent to them? The store example doesn't hold up at all for a number of reasons and online communities have had extra legal standards since the beginning o…

NY Times is not a platform

NYT Opinion page (essence bullshit basically) is.

Re: Germany fines YouTube for removing video of anti-lockdown protest

#179

Post by jayspell »

nemothekid wrote: post #21
anm89 wrote: post #8

Naval Ravikant seems to be a divisive figure here but I think he made a profound point when he discussed this topic on Joe Rogan's podcast. The point was that, as a platform, you cross a line which is very difficult to ever revert when you optionally censor your platform in response to political pressure because both sides are then forced from a game theory perspective to aggressively pursue censoring your platform i…

> Their only winning move was to stay neutral and do nothing but comply with legal requests. No? This narrative is a bit ahistorical - and it's fueled by this idea that hyperliberal boogeyman started censoring everything. If you look at what happened in 2017, Google started "censoring" things because advertisers threatened to boycott . The platforms couldn't stay neutral because advertisers became more and more conce…

What about telling advertisers that if they want to boycott, go ahead, find another Youtube to advertise on. They make 15 billion a year in advertising and 3 billion on subscriptions. I'm willing to bet with that much advertising it would be very unlikely any advertising boycott could make a significant difference.

Re: Germany fines YouTube for removing video of anti-lockdown protest

#180

Post by nitrogen »

takeda wrote: post #79
voxic11 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's response to pressures from advertisers wasn't to censor anything. They just demonetized videos that the advertisers didn't want to be associated with. Hosting someone's video for free without even interrupting it with ads seems like the opposite of censorship to me. There may be something interesting to say about how the desires of advertisers shapes our discourse, but its not censorship (in this case at lea…

Doesn't matter, they still used this as censoring (claiming YouTube cut funds to kill them). I even saw (this mostly was Facebook, but also was done on YouTube) where the channel/fan page purposefully switching videos to private while talking they are being censored.

purposefully switching videos to private

Sometimes channels will do this because they have "strikes" shown on their creator pages, so they hide their videos to avoid having so many strikes they get shut down. Some science and engineering channels I watch have run into this problem.

Post reply on HN