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Germany fines YouTube for removing video of anti-lockdown protest

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

#181
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is as it should be IMO. When you position yourself to be a de-facto public square, you shouldn't get to selectively operate like a private club when it suits you.

Hmm, when did they do this? I actually think Germany has it backwards here. If the German government wants to provide a free-speech "safe zone", they should provide it themselves. You're encouraging government coercion of action.

> If the German government wants to provide a free-speech "safe zone", they should provide it themselves.

But that is what they are doing here, no? They just use Youtube as the way to provide it. Governments doesn't have to run businesses themselves, private actors are much better at running the day to day stuff usually.

Similarly if you own a huge amount of land and build a city there and let lots of people move in, don't get surprised when the government seizes your square and roads and make them public, or at least force you to let people move there as if they were public roads.

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

#182
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what this is about. In both cases, the state is forcing an company to do something they don't want. The only difference is that you agree with the one but not the other.

Yes, because the difference is that they are essentially immutable personal traits. The parent was presenting this scenario as an equivalent one and I don't think they are.

Personal traits are always mutable. What seems (and may be) immutable to you could be mutable to others.

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

#183
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They caved to censoring things that were reasonable, but now anyone can make them censor anything as long as they have some poltical power somewhere. Can you define "reasonable" here in an objective way that we could all agree on? There's no such thing as neutrality. Leaving up a popular anti-vax video is just as political a decision as taking it down.

> Leaving up a popular anti-vax video is just as political a decision as taking it down. Why is it political? They didn't commission the content or request that it be created and hosted on their platform in any way. They're offering the same reasonable self-hosting process that they offer to anyone who shows up with an email address. It only seems to become political when you decide to take action and either protect…

> Why is it political? They didn't commission the content or request that it be created and hosted on their platform in any way. They're offering the same reasonable self-hosting process that they offer to anyone who shows up with an email address.

And profiting from it. The scope changes slightly when you realize your business could get sued repeatedly because you promoted misinformation (which is how it would be spun) and someone died because they followed that misinformation.

This is risk, and few of these businesses want to tackle that risk apparently.

It's a testament to how well marketers over the decades have sold the idea that companies care about anything other than their shareholders that people mistake profit-driven motivation for political stances.

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

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not a place I would choose to hang out. While that may be true.. do you not believe that the exceptional openness of either of those two platforms has an impact on places outside of them? Do you think there's no intangible benefits to you by these places merely existing?

The primary export of places like that has proven to be brigading, harassment, and bigotry in the form of memes, so...no, not really. I have yet to hear a positive argument for their existence, and "well it collects the dirtbags!" is actually not one . I spent years tracking reactionary and fascist movements on the internet and how they interrelate and spread information; these sites more or less exist to do exactly…

> bigotry in the form of memes

gasps and clutches pearls

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

#185
post #97

Curious: Why can Germany fine YT for something that happened in Switzerland?

Just that the video was taken in Switzerland does not mean that a German court has no jurisdiction over a user uploading said video (presumably from Germany - not clear from this article or a German source version).

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

#186
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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…

They both censored and demonetized. You're going to have a much more difficult time trying to find Elsagate videos on YouTube anymore.

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

#187
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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…

Google doesn't just demonitize videos, they make videos impossible to find by unlisting them from search results[1] and shadowbanning creators:

> One of the videos that had been restricted was a trailer for one of his short films; another was an It Gets Better video aimed at LGBTQ youth. Sam had been shadow-banned, meaning that users couldn’t search for it on YouTube. None of the videos were sexually explicit or profane.

> ... five YouTube channels alleged that the platform had unfairly targeted LGBTQ content creators with practices similar to those described by Bardo: demonetizing videos, placing them in restricted mode without warning, and hiding them from search results.

[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/lgbtq-...

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

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Platform shouldn't have the right to an opinion on content. Same way that when you open a store you can't pick and choose your customers. Platforms should just obey law and at most create a process where users and lawmakers can express and enforce their opinion on content.

> 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…

> The same way a store can't kick someone out who's running around saying racial slurs to everyone?

They can't kick out whoever they want, governments regulate that. And here Germany decided that Youtube can't kick out people for a particular reason. It is the same concept.

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

#189
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

And why did "advertisers threatened to boycott" due to pressure from "hyperliberal's" that are prputally offended by everything. They tried to get YT to do it, when YT ignored them they went after the money... It is right from the liberal playbook

>It is right from the liberal playbook

Yep the liberal playbook that was kicked off by an investigation by the progressive news outlet... The Times[1]... which is owned by Hyperliberal Billionaire... Rupert Murdoch.

Do you even bother to do a small amount of research into your biases? It blows my mind that people think the world is controlled by a couple of megalomaniacs on Liberal Twitter.

[1] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/youtube-hate-preachers-sh...

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

#190
post #9

Pretty similar to what India govt did with farmer protests by acting as if it didn't happen & anyone contradicting the govt was branded as anti-national for stupid reasons

This is the opposite however, where Germany is standing up for the rights of people opposed to the the government. I can't imagine Modi government doing anything like that.

It would have been similar had India fined YouTube for removing videos of farmer protests.

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