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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

#191

Post by infamouscow »

eli wrote: post #140
handrous wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They (Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, even Reddit) act so very much like publishers that it seems to me the mistake was granting "platform" protections to sites that: claim broad rights over posted content; use complex logic to decide what to promote (that they promote anything is alarming, for a "platform"!) and what a visitor sees while also hosting and distributing that content they're highlighting or promoting (which…

This "platform vs publisher" thing is a myth based on a misunderstand of how Section 230 works. The law doesn't actually distinguish between the two.

The law is written by people, so it frankly doesn't matter what it says currently because it can (and probably will) change.

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

#192

Post by anm89 »

duxup wrote: post #156
anm89 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right this is the entire point about how crossing the line poisons the well. Which is why they would have to be very clear that their policy is to only respond to legal orders for takedowns and nothing else.

I think the issue then is that the platform becomes ... unusable. The scale of spam of all kinds would render the service useless. Even inaction would be interpreted as part of the game ... and you're in the game again.

You could ultimately be right that they took the better of the two options and that this path would have killed them. I personally disagree.

I think there is also more Grey here. They could have de prioritized things in the algorithm to encourage the direction of the community without explicitly depltforming anyone or blocking\removing content. I think its possible that they could have achieved a lot of what they wanted with this method while avoiding poisoning the well.

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

#193

Post by sofixa »

throwawayswede wrote: post #93
kthejoker2 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a ton of actual evidence that removing bad actors improves the quality of information on social networks: https://www.axios.com/reddit-hate-speech-policies-reduction-... https://www.vox.com/2021/1/16/22234971/trump-twitter-faceboo...

That's not what I said. To reiterate, what I'm saying is: Shady ideas fester in the dark. Banning won't help society. Exposure and discussion does. But the new and very different point that you're making, which is "removing bad actors improves the quality of information on social networks", is also very disputable and shaky. - First link is "Reddit says that the rules Reddit made helped Reddit." is not exactly impart…

> To reiterate, what I'm saying is: Shady ideas fester in the dark. Banning won't help society. Exposure and discussion does

Are you sure? That hasn't helped flat earthers or anti-vaxxers ( of the vaccines cause autism camp), why do you think it's true?

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

#194

Post by yunohn »

eli wrote: post #40
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…

> 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.

> There's no such thing as neutrality. Leaving up a popular anti-vax video is just as political a decision as taking it down.

A lot of the replies to your comment fixate on this, since they take issue with “everything is political”. But I think it’s very true, and agree with you.

Why should YouTube host anything and everything that random anonymous users decide to upload? Why is this /holy/ act of uploading deemed undoable and unrevocable?

It’s a very weird way of thinking that it’s political only if the video is removed, but not if it is kept online.

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

#195

Post by neom »

MauranKilom wrote: post #185
neom wrote: 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).

I understand, I was searching around myself for the answer, but I'm not at all versed in EU or German law. Only thing I could think of is it doesn't matter where it was filmed or who uploaded it, if was removed from german audience of youtube? Or it was filmed in Switzerland and uploaded by a German? I can't find anything in the news and I'd love to know the answer to this :)

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

#196

Post by spoonjim »

syshum wrote: post #57
nemothekid wrote: post #21

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

Hardly. The opposition was from flag-wearing jingoists upset at Islamic terrorist videos on YouTube.

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

#197

Post by travismark »

namlem wrote: post #114
throwawayswede wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what I said. To reiterate, what I'm saying is: Shady ideas fester in the dark. Banning won't help society. Exposure and discussion does. But the new and very different point that you're making, which is "removing bad actors improves the quality of information on social networks", is also very disputable and shaky. - First link is "Reddit says that the rules Reddit made helped Reddit." is not exactly impart…

The "marketplace of ideas" is a fiction that has long since been debunked. The best ideas arent the ones that win out, it's the loudest ones and the ones that appeal to our most base emotions that win. Only a small percentage of people actually possess intellectual curiosity. Most just mindlessly follow social trends.

practicing the 'marketplace of ideas' led to the single most important idea/practice/accomplishment in history - the constitution of knowledge. just read jonathan rauch's new book. sure there are threats to this way of learning and understanding, and it isn't perfect. but it's the best we have, and it has not been debunked

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

#198

Post by clairity »

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…

> "...centralized systems and the arbiters they empower are the core problem and never work out, even if you like some of their decisions for some of the time."

centralization is merely a necessary but not sufficient ingredient for dystopianism. you also need a ratcheting consolidation of power, especially money (provided by advertisers in this case) and attention/influence (provided by viewers). centralization is simply one of those (key) ratchets that can be leveraged to further consolidate power for the benefit of directors and executives.

relatedly, the american constitution is an experiment in crafting a centralized system with checks and balances stable enough to withstand assaults of power consolidation. the jury is still out, but it's looking somewhat bleak at the moment, given a runaway executive branch fueled by an unhinged fed/central bank. we seem to be stomping on the gas pedal even as the brick wall looms ahead.

in any case, i've long been an advocate of right-sizing organizations of all sorts, especially governments and companies. we've concretely learned over the past many decades that the negatives of large (and small, but those tend to self-regulate away) entities eventually far outweigh the benefits, and are better substituted by a more diverse and specialized collection of medium-sized ones.

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

#199

Post by yunohn »

toast0 wrote: post #175
eli wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 spammin…

Have you read the HN guidelines? Most rules have nothing to do with legality, and @dang moderates HN on a best-effort basis to ensure quality discussion.

Presumably, you don’t notice you’re on a moderated platform, but HN is very much not an unmoderated free-for-all.

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

#200

Post by yorwba »

onli wrote: post #141
Navarr wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's pretty clear the fine is about not obeying the court. But I was asking why the court was forcing them to re-instate a video in the first place.

Right, that part makes no sense at all to me. Even if the ToS did not include a fitting clause for the misinformation removal I see no binding right for the user to have his video hosted. That's why I added the tangent about the political environment in Dresden.

The ToS provide the binding right for the user to have the video hosted. It's in the name "terms of service": you follow the terms and in return you're provided with a service. In this case, the plaintiff complied with the terms but was denied service. The court didn't approve of that. I doubt it has anything to do with their political alignment.
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