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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

#221

Post by jMyles »

vbezhenar wrote: post #172
saurik wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If a website does not honour legal request, it'll get blocked

If that is happening, then the architecture of the internet needs to take more evolutionary steps.

If the state can censor the internet, there's nothing 'inter' about it. It's just a network, subject to the whims of its flailing predecessor.

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

#222

Post by bjoli »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #135

> "We have a responsibility to connect our users with trustworthy information and to combat misinformation during Covid-19." Who gave them that responsibility? I didn't. If no one did, why do they think they have that responsibility? Do they feel that they are the final authority on all matters that they forget that their users are humans capable of coming to their own conclusions?

Do you believe that a central part in how many people interact with the internet doesnt have any moral responsibilities?

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

#223

Post by hvac »

silicon2401 wrote: post #150
hvac wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is religion any more or less immutable from political beliefs? In my view both are fully equivalent.

In some cases (e.g. Jews, Amish) the lines between race/religion/national origin become pretty blurry. I agree that it's the most ambiguous of the classes, though.

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

#224

Post by username90 »

silicon2401 wrote: post #150
hvac wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is religion any more or less immutable from political beliefs? In my view both are fully equivalent.

Religion is a protected class to stop zealots from waging wars on each other, got to nip it in the bud before tension builds up. It is a very rational reason even if the protection shouldn't be needed in theory.

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

#225

Post by supergirl »

the fine is for not obeying the court order to put back the video:

> “With the historically high fine, the Higher Regional Court makes it very clear that court decisions must be observed without restriction, regardless of whether YouTube assumes a violation of its guidelines or not,” an attorney for the plaintiff, Joachin Steinhoefel, said in a statement on Twitter.

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

#227

Post by notJim »

akira2501 wrote: post #126
eli wrote: 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…

The idea that the service is a neutral 3rd party who hosts any video is a political idea, in other words it is a choice made by platforms that both influences and is influenced by politics. Note, because people get confused on here, this doesn't mean that it's a bad idea.

Other publishing media do not have this standard. For example, the radio waves are another medium where the FCC (which regulates them) could say that only certain things are allowed, or they could say you can broadcast whatever you want. (In fact I think they regulate content, re: obscenity, but I don't want to look it up right now.)

So again, the idea of being only a neutral 3rd party who hosts videos for all-comers is a choice, which has political implications.

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

#228

Post by byset »

LatteLazy wrote: post #220
throwawayswede wrote: post #2

Good. I'd rather live in chaos than a world controlled by these technocrats. Let's do Twitter while we're at it.

Really? You'd rather your children died of a preventable disease than YT ban antivax lies? Really?

Can’t one frame either side of any controversy using these sorts of histrionics? This makes us all stupider.

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

#229

Post by handrous »

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.

It distinguishes between something and a publisher, in that it says whatever-you-want-to-call-that-something can't be treated as the publisher (it uses that word) of information it's distributing.

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

#230

Post by josefx »

pionar wrote: post #164
throwawayboise wrote: post #104

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.

Think about it this way, you build something that looks like a pub, provides the services of a pub and say you are open for business. Would it be really that surprising that the state enforces laws that apply to pubs on your business or would you tell the health inspector to fuck off and open his own pub if he has problems with it?
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