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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

#351

Post by ssivark »

unethical_ban wrote: post #344
CamperBob2 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion that "I can do what I want" as long as it takes place in the private sphere is absurd. So what's your take on Lawrence v. Texas?

Not the OP, but I think "companies" and "individuals" are very different, and discussions around corporate responsibility and society are different from regulating social behavior between two individuals.

To add, I think that rather than a person -vs- company dichotomy, it’s better to frame the discussion in terms of the total resources that can be brought to bear, and whether that can have an “undue” influence (relative to the power of all the other agents in a sector). Eg: Bill Gates (an individual) is much closer in this sense to YouTube than a typical small company employing a dozen people.

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

#352

Post by tylersmith »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #259
tylersmith wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> YouTube unsuccessfully argued the video violated its policies on Covid-19 “misinformation.” It sounds like YouTube's stance is that the video may cause harm to their users; one of their criteria for removal.

A knife can do even more harm to the user, but they are still sold. "Can do harm" is a slippery slope.

That appears to be largely what Germany thinks as well.

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

#353

Post by bpsh »

holoduke wrote: post #332

A good move. Everything so big as YouTube should follow national laws. Otherwise private terms of policies become more part of society than national ones. Then the hundreds of years of fighting becomes nothing and we are back in a modern kingdom based society.

What if it is an authoritarian government that enacts national laws for the purpose of censorship?

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

#354

Post by anm89 »

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…

I think you are mistakenly conflating government official request with legal request. Maybe I would have been better off to use "legal demand".

A senator can ask you to do something but the fact the they are a senator does not legally obligate you to comply.

But if the DoJ sends you a demand (I'm not a lawyer, I'm just making up details here) let's say it's signed by a judge or something, what are you gonna do, say no?

There are also cases like child pornography where you might preemptively remove stuff without any demand because you want to but it would still be under justification of it clearly complying with a law so you haven't poisoned the well of if you censored anything.

And that's really the important factor in the end.

As everyone else had said, if you don't do that stuff, you are just going to get your domain and assets seized anyway.

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

#355

Post by not1ofU »

akira2501 wrote: post #131
eli wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are of course free to create a platform that only removes illegal content, just as Twitter or YouTube is free to to remove content they don't like. But I think you'd find two problems: determining what could be illegal is really hard (what's a "true threat" and what's a tasteless joke?), and also you'd end up with a community that looks a lot like 4chan or parler. Not a place I would choose to hang out.

> 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?

One wholesome thing 4chan did: Mr.Lashua's Birthday https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lgw7YUYgIc

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

#356

Post by hexane360 »

eli wrote: post #328
the_lonely_road wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I require guests in my house to take their shoes off. They don’t have to do it, they can just leave. But if they want to stay in my house they need to take their shoes off. No one is holding a gun to YouTube’s head and telling them they have to serve video content to Germans. They want to be in Germany serving video content, so it’s only fair and just that they should listen to the Germans and do what they say or lea…

A country isn’t really like your house though, is it? Germany could probably tell Google not to host any videos from the opposition political party under penalty of fine or expulsion. Hopefully we agree that that would be bad?

But Germany can't do that because it would be against Germany's constitution.

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

#357

Post by idownvoted »

It certainly wasn’t “Germany“ that fined YouTube.

Because…

a) anti-lockdown is anti Government

b) the removals are usually done by outsourcing service providers, often ironically by Arvato a subsidiary of Germany‘s biggest media conglomerate and staunch supporter of the lockdowns

and last but not least because

c) it was a regional court that slapped the fine

Note that it did so not because of the „severity“ which it assigned to YT‘s malfeasance, but because big tech is so powerful that it just didn’t care what that local court had ordered in the first place.

100k€ is nothing to google so prepare for bigger sums until their service desk responds to the rule of law.

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

#358

Post by ihumanable »

username90 wrote: post #215
ihumanable wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If YouTube is a store, them taking down a video isn't them picking and choosing their customers it's them picking and choosing the product they put on their shelf. Which is generally a thing left up to the store owner and not the government.

No, whitelists vs blacklists. A store blacklists some customers from entering, but in general most can enter. A store doesn't let most people put wares on its shelves, that is a whitelist. Youtube blacklists video uploads and otherwise allows everything, so it follows the same logic as customers entering a store.

No, product vs customer.

YouTube has a product they sell, advertising slots embedded in videos. YouTube's customer is the person buying the ad slot. The video and uploader are, in a tortured analogy I didn't choose about YouTube being a small store, the product that YouTube sells to their actual customer, the advertiser.

Bringing up whitelists and blacklists doesn't change that.

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

#359

Post by noxvilleza »

neom wrote: post #254
eli wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like Germany should simply nationalize the platform if that's what they want.

Sad you're getting downvoted, I was thinking about this the other day, if nations really want to limit applications on the internet, they need to create a free to use high quality national alternative, and personally I don't think this is an awful idea. Canadian "twitter" provided by a gov entity? I would for sure be interested in that. The ability to use a home grown twitter that I needed to use some government ID t…

You can make your own Mastodon instance where you could possibly/probably have verification required to approve members based on some Canadian IDs - but it sounds kinda overkill really.

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

#360

Post by cblconfederate »

bpsh wrote: post #353
holoduke wrote: post #332

A good move. Everything so big as YouTube should follow national laws. Otherwise private terms of policies become more part of society than national ones. Then the hundreds of years of fighting becomes nothing and we are back in a modern kingdom based society.

What if it is an authoritarian government that enacts national laws for the purpose of censorship?

When did youtube , or any big tech not comply with local laws in authoritarian countries? Never, their position is not one of activism it's "I'm OK with that"

https://www.engadget.com/facebook-turkey-emails-200407588.ht...?

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