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YouTube suspended my channel for a video with disclosed issue in Grammarly

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Re: YouTube suspended my channel for a video with disclosed issue in Grammarly

#41
post #7

It's called surveillance capitalism for a reason. Remember it's also totalitarianism, you don't have free speech when using free services. (libre vs. free) Edit: Of course lack of free speech is what Trumpists complain about, too. I say the same although I would use free speech for very different content.

I have nothing to do with Trump and hold an absolutist position on free speech. What’s the political angle?

Re: YouTube suspended my channel for a video with disclosed issue in Grammarly

#42
post #26
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've incorrectly invoked "free speech" here, IMO this isn't a free speech issue. It may be a TOS issue and it does sound like Google are being a bit unreasonable but "free speech" isn't really something Google ever promised to permit on their platforms

Free speech isn’t just something that can be encoded into law, it’s an ideology. A great ideology, imo. That said, with COVID-19 it really became apparent that these platforms have basically become a new public square, putting everyone in an awkward position. You can basically be ousted from the internet by just a couple entities like Facebook or Twitter and have your entire online presence torpedoed. IRL I can just…

[deleted]

Re: YouTube suspended my channel for a video with disclosed issue in Grammarly

#43
post #26
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've incorrectly invoked "free speech" here, IMO this isn't a free speech issue. It may be a TOS issue and it does sound like Google are being a bit unreasonable but "free speech" isn't really something Google ever promised to permit on their platforms

Free speech isn’t just something that can be encoded into law, it’s an ideology. A great ideology, imo. That said, with COVID-19 it really became apparent that these platforms have basically become a new public square, putting everyone in an awkward position. You can basically be ousted from the internet by just a couple entities like Facebook or Twitter and have your entire online presence torpedoed. IRL I can just…

It is refreshing to see someone who diagnoses the issue here correctly.

The root problem people are complaining about is the moderation policies, and the truth is that services like Facebook et al are simply too large to be effectively moderated. Appealing to (US ideas of) free speech would propose that the solution to bad moderation is no moderation whatsoever (speech restrictions must be content-neutral, and moderation by definition is not content-neutral)--and I think most people would rapidly find that no moderation is worse than bad moderation.

The most effective solution is to do what ought to have been done a decade ago and prevent further social media consolidation and consider breaking up the current oligopoly of social media.

Re: YouTube suspended my channel for a video with disclosed issue in Grammarly

#44
post #26
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've incorrectly invoked "free speech" here, IMO this isn't a free speech issue. It may be a TOS issue and it does sound like Google are being a bit unreasonable but "free speech" isn't really something Google ever promised to permit on their platforms

Free speech isn’t just something that can be encoded into law, it’s an ideology. A great ideology, imo. That said, with COVID-19 it really became apparent that these platforms have basically become a new public square, putting everyone in an awkward position. You can basically be ousted from the internet by just a couple entities like Facebook or Twitter and have your entire online presence torpedoed. IRL I can just…

Far to often nowadays I'll hear people defend communications-companies based on the idea that they can censor whatever they want because they're private entities. Mostly though, that idea is only true for them when they feel that their ideological opponents are being censored. Framing companies like google as new public squares is spot on.

And as you say, free speech is an ideology, and in my opinion this should be repeated. It is a culture and a mindset, not just laws, laws being downstreams from culture anyway. If you do not wish for it to apply in all those areas, in my opinion, you do not defend it at all.

Re: YouTube suspended my channel for a video with disclosed issue in Grammarly

#45
post #26
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've incorrectly invoked "free speech" here, IMO this isn't a free speech issue. It may be a TOS issue and it does sound like Google are being a bit unreasonable but "free speech" isn't really something Google ever promised to permit on their platforms

Free speech isn’t just something that can be encoded into law, it’s an ideology. A great ideology, imo. That said, with COVID-19 it really became apparent that these platforms have basically become a new public square, putting everyone in an awkward position. You can basically be ousted from the internet by just a couple entities like Facebook or Twitter and have your entire online presence torpedoed. IRL I can just…

My point is not that "free speech" as a concept is bad (though I do mention in another comment here that it does raise thorny issues). My point is that tying this complaint and "free speech" together is pointless because it directs attention at the wrong thing.

It's the difference between saying "$person got kicked off Google in a violation of their free speech" and "$person got kicked off Google for a totally specious reason that doesn't even violate Google's TOS".

The first one gets immediately shut down because they didn't violate anyone's free speech. If you try to make that argument it's a total non-starter. We can have a big fun discussion about free speech online some time - and that does happen here on HN - but that's not the issue here.

The second one gets at the actual issue - Google have just booted someone even though they didn't apparently violate their TOS. They just arbitrarily did so to appease a paying client.

I hope this is clear.

Re: YouTube suspended my channel for a video with disclosed issue in Grammarly

#46

For those wanting a more honest alternative to Grammarly, LanguageTool[1] is open source and quite good. That said, I am not a power user and my English is just passable, so your mileage may vary. [1] https://languagetool.org

Thank you! If this tool works as good as Grammarly, I will cancel Grammarly subscription.

Re: YouTube suspended my channel for a video with disclosed issue in Grammarly

#47
post #10

1) At the blocking moment I had only 2 videos (just screen records) on my channel which showed the same problem in 2 different Grammarly products 2) these videos were an illustration for my report https://hackerone.com/reports/1282282 , which Grammarly disclosed to the public and does not consider this a problem. 3) these videos were published after Grammarly representatives allowed me to release this information 4)…

Why did you consider tricking the plagiarism detection engine a hack? Seems more like just one of probably several or even dozens of ways to trick the detection engine. While I applaud your work and clearly think the channel suspension is BS, I just don't know that I would have thought "HackerOne" when I discovered the issue.

History is filled with people having an idea, thinking it is not worth pursuing, then watching someone else actually do something with that idea instead, followed by the first person downplaying the idea altogether.

Re: YouTube suspended my channel for a video with disclosed issue in Grammarly

#49
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that not a free speech issue? It is not a legal issue of course, but removal of critical opinions very much qualifies to be a violation of the principle.

Because it's basically never been a thing there. Facebook, Twitter, Google - all of these platforms can and do remove things from their platforms for whatever reason they feel like. There's nothing we can do about it, there is no free speech there and acting indignant like they're eroding some right that you previously had is just pointless. It'd be like complaining that you can't get sushi at McDonalds anymore. You…

Maybe their network effect monopoly means that they are essentially a public service and maybe our basic concepts of free speech should apply to all public services.

I am obviously not talking about our current legal framework, but proposing the idea that the concepts and reason for free speech are meaningful enough to transcend that framework.

Re: YouTube suspended my channel for a video with disclosed issue in Grammarly

#50
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that companies should be allowed to trample all over basic freedoms because they're not the government has to be the most capitalist idea ever.

What basic freedom are these companies trampling? I dislike them as much as the next person, but it's been clear from the start that they operate their little fiefdoms as they see fit and we should be under no illusions that we have no rights there. If we want to fight for a change to the various laws in various countries, then that is a conversation I would be very willing to have. But let's not pretend that any of…

Have you considered why those places become grim places? Does free speech lead to those ideas? That would be quite a out-there conclusion. Rather, those people can only express themselves on forums like that, they are banned on all the other mediums. If free speech was set as a standard on all mediums, those people would express themselves evenly on facebook, youtube and the chans, rather than being penned into fringe spaces like the chans. I think that society should be more clear about the stance on this, either their speech is banned throughout society, and free speech isn't quite what it used to be, or their speech is tolerated throughout society, and free speech remains.
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