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YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

nytimes.com

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Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#581

Post by marcell »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #539
karaterobot wrote: post #243

> “If a creator’s off-platform behavior harms our users, employees or ecosystem, we take action to protect the community,” the spokeswoman said. Putting aside the validity of the accusations—let's say he did everything he's accused of, for the sake of argument—is Youtube alleging that he assaulted Youtube employees, app developers who use the Youtube ecosystem, or Youtube users? I assume the latter. But the thing is,…

What kind of weird lawyerly nitpicking is this. YouTube does not want to be associated with an alleged rapist. Is that so hard to understand.

It’s not lawyerly nitpicking. The US has a tradition in rule of law, and it’s a social convention that applies broadly.

YouTube, in their statement, is pretending they have an objective standard that is fairly applied to everyone. In reality, there is no uniform standard. They ban people when business interests dictate it.

So their policy reads as “we have an objective standard,” but reality is “we ban when we feel like it.”

YouTube could fix this contradiction by changing their policy to something like “we will ban creators for any reason, at our discretion.”

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#582

Post by pixl97 »

jvickers wrote: post #421
perfect-blue wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting thought experiment, but ultimately boils down to one point. YT gets to do whatever they want. The terms of service are designed so they can be selective in their enforcement. Is it bad policy? Yes. Does it allow for flexibility in a world that is never black and white? Also yes. Honestly, if there was a better solution, what would it be? The questions are endless once you start down this rabbit ho…

No, in my view Youtube can not do whatever they like with this kind of thing, at least as far as my potential outrage is concerned. If Youtube gives a false reason (to me as well as others) about the reason for demonetising someone then I have a problem with that. When some content is banned from Youtube, it's got positives and negatives. Like when Alex Jones was banned, I was annoyed that I could no longer watch Ale…

So what your saying is you want it so I can come to your house/business and talk shit and you have no recourse of kicking the person out, or severing a contract with them?

If you want to deal with Youtube, break them in a way that promotes competition instead of having the largest ad company also owning the largest video company. Trying to otherwise restrict their rights has many other bad outcomes for all businesses and individuals.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#583

Post by rcarr »

judge2020 wrote: post #543
rcarr wrote: post #529

The amount of comments on this that are getting flagged whilst meeting the guidelines is making me question the state of HN as a platform for rational good faith debate. Has tribalism really took over here too?

Have some examples? The few I see are things like victim-blaming (37576676 37576735) or just "innocent until proven guilty" which adds absolutely nothing to the conversation.

Well for one, I don't see how "innocent until proven guilty" posts should be flagged. Maybe they don't add much to the conversation, but people should be allowed to express such a simple sentiment without being flagged to death, just ignore them and move on. Flagging is equivalent to silencing someone, and I don't think we should be doing that apart from cases of obvious hate speech such as racism.

Personally, I found the 37576735 comment interesting because I hadn't thought of this in the context of statue of limitations, even if it does come across a little victim blaming. And the victim blaming was called out and addressed by other comments. In general I think this is the better approach to flagging - state what you disagree and try to change minds rather than just flagging it outright.

This seems like a reasonable statement to make if the author disagrees with the censorship:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37576437

And this is my comment that got flagged:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37577525

By flagging my comment I have no idea what people dislike about it - I presume it's the anti mainstream media stance but I don't know. I'm open to having my mind changed and my thoughts challenged but that can't happen if people can no longer engage with my comment because it's flagged. Personally, I thought it added context, particularly for non-British readers, about the UK media, laws and cultural landscape and how it plays into all of this.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#584

Post by royroyroys »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #539
karaterobot wrote: post #243

> “If a creator’s off-platform behavior harms our users, employees or ecosystem, we take action to protect the community,” the spokeswoman said. Putting aside the validity of the accusations—let's say he did everything he's accused of, for the sake of argument—is Youtube alleging that he assaulted Youtube employees, app developers who use the Youtube ecosystem, or Youtube users? I assume the latter. But the thing is,…

What kind of weird lawyerly nitpicking is this. YouTube does not want to be associated with an alleged rapist. Is that so hard to understand.

Are they not still associated with an alleged rapist by hosting and monetising his content, but not sharing the profits with the content creator? They should just give him notice to close his account if that is the case and close his account.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#585

Post by epgui »

turquoisevar wrote: post #545
epgui wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "innocent until proven guilty" only applies in a court of law No, it doesn't "only" apply in a court of law. I choose to apply it in my own psyche (which breaks the "only"), and I choose to do so because I understand the reasons why a court of law applies the principle. Just because the whole village is wielding pitchforks doesn't mean it's rational for you to also do the same.

They used a turn of phrase of which the full meaning was implied. That meaning being “the concept of innocent until proven guilty is only universally applicable in a court of law”. So unless your psyche has any force beyond itself or it happens to be a court of law, your gotcha lacks any meaningful effect. Beyond you grandstanding that is.

- It’s not meant to be a “gotcha”

- It’s not about enforcing anything on anyone, I think you’re missing the point

- Thank you for your contribution

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#586

Post by phpisthebest »

threeseed wrote: post #524
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You do not get to control Google’s computers. Then why does Google control my phone? Can't have it both ways

> why does Google control my phone Because you chose to buy that phone. Plenty of phones without their software.

Yes I can instead choose to buy an Apple.... much worse

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#587

Post by pixl97 »

marcell wrote: post #581
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of weird lawyerly nitpicking is this. YouTube does not want to be associated with an alleged rapist. Is that so hard to understand.

It’s not lawyerly nitpicking. The US has a tradition in rule of law, and it’s a social convention that applies broadly. YouTube, in their statement, is pretending they have an objective standard that is fairly applied to everyone. In reality, there is no uniform standard. They ban people when business interests dictate it. So their policy reads as “we have an objective standard,” but reality is “we ban when we feel l…

>The US has a tradition in rule of law, and it’s a social convention that applies broadly.

???

You are conflating all the different legal systems of the US. US criminal law is the one of beyond reasonable doubt. US civil law on the other hand is an entire other bag of worms and 'potential' contractual obligations. On top of that private property has a pretty massive leeway in reasons you can ban people from said properties. There is no contradiction here. "Fuck you, your tie sucks" is a completely valid reason to remove you from their private property. Said person being a dick to others is what is typically considered an exceptionally valid reason to remove them from the property.

If we want to follow a broad social convention, then it is be nice to others, how about that for a start?

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#588

Post by johnnyworker »

turquoisevar wrote: post #545
epgui wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "innocent until proven guilty" only applies in a court of law No, it doesn't "only" apply in a court of law. I choose to apply it in my own psyche (which breaks the "only"), and I choose to do so because I understand the reasons why a court of law applies the principle. Just because the whole village is wielding pitchforks doesn't mean it's rational for you to also do the same.

They used a turn of phrase of which the full meaning was implied. That meaning being “the concept of innocent until proven guilty is only universally applicable in a court of law”. So unless your psyche has any force beyond itself or it happens to be a court of law, your gotcha lacks any meaningful effect. Beyond you grandstanding that is.

They used it in the context of the question whether "we, the internet" have done away with it. So clearly it never referred to the legal system, and diverting to that is just kicking up sand to not let the people who are interested discussing the question as it was asked discuss it in peace.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#589

Post by cameldrv »

gdulli wrote: post #445
cameldrv wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is tons of precedent for something like this. It's called Common Carrier law. This applies to phone networks, railroads, airlines, pipelines, electric, water, sewer, and trash utilities, internet service providers, etc. The basic idea is that if a carrier is at least a quasi-monopoly, they have to provide service to anyone unless they have a "good reason." Of course what these reasons might be will vary dependi…

If Google was compelled to keep arbitrary content monetized, the first thing they'd do is improve the tooling for advertisers to opt out of objectionable content in a more automated way. You're just pushing the problem to a different level. It's easy to make a case that Google has to carry content, but forcing advertisers to spend money sponsoring it?

Yes but I'm pushing the problem to a level where there is competition. There are many advertisers. If even a large group of advertisers doesn't want to advertise on Russell Brand's videos, fine. Probably he would get significantly lower ad rates than other more widely acceptable content, but that's between him and the advertisers -- there's no middleman that refuses to let him make any money at all.

Frankly, I think supporting content through advertising stinks, but that's another matter.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#590

Post by majormajor »

ncallaway wrote: post #571
FormerBandmate wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube is a massive platform and inherently has power. People used the exact same argument for Twitter but I don’t think you can deny that arbitrary management choices made a huge difference in how it worked, which had substantial impacts that a private company shouldn’t have.

I continue to assert that the solution to this is not to regulate how an individual private company decides who to associate with (which is a core First Amendment right), but rather to pass strong anti-trust laws to prevent any one company from individually having enough power over society. YouTube should be free to decide who can be on its platform however it sees fit. However, YouTube shouldn’t hold such power over…

Or just aggressively tax large/high-revenue companies.

And speaking of taxing! I'm not sure why highly-successful companies draw so many more "they have too much power" criticisms than highly-successful individuals who often have power over media companies and spend a lot on lobbying politicians.

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