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YouTube and Reddit roll out new restrictions including channel and sub bans

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Re: YouTube and Reddit roll out new restrictions including channel and sub bans

#361

Post by macspoofing »

Haydos585x2 wrote: post #356
macspoofing wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These tech companies were strated by idealistic young men who were initially all about free speech. They just got ground down from years of mainstream press criticism (who love taking potshots at tech companies), the outrage and 'activist' brigade (who now target their campaigns at platforms and advertisers), advertisers who now freak out over individual tweets and even the new tech elite class (e.g. Kara Swisher of…

The web still exists very much as it was. You could set up your own site and host any kind of weapons content you wanted assuming it fits with your local legislation. YouTube has no obligation to host your content. It's annoying that the best/most popular/easiest to use video service won't support you/these weapons channels but I don't think it really impacts on _free speech_. Plus, isn't the free speech crowd usuall…

You missed my point. I'm saying companies like YouTube and Reddit wanted to be those kinds of neutral platforms. They just got beaten down and that's kind of sad.

Re: YouTube and Reddit roll out new restrictions including channel and sub bans

#363

Post by pbhjpbhj »

purple-again wrote: post #353
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Don't take guns away from people to protect the populace because if you try to do it nutters with guns will shoot people"? That sounds like justification for taking people's guns from them.

Every time I see this argument come up people always try to frame it like it will be ‘nutters’ shooting ‘some’ people. You are very wrong, and that is the attitude that will get a lot of innocent people killed. This country is filled with rational, professional, well organized people who will kill before being disarmed.

You don't think trying to murder policemen because your country enacted gun controls to protect schoolchildren would be "nutters trying to shoot people"?

"Oh but I need this 1000 round per minute gun for pest control in my apartment! I'll murder people to protect my right to have it."??

Re: YouTube and Reddit roll out new restrictions including channel and sub bans

#364

Post by yequalsx »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #133
yequalsx wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And those weapons at the time were....muskets, bayonets. They had no vision of the M-16, AK-47, etc. The statement of the 2nd Amendment begins with, "A well regulated militia..." So let's well regulate it. According to Wikipedia: In United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that, "The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent up…

"They had no vision of the M-16, AK-47, etc. " They also had no vision of the Internet. So, obviously, the First Amendment only applies to quill pens and manually-operated printing presses. Right? "The statement of the 2nd Amendment begins with, "A well regulated militia..."" If the First Amendment had read "A well-educated legislature being essential to the governance of a free state, the right of the people to keep…

Well if the first amendment were stated differently than what it is then people would interpret it differently. I fail to see your point on that.

There is much that the writers of the constitution didn’t foresee. I think it’s ridiculous, in many cases, to try to seek what they originally intended. Society is far more complex now than it was then. I mentioned their views for the self described originalists. These people tend to have a very broad interpretation to what the second amendment means but narrowly interpret other parts of the Constitution.

The 2nd amendment has had many cases before the Supreme Court. It wasn’t until 2008 with Heller that it was interpreted to mean an actual right to own guns. As far as I understand the history of the legal interpretation if the second amendment. It appears the modern interpretation is out of sync with what the founders intended.

Re: YouTube and Reddit roll out new restrictions including channel and sub bans

#365

Post by soundwave106 »

humanrebar wrote: post #307
simias wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only a problem because we allowed the web to become centralized around a few large hubs. It makes sense for Youtube to ban this controversial content. It's not new either, websites banning some types of content based on arbitrary rules is as old as the internet. It's not censorship, it's moderating your platform. The problem is that Youtube is so big and almost monopolistic that removing this content from You…

> It's not censorship, it's moderating your platform. On the contrary, it's literally censorship. It's moderation through censorship. > I can't really see how you can complain if they decide that they don't want to deal with your content anymore. I don't find this line of thinking convincing. It's certainly appropriate to criticize moderation policies of platforms. If YouTube decided to censor videos on how to use co…

The problem is, being a corporate entity supported by other corporate entities' advertisements, there is not much you can do about it. The First Amendment does not apply here: with a few exceptions, you can't force a corporation (or any private entity) to promote something contrary to its interests.

This in itself is okay. I certainly can find places on the web that would censor / moderate videos on how to use condoms, pro-#BlackLivesMatters posts, etc. Not my cup of tea, but they have a right to moderate how they want. We all can chose the social webs we want with the amount and style of moderation we look for. (Seeing the places on the web that are "moderation free", I don't think that is a great option unless you really enjoy a lot of spam and nastiness.)

The real problem is really that, for the average person, the social web has become monopolized into a few uber-dominant platforms, most of which (due to their size) are going to pursue a middle-of-the-road-American moderation policy that (due to their size) is muddy, opaque, and arbitrary. If one sticks to a social vision of just the monopoly platforms, there is "no choice".

Personally, I don't use the big social networks much. The more specialized, de-centralized social web of 10 years ago (eg: forums) is still around, and they are less subject to big-corporate moderation messes. A quick Google shows that, for instance on firearms trading, several firearms BST forums still are around and active. In forum world, if a lot of people didn't like the moderation of one place, they simply went to another forum. That's something that's not always possible even with the closest big-social equivalent, subreddits. The web in general originally was a lot more decentralized than today. The centralization of social in today's web feels like quite the mistake.

Re: YouTube and Reddit roll out new restrictions including channel and sub bans

#366

Post by humanrebar »

birksherty wrote: post #174
lettergram wrote: post #120

There are _so_ many ways to make a leathel weapon I can't begin... If I take my car (a Jeep Grand Cherokee) and ram it into a crowd - I'm confident that can take out more people than I can with a gun, knife, probably even bomb. Point being, I understand not facilitating trade, but for the love of god, videos? You really want to push the right over the edge? We need guns. Legally, in the U.S. it's our right - one of t…

General population don't practice ramming car into crowd. Those are not hobbies. So, when mentally ill people want to cause harm they don't use those methods. It does not normally comes to mind. But, shooting is common. It's a hobby. A killing machine is normalized and it becomes a culture. So, those mentally ill men feels completely normal to shoot people when they go crazy. Consider this: ramming car into objects b…

> There are mentally ill people everywhere, not just in USA. This is the point gun lovers don't understand.

I want to understand why we're taking another attempt at the sisyphean task of banning guns when less controversial mental healthcare reform is ripe for discussion. In the case of the Parkland shooter, everyone knew the killer was dangerous, but there was no reasonable mechanism for getting an appropriate combination of judges, law enforcement officers, and mental health care officials empowered to do anything about it.

Current U.S. law says mental health is only a problem after violence already happens. We need other mechanisms. And we need funding and accountability to make sure people are actually cared for and not just locked up in the prison system. Police officers are not psychiatrists and jails are not hospitals.

Re: YouTube and Reddit roll out new restrictions including channel and sub bans

#367

Post by simias »

humanrebar wrote: post #307
simias wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only a problem because we allowed the web to become centralized around a few large hubs. It makes sense for Youtube to ban this controversial content. It's not new either, websites banning some types of content based on arbitrary rules is as old as the internet. It's not censorship, it's moderating your platform. The problem is that Youtube is so big and almost monopolistic that removing this content from You…

> It's not censorship, it's moderating your platform. On the contrary, it's literally censorship. It's moderation through censorship. > I can't really see how you can complain if they decide that they don't want to deal with your content anymore. I don't find this line of thinking convincing. It's certainly appropriate to criticize moderation policies of platforms. If YouTube decided to censor videos on how to use co…

>On the contrary, it's literally censorship. It's moderation through censorship.

I suppose you can say that but I don't think it's a useful definition. Censorship is a strong word, if we overuse it it's going to lose its meaning. Censorship generally has the intent of removing something from society at large because the elites deem it dangerous. Youtube isn't calling for the removal of gun content from the internet, they're just policing their platform. I mean, if what they're doing is censorship then what isn't? HN will ban/flag/delete many off-topic/controversial posts on sight, is that censorship? If your Dungeon and Dragon forum bans you because you posted porn, are they censoring you?

I'm not saying that Youtube couldn't or shouldn't be criticized for their move, I was specifically replying to the parent's claim that there was a change of mentality on the internet at large. Moderation or "censorship" as you like to call it has always existed everywhere, online and off. The real problem here is that Youtube wields a disproportionate amount of power by virtue of being quasi-monopolistic.

If you expect advertising-powered private platforms that host your content pro-bono to suddenly start fighting for your ideals against what they feel is their own economic interest I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. Especially if said platform has no serious competitors and knows a huge amount of its users is effectively "captive" audience.

Re: YouTube and Reddit roll out new restrictions including channel and sub bans

#368

Post by yequalsx »

dragonwriter wrote: post #140
yequalsx wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And those weapons at the time were....muskets, bayonets. They had no vision of the M-16, AK-47, etc. The statement of the 2nd Amendment begins with, "A well regulated militia..." So let's well regulate it. According to Wikipedia: In United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that, "The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent up…

The Second Amendment did not limit the type of arms it applied to, and the reason that it's preamble referred to the dependency of the security of a free state on a well-regulated militia was because it was in the context of the best universal opinion at the time that large standing professional armed forces for either internal security or international conflict were a mechanism of tyranny , and that having a free co…

According to the quote I have of the Wikipedia article there are Supreme Court cases that say it does limit the type of arms.

Re: YouTube and Reddit roll out new restrictions including channel and sub bans

#369

Post by this_user »

slivym wrote: post #326
gtlondon wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We seem to be moving from an era when internet censorship was considered bad, to one where "It's OK, we're just censoring this". I have no sympathy towards gun use - but the principle of large monopolies applying their own morals to censor content seems wrong.

I disagree with this, I think it's fine for large web companies to apply their own morals. The problem I have is that they're having their cake and eating it. To me there are two models: - You are a platform, you don't moderate content (although you do respond to law enforcement), you are not responsible for the content on your site. - You are a media company, you do moderate content, you are responsible for the cont…

The real reason for these new rules are the advertisers. The more objectionable content you have on your platform, the more difficult it becomes to attract them. Take 4chan as an example: For years they were struggling to find anyone who would want to advertise there, and that is not entirely surprising.

Reddit is apparently also preparing an IPO in the foreseeable future. It would appear they are attempting to make the site more palatable for institutional investors by cleaning up.

Re: YouTube and Reddit roll out new restrictions including channel and sub bans

#370

Post by wu-ikkyu »

Waterluvian wrote: post #186

This continues to distract from the problem: systemic issues in American culture and society that perpetually re-primes a powder keg of fear and divisiveness. That sounds wordy but I just don't have the skill to articulate my feelings. There's just... something fundamentally wrong with how everything can feel so zero-sum.

Censoring the symptoms of these systemic issues is like putting a bandaid on an infected boil. It may not look as bad upon first glance, but it's only going to fester and get worse.
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