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Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

jeffgeerling.com

431–440 of 803 posts

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#431
post #59

This is the problem I had with all the content removal around Covid. It never ends with that one topic we may not be unhappy to see removed. From another comment: "Looks like some L-whateverthefuck just got the task to go through YT's backlog and cut down on the mention/promotion of alternative video platforms/self-hosted video serving software." This is exactly what YT did with Covid related content. Here in the UK,…

Yeah because if it wasn’t for COVID YouTube, Facebook, et al would never have removed any content on their platform, unlike what they had been doing all this while… There are so many issues with this. Being able to pick what content they host is fundamental to freedom of speech for private entities. The real problem is twofold. 1. A few platforms hold monopoly positions. Who else can compete with Youtubr? And the rea…

We don’t need the government to throw money at “open source”. That’s silly. Youtube used to be a means to an end. I need to send my friend or a teacher a video but email has a 25mb attachment limit. Need to use youtube or image shack. These days you can just use a text message or whatever platform you’re using to communicate. So youtube has now become a platform for “content creators”. It’s a different beast. To compete with youtube you have to not only make the video stuff work but also break the network effect and figure out how to pay creators.

Further, plenty of VCs don’t give two shits whether your thing is open source or not, they just want ROI. In my experience it’s tech law (or lack thereof) that missed the infusion of “internet maker ethos”. The depth of the average startup legal advice is “here’s a privacy policy and EULA that maximally protect your company at the expense of users”. “Here’s an employment contract template that tries to fuck your employees.” “It’s safest not to share your source code and keep it a trade secret.” “Go have fun.” If you want to see more open source then you need to cultivate that ethos among the people in power running the companies. So often I see the prevailing sentiment even here to be anti-gpl. The gpl may be imperfect, but if you care at all about the proliferation of open-source in a western copyright regime, then pissing on the gpl as “the brainchild of crackpot Stallman” is not the way to get there.

If you want more open source then founders need to come to fundamentally understand that their source code is not what makes their business valuable, it’s the time and effort they put in to provide a service that others aren't providing or is better than the competition. Too many founders are living the delusion that at a software level their engineers are writing novel patentable or trade secret level code that gives them a true algorithmic leg up. 9 times out of ten their shit is just new and fresh and disruptive. I understand that in rare cases people are doing truly novel things with software, but that certainly isn’t the default case.

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah because if it wasn’t for COVID YouTube, Facebook, et al would never have removed any content on their platform, unlike what they had been doing all this while… There are so many issues with this. Being able to pick what content they host is fundamental to freedom of speech for private entities. The real problem is twofold. 1. A few platforms hold monopoly positions. Who else can compete with Youtubr? And the rea…

> Being able to pick what content they host is fundamental to freedom of speech for private entities Interesting position - when somebody posts illegal content on YouTube, they are not liable, it’s not their speech. But when I want to post something they don’t like, suddenly it’s their freedom of speech to remove it. A lot of breakdown in society lately is clearly coming from the fact that some people/companies have…

> Interesting position - when somebody posts illegal content on YouTube, they are not liable, it’s not their speech.

> But when I want to post something they don’t like, suddenly it’s their freedom of speech to remove it.

There is no contradiction there.

Imagine a forum about knitting. Someone, who has it in for the owners of this knitting forum (or perhaps even just a SPAM bot) starts posting illegal, or even just non-knitting content on this forum.

The entire purpose of the forum is to be a community about knitting.

Why is it the legal or moral responsibility of the knitting forum to host SPAM content? And why should they be legally liable for someone else posting content on their platform?

You're equating specific pieces of content with the platform as a whole.

There is no reality where I will accept that if I create something. I spend and risk my money on web hosting. I write the code. I put something out there... that other people get to dictate what content I have to distribute. That's an evil reality to contemplate. I don't want to live in that world. I certainly wont' do business under those terms.

You're effectively trying to give other people an ultimatum in order to extract value from them that you did not earn and have no claim to. You're saying that if they don't host content that they don't want to distribute that they should be legally liable for anything that anyone uploads.

The two don't connect at all. Anyone is, and should be free to create any kind of online service where they pick and choose what is or is not allowed. That shouldn't then subject them to criminal or civil liability because of how others decide to use that product or service.

Imagine if that weird concept were applied to offline things, like kitchen knives. A kitchen knife manufacturer is perfectly within their rights to say "This product is intended to be used for culinary purposes and no other. If we find out that you are using it to do other things, we will stop doing business with you forever." That doesn't then make them liable for people who use their product for other purposes.

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now a counterpoint: we banned government censorship for a good reason(or tried to). Why would a private 3rd party be allowed to do so? especially if government can heavily incentivize the 3rd party(using either stick and/or carrot) to be basically outsourced censorship office? Why do we give power of censorship to private entities that can shape public opinion in a way that brings them the most profit? you can fix fo…

> you can fix former issue by education and culture shift - censorship is just a bandaid. Bandaid is a surprisingly apt similie. It'd be nice to just be healed and healthy, but in the meantime we do have to stop the bleeding.

does bandaid help for broken arm or cancer?

Censorship makes things worse, by entrenching different group - it's just that you like that one.

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#434
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that for some strange reason there is no punishment for malicious/false copyright claims.

There is, technically. It's perjury to file a false DMCA claim. In practice nobody gets pursued for it for several reasons: * Filing a counterclaim means handing the DMCA filer all your personal information (note that the entity filing the DMCA can and often has the ability to get this info redacted on their side of the equation unless you file a counterclaim), so a lot of people simply don't do it because you're han…

Laws that are not enforced are merely suggestions.

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#436
post #59

This is the problem I had with all the content removal around Covid. It never ends with that one topic we may not be unhappy to see removed. From another comment: "Looks like some L-whateverthefuck just got the task to go through YT's backlog and cut down on the mention/promotion of alternative video platforms/self-hosted video serving software." This is exactly what YT did with Covid related content. Here in the UK,…

If you replace "Covid" with "child porn" or "animal cruelty" or "anti-semitism" you'll see how bad this argument is.

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#437

> I purposefully avoid demonstrating any of the tools (with a suffix that rhymes with "car") that are popularly used to circumvent purchasing movie, TV, and other media content What is he talking about here? Im old, I was expecting it to rhyme with “abhorrent”.

See other comments (Servarr, etc.), I was out of the loop as well.

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it doesn't. I reject your slippery slope fallacy. The line must always be drawn somewhere, should YouTube allow neonazi content because any censorship leads to more censorship? Of course not.

[flagged]

> As history has shown

No the hell it didn't. When has policing nazi speech ever led to authoritarianism? It's quite the contrary, let the bigoted invade public space and you end up with a fascist government, like the one currently in the US, who won't give a fuck about your free speech.

Paradox of tolerance [1]:

> If a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance; thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance.

To be clear, are you claiming that the repressive censoring in China started with good intentions and then degenerated, or that free speech absolutism guarantees the perenity of your freedom of speech? Because neither claim is true.

An authoritarian government won't care about what your constitution says. We have to take measures to stop wannabe dictators from getting power, as that is the only protection of your free speech. Why respect the free speech of nazis, who would send you to a death camp the second they're able to?

> If it is not against the law, it should be up.

Well, yeah. The question is what we set the law to be. Siegheiling in public is illegal where I live, and rightfully so if you ask me. There is always a line. The US draws it a CSAM.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#439

> In that case, I was happy to see my appeal granted within an hour of the strike being placed on the channel. (Nevermind the fact the video had been live for over two years at that point, with nary a problem!) Looks like some L-(5|6|whateverthefuck) just got the task to go through YT's backlog and cut down on the mention/promotion of alternative video platforms/self-hosted video serving software. Quick appeal grant…

> I really wonder where the internet goes in this age. Self-hosting? (Whoops!)

If only, but we know that the vast majority of people don't want to self-host, as the majority of people don't even want to make their own coffee.

In the right form (on devices they already own, with internet connections they already own, etc) self-hosting could work though...

Re: Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube

#440
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> which the new administration is rightly cracking down on according to you. I've made no comment on that at all as I don't think it's germain to current the conversation and I have nothing useful to say about it. I'm not sure which country you're actually talking about but your use of the word "administration" makes me think it's somewhere other than here; we form governments in the UK not administrations. Pro-pales…

The paraphrase "fire in a crowded theater" is from an American case so of course I used the American government, Trump, cracking down on Palestine supporters.
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