Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube • Hacker News Board

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

#521

Post by gspencley » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 2:57 PM UTC

dcow wrote: post #500

gspencley wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 n…

This isn’t really what’s being argued. We’re not talking about a knitting forum. We’re talking about content neutral hosting platforms. There is a distinction in the law. If you want to not be liable for the content posted to your platform then you may not moderate or censor it seems like a fair compromise to me. Either you are knitting forum carefully cultivating your content and thus liable for what people see ther…

> We’re talking about content neutral hosting platforms.

There is no such thing as a "content neutral hosting platform." I know that people like to talk about social media services in the same umbrella as the concept of "common carrier", which is reserved for things like mail service and telecommunications infrastructure. And that might be what you're conflating here. If you're not, then please point me to the law, in any country even, where "content neutral hosting platform" is a legal term defined.

> If you want to not be liable for the content posted to your platform then you may not moderate or censor it seems like a fair compromise to me.

Compensation for what? The "platform" built something themselves. They made it. They are offering it on the market. If anyone is due compensation, it is them. No matter how much you don't like them. You didn't build it. You could have, maybe. But you didn't. I bet you didn't even try. But they did. And they succeeded at it. So where does anyone get off demanding "compensation" from them just for bringing something useful valuable into existence?

That is a pretty messed up way of looking at things IMO. It is the mindset of a thief.

> Either you are knitting forum carefully cultivating your content and thus liable for what people see there,

Thank you for conceding my argument and shining a spotlight on how ridiculous this is. You agree that according to your world view, the knitting forum should be liable for the content others post on it just because they are enforcing that things stay on topic. Even just for removing SPAM bot posts this would expose them to this liability.

> Right now we let people platforms be whichever favors their present goal or narrative without considering the impact such duplicity has on the public users.

The beautiful thing about freedom is that along as people don't infringe upon the rights of others, they don't need your permission to just go build things and exist.

The YouTube creators didn't have to ask you to "allow" them to build something useful and valuable. They just went and did it. And that's how it should be.

I get that certain creators run into trouble with the TOS. Hell, I've tried to create an Instagram account on several occasions and it gets suspended before I can even use it. And when I appeal or try to ask "why?" I never get answers. It's frustrating.

But the difference between you and me, is I don't think that people who build and create things and bring valuable shit into existence owe me something just by virtue of their existence.

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

#522

Post by AlexandrB » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 2:59 PM UTC

catlifeonmars wrote: post #376

shakna wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also suppress videos on the correct manufacturing process for plastic explosives. Not because doing it safely is a bad idea, but because proliferating bomb making materials is. Covid disinformation got people killed. It will continue to get people killed, especially with a proponent of it leading the US health service. Things likely to lead to death, are likely things you do not want on your platform.

I think an administration that was happy to spread disinformation and cast doubt on vaccination had an outsized impact. YT ain’t the problem.

> cast doubt on vaccination

This seems like a bizarre retcon. No only did Trump fund "Operation Warp Speed" but he still (occasionally) expresses pride at funding the vaccine research. This is not "casting doubt on vaccination". I think the US right was generally doubtful of vaccination, but I'm fuzzy about whether this started before or after the vaccine mandates. Certainly I remember it being more of a phenomenon once Biden took office - perhaps as knee jerk opposition to a Democrat president.

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

#523

Post by kwar13 » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 3:01 PM UTC

thisislife2 wrote: post #101

kwar13 wrote: post #55

Wow. Jeff is one of my favorite creators. Google has come a long way from "don't be evil"...

That's not meant to apply to Google, it's actually a warning for its users - "Do No Evil (we are watching you)".

And how is teaching installing a self hosted service "evil"?

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

#524

Post by shakna » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 3:01 PM UTC

_heimdall wrote: post #363

shakna wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also suppress videos on the correct manufacturing process for plastic explosives. Not because doing it safely is a bad idea, but because proliferating bomb making materials is. Covid disinformation got people killed. It will continue to get people killed, especially with a proponent of it leading the US health service. Things likely to lead to death, are likely things you do not want on your platform.

> Covid disinformation got people killed. You know this claim can never be substantiated right? You will never be able to show causation like that and we would never allow some controlled trial to see whether giving people whatever information you deem as misinformation actually increases the death rate relative to a control group.

Apart from all the accidental suicides from overdosing on alcohol, or taking cleaning products, or... There were a lot of news articles about this, at the time. They got to interview dying people, who admitted their mistakes.

Which is sorta why there actually is studies done on the impact of the misinformation [0].

> Following this misinformation, approximately 800 people have died, whereas 5,876 have been hospitalized and 60 have developed complete blindness after drinking methanol as a cure of coronavirus.34–37 Similar rumors have been the reported cause of 30 deaths in Turkey.38 Likewise, in Qatar, two healthy South Asian men ingested either surface disinfectant or alcohol-based hand sanitizer after exposures to COVID-19 patients.39 In India, 12 people, including five children, became sick after drinking liquor made from toxic seed Datura (ummetta plant in local parlance) as a cure to coronavirus disease.40 The victims reportedly watched a video on social media that Datura seeds give immunity against COVID-19.40

[0] https://www.ajtmh.org/view/journals/tpmd/103/4/article-p1621...

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

#525

Post by Hikikomori » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 3:02 PM UTC

atemerev wrote: post #185

Hikikomori wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the part we have a problem with. It's that there was already people living there before and now they're using this supposed right to exist to wipe out the local population. Ironically they don't believe that Palestine has the right to exist. Colonialism has always been bad, Israel is clearly no different.

"They" are me, I am a religious Zionist Jew. I believe that Palestine has the right to exist, just like Israel. Israel is the land of our ancestors, which was ruined by Romans and then settled through Arab conquests (Arabian colonialism was a thing). This is fine, this was a long time ago. We were there even longer, but it is not the time to compare. If Palestinians consider themselves a nation, they are a nation, ju…

As Zionists go I think you only disagree on how quickly and blatantly you should perform the genocide.

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

#526

Post by thrawa8387336 » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 3:03 PM UTC

camgunz wrote: post #436

w14 wrote: 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.

Those 3 are not even comparable to each other...

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

#527

Post by Workaccount2 » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 3:05 PM UTC

arrosenberg wrote: post #512

Bender wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like Netflix and Amazon Videos? People can't share their content on Netflix and Amazon without becoming a professional movie producer.

Their point is that people do pay for these services and they have still introduced ads to squeeze out more revenue. Ergo, paying for a service guarantees nothing.

What you are describing is called "ad-subsidized", you pay less than the full cost and get ads to cover the difference.

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

#528

Post by shakna » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 3:05 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #378

shakna wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its the problem of those they affect. "Infectious" is not self-contained to a singular individual. Its also a problem for the platform - who is now party to it happening. YouTube allowing bad medical advice will hurt YouTube. Their safest option, is to disallow it.

> Its the problem of those they affect. "Infectious" is not self-contained to a singular individual. The stats I've seen suggest the vast majority of people have caught COVID between 2019 and now and pretty much all the preventative measures that worked reliably were things that either individuals could do themselves or that required targeting travellers specifically. It isn't obvious that people trusting YouTube abo…

Even if we assume that's true (everything I've seen says it isn't), then a sole individual always affects others. Humans do not exist as lone monks in the hills, generally speaking. When they are ill, it affects their workplaces, it affects their families, it affects their friends. When they die, it's worse - it affects all of those, but also has tail effects on the health industry.

Nothing you do, ever, is in isolation. So nothing you do, ever, will not affect someone else. Pretending that everyone is a sole unit, to excuse behaviour, has never made sense.

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

#529

Post by Phui3ferubus » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 3:06 PM UTC

PaulKeeble wrote: post #356

nicce wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There will be a time when computing is so cheap that ads will be injected to the stream in such a way that it is impossible to remove them without real-time AI detector that indentifies the parts where ads are.

The problem Youtube has is that it wants to make sure you can't skip the ad, so it has to signal in some way to its front end and app that this segment is an ad. That mechanism can and will be used to skip it with other clients. They can put the ads in band of the video stream like twitch does but if they are genuinely indistinguishable then they are also fast forward and skippable.

TYT has to mark the ad segment, they are required by law to do it. And no matter how they try to obfuscate it, their own webpage must be able to extract that info, and present it to user. So it is pointless to integrate ads if you are going to provide the timestamps to skip.

Just look how Facebook does it, there is no "Sponsored post" anywhere in HTML, the literally place entire alphabet multiple times, each letter in separate span/paragraph tag, and then use CSS to actually style that into a message of their choice. All of that work just to prevent simple adblocking rules to work.

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

#530

Post by shakna » Fri, Jun 06, 2025, 3:07 PM UTC

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #389

shakna wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And none of that changes YouTube's liability - caused by misinformation and death. A company can generally be relied upon to act to reduce their liability in most cases. That involves not pissing off their federal regulatory bodies. Sweden was not caught up in the early suppression of misinformation. Things changed after a certain tacolike individual called Google's CEO into a private meeting. And expecting them to i…

>And none of that changes YouTube's liability - caused by misinformation and death. Doesn’t section 230 protect them from the consequences of words users transmit through their platform.

Only if they "take reasonable steps" to "delete or prevent access" to that content. That is, they filter or suppress the information. Which is precisely the point of this thread. They did.