Agreed, there is a fine line and it should not be decided by companies.
I just don't see how you one can say "company A has no right to decide what appears on company A's servers" without following up with some watertight legal or moral reason why this should not be the case. Of course they should be able to.
That's because left wing media does not, in fact, exist. The only types of media that actually exist are right wing media and media that's not left enough. That's a fuzzy distinction to be sure, but it makes the bias clear enough at least.
I think you and I disagree significantly on this foundational fact to the point where there's no use debating downstream arguments.
I see the media fully supporting Clinton while bashing Trump. That's left wing bias in my mind (regardless of my support of either candidate). Once you include online media, the left leaning bias is even more significant. Twitter in particular (I know they're not discussed in the OP) have been very aggressive about stamping out right wing speech.
Anyone who thinks Clinton is left wing is just totally out of touch with reality.
"This company is legally allowed to deny random user #24232's attempts to get us to stream video #198284, but I don't agree with that; I think they should be allowed to upload it". Well, so what? Who cares?
If you felt that strongly about it - not just "i'm going to type a really angry comment about it" strongly but "actually do something about it" strongly then you'd be hosting content yourself. Or at the very least trying to show why it's so important that this particular company should be hosting it. Or you could find another company which would host it and tell people they should be using that site instead. A lot of the complaints I read about freedom and censorship just seems like empty posturing about what companies should or shouldn't do. It's just lazy. These companies only do it at all to make money. Your statements about whether a company should or shouldn't host something would be better phrased as "this company should be hosting this video because it will make them more money". Of course, with a lot of this content the opposite is likely true; complaints from advertisers, users etc will cost them more money (and hassle) than any money they'd make from the average video. It's time to stop thinking of facebook, youtube etc as being a social media version of the First Amendment and more like a conservative pension fund.
Or one could exploit the technicals of such platforms and while increasing the costs for such platforms in engaging in such behavior. Like exploiting oauth keys, public wifi networks, shoddy encryption, etc, to upload/modify content on behalf of "acceptable" users/accounts or engage in a number of interactions on such platforms in ways one wants to without the explicit permission that is not protected or enforced by such technical implementations. There's a lot of creativity to be had beyond self hosting.
The companies just want to make a profit, sure, but not every "user" has to care about that just as the companies don't give shit about the users freedoms. Plenty of jurisdictions where IP addrs are assigned in the world that would turn a blind eye to such actors who are acting agaisnt such platforms.
I do care. Internet censorship has real world consequences. Maybe censoring ISIS stuff is good, but what if they start filtering other political content? What if that leads to fewer followers of that idea, or pushes it out of discussion entirely?
I think it's unethical and worth protesting. I think Google especially has more responsibility than a random website. Given their overwhelming market share to the point they are nearly a monopoly in some areas. And I think this sets a terrible precedent, that tech companies will work with the government to censor political speech.
I think protesting it has value. People working at Google might read this and change their mind. Or at least be aware lots of people disapprove. And it might convince future website owners or startup founders to care more about free speech issues. I certainly plan to do so on future websites I create.
But if nothing else it's just a discussion. I don't get the your idea that every discussion needs to have immediate actionable value. Most things on hacker news are not actionable. It's just interesting or fun to discuss.
Lastly I highly doubt YouTube is doing this for money. They need to hire dozens of people to review and moderate this stuff. And they gain nothing from it. They are acting under government and ideological pressure.
And they were only doing that when what they were doing was going along with the cultural democratic zeitgeist at the time.
If they were more open about "Hey, we're providing you a free service, we can shut you down if you don't conform to public opinion" that's fine also. But you can't have it both ways.
Either you support the free expression of unpopular opinions, or you reserve the right to censor anything at all you find objectionable. You can't say "I support expressing opinions, as long as I approve of them, and I support freedom!"
Yeah, they can say that, but reality doesn't have to conform to such when the chickens come home to roost :P
The overthrown governments probably thought that the opinions expressed on Twitter and Facebook were highly extremist, and should be shut down.
The only reason they weren't (And they even built an SMS bridge for Twitter) is because their biggest markets supported the insurrection. And if that were made a bit more obvious, it would be far more honest and interesting.
What companies have time for such quaint notions of integrity these days? They're too busy trying to extract profit! :P
>…And if that were made a bit more obvious, it would be far more honest and interesting.
I think that a lot of people in the western world choose to willingly turn a blind eye to such, and its a shame, because it will eventually be at their own peril if we look to history as any example.
That's why articles like these are being written—it's the companies letting everyone know that they're changing their policies. They used to be more laissez-faire, didn't like the results, and now are starting to rethink their decisions. I imagine in a few months' time they'll have figured out how they want it to go, and will publish updated guidelines.
Same with free speech: it is possible only inside a framework, with some higher order rules and agreement. One of them could be that you are allowed to tell others your opinions only if you would agree to carry them publicly on your back when waking your kids in the streets. This would certainly moderate a lot. Or, closer to the topic, I should be allowed to upload a video only if I'd be ok with my kid knowing I uploaded this video when they get to be my age.
Have you read Godel, Escher, Bach?
You posit that tolerance is good and intolerance is bad. And you don't give good definitions for either word. That's literally begging the question.
The statement "we all know how to..." is problematic. Do we buy into the "we all" that comprises the west, or the "we all" that is east asia (which, btw is far more repressive. See the great firewall of China)?
You can absolutely run a company that allows users to communicate in interesting ways, and say you support freedom but also refuse to show content you don't want to.
Beheadings. Child Pornography. Instructions for making chemical weapons. Snuff films. Animal abuse. Recruiting extremists to kill innocent people from your country.
I'm really tired of idealists who refuse to accept pragmatism. If you would really run a video site that willingly hosts those things, then I have no respect for you. At all.
You can say you support free speech and ban free speech you don’t like. What?
Actually most countries that have free speech do actually ban certain things that fall under hate speech laws.
Some of the things in the parent comment aren't hate speech. However I think it's certainly possible for a company or government to decide between what should be allowed or not allowed, and to do that in a way that isn't morally objectionable.
Your argument seems to be something along the lines that companies and governments cannot possibly censor free speech in a morally acceptable way. It's a slippery slope argument: "ban ISIS and you'll eventually ban Trump supporters" (that seems to be jimmywanger's argument).
If we had well defined guidelines, such as pedophilia defined as nude people under 18 years old, that would be one thing. Although ridiculous (see all the teenagers who are put on registries for sending naked pictures to each other), at least it can't be twisted to make something else illegal.
Go ahead, define "hate speech". And if the laws already ban hate speech, why wouldn't we just punish the people who violate laws instead of censoring them?
And since hate speech laws vary from society to society, do we have to create a separate site for each country, where the allowable videos shown differ, and the comments are pruned differently?
The same moral authority would be at work in both cases, so there's no fallacy in play, IMHO. It's a very valid concern.
(2) I have a forum.
(3) I do not need to allow you to speak your awful, disgusting crap in my forum.
Is there a part of this that's complicated?
(4) I will pretend to champion free speech and reap the good publicity, while simultaneously not allowing you to speak things I think are awful and disgusting.
That's the last point. If you're running a SF Giants' forum, you have the right to ban LA Dodgers' fans. However, you should not say that you're a bastion of freedom and upholding free speech at the same time you're doing it.
(6) Still claim you're a bastion of free speech.
and -lately-
(7) Monetize other's expressions of correct free speech.
Ironically people actually seem to think this is worth doing. Compare youtube comments and people's opinions of them with, say reddit or wikipedia, both of which boast political moderators.
No. As a citizen, I have rights. Corporations do not.
I'm always amazed at this attitude that hates government power while willfully turning a blind eye to corporate power. The usual argument about governments having a monopoly on the use of force merely demonstrates the naiveté of the speaker. Corporations regularly use no only physical force but are masters at economic manipulation. With the amount of corruption and regulatory capture that now thrives in government, corporate and government power are not easily separated.
When corporations become large enough that it becomes impossible to avoid, they de facto become another layer of government. Except this layer doesn't even pretend to be democratic. With their claims that profit motive trumps all else, corporations are a layer of government that is explicitly working against the interest of the general population.
If corporations want to become so large that they are acting with the powers that are normally reserved for governments - such as being the arbiter of free speech - then they need to take on the responsibilities of acting in the public interest and protecting basic rights.
If they choose instead to act without public buy-in, then this is going to end badly. Populism is on the rise and people are starting to revolt against what they perceive are the powers that have ignored their needs for decades.
Nevertheless, you are correct that corporations and self-organizing groups have a large amount of power to manipulate citizens and voters. The blogger Mencius Moldbug wrote about this back in 2009 (https://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.in/2009/01/gentle-...) - I've been rereading his blog on kindle whenever I have an 18 hour flight and it's quite prescient. (Just longwinded, why I reserve it for flights.)
There is also significant evidence that FB and Twitter are using this power.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/429656/twitter-milo-yi... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/09/facebook-...
In much the same way, Gawker's power was unchecked and unbalanced until Thiel and Hogan stepped in.
I don't know what the solution is or what solutions would be morally acceptable, but there definitely is a problem. The best I can come up with is reducing democracy so as to make manipulating the public a less valuable proposition.
The printing press by itself is not engaged in commerce. I think the logical extension would be that if you're selling printing services, you can't discriminate based on message. But you can print whatever you choose on your own time.
I don't think it is. It's basically a covered up government imposed censorship.