Comment by mhkool | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mhkool | Hacker News Reader

The platforms decide and the question is if that is good. If the platforms have a monopoly, and silence parties at will, it is bad for democracy.

I like to see a new law that regulates platforms with major influence. I have seen that Youtube took away the channel of Mika Adams, aka the Health Ranger, taken down. Youtube not responding to any attempt of conversation. Youtube putting the channel 3 weeks later back but with 50% of the followers "removed". We can only guess what Youtube was thinking but there should be a law against abusing the platform rules to ban somebody, even if that person did not break any platform rule. Removing a channel from Youtube has such a deep impact that one must be able, within reason, to be able to resolve issues. I am not a big fan of Alex Jones and think that most of the times he talks BS and some of the times he is probably right. I see no good reason to ban him.

> "I like to see a new law that regulates platforms with major influence."

Giving the government the power to regulate speech on privately owned media is very dangerous, and is precisely what the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of speech and freedom of the press were designed to prevent.

If the government can regulate who YouTube or Facebook or Twitter must allow to post on their sites, what's to stop them from telling the New York Times what they have to print on their front page? (The Times also fits your description of a platform with major influence. Should they be required to publish an article that I wrote? Or that the President wrote?)

I'm much more scared of the government exercising control over speech than corporations, since the government has much more power (they can put people in prison, etc.).

>I like to see a new law that regulates platforms with major influence.

What counts as "major influence?" Major relative to what, and what sort of influence?

Would Hacker News have enough of an influence on SV culture to warrant government intervention?

>Removing a channel from Youtube has such a deep impact that one must be able, within reason, to be able to resolve issues.

I agree, but I feel like that's more of a market issue than one that requires regulation. Google's 'monopoly' isn't being enforced by the government, so people can leave to other platforms if they're unsatisfied with Google's arbitrary and opaque methods... and they are.

If enough people like Alex Jones need a platform, someone will provide it, either out of ideological solidarity or capitalist opportunity. And I think that's a good enough solution.

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