Comment by bilbo0s | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bilbo0s | Hacker News Reader

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This is actually a common misconception. The goal of the Constitution is to not allow the government to control what you can and cannot do. This is because the Founders, rightly, felt that the government is what we really need protection from.

I have some pretty unpopular opinions because of my support of this Constitutional underpinning. For instance, I think that there is nothing wrong with exclusive country clubs. Or hoisting Confederate/Nazi flags on private property. Or even kneeling during the anthem. Etc.

Our government does not stop any such activities. (And if they did, I would consider it an act of governmental overreach on the level of treason against the Constitution.)

Now from the other side of it, if that exclusive country club does not want me on their grounds, that does not restrict my activities. I don't have any rights that impinge the rights of others. That is, the country club does not have to give up its right to be exclusive, because I want to go eat there.

My rights, shouldn't trump anyone else' rights, but I believe my rights should almost always trump the government's rights. And my honest belief is that that's how the Founders saw things as well.

That's the way I think things should work.

Which works great when you have a decentralized internet with a million separate sections where people with different views congregate with their own community moderation policies.

But when it comes to YouTube or Facebook, no moderation policy is appropriate because there is no single set of community standards for all users. When you have more users than most countries have citizens, you're acting in the role of a government.

Obviously the best solution to this is to get back to a decentralized internet where no one site has more than 5% of the total users, but in the meantime the big players shouldn't be censoring anything. And if that so happens to make them less competitive against smaller sites without so many users they're expected not to restrict anything -- good.

> Obviously the best solution to this is to get back to a decentralized internet where no one site has more than 5% of the total users, but in the meantime the big players shouldn't be censoring anything. And if that so happens to make them less competitive against smaller sites without so many users they're expected not to restrict anything -- good.

i would like to see governments take more of a black/white stance toward "safe harbor" protections. if you need to moderate for the bottom line, you can do it, but this should come with additional liability.

Then nobody would do it.

It isn't bad to have moderated spaces as long as they're actually run by individual communities and not amalgamated general purpose platforms imposing one party's views on everybody else.

As soon as you impose liability you go from moderation as a mechanism to weed out malice to essentially an editorial board that has to pre-approve everything as officially sanctioned by the platform. It excludes an important middle ground.

>But when it comes to YouTube or Facebook, no moderation policy is appropriate because there is no single set of community standards for all users...

There doesn't have to be.

In my view, YouTube and Facebook, are private property. It's like the example of the exclusive country club. I can't argue that the country club is big and has all the best restaurants, so they have to let me in. It's their club.

Or perhaps a more analogous example. What happens a lot up here in Wisconsin is that some families sit on a lot of land. Needless to say, during deer season, there are a lot of people who think they can just go on that land to hunt. But that's not how it works. I don't like it. I'd like to hunt on some of that land. It's all of the best spots being monopolized by one family, but it's THEIR property.

My right to hunt doesn't mean that all of a sudden they don't have a right to their land. It's their land.

Same with YouTube. Go to another video streaming site. Or start your own. But you don't get to tell YouTube what to do with their video streaming site.

Your right to speak freely is not impinged at all by them precluding you from their site for instance. Any more than my right to hunt is impinged by a certain family, that shall remain nameless, not sharing their land.

There is a difference between having a lot of land and having all the land. There is also a difference between recreation and constitutional rights necessary for the successful operation of a democracy.

If someone has a thousand times more land than the average person, but still only 5% of all the land, they have no obligation to share. If someone has more than half of all of it, it's antitrust time and different rules apply.

But no one's constitutional rights are violated by a guy owning land, or indeed, by a guy owning a video service.

You don't like his service, use another. YouTube doesn't own all of the video streaming services around. Not even close.

All your arguments just don't apply to the case you're trying to make. YouTube doesn't own all the video streaming services. And the government doesn't restrict your right to speak freely outside of YouTube.

So where is the necessity to speak on YouTube coming from?

You haven't presented an argument that would, in any way, support abrogating our social compact of private property.

> You don't like his service, use another.

Sure, all you have to do is get all your viewers to switch from Facebook/YouTube to something else. Which you have no real control over, hence the problem.

But that's not a problem with YouTube.

YouTube is not forcing your friends to use YouTube, and neither is the government. Your friends can easily view your video stream on any other service.

So "but my friends won't use Twitch instead", is not really a legitimate reason for us to abandon our belief in private property. Sorry.

> YouTube is not forcing your friends to use YouTube, and neither is the government. Your friends can easily view your video stream on any other service.

If this were true, why isn't it what actually happens? Why is there a single dominant YouTube with majority share rather than dozens of competitors none of which has more than a single digit percentage of the users?

>If this were true, why isn't it what actually happens?...

Presumably because YouTube is better? Or maybe just easier?

I'm not an expert. I couldn't tell you.

But what I can tell you is that it's NOT because the government forces everyone to use YouTube. It's not even because YouTube forces everyone to use YouTube.

If someone starts forcibly preventing you from using, say, Twitch, then give me a call. I'll be the first one to agitate for getting that restriction removed. But if you and every one of your friends are free to use whatever you like, and you're choosing to use YouTube. Then there is no real problem to be solved.

What it sounds to me like you're asking for, is for us to effectively confiscate someone else' private property because you kind of like it. Well I'm sorry, but this is not Cuba. That's just not how things work here. Here in the US, the principle of private property is held sacrosanct. It takes a lot more than what you've put forward for us to go confiscate and nationalize someone's property.

There are plenty of video streaming services. Your issue is that you don't want to use the others. That doesn't make YouTube a problem. The problem is that you don't want to use the others. And that's not a problem that the Constitution or the government should solve for you.

You keep talking about government and property but the issue is antitrust. The government never forced anybody to buy their fuel from Standard Oil but the government still rightfully broke them up.

Because you couldn't buy fuel any other place.

But you CAN view live video streams at numerous other places.

This is the difference that's glaringly obvious to everyone else, but somehow seems to escape you. DailyMotion exists. Twitch exists. Vimeo exists. Facebook video exists, and is actually larger than YouTube. (by megabyte stored.) Twitter video exists. Instagram video exists. Snapchat video exists. The list goes on and on.

You have to have a monopoly, to break up a monopoly. YouTube doesn't have a monopoly. You, presumably, just like their property more than Twitch or Instagram video or whatever. So you want to use YouTube.

Fine. I get that.

But that's a 'YOU' problem, not an 'US' problem.

Microsoft didn't force anyone to use Windows/Office/IE in the 90s. There were other choices. And yet they were hit by anti-monopoly lawsuit. Why? Because they had enough market captured to undermine any serious competition. Google is in a similar position right now.

Also, if you view YouTube as merely a video hosting service, you're completely missing the point. It's the second largest search engine on the web.

Yes, you're right, as long as it's not the government's boot grinding my face into the pavement, then everything is fine.

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