Hacker News Reader

Comment by Zak | Hacker News Reader

> I have no idea how thinkspot is going to play out.

I do. The uncensored alternative to a popular platform consistently attracts all the toxic users, making it a place nobody else wants to go. Voat is a relatively recent high-profile example.

View on HN

And who defines who's toxic and who's not? That's right: the censors.

Or in the censorship-free scenario, the other potential users who stay away because most people find hate speech distasteful (for example) and don't want to spend time somewhere they're exposed to it frequently.

Another buzzword used and defined by censors: hate speech.

Unless they themselves are also terrible people, I can't imagine that they don't have some plan to combat this given how obvious of a problem it's been. They mention respect in the header at least...

How do they combat that without being accused, as youtube is here, of censorship? Will they disallow child porn? How about videos advocating violence against specific people? How about obviously libelous videos, like ones claiming, say, Donald Trump is running a child prostitution ring from the basement of a pizza parlor? When they get sued for hosting such content, who is going to pay their legal bills?

How about they disallow all the illegal content you are using as examples? Legal speech should not be censored.

What if I decide that the goal of my business is to create a platform that excludes particular perspectives I disagree with? Why should the government force me to host things I don't want to for free?

No problem. I don't see a problem with exclusionary platforms as long as they aren't using their extreme dominance in multiple areas to maintain a monopoly. I guess what I am looking for is a cap on wealth and power.

Safe harbor laws make it generally legal for a platform to host such content until certain notification provisions are met. There's a specific process for handling child porn in the US, which you can easily find if you want that in your search history.

Advocating violence against specific people is not illegal in the US unless it is likely to produce imminent lawless action. Saying "[racial slur] should be exterminated" doesn't rise to that standard. A live video saying "everybody get your guns and meet me at [location] - we're gonna slaughter those [racial slur]" probably does, but would be subject to safe harbor protections for the platform.

Libel also falls under safe harbor. The platform could eventually be ordered by a court to remove the content, but not until many people have had the opportunity to see it.

What I was trying to paint was a slippery slope of cases -- start with something illegal and move towards things which are grey to legal.

The question is every such business would need to face, including youtube, is where to draw the line. Child porn clearly is illegal and very few people would object to such a ban. But legal/not legal isn't always so clear, eg, what statement constitutes libel and is a given person enough of a public figure that less stringent standards apply.

Say I create a video saying "zcid lives at 123 Merry Lane in Westchester, MA. I'm not advocating violence happen to him, I'm just stating a fact." Is that legal? (Note: not only is the address made up, I double checked that no such address actually exists)

If there was a bright line then I don't think there would be as much controversy around the issue as there is. Pretending there is a simple solution (just ban illegal things and allow legal things) doesn't mean the distinction really is clear.

For anything that isn't illegal -- offer user controls to block unwanted content.

I'm very much in favor of this principle as well. The problem is that legality is often disputed and not even the biggest platforms have the capacity to resolve all those disputes without taking down the content as a first (and often only) step.

it be interesting if the "censors" actually just made them categories you can block. So they categorize it as "Deceptive" or "Toxic Masculinity" or "Pro X" and you can choose to filter or not.

Offer users control over what they want to filter. As long as it's not against the law, allow it on their platform.

That balance can be shifted if enough normal people get evicted, especially if the normal people tend to end up on some particular service, at least to start with.

Probably the best reason Silicon Valley can understand to start thinking twice about whether they want to deplatform all the non-SV-liberals.

(I initially said "conservatives" there, but given the discussion elsewhere on this page for someone who was deplatformed on Vimeo for reviewing animal traps because they said it was 'cruelty to animals', it's going well beyond that.)

> Probably the best reason Silicon Valley can understand to start thinking twice about whether they want to deplatform all the non-SV-liberals.

I suspect that YouTube's long-term strategy is to morph into a hybrid of Netflix and cable, and YouTubers who broadcast opinions outside the range of acceptable opinions to SV and advertisers are just an impedance to that goal. What they will do is boil the frog by making small changes over a period of time that all appear "reasonable" on their own.

Demonetization was one step in boiling the frog, but hard to argue against because it's in the best interest of advertisers and videos weren't being deleted. Then came changes to the algorithm that promotes videos, and now YouTube believes I "want" to watch more cable news and significantly less of Tim Pool or Joe Rogan. I'm surprised they haven't done more shadow-banning, and maybe that will be one of the following steps.

More incremental changes will be made, probably over several years, until all the interesting voices are gone and no one can point to any one event that made everyone except the left-wing and Rated-G channels leave. And the bulk of users probably won't care since they've been transitioned and conditioned to the resurgence of mainstream blather they'll be selling.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com