Comment by davesmith1983 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by davesmith1983 | Hacker News Reader

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I suspect many people were saying the same about the printing press when that was invented. "If anyone can print something quickly, how can will we stop the peasants from printing their own books".

Many would could say same about open source software, people developing their own technology. They are doing their own thing, there is a lot of rubbish code (noise) to good open source code (signal). Maybe a large company like Microsoft or IBM take control of it and be the guardians of the code.

Youtube has everything from make up tutorials, instructions on how to do fix your laptop, cook a meal, there are people making their own reviews of retro computer hardware. Other people are releasing their own music, tutorials on how to code, teachers helping people with their maths homework. Almost all of this would never see the light of day on regular television. Yet somehow you have concentrated on the negative elements.

Claiming it doesn't scale because you don't like some of the content on there is ridiculous and you are just projecting your personal politics on everyone else. If you don't like the content you can just not watch it. I don't like watching network television because it is awful, I like seeing people debate and debunk things like conspiracy theories because it is fun.

I really wish people like yourself would just be honest and just come out to say that you think that certain people shouldn't be allowed to speak because you think you are better than them.

Personally honestly I don't have a problem with people saying what they want to say even if I disagree with it. My problem is that some people suddenly decided that platforms like Youtube are suddenly required to host any and all content when those platforms have always been privately owned and always had various rules which were subject to change.

People have suddenly decided that youtube is somehow quasi public property and seem to feel if they keep repeating that over and over then it will magically come true, it isn't and that's my issue.

This is another argument I hear often. Firstly I don't think many people aren't making that argument at all. People are complaining about Youtube's policies and how they deal with speech on their platform.

Youtube don't appear to apply their policies in an even handed manner. I think most people would be fine if Youtube if their enforcement was strict, IF it was fair.

However enforcement of TOS seems to be arbitrary and seems to be either politically motivated, incoherent or a knee jerk reaction to whatever the current moral panic at the time is. This isn't helped by the fact that any of the appeal mechanisms on the site seem to work on random chance principles.

As for whether Youtube is some sort of public service. Keep in mind it is a monopoly on online user generated video. There is no other site that even comes close.

1) you make some good points. 2) I think you could make them without jumping to conclusions about what I believe, and without assigning intent that isn't there.

But let me try to clarify my point.

I'm not saying that YouTube doesn't scale, or doesn't have a ton of value. Obviously both are true.

I'm saying that laissez faire freedom of speech doesn't scale on platforms like YouTube. There needs to be some set of standards for acceptable behavior.

I think a lot of subreddit's do a good job of this with their moderators and rules. I think HN does a good job with it's down voting, etc. (I suspect my unpopular opinions here will get me some down-votes though....)

But YouTube, Twitter, etc, don't seem have the same community enforcement mechanisms, but something is needed. It's unfortunate that it ends up being a kind of arbitrarily enforced set of rules through an opaque process... But I feel like that's better than just letting anything go.

Also, to be clear. I don't think I do actually agree with the YouTube policy of blocking hacking videos. But I'm trying to make a larger point that I think there does need to be some standard of what is ok or not to be broadcast.

You keep on saying that it doesn't scale without qualifying it. What does this mean? What is acceptable behaviour?

My idea of acceptable behaviour is probably very different to yours (I almost guarantee it).

There is a really good example of this recently. Tim Pool was talking to Jack Dorsey on the Joe Rogan podcast. Near the end of the podcast they were talking about why an individual (can't remember who it was) got banned from Twitter. When Jack's legal counsel (that was what she was really there for) found out via her phone on the show she claimed it was a "threat of violence", I instantly recognised it as a well known internet meme. But because everyone in that room wasn't aware of the meme, it would sound to the outsider as a threat of violence.

So we have a situation where people that don't understand the "lore" (because with some communities there is a lot of in-jokes, history, characters to get your head around) deciding whether something should be on the site because they don't really understand years worth of previous material. How can they possibly make any sort of judgement on whether the material is acceptable?

The answer is they can't.

The only good answer is to just allow anything that is to have some clear and concise rules e.g. no doxing, no harassment and just allow anything that is considered free speech under US law. Sure you will probably get some idiots streaming an animation of a rotating Swastika for 6 hours at a time, but not only will be swamped by other people's worth while content, it is trivial for people to just tell Youtube via clicking the video menu to not show them that channel's content again.

It is a SELF policing system if you let it be.

To piggyback your comment and the depth of the analogy: Mein Kampf is still in publication today. Does any otherwise rational person want it stopped and all copies removed from public libraries in the way they seem to expect from Youtube/Facebook et al? Would they want Del Ray Books be held accountable for the content of The Turner Diaries?

To extend that; Mein Kampf has extremely relevant historical significants. It's important to understand the mind of your enemy. Not listening to what they have to say does nothing to stop their actions, it only makes you non-privy and less able to identify similar behavior in other individuals.

I think generally they there seems to be a move to remove anything seen to be outside of the Overton Window (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window).

However a lot of people seem to forget that the politics of today is only within the Overton window because speech outside of the Overton window at the time was protected and thus the Overton window can "shift".

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