Show HN: CAVI, how video sharing should be | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: CAVI, how video sharing should be

cavi.us

2 pointsBcin6 comments

"Video sharing sites have been telling us what is ok and what is not ok to say. " - not super sure about this. Examples?

The first clause is really misleading and I don't think it's completely true. I understand the fight against big tech, but I'm not convinced they block expression (unless you're in China) I get that they might screen content for appropriateness (e.g law abiding). Agreed, that they may block users, but still fairly sure people are able to post what they want.

Agreed. Will tweak that and revise. The thought process behind it was that blocking was the equivalent of telling us what is ok to say and what isn't ok to say, however, I agree that it can be a little misleading.

Bulk demonitization and banning of inconvenient views inside the United States has been ongoing for about four or five years now.

I say "inconvenient views" because Google shut down Tulsi Gabbard's adwords account in the 24 to 48 hours following the first democratic debate about a year ago [0].

I think conservatives are the most vocal about this[1], but it is hard to track to total impact of something coming from an institutional level (with methods like shadow banning).

To the OP: I'd say be specific in your claims. Sweeping claims of shadowbanning aren't useful to anyone (perhaps a look here [2] will help you with composing useful copy).

If I were you, I would also reach out to the creators directly and offer your platform as an alternative.

[0] https://www.politico.com/story/2019/07/25/tulsi-gabbard-sues...

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=youtube+shadowban+conservative+cha...

[2] http://paulgraham.com/useful.html

In general, my main method of reaching out is to contact creators directly. I'm constantly trying to interact with content creators and victims of demonetization and complete deletion. It's hard to do in bulk, but PG has always said to do things that don't scale. Also I'm not trying to fall into the realm of only targeting "conservatives" vs "democrats." I don't think that would be necessarily helpful to our goal of reclaiming what made video-sharing so powerful prior to being heavily regulated and advertiser focused. Though conservatives have been very vocal about the said problems, conservatives aren't the only ones that are being affected. The CAVI team and I are trying to solve this problem in a more general sense, but at the same time, we will keep in mind those who were affected the hardest.

What will you do about hate speech, which isn't technically illegal?

Most video views are from non-subscribers, and rarely from paid subscribers. How will stay afloat given the cost of video hosting?

Yes, hate speech is technically not illegal, and as a 100% advocate for “freedom of speech” I believe that if we begin to decide on what is and what is not allowed to say, then the concept of your “opinion” is compromised. HOWEVER, and this is a big however, there is line that can he crossed. I believe that if someone says “John doe sucks and I hate him,” then it’s completely fine. It’s his, or her, or their opinion. But if someone else says “ John Doe sucks and needs to be killed. We need to kill him,” that’s not ok. There is a fine line between your opinion and inciting terrorism and calling to action completely horrific acts of violence. This is also the same for cyber bullying, and that is also a very sensitive topic. There are so many other edge cases that stand on that line. I and the CAVI team will try to ride this line forever. Will it offend some people, yes, but we will never block/censor/change any of our algorithms because someone has a different opinion than someone else.

Most video views will come form non-subscribers, but we have 100% belief that given the time, there will be enough paid subscribers that support our content creators. A good representation of a similar business model is twitch.tv. And also, we eliminated the running ads yes, but we have designed a way that advertisers can still advertise without killing the user experience. Also, video hosting has become easier and cheaper over the years, but yes, we need the product to work in order to keep us afloat. Hopefully that answers all your questions. Email our support (found on our website) and we can have a longer/more in-depth conversation about any of the topics you are interested in.

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