Comment by jasode | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jasode | Hacker News Reader

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>, but I really wish these platforms took the "phone company" approach, in which they considered themselves neutral carriers of information.

This suggestion (and the comparison to phone companies) comes up repeatedly but Youtube can't _be_ a neutral carrier if they are funded by advertising. That's because the businesses' choice to pay for advertising is not a neutral choice. See "advertiser friendly content"[1] and Adpocalypse[2][3].

Land line phones and cell phones are funded by subscriptions and they are also point-to-point communication between 2 private individuals. Phones (barring small-scale exceptions such as conference calls) are not a "broadcasting" medium.

There is no broadcasting medium in the world that acts as a neutral carrier. Not newspapers. And not tv like NBC/CBS/ABC. Even the government funded broadcasters like American PBS or UK BBC are not neutral carriers.

Ok, let's say you this ambitious idealism to create a new broadcasting website that allows anything except for child pornography. How are you going to fund it? Advertising?!? That's just recreating the Youtube "ad friendly" dilemma. Subscriptions? Most people don't want to pay a subscription fee for user-generated-content. Yes some die-hard web surfers pay for Youtube Red/Premium to avoid ads but they are a small minority that's not enough to pay for the entire Youtube infrastructure. So far, only funding based on advertising seems to be viable.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google#Advertise...

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=biggest+advertisers+abandon+...

[3] https://www.tubefilter.com/2018/04/20/pg-resumes-youtube-spe...

>This suggestion (and the comparison to phone companies) comes up repeatedly but Youtube can't _be_ a neutral carrier if they are funded by advertising. That's because the businesses' choice to pay for advertising is not a neutral choice.

It should be as well.

Disallow advertising companies from paying for ads on specific content only.

They should have a blanket agreement to show N ads, to user demographics, interests, etc. But not the ability to not have their ads shown on particular channels/videos. That just gives the ad companies censorship power.

>How are you going to fund it? Advertising?!? That's just recreating the Youtube "ad friendly" dilemma

Ban by law "a la cart content/ad choice" across all platforms. Customers/Ad companies either sign to show their ads the platform or they don't. No selection of channels/videos they'll be shown on (except if they have a deal with a specific channel as sponsors). If that's the case for all platforms by law, they can't go to another platform to have it cater to their demands...

That way a platform doesn't have to cater for specific "ad friendly" content. Just to have popular content, that draws ads in general.

Advertisers are ultimately pulling ads because of the will of the people, so if you're going to follow this one step further you see that the public has censorship power and that's what we want

I think if you want to separate YouTube into separate stacks (eg fundamental infrastructure for hosting videos & a publisher / curator of those videos) you could imagine the infra part not being picky about what is uploaded (as long as it is legal) but the publisher part de listing videos except to be shared by link

Do you take issue with that?

>Advertisers are ultimately pulling ads because of the will of the people, so if you're going to follow this one step further you see that the public has censorship power and that's what we want

They only pull ads because they can. If all platforms are banned from allowing removal of ads on specific videos, then those advertisers will have the option to (a) advertise, or (b) not advertise.

Will the opt-out of YouTube (and every major platform) altogether?

In fact, the public will also understand it's not up to the advertisers and the story will end there. The people can then try to boycot YouTube itself for having a specific video, but that wont go very far either, especially if it doesn't touch the advertising money.

This is such a bad idea. Also, you seemed to miss my points about why advertisers pull ads.

It's actually a good thing if advertisers don't sponsor something because their customers don't like that thing. Those customers are voting with their money, and those customers -- the democratic electorate -- those are the people we want making censorship decisions

This bizarre notion that more regulation (advertisers can't choose what videos they advertise on) would somehow fix the problem we're seeing is completely disconnected from reality

>It's actually a good thing if advertisers don't sponsor something because their customers don't like that thing. Those customers are voting with their money, and those customers -- the democratic electorate -- those are the people we want making censorship decisions

For one, I don't want anybody "making censorship decisions". We're not that far from the time the majority would like pro-integration/black, gay friendly, or atheist e.g content censored.

Second, they don't vote with their wallet on the actual content. They could always vote by not watching the video they don't like, and if enough people did that, the video would naturally not have advertising revenue.

But no, while they hate on the video, they don't target it, but target the company making some totally irrelevant to it advertised product, using their complain to negatively affect the video creators.

Third, and more important, this is not actual voting, nobody counts and there are no official rules and limits. A 20% or even 10% of customers can make the companys, and throu that, the content creators' life miserable (cut ad revenue, deplatform, censor, lose display space, etc), even if a bigger majority has no problem or even likes it. In fact, you don't even need that (10-20%), just enough determined hardcore complainers creating a fuzz, even if they're like 1% of customers, many companies just don't care to suffer them, and cave in.

Fourth, advertising companies also take pressure from their customers, the advertised companies, not just the public. Even more pressure there. So companies can also have leverage to stop them giving ads to content they don't like (whistleblowers, critical videos, etc).

>This bizarre notion that more regulation (advertisers can't choose what videos they advertise on) would somehow fix the problem we're seeing is completely disconnected from reality

Since the problem is advertisers having too much power by being able to choose the videos they advertise in, of course more regulation disallowing that will fix it!

Advertisers will always have power, and platforms will always decide to publish different types of content.

If an advertiser today wants to advertise with pornhub, that is a different editorial decision than choosing to advertise on YouTube

I shouldn't have to spell this out because it seems pretty obvious.

One can imagine a world where YouTube complies with your regulation by providing YouTube, YouTube for kids, and maybe a couple political niches that capture their most popular creators

Now advertisers are effectively still making the same decisions that they were, YouTube is still the preferred advertising backend, and nothing changed except that you made it harder for smaller sites like Vimeo to attract advertisers

Your regulation idea is reckless because you haven't thought it through

>Advertisers will always have power

Not if laws lessen it. Which is my whole point.

>If an advertiser today wants to advertise with pornhub, that is a different editorial decision than choosing to advertise on YouTube. I shouldn't have to spell this out because it seems pretty obvious.

It's only obvious within a certain puritan culture. In Europe nobody would bat an eye if an advertiser for a, say, fast food store, advertised in pornhub. People wouldn't want to take them down.

>One can imagine a world where YouTube complies with your regulation by providing YouTube, YouTube for kids, and maybe a couple political niches that capture their most popular creators

Adults are not kids - they don't need or should require special segmentation from different content (aside from their chosing what they like to view/read).

So we'd just needs a kids and an adults YouTube.

Plus making advertising on the adults YouTube wholesale: you buy impressions/views/clicks/etc - and that's it. You don't get a say which video they appear on.

Legislation can't possibly prevent YouTube from sharding into a bunch of disparate publishing entities

In fact, the "break up big tech" groups might laud such a thing

There is no way of framing your regulation so that it does something useful. Instead it will only ever be a burden on smaller distributers and hurt their chances of advertising (because in order to find advertisers, those advertisers will either have to not care about the content or be convinced that the content is pg -- an incredibly onerous technical burden)

This idea that the regulation wouldn't have consequences you don't like because you don't like them is a fantasy

None of your ideas make any sense here

>Legislation can't possibly prevent YouTube from sharding into a bunch of disparate publishing entities

Actually it can. That's the whole point, legislation can do anything, In the US case it can even change the constitution with a new amendment...

Why shouldn’t I as an advertiser not be allowed to choose which content I want my products to be associated with? It amazes me how willing HN posters are willing to give up power to the government.

>Why shouldn’t I as an advertiser not be allowed to choose which content I want my products to be associated with?

That's easy, because the law I propose will decree so.

As for the moral reasoning, because (a) advertisers are scum, and (b) they should not have powers over content publication. The same reason advertisers putting a billboard don't get to dictate what cars can and cannot pass by it.

>It amazes me how willing HN posters are willing to give up power to the government.

I'm all for giving power to the government, which people vote for, and have established mechanisms to control, instead of private interests that talk by throwing money.

If anything, my problem with government is that enough of it is dictated by those same interests (lobbys, private interests, advertisers, etc) as opposed by the voters directly. But that's another thing to solve, and giving more power to those interests is the opposite of the solution.

As for the moral reasoning, because (a) advertisers are scum, and (b) they should not have powers over content publication. The same reason advertisers putting a billboard don't get to dictate what cars can and cannot pass by it.

Honestly I think politicians are bigger scum and they have the power of the state to impose their will. Do you really think if you gave the state power they would use it fairly?

I'm all for giving power to the government, which people vote for, and have established mechanisms to control, instead of private interests that talk by throwing money.

Elected officials don’t get into the minutiae of enforcing those types of laws. Unelected committees like the FTC do and most of your recourse if you don’t like it is to file lawsuits that are decided by unelected judges that have lifetime appointments.

Not to mention that even those appointments are made by the Senate where the flyover states in “Middle America” and the “Bible Belt” have power far more than their populations would call for thanks to them having two seats in the Senate just like the more populous states. Those are both the last people I want to give more power to.

Yes I’m well aware that the other side is just as bad.

Why should ad companies be forced to subsidize the spread of bullshit and hateful content?

If someone wants to spread bullshit and hate, let them do it on their own dime, or find someone wanting to do spread it.

>Why should ad companies be forced to subsidize the spread of bullshit and hateful content?

They are not forced to do anything. They can always NOT advertise.

What I propose is not forcing them to subsidise anything, it is about taking away from them the power to dictate terms to platforms.

Moreover, the "bullshit and hate" is your strawman.

Traditionally, and I'm not some Gen Z to not remember this, it has been the right that was pushing advertisers and platforms to assist in censoring tv shows, music videos, records, etc with non-approved messages (pro-gay, anti-religion, pro-choice, etc).

That the tables have turned for a while doesn't mean the tables will always be this way (we're already 4 years into Trump for one), and I don't even believe the tables have turned as in "it's just bullshit and hateful stuff that's demonetized". I think that all kinds of good content is demonetized all the time, both left and right wing.

Any cause you personally might like can easily be labeled "bullshit" and or "hateful".

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