It's a private company. If you don't like their slant, use another private company.
I swear, it's like people have never had to cancel a newspaper subscription before.
I swear, it's like people have never had to cancel a newspaper subscription before.
Referring to youtube as "just a private company" or "just a video hosting service" is almost to the point of being disingenuous. There are no alternatives that come even close to what youtube offers. You can't just replicate a social network, and even if you could, who has the hardware and resources to do what youtube does?
Vimeo is niche/specialized, it's not for general video uploads. Selfhosting via e.g. Peertube only really works in smallish communities, due to hardware limitations and word of mouth discovery. No other service has the social aspect that youtube does.
The reality is that this is a much more complicated discussion than "oh, merely switch to another private company".
> I swear, it's like people have never had to cancel a newspaper subscription before
This is such a blithe comment that I'm not sure if you actually use youtube to any degree. It is -the- place to put videos and content. Nowhere else has the sheer amount of educational content, etc, all in one place. There's an extreme wealth of content that is not replicated anywhere else on the internet, much less spread across random websites.
Youtube not only allows for discovery via topics/related youtubers, but it also incentivizes people to make content due to income both internally on youtube and externally as they build a brand. I'm not trying to be a shill here, but without youtube I wouldn't have been able to learn about topics like woodworking, chess, bass guitar, music theory, cooking, programming, etc, to the degree that I have , and discover great content makers as well. Not to mention discovering music that isn't necessarily on spotify/etc.
So it's not so easy as to say "just use a different site/company/etc". What site...?
Of course youtube can remove whatever it wants, it's a private company. This doesn't mean that people can't find this objectionable, and it doesn't mean the only argument has to be "well, just use another company/site/provider".
I think people here are -reasonably- concerned about YT censoring particular information and the precedent it sets. In this case you and I might agree with YT's stance. Will we agree the next time YT decides to take a stance and censors a topic?
However, a lot of people making content on yt are facing demonetization due to the same thing: advertiser pressure. For things like swearing, any sort of violence, etc. A lot of people have issues in some game communities for example.
So I don't think relying on the benevolence of Coca-Cola is the best solution either. Until relatively recently it would not have cared about appearances regarding LBGTQ+ issues either.
Black people and pedophiles don't deserve the same legal protections to have access to a playground or a private school.
"host your conspiracy theories"
I don't even watch anything political on youtube. I use youtube for music and learning about hobbies.
I still think it's worth talking about the precedent that youtube is setting here, and it's not productive to be combative about it. Of course youtube can censor or remove whatever it wants.
My main point, anyway, was that I dislike the "just use a different platform/site/company" argument, for the reasons I outlined above. Not because I think youtube -has- to host any sort of content, nor did I ever state that.
Sure, one -could- host their own peertube instance for a community. However the discovery probability drops immensely. One of the main benefits of youtube (at least for me) is easily discovering new content/creators. Also, having high-quality videos in one central location versus multiple different sites for cooking videos, woodworking videos, etc. Having something like a global search across federated peertube instances could work though.
At that point you also run into the issue of who has the hardware to power these new communities? Few people have that sort of data storage available, and fewer still have enough powerful servers + cdns across the world. The new owners of an instance could easily just as well decide to censor whatever they want, and if I had to trust a random person over youtube I'd most likely choose youtube. At least it faces public scrutiny, etc.
Basically any content that is controversial for any reason, be it porn, government criticism in china or unpopular opinions, makes VISA and Mastercard wary that it will be bad PR for them, so there is some evidence that the pair is basically threaning to cut service to any of their downstream partners, for example if you google a bit there is some (sadly murky) evidence that they been threatening Patreon if they allow certain kinds of content (for example incest porn).
So people noticed many particularly sensitive political videos, can only be hosted safely on outright porn hosting sites, even self-hosting is not safe unless you also own everything else needed, because the CC providers have firepower to threaten almost any company they wish to, including ISP, DNS providers, etc...
But that's actually predictable. Banking is built on trust. Trust is a societal construct. "It's hard to open my porn shop because the banks won't give me a loan and the town won't zone for it" is an issue older than the Internet.
Also, because newspapers have an editor, they are liable for what they print. Google enjoys protections from these liabilities, even though they're clearly willing and capable of editing their users content.
The two situations are entirely different.
On average, newspapers definitely did. Most major cities have at most two primary newspapers. The difference between them and YouTube was geographic reach.
... even still, YT's size doesn't obligate them to provide hosting for high-bandwidth data. It definitely doesn't obligate them to put any specific videos in people's field-of-view. People with alternative viewpoints can buy cloud storage if they desperately need a place to host videos.
The "Is YouTube an editor" question is a good one, but I have a hard time reconciling the notion that they're taking on new editorial behavior with the fact that they've always had both community standards and full control of their curation algorithm. Haven't they always been an editor in that sense, and the new concern is some people don't like how they're using that power?
Who are YouTube's comparable competitors?
Ever tried to start a new one? The network effects are real in print media too.
Similarly, major television media has always locked out socialist and communist points of view in the United States.
This idea that only Google suddenly has a point of view in their editing what they allow on the platform seems really strange to me.
If you are going to measured/weigh rights against the rights of other persons, then those limitations ought to be extended to natural persons too.
If you can get congress/a court to designate an atom as a "person", then sure, the rights would extend to atoms too.
Now, if one wants to have a conversation about the societal benefits of QAnon, or broadcasting information that is re-enforcing the President's overt attempt to thwart the American election for his own benefit, we can go through the front door and have that conversation. But if one wants to fall back on general principles of "Businesses should be required to associate with everyone, all the time, forever!" we quickly find society has never actually agreed with that line.
No shirt, no shoes, no service.