Yes you should. An informed populace is the basis of democracy. If you choose to continue living in a democracy, you have to help pay for its upkeep.
I hardly imagine that a government can really be held to account by its citizens if it also takes for itself the role of educate their children.
Thank you. This is exactly the basis upon which we justify the proposal to force YouTube to host content that their shareholders would prefer not to host. Or the alternative formulation, this is the basis on which we justify prohibiting YouTube from censoring political speech that their shareholders disagree with.
A misinformed populace acts to destroy democracy.
who is to be trusted with the authority to decide what counts as misinformation? Is it possible that a gatekeeper of information would find it easier to misinform the populace than a prominent person who had to contend with other dissenting voices?
So, yes, of course it's possible a gatekeeper would find it easier to misinform the populace. Over the long term, it's almost guaranteed. Yet it's also possible -- in fact, one can argue the probability is essentially 1.0 -- that refusing to have any gates will also misinform the populace. If we're looking for a blanket rule that will cover all possible situations in this new information reality, we're probably looking in vain.
> that would be the basis for the US to stand up its own video publishing platform.
Why not just nationalize YouTube? As a corporation, Google already enjoys special privileges enshrined by law. Lets not pretend to be private property absolutists when the government already limits the liability of shareholders for the actions that bring them profit.
Why not nationalize YouTube is irrelevant to the conversation, but the end result would be the same. The government would then be providing a self publishing platform.
youtube isn't the gov't. Public schools and roads are funded by taxation.
If youtube is to host content that their shareholders don't want hosted, then youtube needs to be paid a portion of gov't taxes.
No actually. The way society works is we can just force them to do it, via the law.
It is our right as citizens to change the law.
That's not something legally recognized though. You can't say you base this on something when there is nothing equivalent. An education is one thing. It's something that's been recognized in court.
Now, if you want to claim that public sites like YouTube should be forced to host content they don't want to from people they don't want to do business with, you'll have to explain how that equates with your established rights in the US?
More to the point: You'll have to explain why you want to take away my rights?
We're having a discussion about what the law should be, not what the law is.
> You can't say you base this on something when there is nothing equivalent.
The above discussion demonstrates that our society already limits property rights in the service of an informed populace, which is relevant to the issue at hand.
> An education is one thing. It's something that's been recognized in court.
Courts have recognized ballot fraud in the past as well, its not some outlandish theory. Its why people are supposed to maintain chain of custody of the ballots.
> you'll have to explain how that equates with your established rights in the US?
Corporations are chartered by the government in exchange for certain privileges and limitations. We already infringe on property rights because an informed population is a public good. QED there is a precedent for requiring a public corporation to host certain kinds of content. For example, foods are required to meet labeling requirements.
> More to the point: You'll have to explain why you want to take away my rights?
The right to remove content is potentially dangerous to democracy. See recent events, where a bunch of trump supporters are ever more convinced that an election was stolen because people keep claiming there was no evidence and YouTube has a policy where they state they won't allow anyone to post the evidence that the Biden camp says doesn't exist.
> my rights?
As a GOOG shareholder, you exchanged certain rights for other privileges when the government chartered your corporation and allowed it to traded on the public market while limiting your liability for criminal acts that might be performed by Google employees. In a sense you are taking the benefit of profit and legally protected from liability for the actions that might generate that profit. That arrangement comes at a cost of increased regulation by the government.