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Comment by marcinzm | Hacker News Reader

>If Silicon Valley continues to drift into ideological activism, at some point a hugely profitable opportunity to set up a new advertising network develops.

YouTube started moderating it's content more because advertisers asked for it. No large advertiser wants to be shown next to a neo-nazi video.

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you have your eyes closed if you think they're only censoring the worst kinds of content, like nazis. videos have been taken down for e.g. criticizing lockdowns. it has moved well into policing acceptable thought.

A large portion of this kind of content results in people irresponsibly spreading a deadly disease while hospitals are turning dying people away in some areas of the country, e.g. LA.

I am happy to see content platforms policing thought in this manner!

I’m not denying the numbers but I was at Century City mall today. Lot of people relatively, lot of fun. Made 3 new friends today and went on a date.

Yes roughly 2-3x the people are dying everyday vs 5 months ago. That’s horrible obviously but I barely see anyone in a close setting.

But people are living despite it. My friend is dating 3 to 7 girls at once and they all know each other (and all hang out together).

Not saying that’s ideal but the pandemic isn’t affecting people like cable news suggest. Barely anyone talks about it but we all try to be careful.

The residents of Singapore, Taiwan, and New Zealand are also having fun right now, without the 2x-3x people dying. The difference is that they stay at home when the experts tell them to stay at home.

At least in Taiwan everyone also wore masks, which was the opposite of what Western experts prescribed at the time. Telling people to wear masks was even banned in some places (though not on YouTube):

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-51729647

(Note that this is from March! When I left Taiwan in late January, everyone at the airport was masked up and slightly paranoid.)

Taiwan and NZ also closed their borders while Western experts "knew" that the coronavirus was just the flu, and that closing borders was xenophobic, racism is the real pandemic, etc. etc.

2020 is easily the year when Western experts failed the hardest I've ever witnessed. Absolutely surreal. Maybe we should fire and replace our current selection of experts before we ban everyone else.

Are you suggesting I have aided the pandemic? I have barely seen anyone. I am safe. I live in Beverly Hills where fascist authoritarians have destroyed our city.

So nice to see sycophantic unintelligent “hackers” promote blind authoritarianism. You have no concept of the words you so ambitiously spout.

On the other hand I don’t let my kids watch YouTube (even using YT kids and with my account to bypass ads) because they don’t do enough moderation of extremist videos. A few clicks leads to a lot of provably false BS.

With all due respect though, it’s not YouTube’s job to decide what’s appropriate for your kids, and there’s a big difference between what’s appropriate for children and what’s appropriate for the rest of us consenting adults to watch.

It's not about deciding what's acceptable for one's kids, it's about limiting the range of programming so that one can choose if that range is acceptable. This is a difference from traditional channels which have a distinct flavour and are subject to watchdogs (in my country, UK, at least).

No parent has time to watch TV with their child all the time up until they're 18. You might say 'well don't let them watch TV' and that's a valid choice. But other parents want to choose safe ranges of programming and have someone else police stuff to make sure it stays in that range.

Give me an example of a video that was removed for "critcizing lockdowns" -- and I can guarantee the reason isn't the criticism, but the manner in which it is somehow "backed up" by disinformation about Covid.

Playing into this idea that somehow criticism isn't allowed is disingenuous.

Disinformation, as determined by minimum wage experts hired as YouTube moderators.

> Give me an example of a video that was removed for "critcizing lockdowns"

I’m sure you realize how difficult this would be to respond to, if such videos were in fact deleted.

Nonetheless, https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/youtube-facebook-spli...

That video was not removed for criticizing lockdowns. It was removed because it was misinformation, pseudoscience and conspiracy nonsense.

I think this kind of thing is over-emphasized.

Most advertisers probably already understand that the person being exposed to their content for a brief moment isn't under the impression that the ad doesn't mean strong endorsement of the content by the advertiser.

This may be true but advertiser do not want to sponsor such content maybe

About 33% of the US actively supported Trump's bid for presidency, and accounting for turnout probably a majority didn't care if he got back in.

Accounting for business owners likely leaning free-market, it seems improbable that they mean 'Trump supporters' when they say 'we don't want to advertise with neo-nazis'. They probably mean literal neo-nazi.

I don't mind if literal neo-nazi are moderated off a channel. Nobody likes them.

Look at all the types of videos YouTube de-monetizes, do you think YouTube wants to pay for hosting and make no money on the videos? No, that's all the types of videos that large advertisers (which pay the most) have complained about over time.

Of course they want to, that is why they are doing it. They'd prefer to keep the network effects going because they know an exodus would undermine their for-pay videos.

If they weren't happy, they would delete the videos on demonetisation. They don't have to pay for hosting. They know these videos are drawing in a valuable audience.

What's a literal neo-nazi? I guess nazis who aren't declaring their support for Hitler are not "literal" neo-nazis and are ok? I mean where you draw that line? Nobody likes them? Lots of people like them.

You’re referring to this?

https://www.vox.com/2018/12/13/18136253/pewdiepie-vs-tseries...

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