Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikaeluman | Hacker News Reader

This award would have made sense when YouTube really took off.

Lately YouTube has engaged in unpersoning - deleting people from the social consciousness. Stefan Molyneux and Alex Jones come to mind. Others have their accounts and videos merely suspended or demonetized for inane reasons, e.g Louder with Crowder.

Even doctors merely expressing opinions contrary to WHO officialdom get taken off.

This process has happened very quickly over the past few years and is the reason why alternatives are set to prosper.

Awarding this CEO merely means the award is not to be taken seriously.

View on HN

I agree with almost everything you said, but the two people you mentioned are legitimately bad examples (other platforms have banned them as well).

Other platforms banning people doesn’t mean much. Almost all of big tech belongs to either the Bay Area or Seattle - both of which are known for their far left politics. So of course their employees exhibit their same biases and censor the same content.

Yes, other platforms have targeted freedom of expression as well. In the same situation, they would receive the same comment.

because freedom of expression is only for those people you like?

Yeah, the underlying concern is about the propagation of "alternative stories", which tend to spread because of well-documented behavioral feedback loops with such stories in social media ("controversial" takes get more engagement, incentivizing more sharing!).

The actual solution is to legislatively neuter the algorithms that power social media. It's harder to do so we're doing the awful, dangerous, strategically-unwise thing (censoring) instead.

The problem is that they get it wrong, all the time, and always in the same direction. I think the solution is complex and includes at least 3 things: 1)treat it as a public health problem, that is have campaigns, just like we did for cigarettes, explaining how toxic online content can be 2) mandate that platforms cannot censor content that is not illegal, but also must provide tools so that users can protect themselves, if they wish, from content they are offended by. 3) and most importantly, start the hard work of building trustworthy institutions. We would not be in this predicament it it was not plainly obvious that our institutions especially media, have rotted beyond redemption.

The biggest problem with starting YouTube competitor is bandwidth you have to pay for. Even Google has physical servers located inside ISPs all around the world with the newest version of their videos to save on transfer. But so does Netflix!

I am surprised we haven't seen NetFlix take on video social network. A YouFlix if you will...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com