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Comment by eli | Hacker News Reader

Seems like Germany should simply nationalize the platform if that's what they want.

Do you think Germany "nationalizing" YouTube is less extreme than this ruling?

Forcing Google to host content against their will is pretty close. I guess in this case it's better than nationalizing though, Google has to pay for the hosting, and you get to tell Google they're not allowed to delete videos.

I require guests in my house to take their shoes off. They don’t have to do it, they can just leave. But if they want to stay in my house they need to take their shoes off.

No one is holding a gun to YouTube’s head and telling them they have to serve video content to Germans. They want to be in Germany serving video content, so it’s only fair and just that they should listen to the Germans and do what they say or leave.

A country isn’t really like your house though, is it?

Germany could probably tell Google not to host any videos from the opposition political party under penalty of fine or expulsion. Hopefully we agree that that would be bad?

Germany could also force all food establishments to add a little bit of poison to the dishes. Would that be an argument against government regulating food preparation standards?

We can agree that bad things are bad, but that doesn’t really gives us much insight.

But Germany can't do that because it would be against Germany's constitution.

It's a hypothetical. A Constitution can be amended or ignored, can't it? My point is that a country is not your house. And citizens are not visitors. It's the wrong analogy and leads to bad conclusions.

s/can't/probably wouldn't/

It is entirely possible for countries to do things which are against their constitution.

You know that Germany does actually outlaw promotion of certain political parties, right? Hopefully you agree German law is bad or you're disagreeing with yourself.

Reminder that Germany doesn't have the same definition of "freedom of speech" that the US does (not making the case that one is better than the other, but simply that they are different.)

They did not delete it because it was unprofitable to host.

If they want to diminish the impact legally and profitably, they can just drown it in in more intrusive ads.

Law overwrites contracts

Sad you're getting downvoted, I was thinking about this the other day, if nations really want to limit applications on the internet, they need to create a free to use high quality national alternative, and personally I don't think this is an awful idea. Canadian "twitter" provided by a gov entity? I would for sure be interested in that. The ability to use a home grown twitter that I needed to use some government ID to log into and had been thought about sensibility, at least then I'd know what I'm getting myself into. I'm not saying it should replace regular internet, just that I wouldn't be apposed to more controlled nationalized alternatives. I'd like to talk to fellow Canadians, in the "comment section", in a manner that I know with over 80% confidence they're actually in Canada.

You can make your own Mastodon instance where you could possibly/probably have verification required to approve members based on some Canadian IDs - but it sounds kinda overkill really.

Good luck finding anyone else bothering to use it. Twitter isn't just some computer software, it's also network effects and the couldn't-have-been-predicted product of a competitive market. How would the government service be known in advance to become a Twitter and not a MySpace?

It's not theirs to take.

And anyhow, the GDR dissolved over 30 years ago, I should think their economic policies died with them.

Is it theirs to force them to host content Google wishes to delete?

I don't think it's unreasonable for companies with publicly available communication platforms be required to abide by laws in the countries they make those platforms available in. If youtube decided that they would host videos in germany on an invite only basis, it would be different.

No matter what the law?

It's theirs to host the videos themselves if they deem them worthy of being hosted.

The German government? Yeah I think they should host videos themselves if they want them to be online and google doesn’t.

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