YouTube's CEO says free speech is a 'core value' even after removing videos | Hacker News Reader

YouTube's CEO says free speech is a 'core value' even after removing videos

businessinsider.com

62 pointsgorwell17 comments

Susan Wojcicki was awarded a "Free Expression Award" from a company sponsored by... YouTube. [1]

This isn't surprising. YouTube is the home of censorship, and any proclamations of "free speech" are merely corporate marketing.

I don't know how software engineers at YouTube justify to themselves that they're working for a free speech company, given they can easily see the code that "deboosts" content for political reasons, and other censorship.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDcvPf78g1k

The suspicion is that the Russian government threatened to punish local Google (YouTube) employees if they failed to comply with the takedown request. If a company has local employees then they can't just hang them out to dry, regardless of how that conflicts with core values. So then should they compromise values to continue selling ads in Russia, or pull out of the country?

Did Putin made them talk about free speech being a core value too?

Google pulled all employees out of Russia years ago. Many were moved to Poland offices.

Then who is working in the Google Moscow office[1]? Androids? Aliens?

[1] https://careers.google.com/locations/moscow/

I thought they pulled their engineering offices. And there were still sales/other employees there.

Google already left China - perhaps Russia is next.

I could even imagine Apple leaving Russia if their employees (or their families) are threatened.

Platitudes are cheap.

How many employees does Google have working in Russia?

Apparently none, if they were moved to Poland as someone else mentioned

and how many of those former russians have family in russia.

Its like our president lying to us by saying the exact opposite of the reality.

Free speech protections don’t apply when you’re breaking the law.

Are you serious? Nobody's talking about illegal content. It's all just content that is inconvenient to some establishment figure or other.

In this particular instance but I’ve seen this line of argument, exactly as listed in the very broad title, used to justify what I said.

The term "free speech" is basically meaningless in general. People will justify their actions by claiming something is an exception to the definition of free speech, but this list of exceptions is unbounded and changes according to the alignment of the stars.

Unless your speech goes against the current corona dogma, of course.

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