This is a dangerous thought. There is already too much decision making of what is allowed on our social platform by the big corps.
YouTube should at best demonetize the video, and only if it does that consistently based on a public policy.
Don't you think it would be better to go through a system which has (at least a semblance of) due process, fairness, and transparency about the rules? Yes yes I know I know, "they're a private company they can do what they want". I'm not wondering what they can do, more flabbergasted about the apparent sudden and large support for corporations acting to censor and punish people like this.
Then it should be in their terms of service. In fact it probably is…
The solution would be for a court to take that money away at the same time as convicting him. And I think many courts would do exactly that.
In this case though the FAA has made the decision, he didn't do something in bad taste - he did something that could have been very dangerous to others, could have started a major fire, and was illegal (or at least broke the FAA rules enough for him to loose his license). And the reason he did that was (almost certainly) to make a YouTube video - I think YouTube would be justified from kicking him off their platform for this.
But remember that aside from a few narrow exceptions (e.g., CSAM), sharing videos of someone doing something illegal isn't itself illegal.
Since the service is 'free' and no money changes hands it's not as if they have to refund banned user etc.
They should delete the video. And I really don't understand the argument that they shouldn't stop him using their platform; my goodness if Youtube was mine he'd be gone and I wouldn't for a second wonder if there was any meaningful free speech implication for removing it.
He is dangerous, and the allure of more views on youtube made him do a dangerous thing. I'd be like: "OK, you're not my customer anymore".
So did the Discovery channel. The only difference is that they had asked the FAA permission to do so.
This guy crashed a plane for profit without permission. This may have just been stupidity, not understanding the consequences. Loads of people also crash other vehicles for fun and profit, so why should YT distinguish between someone crashing a car vs a plane. Where should YT draw the line? They don't make the laws.
If you're pinning your argument on this, then fine. But it is a huge difference.
Honestly this whole idea that Youtube should willingly be a party to this sort of thing is a libertarian take too far for me, but then I'm British.
This is a bit of a silly way to look at it, I'm sorry to say.
What if they just remove the video on the balance of probability that it involved, in the FAA's judgement, a deliberate dangerous plane crash without permission?
This is not a challenging precedent. House-flipping is not smashing a plane into the ground without planning and without regard for safety, is it?
Regulations on performing archælogical excavations?
Food safety violations?
Alcohol production?
Blasphemy laws in any country Youtube might be accessed from?
Animal cruelty laws? (Are hamster wheels cruel?)
Religious laws on the consumption of cattle / pork?
Privacy laws in Germany? (Dashcams are heavily regulated there)
Is it legal to show a Nazi swastika everywhere? A non Nazi swastika? A communist symbol? What about an imperial Japanese ensign?
Is it legal to say the Armenian suffered a genocide, or to claim they didn't?
Is it legal to cast doubt on any one finding of the Nuremberg trials?
What about mentioning a crime committed by a living person more than 20 years go? (Hint: it may not be legal in some European countries. Which ones? You tell me.)
But please, make the libertarian Gish galloping stop.
And would "dangerous" include technically legal but dangerous actions like speaking up for gay rights in Yemen or criticizing cartels in Mexico? Or would they be more limited to the youtube wrong-think-corrections officer judging the video to demonstrate outright illegal actions like protesting Putin's special operation while in Russia, or publishing documents containing evidence of western war crimes?
I prefer to live in a world where people at least try to navigate grey areas.
Exactly.
I'm generally in favour of youtube removing objectionable material, or at least corralling it somewhere as they already do with their half-assed "mature content" filter, but it absolutely must be done on a policy basis which is written down upfront and made clear to uploaders, and subject to fair reviews. Doing it on outrage based case by case basis is just enraging to all involved.
And it's not the actual content of this video which is objectionable, but the circumstances under which it was made. Possibly it contravenes UK rules on profiting from crime if it's monetized: https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN02...
- but (a) it's not in our jurisdiction and (b) he hasn't actually been convicted yet.
No, a responsible behaviour is for Youtobe to purposely leave him on the platform for everybody to see what he did and the comments below the video, but cut his revenue for this video due to ToS violations. I sure the lawyers who wrote the ToS thought about something like this.
Everyone is free to choose who they do business with. There are some protected categories but “people wantonly destroying airplanes for publicity and profit” is not one of them.
I don't get the obsession with removing dumb online stunts. I can understand calls for censoring violent crimes and even then you don't get to make this decision for other people, censoring unpleasant things doesn't make them go away.
But with dumb online posts the case just completely falls apart. "But he's going to benefit from this" ok so fucking what ? there's a whole class of people who do dumb, dangerous and harmful things for public approval and profit from it, they are called polliticans and celebrities. They routinely do unimaginabley stupid and outrageous things and profit from the publicity that comes with it. How is this any different, except that "online influencer" is a relatively new class of people unlike the other ones?
>There are some protected categories
Appealing to protected groups is the weakest argument you could ever make for "Businesses can censor whoever they like". Protected groups are arbitary and reflects lobbying and political considerations more than any moral truth. Why are some religious groups protected for instance? it's just a bunch of beliefs, they could be as wrong or as dumb as any other set of beliefs right ? they are not immutable characteristics of the people believing them. (not anymore than any other kind of beliefs)
My own personal opinion is that it's stupid to classify people as "Protected" or not, but rather any business that have reasonably-easy-to-find alternatives can do whatever the hell they like, refuse to serve customers based on skin color, gender, favorite programming language, you name it. As long as it's "easy" to find alternatives (by some objective standard the law defines, like "there's is a similar service within a 1-KM radius"), they can do whatever they like.
But for all other businesses who aren't so easy to replace, common sense morality says they should be EXTREMELY curtailed from censoring or denying *anyone* without a very good reason.
Alas, we don't live in my utopia and the laws of this time and place are extremely dumb and discriminating.
Youtube does not hold monopoly on communication or information.
> it's an action that you want to force on them by some mechanism of public rage
Lol. :) Public rage you say? Where is the rage? :)
> I don't get the obsession with removing dumb online stunts.
Let me help you with that: This stunt was done in order to get attention. You fuel it with attention and there will be more stunts. Either from this dude or others. You remove the attention and it dies out on its own.
I believe, and many others seems to agree this stunt was potentially dangerous and we should have less of these in the future. Removing the video is the way to achieve that, keeping the video up is youtube profiting from a potentially dangerous stunt.
> Appealing to protected groups is the weakest argument you could ever make for "Businesses can censor whoever they like".
Because it is not an argument for that.
What, pray tell, is that other service that has several hundred million of viewers and thousands of hours of video being uploaded every hour?
As soon as you tell me it's name, I'm going to concede that YouTube is not a monopoly.
>Where is the rage?
Are you implying you just call for censorship as a hobby without even feeling angry? that's even worse.
>You remove the attention and it dies out on its own
This is demonstrably false, the guy who made the video didn't have a trend to draw inspiration from, he thought up of a dumb idea completely on his own. Even IF (a very big if) your model of how social imitation works is reasonably accurate and taking down the video really prevents any further stunts of those type, other influencers will simply think up of new dumb stunts like this.
Let me stress, again, that the world is not a kindergarten and you are not it's caretaker. If people want to crash aircrafts to get internet points, that's completely an issue between them and the relevant authorities, those bureaucrats suck up an awful lot of tax money, let them work for it for once.
You don't get to decide for the hundreds of millions who watch YouTube what's acceptable and what's not. I and countless other people fund this shitty public record with the attention we give to countless 20-second ads, and I want every recorded moment to stay recorded, at least until they go out of business. You don't have the right to force me to respect what offends or worries you, don't worry about public safety, let everyone worry about their own.
Don't forget that each view on a big video is a chance of a subscription by that user, which leads to more views on followup videos, more sharing, more chance of sponsorships, etc. So the total revenue earned by a 'hit' video is actually much larger than it appears.
Really goes to show how shitty the "creator" economy is for the "creator"
He was speculating to accumulate.