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Comment by kypro | Hacker News Reader

Or alternatively companies have to provide clear and explicit rules about what is permissible on their platform and if you feel you're wrongly censored or removed from the platform you should be able to take legal action.

I'm fine with YouTube not wanting to provide a platform for people who they feel are harmful, but they need to define that in an explicit way so that these decisions are not made arbitrarily.

I believe primary Brand's job for the last few years has been as a content creator. Given this I think it's reasonable to expect he should have some legal rights. Personally I don't see a huge amount of difference between an Uber gig worker and a YouTube content creator. Both should have some basic rights regardless of whether they're technically classed as "employees".

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Define "clear and explicit rules". Does the constitution of say United States qualify as examples of clear and explicit rules? If yes, then even after roughly a quarter millennium, there are still hundreds of thousands of cases filed each year.

I don't need to define it. It would be open to reasonable interpretation.

If an online platform creates an unclear or vague rule and use that rule to remove a user, then that user could pursue legal actions. If a court agrees that the rule (or rules) used to remove the user from the platform is unclear or too vague from the perspective of a reasonable person then the platform would need to pay out for their mistake.

Therefore it would be in their interest to ensure they have clear and explicit rules.

I don't think this is hard and we shouldn't pretend it is. It's just regulators in the West rather force Apple adopt USB-C and destroy E2E than than protect us from arbitrary corporate censorship.

They do have rules on what is permissible on their platform.

They call it the Creator Responsibility Policy.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7650329?hl=en

If by "rules" you mean vague references to "harm" then sure.

My use of the word "explicit" here was intentional. As it stands the "rules" may as well just read "if we don't like what you're doing on or off our platform we reserve the right fire you as a content creator". And again I'll note, if you're fired as a content creator for some arbitrary reason you have no way to challenge the decision.

I don't think this is acceptable. I think Google should ultimately be able to run their platform however they like, but they have a responsibility to make those rules clear when people are dependant on them for their income.

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