YouTube gets reminder to follow EU law over Hamas content | Hacker News Reader

YouTube gets reminder to follow EU law over Hamas content

politico.eu

Stated purpose of law: prohibits advocating genocide.

Actual effect of law: prohibits preserving evidence of genocide.

I know there’s, broadly speaking, a difference in how freedom of speech is defined in America versus Europe. The (slightly inflammatory) description above is why I personally find the “European” definition distasteful.

Yes, this is one of the most important problems with well-meaning censorship.

Objectionable content should not be deleted, but instead clearly marked, and possibly require some extra verification steps to access. But it should not be deleted and forgotten, if for nothing else then as an evidence for future crime investigations.

A publication platform is not an archive. Those videos don't just disappear if they aren't uploaded to YouTube. They aren't as accessible to absolutely everyone of course.

On a slightly different legal note, it's not entirely clear to me what evidential value videos uploaded to YouTube have. Providence would be tricky to establish.

Does anyone know if YouTube videos have ever been used as legal evidence in court before?

You don't necessarily need to know who the video's author or uploader is. It may be sufficient to see what is depicted, when, and where.

Incriminating YouTube videos have been admitted in criminal courts many times; e.g.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2109698/Gary-Johnso...

https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/crime/2013/09/11/court-c...

https://www.nycourts.gov/JUDGES/evidence/9-AUTHENTICITY/9.14... (page 4)

https://www.occriminaldefenseattorney.com/blog/youtube-used-...

Interesting, thanks!

The protections of speech in the US are exemplary and I think Europe needs to move in that direction.

Some countries try to penalize insults because they undermine dignity, but I believe that not to be the case necessarily and the paternalizing approach can be even worse for that. In practice, if you look at online discussion, half of the population would be criminals and repeat offenders for that matter.

Most often these restrictions are indeed well-meaning, but not in every case and there are side effects you are describing.

Antisemitism got bad again, but it is restricted to a certain demographic and I don't like the idea to reduce rights because there are some problem actors.

Isn't that part of the desired effect / goal?

Why is the EU singling this type of content out in particular? Surely anything Hamas would release would be considered with skepticism as the EU has a very different tradition. Are they nervous the residents of the EU would quickly become assimilated to the culture of Hamas based on their propaganda videos? I can’t imagine that happening. I don’t get it - why is this different?

Yeah the eu should really be worried. When masses of people have no shame or fear hiding sympathy for obviously terrorist actions then there’s a massive massive issue at hand and thats not a YouTube or tiktok video. Thats a power vacuum that will manifest itself in grotesque ways in the coming future. The dark forces to be are only beginning to realise it.

In EU, and not worried at all by pro-Palestinian protests. Thank you.

Thats a dubious statement - I wrote about terrorist action sympathisers and you wrote about pro Palestine. Nonetheless people have died in france and the army is getting deployed while schools are getting closed in the uk and people told to hide their identity due to said terrorist action sympathisers - which btw have _nothing_ in common with plastine “freedom”.

Don't write ambiguously, then.

Thats ambiguous for you for some reason. Pretty clear for anyone else - or perhaps anyone else outside the eu, which kinda strengthens my point of view. Nonetheless Palestine rights are moot for the coming century, but thats a different topic.

France is not the only EU country. If you don't mention a country, I'll assume any country in EU I like.

And it's only terrorism, until the oppressor gives up. Then it's a libration movement, or whatnot. Bunch of anti-colonial, liberation movements in Africa and elsewhere also weren't pretty.

Palestine's rights are not moot at all. They are as relevant as ever, maybe even more so, because now they're violated much more than before.

Why did Europe do this to themselves? I’ve seen the numbers and I’m sorry, but it isn’t sustainable. Especially when you factor in reproduction rates. Western Europe will be conquered by a caliphate within 100 years. A democratic colonialism.

I don’t understand why there would be so many people in Europe that would “side” with Palestinians that this would be a problem.

So you don’t like it when the brown people do the killing?

All of that applies to Israel too so what’s different?

The Hamas content is valuable to show exactly what Hamas is. Censorship of this material is wrong.

I do think it strange just how much content there is in a week… compared to two years of the war in Ukraine.

I wonder if there is a cause and effect there?

Indeed. Consider this video, for example: https://twitter.com/Natsecjeff/status/1397186381756125184

This is certainly Hamas-created propaganda. I could see it inciting someone to join the cause. Yet it reveals that Hamas proudly digs up water pipes donated as humanitarian aid, to turn them into weapons of war. Is society better off if the government prevents this video from being shared?

Wow, that is wild. I’m going to intentionally not address the extremely disturbing pretense of all of this, but that shows some wild innovation. Literally making war machines from scraps and salvage.

Whatever their motives, I don’t see this ending well for them. It seems as though Israel has decided this is the end of Gaza, and I believe they are sufficiently infuriated, motivated, and emboldened to accomplish their goals.

Content moderation is liberal (EU despots) euphemism for censorship.

[1] https://rumble.com/v3ol4sj-pure-censorship-eu-sends-musk-war... [1] https://rumble.com/v3odrq7-system-update-159.html

Reply on news.ycombinator.com