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Comment by armchairhacker | Hacker News Reader

This seems barely worth an article: the LAPD posted a violent assault asking people to identify the suspect, and YouTube (possibly an algorithm) suspended the account for posting violence.

Should violent content be allowed on the internet? I believe so. Should it be allowed on YouTube? I believe YouTube can decide: if they want to block violence, porn, and other 18+ content for everyone, that's fair and those people can post on the other sites. There's an argument that posting on YouTube instead of a less popular platform is necessary for LAPD to increase the audience and more likely identify the suspect; but I think there are better ways which get a higher-quality audience and don't involve exposing random people to a random assault.

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YouTube’s content policy regularly demonetizes history channels, even ones which are throughly self-censoring and separating the most likely to be demonetized content into separate videos.

The EU digital services act incentivized YouTube to ramp up age restrictions to avoid running afoul of the law which basically strangles the financial viability of much of this content since you need to be logged in and the less people who see it the less people will be shown the video. So it’s not just simply YouTube mulling things and going they don’t want this content on their platform, it’s YouTube thinking it’s easier to blanket block everything and ask questions later in response to regulation. It’s not just how things have always been on YouTube things are getting worse and will get worse as more and more organizations believe YouTube needs to be reformed by threatening them and YouTube continues utilizing the cheapest laziest forms of compliance.

We’re creating a world which isn’t in anybodies best interest just to be risk adverse against pissing off whatever special interest be it copyright holders, advertisers, or governments.

If YouTube's content moderation takes down government content that is being posted for responsible or generally good reasons, then why isn't that worth an article?

Because nothing here is really surprising. What YouTube did in this case is both legal (search for Section 230) and in line with their TOS and historical behavior.

The posting of mostly surprising news is part of the reason why people have such skewed perceptions of how common various risks are, I don't think it's a good practice.

Youtube's capricious moderation policies are well known, they take down content posted for responsible or generally good reasons all the time. This isn't news just because it's the LAPD. It would be news if they treated the LAPD different from anyone else posting violent content.

I got this recommendation[1] right around the time Youtube decided I'd seen enough ad free videos. Whatever sympathy I had for them missing out on ad revenue evaporated.

1: https://i.imgur.com/ymOmwBy.jpg

The "Russian Dashcam" videos are horrific these days, basically snuff films and yes that includes children. I'm the kind of person who likes realistic war movies and the like but this is on a different level. I won't post links but they are easy to find, a simple search will surface them with no issues.

Do you think most people realize(d) that such content moderation policies resulted in government postings like this getting taken down?

Honestly, I don't think most people realize (or care about) the massive damage these giant corporations like Google and Facebook are doing to society in general.

There's no massive damage to society being done here. Law and order and civil society in Los Angeles don't depend on the LAPD's Youtube channel.

The posted article literally mentions the official website on which the content is also posted - and I guarantee most people are neither aware of, nor care about, either.

Censorship can and has caused damage when sweeping news under the rug. I'm thinking of the initial reports of a virus Chinese state media quickly squashed.

I recall more than just Chinese media censoring narratives about it, narratives which they later completely changed course on once it became more politically convenient.

I'd be fine with that approach as long as a law was passed that said that if a journalist wants to commentate on a video, then they have to provide a link where anyone can view the video in full (potentially with exceptions for certain cases like those involving minors).

I just don't trust journalists when they claim that they have a video showing unjustified violence. I imagine that sentiment probably is held by people on both sides. E.g. a leftist would be suspicious of stories accusing protestors of violence while someone on the right would be suspicious about stories of police violence.

What is a journalist? That term isn't even clearly defined in US federal law. Any random person can act as a journalist.

My intention was more to express the idea that, when society is discussing an instance of violence like a riot or police brutality, people need to be able to see the violence so that they can decided for themselves what happened.

My concern is that if violent content is scrubbed from social media, then it will become too easy for thought leaders (journalists, politicians, celebrities, etc.) to simply tell people what happened without any way for them to confirm it.

They mean professional journalists, those who report news for a living and have at least one formal press credential.

Translated into tech:

They mean professional programmers, those who write code for a living and have at least one formal git repository.

That is meaningless from a legal standpoint. Press credentials are not a real thing with any official weight. And if someone reports news as a volunteer for a non-profit organization are they not a journalist?

They are a real thing and bring significant privileges in some jurisdictions. In some of them, press credential is actually government issued and yes, they tend to exclude volunteer journalists. It does not mean volunteer journalism is illegal, rather that volunteer journalists do not confer the same privilege as professional ones.

I am so thankful to live in the USA where anyone can be a journalist and no government credentials are needed.

In that case, shouldn't they just mark the video as 18+ rather than suspending the channel?

Yes, that would be rational, but politics isn’t rational.

What you say seems completely reasonable. Zooming out a bit, it’s really unfortunate youtube doesnt have any competition.

Fortune has little to do with it. Google prioritizes Youtube over other video sites in search [1]. This had even greater impact before Youtube was established as the default video site.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/google-prioritizes-youtube-v...

I've always been curious but never done more than cursory research (which is my own fault), but isn't YouTube operating at such a massive scale and requires so much infrastructure you basically need a true behemoth roughly the size of Google in order to make money or just break even?

I'm not apologizing for Google's monopolistic policies and there are many things I dislike about the company, but despite all its faults YouTube is still one of the gems and miracles of the modern internet. I'm genuinely happy for someone to explain to me why I'm wrong and how this could operate without being attached to a multibillion dollar conglomeration, or just any further data/research about the logistics and costs of operating something like YouTube.

Other, smaller video sites exist and had existed in YouTube's early days. If they were (and are - many are still around) viable, why would growth make them less viable? Economies of scale would work in their favor (and if they didn't, then we would have a multitude of smaller video sites that, together, would sum to the equivalent of a YouTube).

Do those alternatives allow users to upload long (e.g. an hour or more) videos in HD quality? I'm not saying that they don't, that just seems like it could be one area where they might differ.

I think you'll find Vimeo or even Loom could be used, but probably only for private groups. Most people (advertisers) don't want to randomly have graphic violence included in their stream (or pay for it). I'd say if you opt in it's fine, but even then it's really hard to force a for-profit entity to carry violent (or pornographic etc.) content, if they have strict terms of service.

That's because video is ferociously expensive in bandwidth and Google subsidizes it with profits from ads.

This is a pure monopoly that should be broken up by the government for anti-trust reasons.

It's cheaper now

> Zooming out a bit

Pun intended? Perhaps Zoom has an opportunity to enter the video space.

If they want to be The Disney of Video Content that's fine, but be consistent and predictable about it.

I guess there goes any war reporting, cockfighting, etc., on Youtube.

I think it's a sign that the government needs to run social media sites with free speech rights included

No, we all need to start self hosting. Decentralization is the real way forward. Aggregators need to be running locally on your device to create a seamless experience and a feeling of centralization but we need to stop relying on meta and youtube to host our content.

You have a lot more faith in the government and the fact it won't be heavily politicized than I do.

A government running social media site that includes free speech rights is oxymoron at best

Different take: YouTube has created a walled commons. The main walled commons for video by far.

Thanks, YouTube, for caretaking the commons. We wouldn't let the LAPD post that in a public park or at a municipal swimming pool or next to a playground and we'd rather not have it on YouTube.

Ok, but you really want Google caretaking the commons?

That depends, who are you proposing the alternative caretaker? I don't want my government to force video apps to host violent content, nor do I want my government making their own digital commons.

I'm not sure, maybe not have a single commons so people can self-sort into the place they want, the Fediverse option basically. But if we're going to have a single commons a democratic government may be preferable to a company that at best wants to keep it advertiser friendly.

>But if we're going to have a single commons a democratic government may be preferable to a company that at best wants to keep it advertiser friendly.

I'm also a big fan of the fediverse. However, I'm skeptical in the quality and even practical accountability of "democratic" governments, who are themselves pressured to be "advertiser-friendly" in their own way.

Why post a whole video instead of a photo?

Youtube is a monopoly (70% control or more is a monopoly). Monopolists do not have the same legal rights that non monopolists have to use their own discretion, since to allow them to do that would allow them to push everyone around. For example, a utility monopoly cannot turn off the power to your house if they don't like your social media posts.

A monopoly such as Youtube that controls the public square that involves important constitutional rights should be forced to make provision to protect those rights.

There are also important societal concerns. If youtube existed while the Nazis were exterminating Jews and others, and someone smuggled out videos of what was going on, would it be a good thing for youtube to censor those videos and not allow them to be shown? Youtube obviously has important responsibilities given its monopoly status and if they are not willing to live up to them they should be directed to live up to them.

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