Hacker News Reader

Comment by richrichardsson | Hacker News Reader

So how many channels get removed for no reason each week for people who don't have the benefit of being a respected audio developer whom Peter Kirn will fight for?

View on HN

It is an interesting variant of the "you owe bank $1k it is your problem vs you owe the bank $1B it is their problem" saying. This is a problem for small companies as long as YouTube/Alphabet are generally good moderators. It is a problem for YouTube/Alphabet if they start clamping down too hard. Some of these people are going to go elsewhere, set up shop and start peeling the audience away from YouTube. Audiences aren't smart, but sooner or later they figure it out if they should be using a different site.

It's absolutely maddening that this is the only way to get some problems fixed sometimes, _especially_ with Google.

it is why i refuse to use almost all google products. my one exception is gmail, which is impossible to get away from.

i once had google emailing me every single week to bother me about trying out GCP (i used it at work and nearly got certified for that company so i didn't need to scope it out). they offered hundreds or thousands in free credits. well now, you are trying to give me many free dollars, but i have an issue. i couldn't get Google's captcha to work. So i said if you can put me in contact with some person who can help with this very prevalent google product- then i will consider it.

the answer from google is something i will never forget. it was just "we don’t offer support, sorry"

why would i ever give you money? google even sent me a CR-48 for free as a tester, that's how much i used to use them. never again! (except gmail, ugh)

I moved from Gmail to another, paid email company by changing my preferences at each website, one by one. It took about a year without too much effort. Can't recommend enough.

There are a lot of domain registrars that will give you a mailbox for free with purchase/transfer of a domain. Good combo if you want a custom email anyway. I can recommend infomaniak. iirc roughly same price as namecheap, but with added Swiss flavor.

Download thunderbird and sign in via IMAP and bobs your uncle

yeah that is obvious but unfortunately this is for a company email and needs to integrate with Calendly and a CRM, etc. Outlook and Gmail are the only real options.

for personal use, I'm already using MX Route which i learnt about from comments here. $30/yr for unlimited domains and mailboxes. feel free to drop me a message to check how it works! cto@floydnoel.com

for personal use the last G product i am stuck with is Google Voice. not sure of a good replacement for that if you have any recs.

This is why we need an online Bill of Rights.

How would that work exactly? And are there things that need to be protected in the online world but not the physical/real world?

When it comes to YouTube censorship freedom of speech seems applicable except for the fact that YouTube is a private platform with terms of service you have to agree to for them to host and distribute your content.

At a practical level, once a platform like YouTube becomes The Commons, then certain rights become necessary for us to live in a free society. No idea how you implement that legally though.

Perhaps something like utilities where a company operates at sort of a midpoint between private and public?

One way it could potentially work is for Congress to legislate that large online platforms operate as common carriers and refrain from censoring any legal content. I think this is worth considering. It would create challenges for content moderation but there are ways to deal with that by giving users better tools to filter out objectionable content from their feeds.

https://www.npr.org/2021/04/05/984440891/justice-clarence-th...

> It would create challenges for content moderation

Honestly it sounds like this problem would be gone entirely. The government already defines speech that is so bad as to making it illegal despite the first amendment. Treating social media as a common carrier means they get to skip moderation entirely and just have to follow what is legally allowed.

Forcing social media to act as a common carrier could very well mean algorithmic feeds aren't allowed as they impede speech and still toe the line of censorship. Without algorithmic feeds we could be back to seeing just from those in your circle, meaning moderation shouldn't be nearly as big of a concern anyway.

A lot, I suspect:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df5aakJdTzE

Reply on news.ycombinator.com