Comment by ulrikrasmussen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ulrikrasmussen | Hacker News Reader

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The problem is the nature of YouTube, which is a platform with the main purpose of generating revenue based on advertisement while minimizing their own operational risk. YouTube does not care one bit about whether the content they show is informative, harmful or entertaining, they care about maximizing the amount of ad impressions while avoiding legal repercussions (only if the legal repercussions carry a significant cost, of course). This naturally leads them to err on the side of caution and implement draconian automated censorship controls. If the machine kills off a niche content creator then it means nothing in the grand scheme of things for YouTube. YouTube is a lawnmower, and you cannot reason with a lawnmower.

This is very different from past "platforms" such as niche phpBB boards on the old internet, book publishers or even editorial sections in newspapers who at least to some extent are driven by a genuine interest in the content itself even though they are, or were, also financed by advertisements.

The main problem here is that we allow commercial companies to provide generic and universal "free" content platforms which end up being the de facto gatekeepers if you have something to say. These platforms can only exist because the companies are allowed to intersperse generic user-generated content with advertisements. In my opinion, it is this advertisement-financed platform model that is the core problem here, and automated censorship is only one of the many negative consequences. Other problems are that it leads to winner-takes-it-all monopolies and that it strongly incentivizes ad companies such as Google to collect as much information about people as possible.

" ... bit about whether the content they show is informative, harmful or entertaining, they care about maximizing the amount of ad impressions while avoiding legal repercussions"

Close, but no cigar. If you have a sector with giant add spend, you grant them full control, regardless of the add impressions. People talk a lott about 'regulatory capture', but 'media capture' is just as real.

There has never ever ever been a time where you could disseminate your idea to more than about a hundred people for free.

The vast vast vast majority of the good ideas disseminated to the public in human history required someone to go pay a printing press operator to print them hundreds and hundreds of pamphlets.

This is literally how the American revolution happened. Not by requiring existing newspapers to carry opinions they didn't have (though some newspapers were literally owned by friends or people sympathetic to revolution and carried the message).

It's perfectly fine that you have to pay someone to carry your message or print pamphlets. That was always the intent of free markets and free speech together. It wasn't that anyone would be forced to carry your message (which is why the first amendment is extremely clear that you also have a right of association and can therefore not be forced or compelled to carry speech you do not want to), it was always that someone surely would be willing to make a quick buck to cater to your speech, no matter how fringe.

And it's entirely correct. Nobody at any point was unaware that Sweden had a different approach, and there was lively debate about it from day one, primarily about how "just trust people to stay home when they are sick" literally doesn't work here in the US.

It doesn't matter that Youtube took some of that discussion down, because it happened everywhere else too. Youtube is NOT your property.

Youtube cannot prevent you from talking about anything to your family.

I mean, this is just capitalism.

And while I loved old forums, they were constantly fighting with being underfunded, there was infighting between the "owners", and each one worked differently, making them a bunch of disconnected little silos.

Especially compared to Youtube, there's just NO WAY IN HELL any non-exploitative company could ever finance a project of even remotely similar scope. There are already, right know, alternatives for all the big monopolists. Most people aren't using them because they don't like the trade offs.

> I mean, this is just capitalism.

Yes, capitalist forces are incredibly strong, which is why we need regulation to avoid negative externalities to spiral out of control. Regulation that is intended to protect consumers often end up being moats for the monopolies to cement their monopolies even further, because the regulation is too heavy and expensive to comply with for the smaller competitors.

I think that child protection laws is an example of such regulation because it will impose a huge legal and financial risk on small sites and forums which were never part of the problem.

This is why I would rather go for regulation which more or less outlaws or severely limits the viability of the problematic business model. This could also backfire of course, but I believe it will be better even though many will find it inconvenient if YouTube disappeared.

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