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Comment by socalgal2 | Hacker News Reader

You realize don't have to watch youtube right?

I'm not saying I like it. I'm saying that because I don't like it I don't watch.

That's such a low effort bit of criticism of me calling out their scammy behavior. Yes, I could not watch, but that does nothing to solve the actual problem. By ignoring the problem, you're just giving them the okay to continue with scammy behavior. If they behaved like normal broadcasters and had standards on what ads they showed, I'd have much less of a problem. Some of the content that theGoogs allows and accepts and distributes is appalling.

Being unable to accept critical comments and just brush them off with "just don't watch" is just really not appropriate. You can also just not reply to comments on HN when you don't have anything that contributes the conversation, but yet you chose not to do that yourself.

OPs statement should be modified to “ you don’t have to watch free Youtube “,

You can always pay for it and not have any ads .

There shouldn’t be an expectation that a free service should confirm to any standards ? Why should a service be free and of high quality in its free variant ?

If Google refuses to offer a paid version or made it unaffordable then it would be different , but the paid version is pretty affordable with lower pricing in countries with less purchasing power

Broadcast tv is free to consume as much as you can stand. They have standards and practices that they conform and have fines assessed for infractions. Why do we accept that but have weak comments about “you don’t have to watch” for YT? Thanks for confirming the agency I have, but that does nothing to moving the conversation in a compelling manner at all.

Traditional Broadcast TV(or radio[1]) uses limited shared airwaves.

You can have only so many channels, so they has to be acceptable to plurality of people over whom you are transmitting and therefore needs content(and ad) moderation and acceptable standards.

YouTube is not a shared public good, does not have a technical limitation for another provider with different flavor to compete.

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More comparable is Cable TV. No content restrictions apply to Cable TV, this is why HBO doesn't have to censor by blurring/bleeping even common swear words as CBS/NBC/ABC/Fox do, or follow regulations around what kind of content can be shown on prime time versus late night or allocate time for just news.

There are plenty of low quality cable channels and they make money(i.e. enough people want them) like reality TV, pure telemarketing channels, televangelists or porn or anything in between, there are no standards that they need to comply whatsoever.

While the confusion is understandable, few people actually get their TV over airwaves, for most consumers it looks like it is all cable or IP these days, the comparison is not valid.

Expecting standards in a shared public limited good does not compare against expecting it from YouTube.

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[1] Meaning AM/FM stations. Modern Radio (i.e. Podcasts) or Satellite services (SiriusFM etc) can do whatever they want.

"You criticise society, yet you live in it. Curious."

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