5 ms·

They didn't pick Ron Paul to test this on, and it's not a bold move. YouTube has been in the censorship game for a long, long time. A lot of content creators -

They didn't pick Ron Paul to test this on, and it's not a bold move. YouTube has been in the censorship game for a long, long time. A lot of content creators -- of documentaries -- created Nebula because they were sick and tired of getting censored. https://nebula.app/videos?category=history https://nebula.app/videos?category=history These aren't wackos. These are mostly serious scholars, tired of a serious problem with Google. I'm giving this as an example; this has been a problem for a lot of people for a long time.

xupybd 5y ago
For sure this is not the first instance of censorship but I'm not aware of any famous American politicians getting censored before, are there any?
- hagbard_c 5y ago
  I seem to remember your former president getting banned? His shtick may have been that he entered politics as an outsider but once he was in he surely was a politician, and a famous one at that.
  - xupybd 5y ago
    I'm not American but think it's significant because they're American companies. I thought that was Twitter not YouTube. I could be wrong.
    - hagbard_c 5y ago
      As far as I know he was banned more or less across the board - Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, Snapchat, Shopify, Reddit and possibly others [1]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/11/trump-banned-social-media/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/11/trump-b...
      - xupybd 5y ago
        The more you know. That does make this less significant.
        hagbard_c 5y ago
        It certainly does not, it makes it all the more clear that it is foolhardy to rely on these centralised corporate entities to carry your message for you unless that message happens to coincide with the current desired narrative - and even in that case it would be wise to not rely on them given that the narrative can and will change. Every grain of sand leaking from their hands adds to the viability of a decentralised 'net so the more they censor, the more they'll lose. I say let them lose everything, let Youtube become a wasteland of cat videos interspersed with government broadcasts and kitschy music videos, let it become the online equivalent of a shopping mall past its heyday where elevator music echoes through empty galleries, let interesting material migrate to alternative distribution channels. All that is needed for that is a reliable CDN, a problem which might be solvable using p2p distribution like Peertube and LBRY do. Once this is established there will be another fight, this time led by copyright holders who insist on blocking these channels so the system needs to be robust against such attempts. Will there be fewer 'Youtube millionaires'? Sure, that was a short-lived fad which is unlikely to survive in a decentralised 'net. Is this something to mourn over? Not in my opinion.
AnEro 5y ago
Comparing messy AI that will demonetize/remove historic retellings of traumatic events, wars, and hate crimes to 'censoring' Ron Paul is ridiculous. Most of them moved to because of demonetization... Where swearing can demonetize a video as well as mentioning rape or murder in contexts explicitly. Yes that is horrible to punish literal historians talking about these events that really happened that we should be educated on but, how do you separate those from actually hateful content so charmin/coke/corporation still will pay you to run ads? Letting people think the vaccine is dangerous without scientific proof when they could die without it, isn't government regulation friendly. edit: to day I learned there's a down vote feature lol. Didn't know acknowledging a private company has interests beyond letting people saying w/e when want when it can negatively impact their bottom line would be so controversial. Also banning him for being conservative is very different from banning spreading vaccine misinformation. Then grouping that with removing historians incomes due to messy AI implementation to save YouTube's ad friendliness to keep their bottom line is just a victim complex.
- gibba999 5y ago
  If it's just AI, you separate them with actual human oversight. From what I understand, they moved less because of demonetization, and more because of the chilling effect it had on free speech. They needed to be super-careful in script writing to make sure they didn't anger the YouTube algorithm. I'll also mention another darker side of this: Google is almost entirely liberal inside. If a liberal channel is wrongly banned, an army of Googlers quickly rushes to fix it. If a conservative channel is wrongly banned, there's internal snickering. AIs are not neutral, and Google's reflects the biases of the people who keep tweaking it.
  - AnEro 5y ago
    > chilling effect it had on free speech I think comparing this to free speech is just a losing argument cause legally free speech is for criticizing the government non-violently. They are private companies that have a monopoly, making a new platform focused on enabling creator's means of revenue is the ideal approach. >If a liberal channel is wrongly banned, an army of Googlers quickly rushes to fix it. If a conservative channel is wrongly banned, there's internal snickering. Conservatives unironically have a victim complex for this because lefties have the same issue because they are saying the centerist thing. Democrats or what conservatives call 'liberal' right now are mostly a centerist party, trying to be palatable to the largest audience. The same social media companies want to keep the largest ad consumer base as well as advertiser pool. > another darker side of this I honestly think it is a societal shift of the vanilla of politics, I'm sorry conservatism is no longer vanilla and is actually the rocky road of politics and isn't as friendly. Edit: I challenge anyone offended by this point of view, to look into conservatives that have been 'cancelled'/'silenced' viewership and numbers before and after. It usually helps them get more of a following across the board, they inflate this issue beyond how bad it is to get more attention for a possible loss in revenue.

xupybd 5y ago

For sure this is not the first instance of censorship but I'm not aware of any famous American politicians getting censored before, are there any?

hagbard_c 5y ago
I seem to remember your former president getting banned? His shtick may have been that he entered politics as an outsider but once he was in he surely was a politician, and a famous one at that.
- xupybd 5y ago
  I'm not American but think it's significant because they're American companies. I thought that was Twitter not YouTube. I could be wrong.
  - hagbard_c 5y ago
    As far as I know he was banned more or less across the board - Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, Snapchat, Shopify, Reddit and possibly others [1]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/11/trump-banned-social-media/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/11/trump-b...
    - xupybd 5y ago
      The more you know. That does make this less significant.
      - hagbard_c 5y ago
        It certainly does not, it makes it all the more clear that it is foolhardy to rely on these centralised corporate entities to carry your message for you unless that message happens to coincide with the current desired narrative - and even in that case it would be wise to not rely on them given that the narrative can and will change. Every grain of sand leaking from their hands adds to the viability of a decentralised 'net so the more they censor, the more they'll lose. I say let them lose everything, let Youtube become a wasteland of cat videos interspersed with government broadcasts and kitschy music videos, let it become the online equivalent of a shopping mall past its heyday where elevator music echoes through empty galleries, let interesting material migrate to alternative distribution channels. All that is needed for that is a reliable CDN, a problem which might be solvable using p2p distribution like Peertube and LBRY do. Once this is established there will be another fight, this time led by copyright holders who insist on blocking these channels so the system needs to be robust against such attempts. Will there be fewer 'Youtube millionaires'? Sure, that was a short-lived fad which is unlikely to survive in a decentralised 'net. Is this something to mourn over? Not in my opinion.

AnEro 5y ago

Comparing messy AI that will demonetize/remove historic retellings of traumatic events, wars, and hate crimes to 'censoring' Ron Paul is ridiculous. Most of them moved to because of demonetization... Where swearing can demonetize a video as well as mentioning rape or murder in contexts explicitly. Yes that is horrible to punish literal historians talking about these events that really happened that we should be educated on but, how do you separate those from actually hateful content so charmin/coke/corporation still will pay you to run ads? Letting people think the vaccine is dangerous without scientific proof when they could die without it, isn't government regulation friendly. edit: to day I learned there's a down vote feature lol. Didn't know acknowledging a private company has interests beyond letting people saying w/e when want when it can negatively impact their bottom line would be so controversial. Also banning him for being conservative is very different from banning spreading vaccine misinformation. Then grouping that with removing historians incomes due to messy AI implementation to save YouTube's ad friendliness to keep their bottom line is just a victim complex.

gibba999 5y ago
If it's just AI, you separate them with actual human oversight. From what I understand, they moved less because of demonetization, and more because of the chilling effect it had on free speech. They needed to be super-careful in script writing to make sure they didn't anger the YouTube algorithm. I'll also mention another darker side of this: Google is almost entirely liberal inside. If a liberal channel is wrongly banned, an army of Googlers quickly rushes to fix it. If a conservative channel is wrongly banned, there's internal snickering. AIs are not neutral, and Google's reflects the biases of the people who keep tweaking it.
- AnEro 5y ago
  > chilling effect it had on free speech I think comparing this to free speech is just a losing argument cause legally free speech is for criticizing the government non-violently. They are private companies that have a monopoly, making a new platform focused on enabling creator's means of revenue is the ideal approach. >If a liberal channel is wrongly banned, an army of Googlers quickly rushes to fix it. If a conservative channel is wrongly banned, there's internal snickering. Conservatives unironically have a victim complex for this because lefties have the same issue because they are saying the centerist thing. Democrats or what conservatives call 'liberal' right now are mostly a centerist party, trying to be palatable to the largest audience. The same social media companies want to keep the largest ad consumer base as well as advertiser pool. > another darker side of this I honestly think it is a societal shift of the vanilla of politics, I'm sorry conservatism is no longer vanilla and is actually the rocky road of politics and isn't as friendly. Edit: I challenge anyone offended by this point of view, to look into conservatives that have been 'cancelled'/'silenced' viewership and numbers before and after. It usually helps them get more of a following across the board, they inflate this issue beyond how bad it is to get more attention for a possible loss in revenue.