Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

1) you make some good points. 2) I think you could make them without jumping to conclusions about what I believe, and without assigning intent that isn't there.

But let me try to clarify my point.

I'm not saying that YouTube doesn't scale, or doesn't have a ton of value. Obviously both are true.

I'm saying that laissez faire freedom of speech doesn't scale on platforms like YouTube. There needs to be some set of standards for acceptable behavior.

I think a lot of subreddit's do a good job of this with their moderators and rules. I think HN does a good job with it's down voting, etc. (I suspect my unpopular opinions here will get me some down-votes though....)

But YouTube, Twitter, etc, don't seem have the same community enforcement mechanisms, but something is needed. It's unfortunate that it ends up being a kind of arbitrarily enforced set of rules through an opaque process... But I feel like that's better than just letting anything go.

Also, to be clear. I don't think I do actually agree with the YouTube policy of blocking hacking videos. But I'm trying to make a larger point that I think there does need to be some standard of what is ok or not to be broadcast.




You keep on saying that it doesn't scale without qualifying it. What does this mean? What is acceptable behaviour?

My idea of acceptable behaviour is probably very different to yours (I almost guarantee it).

There is a really good example of this recently. Tim Pool was talking to Jack Dorsey on the Joe Rogan podcast. Near the end of the podcast they were talking about why an individual (can't remember who it was) got banned from Twitter. When Jack's legal counsel (that was what she was really there for) found out via her phone on the show she claimed it was a "threat of violence", I instantly recognised it as a well known internet meme. But because everyone in that room wasn't aware of the meme, it would sound to the outsider as a threat of violence.

So we have a situation where people that don't understand the "lore" (because with some communities there is a lot of in-jokes, history, characters to get your head around) deciding whether something should be on the site because they don't really understand years worth of previous material. How can they possibly make any sort of judgement on whether the material is acceptable?

The answer is they can't.

The only good answer is to just allow anything that is to have some clear and concise rules e.g. no doxing, no harassment and just allow anything that is considered free speech under US law. Sure you will probably get some idiots streaming an animation of a rotating Swastika for 6 hours at a time, but not only will be swamped by other people's worth while content, it is trivial for people to just tell Youtube via clicking the video menu to not show them that channel's content again.

It is a SELF policing system if you let it be.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: