>Their only winning move was to stay neutral and do nothing but comply with legal requests.
No? This narrative is a bit ahistorical - and it's fueled by this idea that hyperliberal boogeyman started censoring everything.
If you look at what happened in 2017, Google started "censoring" things because advertisers threatened to boycott. The platforms couldn't stay neutral because advertisers became more and more concerned with staying out of any potential scandal.
Google's response to pressures from advertisers wasn't to censor anything. They just demonetized videos that the advertisers didn't want to be associated with. Hosting someone's video for free without even interrupting it with ads seems like the opposite of censorship to me. There may be something interesting to say about how the desires of advertisers shapes our discourse, but its not censorship (in this case at least).
Google doesn't just demonitize videos, they make videos impossible to find by unlisting them from search results[1] and shadowbanning creators:
> One of the videos that had been restricted was a trailer for one of his short films; another was an It Gets Better video aimed at LGBTQ youth. Sam had been shadow-banned, meaning that users couldn’t search for it on YouTube. None of the videos were sexually explicit or profane.
> ... five YouTube channels alleged that the platform had unfairly targeted LGBTQ content creators with practices similar to those described by Bardo: demonetizing videos, placing them in restricted mode without warning, and hiding them from search results.
> Hosting someone's video for free without even interrupting it with ads seems like the opposite of censorship to me.
Doesn't demonetization on YT just mean the ads still run but the money doesn't flow to the creator anymore? Considering YouTube does it that way with copyright claims and also automatically added ads to previously ad-free videos just because they could, it would surprise me if they'd remove video ads by themselves.
No, because the whole issue is advertisers refuse to have their ads shown with certain types of videos. The ads go away. Johnson and Johnson doesn't want their ads shown next to Nazi propaganda, so demonetization pulls advertising entirely.
Doesn't matter, they still used this as censoring (claiming YouTube cut funds to kill them).
I even saw (this mostly was Facebook, but also was done on YouTube) where the channel/fan page purposefully switching videos to private while talking they are being censored.
Sometimes channels will do this because they have "strikes" shown on their creator pages, so they hide their videos to avoid having so many strikes they get shut down. Some science and engineering channels I watch have run into this problem.
So now they are demonetizing videos that want to be monetized and vice versa. Time for YouTube's demise is long overdue. I hope Peertube, decentralization and finger to censorship is the future.
They (Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, even Reddit) act so very much like publishers that it seems to me the mistake was granting "platform" protections to sites that: claim broad rights over posted content; use complex logic to decide what to promote (that they promote anything is alarming, for a "platform"!) and what a visitor sees while also hosting and distributing that content they're highlighting or promoting (which makes them distinct from some rando's best-of lists on their personal website, linking to content hosted elsewhere); place ads alongside content but sometimes choose not to; and, at times, engage in revenue sharing. And that's before we even get into the censorship.
The whole point of section 230 was to make imperfect moderation legal. It wasn't enacted because some random personal sites got sued. It got enacted because some very large companies got sued and congress thought the results of the court cases were illogical.
Perhaps the most relevant distinction is between "moderation that the users have a choice about" versus "moderation that the users don't have a choice about".
If a site wants to hide all posts/videos that promote some unpopular political belief, or use offensive words, then implementing that censorship as the default user experience is perfectly acceptable, as long as users can choose to opt out of that censorship.
There might be multiple reasons why a given post/video could be censored, and perhaps there is a small burden on sites to tag every single reason rather than mark it for censorship at the first excuse, but I think that a lot of the tagging work could be made the responsibility of the user who uploaded it.
Such a system would hopefully make moot the slightly disingenuous argument that "If sites can't ban political opinions I don't like then they also won't be able to ban spam". Obviously sites would be allowed to put neutral resource limits on users, to prevent DoS attacks.
It distinguishes between something and a publisher, in that it says whatever-you-want-to-call-that-something can't be treated as the publisher (it uses that word) of information it's distributing.
It distinguishes between the person who uploaded the video and YouTube hosting the video. How YouTube exerts editorial control to promote some videos or delete others is not relevant. This is a good rule. HN couldn’t possibly exist without it.
There’s been a lot of really bad information on 230 from people who ought to know better.
I got mine from the text of the law. It does what you say, and also what I say. I definitely doesn't not distinguish between a publisher and a service provider (host, platform, whatever). It does so explicitly.
Unless you know of a way to do moderation 100%, liability for user-generated content is infeasible.
The fulfillment of this fantasy of forcing platforms to abandon their efforts will just lead to all of social media degenerating into cesspits as they fill up with porn and swastikas and all normal people leave.
> Unless you know of a way to do moderation 100%, liability for user-generated content is infeasible.
I agree that highly-public social media anything like what we see now wouldn't work anymore.
I don't even necessarily think that we should kill 230, but I don't think you should be able to curate and promote content, and claim strong rights to posted content, and still enjoy its protections. Yes, this means "algorithm-curation" social media with broad public visibility of content and that claims significant ownership of posted content, would be in trouble. I think services like that should struggle to operate that way. Take ownership or don't, none of this pretending to be one thing while doing another stuff. That doesn't mean we have to crack down on web hosts or ISPs or email providers or anything like that, since they're not doing most of that stuff.
Those threats were never serious though, because YT is too big, but also because advertisers know they can advertise on certain subsets of content that is not offensive.
What about telling advertisers that if they want to boycott, go ahead, find another Youtube to advertise on. They make 15 billion a year in advertising and 3 billion on subscriptions. I'm willing to bet with that much advertising it would be very unlikely any advertising boycott could make a significant difference.
>What about telling advertisers that if they want to boycott, go ahead, find another Youtube to advertise on.
Yeah, it's called Facebook. Regardless these weren't some no names who were boycotting, it was pretty much the whales like P&G and CocaCola who were complaining. (Just those 2 spend $8BN/year). At the very least having any of them pull out would cratered at least one exec's bonus.
> What else do you call the complete removal of parler?
Failure to adhere to terms and services or to express intent to adhere to them going forward.
Parler couldn't or wouldn't stop people from breaking their providers' terms of service and didn't show a good-faith effort towards doing so. Other right-wing outlets do do those things, and have not gotten drilled despite their odious beliefs.
I don't understand why your comment is flagged and dead! You are making a perfectly reasonable point. HN admins, what is unacceptable about what is being stated - I genuinely do not see it.
If you start going on about "election fraud", as that poster did, I'll usually flag the post.
In this case, with my reply, I preferred to point out the obvious mischaracterization and leave addressing the mendacious falsehoods to others, but it looks like others decided to do something about it.
In the beginning, but now both sides see them as the enemy of the people. One side thinks they censor too much and the other thinks not enough. So YouTube is now caught in a political game of trying to appease whichever party is in power lest they get regulated. Hence why Trump stayed on Twitter until he was out of office.
The advertisers are bluffing when they threaten these boycotts. They're not going to stop advertising on google, facebook, twitter, etc., which these days probably represents a majority of their advertising budget and even more of their ROI. They'll make threats because it costs them nothing, but all the platforms need to do is say "no" and that would be the end of it. Even better: immediately ban the accounts of companies that make these threats. They won't receive any more of them.
They don't need to stop all advertising. They can simply stop advertising on Youtube and focus advertising on Facebook, or stop on Twitter and focus on Tik Tok.
They can pit the providers against each other. And that's basically how a free market works.
1. Google definitely censors things on their own as well. Their own search engine turns up a long list of examples, so I won't rehash them all here, but one illustrative example is their censorship of the dissenter plug-in (https://reclaimthenet.org/google-chrome-web-store-bans-disse...), which also seems to be an example of censorship collusion within the tech industry.
2. Google has a long history of internal activism that is highly progressive, and regularly applies pressure on the company, and creates a culture of fear for employees who are either conservative, centrist, or even moderately left-leaning. The James Damore fiasco is a great example of the internal political culture rearing its head and how it impacts who's comfortable speaking up and steering the company's culture (https://www.inc.com/suzanne-lucas/google-fires-employee-for-...).
3. Why do you think advertisers became "more and more concerned"? It's because of left-leaning activist pressure from groups like Sleeping Giants who have made it their mission to organize activists and create a false sense of societal pressure on advertisers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_Giants). It's the same as Google censoring things, because typically activist employees will draw attention internally to these activist campaigns, and try to alter the company's otherwise neutral stances. There's also a pipeline from internal activist employees to certain members of the press (like Geekwire) to try to use external pressure to move company stances.
>The James Damore fiasco is a great example of the internal political culture rearing its head and how it impacts who's comfortable speaking up and steering the company's culture
I'm willing to accept the premise that Google could have neoliberal pressure on the company (I don't know if I would consider the pressure you allude to be progressive or left leaning). That said, James Damore's memo, if you've read it is not a good example of it and I believe he was rightly exiled for it. The memo is poorly sourced and poorly argued. It reads like someone who doesn't understand Dunning–Kruger is.
It was fully sourced with peer reviewed research, per my recollection. I also recall that the version of the memo circulated frequently on social media and in progressive news sources like Mother Jones was not the original, and in particular, omitted all the sourcing. Are you sure you didn’t see an edited version that was circulated specifically to malign Damore?
From Lee Jussim, a professor of social psychology at Rutgers University who was a Fellow and Consulting Scholar at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (https://quillette.com/2017/08/07/google-memo-four-scientists...):
> The author of the Google essay on issues related to diversity gets nearly all of the science and its implications exactly right.
The first Adpocalypse preceded that. Rather, it was part of an internal drive to focus on more "family-friendly" content. Iirc, it was actually the presence of Islamic State propaganda on the site that was part of the motivation.
Yep the liberal playbook that was kicked off by an investigation by the progressive news outlet... The Times[1]... which is owned by Hyperliberal Billionaire... Rupert Murdoch.
Do you even bother to do a small amount of research into your biases? It blows my mind that people think the world is controlled by a couple of megalomaniacs on Liberal Twitter.
Consumers objecting to content is as old as television, and even older, and is certainly not owned by "hyperliberals."
For example, Conservatives demanded radio stations stop playing the Beatles, and, only slightly more recently, the Dixie Chicks. They called up advertisers as well.
You could probably find people complaining to artists' patrons in Medieval texts, if you looked.
> only slightly more recently, the Dixie Chicks. They called up advertisers as well.
If you want recent examples, look at WAP, its Super Bowl and Grammy's performances, Lil Nas X, or the NFL and Colin Kaepernick. There's also the witch hunt and boycott on teachers, companies and anyone else they believe are part of a nationwide critical race theory conspiracy.
Anyone claiming that critical race theory is a "conspiracy" is either massively misinformed, or being actively deceptive in order to push that very ideology. The National Education Association, a union with about 2.3 million members, has not only affirmed the existence of it, but is actively pushing for its inclusion in schools[1][2]:
"Share and publicize, through existing channels, information already available on critical race theory (CRT)"
"Provide an already-created, in-depth, study that critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society, and that we oppose attempts to ban critical race theory and/or The 1619 Project."
"Commit President Becky Pringle to make public statements across all lines of media that support racial honesty in education including but not limited to critical race theory.
This isn't limited to universities, either - it's being taught in K-12 schools[3]:
"Responding to prompts such as “In the last year, I have learned _____ about race and racism,” and “One way I will work for racial equity in my work,” teachers say:
“American society makes it hard to have high hopes.” Racism infests the nation’s “entire fabric.” Everyone must “lean into the discomfort.” “Older millennials are disappointingly racist.” “Aspects of the anti racist movement have been co-opted by neoliberal corporations, and reactionarily [sic] opposed by many even mainstream conservative thinkers.” Racism is “layered into everything we do at school.” We must “share the harsh reality of the BIPOC and LBGTQI communities with our students.” “Discuss issues of equity as arising in most every book I teach.”
Oh, and the statement by the NEA was removed from its website shortly after[4] (https://ra.nea.org/business-item/2021-nbi-039/ now redirects to the homepage), which is only further evidence for the fact that many of those pushing this ideology are simultaneously attempting to gaslight and actively lie to their opponents in an attempt to convince the public that it doesn't exist.
I'm not sure why you used the phrase "witch hunt" when the ideology clearly exists and is actively being pushed in education around the United States. Perhaps you meant to use the phrase "accountability culture"?
The vast majority of those quotes have nothing to do with critical race theory, and are simply anti-racism. The two are not remotely synonymous, the former being a minor academic framework for studying history.
This confusion was deliberate work of a few conservative thinkers, who wanted an obscure "elitist" academic theory to use as a catch-all term for all anti-racism work.
Well, this sure looks like a witch hunt[1] in which people were frothing with rage, becoming violent and getting arrested[2] at a school board metting because they didn't get their witch/CRT when they went looking for one to burn.
According to that same mob, when they couldn't find the critical race theory at the school board meeting, everything they didn't like, along with diversity training, suddenly became critical race theory[3]:
> While critical race theory was not on the agenda, parents and community members accused the school district of requiring teachers to take a diversity training that discusses the concept and then teaching it to students. They also criticized the school board for proposing a policy that would allow gender-expansive or transgender students to use their chosen name and gender pronouns and use the restroom that corresponds with their asserted gender identity.
That sounds and looks like a witch hunt for teachers to me.
Also, this is where the conspiracy comes in. Everything conservatives don't like is critical race theory now, and that's by design[2]:
> Christopher Rufo, a prominent opponent of critical race theory, in March acknowledged intentionally using the term to describe a range of race-related topics and conjure a negative association.
> “We have successfully frozen their brand — ‘critical race theory’ — into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions,” wrote Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. “We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category. The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory.’”
If you look at people on an axis other than liberal/conservative, you find that the people that object are the same people regardless of their politics. They're the people that can't stand the idea of other people seeing reading/hearing/seeing things, that they themselves wouldn't want to. It's the people that are hurt and scared when they see behavior that is actually harmless to them, but maybe spotlights a difference they don't want to be aware of.
Saying that liberals or conservatives have this to a greater or worse extent is looking at it through the wrong lens.
Nice what-aboutism... Yes Conservatives used to be just as bad, I was out there in the 90's complaining about authoritarian conservatives.
We libertarians did not mind our flank and Authoritarian liberals today are about 10000000x more of an issue than even the most extreme bible thumping conservative from the 90's ever was
Do you have a non-biased source that provides actual facts not hyperbolic rhetoric?
Are these tax payer funded libraries, and could it be the fund reduction is simply a result of the fact that many, including myself, believe that libraries should not be funded by forcible taxation of the population.
This position is often turned by left sources as "raaaaccciiism"
I was thinking historical examples would be an interesting context in part because I didn't think anyone needed reminding of all the times in recent days and weeks that conservatives have tried to boycott or cancel things, but others have provided some examples of that if you're interested.
And "what-aboutism" was exactly the point, I was specifically pointing out that boycotting based on morals isn't in any way only the domain of "hyperliberals."
The advertisers threatened to boycott because otherwise they would have risked being scrutinized and potentially making less profit.
What actually happened isn't that one side of the political spectrum "censored" the other side in some sort of targeted attack.. it's that advertisers and private companies optimized for generating as much profits as possible by (obviously) pondering to the majority of potential customers.
No? This narrative is a bit ahistorical - and it's fueled by this idea that hyperliberal boogeyman started censoring everything.
If you look at what happened in 2017, Google started "censoring" things because advertisers threatened to boycott. The platforms couldn't stay neutral because advertisers became more and more concerned with staying out of any potential scandal.