
YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views - okket
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/business/youtube-remove-extremist-videos.html
======
ravenstine
I'm starting to think that comment sections on news sites are a really bad
idea. At first I thought NPR and the like were cowards for removing theirs.

It's bad enough that NYT can be pretty biased on its own, but the comment
sections are always full of low-tier thinking that just push whatever
narrative is currently in the Overton window.

What I find distressing is how people remark that a telecom and advertising
giant acting as a de facto government over the public square isn't a violation
of free speech principles because they're a "private business", as if that's
an original thought that's profound. Funny how people say "it's a private
business" when it suits their own political interests.

We wouldn't blindly allow company-owned cities or states to pass laws,
especially vague or undefined ones, that potentially violate our rights, so
why do we allow "states" in _cyberspace_ to be run in such a way?

Ban people promoting violence? Sure, why not. I'm as against hate and violence
as the next person. But not only is censoring "hate speech" becoming a
slippery slope at the company level, it's bad for the public in general
because it sets a greater precedent for what the big corporations that run our
everyday lives can tell us what we can or cannot do, and with _no
forgiveness_. I don't find it hard to imagine a world where individuals can be
_instantly_ and _permanently_ banned from doing everyday things, just like
they are on YouTube, because they said or did something off the platform.

~~~
dageshi
Is a privately owned museum a "public square"? Or a sports stadium owned by a
private company? Or a Cinema? Or a threatre? No, neither is youtube.

It's a place the public visit not a piece of public infrastructure. Repeating
"public square" over and over again does not make it so.

~~~
bzbarsky
On the other hand, a privately owned shopping mall is legally a "public
square" in a number of states in the US, with the justification that it is
explicitly a place for people to gather and interact, just like the main
street of a town in the 19th century.

Which of these cases is Youtube more like? It's already hard to tell, and it's
continuing to change. I expect the legal status of online forums to evolve
over the next several decades, just like the legal status of brick-and-mortar
spaces has evolved over time.

~~~
belltaco
>On the other hand, a privately owned shopping mall is legally a "public
square" in a number of states

Even then, it does not mean that those malls should allow anyone to sell
wares. What it means it allows people to visit without discrimination on basis
of legally protected classes like gender and race. YouTube banning a channel
does not ban individual from watching videos, it prevents them from uploading
videos which is akin to setting up stores.

~~~
bzbarsky
> What it means it allows people to visit without discrimination on basis of
> legally protected classes like gender and race

No, the "public square" designation specifically allows people to do things
like come to the mall and set up political protests and whatnot. It's not
about _access_ to the mall; it's about speech protections.

Is uploading videos more akin to setting up a store at the mall, or more akin
to standing on a soapbox at the mall and giving a political speech? It
probably really depends on the video, on whether the video is being monetized,
etc.

In particular, I feel there is an important distinction between demonetization
and removal here, from an ethical/moral perspective. I can't speak to the
legal perspective; I am not a lawyer.

~~~
edmundsauto
One flaw in the analogy is that physical space is limited and difficult for a
person to move around in. The digital space is effectively infinite, and
switching is as easy as typing in a new url (compared to the physical
challenge of moving to another state/region).

~~~
bzbarsky
There are all sorts of flaws in the analogies here; that's why they're
analogies, not identities.

That said, I'm not quite sure I understand your point. A speaker in physical
space can pretty easily take their speech elsewhere; most obviously to the
nearest public street corner. So moving away from a private venue typically
does not require anything nearly as drastic as "moving to another
state/region".

I'd really like to understand your point and how it applies to both the mall
and youtube situations, though, and would appreciate you explaining it if you
have the time.

~~~
edmundsauto
The crux is that digital space is infinite -- anyone can create a space for
their own speech. In the physical world, people own very little space, and
free speech almost always needs to impose on someone else's property. I think
because of that, any comparisons between online speech and IRL speech are
inherently flawed and not very useful.

~~~
bzbarsky
Thank you, that explanation helps.

I think there's a difference between "you can speak" and "you can speak in
such a way that interested people can hear". The former is not very useful in
terms of the right people usually think of as "freedom of speech"; the
limiting case of it in the physical world is "you can speak, but only in your
own home". So what, if anything, makes for an online version of the public
square, where one can go to present speech for consideration by others?

Also, I think online speech is more similar to physical-world speech than you
make it out to be. You can't speak online without "imposing" on your hosting
provider, their ISP, etc. If you self-host, you "impose" on your own ISP (and
probably violate their ToS, if you have a residential connection). You
"impose" on your domain registrar. These are all private entities, so you have
the same sorts of issues as you allude to for the physical world. And these
private entities have been known to restrict the speech of people relying on
their services, so this is not a hypothetical risk.

------
kypro
What I find funny about all this is that I'm certain if YouTube existed a few
decades earlier we would likely be under pressure to ban "disgusting" pro-LGBT
content or content supporting things as "vile" as interracial relationships.

We would say, these private companies have a duty not to radicalise our
children. That our children are being led away from god and into sinful
lifestyles like homosexuality.

Some of us would welcome our views being censored by a few execs in silicon
valley because we would see them defending the moral values of the status-
quo...

Surely I'm not the only one who feels it might be a little short sighted to
give a handful of billionaires like Zuckerberg control over what we can and
can't express in the 21st century?

If we're so concerned and don't want to see content we morally disagree with,
why can't we have family friendly modes?

I for one am glad we were all radicalised to support the "homosexual agenda".
I'm glad we were radicalised by people like MLK to resist racism. And sure,
there were some extremists along the way who took it upon themselves to commit
acts of terrorism for the "greater good", but we understood these people were
rare and this was the unfortunate, but necessary cost of liberty.

So before we continue too far down this road, are we certain we have all the
answers now? If someone can be banned from social media sites for stating
biological (but perhaps unfortunate) facts such as, "trans women aren't women"
are we completely sure we'll get mass censorship right this time?

It might be worth remembering vast majority of us hold one or two "extreme
views" that others find morally offensive.

Edit: Not that I should have to, but for those who are suspicious of my
motives, I'm a left-wing, pro-LGBT, anti-racist type of guy.

~~~
lugg
I don't think the analogy fits. Those individuals are protected classes and
refusing them access like this would be discriminatory behavior. Likely not
illegal in USA but it would be illegal elsewhere.

Racists are not a protected class of people. They aren't afforded those same
rights. And on some grounds their disruption of society actually puts an onus
on you as a platform to restrict their access.

~~~
leereeves
They weren't protected classes when the political pressure would have been
against them.

"Protected class" basically means politically favored group, and as GP points
out, that changes.

~~~
lugg
Yes it does, but to attempt and claim that White Supremacy could ever be
considered a "protected class" is absurd.

This isn't my bias speaking here, this is a contextual reality, the world has
constraints and there isn't any iteration of what we have that would allow
this reality to evolve.

The only wiggle room you have here is on free speech grounds but we have
already figured out, that this does not apply here.

~~~
belorn
Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights is already include
ideological and philosophical views as protected.

To quote the EU court: " _the Court held that "A fair balance of personal
rights made it necessary to accept that others’ thought should be subject to a
minimum of influence, otherwise the result would be a "strange society of
silent animals that [would] think but ... not express themselves, that [would]
talk but ... not communicate, and that [would] exist but ... not coexist."_

It basically comes down to the idea that people have a freedom to express a
religion _or_ belief, and its the later word which has in the courts view a
much larger scope as it also covers ideology and philosophy. A belief can be
anything from the view that men are more violent than women, or that
immigrants are more violent than natively born.

The US has generally a much narrower definition for protected classes, but
there are three states that consider political affiliation as protected class.
California, D.C., and New York, where the later protect against discrimination
because of political activity. ([https://www.legalmatch.com/law-
library/article/political-aff...](https://www.legalmatch.com/law-
library/article/political-affiliation-discrimination.html))

All that said, protected class is unlikely going to work on a youtube video.
If youtube wanted to ban all non-white non-christian people they likely could
do so, as people in videos are not employees of youtube and thus are not
covered by the anti-discrimination protection.

------
patagonia
You ever been to a legit protest? Have you been near the police line at a
protest when there are thousands of protesters and hundreds of police officers
and tensions are high and really not nice stuff is being said all around? And
the police officers just stand there at the ready. (Sometimes they don’t and
they antagonize protestors or just plain assault then, but my experience has
been that is the exception.) I have immense, enormous, huge respect for those
officers. Sometimes the individual officers personal beliefs align with the
protesters. Sometimes not. But they stand there. Just stand there. If things
get violent then they shut things down. But a lot of times it feels like
things don’t get violent because they are there and people know they will shut
it down if things get violent. That’s what I want YouTube to be. YouTube
should be the public infrastructure that is available for people to gather and
exchange ideas upon, such that most people don’t even give a second thought to
the importance of having public streets available to protest on, and the
police are there when the law is broken or unprotected speech is spoken. That
is it. The job doesn’t pay well. It’s not a glorified role. And it’s prob
pretty miserable when things get heated. But it’s a beauty to behold when you
step back from it all and take it in and see what is happening.

~~~
fwip
I don't know if this is what you meant, but that's what youtube is doing now.
They've decided that these neo-Nazi videos are causing violence, so they've
stepped in to remove those bad actors for the sake of everyone else.

~~~
josteink
> They've decided that these neo-Nazi videos are causing violence

I’ve decided that your comment causes violence towards people inclined to
believe in freedom.

And so does Antifa, BLM, third wave feminists.

When do we start banning them? And are you “ok” with having someone else
randomly labelling your speech as something “causing violence”?

No? Then if it’s not ok to do to you, why is it ok to do upon others?

~~~
fwip
I don't think you're running a video hosting platform - and if you are, I'd be
inclined not to use it.

You're also welcome to take your business elsewhere, if you wish YouTube had
more Nazis on it.

~~~
josteink
The problem here is not real Nazis.

It’s that leftists are increasingly categorising reasonable discourse and
arguments they don’t agree with as “extremist right wing propaganda” (or just
Nazis), and based on that get accounts defunded or banned.

The left is widening their already rampant use of censorship.

Allowing one side to dictate what the other is allowed to say is generally not
good for a democracy.

------
Sephr
That's fine if we can agree on what is an "extreme view".

YouTube has already decided that academic software vulnerability exploitation
proof-of-concept videos are "dangerous content", which results in video
removal and a strike on your account.

~~~
Bakary
An extreme view is anything that may reduce income by making advertisers
leave.

~~~
Nuzzerino
Correction: Anything that can be reasonably argued to make a layperson believe
that it has the potential to make advertisers leave.

------
ausbah
Here is the actual blog post: [https://youtube.googleblog.com/2019/06/our-
ongoing-work-to-t...](https://youtube.googleblog.com/2019/06/our-ongoing-work-
to-tackle-hate.html?m=1)

Main points:

>Removing more hateful and supremacist content from YouTube

I think this is great, I see nothing of value being lost from channels whose
whole schtick is to marginalize people's of a target group.

>Reducing borderline content and raising up authoritative voices

I do like attempts to curtail outright scams and misinformation, but don't
like YouTube choosing "top channels" as voices of authority.

>Continuing to reward trusted creators and enforce our monetization policies

I think this shows what drives YouTube and many other platforms, what is and
isn't advertiser friendly. Principles only go as far as the bottomline.

~~~
skrowl
> > Removing more hateful and supremacist content from YouTube

> I think this is great, I see nothing of value being lost from channels whose
> whole schtick is to marginalize people's of a target group.

Who gets to pick what's 'hateful' and 'supremacist' though? Did you think of
that?

~~~
fwip
Google. Is this a trick question or something?

~~~
umvi
More specifically, the political party with the most supporters at Google
(currently democratic party, but could change)

~~~
drewrv
They gave slightly more to republicans last time around:
[https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgot.php?cycle=2018&cmte=...](https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgot.php?cycle=2018&cmte=C00428623)

~~~
umvi
Yeah but that doesn't tell you anything about the party alignment of
employees.

1 rich republican Google employee donating $500K vs 100 middle class democrat
Google employees donating $4K will yield those results you posted, yet the
demographics would indicate 1% republican.

------
patagonia
Will YouTube also remove their algos that send people down rabbit holes of
“extreme views” and encapsulate individuals in information bubbles that seem
to validate and fail to challenge their views?

The platform should shoulder as much or more blame than the content in this
case. Free speech man. This is not ok.

~~~
la_barba
>and encapsulate individuals in information bubbles that seem to validate and
fail to challenge their views?

Err, how do you know that the algorithm does this? And also, how do you know
that people are not exposed to other views outside of YouTube. And lastly, why
do you think its the job of an entertainment platform to "challenge" views?

~~~
chronial
> Err, how do you know that the algorithm does this?

Youtube optimizes for watch time. Most people don't want to spend their
afternoons having their views challenged.

Any algorithm that properly optimizes for watch time of the masses will learn
to validate views.

~~~
la_barba
Right, we can all speculate. I'm asking for some objective proof, if any such
is available. We can only propose a solution if we first demonstrate that the
problem is real.

~~~
chronial
I don't want to assume bad faith, but I have the impression that you are
arguing just for the sake of arguing.

What about my statement is speculation?

• Youtube themselves state that they optimize for watch time.

• I don't want to go and search for papers on this, but I don't think the idea
that people prefer to have their views validated instead of challenged is in
any way controversial or speculation.

• It's also not speculation to state that people want to spend their time
doing things that gives them positive emotions.

You clearly won't get "objective proof" on this, because the only way to
actually proof this would be to do a formal study on it. And why would anyone
to a study on such an obvious non-controversial topic?

~~~
la_barba
Maybe it seems confrontational to you but, I don't think "how do you know
this" is the same as "can you make a reasonable guess". I don't want to have a
personal back and forth with you on this, because it doesn't serve any
purpose.

------
joshfraser
Give your worst political enemy the power to decide what is "hate speech" and
what is "disinformation" and then you'll realize that free speech isn't
something we should ever compromise on. - Naval Ravikant

------
Simulacra
I strongly disagree banning anyone or any video that does not call for
violence. I think it's a slippery slope and smacks of book banning. The
information is out there, right or wrong. Who is it to judge what the public
should see?

~~~
dawnerd
YouTube is in charge of what they serve on their site. That’s your answer
right there.

~~~
ng12
I'll never understand this reductionist argument. Yes,
YouTube/Facebook/Salesforce/etc can do whatever they want. That doesn't mean
that it's good for society or that it's not worth talking about.

------
throwaway190605
We're not talking about the removal of extreme political views. We're talking
about the censorship of one particular ideology. Where is the corresponding
elimination of polarizing videos espousing views from the radical left?

A wholesale expunction from one end of the spectrum is hard not to interpret
as politically charged censorship. Let's see how many Antifa and BLM videos
get taken down.

~~~
untog
> We're not talking about the removal of extreme political views.

Yes we are.

You are implying equivalence where there is none. Black Lives Matter and
Antifa are not equivalent to white supremacists.

~~~
throwaway190605
You're arguing with the least interesting part of my point.

Just watch how many radical left videos get removed, irrespective of what
group posted them.

~~~
untog
You appear to not be understanding my point. The videos being removed are not
some "radical right" that serves as the opposite of your definition of
"radical left". They are "channels that advocate for neo-Nazism, white
supremacy and other bigoted ideologies". BLM, Antifa, etc. are not the "left"
equivalent of these "right" viewpoints.

~~~
whenchamenia
As someone who finds them both distasteful and hateful; yes, they are very
similar. All sides need to reign in their extremists, or become defined by
them.

~~~
Frondo
Black Lives Matter literally exists to highlight disproportionate police
violence against people of color;

not only are they _not_ calling for expelling whites (the "reverse" of what a
lot of white nationalists call for), what they are asking for is that people
of color be treated by the state enforcement mechanism at parity with white
people.

You may find that distasteful, but it is difficult to see what aspect of that
is hateful.

From their own website: "We are working for a world where Black lives are no
longer systematically targeted for demise."

[https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/](https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/)

I'm only writing all this because it's very important not to let rhetoric like
"white nationalists and Black Lives Matter are equivalent"; they're not and
it's disingenuous or dishonest to conflate them.

------
JacksonGariety
Regarding the general phenomenon of removing 'hateful content' from social
media platforms (Facebook and Twitter as well) there seem to be primarily two
reactions:

1) Good. Hateful content spreads hate and causes it to multiply. We should not
allow it to proliferate on the internet.

2) This is censorship. It it is the fault of the individuals watching/reading
the hateful media who are to blame for number of views the videos/articles
get.

So I wonder: is it really an either/or decision? Is there no third option
here? It seems like a classic ethical antinomy. Authority influences people
but, at the same time, the authority always needs to be recognized as
authoritative by the people who are influenced by it.

------
wnevets
Why do some people think they're entitled to say what they want on youtube?

~~~
warp_factor
because it became the de facto place most of non tech-savy people go to to see
videos online. They have a huge monopoly on our time and attention and that's
extremely disturbing.

Imagine that the electricity company providing electricity policed what kind
of devices you can use inside your home (you are allowed to connect a Samsung
washer but not a Bosh washer). There would be a lot of outcry.

~~~
root_axis
> _They have a huge monopoly on our time and attention and that 's extremely
> disturbing._

You mean that you willingly give them control over your time and attention.

~~~
warp_factor
the issue is not me or you but with the masses of people that don't know //
don't care where they give their attention. And that's the huge majority
unfortunately.

~~~
root_axis
That's their choice. If they don't like YouTube they should boycott YouTube,
not leverage the government to force YouTube to host arbitrary videos for
free.

~~~
dgjrhgi
How do you make small kids boycott YouTube before they gets addicted to it? If
so then we can also have people simply boycott drugs and not make it illegal.

~~~
root_axis
The same way we prevent small kids from visiting pornhub: through responsible
supervision.

------
adwi
Even as lifelong card-carrying ACLU supporter I don’t see why they don’t just
take down anything they damn well please.

They’re a private company and are entitled to have a curatorial viewpoint—and
for my particular beliefs culling white suprematists and borderline pedophilic
content is a Good Thing.

You’re entitled to say whatever you want in this country, but I’m not
obligated to broadcast it for you.

~~~
skrowl
I think the problem is that they censor views they don't like that aren't
breaking any laws, which makes them a PUBLISHER but then they claim they need
protections only offered to OPEN PLATFORMS.

They've often claimed in court to be an open / neutral platform, because that
comes with legal protections against what your users post -
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/02/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/02/facebook-
mark-zuckerberg-platform-publisher-lawsuit)

Publishers (like Forbes when people blog on there) on the other hand are
responsible for their user posts. I think Facebook / Youtube is more like the
Forbe here, so they should be treated legally as a publisher.

~~~
esailija
I cannot find any mention of youtube in the link, it seems to be about
facebook.

------
fallous
I'm not entirely sure that certain large sites have thought through the legal
implications of this kind of behavior, and no I'm not talking about
"censorship!" or other free speech laws that are applicable to government
rather than private entities.

Back during the late 90s all of us working on public websites knew that
allowing user-contributed content was a great way to build both community and
to increase the sheer amount of content, which increased advertising revenues.
But there's a catch to user-contributed content... in order to avoid legal
responsibility as a site owner for the user content posted on the site you
can't moderate that content directly. The reason for this is the "common
carrier" rule.

Common carrier essentially states that as a communications platform you are
not liable for the legal implications of the communications that occur on your
platform as long as you do not choose to engage in editing or moderating that
content. AT&T, for example, was not legally liable for a conversation that
occurred on their telephone network even if the conversation involved the
commission of a crime (we're plotting a terror attack, a bank robbery, etc.)
The reason they were not liable was because they did not monitor the
communications on their network and did not cut off a phone call if it sounded
like you were planning something illegal, evil, whatever.

The minute you, as the carrier, begin actively moderating the content (as
opposed to setting up common universal rules such as site karma or user driven
moderation), you are responsible for ALL of that content. You managed to
remove 99.99% of all illegal communication? Too bad, you're still on the hook
for that 0.01% that you missed.

This does not mean that content may never be removed by the company, it's just
that they must do it under the order of a court or applicable government
entity... in the same way that AT&T could not tap your phones absent a court
order.

Many sites opted not to have user-contributed content due to the potential
concerns regarding advertisers or their own brand reputation. Others did allow
such content and later removed things such as comments and the like due to the
conflict between violating common carrier and the problems that arose with
advertisers and/or their brand (see Yahoo Finance comments circa 2002 or so).

------
LinuxBender
I know this will be an unpopular opinion, but Youtube can delete whatever they
want. It's their site. AFAIK, most people don't have legally binding contracts
stating that Youtube must keep all their videos online. Even the big streamers
that make money off Youtube have to follow whatever guidelines Youtube come up
with. I bet there is wording that says something to the effect of "Subject to
revision..." or like that in the AUP.

That said, there is nothing stopping people from creating their own sites, or
putting taboo / extreme videos on chan sites, forums, etc... and plonk it down
behind Cloudflare or Akamai. i.e. 4chan, 8chan, I mean, you won't find more
extreme videos that what get posted there every 90 seconds. In this case, I am
not linking to the examples.

------
drilldrive
We talk all the time about the two internets, one of China and one of the rest
of the world. But more and more we are seeing a new division arising within
America itself of two internets. I can't say how this will play out long-term,
but with alternative-media sites rising we may well see two broad forces
developing.

~~~
tal8d
> ...but with alternative-media sites rising...

That should be happening, but isn't - not to the degree it naturally would.
Debanking. Payment processors have been very busy weeding out potential
competitors to the big names in SV. I almost want to laugh at the fact that
the early cryptocurrency proponents experienced the exact same treatment while
building the very thing that would protect those presently being targeted by
Visa/Mastercard. I'm still banned from two major banks...

This youtube censorship stuff is going to pale in comparison to the coming
wave of debanking. There is a very freaked out class of people who have their
hands on the wheel at the moment (especially true at Mastercard), so you can't
rely on traditional profit motives to predict behavior - anything is possible.
My financial adviser suggested, with a straight face, that I consider a
portfolio built around some new social equity index... my account has been
self directed ever since.

~~~
drilldrive
Yes this is absolutely true. But once the cryptocurrencies gain a true grip,
along with alternative payment processors, we will really begin to see a true
divergence. In some sense, such particulars are the bedrock of the second
internet.

~~~
tal8d
Maybe. I have no doubt that cryptocurrency use will be common, primarily
because it will be necessary in a world dominated by software agents that
can't rely on meatspace money, but I'm starting to wonder about likelihood of
the original political goal. Wallstreet gave up fighting it after a couple of
years, and is presently positioned as the guy selling the shovels in the gold
rush, but there is an increasing amount of direct interaction. It seems like
they think they'll be able to maintain the present segmented status - which is
obviously not going to work. So I expect they'll go full hands on mode once it
is obvious that there is no going back. What will that look like? Well every
couple of years, since the very beginning, some idiot has tried to start a
colored-coin/tainted-coin service - to, you know, think of the children...
making the currency worthless after being tainted by activities deemed
unacceptable (ransomware, exchange hacks, etc). No matter how many times it is
explained that this eliminates the property of fungibility, which is what
makes a currency a currency, these people keep popping up. Well wallstreet
might be able to make it happen, if they make the move before there is more
widespread global adoption.

------
xwdv
What I worry here is that the extremity of a view will vary depending on how
close it is to your own beliefs. Extremists don’t self identify as extremists,
so the question is where does YouTube’s temperament lie?

~~~
yakshaving_jgt
We’ve seen their leaked meeting videos. We know where their temperaments lie.

------
microdrum
The beginning of the end of YT. "Extreme" is the ultimate slippery slope
situation, and Google is unable to articulate respectable, bright-line rules
around extremism. I can think of dozens of startups that allow video sharing,
and some like streamable seem to have speeds and compute that outperform YT.

------
malloreon
I said it about facebook and I'll say it again about youtube: zero credit for
deciding extremist views like white hate have no place on your platform a
decade later.

How many ad dollars did Google make off these videos?

And how much damage did hosting those videos do?

------
buboard
How easy is it to shut down decentralized systems like mastodon, ipfs,
bitchute etc? because i feel they are going to become quite popular

~~~
Kye
The nuisance model on Mastodon is different. Silos push everyone together in
the same space, so you pretty much have to fight to protect your own little
corner.

People you might like to remove from your experience will tend to congregate
on certain instances favorable to that kind of thinking. You have the power to
block that instance at an individual level. There isn't the same impetus to
deplatform them because you can just break the link.

I have many (but not all) "free speech" instances blocked because they're
packed with users who try to force that perspective on me by (for example)
removing content warnings when replying. I don't have to appeal to any
authority to enforce my boundaries. Only the owners can decide who has the
power to make those decisions on centralized social media sites. That seems to
be outsourced moderators with little or no understanding of niche or
marginalized communities.

------
staunch
Private companies like Google can't be expected to uphold human rights. They
will almost always act in their own financial interest. It's up to the
citizenry and their elected lawmakers to force them to do what is right.

All it would take is a law that compels public internet services to behave as
if they're public services once they start reaching >33% of citizens.

The problem seems to be that a large percentage of citizens don't grasp that
important freedoms often have a high price tag. Anyone can see this with the
response to second and fourth amendment issues, and the same is becoming true
of the first amendment.

Free societies have an inherent amount of chaos. That chaos is the price you
pay. People desiring to live in a fully ordered society are unwittingly asking
to live in a prison.

------
pessimizer
I'm sure that Google has been waiting for a youtube media panic to pull the
trigger on this for a while. They'd prefer to be an on-demand cable channel,
and would love to remove _any material controversial to anyone,_ but didn't
want censorship to _be_ the story (especially with antitrust stuff going
around.)

Google isn't in the video business because it wants people to be able to share
videos with each other. Google is in the video business to sell ads. Censoring
the illiberal is the way to get to get liberals to support censorship.
Announcing manual control over the suggestions is a way to justify steering
viewers away from any content, starving it of revenue, and getting it off the
platform.

------
0815test
So, they're removing _thousands_ of bad videos... _thousands_! Don't worry
though, there are many, many other videos just like those on the platform.
Your default recommendations are still going to suck.

~~~
ModernMech
Headline says thousands of videos, story body says thousands of videos _and
channels_. I imagine you have to remove only about 20% of the videos/channels
to account for 80% of the views.

------
llamataboot
I think the difference is that YouTube /pays these people/. It's almost an
employer/employee relationship.

YouTube generates revenue, youtube shares that revenue, contributors with tons
of views are making money directly from YT.

This is simply not the same as Twitter, etc. Twitter may make money off of
eyeballs. I may somehow make money by becoming twitter famous. But my money is
not coming as a share of twitter revenue.

The incentives are all screwed up. YT benefits financially the more 'shocking'
my vid can be, and I benefit financially if YT does.

~~~
themacguffinman
If that was the only issue, YouTube can demonetize the content or creator.
They already do so for controversial content that advertisers won't abide. The
fact remains that people want this content completely gone from YouTube, and
preferably the entire internet.

------
munificent
For almost all of human history, sharing and persisting information had a
pretty high cost. To get something into someone else's head, first you had to
verbally tell them. Then you could at least write it once and have it read
multiple times. That written work persisted over time longer too, though it
required scribes to manually copy them periodically to broadcast it farther.

During all of that time, driving the cost to persist and broadcast information
down has been a good thing. The cheaper the better, because it gives more
brains access to useful information. I think because of that, we assumed the
ideal cost is zero.

In the past several years, I believe we are slowly, painfully, realizing that
we were wrong. The web has driven that cost down to practically zero. Any
rando can write anything and it will be served on the web to all and sundry in
perpetuity.

The problem with that is that it makes it equally easy to broadcast _mis_
-information. What humans need to prosper is access to _good_ information —
true facts and useful ideas. Information that helps us take actions that help
people.

When there's a non-zero maintainance cost for info, someone has to
periodically choose to pay that cost. The scribe has to decide what book to
copy. The printer has to decide which pamphlets to re-print. The public access
channel has to decide which shows to schedule.

If someone can't be motivated to care about some piece of information enough
to do that, it naturally decays and disappears. Like evolution, there's a
natural selection process where some memes die. Now, granted, even with a non-
zero cost, bad or misinformed actors may choose to further bad information.
But I think that happens way more often when the cost to doing so is nil.

So, when you have a non-zero cost, it encourages a certain amount of selection
where useful information tends to last longer. At the same time, you don't
want the cost too high. When that happens, only the powerful are able to
decide what information persists and they choose only information that
furthers their own power. Driving the cost down has been, I think, one of the
major engines of democracy.

But I do think we've overshot the mark now. In the next several years, it's
going to be up to us as a culture to figure out how to effectively deal with
the hurricane of misinformation constantly roaring around us. It is, I think,
the biggest threat facing human society today.

(You might argue that climate change is a bigger threat. But note that a
primary reason we're failing to take sufficient action on climate change is
because of misinformation.)

------
cwperkins
I applaud any effort towards deradicalisation, but we need to work towards
transparency. My gut reaction to the college board instituting an adversity
score, was that it would’ve disproportionately impacted a guy like me growing
up, but I’ve since come to realize that I’d prefer one entity with a
transparent methodology tackling the problems instead of each institution,
like Harvard, having an opaque system of their own.

------
minikites
Most people are not information or media literate, they don't do their own
research to fact-check claims, and they believe any authority who says
something similar to what they already believe. The "marketplace of ideas"
requires people to put in the effort I describe, effort that they clearly
aren't, so the responsibility for checking and enforcing content limitations
passes to the platform owner.

If you don't like this outcome, argue for more humanities and social science
classes in primary and secondary education to educate society in evaluating
claims and the other aspects of information and media literacy.

------
fzeroracer
I always find things like this interesting. A short while ago I posted a
thread here [1] on a publicly owned service engaging in clear viewpoint
discrimination with nary a peep. YouTube, a privately owned service, moves to
moderate their platform and all hell breaks loose.

Mind you this isn't an attempt to defend YouTube at all given what they did
yesterday but rather that I've always seen the battles over free speech and
the bias on HN as being incredibly lopsided.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19976398](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19976398)

------
man2525
My sense is that unless content creators get views for calling out the
behavior of other content creators, they risk losing likes and advertising
revenue. Then they become the political agenda guy, and no longer the comic
book movie critic, chef, video game expert, or theremin playing guy they were
trying to portray. I'd like extremism resolved through naming and shaming, a
living exile ideally, but I don't think drafting popular YouTubers to do so is
completely realistic. Black Mirror, here we come?

------
smsm42
> The company also said that channels that “repeatedly brush up against our
> hate speech policies,” but don’t violate them outright, would be removed
> from YouTube’s advertising program

Even their own rules written by them is never enough for censors. They have to
invent stuff like "brush up" to extend censorship even further, even when
recognizing there's no violation of their own policies, that they themselves
wrote. Talk about slippery slope...

------
argd678
It would be good if they apply the policy consistently to people in power too,
such as politicians. I doubt they will though.

------
crankylinuxuser
Note that it's not extreme views (like my adherence to the FSF).

Nope, we're talking about "videos and channels that advocate for neo-Nazism,
white supremacy and other bigoted ideologies".

As much as I don't like censorship, views that advocate for _extermination_ of
other people can rightly fuck off.

~~~
nullbyte
YouTube gets to decide what a "bigoted ideology" is. That's a sweeping term
that can be used as a catch-all for videos they don't like.

I think that this will be bad for the platform overall -- an increase in
censorship is never good.

~~~
fwip
An increase in censorship is very frequently good.

Consider a discussion forum that never banned any users or removed any spam.
It quickly becomes very difficult to have a meaningful discussion when a third
of the posts are "CHEEP ROLE X bUY NOW" and another third are racial hatred.

~~~
nullbyte
Except this is censorship based on political ideologies

~~~
fwip
I thought censorship was never good? Now it's sometimes good except when it's
based on "political ideologies," except for whatever example I bring up next,
which of course is another exception.

------
SmaryLarry
I think the analogies in this case are often extremely accurate ways that
people have been getting the point across. I'll add one of my own in just a
second. The problem here is not censorship at all, the problem is monopoly.
Take the recent Disney acquisition of Fox for example in which in the
acquisition they were forced to sell off regional fox sports stations in their
purchase. The problem was they were about to have a monopoly on sports TV
content. Now look at YouTube which has a near monopoly on ALL user uploaded
video content. The problem is an entire industry - user uploaded video - is
consolidated. Peoples incomes, their very livelihoods depend on YouTube.
YouTube decides whether individuals succeed or fail with user uploaded video
with their recommendations, suggestions, and trending algorithms. Success of
individuals depends as much on YouTubes opinion of them as much as on their
own abilities to produce content. YouTube itself people wouldn't call a small
company, but it doesn't have that many employees... unless you start to count
people who upload videos as employees, then they have millions of them, most
which work for free until they can make it big. YouTube is the largest
employer in the world and their monopoloy on content means their employees
have no where else to go when they get banned. This doesn't even scratch the
fact that typically we have seen bans done across multiple platforms -
Facebook, Twitter, iTunes, Paypal, Patreon. They all ban users simultaneously
to silence people and cut their income off. Imagine if the water company
decided your speech meant you were too evil to be worth supplying. Well Money
is not quiet as necessary as water but it comes close for many people who are
working or trying to make it big at YouTube. Hey you can buy water from some
other company, they might say, right? Even other large companies are depending
on their YouTube videos to succeed and they employ hundreds more people who
rely on YouTube. It is clear that their monopoly on user generated video
content is what is the true problem. How can their power be weakened is the
better question than what should they be censoring. Splitting YouTube from
Google and the rest of Alphabet is a start. They likely saw this coming a long
time ago and preemptively worked towards this goal with their recent
restructuring. How else do you break up a monopoly that was made by user
choice? Well in the Disney example they simply split the channels. Force
YouTube to split into two or more companies. Whether that means breaking
subscribers right now the middle and making two companies or dividing it up
into multiple categorical companies then do it. I don't know the best way but
I do know their dominance and user lack of choice by virtue of the monopoly is
the true enemy, not censorship.

------
raverbashing
Well, not surprising

> The tension was evident on Tuesday, when YouTube said that a prominent
> right-wing creator who used racial language and homophobic slurs to harass a
> journalist in videos on YouTube did not violate its policies. The decision
> set off a firestorm online, including accusations that YouTube was giving a
> free pass to some of its popular creators.

For context: [https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/4/18653088/youtube-steven-
cr...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/4/18653088/youtube-steven-crowder-
carlos-maza-harassment-bullying-enforcement-verdict)

------
AndrewStephens
In my opinion, sites like YouTube that rely on user generated content should
drop any pretense of being neutral - they aren't and never have been. What
they have been doing is dodging responsibility for being the publisher of
racist and harmful material.

I'm sure that YouTube would say that they don't play favorites but even if
that were true, as we have seen there are organizations all the way up to
nation states that are hell-bent on corrupting platforms like YouTube for
their own ends. And they don't require much corrupting.

Moderation is key. Sites like Hacker News work only because of strict
moderation by humans. Similar sites without such moderation quickly become a
haven for trolls and spam. Automatic systems can always be gamed - what is
needed is a strong editorial hand.

I don't want YouTube to end - there are thousands of hours of great content.
But if it is to survive it needs to make a choice of what kind of site they
want to be. Letting itself be anything its users want is turning it into a
cesspit.

~~~
skrowl
Google / Facebook are private companies, and they should absolutely be able to
pick and choose what is posted on their platform if they want.

However, they SHOULD NOT be able to have it both ways where they censor posts
they don't like (like a publisher would do) but enjoy protections afforded to
actual open / neutral platforms.

Once you start censoring things that aren't breaking any laws, you're now a
PUBLISHER and not an OPEN PLATFORM, so you are responsible for what's posted
on your site.

~~~
AndrewStephens
Youtube has always been a PUBLISHER. They have never been an OPEN PLATFORM in
any real sense.

They have so far managed to shirk responsibility for PUBLISHING hateful
content while being amazingly on-the-ball when dealing with copyrighted
material.

I am sure YouTube wouldn't put it in these terms, but from the outside it
looks like every day they make the editorial decision to enforce copyrights
while pushing hate speech. I am sure this makes sense financially.

~~~
busterarm
If they are a publisher, then I can sue them for users posting false
information about me or putting me in harm's way.

------
telaelit
And yet they’re not taking down Crowder’s homophobic videos??

~~~
r3bl
They kinda are over at Twitter:
[https://twitter.com/gaywonk/status/1136056663927087105](https://twitter.com/gaywonk/status/1136056663927087105)

They've demonetized Crowder.

> Update on our continued review–we have suspended this channel’s
> monetization. We came to this decision because a pattern of egregious
> actions has harmed the broader community and is against our YouTube Partner
> Program policies.

Then they've made some additional confusion by talking about how they'll
remonetize him when he removes shirts from the shop (they've presented it as
the only requirement to reinstate monetization). At the end, they've doubled
down on the first thing they've said:

> Again, this channel is demonetized due to continued egregious actions that
> have harmed the broader community. To be reinstated, he will need to address
> all of the issues with his channel.

------
Animats
Not good. What's "extreme"? Medicare for All? Brietbart News? Islam? Haredi?
School shootings? Kim Jong-un? Putin? Trump?

YouTube already tries to transcribe videos to text. Is it within the state of
the art to recognize common false statements and superimpose a crawl with
counterarguments? One thing you have going for you is that the nuts aren't
that original. If you had a classifier that could pick up the 100 best known
nutty statements, you could do this.

Is there a startup in this?

~~~
creaghpatr
It's up to the advertisers really, think cable TV. A little bit of edginess,
but if it gets crazy a boycott can force an advertiser pull out. We're only a
few years away from YouTube turing into cable TV, maybe even the FCC will get
involved in making that determination.

Edit: I don't agree that advertisers should be in charge, I just think they
will ultimately decide the line between edgy and extreme.

------
nyczomg
From the article: 'The new policy will ban “videos alleging that a group is
superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion,” the
company said in a blog post.'

Is this going to include videos that mention "white privilege" (which one
could argue alleges superiority of white people) in which white people are
asked to "check their privilege" in some way (which one could argue is an
attempt to justify exclusion)?

~~~
ajross
> "check their privilege" [...] (which one could argue is an attempt to
> justify exclusion)?

If you can make the case, maybe. I mean, it sounds like a kind of insane case
to make to me. Who's being excluded, and from what, merely by having their
assumptions challenged in a discussion context?

The groups actually being targetted are ones that tend to advocate for the
status of the US as an inherently white nation. Sort of an easier sell to my
mind.

~~~
deogeo
It's not surprising there'd be groups advocating for that. They don't want to
become a minority in their country, as both history and current events show
that's a bad position to be in.

~~~
ajross
I can't tell if you're making a dispassionate explanation for why hate exists
or if you're actually advocating for white supremacists...

~~~
deogeo
My intent makes no difference, and the statement isn't limited to whites.

------
RosanaAnaDana
Relevant xkcd (todays): [https://xkcd.com/2159/](https://xkcd.com/2159/)

------
randyrand
Extreme _political_ views. The title is missing a very important qualifier.

~~~
okket
I added it, although the it's on the NYT website.

~~~
okket
The [Political] got removed, not by me.

------
fwip
You're not pro-LGBT if you think trans women aren't women.

~~~
kypro
This isn't my opinion. I will happily call people by whatever pronoun they
wish to be called. That's just common decency in my opinion.

That comment was in reference to this story, it looks like I got the quote
wrong: [https://www.nationalreview.com/news/journalist-sues-
twitter-...](https://www.nationalreview.com/news/journalist-sues-twitter-for-
banning-her-over-women-arent-men-tweets/)

I think there's a difference between how we should recognise someone socially
and the reality of an individual's biology. What's worrying here is that
stating a biological fact can be viewed as too extreme if it goes against a
certain political ideology.

But there are plenty of examples like this. I know people have been kick off
of social media for suggesting the Prophet Muhammad was a pedophile, or for
discussing racial crime stats. And many of the examples I've seen of this
don't appear to be in bad faith either, in fact most seem to be in the
interest of honest dialogue. They just had the wrong opinions.

~~~
fwip
"In reality, you're not a woman, we're just pretending because we're polite"
isn't a very pro-trans stance.

~~~
DuskStar
But "trans women cannot (yet?) bear children" shouldn't be an anti-trans
stance, either.

~~~
fwip
Is anyone saying otherwise? I haven't heard of anyone being banned for that.

N.B: what somebody says they are banned for and what they were actually banned
for often differ.

~~~
dang
> what somebody says they are banned for and what they were actually banned
> for often differ

Based on our experience at HN (not that it generalizes) I'd even say they
usually differ.

------
vowelless
Good. Online radicalism is a thing.

To all the people here who are decrying this as “censorship”, remember that
during the early 2010s, Islamic radicals were getting radicalized on YouTube
by pretty benign sermons (Ex: Awlaki and his “tour of Paradise” lectures that
inspired Boston 2013, fort hood and a bunch of other international attacks).
YouTube removed all that out and I think Muslims getting radicalized on
YouTube plummeted.

White supremacy is a much bigger deal with a worse tail risk than Islamic
extremism. Don’t see why anyone would object to removal of Neo nazi content
yet go along with the removal of wahabi sermons.

~~~
chrisjc
> White supremacy is a much bigger deal with a worse tail risk than Islamic
> extremism.

Wait... you're saying that white supremacy is worse than islamic extremism? Is
you opinion perhaps a manifestation of your perspective? I'm sure there are
some people in Syria, Afghanistan, etc... that would disagree with you.

BTW, I'm not saying one is worse than the other, just that they are both bad,
both a problem, and both should be removed from social media.

~~~
vowelless
White supremacy was the cause for the worst wars of the 20th century. A white
nationalist uprising in Europe would be deadlier (again) than Islamic
extremists taking over most middle eastern nations due to the resources that
will be available to them.

~~~
creaghpatr
>A white nationalist uprising in Europe would be deadlier (again) than Islamic
extremists taking over most middle eastern nations due to the resources that
will be available to them.

Reckless speculation considering the latter did happen. You're fearmongering
in order to drive censorship and oppression of viewpoints you disagree with.

~~~
gamblor956
How is he fearmongering? A white nationalist uprising is quite literally
relatively recent European history, and resulted in the torture and slaughter
of _tens of millions._

Before Al Queda, the West's biggest fear was domestic white nationalist
terrorists like Timothy McVeigh.

EDIT: It's very disturbing that so many people don't understand what the Nazi
platform was all about. The supremacy of the "Aryan Race" was literally a
platform of the Nazi party from the beginning. The subjugation of Jews was a
part of the party platform from the beginning. The use of paramilitary squads
to enforce ideological purity was a part of the party from the beginning. And
it just got _worse_ from there.

~~~
ng12
The battleground was fascism vs. capitalism vs. communism. Fascism was, at
it's core, reactionairy to the rise of communism and it's dishonest to
describe it simply as "white nationalism".

Furthermore, for a "white nationalist" movement they spent a whole lot of time
killing and oppressing other "whites".

~~~
0815test
Fascism was not "reactionary". It was, in many ways, a sibling ideology to
'communism', but with glorification of violence, a broadly "irrational" (i.e.
_explicitly_ anti-intellectual, and almost relishing in the use of blatant
propaganda as a means of influence) attitude to mass politics and either
nationalist or (in the more extreme Nazi version) racially-supremacist
ideology as major selling points. "White nationalist" is somewhat inaccurate
as you point out but "reactionary" is totally wrong, and Soviet propaganda is
the only reason why some people today still think of fascism as "conservative"
or "reactionary".

~~~
ng12
> Fascism was not "reactionary"

Fascists gained power in Italy, Germany, and Spain as a direct result of anti-
communist sentiment (and in the case of Germany, a failed communist
revolution). Mussolini's early writings were directly proposing nationalism as
the answer to communism's failures. Everywhere fascism had success it was
because it was pitted against the threat of communism. I don't know how the
rise of Fascism was anything but reactionary.

~~~
gamblor956
I agree that facism's rise was tied to nationalism's rise.

But we're talking about the root causes of WWII. And one of the Nazi party's
specific goals when invading Poland was to exterminate the Jews and Roma
(Gypsy) populations of Europe.

~~~
Fins
> And one of the Nazi party's specific goals when invading Poland was to
> exterminate the Jews and Roma (Gypsy) populations of Europe.

Are you sure about that? Wasn't "the final solution" proposed significantly
later?

------
kgraves
dang, could you please flag this post, people are disagreeing with me here and
this post isn't technically stimulating.

I think we should keep politics out of HN at this point, I don't want it to
become reddit.

~~~
happytoexplain
How do we deal with cases where a topic is important and relevant both
technically and politically? I agree with you generally, but it would also be
a big shame if many socially and technically interesting and impactful stories
simply could not be found or discussed on Hacker News.

------
warp_factor
And here we go. As usual the "racist" pretext is being used to censor videos.

I have no doubt that there are some terrible awful racist videos in that lot
but you have to wonder how many times this is ALSO used as a mean to censor
pretty much any video that the youtube execs don't like. Censorship is getting
worse

Edit: Replacing "Censorship is coming back" with "Censorship is getting worse"

~~~
okket
No censorship. You are still free to create your own YouTube clone and publish
your extreme political views there. Maybe call it "GabTube"?

~~~
toomuchtodo
"Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

A free society has costs, including tolerating speech you find deplorable. To
support censorship because it aligns with your current political leanings
makes you no different than the politics you take issue with.

Will you complain if Google mass fires left leaning employees? It's entirely
within their right to do. You could even start a competitor to hire those
people!

~~~
empath75
This isn’t censorship full stop. What you are advocating for is forcing
YouTube to carry content that it doesn’t want to.

I also think it’s grotesque to quote an anti nazi poem in defense of nazis.

------
praptak
"They came for the Nazis and I protested. Then they came for me and it was the
Nazis."

Tolerating extreme views is okay as the price for freedom of speech. It does
not mean large platforms are obligated to give them megaphones. Some kinds of
speech do cause harm far beyond someone getting angry at someone else's views.

------
idlewords
Hacker News should follow YouTube's lead by nuking this thread. Flagged.

------
jsonne
It's curious to me that people who were absolutely up in arms about ISPs
censoring content are 100% okay with Youtube doing it. Not that I support the
views that these videos they're removing espouse (I don't) but it seems to me
to be a pretty big about face by this community.

~~~
Nasrudith
Well YouTube isn't a pipe but a platform in spite of its popularity. I can
always head someplace else with a website. I can't just switch ISPs casually
as entering a different URL.

------
root_axis
If you believe that YouTube unjustly engages in censorship on their platform
then boycott YouTube and encourage others to do so. Just because YouTube is
popular doesn't mean YouTube is obligated to host your videos for free. In
reality, YouTube is unimportant and not something the government should
guarantee you access to.

------
GrayTextIsTruth
There are comments being removed from this thread even though they are not
supremacist. People need to wake up to the control of big tech, big govt, etc.

~~~
happytoexplain
Wouldn't that imply that the only reason comments might be removed from Hacker
News is if they encourage violent, extremist political ideologies?

~~~
Dirlewanger
I'm surprised this post is even still up. HN usually removes anything remotely
controversial. A couple weeks ago, they removed a NYT article solely because
the article had "White Liberals" in the title.

~~~
dang
> HN usually removes anything remotely controversial.

That's not close to true. How people arrive at these generalities is beyond
me!

------
squarefoot
As an antifascist I welcome this move, though at the same time I fear the risk
of abuse.

FTA: "... and videos denying that violent incidents occurred"

This one seems perfectly tailored to match with the Chinese Govt. negationism
about Tiananmen Square events, so that would be generally A-OK for us, but
what about videos or comments by police officers denying violent behaviour of
their colleagues? Would their videos/comments be axed the same way? Then what
about governments lying about civil deaths figures or use of banned weapons in
military attacks?

100 Euros and a beer that the rule will be heavily bent case by case.

------
api
YouTube is a privately owned and operated proprietary delivery platform. This
is no different from a TV station deciding what to air. If you don't like it,
switch platforms or just host stuff yourself somewhere.

Yes I am concerned that these dragnets will delete a lot of content that
doesn't even match the stated criteria. In my experience Google/YouTube's
evaluation of content for compliance is not very deep or well considered. It's
generally performed by underpaid overworked folks that lack any domain
expertise.

This is part of why I am a data packrat. If something is really interesting I
snarf it and store it on my personal NAS. Easy to do and means I'll have
backups of things that get "disappeared" and can share them with others if
needed. If more people did this I think we'd have less of an issue with this.

~~~
GrayTextIsTruth
> YouTube is a privately owned and operated proprietary delivery platform.

Are there any public online social platforms? There literally isn't the
equivalent of a "public space" online so many view it as a de facto public
space.

------
shadowmore
'“Opinions can be deeply offensive, but if they don’t violate our policies,
they’ll remain on our site,” YouTube said in a statement about its decision on
Mr. Crowder.'

I'm sure those policies will shift stealthily until everything except Baby
Shark videos is banned.

Left, right or center politically? But a little too spicy for your average
8-year-old? Banned. Gotta keep the Coca-Cola ad execs happy.

It's a curious hyper-puritanical yet simultaneously secular social order we
find ourselves in today. I'm sure this won't lead to any social unrest or
civilization-wrecking upheaval.

~~~
chocolatebunny
We can always go back to liveleak and vimeo. I think all the youtube I watch
would be fine for an 8 year old and I think most of the people who use youtube
are the same. The most popular platform should be the most innocuous. But
there should be alternatives.

~~~
stcredzero
_We can always go back to liveleak and vimeo._

Good luck trying to monetize that. Good luck getting viral traction with that.
(I will be happy if someone succeeds, because that will be the end of the
YouTube monopoly on video commentary.)

