Depends on who gets to decide what "false/misleading" is. I'm not sure how this could be any less transparent. I personally see less than no reason to trust YouTube's judgment in these matters.
Any time you open the paper, turn on the TV, crack open a book, or visit Hacker News, you are trusting some curator, gatekeeper, editor, or censor's judgement.
And the unmoderated spaced of before don't exist any more (Usenet), because companies didn't make money on it. Or worse, because it violated some company's "right".
Now, in order to speak, you nearly have to go through one of Their gateways. If you piss off FAMGA (Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon), you're gone off the net. Some of those gatekeepers are big scripts with no human intervention for your level. If you fall between the cracks, then you have no recourse, other than find a place like HN and beg publicly - lest you get shitcanned by the HN gatekeepers.
And that they grew to this point before imposing this "curation". It seems to be a recurring theme with these companies to grow to a monopoly with a place for relatively free discourse and then to do this as soon as they feel safe.
To be fair information is a weapon and there should be no free reign for anyone. If you are on purpose suppressing some information to fulfil political agenda - that should be a criminal act.
Because if they have a huge defacto monopoly, and also a outsized impact on our culture, the impacts of them doing so are far more far-reaching than, say, LiveLeak removing some video (trying to think of a competitor for YT is surprisingly hard).
It's interesting. I think we're at a strange period in history where personal speech can reach such a huge audience, thus new ways of suppressing speech are being invented.
Youtube is a private service, thus they can remove content as they wish. Of course, most forms of historical media have also removed or suppressed controversial content. But in the old days it was preemptive. There was only so much room in a newspaper, you had to own presses and a distribution network, and they didn't hire just any schmoe to write columns.
It was a proactive system of censorship. They got people invested in a career of finding the proper stories and promoting what was acceptable to the establishment. Obviously common people could say whatever they like in their daily lives, but their freedom to put content into a newspaper or television show for all to see was extremely limited.
We have enormous freedom in self-publishing mass media today. So much content is being created that no mortal person can serve as gatekeeper and pick and choose what gets published like a newspaper editor could. So on one hand, we're living in a utopia of free speech. But new ways are being devised to automatically manage content all the time. And even though human moderators don't catch everything, but they slowly do what they can.
There are some genuinely harmful ideas out there, of course. Some things that ought to be restricted. Who gets to decide? Is it right for a private company to choose? I doubt it, but private companies have always been choosing what gets into media. In the past their decisions were much more totalitarian than today.
The channels in question aren't accused of containing false/misleading videos, they're accused of containing disallowed facts. Noone disputes that modafinil promotes wakefulness or that magnesium makes many sleepy.
Websites have always been allowed to decide which facts to allow on their site. Right now, if I visited an anti-vaxxer forum, and posted "vaccines don't cause autism" in the comments, I'm sure it would be removed.
I agree with you. They shouldn't. I'm playing devils advocate to make a point. You can't expect websites to treat all opinions as equal. Even 4chan has moderators.
Youtube only differs from other websites in scale. They are moderating content as we see fit. We can disagree with their reasoning behind moderation. But it's silly to act like they didn't have this right all along
(And that's what I see in this comment section. Comments like "why should youtube say what I can and can't watch?" I'm pointing out that those arguments are a dead end.)
> "False/misleading videos that perpetuate a scam."
You seem to be implying that Jones' videos are truthful/informative and totally-not-a-scam, while the videos in the article, which actually contained educational content, were false, misleading, and perpetuating a scam.
Meanwhile, Jones has a supplement business that pulled an estimated $15 mil over two years (some estimate $25 mil) [1]. Here is a sampling of reviews from an independent lab that tested the substances:
- "Both of these products are most likely safe, but ineffective."
- "This product is a waste of money. The claim that 'Anthroplex works synergistically with the powerful Super Male Vitality formula in order to help restore your masculine foundation and stimulate vitality with its own blend of unique ingredients' is fluff on multiple fronts."
- "This product's claims related to 'nascent oxygen' also have no real
basis in science."
- "We tested this product on the chance that it might be potassium iodide or sodium iodide, which it wasn't. Survival Shield is just plain iodine."
etc.
This is a guy who "... repeatedly asserted the Sandy Hook shooting was staged and the parents were liars and frauds who helped in a cover-up" [2].
So, what's your definition of false and/or misleading?
Ooops. If so, I deserve what's coming. There's another reading possible, though, so I'm leaving my response up for those who read it the same way I did.
My point is to show that these criteria are very hard to apply consistently, particularly when there's money to be made. Alex Jones' channel is alive and well.
"You seem to be implying that Jones' videos are truthful/informative and totally-not-a-scam, while the videos in the article, which actually contained educational content, were false, misleading, and perpetuating a scam."
I can assure you wholeheartedly that I am implying that Alex Jones videos are squarely in the "false/misleading/perpetuating a scam" camp.
However if the title was "PHP is the best programming language in the world", then the account should be banned, and they should possibly forward the authorities the offenders IP Address so they can get the crazy person on a watch list.
Then that definition of free speech ignores the changes in culture and communication, no? (I’m not even disagreeing with you, I’m more curious here. This article and discussion has brought up interesting points I think)
He’s right about free speech. Even in countries where free speech is a right, it is strictly defined as government can’t punish you for your opinion. Private companies can show users the door at any time.
What I fail to see is what has his retort about free speech anything to do with my comment on the youtube monopolistic position.
yep, but the tide is changing. my last comment on the slippery slope and youtube didn't go minus fifteen as usual, so at least the tech community around here is coming to term with the issue being real.
