They have the ultimate fall back of relying on user reports and red flags. It’s not like it’ll be a stretch to say Nazi videos get supreme above average flags.
Except they aren’t. To my knowledge, the govt has refused to extend utility status to YT/Twitter/etal.
In Europe maybe, but definitely not here.
Especially since taking down flagged content is a practice literally as old as YT/Twitter are as platforms. If it was suit worthy, it would have been done already.
Not saying some moron won’t try to sue Google over content on YT, but I’d hope any American judge would laugh their bitch ass right out of the court room
Not really. It’s basic algorithm stuff. The higher the visibility the more likely it is to be hit a flag threshold.
Yeah I definitely don’t envy them. The age where the population thinks they should have control over private companies seems to be blossoming from both sides.
You seem to have thought about this a bit. Do you think the Terms of Service represent a contract between the content creators and the tech companies? The content creators are essentially contractors driving traffic and ad revenue to YT.
So if the tech companies arbitrarily change/enforce/violate their own TOS, it will be interesting to see if a breach of contract law will stick.
That’s the new angle the second Prager U lawsuit took after the first was thrown out. It will be interesting.
In a literal sense? I think all terms of service represent a contract between the user and the company.
In a YouTube sense, iirc, the ToS don’t give ownership rights of your videos, but signs away all practical use of said videos to YouTube.
I think it’s hilarious that the thought they’re doing it arbitrarily exists. There is zero doubt in my mind they don’t have intense documentation around reasons for all bans/removals.
He seems dead in the water. Moving the challenge to the home state of Google isn’t likely to help imo.
Ok, I have to tell my favorite anecdote that involves ass eating which my wife explicitly forbade me from telling in real life as it allegedly freaks people out. As a construction engineer on a desert site in a Middle Eastern country I became friendly with the local workers - as friendly as possible for an infidel dog, mind you. I addressed the most glaring problems in workplace safety and as a consequence lives were saved, so I became respected so to speak.
This also means that I became their confidant so to speak regarding…well…matters of sex. You see, they believe that infidels have intercourse 24/7 with whomever and whenever (churces and synagogues are in their mind places of ritual orgies) and so are experts in literally every kind of sexual activity known to man.
The locals couldn’t google anything because the government was (is) monitoring internet traffic and there was a non-zero chance of a death penalty for breaking a plethora of decency laws, and jokes aside, it’s a very serious situation.
Which means that, on several occasions, one of the locals would discreetly come up to me and explained how …ahem…a friend of his accidentally tripped and fell tongue first into another dude’s ass or crotch and this-and-this happened and what course of action should this ahem friend take.
Now, saying “sorry I have no idea” or “honestly, I’m not into that” was not an option because then they’d get angry at the sneaky infidel for having gained their trust under false pretenses in order to trick them into oversharing and they’d probably kill me the next morning in a workplace accident.
So I did what anyone else would do in a said situation - gave groundless, potentially dangerous advice in an authoritative manner about things I had no idea about, including eating ass. Allegedly this detailed information was extremely useful and started making the rounds.
So there’s that. Remember, if you have sex with a ME immigrant and suddenly things take a turn for the bizarre, I’m the one to blame.
Let me start by saying that teachers use YouTube and taking historical things off is going to definitely hurt some things education wise and I’m not for it at all.
That said… On what grounds? I don’t see how so many of the same people who are for small government, less regulations, leave businesses alone, etc all of the sudden think the government should jump in these cases.
Personally I’m just fine with this stuff being out in the open. I want the white supremacists showing their faces if possible. Then watch their dumbasses continue to apologize when people realize who they are. They want to cry if they get fired or something? That’s the risk you take when you use social media. I work in education and I know for a fact most principals and superintendents start with social media before hiring. They aren’t dicking around with someone who has pictures of them doing potentially illegal stuff or posting things they think will cause a stink for them in the future.
This is private companies doing what they want. The horrible people of the world are upset that they can’t be horrible on the biggest platforms? Play by the rules set out.*
And yes I’m aware it’s very difficult to decide what’s horrible and good people might get banned, whatever. Plenty of places to get messages out online. I don’t see how the government can step in and say no Twitter we think you should do this in regards to your content. Especially the same people who say they shouldn’t be involved in Wall Street or banking more, etc.
I agree. There’s plenty of discussion about this right now. Because these companies have a monopoly, they are ‘too big’. Their better play would be to stop censoring altogether and handle issues similar to how Apple handled the iPhone unlocking issue a few years back.
Well the fact that you have an s tells me we aren’t dealing with a monopoly. Who do you think has a monopoly and on what? Plenty of places to put pictures on and interact with people that aren’t Facebook. Places to upload and interact that aren’t YouTube. Places to talk with people that aren’t Twitter.
I can’t get banned from WalMart today and make an argument I no longer have a place to buy goods simply because they are the biggest company close to me.
I often wonder how granular the concept of monopolies have to get. I’d imagine “search engine” wouldn’t be worthy of anti monopoly tactics, but that’s not really what Google/Yahoo/Bing are anymore. They’re ultimately search engines in exchange for valuable data.
So given they’re (google, fb, etal) essentially a data collection/marketing company, do they get lumped in with the “data collection/marketing” companies? Who qualifies as being in that industry? I feel like Congress hasn’t done any real legislating around that industry, so I’m not even sure who the players are. It makes me feel like it’s because the rare concept of a brand pushing your brand, but the main driver being the brand of the marketing company.
Ok maybe I misread you. You’re saying some people think these are monopolies? I really don’t understand the Facebook and especially twitter. What the hell would twitter have a monopoly over? The ability to have a limit on the number of characters you can type?
I think we are far away from strong arguments about Facebook and Twitter. I don’t think the Standard oil is much of a comparison. Being able to type on the internet is much harder to have a monopoly on than something like oil back then.
I realize that in some way some type of regulation on these may come someday and that other countries do certain things that we don’t in regards to their power/influence whatever.
I just don’t see strong arguments behind we need more government involvement in this area but we want to limit the involvement of banking/Wall Street/etc.
Far more people were directly impacted by the housing crash in significant ways than anything happening on Twitter.
The utility argument has never made sense either. You cannot price gouge on something that is free. You can (IMO) make much stronger arguments to needing water/electricity than a Twitter account to survive.
Amazon may be a different conversation in the future but I view the arguments around it much different than Facebook/Twitter.
That’s right. Although, I think the number is more than some, but less than a ‘lot’? Ha.
My original point is simple, tho. If these companies continue to censor the way they are currently, the number of people will increase from ‘some’ to ‘many’ to ‘_____’.
Not sure how familiar you are, but Twitter has recently banned numerous people for petty things, while well-known news anchors can call for the doxing of minors. Further, some have called for physical harm to people without repercussions.
There’s also the whole ‘learn to code’ ordeal.
My opinion: I think Peter Thiel said it well in his book: Monopolies are disrupted by technology. If you want to disrupt Wal-Mart, create Amazon. If you want to disrupt Taxis and hotels, Uber and AirBnB. Same will be true with disrupting Google.
Yeah I’m not necessarily saying they are doing the right thing merely they have the right to do what they want as a private company. And anytime a private company with some size tries to ban certain things you’re going to get the “well what about this?” That said would the government do much better? I mean these types of things are heavily regulated in say China and I would imagine many average people there would love to trade places with regards to what you can do online.
As an advertising site Twitter doesn’t really have a massive market share. So if they continue to ban people I don’t think that actually effects the argument of they are a monopoly. If you aren’t a monopoly today you can’t become one simply by pissing people off.
More people may call for regulation of some sort as it is common to call for the government to do something when people get mad. Personally I just don’t see a strong argument at this point in time for the idea that they are a monopoly and that people can’t simply choose another outlet to talk to each other online.
Especially one without some annoying character limit. That said I don’t use twitter though I will browse around some. Facebook I only use to look at pictures my family share.
Steven Crowder had a video demonitized where he read the green new deal cover to cover. There was no commentary or bashing of anyone. He just read the text of the bill. They aren’t following their own TOS.
Yes. Also, they believe that every infidel behaves in real life like in a porn movie. So when two gay women refused to make out in public transport for their enjoyment, to them it was logical to beat the crap out of them.
This is obviously a guess, and most likely blatantly wrong
Facebook, Twitter, yt, etal ALL explicitly reserve the right to ban/censor/etc based on internally defined thresholds of user reports and flags. You can’t actually know whether or not someone hits one (but their automated systems obviously sure can)
The level of internal documentation a company like Google has is absurd and over the top.