> "Free speech" does not mean you also are entitled to a platform and an audience.

"Free speech" is a right but also an ideal. When speech is being silenced (de-platformed) or people (the audience) are forbidden from hearing it even when they want to, it violates those principles.

> YouTube is not a public service.

Youtube is a powerful and unique resource without meaningful competition which I think does give them a certain level of responsibility to uphold the ideals of free speech.

Personally, I think that education is always better than suppression. Rather than remove these videos, a better option would simply be to inform users that the video contains false information and where they can find the truth.

> When speech is being silenced (de-platformed)

This is a ludicrous equivalency; by this standard YouTube is also “silencing (deplatforming)” people who don’t have computers because it’s not giving them resources to help them make and post videos.

Deplatforming is not silencing. The default state of an individual in society is no platform. People who want platforms should build them.

> Personally, I think that education is always better than suppression.

You do not need to give people bad information to educate them. You only need to give them good information.

I can teach you that 2+2=4 without spending hours belaboring all the numbers that 2+2 does not equal.

> by this standard YouTube is also “silencing (deplatforming)” people who don’t have computers because it’s not giving them resources to help them make and post videos.

unlike directly removing videos from their platform youtube is not responsible for preventing people from having a computer. We should all however strive to make computers and internet access as accessible to people as possible.

> Deplatforming is not silencing.

I disagree. It is suppression and obstruction of information

> The default state of an individual in society is no platform.

The default state is a very limited platform (those immediately around you at any given time perhaps), but when you explicitly provide a platform for the public to use and then censor voices because you don't like what they have to say you're violating free speech principles.

> People who want platforms should build them.

All people or just the ones you want to silence? Should that also apply to people like the WHO or any of the doctors who are spreading truths on youtube? Should they all get off youtube and just use their own platforms?

I actually agree that people should build their own platforms where it's possible because we shouldn't be entire reliant on any one place, but it's unreasonable to expect people to replicate anything on the scale of youtube. Youtube has no meaningful competition for a reason.

> You do not need to give people bad information to educate them.

It is often far more effective to show people something that is wrong, explain why\how\where it is wrong and how to spot similar wrong things than to give only explicit facts. In fact I'd argue that without that kind of instruction or understanding you're unlikely to fully understand whatever you're supposed to be learning in the first place.

route memorization is inferior to actual understanding. In addition not even YouTube controls the narrative everywhere. The same misinformation they silently censor and fail to correct often being spread elsewhere unchecked. Youtube, being so popular, has a great opportunity to raise awareness of truth by addressing misinformation at the very place people hearing it (and vulnerable to believing it) will actually see it. That's something that isn't done in email chains or facebook group etc.

>The default state is a very limited platform (those immediately around you at any given time perhaps), but when you explicitly provide a platform for the public to use and then censor voices because you don't like what they have to say you're violating free speech principles.

If the You I highlighted was the state, you would be correct. But it isnt.

There's nothing wrong with expecting public companies to uphold the ideal of free speech even though they aren't legally compelled to uphold the right of free speech. Companies can certainly violate free speech principles.

> "Free speech" is a right but also an ideal.

The problem with the ideal is that most people have it wrong. "Free speech" is not speech without consequences.

Nobody here thinks that speech should be criminalized but that doesn't mean you have the right to be heard. If nobody wants to associate with you because of your speech, that's their right. You are not entitled to a soapbox.

> Nobody here thinks that speech should be criminalized but that doesn't mean you have the right to be heard.

If someone offers a platform for the public to use but censors people who say things they don't like, that is a clear violation of free speech principals. I don't have to listen to anything, but if someone chooses to speak and I choose to listen no one should try to prevent us from doing so.

There are consequences for speech, but they shouldn't involve include gatekeepers silencing specific voices on the basis of what they have to say. In fact, if you want to take a punitive approach to speech then censoring people so we never get a chance to hear what they're saying actually denies us the ability to make a judgement and hold speakers accountable for those words.

I'd sure like to know if my own doctor was spreading misinformation and making illogical errors when talking about a global pandemic that's impacting me. If she was, but I wasn't allowed to know about that I might easily think she was trustworthy when I shouldn't.

It's more like 'I have the right to choose which voices get heard on my private platform'

Yeah no. YouTube is arguably a very, very public platform. Open to the public; entirely populated and funded by the public (i.e. millions of content providers and viewers generate all the income).

Its reasonable to have different rules for a local newspaper vs a worldwide monopolist.

> entirely populated and funded by the public

You just described every single business in the whole world except those funded by taxpayer money (which is generally what is meant by "funded by the public"). Actually, YouTube isn't even funded by the public -- they're funded by advertisers.

> Its reasonable to have different rules for a local newspaper vs a worldwide monopolist.

All local newspapers are owned by large companies. As for monopolist, you can't just throw that around without argument. YouTube is far far from the only provider of online video.

YouTube is almost the exclusive (by daily views) provider. How can that be in question?

That doesn't make it a monopoly! My local big box grocery store has more visitors than my local corner store.

Any other video provider on the Internet is just as accessible. If YouTube went away tomorrow, videos would still exist on the Internet. Most videos posted to YouTube of any value would immediately show up elsewhere.

Have you considered YouTube is popular because it's at least a little bit curated? Heck, YouTube wouldn't even exist without ContentID.

Ok, overwhelming market leader then.

The rules for it should be carefully considered, since it is a unicorn.

You're begging the question. Overwhelming market leader means nothing -- it doesn't automatically create any new obligations or responsibilities.

You actually have to make the argument that an overwhelming market leader in an otherwise niche market requires them to give up their free speech, marketing ability, hosting limits, income, etc.

Even having a monopoly isn't illegal; a company actually has to be convicted of abusing a monopoly position for anything to be required of them.

Sure it does. It's called a 'trust', and its well-covered in corporate law.

And no, I don't have to prove anything. Just that a reasonable congress should have oversight over the single most watched communications channel on the planet.

This is just dead obvious. I can't believe there's any good faith in this discussion any more. Signing off.

A reasonable congress should have oversight?

What do you mean by that?

This is irrelevant to what I was talking about.

If you post a sign on my front lawn, I have the right to remove it. It's my lawn. That's my freedom of expression to remove it. It seems like you just want it one way.

Seems like you did not bother reading what I wrote.

You are entitled to a soapbox. You're not entitled to an audience. Each person chooses for themselves, not one party choosing for others.

You aren't entitled to a soapbox unless you make your own soapbox or buy one. Nobody is required to give you one. If you have a soapbox, you might still not get an audience.

YouTube took their soapbox away.

They are buying one. The market rate happens to be free; they don't charge money for people to post videos on YouTube. But now Google is saying they won't sell you a soapbox, the same way they do everyone else, based on what you have to say. Building your own YouTube is not within the capacity of ordinary people.

You can either have companies that make decisions for their platforms or you can have monopoly/oligopoly platforms, but not both.

No, using a free service is not the same as purchasing something that happens to be zero dollars. If there is a contractual relationship you can be sure that the terms are that Google can remove your video for any reason of their choosing and by using their service you are agreeing to that. And you do agree with that because it's free.

Nobody says you have to build your own YouTube as that is certainly not the only way you can get your message out. You're just being cheap. You want free stuff without consequences and that's not how the world works or how it should work.

It has nothing to do with cheap. Anybody can register a domain name and buy a web server and buy a building to put it in and internet service to host it with and post all their videos and they'll get zero page views even after spending all of that money because nobody can find them.

The thing YouTube has that isn't available to the average Joe isn't web servers, it's all the glue that comes from being a part of Google which causes YouTube videos to show up in search results and recommendations when the exact same video posted on Joe's Self-Hosted Blog does not. This makes YouTube and Facebook and similarly massive corporations in not the same position as the corner store who should be able to refuse to sell you things for any reason they want, because there you could always buy it from a thousand other places. In this case the thousand other places don't exist.

Moreover, having people pay for something doesn't constrain speech when everybody who wants to speak pays the same amount. But when you start changing the amount based on what they want to say, you're imposing a penalty on expressing certain opinions.

> they'll get zero page views even after spending all of that money because nobody can find them.

You might not be cheap anymore, now you're just lazy. It used to be that if you had something important to say you might actually have to climb out of the basement, walk to the church, and post your words to the door.

The expectation that others should both host and promote your crazy ideas for free is the problem.

> It used to be that if you had something important to say you might actually have to climb out of the basement, walk to the church, and post your words to the door.

It's not 1950. Church attendance has been on the decline for decades. It's an audience of maybe a thousand in a country of over three hundred million. There is no lack of laziness that can scale in-person communication to compete with the internet.

But it's even more ridiculous to suggest going to meatspace meeting places to discuss a pandemic which is keeping everybody out of places like that.

> The expectation that others should both host and promote your crazy ideas for free is the problem.

The expectation exists because it's what they do for other ideas. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

If they want to charge money to all YouTube creators equally or shut down YouTube entirely and let it all drain out into other platforms then nobody's stopping them, but a duty of impartiality has to come with being that big.

> It's not 1950

I was referring to 1517, actually.

> There is no lack of laziness that can scale in-person communication to compete with the internet.

That's the problem. Ideas used to require effort to spread. You'd have to be the President of the United States to get an audience big enough to drink bleach but now you can get kids to eat Tide pods without any effort at all. All ideas are not equal and free has distorted the entirety of human discourse.

> Duty of impartiality

There is no way to be impartial. YouTube censors probably millions of videos every day for outright illegal content, for copyright infringement, for inappropiateness. It's what they have to do to keep the site alive. It may appear to be mostly uncurated but that's not true -- any uncurated site eventually falls apart.

Anyway, most people seem to making the other argument lately -- that sites like Facebook, and Twitter, and YouTube are so big that they have duty to stop the spread of propaganda, fake news, libel, and harmful material. What would you say to that?

> Anybody can register a domain name and buy a web server

Until they kick you out. The only solution would be to use tor but then you would get even less views.

Imagine if Martin Luther decided again making his post had he been discouraged by getting “even less views.”

This generation is obsessed with prospect of “getting lots of views” to the point where it becomes the only metric of success.

It's not clear that services should be both protected from liability as common carriers and permitted the power of the censor.

Should phone companies decide who gets to make phone calls? Should they cut you off if you say things that are unpopular?

"But what YouTube is doing would clearly be bad if it was done by a totally different actor in a totally different context" simply doesn't work as a defense here. Yes, it would be bad if the phone company got to decide who made phone calls, but let's pick something closer to the actual context here: "Should comedy clubs get to decide who gets to perform on their stage? Should they stop booking you if you say things that are unpopular?"

Telecommunications companies in the past have been treated as "public functions," legally speaking, because they were explicitly designated so by the state and given limited regional monopolies. The limits on liability afforded to YouTube and similar services do not magically transform them to state actors; they remain private corporations with their own First Amendment rights not to publish and host what they choose not to. This principle has been tested repeatedly in many cases.

I am not making any statement as to the legality of YouTube/Google/Alphabet's actions.

The effective position of YouTube is that they have responsibility over nothing you or I say but discretion over everything. How does that make sense? I believe that asymmetry is wrong.

> The limits on liability afforded to YouTube and similar services do not magically transform them to state actors

We are arguing that we should change the law to ensure that the principle of free speech applies to them as well. If they want to editorialize content then they should review content before it is posted rather than after. The only reason they should take something down is for legal reasons, like not having kids watch porn so no porn.

Bake that cake.