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oliveroak | 4 years ago

why don't they build their own platform? youtube can do what they want on their website.

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Lascaille|4 years ago

>youtube can do what they want on their website.

This isn't a sophomoric forum like reddit. This is meant to be a place where adults discuss. Adults can see that there are democratic implications of the scenario you're describing worthy of discussion. 'Another platform' may take years to develop, and nothing stops Youtube or another hostile player from simply buying it out and kneecapping it, and how many elections are influenced while that takes place?

Please don't just repeat talking points, it adds nothing to the conversation.

bckr|4 years ago

I agree with this sentiment, although I agree it's stupid that The Hill was suspended.

If anyone wants to give a reason why these arguments are always about freedom of speech VS censorship, instead of being about private property + free markets, please I'm open to this.

DenisM|4 years ago

1. Markets fails under the weight of monopolies. Youtube needs to be broken up or regulated.

2. There was a supreme court decision that a platform (in that case a large mall) that makes itself a de-facto public square has to act like one, accruing responsibility to protect speech. I believe this is the right link: https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/583/pruneyard-s...

x86_64Ubuntu|4 years ago

The difference between the private property + free market argument is that much of the HN crowd is sympathetic to the deranked content.

rhino369|4 years ago

One issue you should consider is that the government can exert soft power on these companies.

The same people who regulate, pass laws, and appoint prosecutors who oversee litigation against big tech, also hold hearings and blame social media for fake news and extremism. There have been explicit calls to clean up their content or face regulation. That starts to implicate government censorship.

Google doesn't give a fuck about election integrity. They do business all around the world in places without elections. They use slave labor. But they are afraid US politicians might do a privacy crack down.

lliamander|4 years ago

Other platforms exist. I'm sure they pop a champagne cork every time youtube ends up in the news for something like this.

polski-g|4 years ago

Because then Google (YouTube) would force the competing app off the Google (Android) App Store for not meeting Google's (YouTube) own censorship policies.

scarface74|4 years ago

Why do you need an app to play video?

CoastalCoder|4 years ago

Why do you believe this?