Strictly speaking it isn't censorship when Youtube removes a channel for being politically too extreme.
Not to distract from the larger point, but this isn't true. The definition of censorship says nothing about the government being the one suppressing the content.
Discussion is terribly confused when 'censorship' is interpreted in this general sense. Censorship enforced by the state is something distinctly different from editorial control exercised by private entities. When the single word can represent either concept (and other related concepts) ambiguity and confusion isn't far behind.
I used to argue that 'censorship' should be interpreted as something done by governments and enforced by the legal system but that battle has been lost. Now the unqualified 'censorship' can mean just about any sort of content restrictions and as such is almost useless in its unqualified form.
> Discussion is terribly confused when 'censorship' is interpreted in this general sense.
It's the original sense.
> Censorship enforced by the state is something distinctly different from editorial control exercised by private entities.
Yes, government censorship is different in important ways than censorship by a publishing or distributing entity, but both are censorship (and they are also similar in important ways.)
> When the single word can represent either concept (and other related concepts) ambiguity and confusion isn't far behind.
Heavy water is different from drinking water in some quite important ways, but its not at all a problem that both are identified with the word "water", because we can use more than one word when the differentiating features are important to the discussion.
> I used to argue that 'censorship' should be interpreted as something done by governments and enforced by the legal system but that battle has been lost.
That battle was lost centuries ago. What the censor librorum does in granting, or denying, the nihil obstat has always been censorship, even where the Catholic Church is not an established Church and so is in now way part of the government.
> Now the unqualified 'censorship' can mean just about any sort of content restrictions and as such is almost useless in its unqualified form.
It has pretty much always meant that, and just because the general sense of censorship is not something you are interested in talking about doesn't mean it's not useful.
> It has pretty much always meant that, and just because the general sense of censorship is not something you are interested in talking about doesn't mean it's not useful.
It's certainly less useful than distinguishing between specific forms of censorship. As you concede yourself:
> Yes, government censorship is different in important ways than censorship by a publishing or distributing entity
The context (the article) is clearly about the latter, specific form.
Or, to expand on your example: When discussing an article about nuclear fusion, the distinction between heavy water and drinking water certainly is more useful then the observation that both are identified with the word "water".
I'm willing to concede that that 'censorship' has always been an expansive term. Perhaps my perspective is just a personal idiosyncrasy.
But that is really ancillary to my point that in order to communicate clearly about the public policy issues involved it is important to avoid the generic use of the term because that obfuscates the arguments making it harder to explore the issues.
In particular I think that in the US context, 1st Amendment proscriptions regarding freedom of speech and of the press are often implicitly assumed to be reasons why Google, for example, shouldn't be able to have a restrictive editorial policy. The negative aspects of censorship in the 1st Amendment sense are misleadingly attached to censorship in the editorial sense.
Sure it is possible to talk about 'censorship' in the 'general sense' but that is uninteresting to me and I would argue isn't very helpful in understanding the distinct aspects of different types of 'censorship'.
> editorial control exercised by private entities.
I would agree with you, but Youtube isn't a place where 'editorial' happens. Youtube isn't a TV channel or a blog with a set of editors. It's a free-for-all place for hosting videos. While I have no problem with Youtube removing content they don't like (it's their website, they're free to do what they like), it does go further than exercising 'editorial control'
YouTube has been criticized for the fact that on some occasions they act as a neutral platform that let people publish things without a top-down control mechanism (this is necessary for them to obtain certain immunity; see DMCA), while on other occasions they play the "editorial control" card acting as an editor-in-chief. What is criticized is this hypocritical duality - at least it's highly confusing.
How is it "distinctly different"? The fact that you "lost the battle" to define it rigidly usually means that you couldn't provide a sufficiently compelling argument that it should have been. For instance, if the state, through asymmetric regulation, allows a platform to become a monopoly, and the platform engages in political censorship, then it IS government sponsored.
It's stupid to restrict your definitions by intent. Treat the restriction of information as the problem itself, rather than the fact that it was done with any specific motive.
It is distinctly different because the government can fine me or imprison me if I violate their legal proscriptions. I can't opt out of those restrictions.
If Google blocks my content or otherwise refuses to host my content I have lots of other options. Your assertion that Google is a monopoly is this regard is not accurate.
If your government censors you, and you break the censorship in some way, you put your own personal freedom and economic status at risk. In many countries, you put your own life at risk as well.
If Google takes down my video, and I publish it elsewhere, there's no real risk of anything. Maybe I'll lose my Google account if the video was particularly heinous, but that's about as far as it goes.
The imprisonment qualification is a very real difference.
if my business is forfeit, because it operates on the platform that the government allows to be a monopoly which youtube absolutely is then it serves the same function as a fine, frankly it doesn't matter what my leverage is, as long as it works.
More importantly this doesn't address the concept, which is that it's dumb to attach motive to the definition of a problem. It's important when assessing criminal liability, but if you're just using it as an excuse to ignore the detrimental effects of censorship, which haven't changed, just because the mechanisms have, then you're just being profoundly counterproductive.
This is the same argument as the one against net neutrality. So if you your arguments are convincing to you here, then they should be there.
If you own a platform on which other people do business which is a natural monopoly, you shouldn't be allowed to regulate the content on that platform. Youtube is a natural monopoly. It's fairly obvious that this is so, but I will elaborate anyway.
The value of youtube is the number of people use the site. The number of people on the site encourages people to host their content on that site, more people hosting content on the site encourages more people to use the site. In this situation there will always be exactly one winner.
Your point was valid 20-30 years ago, but not anymore. Not when our bubbles are so largely defined by what we see online.
These companies with all the eyeballs are now able to exert an influence on people's lives in a way that companies rarely have been able to do in the past (barring media, which the censorship claim was a bit deal).
So it is that nowadays censorship on something like youtube has become a big deal.
Who said it wasn't a concern? It is a concern but the nature of the concern is entirely different for editorial control vs. legal proscriptions.
Your response is a nice example of the problem I was pointing out. You are conflating lots of different concerns by assuming that 'censorship' as an unqualified term accurately expresses the particular nuances of the issue you are concerned about.
I'm just arguing for clarity in communication. Acting as if Google's editorial choices and speech codes at private universities and content filters on library computers and government efforts to squelch speech are all adequately summarized by the word "censorship" is harmful to clarity in communication.
If there's one thing I definitely don't care about, it's the exact definition of censorship.
What I do care about is the idea behind censorship. I will not engage you in any conversation in which you try to use the definition to argue against the point I made.
So if you would like to have a discussion about the ideas behind censorship and why the worry is valid for these large websites such as FB and Youtube, I'm all for it.
But if you're going to repeat that the definition of the word precludes anything but governments, then I'm not interested.
No, but they aren't doing anything to suppress the video, they are just refusing to host it. If you expand the definition of censorship to anyone who refuses to host a specific piece of content, then it basically loses all meaning. The New York Times is censoring me by not publishing my article. This science journal is censoring me by not publishing my paper.
It sounds like you're making the implication that, in order to not be classified as censoring, YouTube is required to host anyone's content, regardless of how it is perceived by their stakeholders. That seems fishy.
Revoking a service is not the same as censoring, I would argue.
There's some difference between removing individuals for specific behavior and in going after identifiable groups of people. As well as whether a service is some sort of public accommodation or not.
So it's one thing to ban someone from some public accommodation for specific behavior and another thing entirely if you don't serve that kind of people or if you play games with the rules and enact a grandfather clause that somehow only applies to 'that' sort, but avoids spelling it out.
The phrase 'public accommodation' has some very particular legal meanings that have nothing to do with content hosting.
Perhaps you are explicitly arguing that the legal framework of public accommodations should be extended to content hosting but you need to make that argument explicitly with full understanding of that framework and not by casually dropping that legal term into the discussion.
Going after 'identifiable groups of people' is phrased to sound terrible but doesn't seem to be what is happening. The policy changes are about content not content creators. Not arguing for or against the policies just pointing out that they aren't targeting content creators in a illegal discriminatory manner.
You may have a point about the rules changing but that is basic contract law. Nothing new there and in any case there needs to be a mechanism by which the hosting terms can evolve, they aren't immutable.
Censorship is the suppression of content in order to exercise political power and control. Refusing to show something because it means you'll make less profit is not censorship; refusing to show it because you have an ideological belief that the viewer shouldn't see it is. Consequently I guess it'd be next to impossible to demonstrate a business is actually censoring content rather than removing it for the benefit of the business.
The end result is the same regardless of what you call it though. That's what needs to be addressed.
YouTube defines "politically too extreme" as anything that's slightly left of Fox News.
Google's News tab now promotes tmz, the onion, and buzzfeed as "news" over sites that actually break news and typically go against the "narrative". http://i.magaimg.net/img/co6.jpg
There's a reason I'm dropping all Google products and services from my life.
No, Youtube is demonetizing anyone who disagrees with the narrative. Do you think pewdiepie is right of Fox News?
Do you think buzzfeed, printers of the 4chan fanfic "piss dossier" are not notoriously full of bullshit? Have tmz or mtv ever broken any story besides celebrity gossip? Every single "news" organization that printed fake polls for months claiming Hillary would win by huge margins is still considered "News" by Google and not demonetized by Youtube. You claim Infowars is full of shit, but they were spot on with the election coverage and calling the polls being fake and oversampled.
Why is Google's censoring of differing views tolerated?
This is such a manufactured controversy. Most modern advertisements are based around audience rather than content. If brands are so uncomfortable with the content their customers are consuming perhaps they should consider either new customers or new products.
It's a weird thing because this seems to be the culmination of YouTube, as a platform, becoming a worse place consistently for content creators. This ad-hysteria seems to have just accelerated the process to its (yet unknown) logical conclusion. I think a lot of content creators didn't look for alternatives to YT as a platform because they've been a pretty alright place for free speech (most of the time -- even during this debacle!), but it's been having some pretty severe issues over the years (a lot of which are caused by YouTube's absolute refusal to deal with people personally).
It's also a weird situation, because free video sharing on the Internet is not really a profitable line of business when it exists in a way as liberal as YouTube is (Vimeo, for example is limited for free users, etc.) so there are not as many long term, similarly equipped alternatives to it, at least as of now.
Let's not forget that presence on YouTube likely increases viewer retention. Being part of a channel eco-system where viewers subscribe to multiple channels gives higher retention for all channels.
Note. YT did cultivate an entire market of independent media published as subscribe-able channels of videos. It's no surprise moving is hard.
Much prefer decent native/immutable adversiting. I don't care for 'smart' ads. I don't want ads following me around the web, because they tend to advertise things that either I already know/have or decided that I don't care for. That's how 'smart' algorithmic advertising has been working. I never got influenced into clicking that Amazon product ad that followed me through dozens websites or that crowdufing product that's on Twitter/Facebook. If a brand wants to reach me, they better find a good narrative and publisher that gets me to manage the relationship. Not plant some cookie and try to guess my taste based on pages I've been to.
Here's an idea, advertisers directly pay the content creators they don't have a problem with to show ads natively in their content at a point they both agree is acceptable. And there could be a contract between the 2 parties that covers any concerns either might have.
I cannot wait for the day when target audience will be able to make money off of providing information about other people.
Website where I can tell that my neighboor is driving BMW, is single and looking for a new house, preferably penthouse with the mandatory view on the lake. So that once ad agency crunch this info, I will eventually benefit when my neighboor clicks some link for advertiser who offered a housing listings that match his preferences 99%
Funny that we went all the back to the starting point. I do agree programmatic ads is a loop of shithole, driving both content and ads into a mutual destruction cycle. Brands are hurting, malware ads are prospering, and on the other hand, clicks become everything and it makes everything clickbaity. Some major cleaning needs to be done otherwise the whole computational ads business is going to die.
This could just be a UI problem. When you see an ad on YouTube, it's right under the video's title, so there's some subconscious association from the video's content to the content in the ad.
What if YouTube ads worked more like TV commercials, where you're taking explicitly out of the content (maybe to another page to view the ad?), and then returned to the video? Would this ease advertiser's concerns about placement?
This doesn't work for tv shows so why would it work for Youtube ? Making the ad full screen doesn't eliminate the association of the brand with the show. When the Super Bowl had the clothing malfunction advertisers were pissed .
It seems like you're advocating pop up/under advertising which is universally hated.
People aren't on YouTube to watch ads they are there to watch videos. The ads need to be as unobtrusive as possible. The current approach is the only solution.
eh, it's not a real problem to solve, the large new buyers in the digital video space just are avoiding the complexity of intentional targeting and placements. The measly 100k-250k I spend on video ads on YouTube can be monitored and controlled to appear exactly where necessary. The large media buyers just didn't feel like doing the work.
It mentions "removing a channel" and "banning unpopular opinions". But that's not necessary to appease advertisers. You just need to unmonetize those videos. And that's what Youtube's been doing as far as I know.
It's more growing pains. Advertisers are starting to better understand the digital space so will hopefully concentrate their efforts and dollars on those creating premium video (like Kurzgesagt). Youtube could help the case by adjusting their recommendation algorithms ... watch one weird video and your recs are ruined.
OT: does blogspot look awful on iPhone for everyone else? I have to use the "request desktop site" feature in Safari. I see even official Google posts on blogspot so I would have thought they would make it work...
Problem with ads is that we don't want to buy from them, we want to search and evaluate products instead. I never buy anything online unless I test both the seller and the product for bad reviews. Ads are just too risky to buy from. I need to trust before I buy, and it's silly to keep watching ads when I know I am not going to buy anything from them.
I've lost lots of money with Youtube ads sending me children trying to learn their abc's. Lot's and lots of children searching for cartoons landing on my channel against my geo/language/age/interest filters.
A few hours on the phone with their Indian tech support got me only false promises of call backs and refunds.
I'm unable to reach intelligent/useful person at google adwords tech support. Which is terrible, because I think that's where most of their revenue comes from?
Is it really censorship or are we seeing the effects of the end of net neutrality with 0 rated services. I'm wondering whether advertisers are using placement as an excuse to try to weasel out of long term ad contracts if youtube's numbers are taking a huge hit to 0 rated video services favored by the carriers? Would you want your ad dollars trapped in a service in decline with long term contracts or try to find some way to get out of it even if its some excuse about a couple ad placements to find a way to break the contract and free those ad dollars for 0 rated carrier favored services?
Not to distract from the larger point, but this isn't true. The definition of censorship says nothing about the government being the one suppressing the content.
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