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.
> "Free speech" is not speech without consequences
This is literally what free speech is. "You can speak your mind or I will kill you" or "You can speak your mind but if I disagree with you I will make sure that nobody can hear you again (by de-platforming you)" is not very free speech-y.
> but that doesn't mean you have the right to be heard
You should certainly have the right to be heard by these that want to hear you.
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.
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 farfar from the only provider of online video.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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?
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.