It's no surprise that the internet is full of "meta debate" and "social shaming" - arguing about the terms of debate and who can participate, and not over any core issues. For debates to be productive, all sides need to agree on at least some facts, and come from a place of good faith. Most places online, anyone can walk in and add their comment. They don't need to share any assumptions with the rest of the audience, and they probably aren't invested in having a productive debate anyway. It produces drive-by commenters.
Productive debates are more likely to happen in places with 1. Moderation and 2. an invested community. That's what makes HN successful, in my opinion.
But we can't turn every comment section into HN. Moderation is expensive. And some sites aren't niche enough to foster a sense of community.
So we should probably remove most comment sections.
News sites are particularly bad. Anyone can just stop by, leave their shitty opinion, and walk away.
You may think your hyper growth startup needs 100% of your time, but that pressure is all in your head. Whether you work yourself to the point of exhaustion, or you take it at a reasonable pace, your chance of succeeding is still the same (extremely low.)
> Again, you're not refuting anything that anybody here actually thinks.
And you aren't refuting what I said. How is this any different than a book publisher deciding what books to publish? Are you saying youtube and other websites should be forced to host content they don't agree with? Should HN be held to the same rules? How would that work?
1. https://xkcd.com/605/
Hard drives are dropping in price. That doesn't mean they will ever be zero.
1a. Youtube has other expenses besides hard drives. Bandwith. Server infrastructure. Employee salaries. To name a few.
2. It's not censorship. It's editorial judgement. Are you saying websites should be forced to host opinions they don't agree with? There is no "fairness doctrine" for sites like youtube.
I agree with you. They shouldn't. I'm playing devils advocate to make a point. You can't expect websites to treat all opinions as equal. Even 4chan has moderators.
Youtube only differs from other websites in scale. They are moderating content as we see fit. We can disagree with their reasoning behind moderation. But it's silly to act like they didn't have this right all along
(And that's what I see in this comment section. Comments like "why should youtube say what I can and can't watch?" I'm pointing out that those arguments are a dead end.)
> the problem is people thinking that censorship is something only a government can do,
It's not. Private companies can attempt to silence people.
But Youtube isn't preventing the creators from hosting content elsewhere. They aren't hitting them with a slapp lawsuit. They aren't colluding with other websites to ban these videos.
Youtube is just saying "host these somewhere else." How is that different from a publishing company choosing not to publish a book?
Well it is a little different. For the reason I mentioned in my post. Because youtube is the only game in town.
> I'm not confident breaking up the google 'monopoly' would actually solve this problem.
The problem, in my eyes, is that youtube can ban you, and there is no alternative place to host your videos with the same level of exposure. Having a competitive market place would solve this problem, and give video hosting sites an incentive to treat creators fairly.
1. Hosting videos costs Youtube money. It's probably a tiny amount per video. But that doesn't mean they can host every video forever.
2. They have a commercial reason to cancel these videos. Maybe they think the use of these drugs is risky, and gives their website an unsavory reputation. That hurts their brand (and potentially their bottom line). This is not unlike a TV show canceling a successful show when it's star actor becomes embroiled in controversy.
Websites have always been allowed to decide which facts to allow on their site. Right now, if I visited an anti-vaxxer forum, and posted "vaccines don't cause autism" in the comments, I'm sure it would be removed.
TV stations decide what shows they want to air, and which ones they don't. And nobody calls it censorship. Youtube feels like public infrastructure. But legally, it's no different than a TV station deciding to cancel a show.
Youtube is a private company and can do whatever they want with their own website. Nobody's stopping makers of these videos from hosting the videos themselves.
This is not censorship in the way we have traditionally understood. It only feels like it because Youtube is where the biggest audience is. It's the same whenever Facebook penalizes a post in the timeline, or whenever Google hides content from the search results. They feel like a the phone company or the post office - neutral platforms where people expect the right to free speech. In reality, they are publishers that exercise editorial discretion.
If we had focused on building decentralized platforms with interoperability and open standards, this wouldn't be an issue. Instead, you all wanted to make money. (Understandable)
My proposal - the government should recognize that network effects produce defacto monopolies, and use existing anti-trust law to break up these behemoth platforms, or force regulation on them.
In the mean time, I'll shout "i told you so" from my lonely, facebookless, linux-powered compound.
The linked article is not criticizing SimCity. This is an architecture student who made something unusual with it, and finds a hidden meaning in his project. Nobody is saying that SimCity teaches bad lessons (at least not in this article).
I fear you are encouraging people not to vote, without suggesting some alternative form of civic participation. Which means the politicians you dislike have even more free reign to subvert the will of the people.
I'm a devoted listener to the author's radio show, (and the radio station it's broadcast on. Anyone in the NYC metro area should check out WFMU!)
It's hard to find tech industry criticism that's reasoned and fair. I was very disappointed when I read some of Jaron Lanier's books, for instance, because I thought some of his arguments were too hypothetical / abstract. Evgeny Morowzov's books had better arguments, but the tone was so cynical, and he spends little time proposing solutions. Mark Hurst's techtonic show spends time looking at the good and bad of technology, and I'm constantly having my views challenged.
Productive debates are more likely to happen in places with 1. Moderation and 2. an invested community. That's what makes HN successful, in my opinion.
But we can't turn every comment section into HN. Moderation is expensive. And some sites aren't niche enough to foster a sense of community.
So we should probably remove most comment sections.
News sites are particularly bad. Anyone can just stop by, leave their shitty opinion, and walk away.