Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

With apologies to H.L. Mencken [1]

"Freedom of video publishing belongs to those who own the platform."

The good news is that anyone can own a platform these days. If you want to publish something, you can do it yourself very easily. You don't have to have youtube do it for you.

[1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/05/21/free-press/#:~:text....




This is a really dangerous line of argument for an example where one platform has a de-facto monopoly on views, whose censorship is fine-grained enough that people open to these other ideas simply won't be able to find them.

It makes a lot of sense for individual publications, or even Reddit banning certain communities, since people looking for alternatives will know to do so. It's a lot more insidious in a case like this, since there's no clear indication that anything is missing.


All of these alternatives are just a search and a click away. If people want to find them, they can.


Until the alternatives are de-listed from search because "they contain disinformation" and the alternative search engines are de-listed and black-holed at the DNS resolver level for the same reasons.


I suspect that will be the next problem. By basically disenfranchising conspiracists they will (and in some cases have) formed their own platforms.

Maybe it will be a net good to separate out the hardcore conspiracy types, but given how relatively widespread sympathy to this idea is, I wonder if it won't just create more and more polarized platforms, which I personally think will only worsen things.

I don't really have any alternative suggestions, and I do think the way ideas spread on the internet is pretty frightening, but I'm not how good the long term results of this are gonna be.


Practically speaking, network effects make it nearly impossible for alternative platforms to achieve the scale of their mainstream ancestors. Right-wing communities exiled from Reddit have much smaller audiences in their new homes.

I'm not so concerned with this level of "censorship" in and of itself. But what happens, when, inevitably, the media starts to demand the same out of Google, AWS, ISPs? That's the truly scary prospect.

EDIT: scary




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: