Why should YouTube have a megaphone to give in the first place? Last I checked, there are still laws on the books to handle companies with >90% market shares. [0]
Good, so we agree that this is not an anti-censorship issue but an anti-trust issue.
Private entities can't censor anything, anyhow. Independently and freely choosing which sentiments to platform on a private service is not censorship, no matter how far anyone tries to stretch the definition of the term.
I just checked a couple of definitions in case my memory was failing me, but I don't see any definition of censorship that limits it to governmental action. YouTube can and does censor content on their platform, I don't understand why so many people seem have trouble with that word. All it means is (quoting Webster) "to examine in order to suppress ... or delete anything considered objectionable"
The way it's being used in public discourse is not necessarily the dictionary definition of the term. You have to meet people where they are when it comes to rhetoric, not try to force them to follow your version of what means what.
YouTube chooses not to display media uploaded to their servers. That is not censorship, that is discretion.
Censorship is going around to all the platforms and forcing them to remove content which has already been or is on the way to being displayed to the public.
I'm not who you've been talking to, but I can't help but laugh at this exchange.
>Censorship is going around to all the platforms and forcing them to remove content which has already been or is on the way to being displayed to the public.
No, actually, that isn't the definition. You guys just had a back and forth on this. You're artificially trying to limit the definition of "censorship" to fit your sentiment because your sentiment is not based in objective reality.
While I would agree with you that YouTube should not be compelled by law to host any content and can censor whatever they want (and we can, and should, refuse to use YouTube to host our videos and inform ourselves), it is still censorship, plain and simple.
If you send me a DM asking me to repeat your claims in a public-facing comment, and I refuse, that is not censorship. Ditto for any and every private entity which exists.
I hear net-neutrality is a common position around here. If you agree prima facia that Comcast should not be allowed to block simply or censor YouTube (they're a private company, its their own equipment, etc, etc), then why doesn't the same argument apply to Google?
>Censorship is going around to all the platforms and forcing them to remove content which has already been or is on the way to being displayed to the public.
That is your own personal definition. What happened to meeting people where they are?
Net neutrality has little to do with censorship, and more to do with extortion. While it is true that extortionary tactics can be used to effectively censor particular sentiments, that is not what is being referred to in discussions surrounding net neutrality.
" Some notable incidents otherwise have included Bell Canada's throttling of certain protocols and Telus's censorship of a specific website critical of the company."
" Deep packet inspection helped make real-time discrimination between different kinds of data possible,[49] and is often used for Internet censorship."
>While it is true that extortionary tactics can be used to effectively censor particular sentiments, that is not what is being referred to in discussions surrounding net neutrality.
Maybe it wasn't being discussed around you. I certainly remember discussions on HN about comcast blocking torrents or whatnot and 'censoring' the internet. But I guess you have a different definition of censorship, so we never did achieve common ground on that.
The way "censorship" is being used in public discourse, in practice, seems to be that it's not censorship when it's applied to views the people driving the public discourse disagree with. Remember the controversy over LGBT content supposedly being removed or demonitised on YouTube - pretty mucn none of the mainstream discourse agreed with the idea that it wasn't censorship because YouTube was a private company, let alone the idea that - as I've seen pushed in other areas - that pressuring YouTube not to do it was actually the real attack on their free speech rights.
1. the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.
2. (in ancient Rome) the office or position of censor.
Yes, but back then we had the party organ of the American Nazi Party and the party organ of the International Workers of the World, and a couple more in between. You could buy them, and you know what you would get. Now you just have Youtube. That is a problem.
[0]: https://www.statista.com/topics/2019/youtube/