<story><title>YouTube suspended my channel for a video with disclosed issue in Grammarly</title><url>https://twitter.com/evilksandr/status/1479507618066571268</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jchw</author><text>Free speech isn’t just something that can be encoded into law, it’s an ideology. A great ideology, imo.&lt;p&gt;That said, with COVID-19 it really became apparent that these platforms have basically become a new public square, putting everyone in an awkward position. You can basically be ousted from the internet by just a couple entities like Facebook or Twitter and have your entire online presence torpedoed. IRL I can just go to a different bar, gym, whatever. On the internet, everything consolidates rapidly. It’s hard to argue that companies should be forced to allow things they don’t want on their platforms, but it’s clear that something has to be done here if platforms are going to consolidate this badly.</text></item><item><author>smcl</author><text>I think you&amp;#x27;ve incorrectly invoked &amp;quot;free speech&amp;quot; here, IMO this isn&amp;#x27;t a free speech issue. It may be a TOS issue and it does sound like Google are being a bit unreasonable but &amp;quot;free speech&amp;quot; isn&amp;#x27;t really something Google ever promised to permit on their platforms</text></item><item><author>megumax</author><text>After Grammarly spent millions of dollars on Google ads, I expect them not to accept valid criticism on Google platforms.&lt;p&gt;But it&amp;#x27;s unfair to block a guy that talked about a real flaw in Grammarly&amp;#x27;s plagiarism checker, at least pretend that you allow free speech and take down that video for a random reason specified in your ToS.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>smcl</author><text>My point is not that &amp;quot;free speech&amp;quot; as a concept is bad (though I do mention in another comment here that it does raise thorny issues). My point is that tying this complaint and &amp;quot;free speech&amp;quot; together is pointless because it directs attention at the wrong thing.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s the difference between saying &amp;quot;$person got kicked off Google in a violation of their free speech&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;$person got kicked off Google for a totally specious reason that doesn&amp;#x27;t even violate Google&amp;#x27;s TOS&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;The first one gets &lt;i&gt;immediately&lt;/i&gt; shut down because they didn&amp;#x27;t violate anyone&amp;#x27;s free speech. If you try to make that argument it&amp;#x27;s a total non-starter. We can have a big fun discussion about free speech online some time - and that does happen here on HN - but that&amp;#x27;s not the issue here.&lt;p&gt;The second one gets at the &lt;i&gt;actual&lt;/i&gt; issue - Google have just booted someone even though they didn&amp;#x27;t apparently violate their TOS. They just arbitrarily did so to appease a paying client.&lt;p&gt;I hope this is clear.</text></comment>
<story><title>YouTube suspended my channel for a video with disclosed issue in Grammarly</title><url>https://twitter.com/evilksandr/status/1479507618066571268</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jchw</author><text>Free speech isn’t just something that can be encoded into law, it’s an ideology. A great ideology, imo.&lt;p&gt;That said, with COVID-19 it really became apparent that these platforms have basically become a new public square, putting everyone in an awkward position. You can basically be ousted from the internet by just a couple entities like Facebook or Twitter and have your entire online presence torpedoed. IRL I can just go to a different bar, gym, whatever. On the internet, everything consolidates rapidly. It’s hard to argue that companies should be forced to allow things they don’t want on their platforms, but it’s clear that something has to be done here if platforms are going to consolidate this badly.</text></item><item><author>smcl</author><text>I think you&amp;#x27;ve incorrectly invoked &amp;quot;free speech&amp;quot; here, IMO this isn&amp;#x27;t a free speech issue. It may be a TOS issue and it does sound like Google are being a bit unreasonable but &amp;quot;free speech&amp;quot; isn&amp;#x27;t really something Google ever promised to permit on their platforms</text></item><item><author>megumax</author><text>After Grammarly spent millions of dollars on Google ads, I expect them not to accept valid criticism on Google platforms.&lt;p&gt;But it&amp;#x27;s unfair to block a guy that talked about a real flaw in Grammarly&amp;#x27;s plagiarism checker, at least pretend that you allow free speech and take down that video for a random reason specified in your ToS.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jcranmer</author><text>It is refreshing to see someone who diagnoses the issue here correctly.&lt;p&gt;The root problem people are complaining about is the moderation policies, and the truth is that services like Facebook et al are simply &lt;i&gt;too large&lt;/i&gt; to be effectively moderated. Appealing to (US ideas of) free speech would propose that the solution to bad moderation is &lt;i&gt;no moderation whatsoever&lt;/i&gt; (speech restrictions must be content-neutral, and moderation by definition is not content-neutral)--and I think most people would rapidly find that no moderation is &lt;i&gt;worse&lt;/i&gt; than bad moderation.&lt;p&gt;The most effective solution is to do what ought to have been done a decade ago and prevent further social media consolidation and consider breaking up the current oligopoly of social media.</text></comment>