<story><title>YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/business/youtube-remove-extremist-videos.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dageshi</author><text>Is a privately owned museum a &amp;quot;public square&amp;quot;? Or a sports stadium owned by a private company? Or a Cinema? Or a threatre? No, neither is youtube.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a place the public visit not a piece of public infrastructure. Repeating &amp;quot;public square&amp;quot; over and over again does not make it so.</text></item><item><author>ravenstine</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m starting to think that comment sections on news sites are a really bad idea.  At first I thought NPR and the like were cowards for removing theirs.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s bad enough that NYT can be pretty biased on its own, but the comment sections are always full of low-tier thinking that just push whatever narrative is currently in the Overton window.&lt;p&gt;What I find distressing is how people remark that a telecom and advertising giant acting as a de facto government over the public square isn&amp;#x27;t a violation of free speech principles because they&amp;#x27;re a &amp;quot;private business&amp;quot;, as if that&amp;#x27;s an original thought that&amp;#x27;s profound.  Funny how people say &amp;quot;it&amp;#x27;s a private business&amp;quot; when it suits their own political interests.&lt;p&gt;We wouldn&amp;#x27;t blindly allow company-owned cities or states to pass laws, especially vague or undefined ones, that potentially violate our rights, so why do we allow &amp;quot;states&amp;quot; in &lt;i&gt;cyberspace&lt;/i&gt; to be run in such a way?&lt;p&gt;Ban people promoting violence?  Sure, why not.  I&amp;#x27;m as against hate and violence as the next person.  But not only is censoring &amp;quot;hate speech&amp;quot; becoming a slippery slope at the company level, it&amp;#x27;s bad for the public in general because it sets a greater precedent for what the big corporations that run our everyday lives can tell us what we can or cannot do, and with &lt;i&gt;no forgiveness&lt;/i&gt;.  I don&amp;#x27;t find it hard to imagine a world where individuals can be &lt;i&gt;instantly&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;permanently&lt;/i&gt; banned from doing everyday things, just like they are on YouTube, because they said or did something off the platform.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bzbarsky</author><text>On the other hand, a privately owned shopping mall is legally a &amp;quot;public square&amp;quot; in a number of states in the US, with the justification that it is explicitly a place for people to gather and interact, just like the main street of a town in the 19th century.&lt;p&gt;Which of these cases is Youtube more like?  It&amp;#x27;s already hard to tell, and it&amp;#x27;s continuing to change.  I expect the legal status of online forums to evolve over the next several decades, just like the legal status of brick-and-mortar spaces has evolved over time.</text></comment>
<story><title>YouTube to Remove Thousands of Videos Pushing Extreme Views</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/business/youtube-remove-extremist-videos.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dageshi</author><text>Is a privately owned museum a &amp;quot;public square&amp;quot;? Or a sports stadium owned by a private company? Or a Cinema? Or a threatre? No, neither is youtube.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a place the public visit not a piece of public infrastructure. Repeating &amp;quot;public square&amp;quot; over and over again does not make it so.</text></item><item><author>ravenstine</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m starting to think that comment sections on news sites are a really bad idea.  At first I thought NPR and the like were cowards for removing theirs.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s bad enough that NYT can be pretty biased on its own, but the comment sections are always full of low-tier thinking that just push whatever narrative is currently in the Overton window.&lt;p&gt;What I find distressing is how people remark that a telecom and advertising giant acting as a de facto government over the public square isn&amp;#x27;t a violation of free speech principles because they&amp;#x27;re a &amp;quot;private business&amp;quot;, as if that&amp;#x27;s an original thought that&amp;#x27;s profound.  Funny how people say &amp;quot;it&amp;#x27;s a private business&amp;quot; when it suits their own political interests.&lt;p&gt;We wouldn&amp;#x27;t blindly allow company-owned cities or states to pass laws, especially vague or undefined ones, that potentially violate our rights, so why do we allow &amp;quot;states&amp;quot; in &lt;i&gt;cyberspace&lt;/i&gt; to be run in such a way?&lt;p&gt;Ban people promoting violence?  Sure, why not.  I&amp;#x27;m as against hate and violence as the next person.  But not only is censoring &amp;quot;hate speech&amp;quot; becoming a slippery slope at the company level, it&amp;#x27;s bad for the public in general because it sets a greater precedent for what the big corporations that run our everyday lives can tell us what we can or cannot do, and with &lt;i&gt;no forgiveness&lt;/i&gt;.  I don&amp;#x27;t find it hard to imagine a world where individuals can be &lt;i&gt;instantly&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;permanently&lt;/i&gt; banned from doing everyday things, just like they are on YouTube, because they said or did something off the platform.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>core-questions</author><text>Youtube runs on the back of publicly-funded infrastructure and, as a natural monopoly in the space, it has a position of privilege that needs to be regulated.&lt;p&gt;We need an Internet Bill of Rights to ensure free speech on any platform of this scale. Yes, that means speech you don&amp;#x27;t like; may I suggest not watching it?</text></comment>