I guess this would be a valid contender. I’d encourage anyone to begin mirroring videos for that reason.
What's so amazing here? This a normal and expected human behaviour.
>forgot to use the internet
What does this even mean in this context?
Look, you've forgotten it otherwise you wouldn't ask this question.
What parent comment implies (at least how a read it) is just your good old gatekeeping.
The internet is still decentralized today.
This if we are talking about second half of 00s. Before this? Most people barely have internet access at home. And things like BBS (for example) were for techies only with very few exceptions.
Maybe it was quite different in the US for example.
Developers already know how to do this with EC2s, Droplets, Linodes, Azure VMs etc. The process just needs to be more average-person-friendly.
The average person still uses the same password for EVERYTHING, despite say iOS and Android making it easy as pie to just go "generate passwords for me". Telling an average person to have a 3-2-1 backup AND run stuff in the cloud that they will 100% lose the password for is not a battle I see to be won in the near future.
A personal computer in a colo rack is technically possible but that self-maintained software stack doesn't really solve the problem for these advocacy groups.
What "corporate" platforms like Youtube/TwitterX/Instagram/TikTok/etc provide is mass audience reach. Because ... (1) recommended by the algorithm as "suggested/related" and (2) a billion mainstream people have those video apps on their smartphones
It means Youtube/etc are "distribution platforms". They provide leverage to raise awareness.
A personal pc with a public ip address doesn't accomplish those goals of spreading awareness. Consider that most HN stories with video links that make it to the front page are Youtube urls and not Peertube nor a random computer with a public ip. (E.g. a recent HN submission a few hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45815419)
People want "free speech" in the busy town square where all the people gather instead of just shouting in an empty forest with nobody around. A personal pc in the cloud with an ip address is the "empty forest".
I'm not sure that's enough. A few years ago there were some set of websites that wanted less censorship than the main corporate sites (or at least, a different set of censorship rules), I forget all their names now - voat, rumble, gab, parler, etc and people who didn't like the content they saw there just went upstream to cloud providers, app stores, registrars, payment processors, CDNs, ISPs and anywhere else in order to shut them down, cut them off or prevent access.
Tons of sites that failed to perfectly comply with American media conglomerate's interpretation of copyright have been forced offline, had their domain names seized, etc.
There was a period of time where the MPAA and RIAA were routinely suing random teenagers and grandparents for life-destroying sums of money because they used Napster to share a song they liked with a friend.
I think to maintain any sort of real open web, we're going to need some sort of new Tor network that can support billions of users anonymously accessing information which can't be deplatformed and can't result in people getting arrested, losing their jobs, their visas or their funding for saying things that the people in power don't want said.
That already exists. They're called onion sites. What we really need is something that performs about as well as the current Internet, but is stronger against deplatforming: decentralized DNS. It doesn't even need to give memorable names like DNS does, it just needs to be a second, stable addressing layer on top of IP so clients can always find the server.
Whatever it is it needs to be distributed like BitTorrent.
gab, voat and the others simply gave up when the convenient providers did not want to deal with their bullshit
Freedom to delete and rewrite history.
YT normally takes down any video depicting violence.
YouTube probably has far worse.
All US social media are bound to US foreign policy which enables Israel to continue it's invasion and systematic cleansing of Palestinians.
And if someone is not, then they have material for blackmail
It doesn't matter if the snuff is an Israeli shooting a Palestinian, or a jihadi beheading a cartoonist. It's all removed because YouTube doesn't accept snuff on its platform.
>A film or video clip which involves a real non-acted murder.
It seems like any video depicting a real murder would count as snuff. In any case, has YouTube ever allowed either kind?
Bing maps seems to be entirely pre-war as far as I can tell. In a way, that's kind of useful, as it can serve as a reference for what Gaza used to look like in A/B comparisons.
Google maps on the other hand has had at least some updates. Southern Gaza appears basically unscathed, but the Northern part shows some wide swathes where there's very little left but dust and rubble. I think Google did that update a couple months ago. Before that it was kind of hard to find any serious damage at all. (Jabalia refugee camp has shown as a ruin before that update.)
To some extent it's understandable that neither company wants to be updating all of their satellite images all the time. Still, the war has been going on for years and this is a place that a huge number of people really want to know what's going on. Updating slowly (Google) or not at all (Microsoft) at this point seem like deliberate policies, and I'd imagine they're probably highly contentious within those companies.
DiogenesKynikos•2h ago
Trump sanctions the International Criminal Court and anyone who provides evidence to it, and now pro-Palestinian groups can't post videos of Israeli abuse on YouTube. The First Amendment is nowhere to be seen.
hobs•2h ago
gosub100•2h ago
coliveira•2h ago
StarGrit•2h ago
e.g.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918
There is nothing unique about what is happening now.
rwmj•2h ago
StarGrit•2h ago
It is a statement of fact about the nature of the US state (and would apply to most western ones tbh). Freedom of Speech is simply a privilege that those in power grant you when it is convenient to do so. It will be taken away when expedient to do so.
The post I was replying to seemed to believe it was a novel situation.
jackjeff•2h ago
saubeidl•1h ago
-- Joseph Goebbels, 1935
_heimdall•2h ago
Freedom of speech is meant to protect us from government censorship. Trump sanctions would fall into that category, but a social media site censoring what they don't want to host seems like fair game.
the_af•2h ago
The article answers this:
> YouTube, which is owned by Google, confirmed to The Intercept that it deleted the groups’ accounts as a direct result of State Department sanctions against the group after a review.
_heimdall•58m ago
Sanctions were put in place and YouTube followed policy to not allow content from sanctioned groups. That sounds like a loophole, and could be found by a court to be a violation, but it isn't nearly as cut and dry as people here seem to be making it out to be.
latexr•2h ago
Yes, according to the article. That argument is made over and over in it, it’s hard to miss. “Forcing” doesn’t just mean directly requiring the action, it also means the threat of “this is not going to end up well for you if you don’t comply”. Of course, you can argue that Google could and should fight it, but that doesn’t change what the government is doing.
> but a social media site censoring what they don't want to host seems like fair game.
Again, the article makes it really clear they are doing this as the direct result of government actions.
_heimdall•1h ago
I saw multiple references there to the government sanctioning groups and that YouTube took down videos based on the sanctions. That very well could be a loophole and a court might deem that a first amendment violation, but it isn't as simple as finding communications where the government directly requested those videos to be taken down.
latexr•56m ago
> “Forcing” doesn’t just mean directly requiring the action, it also means the threat of “this is not going to end up well for you if you don’t comply”.
Which is definitely what the current administration does. If you need an example, look at the recent Jimmy Kimmel case.
_heimdall•43m ago
I could see a court deciding this YouTube situation is a first amendment violation. I don't know of any law or precedent that makes it a clear cut case given what is described in the article.
gosub100•1h ago
mpalmer•2h ago
jackjeff•1h ago
The problem is that in practice, if you can't do YouTube, Facebook, Tiktok, INsta, etc... your speech will not be heard by anyone. It's like if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, the fact that it makes sound is irrelevant. So effectively, it amounts to censorship, even though the government potentially had no hand in it.
Now imagine someone in Trump administration pressured Google with a juicy contract, or the prospect of an expensive lawsuit, and the quid pro quo was dumping these videos that annoy "our Israeli friends". This kind of "pay to play" is at minimum corruption. It may also fall of short of constitutional guarantees for free speech. Ironically, it is exactly the same thing a lot of members of the Trump administration have accused Biden of doing (exhibit: the so called "Twitter Files" etc... ), although I don't believe this went anywhere in federal courts (am I wrong?)
I honestly don't know what the answer is. But I would not be surprised if in 50 years time, some of these large companies get regulated as "utilities" and are no longer able to yank "videos" from their platform just because they feel like it. And every time they "abuse" their powers, I feel like we get an inch closer to that onerous regulation.
davorak•1h ago
nitpick - Youtube is bound by the US Constitution, it is the highest law of the land. 1A[1] is only about binding the government/congresses power though so youtube is not bound by 1A.
[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/
DiogenesKynikos•53m ago
When the government pressures companies to censor Constitutionally protected speech, that is a First Amendment violation. If it weren't, the First Amendment would have no practical meaning.
EdiX•1h ago
woodpanel•1h ago
skulk•7m ago
Also, do you have any actual evidence of political debanking in the US? I can't find any references to it other than the propaganda of the current administration.
ta20240528•59m ago
Perhaps not, but they could courier the evidence on a DVD to the Hague.