In my opinion, sites like YouTube that rely on user generated content should drop any pretense of being neutral - they aren't and never have been. What they have been doing is dodging responsibility for being the publisher of racist and harmful material.
I'm sure that YouTube would say that they don't play favorites but even if that were true, as we have seen there are organizations all the way up to nation states that are hell-bent on corrupting platforms like YouTube for their own ends. And they don't require much corrupting.
Moderation is key. Sites like Hacker News work only because of strict moderation by humans. Similar sites without such moderation quickly become a haven for trolls and spam. Automatic systems can always be gamed - what is needed is a strong editorial hand.
I don't want YouTube to end - there are thousands of hours of great content. But if it is to survive it needs to make a choice of what kind of site they want to be. Letting itself be anything its users want is turning it into a cesspit.
But if you editorialise too much, do you lose e.g. safe harbor status? Most edited media is liable.
It's possible their hands are tied here. The copyright strike thing is out of hand, too, but in that case the blame is also on the (often scummy) copyright owners/enforcers. (That isn't to say they don't benefit from keeping advertisers happy, or that their platform/brand won't suffer the consequences of this approach)
Google / Facebook are private companies, and they should absolutely be able to pick and choose what is posted on their platform if they want.
However, they SHOULD NOT be able to have it both ways where they censor posts they don't like (like a publisher would do) but enjoy protections afforded to actual open / neutral platforms.
Once you start censoring things that aren't breaking any laws, you're now a PUBLISHER and not an OPEN PLATFORM, so you are responsible for what's posted on your site.
> The court upheld AOL's immunity from liability for defamation. AOL's agreement with the contractor allowing AOL to modify or remove such content did not make AOL the "information content provider" because the content was created by an independent contractor. The Court noted that Congress made a policy choice by "providing immunity even where the interactive service provider has an active, even aggressive role in making available content prepared by others."
The law is specifically written for that case, as noted in my excerpt. AOL had a contract allowing them to censor their contractor’s work, did not censor it (although they did moderate and censor various content on their service), and was still held immune from liability.
The CDA basically grants publishers the ability to have their cake and eat it too, so you’d need to change the law.
Did you ever use AOL? It was similar to a website today. There was a search feature, you could view content on it, and so on. They exercised editorial judgment and removed content. Nevertheless, they were found immune from liability for a piece of third party content on their service that they did not remove.
Just follow the link and look up the various legal cases if you want to know more.
The whole point of the law was to allow the websites an option between "total prevetted lockdown" and "spam and gross out filled anarchy because anything not forbidden by law is permitted". It may have been for prudish intentions but there is a reason that was the only section of the CDA to survive.
The problem that you're missing, is that these companies choose the aspects of being a publisher when it's convenient to them and a platform what that is more convenient.
Publishers are responsible for the content that they put out. The New York Times can't publish some of the things that people put on Facebook without legal repercussions. When the government wants to stop some behavior happening on Facebook, Facebook says "we're not a publisher, we're a platform".
But as a platform there are certain consumer protection laws that apply to these companies. In some regard, they are responsible to their users/customers. Except when people try to exercise their rights there, Facebook says "we're not a platform, we're a publisher. We're responsible for the content we publish and we can't publish that."
They really shouldn't be able to have it both ways.
Youtube has always been a PUBLISHER. They have never been an OPEN PLATFORM in any real sense.
They have so far managed to shirk responsibility for PUBLISHING hateful content while being amazingly on-the-ball when dealing with copyrighted material.
I am sure YouTube wouldn't put it in these terms, but from the outside it looks like every day they make the editorial decision to enforce copyrights while pushing hate speech. I am sure this makes sense financially.
Except in a legal sense, which has been the only sense that matters.
If enough people get upset, things could change, but notable it is primarily the lack of censorship that is upsetting people, so it appears the status quo of YouTube being an open platform with some censorship (Section 230 style) will continue.
I'm sure that YouTube would say that they don't play favorites but even if that were true, as we have seen there are organizations all the way up to nation states that are hell-bent on corrupting platforms like YouTube for their own ends. And they don't require much corrupting.
Moderation is key. Sites like Hacker News work only because of strict moderation by humans. Similar sites without such moderation quickly become a haven for trolls and spam. Automatic systems can always be gamed - what is needed is a strong editorial hand.
I don't want YouTube to end - there are thousands of hours of great content. But if it is to survive it needs to make a choice of what kind of site they want to be. Letting itself be anything its users want is turning it into a cesspit.