Most of the comments are unsubstantiated. So what? The sentiment is succinct. It's a useful contribution insofar that one may upvote, rather than adding to the noise.
That's a good point - you don't even have to kill anyone to effect a pretty significant scare. How much would it cost to buy enough drones to shut down an airport by having them hover in front of the runways? And how quickly could they be taken down?
Unless the drones have onboard AI, all you'd need is to jam the signal.
It can't be that hard to shut down drone frequencies seeing as how they have gear to shut down cell phones (to prevent them being used to set off IEDs).
I don't see any sense in attacking the credibility by the choice of the blogging infrastructure - the author wanted to convey a message, present his findings and he achieved that. This should be the only thing that counts.
I guess the best (even if in a totally opposite field) argument against opinionated choice of web-technologies would be the website of Berkshire Hathaway [1]. They invest in highly sophisticated companies but still use the website that always provided the service they demanded.
YouTube isn't deciding what you can watch, they are deciding what they are going to use their resources to show you. You can still watch whatever you want, provided you don't use YouTube's resources.
As to who YouTube is to make that decision: they are the entity providing the resources.
They are not a public service nor to they have to pretend to be one.
But they do pretend that, all the time. They are a common carrier when it suits them and a publisher with editorial control when it suits them. That’s not reasonable and they must be forced to choose one or the other.
Google, who owns Youtube, are distributors at best, and distributors who didn't come by their trade first hand.
They bought into it. They are pretenders who, for the first time in recorded history, are able to perform a massive product recall in the name of censorship without incurring backlash on a scale that would cause bankruptcy or riots.
To wish away all that context in the name of "digital" is a fool's errand.
YouTube essentially has a monopoly on video. Monopolies and other actors can be forced to comply with public space laws or to respect principles that normally apply only to the government.
Well, they are the de-facto curator of the bulk of our civilizations videos. Lets be honest, if you aren't on YouTube your chances of being searched/promoted/seen are greatly diminished. Maybe to nearly zero.
That's so far from true. A "video hosting services" search away is >10 results, of which I recognize at least 3 as professional level excluding Youtube (Vimeo, Ooyala, and Wistia). They may not have the entire ecosystem around it, but you need to be a little specific if you want anything approaching a valid claim for "monopoly on video" _hosting_. If you're talking about traffic, that's a separate story and is only a sign they are generally providing a usable product.
When I search for video on search engines, I only see hits to YouTube and far far fewer hits to Vimeo. I never see hits for Ooyala and Wistia; honestly, you could be making those sites up for all I know.
And the other ones won't ever see more popularity if everyone keeps saying that YouTube is the only game in town, and doesn't start using the other sites.
Quoting from that article: These spaces are usually the product of a deal between cities and private real estate developers in which cities grant valuable zoning concessions and developers provide in return privately owned public spaces in or near their buildings.
TV stations decide what shows they want to air, and which ones they don't. And nobody calls it censorship. Youtube feels like public infrastructure. But legally, it's no different than a TV station deciding to cancel a show.
A TV station has limited bandwidth. They have a constant ongoing algorithm to choose what to fit in there.
YouTube could keep all videos forever. There can be no commercial reason to 'cancel' a YouTube video. So we know that this decision is almost completely unrelated to the TV Station reasons.
1. Hosting videos costs Youtube money. It's probably a tiny amount per video. But that doesn't mean they can host every video forever.
2. They have a commercial reason to cancel these videos. Maybe they think the use of these drugs is risky, and gives their website an unsavory reputation. That hurts their brand (and potentially their bottom line). This is not unlike a TV show canceling a successful show when it's star actor becomes embroiled in controversy.
Number 1 is pretty much yes, they can. It's a diminishing cost, and the price of storage is very likely diminishing faster than the rate of video production is rising.
Number 2, agreed, we in fact know it can only be censorship (and not competing viewership) that drives the decision. That's my whole point.
YouTube content is created by human beings. There is an absolute bound to that (record everything everybody does all day long). No, its not geometric and can never be, right?
Storage and network charges are already pennies per terabyte-day. So currently and in the forseeable future, YouTube's costs will probably be administrative.
And that's all beside the point. There's not hard 24-hour one-channel limit to what YouTube can 'broadcast'. So their model is completely unlike a traditional TV station. So that analogy is flawed. So we can conclude, YouTube's decision to show (or not show) anything is based on completely different criterion. Pedantry notwithstanding.
1. https://xkcd.com/605/
Hard drives are dropping in price. That doesn't mean they will ever be zero.
1a. Youtube has other expenses besides hard drives. Bandwith. Server infrastructure. Employee salaries. To name a few.
2. It's not censorship. It's editorial judgement. Are you saying websites should be forced to host opinions they don't agree with? There is no "fairness doctrine" for sites like youtube.
