RE: YouTube to ban ‘hateful’ videos with ‘supremacist’ content
What about conspiracy theories and questioning videos in regards to more controversial topics, such as 9/11. While most people pretty much accept that Sandy Hook happened...quite a few people thought there were quite a number of questionable things in regards to the incidents on 9/11. Despite the large number of questions in regards to that, they've pretty much ignored the people calling for more public investigations into it. Would a video that talked about the conspiracy theories be removed from recommendations in favor of more "official" narratives?
What about videos about aliens? Or any number of strange ideas people have? A ton of people believe in aliens and a few crazy conspiracies.
There are cases where the "official" narrative has been proven to be false after quite a few years. Are they going to remove videos about "conspiracies" in regards to people being gassed in certain countries that after years are proven to be true?
What about historical cases like Agent Orange and even PTSD. Would they ensure videos that were against the official narrative were not at the top of the list today?
Hell, there are still historical cases where the official narrative is known to be bullshit.
They are treading in very dangerous waters. They should have kept going with trying to do the minimal amount of censorship as they could. Though I understand why they did what they did in regards to racist content and crazy conspiracies. It's just a very dangerous decision.
Whatever happened to just staying away from things you don't agree with? Carloz Maza is able to get Youtube to silence Crowder because Crowder criticized him repeatedly (I don't really even like Crowder because I find him annoying.) Carlos will claim it is bullying but if disagreeing with someone = bullying, well, we may as well turn off the internet right now :P
Making fun of someone's lisp, nationality and sexuality for years is not "disagreeing". Though I think he was trying to be funny most of the time. He wasn't trying to be an ass necessarily, he just is.
Also, the changes to YouTube were in the works for a while. Similar changes were done on Facebook as well. It's not the first move by sites to go more anti-bigotry recently either. Carloz Maza just happened to be bitching around the same time as the changes went into effect. The changes in regards to policing links in videos was implemented like a week ago, before the other changes, and perhaps before the incident.
While it's technically possible that they freaked out over someone bitching about abuse...it happens all the time. Them actually changing their entire TOS over one user is unlikely, unless it makes a huge public incident. They probably didn't even have to change their TOS to demonetize or even ban Crowder though. If you go through a few of the vids where he made fun of Carloz Maza, you can see at least a few really go over the line. That's up to interpretation though, which is why he wasn't demonetized at first, not because they had to change the rules. They didn't ban him though, they simply demonetized him, which is similar to how flagging works here in a way, so he got off lucky. There are even journalists that have been demonetized under the new system.
the most common defense is "YouTube is a private company and can do whatever they want!" and well yeah, that is true. I guess the Libertarian in me wants them to allow market forces to dictate the outcome on its own. I mean honestly, if Crowder is silenced, i don't think there is really any chance his 4 million followers are going to start watching The Young Turks as an alternative :P