[eref]

I think it is right to „soft“-censor in this way (i.e. the information is accessible but not promoted). Reality without sorting and filters would be inhuman because market incentives to grab people’s attention would maximally exploit our tribal instincts and thereby completely destabilize our societies. This is already happening and it needs to stop immediately.

[golemotron]

There will always be a problem because people promote for vanity and status as well as economics. You can't get more human than that.

The next 5 years will be tech companies panicking and trying to impose social control vs. people becoming more aware of when they are being manipulated by other users (and censored by platforms) and opting out of platforms entirely and/or moving to less controlled platforms. Internet media will be seen like smoking and candy bar consumption are seed today. Some people will eat candy bars every day because they don't care about their health. Others will choose to be healthier and it will happen by increasing awareness rather than heavy handedness.

[JohnStrange]

You don't have to go that far to justify demonetization. It's a way to encourage higher quality content in contrast to low quality clickbait and sensationalism. That's good for the users and also in Youtube's long-term interest. On a side note, that's not censorship at all, neither hard nor soft censorship, it's just a kind of automated editorial work.

[ksk]

>It's a way to encourage higher quality content in contrast to low quality clickbait and sensationalism.

Maybe its higher quality, but you will essentially get the same type of content you already get on cable. Its content that has the potential to be popular, is bland enough that advertisers don't mind seeing their logo on the content, and is conducive to people buying things that the advertisers are selling.

YouTube is going the way of being just another cable provider. They flirted with the "community" aspect for a while, but in the end decided they care much more about advertisers. Which is fair enough, IMO.

[jakebasile]

Who decides what to filter? How are they elected?

[chiaro]

Private people appointed by the company in accordance to CSR principles established by the board of directors.

[moduspol]

Agreed. I mean, Russia already verifiably tried to influence the 2016 election, right?

Maybe the algorithm can be adjusted to not promote content that aligns with Russian interests. That way we can ensure people are only seeing the perspectives we want them to.

[ux4]

That puts Youtube as a significant political power though.

Interestingly enough, there was thread saying Youtube was censoring searches of "navalnyi" a critic of Putin. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15806393