[mindcrime]

If NBC decided they were going to allow anyone who felt like it broadcast anything they liked without supervision or editing, it would be shut down once the first reports of, "Hey, NBC is showing me child pornography and beheading videos" came in.

Probably not, just like Youtube hasn't been shut down because some disagreeable content showed up.

Meanwhile, NBC has already figured out what every hacker ought to know. Blacklists don't work, whitelists do.

That completely depends on your definition of "work". If "work" includes not having false positives that block things that should't be blocked, or not unnecessarily delaying the time it takes to publish something, then neither option is terribly good.

What's wrong with a world in which someone at youtube has to approve each cat video before posting it?

1. It doesn't scale very well

2. The decisions would almost certainly be wildly inconsistent, subjective, and controversial. Which is to say, it would be, at best, a marginal improvement over the situation today.

[jmhnilbog]

Gawker, a publisher, was shut down because it reported on Hulk Hogan's sexual activity. I think we can assume that larger publishers would be shut down for more outrageous content.

Yes, obviously, manual approval of content does not scale very well. Scaling is not a good in itself.

Decisions will only be as "wildly inconsistent, subjective, and controversial' as the people responsible for them. This should allow for consistent, objective, and responsible people to rise to the top in the decision making process, no?