[cogman10]

The important thing to distinguish is that they protect free speech, not free platforms.

People are free to say racist things, produce racist games, setup racist podcasts.

What they aren't entitled to is google showing their racist crap, steam carrying their racist games, hacker news keeping their racist comments uncensored. You are free to burn a flag, you can't force someone to watch you burn it.

If someone feels hurt that youtube censors too much, they are more than free to make their own whitepowertube. The fact that there is a ton of far right media right now shows that they aren't completely without a voice.

[rowanG077]

I agree with you in general. But would like to add that effective monopolies like youtube should be excluded. Censoring something on youtube essentially means it censored completely for video platforms.

[amanaplanacanal]

There are other video hosting platforms that work perfectly well, as far as I can see.

[rowanG077]

Excluding porn youtube is essentially a monopoly. If you can't go to youtube you immediately land in very small and obscure video streaming sites.

If you compare this to the "real" world it would be the same as not being able to say what you want in public spaces. Youtube is THE public space for video content.

[thu2111]

They aren't, actually.

I guess "WhitePowerTube" would have been Stormfront? I never visited the site but I remember hearing about it when Google seized their domain name and wouldn't give it back.

There's a nice fantasy about these parts that the deplatforming left somehow created all these platforms and will stop when people they disagree with go away. No. These platforms were mostly created by people committed to free speech, who came under relentless external and internal attacks for years until they bent the knee, and people who try to create alternative platforms are frequently erased from the internet via whatever levers of power those activists can get their hands on. They definitely don't stop and say, well, you created your own website, good for you and best of luck.

[TomSwirly]

> people committed to free speech

That's quite a euphemism for Stormfront!

> the deplatforming left

Maybe I have a different viewpoint because my grandfather spent some years in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, but I just see organizations like Stormfront as completely wrong and to be crushed by any legal means.

The endless association of free speech with white supremacy is tiring.

The First Amendment gives a corporation paying to print hateful lies made up on the spot a massive advantage over an honest and thoughtful individual who has spent considerable time and effort to discover the truth.

Now America is facing an epidemic but has a full-time virus misinformation news network. As a result, at least 80,000 Americans have died unnecessarily, and this number grows every day. https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/19/faster-response-prevente...

What will the final death toll be? How many would have been preventable if Americans hadn't been told a pack of lies?

The First Amendment needs to be completely overhauled to deal with this exploit that is destroying the system. Not to patch this terrible security breach "because the Founders" is like refusing to fix a zero-day exploit in Linux "because Linus".

[thu2111]

That wasn't a euphemism, I was referring to the origins of Twitter, Reddit, YouTube etc where they were committed to allowing a whole range of viewpoints. So you misunderstood me pretty badly. That's perhaps an argument for free speech you'd find understandable - if you can censor peopleb at will there's always a risk you'll not correctly understand them and incorrectly, unfairly shut someone down.