[lopmotr]

Yes but the difference shrinks when all the private entities that dominate the communication between people impose the same censorship and competition is effectively prevented by network effects. It's more of an anti-trust problem. Nobody would be complaining if it was just some small internet forum doing it.

[neogodless]

YouTube (of Google), Facebook and Twitter are three different sources of (peer-propagated) information, and even combined do not constitute a centralized source of information.

It does seem like they are used for "news" way more than (in my personal opinion) is advisable, but they are still each independent organizations, and they do not hold (quite) all of the keys to information, and still want to preserve a reputation of impartiality, as difficult and impractical of a goal as that is.

It's certainly a problem when other sources of information loudly pronounce misinformation as fact. If you only compare YouTube and a single other competing news source, you might feel it's rather odd that YouTube is choosing to stop information of a certain nature. If you look widely enough, you are more likely to find that the information is false, and it was your original comparison source that was, in fact, problematic.

The point of all this is that there needs to be more sources of valid, factual information than sources of the same problematic false information, or we are all going to lose the ability to determine any reasonable facsimile of truth. The fact that is it peer-propagated certainly entangles a complexity that is reflected in the very divided opinion on this issue.

But I think in the end it will boil down to something simple. Like other things we've previously agreed should not be free to be amplified on peer networks, likewise demonstrably false information sourced from the government of the people should also not be free to find amplification on those peer networks.

[chillwaves]

Can google imprison me? Can they seize my assets? Can Google execute me?

[rndgermandude]

Can Google imprison you? Not in the US, unless their lawyers find a nice way to make a prosecutor go e.g. for some fancy computer espionage charges (see Aaron Schwartz for example), but companies in the past had regimes in their bag and made people go to prison or vanish entirely, or perform forced labor for them.

Can they seize your assets? Not directly, but try getting sued by the legal department of a mega corp and see what you have left when it's all over. The end result is the same.

As somebody else pointed out, we already had companies that effectively acted as unelected governments in the past, like the East India Company. They used to execute people.

[defen]

Google can do bad things to you. Significantly less-bad things to you than imprisonment/asset seizure/execution, BUT they are not required to follow due process and are not answerable to anyone but themselves if they do something bad to you. They can also provide substantial amounts of incriminating evidence to the government (the ones who can execute you) and technically a warrant is not required. If the cops go to Google and ask for info about you that is stored on Google's computers, and Google gives it to them without a warrant, your rights as a US citizen have not been violated.

[DiogenesKynikos]

No, but they can effectively stop you from speaking online, which is what we're discussing.

[treeman79]

They have your search history. Or they could make it if inclined. So for a lot of people, yes. They could easily put people in Jail.

More likely scenario would be exposing anyone That wants to be anonymous. Actually I think that happens in other countries all the time.

[chillwaves]

Google cannot put me in jail.

What a low quality response. I'm done with you, please do not reply to me further, here or elsewhere.

[throwmehaweh]

No, but they can use their enormous power and influence to get politicians into office that could write new rules allowing such.