[michaelpb]

> Between 2010-2016 was the golden age for these companies actually being free and open.

Were they really though? I'm pretty sure there were plenty of things, especially things deemed to be "Intellectual Property violating", which were strictly banned on all these platforms far before 2010. One example is that Google has been removing search results for as long as I can remember.

In other words, what was in your perspective "free and open" was very restrictive and politically pro-corporate from my perspective --- hardly an "objective stance" but instead a very political stance on what was permitted and what was forbidden.

[porknubbins]

Ok Youtube for example has had a longstanding policy of removing videos using music clips without the rights (I assume proactively, not just in response to DMA notices). This is essentially an automatic mechanism, possibly overly aggressive, to stay within the law- find unlicensed music and silence the video. But like stopping me from infringing on a Metallica song is clearly categorically different from actually censoring a video about Coronavirus that doesn’t comform to some standard or is accused of spreading misinformation.

[michaelpb]

I brought up copyright as just one example, these platforms have many reasons (not always given) for deleting stuff, ranging from political content or activism to copyright. Most ToS's are quite arbitrary. People have been talking about this for a long time as well -- "Chilling Effects" turns 20 this year! At the risk of being a bit unkind it seems like it's mostly just conservatives who were "living under a rock" until now, and now suddenly have loads of opinions on it.

[TedDoesntTalk]

I don’t think he was talking about search results. Rather other Google products like Drive. People used to share Hollywood films on Drive, for example.

[michaelpb]

Huh, I never have tried this, but I'm pretty sure sharing hollywood films on drive has always violated their Terms of Service, although I could see them not being great at enforcement all the time.

If Drive was that permissive, then upload sites that tended to "look the other way", like Rapidshare, MegaUpload, etc, would never have existed.

[TedDoesntTalk]

MegaUpload and friends predated Google Drive as I recall.

It may have always been against their terms of service, but that didn’t stop it from happening in the beginning.

Source: first-hand experience

Edit: I checked dates. Google Drive started 2012. MegaUpload started 2005.