[_heimdall]

> Should Youtube be obligated to host hardcore porn or gory violence?

YouTube can decide to host, or not host, whatever it wants. The challenge is with unclear terms of use. They have a habit of taking down videos with little or no reason given, and it isn't clear what terms the video content would have violated.

Of course they can draw their own lines, but they should be clear and consistent.

[slg]

>but they should be clear and consistent.

As Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said in Jacobellis v. Ohio [1], "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."

I'm not sure how we can expect "clear and consistent" rulings from Youtube when even our law can be vague and inconsistent.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

[_heimdall]

In my opinion that's a better argument against the usefulness of a supreme court than it is a justification for allowing leeway in censorship.

The justice is claiming that said illegal content cannot be described or identified in law, that it must be up to a judge to make that call. Such a system is insane to those being ruled by it - we can't know if we are breaking the law, but at any time a judge could decide of their own accord that we are.

We must live under a system of laws that can be comprehensible enough for a reasonable person to be able to tell when they cross the line and are likely breaking the law.

[mrguyorama]

The first amendment gives them the right to literally be capricious and malevolent in their hosting choices.

Your right is that, if you don't like it, you cannot be forced to use it.

And that is true. Nebula exists because all those people were getting fucked by Google's capricious actions. Armchair historian made his own platform because Google wont pay you ad dollars if you show actual historical war footage, because god forbid you learn history.

Youtube is not a platform where anyone can say anything. There's no such thing as a "digital town square" that is owned by a private company. Even real, actual, public squares have some limits on speech nowadays.

If you want some sort of digital public square where anyone could host literally any video content, it will be funded by taxes and run by the government.

I would however hold strong support for reforms that limit the shenanigans and nonsense in Terms of Use. You shouldn't be able to put utterly unenforceable or even illegal things into a Terms of Use without penalty. Contract law has a principle of separability that means Google can put literally as many scary, illegal, unenforceable claims into it's contracts and a court would still enforce it, just without those specific parts. That gives Google a huge incentive to put even impossible things into their ToU hoping you will buy that they could enforce it, even when they know they cannot.

I also think it should not be possible to make a contract that says "we can update this at any time and change everything about it without your consent" just entirely. All contract revisions should require mutual consent.

IIUC, ToU have also just not been tested in court very well. So we should stop beating around the bush and just make a real legal framework for them.