Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right. Fuck the censors.
Edit: this pithy response doesn’t reflect my full understanding of the related nuances here, though it does sum up my feelings on this particular example. See below for further discussion.
I’m not talking about the US constitution here. I’m saying it is a fundamental human right regardless of the law. What clothing to wear (or not) is part of that freedom.
Private companies should also not restrict fundamental freedoms. I’m aware they’re allowed to currently.
The content creators freedom to express directly opposes the hosts freedom of affiliation. Not that I want to defend either company but they do have the right to say what is and is not allowed in their spaces using the same idea of “fundamental human rights”.
It is either that or we have to agree that “fundamental human rights” cannot exist because one groups rights can override the other on social whim.
Every other creator on the planet has to abide by these rules if they want to remain on these platforms and every creator has an option not to use them.
When does a platform cross the line between “group of people making money hosting other peoples content” to “fake corporate ‘people’”? Does everyone working in any corporation automatically lose their rights?
When it incorporates, obviously. That’s what incorporation is! You’re trading the rights you get as a full-liability general partnership for the privileges of limited liability and separated tax treatment.
It is the epitome of entitlement to demand those privileges without giving society anything back in return.
The EU protects the free speech rights of users from abuse from platforms, and US conservatives have argued that platforms should have similar regulations.
Is there a reason that you glossed over my main point being that one groups right to free expression is imposing on the other groups right to freely associate?
As I said above, either everyone has their rights respected at all times or there is no such thing as fundamental human rights. Just because you do not like the group exercising their rights doesn’t mean they do not have them.
The content creators are free to express themselves on a platform that allows the content, and the hosts are free to decide what they allow. Nothing is stopping any one of these people from self hosting a website and posting whatever they want.
In the EU, that is not the case. If Facebook decided that people are allowed to talk about Macron, but not about LePen, it would violate users’ right to protected political speech. And any moderation decisions decided by that policy could be challenged by regulators.
Providing a social media platform is a business in the EU, it is not protected speech. Platforms have a lot of leeway to moderate communities, but they are not allowed to infringe on human rights in their moderation.
Here is the Council of Europe’s opinion on it:
Your Internet service provider and your provider of online content and services have corporate responsibilities to respect your human rights and provide mechanisms to respond to your claims. You should be aware, however, that online service providers, such as social networks, may restrict certain types of content and behaviour due to their content policies. You should be informed of possible restrictions so that you are able to take an informed decision as to whether to use the service or not. This includes specific information on what the online service provider considers as illegal or inappropriate content and behaviour when using the service and how it is dealt with by the provider.
Here is the EU’s moderation database that they use to regulate online moderation, they have recorded over 11 billion moderation decisions made in the EU in the last 6 months.
The topic is “Indigenous Brazilian Content creators” not being allowed to post non sexual nudity on American owned platforms. It is not what the EU is doing with human rights.
Do try to keep up. This is the second time you have used my comment to soap box off topic non sense, and the second time I am calling you out for it.
Bull fucking shit. Your argument was that corporate “rights” trump human rights, and I went and showed you that other cultures disagree with you on that. Stop turning everything into a debate.
The issue is that when companies are able to get large enough to control the virtual town square, them censoring people has the same impact as the government censoring people. And especially given the fact that they’re all companies held by literally millions of people, who don’t get input into the speech allowed on the platform, allowing them the “freedom” to restrict speech how they see fit doesn’t make sense.
You don’t have the option to not use major platforms and have your voice heard, because they’ve done the work to make it virtually impossible.
Every consumer has input in to what a company does by simply choosing to support the company or not. Companies tend to move really quick to fix shit when they see profit margins start to dip.
No one is being forced to use either platform, and it is the platforms choice who they allow to use it. Don’t like their rules, go else where.
Kind of like Lemmy instances. Don’t like the rules, go somewhere you can agree with them.
Unless they want it to be possible that people see their content.
Let’s assume that if you share a YouTube video, you get a 1% click through to people watching the video. If you share the same video the same way, but hosted on your own platform, it will drop to .0001%. It’s not viable. People will watch YouTube. They won’t watch on random other platforms.
I will just go and do a quick search to find plenty of alternative hosting platforms and choose to use one of them to immediately distribute video content and nullify your only point.
Youtube only maintains a monopoly if people choose to use the platform. Alternatives exist. Self hosting exists. Doing something more productive than posting “content” online exists. Lets not forget about the film industry.
Having a website people can theoretically watch your video on isn’t distribution.
People watching your video is distribution.
There’s nowhere but YouTube where you can host video and have actual meaningful viewership be a possibility. YouTube has an absolute, complete dominance of the video space.
Frankly, I was mostly mouthing off here, not trying to voice deep moral reasoning but I appreciate your thoughtful reply. I’m actually not sure that fundamental human rights do exist—at least not in all circumstances. As you point out, they sometimes conflict and we need to adjudicate whose rights are more fundamental in a given situation.
You have a good point and I generally agree that there does exist a tension here. I think where it breaks down is when a platform becomes so large and dominant that there isn’t really any significant alternative. I think morally, this shifts my reasoning away from just a collection of individuals deciding what they want on their platform towards an almost state-like entity. And with that power dynamic I am much more skeptical of their unilateral authority to control what is or isn’t posted on their platform. Given the size and structure of YouTube, it makes more sense to think of it as space that belongs to and should be managed by the community and with respect for individual rights of expression. And I feel strongly that non-sexual nudity is not only not harmful, but that it is very harmful to repress, as we see in this specific example.
I don’t think freedoms are opposed here. Creators have the freedom to express themselves that freedom just doesn’t force anyone to give them a platform. They can use their own or another one that’s willing to host their content, which there are many, and then if they, creators or platform, are legally punished it would be a violation of their freedom of expression.
I reject the premise that YouTube belongs to the executives or shareholders at Alphabet. It is a community platform at this point, and its management should reflect that.
If Alphabet happened to own an entire city I would also oppose their right to restrict expression there. Once a space, physical or digital, comes to be used in certain ways, it should no longer anyone’s personal property.
You are just rejecting reality then. You’ve said YouTube or other big social media to be the ‘virtual town squares’ but they are not, they are virtual malls. Also real life town squares can have rules imposed by the town council too.
They have plenty of other places to go with their content, some platforms aren’t for them and that’s ok. But they don’t want to express themselves shouting from a soapbox in the town square, they want to sell their content in the mall and these particular malls just don’t sell that kind of product.
I guess I need to say this again: I’m talking about the way things should work, not how they do currently. Sure, it’s totally legal for private companies to ban any content they want to. And in some societies, the king can legally murder people. The legality of those situations is not synonymous with their morality.
If you are arguing that legally, YouTube is permitted to remove this content, you’ve misunderstood what this thread is about. If you’re arguing they should be allowed to do this, then please focus your statements on that topic.
By the way, I think private malls are also pretty questionable. Community space should be managed by the community, and it should be managed with respect for individual freedoms. But this is not really a comparable situation unless there was a mall that hosted a huge proportion of the products being sold. Exclusion from this mall, even if there are minor alternatives, is not just a matter of personal preference. It’s harmful to be excluded if that’s where everyone is.
As far as rules in town squares: of course. But these rules are typically determined democratically and are limited so as to respect human freedom. That’s what I’m asking for in this case as well. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be rules at all.
I think a big part of it is trauma from trump and his enablers. Honestly, a few years ago my sentiments might have been more similar to the people criticizing me but more thought made me realize how dangerous it is to leave this power in a small number of unaccountable people.
Won’t one party always have restricted freedom of expression in this situation? The private company wants to express themselves freely by curating the content on their social media platform. The individuals wants to express themselves by posting material of themselves with less clothes than the company wants. These both seem to me as entities wanting to express themselves freely. Which freedom are you most willing to limit?
And if you argue that the freedom of an individual should be valued more than the freedom of a private company, should individual people owning websites have their freedom of curation/expression limited?
I think these mega-platforms are way too different from an individual’s website to make that equivalence. The dominant social media companies are, as Elon Musk eloquently put it before shitting all over his own moral principles, more akin to a town square than a back yard. The fact that they are privately owned is a corruption resulting from our authoritarian legal structure—it doesn’t make them morally equivalent to a website I use and produce by myself.
YouTube is a place that tolerates almost any viewpoint or type of content. No one thinks that they actively support or endorse this content. In fact, US law explicitly exempts them from being responsible for it. If that’s the case, why should we grant them the authority to decide what should or shouldn’t be posted there?
Now, there is certainly content, in contrast to non-sexual nudity, that does direct harm, and I support the removal of such content. But either way, I don’t think YouTube deserves the unilateral authority to decide what that looks like. I’d much rather see it managed communally and democratically.
Participation in any community demands some level of censorship or else there would literally be CP on youtube. The problem is that the decision making behind the administration of censorship should be better democratized instead of being decided by advertiser’s attempting to divine the median consumer’s level of tolerance.
I agree, I was overly broad with this comment. But I think that even community management needs to be constrained from interfering with human expression when there is no harm being done. And non-sexual nudity is clearly not harmful.
Well said. It’s impossible to be a free speech absolutist without condoning some pretty heinous forms of human expression. But you’re right that the proper ethical yardstick is whether any meaningful human expression causes demonstrable harm.
Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right. Fuck the censors.
Edit: this pithy response doesn’t reflect my full understanding of the related nuances here, though it does sum up my feelings on this particular example. See below for further discussion.
Again remember that freedom of expression is freedom to not be punished by the government for that expression.
Private companies are not concerned with your freedoms.
Not saying I agree with how things are, just saying how it is. Only way to tell a private company to fuck off is to not use them.
I’m not talking about the US constitution here. I’m saying it is a fundamental human right regardless of the law. What clothing to wear (or not) is part of that freedom.
Private companies should also not restrict fundamental freedoms. I’m aware they’re allowed to currently.
The content creators freedom to express directly opposes the hosts freedom of affiliation. Not that I want to defend either company but they do have the right to say what is and is not allowed in their spaces using the same idea of “fundamental human rights”.
It is either that or we have to agree that “fundamental human rights” cannot exist because one groups rights can override the other on social whim.
Every other creator on the planet has to abide by these rules if they want to remain on these platforms and every creator has an option not to use them.
Real people’s rights trump fake corporate “people’s” rights every single time.
When does a platform cross the line between “group of people making money hosting other peoples content” to “fake corporate ‘people’”? Does everyone working in any corporation automatically lose their rights?
When it incorporates, obviously. That’s what incorporation is! You’re trading the rights you get as a full-liability general partnership for the privileges of limited liability and separated tax treatment.
It is the epitome of entitlement to demand those privileges without giving society anything back in return.
I asked two questions.
The EU protects the free speech rights of users from abuse from platforms, and US conservatives have argued that platforms should have similar regulations.
https://www.coe.int/en/web/freedom-expression/freedom-of-expression-and-information
While what you’re describing is the current legal reality in the US, This argument very much isn’t settled.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22356339/free-speech-facebook-twitter-big-tech-first-amendment
Is there a reason that you glossed over my main point being that one groups right to free expression is imposing on the other groups right to freely associate?
As I said above, either everyone has their rights respected at all times or there is no such thing as fundamental human rights. Just because you do not like the group exercising their rights doesn’t mean they do not have them.
The content creators are free to express themselves on a platform that allows the content, and the hosts are free to decide what they allow. Nothing is stopping any one of these people from self hosting a website and posting whatever they want.
In the EU, that is not the case. If Facebook decided that people are allowed to talk about Macron, but not about LePen, it would violate users’ right to protected political speech. And any moderation decisions decided by that policy could be challenged by regulators.
Providing a social media platform is a business in the EU, it is not protected speech. Platforms have a lot of leeway to moderate communities, but they are not allowed to infringe on human rights in their moderation.
Here is the Council of Europe’s opinion on it:
Here is the EU’s moderation database that they use to regulate online moderation, they have recorded over 11 billion moderation decisions made in the EU in the last 6 months.
https://transparency.dsa.ec.europa.eu/
The topic is “Indigenous Brazilian Content creators” not being allowed to post non sexual nudity on American owned platforms. It is not what the EU is doing with human rights.
Do try to keep up. This is the second time you have used my comment to soap box off topic non sense, and the second time I am calling you out for it.
Bull fucking shit. Your argument was that corporate “rights” trump human rights, and I went and showed you that other cultures disagree with you on that. Stop turning everything into a debate.
deleted by creator
The issue is that when companies are able to get large enough to control the virtual town square, them censoring people has the same impact as the government censoring people. And especially given the fact that they’re all companies held by literally millions of people, who don’t get input into the speech allowed on the platform, allowing them the “freedom” to restrict speech how they see fit doesn’t make sense.
You don’t have the option to not use major platforms and have your voice heard, because they’ve done the work to make it virtually impossible.
Every consumer has input in to what a company does by simply choosing to support the company or not. Companies tend to move really quick to fix shit when they see profit margins start to dip.
No one is being forced to use either platform, and it is the platforms choice who they allow to use it. Don’t like their rules, go else where.
Kind of like Lemmy instances. Don’t like the rules, go somewhere you can agree with them.
Your choices are “follow YouTube’s rules” or “don’t distribute video content”.
YouTube has a monopoly.
There’s like [checks notes] 2 more video platforms on the internet!
No reason these people can’t post on those, or host their own.
Unless they want it to be possible that people see their content.
Let’s assume that if you share a YouTube video, you get a 1% click through to people watching the video. If you share the same video the same way, but hosted on your own platform, it will drop to .0001%. It’s not viable. People will watch YouTube. They won’t watch on random other platforms.
Compelling argument.
I will just go and do a quick search to find plenty of alternative hosting platforms and choose to use one of them to immediately distribute video content and nullify your only point.
Youtube only maintains a monopoly if people choose to use the platform. Alternatives exist. Self hosting exists. Doing something more productive than posting “content” online exists. Lets not forget about the film industry.
Having a website people can theoretically watch your video on isn’t distribution.
People watching your video is distribution.
There’s nowhere but YouTube where you can host video and have actual meaningful viewership be a possibility. YouTube has an absolute, complete dominance of the video space.
Frankly, I was mostly mouthing off here, not trying to voice deep moral reasoning but I appreciate your thoughtful reply. I’m actually not sure that fundamental human rights do exist—at least not in all circumstances. As you point out, they sometimes conflict and we need to adjudicate whose rights are more fundamental in a given situation.
You have a good point and I generally agree that there does exist a tension here. I think where it breaks down is when a platform becomes so large and dominant that there isn’t really any significant alternative. I think morally, this shifts my reasoning away from just a collection of individuals deciding what they want on their platform towards an almost state-like entity. And with that power dynamic I am much more skeptical of their unilateral authority to control what is or isn’t posted on their platform. Given the size and structure of YouTube, it makes more sense to think of it as space that belongs to and should be managed by the community and with respect for individual rights of expression. And I feel strongly that non-sexual nudity is not only not harmful, but that it is very harmful to repress, as we see in this specific example.
I don’t think freedoms are opposed here. Creators have the freedom to express themselves that freedom just doesn’t force anyone to give them a platform. They can use their own or another one that’s willing to host their content, which there are many, and then if they, creators or platform, are legally punished it would be a violation of their freedom of expression.
There is not a fundamental right to use other people’s platform for your expression. That’s not what freedom of expression means.
I reject the premise that YouTube belongs to the executives or shareholders at Alphabet. It is a community platform at this point, and its management should reflect that.
If Alphabet happened to own an entire city I would also oppose their right to restrict expression there. Once a space, physical or digital, comes to be used in certain ways, it should no longer anyone’s personal property.
You are just rejecting reality then. You’ve said YouTube or other big social media to be the ‘virtual town squares’ but they are not, they are virtual malls. Also real life town squares can have rules imposed by the town council too.
They have plenty of other places to go with their content, some platforms aren’t for them and that’s ok. But they don’t want to express themselves shouting from a soapbox in the town square, they want to sell their content in the mall and these particular malls just don’t sell that kind of product.
I guess I need to say this again: I’m talking about the way things should work, not how they do currently. Sure, it’s totally legal for private companies to ban any content they want to. And in some societies, the king can legally murder people. The legality of those situations is not synonymous with their morality.
If you are arguing that legally, YouTube is permitted to remove this content, you’ve misunderstood what this thread is about. If you’re arguing they should be allowed to do this, then please focus your statements on that topic.
By the way, I think private malls are also pretty questionable. Community space should be managed by the community, and it should be managed with respect for individual freedoms. But this is not really a comparable situation unless there was a mall that hosted a huge proportion of the products being sold. Exclusion from this mall, even if there are minor alternatives, is not just a matter of personal preference. It’s harmful to be excluded if that’s where everyone is.
As far as rules in town squares: of course. But these rules are typically determined democratically and are limited so as to respect human freedom. That’s what I’m asking for in this case as well. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be rules at all.
I know what you meant and I agree.
For some reason Americans only understand something and can have an opinion it if it is written in their constitution.
I think a big part of it is trauma from trump and his enablers. Honestly, a few years ago my sentiments might have been more similar to the people criticizing me but more thought made me realize how dangerous it is to leave this power in a small number of unaccountable people.
Won’t one party always have restricted freedom of expression in this situation? The private company wants to express themselves freely by curating the content on their social media platform. The individuals wants to express themselves by posting material of themselves with less clothes than the company wants. These both seem to me as entities wanting to express themselves freely. Which freedom are you most willing to limit?
And if you argue that the freedom of an individual should be valued more than the freedom of a private company, should individual people owning websites have their freedom of curation/expression limited?
I think these mega-platforms are way too different from an individual’s website to make that equivalence. The dominant social media companies are, as Elon Musk eloquently put it before shitting all over his own moral principles, more akin to a town square than a back yard. The fact that they are privately owned is a corruption resulting from our authoritarian legal structure—it doesn’t make them morally equivalent to a website I use and produce by myself.
YouTube is a place that tolerates almost any viewpoint or type of content. No one thinks that they actively support or endorse this content. In fact, US law explicitly exempts them from being responsible for it. If that’s the case, why should we grant them the authority to decide what should or shouldn’t be posted there?
Now, there is certainly content, in contrast to non-sexual nudity, that does direct harm, and I support the removal of such content. But either way, I don’t think YouTube deserves the unilateral authority to decide what that looks like. I’d much rather see it managed communally and democratically.
Participation in any community demands some level of censorship or else there would literally be CP on youtube. The problem is that the decision making behind the administration of censorship should be better democratized instead of being decided by advertiser’s attempting to divine the median consumer’s level of tolerance.
I agree, I was overly broad with this comment. But I think that even community management needs to be constrained from interfering with human expression when there is no harm being done. And non-sexual nudity is clearly not harmful.
Well said. It’s impossible to be a free speech absolutist without condoning some pretty heinous forms of human expression. But you’re right that the proper ethical yardstick is whether any meaningful human expression causes demonstrable harm.
Non-sexual nudity is definitely not harmful.