It's like way back when, when the firefighters were private organizations. Organizations that could choose to just not put out fires if they so wanted to. It was a bad state of affairs.
@@wolfetteplays8894 I fancy myself a libertarian too, but there are so many anarcho-capitalist / neo-feudalist wacko gatekeepers out there saying I’m not a real libertarian that I finally just said “fine, I’ll be a liberal.”
That is literally misinformation (depending on which millenia you're talking about). If you're talking about Victorian era firefighters, Tom Scott did a whole thing about how that is actually wrong and no, firefighters did try to put out every fire (because you know, fire _spreads_ ). Now, in contemporary America, private firefighters do refuse to fight fires if they are not paid. It's called no-pay no-spray. For once in our lives, somehow we are worse than the literal Victorian era.
*Video Summary:* Hank remains calm as he slowly realizes the scope of a complex social problem. Meanwhile, Hank's hair slowly freaks the eff out as it hears Hank talk himself deeper down the rabbit hole.
i dont think having a public website would solve this. In the same way companies push ads, government would push politics and a public website could be used as a propaganda platform. I think a better solution would be regulating the internet so everyone has some level of access to download and upload anything they want.
A serious discussion with a Soft™️ vibe- 10/10. Best served before bed with lots of cozy blankets, casual like. Couch time with Hank is my new favorite time.
Pausing this video to strongly caution against looking up Alex Jones. Your life is better right now before knowing about him and his firey liarpants. DFTBA, my friends!
why, why can't you trust people to stay up against bad ideas? If they are truly bad ideas, especially with hanks giving a negative opinion of him, they will not stand up, and the person will go "What a goof".
Andrés Gómez To be completely honest with you, before Trumpytime it may have been hilarious but somehow knowing sooo many people have such a loose grasp on reality frightens me. Sorry, I don't mean to kill the fun! Party on, Wayne!
Xuramaz I almost fell for it when I was in high school. Sometimes without context it can be frightenly compelling. For me, I was always suspicious of 'corporate America' and 'The Government' and in those areas, AJ provides lots of rabbit holes to go down and dots to connect for a primed mind.
So, I'd agree with you that both trump and damned alex jones are goofs, but be careful of being so confident in your ideas to think they they are truly _the_ good ideas.
Nice to see that Hank took the ideas in this video and inserted them into A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor. A lot of talk about how we live on the platforms on which we communicate, and yet those platforms exist within a capitalistic system instead of a governmental (and more closely regulated) system. I find this stuff super interesting. Hank, thanks for introducing these ideas to me in a new and interesting light. PS: Holy shit ABFE is so good everyone please read it now
Don't care much tbh, I don't make a habit of learning from the quotes of men who are directly responsible for the deaths of over a million innocent civilians.
@@ellw7830 The funny part being I'm pretty sure Hank wouldn't agree. Capitalism is a good system in many ways, we just need people to actually do their jobs and regulate things. (And a bunch of other things that I'm not going to write a boring essay about in a youtube comment.) but I've watched Hank talk about how he runs his 10,000 businesses while not being a dick to his employees yet still being an efficient business and his thoughts on capitalism and it's very interesting. Of course the real answer is Who freaking knows? I'm neither an economist nor a legal scholar and I do not study anything related to the issue lol.
I wonder if the top tier creators on YT will eventually unionize. You bring up a really important question about how to have a influence and rights in a Corporate Autocracy.
Internet creators guild isn't a union, it's specifically not a union and Hank Green was part of the decision against making it a democratic body. It's run by a board of unelected directors.
I'd never heard of the Internet Creators Guild. I'd love to see more about it from those involved. It's really interesting to watch how this social media stuff is playing out shifting the power balance.
Kartoffel Pommes A channel on RU-vid called JoergSprave, or knows as The Slingshot Channel, started form of Union called "The RU-vidrs Union". Have a look at that
Socialists have been making this case for decades: corporations will become a sort of parallel government. There's a solution to this issue, and it's been around since February 21, 1848.
@Kurt Barryman yes, i too beleive that workers having more control of their workplace inevitably leads to genocide. That doesn't sound like propoganda at all! Don't get me wrong, im not a tankie and of course don't condone or endorse the militarization of the state on its own citizens. But you dont have to commit genocide to allow more worker control of their workplace ya feel?
@Kurt Barryman so many reasons not the least of which is that i dont have that kind of money...? Do you have that kind of money? But that aside, you know co-op workplaces exist right? Also unions have been around forever. Also theres nothing inherently wrong with giving workers more control over the place they'll spend most of the rest of their life i feel like i haven't made that point clear somehow
@Kurt Barryman you're right, only the wealthy should decide how we live our lives because since they're just so much better than us common workers. If someone doesn't have enough money to start a business, they're clearly unqualified to know what will make their life better. Airtight logic there 👌
Almost all corporations are autocracies (ask their employees). This is why unions were invented, for collective bargaining. So you would need a RU-vid worker co-op, and then maybe a RU-vid viewer co-op. You could do it theoretically with a blockchain system that incorporates voting. However the most realistic option is probably regulation.
as a business owner on etsy and amazon I can say the issue is universal. etsy regulates my income so it is the same for the last 365 days and they present themselves as a free market. I think how much manipulation is currently happening is yet to be disclosed and the next 4-5 years are going to be full of scandals as both political and economic manipulation of most digital platforms come to light.
*_Congress shall make no law_* respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. That is the first amendment. Many people in the comment section don't seem to actually understand what it says. So I put it here.
Peter Rabitt this, 1000 times this. Freedom of speech is an open mic night, you can technically say what you want, but everyone else has the right to boo you off the stage.
Sigh, this is exactly why I posted the 1st amendment here. Freedom of speech, as discussed in the Constitution, has nothing to do with you. The 1st amendment only restricts what the _government_ can do. *_Congress shall make no law..._* While you are not wrong in that the government cant tell you what to say or not to say at an open mic night. It is completely irrelevant to the 1st amendment. Our rights are imbued by our creators (whomever you believe that to be, I choose to worship Britney Spears), they are not given to us by the government. The constitution is a document that forces the government to respect these rights. Which is why the entire Constitution is a document that says what the government can and cant do, and doesn't say a thing about what we can and cant do.
Claiming that free speech does not apply outside of its legal space implies that fundamental human rights do not apply in certain situations. This is clearly insane, nobody is saying that. First amendment merely enshrines a thing which is already omnipresent.
I feel that Tom Scott would be the person to have a conversation with about this. My thoughts: But WHICH government? Why should it be American? If they were to take away all their business headquarters and move them elsewhere, and the laws there say they don't have to, what then? And if they stay, who's to say that they don't also have to follow the laws of Iceland as well? And then what happens when those laws conflict? Ted Cruz isn't thinking that deeply about this. He absolutely doesn't understand the internet on a level necessary to even begin thinking about legislation or judicial action that fundamentally changes it.
I've been thinking about this from an international standpoint for awhile now. No country can claim the internet as a whole. Yet, if people in the U.K. use my websites, I have to comply with some laws. That's weird to me. I could block traffic from the UK and not worry about it, but it seems more like a person from the UK walked into my business, so why is it incumbent upon _me_ to follow UK laws? (Not that I mind those laws per se, just as a practical question.) This seems like the same sort of thing. How long until we just assign "the internet" as being its own country? Because if all these countries are going to enforce laws on the internet, it will be impossible for the internet to exist otherwise.
Smoothbluehero The internet is international, we can still access stuff from other countries. A company should follow the laws of the country in which it operating, and consumers have particular rights in each country. This makes national laws tricky, since the jurisdiction of the producer, platform and consumer could all be different. China can do (I guess) because they don't have freedom of speech
*Smoothbluehero* But that's not the way it works right now. These giant companies censor lots of stuff depending on what country you're from. They also have to obey other laws, like privacy rights, in each place where users live. The companies have the choice of blocking users from their site by region, but that's missing out on a lot of advertising. They need those eyeballs. But the lengths they have to go to are ridiculous already. The laws are too many, and they keep piling on. I really think the only way we solve this is to declare the internet its own country. We can decide on some kind of constitution, and crimes online would be pursued by law enforcement in the user's place of origin. It would be amazing to see the whole world come together to make this happen.
4 years later and this has gotten only more salient. I'd say it is a kind of market failure because there's such a high barrier of entry to hosting a video-sharing site (initial costs and operating costs are both very high, and you'd need to have existing relationships with advertisers - in fact youtube wasn't profitable in its first few years) that youtube is basically the only option. So to me there is a strong case to be made for regulation, whether that's antitrust measures or treating youtube as a public utility.
Life in 2018: a rambling youtube video is the most well-considered, nuanced media content I've come across all week. Thanks for the thoughtfulness, Hank.
It would be a tough case to make for free speech before we were thrown into a global pandemic and social media was pretty much the only way to reach people. I would be very interested in learning Hanks thoughts on how Twitter and the other socials dealt with Trump after the insurrection...
3 months late, but this is basically what you're looking for considering he talked about the subject in broad strokes on vlogbrothers: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-rj0VLfljf2k.html
Hi, Hank! I am a Sociology student in Brazil. Watching your video I remembered of some classes about Antonio Gramsci's amplified state theory, have your heard about it? Gramsci separated the state in two categories: The political society, which is basically the formal structure of state, including it's fisical buildings, it's representatives in legal and institutional instances, and it's repression system; And in the other hand we have the superstructure or civil society, which is comprised of political parties, syndicates, religions, private schools and the media. Seeing the power that those places that birth ideas have, made him create a category called "hegemonic private apparatus". Those places would end up forming an invisible power beyond the regular notion of state, and they are used by a dominant class to exert their beliefs and have a cultural hegemony over the society. Gramsci called it an amplified concept of state because those hegemonic private apparatus (like newspapers, youtube, twitter or television) influences the ideas of the people who vote and shape the state, and if we wanna shape world to a better place, it is occupying those places that will make it viable. I think that if you are interested in the subject it is worth a read. It is fascinating what he writes, even more if you consider that most of his work were written as he was a political prisoner in fascist Italy.
These spaces, RU-vid/Facebook/Twitter/Etc, have become, in practice, the new public spaces. They are the practical equivalents of the local pub, Speaker's Corner, the local lodge, and other places in which people have traditionally exercised their 1st Amendment rights. The practical realities have diverged from the legalities in this regard. Where legally these "spaces" are not actually spaces at all, but are corporate entities, and the "citizens" of these spaces are not actually citizens at all, but are customers who sign contracts with the controlling corporations in order to access these "spaces." And these contracts are (intentionally?) so complex, dense, and verbose, that we, as customers, essentially tune them out. We click "accept terms & conditions" without even bothering to read these terms & conditions at all. It's so obtuse to us that in our minds it isn't a contract, it's just a button we have to push to gain access. It's like pressing "start" on the microwave to cook food. It's meaningless beyond the immediate accessing function. The very terminology we use in reference to these technological platforms provides concrete evidence that this is true. We call them spaces, communities, friend groups, meet-ups, and social groups. And we call ourselves members, citizens, and friends. And when we access an online space we call it joining. These aren't terms of customer/corporate relationships. These are terms of personal relationships. We don't access a page, we go to a group. We don't purchase a communication unit, we send our friend a Facebook message. This functional fact combines with the scale of these platforms to create a valid argument for extension of constitutional protections to these spaces. Facebook, for instance, currently claims 2.23 Billion monthly active users. That's about 1/3 of the entire population of humans on this planet. That's nearly 7 times the population of the entire United States. That's 1 3/5 the population of China. More than 1 and a half times the size of the biggest country on the planet. The Washington Post reported in 2015 that teens were spending approximately 9 hours every day interacting on social media. That's nearly 40% of their time, including sleep time. If you don't count sleep time, when we aren't socializing anyway, that's 56% of their time spent in social media space. In light of this, it is difficult to comprehend any functional argument against considering social media as public space. Additionally, these companies operate much like brick and mortar companies, only their store spaces are virtual spaces. In the physical world (in the US at least), a restaurant owner can't kick a customer out for being a woman, or black, or gay, or a man, or white, or straight. A big box store can't refuse service to someone because they are a Catholic, or an atheist, or a Mormon. An auto service station can't refuse to change someone's oil based on the fact that the customer is a bigot, or a racist, or a social justice warrior. A day spa can't refuse service to someone because they are in a wheel chair, or are blind, or have scars from severe burns, or have blonde hair. When we choose to operate in an economic system, to open a business and attempt to benefit from participation in that system, we accept the rules of fairness that system requires. If we view social media companies in a similar way, with their virtual spaces being functionally equivalent to a brick and mortar store space (and I believe we do pragmatically view them as such), then the same rules should apply to those spaces. People should not be denied access to these spaces based on moral code preferences, or on physical differences, or other arbitrary subjective discriminative rules. This is, I believe, why people at an instinctual level are offended when RU-vid bans a channel, or demonetizes it, or when Twitter bans a user, or when Facebook tweaks its algorithms to shadow ban certain posts or certain pages, suppressing certain voices in opaque ways (And it is telling that even the most ardent defenders of business rights, hard right-wing or libertarian partisans, are even offended by these corporate actions). Because we don't feel as though we are customers, but rather that we are citizens, and as such we instinctively feel that we should have rights. And, in my opinion, we should. These arguments are sufficient for me. Social Media should be treated similarly to the Net Neutrality framework, as access providers, not as content overseers. They only provide a space for We The People to produce and display our content, with no control over what content we produce and display. And we, as individual citizens, should be held personally responsible for the content we produce in that space in the same manner in which we are personally responsible in the physical world.
Agreed. However, a person who screams "fire!" falsely in a crowded space is at very least removed from that space, and one who habitually lies about others to provoke their injury or murder is at least denied a soapbox. Drawing that line can be difficult, but AJ makes it easy.
With the nets history it's hard to imagine such a result... It was sort of inevitable to end up where we are with the policies and what turns were taken. Hopefully we avoid a full on dystopian future but a significant push would have to be made... and that would require people who both understand this "new" space and want such change.
Yes, it is too late. We are in corporate spaces. In my area, my landlord is married to the prominate realtor of our area (if you'd like to see, our landlord is Jackie Capel and our land owner and prominent realtor in our surrounding counties is Barry Capel, her Husband) so they have no competition. It's impossible in my area to rent cheaper because of this. And they refuse to renew rent lease contracts, so we can be kicked out whenever they want.
WELL THEN FACEBOOK SHOULD BE FORCED TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE THINGS POSTED TO THEIR SITE, LIKE A PUBLISHER WOULD. But of course, they won’t because they would almost immediately go bankrupt from copyright law suits.
But doesn't a publisher decide what to publish? It is curated content. Facebook cannot choose what someone else writes using their platform. Content cannot be curated at live speed.
@@julesnatural I'm sorry, but I can't agree with the 'curator' excuse. While it doesn't have a great business analog, it does have a fairly direct cultural analog: art museum curator. Wouldn't a museum curator be arrested for hosting an exhibit of child porn?
@@julesnatural It sounds pretty convenient that Facebook "can't" screen its content effectively, and still keep its current business model of irresponsibility, clothed in free expression.
Christ. It’s ridiculous to read over and check every single thing uploaded to RU-vid, there’s not enough staff in the world. If they had to, it would cost more money than google’s worth, and they would shut down. Edit: or Facebook for the same reason, especially since text can have not-so-obvious meanings to someone who has been looking at a screen and redacting or approving things for 8 hours straight.
John Doe “Rational moderates?” What use are they? Feudalists were “rational moderates” in feudal times. Slavers were “rational moderates” in slave societies. Colonialists were “rational moderates” in colonial times. Hell, Nazis were “rational moderates” in Nazi Germany. It’s never been the “rational moderates” who opposed the horrors of an appalling status quo; it’s always been the “irrational radicals” which have evaluated the status quo, realized how unjust it all was, worked to bring it to an end, and pushed society forward, oftentimes against the active opposition of that society’s “rational moderates.”
You should find someone to detail how company towns worked. Coal company owned the town, owned the store, paid in company script, rented homes to company workers. It would be interested to see if any of that applies to this.
A lot of this is insightful, but I think there's also a coldly political angle where no one is having deep thoughts about digital cultural spaces and the implications of corporate control. Ted Cruz would never, EVER, speak up like this for say, Hank's channel. He is crying "First Amendment" to meet his own political ends, and I truly don't think he's looking at it from any deeper level. He is using a buzz word that plays on his constituent's feeling that they're being cut out from the broader culture and using that to arouse animosity towards RU-vid and support for himself. I can almost guarantee that if the tables were turned and RU-vid was leaning conservative, you wouldn't hear even a chirp from Cruz. This isn't to say that Hank's thoughts aren't super important or very real!!! Just another angle I thought was important to point out.
I think decentralized, mesh network based internet infastructures will need to be implemented in order for us to take back our online freedoms from not only the ISP monopolies, but these independent websites. When we truly own what we put out in the web, we take back the power.
M O O D M O O D Yes, this is why email is unbreakable. Social media should have followed the same distributed, open infrastructure but Facebook dominated the market early and all the OpenSocial stuff failed.
I'm really happy that you've come to this conclusion, Hank. I hope you continue to think about this, and discover some interesting things! I'm searching for ways to shift the structure of power in a more equitable direction, and I have some hunches, but I think that this issue could really use your energy and your ingenuity!
As a related note: I think we need to understand that our nation is not a Republic anymore and is a corporatocracy basically. They are the ones that control our politicians... even the ones that basically pick them. It's sickening.
money is not speech... people that agree with the Supreme Court over that seem to fail to realize how the Supreme Court has been corrupted by corporate interests. Learn about Lewis Powell Jr.
Excuse the use of third person here, but I don't think he can realistically read all of the comments. His last sentence in the video, "I hadn't thought of it that way," captures just why I enjoy listening to him: it's his ability to go around his own opinion and consider it from the other side. Not many people can humor the hypothetical without becoming agitated. But I think we (can) improve that ability with age. When I was younger and more idealistic, there were some ideas, like "democracy" and "freedom," that just seemed so profoundly 'good' to me that they seemed beyond any scrutiny, revision, or compromise. In university, I first read Hobbes' _Leviathan_ already under the assumption that a monarchy was just some foolish abuse of consolidated power that was without merit; perhaps it was the result of some combination of an antiquated political/economic system and an ignorant populace. It had no legitimacy. And then slowly, over years, I've come to understand the arguments Hobbes was making; I am beginning to understand _why_ we can't have a democracy without having a perfectly informed electorate, and why freedom can only extend until it encroaches upon the freedoms of others. It's not comfortable to admit these things. It's never pleasant to give up part of your worldview, even when the evidence is overwhelming that you should. But I think that these feelings of crashing through and violently discovering a new, disappointing insight are simply the growing pains of wisdom. The world is vastly more complex than we can conceptualize. Even the most basic systems of interaction between (the seven billion of) us result in game complexity that's far beyond what we can ever come to internalize. The best we can do is to stop every once in a while, and just admit to ourselves that we hadn't thought of it that way. As long as we are still here, the boat hasn't yet sunk, so things aren't so bad. We can still revise our approach. The problems are just tougher than we had thought- but they always will be! Letting go of our cherished ideals may be the only way forward.
FFs it seems to be gone. Short version is I feel like we should make our own online community so that we can be visitors to these corporate online as opposed to conscripts. It is absolutely essential however in the meantime we actively enhance and cultivate values in these corporate spaces that are important to us. Up until now I believe myself and most others have been passively or not at all cultivating those values. Such a great video Hank. Thanks for uploading quality thoughtful content.
Exactly. This extremely defeatist attitude tells us alot about our current neoliberal, highly individualized culture, where if you can't change anything on your own, you might as well throw in the towel. Collective struggle (which is the only thing that drives significant social change) is almost unthinkable for many people. Interestingly that wasn't always the case. The labour movement was a thing before the cold war, which as soon as the depression hit, organised the workers and forced the government to sign the new deal. During the civil rights movement, collective resistance was the obvious way to go. Over the last 40 years this idea was systematically driven out of peoples heads.
this is the best video thats ever gone up on hankschannel. coming back to it a few months later and listening again, it hits home all over again how much power these strange internet places have. because I do indeed think of myself as a citizen of youtube. Thanks for making us think, Hank. Even if it's a bit terrifying
This fucked me up. It’s not something I’ve worried about and I’m not worried about it now but it’s definitely got me thinking. What messed me up though is that these are places we live, I’ve never thought about it that way and it mainly freaked me out because a lot of these platforms are majorly one sided actions that may affect someone in the future. I don’t know if any of this is coming across the way it is in my head because I’ve been drinking wine in the hot-tub for the past hour but moral of the story is that this video was really good.
Other people would argue that it's not capitalism itself but a specific form of capitalism kinda like how certain people will argue about what is and isn't communism/socialism
@@blakebrady9002 no, but there are different types of cancer and not all of them are terminal, and not all of them are the same speed or kill rate, it is useful to talk about Leukemia vs Lymphoma just like it's useful to say Corporate Autocracy vs Monarchical Oligarchy
While you're at it look up Universal Basic Income and consider how that would support content creators. If you ask how you pay for it, then look into Modern Monetary Theory. If you say that will discourage work, look up David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs. Enjoy! *Finger guns
It sounds like you're describing a form of social contract theory where the the kings are replaced by companies. We give up or agree to share a part of our lives which is where companies derive their power, in an nontraditional way. The movie "The Circle" explores this is a really interesting way where at one point, every citizen is registered to vote through the nation wide social network. This is the kind of video that would make a killer op ed.
Let's just agree that the problem is the monetary system, ownership and capitalism. The problem is our corrupt, individualistic, materialistic and obsolete culture. They can't just say I'm not publishing your videos because they feel like so without giving you a reason, because they must arrive at decisions and that must be public. That's the problem with humanity that they do as they please without giving any reasons, and we think that individual opinions are sacred, it is not. That's why we promote Resource Based Economy as in the Venus Project, where decisions are being made based on scientific facts and made public to all the people. Also the selfish drivers such as money and ownership are eliminated so people will not be motivated with greed or fear but with compassion and awareness, wisdom. We should stop thinking in the box of our corrupt culture and learn to arrive at decisions for the good of everyone. Once the decision made public, others can see the train of thought hence Hank doesn't need to get confused about these by thinking in the box of obsolete culture that he (as all of us in varying degrees) has been brought up in.
I love this. I'm 100% in agreement with Hank on this. I came to this conclusion myself about a year ago and I haven't been able to properly articulate it to anyone as well as I wanted to and I think Hank to is struggling with this but at the same time he's still done a better job than I. The next step is to think about how this extends outward. If you see youtube/facebook/twitter as being handled this way, look at how things out side of those platforms exist that we must live in that are controlled by corporations. Americans very much do live in a corporate autocracy.
This is a fantastic and thought provoking video. I really appreciate how you politely address individuals with reserved opinions, then really dig into their actions and the implications of those actions without much bias. Great video!
Hank I think the legal wording you’re looking for is “public platforming”. It’s going to be an interesting issue if the court ruling against Trump about blocking people on Twitter gets to the Supreme Court.
John Faria in a lower court, it was ruled that trump cannot block people, because he is a political figure and this would limit citizens ability to have a voice in their representation. (Basically)
Really interesting video. I sometimes worry about the power my employer has over my life. Most of my social circle in the small city where I live works for the same company, and they're one of the major employers in the area. Besides a pay check, they also provide things like health insurance, retirement benefits, cafeteria, etc. So if I were forced out of that community (fired or laid off), I would have huge disruptions in my life and maybe even have to move. There are similar free speech questions because it's the company's right to police its own internal communications (like email). For example, my employer can see all my email and internet traffic at work, and I can get in trouble for anything I do on the company network. The line gets a little bit fuzzy because people here use work email for social purposes, and the majority of their friends work there too.
I remember you saying during the 2016 election you "didn't think you were ready for a political revolution" and thus that's why you were backing Hillary. Does this mean you're more likely to back a Bernie-style candidate in the future?
We keep using this term - platforms - a platform is some technology that other things like businesses, buildings or software are built on. Generally, platforms are agnostic to the content put on them. RU-vid is a platform, Netflix is a publisher. We expect neutrality from platforms. Microsoft doesn't get to decide what I use their .Net framework to do. So when we think of something as a platform, when something desires to be seen as a platform, it is part of the social contract they are entering into that they will be neutral. The violation we feel is the violation of the social contract, not freedom of speech.
One could argue the underlying systems of RU-vid are a Platform, but RU-vid itself has always been a Publisher, just a mostly very open publisher. But even way back in the day you were agreeing to a Publishing agreement to have videos hosted by them. It's what differentiated it from RealMedia which was a Platform you had to put on your own hosted space.
Depending on what build of the closure compiler (and lots of other software) you are running, you might not be allowed to do "evil": wiki.debian.org/qa.debian.org/jsonevil . I think the distinction between publisher and platform is a blurred line.
But in case of youtube, people are not building independent businesses, they are more like employees, because the get ad revenue from youtube. The thing that I find confusing as to how to call it is when through youtube people gain an opportunity to earn money via other means (like donations, sponsorships, etc). Those channel could be called businesses since they dont require youtube to earn income, but are using it as a platform for their products or services. Idk, you got me thinking with ur comment and im gonna need more time hahaha :)
Yes, Microsoft can decide to limit the use of developers using .NET. Trust me, Microsoft has withheld my right to publish software using their framework. If I did, I could get sued.
It’s interesting that these companies can literally take away people’s voices. I actually thought it was totally fair that a platform could control what is said on the platform, but this really made me think about how easily what we see could be controlled without us realizing it. It’s interesting to wonder if these companies have the responsibility to uphold a freedom of speech. It also made me think about what a big scale the internet really is. I grew up with it, but really before, unless you were on tv or the radio, there was no way for any one person to express their thoughts to millions of people. And now that they can, the platforms that created it are able to impose their own moralities onto those people, which is fair but not really? Anyway great video it really made me think
But as Hank said at the beginning, your "Voice" is simply licensed content. At least You Tube is willing to pay for it unlike TweetFace. Nonetheless, your voice is simply a method for them to get people looking at ads.
I think there's a difference between morality and law though. At the moment in the UK there is discussion about having to regulate these sites due to the illegal influence they are having (or have had) on things like Brexit. If they have to regulate due to the laws of the country or if there's user filters available then I think that's acceptable, but if the companies themselves start illegally filtering and manipulating media? That's rather terrifying
But if the social media companies are abusing their control of content too frequently, then people would't keep using their platform. We'd all get fed up and remove our accounts and go to another social media platform, like What's App. Facebook, Twitter and RU-vid have been successful because they know they need all of us individual users and don't want to drive us away with the perception of any unfair practices on their part.So, we users haveultimately a lot of control over what they do.
Radio stations do not claim to be a platform for everyone, nor do television stations, or book publishers, or other platform holders. They claim to only be a platform for the artists they have hired or selected. Yet, RU-vid doesn't select artists. They rely upon artists and audience to self-select. They rely upon this almost totally. In fact, they rely upon this LEGALLY to set themselves apart from those more limited platforms. While those other platforms provide a platform for speech, they do so without the benefit provided to them by the government of being a Safe Harbor. None of those other platforms are given protection, by the government, for violations of copyright and other laws under the DMCA and other laws. Why? Because it is acknowledged by the government that RU-vid and similar platforms are open to free speech by everyone. They are not a "private" platform like other publishers. And the law already affords them special advantages and treats them as different. It should be seen as an unfair business practice that RU-vid should get this safe harbor, get the ability to rely upon artists and audience to perform the job of selection, and yet still take an active role in censoring the platform. They are more than a publisher. And the price of stepping beyond being a publisher should be respecting the free speech as far as such speech is legally permitted in the public forum. If they wish to abandon their legal protection as a safe harbor, and to be only a publisher who explicitly bears full responsibility for every channel and video which they host, that should be an option open to them. But for long as they enjoy the protection by the government from liability under the safe harbor, they should be required to provide voice to all citizens of that government upon whose protection they rely and whose discernment and selection they rely for selection of artists to succeed.
This is a magnificent argument, one that I have not considered. It definitely changed my view on this matter. Or the very least it dislodged me from my previous view. Well done sir.
I agree in principle, however these platforms don't promote every post equally, there are of course algorithms that push specific viewpoints and channels and people can even pay to get their posts seen, so should these 'publishers' have to take responsibility for promoting harmful content? The way that they are doing so at the moment is to remove those posts/channels completely, but in reality is it the way their algorithms are coded that is the problem? That they are pushing more outrageous content to the forefront? In which case shouldn't we get a say in how content is chosen for us? Because right now it's chosen in order to keep our attention and sell us products, but wouldn't we choose to have content that fills us up and enriches our lives if we could?
I've wondered this a lot, and what it shows me is that taking anything to extremes is dangerous. I personally believe capitalism is a good system for trade, but I also believe that it can get to a point where it stops being what we generally think of as capitalism. It's like a fire: If you aren't careful, it can get too big, and either *you* have to extinguish it or it will eventually extinguish itself. If you *are* careful, though, and you give it enough fuel to keep going, but keep it from getting out of hand, you will have a system that can provide you with what you need from it. This idea is probably counter to _laissez faire_ capitalism in some ways, but the problem is that if you just ignore it and "let it be," you may very well end-up with one mega-corporation that has a monopoly on everything, at which point you're in the same place as if the government took control of everything. As in all systems, there needs to be balance. What we're seeing is at least the beginnings of an imbalance, because these corporations are "weird" (i.e., they don't work the same way as car manufacturers or traditional publishers/media distributors) and the government is currently ill-equipped to keep them in check.
Maybe becoming used to living in our online autocratic communities for so long is what's paved the way for so many people to willingly allow our (u.s.) government to now seemingly become a dictatorship.
Alex Jones, one of the people who's involved with making the pizzagate conspiracy spread too far (stupid rumor about Hillary's child sex slavery dungeon) which ended up with someone going to the actual pizza restaurant and shooting in there. AJ is a scumbag that also loves to kick victims of mass shootings as he keeps spreading that these victims are 'crisis actors' so these victims not only has to deal with injuries and PTSD, they also have to deal with a mob who threatens their very lives. He gains money mostly from selling merchandise that are not only dangerous (lead filled) or it just doesn't work (fake health products that has a lot of fat and calories). Should everyone be given a platform when they clearly show a danger to society over and over again? Of course not. Ted Cruz is an asshole and he wants assholes to continue their 'work' at dismantling society.
Most corporations have autocratic governance. Even if they have a vote by stockholders most of those votes are cast by a few people. Either big shareholders, or proxy votes from funds.
That moment when you realize Hank Green is a freaking genius. I had never thought about the complexities of private vs public spaces in this way. Bravo.
I have been saying Corporations vs Companies may be the next Cold War, a personal example is: one of the languages I speak is native to a remote location in Northeast India and google doesn’t have the script in their library despite natives developing the script for it to be digitized. As such any policy works published have an overwhelming majority not in that language which ends up being followed because that’s what’s mostly available and mostly read by a federal government. I’m not saying Google has any active role in suppression here but despite a corporations “intention” there are still major geopolitical ramifications. This along with the fact that any multinational company today exists in multiple countries and as long as the market drives the need, they can diminish or increase operations in any of them with laws suitable to them. For companies like say SpaceX this takes it to greater heights (pun intended) in terms of their effects. I wonder if there are some hills that are actually lost now beyond reclamation and if we should focus on actually building and defending the ones in the future.
This all reminds me of Snow Crash, a novel where the "citizen of a corporation" idea was translated into the physical world, with company neighborhoods abounding
Glad you're finally digging past the surface of these issues, Hank. Rather than an aggregator and science expert you touched on layered contracts. good for you.
I understand what you’re saying, but I hope you realize how utterly patronizing and condescending this comment is. That is only going to push people away. (Yes, I know the comment is old, but the concept still applies)
Monopolies suck. Let's not get all our content from one site. It's the internet. Videos are everywhere. Post all your stuff on multiple platforms. And as for Jones, ball-gag companies don't complain about being unable to sell through Wal-Mart.
If all the creators owned a piece of the company, they would all have a say. You could even pay youtubers based on RU-vid's profits. the community owns the means of productions and shares all benefits from the productions. Everyone has a voice and everyone gets a piece of the pie. No need for upper level people controlling the social space to their own benefit.
Ira McKinzie, And/or make it open source (not only this, but all and every thing, from car design to smartphone designs, to robotics and sensors, to education and healthcare)
If google doesn't get ownership of the massive technical breakthroughs they needed to make to enable youtube to exist they wouldn't have put in the money in the first place, ofcourse going forward I don't see any reason an open source video platform can't be made, ofcourse someone still needs to pay the exorbitant server costs and nobody is going to do that for free.
I'm just going to counter argue that real quick: if everyone owns everything, nobody owns anything. And that's a slippery slope that lets genocidal maniacs take over.
Market co-ops in practice are just employee owned businesses in actuality. Its more like everyone owning only the things they are involved with. Also thats a slippery slope fallacy if ive ever seen one, you can't just say o if we allow employees to own their businesses then mass murder will happen in the US in 2018. Demonstrate why that is likely or withdraw the fallacy.
Let's just agree that the problem is the monetary system, ownership and capitalism. The problem is our corrupt, individualistic, materialistic and obsolete culture. They can't just say I'm not publishing your videos because they feel like so without giving you a reason, because they must arrive at decisions and that must be public. That's the problem with humanity that they do as they please without giving any reasons, and we think that individual opinions are sacred, it is not. That's why we promote Resource Based Economy as in the Venus Project, where decisions are being made based on scientific facts and made public to all the people. Also the selfish drivers such as money and ownership are eliminated so people will not be motivated with greed or fear but with compassion and awareness, wisdom. We should stop thinking in the box of our corrupt culture and learn to arrive at decisions for the good of everyone. Once the decision made public, others can see the train of thought hence Hank doesn't need to get confused about these by thinking in the box of obsolete culture that he (as all of us in varying degrees) has been brought up in.
Semih Systems of self governance have always been the problem, but also the solution. Remember, we're animals. Society has allowed us these comforts, society is built on a system of systems that are meant to internally maintain and sustain one another. It's a long and arduous process, with many considerations for abuse of power and mismanagement having to be kept in mind, to create a functioning governance system that both effectively governs while efficiently managing resources. We need to stop kicking the can down the road and start slowly working out a more effective system of governance, it's easy to say but it's also the one thing humanity has yet to accomplish for any real extended period of time. Religions on the other hand are a whole different ball game... especially with the passage over multiple millennia. The intent of its conception VS what it has grown into and gets used for at times. Hope that didn't completely pop the can of worms...
if a social network exercises antitrust-enforcement-worthy power, how do you break them up? how do you prevent former users of the too-big network from re-coalescing onto only one of the broken up networks, rapidly turning it into again a monopolistically powerful player in the market? or do you sever YT-as-video-host-&-comments/profile-management-system, from revenue sources? eg AdSense or a competing network has to make deals with individual creators, and YT is only permitted to offer API tieins?
4:00 "Is their a point at which a platform like RU-vid or Facebook become so powerful that you could make the case that they are the only way to reach a certain group of people. I don't think that you could make that case." Over the course of this 17 minute video, I think Hank gets to a conclusion where he'd disagree with his earlier quoted comment, but suffice it to say... Sure there is, just give it 20 years. The people have to be poor enough that they only are willing to access free media, and other mediums of mass media need to continue to degrade/become trapped behind paywalls a la what's happening to a lot of digital and print media. Additionally, the US needs to continue its blatant disregard for corporate ownership and monopoly of all avenues of speech. What good is a right to free movement in a country where every road is beset by toll takers and highwaymen? None of this is to excuse Alex Jones or his alt-right crazy pants followers. A healthy society wouldn't need to de-platform him, they would just be inoculated against his nonsense via education.
The reason freedom of speech exists is to foster an open, unmoderated national/international discussion. People who only point out that Facebook isn't technically violating the law are being myopic to the reason why the 1st amendment was created (not that that's what Hank's saying)
Although one could day it's Myopic to think Facebook exists to foster an open, unmoderated national/international discussion, as opposed to simply make people keep looking at their website so that they have eyes on screen to sell to advertisers.
Not really, the problems started before whit the Addpocalypse when the media wrote there hit pieces on PewDiePie. Also this social media sites are natural monopolys which are just always a problem to manage, common ownership does not necessary makes anything better when you look at all this talk how politicians want control over facebook so Russia can´t hack the next election.
king oli because they are natural monopolies we have to as consumers collectively buy up massive amounts of Google class A (voting) stock (this also would potentially solve wealth inequality and the post work income problem)
Yeah, but a social media platform isn't something anyone can just easily make on their own. It takes money for hardware, computer engineers & software developers to create & run these things. How can something like that be a common unless you develop one in a similar manner to PBS where the platform is funded publicly. But then, those who submit content on the platform wouldn't be able to monetize. So to some degree, this idea of freedom of speech on these platforms is at odds with the concept of capitalism. Hank seems to want a platform where he is democratically free to express himself, yet still be able to make a living off of it. I don't think you can have it both ways. If you want to make a living on these platforms, you're gonna have to be contractually limited in some manner to these "corporate autocracies". But if you just want a place where you can freely express yourself, then we "commonfolk" would have to publicly fund our own online social platform that's comparable to youtube & facebook, but no one would be able to make any money off of it.
But I do think, as someone else on here already suggested, that if these platforms get big enough and there are enough content creators integral to that growth, there could develop an official union, where at least the "high level" content creators are allotted certain rights & legal protections as they would be considered indispensable to the continued success of these platforms. Similar, I guess, to writers, directors & actors of film & television. Those who attain a certain level of contributive status in the industry are allowed into these unions to guarantee they get a fair share of studios' success.
Internet social media platforms = New Wild Wild West... muddling along trying to create standards/rights/expectations etc... What a weird world we live in
Wow. Ted Cruz actually had a point for once! Well, he totally wouldn’t have said this for a liberal, so it really isn’t a big point, but he did say something.
I guess, technically, it's a Corporate Oligarchy. The users of these platforms don't get much of a vote, but advertisers, the purchasers of user data, the entities who actually supply most of the revenue to Facebook, RU-vid, etc certainly do have a lot of influence on the direction the platforms take.
the year the "federal" (really a conglomerate of international private banks) reserve and the IRS were established, making every american citizen a slave. a percentage of your work every year goes into the pocket of these private banks, and they loan us our federal budget every year. . . AT INTEREST there will never be enough dollars in existence to pay back the debt, so americans will forever be giving a private corporation a yearly percentage of wages at threat of imprisonment. $lave$
Josh Pollack oh boo hoo. You want an army, you want smooth roads, you want a fire department, pay your forking taxes and quit crying like a 5 year old who has to share a peanut butter sandwich with his little sister.
What's an interesting take on this is that people that aren't in the US use these spaces too. But because it is a US company, are they protected by our freedom of speech? Or would they have to abide by their own countries rules for these spaces? Would the rules only apply to people living in the US?
Let's just agree that the problem is the monetary system, ownership and capitalism. The problem is our corrupt, individualistic, materialistic and obsolete culture. They can't just say I'm not publishing your videos because they feel like so without giving you a reason, because they must arrive at decisions and that must be public. That's the problem with humanity that they do as they please without giving any reasons, and we think that individual opinions are sacred, it is not. That's why we promote Resource Based Economy as in the Venus Project, where decisions are being made based on scientific facts and made public to all the people. Also the selfish drivers such as money and ownership are eliminated so people will not be motivated with greed or fear but with compassion and awareness, wisdom. We should stop thinking in the box of our corrupt culture and learn to arrive at decisions for the good of everyone. Once the decision made public, others can see the train of thought hence Hank doesn't need to get confused about these by thinking in the box of obsolete culture that he (as all of us in varying degrees) has been brought up in.
The producers will rise! Here's to the collective commonwealth of producers! Here's to democracy! Heres to the full development of mankind, masters of their productive forces and no longer slaves.
Though I am kind of waiting on his moment of realization that commodity production is at the heart of our social, economic and environmental crises and that social planning using scientific principles and democratic social ownership of the means of production is the only way to move forwards as a human race. Then, he'll use his massive wealth to fund a Marxian research program like ol' Fred Engels did back in the day.
If you cannot yell Fire in a theater, because i may hurt people wouldn't that same principle apply to any fear mongering, Pizzagate for example i feel like reality is experiencing mitosis, there are practically 2 realities now
you are right! we are entrenched in our ideas, I consider myself liberal, (i don't live in the U.S.) here we have the same problems, one side exaggerates one part of the other sides argument and vice-versa but the reality is one, and it has no political bias, pc culture is one of the nasty and wrong parts of my side, but it can be other parts i don't see, we must be open to criticism and try to see why is being made. Certanly Trump is no nazi, but why are they calling him that? and liberals they/we have to check our own, or this pointless bickering will never end.
If you yell fire in a theater there is a guarantee of an evacuation, possibly a stampede, that will injure and maybe kill people. If you say outrageous shit on the internet there is not a direct impact like that in the real world. Someone's feelings get hurt, someone says something mean,etc. If you're arguing for the 0.05% of the population that would actually commit a crime because they heard something on the radio then you're using the exception to create the norm, which is ridiculous. Feelings are not facts. If someone's feelings are hurt they don't die, they don't lose their job, etc. they just feel bad and maybe angry for a while and move on with their lives. So punishing people for a "thought crime" in order to protect fickle feelings that don't even have a real impact in daily life is moronic.
So many valuable, productive conversations could be had here. I am coming late to this iteration of the conversation, but it is perpetually valid and I hope someone continues it with me, not just trolling. Where you live and where you come from (physically AND functionally) shapes how rights are conceptualized and the expectation of realization in everyday interactions and transactions. I think perspective shapes interpretation of this question.
It bothers me that so many people use the wrong vocabulary. For example, a lot of people say someone is a socialist while they in fact mean a social democrat. A social democrat is totally different than a democratic socialist! Even a lot of "progressive" people on the left do this. On the right they go even further of course by equating socialism with communism. But at least that's intentional.
It's not just Social Media, we've been dealing with this for a while. I think of the 80's when shopping malls were the equivalent of the market or public square. There was a ruling in the US saying (in effect) "While these spaces as public spaces, they are private property." So you don't have a right to protest inside a mall but you do down a street/sidewalk.
Hank. Quick question. Doesn’t the central government of the USA have some power over RU-vid. After all RU-vid and google are based in the USA. While I can understand the government doesn’t have a lot of power wouldn’t the 1st amendment still apply in extreme cases. Just a. Though also, the one thing that is really powerful for the people who want to change these platforms is that these platforms are not governments, and because they need to make profit, creators can unionize and demonetize their own content until change is made. Of course that hurts small creators. So I guess the solution is making some regulations for these platforms and to find a way to change them without hurting creators. Sorry for the random train of though... Dftba
The important thing to understand about the Bill of Rights (amendments 1-10 of the US Constitution) is that it doesn't give the government more regulatory power. It reduces/limits the government's power. So, the 1st amendment just prevents government from getting involved in free speech at all (positively or negatively). RU-vid isn't the government, so the 1st amendment has no relevance to RU-vid.
MethosOhio ya I was thinking about it wrong. The constitution limits what the government can do. So to have power over a group of platforms, Congress would have to pass laws making it illegal to get rid of posts unless they violate some rule out in place.
"So to have power over a group of platforms, Congress would have to pass laws making it illegal to get rid of posts unless they violate some rule out in place." That's also Unconstitutional. Freedom of Speech is not only the right to say what you want, but also the right to not say what you don't want. Congress cannot force a company to publish something they don't want to. This was reaffirmed recently with the Colorado Cake case.
Big creators have to help small creators survive that unionization transition, or it won't work. At some point, the only solution to monopolization of an industry is regulation from the government, but before that point we have the chance to stop the full monopolization from taking place, but people like Hank and John getting together with other creators and creating new platforms. I know Hank doesn't want to do it, and I totally get why, but it may be necessary to address the problems he is worrying about in this video.
Let's just agree that the problem is the monetary system, ownership and capitalism. The problem is our corrupt, individualistic, materialistic and obsolete culture. They can't just say I'm not publishing your videos because they feel like so without giving you a reason, because they must arrive at decisions and that must be public. That's the problem with humanity that they do as they please without giving any reasons, and we think that individual opinions are sacred, it is not. That's why we promote Resource Based Economy as in the Venus Project, where decisions are being made based on scientific facts and made public to all the people. Also the selfish drivers such as money and ownership are eliminated so people will not be motivated with greed or fear but with compassion and awareness, wisdom. We should stop thinking in the box of our corrupt culture and learn to arrive at decisions for the good of everyone. Once the decision made public, others can see the train of thought hence Hank doesn't need to get confused about these by thinking in the box of obsolete culture that he (as all of us in varying degrees) has been brought up in.
I'm so glad I found this channel! The content is great, the topics of thought are GREAT! This is amazing. Also... Couldnt RU-vid just say "start your own RU-vid" like, thats an option, right? I should have waited...
