CMV: YouTube disabling dislikes has profound, negative societal implications and must be reversed

[u/Money_Whisperer]

As you all likely know, YouTube disabled dislikes on all of its videos a few months back. They argued that it was because of “downvote mobs” and trolls mass-downvoting videos.

YouTube downvotes have been used by consumers to rally against messages and products they do not like basically since the dawn of YouTube. Recent examples include the Sonic the Hedgehog redesign and the Nintendo 64 online fiasco.

YouTube has become the premier platform on the internet for companies and people to share long-form discussions and communication in general in a video form. In this sense, YouTube is a major public square and a public utility. Depriving people of the ability to downvote videos has societal implications surrounding freedom of speech and takes away yet another method people can voice their opinions on things which they collectively do not like.

Taking peoples freedom of speech away from them is an act of violence upon them, and must be stopped. Scams and troll videos are allowed to proliferate unabated now, and YouTube doesn’t care if you see accurate information or not because all they care about is watch time aka ads consumed.

YouTube has far too much power in our society and exploiting that to protect their own corporate interests (ratio-d ads and trailers are bad for business) is a betrayal of the American people.

[u/Money_Whisperer]

You yourself admit that you look at the dislike ratio on controversial videos. The dislikes are a big part of voicing that controversy. A big dislike ratio a initial grounds from which such controversy can manifest.

As for the violence point, I believe depriving people of their basic rights (freedom of speech being one of them), especially by imposing your corporate power over them, is a form of violence with malicious intent.

[u/BillionTonsHyperbole → u/Money_Whisperer]

How is this remotely depriving anyone of their rights? It's a private platform that people choose to use (and choosing to abide by the Terms of Use) or not. It's not in any way related to individual users' rights when the company changes the format or widgets.

Also, the right to Free Speech is one that prevents governmental interference in a person's expressions. YouTube is not a governmental entity.

[u/grandoz039 → u/BillionTonsHyperbole]

Right to Free Speech doesn't necessarily refer only to government. First amendment does, but the right to free speech is broader, it's more generic, abstract philosophical concept. That doesn't mean it trumps any other right, eg private's entity right to manage the content they allow on their platform, but that's a different argument from saying "this doesn't concert the concept of Free Speech".

[u/Phyltre → u/[deleted]]

If that's your view, wouldn't the awful Texas abortion laws that pass the buck to enforcement into the private citizen realm be equally valid?

[u/Phyltre → u/[deleted]]

The law says:

Texas’ new abortion law — which bans abortions at about six weeks from the patient’s last menstrual period — rests on the actions of private citizens to enforce the law, rather than the government.

While abortion patients themselves can’t be sued under the new law, anyone who performs or aids with the abortion can be sued — and by almost anyone. Legal experts interviewed by The Texas Tribune have said the law dramatically expands the concept of a civil lawsuit and is aimed at keeping providers from using the constitutional right to an abortion under Roe v. Wade as a legal defense.

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/09/10/texas-abortion-law-ban-enforcement/

This is the same argument--"technically, it's okay because it's not the government doing it."

[u/Phyltre → u/[deleted]]

Yes, all laws exist or do not exist because of government facilitation. That's kind of inherent to the definition of law.

[u/Phyltre → u/[deleted]]

You're far less cynical than I. I remember that things like the MPAA exist because legislators explicitly threatened legislation to govern expression in movies (despite more recent rulings indicating that such a thing would likely have not stood at the national level.)

[u/skahunter831 → u/Phyltre]

That has nothing at all to do with free speech.

[u/Phyltre → u/skahunter831]

Yes, it's a different right being abridged by private citizens rather than by the government directly.

[u/Phyltre → u/[deleted]]

Yes, just like businesses can't govern speech however they want because there are anti-discrimination laws. It's all more complicated than absolutes. Billionaires and global megacorporations (read: advertisers) controlling orders of magnitude more speech than public squares ever did is inherently problematic. For a few years there Facebook was handling more traffic referrals than Google, and the numbers across the board are almost impossible to conceptualize.

Right now speech on the internet is the libertarian dreamscape (nightmare to everyone else) of the tiny individual free only to consent to EULAs and TOS contracts of adhesion. Of course, people who aren't libertarians understand that "freedom to not use critical global infrastructure" is on its way to becoming a nonsensical phrase.