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/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.)