Protests on the social platform have entered a new phase, with users shirking the platform’s NSFW content rules en masse. The development has some media buyers on high alert, experts say.
Protests on the social platform have entered a new phase, with users shirking the platform’s NSFW content rules en masse. The development has some media buyers on high alert, experts say.
Ngl, “brand safety” is a pretty dangerous idea. That’s where tech companies start to get a justification to fiddle with speech.
It already exists. Just look how YouTube demonetizes whatever.
if you have to be paid for speech its not free speech.
I’m not following? Free speech usually means that you have freedom to express yourself, not that you’re speaking for no pay lol.
To be honest, I’m not sure why YouTube was brought into a conversation about free speech. YouTube is not a free speech platform; thus, demonetization of someone on YouTube’s platform has nothing at all to do with free speech.
This conversation wasn’t about free speech, it was about companies fiddling with speech.
Companies fiddling with speech is perfectly legal. No one is obliged to give a soapbox to anyone. Companies curbing speech they don’t want to host is not an infringment on speech, legally (in the US, at least).
An anaolgy might be: You offer your front yard for people to put signs in. Someone decides to put a Nazi flag sign in your yard. You are within your rights to remove that sign, even though you made a general offer for anyone to put signs in your yard.
People (again, in the US) very often conflate this kind of situation - a private entity curbing speech that they don’t want to be associated with - with the First Amendment of the US Constitution (my emphasis):
Free speech, in the US, is about whether Congress, and as has been interpreted by the courts, the government generally, may abridge the freedom of speech. The government may not.
Even so, free speech is not absolute. It remains against the law for individuals to use speech to incite violence, or to incite an emergency reaction where no emergency exists (“Fire!” in a crowded theater), for two examples. Another example would be communicating classified information to people who are not authorized to have said information.
There remains a real conflict about free speech, and it’s the elmination of the commons. When the Constitution was written and ratified, the First Amendment protection of speech was more effective, because the way you would get your speech to a large number of people was via distribution of pamphlets and just speaking aloud in public spaces, where passers-by were walking. The landscape is very different today, where “public” messaging happens on the conduits provided by private companies - who, as we’ve learned, are not legally obliged to carry that speech. In fact, those private companies operating “open forums” can be held responsible for failing to moderate speech which runs afoul of legal limitations on speech.
The internet is definitely a huge change around speech, but the degradation of public spaces brought on by shopping malls - which are private property - had the same kind of effect. The fact that we tend to spend more time in our private homes, travel in the bubbles of our private vehicles, and do our personal business entirely on private property effectively reduces the public space available to exercise our own free speech effectively, or be exposed to others’ speech similarly.
Who is talking about it being illegal?
Well, this comment chain started with:
Which implies that companies need a “justification,” which further implies that companies “fiddling with speech” needs to be “justified,” as though “unjustified fiddling with speech by companies” is, or should be, disallowed.
Later, you said:
That might be colloquially accurate, but it’s misleading in the context of private companies acting as platforms for speech, in the US (I know I have beat that drum plenty, but it’s necessary).
Infringement of freedoms is met with legal consequences. Since private entities are not oblligated to be a platform for any speech, whether that’s a forum on the internet or other people’s signs in your front yard, there are no legal consequences when those private entities curb the speech in the space they provide for speech. The discussions around this situation generally carry a subtext of “something should be done about this,” and because of the conflation of colloquial vs legal “free speech,” it’s easy for that “something” to feel like “companies shouldn’t be able to do that,” with legal consequences.
People rightly recognize that there is a problem with the diminishing ability for people to express themselves, and conversations about that usually misidentify the problem as being with the operators of private spaces where so much speech is today exercised. Any solution which grants and protects individual rights is necessarily a legal solution. So, while maybe nobody is saying the words “It should be illegal for companies to curb speech on the platforms they operate,” the discussion is about a legal remedy.
I was trying to describe that the problem is more likely the degradation of the public commons. The relative absence of public spaces in which speech can be effectively transmitted drives people’s speech to private spaces, and those private spaces come with much greater limitations on speech. While I don’t have a specific solution to offer for that problem, I have to think it must include creating or reinvigorating public commons.
demonitization means taking money away… that doesn’t have anything to do with speech. Posting on YouTube is not “speech” in the traditional sense. Posting on YouTube is content creation.
Tf is “speech” then if not communicating lol
“Speech” in terms of the context in which you’ve been trying to use it means that you’re free in an open forum. Speech would be going out on to the sidewalk and saying things to people. Speech would be your ability to make a platform like YouTube for others to make videos and say whatever they want.
Just as you do not have the right to demand air-time on ABC news to rant about whatever you want; you do not get the right to demand space on YouTube to rant about whatever you want either. When you post on YouTube (or Lemmy / Kbin / reddit) those things you say are not “speech.” The posts you make are content for someone else’s platform.
it means your government cannot limit your right to speak, write, and share ideas and opinions. you can say whatever you want but be ready for consequences for saying stupid, racist, bigoted stuff from the rest of your fellow countrymen.
yeah but not paying you for speech is not restricting you freedom to do it.
YouTube also significantly restricts the reach of demonetised content, though. It becomes very unlikely for even people who are subscribed to your channel to see your new uploads.
Still not free speech at all. You’re pointing out the difference between being able to speak freely and being provided an audience. There are no nations in history or philosophers in humanity which supposed the existence of a human right to provide an audience to everyone.
But again, YouTube isn’t a free speech platform. The public sidewalk is, YouTube isn’t. They have no obligation to provide you anything at all.
This is undoubtedly true. YouTube is a private entity and there is no legal obligation for them to treat speech equally. But it is subjectively troubling that YouTube, a virtual monopoly, has little qualms about directly shaping the political discourse on its platform, censoring and limiting the reach of content about LGBT people while Fox News is on the front page.
They are absolutely no where close to a virtual monopoly. Anyone can upload and stream content online, and probably millions of websites allow it now, without exaggeration. What they have is a prefab audience. There are no considerations needed for free speech whatsoever.
If you want to influence their moderation habits, you need to be their customer or better yet, their shareholder. As just another leeching user, your voice means nothing to them and frankly that isn’t problematic. 10,000 leeches won’t influence them the same as one paying customer. I can guarantee that. And again, if you’re just a leech then it really is no wonder why they wouldn’t listen as a for-profit business.
There are troubling bits about lots of platforms and media outlets and companies, but that’s not an excuse to twist up legal terminologies like monopoly or free speech in order to make weak criticisms. Doing so weakens the framework of law more than it does influence YouTube at all. Because that framework of law is only as valid as we use it. Countless examples of that problem abound - virtually the entirety of the Trump presidency is an example of why misuse of the law in common discussions among people is actually very dangerous. That’s been a sticking point for me for a long time, and it’s more important as years go by. So I’m gonna call it out, especially when it’s happening on “my” team.
If you’re gonna make accusations where we actually have legal recourse (like monopolies) then you need to understand them. There is no where close to a real monopoly in YouTube.
And obviously you’re deincentivising the creator from making more content in that certain style at least. Steering the speech to certain direction.
Youtube is allowed to encourage you to say things. That’s guaranteed by the free speech rights of the people that make up youtube.
No one’s saying they aren’t. Doesn’t mean I have to like it either. Or that their decisions can’t be criticized.
Making comments on YouTube videos, or making YouTube videos themselves =/= speech.
What is it then?
No! You should pay me for every opinion I express!!!
Demonetisation in Youtube is not just about payment, it is also about the “reach” of your video – demonetised videos get pushed to the bottom by “the algorithm”.
Free speech also does not mean right to have your opinion disseminated by others.
That’s definitely true, but it also means only profitable opinions get “boosted”.
but thats the buety of other things. We all have to be ready to leave stuff if its bs. I was barely on facebook, only keep linkedin for job search purposes, and did reddit till it just got to crappy. Might leave this but because its independent I could leave my home for another federated region. I can block what I want which frees up less boosted content and if need be I will go to yet another type of platform.
I remember recently they changed some of their NSFW language rules, people had the shits and 6 weeks later they changed them again. This one guy who makes summaries of r/amitheasshole changed how he says it to ‘am I the butt hole’
It’s silly crap like that which is the most annoying, trying to censor the most mundane swear words.
But it’s silly crap like that that matters to advertisers. NSFW actually is the word “fuck”, “asshole”, etc. You might be able to say that at work, not everyone can without repercussion.
And that’s not a stretch at all, it’s why network television won’t let you say either of those words either. Not next to their Ford and Samsung advertisements.
The entire premise of NSFW is silly to me. Like no one has an obligation to make sure YOU are safely browsing at work. Get back to work.
The NSFW flag is a really good idea in my opinion. It’s a compromise. It’s like saying “we’re still going to have content that might not go over well with all audiences, or all settings; but you just have to mark it as such so that someone ELSE that happens to see the screen doesn’t have a shit fit.” I feel like it protects me, as the viewer. If I want to look at a picture of a party of lemons, then I know that what I’m about to click might cause me to get a bunch of shit from my conservative co-worker. Maybe I’ll wait for her to leave the room, and then I’ll click the link about the party of lemons.
I think you’re taking the W in NSFW too literally. It’s a user-moderated content filtering system. Be it at work, school, on a bus, in the streets, many people wish to be considerate of others and don’t want to publicly flaunt questionable material.
It may be to protect others from having to view it or to protect themselves from repercussion viewing explicit content in professional environments.
There’s also a difference between some text with ‘bad words’ and having hardcore porn or beheadings (NSFL) or whatever. Is there a grey area? Of course, different people will consider different things appropriate, especially in different settings and different cultures, but giving users the ability to flag content they post as ‘potentially questionable’ (synonymous to NSFW from my perspective) is just a means to respect other users.
If you don’t at least have reliable NSFW flags then many parents (and more importantly schools) won’t let their kids watch, which is a large part of ad revenue.
“Warnings about explicit content work” is a new take to me. The history of such direct warnings tells us otherwise. At one point there were bands dropping F-bombs on albums just to get that sticker. Because it increased their sales and visibility.
The Streisand Effect is real, in big ways and also in these small ones. I’m not saying don’t try, but I’m telling you it won’t ever work the way you think it will.
What’s interesting is that the MPAA Rating system itself was a compromise from the industry with the government to avoid the government stepping in to control content. That’s where it started. Seems eerily similar no? It’s not coincidence. But that’s just another example of the point I’m making too: originally they rated porn movies “X” and agreed these wouldn’t be in the industry- controlled theaters. Porn movie producers took it as a badge and began labeling their movies “XXX” and leaned into it so hard, the MPAA had to change the distinction to something more innocuous, “NC-17.” But the cats out of the bag, even today every 11 year old kid knows what XXX means. The warning became a siren call.
Warnings are just the Streisand Effect, so don’t expect much of them.
It slowly goes from “you’re plagiarizing” (when you’re not) to “you’re not making me enough money. Say things that make me more money”.
Brand safety as an idea isn’t dangerous, and there’s an entire sub-industry in the adTech space devoted to it. The bottom line is most companies don’t want their ads showing up on sites or in close proximity to certain types of content (illegal, political, hate speech, etc.). Services from these companies are used to make sure when doing ads on the open web, your DSP doesn’t inadvertently put your ads in places like that. One example: https://integralads.com/solutions/brand-safety-suitability/
Brand safety has existed for as long as marketing has existed, which is a long time. This is nothing new