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Comment by PeterStuer | Hacker News Reader

Google is an American company. Their "rules" are extremely embedded in a US culture. Unfortunately YouTube is a product that is consumed worldwide. Many of the regions where it has a dominant market share for web VoD do have cultural palates that are very different from the US. I feel Google should embrace their international position and be less biased in it's reasoning.

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So, what is your suggestion here? Should they run with the most open interpretation (i.e. allow anything that is socially acceptable somewhere on earth) or most strict interpretation (i.e. limit stuff that might be offensive somewhere on earth)?

Both approaches look rather impossible to me: the former would mean allowing stuff that might even be illegal in the U.S., the latter would mean that e.g. all videos showing alcohol would have to disappear.

What is your specific example here?

Also note that this is not about allowing videos onto the platform, but only about next to which videos to show ads. And I would guess that most ad customers would want rather strict rules, so it makes sense for YouTube to listen to their customers here.

First, it is important to note that Youtube has a defacto monopoly on non-film Internet VoD with close to 90% market share. If you include film/tv style content (basically Netflix ), it is still 80% in a huge number of countries. By lumping in everything from the most outrages, and as you mention even illegal content, with the most benign things like 'swearing', which in many countries people wouldn't even notice, and then presenting the advertiser with an all our nothing choice (if at all), where is the choice realy? "If you want to advertise to this game-themed channel where the hosts drop the occasional f-bomb, sure, but then you also agree to run adds on the neo-nazi Holocaust denier channel". Google is the sole broker here, brokering audiences to advertisers in a monopoly setting. How they set up that market, has very profound implications. The model that is exposed through the OP is far from 'evidently supported' by universal culture or rights.

You mention only extremist polarized positions, full anarcho-libertarianism or ultra-global-conservatism. There are many more moderate positions in between, or even entirely different solutions, such as opening up the YouTube brokerage market.

Well, they already have a system for "this video is not available in your country", driven by the music licensing.

They should probably have different demonetization strategies in different cultures. "This video is demonetized in USA" for example.

This was all figured out at least five to six decades ago, as global media companies emerged.

It's just one more step in the inevitable bifurcation of the Internet down to national barriers / legislation / cultural beliefs. In the not very distant future (within 15-20 years), the commonality laws, things nations have in common with regards to legislating the Internet, will be the minority. Every nation will want and will set its own unique policies (on top of any other agreement lines as eg in the EU).

There's no possible outcome for the Internet other than becoming another well regulated medium, given a few more decades. The laws will pile up, it's what politicians do, and the Internet is the single biggest target.

Yeah having country specific moderation teams with people form those countries would be great. But I won't hold my breath..

It would be great until you reach Saudi Arabia or Iran, or heck don't need to go that far since Venezuela is just near by...

So you are saying it would not be ok for those cultures to impose their morals, but it is ok for the US?

Moral relativism is nonsense, there are objectively better and worse moral systems.

The US and any other country in the world is far from perfect but it doesn’t mean there aren’t better and worse, much much worse moral systems out there today.

What culture-specific reasonings are you referring to, exactly?

The US is unusually sensitive about naked bodies and swearing for instance.

In most countries it's unusual to BEEP swear words on TV, and in some other countries nobody will bat an eye at casual nudity, even in TV shows aimed at children.

Meanwhile excessive violence is permitted on regular TV.

Days of discussion around a staged nipple reveal during the superbowl come to mind. /s

For example, the US is extremely sensitive to things like nudity, swearing, identity political issues, and at the same time callously tolerant about violence and commercial interests.

In some countries, exposing children to advertising would be considered inappropriate.

In some places, nudity and sex are considered fine for children.

In some places, LGBT topics, or even showing people who are openly gay discussing something entirely unrelated would be considered unacceptable.

In some places, standards for nudity are very different, for example failure to wear a headscarf would be unacceptable in parts of the world.

For example, in Germany, public TV channels (e.g. the ARD), showing a 90 minute movie containing a minute of nudity before an implied sex act in a movie targeted at teens, broadcast at prime time (20:15) is not unusual, and won't lead to complaints (see: the first 5 Minutes of "Mein Sohn Helen").

In the US, this would spark an outrage.

Most German public TV channels try to upload all content to YouTube, but sometimes some videos aren't available there due to YouTube's restrictions.

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