At the end of the day YouTube is a private company. Yea, a very big one with huge reach, but private nonetheless. Taking a subjective moral position is something companies have been doing for a long time. If you disagree with them, don't give them your $ (don't use youtube).
> "Ownership does not always mean absolute dominion. The more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it."
Other video streaming sites exist. Moving to them is a click away - no need to pack up your family and put a deposit down.
If YouTube wants to be editor over the content they host, then they ought to be subject to the same liabilities as a publisher. If they want to be considered a platform then should be forced to remain neutral. The conflation of these mutually exclusive roles serves money at the expense of everyone else.
The case cited was one where a piece of land was being used, passively, by individuals requiring no unique support or upkeep by owner in order for the plaintiffs to enjoy those freedoms. To make it relevant to YouTube, the court would have had to rule that the private business was required to provide shade, iced tea in sweet and unsweet varieties, as well as free megaphones.
Without doing this, the government only has the authority to guarantee your rights on government property, which would effectively be no different from granting complete sovereignty to private entities.
This sort of censorship by a private company is only acceptable if there is a legitimate other path to post videos (still within the realm of ethically decided censorship) - if the government has a presence in a market we demand that the government be the most lax player when it comes to issues of freedom of speech, but I think we're fine as long as there exist places in which to practice our free speech.
Right now the only part in which are they private is that they were founded by private capital.
If you agree that what is happening here is harmful, but your ideals don't allow you to change it, you must change your ideals.
I can’t argue that it isn’t, and I’m not sure I’d be comfortable with somebody saying “you have to host whatever is uploaded”… on the other hand, AT&T and Comcast are “private companies” that host the backbone of the internet and could at any time start refusing to route traffic for, say, a YouTube competitor. Some banks are already refusing to do business with vendors that also sell guns… there is a point where censorship become discriminatory.
Big tech has gotten even more powerful and necessary at a practical level, with none of the guarantees of fair treatment the government is bound by. This needs to change, pronto.
If we accept this ownership of the digital space by corporations, our future is looking very bleak.