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Comment by Y_Y | Hacker News Reader

I kind of get it. Punching someone outside a boxing ring is pretty much always a bad move. A funny video where the funny part seems to be an unsuspecting person getting punched may "encourage violence". (I don't feel this way, but I could understand the reasoning.)

The cat is out of the bag on this one though. So much so, that I'd argue the video now has cultural and historical significance that justifies its wanton violence. That is to say, even a general purpose video platform that forbade violence should probably still allow war documentaries.

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The idea that displaying {bad thing} inherently encourages {bad thing} is a dangerous idea imo, and one that comes up time and time again.

It seems self-evident that normalizing a behavior helps to propagate it. It's obviously not the sole driver of a behavior, but trends grow the more they're displayed / normalized, no?

For example, many people jaywalk because they see people doing it all the time without consequences.

The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory is a thing.

Some kid inevitably sees it on the internet with 12m views. He has been wanting to start a channel on his own and thinks "I'll punch my unsuspecting brother on camera, how funny!" now someone's in the hospital. Don't blame the bullets or the gun, blame the wielder who is a minor. Who is to blame for such an eventuality? I see a danger that Goog is potentially liable for.

Kids are on the internet. There is a higher bar for moderation than people want now (partly because of it), but that's how it is.

I don't have a problem with this video being taken down.

>I don't feel this way, but I could understand the reasoning.

A vanishingly rare sentiment.

There are literally millions of videos of street fights and sucker punches on youtube. Do they really intend to remove every single one of those videos?

They have always removed those that they review, presumably triggered by sufficient reports by users - do you find that unexpected? Unless you're implying that if you can't moderate some threshold percentage of instances of a violation that you should moderate 0% of them, which seems unrealistic, but I've seen people make that argument.

Well that's the problem isn't it? If they are going to use their discretion and apply rules selectively, why not make exceptions for videos that most people don't find distasteful, even if they violate your policy?

>wanton violence

>punching someone outside of a boxing ring

I could probably find 100,000 unique instances of violence solely from big Hollywood studios on Youtube as we speak

Fiction and non-fiction are almost universally treated differently.

The best part about your comment is that the video in question is fiction!

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