I think once your an international multi billion dollar monster corporation, we should have serious checks and balances. And we did but now all of those checks are paid off to ignore anti competitive practices and abuses. Make career lobbyists illegal. Also, politicians should not be able to buy stocks, let them have a 401k but no picking stocks.

It's wild to read HN comments advocating for significantly more government control of private companies.

A decade ago that would be pure heresy on any tech forum. Now it's (currently) the top comment on one of the top stories on HN.

That said, I guarantee that a government-controlled or otherwise heavily regulated platform would have far, far more instances of benign content removed for violating obscure rules. Once the consequences rise to the level of regulatory violations, the companies will pull content without thinking because nobody wants to risk the fines or worse.

These companies are rushing to self-censor their own content as a way to get out ahead of potential future regulation. Politicians and journalists can, and will, seize upon even the slightest missteps or unpopular comment to lambaste tech companies as evil. This move was definitely a mistake, but it's part of a larger movement to aggressively err on the side of safety when it comes to any potentially controversial content.

What? No. Since Biden's election, Google is under immense pressure from the government to censor.

https://rumble.com/vtyr34-democrats-are-pressuring-companies...

"Private companies can do what they like" should only apply to companies that are not monopolies.

Due to network effects there is no legitimate competition to YouTube, so YouTube needs to be regulated as a monopoly (unless maybe TikTok has started hosting longform videos instead of just people doing stupid dances).

Yes, but sadly I’m not convinced that “private companies can’t do what they like” would necessarily turn out different.

This isn't a problem, there are alternatives. Attacks that involve choking off access to the banking system are dangerous because starting a up a new bank is legally challenging. Attacks involving deplatforming are just a temporary annoyance, there is already a fairly healthy constellation of alternative platforms growing that can host serious political debate that have grown up in a few short years once these companies went off the rails circa 2020. There are competent competitors out there to at least Twitter & YouTube. Probably Facebook too in time.

YouTube can play politics if they want. It isn't a good thing, but life has survived CNN and Fox News and it doesn't get worse than that for biased publishing.

They're also doing what their regulators in the House and Senate have demanded they do. The line between a private operator exercising their will, and acting on the will of the government, is very thin and quite blurred.

I think of YouTube (and many others) as akin to state media anymore.

fine with me