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Comment by traceroute66 | Hacker News Reader

> He spends no time debugging, no time communicating, no time looking for somewhere to land.

Yup. He spent most of his time doing absolutely nothing, just maintaining back-pressure on the yoke and holding the aircraft in the stall.

I suppose at least he was lucky enough to pick an aircraft with docile stall characteristics. Somehow he does not strike me as the sort of person who could manage to recover from a wing-drop and induced spin.

Frankly shame on YouTube for allowing the video to remain on their platform

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> Frankly shame on YouTube for allowing the video to remain on their platform

I was nodding until this bit... why do you think YouTube should censor this? It's a real video of a real thing that he did (which he misrepresents the circumstances of). I could possibly get on board with "put an explanatory note next to it" or "don't let him get ad revenue from it", but what possible reason would there be for deleting it?

There doesn't need to be a reason, if YouTube want's to remove a video from their platform they are free to do so.

But why would YouTube want to do that? What he did is obviously wrong, dangerous, and stupid, but still I see no reason from YouTube's side to remove the video.

Perhaps they would remove it if they are concerned their platform could be incentivizing wrong, dangerous or stupid behavior and they worry about the brand damage that does or have ethical problems profiting off that.

This is what I was thinking. I didn't find the video here on HN. A few weeks ago my 11 year old son told me about it. Like a lot of kids his age, becoming a YouTuber is aspirational, and his reaction was "that is crazy" but it was also "this guy just raised the ante on Mr. Beast." It's only going to make some YouTubers try to top it with some kind of dangerous Johnny Knoxville-type stunt.

"Wrong" = criminal (?) maybe. Though this guy hasn't actually been prosecuted and may well never be.

But if you're going to ban dangerous/stupid video someone has to make that determination. And you can be sure that there are a ton of activities that are dangerous/stupid in the eyes of some people (even understandably so). BASE jumping, wingsuits, really any kind of extreme sports, stuff with explosives, etc.

> It's only going to make some YouTubers try to top it with some kind of dangerous Johnny Knoxville-type stunt.

People were doing stupid stuff before YouTube existed. As long as it's legal (which this stunt was not) who cares? Teach your son why he shouldn't do that kind of stuff instead of turning to censorship.

Nowhere did I advocate censorship. But I do think it should be illegal because this stunt could have started a wildfire if the plane had started burning.

“Son of Sam” laws in the US prohibit individuals from publicly profiting off their crimes.

Then demonetize it, don’t remove it.

I might be missing the point, but I’m not getting this glorification of stupid acts.

It is annoying to see idiots get a lot of attention, but really, it is not a glorification of a stupid act, it is just a video of one. Furthermore, it would live on in all of those videos that point out just how stupid it was, unless Youtube also removes those - but they are informative, I would say.

What glorification? This is a thing that happened, and it's incredibly newsworthy. Prevent him from profiting off the video and leave it up. There is no reason to do anything further from YouTube's perspective.

How is "treat this video like any other video" (i.e. do nothing) a "glorification"? There are tons of videos of incredibly stupid and dangerous acts on YouTube.

I'm generally in favor of idiots that do illegal things then posting video evidence of them online. I don't think it glorifies the act if YouTube then demonetized the video with a note & link back to the FAA's ruling. Showing stupid things & their consequences seems reasonable.

Would you feel the same if this became the top watched video for weeks, with a lively comment section mostly leaning towards "omg that is so cool! I want to top this!!!"?

I wouldn't - which is why I don't mind if it's taken down.

I'm hesitant to advocate taking something down. I'm not saying it should never happen, but this doesn't cross the threshold for me. In this instance the video creator wasn't encouraging people to do this and the audience response wasn't to jump in and do the same thing. Also videos that would fit this category-- filmed evidence of illegal activity & subsequent consequences (which I think Google should add to the video)-- are not likely to become popular in the thought experiment you describe. If they did, maybe I'd revisit my opinion.

On the other hand, if content is encouraging people to do harmful or dangerous things then that becomes a different issue. I'm less uncomfortable with YouTube trying to stop Tide Pod Challenge videos which were basically encouraging such activity: The first two weeks of 2018 saw about as many poisoning reports from this as most entire years before then. [1]

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220412042754/https://time.com/...

The existence of something is not glorifying it.

That doesn't mean the video has to be taken off.

Simply collect the ill-gotten gains from the perpetrator. The video seems like evidence anyway, should be part of the public record.

YouTube hosts lots of crime that gets monetized.

That's at least 90% false in law and practice.

https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1242/son-of-sam-law...

Very good for actually researching and not just commenting because of raw emotions. Honestly a breath of fresh air to be honest.

Plus... he has yet to be charged with, let alone convicted of, a crime?

> he was lucky enough to pick an aircraft with docile stall characteristics

Evidence suggests he may have bought the plane explicitly for this stunt. He's an experienced sky diver, so I imagine he knows what kind of plane is good for a pilot looking to bail.

He spends most of his time worrying about taping it for YouTube.

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