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Comment by phatfish | Hacker News Reader

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.

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