Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

The documents from the Snowden leaks were illegally obtained/distributed. How long before that type of stuff is censored?


I'm not disagreeing with you, but at the same time, I don't think that likely the first place to release a major government leak is on YouTube or Reddit. There will always be some platform that's "freer" than some others, and there will always be some that are more moderated.

This may smack of censorship in some ways, and if it was a government agency, it certainly would be. Unfortunately, the core of the problem that a lot of people are dancing around is that we've come to expect private businesses on the Internet to care about anything other than their profits - but that's asking them to violate their corporate morality of "profit at all costs". They're not going to do that; we are either the customer or the product. This is those private companies forcing their moderation policies, so as to continue increasing their userbase and advertising income. Reddit and YouTube/Google are essentially moderated private platforms and if they decided that tomorrow all that could be posted on their sites are cat pictures, they would be well within their rights to do that.


>This may smack of censorship in some ways, and if it was a government agency, it certainly would be

This is a common misconception. Nowhere is it defined that only a government can conduct censorship.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: