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Indigenous creators are clashing with YouTube’s and Instagram’s sensitive content bans.
(restofworld.org)
Anglos can't help sexualizing nudity.
this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2024
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Well said.
I was just starting a long text explaining the same ;-)
✅ Accurate ✅ Concise ✅ Relevant
Checks all the boxes for a top tier response here. Cheers.
Oh no! Not the nipple of the wrong gender!
Legend has it that some people spend their entire work day trying to determine if a nipple is a boy nipple or a girl nipple. Could you fucking imagine?
I heard about people photoshopping male ripples onto female breasts
This is my favorite form of protest.
Freedom of expression is a fundamental human right. Fuck the censors.
Edit: this pithy response doesn’t reflect my full understanding of the related nuances here, though it does sum up my feelings on this particular example. See below for further discussion.
Again remember that freedom of expression is freedom to not be punished by the government for that expression.
Private companies are not concerned with your freedoms.
Not saying I agree with how things are, just saying how it is. Only way to tell a private company to fuck off is to not use them.
I’m not talking about the US constitution here. I’m saying it is a fundamental human right regardless of the law. What clothing to wear (or not) is part of that freedom.
Private companies should also not restrict fundamental freedoms. I’m aware they’re allowed to currently.
The content creators freedom to express directly opposes the hosts freedom of affiliation. Not that I want to defend either company but they do have the right to say what is and is not allowed in their spaces using the same idea of "fundamental human rights".
It is either that or we have to agree that "fundamental human rights" cannot exist because one groups rights can override the other on social whim.
Every other creator on the planet has to abide by these rules if they want to remain on these platforms and every creator has an option not to use them.
Real people's rights trump fake corporate "people's" rights every single time.
When does a platform cross the line between "group of people making money hosting other peoples content" to "fake corporate 'people'"? Does everyone working in any corporation automatically lose their rights?
When it incorporates, obviously. That's what incorporation is! You're trading the rights you get as a full-liability general partnership for the privileges of limited liability and separated tax treatment.
It is the epitome of entitlement to demand those privileges without giving society anything back in return.
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The EU protects the free speech rights of users from abuse from platforms, and US conservatives have argued that platforms should have similar regulations.
https://www.coe.int/en/web/freedom-expression/freedom-of-expression-and-information
While what you're describing is the current legal reality in the US, This argument very much isn't settled.
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Frankly, I was mostly mouthing off here, not trying to voice deep moral reasoning but I appreciate your thoughtful reply. I’m actually not sure that fundamental human rights do exist—at least not in all circumstances. As you point out, they sometimes conflict and we need to adjudicate whose rights are more fundamental in a given situation.
You have a good point and I generally agree that there does exist a tension here. I think where it breaks down is when a platform becomes so large and dominant that there isn’t really any significant alternative. I think morally, this shifts my reasoning away from just a collection of individuals deciding what they want on their platform towards an almost state-like entity. And with that power dynamic I am much more skeptical of their unilateral authority to control what is or isn’t posted on their platform. Given the size and structure of YouTube, it makes more sense to think of it as space that belongs to and should be managed by the community and with respect for individual rights of expression. And I feel strongly that non-sexual nudity is not only not harmful, but that it is very harmful to repress, as we see in this specific example.
The issue is that when companies are able to get large enough to control the virtual town square, them censoring people has the same impact as the government censoring people. And especially given the fact that they're all companies held by literally millions of people, who don't get input into the speech allowed on the platform, allowing them the "freedom" to restrict speech how they see fit doesn't make sense.
You don't have the option to not use major platforms and have your voice heard, because they've done the work to make it virtually impossible.
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I don't think freedoms are opposed here. Creators have the freedom to express themselves that freedom just doesn't force anyone to give them a platform. They can use their own or another one that's willing to host their content, which there are many, and then if they, creators or platform, are legally punished it would be a violation of their freedom of expression.
There is not a fundamental right to use other people's platform for your expression. That's not what freedom of expression means.
I reject the premise that YouTube belongs to the executives or shareholders at Alphabet. It is a community platform at this point, and its management should reflect that.
If Alphabet happened to own an entire city I would also oppose their right to restrict expression there. Once a space, physical or digital, comes to be used in certain ways, it should no longer anyone’s personal property.
You are just rejecting reality then. You've said YouTube or other big social media to be the 'virtual town squares' but they are not, they are virtual malls. Also real life town squares can have rules imposed by the town council too.
They have plenty of other places to go with their content, some platforms aren't for them and that's ok. But they don't want to express themselves shouting from a soapbox in the town square, they want to sell their content in the mall and these particular malls just don't sell that kind of product.
I guess I need to say this again: I’m talking about the way things should work, not how they do currently. Sure, it’s totally legal for private companies to ban any content they want to. And in some societies, the king can legally murder people. The legality of those situations is not synonymous with their morality.
If you are arguing that legally, YouTube is permitted to remove this content, you’ve misunderstood what this thread is about. If you’re arguing they should be allowed to do this, then please focus your statements on that topic.
By the way, I think private malls are also pretty questionable. Community space should be managed by the community, and it should be managed with respect for individual freedoms. But this is not really a comparable situation unless there was a mall that hosted a huge proportion of the products being sold. Exclusion from this mall, even if there are minor alternatives, is not just a matter of personal preference. It’s harmful to be excluded if that’s where everyone is.
As far as rules in town squares: of course. But these rules are typically determined democratically and are limited so as to respect human freedom. That’s what I’m asking for in this case as well. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be rules at all.
I know what you meant and I agree.
For some reason Americans only understand something and can have an opinion it if it is written in their constitution.
I think a big part of it is trauma from trump and his enablers. Honestly, a few years ago my sentiments might have been more similar to the people criticizing me but more thought made me realize how dangerous it is to leave this power in a small number of unaccountable people.
Won’t one party always have restricted freedom of expression in this situation? The private company wants to express themselves freely by curating the content on their social media platform. The individuals wants to express themselves by posting material of themselves with less clothes than the company wants. These both seem to me as entities wanting to express themselves freely. Which freedom are you most willing to limit?
And if you argue that the freedom of an individual should be valued more than the freedom of a private company, should individual people owning websites have their freedom of curation/expression limited?
I think these mega-platforms are way too different from an individual’s website to make that equivalence. The dominant social media companies are, as Elon Musk eloquently put it before shitting all over his own moral principles, more akin to a town square than a back yard. The fact that they are privately owned is a corruption resulting from our authoritarian legal structure—it doesn’t make them morally equivalent to a website I use and produce by myself.
YouTube is a place that tolerates almost any viewpoint or type of content. No one thinks that they actively support or endorse this content. In fact, US law explicitly exempts them from being responsible for it. If that’s the case, why should we grant them the authority to decide what should or shouldn’t be posted there?
Now, there is certainly content, in contrast to non-sexual nudity, that does direct harm, and I support the removal of such content. But either way, I don’t think YouTube deserves the unilateral authority to decide what that looks like. I’d much rather see it managed communally and democratically.
Participation in any community demands some level of censorship or else there would literally be CP on youtube. The problem is that the decision making behind the administration of censorship should be better democratized instead of being decided by advertiser's attempting to divine the median consumer's level of tolerance.
I agree, I was overly broad with this comment. But I think that even community management needs to be constrained from interfering with human expression when there is no harm being done. And non-sexual nudity is clearly not harmful.
Well said. It's impossible to be a free speech absolutist without condoning some pretty heinous forms of human expression. But you're right that the proper ethical yardstick is whether any meaningful human expression causes demonstrable harm.
Non-sexual nudity is definitely not harmful.
Platforms exist in a cultural context. When cultures mesh, the platform has to
Pick a culture, or take the superset of norms of all cultures and the most permissive set, or most restrict set.
The big platforms like money and don't like controversy so they take they decide to pick the culture with the most money.
okay so they should just get on the fediverse
That would be nice!
Correct.
Another reason to not use big media, but to use the fediverse instead.
Big media = big reach, compromises made. Fediverse = tiny reach, fewer compromises made. I can see why Indigenous folks choose the former over the latter.
Okay where is False?
Welcome true, hope you enjoy your stay!
This is actually my second account :)
I deleted my first account after hearing about lemmy privacy issues and then I recreated my account to start fresh.
I am using every reddit alternative I know currently, hopefully one of them go mainstream.
Lemmy's in a pretty good place these days, if there's any hangup to more adoption it's the hurdle of understanding federation as a concept and the big time sink of building your subscription list at the beginning. As much as I hated Reddit's default list of subs I kinda think Lemmy could use something similar to help onboard new users more effectively.
I think it needs more of a home page compared to what Lemmy has. Shows newer subs to more people. Also an option to limit how much political stuff you see, thats what scares a lot of ppl off.
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