People can theoretically switch from one social network to another, however taking their friends with them is less easy.
If you make your living making videos on YouTube, and want to move to another service, most of your audience isn't going to come along. Being able to publicly post your videos is pointless if nobody watches them.
YouTube isn't the only seller of megaphones, but they're the only one that matters. When they have an effective monopoly on audience, network effects will make it impossible for anyone else to compete.
They are the only one that matters because of superior products, innovation, or business acumen. Obtaining a monopoly in this way is legal [0].
The argument here seems to be that because "unpopular speech" is not being spread through the market-leader media site, that free speech is being restricted. This sounds really similar to the "Fairness Doctrine" [1], and has the same pitfalls: it forces businesses to devote their resources, risk their brand, and jeopardize their ad dollars to promote speech that their patrons disagree with.
If YouTube were a government run enterprise using public money, absolutely -- everyone gets a megaphone. But YouTube's legal obligation is to shareholders and anything that forces them to act against that is not sound policy.
Those are fair points. By that logic, though, it's reasonable to say that there shouldn't be Net Neutrality regulation.
Let's say Spectrum doesn't like a certain service, say, LiveLeak. We've established that a business shouldn't have to devote resources to promoting something that its shareholders disagree with. It would, then, be reasonable for it to refuse its customers access to LiveLeak, right?
>By that logic, though, it's reasonable to say that there shouldn't be Net Neutrality regulation.
The logic here depends on scale. YouTube is a service among services; ISPs are utilities that provide access to other services. It's much easier to set up your own video streaming website than it is to set up an ISP. As it stands, there no risk for ISPs with the content they carry, since their subscribers have no choice to leave them. They do not risk their brand or advertising dollars. That is why they ought to be neutral to the content they carry.
If there comes a time in America where an ISP risks losing subscribers to their competitor because they allow LiveLeak or Porn or dragon ball z gifs, let 'em go wild with the filters.
Just because someone ought to do something, doesn't mean it should be codified into law. Laws should be made to solve an actual problem that people are already having, not to force someone to do what we think they should.
Also, YouTube isn't just a service among services. They are, effectively, the only service. YouTube's subscribers have no better option, because there isn't much content anywhere else; YouTube's content creators have no better option, because there aren't any subscribers anywhere else.
It's a chicken-and-egg problem, that nobody has been able to solve. Coming up with $200k to start an ISP is easier than breaking into online video streaming.
I think our difference in opinion here can be summarized as what constitutes “freedom.” You mention that YouTube is effectively the only game in town because it’s difficult to get subscribers or views for speech. But that is not what is protected as freedom of speech.
There are other video platforms. Vimeo. PornHub. Facebook. Twitter. Uploading your videos to a private server and sending out links. Those things are not restricted, and those lack of restrictions mean free speech is still alive and well in the age of YouTube removals.
You are arguing not for the right to speak, but the right to be heard and the right to have that speech monetized, none of which is or should be guaranteed.
In the US, we use the attention market as a proxy for government restriction on speech. In the same way that the government should not be in the business of arbitrarily shutting down unpopular speech, it should not be in the business of forcing corporations to promote it by using their resources.
>In the same way that the government should not be in the business of arbitrarily shutting down unpopular speech, it should not be in the business of forcing corporations to promote it by using their resources.
I would agree. My real argument is that this should be applied consistently. There is no material difference between a content provider, such as YouTube, and an ISP. If one is required to carry content that they don't want to, both should be required to.
I agree that it can be painful, but there are parallels that can be drawn. Dick's Sporting Goods just stopped selling certain kinds of guns. Those gun manufacturers can still sell their guns, but just not at Dick's, so they're losing part of their potential audience.
There was a story a month or two ago about a publisher that went out of business because their whole business model (apparently) revolved around pushing their content on Facebook and then Facebook changed their newsfeed algorithm. I think that's a risk for anyone relying on a given channel for their product.
If you make your living making videos on YouTube, and want to move to another service, most of your audience isn't going to come along. Being able to publicly post your videos is pointless if nobody watches them.