• skisnow@lemmy.ca
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    4 days ago

    Pre-internet there was a certain amount of natural limit on how much bullshit one could spread, because you had to print physical newspapers and find distributors, which meant that you had to have a name and a business address people could find you at.

    With 2000s Internet this limiter was removed, but counterbalanced by everyone being able to present their own side for the marketplace of ideas.

    Now in 2025 we’re in the worst of both worlds, where a tiny number of trillion-dollar companies control 98% of Internet traffic and are making it clear that they have no qualms abusing that power to shape public discourse.

    • Samskara@sh.itjust.works
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      4 days ago

      You can still make your own website and publish whatever you like (local laws may apply).

      • skisnow@lemmy.ca
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        4 days ago

        Only in the same way that you could always write your own newsletter and hand it out in the street. I feel like you’re wilfully missing the point there.

        • Samskara@sh.itjust.works
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          4 days ago

          Big platforms have a lot of power. They need to control the content published for reasons ranging from following laws to pleasing advertisers. These decisions always have political implications.

          • Tangent5280@lemmy.world
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            4 days ago

            Yeah, the point is these fucks shouldn’t have ever been allowed to be this big in the first plar.

  • 0_o7@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    5 days ago

    If you’ve been on the internet for a decade or two and can’t find news you clearly remember that happened about the big corp, tech or the government, you know these ghouls work together to shape a narrative. They scrub the internet clean of it.

    These companies (big tech and news corps) being a monopolies isn’t a coincidence, authoritarian governments like it when they have direct access to narrative control.

    Needless to say, archive everything you think could disappear, in multiple places, and possibly in regions of their geopolitical rivals.

      • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Sometimes it might be getting scrubbed. Sometimes it just gets buried under other bullshit. I’ve had to run the same few keywords in different combos to eventually find the article I was looking for because so many other things with the same keywords happened since. The real thing that hampers this is how Google/youtube removed search by year ranges.

        • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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          4 days ago

          some channel i was following was under all that, it was totally buried by yt, because they are loudmouths, i used to followed this channel that jokes about news, but they turn a little to magatty over the pandemic for peoples taste, and i had fun wathching thier downfall which was totally preventable on the main sub(which the channel owners was so afraid they tried take the subreddit talking about them)

  • sk1nnym1ke@piefed.social
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    5 days ago

    Can someone let that reporter know that PeerTube and other YouTube alternatives already exist.

    Yes there are less viewers comparing to YouTube but at least the content willl be not removed.

    • SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org
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      5 days ago

      Content like that should definitely go on multiple platforms. Ironically the right is much better at this, cause they are used to getting deplatformed.

    • dil@lemmy.zip
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      5 days ago

      they could even host it themselves on their own hardware ensuring it stays up

      • iegod@lemmy.zip
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        5 days ago

        This really isn’t a viable long term solution for most individuals.

  • Chozo@fedia.io
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    5 days ago

    No community guidelines violated

    soldiers shooting civilians, including children

    I mean, it’s right there. YouTube ain’t LiveLeak.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Coverage of the Tienanmen Square Massacre is on YouTube and includes exactly this.

      Hell, it’s practically a meme to shout “Nobody in China knows about Tienanmen Square!” at the villainous Lemmy Tankies, precisely because the Chinese government has a policy of taking down media coverage while the US media proudly reproduces it at every opportunity.

      Why would YouTube, a company that has repeatedly expressed its commitment to breaking down the barriers of government censorship and oppression, suddenly decide it needs to censor a state-sanctioned massacre of civilians? What would lead us to conclude that the genocide in Gaza should be treated differently than the Tienanmen Square massacre?

      • GlitchyDigiBun@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        I wonder if we could pressure the BBC or PBS into pushing these videos to force Google/Israel to do this even more blatantly.

      • 87Six@lemmy.zip
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        5 days ago

        repeatedly expressed its commitment to breaking down the barriers of government censorship

        That was only and will only ever be done when it’s in favor of whatever government reigns over the company.

        Displaying the Tiananmen Square Massacre is in line with the USA gov. Displaying Israeli crimes is not.

        Don’t be naive. Youtube and Google don’t give half a shit to go against censorship.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          Don’t be naive.

          Hardly naive. Just pointing out the obvious.

          YouTube clearly has no problem hosting snuff films with the correct political valence.

    • TheEmpireStrikesDak@thelemmy.club
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      5 days ago

      YouTube has no problem with multiple different ai generated gory videos of Rebecca Madeupname being mauled alive by an orca. Every time I opened a private window, one of these was recommended. No age restriction, nothing.

      They have no problem with porn bots spamming family friendly channels with pro-paedo comments, even though they use the same avatars and messages so should be easy to filter out. Videos promoting dangerous hacks stay up even after multiple reports. They’re fine monetising reaction channels that are nothing more than freebooting other people’s work.

      So YouTube’s tos really comes down to: it’s fine if it makes money.

      I wish there was proper competition, even if it was run by another awful company like Microsoft or amazon. AFAIK no other platform offers monetisation like yt does, so people stay and put up with their crap.

      (Personally I’m hoping to reupload mf stuff to peertube if I ever come out this slump.)

  • Soup@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    The fuck does Google even get out of this? At some point I really just do not understand why people are so aggressively supporting Israel’s genocide. Like, the fervor behind their support is crazy for all people who aren’t directly responsible for creating the problem and who could so easily just not support this shit.

    I know there’s money involved but this is ridiculous.

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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      4 days ago

      money, MOSSAD/IDF paid google millions to spread propaganda ads, and recently israeli signed a deal with google for its AI services(1.2bn), and also prevent other nations that requests data from said ai services when accusing IDF soldiers. googles video AI is very useful making alot of propaganda, the ones that been showing up on shorts alot.

  • PearOfJudes@lemmy.ml
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    5 days ago

    Now google doesn’t just steal your data! but they back a genocide too!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA

  • Fleur_@aussie.zone
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    5 days ago

    We really live in a world where “YouTube took down my warcrime videos” is bigger news than “there are warcrimes being committed”

    • morphballganon@lemmynsfw.com
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      5 days ago

      It’s not bigger news. But it’s important supplemental news to know that large corporations are complicit in the war crimes.

  • Avicenna@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    google is waaaaaaaaay beyond “don’t be evil”. Right now, for them any kind of statement is just a temporary transportation between their position and more tech monopoly.

  • Reygle@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Google’s slogan 15 years ago
    Don’t be Evil

    Google’s slogan today
    Don’t be Evil

  • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    LiveLeak was killed for a reason. You might not like what it was, but it would have been fine with hosting these things.

  • DandomRude@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    This is why the world is so terrible: centralization of capital and thus also attention in the hands of unscrupulous monsters.

    In Western countries, we may convince ourselves that we are better than the neglected Third World countries because of all our technology. That is not the case—in fact, the opposite is true, because our inhumane rulers have incomparably more power.

  • ceenote@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    I have to wonder: did they seriously mean it when they made “don’t be evil” their company motto way back in the day? I’d be open to the idea that they were sincere at the time and then had their brains broken and their souls corroded by extreme wealth.

    Or, maybe they were being dishonest even back then, and that mercenary attitude is what you need to succeed in Corporate America.

      • CriticalMiss@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Don’t mean to burst your bubble but if you’ll look at what the founders of Google are saying today you’ll find that they’re on par with Googles current leadership. Then again, we can’t know if they were like this from the start or if it’s just the wealth and power and corrupted them.

        • Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club
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          5 days ago

          Google went public & since before they did that they were (had to be) absolutely dead-set to become a monopoly & exploit that position via experience enshitification (but they had to first make sure they de facto didn’t have any competition - launching gmail helped a lot).

          There was still a period of a few years where Google was saying “we won’t show ads” but was valued on the market into billions (whilst having no profit but promising extreme revenue growth any year now - they were being valued on their potential for ads).

          Much like Uber - the strategy is to shovel enough capital for the company to undercut the competition by any means necessary & then squeeze the market.

          And founders kept stocks, so they’ll say they want Google to kill all puppies in the world, slowly & painfully, if it nets them even more free wealth.

          (Free I mean without any labor, just capital ownership.)

    • TheJesusaurus@piefed.ca
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      5 days ago

      It’s difficult to describe the world in the pre-social media age. There was a time when Google was just a cool software company building cool things, and the don’t be evil motto was probably genuine.

      Software used to be an thing that you would buy and use if you needed it. It came on a disk. It wasn’t this ever pervasive network of always on tools living in our homes and devices working to cultivate the ultimate consumer unit

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      did they seriously mean it when they made “don’t be evil” their company motto way back in the day?

      When they weren’t raking in tens of billions of dollars in government surveillance contracts and state-sponsored media ad buys? Probably.

      But Google is under completely different management in 2025 relative to what it had at the outset in 1998. Perhaps the company’s commitment to “Don’t Be Evil” was violated the day they IPO’d. But Larry Page and Sergey Brin aren’t in the driver’s seats anymore. They sold their souls to join the oligarchy. Perhaps they assumed they could do more with an infinite line of credit than a rising star social media company. Or perhaps Google simply wouldn’t be allowed as the global leader in search without spreading its cheeks and admitting corrupt bureaucracies to puppet it from below.

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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      5 days ago

      There was a time in the early 2000’s when tech companies got their customers by being better than the alternatives instead of just being obscenely wealthy and buying out all competition.

    • Barbecue Cowboy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 days ago

      They removed the old motto from everywhere official many years ago. Don’t be evil… Until you get enough market share that you don’t have to care anymore.