RE: 5 Compelling Reasons Why The Youtube Shooting Has Disappeared From Headlines
What would you suggest? Laws forcing companies to publish your stuff? More government regulation? That won't work out well in the long run. It's up to you to reach the masses. It's not up to youtube or facebook to do it for you. How did you reach the masses before those platforms were available? They haven't been around all that long. You have a right to free speech, you don't have a right to someone else's platform to speak on. Reaching the masses is your responsibility, not that of youtube or facebook.
And no, youtube has no monopoly, effective or otherwise. They just happen to be the most successful at the moment. It won't last forever. Alternatives to YouTube include DailyMotion, DTube, Vimeo, Flickr, Metacafe, Photobucket, Veoh, SlideShare, etc. And those are just the ones I came up with off the top of my head and on the first page of an internet search. I could name many more competitors to facebook including the one we are using right now. If Youtube only wants to publish videos about ponies, they can do so. If they only want to publish far left wing political commentary then they can do that too.
Either they need to stop pretending they are a neutral platform and make a clear TOS that is followed, or they need to actually be neutral. Anything else is effectively an abuse of their monopolistic position.
As I pointed out, they aren't a monopoly and I don't know that they have made claims of "neutrality", whatever that would mean. If everybody that complained about them stopped using their service they also wouldn't be nearly as successful. Complex laws probably make a clear (and simple) TOS difficult. Do you think their TOS, such as it is, has not been followed?
They absolutely are a monopoly, they have no competitors who come even close to their scale. Neutrality as in not selectively enforcing rules for points of view they don't agree with rather than just enforcing TOS. Their TOS has been repeatedly shown to be violated and they are going to be sued over it as a result of this exact behavior.
Saying that property is theft is a bit of an oxymoron. You can't have theft without property. If they have violated their TOS then a lawsuit is an appropriate response. They are still not a monopoly.
Well that is irrelevant because I never said "property is theft". You can have theft without property, it is called "intellectual property" and it protects the investment used to produce it, but again this has zero to do with my argument and I am not even sure why you are bringing it up. The matter at hand is a violation of TOS which is a CONTRACTUAL violation. As far as being a monopoly, it certainly is: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/monopoly.asp
I don't know why either. I think that was meant to be a response to something else.
But like I said, lawsuits are an appropriate response if they have violated their TOS.
Neither facebook nor youtube have a monopoly. In fact, they are in the same market and are owned by different companies. They don't even sell anything to their users. And as far as competitors, here's a very incomplete list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites
This doesn't include things like Wordpress and Steemit among others or various video sites.
Google+ has more registered users than facebook. Sites like twitter and tumblr while having significantly fewer registered users, still have hundreds of millions each.
They all serve different end user markets, you can argue till you are blue in the face but Youtube/Google is a monopoly by any definition. Just because other options exist doesn't mean they are competitors. The user base of any other video sites combined are a pittance compared to Youtube.
And you can yell "monopoly" all day long but saying it doesn't make it true.