>By that definition, every conceivable grouping of human beings that has any sort of leadership has a government, but that definition is so broad as to be useless.
Well, that is in accordance with the dictionary definition.
The bigger and more powerful the grouping becomes, the more practical the definition becomes. Which is why it could be a useful designation for an entity with psychological control over 2,000,000,000+ people, but not so much for a football league with ~100 people (though technically it still can be called a governing body).
You quoted that dictionary definition in another comment:
>Government: the governing body of a nation, state, or community.
Just because something purports to be a dictionary doesn't mean its definitions are useful or correct. That's a poor definition because it covers a large number of things that nobody ever uses the word "government" to describe, such as the football club. This is much more precise (from Webster): "the organization, machinery, or agency through which a political unit exercises authority and performs functions and which is usually classified according to the distribution of power within it"
The definition you cherry picked still seems to describe the management of Facebook. What specific part of the definition do you think excludes FB from being called a government?
>nobody ever uses the word "government" to describe, such as the football club.
FIFA manages football teams, and it describes itself as a government:
>The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA; French for "International Federation of Association Football") is an association which describes itself as an international governing body of association football, futsal, and beach soccer.
I picked that definition because it's precise, whereas yours was vague. Not all definitions are of equal quality, and choosing a good one over a poor one is not "cherry picking".
Specifically, Facebook is not managed by a "political unit". It's managed by its owners, who have authority over it because it is their property and they have property rights. Governments do not own their citizens. They only have authority because citizens agree, whether voluntarily or through intimidation, to respect that authority.
And no, FIFA does not call itself a government. It calls itself a "governing body" in the text you just quoted. That is not the same thing, and their choice of wording is deliberate. I will concede that they are much, much closer to being a government than Facebook, though, by virtue of their organizational structure and how they derive their authority.
Not that that's relevant to my previous example of a football club. We both know I meant a group of people who get together after work to play for fun, and that the people "in charge" of that are obviously not a government. Claiming that that's false because it's not 100% true for FIFA is a pretty egregious straw man.
>Specifically, Facebook is not managed by a "political unit". It's managed by its owners, who have authority over it because it is their property and they have property rights. Governments do not own their citizens. They only have authority because citizens agree, whether voluntarily or through intimidation, to respect that authority.
You're comparing apples (FB code) to oranges (citizens). A fair comparison would be users to citizens, or platform code to national territory.
Facebook does not own it's users just like a government doesn't own it citizens. A nation owns the land within it's boundaries just like FB owns the code on it's platform.
>And no, FIFA does not call itself a government. It calls itself a "governing body" in the text you just quoted. That is not the same thing
Again, a government is literally defined as governing body, even thougg you don't like it. Do you think there is a government that doesn't have a governing body?
>We both know I meant a group of people who get together after work to play for fun, and that the people "in charge" of that are obviously not a government. Claiming that that's false because it's not 100% true for FIFA is a pretty egregious straw man.
Claiming that we cannot call Facebook a government because a local football club is not typically called a government is itself an egregious strawman; apples to oranges again. FIFA is a far more comparable to an international entity like Facebook, isn't it?
Your ability to twist my words into the argument you wish I was making instead of the one I'm actually making is impressive. Infuriating, but impressive.
I will try to make this as simple as possible.
Facebook owns its platform (code, hardware, etc.). I own a house.
If someone posts on Facebook, they have the right to remove that post. That is their right over their property (the platform). If someone graffitis the wall of my house, I have the right to remove that graffiti. That is my right over my property (my house).
If Facebook wishes to punish the person (say they posted something illegal), they have to invoke the authority of the actual government. Facebook has no authority over people beyond how they interact with Facebook's property. If I wish to punish the graffiti artist, I must invoke the authority of the actual government. I have no authority over people beyond how they interact with my property. The government does, even though the country that the government serves is not its "property".
That is the difference between property ownership and governance, and it is why neither I nor Facebook are governments.
I don't know how I can make this any simpler, and I don't wish to waste any more time engaging with the umpteenth strawman you're going to throw up, so I'm going to leave it at that.
Définitions seem like pointless pedantry to me. People in this thread are using the term "government" in an usual way. They are describing a system, and a government is a good simplification of what they mean.
1. Doing this could basically cause the same result, as the cost of more support could easily make it so that they need to start charging or denying who can be a content creator. Neither of us have numbers, so it's all just guesses, but I'd be willing to wager that spending a TON of money and training on new CSRs wouldn't really change all that much, especially when telling someone explicitly "you were banned because X" is almost never a good idea, all this would do (in my opinion) is create a much more expensive, slower, and more annoying version of the same problem.
2. I think this would help, but it's not going to prevent mentally ill people from being mentally ill. They aren't going to say "oh well this removal was justified and was consistent with the others", they are going to find a perceived wrongdoing and will latch on to that, because they are mentally ill.
3. I've come to the conclusion that this is literally impossible. You can't be politically neutral. People aren't politically neutral, and therefore the things they create or moderate can't be politically neutral (whether they mean to do it or otherwise). Even algorithms that are created by people can show biases.
WRT #3, the problem seems to be moreso consciously executed covert and overt political censorship/demonetization of undesireable speech rather than the problem of unconscious biases of developers. It's as simple as refraining from censorship
But when "refraining from censorship" ends with advertisers (your main source of income) pulling out, your options become "censor videos" or "shutdown the service".
>But when "refraining from censorship" ends with advertisers (your main source of income) pulling out, your options become "censor videos" or "shutdown the service".
False dichotomy, there are other business models that don't require selling out to the whims of advertisers.
And YouTube is trying out those other business models, however the extreme vast majority of users don't want to pay, and the content creators already have the option to self-host, self-fund, or even use YouTube un-monetized and setup and run their own in-video ads.
YouTube is mainly an ad supported product, and just because other business models exist doesn't mean that you can call curation of the content "censorship".
This would be the exact same situation if say a website used a "subscription" model where you paid per month, then the credit-card processor decided that the content was "unethical" and dropped the video service as a customer. And that's not theoretical, it's happened to many porn hosting websites out there.
"Not playing the game" isn't an option, no matter what at the end of the day you need to "censor" some stuff (even if just to avoid getting in legal trouble), and that "censorship" will always be more strict than absolutely necessary, as the risk for a "not removed but bad video" far outweighs the downsides of a "removed but ultimately not bad video".
We are in the golden age of information in my opinion. It has never been easier to self-host and self-fund your own content in a way that is basically uncensorable. Use it! But don't go trying to change or destroy other platforms that explicitly don't want that content, or want to pursue another business model. This isn't a zero-sum game.
2 is the key. It’s not just “demonetization” it’s seemingly arbitrary demonetization. It seems like political censorship to some people, to others it seems random and capricious. Nobody seems to have any clue as to how it all works and the natural result is that people take it personally. Transparency costs nothing and scales infinitely.
>shares nothing with the China being discussed right now.
Seems like apples to oranges, assuming the implied comparison is with western post-industrial age nations, which began industrializing centuries ago, as compared to decades ago with China.
Well, that is in accordance with the dictionary definition.
The bigger and more powerful the grouping becomes, the more practical the definition becomes. Which is why it could be a useful designation for an entity with psychological control over 2,000,000,000+ people, but not so much for a football league with ~100 people (though technically it still can be called a governing body).