YouTube had the discretion to take down content that harmed users, judge said.

  • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    That could still bleed into analysis of the type of content. If YouTube consistent took down all videos about Islam, for instance, there would be a legitimate case to be made that that would be illegal discrimination on the basis of religion, even if it wasn’t a blanket ban on uploads from Muslims individually.

    That doesn’t apply here, of course, but my point is that YouTube can be considered to be legally obligated to host some content that they might not otherwise want to. While they could probably get away with prohibiting all religious content, they’d be in a messier position if they only blocked a specific one. Civil rights law gets messy fast.

    • Ferk@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      In general terms, I believe each website can limit the scope of the content they host in any way they choose. The same way as how /m/asia can limit itself to Asian content and delete content related to other countries/ethnicities, or how an Islamic streaming service can decide that it will only allow content that respects the Islam, and remove any Christian content (and in the same way, a website might declare itself Christian and remove Islamic content).

      Though in the particular case of Youtube I’m not saying that’s a bad point, but only because of how big of a platform Youtube is. So in a way they could be considered a monopoly, and in that case there might be a reason to think that they should not target any demografic in their content. But I’m not a lawyer and I’m not sure if that’s enough of a legal basis to demand that. I would expect it’s not, though. Specially if we are talking US law which is under which this lawsuit was filled.