Recently, the YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said in a news interview that the site would ban videos that contradict WHO guidelines, in fact any information that is ‘medically unsubstantiated’.
This sort of content ruins everyone’s online experience by polluting search results, gaming recommendations and fooling the credulous among us. But nevertheless, this got me thinking about censorship, and how one can make one’s online writing, recordings or videos resistant to being taken down.
If someone else is hosting your content, you have quite limited control on its availability and access. This goes for videos on YouTube, writings on Medium, newsletters on Substack, podcasts on iTunes, even apps on the iTunes App Store or Google Play Store. These companies’ terms are opaque, constantly changing, are vague and often inconsistently applied.
Content on your own domain and hosting is more resilient. No central authority can take it down, and it won’t disappear if the service – say, Medium – goes out of business or is bought. Certainly no algorithms will run on your self-hosted content, determining what is and isn’t a violation of the current terms.
However, publish something objectionable enough and it goes viral, there will be consequences. Governments may pressure ISPs into blocking your domain, rendering it inaccessible. Search engines may refuse to index it or will demote it in their results. This frequently happens with torrent discovery and pornography websites. You can always get a new domain, but it’s a game of whack-a-mole. There’s also the question of getting word out about your new domain.
(Part 2)