They didn't say they were going to start removing videos with illegal content, they already do that. They said that they were going to start removing videos that don't break any rules, yet the company deems them unsavory. Which is incredibly frustrating since 1) YT has become the center of our changing culture, and 2) not everyone lines up with the PC Californian culture that dominates large multinational corporations.
They didn't say they would remove the videos, instead they will display an "interstitial warning and they will not be monetised, recommended or eligible for comments or user endorsements." Which is not even on the level of a shadow ban, as practiced e.g. on HN.
I wonder what effect Google's wagging finger and implied scolding from an interstitial will have on people who stumble across a video they like but is branded as naughty.
I find it an interesting question because:
A) Not every video branded as culturally unacceptable will be. Not every video is as bad as the worst-case hypothetical used to justify the content classification.
The landscape of cultural attitudes differ from California-based content minders. The categorization can be flat out wrong, there will undoubtedly be a small percentage of videos that even the minders see as mis-classified.
B) Social interventionist policies can - and often do - backfire.
e.g.: Teens that deliberately seek out taboo. The allure of R movies, M games, Explicit Lyrics, and underage binge drinking can cause them to live a period of their life less well-adjusted than if that content wasn't aggressively filtered from their lives in the first place.
If they do that, they might as well remove the videos, since they have the same goal in mind. Look at the quarantined subreddits on Reddit. While the company gets to say it allows free speech, it basically removed those subreddits from existence, thus successfully controlling the narrative. Do we really want large corporations to intentionally guide the direction of our culture? Personally, I don't. In the end, a corporation would guide it in a direction that favors itself and its donors.
