YouTube and Reddit roll out new restrictions including channel and sub bans - <AUTHOR> Today Youtube has started to roll out bans on gun sales, accessories and howto channels.  Reddit followed with multiple bans on content including sales of multiple products.
Youtube policy update.
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7667605?hl=en
Intends to sell firearms or certain firearms accessories through direct sales (e.g.,
private sales by individuals) or links to sites that sell these items. These accessories include but may not be limited to accessories that enable a firearm to simulate automatic fire or convert a firearm to automatic fire (e.g., bump stocks, gatling triggers, drop-in auto sears, conversion kits), and high capacity magazines (i.e., magazines or belts carrying more than 30 rounds).
Provides instructions on manufacturing a firearm, ammunition, high capacity magazine, homemade silencers/suppressors, or certain firearms accessories such as those listed above.
This also includes instructions on how to convert a firearm to automatic or simulated automatic firing capabilities.
Shows users how to install the above-mentioned accessories or modifications.
Reddit policy update.
https://np.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/863xcj/new_addition_to_sitewide_rules_regarding_the_use/
We want to let you know that we have made a new addition to our content policy forbidding transactions for certain goods and services. As of today, users may not use Reddit to solicit or facilitate any transaction or gift involving certain goods and services, including:

  * Firearms, ammunition, or explosives;
  * Drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, or any controlled   substances
  * Paid services involving physical sexual contact;
  * Stolen goods;
  * Personal information;
  * Falsified official documents or currency
 <comment><USER2> This is very dismaying to see

I have used Youtube in the past for seeing how to install gun accessories, put guns together, how to fix malfunctions, etc. Watching those videos has made me a more knowledgeable, and hence more responsible gun owner. This is an especially large blow for people who are part of niche communities, like reloading ammo for 100+ year old rifles. A lot of historical content will be lost.

The new youtube rules will also get rid of entertainment channels like Hickock45 and Demolition Ranch (the proceeds of which help subsidize the creator's other channel, Vet Ranch)

I'm also pretty disappointed in Reddit. They made a new admin account yesterday to anonymously post the new rules. I believe this is the first time that's been done for an announcement, usually they're posted by a CEO or a specific individual. /r/gundeals was a fantastic community and I don't know if anything comparable exists elsewhere online. There were lots of links posted by regular users, but when dealers posted themselves they really made an effort to engage with buyers. Crappy vendors/products were usually called out in the comments. Other than optics, I can't imagine why reddit would ban strictly law-abiding communities while allowing illegal and toxic ones to flourish.

<comment><USER3> We seem to be moving from an era when internet censorship was considered bad, to one where "It's OK, we're just censoring this".

I have no sympathy towards gun use - but the principle of large monopolies applying their own morals to censor content seems wrong.

<comment><USER4> I disagree with this, I think it's fine for large web companies to apply their own morals. The problem I have is that they're having their cake and eating it.

To me there are two models:

\- You are a platform, you don't moderate content (although you do respond to law enforcement), you are not responsible for the content on your site.

\- You are a media company, you do moderate content, you are responsible for the content on your site.

Reddit & Youtube want a little from (A) a little from (B). They want the revenue from being a neutral platform, and the control of being a media company to moderate content for PR purposes.

The problem they're facing is that by banning stuff they don't like, they are endorsing everything they don't ban. So for example, at Reddit, Pizzagate is now officially endorsed as a reasonable point of view that Reddit believes is a valid opinion and is worthy of investigation. We know that reddit endorses pizzagate, because reddit moderates their content and decided to allow pizzagate conspiracies.

<comment><USER5> The real reason for these new rules are the advertisers. The more objectionable content you have on your platform, the more difficult it becomes to attract them. Take 4chan as an example: For years they were struggling to find anyone who would want to advertise there, and that is not entirely surprising.

Reddit is apparently also preparing an IPO in the foreseeable future. It would appear they are attempting to make the site more palatable for institutional investors by cleaning up.

<comment><USER6> I wonder how we can effectively punish Reddit for this. If we can cut into their advertising revenue and derail their IPO, that might force them to reverse their position.

<comment><USER7> You can stop using Reddit. That will drive down their advertising revenue.

<comment><USER8> If they can have the best of both worlds, then so can I.

I've enabled my ad blocker on Reddit.

Maybe I'll suggest having it added to our corporate web filters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The more social media applies arbitrary rules to speech, the more likely they are to be regulated as common carriers. This puts a lot of restrictions and "the Internet" was against it.

But these items are not illegal speech (although sometimes).

These are private orgs and can legally ban whatever they want. However, phone companies are private too, but they have regulation controlling what is and is not allowed.

The issue is that banning legal speech is a slippery slope. I imagine how I would respond if YouTube banned howtos on ripping DVDs. They can legally do that and it's based on an illegal activity.

This also opens the door for countries with restrictive laws to forbid speech about what is illegal in China, etc.

<comment><USER10> It seems to me that social media aren't the same as common carriers in that people can very easily switch from one to another.

I saw a headline saying that one gun video channel on YouTube was moving its videos to another site. They will no longer have access to YouTube's audience, but they are still free to post their videos in a publicly-accessible fashion.

<comment><USER11> Just curious, what site is that?

Cody's Lab and AVE, two of the most informative educational channels, already have a crap ton of problems with YouTube (granted AVE pokes the bear with a stick). With the #DeleteFacebook movement in full swing, I'd love to see a #LoseTheTube and go to a platform that promotes free expression but can actually classify stuff correctly (giving the user the power to filter what they don't want to see).

<comment><USER10> I had to go back to find the article, because it was just a headline that appeared in the sidebar of an article I was reading this morning.

This wouldn't appear to be a general solution, they're moving to Pornhub:

[https://www.buzzfeed.com/leticiamiranda/a-gun-demo- youtube-c...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/leticiamiranda/a-gun-demo-youtube- channel-with-24-million-subscribers-is)

(The slug in that URL is wrong. They changed the headline to be "24 million views".)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is due to US Section 230 legislation changing this week, spurred by the actions and legal battles of backpage.com

[https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2018/03/21/59...](https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2018/03/21/591622450/section-230-a-key- legal-shield-for-facebook-google-is-about-to-change)

"The Backpage saga has galvanized lawmakers to act on bills amending Section 230 with the goal of stemming online sex trafficking. The legislation allows more state and civil lawsuits against websites related to online sex trafficking, for "knowingly assisting, supporting or facilitating" crimes.

The Senate passed the bill Wednesday, sending it to President Trump for his signature. The White House has supported the legislation."

And the most important quote:

"If the technology companies do not wake up to their responsibilities — and use the power 230 gives them — to better protect the public against sex trafficking and countries that try to hack our political system, you bet that companies can expect (this legislation) will not be the last challenge for them."

<comment><USER13> How does Section 230 relate to banning videos about completely legal firearms accessories?

<comment><USER14> Section 230 protects against all kinds of collateral and contributory liability that a publisher of information might have, not just direct liability for publishing content that is illegal without regard to context.

Weakening 230 means that online services are closer to needing to treat everything that crosses the platform as the kind of legal risk it would be if it were produced and published directly by the company, considering, including in the worst case of conduct that people might allege it contributed to, with the consideration of how attractive the firm is as a deep pockets piñata for lawsuits where the other side has little to lose and much (even if it is unlikely) to gain.

Which is the whole problem 230 was adopted to solve, but conduct by publishers _who were found liable even with 230 in place, proving it doesn 't need to be weakened to address the conduct_ has, nevertheless, provided a pretext for an attack on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I read the craft beer forums got hit hard, since they cant sell alcohol. Also cigars trading and buy clubs are now banned.

The finally got all the dark net, and idtheft, shoplifting subs.

Sexsells is still up, but thats a political discussion sub, not for advertising.

I know my local WA_Gun sub is purging all its trade/sell posts, since they allowed it, since all transactions are done at a dealer under law here. Gun forums are in massive purge if they allowed any swaps or sales. (More work!)

For youtube, no idea the scope of the channels banned, but looks like all legal accessories that are "Fun" are banned from youtube.

30 rounds max? Really, its still legal in many states.

BTW, Pot still seems to be legal everywhere on Youtube and Reddit, even r/WeedDeals is still up, so thats interesting rule breaker they allow.

AND now Weeddeals is banned.

The ban process is rolling on still.

Also, appears the banned subs are moving over to voat.

[http://www.voat.co/v/gundeals](http://www.voat.co/v/gundeals)

<comment><USER15> Not just selling alcohol, "transactions". Which means no more swaps. Trading local brews or homebrews are fun communities, and they just got wiped out with zero warning.

<comment><USER16> Plenty of alcohol is gifted in Reddit's own gift exchange: [https://www.redditgifts.com/gallery/simple-pleasures- exchang...](https://www.redditgifts.com/gallery/simple-pleasures- exchange/gift/whiskey-12/), I wonder if they will ban their own sponsored exchange.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There they go again, the big nanny corporations. They are part of the social fabric of our society. The same rules of freedom of speech should apply there.

Saying that they have a right to censor their platform is OK, if this was the case from the outset. As it is, once these platforms were free and unrestricted. It's only after they grew big, are became protected by network effects that allows them to do stuff like this.

This is censorship plain and simple, it's disgusting, risk-averse behavior that displays a debasing obedience to safe money and corporate interests.

I don't know exactly why this angers me so much, party because it is a bait & switch like I said above. Party because it futile, users will simply go somewhere else. Partly because much of the content that I like to watch and learn about these days is probably on some goody two-shoe's shit list. I despise that they get to decide these things on platforms that have profited to much from an unrestricted and free Internet and online culture. They are hating the players, not the game.

<comment><USER18> >The same rules of freedom of speech should apply there.

If you want freedom of speech to apply in privately controlled media, you would have to compel them to distribute content they do not agree with, which is itself a violation of freedom of speech.

And this is the problem with a simplistic idea like "Freedom of Speech". It is not possible for everyone to hear everyone else's point of view, so some speech will always be restricted. Therefore, our society inevitably makes decisions about which speech to amplify and which to silence, and just because that decision is not being made directly by government, does not mean it is not being made.

In practice when people complain about censorship, what they mean is that these implicit decisions are not being made in a way that they like. And in saying this, I'm not trying to imply that their criticisms are wrong, or that they're being disingenuous or malicious in trying to change those decisions. I'm saying this to reframe the debate, because framing it as if access to speech can only be controlled by intentional malicious restriction prevents us from questioning the ways in which society _already_ controls access to speech.

The most common way speech is restricted is economic. The rich can afford to amplify their speech, and the poor cannot. We have historically accepted this without question as an economic reality, but then the rise of social media gave us a glimpse of a world where economic restrictions are not as big a factor, and so when these restrictions start to re-assert themselves we question them.

People call it "censorship" and demand "free speech", because this is the most pervasive set of ideas we have to understand this dissonance, but the reality is we are always censored, and speech is never truly free, and unless we accept that, we will not be able to ask real questions about what kind of societal discourse we truly value.

<comment><USER19> > If you want freedom of speech to apply in privately controlled media, you > would have to compel them to distribute content they do not agree with, > which is itself a violation of freedom of speech.

People can advocate for social norms and different ethical frameworks without advocating for legal or regulatory changes.

> ...speech is never truly free, and unless we accept that, we will not be > able to ask real questions about what kind of societal discourse we truly > value.

They are called ideals because we cannot perfect reality, not because they are unimportant. There's nothing wrong with forming consensus about how things _should_ work and then only doing what is reasonable to force that vision on each other. I don't see what part of that gets in the way of asking "real questions".

<comment><USER18> >People can advocate for social norms and different ethical frameworks without advocating for legal or regulatory changes.

Yes, but unless you're considering _some_ means of achieving those social norms, even if that's just social pressure, it's unlikely to change anything. And when people do actually advocate means of changing the norms of discourse, people who don't like the proposed changes will call it censorship.

>They are called ideals because we cannot perfect reality, not because they are unimportant. There's nothing wrong with forming consensus about how things should work

I agree. The point I'm trying to make is that in practice "Freedom of Speech" is not actually a very coherent ideal.

If we just mean the government should not directly intervene to prevent speech, that's a reasonable ideal, and relatively few people actually disagree with that. But when people try to consider other ways in which speech is controlled, they still call it "Freedom of Speech", even when arguing for contradictory things.

And I'm arguing that the reason for these contradictions is that the debate tends to be framed in terms identifying speech restrictions and acting to remove them, rather than asking broader questions about the _inevitable_ ways in which speech is amplified or silenced, and how we should structure discourse within those limitations.

<comment><USER19> > "Freedom of Speech" is not actually a very coherent ideal.

Sure it is. The ideal is that better ideas, not power, are the best response to ideas someone doesn't like. But there are certainly exceptions where power _is_ needed to counter acutely harmful speech like "don't yell fire in a crowded theater" and "don't post stolen passwords".

Governments and corporations just have different interests and different amounts and kinds of power. So we have different norms and rules for what governments and corporations ought to do. But the general principle is the same.

<comment><USER18> > The ideal is that better ideas, not power, are the best response to ideas > someone doesn't like.

But what does that _actually_ mean in terms of how we structure discourse? "Better ideas" will do nothing if people are never exposed to them, so presumably we would like to structure things so they are.

Obviously we can't just identify the "better" ideas and amplify them, because the point is that people should identify them themselves. But if we don't amplify anything, it's likely people will not be exposed to them at all.

So perhaps we want to amplify things such that people are exposed to lots of different ideas? But everyone's ideas are slightly different, and we can't amplify all of them equally. Should we choose a selection of ideas, and amplify the best examples of them? How do we decide which ideas, and which are the best examples?

Or perhaps you have some other idea? I'm not trying to dismiss all the possibilities here, I'm just pointing out that statements like "better ideas, not power" get treated as simple and obviously correct, but are actually extremely complex when you get into details. And we quickly find that people understand these supposedly guiding principles in very different ways.

<comment><USER20> It makes sense when you use the term censorship to apply to something like the government, which has a monopoly on violence and can literally jail or kill the people being censored and can apply that standard universally.

It does not make sense to apply it to someone's private property, especially when people are free to continue their speech somewhere else.

Summed up elsewhere, they are not being denied the right to say a certain thing, just the right to say it in a specific place (Reddit or Youtube).

What these people call 'censorship' is more accurately described as 'house rules'.

<comment><USER21> > Summed up elsewhere, they are not being denied the right to say a certain > thing, just the right to say it in a specific place (Reddit or Youtube).

YouTube has been running at a loss for over a decade. This has allowed it to become a monopoly and have undue influence on policing speech.

Censorship like this is an abuse of their monopoly privilege. The most appropriate free market solution is for the government to forcibly split YouTube off into a seperate company and let it compete in the marketplace.

In addition we can remove safe harbor provisions and start holding them responsible for the shady other content they don't remove.

<comment><USER20> The most compelling argument is that Reddit and Youtube cannot pretend to be content agnostic hosts if they are actively censoring. Either they take responsibility for their content or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There are _so_ many ways to make a leathel weapon I can't begin...

If I take my car (a Jeep Grand Cherokee) and ram it into a crowd - I'm confident that can take out more people than I can with a gun, knife, probably even bomb.

Point being, I understand not facilitating trade, but for the love of god, videos? You really want to push the right over the edge?

We need guns. Legally, in the U.S. it's our right - one of the first and most protected rights. The ability to defend yourself and country in the face of tyrany. Look at what happened in Ukraine, Syria, etc. A government doesn't fuck with a populace that has guns, so it increases stability. When you don't have the ability to defend your rights, you don't have rights anymore.

Further, violence isn't associated with guns - it's associated with people being suppressed or by mental issues. The weather is more associated with murder than guns...

I even understand trying to reduce ways to kill massive amounts of people easily. But again, I have a car, I know how to make chlorine gas, so on and so forth.

Address the actual problem and stop making this political. We know you're afraid of guns - that's fine. I'm affraid of dogs, but I'm not going to support banning them (look at them, they are built to kill things human size).

Stop talking about mass murders and start talking about tragedies, do a black out on mass murders names. That'd probably fix the issue in time. Then teach everyone about gun safety, how to use them, the dangers, etc. I'm telling you right now, by removing these videos you're arming people, and exhasborating the problem.

In fact, they just pushed me to buy a weapon.

\flip table and walk out

<comment><USER23> General population don't practice ramming car into crowd. Those are not hobbies. So, when mentally ill people want to cause harm they don't use those methods. It does not normally comes to mind.

But, shooting is common. It's a hobby. A killing machine is normalized and it becomes a culture. So, those mentally ill men feels completely normal to shoot people when they go crazy.

Consider this: ramming car into objects becomes a hobby and people starts to do that and take pride in it. They practice it every week. Then, those mentally ills will start using those methods. And then government will ban riding a car. But, this is not happening, just a hypothesis. You can replace car with other objects you can think of here.

That's why countries where gun are banned for general population, does not have mass murder by "common people" like USA. There are mentally ill people everywhere, not just in USA. This is the point gun lovers don't understand.

<comment><USER24> > That's why countries where gun are banned for general population, does not > have mass murder by "common people" like USA

Sorry, but this is completely false.

I am not going to link to it for reasons of taste, but you can google "encyclopedia dramatica high score" for a very thorough run down on mass shootings. They occur globally and are by no means a phenomenon isolated to the US.

<comment><USER25> They occur, but far less frequently.

<comment><USER24> That is correct but the parent claimed they did not occur at all, which is false.

<comment><USER25> >>the parent claimed they did not occur at all

I read the parent comment again and I don't see the phrase "at all" in there, so the clear implication (at least to me) is that they meant mass murders by gun happen far less often.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Are the big social media companies working together to ban content? What are the odds that reddit and youtube ban similar content on the same day?

What a sad day. Reddit used to be something so special.

If only tech giants stood together and fought the corporate interests and NGOs pushing censorship on them.

I've pretty much stopped using reddit because it's full of political nonsense now anyways. If they are going to be banning subs every 6 months, what's the point of reddit anymore?

<comment><USER27> This is probably all about advertising. Advertisers likely told these platforms to get rid of this stuff or they'll stop using their sites to advertise. It's possibly the same advertiser(s) on both sites asking for it. That could explain why it's happening on the same day.

<comment><USER28> reddit already had a policy to show ads only on whitelisted subreddits, so it would have taken something stronger than just "I don't want my ad shown next to X".

<comment><USER29> The reputation of reddit as a whole still matters to advertisers. An advertiser might not want to advertise on The Daily Stormer, for example, even if its ads are only shown on boards focused on cute animal photos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This continues to distract from the problem: systemic issues in American culture and society that perpetually re-primes a powder keg of fear and divisiveness.

That sounds wordy but I just don't have the skill to articulate my feelings. There's just... something fundamentally wrong with how everything can feel so zero-sum.

<comment><USER19> People don't value tolerance anymore. You only need tolerance for things you don't like or understand.

Honestly, these sorts of things would work better if people acted locally more. It's human to be upset about the Parkland incident. It's not appropriate for a resident of Spokane to have strong feelings about Florida gun laws, let alone actually lobby for them. _Discussing_ current events can be healthy, but only to the extent that it helps us develop our thoughts about how our local communities should work.

<comment><USER31> You're confusing valuing tolerance for tolerating the intolerable.

<comment><USER19> It should be tolerable for someone to do something stupid "over there" to sell their hipster beer if you're not involved. There are few issues where we have to actually force a nation-wide conflict to decide on a particular outcome.

Whoever is doing it, convincing YouTube and Reddit to force internet-wide struggles over these issues isn't choosing the right battles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is a site about startups and tech and hacking.

Doesn't this sound like a golden opportunity for someone to stand up a video service dedicated to this niche? Basically Google and Reddit are stating that they don't want to lose ad revenue from other channels which they deem as more important. Sure they are wrapping it up as being socially conscious or something but it comes down to money. They are ad companies. Large ad firms for large brands might pull their stuff if they keep firearm channels around.

A service for this niche would probably get all of the firearm ad revenue that is leaving those platforms.

<comment><USER33> Already exists and is popular: [http://www.full30.com](http://www.full30.com)

This is where most channels are intending to move.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I am concerned about how this will affect some educational channels.

A good example is Forgotten Weapons ([https://www.youtube.com/user/ForgottenWeapons](https://www.youtube.com/user/ForgottenWeapons)). It's a vlog about interesting old firearms. These are often supplied for the videos by an auction house that is selling them, so the guns are literally for sale. But these are massively expensive, antique weapons, many of which require a Federal Firearms Licence to own.

The same goes for manufacturing ammunition. Handloading is very common in the precision shooting and hunting community. I don't see how it would facilitate gun violence. I would suspect that less than 1% of firearms related murders use hand loaded ammunition.

<comment><USER35> I would suspect Forgottenweapons is screwed on youtube, he gets access to many of the most interesting old guns at auction houses in return for publicising the auctions. I'd be surprised if he can continue to do that under these rules.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Great, so /r/gundeals, which was nothing more than a sales aggregator for law- abiding online retailers, is gone, but /r/the_donald, a vile, rampantly bigoted, conspiracy-theory-peddling shithole, is allowed to stay?

<comment><USER37> You added "law-abiding". How do you know this?

<comment><USER2> I checked /r/gundeals on nearly a daily basis and never saw anything illegal[0]. I can't find the full rules to the sub anymore [1], but I believed they banned posting gun sales that weren't through an FFL (which is actually stricter than the law).

[0] there were products that aren't legal in certain states or cities, but nothing that is illegal at the fed level.

<comment><USER38> Yeah, gundeals was strictly dealers only. There were other subs (probably banned now too) for legal person to person sales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is the 21st century equivalent to burning books.

<comment><USER40> No, it's more like a bookstore not selling books they don't like.

<comment><USER41> Well, the subs themselves contained lots of content that was wiped without warning, so in that sense it is like book burning.

Anyway, hopefully this'll all help stimulate the creation of actually- censorship-resistant platforms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> It's absolutely stunning what's happened to Reddit. Between the speech clampdowns like this and the soul-crushing amount of political astroturfing going on it's clearly time for a new challenger (not Voat).

<comment><USER43> What's wrong with voat besides that it's a cesspool? It seems like it has all the technical features that make Reddit work, and the lack of moderation that makes it so disgusting is the result of not having speech clampdowns.

<comment><USER44> > What's wrong with voat besides that it's a cesspool?

That. Past a certain point, the (not really/apocryphal) Voltaire "I may disagree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it" argument results in really, really nasty communities for out-group people to inhabit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Yet another step narrowing the internet towards the same bland and pre- mediated window of thought seen as TV.

It's too bad.

</comment><comment><USER46> The second line in the Reddit list has been cut short. The full item says:

* Drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, or any controlled substances (except advertisements placed in accordance with our advertising policy);

Meaning they are not against drugs and alcohol, if they can make a buck out of it.

</comment><comment><USER47> Amusingly, InRangeTV and C&RArsenal have both responded by using pornhub as an alternate distribution platform.

<comment><USER38> Pornhub has an opportunity here to branch out if they wanted to. They have the infrastructure, they could open a more general use, non-pornographic video hosting service.

<comment><USER47> From user Katie_Pornhub on reddit:

> We've joked about doing something like this in the past but now it's > becoming more and more realistic and not so crazy. We'll see!

...

> It would be very difficult to be profitable, one of the main hesitations.

[https://www.reddit.com/user/Katie_Pornhub/overview](https://www.reddit.com/user/Katie_Pornhub/overview)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I suppose net neutrality doesn't have a wide definition. /s

</comment><comment><USER49> I'll stop using both reddit. HN is much better anyway. I'll be waiting for the new wave of migration, as it was the case from digg to reddit initially.

</comment><comment><USER50> Such a shame. I don't own a gun, and I don't intend to. But I really appreciate some channels and communities, especially those about historical weapons that will be severely damaged by this.

</comment><comment><USER51> The issue here is that the internet consist basically in monopolies. Its even more alarming when you consider that many of those monopolies are in the hands of just one company. (Google)

</comment><comment><USER52> Forcing a community out carries a host of side-effects, example: a group moves underground... Though knowing that, both reddit and youtube modelled their business around reinforcement and segregation of biased groups (echo- chambers), all the while promoting themselves as _the_ platforms of the free (speech) internet. Turns out ousting such groups is okay- just like axing a product, no?

</comment><comment><USER53> So no links to licensed gun dealers either, then?

<comment><USER2> Nope, otherwise /r/gundeals wouldn't have been banned

<comment><USER54> So when they say "we want common sense things like background checks" then ban avenues that require background checks - you can get an idea of what they really want.

The truest words I've ever heard on the gun debate is that "they don't hate guns, they love guns, they surround themselves guns, it's you they hate".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> It makes me unhappy to know that Reddit is choosing to make written rules rather than choosing changes and improvements in its code. Having opportunities to market and discuss products could be a great source of income if well done. real opinion, honest and who is not a paid advertising on a product and humanize the business relationship are very difficult questions to find on the internet.Especially about artisans products and local productions. __Craft beers __is a market that depends on suggestions and evaluations of people. Facebook has been trying to provide a marketplace opportunity that makes it easier for local and more human businesses. But is horrible. Reddit could offer something in this vacuum. But they preferred to walk away.

</comment><comment><USER56> Have zero problem with Reddit and Google doing this.

But Google footing the bill for Alex Jones on YouTube is wrong. No advertisers then remove the content. Otherwise Google is spending money to support the alt right and I have a problem with that.

Come on Google do not be a wimp and remove.

<comment><USER57> A day may come when your politics differs from theirs, and then you will discover the problem with aggressive political censorship.

In any case, I disagree with the premise that "no ads means no value" for YT. Instead of ads they are just being compensated in other less direct ways. Every video that you watch improves their profile of you, which can and will be used for better ad targeting on other YT videos and other GOOG sites.

Furthermore, some people may come to YT for Alex Jones and then stay to watch other monetized vids. Banning him would reduce that indirect ad rev.

<comment><USER56> My politics already are not consistent with Google paying the bills for the Alex Jones content.

I wish no advertisers then Google boot it. You are a private organization so you have zero reason you need to follow freedom of speech.

Google has the most valuable data there is with search data so there is no value in profiles. Google is doing it as they think it is the right thing to do but that is flawed, IMO. Just get rid of it.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TS2der4Ag_s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TS2der4Ag_s)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> > As of today, users may not use Reddit to solicit or facilitate any > transaction or gift involving certain goods and services, including ... > alcohol

So you can't offer someone a beer on reddit? Speaking as someone resident in London, UK, that seems extreme.

What are the consequences for e.g.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Untappd/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Untappd/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Homebrewing/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Homebrewing/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/LondonSocialClub/](https://www.reddit.com/r/LondonSocialClub/)

<comment><USER59> /r/beertrade got banned. several beer groups that used to feature beer trades have stopped allowing it, trying to avoid being banned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Who wants to open a free-speech based forum site?

<comment><USER60> Voat already exists and already has a reputation for being both terrible and a ghost town.

<comment><USER61> The problem with voat is it basically the dregs of reddit so no-one respectable wants to be associated with it. But if reddit bans enough stuff that is semi-respectable and those people are able to hold their nose to migrate to voat they might end up making voat respectable enough to overcome their current poor reputation.

<comment><USER62> It has reached that point. I'm moving to voat.

<comment><USER63> Let us know what kind of riveting discussions you have with racists, sexists, and conspiracy theorists.

<comment><USER62> You have to be the change you want to see. I have no problem with other people holding views which I think are disgusting. The only thing I have a problem with is censorship.

H. L. Mencken quote is applicable here, "The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all."

 _edit_ , The one thing I'm finding I really don't like about Voat is that it requires whitelisting Javascript from google domains in order to be able to post.

<comment><USER63> I think we need more censorship quite frankly.

<comment><USER64> I can think of no reasonable justification for that comment.

<comment><USER63> It's a satirical comment pointing out how ridiculous OP's platitude filled comment is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Fun fact: Had to read about the Reddit announcement in another sub because it got downvoted.

An important announcement and most people don't see it unless they read a subreddit that cares about it.

</comment><comment><USER66> Just a coincidence, or any relationship to this story? [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/how-congress- censored-...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/03/how-congress-censored- internet)

(discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16641900](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16641900))

</comment><comment><USER67> I wonder if they'll enforce this:

> * Paid services involving physical sexual contact;

Not 'sexual content' \- actual prostitution on Reddit is rare (though does happen in terms of submission of film/video content by sex workers in places where prostition is legal, eg in Australia).

But a large part of the sex subreddits are 'donate to my patreon and I'll give you access to my private Snapchat' which is clearly:

a) 'paid services'

b) sex work.

</comment><comment><USER56> After Google sees the record numbers of people protesting tomorrow against guns they will see them and Reddit made the right decision.

I have 8 kids and me and wife and every one of my kids and many of their friends will be out tomorrow. I have a blow horn ready.

Now why on Earth is Google paying the bills for Alex Jones and other alt right figures as no advertisers? Google should just boot them when no revenues.

</comment><comment><USER68> Is Youtube going to ban the many 80% lower videos? Will they ban my reloading video? I'm a Youtube Red subscriber (I hate commercials). I think it's about time I canceled my subscription.

Hell, at least they think a high capacity magazine is > 30 rounds. That won't last long. Soon it will be anything > 5 rounds.

</comment><comment><USER69> Per the Reddit regulations, item 6:

Do they mean counterfeit currency ("Falsified official currency") or was there supposed to be a comma, meaning all currency? That would rule out any sales transaction as they "involve" currency.

Wasn't sale of counterfeit already ruled out?

</comment><comment><USER70> If YouTube could go ahead and also ban all those videos that take 30+ minutes to convey the same information that I could have read from a text document with static images in 2 minutes, that would be great.

</comment><comment><USER71> So YouTube and Reddit are again saying that they're not okay with potentially illegal conduct on their platform. The only difference is that this time they're being much more direct and specific.

<comment> wu-ikkyu The documents from the Snowden leaks were illegally obtained/distributed. How long before that type of stuff is censored?

<comment><USER71> I'm not disagreeing with you, but at the same time, I don't think that likely the first place to release a major government leak is on YouTube or Reddit. There will always be some platform that's "freer" than some others, and there will always be some that are more moderated.

This may smack of censorship in some ways, and if it was a government agency, it certainly would be. Unfortunately, the core of the problem that a lot of people are dancing around is that we've come to expect private businesses on the Internet to care about anything other than their profits - but that's asking them to violate their corporate morality of "profit at all costs". They're not going to do that; we are either the customer or the product. This is those private companies forcing their moderation policies, so as to continue increasing their userbase and advertising income. Reddit and YouTube/Google are essentially moderated private platforms and if they decided that tomorrow all that could be posted on their sites are cat pictures, they would be well within their rights to do that.

<comment> wu-ikkyu >This may smack of censorship in some ways, and if it was a government agency, it certainly would be

This is a common misconception. Nowhere is it defined that only a government can conduct censorship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> I wonder if Reddit will then ban subreddits relating to Cody's Lab. Maybe youtube will finally ban Cody forever for showing us how to do explosives or make mercury based ammunition in guns! hurray!

<comment><USER73> What I don't understand is how on earth king of random hasn't had the same kinds of problems as cody's lab. I mean, the guy was arrested on explosives charges, and his channel is very clearly aimed at a young audience, while cody's channel doesn't seem particularly aimed at kids. And king of random has to be one of the worst offenders i've seen for showing something dangerous w/o explaining the hazards, such as exposed/poorly insulated mains connections or frankly dangerous tool usage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The youtube ones "no demo of high capacity magazines" leaves me scratching my head, what exactly is that accomplishing?

<comment><USER73> I wonder if that could be applied to film/tv. Is Rambo bannable? Can gaming channels be banned?

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> it was eventual. once you get big, you have to follow these guidelines or run the risk of ad revenue disappearing or getting sued by the government. with success comes the spotlight.

it will be sad the day when they ban r/pomeranians and other animal channels cause it will be consider animal cruelty to put eyebrows on your pom or a pickle behind your cat.

</comment><comment><USER75> How long until every site is like Oratyria, where users can freely censor each other for everyone else?

</comment><comment><USER76> I understand the concern here on HN. However, what do we propose to do? At the end of the day, these are private companies and they can enforce whatever arbitrary guidelines they want within the laws of the countries they operate in. E.g. if you were president Trump, would you do anything about it? Genuinely curious.

<comment><USER77> > However, what do we propose to do?

1\. Ideally, we don't allow corporations to control so much of our communications.

2\. Barring 1, we should set the expectation that communication platforms should protect their users' freedom of speech, with laws to enforce this.

> At the end of the day, these are private companies and they can enforce > whatever arbitrary guidelines they want within the laws of the countries > they operate in.

This is descriptive of reality but not prescriptive of how reality should be. As far as I am concerned, corporations don't have rights, people do, and when corporations start infringing on the rights of people (such as the right to free speech) that's a problem.

<comment><USER76> > Ideally, we don't allow corporations to control so much of our > communications.

What laws would you propose to actually implement this?

I like free speech a lot as well, but it seems that boundaries get a bit fuzzy here. E.g. if you were to run your own forum like HN, don't you think you should be allowed to ban material from, say, KKK supporters?

<comment><USER77> >> Ideally, we don't allow corporations to control so much of our communications.

> What laws would you propose to actually implement this?

I didn't. Note that I didn't bring up laws until #2 in my previous post.

Programs which educated people on the dangers of social media the same way we educate people around the dangers of drugs and alcohol might go toward changing the way we treat these things in our culture, but on the other hand, there's enough problems with i.e. DARE that they might be counterproductive.

> I like free speech a lot as well, but it seems that boundaries get a bit > fuzzy here. E.g. if you were to run your own forum like HN, don't you think > you should be allowed to ban material from, say, KKK supporters?

I think if you combine topic-based moderation with a vote system, you don't need to ban KKK supporters. On a system like HN where all posts are in the same data stream, racist posts are going to be downvoted fairly quickly. And if someone posts racist comments on a post that isn't about race, it's off- topic, so topic-based moderation says it's okay to delete it. It's not a restriction on free speech--it's keeping topics organized to maintain the functioning of the forum.

The key exception here is that when the topic _is_ race, then you don't delete racist comments. This is uncomfortable, but racism doesn't simply go away because you censor it--if anything, censoring a racist makes them feel they are a martyr, and strengthens their beliefs. Instead, if you leave the posts up, users will respond to them with the truth. Countering lies with truth is more powerful than countering lies with censorship.

There's a tendency, I think, to see bigotry as a monolithic problem in a person, without any reasoning behind it. But if you actually listen to bigots, you'll often discover that behind the bigotry they have legitimate fears and problems, and they think bigotry is the solution to those problems. Part of the problem we have in the US that those who value equality and acceptance too often see bigots as just bigots, and forget that they are people. If we see them as just bigots, then they can't change, or aren't worth changing, and we can discard them. But that hasn't worked--that's why we have the administration we have now.

Instead, I think we need to see bigots as people, and try to address their fears and problems with facts and truth. (Most) bigots don't benefit from their bigotry--bigotry doesn't solve their problems, and prevents them from seeing the real solutions. So if we can show them the real solutions to their problems, they might see they don't need bigotry any more.

Civil rights leaders of the past understood that a conversation about race had to be an actual conversation, not just shouting your ideals and silencing your opponents. If you refuse to listen to bigots they will refuse to listen to you. It's not us versus them, it's us _and_ them versus ignorance.

<comment><USER76> Thanks for answering. I think we're going a bit off-topic here though. The crux of what I'm getting at is, do you think that you should have the right to moderate the content on your own platform that you built? Or should the government decide what is and isn't allowed? E.g. maybe instead of you running HN, maybe you run a content distribution network. As its own your network, don't you think you should be allowed to decide which websites you host? Just think of something that disgusts you: extreme right wing, left wing, religious views, whatever. They're allowed in the US and they're using your platform. You hate them. Should you be forced to offer your services to them?

Note Cloudflare had this exact issue: [https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we- terminated-daily-stormer/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated- daily-stormer/)

These aren't rhetorical questions by the way. I'm genuinely wondering what HN thinks about this.

<comment><USER77> > The crux of what I'm getting at is, do you think that you should have the > right to moderate the content on your own platform that you built?

As I've said elsewhere on this thread, corporations don't have rights, people do. A more clear way to say this might be: corporations only have rights inasmuch as the people who make up the corporation have rights.

Even though you're not asking this rhetorically, the way you're asking this question is an appeal to me as a person, and obviously I don't want to be forced to host the content of people I disagree with.

But giant corporations are different from individuals. Either we should prevent corporations from being too big to fail, or we should ensure that their failures don't damage society. If a corporation owns a communication platform the size of YouTube, they lose the right to choose what content they host, because doing so infringes their users' rights to free speech, and their users can't just go elsewhere because there are no other equivalent platforms.

Just because a corporation doesn't have a right to an ideology doesn't mean we should not let any corporations have ideologies: we can let corporations have ideologies as long as we make sure it isn't harmful to the rights of individuals. The purpose of laws, as I see it, is to protect the weak from the powerful. If I started Dave's Liberal Hosting Service with just a server and a dream, and only hosted Democratic websites, that's fine, because such a service doesn't become the platform of the internet that everyone is forced to use--it's likely a conservative equivalent would arise even before I built a significant business. Part of the problem is that services like Reddit and YouTube have performed a bait-and-switch--they built themselves into major platforms on a free-speech ideology, and then when they were too big to fail, they turned into ideological platforms. Similarly in the realm of CDNs, groups like Amazon, CloudFlare, Akamai, or Google absolutely don't get to have ideologies. Anyone who wants to work on the internet has to work with these CDNs, so if they don't allow free speech, there isn't free speech on the internet.

> Note Cloudflare had this exact issue: [https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we- > terminated-daily-stormer/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated- > daily-stormer/)

Likewise, I'm also not saying free speech is the only right that needs protection. With the CloudFlare case, the "Freedom of Speech < Due Process" is a rational argument, at least. I don't have enough context to 100% decide for myself if I agree with their decision, but I do tend to think that _if_ the Daily Stormer was inciting violence, that's a higher priority than free speech. But note how this _isn 't_ about CloudFlare's rights at all--it's about protecting the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness of the people the Daily Stormer was attacking.

Random aside: I do wish that they hadn't been so nationalistic about it though. (He said: "I, personally, believe in strong Freedom of Speech protections, but I also acknowledge that it is a very American idea that is not shared globally").

<comment><USER76> > As I've said elsewhere on this thread, corporations don't have rights, > people do. A more clear way to say this might be: corporations only have > rights inasmuch as the people who make up the corporation have rights.

> But giant corporations are different from individuals.

You can see how this gets fuzzy then, right? At what point is a corporation "giant"? How to measure and who decides that? Why is it okay for your Dave's Liberal Hosting Service to arbitrarily moderate material but not YouTube? YouTube isn't even a monopoly on video hosting services. Both YouTube and Dave's Liberal Hosting Service are still made up of individuals, and you think that individuals should be treated the same. So why aren't they?

<comment><USER77> > You can see how this gets fuzzy then, right? At what point is a corporation > "giant"?

Maybe the exact point where a corporation becomes integral enough to society that it needs to be regulated to protect people's rights is ambiguous, but it's not really ambiguous that YouTube is far past that point.

And I'm not being ambiguous at all about corporations not having rights. Limited liability has to be balanced by restrictions on what an LLC can do, or there's no incentive for people to act sociopathically (which they do). This is true at any size, and corporations violating the rights of individuals aren't limited by size. However, issues with small corporations are both less concerning and more likely to be handled by market forces.

> How to measure and who decides that?

Traditionally it has been regulatory bodies such as the FTC or the FCC. Congress typically hasn't made laws that target specific corporations or small groups of corporations, instead leaving that sort of micromanagement to the regulatory bodies. There are pros and cons to regulatory bodies versus congress handling these things. Ideally I'd want it to be elected officials so that citizens get more direct control.

"Measurement" isn't really applicable: you're looking for a size that can be quantified, but I'm talking about human rights violations.

> Why is it okay for your Dave's Liberal Hosting Service to arbitrarily > moderate material but not YouTube?

I already covered this:

"If I started Dave's Liberal Hosting Service with just a server and a dream, and only hosted Democratic websites, that's fine, because such a service doesn't become the platform of the internet that everyone is forced to use-- it's likely a conservative equivalent would arise even before I built a significant business. Part of the problem is that services like Reddit and YouTube have performed a bait-and-switch--they built themselves into major platforms on a free-speech ideology, and then when they were too big to fail, they turned into ideological platforms."

> Both YouTube and Dave's Liberal Hosting Service are still made up of > individuals, and you think that individuals should be treated the same. So > why aren't they?

Neither corporation has any rights: there's just not much reason to drop the hammer on Dave's Liberal Hosting Service if it's small enough that competitors could arise easily to meet need, and they've not banned any existing users. All the users who Dave's Liberal Hosting Service would "discriminate" against are already using Bob's Conservative Hosting Service, so free speech is available to society.

There are really only two household names in the video hosting space in the US, YouTube and Vimeo, and both of them ostensibly support all content, but don't actually live up to that promise. Not only is free speech not available in that space, but it used to be (at least, moreso), so previous users have had their channels taken away from them; their best options at that point are basically starting over if you've built a channel. If YouTube had started with the promise of censored content, they would have grown in tandem with competitors with more permissive content policies, and this wouldn't be the problem that it is today.

Both corporations are made up of individuals, but when they're acting behind the veil of a corporation and in fact decisions are being made by only a few of those individuals, while they trample the rights of the rest of the individuals that make up the corporation. If you're going to appeal to the idea that people shouldn't be forced to host content they don't agree with on a platform they built, you should realize that it's very unlikely that the engineers who built YouTube are the same people as the executives and board members making the decision to censor their content. The larger the corporation, the more disconnect there is between the individuals that make up the corporation and the actions of the corporation. With corporations of YouTube's size, claiming that individual rights confer rights on the company just doesn't hold water: you're only conferring rights on the decision makers of the company, at the expense of the rights of workers who devoted their work to older policies and may not agree with the new policies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Do you want to get regulated? Because that's how you get regulated.

</comment><comment><USER79> So Reddit is banning "paid services including physical sexual contact".

Does that mean people will no longer be able to sell their used panties on Reddit? It would be a tragic loss to the internet if this was the case. /s

</comment><comment><USER80> Another lesson in the dangers of digital share cropping

</comment><comment><USER81> This reminds me of this quote:

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -Thomas Jefferson

I wonder if he would be considered a terrorist today...

<comment><USER82> If you want to die for your country, please do it alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> Mods: Why is this being deranked? This is a legitimate discussion.

<comment><USER84> It set off the software's flamewar detector a.k.a. overheated discussion detector. I've turned the penalty off and rolled back the clock on the story to compensate.

Posts without URLs (Ask HN, Tell HN, etc.) also start off with a penalty, and I've turned that off too.

<comment><USER83> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> YouTube and Reddit should be like paper and pencil.

If I used paper and pencil to break the law, then it's between law enforcement and me, I would be super annoyed if the pencil refused to write what I want to write because the pencil manufacturer thought it might be illegal or just simply undesired.

What the Content Providers are doing is anti-thesis of neutrality towards ideas and the supporting arguments. If someone breaks the law using their platform then let the someone file a complaint and let law enforcement handle it.

Should the burrito truck ban you from utilizing the calories from the breakfast burrito if you intend to do some insider trading that morning? If the burrito place can't block you from eating, then why should YouTube and Reddit be able to block you from saying what you have to say?

Can't believe that the hacker news crowd was jumping up and down for months at a time for neutrality of packets as if ISP is going to stop you from saying what you want to say, but all the while Facebook/Google/Twitter/Reddit can stop you from saying what you say anytime they feel like it, and those advocating "Neutrality of service providers" are perfectly fine with it.

Can folks be little more realistic about what the real danger is?

Out packets are not threatened, our thoughts are.

</comment><comment><USER56> But Google still has the NRA channel. The list of companies that have cut ties with the NRA are very long but do not include Google.

"One By One, Companies Cut Ties With The NRA"

[https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2018/02/23/588233273...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2018/02/23/588233273/one-by-one-companies-cut-ties-with-nra)

</comment><comment><USER86> "Reddit and Youtube are shooting themselves in the foot!" some would say. "I'm moving to this other site!" those directly affected say. And the rest of the users and the sites say "bye! Good riddance!", thinking that they have just surgically removed a small portion of the site. But they are wrong, the effect will be huge and far reaching and here's why:

What Reddit and those cheering the migration of gun and sex enthusiasts is that those people are also frequent contributors to the funny, light subreddits. If they go, not only do other, straight, subreddits lose out, but the alternatives they go to start to get straighter too.

People will indeed move to something better. And they will move quickly. We have seen it with myspace to facebook and digg to reddit. So far, the alternatives, to me, seem not that attractive, but I imagine it would only take a few people to move to make it so.

It only takes a few sane early adopters.

<comment><USER87> ?? Are you somehow suggesting that people involved in gun sales or drug sales on reddit are somehow meme generators keeping the culture alive?? People made the same arguments when /r/fatpeoplehate was banned and /r/niggers was banned, and before that when /r/jailbait was banned.

Nothing changed except the site got a bit better because a bunch of the assholes migrated to voat or remade those subreddits under different names.

<comment><USER86> Yes, I am saying that gun enthusiasts, the millions of normal Americans and people around the world who like guns, or even craft beer, or historical re- enactment, also like to tell jokes. They do not go to reddit to only talk about guns, but to other subreddits. It's quite easy to understand.

I am not saying they are the only people keeping the site alive, that would be silly. I'm saying that people that like to tell jokes will make the alternatives they go to better and more attractive, and make Reddit a bit less attractive.

Your examples of previous banning was about toxic subreddits where the main focus was on toxic "jokes". I'd agree with you, toxic joke tellers are probably going to always joke toxicly. But a gun enthusiast, a craft beer lover, a historical re-enactment, an adult porn star, they are not primarily makers of toxic jokes. I hope you can see the difference here.

<comment><USER87> Let me clear: im completely against these bannings specifically. It looks like a very political move and it came out of nowhere without any warning to the subreddit mods, volunteers who make reddit what it is.

Having said that, I still don't buy the argument that this will have some sort of larger negative impact on the reddit community. Reddit is way too large for some niche subreddits to actually matter in the big picture.

<comment><USER86> What happened with digg and MySpace? They were too big to fail too but what happened was that more attractive places occurred and people went to them.

I'm proposing that an exodus of non toxic people from place A to place B makes place B less toxic. Now I don't think we will see the alternatives improve overnight but if things carry on along this road then we will see it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hacker News API page is broken - <AUTHOR> https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/
https://github.com/HackerNews/API
It never loads and just shows: "There was an error completing your request"
I have been checking the Hacker News API daily for a while now to see if this will start working, but it appears to be permanently be broken. Is there anything that Hacker News can do to get this to work (update in Firebase UI or setting fix)?
I want to be able to use the new Firebase API to access the Hacker News data, but I can't download the proper google-services.json to get it working when the Firebase API page is broken.
The API is awesome to have and hope that it can be fixed soon! :) <comment><USER2> I don't think it has auth, You can still use the API, you can hit [https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/topstories.json](https://hacker- news.firebaseio.com/v0/topstories.json) to get the ids of all top stories and then hit em individually to get information about it.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can try sending an email to firstname.lastname@example.com to get a reply sooner. Sometime this threads are unnoticed.

</comment><comment><USER4> Apologies for the confusion—that page isn't intended to do anything useful. We've removed the link from the API documentation page, but if we've missed something please let us know via email.

<comment><AUTHOR> The link used to do something useful, but there seems to be something that changed when the new Firebase launched.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you find the answer let me know, because i have been wondering for weeks now.</comment>


Monthly Amazon Prime membership fees are about to increase - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/19/your-monthly-amazon-prime-membership-fees-are-about-to-increase/ <comment><USER2> Amazon has done what many others dream of: I basically forget that I'm paying for Prime every year. And I perceive that it gives me enough value that I don't mind, but I've never actually checked how many orders I place each year vs. the delivery cost for them if I didn't have Prime.

By comparison, Google sends me an e-mail every month reminding me how much I'm paying for Google Play Music. I don't mind it, but I wonder if it affects their retention rates to do that.

<comment><USER3> I actually quit it, because most of the times I'm perfectly fine waiting extra time, and am ok with holding certain items in my cart until I accumulate $25 to get a free shipping.

They seem to artificially add delays to processing to discourage me, but I don't really order anything that I need immediately.

Not having prime also prevents me from impulse buying.

Also, majority of things that you purchase on regular basis, such as cleaning supplies, vitamins etc are often much cheaper in local store and are less likely to be knock offs.

<comment><USER4> If you don't mind waiting longer and have Prime, they often offer a "refund" credit. I currently have $5 in digital credits for items I didn't mind waiting a week for on Prime.

Only downside is that the incentive rotates and some of them are simply terrible (prime pantry, women's fashion, and home services for example).

<comment><USER5> a lot of incentives are terrible, and you can't use two of them on the same order. If I could delay 2 or 3 orders and then get a free digital movie by stacking the credits, I'd do it a lot more often.

<comment><USER6> For digital movies/music the credits do stack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From many conversations, and my personal experience, the reliability of prime for two day deliveries has gone way down. It's generally a day or two before the item even ships in my region. Amazon is also failing to handle rampant knock-offs mixed in with legitimate products.

It seems pretty brazen to increase the cost of Prime in light of those issues, even if it is only the monthly subscription. I'm sure it won't actually hurt them since they have such a strange-hold on online retail, and even with these issues they do still offer the best service by far, but it really seems like Amazon needs some competition.

<comment><USER8> In Hawaii, Prime isn't two day, it's "free shipping within sorta 5-7 business days, for most of the stuff marked Prime". And even that has gotten unreliable.

When there's a range of delivery dates specified, it often seems designed to show up on the very last day of that range. A significant fraction of the time they haven't even shipped the thing by the first day of the delivery estimate.

There are also an increasing amount of items that say they are Prime but when you try to buy them, it says "it can't be shipped to your address". Sometimes it's understandable, like things that are very heavy or hazardous, like Li-ion batteries. Other times it's completely incomprehensible, like 1/8" pipe fittings. And Amazon customer service can't give any info, they just say "sorry, we're not going to be able to send you that thing."

<comment><USER9> I couldn't get them to send me an xbox controller in Hawaii. It's just infuriating. They could at least have the decency to let you filter items you can't get. The mismatch between their listed terms and what you actually get as a Prime customer in Hawaii is borderline fraudulent.

I'm considering putting together and sharing a script that could check your order history and delivery dates. They tend to give a free month of credit for late deliveries, but if I could show them "Well out of 12 months I've had late deliveries every month this year" I should just get the service for free.

<comment><USER10> You cannot expect a company to cater to such a small population. You choose to live there, you choose the consequences.

<comment><USER9> I can absolutely expect them to honor the terms that they themselves defined for a service that costs more than $100/year.

<comment><USER11> The terms state Free 2-day shipping to the contiguous US. It states 5 day shipping to Hawaii and Alaska

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=201118050)

I suppose it could be more clear, but I do not see where they guarantee 2-day to Hawaii. You live on an island in the middle of the ocean, expect shipping delays.

<comment><USER9> They advertise 3-7 business days. For the past 3 months it's been more like ~8-11 business days. Nobody here has unrealistic expectations.

USPS would be much faster if they just dropped it in the mail within a couple days. It would also cost less than fedex overnighting items after waiting 2 weeks.

<comment><USER8> Indeed. It's gotten to the point that if I want something fast, I'll actually _avoid_ Amazon and instead find some merchant who will ship the item USPS Priority Mail which is very reasonably priced and reliably arrives in 3 days.

The biggest problem are merchants that for some reason insist that they can _only_ use UPS/Fedex, which is a complete ripoff to Hawaii. I don't understand how they get any business for their "ground" service here, given that it's usually about the same price as 2-day air but takes a week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I cancelled my Amazon Prime membership about a year ago and haven't looked back. I end up spending less money per month on things that I really don't need and my house is no longer filled with endless cardboard boxes.

<comment><USER13> > my house is no longer filled with endless cardboard boxes.

You can throw in in the trash, you know :)

Cancelling Prime is probably good for the same reason I shouldn't have gotten a Moviepass. I now have one less thing blocking me from watching a mediocre movie.

<comment><USER14> Trees were killed to make those boxes in the first place (do they have 100% recycled boxes yet?). Better to not order than to dump or even recycle the boxes.

<comment><USER15> Trees grow back faster than you might think. Especially the species and grades that go into papermaking. Nobody is cutting down old-growth forest and putting it into pulp. Unless they are a complete idiot - there's no money in it; it's been a while since I was doing my father's logging invoices, but his margins on spruce and fir or hardwood pulp were razor thin, after accounting to stumpage to the landowner and operating expenses. It was largely a way to get rid of the stuff that needed to be cut, but that he couldn't convince anyone to scale out for veneer or saw logs. A huge part of the pulpwood was also blowdowns, storm damage, and disease or insect culls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Walmart, Jet.com and Target offer free 2 day shipping if you order $35, $35, or $25 respectively. It so happens in my area, all three use Fedex ground, which tends to be more reliable than UPS.

Additionally, most items that cost less than $6-8 each tend to be significantly cheaper at Walmart or Target, or you can by a single item rather than a 3-pack, which is a common Amazon strategy.

If you buy a decent number of higher price items, Amazon tends to have a price advantage, so the $99-per-year Prime subscription is worth it. However, you will throw a bunch of money away if you are buying a handful of small-ticket items from Amazon on a regular basis.

<comment><USER17> The biggest thing is probably convenience. Even Amazon regularly reminds me of this, by saying I saved > 50 trips to the store for 1-off items that I've ordered on Prime. From shipping speed to not having to go blunder around a store looking for an item, Prime makes sense.

It makes even more sense if you comparison shop. With Amazon, you can pick the _exact right item_, whereas a big box store like Walmart or Target will only stock a few options at best, 0 at worst. I was looking for a specific light bulb at Home Depot the other day. Didn't find it. Went to Lowe's. Didn't find it. Ordered the exact item from Amazon while walking out of Lowe's. I only went to stores for the time convenience (I obviously needed it urgently), but they failed for lack of stock. That's what Amazon offers to me -- instant availability of a huge range of items, and ridiculously fast shipping on the smallest of those items.

<comment><USER18> > It makes even more sense if you comparison shop. With Amazon, you can pick > the _exact right item_, whereas a big box store like Walmart or Target will > only stock a few options at best, 0 at worst. I was looking for a specific > light bulb at Home Depot the other day. Didn't find it. Went to Lowe's. > Didn't find it. Ordered the exact item from Amazon while walking out of > Lowe's. I only went to stores for the time convenience (I obviously needed > it urgently), but they failed for lack of stock. That's what Amazon offers > to me -- instant availability of a huge range of items, and ridiculously > fast shipping on the smallest of those items.

Why didn't you go to lowes.com or walmart.com? This isn't an apples to apples comparison.

<comment><USER19> And why not check the lowes/homedepot sites before bothering to go into the store? They both have pretty good stock indicators and they'll tell you exactly where the item is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's still worth it. The amount of money saved with shipping, and the comfort of last "minute" shopping is priceless. Plus you get a few extra things like storage, movies, and music.

This past week I paid $12 for ground shipping at another site and was reminded about how much shipping added to the price of the product.

Update: Also forgot about the convenience of using Amazon lockers.

<comment><USER21> For me, it's cheaper to simply pay for the quick shipping when I really need it

<comment><USER22> For me as a chronic overthinker, having the cost of shipping paid up front definitely decreases decision fatigue and saves me time. If I want something, I don't end up thinking about whether I really want the item quickly, or if I should add another item to get to the free shipping minimum, or if I should just go to the store instead of ordering online. Having it paid up front then is completely worth it for me, even if it were slightly more than I'd pay for shipping otherwise.

<comment><USER18> > If I want something, I don't end up thinking about whether I really want the > item quickly, or if I should add another item to get to the free shipping > minimum, or if I should just go to the store instead of ordering online. > Having it paid up front then is completely worth it for me, even if it were > slightly more than I'd pay for shipping otherwise.

Your conclusion to me is an odd one; maybe you wouldn't have ended up making those purchases were you forced to give them more thought which would save you _more_ in the long term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> While I'm not sure I get $156/year worth of value from Prime, or even $99, I share my account with 2 other close family members, and together we place enough orders for it to be worth it. Same with Costco etc. — so as long as These services remain easy to share, the price increases are aren't too bad.

<comment><USER24> I think the new way is to only allow two other people in your household. So for people who cancelled and rebought Prime or got Prime in the last few years, they don't get your perk.

I too am lucky to be grandfathered in. But can't really say it is a current Prime benefit anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Except, nothing new if you pay yearly, still $99 a year.

<comment><USER24> I'm betting when they added monthly prices their plan all along was to push people to pay yearly as it's cheaper. But the price difference must've not been enough. Now it is pretty significant so it'll probably do the job they originally wanted from it. Obviously that's not the only reason for them adding monthly. Just one reason in my opinion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wish Amazon Prime would break itself up into packages instead of raising their rates every 6 months as they throw more and more crap under the umbrella

It annoys me greatly that I'm subsidizing Prime Video when I have zero interest in using it

<comment><USER24> Can you afford to pay yearly? Seems like they are trying to get people to pay yearly. They have really only raised that price once 3 or so years ago (otherwise they did a $5 increase).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Recently Amazon upped its minimum order for Prime Now (2 hr delivery) -- used to be 20 euros, now it's 40. I cancelled my subscription because of that, but the customer service was courteous and refunded the unused months fairly quickly.

</comment><comment><USER28> Many people in this and other recent threads talking about counterfeit items...please be aggressive about reporting these to customer service! It's only happened to me once, and customer service just refunded the ~$50 purchase without even asking me to send it back. A few days later I saw the seller was no longer on Amazon, so I suspect this is something Amazon is starting to take more seriously.

Amazon really needs to do a better job of clearly showing which products are sold by third-parties and how well-vetted those third-parties actually are. I've not seen anyone say that a "Sold by Amazon" product is counterfeit.

This said... I've come to rely less and less on Prime for actually meeting its 2-day promises. Most of the time I don't care when it shows up, but when I _do_ care, I've lost all faith that Amazon will actually pull through so I end up just buying locally.

If volume is the issue, they really could incentivize the "no rush" shipping more than the hokey $5 credit things.

<comment><USER29> > I've not seen anyone say that a "Sold by Amazon" product is counterfeit.

I've had it happen to me with Levi's, and word of mouth tells me this is a problem in general with big name clothing.

<comment><USER24> How obvious was the counterfeit? I'm worried That I'm oblivious enough to not notice something is counterfeit and just think the product is bad quality.

<comment><USER29> I was certainly fooled the first one or two times it happened; my initial thought was that Levi's provided the worst of its production to Amazon. The jeans were cut and sewn poorly, covered in sawdust, and fell apart within months. It's only upon doing further research that I realized they were counterfeit, and that many people have had this problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Especially now that Amazon owns Whole Foods, the vast majority of my disposable income is theirs. It would be very difficult for them to make Prime no longer worthwhile for me.

<comment><USER31> That doesn't at all scare you? Is there anything that they could be doing with your data or money that would make you think twice about using prime?

<comment><USER32> _> Is there anything that they could be doing with your data or money that would make you think twice about using prime?_

Realistically speaking, probably not, no.

<comment><USER33> +1 for straight up honesty. I'm the same way, wish I were more on top of stuff like this, but don't have time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Thanks for the heads up! They just passed my value threshold and I'm making sure to set my auto-reknew to off. I have plenty of patience to wait a week for packages.

</comment><comment><USER35> Never understood why prime is so cheap in Europe. In Italy is 20 euros, and was 10 a few years ago. Sure, prime video here has a very weak offer, but still free shipment for 20/year is a good deal.

<comment><USER36> Probably greater density -> cheaper shipping.

Also they probably are working to lock people in initially with low prices and hike prices overtime once they are dependent (monthly scheduled shipments, etc)

<comment><USER35> Yep locking was my best guess...

<comment><USER37> The comfort you never needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Until I read this article I didn't even realize I could get Prime monthly. Back in the day when it started it was a one time fee, $70? I paid it, and Amazon has been charging me since then. Like all subscription services, you are supposed to deiced once and forget about it. I worry about the concentration of power in the hands of Amazon. But I love my Kindle and I love Prime.

<comment><USER17> > Until I read this article I didn't even realize I could get Prime monthly.

It's relatively new, only added in April, 2016: [https://www.wired.com/2016/04/amazon-prime-now-available- mon...](https://www.wired.com/2016/04/amazon-prime-now-available-month- without-shipping/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I pay for Prime yearly, so this does not affect me. However, in the last couple years, the quality of service has decreased dramatically. When Prime first rolled out, it used to be that I'd receive my packages on day 2 like clockwork. These days, I'm lucky if I receive packages in 4 or 5 days. Additionally, with inventory co-mingling, Amazon has become a dumping ground for counterfeit and damaged products. I've wasted so much time this past year sending stuff back (sometimes repeatedly) because I've received something that was damaged (usually not during shipping) or clearly fraudulent.

The upside of course, is that Amazon's customer service remains top notch and any issues that I have are ultimately resolved to my "satisfaction." It'd be nice if I didn't have to spend so much time in chats with Amazon customer service.

<comment><USER40> Opposite here, I'm receiving most packages same day (evening) at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm fortunate to live close to one of their distribution centers. I regularly get things same or next day.

When I use other resellers online it takes upwards of a week to get things. For the few situations where they're less than amazon, their shipping fees and shipping times lose the sale.

Fedex seems to go out of their way to sit on packages. UPS, on the other hand, seems to go to extra lengths to get packages through their system as quickly as possible, regardless of shipping type. As in, things ordered UPS Ground regularly get here in 2 days. Fedex, though, when they say a week, it'll damned well be 7 days.

</comment><comment><USER42> I've wondered why Amazon Prime charges tax in my state for what's essentially a yearly membership club fee. My guess is that since it's bundled with streaming services etc it counts as being entertainment even though I don't use those features.

<comment><USER24> That would be my guess too. And that is pretty lame for the, I'm guessing, majority of subscribers who don't use their other features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I rarely get two-day deliveries anymore, with the fee increase, I'm likely to terminate the service :/ I only ship about one item per month on Amazon, not worth the $13/mo

</comment><comment><USER44> Is Prime still worth it? Many items on Amazon Prime are more expensive than buying at local retailers, and competitors like Walmart, Costco, and Jet (now part of Walmart) offer cheap, fast shipping, often with lower prices.

I'm planning on cancelling my Prime subscription when it goes up for renewal since I rarely use it (it would actually be cheaper to pay for 2-day shipping every time).

<comment><USER45> Same-day arrival is a godsend for me, which is why I keep paying for it. I don't care about their Music or Video options, though it's handy to have with Echos around the apartment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> It's still the best deal in all of retail ecommerce.

<comment><USER47> Walmart.com has free two-day shipping on orders of $35 or more and there is no subscription fees.

<comment><USER48> Walmart doesn't include Video & Music streaming. Amazon video alone is worth it for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> [Obsolete; new HN title is fine]

<comment><USER50> That's exactly what the title says.

<comment><USER51> The actual article title starts with 'Your'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I've stopped shopping at amazon, but the prime subscription I expected to expire annoyingly auto-renewed itself. There seems to be an (intentional?) lack of prime account management features. The only user facing options seem to be "cancel now" or "email me right before auto-renewal". I don't see a way to simply turn off automatic renewal.

On the other hand I think prime was a useful influence on other e-commence sites. Shipping times have become dramatically shorter in recent years.

So, thank you Amazon for forcing your competition to ship faster while allowing your own site to become overrun with fake reviews and crappy knock- off products!</comment>


Ask HN: Django hosting - <AUTHOR>

I'm fiddling with django and I'd like to find some inexpensive hosts that'll get me going - testing wise.  Hosts where I can upgrade if need be, i.e. my app becomes popular.<p>Where do I look? <comment><USER2> I recommend a VPS with slicehost.com at 20$ month, with Nginx to serve static files and fastcgi for Django. Nginx+FastCGI is the answer to the memory constraints(256mb).

There are multiple plan you can update to. And since it's a VPS, updating is painless.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm using cheapish shared hosting Site5, which supports PHP, Django and Rails. The Django instalation wasn't exactly easy, but it worked (if you need help I can give a hand).

However you might prefer going for a more Django focused host, you can find a few @ <http://djangofriendly.com/hosts/>.

</comment><comment><USER4> I rarely see them mentioned but linode is probably the best deal I have seen. 19.95/month you get a VPS solution, full root access, 360mb ram, 200GB Transfer and they have awesome customer service. And no, I am not affiliated, its just nice to see a hosting company that serves its customers well @ Linode.com

</comment><comment><USER5> I found webfaction.com from recommendations here, and I haven't been disappointed.

<comment><AUTHOR> As far as I've looked I've found webfaction and these guys - <http://machine.kerplunc.com/> . Don't know if they're any good though.

Thanks for the recommendation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Dreamhost, install is manual, but works fine for me.

Hosting is dirt cheap and there are all sorts of deals out there for them.

Customer service and the way they run the place seems to have gotten better lately, too.

</comment><comment><USER7> MediaTemple has Django grid containers now. Starts at $20/mo.

[http://mediatemple.net/webhosting/gs/features/containers.php...](http://mediatemple.net/webhosting/gs/features/containers.php#django)

</comment><comment><USER8> Google.</comment>


Dell Founder Said to Seek Majority Control Using Personal Funds - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-30/dell-founder-said-to-seek-majority-control-using-personal-funds.html

<comment><USER2> Fun fact: Dell's current market cap is 23B. They spent more than 39B over the past 16 years on stock buybacks.

It's the posterchild for stock buybacks gone wrong.

<comment><USER3> What do you mean? That just says to me Dell has returned a lot of money to shareholders.

<comment><USER2> If they paid dividends, it would have been returned to the shareholders (both long and short)

At the end of the day, buybacks benefit those who tender shares into the buyback at the expense of the other shareholders (the buyback would have to happen at a price above the market price at the time of the buyback, so that net loss is attributed to people who are still holding the stock.) This would be worthwhile if the company can grow earnings and profits enough to compensate for the short-term expense, but that doesn't happen most of the time.

Taking the long view, dell was $15/sh back then. If you just held for 16 years you'd be down nearly $2/sh. If they paid a dividend instead of a buyback, you'd have received at least $20 in dividend during that time (and the stock price, all else equal, would be higher)

<comment><USER4> If you want really want dividends instead of a buyback, just sell your shares in proportion to the percent of the company bought back.

It's logically the same thing. In both cases you have the same amount of cash and the same ownership of the company (although, you do have to pay a transaction fee to sell shares).

<comment><USER2> The two things seem the same but are different (as far as taxes are concerned)

<comment><USER5> Not since dividends are treated the same as long term capital gains. Unless you've been holding your shares less than a year, you're fine.

<comment><USER2> Tendering shares for which you have a capital loss triggers a capital loss event, and the amount that you can take a tax loss is limited by other factors (whereas you have to pay full penalty for gains, for losses there is a limit at the individual level). It's not symmetric

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Silver Lake LLC -- were they not the people who also screwed over the Skype folks during that acquisition?

</comment><comment><USER7> Certainly better than letting Microsoft control the company. That would guarantee they're stuck in the "PC world" forever, for better or for worse.

</comment><comment><USER8> Throwing good money after bad?

Dell circa 1997 wouldn't approve.

 _> "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders"_

\- Dell (on Apple)

But more seriously, you gotta give the guy credit for trying to save his baby.

<comment><USER9> If this rumour does happen then he _is_ giving the money back to the shareholders.</comment></comment>


What is the estimated GBs of text data on wikipedia.com? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> 27 GB with markup: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download>

Probably 1/10th of that is real text data, so no more than 3 GB.

<comment> alok-g 90% sounds to be too high an overhead. At 435 words per article [1] and 3553578 articles (English only) [2], it has ~1.5 billion words. At 5.1 letters per word and one extra for space, it comes out to 9.4 GB. With 27 GB uncompressed, even that sounds like too much overhead for markup, but maybe.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_comparisons> [2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Statistics>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> For the English version approximative 14GB archived, see this link for more information:

<http://dumps.wikimedia.org/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this link. I always thought wikipedia should sell Annual Wikipedia DVD's. Something like a brittanica.

EDIT: typo</comment></comment>


Jeff Bezos warns US military it risks losing tech supremacy - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/b38c5cf6-198a-11ea-97df-cc63de1d73f4 <comment><USER2> China and Russia have a number of advantages. The biggest one is the top down ossification in the US military where aged milpols (military politicians) with old ideas and low mental capacity are in charge of all R&D as well as purchasing. The USA has a lot of Aircraft Carriers, none of which could withstand 50 time-on-target (hit at the same time) ship killers at 5000 MPH. China could easily deal with them all. Russia less so, due to lack of missiles due to budgetary limits. The same thing rules in the air, where unmanned drone fighters that cost less than .1% of a new fighter each, with enough AI internal to wiggle through. The USA planes will be swamped. Drones will also take out tanks and risk no pilots. Drones are dirt cheap compared to F35s.

Military production and procurement is also 10 times as costly per unitof weaponry compared to China or Russia.

This is due to the want-of-a-nail POV. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Want_of_a_Nail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Want_of_a_Nail)

So much attention is placed at the nail level that costs can climb to 100 times as much as what a civilian pays for the same thing. Modern electronic parts are made robotically and have very very good reliability - yet the MIL- SPEC procurement process often demands xrays for each part = $$$. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Military_Standar...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Military_Standard)

Have you ever wondered why Russia was able to maintain it's place in line as to space matters, to get the first satellite etc? People in the USA wanted to make and launch satellites well before Russia, and even conceived the geostationary communications nets. The same old farts sat on it. Those same old farts pushed Amazon off-the-puck for the AWS contract. We have all seen the mess Microsoft has made of the cloud services they launched, now the US military will suffer through that same waste of time, money and performance due to that same old boy network. So get used to it. China is going on top and will stay on top, Russia will carry on being robbed by it's own milpols, but will still hit waaay above it's weight due to the US Milpols..

<comment><USER3> >The USA has a lot of Aircraft Carriers, none of which could withstand 50 time-on-target (hit at the same time) ship killers at 5000 MPH. China could easily deal with them all.

Do you have any source on China's missile defense?

<comment><USER4> You might be interested in watching the 70th National Day anniversary to conclude what others in the military might have concluded; China has some military superiority. These are just the highlights [1].

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lmp51YN-7wc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lmp51YN-7wc)

<comment><USER5> I saw a lot of people marching in uniform together and flying fighter planes and wearing suits and making speeches. What did I miss? Not quite sure where the superiority in that video is.

<comment><USER4> It was the highlights, most of the full video shows China flexing its military powers. Whatever man, we could all live in our bubbles and not admit that other countries have a more disciplined military and one that might produce and showcase offensive weapons that are a modern threat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Jeff Bezos built a website / online marketplace. Why does anyone care about his opinion on global military matters?

<comment><USER7> Supply chain & logistics is a huge part of what the military does. Don't understand why you're so sour.

<comment><USER8> The US military is still a logistics leader. Amazon.com barely breaks even and survives with poverty wages for last mile and air transport staff.

Jeff is sour AWS lost to Microsoft for the DoD contract.

<comment><USER4> I thought this was still an ongoing battle between corporate lawyers?

<comment><USER8> The US government has unlimited resources. I'd bet a beer the Azure win sticks, continuing litigation or not.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>