This feels like a really silly question, but why are these sorts of scientific discussions happening on Facebook and YouTube instead of, like, a journal or conference or mailing list or something?
Like, independent of the particular thing they're blocking, YouTube is not a scientific repository and their financial incentives are not aligned with supporting science. Why are we relying on them? Do we want to watch a Grammarly ad interrupt a scientific presentation every few minutes? What do you do if you're a scientist who got banned from YouTube because of copyright strikes or something?
It seems possible that the Substack crowd can push back against this particular culture-war issue with enough public shaming (and friendly legislators), but it seems like very much the wrong path. If you want a scientific presentation to be watchable by other scientists, why isn't a university or an academic press hosting the video? It is, I hear, possible to run a video hosting site of your own. YouTube isn't the internet.
Like, independent of the particular thing they're blocking, YouTube is not a scientific repository and their financial incentives are not aligned with supporting science. Why are we relying on them? Do we want to watch a Grammarly ad interrupt a scientific presentation every few minutes? What do you do if you're a scientist who got banned from YouTube because of copyright strikes or something?
It seems possible that the Substack crowd can push back against this particular culture-war issue with enough public shaming (and friendly legislators), but it seems like very much the wrong path. If you want a scientific presentation to be watchable by other scientists, why isn't a university or an academic press hosting the video? It is, I hear, possible to run a video hosting site of your own. YouTube isn't the internet.