Zach Copley
Sep 4, 2018 · 2 min read

Thank you for your reply, Georgi. Please forgive me if I’m mischaracterizing what you’re saying, but I think the bottom line is, you’re asking users to trust you “not to be evil,” almost exactly what users are supposed to do with YouTube and Google. Falling back on the the law to ensure freedom of expression and speech is cold comfort considering the history of DMCA takedown abuses and the arbitrary censorship we’ve been seeing on other video platforms, particularly YouTube. And YouTube is located in the United States, which does not even have a legal definition of “hate speech”. In Germany, anti-“hate speech” laws do exist, and require companies to censor communications on their platforms. These laws also seem to be expanding as far as their definition and enforcement online. To wit:

I was hoping there were plans on the roadmap (somewhere) to facilitate additional portals to exist capable of capitalizing on the anti-censorship robustness of IPFS, or something along those lines, or something else.

While your monetization system for creators and viewers is a fantastic usage of blockchain technology, and obviously will be a major draw to your platform for many, I think another powerful draw that I’m seeing is the promise of less censorship, transparency and arbitrary decisions than on other video platforms (especially YouTube). But I think while your whitepaper and this medium post talk a good game about being against censorship and BitTube being censorship resistant, it seems like the only thing user’s really have to rely on is the continuation of your good intentions. I feel the whitepaper isn’t as up-front about this fact as it should be. As long as your current team is running things maybe that will work out, but as we know, over time, people, platforms and companies change (e.g.: YouTube was gobbled by Google).

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