this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2025
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I’m down for a breakup but I don’t see how we could twist this into illegality.
You could probably make it illegal to alter people's videos without their explicit consent. But also the Republicans have shown us that laws mean what the people in charge want
By signing up to this service you agree to allow us to alter or modify your content as we require for efficient operation or to increase content engagement
You can make that kind of thing illegal. I think "shrink wrap eulas" are dubious. Rule that fine print with a bunch of other stuff doesn't count as explicit. Like there are rules now about cookie acceptance that has changed how the web works, and most sites don't try to hide the cookie thing because that's against the rules.
We wouldn't need so many damn laws to prevent shitty companies from doing shitty things if we could just become the kind of society that doesn't support shitty companies. The cookie thing is a great example of how a well–intentioned regulation made the internet an even more irritating place to be.
I suppose. But have you tried to get people to care about things? It's stupid hard. I can't get most of my friends to stop using Twitter, which is a pretty low stakes change. Nevermind something like "eat less meat" or "walk instead of drive sometimes"
If you can make people care, you can solve a lot of problems
I have tried, and writing my last comment actually brought a lot of repressed rage out. I've been too lenient on my friends and family who continue to use things like Facebook and X, because I didn't want to be that opinionated, ideological snore who won't shut up about how Facebook is the world's most prolific purveyor of hate speech, propping up the Trump administration, Israel, LGBT hate groups, the Rohingya genocide, housing discrimination, abortion witch hunts, blah blah blah. But the thing is that these are true things, and people should be appalled enough to never touch a Meta product again, even if it means teaching an elderly family member to learn a new group messaging app.
So I'm back to being a loudmouth bitch who scolds people for using Facebook. And X. But I probably don't stand a chance with Google.
I kinda doubt you’d be able to write a law that would actually have the effect you’re looking for. In the case of what you just wrote, all YouTube would need to do is write into their ToS that by uploading to their platform you’ve given them explicit permission to alter the video for purposes of storage space or increasing/decreasing quality.
I think you're under estimating what the law can do, probably because most of the time it's used to bolster rich assholes.
It might not be currently illegal but I think there should be a law defining "crimes against society" that only applies to corporations and politicians. It could be vague like "disorderly conduct" but just for corpos and politicians and would include things like lying to the public and could have punishments like corpos losing their business license (death) and banishment to the moon/sun for politicians.
Overly vague laws are never a good thing.