> Surely we shouldn't want a US YouTube, a French YouTube, a Japanese YouTube, etc.
Why not? What's so special about having all content on the same website? You can generally only consume videos in your own language or others you can understand. There's generally only a handful of countries that speak a certain language, and aggregators would likely appear.
If each country had their own localised platform, local culture would have a much greater chance to flourish.
I know plenty of teenagers who know more about US politics than their own country's, who barely know local artists, who know certain expressions in English but have no resources to convey a similar message in their native languages.
I wouldn't mind going back to a world a little more diverse, a little less homogeneous.
Going further: do you want a US internet, a French internet, Japanese internet, etc? I would prefer to avoid fragmentation of the ecosystem, since it complicates discovery of content, reduces potential reach, limits cross-pollination of ideas, etc.
Suppose that I really want to consume content from certain UK creators, but the UK YouTube-equivalent is region-locked, as much of BBC is today. That's a net loss compared to the status quo.
> There's generally only a handful of countries that speak a certain language
And there are plenty of people who speak languages other than their native one. English literacy / fluency is a de facto standard in tech, whether we like it or not. It's not a matter of suppressing other cultures, but rather providing a common language for discourse.
> and aggregators would likely appear.
I'm not so convinced. If these are services provided by governments for their residents, they're especially easy to region-lock.
> If each country had their own localised platform, local culture would have a much greater chance to flourish.
> I know plenty of teenagers who know more about US politics than their own country's, who barely know local artists, who know certain expressions in English but have no resources to convey a similar message in their native languages.
I sympathize with this concern, but I don't think that this approach is the answer.
> Going further: do you want a US internet, a French internet, Japanese internet, etc?
The Internet was conceived as a network of independent nodes, all interconnected. What I said looks a lot more like what the Internet was intended to be than YouTube does.
> I would prefer to avoid fragmentation of the ecosystem, since it complicates discovery of content, reduces potential reach, limits cross-pollination of ideas, etc.
Aggregators, RSS feeds or similar, word of mouth, all those things help with relevant discovery. The YouTube recommendations algorithm seems to do less so.
> Suppose that I really want to consume content from certain UK creators, but the UK YouTube-equivalent is region-locked, as much of BBC is today. That's a net loss compared to the status quo.
Perhaps. You might also ask yourself why they are region-locked. I believe it will come down to advertisement, at least to a non-negligible amount.
In any case, I'm not saying multi-language or multi-country websites and services would be prohibited from existing, only that the likes of YouTube would probably not be as profitable and may cease to exist.
> And there are plenty of people who speak languages other than their native one. English literacy / fluency is a de facto standard in tech, whether we like it or not.
It is. And within a certain circle it's less of a problem, though sometimes it can also become one.
> It's not a matter of suppressing other cultures, but rather providing a common language for discourse.
I assume you're a native English speaker, most likely from the USA. What you call "a common language for discourse" is unfortunately exactly the suppression of other cultures. There's no way to have that common language without the language, the ideas and the very ways of thinking approaching more the one of the language that's becoming common.
The very premise of TFA shows that. Propaganda and advertisement are one and the same in some languages. And that has profound implications in how the speakers of those languages interpret the world in what pertains to these concepts. By "providing a common language" where there is an intrinsic difference between the words, that world view, the very premises of those other cultures are changed and moulded to be more similar to those of the dominant language.
The very existence of said common language makes the world less interesting, it slowly erases and erodes individualities of cultures and ultimately we as a species are poorer for it.
> The Internet was conceived as a network of independent nodes, all interconnected. What I said looks a lot more like what the Internet was intended to be than YouTube does.
I don't dispute that, and it's not as much of an issue as long as they are in fact interconnected nodes, but the direction we're heading is that more and more countries are exploring China's and North Korea's model where they have their own sovereign internet. Russia, Iran, Myanmar have all taken concrete steps in the past 2-3 years, and plenty of other countries would do more if they had the ability to do so.
Like it or not, there is actually a notion of "too big to block." Most countries are not willing to block, say, all of Cloudflare's IP ranges, or all of Google or YouTube.
> Perhaps. You might also ask yourself why they are region-locked. I believe it will come down to advertisement, at least to a non-negligible amount.
In my experience, most region locks are based on either licensing deals or government regulations. That seems to be the case for BBC content:
"Programmes cannot be streamed outside the UK, even on holiday. This is because of rights agreements."
Sure, some licensing deals are made on the basis of "who gets the advertising revenue", but not all of them (or probably most, for that matter).
> In any case, I'm not saying multi-language or multi-country websites and services would be prohibited from existing, only that the likes of YouTube would probably not be as profitable and may cease to exist.
Yep, I totally agree. As I said, "Take away the ad money, and I can't imagine that the remaining subscription revenue comes anywhere close to paying for the infrastructure." I'm not asserting that multi-country websites would be prohibited, but rather that if you push ownership onto governments, they'll prioritize their residents over any other users, and I wouldn't be surprised if said governments institute region locks (e.g. to limit serving costs).
Why not? What's so special about having all content on the same website? You can generally only consume videos in your own language or others you can understand. There's generally only a handful of countries that speak a certain language, and aggregators would likely appear.
If each country had their own localised platform, local culture would have a much greater chance to flourish.
I know plenty of teenagers who know more about US politics than their own country's, who barely know local artists, who know certain expressions in English but have no resources to convey a similar message in their native languages.
I wouldn't mind going back to a world a little more diverse, a little less homogeneous.