I’ve heard Philip DeFranco discuss conversations he’s had with YouTube reps over his issues surrounding censorship on the platform.
That's not evidence...
Ethically, I would prefer YouTube not to ban this content, but instead put barriers to entry in place, similar with what Twitter did with Trump’s shitposting but I also think a private enterprise shouldn’t be forced to do business with someone they don’t wish to, especially when it’s not a protected class.
I am concerned about Google’s search algorithm, but it’s incumbent on me to use alternative search engines, which is a trivial solution. If we want to have this sort of regulation of tech companies they need to made in to utilities. We have all but formally admitted that video streaming is an essential tool of today’s communication.
It seems that you're fine with private businesses censoring people as long as competition exists, but history shows that businesses easily collaborate when their interests align. This means in the internet sphere where only two or three businesses are competing in a certain realm, it becomes pretty easy to effectively control what information the vast majority of people see.
In the case that they don't collaborate, removing a video from Youtube probably prevents thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people from seeing it, for better or worse. Most people don't go through a great deal of effort to hunt things down (most people can't be pained to look up basic information about their local reps, even). Information control doesn't need to be absolute to do serious damage.
I would agree to give more rights to 'private business' in this regard if their market share was limited, but right now most of the information on the internet is controlled by only a handful of tech companies. Google's search engine market share is 92%. Imagine how much of a difference their proprietary algorithm makes on the information that billions of people view every day.
That is absolutely not what has happened here and you know it.
Given how powerful YouTube is, don't you think they have some responsibility to police what is posted if the content is untrue and harmful to public health? There should be some limits on what can be posted.
There is a potential issue here of course, who is the arbiter of truth? I guess in this example, they are. But the internet being a free for all where anyone can post anything without scrutiny isn't working out too well, I'd suggest it's a big part of the "post truth" world we now live in.
Not only are they the arbiter of truth, they don't have to tell you exactly what they un-truthed. They tell the public "no, you're not allowed to hear that" and that's that. My stance would be closer to that of Rama's if Google's market share in video hosting were closer to 20% of the market instead of 70%.