I know my post was a little long for HN, but I think you need to follow the through line. Let me re-iterate:
Policy decisions and how people respond to them unfold in chronological order, and so the chronology is important. I was responding to a metaphor that imagined Google as an Emperor of YouTube, subjecting its subjects to a series of terrible decisions. It was framed as a "first they came for..." style argument for why we should believe today's decision tells us something about previous decisions. In the original metaphor, no hacking videos is like the emperor taking away another colour, after having previously taken away other colours.
I rewrote the metaphor as a chronology of what I think were some of the major inflection points for YouTube, and why a) this is different than previous cases; b) but the previous cases do lead us to this; c) I can support the goal of restricting some content on YouTube and not support this; d) I disagree with it and believe it to be stupid and arbitrary, but also I don't think the end point here is "Abandon YouTube and reclaim the free web!" for a few reasons.
Policy decisions and how people respond to them unfold in chronological order, and so the chronology is important. I was responding to a metaphor that imagined Google as an Emperor of YouTube, subjecting its subjects to a series of terrible decisions. It was framed as a "first they came for..." style argument for why we should believe today's decision tells us something about previous decisions. In the original metaphor, no hacking videos is like the emperor taking away another colour, after having previously taken away other colours.
I rewrote the metaphor as a chronology of what I think were some of the major inflection points for YouTube, and why a) this is different than previous cases; b) but the previous cases do lead us to this; c) I can support the goal of restricting some content on YouTube and not support this; d) I disagree with it and believe it to be stupid and arbitrary, but also I don't think the end point here is "Abandon YouTube and reclaim the free web!" for a few reasons.