Posted on 06/29/2020 4:45:37 PM PDT by janetjanet998
Bill Mitchell @mitchellvii YouTube just banned Stefan Molyneux.
A million followers.
Hundreds of millions of views.
No warning given.
Gone.
WHEN will Congress do something about this?
> If you want the Wild West, you’re forcing YouTube (and presumably other websites) against the will of their owners to run pornography <
You’re assuming a bit too much there. Or perhaps I wasn’t clear enough. By “Wild West” I meant minimum censorship, and great freedom. Not no censorship at all. Even the Wild West had sheriffs!
As it is, YouTube can kick you off their site for saying even the most innocent non-PC things. I recently read that a chess analysis guy got a YouTube time out. He still can’t figure out why. Maybe the YouTube computer censors flagged him for saying “white moves first”.
A Wild West version of YouTube would scale back those computer censors. No one would argue for no censorship at all. Gotta have a sheriff. Just not a hyper-sensitive one.
I've read about his white replacement theories but it doesn't matter what I think, it matters what YouTube thinks and they think some of his stuff is racist.
“Stefan should take them to court.”
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“I don’t understand this argument.”
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Restraint of trade - entities on both the left and right profit from using Youtube, it is also what keeps Youtube in business. Fortunately for Youtube, no one on the right seems to have yet figured out how to call a lawyer.
“At the most basic level, “restraint of trade” is any activity that prevents another party from conducting business as they normally would without such a restraint. For instance, two businesses agreeing to fix prices in order to put another competitor out of business is an illegal restraint of trade. Other examples include creating a monopoly, coercing another party to stop competing with your business, or unlawfully interfering with a business deal (see Tortious Interference).”
https://smallbusiness.findlaw.com/business-laws-and-regulations/restraint-of-trade.html
Independent-never.
Are you trying to use the law to enforce this position or just hope YouTube comes around to your point of view?
As it is, YouTube can kick you off their site for saying even the most innocent non-PC things. I recently read that a chess analysis guy got a YouTube time out.
Yeah, that's kinda how private property works.
This is a false argument. Alphabet ie Google/YouTube is a monopoly. Due to network effects, the barriers to entry for any competitor are insurmountably high. They use their monopoly power to engage in viewpoint discrimination and hold any potential competitors to different standards than they hold themselves.
The DOJ needs to bring an anti-trust action and break Alphabet up. The same goes for Amazon, Facebook and Twitter.
Say I am writing a book, and when I put it down, somebody who disagrees with me picks my book up and starts writing in it. I will be justifiably upset as they are writing in my book.
But say I am supplying paper for people to write their own books. And I determine there are some people who I don't want to be able to write a book, so I refuse to sell them paper.
FR and even DU are spaces for those with similar thoughts to write their own book essentially.
YouTube and Twitter and such are the paper manufacturers.
When those that control the access to the modern version of the printing press exclude some people it is very different than when some people decide to write their own thing on paper.
Is YouTube conspiring with Facebook and Twitter to ruin this guy’s life? That would be illegal. But if they’re not, then I’m not sure you have much of an argument. And if you think I’m wrong, then he should sue and see what happens.
I’ve been trying parler.com - twitter without the censoring cesspit.
YouTube is guilty as charged. But, they are still a more reliable source of real news than you can find on ABC, CBS, NBC, CSPAN, CNN, MSNBC, FoxNews, or any other so called news network. It is a bit of a problem working through their Left Wing defense systems. All of the king's men and all of their horses with their algorithms can't stop the ability for the truth to get through.
“Do you think Stefan has a right to use it for his benefit?”
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Yes. Refer to my comment hereabouts on “Restraint Of Trade”.
Do you have any legal basis for this distinction or did you just pull it out of your ass? YouTube, Twitter, FR and DU are all *exactly the same* as far as the law goes. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (which was passed to give websites the freedom to moderate pornography) defines them all as providers.
> Are you trying to use the law to enforce this position... <
As I noted earlier, only if YouTube meets the requirements of being a monopoly! I don’t know the figures. Someone in the Justice Department will have to crunch the numbers, If YouTube doesn’t meet those monopoly requirements, then I don’t care what they do. They could kick conservatives off their site for any old reason. Or for no reason at all. I wouldn’t care.
But if YouTube does meet the monopoly threshold (and I suspect it would), then it’s a whole different story.
And I see this as a conservative position.
“Is YouTube conspiring with Facebook and Twitter to ruin this guy’s life? That would be illegal. But if they’re not, then I’m not sure you have much of an argument. And if you think I’m wrong, then he should sue and see what happens.”
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It’s not dependent on a “gang conspiracy”; if those entities also screwed him over they could be sued separately. Think the Covington kids.
This is the real story. Everyone bashing the tech companies has it wrong.
The techs have been walking a fine line, leaving as much stuff out there as possible while still appeasing the advertisers. Now, in the last week, there's been a huge wave of advertisers saying they're going to boycott social media until they clean up "hate speech".
The advertisers have always been driving this bus, not the social media companies, and now they're on the warpath.
People who've wanted to regulate the techs are going to be wishing for the good old days because the advertisers are going to crush debate.
When enough people leave YouTube and go elsewhere YouTube will change their practices.
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That is almost impossible to do now. These tech companies started out as free speech forums for everyone. However, only when they had a complete monopoly, they decided to make their move against conservatives.
If they censored only conservatives from the start, they would have never gotten this big.
I get the argument about government vs free market. Although, this is not a free market anymore. They control it all, and they know it.
Parler has started doing well as an alternative to twitter. However, what happens when they decide to pull the app from google play, or the Apple Store?
There has to be some protections in place when you hold a monopoly.
That’s why we did it with the phone companies.
“YouTube, Twitter, FR and DU are all *exactly the same* as far as the law goes.”
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Nope. Youtube has financial agreements wherein they pay content producers, it’s a business relaationship and subject to business law (in addition to civil and criminal).
Now, maybe you have some kind of deal with FR wherein they pay you for commenting, but I suspect it’s a unique business association among most FR users.
So, you got apples and oranges.
It’s not a free market. These big social media companies were set up and funding by Americsn taxpayers via the CIA—and then given special protection as long as they didn’t act like publishers, picking and choosing what was published on their platforms.
We bought, built and provided special protection for these companies. They are not some natural result of “geniuses” and the free market.
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