> “If a creator’s off-platform behavior harms our users, employees or ecosystem, we take action to protect the community,” the spokeswoman said.
Putting aside the validity of the accusations—let's say he did everything he's accused of, for the sake of argument—is Youtube alleging that he assaulted Youtube employees, app developers who use the Youtube ecosystem, or Youtube users? I assume the latter. But the thing is, a majority of people on Earth are Youtube users, so what the heck does that even mean?
I have no dog in this fight, Russell Brand's fate is not of interest to me. I'm just wondering about the argument they are making, and how broad it seems. If any alleged crime takes place wherein the victim has watched at least one Youtube video at some point in their life, and the perpetrator has a monetized Youtube channel, will Youtube's policy be to step in and protect the victim? For example, if I am YT creator and I punch someone in a bar, and that someone has a Youtube subscription, does Youtube step in? That feels like the kind of policy that cannot be faithfully and objectively executed, which makes it a bad policy and a potential legal vulnerability for Youtube.
I don't think it matters if the other person has a YT subscription. If you create videos about, say, beekeeping and you get in a random bar fight, no, probably not. IF you're some sort of 'influencer' and your public persona is all about being a tough-talking badass, such that your getting into a bar fight makes you the Main character in the entertainment/gossip pages for several days, then they might dump you because they don't want next weeks story to be 'YouTube subsidizes karaterobot's hard-drinking combat LARP.'
It's not a balanced appraisal of facts and harms and injury allocation like in a tort lawsuit; more a seat-of-the-pants executive judgement call on 'does hanging out with this guy commercially make us look bad?' If the answer is yes, then you suddenly no longer have a commercial relationship. It's similar to the 'morals clauses' in the contracts of TV and movie stars, but with the difference that tech firms basically set contractual terms unilaterally and the network effects are so strong that that no individual performer has any kind of leverage to request anything different.
It's worth understanding that the incredible concentration of corporate power on digital platforms is due to a mix of technological moats, the first-mover advantage of preferential attachment, and a philosophical shift away from breaking up monopolies, on the theory that large entities often deliver greater consumer benefits than a competitive market place, a viewpoint famously summarized here: https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
The comparison to 'morals clauses' is apt: it was used mostly to force Christian, anti-Communist, and later pro-China stances on actors lest they harm the 'reputation' of the studio.
> But the thing is, a majority of people on Earth are Youtube users, so what the heck does that even mean?
This is beside the point, but I want to bring it up because I think it's important to remember we live in a bubble.
A majority of people on earth are not Youtube users. Only ~60% of the world's population uses the internet[1], and of those, I'd assume a significant portion lack the bandwidth to stream video. Also, Youtube is blocked in China.
I doubt "we take action to protect the community" has a clear legal definition. Their "community" could be people without an internet connection too (e.g. everyone in Los Angeles because they have an office there).
Since this is obviously not about their "community" but about protecting the brand, I doubt they have put much thought into defining any of the terms in the statement.
YouTube doesn't want to be demonetized by advertisers, so they are demonetizing Brand. It's basic reputation management / income stream protection. Brand is free to go elsewhere or set up his own streaming / video publishing service.
YouTube is a massive platform and inherently has power. People used the exact same argument for Twitter but I don’t think you can deny that arbitrary management choices made a huge difference in how it worked, which had substantial impacts that a private company shouldn’t have.
I continue to assert that the solution to this is not to regulate how an individual private company decides who to associate with (which is a core First Amendment right), but rather to pass strong anti-trust laws to prevent any one company from individually having enough power over society.
YouTube should be free to decide who can be on its platform however it sees fit. However, YouTube shouldn’t hold such power over us that when they arbitrarily ban someone it severely harms them.
Network effects mean that most internet platforms form natural monopolies, as a hypothetical scenario in which there are dozens of video websites with idiosyncratic communities, rules and technical constraints would add friction that most inhabitants of the current ecosystem would loathe. This arguably makes Youtube more similar to a public transportation service - imagine if New York's MTA having banned Russell Brand from using its services, and your proposed solution were that strong antitrust laws ought to have forced its deconsolidation and return to the '20s setup with the IRT, BRT and IND networks being separate, so a ban from just one of the public transport networks would not be so dramatic to the individual.
More generally, I have to say that this commonly held idea of corporations enjoying First Amendment rights does not strike me as a natural or necessary interpretation of the FA; and moreover, it frequently seems to be invoked so selectively that the same people who consider a gargantuan public corporation's right to deny custom at will to be a "core First Amendment right" simultaneously snicker at the invocation of First Amendment rights for private individuals they are politically or morally opposed to, and consider instances of politically or morally motivated rejection of customers by small and completely fungible privately held businesses to be a civil rights issue that should definitively not be decided on a First Amendment basis.
> Network effects mean that most internet platforms form natural monopolies
I'm not entirely convinced. I think it's more "unlimited VC money so platforms could operate at a loss for a decade" had way more to do with entrenching these "natural" monopolies.
I recall plenty of social media/video sharing/etc. sites back in the day. I hosted a number of them. They did not die due to lack of popularity, but due to lack of ability to pay for bandwidth and server costs. VC funded folks could just spam money for free, while being told to not even worry about revenue or monetization.
This is around the time the word "startup" became a joke - and instead described a vastly funded corporate enterprise vs. a couple guys in a garage.
Network effects are certainly a thing, but they are so warped by cheap money and the ability to operate for years at huge losses that I'm not convinced they are as strong as suggested. You had no way to compete with Youtube back then backed by Google money. They effectively had free bandwidth for a decade while they figured things out. Competitors actually had to pay bills and staff with actual revenue. The game was over before it began.
> Network effects mean that most internet platforms form natural monopolies
I don’t think these monopolies are nearly as natural as something like transportation on rail infrastructure.
I think there’s a ton of regulation that can and should be applied to these companies that would bite away at how “natural” these monopolies appear (though, some of these require new legislation, for sure, which might be impossible given Congress in the modern area).
We could regulate interoperability, and force major media organizations to provide interpretation to their competitors (similar to how MVNO’s are allowed to buy their backend infra from the major players at or near cost).
We could prevent these “natural monopolies” from being embedded in a larger organization. YouTube’s monopoly might not appear nearly so natural if it was forced to be separated from the rest of Google and stand on its own.
Facebook’s monopoly would not be so natural if it had been prevented from buying every apparent threat to its business in the last decade. If you split up Facebook into its data collection systems, Facebook itself, the ad sales business, Instagram, and WhatsApp, suddenly it’s monopolies aren’t so natural.
Hell, the standard VC playbook of the 2010s was essentially the definition of anti-competitive practices: ignore the costs, ignore the revenues, just lose money on the business in an attempt to dominate the market to a degree that you can raise costs on consumers and no one will be able to stop you. That was the exact VC playbook, and also almost a perfect description of monopolistic behavior and anti-competitive practices.
I don’t think these are natural monopolies at all. I think Congress and regulators were both asleep at the switch for decades while these monopolies slowly formed out of pretty standard anti-competitive practices.
Tear down their walled gardens, separate these behemoths into their actual distinct lines of business, and prevent them from buying every competitor they see and they won’t be so unassailable.
Or just aggressively tax large/high-revenue companies.
And speaking of taxing! I'm not sure why highly-successful companies draw so many more "they have too much power" criticisms than highly-successful individuals who often have power over media companies and spend a lot on lobbying politicians.
For the broader media ecosystem, we used to have stronger regulations preventing individual entities (be them individuals of corporations) from owning certain percentages of the media ecosystem.
I’d be a fan of modernizing that concept, defining social media companies as being a part of the media ecosystem, and lowering that ownership percentage.
Force individual social media companies to be broken up into smaller entities, and force a rollback of a lot of the traditional media consolidation.
It's easy to imagine such things when it relates to owning all the movie theaters or television stations in a given market. But if it's just because people choose to type YouTube into their browser or upload to YouTube over competitors, how do propose to do it?
I would mainly focus on regulating inter-operability, and countering the network effects so that when you have more than a certain share of the media ecosystem you become defined as a “Major Media” organization, and that designation creates additional regulations that you must follow.
Some of those would be interoperability focused (so, YouTube could have competitiors that are only attempting to provide a competing front-end and ad-serving business, while being able to take advantage of YouTube’s storage, bandwidth, and video serving at or near cost, similar to how the MVNO’s are allowed to piggyback off the big carriers). Interoperability would be focused on allowing new competitors to reasonably compete with a slice of YouTube, without forcing them to compete with the entire business.
The biggest one would be forcing divestment of different aspects of the business. I would allow the data collection apparatus that is Google to own the media company that is YouTube. I wouldn’t allow the ad serving business to be owned by the same entity that is the video distribution and playback company. I wouldn’t allow Google to own any other media properties aside from YouTube.
Basically, if you’re a single entity that on its own breaches the ownership threshold, then that single entity becomes the entire business. Everything else must be divested or separated.
Judging by the history of the web, there's a very strong tendancy to form natural monopolies, so I'm not entirely sure you can just legislate away their dominance.
I'd rather see them classed as common carriers. That can't just arbitrarily ban people from the network.
>Brand is free to go elsewhere or set up his own streaming / video publishing service.
Obviously there's problems with this reasoning right? Why bother mentioning pointless rationalization here? You and Youtube both know there's only one video service that offers long form format and that's youtube themselves.
Just tell it like it is. Youtube having a monopoly over online video content is effectively gagging and censoring Brand because of the alleged crimes influencing their business. It is not technically eliminating freedom of speech but it is both practically and effectively doing the same thing.
This points to a an overall problem within the US today regarding freedom of speech. We effectively do not have freedom of speech because all public speaking platforms are controlled by business interests.
That's what's going on here. Not some "oh you're free to go to another video service" bullshit.
He can mention other means for his fans to support him (Patreon et al) and fund raise | blog elsewhere with links to youtube, etc.
It's not beyond the bounds of reason that he may even see an increase in revenue over a longer time period as a result of wearing sackcloth and ashes and complaining about youtube .. just not direct YT revenue.
> You and Youtube both know there's only one video service that offers long form format and that's youtube themselves.
There are others, but YouTube has the largest audience. That's why Brand chose to use it as his platform. There was never a promise of a continuous business relationship. Things get blurry if YouTube decides to keep serving ads with Brand's videos, but doesn't pay him. They can do it, because that's how they wrote the T&Cs, but it doesn't seem fair. I don't think book publishers stop paying royalties to authors who have been accused of criminal behaviour; they may stop printing their books or even pull the books off the shelves, but the accounts will be settled and there will be no further monetization of the author's content.
Exactly. Don't be a coward... say what you mean. Those sentences are synonyms for "fuck off". Use the correct terminology, don't pretend you're being reasonable or rational.
I doubt YouTube worries about being demonetized by advertisers at this point. Where exactly will this advertisers go to advertise on long form videos otherwise?
> I doubt YouTube worries about being demonetized by advertisers at this point.
They've been the target of that twice at least, in 2017 over hate speech [1], in 2019 over pedos[2]. Large brands spend insane amounts of money on advertising, and they do not want their content to appear next to people facing allegations of sexual misconduct or otherwise bad behavior.
Hell just look at Twitter and how much advertising income they lost in the matter of a few months [4], as brands didn't want their ads to show up next to actual Nazis [3]. And instead of recognizing this and getting rid of the Nazis, Musk wants to sue the ADL [5].
They will show ads between videos, and maybe they do that when one or the other is demonetized, but they do not show interstitials on demonetized channels.
It is way too conspiratorial, simply because when it's demonetized it's still shown completely for free with no limits on number of views.
It's as simple as the execs at every fortune 500 company with an advertising budget being religious in some form and being shown "here's your Diet Coke ad next to <insert spiderman+elsa/terorrism/podcast debating if hitler was bad>" by someone with an agenda/some journalist' article. Even if they don't really care, it's enough of a reason to go to Google and get a marketing discount for x years.
At this point I can't tell if Musk sustained a brain injury/infection at some recent date, or he had a handler that was keeping him from touching pointy things and they quit or he fired them and now we're getting unfiltered Musk all day every day.
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
It's always possible to make your substantive points while staying within the guidelines. Please do.
> Ultimately the citizens of N Korea are 'free' to move elsewhere
They literally are not. They are held in by landmines and barbed wire. Nobody is going to execute Brand and his entire extended family if he moves away from YouTube. But that WILL happen if you leave North Korea.
Ultimately you can climb over the barbed wire fence and jump over the land mines.
They absolutely have agency to try. Just the same as Brand has agency to set up his own YouTube alternative.
Where do you want to set the limits? Is it at you and your extended family being executed?
What about starving people in Africa? They won't be executed if they leave, so it's their own fault for staying? What about USians that want an abortion? They can travel to another country, what about the first world unemployed in a recession? They could travel off to Africa and subsistence farm rather than complain about their mortgage.
Brand doesn't have a practical alternative to YouTube, so simply saying he can go elsewhere is stupid.
Why should he go? He is not being censored. He is still allowed to post videos, ask for Patreon support, sell tshirts etc… Youtube simply cancelled their commercial partnership.
Rumble is doing well and Brand already has a deal with them. Twitter supports long form video now and the owner is a big supporter. Plenty of other places
It doesn't really matter what their argument is, they simply need to have one. It's their sandbox, and they have chosen an advertiser-friendly ratchet as the driver of policy. YouTube will get more and more bland and samey as people fear the banhammer, which will get used on less and less extreme content and producers, as the "cancelling machinery" has been built and will always find the next-most-evil^tm on which to focus.
Until YouTube becomes boring and enough interesting people end up together somewhere else, and then all the users will leave at once (in internet time).
Doctorow huffs his own farts at a James Cameron level, but he's right about this.
>In England and Wales, more than 99% of rapes reported to police do not end in a conviction. This is the result of a criminal justice system that makes prosecuting rape extremely rare, lengthy and difficult.
An alternative interpretation of what's going on here is that the mainstream justice system is failing, and people are cobbling together an alternative justice system, where public shaming and demonetization are the punishments.
I think building in redundancy to reduce single points of failure is generally a good thing.
I get where you’re coming from, but YouTube doesn’t care about justice. They care about reputational harm and ultimately profits. So if that means demonetizing a victim because that’s what’s profitable, they’ll do that. If it means demonetizing an innocent but unpopular person, they’ll do that. A guilty person not being punished isn’t the only failure mode.
There's a word for that: vigilantism, a word not usually associated with fairness, accountability, or proportionate punishment. That there are voices here that suggest private punishment administered without accountability or due process is, to quote the parent poster, "a good thing" should worry us all.
I hadn't thought of it as a redundancy, Thanks for the perspective shift.
It is damming however that our institutions have become so useless and out of reach to the majority of people that we have to implement these obviously flawed system.
It's an interesting thought experiment, but ultimately boils down to one point. YT gets to do whatever they want. The terms of service are designed so they can be selective in their enforcement.
Is it bad policy? Yes. Does it allow for flexibility in a world that is never black and white? Also yes. Honestly, if there was a better solution, what would it be? The questions are endless once you start down this rabbit hole.
No, in my view Youtube can not do whatever they like with this kind of thing, at least as far as my potential outrage is concerned. If Youtube gives a false reason (to me as well as others) about the reason for demonetising someone then I have a problem with that.
When some content is banned from Youtube, it's got positives and negatives. Like when Alex Jones was banned, I was annoyed that I could no longer watch Alex Jones on Youtube if I ever wanted to, but more than that glad that he'd never appear in my autoplay or recommended videos. While I think there is some truth that YouTube can do as it likes, people talking about what their rules are, complaining about them, lobbying Youtube even, is all fair too. A fair complaint would be that the user does not get enough control over what gets recommended. If enough people are talking about that issue, it could motivate Youtube or a competitor to provide that kind of control, as it would be a signal that it would attract an audience to that platform and keep them engaged if recommendation control was a major concern of theirs.
Also, in some circumstances I could be quite annoyed with Youtube for not demonetising or banning some content. It could be something I don't want to watch personally, or more likely something I feel disgusted by such as Elsagate type scandals where the 'protect the children' type argument or instinct in my opinion or feelings override free speech concerns.
People criticising what Youtube does and talking about what a video hosting website would ideally do helps to create the conceptual foundations for the ideal video hosting website, and which Youtube and anyone else who reads the comments can use.
Also, discussing how such a system works produces what would be considered 'prior art' when it comes to patents.
> People criticising what Youtube does and talking about what a video hosting website would ideally do helps to create the conceptual foundations for the ideal video hosting website.
The only problem is that your ideal video hosting website doesn't work. You won't:
a) Get enough users because most people want moderation.
b) Raise enough revenue because most advertisers want moderation.
c) Be able to legally operate because most legislators want moderation.
I never said that my ideal video hosting website would lack moderation.
Ideally I would have control (which I can delegate) over moderation rather than someone I disagreed with, and not have to spend much time or effort on moderation either.
Training and/or fine tuning my own moderation AI would be a useful feature.
After you get fired/retire/die someone else will take over your role. They will have their own ideals. Will they follow your ideals? Maybe. History says not likely.
Communism never succeeds past the first (maybe second) generation before corruption takes root. Same with obtusely vague terms of service and privacy policies. Google circa 2003, awesome. Google circa 2023, not so sure anymore
So what your saying is you want it so I can come to your house/business and talk shit and you have no recourse of kicking the person out, or severing a contract with them?
If you want to deal with Youtube, break them in a way that promotes competition instead of having the largest ad company also owning the largest video company. Trying to otherwise restrict their rights has many other bad outcomes for all businesses and individuals.
He is not being censored. Youtube ends their commercial partnership, because they think he doesn’t fit their brand image. But he can still upload videos, ask for patreon subscriptions, sell tshirts etc…
I believe this is about protecting the ecosystem. YT has basically stopped ads from playing on his content…no advertiser wants to be associated with him right now. If YT didn’t take this action, it’s likely advertisers would pull back on spend because they don’t want to risk being seen along side his content.
YouTube, afaik, doesn’t just let advertisers blacklist individual channels.
> no advertiser wants to be associated with him right now.
I see this sentiment all the time and I just don't understand it. If I sold razor blades, or if I was Stephen He's dad and sold Beijing Corn, I would want EVERYONE buying my product. Communists, Fascists, Russians, Ukrainians, Israelis, Palestinians, Antifa, Proud Boys, Prince Andrew, Andrew Tate, etc.... They may all hate each other but they should all agree that I make the best damn razor blades / canned corn on planet Earth, and everyone should buy it.
This weird era of conspicuous consumption, "lifestyle" branding, and virtue-signaling faux-activism can't end soon enough.
>This weird era of conspicuous consumption, "lifestyle" branding, and virtue-signaling faux-activism can't end soon enough.
This weird era... See this is what blows my mind. Like boycotts are not something that's happened pretty much forever. There is currently a particular group that has been bearing the brunt of boycotts due to their socially unacceptable behavior and they seem a little ticked that the power they once unilaterally wielded is now leveraged against them.
I think because the content algorithms also show you stuff that you are outraged it, you might want your razors blades to be shown to russian watching putin speeches, but you don't want to associate them when the are showing people things they hate.
I think that’s a good way to look at these things. I went through a phase of getting angry at online censorship. In reality, I don’t think corporations will be spending much time debating morals and will simply look at their reputation and bottom line.
Conversely, if I was a sleazy person with a big public profile I'd present myself as an unwavering ally of the common folk, because historically this schtick works incredibly well. Jimmy Saville was considered a living saint in the UK, and it was only after his death that the truth emerged.
Given the whole First Amendment thing the USA has had for a hot minute now, I suspect not. Baseless speculation aside, if you have genuine examples of this occurring, please show the class.
How has it taken YouTube this long, anyway? Hasn’t much of this stuff been openly known for a decade or more? Is YouTube literally just reacting to the media cycle and nothing more?
yeah it's odd, if they do it for brand does that mean they'll now do it for all? of course not and they haven't, this feels unusual for them, so why target brand specifically?
this is going to make his conspiracy's seem true like they are targeting him
but it could be as simple as advertisers don't care about aerosmith because it's bigger than steven tyler, whereas brand is purely a youtube based opinion show and he is the main star of the show
Soon, hopefully. But I don't understand how you think Aerosmith is significant, or somehow countervails Brand. The people who care about Brand's sex pestery tend not to give a shit about Aerosmith. There are always going to be victimizers who haven't been called out, or who haven't yet been dealt with, in every field of endeavor; Robert Kelly is a good example.
It's not as if people who care about sexual assault are somehow lined up in Steven Tyler's corner. Quite the opposite.
I’m not carrying water for Brand-I think all of these Gen X entertainment industry guys are suspect. I’m just trying to figure out how the process works. Why Brand and not Aerosmith (or both) and why don’t the same people care?
R. Kelly was accused innumerable times over the course of over 20 years. I'm sure the truth is going to catch up to Tyler, who bragged about what he did in his memoir.
Same here, but tbh the accusations against Brand are quite moot.
Regardless of that, why is YouTube to decide and not a court of law?
Of course a private platform can do whatever they want, but when their decision is basically the same as a court issuing fine or damages in the way it affects a person’s livelihood, shouldn’t their decisions be regulated accordingly?
Remind me when right-wing trucking businesses refused to transport Budweiser beer because of their marketing? Or are they refusing to deliver products to Target?
The message there was "do not dare to hire trans people for even minor ads" and result is companies being more afraid to hire trans. So yeah, it was literal ce sorship. And yeah, impact on that trans woman was worst then one on Brand. That trans person was not as rich as to eat any amount of financial looses.
I remember right wing leaders going really out of their way to demonize Budweiser for literally having a single video with trans person and like a can of her face. So yeah. And yes, right wing businesses refused to sell the beer and there was actual boycot.
If that is ok to do because trans person was acknowledged, then yeah, youtube demonetization is equally ok.
If Lululemon tried to market tradwife conservatism to young urban women and it backfired, would you call that censorship? Marketing is about feels and vibes and image—customers are entitled to react to that. Beer, athletic wear, etc., are image and identity-based businesses. That’s different than a trucking company, or a credit card company, or YouTube.
A better example would be the Dixie Chicks boycott after the Bush comments, where major radio stations refused to play their music.
What “right wing media machine?” Obviously, conservative media is going to serve as an outlet for whatever is currently riling up conservatives. The politics is central to their business. That’s different than YouTube, which in theory is a politically neutral platform.
(And note that the boycott here wasn’t even stirred up by Fox or Sinclair. Fox did a Bud Light product placement right before July 4.)
It was not conservative media serving as an outlet for whatever is currently riling up conservatives. It was few conservative personalities creating issue, riling up conservatives and generally trying to create outrage and fear.
That is about it. So, you know, the same people can stuff themselves with complains about YouTube. YouTube is at least honest and not pretending that somehow situation is something it is not.
Explain to me how a MegaCorp using its platform for an unrelated political agenda is in any way similar to individual personalities trying to gin up outrage about something?
A lot of the Bud Light outrage wasn't just Mulvaney - their marketing exec openly said they didn't want those people as customers, so they complied.
There's the difference: People didn't want to buy Bud Light anymore, so their sales tanked.
One feature of cancellation is that the cancellee usually has people who want to hear the cancellee and buy their stuff, but activists try to get them kicked off intermediaries so the cancellee and their customers can't conduct business.
If it was just about making the person unpopular, that'd be an entirely different matter.
Nah, this was just yet another case of right wing media machine trying to pretend they do something else then just normal censorship. Which would be fine if they did not turned around with sophistries when, suddenly, they are not the only ones doing it for a change.
Random people did not reacted to the ad, they reacted to the massive campaign. Which is exactly how the message is understood - trans people have no place in public, anywhere.
Is that really the right way to think about it? Has Brand been convicted of any crime by any government? Seems more accurate to say Youtube is building an alternative security state. Heck, it's rather anarcho-capitalist if you ask me.
> Has Brand been convicted of any crime by any government?
No, he's punished without the due process of law.
And that's how most dictatorial regimes usually deal with miscreants. If you bad-mouthed Breznev nobody would bother with a show-trial unless there was some specific benefit of making you an example. In 9/10 cases they'd fire you from any semi-decent job and won't let your kids finish high school with more than 2.0 GPA.
Let's check for political bias here. Suppose I rewrote your comment so instead of talking about Russell Brand, I'm talking about the right-wing Budweiser boycott. Those right-wingers are punishing Budweiser without due process of law. Just like most dictatorial regimes. How worried are you?
That's the way I think about it based upon my perspective and experience.
> Has Brand been convicted of any crime by any government?
Remains to be seen. The police have been "urged" to investigate, according to the AP. Perhaps the "right way to think" hasn't revealed itself yet?
> Seems more accurate to say Youtube is building an alternative security state.
I see no reason to be so certain the government had no involvement in this case, which you would have to be in order to consider this more accurate than literally any other theory.
> Heck, it's rather anarcho-capitalist if you ask me.
Oh.. it's a "cool" way to undermine human society. I didn't realize.
Nobody seems worried about how this standard gets applied down the road. They all seem focused on the case study but don’t see how this example applies directly to them so obviously.
I am genuinely confused how so many smart people can be so short sighted.
'Community' is defined by them. It does not mean us. It could mean the government, military industrial complex, biopharmaceutical complex, the board of Alphabet, and anybody else they wish to include in it.
It's incredibly easy to get a video demonetized on YouTube now. I don't know what videos you're talking about, but I wouldn't assume that they haven't long since been demonetized.
>we take action to protect the community,” the spokeswoman said.
This really exposes Google's hypocrisy, though. If they were worried about protecting the community, surely they would remove his content and not his ability to monetize it.
They must mean that "community" is being harmed by the content and not by the ads (else the responsible thing would be to shut down altogether ...)
That said, I think Brand's videos are a big pile of barf, though again, if that were the standard, YouTube would have to throw out 90+% of their content...
I'll make one point, which is that if you are a violent asshole who punches anyone in the face that looks at you wrong, you still can't actually harm anyone through Youtube except by trying to convince someone to come get their ass kicked by you.
Russel Brand is accused of grooming a 16 year old girl while he was 31, if true, that means there is the very real possibility that Brand could be using the YT platform as a means for finding other victims.
So I guess Youtube should instead by compelled to continue providing their monetization and hosting services to anyone who wants it until a court of law can prove they are guilty of an actual crime?
Who is going to compel Youtube to continue providing those services again?
That's generally the premise behind "innocent until proven guilty in a court of law", as opposed to "guilty whenever the histrionic internet mob and its tech enablers deem it so".
Except, and I know you must have read this somewhere else by now, that Youtube is not the State.
Your employer (should you have one) doesn't need to wait until a court of law proves you guilty of a stealing paperclips before they fire you, and a restaurant doesn't have to wait until a court proves that you are being a public disturbance before they kick you out.
A private corporation has the right to do whatever they want with their product/service unless they are compelled otherwise by the State. Russell Brand is free to sue Youtube in court if he believes he has been inappropriately damaged, as you do.
Unfortunately for him and all his fans, this isn't hearsay from randos coming out of Reddit/Tumblr, it's a direct accusation with evidence and witnesses in an investigation being conducted by his former employers and the UK police.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, YouTube demonitized all Irish because they unilaterally decided they're all plonkers and they're a private company and they can do what they want. Because that's the level of absurdity here.
Nor do your examples hold water. This isn't a situation of "you were caught stealing paperclips on video". Rather, it's more a case of Sally the tart from accounting has accused you of fingering her in a pub toilet ten years ago when you were both drunk and now ten years later she decides she's upset so let's engage the digital lynch mob and proceed with ruining your life because we all know women never lie.
10%?! 10% is huge. So we should assume presumption of guilt with a 10% error rate?
If 10% of all planes crashed, you would never set foot on one. For comparison, the chance of dying in a plane crash is 0%... to the 7th or 8th decimal place.
The people that should be ashamed are those making false accusations, and those dumb enough to believe them.
You can presume or do anything you want with statistics, but your example was gross and if you think 10% chance of it being correct means you should spout it…yikes
But saying things like that, well..its bad for victims of false accusation as well, notice how I didn’t specify?
Good news is, people who put the type of comments out there like yours - they are their own reward - enjoy the world you are making for yourself, il steer well clear
A single person can have different standards for different situations. Your plane crash example is not about guilt, it's directly about life and death. The threat of being wrong about Russell Brand's alleged sexual assault is quite far removed from my own fear of death. If I mistakenly believe the allegations, I get a personal lesson in the risks of jumping to conclusions and trust YouTube a bit less, but I can still rest relatively easy knowing that criminal courts in the US still use the presumption of innocence. If I mistakenly believe in Brand's innocence, I trust myself a little less, and the next time I find out about a famous stranger's rape allegations I read into it and ask myself whether the denials read like Brand's denials.
But I digress. In this case, YouTube, not a random commenter on Hacker News, had a decision to make. Consider these four possibilities:
1. YouTube demonitizes, allegations are false. YouTube gets social ire from people online and angry politicians, and a few complaints from advertisers, but even the angry people will probably continue to use YouTube due to switching costs.
2. YouTube demonitizes, allegations are true. YouTube pats itself on the back in hindsight. Little changes, but the status quo was good for YouTube anyway.
3. YouTube doesn't demonitize, allegations are false. YouTube temporarily loses a few advertisers before the truth comes out, but things return to the status quo in a few months.
4. YouTube doesn't demonitize, allegations are true. A few advertisers leave for a year or longer. News organizations eagerly field complaints from advertisers and disgruntled YouTube employees.
None of the possibilities are devastating, including money-wise. On the other hand, the fourth possibility is worst for YouTube's reputation by a significant margin, and at a 90% chance too.
Non-sequitor. YT does not need the power of a court decision to take this action. It's basically the same question of "Who made YouTube President"; it's irrelevant.
> Let's say, for the sake of argument, YouTube demonitized all Irish because they unilaterally decided they're all plonkers and they're a private company and they can do what they want. Because that's the level of absurdity here.
I mean YT could decide that your country isn't eligible for YT depending on local laws and block content. Which they do.
Well, I assume Youtube and their community are the judges and juries of Youtube.
I am merely one humble judge and jurist of these comment threads, and I rule that your comment here is disgusting and ignorant.
I recommend a sentence of 100 hours of civics and legal Youtube to help alleviate you of your ignorance. And 1 hour of berating following a public reading of your comment to a group of female accountants dressed as your mother.
> So I guess Youtube should instead by compelled to continue providing their monetization and hosting services to anyone who wants it until a court of law can prove they are guilty of an actual crime?
Yes, in the same way as any other public utility. (They may not have intended to become one but at this point they are)
> Who is going to compel Youtube to continue providing those services again?
Youtube is a subsidiary of a publicly-traded company, it is non-essential, largely unregulated, and for-profit. This is very different from what is considered a "public utility".
If you want to argue that Youtube *should* be considered a public utility company and subject to more stringent government controls then that's a debate that can be had, but as it stands they are not legally obligated to continue doing business with someone they believe to be harming their other customers and partners.
We call that a conviction and a system of law for this. We should use it. I don’t think private corporations that are monopolies should decide who can speak and who cannot. Obviously they can protect their business, but then they shouldn’t be allowed to be universally dominant in a technology category like video.
Oh I’m sorry I wasn’t even thinking about legacy media on that one.
I meant video as in YouTube is UGC video as a content type as they as so market dominant.
The evidence against him is compelling. I just worry that this kind of deplatforming is becoming so normalized I can’t imagine it not becoming a ready political weapon and having a great many unintended concequences.
Trying to dig into their statement is a moot point:
R Kelly on Youtube Music is alive and well. You can argue, that it's separate from Youtube. But then here is a search result for R Kelly https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=r+kelly I assume those those videos that come up copyrighted content and someone gets monetization for it? And he his not been merely accused, but convicted.
There are other examples if you dig. This Brand is a tool and can't stand him, but this all happens conveniently right when he gained a little bit of traction by being an outspoken critique of the government.
> But the thing is, a majority of people on Earth are Youtube users, so what the heck does that even mean?
This is an interesting question; why hasn’t anyone verified that these women are YouTube users?
Since we have established that “ecosystem” is a word that means “app developers” and not a broad term that could be interpreted to mean the general environment in which YouTube does business with advertisers and users, this means that YouTube is acting in defense of its users.
Furthermore this announcement gets even more confusing as punching someone in a bar is not something that can faithfully or objectively be separated from (alleged) rape by any community standards or legal bodies, YouTube is in even further hot water here
All this doesn't matter. There is a Social Credit System and Scoring that is implicitly implemented in the Land of the Brave and Free. If you anger the Lords of The Traditional Orthodoxy by shaking your Chains, they will ensure that Sufficient Character Assassination is carried out to reduce your score to pitiful levels. Once that is done, you are deemed as Unfit For Society and then slowly Cancelled and Censored Out Of Existence.
It's simply an excuse to engage in political censure. It's worth remembering that in these people's parlance it's "denying someone's existence" to disagree with their political program or one counter-reality belief they hold, and they do demonetize for it.
YouTube is like HR - they are there to protect the company and the company's revenue streams, not you or "the community".
This is why I think the term "community guidelines" for "censorship policy" is such abusive gaslighting. It's unilateral censorship, not community, and they are rules, not guidelines.
It's the same deceptive drive that renamed "searching your bag" to "security screening" at airports.
I mostly agree but my argument against “rules” is that these things never seem to be unilaterally enforced. So it really is more like a guideline because enforcement is unpredictable in several aspects.
While there’s no reason to believe some broad conspiracy exists, it’d be hilariously ridiculous to assume that the folks at YouTube are unaware of the power they have to influence the zeitgeist. If some number of them act to advance their individual worldview through their enforcement of policy (is there any doubt that this happens?), then it is perfectly reasonable to say that YouTube, as a result of the conscious or unconscious biases of its decision makers, advances a worldview (though perhaps not a specific narrative).
Very much so. It is used to make one's own arguments stronger. "Thank you for listening to the community" actually means "Thank you for listening to me".
Twitter has lost something like 60% of its advertisers because it turns out Proctor and Gamble doesn’t want an ad for Dawn dish detergent next to someone called BasedFuhrer1488 posting about how the Holocaust didn’t happen.
If it wasn’t for that all these platforms would let anything legal go as long as it drove engagement.
It’s not lawyerly nitpicking. The US has a tradition in rule of law, and it’s a social convention that applies broadly.
YouTube, in their statement, is pretending they have an objective standard that is fairly applied to everyone. In reality, there is no uniform standard. They ban people when business interests dictate it.
So their policy reads as “we have an objective standard,” but reality is “we ban when we feel like it.”
YouTube could fix this contradiction by changing their policy to something like “we will ban creators for any reason, at our discretion.”
>The US has a tradition in rule of law, and it’s a social convention that applies broadly.
???
You are conflating all the different legal systems of the US. US criminal law is the one of beyond reasonable doubt. US civil law on the other hand is an entire other bag of worms and 'potential' contractual obligations. On top of that private property has a pretty massive leeway in reasons you can ban people from said properties. There is no contradiction here. "Fuck you, your tie sucks" is a completely valid reason to remove you from their private property. Said person being a dick to others is what is typically considered an exceptionally valid reason to remove them from the property.
If we want to follow a broad social convention, then it is be nice to others, how about that for a start?
If the policy is “Fuck you, your tie sucks”, then that should be written into the policy.
YouTube’s policy does not say “Fuck your, your tie sucks.” They say they remove people for harm to users. But there are many creators who harm users who are not being removed. So that is not the policy.
They can easily fixing this by changing the policy to “fuck you, your tie sucks” or “we ban for any reason at our discretion.”
Until they make that change, it’s perfectly fair to point out the contradiction.
Please feel free to take them to civil court and get the mto change it.
Now, I'm not one for this entire "corporations are people too" thing we have going on in the US, but trying to call Google out for this in particular when the courts have sided with businesses freedom of association until it becomes a civil rights violation in the vast majority of cases. You can point out it as much as you like, but it's mostly a waste of your time until you start championing for 'consumer rights'.
Pretty much a staple of US law is "We withhold the right to refuse service to anyone". There are only a few preconditions (civil rights for example) that are exceptions to this rule.
> They ban people when business interests dictate it.
That is the standard. They're a private company. They're offering free services to content creators to host their content. In exchange for an ad partnership and revenue.
But YouTube/Google is the company, and for them this is a business. If they think hosting someone is bad for business they can stop hosting them.
How is it everyone here is so pro-Liberty yet fails to understand that the Libertarian position is that YouTube and the people that run it are free to host or promote whatever content they want that makes them money (as long as it's not against the law), and they can choose to not.
Brand is free to take his content somewhere else.
He is not entitled to YouTube's hosting privileges, and they're not entitled to him hosting his content there.
Are they not still associated with an alleged rapist by hosting and monetising his content, but not sharing the profits with the content creator? They should just give him notice to close his account if that is the case and close his account.
By demonetizing him, they’ve “done something” and if there is a further outcry they can take more drastic steps. It’s like the very first West Wing episode “a proportional response”.
They just want to be seen as “doing something” and if they do it first they seem cooler than other platforms. Didnt deplatform him, just demonetized. They have done this to a lot of other non-mainstream political voices.
Oh I see, you seem to think he hasn't had this treatment before. I guess you missed the dozen previous times he's complained about the system trying to silence him. It's totally on-brand for Brand.
Allegedly. If a bunch of people come forward accusing you of assault, odds are pretty good you did it.
However, private businesses punishing people for having charges brought against them but not yet tried? That's judge, jury and executioner, which is incompatible with the set of laws that the US is built on - for which the source material was English Law, and precedent even older than that.
So an American company pre-punishing a Brit based on a news article is the beginning of another level of dystopia none of us wants.
Brand is not being executed. There has never been a principle in US or English law that you have to do business with everyone all the time. There are, in modern times, certain protected classes that you cannot discriminate against. Otherwise, you are free not to do business with someone, or to set the terms on which you are willing to do business with them. Alleged rapists are not a protected class.
In fairness there is a discussion that needs to be had about private businesses that have the de facto power to wreck people's lives if they decide to de-platform them. I think that applies more to businesses like banks and payment services providers that can literally make it difficult for you to obtain food and shelter than it does to social media or content hosting platforms, which are relatively easy to self-host. In any event, it has nothing to do with the criminal law concept of "innocent until proven guilty".
> There has never been a principle in US or English law that you have to do business with everyone all the time. There are, in modern times, certain protected classes that you cannot discriminate against. Otherwise, you are free not to do business with someone, or to set the terms on which you are willing to do business with them. Alleged rapists are not a protected class.
There's long been a principle that the innocent have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Protected class laws exist because, in their absence, too many businesses chose to discriminate against the same groups of people - but surely that reasoning applies even more strongly to discriminating against those accused of serious crimes. (Indeed historically there's a lot of overlap between the two - many lynchings were justified with rape allegations).
> I think that applies more to businesses like banks and payment services providers that can literally make it difficult for you to obtain food and shelter than it does to social media or content hosting platforms, which are relatively easy to self-host.
Realistically there are at most two viable video platforms (and if anyone is to blame for that it's the government, not Brand). If someone can take away your ability to make money they can make it hard for you to obtain food and shelter just as much as if they were refusing to sell food to you.
By the definition of "punish" that you are implicitly using, private businesses in America used to be able to punish people for anything ("we reserve the right to refuse service to anybody"). Now there are certain things they cannot punish people for (e.g. being black). Are you suggesting that the time has come to mandate that companies may not discriminate against customers for other reasons as well?
> Now there are certain things they cannot punish people for (e.g. being black). Are you suggesting that the time has come to mandate that companies may not discriminate against customers for other reasons as well?
We should pick one or the other. Either it's fine to discriminate for any reason, or some businesses have a public service obligation and must serve anyone.
I think many (maybe even a majority of?) Americans consider individual freedom to be a deontological moral good. This includes freedoms of those running private businesses. The "Protected Class" rules were created because many (including some overlap with the first set of) Americans didn't like specific consequences of enforcing that moral good.
Policy in a well-functioning, pluralistic, society will necessarily have (occasionally self-contradictory) compromises because we are trying to satisfy groups of people with sometimes conflicting needs and values.
It seems to be going the other way in the US. Recently, in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, it was found that discrimination against customers who "violate your values", in that case by being gay, was fine.
I’m not sure that case is relevant to the YouTube example, as YouTube isn’t refusing to or being compelled to create new works on behalf of Brand, or whatever the closest analogy here would be. Refusing service based on protected attributes tends to be far more explicitly addressed, in the US and likely many other countries.
I'd rather we sorted out what 'the commons' means in an online context, but failing that? Yes. Because we're essentially privatizing all discourse and those companies can do pretty much whatever they want - as long as they don't piss off other companies too badly (eg, Twitter being demonetized because of Nazis).
We've lost the idea of broadcasting in the public interest decades ago, and there's no PBS for the internet (Just PBS on the Internet)
This has never been the standard for businesses. "Innocent until proven guilty" is only applicable in criminal court.
OJ didn't keep his endorsements after he murdered Nicole and Goldman, he lost them well ahead of the trial, and the businesses shouldn't have been forced to continue them because he was a toxic asset even after he was found not guilty.
Russel Brand is not a spokesman for YouTube though. Nor is a gay couple a spokesman for a photographer.
Some photographers offer a discount if they can use your pictures. If you don’t want to feature “gross boys kissing each other” or a Star Trek themed wedding in your portfolio, fine, or not fine actually, but whatever. However it’s getting a little late in the day to still want to shun people because of who they sleep with (consent and ability to give consent notwithstanding).
I typed “avoid” but changed it to “shun” because I find there’s an important difference between not wanting to hang out with cosplayers or gay men and not selling them a cake that you don’t even have to be present for. And who the hell knows who made your wedding cake anyway? Really? Is that even a thing? I’ve only had one wedding and we kept it as simple as possible so we could spend more on the honeymoon. We might have sprung for a cake from the fancy bakery. In fact now that I say that I think we did. But it wasn’t a defining moment, as evidenced by the fact that it took me a while to remember that happened. I know the place we had the ceremony, and the reception. And the bad photographer’s assistant with the broken flash mount that kept falling over and ruining her shots. Fuck the cake. My cake didn’t define my wedding and definitely didn’t define the shop, which is the point here. We were just two stupid kids buying a cake.
People have gotten crazy about weddings. So I’ll allow there’s ample space between “reasonable human” and “actual human” to get up to mischief.
>is the beginning of another level of dystopia none of us wants
This 'dystopia' is called freedom of association and I can confidentially tell you that I personally support the rights of any business to choose who they enter contracts with and not to do business with a likely sex offender, so I think you ought to speak for yourself.
There is no basis on which to compel a private business to host everyone's content and I would in fact consider that to be quite dystopian.
And if you are wrong, are you also willing to apologize for hasty decision making? Or will you hide behind the crowd and say 'well everyone else said X!'
Because that's what is happening right now. People's lives are ruined on the assumption of someone being the big bad. Then when it turns out the situation is far more nuanced and delicate, the social damage is already done. Not just the big guys like Brand, who got enough millions to throw lawyer after lawyer at the case should he be innocent, but also the small guys who have a far weaker position socially and financially.
Suddenly this is the thread that has snapped for you and said this is wrong? For most of modern history an accusation was all that was needed to have you removed from your job. The cops showing up at your office and just 'questioning' your behavior around minors without even making accusations is generally enough to ensure you don't come back the next day. It's one of the reasons I don't post as little information about myself online as I can. Doxxing can have terrible outcomes.
> The cops showing up at your office and just 'questioning' your behavior around minors without even making accusations is generally enough to ensure you don't come back the next day.
For the record, 16 is the age of consent in Britain. No doubt it's fair to have the ick about a 31 year old involved with someone so young, but Brand was never alleged to have been involved with minors.
>Suddenly this is the thread that has snapped for you and said this is wrong?
How about we take our own advice, stop making assumptions and "be nice" as you put it, hm?
>The cops showing up at your office and just 'questioning' your behavior around minors without even making accusations is generally enough to ensure you don't come back the next day.
I'd like you to honestly think deeply about this a few times. Has this really been the same as it was a few decades ago? Why do some countries or areas feel far more comfortable with leaving children around with men, while it seems the US in particular has trouble even imagining a dad wants to spend time with his kids? And why is it primarily the men, when it's become more and more obvious women are just a much perpetrators?
Yes, false accusations and ruining people's lives over them has been a thing since we exist. You ever wonder why so many people freak out the moment they are accused, despite being innocent? But as a society, we can fight and be critical about this. Just like we got rid of witch hunts, so too can we think twice about companies facing next to zero repercussions by hiding in the crowd despite their disproportional power.
All I'm saying is, if you're the coward throwing others under the bus over your own gain, don't be surprised if a rebel fed up with your cowardice decides to do the same. Turnabout's fair play, after all.
And for real: it's just an apology. I'm not telling these companies to pay damages or get dragged to court. It's just a 5 minute effort to say "Oh we were too quick in our judgment, sorry about that". It isn't enough, but it's the bare minimum they can do without having to drag them to court to force it or threatening to take away their position of power. The fact they can't even do that speaks volumes.
>Why do some countries or areas feel far more comfortable with leaving children around with men,
I cannot answer for other countries, but for the US I can answer that we've allowed the "boys will be boys" excuse for pretty much ever when it comes to sexual misconduct. I've made it a point in my life to be a person available to talk to when other people need that. Maybe I've just had bad luck in who has opened up to me, but when a very large percentage of the women I've talked with have talked about sexual misconduct, sexual abuse, or outright rape against them that I realize we have a massive problem in this country. Even worse is I've talked to people decades later that explained confusing things that occurred when I was a teenager and went to church. When you find out the church covers up sexual assault, convinces people not to call the police, and pays for the pastor to move elsewhere you get a grim view on the people in power. It turns out when you cover up for evil behavior, you have to be suspect of all those around you.
If you don't want people to be destroyed by allegations, you need a system that actually investigates discretely, and prosecutes those with evidence against them. In the US we can't even process the back log of rape kits we have around.
>And if you are wrong, are you also willing to apologize for hasty decision making?
Yes, although it would be a first given the severity of the accusations.
But more importantly that's entirely besides the point. You don't need a good reason, or even much of any reason at all to not do business with someone. Case in point, you can decide to not sell a wedding cake to a same sex couple because that offends your religious beliefs. That's a pretty silly and homophobic justification by most people's standards, certainly more controversial than not doing business with a suspected criminal.
But it's a good thing that right exists. If someone is innocently accused take that up with the accuser, don't interfere with the freedom of private business. It's not any third parties decision that ruined them, it's people spreading falsehoods.
It's just as certain to say that if you're an egotistical narcissist jugggling drug and sex addiction for a decade+ under a celebrity spotlight and on record as having had sex with five different women a day between appearences then a handful of those encounters were very probably the kind that were forced under the presumption of consent while drug addled.
Liability. It all comes back to liability. I can't tell you what kind of cases have legal standing against YouTube for showing videos of an alleged abuser, but I trust that many smart and less scrupulous lawyers could.
Putting aside the validity of the accusations—let's say he did everything he's accused of, for the sake of argument—is Youtube alleging that he assaulted Youtube employees, app developers who use the Youtube ecosystem, or Youtube users? I assume the latter. But the thing is, a majority of people on Earth are Youtube users, so what the heck does that even mean?
I have no dog in this fight, Russell Brand's fate is not of interest to me. I'm just wondering about the argument they are making, and how broad it seems. If any alleged crime takes place wherein the victim has watched at least one Youtube video at some point in their life, and the perpetrator has a monetized Youtube channel, will Youtube's policy be to step in and protect the victim? For example, if I am YT creator and I punch someone in a bar, and that someone has a Youtube subscription, does Youtube step in? That feels like the kind of policy that cannot be faithfully and objectively executed, which makes it a bad policy and a potential legal vulnerability for Youtube.