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YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

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Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#132
post #13

Twitch and Reddit enacted bans simultaneously: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/29/reddit-bans-pro-tru... https://www.engadget.com/twitch-suspends-donald-trump-accoun... Seems odd for multiple independent companies to act in concert like this.

It is coordinated. Remember when Alex Jones got banned from literally everything on the same day? The reddit bans wave was leaked in advance. The more actors involved in a coordinated action the harder it is to keep a secret. Original leak: https://old.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/hh1pjd/redd...

>It is coordinated.

Is there any evidence of this besides the announcements just happening on the same day? It could be companies waiting to announce these moves on Monday morning after days of seeing Facebook embroiled in controversy for not doing this. Or maybe one company decided to make this move and other companies fast tracked anything they had planned on this so they wouldn't be viewed as ignoring this issue.

We have no indication one way or another whether this is coordinated. We shouldn't just assume it is coordinated because it is happening on the same day.

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#133
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps there is an association between strongly supporting principles of free markets and problematic ethics.

There is a strong association between free market principles and the principle of non-aggression. Others advocate that it is acceptable to use violent aggressive force against people who do not conform to your opinion of how things should be governed. Tell me where the problematic ethics are again? (FWIW, I don't watch any of the people mentioned above and have only heard of the first, so I am not here to defend them…

non-aggression is not the same as non-oppression. I can non-aggressively disenfranchise a group of people. I believe the problem lies in the trust placed in the free market to take the place of empathy and social unity required for creating and protecting civil liberties and equality.

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to listen to Stefan Molyneux about 10 years ago because he had some interesting views on free market economics. Now I look him up on Wikipedia and find out he's turned into a white nationalist. What the hell happened?

Perhaps there is an association between strongly supporting principles of free markets and problematic ethics.

Just to be clear, Molyneux had long been an anarcho-capitalist, which is already an extreme take on free market economics. I wouldn’t look too far into it, and I certainly wouldn’t conclude that white nationalism is the logical conclusion of thinking that free markets have their place in society.

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#135
post #3

I haven't watched Stefan in a long time, is he now producing content in the same register as David Duke & Richard Spencer ? It did not seem to be the case a few years ago.

Ten years ago I met him once as a libertarian/free-market conference, he was there with his kids. He seemed like an adorable father at the time.

Wow can people change.

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#136
post #13

Twitch and Reddit enacted bans simultaneously: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/29/reddit-bans-pro-tru... https://www.engadget.com/twitch-suspends-donald-trump-accoun... Seems odd for multiple independent companies to act in concert like this.

Why? There is a massive political movement for racial equality happening all over the country. They are responding to pressure from consumers, which they very much should, because all of these companies have ignored these issues for decades. They aren't coordinating with each other in some conspiracy to silence white supremacists. The -people- want white supremacists to be deplatformed (a good thing!).

The pressure is more directly from advertisers. Major consumer brands don't want their advertisements appearing next to objectionable user generated content.

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an easy answer to that: Youtube has more users than there are people in US. If you had a service that was used by whole of US, shouldn't that be public? Imagine there was a single food stall in the entire US. Should you allow food stall which is really controlled by a few share holders and executives at the top to decide whom to feed or not? Again, the problem is not huge platforms banning toxic people. It's t…

Somebody would open a competing grocery. Likewise, racist and bigots can build their own internet platform.

That's a confusing answer to what I said. I am not defending anyone in the post here but just yesterday, visa banned gab's CEO and his family. Now you need to build a payment processor which is not possible for any individual to do so. To how deep you want to go here?

Put your own cables in the sea?

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#138
post #13

Twitch and Reddit enacted bans simultaneously: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/29/reddit-bans-pro-tru... https://www.engadget.com/twitch-suspends-donald-trump-accoun... Seems odd for multiple independent companies to act in concert like this.

It’s like the nuclear arms treaty. If one company doesn’t ban these accounts, it can gain all the users who subscribe to these people and benefit. All companies agree to potentially lose these users, so no one profits from doing the so called “wrong thing”.

Same thing with mask use in airlines. Some companies do not want to enforce mask use until all airlines do it, because they do not want customers opposed to masks leaving them for competitors that do not require masks on flights.

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#139
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment tree was about "white nationalism", which is definitely commonly understood to mean "wants a white ethnostate".

Fair, but is the distinction actually important in this case? It seems to me to be more of a means of obfuscating/derailing the discussion of Molyneux's views.

I think precision is important in this context, because people have a bad habit of using terms like "white supremacist" as generic insults against any right-wing figure. Being imprecise diminishes the force of the arguments against Molyneux, who really has made explicit claims that white people are better than everyone else.
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