The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire

You can upload videos to them and share them freely. Doing so draws views away from YouTube that they may have otherwise enjoyed, and may expose more users to the competition.

Demanding that YouTube be regulated to be forced to carry content when a healthy marketplace of competitors exists is hilariously un-American.

There is a difference between "allowed to" and "ought to". It's a question of ethics, not law.

In my opinion it feels immoral for someone who has this much control over human interaction to act in a way that undermines free discourse so blatantly. To see an American company ignore the value of free speech is disheartening to me. YouTube is so popular and I wish they took a different stance on these issues.

Yeah, the last time the US states had that level of autonomy was 1860 [1]. After 1865, the Federal government consolidated power, and more so after the 1940s [2]. It's just that in the US, most calls for more decentralization (aka "states rights") were considered a "dog whistle" for pro-slavery sentiment (or at the least, pro-racist thoughts). I think it's crazy that the US President has the power that he has (and have felt that way for the past few Presidents) and that Congress have shirked their "checks and balances" [3]---it's just been the most blatant for the last two Presidents.

It's funny you mention the school systems. They aren't centralized in the US. Heck, they aren't even necessarily centralized by the states! In the areas I've attended school, it's been by county. And even the one I graduated high school under was administratively treated as three separate school systems (because even at the county level, it was pretty large). It's one of the few areas left that haven't been completely taken over by the Federal government.

Yes, English is widely spoken in the US, but there are areas where it's a distant second. It may surprise you to learn that the US has no official language. I live in South Florida and it's not rare to encounter areas were on Spanish is spoken. There's an older dialect of German still spoken in parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. And there are areas on the West Coast where Vietnamese, Japanese and Mandarin (I think it's Mandarin is the most widely spoken Chinese language) are spoken.

I am surprised at the 20% (I found figures saying it was as high as %24) in Switzerland, but I would still contend that the US is still diverse. There are cultural differences between New England, the South, Texas, the Midwest, the Southwest and the West Coast that are probably just as deep as the French/German divide in Switzerland.

[1] Just prior the the US Civil war.

[2] Just after the Great Depression and World War II.

[3] And for all my voting life time, Congress has had lower polling numbers than any President, yet we keep electing the same yo-yos to office ("Congresscritter X is an idiot, but X is my idiot!").

> What if, there was in fact an organization comprised of people smarter than you and obviously better than you at figuring out what is true or not - and I would go further - one that can tell you how to make better/more optimal decisions than you would have made without them?

> Would you then cede your decision making to them if it were demonstrably better?

No. Nobody should ever have to cede their decision making authority. If this organization is so smart and right, they should have no trouble finding a way to convince people without coercion

Even, if they are smarter than me, are they perfect? Is it impossible for them to be wrong? Of course not. That's why we need multiple sources. Nobody is right about everything all the time. All of this talk about "misinformation" ignores the possibility that you might one day be a source of misinformation, so it is vitally important that people be able to disagree with you.

I did know that, thank you for blindly assuming I didn't.

First off, the reason why so many of these lawsuits are dismissed for procedural mistakes is because they are taken by awful lawyers, since real election lawyers don't want to touch these with a 10 foot pole.

Secondly, again, while they claim fraud on social media and on TV, the lawyers actually don't claim fraud in court, as that's much harder to prove, and affidavits are just hearsay when it comes to proving fraud. The reality is that so far, across 50+ lawsuits, they haven't managed to show any real proof of anything.

You explained the two SC ones but still fail to explain how the other 50 or more failed, or why none of them have been able to present any real evidence. Why is it that they all have lack of standing? Because you can't overturn an entire election based on an affidavit of someone claiming they saw trucks full of ballots, with zero other evidence. And rightly so.

As for the Texas case, what a coincidence that such a baseless suit happen to have been brought by the Texas AG, who is coincidentally under investigation by the FBI, and is seeking a pardon from the President.

I'm honestly curious what YOU think the reason is. Is it just pure bad luck that all 50+ lawsuits just failed in the most miserable way? Is the court system broken? If they have real solid evidence (and no, someone signing an affidavit is not it), then where is it? Why have we not seen any yet?

But go ahead and assume it's because of censorship if it makes you happy.

EDIT: I'd also add that many of these cases are dismissed early because, even the defense can show that even if everything the plaintiff claims is true, it still isn't enough. In most of these cases, Trump's team is trying to use irregularity with a 1-2 ballots to throw out hundreds of thousands of ballots, and that's just not how it works. That's why all those lawsuits are being dismissed without even being heard because even if they prove their point, they cannot overturn the election.