Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

551–560 of 1001 posts

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#551

Post by QuantumG »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #539
karaterobot wrote: post #243

> “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,…

What kind of weird lawyerly nitpicking is this. YouTube does not want to be associated with an alleged rapist. Is that so hard to understand.

[flagged]

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#552

Post by nullifidian »

arpowers wrote: post #193
mrmincent wrote: post #155

Sexual assault is a serious allegation. In most media channels if an employee is accused of sexual assault they would be stood down and an investigation launched. He’s lucky they’re still giving him a platform to use.

While sexual assault is serious if true, it's also the only crime that can ruin someone's life and livelihood with no evidence or actual crime taking place. Additionally there is often large financial incentive for accusers (and their lawyers) via lawsuits and it serves as a fantastic method of hurting people politically even if they are exonerated.

There is even bigger financial incentive in general to shut up / deplatform an outspoken, high-profile leftist (as in a person who threatens profits), or a politician in general. So such accusations should be considered with caution.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#553

Post by dragonwriter »

judge2020 wrote: post #531
toyg wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brand could argue he was discriminated as a man, in the sense that he was assumed as guilty of rape because he's a man.

The letter of the law allows anyone to be guilty of rape, in the U.S. at least (as opposed to the UK).

> The letter of the law allows anyone to be guilty of rape, in the U.S. at least

That actually varies based on jurisdiction, some states have separate laws with different offense names (often with similar conditions and punishments) for different kinds of sexual assaults, and still have “rape” being specific in the same way that it is in Britain, in some states and the federal system, “rape” is not a specific offense named in statute but is sometimes used as an informal name for some offenses. (E.g., in the federal system, the title of the relevant section including, but not limited to, the common law definition of “rape” is “sexual abuse” [0], and the word “rape” does not appear anywhere in it.)

[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2242

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#554

Post by gooseus »

housemusicfan wrote: post #523
gooseus wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#555

Post by jvickers »

threeseed wrote: post #490
jvickers wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Ale…

> 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 b…

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.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#556

Post by anigbrowl »

mistermann wrote: post #495
Waterluvian wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’ve calculated that this is the right business decision. There is never anything more than that with corporations.

The government may offer them "advice" now and then as well. If I was running the American regime, I'd want him deplatformed due to his content.

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.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#557

Post by reddog »

pseudosavant wrote: post #450
JacobThreeThree wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that when a channel's content is not monetized, no ads are displayed. So no, YouTube is not pocketing the money they would have paid him.

YT most certainly runs ads against demonetized content. They just don't share in the take with the creator. What a principled stance... "I will make even more money because you did something bad somewhere else!"

No. Since there is a lot of disagreement about this in the surrounding comments, I just watched 20m of an old Russell Brand YT video. As of a few minutes ago there were no YT ads in the video. That includes the very beginning and the end. However there were Brand narrated promotions in the video.

The video was actually much easier to watch without the blasted YT ads that normally pop up every 5 minutes. And I suppose Brand still gets paid 100% for the embedded promos he narrated and negotiated with the advertisers.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#558

Post by dragonwriter »

toyg wrote: post #393
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know that’s only certain protected classes of people, in that you can’t discriminate in the basis of race, sex, religion, etc.

Brand could argue he was discriminated as a man, in the sense that he was assumed as guilty of rape because he's a man.

> Brand could argue he was discriminated as a man, in the sense that he was assumed as guilty of rape because he’s a man.

Anyone can argue anything, but Brand might have an uphill slog convincing a trier of fact that YouTube dumped him for being a man.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#559

Post by QuantumG »

pydry wrote: post #380
jmfldn wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His decent into outrage-bait, alt-right friendly nonsense struck me as abrupt. One minute his channel was reasonable enough, the next it was totally nuts. Part of me wonders whether this was calculated once he knew that a major expose was circling. I have zero evidence for this, but you can see the logic. Court a following that is sceptical of everything, and that will see an investigation by the 'mainstream media' a…

His channel went from 500k to 20 million viewers when he went off the rails. It could all have been an elaborate 4D chess gambit or alternatively he could just like money and attention.

He discovered who his audience is and, rather than recoil and amend his ways, leaned into it.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#560

Post by Aunche »

pseudosavant wrote: post #450
JacobThreeThree wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that when a channel's content is not monetized, no ads are displayed. So no, YouTube is not pocketing the money they would have paid him.

YT most certainly runs ads against demonetized content. They just don't share in the take with the creator. What a principled stance... "I will make even more money because you did something bad somewhere else!"

What Youtubers call "demonetization" usually refers to their monetization status changing to "limited to no ads." Even if their video is in the category of "limited" ads, the video tends to make a small fraction of what a regular video would make because there are fewer bidders for these ad slots, so from their perspective, it's basically the same as not being paid at all. In Russell Brand's case, it looks like his channel got completely demonetized, so his channel shouldn't have any ads.
Post reply on HN