Let’s go down the list of rappers and professional athletes and see how much harm they’ve caused women. Once again, another coincidence in which side of the political aisle gets censored.
They get a free pass as long as they stay on the plantation.
YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform
681–690 of 1001 posts
Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform
#682Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worked at a (big) company when they changed their policy to include this vagueness. It was all over this guy spreading mass disinformation and conspiracy theories that were actively harmful. There was a lot of discussion about “yeah, I agree this is bad… but, this is a slippery slope,” and “how can you think we should let him use OUR platform to do this,” type arguments. We were a privately held company at the time…
Nature of the allogations aside, isn't this what possibly happened to Brand? He spoke things that many wished went unsaid. Eventually the "terms & conditions" were tweaked so to speak and now the critic is silenced, marginalized and humiliated. Of all the targets to pick, why Brand? Why now?
>He spoke things that many wished went unsaid.
Yes, but why did they wish it unsaid? Is it because he's speakin (uncomfortable) truth to power, or because he's an ignorant man spreading potentially dangerous narratives?
Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform
#683Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform
#684Anonymous allegations from more than a decade ago, procured by a fishing reporter, should not lead to the cancellation of someone's means of supporting themselves. This is absurd, regardless of whether the accusations are ultimately true or not. Beyond the absurdity, this is tyrannical. Even the "testimony" they released was recorded by an actor. There's simply very little of substance here.
Your comment seems either mistaken or disingenuous to me: > Anonymous allegations The identity of the alleged victims is not public, but that is not the same thing as an anonymous allegation. The newspaper and television channel know the identities of the individuals, as does Brand. > from more than a decade ago Utterly irrelevant. > procured by a fishing reporter It's unclear what you mean by this. I can't find anyt…
There’s been so, so many of these accusations in the past decade that turned out to be far less than the initial reporting or flat out wrong. Your deference to the professionalism of journalism is about a decade or two out of touch with modern reality.
It is only rational to wait for proper processes play out.
It’s sad that such a thing has become politicized where one has to feel the need to tar and feather someone at the first reporting of accusations and any dissent of immediate overreactions is dismissed as conspiratorial or itself motivated by a distasteful political agenda or merely getting their information from unclean sources.
Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform
#685Earlier quoted context omitted.
His means of supporting himself has not been cancelled, just his ability to get paid from YouTube. Don't conflate them.
Do any of us know what percentage of his income is from YouTube currently? I think the point stands in the abstract. It doesn't even matter for him specifically, because there are people whose income is primarily/entirely from YouTube. And so we should appreciate what a serious action that is, to turn it off. It's not like it's just play money, that we can pretend it doesn't matter. It's real income.
The Guardian estimates that he makes a little over a million a year from his YouTube videos.
If your sole source of income comes from YouTube, a private enterprise you freely chose to contract and enter into a binding agreement with which affords them the right to do this, then this is a risk you run.
Brand, like everyone, is free to monetise his content on platforms with different perspectives on acceptable creator conduct, or to monetise his content directly. The specific transaction which he is entering into with YouTube is that he will benefit from their large audience viewing his videos, and if people watch those videos, YouTube and he will benefit from advertising running against the videos. Brand does not have any de facto right to broadcast to YouTube's audience, which I would imagine they consider to be proprietary and valuable -- exactly the sort of thing you wouldn't want, for example, associating your brand with individuals credibly accused of rape.
> And so we should appreciate what a serious action that is, to turn it off. It's not like it's just play money, that we can pretend it doesn't matter. It's real income.
It's a serious course of action but that does not mean it's unfair on Brand. He was already warned when he -- a standup comedian with identical bona fides to a goldfish -- espoused discredited unscientific nonsense during COVID. It was fair then, and it's fair now.
Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform
#686When YouTube does this it means that they tacitly endorse the behaviour of everyone who is currently monetised at the moment. I’m sure it would be easy to find many monetised channels with similar allegations as well as people who have actually been convicted of crimes. Edit: for example, someone like Chris Brown is convicted of domestic abuse as well as accused of many other incidents. He appears to be monetised on…
I think "endorse" is far too strong of a word. No, YT isn't "endorsing" Chris Brown. But it certainly raises the question of YT being arbitrarily punitive. Rather than endorsing, it ignores certain allegations while demonetizing others.
It’s never been that arbitrary at YouTube though. Pretty easy to spot patterns. It’s very obvious that it’s a small motivated human group doing this, not just a faceless process protecting their profits using some hyper capitalist risk projection with advertisers, where the news cycle comes in and the outputs go out.
Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform
#687> “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,…
We thought we were going to escape a CCP style social credit score in the US, but big tech has an exploitable loophole in the administrative layer.
Professional reputation is and has always mattered when engaging with large companies. Especially between 'media personalities' and media companies.
Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform
#688Earlier quoted context omitted.
Glad to see you deleted your other reply that was just rude. I'd agree with the other person (and even if I agreed with you, I'd still point out that your language and attitude are quite against the HN guidelines, which are worth reading: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ) I'd personally be surprised if Russel Brand had more than $1M/yr in sponsorship deals relating to his YouTube content, which would…
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Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform
#689Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 interne…
Your "broadcasting in the public interest" is also "government funded propaganda with limits on free speech"
I think you have a very different u sweats don’t of broadcasting history than I do.
Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform
#690Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 pr…
> If a bunch of people come forward accusing you of assault, odds are pretty good you did it. I sure hope you're never on a jury!
That’s interesting cherry picking.