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YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

nytimes.com

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

#881

Post by janalsncm »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #842
Sophistifunk wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. https://www.city.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2022/04/new-scor... An alternative interpretation of what's going on here is that the mainstream justice system is failing, and people are cobbling together an alternat…

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.

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

#882

Post by Cymrukicks »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #842
Sophistifunk wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. https://www.city.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2022/04/new-scor... An alternative interpretation of what's going on here is that the mainstream justice system is failing, and people are cobbling together an alternat…

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.

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

#884

Post by harshitaneja »

kypro wrote: post #256
JohnMakin wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you propose this actually work out? Every time youtube, twitter, facebook, etc wants to ban someone they have to submit a request to the government or be subject to its oversight? That's far more dystopian.

Or alternatively companies have to provide clear and explicit rules about what is permissible on their platform and if you feel you're wrongly censored or removed from the platform you should be able to take legal action. I'm fine with YouTube not wanting to provide a platform for people who they feel are harmful, but they need to define that in an explicit way so that these decisions are not made arbitrarily. I beli…

Define "clear and explicit rules". Does the constitution of say United States qualify as examples of clear and explicit rules? If yes, then even after roughly a quarter millennium, there are still hundreds of thousands of cases filed each year.

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

#885

Post by agentgumshoe »

mcpackieh wrote: post #696
agentgumshoe wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point you're making is there's no such thing as the Far Left, despite the Far Right seeing such common use.

Those terms, particularly with the 'far' intensifier, are all relative.

And subjective too, which is convenient.

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

#886

Post by 867-5309 »

benj111 wrote: post #851
musicale wrote: post #824

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2.7B youtube users is about 1/3 of the people on Earth, and a solid majority of internet users. India has the most youtube users at 570M+, though the US is highest in youtube traffic. Japan also has high youtube traffic per capita. https://www.globalmediainsight.com/blog/youtube-users-statis...

1/3 isn't a majority.

X = Y/3, X = Z, Y != Z

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

#887

Post by chiefalchemist »

grepfru_it wrote: post #699
Sabinus wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

>potentially dangerous narratives https://youtu.be/v4ZOJLsnvZo?si=Y7su4zyFagpePwdj I have no public opinions. I just share what I see

Perpetual crisis leads to perpetual fear and nothing nudges and controls behaviour better than fear.

Nothing makes people not act in their own best self-interest (e.h., diet and lifestyle) than fear.

Nothing nudges people to forfeit their individuality to a group of overseers (i.e., government) more than fear.

Nothing blinds people to possibilities other than the dysfunctional status quo more than fear.

Nothing servers fear better than more fear.

Not my opinion. This is history's opinion.

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

#888

Post by chiefalchemist »

Sabinus wrote: post #682
chiefalchemist wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Whose definition of ignorance are we using? And who does that definition benefit and serve?

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

#889

Post by boffinAudio »

misja111 wrote: post #16
boffinAudio wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its really atrocious on so many levels, and speaks to a real ethics issue we, in the West, are ill-prepared to address - first, that he could have gotten away with these alleged actions for so long, atrocity #1, but then - second, that he has had his livelihood completely upended on the basis of unproven allegations which have not yet been confirmed through the legal process that is a core issue in Western moral valu…

> it is obvious to even the most casual observer that he's upsetting the power structures that propagate these sexcrime narratives You're saying that there are 'power structures' that propagate 'these sexcrime narratives'. I'm obviously not casual observer enough because I don't know which power structures you are referring too. Could you please tell a bit more about them?

The very institutions making these claims against Brand have been profiting from propagating the sexcrime narrative - or, covering it up - for decades. These very institutions have also been involved in protecting known pedophiles from public scrutiny - so this is why I believe its very telling that they are turning their craven eye on Brand, who has done a lot to point this out over the last couple of years ..

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

#890

Post by 4bpp »

ncallaway wrote: post #571
FormerBandmate wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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