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YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

nytimes.com

361–370 of 1001 posts

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

#361

> “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,…

I don’t want to state the obvious but the part of the ecosystem being harmed is advertisers.

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

#362
post #281

> “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,…

YouTube is like HR - they are there to protect the company and the company's revenue streams, not you or "the community". This is why I think the term "community guidelines" for "censorship policy" is such abusive gaslighting. It's unilateral censorship, not community, and they are rules, not guidelines. It's the same deceptive drive that renamed "searching your bag" to "security screening" at airports.

In this case it looks like theyre essentially just keeping his money because they decided to.

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

#363

So has the internet completely done away with innocent until proven guilty? The primary benefit of things like MeToo was supposed to be people being able to take action against individuals who otherwise would have been expected to squash things due to undue influence on law enforcement, the media, and politics - like Harvey Weinstein. But in cases like this, it seems quite dystopic that a D-list celeb, likely with li…

"innocent until proven guilty" only applies in a court of law. Similar to when people cite the 1st amendment in situations where a private company is taking action, this phrase is meaningless here. A private company can do what it wants within the bounds of the law.

> "innocent until proven guilty" only applies in a court of law

No, it doesn't "only" apply in a court of law. I choose to apply it in my own psyche (which breaks the "only"), and I choose to do so because I understand the reasons why a court of law applies the principle.

Just because the whole village is wielding pitchforks doesn't mean it's rational for you to also do the same.

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

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole philosophical backing of both "freedom of speech" and "innocent until proven guilty" is that the government doesn't itself have civil rights, only the rights explicitly outlined to it in the founding documents of that government (e.g. US Constitution). Once you venture into private parties evaluating other private parties, you encounter a collision of rights. It's still freedom of speech and association to…

> government doesn't itself have civil rights Neither do corporations. This is easy to demonstrate. Imagine you refuse to talk to Trump supporters - most people would say that's your right. > It's still freedom of speech and association to not want to do business with certain people imagine the outrage if Tomorrow YouTube deletes accounts for anyone that supported Trump

Let's go more extreme. Tech companies are free to not host Nazi content. The US govt is NOT free to lock someone up for being a Nazi. That's the power of the 1st amendment.

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

#365
post #281

> “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,…

YouTube is like HR - they are there to protect the company and the company's revenue streams, not you or "the community". This is why I think the term "community guidelines" for "censorship policy" is such abusive gaslighting. It's unilateral censorship, not community, and they are rules, not guidelines. It's the same deceptive drive that renamed "searching your bag" to "security screening" at airports.

I mostly agree but my argument against “rules” is that these things never seem to be unilaterally enforced. So it really is more like a guideline because enforcement is unpredictable in several aspects.

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

#366
Wow so much focus in the comments on the individual instead of YouTube's ability to randomly remove whoever they dislike, reminding us of the problems with large corporate companies controlling essentially public services. Just imagine if Tencent decided to buy YouTube from Google, would get real interesting.

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

#367

So has the internet completely done away with innocent until proven guilty? The primary benefit of things like MeToo was supposed to be people being able to take action against individuals who otherwise would have been expected to squash things due to undue influence on law enforcement, the media, and politics - like Harvey Weinstein. But in cases like this, it seems quite dystopic that a D-list celeb, likely with li…

"innocent until proven guilty" only applies in a court of law. Similar to when people cite the 1st amendment in situations where a private company is taking action, this phrase is meaningless here. A private company can do what it wants within the bounds of the law.

It doesn't have to apply everywhere but it's still a good policy in a lot of contexts. I think a massive general audience platform is a good example. If this were, let's say, an online community of survivors of abuse, maybe that sort of prudence could reasonably take a back seat.

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

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube doesn't want to be demonetized by advertisers, so they are demonetizing Brand. It's basic reputation management / income stream protection. Brand is free to go elsewhere or set up his own streaming / video publishing service.

I doubt YouTube worries about being demonetized by advertisers at this point. Where exactly will this advertisers go to advertise on long form videos otherwise?

They’ll just go to other forms of media, and/or skip long form videos altogether.

With platforms like TikTok also being extremely popular, advertisers may simply choose to focus their budgets on these platforms instead of YouTube.

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

#369

[flagged]

Brand's autobiography "My Booky Wook" has quite a few rapey/manipulative portions. It was a less sensitive time, pre Me Too, so he was more open about being a creep.

Assuming the allegations are true, which I'm doubtful of:

Youtube is fine with hosting the videos of a "rapey/manipulative" creep as long as they get to keep the money.

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

#370
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... having far lower standards yourself ... How are we measuring that? Firstly, as a nitpick, the mainstream media these days is Russel Brand. He has an audience comparable to a group like CNN. Possibly slightly larger. Secondly, the quality of the podcasters is generally better on net than the big media companies. They tend not to be gung-ho all-weather war supporters for example. People like Brand might get a lot…

Journalism. Reaching out to involved parties for comment, boots on the ground, making retractions, reserving judgement, citing sources, seeking and contextualizing opposition and/or expertise, making an attempt to prefer observation over interpretation, pushing back on wild claims, etc etc etc. I was acutely aware of partisan bias in MSM but I didn't appreciate just how much they actually did get right until the delu…

You do realise he has a large team of journalist behind him?
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