Category: Internet controversy

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First Amendment rights Internet controversy

Ron Paul vs. Fauci, YouTube vs. You

Ron Paul, Fauci, Covid, censorship, free speech, 1st Amendment

It’s new news but also, unfortunately, old news.

Tech-​giant providers of forums for public discussion keep banning discussion of the issues of the day. The latest victim: Ron Paul, medical doctor, former congressman and presidential candidate, father of U.S. Senator Rand Paul.

Alphabet/​Google/​YouTube has pulled a video from Dr. Paul’s YouTube channel in which he criticized Fauci for, among other things, reversing his advice about wearing masks to combat COVID-​19. YouTube warns of further suppression if this kind of thing (debate, I guess) continues. You can still watch the video, since there are competitors to YouTube (and we hope there will be many more). SoundCloud has it.

Paul linked to an image of the YouTube communiqué. “Your content was removed due to a violation of our Community Guidelines. . . . Medical misinformation.”

“If this happens again,” Paul’s channel will be hobbled for a week.

And if even then he still speaks freely, like any red-​blooded American would? Still more sanctions, presumably.

Alas, there are many examples of these obnoxious policies.

We’ve recently complained about YouTube’s removal of a Mises Institute talk — once again, for failure to follow the pandemic panic party line. We’ve also complained about how WordPress buzz-​sawed The Conservative Treehouse blog for nebulous violations of policy, violations suddenly discovered after years of hosting the blog.

We could go on. We probably will. Like the proverbial “broken record.” 

When’re we gonna stop?

Well, right after the tech giants stop their accelerating efforts to suppress debate.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Internet controversy media and media people

Google Gag Reflex

John Stuart Mill, Google

Maybe it’s an honor when big-​tech companies gag you. Maybe you’re doing something right.

Google-​owned YouTube has yanked a Mises Institute talk by Tom Woods (“The COVID Cult”) from the Institute’s YouTube channel for challenging orthodox views of the pandemic. Google is also threatening the Mises Institute with further sanctions if the Institute’s YouTube channel sponsors further prohibited discourse.

In response, Mises Institute President Jeff Deist observes that Google and other big-​tech firms have become de facto extensions of the state, “governmentalities . . . committed to ideological service. . . .”

To fight back, he says, we must “build our own platforms.” YouTube alternatives include Bitchute and Odysee, which still host the forbidden talk.

In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill argued that there’s a big difference “between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation. Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right.”

Not every word of this passage is incontestable, but Mill had a point. If Google is so sure it is so right about COVID-​19 policy and Woods so wrong, why try to kill an “opportunity for contesting” Google’s view?

Maybe Google’s “assurance of being right” is not so rational.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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