Tag: YouTube

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defense & war international affairs Internet controversy social media

Too Funny or Too On-Target?

China, Youtube, censorship, copyright

Since nobody has noticed or documented a Google policy of banning YouTube videos that are too funny, let’s go with “too on-​target” as the reason that Google deleted a popular YouTube channel, the RutersXiaoFanQi channel, devoted to satirically slapping China autocrat Xi Jinping.

Some of RutersXiaoFanQi’s videos survive in lesser-​known YouTube channels. (Here is one. Here is another.) The approach of the videos seems to be to keep throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. Apparently, the ratio of sticking to falling flat was too high for Xi and Google.

Unfair to Google? Maybe. We don’t know what happened behind the scenes.

Did Google just automatically delete the channel after having received a certain number of complaints about copyright violations from Xi’s offices? Or did Google honchos sit around an oak conference table, mull all the variables, and solemnly conclude “We simply must appease the Xi regime!”?

YouTube did not respond to an inquiry from Radio Free Asia about the matter. But RutersXiaoFanQi had received a notice stating that “Your YouTube account has been shut down following repeated copyright warnings,” presumably pertaining to music used in the videos.

It is unlikely, though, that various owners of whatever tunes the channel used bothered to lodge any complaints. It is much more likely that, as RFA speculates, the censors of Xi’s regime are exploiting YouTube’s system for reporting copyright infringements. 

And that Google’s YouTube is taking the easy way out.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling First Amendment rights social media

Our Authoritarian Moment

Youtube, censorship

Was it something I said?

Yesterday, YouTube removed the video of my latest episode of This Week in Common Sense. Why? The platform claims I violated its “terms of service” and “community standards” by providing “medical misinformation.”

Funny, YouTube did not specify which statement in the video was incorrect, much less provide any citation to back up its “misinformation” claim.

This sort of authoritarianism is quite common these days. We’re just supposed to take the Authority’s word that It Possesses the Whole Truth.

No debate. No dissent.

There is not even a reference or consult.

Which is what Dr. Byram W. Bridle, PhD, Associate Professor of Viral Immunology Department of Pathobiology at the University of Guelph discovered.

He refused to provide evidence of vaccination. So his Canadian university “banned” him “from campus for at least a year.” And sat by while colleagues and students abused him for being “anti-​science.”

Thing is, as he points out in his Open Letter to the academic institution, not one of the tenured immunologists of the University of Guelph thinks there should be mandatory vaccination. All are very concerned about the goal of universal vaccination. Since not one of the available vaccines appears effective enough to produce sufficient immunity in recipients “herd immunity,” the goal must be mere “herd vaccination.” 

Dr. Bridle is especially annoyed that the university does not allow him to demonstrate his natural immunity to the disease, which simply does not interest the pro-​vaccination bureaucrats.

Worse yet, at no point in the university’s deliberations over the vaccine mandate did administrators consult their own immunology department!

That’s not “following the science.”

Like at YouTube, it’s a political campaign: science not required.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: I first heard about both stories from my podcasting sparring partner, who produced two stories on his website regarding Dr. Bridle and tipped the hat to historian Tom Woods.

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies

The Colluders

censorship, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube

Big Tech social media companies that once boasted of providing open forums now routinely ban speech that they disagree with — speech about elections, pandemics, Wuhan labs, or what have you.

How much of this suppression is private and independently initiated? How much is imposed at the behest of government officials who are supposed to respect First Amendment rights?

Government officials not only say that people should not say such-​and-​such; they also, increasingly, either complain that social media companies don’t do enough to gag people or herald the extent to which they do so.

Earlier this year, Reuters reported that “the White House has been reaching out to social media companies including Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet Inc’s Google about clamping down on COVID misinformation. . . .”

Now the American Freedom Law Center is suing Twitter and President Biden so that the question of whether the government is in effect “deputizing” private organizations to assault freedom of speech can be adjudicated.

The Center is filing on behalf of Colleen Huber, a doctor Twitter censored and suspended for saying the wrong thing about COVID-​19. Of course, there are many other victims of the same policy, and it the Center seeking class-​action status for the lawsuit.

The government has been enlisting social-​media moguls as foot soldiers in a propaganda war. Whether this is done openly or behind closed doors, this war on free speech violates the Constitution. 

As we must hope the outcome of this legal action affirms.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The YouTubification of China

China, YouTube, censorship

The speech-​repressing Chinese government and the speech-​repressing tech firm Google are apparently taking cues from each other.

Busy Google unit YouTube has been working overtime to cripple the YouTube channel China Uncensored, which is too brutal in its criticism of the Chinazi government.

YouTube has demonetized the channel’s latest video, “YouTube Helps Cover Up China’s Atrocities.” According to channel publisher America Uncovered LLC, the videos that tend to get penalized are those with footage “that makes the Communist Party look bad.”

Google often does much more to repress speech than flag and demonetize. But Google doesn’t want to always be super-​blatant. So China Uncensored is still a YouTube channel. For now.

In contrast, the Chinese government usually goes full Chinazi. Its latest project is a snitch app to help neighbors turn in neighbors for voicing “wrong” opinions.

It’s about correcting misinformation. China’s Cyberspace Administration says the app will help counter online statements that are “maliciously distorting, slandering and denying Party, national and military history in an attempt to confuse people’s thinking,”

Ah, disagreement, a.k.a. “misinformation,” the too-​steep cost of freedom! And who alone is qualified to determine which information is correct?

“Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth,” says Orwell’s O’Brien. “It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.”

Deviate from the party line about the party, the pandemic, an election, lack of elections, or anything else, and supposedly it’s right and just to muzzle you.

Wrong.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture media and media people Snowden

The Whistleblower Who Shall Not Be Named

Rand Paul

“YouTube — Google, one of the largest, most powerful companies on the planet — has just censored political discourse from a U.S. senator on the Senate floor,” reports independent, online journalist Tim Pool. 

The case refers to the alleged “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella, around whom hangs a sort of hush-​hush infamy regarding the Ukraine phone call that became the centerpiece of the Democrat’s impeachment of Donald Trump. YouTube, under a self-​imposed/​tribe-​imposed gag order not to mention the man’s name, takes down all videos that dare breach this rule. YouTube just took down a C‑Span video featuring Senator Rand Paul discussing Mr. Ciaramella on the Senate floor — in which he defended whistleblower protections, but notes that they do not enforce anonymity.*

“Think about how dangerous that will be.”

“It is a chilling and disturbing day in America when giant web companies such as YouTube decide to censure [sic] speech,” the senator was quoted in The Washington Examiner after YouTube removed the clip. “Now, even protected speech, such as that of a senator on the Senate floor, can be blocked from getting to the American people.”

Rand Paul has been demanding full disclosure of possible conspiracy on the part of Ciaramella — working with Representative Adam Schiff, who led the impeachment push — but has not been getting very far. During the Senate impeachment trial, presiding officer Chief Justice Roberts declined to read a question (“as written”) by the senator that had specified the Unnamable Name without identifying him as the “whistleblower.”

Google is free to play censor, of course, but who wants an information age without the information?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The senator also expressed some incredulity about the near-​universal proclamations in support of whistleblower laws, calling Edward Snowden “the greatest whistleblower of all-​time” but noting that half the Senate wanted Snowden put to death and the other half to plunk him “in jail forever. So it depends on what you blow the whistle on whether or not they’re for the whistleblower statute.”

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Rand Paul

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The Opposite of Infowars

Alex Jones, InfoWars, censorship, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube,

Yesterday’s big story? Several major social media platforms have de-​platformed Alex Jones and his Infowars opinion (“information”?) show. 

Most commenters about this happening hasten to signal to their audiences that they do not approve of Alex Jones. Is this really necessary? When we consider a mass de-​platforming event, do we need to belabor the obvious? 

I hazard that even most of Jones’s viewers and listeners agree with a small amount of what he says. Jones is more like Jon Stewart and Cenk Uygur, a performer whose rants entertain most of all. In his case, because he says things no one else will, Infowars makes for a bracing … alternative.

It should also go without saying that private platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Apple, who are the main players to kick Jones to the curb of the Information Super-​Highway, have the right to include or exclude anyone they want. As Robby Soave at Reason put it, these “companies are under no obligation to provide a platform to Sandy Hook conspiracy theorizing, 9/​11 trutherism, or any of the other insane ideas Jones has propagated.”

But Soave does worry about the goofy rationales provided for the exclusion.

As do I. And it is not just that the proffered reason, “hate speech,” is, as Soave explains, vague, unanchored to any offered specific offenses.

But it’s worse. This whole exclusionary move is not about hate speech. Everyone knows this.

It’s about suppressing ideas that are (a) popular and (b) despised by the dominant culture.

And these insiders seem at a loss to confront Jones’s farragoes with better ideas, failing to provide “counter info” in their war on Infowars. 

They strike below the belt.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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