YouTube drops mask, Mass Demonetizes right wing content

[Platypus Bureaucracy]

No, it isn't. Every country places some restrictions on speech. Fascists don't restrict the free speech of fascists; they restrict the free speech of everyone else.

Yes, every country places some restrictions on speech, but the more restrictions you pleace on it, the more you have in common with Nazi Germany. Of course you don't want to restrict the same speech as Fascists, but what you have in common is that you both want to restrict speech to an unacceptable degree.

Why's that an unacceptable degree? I assume you believe in advertising standards, so why am I not allowed to sell you a sugar pill that I claim will fix your gender dysphoria, but I am allowed to tell you that your country will be majority Muslim by 2050 unless we deport all the brown people? Why are you more sympathetic to the speech of fascists than to the speech of small-time conmen?

Overall, my country would have less in common with Nazi Germany if we banned fascism, because there would be no fascism, whereas Nazi Germany had really quite a lot of fascism. And, hey, if you're really worried about some imaginary set of "free speech scales" that need to be balanced, we'll loosen the libel laws a tad to compensate. That works, right?

[Arcturus Novus]

Found a pretty interesting take on this situation a few minutes ago.
Personally I wouldn’t mind a more decentralized, democratized approach to content creation and proliferation. I understand it’d be hard in such a social media-reliant age, but it sure as hell beats having fuckoff giant corporations with an unreasonable amount of power over like 80% of popular web content.

[The Xenopolis Confederation]

Yes, every country places some restrictions on speech, but the more restrictions you pleace on it, the more you have in common with Nazi Germany. Of course you don't want to restrict the same speech as Fascists, but what you have in common is that you both want to restrict speech to an unacceptable degree.

Why's that an unacceptable degree? I assume you believe in advertising standards, so why am I not allowed to sell you a sugar pill that I claim will fix your gender dysphoria, but I am allowed to tell you that your country will be majority Muslim by 2050 unless we deport all the brown people? Why are you more sympathetic to the speech of fascists than to the speech of small-time conmen?

Overall, my country would have less in common with Nazi Germany if we banned fascism, because there would be no fascism, whereas Nazi Germany had really quite a lot of fascism. And, hey, if you're really worried about some imaginary set of "free speech scales" that need to be balanced, we'll loosen the libel laws a tad to compensate. That works, right?

It's an unacceptable degree because banning an ideology wholesale is prohibiting the expression of ideas, horrid though those ideas may be. To ban a useless pill advertised as a cure for gender dysphoria would be banning false advertising, and thus banning corporate fraud. Fraud and false advertising is not an idea in the same way that Fascism is. This video I think explains it pretty well, especially from 6:24 to 6:53. Fascists are far worse than small time conmen, but it's not about sympathy, it's about rights.


It really wouldn't. Yes, there would be no Fascists, at least no law abiding, open Fascists. But it would also prohibit the free expression of ideas, which in my view is a more critical similarity than how many Fascists there are.

[Neu Leonstein]

Because powers to go against the Weimar constitution in cases of emergency was entrusted in the chancellor during the Stresemann government due to the hyperinflation crisis of the early 20s. After the reichstag fire, Hitler used these powers to suspend the parliament and the constitution indefinitely. At least, that's my interpretation of what I was taught in Modern History.

I have never said Freedom of Speech would have stopped the nazis.

In the late Weimar era there were several powerful groups and factions competing with each other, and in the end Hitler emerged as the victorious one. The Weimar Republic was intrinsically instable from the beginning. By the early 1930 Weimar was already pretty much doomed. The question was not if it would be going away but rather what would be following it.

I do not believe this situation is present in contemporary Germany, and if it ever would come to that, censorship laws would be unlikely to fix any of the deeper running problems that undoubtly would exist in such a case.

Neither of your responses are wrong as such. But they're sort of what I was talking about re the shortcomings of the way things are presented in history classes. You're focusing on specifics about institutions and circumstances, when what I was asking about was what was going in people's heads. The circumstances are important, bit they're obviously not the key thing to learn from. The real question is: what made people vote for Hitler, who was openly disdainful of the liberal democratic system and of the political rights of his opponents, even before he got his hands on the tools of the state and used them to silence opposition? And maybe even more interestingly, why did people come to support him even after he had taken power?

It's exceedingly difficult to argue for freedom of speech as an innate, universal right in the abstract. That's why almost any defence of it rests on its usefulness and its importance to holding a free and fair political discourse. Freedom of speech is considered important mostly because of it's functional importance to the liberal democratic system.

And why is it useful? Clearly the premise is that people present arguments for particular policies, and society through debate figures out the best tradeoffs of costs and benefits to each. It's a very rationalist sort of way of thinking. Very British liberal philosophy sort of stuff.

But clearly it has to be tested against the real world, precisely because that's the premise on which it rests. And Weimar Germany is just one of hundreds of examples of a marketplace of ideas not happening the way it is supposed to. Clearly there is not a great deal of good rational evidence for ending the discourse with concentration camps, going on a genocidal campaign against part of one's own citizenry, or starting the world's biggest war with a country that was objectively far weaker relative to its foes than the defeated Empire had been only a few years earlier. Yet substantial pluralities, and maybe majorities supported some or all of these.

Was it rational argument that convinced them? Or was it something else? And if it was something else, then how does it fit into the justification for freedom of speech?

My point is that maybe it doesn't. Instead, if you're looking for a functional argument for freedom of speech, then that's an argument that comes with qualifications. The argument that speech that seeks to end freedom of speech or the liberal democratic system should be tolerated implicitly assumes that its internal contradictions will be exposed and make it irrelevant. But if that's not the case, and people really can't tell a good argument from a snazzily-presented one, then the defence of the liberal democratic system would be better served by not having some things enter the public domain in the first place.

[Platypus Bureaucracy]

Why's that an unacceptable degree? I assume you believe in advertising standards, so why am I not allowed to sell you a sugar pill that I claim will fix your gender dysphoria, but I am allowed to tell you that your country will be majority Muslim by 2050 unless we deport all the brown people? Why are you more sympathetic to the speech of fascists than to the speech of small-time conmen?

Overall, my country would have less in common with Nazi Germany if we banned fascism, because there would be no fascism, whereas Nazi Germany had really quite a lot of fascism. And, hey, if you're really worried about some imaginary set of "free speech scales" that need to be balanced, we'll loosen the libel laws a tad to compensate. That works, right?

It's an unacceptable degree because banning an ideology wholesale is prohibiting the expression of ideas, horrid though those ideas may be. To ban a useless pill advertised as a cure for gender dysphoria would be banning false advertising, and thus banning corporate fraud. Fraud and false advertising is not an idea in the same way that Fascism is. This video I think explains it pretty well, especially from 6:24 to 6:53. Fascists are far worse than small time conmen, but it's not about sympathy, it's about rights.


It really wouldn't. Yes, there would be no Fascists, at least no law abiding, open Fascists. But it would also prohibit the free expression of ideas, which in my view is a more critical similarity than how many Fascists there are.

And why is the expression of ideas (including ideas sold using lies, remember) worthy of protection when the sale of false goods isn't? You're drawing an arbitrary distinction. If I can restrict speech in order to save people from wasting a few quid, why can't I do the same to save people from living in a fascist hellhole? You seem to consider the expression of ideas an end in itself. Why?

[The Xenopolis Confederation]

It's an unacceptable degree because banning an ideology wholesale is prohibiting the expression of ideas, horrid though those ideas may be. To ban a useless pill advertised as a cure for gender dysphoria would be banning false advertising, and thus banning corporate fraud. Fraud and false advertising is not an idea in the same way that Fascism is. This video I think explains it pretty well, especially from 6:24 to 6:53. Fascists are far worse than small time conmen, but it's not about sympathy, it's about rights.


It really wouldn't. Yes, there would be no Fascists, at least no law abiding, open Fascists. But it would also prohibit the free expression of ideas, which in my view is a more critical similarity than how many Fascists there are.

And why is the expression of ideas (including ideas sold using lies, remember) worthy of protection when the sale of false goods isn't? You're drawing an arbitrary distinction. If I can restrict speech in order to save people from wasting a few quid, why can't I do the same to save people from living in a fascist hellhole? You seem to consider the expression of ideas an end in itself. Why?

Because the free expression of ideas must never be violated by the state. It's immoral for the state to involve itself in the expression of ideas, and that is one of the cornerstones of liberalism.

[Platypus Bureaucracy]

And why is the expression of ideas (including ideas sold using lies, remember) worthy of protection when the sale of false goods isn't? You're drawing an arbitrary distinction. If I can restrict speech in order to save people from wasting a few quid, why can't I do the same to save people from living in a fascist hellhole? You seem to consider the expression of ideas an end in itself. Why?

Because the free expression of ideas must never be violated by the state. It's immoral for the state to involve itself in the expression of ideas, and that is one of the cornerstones of liberalism.

That's not an answer. That's just a rewording of your belief that it's valuable. This is kind of the problem with seeing free speech as an end rather than a means; it's not particularly obvious why free speech is good until you talk about its consequences. And that's because speech is itself a means; unless you just love the sound of your own voice, you probably don't share political ideas for the sake of it. You want them to spread so they'll be put into action.

So I might make an argument like:

1. People being happy is good
2. If we have free speech, people in marginalised groups will be able to raise awareness about their issues
3. This will increase the chance of those issues being addressed
4. This will make people in these groups happier
5. This is good, so we should have free speech

And since "happiness=good" is pretty intuitive, this is an argument that most people can understand.

Whereas you've basically got:
1. Free speech is good
2. Therefore we must not restrict free speech

Which leaves no room for you to do anything but repeat your assertion that free speech is good.

[The Xenopolis Confederation]

Because the free expression of ideas must never be violated by the state. It's immoral for the state to involve itself in the expression of ideas, and that is one of the cornerstones of liberalism.

That's not an answer. That's just a rewording of your belief that it's valuable. This is kind of the problem with seeing free speech as an end rather than a means; it's not particularly obvious why free speech is good until you talk about its consequences. And that's because speech is itself a means; unless you just love the sound of your own voice, you probably don't share political ideas for the sake of it. You want them to spread so they'll be put into action.

So I might make an argument like:

1. People being happy is good
2. If we have free speech, people in marginalised groups will be able to raise awareness about their issues
3. This will increase the chance of those issues being addressed
4. This will make people in these groups happier
5. This is good, so we should have free speech

And since "happiness=good" is pretty intuitive, this is an argument that most people can understand.

Whereas you've basically got:
1. Free speech is good
2. Therefore we must not restrict free speech

Which leaves no room for you to do anything but repeat your assertion that free speech is good.

In my view, freedom of speech is an end in itself though. But if you insist on consequentialist arguments against banning Fascism and hate speech; Banning Fascism opens the floodgates to banning any ideology, thus making other ideologies at risk too. If a conservative government is in power, they will likely use this precedent to ban Communism, which might trigger a reaction from the next progressive government in power, leading to a gradual and very hard to reverse erosion of the window of acceptable discourse.

What's more, if we ever reach such a depraved point as to elect a Fascist government, banning it likely wouldn't help. In the words of JFK, if you make peaceful revolution impossible, you make violent revolution inevitable. Banning Fascism would probably only make a Fascist rise to power that would occur in a timeline where it was not banned, occur all the same only by a much bloodier process.

It would also be a complete nightmare to implement in any country that had strong free speech protections, for example the United States. And very difficult to determine where the line is drawn.

[Platypus Bureaucracy]

That's not an answer. That's just a rewording of your belief that it's valuable. This is kind of the problem with seeing free speech as an end rather than a means; it's not particularly obvious why free speech is good until you talk about its consequences. And that's because speech is itself a means; unless you just love the sound of your own voice, you probably don't share political ideas for the sake of it. You want them to spread so they'll be put into action.

So I might make an argument like:

1. People being happy is good
2. If we have free speech, people in marginalised groups will be able to raise awareness about their issues
3. This will increase the chance of those issues being addressed
4. This will make people in these groups happier
5. This is good, so we should have free speech

And since "happiness=good" is pretty intuitive, this is an argument that most people can understand.

Whereas you've basically got:
1. Free speech is good
2. Therefore we must not restrict free speech

Which leaves no room for you to do anything but repeat your assertion that free speech is good.

In my view, freedom of speech is an end in itself though. But if you insist on consequentialist arguments against banning Fascism and hate speech; Banning Fascism opens the floodgates to banning any ideology, thus making other ideologies at risk too. If a conservative government is in power, they will likely use this precedent to ban Communism, which might trigger a reaction from the next progressive government in power, leading to a gradual and very hard to reverse erosion of the window of acceptable discourse.

What's more, if we ever reach such a depraved point as to elect a Fascist government, banning it likely wouldn't help. In the words of JFK, if you make peaceful revolution impossible, you make violent revolution inevitable. Banning Fascism would probably only make a Fascist rise to power that would occur in a timeline where it was not banned, occur all the same only by a much bloodier process.

It would also be a complete nightmare to implement in any country that had strong free speech protections, for example the United States. And very difficult to determine where the line is drawn.

We could just stop at fascism, though.

[The Xenopolis Confederation]

In my view, freedom of speech is an end in itself though. But if you insist on consequentialist arguments against banning Fascism and hate speech; Banning Fascism opens the floodgates to banning any ideology, thus making other ideologies at risk too. If a conservative government is in power, they will likely use this precedent to ban Communism, which might trigger a reaction from the next progressive government in power, leading to a gradual and very hard to reverse erosion of the window of acceptable discourse.

What's more, if we ever reach such a depraved point as to elect a Fascist government, banning it likely wouldn't help. In the words of JFK, if you make peaceful revolution impossible, you make violent revolution inevitable. Banning Fascism would probably only make a Fascist rise to power that would occur in a timeline where it was not banned, occur all the same only by a much bloodier process.

It would also be a complete nightmare to implement in any country that had strong free speech protections, for example the United States. And very difficult to determine where the line is drawn.

We could just stop at fascism, though.

You could, but it would be very hard to do so. It creates a precedent that people you might disapprove of would be all too willing to exploit.

[Platypus Bureaucracy]

We could just stop at fascism, though.

You could, but it would be very hard to do so. It creates a precedent that people you might disapprove of would be all too willing to exploit.

Does it, though? We've already got restrictions on hate speech in a lot of countries, but you can still argue for far-left positions. We banned National Action a few years ago, and we haven't fallen down your slope. Maybe it's not as slippery as you reckon it is.

[Liriena]

It's not an effective defence of society because it's not meant to be. If Nazis start hurting people or getting into power, that's the point at which you stop them, not before.

If they start winning elections how do you stop them without betraying your values?

Also, nazis are always hurting people. White supremacism is one of the main culprits of terrorism in the western hemisphere.

And why can't we prevent them from getting into power by refusing them any sort of legitimacy or influence beforehand? Why must we appease them at every turn, knowing what we know about their movement and its inevitable consequences?

I get the "sets a bad precedent" or "muh free market of ideas" arguments, but on a practical level they are worse than useless. They are openly and specifically abused by extremists to sneak their garbage past liberals' radar and it's putting innocent people in danger.

[Liriena]

You could, but it would be very hard to do so. It creates a precedent that people you might disapprove of would be all too willing to exploit.

Does it, though? We've already got restrictions on hate speech in a lot of countries, but you can still argue for far-left positions. We banned National Action a few years ago, and we haven't fallen down your slope. Maybe it's not as slippery as you reckon it is.

But if you prevent the far right from organizing, some day they might organize and win an election somehow!

[Platypus Bureaucracy]

Does it, though? We've already got restrictions on hate speech in a lot of countries, but you can still argue for far-left positions. We banned National Action a few years ago, and we haven't fallen down your slope. Maybe it's not as slippery as you reckon it is.

But if you prevent the far right from organizing, some day they might organize and win an election somehow!

Curses! Oh, we really shot ourselves in the foot there!

Okay, new plan. What if we provided free premises for far-right meetings and discounted printing services for their flyers?

[Liriena]

But if you prevent the far right from organizing, some day they might organize and win an election somehow!

Curses! Oh, we really shot ourselves in the foot there!

Okay, new plan. What if we provided free premises for far-right meetings and discounted printing services for their flyers?

And we hold "debates" where they control the microphone and they get to edit the footage as they see fit. It's brilliant.

[Ifreann]

Curses! Oh, we really shot ourselves in the foot there!

Okay, new plan. What if we provided free premises for far-right meetings and discounted printing services for their flyers?

And we hold "debates" where they control the microphone and they get to edit the footage as they see fit. It's brilliant.

It's the only way we can win in the MARKETPLACE OF IDEAS!

[First American Empire]

YouTube isn't going far enough. They should outright ban all this far-right content instead of merely demonetizing it. Neo-Nazis should never be given a safe space to peddle their hatred.

If you're going to ban Neo-Nazis, you should ban SJWs too. They're basically the same, just on different sides of the Political horseshoe.

No they aren't. If we banned far-right content and all the people literal fascists like you call "SJWs", there would be no internet left.

[Liriena]

YouTube isn't going far enough. They should outright ban all this far-right content instead of merely demonetizing it. Neo-Nazis should never be given a safe space to peddle their hatred.

If you're going to ban Neo-Nazis, you should ban SJWs too. They're basically the same, just on different sides of the Political horseshoe.

Nice try, but we can see your sig.

[Washington Resistance Army]

If you're going to ban Neo-Nazis, you should ban SJWs too. They're basically the same, just on different sides of the Political horseshoe.

No they aren't. If we banned far-right content and all the people literal fascists like you call "SJWs", there would be no internet left.

That's not inherently a bad thing tbh

[Liriena]

No they aren't. If we banned far-right content and all the people literal fascists like you call "SJWs", there would be no internet left.

That's not inherently a bad thing tbh

ANPRIM GANG

[Vassenor]

So how are we defining "SJW" today?

[Shofercia]

Carlos Meza made a Twitter thread complaining about YouTube letting Steven Crowder get away with homophobic abuse against him for years.
This went a bit viral.
YouTube eventually responded by saying that Crowder's channel hadn't broken the rules, even though some of the things he said are hurtful.
It was pointed out that YouTube's has rules explicitly against videos with hurtful content.
YouTube pulled a 180 and demonetised Crowder.
YouTube started this stupid purge of channels "promoting hatred", which Maza has criticised.

Nothing to do with the Vox writers' union, no possible way this could benefit them, just YouTube getting attention for letting a big right-wing channel get away with breaking the rules for years and unsurprisingly fucking up their response.

As has been explained, this is a poor understanding of the situation.
In as simple a way as this can be explained,

• Maza is involved in the Vox Media Union
• Vox gets most of its money from Youtube
• When Youtube initially decided that Crowder wasn't doing anything severe enough to deserve punishment, Maza decided to threaten going after advertisers if they didn't change course
• Advertisers are how channels, like Vox, get much to most of their income (that and sponsorships, I don't remember if Vox does that though)
• Putting two and two together to get four here, going after Youtube and threatening an attack on their advertisers is very easily part of a ploy to bring Vox to the table
• It didn't work as intended though because Youtube staff has no spine, so instead of advertisers pulling out, channels are getting axed and demonetized, which indeed doesn't really benefit the union, as can be seen by Maza continuing to yell despite getting what he wanted

As a side note, I'll have to check on this myself, but reportedly the quality of Vox's articles has gone up since the strike began. Interesting if true.

See guys, this is what I was asking for - another possible explanation. Thank you.

[Platypus Bureaucracy]

And we hold "debates" where they control the microphone and they get to edit the footage as they see fit. It's brilliant.

It's the only way we can win in the MARKETPLACE OF IDEAS!

Remember, the marketplace is open to both new and used ideas. Found an old idea in the attic that got millions killed, buyers and non-buyers alike? Don't worry, you can sell it. You can even repackage it and pretend it's new!

[Gormwood]

So how are we defining "SJW" today?

"They say mean things about conservatives."

[Nakena]

Neither of your responses are wrong as such. But they're sort of what I was talking about re the shortcomings of the way things are presented in history classes. You're focusing on specifics about institutions and circumstances, when what I was asking about was what was going in people's heads. The circumstances are important, bit they're obviously not the key thing to learn from. The real question is: what made people vote for Hitler, who was openly disdainful of the liberal democratic system and of the political rights of his opponents, even before he got his hands on the tools of the state and used them to silence opposition? And maybe even more interestingly, why did people come to support him even after he had taken power?

It's exceedingly difficult to argue for freedom of speech as an innate, universal right in the abstract. That's why almost any defence of it rests on its usefulness and its importance to holding a free and fair political discourse. Freedom of speech is considered important mostly because of it's functional importance to the liberal democratic system.

And why is it useful? Clearly the premise is that people present arguments for particular policies, and society through debate figures out the best tradeoffs of costs and benefits to each. It's a very rationalist sort of way of thinking. Very British liberal philosophy sort of stuff.

But clearly it has to be tested against the real world, precisely because that's the premise on which it rests. And Weimar Germany is just one of hundreds of examples of a marketplace of ideas not happening the way it is supposed to. Clearly there is not a great deal of good rational evidence for ending the discourse with concentration camps, going on a genocidal campaign against part of one's own citizenry, or starting the world's biggest war with a country that was objectively far weaker relative to its foes than the defeated Empire had been only a few years earlier. Yet substantial pluralities, and maybe majorities supported some or all of these.

Was it rational argument that convinced them? Or was it something else? And if it was something else, then how does it fit into the justification for freedom of speech?

My point is that maybe it doesn't. Instead, if you're looking for a functional argument for freedom of speech, then that's an argument that comes with qualifications. The argument that speech that seeks to end freedom of speech or the liberal democratic system should be tolerated implicitly assumes that its internal contradictions will be exposed and make it irrelevant. But if that's not the case, and people really can't tell a good argument from a snazzily-presented one, then the defence of the liberal democratic system would be better served by not having some things enter the public domain in the first place.

Speaking about the real world:

How the hell is banning Swastikas from friggin vidya games supposed to prevent an apparently imminent return of Zombified Cyborg Hitler in 2025?