That’s right. Daryush Valizadeh, aka “Roosh” the pro-rape “return of kings” buffoon has been kicked off of youtube. His entire account is gone, all of his videos.
I’m sure he and others will be calling this “censorship”. I think most will agree when I call it overdue. Now the question is, can he still live in his mother’s basement, or will he be kicked out of there too?
Would it be too much to ask youtube to jettison other channels that violate their terms of service (e.g. thunderfoot)?
I’m sure he and others will be calling this “censorship”.
And it’s not. It’s youtube exercising its corporate right of speech; i.e.: deciding what’s OK and what’s not under their terms of service. In fact, if youtube management wished to, they could be completely arbitrary, like facebook.
This topic interests me because it seems to revolve around the farcical claim that companies have opinions. Unless the shareholders and employees have a meeting and decide collectively the company’s opinion, all we’re really talking about is the opinion of the company’s executives.
As the saying goes, silence equals assent (or consent).
Companies like google, facebook and twitter are giving their opinion with what they allow and what they silence, even if they’re not saying it directly. Racists, nationalists and misogynists have been able to spew hate and threats without consequences, while those who spoke against it or used harmless speech have been punished (e.g. saying ‘white trash’ or tracking users who make rape threats is punished more severely than a white male uttering a racial slur or a death threat).
It’s only now that corporations are threatening companies with lost revenue that they are beginning to take action. Facebook recently lost $56 billion in stock value because of it. As I’ve said elsewhere, facebook’s “standards” are double standards.
Marcus Ranum @1
That reminds me of a time that Alan Greenspan, not normally thought of as a funny guy, made me laugh…at him, not with him. I can’t give a proper citation; but I remember him (an Ayn Rand cultist IIRC) testifying in Congress during the Great Recession that he was shocked, shocked I tell you, that companies hadn’t behaved in their best interest.
One good laugh was related to Marcus’ point: Greenspan seems to think that a company is an entity with intelligence and will.
But the real knee-slapper for me was that, as near as I could tell, the natural persons who trashed the economy were acting very much in accordance with what they perceived to be their personal best interest, and were largely correct in that estimation.
Of course he’s claiming persecution! Over on wehuntedthemammoth, they posted a quote: “For 13 years I preached fornication on YouTube and did not get banned. As a Christian I lasted a little over a year.”
There is something a little perverse about this, but it’s not what he thinks. I’ll fix his quote for him: “For 13 years I preached rape on YouTube and did not get banned. As an anti-Semite I lasted a little over a year.”