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> censoring people for espousing views expressed by the elected president of the United States To the extent that's true, that says a lot more about how far th

> censoring people for espousing views expressed by the elected president of the United States To the extent that's true, that says a lot more about how far the office of President has fallen than anything else. In a sane world, there would be bipartisan consensus that many of the views Trump expresses should rightfully be condemned: https://www.weeklystandard.com/stephen-f-hayes/donald-trump-is-crazy-and-so-is-the-gop-for-embracing-him?_amp=true https://www.weeklystandard.com/stephen-f-hayes/donald-trump-... > The degree of this normalization is stunning. The Republican nominee for president made comments Friday that one might expect from a patient in a mental institution, the kind of stuff you might read on blog with really small print and pictures of UFOs. And yet his remarks barely register as news. There are no condemnations from fellow Republicans. His supporters shrug them off as Trump being Trump.

lgleason 8y ago
My understanding is that this view is shared by a majority of YouTube employees who censor the content. IE: We hate Trump, Trump is evil and his supporters are deplorables, therefore it is the right thing to do to suppress this horrible speech. If YouTube is treated like a publisher, and is liable for all content that is fine. But irregardless of your feelings about those views and people, when views that are held by a large percentage of the American population are actively being banned/suppressed you are no longer a neutral platform nor are you following the standard of just being a good Samaritan. To be very clear I would also have an issue with this is the target was people who are considered far left because at the end of the day I do not want to have an un-elected, for profit, monopolistic corporation (which was in fact given that power through safe harbor) forcing it's moralistic views on me or anybody else. If anything the tech companies have shown that they are great at technology and really bad at public policy, so lets let the democratic governments sort out the public policy side and the tech get back to being neutral platforms.
- vatueil 8y ago
  I do not think that is an accurate description of how most YouTube employees feel. It is certainly not an accurate description of mine. You have cause-and-effect completely backwards: it is not because I "hate Trump" that I condemn hate speech and conspiratorial content, but rather it is because I oppose hate speech and conspiracy theories that I think Trump deserves to be condemned. As for the role of content platforms, others have already explained the difference between a journalistic publisher and a mere content filter better than I can, so I won't bother to repeat it here. Perhaps I am too optimistic, but I do not believe most of the large minority of Americans that voted for Trump did so because he espouses hate and bigotry, but rather despite it. I think many conservatives who voted for Trump overlooked his rhetoric due to partisan fervor or because they were convinced Clinton was worse, rightly or wrongly. I do not believe the alt-right and unabashed racists are a "large percentage of the American population" or that public platforms need accept their hateful views. I do believe conservative voices deserve to be heard, whether I agree with them or not. But it would be doing principled conservatives a disservice to conflate them with Trumpists and the so-called alt-right. I understand there may be concern about where to draw the line, but I think any government regulation your "bi-partisan group" produces is more likely to do harm than good in the current political context.
  - lgleason 8y ago
    You just helped to prove my point. A large swatch of Trump supporters agree with many of his views, just look at the rally's. Many also feel that certain positions of the left, such as the the support of abortion is morally repugnant. The term "hate speech" is extremely subjective, as are the terms "hate" and "bigotry" as they are used today. If you take a person on the religious right, they will use the terms such as "heathen", "sinner", "obscene" and "degenerate" to describe many alternative lifestyles, also subjective terms. I've heard some on the right say they want to think that many on the left do not really feel these lifestyles are OK etc.. The reality is that that the person on the far right, and the person on the far left, no matter how tolerant they may feel they are, will ultimately be biased towards their own morals when dealing with subjective matters. They may feel they are doing the right moral thing, yet the person from the other side may fervently disagree. The reality is that there is an equal amount of sin on both sides which is why I want neither of them being the sole arbiter of the content I see. This is why the checks and balances are so important. But when you have a pseudo monopoly, for profit corporation such as YouTube, with a predominately left leaning set of values running the show we no longer have that. More importantly there is an argument to be made that the content filtering as is being done today is not what was intended in the current legislation and clarification via legal precedent and/or revised legislation is overdue.

lgleason 8y ago

My understanding is that this view is shared by a majority of YouTube employees who censor the content. IE: We hate Trump, Trump is evil and his supporters are deplorables, therefore it is the right thing to do to suppress this horrible speech. If YouTube is treated like a publisher, and is liable for all content that is fine. But irregardless of your feelings about those views and people, when views that are held by a large percentage of the American population are actively being banned/suppressed you are no longer a neutral platform nor are you following the standard of just being a good Samaritan. To be very clear I would also have an issue with this is the target was people who are considered far left because at the end of the day I do not want to have an un-elected, for profit, monopolistic corporation (which was in fact given that power through safe harbor) forcing it's moralistic views on me or anybody else. If anything the tech companies have shown that they are great at technology and really bad at public policy, so lets let the democratic governments sort out the public policy side and the tech get back to being neutral platforms.

vatueil 8y ago
I do not think that is an accurate description of how most YouTube employees feel. It is certainly not an accurate description of mine. You have cause-and-effect completely backwards: it is not because I "hate Trump" that I condemn hate speech and conspiratorial content, but rather it is because I oppose hate speech and conspiracy theories that I think Trump deserves to be condemned. As for the role of content platforms, others have already explained the difference between a journalistic publisher and a mere content filter better than I can, so I won't bother to repeat it here. Perhaps I am too optimistic, but I do not believe most of the large minority of Americans that voted for Trump did so because he espouses hate and bigotry, but rather despite it. I think many conservatives who voted for Trump overlooked his rhetoric due to partisan fervor or because they were convinced Clinton was worse, rightly or wrongly. I do not believe the alt-right and unabashed racists are a "large percentage of the American population" or that public platforms need accept their hateful views. I do believe conservative voices deserve to be heard, whether I agree with them or not. But it would be doing principled conservatives a disservice to conflate them with Trumpists and the so-called alt-right. I understand there may be concern about where to draw the line, but I think any government regulation your "bi-partisan group" produces is more likely to do harm than good in the current political context.
- lgleason 8y ago
  You just helped to prove my point. A large swatch of Trump supporters agree with many of his views, just look at the rally's. Many also feel that certain positions of the left, such as the the support of abortion is morally repugnant. The term "hate speech" is extremely subjective, as are the terms "hate" and "bigotry" as they are used today. If you take a person on the religious right, they will use the terms such as "heathen", "sinner", "obscene" and "degenerate" to describe many alternative lifestyles, also subjective terms. I've heard some on the right say they want to think that many on the left do not really feel these lifestyles are OK etc.. The reality is that that the person on the far right, and the person on the far left, no matter how tolerant they may feel they are, will ultimately be biased towards their own morals when dealing with subjective matters. They may feel they are doing the right moral thing, yet the person from the other side may fervently disagree. The reality is that there is an equal amount of sin on both sides which is why I want neither of them being the sole arbiter of the content I see. This is why the checks and balances are so important. But when you have a pseudo monopoly, for profit corporation such as YouTube, with a predominately left leaning set of values running the show we no longer have that. More importantly there is an argument to be made that the content filtering as is being done today is not what was intended in the current legislation and clarification via legal precedent and/or revised legislation is overdue.