20 ms·

YouTube Bans Ron Paul Institute

92 points by thereare5lights 5y ago

joelbondurant 5y ago
Communists must be bulldozed into mass graves.
jeffbee 5y ago
Commercially deceptive content. Ron Paul has been flogging his useless quasi-currency for decades.
- gowld 5y ago
  Did YouTube tell you that was the content that they flagged?
madengr 5y ago
WTF? Banning Ron Paul?
drocer88 5y ago
What community standards were violated?
- kwanbix 5y ago
  That is a generic response. They never tell you, so you can never defend yourself, or even fix the problem.
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    No, it gives the reason right there. Commercially deceptive content. Scams.
    - gowld 5y ago
      But they don't tell you what content violated the standard.
sevencolors 5y ago
Oh no. How will he ever communicate that to people?
xupybd 5y ago
The banning of politicians from any public platform raises questions about the level of influence these platforms hold and their impact on democracy. I'm not sure where things will land but this is a bold move by YouTube. I'm surprised they picked Ron Paul to test this on.
- gibba999 5y ago
  They didn't pick Ron Paul to test this on, and it's not a bold move. YouTube has been in the censorship game for a long, long time. A lot of content creators -- of documentaries -- created Nebula because they were sick and tired of getting censored. https://nebula.app/videos?category=history https://nebula.app/videos?category=history These aren't wackos. These are mostly serious scholars, tired of a serious problem with Google. I'm giving this as an example; this has been a problem for a lot of people for a long time.
  - xupybd 5y ago
    For sure this is not the first instance of censorship but I'm not aware of any famous American politicians getting censored before, are there any?
    - hagbard_c 5y ago
      I seem to remember your former president getting banned? His shtick may have been that he entered politics as an outsider but once he was in he surely was a politician, and a famous one at that.
      - xupybd 5y ago
        I'm not American but think it's significant because they're American companies. I thought that was Twitter not YouTube. I could be wrong.
        hagbard_c 5y ago
        As far as I know he was banned more or less across the board - Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, Snapchat, Shopify, Reddit and possibly others [1]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/11/trump-banned-social-media/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/11/trump-b...
yawaworht1978 5y ago
So Ron Paul learned that YouTube is not radically libertarian. I see appeal was received, funny thing he's saying out of nowhere, similar thing happened on Facebook.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > So Ron Paul learned that YouTube is not radically libertarian. Nothing more radically libertarian than exercising your private property rights to control what ideas are spread by use of that property. The people complaining on the basis that private parties should not have the right to control what ideas are spread using their own property, OTOH, are clearly not radically libertarian.
  - angelzen 5y ago
    Good point. Radically libertarian is a nightmare. In general, radically $ideology usually is a nightmare. Some cultures even have a word for moderation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagom
gibba999 5y ago
This is sad. As much as I'm offended by many of the things Ron Paul does and stands for, I'm glad he's there. There's a lot of divergent thinking there. Outliers are good. I'd be terrified of a congress with a dozen Ron Pauls, but one is good to have around. If I had my druthers, we'd have one of him in Congress. And one of each other extremist point of view, left-wing, right-wing, or just off in another direction.
- AnEro 5y ago
  >Outliers are good If American politicians had no outside interests than sure. It's currently a fundamentally flawed system: political games, corporate interests, religion and re-elections all cloud actual discussion and turns it into a show. Nothing in house is driven by real data, both sides don't see the actual reality of what ever situation they're in. They take random data points to mislead voters to their position, each side having different areas they fudge the numbers on.
rvz 5y ago
Another day another ban from YouTube, it is typical that they give no reason. Mark my words: They will NEVER change. It will ONLY get worse.
zzzeek 5y ago
so ironic a poster here referred to this move as "communist". They're right; enough communism, youtube should be privatized!
- woodruffw 5y ago
  No, you see: it's only free association when we do it. When they do it, it's communism.
  - zzzeek 5y ago
    yeah and maybe "The government" can step in and tell that private company not to censor them! you know. so the government....can protect a private individual from the actions of...a private company. through, i dont know, like a "law" or "regulation" or something, and...if they dont obey it, you know have courts and police and stuff all employed by...the government, to make sure it all works. Then we can get on with being libertarians!
    - mixmastamyk 5y ago
      It's not really helpful to take an unthinking, throw away comment, and run with debunking it. I understand the urge, but is ultimately useless.
      - woodruffw 5y ago
        I’m pretty sure ‘zzzeek was riffing with me, not attempting to debunk me, given their top comment. But then again, that’s what every fool thinks!
      - zzzeek 5y ago
        huge mood enhancer, ive found it very useful
        dang 5y ago
        Not cool. Please don't enhance your mood at the expense of damaging the ecosystem. I'm sure you wouldn't litter in a city park or enjoy setting fires in a dry forest. Please don't do the equivalent on HN.
woodruffw 5y ago
In any conversation that begins with framing Ron Paul as a principled libertarian who we can trust to have positions unbesmirched by the normal far-right talking points, we would do well to remember that he ran a deeply racist and homophobic newsletter for over two decades[1]. I'm not saying that he deserved to be banned from YouTube, since I have no idea what he (or others using his brand) put on their website. But I feel it's important to note that Ron Paul (and his son) have spent the better part of the last 30 years attempting to launder their reputations away from their reactionary roots. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Paul_newsletters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Paul_newsletters
AnEro 5y ago
If you look at his twitter videos are clips from the channel, and they're all about berating any initiative to take a free and safe vaccine. Must have spoken in greater lengths about negatives that don't have any scientific bases. Which honestly at this point makes sense to start punishing. Where most of the people against the vaccine (Tucker Carlson/Bret Weinstein) at this point that are popular have taken it but puppet different positions for building a brand and/or money.
mixmastamyk 5y ago
Yeah, I've been a fan of Paul for a long time. But his group has lost the plot since Covid happened. Perhaps an echo chamber effect. Early on I was happy someone was fighting back against government overreach. This was around the time they were closing beaches in California, and showing photos in the news carefully taken at a 15 degree angle to make it look like people fifteen feet apart were on top of each other. It doesn't take a tremendous amount of science education to know folks don't get respiratory infections outdoors at a sunny, windy beach. But that era is long over, govt has mostly stepped back. Their channel however has since degenerated into sloppy, constant tone-deaf vaccination, CDC, and card bashing. We don't know everything, but one thing we do is that the major covid vaccines are orders of magnitude safer than getting it. We've had vax cards for school, etc for a long time as well. It's just an odd stance for someone with a medical background to take. That said I wish the government would dial back its spending. Something Paul would do better to focus on. Not sure what to make of Youtube, but it's their network.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > It doesn't take a tremendous amount of science studies to know folks don't get respiratory infections outdoors at a sunny, windy beach. They do at the crowded indoor public restrooms at the beach which are kind of essential to keeping the beach open.
  - gowld 5y ago
    What crowded indoor restrooms?
    - mixmastamyk 5y ago
      I don't know of any offhand, they are all separate. Closing exceptions would have been much easier than thousands of miles of coastline.
mandmandam 5y ago
I'm not seeing any good reasons here for this to be flagged. What am I missing?
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  Also, how to vote to unflag a post? Sometimes there is a vouch, but not available here.
jdkee 5y ago
Why is this flagged? Censorship by large tech platforms is an important issue here in the U.S. and abroad.
MiguelX413 5y ago
Why is he shocked, are we thinking about the same YouTube?
CanceledAccount 5y ago
Apparently this was completely by mistake and is fixed now.
- saurik 5y ago
  I feel like the term "mistake" must mean something different to you than it does to at least me. Like, we know this isn't some kind of "oops": from just the screenshots in the one linked tweet, we know he filed an appeal and of held up in appeal. I would buy "error", but errors are something that people should attempt to minimize and aren't necessarily excusable with a hand-waive.

joelbondurant 5y ago

Communists must be bulldozed into mass graves.

jeffbee 5y ago

Commercially deceptive content. Ron Paul has been flogging his useless quasi-currency for decades.

gowld 5y ago
Did YouTube tell you that was the content that they flagged?

madengr 5y ago

WTF? Banning Ron Paul?

drocer88 5y ago

What community standards were violated?

kwanbix 5y ago
That is a generic response. They never tell you, so you can never defend yourself, or even fix the problem.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  No, it gives the reason right there. Commercially deceptive content. Scams.
  - gowld 5y ago
    But they don't tell you what content violated the standard.

sevencolors 5y ago

Oh no. How will he ever communicate that to people?

xupybd 5y ago

The banning of politicians from any public platform raises questions about the level of influence these platforms hold and their impact on democracy. I'm not sure where things will land but this is a bold move by YouTube. I'm surprised they picked Ron Paul to test this on.

gibba999 5y ago
They didn't pick Ron Paul to test this on, and it's not a bold move. YouTube has been in the censorship game for a long, long time. A lot of content creators -- of documentaries -- created Nebula because they were sick and tired of getting censored. https://nebula.app/videos?category=history https://nebula.app/videos?category=history These aren't wackos. These are mostly serious scholars, tired of a serious problem with Google. I'm giving this as an example; this has been a problem for a lot of people for a long time.
- xupybd 5y ago
  For sure this is not the first instance of censorship but I'm not aware of any famous American politicians getting censored before, are there any?
  - hagbard_c 5y ago
    I seem to remember your former president getting banned? His shtick may have been that he entered politics as an outsider but once he was in he surely was a politician, and a famous one at that.
    - xupybd 5y ago
      I'm not American but think it's significant because they're American companies. I thought that was Twitter not YouTube. I could be wrong.
      - hagbard_c 5y ago
        As far as I know he was banned more or less across the board - Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, Snapchat, Shopify, Reddit and possibly others [1]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/11/trump-banned-social-media/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/11/trump-b...

yawaworht1978 5y ago

So Ron Paul learned that YouTube is not radically libertarian. I see appeal was received, funny thing he's saying out of nowhere, similar thing happened on Facebook.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> So Ron Paul learned that YouTube is not radically libertarian. Nothing more radically libertarian than exercising your private property rights to control what ideas are spread by use of that property. The people complaining on the basis that private parties should not have the right to control what ideas are spread using their own property, OTOH, are clearly not radically libertarian.
- angelzen 5y ago
  Good point. Radically libertarian is a nightmare. In general, radically $ideology usually is a nightmare. Some cultures even have a word for moderation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagom

gibba999 5y ago

This is sad. As much as I'm offended by many of the things Ron Paul does and stands for, I'm glad he's there. There's a lot of divergent thinking there. Outliers are good. I'd be terrified of a congress with a dozen Ron Pauls, but one is good to have around. If I had my druthers, we'd have one of him in Congress. And one of each other extremist point of view, left-wing, right-wing, or just off in another direction.

AnEro 5y ago
>Outliers are good If American politicians had no outside interests than sure. It's currently a fundamentally flawed system: political games, corporate interests, religion and re-elections all cloud actual discussion and turns it into a show. Nothing in house is driven by real data, both sides don't see the actual reality of what ever situation they're in. They take random data points to mislead voters to their position, each side having different areas they fudge the numbers on.

rvz 5y ago

Another day another ban from YouTube, it is typical that they give no reason. Mark my words: They will NEVER change. It will ONLY get worse.

zzzeek 5y ago

so ironic a poster here referred to this move as "communist". They're right; enough communism, youtube should be privatized!

woodruffw 5y ago
No, you see: it's only free association when we do it. When they do it, it's communism.
- zzzeek 5y ago
  yeah and maybe "The government" can step in and tell that private company not to censor them! you know. so the government....can protect a private individual from the actions of...a private company. through, i dont know, like a "law" or "regulation" or something, and...if they dont obey it, you know have courts and police and stuff all employed by...the government, to make sure it all works. Then we can get on with being libertarians!
  - mixmastamyk 5y ago
    It's not really helpful to take an unthinking, throw away comment, and run with debunking it. I understand the urge, but is ultimately useless.
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      I’m pretty sure ‘zzzeek was riffing with me, not attempting to debunk me, given their top comment. But then again, that’s what every fool thinks!
    - zzzeek 5y ago
      huge mood enhancer, ive found it very useful
      - dang 5y ago
        Not cool. Please don't enhance your mood at the expense of damaging the ecosystem. I'm sure you wouldn't litter in a city park or enjoy setting fires in a dry forest. Please don't do the equivalent on HN.

woodruffw 5y ago

In any conversation that begins with framing Ron Paul as a principled libertarian who we can trust to have positions unbesmirched by the normal far-right talking points, we would do well to remember that he ran a deeply racist and homophobic newsletter for over two decades[1]. I'm not saying that he deserved to be banned from YouTube, since I have no idea what he (or others using his brand) put on their website. But I feel it's important to note that Ron Paul (and his son) have spent the better part of the last 30 years attempting to launder their reputations away from their reactionary roots. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Paul_newsletters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Paul_newsletters

AnEro 5y ago

If you look at his twitter videos are clips from the channel, and they're all about berating any initiative to take a free and safe vaccine. Must have spoken in greater lengths about negatives that don't have any scientific bases. Which honestly at this point makes sense to start punishing. Where most of the people against the vaccine (Tucker Carlson/Bret Weinstein) at this point that are popular have taken it but puppet different positions for building a brand and/or money.

mixmastamyk 5y ago

Yeah, I've been a fan of Paul for a long time. But his group has lost the plot since Covid happened. Perhaps an echo chamber effect. Early on I was happy someone was fighting back against government overreach. This was around the time they were closing beaches in California, and showing photos in the news carefully taken at a 15 degree angle to make it look like people fifteen feet apart were on top of each other. It doesn't take a tremendous amount of science education to know folks don't get respiratory infections outdoors at a sunny, windy beach. But that era is long over, govt has mostly stepped back. Their channel however has since degenerated into sloppy, constant tone-deaf vaccination, CDC, and card bashing. We don't know everything, but one thing we do is that the major covid vaccines are orders of magnitude safer than getting it. We've had vax cards for school, etc for a long time as well. It's just an odd stance for someone with a medical background to take. That said I wish the government would dial back its spending. Something Paul would do better to focus on. Not sure what to make of Youtube, but it's their network.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> It doesn't take a tremendous amount of science studies to know folks don't get respiratory infections outdoors at a sunny, windy beach. They do at the crowded indoor public restrooms at the beach which are kind of essential to keeping the beach open.
- gowld 5y ago
  What crowded indoor restrooms?
  - mixmastamyk 5y ago
    I don't know of any offhand, they are all separate. Closing exceptions would have been much easier than thousands of miles of coastline.

mandmandam 5y ago

I'm not seeing any good reasons here for this to be flagged. What am I missing?

mixmastamyk 5y ago
Also, how to vote to unflag a post? Sometimes there is a vouch, but not available here.

jdkee 5y ago

Why is this flagged? Censorship by large tech platforms is an important issue here in the U.S. and abroad.

MiguelX413 5y ago

Why is he shocked, are we thinking about the same YouTube?

CanceledAccount 5y ago

Apparently this was completely by mistake and is fixed now.

saurik 5y ago
I feel like the term "mistake" must mean something different to you than it does to at least me. Like, we know this isn't some kind of "oops": from just the screenshots in the one linked tweet, we know he filed an appeal and of held up in appeal. I would buy "error", but errors are something that people should attempt to minimize and aren't necessarily excusable with a hand-waive.