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So has the internet completely done away with innocent until proven guilty? The primary benefit of things like MeToo was supposed to be people being able to ta

So has the internet completely done away with innocent until proven guilty? The primary benefit of things like MeToo was supposed to be people being able to take action against individuals who otherwise would have been expected to squash things due to undue influence on law enforcement, the media, and politics - like Harvey Weinstein. But in cases like this, it seems quite dystopic that a D-list celeb, likely with little to no major influence, is suddenly getting completely cancelled across an entire swath of avenues and platforms, based solely on accusations.

JohnMakin 3y ago
"innocent until proven guilty" only applies in a court of law. Similar to when people cite the 1st amendment in situations where a private company is taking action, this phrase is meaningless here. A private company can do what it wants within the bounds of the law.
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  Maybe this should be reconsidered when a "private company" controls a large majority of humanity's social fabric and/or popular culture?
  - klyrs 3y ago
    No, antitrust laws should break them up.
  - nova22033 3y ago
    The way to reconsider this is to amend the constitution.
  - miohtama 3y ago
    This is why developer and hacker community should strive to build open networks, and then have them adopted. This was what early internet was like: Usenet, IRC, etc.
    - anigbrowl 3y ago
      Usenet was a set of fiefdoms mostly administered by academics in CompSci departments, and proved utterly unequal to its first real crisis*. Distributed systems work great as long as they're new and everyone is participating in good faith most of the time. In adversarial situations, they're rarely able to adapt flexibly enough, partly because the networked structure imposes a severe decision-time penalty on consensus formation. A negligent or malicious attacker just has to overwhelm nodes with high betweenness centrality and the whole network fails. Immediately following crises everyone talks about making the network more resilient and so on, but it never fully recovers because everyone intuitively knows that establishing consus is slow and bumpy, and that major restructuring/retooling efforts are way easier to accomplish unilaterally. So people start drifting away because unless there's a quick technical fix that can be deployed within a month or two, It's Over. Distributed systems always lose against coherent attackers with more than a threshold level of resources because the latter has a much tighter OODA loop. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Siegel#Green_card_spam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Sie...
    - tored 3y ago
      Yes, but I would also add that it is important that the rest of the world should stop using services from American companies.
    - corinroyal 3y ago
      Exactly, and look what happened to Usenet. People abused the commons and we lost it to spam. Unmoderated networks always fall to bad actors. I'm building a p2p social network and struggling hard with how to balance company needs, community needs, and individual freedom. A free-for-all leads to a tyranny of structurelessness in which the loudest and pushiest form a defacto leadership that doesn't represent the will of the majority. On the flip side, overly restrictive rules stifle expression and cause resentment. These are hard questions and there is no one answer, except that unmoderated networks always suck eventually, so the question is one of line drawing and compromise.
  - JohnMakin 3y ago
    How do you propose this actually work out? Every time youtube, twitter, facebook, etc wants to ban someone they have to submit a request to the government or be subject to its oversight? That's far more dystopian.
    - plagiarist 3y ago
      Aren't they still publishing his content, just not running ads and paying? The US government will do fuckall about that, even if platforms are forced to be quasi-national entities subject to the First Amendment.
    - kypro 3y ago
      Or alternatively companies have to provide clear and explicit rules about what is permissible on their platform and if you feel you're wrongly censored or removed from the platform you should be able to take legal action. I'm fine with YouTube not wanting to provide a platform for people who they feel are harmful, but they need to define that in an explicit way so that these decisions are not made arbitrarily. I believe primary Brand's job for the last few years has been as a content creator. Given this I think it's reasonable to expect he should have some legal rights. Personally I don't see a huge amount of difference between an Uber gig worker and a YouTube content creator. Both should have some basic rights regardless of whether they're technically classed as "employees".
      - jayrot 3y ago
        They do have rules on what is permissible on their platform. They call it the Creator Responsibility Policy. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7650329?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7650329?hl=en
        kypro 3y ago
        If by "rules" you mean vague references to "harm" then sure. My use of the word "explicit" here was intentional. As it stands the "rules" may as well just read "if we don't like what you're doing on or off our platform we reserve the right fire you as a content creator". And again I'll note, if you're fired as a content creator for some arbitrary reason you have no way to challenge the decision. I don't think this is acceptable. I think Google should ultimately be able to run their platform however they like, but they have a responsibility to make those rules clear when people are dependant on them for their income.
  - plagiarist 3y ago
    You are reconsidering the wrong part. Let's have smaller companies that aren't able to control that much of society.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- efitz 3y ago
  Then let’s change the law. It’s obvious over the past few years that companies can’t be trusted with freedom of association or freedom of speech. Let’s strip them of both. If you are incorporated (and therefore benefit from government-provided protection from liability and lower tax rates) then you no longer get to choose your customers; you’re a common carrier and must provide the same service to all customers. You can only terminate a customer for non-payment (if you’re a paid service) or if the customer takes actions that directly threaten your business (eg attempts to hack your service). Social media companies may no longer promote or suppress content; they can only provide tools to let users do so themselves (eg filter/block/subscribe/tag). Advertisers can use similar filters for ad placement.
  - threeseed 3y ago
    You need to understand that the majority of people simply don't agree with you. They choose platforms with moderation (aka censorship) and stay away from those that don't.
    - flextheruler 3y ago
      In the beginning YouTube was popular and had very little moderation. You could watch illegal streams of many films and movies and you could find some porn before it’d be taken down. Advertisers are what demand moderation not users so as to protect their bottom line. It’s disingenuous to say otherwise and ignores a multitude of services that became and still are incredible popular with little moderation.
      - anigbrowl 3y ago
        'Them that has the gold makes the rules'. The users are not the paying customers.
      - threeseed 3y ago
        > ignores a multitude of services that became and still are incredible popular with little moderation Please provide examples. So we can compare them to the likes of Meta, Netflix, Spotify, Apple, Reddit etc.
- LudwigNagasena 3y ago
  > "innocent until proven guilty" only applies in a court of law. “Innocent until proven guilty” is a philosophical concept that many legal systems subscribe to in the context of criminal law. > Similar to when people cite the 1st amendment in situations where a private company is taking action Indeed, it’s very similar in the sense that the concept of the freedom of speech goes way beyond the 1st amendment. It existed before it. And it is the first amendment that exists because of the freedom of speech, not the other way round. > A private company can do what it wants within the bounds of the law. Yeah, including immoral actions that others may disagree with.
  - runarberg 3y ago
    > Yeah, including immoral actions that others may disagree with. The morality in this instance does not follow this principle. If people find these allegations credible—and most should—the morally correct action is to deplatform him and delete his content.
    - indoclay 3y ago
      > If people find these allegations credible—and most should Why should most people find these allegations credible? I do not believe there is a police report, arrest, and let alone a trial. These are currently just allegations, their credibility has not been adjudicated.
      - Airsinner 3y ago
        One might evaluate the situation based on what I think is called a "preponderance of evidence", combined with an understanding that the legal system is both slow and tends towards innocence unless a crime is proven "beyond a shadow of a doubt". A person may know how slow and different a legal decision is compared to what may be obvious and a reflection of reality, and therefore might arrive at a conclusion well before a system designed to be conclusive would. The law is more about what can be proven than it is about what is true, and for people who know that, legal judgement stands separately from moral evaluation.
- afiori 3y ago
  "innocent until proven guilty" and "freedom of speech" are principles codified in law. The position that only the government is bound by "freedom of speech" is, at the very least, weird in an international context where things that are not the US government are expected to respect people's freedoms. It is also perfectly legal to do a lot bad things like e.g. buying the product of slave labor in other countries or blood diamonds or buying stocks of companies known to pollute with wild disregard. Also in the US: > "innocent until proven guilty" only applies in a court of law. is misleading, the more precise version is that "innocent until proven guilty" only applies in criminal courts.
- tored 3y ago
  Sure, but the public can always remove all legal benefits a private stockholder company has, like liability.
- bsndiieee665262 3y ago
  [flagged]
- zo1 3y ago
  It's a principle we hold as a society.
- epgui 3y ago
  > "innocent until proven guilty" only applies in a court of law No, it doesn't "only" apply in a court of law. I choose to apply it in my own psyche (which breaks the "only"), and I choose to do so because I understand the reasons why a court of law applies the principle. Just because the whole village is wielding pitchforks doesn't mean it's rational for you to also do the same.
  - turquoisevar 3y ago
    They used a turn of phrase of which the full meaning was implied. That meaning being “the concept of innocent until proven guilty is only universally applicable in a court of law”. So unless your psyche has any force beyond itself or it happens to be a court of law, your gotcha lacks any meaningful effect. Beyond you grandstanding that is.
    - epgui 3y ago
      - It’s not meant to be a “gotcha” - It’s not about enforcing anything on anyone, I think you’re missing the point - Thank you for your contribution
    - johnnyworker 3y ago
      They used it in the context of the question whether "we, the internet" have done away with it. So clearly it never referred to the legal system, and diverting to that is just kicking up sand to not let the people who are interested discussing the question as it was asked discuss it in peace.
- orblivion 3y ago
  It doesn't have to apply everywhere but it's still a good policy in a lot of contexts. I think a massive general audience platform is a good example. If this were, let's say, an online community of survivors of abuse, maybe that sort of prudence could reasonably take a back seat.
- globular-toast 3y ago
  This is such a common thing for people to say I have to wonder if it's propaganda from big corporations. The idea that core tenets of our civilisation are invalid because "it's a private company" is insane. These principles are based on practicalities, not technicalities.
- Plasmoid 3y ago
  There's this really neat section of law known as administrative law. One of the tenants is that you are allowed to have pretty much any rule that you want to have but you have to apply it in a reasonably impartial and fair manner. This means, you can setup random rules that you enforce capriciously.
- turquoisevar 3y ago
  Even then it’s a rather unfortunately named legal principle. It would’ve been better for it to be called “not-guilty until proven guilty” since criminal courts aren’t in the business of establishing innocence nor do they have the power to declare someone innocent. But I guess that doesn’t roll as nicely off the tongue.
smcleod 3y ago
YouTube isn’t the internet… it’s Google.
mattficke 3y ago
“Innocent until proven guilty” is an incredibly high burden of proof that we reserve for criminal trials. In other contexts, this is not the appropriate standard —- civil suits, for example, use a “preponderance of evidence” standard. Non-state actors using a lower burden of proof is entirely appropriate.
tredre3 3y ago
> So has the internet completely done away with innocent until proven guilty? Yes. But to be fair it wouldn't be out of character for Russel, if you actually know who he is, so maybe that's why the internet finds it so easy to ignore silly things like "evidence" and "proof".
- threeseed 3y ago
  Nobody is ignoring evidence and proof. We have a victim who has gone to police. We have three newspapers who have corroborating evidence. And in response Brand hasn't had his videos removed and his live shows have been temporarily suspended.
runarberg 3y ago
Innocent until proven guilty is a legal framework, it has nothing to do with popular actions, and never has. All it basically says is that Russell Brand cannot go to jail until he is proven guilty. There are no laws requiring the public to treat an accused person as if they never committed a crime until said crime has been proven. It is up to the public whether they believe the victim or the accused. In this case youtube has decided to believe the victim. Perhaps youtube—like so many others—have deemed the accusations credible, and they are in their full right to act on these believes.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > youtube has decided to believe the victim Not the victim. The accuser, who may be a victim.
  - runarberg 3y ago
    I’m under no legal obligation either to deny the allegations until proven. And in this case I choice to believe the victims. And I will keep calling them victims until proven otherwise.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      I don't understand this comment, sorry. Who's talking about your legal obligations? I'm talking about what you know vs what you assume.
      - runarberg 3y ago
        You are saying it is wrong of me to call the victims, victims, and should instead call them ‘accusers’. I’m saying I am under no legal obligations to do so. I believe their stories and I believe they are victims, so I am allowed to call them victims. Now I think there might be slander to call the accused something like an abuser, so I don’t do that (yet). However there is no slander laws which disallow me from using words which indicate that I believe the victims, so I’m not calling them ‘accusers’, I call them victims, because that is what I believe they are.
throwaway128128 3y ago
On X you can get "cancelled" on even flimsier pretexts.
iterminate 3y ago
I disagree with the premise of your comment but on a factual note: Russell Brand has been litigious on this very issue, he has threatened to take legal action and taken legal action against people who have spoken up about him. He has been widely "known" to be a predatory rapist for years but has used his money to intimidate those who wanted to speak up.
snakeyjake 3y ago
>So has the internet completely done away with innocent until proven guilty? I'm not a court. Are you a court? I hope you're not a court. Sentient buildings weird me out. If four employees came to me and accused someone of harassing them, I would weigh the evidence and if warranted, fire the employee. No court involved. When you are self-righteous prick as prickly as brand, it is extremely easy to believe the accusers.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > When you are self-righteous prick as prickly as brand, it is extremely easy to believe the accusers. This is why courts use the only system that has a chance of finding the truth.
  - zztop44 3y ago
    Yes but the courts are legally empowered to lock someone in a cage for years. So they should be working by a different standard than a company firing someone.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      Firing someone for a horrific accusation might not be that different to locking the person in a cage.
      - awb 3y ago
        I don’t know many people that would prefer the later, since being locked in a cage also comes with losing your job, a horrible accusation proven true (or admitted to) in court and a public criminal record. Losing your income and being publicly shamed sucks, but you still can rely on close friends and family, a public safety net and lawsuits (if you’ve been defamed or illegally fired), while enjoying sunshine, fresh air and freedom of movement.
        robertlagrant 3y ago
curiousllama 3y ago
> based solely on accusations This is not true. The independent corroborating evidence is also material. Contemporaneous records from a rape clinic is powerful evidence. More generally, innocent until proven guilty is a legal concept, not a social one. From a social perspective, that's never been the standard, nor should it be. Bad folks have often been shunned without convictions - that's why the norm has been "resign in disgrace," not "get thrown in prison"
- paganel 3y ago
  [flagged]
- xhkkffbf 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - jamiek88 3y ago
    >If it was really bad? Well, that’s enough of this thread for me. Unfuckingbelievable.
  - burkaman 3y ago
    Think about what makes this alleged crime "really bad", and then consider if that might make it difficult for a victim to come forward. There is no statute of limitations for sexual assault in the UK.
  - curiousllama 3y ago
    Should have? Yes, it would have been better. Is it reasonable to expect them to do so? Maybe. Probably not pre Me-Too, and especially if they didn't know about each other. Does it change my interpretation either way? Not really. Contemporaneous records from an independent third party undercut most of my concerns. Notably, many US states don't have statutes of limitation for rape. Practical reasons can be overcome.
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  [flagged]
tjrgergw 3y ago
> So has the internet completely done away with innocent until proven guilty? YouTube isn't a court of law, fortunately. If he's innocent, he can sue them.
kube-system 3y ago
The court of public opinion has never followed the rules which apply to courts of law.
qingcharles 3y ago
Can we stop using "innocent until proven guilty" and change it to "innocent unless proven guilty"? "Until" always makes it sound to me like it is a foregone conclusion.
pixelat3d 3y ago
Your assumption is the reason his content was removed was because of the allegations, which is potentially not true. While it's very likely the allegations are what drew attention to it, it doesn’t mean there wasn’t a bunch of stuff there already that violated policies – especially given the content he had doubled down on. All Youtube did was cite their “Creator responsibility“ clause[1] as the reason. This could have included a myriad of violations, especially considering the type of content he was producing. Also, if you read the allegations, he very much was in the protected status you mention. “Open secret”, lots of people covering for him, running interference, etc etc. Calling him a “D-list celeb, likely with little to no major influence” illustrates your lack of research into the issue. [1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7650329?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7650329?hl=en as the reason.
- nomel 3y ago
  > there wasn’t a bunch of stuff there already that violated policies Are you suggesting that it could be that his existing videos were in violation of community guidelines? Is there any evidence for this? I've watched some of his videos, and this seems like a rather silly accusation.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

JohnMakin 3y ago

"innocent until proven guilty" only applies in a court of law. Similar to when people cite the 1st amendment in situations where a private company is taking action, this phrase is meaningless here. A private company can do what it wants within the bounds of the law.

Nextgrid 3y ago
Maybe this should be reconsidered when a "private company" controls a large majority of humanity's social fabric and/or popular culture?
- klyrs 3y ago
  No, antitrust laws should break them up.
- nova22033 3y ago
  The way to reconsider this is to amend the constitution.
- miohtama 3y ago
  This is why developer and hacker community should strive to build open networks, and then have them adopted. This was what early internet was like: Usenet, IRC, etc.
  - anigbrowl 3y ago
    Usenet was a set of fiefdoms mostly administered by academics in CompSci departments, and proved utterly unequal to its first real crisis*. Distributed systems work great as long as they're new and everyone is participating in good faith most of the time. In adversarial situations, they're rarely able to adapt flexibly enough, partly because the networked structure imposes a severe decision-time penalty on consensus formation. A negligent or malicious attacker just has to overwhelm nodes with high betweenness centrality and the whole network fails. Immediately following crises everyone talks about making the network more resilient and so on, but it never fully recovers because everyone intuitively knows that establishing consus is slow and bumpy, and that major restructuring/retooling efforts are way easier to accomplish unilaterally. So people start drifting away because unless there's a quick technical fix that can be deployed within a month or two, It's Over. Distributed systems always lose against coherent attackers with more than a threshold level of resources because the latter has a much tighter OODA loop. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Siegel#Green_card_spam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Sie...
  - tored 3y ago
    Yes, but I would also add that it is important that the rest of the world should stop using services from American companies.
  - corinroyal 3y ago
    Exactly, and look what happened to Usenet. People abused the commons and we lost it to spam. Unmoderated networks always fall to bad actors. I'm building a p2p social network and struggling hard with how to balance company needs, community needs, and individual freedom. A free-for-all leads to a tyranny of structurelessness in which the loudest and pushiest form a defacto leadership that doesn't represent the will of the majority. On the flip side, overly restrictive rules stifle expression and cause resentment. These are hard questions and there is no one answer, except that unmoderated networks always suck eventually, so the question is one of line drawing and compromise.
- JohnMakin 3y ago
  How do you propose this actually work out? Every time youtube, twitter, facebook, etc wants to ban someone they have to submit a request to the government or be subject to its oversight? That's far more dystopian.
  - plagiarist 3y ago
    Aren't they still publishing his content, just not running ads and paying? The US government will do fuckall about that, even if platforms are forced to be quasi-national entities subject to the First Amendment.
  - kypro 3y ago
    Or alternatively companies have to provide clear and explicit rules about what is permissible on their platform and if you feel you're wrongly censored or removed from the platform you should be able to take legal action. I'm fine with YouTube not wanting to provide a platform for people who they feel are harmful, but they need to define that in an explicit way so that these decisions are not made arbitrarily. I believe primary Brand's job for the last few years has been as a content creator. Given this I think it's reasonable to expect he should have some legal rights. Personally I don't see a huge amount of difference between an Uber gig worker and a YouTube content creator. Both should have some basic rights regardless of whether they're technically classed as "employees".
    - jayrot 3y ago
      They do have rules on what is permissible on their platform. They call it the Creator Responsibility Policy. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7650329?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7650329?hl=en
      - kypro 3y ago
        If by "rules" you mean vague references to "harm" then sure. My use of the word "explicit" here was intentional. As it stands the "rules" may as well just read "if we don't like what you're doing on or off our platform we reserve the right fire you as a content creator". And again I'll note, if you're fired as a content creator for some arbitrary reason you have no way to challenge the decision. I don't think this is acceptable. I think Google should ultimately be able to run their platform however they like, but they have a responsibility to make those rules clear when people are dependant on them for their income.
- plagiarist 3y ago
  You are reconsidering the wrong part. Let's have smaller companies that aren't able to control that much of society.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
efitz 3y ago
Then let’s change the law. It’s obvious over the past few years that companies can’t be trusted with freedom of association or freedom of speech. Let’s strip them of both. If you are incorporated (and therefore benefit from government-provided protection from liability and lower tax rates) then you no longer get to choose your customers; you’re a common carrier and must provide the same service to all customers. You can only terminate a customer for non-payment (if you’re a paid service) or if the customer takes actions that directly threaten your business (eg attempts to hack your service). Social media companies may no longer promote or suppress content; they can only provide tools to let users do so themselves (eg filter/block/subscribe/tag). Advertisers can use similar filters for ad placement.
- threeseed 3y ago
  You need to understand that the majority of people simply don't agree with you. They choose platforms with moderation (aka censorship) and stay away from those that don't.
  - flextheruler 3y ago
    In the beginning YouTube was popular and had very little moderation. You could watch illegal streams of many films and movies and you could find some porn before it’d be taken down. Advertisers are what demand moderation not users so as to protect their bottom line. It’s disingenuous to say otherwise and ignores a multitude of services that became and still are incredible popular with little moderation.
    - anigbrowl 3y ago
      'Them that has the gold makes the rules'. The users are not the paying customers.
    - threeseed 3y ago
      > ignores a multitude of services that became and still are incredible popular with little moderation Please provide examples. So we can compare them to the likes of Meta, Netflix, Spotify, Apple, Reddit etc.
LudwigNagasena 3y ago
> "innocent until proven guilty" only applies in a court of law. “Innocent until proven guilty” is a philosophical concept that many legal systems subscribe to in the context of criminal law. > Similar to when people cite the 1st amendment in situations where a private company is taking action Indeed, it’s very similar in the sense that the concept of the freedom of speech goes way beyond the 1st amendment. It existed before it. And it is the first amendment that exists because of the freedom of speech, not the other way round. > A private company can do what it wants within the bounds of the law. Yeah, including immoral actions that others may disagree with.
- runarberg 3y ago
  > Yeah, including immoral actions that others may disagree with. The morality in this instance does not follow this principle. If people find these allegations credible—and most should—the morally correct action is to deplatform him and delete his content.
  - indoclay 3y ago
    > If people find these allegations credible—and most should Why should most people find these allegations credible? I do not believe there is a police report, arrest, and let alone a trial. These are currently just allegations, their credibility has not been adjudicated.
    - Airsinner 3y ago
      One might evaluate the situation based on what I think is called a "preponderance of evidence", combined with an understanding that the legal system is both slow and tends towards innocence unless a crime is proven "beyond a shadow of a doubt". A person may know how slow and different a legal decision is compared to what may be obvious and a reflection of reality, and therefore might arrive at a conclusion well before a system designed to be conclusive would. The law is more about what can be proven than it is about what is true, and for people who know that, legal judgement stands separately from moral evaluation.
afiori 3y ago
"innocent until proven guilty" and "freedom of speech" are principles codified in law. The position that only the government is bound by "freedom of speech" is, at the very least, weird in an international context where things that are not the US government are expected to respect people's freedoms. It is also perfectly legal to do a lot bad things like e.g. buying the product of slave labor in other countries or blood diamonds or buying stocks of companies known to pollute with wild disregard. Also in the US: > "innocent until proven guilty" only applies in a court of law. is misleading, the more precise version is that "innocent until proven guilty" only applies in criminal courts.
tored 3y ago
Sure, but the public can always remove all legal benefits a private stockholder company has, like liability.
bsndiieee665262 3y ago
[flagged]
zo1 3y ago
It's a principle we hold as a society.
epgui 3y ago
> "innocent until proven guilty" only applies in a court of law No, it doesn't "only" apply in a court of law. I choose to apply it in my own psyche (which breaks the "only"), and I choose to do so because I understand the reasons why a court of law applies the principle. Just because the whole village is wielding pitchforks doesn't mean it's rational for you to also do the same.
- turquoisevar 3y ago
  They used a turn of phrase of which the full meaning was implied. That meaning being “the concept of innocent until proven guilty is only universally applicable in a court of law”. So unless your psyche has any force beyond itself or it happens to be a court of law, your gotcha lacks any meaningful effect. Beyond you grandstanding that is.
  - epgui 3y ago
    - It’s not meant to be a “gotcha” - It’s not about enforcing anything on anyone, I think you’re missing the point - Thank you for your contribution
  - johnnyworker 3y ago
    They used it in the context of the question whether "we, the internet" have done away with it. So clearly it never referred to the legal system, and diverting to that is just kicking up sand to not let the people who are interested discussing the question as it was asked discuss it in peace.
orblivion 3y ago
It doesn't have to apply everywhere but it's still a good policy in a lot of contexts. I think a massive general audience platform is a good example. If this were, let's say, an online community of survivors of abuse, maybe that sort of prudence could reasonably take a back seat.
globular-toast 3y ago
This is such a common thing for people to say I have to wonder if it's propaganda from big corporations. The idea that core tenets of our civilisation are invalid because "it's a private company" is insane. These principles are based on practicalities, not technicalities.
Plasmoid 3y ago
There's this really neat section of law known as administrative law. One of the tenants is that you are allowed to have pretty much any rule that you want to have but you have to apply it in a reasonably impartial and fair manner. This means, you can setup random rules that you enforce capriciously.
turquoisevar 3y ago
Even then it’s a rather unfortunately named legal principle. It would’ve been better for it to be called “not-guilty until proven guilty” since criminal courts aren’t in the business of establishing innocence nor do they have the power to declare someone innocent. But I guess that doesn’t roll as nicely off the tongue.

smcleod 3y ago

YouTube isn’t the internet… it’s Google.

mattficke 3y ago

“Innocent until proven guilty” is an incredibly high burden of proof that we reserve for criminal trials. In other contexts, this is not the appropriate standard —- civil suits, for example, use a “preponderance of evidence” standard. Non-state actors using a lower burden of proof is entirely appropriate.

tredre3 3y ago

> So has the internet completely done away with innocent until proven guilty? Yes. But to be fair it wouldn't be out of character for Russel, if you actually know who he is, so maybe that's why the internet finds it so easy to ignore silly things like "evidence" and "proof".

threeseed 3y ago
Nobody is ignoring evidence and proof. We have a victim who has gone to police. We have three newspapers who have corroborating evidence. And in response Brand hasn't had his videos removed and his live shows have been temporarily suspended.

runarberg 3y ago

Innocent until proven guilty is a legal framework, it has nothing to do with popular actions, and never has. All it basically says is that Russell Brand cannot go to jail until he is proven guilty. There are no laws requiring the public to treat an accused person as if they never committed a crime until said crime has been proven. It is up to the public whether they believe the victim or the accused. In this case youtube has decided to believe the victim. Perhaps youtube—like so many others—have deemed the accusations credible, and they are in their full right to act on these believes.

robertlagrant 3y ago
> youtube has decided to believe the victim Not the victim. The accuser, who may be a victim.
- runarberg 3y ago
  I’m under no legal obligation either to deny the allegations until proven. And in this case I choice to believe the victims. And I will keep calling them victims until proven otherwise.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    I don't understand this comment, sorry. Who's talking about your legal obligations? I'm talking about what you know vs what you assume.
    - runarberg 3y ago
      You are saying it is wrong of me to call the victims, victims, and should instead call them ‘accusers’. I’m saying I am under no legal obligations to do so. I believe their stories and I believe they are victims, so I am allowed to call them victims. Now I think there might be slander to call the accused something like an abuser, so I don’t do that (yet). However there is no slander laws which disallow me from using words which indicate that I believe the victims, so I’m not calling them ‘accusers’, I call them victims, because that is what I believe they are.

throwaway128128 3y ago

On X you can get "cancelled" on even flimsier pretexts.

iterminate 3y ago

I disagree with the premise of your comment but on a factual note: Russell Brand has been litigious on this very issue, he has threatened to take legal action and taken legal action against people who have spoken up about him. He has been widely "known" to be a predatory rapist for years but has used his money to intimidate those who wanted to speak up.

snakeyjake 3y ago

>So has the internet completely done away with innocent until proven guilty? I'm not a court. Are you a court? I hope you're not a court. Sentient buildings weird me out. If four employees came to me and accused someone of harassing them, I would weigh the evidence and if warranted, fire the employee. No court involved. When you are self-righteous prick as prickly as brand, it is extremely easy to believe the accusers.

robertlagrant 3y ago
> When you are self-righteous prick as prickly as brand, it is extremely easy to believe the accusers. This is why courts use the only system that has a chance of finding the truth.
- zztop44 3y ago
  Yes but the courts are legally empowered to lock someone in a cage for years. So they should be working by a different standard than a company firing someone.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    Firing someone for a horrific accusation might not be that different to locking the person in a cage.
    - awb 3y ago
      I don’t know many people that would prefer the later, since being locked in a cage also comes with losing your job, a horrible accusation proven true (or admitted to) in court and a public criminal record. Losing your income and being publicly shamed sucks, but you still can rely on close friends and family, a public safety net and lawsuits (if you’ve been defamed or illegally fired), while enjoying sunshine, fresh air and freedom of movement.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago

curiousllama 3y ago

> based solely on accusations This is not true. The independent corroborating evidence is also material. Contemporaneous records from a rape clinic is powerful evidence. More generally, innocent until proven guilty is a legal concept, not a social one. From a social perspective, that's never been the standard, nor should it be. Bad folks have often been shunned without convictions - that's why the norm has been "resign in disgrace," not "get thrown in prison"

paganel 3y ago
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xhkkffbf 3y ago
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- jamiek88 3y ago
  >If it was really bad? Well, that’s enough of this thread for me. Unfuckingbelievable.
- burkaman 3y ago
  Think about what makes this alleged crime "really bad", and then consider if that might make it difficult for a victim to come forward. There is no statute of limitations for sexual assault in the UK.
- curiousllama 3y ago
  Should have? Yes, it would have been better. Is it reasonable to expect them to do so? Maybe. Probably not pre Me-Too, and especially if they didn't know about each other. Does it change my interpretation either way? Not really. Contemporaneous records from an independent third party undercut most of my concerns. Notably, many US states don't have statutes of limitation for rape. Practical reasons can be overcome.
nvm0n2 3y ago
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tjrgergw 3y ago

> So has the internet completely done away with innocent until proven guilty? YouTube isn't a court of law, fortunately. If he's innocent, he can sue them.

kube-system 3y ago

The court of public opinion has never followed the rules which apply to courts of law.

qingcharles 3y ago

Can we stop using "innocent until proven guilty" and change it to "innocent unless proven guilty"? "Until" always makes it sound to me like it is a foregone conclusion.

pixelat3d 3y ago

Your assumption is the reason his content was removed was because of the allegations, which is potentially not true. While it's very likely the allegations are what drew attention to it, it doesn’t mean there wasn’t a bunch of stuff there already that violated policies – especially given the content he had doubled down on. All Youtube did was cite their “Creator responsibility“ clause[1] as the reason. This could have included a myriad of violations, especially considering the type of content he was producing. Also, if you read the allegations, he very much was in the protected status you mention. “Open secret”, lots of people covering for him, running interference, etc etc. Calling him a “D-list celeb, likely with little to no major influence” illustrates your lack of research into the issue. [1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7650329?hl=en https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7650329?hl=en as the reason.

nomel 3y ago
> there wasn’t a bunch of stuff there already that violated policies Are you suggesting that it could be that his existing videos were in violation of community guidelines? Is there any evidence for this? I've watched some of his videos, and this seems like a rather silly accusation.

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