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It turns out that it's much easier than anyone thought to end freedom of speech in the United States. If no one cares about the Constitution, then it's just pap

It turns out that it's much easier than anyone thought to end freedom of speech in the United States. If no one cares about the Constitution, then it's just paper. Trump sanctions the International Criminal Court and anyone who provides evidence to it, and now pro-Palestinian groups can't post videos of Israeli abuse on YouTube. The First Amendment is nowhere to be seen.

hobs 1y ago
Don't forget how this admin cried up and down about the censorship of the previous on Covid misinformation, and said that freedom of speech was paramount; no surprise a lie again.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- gosub100 1y ago
  Both sides are heavily controlled by AIPAC. That's why you'll rarely hear democrat YouTubers calling out the genocide. For example, Brian Tyler Cohen has remained mute about it. It's true for many other partner channels.
  - coliveira 1y ago
    They're both controlled by billionaires, and we know who they are.
- Mountain_Skies 1y ago
  Tech company censorship during the pandemic was one of the most widely celebrated actions on Hacker News. A few warned that giving tech companies this much control over discourse would have consequences, but the typical poster here didn't care, they just wanted anything that didn't conform with the blessed narrative to be suppressed.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
StarGrit 1y ago
Freedom of Speech has and will be suppressed by various governments, with various reasons being given. This has been going on for longer than any of us have been alive. e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918 There is nothing unique about what is happening now.
- rwmj 1y ago
  A peculiar bit of whataboutism.
  - StarGrit 1y ago
    It literally isn't whataboutism. It is a statement of fact about the nature of the US state (and would apply to most western ones tbh). Freedom of Speech is simply a privilege that those in power grant you when it is convenient to do so. It will be taken away when expedient to do so. The post I was replying to seemed to believe it was a novel situation.
jackjeff 1y ago
The irony is that JD Vance lectured the Europeans about their lack of freedom of speech in Europe while invited in Germany.
- saubeidl 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - Herring 1y ago
    Yeah I hope to never say this again, but I'm pretty sure Goebbels was right. Germany took those lessons to heart. Speech and expression related to Nazism is heavily regulated and subjects you to imprisonment. Demonstrations/rallies are often banned. The Nazi party itself is banned. AfD is being monitored by intelligence agencies and might be banned in the future, etc. They do this defensively when groups demonstrate an "actively belligerent, aggressive stance" towards the democratic order. Because it's like pointing a gun at people in public - it's already violent even if you don't pull the trigger.
    - DiogenesKynikos 1y ago
      Germany has never had much of a culture of free speech. The intelligence agencies in charge of monitoring extremists have long had their own problems with extremism. The former head of the agency for "Protection of the Constitution" ("Verfassungsschutz") himself turned out to be a xenophobic right-wing extremist.[0] They have wide authority to spy on citizens based purely on their political views. Unless you really, really trust the agency doing that, this is not a good thing for society. During the war in Gaza, the various restrictions on free speech were used to crack down on pro-Palestinian protesters. For many months after October 7th, many cities (such as Hamburg) issued blanket bans of pro-Palestinian protests. A Jewish German woman was even arrested for standing alone in a public square and holding up a sign about Gaza, because that was supposedly a violation of the ban on protests about Gaza.[1] All sorts of people have been banned from entering the country (including an elected member of the European Parliament, Yannis Varoufakis [2]), purely because of their views on Gaza. A major conference in Berlin was broken up by police because they allowed "banned" individuals to speak over Zoom (banned explicitly for their views on Gaza) [3]. When there's a major event going on in the world (which your government is involved in), and the government tells you you're not allowed to demonstrate about it, that's not a good thing. These supposed protections have not done much of anything to prevent the rise of the far right in Germany. The "Alternative for Germany" (AfD) is a right-wing extremist party filled with "former" neo-Nazis (such as the leader of the party in the state of Thuringia, who used to write neo-Nazi articles under a pseudonym [4]). The AfD is now polling at 25%, making it tied for the most popular party in Germany. Even if the AfD doesn't get into government, the conservatives are imitating them more and more. The Chancellor recently said that German cities no longer look right (because you see too many foreigners). When asked what he meant, he responded, "Ask your daughter" (with the obvious implication). And no, the agency for protection of the constitution is obviously not going to tell him to stop saying things like this. The German system of political censorship is not something that other countries should be imitating. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Georg_Maa%C3%9Fen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Georg_Maa%C3%9Fen 1. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/1/we-jews-are-just-arrested-palestinians-are-beaten-german-protesters https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/1/we-jews-are-just-arr... 2. https://www.newstatesman.com/diary/2024/04/cancelled-germany-yanis-varoufakis-israel-palestine https://www.newstatesman.com/diary/2024/04/cancelled-germany... 3. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pal%C3%A4stina-Kongress_in_Berlin https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pal%C3%A4stina-Kongress_in_Ber... 4. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B6rn_H%C3%B6cke#Pseudonym_%E2%80%9ELandolf_Ladig%E2%80%9C https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B6rn_H%C3%B6cke#Pseudony...
_heimdall 1y ago
Did the government force YouTube to take down the videos? Freedom of speech is meant to protect us from government censorship. Trump sanctions would fall into that category, but a social media site censoring what they don't want to host seems like fair game.
- the_af 1y ago
  > Did the government force YouTube to take down the videos? The article answers this: > YouTube, which is owned by Google, confirmed to The Intercept that it deleted the groups’ accounts as a direct result of State Department sanctions against the group after a review.
  - _heimdall 1y ago
    I could see a court finding that to be a first amendment violation, but that isn't the same as the government directly requesting YouTube to take down videos. Sanctions were put in place and YouTube followed policy to not allow content from sanctioned groups. That sounds like a loophole, and could be found by a court to be a violation, but it isn't nearly as cut and dry as people here seem to be making it out to be.
- latexr 1y ago
  > Did the government force YouTube to take down the videos? Yes, according to the article. That argument is made over and over in it, it’s hard to miss. “Forcing” doesn’t just mean directly requiring the action, it also means the threat of “this is not going to end up well for you if you don’t comply”. Of course, you can argue that Google could and should fight it, but that doesn’t change what the government is doing. > but a social media site censoring what they don't want to host seems like fair game. Again, the article makes it really clear they are doing this as the direct result of government actions.
  - _heimdall 1y ago
    It doesn't seem that clear in my opinion. There is a lot of smoke there, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was a fire, but I didn't see the article specifically claiming the government directed YouTube to take down the videos. I saw multiple references there to the government sanctioning groups and that YouTube took down videos based on the sanctions. That very well could be a loophole and a court might deem that a first amendment violation, but it isn't as simple as finding communications where the government directly requested those videos to be taken down.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
mpalmer 1y ago
The ICC is not a beneficiary of the Constitution, nor is YouTube bound by the Constitution. I'm unhappy for the same reasons as you, but this isn't how 1A works.
- davorak 1y ago
  > nor is YouTube bound by the Constitution. nitpick - Youtube is bound by the US Constitution, it is the highest law of the land. 1A[1] is only about binding the government/congresses power though so youtube is not bound by 1A. [1] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/ https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/
- jackjeff 1y ago
  The problem is that these private companies have taken a disproportionate place in public discourse. You are absolutely right that freedom of speech does not guarantee the right to post anything on YouTube (someone else's website). In fact YouTube has the right (protected speech) to censor you and refuse to let you post long as they don't do in a discriminatory way (for instance, only "white people" can post would be discriminatory/illegal). The problem is that in practice, if you can't do YouTube, Facebook, Tiktok, INsta, etc... your speech will not be heard by anyone. It's like if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, the fact that it makes sound is irrelevant. So effectively, it amounts to censorship, even though the government potentially had no hand in it. Now imagine someone in Trump administration pressured Google with a juicy contract, or the prospect of an expensive lawsuit, and the quid pro quo was dumping these videos that annoy "our Israeli friends". This kind of "pay to play" is at minimum corruption. It may also fall of short of constitutional guarantees for free speech. Ironically, it is exactly the same thing a lot of members of the Trump administration have accused Biden of doing (exhibit: the so called "Twitter Files" etc... ), although I don't believe this went anywhere in federal courts (am I wrong?) I honestly don't know what the answer is. But I would not be surprised if in 50 years time, some of these large companies get regulated as "utilities" and are no longer able to yank "videos" from their platform just because they feel like it. And every time they "abuse" their powers, I feel like we get an inch closer to that onerous regulation.
EdiX 1y ago
Where were you in the last 6 years? Ah, I see, people you didn't like were being censored so you didn't care.
- decremental 1y ago
  [dead]
- woodpanel 1y ago
  Exactly, it's laughable that this is coming from the same people who cheered on auto de-monetization for even mentioning the word "Covid" in a YT-video or the countless de-platforming and de-banking of individuals. Is this still gaslighting or something else?
  - skulk 1y ago
    Google didn't censor covid-related conspiracies or whatever at the behest of the government. YouTube can censor whoever it wants but the US government cannot. Also, do you have any actual evidence of political debanking in the US? I can't find any references to it other than the propaganda of the current administration.
    - econ 1y ago
      I don't know anything so I tried searching. This was th first result. https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/google-admits-censorship-under-biden-promises-end-bans-youtube-accounts https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/google-admi... Make of it what you will.
      - acdha 1y ago
        Google’s employees didn’t mention government pressure earlier and the company only started talking about that in conjunction with their PR plan to get favorable treatment from the current administration: https://www.wired.com/story/republicans-claim-biden-censored-youtube/ https://www.wired.com/story/republicans-claim-biden-censored...
ta20240528 1y ago
"now pro-Palestinian groups can't post videos of Israeli abuse on YouTube." Perhaps not, but they could courier the evidence on a DVD to the Hague.
jalapenof 1y ago
[flagged]

hobs 1y ago

Don't forget how this admin cried up and down about the censorship of the previous on Covid misinformation, and said that freedom of speech was paramount; no surprise a lie again.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
gosub100 1y ago
Both sides are heavily controlled by AIPAC. That's why you'll rarely hear democrat YouTubers calling out the genocide. For example, Brian Tyler Cohen has remained mute about it. It's true for many other partner channels.
- coliveira 1y ago
  They're both controlled by billionaires, and we know who they are.
Mountain_Skies 1y ago
Tech company censorship during the pandemic was one of the most widely celebrated actions on Hacker News. A few warned that giving tech companies this much control over discourse would have consequences, but the typical poster here didn't care, they just wanted anything that didn't conform with the blessed narrative to be suppressed.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

StarGrit 1y ago

Freedom of Speech has and will be suppressed by various governments, with various reasons being given. This has been going on for longer than any of us have been alive. e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918 There is nothing unique about what is happening now.

rwmj 1y ago
A peculiar bit of whataboutism.
- StarGrit 1y ago
  It literally isn't whataboutism. It is a statement of fact about the nature of the US state (and would apply to most western ones tbh). Freedom of Speech is simply a privilege that those in power grant you when it is convenient to do so. It will be taken away when expedient to do so. The post I was replying to seemed to believe it was a novel situation.

jackjeff 1y ago

The irony is that JD Vance lectured the Europeans about their lack of freedom of speech in Europe while invited in Germany.

saubeidl 1y ago
[flagged]
- Herring 1y ago
  Yeah I hope to never say this again, but I'm pretty sure Goebbels was right. Germany took those lessons to heart. Speech and expression related to Nazism is heavily regulated and subjects you to imprisonment. Demonstrations/rallies are often banned. The Nazi party itself is banned. AfD is being monitored by intelligence agencies and might be banned in the future, etc. They do this defensively when groups demonstrate an "actively belligerent, aggressive stance" towards the democratic order. Because it's like pointing a gun at people in public - it's already violent even if you don't pull the trigger.
  - DiogenesKynikos 1y ago
    Germany has never had much of a culture of free speech. The intelligence agencies in charge of monitoring extremists have long had their own problems with extremism. The former head of the agency for "Protection of the Constitution" ("Verfassungsschutz") himself turned out to be a xenophobic right-wing extremist.[0] They have wide authority to spy on citizens based purely on their political views. Unless you really, really trust the agency doing that, this is not a good thing for society. During the war in Gaza, the various restrictions on free speech were used to crack down on pro-Palestinian protesters. For many months after October 7th, many cities (such as Hamburg) issued blanket bans of pro-Palestinian protests. A Jewish German woman was even arrested for standing alone in a public square and holding up a sign about Gaza, because that was supposedly a violation of the ban on protests about Gaza.[1] All sorts of people have been banned from entering the country (including an elected member of the European Parliament, Yannis Varoufakis [2]), purely because of their views on Gaza. A major conference in Berlin was broken up by police because they allowed "banned" individuals to speak over Zoom (banned explicitly for their views on Gaza) [3]. When there's a major event going on in the world (which your government is involved in), and the government tells you you're not allowed to demonstrate about it, that's not a good thing. These supposed protections have not done much of anything to prevent the rise of the far right in Germany. The "Alternative for Germany" (AfD) is a right-wing extremist party filled with "former" neo-Nazis (such as the leader of the party in the state of Thuringia, who used to write neo-Nazi articles under a pseudonym [4]). The AfD is now polling at 25%, making it tied for the most popular party in Germany. Even if the AfD doesn't get into government, the conservatives are imitating them more and more. The Chancellor recently said that German cities no longer look right (because you see too many foreigners). When asked what he meant, he responded, "Ask your daughter" (with the obvious implication). And no, the agency for protection of the constitution is obviously not going to tell him to stop saying things like this. The German system of political censorship is not something that other countries should be imitating. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Georg_Maa%C3%9Fen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Georg_Maa%C3%9Fen 1. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/1/we-jews-are-just-arrested-palestinians-are-beaten-german-protesters https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/1/we-jews-are-just-arr... 2. https://www.newstatesman.com/diary/2024/04/cancelled-germany-yanis-varoufakis-israel-palestine https://www.newstatesman.com/diary/2024/04/cancelled-germany... 3. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pal%C3%A4stina-Kongress_in_Berlin https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pal%C3%A4stina-Kongress_in_Ber... 4. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B6rn_H%C3%B6cke#Pseudonym_%E2%80%9ELandolf_Ladig%E2%80%9C https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B6rn_H%C3%B6cke#Pseudony...

_heimdall 1y ago

Did the government force YouTube to take down the videos? Freedom of speech is meant to protect us from government censorship. Trump sanctions would fall into that category, but a social media site censoring what they don't want to host seems like fair game.

the_af 1y ago
> Did the government force YouTube to take down the videos? The article answers this: > YouTube, which is owned by Google, confirmed to The Intercept that it deleted the groups’ accounts as a direct result of State Department sanctions against the group after a review.
- _heimdall 1y ago
  I could see a court finding that to be a first amendment violation, but that isn't the same as the government directly requesting YouTube to take down videos. Sanctions were put in place and YouTube followed policy to not allow content from sanctioned groups. That sounds like a loophole, and could be found by a court to be a violation, but it isn't nearly as cut and dry as people here seem to be making it out to be.
latexr 1y ago
> Did the government force YouTube to take down the videos? Yes, according to the article. That argument is made over and over in it, it’s hard to miss. “Forcing” doesn’t just mean directly requiring the action, it also means the threat of “this is not going to end up well for you if you don’t comply”. Of course, you can argue that Google could and should fight it, but that doesn’t change what the government is doing. > but a social media site censoring what they don't want to host seems like fair game. Again, the article makes it really clear they are doing this as the direct result of government actions.
- _heimdall 1y ago
  It doesn't seem that clear in my opinion. There is a lot of smoke there, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was a fire, but I didn't see the article specifically claiming the government directed YouTube to take down the videos. I saw multiple references there to the government sanctioning groups and that YouTube took down videos based on the sanctions. That very well could be a loophole and a court might deem that a first amendment violation, but it isn't as simple as finding communications where the government directly requested those videos to be taken down.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

mpalmer 1y ago

The ICC is not a beneficiary of the Constitution, nor is YouTube bound by the Constitution. I'm unhappy for the same reasons as you, but this isn't how 1A works.

davorak 1y ago
> nor is YouTube bound by the Constitution. nitpick - Youtube is bound by the US Constitution, it is the highest law of the land. 1A[1] is only about binding the government/congresses power though so youtube is not bound by 1A. [1] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/ https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/
jackjeff 1y ago
The problem is that these private companies have taken a disproportionate place in public discourse. You are absolutely right that freedom of speech does not guarantee the right to post anything on YouTube (someone else's website). In fact YouTube has the right (protected speech) to censor you and refuse to let you post long as they don't do in a discriminatory way (for instance, only "white people" can post would be discriminatory/illegal). The problem is that in practice, if you can't do YouTube, Facebook, Tiktok, INsta, etc... your speech will not be heard by anyone. It's like if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, the fact that it makes sound is irrelevant. So effectively, it amounts to censorship, even though the government potentially had no hand in it. Now imagine someone in Trump administration pressured Google with a juicy contract, or the prospect of an expensive lawsuit, and the quid pro quo was dumping these videos that annoy "our Israeli friends". This kind of "pay to play" is at minimum corruption. It may also fall of short of constitutional guarantees for free speech. Ironically, it is exactly the same thing a lot of members of the Trump administration have accused Biden of doing (exhibit: the so called "Twitter Files" etc... ), although I don't believe this went anywhere in federal courts (am I wrong?) I honestly don't know what the answer is. But I would not be surprised if in 50 years time, some of these large companies get regulated as "utilities" and are no longer able to yank "videos" from their platform just because they feel like it. And every time they "abuse" their powers, I feel like we get an inch closer to that onerous regulation.

EdiX 1y ago

Where were you in the last 6 years? Ah, I see, people you didn't like were being censored so you didn't care.

decremental 1y ago
[dead]
woodpanel 1y ago
Exactly, it's laughable that this is coming from the same people who cheered on auto de-monetization for even mentioning the word "Covid" in a YT-video or the countless de-platforming and de-banking of individuals. Is this still gaslighting or something else?
- skulk 1y ago
  Google didn't censor covid-related conspiracies or whatever at the behest of the government. YouTube can censor whoever it wants but the US government cannot. Also, do you have any actual evidence of political debanking in the US? I can't find any references to it other than the propaganda of the current administration.
  - econ 1y ago
    I don't know anything so I tried searching. This was th first result. https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/google-admits-censorship-under-biden-promises-end-bans-youtube-accounts https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/google-admi... Make of it what you will.
    - acdha 1y ago
      Google’s employees didn’t mention government pressure earlier and the company only started talking about that in conjunction with their PR plan to get favorable treatment from the current administration: https://www.wired.com/story/republicans-claim-biden-censored-youtube/ https://www.wired.com/story/republicans-claim-biden-censored...

ta20240528 1y ago

"now pro-Palestinian groups can't post videos of Israeli abuse on YouTube." Perhaps not, but they could courier the evidence on a DVD to the Hague.

jalapenof 1y ago

[flagged]