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YouTube Suspends Trump's Channel For At Least 7 Days 442

Posted by BeauHD from the another-one-bites-the-dust dept.
YouTube has taken action against President Donald Trump and barred new videos from being uploaded to his channel for at least seven days, citing violations of its policies and "concerns about the ongoing potential for violence." NBC News reports: It's the latest action against Trump after last week's deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. Twitter and Facebook have both also suspended or blocked the president's accounts. YouTube issued "a strike" to Trump's channel, and said comments would also be disabled indefinitely. The company also said it removed new content posted Tuesday.
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YouTube Suspends Trump's Channel For At Least 7 Days More

YouTube Suspends Trump's Channel For At Least 7 Days

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  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ItsJustAPseudonym ( 1259172 ) on Wednesday January 13, 2021 @03:10AM (#60936638)
    ...the signal-to-noise ratio of Youtube has risen, marginally. Analysts expect this to last at least seven days.
  • The argument used to be "you wouldn't want your phone provider to hang-up your call if you shared wrongthink." Now people have been conditioned to not only ask for that, and not only celebrate it, but get angry that it's not happening enough.

    • The argument used to be "you wouldn't want your phone provider to hang-up your call if you shared wrongthink." Now people have been conditioned to not only ask for that, and not only celebrate it, but get angry that it's not happening enough.

      Problem is when we all got afraid of "wrongthink" ruining our day because they didn't like that I liked Cheerios we forgot that killing people, and sedition were crimes. It wasn't up for debate. The president lying to the American people, willfully? Not technically a crime, but we all know it really is though.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by phantomfive ( 622387 )

        Problem is when we all got afraid of "wrongthink" ruining our day because they didn't like that I liked Cheerios we forgot that killing people, and sedition were crimes.

        We didn't forget that. Do you think sedition and killing people didn't happen when the constitution was written? The authors realized that freedom of speech is important enough that it's worth the risk.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by noodler ( 724788 )

          The authors no soothsayers. They couldn't have foreseen the abuse of freedom of speech through modern media like twitter and youtube.

        • Problem is when we all got afraid of "wrongthink" ruining our day because they didn't like that I liked Cheerios we forgot that killing people, and sedition were crimes.

          We didn't forget that.

          Then you know full well that the first amendment does not protect you from using your voice to commit crime.

        • Do you think sedition and killing people didn't happen when the constitution was written? The authors realized that freedom of speech is important enough that it's worth the risk.

          I mean, trying to foment sedition was made illegal in 1798, so...

        • Otherwise smart people seem to give too much weight to the Twatters, ZuckFaces, et al. Let them destroy themselves, who cares. We will all be better off.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          But this has nothing to do with the constitutions, because YouTube is not the government.

    • Re:social credit culture (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Mr. Barky ( 152560 ) on Wednesday January 13, 2021 @03:44AM (#60936706)

      But YouTube isn't a phone provider. It is a (semi)public place to post videos and the like. This is fundamentally different than a phone - where conversations are expected to be private. When something is done on privately owned property, you expect restrictions to what you can do. If you visit Disneyland, for example, you don't have the right to freely protest. You are allowed do so on publicly owned land nearby, perhaps, but not on Disney's property. I would say the YouTube/Facebook/Twitter restrictions are a lot closer to Disneyland than they are to a phone company.

      I don't disagree that it is a problem that a handful of companies control so much of what is said and done, but the solution to that is to create new companies. And yes, that includes hosting providers. If your speech is so disagreeable that you can't find anybody to host for you, well then you'll have to get your message out the old fashion way and print up flyers. Online isn't the only place for free speech.

      • Disneyland isn't (semi) public, it's private. And it's also pretty limited in extent and demographic while Twitter etc. are nationwide/global. Also Disneyland isn't a news/communication platform so unless the whole world starts giving their attention to Disneyland and only that nobody cares about what Disneyland allows at their parks or not.

        Also, for more important people there is public interest to hear them speak. That's not the same as kicking a dunkard form your park.

        • Re:social credit culture (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Mr. Barky ( 152560 ) on Wednesday January 13, 2021 @08:39AM (#60937380)

          But Twitter and YouTube, etc, aren't public either. They are privately owned and operated. When you signed up for an account (if you did), you agreed to their terms - including what sorts of posts are allowed.

          The New York Times is a news/communication platform. Do they have to host anyone's comments? Traditionally letters to the editor were always filtered by the editorial staff. I am not sure what they do today. If I create a WordPress site called "My news" and allow people to comment, do I have to host anyone's comments? I hope not.

          Under what criteria do we need to treat Twitter differently than my little web site? Who judges that it is a "critical service" that needs to follow a different set of rules? The fact that they let "more important people" post? Or maybe that "more important people" do post? Are they not allowed to take down any posts at all? Illegal posts only? What about inciting violence? Copyright? Who judges what is illegal or what is an imminent threat? Should it be take down first and the adjudicate or adjudicate before taking down (thus leaving illegal posts online until that can happen)?

          The way it works today is that it is Twitter's call and occasionally somebody will force some posts offline due to copyright violations or similar considerations. This mostly works and avoids answering a lot of those thorny problems that would inevitably arise if you required Twitter to host comments that they don't want to have on their site.

          I completely agree that their power is problematic. I am not quite sure what to do about it. Saying that they have no control over who posts doesn't seem right to me.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jarwulf ( 530523 )
        Silicon Valley is an effective monopoly on several services critical for today's world. You guys would never accept the deplatforming you are cheering on today if it happened to you...especially not in defense of 'private enterprise' like you are pretending.

      • The solution part is the issue.

        It's the age old issue of monopoly. Like railroads back in the day.

        You could say even back then if you felt the rail road company wasn't treating you fairly... to just build your own railroad. At some point it just isn't practical to think that every farmer, oil company... should own their own railroad. It's why the Rockerfeller's oil monopolistic practices as it relates to their tie in with rail, were put to bed via lobbying the government for regulation.

        Monopoly law is alway

    • Re:social credit culture (Score:5, Interesting)

      by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Wednesday January 13, 2021 @04:21AM (#60936820) Journal

      In general, no. We're making an exception here for VIOLENT INSURRECTION. Recall, Twitter and all the other social media sites were reluctantly allowing him and his followers to post. It was, "grumble, grumble", but support for free speech even though they always had the right as private entities to pull the plug.

      It's hard to say what the Framers had in mind regarding a general consensus of private entities to deny speech. They only spoke to the issue of the *government* denying speech. Organizing an overthrow of the government is not protected speech anywhere--and it can't be since allowing it would ultimately cancel the very rights which to secure, "Governments are instituted among Men".

      Now here's where the real issue is--in the days of the Constitution, one could buy ink, paper, and other state of the art tools for dissemination with a reasonable presumption of anonymity and/or that the person selling you such supplies would not know what you were going to print. I'm not aware of any group of stationery vendors effectively "de-platforming" people in Colonial times based on their politics.

      Today, it's a bit more complicated. To put yourself on an equal footing with the mainstream you need to be able to buy hosting services and bandwidth. It's where these items are being restricted that I think the argument for a right to purchase is most compelling--but once again, not in the case where these things are being used to advocate sedition.

      In other words, while I empathize with your PoV I don't think the comparison is entirely fair. I'll be in the street with you when the *government* is telling service providers they can't sell me bandwidth and hosting based on my political views, and when those views don't involve ransacking things.

      • Re:social credit culture (Score:5, Insightful)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot.worf@net> on Wednesday January 13, 2021 @05:58AM (#60937040)

        Now here's where the real issue is--in the days of the Constitution, one could buy ink, paper, and other state of the art tools for dissemination with a reasonable presumption of anonymity and/or that the person selling you such supplies would not know what you were going to print. I'm not aware of any group of stationery vendors effectively "de-platforming" people in Colonial times based on their politics.

        It happened, a lot. That's why a lot of the early framers owned their own printing presses - some even owned ones in England to ensure their materials got printed.

        You have to remember the whole independence thing was highly controversial and I'm sure the printers at the time very much cared what they printed,

        There's a real reason why "freedom of the press belongs to those who own the presses".

        De-platforming happened all the time back then. The founding fathers simply took care of it by owning their own platforms (printing presses), which were printing presses back then. Also remember there were things people weren't allowed to say because it would be illegal or wrong (e.g., witches) so printers simply refused to let them print their piece.

        Trump is completely free to set up his own Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Facebook and everything else he got removed from.and hook it up to the internet. Trump just likes using Twitter, YouTube, etc. because well, they're FREE and get lots of people. If he set up his own platforms, he'd have to spend money on servers and hosting and all that stuff, the horror.

        He's also free to make use of stuff taxpayers already paid for, like the White House Communications Office, so he can print out as many press releases he wants through them - they have to print what he says as President. He could've had them set up their own online communications portal with Tweets and Posts and Likes and Videos.

        Unfortunately, it appears that the right is cheap. I mean, Parler can certainly get back online and working, they'd just need an injection of cash because the places that would carry them will do so at higher rates, so increased costs. And since they refuse to pay for stuff, well. I mean, plenty of alternative platforms out there, and plenty more existed but collapsed because no one was paying up or willing to sponsor them.

        I mean, most other platforms and sites with user sponsorships seem to run fine.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by shilly ( 142940 )

          Mod this up. Absolutely correct

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by sinij ( 911942 )
          A very accurate historical representation. However, if we make it fully applicable to the current situation - printing businesses also managed to monopolize paper production, so even if you set up your own printing press you still can't print. To create alternatives to existing ecosystem you have to go down to growing your own trees.

          There are multiple examples where conservative alternatives, like Gap, Parler, SubscribeStar, that were maliciously shut down or attempted to shut down.
        • Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have become the primary medium for political discourse in the US. The high capital cost of entering the market, plus network effects and collusion between existing market actors to prevent competition (such as denying them a host) means the, "start a competing service", line just does not fly.

          Just look at what happened when someone did try to compete - they were denied a host on a flimsy excuse and banned from mobile platforms. This is despite the fact that the event used

        • This is an excellent reply, and opens up some knowledge about the Revolutionary period that I didn't possess.

          In light of that knowledge, I think there's a case to be made that at *some* level, private companies should not be allowed to make distinctions based on content--but isn't that what common carrier is all about? So. At the very least, I don't think something like Parler should be prevented from linking directly to the Internet via something like this [seattleix.net], but that's down at a telco sort of level that w

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Shadow of Eternity ( 795165 )

        You're not making an exception for violent insurrection because there have been violent insurrections happening since 2016. Hell for almost a goddamn month a violent insurrection occupied half downtown Seattle and it was literally ruled by a warlord. People were getting summarily executed for breaking the so called laws of the "autonomous zone".

        • Hell for almost a goddamn month a violent insurrection occupied half downtown Seattle and it was literally ruled by a warlord. People were getting summarily executed for breaking the so called laws of the "autonomous zone".

          I looked up a few articles and still have no idea what the hell you're talking about.

          Sure, Seattle was one of those areas with an autonomous zone where the cops stayed out. But there wasn't anything that sounds like a "warlord", and the people who died inside the zone seemed to be gang violence not really related to the protests. Certainly I didn't read about anything remotely reflecting executions.

      • Now here's where the real issue is--in the days of the Constitution, one could buy ink, paper, and other state of the art tools for dissemination with a reasonable presumption of anonymity and/or that the person selling you such supplies would not know what you were going to print. I'm not aware of any group of stationery vendors effectively "de-platforming" people in Colonial times based on their politics.

        Today, it's a bit more complicated. To put yourself on an equal footing with the mainstream you need to be able to buy hosting services and bandwidth.

        I think if people wanted to email others they could do it pretty much without restriction. And email doesn't have to be plain text. You can send almost anything in an email that you can put on a web page.

        As for the president himself? If he wanted to get something out to the public, all he has to do is call in a press conference. He has a room for it and everything.

        The problem is accountability. Do you want the web sites accountable for what is posted on them? If so, they will bar hate speech. If not,

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Jarwulf ( 530523 )
        Unless the 'violent insurrection' is earlier far more deadly and destructive blm riots Dems not only allowed but supported to the point of bailing out rioters and never apologizing for it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fred911 ( 83970 )

      ''people have been conditioned to not only ask for that, and not only celebrate it,''

      I agree, total BS. Even worse, it appears that there's no official governmental server for current Whitehouse videos aside from YouTube. Whereas the president can stream live videos from Whitehouse.gov, there's no reason it shouldn't also include all videos.

      Regardless of what POTUS has to say, it appears that YouTube has become the de facto platform. YouTube has the right to allow or disallow any content they choose to, I

      • Re:social credit culture (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Knightman ( 142928 ) on Wednesday January 13, 2021 @05:54AM (#60937028)

        I have to ask, are you really arguing that the Government should be able to force private entities to host whatever they want?

        That falls under the term 'government compelled speech', and it's not a good thing since if we look at where this has been done the media quickly devolves into governmental propaganda outlets. Plus, it's against the US constitution since it violates the 1A.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Jarwulf ( 530523 )
          if they can force cake shops they can force tech monopolies. We have thousands of far more onerous regulations involving how companies serve and treat customers for lesser reasons and pass hundreds each year. What makes this one so unacceptable?

          • You are conflating things. SCOTUS found that the cake shop didn't have bake the cake because that would have violated the owners religious beliefs, in essence, one persons rights doesn't negate the same rights for another person. So no, they can't force tech-companies when it comes to free speech as long as it doesn't pertain to discrimination of protected groups.

            Yes, there are regulations in place how companies should serve and treat customers but nowhere do those regulations say that companies are forced

    • Re:social credit culture (Score:4, Interesting)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday January 13, 2021 @05:25AM (#60936970)

      Equating what has happened this past week with "wrongthing" is definitely being part of the problem. We have run the social experiment, it shows that powerful raving lunatics publishing their opinion widely to devout followers hasn't had a good effect.

      Whatever the right answer is, it's not maintaining the status quo.

    • That's exactly what the phone provider have to do under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Art. 30, which USA signed to apply in its country.

      Basically, it says: yes, you have right to express your opinion or spread your religion AS FAR AS it doesn't attack the UDHR.

      As the foundational article of the UDHR says "all human ... have the same rights and dignity", all xenophobia (against gays, blacks, etc.) it's a direct violation of the UDHR and IT'S NOT PROTECTED AT ALL.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by thsths ( 31372 )

      I think there is a clear difference between a private conversation, where you have the expectation of privacy, and a publication, which is by its very nature not private. Publications are subject to a higher standard, and that has always been the case.

      There can be corner cases, of course, but the example of a phone call and a Youtube channel are very clear.

    • Re:social credit culture (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Wednesday January 13, 2021 @06:59AM (#60937160) Homepage Journal

      YouTube is more like a TV channel or a venue that allows acts to book it. A privately owned space for communicating with the public, not specific individuals.

      Imagine is Miley Cyrus demanded that because she was once on the Disney Channel and has lots of fans there she must now be allowed unlimited access to it. Her content is more mature now but freedom of speech requires that Disney broadcast for her. Obviously Disney's business would be ruined, parents would unsubscribe in droves, but well too bad for Disney, they let her do it once and now they have to for all time.

  • Or is it just a general ban?

  • Many of the same people (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@ y a hoo.com> on Wednesday January 13, 2021 @04:03AM (#60936762) Homepage Journal

    Complaining about Amazon, Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter cutting off Trump are the ones who advocated for the abolition of common carrier status for precisely these organizations.

    You can't have it both ways. If you give them the power to select, then selecting they will go.

    Obviously, there will be some Libertarians in the mix who actually adhere to their principles. I'm not keen on their philosophy, but I do admire integrity.

    Even so, in such cases, if you withdraw enforceable protections, the system will switch to might makes right. This is why I don't agree with their philosophy. It hurts those it is meant to free. Still, they do have integrity, and I hope some reasonable compromise can be found for their sake.

    Those who advocated or committed acts of terror, however, get no sympathy. I hope the majority of such people are rounded up and given their day in court. They're entitled to explain the legality of their actions before a jury of their peers. I'm not advocating a biased court, those who can justify their actions should be cleared and protected against harassment. I don't think many can, I'm open to being wrong. That happens occasionally.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fred911 ( 83970 )

      ''the ones who advocated for the abolition of common carrier status for precisely these organizations.''

      Great point. They aren't common carriers. They are popular carriers. They are private businesses that obviously consumers choose because they do the best job for that consumer.

      Insofar as the reasoning being that POTUS incited acts treason, caused or collaborated with criminals to attempt to prevent execution of governmental process, disrespects the office, the citizenry, as well the trust in the system o

    • Re:Many of the same people (Score:5, Insightful)

      by wiredog ( 43288 ) on Wednesday January 13, 2021 @07:12AM (#60937184) Journal

      It's very amusing hearing people who spent the last thirty+ years making sure every aspect of our communications infrastructure was under corporate control suddenly getting mad that corporations can control their communication.

    • The only good argument I have seen was in a left learning newspaper, that just noted that politicians that for instance, encouraged genocide in Myanmar, were never blocked. Which is certainly worth noting and ponder, but not necessarily an argument against this blocking.

  • He has a YouTube channel?

  • Soviet US (Score:5, Funny)

    by k2dk ( 816114 ) on Wednesday January 13, 2021 @06:15AM (#60937060)

    In Soviet US, business regulates goverment!

  • Is Truth Irrelevant? By Dr. Thomas Sowell (Score:3)

    by walterbyrd ( 182728 ) on Wednesday January 13, 2021 @10:23AM (#60937718)

    It is amazing how many people seem to have discovered last Wednesday that riots are wrong — when many of those same people apparently had not noticed that when riots went on, for weeks or even months, in various cities across the country last year.

    For too many people, especially in the media, what is right and wrong, true or false, depends on who it helps or hurts politically. Too many media people who are supposed to be reporters act as if they are combatants in political wars.

    Someone once said that, in a war, truth is the first casualty. That has certainly been so in the media — and in much of academia as well.

    One of the most grotesque distortions growing out of this carelessness with the facts has been a removal of Abraham Lincoln's name and statues from various places, on grounds that he saw black people only as property.

    Such criticisms betray an incredible ignorance of history — or else a complete disregard of truth.

    As a lawyer, Abraham Lincoln knew that there was nothing in the Constitution which authorized him or any other President to free slaves. But he also knew that a military commander in wartime can legally seize the property of an enemy nation. Defining slaves as property gave President Lincoln the only legal authority he had to seize them during the Civil War. And once they were seized as property, he could then free them as human beings.

    But, if the Emancipation Proclamation had based its action on defining the slaves as human beings, with a right to be free, the Supreme Court of that era would undoubtedly have declared it unconstitutional.

    Millions of human beings would have remained slaves. Would ringing rhetoric be worth that price?

    As for the claim that Lincoln did not regard black people as human, he invited Frederick Douglass to the White House!

    Gross distortions of history, in order to get Abraham Lincoln's name removed from schools tells us a lot about what is wrong with American education today.

    Many schools are closed because of the corona virus and the teachers unions. And many schools in minority neighborhoods failed to teach children enough math and English, back when they were still open. So it is incredible that school authorities have time to spend on ideological crusades like removing names and statues from schools.

    Unfortunately, too many American educational institutions — from elementary schools to universities — have become indoctrination centers. The riots that swept across the country last year are fruits of that indoctrination and the utter disregard for other people's rights that accompanied those riots.

    At the heart of that indoctrination is a sense of grievance and victimhood when others have better outcomes — which are automatically called "privileges" and never called "achievements," regardless of what the actual facts are.

    Facts don't matter in such issues, any more than facts mattered when smearing Lincoln.

    Any "under-representation" of any group in any endeavor can be taken as evidence or proof of discriminatory bias. But those who argue this way cannot show us any society — anywhere in the world, or at any time during thousands of years of recorded history — that had all groups represented proportionally in all endeavors.

    In America's National Hockey League, for example, there are more players from Canada than there are players from the United States. There are also more players from Sweden than from California, even though California's population is nearly four times the population of Sweden.

    Californians are more "under-represented" in the NHL than women are in Silicon Valley. But no one can claim that this is due to discriminatory bias by the NHL. It is far more obviously due to people growing up in cold climates being more likely to have ice-skating experience.

    This is one of many factors that produce skewed statistics in many endeavors. Discriminatory bias is among those factors. But it has no monopoly.

    Yet

  • Nature abhors a vacuum (Score:3)

    by tflf ( 4410717 ) on Wednesday January 13, 2021 @11:17AM (#60937970)

    The only thing worse than having government decide what is acceptable behaviour is having anyone else (especially business) do it.

    Absent direction from those elected to provide it, other social structures will respond to a social and political vacuum. Before January 11, there were already calls for action from what appeared to be a good-sized portion of the population. Media businesses, including social, were under intense pressure due to the perception they "enabled" the growing chaos resulting from the constant stream of legally unproven accusations of a stolen election eminating from the Trump universe. Advertisers are "enjoying" the same pressure to get action. The events of January 11 tipped the scales, and the bans are the logical and largely expected result.

    Regular people, even in large numbers, may complain to politicians, and businesses, but, action is highly unlikely. However, when money talks, business respond, usually very quickly. Politicians do as well, but, their response pace is glacial.

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