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Comment by standardcitizen | Hacker News Reader

Is the information correct or incorrect? I’m not a massive fan boy if such kind of topics either. Often the crazy ones tell us research things that we often bypass.

This is one of those times. I don’t agree with their messaging, but Alex Jones should be allowed. Again I completely whole heartily disagree with him, but we can’t be selective in this area.

We’ve kind of validated him to some degree and made him much much bigger than before.

There is a class of people who feel like they aren’t being heard or lied too. Yet we often use tactics to discredit them.

I think this only embolden them. We can even discuss things, without doing the mental laziness of saying. I don’t wanna look at your source, because it’s x.

Within universities, you can’t use one source, why would you think it’s ok now?

You need supporting claims, if you disagree, than support it.. stop being mentally lazy.

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How exactly do you find a list of YouTube channels "correct" or "incorrect"?

YouTube bans thousands of channels a day. It's their right to ban whomever they please and they likely didn't even give the channel owner a reason much less me. For all I know each one of those violated very reasonable terms.

Where did this list even come from? Why are these channels special enough to make it to this list? My guess is the poster agreed with their content, or found news about their banning through various conspiracy-oriented websites.

There's no reason whatsoever to think this list is interesting. There is, however, plenty of reason to think where it was posted is not worth my time.

The discussion has gone from "There are hundreds of instances of Google censoring ... YouTube channels ..." to "Name 5" to a list of dozens, to "YouTube bans thousands of channels a day", with different commenters making subtly different points at each stage.

I think the original point was that Google has a policy of censoring people based on the (perfectly legal) political views that those people have. As you say, Google has the absolute legal right to censor people because of their political views, and presumably you think it is not a problem if they do so.

So I don't think the interesting question is how many of the thousands of channels a day were banned for their unpopular political speech (nor is it interesting to know how special the channels on the r/conspiracy list are), but rather we should ask whether it is good for society if an entity as powerful as Google has this much editorial control over who is exposed to which ideas.

They have no such policy, and you have no evidence whatsoever that people are being banned for political views alone.

If I could show that YouTube channels are being banned from expressing certain political views, would you agree that Google has too much power and censors too much? Consider this recent example then:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-21/youtube-b...

Perhaps you will say that "instructions on how to assemble firearms" is not an expression of a political view, however I would argue that preventing people from imparting legal factual information to help other people exercise a constitutional right seems like something that, if the government were to do it, would be a breach of their First Amendment rights.

So as not to be seen to be taking a specific view on "gun rights", let me give a different (hypothetical, and non-equivalent) situation to clarify what we mean by "banned for political views alone" here.

Suppose that Google had different politics and decided to ban channels that provided assistance to women seeking an abortion. Perhaps Google would allow channels to advocate, in the abstract, for "abortion rights", but not to give any practical advice on how to exercise them. I think that most people would agree that this would count as unconstitutional "viewpoint discrimination" if the government were to do it, so it is effectively a "ban for political views/expression" if Google do it as a private corporation.

They ban instructional videos on items that are federally or state prohibited. Shit they don't want to have to deal with. This hardly is a ban on political views.

The information itself isn't federally or state prohibited, though, right? If they didn't want to "deal with" it, then they shouldn't have a specific policy about it at all. Unless the government (or the courts) were pressuring Google on this issue, then it is simpler (and arguably fairer) to not try to be the arbiter of what is and is not allowable speech.

I can't speak for the people that create these channels or want to make these expressions, but I have to assume that at least some of them think that they are making people safer by teaching them how to legally arm themselves. That seems to be a view that Google disagrees with, so they have implemented an editorial policy on YouTube which prevents people from expressing that view in a meaningful way.

Perhaps you think that Google would only be banning people for their political views if the company openly said to them: "We are banning your channel because of a political view you have, even if you never express that view in any of your videos." That seems like an unreasonably high bar to require though. If Google said "You can support any party you want, but we won't allow Democrat political candidates to put their campaign ads on their channel." then that would, at least to me, be a ban on political views.

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