edit: I have no idea how thinkspot is going to play out. But if I know one thing about the internet it's that it's really hard to stop people from using it however they please. Attempts to squash mostly just result a shift of where it occurs, not the fact that it occurs.
I do. The uncensored alternative to a popular platform consistently attracts all the toxic users, making it a place nobody else wants to go. Voat is a relatively recent high-profile example.
Advocating violence against specific people is not illegal in the US unless it is likely to produce imminent lawless action. Saying "[racial slur] should be exterminated" doesn't rise to that standard. A live video saying "everybody get your guns and meet me at [location] - we're gonna slaughter those [racial slur]" probably does, but would be subject to safe harbor protections for the platform.
Libel also falls under safe harbor. The platform could eventually be ordered by a court to remove the content, but not until many people have had the opportunity to see it.
The question is every such business would need to face, including youtube, is where to draw the line. Child porn clearly is illegal and very few people would object to such a ban. But legal/not legal isn't always so clear, eg, what statement constitutes libel and is a given person enough of a public figure that less stringent standards apply.
Say I create a video saying "zcid lives at 123 Merry Lane in Westchester, MA. I'm not advocating violence happen to him, I'm just stating a fact." Is that legal? (Note: not only is the address made up, I double checked that no such address actually exists)
If there was a bright line then I don't think there would be as much controversy around the issue as there is. Pretending there is a simple solution (just ban illegal things and allow legal things) doesn't mean the distinction really is clear.
Probably the best reason Silicon Valley can understand to start thinking twice about whether they want to deplatform all the non-SV-liberals.
(I initially said "conservatives" there, but given the discussion elsewhere on this page for someone who was deplatformed on Vimeo for reviewing animal traps because they said it was 'cruelty to animals', it's going well beyond that.)
I suspect that YouTube's long-term strategy is to morph into a hybrid of Netflix and cable, and YouTubers who broadcast opinions outside the range of acceptable opinions to SV and advertisers are just an impedance to that goal. What they will do is boil the frog by making small changes over a period of time that all appear "reasonable" on their own.
Demonetization was one step in boiling the frog, but hard to argue against because it's in the best interest of advertisers and videos weren't being deleted. Then came changes to the algorithm that promotes videos, and now YouTube believes I "want" to watch more cable news and significantly less of Tim Pool or Joe Rogan. I'm surprised they haven't done more shadow-banning, and maybe that will be one of the following steps.
More incremental changes will be made, probably over several years, until all the interesting voices are gone and no one can point to any one event that made everyone except the left-wing and Rated-G channels leave. And the bulk of users probably won't care since they've been transitioned and conditioned to the resurgence of mainstream blather they'll be selling.
the meme has been to add pornographic industry titles to benign non sexual videos. that part is just for fun and views
Hope they keep the adult ad networks though. Thats key infrastructure
I wish the only people fighting against censorship by trying to build their own platforms weren't actual white supremacists and bad-faith pseudo-intellectual charlatans. (Note, I"m only placing Peterson in the second category. He's not a white supremacist. He IS however a reductive, regressive male-supremacist, wearing the mask of a classic liberal free speech advocate).
He claims to fight for a free marketplace of ideas, but only because his religious conservative dogma about men, women, gay marriage, and trans people does not hold up to scrutiny, and people have gotten tired of debating him.
Let's be clear:
* Google and YouTube do not owe the internet the right to access to an expensive video hosting content platform. They are a business and they are free to prioritize the content that enables them to make money * ThinkSpot has two agendas - one to promote "unpopular" free speech ideas in a "safe space" free from criticism, which is hilariously ironic. Two - to make Jordan Peterson money. If you don't think that's part of the goal, you haven't been paying attention to all of his Patreon activity and motivations for the last several years.
These are not the droids we are looking for.
What is the alternative? Honestly, here is a hot take: Kazaa
We need to get back to distributed peer-to-peer file hosting. But this time with more security, encryption, access control, categorization of content that you can choose to host on your node.
How much of our classic liberty are we willing to lose in the pursuit of tribalism? The retort I hear when I complain about censorship is "haha you conservatives used to love the free market", not realizing not everyone who supports free speech and is anti-corporate is a conservative!
EDIT: These corporations cynically manipulated society's tribalistic nature to impose something that should've had bipartisan opposition. The good news about things like this is it's a great way to develop that bipartisan opposition, many people who've been wearing blinders will say, "hey wait a minute, that's my voice you're shutting down, and I'm not a bad person."
EDIT 2: I'm not here to defend Jordan Peterson or white supremacists. Just saying that moves like this will at least drive more than just two kinds of people away from YouTube, which was "people who love liberty and white supremacists" which of course makes the liberty people miserable.
I support your right to perform necessary bodily functions, just not on my living room carpet. I wouldn't say that's "tribalistic", more like "territorial".
It's 2019 and everyone talks online, it's time to stop pretending that the public sidewalk is the only place people have a right to protest. Telling someone they have to go use gab.ai (which is blocked on both on both app stores and has had its payment systems pulled) is like telling a sidewalk protestor they have the right to protest as long as it's somewhere in the wilderness where they will not be discovered, alongside the other miscreants who have a beef.
Nobody has ever been against the right of people to protest in invisible places, even China lets you do that. It's like the old saw, that Stalinist Russia had free speech as long as you were praising the party or nobody could hear you.
Nobody is saying "Free Speech is a racist idea.
However, Free Speech OF racist ideas is a racist idea.
That sounds pretty racist to me.
Shapiro even stokes anti-semitic rhetoric by distinguishing between "ethnic jews" (The Woody Allens of the world, but more broadly liberal hollywood elite jews) and "cultural/religious jews" (Morally-clear good-minded folk like himself). The video covers it.
This is how he reconciles his alt-right allies who are anti-semitic and white nationalist, yet use Shapiro as a shield to protect their heinous opinions.
And this is before we get to any of his perspectives on arabs, which another commenter already addressed.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/04/18...