YouTube can restrict PragerU because it is a private forum, appeals court rules

I agree this is true in theory, with the internet as it is today. PragerU can and should host their own videos if Google doesn't want to (edit: though in this case the problem is not related to hosting but advertising, it seems?). Anyway, we can and should criticise Google for their partisan stances and they shouldn't be treated with much sympathy if a conservative government retaliates in some way either, but that's by the by.

The problem is that this sort of thing doesn't have any limits. People were making the exact same argument when Google seized the domain of a source of unpopular speech such that the owners were not only unable to use Google's services, but in fact, were unable to host themselves too. It was basically a DoS attack by a corporation on that site.

The internet is run entirely by private companies. What happens to your argument when someone does in fact stop PragerU from providing their own video platform that doesn't censor content? For instance because an angry mob tries to shut down your ISP, or a DNS provider steals your domain, or a DDoS protection firm decides not to protect you anymore and then lets an anonymous mob take your servers offline?

Nobody at any point has violated the constitution, but the outcome is identical. Digital technology requires private sector collaboration. If an increasingly partisan set of tech firms systematically try to wipe conservative thought out - which is what they are doing - despite that this political philosophy represents about half the voting population, then they are going to end up regulated so strictly it'll make banks look like free-wheeling anarchists in comparison. This will happen slowly because conservatives don't want to do that, but it will happen, especially as actual shrink-the-state conservatives don't tend to get into leadership positions in the west.

Ultimately the right to criticise the government is a right to criticise those who have power. The arguments for it don't change if the government outsources suppression of speech to contractors, and don't change if a bunch of political allies manage to take control of organisations required to engage in speech. It's the right itself that matters.

Billionaires own, or control, PragerU, both in funding and board seats.

So they get the best of both worlds - the ability to use corporations to speak on their behalf _and_ shield them from the consequences.

If they can't convince that level of hack, they don't have a chance in the SC.

Interestingly Manhattan Community Access Corp is definitely in some regards closer to a state actor, being authorized by NYC to operate.

The wedding cake case in Oregon was much closer to what you describe.

The one in Colorado was more like the Youtube case. He offered to sell them a cake off the shelf, but refused to create a custom cake for something he didn't support.

I’ve used AWS and Cloudfront for years, never had a problem. And that’s only for high traffic applications.

You spend too much time in tech and you get blinders and literally start to think that nothing else exists. Most people still get their information from television and, believe it or not, radio.

YouTube just makes video hosting easy. You have a freedom of speech, not a freedom to a guaranteed audience.

Have you ever actually seen someone in a public square going on a rant? They are often lucky if they reach a few people.

Lets see who funds PragerU. From the Wiki:

>Much of the early funding for PragerU came from hydraulic fracturing billionaires Dan and Farris Wilks.[2][4] Two members of the Wilks family are on PragerU's board.[2] The next-largest donor is the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.[7][23] Other donors include the Morgan Family Foundation, Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, Donors Trust, and the Minnesota-based Sid and Carol Verdoorn Foundation, led by former C.H. Robinson CEO Sid Verdoorn.[23]

>As of 2018, the organization reportedly had a $10 million annual budget, of which it spent more than 40% on marketing.[2] In 2019, PragerU raised $22 million and expects to receive $25 million in 2020.[4][24] PragerU consistently spends more on Facebook advertising than major political campaigns and national advocacy groups.[25] It ranks among the 10 biggest political spenders on the platform.[25]

The lawsuit also talks about being demonetized because of advertiser preferences.

You can literally start with uploading .mp4 files on your site immediately. How many tens of billions have been spent on campaigns? There's so much money sloshing about just in the immediate vicinity of the political agenda driven folks complaining but somehow no one can throw source code on GitHub of Reddit and clones onto a server and buy a domain for a few bucks, or set up a video sharing site with all the commercial tools available, and advertise them.

The reasoning is that it’s similar to a government official holding a meeting, or other such public forum. That has to be open to all comers without viewpoint discrimination.

But it doesn’t mean a private business can’t block people from their accounts - just that it’s illegal for a government official to use that feature.

When I say "the law assumes" I obviously meant "the people who wrote the law assumed."

People expose unintended loopholes in laws all the time, because the people who wrote the laws assumed certain things that ended up not being correct.

I would agree that they shouldn't, but I don't know if I can say that they won't.

What spirit is that? Have you sent me money? Do you wear hats and T-shirts with my name on them? b^)

Seriously, though, we have plenty of space here. It doesn't surprise me that rich people like to give money to people who agree that those same rich people should be rich. Basically everything I see on TV, and certainly all the ads, amount to the same thing. With all of their vast resources, the Wilks haven't managed to keep the message of global warming from reaching me.

Isn't that curious? Here you have several actual billionaires, allied with a variety of vaguely telegenic pundits, and Alphabet swats them away without even really making an effort. That's the monopoly I was talking about. You may celebrate when speakers you dislike are silenced, but it makes me wonder who else is being silenced, who because they're not billionaires never even came to my attention.

That's the key bit. The store owner can say "no".

And somehow I'd imagine that CNN's YouTube channel isn't limited in the same way. (Or Fox News, for that matter)

It is that the spread of the British Empire spread Western democratic norms.

This particular facet is well-supported by the facts. I agree that it fails to be sufficiently critical of the British. However, it falls well within the Overton Window and any claim that this particular video is incendiary, or that it is sufficiently wrong that it should be discouraged for people to watch it, is absurd.

To the degree that History departments want to tell a moral narrative, they need to be a lot more careful than a youtube channel, I agree. I remember my British History professor in college implied that any Republicans taking courses at a state-supported university are hypocrites, so I'm well-aware of the ideological leanings of the ivory tower. If it came down to it, I'd prefer a left-leaning history department to a right-leaning one, just for the fact that you can (typically) squeeze more nuanced narratives out of the (typically) increased moral relativism of the left. It's a pretty slight preference though, subject to the tradeoff that a bleeding-heart professor still has enough assertiveness to admit to moral failings across all sorts of different cultures.

Regarding objective facts of a video- they remain true on the ground. Regarding the moral narrative- I see no reason to hold the rest of the world's commentariat to the same standard of preference as a history department. I would also remark that PragerU has the merit of making it's moral leanings obvious enough that you don't have to guess at their direction of bias, in contrast to other presenters who may be willfully disguising their revisionism.

Perhaps it's easier to discern the truth when you give competitors on all sides of the moral landscape a fair fight.

Beyond that, hardly anything can make a bad idea more attractive than telling people that it's been dismissed by their betters long ago and should no longer be discussed.

If they are a conservative outlet then that video was specifically designed to engage non-conservatives so that they could reach them and that would make sense if that was the mission.

As for the the actual causes, there really is a lot of complexity to it.

The short version:

- 11 states seceded

- There were only 4 declarations of causes (SC, Georgia, Miss, Texas)

- Secession happened slowly over the course of many months, from November to May

- The border states of North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Arkansas seceded in direct response to Lincoln's requisition for troops. The request bypassed Congress. Virginia legislature in particular took it as an abuse of executive power.

The viral video put out by Prager quickly listed off the states that seceded and oversimplified by saying "all the declarations of causes" which insinuated that each state produced such a declaration. It gave the appearance that the secessions were something of a quick and unified action.

It hit all of the necessary points for a viral share though. Gave the appearance of an educational entity delivering a quick video to support the "everybody in the south was evil" rhetoric.

If you ever really deep dive into the history, there was a lot going on, so seeing something like that from an "educational" institution immediately put them on my propaganda radar. I haven't seen much else from them since.