Civil rights groups demand Google remove Trump's YouTube channel | Hacker News Reader

Civil rights groups demand Google remove Trump's YouTube channel

reuters.com

23 pointsreddotX19 comments

Civil rights groups demand removing an elected officials freedom of speech. Okay. I am struggling to follow who exactly is pro or against civil rights. Certainly anger is justified, but the civil rights argument (as opposed to other paths) seems objectionable.

Reminds me of this fun quote from the View: “Can’t the ACLU sue Trump for hate speech?”

https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-again-calls-impeach...

As someone who moved to the US in their teens, American life reminds me football teams. These similar "fan like" group attachments branch out into so many aspects of American life.

It's one side vs. the other. We're better they're worse. One side must be good, one side must be bad. Like interviewing an Arsenal fan and a Chelsea fan about each other.

I honestly don't even know if these groups could possibly put aside their differences to see themselves as all Americans. It seems like everyone is in the mindset of "I'm Team A", "I'm Team B", etc. rather than all part of the same whole.

For the tribeless among us the hyper partisanship is also very evident.

Not just America, it's like that here in the UK, albeit not quite to the same extent, as far as I can tell. I get the impression that this is quite common, at least in other western democracies.

I recall that the ACLU supported the right for the KKK to hold rallies since freedom of speech (both in the legal sense and the moral sense) require supporting those that you disagree with.

https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-em-defends-kkks-rig...

Since then the ACLU has taken a hard leftward swing. If you follow them on social media, you’ll see they make lots of partisan posts, are no longer very professionally neutral in how they talk about things, and have a selection bias in terms of what they focus on and talk about. I doubt today’s ACLU would make the same statement, if only because most of their social media following seems to be against the free speech principles that are fundamental to the US. I feel this change primarily happened between 2015 and now. It’s why I stopped supporting them after years - there are better organizations for supporting those principles, like FIRE.

Information is scary to some...

Trump’s freedom of speech has not been abridged. As President of the United States, he can hold a press conference with journalists and cameras present.

One person wants to speak, 80 million people don’t want to hear him, 70 million do, so who’s rights are abridged?

I forget where I read it, many years ago, and I will probably butcher it but the gist of the idea was:

Freedom of Speech includes the Freedom of those whom the speech would be directed at to HEAR the speech. The abridgment of freedom of speech denies not only the speaker the right to speak but others the* right to hear what they may or may not disagree with.

The right to hear it, not an obligation to listen.

You were obligated to listen to Trump because he had a YouTube channel?

And any presidential speech would be posted to YT after it took place

The first amendment is a fantastic piece of work.

Trump can publish any content he wants to. The government can't punish him for it unless it harms someone.

Any platform can distribute their users' content, or at their discretion they can remove content they find objectionable.

People publish demands for platforms to remove content they find objectionable. Other people can criticize that demand.

I haven't seen a bigger bunch of hypocrites! Lost all respect for US after seeing how it embraced Censorship as a way to resolve issues. America the "land of the free". Yeah right!

Trump is a customer like any other and if he is reducing the value of the service for a sufficient number of other customers then it is a net benefit to remove him from the platform. Trump starts flame wars for self-promotion and profit and YouTube doesn’t see adequate compensation for their costs. They could stand to have less abusive speech and more money in their pocket. YouTube has a very wide moat trenched around them and so they don’t have to cater to niches to maximize their profits.

I don’t think I would call youtube content providers customers. Business partners is probably a better term.

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