The Unseen Side of “Cancel Culture”
persuasion.community
persuasion.community
I do hope there is an alternate ecosystem of infrastructure and utility services like search, social media, payments, and so on. However it will be hard due to capital barriers and network effects. Even if it happens, then what - do we just end up with a Balkanized America that breaks apart? Maybe that’s for the best but I am not sure.
Either way, the present reality is that all these megacorps (like Google/YouTube) are too big, protected from competition due to those barriers, and are just utilities masquerading as private innovation. They need to be broken up and regulated as utilities for society go work. But because that hasn’t happened, the government continues to outsource utility services to private companies who can discriminate based on political viewpoint and violate people’s freedom of speech and expression.
It also is somewhat offensive for me on a personal level to hear these shock jocks trying to politicize which team a trans child plays on or what medical treatments they might receive; those seem like they would be issues best left up to the child's fellow participants in that sport and the child's doctor, not some youtuber trying to build a name for themselves by generating controversy about things that don't even affect them.
The number of warnings has nothing to do with it. It’s cancel culture because it involves censoring opinions and perspectives that disagree with those of the people in power - namely the activist progressives who lead and work at Google.
> I'm sure you can see how a video service that aims to be used by families, children, in schools, etc, doesn't want to provide a platform for cruel and offensive content.
No, I cannot see that, for many reasons. Those who are offended can choose not to click the video. They don’t need to ban it unless they’re afraid of truth and openness, and instead want to substitute authoritarianism in place of it.
> which team a trans child plays on or what medical treatments they might receive; those seem like they would be issues best left up to the child's fellow participants in that sport and the child's doctor, not some youtuber
This is just a long winded way of saying “trust those with power blindly and don’t question them”, especially as vague and unscientific activist medical approaches are corrupting neutral medical science. A man shouldn’t play in women’s sports because they have innate advantages and it makes the notion of women’s sports meaningless. A child shouldn’t be given invasive and irreversible treatments when they are still growing, changing, and very likely to grow out of phases. I find it offensive that challenging these irresponsible and dangerous practices is disallowed in an ostensibly free society.
I'm not talking about Google though, my point was that I would make exactly the same decision even if it were a small video site I was running with the same target audience, because that is what the customers ask for when you aim to build a family-friendly site. They don't want cruel and offensive content, they don't want porn, they don't want violence and gore, I could go on here. These aren't decisions made by anyone in power, they're decisions made by regular people like you and me.
>Those who are offended can choose not to click the video. They don’t need to ban it unless they’re afraid of truth and want to substitute authoritarianism in place of truth and openness.
That's not really an option as I don't think those customers would want to see those videos in the related videos at all, or see them come up in search results. Again, the customers have asked for this, so I can't see how you would call it authoritarianism. It's not like they don't know that the internet is filled with offensive content and porn, a lot of times people just don't want anything to do with it.
>This is just a long winded way of saying “trust those with power blindly and don’t question them”
I really don't understand how you got that. I'm talking about leaving it up to the child's parents, doctor, and school coaches who know the child and their family and know what's best for them, to all come together, ask questions and make an informed decision.
>especially as vague and unscientific activist medical approaches are corrupting neutral medical science.
I would advise against making these comments, this seems like something that is impossible to quantify in any meaningful way.
>A man shouldn’t play in women’s sports because they have innate advantages and it makes the notion of women’s sports meaningless.
I don't know what you mean exactly here, but I don't really agree; what I've noticed is that "men" and "women" is not well defined and it varies from sport to sport, so it's already somewhat meaningless. Some sports will rely on chemical testing, some sports will rely on body measurements, some sports will rely on physical testing, some sports are not very opinionated on it at all. I think you may be oversimplifying this. For your typical after school soccer team I don't see the problem if all the other players and the staff agree that someone can play on their team who may not fit the mold exactly, they can decide for themselves if they think the game will be fair.
>A child shouldn’t be given invasive and irreversible treatments when they are still growing, changing, and very likely to grow out of phases.
I hear what you're saying but sometimes children do need invasive treatments because of other medical issues they might have; for cases where the child is at risk of self-harm it can be very difficult to tell if it's a phase or if they need immediate treatment. It's not an easy decision to make, ultimately it is up to the parents what medical care their children receive.
>I find it offensive that challenging these irresponsible and dangerous practices is disallowed in an ostensibly free society.
I don't understand why you're saying these are disallowed. I have heard similar comments made throughout conservative media over the last year. I've actually heard them so overwhelmingly coming from conservative media that I haven't even heard many opposing viewpoints because the noise from that seems to drown out what actual parents of trans children are saying. In fact your views are so pervasive that polling data seems to suggest they are shared almost unanimously by Republicans in the US: https://news.gallup.com/poll/350174/mixed-views-among-americ...
Even democrats seem to be pretty divided on the issue, so I'm very confused as to what you're looking at.
Looking at this, I don't find your statements convincing and it doesn't appear to me that youtube is censoring these particular opinions and perspectives. Sorry. You may want to check your sources before you post any more comments about this. The difference with those videos and the person who was banned is he wasn't just expressing those views. From the few videos I've seen of that creator, his content seems to be exclusively focused on insult comedy made at the expense of minority groups. It's fine to disagree on policy but that kind of content is where it crosses the line into hate speech. I'm disappointed that some here felt the need to downvote my other comment, I don't really agree with republicans or democrats on this issue and so it's very hard for me to get a word in anywhere. It seems a bit hypocritical to be worried about "cancel culture" while burying my comments for giving my honest perspective.
But YouTube have banned him for crossing ideological lines not for being an ass.
I'm probably seeing this through an ideological lense myself.
I think his nastiest attack was on Cenk from the young Turks. No body seemed to care about that. But I could be wrong.