Whether or not you're a fan of Russell Brand, a government 'asking' media to stop paying/employing someone they don't like, without a legal mandate, is a very obvious contravention of a free society.
The one thing that the two major parties have consistently agreed over the years is that our rights are a danger to ourselves.
This kind of thing is just par for the course in our performative democracy where the media holds the true power and the politicians’ only way to get ahead is to prostitute themselves to the media, particularly Murdoch. This letter to Twitter is one such performance.
1. The letter was sent by the Select Committee responsible for overseeing the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.
2. This Select Committee is not the government. It is in fact a bipartisan oversight committee comprised of Conservative, Labour, and SNP members of parliament.
3. The Select Committee has a responsibility to provide oversight for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, to influence its priorities, and to understand the people, communities, and entities (companies, sports teams, arts galleries) to whom the Department has a responsibility.
4. One way that Select Committees do this is to request testimony and insight from relevant people/communities/entities -- particularly where they are at the forefront of something new or newsworthy which is within the Department/Committee's wheelhouse.
5. The remit of the Department is highly relevant to the Brand allegations. Most directly, the Department is largely responsible for the government's relationship and enthusiasm for funding the BBC, where Brand was employed at the time one victim alleges he abused her.
6. It is specifically part of the job of departments like DCMS, and their oversight committees, to promote the positions of government in areas outside of policy and law.
7. Nobody here is sacrificing any rights. You do not need to acquiesce to a parliamentary request. Zuckerberg has refused multiple requests for testimony both live and via Zoom. X refused to provide any information beyond what is publicly available. Brand did not have a right to due process with YouTube before he was de-monetised. Zuckerberg, X, Rumble, Brand, etc. have experienced zero change in their rights and legal protection within the United Kingdom before, during, or after they were asked for testimony.
On to the rest:
> The UK is not a free society
I find myself writing this more and more frequently on HN: I know that you're just trying to be emphatic, but it's not generally helpful to make extremely exaggerated statements for effect. There is clearly a plurality of thought on what constitutes freedom and a free society, but it is utterly uncontroversial to say that the United Kingdom, like all modern developed nations operating something which looks and smells a bit like democratically-elected officials, is as free as it gets in the world.
What specifically is your special standard of "freedom" which is not being met by the UK at the moment?
> We long since sacrificed our civil rights
I must have missed this! Which rights in particular?
> at the altar of various boogiemen
Unless we forewent our civil rights because of a dance troupe I think you mean "bogeymen"!
> criminals, terrorists, immigrants, nonces, rapists
All intentional communities - companies, countries, camping trips, whatever - evolve and iterate on their values and protocols as time goes by. For example: prior to 9/11, it was perfectly logical that cockpit doors be open during flights and made of unremarkable materials. As soon as somebody decided to start flying planes into buildings, we began closing and locking cockpit doors, and reenforcing them.
So hopefully you agree that societies and their leaders get new information from time to time which requires them to change things?
I'd love to know, and I mean this in a spirit of genuine curiosity, which specific civil rights were afforded to you in your lifetime but which were then stripped due to your list of bogey/boogie-men.
For example, what are you legally prohibited from doing today which you once were not, as a result of pedophiles (nonces to non-UK readers)?
> The one thing that the two major parties have consistently agreed over the years is that our rights are a danger to ourselves.
Again I know this is a rhetorical device, but no major UK party or member of a major UK party has made the claim that "our rights are a danger to ourselves". For one thing it's such a facile thing to say that they would probably be mocked for saying it, but even if you pretend it isn't lowest common denominator conspiratorial nonsense, there are very few examples of orchestrated bipartisan efforts to curtail civil rights at all – let alone any which do not have widespread public support or a plausible public good as their intended outcome.
> This kind of thing is just par for the course in our performative democracy where the media holds the true power
Oh brother.
> and the politicians' only way to get ahead is to prostitute themselves to the media, particularly Murdoch.
Ah yes, of course! Who can forget Joe Biden's cozy relationship with FOX News in the run-up to the 2020 election? And of course Keir Starmer's seemingly-unassailable lead in the polls is black magic from Labour's propaganda arm, News International.
I'm being facetious but you see my point: say what you mean. I would consider the two examples I provided to be disproof of your claim that "the politicians' only way to get ahead is to prostitute themselves to the media", which is the kind of bubblegum thing people say unchallenged, but which really doesn't appear to be the case. Trump is the GOP frontrunner and he openly derides the entire mainstream media including FOX News.
tl;dr: if you understand the responsibility of this committee, then you understand that this is an entirely appropriate and necessary letter for them to write. If you read the letter, then you understand that it is benign. And finally, I'm guessing here, if you try to enumerate specific civil rights you have lost down the years, you'll fall some way short of what I, a reasonable person (hehe) would consider sufficient to say "the UK is not a free society".
But maybe!
If you have read it and truly believe that it is somehow undone by the fact that Brand is innocent until proven guilty in court, I would love to understand where I could be expressing myself more clearly, because, again, no part of my argument is contingent on Brand being convicted or not. It is entirely immaterial to my position.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
Also:
Trying to get the last word in an Internet 'conversation' can quickly lead to your day being ruined. :)
1. Right to freedom of speech: violated by the Communications Act 2003 which makes it a criminal offence to post communications that are "grossly offensive, or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character". Notably used in such classics as the Twitter Joke trial, and the Hitler Dog Salute trial.
2. Right to silence: violated by the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 which repealed the right to "plead the fifth" so to speak, to allow juries to take adverse inferences if the accused refuses to provide the police with details of their defence as soon as possible. Also violated by RIPA which allows a person to be imprisoned for years for refusing to disclose a password.
3. Right to freedom of assembly: violated by various laws passed in recent years adding more and more restrictions on protests. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 allows the police to shut down protests that cause a "nuisance", in the Government's own words: "The Act will allow police to place conditions on public processions, public assemblies and one-person protests where it is reasonably believed that the noise they generated may result it serious disruption to the activities of an organisation carried on in the vicinity or have a significant impact on people in the vicinity of the protest."
4. Right to privacy: violated by many internet laws, predominantly RIPA: "In April 2008, it became known that local government officials in Poole put three children and their parents under surveillance, at home and in their daily movements, to check whether they lived in a particular school catchment area". The Investigatory Powers Act 2016 went further and imposed mandatory logging of internet activity in the UK by ISPs.
5. Right to not be subjected to facial recognition: facial recognition is rife, the police are permitted to use facial recognition vans in public places.
6. Right to vote: violated by the Voter Identification Regulations 2022 which were created for the express purpose of disenfranchising voters (as admitted by Jacob Rees-Mogg that it might have backfired and caused a disenfranchisement of older voters instead of younger), especially given the almost non-existent level of in-person voter fraud, and the non-possession of photo ID by a much larger number of people.
7. Right to a fair trial. The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 drastically cut funding and availability of legal aid.
8. Right to nationality: thanks to the Begum case, the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 substantially weakened the already quite weak protections for natural-born British citizens who are entitled to another nationality. The minister can withdraw the nationality of any dual national, without any due process or even notifying them about it.
Governments have also attempted to do several things which failed or are in the process of failing:
1. The Home Secretary wishes to leave the ECHR, and there have been repeated unsuccessful attempts to repeal and water-down the Human Rights Act.
2. Successive governments have attempted to restrict the availability of end-to-end encrypted communications apps such as WhatsApp, despite relying on WhatsApp to keep ministerial communications secret from the public, and refusing to submit WhatsApp messages to public inquiries.
3. Successive governments have attempted to institute mandatory age verification to access the internet, although they have been mostly foiled by the IETF's improvements to internet privacy post-Snowden (thanks guys).
I'll just make one observation. Very few rights are absolute. Take the right to privacy in the HRA for example:
> There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
You really could drive a cart and horses through that.
> 1. Right to freedom of speech: violated by the Communications Act 2003
Freedom of Expression is most obviously defined in the UK in the 1998 Human Rights Act, which goes on to specifically state that the right can "be subject to formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society".
The 1986 Public Order Act had already made it an offence to use “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviours that causes, or is likely to cause, another person harassment, alarm or distress”.
Oh, and the 2003 Communications Act was a fairly benign modernisation of the Malicious Communications Act of 1988, which includes this language: "[it is an offence to send a letter] which is, in whole or part, of an indecent or grossly offensive nature[…]"
It is a mistake to believe that your right to freedom of expression has meaningfully changed since 2003.
> 3. Right to freedom of assembly
Again, there are a wide range of longstanding limitations and conditions surrounding this right which are occasionally revised and refined to keep them current (and to avoid a situation where we govern using something akin to constitutional originalism, which is a clusterfuck). It is not possible to avoid refining laws in this manner, and it is not a right being taken away from you.
Specifically in this case, there are multiple provisions in the Public Order Act of 1986 (actually maybe a 1991 revision glancing at it now) to allow the police to forbid, restrict, and dissolve public processions and gatherings at their discretion, including for a failure to notify the police of the intent to gather. Police have long been able to use these as the basis to dissolve nuisance gatherings and protests which cause significant disruption or noise. Your right to peacefully gather and protest has never afforded you the right to cause a significant or sustained nuisance to others who also enjoy rights which the government must protect.
The way you've expressed this makes me think that you haven't actually read the detail. Here's what the Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee wrote in her letter to Rumble:
> However, we are also looking at [Brand's] use of social media, including on Rumble where he issued his pre-emptive response to the accusations made against him by The Sunday Times and Channel 4's Dispatches. While we recognise that Rumble is not the creator of the content published by Mr Brand, we are concerned that he may be able to profit from his content on the platform.
It is absolutely central to the interests of the select committee that Brand is talking about an ongoing police investigation which may turn into a prosecution, and making money from that pursuit, and that specific allegations relate to his time as an employee of the BBC, which is sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
But, either way, they did not ask that he be de-monetised, as you explicitly claimed:
> We would be grateful if you could confirm whether Mr Brand is able to monetise his content, including his videos relating to the serious accusations against him. If so, we would like to know whether Rumble intends to join YouTube in suspending Mr Brand's ability to earn money on the platform. We would also like to know what Rumble is doing to ensure that creators are not able to use the platform to undermine the welfare of victims of inappropriate and potentially illegal behaviour.
Finally, as a parliamentary select committee, DCMS specifically has a legal mandate to oversee and develop policy in areas such as broadcasting, press freedom/regulation, film, the arts, etc. -- which are all, to some extent, related to the context of the specific allegations against Brand and the committee's stated interest in those allegations.
FWIW "Reclaim The Net" cropped up in my Apple News+ feed today and after reading this very headline, I blocked the channel -- it's about as self-serving and myopic as it gets.
The headline of this post is self-evidently misleading: aside from falsely describing "MPs" (which ones?) as "pro-censorship" (to reasonably describe someone as such would, to my mind, require an individual having a specific track record of promoting "censorship" - whatever that is), it seems to simultaneously hold the position that X/Twitter is a bastion of free speech for refusing to answer the committee's questions, whilst YouTube – exercising the very same freedoms as X/Twitter to regulate its own platform and terms of use – is evil for de-monetising Brand.
I find the implication to such line of questioning to be rather obvious, unless there is something I'm missing? If this monetization in itself was a crime, for example (say it's a crime to profit from making public statements of this sort, for example) then I could understand that, but it seems far-fetched to me.
Maybe arguing in court that it's all performative?
Below are the relevant excerpts from their letter to Rumble. I see a z in 'monetising' which makes me think you're not from the UK? If so, spend two minutes Googling around terms like "UK parliament request for testimony" and "UK select committee writes to " and you will see that select committees are constantly* writing to individuals and companies requesting their input on things like this.
The tinfoil bozos on here try to make it seem sinister by describing MPs as "pro-censorship", and a large subset (like the most upvoted comment on this page!) appear to misrepresent facts (I won't link it but the top comment claims that government asked for Brand to be demonetized, which is empirically false), but this is the best idea we have on how government should work.
Civil servants and politicians cannot be experts in deeply specialised / technical topics whilst also running departments which oversee 200 disparate areas of public life. They therefore necessarily solicit a wide range of opinions and perspectives from outside experts to help them develop their thinking, influence policy, and generally to make better choices for the population.
> The Culture, Media and Sport Committee is raising questions with the broadcasters and production companies who previously employed Mr Brand to examine both the culture of the industry in the past and whether that culture still prevails today.
This is important. This Committee oversees the department which has responsibility for the arts, the BBC, broadcast, film, etc. It is their job to ensure that the BBC in particular is operating in a way which puts the best interests of taxpayers first, and the corporation has been uniquely terrible at safeguarding both employees and vulnerable people coming into close contact with those employees, so it's absolutely unremarkable that they are following up on Brand's conduct whilst he was at the BBC.
This paragraph explains why the Committee is concerning itself with Brand and the companies he worked with, one of which is essentially funded by the department.
> However, we are also looking at his use of social media, including on Rumble where he issued his pre-emptive response to the accusations made against him by The Sunday Times and Channel 4's Dispatches. While we recognise that Rumble is not the creator of the content published by Mr Brand, we are concerned that he may be able to profit from his content on the platform.
Brand's preemptive refutation of the accusations is a trigger meaning they want to understand the dynamics of his relationship with Rumble: he could be making money from content which impedes a police investigation, or an internal investigation at the BBC, or which intimidates others he may have abused. Rumble should be able to tell the Committee wht happens if he's convicted, or confesses, or if he doxxes a victim.
The letter is not as direct as it might be, but a concern the author seems to me to hold is similar to one I encountered recently when flicking through Netflix here in the US. One of the "trending" picks was a Russell Brand standup set. It makes sense that Brand being in the news might translate to an uptick in the popularity of his content, but if I were at DCMS I'd be very curious to understand what role, if any, Netflix plays in promulgating the content (does Netflix consider it 'trending' because lots of people are watching it, or are lots of people watching it because Netflix designates it as 'trending'?).
These are the kinds of things they seek to understand and influence.
> We would be grateful if you could confirm whether Mr Brand is able to monetise his content, including his videos relating to the serious accusations against him. If so, we would like to know whether Rumble intends to join YouTube in suspending Mr Brand's ability to earn money on the platform.
If there is pressure here, it seems to simply be to encourage companies to consider whether it's moral to allow someone facing multiple credible accusations of a crime to profit from discussing that crime. (I put it in the same category as people finding it repulsive that OJ Simpson made that $29.99 mail order VHS discussing Nicole.)
> We would also like to know what Rumble is doing to ensure that creators are not able to use the platform to undermine the welfare of victims of inappropriate and potentially illegal behaviour.
Translation: could you maybe update your terms so that content in which related parties discuss ongoing investigations into their conduct is not monetised? (Not preventing people from talking about it, but removing some incentives for weaponising the scrutiny.) Or could you let us know what safeguarding policies are in place if Brand's audience decides to dox the alleged victims? Could you let us know what constitutes 'libel' on your platform?
Far from trying to compel Rumble or Twitter to do anything, I see these letters as MPs understanding where their remit ends and private enterprise begins, and trying to influence rather than compel.
> If this monetization in itself was a crime, for example (say it's a crime to profit from making public statements of this sort, for example) then I could understand that, but it seems far-fetched to me.
They just want to understand. Rumble doesn't have a publicly available policy governing the way it treats users as they go from "credibly accused by serious journalists from two independent media organisations after an exhaustive years-long investigation with multiple pieces of corroborative documentary evidence and testimony" to "convicted of sexual assault", so it makes sense to ask. And part of the purpose here is that such companies have an internal discussion if they haven't formalised their thinking.
Indeed. The poster's legalese may well be valid, but the intent here is quite plain for all to see, as evidenced by youtube's response.
I'm trying to parse this: what do you mean by "YouTube's response"? Their decision to de-monetize Brand (which came before the letter and is entirely independent of it)? Or their response to the letter we're discussing (which they were not sent, and do not appear to have responded to?)?