> I don't dispute that Google can terminate Brand's account under current law. My point is that the law should be changed so that they can not do that purely on the basis of accusations.
Why?
> The rule of law requires that the law and the legal process is effective.
Sure.
> If the consequences of accusations are no longer primarily decided in court, then the law becomes ineffective and even more unequal than it already is.
If the scope of the law is expanded so that every change in relations between two persons not resulting from a mutual agreement to change requires going to court, the resulting social friction will make the law more ineffective where it is.
If Brand wants to only enter into business agreeements that are framed so that the only behavioral reason for termination by the other side is a ruling by a court that he violated some law, he can insist on those terms, but that's a expensive proposition for the other party and society, and I see it as absolutely undesirable that such conditions be a legal default or, worse, effectively obligatory as a matter of law.
>If the scope of the law is expanded so that every change in relations between two persons not resulting from a mutual agreement to change requires going to court, the resulting social friction will make the law more ineffective where it is.
Not every relation between two persons is between a globally dominant platform or infrastructure provider and a user of such a platform. The threshold for global gatekeepers must be higher.
Public figures are of course subject to the court of public opinion. That's what they signed up for. But there has to be a limit to the _legal_ blast radius of accusations reflecting the uncertainty of any accusations being true.
Russell Brand is not just a user of YouTube. He reportedly makes $1M/mo on that platform. He got demonetized, not kicked off or censored. Presumably his GMail account still works, and he can still upload to YouTube. The "dominant global platform" chose to not show ads on Brand's videos, which protects their advertisers from blowback and a bad look, and has the consequence of cutting into Russell Brand's income. Brand has a contractual relationship with YouTube that includes the possibility of demonetization (no ads on his videos) if he does something illegal or embarrassing to YouTube or their advertisers or other users. That's what happened. He's not the victim of a malign global infrastructure provider.
There's no "legal blast radius," just one celebrity who got his wings clipped because of credible accusations made in the British press -- a TV documentary ran about Brand's alleged sexual assaults. Piers Morgan tried to discuss this on his show (which you can watch on YouTube). This is not the first time Russell Brand has got into trouble with media , or with his treatment of women. He had to resign from his show on BBC 2 and left the BBC paying fines for his antics.
Edit: I just checked YouTube. Russell Brand's channel is still there, videos still available. His About page points to Rumble, where he presumably can still get paid by advertisements. He also has Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, locals.com channels running, and a book for sale on Amazon. Most of us, most content producers on YouTube, can only dream of Brand's level of exposure (and his income). And most of us won't have credible allegations of rape made by multiple women.
> The threshold for global gatekeepers must be higher.
Maybe there are some aspects of Google’s operations that ought to be public utilities, but I have a lot of trouble seeing YouTube as one of them. It may be dominant in its particular structure (or some aspects of it, since YouTube does lots of different things in one platform, many of which have many strong competitors), but I don’t really see the case that it is essential. There’s lots of channels for video distribution with slightly different models.
> But there has to be a limit to the _legal_ blast radius of accusations reflecting the uncertainty of any accusations being true.
There is, in that there are kinds of sanctions that private entities can not impose.
Why?
> The rule of law requires that the law and the legal process is effective.
Sure.
> If the consequences of accusations are no longer primarily decided in court, then the law becomes ineffective and even more unequal than it already is.
If the scope of the law is expanded so that every change in relations between two persons not resulting from a mutual agreement to change requires going to court, the resulting social friction will make the law more ineffective where it is.
If Brand wants to only enter into business agreeements that are framed so that the only behavioral reason for termination by the other side is a ruling by a court that he violated some law, he can insist on those terms, but that's a expensive proposition for the other party and society, and I see it as absolutely undesirable that such conditions be a legal default or, worse, effectively obligatory as a matter of law.