I don't know why they're even responding to the request to be honest.
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 UK is not a free society and has not been for a long time. We long since sacrificed our civil rights at the altar of various boogiemen: criminals, terrorists, immigrants, nonces, rapists.
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.
The parent you're replying to does not appear to have read the letter in question. Have you?
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"!
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".
I have nothing to add, but to say thank you for a highly detailed and well thought-out/written response. This isn't the place for wildly misleading opinions masquerading as facts (such as the one you rebutted).
Thanks for taking the time to say this. I'm trying to get better at explicitly encouraging positive behaviours (instead of just wading into arguments like this!), and you've inspired me to recommit.
If you dismissed my post as 'bullshit' and think that Brand not having been convicted somehow diminishes my argument, then I suspect you have not read it.
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.
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).
You've got some good ones and some crazy ones there, probably more good than crazy. Certainly a lot I'm sympathetic to.
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.
I cherrypicked two to illustrate my point, but if you think there are especially strong examples here which you'd like me to address, do feel free and I'm happy to go into detail on any of them!
> 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.
> 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 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.
So it's simply them wanting to find out if he is monetizing that specific content?
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?
> the intent [of DCMS' letter] 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?)?
> So it's simply them wanting to find out if he is monetizing that specific content?
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.
Many politicians and elites in the UK seem to believe that the only way to weather the storm of a declining society is to take away the rights of its citizenry. It's a shallow attempt at self preservation by the rich and powerful and that's simply not going to work in the modern era.
The only thing that will work and will protect their cushioned existence is if they work to improve the lives of citizens, like not in token ways, perhaps not even monetarily, but meaningfully.
Few are buying into these nonsensical 'safety' arguments and the good will of everyone is being stretched.
I hate to break it to you, person of the people, but anyone with your raw intellect (proxies: commenting on Hacker News, above average vocabulary and English proficiency, somewhat thoughtful opinions about abstract notions such as civil rights and sociology) is axiomatically an elite.
(What do you consider the 'elite' to be, btw?)
> in the UK seem to believe that the only way to weather the storm of a declining society is to take away the rights of its citizenry.
Is somebody taking away citizens' rights? Which ones? How did you read this letter and conclude that it was sensible to begin discussing the erosion of civil rights? Did you read the letter? Do you understand what a select committee is?
> It's a shallow attempt at self preservation by the rich and powerful and that's simply not going to work in the modern era.
I'd say it's working for them very well so far. The commoners may no longer believe the bullshit excuses, but they've still proved powerless to prevent the erosion of their freedoms. The rich and powerful are only getting richer and more powerful while the gap between them and everyone else widens. You call it "a shallow attempt at self preservation" but they're not just surviving, they're thriving.
X > Youtube on this. Demonetizing on suspicion makes slander overpowered. This is an example of the quality of the signal being improved by politically diverse media ownership. Having media moguls who are ideologically disaligned with one another makes for less centrally controlled speech.
This is definitely right. It's amazing how quickly presumption of innocence goes out the window when the accused is from the enemy tribe. In this case, it's a person who hasn't even been formally indicted, much less convicted beyond a reasonable doubt. Do people really think that any sort of public accusation should be enough to have you punished, or does that only apply to people they don't like?
Removing someones ability to defend themselves against serious allegations by cutting them off from their ability to make money to pay for said defense undermines the integrity of the legal system itself. It's a thumb on the scale. These people believe in nothing.
> cutting them off from their ability to make money to pay for said defense undermines the integrity of the legal system
If that were happening you'd be right! But the good news is, since apparently you haven't read or understood the link you're commenting on, neither X, nor the politicians in question, is doing that.
Or put another way: the premise you lead with is false. Try again.
That the situation you describe, in which "those people" (Rumble, X, DCMS), either demonetized or solicited the demonetizing of Russell Brand's content. That did not happen, as the original link sets out very clearly.
> Consequently, Dinenage had sought an audience with Linda Yaccarino, X’s CEO, expressing apprehensions regarding the comedian’s ability to monetize his content on the platform amid the accusations. She also queried whether Musk had influenced the decision-making process pertaining to Brand’s case, given the billionaire owner’s public defense of the comedian.
In addition to the article linked within the article that details the letter Dame Dinenage sent to other platforms asking whether they would demonetize him, with the implication it was the governments strong preference. Consider whether your comments improve the discourse or undermine it.
> Removing someones ability to defend themselves against serious allegations by cutting them off from their ability to make money to pay for said defense undermines the integrity of the legal system itself. It's a thumb on the scale. These people believe in nothing.
Is supported by this citation:
> Consequently, Dinenage had sought an audience with Linda Yaccarino, X’s CEO, expressing apprehensions regarding the comedian’s ability to monetize his content on the platform amid the accusations. She also queried whether Musk had influenced the decision-making process pertaining to Brand’s case, given the billionaire owner’s public defense of the comedian.
You said:
> cutting them off from their ability to make money
What happened:
> expressing apprehensions
Consider whether your comments reflect reality or undermine it ;)
> Removing someones ability to defend themselves against serious allegations by cutting them off from their ability to make money to pay for said defence
is not how the uk courts work(ed) thats what legal aid is for. granted in practice now its not the case, but for any crown court there is still legal aid for most cases.
Almost as ridiculous as trying to argue that anyone in this situation is "preemptively cutting someone's livelihood ahead of a battle".
If you read the letter and believe that the government is requesting, or that X and Rumble are agreeing to, the de-monetisation of Brand's content, then we should address a reading comprehension challenge. If you can see that this -- "preemptively cutting someone's livelihood" -- is definitely not happening, then I would encourage you to more precisely convey what you mean, because this attempt almost perfectly expresses the opposite of reality.
"thats what legal aid is for" - public defenders are famously underpaid and overworked in most environs. If you rely on them for your defense it will be very poor.
Russell is a tank and handling the situation in a very mature manner. He is still doing his show and not talking about the allegations whatsoever. If it goes to court then he will address it as it comes,
as he should.
This is a pathetic which hunt by the UK, and any platform giving in to nonsense like this is a serious red flag.
Is YouTube going to fire its CEO if I make an allegation against him/her? How is me doing that any different than Russell’s current situation?
What’s with the weird scapegoating and not respecting “innocent until proven guilty” …
There are weird lines here in general. The court of public opinion plays a major role in where major advertisers are willing to spend their money, regardless of guilt or proof of guilt.
But should we treat platform monetization the same way? I hope not, but I can see why there are advocates on that side.
> Is YouTube going to fire its CEO if I make an allegation against him/her? How is me doing that any different than Russell’s current situation?
I really do get what you're saying, but you making an accusation against youtube's CEO would be very different from Russell’s current situation
For the comparison to work your accusation would need to be only one of several similar allegations, made by multiple people, with varying degrees of evidence, covering a span of many years. Bonus points if you and the other accusers had a Channel 4 documentary released about your accusations.
Don't care for the guy but I believe bad people should be allowed to make money. I have an issue with advertisers bullying platforms to remove bad guys, but that's the way it works.
It's reasonable for advertisers to care about where their ads appear and what content they're associated with. It's been part of placement strategy for as long as modern advertising has existed. Magazines/broadcasts/websites naturally need to be sensitive to that because advertisers are ultimately their clients.
It's far less reasonable for governments to use their authority to intervene between those parties, at least without clear legal justification and prior exercise of due process.
> It's reasonable for advertisers to care about where their ads appear and what content they're associated with.
It's reasonable for them to care, but it's less reasonable that anyone else care about their concerns.
Advertisers are the clients, but they also need something to attract our eyeballs before they can hijack our attention with their shitty ads. Media is a lot more consolidated than the ad industry and they have a strong enough position to push back. All media has to say is "if you pull your ads we'll never run another ad for your product in any of our magazines/broadcasts/websites again"
There's zero reason why anyone should assume that just because an ad is shown in a magazine it indicates total approval of the full contents of that magazine anyway.
I don't associate companies with whatever random things their ads appear next to, I don't even remember it. I'm pretty sure this is also true for 99.9% of other people. This brand safety stuff is just an excuse for woke marketing staffers to feel like they're "making a difference" by attacking people and companies they don't like.
> This brand safety stuff is just an excuse for woke marketing staffers to feel like they're "making a difference"
The incentive structures are clear: you do nothing and maybe get fired if your company gets embroiled in a controversy due to the placement of those ads, or you pull your ads and spend that budget in another channel, and worse case nothing will happen to you, and best case you'll be praised for proactive thinking. Woke or not, I'd imagine most people would choose the latter; the former is mostly downside with limited upside.
Marketers/advertisers have clearly felt different about this forever. There's really no doubt that advertisers leaned on newspapers to have certain stories "above the fold" or to not carry or diminish other stories.
I'd say that advertisers are in a good place to know whether people do or don't notice what ads are next to content, or vice versa.
I do notice ads and assume some minimal endorsement of content by the advertisers - we are constantly assured that Internet ads are at least demographically targeted.
> I don't associate companies w with whatever random things their ads appear next to, I don't even remember it.
Of course you don't. You're watching things you're comfortable with and so you have no complaint about an advertiser's association with it.
> I'm pretty sure this is also true for 99.9% of other people. This brand safety stuff is just an excuse for woke marketing staffers to feel like they're "making a difference" by attacking people and companies they don't like.
Holding advertisers accountable for their placement, and distributors accountable for their catalog, predates "woke culture" by well over a century. Most "woke culture" activists in the US grew up seeing it aggressively deployed by "family oriented" activist groups in 1970's - 2000's era and they saw it be extremely effective at influencing what was available on TV, in print, in cinemas, and on music shelves because it threatened revenue and scared capitalists. And those "family groups" learned it from the anti-communists of the post-WWII era, etc, etc.
It's not new, it's not "woke", and history suggests that it does have material impact on media, culture, and business.
>I have an issue with advertisers bullying platforms to remove bad guys, but that's the way it works.
Yes, you'd think in 2023, platform companies could just disassociate advertisers with channels rather than just kicking someone off the platform. You don't want your ads on Brand's channel? Just uncheck the "show ads on this channel" box.
I'm fairly certain that's available, but companies want people completely silenced and use their advertising money as leverage to do so, which is significantly more insidious.
> yeah, misleading people on the internet is big business
So what? In America, unless you violate FDA or SEC (or similar) agencies, or are slandering or libelling, its not illegal. Also, who is the arbiter of what is "true" in your comment above? Not everything has a fact based logical answer that is generally accepted. Should pastors be kicked off YT for "misleading" people about heaven? Free speech protects EVERYONE's right to speak because from someone else's point of view, you are the one that is misleading someone.
Also, in terms of Brand, or other cases, an allegation can be settled in many courts. Once adjudicated, it is appropriate to consider action.
I was personally affected and have a very nuanced thoughts about this and policy generally. However, they are not outside the spirit of what I said above? Purdue did run afoul of FDA guidelines. Regardless, US drug policy is very broken.
I'm being flippant but I stand by my point. I think your line of thinking is what leads to things like the DSA in Europe. Laws already exist so when you say "bad people" who are you referring to? People breaking laws but they haven't been charged? Or people you personally are defining as morally bad?
Are you saying YouTube is a public utility like telephones? To me it's an application that could be replaced by another application one day. Not necessarily Rumble but maybe something else.
But if you don't think it's a utility, it would be strange to believe they should be regulated like one.
Land line telephones got replaced by cell phones. That didn't make land lines less of a utility. Anything could be replaced somewhere down the road.
You don't really have a choice with regards to your YouTube usage, currently. There isn't anything near YouTube, and due to it's currently-established presence, we won't realistically see it getting replaced any time soon.
Would you have a problem with "Please watch this ad for samketchup's product before watching this blogger's pro-Hamas video!"? Remember, free speech means the blogger is allowed to say what they say...
Not the GP poster, but I would honestly be okay with that because I actually believe in free speech. As we discovered over the last 2 weeks, though, many colleges (including at least half of the ivy league) are also okay with pro-Hamas rallies -- not because they believe in free speech, but because they've chosen a side.
> As we discovered over the last 2 weeks, though, many colleges (including at least half of the ivy league) are also okay with pro-Hamas rallies -- not because they believe in free speech, but because they've chosen a side.
Were the rallies actually pro-Hamas, or pro-Palestine?
That's a fair question. I'm sure some attendees are pro-Palestine, but many of the important organizers might not be. I've seen a few things over the last 2 weeks that led me to this impression:
* While speaking at an off-campus event, Cornell professor Russell Rickford described the massacre of Israelis as "exhilarating" and "energizing". You can find plenty of citations (including video) by Googling his name; most of them come from right-wing news sources, but unfortunately the liberal newspapers didn't deem this worth mentioning.
* Many examples of the protesters chanting "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free". Wikipedia actually has an article about this phrase, which originates from before Gaza and the West Bank were controlled by Israel. In other words, the term "Palestine" referred to something other than West Bank/Gaza when that slogan was originated. In the true meaning of that phrase, "Palestine" refers to the entire region of which modern-day Israel is a subset, and "free" means "no Israel". All of this lines up with the Hamas worldview.
* Black Lives Matter tweeted a picture saying "I stand with Palestine" that had a picture of a man on a paraglider. [1] That's a reference to Hamas terrorists using paragliders to cross checkpoints at the Gaza border, and then murdering innocents (including women, children, and babies). Again, the words-as-written on that tweet just reference "Palestine" while the picture makes it perfectly clear who they really stand with. Also, I'm sorry for citing exclusively right-wing sources. I swear this really happened, and is being reported correctly here; it's just that liberal sources won't cover it.
You could kind of excuse American protesters for #2. I like to think that most Americans who sympathize with Palestine do so on the basic grounds of "everyone is entitled to personal freedom, dignity, and a place to call home." It all gets muddy when you understand the history and how they got here, but who in America really knows hardly any of that (even recent events)?
#1 and #3 are just bizarre. You have to have a seriously fucked-up world view to excuse what Hamas did on Saturday, regardless of anything and everything Israel did prior to that.
Well, it was poor choice of words since you can't expect mobs with pitchforks to understand nuance, but if I can interpret his words favorabily to him, the exhiliration is not because some Israeli grandmas and babies were being butchered, but because; imagine a dog that's been kept in a small cage and abused for many years, wouldn't you expect it to hate its owner, and wouldn't you expect it to bite the owner, if given the chance; well, finally it's gotten a chance.
To expand on "poor choice of words"/"nuance", yeah ok, I agree with you to a degree, being exhilirated rather than horrified does seem to me he's taking the deaths for granted. Here's your whataboutism: it seems some of the "Hate Israel" camp take the Israeli deaths for granted, just like some of the "Hate Hamas" camp take the Palestinian deaths for granted and justify these with "Well, what can you do if Hamas hides among civilians?"/"It's Hamas' fault anyway, not IDFs!" and deaths painful to family and friends are just summarized as "collateral damage".
Twitter's free speech ideals are arbitrary at best. Asking Twitter to take action before this man will eventually be convinced is wrong, but portraying Twitter as some kind of free speech activist when Musk will ban and block as he sees fit when people are mean to him is just wrong.
From what I can tell this has very little to do with free speech in the first place, this is more about a company entering a business partnership with a man under investigation for sexual crimes and stalking. They're not asking Twitter to ban him, just to (re)consider their position on doing business with him. Twitter decides per account if they can or can't make money by tweeting, so their decision in this regard do reflect on the company.
Brand having proven to be a conspiracy nutjob during COVID should be enough reason for any business not to to business with him, but Musk does seem to attract a certain crowd.
I can't say I'm very surprised by Twitter's response other than the fact they responded in the first place; I thought Twitter fired their PR team during the mass exodus when Musk took over.
What's the likelihood that pharmaceutical companies paid his accusers due to his anti-pharmaceutical media appearances? The timing is extremely coincidental.
They do not need to. You only need one journalist from a newspaper to investigate him and find the accusers and report on it. You do not even need to pay them for it just tip them off.
In this context probably people saw his start rising and checked if they could find some dirt on him. Or one of victims saw him get famous and contacted a journalist.
It looks expedient but his increased coverage could have simply triggered the research and now it looks like they only did it because of his covid message.
No need to speculate, the accusers said specifically that they "came forward" because of the popularity of his YouTube channel. It was printed in the Times. The fact that some people still listen to them after that is a damning indictment of how evil #believeallwomen actually is. If they can't be bothered reporting accusations until there political reasons to do so they should automatically be found guilty of slander, imo.
> No need to speculate, the accusers said specifically that they "came forward" because of the popularity of his YouTube channel.
Sure but if you think that she is getting paid then you might not trust what she is saying.
> The fact that some people still listen to them after that is a damning indictment of how evil #believeallwomen actually is.
The believe all women phrase was stupid the moment it got uttered. Only extremists actually believe it. They should have said listen to all women but not believe everything blindly. Most people can get behind listening to victims when they come forward.
> If they can't be bothered reporting accusations until there political reasons to do so they should automatically be found guilty of slander, imo.
Their motives do not matter to me if they tell the truth. If he is a predator he should face punishment for his crimes. But until a court convicts him he is innocent and has a right to a fair trial.
Not very likely? I mean sure, it's theoretically possible, but like all conspiracies it requires a lot of people to keep a very juicy secret perfectly, so... probably not.
The number of people previously well disposed towards pharmaceutical companies that are now not because of Russell Brand probably doesn't have the boards quaking in their boots either - the likely shareholder overlap is not high.
> moreover, the evidence of him being a utter shite predates him going off the deepend by quite some way.
When I was a lad, we still had this weird concept in the UK's various legal systems of "innocent until proven guilty". The pressure to end his sources of income in the absence of any kind of legitimate justice process, especially from elected officials, is pretty shameful, and I say this as someone who can't stand him either.
Sadly, if it were true, I wouldn't be surprised. Brand has made a lot of enemies out of powerful people with his political commentary. Assange did the same thing and IIRC, he was also accused of rape.
Actually Assange was charged with rape for failing to take an STD test after consensual sex, the 'victim' came at him awhile after the one night stand.
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.