Today’s blacklisted American: YouTube shuts down conservative channel during its annual conference
No free speech for conservatives on YouTube!
Blacklists are back and YouTube’s got ’em! The American Conservative Union (ACU) was banned by YouTube this week, a ban that coincided precisely with the ACU’s annual convention, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), thus preventing it from airing content from the event.
The ACU, which hosts the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), received “a strike” on their account from YouTube on July 9, preventing them from uploading new content for a week. This includes ACU’s CPAC 2021 Part 2 in Dallas, Texas, and Trump’s CPAC speech scheduled for Sunday, the organization said in a statement.
In addition, YouTube unilaterally deleted a CPAC video featuring Trump’s announcement of a lawsuit against big tech companies like Google and YouTube for their censorship of conservative speakers. As the Google company routinely does when it blackballs conservative content it does not like, it vaguely claimed there was “‘medical misinformation” about COVID-19 during Trump’s speech, without specifying the exact statements that gave offense.
The old ACLU motto, when that organization believed in free speech, was “the answer to bad speech is more speech.” Thus, rather than censor anyone from saying anything that YouTube doesn’t like or disagrees with, the platform could highlight alternative statements by others. That would still be unethical and biased, but at least it would not be engaging in censorship and thuggery.
Nah. Companies like Google and YouTube aren’t into free speech and open debate. They are for oppression and rule without opposition. They are afraid of open debate, because probably they know they would lose the debate quite badly in such circumstances. Instead, their answer to anyone who says anything they don’t like is to move to silence them.
All this provides more reason to stop using Google as your search engine. It takes literally ten seconds to make any one of several more secure search engines your default, such as DuckDuckGo, MyPrivateSearch, or Qwant. People should also get off Gmail and find another email service.
The goal in all this is not so much to put these oppressive companies out of business, but to create viable competitors. Competition always helps the little guy, and makes the big guy have second thoughts about doing evil, as it might come back to bite them.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
No free speech for conservatives on YouTube!
Blacklists are back and YouTube’s got ’em! The American Conservative Union (ACU) was banned by YouTube this week, a ban that coincided precisely with the ACU’s annual convention, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), thus preventing it from airing content from the event.
The ACU, which hosts the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), received “a strike” on their account from YouTube on July 9, preventing them from uploading new content for a week. This includes ACU’s CPAC 2021 Part 2 in Dallas, Texas, and Trump’s CPAC speech scheduled for Sunday, the organization said in a statement.
In addition, YouTube unilaterally deleted a CPAC video featuring Trump’s announcement of a lawsuit against big tech companies like Google and YouTube for their censorship of conservative speakers. As the Google company routinely does when it blackballs conservative content it does not like, it vaguely claimed there was “‘medical misinformation” about COVID-19 during Trump’s speech, without specifying the exact statements that gave offense.
The old ACLU motto, when that organization believed in free speech, was “the answer to bad speech is more speech.” Thus, rather than censor anyone from saying anything that YouTube doesn’t like or disagrees with, the platform could highlight alternative statements by others. That would still be unethical and biased, but at least it would not be engaging in censorship and thuggery.
Nah. Companies like Google and YouTube aren’t into free speech and open debate. They are for oppression and rule without opposition. They are afraid of open debate, because probably they know they would lose the debate quite badly in such circumstances. Instead, their answer to anyone who says anything they don’t like is to move to silence them.
All this provides more reason to stop using Google as your search engine. It takes literally ten seconds to make any one of several more secure search engines your default, such as DuckDuckGo, MyPrivateSearch, or Qwant. People should also get off Gmail and find another email service.
The goal in all this is not so much to put these oppressive companies out of business, but to create viable competitors. Competition always helps the little guy, and makes the big guy have second thoughts about doing evil, as it might come back to bite them.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Free speech has always been a red herring. At least the lolbertarians at Samizdata finally said the quiet part out loud:
“Free speech was, after all, built on the right to blaspheme.”
I de-Googled years ago after some incident that I no longer even recall (might have been prop 8 related – or that could be why I got rid of Netscape). The exception: I have two gmail accounts. They’re both very old and well known (to people who know me). Changing them would be painful, but I’m about to move, so that seems like a good reason to start a new email address – even if I don’t immediately decommission the old ones.
Anyone have a suggestion for an alternative? Work uses Office360, so outlook.com is a known-to-me option, but is Microsoft really any better than Google?