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.
Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!
From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.
“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of founder of the Mars Society.
All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. The ebook can also be purchased direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.
Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from me (hardback $24.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $5.00). Just email me at zimmerman @ nasw dot org.
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.
Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!
From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.
“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of founder of the Mars Society.
All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. The ebook can also be purchased direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.
Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from me (hardback $24.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $5.00). Just email me at zimmerman @ nasw dot org.
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?