I keep wondering if there's a regular reoccurrence of certain moral panics throughout human history. This one is a rerun of the same one from the 1990's (see "cancellation" and "political correctness" in higher education contexts), and it seems to coincide with nostalgia for the same period as Gen Y members are moving towards middle age, a period when political attitudes typically mutate towards conservation of the idealized youth. In this case, the representative "edgy" and "cool" dialectic, Gen X platitudic era-appropriate constants, typically disdainful of any perceived puritanical emanations.
I think you are correct in some sense. It is just that kids who grow up in this culture will learn how to navigate it properly, while older people struggle to adapt and find their voice. Now I know what it is like to feel old.
Steven crowder just got banned until the end of the year on YouTube. Second strike. Both for lgbtq jokes. 5 million subs. One more strikes and he's out.
Not sure how 5 million of his subscribers will feel after. To me it seems short sighted. Since this will just strengthen competitor platforms. I suppose will it lead to conservatives having to create their own internet infrastructure and banking system eventually if the bans continue.
These bans are ridiculous, and from multiple angles. First off humor is humor, and offensive humor is ethically and morally acceptable. Secondly, there is a totalizing attitude around the LGBTQ movement where you’re not allowed to disagree with ANY part of it (like puberty blockers for children or biological males in sports), or else you’re a bigot who is to be socially and economically marginalized or worse. Thirdly, censorship and deplatforming are fundamentally opposed to classically liberal values and are unacceptable practices in any free society.
I do hope there is an alternate ecosystem of infrastructure and utility services like search, social media, payments, and so on. However it will be hard due to capital barriers and network effects. Even if it happens, then what - do we just end up with a Balkanized America that breaks apart? Maybe that’s for the best but I am not sure.
Either way, the present reality is that all these megacorps (like Google/YouTube) are too big, protected from competition due to those barriers, and are just utilities masquerading as private innovation. They need to be broken up and regulated as utilities for society go work. But because that hasn’t happened, the government continues to outsource utility services to private companies who can discriminate based on political viewpoint and violate people’s freedom of speech and expression.
I don't really see how they are ridiculous. I'm familiar with this person's content and it's pretty much all cruel, hateful and spiteful "jokes" if you could even call them that. It's like the classmate who never learned to stop bullying your other gay classmate, except this is a grown adult doing it to make money online. I haven't been in school in many years but I still am disappointed on a daily basis at how some people just never learned to behave when this type of behavior would have gotten a 13 year old sent home and grounded. If I operated a video site, I personally would not want this type of content on it either. I'm sure you can see how a video service that aims to be used by families, children, in schools, etc, doesn't want to provide a platform for cruel and offensive content. The "totalizing" attitude is because people don't seem to learn the first time and the service operator doesn't really have a choice if they want to be firm about it, the parent comment even says this is the second time this person has been warned about this behavior. I don't see how it can be called "cancel culture" if multiple warnings have been given.
It also is somewhat offensive for me on a personal level to hear these shock jocks trying to politicize which team a trans child plays on or what medical treatments they might receive; those seem like they would be issues best left up to the child's fellow participants in that sport and the child's doctor, not some youtuber trying to build a name for themselves by generating controversy about things that don't even affect them.
> I don't see how it can be called "cancel culture" if multiple warnings have been given.
The number of warnings has nothing to do with it. It’s cancel culture because it involves censoring opinions and perspectives that disagree with those of the people in power - namely the activist progressives who lead and work at Google.
> I'm sure you can see how a video service that aims to be used by families, children, in schools, etc, doesn't want to provide a platform for cruel and offensive content.
No, I cannot see that, for many reasons. Those who are offended can choose not to click the video. They don’t need to ban it unless they’re afraid of truth and openness, and instead want to substitute authoritarianism in place of it.
> which team a trans child plays on or what medical treatments they might receive; those seem like they would be issues best left up to the child's fellow participants in that sport and the child's doctor, not some youtuber
This is just a long winded way of saying “trust those with power blindly and don’t question them”, especially as vague and unscientific activist medical approaches are corrupting neutral medical science. A man shouldn’t play in women’s sports because they have innate advantages and it makes the notion of women’s sports meaningless. A child shouldn’t be given invasive and irreversible treatments when they are still growing, changing, and very likely to grow out of phases. I find it offensive that challenging these irresponsible and dangerous practices is disallowed in an ostensibly free society.
Looking at this, I don't find your statements convincing and it doesn't appear to me that youtube is censoring these particular opinions and perspectives. Sorry. You may want to check your sources before you post any more comments about this. The difference with those videos and the person who was banned is he wasn't just expressing those views. From the few videos I've seen of that creator, his content seems to be exclusively focused on insult comedy made at the expense of minority groups. It's fine to disagree on policy but that kind of content is where it crosses the line into hate speech. I'm disappointed that some here felt the need to downvote my other comment, I don't really agree with republicans or democrats on this issue and so it's very hard for me to get a word in anywhere. It seems a bit hypocritical to be worried about "cancel culture" while burying my comments for giving my honest perspective.
>because it involves censoring opinions and perspectives that disagree with those of the people in power
I'm not talking about Google though, my point was that I would make exactly the same decision even if it were a small video site I was running with the same target audience, because that is what the customers ask for when you aim to build a family-friendly site. They don't want cruel and offensive content, they don't want porn, they don't want violence and gore, I could go on here. These aren't decisions made by anyone in power, they're decisions made by regular people like you and me.
>Those who are offended can choose not to click the video. They don’t need to ban it unless they’re afraid of truth and want to substitute authoritarianism in place of truth and openness.
That's not really an option as I don't think those customers would want to see those videos in the related videos at all, or see them come up in search results. Again, the customers have asked for this, so I can't see how you would call it authoritarianism. It's not like they don't know that the internet is filled with offensive content and porn, a lot of times people just don't want anything to do with it.
>This is just a long winded way of saying “trust those with power blindly and don’t question them”
I really don't understand how you got that. I'm talking about leaving it up to the child's parents, doctor, and school coaches who know the child and their family and know what's best for them, to all come together, ask questions and make an informed decision.
>especially as vague and unscientific activist medical approaches are corrupting neutral medical science.
I would advise against making these comments, this seems like something that is impossible to quantify in any meaningful way.
>A man shouldn’t play in women’s sports because they have innate advantages and it makes the notion of women’s sports meaningless.
I don't know what you mean exactly here, but I don't really agree; what I've noticed is that "men" and "women" is not well defined and it varies from sport to sport, so it's already somewhat meaningless. Some sports will rely on chemical testing, some sports will rely on body measurements, some sports will rely on physical testing, some sports are not very opinionated on it at all. I think you may be oversimplifying this. For your typical after school soccer team I don't see the problem if all the other players and the staff agree that someone can play on their team who may not fit the mold exactly, they can decide for themselves if they think the game will be fair.
>A child shouldn’t be given invasive and irreversible treatments when they are still growing, changing, and very likely to grow out of phases.
I hear what you're saying but sometimes children do need invasive treatments because of other medical issues they might have; for cases where the child is at risk of self-harm it can be very difficult to tell if it's a phase or if they need immediate treatment. It's not an easy decision to make, ultimately it is up to the parents what medical care their children receive.
>I find it offensive that challenging these irresponsible and dangerous practices is disallowed in an ostensibly free society.
I don't understand why you're saying these are disallowed. I have heard similar comments made throughout conservative media over the last year. I've actually heard them so overwhelmingly coming from conservative media that I haven't even heard many opposing viewpoints because the noise from that seems to drown out what actual parents of trans children are saying. In fact your views are so pervasive that polling data seems to suggest they are shared almost unanimously by Republicans in the US: https://news.gallup.com/poll/350174/mixed-views-among-americ...
Even democrats seem to be pretty divided on the issue, so I'm very confused as to what you're looking at.
I don't really agree, I can't recall any controversial videos of his that weren't cruel and bordering on hate speech. This is not "bit of a dick sometimes" it was some really nasty and mean-spirited stuff aimed at minorities. These weren't one-off comments either, they were entire videos. I don't think you can chalk that up to ideological lines.
I don't know about this latest video but the previous video that got this person banned was a video suggesting that trans women are rapists using a crude stereotype of trans women. I've also seen a number of other comments made by him attacking trans women that apparently he was warned for earlier. If he was aware of these issues, he doesn't seem to have made an effort to learn why this pattern of behavior is offensive.
I think everyone knows this but most don't openly speak against these kinds of things because of the want to please the black swan, exactly how Nassim Taleb explained it
I find myself completely withdrawing from all social engagement at work because of this. our company even has a program for reporting micro-aggressions. So I basically refrain to talk about anything that is not work related at work.
