In the last 24 hours.
We've seen YouTube read it and Twitch take
some major steps to enforce their terms of
service and weed out what they believe to
be hateful content, content that encourages
violence, content that violates their terms
of service.
And once again, conservatives are going absolutely
cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, as I like to say,
claiming that this is all about targeting
conservatives, that every platform on the
Internet other than what's that new one parlor
or something like that, arguing that every
platform on the Internet or just about has
an tie, conservative bias.
Everybody's biased against conservatives.
Now, this may be a tough pill to swallow for
the American right, but most political violence
is right wing.
And I'm going to get to the details of that
later.
And I know, like, you know, they talk about
an and Teef has never killed anyone, to my
knowledge, ecoterrorism.
Right.
Like you.
It's not untrue that we have seen political
violence from the left, but the vast majority
of the political violence and the violent
rhetoric is on the right.
That's just the reality.
And that means that if you have a policy as
a platform which says we don't allow violent
rhetoric, we don't allow encouraging violence
against groups of people based on membership
in a protected class.
If you enforce those policies, by definition,
you're going to sweep up more conservatives.
Now, if the policy was one that either implicitly
or explicitly targeted a protected class based
on race, nationality, et cetera, they might
have a case.
But what you have here is merely a reflection
of the reality that the vast majority of violent
language, violent rhetoric and actual violence
is on the right.
Now, I'm going to get to that a little bit
later.
First, what happened?
Who was banned?
Number one, Donald Trump's own Twitch channel
was temporarily suspended.
Hateful content is not allowed on Twitch.
The Trump Twitch channel broadcast that old
speech Trump made about when Mexico sends
us its people, they're not sending their best.
They're sending, you know, rapists and drug
addicts and whatever.
They rebroadcast that.
Also, they broadcast.
Trump's Tulsa, Oklahoma rally for a week or
two ago.
And there also Trump told this story about
it's one o'clock in the morning and a bad
arm.
Brei, as Donald Trump likes to say, of course,
that the word is pronounced Umbra.
But as Trump says on Brei, you call nine one
one.
It was this kind of like violent imagery about
Hispanics that also apparently violating Twitch's
policies and which says this violated terms
of service and good for them.
I mean, there's absolutely no controversy
there whatsoever.
Read it banned a controversial pro Trump sub
Reddit called The Donald.
It's a cesspool of some of the worst pro Trump
propaganda around.
And read it said that sub Reddit promotes
hate based on identity or vulnerability.
They regularly post spam, as well as malicious
attempts to interfere with other Reddit communities.
And thus the Donald sub Reddit was caught
up in the ban.
Also, by the way, it wasn't only the right
in this case, the ostensibly left wing sub
Reddit, Chapo, Chapo, Chapo, I don't even
know Trap House was also caught up in it.
And then sort of like the really big news
over on YouTube.
YouTube has banned conspiracy theorist.
Stefon Molin, you white nationalist, David
Duke, white nationalist Richard Spencer and
some others.
The reason they're according to YouTube is
that all of those channels are regularly violating
hate speech, policy and policies that protect
specific classes of people from targeted discrimination.
Stefon Molin, you actually posted a hilarious
tweet in response to this where he said, quote,
YouTube just suspended the largest philosophy
conversation the world has ever known.
Philosophy.
Yeah, that's a hilarious way to describe it.
But needless to say, this is happening.
So, first of all, really, Trump should probably
be banned from Twitter.
I mean, if you just want to do a cold, unbiased
reading of Twitch of Twitter's policies, Trump
shared, you know, the white power video on
Sunday and deleted it.
Trump regularly encourages the bullying of
individuals on Twitter.
Clearly, Trump violates Twitter's guidelines.
And if Twitter was to take those seriously,
Trump would have been banned.
That hasn't happened.
Important to note, no.
Number two, you're seeing all of the same
people who insist companies should be allowed
to do whatever.
Nobody should be forced to bake a cake for
a gay wedding.
All of those same people are now saying the
government should force twitch.
YouTube, Reddit, whatever.
Those companies should be forced to allow
other people's hate speech to exist there.
Now they'll come back and say hate speech
is in the eye of the beholder.
OK, well, you don't run YouTube.
YouTube runs YouTube.
So what matters is what is hate speech?
From the perspective of YouTube now, I've
sometimes suffered at the hand of YouTube's
whims.
You all know that when it came to demonetization
on a number of different issues, when it came
to YouTube, couldn't tell the difference between
an actual white nationalist channel versus
me criticizing white nationalism.
Like, listen, I. I don't pretend that I am
not pushing for what would always be best
for me.
I may not agree with YouTube's decisions,
but how do you say YouTube must be forced
to publish what they believe to be hate speech?
My personal view is that more speech is generally
better than less speech.
And yet, how can these companies not have
terms of service and be allowed to enforce
them?
They can and they are enforcing them now to
go back to what I said at the beginning.
The reality is that most political violence
and hateful rhetoric is on the right.
Doesn't mean that it doesn't exist on the
left.
I know people like to talk about antifa, etc.,
but we have to talk about proportion.
Look at the Anti Defamation League's report
on murder and extremism in 2019.
Nineteen 76 percent of politically murders
resulting from political extremism, 76 percent
where right wingers of various flavors, three
percent were left wingers, including anarchists
and black nationalists.
I think there's a debate to be had over whether
black nationalism is really on the left.
I would argue it's probably not, but OK.
And then 20 percent were Islamic extremists.
And again, there's debate over whether Islamic
extremists are on the left or right.
I believe they're on the right.
When you believe that your religion should
be the law of the land and you're willing
to kill over your religious beliefs.
That's not any kind of left wing belief that
I've ever seen.
But regardless, these are not small margins.
The numbers are ultra clear.
So when YouTube or Twitch or whoever, say
we're going to sweep up and enforce our policy
when it comes to violent rhetoric targeting
of people based on identity, etc., of course,
more right wingers are going to be caught
in it because that type of content is disproportionately
coming from that side of the political spectrum.
If you agree with me, if you disagree with
me, I want to hear from you.
I'm on Twitter at David Pakman.
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