Is free speech for everyone, including Russell Brand?

[Appalonia]

Firstly I want to say I 100% believe the victims and think he should be held accountable for what he's done. But the demonetising of his YouTube channel, and being basically scrubbed from all media channels doesn't sit well with me. And, this is creating a massive backlash online from the many pp who already think these allegations have only come out now as ' The Establishment ' doesn't like what he's saying.

So many women have been 'cancelled' for saying things like men aren't women and women need safe spaces ( JKR ) and more recently Roisin Murphy for objecting to puberty blockers. It's tricky, but if we believe in free speech for us, shouldn't it be the same for everyone?

^^ This.

If you make an argument that something is vital purely because it provides an income then this is where it takes you.

@lemmein - they aren’t accusers. They are women detailing their experiences to investigative journalists who researched, fact checked and ran it through lawyers for three years before publishing / broadcasting.

There is no suggestion at any point they were paid, and the journalists went to them, they didn’t go to the media.

And just like Savile, once it’s been put in the public domain many others are coming forward with their experiences of this powerful, litigious man.

However, companies (who are not someone's direct employer) are fully within their rights to choose who they decide to promote or monetise.

This is where we disagree.

Why do you think they have such a right to judge a person for anything other than the content they create on that platform? For example, I think it was disgraceful that Trump was booted off of Twitter.

Platforms are custodians of public discourse, the world has changed and they now have enormous power, they need to grow up and take responsibility for that enormous power and interfere as little as possible in public discourse. Employees of YouTube do not have some mystical moral superiority with bestows upon them moral authority to police human thought and expression, just because the are good at tech and they inadvertently found themselves with that kind of power in their hands.

letter from the parliamentary committee urging platforms to demonetise his content should concern us all.

I agree with this though.

I think MPs are well within their rights to express an opinion on the alleged actions of RB and even to express a personal opinion on decisions to monetise or not monetise his content (for example, on their own social media channels or in interviews).

However, I strongly disagree with MPs formally using the machinery of Parliament to do this if there is no criminal charge. I think Parliament needs to create some strong guidance on this matter.

However, I strongly disagree with MPs formally using the machinery of Parliament to do this if there is no criminal charge. I think Parliament needs to create some strong guidance on this matter.

It's a very dangerous, slippery slope to start going down. Back to the social credit issue, officially 'no-platforming' a person who may not have committed any crime whatsoever (not necessarily talking about Brand here), but whose opinions may simply not be considered 'kind' or 'proper' is horrifying.

This. My Guardian-reading family think I've been radicalised, especially when I said Farage shouldn't have been debanked.

They did concede, eventually, that debanking Farage and continuing to bank oligarchs isn't a moral position, and that virtue-signalling is pointless shite. And that one day virtue may well mean 'not you'...

Bloody hate this timeline. People I value thinking I've turned into some mad gammon because I'm questioning who I'd always thought of as The Goodies.

Yes your analogy doesn’t work. If the monetised content itself was causing harm, you could compare it to slavery. That’s not the case. We are discussing a situation where alleged crimes are completely unrelated to the content that was formerly monetised.

Nigel farage was never debanked.

he was offered an account with nat west, part of the same company as coutts.

arguably it was an improperly political decision to try and get him
off of coutts’ books. But he was never debanked.

It's a very dangerous, slippery slope to start going down. Back to the social credit issue, officially 'no-platforming' a person who may not have committed any crime whatsoever (not necessarily talking about Brand here), but whose opinions may simply not be considered 'kind' or 'proper' is horrifying.

It's a very interesting area for debate. I feel like I could argue for different sides of this depending on the day...

For social media companies they're damned if they do, and damned if they don't.

Look at the massive backlash Elon Musk has had from removing similar policies on Twitter/X.

Obviously we're going beyond Brand here as he hasn't been "de-platformed" just de-monetised.

Now that there is a wider variety of social media channels I'm more swayed to saying they're private companies and can de-platform if they wish and it's within the user contract terms since people can move on to other platforms.

I think it's an area that would really benefit from a thorough public discourse, consultation and, eventually, legislation as it cuts quite far down into the kind of society we want to be in a world of ever increasing power and influence of tech companies.

This is going to ramp up significantly with AI...tech companies are already becoming almost a quasi-state and I don't feel like we're having the level of discussion needed on what this means.

The fact we haven't got to grips with this one, fairly simple topic in the face of what's coming in the next 5-10 years doesn't bode well TBH.

Only after he made it all public and that was not a business account.

Also, this is a humiliating situation to have to go public about. That humiliation is punishment too. How have we got to the point that banks feel they are the morality police - able to mete out punishment to people, for matters unrelated to banking, where ever they deem fit?

It seems to me that we have a largely insoluble problem here, which is that enormous, wealthy, powerful private institutions are running what are effectively public services. There are no real rivals to Twitter, YouTube, Facebook etc. And they get to decide who has a platform and who doesn't. Which in theory is reasonable - just as the Guardian is free to delete comments below the line it doesn't like. Its house, its rules. People can always go and comment on some other newspaper's website.

But we saw how the previous owners of Twitter used to chuck people off the platform for expressing moderate and sane views, such as saying that Jonathan Yaniv was a man. Where else could feminists go that provided a platform like Twitter? And what's the answer to that? Should governments force private companies to allow everyone a voice? Or should private companies be allowed to draw a line?

And if there is a line, where should it be drawn? It seems to me there are two objections to Brand. One is that he spouts dangerous conspiracy theories, which he has apparently been allowed to do unfettered on YouTube. The other is that he stands accused of rape and sexual abuse. Denying him a platform on the basis of the second is about showing moral disapproval rather than showing disapproval of his views.

Personally I think there's something to be said for YouTube's solution of allowing Brand to promote his views but not to profit financially from them. But ultimately it's up to YouTube what they do and I'm not sure there's anything anyone can realistically do about that.

Why do you think they have such a right to judge a person for anything other than the content they create on that platform? For example, I think it was disgraceful that Trump was booted off of Twitter.

Because they literally have this right under law.

Platforms are custodians of public discourse, the world has changed and they now have enormous power, they need to grow up and take responsibility for that enormous power and interfere as little as possible in public discourse. Employees of YouTube do not have some mystical moral superiority with bestows upon them moral authority to police human thought and expression, just because the are good at tech and they inadvertently found themselves with that kind of power in their hands.

I don't think we disagree as much as you think...

I could be open to persuasion because it's quite a nuanced topic (the kind of thing I wish mainstream media would actually get its teeth into instead of all the shallow crap they churn out).

I don't think we can impose extraordinary duties on private companies without legislation.

I don't think we can decide today that they are responsible for public discourse when that isn't what they were set up for and isn't what they were created to do.

So as things stand today, I don't believe we can criticise them for doing what they believe is in the best interest of their brand and stakeholders and society (even if we think they're wrong).

I do believe it's why we need to be having a public discourse, consultation and legislation though.

If we, as a country, haven't decided how we want these companies to handle this situation and haven't provided any legislation then we can offer an opinion but that would be better directed to our MP. I don't think criticism of the company stands up to logic on this basis.

just as the Guardian is free to delete comments below the line it doesn't like. Its house, its rules. People can always go and comment on some other newspaper's website.

And this is only the bit we see.

Obviously the vast majority of decisions made by traditional media are done behind closed doors.

We don't know what stories they decide never to follow up on or why...

We don't have transparency over what someone has tried to get them to pay attention to and they've dismissed...

This is basically the equivalent of de-platforming and it's something we've been comfortable with (or at least accepted) for a very long time.

How is social media different except that we have more knowledge about the decisions?

I think people should have a proper process and legal recourse if they are kicked off of major platforms.

The way that platforms work is that people are able to communicate with the many other users of that platform. So if you are kicked off one, it’s not like you can just switch to another and access the same set of people. Providers need to take responsibility for that enormous power and it should be possible to challenge them if they have overstepped the mark from protecting their company and upholding the law of the lands they serve in, to punitively unpersoning and denying income to users, at the whims of their power-abusing staff.

There needs to be due process, with proper recourse, when private companies wield such enormous power.

YouTube have a whole heap of criteria, guidelines, and policies dictating who is eligible for monetisation. Why should a private platform not be able to govern this as they wish? I mean what’s the alternative they’re forced to give everyone money?

I could post a video on YouTube now and would not make any money from it due to not meeting the criteria, and I think that seems fair enough and I don’t feel like my right to freedom of speech is impacted by that.

Take some time this week to have a look at where AI is heading and the timescales.

Most of the experts now expect AI that is as good as, or better than, humans within 5-10 years (and many of those closest to it are towards the bottom end of that spectrum).

The far reaching consequences of this for society are frankly, mind blowing.

Not just jobs...not just the impact this could have on deepfakes and the destabilisation of democracy but even fundamentals like 'What happens to money? What is the point of money after AGI when an AGI will be able to create wealth in a way that no human can?'

Tech companies already have revenues larger than nation states. Many people (most?) already spend most of their life interacting with tech in some way.

This conversation is just the tiny tip of the iceberg when it comes to needing to think about how nation states and tech companies interact.

I know this is de-railing this thread but it's such an important topic and I feel like most of the general public isn't aware of how insanely wide teaching the consequences are and how close in time we might be. If anyone fancies an ongoing thread on this topic let me know (last AI post on this thread!)

(And I'm a massive tech fan, early adopter of AI, etc so not a 'everything tech does is bad doom mongering type' but neither am I prone to hyperbole).

Some resources for anyone interested that are actually useful and not overhyped:

One of the best AI related YouTube channels as he points you to the relevant papers and interviews and takes a fairly balanced view

https://youtube.com/@aiexplained-official?si=GR7DupKOpOYq6l6s

This is a good starter in 15 mins:

Also worth reading Mustafa Suleyman's recent book which dives in to the issues we have coming up on the interplay between tech companies and the nation state (he was a Co-founder of Deep Mind, one of the original AI companies which is now part of Google and now runs another AI company).

If he's such an important person he can start his own website.

I think the monetisation depends on your number of views and followers, not the kind of content you provide. Some people are professional youtubers and others are hobbyists.

There could be an argument that some advertisers might not want to advertise on your content, but if there is nothing seriously harmful or illegal about your content, you also have the requisite number of followers, and goods and service providers are happy to be advertised on your channel, why the fuck should some jumped up, little control-freak-moral-tyrant at YouTube, whose power far exceeds their stature, decide any different?

People have been banned from YouTube for far far less than Brand. The fact he's kept his channel for so long signifies to me that "the Establishment" were NOT coming from him at all. And he still has his platform doesn't he? So he's still free to direct people to whichever platform he wants. How is that being silenced?

People have been banned from YouTube for far far less than Brand.

Yes it’s disgraceful. This should stop.

And what’s worse is that this dodgy guy creating dodgy pedophelic/sadistic content which primarily appealed to children, and where children complained that they were upset and disturbed in the comments, they were set upon with really nasty, sexually sadistic retorts by his followers, was left to stand. The NSPCC didn’t even do anything. They just said parents should keep a better eye on what their children view (it wasn’t even set for over 18s).

So YouTube is all over the shop.

I don’t think they are entitled to wield the extraordinary power they inadvertently find themselves with.

The anecdote I mentioned above was nothing to do with Brand

As far as I can tell he IS the establishment

Loving the idea that free speech is only free if someone is prepared to pay you. So not actually free.