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YouTube's New Moderators Mistakenly Pull Right-Wing Channels (bloomberg.com)
In December, said it would assign more than 10,000 people to moderate content in an attempt to curb its child exploitation problem. Today, Bloomberg reports that those new moderators mistakenly removed several videos and some channels from right-wing, pro-gun video producers and outlets in the midst of a nationwide debate on gun control. From the report: Some YouTube channels recently complained about their accounts being pulled entirely. On Wednesday, the Outline highlighted accounts, including Titus Frost, that were banned from the video site. Frost tweeted on Wednesday that a survivor of the shooting, David Hogg, is an actor. Jerome Corsi of right-wing conspiracy website Infowars said on Tuesday that YouTube had taken down one of his videos and disabled his live stream. Shutting entire channels would have marked a sweeping policy change for YouTube, which typically only removes channels in extreme circumstances and focuses most disciplinary action on specific videos. But YouTube said some content was taken down by mistake. The site didn't address specific cases and it's unclear if it meant to take action on the accounts of Frost and Corsi. "As we work to hire rapidly and ramp up our policy enforcement teams throughout 2018, newer members may misapply some of our policies resulting in mistaken removals," a YouTube spokeswoman wrote in an email. "We're continuing to enforce our existing policies regarding harmful and dangerous content, they have not changed. We'll reinstate any videos that were removed in error."
Stopping someone from speaking in a public square would be censorship, stopping them from entering my house and yammering in my living room is not censorship. If someone kicked them out of a video service that had only 1000 subscribers, that wouldn't be censorship, such a tiny service in no way prevents them from spouting off their shit somewhere else. So why is a large video company suddenly censoring if it tells them to get lost? They can find another service, make their own service, go to a news outlet, mimeograph flyers and post them on telephone poles, etc.
Also, not all censorship is illegal. The US constitution only says that congress cannot engage in censorship, it does not restrict corporations or individuals from doing that.