The reason you can't post ads on de-monetized videos is because most of the de-monetizing is due to copyright claims.
I'm not an expert in these matters, but I think you're mistaken. Copyright claims can be used to take down videos, mute soundtracks, or *claim monetization*. Claiming monetization is not the same thing, from my understanding, as de-monetization, which have been used against videos that are deemed too controversial, without any copyright claims being involved.
That said, I've no firsthand experience here.
You are of course free to criticise YouTube's decision, but I don't think it's a very strong argument.
The only reason why Youtube and (some) advertisers care about messing around with de-monetization is because of the influence of the pro-censorship sections of society (on both the right and left). That influence came about through successful campaigns of letter writing, boycotts, and awareness-raising. If it can work for one side, it can at least in principle work for the other. (Which is not to say that I'm a huge optimist here.)
The problem with this argument is that it's anti-free-speech. You are saying that once a service becomes popular, once the inertia sets in, that service must be forced to publish and force to silence its criticism.
No I'm not. I've explicitly refuted this straw man like twenty different times now in every way I can think of, but it keeps rising from the dead.
Are you suggesting that YouTube Red and Disney should be forced to continue paying him?
No, I'm suggesting these legions of people (like you) who are trying to shut down debate, analysis, criticism, and talk of boycotts[1] by conflating it with arguing that Youtube should be legally forced to not censor people are being intellectually dishonest asshats.
why not also require PDP to host material from other channels on his own?
This is taking an argument that "it would be a bad thing if phone companies could start censoring who I talk to and what we talk about" and trying to refute it by asking "well, why not force you to make *your* phone public use to everyone who wanders by?"
This is nonsensical. There is an obvious distinction between a general-purpose communication platform and a user of that platform. Also, see above. No one in this entire thread, as far as I can see, is arguing that Youtube should be legally compelled to host any content... but it does not then follow that there is no point in ever criticizing any of their decisions.
It's also worth pointing out that PDP hasn't actually been kicked off YouTube
There's a wider context here of Youtube's banning policies and demonetization policies, which are mostly subjective and have been enforced more and more in recent months. Advertisers, it's worth noting, cannot opt out of Youtube's de-monetization decisions. If you want to advertise on a video which has been demonetized, you can't. (You'd have to post a new version of the video and roll your own advertising system from scratch, which is unrealistically cumbersome for the majority of producers and advertisers.) This is an important issue worth talking about, and talking about it does not mean one supports the government making it illegal for Youtube to act this way, nor does it mean one necessarily likes or supports PewDiePie.
Also, there's the tiny, tiny side issue here of journalistic integrity.
1. Not that I'm thrilled about the prospects of these being successful, but if it stood any chance of succeeding I would of course be for it, because only reason why some advertisers care about this stuff is because the people on the other side of this war have already conducted many successful boycotts in the past.
And let me just clarify, I'm not saying the facial expressions had to be genuine. Whether it was fake horror or real horror is largely irrelevant; the point is, there were no sly neo-Nazi winks in sight and the entire joke hinged upon the (real or fake) horror in the situation.
It's also irrelevant whether or not PewDiePie was being a dick to those two guys who made his $5 video (you can say that that's *an issue*, but it's still not *the issue at hand*.)
If advertisers don't want to do business with him because of his actions, that's that. Advertising execs are big boys, they make their own decisions. This is Internet advertising, it could be flipped back on like a light switch if they change their minds.
This sounds about as loopy as Trump's blaming the media for firing Flynn for lying to his VP.
The larger context you're missing here is that Youtube has a single (unwritten and subjective) content policy for monetized videos. If they decide to de-monetize you, that's it. Individual advertisers cannot use Youtube's built-in ad programs to reach videos that have been de-monetized. They are not given that ability. The prudish, irrational, anti-intellectual fears of a handful of media giants is thus being foisted upon advertisers and content producers alike. This trend is worth discussing and pushing back on, particularly in the light of the active role the media played in this episode and the hyperbole they've used.
(Yes, it is possible to roll your own ads outside of Youtube's system but this is much more cumbersome and less cost-effective.)
If you want to next argue that Youtube is free to do whatever they want, this is America, free market, etc. please see my otherposts first.
Your posts and others like it are rather like the arguments that seek to conflate the contents of leaked documents with the personalities of Assange, Snowden and Manning. All three of them could turn out to be cynical trolls or just plain horrible people, but that wouldn't make their revelations worth ignoring.
Insults found in in the conclusion of an argument (in the "then") cannot, by definition, be an ad hominem. Only insults in the premise or logical induction of an argument (in the "if") can qualify, and they do not automatically qualify simply by being insults. On a simpler note: an ad hominem is not an "attack"; it is an informal logical fallacy. The rules of politeness are entirely orthogonal to the rules of factual or logical correctness.
Sorry, but this is a bit of a pet peeve of mine.
But let me clarify what I said in that "ad hominem" a bit: yes, PewDiePie could have been acting with those facial expressions. That's entirely conceivable. What is not up for debate with anyone who understands human emotion is that that reaction presented (fake or real) was, in fact, one of shock and horror. You can't plausibly twist it around to make it out to be a neo-Nazi slyly winking at the camera. There's no undercurrent of that sort whatsoever. Someone pretending to by anti-semitism (or the ease with which it can be produced) is, in the absence of evidence establishing ulterior feelings and motives, more or less as good as someone who really is offended.
Consider The Producers, where there is a scene celebrating Hitler and Nazism and then a shot of an audience looking horrified at the scene celebrating Nazism. Except, the audience wasn't *really* horrified. They were actors pretending to horrified. Does it then follow that Mel Brooks and/or the audience were anti-Semitic? Does it then follow that the movie as a whole contains an anti-Semitic message?
There is nothing more insidious and anti-free speech than claiming that someone else is required to provide you the soapbox to stand on.
Which no one said.
Saying that Youtube or anyone else must pay to provide a platform for someone else is as about not free as you can get.
Which is something you had a fever-dream about, not something I actually said.
not forcing some private company
Which is something you invented whole cloth, and something that I explicitly, tediously denied *at length*.
Your right to free speech ends at your nose, no one else is obligated to help you speak.
And I'm *not obligated* to not talk about how evil Youtube and the WSJ are behaving.
You are demonstrating what may be the greatest, or at least the most successful, straw man argument of all time. I can explain over and over and over how I am not arguing that Youtube should be "forced" to do anything, and people like you (you're certainly not the only one doing this) will reply as if I had just said the exact opposite.
Youtube isn't obligated to show PDP's videos. And I'm not obligated to use Youtube, to not talk about Youtube's actions, or even to not talk about how market pressures could be brought to bear to oppose the current and ever-tightening policies being championed by Youtube and the WSJ.
You, and your strawmen-ing ilk, are the only ones talking about forced obligations here.
Well, so you say. But others watch the video, and his other videos, and conclude that he is a bigot and that this video is an attempt to push out bigotry under the cover of humour.
And this is hysterical McCarthyist nonsense. (Granted, I haven't watched a large body of his work yet so conceivably there could be a "pattern" I've missed)
And I'm not sure that I'm going to go the extra mile to get *yet more* exposure for bigoted views
Is Mel Brooks an anti-Semite? Was The Producers an anti-Semitic movie? Simple questions. The Producers contained scenes celebrating Nazism *and then a reaction shot of people looking horrified at that scene*. Does that ring any bells?
faux-shock-horror faces
If it's faux, it's as good as real. There was no winking-at-the-camera moment. Mel Brooks didn't include a scene in The Producers where he addressed the camera with "HITLER WAS BAD, MMMKAY?!". That doesn't make it anti-Semitic.
Not in a world that has seen such an uptick in racial hatred and misogyny expressed online in the past few years.
This trend will continue so long as the witch hunt continues. Pegging non-racism and non-sexism as actual racism and sexism is operating in the opposite effect as intended; it is causing the taboos against those things to weaken. This is one of the most important reasons to talk about this shit, but in order to accept that this is what's happening you'll probably need to first admit to yourself that the political correctness based campaign against Trump (who is a loathsome individual, don't get me wrong) completely backfired.
This shouldn't be a controversial thing to say, it really shouldn't. Look at the numbers--it was a lack of turnout among Democrats that sunk Hillary, not a spike in Republicans. So far as you support witch hunt stuff like this, you are further sowing the seeds of the left's ongoing destruction.
There is nothing more insidious and anti-free speech than demanding that someone else carry your speech and pay to have it broadcast to the masses. youtube, disney and everyone else has no obligation to carry his material.
Again with this bizarre "demanding / insisting / owed / obligation" straw man. No one here, from what I've seen, is demanding that laws be passed preventing Youtube from banning whomever they choose.
If he believes they lied and caused him financial loss he can take them to court.
And in the meantime, we're all free to analyze what has just happened and decide if we want to say anything or do anything about it. Talking about corporate lies and corporate censorship is not a call for more censorship! It's astonishing how many otherwise rational-sounding people can't or won't concede this point.
That's an important detail I've neglected to flesh out, thanks for the reminder. I didn't mean to imply a monolithic conspiracy. The precise incestuous genealogy of the people involved doesn't hugely matter. At the end of the day, they're tapping into the rabidly over the top anti-fascist mentality that the left has created in response to Trump.
If doubt the existence of this new atmosphere, ask yourself this: do you really believe that a few years ago J.K. Rowling would be busy calling out random comedians who've made Nazi jokes?
Another brainless regurgitation of a vintage nonsense arguments. I don't have the energy to take this one down in detail; maybe someone else could?
To get you started regarding free speech, I recommend an analogy wherein phone companies (sans common carrier law, in this example) choose whom you're allowed to communicate with, focusing not on whether this is legal (because for the nth time, NO ONE IS ARGUING ANY OF THIS IS ILLEGAL), but rather whether we're allowed to complain about it, whether we're allowed to point out that it's hampering the free flow of ideas and then muse aloud on potential methods of redress.
Youtube isn't yours. They owe you nothing. They owe no one anything.
Did you read the ending of my last goddamn post? No one is saying they owe anyone anything. You're arguing with phantoms. Black people aren't "owed" the right to enter private golf courses, but that doesn't mean I'm going to defend said goddamned golf courses.
The big question here is who else is a Nazi? John Cleese? Mel Brooks? Norm MacDonald? Bill Hicks? A LOT of goddamn people have done Nazi jokes. Of the all great comedians that have come and gone since the 70s, I wouldn't be too surprised if the *majority* of them have done Nazi or Hitler jokes.
Fewer people have done holocaust jokes, but the Kill All Jews bit did not contain a coda that had the slightest trace of a wink at a supposedly right-wing audience. Quite the contrary.
As far as Felix's body of work as a whole, I can't render anything like an authoritative opinion because I haven't seen much of it.
The point is to have a separation of ideas, institutions and people. Would you be willing to trash, say, calculus if you found out that Newton stomped kittens in his spare time?
If so, I'd say you're the one who needs luck with your outlook.
The joke was in the paying, not in the killing. Is there some double-digit percentage of the human race that doesn't understand humor or facial expressions and has been faking it this whole time?
I understand the distinction you are trying to make
I don't think you do. I really, really don't think you do, because you just continued from the same stale script that PopeRatzo was using.
Not everyone can build everything from the ground up. The perennial example is that Comcast is widely surveyed as one of the worst companies in the nation at customer service, but no one can afford to start their own competitor. PDP can roll his own video service and carry with him a decent chunk of his fans, but damn near no one else could. The inertia involved with platforms like Youtube is incredible.
This is not a Free Speech issue.
Yes it is. Free speech was not born with the First Amendment. It exists outside of it. Claiming that one is pro-free speech while supporting a company that engages in draconian censorship (not merely "supports their right to", but actually supports and patronizes and defends the companies) is akin to claiming to be against racism whilst patronizing and vocally defending a private golf club that doesn't allow black people to enter. Just because they're not the government doesn't magically make it not racism. Ditto censorship and internet media giants.
This is another very old argument that has persisted and achieved some sort of status as wisdom, despite it being utter bollocks. People who truly believe in free speech do not believe that it is perfectly OK if major communication platforms do an end run around it by dint of their being private corporations. Many will say that needs to stay legal (they're not for making it illegal for Youtube to censor whomever they choose), but they don't think it's ok any more than an anti-racist thinks racist private golf courses are ok.
but no one is owed a Youtube channel or Disney sponsorship.
No offense (but I'm too worn out to properly soften this so it might be offensive anyway, sorry), but I haven't the slightest fucking clue how you could read my entire post and think that this was a sensible thing to say. It means nothing. It's a very, very tired Cold War era argument that has long outlived its usefulness and migrated outside of the context where it makes sense.
No one, *no one* is saying they are owed anything. I believe PewDiePie himself said a disclaimer to that effect in his response video.
Maybe it needs to be explicitly said that Youtube, WSJ, etc. are not "owed" anything from us, including but not limited to silent acquiescence?
If someone is so stupid as to not understand that making jokes about killing Jews
He didn't make a joke about killing Jews. He made a dark joke about the fact that there's a real fucking website where you can pay $5 and someone else will happily wish death upon all Jews halfway around the world. It's surreal and unsettling and symbolic of all kinds of stuff that that's the world we live in. But the joke (and the wider point) doesn't work at all if the written message isn't an offensive one.
If you honestly thought that Jews dying was the punchline of that joke, you are an android and your sense of humor simulation circuits are malfunctioning. You're like someone who thinks any work of fiction written in the first person must be espousing author's own thoughts and feelings.
This is akin to bitching that you don't like Snowden because he wears ugly glasses and has a boring face.
I'm the submitter. I don't watch PewDiePie videos. I think I watched only two in my entire life before today. This is serious news. He is the biggest name on Youtube (like it or not), and these are some of the biggest names in mainstream news lying about him, engaging in an open campaign to get him fired (WSJ went directly to Disney, from my understanding), and then they casually, lazily, openly discuss about how their motive in all of this was that they want to see online media giants dictate acceptable content with an iron fist instead of this willy-nilly free speech bullshit that makes old media nervous.
When the hell did Slashdot turn into goddamn TMZ? Who cares who you like or don't like? This. Matters.
" I don't care if he stomps kittens in his spare time"
to each his own but animal abuse is on my list of psychotic behavior. wouldn't want anything to do with such a person.
But that's the goddamn point! I'm not "having anything to do" with PewDiePie! I mean, I'm not offering to mow his lawn or perform oral sex on him. This is about ideas and institutions and honesty and intellectual honesty.
This is a bizarre little trick, apparently some weird leftover piece of Cold War propaganda, that any time a topic has anything to do with the free market you can point that out and a significant minority of people will believe you've just "won" the discussion and will mod you up, even if you're rambling irrelevant drivel. (It works on Reddit, too.)
Congratulations, Disney and Youtube are legally free to do as they choose. No, the first amendment doesn't constrain them. Are we done with the kindergarten version of Civics now?
There appears to be widespread *lying* about the nature of the videos in question, characterizations that are so brazen as to be actual lies by mainstream media organizations like the Wall Street Journal, Wired, The Independent, etc. This is on top of the WSJ actually going out of their way to get PewDiePie "fired" by mining and editing his content and then sending it directly (from my understanding) to Disney.
I think that alone is all worth talking about. If dishonest and manipulative newspapers don't interest you at all, well there's the door. Bye.
But there's even more: to the extent that companies like Youtube and Disney are being pressured by asshats writing letters and threatening boycotts, I'd even go so far as to say it's worth discussing trying to pressure them in the opposite direction. Not because I'm a huge PewDiePie fan (I'm not; I've watched only a few of his videos), but because the internet is being dominated by a small group of companies and it's worth a little effort to push back now, while we still can, and inform them that free speech for their platform (not just our constitution) is what we actually want.
Just listen to this smug shit coming out of the WSJ and put that in the context of the thousands of Youtubers trying to figure out Youtube's uncodified content policy so their videos won't be de-monetized. Put that in the contest of the millions of Youtube users who just want their favorite hosts to be able to speak their mind uncensored. The WSJ doesn't care about all of that. They only care about media giants being able to dictate acceptable content with an iron fist.
Does that violate the first amendment? Again, no. Is this capitalism at work? Again, yes. You're such a good, smart little anti-Communist for reminding us of these things!
But us talking about it and getting a bit pissed about it and wondering aloud if there's any way to pull the brake on this shitshow before it gets any worse is also capitalism at work. If that's a conversation that doesn't interest you--there's the door. Vote with your feet, citizen.
It's entirely accurate as far as I'm aware. Notice all of the "he claims" and stuff? But I was not going to strike a tone as if the WSJ has a point. Because they don't.
That's right, we know you are characterizing the media for your own gain, as you are a paid professional troll.
I think it's far more likely a random AC is a paid troll for the WSJ. Who do you think hired me? I'll be happy to viciously insult them for you to dispel that notion.
I'm the submitter. I don't care if he stomps kittens in his spare time, and I doubt I've seen three of his videos before today. The dishonesty and cynicism here shown by allegedly reputable mainstream media outlets here is astonishing.
He may well be a troll. Entirely possible. But the videos I've thus far seen were not of a trollish cast, and the "Death to All Jews" one in particular is not remotely anti-semitic. If you genuinely believe it to be so, you may be from an actual intellectual, emotional or perceptual disorder of some sort.
This latest response is perfectly timed, just as the flames were dying down he fans them and gets another round of attention.
If this is the current state of the media, if this is the sort of hyperbole we're going to be subjected to for the next four years, if this is the new McCarthyism, then these are flames that need flaming, be it by trolls or non-trolls.
On a personal note here: it's not like I really fear some totalitarianism of the left, either. I don't think they can win this war... not in America, anyway. But I do rather fear the consequences of proving Trump right, of validating the echo chambers of tens of millions of people who were right-leaning fence sitters until they saw the proof stack up that the mainstream media really is full of hysterical, baldfaced lies.
Has it always been *this* bad? Fuck me, I'd better stop before I start saying "woke".
Corporations being corporations with their policies... fine, whatever. Allegedly reputable news organizations characterizing that video as "anti-semitic" is something else entirely.
Anyone watching the end sequence of that video who goes on to describe it as anti-semitic either does not understand human emotion or is deliberately lying. If that video proves PewDiePie is anti-semitic, then John Cleese, Mel Brooks, Jon Stewart, and dozens of other comedy legends are also anti-semitic, including the political and the largely apolitical.
It's been a long time since I thought of the nuts and bolts of voting system reform. It would take some hours of pondering to come up with a fine-honed product with a clear strategy or goal and I'm pressed for time, so I'm going to give you more of a brain dump and you can make of it what you will.
* I instinctively think it needs to happen because our big tent two-party system is FUBAR and seems to be responsible for dangerous amounts of polarization in recent years, and also because a lot of important reforms aren't ever going to make it through either of the two parties' leaderships.
* It's a chicken or egg thing, and for that reason I almost want to say it has to happen simultaneously. You need a revolt in congress to create a new party (largely enough to actually accomplish things, which is... optimistic, I know) and the first thing they do has to be enable voting reform to ensure their continued survival.
* Moving away from first past the post voting is only one of many changes that need to happen, and I'm not sure it will be easiest to try to make it the first. You need to do everything possible to weaken the stranglehold of the two party system.
* I think that preventing federal facilities from being used in any party primaries would be a wonderful start.
* Although I haven't figured out a way to square it with free speech that would actually be workable in practice, I'd also love it if we figure out how to ban paid political advertisements entirely.
* Failing the above, campaign finance reform will help. I'm not fond of public campaign financing, but if we're in a system where campaigns need money to function this might be the only way to prevent widespread corruption. I don't know. Really, the first priority needs to be on finding a way where campaigns can be run on volunteer effort, hard work and (obviously) good politicians and good policies. I'm not sure what Wolf PAC is up to, but they're probably worth checking out.
* May need to go deeper. Attacking the way laws are made might be a decent start, both by directly improving the political process and possibly by leading to changes in the way parties and elections work. Failure Standards, as explained in an episode of "Yes, Prime Minister", are an excellent idea whereby you attach goals (preferably numeric) to laws and if the law fails to achieve the goal by such and such date, it's deemed a failure (and maybe can auto-sunset or something.) I would go a step further and prefer a ground-up constitution re-write where the government only has the right to pass laws for a limited, enumerated list of purposes, with the courts periodically clarifying which sub-purposes are logically valid and what they nest under, with every law fully explaining its purpose and the permissible governmental goal it's trying to serve with that purpose. Then, instead of a two dimensional one-off failure standard, the courts would be free to interpret , strike down or send back to congress laws in light of their stated goals.
This last bit may be a bit of a stretch to imagine being implemented.
* Media changes... no idea. The media plays a massive part in the election (if for no other reason than it pays the most attention to the two main parties), but the mainstream media is going to be changing a lot in the coming years. The "fake news" thing which started in such a funny little way has rapidly snowballed and the media are, *astoundingly enough*, lying more frequently, thus playing right into the hands of the alt-right. People apparently don't understand how to be strong-willed and aggressive without lying. This is a subject I will dissect in length, but not here.
* For voting alone, nothing else, no other changes, it's hard to see what would be an objective improvement. I don't think any of the simpler alternative voting methods would have prevented Trump (again, I"m not devoting a lot of brain CPU cycles to this), which is remarkable given the narrow margin
Slashdot Mirror
The reason you can't post ads on de-monetized videos is because most of the de-monetizing is due to copyright claims.
I'm not an expert in these matters, but I think you're mistaken. Copyright claims can be used to take down videos, mute soundtracks, or *claim monetization*. Claiming monetization is not the same thing, from my understanding, as de-monetization, which have been used against videos that are deemed too controversial, without any copyright claims being involved.
That said, I've no firsthand experience here.
You are of course free to criticise YouTube's decision, but I don't think it's a very strong argument.
The only reason why Youtube and (some) advertisers care about messing around with de-monetization is because of the influence of the pro-censorship sections of society (on both the right and left). That influence came about through successful campaigns of letter writing, boycotts, and awareness-raising. If it can work for one side, it can at least in principle work for the other. (Which is not to say that I'm a huge optimist here.)
The problem with this argument is that it's anti-free-speech. You are saying that once a service becomes popular, once the inertia sets in, that service must be forced to publish and force to silence its criticism.
No I'm not. I've explicitly refuted this straw man like twenty different times now in every way I can think of, but it keeps rising from the dead.
Are you suggesting that YouTube Red and Disney should be forced to continue paying him?
No, I'm suggesting these legions of people (like you) who are trying to shut down debate, analysis, criticism, and talk of boycotts[1] by conflating it with arguing that Youtube should be legally forced to not censor people are being intellectually dishonest asshats.
why not also require PDP to host material from other channels on his own?
This is taking an argument that "it would be a bad thing if phone companies could start censoring who I talk to and what we talk about" and trying to refute it by asking "well, why not force you to make *your* phone public use to everyone who wanders by?"
This is nonsensical. There is an obvious distinction between a general-purpose communication platform and a user of that platform. Also, see above. No one in this entire thread, as far as I can see, is arguing that Youtube should be legally compelled to host any content... but it does not then follow that there is no point in ever criticizing any of their decisions.
It's also worth pointing out that PDP hasn't actually been kicked off YouTube
There's a wider context here of Youtube's banning policies and demonetization policies, which are mostly subjective and have been enforced more and more in recent months. Advertisers, it's worth noting, cannot opt out of Youtube's de-monetization decisions. If you want to advertise on a video which has been demonetized, you can't. (You'd have to post a new version of the video and roll your own advertising system from scratch, which is unrealistically cumbersome for the majority of producers and advertisers.) This is an important issue worth talking about, and talking about it does not mean one supports the government making it illegal for Youtube to act this way, nor does it mean one necessarily likes or supports PewDiePie.
Also, there's the tiny, tiny side issue here of journalistic integrity.
1. Not that I'm thrilled about the prospects of these being successful, but if it stood any chance of succeeding I would of course be for it, because only reason why some advertisers care about this stuff is because the people on the other side of this war have already conducted many successful boycotts in the past.
And let me just clarify, I'm not saying the facial expressions had to be genuine. Whether it was fake horror or real horror is largely irrelevant; the point is, there were no sly neo-Nazi winks in sight and the entire joke hinged upon the (real or fake) horror in the situation.
It's also irrelevant whether or not PewDiePie was being a dick to those two guys who made his $5 video (you can say that that's *an issue*, but it's still not *the issue at hand*.)
If advertisers don't want to do business with him because of his actions, that's that. Advertising execs are big boys, they make their own decisions. This is Internet advertising, it could be flipped back on like a light switch if they change their minds. This sounds about as loopy as Trump's blaming the media for firing Flynn for lying to his VP.
The larger context you're missing here is that Youtube has a single (unwritten and subjective) content policy for monetized videos. If they decide to de-monetize you, that's it. Individual advertisers cannot use Youtube's built-in ad programs to reach videos that have been de-monetized. They are not given that ability. The prudish, irrational, anti-intellectual fears of a handful of media giants is thus being foisted upon advertisers and content producers alike. This trend is worth discussing and pushing back on, particularly in the light of the active role the media played in this episode and the hyperbole they've used.
(Yes, it is possible to roll your own ads outside of Youtube's system but this is much more cumbersome and less cost-effective.)
If you want to next argue that Youtube is free to do whatever they want, this is America, free market, etc. please see my other posts first.
If he was truly horrified by what he and they did
Your posts and others like it are rather like the arguments that seek to conflate the contents of leaked documents with the personalities of Assange, Snowden and Manning. All three of them could turn out to be cynical trolls or just plain horrible people, but that wouldn't make their revelations worth ignoring.
Likewise, PDP could be a troll and it wouldn't change one iota the underlying gravity of the situation. Youtube and other social media have been slowly clamping down in recent months, the Wall Street Journal was an active participant in getting Youtube and Disney to act against PewDiePie here, and in the aftermath they are openly and brazenly talking about it all in the context of online media giants needing to crack down on free speech everywhere.
[trimmed ad hominem attack]
Insults found in in the conclusion of an argument (in the "then") cannot, by definition, be an ad hominem. Only insults in the premise or logical induction of an argument (in the "if") can qualify, and they do not automatically qualify simply by being insults. On a simpler note: an ad hominem is not an "attack"; it is an informal logical fallacy. The rules of politeness are entirely orthogonal to the rules of factual or logical correctness.
Sorry, but this is a bit of a pet peeve of mine.
But let me clarify what I said in that "ad hominem" a bit: yes, PewDiePie could have been acting with those facial expressions. That's entirely conceivable. What is not up for debate with anyone who understands human emotion is that that reaction presented (fake or real) was, in fact, one of shock and horror. You can't plausibly twist it around to make it out to be a neo-Nazi slyly winking at the camera. There's no undercurrent of that sort whatsoever. Someone pretending to by anti-semitism (or the ease with which it can be produced) is, in the absence of evidence establishing ulterior feelings and motives, more or less as good as someone who really is offended.
Consider The Producers, where there is a scene celebrating Hitler and Nazism and then a shot of an audience looking horrified at the scene celebrating Nazism. Except, the audience wasn't *really* horrified. They were actors pretending to horrified. Does it then follow that Mel Brooks and/or the audience were anti-Semitic? Does it then follow that the movie as a whole contains an anti-Semitic message?
There is nothing more insidious and anti-free speech than claiming that someone else is required to provide you the soapbox to stand on.
Which no one said.
Saying that Youtube or anyone else must pay to provide a platform for someone else is as about not free as you can get.
Which is something you had a fever-dream about, not something I actually said.
not forcing some private company
Which is something you invented whole cloth, and something that I explicitly, tediously denied *at length*.
Your right to free speech ends at your nose, no one else is obligated to help you speak.
And I'm *not obligated* to not talk about how evil Youtube and the WSJ are behaving.
You are demonstrating what may be the greatest, or at least the most successful, straw man argument of all time. I can explain over and over and over how I am not arguing that Youtube should be "forced" to do anything, and people like you (you're certainly not the only one doing this) will reply as if I had just said the exact opposite.
Youtube isn't obligated to show PDP's videos. And I'm not obligated to use Youtube, to not talk about Youtube's actions, or even to not talk about how market pressures could be brought to bear to oppose the current and ever-tightening policies being championed by Youtube and the WSJ.
You, and your strawmen-ing ilk, are the only ones talking about forced obligations here.
Well, so you say. But others watch the video, and his other videos, and conclude that he is a bigot and that this video is an attempt to push out bigotry under the cover of humour.
And this is hysterical McCarthyist nonsense. (Granted, I haven't watched a large body of his work yet so conceivably there could be a "pattern" I've missed)
And I'm not sure that I'm going to go the extra mile to get *yet more* exposure for bigoted views
Is Mel Brooks an anti-Semite? Was The Producers an anti-Semitic movie? Simple questions. The Producers contained scenes celebrating Nazism *and then a reaction shot of people looking horrified at that scene*. Does that ring any bells?
faux-shock-horror faces
If it's faux, it's as good as real. There was no winking-at-the-camera moment. Mel Brooks didn't include a scene in The Producers where he addressed the camera with "HITLER WAS BAD, MMMKAY?!". That doesn't make it anti-Semitic.
Not in a world that has seen such an uptick in racial hatred and misogyny expressed online in the past few years.
This trend will continue so long as the witch hunt continues. Pegging non-racism and non-sexism as actual racism and sexism is operating in the opposite effect as intended; it is causing the taboos against those things to weaken. This is one of the most important reasons to talk about this shit, but in order to accept that this is what's happening you'll probably need to first admit to yourself that the political correctness based campaign against Trump (who is a loathsome individual, don't get me wrong) completely backfired.
This shouldn't be a controversial thing to say, it really shouldn't. Look at the numbers--it was a lack of turnout among Democrats that sunk Hillary, not a spike in Republicans. So far as you support witch hunt stuff like this, you are further sowing the seeds of the left's ongoing destruction.
There is nothing more insidious and anti-free speech than demanding that someone else carry your speech and pay to have it broadcast to the masses. youtube, disney and everyone else has no obligation to carry his material.
Again with this bizarre "demanding / insisting / owed / obligation" straw man. No one here, from what I've seen, is demanding that laws be passed preventing Youtube from banning whomever they choose.
If he believes they lied and caused him financial loss he can take them to court.
And in the meantime, we're all free to analyze what has just happened and decide if we want to say anything or do anything about it. Talking about corporate lies and corporate censorship is not a call for more censorship! It's astonishing how many otherwise rational-sounding people can't or won't concede this point.
"Death to All Jews"
Well, by your own logic then you just showed that you are an anti-Semite. Because you just posted those words.
And to think, there is no possible defense you could use against this accusation except context.
That's an important detail I've neglected to flesh out, thanks for the reminder. I didn't mean to imply a monolithic conspiracy. The precise incestuous genealogy of the people involved doesn't hugely matter. At the end of the day, they're tapping into the rabidly over the top anti-fascist mentality that the left has created in response to Trump.
If doubt the existence of this new atmosphere, ask yourself this: do you really believe that a few years ago J.K. Rowling would be busy calling out random comedians who've made Nazi jokes?
To get you started regarding free speech, I recommend an analogy wherein phone companies (sans common carrier law, in this example) choose whom you're allowed to communicate with, focusing not on whether this is legal (because for the nth time, NO ONE IS ARGUING ANY OF THIS IS ILLEGAL), but rather whether we're allowed to complain about it, whether we're allowed to point out that it's hampering the free flow of ideas and then muse aloud on potential methods of redress.
Youtube isn't yours. They owe you nothing. They owe no one anything.
Did you read the ending of my last goddamn post? No one is saying they owe anyone anything. You're arguing with phantoms. Black people aren't "owed" the right to enter private golf courses, but that doesn't mean I'm going to defend said goddamned golf courses.
I don't watch gaming videos all the damn time but when I do, [Dos Equis voice], it's Jacksepticeye.
Seriously. Never got into PDP, for whatever reason.
The big question here is who else is a Nazi? John Cleese? Mel Brooks? Norm MacDonald? Bill Hicks? A LOT of goddamn people have done Nazi jokes. Of the all great comedians that have come and gone since the 70s, I wouldn't be too surprised if the *majority* of them have done Nazi or Hitler jokes.
Fewer people have done holocaust jokes, but the Kill All Jews bit did not contain a coda that had the slightest trace of a wink at a supposedly right-wing audience. Quite the contrary.
As far as Felix's body of work as a whole, I can't render anything like an authoritative opinion because I haven't seen much of it.
The point is to have a separation of ideas, institutions and people. Would you be willing to trash, say, calculus if you found out that Newton stomped kittens in his spare time?
If so, I'd say you're the one who needs luck with your outlook.
The joke was in the paying, not in the killing. Is there some double-digit percentage of the human race that doesn't understand humor or facial expressions and has been faking it this whole time?
I understand the distinction you are trying to make
I don't think you do. I really, really don't think you do, because you just continued from the same stale script that PopeRatzo was using.
Not everyone can build everything from the ground up. The perennial example is that Comcast is widely surveyed as one of the worst companies in the nation at customer service, but no one can afford to start their own competitor. PDP can roll his own video service and carry with him a decent chunk of his fans, but damn near no one else could. The inertia involved with platforms like Youtube is incredible.
This is not a Free Speech issue.
Yes it is. Free speech was not born with the First Amendment. It exists outside of it. Claiming that one is pro-free speech while supporting a company that engages in draconian censorship (not merely "supports their right to", but actually supports and patronizes and defends the companies) is akin to claiming to be against racism whilst patronizing and vocally defending a private golf club that doesn't allow black people to enter. Just because they're not the government doesn't magically make it not racism. Ditto censorship and internet media giants.
This is another very old argument that has persisted and achieved some sort of status as wisdom, despite it being utter bollocks. People who truly believe in free speech do not believe that it is perfectly OK if major communication platforms do an end run around it by dint of their being private corporations. Many will say that needs to stay legal (they're not for making it illegal for Youtube to censor whomever they choose), but they don't think it's ok any more than an anti-racist thinks racist private golf courses are ok.
but no one is owed a Youtube channel or Disney sponsorship.
No offense (but I'm too worn out to properly soften this so it might be offensive anyway, sorry), but I haven't the slightest fucking clue how you could read my entire post and think that this was a sensible thing to say. It means nothing. It's a very, very tired Cold War era argument that has long outlived its usefulness and migrated outside of the context where it makes sense.
No one, *no one* is saying they are owed anything. I believe PewDiePie himself said a disclaimer to that effect in his response video.
Maybe it needs to be explicitly said that Youtube, WSJ, etc. are not "owed" anything from us, including but not limited to silent acquiescence?
I didn't mean that as a macho statement so much as clarifying that I was obviously being reserved in the summary.
If someone is so stupid as to not understand that making jokes about killing Jews
He didn't make a joke about killing Jews. He made a dark joke about the fact that there's a real fucking website where you can pay $5 and someone else will happily wish death upon all Jews halfway around the world. It's surreal and unsettling and symbolic of all kinds of stuff that that's the world we live in. But the joke (and the wider point) doesn't work at all if the written message isn't an offensive one.
If you honestly thought that Jews dying was the punchline of that joke, you are an android and your sense of humor simulation circuits are malfunctioning. You're like someone who thinks any work of fiction written in the first person must be espousing author's own thoughts and feelings.
This is akin to bitching that you don't like Snowden because he wears ugly glasses and has a boring face.
I'm the submitter. I don't watch PewDiePie videos. I think I watched only two in my entire life before today. This is serious news. He is the biggest name on Youtube (like it or not), and these are some of the biggest names in mainstream news lying about him, engaging in an open campaign to get him fired (WSJ went directly to Disney, from my understanding), and then they casually, lazily, openly discuss about how their motive in all of this was that they want to see online media giants dictate acceptable content with an iron fist instead of this willy-nilly free speech bullshit that makes old media nervous.
When the hell did Slashdot turn into goddamn TMZ? Who cares who you like or don't like? This. Matters.
" I don't care if he stomps kittens in his spare time"
to each his own but animal abuse is on my list of psychotic behavior. wouldn't want anything to do with such a person.
But that's the goddamn point! I'm not "having anything to do" with PewDiePie! I mean, I'm not offering to mow his lawn or perform oral sex on him. This is about ideas and institutions and honesty and intellectual honesty.
Submitter here. And the gloves are off, FYI.
This is a bizarre little trick, apparently some weird leftover piece of Cold War propaganda, that any time a topic has anything to do with the free market you can point that out and a significant minority of people will believe you've just "won" the discussion and will mod you up, even if you're rambling irrelevant drivel. (It works on Reddit, too.)
Congratulations, Disney and Youtube are legally free to do as they choose. No, the first amendment doesn't constrain them. Are we done with the kindergarten version of Civics now?
There appears to be widespread *lying* about the nature of the videos in question, characterizations that are so brazen as to be actual lies by mainstream media organizations like the Wall Street Journal, Wired, The Independent, etc. This is on top of the WSJ actually going out of their way to get PewDiePie "fired" by mining and editing his content and then sending it directly (from my understanding) to Disney.
I think that alone is all worth talking about. If dishonest and manipulative newspapers don't interest you at all, well there's the door. Bye.
But there's even more: to the extent that companies like Youtube and Disney are being pressured by asshats writing letters and threatening boycotts, I'd even go so far as to say it's worth discussing trying to pressure them in the opposite direction. Not because I'm a huge PewDiePie fan (I'm not; I've watched only a few of his videos), but because the internet is being dominated by a small group of companies and it's worth a little effort to push back now, while we still can, and inform them that free speech for their platform (not just our constitution) is what we actually want.
Just listen to this smug shit coming out of the WSJ and put that in the context of the thousands of Youtubers trying to figure out Youtube's uncodified content policy so their videos won't be de-monetized. Put that in the contest of the millions of Youtube users who just want their favorite hosts to be able to speak their mind uncensored. The WSJ doesn't care about all of that. They only care about media giants being able to dictate acceptable content with an iron fist.
Does that violate the first amendment? Again, no. Is this capitalism at work? Again, yes. You're such a good, smart little anti-Communist for reminding us of these things!
But us talking about it and getting a bit pissed about it and wondering aloud if there's any way to pull the brake on this shitshow before it gets any worse is also capitalism at work. If that's a conversation that doesn't interest you--there's the door. Vote with your feet, citizen.
as your editorial screed is about as accurate
It's entirely accurate as far as I'm aware. Notice all of the "he claims" and stuff? But I was not going to strike a tone as if the WSJ has a point. Because they don't.
That's right, we know you are characterizing the media for your own gain, as you are a paid professional troll.
I think it's far more likely a random AC is a paid troll for the WSJ. Who do you think hired me? I'll be happy to viciously insult them for you to dispel that notion.
He may well be a troll. Entirely possible. But the videos I've thus far seen were not of a trollish cast, and the "Death to All Jews" one in particular is not remotely anti-semitic. If you genuinely believe it to be so, you may be from an actual intellectual, emotional or perceptual disorder of some sort.
This latest response is perfectly timed, just as the flames were dying down he fans them and gets another round of attention.
If this is the current state of the media, if this is the sort of hyperbole we're going to be subjected to for the next four years, if this is the new McCarthyism, then these are flames that need flaming, be it by trolls or non-trolls.
On a personal note here: it's not like I really fear some totalitarianism of the left, either. I don't think they can win this war... not in America, anyway. But I do rather fear the consequences of proving Trump right, of validating the echo chambers of tens of millions of people who were right-leaning fence sitters until they saw the proof stack up that the mainstream media really is full of hysterical, baldfaced lies.
Has it always been *this* bad? Fuck me, I'd better stop before I start saying "woke".
Corporations being corporations with their policies... fine, whatever. Allegedly reputable news organizations characterizing that video as "anti-semitic" is something else entirely.
Anyone watching the end sequence of that video who goes on to describe it as anti-semitic either does not understand human emotion or is deliberately lying. If that video proves PewDiePie is anti-semitic, then John Cleese, Mel Brooks, Jon Stewart, and dozens of other comedy legends are also anti-semitic, including the political and the largely apolitical.
Respond to RFC:
It's been a long time since I thought of the nuts and bolts of voting system reform. It would take some hours of pondering to come up with a fine-honed product with a clear strategy or goal and I'm pressed for time, so I'm going to give you more of a brain dump and you can make of it what you will. * I instinctively think it needs to happen because our big tent two-party system is FUBAR and seems to be responsible for dangerous amounts of polarization in recent years, and also because a lot of important reforms aren't ever going to make it through either of the two parties' leaderships.
* It's a chicken or egg thing, and for that reason I almost want to say it has to happen simultaneously. You need a revolt in congress to create a new party (largely enough to actually accomplish things, which is... optimistic, I know) and the first thing they do has to be enable voting reform to ensure their continued survival.
* Moving away from first past the post voting is only one of many changes that need to happen, and I'm not sure it will be easiest to try to make it the first. You need to do everything possible to weaken the stranglehold of the two party system.
* I think that preventing federal facilities from being used in any party primaries would be a wonderful start.
* Although I haven't figured out a way to square it with free speech that would actually be workable in practice, I'd also love it if we figure out how to ban paid political advertisements entirely.
* Failing the above, campaign finance reform will help. I'm not fond of public campaign financing, but if we're in a system where campaigns need money to function this might be the only way to prevent widespread corruption. I don't know. Really, the first priority needs to be on finding a way where campaigns can be run on volunteer effort, hard work and (obviously) good politicians and good policies. I'm not sure what Wolf PAC is up to, but they're probably worth checking out.
* May need to go deeper. Attacking the way laws are made might be a decent start, both by directly improving the political process and possibly by leading to changes in the way parties and elections work. Failure Standards, as explained in an episode of "Yes, Prime Minister", are an excellent idea whereby you attach goals (preferably numeric) to laws and if the law fails to achieve the goal by such and such date, it's deemed a failure (and maybe can auto-sunset or something.) I would go a step further and prefer a ground-up constitution re-write where the government only has the right to pass laws for a limited, enumerated list of purposes, with the courts periodically clarifying which sub-purposes are logically valid and what they nest under, with every law fully explaining its purpose and the permissible governmental goal it's trying to serve with that purpose. Then, instead of a two dimensional one-off failure standard, the courts would be free to interpret , strike down or send back to congress laws in light of their stated goals.
This last bit may be a bit of a stretch to imagine being implemented.
* Media changes... no idea. The media plays a massive part in the election (if for no other reason than it pays the most attention to the two main parties), but the mainstream media is going to be changing a lot in the coming years. The "fake news" thing which started in such a funny little way has rapidly snowballed and the media are, *astoundingly enough*, lying more frequently, thus playing right into the hands of the alt-right. People apparently don't understand how to be strong-willed and aggressive without lying. This is a subject I will dissect in length, but not here.
* For voting alone, nothing else, no other changes, it's hard to see what would be an objective improvement. I don't think any of the simpler alternative voting methods would have prevented Trump (again, I"m not devoting a lot of brain CPU cycles to this), which is remarkable given the narrow margin