boji said:
Cyrano, i appreciate you adding your personal experience. I trust that the executives you've met, and potentially many others as well are not left leaning, but they are gears in a much larger machine. And unfortunately that machine is partially working in opposition to the conservative / libertarian content provider. That is, if those content creators can be found to have made any gaff, taboo, or mistake of speech that can be interpreted to be hateful, no matter how far into the past it occurred, no matter the context surrounding the incident.
That's two things:
- First, I've had to deal with a lot of executives. Most are just plain capitalists and they only care about politics if it pertains to The Company. I'd call them "liberals", but in the strict, economic sense.
- The ones I see as true nazis, are a minority. They seem to know one another very well, even if it's not always apparent. An example: Baron de Bonvoisin. Not apparent in everyday politics. Also called "The black baron". He was on the board of directors of a number of large companies and non-profits. He seemed to be financing a number of right-wing groupuscules. "Front de la jeunesse" was one of them. I met him while doing research about a group called "Westland New Post", some 35 years ago. It was clear from the beginning that WNP wasn't your average groupuscule. They never lacked money, for instance. They also were linked to the "Nivelles killers" gang. A gang that robbed supermarkets, getting very little loot, but killing lots of people. I'm pretty certain de Bonvoisin wasn't financing WNP. It ended when the leader hanged himself. I knew that guy. I can't believe he would kill himself, let alone by hanging. He was an arms lover and loathed people who tried hanging themselves. He called it "dishonourable". I'm pretty certain WNP and the Nivelles gang were both efforts to destabilise Belgian govt.
Those are the real, dangerous nazis. Money is not their leitmotiv. Power is.
The other thing is Youtube and demonitisation. It might look like it's left-wing oriented, but it isn't. Lots of channels that don't have anything to do with politics have been hit too. A few people even committed suicide. In one case, it was interesting enough to follow: Cody's lab. CL is about science, not politics. The guy maybe is a bit weird, but he's no fool. He got a visit from the FBI because some of his chemistry stuff just might teach someone to make a bomb. That was soon cleared up and he's more cautious now.
This example shows that it's YT just following new guidelines. fi, all vids about "hacking" computers are forbidden. Even when the bigger ones, eg from Blackhat, are still around.
The problem is the sector "hate speech". That's even more vaguely defined than hacking. There were also a lot more hate vids from religious and white supremacy groups around than leftist propaganda. The anti-vaccination groups, for instance have also been declared not-allowed. And those aren't politic, in general. Hec, even some vids about food supplements are gone. And these guys manage to use the fact that YT forbids their vids as a publicity weapon. It's forbidden, so it must be good/true?
Personally, I'm against all forms of censorship. But this wave doesn't bother the real nazis one bit. They operate in the dark. Not on YT...
Take the time to look at who's being de-monetized, or driven off of many social media platforms in the past few years and a pattern emerges: a person's politics is a key factor in how SV decides to play inquisitor, and how severe the punishment is to be once a violation of terms of service is found.
Who's SV?
If you'd rather not seek to verify these claims, then perhaps the example of Steven Crowder would best sum it up. He's right leaning (admittedly an irrevent, shock-jock comedian) that loves to skirt the edge, and he's paying for it (btw Remember that nut Alex Jones?).
On Crowder:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW0PuRIErkU
I'd like to be able to quantise this wave of censorship. But I can't. It's too hard and somewhat dangerous to try and classify these vids. What's right wing to one person, might be center, or even left wing to another...
I've been studying Google since it started. There's certainly some stuff goin' on. But it's not a left wing bias. Google was started with CIA capital. I wouldn't call the CIA left wing. Would you?
If I was American, i would worry a lot more about voting computers and all sorts of trickery with voter's registration and so on. And AFAICT, both sides have dirty hands when it come to that last one. But the major question is "Who is using that backdoor in the voting computers?"
