YouTube Suspends Trump’s Account(cnbc.com) |
YouTube Suspends Trump’s Account(cnbc.com) |
That's my problem with this type of censorship - now I want to know what was so bad YouTube felt the need to remove it. If it's that bad and was said by the President, it seems like it may be something I should know, but now I can't easily know. Why do tech companies get to decide what information the average person can or can't easily see? Part of the blame is on Trump for posting all this stuff on these websites instead of somewhere like whitehouse.gov.
Let's say he hypothetically called on his supporters to commit a terrorist attack at the inauguration. Now Youtube is putting anyone who attends the inauguration in danger, because they are withholding information from them.
Because it's their platforms and in this case YouTube (Google) is a private company. So they can do whatever they like.
While they're continue to de-platform, they should update their about page a bit: [0]
https://theintercept.com/2019/07/11/china-surveillance-googl...
Google is a private company, so don't you dare to criticize them.
So it's not so much a case where something finally crossed the line. And if you look just at the removed content you'd say "I don't see the big deal". It's more the pattern: the sum total of what he said was interpreted as calling for violence -- not reading into it by outsiders, but in the actions and the words of the people taking them. YouTube, Twitter, and others don't want to be in the spotlight if future communications are interpreted that way.
If there hadn't been violence, he'd still be on these media. But there has been, and what changes suddenly is that people who said "These will cause violence" now say "These did cause violence, and there will be more if you don't do something before rather than after the fact".
The content that was removed is readily available if you'd like to read it, but you'll find it underwhelming.