In the United States, we have the freedom of speech. It’s a glorious thing because we can say whatever is on our minds. It opens up doors to have healthy debates, too.
The problem is that the liberals don’t like us to be able to speak freely. They like to label things that go against their agenda as “misinformation.”
When did everything said on social media have to be accurate? It should be up to each and every person to fact-check what they hear if it is a concern to them.
YouTube has decided that they want to be like many of the other social media platforms – censor, censor, censor.
Back in August of last year, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) sent Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of YouTube, a letter that raised concerns about the censorship that was going on, particularly as it had to do with politically conservative and religious speech. Rubio questioned a few specific incidents and wanted answers from the Google-owned platform to see how they were in “violation” of the community guidelines.
YouTube has been known to ban people randomly that say it’s a “violation” of their community standards. That’s not entirely accurate, though. It all depends on what the people are saying. Rubio says that it’s a “pattern of apparent political and religious bias on YouTube’s part.”
We’ve seen it more times than we can count.
Dan Bongino, a conservative podcaster, was permanently banned by the platform after he announced that he was leaving YouTube over censorship.
The “Let’s Go, Brandon” song was removed because it was due to “medical information.”
And, we’ve seen how several of Senator Rand Paul’s videos have been deleted because they talked about COVID-19 (and the information was proven to be correct).
Wojcicki could just do as Rubio is asking and explain herself. It would make it easier for people to know what can and cannot happen on YouTube. However, she doesn’t want to. Instead, she is urging the federal government to outlaw “harmful” speech so that YouTube doesn’t have to bother censoring it.
This is where we get into the age-old debate of what is considered “harmful.”
We have freedom of speech in this country, so we can say whatever we want. That means we can talk about science, have political debates, and even disagree about how various government entities are handling the pandemic.
COVID has been going on for two years, so clearly, no one has the right answer to deal with it. Therefore, banning people and videos because of “misinformation” is simply a way of censoring people with differing opinions.
It seems that Wojcicki is struggling to understand what freedom of speech really means. There’s no need for YouTube to censor anything. Just let people say what they want to say. Unless it’s being reported as being violent or hateful toward a specific group, there’s simply no need to fuss about it.
Particularly when it comes to censoring government employees, however, it goes above and beyond what is acceptable. Rubio, Paul, and others have been voted by the people. They should be able to speak openly about issues without wondering if they’re going to say something that goes against “community standards.”
Wojcicki already knows that the policy of censoring legal content is controversial. It’s why she wants governments (all governments, not just the U.S.) to pass stronger laws against the idea of free speech so that YouTube can easily enforce their censorship without being controversial.
Again, though, we’re dealing with “harmful” being an opinion as opposed to a fact. And, especially in the U.S., censorship goes against our very constitutional rights.
