Actually...I don't know why they suddenly started banning people in 2016. Why? (No, no sarcasm, just a lack of being informed).

Youtube has been taking down Nazi videos, threats, assorted other racist and abusive content, as well as accounts involved in harassment or other criminal behavior.

One theory says Youtube is part of a vast evil conspiracy to persecute conservatives!!!!!!

The other theory is that the vast 2016 Russian propaganda attacks were successful in stirring up rightwingnut racism and hate and conspiracy nutters, and Donald Trump played a big part in fueling the rightwingnut racism and hate and conspiracy nuttery.

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In case you hadn't noticed, you're not King and you do not get to personally define community standards for objectionable content.

The Law provides Youtube immunity for "Good Samaritan" blocking and screening of offensive material. Youtube has in place standard mechanisms and policies and procedures for community-standards flagging and handling of objectionable materials. The law gives deliberately broad protection for any half-ass-credible system put in place for that purpose. It deliberately leaves the details of that system to the service provider, and it deliberately leaves review of that system to consumers.

As I understand it, YouTube did not target Prager. A large number of people independently flagged the content as objectionable. I haven't watched Prager's videos, but as I understand it there is good reason for people to consider the content inappropriate or objectionable. Heck, it makes me think I should start flagging pseudoscience, conspiracy theories, and other propaganda and disinformation videos. If we're going to have community-standards content flagging, then I say we drop the asinine concerns with seeing human bodies and instead object to lies and misinformation and irrational nonsense that are actually harmful.

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If you don't curate your content, then soon your service will be full of conspiracy theories, nazis both rhetorical and actual, porn and vast amount of copyright infringement.

Oh man. I despise conspiracy nutters and nazis..... but porn and vast amounts of copyright infringement makes for a very tempting bargain there.

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What was the evil nasty foreign government supposedly doing?

Seriously?

They successfully (and criminally) hacked both Republican and Democratic computer networks.

Russian intelligence retained the information hacked from Republican systems as kompromat. (Note that Russian Intelligence don't need to make overt blackmail threats, all that is necessary is for Trump to know that the Russians have kompromat.)

The information hacked from Clinton and Democratic computer systems was released both for smear value and to (criminally) aid the Trump campaign with all of the confidential campaign data.

They also (criminally) used the hacked information to meddle in many legislative elections across the country.

They (criminally) funneled financial contributions into the Trump campaign.

They (criminally) successfully hacked into at least one manufacturer of Voting Machines.

They (criminally) attacked the computer election systems in all 50 states, with successful intrusions in many of them. While we don't have confirmation of the Russians directly changing vote totals or indirectly changing totals by altering voter registration records or other means, we really don't know the full extent of what they did after they successfully intruded into all of those state election systems. All we do know is that they successfully compromised the election systems for about half the country.

They ran a massive campaign of lies and fabricated stories to slander Clinton, slander Democrats, and slander Republicans that criticized Trump. Slander is illegal, and it almost surely violated some part of the criminal campaign laws.

That list of course doesn't include any Russian activities that are still held as classified. It of course doesn't include any Russian activities that weren't caught. And I didn't bother with hostile actions that that might not directly violate the law.

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They shoot stuff on shoestring budgets and don't plan for extra filming days

Success!

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This case, and the size of the fine, should stand as a warning to all companies that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated and WILL NOT BE PROFITABLE unless you anticipate at least a 10% chance that you will get away with it.

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The world's largest robot is your mamma's vibrator.

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Yeah, like Republicans are going to vote in favor of business regulations.

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Note to FlightSimLabs management: Just because you broke the law does not make it legal for your prison cellmate to assrape you.

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You're right, things could get a LOT worse than predicted, a lot faster than predicted.

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Vote Conservative Christian! We don't murder as many gays as Conservative Muslims do!

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Microsoft really seems to be de-emphasizing quality assurance

Hmmm. I haven't noticed any change.

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