Should Youtube silence the right?

piloteer

@Vaulk

Google doesn't get money from the government to run their operations. They get tax incentives from states so google and all the tech giants will move their operations to their states and create jobs. Although that's technically a subsidy, it's not the same as with all the nuclear energy plants, and coal burning plants, or natural gas plants that need government assistance to continue to stay in business. I don't see how tax incentives can give the government a legal right to say how the business should function. As far as all the other a$$hats, I say any profits they make should be redistributed back to their customers. I also agree that what constitutes "hate speech" shouldn't be so stringent.        

piloteer

@대왕광개토

Stormfront is allowed to run their website how they feel it should be run, and it is totally contrary to mainstream media. Stormfront actually implemented many of the same restrictions that YouTube has, and they did it long before YouTube did. Hate speech is frowned upon on Stormfront, and racial slurs as well. Violent rhetoric will get a user kicked off Stormfront faster then they would get kicked off YouTube. Do you think the white-nationalist/white-supremacist Stormfront should be made to not censor people that they don't want on their site because they don't want to be tied to the violent actions of some white supremacists?  If Google can be made to not censor who they want, so can Stormfront. That is a violation of their freedom of expression, and freedom of private property, and economic freedom. If it happens to google, it can happen to all of us. Google can do what they want. Google certainly is free to be infallible, and they're free to be fallible, as is clearly stated in the constitution. 

What does your name mean? Either I have dyslexia all of a sudden, or your name is in some kind of lingo that's indecipherable to people who don't watch Pokemon.      

Vaulk

piloteer said:

@Vaulk

Google doesn't get money from the government to run their operations. They get tax incentives from states so google and all the tech giants will move their operations to their states and create jobs. Although that's technically a subsidy, it's not the same as with all the nuclear energy plants, and coal burning plants, or natural gas plants that need government assistance to continue to stay in business. I don't see how tax incentives can give the government a legal right to say how the business should function. As far as all the other a$$hats, I say any profits they make should be redistributed back to their customers. I also agree that what constitutes "hate speech" shouldn't be so stringent.        

I don't necessarily "See" how tax incentives can give the government a legal right to say how the business should function either.  But it does.  This isn't a matter of what ought to be or what should be, it's a matter of what lawfully IS.  The Government has the control because the business entered into contract willingly and knowingly with full freedom of choice to do so.  It's all legal and contractually binding under the law.  I don't agree that it should be that way but unfortunately it is.

Plaffelvohfen

@Vaulk

You're right that it's a question of legal statutes, but the thing is under federal anti-discrimination laws, businesses can refuse service to any person for any reason, unless the business is discriminating against a protected class.

At the national level, protected classes include:

• Race or color
• National origin or citizenship status
• Religion or creed
• Sex
• Age
• Disability, pregnancy, or genetic information
• Veteran status
  

Socio-Political ideologies are not a protected class of citizens... Yet... So at the moment even subsidized corporations can discriminate against socio-political ideologies... IF they don't mind the possible resulting social-pressure on their business that is...

Churches that are being sued are discriminating against protected-class citizens, but they actually could discriminate against political ideologies without legal problems... 

piloteer

@Vaulk ;Vaulk said:

       

I don't necessarily "See" how tax incentives can give the government a legal right to say how the business should function either.  But it does.  This isn't a matter of what ought to be or what should be, it's a matter of what lawfully IS.  The Government has the control because the business entered into contract willingly and knowingly with full freedom of choice to do so.  It's all legal and contractually binding under the law.  I don't agree that it should be that way but unfortunately it is.

Ummm......no. You are absolutely incorrect. Government incentives do not constitute any legal obligation on the part of the government or business in any way shape or form. Hence the reason individual citizens do not lose any rights because of the tax incentives they get when they donate to charity. And businesses do not have to hand over their operations to the government for the tax incentives they get for going green, or complying with ADA(Americans with disabilities act). You WILL NOT be a able to demonstrate that any contracts that Google has with any state government, or municipality puts Google into any kind of governmental ownership. Either, you are sadly misinformed, or you are just making baseless claims for the sake of this discussion. But either way, you are wrong.

Good to see you're back   

piloteer

@YeshuaBought

Hypocrisy IS a right. But I'm not being a hypocrite. I'm saying the government shouldn't have the right to dictate what is hate speech. Just like I'm arguing the government shouldn't have the right to force YouTube to not censor. Why don't you just get back to your coloring book and let the adults have their discussion. Thanx hun   

Vaulk

piloteer said:

Ummm......no. You are absolutely incorrect. Government incentives do not constitute any legal obligation on the part of the government or business in any way shape or form. Hence the reason individual citizens do not lose any rights because of the tax incentives they get when they donate to charity. And businesses do not have to hand over their operations to the government for the tax incentives they get for going green, or complying with ADA(Americans with disabilities act). You WILL NOT be a able to demonstrate that any contracts that Google has with any state government, or municipality puts Google into any kind of governmental ownership. Either, you are sadly misinformed, or you are just making baseless claims for the sake of this discussion. But either way, you are wrong.

Good to see you're back   

So I had this long drawn out explanation here, sorry for the delay in response.  But after some research (It's good to get called out on facts every now and then) I found the U.S. Supreme Court rulings regarding what I was talking about.

Limitations in Constitutional Rights: Hale V Henkel 201 U.S. 43 (1906)

The takeaway here is that the Church specifically under 501(c)(3) has no 1st Amendment rights and no 5th Amendment rights because the corporation is an artificial entity.  Because 501(C)(3) corporations can be sued, if the public is offended by something that's said by the preacher (Likely about homosexuality) then the corporation can be sued as a result.

Here
https://www.churchlawandtax.com/cltr/2013/september-october/church-member-sues-pastor-for-defamation.html
And here
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/city-of-houston-demands-pastors-turn-over-sermons
And here
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/state-of-georgia-demands-pastor-turn-over-sermons

Thus is the result of incorporating as a Church for the benefits offered by Government such as tax-leniency and other state and federal benefits that accompany Corporate status.  This represents power that the Government didn't have before but now has as a direct result of your incorporation, allowing the Government to tell you what you can and cannot do and to go as far as disrupting your normal practices within your organization.  

Now onto Google specifically.  First thing's first, Google is a publicly traded company, this identifies their corporation status.  Again Hale V Henkel comes into play here with restrictions as to what constitutional protections a corporation has.  Now, in regards to your claim:
piloteer said:

You WILL NOT be a able to demonstrate that any contracts that Google has with any state government, or municipality puts Google into any kind of governmental ownership. 

I never said that the government has ownership over Google, I stated clearly that "The Government has control" and I also explained why.  Submission of a Corporate application is the contractual agreement with the Government that I was talking about.  This happens when you file your corporate bylaws and register the corporation with the IRS and local state tax agencies through contractual agreement.  

What I was pointing out with Google is that the Government has control of a large portion of what they can and cannot do because of the fact that they are incorporated, for example:

Freedom of Speech being replaced with Commercial Speech.  In corporations the Government reserves the exclusive right to restrict speech under penalty of law and regularly do for the cases of: 

1) Advocacy of the Use of Force 
2) False Statements of Fact 
3) Obscenity
4) Child Pornography 
5) Fighting Words and Offensive Speech
6) Speech Owned by Others
7) Restrictions Based Upon Special Capacity of Government.

We could probably all agree that most of these are spot on and should be in place, but telling corporations that they can't advocate, use or allow fighting words or offensive speech on their sites is an open door for lawsuits because the lines drawn for what's "Offensive" these days are pretty thin.  The book on how to not be offensive is like twenty feet tall and growing.  This is where Google falls under Government control as to what they can and cannot do, say or allow within their organization.  Same applies with Youtube.

I understand how my statements may have implied a type of ownership but it wasn't my intent to bring that across.  I don't think the Government "Owns" you if you incorporate, I just have knowledge that if you do you'll be subject to an entirely new set of laws and regulations, many of which would normally be just cause for civil rights lawsuits...but because corporations are artificial entities...they don't get the same rights.  In this manner the Government definitely receives controls over your business that it didn't have before and those controls are far reaching and have substantial impact.

Vaulk

Plaffelvohfen said:

@Vaulk

You're right that it's a question of legal statutes, but the thing is under federal anti-discrimination laws, businesses can refuse service to any person for any reason, unless the business is discriminating against a protected class.

At the national level, protected classes include:

• Race or color
• National origin or citizenship status
• Religion or creed
• Sex
• Age
• Disability, pregnancy, or genetic information
• Veteran status
  

Socio-Political ideologies are not a protected class of citizens... Yet... So at the moment even subsidized corporations can discriminate against socio-political ideologies... IF they don't mind the possible resulting social-pressure on their business that is...

Churches that are being sued are discriminating against protected-class citizens, but they actually could discriminate against political ideologies without legal problems... 

You've got some great points here, but the fact of the matter is that while socio-political ideologies may not be protected classes of citizens yet, you can still sue a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization (Like most churches are) for defamation of character (See above post for articles on that).  

Secondly, churches are legally restricted from discriminating against political ideas or figureheads.

"All IRC section 501(c)(3) organizations, including churches and religious organizations, are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office . Contributions to political campaign funds or public statements of position (verbal or written) made by or on behalf of the organization in favor of or in opposition to any candidate for public office clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity.” By breaking this rule, the IRS may deny or revoke the tax-exempt status of the church and the impose of certain excise tax".

This represents legal penalties for leadership within the Church speaking out for or against any political candidate and might include speaking out against political parties as well.  I'm honestly not sure on the latter.

Plaffelvohfen

@Vaulk

Interesting, didn't know that article... So it's the non-profit status (or rather the tax-exempt status) that is ground for this ruling... But as you wrote: This isn't a matter of what ought to be or what should be, it's a matter of what lawfully IS. 

And thus Google and others, not being tax-exempt, are within their rights to discriminate against any unprotected-class citizen they want, whether we like it or not... The only leverage is individual protests like boycotts and such... That covers what legally IS...

I'm not sure whether to extend this ruling to for-profit organizations, it would clearly change the news cycle tone on all sides! lol... Would that have any impact on previous rulings like Citizen United for example? Too tired to think about it now though... Food for thoughts...  

대왕광개토

@piloteer If what you said about stormfront is true, then I will make the same argument as to why stormfront should not censor people they don't want in its site. Freedom of speech should not be dismissed because it is the most important means of discovering new thoughts and therefore new solutions to existing problems. The problem I have with media platforms such as Stormfront and Google is not the fact that they have a right to censor trolling useless comments but the fact that they have a right to  choose who is bad and who is good based only on how far a person's opinion is from their viewpoints. For example, let's assume I agree with immigrant policy and you don't. Let us furthermore assume that we both have good reasons to support our claims. Wouldn't it be totally ridiculous if I ban you from expressing your thoughts just because your viewpoint is different from that me?  By the way, my account name is 광개토대왕(Gwanggaeto the Great) and he was one of the kings of Goguryeo Dynasty(Korean kingdom ) whose territory stretched from Korean peninsula to Manchuria, parts of Russian Far East, and eastern Mongolia.

piloteer

@Vaulk

 I do agree that the guidelines that businesses are obligated to follow when they are incorporated are fair, and for the most part are actually in the best interest of the businesses anyway. I also agree that what constitutes "hate speech" can be used as a fulcrum to legitimize  shelving all free speech when it is misused by government entities. That would be most unsatisfactory as far as I'm concerned. But I also feel that a business or a website should not be forced to not censor who they want. Stormfront has a strict censorship rule because they're sick and tired of being tied to the violent actions of some people, and they don't want to be portrayed in that manner. However much I loathe the message that is espoused on Stormfront, I can't blame them for not allowing users to use racial slurs, hate speech, or violent rhetoric. Firstly, I can't blame them because they should have the right to not be tied to violent extremism, but secondly, Stormfront is private property, and they shouldn't be forced to enforce a non-censorship rule if they don't want to. Just like I shouldn't be forced to not censor guests in my own house, the same goes for Stormfront and YouTube.               

As far as a church being put into some other form of ownership other than private ownership, I'm confused as to why a church would want to do that in the first place. Perhaps you know more than I do on this matter. I would think that a church would want to retain all the freedoms allotted to them in the constitution, but I guess some don't. What is their motivation to do so here?  Are they put into some other tax bracket that's more financially beneficial to them? Do they actually receive subsidies, and if so, Why? I don't get it to be honest.        

piloteer

대왕광개토 said:

@piloteer If what you said about stormfront is true, then I will make the same argument as to why stormfront should not censor people they don't want in its site. Freedom of speech should not be dismissed because it is the most important means of discovering new thoughts and therefore new solutions to existing problems. The problem I have with media platforms such as Stormfront and Google is not the fact that they have a right to censor trolling useless comments but the fact that they have a right to  choose who is bad and who is good based only on how far a person's opinion is from their viewpoints. For example, let's assume I agree with immigrant policy and you don't. Let us furthermore assume that we both have good reasons to support our claims. Wouldn't it be totally ridiculous if I ban you from expressing your thoughts just because your viewpoint is different from that me?  By the way, my account name is 광개토대왕(Gwanggaeto the Great) and he was one of the kings of Goguryeo Dynasty(Korean kingdom ) whose territory stretched from Korean peninsula to Manchuria, parts of Russian Far East, and eastern Mongolia.

Stormfront doesn't want to be tied to violent extremism. They hope to legitimize white nationalism by means of persuasion, not violent actions. I also don't want to be tied to violent extremism, or racist rhetoric, so I wouldn't allow people who espouse those ideals into my home or place of business. Stormfront is private property just the same as my home and business is. If they can be forced to not censor, then I can. That would be no bueno. The constitution allows freedom of private property and business. Freedom of speech can be dismissed when it's within the confines of ones private property when it becomes a violation of ones rights to private property. Your feelings for trampling on those rights are not very convincing to me. I do believe that freedom of expression should not be dismissed in public forums, or privately owned places, so long as the private owner approves of his or her place being used in that manner, but if YouTube can be forced to not censor, then I can be forced to not censor in my own home, or business.

There are media outlets that do have a non-censorship policy, but because I'm not sure of your age, I won't tell you the names of some of these sites, and even though I am old enough to go to those sites, I DO NOT because they're messed up and it makes people question our ethical values as a society when they go to those sites. This site is not one of them, however you are allowed to say things on DI that you can't say on YouTube, because it's a debate site. You can question the validity of the holocaust on DI (and know that I would be right there to discredit anybody who would do so), and I feel they should be allowed to because it wouldn't be much of a debate site if you're not allowed to (tastefully) express your opinions. YouTube is not a debate site, and they no longer allow holocaust denial on their site, and that's their prerogative which should not be violated. YouTube knows they will get backlash and lose some users for their new rules, but they also know they could potentially get more backlash and lose more users if they don't enforce the rules they've implemented. It's in YouTube's best interest to get as many users as they can, and they feel implementing those rules is how they can achieve their goal of getting those users, and they should be free to run their site how they'd like. There are an infinite amount of other media outlets to get conflicting opinions from, and if YouTube doesn't want to be one of those sites, so be it, but YouTube has no legal or moral obligation to not censor.            

The meaning of your avatar name is very interesting. I'm going to see if I can find any information on it on YouTube right now. HAAAAA!!!

Vaulk

piloteer said:

@Vaulk

 I do agree that the guidelines that businesses are obligated to follow when they are incorporated are fair, and for the most part are actually in the best interest of the businesses anyway. I also agree that what constitutes "hate speech" can be used as a fulcrum to legitimize  shelving all free speech when it is misused by government entities. That would be most unsatisfactory as far as I'm concerned. But I also feel that a business or a website should not be forced to not censor who they want. Stormfront has a strict censorship rule because they're sick and tired of being tied to the violent actions of some people, and they don't want to be portrayed in that manner. However much I loathe the message that is espoused on Stormfront, I can't blame them for not allowing users to use racial slurs, hate speech, or violent rhetoric. Firstly, I can't blame them because they should have the right to not be tied to violent extremism, but secondly, Stormfront is private property, and they shouldn't be forced to enforce a non-censorship rule if they don't want to. Just like I shouldn't be forced to not censor guests in my own house, the same goes for Stormfront and YouTube.               

As far as a church being put into some other form of ownership other than private ownership, I'm confused as to why a church would want to do that in the first place. Perhaps you know more than I do on this matter. I would think that a church would want to retain all the freedoms allotted to them in the constitution, but I guess some don't. What is their motivation to do so here?  Are they put into some. other tax bracket that's more financially beneficial to them? Do they actually receive subsidies, and if so, Why? I don't get it to be honest.        

Well said all around.

In regards to the "Why" Churches incorporate themselves, it's largely due to a misunderstanding that's equal parts ignorance and deceptive influence.  Generally speaking Preachers or Priests represent the head of the Church and from an organizational standpoint they are the CEO.  When these leaders consider the 501(c)(3) option it's either because they think it will grant the Church additional immunities or benefits that it doesn't already have.  The reason for this ideology is typically just plain ignorance, Preacher reads about non-profit benefits, assumes they will help the Church, and that's how the pie was made.  In other cases (minority) it's because of a tax specialist or other representative of the Government who either doesn't know what they're talking about or has bad motives for convincing the leaders of the Church that a non-profit status would benefit them in some way.  

While the 501(c)(3) status is specific with it's guidelines and policies, it is still in the corporation realm and most of the rules and regulations apply across the board regardless of corporation type.  The heavy theme of corporate status is "Giving the Government a great deal of control over your company".  Corporate laws are (Like many other laws) broad, vague and unspecific for the most part, they were created with the idea in mind that "We'll exercise good judgement and handle grievances on a case by case basis".  Unfortunately with the rise in social justice we're seeing more and more breakdowns of the corporate laws where policy makers were supposed to step in and say "No, that's not what these laws were designed for" and instead...Churches are being sued for defamation of character and hate speech when the Preacher stands at the pulpit and says "You're going to hell if you're gay".

Granted I don't personally subscribe to telling people that despite the fact that it is well documented in the Bible, it generally doesn't go over well.

piloteer

@Vaulk

Although I don't agree that the bible specifically states that homosexuality is an unforgivable sin, and it alone will cause you to go to hell, I DO agree that churches should be allowed to preach that message if they feel fit. But I'm not really "in the know" on that subject. 

Are there certain denominations of churches that end up incorporating, like Catholic, or Presbyterian, or is it just a multitude of ignorance of the consequences of doing so among many religious institutions?    

Vaulk

@piloteer

You know I'm honestly not sure what typical denomination falls prey more often that others.  I'd take a shot and say that, based on the little that I know, it's likely not a big issue for the Catholic Church...they've got their own police force for crying out loud...I doubt they'd fall into that trap unwittingly.

Deductively I'd say it's probably small churches that have no system of hierarchy and are only responsible for managing themselves...which is likely the majority of Churches to be honest.  We all know there's big-shot churches out there with huge budgets but there's definitely more small-time churches ran by just a few elders.

piloteer

@대왕광개토

Wow. Did you know that the name "Goguryeo" is the origin of the modern English name "Korea"? 
What fun and interesting facts we can find on Google and YouTube. I actually never new any of this until you let me know of it. Thanx!  

대왕광개토

@piloteer Actually, the origin of the word Korea is Goryeo(Korean dynasty after silla). As far as I know, arab traders who visited Goryeo pronounced Goryeo as Koryo(Korea):).

piloteer

@대왕광개토

I'm not going to argue that you're wrong, because this is all new knowledge to me, but from what I read, Gorguryeo, is the origin of the name Goryeo, and that is the origin of the english name Korea. But again, I get the feeling you know more than I do on the matter.   

대왕광개토

@piloteer You are correct!