In the wake of The New York Times story “The Making of a YouTube Radical” — that tarred Bill Whittle, Stephen Crowder, Ben Shapiro, Stefan Molyneux, Jordan Peterson and others — it’s time for “the paper of record” to meet some of the real Members of a private Conservative video enclave. (Progressives prepare to be shocked.) Rather than a monolithic demographic cluster of old, white, heterosexual men, we find a cross-section of America.
The NY Times finds a troubled young college dropout who claims YouTube turned him from Liberal to Alt-Right radical — that he was “brainwashed” by YouTube’s recommendation algorithm which led him ever deeper into the right-wing “rabbit hole.” The Times illustrates the story with a collage of commentators, including Bill Whittle, Stefan Molyneux, Steven Crowder, and Ben Shapiro, implying they’re culpable for the brainwashing. Bill Whittle reacts to this new, libelous, effort by a Progressive flagship to shut down freedom of speech.
YouTube demonetized popular conservative comic commentator Steven Crowder, in a crackdown on so-called “hate speech.” But are social media anti-cyberbullying efforts just a discriminatory Progressive speech code designed to make conservative voices shut up? Is YouTube obligated to pass on advertising dollars to any creator, no matter how abhorrent his ideas or hateful his speech?