Law&Crime Sidebar - Russell Brand Calls Out YouTube for 'Censorship and Bias'

Episode Date: September 29, 2022

Comedian Russel Brand is calling out YouTube for silencing him but not mainstream media…is he right? Jesse Weber and Professor Eugune Volokh discuss.GUEST:Professor Eugene Volokh: https://law.ucla.edu/faculty/faculty-profiles/eugene-volokhLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo Editing - Michael Deininger & Logan HarrisGuest Booking - Alyssa FisherSocial Media Management - Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieObjectionsThey Walk Among AmericaCoptales and CocktailsThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. View Shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that

will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Is there one standard for independent news broadcasters like us on our channel and a different standard for what we would call the mainstream media? Comedian Russell Brand is calling out YouTube for silencing him, but not mainstream media, is he right? Professor Eugene Volick comes on to discuss. We have been officially censored by YouTube. They took down one of our videos for misinformation, but why are big media organizations not censored for misinformation in the same way?

Comedian and social commentator Russell Brand is calling out YouTube for what he sees as censorship, and he's decided to move his live streaming show over to Rumble. Now, Brand claims that the platform took down one of his videos for misinformation regarding COVID-19. In the mistaken video, we said that the NIH were recommending the use of what we should have said is they're trialing. That's what we should have said. You pointed that out to us.

We made an apology video. We've taken that down as well. YouTube took down our original video. We've taken down the apology video because in case we reiterate the claim while apologising. I think it's, I think what he was actually trying to say that it was Ivermectin there and satirically bleeping himself out, bleeping out the drug, pretty funny there. But then he's raised this larger issue, this larger issue of why, in his opinion, media companies aren't held to the same standard. We made an error, in my opinion, a relatively small error, and we're being penalized.

For me, that looks like censorship. And the reason I think it looks like censorship is because there's mainstream media misinformation up all the time. I should mention that Elon Musk has tweeted that Brand has made a good point. But the question is, has he made a good point? Well, I'm joined right now by Professor Eugene Volick, who teaches and writes about First Amendment law and a First Amendment amicus brief clinic at UCLA School of Law. Professor, thanks for coming on sidebar. Always a pleasure.

So what do you think? We'll just start generally. Do you think Russell Brand has a point here that there's a double standard for him in the way that he's delivering commentary and, you know, maybe news, versus big mainstream media companies? Well, I don't know all of the details of all of Russell Brands past controversies. And as to this one in particular, it sounds like it was a relatively minor mistake. And the question that is being raised is, how often does YouTube block videos, especially popular ones based on that? Just to give an example, President Biden several times recently

claimed that AR-15's fire bullets at a muzzle velocity five times that of some point all other guns than most guns. Turns out that's just false. Was that removed? Well, maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. We don't know. But there is always the possibility of that kind of a double standard whether deliberate or inadvertent. Maybe, for example, it wasn't flagged to YouTube or maybe YouTube is still in the middle of investigating. So it's very hard to tell if there's a double standard. certainly possible there might be, but these kinds of things are inevitable whenever you have this kind of editorial judgment on the part of a company like YouTube. One question we might ask is, should YouTube exercise that kind of editorial judgment? Should YouTube undertake to

police videos for misinformation with the inevitable risk of double standards that happen in all human institutions? That's an interesting question. So sticking with the COVID-19 subject matter for a moment, the reason, and I have to tell you, I think Russell Brand makes an interesting point, here. So he says that he was wrong, right? He takes, you know, he says, I misinterpreted the data regarding and he bleeped it out, but I think it was Ivermectin that he was talking about. And he, he acknowledged it. He said he made an apology video, then took it down when YouTube took his original video down. But he said, if you want to focus on COVID-19 and misinformation about COVID-19, he flags this video from March 30th, 2021. It's of MSNBC host Rachel Maddow.

And she's talking about vaccination process. And she says from this video, now this is from her broadcast. Now, we know that the vaccines work well enough that the virus stops with every vaccinated person. A vaccinated person gets exposed to the virus. The virus doesn't infect them. The virus cannot then use that person to go anywhere else. Now, we know at this point that while vaccines are highly effective at preventing serious illness and death, that statement is really no longer true. And Russell Brand said that video is up on YouTube right now. And he says, in my opinion, that's a misinformation. I actually check. That video is still on YouTube. So if we're focusing just on the COVID-19 conversation, do you think there's a problem here that

YouTube took down his video that was inaccurate about COVID-19, but then kept up a video like Rachel Maddows? Well, so again, it seems to me there are a couple of questions one could ask. One is, if we assume that YouTube should be in the business of policing videos for misinformation, what should it be its obligations to be thorough on this, what should it be its obligations to be even handed on it? Inevitably, there's going to be some some error in any human system. So whether it's because of bias or because of anything else. YouTube might also decide that it has a different view as from older videos as to older videos than newer videos. On the one hand, older videos are still available online. On the other hand,

they're probably going to be recognized by most people as being creations of their time. So people will often see what the date stamp is. And if they're looking at it, they're probably going to be aware that this is from an earlier time, and it may just be both too difficult and kind of too dangerous to history to have to go back and retroactively police all the errors that have accumulated over the years. So maybe YouTube has reasonable position in saying we're going to block videos that are new that say this, but not go back and remove videos that are old that say such things. Interesting question. I don't know what their formal policy is, but it's the kind of question you might ask. There's a separate

question, which is, should we be trusting big tech to make these kinds of decisions, especially the very, very big platforms like YouTube, like Facebook, like Twitter, for example, to decide what is right and what is wrong, what should be blocked or removed and what should stay up? And that's an interesting and quite different and difficult conceptual question. Look, you know, at the point we're doing this recording, I should tell you, we're actually covering Alex Jones's defamation trial out in Connecticut. And if there's any lesson that could be learned there, it's the power of extreme misinformation, because that whole case is about, you know, his supporters believing Sandy Hook wasn't real and actually harassing the victim's family members. So that that's a concern,

I think that, you know, when we talk about trying to police misinformation, I guess the question, let's just start off right here, because I think it's important for our viewers and listeners to understand. YouTube has a right to do this, right? They can take off any video. Russell Brand's rights aren't being violated. Right. So YouTube does, there's nothing illegal with YouTube saying, we want to host these videos and not those videos. Some people even say that they have a First Amendment right to decide what videos to host and what not to host, just like your podcast can decide whom to invite and whom not to invite. Some people say that. I'm not sure that's right. I think they may in fact be more, at least it may be permissible for the government

to treat them more like a phone company. We don't expect the phone company to say, oh, we're going to cancel somebody's phone line because it's being used for get out the vote. vote for the communists or for the Nazis or the KKK or because we think this phone line is being used to spread misinformation about the election or whatever else. That's just not the job of the phone company we've decided. We've decided that it should provide the infrastructure and that the users of the phone system should decide what to go there, even recognizing that may therefore be used for bad purposes.

So maybe it might make sense to treat YouTube more like the phone company. in this respect. On the other hand, the current law does not so treat it, at least at a federal level. So it probably does have a legal right to do this. I guess the question is, should it have such a right and should we encourage it to do this? Or should we argue that, no, no, we don't want big tech to be set up, afford the channels of communication deciding what people see and hear. But I guess the concern is, and before I let you go, Professor, I wanted to ask you this, does it matter about the subject matter? So you mentioned something before about President Biden in terms of, you know, national defense. If we're having a conversation, because COVID-19 was

such a sensitive subject matter, it affected everybody. It was important to get the right information out to everybody at the right time. Do we treat something like COVID-19 versus a different piece of subject matter differently? Do you think YouTube should be in that position? Depending upon what the subject is, they have to take a bigger stance on what to block and what not to block. Because at the end of the day, someone is going to have a platform somewhere else. If it's not YouTube, They'll go to a rumble. They'll go to some other place. And I guess is it matter what the subject is?

Well, it's a plausible argument. You might say that when it comes to certain kinds of things, it should be, speech should be treated differently. Some people might say, you know, when it comes to speech, let's say, urging violence, like, while it attacks on police officers, police officers' job is dangerous enough. We shouldn't have, or we should encourage platforms to block that kind of thing. So you could, as opposed to other things, you know, just debates about gun control. will leave that to fact checkers. So you can imagine that I'm not sure how this plays out here. As I understand it, Ivermectin is a prescription drug. So the way that some people have described using Ivermectin, they have asked their doctors to prescribe it off-label, and which doctors,

I believe, are allowed to do if in their judgment it's a good idea. So the danger of Russell Brand praising Ivermectin is probably relatively modest, right? I mean, people, I think say, well, some people might take, I think, the veterinary version, which I don't know, maybe available without prescription or maybe otherwise available, but still, the typical person who hears him, and let's see he believes him, he calls up his doctor, and it's up to the doctor to act as the gatekeeper there. So I'm not sure we need YouTube as the gatekeeper. On the other hand, in the example of that older video from Rachel Maddow, if it's being accurately reported, That may actually be bad for worse for public health because then people might say, oh, I'm vaccinated now.

I'm perfectly safe. I may have all of these symptoms, but I'm sure it's not COVID because I'm vaccinated or I won't spread it to others. And it turns out that they're mistaken and mistaken in a way that a doctor might not be able to solve. So I would just resist the sense that because it's about COVID, there's some pressing emergency need to have Big Tech police it. Again, especially when it comes to discussion of prescription drugs, it's the doctors that are ultimately the gatekeepers on that, and I don't see why YouTube needs to be a gatekeeper. Eugene Vallek, thank you. I thought this was a really good, interesting conversation.

I appreciate you taking the time. Always a pleasure. And thanks, everybody, for joining us here on Sidebar. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast. I'm Jesse Weber. Speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this Law and Crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus.

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