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Last February John Yoo and I hosted Richard Epstein, who needs no introduction for Ricochet members and listeners, for a lecture at Berkeley Law on his most recent book, The Dubious Morality of Modern Administrative Law. Given that we were still under a mask mandate on campus at the time, Richard decided to talk about our COVID misadventures as a prime example of the administrative state run amok. Following the lecture, we posted it to the law school’s YouTube channel as we always do.
Lo and behold, a few days ago YouTube took down the video of Richard’s talk on ground that it violates YouTube’s terms of service relating to spreading “misinformation” about COVID. Here’s how the university’s website for our Public Law and Policy Program now appears:
Let that sink in: at the home of the modern “free speech” movement, YouTube has decided to play its Big Brother role to the hilt. YouTube further informs us that we have a “Community Guidelines strike” on our record, and a one-week probation period during which we are prohibited from posting any new content or streaming any event. (And we have a brand new lecture from Ilya Shapiro in the can and ready to go).
Clearly the minimum response is to share the lecture with our listeners now. And so here it is. Stay tuned for updates.
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I have heard from others that YouTube has in recent weeks been going back through history (in one case back to January 2021) and pulling videos and suspending posters’ current ability to post, based on historical videos discussing then-current events because the then-hot discussion did not align with the now current politically correct narrative.
Some outsiders could argue (OK, I will argue) that there is no irony. U.C. Berkeley may have been a primary birthplace of the modern free speech movement, but in recent years the students and administration (and probably some faculty) at U.C. Berkeley have abandoned the concept of free speech. Therefore, it is not ironic that information from U.C. Berkeley would be censored, since U.C. Berkeley itself demands heavy censorship.
The Left always poses as the defender of freedom of speech, when it is out of power. When it is in power, the Left always tries to suppress freedom of speech.
For the Left, freedom of speech has no value in itself except as an avenue permitting the dissemination of left-wing views.
This is outrageous and unless these platforms define where exactly a difference of opinion is in violation of anything, then they should present and advertise themselves as censors of our Constitutional Amendment Freedom of Speech. Time to find and use other companies.