Conservative Talk Host Dan Bongino Permanently Banned by YouTube
“Both of Bongino’s channels have been removed and he will not be able to create a new one in the future, the platform said.”
Conservative commentator Dan Bongino has been permanently banned by the video-sharing social media site YouTube for allegedly spreading ‘misinformation’ about COVID-19.
I do not believe this was why he was banned and neither should you.
Misinformation has become nothing more than a cover for the left to silence voices they don’t like and the banning almost always goes in the same direction.
The entire Democrat Media Complex pushed misinformation about Trump colluding with Russia for four years and no one paid a price for it.
In my humble opinion, the Bongino ban is all about politics.
Chris Mills Rodrigo reports at The Hill:
YouTube permanently bans Dan Bongino
YouTube on Wednesday permanently banned conservative commentator Dan Bongino from the platform, saying he attempted to evade a previous suspension.
The Fox host uploaded a video to his main channel while his secondary channel, which primarily hosted short clips from his digital radio show, was actively suspended for violating YouTube’s COVID-19 misinformation policy.
“When a channel receives a strike, it is against our Terms of Service to post content or use another channel to circumvent the suspension,” a YouTube spokesperson told The Hill.
Both of Bongino’s channels have been removed and he will not be able to create a new one in the future, the platform said.
The YouTube spokesperson confirmed that attempts to make new channels “associated with his name” will also be denied.
Bongino has a channel on the alternative video-sharing site ‘Rumble’ where he addressed the YouTube controversy:
The truth is that Dan Bongino will be fine.
YouTube’s loss. At least now we all know it’s the Communist echo chamber they always wanted to be but never could admit to being.
Subscribe to @dbongino’s Rumble channel:https://t.co/cKy7vfWgd4 https://t.co/5SVeG45TX5
— Jeremy Frankel (@FrankelJeremy) January 27, 2022
Hilarious watching the @YouTube communists desperately try to save face after we told them to go f%^* themselves.
They’re claiming we “tried to evade suspension.” Really? By posting a final video LITERALLY titled “Why I’m Leaving YouTube”? 🤦🤦— Bongino Report (@BonginoReport) January 26, 2022
New social media sites like Rumble, Gettr, and others are being launched as alternatives all the time, and that’s a good thing. People need to have choices since the legacy sites are controlled almost exclusively by social justice warriors.
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Days after pulling his account and telling SCREWTUBE to pound sand they ban him.
YouTube took Otter’s advice (paraphrase) – “I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on YouTube’s part.”
While it’s easy to dismiss this as something inconsequential because Bongino (and others) have Rumble, terrestrial and satellite radio and other conservative friendly outlets, it’s important to remember those places aren’t frequented by young people and those who aren’t already members of the Tribe.
Places like YouTube, Instagram and TikTok are really the only platforms where conservatives have any chance whatsoever of reaching both the young and the politically unaware or disinterested. Progressives have all but eliminated conservative influence in every level of academia and they have an iron-clad hold on the entertainment industry. So, purging conservatives from social media is the next logical step in securing a kind of ideological hegemony on pop culture. I don’t know how a GOP Congress can remedy this. But, if they don’t, dissent will simply be eradicated by the left.
It is a no-brainer to make tech companies that are actually publishers liable for the same things as other media.
More complex is updating the nation’s non-discrimination laws and beliefs. Tribes are no longer defined by birth, they are formed along ideological lines.
These companies are not “actually publishers”. They do not produce their own content, and they do not pre-approve all content before it is posted. They never lay eyes on the vast majority of the content they host. By definition that means they are not publishers. Their position is that of distributors, exactly the same as book stores, and that means that regardless of § 230 they constitutionally can’t be held liable for what they host.
How does Facebook “Fact-Checking” come into play?
Sure they are publishers. They curate the contents on their sites using pervasive manual and programmatic techniques to achieve the expression of particular narratives and viewpoints. Thus they are editors. They spend non-trivial percentages of their revenues on this policing. Thousands of employees and contractors are dedicated to making “human-in-the-loop” decisions based on marching orders from management. These actions have intended and obvious impacts on the nature of content available on their platforms.
It’s clear and provable as a matter of law that they engage in disparate treatment of content that does not conform to the political predilections of company management. Left-wing content with persistent lies about the Russia Hoax, about Covid origins, and BLM lies is promoted while Right-wing *facts* about the Russia Hoax, Covid origins, and BLM are suppressed. This equals expressing an editorial viewpoint, and thus these companies are editing—are editors—and effectively propagate their views. Even today we have the Biden administration openly coordinating with—or do you prefer the word dictating to?—Big Tech companies to ensure that only content the federal government, under Biden’s and his puppeteers’ control, finds congenial is allowed to exist on the internet.
Thus it’s really a moot point whether 230 should or does protect the anti-liberty, anti-free speech, authoritarian, collusive (remember what happened to Parler anyone?), fascist Big Tech and its gentry laptopping director class (who should be sued by shareholders for failing in their fiduciary duties: inviting government scrutiny and lawsuits and alienating half your user base hardly seems like good management practice). Because if it does, we should start actually regulating them like it does, and allow lawsuits over their content, which will swamp their exploitative business models. And if it doesn’t, then the law should be updated to include Big Tech in its purview—or that is to say outside its safe harbor—or, even better, completely eradicated from the federal register and then we can start over with a new 230 descendant whose ken is modern and which groks the games of footsie that Big Tech and the Left have started playing, and reforms the perversions of our free speech culture wrought by the Left.
Scooterjay, how does Facebook “Fact-Checking” come into play? It doesn’t. It’s completely irrelevant to their status as distributors rather than publishers.
Polly_mathick, you are simply wrong. That is not how it works. What makes a publisher a publisher, and thus liable for everything it publishes, is that it originates or approves all content. Nothing gets into a newspaper without an editor having reviewed and approved it. The same with books; no book is published without an editor having gone over and approved every word. That is why it is constitutional to hold publishers liable for all their content. Without that it would be unconstitutional.
Facebook and Twitter don’t do that. People post content and it goes up immediately. And the overwhelming majority of it is never reviewed by anyone. Once in a while someone reports something, or an algorithm picks up on it, and an editor takes a look and may decide to remove that content. That makes them a distributor, and it is unconstitutional to hold them liable for all the content that they did not review or fact-check and have no idea is illegal. And that’s even without § 230. That’s what the situation would be were § 230 to be repealed. § 230 simply makes this explicit in the law,
Remember that the purpose of § 230 was not to provide this protection but to require providers to exercise a heavy hand and remove offensive content as they found it. In return they got an explicit guarantee that doing so would not make them liable. Then the courts said requiring them to censor was unconstitutional, but they could do so if they wished.
Yes, that is indeed perfectly clear and they don’t even try to hide it. But that is their right. They are acting no different from bookstores, and have the same status as them.
No more so than bookstores. The fact remains that the material you want to hold them liable for as publishers is not the material they have looked at and deleted — because of course they can’t be liable for not publishing something — but the material they haven’t looked at, haven’t censored, and do not know is illegal. And both the constitution and § 230 say you can’t do that.
The theory that colluding with the government makes them state actors is very flimsy. It would be different if they were coerced by the government, but obviously the Trump administration was not coercing them, and in fact was very upset that they were doing it, so it’s clear that they’re doing this on their own initiative, and are thus private actors.
You are correct…which means that under freedom in communications legislation that should be drafted as soon as conservative retake the seats, they should be told that they cannot ban for political purposes.
They can’t be told that. It’s their first amendment right to decide what content they want to host on their platforms. Just as Prof J can’t be forced to host pro-communist or antisemitic comments, or anything else he considers obscene (such as rape jokes, which I report when I see them and they are always removed), neither can Facebook or Twitter be forced to host content they object to, such as the truth about Wuhan Disease or election fraud.
They are paying the creators some money in exchange for the rights to publish the work. That is what a publisher does.
No, they’re not. Their whole business model is that by posting your content you give them the right to distribute it and profit from it without payment. Unlike FB and Twitter, Youtube does pay some posters who get very many views, as an incentive for them to attract more viewers. But even if that made it a publisher (it doesn’t), that wouldn’t affect the material for which they need protection from liability, which is overwhelmingly from tiny and obscure posters.
In any case, paying for content is not what makes someone a publisher. It’s editorial control, exercised before anything is published. It’s a conscious decision by the publisher to approve every word that comes out. That’s why the publisher is liable for those words.
And that’s besides the fact that many publishers don’t pay content providers, and some even charge them! (e.g. some academic journals)
The greatest trend to bring young folks out of the clutches of leftism is not Gab, GETTR, Rumble, or Parlor. It’s that most of them grow up.
which is why liberals want to coddle them and delay their maturity as long as possible while trying to give them voting rights at 16!
3% of population tweets
I don’t know the percent on the other social platforms but we always make them more important than they are.
Of course, people make bank on videos that are watched by millions
Most of it is crap
Today they ban for Covid “misinformation”. In three or four months, it will be about election “misinformation”
That ship sailed a year ago. YouTube has banned scores of accounts (maybe hundreds of accounts or more) that denied the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election.
We need to change the libel law so that there are different rules for “professional” news people. They would be required to follow generally accepted standards for all stories they publish. If someone sues them for libel and they can’t prove that they followed these standards then all the plaintiffs have to prove is that the story was false in order to collect damages.
Agree completely. I saw someone make similar point many years ago. His idea was, so long as courts extend a kind of professional courtesy to journalists in allowing them to be able to refuse to name their sources in their news stories they produce, they should also be held to a higher standard when it comes to the factual accuracy of those same stories. Amending the defamation laws would go some way to raising that standard.
They have no such privilege; there have been cases where they have been ordered to reveal their sources, and have gone to jail rather than comply as they should.
And to make them liable would need a constitutional amendment.
I don’t believe a constitutional amendment is necessary. The absence of malice standard for public figures was a judicial creation and subject to being reversed at some point by a later court. That standard is the main reason Rittenhouse won’t collect a penny for being libeled and defamed as a “white supremacist” by the press.
You might want to check with Nick Sandmann. He has bent NBC and CNN over a barrel and reamed them because of their remarks on air about him that both slandered and libeled him. They settled out of court for amounts rumored to be in the 10s of millions. That was for a story of the day type deal. MSLSD, CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC all made huge bank off slandering Rittenhouse for over a year. He has a court ruling that shows he was never a white supremacist, didn’t carry a gun over state lines, nor was he a murderer. These pricks never used “alleged” once when using these statements, and a court of law finding him innocent of ALL charges means he will burn the MSM a new asshole. And they deserve it.
Nick Sandmann was a minor during the defaming and wasn’t charged with a felony.
I hope Kyle can get his reckoning but don’t hold your breath.
Yes, an amendment would be necessary, because the first amendment prevents them from being held to a stricter standard than the ordinary libel laws.
The “public figure” rule is indeed a creation of the supreme court, and may be on its way out. But (1) that rule applies to everyone, not just the news industry, and (2) it’s not relevant to ConradCA’s proposal.
Also, that is not the reason Rittenhouse is unlikely to succeed. Calling anyone a “white supremacist” is not defamation, because it’s an opinion, not a statement of fact. Sandmann couldn’t sue for that either.
Sandmann’s suit was over factual misstatements the news industry made about him. Not about the slurs and hateful opinions they expressed, or the conclusions they erroneously drew from facts, but the factual statements they made which were simply not true. But your claim that he “bent NBC and CNN over a barrel and reamed them” is pure supposition, and I doubt it’s true. I think it’s far more likely that he got little more than nuisance money, because if it got to trial they could argue that the damage he suffered was not due to their factual misstatements but to their opinions, and in that case he’s not owed anything.
That’s simply incorrect. All but one or two states have adopted so-called ‘shield laws.’ Many of the Circuit Courts have created some level of qualified immunity for reporters to be able to protect sources. Just because a handful of reporters haven’t been granted that immunity in specific cases, doesn’t mean reporters in this country do in fact enjoy privileges average Americans do not.
To demonstrate that, you need just look at the recent Veritas raid. Plenty of commentary has been written pointing out that while such a raid might be permissible if conducted against a common peon, law and precedent make it absolutely indefensible to confiscate the same materials belonging to “a journalist.”
That’s states. It’s not a constitutional privilege, and the supreme court has repeatedly refused to recognize such a privilege. The issue with Veritas is DOJ policy. There’s no need for DOJ to have such a policy, but it does, and in this case it seems to have violated it. Which of course it’s entitled to do, but it’s embarrassing.
“When a channel receives a strike, it is against our Terms of Service to post content or use another channel to circumvent the suspension,” a YouTube spokesperson told The Hill.
Their trying to control what you post in other channels!
No, they mean another channel on their service.
Bongino is a bit of a king maker.
If Rumble doesn’t drop the ball like Parler did, they could rise on this move along with a lot of other content creators.
The truth is that a lot of content creators are sick of youtube and would love to go elsewhere if it were viable.
Doughnut operator, Herrera, Warrior Poet, Critical Drinker and countless more. Many are not all that political but are sick of youtube’s woke garbage and evil business practices.
Action item: whenever discussing YouTube with leftists from now on, be sure to drop the term “echo chamber” early and often. They hate having that pushed in their faces.
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.”
YouTube is one of the three most powerful websites in the western world. Alexas ranks it #2 globally in Internet engagement and it’s the third biggest search engine on the planet trailing only Bing and parent Google.
Rumble is barely in the top 900. It’s apples and oranges. And for that reason, there currently aren’t any viable alternatives to YouTube. To have a viable alternative, a startup would need to have access to billions in capital and the wherewithal to lose money for several years, maybe even a decade or more, as YouTube itself did.
This afternoon, Google has upped the ante by stripping Bongino’s website of access to Google’s AdSense. That’s the service that allows website operators to serve ads. AdSense is EASILY the most powerful advertising service in cyberspace. While it’s not striclty a monopoly as it ‘only’ has 52% market share, because of complex reasons dealing with how internet advertising works in a practical sense, AdSense is effectively a monopoly.