Susan Wojciki, the CEO of YouTube, is no fan of free speech.
She has routinely offered up YouTube as a privatized censorship arm of the managerial state to shut down any discourse that goes against the regime’s the discourse.
However, even Wojciki recognizes that her company can only do much as a private mercenary of anti-free speech politicians. As a result, she is now calling on governments to pass stronger anti-free speech laws on otherwise legal content.
The YouTube CEO mades these comments during an interview with the German independent broadcaster TIDETVhamburg where she was questioned about how YouTube is able to comply with national laws while satisfying advertisers and maintaining user interest.
“We work around the globe, and you’re right, certainly there are many different laws and many different jurisdictions, and we…enforce the laws of the various jurisdictions around speech or what’s considered safe or not safe,” Wojcicki stated.
She claimed that YouTube’s decision to enforce these laws has generated little controversy. As Tom Parker of Reclaim the Net highlighted, that the controversy emerges when YouTube censors speech its categorizes as “harmful” but “not illegal.” This is routinely used in cases that are dealing with the Wuhan virus.
“What has been the controversial part is when there is content that would be deemed as harmful but yet is not illegal,” Wojcicki stated. “An example of that, for example, would be COVID. I’m not aware of there being laws by governments saying around COVID in terms of not being able to debate the efficacy of masks or where the virus came from or the right treatment or proposal but yet there was a lot of pressure and concern about us distributing misinformation that went against what was the standard and accepted medical knowledge. And so this category of harmful but…legal has been, I think, where most of the discussion has been.”
Wojcicki conceded that YouTube’s censorship policies are controversial. However, the YouTube CEO insisted that countries start pushing for stronger restrictions on online speech.
“Our recommendation, if governments want to have more control over online speech is to pass laws to have that be very cleanly and clearly defined so that we can implement it,” Wojcicki remarked.
Parker noted that “This is the latest of several calls Wojcicki has made in support of censoring legal speech that’s deemed to be ‘harmful.’” On top of that, Wojcicki has pushed for the US government to provide guidance on “hate speech” and even attended a secret meeting with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar to talk about content moderation (a euphemism for censorship) on YouTube.
All told, YouTube is no advocate for free speech. In the US’s case, YouTube will continue playing an outsized role in policing political discourse for the simple fact that US free speech protections are still robust — at least in the public sense. In turn, corporations are tasked with carrying out the managerial regime’s agenda of shutting down dissident speech in the American context.
Other countries, especially those in Europe, with a less vigorous tradition of free speech will likely see their laws changed to reflect this new “anti-misinformation” agenda. There are clearly unholy forces out here working to undermine foundational freedoms across the West.
It’s up to liberty conservatives to ensure that governments and mega corporations alike can’t infringe on the freedom of speech. If this civil liberty were to go, tyranny would become the norm throughout the West in short order.
