Monday, June 17, 2013

Why this blog has no advertising

At one point I decided to make a few pennies off this blog, especially considering the number of libertarians who land on my doorstep due to someone linking it on a libertarian Facebook page.  I'd love to make money off of them!

But I made the mistake of reading the terms of service.  You have to promise not to do anything that could be construed as hate speech.  Now, I don't consider what I do to be hate speech, but someone else might. Here is google's definition for youtube:

Hateful Content is videos, comments or channel information which contain "Hate Speech". "Hate speech" refers to content that promotes hatred against members of a protected group. Protected groups include, but are not limited to, race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, and sexual orientation/gender identity.

Sometimes there is a fine line between what is and what is not considered hate speech. For instance, it is generally okay to criticize a nation, but not okay to make insulting generalizations about people of a particular nationality.
I don't hate Christians, really.  Some of my best friends are Christians... really! I don't promote hatred toward them, or most believers, though I'm annoyed with the more reasonable ones for not speaking up against the dangerous ones more publicly.  As for the dangerous ones, is it hate speech to say I hate the child abusers I've written about on this blog?  They are a protected group by virtue of their religion, but shouldn't butt-fucking priests, faith-non-healing parents, and organizations that torture teenagers be exempt from that protection?  I think so.

And what kind of speech would "promote hate?"  And what is hate anyway?  It's a feeling, not an action.  Promoting violence would definitely be something I could see google prohibiting, whether motivated by hate or otherwise.  That's the real risk in unrestrained "hatespeech."  I would never promote violence, though I might make a few rhetorical suggestions about the appropriate punishment for child abusers.

Can garden variety atheist ranting be construed as "hate speech?"

Apparently it can.   Dusty Smith, of the "Cult of Dusty" has posted a chilling video about his experience being deemed hateful by google.  He's stopped advertising other people's crap on his channel and now advertises his own T-Shirts to make some money.  He's an atheist in Mississippi.  He has my sympathy, and I could use a couple of new shirts:

7 comments:

Unknown said...

I used to have ads, but then one day it was gone. I wonder if that is what happened to them.

K

LadyAtheist said...

Possibly :-(

L.Long said...

I phuckin' HATE censorship in any guise!!!!
Everyone has the right to NOT LOOK! or NOT listen!
But then they say 'well you are insisting other to do violence.' OK I'll go with that, let's see, the last time atheist attacked a group of xtians or bombed a church was ??? when ??? exactly???
The last time some religidiots took down a couple of buildings? Bombed an abortion clinic? Shot a good doctor? attacked a muslin place? RRRrriiggghhtt!!!!
Atheists do hate speech and xtians are about LLLlllooovvee!

PPpppLLLleaaassse!
Man I with keyboards had an irony and a whinnying key!

Plasma Engineer said...

From what I hear, you're not missing out on much income. You need to be getting hundreds of thousands of visits per month to make enough for a bag of peanuts. Having said that, I hope you are that popular. :)

LadyAtheist said...

Ha! Not quite! Thanks for the info. It makes me feel better

Sheldon Cooper said...

That's why the very term "hate speech" is a problem, the definition is so vague, and can mean so many different things to different people, (especially when they are being too over emotional). Even in the case of actual racism, etc, I'm usually more lenient than most people, unless they are advocating genocide, or making threats against people, sites should leave them alone. Why? One good reason is that bigots and extremists actually lose support for their positions, the more they talk.



LadyAtheist said...

Hoist them by their own petard!

Saying that you hate someone is a far cry from exhorting people to kill them. Google isn't the government so they can make up their own rules, but I wish they hadn't used the word.