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More YouTube Censorship

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IainB:
I was watching this Fox news interview which is discussing Reason TV's review of the gross inefficiency of Government-run and maintained escalators in Washington DC:
Nick Gillespie & Kennedy Look at the Chaos of Government Run Escalators w/ Stossel

The Reason TV video and the discussion relate to the argument that Government should probably keep out of providing any service in general, because it has apparently repeatedly shown itself unable to provide service adequately or cost-effectively.

At the 4:31 point, the interviewer asks Kennedy (who is a Reason TV reporter and ex Music VJ) a question in the wider context of Government-run service capability/inefficiency, and in response she mentions that she was a Libertarian before she knew what the term meant and that she had listened to or had discussions with Frank Zappa about censorship (and she's talking about this in the context of government censorship of rude words in song lyrics).

So, we know that what Google did was initially censoring (QED) the video Professor Wants to Drug Climate Skeptics (and which Google have now allowed back online).
This would seem to be a good example of private censorship or "self-regulation", i.e., not Government censorship.
We know from discussion elsewhere on the DC forum that corporations are unable to be trusted to self-regulate with ethical integrity (QED), and that it is pointless expecting them to be able to do so unless the legal status of a Corporate Person is changed.
So what Google would seem to have just successfully and publicly demonstrated in this case is an inability to be trusted to censor with ethical integrity. Furthermore, they cannot be called to answer for criticism on this score.

Maybe, if Google had an unambiguous stated policy on deliberate Google censorship, and avoided arbitrary censorship, and stuck rigidly to the stated policy, then this form of private censorship just might work. Everyone - including YouTube channel suppliers/feeds and Google - would know exactly where they stood.
Otherwise, it looks as though private censorship by Google probably cannot be applied with ethical integrity.

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