YouTube Hate Speech

[Ninth Doctor]

There’s a well known atheist on YouTube who calls himself Thunderf00t. He mostly makes videos debunking creationism and otherwise exposing bad religious rhetoric. Smart, well done stuff, I'm sure I've posted a thing or two here before. He’s not an Objectivist (I’ve never heard him comment on Rand), and seems to be pretty similar to Richard Dawkins all around. I gather he’s having censorship issues, with some of his videos being taken down on the grounds that they are hate speech. Other YouTubers have stepped up and mirrored his videos, so here’s one you can still see, it was just taken down from his channel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bnVlxV5KbU

I’m not going to go into why I don’t think there’s any “hate speech” there, I assume anyone visiting this site will agree.

Here’s his latest, where he discusses what’s happening:

He’s asking people to “like” this video (vote for it, in effect). How that makes a difference, I don’t know. In order to "like" it, I think you'll need to open it at the YouTube site; on my system I just right click and choose "Watch on YouTube" and a new tab (or window) opens. Then there'll be a thumb up / thumb down thingee underneath.

[Wotan]

Passionate religion is unbelievably ugly and obscene.

[Steve D'Ippolito]

Thunderf00t has been known to go on socialist rants. Definitely no Objectivist, but I find his material quite entertaining.

I find it appalling that the "hate speech" standard is being applied on YouTube. It can be abused by Muslims to ensure that there is no criticism of Islam or Muhammad, and (oddly enough) that happens to be part of sharia law.

Edited February 27, 2012 by Steve D'Ippolito

[Ninth Doctor]

It seems the squeaky wheel approach worked for Thunderf00t. The banned videos were reinstated.