Mike Adams and YouTube – Freedom of Expression?

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Mike Adams has had his Natural News channel obliterated from YouTube.

(Insert cheering crowd here).

First, let’s clear something up. In a recent rant about this quite official YouTube ban a few days ago he made a claim about this being a violation of Free Speech (I’m not linking to it, you can google it if truly willing to dip into his word soup) …

In the latest gross violation of free speech committed by radical left-wing tech giants, YouTube has now deleted the entire Health Ranger video channel, wiping out over 1,700 videos covering everything from nutrition, natural medicine, history, science and current events…

… fraudulent medical claims, fake news, and conspiracy bullshitzu including the claim that the students speaking up about the Parkland school shooting are “crisis actors” and it never really happened.

Er no, just no, this is not a freedom of speech issue. YouTube has no legal, ethical, or moral obligation to provide anybody a platform for anything. They are not a public service but instead are a private business and so they can police their user accounts in whatever way they wish. Obliterating an account for any reason is not a “Freedom of Speech” issue.

What is Natural News and why was it banned?

Basically Natural News is a blend of whacky and utterly absurd alternative medicine claims mixed in with almost every conspiracy theory that pops up. RationalWiki sums it all up very nicely …

NaturalNews.com[note 1] and its sister site WakingScience.com are websites run by Mike Adams (self-labeled “The Health Ranger”) which promotes alternative medicine and related conspiracy theories.[2] Even other quacks think it’s a quack site.[3] The site particularly specializes in vaccine denialism and the alleged vaccines-autism link,[4] AIDS/HIV denialism,[5] quack cancer treatments,[6] and conspiracy theories about “Big Pharma”.[7] If there’s an alternative medicine or alternative medical treatment out there, you can guarantee that NaturalNews has one article singing its praises to the sky and one more bashing the stupid “skeptics”.

In short: If you cite NaturalNews on any matter whatsoever, you are almost certainly wrong.

YouTube is filled with lunacy. For almost any and every whacky fringe idea going you can find a YouTube video promoting it. So what exactly did Mike Adams do to trigger YouTube into a complete outright wipe of his channel?

Orac has some thoughts …

I strongly suspect that it’s likely due to YouTube’s recent move to eliminate conspiracy videos about the Parkland school shooting claiming that the survivors agitating for gun control are “crisis actors,” of which Adams posted at least a couple. At least, that’s what Adams seems to think, given a post he did a week ago, SILENCE! Twitter, YouTube scrubbing all content and banning all users who question the official (false) narrative on the Florida school shooting.

In essence, this master of snake-oil and general woo-fuckery crossed a YouTube red line and got canned.

Further Natural News Insights

Jonathan Jarry recently wrote an fascinating insight into Mike Adams on McGill’s Office for Science and and Society  ..

Mike Adams’ online bubble is so vast and self-sufficient, it warrants the term “ecosystem”.

…Raising awareness of this “alternate reality” online is important since the world of alternative medicine can seem, to the casual observer, quite benign. Behind the curtain of empathy and so-called holistic care, however, often lies a darker notion: that modern medicine cannot be trusted. Few alternative medicine proponents reach the near-operatic heights of Mike Adams, but his empire of misinformation has major ramifications. In the age of the digital echo chamber, his voice can be heard even if you don’t go searching for it …

…Mike Adams’ dark, conspiratorial Wonderland is vast and the rabbit hole is frightening in depth. “Down, down down. Would the fall never come to an end?”

To grasp just how vast the scope of the Mike Adams money making ecosystem actually is, Jonathan’s article is worth reading.

New Trends

The removal of Natural News from YouTube is not an isolated incident, it would appear that YouTube is starting to clean up its act and stop being the ultimate bullshit cess pit.

As an example, another well-known bullshitzu luminary has also been on the receiving end of some YouTube flack.

YouTube has demonetized Alex Jones’ YouTube channel and while that is not the same as an outright ban, it certainly is a step in the right direction …

While Alex Jones’s account is still alive and kicking, it is not in completely good standing.

It had one strike against it a couple of weeks ago, when YouTube removed a video from the channel that accused a student from Marjory Stoneman Douglas, who had appeared in the media speaking about gun control, of being a ‘crisis actor’ in the wake of the shooting at the school — he isn’t. This counted as a first strike in YouTube’s termination procedure.

Then in recent days, YouTube confirmed to us that it had notified Jones about advertisers asking to be removed from Jones’ various channels — following an investigation by CNN into how the videos get monetised. It’s not clear if this is also counted as a strike against the channel (we’re asking).

In other words, with all this going on I can say with some hope that the world has became a slightly better more rational place to be.

Further Reading

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