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Comment by watwut | Hacker News Reader

The message there was "do not dare to hire trans people for even minor ads" and result is companies being more afraid to hire trans. So yeah, it was literal ce sorship. And yeah, impact on that trans woman was worst then one on Brand. That trans person was not as rich as to eat any amount of financial looses.

I remember right wing leaders going really out of their way to demonize Budweiser for literally having a single video with trans person and like a can of her face. So yeah. And yes, right wing businesses refused to sell the beer and there was actual boycot.

If that is ok to do because trans person was acknowledged, then yeah, youtube demonetization is equally ok.

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If Lululemon tried to market tradwife conservatism to young urban women and it backfired, would you call that censorship? Marketing is about feels and vibes and image—customers are entitled to react to that. Beer, athletic wear, etc., are image and identity-based businesses. That’s different than a trucking company, or a credit card company, or YouTube.

A better example would be the Dixie Chicks boycott after the Bush comments, where major radio stations refused to play their music.

It was right wing media machine trying to punish the company. And if right wing media machine can do that, Youtube can do the exact same.

The only difference is that Youtube is less hypocritical about the whole thing.

What “right wing media machine?” Obviously, conservative media is going to serve as an outlet for whatever is currently riling up conservatives. The politics is central to their business. That’s different than YouTube, which in theory is a politically neutral platform.

(And note that the boycott here wasn’t even stirred up by Fox or Sinclair. Fox did a Bud Light product placement right before July 4.)

It was not conservative media serving as an outlet for whatever is currently riling up conservatives. It was few conservative personalities creating issue, riling up conservatives and generally trying to create outrage and fear.

That is about it. So, you know, the same people can stuff themselves with complains about YouTube. YouTube is at least honest and not pretending that somehow situation is something it is not.

Explain to me how a MegaCorp using its platform for an unrelated political agenda is in any way similar to individual personalities trying to gin up outrage about something?

A lot of the Bud Light outrage wasn't just Mulvaney - their marketing exec openly said they didn't want those people as customers, so they complied.

There's the difference: People didn't want to buy Bud Light anymore, so their sales tanked.

One feature of cancellation is that the cancellee usually has people who want to hear the cancellee and buy their stuff, but activists try to get them kicked off intermediaries so the cancellee and their customers can't conduct business.

If it was just about making the person unpopular, that'd be an entirely different matter.

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