The NY Times Smears Free Speech in Dishonest New Article

“There were no examples of someone embracing white supremacy or becoming a radical racist because they watched conservative videos. To the New York Times, the fact that someone is able to access and embrace information outside of liberal thought is problem enough.

The fact that Roose and the New York Times considers this to be a problem is the main thrust of their article. Roose goes on to blame YouTube and its algorithms for introducing Caleb Cain and others to conservative ideas.

Though Roose never offers a solution to this problem outright, the solution that he is getting at could not be more apparent – Roose would like nothing more than for YouTube to censor conservative voices altogether. To him, this is the only way to prevent young people such as Caleb Cain from becoming “radicalized” by conservative content.

In more accurate and honest terms, censoring conservative voices is the only way to prevent people from being exposed to ideas outside of leftist thought.”

A great and well written and accurate article about a biased article in the New York Slimes.

My faith that your source, American Liberty Report , has accurately described the NYT article is zero. 

I will read the NYT article itself and then possibly come back and make a comment here. 

My source is a much better and more fair and balanced source of info than the New York Times, all the fake news not fit to print.  

You dont know what you are talking about.

Actually, I know exactly what I’m talking about.  Why are you making this about me instead of the topic of the seeded article?  

It's not really so much the source as the utter hilarious bullshit it displays. They claim the New York Times op/ed is the supposed "latest attack on free speech, though, is so biased and dishonest that in just one article the New York Times has reached a new low" but then later admit "Roose goes on to blame YouTube and its algorithms for introducing Caleb Cain and others to conservative ideas" but "Roose never offers a solution to this problem outright". So it's supposedly such an egregious attack on free speech it never once mentions actually censoring anyone.

This whole piece of trash article was simply pathetic. It makes no valid argument, shows exactly ZERO examples of "conservative" free speech being censored or attacked and basically just shits itself by the end.

"any voice outside of the mainstream media need to be silenced."

Yeah, which is why we're here having to listen to conservatives endless whining about being censored. "We demand you listen to us whining about you not listening to us!". You can fix ignorance with education, sadly, you just can't fix stupid.

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As I naturally suspected, the seeded article completely misrepresents the NYT article. 

The major point made in the seed article is that the NYT misrepresents traditional conservative videos as "radical", but in reality the NYT article goes into some detail separating different levels of right wing political shows on You Tube. 

 Although the NYT is paywalled, I have access to it through my local library. I will post a few excerpts of the NYT article here. 

-MARTINSBURG, W.Va. -- Caleb Cain pulled a Glock pistol from his waistband, took out the magazine and casually tossed both onto the kitchen counter.

"I bought it the day after I got death threats," he said.

The threats, Mr. Cain explained, came from right-wing trolls in response to a video he had posted on YouTube a few days earlier. In the video, he told the story of how, as a liberal college dropout struggling to find his place in the world, he had gotten sucked into a vortex of far-right politics on YouTube.

"I fell down the alt-right rabbit hole," he said in the video.

Mr. Cain, 26, recently swore off the alt-right nearly five years after discovering it, and has become a vocal critic of the movement. He is scarred by his experience of being radicalized by what he calls a "decentralized cult" of far-right YouTube personalities, who convinced him that Western civilization was under threat from Muslim immigrants and cultural Marxists, that innate I.Q. differences explained racial disparities, and that feminism was a dangerous ideology.....

Like many Silicon Valley companies, YouTube is outwardly liberal in its corporate politics. It sponsors floats at L.G.B.T. pride parades and celebrates diverse creators, and its chief executive endorsed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. President Trump and other conservatives have claimed that YouTube and other social media networks are biased against right-wing views, and have used takedowns like those announced by YouTube on Wednesday as evidence for those claims.

In reality, YouTube has been a godsend for hyper-partisans on all sides. It has allowed them to bypass traditional gatekeepers and broadcast their views to mainstream audiences, and has helped once-obscure commentators build lucrative media businesses.

It has also been a useful recruiting tool for far-right extremist groups. Bellingcat, an investigative news site, analyzed messages from far-right chat rooms and found that YouTube was cited as the most frequent cause of members' "red-pilling" -- an internet slang term for converting to far-right beliefs. A European research group, VOX-Pol, conducted a separate analysis of nearly 30,000 Twitter accounts affiliated with the alt-right. It found that the accounts linked to YouTube more often than to any other site......

One day in late 2014, YouTube recommended a self-help video by Stefan Molyneux, a Canadian talk show host and self-styled philosopher.

Like Mr. Cain, Mr. Molyneux had a difficult childhood, and he talked about overcoming hardships through self-improvement. He seemed smart and passionate, and he wrestled with big questions like free will, along with practical advice on topics like dating and job interviews.

Mr. Molyneux, who describes himself as an "anarcho-capitalist," also had a political agenda. He was a men's rights advocate who said that feminism was a form of socialism and that progressive gender politics were holding young men back. He offered conservative commentary on pop culture and current events, explaining why Disney's "Frozen" was an allegory about female vanity, or why the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer was proof of the dangers of "rap culture."

Mr. Cain was a liberal who cared about social justice, worried about wealth inequality and believed in climate change. But he found Mr. Molyneux's diatribes fascinating, even when they disagreed.

"He was willing to address young men's issues directly, in a way I'd never heard before," Mr. Cain said.

In 2015 and 2016, as Mr. Cain dived deeper into his YouTube recommendations, he discovered an entire universe of right-wing creators. Over time, he watched dozens of clips by Steven Crowder, a conservative comedian, and Paul Joseph Watson, a prominent right-wing conspiracy theorist who was barred by Facebook this year. He became entranced by Lauren Southern, a far-right Canadian activist, whom he started referring to as his "fashy bae," or fascist crush.

These people weren't all shouty demagogues. They were entertainers, building their audience with satirical skits, debates and interviews with like-minded creators. Some of them were part of the alt-right, a loose cohort of pro-Trump activists who sandwiched white nationalism between layers of internet sarcasm. Others considered themselves "alt-lite," or merely antiprogressive......

By the night of Nov. 8, 2016, Mr. Cain's transformation was complete.

He spent much of the night watching clips of Mrs. Clinton's supporters crying after the election was called in Mr. Trump's favor. His YouTube viewing history shows that at 1:41 a.m., just before bed, he turned on a live stream hosted by Mr. Crowder, with the title "TRUMP WINS!"

"It felt like a punk-rock moment, almost like being in high school again," Mr. Cain said.

That year, Mr. Cain's YouTube consumption had skyrocketed. He got a job packing boxes at a furniture warehouse, where he would listen to podcasts and watch videos by his favorite YouTube creators all day. He fell asleep to YouTube videos at night, his phone propped up on a pillow. In all, he watched nearly 4,000 YouTube videos in 2016, more than double the number he had watched the previous year.

Not all of these videos were political. Mr. Cain's viewing history shows that he sought out videos about his other interests, including cars, music and cryptocurrency trading. But the bulk of his media diet came from far-right channels. And after the election, he began exploring a part of YouTube with a darker, more radical group of creators.

These people didn't couch their racist and anti-Semitic views in sarcastic memes, and they didn't speak in dog whistles. One channel run by Jared Taylor, the editor of the white nationalist magazine American Renaissance, posted videos with titles like "'Refugee' Invasion Is European Suicide." Others posted clips of interviews with white supremacists like Richard Spencer and David Duke.

Mr. Cain never bought into the far right's most extreme views, like Holocaust denial or the need for a white ethnostate, he said. Still, far-right ideology bled into his daily life. He began referring to himself as a "tradcon" -- a traditional conservative, committed to old-fashioned gender norms. He dated an evangelical Christian woman, and he fought with his liberal friends.

"It was kind of sad," said Zelda Wait, a friend of Mr. Cain's from high school. "I was just, like: 'Wow, what happened? How did you get this way?"'

Some of Mr. Cain's favorite YouTube creators were shifting their politics, too.

Mr. Molyneux, in particular, seemed to be veering further to the right. He fixated on "race realism," a favored topic of white nationalists, and went on an Infowars show to discuss his opposition to multiculturalism with Mr. Jones. He hosted far-right figures on his channel, including Mr. Taylor of American Renaissance and Brittany Pettibone, a self-described "American nationalist" who pushed the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.

As Mr. Molyneux promoted white nationalists, his YouTube channel kept growing. He now has more than 900,000 subscribers, and his videos have been watched nearly 300 million times. Last year, he and Ms. Southern -- Mr. Cain's "fashy bae" -- went on a joint speaking tour in Australia and New Zealand, where they criticized Islam and discussed what they saw as the dangers of nonwhite immigratio n.....

nytimes

As you can see, this NYT article is not about traditional conservative voices being "silenced" . 

Most people who have looked even slightly into this topic previously will not be surprised by any of the names of right wing "entertainers" mentioned in the story. All of them are well known hucksters along the general lines of an Alex Jones. One of Jones protégées, John Paul Watson , is referred to in the NYT story. 

As you look through the NYT story though you will see bits and pieces of themes we see referred to on NT, particularly about social justice warriors and feminists. You can see where a few of our right wingers on NT are getting some of their ideas. 

This is from xx Jefferson's seeded article, and it completely misrepresents the New York Times article. 

Though Roose never offers a solution to this problem outright, the solution that he is getting at could not be more apparent – Roose would like nothing more than for YouTube to censor conservative voices altogether. To him, this is the only way to prevent young people such as Caleb Cain from becoming “radicalized” by conservative content. In more accurate and honest terms, censoring conservative voices is the only way to prevent people from being exposed to ideas outside of leftist thought.

Are you surprised given the conservative bias of XXXJefferson's source?

mediabiasfactcheck

It’s not as far right as a seed today by John from Alternet is far left.  

It’s not as far right as a seed today by John from Alternet is far left.  

I stopped reading Alternet in 2004. I never read Raw Story because it is junk media.

[Deleted] When I seed an article from any source, I understand the basis for the viewpoint of the writer. I try to be sure that the source is being factual in the parts of its premise that rely on being factual. I want the source to have at least one link in it to something that verifies the facts. 

The article you seeded at the top does not have a single link in it to another source. It doesnt even have a link to the New York Times article that it is criticizing. Of course , the writer doesnt want you to see the NYT article and decide for yourself if it is fair or unfair to conservatives. 

I dont object to sources that are "biased" if the article being seeded has a factual basis. Some of the most interesting things on a forum are "op-eds" that have a viewpoint. 

You regularly seed things that are all viewpoint without factual underlying support. The article you seeded here is ALL viewpoint. It badly misrepresents the NYT article. 

No surprise at all. 

I don't look at Alternet all that much. I have it in a list of sources that give me news feeds. 90% of what I seed is from mainstream media, but I won't throw out something based solely on the site it is on as long as I am satisfied that it is accurate. 

My seeded article is factually correct.  It is 100% right on all the points the author wrote about.  

If people want to, they can look at what you seeded and look at the NYT article and sensible people will see the difference easily. 

You succeeded in bumping this silly article though.