The platform among platforms
YouTube enters the show’s discussion of social media as one of the large platforms that host billions of members. In the 2019 episode on social media censorship, Bob Zadek grouped it with Facebook and Twitter and “all of these other platforms,” asking how far from the truth it is that subscribers receive an unfiltered stream from the sources they choose. Bill Ottman, founder of Minds.com, answered that the belief is drifting further from the truth every day, and described the scale of the big social networks as far beyond what the founders of the country dealt with, arguing that blocking the free flow of information is the type of thing that causes revolution within a system. Social Media Censorship (2019)
Ottman returned to YouTube later in the same episode when describing how platforms suppress reach. He said that on Facebook and Instagram, and that Google and YouTube do this too, a user reaches only 5% of the people who subscribe to them, which he called bonkers because the basic premise of social media is that a subscriber sees the posts of the person they subscribe to. He characterized the original arrangement as a social contract, which Zadek repeated back to him, and said it had been degraded by 95%, producing a totally different product. Ottman added that lawsuits are in the works over whether that social contract is valid or amounts to false advertising, and compared it to buying a football that loses 95% of its function after a year by design. Social Media Censorship (2019)
Zadek drew his own parallel, saying that Facebook as a commercial model for targeted marketing is magnificent but as a marketplace of ideas is an abject failure, and that anyone using it to acquire or share ideas is kidding themselves. He extended the comparison to commercial television, which he said has become a bunch of commercials with scattered content, and predicted the same demise for Facebook because it has lost its function of connecting the world. Social Media Censorship (2019)
The Crowder incident and the case against breaking platforms up
In the 2019 episode with Professor Frank Buckley, Zadek framed the starting point as social media operating with maximum editorial freedom: so long as they break no law, platforms may set their own policies and publishing standards, admit or reject members, and delete or de-platform those they do not want. Buckley agreed, distinguishing private censorship, which he said he does not mind—if Facebook wants to delete the account of a neo-Nazi, he has no problem with that—from the case that provoked the controversy, in which Facebook deleted the account of someone he described not as a neo-Nazi but as a loud and maybe slightly obnoxious conservative comedian who told jokes. Who Will Censure the Censors? (2019)
Zadek placed the incident in a lineage of American censorship, invoking Lenny Bruce and Shelley Berman, who he said were arrested for telling a joke, and said Crowder was in that vein—not criminal law trouble, at least not yet, but trouble in the sense that he lost his rights to publish on YouTube. Buckley observed that comedians today complain about political correctness and being unable to tell jokes on campuses, but that the difference here is social media, which he called undoubtedly really, really important in terms of the way people share ideas. He singled out as problematical the number of really dumb ideas offered to correct the situation, beginning with the proposal to break up the behemoths, which he called beyond stupid. Who Will Censure the Censors? (2019)
Government pressure: jawboning and the Blumenthal episode
The 2023 episode with Will Duffield treated YouTube as a target of government jawboning rather than as an autonomous censor. Duffield described a range of interference styles by government actors and congressmen, including demands for a response—what action have you taken about this problematic speaker, why haven’t you taken that action—and asked listeners to imagine a newsroom hauled into Congress and asked why it did or didn’t run a particular op-ed, which he called absurd, while noting that social media platforms have at least perceived the rules to be a little different. The New Face of Government Censorship (2023)
Duffield identified outright allegations of illegality as one of the most pernicious forms of jawboning, even when the underlying speech would be protected by any court. He cited Steve Bannon’s hyperbolic statements about Anthony Fauci—that if he were a Tudor-style king he would put Fauci’s head on a pike—and Senator Richard Blumenthal’s claim that this was a death threat and that Bannon should be banned from YouTube for threatening Fauci’s life in an illegal way. Duffield said the speech is clearly hyperbolic and protected as opinion, that no one anticipates Bannon actually trying to lop Fauci’s head off, and that Blumenthal nevertheless claimed the speech was unlawful in an attempt to jawbone or bully YouTube into silencing and censoring him. The New Face of Government Censorship (2023)
Zadek placed the episode in a longer history of government control of speech, recalling a show on the history of radio and the era when newspapers were the first mass media. He said the government by statute regulated who was given the right to use the airways, requiring a license, which he called one of the most hateful words in the language—permission from government to do an otherwise lawful act—and noted a requirement that broadcasters’ programming be in the public interest and balanced in order to keep a license, meaning the government decides if you’re broadcasting the right stuff. He concluded that governments have forever learned how to do this and that it is not new to Twitter or Facebook. The New Face of Government Censorship (2023)
Duffield juxtaposed contemporary jawboning with Carlin Communications v. Mountain States, a 1980s case about a phone sex hotline disconnected by the phone company after the local district attorney threatened the company. He said the operator sued and the district attorney’s actions were found illegal, but the only remedy the court could offer was reconnecting the hotline, which in some ways trod on the phone line operator’s rights to host or refrain from hosting content, and the court had to leave it open for the operator to disconnect in the future. Duffield said that in the online platform space, where there are a whole host of steps between connection and disconnection—algorithmically amplifying or refraining from amplifying, showing content in search or hiding it—it is hard to identify when jawboning has happened and even harder to offer a fixed permanent remedy, and that you cannot guarantee someone a certain amount of traffic going forward forever on YouTube after it has been found that the government bullied YouTube to suppress their videos. The New Face of Government Censorship (2023)
YouTube as the show’s own channel
The excerpts also show YouTube functioning as the show’s own distribution channel. In the 2019 social media episode, Zadek announced that the conversation with Ottman would continue on the show’s YouTube channel at youtube.com/bobzadekshow, where listeners could text in questions, and he closed by saying he was switching over to the YouTube channel for a bit. Social Media Censorship (2019) In the same episode’s introduction, he welcomed Ottman for a full hour and for a bonus hour on the YouTube video channel. Social Media Censorship (2019)
In the 2017 episode with Dr. Michael Edelstein, the guest directed listeners to his own presence on the platform, saying he has many YouTubes and podcasts and that a search on YouTube under his name would find many, alongside his website threeminutetherapy.com and his in-person, phone and Skype practice. How to Stay Sane in a Statist World (2017) The exchange is a sign-off in which Zadek thanks Edelstein, thanks producer Charlie Deist, and says he will be back next Sunday.
Across episodes
The excerpts show the same question—who controls what speech appears on large platforms—argued in more than one episode, but they do not show a development from one treatment to the next. In 2019, Bill Ottman described platform suppression of reach and the degradation of the social contract, and Frank Buckley argued against breaking up the platforms in the wake of the Crowder de-platforming; in 2023, Will Duffield shifted the frame from private moderation to government jawboning, with YouTube as the target of Senator Blumenthal’s demand that Steve Bannon be banned. Bob Zadek supplies the connecting thread in both periods, framing the 2019 discussion around access to unfiltered information and the 2023 discussion around the history of broadcast licensing. The excerpts contain no episode in which the earlier and later treatments are reconciled or revised.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state YouTube’s founding date, ownership, corporate structure, or terms of service, nor do they name any statute or bill governing platform liability. They do not report the outcome of the lawsuits Ottman said were in the works, nor the resolution of the Crowder matter beyond his loss of publishing rights on YouTube. The Carlin Communications v. Mountain States discussion does not identify the court, the amendment at issue, or the full holding beyond the remedy described. The final excerpt breaks off mid-sentence while Duffield is describing the difficulty of guaranteeing traffic on YouTube, and nothing after that point is available.