Democrats Say Hulu Has Censored 'the Truth.' Hulu Says It's Within Its Rights To Refuse Political Ads.

The streaming platform has said gun- and abortion-related ads submitted by Democrats are too controversial to be aired.

Hulu is refusing to run Democrats' midterm campaign ads on topics like guns and abortion, per a Monday report by The Washington Post. Democrats are calling Hulu's decision "censorship of the truth." Not really; it's just a decision by a private company not to interrupt its users' chill weeknight TV time with footage of the January 6 riots.

On July 15, Democratic campaign groups tried to buy spots for gun- and abortion-related ads on YouTube, Facebook, Roku, and traditional cable TV. They successfully placed those ads. But the spots they tried to buy on Hulu, which is owned by Disney, ended up never being aired, due to the company's longstanding policy against ads deemed too controversial.

According to the Post, a Hulu representative told Suraj Patel, a Democratic congressional candidate running to represent New York, that "there was an 'unwritten Hulu policy' that deemed the topics in one of his ads too 'sensitive' for the platform. The ad in question mentioned Republican successes around abortion, climate change and gun violence, while also showing footage of the violence from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol." After Patel complained, and the Post's article came out, Hulu reversed course and accepted the original ads. Other ads on similar themes, like those by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Democratic Governors Association, remain held up in talks with Hulu reps.

"Hulu's censorship of the truth is outrageous, offensive, and another step down a dangerous path for our country," said the three aforementioned Democratic organizations in a statement. "Voters have the right to know the facts about MAGA Republicans' agenda on issues like abortion—and Hulu is doing a huge disservice to the American people by blocking voters from learning the truth about the GOP record or denying these issues from even being discussed."

But Hulu isn't censoring the truth so much as making a business decision—one they've pretty consistently applied—not to air ads that will piss off a significant chunk of their viewership. To act like a campaign ad represents "the truth" or "the facts" about the other side is absurd, something only the most intransigent partisans could say with a straight face. To call this type of thing "censorship" when it happens to your side, but "just private companies doing business as they please" when it comes for your opponents, is tempting for hacks on both sides but terribly wrong. Private companies ought to make the business decisions they deem best, ideally unmolested by angry politicians convinced they're aggrieved truth-peddlers.

"Disney has told advertisers that political and alcohol ads will not be accepted on Disney Plus, a separate streaming service, when it launches an ad-supported version later this year," adds the Post. It seems Disney, and thus Hulu, might be early in the process of more broadly extricating themselves from the tedious realm we've entered into, where companies feel comfortable taking sides on matters of petty partisan squabbling or subjecting their customers to the beliefs of their employees and executives. It's perfectly fine for Disney and Hulu to want to opt out—and Disney is perhaps especially interested in doing so after CEO Bob Chapek criticized a Florida law prohibiting classroom talk of gender identity/sexual orientation–related topics and received nasty political retribution from that state's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who started trying to revoke Disney's special improvement district status.

If Hulu were a regular old broadcast TV network, it would be forced by the Communications Act of 1934 to allow both sides to air political ads. It's both a modern-day marvel and a blessing that streaming services aren't bound by archaic laws like that one, so we can watch our old Weeds and High Maintenance episodes in peace without being jarringly interrupted by January 6 footage.

Comments

[Vernon Depner]

Fuck Joe Biden

[Moonrocks]

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[Don't look at me!]

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[Brandybuck]

Fuck Joe Biden. Fuck Donald Trump. All lives matter, all politicians suck. Both sides. Also fuck whoever runs in 2024. Fuck Gavin Newsom too. But not with my dick, someone else’s please.

[SQRLSY One]

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[JesseAz]

Man. All the leftists are angry this morning.

[Kanty Satanist]

I couldn’t agree more, with the exception of being more on the “no lives matter” train. Choo Choo right off a cliff into a blazing pile of charnel.

[5.56]

As a cunty stalinist, that’s the train you deserve.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

Well, it is censorship on the part of Hulu. Let’s call a spade a spade. But it is censorship by a private firm, only on their own property. It is not *government* censorship on *everyone’s* property. They are absolutely within their rights to censor on their own property, because private property rights are supreme here. They have every right to censor Democratic campaign ads as they would have to censor Republican campaign ads or Libertarian ones or any others.

And no they are certainly not “censoring the ‘truth'”, that is absurd.

[mad.casual]

Well, it is censorship on the part of Hulu. Let’s call a spade a spade.

Calling a spade a spade; an vague equivocation on the paid content of the party that controls 2/3 of the government, isn’t censorious the way booting a no-name opposition conspiracy theorist off of every streaming service and social media network is censorious. Sure, refusing to accept pro-Nazi propaganda, produced and paid for by the Nazi Party, in Nazi Germany is censorship, but if you really want to call a spade a spade, you should be clear about how it’s different from a club.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

You are referring to Alex Jones? I don’t think Hulu had anything to do with kicking Alex Jones off of social media. You are criticizing me for not being critical of what other people did to kick Alex Jones off of social media in relation to a story that had nothing to do with Alex Jones, or even social media in general? I mean I don’t know what you want from me. Yesterday it was “you want to spread noxious weeds!” when I encouraged people to travel. Today it’s “you didn’t say anything about Alex Jones!” when I correctly label Hulu’s actions as censorship. You are starting to sound like Jesse with his interminable whatabouts that are irrelevant to the topic at hand.

[Don't look at me!]

Poor jeff

[sarcasmic]

You are criticizing me for not being critical of what other people did…

That’s standard argumentation in these parts. When you don’t criticize something (or don’t praise) then that equals praise (or criticism) for whatever it is you didn’t say anything about. And if you disagree with your accuser then you’re a liar.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

Yeah I was just reflecting on this sort of thing this morning. People here criticize me for not consistently upholding high standards for my conduct. Okay, fine. I am a human being and while I strive to do the right thing, I am not always successful. But for heaven’s sake at least I try to bring ideas to the table, unlike many around here who do nothing but bitch and whine and troll. And they never seem to get any pushback for their generally shitty behavior. I can accept criticism when I legitimately do something wrong, but I can’t accept the double standard. You want to criticize me for being too harsh on Team Red? Fine, so how about sparing one iota of criticism for the people around here who want to literally MURDER Team Blue? I think that is a little bit more significant than simply not taking Team Red at face value.

[mad.casual]

That’s standard argumentation in these parts.

It wasn’t a criticism or argument I was making. If it’s standard, it’s only because of Jeff’s posting it.

[mad.casual]

I mean I don’t know what you want from me.

“I don’t know what calling a spade a spade means.” – Jeff and Sarc

I asked nothing of you in the above post. “A spade is any black club like symbol, with a point.” isn’t the same thing as “A spade is a shovel, a symbol that resembles, or is reasonably intended or interpretted as a shovel.” Like I said, refusing pro-Nazi propaganda produced by the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany would technically be censorship, but no one would rightly consider it to be.

I get it. You don’t have a soul so you can’t even begin to conceptualize things like good faith, objective reason, platonic logs, and reciprocity, so everything is some sort of personal attack or ancillary political attack that traces back to you personally. None of that means I can’t point out the obvious flaws in the unbridled optimism or stupidity of your other arguments, or simply call a spade a spade, or that one necessarily has anything to do with the other.

[mad.casual]

platonic logs

Ugh, platonic comments.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

Like I said, refusing pro-Nazi propaganda produced by the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany would technically be censorship, but no one would rightly consider it to be.

Why wouldn’t it be censorship? Censorship isn’t defined as to whether the result of the censorship would be “good” or “bad”. If I’m refusing you to let you air your opinion on my property, then I’m censoring you, regardless of whether either one of us, or both of us, are Nazis or not.

Here it sure seems like you are assuming that I adopted a definition of censorship that I didn’t actually adopt, and then criticizing me for not adopting the definition that you thought I had adopted but didn’t. This is very Jesse-like of you.

[mad.casual]

Why wouldn’t it be censorship?

Because, whether you adopted the definition or not, censorship rather explicitly connotes the policy or practice. If I have eggs and toast for breakfast one day, juice and coffee the next, skip breakfast on the third, and have pancakes and bacon on the fourth and simply don’t eat eggs Benedict flown in from France because I can’t afford it, I don’t have a clear policy or practice for or against eggs, bacon, juice, or even breakfast in general.

But, again, having a policy and practice of disregarding good faith and objective reasoning, you don’t give a shit.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

Because, whether you adopted the definition or not, censorship rather explicitly connotes the policy or practice.

Is that so?

Definition of connotation
1a: something suggested by a word or thing : IMPLICATION

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/connotation

So because the word censorship does not IMPLY the same thing to me as it does to you, you are going to criticize me as if I had used the wrong definition of the word.

You know what might have been a good-faith response from you?

“Well, while I understand that ‘censorship’ strictly means any suppression of speech, it usually connotes a practice of trying to withhold otherwise unobjectionable material in the service of a political agenda. Since Hulu’s decision here seems mainly motivated by economics and not politics, I don’t think it is fair to call this an example of censorship.”

But no, what we got was an immediate attack followed by claims of bad-faith argumentation FROM ME.

[mad.casual]

Is that so?

Yes.
merriam-webster.com/dictionary/explicitly
: in an explicit manner : clearly and without any vagueness or ambiguity
merriam-webster.com/dictionary/connote
1a: to convey in addition to exact explicit meaning
b: to imply as a logical connotation
2: to be associated with or inseparable from as a consequence or concomitant
merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censorship
1a: the institution, system, or practice of censoring
b: the actions or practices of censors
especially : censorial control exercised repressively
2: the office, power, or term of a Roman censor
3: exclusion from consciousness by the psychic censor

It’s contained right there in the definitions whether you adopted them or not.

You know what might have been a good-faith response from you?

Yes. Nobody said anything about ‘fairly’ calling a spade a spade, the idiom even invokes a sense of unfairness:
merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censorship
call a spade a spade
1: to call a thing by its right name however coarse
2: to speak frankly

But no, what we got was an immediate attack followed by claims of bad-faith argumentation FROM ME.

It wasn’t an attack. You openly pronounced coarse speech without intent to assail, attack, or injure as acceptable and then, when others spoke in equal coarseness without intent to force, assail, or injure, you defined it as an attack. That’s the definition of bad-faith:
merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bad%20faith
: lack of honesty in dealing with other people

[Brandybuck]

Still not censorship. Not even private censorship. Individual ads are not being examines by a censor, rather rules are in place not to show political ads or gun ads. As long as the rules are in place before hand, it’s not censorship.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

It’s suppression of speech. It doesn’t matter if the speech is ‘good’ or ‘bad’, it doesn’t matter if the suppression is done by private actors vs. government, it’s censorship. It is not OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT censorship, no. But it is still a property owner refusing to let another person air his/her views on that property.

[Brandybuck]

So I refuse to take porn ads and that’s censorship? Please look up the word.

[Redbrick]

He knows better but wants to be pedantic.

[Captain Hindsight]

Censorship involves suppression or prohibition, so technically this is censorship. However, it’s a pretty passive form of censorship. Mosy would agree that private businesses shouldn’t be forced by other private entities to take actions that hurt their business. This is just one example of where Disney has drawn the line, to avoid harming their business model. No problem with it

[BestUsedCarSales]

I really don’t think this is censorship. Let’s not weaken the word.

[Spiritus Mundi]

Disney just runs the ads as part of their content, free of charge.

[mad.casual]

“Find a team writers to stretch it out to 240-300 min. and put a Star Wars or Marvel theme to it. It could be a backstory explaining why the Jedi don’t use blasters or Capt. Britain and Steve Rogers never had a kid, we don’t care. We’ll call it ‘Order 66§C’ or ‘What If? – The Real World Edition’, or something, it doesn’t matter. All you need to care about is that we’ll cut it into 8-10 episodes and pay $50K per episode. “

[cgr2727]

Call me a blasphemer, but Captain America must have been as gay as the day is long if he never fooled around with agent what’s-her-name, whose uniform was so well filled by Hayley Atwell.

[mad.casual]

[Don’s Assoicate Justice of Marvel Canon robe]
No blasphemy arguing that he should’ve or did hook up with Agent Carter. The lack of specifics in this regard was actually pretty good wrt character and period-specificity. They’re in a fucking war and a Gentleman/Lady never tells. He did get a kiss with a random groupie and was depicted as being undesirable/awkward prior to becoming Capt. Gay, as well as cucked, is pretty egregious. I think pussywhipped would probably be acceptable.
[/disrobes]

[mad.casual]

was depicted as being undesirable/awkward prior to becoming Capt. Gay

Heh, that could probably use some better punctuation.

[mad.casual]

They’re in a fucking war and a Gentleman/Lady never tells.

Forgot to mention birth control and biological experiments. Turns out women in olden times really did take their life into their hands when choosing a mate that might cause them to die giving birth (or aborting with the then-current state of medical science) to a fucked up mutant and, as a result, weren’t necessarily more broadly promiscuous.

[BestUsedCarSales]

He was a man with older, probably better, standards of decency. He had his love, and he stayed true to her.

[A Thinking Mind]

To call this type of thing “censorship” when it happens to your side, but “just private companies doing business as they please” when it comes for your opponents, is tempting for hacks on both sides but terribly wrong.

Irony senses tingling.

[Social Justice is neither]

I don’t think conservatives would have a problem with censorship of actual extremism except it was defined in a repressive tolerance fashion where any leftist call to violence was fine but any right leaning resistance was labeled violence or hate speech and banned.

There should be some places out of bounds but where they exist they should be at both margins of society, not censoring half of the population

[mad.casual]

And not aligned with the political party that is nominally in charge of 2/3 of the government.

As I pointed out and including parts I left out above, Twitter, Facebook, and Google all getting emails from the sitting President and taking simultaneous action that aligns with the party/administration policy is far more clearly censorious than one company, seemingly not getting emails from The Party/Administration and/or ignoring them.

[A Thinking Mind]

Well I think there’s also a fundamental difference to censoring what users on social media can say, and choosing what ads you want run on your platform. It’s much easier to distance yourself from users’ content as not being speech endorsed by the platform. When you’re running ads during your program, you’re specifically offering those directly to your users, so it’s logical to ask that the messaging not be overly provocative.

It’s also directly related to user experience. If I don’t like what Josh Hawley is saying on Twitter, I can block him or refuse to look at his twitter. If Hulu is running provocative ads I don’t want to see, there’s no way to keep using Hulu while opting out. So Hulu has an interest in making sure the user isn’t having things forced on them that they don’t want.

[OpenBordersLiberal-tarian]

Very disappointing from the streaming service that produces The Handmaid’s Tale, which is the most important current TV show ……. no, wait, make that literally the most important work of fiction in the history of our species.

#PostRoeAmericaIsAFascistTheocracy

[Ajsloss]

It’s not fiction anymore. We are literally living THT! Don’t you see them protesting in costume?!

[JimboJr]

Since its not airing lefty propaganda one could argue they are doing their part to cull misinformation

Jankowitz would be proud!

[Louisa Lovejoy Hughes]

Democrats are so shrill and tiresome. Does anyone not already a choirmember in their Church of Perpetual Hysteria want to be bothered by their hissy fits?

[Adans smith]

She means her ‘ truth ‘

[Nardz]

Leftists are literally cancer.

Literally, not figuratively.

[Dillinger]

literally existential cancer.

[Idaho Bob]

Watching some TV last night and the political ads are in every time slot. I started counting how many times I heard a D candidate say “the GOP is a threat to our democracy”. In about 30 minutes, I counted 7 times. The ads also had footage of J6. This is Spokane, WA local television.

The hyperbole was over the top. I can’t imagine anyone falling for it.

[Brandybuck]

Repeat the shrill long enough and it starts reverberating into belief. I’ve seen the same thing with “stop the steal” shrill. Say it once and it can be passed off as a lone nut. Say it a thousand time and it starts sounding like a broad consensus.

[mad.casual]

Except election fraud is actually a threat to democracy while our current conception of democracy was nominally saved by the GOP.

[Inquisitive Squirrel]

Do you ever respond in a manner that doesn’t involve “whatabout” or “both sides?”

[sarcasmic]

Lies! Democrats run the media and are never censored! Only Republicans are censored! Poor, poor innocent Republicans who mean so well! Always getting censored for no reason! It makes them cry! They cry all day long from being censored! It’s not fair! Not fair! Not fair! Poor Republicans! So not fair!

[Don't look at me!]

Poor sarc

[Terran]

You do realize that most Republicans are voters not politicians right?

[Inquisitive Squirrel]

Wow. You really taking this schtick to epic personal levels now. Do you dream about this?

[Zeb]

Seems like a smart decision. Why air stuff that will piss off half your audience?

[Brett Bellmore]

It’s redundant, why run ads pissing off your audience when the content is already doing it? I’d picked the service up while in Covid quarantine, because they at least carried Helsing. Ended up dropping it, I got tired of every day being a combination of Black History Month and Gay Pride Month.

[sarcasmic]

I was going to watch one of those “free with ads” movies the other day, and after three minutes of praising some poor teenager who grew up in the wrong body but had the courage to go through several operations and take fistfuls of pills blah blah blah I ended up not watching the movie.

[Zeb]

There’s plenty on there that’s not obnoxiously woke. I just don’t pay attention to it and that works for me.

[mad.casual]

There’s plenty on there that’s not obnoxiously woke.

Between ‘not obnoxiously woke’, ‘this feels like it was written by a barely-literate, crazy hobo’, and ‘consume next thing’ (or combination thereof), the pickings are pretty slim, IMO. Smart decision not to continue trying to forge ahead into uncharted territory while, simultaneously, you GYST. Equally smart to, in the current climate, hedge your bets and invest more equally in batshit crazy and middle of the road (revenue) streams. Especially if you already have to tone down the batshit crazy to get cultural traction in markets that have nothing to do with your ‘home’ market’s politics.

[Zeb]

I mostly watch olders stuff and a few select new things that I know I like. And somehow Ad block plus works on Hulu for me.

[mad.casual]

Agreed on known-quantities, and I may be confusing Hulu and Disney+ a bit. I’m not 100% sure of everything watched on which stream and/or any given productions-to-consumption path.

[Hattori Hanzo]

If Hulu interrupts my King of the Hill streaming with political ads I am canceling. Hulu has chosen wisely.

[Brandybuck]

Just gotta say of Hulu refused to air a Republican ad, the outrage from the Republicans would be similar. Both sides. Different colors, same species.

If I ever was in charge of a website, forum, network, whatever, I would ban all political ads, period.

[mad.casual]

“Just gotta say I’m completely unaware of Hulu’s policy on airing ads for guns or against abortions, but I’m not above using other people’s silence on the issue to shit on them.” – Brandybuck

[Terran]

Yeah except Disney had a policy for no gun or abortion ads and the one political party that threw a fit and got their ads placed wasn’t the one you assumed so…
What is it like living in a universe where you assume facts that are the opposite of what happens? Stop both sidesing. Be a libertarian and say this simple truth, democrats are trying their best to become the moral majority that burned the republicans so bad. The republicans learned that shoving your morals down the nations throat doesn’t work in the 80s the democrats never learned. So now the next generation of moral majority Republicans is being created by closed minded Democrats today. Instead of this take though I guess yours is fine. When in 20 years the republicans are back to shoving their morals on us, it’s because when they weren’t people like you said they were, so they had nothing to lose from you. There are a lot of people like you btw.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

CNN and MSNBC are nonstop Dem advertisers, so that makes up for it.

[Gaffer Tape]

Yeah, about that: https://www.axios.com/2022/07/27/disney-hulu-political-ads-democrats-abortion-guns

[mad.casual]

I’m sure Reason will be along shortly to update their story. To be fair if they don’t, when you blow your ‘both sides’ load on two girls and only one of them explicitly dissents up front, it doesn’t really matter if the other one dissents after the fact.

[mad.casual]

Huh. 32 min. ago: Hulu Will Now Run Political Ads About Abortion Rights and Gun Control
The Disney-owned company reportedly has a policy prohibiting ads that feature content considered controversial

Weird, I never heard a peep about gun manufacturers complaining that they couldn’t run ads on Hulu. Almost like they seemed entirely content to take their money to another business (The Outdoor Channel) or build their own streaming service (NRA TV) like any libertarian would expect and any stupid or bad-faith leftist would try to obfuscate and/or shit on them for doing.

[BestUsedCarSales]

Or cigarette ads. It’s so hard to figure out which tobacco these days is the smoothest.

[Winnie SC]

Ah! So the shoe DOES have another foot!

[CHARLES WILKINS]

Why was the American tax payer paying for these Hunter biden trips when he was not working for the US Government?The Secret Service records showed that countries and territories visited by Hunter Biden, between June 2009 and May 2014, included:
Ethiopia and India on June 14-22, 2009
Argentina on September 14-17, 2009
France and Spain on November 9-13, 2009
Canada on February 12-15, 2010
Dominican Republic on February 18-22, 2010
Puerto Rico on March 20-27, 2010
China on April 6-9, 2010
Belgium, Spain, and the United Kingdom on May 5-8, 2010
UK, Egypt, Kenya, South Africa, Ascension Island, U.S. Virgin Islands on June 6-13, 2010
Denmark and South Africa on August 9-24, 2010
Hong Kong, Taiwan and China on April 16-22, 2011
Mexico on May 15-17, 2011
Colombia, France, United Arab Emirates and France again on November 1-11, 2011
UK and Russia on February 15-18, 2012
Germany, France and UK on February 1-5, 2013
UK and Ireland on March 20-22, 2013
China on June 13-15, 2013
Switzerland and Italy on July 26-August 7, 2013
Japan, China, South Korea and the Philippines on December 2-9, 2013
China and Qatar on May 7-14, 2014

[Terran]

Because we failed to convince enough people to vote libertarian so that the corruption that is rampantly running through our politics could be checked. That is why. Reason does a good job not convincing people but luckily these comments exist.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Hey, who else was going to monetize the Big Guy?

[mad.casual]

Funny that despite how crooked and shady it may’ve seemed or actually was, Trump had the decency to produce functional children, set up businesses for them to run (even if only auspiciously), establish (or just have) plausible private income streams, and/or appoint them to posts in his administration. The government interest in having Hunter Biden on a paid flight to (e.g.) Canada on Feb. 12-15, 2009 makes no fucking sense and even if you say “It was only donor money.” or “Dad just failed to report spending his own private money.” you still run pretty far afoul of the law.

[Inquisitive Squirrel]

Jesus. The constant bitching by political parties that some private company is suppressing their speech is just exhausting at this point.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Again, the real story here is they accepted and ran the ads.

[Inquisitive Squirrel]

Actually, the real story here is how the most entitled, wealthy, successful, educated, and connected amongst us always claim to be the most victimized in our society.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

“Hulu’s censorship of the truth is outrageous, offensive, and another step down a dangerous path for our country,” said the three aforementioned Democratic organizations in a statement.

They went on to say, “Who the fuck do they think they are? Censorship and destroying liberty is our job.”

[Dillinger]

waaaaahmbulance!

[Jose 3]

“Censorship” is a harsh term for a company that refuses to run certain types of ads they feel are inappropriate for, or objectionable to, their viewership…providing the standards apply equally to all who want to run those particular types of ads. Would it be fair to accuse Disney of censorship for refusing to run pornographic or other “adult themed” ads during their children’s shows? I don’t think so.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

It might seem like a harsh term but as we’ve argued here before, “censorship” does not have to be a “first amendment actionable issue”. I agree that in this case, however, that Censorship is a little harsh. It’s not like Hulu is a platform where someone posted the ads, and the Hulu deleted them. That’s more akin to ‘censorship’. Declining to accept the ad in the first place is more discriminatory collating and curating. It’s refusal to publish.

[Tony]

Boy is it fun watching these gears turn.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

The ‘it’s a private company and they can do what they want’ gears? Yeah, I’ve seen those gears turning too, and it seems they came to a sudden halt.

[Tony]

Nobody’s writing any law forcing private companies to publish partisan propaganda except Republicans who are proposing literally that.

[Vernon Depner]

Pornography should be shown to children only in public schools.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

The ad in question mentioned Republican successes around abortion, climate change and gun violence

What gun-violence successes have Republicans had?

[Zeb]

Curious choice of wording. Both “gun violence” and that the three court cases they are presumably referring to are specifically republican successes rather than appropriate (or otherwise) interpretations of law.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

I shot an elephant in my pajamas.

Eats shoots and leaves.

This magazine needs Tim Cavanaugh back as the grammar whip.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

But Hulu isn’t censoring the truth so much as making a business decision—one they’ve pretty consistently applied—not to air ads that will piss off a significant chunk of their viewership.

This is not the story here. The story is they ran the ads.

[mad.casual]

So, getting abjectly (or maybe just sorta) conspiratorial about things; with the ‘not-exactly-a-pattern(… yet)’ of initially reasonable positions being reversed in favor of unreasonable decisions, I almost wonder if the leadership at Disney isn’t 100% batshit crazy and capable of making right/sensible decisions, until the red phone from China Beijing rings.

[mad.casual]

Guess this would be more appropriate in response to your post below.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

It’s both a modern-day marvel and a blessing that streaming services aren’t bound by archaic laws like that one, so we can watch our old Weeds and High Maintenance episodes in peace without being jarringly interrupted by January 6 footage.

No, they’re just bound by the DNC speaking through the Washington Post.

[Tony]

A Washington Post that may find Republicans vulgar and repugnant, but will never push too hard for raising taxes on billionaires.

I’d take it as a win if I were a libertarian.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

If you want to get rid of the billionaires, let’s see who blinks first, because they ain’t on my side.

[Tony]

That’s what I just said.

Perhaps through all the insane shrieking of Republicans you couldn’t hear: “Democrats are capitalists.”

Not that there’s any such thing as capital anymore.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

FYI, it’s my opinion that streaming services and other entertainment videos should eschew political ads for reasons too obvious to state. The problem as we’ve seen again and again and again… and again… and again, is in the rare occasion that an entertainment venue does bar or eschew political ads, they often relent in specific cases and when their hypocrisy is pointed out, they respond with statements such as “This issue is too important [to maintain our standard terms of service]”.

One early example of that in the tech sector was Facebook allowing the Obama administration to (in their words, not mine) “capture the entire social network”. This was, according to facebook, nominally something they’d never allow, but as they “were on Obama’s side” the issue was “too important” to maintain their standard terms of service.

It appears that this issue with Hulu is no exception to the exceptions.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

“entertainment platforms”*

[Tony]

Then Facebook became the very catalyst of the Trump election and eventual insurrection. Guess they made up for it.

[Mickey Rat]

If you are not parroting the Democratic Party line, then you stand against The Truth. According to the Democrats. Their rhetoric and actions have been rather consistent on this point for several years now.

Remember that.

[Truthteller1]

We are dealing with children.

[MatthewSlyfield]

It’s okay for Titter et al to censor Republicans because “private company”, so why isn’t it okay for HULU to censor Democrats because “private company”.

[mad.casual]

Because Tulsi Gabbard, duh.

[Its_Not_Inevitable]

The way these people phrase these things and carry on and whine like little children. And the MSM goes right along with it. Friggin’ ridiculous.

Raises the question: What can you do when you have a monopoly on “the Truth”?

George Orwell answered that question a long time ago.

Best answer might be: Anything you want.

[Tony]

How the fuck does anyone have a monopoly on the truth when the internet exists?

You can have any truth you want. You can believe Hillary Clinton runs a child trafficking ring from a pizza shop. You can believe it so hard you commit murder or vote Republican.

It’s not easy figuring out what’s true. It takes a real education. But it’s far from impossible either. Just… make sure you have that education. You wouldn’t want your gullibility to be exploited by nefarious entities.

[5.56]

“It’s not easy figuring out what’s true. It takes a real education. But it’s far from impossible either. Just… make sure you have that education. You wouldn’t want your gullibility to be exploited by nefarious entities.”

Nefarious entities, such as public schools? What’s that authoritative, distinguishing education you’re talking about? Knowing calculus? (yawn) Speaking a second language? (yaaahaaaawn) State theory and history? (taught like it is in public schools or what?!)

This education-insisting stuff, I really think it’s used a lot to spread non-education.

What would help our population greatly is media competence 101. Awareness of stochastic manipulation strategies, probability-driven, soft censorship, opinion occurrence frequency manipulation and so on. Maybe also a dose of Machiavelli, which radically boosts the understanding of the actions of politicians.

[Tony]

No, silly, not public schools. After public schools, I went to a private university. It’s there you learn that many of the things you learned when you were twelve were simplified. I mean, who would have thought?

I’m talking specifically of the critical thinking skills needed to discern reliable sources on the internet. The first, and I mean the very first, human bias you must check for is confirmation bias. The internet makes it the easiest thing in the world to look up what you already want to believe.

Wikipedia, it turns out, is a good model. It cites its sources and has constantly active editors. The more noteworthy the subject, the more accurate it tends to be. So it’s actually pretty easy to get basic facts right.

But some people insist that it’s all a conspiracy, that and all the science journals of course, because some crappy random blog says something different. What are you going to do with people?

[Tony]

Disney’s corporate sociopathy is as pristinely manicured as the hedges of Magic Kingdom. It almost brings a tear to my eye. I don’t care what you say, that is one mouse with its shit together.

They don’t see countries on a map, they see entries on a spreadsheet. If the world ends, they probably have fully stocked underground bunkers somewhere in those tunnels the park characters use.

I’d vote for that mouse to run the government. It may not give a single shit about the future of the country, but at least we know there would be no bothersome human feelings getting in the way. And Elton John can sing the theme song.

[5.56]

Yeah, as a sociopath you would want someone without bothersome human feelings in charge.

[Tony]

Facts don’t care about your feelings, or so I heard from some retarded kid.

[5.56]

Which is true, but decision-makers aren’t facts or data. If you can’t distinguish between data and humans, that might indicate sociopathy.

[5.56]

What I’m really saying, though, is that it’s a fact that the identity of a human is bounded by biology. It’s a fact that I am sitting at a computer. It is a fact that human decision-making involves human feelings. It is my OPINION that it should.

The difference is, I do know when I’m in the territory of facts or the territory of opinion. The left doesn’t.

(And what I’m doing here is mostly advocacy, opinion. Most comment section users are.)