She was going out to dinner near the airport with her best friend, who was then going to drop her off for her flight.
She glanced at her phone as we started out. Great, there’s been a shooting.
In San Bruno.
We were headed to San Bruno.
On some level, it just didn’t sink in; it just made no sense.
She read on. The shooter was already known to be dead; we didn’t think we were going to be too close to the scene anyway.
But after I got home I found out a friend had marked himself as Safe on Facebook (Oh is that where your new job is) and another had said that she was pinging her co-workers, hoping to hear that they were okay. She later deleted the post: no sense in letting the crazies know where she worked.
These are the times we’ve been allowing ourselves to live in and creating for our children to inherit.
Meantime, another friend had a small fender-bender near there and a witness waited with her for the police to come–and for friendly chat to pass the time he asked her, Did you hear about YouTube? When she said no, he (with expletives) said that they deserved it because they were threatening our Second Amendment rights.
Wait. YouTube said they would no longer allow videos that made them a party to gun sales. They didn’t say you couldn’t sell, they didn’t say you couldn’t speak, they didn’t outlaw your guns, they’re not the government nor are they a public utility nor are they censoring speech, they simply said that on the platform that they own and pay people to manage, on the machines and electricity bills that they pay for, these were some of the rules for participating.
Anybody can still make their own video and host it on their own server.
This man actually thought it was okay to wish a death sentence on innocent people out loud to a total stranger–and he assumed she would agree with him!–for YouTube’s unwillingness to be a party to what they felt was promoting gun violence. This afternoon that issue was forced into their very workplace and I imagine their decision gained both clarity and a deep-seated sense of righteousness.
If people like him think that they’re a majority, then clearly that would suggest he could strike it rich with his own startup: video hosting for people who think like him. Literally nothing right now is stopping him. Venture capitalists in Silicon Valley constantly chase the next big money-maker, go make your pitch to them.
You see? That First Amendment: and it came first for a reason.
But it does not include the right to force someone else to pay to issue your speech for you.