"They start taking a sledgehammer to this with zero nuance"
Jake Silberman's video of a Stop the Steal rally in Salem, Oregon was removed by YouTube—and he still doesn't know exactly why
Welcome to The Flashpoint.
Today I’m talking to Jake Silberman, an old friend from college who I talked to a few weeks ago about the January 6 riots on his podcast, What is Stuff.
Since then, Jake’s had his video from the Salem, Oregon Stop the Steal rally taken down from YouTube and even had his Instagram account shut down for sharing a clip from the video. It’s important to note that the video was not in any way endorsing the actions of the rally goers or the conspiracy theory that the election was stolen.
As you’ll see, that didn’t matter. But Jake’s still agitating to get the video put back up on YouTube, in part by posting a video appeal… to YouTube.
We talked about the process, the rally itself, and tech companies and speech.
Enjoy!
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Let's start at the beginning. Tell people who you are, what you do, give us the context for the video itself.
Yes. So my name is Jake Silberman, I'm a Portland based stand up comedian. And I also have created this video series called Jake on the Street, where I go to different events and interview people.
It's more in the style of—well, before the pandemic, it was definitely a lot lighter. We went to a house party and we went to a beer festival. I was definitely much more like comedic stuff.
Then when the pandemic hit, gatherings pretty much dropped off, and the only thing that was really happening was political things. So, it wasn't as much humor just because a lot of the stuff we went to was more serious and the situations were a little more serious.
But we kept doing it and wanted to create this brand of journalism or whatever you want to call it, interviews, I guess, cut it in a certain way. We obviously do have a bias like everybody does. And if there was a laugh that we could get out of it, depending on what events were. I mean, we went to a Trump rally down in Nevada and stuff like that.
We also did some of the protests here in Portland when they were at their peak. It was a lot of just trying to talk to people at these events and get the vibe of why they were there and and just hear from the people's mouths, which I think is pretty valuable and I think is sometimes missing in certain contexts.
We went to a Trump rally, we went to the Proud Boy rally that happened in Portland. We went to that.
You were already known to members of the Proud Boys, members of these extreme right groups who were at the January 6th events. They knew who you were and they didn't like you.
I was a little confused by that. They were pretty quick at the January 6 event to identify us as what they called Antifa. They either did know who I was or they were just like, you do not look like you belong here. And therefore we're going to stick us with this label of Antifa media or whatever they were calling us.
It was very surprising because we've been seeing these things, but we're not like a beat reporter. It's not like we've been out at every one of their events and they should really recognize us. But you never know what people have seen.
Let's set the scene here for people. The Stop the Steal rally on January 6th, which was in Salem, Oregon. So you go down there because you know that there's going to be some right wing extremism that you guys can check out. Your other videos do a good job, I think, as did this one in my opinion, a good job of highlighting the ridiculousness, but also the sadness and craziness of this belief system.
So you're there and you're talking to people and at a certain point it gets a little tense. Can you give a really brief explanation of what happened?
On January six, obviously, as everybody knows, there was a giant basically Stop the Steal rally in D.C. A lot of state capitals had individual Stop the Steal rallies and Salem was no different. We went down there and obviously the people know just in general, as they follow the news, that Oregon has been a big flashpoint for a lot of right-left fighting; the Proud Boys and Antifa, all the stuff that's happened in Portland. This is a pretty politically active area for those types of groups.
So we went down to interview them. And obviously we didn't know that it was going to be such a historic day with what was going to eventually happen in D.C. We figured it would be interesting and that video would be a good way to show what these people were feeling, because, like you said, I think it is no matter what you think about them, I think it is important to hear it from their own mouths, why am I here? What do I believe? What do I think?
We always try to show a variety. Here you got a kid who's just like a general Trump protester. He's not going to break any windows. He's just going to stand out there with his American flag and say, whatever, I like Trump. I think the election was stolen. And so you get this huge, huge span of people.
[The Proud Boys didn't like Jake filming them and tried to intimidate him and his cameraman. It didn't work.]
We stuck around and eventually a small group of counter-protesters showed up. I imagine they were mostly from the Portland area, because I recognized a fair amount of them. And that broke out into a scuffle between the groups, which often happens, then the cops broke that up. And that was the end of the rally. That day just ended traditionally. I guess the two groups who hate each other got to fight. It broke off into a little violence. The cops stepped in the middle and then that was it for the day.
You go home, you edit the video, and then you put it up on YouTube a few days later.
So yeah. I put a small clip of it on my Instagram and I think about three days after I put it up, I checked my Instagram and all of a sudden it gave me this message saying, your account has been suspended for 30 days. It didn't tell me why, wouldn't say, it didn't even say, like, you violated our terms of service. It just said you can appeal this in twenty four hours.
And I was like, OK. By this time I had seen floating on the Internet that Instagram and Facebook might take some stuff down associated with Stop the Steal. I assumed, oh, well, they're taking stuff down that's clearly calling the election fraud, which I wasn't. I mean, I was reporting on this thing.
Then I check back the next day after twenty four hours are up thinking I'll have somebody to write to or something. And my account was deleted. I can't get it back. And that's it.
You can't do anything. That's it. You're shit out of luck.
This was about a week after the 6, and it had only been up for three days. And then, you know, I was like, OK, this really sucks. There's really no appeal process.
But the YouTube video stayed up. You know, it was past the inauguration, and I think even past the impeachment trial. It was up there into the Biden presidency.
They took it down March 3rd.
I got this message from them saying, you violated our terms of service, but you do get an appeal. I think it took literally 20 minutes or something. And then they said, we're not going to reinstate and that's it.
So Instagram nuked your account, but YouTube didn't?
YouTube has a three strike policy. I think they basically have a strike system where if you get one, you can't post for a week. If you get another, you can't post for like two weeks. And then I think when you get a third, that's when that's like your account is done.
They actually didn't even give me one of their strikes. They gave me what they're calling a warning, which is—I don't even really know. I mean, it doesn't do anything. So that's where I stand with you.
This stops making sense to me once the appeal doesn't go through, because it's so clear what you're doing in the video, right?
Well, I think what it is is that there's not a human at the other end of any of this process. Because I use the words Stop the Steal, that was all that it took for them to say, oh, this must be one of those videos that we're looking for.
It's just some algorithm saying, does it go against whatever we've been told to search for and kick off and if it does, you can say anything you want, but we're still going to take this video off.
Obviously YouTube and these platforms after January 6 in D.C., people were pissed because YouTube and others have been basically allowing these guys to do all this shit on your platforms in plain sight.
So they're just going back now, trying to save face. If things get caught up in it that clearly, are showing what actually happened, it's just a casualty of them trying to do their PR, I think.
You did put out a video about this. Have you had any response from that? I remember we were talking and you mentioned journalist Ford Fischer, who's also had to deal with some of this stuff.
Do you expect that there's any way that you can get them to reverse the decision? You're obviously not letting this go, so, what do you what are you hoping happens in the short to medium term?
I really don't have any hope that it's going to come back. I did some research and saw a lot of people's YouTube videos getting taken down around the January 6 issue. You mentioned that guy Fischer whose videos were literally used in the impeachment trial, like they used his footage on the congressional floor and YouTube still took it down.
He's like a serious journalist, that's his life's work. I'm a small comedian, but he has, like, I think around 50,000 subscribers on YouTube and and even his stuff was getting taken down. And really what happens is if you have a big enough social media platform, like if you can generally I think through Twitter, if you can get a bunch of people on Twitter just to take, you know, the YouTube accounts, you might be able to get this.
But if you're just a tiny account like mine, I mean, I don't think I even have 1700 subscribers on YouTube. There is just not going to be enough public pressure that I could mount for them to notice or care.
You don't really stand any chance because it's just not worth it to them when there's just they're not going to lose any points in the public eye because no one knows about it. No one knows about my stuff. I mean, a handful of people do, but not enough to really, like, bother them.
You're hinting at it a little bit, but what do you think that this says in general about the way that tech companies are regulating speech and regulating content?
It's definitely a pretty complicated issue because it's new. It's like when Trump got banned. I feel like party lines divided people on the ban. Anybody who didn't like Trump, with a few people who were looking at this issue already, were like good. And anybody who is like, well, is it really good that these tech companies have the power where they can basically knock this guy off of these platforms, the response was, well, they're a private company, and so if they're a private company, they can do whatever they want.
Trump was, holy shit, they're like actually doing something. And Trump was so hated by so many people, people were like, this is awesome. I'm so glad.
And so now when a video like mine or Ford's or any person who's talking about these issues, brings it up, people are like, it's a private company. And it's like, yeah, it's a private company, but these private companies are now basically—without them, you're invisible.
Yes, they are a private company, but the public interacts with these private companies in such a way that if you are trying to get a message out there without the use of them, I mean, what are you doing? I don't write for a paper or anything. I don't have any other platform besides using these public platforms.
Yes, they are private companies, but they are dictating huge parts of public life.
The other thing about this is that YouTube and these platforms for years have set their algorithms to specifically radicalize people. They have an algorithm that basically goes crazy with suggestions like, You like this, you might like this.
Tension sells on there, they want you on their platforms as long as possible, so they're going to show you a million videos. If you apply that to politics, it doesn't really matter if you start with a more moderate voice and then all of a sudden they kick you down the road to, you know, the Proud Boys or whoever, some more extremist group.
But now when it's, oh, shit, people are looking our way, we got to hustle and make something happen. Then they start taking a sledgehammer to this with zero nuance about what's going on. It has this incredible amount of power that we haven't really been looking at at all.
In America especially, we're not in the game of telling big private businesses what they can do. We don't really challenge that level of power because it's freedom and it's enterprise and, you know, who are we to tell this private company what to do? But these private companies are ubiquitous with our public life. There has to be something—you can't just be oh, well, we decided to take information about the historic day down because of some in the moment PR move. It just doesn't work for a democracy.
The point about radicalization is so interesting because, yeah, that was their business model for so long. I think that shows that there is a content moderation problem. I'm not necessarily saying that they should be removing content or not, there just doesn't seem like there's consistency or any logic to it.
No, that's the thing. It's so opaque. There's no transparency. There's no rhyme or reason. You see one guy's video, you would be like, OK, so they're banning this, how is this up? It doesn't make sense. That's the thing. The terms of service are broad.
Again, this is a private company and they can choose exactly what's on there. And you really are at their whim. I'm not saying like everything should be on YouTube, you know, I think the early arguments over this stuff were like the beheading videos.
I think that's where this stuff really started to take off. I don't know what the right answer is. I just know that there is no system to even really debate this right now. It's all behind these closed private companies doors. So we have no say in any way. Don't we as Americans want this information? Should there be some type of public record of what happened that day and, you know, you got journalists out there documenting the incident, shouldn't I be able to pull that up to remind myself that this is what happened? It seems dangerous for it just to be that the company will decide if you're going to be able to have access to that easily or not.
People can watch this and see for themselves, but I think that's right. I think it's pretty clear to me watching your video that what you're doing is in all these interviews, you're just giving these guys enough rope to hang themselves. There's no endorsement of this.
You're just asking pretty simple questions and they're just answering them in increasingly unhinged ways, because that's what the belief system is, and I think that anybody who was thinking about this rationally, if a person was even thinking about it at all while looking at your appeal, they would notice that it's impossible to misinterpret it. It is impossible to misinterpret what the video is.
The best way to expose people is just to let them talk because they're going to tell you who they are, what they believe pretty quickly. They fucking want their shit out there. They're constantly worried that their beliefs are being oppressed or not heard. So they are actually like some of the most camera ready people because they want to let you know.
So, yeah, it's not it's any human who watches it would have misunderstood what I was doing, but no human ever watched it. It was just a computer.
Thanks for reading! Be sure to head over to The Discontents newsletter as well for my thoughts on the White House press corps. And stay tuned.