Unprocessed

Dame Caroline [Dinenage, chair of the House of Commons media committee] then wrote to Rumble, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook owner Meta asking if they would follow suit.

In her letter to Rumble chief executive Chris Pavlovski, she said: "While we recognise that Rumble is not the creator of the content published by Mr Brand, we are concerned that he may be able to profit from his content on the platform.

"We would be grateful if you could confirm whether Mr Brand is able to monetise his content, including his videos relating to the serious accusations against him. If so, we would like to know whether Rumble intends to join YouTube in suspending Mr Brand's ability to earn money on the platform.

"We would also like to know what Rumble is doing to ensure that creators are not able to use the platform to undermine the welfare of victims of inappropriate and potentially illegal behaviour."
Rumble rejects MP's 'disturbing' letter over Russell Brand income

Expecting that someone would have their income withheld on the basis of accusations? No wonder "cancel culture" has acquired a bad name. The fact that legislators would feel that it is appropriate to ask that media platforms take unilateral actions without allowing the accused the chance to defend themselves against whatever allegations have been leveled speaks to the need politicians feel to mirror the judgements that are rendered in the court of public opinion. (And, of course, Parliamentarian Dinenage won't be on the hook if it turns out that Russel Brand is cleared, and sues over the withheld funds.)

The problem with following the judgements of the court of public opinion is that they are fickle. This makes substituting those judgements for due process a more dangerous practice than it is often given credit for. The public is not accountable to anyone for popular opinions. Once can imagine a vocal segment of the public being up in arms over YouTube demonetizing a person's videos for some breach of the terms of service, where the public is on the side of the video creator. Legislators will have a difficult time in asking companies to follow their own rules if they advocate for those rules to be set aside every time they start feeling the heat from some or another group of their constituents.

But more importantly, deciding that the processes and procedures that organizations and institutions have for investigating and sanctioning violations of rules need not apply when some number of people are sufficiently vocal about it, or someone is accused of something unpopular has the effect of turning rules and the like into means of punishing people for being unpopular or the targets of public anger, rather than being the result of a formal finding of fact - even if that finding of fact becomes a mere formality. Concepts like democracy and the rule of law are not meant to be weapons wielded against those who are out of favor, because the perception that they are is what splits societies. Especially when it appears that people in government are looking to the private sector to get around the rules that government has set for itself and/or expects the populace at large to follow. This is what lends the letter from the UK's House of Commons media committee an air of illegitimacy. Russel Brand has been accused of "inappropriate and potentially illegal" activity; and while those accusations may be very credible, he hasn't been convicted of anything yet. Placing the focus on victims shouldn't be a means of circumventing that.

Russel Brand, like a lot of people who deliberately set out to push people's buttons, hasn't done himself any favors with his behavior. That's what makes him so vulnerable to this sort of tactic. It's easy to take the allegations being made as the truth of the matter, even though, to the best of my knowledge, no charges have been filed and all of the accusations have been made anonymously. This forces any accountability to be outside of the formal structures of the legal system. Parliamentarian Dinenage doesn't have many options in calling for accountability other than to appeal to the private sector directly. (This still doesn't make it a good idea.) Mr. Brand, having made himself look bad in front of the court of public opinion (likely because he didn't predict that behavior that he thought was simply "edgy" when he did it would morph into "predatory" several years later), now finds that the public believes him capable of open sexual misconduct.

This leaves legislators in a difficult position. The public has a habit of expecting elected officials to mirror their attitudes and preconceptions back to them. And failing to do so can result in a challenger running on a promise that they will do so. That promise may be implied far more often than it's openly stated, but its there nonetheless. And the public, being merely a rather large mass of individuals, is incapable of being consistent; there will always be people for whom this or that outcome trumps other considerations. And it's worth noting that politicians are members of the public themselves. Be that as it may, however, I think that it's important that people in government not advocate for going around government; it just doesn't end well in the long term.