I am implementing a new rule for this community. Political ideas, policies, parties, and politicians are all fair game. Treating ordinary people as enemies because they are liberal, conservative, left-wing, or MAGA is not.

I have been guilty of this myself, especially when mocking MAGA voters instead of confronting the politicians and ideas causing harm. I helped create the tone I now want to change, so this rule begins with me.

Mocking politicians and exposing corruption will remain part of this community. What needs to stop is the blanket hatred of entire groups of people. Calling everyone on the left stupid will not change anyone. Calling every Trump voter evil will not heal anything. That kind of contempt only pushes people deeper into their camps.

We can criticize a belief without dehumanizing the person who holds it. We can fight cruelty, corruption, authoritarianism, and greed without becoming cruel ourselves. Posts and comments whose only purpose is to insult ordinary people because of their political identity will be removed.

I care more about bringing people together than providing another home for toxic political warfare. If we want the country to heal, somebody has to stop feeding the hatred. I am choosing to start here.

On August 31, YouTube suddenly demonetized a large number of First Amendment auditing channels. Long Island Audit, Bay Area Transparency, San Joaquin Valley Transparency, Delete LawZ Clips, Liberty Troll, Odd Man Audits, and others reportedly received nearly identical notices at approximately the same time. YouTube cited its vague “Creator Responsibility” policy, but apparently did not identify the videos or incidents that triggered the punishment.

That does not look like a series of unrelated decisions. It looks like a coordinated sweep.

The unanswered question is who pushed YouTube to conduct it. We do not yet have a document proving that a police union, law enforcement organization, or government official demanded these demonetizations. We should be honest about that. Suspicion is not proof. But the circumstances are serious enough that they cannot simply be dismissed as another routine platform decision.

Police organizations have been complaining about First Amendment auditors for years. Recently, Suffolk County Police Benevolent Association President Lou Civello went further. He publicly attacked auditors as frauds and con artists, criticized YouTube for allowing them to earn money, called for tougher laws, and argued that the companies supporting this content needed to be stopped.

Then many of the channels he was complaining about lost their income on the same day.

Perhaps that is a coincidence. Perhaps YouTube independently decided that this entire category of citizen journalism had become too dangerous for advertisers. But when a powerful police union publicly demands that a platform cut off a movement’s financial support, and the platform then cuts off that support, the public has every right to ask whether pressure was applied behind closed doors.

This is especially concerning because the Suffolk County District Attorney reportedly subpoenaed Google for subscriber and financial information connected to the Long Island Audit channel shortly before the demonetization. Civello and other police union officials also attended a national police conference where Todd Blanche, then deputy attorney general and now attorney general, delivered the keynote address.

None of those facts alone proves coordination. Together, however, they describe a relationship between police power, government authority, and the corporation controlling the economic survival of the people recording them. That relationship deserves investigation.

The apparent strategy is frighteningly effective. The government does not have to arrest every person holding a camera. It does not have to pass a law making criticism of police illegal. It does not even have to remove the videos. It only has to make the work financially impossible.

Travel costs money. Cameras cost money. Attorneys, court records, public-records requests, transcripts, and lawsuits cost money. When YouTube removes monetization from a channel, it does more than take away a creator’s paycheck. It removes resources from the investigations, legal challenges, and public-records work that make police accountability possible.

That is what makes this different from an ordinary argument about content moderation. These channels frequently document public employees exercising government power. Their videos have captured illegal arrests, unconstitutional searches, unlawful demands for identification, interference with recording, and public officials who do not understand the rights they are sworn to respect.

Not every First Amendment auditor behaves responsibly. Some deliberately antagonize private citizens. Some have escalated encounters into pepper-spray incidents, threats, trespassing, and violence. YouTube has every right to examine those cases individually. A person does not become immune from consequences merely by pointing a camera at someone and calling it journalism.

But that is precisely why individual explanations matter.

If a channel encouraged violence, identify the video. If a creator organized harassment, show the evidence. If someone published private information or directed an audience to threaten a person, say so plainly. A platform as powerful as YouTube should not be able to destroy the income of an entire group of independent journalists by citing a policy broad enough to mean almost anything.

A sweeping punishment also erases the difference between a peaceful auditor exposing misconduct and a provocateur manufacturing confrontation for views. It treats the entire practice of recording government as a single dangerous category. That should concern everyone, including people who dislike auditors or disagree with their methods.

The First Amendment normally restricts government, not private corporations. YouTube can decide what it wants to monetize. But that legal distinction changes if government officials used their authority to pressure a private platform into punishing protected speech. The Supreme Court has made clear that officials may express their opinions, but they may not use government power to coerce private companies into suppressing people the government cannot silence directly.

That is why public-records requests must now be filed with Suffolk County, the police union, the district attorney’s office, and relevant federal agencies. We need communications concerning First Amendment auditors, Long Island Audit, Google, YouTube, monetization, advertising, and the Creator Responsibility policy. Google should also disclose whether law enforcement organizations submitted formal complaints or participated in discussions about this enforcement action.

Until those records are produced, I will not pretend that police involvement has been conclusively proven. But I also refuse to pretend that the timing means nothing.

A police union leader publicly attacked the financial infrastructure supporting police accountability. Law enforcement sought information from Google about one of the largest auditing channels. Multiple channels were then demonetized simultaneously under the same vague policy. Those facts create a legitimate appearance of coordinated pressure.

If YouTube reached this decision independently, it should explain its reasoning. If individual creators violated specific rules, YouTube should identify those violations. If police unions or government agencies communicated with the company, the public deserves to know exactly what was said.

Cameras have changed the balance of power between citizens and police. For generations, an officer’s version of an encounter could become the official truth simply because no competing record existed. Citizen video changed that. It gave ordinary people the ability to preserve what happened before institutions could rewrite it.

Now the struggle may be moving from control of the camera to control of the money behind it.

When police cannot legally stop people from recording, the next temptation is to make recording too expensive to continue. When officials cannot constitutionally silence their critics, the next temptation is to persuade a corporation to do it for them.

That possibility is no longer abstract. It is sitting in the inboxes of dozens of people whose cameras were pointed at power.

The cameras are still rolling. Now they need to be pointed at Google, the police unions, and every government office that may have helped make this happen.

There once was a man who kept Tuesday in a jar. Not every Tuesday. Just one. He had found it many years ago underneath his kitchen table, trembling beside a dust bunny. Tuesday was very small then. About the size of a button. So he put it in a pickle jar. He poked three holes in the lid. He wasn't cruel. Every morning before work he checked on Tuesday. "Morning." Tuesday said nothing. Tuesday had never said anything. Still, the man left it a little coffee. Just in case.

Years passed. The man grew older. Tuesday did not. People visited his house. They noticed the jar. "What's that?" "Tuesday." "No, really." "Tuesday." Most people stopped asking. One woman did not. She stayed for dinner. Then another dinner. Then several hundred dinners. Eventually her toothbrush appeared beside his. She never asked him to throw Tuesday away. This was one reason he loved her. At night they could hear the jar humming downstairs. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. "What does it want?" she asked once. "I don't know." "Have you ever opened it?" The man looked horrified. "You can't just open Tuesday." She nodded. Of course. There are rules. Nobody knows who wrote them. Still, there are rules.

Years passed again. The woman became sick. Not storybook sick. Not one dramatic cough into a white handkerchief. Sick in the tedious way. Appointments. Parking garages. Plastic bracelets. Numbers. Waiting rooms filled with magazines no one had chosen to read. The man would sit beside her and hold her hand. Sometimes neither of them talked. There isn't always something to say. Eventually there was one hospital room. One chair. One bed. One afternoon. She looked at him and whispered: "I think Tuesday wants out." The man laughed. Then cried. Then laughed because he was crying. Then cried because he had laughed. Human beings do ridiculous things when the walls get close.

That evening he went home alone. The house had become enormous. Every room seemed to contain another room behind it. The refrigerator buzzed. The hallway light blinked. At the end of the hallway stood someone who looked exactly like him. Except taller. And smiling. The man switched off the light. When he switched it back on, nothing was there. From the kitchen: mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. He walked toward the jar. Tuesday was glowing. Very faintly. Blue perhaps. Or green. Or that color you sometimes see when you close your eyes after looking at the sun. He sat down. "All right," he said. Tuesday hummed. "You've been here forty-three years." Tuesday hummed. "I don't even know what you are." Tuesday hummed.

The man put his hand on the lid. Suddenly he remembered being eight years old. Running through wet grass. His mother calling him home. He remembered being nineteen. He remembered his first apartment. His father's hands. A terrible haircut. A dog whose name he had almost forgotten. The woman laughing so hard milk came out of her nose. The woman asleep beside him. The woman in the hospital. The woman saying: I think Tuesday wants out. The jar began shaking. "No," the man whispered. Because now he understood. Tuesday wasn't Tuesday. Not exactly. Tuesday was every day he had decided he could keep. Every afternoon he wished would remain unfinished. Every person he had secretly believed could be protected by remembering them hard enough. Every moment he had placed beneath glass and said: Mine. Stay. Please.

The lid turned. Once. Twice. The man stopped. From somewhere upstairs came footsteps. Slow footsteps. Coming down. One. Two. Three. The kitchen light flickered. The refrigerator stopped humming. Everything became silent. The man opened the jar. Nothing happened. He waited. Still nothing. Then something very small climbed onto his hand. Tuesday. It looked nothing like Tuesday. It looked like a tiny warm light. It crawled across his palm. Paused. And disappeared. The footsteps upstairs stopped. The man sat alone at the kitchen table. The empty jar stood before him.

Morning eventually arrived. Not dramatically. No trumpets. No revelation. Just sunlight finding the curtains. The man made coffee. He poured two cups from habit. He stared at the second one. Then smiled. Then cried. Then drank them both. Outside, someone was mowing a lawn. A truck backed up somewhere. A dog barked. The world continued performing its ridiculous little duties. The man stepped outside. It was Wednesday. He had never noticed Wednesday before.