Youtube's apparent censorship
Recently, there's been a torrent of videos on Youtube of people talking about, and heavily criticizing, Google's decision to demonitize (take away advertisement based funding) any and all videos that are, to name a few categories, "controversial, include swearing, show violence, contain partial nudity," among others. The immediate reaction was that people believed Google was engaging in censorship of some form. But I have found another viewpoint that makes a little more sense to me: the money. To explain that viewpoint, I present to you the Armoured Skeptic.
Edit: accidentally put the video as an image. Oops.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g1tJzTgJAE]
It makes me think of our corporate "news" organizations. We've seen before how money and greed caused by unregulated, corporatism/capitalism can silence free and honest speech as effectively as (or possibly even greater than) a governing body can. And it looks like it is happening again on one of the largest platforms for free speech we have.
Comments
I saw this over
at TOP and, yes, it's all about the money. Well, that, and, as always, fucking the 99%. Becuz, it's much more fun making money when you can fuck the 99% at the same time. Hell, it would be fun fucking the 99% if we didn't make a nickel. But making money While fucking the 99%? Priceless.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
The Clintons’ first two terms deregulated media
In a neoliberal "free-market" society, you don't have to ban truth-telling entirely — just make it unprofitable.
Google has a long history of
screwing people out of their revenues. Adwords/Adsense etc. Why should youtube be any different?
"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage
Since google owns youtube, it isn't different. n/t
Exactly--
That is what I was getting at.
"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage
i've watched a bit about this
and i'm kind of torn, because i don't see it as censorship so much.. people are still allowed the platform, it's not like videos are being taken down due to the new rules. that being said, the rules are so overly broad that everything from profanity to discussing current events that don't involve puppies and rainbows can be demonitized.
the bigass youtube channels though, those with more than a quarter or half a million followers, are what makes youtube what it is. that's where the clicks come from, that's why advertisers pay youtube. most of those channels are not amateurs. when you're putting 12 hours a day into creating content and basically handing it to youtube for free... i guess it's unfortunate that there's not some kind of legal protection for this type of media. maybe we'll see something like that in the future.
GIANT ALL-CAPS SIG
Drat, saw last night a list
Drat, saw last night a list of alternates to YouTube posted somewhere on here, but am (and was) too tired to remember in what C-9 comment thread it was posted and will hope to find one which has a decent selection of music videos.
I think a boycott is in order...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
vimeo
is a big one, i've seen some others, but let's face it, google's got a bigtime monopoly on pretty much everything other than music videos and bootleg content. i've been listening to a lot more podcasts lately myself, but a lot of things are better with visuals. (and a whole lot of podcasts are produced as video as well)
GIANT ALL-CAPS SIG