March 30, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
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| First, they ignore you. | |
| Then they laugh at you. | |
| Then they fight you. | |
| And then you win. | |
| Mahatma Gandhi. | |
| We have now entered into the third stage of these four stages. | |
| You may not have noticed the increasing frequency with which old media outlets have begun to criticise the new. | |
| It may seem inexplicably petty that media corporations would target individual YouTubers, but there is actually a very good reason for it, which this article from The Guardian amply demonstrates. | |
| Zoe Sugg is a YouTube vlogger blamed for declining teenage literacy. | |
| You might think that this is far beyond her personal power, and at first blush the article might sound absurd, but the motivation for the article becomes clear by the information the author chooses to present. | |
| The author highlights Sugg's personal fortune and £50,000 per month income, and they linger on her numbers. | |
| 11 million YouTube subscribers, 10 million followers on Instagram and 7 million on Twitter show us precisely why a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper decided to cover a vlogger. | |
| They explain that these viewing figures are irresistible to corporate interests, but at the same time leave them with no method of control or influence over the vloggers. | |
| These individuals are not beholden to corporate interests, because they establish their platforms independently, earning their fame and fortune through a reciprocal relationship with their audience, with their social media platforms as mere facilitators. | |
| There is no room for a corporate middleman in this arrangement. | |
| The rise of independent content creators using online platforms to disseminate their work and attract a loyal audience using social media and YouTube is a trend that has been growing at great speed since the inception of these websites, and the old media can see it. | |
| In this article from Huffington Post, the author states that the rise of the YouTuber has forced the rest of the media industry to view YouTubers as legitimate content creators and entertainers, recognizing their popularity and acknowledging them in mainstream entertainment. | |
| Another article on the subject from The Guardian explains how YouTubers are genuinely influential for their fans, which is apparently a fact that Variety Magazine has been confronting its readers with since 2014. | |
| It published a survey of 13 to 18 year olds in the US from the University of Southern California, asking them to rate the 10 most popular YouTubers against the 10 most popular celebrities across a range of qualities representing influence. | |
| YouTubers took the top 5 places in the resulting chart, and when the survey was repeated in 2015, YouTubers took the top 6. | |
| It should come as no surprise to realize that the power of influencers extends beyond youth entertainment. | |
| In August 2016, Hillary Clinton gave her famous alt-right speech, in which she condemned a poorly understood online political movement that rejected both progressive and conservative positions while embracing identity politics. | |
| Corporate media on both the left and the right was quick to follow suit, using a mix of facts and conjecture to construct a monolithic racist boogeyman that could be held responsible for any knee-jerk claim, no matter how ludicrous or petty. | |
| The term alt-right morphed from a specific term for white identitarianism into a nebulous slur applied to any independent political content creator that did not fall in line with the media narrative. | |
| The progressive media in particular developed an obsession with certain core figures within the alt-right, devoting article after article to ridiculing and denouncing them, instead of debunking them. | |
| These outlets became enamoured at the internal political dramas that played out within the alt-right, such as the ideological split between disaffected conservatives and white nationalists, personified in the row between InfoWars Paul Joseph Watson and the alt-rights founder Richard Spencer, resulting in the ideological split that became known as the New Right against the alt-right. | |
| They delighted in their enemies' weakness when the founders of popular alt-right blog The Right Stuff were doxed by anti-far activists and it was, amusingly, revealed that Mike Enoch was married to a progressive Jewish woman. | |
| This pattern of behaviour extended to the British tabloid press, who discovered Vlogger Millennial Woes and promptly doxed him and his family in national newspapers, a punishment that they felt was fitting given his racist views. | |
| Certain media outlets eventually came to realize that their own fixation with the alt-right had helped to legitimise them as a political force. | |
| The genie was out of the bottle, and the media found itself in a battle with these rising alternative platforms. | |
| Newspapers, both online and off, have suffered from a persistent decline in readership because of a multitude of factors, and one way they cope with this is by striking back and attempting to delegitimise alternative political voices. | |
| There are dozens of articles online that amount to little more than character assassination of popular, quote, alt-right figures, few of whom are actually alt-right at all. | |
| This is where I become a part of this story. | |
| Despite being a critic of the alt-right and a left-leaning liberal centrist, I am repeatedly categorised with not only the more moderate right-wing voices such as Mike Cernovich, Paul Joseph Watson, and Stefan Molyneux, but also with the white identitarian movement of which I am so staunchly opposed. | |
| However, this does not matter, as these articles are not written to accurately inform the reader, but to influence them, specifically to elicit an emotional reaction and rejection of alternative media voices. | |
| The old media are well aware of the influence of the new media, and react accordingly. | |
| When Paul Joseph Watson publishes a video called Conservatism is the New Counterculture, The Independent publishes an article designed to rebuke him, that is filled with, and as you can see by the tagline, little more than condescension and scorn. | |
| Old media outlets have no issue promoting popular progressive YouTubers, such as Lacey Green and Anita Sarkeesian, but bulk at even enduring a neutral stance towards any content creator they view as being in ideological opposition to themselves. | |
| Instead, left-wing journalists resort to denigration, smear campaigns, and outright lies in order to attempt to keep firm control over public perception through the use of a selectively chosen narrative. | |
| The problem that the old news media has with the new media is that this strategy is not working. | |
| No amount of half-truths, character assassination, and condescension has prevented the steady growth of alternative news media, and after ignoring YouTube and YouTubers, then laughing at them, they have finally gone on the attack against YouTube itself. | |
| A viral article by BuzzFeed set the stage for the coming battle. | |
| How YouTube Serves as the Content Engine of the Internet's Dark Side details how YouTube's strict stance on freedom of speech has allowed actors with fringe views a place to express them. | |
| This expose is couched in language specifically intended to create feelings of distrust, revulsion, and fear about the subjects of the article. | |
| The article's focus is on conspiracy theorists such as Alex Jones and David Seaman, who regularly discuss unproven conspiracy theories such as the Sandy Hook hoax and Pizzagate, alongside white supremacist videos about Holocaust denial, and places alternative news outlets such as myself alongside them, to make us seem guilty by association, no doubt. | |
| BuzzFeed encounter a singular problem with dealing with this subject, however. | |
| Quote: So, what responsibility, if any, does YouTube bear for the universe of often conspiratorial, sometimes bigoted, frequently incorrect information that it pays its creators to host, and that is now being filtered up to the most powerful person in the world. | |
| Legally, per the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which absolves service providers of liability for content that they host, none. | |
| But morally and ethically, shouldn't YouTube be asking itself the same hard questions as Facebook and Twitter about the role it plays in a representative democracy? | |
| There is no legal argument to be made for restricting any of the specified content uploaded to YouTube. | |
| Instead, the author must make an emotional appeal in an attempt to craft a moral argument for the censorship of dissenting opinions, citing Facebook and Twitter's recent capitulation to media pressure as a precedent. | |
| The onus is placed on YouTube to become the moral and ideological arbiter of the content it hosts, something not required by law and probably impossible due to the phenomenal size of YouTube itself. | |
| More importantly, this argument is one that the media has been winning through sheer force of influence for years. | |
| As demonstrated by BuzzFeed, journalism and activism have become synonyms, but the era of progressive ideological hegemony of information is coming to an end. | |
| Increasingly, we see a trend of news media outlets using their power and influence not to report the news, but to make it. | |
| The first major attack came in February 2017, when the Wall Street Journal published an investigation into PewDiePie, the largest channel on YouTube with 55 million subscribers, run by Felix Schellberg. | |
| PewDiePie is a comedy channel with a youthful audience. | |
| Three reporters from the Wall Street Journal took it upon themselves to watch Schellberg's daily videos for the past six months and decontextualize any satire at the expense of Adolf Hitler, the Nazis, or the Holocaust. | |
| They then presented this scoop to Schellberg's partner and sponsor Disney before this investigation was made public, and the resulting article was focused around Disney's decision to cut ties with Schellberg because of the nature of these jokes. | |
| What followed was a media firestorm of approximately 60 different articles spread across a wide range of mainstream news outlets, with most directly connecting Schellberg with anti-Semitism and some even accusing him of attempting to promote fascism when he was merely being a provocative comedian. | |
| Schellberg knew he was towing the line of what is and is not politically correct when making these jokes, and the media has a history of overreacting in an absurd manner to humour on sensitive subjects. | |
| An example of this is the infamous Nazi Pug viral video by a YouTuber called Count Dankula, which had previously caused a cascade of condemnation over what is, quite obviously, not a serious political point. | |
| My girlfriend is always ranting and raving about how cute and adorable her wee dog is and so I thought I would turn him into the least cute thing that I could think of which is a Nazi Sieg Heil Sieg Heil Who's a good wee Nazi What, gas the Jews? | |
| Gas the Jews Guys, the Jews? | |
| Jews. | |
| Unbelievably, Count Dankula is now facing criminal charges in the UK for that joke. | |
| The reaction to the media onslaught against PewDiePie's reputation from YouTubers was equally as vocal, with 35 videos produced by various different popular content creators who broadly spoke in defense of Schellberg. | |
| After this, the commotion died down until John Jafari, host of the popular channel Jontron, engaged in a live debate with a video game streamer called Steve Bonnell on his channel Destiny. | |
| Jafari made controversial statements on immigration that reignited the debate and caused a slew of articles that condemned what was mistakenly perceived to be racism and sexism among the figureheads of the online gaming community. | |
| In an attempt to bring these rogue YouTubers to heel, many prominent outlets in both the mainstream and gaming media emphasized the young age of their audience in an attempt to instill fear into parents of their children being infected with a renegade anti-PC ideology. | |
| This propaganda campaign worked and was picked up by mommy blogging sites that further spread the hysteria that popular YouTubers were spreading white supremacy and turning their children into neo-Nazis. | |
| This narrative was not only not true, but appeared to be deliberately contrived to pressure YouTube into taking punitive action against these YouTubers. | |
| This campaign of misinformation not only worked, but backfired on the progressive activists and journalists perpetuating it, because YouTube listened to the perceived concerns of parents by implementing a restricted mode that parents could enable to ensure that political and adult content did not appear in searches. | |
| Outrage erupted in the LGBT community, which had always been well supported by the ideologically aligned media, as they found that their content on sex, sexuality and gender was also restricted. | |
| The second major attack on YouTube was conducted by The Times, a venerable British newspaper who had conducted their own investigation into the fringe elements of YouTube that published white supremacist and anti-Semitic content. | |
| They discovered that these videos were monetized and occasionally the advertising algorithms, which automatically assigned adverts to videos, with no control from either the videos publisher or the advertiser, had served adverts for large corporations alongside these controversial videos. | |
| There was no evidence provided that these brands, which had previously not been associated with fringe ideologies, were subsequently being associated, but the moral outrage generated by the media infected the companies placing these adverts. | |
| Havas, one of the six major advertising agencies that use YouTube, and responsible for the advertising of approximately 250 different companies, decided to pull their ad campaigns from YouTube in protest, and Google found themselves under pressure by several British politicians for hosting hate speech in an attempt to force Google to sanitize the content hosted on YouTube. | |
| Google stood firm against these demands and refused to remove the videos, but instead chose to compromise by increasing the frequency of the systemic automated demonetization of any videos that could be interpreted as promoting hate speech. | |
| This is why you will likely have heard your favourite political YouTuber commenting on the apparently random demonetization of their videos, sometimes without recourse, even if the video in question is not only not hate speech, but a refutation of hate speech. | |
| The corner of YouTube I and others like me inhabit has been wrongfully included in this dragnet from its inception. | |
| To our ideological enemies, we are targets, and to Google, we are collateral damage. | |
| It is important to note that anti-SJW content is being targeted specifically as offensive by certain advertisers. | |
| Several large corporations had adverts playing in front of, quote, men's rights and anti-feminist content, and a spokesman said, Holden in no way supports the content our advertising has been inadvertently associated with by Google. | |
| We're proud of our diversity credentials. | |
| Peter Barron, Google's Vice President of Communications, stated Google's position clearly, Our teams are making highly principled decisions and debating with a lot of intensity these issues. | |
| We are not looking at these questions lightly. | |
| This is a categoric declaration by Google that they stand by the principle of free speech, and we must recognize that. | |
| In the face of politicians citing the capitulation of Facebook and Twitter from mass social and financial pressure from the mainstream media and concerned politicians, they chose to side with their content creators and resist the steady encroachment of censorship. | |
| However, even Google is not impervious to a continued campaign against their brand and will continue to make concessions unless something is done. | |
| It is important to understand the manipulative methods by which The Times has reported on this issue. | |
| Even the article we are discussing is heavily biased from the title onwards. | |
| Instead of choosing a positive or neutral headline, such as, Google maintains free speech stance despite YouTube controversy, they chose, Google, We won't remove video that attacks Jews. | |
| As the example of PewDiePie demonstrated, accusations of anti-Semitism have a great deal of weight in the media. | |
| Worse still was a follow-up article by The Times, entitled, Google Lets Anti-Semitic Videos Stay on YouTube, with the banner image of a happy merchant meme, which is highly offensive to the general public. | |
| The corporate boycott of YouTube continued, and eventually Google capitulated to the demands and decided to pull advertising from a wider range of videos, deemed extremist and offensive. | |
| Not only did Google cooperate with demands to remove adverts from controversial content, they provided advertisers with the tools to ensure that their adverts do not appear alongside anything currently viewed as controversial. | |
| This is actually an excellent defensive maneuver by Google. | |
| The definition of what is and is not extremist and offensive can change overnight, and advertisers may find themselves hosting adverts on content that is not controversial, but this could change in an instant if a scandal erupts over an issue, and advertisers could find themselves with tens of thousands of angry activists as they accepted the responsibility of selecting where adverts appear. | |
| This entire assault is nothing more than smoke and mirrors from the press and politicians. | |
| Internet users are broadly aware of how the internet works. | |
| Before the Times investigation, nobody connected any major advertising brand with controversial content on YouTube or any other platform, even if their adverts appeared there. | |
| It's well known that advertising online through Google is done via a series of algorithms, and a car advert appearing on a Holocaust denial video is not an endorsement of the content of the video. | |
| To drum up a controversy over this is so asinine as to be unrecognisable as anything other than a power play. | |
| No evidence has been provided by the Times that any of these brands are losing revenue due to a consumer boycott over these adverts, or at all, and there are no victims of these adverts. | |
| The entire content of these articles, from the Wall Street Journal to BuzzFeed to The Times, has been predicated on a moral argument, not on any quantifiable harm done. | |
| Google's attempt to diffuse the situation is to bring in several new initiatives, detailed in a statement. | |
| In the statement, they reaffirm their commitment to their content creators and viewers, but accept that certain brands are unnecessarily worried about product association and should be able to command influence over Google's advertising practices. | |
| The most pertinent points for anyone concerned about free speech are that they will be actively demonetizing anything that can be argued to be hate speech and are reinstating their commitment to diversity, comrade. | |
| The most revealing part is the final paragraph. | |
| We want YouTube to remain a place where content creators can express themselves while earning revenue, where fans can discover new voices, and where advertisers have a place to reach engaged audiences. | |
| To keep that incredible dynamic going, advertisers have to feel confident their ads are only appearing where they should. | |
| Although ad restrictions can feel limiting, they're essential to protecting the livelihood of creators. | |
| While YouTube will always be home to videos that meet our community guidelines, today's measures will help ensure the virtuous cycle between creators, fans, and advertisers remains strong for years to come. | |
| The important part for our purposes is that they say ad restrictions are essential to protecting the livelihood of creators. | |
| They are saying that if they cannot shield YouTube from the current pressure by demonetizing anything controversial, then the situation may escalate. | |
| Their demonetization program is to give them a defence against allegations of funding hate speech. | |
| Google may have compromised, but they did not surrender. | |
| And so the Wall Street Journal followed up the Times' investigation with another investigation of their own to discover that other brands that did not object to the placement of their advertisements are finding their ads on objectionable videos as well, specifically calling out by name Coca-Cola, Procter ⁇ Gamble, Amazon and Microsoft. | |
| They are attempting to maintain the pressure and expand the number of corporations boycotting YouTube by attempting to link these brands to racist and anti-Semitic content too. | |
| So let's talk about the numbers. | |
| In 2016, YouTube received 5 billion video views per day from 900 million unique users every month, with 70% of this figure coming from outside of the United States. | |
| 1 billion of YouTube's daily views were on mobile devices. | |
| This is a five-fold increase in views per day since 2009, where YouTube received only 1 billion views per day. | |
| Despite this massive growth, YouTube is not profitable. | |
| The annual cost of running and maintaining YouTube is almost $6.5 billion, and the annual revenue generated by YouTube is only $4 billion, and YouTube makes up only 6% of Google's total ad sales. | |
| YouTube's users are, naturally, younger, and almost half of users being between 25 and 44, and YouTube reaches and influences more 18 to 34 and 18 to 49 year olds than any cable network in the US. | |
| And these networks know it. | |
| I've detailed in previous videos how both online and print news media are currently seeing a consistent downward spiral of views across the board, while alternative news media is seeing a consistent rise in views, and the links to these are in the description box of this video. | |
| TV networks are also well aware that they are getting utterly creamed by social and alternative media. | |
| Here is a clip from a recent 60 Minutes interview with Mike Cernovich, and a look at the faces of the 60 Minutes team reveals just how disturbing they find their comparative lack of reach. | |
| For example, Michael Cernovich last month had 83 million Twitter impressions. | |
| Well, 60 Minutes had 3 million Twitter impressions. | |
| So this guy's getting more traction on Twitter than 60 Minutes is. | |
| Who is consuming fake news? | |
| A lot of people, millions of people on both the left and the right. | |
| And giving legitimate news organizations a run for their money. | |
| YouTube's raw number of views makes YouTube a direct competitor for TV networks. | |
| Which is why they all have a presence on it. | |
| But in February 2017, YouTube announced that they would be offering their own live television channels. | |
| These channels will be promoted as live television for the YouTube generation and come with a subscription fee. | |
| YouTube already operates a precursor to this called YouTube Red, an ad-free subscription-based streaming service that hosts original content. | |
| This is a daunting prospect for TV networks because of the sheer financial power of Google. | |
| They can afford to put YouTube TV on a number of different competing networks and outbid existing networks for exclusive content. | |
| Netflix is another major thorn in the side of existing TV networks, as in 2016 the rise of Netflix was responsible for a 50% drop-off in TV viewing time in the United States. | |
| Put simply, market forces are steadily eroding the existing media to catch up with digital and technological developments in the same way that made Betamax, videotapes, video cassettes and CDs obsolete. | |
| They know the writing is on the wall and they are doing everything in their power to hurt YouTube in an attempt to prevent this otherwise inevitable decline. | |
| And they might do it if we do nothing. | |
| The Wall Street Journal published an article describing how TV networks see an opportunity in the Google ad backlash, pointing out that TV networks view the backlash as an opportunity to be capitalized upon. | |
| These networks will actively solicit advertisements from corporations the Wall Street Journal has already called out in a previous article, with the chief executive of Crown Media, the owners of the Hallmark channel, saying, We don't like to go after any competitor, but in a case like this, it's so egregious and so obvious, we would be foolish not to lean into that in some way. | |
| The news media and television have found themselves with converging interests, and so it should be no surprise to see articles in news media denigrating Google while remaining neutral to the predatory practices of TV networks, because it is in their interests to do so. | |
| They stand to benefit at the expense of Google. | |
| So anyone playing naive and suggesting that everything happening in this regard is merely a coincidence and can be safely ignored is stating something absurd, counter to reality. | |
| To say that they are not actively scheming and politicking behind the scenes, and indeed in front of them, is just flat wrong. | |
| It's important to note that these large corporations pulling their adverts from YouTube sounds like a big deal, but it is actually a very small part of Google's advertising revenue. | |
| The majority comes from thousands and thousands of smaller companies who simply don't have the budget to advertise on TV or in newspapers, and aren't pretending to be outraged about the decisions of an algorithm. | |
| According to Reuters, any impact from this on Google is likely to be limited, and it is also a double-edged sword, as the advertisers wish to reach YouTube's younger audience, which they are unable to do if they refuse to advertise on the platform. | |
| Put simply, they can't afford to wait, Google out on this, and need a swift victory, whereas Google has all the time in the world if they refuse to play ball. | |
| Google's concerns in this regard are not really financial, as YouTube is a platform that loses them money anyway. | |
| Really, they are political. | |
| Google does not want politicians to step in and begin to legislate, and they do not want to see their reputation dragged through the mud. | |
| There have been suggestions that there might be a conspiracy between news media outlets and TV networks, either among themselves or with each other. | |
| As far as I have found, there is no proof of this. | |
| The most relevant information I have is evidence of previous conspiracies that many journalists and activists have been involved in. | |
| The first is Journo List, a secret email network that was founded by Vox Media's Ezra Klein, in which progressive journalists plotted to advance their personal agendas by smearing their opponents as racist, among other things. | |
| A similar list, called Game Journo Pros, was revealed in an expose by Milo Yiannopoulos on Breitbart during the Game Agate scandal, in which progressive video games journalists did much the same thing, with Polygon's Ben Cuchera acting like a party whip to the editors of competing outlets. | |
| There was also a conspiracy against me personally by Zoe Quinn and Alex Lifshitz, the founders of the Twitter-affiliated Crash Override Network, where Lifshitz relishes having my Patreon account investigated. | |
| And nothing came of it. | |
| Beyond this, I am not aware of any conspiracies, especially not some kind of vast overarching conspiracy between the MSM and against alternative media. | |
| Everything we can see can be satisfactorily explained by individual actors and small groups operating in personal self-interest, with their interests converging and intersecting with one another. | |
| To summarise, the old media has the following interests that inform their decision-making towards the new media. | |
| 1. There is a firm ideological divide between the old media and the new media. | |
| 2. | |
| There is a financial incentive caused by the steady decline of the old media. | |
| 3. There is a power incentive as new media voices become more influential. |
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