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April 4, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
39:24
The YouTube Controversy： Who Benefits？
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So with the media war on YouTube still raging, I thought I would give you all of the information that I have that I think is pertinent, and then we can look into who benefits from this.
As with the Wall Street Journal and The Times, Bloomberg has joined the bandwagon of publications who think it's more interesting for them to make the news, rather than report it.
Major advertisers across Europe and Asia are still appearing alongside extremist YouTube videos, days after the technology giant Google said it was taking steps to protect its clients from inadvertently supporting hate.
Personally, I think it's rather uncharitable for anyone to expect Google to have fixed this problem within days.
But that didn't stop the crack sleuths at Bloomberg from getting their own scoop and investigating by watching a bunch of videos that millions of people have already watched, seeing what adverts turn up, and then bypassing the advertising agencies to email the companies directly to ask them if they still beat their wives.
They then say that the advertisers' discomfort highlights the reliance of Google and Facebook on automated software that maximizes volume to help them dominate online advertising.
Digital advertising grew by 17% globally to $178 billion in 2016 according to Magna Global, which projects that digital-based ad sales will overtake TV to become the number one media category this year.
As you can imagine, there are many, many people who want a slice of that pie, and Google and Facebook are currently dominating it.
The great YouTube advertising controversy has cost Google's parent company Alphabet around $24 billion in value that week, which just goes to show you the efficacy of a mass media smear campaign.
These campaigns have power.
Normally, I would be absolutely loath to speak in the defence of a multinational tech giant, but in this case, I'm really struggling to find what Google has actually done wrong other than out-compete their competition.
And given how The Times was one of the publications leading the charge in condemning Google for serving ads on videos they don't like, it does not surprise me at all that they would run articles like this.
Taxpayers 31 million debt to Google.
Revenue landed with huge bill from the web giant.
This headline is actually a very cunning misrepresentation of what has actually happened.
Accounts published yesterday suggest that the crackdown has failed to increase significantly the tax paid by Google in Britain.
This is despite the search engine and publishing site enjoying billions of pounds of sales in this country.
Google paid £25 million in tax for the year ending June 30th, 2016.
Its British accounts show.
The sum is roughly equivalent to the previous years, even though the company promised to pay more tax in Britain after settling a decade-long dispute with the tax authorities last January.
Within the same accounts, Google recorded that HMRC owed it £31 million in corporation tax.
Owed it?
That's a very interesting way of phrasing that, because it makes it sound like Google is the bad guy here.
Even if I hadn't read the rest of this article, I can tell you exactly what's happened here, because the same has happened to me.
Google has overpaid their taxes as legally required in the UK.
They have received a tax rebate, in the same way that I have received a tax rebate.
Admittedly, mine was only for about £200, but that doesn't change the fact that this is not of Google's making, and they are not giving them a huge bill.
This is something that HMRC sends to you to let you know that they have overcharged you.
Google sources said there had not been a check from the HMRC, but an overpayment by the company had been reflected on the balance sheet.
The company said that it had paid all taxes that were legally due.
Google has done nothing wrong here.
They are not extorting the UK taxpayer for money that the UK taxpayer will have to shell out.
They are being given back the excess tax they have paid.
Now, you might complain, well, only 25 million on what is undoubtedly billions in revenue, something fishy is going on there, and I agree that it is.
But the problem, as Jimmy Carr says, is not with the people who don't want to pay their taxes, it is with the system itself.
Because the system allows people to do this.
This is accurately assessed in another Times article called A Loophole That Osborne Fell to Close.
For years, Google and other multinational tech companies use complex legal and highly effective methods to avoid paying more than a sliver of profits tax in Britain.
The consequences to the Exchequer were stark.
Google made 3.4 billion in revenue in 2014, but paid a corporation tax of only 24 million.
To be fair to the company, the international tax system taxes economic activity rather than sales profits.
Mr. Osborne's diverted tax profits was supposed to change all that.
By levying a 25% charge on profits artificially diverted overseas, it covered companies that, like Google, operated marketing offshoots in Britain while finalising contracts abroad.
This is standard practice.
I don't like it, and I think it should change, but the people who are the ones in charge of changing the system have failed to change it.
It's very easy to see the difference in tenor between the two articles.
One places the onus firmly on the Conservative government, who said that they would close these loopholes.
The other places the onus on Google, despite the fact that HMRC are the ones telling them that they can have 31 million back.
I'm sorry, but in this situation, Google has done nothing wrong.
And so the Times, once again, writing articles that make it sound like Google is robbing the taxpayer have to be considered in the light of their previous quote-unquote investigations.
And it's important to note that these attacks on Google are not ideologically partisan.
Any mainstream news outlet that thinks it has a stick with which to beat them is proceeding to do so, no matter how ridiculous they are making themselves look.
The Daily Mail printed, Google Blood Money.
Web giant cashes in on vile, 7-minute videos showing KnifeExpert penetrating a stab vest like the one worn by murdered Westminster PC.
Almost nothing about that headline is true.
A Mail on Sunday investigation today exposes how Google has cashed in on a sickening YouTube video that shows viewers how to kill someone in a stab vest, like the one worn by PC Keith Palmer when he was murdered in the Westminster terror attack.
The vile video was online for six months before the outrage and could be viewed for days afterwards, despite widespread warnings that UK jihadis use such material for training.
The seven minute film entitled How to Pierce a Stab-Proof Vest demonstrates how to plunge a knife through protective body armour and has been viewed nearly a quarter of a million times, generating thousands of pounds in advertising revenue.
My God.
The Mail on Sunday easily found the film online, despite promises made last week by YouTube owners Google to crack down on extremist material.
Last night Home Secretary Amber Rudd condemned the video and demanded that YouTube take action to ensure similar films are banned.
She said, we will not tolerate the internet being used to hide terrorist activities, or as the Mail on Sunday has revealed, provide information to assist them in their terrible activities.
Well, I'm afraid you simply cannot rely on these adlets to accurately report on YouTube.
Neither the Wall Street Journal, nor the Times, nor the Daily Mail, if you can even believe it.
Miss Rudd.
Literally nothing about this is true.
I can't pronounce the chap's name, but he runs a channel called The Slingshots Channel, in which he makes and tests homemade weaponry.
And when I say weaponry, I mean automatic pencil shooters and things like this.
But one of the things that he was doing was demonstrating how a stab-proof vest that he ordered off of Amazon was in fact not stab-proof, because it had an aluminium plate inside it instead of a steel one, or a Kevlar one, which is what the Westminster PC would have been wearing.
He was in no way attempting to encourage people to try and stab through a stab-proof vest.
He was demonstrating that it was not a stab-proof vest.
And honestly, anyone with any kind of martial arts and weapons training will tell you, and you might think that this is common sense, but I guess I will refer to the authorities on this.
You don't stab at the armor because usually, armour is actually good at preventing weaponry from getting through it.
That is, after all, the point.
After receiving a community strike for this video, and having his name dragged through the media, the chap who runs the Slingshot channel finally managed to get some response from YouTube.
They gave him permission to re-upload the Riot Gear video entirely unchanged, and also the stab-proof vest video, with just a little more context that it is a review.
Thankfully, the YouTuber who was targeted, who I am informed is a very nice chap, will not lose his livelihood, and his reputation I think has appeared to have recovered thanks to the collective effort of the internet in various comment sections talking about this.
This man was unfairly maligned as an attack on Google.
Given the repeated and self-evidently malicious attacks on both YouTube and YouTubers, it's understandable that some YouTubers would want to push back.
And while well-meaning, these attempts have been a bit misguided.
The first was Keemstar's Thank You Coke or Thanks Coke hashtag, meant to try and drum up support for those advertisers who didn't pull out.
But unfortunately, Coca-Cola was already one of them, and a bit of cursory fact-checking would have revealed this.
And the second one was Ethan Klein of H3H3 Productions investigation into the screenshots used by the Wall Street Journal.
Klein's investigation showed that one of the videos that had ads running alongside it had been demonetized, and he found this information by contacting the person who had made the video.
However, the video also contained copyrighted content, and so was claimed by a third party.
But this does not actually mean that the video did have ads running on it, as Chris Raygun demonstrated by putting up his own video with a very similar title with copyrighted content that was also claimed that did not have ads running on it.
Unfortunately this was not proof that the Wall Street Journal had falsified screenshots and the gravity of that accusation means that we shouldn't make it without being sure in advance.
But I do think Ethan and Keem's hearts were in the right place and we certainly do need to do something.
We just must remember to be fastidious with everything we do.
I do find it very interesting that the Wall Street Journal replied very swiftly to rebut the accusations.
No response to how they decontextualized PewDiePie's jokes and painted him as a Nazi sympathiser who is indoctrinating their children or anything, but on the case where Ethan was incorrect, they jumped at the chance to assert that no, in this particular case, we have been honest, and say that they are proud of their reporting and high standards that they bring to their journalism.
Apparently they go to considerable lengths to ensure its accuracy and fairness, and that's why they're among the most trusted sources of news in the world.
At least among certain demographics.
In a recent poll of the thousand teenagers, the Wall Street Journal came dead last in a least cool versus most cool scale, with many of the teenagers actually being aware of what the Wall Street Journal was.
That is, embarrassingly, upstaged by Vice, who were about as uncool, but far less well known.
Now I have to wonder why it is that around 70% of teenagers actually know what the Wall Street Journal is.
And if I had to take a guess...
Can I just point out that it's a little bit ironic that Jews somehow found another way to fuck Jesus over?
No?
Okay.
I think it's safe to say that the youth have been red-pilled on the state of modern journalism.
But do you want to know what modern teenagers were apparently most aware of and thought was most cool?
That's right.
YouTube, followed swiftly by Netflix.
With Google coming in third place.
These are the things that Generation Z enjoy.
They are not the sort of things that Generation Z's parents enjoy.
Because television is for the old fogies.
Back in 2008, the average viewer's age for TV was 50 years old.
And in 2014, they knew exactly why they were abandoning television.
2015, people understood that TV was for old people, and the numbers of people in general were falling off a cliff, presumably because old people end up dying.
And broadcasters were in deep fear come 2016 about falling revenues as their viewers switched to on-demand television.
And if I were a television executive, any graph that charts viewing figures over time for the younger audiences would make me shit a square brick.
But I think the thing that I'd be most concerned about is the fact that this is permanent.
Traditional TV viewing is over.
YouTube habit permanent warn researchers.
Major shift in viewing patterns persist after so-called millennials get their own home and have kids.
A survey of so-called millennials' entertainment habits found that even when under-35's generation move into their own homes and have families, they do not revert to paying for TV packages and watching linear television.
This is a business model that is over.
This is a legacy business model, and they know it.
The writing is on the wall and it is a matter of time until they are out of business.
It's not a joke when people say the old stream media is literally dying out, because in Britain, for example, the average age of a BBC One viewer is 61, 62 for BBC2, 60 for ITV, 58 for Channel 5, and 55 for Channel 4.
The average viewer for C4's supposedly hip sister channel is 42.
At this rate, in 20 years' time, television stations will no longer exist.
I'm sure it'll come as no surprise for you that Pew have found that social media is where people are getting their news from, from articles being shared around and from videos.
And 21% of YouTube users use YouTube to get their news.
That might sound like a small percentage when compared to Reddit, Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr, but YouTube is such a colossal platform that equates to 189 million unique users per month who use YouTube to get their news.
That staggering amount puts YouTube in direct competition with all of the legacy media, both print, online, newspapers and television.
And as you can see, since 2013, that number has increased.
This is not going unnoticed by politicians, which is why they are so quick to jump in and attack Google when the opportunity is presented.
Germany really is the canary in the coal mine when it comes to these sort of things, and I thank my friend Kratenty for sending me this.
This is a translation of an article that details how they are looking to require YouTubers to have a broadcasting license.
And I presume this means if you don't have a broadcasting license, you are not allowed a YouTube channel, because as they say there, the regulatory authorities want to control the network.
This is what they want, because this is what they do.
And YouTube is a wild west that is firmly outside of their control, and they're doing everything they can do to bring it to heal.
But all of this hullabaloo over offensive content having ads alongside it, which apparently impacts the brands that are being shown, has been entirely speculative.
No one has had any evidence for this.
So someone ran a survey.
36% of people surveyed thought that the adverts served on YouTube videos were actually endorsements by those brands, which was a cause of concern among marketers, presumably because they thought, wow, 36% of people don't know how the internet works.
A more responsible approach might well have been to educate the public on how exactly Google's ads get served on YouTube and other questionable sites, and whether the brands involved have any say over it, or at least did have any say of it.
But interestingly, 55% of participants surveyed said their opinions didn't change about those brands either way.
So we are talking about a very small minority of people, presumably normies, who don't know how the internet works and don't know how Google ends up putting ads in front of videos.
Put simply, this is not the PR disaster that the media would have companies believe, and if there is anyone from any of these companies watching this video, you have nothing to fear.
You can stop panicking.
This was the state of affairs for years before this incident, and your brand was not associated with hatred, because most people are not silly enough to think that that's the case.
And when someone does, people in the comments will correct them.
You are okay.
Stop dancing to their tune.
And we finally received a statement on this from Google themselves.
Google's chief business officer Philip Schindler spoke out about the ad boycott that beset YouTube in recent weeks after major marketers discovered that in some cases their ads were running alongside extremist videos containing calls to violence and hate speech.
It has always been a small problem, Schindler tells Recode, given YouTube's scale and the imperfection of any such screening technology.
And over the last few weeks, someone has decided to put a bit more of a spotlight on the problem.
Google says, for instance, that ads appeared against extremist videos represented less than one one-thousandth of the marketer's total ad impressions.
So not only do around only 18% of people actually care that Google is putting these adverts against extremist content, but this happens so rarely and is such a small percentage that has accidentally fallen through the cracks in their algorithms, it's barely worth noticing from their perspective.
This is a storm in a teacup.
This is not a real issue.
Nobody is associating these brands with extremism.
This barely happens when these brands take out marketing campaigns on Google's services, and yet the Wall Street Journal would have you believe this was a big deal.
Why?
Who benefits?
The answer is, of course, within this article.
While analysts previously predicted the boycott of Google could cost roughly $750 million, a 7.5% hit to the company's estimated revenues in 2017, in a report in DigiDay, it suggests that ad pull-outs had a limited effect on YouTube, and that the boycott ultimately represents an attempt by companies to wrest more control and better deals from the video giant, as opposed to genuine moral outrage.
Parthmatics, which tracks YouTube advertising, reports that overall spending remained stable throughout the month of March, even as the boycott reached a fever pitch.
While spending among YouTube's 200 biggest advertisers did dip in March, as major marketers like AT ⁇ T, Verizon, PepsiCo, and Walmart all pulled ads, spend among the top 200 advertisers at the end of March was still higher than their spend in January, before the controversy had entered the public eye.
Additionally, they report that spend from top buyers is usually cyclical around major launches, which could also account for the March drop-off.
So let's talk about the middlemen, those people who seek to make a profit out of the cheaper deals that presumably Google is offering to these major advertisers for their faux moral outrage.
Now, I just want to preface this by saying I don't have a vast amount of information about these people, and honestly, it's something that I think groups of people on the chans, on Reddit, or on any other platform might be worth taking their time to investigate and find the links between.
I'm looking at you, KatarinAction, I'm looking at you, 8chan Poll.
Come on, guys, this is the important stuff.
These are the actors behind the scenes trying to pull the strings.
Now, I don't know how influential they are, but I suspect they might be quite influential with the people that matter.
So the first company on the make is Omnicom, who will sort through YouTube videos to make sure they're appropriate for brands.
Omnicom has developed a safety program for YouTube that could reassure some of the major advertisers currently on hiatus from the video site.
The media holding company said the program could review hundreds of thousands of videos daily and ensure that they are appropriate for brands to advertise near.
Machines and in some cases people will review YouTube content and score it for brand safety before putting it on the whitelist.
Omnicom said they would also make the data available to brands regarding videos on YouTube.
Omnicom Media Group represents clients like AT ⁇ T, Pepsi, Improctor and Gamble, which are among the hundreds of advertisers that throw spending on YouTube because of concerns about the type of content.
Well, wouldn't you like to know whether you're on the whitelist or not, champs?
We're building this from the ground up, said John Anselmo, Omnicom's chief digital officer.
These are whitelisted pools of inventory that we can say with extremely high confidence are safe for clients.
This would be the corporatization of YouTube, at least the monetary aspect of it.
Scores will be determined by utilizing AI and will be built upon public and non-public metadata that had previously been unavailable to advertisers.
Hmm, if only I knew some YouTubers who were particularly concerned about the use of AI in moderating what is and isn't acceptable.
But again, this is really something that people should start looking into.
I am of course doing the best I can, but I am but one man.
Groups of people will have this figured out far quicker than I can do it.
Earlier this week, on-com rival WPP said it would work with OpenSlate, a video ad tech firm and whitelist YouTube channels for its advertiser clients.
OpenSlate scores videos and helps brands decide which channels are worth their money.
The company says it sorts through hundreds of millions of videos, and that millions of channels to come up with a select group of 850,000 channels that advertisers should even consider.
What are the odds that we are not among those channels?
The next is a man called Eric Feinstein, the man behind YouTube's sudden ad crisis, and he has a patented fix.
Major marketers' ads have likely been showing up or near YouTube videos promoting terrorism, neo-Nazi groups and other web content for a long time.
So why has the brand safety problem suddenly burst into the open, prompting big advertisers to stop spending on YouTube or other Google properties?
Thank, or blame, Eric Feinberg, a longtime marketing services executive who in recent months has made it his mission to find ad-supported content linked to terror and hate groups, then push links and screenshots proving it happened to journalists in the UK and the US.
Now I just want to point out that I can't prove that that's true.
That's this source saying it.
And this is an advertising industry newspaper.
But they think that the resulting coverage has sparked the full-fledged advertiser revolt.
So if this is true, then Eric Feinberg is the one who dug all of this up, specifically passed it to the Wall Street Journal and the Times with the intention of them creating this advertiser revolt out of a fabricated moral outrage.
Feinberg owns GIPEC, short for Global Intellectual Property Enforcement Center, which employs deep web interrogation to find keywords and coding linked to terrorism and hate speech.
He's the co-owner of a patent issued in December for a computerized system and method of detecting fraudulent or malicious enterprises.
His system works in parts by analysing when videos and websites contain words that appear alongside phrases such as kill Jews.
He's logged thousands of sometimes innocuous or obscure sounding terms he says co-trend with such hate speech or exhortations to violence, which in turn helps him to find offensive videos.
His efforts in media have been classic problem solution marketing.
Mr. Feinberg makes no bones about his interest in licensing his technology to Google and other digital platforms to monitor offensive content and keep ads away from it.
Certainly Google knows plenty about artificial intelligence and machine learning, and its executives have eagerly informed marketers in public and private presentations for years.
And last week, as major advertisers one after the other pressed pause on YouTube advertising, Google said in a blog post that it's beefing up its tech efforts and hiring more people to prevent placement of ads with unsavoury content.
But Mr. Feinberg said in an interview on Friday that he doubts Google can succeed, at least he said, not without violating my patent.
Right.
Gotcha, Mr. Feinberg.
I'm afraid that I know absolutely nothing about patent law in the US or the systems that this will work on, so all I can do is leave a link to the sources and hopefully someone on the internet who does know about these things can look into it, even if nothing more for our own interest, really, just for our own information.
Feinberg wants to sell his tech to the digital platforms themselves, not to brands, agencies, and third-party monitors.
That's because he's not just out to make money, he said, but to stop terrorists and hate groups from making money off of digital advertising.
He says, they aren't really understanding key trending or keywords, and they're not looking at it like we do.
I have a database of thousands of words and phrases linked to nefarious activity.
And this is where we transition from the financially incentivized to the ideologically incentivized.
You guys know who David Brock is, don't you?
You all know that he's the founder of Media Matters for America, and that he's highly connected to the Clintons and the Democratic establishment.
Don't you?
Well, if you don't, you can look at his Wikipedia bio.
In the meantime, let's have a look at what Media Matters for America are all about.
Media Matters for America is a web-based, not-for-profit, 501c3 progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively misrepresenting and slandering their political opponents.
Oh wait, that's not what it says, but it may as well be.
So recently a leaked document exposed Media Matters conspiring with Facebook and Google to censor alternative media.
Now, I actually think this headline is a misrepresentation of what's in the document.
I don't think the document is proof that they're conspiring with Facebook and Google, but I will show you exactly what they do have, and that's worrying enough.
A recently leaked briefing document from political operator David Brock's ultra-liberal, self-proclaimed media watchdog Media Matters has exposed the hard left activist group conspiring with Facebook and Google to create a strategy to marginalize and ban political thought outside of the progressive neoliberal paradigm, essentially censoring libertarian and conservative political speech.
For the uninitiated, Brock is the key cog in the hard left neoliberal political media attack machine that attempts to propagandize the public into accepting a progressive political narrative as fact.
Essentially, Brock acts as the tip of the spear in the left's culture war, forwarding a divide and conquer paradigm based largely on identity politics.
Well, he sounds like a lovely chap.
So here is the document.
The top watchdog against fake news and propaganda.
Ironic.
Transforming the media landscape.
Media Matters will continue our core mission of disarming right-wing misinformation while leading the fight against the next generation of conservative disinformation, the proliferation of fake news and propaganda now threatening the country's information ecosystem.
Utilising our unique capacity as the nation's premier progressive media watchdog and a rapid response research center, Media Matters will further increase our visibility in the ecosystem, strengthen the ability of our supporters and partners to influence it, and improve the infrastructure on which it rests.
In this document, you'll find things like this.
Overarching strategy.
In our last four-year strategic plan, we described the media landscape ahead as being sandwiched between two realities.
We foresaw a landscape where, on one hand, legacy outlets would ostensibly remain at the forefront, but their power and relevancy would wane as they made abrupt shifts to respond to changing economic realities.
On the other hand, fragmentation among audiences would create an explosion in new digital outlets, yielding increases in confirmation bias, trap information consumers in a filter bubble, isolating them from contrary views, and foment extremism.
Don't get me wrong, that is actually true.
That is actually what's happening.
We are no longer sandwiched between two realities.
The new reality is one of fragmentation, and all that comes with it.
Specifically, Media Matters must respond to three distinct challenges.
One, the decay of journalism.
Two, the rise of fake news, disinformation, and active propaganda efforts.
The fact that they delineate between the two I find very interesting.
Because what they're saying is that the propaganda could be true, it's just not in their favour.
An information ecosystem that furthers extremism and cultivates a climate of harassment.
To stop right-wing media manipulation in this environment, note, they're fine with left-wing media manipulation of this environment.
We must further increase our visibility in the ecosystem, strengthen the ability of our partners and supporters to influence it, and improve the infrastructure on which it rests.
Yes, you repeat yourself.
Top outcomes.
Over the next four years, Media Matters will focus on achieving the following outcomes.
Serial misinformers and right-wing propagandists.
Note, there is no such thing as a legitimate right-wing outlet in this document.
Inhabit everything from social media to the highest level of government and will be exposed.
Internet and social media platforms like Google and Facebook will no longer uncritically and without consequence host and enrich fake news sites and propagandists.
Toxic, alt-right, social media-fueled harassment campaigns that silence dissent and poison our national discourse will be punished and halted.
Do you think that if you are not part of the alt-right, say if you were someone like me, and these people approached you or you found yourselves on their radar, that they would take the time to delineate between you and the people that they hate so much?
The answer is, of course, no, they fucking won't.
Media Matters will push back on all conservative misinformation across all media channels in the information ecosystem and specifically neutralize the effects and infrastructure of the newly empowered alt-right.
Honestly, anyone on YouTube is going to fall into this category.
We will focus our efforts on the following three areas.
Leverage our authority to encourage good journalism.
Develop technologies to serve as early warning systems for fake news and inoculate social media platforms of exploitation and abuse.
Implement a robust omni-channel communication strategy and mobilize a massive grassroots advocacy effort.
This will be an attack against anyone who does not toe the progressive line.
If you are a liberal disaffected with progressive social justice identity politics, you will be targeted.
If you are a libertarian who has never liked such things, but doesn't have any particularly malevolent goals, you will be targeted.
If you are a traditional conservative merely espousing normal, traditional conservative talking points, you'll become a Nazi, and you will be targeted.
And that's to say nothing of the actual white identitarians who they actually are looking to target.
This is a plan to take over the media landscape.
And here is where the conspiracy comes in.
They say, Media Matters has already secured access to raw data from Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites.
Now, they don't say how they secured this access.
I don't know whether it's legal and above board.
I don't know whether it's a progressive informant from within these companies.
Either could be completely feasible in my opinion.
They say, we have also put into place the technology necessary to automatically mine white nationalist message boards and alt-right communities for our archive.
Again, who listening to this video has not been called a white nationalist when in argumentation with a progressive?
Who has not been called alt-right when being smeared by a left-wing outlet?
We will now develop technologies and processes to systematically monitor and analyze this unfiltered data.
These people are coming for us.
And they're going to do it with their predictive technology.
Bringing this data analysis to scale will also allow MediaMatters to identify which individuals and outlets are the most destructive forces driving fake news, misinformation, and harassment.
Cutting-edge advances in cloud computing and machine learning will enable us to identify patterns and connections that would otherwise go under the radar.
We will be able to assess where and how misinformation is likely to move, who will be affected by it, and what needs to be done to neutralize it.
This goes down to the individual on social media who promotes a news article, a story, a point of view that is against the progressive narrative.
Like I said, I don't know how influential these people are, but I do know that they are very well connected and very well funded.
Media Matters' core budget for 2017 is $13 million, which covers a staff of 81 people, and we know that they have friends in high places.
They apparently have a 34-person research department engaged in media monitoring, research, deep dive analysis, and rapid response.
In addition, this sports five issue-specific teams housing experts that provide broad support to the progressive movement on topics key progressive issues like gun violence, public safety, LGBT equality, reproductive health, and gender equality, climate and energy, and economic policy.
This budget also allows us to invest in technological innovations such as the creation of an early warning system to identify the proliferation of fake news more efficiently, and to create cutting-edge predictive technology that allows us to identify patterns and connections in order to assess how misinformation will move and how we can neutralize it.
We will also build our digital and video teams a staff of nine to create a robust omni-channel communications command center and mobilize a grassroots truth squad and increase the number and impact of actions and advocacy initiatives we undertake to drive change and accountability across the media landscape.
Put simply, they wish to be the puppet masters of the internet, of the media narrative, of everything that people read and see online.
Again, whether they can accomplish this or not is a completely different story, and if anyone has more information about this, please send it over.
But they have not been the only beneficiaries of the YouTube ad controversy.
There have been others, such as alternatives to YouTube.
I've already stressed that mines.com is an excellent platform as an alternative, and I have an account there and you should subscribe to me there.
Because if my YouTube account goes down for whatever reason, I will continue to use Mines and I'm certain that my account there won't go down.
After this debacle, I saw a huge increase in my Mines subscribers, reaching almost 50,000 people, which is massive considering the size of the platform, which, by comparison of YouTube, is tiny.
And I've had over a million views.
And they're rolling out new features all the time, such as a monetization option for posts.
So you can put, say, videos or articles or something like that behind a paywall.
So if you have subscribers who want to pay to see your content, you can do this.
I think my favourite response was from one of YouTube's small competitors called vid.me.
And I actually do have an account up there and I do upload my videos in parallel.
So if for whatever reason you wish to watch my content without adverts, you can do so on vid.me.
Vid.me make the point of saying that they think that creators should come before advertisers, because as we all know, if it wasn't for the creators, YouTube would be nothing.
And they understand that.
And I have to say, hats off to the best rebuttal video I have ever seen.
Hello, Human kids.
Do you like BidMe, the internet's most creator-friendly video platform?
Yeah!
Then you will be excited to hear that BidMe is now AdMe, the internet's most advertiser-friendly video platform.
Huh?
AdMe is the safest collection of online videos curated by your favorite corporate advertisers.
McDonald's, Toyota, Cock Industries, Monsanto, ExxonMobil, all sharing videos they love and nothing else that could possibly upset their consumers.
Because if we can't run ads on a video, does the video even really exist?
I don't know.
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