Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - The Progressive Attack on the YouTube Political Sphere

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Sept. 18, 2018 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

13:27

The Progressive Attack on the YouTube Political Sphere

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	So it finally happened.
	The mainstream, and I don't just mean the mainstream media, I mean the corporate mainstream have realized that a massive conglomeration of political YouTubers exist and have a significant amount of influence.
	As The Guardian reports, YouTube's alternative influence networks breeds right-wing radicalization report finds.
	The report in question is from the Data and Society Foundation, and they think that it's a breeding ground for far-right radicalization, where people interested in conservative and libertarian ideas are quickly exposed to white nationalist ones.
	Although YouTube's recommendation algorithms are partly to blame, the problem is fundamentally linked to the social network of political influences on the platform and how, like other YouTube influencers, they invite one another on their shows.
	The problem that they have identified is that people talk to one another.
	What they don't seem to be aware of is that the alt-right is currently in decay.
	Once again, free speech has triumphed.
	Once again, it has been demonstrated, as it has been time and time before, and it will time and time again, that providing a platform for bad ideas is the best way to get rid of bad ideas.
	The report describes an alternative influence network of about 65 scholars, media pundits and internet celebrities promoting a range of right-wing political positions from mainstream conservatism to overt white nationalism.
	They are broadly united by their reactionary position, an opposition to feminism, social justice and left-wing politics, and present themselves as an underdog alternative to the mainstream media.
	So I think we've worked out precisely what political ideology wrote this report.
	And you'll notice the use of incredibly neutral postmodern style language there.
	They present themselves as an underdog alternative to the mainstream media.
	They are also an underdog alternative to the mainstream media.
	Discussing images of the alt-right or white supremacism often conjures a sense of the dark corners of the internet, states the report.
	In fact, much extremist content is happening front and center, easily accessible on platforms like YouTube, publicly endorsed by well-resourced individuals and interfacing directly with mainstream culture.
	Yes, it's almost like they are people with ideas that disagree with yours, and yet they are still people nonetheless.
	At the more mainstream end of the network are people such as Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin, self-described members of the intellectual dark web.
	At the other end are white nationalists such as Richard Spencer and Colin Robertson, aka Millennial Woes.
	So what we are doing here is playing six degrees of separation.
	Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson and Dave Rubin have absolutely nothing in common with Richard Spencer and Millennial Woese.
	And Millennial Woese and Richard Spencer would say that they have absolutely nothing in common with Shapiro, Peterson and Rubin.
	And yet, they are being grouped together because they are all dissident political voices.
	While the mainstream members of the group typically don't subscribe to alt-right or white nationalist ideals, they do host those who do under very friendly terms.
	They have these conversations where their really openly racist ideas are getting thrown around as if they're perfectly normal.
	This amplifies these ideas.
	I love the way they talk about white nationalist ideas as if they are somehow contagious.
	The alt-right has dramatically shrunk in influence and membership, and this has been visible by the fact that Richard Spencer is no longer appearing on the largest channels, he's appearing on the smallest ones.
	And I find it mildly ironic given that the far-left and incredibly racist progressive wing of politics are the ones complaining that someone else's racist ideas are getting a platform.
	She cites the example of Dave Rubin hosting Stefan Molyneux, who openly promotes scientific racism and advocates for the men's rights movement.
	Okay, Stefan Molyneux is not a racist.
	He promotes scientific data.
	He doesn't say why the data is that way.
	There is evidence one way and another, and it's a long-running scientific question.
	He is not making categoric statements on this.
	And he advocates for the men's rights movement because men are human beings, and as human beings, they have human rights.
	This is the alternative influence network on YouTube.
	And you'll see me, just off from center there, Carl Benjamin's Sagan of Akkad, and I'm linked quite heavily within this.
	But you'll see an amazing array of people.
	People like James DeMoore, Andrew Clavin, Michael Knowles, Dennis Prager, Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, then Britney Pettibone, Millennial Woes, Mark Collett, Tara McCarthy, Wife with a Purpose, Styx Hexenhammer, Richard Spencer, Andy Worski, Krauton T, Mike Enoch, even V gets a mention, Mundane Matt, Milo Bunty, Blair White, Derek Blackman, Tim Poole, all of these white supremacists.
	My goodness.
	The alternative influence network on YouTube is remarkably diverse.
	They have women, trans people and people of colour.
	It's almost like this isn't actually based around race and gender, it's based around a series of ideas.
	And the people who hold white nationalist ideas are obviously a minority here.
	And here's a word of warning.
	They're coming for your super chats.
	Members of the network frequently use a live debate format with multiple speakers arguing for hours on topics such as race, immigration and feminism.
	This format is particularly challenging to moderate, relying on viewers reporting objectionable content during the live stream.
	YouTube profits from these live debates through the super chat feature, which allows users to pay to have their comments highlighted during the stream, even if the channel fails to meet YouTube's advertiser-friendly content guidelines.
	As a BuzzFeed investigation in May highlighted, these paid-for comments are frequently used to spread hate speech.
	You know, hate speech, that neutral political term that doesn't come from a particular and identifiable ideological position.
	One of the challenges for YouTube is how careful the more extreme members of the network are to avoid breaking the platform's community guidelines.
	Even the most open white nationalists know how to stay just within the terms of service.
	You almost never hear them using racial slurs.
	They couch the language in a way that obscures its violent overtones.
	Right, so the problem is that they're staying within the community guidelines.
	Oh, how dreadful.
	How very dare they.
	They also employ persuasive influencer marketing techniques to increase their audiences and establish an alternative to mainstream news through memes, cross-promotion and search engine optimization.
	You mean they act like themselves on the internet and people who are interested in their kind of content, in their kind of thought processes, subscribe and watch their videos.
	These are the kinds of techniques used by brands and makeup vloggers to capture people's attention, only this time the product is political ideology.
	YouTube monetizes influence for everyone, regardless of how harmful their belief systems are.
	Yes, I believe even progressives are monetized on YouTube, despite the demonstrable harm of their belief system.
	The platform and its parent company have allowed racist, misogynist and harassing content to remain online, and in many cases to generate advertising revenue, as long as it does not explicitly include slurs.
	YouTube is an open platform where anyone can choose to post videos to a global audience, subject to our community guidelines, which we enforce rigorously, said a YouTube spokeswoman.
	So they're complaining about people who have not broken the rules, are not doing anything wrong, are not doing anything illegal, and are just sharing their thoughts.
	And the market of ideas is deciding which ones should rise to the top and which ones should not.
	You know, it's almost like this is freedom.
	You know, the way freedom was intended to be used.
	The problem with that though is it's not promoting progressive ideology because when it comes to either freedom or progressivism, there is an actual dichotomy there.
	Lewis argues that YouTube and other platforms' content moderation policies need to factor in the influence of an account rather than just the content.
	When an anonymous account with four followers tweets a conspiracy, it's very different from when Alex Jones posted the exact same conspiracy theory.
	She wants to demonetize big platforms.
	This is what it's coming to.
	They are coming for our livelihoods.
	Lewis proposes that YouTube should consider not only reviewing the content of the channels identified in the reports, but the people they host and what their guests say.
	YouTube is choosing to continue to endorse the content of these people who are delivering really harmful messages.
	It would be an opportune time to make their standards stricter for people who have that level of influence.
	Translation, YouTube is allowing our political opponents to broadcast their message using a platform that they offered as open to everyone.
	And our ideas are so absolutely abysmal that we can't sell them.
	Any other belief system begins to prosper when given a platform and these people must be restricted, especially the big ones who have got more influence than we do.
	And The Guardian's report was the most sane of the two that I'm going to feature in this quick video.
	Political extremists are using YouTube to monetize their toxic ideas from Mother Jones.
	This article is total nonsense.
	This is their description of my debate with Richard Spencer.
	Now, over half a million people have seen this, so you're probably well aware that me and Spencer were discussing politics.
	We were discussing the political viability of white nationalism.
	I disagreed.
	Richard Spencer thought it was possible, and we did not come to any kind of concord.
	We did not discuss genetics, we discussed politics.
	Over 10,000 active viewers watched a January debate between white nationalist Richard Spencer and a conspiracy theorist who goes by the name Sargon of a CAD.
	What conspiracy theories do I promote?
	The discussion topic was whether science proves whites are more intelligent because of genetic superiority.
	That was not the discussion topic.
	That was absolutely not what we were there to talk about.
	We were there to talk about the political viability and desirability of what Richard Spencer was proposing.
	There was little disagreement, according to Mother Jones, whereas according to reality, there was absolutely no agreement whatsoever.
	But apparently, both sides agreed on the superiority of the white race.
	That is a flat out lie.
	Almost every political YouTuber that I watch, whether I agree with them or not, are all on HIF.
	And here you can see they use the example of Roaming Millennial, who thinks that social justice is cancer.
	Because it is.
	And just to be clear, Becca Lewis, the doctoral student who's done this, is just advocating for open censorship.
	She says, we've gotten a really clear picture of the type of fake news that disseminates on Facebook when it's created by Macedonian teenagers.
	We've gotten a really clear idea of what can happen when Donald Trump retweets a tweet that originated from an anti-Semitic meme on an anonymous forum.
	We don't have a clear picture of what's happening on YouTube and Google.
	It's important to bring to the fore some illustrations of the problems that do exist on these platforms.
	Yes, problem for Rebecca Lewis.
	I'm trying to show that there are fundamental issues we need to be addressing with YouTube in the same way that we have recognized fundamental issues with Facebook and Twitter.
	Mother Jones says, one way that these posters define themselves is by saying that they are the underdogs who are being tacked by mainstream society.
	Well, it seems you're quite happy to prove us correct there, Mother Jones.
	Do go on.
	Do you have any thoughts on how to deplatform or demonetize these creators if they just turn around and point to those efforts as examples of the very discrimination they can use to bolster their claims?
	You are literally doing this now.
	It's not that we think that we're the underdogs, we're just saying it without reason.
	You are literally doing this.
	And now you're saying, well, if we persecute them, then they look like the underdogs.
	So what they're saying is true.
	Is there any way that we can get around that and do it anyway without what they're saying being true?
	And Rebecca Lewis says, that's a fundamental question that's been plaguing academics and tech firms alike.
	How can we persecute these people without looking like we're persecuting these people?
	My interpretation is that the framing of social underdog paranoia thrives when content moderation and platforming happens inconsistency and without clear explanation.
	And the fact is, if extremists were being consistently deplatformed, they wouldn't be able to make content about it.
	Well, has anyone seen an Alex Jones video recently?
	This is exactly what you're doing.
	You're doing it by degree.
	We are raising the alarm now because we know that ultimately you want us all gone.
	This video is a quick one that I'm doing to put up a flare to the rest of political YouTube.
	We are all in trouble.
	It's time to drop the petty swabbles.
	This is a problem.
	This report is going to be cited over and over and over by tech companies as they shadow ban, demonetize, and eventually just remove us from these platforms.
	This is an ideological attack on political YouTube because political YouTube is broadly not progressive.
	That's the bottom line.
	For the content creators, they are coming for your livelihoods.
	And for the audience, they are Coming for the people whose videos you watch, we all have the same problem.
	We have to do something about this.

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