Suicide by Censorship
Since a few weeks now, YouTube has engaged in what I can only describe as Strike-and-Retreat or Hit-and-Run against anyone who belong to conservatives, right-wingers or pro-gunners. It’s quite simple: Constantly hit them with strikes, then take some back so that there’s no legal response, with the goal of confusing the channel owners, burying the videos in the algorithm, demonetizing everything and trying to get them to just give up and stop uploading anything. And afterwards, when people are fed up with news “I’ve gotten another strike” and don’t care anymore, get ready for those channels to just be ended and silenced one day. But all of that won’t lead to these channels ending, they can take their content somewhere different. Instead, YouTube is committing suicide by throwing out large parts of their audience.
YouTube’s Self-destruction: Strike-And-Run
The Purge is here. Another one. Again.
Just in case you missed it, tons of what people would call “conservatives” including a lot of pro-gun channels on YouTube have gotten strikes repeatedly and then lost the strikes shortly after, only to receive more, be temporarily shut down, then unlocked again. Waking up for these people has to feel a bit like Russian roulette: Could be fine. Could be the end of it. So here are some sources just so you can see what is going on from:
So what is happening? Nothing much, if you are a “liberal”, SJW or anyone else left of Stalin. Because YouTube has apparently decided that their platform offers too big of a platform for the people they don’t want to see there. We’ve looked at purges like this in the past, including the “Adpocalypse” where demonetization was the weapon of choice to destroy the funding and reach of the targets. Now it has turned from drying out the money to simply denying it altogether. YouTube is doing this in collusion with the MSM (source: here): CNN is openly searching through all the videos on popular conservative channel InfoWars, finding a crooked toenail that they can report to YouTube. For all intensive purposes CNN has turned into the annoying, universally hated slime-bag in school that would report everything that could possibly be against the rules to the teacher out of envy towards the rest of children that have friends, fun and a good life.
But not only that, the strategy of “strike-and-run” has multiple other effects to it: Striked channels have certain abilities taken from them (more info here): Channels with just one strike can have for example their live-streaming, monetization, video length above 15 minutes or custom channel layout taken from them, among other things. So oscillating between 1 and 3 strikes not only helps confusing content creators and consumers alike, but also gives YouTube the handy excuse to block vital functions, as well as hide the content in the algorithms and prevent possibly viral content from spreading.
More than that, it takes away the ability to respond. It’s possible for whoever goes around and flags all they can (which they call “trusted flaggers”, see here) to find something that they and YouTube want gone even though it does not violate the community guidelines, but the “trusted flaggers” go ahead and just flag and remove it. According to the help page, YouTube does have the right to remove “trusted flaggers”, but seeing as they may have the same bias and goal, I’ll assume they are just ignoring if not downright coordinating it.
For outlets as for example CNN this bears another fruit: They can lie over what the rest cannot see anymore. Imagine uploading a video of kittens and someone that for whatever reason hates you to the bone, also being one of the “trusted flaggers”, flags and removes it claiming that you in the video showed how you murdered someone, then claims that on his or her YouTube account. You cannot respond to that, because the evidence, the video, has disappeared. It’s possible that your ability to upload videos (if another strike, real or not has been issued) is removed. The victim has been silenced and defamed, with no chance to respond to the audience exposed to the fraud until YouTube decides to remove strikes or (the period of the 2-strike upload restriction) 2 weeks have passed. By then, a hundred new things are in the news cycle and whatever the hater claimed stays even if afterwards the video is reviewed and found innocent. But now add to this mess that YouTube also hates you: They can push the false claims through their algorithms, put the review of the video on long, long hold and use other strategies to amplify the fraud. This is what conservatives, pro-gunners and right-wingers all over YouTube are experiencing for about the last 2-3 weeks now.
Why YouTube (and Google, Facebook, Twitter) may die in the near future
It’s not just YouTube doing this. Google, though less their social platform and more the search algorithms, is also “shadow banning” which is nothing but sneaky censorship the same targets. This reveals that it in fact isn’t just the “trusted flaggers” but Google itself behind it. In the aftermath of the Florida Shooting, Google decided to ban everything with the words “gun”, “guns”, “pistol” etc from their shop (see here), resulting in a lot of results just returning empty: “toy gun”, “water gun”, “glue gun”, “naked gun”, “shogun”, “burGUNdy” etc were all unavailable because the three letters “gun” were in it. Honestly, who was responsible for that kind of shoddy craftsmanship? This looks like a hasty effort in response to for example the NRA membership surging (source: here) and weapon shops having record sales (source: here) in an effort to dampen both. By now, Google has fixed it, but this was a really big blunder on their part.
So where does this continue? First we had (presumably) burying the unwanted channels in the algorithm. Then we had the “Adpocalypse”. Now we have “Strike-and-Run”. All that is left is to kick them off YouTube and Google search results altogether. But if anyone thinks these people will just say to themselves “oh, I’ve been banned from Google and YouTube. Guess I can’t do anything on the internet anymore, I’ll just hop into a hole and stay silent” they are stupid. Instead, they will switch to alternative platforms and take the viewership along with them. Alternative search engines like duckduckgo.com (which I personally prefer) are rising and the same will happen to streaming platforms and social media like Minds and Gab.ai. By kicking out the channels that provided viewers with what they wanted to see and leaving only neutral or leftist content YouTube and Google are alienating their customers. If the viewers can’t get what they want they won’t just change their preferences, they will go to wherever they the content creators went. This is free market and also shows why all of Big Tech hates it.
If this continues and accelerates as it currently does, YouTube could within the year become a leftist echo chamber that has no more voices of dissent. Because if the “trusted flaggers” and general SJWs run out of conservatives to ban, they won’t stop either. They are drunk on the power and hate of ruining people’s days and continue to flag and ban even centrist or politically neutral channels and videos for not conforming and being politically correct enough, forcing all others off the platform too. These people never run out of enemies they want to ban, they merely focus on what is the most to the right of Mao. In general, they are poor souls that have drained all the fun (because fun in part needs to be edgy, dirty and politically incorrect – things they consider “verbal violence” and thus want gone) out of everything until all they see and hear is a coherent message. So all they have left is to once again narrow what is allowed, according to them, and get a rise out of being more “pure” and fighting against what is not pure enough.
When all the normal content creators have left and YouTube is forced by the remaining audience to throw out even more, that is when they can simply shut down the platform. They have suicided by censorship. But on the other hand, we have gotten what we wanted without anti-trust action: The giants splintered. The same will happen, provided of cause the course of action does not change, to Twitter and Facebook. Twitter also had a huge purge in recent times, labeled “#Twitter LockOut” where the same group (conservatives, pro-gunners, right-wingers) had their followers slashed and some of them were locked out of their Twitter under the claim that their account was suspected to be a [Russian] bot (source: here). No doubt this will come to Facebook sooner or later.
So all that remains is to see what Big Tech hates more: Non-Leftists or losing money and power. But I already have a feeling they will chose ideology over profit. Even if they turn back now, we must acknowledge that it’s time for anti-trust action against them. Because even though the free market is doing what it does, the power of the leftist trifecta Alphabet (parent company of Google and YouTube), Facebook and Twitter far exceeds what should be allowed. They need to either be split up into a hundred pieces or regulated like a public utility. During the time they stayed in power, they censored, shadow-banned and manipulated on a massive scale that tops anything the Russians could have hoped for in their wildest dreams. If you think a mere 13 Russians and 3 Russian entities had a devastating influence on the election (see here) then just think what Google, Facebook and Twitter that are openly anti-Trump have done to favor Clinton. We already know that Twitter has been shadow-banning (see the series on Project Veritas, starting here, and from the same revelations we know that Twitter sees itself as not as scary as others (which most likely is Google and Facebook).