The below video is an excellent discussion of what is going on with YouTube.
However, it is particularly insightful toward the end when Viva Frei discusses the uncertainty that YouTube is introducing into its platform. It reminds me a lot of what the economist Robert Higgs has described as the problem of government regime uncertainty.
I should also note that what Viva Frei mentioned, regarding downloading copies of all his YouTube videos, I have also done with my videos and I know others who are doing the same thing.
My guess is that conservative and libertarian YouTube broadcasters aren't a big part of YouTube ad revenue (otherwise YouTube wouldn't be doing what it is doing) but YouTube is playing with fire with its censorship.
There is a lot to say for the retail slogan "The customer is always right" and it is exponentially stupid to go out of your way to piss off customers. Especially customers who are smart, creative and on the cutting edge.
It is very, very dumb to focus these people on thinking about alternative platforms and methods.
Viva Frei may have something when he says that YouTube may be killing itself with a thousand small cuts. That goes the same for other social media giants. I have one word of warning to all of them: MySpace. However, in the current situation, it isn't a few skilled platformers going after a giant, but the smartest people on the internet coming after the entire censorship bias of Silicon Valley social media. My money is not on the censors. They have triggered a bunch of people that it is really dumb to trigger against you.
The Soviet Union wasn't able to shut down the samizdats, no way is Lefty Valley going to be able to shut down the current SJW resistance crowd and other independents.
Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of EconomicPolicyJournal.com and Target Liberty. He also writes EPJ Daily Alert and is author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank and most recently Foundations of Private Property Society Theory: Anarchism for the Civilized Person Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics and on LinkedIn. His youtube series is here: Robert Wenzel Talks Economics. More about Wenzel here.
Man, LOVE those red buttons! Say, wasn't he a comic actor?
ReplyDeleteThis is spot on RW and it will a wake up call when their market share goes away ... and it will. I never got on the social network band wagon. I spotted the outcome of censorship more than a decade ago.
ReplyDeleteI have looked forward to the idiots in charge kicking the hornets nest in it arrogance. I will be playing the fiddle and dancing a jig when they burn
The problem is not just YouTube and Twitter censorship. An equally large problem is that the payment processors and banks are cutting off people and companies based on political views. How can you build an alternative platform if you can't accept payments?
ReplyDeleteI think this is a very clever ploy by TPTB to get the public to rally behind 'regulating' the tech companies. And they WANT to be 'regulated' because they know they will control that regulation and use it, as big corporations always do, to crush any competition that may arise in the future.
ReplyDeleteIt is brilliant. The masses will cheer when government grows yet again and expands its power to the internet. By the time people realize the results weren't what they were hoping, it will be too late. The 'Department of the Internet' or whatever will be there, employing parasites who all collect a hefty retirement package.
Rinse, repeat.