YouTube’s new censorship tactic is to limit streams that are too popular
reclaimthenet.orgBefore people start making conspiracies theories, I want to mention a reasonable explanation that answers the following question: how could it be in Youtube’s financial interest to block views from small channels that go viral?
I think the answer must be related to an effort to reduce the amount of unauthorized copyrighted material or fraud on the platform. Currently the majority of such material/fraud on youtube is uploaded by small channels who can create another channel as necessary. Throttling small accounts is one possible way to combat this.
I think the answer is still related to censorship. Streamers with lots of history also got throttled.
So, ask yourself, why would YouTube need to throttle in the first place? Who is giving all these protest-streamers their first 300 viewers, making them rise in the live-streaming rankings and exposing millions to anti-mandate protests?
I think YouTube is under attack. I think they learned from live-streams during George Floyd protests, which, incidentally, I also was exposed to, even though not caring too much about that. I think throttling is an attempt to avoid the artificial boosting of divisive and polarizing content.
I really do not want to turn this into a conspiracy theory, though Mark Zuckerberg did offer for Facebook to make some changes, with the rest blacked out under "secret weapon" technology. After experiments done on Facebook on emotional contagion, surely, they must have ways to, instead of rile up an entire populace, calm them down. We are at an age where a single out-of-context video of alleged police brutality can shut down the economy.
Depends if the creator is a hot potato. Even if you can make a lot of ad revenue off them it may not be good for your overall image. Just look at what is happening at Spotify.
This only applies to new live streams, likely due to moderation and copyright concerns! Many platforms will have systems like this to prevent spam.
And the first instance of this I could easily find on Twitter was on Jan 8 that was in reply to somebody who tweeted a Youtube livestreamed dogsledding race: https://twitter.com/Cami5320/status/1479893333480599555
This is like an indiscriminate low pass filter, how does this make any sense whatsoever ?
I imagine that there is a nontrivial amount of nobody channels with suddenly popular videos that are part of fraudulent ad revenue streams (if you can drive views at less $ per view than the ads earn you it's a net positive).
This is not to say that all suddenly popular channels are ad fraud. And it seems in character for YouTube to put a blanket constriction instead of doing the trickier job of dealing with separating genuine viral hits from fraudsters.
Or maybe they're working on something more nuanced but rolled out a rough measure to stem an aggressive wave of ad fraud. We'll never know because companies are tight lipped about that sort of thing.
This website reads like its affiliated with InfoWars.
I've occasionally wondered who is behind reclaimthenet.org, but unlike most legitimate advocacy sites it seems very hard to find out who or what is behind it. Someone asked about this a while back and it looks like I'm not the only one who could not find anything [1].
Are you suggesting that the information portrayed is false?
Based upon the discussion I am reading here, this specific title is misleading at best. They even explain in the article how its applied almost at random...
Given this is clearly meant for the 'First Amendment applies to private entities' crowd, its meant to rile people up, just like Infowars.
There's always a "reason" why an evil decree is actually quite logical and palatable - just look at Whoopie Goldberg's latest scandal. But that doesn't stop it from being evil. This is an outright attempt to close the net. An open web means that anyone can say anything, and that concept horrifies and terrifies FAANG. They want a total monopoly on thought, and any "excuse" they give for closing the web is just that - an excuse.
They don't want anything against the establishment to go viral.
Web3 fixes this shit.
Web3 solves this by decentralization.
Let's see, what do I know that's decentralized?
Ah, Web1 and the Internet. HTTP, SMTP, FTP, etc. How are they doing? Ah, right, in practice the protocols people really care about like HTTP and SMTP became oligopolies.
What exactly does Web3 add to prevent this <<social>> problem?
I'm the biggest web3 hater out there, but web1 or generally the "Internet" today is not decentralized at all.It's centralized through popular software protocols being used, the adressing system, the fact that you cannot "pipe yourself" to the internet without being approved at a certain level by a forementioned centralized process,etc.This is not even going into the legislative argument.
These(software & legal arguments) all are irrelevant considering the fact that the web is hardware-wise not decentralized.I've seen this weak argument from smart people who argue that everyone can buy their own equipment, start their own ISP(which they can't, legally speaking, without going into a centralized process) and go through the process of creating one's own network that's being piped into the internet, but besides the fact that it defeats the point, ~nobody has access to that hardware in the consumer space.(There are few interesting projects existing but those are extreme outliers).
To continue your point and to reinforce it: software decentralization being useless, web3 will solve almost nothing, even in the best case scenario: where we defeat performance & "cultural" issues (NFTs, shittyverse, secure money, etc).It became a platform for the big players to show a shiny new big toy to the masses, one where security is improved; but security for the user is irrelevant from the POV of a company which seeks usage & entrapment.
Web3 will vehemently NOT fix that shit.
Web3 fixes nothing that needed fixing. What's the web3 equivalent to YouTube?
I agree with your first point but not your second.