InfoWars’ conspiracy theories have advertisers ditching YouTube channels
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Of course this might finally open the door to taking a slice of the video hosting pie. It might also end up like a Reddit vs. Voat, because at the end of the day a lot of the crap being objected to here is really quite objectionable. I know that people like to invoke freedom of expression arguments, censorship and so on, but again, look at Voat if you haven’t eaten lately; it’s a combination of appalling and dead.
Usefully though, these alt sites can act as a useful way to monitor the degree of real censorship, if it exists. When and if you start to see significant amounts of something other than paranoia and hate there, you’ll know something is being suppressed elsewhere. So far though, not much.
Frankly they have a tough path to carve between objectionable content and damaging their platform.
YouTube's suggested videos is a tire fire, they suggest stuff I'm not remotely interested in and wouldn't watch at all.
I mean my interests aren't hard to profile, engineering videos, chess videos and programming stuff.
Hell Yes!
For some very strange reason watching a bit of Periodic Videos and Numberphile made YouTube think I was interested in batshit conspiracy theories and some “KingOfRamdom” twit. Thrown in there is a ton of viral “Let’s see if this explodes?” and “You’ll never guess what happens next!” tripe.
I watched some really good CNC videos, very technical, and I was flooded with recommendations to watch a guy apply women’s makeup. I can’t even begin to imagine the connection.
You've got it mixed up, you're only supposed to deploy that snark when someone complains about a private company violating First Amendment rights.
Seriously now, I think its very important to consider how the increasing concentrated private ownership of public communication affects the people's natural rights of free expression. The legal regime that was developed to protect free expression when there was only one entity (the government) with the concentrated power to widely censor may no longer be adequate for the modern world.
The truth though, is that most graffiti is crude bullshit, not unlike most of Voat for example. Keep an eye on it, because there might be some fine art hidden in there, you can still understand why curstion is necessary; imperfect, it necessary.
Put another way: what wasn't censorship when there were a dozen independent media outlets in every city becomes censorship when there are only a dozen or fewer independent media outlets in the whole country. We're not there yet, but that's the direction we're headed.
Also, if media and network consolidation make non-government censorship as powerful as government censorship, and the "physicists, doctors, artists, etc making the same complaints," then it's probably too late to do much about it. It's much better to nip the problem in the bud, and prevent the infrastructure of private censorship from getting too developed.
Think of it this way: if you give too much power to good people in government, then when some crazy fucker like Donald Trump comes along, he can do a lot more harm because he has all the tools and precedents he needs to fuck things up, handed to him ready-made. It's the same for power generally.
I’m not making that argument, and I’m not diving into the bottomless pit or what people “feel” is censorship, when it’s appropriate, etc. HN exists by virtue of constructively and carefully applied censorship, with a specific and stated goal to avoid degradation and collapse. Censorship is a tool like any other, none of us should expect to be free from it. Government censorship is a whole other matter, but fortunately the 1st ammendement protects against that.
To the rest, I’ve been hearing the same “if’s” from the same bad actors for decades. After all, when a good argument or cause is absent, out come the slippery slopes. I’m just tired of it. It always seems to come down to a plea for assholes to be given deference, and anything short of that is “censorship”. Please.
This is good news for any firm who just wants as many people as possible to see their ads, and I suspect this consequentially won't mean any real loss (and potentially a gain as other firms rush to fill the void) for InfoWars.
The way I see it, CNN only managed to scare off these big firms because the specific employees who manage their Youtube advertising campaigns were scared the (very real) possibility of being fired because a nasty article might reflect badly on their firm and would "tarnish the brand" or some other such intangible reasoning.
Don't conflate publishing individual's private information with posting public relationships. It is grossly unfair to the victims of actual doxxing and subsequent harassment to claim that this is equivalent.
No, for the same reasons Gordon Ramsay isn't "competing" with children making mud pies in the back yard.
I did not mean to imply it was illegal, or even immoral. But their sharing the same industry is facet of the story that many commenters seem to be glossing over.
Groups like Infowars have a newsworthy impact on the political climate, and deserve coverage by news organizations. It's not about activism - the intersection of advertising and extremist content on places like YouTube is a very legitimate subject for journalism, if you ask me.
The mainstream news is the one that is complicit in the spread of dangerous Conspiracy theories such as: "Saddam was behind 9/11 and has Weapons of Mass Destruction!"
Boom. 10,000's of US soldiers dead and many more crippled.
1 Million Iraqi people dead.
Infowars has more often than not been right on important matters. Is Alex Jones over the top? Of course!
Are their Chem Trails and other conspiracy theories "out there"? You bet!
But look up MK Ultra on Wikipedia and other programs that the US/CIA ran and you will realize that truth is stranger and much more dangerous than the "conspiracy theories and the penis pills" that Alex Jones is talking about.
At least those Penis pills aren't like the Opiates and depression medication that kills 10's of thousands a year that MSNBC, Fox, CNN et al peddle.
Use your ability to think: this is an information war and the MSM is the most dangerous kind of "fake news" and they are fighting tooth and nail to be the ones allowed to define their competing broadcasters as "fake" (since Infowars is now becoming huge)
Would you mind providing a list of those things it's been right on?
I agree with the spirit of your comment, except this bit steps over the line and ruins the whole thing.
The thing about Infowars is they are close a random noise generator. They can't help but be right on some things, as anything random is bound to do.
By contrast, the MSM is a structured but biased source. Their narratives will tend to align with reality quite well, only getting a few facts wrong here and there, due to internal processes that filter out the inconvenient facts.
So, it's true that already having to apply critical thinking, it's actually easier to sift through Infowars's crap, as most of it is blatant garbage that can be easily discarded - whereas the MSM you'll hear the same exact message from multiple sources, and have a much harder time picking out the little bit of actively harmful garbage. But this doesn't mean that you can point to randomness and say it has any sort of predictive power.
(Of course, my comment here is certainly not condoning the growing centralized censorship touched on in the original article. We've been destined for this slow motion trainwreck ever since the term AJAX was coined, and it's looking like we need to abandon centralized communication platforms ASAFP!)