In Response to the Markup’s Reporting, Some YouTubers Are Ditching the Platform | Hacker News Reader

In Response to the Markup’s Reporting, Some YouTubers Are Ditching the Platform

themarkup.org

28 pointsatg_abhishek26 comments

> We spoke to eight YouTubers who said they were quitting, each with relatively small followings of less than 2,000 YouTube subscribers apiece.

One of the people interviewed had "a few dozen" followers on YouTube. I get that the original reporting on advertising blacklists may have been newsworthy, but this article in particular seems to have only been written to push an agenda. Less than 10 people with a combined reach probably in the 4 digits leaving YouTube is not noteworthy.

One of the ways in which the “Fake News” term is earned is by taking inconsequential individuals like Youtubers with 30 followers or random Tweets and forming a “people are saying” narrative out of them.

The first paragraph of the story explicitly mentions that this is about "small" youtubers. You could argue that the headline is clickbait, but if you actually read the article they don't try to hide the fact that these are not major youtubers.

The article is more than just the headline. They did a lot of reporting, and it's an interesting article. Apparently Google changed their search tool to hide the fact that some terms are blocked. (I actually think that would be a better hook for the article, rather than report on small youtubers leaving the platform).

Characterizing it as "fake news" because the headline is more general than it should be is really doing a disservice to public discourse. That would make almost all news "fake news", and I think we should reserve the term for articles that actually spreads lies, and not apply it to articles where the text doesn't quite live up to the headline. The term for that is clickbait.

Headlines are news as well as most people don't read articles. Lies or misleading information in headlines is therefore also fake news.

It doesn't matter that it is "technically correct", what matters is that they are intentionally spreading misinformation. I think it is ok to be harsh against everyone who intentionally spreads misinformation.

If you consider misleading headlines to be misinformation, then you must have very few sources you trust. By this definition the NY Times, the Washington Post and pretty much every “trusted” source of news provides misinformation.

The “accurate” version of this article is the absence of an article. Of course, that does not generate revenue, hence, this article.

This is basically an onion article. Along similar veins:

Headline: Scandal makes long term Dreamer give up Dream

Sally who has dreamed of becoming a movie star for 10 years now stopped chasing the dream after the latest hollywood scandals.

Sally: There is no way I would have stopped dreaming if not for theses scandals, the situation is really bad!

In addition, in printed news at least, the article writer rarely gets to write the headline.

For comparison, I posted a short tutorial for animation software asna class assignment on YouTube and I now have 15 subscribers and only a single video of note. It's probably very easy to get dozens of followers as a drag queen if you enlist your social circle

Effectively "four people we found on the street had this to say"

Back in the 00s we would spread large files using BitTorrent. That option still exist. With today’s network speeds, downloading 30 minutes of video should be pretty fast.

Exactly. It should be practical to do this on a larger scale to create a decentralised alternative to YouTube.

The fact that it still exists, probably tells us that we should use this technology to its full potential since we need it more than ever these days.

Sounds like that would be unreliable for smaller creators.

Isn't that what PeerTube is?

Streaming the content is simple, even as a single stream from an HTML page. You could create a blog page with embedded video in a couple of hours.

Discoverability is the thing. How would anyone know your videos are there?

>Discoverability is the thing. How would anyone know your videos are there?

But is "The YouTube algorithm" really a good answer to that question? At the end of the day there's a lot more to building an audience. I agree that YouTube helps with that, but I think it has more to do with the user convenience rather than discoverability as such.

Youtube Alternatives :

Centralized : Bitchute, Rumble, Odyssey(LBRY), DTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo

Decentralized : Peertube

I skimmed over the article because I'm interested in what platform the content creators are switching to. Unfortunately I didn't see any other platform mentioned.

I have been dreaming of a good youtube alternative for some time.

I think LBRY/Odysee[0] is an interesting one to watch.

[0]https://lbry.com/

Here is a list of YouTube alternatives: https://nordvpn.com/blog/youtube-alternatives/

There's also Rumble (https://rumble.com/), PeerTube (https://peer.tube/), Odysee (https://odysee.com/), and BitChute (https://www.bitchute.com)

Unfortunately given that YouTube has large audiences, and a captive supply of advertisers, it will be hard for any of these alternatives to compete against those network effects and Google's massive capital. Of these, I think Rumble has been getting the most views since several prominent centrists and conservatives who've faced censorship on YouTube have started hosting their content there.

Why would you quit a forum where you can spread your ideas if you have no way to create an alternative?

They can’t spread their ideas on YouTube either... the ones quoted have TENS of subscribers.

I can't say I'm fond of the BLM movement, but hey at least I still think they should be able to advertise if they wish.

But I am kind of pleased that finally the censorship also hits left-leaning people as it previously was very dominated against more right leaning people.

Maybe now we can finally agree that censorship is bad, whomever it hits.

I'm sure this is just a mistake, an algorithmic mishap. It probably flagged the content as possibly racist. Alphabet's interests have always been in supporting social justice, BLM, etc, and censoring the other side. That's not likely to change soon.

Unfortunately that culture of protecting free speech for all, a classically liberal value, has been dying out. The ACLU used to be seen as the most staunch protector of free speech principles, but even they've changed (leadership, ideology) and now they don't value free speech either. See https://reason.com/podcast/2020/10/14/ira-glasser-would-toda... or https://reason.com/2018/06/21/aclu-leaked-memo-free-speech/ for more details on that. But when even the most trusted defenders of free speech are wavering, I'm not surprised to see pervasive censorship elsewhere, like on platforms owned by big tech companies.

They finally see it's a bad thing when it now happens to them. Which all the privacy and anti-censorship activists have been telling them for years and foreshadowed by the increased bans of the right leaning creators.

It's like the chickens are cheering on the wolves that ate the other chickens that disagreed with them and now complaining that the same wolves are now going to eat them too.

Google / YouTube are not on your side and are not your friends. They will not change and will only listen to their masters voice.

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