Post by coffekanon on Mar 5, 2018 13:25:07 GMT
An interesting question that surfaced during a debate over at the facebook group.
The adpocalypse and the flimsy and arbitrary reasoning (and most of the time complete lack of reasoning or motivation) behind demonetization for Youtubers can in almost all ways be traced to a growing sentiment in certain corporations and media news outlets that impopular opinions, speech and interests must be "banned" or censored.
Since legislators aren't banning speech or opinions (due to freedom of speech being a constitutional right in most of the western world), private companies like Youtube, Google, Facebook, Twitter and others have taken it upon themselves to ban and censor speech for arbitrary, and politically motivated reasons. As have the companies who purchased marketing spots through youtube and their advertisement business model where they basically tell youtube to censor impopular opinions or content, or they will pull back their business dealings with youtube.
There are several business-flaws in this kind of reasoning that the so called "marketing experts" don't seem to understand. As one other youtuber I forget the name of right now put it: "Even neo-nazis drink Coca-cola.". A private company wishing to advertise their product or service on youtubes platform should reasonably be interested in exposing their product or service to as many potential paying customers as possible. It would be a business suicide to start denying customers services or goods because you happen to dislike their political views or uploaded content for whatever reason.
Therefore, this mostly politically motivated anxiousness of "risking association" with controversial or impopular videos on youtube isn't just a problem for content creators and youtube users in general, but it infests businesses all over the world.
Ideally what youtube should have done right from the start is not interfering with content at all (unless the content is actually illegal). A stable and successful business model would be to let content creators upload what they like, and through the monitization program pay them according to the amount of views content creators manage to gather.
That way, everything would be fair, equitable and no ones constitutional rights would be infringed. If you have a small channel, gathering small views, then your payout will be small. If you have a big channel, gathering a large ampount of views, then your payout will be bigger.
If a company customer of youtube have concerns or threaten to leave a partnership because their ads may or may not have popped up at a controversial channel, then youtube should have the integrity to maintain exclusive rights over how and where ads are being broadcast. Your fee for hosting ads on youtube should only ever dictate the frequency of your ads being showed (the more you pay, the longer and more frequent your ads can be), but you do not get to micromanage which videos your ads will be shown with.
Some companies will complain about this, but in the end, denying them the right to micromanage the content will benefit both them and youtube and the content creators. Because, like I said before: Even neo-nazis drink Coca-cola. Just because an ad for coca-cola shows up in a neo-nazi video, no one watching it will believe that Coca-cola somehow "endorse" the content of any video that their ad shows up in.
Now, back to the headline, as I hope I have been able to show (and that many of you already realize) is that there is a clash of political ideals that is a root cause behind Youtubes abuse of content creators. And I think it is important that a Union of youtubers, that truly values personal integrity of content creators and their right to upload whatever content they like (as long as it is legal), also takes a clear stance on the basic value of freedom of speech and expression.
It may sound nice to say that "the union is open for everyone". But after having seen people join and then openly complain about other members being "red-pilled" and "anti-SJW's", I think a Union will ultimately have to pick a side.
Because you can't BOTH be in favor of censorship and consider it a valid "means to an end" AND be a part of a Union with the stated goal to fight back against Youtube's attempts at censorship. It would be Orwellian Doublethink to say the least, and make it very hard to determine where the loyalties of such a person lies.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
-Evelyn Beatrice Hall (famously attributed to Voltaire)
"If we don't believe in the freedom of expression for the people we despise, then we don't believe in the freedom of expression at all."
-Noam Chomsky
The adpocalypse and the flimsy and arbitrary reasoning (and most of the time complete lack of reasoning or motivation) behind demonetization for Youtubers can in almost all ways be traced to a growing sentiment in certain corporations and media news outlets that impopular opinions, speech and interests must be "banned" or censored.
Since legislators aren't banning speech or opinions (due to freedom of speech being a constitutional right in most of the western world), private companies like Youtube, Google, Facebook, Twitter and others have taken it upon themselves to ban and censor speech for arbitrary, and politically motivated reasons. As have the companies who purchased marketing spots through youtube and their advertisement business model where they basically tell youtube to censor impopular opinions or content, or they will pull back their business dealings with youtube.
There are several business-flaws in this kind of reasoning that the so called "marketing experts" don't seem to understand. As one other youtuber I forget the name of right now put it: "Even neo-nazis drink Coca-cola.". A private company wishing to advertise their product or service on youtubes platform should reasonably be interested in exposing their product or service to as many potential paying customers as possible. It would be a business suicide to start denying customers services or goods because you happen to dislike their political views or uploaded content for whatever reason.
Therefore, this mostly politically motivated anxiousness of "risking association" with controversial or impopular videos on youtube isn't just a problem for content creators and youtube users in general, but it infests businesses all over the world.
Ideally what youtube should have done right from the start is not interfering with content at all (unless the content is actually illegal). A stable and successful business model would be to let content creators upload what they like, and through the monitization program pay them according to the amount of views content creators manage to gather.
That way, everything would be fair, equitable and no ones constitutional rights would be infringed. If you have a small channel, gathering small views, then your payout will be small. If you have a big channel, gathering a large ampount of views, then your payout will be bigger.
If a company customer of youtube have concerns or threaten to leave a partnership because their ads may or may not have popped up at a controversial channel, then youtube should have the integrity to maintain exclusive rights over how and where ads are being broadcast. Your fee for hosting ads on youtube should only ever dictate the frequency of your ads being showed (the more you pay, the longer and more frequent your ads can be), but you do not get to micromanage which videos your ads will be shown with.
Some companies will complain about this, but in the end, denying them the right to micromanage the content will benefit both them and youtube and the content creators. Because, like I said before: Even neo-nazis drink Coca-cola. Just because an ad for coca-cola shows up in a neo-nazi video, no one watching it will believe that Coca-cola somehow "endorse" the content of any video that their ad shows up in.
Now, back to the headline, as I hope I have been able to show (and that many of you already realize) is that there is a clash of political ideals that is a root cause behind Youtubes abuse of content creators. And I think it is important that a Union of youtubers, that truly values personal integrity of content creators and their right to upload whatever content they like (as long as it is legal), also takes a clear stance on the basic value of freedom of speech and expression.
It may sound nice to say that "the union is open for everyone". But after having seen people join and then openly complain about other members being "red-pilled" and "anti-SJW's", I think a Union will ultimately have to pick a side.
Because you can't BOTH be in favor of censorship and consider it a valid "means to an end" AND be a part of a Union with the stated goal to fight back against Youtube's attempts at censorship. It would be Orwellian Doublethink to say the least, and make it very hard to determine where the loyalties of such a person lies.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
-Evelyn Beatrice Hall (famously attributed to Voltaire)
"If we don't believe in the freedom of expression for the people we despise, then we don't believe in the freedom of expression at all."
-Noam Chomsky