YouTube Has Quietly Begun "Censoring" Journalists Who Criticize Government
15 August, 2016
Earlier
this month, YouTube, the behemoth video-sharing website was
accused of censoring users.
Claiming some of their videos had been barred from making money through the company’s ad services, YouTube hosts like Philip DeFranco spoke out against the policy, claiming over “a dozen of his videos had been flagged as inappropriate for advertising, including one dinged for ‘graphic content or excessive strong language.’“
In a video entitled “YouTube Is Shutting Down My Channel and I’m Not Sure What To Do,” DeFranco called YouTube’s policy “censorship with a different name,” since users touching on what the company considers to be controversial subjects end up losing money. “If you do this on the regular, and you have no advertising,” DeFranco added, “it’s not sustainable.”
While
YouTube has already confirmed its policy regarding what it
considersunfit for monetization hasn’t changed, the issue
might lie elsewhere now that the company seems more efficient in
enforcing its own rules. As a matter of fact, the content
policy changed in 2012, when YouTube first introducedits
“ad-friendly” guidelines.
But
while an algorithm is allegedly used to spot and “de-monetize”
videos that break the company’s rules, many continue to accuse
the company, currently owned by Google, of having “vague”
descriptions of what its leadership considers ad-friendly.
YouTube rolled
out its monetization tool in 2006, when ads consisted of
videos that would pop up at the bottom of the user’s screen. If the
user did not click on it, it would roll for about ten seconds before
going away. But as ad executives pressured YouTube to “to
do a better job at promoting its creators,” the relationship with
its advertisers changed. As better and even more intrusive ads were
added to YouTube videos, the company allegedly became more concerned
with the content.
Those
who are affected often complain about copyright claims, but some
complain about another type of targeting — one that involves power player.
YouTube
Content Creators Speak Out
Derrick
J. Freeman, the host of FR33MANTV, told Anti-Media that
he monetizes all of his videos, “and every day some video —
even much older ones — gets slapped with some kind of warning or
another because of music playing in the background somewhere. Usually
a public place.”
While
Freeman’s work is often political in nature, he hasn’t seen
any of his videos being flagged for breaking YouTube’s rules
concerning subjects related to war or political conflicts.
Mat
Bars, another YouTube user, also complained about copyright claims.
Asked
about the alleged censorship problem, Bars told Anti-Media that
“what it really most likely comes down to is advertisers not
wanting their ads to be associated with certain things.” To the
YouTube host, the company is “mostly blameless in this. The site
isn’t even profitable, so letting advertisers push them around like
this suits their best interests.” Instead of complaining about
censorship, Bars added that what affects him personally is “the
copyright system.”
But
to more radical political figures who gather a considerable number of
followers on YouTube, things are slightly differently.
To
Luke Rudkowski, the man behind the popular channel We Are
Change, YouTube’s policy of nixing monetization on some of his most
popular videos has been a problem for a long time.
“For
years,” he told The Anti-Media, “I have monetized and still
get f*cked from it.” Especially, he continued, “[when I launch a
video about] Hillary, or war and foreign policy.” When his videos
touch on drugs or guns, however, he says ads remain in place.
“When
the videos only have ‘Hillary Clinton’ they do fine,” he added,
“however, when we add ‘FBI’, that’s when YouTube” springs
into action.
Anti-Media journalist
and senior editor Carey Wedler got her start on Youtube and has had a
similar experience with her channel.
She
explained the first time she realized the site had singled out her
videos was “a couple of weeks” after she “posted a video about
how America’s culture of militarism is an underlying contributor to
domestic mass shooting.”
She
continued:
“The
video was released shortly after the Orlando shooting, which occurred
in June. By July 6, I had received an email saying the video was not
‘advertiser friendly.’ Two days later, I received another email
about a video I released at the beginning of June — before I
released the mass shooting video. This video, which pointed out
inconsistencies in Bernie Sanders’s record and questioned his
‘revolutionary’ status, was also stripped of monetization.”
While
the mass shooting video’s monetization has been restored
without her appealing the company’s decision, her
Sanders video remains ineligible. The Sanders video focused
largely on his record of supporting war and the military-industrial
complex.
Her
other videos affected by YouTube’s policy include “What Every
American Needs to Know About Radical Islam,” a video “that
challenged rampant Islamophobia and jingoism right after the Paris
terror attacks last November,” and “Why I’m “Ready for
Hillary!,” which the creator claims to be an “extremely sarcastic
indictment of Hillary Clinton published before she announced her
candidacy early last year.”
Other
videos by Wedler that suffered the same fate include “How America
‘wins’ the wars in Syria & Iraq” and “How I became a
“self-hating Jew.” All of the de-monetized videos contain
anti-war sentiments.
According
to the prolific writer and vlogger, YouTube only bothered to email
her notifications regarding the changes in monetization for the
Sanders and the mass shooting videos:
“I
noticed the [other] videos had all been stripped of monetization when
I logged into Youtube to check out the two that had been officially
flagged. However, when I checked my settings following receipt of the
two emails regarding mass shootings and Bernie, my overall
monetization setting had been switched off — meaning none of my
videos were monetized.”
She
claims to have “never selected that option” prior to learning
about the issues with the videos mentioned previously, yet when she
turned the monetization option back on, “the monetization
reactivated — but only for videos that hadn’t been specifically
flagged.”
“I
also noticed that my videos before the self-hating Jew video hadn’t
been rejected for monetization at all,” she said.
In
cases involving YouTube’s decision to flag her videos that included
notifications, Wedler added, YouTube failed to give her “a specific
reason as to why the videos were stripped of monetization. I’ve seen
some screenshots of those emails from other Youtubers … and
some contain reasons. Mine didn’t, though it’s pretty clear to me
that in my case, it’s because they are considered ‘controversial.’
Some discuss war and some contain images of war, and they are always
questioning military violence.”
While
Wedler agrees that this type of policy is “not direct censorship …
it does amount to an implicit attempt to discourage me and others
from saying controversial things.”
She
added that while YouTube is a “privately owned company that can
decide which content is appropriate for its advertisers, … if they
are deciding [which of] my videos shouldn’t be allowed to generate
revenue, they are effectively removing much of my incentive to
continue producing content on the platform.”
Despite
the company’s policy, Wedler vows to continue making these videos
simply because the message is what matters.
Google
and Its Addiction to Buying Influence
As
Wedler stated, YouTube is a private company and it has the right to
set its own policies. But it’s undeniable that the site’s owner,
Google, has, on a number of occasions, shown its favoritism
through lobbying, prompting many to highlight the
company’s appearance of favorable bias toward Democratic
Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Google went
from spending $80,000 on lobbying in 2003 to over $16 million in
2014. After 2014, Google, Inc. became Alphabet, and in
2015, Alphabet invested over $16 million in lobbying. To
date, the company has spent over $8 million on Washington
politicians.
Alphabet’s
top recipient this election cycle is, unsurprisingly, Hillary
Clinton.
But
despite its knack for influence buying, Google has, over the years,
created relationships with think tanks that would have criticized the
tech giant’s crony capitalist ways under different circumstances.
According
to the Washington Post, Google has embarked on a quest to woo
free market organizations by populating “elite think-tanks such as
the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the New
America Foundation” with its fellows, including “young lawyers,
writers and thinkers paid by the company.”
From the
Post:
“To
critics, Google’s investments have effectively shifted the national
discussion away from Internet policy questions that could affect the
company’s business practices. Groups that might ordinarily
challenge the policies and practices of a major corporation are
holding their fire, those critics say.”
Claiming
to be defenders of privacy, Google successfully waged an aggressive
lobbying campaign within Washington to defeat a congressional effort
that could have put Google in the middle of a very nasty antitrust
fight.
After supporting the
European Union’s antitrust prosecution of Microsoft, Google found
itself the target of the same type of scrutiny, being accused of
unfairly discriminating against users.
With
the excuse of going after companies like Google for antitrust law
violations, Congress came up with the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA),
a bill disguised as an anti-online piracy fix that would have allowed
the federal government to target “illegal copies of films
and other forms of media hosted on foreign servers.” The bill would
have hurt Google the most because the search engine would have
several results deleted from its database, requiring“ISPs to
remove URLs from the Web, which is also known as censorship last time
I checked,” Google chairman Eric Schmidt said.
Just
one month before SOPA was unveiled by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX),
Schmidt appeared before Congress during a Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) hearing where a Republican senator “accused the
company of skewing search results to benefit its own products and
hurt competitors.” As this hearing took place and Google was
grilled by lawmakers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Motion
Picture Association of America lobbies pushed Congress to pass harsh
anti-privacy legislation, accusing companies like Google of giving
users access to pirated music and movies.
Afraid
of the backlash caused by the hearing, Google feared the
Hollywood lobby would end up hurting many of its partners, as well as
smaller organizations directly tied to Google. But the search engine
giant had a way out — its aggressive lobbying and partnership
building skills.
As
SOPA appeared poised for passage, Google and several other tech
firms stood in opposition and the bill finally failed.
While
SOPA was, indeed, a farce — and privacy advocates in
Washington were happy the bill didn’t see the light of day —
it’s important to note how hard Google worked to keep it from
becoming a reality, putting the Silicon Valley giant closer to
powerful institutions that, in theory, are against crony
capitalism.
But
after SOPA, the FTC went back to the drawing board, threatening to
investigate Google’s alleged antitrust violations further. At
the time, the “company’s rivals, including Microsoft and Yelp,
were aggressively pressing arguments that Google was exploiting its
dominance in the search business.”
Reaching
out to another partner, George Mason University’s Law &
Economics Center, Google and the university put together “the
first of three academic conferences at the GMU law school’s
Arlington County campus,” which, according to the Washington
Post, helped to shape the FTC’s approach to the Google probe from
then on.
At
the third academic conference held at GMU, Google remained present as
a silent partner. As “[a] strong contingent of FTC economists and
lawyers were on hand for the May 16, 2012, session,” the Washington
Post reported, research financially backed by Google was
presented by GMU lawyers and economists. And “[i]n January 2013,
after an investigation that spanned more than a year and a half, the
FTC settled the case with Google, which agreed to give its rivals
more access to patents and make it easier for advertisers to use
other ad platforms.”
From
the publication:
“But
when it came to the charges that Google biased its search results to
promote its own products, the five FTC commissioners all voted to
close the investigation, saying there was no evidence the company’s
practices were harming consumers.”
As
Google became more involved with politics, other lobbying
opportunities would arise.
More
recently, Google got involved in yet another powerful
lobbying effort, which started when the company hired the former
administrator of the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration to serve as the company’s Director of Safety
for Self-Driving Cars, proving the revolving door that presidential
candidate Barack Obama promised to nix is still alive and well.
The effort paid off, and personal injury attorneys are
now concerned that Google may try to push still more
regulations, forcing regulators to stick the human driver with the
blame for crashes and getting Google’s autonomous driving system
off the hook.
Whether
YouTube’s ad policy has anything to do with its parent company’s
politics is impossible to determine. But as we analyze Google’s
influence in Washington, it’s important to note that, whether you
agree with the tech giant on none, some, or all issues, governments
create the incentives for companies like Google to continue
rent-seeking.
As
the economist David R. Henderson puts it, individuals “are
said to seek rents when they try to obtain benefits for themselves
through the political arena. … licensed electricians and doctors
[for instance] often lobby to keep regulations in place that restrict
competition from unlicensed electricians or doctors.” Companies
like Google are champions of this practice, which has
helped to protect the brand’s popularity by keeping
competitors at bay.
So
it’s not a surprise to see many claiming their content is
being censored by Google’s YouTube. After all, with the amount
of power the company holds in Washington, it’s as if Google -
or Alphabet - is an actual wing of the government.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.