The New York Times lamented, “For the New Far Right, YouTube Has Become the New Talk Radio,” saying, “They deplore ‘social justice warriors,’ whom they credit with ruining popular culture, conspiring against the populace and helping to undermine ‘the West.’ They are fixated on the subjects of immigration, Islam and political correctness. They seem at times more animated by President Trump’s opponents than by the man himself, with whom they share many priorities, if not a style.”525
YouTube has changed the world. Sociologist Philip N. Howard quoted an Arab Spring activist on the power of YouTube back in 2010 as saying activists used, “Facebook to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world.”526 This was before Facebook (and Twitter) enabled users to upload and share videos directly there as well, and while we may now take for granted the ability to upload videos online and share them with the world, YouTube first put this power in the hands of ordinary people, and it was truly revolutionary.
The mega-viral Kony 2012 video, which received over 100 million views, was credited with encouraging the U.S. Senate to introduce a resolution against African warlord Joseph Kony, which they did just two weeks after the video was posted.527
A YouTube video is even said to have cost Mitt Romney the 2012 election after his comments at a $50,000 per plate dinner were secretly recorded by a bartender at the event, where Romney complained that 47% percent of Americans would never vote for him because they’re dependent on the government for handouts.528 That video was posted on YouTube just a month and a half before the election and immediately went viral, changing the entire tone.
While it started as primarily a user-generated content platform, once major corporations realized the power of YouTube, they started focusing on getting in on the action. It took a while for major media companies to see the potential and significance of it, but eventually the major news and entertainment networks began using the platform and were given favoritism and special features by YouTube, like anti-piracy monitoring (Content ID), and the ability to edit videos after they were already posted.529 The home page now mostly consists of corporate sponsored videos, and what was once a community of small and independent video producers has been completely hijacked by the big media corporations.
As with Facebook and Twitter, YouTube has a Trending tab which features the supposedly most watched videos of the day, but just a quick look at the ranking of the videos and the amount of views they have can tell you that their Trending section is censored and manipulated too, or as a YouTube spokesman calls it, “a little human curation.”530 A brief look at the tab on most days shows many videos which hardly have any views but are manually placed on the list, hoping to artificially cause them to go viral because they promote political or social agendas that YouTube wants to further.
YouTube has also admitted that they manipulate the search results for certain topics to favor news reports from mainstream media channels over regular, independent ones.531 They did this to put “more reliable and trustworthy” videos at the top of the page after “conspiracy” videos populated the top spots for certain searches.532 Previously, the most-watched videos, or videos with the most engagement (comments and likes) were the top search results, no matter what channel they were from, but that is no longer the case. YouTube is now playing favorites with the major media companies, even if their videos barely have any views.
While most people just saw YouTube as a place to upload funny videos of their pets or their kids (remember Charlie Bit My Finger?), others saw the amazing power in being able to upload news segments so they could email the links to their friends◦— and when social media would come on the scene, share them there as well. There were also people like myself who started making our own videos giving our analysis of current events and uploading them to share our thoughts with anyone who would watch.
When I first got started making YouTube videos in 2006, smartphones didn’t have video cameras in them, so the only people making YouTube videos were those who had camcorders, and to make the videos look and sound like they weren’t shot in your basement, you had to have lighting kits, external microphones, and editing software; all of which cost money. Today a single smartphone has a high enough quality camera and microphone for anyone to record a vlog or an interview, and it looks and sounds pretty good, but in the early days of YouTube it took some equipment, money, and know-how to be able to make videos.
Now anyone with a cellphone can record a high quality video of anything◦— from a protest, or an interview with someone, to just a simple commentary on a current event, and it can be seen by just as many people as something that airs on the major television networks. What once took millions of dollars of equipment and infrastructure, not to mention a staff of skilled people, can now be accomplished by one person using a device that fits in the palm of their hand.
As YouTube “stars” got larger followings than many actors on network television, the sharks smelled blood in the water, and began circling. The Hillary Clinton campaign began recruiting YouTubers to encourage their audience to support her in the 2016 election since they had so much influence over their fans. Vanity Fair wrote, “The Clinton Campaign Deploys Its Secret Weapon: YouTubers,” and pointed out that they recruited three popular YouTubers to help her appeal to voters in swing states just a week and a half before the election.533
The Clinton campaign got YouTubers to make endorsement videos for her in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida. One of the videos, shot by Todrick Hall, who has two and a half million subscribers, consisted of him “surprising” a fan of his who said she wasn’t sure if she was voting, so he decided to visit her and encourage her to vote for Hillary Clinton. “I’m partnering with Hillary Clinton for America, because I want everybody to come out and vote, and I want everyone to make the right vote, and I believe the right vote is Hillary Clinton,” he said.534
Another YouTuber, GloZell Green, who has 4.5 million subscribers but can barely get 20,000 views on a video because her novelty skits of eating gross foods quickly wore off, also posted a video which consisted of her meeting a “super fan” to talk to her about why she should vote for Hillary Clinton.535 Barack Obama also met with YouTubers hoping to help Hillary. He sat down for live interviews with several poplar YouTubers, one of which was also GloZell Green, who is best known for taking a bath in a tub full of milk and cereal.536 While many YouTubers aren’t household names, their fans can be very dedicated and easily influenced, which is why both Hillary and Obama tried to tap into their audiences.
As independent content creators began dominating the platform and amassing huge followings of millions of people, all while working from their basement or bedroom; the “powers that be” got so concerned that their information monopoly was collapsing, they had to do something to stop it. When channels like mine and Alex Jones, and Next News Network are getting more viewers than CNN, MSNBC, and other major ‘news’ networks, you know that industry insiders are panicking, not only because they’re losing millions of viewers, but because they’re losing the ability to control the narrative surrounding major issues.
Censorship is a problem that slowly kept creeping up on YouTube in the form of giving channels “Community Guidelines strikes” and deleting videos their moderators thought constituted ‘hate speech’ or ‘bullying,’ but as channels like mine began getting millions of views a week, YouTube began to regret the ‘monsters’ that they helped to create, and new Orwellian censorship tactics were implemented.