Singer Elton John and his ‘husband’ were involved in a sex scandal in the UK when it came to light that their ‘marriage’ was really just a sham and that they had engaged in threesomes with other men.592 And after news of this broke in the British tabloids, Elton John got a court order to block every news outlet in England from reporting on the story.593
After I posted a YouTube video about the legal threats I received after tweeting about the censorship, the video was soon blocked in the UK as well. Fans from England sent me screenshots showing my video was blocked in their region after they clicked on the link I posted on my Facebook page. Anyone living in the UK who went directly to my YouTube channel (YouTube.com/MarkDice) just simply didn’t see the video at all. It’s an ongoing battle for many of us YouTubers to keep our videos (and our entire channels) from being deleted. I wasn’t given any warning for this, but since I was aware that Elton John was silencing the media in the UK, and having Twitter send out legal threats to people tweeting about it, it was pretty clear what was happening.594
People and companies often abuse YouTube’s copyright policy and file DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] takedown notices on peoples’ videos when they include clips of their content for purposes of criticism, which is fully allowed under fair use laws, but sometimes people file these false copyright claims in attempts to have the criticism removed.595 Various social justice warriors have been accused of filing false DMCA claims against their critics, and even some videogame developers have been accused of abusing DMCA takedowns to have negative reviews of their games deleted.596
It is possible that the constant pushback against the politically correct ‘Thought Police’ may eventually cause advertisers and YouTube to loosen their restrictions on ‘offensive’ or ‘controversial’ content, but it’s an uphill battle and one that at this point we are losing by a landslide. The days of most smaller conservative YouTubers being able to make a living using the website is probably a thing of the past.597 And even for larger channels like mine, it’s a constant struggle.
You may be wondering, ‘doesn’t YouTube need to make money from advertisers?’ ‘Wouldn’t demonetizing so many videos cost them money as well?’ At this point there may be so many ‘brand friendly’ videos that it won’t matter to YouTube if they don’t run ads on channels like mine, because there are so many others available that they see as being ‘safe.’ It also appears that YouTube has changed its revenue model, so they no longer need content creators to make videos to place ads on like they once did.
Shortly after the “Ad-pocalypse” (the advertiser apocalypse as we call it), YouTube announced YouTube TV and started going after cable TV providers like Cox, Time Warner, and Dish Network, by offering people the same basic cable service through the YouTube TV app on their smart TVs, tablets, and phones.598 Like a parasite that sucked the blood out of its host until it died, YouTube has simply moved on to other ways to generate money, and left thousands of full-time content creators in the dust◦— people like me who had largely relied upon revenue from making YouTube videos to pay our bills.
YouTubers franticly scrambled to try and stay afloat and many went to a fan-funded model though Patreon or started making money from livestreaming through Super Chat donations, where users pay to ask them questions. Many started asking for direct donations through PayPal, Bitcoin, and other crowdsourcing methods. Others started selling merchandise like T-shirts and coffee mugs or began getting their own sponsors through MCNs (Multi Channel Networks) or 3rd party ad agencies.
In previous generations most kids wanted to grow up to be a professional athlete, a rock star, or an actor; but the millennial generation and generation Z all wanted to be YouTubers because it seemed like a life of freedom, fun, and easy money; but the heyday of truly independent YouTubers who do and say whatever they want is over. With the wheels having fallen off the gravy train for many, what was once a dream job has become more of just a job, or even a hobby now that many have had to get ‘real jobs’ to pay their bills since YouTube’s monetization program has collapsed. As bad as all this is, unfortunately YouTube continues to tighten the restrictions on what people are allowed to post even if it’s not monetized.
YouTube announced they were going to further censor ‘controversial’ content and teamed up with the ADL [Anti-Defamation League] a ‘civil rights’ agency which has the sole purpose of ‘fighting bigotry’◦— an organization whose standards for what is ‘extremist’ content is so low that they labeled Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character used in pro-Trump memes, a ‘hate symbol.’599
In a blog post YouTube admitted, “We’ve started rolling out features from Jigsaw’s Redirect Method to YouTube. When people search for sensitive keywords on YouTube, they will be redirected towards a playlist of curated YouTube videos that directly confront and debunk violent extremist messages. We also continue to amplify YouTube voices speaking out against hate and radicalization through our YouTube Creators for Change program.”600
Of course, to YouTube it is considered ‘extremist propaganda’ if someone says that there are only two genders, or if they say it’s disgusting to allow a man who thinks he’s a woman to shower in the girl’s locker room, or if someone doesn’t support gay marriage, or if they want to secure the U.S./Mexico border and deport criminal illegal aliens from the United States.
In an interview with CNN, YouTube’s CEO Susan Wojcicki was asked if she had experienced any “sexism” in the tech industry since it is dominated by men, and after thinking silently for a moment◦— not wanting to disappoint the interviewer with a “no,” she responded that she has experienced sexist “microaggressons” such as when men “interrupt” her while she’s talking, or when men say something that “annoys” her.601 Those were literally her examples of “sexism” in Silicon Valley, so you can see why the company considers videos criticizing feminists and other aspects of the Leftists’ agenda as “hate speech.”
Many viewers who have seen her interviews wonder how she could possibly be the CEO of any company, let alone YouTube, because she seems like a complete idiot. Many suspect nepotism is the reason she got the job because her sister married Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin.602 (Google is the parent company of YouTube◦— or was◦— now it’s Alphabet Inc., which is the new parent company due to corporate restructuring.)
In July of 2017, just as the crackdown on conservative channels was ramping up, she tweeted out a photo of herself meeting with The Young Turks host Cenk Uyger, the biggest liberal ‘news’ channel on the platform, thanking him for stopping by YouTube’s headquarters.603 So it’s clear that she’s playing favorites, and you can see which team she is on, and that the liberal rot at YouTube is coming directly from the head.
Some people are turning to other platforms, including decentralized peer-to-peer file sharing networks and even blockchain technology to avoid YouTube censorship. So if my channel ever gets deleted, check out my Facebook page or Twitter feed (if they’re still up) so you can find links to my videos (wherever they’re being hosted) and see where I’ve moved to, if it comes to that. But in the meantime, I hope you’ll subscribe to me at YouTube.com/MarkDice and visit the channel regularly for new videos.
Google is more than just a search engine. It is the closest thing to an all-powerful information monopoly the planet has ever seen. Not only does it account for 90% of Internet searches in most countries,604 and run the Android operating system on 80% of the world’s smartphones and tablets,605 and own YouTube◦— the largest video sharing site in the world; but the company is also trying to give birth to the world’s first artificial intelligence. They’re even hoping to make humans immortal.606 In 2015 Alphabet Inc. was created as part of a corporate restructuring and is now the parent company of Google and its many subsidiaries.