[Peace-discuss] Censorship ahoy! YouTube clamps down on establishment-challenging media

[J.B. Nicholson]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=FQ7zy2hZxcw -- Jimmy Dore interviews Jordan Chariton of 
"Status Coup" discussing how YouTube is:

* dishonestly representing popularity numbers (such as subscribers) by altering 
users' YouTube subscriptions (users find that some subscriptions are removed for them 
by YouTube without the user's consent). This occurs in both directions: alternative 
news loses subscribers and establishment media increases subscribers or remains 
inexplicably high. This video covers both, and Jimmy Dore has given a compelling 
argument explaining why The Young Turks' subscriber counts are high but somehow 
maintains very low live show viewership. CNN knows that Jimmy Dore gets more viewers 
than CNN does, and CNN hates this.

* unpublishing videos for a variety of reasons including falsely claiming copyright 
infringement -- Status Coup (SC) shot video at a Trump rally. SC's video appeared on 
CNN (including CNN's YouTube uploads). SC's copy of their video was labeled as a 
'copyright strike' allegedly infringing on someone else's copyright while CNN's copy 
of the same footage remained on YouTube.

NASA has the same problem with its footage being taken down or flagged for alleged 
copyright problems:

- with "bogus copyright claims" according to Condé Nast (per 
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/false-natgeo-copyright-claim-took-nasas-launch-video-down-this-weekend/

- 
https://9to5google.com/2012/08/06/nasas-official-mars-landing-video-got-taken-off-youtube-after-fictitious-copyright-claim-from-scripps/ 
on a false DMCA claim by Scripps against NASA.

- 
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110725/05302515238/did-ap-claim-copyright-public-domain-nasa-pictures.shtml 
when Associated Press tried to take copyright over NASA's work which is often added 
to the public domain.


The show gets one big point right: this is not a "right vs. left" fight. Arguing over 
whose speech is more hindered goes nowhere because that mischaracterizes the fight 
and points to no solution. This is a popular mistaken talking point for lesser 
discussion shows like a disappointing new RT show called "Eat the Press". A more 
productive way to see who the players are is to think of a three way split: those who 
challenge the establishment, those who aren't a threat to the establishment, and 
those who support/buoy the establishment. Most uploaders will fill the second 
category. Jimmy Dore (for now) is a member of the latter category and CNN a member of 
the first category. Dore has remained consistent that he'd become an establishment 
hawk if it paid well enough.

Unfortunately this Dore/Chariton interview comes with advice that doesn't convince me 
that they understand the scope of the problem: Chariton and Dore address the common 
response "you should switch to (some other system)" but their response (join Rokfin 
and Twitch in addition to YouTube) is not compelling. So long as that other system is 
a single point of censorship like YouTube is, switching is no real solution. If 
Rokfin, Twitch (owned by Amazon), or one's own site becomes popular then the same 
pressure can and will be exerted on them to stop anyone from challenging the 
establishment.

The catch is:

- everything deployed on the Internet in a single-server arrangement has 
failure/censorship built into it.

- anything deployed in a decentralized fashion is harder to take down but doesn't 
have a ready-made business model built into it (which is what commercial operations 
like Chariton's Status Coup is looking for even though he doesn't explicitly call for 
this in this interview; instead he makes reference to paying for things like a 
working trip to Flint, Michigan to do reporting).

There are no easy answers. There is no simple 'use this instead' solution that will 
deliver censor-free delivery of programs to anyone where the delivery mechanism also 
makes money and shares a portion of that money with popular uploaders. As Glenn 
Greenwald can attest to, so long as you're supplying your material to someone else or 
some organization you can be censored if you become a threat to the relevant 
establishment.

The best we have now is to convince one's audience to pay and perhaps offer 
additional material to incentivize payment (Jimmy Dore hosts a subscribers-only show 
and access to the live show archive, to name a couple of examples). Greenwald offers 
limited access to articles for non-subscribers and subscribers get full access to 
older articles plus a subscriber-only audio show.