YouTube is addressing a corporate boycott: Advertising sponsors are withdrawing ads, but the solution involves disproportionately censoring channels that are not politically correct, specifically anything remotely conservative.
Google AdSense, a program enabling YouTube publishers to receive ad revenue from corporate sponsors, caused titan corporations like AT&T, Verizon, Starbucks, Wal-Mart, Pepsi, and several others to pull their advertising from YouTube because their ads reportedly are premiering on channels with terroristic and hateful content.
In an effort to comply with corporate demands, YouTube has secretly enforced their restricted mode to hide age-inappropriate content, shield comments from all videos, and allow third-party media firms to evaluate which channels and videos should receive ad revenue. But it appears much of the content caught in this censorship sweep are conservative channels.
YouTube users under the age of 16 years old are affected by restricted mode, and while YouTube does have a kids app and parental controls, it appears channels with a conservative slant are unfairly invisible while their liberal counterparts have most of their videos viewable.
For example, The Young Turks on “restricted mode” is the same as The Young Turks on “unrestricted mode.”
Lowder with Crowder on “restricted mode,” however, is completely different than Lowder with Crowder on “unrestricted mode.”
In addition to delisting videos, YouToube is demonetizing on existing and newer videos.
Google is partnering with third-party media firms that will monitor ads on reported channels to secure “brand safety,” according to Bloomberg. Its partners announced so far are comScore Inc. and Integral Ad Science Inc. — but a closer investigation reveals these given firms have partnerships with broadcasting and online organizations like Sinclair Broadcast Group or AOL. This would mean corporate newsrooms and media affiliates can determine what is offensive.
Although Johnson & Johnson vowed to reverse their castigation, they are the only Fortune 500 company signaling satisfaction for Google’s new procedures.
In what eerily sounds like Facebook emboldening fact-checking websites like Snopes and PolitiFacts filtering fake news, YouTube’s newfound monitoring partners, at the very minimum, are a conflict of interests. But at maximum, YouTube will be a corrupted platform where uniqueness and an honest living once were compatible.
“The YouTube ad boycott has pushed Google to beef up its policing. In its initial response, Google expanded its definition of hate speech to include marginalized groups,” according to Bloomberg. “Now it’s adding a new filter to disable ads on ‘dangerous and derogatory content,’ the company said. That includes language that promotes negative stereotypes about targeted groups or denies ‘sensitive historical events’ such as the Holocaust.”
YouTube is one of the few and biggest social media platforms where progressive channels are floundering in popularity.
A simple solution in decreasing the volume of profitable extremists would be to grant AdSense to verified accounts and established personnel, but YouTube took it upon itself to flush liberal-opposing commentators because the presumed media biased indicates criticizing or upsetting marginalized groups, regardless the situation, is wrong and punishable.
As 250 companies suspend their ads on a website struggling to break-even, a $750 million loss is potentially awaiting YouTube, according to Business Insider.
Furthermore, “brand safety” is not guaranteed under restricted mode or massive demonetization. Plenty of disturbing videos are still available for children, featuring ads, and Disney and Warner Bros. properties: Spider-Man stealing Anna’s underpants while she was unconscious, Elsa and Spider-Man drinking from the toilet, and my personal fave, a video of a green witch stabbing Elsa’s baby in the bottom with a syringe.
