• iie [they/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 days ago

    I have zero proof but for a long time now youtube has just felt vaguely psyopped to me. The avalanche of far-right and manosphere content with zero pushback, the automated removal of even the most decorous pro-palestinian or leftist speech while seething bigotry somehow gets through, the opaque proprietary algorithms that run the site without accountability or oversight. We already know that most of these sites actively collaborate with US intelligence, we know about the NSA backdoors. It just feels off to me. Maybe I’m coping

    • Simon 𐕣he 🪨 Johnson@lemmy.ml
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      3 days ago

      It’s not a psyop. It’s kids. The dirty secret is that the majority of ad money is spent practically advertising to children because they’re online the most. Tate is a perfect example of this, just views and ad revenue driven mostly by little boys.

      Most podcasts today hide their Patreon or premium numbers because it would be very easy to track outliers that have tons of free subs vs paid subs – because an excess of free subs means the audience is children.

      YouTube became the biggest Podcast Platform because on all of the other ones there are various payment barriers.

      https://podnews.net/press-release/children-podcasts-uta

    • Belly_Beanis [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      2 days ago

      Steve Bannon dumped a huge chunk of change into YouTube to fuel Gamergate. He talked about radicalizing young men through the internet way back in like 2009. The Kochs followed his example, pumping more traditional media personalities (Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro, etc.) full of cash on YouTube, Facebook, and other social media sites.

      It’s no coincidence YouTube was mostly cat videos, video game compilations, music, and sketch comedy for a long-ass time, then there were hundreds of rightwing grifters practically overnight doing 4 hour rants about Zoey Quinn.