Slashdot Mirror
Why I'm a Defender of YouTube (vortex.com)
Lauren Weinstein writes: In a time of fascist politicians spouting simplistic slogans about race, religion, terrorism, and censorship, along with whatever other pandering platitudes they believe will win them votes, prestige, power, and control — it's worth remembering how much good the Internet brings us, and how much poorer we'd all be in so many ways for the shackling of Internet services like YouTube, in the name of such self-serving proclamations and damaging false solutions.
Sorry, who are you? YouTube is the successful product of a wealthy and powerful company. It doesn't need defending.
Youtube's biggest problem isn't really the struggle that the article presents, it's that it's a monolithic entity that can be censored or manipulated by the nation-state, even if that state is limited to blocking. It's also subject to the whims of the corporation that owns it, as was demonstrated very poignantly by the integration of a social networking site and the adjustment of the way that usernames and the comments system function.
Granted, Youtube is not the sole video site on the Internet for personal content, and sometimes the huge amount of content that is acceptable to a nation-state makes it hard for them to justify blocking the whole site just to get a little bit of unacceptable content, but when one site emerges as the de facto default it becomes more likely that users don't even consider other sites or other options. Usually a competitive system is a healthy system, and this lack of competition threatens the health as it leaves the concept threatened to unilateral manipulation despite the interests of the users.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I replied to one of these "YouTube is not a news source" groupie for HRC and it really dawned on me how important the collection, aggregation and the ability to compare and contrast news stories is - really critical if one wants to be well informed at a time when bias and outright lies are being propagated throughout the media.
will work for dragon quest localization
Newspeak for 'people I don't agree with'.
"In a time of fascist politicians spouting simplistic slogans about race, religion, terrorism, and censorship, along with whatever other pandering platitudes they believe will win them votes, prestige, power, and control..."
Which is to say *all* politicians.
Who are you?
What on earth are you talking about?
Why do you write a sentence instead of a summary?
Why the hell is that sentence so long and so difficult to read?
Even if I was interested in what you had to say, I don't know why or what you're on about. But any inkling I may have had to click that link has disappeared due to fear that I will have to spend 10 minutes attempting to understand what each poorly constructed sentence actually means.
The only time in memory that I can think of a fascist action against youtube or a youtube poster, was after the Benghazi embassy was attacked, and some guy was arrested and imprisoned for posting a video critical of Islam. I'm sure that's not the kind of Fascism that TIMMMAAAY! or Ms. Weinstein had in mind, as I'm sure they are both Obama, and Clinton supporters. They should really re-evaluate their political inclinations. Nice straw man, though.
In a time of fascist politicians spouting simplistic slogans about race, religion, terrorism, and censorship, along with whatever other pandering platitudes they believe will win them votes, prestige, power, and control — it's worth remembering how much good the Internet brings us, and how much poorer we'd all be in so many ways for the shackling of Internet services like YouTube, in the name of such self-serving proclamations and damaging false solutions.
So there are bad politicians trying to gather power. And because of that bad thing, it is somehow worth remembering that the internet is good. Furthermore without that good we would be very poor somehow in many ways without the "shackling of Internet services" ... uh what? "in the name of such self-serving proclamations..." - oh wait the politicians are self-serving and youtube has damaging false solutions? No...
Yeah so, can anyone turn that run on sentence into an actual coherent thought?
One thing has struck me recently, which is that YouTube allows us to catch out misrepresentations and media bias.
In previous years, we would *only* have the media interpretations of current events. My parents, for instance, would read the newspaper article about some incident or other, and have no way to judge whether the opinions and position were in any way correct.
Nowadays we can easily dig down to the source, and verify what we are told.
As an example that everyone knows about, we can look to some of the things said about Trump:
What he actually said:
They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.
An accurate representation of what he said was "some illegal immigrants are criminals", which is true simply by the law of averages, with the implication that if they went through a vetting procedure we could perhaps filter out the criminal portion.
This was taken so completely out of context that WaPo rephrased it as "He referred to Mexicans as “rapists.", with the implication that he insulted the entire population of another country, and a fair portion of our own citizens.
It's highly interesting to me that, as individuals, we now have the ability to find the evidence and come to our own conclusions, rather than blindly listen to the pronouncements of the elite.
And a little bit, I think that's why Trump's supporters are so immovable. When the MSM cries "but he's a *racist*!", most of the people who were at the rally think "he didn't actually say that".
It's definitely interesting the effect that YouTube has had on the political landscape.
Which is far more interesting than TFA's actual "summary-run-on-sentence".
YouTube opened a whole world of learning available to people. YouTube is more than just entertainment, it's educational and informative as well. It's almost the best thing to come to the Internet since the World Wide Web.
If you're going to start your post with "I AM AN IDIOT", how can you expect other people to take you seriously?
Being able to control the information being fed to the population creates a tremendous of control over that population. Television and radio are loudspeakers into people's homes. And now so is the Internet. Television and radio are very strictly controlled by those that own the airwaves, and a very expensive medium on which to advertise.
Being able to control information on the Internet is a very dear goal to the powers that be, either elected or not-elected. ALL spectrums of politicians want this power, not just the ones you or I disagree with.
If it wasn't for YouTube, I'd never have learned that Alex Jones was a secret agent for the Knights of Malta and the Jesuits.
https://youtu.be/0ZLIoEOjNhY
I'd never have learned that the Moon was a hologram.
https://youtu.be/_3axPn65MGM
I wouldn't have learned that jet fuel can't melt steel beams.
https://youtu.be/DXRDq9nKJ0U
And most important, I'd never have learned that Jay-Z was an Illuminati time-traveler,
https://youtu.be/-lf4zco47Gc ...and possibly a clone.
https://youtu.be/AYDRHySPyDE
So don't you fucking tell me that YouTube doesn't need defending. There's no better place to learn the truth than a platform where anyone can have a voice. We don't need journalists when we can get the straight shit from other people like us.
You are welcome on my lawn.