Youtube is releasing an updated “terms of service” that has many content creators highly concerned, for just as we here at Shoebat.com have experienced with the abrupt deletion of our videos, that this new “agreement” will allow for a “legalized” form of censorship.
YouTube is rolling out updated terms of service on December 10th, and a new line acts as a reminder that the company doesn’t have to keep any video up that it doesn’t want to.
“YouTube is under no obligation to host or serve content,” the new terms of service policy reads.
It’s another way of saying that just because YouTube is a relatively open platform, it doesn’t mean that the company is required to keep videos up.
YouTube has faced criticism from all sides over its video removal process. Some critics argue that YouTube could do more to take down videos that butt up against the company’s rules but don’t outright violate them; others argue that YouTube ought to be a fully open platform and shouldn’t control what remains up and what doesn’t. Executives have long defended the platform as a champion of free speech, but have started to clamp down on the type of videos allowed to circulate.
Companies update their terms of service all the time — this is YouTube’s third change just in 2019. These latest updates seemingly coincide with upcoming changes YouTube will make in accordance with new Federal Trade Commission guidelines for YouTube, although a YouTube rep denies these changes were made because of the FTC ruling. (source)
The main issue is how YouTube is used.
Right now, there are a lot of videos that are being hidden for whatever reason- political or not -and I am not speaking about “censored” videos by people (Lauren Southern, etc.) who would seem to delete their own material and then claim persecution to cause a controversy. Rather, the issues is of how Youtube is perceived, and this is a generational issue.
Zoomers tend only use Youtube as if it’s an ‘app’, by clicking a bunch of pre-selected ‘popular’ videos. It is largely Gen Xers and Millennials, generally skewed 30 and up, who use Youtube as a ‘website’ now. The Zoomers are the target market of Youtube these days and that goes hand in hand with the move toward what is apparently a censored, consolidated, homogenous Internet because Zoomers don’t really use computers or “browse websites” in terms of tools, but rather as toys and occasional educational tools.
This is an important change for them. Rather than banning people for content they don’t like, they can say it is just not ‘viable’. THAT is important because Youtube can retain the protection of a ‘platform’ and not be classed as a ‘publisher’. This change allows them to do that while also censoring people in a serious way, allowing them to persecute everyone for any reason. This problem already exists now, but the new policy gives YouTube free reins to delete and censor anyone for no real reason at all.
This choice is not about money, it’s about power and control. Google already has enough money to tell the entire planet what they want them to watch, as their position as the most used video platform along with their inseparable union from the technocratic bloc that controls society along with the financial and industrial blocs all operate from a similar point of view. Thus it is wrong to say that “Youtube is broken”, because to the contrary, the company is doing exactly what they intend to do, which is manufacturing a uniform consent for a particular political ethos, and then removing those who disagree from public discourse in a way that has global impacts.
The Internet is changing rapidly, and these new “terms of service”, while expected, are a part of this.
For those who want to remain in the “alternative media”, now is the time to start distributing one’s content to other servers such as Bitchute, DTube, DailyMotion, and others, because while they are still proportionately smaller as far as market share is concerned, this is an attempt to move towards a “TV” style model for the future.
Television years ago was said to be something that people would have a choice over. Instead, the opposite happened. Youtube has returned to original promise of the TV model to what it was, and these “changes” are a direct attempt to reverse this.
Beware of the changes, and start saving as much as one can, for it is not unreasonable to say that given the changes taking place, that one may be starting to witness the greatest “shutting down” or, perhaps, “closing off” of knowledge in human history.