Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
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Speaker 3: Hello, and welcome back to Netflix. My name is Matt,
Speaker 3: my name is Nol.
Speaker 2: They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 2: super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
Speaker 2: are you You specifically you are you. You are also
Speaker 2: here right now, and that makes this the stuff they
Speaker 2: don't want you to know. Previously on Stuff they don't
Speaker 2: want you to know, we explored the origin and the
Speaker 2: controversy surrounding the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: It's a pun that we're not giving up on. Please
Speaker 2: check out chapter one before you continue to chapter two.
Speaker 2: What do you say? Guys? Should we just drop in
Speaker 2: and media arrests?
Speaker 3: And before we do, reminder you have to watch on
Speaker 3: YouTube reactions to Pete and Boss for the first time.
Speaker 3: It's one of the best things you can do on YouTube.
Speaker 4: So here we go, joining us already in progress. The
Speaker 4: absolute volume of content on YouTube is a feature, not
Speaker 4: a bug, and there is no possible way that that
Speaker 4: could be policed, so to speak, by YouTube themselves, except
Speaker 4: when it kind of benefits them, right.
Speaker 3: Well, that was one of the main things YouTube was
Speaker 3: concerned with in the beginning, right, just like Facebook, just
Speaker 3: like all these other social media platforms, about the terrible
Speaker 3: things that could be uploaded. If you give that tool
Speaker 3: to everybody who can possibly make a video or put
Speaker 3: video up, there's danger there, right, And is it their fault?
Speaker 3: It might be their fault if it goes up and
Speaker 3: everybody sees it. So we as a company have to
Speaker 3: protect ourselves more than anyone for sure, that kind of stuff, right.
Speaker 4: And I mean, obviously there are safeguards in place that
Speaker 4: would prevent someone from, say uploading a video of like
Speaker 4: murder or violent sticking place or something really horrific like that.
Speaker 4: But then it gets a little more nuanced when it
Speaker 4: comes to like ideological content and like what is and
Speaker 4: is not okay and what is incentivized and de incentivized.
Speaker 4: And I love then that you point on on the
Speaker 4: outline here. That's when we start getting into Acts of
Speaker 4: Congress and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as well as
Speaker 4: Communications Decency Act, and how those things kind of play
Speaker 4: into the way YouTube needs to approach this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and thank you for shouting those out, because the
Speaker 2: YouTube initiative runs into specific acts of Congress. You mentioned DMCA,
Speaker 2: which we are unfortunately quite well aware of, as well
Speaker 2: as the CDA Communications Decency Act, specifically section two three
Speaker 2: zero for anybody who wants to play along at home.
Speaker 2: Pretty much like the YouTube okay created in two thousand
Speaker 2: and five, they get into legal trouble as early as
Speaker 2: the next year. In two thousand and six, there is
Speaker 2: something called the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers
Speaker 2: and Publishers sent them a takedown request and they said, hey, YouTube,
Speaker 2: you got more than thirty thousand things that you got
Speaker 2: to take down. And Comedy Central, which is actually known
Speaker 2: for being cool and comedic, also sued for copyright infringement.
Speaker 3: But yeah, those companies, those producers of content, right, the
Speaker 3: traditional ones, TV, radio, movies, all that kind of.
Speaker 2: Stuff, we call the legacy ones.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the only way they make money is if you're
Speaker 3: watching it through one of the channels that's been curated
Speaker 3: for you to watch stuff on, right, where there's huge
Speaker 3: ad dollars.
Speaker 4: Well, of course, know, then they take on that. If
Speaker 4: you can't beat them, join them. Mentality where then, you know.
Speaker 2: Are vigorous, massively presence on YouTube.
Speaker 4: In fact, I think we could argue that they probably
Speaker 4: make just as much money off of viral YouTube clips
Speaker 4: of like The Daily Show and stuff than they do
Speaker 4: from people actually watching it on TV.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the old joke. It's the old joke. Good
Speaker 2: friend of the show. John Stewart also pointed as how
Speaker 2: years ago, it's weird that The Daily Show published DVD
Speaker 2: collections and later Blu ray collections because it was such
Speaker 2: a topical show. And what we're seeing here is a
Speaker 2: paradigm shift, right, a deep sea change wherein people are
Speaker 2: thinking less deeply about things. Right, I explain it to
Speaker 2: me in three minutes, Right, I just learned. I just
Speaker 2: learned that maybe Syria and Jordan don't always get along.
Speaker 2: But I've only got so long on my smoke breaks.
Speaker 2: So just explained it to me. Don't make me quote stuff,
Speaker 2: give me some stats that make me sound smart. That
Speaker 2: is what is happening.
Speaker 3: Let's think about the residual checks that got destroyed through
Speaker 3: all of this. That was the way artists made money, right,
Speaker 3: Bright Bright in two thousand and six, that's not that
Speaker 3: long ago. Twenty years ago. But it this advent of
Speaker 3: YouTube destroyed that entire way of making money, like just
Speaker 3: killed it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great point, Matt. And further, Okay, it
Speaker 2: gets stranger, folks, it gets more dangerous, the water gets
Speaker 2: ever deeper because we have been talking about corporations primarily.
Speaker 2: But around the same time, just within a year of
Speaker 2: YouTube going public for the people, various state powers also
Speaker 2: found YouTube problematic. This is when we see, you know,
Speaker 2: user generated content. I'm an activist, I'm a protester. I
Speaker 2: want people to know that this school is getting bombed
Speaker 2: by some world's military. I'm sharing news that my government
Speaker 2: doesn't want out there. Right, I'm becoming part of things
Speaker 2: like on the ground reporting of the Arab Spring for
Speaker 2: a few years back. Right. This is a This is
Speaker 2: a shift that is similar to American civilians seeing real
Speaker 2: world footage from the Vietnam War, testimonies of political prisoners,
Speaker 2: arguments against state suppression and their policies. By two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight, again just three years or three if you
Speaker 2: want it, in glorious bastard style, just three years after
Speaker 2: YouTube debuted, multiple countries have blocked part of YouTube content
Speaker 2: or block the platform entirely. And yes, of course this
Speaker 2: includes problematic, you know, authoritarian countries like Syria and China
Speaker 2: or Pakistan, but it also includes things like Brazil or
Speaker 2: Thailand or Turkey. YouTube was getting jammed up and their
Speaker 2: boardroom decided to make some changes. They said, hey, what's
Speaker 2: the point of making this if fewer and fewer people
Speaker 2: can actually use it?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: If we were global and people across the globe can't
Speaker 2: use it, then what kind of weird don quixote stuff
Speaker 2: are we doing? So YouTube started suspending user accounts. One
Speaker 2: I think we all remember back in O seven, the
Speaker 2: platform suspended the account of an Egyptian activist named Wail
Speaker 2: Abbas and part of my pronunciation there he was a
Speaker 2: blogger or a vlogger with a V as we would
Speaker 2: call them. He was an anti torture activist. And his
Speaker 2: whole thing was like he wasn't trying to sell bone,
Speaker 2: broth or gold. He said, hey, police in Egypt are
Speaker 2: torturing people, including women and children. I've got clips of
Speaker 2: this I could show you, and YouTube shut the guy down.
Speaker 2: And still they're rumors. We're being very diplomatic calling them rumors.
Speaker 2: There are sh as no ones say rumors that YouTube
Speaker 2: bent the knee to the Egyptian government, but they said
Speaker 2: their official stance has always been that no other users,
Speaker 2: just like you, they're the ones who complained. That's why
Speaker 2: we covered up these Egyptian war crimes.
Speaker 4: Well, and that's sort of the advent of the concept
Speaker 4: of deplatforming. You know, this is really kind of the
Speaker 4: early days of that, because I think that's one of
Speaker 4: the first mass you know, reach platforms other than like
Speaker 4: Facebook or whatever, which isn't really in the conversation so
Speaker 4: much anymore in that respect. That's why Facebook had to
Speaker 4: stay relevant by like buying Instagram. But we start to
Speaker 4: see later even like people on the right being deplatformed,
Speaker 4: and that kind of leading to radicalization on the on
Speaker 4: the right, further radicalization because they had to start their
Speaker 4: own companies like you know, truth Social and things like that,
Speaker 4: because they were no longer allowed to be on these
Speaker 4: more mass platforms like Instagram and YouTube specifically. So it's
Speaker 4: a fascinating kind of beginning of this whole culture war stuff, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So he did debate about censorship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we saw the splintering occur in real time
Speaker 3: in two thousand and six, two thousand and seven, when
Speaker 3: places like Shock. Websites like Orgish turned or I think
Speaker 3: it was Orgish Orgish, I can't remember, but they turned
Speaker 3: into livelyek dot com in like two thousand and six,
Speaker 3: two thousand and seven, and that's where you could go
Speaker 3: to you go to this new video channel place and
Speaker 3: watch Saddam Hussein get executed or if you wanted to
Speaker 3: see actual live battle Warm.
Speaker 2: World Star hip hop.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and and some of it is like like Orgish
Speaker 3: was gross, like Shock, like rotten dot com ference of
Speaker 3: type stuff. Yeah, but places like Lively tried to step
Speaker 3: up and say, hey, you can actually see what is
Speaker 3: happening in you know, war torn areas. You can see
Speaker 3: what's really happening on the ground in places, and you
Speaker 3: can just see that while YouTube is kind of changing
Speaker 3: and going towards the money and the advertiser happiness thing
Speaker 3: and trying to get the content the DCMA and the
Speaker 3: content stuff right, all these other places are attempting to
Speaker 3: fill in those spaces.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that happened with cable TV or you know, okay, no,
Speaker 4: let me let me phrase it's the same thing that
Speaker 4: happened to network TV when cable TV kind of swooped in.
Speaker 4: It's just an extension of that to a degree, right,
Speaker 4: because cable TV had a lot more freedom. Network TV
Speaker 4: had to play much nicer with the advertisers than eventually
Speaker 4: so did cable TV, and it just kind of like
Speaker 4: it just you know, kicks the can down the road.
Speaker 2: Right in the in the Abbas case in particular, YouTube
Speaker 2: claimed and has always claimed that censorship was not the
Speaker 2: end goal. The public, including by the way yours truly
Speaker 2: was skeptical. Now there are countless allegations that are only
Speaker 2: growing arguing that YouTube bends its own rules and will
Speaker 2: act on behalf of powerful companies or powerful countries and
Speaker 2: even authoritarian autocratic regimes and dictatorships. A lot of these
Speaker 2: haven't been proven. But at the same time we also see.
Speaker 4: We of course they will like it just seems like
Speaker 4: it's common sense that the degree to which they've become
Speaker 4: the big guy, that it behooves them to do just
Speaker 4: that they're no longer out there to spread quote unquote
Speaker 4: truth and unfettered information. They have a lot more shareholders
Speaker 4: to answer to. That's why you need the live leaks
Speaker 4: and the more kind of underground versions of what YouTube
Speaker 4: maybe used to be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting because at the same time, we see
Speaker 2: that there are numerous videos and accounts that are not
Speaker 2: publishing copyright infringement stuff, right, They're not publishing something that
Speaker 2: hits the narrative of a bully regime, which is all
Speaker 2: the bad guys are. They're just jerks who are bullies.
Speaker 2: But they these accounts are putting out heinous things, depictions
Speaker 2: of illegal acts, calls to violence, racist material, gross sex stuff,
Speaker 2: and so on. So now YouTube hit this Road to
Speaker 2: Damascus moment, right, they hit this moment of recognization, realization,
Speaker 2: something we call had come to Jesus moment. In the
Speaker 2: American South, they say, we're everywhere in the world. All
Speaker 2: these countries have different laws. Which laws of a given
Speaker 2: country do we as YouTube follow? And so in two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight they put out their rules for what
Speaker 2: they call violations of community guidelines, and it's a three
Speaker 2: strike thing. You screw up once, in their opinion, you
Speaker 2: get a warning. After six months you're back in the game.
Speaker 2: So they give you a yellow card. You know, they
Speaker 2: put you in time out. And I think everybody in
Speaker 2: the audience tonight is aware of the concept of time out,
Speaker 2: especially if you are a bad kid growing up. It's
Speaker 2: nuts because then They also had again to the point
Speaker 2: about power players. These are the real dangers for YouTube.
Speaker 2: Folks like Senator Joseph Lieberman called on YouTube to remove
Speaker 2: any video that had a logo of Outida Right, a
Speaker 2: terrorist group, and they said, also take away any videos
Speaker 2: that have any depiction of a logo or a sigil
Speaker 2: associated with a known terrorist group. And then YouTube bucked
Speaker 2: back and they said, look, these videos don't violate our
Speaker 2: policies against violence or hate speech. We have people singing
Speaker 2: songs a capella, or we have people who are talking
Speaker 2: about Al Qaeda in an analytical way, so you can't
Speaker 2: just automate taking that signal out. It's weird because you know,
Speaker 2: I mentioned the Arab uprisings for the Arab Spring in particular,
Speaker 2: this was another watershed moment. People around the world are
Speaker 2: seeing self immolation, They're seeing massive acts of horrendous violence
Speaker 2: and inspiring protests, and the company has to change its
Speaker 2: approach to moderation. This is where we have pretty nasty
Speaker 2: stuff happening.
Speaker 3: We're also seeing leaked footage of things that at this
Speaker 3: time twenty ten, around those time, things that active military
Speaker 3: and like private military US troops are doing in Afghanistan
Speaker 3: and Iraq in particular. We're seeing videos like that show
Speaker 3: up on YouTube and get shared from it and then
Speaker 3: get taken down.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: That was happening rapidly in that time. Yes, so there's there,
Speaker 3: really is. You can see why Lieberman and a bunch
Speaker 3: of other appeal I heard that name in a long time,
Speaker 3: just Y too, leabermen. But just you can see why
Speaker 3: there was a major push to censor the things that
Speaker 3: could get published, right, and you want you want to
Speaker 3: stop them before somebody has to take it.
Speaker 2: Down because you're powerful and you want to control the narrative.
Speaker 4: For sure, but you also don't want to seem like
Speaker 4: you're doing that, yes, exactly. So then it becomes a
Speaker 4: matter of public relations. And then you found this great
Speaker 4: comment from the manager of YouTube News, or YouTube's manager
Speaker 4: of News, Olivia Maw who in twenty eleven, referring to
Speaker 4: the kinds of content we're talking about, said, normally this
Speaker 4: type of violence would violate our community guidelines in terms
Speaker 4: of service, and we would remove them. But we have
Speaker 4: a clause in our community guidelines that make an exception
Speaker 4: for videos that are educational, documentary, or scientific in nature.
Speaker 4: In these cases, we actually make an exception and say
Speaker 4: we understand that these videos have real news value. That's
Speaker 4: a great way of characterizing it. But it would seem
Speaker 4: to your point earlier, Ben or I can't remember who
Speaker 4: said this. They also have a way of bending their
Speaker 4: own rules depending on what the footage in question is
Speaker 4: and maybe what government is yelling at them about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we all know, folks, how rules are. When you're
Speaker 2: the one who makes the rules. It's a lot less
Speaker 2: like saying thou shalt or thou shalt not. It's a
Speaker 2: lot more like saying what do I feel like eating tonight?
Speaker 2: I know I said I was gonna get something vegan,
Speaker 2: but it might be barbecue nite'. That's what often happens
Speaker 2: when these these entities don't have an outside authority and
Speaker 2: YouTube is doing its best right. YouTube is the Mickey
Speaker 2: Mouse sorcerer's apprentice who never knew there would be that
Speaker 2: many mops or brooms or a flood. So at this point,
Speaker 2: YouTube has around eight hundred million users. At this point
Speaker 2: in time, it's the third most visited website on the
Speaker 2: planet entire and Google has noted by this time that
Speaker 2: a lot of those DCMA takedown requests are coming from
Speaker 2: not private entities. They're coming directly from governments. So what
Speaker 2: if we take a pause for a word from our
Speaker 2: sponsors and dive even deeper into the water. We're back.
Speaker 2: We've got to recommend a phenomenal journalist, Gillian c. York.
Speaker 2: Jillian c. York is writing for Vice back in the
Speaker 2: day and says the company's decision making YouTube has become
Speaker 2: considerably more questionable. They went up against US intelligence agencies
Speaker 2: who were claiming that a short film, though was quite Islamophobic,
Speaker 2: called The Innocence of Muslims, was partially responsible for the
Speaker 2: attacks in Benghazi. If everybody remembers when US facilities in
Speaker 2: Magazi were attacked. YouTube had a call directly with the
Speaker 2: White House. They blocked the video only in Libya and Egypt,
Speaker 2: and protests were already beginning to erupt because this film
Speaker 2: had already been dead. To your point, Noe, this film
Speaker 2: had already been aired on Egyptian broadcast television. The Libyan
Speaker 2: government and the Egyptian government civil organizations in either country.
Speaker 2: They were never in the conversation. It was from the
Speaker 2: United States, half a world away, and YouTube, nobody else
Speaker 2: on the ground is included. And other countries started demanding, hey,
Speaker 2: remove this video. YouTube played along with some of those countries,
Speaker 2: but they they iced out or stonewalled others. And one
Speaker 2: country in particular, great example named by Yorke in their
Speaker 2: article is Pakistan. Pakistan said, hey, you're not going to
Speaker 2: respect us. Nobody gets YouTube, nobody about YouTube for you,
Speaker 2: No YouTube for you. Yeah, it's weird because there are
Speaker 2: it's always the bag of badgers of censorship. Right are
Speaker 2: we inciting people to violence? Where we allow people to
Speaker 2: speak their minds even if we know they're incorrect or
Speaker 2: racist or evil. YouTube is trying at this point in
Speaker 2: time to respond to these. Again, not corporations, state level actors,
Speaker 2: governments say take down this specific video and anything like it.
Speaker 2: That's what YouTube was and is in such a tough spot.
Speaker 2: It's an economy of scale that incorporates, incorporates controversy as
Speaker 2: well as profit. The company is under so much fire
Speaker 2: because there are people who feel it is not doing
Speaker 2: enough to curb the spread of hateful content. And there
Speaker 2: are people who are saying, and you are going way
Speaker 2: too far. We don't have to get too much into
Speaker 2: the weeds of this. It is a bag of badgers,
Speaker 2: chock full of controversy in the modern day. The main
Speaker 2: thing you have to know is that powerful, very powerful
Speaker 2: entities want to be able to control this platform. They
Speaker 2: have contradictory demands. They also have they got int a
Speaker 2: Kobyashi Maru. For any Star Trek fan, there is a
Speaker 2: a no win situation. You cannot please all your customers
Speaker 2: and all your masters. And maybe here guys at the end,
Speaker 2: because we have so much, because we do have personal experience,
Speaker 2: we can talk about demonetization. This is on the ground
Speaker 2: threat well for.
Speaker 4: Sure, and I think we haven't really mentioned the whole
Speaker 4: idea of how you Tube became an economy of scale
Speaker 4: for a home new class of creators who would come
Speaker 4: to rely on the income that their video is generated.
Speaker 4: So when you have this potential for depriving these individuals
Speaker 4: of their ability to earn a living based on the
Speaker 4: nature of the content that they've been making for however long,
Speaker 4: all of a sudden those guidelines change and they're demonetizing,
Speaker 4: aka pulling ads from your videos.
Speaker 2: You then are being.
Speaker 4: Threatened essentially, and it's a form of censorship kind of
Speaker 4: like shadow bands on Instagram, where you're not outright told
Speaker 4: necessarily that if you say this we won't promote your
Speaker 4: stuff as much. Just all of a sudden, you are
Speaker 4: noticing that your reach has been diminished significantly, and you're
Speaker 4: not really told why.
Speaker 2: Yeah, demonetization is one of those fancy words that sounds
Speaker 2: good in a boardroom. It's a corporate term for, like
Speaker 2: you said, the removing ad revenue, in this case from
Speaker 2: YouTube creators. Host anything you want, but we may bury
Speaker 2: it in the algorithm. We won't allow you to make
Speaker 2: money even your little you're laughably small percentage of whatever
Speaker 2: an ad is, and a lot of frustrated video creators
Speaker 2: to your point, recognize what I would call the near
Speaker 2: hominem here. So a homonym is two different words that
Speaker 2: sound the same but mean different things. They feel like
Speaker 2: demonetization is really demonization, right and patently unfair, especially when
Speaker 2: regarding sensitive issues. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, folks,
Speaker 2: you need to know that we have you know, we
Speaker 2: have a crow in the game here because we have
Speaker 2: personally encountered automated demonetization when we created video essays on
Speaker 2: certain sensitive subjects, and you can appeal that. Guys.
Speaker 4: I'd love for you to speak more to that on
Speaker 4: the YouTube side of it, maybe even talk about some analytics.
Speaker 4: You can appeal that, but by the time you've appealed that,
Speaker 4: as we know, YouTube videos only really hit in a
Speaker 4: certain window of when they're dropped, and then if you've
Speaker 4: lost out on that window to make money off of
Speaker 4: those hits, it ain't coming back even if your appeal
Speaker 4: is successful.
Speaker 3: Yep, it's all a big algorithm. It's all about the
Speaker 3: first twelve twenty four hours. That's every video that drops
Speaker 3: on YouTube.
Speaker 2: It started in twenty twelve, the automated demonetization.
Speaker 3: Which is exactly well, it's around the same time when
Speaker 3: we started our channel, Conspiracy Stuff. We used to make
Speaker 3: stuff on how stuff works on their main channel, and
Speaker 3: then we started posting on our brand new channel, which
Speaker 3: was YouTube dot com slash Conspiracy Stuff October twenty twelve.
Speaker 3: And just to give you an example of these things,
Speaker 3: because we encountered it almost immediately as we were making shows.
Speaker 3: Here's one of the earliest videos we ever put on
Speaker 3: our channel, Edward Burne's three colon the Legacy November thirtieth,
Speaker 3: twenty twelve, had ninety two thousand views. As of today,
Speaker 3: it has ninety two thousand views. It was almost immediately
Speaker 3: switched to limited ad earnings. Content not suitable for advertisers.
Speaker 4: What about it isn't suitable? That's wild Edward Brenees was
Speaker 4: a marketing dude.
Speaker 3: That's like, yeah, well, you also know that's not many
Speaker 3: views at all. So here's something to also keep in mind.
Speaker 3: The number of views you get on a particular video
Speaker 3: has a lot to do with the number of subscribers
Speaker 3: you have that are active, that have notifications turned on.
Speaker 3: Has to do with discoverability of like a video that's
Speaker 3: chosen for suitability to be discoverable by others. It has
Speaker 3: all it's this huge algorithm that has to do with right.
Speaker 3: And if you do really good and you make the
Speaker 3: type of video with the right words in your description
Speaker 3: and your title, and with your metadata correct, with your image,
Speaker 3: your thumbnail, and it doesn't have any profanity, doesn't have
Speaker 3: any sexual imagery, doesn't have all these other things in
Speaker 3: it has the right number of human faces, then you're
Speaker 3: gonna you know, you're getting like plus one every time
Speaker 3: you do these things right. And then inside your video,
Speaker 3: if your host, your person talking, your AI generated thing,
Speaker 3: whatever it is, as long as it says the right
Speaker 3: things and doesn't say the wrong things, you're getting more
Speaker 3: plus ones plus ones plus ones in our case, guys,
Speaker 3: I think it's I think we only have metrics for money.
Speaker 3: Since April of twenty twenty four, That's what I can
Speaker 3: see on our creator page right now. Since April of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four, that video has earned thirty two cents. Now, No,
Speaker 3: but seriously, think about that. A video that we cared
Speaker 3: a lot about made in twenty twelve, it's been around
Speaker 3: since then. It's only got ninety two thousand views, but
Speaker 3: thirty two cents.
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean we talk.
Speaker 4: About like your average is run of the mill, like
Speaker 4: a new big content creator.
Speaker 2: Ninety two thousand views is a lot.
Speaker 4: And I was always understood that the metric was like
Speaker 4: a million views you make about.
Speaker 2: One thousand bucks.
Speaker 4: I don't know if that hold is true today, but
Speaker 4: that still seems insane and the product of this unsuitability factor.
Speaker 3: We give you a few more videos so we can
Speaker 3: really like think about some of this stuff. Ben, you'll
Speaker 3: remember this one March sixth twenty thirteen, Libya, The Fall
Speaker 3: of Gadaffi two hundred and forty two thousand views, nine cents.
Speaker 3: Since April twenty twenty four, we've made on that again
Speaker 3: said content's not suitable.
Speaker 2: What are some other videos you'd like to mention?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm just trying to give everybody versions of like,
Speaker 3: here's the type of content that we found important and
Speaker 3: important enough to spend all of our time on these
Speaker 3: things put them out. It was once a week at
Speaker 3: this time, once or twice a week at this time
Speaker 3: that we were making videos. Danny Casileiro in the Octopus
Speaker 3: May tenth, twenty twenty four, one hundred and fifty seven
Speaker 3: thousand views twenty four cents that we've made on that video.
Speaker 4: My question though, is like, do they not have any
Speaker 4: ruberg for what qualifies as suitable?
Speaker 2: Yes? Is it a black box? Oh? Yes, No, I'd
Speaker 2: love to get to that. Yeah, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 4: No, No, we must that's the next logical step I
Speaker 4: think if it's The answer is yes.
Speaker 3: Just the simple answer to that question is YouTube does
Speaker 3: not have a list of words you can't say and
Speaker 3: stuff like that. But there are all of these guidelines
Speaker 3: that you can find. They're a little morphous, a little confusing,
Speaker 3: because it's a nice little mixture, right man, of humans
Speaker 3: and automated algorithms and things that are scanning videos. It's
Speaker 3: a nice little mixture, so you never really know who's
Speaker 3: going to be or what's going to be looking at
Speaker 3: your stuff, and it's a bit of a crapshoot every
Speaker 3: once in a while.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for instance, we were demonetized on things that forced
Speaker 2: us to read some tea leaves right to your point
Speaker 2: to go back, you guys and say, well, what was
Speaker 2: it that made you also persnicty. We know that YouTube
Speaker 2: began demonetizing videos in one T twelve based on advertising
Speaker 2: guidelines you can and based on some surveys they have
Speaker 2: with advertisers. Put honestly, you can read a great article
Speaker 2: about that from The Daily Dot back in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: That's a good primer to the point about the automation.
Speaker 2: That's the real devil's bargain here, because the first wave
Speaker 2: of demonization or demonetization is not done by humans meatmechs.
Speaker 2: It is automated. It is algorithmic. It looks at metadata
Speaker 2: of videos as well as other factors like which videos
Speaker 2: naturally linked to yours, which I think was a big
Speaker 2: deal in the Libya exploration. And it also says their
Speaker 2: question is not is this dangerous to society? Their question
Speaker 2: is is this something an advertiser would or would not
Speaker 2: want to be associated with. So you can imagine easily, folks,
Speaker 2: how this affected show those that explored conspiracy theories, especially
Speaker 2: as the term conspiracy theory became once again weaponized in
Speaker 2: the US. This it's a shadow band, like you were saying, no,
Speaker 2: it's not, it's not to and we don't want to
Speaker 2: come off bitter. We're grateful to YouTube. It was not to.
Speaker 2: It was not meant to stamp down information, at least
Speaker 2: the way they wrote this stuff. It was meant to
Speaker 2: stamp out disinformation and to satisfy advertising partners. It also
Speaker 2: in the in the big days, like in the original days,
Speaker 2: it was very difficult to know that your video had
Speaker 2: been demonetized. You could you could notice if you took
Speaker 2: a granular look at analytics like we always did. You
Speaker 2: could ask you to what happened, and we did. You
Speaker 2: could appeal, and we did in several cases, but other
Speaker 2: than that, there's not much else you could do with it.
Speaker 4: Well, and you've missed that window again, like even if
Speaker 4: you win your appeal, like you've totally missed the crucial
Speaker 4: time for views that would then create monetization if you
Speaker 4: get it approved after the fact you're not getting that
Speaker 4: time back right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to which point my question now evolves from uh,
Speaker 2: from is YouTube democratizing stuff? The answer was yes for
Speaker 2: a while and still is yes to a degree. But
Speaker 2: now has YouTube become similar to the same oppressive forces
Speaker 2: that it was originally invented to circumvent. These claims can
Speaker 2: be treated on a case by case basis, but they
Speaker 2: all have their own bag of badgers. It's it's very difficult.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying YouTube is automatically now the bad guys,
Speaker 2: but I am saying, you know, you stay at a
Speaker 2: barbershop long enough, you get a haircut.
Speaker 3: We're a whole for one second, so you can like
Speaker 3: subscribe and hit that little bell so you never miss
Speaker 3: a new video. Wait, what are we doing? Ad break?
Speaker 3: We'll be right back. I'm gonna make the argument that
Speaker 3: what YouTube and Alphabet and Google and everybody they are
Speaker 3: actively participating in stepped thought control. I think that's what
Speaker 3: they're doing. That's my argument. It's my opinion here. Think
Speaker 3: about Ben, take yourself back to the number of hours
Speaker 3: you would spend making a single YouTube video, really, like
Speaker 3: back to twenty twelve. Just how much time you would
Speaker 3: spend writing, being in front of the camera in the studio,
Speaker 3: recording audio. The amount of time I would spend behind
Speaker 3: the camera with you shooting stuff, The amount of time
Speaker 3: I would spend it at an editing bay, and then
Speaker 3: you know, writing all the meta, getting all the stuff together,
Speaker 3: and then putting out a single video. Just how much
Speaker 3: time that is. Now, if you can't, if you can't
Speaker 3: make money for that time right that you are spending,
Speaker 3: that's not a job. And if you can't make it
Speaker 3: your job, then this has to be your pastime, the
Speaker 3: thing you do for fun, And that's a ton of
Speaker 3: time and hours that you're spending making this stuff. So
Speaker 3: what they are doing by demonetizing these videos is forcing
Speaker 3: people to not have a job making stuff that is
Speaker 3: not suitable for advertisers. Because we were paid, We were
Speaker 3: paid salaries to make these videos, and that's why we
Speaker 3: could make them, right, that's the only reason why we
Speaker 3: could put this content out is because somebody thought to
Speaker 3: pay us a salary to make this kind of stuff,
Speaker 3: to pursue the things that we thought were interesting and
Speaker 3: important for people. But if as an independent creator, you can't,
Speaker 3: you can't make money doing this because all your stuff
Speaker 3: gets demonetized, then you have to fall in line and
Speaker 3: make videos only about the stuff that YouTube wants you
Speaker 3: to make videos about.
Speaker 4: That's true to a point, Matt, I just want to
Speaker 4: push back slightly that there are other ways now more
Speaker 4: than ever. You know Patreon, for example, where you're getting
Speaker 4: paid directly by the folks that are consuming your stuff,
Speaker 4: and they're paying your salary in that way to allow
Speaker 4: you Because at the very least YouTube isn't straight up
Speaker 4: kicking people off for doing stuff they don't like. They're
Speaker 4: just not letting them make money on their built in
Speaker 4: ad sales monetization system. You can also advertise directly in
Speaker 4: the content of your video and have relationships with advertising
Speaker 4: agencies that allow you to get money from episodes by
Speaker 4: having those direct sales, let's call it. So it's the
Speaker 4: very least you could I'm not trying to I'm just
Speaker 4: be Devil's advocate here. They're not kicking people off for
Speaker 4: saying things that they don't like. They're just excluding them
Speaker 4: from a built in way of making money. And it
Speaker 4: doesn't mean there aren't other ways to do it so
Speaker 4: that you can still We'll capture that audience and then
Speaker 4: have that audience pay you directly.
Speaker 3: It just means you have to have a Patreon or
Speaker 3: an OnlyFans or whatever it is that you use to
Speaker 3: actually make money with the stuff you put onto this platform.
Speaker 3: Just to give one more metric, guys, the watch time
Speaker 3: on our channel watch time lifetime watch time is five million,
Speaker 3: three hundred and eight thousand, seven hundred and twenty eight
Speaker 3: point nine hours that people have spent watching our videos.
Speaker 3: Since April of twenty twenty four, our channel, which has
Speaker 3: five hundred and ninety four thousand subscribers, has made six thousand,
Speaker 3: two hundred and sixty six dollars and eighty one cents.
Speaker 2: Think about this, I'll see you at Dave and Busters.
Speaker 3: No, but but think about that divided on a monthly basis,
Speaker 3: divided on the money, the number of people that make
Speaker 3: this show. Think about that.
Speaker 2: It's nothing.
Speaker 4: But if you have people it's like two hundred something dollars,
Speaker 4: you will have people that make that every day on Patreon.
Speaker 4: You know that'll make one hundred and grand a month
Speaker 4: on Patreon and that is their bread and butter. So
Speaker 4: I'm just saying the world has it is a little
Speaker 4: bit different, and it's not like you rely exclusively on
Speaker 4: YouTube to pay for your existence. There are other ways.
Speaker 2: And I'm not saying that that's okay.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying that YouTube to your appointment, isn't participating
Speaker 4: in some level of minor thought control or whatever however
Speaker 4: you want to put it. I just think that at
Speaker 4: the very least, they're not like completely wholesale deplatforming people
Speaker 4: for saying things that they don't like.
Speaker 3: I get it, But Ben, what was that number you
Speaker 3: gave us early on about the amount of money YouTube
Speaker 3: is gonna probably.
Speaker 2: Make sure yeap again? YouTube is projected to hit sixty
Speaker 2: two billion dollars worth of that revenue here in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty six. Folks, Just just.
Speaker 3: Really think about that, the amount of money that corporation
Speaker 3: makes versus if you don't do the things that you're
Speaker 3: supposed to do, you're gonna make that two hundred dollars
Speaker 3: a month.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe right, Unless you're mister beast, unless you're you're
Speaker 2: towing a line hitting lightning in a bottle a zeitgeist,
Speaker 2: we have nothing but nothing but an attaboy and respect
Speaker 2: for people who are who are playing the game. As
Speaker 2: long as you are being intellectually sincere, as long as
Speaker 2: you are not lying to people are hurting them for money.
Speaker 2: We don't have time to get into the quote unquote AI.
Speaker 2: I hate that term, but you do need to know
Speaker 2: that as of twenty twenty five, roughly twenty percent of
Speaker 2: the content on YouTube has especially in YouTube shorts, has
Speaker 2: been found to be AI slop. I have a pitch
Speaker 2: for you, guys. This is my personal opinion and I
Speaker 2: usually don't like injecting these, but see, I would love
Speaker 2: to hear your thoughts. I see right now YouTube at
Speaker 2: a crossroads because it's getting again a kobyashi maru and
Speaker 2: no win scenario from so many stakeholders as they call
Speaker 2: them in boardrooms. It's also at a situation where, just
Speaker 2: to its gigantic Leviathan nature, someone outside of YouTube, many players,
Speaker 2: want to get a hold of it. And if those
Speaker 2: extremely powerful forces who want to gaslight their narratives to
Speaker 2: the world at large, if one of those outsiders gets
Speaker 2: too too much control over YouTube, things are going to
Speaker 2: be bad for everyone involved, and it will happen. I
Speaker 2: think it is at this point, you know, when we
Speaker 2: originally wanted to do this episode. I think we're pulled
Speaker 2: back for a number of reasons. But now it is
Speaker 2: quite possible that something outside of YouTube, probably a state actor,
Speaker 2: a large corporation that controls a state actor, will get
Speaker 2: a hold of it and will push the narrative. We
Speaker 2: have so much more to talk about. We know that also,
Speaker 2: YouTube's important. That's the other point I have to make. Ah,
Speaker 2: we didn't even talk about this. YouTube is not a
Speaker 2: video platform anymore. It is kind of right in your
Speaker 2: day to day But at this point in twenty twenty six,
Speaker 2: fellow conspiracy realist want you to know and admit this
Speaker 2: is a library. It is a global library of human experience,
Speaker 2: of ephemera of like you know, you go to the
Speaker 2: redwood forest and you see a redwood that has been
Speaker 2: cut down and you practice dendo chronology. You learn about
Speaker 2: the world when that redwood was growing. You can learn
Speaker 2: about the world and history for now via YouTube stuff
Speaker 2: from you know, just a few decades ago. And it's
Speaker 2: not even a matter of access other than Internet access, right,
Speaker 2: That's why you got to check out awesome stuff. I'd
Speaker 2: love to recommend preserve tube spelled like it sounds.
Speaker 4: For sure, And I mean, you know, early days of YouTube,
Speaker 4: especially as pertains to some of that copyright strike stuff
Speaker 4: and the digital Millennium Copyright Act, like that library aspect
Speaker 4: of it.
Speaker 2: All involve copyright infringement. You know.
Speaker 4: It was like, okay, I could upload this contents of
Speaker 4: this VHS that you can't find anymore, and then that
Speaker 4: aspect of it, Ben, I would argue, is also under
Speaker 4: threat because of the coziness that they have, the platform
Speaker 4: has with advertisements. They don't want to be controversial and
Speaker 4: allow some of this kind of more archival stuff to
Speaker 4: be uploaded unfettered. You might have like an MTV concert,
Speaker 4: you know, from the nineties that's up there, and in theory,
Speaker 4: if it is uploaded by a user and not through
Speaker 4: MTV's official channel, that might not be long for this world.
Speaker 4: I mean, there was a video of my mother singing
Speaker 4: in the opera that was on YouTube for years and I'm.
Speaker 2: So grateful that I screen grabbed the.
Speaker 4: Video and the audio of it because it went away
Speaker 4: and I didn't think it was ever going to but
Speaker 4: for whatever reason, it went away. And I don't know why.
Speaker 2: Global Library of Ephemera. You know, I think there's something
Speaker 2: to hold on to here. I think this matters. Do
Speaker 2: check out preserve toob Matt what's on your mind? Oh?
Speaker 3: Nothing, I I just think you should look up reasons
Speaker 3: for demonetization after this, you should look up the profanity guidelines.
Speaker 3: There's an update in June or July of last year
Speaker 3: on some of the things that you can and can't say. Again,
Speaker 3: there's no official list of like blacklisted words or something
Speaker 3: that YouTube has out there, but the number of human
Speaker 3: beings that use YouTube on a daily basis to kind
Speaker 3: of stay up to date on things, especially when people
Speaker 3: have to pay for news nowadays. You know, if you
Speaker 3: might have to pay for YouTube premium if you don't
Speaker 3: want the ads, but people just kind of go through
Speaker 3: it because it's what they can afford. Our thoughts are
Speaker 3: generated from the things we're exposed to, and when the
Speaker 3: only things that we're exposed to are the things that
Speaker 3: are advertiser friendly, is just painting a picture of what
Speaker 3: the future could be, right and what we can think
Speaker 3: about and how we're going to view the world. And
Speaker 3: I think it. Brockness sent an email while I was away.
Speaker 3: They said, like, what is this guy on about? Why
Speaker 3: is he Why is Matt so frustrated by things? It's
Speaker 3: because I personally see a view of the world that
Speaker 3: is shaping in a way that is very uncomfortable in
Speaker 3: draconian and bad and YouTube is a part of it.
Speaker 3: And it doesn't mean that's right, that's what I see.
Speaker 3: I'm with you, man, But it is also beautiful, Ben,
Speaker 3: as you were saying, it's also a beautiful thing.
Speaker 4: Well, no, and Ben, I mean, I'm completely agreeing with
Speaker 4: your archival perspective of it. I think there is still
Speaker 4: some of that out there, but a lot of the
Speaker 4: stuff that's most important to an archival aspect sort of
Speaker 4: flies under the radar. And just you know, my case
Speaker 4: study of this one clip of my mother, you know
Speaker 4: of a VHS that was uploaded by some random user
Speaker 4: from a thing that was put out in the eighties
Speaker 4: all of a sudden disappeared. I just think because of
Speaker 4: that cozy advertiser centric relationship that YouTube has, some of
Speaker 4: that archival aspect of it could be under threat on
Speaker 4: a long enough timeline, you know, as those things are
Speaker 4: maybe filtered out because they don't want to deal with
Speaker 4: the hassle of having to you know, have advertisers worried
Speaker 4: about being served up in copywritten content.
Speaker 2: And we've got so much more to get to folks,
Speaker 2: we didn't really get a chance to explore the AI stuff,
Speaker 2: the supposed brain rot. We are in full disclosure overall
Speaker 2: fans of YouTube. This platform has been integral to our show.
Speaker 2: It has provided immense learning opportunities. Definitely helped me out
Speaker 2: in a couple of couple of situations. As we said,
Speaker 2: you can find a ton of our work on YouTube
Speaker 2: and multiple formats, and I just gotta say go humanity,
Speaker 2: Go human beings from me at the zoo to billions
Speaker 2: of dollars and billions of people. I do think YouTube
Speaker 2: will get heavily compromised in the horizon, but we want
Speaker 2: to know your thoughts and also just to keep it
Speaker 2: positive instead of a random fact in email, Folks, why
Speaker 2: don't you share with us the weirdest or funniest stuff
Speaker 2: you've seen on YouTube? Shout out to everybody who gets
Speaker 2: the reference. Not my chair, not my problem, you know
Speaker 2: the drill smash that like button subscribe. We want to
Speaker 2: hear your thoughts. There are a number of ways to
Speaker 2: get in touch with us, that's right.
Speaker 4: If you would like, you can reach out to the
Speaker 4: handles Conspiracy Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show on whichever social
Speaker 4: media platform you enjoy. You'll find us on one of them.
Speaker 3: Hey, are you watching us on YouTube. Don't forget there's
Speaker 3: an audio feed. You can find it. It's all over
Speaker 3: the place, in various place you just look for it.
Speaker 3: You can find our episode from when was it October nineteenth,
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen, thought Control? What's up with YouTube's algorithm? That's
Speaker 3: when we looked at this along like what almost ten
Speaker 3: years ago, and we were talking about some of these things.
Speaker 3: It has changed shape a lot. We would love to
Speaker 3: hear you, hear your voice and your thoughts, so call us.
Speaker 3: Our number is one eight three three std WYTK. When
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Speaker 2: That's right, this is one of the best ways to
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