August 14, 2026 • 46 mins
As the largest video-sharing platform on the planet, YouTube can make -- or break -- the careers of billions of creators through policy changes or demonetization. For many people, it's become the primary source of news, education, and entertainment. And other powerful forces are paying attention. In the second chapter of this special two-part series, Ben, Matt, and Noel explore how everyone from large corporations to state-level powers, intelligence agencies, and extremist groups push to control aspects of YouTube, conspiring to win a war of narratives -- and make sure you only see what they want you to see.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
A production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Hello, and welcome back to Netflix. My name is Matt,
my name is Nol.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
are you You specifically you are you. You are also
here right now, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. Previously on Stuff they don't
want you to know, we explored the origin and the
(00:54):
controversy surrounding the stuff they don't want you to know.
It's a pun that we're not giving up on. Please
check out chapter one before you continue to chapter two.
What do you say? Guys? Should we just drop in
and media arrests?
Speaker 3 (01:10):
And before we do, reminder you have to watch on
YouTube reactions to Pete and Boss for the first time.
It's one of the best things you can do on YouTube.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
So here we go, joining us already in progress. The
absolute volume of content on YouTube is a feature, not
a bug, and there is no possible way that that
could be policed, so to speak, by YouTube themselves, except
(01:38):
when it kind of benefits them, right.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Well, that was one of the main things YouTube was
concerned with in the beginning, right, just like Facebook, just
like all these other social media platforms, about the terrible
things that could be uploaded. If you give that tool
to everybody who can possibly make a video or put
video up, there's danger there, right, And is it their fault?
(02:01):
It might be their fault if it goes up and
everybody sees it. So we as a company have to
protect ourselves more than anyone for sure, that kind of stuff, right.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
And I mean, obviously there are safeguards in place that
would prevent someone from, say uploading a video of like
murder or violent sticking place or something really horrific like that.
But then it gets a little more nuanced when it
comes to like ideological content and like what is and
is not okay and what is incentivized and de incentivized.
And I love then that you point on on the
(02:31):
outline here. That's when we start getting into Acts of
Congress and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as well as
Communications Decency Act, and how those things kind of play
into the way YouTube needs to approach this.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yeah, and thank you for shouting those out, because the
YouTube initiative runs into specific acts of Congress. You mentioned DMCA,
which we are unfortunately quite well aware of, as well
as the CDA Communications Decency Act, specifically section two three
(03:05):
zero for anybody who wants to play along at home.
Pretty much like the YouTube okay created in two thousand
and five, they get into legal trouble as early as
the next year. In two thousand and six, there is
something called the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers
and Publishers sent them a takedown request and they said, hey, YouTube,
(03:31):
you got more than thirty thousand things that you got
to take down. And Comedy Central, which is actually known
for being cool and comedic, also sued for copyright infringement.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
But yeah, those companies, those producers of content, right, the
traditional ones, TV, radio, movies, all that kind of.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Stuff, we call the legacy ones.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Yeah, the only way they make money is if you're
watching it through one of the channels that's been curated
for you to watch stuff on, right, where there's huge
ad dollars.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
Well, of course, know, then they take on that. If
you can't beat them, join them. Mentality where then, you know.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Are vigorous, massively presence on YouTube.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
In fact, I think we could argue that they probably
make just as much money off of viral YouTube clips
of like The Daily Show and stuff than they do
from people actually watching it on TV.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yeah, it's the old joke. It's the old joke. Good
friend of the show. John Stewart also pointed as how
years ago, it's weird that The Daily Show published DVD
collections and later Blu ray collections because it was such
a topical show. And what we're seeing here is a
paradigm shift, right, a deep sea change wherein people are
(04:51):
thinking less deeply about things. Right, I explain it to
me in three minutes, Right, I just learned. I just
learned that maybe Syria and Jordan don't always get along.
But I've only got so long on my smoke breaks.
So just explained it to me. Don't make me quote stuff,
(05:12):
give me some stats that make me sound smart. That
is what is happening.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Let's think about the residual checks that got destroyed through
all of this. That was the way artists made money, right,
Bright Bright in two thousand and six, that's not that
long ago. Twenty years ago. But it this advent of
YouTube destroyed that entire way of making money, like just
killed it.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yeah, that's a great point, Matt. And further, Okay, it
gets stranger, folks, it gets more dangerous, the water gets
ever deeper because we have been talking about corporations primarily.
But around the same time, just within a year of
YouTube going public for the people, various state powers also
(06:00):
found YouTube problematic. This is when we see, you know,
user generated content. I'm an activist, I'm a protester. I
want people to know that this school is getting bombed
by some world's military. I'm sharing news that my government
doesn't want out there. Right, I'm becoming part of things
(06:23):
like on the ground reporting of the Arab Spring for
a few years back. Right. This is a This is
a shift that is similar to American civilians seeing real
world footage from the Vietnam War, testimonies of political prisoners,
arguments against state suppression and their policies. By two thousand
(06:48):
and eight, again just three years or three if you
want it, in glorious bastard style, just three years after
YouTube debuted, multiple countries have blocked part of YouTube content
or block the platform entirely. And yes, of course this
includes problematic, you know, authoritarian countries like Syria and China
(07:11):
or Pakistan, but it also includes things like Brazil or
Thailand or Turkey. YouTube was getting jammed up and their
boardroom decided to make some changes. They said, hey, what's
the point of making this if fewer and fewer people
can actually use it?
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Right?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
If we were global and people across the globe can't
use it, then what kind of weird don quixote stuff
are we doing? So YouTube started suspending user accounts. One
I think we all remember back in O seven, the
platform suspended the account of an Egyptian activist named Wail
(07:50):
Abbas and part of my pronunciation there he was a
blogger or a vlogger with a V as we would
call them. He was an anti torture activist. And his
whole thing was like he wasn't trying to sell bone,
broth or gold. He said, hey, police in Egypt are
torturing people, including women and children. I've got clips of
(08:13):
this I could show you, and YouTube shut the guy down.
And still they're rumors. We're being very diplomatic calling them rumors.
There are sh as no ones say rumors that YouTube
bent the knee to the Egyptian government, but they said
(08:36):
their official stance has always been that no other users,
just like you, they're the ones who complained. That's why
we covered up these Egyptian war crimes.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
Well, and that's sort of the advent of the concept
of deplatforming. You know, this is really kind of the
early days of that, because I think that's one of
the first mass you know, reach platforms other than like
Facebook or whatever, which isn't really in the conversation so
much anymore in that respect. That's why Facebook had to
stay relevant by like buying Instagram. But we start to
(09:11):
see later even like people on the right being deplatformed,
and that kind of leading to radicalization on the on
the right, further radicalization because they had to start their
own companies like you know, truth Social and things like that,
because they were no longer allowed to be on these
more mass platforms like Instagram and YouTube specifically. So it's
(09:34):
a fascinating kind of beginning of this whole culture war stuff, right.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Yeah, So he did debate about censorship.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Yeah, and we saw the splintering occur in real time
in two thousand and six, two thousand and seven, when
places like Shock. Websites like Orgish turned or I think
it was Orgish Orgish, I can't remember, but they turned
into livelyek dot com in like two thousand and six,
two thousand and seven, and that's where you could go
(10:04):
to you go to this new video channel place and
watch Saddam Hussein get executed or if you wanted to
see actual live battle Warm.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
World Star hip hop.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Yeah, and and some of it is like like Orgish
was gross, like Shock, like rotten dot com ference of
type stuff. Yeah, but places like Lively tried to step
up and say, hey, you can actually see what is
happening in you know, war torn areas. You can see
what's really happening on the ground in places, and you
can just see that while YouTube is kind of changing
(10:38):
and going towards the money and the advertiser happiness thing
and trying to get the content the DCMA and the
content stuff right, all these other places are attempting to
fill in those spaces.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
Yeah, that happened with cable TV or you know, okay, no,
let me let me phrase it's the same thing that
happened to network TV when cable TV kind of swooped in.
It's just an extension of that to a degree, right,
because cable TV had a lot more freedom. Network TV
had to play much nicer with the advertisers than eventually
so did cable TV, and it just kind of like
it just you know, kicks the can down the road.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Right in the in the Abbas case in particular, YouTube
claimed and has always claimed that censorship was not the
end goal. The public, including by the way yours truly
was skeptical. Now there are countless allegations that are only
growing arguing that YouTube bends its own rules and will
(11:32):
act on behalf of powerful companies or powerful countries and
even authoritarian autocratic regimes and dictatorships. A lot of these
haven't been proven. But at the same time we also see.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
We of course they will like it just seems like
it's common sense that the degree to which they've become
the big guy, that it behooves them to do just
that they're no longer out there to spread quote unquote
truth and unfettered information. They have a lot more shareholders
to answer to. That's why you need the live leaks
(12:10):
and the more kind of underground versions of what YouTube
maybe used to be.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yeah, it's interesting because at the same time, we see
that there are numerous videos and accounts that are not
publishing copyright infringement stuff, right, They're not publishing something that
hits the narrative of a bully regime, which is all
the bad guys are. They're just jerks who are bullies.
(12:36):
But they these accounts are putting out heinous things, depictions
of illegal acts, calls to violence, racist material, gross sex stuff,
and so on. So now YouTube hit this Road to
Damascus moment, right, they hit this moment of recognization, realization,
(12:59):
something we call had come to Jesus moment. In the
American South, they say, we're everywhere in the world. All
these countries have different laws. Which laws of a given
country do we as YouTube follow? And so in two
thousand and eight they put out their rules for what
they call violations of community guidelines, and it's a three
(13:22):
strike thing. You screw up once, in their opinion, you
get a warning. After six months you're back in the game.
So they give you a yellow card. You know, they
put you in time out. And I think everybody in
the audience tonight is aware of the concept of time out,
especially if you are a bad kid growing up. It's
(13:43):
nuts because then They also had again to the point
about power players. These are the real dangers for YouTube.
Folks like Senator Joseph Lieberman called on YouTube to remove
any video that had a logo of Outida Right, a
terrorist group, and they said, also take away any videos
(14:07):
that have any depiction of a logo or a sigil
associated with a known terrorist group. And then YouTube bucked
back and they said, look, these videos don't violate our
policies against violence or hate speech. We have people singing
songs a capella, or we have people who are talking
(14:30):
about Al Qaeda in an analytical way, so you can't
just automate taking that signal out. It's weird because you know,
I mentioned the Arab uprisings for the Arab Spring in particular,
this was another watershed moment. People around the world are
(14:52):
seeing self immolation, They're seeing massive acts of horrendous violence
and inspiring protests, and the company has to change its
approach to moderation. This is where we have pretty nasty
stuff happening.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
We're also seeing leaked footage of things that at this
time twenty ten, around those time, things that active military
and like private military US troops are doing in Afghanistan
and Iraq in particular. We're seeing videos like that show
up on YouTube and get shared from it and then
(15:30):
get taken down.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
That was happening rapidly in that time. Yes, so there's there,
really is. You can see why Lieberman and a bunch
of other appeal I heard that name in a long time,
just Y too, leabermen. But just you can see why
there was a major push to censor the things that
could get published, right, and you want you want to
stop them before somebody has to take it.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Down because you're powerful and you want to control the narrative.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
For sure, but you also don't want to seem like
you're doing that, yes, exactly. So then it becomes a
matter of public relations. And then you found this great
comment from the manager of YouTube News, or YouTube's manager
of News, Olivia Maw who in twenty eleven, referring to
the kinds of content we're talking about, said, normally this
type of violence would violate our community guidelines in terms
(16:20):
of service, and we would remove them. But we have
a clause in our community guidelines that make an exception
for videos that are educational, documentary, or scientific in nature.
In these cases, we actually make an exception and say
we understand that these videos have real news value. That's
a great way of characterizing it. But it would seem
to your point earlier, Ben or I can't remember who
(16:40):
said this. They also have a way of bending their
own rules depending on what the footage in question is
and maybe what government is yelling at them about it.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Yeah, we all know, folks, how rules are. When you're
the one who makes the rules. It's a lot less
like saying thou shalt or thou shalt not. It's a
lot more like saying what do I feel like eating tonight?
I know I said I was gonna get something vegan,
but it might be barbecue nite'. That's what often happens
(17:16):
when these these entities don't have an outside authority and
YouTube is doing its best right. YouTube is the Mickey
Mouse sorcerer's apprentice who never knew there would be that
many mops or brooms or a flood. So at this point,
YouTube has around eight hundred million users. At this point
(17:39):
in time, it's the third most visited website on the
planet entire and Google has noted by this time that
a lot of those DCMA takedown requests are coming from
not private entities. They're coming directly from governments. So what
(18:00):
if we take a pause for a word from our
sponsors and dive even deeper into the water. We're back.
We've got to recommend a phenomenal journalist, Gillian c. York.
Jillian c. York is writing for Vice back in the
(18:20):
day and says the company's decision making YouTube has become
considerably more questionable. They went up against US intelligence agencies
who were claiming that a short film, though was quite Islamophobic,
(18:41):
called The Innocence of Muslims, was partially responsible for the
attacks in Benghazi. If everybody remembers when US facilities in
Magazi were attacked. YouTube had a call directly with the
White House. They blocked the video only in Libya and Egypt,
and protests were already beginning to erupt because this film
(19:05):
had already been dead. To your point, Noe, this film
had already been aired on Egyptian broadcast television. The Libyan
government and the Egyptian government civil organizations in either country.
They were never in the conversation. It was from the
United States, half a world away, and YouTube, nobody else
(19:28):
on the ground is included. And other countries started demanding, hey,
remove this video. YouTube played along with some of those countries,
but they they iced out or stonewalled others. And one
country in particular, great example named by Yorke in their
(19:49):
article is Pakistan. Pakistan said, hey, you're not going to
respect us. Nobody gets YouTube, nobody about YouTube for you,
No YouTube for you. Yeah, it's weird because there are
it's always the bag of badgers of censorship. Right are
(20:09):
we inciting people to violence? Where we allow people to
speak their minds even if we know they're incorrect or
racist or evil. YouTube is trying at this point in
time to respond to these. Again, not corporations, state level actors,
(20:29):
governments say take down this specific video and anything like it.
That's what YouTube was and is in such a tough spot.
It's an economy of scale that incorporates, incorporates controversy as
well as profit. The company is under so much fire
(20:52):
because there are people who feel it is not doing
enough to curb the spread of hateful content. And there
are people who are saying, and you are going way
too far. We don't have to get too much into
the weeds of this. It is a bag of badgers,
chock full of controversy in the modern day. The main
(21:13):
thing you have to know is that powerful, very powerful
entities want to be able to control this platform. They
have contradictory demands. They also have they got int a
Kobyashi Maru. For any Star Trek fan, there is a
(21:34):
a no win situation. You cannot please all your customers
and all your masters. And maybe here guys at the end,
because we have so much, because we do have personal experience,
we can talk about demonetization. This is on the ground
threat well for.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
Sure, and I think we haven't really mentioned the whole
idea of how you Tube became an economy of scale
for a home new class of creators who would come
to rely on the income that their video is generated.
So when you have this potential for depriving these individuals
(22:12):
of their ability to earn a living based on the
nature of the content that they've been making for however long,
all of a sudden those guidelines change and they're demonetizing,
aka pulling ads from your videos.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
You then are being.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
Threatened essentially, and it's a form of censorship kind of
like shadow bands on Instagram, where you're not outright told
necessarily that if you say this we won't promote your
stuff as much. Just all of a sudden, you are
noticing that your reach has been diminished significantly, and you're
not really told why.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Yeah, demonetization is one of those fancy words that sounds
good in a boardroom. It's a corporate term for, like
you said, the removing ad revenue, in this case from
YouTube creators. Host anything you want, but we may bury
it in the algorithm. We won't allow you to make
(23:07):
money even your little you're laughably small percentage of whatever
an ad is, and a lot of frustrated video creators
to your point, recognize what I would call the near
hominem here. So a homonym is two different words that
sound the same but mean different things. They feel like
demonetization is really demonization, right and patently unfair, especially when
(23:34):
regarding sensitive issues. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, folks,
you need to know that we have you know, we
have a crow in the game here because we have
personally encountered automated demonetization when we created video essays on
(23:56):
certain sensitive subjects, and you can appeal that. Guys.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
I'd love for you to speak more to that on
the YouTube side of it, maybe even talk about some analytics.
You can appeal that, but by the time you've appealed that,
as we know, YouTube videos only really hit in a
certain window of when they're dropped, and then if you've
lost out on that window to make money off of
those hits, it ain't coming back even if your appeal
is successful.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
Yep, it's all a big algorithm. It's all about the
first twelve twenty four hours. That's every video that drops
on YouTube.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
It started in twenty twelve, the automated demonetization.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Which is exactly well, it's around the same time when
we started our channel, Conspiracy Stuff. We used to make
stuff on how stuff works on their main channel, and
then we started posting on our brand new channel, which
was YouTube dot com slash Conspiracy Stuff October twenty twelve.
And just to give you an example of these things,
because we encountered it almost immediately as we were making shows.
(24:53):
Here's one of the earliest videos we ever put on
our channel, Edward Burne's three colon the Legacy November thirtieth,
twenty twelve, had ninety two thousand views. As of today,
it has ninety two thousand views. It was almost immediately
switched to limited ad earnings. Content not suitable for advertisers.
Speaker 4 (25:11):
What about it isn't suitable? That's wild Edward Brenees was
a marketing dude.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
That's like, yeah, well, you also know that's not many
views at all. So here's something to also keep in mind.
The number of views you get on a particular video
has a lot to do with the number of subscribers
you have that are active, that have notifications turned on.
Has to do with discoverability of like a video that's
chosen for suitability to be discoverable by others. It has
(25:38):
all it's this huge algorithm that has to do with right.
And if you do really good and you make the
type of video with the right words in your description
and your title, and with your metadata correct, with your image,
your thumbnail, and it doesn't have any profanity, doesn't have
any sexual imagery, doesn't have all these other things in
it has the right number of human faces, then you're
gonna you know, you're getting like plus one every time
(26:01):
you do these things right. And then inside your video,
if your host, your person talking, your AI generated thing,
whatever it is, as long as it says the right
things and doesn't say the wrong things, you're getting more
plus ones plus ones plus ones in our case, guys,
I think it's I think we only have metrics for money.
(26:22):
Since April of twenty twenty four, That's what I can
see on our creator page right now. Since April of
twenty twenty four, that video has earned thirty two cents. Now, No,
but seriously, think about that. A video that we cared
a lot about made in twenty twelve, it's been around
since then. It's only got ninety two thousand views, but
(26:43):
thirty two cents.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Oh, I mean we talk.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
About like your average is run of the mill, like
a new big content creator.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Ninety two thousand views is a lot.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
And I was always understood that the metric was like
a million views you make about.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
One thousand bucks.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
I don't know if that hold is true today, but
that still seems insane and the product of this unsuitability factor.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
We give you a few more videos so we can
really like think about some of this stuff. Ben, you'll
remember this one March sixth twenty thirteen, Libya, The Fall
of Gadaffi two hundred and forty two thousand views, nine cents.
Since April twenty twenty four, we've made on that again
said content's not suitable.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
What are some other videos you'd like to mention?
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Well, I'm just trying to give everybody versions of like,
here's the type of content that we found important and
important enough to spend all of our time on these
things put them out. It was once a week at
this time, once or twice a week at this time
that we were making videos. Danny Casileiro in the Octopus
May tenth, twenty twenty four, one hundred and fifty seven
thousand views twenty four cents that we've made on that video.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
My question though, is like, do they not have any
ruberg for what qualifies as suitable?
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Yes? Is it a black box? Oh? Yes, No, I'd
love to get to that. Yeah, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
No, No, we must that's the next logical step I
think if it's The answer is yes.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
Just the simple answer to that question is YouTube does
not have a list of words you can't say and
stuff like that. But there are all of these guidelines
that you can find. They're a little morphous, a little confusing,
because it's a nice little mixture, right man, of humans
and automated algorithms and things that are scanning videos. It's
a nice little mixture, so you never really know who's
(28:27):
going to be or what's going to be looking at
your stuff, and it's a bit of a crapshoot every
once in a while.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Yeah, for instance, we were demonetized on things that forced
us to read some tea leaves right to your point
to go back, you guys and say, well, what was
it that made you also persnicty. We know that YouTube
began demonetizing videos in one T twelve based on advertising
(28:58):
guidelines you can and based on some surveys they have
with advertisers. Put honestly, you can read a great article
about that from The Daily Dot back in twenty sixteen.
That's a good primer to the point about the automation.
That's the real devil's bargain here, because the first wave
(29:20):
of demonization or demonetization is not done by humans meatmechs.
It is automated. It is algorithmic. It looks at metadata
of videos as well as other factors like which videos
naturally linked to yours, which I think was a big
deal in the Libya exploration. And it also says their
(29:44):
question is not is this dangerous to society? Their question
is is this something an advertiser would or would not
want to be associated with. So you can imagine easily, folks,
how this affected show those that explored conspiracy theories, especially
as the term conspiracy theory became once again weaponized in
(30:09):
the US. This it's a shadow band, like you were saying, no,
it's not, it's not to and we don't want to
come off bitter. We're grateful to YouTube. It was not to.
It was not meant to stamp down information, at least
the way they wrote this stuff. It was meant to
(30:29):
stamp out disinformation and to satisfy advertising partners. It also
in the in the big days, like in the original days,
it was very difficult to know that your video had
been demonetized. You could you could notice if you took
a granular look at analytics like we always did. You
(30:51):
could ask you to what happened, and we did. You
could appeal, and we did in several cases, but other
than that, there's not much else you could do with it.
Speaker 4 (31:03):
Well, and you've missed that window again, like even if
you win your appeal, like you've totally missed the crucial
time for views that would then create monetization if you
get it approved after the fact you're not getting that
time back right.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Yeah, to which point my question now evolves from uh,
from is YouTube democratizing stuff? The answer was yes for
a while and still is yes to a degree. But
now has YouTube become similar to the same oppressive forces
that it was originally invented to circumvent. These claims can
(31:42):
be treated on a case by case basis, but they
all have their own bag of badgers. It's it's very difficult.
I'm not saying YouTube is automatically now the bad guys,
but I am saying, you know, you stay at a
barbershop long enough, you get a haircut.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
We're a whole for one second, so you can like
subscribe and hit that little bell so you never miss
a new video. Wait, what are we doing? Ad break?
We'll be right back. I'm gonna make the argument that
what YouTube and Alphabet and Google and everybody they are
(32:20):
actively participating in stepped thought control. I think that's what
they're doing. That's my argument. It's my opinion here. Think
about Ben, take yourself back to the number of hours
you would spend making a single YouTube video, really, like
back to twenty twelve. Just how much time you would
spend writing, being in front of the camera in the studio,
(32:42):
recording audio. The amount of time I would spend behind
the camera with you shooting stuff, The amount of time
I would spend it at an editing bay, and then
you know, writing all the meta, getting all the stuff together,
and then putting out a single video. Just how much
time that is. Now, if you can't, if you can't
make money for that time right that you are spending,
(33:06):
that's not a job. And if you can't make it
your job, then this has to be your pastime, the
thing you do for fun, And that's a ton of
time and hours that you're spending making this stuff. So
what they are doing by demonetizing these videos is forcing
people to not have a job making stuff that is
(33:28):
not suitable for advertisers. Because we were paid, We were
paid salaries to make these videos, and that's why we
could make them, right, that's the only reason why we
could put this content out is because somebody thought to
pay us a salary to make this kind of stuff,
to pursue the things that we thought were interesting and
important for people. But if as an independent creator, you can't,
(33:52):
you can't make money doing this because all your stuff
gets demonetized, then you have to fall in line and
make videos only about the stuff that YouTube wants you
to make videos about.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
That's true to a point, Matt, I just want to
push back slightly that there are other ways now more
than ever. You know Patreon, for example, where you're getting
paid directly by the folks that are consuming your stuff,
and they're paying your salary in that way to allow
you Because at the very least YouTube isn't straight up
kicking people off for doing stuff they don't like. They're
(34:26):
just not letting them make money on their built in
ad sales monetization system. You can also advertise directly in
the content of your video and have relationships with advertising
agencies that allow you to get money from episodes by
having those direct sales, let's call it. So it's the
very least you could I'm not trying to I'm just
(34:48):
be Devil's advocate here. They're not kicking people off for
saying things that they don't like. They're just excluding them
from a built in way of making money. And it
doesn't mean there aren't other ways to do it so
that you can still We'll capture that audience and then
have that audience pay you directly.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
It just means you have to have a Patreon or
an OnlyFans or whatever it is that you use to
actually make money with the stuff you put onto this platform.
Just to give one more metric, guys, the watch time
on our channel watch time lifetime watch time is five million,
(35:24):
three hundred and eight thousand, seven hundred and twenty eight
point nine hours that people have spent watching our videos.
Since April of twenty twenty four, our channel, which has
five hundred and ninety four thousand subscribers, has made six thousand,
two hundred and sixty six dollars and eighty one cents.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Think about this, I'll see you at Dave and Busters.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
No, but but think about that divided on a monthly basis,
divided on the money, the number of people that make
this show. Think about that.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
It's nothing.
Speaker 4 (35:53):
But if you have people it's like two hundred something dollars,
you will have people that make that every day on Patreon.
You know that'll make one hundred and grand a month
on Patreon and that is their bread and butter. So
I'm just saying the world has it is a little
bit different, and it's not like you rely exclusively on
YouTube to pay for your existence. There are other ways.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
And I'm not saying that that's okay.
Speaker 4 (36:14):
I'm not saying that YouTube to your appointment, isn't participating
in some level of minor thought control or whatever however
you want to put it. I just think that at
the very least, they're not like completely wholesale deplatforming people
for saying things that they don't like.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
I get it, But Ben, what was that number you
gave us early on about the amount of money YouTube
is gonna probably.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Make sure yeap again? YouTube is projected to hit sixty
two billion dollars worth of that revenue here in twenty
twenty six. Folks, Just just.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Really think about that, the amount of money that corporation
makes versus if you don't do the things that you're
supposed to do, you're gonna make that two hundred dollars
a month.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Maybe maybe right, Unless you're mister beast, unless you're you're
towing a line hitting lightning in a bottle a zeitgeist,
we have nothing but nothing but an attaboy and respect
for people who are who are playing the game. As
long as you are being intellectually sincere, as long as
(37:20):
you are not lying to people are hurting them for money.
We don't have time to get into the quote unquote AI.
I hate that term, but you do need to know
that as of twenty twenty five, roughly twenty percent of
the content on YouTube has especially in YouTube shorts, has
(37:41):
been found to be AI slop. I have a pitch
for you, guys. This is my personal opinion and I
usually don't like injecting these, but see, I would love
to hear your thoughts. I see right now YouTube at
a crossroads because it's getting again a kobyashi maru and
(38:02):
no win scenario from so many stakeholders as they call
them in boardrooms. It's also at a situation where, just
to its gigantic Leviathan nature, someone outside of YouTube, many players,
want to get a hold of it. And if those
(38:23):
extremely powerful forces who want to gaslight their narratives to
the world at large, if one of those outsiders gets
too too much control over YouTube, things are going to
be bad for everyone involved, and it will happen. I
think it is at this point, you know, when we
(38:44):
originally wanted to do this episode. I think we're pulled
back for a number of reasons. But now it is
quite possible that something outside of YouTube, probably a state actor,
a large corporation that controls a state actor, will get
(39:07):
a hold of it and will push the narrative. We
have so much more to talk about. We know that also,
YouTube's important. That's the other point I have to make. Ah,
we didn't even talk about this. YouTube is not a
video platform anymore. It is kind of right in your
day to day But at this point in twenty twenty six,
fellow conspiracy realist want you to know and admit this
(39:30):
is a library. It is a global library of human experience,
of ephemera of like you know, you go to the
redwood forest and you see a redwood that has been
cut down and you practice dendo chronology. You learn about
the world when that redwood was growing. You can learn
about the world and history for now via YouTube stuff
(39:56):
from you know, just a few decades ago. And it's
not even a matter of access other than Internet access, right,
That's why you got to check out awesome stuff. I'd
love to recommend preserve tube spelled like it sounds.
Speaker 4 (40:10):
For sure, And I mean, you know, early days of YouTube,
especially as pertains to some of that copyright strike stuff
and the digital Millennium Copyright Act, like that library aspect
of it.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
All involve copyright infringement. You know.
Speaker 4 (40:23):
It was like, okay, I could upload this contents of
this VHS that you can't find anymore, and then that
aspect of it, Ben, I would argue, is also under
threat because of the coziness that they have, the platform
has with advertisements. They don't want to be controversial and
allow some of this kind of more archival stuff to
be uploaded unfettered. You might have like an MTV concert,
(40:47):
you know, from the nineties that's up there, and in theory,
if it is uploaded by a user and not through
MTV's official channel, that might not be long for this world.
I mean, there was a video of my mother singing
in the opera that was on YouTube for years and I'm.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
So grateful that I screen grabbed the.
Speaker 4 (41:04):
Video and the audio of it because it went away
and I didn't think it was ever going to but
for whatever reason, it went away. And I don't know why.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Global Library of Ephemera. You know, I think there's something
to hold on to here. I think this matters. Do
check out preserve toob Matt what's on your mind? Oh?
Speaker 3 (41:22):
Nothing, I I just think you should look up reasons
for demonetization after this, you should look up the profanity guidelines.
There's an update in June or July of last year
on some of the things that you can and can't say. Again,
there's no official list of like blacklisted words or something
(41:43):
that YouTube has out there, but the number of human
beings that use YouTube on a daily basis to kind
of stay up to date on things, especially when people
have to pay for news nowadays. You know, if you
might have to pay for YouTube premium if you don't
want the ads, but people just kind of go through
it because it's what they can afford. Our thoughts are
(42:05):
generated from the things we're exposed to, and when the
only things that we're exposed to are the things that
are advertiser friendly, is just painting a picture of what
the future could be, right and what we can think
about and how we're going to view the world. And
I think it. Brockness sent an email while I was away.
They said, like, what is this guy on about? Why
(42:27):
is he Why is Matt so frustrated by things? It's
because I personally see a view of the world that
is shaping in a way that is very uncomfortable in
draconian and bad and YouTube is a part of it.
And it doesn't mean that's right, that's what I see.
I'm with you, man, But it is also beautiful, Ben,
as you were saying, it's also a beautiful thing.
Speaker 4 (42:48):
Well, no, and Ben, I mean, I'm completely agreeing with
your archival perspective of it. I think there is still
some of that out there, but a lot of the
stuff that's most important to an archival aspect sort of
flies under the radar. And just you know, my case
study of this one clip of my mother, you know
of a VHS that was uploaded by some random user
from a thing that was put out in the eighties
(43:11):
all of a sudden disappeared. I just think because of
that cozy advertiser centric relationship that YouTube has, some of
that archival aspect of it could be under threat on
a long enough timeline, you know, as those things are
maybe filtered out because they don't want to deal with
the hassle of having to you know, have advertisers worried
about being served up in copywritten content.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
And we've got so much more to get to folks,
we didn't really get a chance to explore the AI stuff,
the supposed brain rot. We are in full disclosure overall
fans of YouTube. This platform has been integral to our show.
It has provided immense learning opportunities. Definitely helped me out
(43:52):
in a couple of couple of situations. As we said,
you can find a ton of our work on YouTube
and multiple formats, and I just gotta say go humanity,
Go human beings from me at the zoo to billions
of dollars and billions of people. I do think YouTube
(44:17):
will get heavily compromised in the horizon, but we want
to know your thoughts and also just to keep it
positive instead of a random fact in email, Folks, why
don't you share with us the weirdest or funniest stuff
you've seen on YouTube? Shout out to everybody who gets
the reference. Not my chair, not my problem, you know
the drill smash that like button subscribe. We want to
(44:40):
hear your thoughts. There are a number of ways to
get in touch with us, that's right.
Speaker 4 (44:43):
If you would like, you can reach out to the
handles Conspiracy Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show on whichever social
media platform you enjoy. You'll find us on one of them.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
Hey, are you watching us on YouTube. Don't forget there's
an audio feed. You can find it. It's all over
the place, in various place you just look for it.
You can find our episode from when was it October nineteenth,
twenty eighteen, thought Control? What's up with YouTube's algorithm? That's
when we looked at this along like what almost ten
(45:13):
years ago, and we were talking about some of these things.
It has changed shape a lot. We would love to
hear you, hear your voice and your thoughts, so call us.
Our number is one eight three three std WYTK. When
you call in, give yourself a cool nickname and let
us know within the message if we can use your
name and message on one of our listener mail episodes
that show up in the audio feeds. Hey, you can
(45:36):
also email us.
Speaker 2 (45:37):
That's right, this is one of the best ways to
contact us. Twenty four hours a night, seven evenings a week.
You can send us the links. We'll all see it immediately.
We can all respond. You will take us to the
edge of the rabbit hole. We will do the rest.
Send us your favorite random, weirdest, coolest YouTube video from
(45:58):
the past. We'll see you out here in the dark.
Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
Stuff They Don't Want You to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
A production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Hello, and welcome back to Netflix. My name is Matt,
my name is Nol.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
are you You specifically you are you. You are also
here right now, and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. Previously on Stuff they don't
want you to know, we explored the origin and the
(00:54):
controversy surrounding the stuff they don't want you to know.
It's a pun that we're not giving up on. Please
check out chapter one before you continue to chapter two.
What do you say? Guys? Should we just drop in
and media arrests?
Speaker 3 (01:10):
And before we do, reminder you have to watch on
YouTube reactions to Pete and Boss for the first time.
It's one of the best things you can do on YouTube.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
So here we go, joining us already in progress. The
absolute volume of content on YouTube is a feature, not
a bug, and there is no possible way that that
could be policed, so to speak, by YouTube themselves, except
(01:38):
when it kind of benefits them, right.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Well, that was one of the main things YouTube was
concerned with in the beginning, right, just like Facebook, just
like all these other social media platforms, about the terrible
things that could be uploaded. If you give that tool
to everybody who can possibly make a video or put
video up, there's danger there, right, And is it their fault?
(02:01):
It might be their fault if it goes up and
everybody sees it. So we as a company have to
protect ourselves more than anyone for sure, that kind of stuff, right.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
And I mean, obviously there are safeguards in place that
would prevent someone from, say uploading a video of like
murder or violent sticking place or something really horrific like that.
But then it gets a little more nuanced when it
comes to like ideological content and like what is and
is not okay and what is incentivized and de incentivized.
And I love then that you point on on the
(02:31):
outline here. That's when we start getting into Acts of
Congress and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as well as
Communications Decency Act, and how those things kind of play
into the way YouTube needs to approach this.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yeah, and thank you for shouting those out, because the
YouTube initiative runs into specific acts of Congress. You mentioned DMCA,
which we are unfortunately quite well aware of, as well
as the CDA Communications Decency Act, specifically section two three
(03:05):
zero for anybody who wants to play along at home.
Pretty much like the YouTube okay created in two thousand
and five, they get into legal trouble as early as
the next year. In two thousand and six, there is
something called the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers
and Publishers sent them a takedown request and they said, hey, YouTube,
(03:31):
you got more than thirty thousand things that you got
to take down. And Comedy Central, which is actually known
for being cool and comedic, also sued for copyright infringement.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
But yeah, those companies, those producers of content, right, the
traditional ones, TV, radio, movies, all that kind of.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Stuff, we call the legacy ones.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
Yeah, the only way they make money is if you're
watching it through one of the channels that's been curated
for you to watch stuff on, right, where there's huge
ad dollars.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
Well, of course, know, then they take on that. If
you can't beat them, join them. Mentality where then, you know.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Are vigorous, massively presence on YouTube.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
In fact, I think we could argue that they probably
make just as much money off of viral YouTube clips
of like The Daily Show and stuff than they do
from people actually watching it on TV.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yeah, it's the old joke. It's the old joke. Good
friend of the show. John Stewart also pointed as how
years ago, it's weird that The Daily Show published DVD
collections and later Blu ray collections because it was such
a topical show. And what we're seeing here is a
paradigm shift, right, a deep sea change wherein people are
(04:51):
thinking less deeply about things. Right, I explain it to
me in three minutes, Right, I just learned. I just
learned that maybe Syria and Jordan don't always get along.
But I've only got so long on my smoke breaks.
So just explained it to me. Don't make me quote stuff,
(05:12):
give me some stats that make me sound smart. That
is what is happening.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Let's think about the residual checks that got destroyed through
all of this. That was the way artists made money, right,
Bright Bright in two thousand and six, that's not that
long ago. Twenty years ago. But it this advent of
YouTube destroyed that entire way of making money, like just
killed it.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yeah, that's a great point, Matt. And further, Okay, it
gets stranger, folks, it gets more dangerous, the water gets
ever deeper because we have been talking about corporations primarily.
But around the same time, just within a year of
YouTube going public for the people, various state powers also
(06:00):
found YouTube problematic. This is when we see, you know,
user generated content. I'm an activist, I'm a protester. I
want people to know that this school is getting bombed
by some world's military. I'm sharing news that my government
doesn't want out there. Right, I'm becoming part of things
(06:23):
like on the ground reporting of the Arab Spring for
a few years back. Right. This is a This is
a shift that is similar to American civilians seeing real
world footage from the Vietnam War, testimonies of political prisoners,
arguments against state suppression and their policies. By two thousand
(06:48):
and eight, again just three years or three if you
want it, in glorious bastard style, just three years after
YouTube debuted, multiple countries have blocked part of YouTube content
or block the platform entirely. And yes, of course this
includes problematic, you know, authoritarian countries like Syria and China
(07:11):
or Pakistan, but it also includes things like Brazil or
Thailand or Turkey. YouTube was getting jammed up and their
boardroom decided to make some changes. They said, hey, what's
the point of making this if fewer and fewer people
can actually use it?
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Right?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
If we were global and people across the globe can't
use it, then what kind of weird don quixote stuff
are we doing? So YouTube started suspending user accounts. One
I think we all remember back in O seven, the
platform suspended the account of an Egyptian activist named Wail
(07:50):
Abbas and part of my pronunciation there he was a
blogger or a vlogger with a V as we would
call them. He was an anti torture activist. And his
whole thing was like he wasn't trying to sell bone,
broth or gold. He said, hey, police in Egypt are
torturing people, including women and children. I've got clips of
(08:13):
this I could show you, and YouTube shut the guy down.
And still they're rumors. We're being very diplomatic calling them rumors.
There are sh as no ones say rumors that YouTube
bent the knee to the Egyptian government, but they said
(08:36):
their official stance has always been that no other users,
just like you, they're the ones who complained. That's why
we covered up these Egyptian war crimes.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
Well, and that's sort of the advent of the concept
of deplatforming. You know, this is really kind of the
early days of that, because I think that's one of
the first mass you know, reach platforms other than like
Facebook or whatever, which isn't really in the conversation so
much anymore in that respect. That's why Facebook had to
stay relevant by like buying Instagram. But we start to
(09:11):
see later even like people on the right being deplatformed,
and that kind of leading to radicalization on the on
the right, further radicalization because they had to start their
own companies like you know, truth Social and things like that,
because they were no longer allowed to be on these
more mass platforms like Instagram and YouTube specifically. So it's
(09:34):
a fascinating kind of beginning of this whole culture war stuff, right.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Yeah, So he did debate about censorship.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
Yeah, and we saw the splintering occur in real time
in two thousand and six, two thousand and seven, when
places like Shock. Websites like Orgish turned or I think
it was Orgish Orgish, I can't remember, but they turned
into livelyek dot com in like two thousand and six,
two thousand and seven, and that's where you could go
(10:04):
to you go to this new video channel place and
watch Saddam Hussein get executed or if you wanted to
see actual live battle Warm.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
World Star hip hop.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Yeah, and and some of it is like like Orgish
was gross, like Shock, like rotten dot com ference of
type stuff. Yeah, but places like Lively tried to step
up and say, hey, you can actually see what is
happening in you know, war torn areas. You can see
what's really happening on the ground in places, and you
can just see that while YouTube is kind of changing
(10:38):
and going towards the money and the advertiser happiness thing
and trying to get the content the DCMA and the
content stuff right, all these other places are attempting to
fill in those spaces.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
Yeah, that happened with cable TV or you know, okay, no,
let me let me phrase it's the same thing that
happened to network TV when cable TV kind of swooped in.
It's just an extension of that to a degree, right,
because cable TV had a lot more freedom. Network TV
had to play much nicer with the advertisers than eventually
so did cable TV, and it just kind of like
it just you know, kicks the can down the road.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Right in the in the Abbas case in particular, YouTube
claimed and has always claimed that censorship was not the
end goal. The public, including by the way yours truly
was skeptical. Now there are countless allegations that are only
growing arguing that YouTube bends its own rules and will
(11:32):
act on behalf of powerful companies or powerful countries and
even authoritarian autocratic regimes and dictatorships. A lot of these
haven't been proven. But at the same time we also see.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
We of course they will like it just seems like
it's common sense that the degree to which they've become
the big guy, that it behooves them to do just
that they're no longer out there to spread quote unquote
truth and unfettered information. They have a lot more shareholders
to answer to. That's why you need the live leaks
(12:10):
and the more kind of underground versions of what YouTube
maybe used to be.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yeah, it's interesting because at the same time, we see
that there are numerous videos and accounts that are not
publishing copyright infringement stuff, right, They're not publishing something that
hits the narrative of a bully regime, which is all
the bad guys are. They're just jerks who are bullies.
(12:36):
But they these accounts are putting out heinous things, depictions
of illegal acts, calls to violence, racist material, gross sex stuff,
and so on. So now YouTube hit this Road to
Damascus moment, right, they hit this moment of recognization, realization,
(12:59):
something we call had come to Jesus moment. In the
American South, they say, we're everywhere in the world. All
these countries have different laws. Which laws of a given
country do we as YouTube follow? And so in two
thousand and eight they put out their rules for what
they call violations of community guidelines, and it's a three
(13:22):
strike thing. You screw up once, in their opinion, you
get a warning. After six months you're back in the game.
So they give you a yellow card. You know, they
put you in time out. And I think everybody in
the audience tonight is aware of the concept of time out,
especially if you are a bad kid growing up. It's
(13:43):
nuts because then They also had again to the point
about power players. These are the real dangers for YouTube.
Folks like Senator Joseph Lieberman called on YouTube to remove
any video that had a logo of Outida Right, a
terrorist group, and they said, also take away any videos
(14:07):
that have any depiction of a logo or a sigil
associated with a known terrorist group. And then YouTube bucked
back and they said, look, these videos don't violate our
policies against violence or hate speech. We have people singing
songs a capella, or we have people who are talking
(14:30):
about Al Qaeda in an analytical way, so you can't
just automate taking that signal out. It's weird because you know,
I mentioned the Arab uprisings for the Arab Spring in particular,
this was another watershed moment. People around the world are
(14:52):
seeing self immolation, They're seeing massive acts of horrendous violence
and inspiring protests, and the company has to change its
approach to moderation. This is where we have pretty nasty
stuff happening.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
We're also seeing leaked footage of things that at this
time twenty ten, around those time, things that active military
and like private military US troops are doing in Afghanistan
and Iraq in particular. We're seeing videos like that show
up on YouTube and get shared from it and then
(15:30):
get taken down.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
That was happening rapidly in that time. Yes, so there's there,
really is. You can see why Lieberman and a bunch
of other appeal I heard that name in a long time,
just Y too, leabermen. But just you can see why
there was a major push to censor the things that
could get published, right, and you want you want to
stop them before somebody has to take it.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Down because you're powerful and you want to control the narrative.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
For sure, but you also don't want to seem like
you're doing that, yes, exactly. So then it becomes a
matter of public relations. And then you found this great
comment from the manager of YouTube News, or YouTube's manager
of News, Olivia Maw who in twenty eleven, referring to
the kinds of content we're talking about, said, normally this
type of violence would violate our community guidelines in terms
(16:20):
of service, and we would remove them. But we have
a clause in our community guidelines that make an exception
for videos that are educational, documentary, or scientific in nature.
In these cases, we actually make an exception and say
we understand that these videos have real news value. That's
a great way of characterizing it. But it would seem
to your point earlier, Ben or I can't remember who
(16:40):
said this. They also have a way of bending their
own rules depending on what the footage in question is
and maybe what government is yelling at them about it.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Yeah, we all know, folks, how rules are. When you're
the one who makes the rules. It's a lot less
like saying thou shalt or thou shalt not. It's a
lot more like saying what do I feel like eating tonight?
I know I said I was gonna get something vegan,
but it might be barbecue nite'. That's what often happens
(17:16):
when these these entities don't have an outside authority and
YouTube is doing its best right. YouTube is the Mickey
Mouse sorcerer's apprentice who never knew there would be that
many mops or brooms or a flood. So at this point,
YouTube has around eight hundred million users. At this point
(17:39):
in time, it's the third most visited website on the
planet entire and Google has noted by this time that
a lot of those DCMA takedown requests are coming from
not private entities. They're coming directly from governments. So what
(18:00):
if we take a pause for a word from our
sponsors and dive even deeper into the water. We're back.
We've got to recommend a phenomenal journalist, Gillian c. York.
Jillian c. York is writing for Vice back in the
(18:20):
day and says the company's decision making YouTube has become
considerably more questionable. They went up against US intelligence agencies
who were claiming that a short film, though was quite Islamophobic,
(18:41):
called The Innocence of Muslims, was partially responsible for the
attacks in Benghazi. If everybody remembers when US facilities in
Magazi were attacked. YouTube had a call directly with the
White House. They blocked the video only in Libya and Egypt,
and protests were already beginning to erupt because this film
(19:05):
had already been dead. To your point, Noe, this film
had already been aired on Egyptian broadcast television. The Libyan
government and the Egyptian government civil organizations in either country.
They were never in the conversation. It was from the
United States, half a world away, and YouTube, nobody else
(19:28):
on the ground is included. And other countries started demanding, hey,
remove this video. YouTube played along with some of those countries,
but they they iced out or stonewalled others. And one
country in particular, great example named by Yorke in their
(19:49):
article is Pakistan. Pakistan said, hey, you're not going to
respect us. Nobody gets YouTube, nobody about YouTube for you,
No YouTube for you. Yeah, it's weird because there are
it's always the bag of badgers of censorship. Right are
(20:09):
we inciting people to violence? Where we allow people to
speak their minds even if we know they're incorrect or
racist or evil. YouTube is trying at this point in
time to respond to these. Again, not corporations, state level actors,
(20:29):
governments say take down this specific video and anything like it.
That's what YouTube was and is in such a tough spot.
It's an economy of scale that incorporates, incorporates controversy as
well as profit. The company is under so much fire
(20:52):
because there are people who feel it is not doing
enough to curb the spread of hateful content. And there
are people who are saying, and you are going way
too far. We don't have to get too much into
the weeds of this. It is a bag of badgers,
chock full of controversy in the modern day. The main
(21:13):
thing you have to know is that powerful, very powerful
entities want to be able to control this platform. They
have contradictory demands. They also have they got int a
Kobyashi Maru. For any Star Trek fan, there is a
(21:34):
a no win situation. You cannot please all your customers
and all your masters. And maybe here guys at the end,
because we have so much, because we do have personal experience,
we can talk about demonetization. This is on the ground
threat well for.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
Sure, and I think we haven't really mentioned the whole
idea of how you Tube became an economy of scale
for a home new class of creators who would come
to rely on the income that their video is generated.
So when you have this potential for depriving these individuals
(22:12):
of their ability to earn a living based on the
nature of the content that they've been making for however long,
all of a sudden those guidelines change and they're demonetizing,
aka pulling ads from your videos.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
You then are being.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
Threatened essentially, and it's a form of censorship kind of
like shadow bands on Instagram, where you're not outright told
necessarily that if you say this we won't promote your
stuff as much. Just all of a sudden, you are
noticing that your reach has been diminished significantly, and you're
not really told why.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Yeah, demonetization is one of those fancy words that sounds
good in a boardroom. It's a corporate term for, like
you said, the removing ad revenue, in this case from
YouTube creators. Host anything you want, but we may bury
it in the algorithm. We won't allow you to make
(23:07):
money even your little you're laughably small percentage of whatever
an ad is, and a lot of frustrated video creators
to your point, recognize what I would call the near
hominem here. So a homonym is two different words that
sound the same but mean different things. They feel like
demonetization is really demonization, right and patently unfair, especially when
(23:34):
regarding sensitive issues. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, folks,
you need to know that we have you know, we
have a crow in the game here because we have
personally encountered automated demonetization when we created video essays on
(23:56):
certain sensitive subjects, and you can appeal that. Guys.
Speaker 4 (24:00):
I'd love for you to speak more to that on
the YouTube side of it, maybe even talk about some analytics.
You can appeal that, but by the time you've appealed that,
as we know, YouTube videos only really hit in a
certain window of when they're dropped, and then if you've
lost out on that window to make money off of
those hits, it ain't coming back even if your appeal
is successful.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
Yep, it's all a big algorithm. It's all about the
first twelve twenty four hours. That's every video that drops
on YouTube.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
It started in twenty twelve, the automated demonetization.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Which is exactly well, it's around the same time when
we started our channel, Conspiracy Stuff. We used to make
stuff on how stuff works on their main channel, and
then we started posting on our brand new channel, which
was YouTube dot com slash Conspiracy Stuff October twenty twelve.
And just to give you an example of these things,
because we encountered it almost immediately as we were making shows.
(24:53):
Here's one of the earliest videos we ever put on
our channel, Edward Burne's three colon the Legacy November thirtieth,
twenty twelve, had ninety two thousand views. As of today,
it has ninety two thousand views. It was almost immediately
switched to limited ad earnings. Content not suitable for advertisers.
Speaker 4 (25:11):
What about it isn't suitable? That's wild Edward Brenees was
a marketing dude.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
That's like, yeah, well, you also know that's not many
views at all. So here's something to also keep in mind.
The number of views you get on a particular video
has a lot to do with the number of subscribers
you have that are active, that have notifications turned on.
Has to do with discoverability of like a video that's
chosen for suitability to be discoverable by others. It has
(25:38):
all it's this huge algorithm that has to do with right.
And if you do really good and you make the
type of video with the right words in your description
and your title, and with your metadata correct, with your image,
your thumbnail, and it doesn't have any profanity, doesn't have
any sexual imagery, doesn't have all these other things in
it has the right number of human faces, then you're
gonna you know, you're getting like plus one every time
(26:01):
you do these things right. And then inside your video,
if your host, your person talking, your AI generated thing,
whatever it is, as long as it says the right
things and doesn't say the wrong things, you're getting more
plus ones plus ones plus ones in our case, guys,
I think it's I think we only have metrics for money.
(26:22):
Since April of twenty twenty four, That's what I can
see on our creator page right now. Since April of
twenty twenty four, that video has earned thirty two cents. Now, No,
but seriously, think about that. A video that we cared
a lot about made in twenty twelve, it's been around
since then. It's only got ninety two thousand views, but
(26:43):
thirty two cents.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
Oh, I mean we talk.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
About like your average is run of the mill, like
a new big content creator.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Ninety two thousand views is a lot.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
And I was always understood that the metric was like
a million views you make about.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
One thousand bucks.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
I don't know if that hold is true today, but
that still seems insane and the product of this unsuitability factor.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
We give you a few more videos so we can
really like think about some of this stuff. Ben, you'll
remember this one March sixth twenty thirteen, Libya, The Fall
of Gadaffi two hundred and forty two thousand views, nine cents.
Since April twenty twenty four, we've made on that again
said content's not suitable.
Speaker 2 (27:26):
What are some other videos you'd like to mention?
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Well, I'm just trying to give everybody versions of like,
here's the type of content that we found important and
important enough to spend all of our time on these
things put them out. It was once a week at
this time, once or twice a week at this time
that we were making videos. Danny Casileiro in the Octopus
May tenth, twenty twenty four, one hundred and fifty seven
thousand views twenty four cents that we've made on that video.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
My question though, is like, do they not have any
ruberg for what qualifies as suitable?
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Yes? Is it a black box? Oh? Yes, No, I'd
love to get to that. Yeah, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
No, No, we must that's the next logical step I
think if it's The answer is yes.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
Just the simple answer to that question is YouTube does
not have a list of words you can't say and
stuff like that. But there are all of these guidelines
that you can find. They're a little morphous, a little confusing,
because it's a nice little mixture, right man, of humans
and automated algorithms and things that are scanning videos. It's
a nice little mixture, so you never really know who's
(28:27):
going to be or what's going to be looking at
your stuff, and it's a bit of a crapshoot every
once in a while.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
Yeah, for instance, we were demonetized on things that forced
us to read some tea leaves right to your point
to go back, you guys and say, well, what was
it that made you also persnicty. We know that YouTube
began demonetizing videos in one T twelve based on advertising
(28:58):
guidelines you can and based on some surveys they have
with advertisers. Put honestly, you can read a great article
about that from The Daily Dot back in twenty sixteen.
That's a good primer to the point about the automation.
That's the real devil's bargain here, because the first wave
(29:20):
of demonization or demonetization is not done by humans meatmechs.
It is automated. It is algorithmic. It looks at metadata
of videos as well as other factors like which videos
naturally linked to yours, which I think was a big
deal in the Libya exploration. And it also says their
(29:44):
question is not is this dangerous to society? Their question
is is this something an advertiser would or would not
want to be associated with. So you can imagine easily, folks,
how this affected show those that explored conspiracy theories, especially
as the term conspiracy theory became once again weaponized in
(30:09):
the US. This it's a shadow band, like you were saying, no,
it's not, it's not to and we don't want to
come off bitter. We're grateful to YouTube. It was not to.
It was not meant to stamp down information, at least
the way they wrote this stuff. It was meant to
(30:29):
stamp out disinformation and to satisfy advertising partners. It also
in the in the big days, like in the original days,
it was very difficult to know that your video had
been demonetized. You could you could notice if you took
a granular look at analytics like we always did. You
(30:51):
could ask you to what happened, and we did. You
could appeal, and we did in several cases, but other
than that, there's not much else you could do with it.
Speaker 4 (31:03):
Well, and you've missed that window again, like even if
you win your appeal, like you've totally missed the crucial
time for views that would then create monetization if you
get it approved after the fact you're not getting that
time back right.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Yeah, to which point my question now evolves from uh,
from is YouTube democratizing stuff? The answer was yes for
a while and still is yes to a degree. But
now has YouTube become similar to the same oppressive forces
that it was originally invented to circumvent. These claims can
(31:42):
be treated on a case by case basis, but they
all have their own bag of badgers. It's it's very difficult.
I'm not saying YouTube is automatically now the bad guys,
but I am saying, you know, you stay at a
barbershop long enough, you get a haircut.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
We're a whole for one second, so you can like
subscribe and hit that little bell so you never miss
a new video. Wait, what are we doing? Ad break?
We'll be right back. I'm gonna make the argument that
what YouTube and Alphabet and Google and everybody they are
(32:20):
actively participating in stepped thought control. I think that's what
they're doing. That's my argument. It's my opinion here. Think
about Ben, take yourself back to the number of hours
you would spend making a single YouTube video, really, like
back to twenty twelve. Just how much time you would
spend writing, being in front of the camera in the studio,
(32:42):
recording audio. The amount of time I would spend behind
the camera with you shooting stuff, The amount of time
I would spend it at an editing bay, and then
you know, writing all the meta, getting all the stuff together,
and then putting out a single video. Just how much
time that is. Now, if you can't, if you can't
make money for that time right that you are spending,
(33:06):
that's not a job. And if you can't make it
your job, then this has to be your pastime, the
thing you do for fun, And that's a ton of
time and hours that you're spending making this stuff. So
what they are doing by demonetizing these videos is forcing
people to not have a job making stuff that is
(33:28):
not suitable for advertisers. Because we were paid, We were
paid salaries to make these videos, and that's why we
could make them, right, that's the only reason why we
could put this content out is because somebody thought to
pay us a salary to make this kind of stuff,
to pursue the things that we thought were interesting and
important for people. But if as an independent creator, you can't,
(33:52):
you can't make money doing this because all your stuff
gets demonetized, then you have to fall in line and
make videos only about the stuff that YouTube wants you
to make videos about.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
That's true to a point, Matt, I just want to
push back slightly that there are other ways now more
than ever. You know Patreon, for example, where you're getting
paid directly by the folks that are consuming your stuff,
and they're paying your salary in that way to allow
you Because at the very least YouTube isn't straight up
kicking people off for doing stuff they don't like. They're
(34:26):
just not letting them make money on their built in
ad sales monetization system. You can also advertise directly in
the content of your video and have relationships with advertising
agencies that allow you to get money from episodes by
having those direct sales, let's call it. So it's the
very least you could I'm not trying to I'm just
(34:48):
be Devil's advocate here. They're not kicking people off for
saying things that they don't like. They're just excluding them
from a built in way of making money. And it
doesn't mean there aren't other ways to do it so
that you can still We'll capture that audience and then
have that audience pay you directly.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
It just means you have to have a Patreon or
an OnlyFans or whatever it is that you use to
actually make money with the stuff you put onto this platform.
Just to give one more metric, guys, the watch time
on our channel watch time lifetime watch time is five million,
(35:24):
three hundred and eight thousand, seven hundred and twenty eight
point nine hours that people have spent watching our videos.
Since April of twenty twenty four, our channel, which has
five hundred and ninety four thousand subscribers, has made six thousand,
two hundred and sixty six dollars and eighty one cents.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Think about this, I'll see you at Dave and Busters.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
No, but but think about that divided on a monthly basis,
divided on the money, the number of people that make
this show. Think about that.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
It's nothing.
Speaker 4 (35:53):
But if you have people it's like two hundred something dollars,
you will have people that make that every day on Patreon.
You know that'll make one hundred and grand a month
on Patreon and that is their bread and butter. So
I'm just saying the world has it is a little
bit different, and it's not like you rely exclusively on
YouTube to pay for your existence. There are other ways.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
And I'm not saying that that's okay.
Speaker 4 (36:14):
I'm not saying that YouTube to your appointment, isn't participating
in some level of minor thought control or whatever however
you want to put it. I just think that at
the very least, they're not like completely wholesale deplatforming people
for saying things that they don't like.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
I get it, But Ben, what was that number you
gave us early on about the amount of money YouTube
is gonna probably.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Make sure yeap again? YouTube is projected to hit sixty
two billion dollars worth of that revenue here in twenty
twenty six. Folks, Just just.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Really think about that, the amount of money that corporation
makes versus if you don't do the things that you're
supposed to do, you're gonna make that two hundred dollars
a month.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Maybe maybe right, Unless you're mister beast, unless you're you're
towing a line hitting lightning in a bottle a zeitgeist,
we have nothing but nothing but an attaboy and respect
for people who are who are playing the game. As
long as you are being intellectually sincere, as long as
(37:20):
you are not lying to people are hurting them for money.
We don't have time to get into the quote unquote AI.
I hate that term, but you do need to know
that as of twenty twenty five, roughly twenty percent of
the content on YouTube has especially in YouTube shorts, has
(37:41):
been found to be AI slop. I have a pitch
for you, guys. This is my personal opinion and I
usually don't like injecting these, but see, I would love
to hear your thoughts. I see right now YouTube at
a crossroads because it's getting again a kobyashi maru and
(38:02):
no win scenario from so many stakeholders as they call
them in boardrooms. It's also at a situation where, just
to its gigantic Leviathan nature, someone outside of YouTube, many players,
want to get a hold of it. And if those
(38:23):
extremely powerful forces who want to gaslight their narratives to
the world at large, if one of those outsiders gets
too too much control over YouTube, things are going to
be bad for everyone involved, and it will happen. I
think it is at this point, you know, when we
(38:44):
originally wanted to do this episode. I think we're pulled
back for a number of reasons. But now it is
quite possible that something outside of YouTube, probably a state actor,
a large corporation that controls a state actor, will get
(39:07):
a hold of it and will push the narrative. We
have so much more to talk about. We know that also,
YouTube's important. That's the other point I have to make. Ah,
we didn't even talk about this. YouTube is not a
video platform anymore. It is kind of right in your
day to day But at this point in twenty twenty six,
fellow conspiracy realist want you to know and admit this
(39:30):
is a library. It is a global library of human experience,
of ephemera of like you know, you go to the
redwood forest and you see a redwood that has been
cut down and you practice dendo chronology. You learn about
the world when that redwood was growing. You can learn
about the world and history for now via YouTube stuff
(39:56):
from you know, just a few decades ago. And it's
not even a matter of access other than Internet access, right,
That's why you got to check out awesome stuff. I'd
love to recommend preserve tube spelled like it sounds.
Speaker 4 (40:10):
For sure, And I mean, you know, early days of YouTube,
especially as pertains to some of that copyright strike stuff
and the digital Millennium Copyright Act, like that library aspect
of it.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
All involve copyright infringement. You know.
Speaker 4 (40:23):
It was like, okay, I could upload this contents of
this VHS that you can't find anymore, and then that
aspect of it, Ben, I would argue, is also under
threat because of the coziness that they have, the platform
has with advertisements. They don't want to be controversial and
allow some of this kind of more archival stuff to
be uploaded unfettered. You might have like an MTV concert,
(40:47):
you know, from the nineties that's up there, and in theory,
if it is uploaded by a user and not through
MTV's official channel, that might not be long for this world.
I mean, there was a video of my mother singing
in the opera that was on YouTube for years and I'm.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
So grateful that I screen grabbed the.
Speaker 4 (41:04):
Video and the audio of it because it went away
and I didn't think it was ever going to but
for whatever reason, it went away. And I don't know why.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Global Library of Ephemera. You know, I think there's something
to hold on to here. I think this matters. Do
check out preserve toob Matt what's on your mind? Oh?
Speaker 3 (41:22):
Nothing, I I just think you should look up reasons
for demonetization after this, you should look up the profanity guidelines.
There's an update in June or July of last year
on some of the things that you can and can't say. Again,
there's no official list of like blacklisted words or something
(41:43):
that YouTube has out there, but the number of human
beings that use YouTube on a daily basis to kind
of stay up to date on things, especially when people
have to pay for news nowadays. You know, if you
might have to pay for YouTube premium if you don't
want the ads, but people just kind of go through
it because it's what they can afford. Our thoughts are
(42:05):
generated from the things we're exposed to, and when the
only things that we're exposed to are the things that
are advertiser friendly, is just painting a picture of what
the future could be, right and what we can think
about and how we're going to view the world. And
I think it. Brockness sent an email while I was away.
They said, like, what is this guy on about? Why
(42:27):
is he Why is Matt so frustrated by things? It's
because I personally see a view of the world that
is shaping in a way that is very uncomfortable in
draconian and bad and YouTube is a part of it.
And it doesn't mean that's right, that's what I see.
I'm with you, man, But it is also beautiful, Ben,
as you were saying, it's also a beautiful thing.
Speaker 4 (42:48):
Well, no, and Ben, I mean, I'm completely agreeing with
your archival perspective of it. I think there is still
some of that out there, but a lot of the
stuff that's most important to an archival aspect sort of
flies under the radar. And just you know, my case
study of this one clip of my mother, you know
of a VHS that was uploaded by some random user
from a thing that was put out in the eighties
(43:11):
all of a sudden disappeared. I just think because of
that cozy advertiser centric relationship that YouTube has, some of
that archival aspect of it could be under threat on
a long enough timeline, you know, as those things are
maybe filtered out because they don't want to deal with
the hassle of having to you know, have advertisers worried
about being served up in copywritten content.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
And we've got so much more to get to folks,
we didn't really get a chance to explore the AI stuff,
the supposed brain rot. We are in full disclosure overall
fans of YouTube. This platform has been integral to our show.
It has provided immense learning opportunities. Definitely helped me out
(43:52):
in a couple of couple of situations. As we said,
you can find a ton of our work on YouTube
and multiple formats, and I just gotta say go humanity,
Go human beings from me at the zoo to billions
of dollars and billions of people. I do think YouTube
(44:17):
will get heavily compromised in the horizon, but we want
to know your thoughts and also just to keep it
positive instead of a random fact in email, Folks, why
don't you share with us the weirdest or funniest stuff
you've seen on YouTube? Shout out to everybody who gets
the reference. Not my chair, not my problem, you know
the drill smash that like button subscribe. We want to
(44:40):
hear your thoughts. There are a number of ways to
get in touch with us, that's right.
Speaker 4 (44:43):
If you would like, you can reach out to the
handles Conspiracy Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show on whichever social
media platform you enjoy. You'll find us on one of them.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
Hey, are you watching us on YouTube. Don't forget there's
an audio feed. You can find it. It's all over
the place, in various place you just look for it.
You can find our episode from when was it October nineteenth,
twenty eighteen, thought Control? What's up with YouTube's algorithm? That's
when we looked at this along like what almost ten
(45:13):
years ago, and we were talking about some of these things.
It has changed shape a lot. We would love to
hear you, hear your voice and your thoughts, so call us.
Our number is one eight three three std WYTK. When
you call in, give yourself a cool nickname and let
us know within the message if we can use your
name and message on one of our listener mail episodes
that show up in the audio feeds. Hey, you can
(45:36):
also email us.
Speaker 2 (45:37):
That's right, this is one of the best ways to
contact us. Twenty four hours a night, seven evenings a week.
You can send us the links. We'll all see it immediately.
We can all respond. You will take us to the
edge of the rabbit hole. We will do the rest.
Send us your favorite random, weirdest, coolest YouTube video from
(45:58):
the past. We'll see you out here in the dark.
Conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
Stuff They Don't Want You to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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