Марк Дайс - The Liberal Media Industrial Complex

But even for those who never expected to be full-time YouTubers, it was still nice to make a few dollars every month for the time and effort put into creating videos about things they’re passionate about. Despite the loss of income caused by the increased scrutiny, a lot of the more popular YouTuber news channels were still able to get by, or at least kept making videos because it’s about the message not the money, but we all have to pay the bills, so YouTube decided to make people’s lives even harder by demonetizing entire channels instead of just certain videos.

In January 2019 Tommy Robinson’s entire channel was demonetized. 838A few months later in May 2019 Count Dankula was fully demonetized. What’s particularly interesting is that he learned about it from an email from BuzzFeed asking for a statement about it. It appears they had lobbied YouTube to get him demonetized and then reached out to him for a comment immediately after their YouTube source confirmed they had done it. 839

BuzzFeed learned about it before him, which speaks volumes about what’s happening. Sargon of Akkad’s channel was also completely demonetized because of a rape joke he had made three years earlier on Twitter, and—what a “coincidence”—BuzzFeed was the first to break that story as well. 840

Another round of mass demonetization and channel bans occurred in June 2019 (dubbed the Vox Adpocalypse) occurred after a gay activist named Carlos Maza, who works at Vox, ranted nonstop on Twitter for an entire week about conservative comedian Steven Crowder making fun of him. Maza’s rant, which was conveniently timed to coincide with the kickoff of gay pride month for extra leverage, was a rallying call for liberals to pressure YouTube to completely ban Crowder (the most-subscribed conservative channel on YouTube) for “hate speech” because he called Maza a “lispy queer” since he talks with a lisp, and he’s a queer.

What do you think the “Q” stands for in LGBTQ? They call themselves queers, but normal people can’t use the word now apparently because the Left is trying to claim that only gay people can say queer , similarly to the double standard most black people have about the n-word.

While YouTube didn’t ban Steven Crowder from YouTube, or give him any community guideline strikes to take down any of his videos; they did demonetize his entire channel, not just the “offensive” videos in question, which were probably never even monetized to begin with, thus, preventing him from ever making another dollar from the pre-roll ads you often see before videos start playing. 841

It wasn’t just Steven Crowder’s channel though. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of others were hit at the same time, some of which were very popular with hundreds of thousands of subscribers. 842YouTube said this was just the beginning of their latest crackdown, and vowed to purge more “hateful” right-wing channels.

The very next week the New York Times ran a front page story titled “The Making of a YouTube Radical” which included a collage of various (mostly) conservative YouTubers who have sizable followings, and told the story about how a lonely loser named Caleb Cain “fell down the YouTube rabbit hole” and it turned him into a “radical.” How radical? The Times explained that, “He began referring to himself as a ‘tradcon’ — a traditional conservative,” supported “old-fashioned gender norms,” started dating a Christian girl, and “fought with his liberal friends.” 843

“Fought” meaning discussed politics and disagreed with the nonsense they were indoctrinated to believe. The man admits he never thought about doing anything violent and wasn’t even a hateful person, but he was the new poster boy denouncing right-wing YouTubers and the “algorithm.”

Other outlets immediately added more fuel to the fire and he was interviewed on CNN where he once again blamed “the algorithm” for “radicalizing” him. 844He said the conservative YouTubers he used to watch warned of Cultural Marxists who “were trying to destroy Western civilization and install some sort of socialist regime.” 845That’s exactly what they’re doing of course, but now if you just mention that, you’re considered a right-wing extremist and at risk of having your entire channel demonetized or even deleted.

When the White House announced the Social Media Summit and invited dozens of the top conservative social media personalities to meet with President Trump to discuss the issues of censorship and liberal bias, the media freaked out saying that the attendees (which included me, as you probably know) were “trolls,” “conspiracy theorists,” and “extremists.” 846

President Trump addressed us by saying, “So this is a historic day. Never before have so many online journalists and influencers, and that is exactly what you are, you are journalists and you are influencers, come together in this building to discuss the future of social media… Each of you is fulfilling a vital role in our nation. You are challenging the media gatekeepers and the corporate censors to bring the facts straight to the American people… Together you reach more people than any television broadcast network by far.” 847

I knew once word got out that I was invited to the White House I would have a huge target on my back and just a few days later over 200 of my YouTube videos were demonetized, with about 100 of them manually reviewed by the moderators and deemed “non-advertiser friendly” despite not just being fully monetized for days, months, (and some for years) but many of them had been manually reviewed previously and approved for monetization.

YouTube moved the goal post again, and may be looking for a reason to demonetize my whole channel by deeming a “significant portion” of my content “non-advertiser friendly” like they had done to dozens of other channels a month earlier. Many of the videos were of me making fun of CNN hosts, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Beto O’Rourke, and other members of Congress. Apparently it’s okay for Stephen Colbert to do political comedy, but not a conservative YouTuber.

In January 2017 YouTube introduced what they call Super Chats, which is a creative way for a viewer to get their question answered by their favorite YouTuber while they’re doing a livestream by tipping them a few bucks. Basically, viewers can choose a dollar amount anywhere from $5 to $500, and their question or comment will be highlighted in color and pinned up at the top of the chat box in order to catch the streamer’s attention since comments in the chat can scroll by the screen so fast they’re impossible to read.

In May 2018 BuzzFeed targeted Super Chats, claiming they were fueling racism and began pushing for them to be disabled because someone spent $100 on a Super Chat to post a message that said “WHITE PRIDE WORLD WIDE!” during someone’s livestream. 848A few months later the Wall Street Journal (which is responsible for setting off the first Adpocalypse in April 2017) also started complaining about people making money from Super Chats in a report titled, “Hate Speech on Live ‘Super Chats’ Tests YouTube.” 849

Just a few days later, KillStream, which was a free speech variety show that included debates about various issues, was completely banned from YouTube since the Wall Street Journal pointed out some of the viewers had been posting racist messages in their Super Chats. 850A channel has no control over what viewers put in the comments or Super Chats, but now the media was blaming YouTubers themselves for what their fans (or trolls) were saying.

The Liberal Media Industrial Complex is targeting Super Chats because even fairly small channels can earn a significant amount of revenue from them, since fans tossing in $5 and $10 can add up pretty fast, whereas in order to earn the same amount of money from video views alone as they can make in a livestream could take hundreds of thousands or millions of views.