Let me thank Trump, once again, for increasing our freedom of speech.

I'm reading "YouTube Loosens Rules Guiding the Moderation of Videos/The world’s largest video platform has told content moderators to favor 'freedom of expression' over the risk of harm in deciding what to take down" (NYT):

For years, YouTube has removed videos with derogatory slurs, misinformation about Covid vaccines and election falsehoods, saying the content violated the platform’s rules. But since President Trump’s return to the White House, YouTube has encouraged its content moderators to leave up videos with content that may break the platform’s rules rather than remove them, as long as the videos are considered to be in the public interest. Those would include discussions of political, social and cultural issues....

[U]nlike Meta and X, YouTube has not made public statements about relaxing its content moderation. The online video service introduced its new policy in mid-December in training material that was reviewed by The New York Times....

My post title says "once again," because I thanked Trump before, in a dream I had in 2015, recounted here: "Last night, I dreamed that I was talking to someone about Trump.... And then I look over and see that Donald Trump has been eavesdropping.... I thanked him, effusively, for teaching us to have the courage to speak freely." Teaching by example, I believe it was. 

"You can go to your camper and do whatever you want. I even get television in there.... The camper taught me how to watch TV.... I go to YouTube."

"Anything. And everything. There’s so many things on YouTube. You’ve got Ibsen, you got Chekhov, you got Strindberg. All on the internet. I even like TikTok when I see it from time to time.... TikTok. Yeah. I saw, like, a 14-year-old girl who was deaf, her whole life, and they do something with her, and she actually starts to hear for the first time! How 'bout that? And sometimes the dogs, they rescue them. You watch the guy go in there and bring this beautiful, sad dog back to, uh, being somewhat — aware of things.... Well, I love that stuff!"

Said Al Pacino, quoted in "The Interview/Al Pacino Is Still Going Big" (NYT).

I'm quoting from the recording. The transcript is edited down a bit and it misses some of the feeling. I thought the interviewer, David Marchese, rushed by some of the best material Pacino seemed to want to hand him. For example, when Pacino spoke of the beautiful, sad dog becoming aware, Marchese intruded with "You're such a softy," categorizing Pacino's feeling as shallow sentimentality as opposed to some more subtle existentialism.

And one of the topics was Pacino's nearly dying of of Covid.

"Creating a retention edited video requires a lot of work. 'Every clip in the video should be under two seconds,' said Dara Pesheva, a 17-year-old..."

"... who works as a freelance video editor for social media content creators. 'Every 1.3 to 1.5 seconds you have to have a new graphic or something moving, you have to [use] a lot of effects. For every image and every transition, you have to add a sound effect. You need flashing graphics, and you have to have subtitles in every video.' TikTok has trained users to scroll away if they aren’t hooked within the first half-second.... This is why so many retention edited videos start with a loud bang or whoosh sound.... 'People around my age can’t focus,' Pesheva said. 'They have very short attention spans. They’re used to TikTok, and so editors have to adjust for Gen Z. They have to adjust to the fact that people can’t keep their attention on something for more than a second if it’s not entertaining.'"

From "The 'Beastification of YouTube' may be coming to an end/The popularity of so-called retention editing made a generation of creators go viral, but when every video looks the same it’s harder than ever to stand out" (WaPo).

That's funny, when I use TikTok, I scroll away in less than one second if I see that it's edited like that. Nice to know there's a term for that annoying crap, "retention editing." They're trying to retain your attention... or really, trying to obtain it in the first place. But maybe it's not working anymore. ("Beastification," in case you're wondering, refers to a particular YouTube star, Mr. Beast.)

If you don't know what I'm talking about, look at this:

"Migration sells.... My public is a public that wants a dream."

Said Manuel Monterrosa, who "set out for the United States last year with his cellphone and a plan: He’d record his journey through the dangerous jungle known as the Darién Gap and post it on YouTube, warning other migrants of the perils they’d face."

I'm reading "Live from the Jungle: Migrants Become Influencers on Social Media/TikTok, Facebook and YouTube are transforming global migration, becoming tools of migrants and smugglers alike" (NYT).

In his six-part series, edited entirely on his phone along the way, he heads north with a backpack, leading viewers on a video-selfie play-by-play of his passage across rivers, muddy forests and a mountain known as the Hill of Death. He eventually made it to the United States. But to his surprise, his videos began attracting so many views and earning enough money from YouTube that he decided he no longer needed to live in America at all.

So, Mr. Monterrosa, a 35-year-old from Venezuela, returned to South America and now has a new plan altogether: trekking the Darién route again, this time in search of content and clicks, having learned how to make a living as a perpetual migrant....

The journey is everything. 

"George Floyd was saying 'I can't breathe' when he was standing up straight and just being coaxed to get into the car."

"What they were trying to do was take him somewhere to get treatment, because the drugs were severely addling his mind and he wouldn't get in the car. And he starts saying, breathing air, standing up, 'I can't breathe, I can't breathe,' when nobody is anywhere near his neck or anything else. George Floyd was extremely high on fentanyl and meth to an extent that could have killed him sitting in a chair. If you're on fentanyl in particular, you get something called 'wooden chest,' where you can't breathe if you've got that much in you. That's how high he was."

Said John McWhorter, in a discussion with with Glenn Loury, quoted at Loury's Substack, under the provocative title, "Derek Chauvin Did Not Murder George Floyd."

"I love YouTube, and I want to be famous on YouTube, because I want a lot of money..."

"... said camper Chloe, 7, a second-grader who said she has dreamed of being a YouTuber since age 4. As a YouTube star, 'I could buy whatever I want,' she added, including 'an iPhone and a computer, AirPods and a Barbie Dreamhouse. A real Barbie Dreamhouse, that’s big and has walls. It would be in Paris because of the Eiffel Tower. I would go see the Eiffel Tower every day, and I’d have my room in front of the Eiffel Tower every morning and make videos about that.'"

Writes Taylor Lorenz, in "Camps teaching kids to be YouTubers are cropping up across the country/Education programs aimed at helping children gain the skills needed to become online creators are exploding" (WaPo).

"The Supreme Court on Friday said it would... decide whether laws passed in Texas and Florida can restrict social media companies from removing certain political posts or accounts."

"Tech industry groups, whose members include Facebook and Google’s YouTube, asked the court to block Texas and Florida laws passed in 2021 that regulate companies’ content-moderation policies. The companies say the measures are unconstitutional and conflict with the First Amendment by stripping private companies of the right to choose what to publish on their platforms.... 'The act of culling and curating the content that users see is inherently expressive, even if the speech that is collected is almost wholly provided by users,' Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar told the justices. 'And especially because the covered platforms’ only products are displays of expressive content, a government requirement that they display different content—for example, by including content they wish to exclude or organizing content in a different way—plainly implicates the First Amendment.'"

From "Supreme Court to decide landmark Texas, Fla. social media cases and more" (WaPo).

"YouTube suspended the comedian and actor Russell Brand on Tuesday from making money from videos posted to the social media platform..."

"... three days after British news organizations published an investigation in which several women accused Mr. Brand of sexual assault.... A spokeswoman for YouTube said in an email that Mr. Brand, whose channel on the platform has 6.6 million subscribers, was suspended for violating YouTube’s 'creator responsibility policy.' 'If a creator’s off-platform behavior harms our users, employees or ecosystem, we take action to protect the community,' the spokeswoman said."

The NYT reports. 

How does the action taken — demonetizing current videos — protect anyone from the "off-platform behavior" — which took place, if it took place, long ago? The current videos don't have anything to do with the conduct he's accused of. It seems to me that the demonetization is at most punishment in retribution for what he is accused of having done. The only conceivable "protection" it offers is from the current speech, which is about culture and politics. YouTube isn't admitting to this kind of viewpoint-based censorship, but the NYT alludes to it:

While Mr. Brand’s earlier stand-up routines had a broadly left-wing focus, skewering the British establishment and focusing on subjects like social inequality, he has recently reinvented himself to focus on conservative talking points, often seeming to target an American audience.

NOTE: This post was edited a bit to make it easier to read.

"In a reversal of its election integrity policy, YouTube will leave up content that says fraud, errors or glitches occurred in the 2020 presidential election and other U.S. elections...."

Axios reports.

I'm guessing the key words are "other U.S. elections." Too hard to treat 2020 as different from 2016 and 2004 and 2000 and whatever may be about to happen in 2024. It's crazy to say people can't talk about it, but that is what YouTube has been doing.

Let's read on:

"YouTube chief executive Susan Wojcicki will step down after nearly a decade... leaving all of the major social media and entertainment platforms in the management of men."

WaPo reports.

It was in Wojcicki’s Silicon Valley garage that Larry Page and Sergey Brin began building the search giant. Brin later married her sister, and Wojcicki stayed with the company, rising through the ranks and holding a number of major roles before being appointed head of YouTube in 2014.Wojcicki was seen by many Google employees as more or less a member of Brin and Page’s family....

So that was never a very encouraging sign of the ability of women to rise to power in Silicon Valley. 

"My channel was as raw and honest as I would have been in my diary. That’s part of the culture."

"Being known as you are — and praised for it — lures in those of us with a deep desire to be seen. But another part of the culture is to make yourself into a product and figure out how to sell that product. Success is measured in views and subscriber counts, visible to all. The numbers feel like an adrenaline shot to your self-esteem.... When done right, YouTube can quickly become a lucrative career. But maintaining it is a delicate balancing act... In 2018, I impulsively released a video about my struggle with burnout.... [I]t brought me even more attention.... I kept making videos.... I was entering adulthood and trying to live my childhood dream, but now, to be 'authentic,' I had to be the product I had long been posting online, as opposed to the person I was growing up to be.... Changing an online persona is something at which few have been successful.... Staying unchanged brings its own challenges — stagnancy, inauthenticity, burnout.... But to those who will walk the path I did, I hope you will learn... [to] use these platforms to open opportunities, but not at the cost of giving all of yourself away."

From "YouTube Gave Me Everything. Then I Grew Up" by Elle Mills (NYT).

Here's that 2018 video:   

"YouTube really rewards straightforward, untrammeled, and unscripted discussion, and it's really what people expect on the platform."

Says Jordan Peterson, talking to Piers Morgan about how to conduct an inteview. He's distinguishing YouTube from "legacy TV." He's responding to Morgan, who has just acknowledged that Peterson is phenomenally successful on YouTube:

 

They're right about the constraints of television, but I want to show you this amazing segment of television from October 9, 1970, when the host, Dick Cavett — and guests Jeanne Moreau and Lee Marvin — kept almost entirely quiet for minutes on end while Truman Capote stumbled and mumbled his way to the most important question in the world:

Was Capote straightforward? He was untrammeled and unscripted! But straightforward may seem like the opposite of what he was. And yet, his struggle to find his point is real, and isn't that a form of straightforwardness? I don't think he's holding anything back, and I don't think he's using more words than he needs. He's just very, very needy.

"[Iohan] Gueorguiev made his name overcoming challenges hurled at his body and spirit. He was a star in the world of 'bikepacking'..."

"... long-distance bike travel conducted off main roads. Calling himself the Bike Wanderer, he stood out for his Beatnik-like romanticism about the open road, in contrast to the competitiveness of many bike jocks and gear heads.... [H]e spent from April 2014 to March 2020 biking from the Canadian Arctic Circle to its South American antipode, the icy mountains and valleys of Patagonia.... He shot his videos with a simple GoPro camera charged by a portable solar panel.... Headwinds on desert plains required him to take long breaks sheltered behind rocks and make a campsite in a stray shipping container, which itself shook from powerful gusts.... A spirit of generosity helped him get by. 'Hey, beautiful!' he called out to a large bear staring at him. When a tanker truck passing him on the road kicked up a storm of dust, he waved cheerfully in response. When he was running out of food on a particularly arduous journey, he nevertheless fed tortilla-and-peanut-butter sandwiches to stray dogs.... With the onset of the pandemic, Mr. Gueorguiev found himself stuck in Canada, unable to cross borders because of travel restrictions....  Mr. Gueorguiev had in recent months discussed feeling pressure about being unable to produce exciting new videos for his patrons.... He was also suffering from insomnia. 'I think I can get some sleep when I’m dead,' he wrote in a suicide note...."

From "Iohan Gueorguiev, ‘Bike Wanderer’ of the Wilderness, Dies at 33/He gained a following online for his lyrical appreciation of the open road while biking through remote landscapes and braving extreme conditions" (NYT).

"He said, 'It's your fault for encouraging these videos."

I got there via Know Your Meme, where Nikocado Avocado is a "Top Entry This Week." 

I was at Know Your Meme for something completely unrelated, the meme "Chad" — because that New Yorker humor piece (blogged in the previous post) used the name Chad, repeatedly, but possibly not within the well-known meme. There was the idea that "Dating a Chad (a man named Chad or a man with Chad energy)" should require you to overcome a filibuster in your chat group. There were 5 more iterations of the name Chad in that piece. 

Do the famous New Yorker fact-checkers check to ensure that nothing in an article is a meme or, if it is, that it's used intentionally and correctly? Or are they shaking their fist at the internet and yelling "It's your fault!"

Cop cues up a Taylor Swift song so the video a man is making of him will run afoul of YouTube's copyright enforcement and get censored.

But here's the video on YouTube, where it's been since July 1st: 

I found that via "An officer played a Taylor Swift song to keep his recording off YouTube. Instead it went viral" (WaPo).

"Building a brand starts with creating a culture. Play with rituals, memes, catchphrases, and inside jokes that'll consistently delight both old and new fans."

YouTube sends me advice. From my email:

I brushed it off as stupid, but it also made me think. Are people enjoying the rituals, memes, catchphrases, and inside jokes around here? Do I have enough rituals, memes, catchphrases, and inside jokes?

Blogging is its own ritual, but there's also the ritual of the sunrise. As for memes, catchphrases, and inside jokes, there's... what?... men in shorts, the word "garner"...

"This talk show was so elegant and respectful, that even the comment section of a video like this isn't infested by angry people shouting from both extremes of the issue."

A comment written one month ago on a video put up on YouTube a year ago: 

 

The show aired in 1970. Watch the whole thing. The person at the extreme left of the talk-show couch — who eventually pipes up — is Grace Slick. The host Dick Cavett engineers the mood — which is serious and comical, tense and relaxed. It's quite something. 

The 70s vibe is mesmerizing. Somehow the colors brown and orange dominated. And who remembers that there was once a feminist notion that women should travel in pairs so that no one becomes a celebrity?!

Hugh Hefner takes the position that maleness/femaleness is the very beginning of who you are as a person. He also attempts to bond with the feminists over his strong support for abortion rights. And he gets out his pipe and smokes up a storm. One of the feminists smokes a cigarette, and makes a theatrical point of lighting it for herself, rejecting Cavett's straight-man offer to play the old chivalrous role of cigarette lighter.

I cannot tolerate today's TV talk shows. The mood is so poisonous. One alternative is to watch half-century old talk shows on YouTube.

***

There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.

"YouTube to Forbid Videos Claiming Widespread Election Fraud."

The NYT reports. 

The company said it was making the change because [this past] Tuesday was the so-called safe harbor deadline — the date by which all state-level election challenges, such as recounts and audits, are supposed to be completed.

Why does reaching the "safe harbor" deadline make any difference? Is there no free-speech interest in talking about something you think is going wrong because it might be too late to do anything? 

YouTube’s announcement is a reversal of a much-criticized company policy on election videos. Throughout the election cycle, YouTube, which is owned by Google, has allowed videos spreading false claims of widespread election fraud under a policy that permits videos that comment on the outcome of an election.

That makes it sound as though YouTube wanted to change the policy and is using the "safe harbor" date as an excuse, to make it seem as though they didn't think their policy was wrong or that they wanted to appease critics without needing to say that the critics were right all along. 

They're not, however, taking down videos uploaded before the "safe harbor" date, which makes me think the motivation is to appease critics. People can still watch the already-uploaded videos. What's the point of preventing more of the same? All I can think is that there's a concern that as the legal options for challenging the election become closed off, there will be a new and more desperate expressions about what possibly could be done.

Here's YouTube's statement, which went up on Wednesday. It says its policy was violated all along by misleading allegations of "widespread fraud or errors" that "changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election," but that they are going to "begin enforcing" the policy now. The "safe harbor" date just seems to work as a milestone. It seems as though it might work to make some people believe that YouTube didn't change anything, but that date arrived.

Here's YouTube's last paragraph — projecting friendly corporate responsibility while repelling any effort to actually read it:

"I know a predator when I see one," said Kamala Harris.

At the Democratic Party convention last night. Transcript.

I found a clip of it:



And YouTube thought I'd like to see this next:

"[James] Charles and [Tati] Westbrook, two stars of the YouTube beauty and makeup community, had long been friends, with Charles referring to her as 'like a mother.'"

"Then, in May 2019, Westbrook released a 43-minute video in which she accused him of using his fame to 'manipulate someone’s sexuality,' referring to straight men. Charles vehemently denied this charge in a video of his own, and for a while, the two continued releasing videos about each other, centered on their fraying friendship."

I'm trying to read a damned near incomprehensible WaPo article about YouTube withdrawing advertising from some popular vloggers. You might not know the name Tati Westbrook, but her video that came out yesterday already has nearly 6 million views. Here, try to watch it — I tried but clicked it off at the 3-second mark because that stare and series of mouth noises utterly grossed me out:



I know I wrote about this controversy — whatever the hell it is — back when it was in the news last year. Ah, here it is, May 17, 2019: "I'm reading 'James Charles, Tati Westbrook, and the feud that’s ripping apart YouTube’s beauty community...' and I cannot understand it...."

Yeah, I still can't — and won't — understand it. The reason I'm blogging it today is because I was interested in the phrase "manipulate someone’s sexuality" — in "she accused him of using his fame to 'manipulate someone’s sexuality,' referring to straight men." Is it wrong to "manipulate someone’s sexuality"? Isn't that what people do when they have sex with another person — manipulate each other's sexuality?

If it's wrong to "manipulate someone’s sexuality," then it would seem that the only ethical form of sex is masturbation. A good theory to propound on the internet!

But I don't know what Tati Westbrook is really talking about. Something special against gay men? I don't know, and I'm not going to put up with Westbrook's grotesque mouth smacking to find out. Presumably, she fascinates other people with that strange, slow-talky facial action... manipulating their sexuality.