Its worth listening to the recent episode of NoAgenda, Brand Purpose. Be patient and wait for Adam Curry to adopt his annoyed teacher voice, and begin to pontificate about marketing. It's worth it, because he was in the business and knows what he is talking about.
He also found a clip of a CEO, responsible for 8 billion dollars of ad revenue, talking about making the platforms brandsafe.
Brand safe means the advertisers want to avoid having their brands associated with controversial content, but it is clear from what the CEO said that part two of the plan is to remove all controversial content from the platform entirely.
This is going to kill youtube, as it will no longer be about 'you'- about the people making and putting up videos. Sure, maybe you get away with your cat videos, make up videos, a few product review videos- as long as you are sufficiently positive about whatever product it is you are reviewing, and it doesn't compete with whatever product that the advertisers are trying to sell ads for.
Youtube will die under this regime because that's not what keeps people on youtube. We go there looking for answers for our problems. Advertisers want to sell us stuff- for instance, I see way too many ads for something called Cosentix. I have no idea what the hell it is for, because, like most ads, it is low information, insult my intelligence, have people dancing around- anything but telling me what the fuck it is actually for. And what would I do if I actually had the problem it was for? I'd search for people who had the problem and solved it naturally, or with less side effects than Cosentix has. For certainly, whatever this crap is, you can be sure it has side effects.
And this will be the ultimate end of youtube- Right now, it's 'right wing content' including, apparently, actual history. But this slide never ends, and they will be demanding more suppression. Do you think Ford is going to be happy with the youtube video that teaches you how to fix something that would costs $500 dollars at the dealership with a $3 part? Hell no.
Either it's owners figure this game out, and stop this, or youtube will surely die. They currently don't see the problem, because they live in SJW land and it seems okay to suppress content they disagree with, but a few years from now, they won't have anything interesting left on their platform. That doesn't mean it won't be out there, but it probably means we will have to find ways to operate outside of google's reach.
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