By VennerRoad, 27th Mar 2017
YouTube is under pressure to remove offensive advertisements. Obviously it needs the revenue, but should it?
The YouTube logo.
There are two issues here: one is censorship; the other is one you have probably not considered. Let’s begin at the beginning. Although for younger millennials it must seem like this website has been around forever, YouTube was founded as recently as 2005, and only the oldest of its three founders has turned forty. The following year it was purchased by Google, and now has a staggering one billion plus subscribers – more than a quarter of the entire human race!
YouTube is very much the video hub of the world, and has levelled the playing field in a way no government could, now everyone can have his or her say. The downside to this is that not everyone has something nice to say, and at times what they say is illegal, not to mention stupid, misleading or just plain wrong, so at times videos and other content are removed in compliance with US law. Some content can also be blocked in designated countries.
Google is now a public company, which complicates things, but its two founders remain its major shareholders; they are Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Leaving aside blatantly illegal content, all are welcome on YouTube although “adult” ie grossly pornographic, videos, are generally removed, but there are plenty of other free sites where they can find a home. The phrase all are welcome means literally all; the spirit of YouTube is one of extreme Libertarianism. Sergey Brin is a Jew, and Nazis who rail against Jews controlling the media can do so with gay abandon – perhaps he sees the irony and they don’t? Extreme socialists and communists are also welcome to use it for free to preach the downfall of the hated super-rich, including these two multi-billionaires. Likewise extreme feminists are welcome to spew their venom against men, especially white men – the root of all evil.
The downside for all these idiots is that their opponents have a free platform too, so that for example men and increasingly women who oppose feminism can present their counter-arguments to the world.
Generally, those of a left wing disposition have never been fond of allowing their opponents any sort of platform, and for decades they have ensured they do not by enforcing what they call no-platform. This began as no platform for fascists way back in the 1930s, but since the 60s has been expanded to include racists, sexists, and now anyone who is deemed to promote hate speech. And hate speech is? Anything they claim it is. On campuses across both the UK and North America (including Canada) this can include both supporting and opposing the Israeli Government; in Canada at the moment the big issue is anything associated with gender/trans-gender.
While much of this is too stupid to comment on, what is happening in the cyberworld at present is very different. As well as Nazis – read anyone white person who opposes forced racial integration – so-called Islamic hate clerics are coming underfire. How dare Google permit their videos to run in conjunction with advertisements placed by major corporations and vice versa?
If this were a new problem the current avalanche of claims might have some merit, but it is neither new nor a problem, although it is likely to be for Google. Make no mistake, this is the thin edge of the wedge, and if Google caves in to this hysteria, demands for further censorship will follow until eventually anyone who dares to point out that the gender pay gap is a fantasy, who challenges Black Lives Matter, or who supports Donald Trump, will be declared a hater and driven from the site.
So what is the alternative? Why doesn’t the US Government and the governments of the world pay YouTube and other Internet sites instead of they’re being funded by advertising? How would this work? Although a small quantity is printed and a tiny quantity is minted, most of the money in circulation comes into existence as loans from the banks. No, banks do not lend money, rather they create credit by writing figures in a book, or today as blips in cyberspace. This process has been understood since the great Major Douglas explained it back in the 1920s.
In addition to ordinary bank loans, much money is created by the process of quantitative easing. Between 2009 and February 2012, the Bank of England injected a staggering £325 billion into the British economy, which begs the question, if there is so much money in circulation, why so much austerity? The surprising answer is that this money was not spent into circulation, rather it was given to the banks as free money for them to play games with, and for the banksters to collect massive bonuses. This is standard practice in especially the UK, the US, and Japan.
Google and other Internet companies are distributors of information, which includes entertainment, etc. Now consider this, in a pre-Internet world, a book, magazine, a newspaper publisher or a record company, manufactured its products which involves chopping down trees, pulping wood to make paper, printing, pressing records, distributing to newsagents, bookshops, record shops...yet more transportation, more expenses, more costs. This is still the case today, but a rock band, a singer-songwriter, a novelist, a biographer, can all distribute their products for virtually no cost. Even someone who does not have Internet access at home can upload his product from his local library.
Consider how many e-mails a busy person might send in a day; at one time that would have required expensive postage or at least possibly time consuming telephone calls. Internet giants like Google facilitate this distribution and the generation of even more wealth. When the goods and services in the community increase, there needs to be a corresponding increase of money. A more detailed discussion of these proposals can be found in this video. It is difficult to believe no one has ever considered this before, but with Donald Trump vowing to take on what he calls the special interests, the big question is can he, Google, and the real major creators of the world’s wealth put their heads together and take on the biggest, most powerful special interest of all, the Federal Reserve System and the worldwide banking cartel?
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