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YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

nytimes.com

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Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#381
post #26
post #23

When a channel is demonetized does that mean YouTube doesn't run ads at all on the channel's content, or do they still run ads and just don't pay out the share to the creator?

They're still hosting the videos, still running ads, but YT keeps all the money. Seems... not right and backwards to me.

Interesting conflict of interest there.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#382
post #285

Putting aside recent allegations, it's disappointing what has happened to Russell Brand's YouTube channel. I watched some of his videos a few years ago and they were interesting discussions of the news with a particular emphasis on questioning everything which I see as a healthy habit. Inevitably though, the algorithm steered the videos to become more clickbaity, divisive, and frankly crazy. He probably saw that outr…

His decent into outrage-bait, alt-right friendly nonsense struck me as abrupt. One minute his channel was reasonable enough, the next it was totally nuts. Part of me wonders whether this was calculated once he knew that a major expose was circling. I have zero evidence for this, but you can see the logic. Court a following that is sceptical of everything, and that will see an investigation by the 'mainstream media' a…

> His decent into outrage-bait, alt-right friendly nonsense struck me as abrupt. One minute his channel was reasonable enough, the next it was totally nuts.

An observation of mine going back to the 90s when I was a kid and liked listening to the radio: Talk show hosts would always lure you in with something that sounds reasonable, and use it to segue into a topic that sounded absolutely nuts.

That overall trend into insanity sounds like taking the exact same concept and doing it over a much longer timeline lol. That way they've established themselves in the community as a trusted 'podcast' source, and once they have an audience they start blasting crazy shit with hopes that at least some people will listen and consider it "thought provocative"

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#383
post #289

Anonymous allegations from more than a decade ago, procured by a fishing reporter, should not lead to the cancellation of someone's means of supporting themselves. This is absurd, regardless of whether the accusations are ultimately true or not. Beyond the absurdity, this is tyrannical. Even the "testimony" they released was recorded by an actor. There's simply very little of substance here.

His means of supporting himself has not been cancelled, just his ability to get paid from YouTube. Don't conflate them.

There are people whose main income is YouTube and if YouTube can do this to famous people, surely they can do it to smaller creators who are paying their bills with YouTube money.

Don't be confused by the situation and the precedent it establishes.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#384

> “If a creator’s off-platform behavior harms our users, employees or ecosystem, we take action to protect the community,” the spokeswoman said. Putting aside the validity of the accusations—let's say he did everything he's accused of, for the sake of argument—is Youtube alleging that he assaulted Youtube employees, app developers who use the Youtube ecosystem, or Youtube users? I assume the latter. But the thing is,…

Liability. It all comes back to liability. I can't tell you what kind of cases have legal standing against YouTube for showing videos of an alleged abuser, but I trust that many smart and less scrupulous lawyers could.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#385
post #289

Anonymous allegations from more than a decade ago, procured by a fishing reporter, should not lead to the cancellation of someone's means of supporting themselves. This is absurd, regardless of whether the accusations are ultimately true or not. Beyond the absurdity, this is tyrannical. Even the "testimony" they released was recorded by an actor. There's simply very little of substance here.

His means of supporting himself has not been cancelled, just his ability to get paid from YouTube. Don't conflate them.

Do any of us know what percentage of his income is from YouTube currently?

I think the point stands in the abstract. It doesn't even matter for him specifically, because there are people whose income is primarily/entirely from YouTube.

And so we should appreciate what a serious action that is, to turn it off. It's not like it's just play money, that we can pretend it doesn't matter. It's real income.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#386
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the long-term reality catch-up mechanism in the social media space?

> YouTube Blocks Russell Brand From Making Money Through Its Platform https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/19/arts/russell-brand-youtub...

That's a consequence of him being a [alleged] rapist. It's not a consequence of him publishing nonsensical and pretentious conspiracy theory videos.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#387

Current events aside, kinda insane how a Youtube channel with 6.6 million subscribers can get less than 500k views on a month old video

Youtube turned subscription numbers into a gameable metric for some time, so they got heavily inflated, so then Youtube basically made them meaningless. Youtube rarely even shows your subscribers your new videos nowadays, and for many creators, subscribers are about 20% or less of their total views.

I'm subscribed to hundreds of channels, and I rarely see their content in my feed. It is so bizarre.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#388

[flagged]

Except that Brand hasn't been censored. His videos are still online.

Of course it has, and we all know it. He's now been proven to be "that guy who had rape accusations" by "multiple women". Or the "controversial figure known for his wild antics and potentially non consensual dealings with women in the past".

It's all just the start of a large machine thats been set in motion. Every news outlet that doesn't like him or doesn't want to portray him in a neutral or positive light will use this. They'll never say anything that can be factually proven wrong. This allows them to have selective bias which drives an agenda and is steering the thoughts of their readers into a specific direction.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#389

Wow so much focus in the comments on the individual instead of YouTube's ability to randomly remove whoever they dislike, reminding us of the problems with large corporate companies controlling essentially public services. Just imagine if Tencent decided to buy YouTube from Google, would get real interesting.

Why do I have to waste brain space on this absurd hypothetical?

It's impossible, yes? Let's see what happens next US election as a good start, I can't imagine what becomes 'misonformation' or 'harmful,' no matter which party wins.

And still you wasted brain space to respond, very witty.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#390
post #309
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His decent into outrage-bait, alt-right friendly nonsense struck me as abrupt. One minute his channel was reasonable enough, the next it was totally nuts. Part of me wonders whether this was calculated once he knew that a major expose was circling. I have zero evidence for this, but you can see the logic. Court a following that is sceptical of everything, and that will see an investigation by the 'mainstream media' a…

He pulled an Elon. Elon Musk also came out as an alt-right troll when he was tipped that an expose about sexual harassment of a flight attendant was coming his way.

I think Elon was always what I'd call "silicon valley libertarian" at best. Nothing he's said or done is really all that surprising, if you go back and look at the things he said and did 10 years ago.
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