YouTube user Pewdiepie is the single most popular content provider on YouTube. Having had his videos monetized, he has made millions of dollars per year for making videos. His subscriber count is over 50 million. For comparison, the Wall Street Journal's YouTube channel has almost 500,000 subscribers. He is so influential on the site that the owners of YouTube actually listen to his opinion, and he is aware of this. He will actually speak up for less popular and influential users when the issues don't directly relate to him but he feels it is important for the site as a whole.
Most of his videos are lighthearted, made simply for general entertainment value. Recently, upon finding a vendor who offers to make a video of themselves holding up a sign with any message, he decided to see if they were sincere. He commissioned them to hold a sign with an anti-Semitic message. He did not do this because of personal beliefs in anti-Semitism, but because he wanted to see if they would actually do it. Upon being called out on anti-Semitism, he went further. He stated that his accusers would take clips of his videos out of context, and inserted a clip of him watching a speech by Adolph Hitler, to dare them to take the clip out of context.
The Wall Street Journal rose to the occasion. Someone at the Wall Street Journal decided to accuse Pewdiepie of being an anti-Semite based on these out of context clips. These people at the Journal also pressured both YouTube and Disney to stop doing business with him, costing him a large amount of revenue. His YouTube channel still exists, but videos have been demonetized.
Rather laughably, when people started reacting to the smear campaign by the Wall Street Journal, they offered to give him a platform from which he could respond to allegations by the Journal, even though they had already cost him revenue. His subscriber count is more than one hundred times theirs, and they offered to give him a platform.
The print media is losing importance. One person with a YouTube channel, without any bosses to tell him what videos to make, may have more influence than the entire Wall Street Journal. Not in all areas or in all ways, but at least in some areas this one person is more influential. When the media lashed out at him, he was able to respond, able to get his version of event out. This goes beyond the old model of the internet keeping alive a story that the media wants to bury, this goes to a direct challenge against a media narrative. This is a direct challenge by someone who isn't even a politician, such as when Donald Trump bypasses the media and speaks directly to the public through Twitter. This one person who has gotten wealthy by making YouTube videos, has sufficient influence to counter the chosen media narrative directly.
This fight that the Wall Street Journal picked with Pewdiepie is the old media lashing out at the new media, in a manner akin to an injured animal thrashing wildly. And the way they chose to do it is so pitiful, because unlike in the earlier era of media dominance, anyone can see the source videos under discussion. They are still on YouTube. Anyone even mildly curious, even if their curiosity is "I want to see what that bigot said so I can hate him too" can go see the videos and see they are not what the Journal said they are.
This actually serves as a well deserved humiliation of the mainstream media. Between the election of Donald Trump, the vote for Brexit in the United Kingdom, and the possible election of Marine Le Pen in France, the media is already losing control of the narrative. Choosing to fight with someone who is actually harmless, and losing because he is more influential in some areas, and more influential in the long run, is actually pitiful. To do so after the media recently embarrassed itself by having a discussion about fake news is humiliating. Pewdiepie did nothing wrong.
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Monday, February 20, 2017
Saturday, July 14, 2012
We Need More Fear
According to the Department of Homeland Security, warned that hackers are attacking software that controls medical devices, elevators, video cameras, security systems and a wide array of other sensitive operations. Except that is not included in the details of the report.
In the details of the report, a software vulnerability was found. There was no indication of any planned or attempted attacks by hackers into those systems. It was revealed that hackers could access through the discovered vulnerabilities, but not that this weakness had been exploited.
The internet has been a major problem for government officials. News reporting and political commentary are no longer confined to the major media outlets anymore. Not only does it disseminate news stories that said officials would rather keep buried, and not only does it enables large scale organization to oppose controversial decisions, through the actions of people like Julian Assange the users of the internet can now rip the mask off of the government and enable people to see just how ugly it really is.
In "Atlas Shrugged," the character Francisco Danconia compared the San Sebastian Mines to ripping the cover off of hell and letting people see it, saying that he had outdone Nero. Wikileaks has done the same thing outside the realm of fiction.
It is no surprise that congress was recently debating SOPA and PIPA. Small wonder as well that net neutrality is so heavily discussed. Government officials are afraid, and want more power to deal with what they fear. To get more power, they need to make a significant portion of the population afraid as well.
Threats need to be exaggerated. Just as when the neocons warned about the Iraqi threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction, and just as they warn about Iran's nuclear capabilities, in both cases exaggerations, the threat of the hackers has to be magnified to a degree sufficient to terrify people.
If remote control medical devices are hacked and disabled by hackers, that would be terrible. If an elevator was to suddenly plummet due to the actions of a hacker, that would also be terrible. There is no indication that this is happening, and those who issued the press release know this. The vulnerability was all they needed to hype it into a threat though. They needed more fear, and that is why they reported this the way they did. Only with enough fear can they try to take on the internet.
In the details of the report, a software vulnerability was found. There was no indication of any planned or attempted attacks by hackers into those systems. It was revealed that hackers could access through the discovered vulnerabilities, but not that this weakness had been exploited.
The internet has been a major problem for government officials. News reporting and political commentary are no longer confined to the major media outlets anymore. Not only does it disseminate news stories that said officials would rather keep buried, and not only does it enables large scale organization to oppose controversial decisions, through the actions of people like Julian Assange the users of the internet can now rip the mask off of the government and enable people to see just how ugly it really is.
In "Atlas Shrugged," the character Francisco Danconia compared the San Sebastian Mines to ripping the cover off of hell and letting people see it, saying that he had outdone Nero. Wikileaks has done the same thing outside the realm of fiction.
It is no surprise that congress was recently debating SOPA and PIPA. Small wonder as well that net neutrality is so heavily discussed. Government officials are afraid, and want more power to deal with what they fear. To get more power, they need to make a significant portion of the population afraid as well.
Threats need to be exaggerated. Just as when the neocons warned about the Iraqi threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction, and just as they warn about Iran's nuclear capabilities, in both cases exaggerations, the threat of the hackers has to be magnified to a degree sufficient to terrify people.
If remote control medical devices are hacked and disabled by hackers, that would be terrible. If an elevator was to suddenly plummet due to the actions of a hacker, that would also be terrible. There is no indication that this is happening, and those who issued the press release know this. The vulnerability was all they needed to hype it into a threat though. They needed more fear, and that is why they reported this the way they did. Only with enough fear can they try to take on the internet.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Stop SOPA
Those who wish to rule must rue that the government ever created the internet. It has, since it branched beyond military use, become a big thorn in the side of the political class. In terms of shopping, it has enabled people to bypass sales taxes and to find bargains from a great distance as well as purchase used items at deep discounts on sites such as eBay. In terms of news it has allowed non-mainstream providers and their audience to find each other, and allowed greater dissemination of stories that the mainstream media would prefer to bury. In terms of law enforcement, incidents of an individual being mistreated are no longer considered isolated incidents local to one area but are instead indicative of a pattern with each new "isolated incident" feeding into the general outrage of the people being mistreated by the police. In terms of political activism, it has created the Ron Paul campaign as well as other issue focused campaigns that in the past would have died for lack of coverage.
Various attempts at "net neutrality" have been a topic of conversation, in which the cover of safeguarding the net is used to control the net. While there is some merit to some aspects of the discussion in favor of net neutrality measures, the discussion as a whole lacks much merit. It is obvious by the way the internet was constructed that it was a government project initially, as the methods of allocating bandwith are somewhat crude compared to how one might design the internet if one was starting from scratch.
But "net neutrality" keeps getting a justified defeat, so false claims of fairness have proven to be far insufficient. So in the name of stopping piracy a bill has been introduced to congress that will effectively shut down large swaths of the internet for those who access in the United States. It is the Stop Internet Privacy Act. A better, although more biased and more vulgar link can be found here although it would be a bad idea to open that link at work.
This bill has the potential to, in the name of stopping piracy, shut down many sites that contribute the value to the internet today. Any site that has user-provided content is at severe risk lest one of the users provides copy-righted content. If the content falls under fair use, the burden of proof is on the accused. Currently, under DCMA, if someone sees copyrighted material they must submit a letter to the site requesting the material be taken down. Under the SOPA bill, a site must instead actively monitor all content lest something be copyrighted, and failure to do so is a crime. YouTube, which receives a vast number of videos every day, could not handle the burden and would have to shut down. That would stop the embarrassing videos of police abusing people from surfacing and spreading.
Other sites that share content, such as Rational Review News Digest and Freedom's Phoenix which excerpt portions of an article and link to the original article at the original site may be considered to be at risk if the original provider does not want their article shared with a particular audience. Righthaven was shut down for their abuse of copyright law, but this new bill strengthens the position of similar copyright trolls.
The internet has been a force for freedom in this increasingly oppressive world. Given how many content provider websites are headquartered in the US, and disputes are supposed to be settled in the US no matter where the content provider website is located, this amounts to world-wide censorship. Currently this bill is in committee, but given what it could potentially accomplish this is bill should be stopped.
Various attempts at "net neutrality" have been a topic of conversation, in which the cover of safeguarding the net is used to control the net. While there is some merit to some aspects of the discussion in favor of net neutrality measures, the discussion as a whole lacks much merit. It is obvious by the way the internet was constructed that it was a government project initially, as the methods of allocating bandwith are somewhat crude compared to how one might design the internet if one was starting from scratch.
But "net neutrality" keeps getting a justified defeat, so false claims of fairness have proven to be far insufficient. So in the name of stopping piracy a bill has been introduced to congress that will effectively shut down large swaths of the internet for those who access in the United States. It is the Stop Internet Privacy Act. A better, although more biased and more vulgar link can be found here although it would be a bad idea to open that link at work.
This bill has the potential to, in the name of stopping piracy, shut down many sites that contribute the value to the internet today. Any site that has user-provided content is at severe risk lest one of the users provides copy-righted content. If the content falls under fair use, the burden of proof is on the accused. Currently, under DCMA, if someone sees copyrighted material they must submit a letter to the site requesting the material be taken down. Under the SOPA bill, a site must instead actively monitor all content lest something be copyrighted, and failure to do so is a crime. YouTube, which receives a vast number of videos every day, could not handle the burden and would have to shut down. That would stop the embarrassing videos of police abusing people from surfacing and spreading.
Other sites that share content, such as Rational Review News Digest and Freedom's Phoenix which excerpt portions of an article and link to the original article at the original site may be considered to be at risk if the original provider does not want their article shared with a particular audience. Righthaven was shut down for their abuse of copyright law, but this new bill strengthens the position of similar copyright trolls.
The internet has been a force for freedom in this increasingly oppressive world. Given how many content provider websites are headquartered in the US, and disputes are supposed to be settled in the US no matter where the content provider website is located, this amounts to world-wide censorship. Currently this bill is in committee, but given what it could potentially accomplish this is bill should be stopped.
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