Gag Orders 2

Gag Orders 2 - Gag Harder

Last week we touched on the outcry over Captain Marvel's marketing campaign, and the shutting down of the 'Interested-Not Interested' section of Rotten Tomatoes.

At the same time, a somewhat-related hammer hit YouTube creators when channels were demonetized or limited and told that unsavory or questionable COMMENTS could make them ineligible to be monetized. There are sinister, creepy things happening in some comments, but punishing unrelated channels for comments seems like an unreasonable…and ineffective…way to clean up the problem.

YouTube's motives are more clear - they want to preserve advertiser dollars and not upset the companies that give them money. But once again, they seem to be overreacting - and more importantly, reacting in ways that don't seem likely to solve their problems, and that unjustly punish their content creators.

YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and so on will also "shadow-ban" channels that their algorithms judge to be "controversial". This means channels cannot be easily found.

Private companies are allowed to do what they want, of course - but the fact that these entities are basically monopolies on Internet communication and assembly of citizens makes this a problem.

The fact that they are profit-driven makes this a bigger problem - they will always choose the course of action that keeps the money rolling in - which is not always in the interest of the citizenry.

Private companies that hold the reins of power to this degree - is kind of scary. In general terms, my impression is that Establishment power is shutting down voices that interfere with profits and disagree with agendas of political/financial power. A few cranks complaining - they don't care. But people coming together to oppose - they don't want that!

I don't know what can be done about it.