Shadow Banning — the ability of social media to reduce access to content without leaving any trace — is not only financially destructive: it’s a psychological weapon as well, and a very effective one. Bill and Zo get personal on this one.
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23 replies on “Shadow Banning”
What social media platforms do you recommend that do NOT shadow Ban?
I’ve been a paying member of your community for quite a while. I don’t think there’s a single video that y’all have posted didn’t need to be heard far and wide. The most damaging thing that can be perpetrated against a person is to make them feel like their message isn’t worth hearing. Might this be a consolation: The media will join their father Satan to burn in the Lake of Fire forever after Jesus comes to clean things up and start anew. God Bless you all…
Notifications are sort of iffy no matter what. A lot depends on the device you’re using, the settings on the device, the settings on your Google and subsidiary YouTube account, what you make a habit of watching and quite a few other factors.
Where I’m sitting right now I have a lot of screens active around me. There are 7 screens on the Windows based computer I’m typing this on, and eleven other screens displaying some sort of internet connected data. That’s a total of 18 screens on a dozen separate devices.
(Sometimes Woot has a good price on Amazon Kindle Fire Tablets and I buy one or two and jail break ’em for a dedicated display for something I want to keep an eye on. Like my weather station data. Or various SANS.edu Internet Storm Report graphs. Which BTW have nothing to do with actual weather. Kindle Fire tablets are reasonably well made, cheap and plentiful, and they all run a version of Android that can be easily accessed and de-Amazoned. The price is usually around $16 so that’s a very cheap means to get a dedicated display screen.)
The point here is that I have a whole bunch of things connected to the internet with several different operating systems and so I see how all of this responds to various things. Like in this case YouTube subscriptions.
Some of these things get no notifications at all, some sporadically show an icon at the top left of the display, some of them get every single notification for every single one of the many channels I subscribe to. Some of them get notifications from only certain channels and not others. Some of them make noise (a tone) when a notification arrives, some do not. Etc.
It’s a ridiculously hit-and-miss sort of thing.
Bill made a very important point about Rumble. He said that Rumble is “4 or 5 orders of magnitude” behind YouTube. He’s looking at it from the perspective of a content provider and issues related to being a content provider. I’d say he’s grossly underestimating the gap because from the point of view of someone who is genuinely looking for real information and not just conservative commentary and cute cat videos it’s pretty much useless.
For instance a couple weeks ago I needed to know something very specific about doing a M.2 NVME hard drive upgrade on a very specific laptop computer. There was nothing helpful at all on Rumble, just some generic junk that was useless to me. There were NO videos at all returned in a search for “M.2 NVME SSD hard drive upgrade Dell G5 5587”.
Using that search string it took me about a minute to find the exact information I needed on YouTube. It was in a 3 minute video and the guy who posted the video didn’t even know he was telling me what I needed to know. I needed to know the physical dimensions and type number of the drive I needed to order. M.2 NMVE drives come in 3 different dimensions. The content provider ‘accidentally’ provided that information along with other things he was showing in his video that I also needed to know.
Because of that information I was able to order the drive and when I got the computer in my hands then clone and install it. Hitting a target window when the owner had a period of time where he didn’t need the machine. That information saved me from guesswork, delays incurred because I ordered the wrong thing and had to return it and get the right thing on its way, trial and error in the disassembly and reassembly process and a whole bunch of time. Rumble was not at all useful to accomplish this.
Last summer a neighbor of mine needed to do some work on his tractor and he’s pretty mechanical minded but he couldn’t figure it out. So I went over there with a tablet and hotspotted it to my phone. Then went on YouTube and not only found his exact make and model of tractor, I found a tractor mechanic who had posted a video on the exact same thing he needed to do with the exact same parts.
Problem solved and we fixed his tractor.
If all you’re doing is playing, which is to say entertaining yourself, then maybe Rumble is enough for you and hey, that’s great and more power to you.
One of our members claimed he “broke his addiction to YouTube and switched to Rumble”. OK … Obviously he doesn’t use YouTube for the same things I do. If he did he wouldn’t say something like that because this has nothing to do with ‘addiction’ as far as I’m concerned. YMMV
Getting this kind of thing across to people is not easy. People tend to think everyone else does the same things for the same reasons they do. That’s just not so.
I don’t use YouTube because my Conservative Ideology isn’t ‘pure’ enough. I use it because that’s where the information is that I need and that information is almost never on Rumble.
The point here is that YouTube has a GIGANTIC library of stuff running the gamut from cute cat videos to how to accomplish a project using Visual Studio C++. That pulls a LOT of eyeballs. Out of that huge number of eyeballs a significant number of them will just wander over to Bill’s content. Out of billions of views even a tiny percentage is a very large number. Some of those will like what they see and subscribe. The channel grows, makes more money and ever wider distribution of our message occurs …
If Bill is not being shadowbanned and thereby starved into silence.
Rumble is not a replacement for YouTube unless you’re just playing. It is not the serious information source that YouTube is. It does not and never will have the number of people using it that YouTube does no matter how many people you try to drive over to Rumble from YouTube. If Rumble was a serious contender for information that YouTube is then it would have had at least something on the laptop make and model if not the exact series that I was searching for. Something. It had nothing at all even close.
Because people do not and never will turn to Rumble to upload that kind of information. Because they want to get eyeballs viewing their content and that just doesn’t happen at anywhere near the same scale on Rumble as it does on YouTube. NO WHERE NEAR THE SAME SCALE. No amount of fussing or telling everyone they need to abandon that dastardly ol’ YouTube villain is going to change that.
So like it or not, admit it or not, we’re stuck with YouTube. Rumble is not the solution. Rumble will never be the solution. The solution is to hold YouTube accountable and change how YouTube does things. YouTube doesn’t give a flying rat’s ass if you use it or not, it has billions of subscribers.
You’re not going to change YouTube by boycotting it, they’re happy to see you go. You’re helping Google/YouTube when you do that. If you’re not using YouTube because of Google villainy then you’re just diluting the Conservative presence on YouTube. That’s what YouTube wants, they want you to go away and never come back again. They are silencing the Conservative voice and you’re helping them do that. You’re harming Conservative causes if you do that for them. If you’re acting out of some misguided sense of ‘principles’ that still applies.
WE’RE going to change YouTube by political force. That’s the only way this gets fixed and that’s the only thing powerful enough to do the job.
If you think anything else you do is going to make the slightest amount of difference you’re flattering yourself and overestimating your own importance.
This all just my $0.02.
My day job is I’m a software architect. I’m paid to study and understand large systems and understand how they work and move them into a public cloud.
I’m commenting here, so I’m also a BW subscriber.
Down to the heart of it. I’m not defending YouTube, just articulating my observations as to how their system works.
– Every Episode Should Begin with “Subscribe and ring the bell”
Subscribe means you like the creator.
Ring the bell means you want to receive notifications.
Most highly successful channels do this.
The notifications are not in email, they are alerts on the YouTube app. If you don’t use the app, and you use a browser, then they appear under the bell in the upper right-hand corner. Click on the bell, you’ll see notifications for those channels, however many that is.
– Rumble “Follow”
The process for Rumble is different. You “Follow” and then your inbox does fill with noise.
The Rumble network is not only smaller, its videos have less breadth.
Personally, if I have a choice, I watch on Rumble. I rarely get a choice.
– In Feed Content, Subscription are Secondary to Actual Service Usage.
I’ve gone through phases where I go on jags on certain topics.
The videos that end up at the top of my feed, are weighted towards what I’ve actually been watching recently.
– Feeds Tend to be Weighted Towards Newer Content
You can go and actively find content and even older content. But YouTube does not weigh that heavily in the placement of your fed unless it has no other content.
– Feeds, Using the Same Account, Will Vary by Device, if the Device Viewing Favors a Different Sort of Content
I resurrected a iPad (battery is failing) that I hadn’t used in six month. Its feed resembled what I watched six months ago.
Suggestion:
Look this is your business, not mine. I contribute as a matter of charity.
The message is important.
However, as Daily Wire, The Blaze and others have learned, you cannot YouTube or Facebook or any other entity control your destiny. They should be viewed as a marketing tool.
Here is the first episode of a documentary on X. To see more subscribe to BW.
Now you are getting something for your money and YouTube is relegated to an advertising platform.
This shadow-banning will end up driving you all to bigger, more powerful entities that can more effectively fight. The Daily Wire and Prager (now one in the same), and maybe The Blaze will end up stronger and smaller guys may struggle.
Bill, FYI: Stefan Molyneux is on Locals @freedomain
Between shadow banning and demonetization, I’d say demonetization is the greater evil. It makes the CIA’s Project Mockingbird look like amature hour.
Im not one of the very long time members here. But I did not join in the most recent push either. I got an email from a friend about one of Bills firewall (Number one with a bullet), and went looking for more. I viewed free for months at least until Bill mentioned (Complained) about losing numbers. So I signed up. if I had more money, I’d up my membership level.
Some of the best money I’ve ever spent.
Long-timer here, thankful for you joining. Back when I followed Bill on PJTV, I was “jaknoz” and I had this weird obsession with the comments section. It could never happen again. Never. Ever.
I think you missed your sarcasm emoticon after your comment about your comments😏
I always enjoyed the comments from Jaknoz.
Why thanks. Surprised you remembered.
But it can’t happen again. Ever.
I don’t want my box being filled up with dozens of even more emails, so I never subscribe to any channel. I add my favorite shows to my bookmarks, and click on every day to see what’s up; that way I never miss a show.
I mainly do the same thing. But not because of emails filling my inbox. I bookmark and check… Because I dont get the emails.
I’m on a reasonably powerful Windows machine that acts as my main server for everything on this property and is my work computer, among a bunch of other things. It’s got the juice to handle multiple browsers and in those browsers multiple tabs and tab groupings. So I just keep sites like this alive on their own tab all the time. It’s not something that would work well with a tablet, pad or phone.
I get notifications but I have never gotten emails from YouTube for anything related to new content releases. Never, not as far as I can recall and content subject doesn’t matter.
over the years I have noticed that even though subscribed on YT, after some time the email notification took longer then stopped coming altogether. This is the algorithmic impact of shadow banning. When those of us who wanted the notifications don’t get them.
When that happened the last time, I unsubscribed and then subscribed and starting getting the notifications again.
Now, again, they are delayed. I routinely get the notification from Spotify days before the notification from YT, though I am pretty sure that Scott uploads them at the same time. When I get the Spotify, I’ll check YT and sure enough the episode is posted already, but no notification.
Just to augment the below (or above depending how you sort).
I received my notification for this video from BW(Dot)com this morning at 9am.
I received my notification for this podcast from Spotify sometime before that.
I have not received an email from YT for at least the last 4 videos Bill has posted.
I have other, non political channels, to which I subscribe.
I see all of their notifications within hours of their posting a video or podcast in the case of Spotify.
Only political items get delayed. JP Reacts is in the same boat, I do not get notifications from that channel.
I don’t know if you’re referring to subscribing on YouTube or Rumble, but I gotta think it’s the latter ’cause YouTube never sends me email regarding a subscription posting new content. Never. It doesn’t matter what the channel’s content is, political or not, I never ever get any emails from YouTube about new content.
I get emails from YouTube when someone replies to a comment I dropped on a video but that’s not the same thing and it’s usually some idiot replying with some idiocy to something I said. I never get emails from YouTube other than those.
I get notifications from YouTube but those do not come in the form of an email.
Same here.
You are correct, YT notifications are not email. But they are not consistent. Some channels to which I subscribe, it seems fairly instantaneous. Others take days or just never. I finally got the notification for this episode on YT last night.
And I pay attention as I try to give some feedback to Scott.
Several months back, I unsubscribed and the subscribed making sure to click the Black Bell so as to send me all notifications from that channel. That worked for awhile. Got notifications in the mornings when Scott posted them. Now, nope.
You are the programming guy. Isn’t it easier to have code that says: When a video is uploaded, send a notification to all those who subscribed and clicked that they wanted to be notified then it is to code: when a video is uploaded send notifications to every fifth subscriber then wait X days and send the rest?
(Man that was a heck of a run on, but I trust you’ll understand my ramblings by this point!)
Jah, ramblings are my thing. I got what you were saying.
I’m not actually a programmer, that’s more Harry’s bailiwick. I do some ‘light’ programming and for everything heavier I use a real, certified programmer as a subcontractor.
Programming isn’t always about what’s easier. Or cheaper. It’s about accomplishing a desired purpose. Google has some high end programmers on staff and has to pay them whether they are actively working on code or sitting in the staff break room drinking caramel latte while playing Call of Duty.
So easier or cheaper are lesser considerations. The desired purpose is far more of a driver.
Then there’s the fact, as I’m sure Harry can vouch for, that a LOT of programmers are somewhere on the autism spectrum and many gravitate to the “burn this bitch down” political worldview. They see themselves as rebels ‘sticking it to the man’.
Which is more than a little pathetic but you’ll never convince these self appointed social warriors of that.
It causes a sort of weird discontinuity when you see that type at various conventions or trade shows wearing Che Guevara T-Shirts and sporting Black Power Fist tattoos on their lilly white never-sees-the-sun skin.
I despise that sort, Google hires them.
The evil vileness at Google has followed roughly the same time frame as hiring these people as programmers right out of college, then as they advance to higher positions of software engineer and then software architect. What were kids fresh out of school 15-20 years ago are now running the show as far as software is concerned.
I’m not certain that Google does that because they want to rule the world through information bias. At least some of the reason is that some of these guys are really good at out-of-the-box thinking. Or maybe I should say “out of the box, into the frying pan, out of the frying pan and into the fire” thinking.
Which is to say they’re top notch programmers but when it comes to logical consistency not so much. There are other top notch programmers whose logical consistency, moral fiber, good will, common sense and proportional worldview all keep them from going to the extremes this tattooed wannabe rebel is all too glad to explore.
But … Working at Google gives that type a sort of power.
Power over public information bias, power internally in the company, power over other employees, etc.
It’s the same phenomena we see with other potent but small minority types in other areas. Like Disney going woke and doing things clearly detrimental to their company. It’s not wannabe rebel programmers driving that at Disney but the same principle applies.
“The Message” as Critical Drinker so aptly puts it, is the be all and end all. Everything else is lower priority including being decent human beings, actual fairness as opposed to a made up hollowly virtuous unfairness claimed as being fair, whether something is easy and cheap or not — And all the rest of the systemic social poison that has come to be known as ‘wokeness’.
Those sorts of people have their entire identity invested in what really amounts to hate. Their abysmal hate has convinced them that being hateful makes them good people.
To them it’s OK to hate as long as you’re hating the correct people. While this is something the Left takes to uttermost disastrous extreme, the Left does not have a monopoly on hate. Hate is easy to find if you look for it.
I haven’t programmed for a living in 20 years, but know I still can (and do for fun) .
I would say that most (and definitely me according to an online test I took) are on the spectrum somewhere.
Most I knew were on the conservative side of things, but note: 20 years ago. Also I think that people gravitate to companies that think like they do if the have the option. So that can help explain Google and their programmers. I programmed first for an oil company, then a bank, and then a greeting card company. Pretty conservative areas overall. Did a bit in my current job… Maybe 10-15% of my time for 2 years.
I only knew one who was”off”. Genius, but looking back, way on the spectrum, back when autism was not identified. He became paranoid and erratic. Last I heard he was driving a taxi for a living. Probably the kind you ride with and get an earful of the conspiracy theory of the day.
Oddly enough, I test on the spectrum (barely) but am not too bad with people. Indeed, in most jobs in was in I was considered free entertainment due to my goofy sense of humour.
But don’t put me in a party without a “theme” and I sometimes end up holding up a wall by myself . Also every so often I miss social cues. Sometimes I am told I am rude and interrupting, but to me, I’m doing the same thing others are doing that aren’t called rude and sometimes the life of the party. I can’t seem to tell the difference sometimes. But sometimes i can.
Let me prepare and I can do well depending on the party. (Halloween I do ok. I roleplay the costume. Once dressed like Groucho Marx. Stayed in character almost the whole night.)
And one final thing. The rule of three for programs. Easy to use, powerful and cheap/fast.
Pick two. (Or one) Easy to use and powerful? Takes time and time is money. Powerful and cheap? Try wading through it. Cheap and easy to use? Not very powerful.
If I had adequate time, I did powerful and easy to use.
Things have definitely changed since 20 years ago.
I don’t know if you ever went to that sort of thing but I’d go to trade shows (I lived in Los Angeles, lots of trade shows) back then — 20+ years ago — and they’d be populated with geeks and engineers. Button down collars, the occasional T-shirt that said “I surf the World Wide Web (which was a big thing back then), pocket protectors, awkward silences, all that good stuff. It was actually fun.
There were also two big computer and electronics swap meets that I never missed. One was at the Anaheim OC Fairplex and one was in the big TRW – AC Martin parking lot in Redondo Beach. I think. Same crowd.
By the time I stopped going to that kind of thing the crowd had changed character completely. Bear in mind that this was in California and as we’ve seen over time things go to hell in California first.
I think it’s very likely that oil companies are not hiring programmers that wear Che Guevara T-shirts and have fully sleeved tattoos on their arms. So I guess you didn’t see the things I’m talking about.
I did. I provide IT design, installation and support for SMBs, Small to Medium sized businesses. I try to give my clients as much of what the really big companies have but scaled and priced to their needs.
I almost never call or contact Tech Support. I’m the tech support for my clients. We used so much Dell equipment I even took the course to be an official Dell Support field tech so as not to void the warranties on the stuff we used made by Dell. Still, there are times when I have to get the vendor involved in something for which they have to send a rep to the site.
I watched the same decline in those reps. It started years back with smart, reasonably dressed guys (sometimes gals) with no visible tattoos and by the time I left LA the vendors (like for instance Hewlett Packard) were sending what I would consider scumbags covered in tattoos and dressed like bums. Smart scumbags but scumbags even so.
So I’ve witnessed a definite downswing in the character of people in the IT business.
I think those scumbags gravitate to places like Google and Google to its shame and detriment hires them.
Google, like Disney Inc., is a privately owned, publicly traded company. There are only two things that will move them in the right direction. That’s stockholder dissatisfaction and political power.
What we need to do, and it’s for their own good too, is remove the protection as a carrier under Section 230 but not to make them full blown publishers in the process. This means NEW laws regarding fairness.
When the U.S. Constitution guarantees Freedom of Speech that doesn’t just apply to the U.S. Government. That is an inherent Right endowed by the Creator and it applies to all Americans not just the Americans who might be adversely disadvantaged by the government.
There are ample arguments to act on the preservation of that right when it comes to businesses as well as government.
I have a few ideas along those lines but this post is already long enough.