Dear YouTube,
May I first say how pleased I am that climate misinformation videos on your platform will now carry informative links to official data sources correcting the lack of understanding and conspiracist ideation among the less scientifically educated of your viewers.
It’s difficult to know exactly where to start re-educating the sort of people that think somehow just because the Jet Stream has moved around a bit that a hot July doesn’t prove the need to adopt global communism to save us all from the sins of our capitalist folly.
As long as we live in a world in which bourgeois intellectuals are free to own private property and sit around in it thinking and writing what they like, we can only do what little we can to correct the error of their ways. Your commitment to party communications at the end of their silly YouTube clips is therefore a most welcome development and one with which I am delighted to be able to help, having found the following disinformation videos which you will no doubt want to amend with corrective messaging.
A man called Albert Gore can be seen here making a speech after receiving a Nobel prize.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhAYP_m4k0w
In it he claims arctic ice will be gone by the summer of 2014. A link to the Danish Meteorological Institute can show this to be nonsense. Sea ice is largely stable over the last 15 years, a little below average for sure but then Gore would know how it feels.
One “expert” Gore and conspiracy theorist sites like the Guardian are fond of citing is Professor Peter Wadhams. Within the climate community, his standing isn’t quite what you’d expect for a learned Cambridge professor, as indicated by a series of tweets from NASA’s climate chief, Gavin Schmidt, who took to twitter during one of Wadhams’ laughable presentations:
@ClimateOfGavin: Wadhams still using graphs with ridiculous projections with no basis in physics.
Wadhams has several videos on YouTube pronouncing “a farewell to ice”.
These should include the same health warnings as Gore’s. He’s also no stranger to conspiracy theories and has claimed MI5 and “big oil” was behind the tragic deaths of three well known climate scientists, including one who was struck by lightning.
He also apparently failed to report an attempt on his own life only through fear of being labelled a loony, which you might think was preferable to being murdered. Given your recent ban on another well known conspiracy theorist, perhaps just links to authoritative sources might not be enough, I urge you to consider an outright ban.
Other suspect sites like the New York Times have been promoting the idea that the world is beset by wildfires caused by climate change. Even a cursory examination of the data can show this to be propagandist nonsense.
Links to official figures showing the continuing decline in global burn acreages should be provided at the end of any of their stories.
In the UK, an outlet called the BBC has been pushing a far-fetched idea that the world could somehow experience run away global warming and turn into a hothouse.
Again these clips should be qualified by links to authoritative sources explaining scientific concepts like evaporation and clouds and how this must be nonsense otherwise it would have happened in the time of the dinosaurs when the world was anything up to 13° warmer.
So keep up the good work and I’ll keep my eyes peeled for any more disinformation.
Sincerely yours, Tom Peer
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I welcome You Tube and Google making their biased public – because this will only hasten the development of unbiased alternatives.
For example: https://www.real.video/channel/infowarsnetwork
It’s not as if there are a lot of barriers to entry into a video sharing service.
Vimeo was always better than YouTube for movies.
Let’s move to Vimeo. Google can keep the neutered Youtube.
Vimeo just removed Alex Jones videos. It begins.
Try DailyMotion.com
You’d think by now youtube etal would have realised that echo-chambers are self-defeating, they have just undermined themselves.
The facts always win in the end.
Youtube will be just another discredited maligned echo-chamber, not worthy of existence or anyone.
Thanks to Theo, Curious, and Hivemind for listing alternatives.
Wow thanks. I didn’t even know about Vimeo.
Agreed. I sincerely HOPE that Google makes a very public spectacle of their patronizing corrections to “wrong thinking” humans everywhere. Please Google … set the record straight … with every post. Be our Big Brother, er Big Sister, er Big Chaz Bono, er …. whatever …
Light a fire under ALL competing platforms who actually BELIEVE in FREE SPEECH … who refuse to do any EVIL.
Google no longer subscribes to the “Do No Evil” mantra… they’ve changed it to “Do The Right Thing”. Of course, the ‘right’ thing is entirely dependent upon perspective… and in this case, it appears that ‘right’ from Google’s perspective is that of advancing their socialist ideology and quashing dissent in order to curry favor from their like-minded big-government comrades such that they increase their chances of receiving a steady and lucrative stream of government funding for undertaking the added task of said advancement and quashing.
I wonder which will disappear first: arctic sea ice, Peter Wadhams or Google. I’d put my money on Wadhams followed by Google and no one will see the end of arctic ice.
They’ll just redefine disappearance of sea ice, until they can say it disappeared during a future summer.
The disappearance of Waldhams and/or Goofle wouldn’t be so subjective… Goofle was a typo, but I liked it, so I didn’t fix it… 😎
A fearless, peerless letter.
I have officially stopped using Youtube.
Alternative platforms will destroy this dying alternative media platform.
I don’t know if hoisted by it’s own petard, but it sounds like the one with an “r” so I’m using it.
bitchute, patreon, etc.
I stopped using Facebook. My friends said, you can’t fight Zuckerberg all alone. I said that I wasn’t, and sure enough, when its latest earnings report came out, FB stock tanked.
Facebook’s Traffic Is Down Nearly 50% in 2 Years
http://fortune.com/2018/08/09/facebook-traffic-down/
You’ll be pleased to learn that Zuckerberg lost $16.8 billion… in one day. $15.1 billion of that in a mere 5 minutes.
Keep spreading the word and recruiting people to the #WalkAway movement… the liberals will feel it in their wallets and moderate their behavior if they’re smart.
Of course, they’re not so smart as they like to think they are, so they’ll keep doubling down until their companies are broke… and good riddance to bad rubbish.
You know, if enough people leave FB and Twitter, their bottom line will feel it. Maybe won’t end them but at least we have caused them some financial damage.
I came home from a trip away and as I went to baggage pickup there was an ad 9 a physical poster no less) saying that Facebook was so opposed to “fake news” etc. Typical marketing spin/defensive PR schpin.
Then it occurred to me what was really always there:-
Its not Facebook at all,
its Fakebook
and it always was.
Fakebook have adverts on about 80% of the billboards around here. There are so many of them it resembles a scene from “They Live”
I was banned from Facebook and then to re-instate me they wanted my drivers license, birth certificate or passport to prove to them who I was! I told them to Foxtrot Oscar!
I left Facebook recently but set up a completely fake persona simply to monitor the information that they extract from you and to view how they continue to market themselves and encourage usage. I am entirely inactive on it but regularly receive friend suggestions from them, so be warned, if you are a ladies hairdresser, expect lots of links to nail bar proprietors. They may be claim to be able to spot fake news but they are unable to spot fake people.
A friend’s cat has his own Facebook page….
Just purrfect!
I stopped using Google search (I use DuckDuckGo – even tho it isn’t perfect), Gmail, ‘anything Google’ if I can help it. I deleted my Facebook account (which I had no real info on and didn’t use) when they started assigning ‘political positions’ – conservative, liberal, etc of their own ‘interpretation’ of my beliefs w/o consulting me or providing an ‘opt out’ option, now I add YouTube to the list.
I wonder why they don’t allow the owners of the youtube videos they ‘edit’ the opportunity to respond to the ‘authoritative sources’ they attach to the videos. Seems only fair that they do so.
I use twitter almost exclusively to follow my sports teams, but, if they keep it up, I’ll have to abandon that as well.
A good search engine is StartPage.com… it uses Google search, but doesn’t forward any of the data that Google collects on its search page. So it’s the best of both worlds.
Anti-trust seems appropriate.
Start hitting them with DMCA and similar. They’re clearly taking an editorial role, which should remove “safe harbor”.
Agreed!
The former lawyer, former newspaperman, now well esteemed scifi writer John C. Wright has a post up: http://www.scifiwright.com/2018/08/alex-jones-and-the-communications-decency-act/ which covers most of the matter. I would commend it to your reading.
It seems to me that these big tech giants monitor content, thus setting themselves up as publishers. Consequently, they subject themselves to liable and should be sued every day along with being charged with trafficking in pornography.
The phone companies monitor traffic, not content. Google reads everything and it is reasonable to conclude that they are responsible for what is “published”; e.g. the vile pornography delivered to young children on the internet, the conspiracies to defraud that occur all the time on Gmail, etc, etc, etc. If they don’t like the liability they should keep their noses out of all content traversing their servers!
Just IMHO, of course.
That logger should post that or a similar letter every Day! I certainly don’t agree with every video on U tube, but I do believe in free speech and the right to debate. Everyone has right and responsibility to think for themselves and to live and learn.
“Everyone has (the) right and responsibility to think for themselves and to live and learn.”
That’s actively discouraged among the left.
” Everyone has right and responsibility to think for themselves and to live and learn. ”
Not according to AGW. They want to try in court anybody that opposes AGW ( and their solutions ) as crimes against humanity. Not some day, 20 years ago.
Somewhere in the files of WUWT are the prominent names of people who have wished most of the inhabitants death by one sort or the other for deniers and people in general.
Strangely, I saw a YouTube video from a far-left loon spouting the usual lefty nonsense and actively inciting violence against conservatives. In the comments section, another leftloon was spouting that he was stocking up on arms and ammo, and was hoping for the day that he could slaughter as many conservatives as possible… even if he had to end the life of his own son in the process (his son being conservative).
When I pointed out that he was in violation of the law in his incitement to violence (as was the video itself) and that I’d reported him to the appropriate authorities, YouTube banned *me*, and left both the video and the inciting comment untouched.
This theme repeats itself in many YouTube videos… YouTube is run by fascists who are attempting to quash dissent as means of furthering their socialist agenda. Socialists unrestrained almost always slide into communism (their “progressivism” demands “progress” (read: change) even if that ‘progress’ is regressive)… the chief difference between socialism and communism being that socialism achieves its ends via coercion (reference the recent ‘nudging’ meme the leftists advanced), peer pressure and guilt whereas communism achieves its ends via violence. Thus we can see that the socialists want to plunge headlong straight into communism… they haven’t the historical context to understand the horrors their belief system encompasses when fully implemented.
Ironically, if they got their way, it’d destroy the very means by which their own company became so large and thus enriched those very socialists.
No one ever said socialists were very bright.
Make it a police matter.
I suspect youtube would be on a winner if it took this advice on board and would further reduce global mental stress.
They’d have to have someone educated enough in basic science to properly code their interface and search routines first.
Add to that the parsing of “unpopular” data resulting in almost any actual facts prior to 2004 being lost from the search engine and no policing of internal political view forcing agendas and basically everything you can say about RT is factual about youtube as well.
I watch channels, not youtube.
I’m not sure if global mental stress will be reduced or not. Since feelings are more important than facts, stress might increase. I’m glad I’ve been taught to accept correction, especially when I was wrong, all through school and in five languages. I like the teaching I get here as well. Thank you.
Now that ought to do it. I am going to look for a video clip of Danny Divito saying that in the movie Ruthless People.
Oh here it is
https://youtu.be/fDLk9z7LImw
Sorry, Tom, I don’t think the people in charge of youtube have reading comprehension skills.
Umm, it was a Nobel PEACE Prize, kinda like a participation trophy.
That makes them buddies of Yasser Arafat.
He was a great peace loving person too. He earned that trophy by not killing anyone for about 4 years while he was holed up in a bunker surrounded by Israelis.
Israelis don’t play.
Excellent letter, sometimes I have to pinch myself that we are living in the heady days of Galileo! Perhaps I shouldn’t say “heady” as warming alarmists might think that gauging out the eyes of true scientists doesn’t go far enough!
Dear YouTube,
Let me be first congratulate you in unselfishly opening the market up in hosting/sharing videos. I’m sure Vimeo, Bitshute, DTube, and all the rest listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_hosting_services and any they have missed all congratulate you on this fine move.
Well done!
You shouldn’t have said that.
Now Wike will delete all those links!
Priceless! 🙂
A few years ago I published my Youtube video “Vanishing Ice Most Likely All Natural!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaZb0r4G_Gc
My video was totally based on undeniable peer reviewed science. The foundation of trusted science is open debate where all alternative hypotheses and confounding factors are well vetted.
To suppress alternative views Youtube or at the very least steer people away from any skeptical arguments, Youtube is now targeting any alternative hypotheses no matter how well supported by the evidence. They are posting a carefully worded “information box” right below the video that serves to label the video as “disinformation” and links to Wikipedia. (Wikipedia was involved in a scandal where one of their editors was removing any skeptical information.)
The information box has a link (hover over the 3 dots in upper right corner) and a drop down menu entitled “why am I seeing this”. Their explanation for why they added their information box states
“Information panel providing topical context
Note: This feature is currently available only in the United States.
Users may see information from third parties, including Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia, alongside videos on a small number of well-established historical and scientific topics that have often been subject to misinformation online, like the moon landing.
An information panel providing topical context may appear in search results or on the Watch page of videos. It will include basic, independent third party information about a given topic, and will link to the third party partner’s website to allow viewers to learn more about the topic.
This information panel will appear alongside videos related to the topic, regardless of the opinions or perspectives expressed in the videos.”
It is a carefully worded statement to appear objective and justify their nanny government meddling to guide your mind or peddling of their preferred viewpoints. In essence they are posting a dog whistle that the video might be disinformation, while the ones they let stand without commentary or more valid.
Although youtube claims “This information panel will appear alongside videos related to the topic, regardless of the opinions or perspectives expressed in the videos,” if you google “Vanishing Ice” there are many videos but not all are adorned with their “information panel”. My video is the fifth listed in youtube’s results for Vanishing Ice. Yet mine is the only one in that 5 with their so-called “information panel” . Furthermore their information panel does not deal directly with the evidence my video discusses. It merely creates a link to Wikipedia suggesting man-made global warming is real.
Youtube and Google are embarking on a slippery slope into intellectual tyranny, situations themselves in position to tell the public what is truth and what is disinformation. The public must be warned of this latest tactic.
Jim, very nice, thanks. It looks like Youtube is now taking on a full responsibility for the contents of ANY post.
… and stepping into a pile of ‘Contingent Liability’ poo…
“The public” will find a workaround, you watch.
Yes. Youtube should be careful what it wishes for.
Quite some years ago, Channel4 TV in the UK decided to post a pink triangle (if I remember correctly) on programs/movies that contained material of an explicit sexual nature. (At the time, Channel4 was known as being rather adventurous in what it aired).
Of course, as expected, some people complained. But more people started switching on/over to watch such broadcasts.
However, I think the experiment didn’t last very long because viewers were too often disappointed to find the material was usually rather tame.
I recall that too and it was rather ridiculous IIRC. I recall before CH4 “Play for Today” on BBC2 was more daring than anything broadcast on CH4.
Thank you Jim. Your comment could have been / should have been a post.
Would be nice if the AG began antitrust proceedings against them. Paging Jeff Sessions.
hmm, i wonder what would happen if people kept mailing to “report” the agw ones instead?
Already doing my bit there & hoping I’m just one small voice among many.
Good video. Thanks. Also thanks for giving the site for the links to all the published works upon which the presentation is based.
Just removed YouTube from my phone.
Jim Steele wrote:
“(Wikipedia was involved in a scandal where one of their editors was removing any skeptical information.)”
Yeah, I ran across that guy a couple times. On some pages not even related to climate change, they’d put CAGW misinformation that was blatantly false. I corrected it, they reversed the corrections, I provided peer-reviewed studies proving their information wrong and my information right and corrected the article again, they reversed it again, we got into a long comments-section argument culminating in my bringing in Jimmy Wales to mediate… that was early on, and I think after a few more instances of the same with the same eco-loon editor, the editor first got warned, then booted.
YouTube is a private enterprise. They can allow or disallow whatever information they want.
They can also be targeted with antitrust.
So was the monopoly phone company.
No they are not, YouTube, Google, Alphabet are a publicly listed corporation. Why do people persist in repeating this ignorant lie?
Really?
Could you elaborate, please?
…apparently not!
We’ve fallen a long way when you have become ‘anonymous’ to avoid a public company from trying to destroy you for speaking your opinion about their bad behavior.
YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and all the other computer service providers have a legal get out from court action in that they say they are not publishers, they are just ‘a platform’. They just ‘facilitate’ others to publish their content.
About time for the law on publishing to be updated?
IMHO, I think you are going in the wrong direction, if indeed you are talking about regulating publishing.
Do you really want someone telling you what you can say??
Maybe I misunderstood your comment ?
Uk,
Early on when the Internet was becoming more accessible to more people Congress passed a law relieving providers of a service of any liability for what a 3rd party might post on their platform. The rational was these providers were not exercising editorial control over the content. Now that these companies are exercising editorial control they should fall under the classification of being a publisher. As a publisher they should now be held responsible for content on their service. For example, allowing copyright material without prior permission from the copyright holder should make them, as a publisher, vulnerable to being sued.
You got it in one Greg 🙂
Kim Dotcom may beg to differ.
pirates put copyright in a coma and youtube manages its hospice care. they do it very well.
once, microsoft paid 10 million dollars for the rights to use rolling stone’s Start Me Up to promote windows ™.
now you can use it yourself – autolicensed by youtube. you just agree to allow ads.
copyright does get the lip service, still, but mostly, when it is enforced, it is used as the excuse to mess with a particular person.
“Do you really want someone telling you what you can say??”
They (Google, YouTube, etc) already are. It’s a bit late for that question.
So, you’ve given up?
I didn’t think so….
Doesn’t adding ‘information’ to a ‘facilitated’ content make them ‘publishers’?
Or deleting content? It sure seems like it, as it’s no longer just a carrier is it.
Methinks YouTube should do a U-turn, before they become YouBoob.
Old Aussie joke;
Can you make a u-turn?
No, but I can make her eyes pop!
(Mods, feel free to delete if inapropriate)
More relevant as a Kiwi joke, Bruce?
Whilst I understand the point, the objections, and the need to take a stance, frankly this is no more than yet another miserable storm in a teacup bound to do YouTube more harm than good.
The fact is that YouTube, and any other media outlet relies on advertising revenue to survive. The second profits are threatened or viewings drop, the campaign will be pulled.
And whilst these guys pander to the left, make no mistake tat they invented the term ‘Capitalism by hoovering up al, those advertising dollars on offer for their services.
Screw with that and all these left wing organisations will begin to bare their own teeth.
HotScot wrote:
“The fact is that YouTube, and any other media outlet relies on advertising revenue to survive. The second profits are threatened or viewings drop, the campaign will be pulled.”
There’s a simple corrective that can be applied… encourage everyone who disagrees with YouTube acting as censor to run AdBlock Plus (or similar ad blocker) and thereby block all ads. I haven’t seen an ad on YouTube for years.
Then encourage them to watch as many videos as they can.
This takes YouTube’s income stream away, while increasing their costs.
One person doing this won’t have much of an effect… millions doing it will, though.
Very good letter! I have been indulging watching YouTube videos recently just out of interest of a couple of subjects but YouTube throws up suggested videos to watch. And so videos about “flat earthers” are shown. Really strange people who believe this and disbelieve gravity using jugs of oil and water or fruit (Fruit loops rather). But, there was a very short video with Bill Nye saying the earth is a closed system, we cannot leave the Earth, only enter low Earth orbit.
I am sort of addicted to these now, just to listen to people who really should not post videos stating the Earth is not a globe!
There’s no money to be made by silencing the “flat earthers” and no political agenda, therefore, there is no concern about the “truth” in those videos. “Truth” is what yields power to the government and the most income redistribution.
I’m sure the videos are entertaining.
I would recommend doing a quick search and having a watch of one or two. Real eye openers at the scientific illiteracy of a large, and seemingly growing, number of people.
I’m not sure who originally said this but “when a business takes actions that will end in its own demise (commit suicide), it’s best to get out of the way and let them… It opens up opportunity for others…”
What’s all the fuss about? I think this is an “own goal”.
I expect that people who let others think for them probably don’t watch these kinds of videos at all. People who are searching for factual information will wind up at a link that says something like “global warming is real, all the scientists say so”. Well, for starters, if the video is factual, the video is factual and and the opinion of scientists that global warming is real doesn’t challenge the facts. Anyone curious enough to do their own verification will find out that the facts are correct. Which will no doubt prompt them to start asking more questions.
I think this policy is going to turn into a Streisand moment for them. Anyone with a lick of sense will see that the links youtube provides don’t prove the facts incorrect. They’re shining a light on facts that can only be discredited by an appeal to authority that proves nothing.
YouTube is counting on the Appeal to Authority. That’s how it works—everyone must think the same and the “authorities” will tell you how to think. Don’t scoff at it. There are millions who have never had an original thought in their lives. They live by what social media tells them is important, live by what the school taught them, etc. It’s not just a few people. Considering that a sizable portion of American thinks Daddy Government is always right and should always care for them, appeal to authority is very, very effective.
And per what I said above, THOSE people will NEVER go looking for an alternative point of view in the first place. The only people who this will affect are ones who ARE looking for both sides of the argument, and Appeal to Authority not only fails with them, it reinforces their interest in verifying facts for themselves. A sheeple that meets Appeal to Authority notices nothing. Anyone with an ounce of ability to think for themselves goes on high alert when they see that BS and starts asking more questions.
Own goal.
Climate Narcissists believe they have a moral imperative to make stuff up.
Excellent!!!!!!
WONDERFUL!
Rational scientists (and Conservatives if I may be political) have to redirect the Progressives’ tactics right back at them.
A great example is the issue of “Fake News”. Who remembers that that meme was actually started by the Progressive MSM to counter some of the early DJT statements without having to resort to data. And now Trump beats them over the head with their own phrase! (Google and Wikipedia seemed to have “forgotten” that provenance.)
A good place to start is with some of more effective, yet benign of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.
And I have to say I ENJOYED this post!!
I want to thank U-Tube for this service. From now on I’ll know to not waste time on climate related videos that don’t include the information box.
LOL… You’ll find yourself banned from YouTube Tom. Lefties don’t have any sense of humor, irony or perspective. Their entire beings are driven by vindictive hatred.
True. I am a leftist and I have no sense of humor.
(Get it?)