Progressive Media Takes A Beating As YouTube Becomes More Corporate

YouTube was, at one point, the great equalizer that finally allowed progressive media outlets to compete on the same level as corporate-sponsored Republican platforms. But thanks to a few bad actors, mostly on the right, progressive content is being unfairly dinged by algorithm shifts and corporate influence. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses these issues and many more with Mike Figueredo, host of The Humanist Report.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Not that long ago Youtube was really a great equalizer between both the right and the left. Right wing media typically gets propped up by some kind of organization or possibly a millionaire, billionaire backer, progressive media, not so much, and youtube put us all on an even playing field, but recently progressive content has been getting dinged to left and right for essentially covering the news of the day. Joining me now to talk about this as well as several other issues is host of the humanis t report. Mike, it is a pleasure to have you here on ring of fire with me today.

I am really glad to be here. Thank you so much for the invite Farron.

you know, I, I've seen you tweet out about it. Uh, I've tweeted about it. Everybody on the left pretty much has been talking about this for quite some time, but we, we've been noticing with youtube a lot more recently everything, maybe not everything but, but a lot of things just happened to get demonetized a, a great example. Even when you're talking about something that's not necessarily controversial LGBTQ issues. If you talk about those, you get demonetized I think what up until about two days ago, they finally started letting some of those through talking about social issues. I mean this is it starting to really get out of control with the amount of content that's getting hit here for really no reason whatsoever, isn't it?

It's, it's really difficult to, um, figure out what will and won't work, especially like with LGBTQ issues because pretty much any video that I put out that was related to LGBTQ plus rights, I mean, I just expect that to be demonetized. Although I actually tweeted, because I was surprised that after being initially demonetized, the video that I had covered on trans rights was re monetized. And I was actually so shocked that I tweeted about it and I said, this is like the first time in a while I have been able to monetize a video on trans rights, which is strange because you know, this double standard where if you are hateful towards LGBTQ people like Steven Crowder, you can monetize that content. But when we put out a response to that, we get demonetized. So it's a little bit of frustrating that this was the standard.

I mean, I'm assuming up until recently. So it's a, it's an indication that hopefully youtube is changing because I do think we should be encouraging and incentivizing creators to make LGBTQ plus content. I mean, back when I was a young man, youtube was a great resource. When I was coming out, I would listen to people's coming out stories and whatnot and it really helped me. So to have that demonetize when I saw this happen, especially after the 2017 ad apocalypse, it was really devastating to see that because you know, that turns LGBTQ plus creators and allies off to the platform, which I think is a really, really bad sign. And it's not just LGBTQ plus rights. As you know, pretty much we, we know what will and won't get demonetized anything with regard to foreign policy, anything a little bit too controversial, it will be demonetized and you know, the issue isn't necessarily that it's permanently demonetized. A lot of times we'll appeal when we're initially the monetized and then they will reinstate the ads. The problem is when you're hosting a news and politics channel like ours is that first 24 hours is absolutely crucial. If we don't make that revenue, then we're probably not gonna do too well on that video if we're all.

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