Series parts:

1. New Series: Why People Everywhere Should Quit YouTube
2. YouTube's New Management: Time's Up, Start Paying and Watch Ads, Don't Use Free Software
3. Why You Should Quit YouTube - Part 3: Google Exploits Creators, It'll Get Even Worse
4. Why You Should Quit YouTube - Part 4: Financial Crunch Time
5. Why You Should Quit YouTube - Part 5: The Real Enemy Has Become Sanity of Users
6. Why You Should Quit YouTube - Part 6: The 'Audiences' as the Enemies of YouTube
7. Why You Should Quit YouTube - Part 7: The 'Creators' as the Enemies of YouTube
8. YOU ARE HERE ☞ YouTube, Google, and Alphabet as the Political Opportunists and Enemies of Public Health

Summary: Following the 'lead' of Fentanylware (Bytedance/TikTok), YouTube has become a large hosting platform for "#shorts" and it is in a position to promote self-harm or harm to one's surroundings, based on one's geography

MY original intention was to cover this issue in one long article. But as noted a few days ago, it quickly (soon afterwards) became apparent that there was a lot of material to speak about and thus it became a short series instead of one long article. This will likely be not just the latest part but the last before the summary/outline and then we'll offer some conclusions. The main conclusion is in the title of the series: "You Should Quit YouTube" (even as a mere spectator).

Being a passive viewer isn't harmless. You are being controlled and hypnotised, some might say "programmed". Your "screen time" is their power.

It's hardly a secret that Russian media in Spanish, English, German etc. (with sponsorship from the Kremlin), with additional presence in sites like Twitter, has selectively covered things to destabilise political systems overseas, dividing populations along lines of ethnicity, gender etc. It's deliberate. China is following the Russian model. The US is not harmless, either.

There's also class war, which leverages the same tactics domestically (weapons of propaganda aimed inwards).

Things Deteriorate Fast

As readers can hopefully see, the theme in this series is, YouTube is not our friend. It's nobody's friend. It stabs a lot of people in the back, even some of the best "creators" (who get suspended for no good reasons, even at the worst of times). Earlier today I discovered that some old videos of Dr. John Campbell, which I linked to over a hundred times before (he publishes almost daily), are already vanishing. They even target the videos where he speaks about the censorship by YouTube. He belatedly started looking for alternatives. What have sites like YouTube and TikTok become? Just censorship engines for regimes and corporations, censoring even doctors and health professionals who highlight actual risks to one's health or mention the censorship (while citing scholarly papers to back what they are saying)?

"What have sites like YouTube and TikTok become?"Don't trust Alphabet/Google; they view us all as enemies; we should view them as enemies too. Even some of the most "popular" YouTubers might say the same; when they were down and out (e.g. account compromised) YouTube kicked them and bruised them; instead of support they got the cold shoulder, even a ban. Not nice!

Is 'Short' (Attention Span) the Future?

"YouTube is similar to TikTok, except it is controlled by and based in the US."So what's the endgame here? A platform for everyone? YOU as in YOU-tube? Who does the "YOU" refer to? Who stands to benefit? "Have you addressed the questions about the business model for YouTube?" So said a person an hour ago, noting that: "Their storage costs go up arithmetically but the revenue stays more or less stable at this point." Actually the revenue is decreasing. Running YouTube is getting more expensive (salaries aside) and the revenue is decreasing.

One rather safe assumption to make is that the 'cool kids' adopt or move to Bytedance/TikTok. As of this week's Press Gazette, "Facebook [is] fading", but "Facebook remained the most important social network for news despite the decline". It says people increasingly adopt video platforms, with TikTok/YouTube as a growing problem. As noted in the previous two parts, many videos that are nowadays uploaded to YouTube are merely copies of what users had already made for and uploaded to TikTok. In other words, YouTube has been demoted to "backup" and for those who don't know what TikTok is optimised for, consider watching/reading this programme:

• Watch 60 Minutes: The question about TikTok - Full show on CBS





• Is TikTok a harmless app or a threat to U.S. security? - 60 Minutes - CBS News

YouTube is similar to TikTok, except it is controlled by and based in the US. "The data extraction is just a sideshow," an associate points out, "the real function is to destroy the social capabilities of a generation."

"The arguments over the years seem to focus on which countries or companies should be allowed to abusively collect data (and subsequently use it) rather than whether data should be collected by any company and if so what amount and to what ends. It is the ends to which the data is used which make Bytedance's weapon TikTok so harmful."

There was a story this month about it being used to crush resistance in Hong Kong, enabling the annexation per se.

So we can already see the political interference facilitated by such platforms. It is moreover becoming like the Opium Wars, weakening the already-feeble minds of people, especially the youth.

Third Opium War

"Soon enough Google will block almost every third party from accessing YouTube material."Social control media, especially videos by their nature, is making people act like zombies, by means of imitation or inspiration. They're getting worse and worse or more extreme. They stuff they get exposed to is getting more extreme (or a lot less accurate), as they're drifting towards 'doom', fed with messages of suicide, misinformation, extremism etc. This fascinating phenomenon has been documented for years already. People get sucked into a sort of wormhole, leading towards permanent or temporary (but still severe) mental damage. Nothing is bad or extreme enough for them anymore, so they drift further or further away into the abyss.

As an associate put it today: "The US Surgeon General has a lot to say on the health effects especially for the damage done to teens by social control media."

"It might worth raising the question again of who controls the algorithms for the weaponised services, especially if kids are spending 6 - 7 hours per day plugged into such a skinner box," this associate told us this week.

Today's YouTube, based on what I see through Invidious since 2021, has exactly the same issue as the principal issue with TikTok, which is basically a weapon disguised as an innocent "app". Soon enough Google will block almost every third party from accessing YouTube material. API??? What's that?

"Whether by bans or another factor, TikTok won't be a lasting force, at least not in the West, but what then? Will YouTube become the 'new' TikTok?"At the moment TikTok is being promoted by many press outlets in the US, e.g. here in mainstream media or in Rupert Murdoch's main tabloid [1, 2].

"TikTok" as "news"?

This is an example of harm being promoted. "Father fakes his own death" is not an innocent stunt; it can lead to false calls for emergency services and even worse outcomes. How about this nonsense in English-speaking Singaporean press? Who made it go viral? Beijing? Well, this thing is good for Beijing, so it can make it go "viral", sit back, and watch culture wars unleashed by Murdoch's media empire. Destructive? Poisonous? Opium? Cultural Maoism? Who sets the agenda here? How is this even news??? TikTok in action, causing strife and angst, even conflict. "More "news" is just a description of hearsay based on a tweet or TikTok video," an associate explained. "TikTok is by design a weapon." Yesterday we saw the "journal of record" doing the same, Singapore's English language media running puff pieces for TikTok, and this report that "TikTok and Reddit sleuths swarmed the campus." Yesterday (less than a day ago) Public Knowledge published "The Battle for Control: TikTok, Parental Consent, and the Rights of Children", saying that "TikTok [is] managing to unseat Google, Facebook, and Twitter as Congressional Enemy #1. What started as concerns about national security and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) having too much influence over the platform’s algorithmic design and content moderation has morphed into something different."

Even if it's not controlled by a "Chinese Communist Party (CCP)", it's still harmful. YouTube too has compelled people to do dangerous things. Some people get shot for it. Some die. Some people do live footage of murder expeditions, looking for popularity this way.

The Future Looks... Worrying

"The "news" is full of TikTok," the associate said yesterday, "advancing the weapon's deployment throughout society For TikTok dig up the 60-Minutes segment from last Autumn." (Links above)

Whether by bans or another factor, TikTok won't be a lasting force, at least not in the West, but what then? Will YouTube become the 'new' TikTok? If so, it's time to be forewarned. It's time to ensure people don't get addicted to those billions of TikTok videos that are also uploaded to YouTube. Recycled TikTok videos, uploaded to YouTube, might soon outnumber everything else in YouTube. ⬆