Here is my current line-up. I've just recently really been getting into YouTube... couple years behind the curve... But normally i'll start by going through each sub and checking out the new content then queue up my own watch list as the vids that YouTube pushes my way are just fox news over and over. Which is okay, but i like different perspectives.
Need more lefties but its just so hard to listen to retard:
Just as an FYI, YouTube is actively purging alternative news from their platform. They're doing this under the guise of inclusiveness - so if someone says anything even remotely aimed at a minority group they're getting bumped from the platform.
This has been YouTube's efforts so far:
1. Demonetization - YouTube claimed alternative media channels couldn't get sponsorships because their content was too edgy (This wasn't true, this was YouTube's decision themselves not to allow it). So people who ran channels found sponsors for their channels - even though YouTube expressly indicated that they couldn't possibly allow ads to run on them.
2. De-platform - YouTube claimed that various alternative media groups were violating the terms of service. The specific clause, the specific reasons, the specific violations, or even a response to the 'why' question is often never address period - you simply go to log in and find your account is now terminated without a reason given.
They tested the waters at various points on some of the larger YouTubers that functioned in the alt media space - Alex Jones famously. Just to test public reaction to what they were doing. YouTube would periodically test the waters over and over on various YouTubers by banning their channels and wiping their accounts - with enough backlash on Twitter many of them were reinstated with YouTube stating, "Oops, our bad...".
3. 'De-Boosting' - YouTube couldn't demonetize their way out of the situation, and they couldn't outright ban, so they decided to limit the view and scope of viewers who didn't politically align with them. They began to persistently revamp the algorithms responsible for content delivery on their platform. Their AI systems that were typically used for things like Closed Captioning services and content IDing were weaponized to illicit strikes against video creators by scanning their content for key words, images, identifying political motivation or content, and using it to censor the content.
It would also be influenced by your audience. Getting 'Likes' and comments from people of the wrong political persuasion would also negatively affect your video's standing and therefore your account standing. This resulted in YouTube not promoting your video, and putting it behind a wall of search results that would hide your content behind 'Authoritative News Sources', like NBC, MSNBC, ABC, CNN, Wall Street Journal, etc.
Organic growth of content was killed almost outright for a lot of channels - even those that weren't of the political persuasion.
4. Removing subscribers at random - This was another, perhaps lesser known tactic. YouTube would periodically unsubscribe people from channels that they were subscribed to without any kind of notification - you'd simply stop getting notifications of activity of channels that you were watching. Between #4 and #3, a lot of alt media content creators saw Subscriber numbers not on flatline, but often drop over time. Their content is now being hidden, new people can't see it, people can't search for and find it, and even subscribers are sometimes finding it difficult to dig through older content.
5. This worked in tandem with #4, but they would also nip notifications in the bud. This was after they activated the "Notification's Bell" on the YouTube service - subscribing was no longer enough, now you had to specify your personal preference on notifications for activity. A lot of channels won't even get most of their notifications sent out to their subscriber base regardless of what options the users specify under the bell notification system.
Those are just 5 of the main ones, but there's a few other tactics that were also used to varying levels of success that received little discussion when they started happening...
1. YouTube 'Jail' - YouTube would take certain videos pertaining to certain political topics - PragerU famously put out a video discussing the history of the Nazis - a historical perspective. YouTube flagged the video for hate speech and put it in what the people are referring to as 'YouTube Jail' - YouTube couldn't legally ban the video, or deplatform the content creators, so they instead opted to put the video in an unviewable state. The video could not be searched for, would never come up under recommendations, could not display a thumb nail, could not be embedded off site, and would not allow comments or up/down votes. The video could only be shared to those that already had an established link to the video itself.
2. Changing the YouTube ToS to give a legally binding method of banning and/or closing channels. This most notably applies to the recent changes to the terms of service that allows YouTube to close channels that are "not commercially viable" - that is, if your content doesn't fit whatever limitations YouTube chooses to set on their platform in regards to monetization then they have the right to close your account on those grounds alone.
3. COPPA Copout - I find this one to be the scummiest of them all, as it puts blame on the users instead of the very platform that was engaged in the illegal activity. YouTube, like many other tech companies, have been in violation of COPPA regulations (That is the protection of minor children from having their personally identifying information harvested by tech companies) pretty much since they opened their doors.
Given the way that the big tech companies (Twitter, Facebook, and Alphabet Inc.) systemically harvest information from their users to build databases on their non-users, I'm not sure how one would or could enforce a law such as COPPA, but COPPA has been around for much longer than people realize - that's why YouTube got nailed so hard on the fine they received.
Facebook famously builds abstract databases of non-users by consolidating and connecting the dots of information of it's active users. Even if you personally have never used Facebook, if you have a friend or family member that does then you have a Facebook database with most if not all of your personal information plugged into it somewhere in the cloud.
But I digress, getting back to YouTube... When YouTube got sued it was because they were actively partaking in the acquisition of children's personal information on their platform and using that information to serve advertising to their YouTube Kids platform.
YouTube decided that the best way to deal with their violation of the law under Coppa was to turn to the user base and blame them. Rather than simply not blanket harvesting information on their user base across the platform, or effectively keeping children under the age of 13 off of their platform, they have forced content creators to flag their content as being "For Kids" or "Not for Kids".
This sounds simple enough, but flagging the video is largely paramount to nothing, as the implication is that one should simply flag all their content as 'Not for Kids' because it's probably not for them, and because then we don't have to worry about it. Instead that switch is not affecting whether or not kids can or cannot see your video, it more or less affects whether or not you're allowing YouTube to place ads on the video.
It's a disgusting twisting of the laws that protect YouTube for violation of certain copyright laws. Falling under the Platform vs. Publisher issue that has been a long running problem with YouTube's choice of censorship.
Lastly, YouTube is hemorrhaging money in the wake of all of this.