Thread by @BretWeinstein

YouTube soft-demonetized this video right out of the gate. Something clearly reviewed it while it was uploading--presumably an algorithm. More troubling, four technical obstacles were placed in the path of viewers (e.g. background-play was disabled).

View-counts were also much more inconsistent than usual.

A "manual review" of the video (requested) restored regular monetization, and all normal features returned. We can't know how much momentum was lost, the actual number of views, or how the recommendation algorithm behaves.

I'm not troubled by the loss of revenue itself. I don't depend on ad revenue from YouTube for several reasons: It isn't safe, and 'YouTube is stingy with content producers' among others.

What I am troubled by is Google's position as 'cryptic sense-making middleman'.

The Antifa attack on @MrAndyNgo is news. This interview is, at least so far, the best source of information on Ngo's mindset for people trying to understand what happened and its implications. Maybe it doesn't put people in a buying mood. Fine. Say that and take the ads off.

But interfering with viewer access to a video that violates no rules, and that they want to see, is a very different matter. Google has become the ghost in our machine.

We are not children. We have to be able to to think without Google setting the terms and the agenda.

Google doesn't know best.