Member-only story
YouTube incurred many accusations of political bias in the past. What those accusations mainly consist of, is the notion that YouTube as a platform, is rigging its methods of participation and promotion, to downgrade right-wing-leaning content in its algorithmically-based hellscape of a discovery system. Those accusations however, have remained unsubstantiated, and hinge heavily on a predominant view within the American conservative political class that Big Tech by virtue of operating out of the liberal haven that is San Francisco’s Silicon Valley, panders to progressive sensibilities more than it does to conservative ones.
In practice, that turns out to be mostly untrue. YouTube, Twitter and Facebook — the leading subjects of discussion within that debate — have mostly demonstrated that they have quite a warped sense of what is acceptable within the boundaries of their platforms, often resorting to reactionary measures only after political pressure mounts up from political parties domestically or internationally, or after threat of advertisement money being pulled looms around the horizon. It’s quite a tricky field to navigate considering the sheer volume of content that gets uploaded to these…