POOPIESkillz Gaming

[POOPIESkillz]

Hey guys. This is the thread I'll use to shamelessly plug my YouTube channel. Thanks!

LINKS:

YouTube
Twitter
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[POOPIESkillz]

The only video I'll post for now is the video I made when I tested my Elgato HD60 capture card. This video is in an admittedly nice 1080p 60 but it's just gameplay with no commentary.

Maybe I'll do this, is there a game that I should do my first real recorded playthru of? I'm open to suggestions! The videos will have full commentary and editing. At some point, I'll get equipment so that I can record on camera footage as well. For now, I'll have to stick to let's plays and game reviews.

[Ziggy]

What direction do you see the channel going in?

[POOPIESkillz]

What direction do you see the channel going in?

Well, I have a broad set of interests in general as well as with gaming specifically. I can go in the direction of lets plays or reviews, or pickups and discussion kind of like Happy Console Gamer. I think the latter feels the most natural to me but they all sound fun. I cant imagine Id ever garner much of an audience if I did all three. Retro gaming is pretty niche as it is.

[Ziggy]

I think you can do all of the above. I don't know what it's called, but I've noticed that you can have different sections on a single YouTube channel. For example, Cinemassacre has James and Mike Mondays, Rental Reviews, The Nerd, et cetera. I think the 4 topics you mentioned would all fit really well together on a single channel.

[POOPIESkillz]

I think you can do all of the above. I don't know what it's called, but I've noticed that you can have different sections on a single YouTube channel. For example, Cinemassacre has James and Mike Mondays, Rental Reviews, The Nerd, et cetera. I think the 4 topics you mentioned would all fit really well together on a single channel.

Like different video series? Yeah I suppose I could. And honestly that would probably keep me from getting bored. But man, trying to get excited to make YT content these days is hard with how terrible the platform has become for creators. Especially when Google keeps pulling shit like this.

[marurun]

That bit doesn't look bad to me at all. I'd be much more worried about the easily-abused copyright filters.

[POOPIESkillz]

That bit doesn't look bad to me at all. I'd be much more worried about the easily-abused copyright filters.

What worries me is the second line.

1. Does not contain inappropriate language
1A. Isn't that a bit ridiculous? I'm sure that not only will it be selectively enforced just like every other policy on every other "platform" (Facebook, and Twitter especially) but that's pretty vague. What is inappropriate? Seems pretty subjective, no? Something that someone else deems inappropriate, someone else may deem just fine. The point is, it isn't solidly defined and wont be applied correctly or fairly. Though, I'd rather it not be there at all.

2. Adult content
2A. This one seems fair. While again, that's pretty vague, I think almost all of us assume that this means pornography. In which case, is fine.

3. Violence
3A. What really constitutes violence? Street fight videos? MMA or boxing clips? Bloody graphic murder? Again, it doesn't specify.

4. Harmful or dangerous acts
4A. What is a harmful or dangerous act? Is this not subjective? Would someone smoking a cigarette in a video be banned because smoking is harmful for your health? What about those crazy videos of people hanging from skyscraper ledges? That's dangerous. Will those be gone too?

5. Drug related content
5A. The classification of drugs changes all the time. And it's different state by state, country by country. Marijuana is perfectly legal in Colorado but still totally illegal in Alabama. Is someone in Colorado smoking weed in a video going to be fine and an Alabamian not? Or will they both be taken down? What does YouTube define as a drug? Since when is it YouTube's job to police people?

6. Hateful content
6A. This is a big one. What exactly is hateful content? That is EXTREMELY subjective. "Hate speech", for example, is not a legally defined term and hence can't really be enforced in any way other than subjectively. If someone deems someone else's opinion as "hateful', then odds are it'll be taken down.

7. Firearms related content
7A. So a perfectly benign video such as this should be removed? Why? Because firearms are a sensitive topic in US politics these days?

8. Sensitive issues
8A. Sensitive issues? Oh come on. What the actual fuck. Do I even need to say anything about this?

Anyone reading this may think I'm nitpicking or taking it too seriously but Google is a company with INCREDIBLE reach and influence. All these new "guidelines" seem to be are conditional censorship. And I use conditional pretty loosely because the terms of this censorship are rooted in arbitrary subjectivity.

When big tech companies like Facebook and Google do these things, there are always questions around it. For example, I'm sure everybody remembers when Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of the US Congress. Censorship is a huge deal, especially on the scale that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube operate in.

But that's just the half of it. Look, I am all for private companies choosing how to conduct their business. But this here crosses the line for one very big reason. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are platforms. And despite being platforms, they are trying to act like publishers but with none of the downsides of being a publisher.

The difference is that while a publisher curates content and is responsible for what it publishes, a platform does not curate content and is not responsible for what users publish to the platform. A pure platform would be a company like T-Mobile. You pay for their phone service and you can say whatever you want through phone calls and text. They are not responsible. A pure publisher would be like Time Magazine. If someone wrote an absolutely terrible article and they published it, the author, editor, and magazine itself would be responsible.

I'll break this up with a quote from MetalJesusRocks on Twitter when he found out about this new form YouTube is making creators fill out.

YouTube asked me during upload if my video had ANY swearing (even light swearing like "damn" or "hell"), guns, violence of any kind, kissing, etc... This was required for Monetization. Typically my videos are family friendly...but times are changing at YouTube my friends

The state of YouTube and censorship in general to me is very sad. While I think it's better here in the States, it still could be better from a societal and technological standpoint. I'll provide some more links and quotes. I could go on for day with how ridiculous it is that Google and Facebook rake in billions in US govt subsidies but I'll let the links do the rest. Thanks to anyone who read this. Let me know what you think!

Medium - Is Facebook a Platform or a Publisher?

Platform: a company or technology that enables communication and distribution of information.
A good example is a phone company. When talking to a friend certain words or ideas you communicate don’t get censored or buzzed out. A platform is not responsible (legally) for the content that is posted.
Publisher: a company or person that qurates and distributes content. You can think of all the news and media outlets out there as prime examples. A publisher is legally responsible for the posted content and the source.
Facebook has been promoting itself as a social media Platform, but for the past few years they have been shifting away from that with the decision to ban certain types of content (written or visual).

The Atlantic - The ‘Platform’ Excuse Is Dying

To defend themselves, the so-called platforms have developed byzantine sets of rules. If they follow the guidelines they make up, they say, they are fulfilling their obligations to their various kinds of users.
Yet for years the internet platforms mostly denied that they were much of an intervention at all. When Senator Joe Lieberman tried to get YouTube to take down what he characterized as Islamist training videos in 2008, the YouTube team responded with free-speech bromides. “YouTube encourages free speech and defends everyone’s right to express unpopular points of view,” they wrote. “We believe that YouTube is a richer and more relevant platform for users precisely because it hosts a diverse range of views, and rather than stifle debate we allow our users to view all acceptable content and make up their own minds.”

City Journal - Platform, or Publisher?

If Big Tech firms want to retain valuable government protections, then they need to get out of the censorship business.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act immunizes online platforms for their users’ defamatory, fraudulent, or otherwise unlawful content. Congress granted this extraordinary benefit to facilitate “forum[s] for a true diversity of political discourse.” This exemption from standard libel law is extremely valuable to the companies that enjoy its protection, such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter, but they only got it because it was assumed that they would operate as impartial, open channels of communication—not curators of acceptable opinion.

Silicon Valley Watcher - Google's Billions In Internet Subsidies...

Google is the world's single largest user of Internet bandwidth. But it doesn't have to pay for most of the bandwidth it consumes, in the form of its spiderbots copying web pages, and YouTube video streams.
A study in December 2008 estimated Google's 'free' bandwidth use to be about $6.9 billion, today it could be double that amount. [Precursor study- December 2008]
Google received $89 million in taxpayer subsidies from the state of North Carolina to build a data center. It does not disclose subsidies received from other data center sites.

While politics are a large part of my life, I try to keep them separate from gaming/YouTube. Regardless of someone's views, I typically don't want to see them when I'm following gaming Twitters and Instagram pages or subbed to YouTube channels for gaming content, not political conjecture. But seeing as this directly effects my channel and everyone else's, I felt it was relevant. Please, leave me your thoughts. I'd love to get some input.