So the CEO of Youtube, uh, Susan would just ski recently, made some statements that lots
of people have fallen for just hook, line and sinker.
And I want to explain to you today because this is so important that what she's saying
is actually that for independent producers of news and politics on Youtube, it's about
to get much, much worse.
What's happened already is only going to get worse.
And a lot of people are not understanding this.
And I want to lay it out for you.
So let me lay this out for you.
I've been behaving and not talking about youtube issues for weeks at this point.
But now that she's made these statements, I really have to talk about them.
So I hope you'll give me some, uh, some leeway here cause this is important stuff.
Susan was just, ski is being lauded for saying that it's quote more important than ever that
people should be allowed to upload anything they want at any time to youtube.
Wow.
Free speech, diversity of voices.
Youtube is turning the corner.
Things are going to get better for everybody, including for independent producers like us
and many of our colleagues wrong.
Okay.
Let me break this down for you because you really have to read sort of between the lines
and in context to understand what it is that Susan, which is he is announcing here.
She wrote a letter to creators a few days ago.
Uh, and she as the CEO of Youtube set a few things.
Number one, she again said preserving and open platform is more important than ever.
That the problematic content is a really small piece of what's uploaded to youtube, that
they are working to reduce that even further and that it is more important than ever that
anyone get to upload whatever they want.
Of course, assuming that it is not illegal content, and this was interpreted by many
and dozens of people in my audience emailed me saying, David, look, Susan was Ischia saying,
it's going to be great.
You're going to do fine.
Your content is going to be a prioritized and monetized and all of this stuff.
This is not what Susan was just is saying.
The headlines are just gushing about how great this is.
The reality is that being able to upload anything you want deals not at all with monetization
and deals, not at all with de prioritization.
The two things that independent news producers like the David Pakman show have been facing.
The issue for independent producers like us is not that at any point there was a question
about whether I'd be able to upload whatever I want whenever I want.
That was never the issue.
The issues are the speech limiting force of demonetization on uploads deemed controversial
by youtube and the deep prioritization of independent news content in favor of legacy
corporate news content and that's actually going to get worse, which askie goes on to
say in this letter that people are just like blindly gushing about.
She says we raise up as as part of the commitment that she is now making.
She says we raise up authoritative voices when people are looking for breaking news
and information.
This is an announcement where she is saying we are going to even more prioritized so called
authoritative voices at the expense of non authoritative voices which as we know means
CNN, youtube channel and MSNBC and Fox News as youtube channels and late night talk shows
with tens of millions of dollars production budgets at the expense of the David Pakman
show and Sam Cedar and Kyle Kalinsky and all of the others.
This is what happened already.
The announcement is saying we are going to do more of what we've been doing for the last
year.
We're going to keep letting you upload whatever you want, whenever you want.
As she says, but what we're going to promote to the audience is authoritative news content
meaning corporate media.
So let me remind you because this is not me saying this is going to happen.
This has happened.
It's happening already.
Last summer, Youtube said for the first time in news and politics, we are going to be pushing
authoritative sources more within weeks.
YouTube's algorithm took away about two to two and a half million views per month from
us through what's called the recommended view algorithm.
As you can see on screen right after youtube made this announcement around the time youtube
made this announcement about pushing authoritative news, we were getting about three and a half
million views per month just from the recommended view algorithm.
Meaning you're watching something else and youtube says, hey, you might like to check
out this clip of the David Pakman show from 3.5 million to just 1.5 million in the last
few months and in June, barely 1 million of those views.
This is a shortfall.
This is what Susan was risky is cheering about.
We're pushing and prioritizing authoritative content for us.
That has so far met a shortfall of two to two and a half million views per month since
youtube first announced this 2 million views per month as a shortfall, as just a snap of
the fingers.
It's gone is a lot of revenue for us.
It adds up very, very quickly.
And now Susan was, Husky is hiding in what is being framed as a beautiful positive letter
of love to creators.
They are once again going to keep pushing corporate authoritative news sources, so-called
authoritative news sources.
This is a disaster for channels like ours.
And the latest, by the way, is that something in the youtube algorithm now is hurting new
subscriber numbers as well.
If you look at recent new subscribers for a lot of independent news channels, including
ours, daily new subscribers are all trending down.
And it's not because of what one channel is doing because they're all trending down.
I didn't pull the data visually to show you, but a, it's available online.
You can find it.
So Youtube is saying everything's great, peace and love.
It's all gonna be wonderful.
And the reality is that it's going to be more of the same problems that we've had.
So listen, like I've said before, the solution here is we've just got to sever the tie between
ad dollars and monetizing content.
Right now the amount of monetization we received, the amount of revenue we receive on youtube
depends on, does youtube say that what we are publishing is too controversial to run
ads?
If so, then we don't make any money.
Is Youtube saying, okay, what you're publishing is not too controversial, but we are going
to suggest to viewers that they look at CNN coverage of it or Fox News coverage of it
instead of your coverage of it.
And the solution is we've got a sever that tie support the shows that you like directly.
I don't care what shows they are, if it's not this one, if you say, you know, David,
I really what you do is okay, but I think these other five producers are much better
support them.
Okay.
With us, you can support the work we do directly.
You can circumvent this entire advertiser monetization link that exists, uh, by going
to our website, join pacman.com and just getting a membership.
This is cheap, right?
We're not, we're not talking about a lot of money.
Talking about a few bucks a month.
You can use the coupon code half 19 to save 50% off of your membership.
It takes under a minute.
You get extra content and you're supporting us.
You give us insurance against these changes that Susan wishes ski is gleefully announcing
they're going to make.
You can also make a pledge on Patrion, uh, just as quick and you might already have a
patrion account if you're supporting other shows there at patrion.com/david Pakman show.
Thank you for letting me rant.
We can now continue with the show.
I've been good.
I haven't done the youtube stuff for, it feels like it's been close to a month, probably
more like three weeks, but it just had to be discussed today.