I've been sounding the alarm now for more than a year that YouTube is becoming corporate
media.
That channels like the David Pakman show and others are starting to be strangled.
And I even identified the specific metrics that confirmed this.
And now YouTube is not, not only admitting it, they are bragging about it like it's a
really good thing and I'm going to talk about that.
So let's reset the David Pakman show depends on YouTube recommending our videos to viewers.
Okay.
We have a nice YouTube channel, nearly 800,000 subscribers, thanks to you.
But historically, the way that our channel has grown is that somebody will watch a CNN
video or they'll watch another independent video they might want, might watch Sam Cedar
for example, and then some of those people would get the idea of watching a David Pakman
show video after that by the recommendations that show up on the side or below that YouTube
suggests.
And then some people would click onto the David Pakman show video and then some portion
of those would say, I like this, I'm going to hit subscribe.
Now we've got a new subscriber.
Now, historically, anywhere from 50 to 70% of our monthly viewers are not from our existing
subscriber base.
So we really depend on YouTube doing that.
So what happened?
Well, what you have to understand is that when you were dealing with a corporation that
is doing stuff and it knows that a lot of people will be furious about the things that
they are doing.
They don't just tell you what they're doing.
They use sort of like coded corporate English, I would call it if someone was speaking Spanish
and you spoke English, you'd need a translator to from Spanish to English.
In the same way, if you are listening to corporate coated English and you just want to understand
like normal person English, it needs a translation.
So late last year in 2018 YouTube said we will start prioritizing authoritative sources.
Oh well that sounds kind of reasonable, right?
They said, yeah, we're going to prioritize authoritative sources so that we're not promoting
hate speech or content that violates terms and conditions.
What they mean by authoritative is corporate media over independent media like the David
Pakman show, and we got crushed.
We actually saw the views that were coming from YouTube recommendations algorithm, a
drop from roughly 4 million views per month to somewhere between one and one and a half
million views per month for a channel like ours to instantly lose two and a half million
views per month.
It's a lot of money, so a lot of money.
So I've been quiet about this for months.
We've been grinding it out, doing our videos, doing our show, because I can't do a damn
thing about it.
I told you some months ago that I don't want to annoy the audience with this stuff because
every time I do a story about this, I know I'm spending some of my political capital
with my audience because there are people who get annoyed by these stories and some
of you evaporate every time I talk about this, but it's getting worse and YouTube is now
confirming that they are doing this and the effect is brutal.
So again, we have to interpret corporate speak.
Now the terms we have to interpret our borderline content and what it means that YouTube claims
that they are succeeding, that their policy is working to stifle borderline content because
when they talk about borderline content, it's not just white nationalists stuff.
It's not just hate speech.
It's all the independent news content like our channel that gets wrapped up with the
hate content and not recommended and it crushes us, crushes us.
When YouTube now says that this is working, what they mean is the algorithm changes they've
made are correctly recommending corporate content over hours and it's a disaster.
Nathan recently sent me a screenshot of how bad it is.
Nathan said he'll add a ton of our videos to his watch later Q on YouTube, but then
when those finish up, the queue will start automatically getting filled up with corporate
media content.
In this case, it's showing Nathan videos from Seth Meyers, late night show.
Often it's CNN, Fox news, MSNBC content from other, you know, a hundred million dollar
budget shows like John Oliver's.
So I know that this is a pain.
When I talk about this, I'm making a concerted effort to talk about this much less, but now
that we're getting ready to end the year, I did want to tell you what is going on because
I know many of you are watching the algorithm and you write to me and you say, David, I'm
just watching your stuff, liking your stuff.
And yet YouTube keeps recommending CNN.
This is a feature, not a bug as far as YouTube is concerned.
YouTube CEO, Susan [inaudible] is admitting it.
YouTube made 30 changes since January of this year.
I'm not aware of any that helped us, although YouTube of course won't tell us what they
changed.
One of the issues is what is considered brand safety for running ads.
I have recently been told that anything that mentions abortion is not brand safe.
If you are an independent channel like us, takes the issue off the table if you want
to be able to monetize your content.
I won't even mention the other things that are total no goes because I don't want to
get this video demonetized merely by mentioning those things, but there are a lot more no-go
topics if you want to run ads.
Another issue, constant bogus copyright claims.
You know, if you paid attention a few weeks ago to our impeachment streams, we ran the
house of representatives feed during impeachment streams.
CNN was claiming our videos for copyright violation.
NBC, the associated press, fraudulent claims that crush us.
I'm asking you tube, how can I fight these?
And that's because appealing each one individually is, is nuts.
They're filing the men loosely.
No answer from YouTube, so please consider pushing back against this by supporting shows
you like directly.
I'm saying support us.
Sure.
Or other show, whatever show you think is valuable.
We have made really big progress this year.
We've actually added more members in 2019 than in any other year and this is insulating
us partially from what YouTube is doing, but it's going to ramp up in 2020 with so much
more corporate media content about the election.
We're going to get crowded out by the algorithm, so consider getting a very cheap membership@joinpacman.com
our year end coupon code is last 2019 this is 66% off.
Okay, 66% off with the coupon code last 2019 it's very cheap and I'm humbly asking for
your support.
Also, consider throwing us a dollar or two on Patrion at patrion.com/david Pakman show.
All of this stuff helps give to us, give to shows you value.
Just understand the stakes here and the importance of your support given what
is going on with YouTube.