The YouTube Files

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and its Weaponization Subcommittee, clearly has mastered the art of Platform X journalism. Regular readers will remember the Facebook Files – four threads he dropped about Facebook’s involvement in censorship. (See here, here, here and here.) Yesterday morning – even before his subcommittee heard from Mike Shellenberger about CTIL – he released the YouTube Files. Those files will explain, at least somewhat, why CNAV’s affiliated channel, Declarations of Truth, permanently suspended most uploads to YouTube.

YouTube and its competitors

YouTube began independently, of course, before Alphabet, Inc. first started its own video upload service, then bought YouTube. Today, to upload anything to YouTube, or even to authenticate yourself uniquely, subscribe to channels, receive recommendations – or play adult content – a viewer must have a Google account.

But more than that, YouTube has the most complex and intrusive content standards of any video upload platform. Absolutely any subject, presenting the slightest controversy, could run afoul of the service’ “Community Guidelines.” These Guidelines are the regulations of the service’ Board of Censors. What they say, goes. Appeals are sometimes allowed – but beyond a certain reach, decisions by the Board are final. Recently YouTube demonetized one of its most popular channels, Dr. Steve Turley, for utterly specious reasons. This has forced him to change his business model and emphasize paid subscriptions and semi-private livestreams. (One can find those at StreamYard, a recent rival to Zoom.)

YouTube, as part of the Alphabet empire, is also heavily involved in the Censorship Industrial Complex. They obviously came under the purview of the fancifully named Cyber Threat Intelligence League (CTIL).

Lately, this service has gotten some competition, from Rumble, BitChute, Brighteon, Odysee, Gab, and others. Its overlords either don’t care or are planning some campaign of legal – or technical – attack. No other motive can make sense of their seeming negligence in allowing these other services even to exist.

The thread

Herewith the thread that Chairman Jordan released yesterday:

Reaction is mixed, and that illustrates further the serious political divide in America. On one hand, a user points out that Rob Flaherty, at the heart of government censorship, is Biden’s campaign manager.

On the other, another user attempts to defend YouTube and the Biden administration:

Reaction to his post is also mixed.

The complaints about Jim Jordan’s YouTube thread fall into two categories. Some, like the “For Human Unity” user, defend the practices of the site and the government. Others want to know why no one has yet taken any action against either institution.

Analysis

Chairman Jordan has definitely proved that YouTube were just as guilty as Twitter (pre-Musk) or Facebook of being State actors. Actually he hasn’t told us anything we didn’t know before. True, knowing is one thing and proof is another.

CNAV has had its share of trouble with YouTube. When we reviewed Dinesh D’Souza’s movie 2000 Mules, YouTube struck the review from their site and “warned” our channel. Perhaps the only reason for the warning is that the channel hadn’t sufficient reach to cause alarm in the councils of the Deep State. That is demonstrably not true of Dr. Steve Turley, who has lost all monetization. (He is now building his own channel, independent of YouTube or any other platform.)

Among the forbidden subjects in the Community Guidelines is anything to suggest that the Novel Coronavirus had an artificial origin. Likewise, YouTube forbids any suggestion that the coronavirus vaccine is less than safe or effective as advertised. (In fact it is dangerous and countereffective.) Chairman Jordan has now revealed that the directive to forbid that and other subjects came from the Biden White House. They are the link between social media and the ruling elite and their minions, the Deep State.

Lawsuits are pending against the government, of course, over the censorship regime. But CNAV repeats its recommendation to file lawsuits against the social media themselves. The people must press all three branches of government – as a certain widow pressured a lazy judge in one of Jesus Christ’s parables.