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Op-Ed

Steven Crowder's New YouTube Blacklist Illustrates YouTube CEO's Broken Promises

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If you are looking for someone profoundly affected by big tech’s biased and politically motivated wave of online censorship, look no further than conservative comedian Steven Crowder.

He and his crew at “Louder With Crowder” have faced it nearly worse than anyone, and it hasn’t stopped. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said in August that “YouTube will remain an open platform, even if that means it will offend people along the way.”

Crowder is a perfect example of why her promise has been utterly broken.

Crowder, a YouTube personality with over 4.1 million subscribers, has been busy for a substantial amount of time not only getting demonetized amidst the shrieking outcry of a journalist but now battling both a YouTube and Google search blacklisting of his channel.

It’s important to note that YouTube is a company that is parented by Google.

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Crowder’s channel was demonetized in early June of this year because of a tweet thread sent to YouTube by Carlos Maza, a journalist at Vox with whom Crowder got into a feud.

Instead of the original call from crying social justice warriors to ban the channel entirely from the platform, YouTube allowed him to keep the channel, but he can no longer make a penny off of the revenue his content brought to YouTube.

Following demonetization, Crowder’s channel is now restricted to revenue streams generated through organic search that convert to Mug Club (his premium subscription) members on the channel’s website, along with merchandise and a limited amount of sponsors.

Known widely as one of the largest conservative shows today, “Louder With Crowder” has seen exponential growth over the past few years, and even after the Vox journalist incident that demonetized the account. Views and critical metrics have steadily grown, that is — until recently.

Are you concerned about YouTube's bias?

And there’s an explanation for it.

In a recent episode of “Louder With Crowder,” Steven explains how the YouTube search engine, when used to search for his channel and even specific videos, will use the algorithms in place to prioritize other channels’ videos first. These are channels that have far fewer views, subscribers and overall metrics than Steven’s.

While the channel itself will pop up first, the videos on the channel are nowhere to be found on the first page when searching for “Steven Crowder Change My Mind,” his primary and most controversial segment where he welcomes those that disagree with his conservative positions to explain why he’s wrong and should, therefore, change his mind.

The unhinging results are part of a blacklisting wave involving YouTube search that is hindering how Crowder can run his business. Despite subscribers remaining active, and more people watching individual videos than ever before, overall weekly views and subscribership gains have dropped “dramatically,” according to Crowder.

With the channel’s videos averaging close to a million views each, the only metrics showing downward trends in a graph shown in the video are organic subscriptions from search. Additionally shown in the same video, every other metric shows upward trends. The account is not dying.

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Unsurprisingly, the team has yet to get a clear answer from YouTube on the blacklisting from search, along with guidelines as they relate to content they’re allowed to post.

Crowder and his team are in the lion’s den, and they’ve certainly endured a vicious attack over the last year. But they’ve remained tough and are allegedly taking legal action in the future against the liberal tech giant. He and “half-Asian lawyer” Bill Richmond confirmed this in the video, but have yet to specify what litigation they’re pursuing.

We are descending the inevitable slippery slope that you encounter when you “OK” the banning of speech you find distasteful, like that of Alex Jones or Milo Yiannoupoulus.

The lines are now grayed, a dangerous precedent is set, and a comedian that strives to bring a conservative voice into late-night comedy is forced to spar with a multi-billion dollar liberal tech giant for the well-being of his company and livelihood.

The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website. If you are interested in contributing an Op-Ed to The Western Journal, you can learn about our submission guidelines and process here.

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Bobby Harr is an independent journalist and freelance writer who has been featured in The Western Journal, American Thinker and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.




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