With the dust having settled for the moment in the battle between Steven Crowder, Carlos Maza, and YouTube, a closer look at how the events unfolded leads me to believe none of it was organic at all and instead was a coordinated effort between Maza and YouTube to provide cover and justification for YouTube’s recent increase in political censorship.
In YouTube’s version of events, Carlos Maza started an internet campaign to pressure YouTube to remove Crowder based on what he believed was Crowder’s violations of YouTube’s policies regarding hate speech.
Crowder had poked fun at Maza for months in various videos and Maza claimed it was more than simple jokes, and instead was evidence of hate speech that violated YouTube’s policies. He encouraged his followers on social media, other left-leaning journalists, and advertisers to pressure YouTube to remove Crowder or take action against him.
Normally, this would somewhat make sense and could be seen as purely organic. Often times left-leaning journalists and blue-check Twitter people start campaigns to press companies into taking rash action for fear of a backlash.
But there are a few very suspicious pieces of evidence that cast doubt on Maza’s campaign being purely organic and instead it leads one to believe they most likely coordinated with each other.
First of all, YouTube/Google and other social media platforms have a history of this exact thing. When YouTube banned Alex Jones along with Facebook, those social media platforms had contacted friendly members of the press in advance to share the news. The stories were embargoed and not allowed to be released until told to do so by the social media platforms. So members of the left leaning media knew about the bans before the actual person being banned. The reason for this is so articles could be written up in advance and ready to be released as soon as the banning went public. Articles that would support the moves by these social media companies in an attempt to take control of the narrative instantly, making it harder for the accused to put out their version of events.
Next, we have the fact that on the same day YouTube announced their actions against Crowder, they announced wider disciplinary action against thousands of accounts and videos they deemed as problematic. They also announced significant algorithm changes that would further reduce the reach of videos they deemed problematic.
So I suppose one could believe that a nationwide story involving YouTube going after “hate speech” just happened to be resolved on the same day they announced widespread censorship of political and conspiracy videos they deemed as “misinformation”. But this seems like a highly unlikely coincidence and instead suggests this was all coordinated to happen at the same time, using the Crowder incident as cover and justification for YouTube’s wider actions.
Finally, we have a strange bug that appeared on YouTube in the week leading up to their newly implemented censorship policies.
Users were reporting that as soon as they uploaded a video, they would get a notice saying their video was unlisted and private. But looking at the video in their profile, the video was shown as being public.
This was likely a case of YouTube implementing a new type of shadow banning. The bug was the fact that the notice of the video being private and unlisted was NOT suppose to be shown to the uploader.
It’s quite a coincidence that this bug appeared days before YouTube went public with the fact that they are reducing the reach of videos and creators they deem problematic by showing and recommending their videos less.
Given all these factors and using some basic common sense regarding YouTube’s past behavior, it’s very likely that this latest “event” with Steven Crowder was coordinated between them and Carlos Maza.
The purpose was to give YouTube justification for going after Crowder, which they have wanted to do for months. It also gave them some cover for their wider banning and censorship which they announced on the same day as Crowder’s punishment. Finally, it gave them cover since they can now pretend they acted due to a “public uprising” created by Maza’s on-line campaign. And Maza can continue to cry YouTube is not doing enough, all to keep up the charade that they are not working together.
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