My Google and Facebook public confidence down 50 Percent
I have never before broken topic on my blog before today, always sticking to the topic at hand which is helping online sellers learn how to make money and sell more professionally.
I am also not prone to conspiracies, fake news or politically correct culture content. During school I received a well grounded, unbiased education in the first amendment, US constitution, and unaltered history of the United States of America, with all of its sin's intact. That seems to be quite contrary to things being taught in the American Education system of today.
I have also worked ten years in a university in California, so I have observed the higher educations political leanings and liberal indoctrinations which engulf everything from its teacher and classified unions, professors, deans, administrators and many of its boards of supervisors.
Yet, despite any disagreements or alternative views, few have bothered me as an author, film director, educator or social media public personality. I realize that part of being American is the ability to disagree and still be cool with one another.
But that shifted this week in the world of Social Media, most profoundly with Google and Facebook whom I already had began using less and less since 2015 and frequently exploring other options.
As a YouTube Social Media personality, who heavily uses Google Keep, Google Photos, YouTube, Google mail, etc, an alarm didn't go off until this week when Google decided to kick that nut, Alex Jones off of its YouTube platform.
Jones of Infowars has always been something of an interesting oddity for me, I'd occasionally take a peek at his channel to see what unusual perspective he was pitching, usually out of boredom, and once in a while intrigued by some of his insights or perspectives. Once in a while he'd get things right.
Last year, YouTube began blocking some of my YouTube channel videos. Once for only having a single keyword in the video of "God". I mentioned this on my blog before. Mainly because other videos suddenly began to be prohibited from being monetized on my channel. I believe in monetization for my efforts to bring valuable information to sellers and resellers, considering it often takes several days to make a single video.
So while my internal warning radar, bell and whistles were already beginning to go off every now and then, my overall confidence in Google or Facebook hadn't been affected.
Something different happened this month. My confidence in Facebook and Google as a whole (not just YouTube) severely diminished with the banning and deletion of Alex Jone's InfoWar channels and platforms, and that should concern everyone.
My internal alarm threshold for censorship is extremely high. I was part of the "Blue Ribbon" campaign at the dawn of the internet. A public civil activist movement to fight against censorship on the internet and by 1999 we had won that battle. There hasn't been anything since the "Blue Ribbon" campaign on the internet as a whole that has concerned me until today.
We need the EFF to launch a new Blue Ribbon Campaign in 2018.
Even the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) which is essentially the ACLU of Internet Freedom, Blogging and Video Creators such as my, was as result if the "Blue Ribbon" movement on the early internet.
Google even earned it's "Don't Be Evil" title back then.
Be afraid, be very afraid! When corporations become such large entities that they control the majority of internet and web interaction like Facebook and Google, their should be great concern about personal freedoms, expression and manipulation.
Unlike my concern with Facebook and Google during the 2016 elections, the deletion and banning of Alex Jones, accounts are distressing to the point that I essentially have 50% less confidence in allowing these two companies to be involved in my public interactions on the internet.
In a single swipe, Google for instance could pretty much wipe me off of the internet and wipe out 40% of my internet business or more. How?
Because I use Gmail, Google Voice, YouTube, Google Keep, Google Photos, Google Drive for 98% of my business online activities.
It is not longer a stretch of the imagination that Google could decide to censor me on YouTube as a public figure (it already does to a degree by demonetizing videos and forcing a review process that isn't realistically feasible for most mid-sized YouTube content creators. Those videos if uploaded, get 1% of the traffic or views as monetized videos. On average, a demonetized video will get 35 to 45 views total over several years, where as a monetized video will get views in the high thousands.
When a friend emailed me two days after Alex Jones got deleted off Google, I checked it via the GMail App on my iphone. My friend was asking how I was doing since I had suddenly dropped off of Facebook.
He asked me three other questions.
I was shocked when Google's GMail app, gave three very specific reply answer choices I could click to use as responses. It suddenly dawned on me, that Google's Artificial Intelligence algorithms had read, analized and provided pretty much the same responses I might have used. That may sound cool, but what that is telling me, is that Google's system is reading all of the e-mails I receive, potentially even storing them long term after I delete them from their servers.
I desire and expect a degree of privacy online, even if the services being provided are advertiser supported. I no longer have confidence that Google and Facebook are delivering or honoring that expectation. As a result I decided to indefinitely "Log Off" Facebook. I left the account turned on, because I have a Facebook Page that still points to my other social media platforms and provides information about my public interactions. I also left on the ability for friends and public comments on my past Facebook posts. But, at least for the remainder of this year, I'll not be using Facebook.
In 2015 I deleted my Facebook account, because of all the hate that was spreading through its network and being advertised. There was no "Left" or "Right" innocence as far as hate goes, hate is equal, maybe even a little more violent aggression on the side of left leading groups. To me, both are guilty of being verbally abusive, dishonoring and hostile. I returned to Facebook in October 2017. Its interesting to be in this place of diminishing trust of Facebook a mere 10 months later. Not to mention its evasiveness before congress.
As a YouTube creator, I am on YouTube a considerable amount of time, both personally and also publically. There is a ton of so called hate violations that YouTube ignores because of its Politically Correct leanings. I've reported quite a few racial and religious hate videos on YouTube only to be told that it does not violate its policies. These are videos much more noxious and direct than anything I have happened across the occasional times YouTube would promote an Alex Jones, InfoWars video.
So it disturbing, very disturbing. I had already been seeking alternatives to Google options. I changed from having Google Search to the equally effective new and private search engine Qwant.
I'll be looking into moving all of my e-mail accounts off GMail next year.
As convenient as Google Keep, Google Voice, Google Drive are for me, especially because of the ability to use both on desktop or my smart device, I'll begin moving away from these also. Not an easy task, but at this point, I honestly have to ask if Google can be trusted. If GMail is now reading my e-mails and my YouTube videos are being screened for Politically Correct Triggers, what happens in the immediate future if something I write in an e-mail is next of Google's policing policy list?
Can I really afford to have my business activities hampered or deleted because I might write or say something Google Culture deems counter cultural? No, I can't! My business runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I can not afford to even have my business delayed 12 hours or I will lose money, have customers yelling at me, etc.
What about YouTube? YouTube's become a hostile environment at that reminds me of how I have felt about eBay in the recent past. I ended up having to leave eBay for a year and focus on other marketplaces, because it had become stressful trying to readjust my business practices every 3 months when it changes it policies.
YouTube will eventually have to take a new direction for me also. My goal is to eventually delete and remove my business and personally activities 100% from Google's network. That's challenging as a YouTube creator, since there are financial incentives. There always has to be a "Red Line" at which point financial incentives and principals of free speech, privacy, and the option to be politically incorrect part ways. That time is coming very soon.
If you are using Google or Facebook (this blog is also a Google service), you may want to begin considering other options for the future, even if you have to pay for those services from a company that guarantees privacy protection.
I have no recommendations for alternatives, I won't give recommendations either, because I am still actively using their services to a degree. Perhaps I will once I am fully purged from both companies Matrixes.
Interested in another perspective?
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