Youtube Inc. on politics

Summary (posts follow):

As a corporate entity, Youtube seems to have an agenda that generally supports illegal/massive immigration, and that might be due to the financial interests of their corporate parent Google in having a large supply of lower-cost engineers.

They repeatedly promoted the 9500 Liberty documentary series, one that was supportive of illegal immigration in Virginia. In partnership with the Pulitzer Center, a vapid 4 minute video about Postville was made a finalist in a contest. And, the immigration-related questions that were selected for their partnership with CNN to conduct debates were weak setups that simply allowed the candidates to give stock responses.

For those debates, they did not select my tough questions, and when I replied to the CNN/Youtube-supplied videos with responses pointing out how bad the questions were, CNN and/or Youtube deleted them from the list of responses and did not reply to my request for an explanation.

Last modified Dec 9, 2008

Discussed in (click each link for the full post):

Sep. 8: Obama to address U.S. schoolchildren directly in national address - 9/01/2009

Arne Duncan of the U.S. Department of Education writes (ed.gov/admins/lead/academic/bts.html): ...President Obama announced that on September 8 - the first day of school for many children across America - he will deliver a national address directly to students on the importance of education... This is the first time an American president has spoken directly to the nation's school children abo...

Youtube helps Obama find useful idiot questioners for his healthcare town hall - 6/29/2009

Steve Grove of Youtube writes (youtube.com/blog?entry=20h2yiH79Tc): President Obama is taking your questions this Wednesday in a special online health care town hall event. With health care at the top of the President's agenda, he is opening up the White House to questions via YouTube... He'll answer some of the most popular questions during the event, which we'll stream live from t...

Sen. Blanche Lincoln thanks you for your input on the SAVE Act, will be in touch - 4/11/2009

On the attached video, Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln responds to citizen input on the SAVE Act and her related push to increase volunteerism. This is part of the Youtube effort called "Senate Hub" in which users submit questions which are then answered by various senators (youtube.com/user/senatehub). At post time there doesn't appear to be much happening there; no questions are ...

Youtube joins with Anti Defamation League to stop "hate" videos ("Abuse and Safety Center") - 3/01/2009

Back in December 2008, Youtube established the Orwellian-named "Abuse and Safety Center" (youtube.com/t/safety), an online tool that can be used to report threats, spam, and other forms of legitimate abuse. However, they also have a section dealing with "Hateful Content", and for that they've joined with the Anti Defamation League (help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answ...

Is Youtube banning conservative videos without cause? - 1/24/2009

There's a discussion of that here, including two videos side-by-side: one from the rightwing side that was deleted by Youtube, and an apparently similar one from the other side that was not. I haven't looked into it, but there are also a series of videos here, some of which may have been deleted by Youtube. On the mitigating side, I believe that widely-watched Youtube vlogger "sxeph...

Youtube, Davos seeking user opinions, pet - 12/29/2008

Youtube and the World Economic Forum have teamed up as they did last year, seeking user-generated answers to four setup questions on ethics, politics, the environment, and the economy (youtube.com/user/thedavosquestion). For instance, one of the super-tough questions comes from Christiane Amanpour, wanting to know whether Barack Obama will change the world in 2009. A handful say yes, a smaller num...

Youtube/Pulitzer makes worthless illegal immigration supporting video finalist - 11/19/2008

For the backstory, see Shock: Youtube/Pulitzer contest has pro-illegal immigration puff piece as finalist. That same worthless, illegal immigration-supporting video (link) is now one of the five finalists in the Pulitzer competition and is #20 on Youtube's Featured list. Either because of that or because of creative counting, its views have jumped from around 700 a couple days ago to over 60,...

Discuss president-elect Barack Obama's radio/Youtube address (November 15, 2008) - 11/15/2008

Our beloved president-elect Barack Obama is offering his new weekly speech not just as a radio address but also as an online video: youtube.com/watch?v=Zd8f9Zqap6U (also available at AOL, MSN, and Yahoo). On Youtube at least, almost every form of interaction is disabled: no ratings, comments, or video replies are allowed. The only sign of the outside world are the "sites linking to this vid...

Sham: Obama to hold "fireside chats" on Youtube - 11/14/2008

Jose Antonio Vargas of the Washington Post breathlessly informs us of this: Today, President-elect Obama will record the weekly Democratic address not just on radio but also on video -- a first.

Shock: Youtube/Pulitzer contest has pro-illegal immigration puff piece as finalist - 11/13/2008

Youtube is currently sponsoring an amateur journalism contest with the Pulitzer Center (youtube.com/projectreport), and they've recently selected their top ten finalists; one of those is the worthless, formulaic puff piece in support of illegal immigration to the right. The video is specifically about the Agriprocessors immigration raid in Postville, Iowa, and it's even worse than some...

Are you scared of Barack Obama's followers yet? (kids singing video) - 9/30/2008

Please compare these two videos of children singing to their leader. If you aren't scared of Barack Obama and his followers now, it might just change your mind [SEE THE UPDATES; 'SING FOR CHANGE' REMOVED THE ORIGINAL VIDEO]: Note that the second video was embedded at DailyKos, but none of the pages shown as linking to the video exist anymore. Apparently it's not yet ti...

Open Debate Coalition: a failed format for fake debates - 9/26/2008

The "Open Debate Coalition" - a group consisting of people such as Glenn Reynolds ("Instapundit") and Stanford law professor Larry Lessig [1] - is calling on John McCain and Barack Obama to open the presidential debates by allowing questions chosen by regular people and not just the MSM. However, what they support has not only been proven to be a failure, but two of the signato...

Youtube's Citizentube blog doesn't want to hear from citizens, deletes all comments - 7/06/2008

Youtube's "Citizentube" (citizentube.com) apparently doesn't want to hear from citizens, because that blog where they post promos for Youtube's political ventures has stopped allowing comments on their entries. They used to allow comments, but they've even gone as far as deleting all comments which were left on their past entries. I blame myself, since I pestered Yout...

Youtube/Google debate: September in New Orleans (Soviet Union flashbacks for Sergey Brin?) - 4/29/2008

Youtube and Google are working with local politicians to have a presidential debate in September in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Steve Grove/Youtube still promoting 9500 Liberty's pro-illegal immigration propaganda - 4/25/2008

Filmmakers Eric Byler, Annabel Park, and Jeff Man run "9500Liberty", a pro-illegal immigration online documentary project discussing issues in northern Virginia (youtube.com/user/9500Liberty). In the past they've resorted to re-re-re-repurposing supposedly controversial comments from an older white gentleman in an attempt to racially demagogue the issue, but now they're back wi...

Snowman goes global: Youtube questions at World Economic Forum (Davos) - 12/15/2007

The World Economic Forum and Youtube appear to have joined forces and are requesting that Youtube users submit questions for the Davos event to be held next year (youtube.com/thedavosquestion). One or more top-rated videos will be selected and screened for the attendees, and then the attendees will deign to provide responses. The user videos should answer the following question: "What one thi...

CNN/Youtube censored video replies on CNN debate - 12/05/2007

Youtube and/or CNN censored the list of video replies to their raw footage of the recent CNN/Youtube GOP debate. On November 29, 2007 I uploaded two highly critical videos about the previous night's debate, and added them as replies to two of the CNN/Youtube-provided videos. My videos were in the list of replies for between one and three days, but then sometime on or before December 1 were de...

CNN/Youtube Debate Debacle: 11/28/07 GOP version, Part 2 - 11/29/2007

Part 1 is here. At last night's debate, CNN gave Mike Huckabee so much time to demagogue college discounts for illegal aliens that they didn't give Mitt Romney enough time to make the essential point that what Huckabee supported would have deprived U.S. citizens of college discounts. They also failed to do their research and realize that there's already an existing federal law (Titl...

CNN/Youtube Debate Debacle: 11/28/07 GOP version, Part 1 - 11/29/2007

Analyzing all the ways that CNN and Youtube are trying to lead America astray with their bogus "debates" would take a tremendous amount of time. So, I'm just going to look at two of the ways (Part 2 is here). The first is keyed to this video, the question asking the candidates to pledge to oppose any immigration bill containing amnesty. CNN should not have selected that question bec...

CNN Youtube GOP debate November 28, 2007 - 11/28/2007

[UPDATE: Videos showing how CNN went wrong here and here.] 1. Huckster really showed how to demagogue, changing what appeared to be a question about giving illegal aliens college discounts into an answer generating pro-military applause. Romney made the important point that there's only so much money to go around... that is, before CNN had to move on to the next question. 2.

Can we get the presidential candidates to attend policy debates? - 11/26/2007

The presidential debates so far have been a mockery of a sham, featuring shallow questions, few follow-ups, and even worse in the case of the last CNN debate. The following video proposes a new type of debate. Each candidate - together with their policy advisors - would face off with a panel of policy experts from across the spectrum. Those experts would ask the candidate a series of detailed ques...

Youtube/CNN GOP debate: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 - 11/23/2007

The second Youtube/CNN debate will be held on Wednesday, November 28, and I can tell already it's going to be as bad - if not worse - than the first one. They'll ask a series of lightweight questions, and throw in a few humorous entries designed to portray those on the internet of being wacky (in contrast to the "serious journalists" at CNN). And, CNN isn't even hiding tha...

Rudy Giuliani tied to Trans Texas Corridor, "NAFTA Superhighway" (CNN/Youtube debate) - 9/04/2007

Rudy Giuliani claimed that he'd never heard of the "NAFTA Superhighway" but his law firm is deeply involved in the Texas leg of the project. Here's a relatively mild question I put together for the upcoming CNN/Youtube debate about that discrepancy; please go to his campaign appearances and try to ask him this question:

Youtube/CNN Republican debate questions (I've had it edition) - 8/10/2007

I give up. Well, not really, but that's how I feel after watching some of the submissions for the Youtube/CNN Republican debate (to be held at some unknown future date). As with the Democratic version, expect CNN to pick the worst of the worst in order to a) not make the candidates uncomfortable, and b) not make CNN's standard questions look as weak as they are. While Dr.

George Stephanopoulos shows the way: no immigration questions at GOP "debate" - 8/05/2007

In previous GOP and Democratic debates, various MSM hacks have featured at most one or two questions about immigration matters, all of them worthless.

CNN/Youtube: Don't ask Mike Huckabee this question - 8/02/2007

Dear CNN: Please do not choose the following video for the upcoming GOP debates. If you ask Mike Huckabee this question, it just might end his political career, as well as showing the millions who watch the debate just how lightweight the questions the mainstream media usuall

Shocker: politicians are scared of citizen questions - 7/27/2007

Mitt Romney is apparently going to pull out of the next CNN/Youtube "debate" because he doesn't want to answer questions like those from snowmen. Rudy Giuliani is likewise unsure. Hugh Hewitt thinks it will turn into a chance for CNN to ask a series of leftwing questions, and is suggesting against taking part. A look at the questions for the debate submitted so far shows that they h...

Send CNN a message about the Youtube "debate" - 7/24/2007

The Youtube/CNN debate sucked. The questions that CNN selected were little different from what MSM hacks would have asked; the videos from "average citizens" were little more than props. Of course, that's to be expected: if CNN had selected any of the small number of tough questions, it would have revealed them and the rest of the mainstream media for the corrupt hacks they are.

CNN/Youtube Democratic debate: live coverage - 7/23/2007

[UPDATE 5: 10/15/08 McCain/Obama coverage here.] [UPDATE 4: 10/07/08 McCain/Obama coverage here.] [UPDATE 3: 10/02/08 Palin/Biden coverage here.] [UPDATE 2: 9/26/08 McCain/Obama coverage here.] [UPDATE: If you too think the debate sucked, please

Enter the CNN/Youtube "Debate" Contest Meta-Contest! - 7/22/2007

As we all know by now, on Monday CNN and Youtube will be holding a debate which will most likely be a "debate". The moderator is none other than Super Puffball Anderson Cooper, former anchor for a news program for kids (Channel 1). Some of the questions will be provided by users of that service, and in fact there have been over 2000 entries so far.

We're all going to regret giving Youtube so many links - 7/15/2007

I like Youtube, but I feel a bit perturbed every time I link to or embed one of the videos from that site. I'd prefer not to give them any links at all, and I may at some future date convert the current links to them to bare links or add nofollow tags. 1. I use a Firefox CSS one-liner that shows whether links have nofollow tags on them in the salmon color. When I visit a YT page, it's li...

What are they teaching Public Policy/Administration students? (NASPAA,MPA/MPP awards) - 7/02/2007

What I call - and no doubt you will call - one of the World's Dumbest, Saddest, and Most Pathetic Videos has just won the 'MPA/MPP You Tube Public Policy Challenge: Change the World in 1 Minute' contest.

CNN/Youtube debates: tough questions for Hillary, Obama - 6/22/2007

As previously discussed, CNN and Youtube are soliciting questions for their upcoming Democratic debate. My entry is a question for Hillary Clinton concerning her support for the anti-American DREAM Act. Unfortunately, a glance through the other entries reveals only one other person who asks similar questions, and he's got some questions for Hillary and Obama.

CNN/Youtube debates: user video submissions - 6/17/2007

Youtube wants their users to submit videos with questions for the upcoming Democratic debate to be held on CNN on July 23rd and moderated by fluffball Anderson Cooper.

Google: jabs at Lou Dobbs; testifies for more H-1B - 6/06/2007

A few days ago, Google's entertainment channel (?) at current.tv had an episode with a lightweight mocking (in both senses) of Lou Dobbs: current.tv/pods/google/GC03275 . This was contemporaneous with the David Leonhardt smear. Today, Laszlo Bock, Google's "Vice President of People Operations" testified before Congress today expressing their wish for more H-1B visas, including ...

John Edwards: live, work here for five years and citizenship is a "right" - 6/01/2007

Youtube's political editor Steve Grove has been interviewing the presidential contenders, and I've left comments pointing out how lightweight the interviews are. However, they appear to at least be making baby steps towards asking slightly more difficult questions. In the latest, they interview John Edwards and ask him a series of "is this a right or a privilege" questions. Nea...

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