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 Youtube's Steve Grove by leaving the three comments in the extended entry, none of which are there anymore.

1. From citizentube.com/2008/04/announcement-general-election.html
Have you ever heard hype about a new band, and when you listen to them it's just elevator music?

Youtube's "debates" are like that. The "debate" will be like the CNN/Youtube "debate", featuring puffball after puffball which the candidates will simply answer with their stock speeches. And, whoever the moderators are won't call them on their lies or press for a followup.

Youtube is already telegraphing what they're going to do by featuring the superlightweight James Kotecki, someone who wouldn't know a tough question if it fell on his head.

Not only that, but their example of a user-generated question is someone asking "do you think your personal qualities will allow you to be an effective president"?

What does anyone expect the answer to be, "no"?

If I were Youtube, I'd watch out: the questions they're going to allow to be asked might give Sergey Brin Soviet Union flashbacks.

2. From citizentube.com/2008/04/announcement-general-election.html
Let me light a candle by offering this proposal. The only way to avoid a repeat of the CNN disasters is to have bloggers and the like vote on the questions. They'll be charged with selecting the *toughest* questions, not the ones they want answered or anything else. And, their votes for each video will be public. So, if they vote up weak videos or vote down tough videos then they can be held accountable by their readers. And, the votes could be sliced and diced by who voted in which categories, a specific blogger's votes, etc.

On the plus side for Google, this would also cause more people to visit whatever site they host that at because the bloggers could link to a list of their votes.

And, this would also give Google plausible deniability when those tough questions get asked and the candidates get angry: it was the bloggers that selected the questions, not Google.

3. From citizentube.com/2008/04/welcome-to-new-citizentube.html
If Youtube wanted to do a public service they'd encourage people to go to campaign events and ask the questions that the MSM is too corrupt to ask. The MSM includes CNN and CSPAN, two Youtube partners that ran contests and then selected the wimpiest questions of the bunch. Regarding the CNN debacle, see these:

youtube.com/watch?v=nIbDAVQMKGM
youtube.com/watch?v=wm0uWz2BS9M

If someone who's familiar with the issue and who isn't afraid to ask real questions ever engages one of the top three candidates on immigration, the candidate is going to end up looking very bad since all three of them have offered unworkable proposals and have frequently lied or made misleading or incomplete statements. Perhaps Youtube is afraid of encouraging people to ask real questions lest they lose their access. Or, maybe it's something else.