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 like looking at a Washington river in spawning season. Here's part of a screengrab and here's another; note that since that time they've added a nofollow tag to links in descriptions (the only link shown without the coloration at the second link), and they also forbid even bare links in comments: you have to write things like example dot com. However, here's the kicker: some pages don't have those tags on outbound links, like this one: youtube.com/t/studio_article_05 Gosh, I wonder why that would be like that. In brief, YT is - like Wikipedia - a massive link funneling machine, with a ton of links coming in and very few going out.

2. YT is now owned by Google and is prominently featured in search results. While they certainly might take those results at the top from a database not related to their normal index, I'd imagine that YT videos getting links - especially with relevant anchor text - doesn't hurt and may enable some videos to get the top position over others. Combined with Wikipedia being put so high in search results, this increases the change of mischief and manipulation. That would usually work best for those of a more activist - and thus leftwing - bent. Note also that Google has pretty much invaded every aspect of our online lives, or at least is trying to. They also are making some moves of a political nature. I don't trust Google in the least, and I suspect that sooner or later even more people are going to share that view.

3. I use Firefox's FlashBlock plugin, which requires me to click a button graphic before I even see the preview of a Flash movie. Otherwise, it's just a big "F" graphical button. I worry about the impacts that including even just one YT video has on those who use other setups; even on Firefox when I play a Flash movie it usually messes up the keyboard commands, requiring me to click the page before I can use control-tab to move to another tab.

4. The upcoming Youtube/CNN debate will perhaps be an even worse disaster - and even worse for democracy - than the previous debates. First, it's hosted by Anderson Cooper, someone who's perhaps even more of a puffball reporter than his co-hort Larry King. Second, questions like the one I submitted, if asked, could both damage political careers and show just how corrupt the MSM is. So, don't expect questions like that to be asked. Instead, Cooper gives a preview of the types of videos that are going to be selected here.

First, all of the videos shown appear to be asking for what the candidates will do in the future; questions like that will simply send the candidates into replay mode. Does anyone think any candidate (except perhaps Ron Paul) is going to not make happy noises signifying nothing when asked how they're going to prevent a future Katrina-style response? So, why ask that question at all? Why not ask a question about something that the candidates have already done? For instance, did any of them support Bush's plan to move illegal aliens in to the affected areas?

Second, there are at least three joke entries, one with Kermit and two of people in masks. These will be shown in order to provide a laugh break, but with a more sinister purpose: to try to portray those on the internet as kooks, in contrast to respectable "journalists" like Cooper.

5. For something else I've been working with ffmpeg (converts mpegs etc. to Flash movies), and I've installed that locally. It wouldn't take much to host videos here, although getting the player issues right might be a bit tricky. For most of my videos that don't get that many views that would work out OK, but my Teddy Kennedy video got 15,000 views over three weeks which, assuming it's 1Meg, works out to 15 gigs of traffic, something which would cost some money: I think around $2 at Amazon's S3, and even more if I went over my limit at my current hosting company. And, of course, a very significant portion of that 15,000 found out about the video through YT; I probably would have only seen a few thousand if the video were only hosted here. On the other hand, a few thousand coming here would be better than several times that amount going to some other site.