You know, there was a discussion on hacker news about this being censored by US news media, and a ton of people were pointing out some news media outlets in the US did report on it, albeit rather poorly, and it reminded me of something that's been bothering me. I haven't put much thought into this, so this might sound like gibberish or nonsense, so be prepared for that, but I think I'm noticing something going on with words and the way people use and abuse them. I guess the best way to explain it is through an example, that you can only say you live in a fascist society when you cannot say you are living in a fascist society. Simpe enough. ...But I think you CAN say that in any case. I think there was censorship going on, even if it wasn't censorship by the exact definition. It's like what Snowden is saying in the interview about the distinction between "spying" and "data collection", and how the NSA doesn't spy on anyone, but it certainly collects tons of data on everyone. It's not spying by the exact definition. I think there's this recent trend of troublesome words reviving themselves while we try to say those words are dead (There is no racism anymore, no slavery, etc.) and, I guess I want to say surpass... Transcend the limits of their definitions? It's like nonalcoholic beer. It's beer, except it's not beer. I know this probably makes no sense, but it's been bothering me.
As I put on my tinfoil hat... I think in a lot of ways we can see the effect of the study of human psychology on the way that the government takes advantage of the media. Instant gratification isn't new to us as a species, it's just so much easier to get now that it can be used to "control" someone who isn't paying attention. I mean, look at Xbox Live achievements: Every time you complete a small section of the bigger story, or collect something, or do another minor action, you get an achievement. When you get that achievement, you feel good, and you want to keep doing the thing that makes you feel good (especially considering most people enjoy video games in the first place). Because these achievements are relatively close together, makes can keep you riding on that dopamine burst, and keep you playing. In many ways, media uses the same sorts of ideas. Reality television, like comic opera, uses extreme character models in normal situations to make a funny or dramatic program that either makes us feel good or keeps us in suspense, both of which drag us in for more. What chance does legitimate news (which generally makes us feel pretty upset) have against that? So as long as we keep on watching survivor or Keeping up with the Kardashians, or even "fluff news" and the real news is being played at the same time, things can be slipped under our noses under the auspices of "Well, we reported on it!". Anyways, tin foil hat off, it's a little crazy to think about but it scares me that it might be true.
A friend of mine expressed recently, that basically, there had to be the people, who before major human events, perceived it coming. The sense you describe is something we've talked about amongst ourselves. Its interesting omissions and strange suggestions in news media consumption...even the point that I called it "consumption." And then if you log into youtube with your google account, you only really see the content you chose or what Youtube's algorithms thinks you should watch and ads. Looks like its about ads more than the people. It just seems weird.
Now that you mentioned youtube... I was bored one day and tried to search for an old video. I really wanted to see this video, so I kept on searching and searching, page after page, and obviously couldn't find it. It was almost certainly deleted... But what was more interesting was the results some 60 pages in. It was all playlists from other users after a certain amount of pages. I kept on searching and eventually hit a dead end, and wondered whether or not I really hit all the possible results. It was a semi-popular subject and I'm sure it should have had more results than what I got. I mean, youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html There has to have been more videos from my subject. So, I searched for "Pokemon", and decided to change the url to jump in a couple of hundred pages in and got this message: I guess that explained it. I wonder if that video I wanted to see WAS on youtube, but youtube decided that from my queries and history it got drowned out in 1000 other results that it thought I would have wanted. I kinda get worried about being filter bubbled and not seeing all the results. I wonder just how much gets ignored. I wonder if there is a video that has been uploaded that no one (aside from the uploader) has any chance of ever seeing because the algorithms always pick other results to show. I wonder if someone can abuse those algorithms to make it so you never see a video. I'm probably overthinking this I'm sure...100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
Sorry, YouTube does not serve more than 1000 results for any query. (You asked for results starting from 3300.)
No one I've asked, in the past about 5 years has been able to tell me why they watch the news anymore. Every story I've seen on the nightly news, has been sourced from twitter feeds, facebook, Huffpo, etc etc etc... And no one, knows why they bother watching. mk made a point on another post in this thread about anemic news coverage being worse than direct censorship, and I think he has a valid point. If something is censored, it's easy to see what someone wants to hide/downplay. When it gets slipped in as a joke, a side note, or end of report blurb, it just obfuscates everything. It removes journalistic accountability because as coffeesp00ns stated, 'Well, we reported it." But, to ask the newscaster, did you really? Did you portray the issue (NSA breaking constitutional law, Snowden stuff etc) fairly? Did it get a proper amount of time and multiple perspectives to provide a comprehensive and informed picture of reality? If the answer to any of that is no, the journalist in question has failed, not in part, but in whole.