How is everyone? I've been away for a week or so. I've noticed some things when watching youtube videos on my phone without adblock of course and I've noticed some political propaganda videos being passed off as "ads." The first one I noticed was a video by Prague U, and I mean it was straight up a 5 minute video with Ben Shapiro as the host. This video didn't really stand out to me at the time, I thought it was odd that it was a full video that was selling a message I guess rather than a product, but I was interested so I watched most of it.
But today I saw another "ad" by something called Trt or something like that. It was an anti-Trump propaganda video about patriotism vs nationalism. And it used as many scary boogie man buzzwords as possible. And now thinking back on the other video, I guess it basically is a propaganda video too.
So yeah, youtube now has actual unabashed propaganda prefacing the videos you want to watch, being passed off a "ads." The good thing I suppose it it's at least equal opportunity, Prague U and this TRT are both taking advatage of it. I doubt google will turn their money away.
I do notice though between the two videos, the TRT one was based wholly on buzzwords, evoking emotions and outrage, assertions without any evidence to back up it's claims, while the Prague U video had studies and citations. Really makes you think,.