Okay, Iâll admit it.
I went on Youtube and watched a Ben Shapiro video.
Just one.
I know. Stupid me.
It was about how AOC has been crapping on Florida and its governor, while locking down her home state, then getting caught partying in Florida with her boyfriend.
Not a great look for her.
Shapiro made an even bigger fool of himselfââânothing but ad hominem attacks. Completely childish.
That was Saturday.
On Sunday, I went on Youtubeâââwhich is owned by Googleâs parent corporation, an illegal monopoly that has devoured more than 200 other businessesâââto search for lectures about the Bible verse in Matthew that says âSeek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.â
Youâd think Iâd be presented with sermons and talks about, oh, I donât know, maybe Matthew 6:33?
Instead, because Iâd watched a hate-mongery video by Shapiro, Googleâs algorithms recommended a series of highly-divisive, libelous, pastor-bashing videos with high-conflict titles like:
âJohn Mark Comer doesnât believe in the same god as the real God.â
âIs Matt Chandler preaching a false gospel?
âFrancis Chanâââthe Anti-Christ or Satan himself?â
And then it hit me.
Google is a terrorist organization.
America, if you havenât noticed, is coming apart at the seams.
The divide between right and left is growing so far apart that extremists are consolidating control of both the Republican and Democrat parties.
The far-left wants to lock everyone inside forever, while the far-right doesnât even believe Covid exists.
Tens of millions of Americans no longer believe climate change is real.
Anxiety, depression, and pill-popping are rampant.
Shelter costs are crushing the poor and working class.
Suicide took over 44,000 lives last year.
Drug overdose deaths cracked 100,000 for the first time ever.
81,283,098 delusional people think the corporate-corrupted Democrats can somehow magically fix the mess.
Iâm kidding-not-kidding about that last one, but you get my pointâââhyper-individualist America is splintering.
Everyone is stressed and fearful all the time, buzzing with anxiety and worry about the future, and fighting and bickering about politics constantly.
And there are algorithms that are helping it along.
I know a guy who caught Covid early.
And caught it bad.
Long Covid.
Kicked the crap out of him.
He nearly thought he was going to die.
Several months later, he still couldnât walk up a single of stairs without losing his breath.
Fast-forward a year.
His entire family doesnât believe in Covid.
Itâs a plandemic. A hoax. A conspiracy to embed microchips in our arms.
They found âthe truthâ on Youtube.
My wife has a relative whoâs an anti-vaxxer.
She also believes Donald Trump is still the President.
And that JFK will restore DJT to POTUS.
And that America is run by gay alien lizard Jew pedophiles based in Hilaryâs pizza parlor.
She believes it all.
Why?
Because she lives on Youtube, and has a Youtube channel where she makes her own QAnon conspiracy theory videos, and her brain has turned to mush because an algorithm cares more about screen engagement than her mental health, marriage, children, career, or democracy.
As long as she keeps clicking, Google will keep radicalizing.
Youtube is the worldâs second-largest search engine, right behind its parent company, Google.
Humanity incinerates more than 365 billion hours of life each year on Youtube. (Thatâs half a million lifetimes annually, for those counting.)
Sheer amount of time-wasting aside, Google/Youtube has a fundamental problem:
Its users are the product.
Google only makes money by selling user attention to advertisers.
So the key is to keep the userâs attention.
Whatâs the easiest way to keep user attention and rake in the cashâââby recommending highly-accurate educational videos, or emotion-driven reaction-inciting propaganda thatâs guaranteed to get shared and go viral?
Google has engineered its algorithm to wreck the world and make dat paper.
Thatâs why, until they recently got caught, Youtubeâs algorithm was actually steering people away from accurate academic Covid information and toward anti-vax conspiracies.
And it makes senseâââGoogle is a giant anti-human monopoly whose sole fiduciary legal reason for existing is to extract wealth from society in order to deliver private profits to elite pockets at the expense of democracy.
Youtube has been doing this forever. Google has spent years purposely dragging its feet and has made money from:
Helping get at least one authoritarian elected, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths and crimes against humanity.
What do you call a private entity that directly and knowingly profits from societal breakdown, violence, and thousands of deaths?
A terrorist organization.
And they will not stop until they are stopped.
After watching that stupid Ben Shapiro video and immediately seeing all those straight-up libelous accusations against high-character pastors like Chan, Chandler, and Comer, I immediately went onto Youtube, deleted my Shapiro history, and re-typed my search query.
All the divisive videos immediately disappeared from the search results.
Guess what I got instead?
Sermons about Matthew 6:33.
If thereâs a call to action here, itâs this:
Donât let algorithms determine what you watch, read, listen to, or think.
(And donât let your kids anywhere near Youtube.)
Read this article on how to block all ads and keep algorithms from getting to know you more than your own spouse does.
Donât get me wrong, I love Youtube when it delivers highly-accurate videos related to my search term.
But it rarely, if ever, does.
Instead, Google wants to recommend whatever will make them the most moneyâââand that turns out to be highly emotional, highly negative, highly divisive, highly untruthful viral videos.
If the truth is what sets us free, itâs organizations like Google that are keeping us in chains.
The reality is that Google is an illegal monopoly that needs to be broken up. At the very least, it needs to be held criminally responsible for feeding tens of billions of hours of misinformation and disinformation to billions of people, contributing to hundreds of thousands of Covid deaths, massively undermining democracy around the world, and shredding the fabric of our already extremely fragile society.
Google could, of course, change its algorithm overnight.
Instead of dividing, it could unite us.
Instead of confusing us, it could educate us.
Instead of sowing chaos, it could create order.
But whereâs the profit in that?
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