Transcript: Christian Freedom of Speech on YouTube: Navigating Censorship and Restrictions

YouTube and other social media platforms are riddled with people making sensational claims that Big Brother is out to get them, and that they could soon get shut down because of the radical things they are saying. This channel has tried to avoid making such claims in order to get people to slow down and listen to what we are saying. We don't want you following us just because we're getting you scared about some conspiracy. To be fair, our channel is probably more likely to receive such persecution than the others due to the fact that our message really is radical and contrary to mainstream society. We're telling people to quit working from money, to sell everything they own, to reject the mark of the beast, and to tirelessly teach others to do the same things even to the point of death if necessary. Those are the sort of teachings that got Jesus killed, and they are the kind that any totalitarian government would want squashed. Powerful governments could probably care less about talk of lizard people and a flat earth, because those just aren't the sort of issues that start revolutions. For now, however, most of us are allowed to carry on with relative freedom to say what we like. But we have to agree with the conspiracy theorists that this freedom is being taken away, slowly, at least slowly for now. Governments don't want to bring in too much unpopular change too quickly because it could result in a revolution a risk most governments would prefer to avoid So they introduce little bits of legislation to gradually remove our freedoms And they point to terrorists and other troublemakers as the example of the sort of people they trying to protect us from It works. But we seem to be approaching a point where the rate of change is increasing. At the beginning of 2019, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, who are credited for having invented the Doomsday Clock, stated that global threats such as climate change and nuclear weapons have been intensified by information warfare via the internet. There have been an increasing number of attempts to hide, twist, and falsify information, and all of this has put world leaders on edge more than ever at a time when nuclear arsenals are growing quickly. Recently, it was revealed that China had infiltrated computers and internet service providers all over the world. To what end? It's not clear. But the fact that it happened shows that information warfare is more than just a spurious conspiracy theory and that those in power are not taking it lightly. It has the capacity to do serious damage both globally and on an individual level. Now, even non-government entities like YouTube are contributing to it. On January 25th, 2019, the YouTube team posted an article on their official blog entitled, Continuing Our Work to Improve Recommendations on YouTube. The link to this article is in the description below, but here is a brief summary. The YouTube representative explains that there has been much dissatisfaction from people regarding YouTube recommendation system This is the system YouTube designed to determine which videos show up on your homepage as being recommended by YouTube Over the last few years there were complaints from many people because the recommendations they were seeing weren't lining up with their actual interests. So YouTube took steps to personalize this section more in order to increase viewer satisfaction. This year, in an effort to refine the system further, they have plans to eliminate recommendations which come close to violating their community guidelines. That sounds fair enough on the surface, but listen to this. To that end, we'll begin reducing recommendations of borderline content and content that could misinform users in harmful ways, such as videos promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historical events like 9-11. The example of phony cures for serious illnesses makes it seem like this is a just cause. But even then, it only seems just if the phony cure is advocating doing something harmful, for example drinking battery acid to cure cancer. If what people are advocating is not harmful, for example to drink 4 liters of orange juice a day to cure cancer, even if it is a phony cure, there is no reason why it should be censored or discriminated against. Furthermore, even though this channel does not promote the flatter theory or that 9-11 was an inside job, mention of hindering proponents of these theories is quite shocking. Freedom of speech should not allow for hate but it should allow for people to explore such issues through fair discussion YouTube censorship plan also begs the question who gets to decide what is phony and what is not The article goes on to explain that these changes will only affect how videos are recommended, meaning that people will still be allowed to view and upload videos, which YouTube deems to be borderline. But it's not a big leap to go from blocking recommendations on some videos to actually deleting them or preventing them from being uploaded. Like if they really are so bad that they should be censored in one area, then it seems almost natural that they would censor them in all areas. One day, we'll be facing much more serious repercussions at the hands of the Antichrist for promoting our message. But Jesus says our reward will be great in heaven if we persevere despite the attempts to silence us. If you want to take part in that reward, then please help us to promote this message by sharing links to our videos across other social media platforms while there's still time. You might also want to consider linking up with others in your part of the world so that you can learn about other ways to reach people and so that you can gain encouragement in a world which is growing darker every day. We look forward to hearing from you. And remember, time is short. Let's make the most of it. Thank you.