A long time ago in a Westeros far, far away…
HBO / Omid G. / Via youtube.com
Because of course Arya would be the only other person besides Samuel L. Jackson to have a purple one.
HBO / Omid G. / Via youtube.com
There’s no bad result, tbh.
College is right around the corner.
If you haven’t already seen them…
“No regrets. I don’t think you can be an online creator and think that you made any big mistakes.”
Hannah Hart is undoubtedly one of YouTube's most hilarious stars. From her wildly successful online series My Drunk Kitchen to her latest book, Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded, Hannah has proven to be a force on the internet and beyond. To celebrate her brand new show I Hart Food on Food Network, Hannah stopped by BuzzFeed to answer YOUR most burning questions while talking soufflés, Malibu rum, and of course...kittens!
Macey J. Foronda / Angelica Baini / BuzzFeed
Hannah Hart: I started out My Drunk Kitchen as a joke for a friend. I was a proofreader working at a translation firm — I had just moved from San Francisco to New York — and a friend of mine...[stops to pet kitten] He's so cuddly and warm! A friend of mine was going through a little bout of depression and I just wanted to make a joke to cheer her up!
BuzzFeed
HH: I Hart Food is a show that's about going to different cities across America and seeing how each of those areas highlight local ingredients. How many ways can you cook a lobster? Isn't it all basically the same? That's something we explore.
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If you hate watching news channels and can’t keep up with politics, but really care about your country, say hello to your new favourite show.
While news channels convey political information via shouting matches, Kamra sits down calmly with reps of major political movements, makes them laugh, and gets to the heart of their ideologies and stands.
Kunal Kamra
Laura Breiling for BuzzFeed News
Trendy copper fairy lights hover just out of focus behind Zoe Sugg (known on her YouTube channel as Zoella), who sits perched on a smooth white duvet, her hair settled in immaculate blonde waves. She smiles at the camera and greets the audience with a friendly, conspiratorial “Hello everybody! Today, I wanted to do something a little bit different.” It’s as though the viewer is an old friend who has settled in for another chat in her warmly lit bedroom.
The intimate venue belies the reach of Zoella’s audience. The British YouTube star has a subscriber count of nearly 12 million, while videos like this bring in more than a million views. Her monthly earnings are said to hover around £50,000. But in this particular video she isn’t doing her usual makeup tutorial or clothing haul — the kind of content that brought her fame and considerable fortune. Today Sugg wants to talk about “ways that people de-stress, or just kind of switch off and have a little bit of me time.” For the next 15 minutes, she happily ruminates on the importance of “winding down” and offers suggestions for doing so. These include investing in new bedding and “buying cute little home finishes," that makes her "feel happy and relaxed and just very content.” She also recommends candles — and shares a link to her own Zoella Lifestyle branded candle line. Writing things down also helps, she says, and on cue there’s a cutaway shot to Sugg picking up her Zoella Lifestyle writing journal. And as for a restful sleep, Sugg recommends the This Works pillow spray to help you drift off.
In a booming beauty vlogger industry, videos like Zoella’s “Winding Down & Mindful Minutes” capitalize on a growing interest in mental health and heightened emotional literacy. What is especially notable, however, is how these videos intersect with young female YouTubers’ commercial interests and business ventures: Their channels are incredibly lucrative and often bankrolled by corporate partnerships. These self-made beauty gurus have seamlessly linked their entrepreneurial savvy with the newest trend: self-care.
These self-made beauty gurus have seamlessly linked their entrepreneurial savvy with the newest trend: self-care.
So, just as a young viewer might look to YouTube for advice on perfect eyeshadow application, they might now watch a video on how best to deal with their burgeoning anxiety disorder. But while these gurus might have mastered the art of the smoky eye, it’s not clear whether they’re actually equipped to offer expert advice on mental health. A quick perusal of YouTube’s more popular beauty vloggers’ channels finds a shift toward this content, such as beauty-cum-lifestyle guru Ingrid Nilsen’s “How I Get Ready on a Bad Day.” In the video, Ingrid, with a tearful voice and blank eyes, tells the viewer she is truly having a bad day today: “On days like today, it can be really hard to just get out of bed,” but that doing hair and makeup “allows me to invest time in myself … Just doing something as small as putting hair powder on my hair makes me feel … a little better.”
As Nilsen runs through the myriad products in her "routine," links to purchase are listed in the description box below the video. And hidden away in the last line of the description is this note: “Thank you so much to my friends at bareMinerals for sponsoring this video.” A collaboration between YouTubers Arden Rose and Estée Lalonde entitled “De-Stress and Anti-Anxiety Routine” focuses on face masks and bubble baths as antidotes to chronic stress. And in “My Evening Routine to De-Stress,” Niomi Smart opines, “Sometimes life just gets so busy and crazy … and before you know it you haven’t given yourself any time to yourself. And it’s so important to recharge and de-stress.” Her recommendation, other than cooking, cleaning, and yoga? A pamper session with Burt’s Bees skin care — indeed, the video is sponsored by the skin care corporation, and discreetly marked “AD.”
Many of these videos follow a similar pattern: YouTuber reveals her hidden struggles with anxiety, or stress burnout, and suggests a routine to the viewer to combat this struggle in day-to-day life — with recommended products to purchase. Many gurus make their money off of YouTube through brand deals and collaborations, product placement, in-video advertisements, and affiliate links (e.g., YouTuber recommends a product, then places a link to the product in the video description box, and then makes money off of all the clicks).
A screenshot of Zoe "Zoella" Sugg in a YouTube video.
screenshot / Via YouTube
It might be overly cynical to suggest that vloggers have simply found in the mental health advocacy phenomenon another avenue through which to peddle products. Perhaps young female media creators, formerly relegated to the domain of makeup and clothes, want to stretch the boundaries of what they can talk about online. And naturally they want to do this while still earning money and forming lucrative corporate partnerships. (None of the YouTubers BuzzFeed News reached out to were available for comment on this story.) But regardless of intent, the lines have become blurred over what, exactly, the audience is to assume they are watching. Is this a commercial, a tutorial, an honest analysis of products, or simply a video diary of a girl talking to her fanbase?
The reaction from viewers of these videos is decidedly mixed. While there is a strong demand from the audience for fresh content that feels genuine, many viewers are reluctant to see themselves as mere consumers in this relationship. Those who have watched YouTubers for years develop a unique sense of affection for and personal investment in these personalities, which helps guard them against some criticism. It's a connection that YouTube gurus have carefully cultivated.
And so, when advertorials are presented not only as brand reviews but as stories that connect to the YouTuber's real-life issues, it can provoke strong but conflicting feelings in the audience. Nilsen's aforementioned "How I Get Ready on a Bad Day" video was met with criticism in the comments section by a viewer who saw it as a disingenuous play for money. “As if when you're going through a hard time or have depression all you need to do is spend money at bareMinerals. … Gross emotional exploitation at its finest." Yet those who came to Ingrid's defense were invested in her personal story and defensive of her right to monetize. As one reply reads: “Makes me sick to see that 'her own fan' sends a mean comment to her when she's having a bad day. So what if it's sponsored?"
A screenshot Ingrid Nilsen in a YouTube video
screenshot / Via YouTube
Longtime viewers who spoke to BuzzFeed News for this story were all quick to point out that brand deals were a legitimate way for young women to make a career from YouTube. Kate Hughes, 28, a communications coordinator from Ontario, Canada, who has watched YouTube tutorials from numerous gurus for about five years, says "I naturally have my guard up when I see a video is sponsored," but she still maintains a belief in its inherent honesty. "I would hope they would only do so for brands [and] products which they believe in and use themselves," she says. Hughes believes a good YouTuber can provide an "expert" opinion on a product to an audience seeking their particular makeup savvy — something that a simple commercial cannot do. The discussion of personal and social issues is a good thing, she contends, as gurus have a wide network of viewers who can benefit from honest advice.
Abby (who asked for her last name not to be published), 15, from Toronto, agrees: She is an avid fan of Zoella in particular, whom she credits as a "strong female role model" for her discussion of anxiety and mental health. What Abby most appreciates in YouTubers are those "who aren't afraid to really be themselves... REAL people... who try to help others." For Abby, who has watched YouTube with friends since her preteen years, it is when YouTubers become "fake ... unoriginal, and boring" that they are no longer worth watching. She mentions Bethany Mota, a guru who professed self-acceptance to her fans but would then, Abby believes, photoshop herself in her own photos. (Mota did not respond to BuzzFeed News' request for comment.) Abby prefers intimate glimpses into real life.
Viewer Ashley Chew, 19, a student from Singapore, allows that sponsored content is inevitable in that gurus "need to make a living after all" — but she does not share other viewers’ opinions about YouTubers’ inherent genuineness. Chew has noticed a rise in personal and mental health–based content and believes it’s partly a "marketing strategy" to earn money, one exploited by those who she feels aim to make money by playing up the idea of a personal relationship with their audience. When it comes to paid-for product placement, the videos she doesn’t like are the ones “that are fixated on advertising throughout."
Indeed, a common refrain among viewers is that advertising in videos is reasonable as long as it’s not too overt — if the content and YouTuber still seem real enough. Thus, selling things through videos can be acceptable as long as the guru can still sell herself as genuine to an audience that demands sincerity. Offering personal, intimate stories to promote products allows them to maintain a “real girl” image while obscuring outright financial ambition.
Is this a commercial, a tutorial, an honest analysis of products, or simply a video diary of a girl talking to her fanbase?
The interest in this content from young women speaks to what scholars of girls’ studies and youth behavior have dubbed a “bedroom culture” — that is, a recognition of the private spaces and networks in which girls create their own sociocultural norms. Girls’ studies scholars Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber use the notion to explain seemingly insignificant practices among young women (talking about makeup, learning about clothes, even just gossiping) as “alternative ways of organizing their cultural life.” And they assert that the goal is "to gain private and accessible space. This in turn allows ... girls to remain seemingly inscrutable to the outside world." The popular YouTube beauty subjects (how to apply a bright lipstick properly, for example) also carry the unspoken "this is just between us girls" connotation, and with it an implicit trust. The more open and honest a girl gets on YouTube, then surely the more trustworthy and "real" she must be.
Several years ago, a predilection among YouTube gurus for TMI videos, about anything from period stories to pubic hair preferences, foreshadowed this move toward videos that offer intimacy rather than straight beauty tips. The typical TMI video vacillates between these two sentiments: "We shouldn’t be speaking of this," and "Shouldn’t everyone be speaking of this?" It affirms both the secrecy and universality of their private experience.
And just as videos expressing intimacy and vulnerability grew in popularity, so did a broader pop cultural movement centered around mental wellness and emotional literacy. Much of that trend involves or encourages commercial consumption — think GOOP-brand health innovations and the emerging "self-care" industry in the form of meditation apps, wellness retreats, and even self-care kits for purchase. It was easy for YouTube to cotton on, especially young women vloggers. A YouTuber who had already opened up about shaving her bikini line, for instance, could pretty naturally transition into talking about her spells of depression.
This new focus on the more real, intimate side of girlhood has been largely rewarded by viewers and corporate partners alike. But what makes young women in particular so poised to take up this conversation, and ultimately profit from the interest of their (largely female) audience? For one, demonstrating high levels of personal and emotional intelligence is a prerequisite for being an idealized vision of a successful young woman. Many of these emerging trends in pop culture — yes, even in niche YouTube videos — indicate society’s intense interest in women developing a heightened awareness of the self. Feminist theory has long held that women practice self-surveillance (and therefore self-discipline) because of the immense pressures they face. From the expectation that girls know their specific body "type" (curvy on top! petite! pear-shaped!) to find the ideal jeans fit, to the myriad wellness and self-help circuits that focus on turning inward to find healing, to the health and diet fads that are rooted in self-diagnosis and self-treatment, girls and women are believed to find success through knowing and monitoring themselves intensely. The question is, if more and more gurus are turning inward, seemingly more interested in taking care of the self, then how do they continue to encourage other people to buy products that are largely focused on outward appearance?
A YouTuber who had already opened up about shaving her bikini line could naturally transition into talking about her spells of depression.
That’s where their established position as beauty experts comes into play. Buying products is one thing — but buying the right products signifies self-knowledge and the ability to care for oneself. Retail spending is blended with political and social freedom, something girls’ studies scholar Anita Harris calls a “linking of neoliberal ideologies about individual choice with a distorted kind of feminism.” Girls’ ability to make purchases is often seen as empowering, in its display of personal wealth amassed and its demonstration of knowing oneself best. The young women on YouTube have deftly manipulated this ethic to their advantage. There are only so many videos one can make about eyeshadow palettes or bubble bath before finding a new narrative through which to talk about them.
Interestingly, when YouTube success story Michelle Phan recently reappeared after a long hiatus from her makeup channel and multimillion-dollar offshoot cosmetics business, she reintroduced herself through an 11-minute animated video entitled “Why I Left” (which has over 8 million views and counting). Phan ruminates on the destructive nature of her YouTube-earned fame and the realization that money doesn't buy happiness; she hints at a subsequent struggle with depression. But she has found herself again, she claims, and in the last few moments of the video her soft voice suggests a sudden, exciting awakening: “So what do I wanna do next?” she whispers. “Back then, I was just someone who was showing you how to look more beautiful. Now, I want to show you how to feel more beautiful.” With that, the logo for her new vegan beauty company flashes onscreen. Among the supportive, sympathetic, and adoring comments from viewers is one that simply reads, “Did I just watch an ad?”
Screenshot of Michelle Phan's "Why I Left" video.
screenshot / Via YouTube
A similar conceit runs through Nilsen’s video “How to Be Authentic + Stay True to Yourself.” With a background of tinkling piano music interspersed with artfully faded ocean and beach shots, Nilsen talks about how the viewer needs to “let go of who you think you should be and step into who you really are.” She implores the viewer to ask themselves some key questions, such as “What makes you feel alive? It can be something as small as planting a garden.” But then, about halfway into the video, she suddenly, yet seamlessly, changes tack. “Doing this daily work in pursuit of your most authentic self is really difficult, but the biggest privilege … is to be who you really are.” She smiles. “And that’s why I’m so excited to announce a jewelry collection that I’ve been doing with Mejuri."
It turns out that young women on YouTube have been able to do what advertisers and corporations have long attempted: commercialize the intimate aspects of being a girl, reach into their bedrooms, and speak to them as friends, not marketers. And now these beauty YouTubers are seamlessly adapting to new psychosocial trends, taking part in the emerging politics of the self. As mental wellness and mental health are talked about more than ever before, YouTubers are at the forefront of the discussion, ready to talk about the stress epidemic with just the right bubble bath recommendation. What’s more, they’ll convince you that buying it enriches your authentic self — and not their bank accounts.
Outside Your Bubble is a BuzzFeed News effort to bring you a diversity of thought and opinion from around the internet. If you don't see your viewpoint represented, contact the curator at bubble@buzzfeed.com. Click here for more on Outside Your Bubble.
Victoria Sands is a writer from Toronto.
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Our world seems more connected than ever. Google recently boasted that its Android mobile platform has over 2 billion users. A month later, Facebook said it had the same number of monthly active users. And yet, over 4 billion people around the world still don’t have access to the internet. Africa and South Asia are particularly affected: One of the lowest rates in the world is in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where merely 3.8% of the population has access.
But now, Google, Facebook, SpaceX, and a handful of other startups are developing ways to get the rest of the world online. These companies’ motivations aren’t purely altruistic. These costly projects serve dual purpose: as generators of good PR, as well as a gateway to billions of potential new Internet-connected customers, who (they hope) will ultimately use their services.
World Economic Forum / Via weforum.org
This kind of connectivity could have a huge impact on the lives of those who live in rural areas, and other places where it doesn’t always make sense financially for cellular providers to put up a big, expensive cell tower that services a small number of people who may not be able to afford it.
Broadband internet isn’t just about getting more people into Snapchat; it has the potential to change people’s access to jobs, education, and information. “Historically, those communities have not been seen as the highest return of investment, where you’re looking at 50 homes within a wide span of land,” explained Dr. Nicol Turner-Lee, a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation. Governments do, occasionally, step in to invest in digital infrastructure where private companies fail to do so, but that’s more likely to occur in wealthy, developed countries, not emerging ones.
The process by which something gets to you via the internet involves a network of cables, data centers, and cell towers. The final step in, say, streaming an episode of Game of Thrones, involves your internet service provider (companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast) sending that video over fiber optic cables that eventually lead to a cell tower or to your house’s router.
It’s that last mile of internet connectivity—the part where the video travels from your ISP to you—that’s costly for areas that aren’t densely populated. But tech companies have some novel ways of solving this problem.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, wants to blanket the Earth’s atmosphere with thousands of orbiting satellites (around 4,425, according to the original proposal), forming a global communications network that would deliver data to devices on the ground — but the first of SpaceX’s satellites aren’t slated to launch until 2019. Musk’s biggest competitor, the Virginia-based satellite company OneWeb, which aims to create a similar network that covers the entire globe with LTE connectivity, is hoping to launch in 2019, too.
Facebook also worked on a satellite designed to bring connectivity to parts of sub-Saharan Africa. In September 2016, Facebook’s new satellite went aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Unfortunately, that rocket blew up, destroying the satellite with it.
The company had another plan up its sleeve: a solar-powered, autonomous, Internet-delivering drone called Aquila, with a huge wingspan (larger than a Boeing 737’s). The plan is to deploy a fleet of high-altitude drones that would communicate with each other via laser and fly for months at a time. Aquila is designed to beam wireless signal to people within a 60-mile diameter. The project still has a long way to go to hit that 90-day goal. In June, the drone completed a one hour, 46 minute flight.
One high-altitude solution that’s much closer to its goal is Project Loon, which is a part of X, Alphabet’s “moonshot factory” (formerly known as “Google X”). Like Aquila, Loon is an airborne Internet network — except, instead of drones, it uses balloons filled with helium that float in the stratosphere. Loon’s flight record is 190 days and, while the project is still in a testing phase, its balloons have already delivered Internet connectivity to tens of thousands of people in Peru, which was devastated by floods earlier this year. In February, Loon announced it had developed machine-learning navigation algorithms that allow it to send a much smaller fleet of balloons (dozens, instead of hundreds) to specific locations, making the project much cheaper than originally planned.
Nicole Nguyen / BuzzFeed News
But the project isn’t without its setbacks. Loon has changed leadership twice within the past year. A key Loon patent involving balloon navigation was also cancelled by the US Patent and Trademark Office, after a company called Space Data filed a lawsuit claiming they had come up with the idea first.
In any case, Alphabet has invested a significant amount of resources to Loon, with two launch locations (one in Ceiba, Puerto Rico and the other in Winemucca, Nevada) equipped with “autolaunchers” that can send up to twenty balloons a day into the stratosphere, balloon recovery missions all over the world, and labs back at X headquarters in Mountain View, California. One of Loon’s labs hosts the world’s largest flatbed scanner, named “Billie Jean” for the way its panels light up, which helps engineers and scientists examine every stress and stretch on the balloon’s plastic.
But lack of physical infrastructure isn’t the only thing preventing the widespread expansion of internet access. Device affordability, literacy, and creating websites available in local languages are also key to getting the rest of the world online. Furthermore, balloons, drones, and thousands of satellites may not bridge the digital divide in the areas that need it most — areas that have more pressing problems than lack of internet. “The real challenge [for these companies] will be getting to those areas that have … no running water, no electricity, no functioning schools,” said Dr. Turner-Lee.
And while these projects all sound promising, whether or not they will work in practice, outside of their tests on a large scale, remains to be seen. Silicon Valley-backed internet access projects have been met with controversy in the past, as with Facebook’s Free Basics program in India. Government authorization and cell provider cooperation are crucial to the progress of these developments. How will local governments and telecom companies treat experimental, air-borne Google, Facebook, or SpaceX hardware floating overhead? Until Loon, Aquila, and Musk’s space internet take off widely, it’s hard to tell just how much they're going to change people's lives around the world.
I’m sorry, the old record-holder can’t come to the phone. Why? ‘Cause it’s dead.
Big Machine/ ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com
And according to YouTube, it got 30,000 plays every minute!
Big Machine/ metro.co.uk
"Gentleman" got 36 million views in its first day of release in 2013.
Republic
El canal usa una foto de las pequeñas llorando para promocionar su vídeo.
El canal, que cuenta con más de 800 000 seguidores, está dedicado a subir vídeos compartiendo situaciones familiares "divertidas".
Youtube / @ItarteVlogs / Via youtube.com
La familia aparece buscando a la perrita durante un rato y contando cómo tienen miedo de que haya podido tener un accidente y que por eso no pueda volver a casa.
Youtube / @ItarteVlogs / Via youtube.com
Twitter / @ItarteVlogs / Via Twitter: @ItarteVlogs
Twitter / Via Twitter: @ItarteVlogs
Sorry, she has no idea if we’ll ever hear Jason speak or not.
The CW
Two days after trying out for a role on Legends of Tomorrow, Petsch went in to audition for the role of Betty, even though "[she's] pretty sure they always knew they wanted [her] for Cheryl." Still, it wasn't until four months later that she auditioned to play the Blossom twin.
The CW
She worked at both a political consulting firm and a hookah lounge, as well as took jobs as a barista, a hostess, a waitress, and a personal assistant to a photographer.
PewDiePie
Ben Stansall / AFP / Getty Images
Felix Kjellberg, a 27-year-old Swede better known by his online name PewDiePie, finds himself embroiled in another controversy after he was recorded saying a racial epithet during a video game livestream.
On Sunday, while playing the game "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds," Kjellberg called another player an n-word before laughing into his microphone.
"What a fucking nigger," he said. "Jeez, oh my god. What the fuck? Sorry, but what the fuck? What a fucking asshole. I don't mean that in a bad way."
Kjellberg, who has 57 million subscribers on Youtube, lost a brand deal with Disney's Maker Studios and an original show with YouTube Red earlier this year after media reports questioned his use of anti-Semitic jokes and imagery in videos. The Wall Street Journal counted nine different videos that included anti-Semitic content since Aug. 2016.
Many have been swift to condemn Kjellberg's comments including video game designer Sean Vanaman, whose San Francisco-based Campo Santo studio is behind "Firewatch," a title played by Kjellberg.
"We're filing a DMCA takedown of PewDiePie's Firewatch content and any future Campo Santo games," he wrote on Twitter. "There is a bit of leeway you have to have with the internet when u wake up every day and make video games. There's also a breaking point."
"I am sick of this child getting more and more chances to make money off of what we make," he added.
In a video following the events in Charlottesville last month, Kjellberg attempted to distance himself further from those who suggested he was aligned with Nazi sympathizers and white supremacists.
“If for some reasons Nazis think it’s great that I’m making these jokes, I don’t want to give them that benefit,” Kjellberg said. “So I’m going to stop doing it. Nazi memes, they’re not even that funny anymore. It’s sort of a dead meme. So just to make it clear, no more."
“It’s not me censoring myself," he added, "it’s more like I don’t want to be part of this.”
Kjellberg has yet to respond online to the criticism following Sunday's livestream remarks. He did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment from BuzzFeed News.
When contacted by BuzzFeed News on Sunday, Vanaman outlined his hesitance in using a takedown request through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, but said that Kjellberg's comment was "the straw the broke the camel's back."
"I love streamers," he said. "I stream and I watch streamers literally every day. I’m sure a lot of them say things that I hate and have political views that are different than mine, but I don't care because we just play video games together.
"Nevertheless we made a choice to have 'Firewatch' not associated with his channel anymore, not because he's the most offensive person, but because
he’s the biggest."
Vanaman said he issued one takedown notice to YouTube for one of Kjellberg's videos that featured his company's game. The video, which had been watched more than 5.7 million times, was removed by YouTube on Sunday night.
"I wish there was a clear way to say we don’t want our work associated with hate speech, even accidental hate speech if that's what it was," Vanaman said to BuzzFeed News. "I regret using a DMCA takedown. Censorship is not the best thing for speech and if I had a way to contact PewDiePie and take the video down, I probably would. He’s a bad fit for us, and we’re a bad fit for him."
Honestly what is even happening anymore.
But also, he's gotten into trouble on the internet before for tweeting some controversial things.
New Line Cinema
In aftermath of Sunday evening’s mass shooting in Las Vegas, visitors to Facebook’s Crisis Response page for the tragedy should have found a cascading feed of community-posted news and information intended to "help people be more informed about a crisis." Instead, they discovered an algorithmic nightmare — a hodgepodge of randomly surfaced, highly suspect articles from spammy link aggregators and sites like The Gateway Pundit, which has a history of publishing false information. Indeed, at one point Monday morning, the top three news articles on Facebook's Las Vegas Shooting Crisis Response page directed readers to hyperpartisan news or advertising-clogged blog sites trying to profit from the tragedy.
And early Monday morning, Google search queries for "Geary Danley" — a man initially (and falsely) identified as a victim of the shooting — were served Google News links to the notorious message board 4chan, which was openly working to propagate hoaxes that might politicize the tragedy.
Facebook and Google are hardly alone. Twitter — the internet’s beating heart for news — is continually under siege by trolls, automated accounts, and politically motivated fake news peddlers. In the aftermath of Sunday night’s shooting, a number of pro-Trump accounts of unknown origin tried to link the gunman to leftist groups in an apparent attempt to politicize the tragedy and sow divisions. Others hinted at false flags and crisis actors, suggesting that there was a greater conspiracy behind the shooting (Twitter told BuzzFeed News it has since suspended many of these accounts).
And on sites like YouTube, unverified information flowed largely unchecked, with accounts like The End Times News Report impersonating legitimate news sources to circulate conspiracy and rumor.
A few hours later, Facebook and Google issued statements apologizing for promoting such misinformation. “We are working to fix the issue that allowed this to happen in the first place and deeply regret the confusion this caused,” a Facebook spokesperson told CNN. Google issued a similarly pat explanation for featuring a 4Chan troll thread as a “Top Story” inside Google search results for Danley: “This should not have appeared for any queries, and we’ll continue to make algorithmic improvements to prevent this from happening in the future.”
But neither apology acknowledged the darker truth: that despite the corrections, the damage had already been done, misinformation unknowingly shared with thousands via apparently reckless curators. One link surfaced in Facebook’s Crisis Response page from the website alt-right-news.blogspot.com has been shared across Facebook roughly 1,300 times as of this writing, according to the analytics site BuzzSumo. The article’s third paragraph hints at the shooter’s political leanings, but offers no evidence in support of that claim. “This sounds more like the kind of target a Left-wing nutjob would choose than a Right-wing nutjob,” it reads, before going on to spread unconfirmed information about other (since dismissed) suspects in the shooting. A link from the hyperpartisan site The Gateway Pundit (the same site that misidentified the shooter earlier in the day) was shared roughly 10,800 times across Facebook, according to BuzzSumo.
This is just the latest example of platforms who've pledged to provide accurate information failing miserably to do so. Despite their endless assurances and apologies and promises to do better, misinformation continues to slip past. When it comes to breaking news, platforms like Facebook and Google tout themselves as willing, competent gatekeepers. But it’s clear they’re simply not up to the task.
Facebook hopes to become a top destination for breaking news, but in pivotal moments it often seems to betray that intention with an ill-conceived product design or a fraught strategic decision. In 2014, it struggled to highlight news about the shooting of Michael Brown and the ensuing Ferguson protests. News coverage of the events went largely unnoticed on the network, while instead, News Feeds were jammed with algorithmically pleasing Ice Bucket Challenge videos. And during the 2016 US presidential election, it failed to moderate the fake news, propaganda, and Russian-purchased advertising for which it is now under congressional scrutiny. Meanwhile, it has made no substantive disclosures about the inner workings of its platform.
Google has had its fair share of stumbles around news curation as well, particularly in 2016. Shortly after the US presidential election, Google’s top news hits for the final 2016 election results included a fake news site claiming that Donald Trump won both the popular and electoral votes (he did not win the popular vote). Less than a month later, the company came under fire again for surfacing a Holocaust denier and white supremacist webpage as the top results for the query “The Holocaust."
This year alone, almost every major social network has made a full-throated commitment to rid its platform of misinformation and polarizing content, as well as those who spread it. Google and Facebook have both pledged to eradicate fake news from their ad platforms, cutting off a key revenue stream for those who peddle misinformation. And Google has told news organizations that it has updated its algorithms to better prioritize “authoritative” content and allow users to flag fake news. YouTube has pledged to cut the reach of accounts “that contain inflammatory religious or supremacist content,” and Twitter continues to insist that it is making progress on harassment and trolls on its network.
Big Tech’s breaking news problem is an issue of scale — the networks are so vast that they must be policed largely by algorithm — but it's also one of priorities. Platforms like Facebook and Google are businesses driven by an insatiable need to engage and add users and monetize them. Balancing a business mandate like that with issues of free speech and the protection of civil discourse is no easy matter. Curating news seems an almost prosaic task in comparison. And in many ways, it’s antithetical to the nature of platforms like Facebook or YouTube. News is often painful, unpopular, or unwelcome, and that doesn't always align well with algorithmic mechanisms designed to give us what we want (it's worth noting that the curated platforms like Apple News and Snapchat did a far better job today sharing and promoting reliable and vetted information).
And though their words may suggest an unwavering commitment to delivering reliable breaking news, the platforms’ actions frequently undermine those ambitions. Sometimes the companies make these priorities public, like in June 2016 when Facebook announced that it would tweak its News Feed algorithm away from professional news organizations and publishers to show more stories from friends and family members. But other priorities are expressed through engineering decisions made behind closed doors.
Given the massive scale of platforms like Google and Facebook, it’s impossible to expect the platforms to catch everything. But as the Vegas tragedy proved, many of the platform’s slip-ups are simple, egregious oversights. Google, for example, claims the 4chan story appeared in its "Top Stories" widget because it was one of the few pages mentioning "Geary Danley" when today's news broke and it was seeing a lot of traffic. But why didn't Google have guardrails in place to prevent this from happening? 4chan has been a deeply unreliable and toxic news portal for years — why didn't Google have protocols in place to stop the site from appearing in news results? Why treat 4chan as a news source at all?
The same goes for Facebook. The company can't be expected to stop every single scrap of fake news. But in the case of its Crisis Response pages, why not curate news from verified and vetted outlets to ensure that those looking for answers and loved ones in a crisis aren't led astray? These are seemingly simple questions for which the platforms rarely have good answers.
The platforms always promise to do better. Why can't they?
Lam Vo contributed reporting for this piece.
LINK: Here Are All The Hoaxes Being Spread About The Las Vegas Shooting
White Cat is the hero we need.
She's not just angry! She's a woman scorned, and she's not gonna take it anymore.
El vertedero de Wismichu / Via youtube.com
El youtuber Wismichu ha publicado recientemente un vídeo titulado 'Así es Dalas Review'. "Tras años callado por miedo, es hora de hablar", publicaba el famoso youtuber a la vez que enlazaba al vídeo donde explicaba a través de una serie de puntos situaciones que le han ido enfrentando a Dalas a lo largo de los años: desde su discusión con AuronPlay hasta cómo Dalas llegó a "fingir su propia muerte". Y, por supuesto, Wismichu también hablaba del acoso por parte de Dalas a sus ex parejas, defendía a la también youtuber Miare (ex de Dalas) y hablaba de las situaciones de violencia vividas por Ingrid, actual pareja de Wismichu y ex pareja de Dalas, durante y después de terminar su relación con este.
Tras la publicación del vídeo de Wismichu y al tiempo que este recibía un sinfin de felicitaciones a través de todas sus redes sociales, Dalas comenzó a perder millones de suscriptores en su canal de Youtube y seguidores en Twitter.
Wismichu podría ser el ejemplo perfecto de cómo debe utilizar un hombre su privilegio masculino para ayudar a las mujeres, porque la historia de acoso, manipulación y abusos por parte de Dalas ha sido contada cientos de veces por mujeres como Miare e Ingrid sin conseguir la misma repercusión negativa para el youtuber ni sin que los diarios publicasen artículos con el título de "la caída de Dalas Review".
@san3224
El privilegio masculino de Wismichu le ha permitido que su voz sea tomada en serio y se escuche lo que ha querido contar aunque estuviera contando la misma historia que ya había contado Miare. El privilegio masculino ha permitido que Wismichu se llevase el aplauso mediático al decidir ser vocal en un asunto tan serio como el maltrato, mientras que Miare se ha tenido que enfrentar durante meses al insulto y a la desacreditación pública, a la duda y la interrogación constante y al "siempre hay dos versiones de la misma historia".
Muchos amigos me preguntan qué pueden hacer los hombres por el feminismo. Este es un buen ejemplo de lo que se puede hacer. De lo que los hombres podéis y debéis hacer. Porque lo que un hombre puede hacer por el feminismo y por las mujeres es utilizar su privilegio para ayudarnos. Es, a la segunda vez que un hombre nos interrumpe en una reunión de trabajo, decir "deja terminar a Fulanita, por favor". Es recordarle al jefe que esa idea tan brillante por la que un compañero (o quizás tú mismo) se está llevando todo el mérito realmente le pertenece a una mujer. Es decirle a tus colegas que dejen de ser unos babosos con las veinteañeras del bar cuando se han bebido un par de gin tonics. Es no cuestionar a la amiga que te cuenta que, desgraciadamente, ese amigo al que tanto aprecias es un sobón. O no mantenerse en una postura equidistante de "yo es que en estas cosas no me meto" si, tras una ruptura, una amiga te cuenta que su ex pareja tenía comportamientos abusivos.
Es realmente frustrante ver el doble rasero con el que la sociedad nos juzga a hombres y a mujeres por realizar las mismas acciones. Cómo vosotros sois unos campeones y nosotras unos putas si los dos follamos lo mismo. Cómo vosotros tenéis "dotes de liderazgo" pero nosotras somos unas trepas o unas mandonas por tener la misma ambición. O cómo vosotros sois unos padrazos por llevar a un niño sobre los hombros mientras que nosotras somos unas madres de mierda por preferir una cesárea a un parto natural. O cómo Wismichu es un héroe y Miare, hasta hace unos días, era una mentirosa despechada que quería rascar algo de la fama de Dalas.
Es frustrante que haya tenido que llegar Wismichu para que todo el mundo se ponga de parte de Miare. Claro que lo es. Pero es el mundo en el que vivimos: un mundo en el que la desigualdad de género se cuela por todas partes. Lo triste es que queda muchísimo camino hasta que las mujeres lleguemos a tener la misma credibilidad, el mismo reconocimiento y la misma repercusión que los hombres, así que me temo que mientras tanto vamos a necesitar la ayuda de muchísimos Wismichus por el camino.
This is some TRULY scary stuff.
instagram.com / Via @jamescharles
Warner Bros.
In the intro for the video, James admits people will say it's "hypocritical" and "ironic" of him to do this video after all the initial It drama. Boy, was that the understatement of the century.
Warner Bros.
Good things come in small packages.
Touchstone Pictures