
PewDiePie’s Battle for the Soul of the Internet - tim_sw
https://quillette.com/2018/12/20/pewdiepies-battle-for-the-soul-of-the-internet/
======
Tehnix
To be honest, the disgusting hit pieces/slander from WSJ, Vox, The Verge, etc
that has been on PewDiePie, has made me loose almost all faith in MSM outlets
and their credibility. If you let your journalists write things that are so
outright wrong, and so extremely trying to twist the words of someone to
manipulate your readers, then why on earth should I trust any other story from
you.

And I doubt in any way I’m alone in this—proabably the far majority of
PewDiePie’s subscribers don’t take media outlets serious anymore.

The age of journalism has long been dead. Click-bait killed in, and now they
just putting nails in their own coffin.

~~~
wp381640
I knew little about this topic until I just happen to catch Pewdiepie on a
podcast.

He spoke at length about the recent Swedish elections, how his mother cried
when the Swedish Democrats (the new right-wing) party won, how he thinks young
people can be more racist than old people today, went on to defend immigrants,
the old Swedish values of being an open society etc.

He sounded like the complete opposite of what the media in these stories are
portraying him to be

~~~
qnsi
Do you happen to know the name of podcast? Was it in English or in Swedish?

------
Reedx
This trend of outrage journalism is disturbing. Where the goal seems to be
about finding the worst possible interpretation for clicks and prestige
points. The headline is all that seems to matter, with few digging into the
actual context. Which both fuels more uninformed outrage and erodes trust in
journalism overall.

It seems like a new form of witch hunting?

~~~
toufiqbarhamov
The issue is not that journalism has developed a new trend of ginning up
outrage, that’s a constant in the history of journalism. The issue is that
it’s rapidly becoming all that’s left, all that most people consume, and it’s
unleavened with anything like responsibility, or balance from respectable
journalists and politicians with at least _some_ limits.

It’s the degradation of _all_ media rather than just a large portion of it,
which is new and worrying.

~~~
darkpuma
Whether it's all media or some media doesn't really matter so much, I think
what's really important is how much influence is actually wielded by the bad
actors. Good media existing doesn't do us much good if that media isn't the
influential media.

You're absolutely right about it being a constant in the history of journalism
though. Recently I've heard a lot of talk about how the situation in this
respect is getting worse, but I think it's important to remember that yellow
journalism is nothing new, nor is the influence it wields. The _Spanish
American War_ was essentially started by yellow journalist media barons
fabricating public consensus, and the ramifications of that war were fairly
severe in both hemispheres. Maybe Vox picking on pewdiepie is unfair, or maybe
they're justified. But viewed in the proper context it's inconsequential
either way; neither Vox nor pewdiepie are provoking bullshit wars. Thank the
gods for that.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Maybe Vox picking on pewdiepie is unfair, or maybe they're justified. But
> viewed in the proper context it's inconsequential either way; neither Vox
> nor pewdiepie are provoking bullshit wars.

But they _are_ provoking bullshit wars.

Being an unreasonable extremist and drowning out the reasonable voices on your
team gives the unreasonable extremists on the other team license to do the
same.

People being able to express contrary opinions in public is a release valve
that allows a moderate consensus to form.

Polarizing everything and then shutting down public debate is how you get into
a war. Just because nobody is actively building munitions factories doesn't
make this a benign development that it's reasonable to ignore just because the
country is not yet literally on fire.

~~~
darkpuma
> _" But they are provoking bullshit wars."_

No not actually. Hyperbole is fine but don't confuse it for the real thing.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
How does the real thing happen?

~~~
darkpuma
Similar process is not similar outcomes. The stakes in pewdiepie vs vox are
far less serious than an _actual war_. This really should not require
explanation.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
The media doesn't provoke an actual war by bombing anyone themselves.

~~~
darkpuma
I'm not sure what your point is, I never claimed media organizations were
doing the bombing.

To reiterate my point: Yellow journalism that successfully warmongers is a far
cry from yellow journalism that gets into a heated argument with a youtube
celebrity. The methods employed by yellow journalists may be identical (in
fact I'd argue they probably are), but there is a serious disparity in the
severity of the outcome. And considering that in one case we're talking about
significant loss of human life, I don't think you should be abstracting that
away so coldly.

You should be thankful that the Vox/pewdiepie spat is not getting thousands of
people killed and territory annexed. Is that not clear?

~~~
AnthonyMouse
That it's all the same methods is the issue. Honing a censorship apparatus on
random people is how it becomes sharp enough to do real damage.

When you find a tiger loose in a city, the response should be to do what it
takes to get it off the streets, not that we should be thankful that
everything is fine because so far it has only been hunting puppies.

~~~
darkpuma
> _" That it's all the same methods is the issue."_

Only if you're abstracting away the value of real human lives. If a tiger
breaks loose you should be concerned by that tiger but ALSO be thankful that
nobody has been eaten by it. If you forget the later, you forget your
humanity.

------
Chazprime
_“PewDiePie’s ties to white supremacy spell serious trouble for the future of
YouTube”_

Titles like the above are likely the reason that news outlets like Vox and
Vice have fallen on hard times.

It’s a shame really - both outlets have done some seriously groundbreaking
work, but this...this is just cheap outrage-bait for clicks.

~~~
fareesh
As an outsider it feels like young people in America are getting their values
from some kind of cult of political correctness. It seems to be doing the same
thing that the religious right used to do at one point in time. The old
censorious approach to a new set of blasphemous topics has become the norm.

What seems obviously broken is the fact that ideals like free speech, free
association, due process, etc. have taken a backseat to some new rules like
inclusivity, hyper sensitivity and hyper empathy.

That is dangerous for society. It has happened before in so many theocracies.
A very vocal group seems to have seized the reins of all mainstream media and
technology companies in areas like "trust and safety", which always seem to
morph into propaganda outfits.

By displacing to a large extent judeo Christian values, for all their faults,
perhaps in education and elsewhere, it looks like something far more broken,
dangerous and sinister has filled the void left by it.

As a result the new crop of young talent seems to be attracted to these new
"woke" companies like vice and vox who are pandering to their misguided ideas
of the world.

~~~
hnmonkey
What 'far more broken, dangerous, and sinister' things have filled the void
left by Judeo-Christian values? There's a long history of Judeo-Christian
values being pretty broken, dangerous, and sinister themselves. The Spanish
Inquisition is just 1 of many examples.

~~~
leereeves
The Spanish Inquisition occurred under the aegis of a church that had strayed
so far from Judeo-Christian values that many of the most pious people in
Europe would soon abandon it.

Judeo-Christian values are hard to pin down, but I feel confident that the
15th century Catholic Church did not reflect those values.

~~~
wp381640
Isn't that just a way of saying Judeo-Christian values are anything good
Judeo-Christians have done, but none of the bad stuff?

~~~
leereeves
Isn't that what "values" means? Things that "good" people do and "bad" people
don't.

I'm just offering the Reformation as evidence that even people in the 1500s
didn't consider the behavior of the Catholic Church at that time "good".

Edit: As the responses point out, people don't all agree about values. I
didn't mean to imply otherwise.

~~~
hnmonkey
I don't think values means that at all. Some of the most evil people in
history had values too, but they were considered awful by others. Many times
in history their values from their perspective were noble, yet to others they
were murdering people for their thoughts or speech.

------
spectre256
A key part of the article seems to be that PewDiePie's channel is largely
satire, which is inherently under attack and worth protecting. Maybe I am
getting old, but I find satire a lot less valuable than I once did.

The article mentions South Park too. I once loved the show, and still remember
many moments in a strangely fond way. But the problem of Poe's law and the
like means satire is sometimes taken seriously, and the cumulative effects of
that have serious and real repercussions.

The creators of South Park, for example, recently "apologized" to Al Gore[1],
who they ridiculed mercilessly. Many people believe that ridicule seriously
hurt the climate change movement. I can't imagine what a real world solution
would look like, but I would gladly live in a world where those episodes
disappeared and we were in a little better spot regarding climate change.

We probably don't yet know what the lasting legacy of PewDiePie will be, but
personally I'm doubting the positive aspects of it will outweigh the effects
of many of his viewers taking some of his satire seriously.

[1] [https://www.salon.com/2018/11/08/south-park-apologizes-to-
al...](https://www.salon.com/2018/11/08/south-park-apologizes-to-al-gore-and-
admits-it-was-wrong-about-global-warming)

~~~
hnmonkey
If his channel falls into a satire category then the category has massively
expanded these days. Outrage porn is not satire and is just going for shock
value. It's not satirizing anything, which is often a commentary on how absurd
something is and not just saying something disgusting to get views.

~~~
solarkraft
I don't follow him much, but his content (currently, he pivoted from a few
years ago) certainly has satirical elements.

------
drak0n1c
I'm in my late twenties, and it's interesting to see "tech" and "culture"
journalists around my age get more and more out of touch with internet
culture. At first I thought it was deliberate misinterpretation of satire and
Monty Python shock-jock comedy for the purposes of clicks and politics.

Now I'm not so sure - much like how early 4chan's self-deprecating and self-
aware irreverence devolved in a swell of uncreative people taking the memes
(and themselves) way too seriously, the same seems to be occurring with the
media. Maybe the media is on to something when they say memes, jokes, and
satire are dangerous because too many people take the performance literally
and become neo-Nazis? But I don't see this phenomenon as only existing inside
that sphere - so many people, even journalists who should know better, are
content with bits of second-hand information and out-of-context sound bites
when making up their mind about something or someone.

Maybe we're getting too comfortable with the internet. It was once a curio
outside of our brain, but as it becomes a part of who we are we increasingly
give it authenticity.

~~~
sascha_sl
A wise anon said as far back as 2007, on 4chan's politics board, paraphrased:

A community that consistently pretends to be something will eventually attract
and finally be replaced by exactly the people they meant to pose as.

In this case, nazis. Even now you can't really tell how serious people on
there are.

------
smacktoward
_> The story centres entirely on Kjellberg accidentally throwing a fringe site
into a laundry list of other outlets he was seeking to signal-boost._

Poor Pewd! It's sad how these accidents keep happening to him, over and over
again. Just bad luck, I guess.

~~~
Rotten194
[https://twitter.com/prettybadlefty/status/107234761673268428...](https://twitter.com/prettybadlefty/status/1072347616732684289?s=21)
is my favorite take on this

~~~
akhilcacharya
"It's just a heated gaming moment, over the course of several years!"

------
will4274
It's interesting to compare the level of forgiveness / empathy from news
organizations like Vox and Vice depending on the subject they are covering.

1\. Youtube star who links a white supremacist channel and then immediately
disavows it - still a racist.

2\. Democratic presidential candidate (Obama) meets with and has photos taken
with avowed racist and anti-Semite (Farrakhan) and then disavows it a few
years later - no problems here.

Websites with discussion (like hacker news) have simple rules like "assume
good faith." If somebody says they don't believe something, participants are
expected to accept that, unless there is evidence to the contrary. Yet,
"respected news organizations" like Vox and Vice only presume good faith for
people who agree with them.

~~~
akhilcacharya
And yet, when 3. our current president said there were "fine people on both
sides" it's still racist, because it is a _pattern of behavior_. It's not a
single incident.

Obama disavowed Wright and Farrakhan in a speech that was praised by nearly
everyone, including Mike Huckabee and John McCain, and was president for 8
years without winking at Nazis, white supremacists, or anti-semites like
Farrakhan.

~~~
anon12345690
do you realize that people use bad words all the time in real life? saying a
few bad words when you record yourself hours every day is not a big deal and
almost everyone can look past it because other than some words he hasnt
actually done anything

meanwhile you should probably pay attention to actual fascists out there in
the world like in china and russia

~~~
akhilcacharya
Because most people don’t use the nslur against people even in “heated gaming
moments”

~~~
username90
Young people in Sweden used it kinda like "fucker" when pewdiepie grew up. It
is wrong to use the word that way for the same reason it is wrong to use the
word retarded etc and he should stop, but using it is in no way proof that he
is a racist.

~~~
akhilcacharya
That, plus the fiverr stuff, plus the E;R shoutout, plus the n-word? It's a
pattern of behavior of either being racist or being incredibly irresponsible
and ignorant.

Not that it absolves him of even saying it, which is pretty bad on its own,
especially in a pejorative sense.

For the record, I know from being on the receiving end that racist young
people use it in America too so he's not getting a pass on that from me (nor
should he).

~~~
username90
You can't judge a white Swede with the same standard as a white American, they
grew up in completely different cultures. In Sweden saying the n word was
completely normal 20 years ago and almost everybody did it, not just racists
but a lot of immigration friendly people as well. That means that pewdiepie
having that word in his unconscious vocabulary is not a sign of him being a
racist, but of him having grown up in Sweden in the 90's. White Americans on
the other hand have been drilled not to say the word for a long time (kinda
like Voldemort in harry potter) so to them it is unthinkable to say the word
like that, but pewdiepie didn't have the luxury of growing up in USA. Being
lenient to foreigners is an important part of globalism, he did something
wrong, said he was sorry and he is unlikely to do it again, why is it so
important to you to press further?

Also many racist things that would be totally unacceptable in Sweden are
common in USA so it is not like we are more tolerant or racist than you are
over there, we just focus on different things. For example in Sweden it is
unacceptable to group people together like "African American", expressions
like that are there to alienate groups. Instead we think it is enough to call
everyone "Swedish", it is unthinkable that a politician would start calling
immigrants "Afro Swedish". Or at least it was seems like we have gotten more
influenced by USA now. But another thing: In Sweden it is seen as very racist
to ask about race, gather data about race etc, while in USA that is mandatory.
A politician suggesting adding such measures would get called a Nazi and
thrown out immediately.

About the other things, pewdiepie has produced around 600 hours of original
video content with edgy humor on his own, each clip getting millions of views.
Edgy humor tends to skirt on whats acceptable and he is bound to make mistakes
sometimes, especially with the cultural differences between Sweden and USA. I
think it is stranger that they haven't found more dirt on him on than they
did.

------
tomohawk
Pretty good read. Liked this quote:

> Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya once recalled his work with Facebook
> this way: “We trumpeted [our platform] like it was some hot-shit big deal.
> And I remember when we raised money from Bill Gates…And Gates said something
> along the lines of, ‘That’s a crock of shit. This isn’t a ‘platform.’ A
> platform is when the economic value of everybody that uses it exceeds the
> value of the company that creates it. Then it’s a platform.’” The brilliant
> Microsoft founder knew that his own Windows operating system was a true
> platform because, as Microsoft openly bragged, the company itself captured
> only a minority of the value created through the Windows ecosystem.
> Facebook, YouTube and Google are in a completely different category—because
> the vast majority of the wealth they generate is controlled by the social-
> media oligopolies themselves. They aren’t platforms so much as rent-seeking
> agents that oversee a set of critical economic protocols.

~~~
tokyodude
I don't know about the Google of today but the Google of say 2003 clearly fit
that definition. It was making it possible for 1000s of mom and pop shops to
reach a much larger audience. I remember specifically a story about a small
company that made custom cowboy boots that was doing much better now that it
could could buy a few keywords and target people looking for those kinds of
boots so that seems to fit.

Youtube certainly seems like a platform for others to make money, the top
example being PewDiePie himself making 7 million year 2 or 3 years ago from
just youtube ad share. No idea how much more he made from product placements
or endorsements. There's clearly some amount being made by groups like Vox,
Kurzgesagt, Corridor, and similar channels who . Would those channels be able
to survive if they had to pay to stream their own video?

------
jl2718
I’d like to re-center this on the author’s central diagnosis. Advertising is
the problem. Bad protocol design is the cause. Now advertising giants control
the protocols.

What are we going to do about it?

------
luord
While I won't subscribe to PewDiePie because I'm just not interested in that
kind of content... I disagree with very, very little of this piece.

Sad state of affairs.

------
hyperpape
Search this article for the racial slur that PewDePie yelled out during a
livestream, and you won’t find it.

The essence of the anti-censorship position, non-governmental or otherwise, is
acknowledging when someone says something that you object to, and nonetheless
supporting their right to say it. Sweeping it under the rug is just cowardice.

(I’m being generous in even linking this to censorship of any form. PewDePie
is still on YouTube (as he should be allowed to be!), he just wasn’t featured
in a highlight reel).

~~~
username90
To someone not growing up in America it isn't clear that you can't say the
n-word. We see people say it all the time in tv shows so we just copy that.
Therefore it makes perfect sense that Europeans uses the n-word without being
racist. Once they are told to stop they usually do though.

------
repolfx
All the comments here are about journalism or politics so I'll start a thread
about technology instead. The article says this:

 _this kind of power hoarding exists only because of insufficiently farsighted
design of the early web ... Were there a public protocol that allowed video to
be shared as easily as hypertext, there would be no need for YouTube_

But this is a major misunderstanding of the problem, which is not due to the
web's design but rather the basic incentive issues around the creation of
decentralised, public infrastructure.

Because of course there _is_ such a public protocol that allows video to be
shared as easily as hypertext. It's called _the web_. How does this author
think YouTube works, exactly? Anyone can transcode a video, upload it to their
personal web server and use the <video> tag. The codecs, the transports, the
viewer software, it's all free and public.

So why don't PewDiePie and others like them do that? Why do they all flock to
YouTube and then create massive dramas over YouTube's policies? And by the
way, I ask these rhetorical questions as someone who is no fan of Google's
recent turn towards blocking and censorship of conservative views.

Well the questions are rhetorical because the answers are obvious. They stick
with YouTube and don't even go elsewhere if they get silenced because the
value YouTube is providing them is staggeringly huge. YouTube isn't merely a
way to publish video. It's a huge, no questions asked bandwidth and CPU
subsidy. It's the technology to instantly handle serving to planet-scale
populations. It's commenting and voting that's defending against spamming and
other forms of DoS. It's discovery and sharing. It's editing tools and
analytics and most of all it's advertising - _monetisation_ is what we lack
public infrastructure for, not video serving.

And why do we lack public protocols for all these things? Because creating
YouTube is a hell of a lot of work for many people and they want to get paid
for their skills. Which inherently means they need to own the result of their
work, and ownership implies control. Private property rights, that's
capitalism and incentives 101.

I've worked on decentralisation related software for a long time and still do,
because there are certain areas where it can really help. But you can't
inherently point the finger at existing technologies and say "if only they
were better, everything would be decentralised". No, it doesn't work like
that. It's a failed analysis of the problem. Create decentralised tech like
the <video> tag or git, and a YouTube and GitHub will arise around it and re-
centralise it all by providing value the public protocol does not. Society
_wants_ centralisation because most of the time, the abuses of power it allows
are collectively considered low cost relative to the benefits of the extra
features and competence the centralisation allows.

This doesn't mean it's all useless. Git being decentralised is helpful even
though everyone has centralised around GitHub: if you _do_ want to move your
code off of GitHub, you are just a "git push" away from having all your
history and branches painlessly transferred to GitLab or your own server.
Sure, that won't help your issues or pull requests, but that doesn't take away
from the fact that source code is now properly decentralised and that's still
better than before. So we should continue to develop decentralised technology,
whilst understanding that it won't result in everyone using purely
decentralised systems.

~~~
allenf13
Hi all - this is Allen Farrington, the author of the piece (not sure how to
prove that but oh well. If only we had a public protocol for identity :P )

I just wanted to say that of all the commentary on the article across the web
that I am aware of, this is by far the most interesting and informed. I would
really encourage the contributor of this post to copy and paste the whole
thing onto the Quillette article itself as it may well get a great
conversation going.

In short, I am aware of all these issues and agree that the best way to frame
the problem is not really in terms of 'technology' per se, but in terms of
incentives. That folds in what I think is the all-important point about
monetisation, which I completely agree with.

Where I think I disagree slightly is the overly deterministic assertion that
'recentralisation will occur' due to social demands. I think this
understanding underplays how much social interaction with technology is
moulded by the technology itself. This is getting a bit subjective at this
point, but I don't think society really does 'want' centralisation, at least
not along the lines of such a sweeping declaration. I think they like the
results of centralisation as they happen to exist on the web so far. But, as
above, these are strongly determined by the available technology, and in turn
what incentives are viable. As you say yourself lower down, there are cases at
meaningful scale where the degree of decentralisation is increasing, and other
more speculative cases in which the degree of decentralisation is a step
change from current norms. My thought (/my hope) is that this provides enough
leeway to enormously alter incentives such that social interaction with the
technology can alter enormously as well.

Fortunately for some, unfortunately for others, I covered these issues
extremely briefly and overly rhetorically in the article as I am assuming that
some 99% of the audience has never even considered these issues, never mind
having the technical understanding to follow a discussion this in-depth. I was
really using the hook of PewDiePie to meander towards this exact topic. That
said, I am very happy that this discussion has got going here! Good job, and
please spread it if you can!

~~~
repolfx
Glad you liked it! :)

You may well be right about the interplay of what society 'wants' vs
technology choices. After all, git and GitHub competed in a market against
totally centralised and proprietary version control systems, and won. The
decentralised nature of git, making forking easy and so on, was surely a part
of that, and is certainly the hard part relative to fairly trivial features
like an issue or PR tracker.

I'll copy and paste the comment into Quillette. One might say, I'll fork the
conversation. Perhaps we need a git-like mechanism for discussing essays on
the internet :)

------
unixhero
Let's try a Trump quote "There is good people on both sides"

rofl

~~~
drak0n1c
I'll play devil's advocate. Part of the Charlottesville pro-statue crowd were
"heritage not hate" types who grew up with those town statues as part of their
local history and had no personal racial animus. While I think they're
misguided, I think they can still be "good people". They heard of the rally
amidst the trend of statues getting taken down, and showed up without knowing
of the organizer or who else would show up. Before you dismiss this out of
reflex - most Women's March attendees had no idea that some organizers of the
march were connected to anti-Semitism and a speaker was convicted for
torturing a gay man to death (Donna Hylton).

Of course, this part of the crowd was not sensational and was not covered so
perceptions were shaped accordingly. The part that was repeatedly covered was
the neo-Nazi vans showing up later in the day (the original attendees started
leaving when this happened), and the subsequent brawls and vehicle terrorism.

Much like how there were well-intentioned statue protesters and violent antifa
marxists, there were also well-intentioned statue advocates and violent neo-
nazis. In light of that the statement of "good people on both sides" is not
malicious or technically wrong, though it was unnecessary and tone-deaf.

~~~
will4274
It's unfortunate that you are downvoted without any responses. I read this
article about the Women's March just today: [https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-
news-and-politics/276694/is...](https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-
politics/276694/is-the-womens-march-melting-down) . Certainly many of the
people I know (having grown up in a fairly Jewish community) attended the
Women's March without understanding the views of their leadership.

------
pfschell
20 years ago when the internet was just hitting its stride, it would be
unthinkable for any individual or organization to systematically attack anyone
on the internet for the content they created.

The fact that so many have devolved into a religious fervor over silencing any
views they don't like is anathema to the fundamental purpose of the internet
itself.

Edit: and entirely predictably, I am being attacked for saying this. HN is
part of the problem.

~~~
hnmonkey
The internet is a place where usually people can state their views openly.
That is happening. However, what's also happening is people find his views and
comments disgusting and they're commenting on it. Totally within their rights
to do.

And it's not as unthinkable as you say at all that an individual or
organization would attack others for what content they create. Since there has
been an internet there's been people who attacked others for their content.
I'm not sure what internet you saw 20 years ago but it wasn't the same I saw.

~~~
PavlovsCat
rotten.com? stileproject? goatse.cx? _were_ there even other sites 20 years
ago? The Smoking Gun? When did Cryptome/Cartome start? I don't know, but I
know users on slashdot weren't pearl-clutching prudes, for example.

Sure people "commented on" things they didn't like, on their own websites. Not
on platforms from which they wanted to kick others, certainly not as a
habitual normal thing a sane person would consider. Yes, "such people always
existed", so in that sense it was "thinkable". But it wasn't done as a matter
of course, as a way to win debates.

