What Would Happen If All the Scandinavian Countries Combined?
It’s accompanied by a map showing the ‘Scandinavian countries.’ Only it’s wrong because it includes Finland, which isn’t in Scandinavia. This is ignorance and therefore regrettable, but at least it’s probably a genuine and relatively common misapprehension, so there’s little harm done.
What is much worse is the habit of peddling outright lies in order to get clicks. A recent example was ‘King Charles III Abdicates!’ No he didn’t, and there’s no reason to think that he might have done. This has become so common now that the practice of lying to get clicks is apparently regarded as acceptable.
When did this happen? It’s long been accepted in modern civilisations that deliberately lying on a public platform in order to make money is at least frowned upon and usually illegal. This practice on YouTube is akin to those unscrupulous peddlers of coloured water in the Old West who assured the ignorant that their magic elixir was a guaranteed panacea and particularly efficacious against rattlesnake bites.
And money is what it’s all about. The more clicks, the more advertising revenue, so both the YouTuber and Google are happy. It’s inevitable to conclude that it’s why Google apparently makes no attempt to put a stop to it, and why YouTube has become an object of suspicion as much as a means of acquiring information and entertainment.
No comments:
Post a Comment