NSR: A gun on Every Corner: Discuss the NRA, Gun Ownership and All Those Non-Mass Shootings..

Yes 100%. But it's even more complicated - a triangle of doom.

I left this forum and went to study this exact thing - but in relation to something called "law tube" which was more niche and easy to study than politics. Law Tubers are basically unscrupulous attorneys who stream about crimes - usually murder trials. Here is what I found:

1. Bottom up demand: There is strong demand for conspiratorial content where law enforcement, the DA and the Judge are all corrupt and are rail roading the defendant. This demand is met on You Tube, Reddit & Tiktok mostly.

2. Algo creates Bad Incentives: Due to this demand, the algo prioritises dishonest and misleading 'entertainment' dressed up as legal analysis. Because the people producing it are attorneys people believe this is representative of legal opinion - which is laughable. it's literally just some guy or gal, usually with little relevant experience and almost always out of state. These streamers can make 100s of k per year streaming. End result is almost all content is about the supposed corrupt judge and no one makes "prosecutor tube" - this is a structural artefact - but like you say in the past professional editors would guard against this.

3. Failed gate keeping and elites: Because of 1 and 2, unscrupulous defence attorneys can flood the zone with conspiracies to try to poison juries and destroy faith in institutions.

tldr; the algo is destroying faith in legal institutions.

 

There's a personal injury lawyer in GA (metro Atlanta, I think), who posts stuff about mostly about his trials and cases he deals with, and legal insurance stuff (auto stuff, slip and falls, and related). He's clear about what to do and not to do regarding legal stuff (a lot of it is about not trusting insurance companies looking out for who is being covered). But every now and then, somebody will point out a legal youtube channel or reddit poster or similar posing legal stuff that is not his area (legally or geographically) while using his image.

Additionally, The Plain Bagel guy did an episode on how AI is allowing people to impersonate real people quite well (in his case it was about promoting crypto currency). This is a problem, and too many people don't have the critical thinking ability to figure out the bullshit.

 

To be clear - there are legit defence lawyers and civil lawyers who stream about their area of expertise as a form of marketing. I am not talking about those guys.

Law Tubers will stream ever single day about the Depp trial for example - some for like 3-6 hours a day

People doing that clearly have no real law practice!

 

I understood your point. I was just adding on to it that people can be fooled because of copy/pasting images or AI, as well as the algo just causing problems.

 

I think one point @Yoshou sagely noted is that the business of primary reporting is expensive and time consuming - yet now there is a layer of grifters who essentially harvest the value out of it for free by retooling for the algo, for a share of the platforms profits.

I see almost all this stuff as political punditry - essentially they just watch the news but repackage it as a fun podcast but with no editorial safeguards.

Sports also has this with any number of fanfic streams/tubes who have no actual proprietary info or real insight.

 

Yup. I follow two F1 channels (F1 itself, and The Race) and Driver61. But I get a shit ton of knock off recommendations despite never watching them, and putting them on ignore.

 

Sports I feel is mostly harmless which tribe you choose - reactionary man at the bar Roy Keane, the absurdity of AFTV or Goldbridge - but somehow watching the Goldbridges of politics seems a poor life choice