Rice discusses YouTube censorship and Bitcoin’s public perception

0:00i'm ashlyn addison from event shane for investmentpitch media and FinTech news network and today on blockchain interviews we have rice from the rice crypto show hey man welcome to the show it's great to see you again it's great seeing you man I appreciate you inviting me on the show I'm looking forward to this talk yeah me too there's so much to talk

0:19about so much has been happening in the crypto space in the past few months you know I think we last I mean we've done a lot of virtual shows together but it was last the world crypto con in Vegas where we were in that in-person event and I'm looking forward to getting back to those in-person events but if yet yeah a particular event was a lot of fun man I

0:37really enjoyed that afterparty that's I think the first time we met was at that afterparty so that was a really cool time yeah and there's still a few months here till the world Krypton comes back again so let's hope all goes well and we can get back there in person but for this interview it'd be great if you could kick off a little bit of background on yourself and you know how

0:56you first got into cryptocurrency and getting up to this point now all right well the how I found cryptocurrency I kind of try to start as much as I can from the beginning I started studying on going to school for Business Administration and started studying economics and before that I really didn't care a lot about money or monetary policy and we're only talking

1:19like five six years ago so at this time I start doing my going down these rabbit holes and doing my research and kind of discovering how our monetary system works and in talking about the Federal Reserve fiat money and fractional reserve banking and just really was kind of disgusted about it even talking to my teacher about some of these feelings she

1:42disagreed and even the college I went to they were trying to claim that the Federal Reserve was part of the government and I was trying to explain that it wasn't so that really kind of opened my eyes to a lot of things and at that point I was already kind of getting involved in precious metals which was at the time the way I was looking at preserving my wealth and then I started

2:03stumbling upon Bitcoin and crypto currencies it was sometime around 2016 that I had been hearing a lot about it and doing a little bit of research not really doing much more than that and then in school there was a couple times where I was gonna do presentations on something blockchain based or talking about Bitcoin but I was still kind of new to the space and didn't really feel

2:25like I could do a good job of explaining it in a presentation especially in a short time period but you know to shorten that story early 2017 I decided to go ahead and start investing into Bitcoin and diversifying and other crypto currencies and really went down the rabbit holes that I mentioned earlier there's so many rabbit holes you can go down and I just really got sucked

2:50into it I saw the power and potential of what bitcoin and blockchain technology will offer as creative destruction and bringing us that power and taking away the element of the power that governments and central banks have with fiat money so if that if that makes sense that's kind of where I come from and how I got Mabi crypto definitely and I really resonate with that because I

3:13too did Business Administration and was studying economics and it was really just the great combination between technology and finance right and this is the very forefront of innovation with Bitcoin and all these other distributed Ledger's so it's so exciting you know I could see how you it would attract to it and now you've produced so much content

3:33related to the space educational informational were you creating content before you got into crypto as well and also what do you like most about being an independent journalist okay so yeah I'm really glad you asked that you mentioned journalists because I don't look at myself as an influencer or I definitely look at myself as a content creator and a journalist so I appreciate

3:55you saying that now as far as the journalism and what I did as far as before I started my youtube channel and cryptocurrency education I was a musician and I was doing a magazine wrote for a couple different magazines so I consider myself an artist and I always created different things but never actually went into the video element so when I started my channel

4:19originally the beginning of 2018 I have a starting out with my top using my laptop mic and camera and just just getting started and as I was going started improving my cameras my editing qualities and things like that improving how I do my thumbnails and learning about marketing and keywords and so I've always looked at myself as an artist and once I got involved in

4:45cryptocurrency I knew that education was gonna become an important factor especially for new people coming into the space I look at what we do is offering tech support so starting a YouTube channel I felt was an opportunity for me to be able to voice some of the things that I'm concerned about and help educate and empower people and not only just cryptocurrency

5:07and blockchain but also with economics and the philosophies of anarchy and voluntary ISM because I do identify both very interesting and you do have quite a bit of content that you've produced educational wise on YouTube as well but I'm curious on your take on the recent censorship about Bitcoin related and cryptocurrency related topics on YouTube you know have you been affected by it

5:31personally and what should be done about this situation this is a great question because censorship is actually becoming a very important thing that people need to start paying attention to because it's getting to the point and that if people don't start paying attention and saying things now we're actually just gonna lose control and the situation is

5:52gonna get a lot worse and with that being said yes I my channel itself was affected in some different forms of censorship and shadow banning and me in particular it was the end of last year just I was right around Christmas time of 2019 that the crypto YouTube purge took place where a lot of channels on Christmas Eve were given basically warnings or strikes and had videos

6:17removed and that was my situation Christmas Eve I woke up had two videos removed and a warning the next day on Christmas morning I woke up had a strike another video removed and was told I couldn't put any content up for seven days Wow and I appealed that process never heard anything back but the next day the 26th a day after Christmas everything was

6:37back to normal all those videos were there it was as if I never got a warning or strike but there was no explanation and there was a lot of other content creators who got affected at the time now we've been seeing some people over the past month or so that have been losing their channels and getting them back I think data – was one crypto Crow was another

6:58and you know I don't really think there's been any explanation I'm not sure if it's YouTube trying to test out how people are gonna react or if it's a situation where somebody's manipulating the system and you got people reporting and flagging videos and content creators now as far as the recent censorship that we're talking about with Bitcoin related

7:19content um there definitely has been a decline and a shadow banning of the content not necessarily a censorship a censorship would be outright removing it but shadow banning is trying to minimize its visibility on the platform basically not promoting it and what we're finding with a lot of content creators is their their analytics and on the backend a lot

7:41of that is being affected by the views the impressions all that is gone down by some in some cases up to 50% in a lot of people's cases now some people are speculating that this is because ripple is taking YouTube to court they're suing YouTube over an issue that we're seeing with live streams so you're seeing legitimate live streams like I think the coin Telegraph having

8:07party I think it got cut off by YouTube yeah and that was a legitimate live stream and but you're seeing people who are buying other people's channels changing the name and putting up a picture saying aetherium and use invite Alex pitcher or putting up something about ripple and putting up a picture of somebody from riffle and they're doing this they're doing it for Bitcoin cash

8:29and a lot of different things but these these streams they're not legitimate that are definitely scams that people are reporting are not getting taken off or removed but you're seeing legitimate videos being removed so I think that YouTube it is in a way punishing the cryptocurrency community for ripple XRP labs or whoever it is that's actually doing YouTube and they're suing because

8:54of one of these channels that's in it's basically scamming people trying to pretend to be somebody a triple which basically is defaming ripples so I understand what ripple is doing but I don't think they understand it the consequences of the effects of how it's gonna affect the entire industry because a lot of people are getting education and getting information from content

9:19creators on YouTube and if YouTube is shadow banning the videos meaning they're not making it come up in your suggestion you're not getting notifications because a lot I've been dealing with this before the crypto YouTube purge because I am an outspoken anarchist and voluntarios so I've been dealing with people being unsubscribed for my channel it don't unsubscribe I've

9:38had people that tell me they don't get you know no notifications or they're not whether their notification bell gets turned off and they don't turn it off so and then I get some people who tell me that they get everything like normal and there's no problem so it's it's very hard to figure out the algorithm but there's definitely some censorship going

9:59on and a lot of shadow banning yeah there's definitely a lot going on there and without a proper explanation from YouTube you know you can only speculate as to all of the different reasons now do you think that part of the maybe one of the reasons is to protect you know you mentioned that there's scams and I have seen some live streams where you know people put up a fake live stream

10:22and you send Bitcoin and they send you back double and it sounds you know pretty scammy from from the get-go but there's obviously a lot of great valuable educational content coming out as well that's clearly isn't a scam you know is YouTube blanketing this together and they're trying to protect individuals you know do you think that or is it that we need to protect people because

10:44cryptocurrency is still new and and you know you don't want them to risk something that they don't understand yet is that part of it I don't know that the second part of what you said would necessarily be what's coming into play I I do know that since everything that's happened this year with the country being shut down because of various I'm not going to mention just because of

11:07censorship and shadow banning the data that data basically being used as an excuse and a scapegoat in the situation now they're saying because of the situation that YouTube is not having as many employees at their office and with that being said they're running on an automated system and they said this team YouTube several months ago said this that basically they're running on an

11:32automated system that videos can and will be removed some that even don't even go against Community Guidelines and there may or may not be anything if people can do about it and it's kind of deal with it yeah so the problem that we got going on with that and I'm glad that you mention it and I don't mean to like be hot winded about it but this is definitely an important topic and and

11:53I'll basically say it as short as I can YouTube needs to be defined as a public forum or a publisher you can't be both and what that means is as a publisher they can control their content they can censor people and remove and all that good stuff as a public forum they have the responsibility of giving freedom speech which freedom of speech is a double-edged sword because I want to say

12:15what I want to say but I also have to respect the fact that other people want to say what they want to say whether or not I agree with it but freedom of speech is the important factor here and that's really what's under attack and Prager University is suing YouTube to actually get them to define whether they are a publisher or a public forum in a public forum the way it would act is

12:36I'll use like a public utility company like your power company as an example because they are a public utility they're not held responsible or liable for let's say I'm using that power for some illegal source like I live in North Carolina it's illegal to grow marijuana but if I was using the power to do that the power company here is not held liable for that so but then you got to

12:59take in consideration at YouTube is a private company with stake holders and they're always you're looking out for the best interests you know they want profits so they've got to figure out are you a publisher or are you a public forum and you really can't technically be both but depending on how the outcome of this court proceeding goes and how like a verdict of you know the jury

13:18decides to draw a verdict they could incense be a public forum and a publisher by definition by law which would be really bad news for people who are speaking out against anything against the mainstream yeah well it's good to see that you know something it's getting attention and as well there are a lot of alternatives that are popping up blockchain based

13:42alternatives as well I know you're using library and we're backed up to library as well that seems to be one of the great ones but there are quite a few of the other ones as well so it doesn't have the same network effect as YouTube but it does provide a another alternative to have that freedom of speech if you need it well it also gives you the the idea that you know that your

14:04content is still gonna be available if YouTube decides to you be the one like let's say they cut my channel off or your channel off I know that a hundred percent right now that all my stuff is gonna be and I'm using not only library but I use three speak which uses the hive blockchain and I'm also using bit tubers at the moment so I've got my stuff backed up on multiple sites so

14:25that if something happens I at least haven't lost my content and that my work is still available to you know be available for people to be able to watch it which is the point so ultimately it's just kind of having that extra layer security mm-hmm very cool and you know we're running out of time but I really want to touch on one of the focal points of your channel you know it's not as

14:48much crypto related but you seem to talk about it a lot and this is a practicing change you know what does that mean to you yeah and I really appreciate you asking me this because a lot of people don't ask me and I'm sorry I got long-winded on some of these other topics but to keep this short and sweet we talked about changing the world with these technologies of Bitcoin and

15:08cryptocurrency and blockchain like just disruption it can cause and how it can make things better for us as human as humans so basically the idea of practice change is that we get to practice every day being a better person and we get to do this by learning from everything that we do good or bad positive or negative and by being the change you get to

15:29influence other people also to be that chain because you know essentially a lot of people complain about things they don't like in this world but instead of complaining about things they don't like be that change and exemplify that and if you live that and it starts to have that effect on people around you and I think it all ties together because if we talk

15:48about changing the world with these technologies like Bitcoin blockchain then you know we're gonna continue to have the same problems as humanity that we've been having if we don't evolve as well so I think it's kind of important for us as a species to evolve as well as trying to evolve our technologies very well said rice how can people follow your work and

16:11get in touch with you okay so yeah you can find me on YouTube and library mainly or my main channels library I post exclusive content it's rice crypto at two words I also have a patreon channel I started recently you can find me on patreon obviously at rice crypto and pretty much everywhere on social media Facebook Twitter Instagram at rice crypto great rice I'll leave those links

16:36in the description box below as well and thank you so much for taking the time man it's been a pleasure speaking with you I'm looking forward to the future and following up soon I definitely enjoyed it thank you