I am setting up this blog to address a number of technical and legal issues that, over the long run, can affect the freedom of media newbies like me to speak freely on the Internet and other low-cost media that have developed in the past ten years.
Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!
Video channels are more likely to hold their own financially than blogs, although this is a fairly recent development
Just to follow on yesterday’s discussions:
It’s apparent that in the past few years (starting
maybe in 2013 or so), video channels seem to have replaced blogs in popularity,
for the most part.Some video bloggers
can make six figures in patronage and advertising and some subscriptions a
year. Like anything else, there is a bit of winner-take-all, and there is a
finite limit on how much the public would pay for this.
Video blogging in the US is done mostly on YouTube,
which is on its surface a free service.It has been very stable and very secure. The ContentID has been
manageable, but sometimes it does flag videos for unintentional background
music (usually without copyright strikes).As with Blogger, there is some risk in using “somebody else’s free
service” (without phone support) and recently YouTube has become stricter on
what it will not allow (weapons demonstrations and sales, for starters).But in the later part of 2018, a number of “conservative”
vloggers found themselves kicked off patronage platforms apparently from
left-wing pressure on payment processors following Charlottesville and even
Trump’s election (and right-wing unrest in Europe).
Video blogging from EU countries would be severely
restricted it Article 13 were to go into effect.
But blogs became prominent in the early 2000’s, most
of all Heather Armstrong’s famous mommy blog, “Dooce”, a verb she invented to
mean fired for an online reputation problem.Typically blogs were dependent on search engine placement for visitors
and revenue, but some of them do get fed into social media algorithms. Blog content usually is free and supported by
ad revenue (clicks and especially product purchases, which happen today less
often because of social media competition). But most blogs (outside of mommy blogs) make
money only when connected to an already successful business.Blog success was tied to building email
subscription lists, which became more objectionable as time went on because of
spam and phishing concerns.Blogs were usually
managed technically by hosting companies, which also sold domain names.Generally, hosting companies had good phone
support.Although they had AUP’s against
obviously bad or illegal behaviors, generally deplatforming was not a problem
until things changed suddenly with Charlottesville, as companies came under
pressure not to become associated with white supremacy or some of the “alt-right”.Typically they had not been as concerned about
radical Islam or foreign influences. Security concerns are more likely to occur
with hosted content than with free services from very large platforms
(Facebook, YouTube).In a polarized
political climate, these could become more significant with “free” by otherwise
obscure content.
Blogs can be read and easily cross referenced over
time with labels and tags. So they are easier to do research from. But videos,
while taking longer to consume, now are much more popular with most visitors
and more likely to hold their own financially. In watching the video above, please remember that there have been controversies with Patreon recently, as explained in other blog posts here or from many other sources online.
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