One of the keys to success in digital content creation is mastering search engine optimization — a powerful strategy that boosts a creator’s visibility. SEO involves using targeted keywords in video titles, descriptions, and tags, along with engaging thumbnails and captions, to help search engines like Google and YouTube rank content higher in search results, driving more viewers to discover it.
Here’s how it works: A YouTuber films a cooking video demonstrating a pasta recipe. To reach a wider audience, she applies SEO by crafting a keyword-rich title and description with phrases like “easy dinner ideas” and “quick pasta dish” and adding relevant tags to her video. If she does this well, she increases her video’s chances of ranking higher in YouTube search results, attracting more viewers in a competitive digital landscape.
But what happens when Big Tech shadow cabals in collaboration with federal entities decide to erect virtual barriers that prevent certain topics from appearing on search result pages — regardless of how adeptly the creator used SEO and other content-optimizing digital tools?
BlazeTV host Steve Deace has been living out the reality of that question for years.
Topics — especially “controversial” ones — YouTube, Apple iTunes, and Google have deemed problematic are quietly buried under an avalanche of other content. This censorship has been happening for years, so conservative content creators got smarter and found loopholes around the algorithms by avoiding key words and phrases they knew would be flagged and squashed.
However, Big Tech companies are now “transcribing everything that’s said on podcasts,” meaning creators cannot avoid the consequences of discussing forbidden topics.
“So let’s pretend we spend an entire entire show just debunking the demonic ideology of transgenderism, but we market it in a way that it says nothing about trans in order to try to get around the algorithm. Well, now that they’re transcribing that for us, we can’t get around that,” says producer Aaron McIntire.
Creators can appeal YouTube’s decision to demonetize their show, but success is rare. “There’s basically no recourse whatsoever,” says Aaron.
“I would venture a guess we are the largest show in America with by far the most anemic YouTube traffic,” says Steve. “They’re making it so we can’t connect with our audiences, and if we can’t connect with you, we can’t hit the numbers we want to get the monetization we need to keep even doing this at all.”
Steve has been battling Big Tech censorship behind the scenes for years now. Recently, however, his fight experienced a new development when he contacted First Liberty — “the leading constitutional conservative political advocacy organization in the country” — which determined that Steve, indeed, had grounds to file a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.
To hear where Steve is at in the process of fighting Big Tech censorship, watch the episode above.
Want more from Steve Deace?
To enjoy more of Steve’s take on national politics, Christian worldview, and principled conservatism with a snarky twist, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
The post Steve Deace vs. Big Tech censorship — the battle everyone should be following appeared first on TheBlaze.
