DECACS, Inc. and all its Initiatives

Archive for January, 2018

“Voices Of Africa” Is available for Black History Month Programs

“Voices Of Africa” Is available for Black History Month Programs

via “Voices Of Africa” Is available for Black History Month Programs — Steemit

“Voices Of Africa” Is available for Black History Month Programs. Bring us to your community centers, schools, churches, colleges and universities. We will travel to where you are!

Enjoy the soul-stirring Magic Of Drums.
Contact VOA: voicesofafrica@voicesofafrica.net
htttp://www.voicesofafrica.net

MORE INFORMATION:
The “Voices Of Africa” Choral & Percussion Ensemble is an Unique Artistic Collective of Artists dedicated to West African percussion Cultural Music. This music includes percussions, dance, songs and storytelling. VOA is an ensemble based in Philadelphia. We have a unique sound and presence with instruments are the Sekere, Sakara drum, Agogo bell, Djembe and Sangba/Djundjun drum and various other hand held percussion instruments. They are a vivacious, performing arts ensemble and have performed to standing ovations at the Women & Earth Conference, Ghana, West Africa, The Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, Washington, D.C., the National Women’s Music Festival and many other venues throughout the country and abroad. The “Voices Of Africa,” share the joy of their music, which spans the African Diaspora, through traditional African and African-American songs, message music, gospel and inspirational percussive rhythms. They have been together since 1990.

VOA Says  “Our purpose is to spread the message of freedom, peace and love through our music”

YouTube Favors Larger Channels But It’s Really The Slow Fizzle for Smaller and Newer Ones.

YouTube Favors Larger Channels But It’s Really The Slow Fizzle for Smaller and Newer Ones.

Greetings…….

The title of this video is “YouTube Favors Larger Channels But It’s Really the Slow Fizzle for the Smaller and Newer Ones.

I have been monitoring the many changes that have been going on with YouTube in 2017. Up until that time, I had seen several channels and videos get hammered by YouTube due to their content for a few years going back.  It didn’t impact on my channel until I stepped out there and did a video series on Michelle Obama and this rumor going around that she was a man. That video series garnered me several views, comments and subscribers. I posted the video in February of 2017 and continued to post subsequent vids to the series, there after.  Then YouTube took the video that had the most views, comments and decided to demonetize it because it was  “not advertiser friendly.” Why, because at that time, it was a no no to even mention transsexuals.

I did a lot of research on that series and did all I could to debunk the rumor by finding the source of it and showing that in my vids.  When YouTube came down on me, I sent them an email explaining what the purpose of my video was, that is, it was to support Michelle and get people to think outside the box, and yet they still, after manual review found my video to “not advertiser friendly”. They stopped monetizing the one that got me the most views, over 300k and then over time went down the list of all of them, one by one, and demonetized them.

Personally, I couldn’t understand what the problem was, there were dozens or maybe even hundreds of channels that had gotten on the “Michelle Obama is a Man” bandwagon and were garnering millions of views.  I had never thought I would get so many views and was quite surprised when I did!  I spent hours answering comments, etc.

Then I began to notice something.  My channel was small, and it didn’t really matter at that time if I got 300k views or over 4million in the past year, the content of my channel was not suitable for YouTube over all and they systematically demonetized my videos as I would put them up, in some instances it was instantaneously! To the point where it did not even matter what I put up, then, in grand YouTube fashion, they would re-monetize it after a day or so.  Of course, most vids are viewed right away so that didn’t help none.

But I also noticed other things that they were doing, they were suppressing views, unsubscribing folks from your channel, hiding your vids in that so called interstitial plane of existence, not alerting subs that you even posted a video and a host of other nefarious, passive aggressive tactics that would prevent your channel from growing or even reaching this so called announced threshold they sent out in their January 17, 2018 letter of intent to squash your revenues.

Even big channels were complaining about losing revenue some got over 300 vids demonetized, some lost channels altogether, some others lost subs and views were suppressed.

To me, it’s cloak and daggers, how in the world can any channel large or small deal with all these subversive tactics to diminish their presence on YouTube and surely the little guys who barely have 1000 subs can’t fight this YouTube War.

I have been on YouTube since 2009, and I was surprised to see my I Ching Videos increase in views over the years.  But it was in 2016 that I actively started to increase my video content because YouTube paid me! I was excited to be able to get a little chump change from them.

However, since my videos about Michelle Obama and the psyops around her being born a man, my views have gone down substantially.  I couldn’t understand why this was happening.  Now folks have to press the button to get notifications about uploaded vids, but that ain’t always the case, cause I get notifications for channels I did not press the button for.

Here is a sample of the vids I have done on this YouTube madness.

“Crowdfunding, Patreon and YouTube Demonetization”

https://youtu.be/F6Cz5XywRf4

In this video I explore the history of YouTube and its connection to Patreon because it seemed a little suspicious that of all the Video platforms you could only link to your patreon account.  I was also leery because Patreon channels became begathons, which I abhor, and which I would seldom do except in the credits of my vids. If you have a bunch of channels you favor, it would be almost financially impossible for you to pay out that money on a monthly basis, unless you are rich and famous and the rich and famous ain’t watching YouTube videos.  They are on the beach somewhere basking in the sun of their riches and fame.

Then YouTube decided to launch a Contributors options, which raised this question:

What is going to happen to Patreon now that Google Contributor has launched?

https://www.quora.com/What-is-going-to-happen-to-Patreon-now-that-Google-Contributor-has-launched.

Of course on the other hand, only if you have a huge YouTube channel with millions of views and thousands of subscribers do you even stand a chance on Patreon.

My next video entitled:

“Why Is YouTube Demonetizing My Videos?”  https://youtu.be/q-sXGne8Bb0

This lead me to the arena of the adpocalypse where YouTube was threatened by advertiser to pull the plug on them if they didn’t straighten up and fly right and get rid of that hate speech that they did not want their advertisements on.  This puzzled me greatly because I don’t have hate speech videos and I could not wrap my brain around what the heck was the problem with my videos, but slowly but surely one by one, they were demonetized, no reason given except some weirdness about not being advertiser friendly and devolving into not advertiser friendly for most advertisers, what ever the heck that means.

I began to scramble, now what do I do, how do I draw revenue from my vids, and of course you have these folks contacting you telling you how awesome your vids are and why don’t you join their program so they can show you how to grow your channel and reach millions.  But seriously though, if YouTube has already decided that your channel is dangerous to its health and well being, you won’t be able to grow anything because they will simply demonetize your videos, hide your channel, suppress your views and refrain from alerting your subscribers, so what’s the sense of getting involved in those “get rich” off YouTube programs?  I mean seriously.

So I started looking at other options for posting videos.  My next video on this YouTube journey is entitled:

“Untying the YouTube Knot”  https://youtu.be/43PvB_Z8TYY

I began to realize that we were having a co-dependent relationship with YouTube and that YouTube was abusing its creators in a very passive aggressive manner.  Instead of just shutting down channels and getting it over with, they started playing games, with its creators, taking them up and down in emotions, people were crying in their videos, others were angry and it was sure nuf free for all of emotions streaming through as channels were being hit, not just the small ones, but the larger ones as well.  And it was becoming clearer and clearer that we needed to drink at another troth because YouTube is not really caring about us, and that means all of us, except of course the silly ones that get millions of views, and even some of those perverted ones and the ones that draw child predators, now those channels thrive, and why is that?  And how do they get ads?  Very curious scenario right there I  might add.

Moving on…

As if what YouTube was doing to us wasn’t bad enough it took out another dagger to stab us with by putting us into their interstitial program.  Now that message from YouTube had me in the dictionary trying to determine what Interstitial meant. So my next video on this YouTube journey of who will win the YouTube jackpot at the end, was entitled:

“YouTube’s Interstitial Program”  https://youtu.be/9bBgfFcTstM

And by the way, all my vids about YouTube shenanigans were demonetized.  Gee, I wonder why?  But I digress.

Now YouTube had decided to push us to the background, I mean we are no longer necessary but they don’t want to just drop us like a hot potato so they give us this fancy name of the place we will be which really means we are so far out of view, you would need a microscope to find us.  So hurray hurray, we are now being interstitialize and of course our views, and subs will drop even further.

And the reason that I am going thru this is because, it ain’t like they just decided to make it hard for us to get views and subs, they have been gradually making it harder and harder for us to get them.  So, anyone coming on board now, is just being smacked with something that has been ongoing for at least 2 years out in the open and longer under cover.  Which is really like under the bed, cause YouTube had been under cover all along, it just got really raunchy lately.

My next video in this scenario, and mind you, it’s what YouTube is doing to my little channel and what I have discovered it’s doing to others as well.  Heads are rolling and I must emphasize, that you big channels out there, don’t get too comfy, cause YouTube is coming after you as well.  It doesn’t want anything on there but what they want on there and that’s TV, re-invented to fit to their platform, they want mainstream, nothing more or less, they do not care about creators or their creations, they want standardized programming that fits their new way and makes the advertisers happy as a kid in play town.

This became clearer and clearer as the saga unfolds.

It got so bad that I finally broke down and alerted all my subs with a personal letter telling them what YouTube was doing and asked them to support me if they wanted to, of course no support came, but hey, who knows if they even got the email?  Besides if you want their emails, to send to them directly you have to pay for that service. If you send out more than 25 emails a day, they end up in the spam folder, so you can’t win for losing.

YouTube got really interesting to the point where I explored in this video entitled

“Not Suitable for Most Advertisers”  https://youtu.be/jeLsed3jyVY

The slow fizzle persists and YouTube starts playing around with what it means to be advertiser friendly, not so friendly to most advertisers and just plain demonetized.  They started changing the color of the little buttons next to your videos and then asking you to request a review, but of course only if have you had at least 1000 views which of course you won’t get if you video is interstitialized, suppress, removed from trending, hidden from subscribers and a host of other nefarious tactics with the algorithms that YouTube used and continued to use.  So I invite folks to come check me out on other platforms because by this time, it is starting to stink really bad, YouTube is not playing fair, not that they have to, it’s their house and they can invite or dismiss anyone they wish, but it just seems that they fattened us up for the kill.

With all this going on, people started saying they didn’t feel the need to pay anyone for anything especially if they got it for free and now they gotta pay.  So my next video entitled:

“Why Pay Creators When the Service Was Once Free?”  https://youtu.be/iz7g5Y3uS1U

Was inspired by a rant by a subscriber who felt they shouldn’t have to pay for anything they got free.  And you know, I can see how that would be annoying and at some point enraging, first it’s free and then you gonna charge??  Now this whole subscription thing has gone over the top.  It used to be only a few outlets asked for you to subscribe, most others were free to view and free to read, now folks are asking for subscriptions and with some ip’s being banned, they really have to beg, and beg, and beg to stay afloat, and yet, I can truly understand why folks would balk at the idea that now they gotta pay, or folks are begging.  Interestingly enough, YouTube demonetized this video as well, and it was starting to look like they just are that teacher, who looks at your name and gives you an “f” and that’s it!

My next to last video in my YouTube saga of events with them is entitled

YouTube is Bipolar”  https://youtu.be/MeQeRs0nvQA

I just had to get this one out, because YouTube would demonetize a video and then in a couple of days, re-monetize it, and what the heck was that all about?? You know that in the first few hours after posting your video that that is where you get the most traction.  A couple of days later, ain’t nobody paying attention they are moving on.  So YouTube goes up and down and down and up, they say come here, come here, come here, and then say get away, get away, get away, and if that ain’t bipolar, I don’t know what is.

You never know when they are gonna lower another boom on us, in fact, they are causing us to suffer from Post Traumatic YouTube Stress Syndrome.

But what got me the most about all this, is that after watching several videos on this topic, no body seems to be talking about what is really happening and why folks can’t reach the threshold because YouTube is making sure that you don’t reach it.  It’s like your mom says you better clean up your room and as you are doing it, she throws more and more other stuff at you, that you never get a chance to do it completely and then you are in time out cause you didn’t do it.

I mean people would change the titles of their vids to be more acceptable, they would be careful of the tags, and the description of their videos, they would upload it into private and then make it public, they would stand on their heads and bark like a dog, and still YouTube would say, “oh no, you can’t do that, and slam you”.  I mean they even gave PewDiePie the blues who gave them an idle threat of a law suit, that went over like a lead balloon.  And if folks want to blame Logan Paul, I would not be surprised if he was put up to it, cause at this point, he should have know better than to post a video like that anyways, with all the censorship that’s going on on YouTube these days.

I Think this all started with the fake news meme that began during Obama’s administration and I remember one channel, Red Silver J (https://youtu.be/PJ1jf2W8HQM) who warned us, that they were coming after us and would be shutting us down, and that they were using certain psyops to target channels who got on the band wagon of the psyops and shut them down, one by one.  The link in the description of this video where he explains it all, is “no longer available.”  Imagine that!

So, I am gonna end my little triad with an article from Activist Post entitled

“YouTube Just Moved to Crush the Little People, Will Only Monetize Large Accounts”

https://www.activistpost.com/2018/01/youtube-just-moved-crush-little-people-will-monetize-large-accounts.html

activist post article front page

It has the original email sent out to their channels and it discusses some of the concerns about this “new Change” with YouTube, but again, what I find still missing is the gradual and systemic crushing of the little people, along with the big people as well.  There were some really big people out there that were hit hard by these 2017  changes on the YouTube Platform.   Some are saying that longer vids will work but that’s not true, cause folks don’t really watch any longer than 5 minutes of a video, I know that for sure from the comments I get, which clearly show they did not watch the entire video.  And making longer ones hoping that will make a difference when your channel is already in the YouTube doghouse is just a waist of time and energy.  YouTube is changing and the change does not include the folks who made YouTube famous, it does not include the little people and some of those big people who made it.  They will drop that hammer on them as well because they are changing how they wish to be as a Video platform.  We can complain all we wish, but they have the right, and it ain’t about free speech, it’s about controlling content that support their new face.  And they will hire thousands of employees, spend a ton of money, just to get that to happen. Period.

But here are some excerpts from this article.

YouTube alienated a large portion of its audience this week by demonetizing all of their smaller content creators. In an email sent out to millions of independent artists, musicians, and journalists, YouTube informed them that they were no longer eligible for advertising revenue on the site because their channels were simply not big enough.

The site now requires a minimum of 1000 subscribers and 4000 hours of viewed content, automatically disqualifying a large chunk of their creators from monetization.

The company also said that the change in policy was intended to “prevent bad actors from harming the inspiring and original creators around the world who make their living on YouTube.”

As The Free Thought Project reported last year, a group of whistleblowers from YouTube claimed that the company has allowed at least 100,000 predatory accounts to leave inappropriate comments on videos with no repercussions as “YouTube’s system for reporting sexualized comments left on children’s videos has not been functioning correctly for more than a year.”

This is a devastating situation for may content creators, but luckily there is a solution on the Blockchain. Many of the YouTubers who have become disenfranchised with the site are moving their content to DTube, which is a decentralized video hosting platform where users are paid in cryptocurrency for “likes” and comments.

As the big dogs shoot themselves in the foot, a revolution in social media is happening on platforms like DTube and Steemit. The dinosaur social media platforms are losing their relevance as we expose their censorship and subservience to special interests like the advertisers who have access to all your personal data. If you truly want to be a part of the next step, we invite you to join Steemit today. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Now, they are saying, 1000 subs and 4000 hrs in the past 12 months.  This is what my analytics look like… Does that mean they will reevaluate me? And reopen my YouTube Partners account?  What about folks that get one of these criterion but not both?  And if you notice, after YouTube started it’s funny business my views went way down, to a dull roar and I am making barely pennies out the deal.  So yeah, it’s time, everyone, it’s time!!

YouTube analytics from Jan 20, 2017-Jan 20, 2018

As you can see, my channel views, subs and watch time peaked around Feb., 2017 like I mentioned earlier.  So let’s see if I meet the criterion when looking at Feb 20. 2017 thru Jan. 20, 2018.

YouTube analytics from Feb 20, 2017-Jan 20, 2018

Looks like I made it by the skin of my teeth, however, they will probably come up with something else to target my channel for demonetization.  They have already done so, and the wind is so out of my sails these days for doing much more than using YouTube as a holding place to copy and paste the url of my vids. Cause seriously, it’s just a matter of time, and as you can see, how my view count dropped significantly, and that is for all of the above reasons.

So folks, it is what it is, and YouTube is pushing us out and if we don’t get out now, I guess we will remain co-dependent with a platform that really has bigger fish to fry and is treating us small fish and even some big ones, like a bald headed step child, and that’s what I got to say about that!!