That was interesting. I started a Periscope talking about my own experience as a “crisis actor”, which is simply another way of saying “roleplayer in a training exercise”, and most of the people trying to watch it were blocked. I could see the number of people joining and then dropping out going up and down by scores before I shut it down.
It’s remarkable how desperate they are to stop “crisis actor” from becoming the “fake news” of 2018. Apparently these people are unfamiliar with the term “Streisand Effect”.
Nor is Periscope the only Big Social platform to do so:
On Wednesday, one week after the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., Facebook and YouTube vowed to crack down on the trolls. Thousands of posts and videos had popped up on the sites, falsely claiming that survivors of the shooting were paid actors or part of various conspiracy theories. Facebook called the posts “abhorrent.” YouTube, which is owned by Google, said it needed to do better. Both promised to remove the content.
The companies have since aggressively pulled down many posts and videos and reduced the visibility of others. Yet on Friday, spot searches of the sites revealed that the noxious content was far from eradicated.
UPDATE: Definitely some sort of flag on the term. I did a second Periscope using the name “The Streisand Effect” and had no issues. This is actually an opportunity to redpill some people by showing them the strings; encourage them to put the term “crisis actor” in a YouTube, Facebook, or Periscope title and see what happens. It will definitely convince them that Big Social is suspiciously desperate to conceal specific forms of badthink.
What President Trump should do is call out “crisis actors undermining public confidence in the media,” both on Twitter and in a White House address. The response would make last year’s Fake News meltdown look downright sane and reserved in comparison.