technologia: BitChute

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

BitChute is an alt-tech video hosting service launched by Ray Vahey in January 2017. Originally established in the United Kingdom, it suspended its services there in 2025 and relocated to the United States. It describes itself as offering freedom of speech, and is known for hosting far-right individuals, conspiracy theorists, and hate speech. Some creators who use BitChute have been banned from YouTube; some others crosspost content to both platforms or post more extreme content only to BitChute. Before its deprecation, BitChute claimed to use peer-to-peer WebTorrent technology for video distribution, though this was disputed.

Evidence: 56 • authority: 92

Characterizing Abhorrent, Misinformative, and Mistargeted Content on YouTube. YouTube has revolutionized the way people discover and consume video. Although YouTube facilitates easy access to hundreds of well-produced and trustworthy videos, abhorrent, misinformative, and mistargeted content is also common. The platform is plagued by various types of problematic content: 1) disturbing videos targeting young children; 2) hateful and misogynistic content; and 3) pseudoscientific misinformation. While YouTube's recommendation algorithm plays a vital role in increasing user engagement and YouTube's monetization, its role in unwittingly promoting problematic content is not entirely understood. I…

Evidence: 49 • authority: 92

Post-January 6 deplatforming shows long-term effects on ideological polarization among Twitter users.. This study examines audience response to Twitter's "Great Deplatforming" following the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. Using a survey of Twitter users from the 2020 US election, we test whether Twitter's deplatforming coincides with significant changes in respondents' behavior, operationalized using individuals' posting frequency and ideological lean-measured daily via a news-sharing metric we validate. To control for exogenous changes in the information environment, we pair Twitter respondents with Reddit accounts that exhibit similar pre-event behavior. Results indicate a shift in Tw…

Evidence: 49 • authority: 92

Conceptualizing platformed conspiracism: Analytical framework and empirical case study of BitChute and Gab.. This article introduces the notion of platformed conspiracism to conceptualize reconfigured forms of conspiracy theory communication as a result of the mutual shaping between platform specificities and emergent user practices. To investigate this relational socio-technological shaping, we propose a conceptual platform-sensitive framework that systematically guides the study of platformed conspiracism. To illustrate the application of the framework, we examine how platformed conspiracism unfolds on BitChute and Gab during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings show that both platforms ha…

Evidence: 43 • authority: 72

Alt-tech is a collection of social networking, online video, blogging and other platforms and services that provide alternatives to "Big Tech" platforms and services. The "alt-" prefix alludes to the alt-right movement. Alt-tech platforms employ looser content moderation and stronger privacy protections than mainstream platforms. They describe themselves as protectors of free speech and individual liberty, though some researchers have also pointed out such platforms' potential use for recruitment and mobilization by extremist groups.

Evidence: 43 • authority: 88

“Like, comment, subscribe”. This dissertation investigates the influence of different acoustic-prosodic features on the perception of charismatic speech of YouTubers (i.e., creators of video content on YouTube who star in their own videos). Charisma – if seen as skill used to draw in and retain an audience – is a major factor in success online, and part of charisma is transmitted via the voice. A selection of voice characteristics (e.g., pitch, tempo, emphasis, pauses) are investigated in three perception studies to find out how certain features should be configured to be perceived as charismatic (and authentic, enthusiastic, likable, and persuasive as related attributes) in the context of…

Evidence: 37 • authority: 88

An Example of Negative Wage Elasticity for YouTube Content Creators. The neoclassical model of labor supply implies a positive wage elasticity absent significant income effects. This paper documents an instance of negative wage elasticity in video production by YouTube content creators. We exploit viral videos as an exogenous source of significant wage increases and investigate the productivity dynamics around the time a channel’s video went viral, against a control group of channels that had no viral videos. Our analysis shows a significant productivity decline during the week after a video goes viral, despite the higher wages, followed by a gradual return towards pre-treatment productivit…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Samuel Whitcomb Hyde (born April 16, 1985) is an American comedian and a co-founder of the sketch comedy group Million Dollar Extreme (MDE), alongside Nick Rochefort and Charls Carroll. MDE gained notoriety on YouTube for their provocative, anti-sketch style and public pranks, including trolling staged performances at conventions and comedy clubs that pushed social boundaries and courted controversy. Widespread public attention followed one such satirical TEDx talk. Hyde and MDE created the television series Million Dollar Extreme Presents: World Peace, which aired on Adult Swim in 2016. The show featured surreal, boundary-pushing sketches that contained bigoted dog whistles, violence and m…