This episode is about a little more than what I've written below but I thought it went nicely together. If you would like to read more from me check out seancross.co

We thought we’d lost our biggest gatekeepers when the internet was born. When it didn’t take a publishing house, radio station or tv network to get you, words, music or film out into the world.

We had, the last 20 years have been a boom for self publishing, new media, blogging, Indie film makers and many more. Unfettered access to an audience that had chosen to engage with the thing you were putting out there. It was great. It gave us things like Andy Weir’s ‘The Martian’. He began publishing that as a blog, week to week. Gaining an audience until it thrust him into the main stream.

We don’t have those same gatekeepers in place anymore, not like they used to be but we do now have new ones.

Anytime a huge tech company puts an algorithm between you and your audience, they are becoming a gatekeeper. They are effecting your ability to reach that audience. But unlike the gatekeepers of old, they aren’t a huge wall with only one entrance, only letting through the very tip of what they deemed best. The new gatekeepers have millions of doors but they only let through the controversial and things that look like things that have already done well.

However it’s done, it’s still doing the same thing. It’s making you have to work harder to be seen.

Links

Tom Scott video about the YouTube algorithm: https://youtu.be/BSpAWkQLlgM

Philip DeFranco video about being suppressed by YouTube: https://youtu.be/0t1Ng1mOEY0

That other video I watched about being blocked by YouTube: https://youtu.be/tmQYskXD1EQ