Automation, algorithms, and self-censorship

I’m probably not going to turn this essay into a video and maybe not even a podcast. Not because of the theme or any of the concerns raised, but simply because I don’t know if I’ll have the time to do so this week. A couple of my videos on YouTube got picked up by their recommendation algorithm. Even by the most conservative “percentage of the audience who watched to the end” estimate, those videos had an audience that was at least one hundred times larger than my channel’s baseline. They’re still racking up views. This raised a question I’ve been wrestling with since. Not “how do I replicate this and make it happen again?” Though that’d be an understandable thought. Instead, I’ve been tackling the question of choice and self-censorship. “Should I be trying to replicate this?” Should I let the temptation of an algorithmically-driven mass audience on YouTube define and constrain what I do as a writer? That’s obviously a loaded question with an equally obvious and loaded answer, but the…

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