The proprietary JW Player has gone “full woke” and is kicking out platforms it disagrees with, or is forced to disagree with, from remaining viable in its main, corporate profit market.
And nobody saw that coming, right. /s
Well, maybe in the tech-oriented and monitoring free software and free speech communities some people did – but it seems that those like PragerUniversity (PragerU) who might still have believed tech tools are simply an agnostic way to deliver your message to the world on the internet, might now be a little frazzled when they got kicked off JW Player’s platform, with their videos over the last decade amounting to more than 5 billion views there.
JW has many irons in that big profit fire: it has deals with the likes of ESPN, Electronic Arts, and AT&T. It also heavily features outlets like Vice and the Young Turks. Compared to that, what does it matter to it, in this day and age, “cancel” PragerU’s content via an “updated community guidelines” policy?
So PragerU’s CEO Marissa Streit revealed that “in true cowardly fashion, JW Player has refused to give us specifics and opted to hide behind third party ‘fact-checkers to get rid of us’.”
Let’s not even get into how similar this sounds to anybody erasing unwanted voices from major social networks these days. The censorship on Big Tech platforms has ostensibly removed the reach from PragerU to establish itself as a trusted conservative voice for the next generation.
That’s despite the platform’s free-market organizations for Facebook likes ranking PragerU at 3.85 million, 537,000 Twitter followers, and most subscribers in the past 12 months on YouTube.
“As a nonprofit media organization, the support of our viewers is vital to our success. We’re incredibly grateful to all those who have championed our mission. Rest assured: Despite Big Tech’s absurd censorship campaign against us, we are already working on a solution and continue to shape millions of young minds around the world,” Streit said.
