Thursday, March 29, 2018

Bp Barron Visits YouTube

Earlier this week, Bp Barron posted a brief Youtube video covering a day spent at YouTube and the headquarters of its parent, Google. I've been reflecting on this. In part, I'm guided by the insights of another media savant, Rush Limbaugh, who frequently says,"If you've got a marketing plan, you don't announce it. You execute it."

Bp Barron has something of a Church of Nice persona, and in the video, he does some of that by talking about the wonderful Catholics who work at Google and have a lunchtime rosary group. (I assume the Google engineer who got fired for writing a politically incorrect memo about diversity wasn't a member.) On the other hand, the rosary is a tool. People pray the rosary outside abortion clinics. The bishop didn't go into that.

But that visit certainly had to have a context. Google and YouTube have been at the forefront of modern-day censorship, in which the state doesn't even need to play a visible role; corporate social media can demonetize or delete outright opinion that isn't deemed advertiser friendly, or which visitors can denounce as being insufficiently tolerant or inclusive. The Catholic Church has any number of teachings that can potentially be suppressed on that basis.

Currently there are a number of Catholic channels on YouTube, ranging from Bp Barron's own channel to Ascension Presents to Sensus Fidelium, as well as individual channels where pastors record their homilies, and of course, Church Militant. The slightest change in the algorithms could wipe these out in a matter of days -- so far, quite innocuous channels that simply present opinions outside the Overton window, the "range of policies considered politically acceptable in the current climate of public opinion", have been hit, either partially or kicked off YouTube completely. KEK, as they say.

I've got to assume Bp Barron, who is almost certainly being advanced in the Church for his understanding of contemporary media, recognizes the risks here.