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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   2533 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 6, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I just got an email from Rescue the Republic, which I supported with some cash. The gist is, "Yay, we had 4 million Youtube views...Americans are taking notice!" I've seen similar things with Trump videos on X. Always some form of "something happened on this platform...Americans are totally into it!"

I understand that most viewers of Youtube are still Americans (correct me if that's no longer true) so, yeah, maybe in some basic way the statement is true, but I cringe whenever I see these types of claims. It's the Internet, man...you have no idea who watched your video, upvoted your comment or forwarded you tweet.

Am I way out over my skis here? Is it a safe claim to make or is the rest of the world being under-counted? am I right to side-eye these kinds of claims?

I'm pretty sure youtubers can see who is watching their videos, even down to a subnational level. I think they could tell if it was Floridians or Californians. Don't think X is on that level.

It's pretty trivial to collect demographics. Google knows what IP address you used to visit YouTube, and that IP address pretty trivially traces back to a specific city. I'd expect YouTube makes this information available to content creators, since knowing your audience helps you tailor your content. Back when I was working with such tools, it was a pretty standard feature - even my tiny personal blog reports which countries I get visitors from.

I'd be more suspicious of social media making the same claims - as far as I know, Twitter doesn't provide any way to get that sort of information. It wouldn't be hard to build a 3rd party tool to calculate that data, but it would be relying on profiles listing a self-reported location.

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