> If YouTube were silencing protests I wouldn't like that, but I don't rely on YouTube to understand what's going on in the world

A lot of people do. You can't really find out what's going on in the world from the mainstream media in any real resolution or detail, and "other websites on the internet" don't generally have thousands and thousands of people livestreaming actual live video of what's happening.

Perhaps this could be rectified by our society working to make bandwidth an order of magnitude or two cheaper, so that there can be lots more live video hosts. As it stands, you're pretty much stuck with a few giant megacorps like Google or Twitch.

This. Some media outlets have decent live reporting, but going through the available apps on a PlayStation, which is what we use to watch video on a big screen via a projector (we also have a Shield and a Mac mini connected to it, but those get used less), we ended up watching both large media cos and smaller channels live-streaming the events of Jan 6 on YouTube. If one looks at the available apps and platforms on smart TVs, there aren’t actually that many options. This could change, but there are high barriers to entry e.g. having enough of a platform that it makes sense to build an app for Samsung TVs, another for LG TVs, another for Sony TVs, then get those all certified and keep them available.

The overwhelming majority of YouTube content is junk, people shouldn't rely on it to stay informed, at best, they should cherry-pick a few quality sources to supplement others. Yes, there are some people who rely exclusively on YouTube just like there are some that rely exclusively on Fox News to stay informed, in both cases it is the responsibility of the media consumer to make better choices.

You can because the mainstream western media despite it's faults tends to be pretty good

Meanwhile there are tons of crazy extremists streaming. A lot of it doesnt provide an accurate view and might only be useful as a potentially biased first hand account to digged through by journalists and historians after the fact

There are also tons of non-crazy, non-extremists streaming.

Regardless of whether you listen to the streamers, it's an amazing tool for seeing what is actually happening in a specific place. You can ignore the commentary or ideology (not that that is really an issue, most streams are just normies) and see what is happening.

Western mainstream media is a lot of things, but comprehensive and nuanced it is not.

>Nobody is being hunted, that's pretty hyperbolic.

That's pretty hyperbolic.