The Kensington neighborhood in Philadelphia is one of the most brutally obvious signs of America’s public health crisis. The so-called “open air drug market” in the middle of the country’s sixth most populous city is where hundreds of people use drugs, some of whom are unhoused, usually without being arrested by the police. It is a failure of our health care system, our cities, and our drug enforcement policies on public display.
For some, it’s also a content farm, where they turn other people’s misery into engagement and profit.
As I am writing this, 675 people are watching a YouTube livestream from a channel called USALIVESTREAM of a camera that is panning back and forth over the corner of Kensington Avenue and East Allegheny, where there’s a SEPTA train station that people congregate around. As is normal on YouTube, to the right of the video is a chat where viewers can talk to each other, and pay to post stickers and “super chats,” highlighted messages that cost as much as $500. The revenue generated from this chat is split between YouTube and the YouTube channel owner. YouTube and the channel owner also make money via pre-roll ads viewers have to watch before the video starts. It is a live version of a growing trend, mostly on YouTube and TikTok, where people make videos of people in distress, specifically in Kensington.
The dire situation at Kensington is such that the live feed is always capturing multiple people who are clearly in distress, slumped over while they’re standing, asleep in camping chairs, or using drugs. None appear to be aware they are being filmed and exploited as a form of entertainment.
read more: https://www.404media.co/youtube-is-monetizing-the-suffering-of-an-open-air-drug-market/
Finally someone is noticing this.
I report this garbage every time it gets recommended to me on YT, which is way too often. These are real human beings going through the most difficult and humiliating experiences of their lives.
One thing that’s always overlooked about homelessness is the complete, total, utter lack of any privacy whatsoever. It seems obvious when you say it out loud, but no one seems to acknowledge it. Imagine every bad day you have, you have an audience. When you wake up in the morning after a shit night of sleep, everyone gets to walk by you, judge you, and gawk at how shitty you look. I’m sure not everyone in these videos is homeless (likely fewer than people would automatically assume), but probably a significant enough number.
The fact that there is anyone out there who believes treating people like they’re in a zoo and then profiting off of their suffering for “entertainment” is an actual, unfeeling psychopath.
The worst part is that there are a bunch of channels like this and even more videos. They’re not limited to addiction but exploit any marginalized people they can. I blame Vice for having constant drug/addiction content with no real message besides “watch this person shoot up for some reason. No, we’re not blurring their face.” Wtf.
The $500 donations must be money laundering. I can’t see a normal user on YouTube donating to a unmanned livestream and definitely not that amount of money.
Ever watch a vtuber stream? There’s apparently people out there with cash to just burn.
Vtubers do things. They talk to the audience, play games, draw, cook and a bunch of other things. A lot of it is para-social which explains why some people donate a lot. This is a generic livestream of a street.
I think it’s just the journalist being silly, there is a tier on YouTube for a $500 donation because that’s part of the YouTube system but has anyone ever used it for this stream? Incredibly doubtful.
I imagine like most webcam streams it makes very little money.
Edit - I’ve watched some and looked through the vods, no adverts so it’s probably not monetized - likely due to showing drug use, also no one has donated in any of the sections I’ve looked at.
Exposure brings attention, attention brings solution. To be ignored is to never be fixed
Even though I agree with you that you shouldn’t look away, there are two things that bother me:
If I understand correctly, this is completely unmoderated. This means it is up to the viewer how they interpret what they see.
In addition, the income should be made available to solve the problem. But it seems like someone is just putting it in their pocket.
I don’t think the income from this would make the slightest dent…
Also, moderation? I haven’t seen the stream but I imagine people stumbling, or performing sexual acts in exchange for drugs and such. There aren’t many ways to ‘interpret’ it imo, at least not worse than it is
And if it were just a few dollars that were made available to the social workers there… That would be something, right?
And by moderation I mean that someone should explain what you see and thus point out dangers. Over and over again. They should try to rule out that anyone has fun watching these sad fates.
I totally agree, a charity trying to raise awareness and help the problem should be running it.
I’m watching now and from what I can tell it doesn’t appear to be a monetized account as no adverts have shown, there’s not been a single donation either only a lot of comments about how awfull the situation is. there are moderators in the chat though it’s impossible to tell on a recorded stream how many comments they’re removing.
Really it’s just a street cam, you can see loads of them in all sorts of areas - it’s different because there are lots of people buying drugs and hanging around but they’re doing it on a public street so why should this one be any different to the popular time square or rue de mars streams?
Overall my take-home is that after watching fifteen minutes of it I’m somewhat less likely to do heroin today, and that’s probably a good thing. These people’s lives haven’t changed because I’ve seen them buy and consume drugs, when you’re smoking crack on a cold street it’s not like every one in you life can’t tell. It’s sad but it’s a reality hiding from won’t help either.
If profiting from raising awareness is morally wrong then don’t donate to any charities either.
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How is this YouTube’s fault. The person who set up the stream is the one picking the content YouTube don’t officially know anything about it.
There’s many reasons to go after YouTube, but this isn’t one of them, this is stupid. What idiot wrote this, and do they not understand how the internet works?
It’s good to bring exposure to these types of issues, even if the only way to do that is through a commercial platform. There’s nothing wrong with monetizing this.
I thought its purpose was anti-usa propaganda rather than profit. Now I see it can serve both purposes.
