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YouTube Advertiser Meltdown: An Opportunity for Startups

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Re: YouTube Advertiser Meltdown: An Opportunity for Startups

#81

Post by beaconstudios »

jlebrech wrote: post #80
DavidSJ wrote: post #10

Strictly speaking it isn't censorship when Youtube removes a channel for being politically too extreme. Not to distract from the larger point, but this isn't true. The definition of censorship says nothing about the government being the one suppressing the content.

but if there was a right leaning "youtube" and they removed overt-lgbt, antifa, anti-trump videos then it's ok right? or is it wrong because they align with the current us-government?

I think the point is in the messaging. YouTube isn't "YouTube for the left wing", it doesn't advertise itself as being hostile to certain opinions. You could argue that the terms of service denote that "offensive" content is not allowed, but something being offensive is a subjective opinion. And then there's the issue of selective enforcement of things that _are_ banned.

In other words, if a site was called "ConservativeTube" or "LiberalTube" I personally wouldn't consider it censorship for them to remove views from the opposite political wing because the service is openly politically biased.

Re: YouTube Advertiser Meltdown: An Opportunity for Startups

#82

Post by nafey »

mattmanser wrote: post #78
cel1ne wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Censorship enforced by the state is something distinctly different from editorial control exercised by private entities. I use the following analogy for the latter: Would you call it censorship if you decide to remove the graffiti someone spraypainted on your car? No one has the obligation to provide for unrestricted distribution of opinion/information. Especially not state-financed media, as they have a stake in e…

That's a very bad analogy, you should stop. The message of the grafitti is not what people care about, it's that it was painted in the first place. Your analogy only works if you have a big sign outside your house saying "Please paint my car".

Don't misconstrue what is being said. Imagine the sign saying "Please paint my car but we reserve the rights to remove anything we want". That's essentially what the YouTube user license says.

Re: YouTube Advertiser Meltdown: An Opportunity for Startups

#83

Post by keymone »

ouid wrote: post #49
jimmywanger wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if my business is forfeit Forfeit is not the right word. Nobody is taking your business away from you, it's just not a profitable business. > monopoly which youtube absolutely is That is begging the question. There are plenty of sites that let you share video like youtube[0] [0] http://www.freemake.com/blog/top-7-free-video-sharing-sites/

This is the same argument as the one against net neutrality. So if you your arguments are convincing to you here, then they should be there. If you own a platform on which other people do business which is a natural monopoly, you shouldn't be allowed to regulate the content on that platform. Youtube is a natural monopoly. It's fairly obvious that this is so, but I will elaborate anyway. The value of youtube is the nu…

monopoly is not about being most popular service, it's about being the only supplier of some commodity or service. youtube is not the only supplier of video publishing service, hence it's not a monopoly. users can switch from youtube to another service easily.

users can't easily (and sometimes at all) switch to a different internet provider, which is why net neutrality is important.

Re: YouTube Advertiser Meltdown: An Opportunity for Startups

#84

Post by bmon »

jsonne wrote: post #29

This is such a manufactured controversy. Most modern advertisements are based around audience rather than content. If brands are so uncomfortable with the content their customers are consuming perhaps they should consider either new customers or new products.

Why is this? Is it because it is easier to categorize users as opposed to content, or do ads perform better when targeted to specific audiences? If I had to guess I'd think that audience targeted adverts would perform better, but here we have a large amount of companies upset that their adverts are appearing next to specific content.

Re: YouTube Advertiser Meltdown: An Opportunity for Startups

#85

Post by Ralfp »

cel1ne wrote: post #73
gwright wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discussion is terribly confused when 'censorship' is interpreted in this general sense. Censorship enforced by the state is something distinctly different from editorial control exercised by private entities. When the single word can represent either concept (and other related concepts) ambiguity and confusion isn't far behind. I used to argue that 'censorship' should be interpreted as something done by governments a…

> Censorship enforced by the state is something distinctly different from editorial control exercised by private entities. I use the following analogy for the latter: Would you call it censorship if you decide to remove the graffiti someone spraypainted on your car? No one has the obligation to provide for unrestricted distribution of opinion/information. Especially not state-financed media, as they have a stake in e…

The key difference between your car and YouTube is that YouTube (or Facebook or Twitter) makes part of new media that has reach far enough for commentary published on it to shape public discourse. This is especially big thing within young democracies for which new media is de facto mainstream media.

Our markets are usually regulated to make sure monopolies don't arise, and if they do, they may be forced to downscale, split or open market for competition.

This is not the case with major social media sites, that answer only to the mighty dollar.

Re: YouTube Advertiser Meltdown: An Opportunity for Startups

#86

Post by makomk »

DavidSJ wrote: post #10

Strictly speaking it isn't censorship when Youtube removes a channel for being politically too extreme. Not to distract from the larger point, but this isn't true. The definition of censorship says nothing about the government being the one suppressing the content.

The funny thing is that whenever someone leans on advertisers to pull ads from the mainstream press, they've never had any problem seeing this as an attack on freedom of speech, the media and journalism itself. Doing the same to upstart competitors like YouTube is just fine though.

Re: YouTube Advertiser Meltdown: An Opportunity for Startups

#87

Post by ouid »

keymone wrote: post #83
ouid wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the same argument as the one against net neutrality. So if you your arguments are convincing to you here, then they should be there. If you own a platform on which other people do business which is a natural monopoly, you shouldn't be allowed to regulate the content on that platform. Youtube is a natural monopoly. It's fairly obvious that this is so, but I will elaborate anyway. The value of youtube is the nu…

monopoly is not about being most popular service, it's about being the only supplier of some commodity or service. youtube is not the only supplier of video publishing service, hence it's not a monopoly. users can switch from youtube to another service easily. users can't easily (and sometimes at all) switch to a different internet provider, which is why net neutrality is important.

you clearly have no idea what a monopoly is.

Re: YouTube Advertiser Meltdown: An Opportunity for Startups

#88

Post by jlebrech »

beaconstudios wrote: post #81
jlebrech wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but if there was a right leaning "youtube" and they removed overt-lgbt, antifa, anti-trump videos then it's ok right? or is it wrong because they align with the current us-government?

I think the point is in the messaging. YouTube isn't "YouTube for the left wing", it doesn't advertise itself as being hostile to certain opinions. You could argue that the terms of service denote that "offensive" content is not allowed, but something being offensive is a subjective opinion. And then there's the issue of selective enforcement of things that _are_ banned. In other words, if a site was called "Conserva…

but if it's offensive to someone on the biblebelt, it's offensive right?

Re: YouTube Advertiser Meltdown: An Opportunity for Startups

#89

Post by geff82 »

I think there still is a big opportunity for ad companies that try to actually show stuff the user might interested in. Let me explain.

Let's say you are an amateur astronomer, like me. You have subscribed to a paper magazine about astronomy, like me. If, again, you are like me, then you also read the magazine for the ads in it. Ads showing new telescopes, ads talking about astronomy expeditions, ads for the astronomy club. It is advertisement on the one hand, but still relevant information for my hobby. The companies that buy ads for a longer period burn their brand into my brain, in the "relevant" section of it.

Now let's talk about how this would be on the web. When I visit a site about astronomy, I can expect the ads to show: flight offers for the business trip I recently googled. SAS software because I recently did a certification with them and visited their website. Amazon ads showing me business books I recently searched there. But what they often do not show: relevant, juicy astronomy related ads. And when they do, the ad is gone the next time I refresh the page replaced by something else. The ads on the web are most often totally out of context. They might be shown to you because of your recorded behavior before, but still they are totally irrelevant.

Probably running an ad network with great ads would be much more manual work than running the next past-behavior based network that tries to mine user data for new ideas. But at least for special interest sites, it could be a gold mine.

Re: YouTube Advertiser Meltdown: An Opportunity for Startups

#90

Post by blatherard »

dragonwriter wrote: post #36
gwright wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discussion is terribly confused when 'censorship' is interpreted in this general sense. Censorship enforced by the state is something distinctly different from editorial control exercised by private entities. When the single word can represent either concept (and other related concepts) ambiguity and confusion isn't far behind. I used to argue that 'censorship' should be interpreted as something done by governments a…

> Discussion is terribly confused when 'censorship' is interpreted in this general sense. It's the original sense. > Censorship enforced by the state is something distinctly different from editorial control exercised by private entities. Yes, government censorship is different in important ways than censorship by a publishing or distributing entity, but both are censorship (and they are also similar in important ways…

> It's the original sense.

Nope. The original "censors" were Roman magistrates who enforced public morals. They're called censors because they were also responsible for the census. The government part of censorship has been baked in from the very coining of the word.

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