Live data from Hacker News

YouTube Demonetization Screenshot Leaks and Secret YouTube Meeting

twitlonger.com

161–170 of 256 posts

Re: YouTube Demonetization Screenshot Leaks and Secret YouTube Meeting

#161
post #32

Google is an American company. Their "rules" are extremely embedded in a US culture. Unfortunately YouTube is a product that is consumed worldwide. Many of the regions where it has a dominant market share for web VoD do have cultural palates that are very different from the US. I feel Google should embrace their international position and be less biased in it's reasoning.

So, what is your suggestion here? Should they run with the most open interpretation (i.e. allow anything that is socially acceptable somewhere on earth) or most strict interpretation (i.e. limit stuff that might be offensive somewhere on earth)? Both approaches look rather impossible to me: the former would mean allowing stuff that might even be illegal in the U.S., the latter would mean that e.g. all videos showing…

This was all figured out at least five to six decades ago, as global media companies emerged.

It's just one more step in the inevitable bifurcation of the Internet down to national barriers / legislation / cultural beliefs. In the not very distant future (within 15-20 years), the commonality laws, things nations have in common with regards to legislating the Internet, will be the minority. Every nation will want and will set its own unique policies (on top of any other agreement lines as eg in the EU).

There's no possible outcome for the Internet other than becoming another well regulated medium, given a few more decades. The laws will pile up, it's what politicians do, and the Internet is the single biggest target.

Re: YouTube Demonetization Screenshot Leaks and Secret YouTube Meeting

#162
post #6

I have a feeling that the internet will get outraged about this for one reason or another, but just from looking at this, it actually seems like a sensible policy designed to keep YouTube out of trouble. Nothing extreme or unfair, just avoiding to show ads next to stuff advertisers would not want to see their ads next to, while also making an effort to avoid offending or censoring youtubers. Probably won't be flawles…

The real problem with these rules is subjectivity. Something you would consider offensive is probably not from my perspective. In the end it will be a moderator bias galore. I can easily see a Christian mod demonetizing atheist videos, democrat republican, prude free, etc etc etc. I'd like to see a true free speech platform with violence/nudity sectioned off according to the local laws, and then let the advertisers d…

[deleted]

Re: YouTube Demonetization Screenshot Leaks and Secret YouTube Meeting

#163
post #6

I have a feeling that the internet will get outraged about this for one reason or another, but just from looking at this, it actually seems like a sensible policy designed to keep YouTube out of trouble. Nothing extreme or unfair, just avoiding to show ads next to stuff advertisers would not want to see their ads next to, while also making an effort to avoid offending or censoring youtubers. Probably won't be flawles…

The real problem is the outcome. If you demonetize a video by accident, and then "fix" it, you've effectively killed up to 90% of the youtuber's income from that video. Many youtubers get most of their views within the first 48 hours of posting a video.

This impacts people who post a video <1/wk the most, because one demonetized video can mean a huge hit to their monthly income. Now you're driving out higher production values in trade for shorter, more frequent videos.

Re: YouTube Demonetization Screenshot Leaks and Secret YouTube Meeting

#164
post #108

Maybe this is real, but it doesn't seem to line up with what I have heard from other Youtubers. Firstly it is almost certain that a video is initially demonetized by an algorithm. Only during a manual review is it looked at by a human. The main complaint from Youtubers is that the algorithm is way too strict and inconsistent. But the manual review process is pretty fair and the vast majority of videos get remonetized…

Couldn't the algorithm give its judgement before the video goes live?

YouTube's advice to creators is to do exactly this - post the video privately to let the algorithm and potentially the human review go through before making it public.

Sadly, since this process can take up to 48 hours, this doesn't work if your videos have any kind of time sensitivity.

It also doesn't help with videos of streams, which are automatically posted immediately after the stream's conclusion.

Re: YouTube Demonetization Screenshot Leaks and Secret YouTube Meeting

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Algorithms [allow to] identify what exactly happened "This video was demonetized because at the 1:15 mark, there is a patch of light dirt that our neural network classified as naked skin with a 70% confidence." Oh, you meant you were going to do image recognition without any sort of machine learning?

Your alternative is the idiot on his last day at Twitter who in his post Trump account blocking interview basically admitted that it was the totality of things that happened that day to him and it being his last day and that Trumps account popped up in front of him which caused him to make the arbitrary decision to block it. Please remove humans from making decisions that need to be uniform. So yes, algorithm it is.

You're implicitly making the assumption that an algorithm is unbiased and less likely to be fallible - and unlikely to be susceptible to bias or manipulation (at least, compared to a human). There is a considerable amount of academic and popular literature showing that these assumptions are false, at least at a technical level.

The problem of vetting YouTube videos isn't necessarily something that can be solved by an algorithm, at the end of the day. Lots of the simple cases, sure - but such an algorithm won't work on even the most moderately challenging content. After all, moderating complex content such as video doesn't just require a well-trained neural network to recognise objects portrayed in images and sounds in audio... deciding whether a video is appropriate or not for monetisation is something that requires an explicit understanding of the social and cultural context which the video is going to be viewed in - which is both highly subjective and difficult to express in an algorithm.

NB;

- Neural networks (and other AI techniques) can be tricked and manipulated (see [0,1]; examples of adversarial images)

- Machine learning algorithms can induce or confirm bias through inadequate training data and poor assumptions. (see [2]; a book about bias in machine learning algorithms)

[0]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.05328

[1]: http://www.evolvingai.org/files/DNNsEasilyFooled_cvpr15.pdf

[2]: https://weaponsofmathdestructionbook.com

Re: YouTube Demonetization Screenshot Leaks and Secret YouTube Meeting

#167
post #10
post #8

I don’t understand what the term “demonetization” means in this context. When a video is flagged for “demonetization” what are the immediate consequences? I’ve never actually met anyone who got paid for something that happened on YouTube, so I just don’t understand how the business side of YouTube even works. For the life of me, all I’ve ever directly witnessed is the occassional friend who received a DMCA notice, be…

It means the video won't have ads and thus the creator won't earn any money from ads. It's very difficult to make a lot of money from YouTube ads, but some people are doing it and getting "demonetized" really hurts them.

[deleted]

Re: YouTube Demonetization Screenshot Leaks and Secret YouTube Meeting

#168
post #70
post #51

I don't see the issue. Google is curating their platform and trying to remove as much un-original and reasonably offensive content. The doc also didn't seem to contain any political leanings or cultural shifters. I believe much of this is part of the service agreement on Youtube. Only issue I see here is the manual review process and subjectivity baked into that.

It’s not even about removing the content - but just not showing ads on it.

Not showing ads has the side effect of burying the video when it comes to discoverability as well.

Re: YouTube Demonetization Screenshot Leaks and Secret YouTube Meeting

#169

On a different YouTube note if they want to continue being a powerhouse they need to also get rid of all those robot voiced bot created videos. Also those videos that are clickbait and play only an image of a website to go to. Youtube for me is being plagued by the above videos.

[deleted]

Re: YouTube Demonetization Screenshot Leaks and Secret YouTube Meeting

#170
post #6

I have a feeling that the internet will get outraged about this for one reason or another, but just from looking at this, it actually seems like a sensible policy designed to keep YouTube out of trouble. Nothing extreme or unfair, just avoiding to show ads next to stuff advertisers would not want to see their ads next to, while also making an effort to avoid offending or censoring youtubers. Probably won't be flawles…

The real problem is the outcome. If you demonetize a video by accident, and then "fix" it, you've effectively killed up to 90% of the youtuber's income from that video. Many youtubers get most of their views within the first 48 hours of posting a video. This impacts people who post a video <1/wk the most, because one demonetized video can mean a huge hit to their monthly income. Now you're driving out higher producti…

> Now you're driving out higher production values in trade for shorter, more frequent videos.

The market does that anyway, though. Ask any YT creator, or just looks at the stats for the two approaches in the same niche. Frequency (with a minimum bar of quality) will beat out infrequent but very very high quality every time. It's better to post 2 minimally edited, acceptable quality videos every week than one high production value video every 2-3 weeks.

Post reply on HN