Suspect in YouTube Shooting Posted Rants About the Company Online • Hacker News Board

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Posted Rants About the Company Online

#201

Post by daodedickinson » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 8:34 AM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #126

danso wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My question is, should such a shooting have any impact on that conversation? Did you expect that the shooting would have a meaningful impact in the debate? Certainly, people will mention her name in the next few months, because of the infamy of her acts. But no, I don't think Google is going to openly say that an attempted mass murder of their employees was an incentive or disincentive. For likely the same reason w…

> Did you expect that the shooting would have a meaningful impact in the debate? Not upstream comment author, but I can see how it could . People make a living off YouTube. YouTube purposefully hides the metrics by which they judge videos and choose to promote them to or hide them from different audiences, and which cause a video to become demonetized, which means no revenue can be obtained from it. They have valid r…

Thousands of people got massive "wealth shocks" from YouTube's massive wave of perceived-as-arbitrary (or at least unexplained) and unanticipated "demonitization" wave. YouTube has no worthy competitor so these people had nowhere else to go and could only try to trade even more labor for far less income. It's no surprise that this has led to quite a few suicides: https://www.daytondailynews.com/business/midlife-wealth-shoc...

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Posted Rants About the Company Online

#202

Post by trophycase » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 8:44 AM UTC

themacguffinman wrote: post #198

boomlinde wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the definition of "correct" in this context that we can all agree to?

Morally correct?

What if you feel that society is morally bankrupt and that violence is the only way to fix it?

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Posted Rants About the Company Online

#203

Post by prawn » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 8:47 AM UTC

silveroriole wrote: post #178

verylittlemeat wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She had a pretty good point. Any given popular music video is loaded with borderline porn. Why were her fully clothed yoga videos (that weren't even questionably sexual) not allowed but the former were?

Part of this is obvious: youtube restriction policies are largely based on what is advertiser-friendly, and popular music videos are advertiser-friendly by definition. I don’t know what caused her videos to be demonetised, but she’s not wrong - it does seem pretty much arbitrary with no proper channel for disputing it.

Is it possible that the decision to demonetise or age-restrict was algorithmic, then she was too small-fry to get any interest/reconsideration from support?

We've heard loads of stories of people getting AdSense accounts shut unfairly and without recourse, for example. If that was your entire income, you already felt hard done by, and were so inclined, I could see how you might go off the rails.

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Posted Rants About the Company Online

#204

Post by taneq » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 8:48 AM UTC

tlrobinson wrote: post #73

trhway wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The platforms today are so large, it surely can seem like being cut off from society in general, like a human right is being revoked. probably similar to say imagine Bell's denying a landline in 197x because of your speech.

I believe that would be illegal because phone companies are “common carriers”? Not sure if that was true in the 70s.

The implication being that private companies (Google, Facebook, etc.) now fill the role that common carriers did a few decades ago, and that, curiously, they enjoy many of the privileges usually allotted to common carriers (eg. can't be prosecuted for content passing through their networks) without the responsibilities.

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Posted Rants About the Company Online

#205

Post by hux_ » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 8:48 AM UTC

adventured wrote: post #3

This looks like it's going to be an increasingly big problem for the platform giants, as it pertains to their increasingly aggressive speech restrictions. As they ramp those restrictions up, I'd expect the need for security to increase accordingly. A mentally unwell person is likely to feel targeted, oppressed, threatened, harmed, etc. by being silenced. They'll feel isolated and it'll very likely feel like a persona…

You are talking about people with mental illness. I think the platforms produce mental illness. If you influence and produce a certain kind of behaviour through appropriate reward mechanisms and then after a few years of conditioning reduce/remove the reward what do you think happens? Mental illness. YouTube has conditioned a generation of people to chant "subscribe like and share" like a robots. The day the "subscribe like and share" model stops being viable the robots will break down.

For those who care about doing something here is a starting point - humanetech.com

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Posted Rants About the Company Online

#206

Post by verylittlemeat » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 8:52 AM UTC

rabidrat wrote: post #193

verylittlemeat wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like Poppy who has millions of views on youtube? If you saw her before she was known you'd probably think she was just as likely to shoot up youtube HQ. The truth it's not as easy as it seems to separate the "merely deviant" and the violently deviant. That's why censors often choose blanket censorship of any deviance.

Poppy is an act though. This woman does not appear to be acting very much.

Arguably the only reason Poppy got popular was because people weren't sure if she was an act. For a long time she was just "OMG who is this freaky youtube girl!!!"

Obviously in hindsight we know she was an act and correspondingly interest in her has declined.

Blurring the line between act and reality is one of the foundations of entertainment. It's the reason people admire good method actors so much. It's the reason people like Andy Kaufman are considered artistic gods.

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Posted Rants About the Company Online

#207

Post by prawn » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 8:52 AM UTC

pavs wrote: post #156

Jesus_Jones wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on that? Did she make irrational comments, accuse people of impossible acts, was she threatening? I looked at the 1.5 minute video someone copied out and she was upset but not frothing at the mouth.

You don't have to be "frothing at the mouth" to be mentally unstable. I saw her videos on Dailymotion and I had the impression that something is not right with her, can't really pinpoint or explain what it is. but definitely very awkward in front of the camera. Just my personal take on it.

I watched one video. It's possible that something was "not right with her" but then I think that's true in some small way with almost all of us (personality foibles, etc).

But it's also possible she was on-edge because she was angry and frustrated by a situation that was important to her (earnings, passions, etc). Lots of people act like that when they feel upset, then you add in the pressure of a camera...

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Posted Rants About the Company Online

#208

Post by trophycase » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 8:53 AM UTC

idlewords wrote: post #78

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you have said the same thing about Mark Conditt? Or is there a difference? Should we talk about some murderers and not others? Was he a terrorist? Was she?

We know that reporting on a killer's identity and motives in detail encourages ideation in others. I think it's fine to talk about these people, but context is important. In this case, it appears to be someone who was frustrated with a lack of social media attention; we should be careful in not rewarding her heinous act in a way that encourages a future shooter.

Ignoring symptoms won't just magically fix the underlying problem

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Posted Rants About the Company Online

#209

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 8:53 AM UTC

adventured wrote: post #3

This looks like it's going to be an increasingly big problem for the platform giants, as it pertains to their increasingly aggressive speech restrictions. As they ramp those restrictions up, I'd expect the need for security to increase accordingly. A mentally unwell person is likely to feel targeted, oppressed, threatened, harmed, etc. by being silenced. They'll feel isolated and it'll very likely feel like a persona…

[deleted]

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Posted Rants About the Company Online

#210

Post by jobigoud » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 8:57 AM UTC

Jesus_Jones wrote: post #121

nailer wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> those people feeling that someone not finding them via google is a cheat are over-reacting. > So all these people mad that they don't have lots of viewers That's not the issue at all. They're mad they HAVE lots of views and their videos are being demonetised, and the rules around demonetisation aren't enforced consistently.

okay, maybe i don't get that. Is that what the point that was in the supposed shooter's screen grab with 300k views and 10c of payment was about? I had forgotten about the problems around terrorist or violent racist videos and ads for random stuff showing up on them so youtube was going to cut off advertising on such videos - I guess google screwed it up and went too far? It seems very unfair the way this works at yo…

> But I also still think theres also a lot of similar content for certain broad categories. Like say exercise videos.

Yeah but just because a niche is crowded doesn't mean that all creators produce equally good content.

You will notice that many of the top channels, say those that have more than 100K subscribers, very often have very good production standards, and are the creator's full time job.

Sometimes the reason why a specific channel is more popular than another is not obvious, but very often it's because they spent more time carefully crafting their videos, even if in the end they appear like candid shots.