Suspect in YouTube Shooting Angry That Her Videos Had Been 'De-Monetized' • Hacker News Board

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Angry That Her Videos Had Been 'De-Monetized'

#201

Post by mschuster91 » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 2:30 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #75

aninhumer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever something like this happens, people like to dismiss the situation by saying we can't possibly understand "crazy" people. It avoids having to consider the systemic reasons why something like this can happen. I'd imagine a significant part of it is that we live a society where some people can have their livelihood yanked away from them, with no support structure to help them, leaving them desperate and angry.

Absolutely it makes sense. "That person shoot out random youtube employees therefore youtube should change its helpdesk" argument does not make sense. It makes as much sense as caving to any other form of terrorism. Youtube and its employees are the victim here. Using this to put pressure on them in the "for the safety of your employees" way is incredibly distasteful.

> Youtube and its employees are the victim here.

No. The employees are the victim. Youtube? Not at all, save for a day of missed work. Them cutting off a person off their income without any way of appeal caused the whole chain of events in the first place.

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Angry That Her Videos Had Been 'De-Monetized'

#202

Post by DanAndersen » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 2:30 PM UTC

wwwdonohue wrote: post #139

speeder wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This person videos weren't even strange or fringe... The attacker videos seemly were mostly about exercising, vegan diet, and some lighthearted videos... AFTER demonetization, seemly some videos with criticism about Youtube and US, saying that Iran (her home country) had more free speech than US, showed up.

From saved screenshots of her YouTube channel, she'd put up/shared videos of really violent animal cruelty. Animals being skinned alive/boiled, etc. Somehow I don't think it was the workout videos that were the most offensive to YouTube.

From what I understand, this is an example of the issues of algorithms not being able to understand context. We would obviously want to discourage animal cruelty, but graphic depictions of animal cruelty from an anti-cruelty perspective also get the crackdown. It could lead to a scenario where bad things continue to happen just because any depiction of them is filtered as advocating for it.

At the risk of drumming up unneeded controversy, it reminds me of when Marine Le Pen in France tweeted graphic images from ISIS actions as a rallying cry against them, only to be charged by the state with circulating violent content inciting terrorism ( https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/01/marine-le-pen-... ). Without proper application of context and judgment, a terrorist spreading propaganda and an anti-terrorist illustrating the terrorist's propaganda would be seen as the same sort of thing.

Of course, there's no simple solution -- we wouldn't want a world in which someone could get out of responsibility for spreading needlessly graphic content just by saying "oh I was just spreading it for educational purposes!".

Can automated processes ever hope to achieve the nuance we need in our societies?

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Angry That Her Videos Had Been 'De-Monetized'

#203

Post by post_break » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 2:31 PM UTC

INTPenis wrote: post #103

Americans in the comment section are reacting about this woman being a disgruntled user, angry about perceived discrimination from Youtube, down on her luck, suicidal. Me, a european, I'm reacting to how easily she found a gun. I hate to bring up this very toxic debate, my comment will seem like fishing for trouble. Yet you have to understand our perspective. Not every lunatic where I live can find a gun when they ne…

If it wasn't a gun it could have been a knife. Or like the epidemic over seas, a bunch of acid thrown on peoples faces. We don't know how she got the gun, but in America, if you have no criminal background, haven't done anything crazy, and they do a background check, you can purchase a weapon. You can't ban crazy, and until we have some way of seeing into the future, you can't stop all crimes. Also, our gun ownership in America has absolutely exploded. Like doubled. And have shootings and killings doubled? Nope.

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Angry That Her Videos Had Been 'De-Monetized'

#204

Post by staunch » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 2:31 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #46

bertil wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get how that gets some channel into trouble: politics, guns. Than channel was apparently a Iranian-American vegan animal rights activist. I’m not a vegan, but I don’t see the point in opposing them. Other than the banter about how in-your-face they can be, do people violently oppose vegans, or animal rights activists? She was upset over a workout video being age-gated: who would oppose that video?

There is something very ironic about a person that is supposedly so careful about animal rights that they will change their diet to relieve the pressure who at the same time has no problems in bringing a gun into the offices of a free service and shooting random strangers.

"Hitler followed a vegetarian diet. At social events he sometimes gave graphic accounts of the slaughter of animals in an effort to make his guests shun meat."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler#Health

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Angry That Her Videos Had Been 'De-Monetized'

#205

Post by rowyourboat » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 2:32 PM UTC

analognoise wrote: post #148

simonsarris wrote: post #40

I can't help but think of of the Tunisian guy who was trying to eke out a living, faced his own Arbitrary Machine (the state in this case) and lost, getting de-monetized. Then set himself on fire, more or less starting the "Arab Spring." If you never read of the Tunisian man, from wiki: > Twenty-six-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi had been the sole income earner in his extended family of eight. He operated a vegetable or a…

I can't tell if you're serious. One of those 'systems' is governmental corruption, the other is Youtube; the comparison makes absolutely no sense. Youtube is a private company, not a corrupt government. If you're living in the states and trying to "eek out a living" and Youtube steals your proverbial "apple cart", too bad, so sad, go get a different job - they don't exist as a platform to ensure people get paid, peop…

You could argue that since Youtube has created a public forum for others to work in, they should be held to different standards than a regular private company. I.e. Youtube should be regulated as infrastructure and thus can not longer unilaterally changes rules or make judgements based on those rules.

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Angry That Her Videos Had Been 'De-Monetized'

#206

Post by jacquesm » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 2:32 PM UTC

timkpaine wrote: post #195

jacquesm wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not going to defend shooting anyone, obviously. And then you proceed to defend that anyway. Any webserver will be happy to serve up .mp4 content. There are free players (JWPlayer for instance) and you are entirely free to serve up whatever you want from your own hosted service. That capricious decision can be appealed, you can take Youtube to court if you feel they have wronged you. > Why would you be surprised…

Without addressing any of the actual arguments.. >Any webserver will be happy to serve up .mp4 content. There are free players (JWPlayer for instance) and you are entirely free to serve up whatever you want from your own hosted service. This echos the classic dropbox comment, "you can just do it yourself". A layperson isn't going to. >That capricious decision can be appealed, you can take Youtube to court if you feel…

> This echos the classic dropbox comment, "you can just do it yourself". A layperson isn't going to.

Then you will have to live with being dependent on the whims of another entity. Which means you give up a lot of your freedoms.

> As the facebook controversies have show, people have a remarkably bad time using common sense and making rational decisions on the internet

This wasn't 'on the internet', this was about as IRL as it gets.

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Angry That Her Videos Had Been 'De-Monetized'

#207

Post by sergiotapia » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 2:32 PM UTC

INTPenis wrote: post #103

Americans in the comment section are reacting about this woman being a disgruntled user, angry about perceived discrimination from Youtube, down on her luck, suicidal. Me, a european, I'm reacting to how easily she found a gun. I hate to bring up this very toxic debate, my comment will seem like fishing for trouble. Yet you have to understand our perspective. Not every lunatic where I live can find a gun when they ne…

In every thread - every single thread - there's some euro guy with this exact comment verbatim. Line for line, word for word.

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Angry That Her Videos Had Been 'De-Monetized'

#208

Post by emodendroket » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 2:32 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #198

emodendroket wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, no, I don't think recognizing the validity of someone's grievance means you necessarily have to also support a mass shooting as a way of redressing said grievance.

And what valid grievance would that be?

I guess you have short-term amnesia, because I just explained why I think the grievance is valid in the post you replied to.

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Angry That Her Videos Had Been 'De-Monetized'

#209

Post by gnu8 » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 2:32 PM UTC

dwighttk wrote: post #158

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'De-Monetized' suggests that someone who produces a video has an automatic right to income. That's bonkers, it's already quite a service that Youtube allows you to upload your videos to reach an audience that you'd be hard pressed to serve from your own server. They do this for free. In the previous iteration of such platforms all the ad income would go to the owner of the website, not to the rights owners of the vid…

>It's like when Apple pulls something from the AppStore because they want to release something similar. when did that happen?

F.lux for example.

Re: Suspect in YouTube Shooting Angry That Her Videos Had Been 'De-Monetized'

#210

Post by mitchdoogle » Wed, Apr 04, 2018, 2:33 PM UTC

Klathmon wrote: post #15

sqdbps wrote: post #2

The media’s part in this: For whatever reason they started scouring youtube for “controversial” videos checking if they had ads (no matter how little views they had) then they would contact the advertisers for comment. Advertisers would initiate damage control and pull their ads from youtube. Youtube would explain that the numbers and views in question are insignificant and that this type of complex system can never…

This is absolutely a "no-win" situation in my mind. Everyone is acting in their best interests, and in many cases are acting benevolently, but the outcome is still awful. Obviously YouTube is going to cave to advertiser pressure and start to restrict what videos can have ads, their whole existence depends on it, and if I worked at YouTube i'd see demonetizing some videos as a welcome alternative to closing the whole…

I don't understand why it's a problem at all. Can't YouTube enact settings for advertisers to choose which videos they want to advertise on. Some of the obvious things to filter could be video category, view count, number of likes/dislikes, comments. Instead of demonetizing channels, they could tag them controversial and allow advertisers to say they don't want to advertise on controversial channels. Seems a lot better than a blanket ban on advertisements.