YouTube bans comments on all videos of children • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#191

Post by nradov » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 9:37 PM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #159

dosshell wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Limited Monitization Video that include minors and are at risk of predatory comments may receive limited or no ads (yellow icon). If you think we made a mistake please appeal [link]. We will continue to refine our approach in the coming weeks and months. Is misstaken as deletion? English is not my first language, but I have a hard time reading this as "we may delete your channel".

Removing monitization is as good as deletion for the content creators. Furthermore, their "appeals" process tends to be a black hole, as is basically everything at google that would require human intervention.

That's only true for "professional" content creators. The silent majority of creators don't care about monetization and won't be impacted.

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#192

Post by ben_w » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 9:38 PM UTC

mediocrejoker wrote: post #124

brentonator wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God forbid they put a link to Wikipedia under flat earth videos, huh?

You only think that's a good idea because you don't believe in flat earth. They could equally put a link to flat earth sites under NASA/SpaceX videos. Do you really want to decree that whatever they link is "true" just because you agree with them in this particular instance?

When I am objectively wrong, I want my mind to be changed. I expect this to be the case for around 10% of my ‘knowledge’, even on topics I care to educate myself about, and much worse on other issues.

Putting a link under the videos isn’t likely to achieve that, but that’s a separate issue.

The only problem I have with Google doing this, is that I trust corporations and government about the same — i.e. that both will lie and dissemble as much as they are allowed to get away with for their own or their leader’s benefit, without regard for my interests.

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#193

Post by shaki-dora » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 9:38 PM UTC

mediocrejoker wrote: post #124

brentonator wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God forbid they put a link to Wikipedia under flat earth videos, huh?

You only think that's a good idea because you don't believe in flat earth. They could equally put a link to flat earth sites under NASA/SpaceX videos. Do you really want to decree that whatever they link is "true" just because you agree with them in this particular instance?

You can’t abstract away from the content to the pure form of an action, and then posit that there’s no observable difference between two (very much different) examples.

Ex: „If banks stop allowing strangers to withdraw money from my account, how will I ever get my money“

And, no, questions of fact aren’t different. The earth is round, not flat. One tree does not a forest make, but a thousand does. Even if we can’t agree on the specific cutoff (is 15 trees a forest? 50? 500?), that does not prevent us from accurately describing the extremes.

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#194

Post by anonytrary » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 9:38 PM UTC

40acres wrote: post #122

Does YouTube even need comments? I can't remember any meaningful discussion happening in the comments, it's mostly meme type stuff. Long term I can see this being the final resolution for toxic comments.

> I can't remember any meaningful discussion happening in the comments, it's mostly meme type stuff.

That's because you're watching pop-videos. There's a goldmine of educational content on YouTube which breed valuable comments. The problem isn't the concept of commenting, the problem is that shitty content attracts shitty comments.

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#195

Post by bduerst » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 9:39 PM UTC

zanny wrote: post #167

bduerst wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this whole "Youtube isn't even trying" is a massive survivor bias/fallacy because it ignores all the failed moderation attempts that aren't visible.

Its less that nobody at Youtube tried to solve the problem but more that it was never a business priority in the interests of the bottom line to solve this problem in a nuanced way. For Youtube, these kinds of comments threaten to alienate advertisers. Comments only have a miniscule impact on viewer retention and engagement, so if the actual business is threatened by comments you just get rid of the comment system.

Saying it's not a "business" priority is the same as saying that Youtube isn't trying, just with more words. It's also subject to the same survivor bias because we don't know the "business" investments into community and moderation.

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#196

Post by xenadu02 » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 9:39 PM UTC

Google manages to impose the Google Death Penalty on people for supposedly violating AdSense terms or having an unpaid Google Cloud account or any number of other reasons.

Is there some reason they can't require a verified account to comment and nuke any account found to be making inappropriate comments? That sure would put a stop to it.

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#197

Post by _wmd » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 9:40 PM UTC

notatoad wrote: post #190

zaroth wrote: post #12

The fact that Google is ceding the fight against toxic comments on YouTube is actually pretty shocking. In a company that knows more about you than you can possibly imagine, and more about automated sentiment analysis than anyone in the world, they couldn’t algorithmically determine who should be allowed to post on certain subsets of videos, or devise a system they thought was worth deploying to ensure comments meet…

What are their other options? Imagine they could, with great accuracy, predict whether somebody is going to leave a good comment or a bad one. Do they expose that to the commenter, saying they've been blocked from commenting because the algorithm thinks they're a shitty person? Imagine the optics of that... The other option is the shadowban, where toxic commenters are hidden without notice. It sounds like a good idea…

If the structure of the service offering exceeds the limits of available technology, then the structure of the service is at fault and needs to change -- wishing away the bad people doesn't work, nor does pretending the issue does not exist (their current strategy) until advertisers are forced to threaten them

The option available to them is clear, it's just not something anyone is willing to accept: connecting untrustworthy anonymous third parties to the bedrooms of 5 year olds cannot be done safely within the limits of existing technology.

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#198

Post by Shivetya » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 9:40 PM UTC

TACIXAT wrote: post #162

xfitm3 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be in the minority here but I enjoy the low quality youtube comments. Most people dismiss them as cancer but the reality is a lot of people think in patterns that drive these comments. I would rather be in touch with and exposed to this rather than try to pretend it doesn’t exist. It won’t ever go away, it will just be hidden.

This isn't about shitposting on YouTube videos, this is about pedos time stamping videos of kids in sexualized positions. Mostly in response to this video [1] (with a warning that it's pretty uncomfortable and gross). 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O13G5A5w5P0

that truly was uncomfortable to watch, did not finish. Amazing how the human mind works that such a system came about but the algorithm that is built into youtube itself needs to be questioned.

so what solution is there, preventing any content with children under a certain age? blocking any comment that features a link? can youtube detect use of vpn? once you leave certain countries I am not sure it can be policed.

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#199

Post by Wowfunhappy » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 9:41 PM UTC

drak0n1c wrote: post #165

m23khan wrote: post #151

As a Father of very young kids, I think this is nothing short of emergency. Not only commenting on kids videos should be banned, also youtube should heavily vet and tag all their kids related videos -- these days kids are hooked on watching cartoons and poems on youtube and a lot of times, there are really garbage videos targeting kids just showing little girls buying and playing with make ups, cleaning houses and le…

People said the same about the chat rooms we used when we were kids. You could argue that those had much more potential than Youtube comments to lead to actual physical harm. In some cases, bad things really happened. Chris Hansen made a show about it, and police used chat rooms to find pedophiles. But were internet chat rooms ever an "emergency"? Where do we draw the line with bans? There are family-friendly content…

I'm mostly playing Devil's Advocate here, but consider that Youtube is much more widely used than IRC chatrooms ever were.

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#200

Post by anonytrary » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 9:43 PM UTC

circa wrote: post #177

Just ban all the comments. The world would be a better place.

That's the easily solution, but the easy solution is hardly ever the right one. There are plenty of reasons why commenting on videos can be useful. Lectures and other educational content typically have errors and other useful information as the top comments. Those are useful.