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

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#361

Post by throwawaymath » Fri, Mar 01, 2019, 2:07 AM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #285

throwawaymath wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But being okay with Google doing this for flat-earth also makes it more acceptable for Google to do it for climate change. Sounds great, I'm all for it. Sure the truth can be complicated, but I fail to see how implementing software that auto-links to a relevant article on Wikipedia causes Google to be the arbiter of truth.

> Sounds great, I'm all for it. Even if Google thinks climate change isn't man-made and links to sources backing that up?

No, but I reject the implied premise. I don't just think Google should endorse the things I agree with, and I think characterizing this that way is disingenuous. Rather Google should endorse the truth which substantially recognized experts have consensus on.

There aren't sources backing up that climate change isn't real. That's a hill I'll happily die on. There are plenty of alternative sources which make that claim, but Google does not aggregate facts from them for presentation to its users. Because they don't have evidence.

Like I've said elsewhere in this thread, this isn't a revolutionary idea. Google does it on its search engine and the sky hasn't fallen. I remain unconvinced it would fail if they pushed it out to YouTube.

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#362

Post by throwawaymath » Fri, Mar 01, 2019, 2:08 AM UTC

mrep wrote: post #338

Mirioron wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sounds great, I'm all for it. Even if Google thinks climate change isn't man-made and links to sources backing that up?

Do you think YouTube should have censored videos about government surveillance programs before the Snowden documents came out?

That sounds like a leading question for rhetorical purposes - is this something Google actually did, or are we speaking purely of hypotheticals here?

Note the solution I posed is something which Google already does on its search engine without calamity. Therefore I don't see a reason why it would fail for YouTube. In contrast the example you're giving seems pretty hard to just link to an authoritative source.

Put another way, I'm not advocating for Google to arbitrate the truth on a case by case basis. I'm advocating for Google to identify ahead of time which sources are well-researched and trustworthy, then outsource its fact-linking system to those sources.

If Google were to supply facts on a case by case basis that would be suspect. But that's not how the company operates, so I'm deeply skeptical they would become some kind of arbiter of truth.

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#363

Post by joe_the_user » Fri, Mar 01, 2019, 2:13 AM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #345

disillusioned wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that there's an element of validation and indoctrination that is a serious concern here. In addition to an overall significant lowering of the discourse around things by allowing garbage quality trolls and other horrible comments, and in addition to bullying, aggressive behavior, stalking, and other things that are broadly considered unpleasant, this kind of behavior breeds more of this behavior. Consider som…

This is one of the reasons I think anonymity on the Internet is a bad thing. Not that I am saying it should be banned, but it should not be the norm. Much of the toxicity simply would not happen, could be prosecuted, or could be filtered if a "real person" attribute was widely available.

Toxic comments can be just as common in non-anonymous forums and venues. Facebook produces a lot of toxicity, for example. Further consider; the Internet is much less anonymous then twenty years ago and that hasn't stopped the overall level of toxicity imo. The type of person who spontaneously makes toxic comments spontaneously will still make them when forced to use their real name (they'll just suffer more from it). The provocateur, those who calculatedly elicit toxicity, is always going to be here too - no matter many Russians Facebook filters.

One factor is that once one person begins attack another person, both using real names, both people have a hard time backing down, especially if they know each in real life or if they are semi-public figures. For a lot of people, admitting that they are wrong is a huge hurdle - and these tend to be the people who engage in toxicity in the first place.

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#364

Post by hbosch » Fri, Mar 01, 2019, 2:34 AM UTC

jawns wrote: post #9

Chris Ulmer, who runs the popular YouTube channel Special Books for Special Kids, said that comments were removed from his channel despite no evidence of unacceptable comments, and YouTube told him that if he turned comments back on, he risked his channel being deleted. [EDIT: Turns out, this is not actually the case. See child comments.] https://twitter.com/chrisulmer/status/1099366622329036801 "Last night I realize…

I only have a peripheral knowledge of Twitch, but don’t they have a similar solution to what you’re outlining here? There is a “public” channel, on major streams this is full of spam and nonsense, then a separate channel for subscribers where they can talk amongst each other.

Perhaps a subscriber-only gate to comments would be a good thing. And only subscribers could read the comments, too. Channel owner is tasked with moderating the conversation or recruiting mods to do it, like any chat room or message board. Then, whatever happens in the comments becomes the channel owners responsibility.

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#365

Post by jake_the_third » Fri, Mar 01, 2019, 2:46 AM UTC

ltbarcly3 wrote: post #359

This is just idiotic. Rather than removing videos that creeps are into, or in any way addressing the situation where their platform is being used by creeps, they are just removing the evidence that creeps are there so we won't be able to embarrass them by pointing out the creeps using their platform to be perverted creeps. So the creeps will keep creeping on kids, and nobody will know except Youtube, since they have…

Just how would you solve this if you were in their position?

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#366

Post by hbosch » Fri, Mar 01, 2019, 2:51 AM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #199

drak0n1c wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In addition, Coca Cola never ran ads on IRC spliced into channels (as far as I know ;)).

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#367

Post by darkpuma » Fri, Mar 01, 2019, 2:52 AM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #234

_wmd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ramifications of this are profound, at least: - shake the money stick at them and they will dance (thanks, of all people, Nestle!) - they've admitted a serious problem exists that they were unwilling to deal with until external pressure forced them to (i.e. they can't be trusted to self regulate) - they've all but admitted they can't fix this in reasonable time, if at all This is the first time I can think of whe…

> - they've admitted a serious problem exists that they were unwilling to deal with until external pressure forced them to (i.e. they can't be trusted to self regulate) No, they didn't. The problem that Youtube is dealing with is advertisers leaving, not the actual comments. Dealing with the problem of advertisers leaving is different from dealing with those comments. It's unclear whether dealing with those comments…

Can a child consent to fame? Should a parent be permitted to make that choice for their child?

I don't believe so. We don't let parents send their children down into coal mines, and neither should we allow parents to make their children famous on youtube. Parental rights are secondary to the rights of the child.

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#368

Post by spookthesunset » Fri, Mar 01, 2019, 3:03 AM UTC

zbentley wrote: post #356

gambler wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will you stop using YouTube because of this? No. So Google doesn't loose anything and gains the ability to say they're "fighting toxicity". In reality, if they wanted to fix comments, they could easily do it without any high-tech stuff, through basic UI redesign. It's the quintessential broken window effect. The comment section design is horrible for actual discussions. People who have something intelligent to day si…

> In reality, if they wanted to fix comments, they could easily do it without any high-tech stuff, through basic UI redesign. Do tell.

They won’t. You can’t fix it through UX or algorithms. Honestly why allow comments on kids videos at all? What value do they deliver over the risk of abuse? None.

This is a step in the right direction for google.

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#369

Post by MiddleEndian » Fri, Mar 01, 2019, 3:14 AM UTC

jumpman500 wrote: post #289

MiddleEndian wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scalable web services and robust home internet with high upload rates should be the solution in my opinion. Any centralized corporate service is inherently limited. The internet should be the platform.

I agree there’s no reason it has to be a corporation. It just has to simpler for non-tech people to do creative stuff online and have others see it. YouTube makes it extremely easy, that’s why they have such dominance.

There's definitely a market for something that gets people up online in a straight forward way. I know a lot of art pros and they seem to have no trouble learning the tech they really need, whether it's cameras, synthesizers, or RAID setups.

Re: YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

#370

Post by philliphaydon » Fri, Mar 01, 2019, 3:18 AM UTC

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…

I won’t let my kid watch YouTube at all. Not when we have people editing peppa pig into being a murderer and listing it as a kids cartoon.

That said blanket disabling of comments on anything that features a kid is stupid. One channel I watch laowhy86 who vlogs about China had all his comments disabled on all his videos because his kid is in the pram during his vlogs.