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YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

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Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#231
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How did we end up here? [...] systematic censorship and endless puritanical moral panic? The reason is advertising money is what funds Youtube. Ultimately, this means Google has to make sure their videos are mostly "advertiser-friendly" [0]. This unavoidable editorial tension is what the prior boycott incident (Adpocalypse[1]) was all about. >We badly need some new blood guiding tech development. It's not just a new…

How come this isn't a problem for Facebook? I could see some crazy political post right next to an ad, and nobody would say "oh well, the brand from that ad is now associated with ". I don't see how this is the case for YouTube, but not Facebook. Why are brands so concerned about association on one platform, yet not the other?

For the same reason that brands aren't concerned that the bus carrying their ad may be waiting for the light to change... In front of a strip club.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no more right of access to a privately-owned live-streaming platform with an audience in the millions than he had right of access to a broadcast TV network If the government now has the right to say, "piece of content X -- not allowed" arbitrarily and with no process and rational standard, then Free Speech is simply broken. An event of that magnitude is now history. A free society should not be rewriting history. Peo…

This risks making about as much sense as “free guns” or “free nuclear weapons”. While we are tolerant about free speech in New Zealand, and indeed we have amazing access to our politicians, even to the point where the dildo-throwing protestors who targeted the 3rd most powerful politician here was let go immediately. We are, however, rightly intolerant of hate speech, especially speech against a segment of the popula…

This risks making about as much sense as “free guns”

I think the US 2nd Amendment is a great thing. People everywhere should have that absolute degree of freedom. That's certainly not the same thing as "free nuclear weapons."

We are, however, rightly intolerant of hate speech, especially speech against a segment of the population.

The problem we've seen with this, is that rather tame bog-standard Republican positions in the US are being tarred as "hate speech" by bad actors on the Far Left. (Accompanied by Far Leftist mobs chasing bog-standard Republicans in the street and beating them up. There's video of this to be found on YouTube.) I'm fine with direct incitement being illegal. That's pretty much the same thing as prohibiting explicit threats of physical violence. But there should be a wide zone around any kind of political opinion which isn't direct incitement. Otherwise, without objective standards, everything just devolves into namecalling, trying to get everyone else de-platformed.

In 2019, every enforcement mechanism needs to be vetted with the question: Can this be exploited? Because in 2019, you can rest assured that some bad actor will exploit it.

Almost every country has laws on the books like this, including the USA.

There is no such thing as "Hate Speech" in the US. However, we do have laws against things like direct incitement.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having one company be the sole gatekeeper for the overwhelming majority of the web's video content is not a solution. I struggle with this line of thinking because it's not specific enough. YouTube doesn't act as a gatekeeper for most video content. You can upload almost anything you want as long as its not grotesque or copyrighted. What most people mean when they say YouTube acts as a gatekeeper is "will YouTube p…

> a handful of large advertisers decided they didn't like a lot of the content on YouTube and refused to pay for it. The beef is with the advertisers, not YouTube. No, the beef is with YouTube. They could offer advertisers the option to pay more and only advertise on “high-quality” content, or pay less and advertise everywhere. Make it a slider with example videos and let them select what they’re comfortable with. In…

But they already do that. It‘s called Google Preferred:

https://www.youtube.com/google-preferred/

https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/products/google-preferred/

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#234

Frankly, I hope YouTube (and Google in general) dramatically overdo it with the censorship, "curation", and deplatforming of "irresponsible" content, purely so that it forces an independent, non-corporate model to be developed. Having one company be the sole gatekeeper for the overwhelming majority of the web's video content is not a solution.

You don't have to look any farther than Gab and Dissenter to see what happens when someone tries to create free speech respecting versions of things.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> best solution is to simply use actual humans Gee, how many humans might it take to review the >400 hours of video uploaded every minute? (source: https://www.tubefilter.com/2015/07/26/youtube-400-hours-cont... )

400 hours/minute is 24,000 minutes of video per minute, or 241,920,000 minutes of video per week. Assuming a human can review 8 hours of video per day, 5 days a week (too high, but not by much), and that YouTube engineers can create an algorithm that automatically marks 95% of video (probably low, 95% correct labelling is easy to get; 99% is usually necessary to outdo humans), then you would need 5,040 humans. Automa…

> you'd need 3,360 humans

Likely this number would decline rapidly over time - i.e. months vs. years - as the ML would use the human tagging to improve itself to the point of reaching the 99% threshold fairly quickly.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#236

Frankly, I hope YouTube (and Google in general) dramatically overdo it with the censorship, "curation", and deplatforming of "irresponsible" content, purely so that it forces an independent, non-corporate model to be developed. Having one company be the sole gatekeeper for the overwhelming majority of the web's video content is not a solution.

You don't have to look any farther than Gab and Dissenter to see what happens when someone tries to create free speech respecting versions of things.

There's a bit of bias in the commentary on Gab, especially considering everyone at YC hates Andrew Mason. Not that he doesn't deserve it...

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(EDIT: I think the problem is exactly the opposite: people are now getting way too much of the content they can’t help but like, and that in way too many cases turns out to be deliberately polarising and extreme content. In the long run, that works out like the children's story where the young girl gets to decide she'll eat nothing, ever, but peanut butter and jelly. If it's stupid nonsense, then most people eventual…

Contributing all of that to the 'marketplace of ideas' is ultimately a fallacious remark. It cannot be proven or disproven because it casts a net so wide that it reaches absurdity. It's placing two points far apart in history and trying to point at one thing as being responsible for all of it.

[flagged]

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This risks making about as much sense as “free guns” or “free nuclear weapons”. While we are tolerant about free speech in New Zealand, and indeed we have amazing access to our politicians, even to the point where the dildo-throwing protestors who targeted the 3rd most powerful politician here was let go immediately. We are, however, rightly intolerant of hate speech, especially speech against a segment of the popula…

This risks making about as much sense as “free guns” I think the US 2nd Amendment is a great thing. People everywhere should have that absolute degree of freedom. That's certainly not the same thing as "free nuclear weapons." We are, however, rightly intolerant of hate speech, especially speech against a segment of the population. The problem we've seen with this, is that rather tame bog-standard Republican positions…

The 2nd amendment isn't absolute though, which you can see through the different gun laws in each state.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#239
I think when critics accuse YouTube of "stepping on the scale" here, they under-consider how warped that scale is already. The existing YouTube algorithm isn't neutral or fair, and is laughably easy to game. It's already biased—it's just biased towards extremes.

YouTube waded into this moral quagmire a long time ago. Being biased towards "engagement" is just as troubling as having a more human-relatable bias.

Now they're starting to take responsibility for the recommendations this algorithm spits out. I think that's a good thing.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a handful of large advertisers decided they didn't like a lot of the content on YouTube and refused to pay for it. The beef is with the advertisers, not YouTube. No, the beef is with YouTube. They could offer advertisers the option to pay more and only advertise on “high-quality” content, or pay less and advertise everywhere. Make it a slider with example videos and let them select what they’re comfortable with. In…

But they already do that. It‘s called Google Preferred: https://www.youtube.com/google-preferred/ https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/products/google-preferred/

Then why demonetize my super niche repair videos because they aren’t “subscribable”???
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