YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#281

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee » Sun, Apr 14, 2019, 12:46 AM UTC

eropple wrote: post #52

bitxbit wrote: post #25

Please just give us the ability to blacklist channels. That’d increase usability by 10x for me.

AFAIK you can do that? Hit the menu on a video recommendation, "Not Interested" -> "Tell Us Why" -> "I'm not interested in this channel". IMO, though, blacklisting has been mostly proven to be insufficient. If you block, say, noted chud Sargon of Akkad, that doesn't mean that another half-dozen "Rationalist" "Thinkers" Who Just Happen To Be Chuds won't be recommended to you as well.

It doesn’t work for me. I still get channels I never want to see constantly coming up everywhere.

It’s quite annoying because I’m trying to help actively train my preferences and it’s as if YouTube will not let me participate in that.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#282

Post by tracker1 » Sun, Apr 14, 2019, 9:37 PM UTC

atomical wrote: post #236

tracker1 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I get it on all sides... however, it's worrisome to me that the support of censorship is moving so far as to ban access to such (opt-in) tools.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#283

Post by rhcom2 » Sun, Apr 14, 2019, 10:43 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #241

rhcom2 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The 2nd amendment isn't absolute though, which you can see through the different gun laws in each state. Those are often states being naughty and infringing. Those are often backdoor attempts to circumvent the 2nd amendment.

Not according to the Supreme Court, who has upheld the state's right to regulate firearms.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#284

Post by anitil » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 12:37 AM UTC

hombre_fatal wrote: post #196

seattle_spring wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Just like people got what they wished for when Voat was spawned from Reddit?

Voat isn't just what you get with no censorship. It's what you get when you're a new alternative to a large incumbent: you are populated almost 100% by people banned by the incumbent. Nobody else has a reason to join your platform. It's a phenomenon that makes it even harder to compete with an incumbent social network.

There's a great video that goes through this phenomenon (in the context of Youtube vs VidMe) [0]. It points our exactly that the people who adopt a new platform tend to be the people most toxic for the original. I have no idea how you get around this.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3snVCRo_bI

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#285

Post by gdhbcc » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 1:30 AM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #179

enitihas wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think any new platform is going to be able to compete with YouTube at all with the current regulations. How will any new platform comply with new EU copyright laws, or remove unlawful videos as quickly as YouTube? (e.g the unfortunate New Zealand terrorist attack)

1) below a certain scale, they don't have to comply 2) if they make a good faith effort, at whatever level of expertise and resources they have, I belive they will be within the law. I dont think there is any specific legal requirement to do machine learning or any other specific implementation of content ID. I'd start with checksums, whatever level of flagging by hand I could afford, and go from there. As you scale…

Your first point is objectively incorrect. The EU copyright laws apply to every website/company, the only difference is small companies/websites have 3 years to bring themselves into compliance.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#286

Post by tracker1 » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 4:55 PM UTC

notatoad wrote: post #131

noego wrote: post #22

Honestly, it's pretty ridiculous that YouTube is being pressured to police the content on its platform. What worries me far more than extremist videos on YouTube, is the idea of a mega-corporation exerting outsized influence over the opinions we are exposed to. Is our democracy really so fragile that it cannot survive an open marketplace of ideas?

I think it's fairly reasonable that anybody who runs a recommendation service is held responsible for the content they recommend. YouTube isn't just a video hosting platform, it's a homepage providing recommendations, a service that automatically queues up a new video after the one you're currently watching, and an advertising network that directly funds the creation of the videos they host. YouTube is already puttin…

There's no real reason that "recommended" can't also mean "curated." They could definitely limit recommendations to +1's by trusted users who are getting feeds by entropy.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#287

Post by erikpukinskis » Mon, Apr 15, 2019, 6:59 PM UTC

gdhbcc wrote: post #285

erikpukinskis wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) below a certain scale, they don't have to comply 2) if they make a good faith effort, at whatever level of expertise and resources they have, I belive they will be within the law. I dont think there is any specific legal requirement to do machine learning or any other specific implementation of content ID. I'd start with checksums, whatever level of flagging by hand I could afford, and go from there. As you scale…

Your first point is objectively incorrect. The EU copyright laws apply to every website/company, the only difference is small companies/websites have 3 years to bring themselves into compliance.

My first point is also objectively correct IF size and age are strongly correlated. Do you agree with that premise?

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#288

Post by tmm84 » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 3:47 AM UTC

bitL wrote: post #46

Quality content takes time to create; many of the past changes in YouTube algorithms explicitly pushed for churning out low-quality content frequently and rewarded it, while seriously disadvantaging irregular quality content (that moved elsewhere in the meantime). You get what you reward.

I noticed this a long time ago. Content creators were being rewarded for "daily" videos. So many of the channels I loved had videos where they came out and said "I'm going daily and, yes, the videos are going to suck until I daily upload good stuff." A few channels I watched just disappeared because of the daily upload reward/promote requirement. Algos don't work with creative works and human tastes.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#289

Post by danans » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 5:02 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #262

danans wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Free speech" as you are using that term (vs. it's actual meaning as a guard against government suppression of speech) was suppressed for decades by the media industry. You couldn't publish the extreme content you see on the internet today in traditional newspapers and television. Mass radicalization didn't occur for all those decades. The freedom to publish anything you want over a mass medium is something that is o…

(vs. it's actual meaning as a guard against government suppression of speech) False, False, False! This is not how it works in US jurisprudence. Freedom of speech has to do with fundamental human rights and society. Government, being an important part of this, therefore must abide by Free Speech. However, private parties are also subject to it as well. Free Speech is fundamental, and even supersedes other rights, lik…

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama

The holding in that case is quite narrow: "Constitutional protections of free speech under First and Fourteenth Amendments still applicable within the confines of a town owned by a private entity."

You would have to stretch the definition of "town" to include "website" to have it apply.

>> You can still shout whatever you want in the town square, > This is such a dishonest conceit.

Fine, then you can go on Gab, 4chan, 8chan or any of a number of other platforms or sites that accept hate speech to varying degrees. There are digital platforms available for that kind of speech.

> The audience relationship is not with people and YouTube. It's with people and a particular creator.

The editorial aspects of Youtube (including recommendations) are certainly within Youtube's rights to control. Youtube is a brand, not an ISP. Creators must establish a relationship with Youtube in order to publish content on it. There are terms for any such relationship, in the case of Youtube, they are described at https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/policies/#community-guideli...

> If there were a monopoly on printing presses,

There is no monopoly on the technical mechanisms of distributing video online. There are plenty of websites that self-host video content today, and there is no reason that a new provider couldn't attract the creators and audience that Youtube doesn't want.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#290

Post by danans » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 5:21 PM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #270

danans wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Free speech" as you are using that term (vs. it's actual meaning as a guard against government suppression of speech) was suppressed for decades by the media industry. You couldn't publish the extreme content you see on the internet today in traditional newspapers and television. Mass radicalization didn't occur for all those decades. The freedom to publish anything you want over a mass medium is something that is o…

The problem is that a lot of our (political) communication now happens on those private platforms. There is no digital town square, where people could openly share ideas. That's a massive problem for society, because effectively those digital platforms become the gatekeepers of political discussion. We give a lot of free passes to those platforms by not making them liable for allowing content that everyone else would…

> There is no digital town square, where people could openly share ideas

There are many of them. We're conversing on one right now, in fact. I enjoy civil conversations here with people with whom I disagree deeply about many issues.

However, if mine or anyone else's comments veer to the hateful or inciteful, you can be sure that the moderators will address it by banning our comments or accounts.

> YouTube isn't held liable for copyright infringement

The existence of Youtube Content ID [1] directly contradicts this statement. The whole point of developing Content ID was to enforce copyright on the behalf of, and under pressure from copyright owners.

1. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797370?hl=en