Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Watch Out Google, YouTubers Are Unionizing

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 259 posts

Re: Watch Out Google, YouTubers Are Unionizing

#161

Post by arkades »

mrec wrote: post #25
anon1m0us wrote: post #9

What they should do is collectively take their content somewhere else. As an aside, I'm seeing the same pattern at Amazon. People thought they were opening a business on amazon selling retail. Then amazon started selling the profitable products themselves, storing the products themselves, ... basically doing more and more of the work and taking more control and taking money from the people who helped them become powe…

> The internet has turned to garbage. The ad-supported internet has turned to garbage. The academic and hobbyist internet is fine, and not that much different from the old days. The governmental internet depends a lot on where you are, but .gov.uk is really rather good, and vastly better at what it does than snailmail and Post Offices were in the old days.

I have the same impression.

Old days: random cool stuff, sea of garbage, impossible to find anything.

Middling days: random cool stuff, sea of garbage, Google!

Now: random cool stuff, sea of garbage, impossible to find anything.

It’s still gotten easier to put things on the Internet than ever before. There are still even more hobbyist sites than ever. Google hasn’t actively rolled those things back, it’s just taken us back to the garbage fire of the old days.

Re: Watch Out Google, YouTubers Are Unionizing

#162

Post by La-ang »

Can youtubers go on strike and take the content down for a limited time? If such an option is available and they do it, it would be a relevant strike. But since those who are joining the Union are the one demonetized provides that Youtube isn't making as much profit from their presence as those who are still running ads. In such case, the former ones will need a way to engage those who make profit align with their doctrine, so the strike can be a blow to youtube. Bottom line to me; Not Gonna Happen (NGH).

Re: Watch Out Google, YouTubers Are Unionizing

#163

Post by josteink »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #119
mrec wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The internet has turned to garbage. The ad-supported internet has turned to garbage. The academic and hobbyist internet is fine, and not that much different from the old days. The governmental internet depends a lot on where you are, but .gov.uk is really rather good, and vastly better at what it does than snailmail and Post Offices were in the old days.

> The academic and hobbyist internet is fine, and not that much different from the old days. YouTube, and dreams of monetization, have infected the hobbyist internet too. I am active in some niche travel hobbies. It used to be that people in this subculture would write detailed text blogs with tips about various routes and definitions. Now, people think video is the default medium for sharing one’s information, and s…

> Now, people think video is the default medium for sharing one’s information

How people decided to default on the absolutely least effective medium for doing this is beyond me, but oh yeah, I’ve seen this.

For me it’s a clear sign of worthless content not worth my time.

If it’s not text, I’m not going to consume it. EOT.

Re: Watch Out Google, YouTubers Are Unionizing

#164

Post by arkades »

wtetzner wrote: post #52
peter_l_downs wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, a lot of the amazing parts of the internet that people reminisce about are still there. The things that _have_ disappeared are often not technically complex or expensive to reproduce. Defeatism is boring, start building things and telling your friends about them.

I think the biggest change is that you can't easily find the good parts of the internet through Google anymore.

Some of us predate Google.

Come, lovely summer child, we will teach you to survive the winter.

Re: Watch Out Google, YouTubers Are Unionizing

#165

Post by stcredzero »

AgentME wrote: post #160
stcredzero wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fundamentally I think the problem is that these platforms are not neutral, when YouTube's algorithm hoists your video to the front page they are "manipulating" the system. Sure, and when someone puts weights on both sides of a scale, operating it correctly, they are still "manipulating" the scale. That's not what people get mad about. It's when someone puts their thumb on the scale, because they want it to read a cer…

>It's not going to be easy to draw the line, but in the case of pushing politics, it has clearly gone too far. In which way? I've seen a lot of arguments that YouTube pushes people into alt-right and ethnonationalist content way too easily. I don't think there's an objective way to choose what videos to promote. Obviously they're going to try to come up with some right way to put the weights, and then if they subject…

There's way more than algorithm tweaking going on there. There are employees who are manually treating the same thing differently, depending on who and also subject to their own biases. The examples of this on YouTube are legion.

Also, there are people who gained viral notoriety, but were going against YouTube/Google politics, then had their whole Google account disappear, then get restored, or remain disappeared. There's some thumbs on the scale over there.

Re: Watch Out Google, YouTubers Are Unionizing

#166

Post by logfromblammo »

lowdose wrote: post #139
logfromblammo wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government offices don't just lose on salary, but also on working conditions. Secondhand anecdotes recount fistfights in the office and the unfireable-until-the-election official viewing porn during working hours and continually infecting their desktop and the intranet with malware.

This sounds outrageous. Would be awesome if that video is going to end up on yt.

Unfortunately, that was from before smartphone ubiquity. Possibly the story is also from before YouTube, but the recounting of it was not.

Re: Watch Out Google, YouTubers Are Unionizing

#167

Post by josteink »

aylmao wrote: post #123
anon1m0us wrote: post #9

What they should do is collectively take their content somewhere else. As an aside, I'm seeing the same pattern at Amazon. People thought they were opening a business on amazon selling retail. Then amazon started selling the profitable products themselves, storing the products themselves, ... basically doing more and more of the work and taking more control and taking money from the people who helped them become powe…

> Now Youtube is doing the same. They used focus on being a search and distribution mechanism. Now they produce content, allow sponsorships, have more ads per minute of viewing then television, ... jobs there are again, repackaging jobs. Repackage scenes from movies, previews, upload documentaries, sports clips... This. I remember when getting a single ad in YouTube was news. Or an unstoppable ad. Now I've bumped int…

> This. I remember when getting a single ad in YouTube was news. Or an unstoppable ad. Now I've bumped into videos that have close to an ad a minute.

If it bothers you so much, just pay up for Youtube Premium and the problem goes away.

These days paying for ad-free actually is an option. So if what you want is ad-free youtube either pay up or admit to being a hypocrite.

Re: Watch Out Google, YouTubers Are Unionizing

#168

Post by monknomo »

cobookman wrote: post #76
anon1m0us wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to a government website the other day. 5 pages of forms I filled out several times. Each time on the final page, "system error, cannot proceed." I called the agency, they said, "You should print out the PDF, fill that out and bring it to our office." Can you believe that?? There aren't enough programmers to make the .gov stuff work right because FAANG is buying them all. So, I'm not sure you are right on that.

It’s due to the government not being able to compete on salary due to federal salary schedule limitations. The joke is they can easily pay a contractor 150$/hour though. But can’t pay an employee hourly wage of 100$/hour

I believe employee wage ceiling is something more like $75/hr, and that would be for a job description like "you run the department of commerce"

Re: Watch Out Google, YouTubers Are Unionizing

#169

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew »

40acres wrote: post #72

Fundamentally I think the problem is that these platforms are not neutral, when YouTube's algorithm hoists your video to the front page they are "manipulating" the system. Personally, I would not be surprised to see Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act challenged on this notion and it as the basis for other challenges. Internet providers just serve bits, any effort to "manipulate" those bits based on who is…

Section 230 does the exact opposite of what you want (think?). The idea being that a platform's effort to curb hate/violence/porn/whatever should be applauded, and not open them up to endless liability.

The internet as we know it is not workable without Section 230. Youtube would have to decide between becoming Netflix or *(something-worse-than-)Pornhub.

HN wouldn't be possible, nor would reddit (both would become 4chan).

Re: Watch Out Google, YouTubers Are Unionizing

#170

Post by nordsieck »

La-ang wrote: post #162

Can youtubers go on strike and take the content down for a limited time? If such an option is available and they do it, it would be a relevant strike. But since those who are joining the Union are the one demonetized provides that Youtube isn't making as much profit from their presence as those who are still running ads. In such case, the former ones will need a way to engage those who make profit align with their do…

> Can youtubers go on strike and take the content down for a limited time?

In order for that to be effective, a strike needs to remove enough capability from the other party to materially affect them. In this case, with so many videos online, I'd bet creators would need to get perhaps 95%-99% of recent videos taken down. They won't get anywhere close.

Right out of the gate, news and music won't join in the strike. Also the rewards to defect get higher, the more other creators join the strike.

Post reply on HN