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YouTube’s LGBTQ Problem Is a Business-Model Problem

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Re: YouTube’s LGBTQ Problem Is a Business-Model Problem

#121

Post by alwayseasy »

cromwellian wrote: post #88

There's an assumption if you use human raters, you won't have false negatives or positives, but even human beings disagree over how to categorize speech, what's homophobic, what's legitimate sarcasm or irony, what is violent content. In fact, on top of human raters exhibiting classification problems in the face of ambiguity, there is also the issue of bias. Radiolab on NPR had a great series on Facebook's human censo…

Isn't this the whole business model of media organizations? Humans classifying, censoring information that is harmful based on the media's definition? Youtube has proven unable to manage their algorithmic censorship many times.

Re: YouTube’s LGBTQ Problem Is a Business-Model Problem

#122

Post by wtdata »

pjc50 wrote: post #101
wyoh wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LGBT creators are not a special case, all news and politics commentators I follow are demonetized, all gun related channels as well.

That's probably a sign that you're being radicalised and should find some saner news and politics commentators.

Do you apply the same logic to LGBT content that is complaining about getting demonetized?

Re: YouTube’s LGBTQ Problem Is a Business-Model Problem

#123

Post by dsjoerg »

goatinaboat wrote: post #116
Mirioron wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The platform economics change in that case. Right now, anybody can upload content for free and it'll appear very quickly on the channel. If you increase the cost per video by mandating human oversight on videos, then YouTube will probably remove the ability for (most) people to upload videos for free. I don't think that that's preferable for society.

Is what we have now preferable? Imagine a YouTube that cost $10 to upload a video and $1 per comment. The quality of the content would be much higher and the hate speech would drop to zero. Wouldn’t that be preferable for society?

Global median per-capita daily income is $8. So I have to spend my whole day's income to upload a video?

You're effectively restricting speech to the rich, and the poor just have to sit there and listen. That would be sad and unnecessary.

Re: YouTube’s LGBTQ Problem Is a Business-Model Problem

#124

Post by wvh »

This is an example of how censorship can boomerang back into the face of those it tries or claims to protect. I think policing words and topics will have a negative impact in the long run for most situations. Simple AI (or even human censorship) reacts to words and not intent, and ends up actually suppressing the minority.

Re: YouTube’s LGBTQ Problem Is a Business-Model Problem

#125

Post by [deleted] »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #8

One of the big problems with machine learning algorithms at this time is that they have a hard time figuring out intent. A lot of the terms used by the LGBTQ community, have been used by homophobic people as slurs. Yes it is great that the community is reclaiming those words, but current ML tech has no way of distinguishing when those terms are being used by the community in a respectful manner from where they are us…

[deleted]

Re: YouTube’s LGBTQ Problem Is a Business-Model Problem

#126

Post by crankylinuxuser »

dsjoerg wrote: post #123
goatinaboat wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is what we have now preferable? Imagine a YouTube that cost $10 to upload a video and $1 per comment. The quality of the content would be much higher and the hate speech would drop to zero. Wouldn’t that be preferable for society?

Global median per-capita daily income is $8. So I have to spend my whole day's income to upload a video? You're effectively restricting speech to the rich, and the poor just have to sit there and listen. That would be sad and unnecessary.

So it would be like old terrestrial over the air television. No?

Re: YouTube’s LGBTQ Problem Is a Business-Model Problem

#127

Post by makomk »

pdkl95 wrote: post #87
mushufasa wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All countries already have laws regulating speech to various degrees of freedom. Google's need to comply with these laws is part of the genesis for the moderation (e.g. copyright protection, child pornography). In fact, aggressive government laws for censorship are why Google chooses not to operate in China. The topic at hand is about monetization of ads -- the "acceptability" of the content is determined by the ad b…

> All countries already have laws regulating speech to various degrees of freedom. This is mostly unrelated to what I'm talking about. > The topic at hand is about monetization of ads That's one (important) aspect of "YouTube’s LGBTQ Problem", but it is not the only issue. As others have mentioned, some of Google's attempts to "fix" the problem have, for example, been used as a weapon by various hate groups to get LG…

The problem is that it's basically untenable for Google not to unilaterally try and solve these social problems; activists and the press have been putting pressure on them to do so by leaning on advertisers to pull out, with enough success that the continued existence of YouTube is imperilled if they don't. The other problem is that the activists keep demanding things which will inevitably backfire. For example, lately there's been this campaign for tech companies to eradicate far-right content the same way they did ISIS[1], often accompanied by claims that they avoided this because it'd take out a bunch of right wingers who'd get pissed off. In reality, that sweep ended up banning a bunch of respected analysts who were monitoring and reporting on ISIS's activity[2], and if they did the same to the far right it would result in a lot of anti-fascist campaigners getting banned.

I guess basically what I'm saying is that Google's content moderation problem is really a problem with our society, our politics, and our press.

[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/will-sili...

[2] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mitchprothero/isis-rese...

Re: YouTube’s LGBTQ Problem Is a Business-Model Problem

#128

Post by bprieto »

rewq4321 wrote: post #114
tu7001 wrote: post #108

Is it a joke? In Poland, for example, Youtube, in wholesale, blocks channels which are criticize on LGBTQUERTY. The question is why the are able to censor content. I don't expect that my supplier turn off gas for me, if he thinks, that I use it to kill people; it's not his business, ot's the matter of law enforcement, the police, etc.

> In Poland A month ago LGBT people were being punched and kicked in the head and had bricks thrown at them while walking down the street for a parade: https://streamable.com/hflsx "Fuck off, we will kill you, there is no place for you in society" https://streamable.com/f1c7c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlXWhSE9kAM You should be ashamed of your country for the way LGBT people get treated.

Are you really sure you should also be held to that standard? That you should be ashamed by any of the wrong things anyone does in your country?

Re: YouTube’s LGBTQ Problem Is a Business-Model Problem

#129

Post by crankylinuxuser »

philpem wrote: post #118
Fomite wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We may be hitting the point where societal impact is great enough that people don't necessarily accept "We can't do that at scale" as an out.

Maybe the solution to that is decentralised services. To use a historical example, it's easier to moderate an IRC channel of 100 people than an IRC network of 10,000.

Or better yet, unmoderated.

Usenet only fell apart because of the spam, and legal attacks by the RIAA and MPAA and BSA.

Re: YouTube’s LGBTQ Problem Is a Business-Model Problem

#130

Post by makomk »

username90 wrote: post #91
tareqak wrote: post #43

Here is a graph of how this thread trended: http://hnrankings.info/20709563/ .

Why would it do that? Did some moderator intervene?

Most likely a moderator intervened to stop it being algorithmically kicked off the front page - we're well over the threshold where the flame war detector normally kicks in and downranks submissions (roughly when it has more replies than upvotes).
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