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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

#131

Post by prometheus76 »

ptah wrote: post #115
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…

possibly, they should have LGBTQ humans do the rating on what is homophobic etc

No bias at all. Should work out great.

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

#132

Post by mieseratte »

ptah wrote: post #115
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…

possibly, they should have LGBTQ humans do the rating on what is homophobic etc

I know LGBTQ people who are free-speech absolutist and others who believe that anything that may offend or otherwise may be used negatively should be censored. I know LGB people who think that the TQ+ should be peeled off and needs to be its own thing. There is no uniformity among LGBTQ, the only commonality is the lack of being hetero.

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

#133

Post by paulnechifor »

ptah wrote: post #115
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…

possibly, they should have LGBTQ humans do the rating on what is homophobic etc

Sounds like a conflict of interest. If someone gets sued for rape, the jury doesn't get filled with rape victims.

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

#134

Post by paulnechifor »

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?

Honestly, a moderator should intervene. What's the point of linking to an article where you can only read 3 lines before paying?

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

#135

Post by jdietrich »

mushufasa wrote: post #81
pdkl95 wrote: post #60

s/(algorithmic|human) moderation/a rule of law/g This mess will only get worse as long as Google insists on trying to fix unsolved social conflicts unilaterally. Google made themselves the primary target when they started to make decisions with large social consequences by fiat. They de facto implemented rule of man [1]. The solution is to not be the sole entity with the power to make decisions about unsolved social…

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…

YouTube's changes to monetization didn't come out of nowhere - they were a response to the adpocalypse of 2017, when as much as 40% of advertisers stopped using the platform. These advertisers (perfectly reasonably) feared a backlash if their ads appeared next to the wrong sort of videos, so they just pulled their money. There was an outcry by YouTube content creators, so YouTube took sensible and proportionate steps to make the platform more attractive to advertisers without stifling free speech.

Savvy YouTubers (especially those who produce content that could be perceived as controversial) have taken control of their own revenues through sponsorship and patronage. YouTube doesn't have a business model problem - YouTubers do. You can't expect a platform to sell such vast amounts of ad inventory while also judging each piece of content in a nuanced fashion. That's the devil's bargain of algorithmic advertising and it isn't going away. If you don't like that bargain, sell your own damned inventory, or cut advertisers out of the loop completely and ask your viewers to make a direct contribution.

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

#136

Post by Proven »

It’s not a business model problem it’s a “too many busybodies” problem.

YouTube ought to be able to manage their platform any way they want.

It doesn’t make sense that someone can sue another person or entity because of the way they manage their own, private property.

And such lawsuits are especially hypocritical when they’re initiated by supposedly tolerant people like this particular (I am not generalizing) LGBTQ organization.

None of this has anything to do with YouTube or LGBTQ, it’s a simple matter of property rights.

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

#137

Post by pixl97 »

vintermann wrote: post #99
mushufasa wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about attaching a 'reputation' score to the flagger? E.g. something like: - if there are sufficient flags, trigger a moderator review - flaggers who correctly flagged content get +1 score or -1 score if not that would make it harder for people to consistently flag content maliciously. Like age-old moderation systems such as calling 911 or police. If you abuse calling 911, you can get fined. I imagine this has be…

People were asking such questions since at least 1997. Slashdot had the (imo, great) idea of rotating various voting privileges randomly. Raph Levien's Advogato used a network of trusted users and certification which was designed to be resistant against attack. Kuro5hin also had some novel ideas about what was needed to create robust high quality discussion (which turned out to be an obvious failure, but potentially…

One thing I dislike about most current voting/moderation systems is they are one dimensional, you get up or down (or in the case of FB they only have a point dimension of upvote).

I'd love a system were you could get 2 vote choices per post and then have 8 or more vote options.

Like/dislike (or agree/disagree), off topic/on topic, factually correct/factually incorrect, funny/hateful, user is a prick/user is a swell guy, or whatever seems like a good option for the discussion forum.

I mean, something can be funny, but off topic at the same time. Or something can be factually correct but the person making the post can be a real jerk about it.

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

#138

Post by jakelazaroff »

Mirioron wrote: post #105
goatinaboat wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Given the vast wealth Google etc have accumulated its clear that actually, they could afford to do it, and still make good, but not astounding, profits. The rationale “we can’t make as much money as we’d like to if we followed the law” just won’t wash.

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.

Why is the existence of YouTube specifically preferable to society? They're just a random company. No one has a right to their business model; if they can't figure out how to do make a video sharing site that doesn't harm people, they should go out of business to make space for someone who can. It's not like YouTube's particular implementation of video sharing is inherently better than Vimeo, PeerTube, or whatever else someone could come up with.

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

#139

Post by np_tedious »

pdkl95 wrote: post #60

s/(algorithmic|human) moderation/a rule of law/g This mess will only get worse as long as Google insists on trying to fix unsolved social conflicts unilaterally. Google made themselves the primary target when they started to make decisions with large social consequences by fiat. They de facto implemented rule of man [1]. The solution is to not be the sole entity with the power to make decisions about unsolved social…

You can argue about the sincerity of the statement, but Facebook / Zuckerberg appear to be firmly in the latter "someone else's problem" / "we don't want to make these decisions ourselves" camp: https://beta.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mark-zuckerberg-the...

I have not yet observed much progress towards these rules. The few "ministry of truth" style steps that have occurred don't exactly look promising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz

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

#140

Post by forgottenpass »

pdkl95 wrote: post #60

s/(algorithmic|human) moderation/a rule of law/g This mess will only get worse as long as Google insists on trying to fix unsolved social conflicts unilaterally. Google made themselves the primary target when they started to make decisions with large social consequences by fiat. They de facto implemented rule of man [1]. The solution is to not be the sole entity with the power to make decisions about unsolved social…

>Google insists on trying to fix unsolved social conflicts unilaterally

I wonder what all this paternalism will do to society long term.

In the short term we mostly see the people who are agitated by being on the wrong side of popular opinion (or are just caught by hamfisted enforcement), or others who expect levels of protection they're still not getting. But that's just the exceedingly obvious parts.

Every social intervention risks unintended consequences, no matter how well intentioned and angelic the goals are.

Censorship in TV and movies have irreparably damaged our collective psyche for generations (e.g.: the most obvious and uncontroversial area to say it's warped us are in attitudes around sex).

Where does social media censorship go from here? And what effects will it have on the population at large over time?

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