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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

#151

Post by foldr »

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.

Youtube doesn't actually censor anti-LGBT hate speech very effectively. For example, this asshole's videos are still up:

https://gizmodo.com/youtube-no-we-wont-remove-these-videos-o...

(And no, they're not blocked in Poland.)

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

#152

Post by big_chungus »

tremon wrote: post #144
ralusek wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention that people are biased and cannot be trusted to moderate ethically.

Whereas an algorithm can be trusted to moderate ethically? This is why civilized countries have developed rule of law, including arguments and rebuttals, overseen by an impartial arbiter. Yes, that is costly. But it is the accepted solution we have as a society, and it's time "Big Tech" starts accepting rule of law.

> it's time "Big Tech" starts accepting rule of law.

Which laws? I will acknowledge they are gaming the system somewhat by claiming to be an impartial platform (thereby gaining copyright protections) while removing what they find distasteful (but not illegal, so moderation based on opinion). However, it sounds like you believe removing videos that are not illegal in and of themselves is itself illegal. We don't have a law prohibiting that, so I'm not sure to what you are referring. Protecting speech also means protecting the right not to speak.

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

#153

Post by rdtwo »

CapricornNoble wrote: post #84
ppseafield wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just about "not getting ad revenue". It's about accounts getting suspended, homophobic ads running on pro-lgbt videos, and a total lack of enforcement on their harassment policies. https://twitter.com/gaywonk/status/1134264395717103617?lang=...

"homophobic ads running on pro-lgbt videos" There are homophobic ads on YT? What does that even look like? Can you link to an example?

So anti ads- everyone looses type of deal? I guess I’d like to know if a company hates me so I can never shop there so bring it on

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

#154

Post by rdtwo »

Truth is ad buyers don’t want to be associated with any controversial content and a majority of Americans still feel uncomfortable about Gay and lesbian issues and even more uncomfortable about transgender issues. It’s smart for advertisers to exclude lgbt content from their ads if they don’t think that’s a target demographic

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

#155

Post by Faark »

makomk wrote: post #127
pdkl95 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, late…

> 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.

Were those activists you mentioned campaigning to explicitly get respected analysts removed? Not from what I remember.

Lets compare this with a hypothetical: Lets say activists successfully got gov to newly introduce a speed limit. Some time later, a huge chunk of the emergency service personnel is in prison for breaking this new law. Would you actually blame this on activist's? Or maybe a retarded court system, probably combined with incompetent legislators.

Back to Youtube. They are either incompetent at making rules or incompetent at reasonably enforcing them, probably cause they entirely offload the latter on some shitty algorithm. Don't get me wrong, algorithms are great as first heuristic to save work. But there has to be a way to get to higher court levels, even if there is some form of cost.

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

#156

Post by Faark »

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.

More likely: YouTube will actually look for a way to achieve the same while offloading the costs to someone else. That should be very easy once two other parties are involved, as is the case with copyright stuff. I've never got a good argument against pushing both parties towards arbitration (selected by YT), with the looser picking up the tab.

Video classification by YT is a bit more tricky, since they themselves are one of the involved parties and thus any incentives put in place to improve the system would cost YT.

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

#157

Post by Balgair »

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…

> However, doing that really changes the economics of the platform

Getting profit-loss data on Youtube is very difficult. If they are profitable, it can't be by a large amount.

So, if the plan is to have a LOT of real people just trying to monitor YT all day long it will really gut YT's economics, not just change it.

Destin of Smarter Every Day on YT went and talked to FB and their content mod team a few months back [0]. He talked with Rob Leathern of FB's Cyber Security Department. Rob mentiond that they now use ~30k real people to monitor FB. Soon thereafter, The Verge released a scoop on the horrific conditions these 30k people must endure [1] in that job.

YT would likely have to have a proportinate number of people in similar conditions as well, or likely scale up to make things less worse and then have to pay more people.

YT simply cannot possibly afford to have enough people moderate YT.

Likely, this version of YT will become something of a blip in history. All this investment will likely not pan out as the economics of video platforms like YT cannot work as they are today. The real question is what is the subscription amount that does make YT work the way we want it to work?

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY_NtO7SIrY Also, watch Destin's body language with Nate Gleischer (~14:30 mark). It's so strange. Something wierd happened in that interview with Nate.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/19/18681845/facebook-moderat...

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

#158

Post by Faark »

pixl97 wrote: post #137
vintermann wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

Valve added a "Funny" button to steam reviews, since many top reviews were great jokes but had little substantial in them. I feel like it helped at least somewhat.

I also have a hard time believing the GP that there is no experimentation anymore. Probably a lot more subtle, but you can do a lot of stuff behind the scene without giving feedback to the user. I'd be shocked if there is not at least some form of shadowbanning bad actors.

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

#159

Post by tremon »

big_chungus wrote: post #152
tremon wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whereas an algorithm can be trusted to moderate ethically? This is why civilized countries have developed rule of law, including arguments and rebuttals, overseen by an impartial arbiter. Yes, that is costly. But it is the accepted solution we have as a society, and it's time "Big Tech" starts accepting rule of law.

> it's time "Big Tech" starts accepting rule of law. Which laws? I will acknowledge they are gaming the system somewhat by claiming to be an impartial platform (thereby gaining copyright protections) while removing what they find distasteful (but not illegal, so moderation based on opinion). However, it sounds like you believe removing videos that are not illegal in and of themselves is itself illegal. We don't have…

I'm not referring to "gaming the system", I'm referring to the refusal to hand over appeals to an independent third party, or in some cases flatly refusing appeals. The contentid, moderation and banning decisions should be subject to public scrutiny, they shouldn't be the unassailable result of a backroom process.

it sounds like you believe removing videos that are not illegal in and of themselves is itself illegal.

It's not even on my radar. I'm concerned with the transparency and consistency of the process, not the outcome of individual decisions.

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

#160

Post by manfredo »

Fomite wrote: post #78
Mirioron wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then the costs of YouTube probably balloon so high that it doesn't matter for creators whether their videos are demonetized or not, because they aren't going to earn anything from them.

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.

Evidenced by what? Violence continues to be at or near the lowest point since the mind 20th century. Not just in the US but globally. Economic growth is persisting despite governments uncooperative with the global economy in key countries (like the US). And the internet itself is doing a way better job of policing content today than it was in the 2000s. So why is the internet all of a sudden a problem today, despite key indicators showing that society isn't worse off?
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