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I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

gamefromscratch.com

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Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#11
post #3

I keep reading these horror stories about YouTube. It must really suck, as there are alternatives, but they just don't have the audience YouTube has. I guess there just isn't much we can do about this apart from hosting elsewhere when necessary?

well, it seemed like it was due to abuse w/ a botnet making a bunch of community guideline claims. I'm sure youtube will patch their codebase better.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#12
This might not be a popular opinion, but I feel like YouTube is doing their best with a really hard problem.

I see a lot of people complaining about things like this, but I also see a lot of people complaining that YouTube/Twitter/etc aren't doing enough to take down false/immoral/illegal content quick enough. [1]

It really sucks when a legitimate video is taken down by mistake. But it also really sucks when revenge porn is left up. YouTube is doing it's best to blend automation (fast but inaccurate) with human curation (more thoughtful but slower), and sometimes it gets it wrong.

I feel like most of the time I see posts like this, the situation is resolved favorably and relatively quickly. YouTube is dealing with two opposing issues, and is constantly doing its best to find a fair middle ground.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23316660

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#13
It seems like the extortionists can keep sending claims until they stumble across a YouTube moderator who guesses wrong and clicks the "this claim was legit" button. Even if 90% of the moderators would get it right eventually your video is going to be down for good. Even humans make mistakes sometimes, so human-in-the-loop isn't a perfect solution.

The thing that really doesn't make sense to me is that when a moderator marks a claim as invalid it doesn't switch the automod system to requiring the moderator to review the claim before taking the video down. Ideally you'd like that to be the case for all videos, but presumably that would anger the media cartels that dictated the requirements for the system and just want a way to do mass takedowns that doesn't cost them lawyer hours or have the potential of consequences for them.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#14

This might not be a popular opinion, but I feel like YouTube is doing their best with a really hard problem. I see a lot of people complaining about things like this, but I also see a lot of people complaining that YouTube/Twitter/etc aren't doing enough to take down false/immoral/illegal content quick enough. [1] It really sucks when a legitimate video is taken down by mistake. But it also really sucks when revenge…

>This might not be a popular opinion, but I feel like YouTube is doing their best with a really hard problem.

100% agree. Also true of Paypal, another common 'whipping boy' because enforcing various regulations around moving money while still providing good customer service is HARD.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#15

This might not be a popular opinion, but I feel like YouTube is doing their best with a really hard problem. I see a lot of people complaining about things like this, but I also see a lot of people complaining that YouTube/Twitter/etc aren't doing enough to take down false/immoral/illegal content quick enough. [1] It really sucks when a legitimate video is taken down by mistake. But it also really sucks when revenge…

I agree with this, except that the reason they receive so much criticism is because of their monopoly status.

If you're trying to make money from digital video, getting banned or even demonetized from YouTube is a death sentence on your vlogger career.

So sure, I don't blame YouTube. They're likely good folks doing their best to solve hard problems. At the same time, that this is such an impossible problem to deal with is probably a good reason to make sure Google doesn't have too much monopoly power over advertising (in this case video ads).

In short, the stakes are too high! They'd be lessened with more alternatives.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#16

This might not be a popular opinion, but I feel like YouTube is doing their best with a really hard problem. I see a lot of people complaining about things like this, but I also see a lot of people complaining that YouTube/Twitter/etc aren't doing enough to take down false/immoral/illegal content quick enough. [1] It really sucks when a legitimate video is taken down by mistake. But it also really sucks when revenge…

It's only ever resolved favorably if you have enough clout.

I understand there simply not being enough manpower on Earth to manually review so many cases, but the balance seems to be so heavily skewed towards automation (which still does a very piss poor job at it) that just feels like there's no human element vetting the final decision at all, and that's the approach which so many people have gripes about, rightfully so until Google strikes that balance.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#17

This might not be a popular opinion, but I feel like YouTube is doing their best with a really hard problem. I see a lot of people complaining about things like this, but I also see a lot of people complaining that YouTube/Twitter/etc aren't doing enough to take down false/immoral/illegal content quick enough. [1] It really sucks when a legitimate video is taken down by mistake. But it also really sucks when revenge…

It's only ever resolved favorably if you have enough clout. I understand there simply not being enough manpower on Earth to manually review so many cases, but the balance seems to be so heavily skewed towards automation (which still does a very piss poor job at it) that just feels like there's no human element vetting the final decision at all, and that's the approach which so many people have gripes about, rightfull…

Is that true? I mean, you can also argue it's only ever an issue in the first place if you have enough clout to be targeted. And I haven't seen any proof that people "without clout" aren't able to get it resolved, have you? Even this person isn't exactly a YouTube heavy-hitter, it's a relatively niche channel.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#19

This might not be a popular opinion, but I feel like YouTube is doing their best with a really hard problem. I see a lot of people complaining about things like this, but I also see a lot of people complaining that YouTube/Twitter/etc aren't doing enough to take down false/immoral/illegal content quick enough. [1] It really sucks when a legitimate video is taken down by mistake. But it also really sucks when revenge…

> This might not be a popular opinion, but I feel like YouTube is doing their best with a really hard problem.

Of their own making. It's solvable. You throw humans at it.

If Google can't deal with this then they shouldn't be allowed to collect money by running ads. Problem solved.

And other sites will spring up that might actually be willing to deal with the problem correctly because now YouTube isn't a monopoly anymore.

Google (and others) are going to continue to be shit until we hit them with anti-trust actions and big fines. Until then, this is all just a cost of doing business and they will laugh all the way to the bank.

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