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I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

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Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#171

Post by xmprt »

downerending wrote: post #104
causality0 wrote: post #84

Google has an absolute fetish for making the ratio of profit to employees as large as possible. They will do it at any cost. There is no Google service without horrific customer support. Youtube, Google Fiber, Google Fi, doesn't matter. They refuse to accept that having 2x as many customers requires 2x as many support personnel.

Hard to convince a company to provide good service when they can make more money by not doing so.

I'm not sure about that. It's pretty common knowledge that YouTube isn't the endgame for a lot of content creators. If instead, YouTube supported their users more (especially the larger ones) they would have potential to be in the loop for other services like livestreaming, merch, and donations instead of having creators resort to using services like Twitch, Squarespace, and Patreon.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#172

Post by acituan »

colechristensen wrote: post #163
acituan wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you are as big as Google, very improbable failures happen all the time, pointing them out doesn't tell the story of how well they're doing unless your expectation is constant perfection Just a thought experiment, does Youtube need to be as big as it is? Can’t Youtube say “given the current accuracy/precision of ML based solutions and how much our manual operations can scale, we are going to rate limit the cont…

>Just a thought experiment, does Youtube need to be as big as it is? A few scattered moderation complaints compared to wholesale rate limiting of incoming content... I can only imagine the madness of content producers if YouTube tried that. >Youtube has near perfect knowledge of the warm data of their operations, and use it to optimize user frustration rather than minimize it YouTube content moderation isn't human sp…

> A few scattered moderation complaints compared to wholesale rate limiting of incoming content

I'm sure there is already some per-user upload rate limits in place to prevent gross abuse. It is a matter of playing with these parameters. Rate limits don't have to be distributed mindlessly equally globally. Just like in Hacker News or in Twitter, certain proxy variables like the account age and karma scores are used to assess abuse potential and certain capabilities of the platform is unlocked to the user. Most probably something like this also exists. Again, it is a matter of playing with these parameters.

Additionally, "few scattered complaints" suffer from selection bias in telling what is actually going on. Not all policy (mis)applications transform into a complaint. If I had to guess, the ratio could be at least an order of magnitude but obviously we have no data on this.

> Do you think that number is ever going to be zero?

Zero complaints is a straw-man end-state. Of course there is going to be diminishing returns. You can aim to minimize user complaints at 80% to save from diminishing returns, or you can aim to maximize platform usage and ad revenue and take user frustration into account only to the extent it affects platform usage maximization. You can operate on either goals while paying attention to diminishing returns.

Very simplistically, there is a relationship such that "for every x dollars we don't spend on reducing abuse, we lose y dollars in user frustration". Who decides the satisficing ratio between x and y? This optimization is done asymmetrically by these types of services and in general there is no way for us to say "wait a second, turns out you were abusing your users/letting them get abused more than you should while making a smidge more profit out of it" with such information asymmetry.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#173

Post by peter_d_sherman »

Some comments/ideas/takeaways:

1) According to this video, it is very easy for some troll living in another country, who has a bot network, to extort money from YouTube creators by gaming YouTube's takedown request system:

"I'll get your video taken down unless you pay me" (Sounds a whole lot like patent trolls -- but applied to videos).

2) YouTube (or any other video sharing site, present or future), should conduct a thorough investigation as to how their system for user requested takedowns -- could be gamed by bot networks / multiple phony user accounts requesting takedowns -- and what could be done about it, using what happened here as a baseline for that investigation.

Note that this also applies to non-video sharing sites where user takedowns can be requested, i.e., craigslist -- if that process is automated in any way, it should be thought about from the perspective of "how do we protect against swarms of automated bots / fake user accounts, requesting takedowns?"

3) Any ML/AI algorithm that is used in the takedown determination process should consider the reputation of the user whose videos are being requested to be taken down.

This includes such things as 'how long has the user been a user', how many other videos have they uploaded, how many likes they've received over the years, how many video views, and how many real legitimate complaints, verified by an actual YouTube human staffer -- have occurred on that account over the years (feeding that data in only after human YouTube staffer review, etc.)

4) It wouldn't be a bad idea (if YouTube is short of staff), to create another tier of users, "review users", that is, these users would be / could be called upon to review content that was flagged for removal/deletion for one reason or another. If enough "review users" (randomly selected) collectively vote that the content should be removed, THEN and only then it gets queued for a human being staffer at YouTube for final review... otherwise it's not banned, and sticks around... but this would hopefully save a lot of work for human YouTube staffers -- much in the same way automated voice assistants do for human telephone operators or receptionists... any AI/ML algorithms could be the gatekeeper for this tier of users; if the AI/ML has a problem with the content -- escalate it to this tier of users for further review...

5) To implement #4, User accounts, agreements, and YouTube's suggestion algorithm -- would have to be modified (basically you're adding another user account type and another agreement type) to support the functionality.

6) No matter how great YouTube is, it's a human created system like all others, and as such, subject to failure. As the old expression, "Don't put all of your eggs in one basket" goes, similarly:

Don't host all of your videos on one and only one video hosting site.

Just like you wouldn't store your important files in one location only, without making/having backups...

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#174

Post by code_duck »

movedx wrote: post #73
code_duck wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>HIRE SOME PEOPLE. they have huge margins, it would take very little for these companies to hire some people to review content. Agreed. That's something that's frequently said about Google and Facebook... That their volume is so large, they couldn't possibly do a better job with customer service. Given that they each make billions in profit every quarter, I find it hard to believe that improving customer service is u…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23317390

That's an elaborate version of what I was saying I didn't believe.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#175

Post by greggman3 »

novok wrote: post #100
movedx wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead of actually trying to create the best customer service I've worked in high volume customer services. It's not easy for the agents doing the work or the companies operating them. I've worked in multiple call centers dealing with calls and tickets. I've worked in companies in which I dealt with mobile phone bill queries and hardware issues right up to Cisco networking problems and then eventually enterprise g…

They might have 1 billion free users, but they definitely don't have 1 billion partners or 1 billion paying customers. Google's customer service is horrible even for organizations that pay them +$10k/month or make them +$10k/month for ad sales, and that is a far smaller number. You would think they could at least scale customer support properly for that much smaller number, but they don't because culturally they do n…

> Google's customer service is horrible even for organizations that pay them +$10k/month or make them +$10k/month for ad sales, and that is a far smaller number.

Is this true? As a paying customer for gsuite, the 4 times I've contacted customer service I got someone immediately and they solved my problem immediately. I'm not a big customer either I have one account. I pay them $72 a year.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#177

Post by sircastor »

philpem wrote: post #98
whotheffknows wrote: post #66

Hi so this is illegal. Call the FBI. Extortion and coercion are felonies in all 50 states.

"Hello, FBI? This random guy on the Internet is extorting me." FBI: 'Go away and come back when you have a name and address, and can prove the guy is under our jurisdiction.'

Fortunately the FBI doesn't dismiss illegal activities of you lack this kind of information. They will investigate and can arrest individuals on US soil as well as consenting countries. Additionally a country's own law enforcement may cooperate and the perpetrators can be extradited for trial.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#178

Post by thaumasiotes »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #86
movedx wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead of actually trying to create the best customer service I've worked in high volume customer services. It's not easy for the agents doing the work or the companies operating them. I've worked in multiple call centers dealing with calls and tickets. I've worked in companies in which I dealt with mobile phone bill queries and hardware issues right up to Cisco networking problems and then eventually enterprise g…

I don't think your point passes a back of the envelope math test. Right now Google makes the second most profit per employee of any large enterprise on earth: $269,000 in profit, annually, per employee. I know of other- successful!- companies that make less money per employee, because they hire people to do customer support. To start your argument, I think you have to explain why Google can not hire more CSRs, even t…

Google is profitable because it has a small number of employees and a large number of customers.

To begin your "back of the envelope math test", you should ask:

If Google were to hire CSRs until its profit went to $0 per employee per year, how much of an effect would the additional CSRs have on the experience of Google's customers? How many CSRs would that be? How many customers would each one be handling per day?

Saying that a company which is profitable because a small number of employees serve a large number of customers can obviously afford to hire a large number of employees isn't a math test, it's wishful thinking. Do some math.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#179

Post by philwelch »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #86
movedx wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead of actually trying to create the best customer service I've worked in high volume customer services. It's not easy for the agents doing the work or the companies operating them. I've worked in multiple call centers dealing with calls and tickets. I've worked in companies in which I dealt with mobile phone bill queries and hardware issues right up to Cisco networking problems and then eventually enterprise g…

I don't think your point passes a back of the envelope math test. Right now Google makes the second most profit per employee of any large enterprise on earth: $269,000 in profit, annually, per employee. I know of other- successful!- companies that make less money per employee, because they hire people to do customer support. To start your argument, I think you have to explain why Google can not hire more CSRs, even t…

I think you’ve unintentionally provided a good argument as to why they don’t have to.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#180

Post by thaumasiotes »

zaroth wrote: post #150
stopping wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, Google's profit per employee isn't an indicator of Google's obligation to increase its customer service headcount. Taken to it's logical conclusion, we should let poorly-performing companies off the hook for having awful customer service. The rest of this comment is going to be somewhat critical of Google criticism and seemingly apologistic. Please assume positive intent. I agree that Google certainly could do m…

> IMO, Google's profit per employee isn't an indicator of Google's obligation to increase its customer service headcount. Taken to it's logical conclusion, we should let poorly-performing companies off the hook for having awful customer service. That’s not the logical conclusion, that’s the inverse. If P (large profit per employee) then Q (should be able to spend more on customer support)... - The converse is If Q th…

>> IMO, Google's profit per employee isn't an indicator of Google's obligation to increase its customer service headcount. Taken to it's logical conclusion, we should let poorly-performing companies off the hook for having awful customer service.

> That’s not the logical conclusion, that’s the inverse.

Your logic is misapplied. If Google's profit is an indicator of its customer service obligations, it is logically necessary that less-profitable companies have lower such obligations than more-profitable companies do. If they had higher obligations, Google's profitable status would indicate that it didn't have much in the way of customer service obligations. If they had equal obligations, then profit would not be an indicator.

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