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YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Gets 'Freedom Expression' Award Sponsored by YouTube

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Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Gets 'Freedom Expression' Award Sponsored by YouTube

#71
post #2

This reads like an headline from "The Onion".

Crazy. Now that you say that, I honestly thought it was a parody even showing up here in HN. Took me a few seconds to realize it was not when reading the article, and had to watch part of the video to convince myself. But then again, most news these days read like an Onion article of yesteryears. Just sad, not funny anymore.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Gets 'Freedom Expression' Award Sponsored by YouTube

#74
post #35

Let this be a lesson to all: intelligence does not in any way correlate with self awareness. It's likely that 'smart' people are just as likely to be unaware of their own follies or inabilities, I would argue, maybe more so as a lot of smart people tend to be 'inwardly focused' and less concerned about their direct environment. This kind of thing happens all the time among Exec. level, but normally we'd expect it fro…

"It might be a sign that Susan does not have a fully trusted team around her ..." => It might be a sign that team around her is afraid to tell her how ridiculous this is... Maybe they made good proposals in the past and where turned down and they now don't want to make good suggestions again...

I'm currently tickling my brain with the hypothesis that this is a next-level move by her team, to get her to publicly "emphasize the importance of free speech and the role that YouTube plays in protecting it", so that it will become more inconvenient for her (or for the rest of Youtube) to do more things that interfere with free speech.

Analogize this to publicly praising a corrupt general for doing or planning something good that he hasn't actually been doing. It's difficult for him to turn down the praise ("No, I seriously haven't done anything to deserve this"), and meanwhile it focuses eyes on him and pressures him to actually do the thing. I read about the tactic in a fictional book once, I'm sure it works. :-)

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Gets 'Freedom Expression' Award Sponsored by YouTube

#75
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but I simply can't believe that "no one is particularly happy with YouTube" while so many people still use it, including the vast majority of the people who are supposedly "not particularly happy" with it. When people ask, "Why hasn't someone disrupted YouTube?" I think the more boring answer that keeps getting overlooked is that it still meets the expectations of enough users, and the dissatisfied constit…

Youtube being a place to put videos for free is pretty hard to casually compete with when your pockets need to match google's. I've been surprised to see YouTube actually partially out-compete twitch for streaming and entrench itself as a place where a lot of old media places its broadcast (from PBS to the Colbert Report). For the first time I think they've got a real competitor though - Nebula has managed to somehow…

Nebula is in a rough place. It’s essentially subsidized by CuriosityStream and many of their founding creators have pulled out of the project. More fundamentally, Nebula is explicitly curated, which isn’t an inherently bad thing but it does mean they’re unlikely to solve any “freedom of expression” issues with YouTube. I see Nebula less as a YouTube alternative and more as a premium monetization mechanism for the small clique of YouTubers who are involved in it.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Gets 'Freedom Expression' Award Sponsored by YouTube

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this reflects the fact that no one is particularly happy with Youtube. Between the bans, increasingly aggressive (and abusable) copyright strikes, and constantly shifting rules around content and monetization most Youtubers I watch express unhappiness about some aspect of Youtube on a regular basis. Many have started seeking alternative revenue streams to mitigate platform risk.

I'm sorry, but I simply can't believe that "no one is particularly happy with YouTube" while so many people still use it, including the vast majority of the people who are supposedly "not particularly happy" with it. When people ask, "Why hasn't someone disrupted YouTube?" I think the more boring answer that keeps getting overlooked is that it still meets the expectations of enough users, and the dissatisfied constit…

[deleted]

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Gets 'Freedom Expression' Award Sponsored by YouTube

#77

Let this be a lesson to all: intelligence does not in any way correlate with self awareness. It's likely that 'smart' people are just as likely to be unaware of their own follies or inabilities, I would argue, maybe more so as a lot of smart people tend to be 'inwardly focused' and less concerned about their direct environment. This kind of thing happens all the time among Exec. level, but normally we'd expect it fro…

I would even make the case that self-awareness and success may be inversely correlated in fact. I've heard many people say similar things over the years... Why is that? Is it some kind of kin selection? Is this total lack of self-awareness a requirement for getting into positions of power? It's so obvious, I even wonder if they're just pretending to be hypocrites? It seems so simple and obvious, how can they not see…

It's probably a lop sided u-shape. Most people lacking in self-awareness are either really smart or true outcasts, with 'high conscientious + good communicators' occupying most middle management ... but it does take a kind of hubris sometimes to overlook one's faults, even worse, to completely ignore them otherwise. Without being controversial I see hints of this in Jobs, Ellison, Trump, Musk, Page, Zuck etc. (again I'm not condemning here, if any one of us put our thoughts online consistently there'd be a few we would seriously regret).

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Gets 'Freedom Expression' Award Sponsored by YouTube

#78
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It might be a sign that Susan does not have a fully trusted team around her ..." => It might be a sign that team around her is afraid to tell her how ridiculous this is... Maybe they made good proposals in the past and where turned down and they now don't want to make good suggestions again...

I'm currently tickling my brain with the hypothesis that this is a next-level move by her team, to get her to publicly "emphasize the importance of free speech and the role that YouTube plays in protecting it", so that it will become more inconvenient for her (or for the rest of Youtube) to do more things that interfere with free speech. Analogize this to publicly praising a corrupt general for doing or planning some…

Well that won't work... former President Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace prize but he went on to involve the United States in additional foreign wars and went ham with drone strikes.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Gets 'Freedom Expression' Award Sponsored by YouTube

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this reflects the fact that no one is particularly happy with Youtube. Between the bans, increasingly aggressive (and abusable) copyright strikes, and constantly shifting rules around content and monetization most Youtubers I watch express unhappiness about some aspect of Youtube on a regular basis. Many have started seeking alternative revenue streams to mitigate platform risk.

I'm sorry, but I simply can't believe that "no one is particularly happy with YouTube" while so many people still use it, including the vast majority of the people who are supposedly "not particularly happy" with it. When people ask, "Why hasn't someone disrupted YouTube?" I think the more boring answer that keeps getting overlooked is that it still meets the expectations of enough users, and the dissatisfied constit…

More troll posts... I guess people haven't seen your username enough yet to realize what your game is, so on behalf of those who haven't picked up on it:

The reason YouTube has no competitor yet is because you'd need $10 billion just to get the platform off the ground - that's servers, developers, datacenters, peering agreements, etc.

Very few people have $10 billion lying around, and no one is interested in tackling Google on their home turf.

Re: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Gets 'Freedom Expression' Award Sponsored by YouTube

#80
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It might be a sign that Susan does not have a fully trusted team around her ..." => It might be a sign that team around her is afraid to tell her how ridiculous this is... Maybe they made good proposals in the past and where turned down and they now don't want to make good suggestions again...

I'm currently tickling my brain with the hypothesis that this is a next-level move by her team, to get her to publicly "emphasize the importance of free speech and the role that YouTube plays in protecting it", so that it will become more inconvenient for her (or for the rest of Youtube) to do more things that interfere with free speech. Analogize this to publicly praising a corrupt general for doing or planning some…

> "...so that it will become more inconvenient for her (or for the rest of Youtube) to do more things that interfere with free speech."

This is a good theory, I don't think it reflects the situation though. She used her 'acceptance speech' for this absurd accolade to emphasise the importance of censorship in ensuring freedom, that war is peace, freedom is slavery, so on so on. If this was the aim, it clearly didn't work.

Given her speech, the irony is either totally lost on her, or she legitimately thinks that YouTube is such a monolithic entity that the truth is whatever she says it is.

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