YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#281

Post by sneak » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 9:55 PM UTC

karaterobot wrote: post #243

> “If a creator’s off-platform behavior harms our users, employees or ecosystem, we take action to protect the community,” the spokeswoman said. Putting aside the validity of the accusations—let's say he did everything he's accused of, for the sake of argument—is Youtube alleging that he assaulted Youtube employees, app developers who use the Youtube ecosystem, or Youtube users? I assume the latter. But the thing is,…

YouTube is like HR - they are there to protect the company and the company's revenue streams, not you or "the community".

This is why I think the term "community guidelines" for "censorship policy" is such abusive gaslighting. It's unilateral censorship, not community, and they are rules, not guidelines.

It's the same deceptive drive that renamed "searching your bag" to "security screening" at airports.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#282

Post by madeofpalk » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 9:55 PM UTC

lukev wrote: post #236

grecy wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my examples do actually work well, in that the painter and the TV reporter ARE incentivized, short term to do those clickbait things, in exactly the same way YouTube creators are. In all cases, reality will catch up to them, and in the long term they will be punished for what they did in the name of short term gains.

What's the long-term reality catch-up mechanism in the social media space?

> YouTube Blocks Russell Brand From Making Money Through Its Platform

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/19/arts/russell-brand-youtub...

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#283

Post by nothatscool » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 9:56 PM UTC

When YouTube does this it means that they tacitly endorse the behaviour of everyone who is currently monetised at the moment. I’m sure it would be easy to find many monetised channels with similar allegations as well as people who have actually been convicted of crimes.

Edit: for example, someone like Chris Brown is convicted of domestic abuse as well as accused of many other incidents. He appears to be monetised on youtube.

>If a creator's off-platform behaviour harms our users, employees or ecosystem, we take action.

So why does this apply to Russell Brand but not to Chris Brown who is convicted of violence against another YouTube user? It must mean that youtuber endorses the behaviour and criminal activity of Chris Brown.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#284

Post by notamy » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 9:56 PM UTC

efitz wrote: post #133

JohnMakin wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"innocent until proven guilty" only applies in a court of law. Similar to when people cite the 1st amendment in situations where a private company is taking action, this phrase is meaningless here. A private company can do what it wants within the bounds of the law.

Then let’s change the law. It’s obvious over the past few years that companies can’t be trusted with freedom of association or freedom of speech. Let’s strip them of both. If you are incorporated (and therefore benefit from government-provided protection from liability and lower tax rates) then you no longer get to choose your customers; you’re a common carrier and must provide the same service to all customers. You…

> Social media companies may no longer promote or suppress content; they can only provide tools to let users do so themselves (eg filter/block/subscribe/tag)

Users don’t want the responsibility of filtering out CP, gore, sexual violence, etc. I would bet the average user actively wants that content suppressed. Just look at any of the cases of social media moderators developing PTSD from their work.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#285

Post by jmfldn » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 9:56 PM UTC

c7DJTLrn wrote: post #143

Putting aside recent allegations, it's disappointing what has happened to Russell Brand's YouTube channel. I watched some of his videos a few years ago and they were interesting discussions of the news with a particular emphasis on questioning everything which I see as a healthy habit. Inevitably though, the algorithm steered the videos to become more clickbaity, divisive, and frankly crazy. He probably saw that outr…

His decent into outrage-bait, alt-right friendly nonsense struck me as abrupt. One minute his channel was reasonable enough, the next it was totally nuts.

Part of me wonders whether this was calculated once he knew that a major expose was circling. I have zero evidence for this, but you can see the logic. Court a following that is sceptical of everything, and that will see an investigation by the 'mainstream media' as obvious evidence of some deep state conspiracy. You now have an army of cheerleaders, and an alternative renevue source, ready to wage war with.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#286

Post by fgsfds028374 » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 9:56 PM UTC

iamacyborg wrote: post #249

itsoktocry wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can say the same thing about Jordan Peterson, no? Content from 5-10 years ago was interesting. Now I have him muted on X.

I think both Peterson and Brand were always these people, social media just allows them to monetise it.

[dead]

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#287

Post by tatrajim » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 9:56 PM UTC

curiousllama wrote: post #198

nimos wrote: post #30

The Monetization Window is the new Overton Window. I think people underestimate how much Youtube's monetization policy influences what popular creators put in videos. Because it's not just the money - it also effects how videos are promoted by the algorithm.

This is a very interesting point. Tech-media companies (Google, Meta, Tik Tok) increasingly serve a similar gatekeeper function for public discourse that TV networks (ABC, NBC, CBS) did 50 years ago. This... actually is a hopeful insight to me.

You would really enjoy the Chinese internet world, where legions of "gatekeepers" at Bytedance et al. bravely patrol the cyber world and rapidly eliminate any undesirable utterance. It's very clean and reassuring.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#288

Post by mrtksn » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 9:56 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #259

mrtksn wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if YouTube takes into consideration local values when doing this. For example, nudity and other controversial stuff can have much different standards on what's acceptable and what's not. If this is not baked into the formula, then it's likely that YouTube is pushing cultures to align with SV or some managers in Google. I'm not going to defend Russel Brand, just making a point about YT's impact. This time aro…

And if you don’t moderate at all you get deluged under piles of crap, hate speech, spam, and bot-created garbage. Might as well not even try. In any sort of forum context, zero moderation makes it useless at least for most.

Moderation against abuse of your own system is fine, that's given. Even electricity companies will go after you if you abuse their grid but they won't care what kind of videos you film using their electricity.

However I don't think that YouTube should decide what's hate speech and ban it. If that speech is illegal, the law enforcement should find the person. Maybe it can be acceptable to let the law enforcement delete videos but that's also risky because that's how you can get speech suppression when the government isn't very good.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#289

Post by sneak » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 9:56 PM UTC

droptablemain wrote: post #185

Anonymous allegations from more than a decade ago, procured by a fishing reporter, should not lead to the cancellation of someone's means of supporting themselves. This is absurd, regardless of whether the accusations are ultimately true or not. Beyond the absurdity, this is tyrannical. Even the "testimony" they released was recorded by an actor. There's simply very little of substance here.

His means of supporting himself has not been cancelled, just his ability to get paid from YouTube. Don't conflate them.

Re: YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

#290

Post by ClumsyPilot » Tue, Sep 19, 2023, 9:57 PM UTC

iamacyborg wrote: post #255

lukev wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the long-term reality catch-up mechanism in the social media space?

In this and other examples, getting deplatformed and losing your sources of income.

They already made millions - it doesn't work.

And in fact, Google and others profit from this carnage.