Live data from Hacker News

YouTube blocks Russell Brand from making money through its platform

nytimes.com

601–610 of 1001 posts

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

#601

Like every social media platform the "community guidelines" are written to be purposely subjective and vague, such that the enforcement of the guidelines can be done arbitrarily, per the whim of the company and their agents.

Not just social media. Stripe and Square have similar wiggle-room and it's a demonization felt pretty directly. Amazon, Etsy and others - their policies give room to pick and choose winners - and change policy on a whim - and apply it inconsistently. Corporate Overlords don't have to engage on Rights - it's all in the Privilege realm.

I worked at a (big) company when they changed their policy to include this vagueness. It was all over this guy spreading mass disinformation and conspiracy theories that were actively harmful. There was a lot of discussion about “yeah, I agree this is bad… but, this is a slippery slope,” and “how can you think we should let him use OUR platform to do this,” type arguments. We were a privately held company at the time, and this is what the owner wanted to do.

So we changed the terms. I felt like the T&S team (trust and safety) sighed a huge sigh of relief because they were having to deal with advertisers and bereft families complaining.

Anyway, it became a very heavy hammer that was very rarely used except in extreme circumstances.

I imagine not every company uses it as sparingly but it’s a much needed clause to deplatform certain kinds of charismatic people who are harmful to humanity. I don’t know anything about this particular case, nor do I want to know even a TL;DR. I’m just here for the comments and your comment chain struck a nerve.

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

#602
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 why contract law exists. You can cancel me, sure, go ahead, but you will pay up. With youtube, the contract is written, in the TOS, to 100% favor youtube.

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

#603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube has been doing this for a while. If you’re just starting out and don’t qualify to become a “partner”, you can’t monetize your videos until you reach X amount of subscribers and Y amount of watch hours. This doesn’t mean your videos won’t have ads on them. They most assuredly will have ads on them. It just means that YouTube doesn’t consider you good enough to share the revenue with you. Load of BS of course.…

consider it ads on UGC to operate the service.

or, massive profit!

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

#604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a category error. Courts use a methodology that's the best one we have for discovering the truth. They don't always do it well (e.g. the OJ case) and you as an individual can use the same methodology to understand if something happened or not. It's the methodology, not the "being a court" that is key.

I as an individual do not have the powers of a court, and cannot do the things a court can do to ACTUALLY get close to "the truth", and must rely on what little information I am allowed to have.

Absolutely. And if that information means you don't know, then you don't know.

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

#605

Did I read this correctly? It sounds like YouTube will continue to host his content, but will now pocket the money they would have paid him. That doesn't seem right to me. If they were to cease hosting his material, that would maych their corporate-speak blurb. This sounds to me like more money for YouTube.

> It sounds like YouTube will continue to host his content, but will now pocket the money they would have paid him. If he is demonetized, then his videos won’t get ad placement, so Google won’t make the money in the first place, as it will contribute neither to advertising revenue nor to the marginal benefit from the Premium users derived compared to non-Premium users in avoiding ads. Since Google pays creators less…

> marginal benefit

While Youtube may be discounting direct revenue from this specific and limited set of content, Alphabet recognises the value of ostensibly being the quasi-exclusive repository & catalogue of video content.

Denying to their "users"/viewers the availability of some subset of content hurts their reputation more than "losing" a negligeable fraction of direct monetisation.

Leaving aside the morality of repudiating monetisation while allowing access, this is a sound strategy for maintaining the Youtube platform's monopoly and raison d'être. Which is after all the core of their ability to maximise shareholder value, and what else matters to a corporation?

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

#607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this comment, sorry. Who's talking about your legal obligations? I'm talking about what you know vs what you assume.

You are saying it is wrong of me to call the victims, victims, and should instead call them ‘accusers’. I’m saying I am under no legal obligations to do so. I believe their stories and I believe they are victims, so I am allowed to call them victims. Now I think there might be slander to call the accused something like an abuser, so I don’t do that (yet). However there is no slander laws which disallow me from using…

Of course you're allowed - there's no parent enforcing things and you aren't a child, and shouldn't be thinking that way.

But this is a strange response: "It's not illegal for me to say this!" Would you accept that as a response from a flat earther if you challenged something they stated as fact?

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

#608

Did I read this correctly? It sounds like YouTube will continue to host his content, but will now pocket the money they would have paid him. That doesn't seem right to me. If they were to cease hosting his material, that would maych their corporate-speak blurb. This sounds to me like more money for YouTube.

YouTube has been doing this for a while. If you’re just starting out and don’t qualify to become a “partner”, you can’t monetize your videos until you reach X amount of subscribers and Y amount of watch hours. This doesn’t mean your videos won’t have ads on them. They most assuredly will have ads on them. It just means that YouTube doesn’t consider you good enough to share the revenue with you. Load of BS of course.…

I don't think it's a load of BS.

Youtube is a free platform to host video content, they themselves need to pay the bills. At a particular point that your videos become "valuable" they offer to provide you with a cut.

The grey area is potentially how they determine the value

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

#609

> “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,…

It doesn't really matter what their argument is, they simply need to have one. It's their sandbox, and they have chosen an advertiser-friendly ratchet as the driver of policy. YouTube will get more and more bland and samey as people fear the banhammer, which will get used on less and less extreme content and producers, as the "cancelling machinery" has been built and will always find the next-most-evil^tm on which to focus.

Until YouTube becomes boring and enough interesting people end up together somewhere else, and then all the users will leave at once (in internet time).

Doctorow huffs his own farts at a James Cameron level, but he's right about this.

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

#610

Let’s go down the list of rappers and professional athletes and see how much harm they’ve caused women. Once again, another coincidence in which side of the political aisle gets censored.

Don't forget to add male feminists to the list.

https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/when-men-claim-to-be-femini...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/opinion/schneiderman-abus...

Post reply on HN