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YouTube doesn't want to take down scam ads

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Re: YouTube doesn't want to take down scam ads

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The youtube recommendation algorithm brings up new and cool content For you. For kids it brings up amputation videos and seriously weird/predatory shit. Should they be cultivating their recommendation feed better? Try searching for '!' on the homepage. You'll get a mix of kid videos and fucked up animated softcore furry shit. It's been like that for fucking years . For me it brings up Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterso…

>> so you'll love these smarmy shitheads. I've had success with just blocking these channels, or selecting "don't recommend this to me", after a while it stops suggesting right wing content to me, it hasn't for quite a while in fact.

I have a similar problem, and I find "don't recommend" is a temporary thing. YT really, really, really wants to push that material.

Eventually, it does.

Or, I make one mistake, rando-click on something favorable and boom! They are back.

Re: YouTube doesn't want to take down scam ads

#164

Oh yeah the Elon Musk ad. I reported it to YouTube maybe a month ago. I think someone with a similar voice dubbed over a real Musk video, with pretty good lip-syncing. It's a pretty dangerous scam because it could really convince someone who is gullible.

Doesn't even have to be a lip-sync, it could've simply been AI

Re: YouTube doesn't want to take down scam ads

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The youtube recommendation algorithm brings up new and cool content For you. For kids it brings up amputation videos and seriously weird/predatory shit. Should they be cultivating their recommendation feed better? Try searching for '!' on the homepage. You'll get a mix of kid videos and fucked up animated softcore furry shit. It's been like that for fucking years . For me it brings up Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterso…

>> so you'll love these smarmy shitheads. I've had success with just blocking these channels, or selecting "don't recommend this to me", after a while it stops suggesting right wing content to me, it hasn't for quite a while in fact.

[dead]

Re: YouTube doesn't want to take down scam ads

#166
post #92

I love Youtube and consider it a major contribution to the modern world -- however it would have been "invented" within a few months regardless of who built if first and would have grown regardless of who acquired it. It's important to recall that Youtube grew not because of "you" -- there was really not any kind of creator ecosystem for the first phase of massive growth. Youtube grew because of piracy and the postin…

[deleted]

Re: YouTube doesn't want to take down scam ads

#167

They're all like that. A whole back I reported an obvious real estate scam using Wayne Gretzky and some Blue Jays player (I'm in Canada). The reply was it didn't break any policy. When ads are the primary source of revenue, there's zero incentive to police the platform

It's even worse: the incentive is to police the creators, not the advertisers. Youtube will bend over backwards for advertisers whose "brand safety" team doesn't want their product to appear next to a swear word, and demonetize/strike/etc those creators. But the ad content itself isn't policed nearly as relentlessly.

I do wonder, clearly there is a perverse incentive for YouTube to be less strict with ads, but is it also a question of availability? I've been paying for YouTube Premium, so haven't seen ads in a while, but before that I noticed that there was almost no variety in the ads. You just got the same three or four ads on repeat.

What I'm wondering is: Does YouTube not have enough quality advertisers? You'd think they'd turn away the scammers, because actual business doesn't want to be on the same platform as some shady "buy/sell gold" or similar. If they don't, is that because there's no money, or not enough honest business buying ads in a sufficient amount? Or is it that YouTube just makes more on the scams?

Re: YouTube doesn't want to take down scam ads

#169

YouTube does not have the scale to manually review every time someone flags an ad. HN community believes that “oh, but MY report is high signal” which may be true, but user reports as a whole are not high signal. So instead it’s going through some ML classifier first. An automatic answer saying “this doesn’t go against policy” does not mean that it escalated to YT staff who carefully considered the ad and said “actua…

> YouTube does not have the scale to manually review every time someone flags an ad. HN community believes that “oh, but MY report is high signal” which may be true, but user reports as a whole are not high signal. So instead it’s going through some ML classifier first.

So what? Youtube is trying to do the online equivalent of trying to police New York City with only 50 cops and a 911 answering machine that repeats "computer says no" on a loop.

If New York City chooses to understaff their 911 call center, that's not an excuse for them not taking 911 calls.

Re: YouTube doesn't want to take down scam ads

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even worse: the incentive is to police the creators, not the advertisers. Youtube will bend over backwards for advertisers whose "brand safety" team doesn't want their product to appear next to a swear word, and demonetize/strike/etc those creators. But the ad content itself isn't policed nearly as relentlessly.

In the Youtube economic model the advertisers are the customer and the creators are the vendors (the viewer is the product), so that actually makes sense and isn't really any different from any other business. The customer is king, and if a vendor pisses off a customer, that vendor is gone.

Viewers are actually feudalistic subjects that are taxed and employed for free or litkle.
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