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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

#101
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three hundred hours of video are uploaded to Youtube every minute [0]. There's no amount of "excessive profit" that can scale humans to review it all. [0] https://merchdope.com/youtube-stats/

No one's saying not to have algorithms involved at all. Humans don't have to review all of the content, just the stuff the algorithms are unsure about, as well as takedown/review requests.

And how do you know that's not what Youtube is doing already ?

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#102

This might not be a popular opinion, but I feel like YouTube is doing their best with a really hard problem. I see a lot of people complaining about things like this, but I also see a lot of people complaining that YouTube/Twitter/etc aren't doing enough to take down false/immoral/illegal content quick enough. [1] It really sucks when a legitimate video is taken down by mistake. But it also really sucks when revenge…

> I feel like most of the time I see posts like this, the situation is resolved favorably and relatively quickly.

This is because the only time a post like this rises to the top on HN is because it's affecting someone notable in the tech/startup circle or someone with a lot of tech followers. If you don't have this kind of leverage to get Google's attention you're usually SOL. An example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrMvyVEQO6M

Edit: follow up to the above video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIK0yafnbGM

From the transcript:

> long story short it only went back up I got a message this morning from someone who is a fan of mine who is a Google employee who kind of reached out internally about it after finding out what happened and that basically immediately solved it after three months of me trying everything that I you know basically everything that I knew to try

So yeah. Unless you have a fan at Google, you can go pound sand if you run into a problem.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#103
post #70
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they are really doing their best. If other Google's support forums are any indicator of their effort, they are mostly trying to automate the whole process as much as possible which then causes errors like this. Which makes sense from the SV software engineer perspective, but really is unfathomable to the normal user who then has to live in fear if some malicious teenager decides to ruin their channel. I…

> 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…

> The call queue for that company never dropped below a constant 200-300 on hold and emails took days to even get to.

If those are the stats and you're still not actually solving many customers' problems; if tons of people are being hung out to dry with no recourse, then you're doing a bad job. If you don't have enough people to do the job, then hire more people. If you can't afford to hire more people, then don't do the job, or limit the number of customers you deal with.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#104

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.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#105
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The videos were flagged and reviewed as acceptable several times, then subsequently flagged and reviewed as unacceptable. The inability to prevent scripted attacks like this where an attacker brute forces takedown requests doesn't strike me as "doing their best". They can defend against DDoS attacks, why can't they do better against fraudulent takedown requests? I think the answer lies in their monopoly status and th…

IMHO if you came up with a workable solution, Google would buy you out in an instant. Scalable reliable content moderation is one of the next major breakthroughs waiting to be solved. And it's not just Google it's everyone.

>>The videos were flagged and reviewed as acceptable several times

IMHO if you came up with a workable solution, Google would buy you out in an instant.

  if passed_review_count > 0 == true
buy me

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#106
It seems an obvious solution would be to incorporate historical data into future decisions on whether to take down immediately vs take down after manual verification.

If someone has been hit with these takedown requests over and over where the resolution was always to put it back up, what likelihood is there that future resolutions will be different? By standing by your content creators with a history of improper takedown requests you'll build brand loyalty. By making it just as difficult on content creators the 100th time as the first time makes me think YouTube isn't going to be the "platform of the future" for content creators.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#107
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…

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 more to help people on its platform. But this will always be the case until every single customer service issue is solved to the user's satisfaction. The important question that I never see anybody asking or answering is "How much is reasonably enough, and how do we know (subject X) has done enough?"

It all boils down to what we believe the moral obligation of people (and companies, by extension) ought to be. Any extra service that Google provides beyond those required for profit maximization (e.g. customer retention, maintaining reputation, being only slightly better than the second-best option) is purely charity. Then, how do we evaluate when a certain amount of charity is sufficient, let alone necessary? Public sentiment is fickle, and therefore not a great measure. I bet even if Google increased its CSR by 10x, we'd still see communities eagerly latch onto any criticism of the tech giant and shout "you have to do more!" without quantifying what the final demand actually is!

I take the moral position that we as a society certainly can and should do much more to take care of each other. Telling each other to be better is absolutely valuable and I will never argue against that. But I believe we ought to do a much better job of suggesting desirable and realistic end states, instead of perpetuating insubstantial discourse amounting to one of either "They need to do better!" or "Come on, they're doing the best they can."

Admittedly this places me in a non-committal position. I don't have any great suggestions for what the end states of YouTube, Twitter, et al should look like from a content moderation perspective. But I would love to hear input from actual experts in who can offer some reasonable ideas about the most cost-beneficial solutions for society as a whole.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#108
post #49

This might not be a popular opinion, but I feel like YouTube is doing their best with a really hard problem. I see a lot of people complaining about things like this, but I also see a lot of people complaining that YouTube/Twitter/etc aren't doing enough to take down false/immoral/illegal content quick enough. [1] It really sucks when a legitimate video is taken down by mistake. But it also really sucks when revenge…

I dont feel sorry for them at all. > "I also see a lot of people complaining that YouTube/Twitter/etc aren't doing enough to take down false/immoral/illegal content quick enough" I dont want these companies touching false/immoral take downs. who are they to decide? sorry, I dont want these people in charge of the moral police. illegal stuff, like revenge porn makes sense. > "YouTube is doing it's best to blend automa…

They are the ones who own the systems and services that make YouTube a thing?

Your problem is with the ownership model. Good luck.

So long as more people provide a market to have their agency bought for an ever lower price... you’ll have that.

To their models we’re replaceable cogs, so long as the correct stats are up wtf do they care?

Don’t bother rethinking how we compute or anything. It’s not like people weren’t predicting just this as the cloud took off (oh wait they were!, Google it!)

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#109
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…

There has to be something between the best customer service and things like letting shitty "AI" ban accounts without any human intervention. How hard can it be to augment crowd sourcing and "AI" with some actual humans? If the "AI" is so crappy that it can't figure out an established, popular account is worthy of human support, what problems can it actually solve? I also wonder why we can't just pay $X to get a human…

It's easy to say "there has to be something between the best customer service and things like letting shitting "AI" ban accounts" as an armchair hackernews user.

But maybe, there isn't, currently. Maybe there simply isn't a solution at the scale of companies like Google.

Re: I was blackmailed – any YouTuber could be next

#110
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability to transact anonymously online shouldn't be understated.

Also, Bitcoin is not anonymous. https://www.elliptic.co/our-thinking/bitcoin-transactions-mo...

(but Monero is)
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