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YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

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Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#111
post #46

Quality content takes time to create; many of the past changes in YouTube algorithms explicitly pushed for churning out low-quality content frequently and rewarded it, while seriously disadvantaging irregular quality content (that moved elsewhere in the meantime). You get what you reward.

This can be seen easily if you go to Youtube and search "fortnite", with every single top video being just over 6 minutes long, full of vapid nothingness related to the title, and perhaps 20-30 seconds of content related to the title it originally baited you into watching. The majority of what can be found through searching/filtering on YouTube is also hot steamy garbage, or large corporate channels. The recommendation engine sometimes throws in some gems, but rarely. The only video length filters are "short 20mins". Why on earth? It's like they randomly tried those values in 2008 and never looked at it again.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#112
post #85

Frankly, I hope YouTube (and Google in general) dramatically overdo it with the censorship, "curation", and deplatforming of "irresponsible" content, purely so that it forces an independent, non-corporate model to be developed. Having one company be the sole gatekeeper for the overwhelming majority of the web's video content is not a solution.

A site like youtube requires so much CPU/GPU power, storage capacity and bandwidth that it's highly unlikely that a new competitor[] will appear, and completely impossible to decentralise. []If we don't count the likes of Facebook, Microsoft, etc as competitors, since they would manage the site in the same way Google does.

Bandwidth has nothing to do with it. If a site was super-popular, I'm sure they'd get the VC money. That's really not the issue. The issue is getting people to put their videos on other sites, too.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#113
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That's the problem: people that have nothing to do with nazis are labeled nazis and then get deplatformed. How many damn nazis do you think there are that we need entire services demonetized because of them?

>How many damn nazis do you think there are that we need entire services demonetized because of them?

If you accept the colloquial definition of "nazis" as "people who support racial supremacist ideology, forced segregation, ethnic violence or the establishment of racial ghettos or an ethnostate" then a lot.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#114

Frankly, I hope YouTube (and Google in general) dramatically overdo it with the censorship, "curation", and deplatforming of "irresponsible" content, purely so that it forces an independent, non-corporate model to be developed. Having one company be the sole gatekeeper for the overwhelming majority of the web's video content is not a solution.

I don't think any new platform is going to be able to compete with YouTube at all with the current regulations. How will any new platform comply with new EU copyright laws, or remove unlawful videos as quickly as YouTube? (e.g the unfortunate New Zealand terrorist attack)

.. by said platform not being based on the broken-ass dns/http naming system, and thus not relying on centralized servers that provide a juicy targets for legal nastygrams. Then when governments want to censor, they'll have to go after the errant individuals themselves rather than getting centralized platforms to perform categorical a priori enforcement for them.

What's happening to Youtube et al right now was inevitable - this was apparent to anyone with half a brain back when AJAX was a novel thing. But "it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it", and that VC funded advertising pop culture party was a hell of a time.

Unfortunately this centralized detour has made it so that the move to p2p methods is going to be a lot more violent. Lawlmakers have now been primed to being able to wave their magic wand to implement their whims, and will expect that ability to continue. When reality hits and it stops working again, they'll be hunting for individuals to blame and persecute.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#115
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do those video streaming sites offer comparable quality to YouTube, while also giving away half of the ad revenue they receive? Because YouTube does that. If it didn't give away half of the ad revenue to creators then YouTube would probably never have become as big as it is now. We know that YouTube has trouble making money with this type of criteria. What do you think is the chance that another company with far…

Youtube is so capricious with demonetizing user content that it's become a meme, and content creators have to resort to merchandise and Patreon to survive. They're definitely not giving away anywhere near half of their ad revenue.

YouTube takes 45% of the ad revenue in a video, the creator of it takes 55%. If a video is demonetized then it won't have ads on it. This means that YouTube won't make any money on that video. It's in YouTube's best interests not to demonetize videos. They do it, because they want to avoid bad PR and avoid advertisers from doing yet another boycott.

I don't see how YouTube is not giving away half of their ad revenue. Note that even when a video is "unsuitable for advertisers" the creators still get paid by YouTube Red.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#116

Frankly, I hope YouTube (and Google in general) dramatically overdo it with the censorship, "curation", and deplatforming of "irresponsible" content, purely so that it forces an independent, non-corporate model to be developed. Having one company be the sole gatekeeper for the overwhelming majority of the web's video content is not a solution.

I don't think any new platform is going to be able to compete with YouTube at all with the current regulations. How will any new platform comply with new EU copyright laws, or remove unlawful videos as quickly as YouTube? (e.g the unfortunate New Zealand terrorist attack)

I think this might actually be a good thing long run. Regulation forces decentralization until you reach the equilibrium where playing whack-a-mole ceases to be cost effective. If YT didn't have regulatory capture, the easy answer would be another YT clone startup. Now the solution is a protocol rather than a platform. The protocol can't be made illegal because it's not inherently against the law but if someone uploads something illegal to their node/whatever, that's on them.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#117
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly, it's pretty ridiculous that YouTube is being pressured to police the content on its platform. It's not "ridiculous", it's table stakes. If you ever run an open community, you'll find that bad actors are inevitable.

What are these bad actors doing that requires top-down censorship and marginalization?

Posting videos of death, gore, kiddie porn, targeted bullying, fascist propaganda, trying to incite genocide, rape and other violence.

The idea that we should allow sites that are marketed to the general public to be unmoderated is completely ridiculous.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#118
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly, it's pretty ridiculous that YouTube is being pressured to police the content on its platform. It's not "ridiculous", it's table stakes. If you ever run an open community, you'll find that bad actors are inevitable.

What are these bad actors doing that requires top-down censorship and marginalization?

They have dangerous thoughts and they express them.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#120
post #90
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of other video streaming sites exist. Competition certainly isn't impossible, and competitors don't have to operate at Youtube's scale to be viable, assuming they target a niche demographic.

A competitor would need to operate at youtube's scale for it to be considered a serious competitor. Otherwise, we wouldn't be having this conversation, given that websites like Dailymotion and Vimeo exist, but no "youtube stars" use them.

It really wouldn't. YT makes a big deal about vanity metrics like "10,000 hours of video uploaded per hour" (or something like that), but the 80-20 rule still applies.

A giant chunk of uploaded content is never even watched.

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