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Academic media censorship conference censored by YouTube?

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Re: Academic media censorship conference censored by YouTube?

#51

Post by jfrunyon »

ikerdanzel wrote: post #44
motbob wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fwiw, there have been instances of Google straight up not being able to restore deleted content. When you go to delete videos, you do get warnings that deletion cannot be undone. I wouldn't be surprised if Google didn't have great records of deleted content. Maybe Google deleted this tiny channel, or maybe it was user error by Project Censored (the apparent organizers of the conference), or maybe it was a publicity s…

Google censorship is more equal than other possibilities. They themselves have committed a lot lately compare to say owner did it. Purely based on perception, without any proof, I say your last statement is unlikely.

"More equal"? The idea that YouTube deleted some random videos that no one has ever heard of and then lied about it, is "more equal" than the idea that an organization whose stated position is basically "Google bad because censor" wants to make Google seem bad?

Re: Academic media censorship conference censored by YouTube?

#52

Post by jfrunyon »

doh wrote: post #40
meibo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nice that there's ways to make this friendlier for creators, but wouldn't most bigger services rather block and build a cheap system in-house than rely on a SaaS/b2b product, if you don't give it away for free or price very competitively? Are they actually open to implement better systems? Hope it's alright to ask this, it's obviously a very important thing that will be coming up for all of us in the future. Goo…

> Hope it's alright to ask this Absolutely! We need to be held accountable. > It's nice that there's ways to make this friendlier for creators, but wouldn't most bigger services rather block and build a cheap system in-house than rely on a SaaS/b2b product, if you don't give it away for free or price very competitively? The biggest innovation of our company is not its technology but the business model. We in fact do…

"We give it free!" "... for a percentage of their revenue"

Re: Academic media censorship conference censored by YouTube?

#53

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

motbob wrote: post #33
Jabbles wrote: post #2

Google is claiming these videos were never on YouTube? That seems... odd? And surely easy to refute, if they were public? Internet Archive would at least have scraped the channel's page. TFA links to https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGPZJTVIpNe-hroLo-CQ9wQ/vid... which currently 404s... But which indeed did contain many videos... https://web.archive.org/web/20201101020416if_/https://www.yo...

Fwiw, there have been instances of Google straight up not being able to restore deleted content. When you go to delete videos, you do get warnings that deletion cannot be undone. I wouldn't be surprised if Google didn't have great records of deleted content. Maybe Google deleted this tiny channel, or maybe it was user error by Project Censored (the apparent organizers of the conference), or maybe it was a publicity s…

> Fwiw, there have been instances of Google straight up not being able to restore deleted content. When you go to delete videos, you do get warnings that deletion cannot be undone

As there’s (former, no-NDA) YouTube SWEs/SREs here - can anyone shed light onto how YouTube’s storage system works? What amount of storage redundancy and retention is available for the vast majority of videos that only get a few views ever?

Re: Academic media censorship conference censored by YouTube?

#54

Post by px43 »

wmf wrote: post #45

It is unfortunately well known that moderators (human and machine) can't reliably distinguish between X and discussion/criticism about X. So it's quite common for academic discussion of topics like fascism, conspiracy theories, terrorism, trolling, etc. to be mistakenly censored. Either YouTube/Facebook/Twitter need to invest 1000x more on better moderation or academics should host their content on university sites.

"The Cleaners" is a great documentary about this.

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thecleaners2018

One really eye opening thing that was super obvious in retrospect is the societal context that's required for a lot of the content moderation. No matter how many people you cram into a room in Malaysia, they aren't going to be able to fully appreciate the nuances of things like satire targeted towards a US audience. For the same reason, you can't have a team of well paid moderators in San Francisco moderating political discussions happening in Burma.

This is what makes the problem of content moderation so intractable. There are extreme financial and political incentives trying to evade moderation, and no matter how many people you throw at the problem, from any number of backgrounds, your coverage is still going to be dismal.

Couple that with the fact that this is probabally the most traumatizing job in the world, with incredibly high suicide rates. It's really really hard to build up a moderation team that can make a sizable dent in the flood of horrific content that floods these platforms. Your best bet is a swarm of AI doing its best, and as many humans as you can hire double checking their work, which is the state of moderation on most major platforms.

Re: Academic media censorship conference censored by YouTube?

#55

Post by doh »

jfrunyon wrote: post #52
doh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hope it's alright to ask this Absolutely! We need to be held accountable. > It's nice that there's ways to make this friendlier for creators, but wouldn't most bigger services rather block and build a cheap system in-house than rely on a SaaS/b2b product, if you don't give it away for free or price very competitively? The biggest innovation of our company is not its technology but the business model. We in fact do…

"We give it free!" "... for a percentage of their revenue"

For percentage of LICENSED revenue. So if platform makes no money from the content that is being used, or they use public domain, royalty free, creative commons content or content is blocked, then it's free.

The whole point is that we can offer this system exactly because we get to share the upside with the platform, rightsholders and creators.

Re: Academic media censorship conference censored by YouTube?

#56

Post by pdkl95 »

doh wrote: post #40
meibo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nice that there's ways to make this friendlier for creators, but wouldn't most bigger services rather block and build a cheap system in-house than rely on a SaaS/b2b product, if you don't give it away for free or price very competitively? Are they actually open to implement better systems? Hope it's alright to ask this, it's obviously a very important thing that will be coming up for all of us in the future. Goo…

> Hope it's alright to ask this Absolutely! We need to be held accountable. > It's nice that there's ways to make this friendlier for creators, but wouldn't most bigger services rather block and build a cheap system in-house than rely on a SaaS/b2b product, if you don't give it away for free or price very competitively? The biggest innovation of our company is not its technology but the business model. We in fact do…

> We also aligned our incentives with the success of everyone involved.

Great! In the interest of preserving that alignment into the future, it might be helpful to lock in important aspects of the business model by limiting your future decisions with a Ulysses pact[1]. Cory Doctorow gave a tall[2] about using Ulysses pacts in the tech industry:

>> It's not that you don't want to lose weight when you raid your Oreo stash in the middle of the night. It's just that the net present value of tomorrow's weight loss is hyperbolically discounted in favor of the carbohydrate rush of tonight's Oreos. If you're serious about not eating a bag of Oreos your best bet is to not have a bag of Oreos to eat. Not because you're weak willed. Because you're a grown up. And once you become a grown up, you start to understand that there will be tired and desperate moments in your future and the most strong-willed thing you can do is use the willpower that you have now when you're strong, at your best moment, to be the best that you can be later when you're at your weakest moment.

>> The answer to not getting pressure from your bosses, your stakeholders, your investors or your members, to do the wrong thing later, when times are hard, is to take options off the table right now.

Designing for durability and failure safety is still important when designing business models.

Re: Academic media censorship conference censored by YouTube?

#57

Post by tal8d »

lsh123 wrote: post #48
tal8d wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many will unironically justify their actions by declaring themselves to be "on the right side of history". The phrase has an unsurprising origin.

“This is all for the greater good”

It is closer to "Deus vult" than "Think of the children", one is ridiculously presumptuous and the other is simply manipulative.

Re: Academic media censorship conference censored by YouTube?

#59

Post by s3r3nity »

cryptica wrote: post #50
ajnin wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get why this maxim is constantly touted as if it were a fundamental truth. Corporations exist in a social and legal framework that we agreed to create, and that we could change so that money would not be the sole measure of value. You might say that's the way things are right now, but if you stop there it sounds like fatalism. I'd rather say something like "let's find ways to regulate corporations so that the…

This is incorrect. Corporations are soulless financial instruments designed purely to deflect blame away from people who repeatedly engage in unethical activities. Corporations ought to be abolished. They are a cancer on society. Just read the legal definition of a corporation out loud and it's pretty clear what it's designed to do. There is nothing ambiguous about it. It's an instrument designed to legitimize crimin…

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