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YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

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Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#71

Post by noego »

CharlesW wrote: post #69
noego wrote: post #22

Honestly, it's pretty ridiculous that YouTube is being pressured to police the content on its platform. What worries me far more than extremist videos on YouTube, is the idea of a mega-corporation exerting outsized influence over the opinions we are exposed to. Is our democracy really so fragile that it cannot survive an open marketplace of ideas?

> 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?

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#72

Post by A2017U1 »

xxpor wrote: post #26
AlexB138 wrote: post #21

What a dystopian nightmare the internet is turning into. Anything that isn't in line with "right thought" isn't Responsible and is therefore hidden away? How did we end up here? How did Silicon Valley go from a place focused on ideas and building the future to generating systematic censorship and endless puritanical moral panic? We badly need some new blood guiding tech development.

The internet has operated that way forever. Most hosts haven't allowed porn since the beginning of time. You're still free to make your own video hosting website if you'd like. Liveleak still exists.

> You're still free to make your own X

It's becoming plainly clear that isn't the case.

Liveleak was recently banned in Australia and NZ.

Gab extension Dissenter has been banned from both chrome and Firefox app stores despite it self-censoring far more than twitter.

Paypal, Stripe and Patreon all deplatform people based on words they have said.

I don't agree in the slightest with conservative or far right thought but this direction is scary if it continues. Once they have "fixed" this problem, who is next?

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#73

Post by contravariant »

AlexB138 wrote: post #21

What a dystopian nightmare the internet is turning into. Anything that isn't in line with "right thought" isn't Responsible and is therefore hidden away? How did we end up here? How did Silicon Valley go from a place focused on ideas and building the future to generating systematic censorship and endless puritanical moral panic? We badly need some new blood guiding tech development.

I share some of your concerns, but we should take care that we don't simply condemn any attempt at promoting mainstreem content as 'censorship' and any attempt to promote highly specific content as 'bubbles'.

If both are dystopian nightmares we're in deep trouble.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#74

Post by mistermann »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #56
exabrial wrote: post #11

On a side note, the creators of YouTube ought to [at least informally] unionize. There's no reason Adam Neely should be getting copyright "strikes" for explaining music to the masses, or Cody's Lab should be forced to take down videos on mining with explosives [on his family's ranch]. YouTube needs to have a hotline for problem solving for their most profitable content providers, and until the creators collectively h…

As a tangent to your tangent, seeing a name like Adam Neely, whose videos I've been watching all week, even though I know nothing about jazz or playing music, really strikes me as the magic of YouTube. It's being able to watch talents you'd never normally be interested in, but who prove to be genuinely entertaining, even if you don't know what a quarter note from a crotchet, and it's amazing to realize these people a…

> whose videos I've been watching all week, even though I know nothing about jazz or playing music, really strikes me as the magic of YouTube

100% agree about that being the magic of YouTube, and it's something I feel that most people just don't get. There is so much amazing and incredibly professionally produced content, as good or far better than what you get on TV, on YouTube that simply would never, ever have made it to TV or movies.

And not just quality content, but someone in a third world country with a relatively tiny budget, can capture a huge audience which can show the masses what "others"[1] are really like. I happen to believe YouTube could go a long way to healing some of the growing divisions we're experiencing in modern society. Well, that is if you could actually get individual people to develop a little curiosity, and get YouTube to put a little genuine effort into discoverability and curation of videos, and get politicians to not want to keep people dumb and divided. So it will probably remain yet another lost opportunity to make the world a better place, like so many other opportunities we've squandered.

[1] http://www.otheringandbelonging.org/the-problem-of-othering/

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#75

Post by ALittleLight »

krapp wrote: post #24
AlexB138 wrote: post #21

What a dystopian nightmare the internet is turning into. Anything that isn't in line with "right thought" isn't Responsible and is therefore hidden away? How did we end up here? How did Silicon Valley go from a place focused on ideas and building the future to generating systematic censorship and endless puritanical moral panic? We badly need some new blood guiding tech development.

Why is it a dystopian nightmare for Youtube to curate its content according to "quality", but it wasn't a dystopian nightmare for Youtube to curate its content to maximize engagement for ad revenue?

They give an example in the article of Logan Paul's YouTube channel being troubling. Apparently his fans enjoy his videos as measured by watch time, the like button, views, and subscribers, but his content also lacks a certain jena se qua that Google calls "quality".

The impulse to tell people what the quality of their entertainment is strikes me as dystopian and deeply authoritarian. In addition, it's also patronizing - suppose I like watching Logan Paul videos, why should dear Mother Google decide they aren't good enough for me and decide that I should watch advertiser friendly content instead?

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#76

Post by gloflo »

bitxbit wrote: post #25

Please just give us the ability to blacklist channels. That’d increase usability by 10x for me.

Video Blocker extension for chromium and firefox keeps me sane on YouTube. It is surprisingly quick to block the main offenders and have actually decent recommendations on the sidebar.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#77

Post by LandR »

beaconstudios wrote: post #39
krapp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it a dystopian nightmare for Youtube to curate its content according to "quality", but it wasn't a dystopian nightmare for Youtube to curate its content to maximize engagement for ad revenue?

both are pretty bad options. Better to let users curate and allow popularity to dictate visibility, surely?

Then YouTube risks things being popular that aren't aligned with it's collective politcal views.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#78

Post by manfredo »

krapp wrote: post #64
manfredo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Th latter puts the users in control of what is trending. The former lets YouTube manipulate the content for arbitrary purposes.

Youtube was always manipulating the platform for arbitrary purposes (and sometimes the content, for copyright purposes.) Users have never been in control of anything. see: the Youtube "Adpocalypse" and the various other changes to their algorithm that destroyed the profitability of entire genres of content (such as animation.)

Enforcement of copyright is following the law not manipulation. I'm sure their automated takedowns aren't perfect, but that's due to technical limitations.

This rewarding if "quality" content is straight up picking winners and losers. But you're right it's not like YouTube hasn't done this before. Plenty of very rapidly viewed videos (e.g PewDiePie's "Congratulations" and rewind videos) mysteriously didn't appear on trending.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#79

Post by minikites »

noego wrote: post #70
minikites wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an open marketplace and each side is is fighting a different fight: >Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to pl…

What makes it not an open marketplace? The very bias introduced by platform like YouTube which you seem to be defending? Is the average person so dumb that they cannot distinguish between "sound argument" vs "intimidate and disconcert"? If that's how you feel about the average person, why do you still favor democracy?

People aren't dumb, but I think people have poor information literacy skills, which is linked to the decline in liberal arts education in favor of the emphasis on STEM education. The lack of these skills leads to people being unable to distinguish between "sound argument" vs "intimidate and disconcert" (again, not related to their intelligence, this is a developed skill).

https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10858.html

>We increasingly treat education as though its primary goal were to teach students to be economically productive rather than to think critically and become knowledgeable, productive, and empathetic individuals. This shortsighted focus on profitable skills has eroded our ability to criticize authority, reduced our sympathy with the marginalized and different, and damaged our competence to deal with complex global problems. And the loss of these basic capacities jeopardizes the health of democracies and the hope of a decent world.

Re: YouTube is trying to reward “quality” content

#80

Post by krapp »

ALittleLight wrote: post #75
krapp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it a dystopian nightmare for Youtube to curate its content according to "quality", but it wasn't a dystopian nightmare for Youtube to curate its content to maximize engagement for ad revenue?

They give an example in the article of Logan Paul's YouTube channel being troubling. Apparently his fans enjoy his videos as measured by watch time, the like button, views, and subscribers, but his content also lacks a certain jena se qua that Google calls "quality". The impulse to tell people what the quality of their entertainment is strikes me as dystopian and deeply authoritarian. In addition, it's also patronizi…

It seems a bit contradictory to me, though, that here we are on a forum whose entire premise is aggressive curation of "quality," talking about a video streaming platform considered by many here to be a vapid cesspool of inane nonsense and clickbait wanting to improve the quality of what its users see, and the immediate reaction is to cry censorship, and wonder whether "quality" even means anything, rather than say "it's about time."

And if you like Logan Paul videos, you're probably already subscribed to his channel. Be sure to click the bell to be notified. There's also a search bar you can type "Logan Paul" into. He's not quality, though.

Assuming Youtube isn't secretly pushing some left-wing agenda of propaganda and mind-control (I don't believe they are, but a lot of people do) and that their goals are as stated, then I don't see how adding a "quality" metric to all of their other metrics is a bad thing.

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