6 ms·

The ethics of this move are quite questionable on Youtubes part. Dumping a large cognitive load on shared volunteer infrastructure without some level of compen

by olefoo 9y ago

The ethics of this move are quite questionable on Youtubes part. Dumping a large cognitive load on shared volunteer infrastructure without some level of compensation? Not cool. The fact that Youtube is doing this and is not: * paying wikipedia for the service they are demanding of it * offering wikipedia support in developing tooling to cope with the NEW TASKING that youtube is expecting * talking to them about it before announcing it Suggests that Youtube does not understand its own role in the media ecosystem and is exposing itself to systemic legal and moral risks that could have adverse effects on the company itself and possibly on the entire industry. If someone gets to a Flat Earther video via autoplay ( start from watching aircraft videos.. ) are they better served by being directed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth orby being shown a countervailing video explaing that the earth is in fact round and there's evidence and how to check it? Does Youtube have a responsibility to help society stay within shouting distance of the reality principle? I think it does. Do you?

rory096 9y ago
How does forking over cash help with the burden on said volunteer infrastructure? Is there any relationship at all between Wikimedia's monetary expenditures and editor effort expended?
- yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
  That kinda sounds like a failing on Wikipedia's end.
- rickycook 9y ago
  hiring developers to help develop software to make editing easier. wikimedia has stated this as one of their uses for donations in the past afaik
wallace_f 9y ago
I agree with the first part of what you said. As for the second part. Can you convince me of why I should trust Youtube's owners to police what I can see and hear, rather than rely on my own whims and judgements? Let's say we do allow our largest corporations to police thought. In that case, would it be OK for me to question or dissent?
- olefoo 9y ago
  > Can you convince me of why I should trust Youtube's owners to police what I can see and hear, rather than rely on my own whims and judgements? Asking this question is precisely the systemic risk to Youtube. If there's thought policing going on; there will be a host of players with "the best of intentions" who want in on it. From Animal Control to the Pentagon; every branch of .gov will want a piece of that pie as will most of the quasi-governmental and non-governmental stakeholders. If only truth is allowed; whose truth? If fiction is marked as such; who decides what is not fantasy? If some powerful faction makes money from people believing that chemtrails are government mind-control drugs being spewed into the air to make us all more compliant and effeminate; should they be allowed to spread that belief at will? What happens if the profitable meme is that a certain ethnic group is diluting the purity of a majority ethnic groups heritage and should therefore be exterminated? Do we allow that? What are the limits of acceptable folly?
  - wallace_f 9y ago
    Or what if Harvard scientists said that sugar is good, fat is bad, because they were paid some bribe? So Youtube bans videos spreading "fake news" that disagrees with the "science" by "foremost industry experts." What if it was about leaded gasoline? Or $500 million is missing Haiti charitable funds. Or the catalyst for the Vietnam War, the Gulf of Tonkin, as well as the WMD claims that set off Iraq War, were all lies? All these things really happened.
verylittlemeat 9y ago
Maybe youtube is unhappy with their current solutions? Some videos* are already walled up behind warnings and disabled features. * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Qt6a-vaNM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Qt6a-vaNM
- twhb 9y ago
  Off topic, but it's damn ironic that a video decrying rich, pervasive manipulators is hosted on a platform controlled by the rich, which then tries to guide people away from the video, by disabling its standard attempts to guide people toward the video, which ends up making the viewing experience better.
  - verylittlemeat 9y ago
    I watched about 3/4ths of that conspiracy video for fun and I don't even get it being restricted under "hate speech." There are parts that are obviously either untrue or exaggerations but the whole thesis of the video is "american fascists are behind everything and world war II was invented to be a profitable enterprise for industry captains."
paxys 9y ago
YouTube can't pay Wikipedia for the service because this isn't a service Wikipedia offers in the first place. And honestly if this problem could be solved by throwing money at it, Google would already have done so. They essentially want someone to point the finger at the next time someone blames them for inaccurate content, and knew that there was no way Wikipedia would agree to it with an official partnership.
peferron 9y ago
I rather think you're being extremely dramatic, and with zero justifications for why this would suddenly add a "large cognitive load" to Wikipedia (relatively to the load they are already sustaining today), or why it's a "new tasking" that will require new tooling to cope with (rather than reusing the tooling and processes they have been developing for more than a decade to deal with contentious topics), or why it exposes YouTube and the entire industry to "systemic legal and moral risks".
- pika_weedier 9y ago
  > and with zero justifications for why this would suddenly add a "large cognitive load" to Wikipedia Because if a video about say, 9-11 conspiracy theories, will have an infobox added to it which quotes the first par of a Wikipedia article, makers and viewers of such a video will go to Wikipedia and edit the first par to front-load the information they want to see. This will happen extensively across hundreds of thousands of topics. Many of Wikipedia's policies and processes won't apply to these new edit wars because they are about whether or not information can be included, rather than which information appears in the introductory part.
  - pandemi 9y ago
    Many controversial Wikipedia articles are already protected in some ways. This is nothing new.
  - SarasaNews 9y ago
    This guerrilla editing would be to the detriment of Youtube's own service in this case, so the fact that they don't support the service with tooling or money is a disservice to themselves.
devmunchies 9y ago
The hypocrisy is that if you tried scraping google results they would block you so fast your head would spin.
- eh78ssxv2f 9y ago
  But is that really comparable? Wikipedia is compiled by volunteers, but Google search algorithm or results are not. If Wikipedia was really a paid service, it very likely would not have access to so many unpaid volunteers.
  - belorn 9y ago
    Abusing the work of volunteers is a morally worse act than abusing the work of paid services. I don't see the argument that the opposite should be true.
    - Klathmon 9y ago
      Why is this "abusing volunteers" but large coorperations using open source tools not? Wikipedia is open for everyone, and in my opinion that means you don't get any right (legal or moral) when someone, anyone, uses that information within the rules you set in the license. If they want to prevent this, they should change their license.
      - belorn 9y ago
        It is true that if Wikipedia wanted to use legal means to prevent it then they should change their license, but it is equally true that if Google want to prevent users from scraping their site then they should stop making the search site public available. The web is open for everyone, and thus following your argument the rights (legal or moral) should not apply. Naturally Google won't prevent users form accessing the search since that would invalidate the purpose of their site, and equally naturally Wikipedia won't change the license since it too would invalidate the purpose of their site. Both however do complain and may invoke blocks when they feel that people are abusing the permission that is normally given. From a legal stand point, Google can arbitrarily revoke access to their site and in similar way wikipedia could revoke access (which is not the same as changing the license) to Google. They could block Googles bots, or change the targeted information for which they intend to scrape. Wikipedia could publishing a explicit statement on how Google (as a legal entity) may access their servers and Google would be legally bound to follow it or be charged under hacking laws.
Niksko 9y ago
You make an interesting point, though I think you're placing a little more responsibility on YouTube than they currently warrant. Perhaps in 20 years the argument you're making would be taken seriously if YouTube continues on it's current trajectory to become as much a tool for information dissemination as it currently is for entertainment.
- lukev 9y ago
  That's not 20 years down the road, that's now. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-politics-radical.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-po... This is an opinion piece, but the author is a respected professor who has done some really interesting research on this stuff, so I'm inclined to take it seriously.
braindongle 9y ago
The rude part is that Youtube is forcing Wikipedia deeper into the fake news wars, and not even talking with them about it, apparently.
- olefoo 9y ago
  Thank you. I was beginning to think that reading comprehension was a lost art here at HN
drivingmenuts 9y ago
The thing is Wikipedia is out there for anyone to link to, without paying a dime, and there are no legal requirements for compensation. Now, you and others may think they have some ethical responsibility (I'm not sure I agree with that) but if YouTube had to parse all the ethical requirements their users thought they had to abide by, they'd never get anything done. B2B interactions are never bound by the same ethical constraints that human-to-human interactions are. Corporations are not people - they can be bound by laws but not arbitrary social conventions. Near as I can tell, Wikipedia is SOL unless YouTube wants to help them out. YT is certainly not obligated to.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Corporations are not people - they can be bound by laws but not arbitrary social conventions. Corporations are bound by social conventions for the same reason natural persons are: if they sufficiently violate them, people impose consequences on the corporation by actively avoiding interactions beneficial to the corporation.
- belorn 9y ago
  This is not about linking. Anyone can link to Wikipedia articles without paying a dime. There is a very significant difference between linking to an article like what HN does, and copying new articles and publish them which HN does not.
- rickycook 9y ago
  because if it’s legal, it’s morally acceptable right? i guess the patent trolls are in the right then.
Cthulhu_ 9y ago
Youtube is indirectly compensating Wikimedia though; the benefactors page lists Google Matching Gifts as a major benefactor (https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Benefactors https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Benefactors). Looks like that's a 'matching' foundation of sorts that will match / double certain donations - maybe from googlers?

by olefoo 9y ago

rory096 9y ago

How does forking over cash help with the burden on said volunteer infrastructure? Is there any relationship at all between Wikimedia's monetary expenditures and editor effort expended?

yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
That kinda sounds like a failing on Wikipedia's end.
rickycook 9y ago
hiring developers to help develop software to make editing easier. wikimedia has stated this as one of their uses for donations in the past afaik

wallace_f 9y ago

I agree with the first part of what you said. As for the second part. Can you convince me of why I should trust Youtube's owners to police what I can see and hear, rather than rely on my own whims and judgements? Let's say we do allow our largest corporations to police thought. In that case, would it be OK for me to question or dissent?

olefoo 9y ago
> Can you convince me of why I should trust Youtube's owners to police what I can see and hear, rather than rely on my own whims and judgements? Asking this question is precisely the systemic risk to Youtube. If there's thought policing going on; there will be a host of players with "the best of intentions" who want in on it. From Animal Control to the Pentagon; every branch of .gov will want a piece of that pie as will most of the quasi-governmental and non-governmental stakeholders. If only truth is allowed; whose truth? If fiction is marked as such; who decides what is not fantasy? If some powerful faction makes money from people believing that chemtrails are government mind-control drugs being spewed into the air to make us all more compliant and effeminate; should they be allowed to spread that belief at will? What happens if the profitable meme is that a certain ethnic group is diluting the purity of a majority ethnic groups heritage and should therefore be exterminated? Do we allow that? What are the limits of acceptable folly?
- wallace_f 9y ago
  Or what if Harvard scientists said that sugar is good, fat is bad, because they were paid some bribe? So Youtube bans videos spreading "fake news" that disagrees with the "science" by "foremost industry experts." What if it was about leaded gasoline? Or $500 million is missing Haiti charitable funds. Or the catalyst for the Vietnam War, the Gulf of Tonkin, as well as the WMD claims that set off Iraq War, were all lies? All these things really happened.

verylittlemeat 9y ago

Maybe youtube is unhappy with their current solutions? Some videos* are already walled up behind warnings and disabled features. * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Qt6a-vaNM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Qt6a-vaNM

twhb 9y ago
Off topic, but it's damn ironic that a video decrying rich, pervasive manipulators is hosted on a platform controlled by the rich, which then tries to guide people away from the video, by disabling its standard attempts to guide people toward the video, which ends up making the viewing experience better.
- verylittlemeat 9y ago
  I watched about 3/4ths of that conspiracy video for fun and I don't even get it being restricted under "hate speech." There are parts that are obviously either untrue or exaggerations but the whole thesis of the video is "american fascists are behind everything and world war II was invented to be a profitable enterprise for industry captains."

paxys 9y ago

YouTube can't pay Wikipedia for the service because this isn't a service Wikipedia offers in the first place. And honestly if this problem could be solved by throwing money at it, Google would already have done so. They essentially want someone to point the finger at the next time someone blames them for inaccurate content, and knew that there was no way Wikipedia would agree to it with an official partnership.

peferron 9y ago

I rather think you're being extremely dramatic, and with zero justifications for why this would suddenly add a "large cognitive load" to Wikipedia (relatively to the load they are already sustaining today), or why it's a "new tasking" that will require new tooling to cope with (rather than reusing the tooling and processes they have been developing for more than a decade to deal with contentious topics), or why it exposes YouTube and the entire industry to "systemic legal and moral risks".

pika_weedier 9y ago
> and with zero justifications for why this would suddenly add a "large cognitive load" to Wikipedia Because if a video about say, 9-11 conspiracy theories, will have an infobox added to it which quotes the first par of a Wikipedia article, makers and viewers of such a video will go to Wikipedia and edit the first par to front-load the information they want to see. This will happen extensively across hundreds of thousands of topics. Many of Wikipedia's policies and processes won't apply to these new edit wars because they are about whether or not information can be included, rather than which information appears in the introductory part.
- pandemi 9y ago
  Many controversial Wikipedia articles are already protected in some ways. This is nothing new.
- SarasaNews 9y ago
  This guerrilla editing would be to the detriment of Youtube's own service in this case, so the fact that they don't support the service with tooling or money is a disservice to themselves.

devmunchies 9y ago

The hypocrisy is that if you tried scraping google results they would block you so fast your head would spin.

eh78ssxv2f 9y ago
But is that really comparable? Wikipedia is compiled by volunteers, but Google search algorithm or results are not. If Wikipedia was really a paid service, it very likely would not have access to so many unpaid volunteers.
- belorn 9y ago
  Abusing the work of volunteers is a morally worse act than abusing the work of paid services. I don't see the argument that the opposite should be true.
  - Klathmon 9y ago
    Why is this "abusing volunteers" but large coorperations using open source tools not? Wikipedia is open for everyone, and in my opinion that means you don't get any right (legal or moral) when someone, anyone, uses that information within the rules you set in the license. If they want to prevent this, they should change their license.
    - belorn 9y ago
      It is true that if Wikipedia wanted to use legal means to prevent it then they should change their license, but it is equally true that if Google want to prevent users from scraping their site then they should stop making the search site public available. The web is open for everyone, and thus following your argument the rights (legal or moral) should not apply. Naturally Google won't prevent users form accessing the search since that would invalidate the purpose of their site, and equally naturally Wikipedia won't change the license since it too would invalidate the purpose of their site. Both however do complain and may invoke blocks when they feel that people are abusing the permission that is normally given. From a legal stand point, Google can arbitrarily revoke access to their site and in similar way wikipedia could revoke access (which is not the same as changing the license) to Google. They could block Googles bots, or change the targeted information for which they intend to scrape. Wikipedia could publishing a explicit statement on how Google (as a legal entity) may access their servers and Google would be legally bound to follow it or be charged under hacking laws.

Niksko 9y ago

You make an interesting point, though I think you're placing a little more responsibility on YouTube than they currently warrant. Perhaps in 20 years the argument you're making would be taken seriously if YouTube continues on it's current trajectory to become as much a tool for information dissemination as it currently is for entertainment.

lukev 9y ago
That's not 20 years down the road, that's now. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-politics-radical.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-po... This is an opinion piece, but the author is a respected professor who has done some really interesting research on this stuff, so I'm inclined to take it seriously.

braindongle 9y ago

The rude part is that Youtube is forcing Wikipedia deeper into the fake news wars, and not even talking with them about it, apparently.

olefoo 9y ago
Thank you. I was beginning to think that reading comprehension was a lost art here at HN

drivingmenuts 9y ago

The thing is Wikipedia is out there for anyone to link to, without paying a dime, and there are no legal requirements for compensation. Now, you and others may think they have some ethical responsibility (I'm not sure I agree with that) but if YouTube had to parse all the ethical requirements their users thought they had to abide by, they'd never get anything done. B2B interactions are never bound by the same ethical constraints that human-to-human interactions are. Corporations are not people - they can be bound by laws but not arbitrary social conventions. Near as I can tell, Wikipedia is SOL unless YouTube wants to help them out. YT is certainly not obligated to.

dragonwriter 9y ago
> Corporations are not people - they can be bound by laws but not arbitrary social conventions. Corporations are bound by social conventions for the same reason natural persons are: if they sufficiently violate them, people impose consequences on the corporation by actively avoiding interactions beneficial to the corporation.
belorn 9y ago
This is not about linking. Anyone can link to Wikipedia articles without paying a dime. There is a very significant difference between linking to an article like what HN does, and copying new articles and publish them which HN does not.
rickycook 9y ago
because if it’s legal, it’s morally acceptable right? i guess the patent trolls are in the right then.

Cthulhu_ 9y ago

Youtube is indirectly compensating Wikimedia though; the benefactors page lists Google Matching Gifts as a major benefactor (https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Benefactors https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Benefactors). Looks like that's a 'matching' foundation of sorts that will match / double certain donations - maybe from googlers?