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It's not "screwing" them, you said it yourself. They can't provide adequate support to all of their customers (in this situation, customer is defined as a conte

It's not "screwing" them, you said it yourself. They can't provide adequate support to all of their customers (in this situation, customer is defined as a content creator), so they are reducing the number of customers that they take on (by making it so you need a specific number of views-per-month or subscribers before you are eligible for monetization), and are reducing the number of current customers they have (by demonetizing the videos and categories that advertisers like the least)

DataWorker 9y ago
Great solution give or take the occasional shooting. The shootings don’t cost much and most shooters can’t scale their killing so I guess it’s all good.
- Klathmon 9y ago
  I don't know why I'm even bothering to respond to this, but what is your proposed solution that keeps the company in-business and ensures no mentally-ill people decide to shoot up the company?
  - manjushri 9y ago
    1. Hire more support 2. Provide clearly defined guidelines as they relate to the algo and be equitable with enforcement 3. Be politically neutral This will not guarantee safety from violence, but it could increase it.
    - Klathmon 9y ago
      1. Doing this could basically cause the same result, as the cost of more support could easily make it so that they need to start charging or denying who can be a content creator. Neither of us have numbers, so it's all just guesses, but I'd be willing to wager that spending a TON of money and training on new CSRs wouldn't really change all that much, especially when telling someone explicitly "you were banned because X" is almost never a good idea, all this would do (in my opinion) is create a much more expensive, slower, and more annoying version of the same problem. 2. I think this would help, but it's not going to prevent mentally ill people from being mentally ill. They aren't going to say "oh well this removal was justified and was consistent with the others", they are going to find a perceived wrongdoing and will latch on to that, because they are mentally ill. 3. I've come to the conclusion that this is literally impossible. You can't be politically neutral. People aren't politically neutral, and therefore the things they create or moderate can't be politically neutral (whether they mean to do it or otherwise). Even algorithms that are created by people can show biases.
      - Melchizedek 9y ago
        >You can't be politically neutral No, but it's pretty easy not to be censorship happy, far left SJW activists.
      - manjushri 9y ago
        WRT #3, the problem seems to be moreso consciously executed covert and overt political censorship/demonetization of undesireable speech rather than the problem of unconscious biases of developers. It's as simple as refraining from censorship
        Klathmon 9y ago
        But when "refraining from censorship" ends with advertisers (your main source of income) pulling out, your options become "censor videos" or "shutdown the service". "Not playing the game" isn't ever an option here.
        manjushri 9y ago
        >But when "refraining from censorship" ends with advertisers (your main source of income) pulling out, your options become "censor videos" or "shutdown the service". False dichotomy, there are other business models that don't require selling out to the whims of advertisers.
        Klathmon 9y ago
        And YouTube is trying out those other business models, however the extreme vast majority of users don't want to pay, and the content creators already have the option to self-host, self-fund, or even use YouTube un-monetized and setup and run their own in-video ads. YouTube is mainly an ad supported product, and just because other business models exist doesn't mean that you can call curation of the content "censorship". This would be the exact same situation if say a website used a "subscription" model where you paid per month, then the credit-card processor decided that the content was "unethical" and dropped the video service as a customer. And that's not theoretical, it's happened to many porn hosting websites out there. "Not playing the game" isn't an option, no matter what at the end of the day you need to "censor" some stuff (even if just to avoid getting in legal trouble), and that "censorship" will always be more strict than absolutely necessary, as the risk for a "not removed but bad video" far outweighs the downsides of a "removed but ultimately not bad video". We are in the golden age of information in my opinion. It has never been easier to self-host and self-fund your own content in a way that is basically uncensorable. Use it! But don't go trying to change or destroy other platforms that explicitly don't want that content, or want to pursue another business model. This isn't a zero-sum game.
    - DataWorker 9y ago
      2 is the key. It’s not just “demonetization” it’s seemingly arbitrary demonetization. It seems like political censorship to some people, to others it seems random and capricious. Nobody seems to have any clue as to how it all works and the natural result is that people take it personally. Transparency costs nothing and scales infinitely.
talmand 9y ago
Well, I fall on the side of calling a situation involving a company promoting a service that is monetized and then suddenly (sometimes quietly) removing said monetization from people with little or no attempt at justification with strange/vague rules that no one understands nor will the company bother to explain as screwing your clients or customers or creators or whatever we wish to call them. But I admit that could just be me.
- Klathmon 9y ago
  But Google is explaining their actions here, at least on a macro level. The blog post at [0] as well as an email summarizing the situation was sent to every channel under the new threshold for monetization. And any time a video is demonetized, they are given links to various help articles like [1] that go over what isn't allowed. You are also sent a link on how to appeal the decision at [2] They don't speak to an individual reason or reasons, and likely never will, because it's too easy to game that. You end up with people following the "letter of the law" but not the spirit, then if you decide to ban them anyway, you get called out for applying rules inconsistently. There's a reason why our legal system has judges, lawyers, juries, and takes many years in some cases to come to a conclusion. This shit is extremely difficult to manage at any scale. [0] https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2018/01/additional-changes-to-youtube-partner.html https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2018/01/additional-c... [1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6162278 https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6162278 [2] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7083671#appeal https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7083671#appeal

DataWorker 9y ago

Great solution give or take the occasional shooting. The shootings don’t cost much and most shooters can’t scale their killing so I guess it’s all good.

Klathmon 9y ago
I don't know why I'm even bothering to respond to this, but what is your proposed solution that keeps the company in-business and ensures no mentally-ill people decide to shoot up the company?
- manjushri 9y ago
  1. Hire more support 2. Provide clearly defined guidelines as they relate to the algo and be equitable with enforcement 3. Be politically neutral This will not guarantee safety from violence, but it could increase it.
  - Klathmon 9y ago
    1. Doing this could basically cause the same result, as the cost of more support could easily make it so that they need to start charging or denying who can be a content creator. Neither of us have numbers, so it's all just guesses, but I'd be willing to wager that spending a TON of money and training on new CSRs wouldn't really change all that much, especially when telling someone explicitly "you were banned because X" is almost never a good idea, all this would do (in my opinion) is create a much more expensive, slower, and more annoying version of the same problem. 2. I think this would help, but it's not going to prevent mentally ill people from being mentally ill. They aren't going to say "oh well this removal was justified and was consistent with the others", they are going to find a perceived wrongdoing and will latch on to that, because they are mentally ill. 3. I've come to the conclusion that this is literally impossible. You can't be politically neutral. People aren't politically neutral, and therefore the things they create or moderate can't be politically neutral (whether they mean to do it or otherwise). Even algorithms that are created by people can show biases.
    - Melchizedek 9y ago
      >You can't be politically neutral No, but it's pretty easy not to be censorship happy, far left SJW activists.
    - manjushri 9y ago
      WRT #3, the problem seems to be moreso consciously executed covert and overt political censorship/demonetization of undesireable speech rather than the problem of unconscious biases of developers. It's as simple as refraining from censorship
      - Klathmon 9y ago
        But when "refraining from censorship" ends with advertisers (your main source of income) pulling out, your options become "censor videos" or "shutdown the service". "Not playing the game" isn't ever an option here.
        manjushri 9y ago
        >But when "refraining from censorship" ends with advertisers (your main source of income) pulling out, your options become "censor videos" or "shutdown the service". False dichotomy, there are other business models that don't require selling out to the whims of advertisers.
        Klathmon 9y ago
        And YouTube is trying out those other business models, however the extreme vast majority of users don't want to pay, and the content creators already have the option to self-host, self-fund, or even use YouTube un-monetized and setup and run their own in-video ads. YouTube is mainly an ad supported product, and just because other business models exist doesn't mean that you can call curation of the content "censorship". This would be the exact same situation if say a website used a "subscription" model where you paid per month, then the credit-card processor decided that the content was "unethical" and dropped the video service as a customer. And that's not theoretical, it's happened to many porn hosting websites out there. "Not playing the game" isn't an option, no matter what at the end of the day you need to "censor" some stuff (even if just to avoid getting in legal trouble), and that "censorship" will always be more strict than absolutely necessary, as the risk for a "not removed but bad video" far outweighs the downsides of a "removed but ultimately not bad video". We are in the golden age of information in my opinion. It has never been easier to self-host and self-fund your own content in a way that is basically uncensorable. Use it! But don't go trying to change or destroy other platforms that explicitly don't want that content, or want to pursue another business model. This isn't a zero-sum game.
  - DataWorker 9y ago
    2 is the key. It’s not just “demonetization” it’s seemingly arbitrary demonetization. It seems like political censorship to some people, to others it seems random and capricious. Nobody seems to have any clue as to how it all works and the natural result is that people take it personally. Transparency costs nothing and scales infinitely.

talmand 9y ago

Well, I fall on the side of calling a situation involving a company promoting a service that is monetized and then suddenly (sometimes quietly) removing said monetization from people with little or no attempt at justification with strange/vague rules that no one understands nor will the company bother to explain as screwing your clients or customers or creators or whatever we wish to call them. But I admit that could just be me.

Klathmon 9y ago
But Google is explaining their actions here, at least on a macro level. The blog post at [0] as well as an email summarizing the situation was sent to every channel under the new threshold for monetization. And any time a video is demonetized, they are given links to various help articles like [1] that go over what isn't allowed. You are also sent a link on how to appeal the decision at [2] They don't speak to an individual reason or reasons, and likely never will, because it's too easy to game that. You end up with people following the "letter of the law" but not the spirit, then if you decide to ban them anyway, you get called out for applying rules inconsistently. There's a reason why our legal system has judges, lawyers, juries, and takes many years in some cases to come to a conclusion. This shit is extremely difficult to manage at any scale. [0] https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2018/01/additional-changes-to-youtube-partner.html https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2018/01/additional-c... [1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6162278 https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6162278 [2] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7083671#appeal https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7083671#appeal