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There are more than 400 hours of video uploaded every minute to the platform, and putting the onus of responsibility on platforms like YouTube t

There are more than 400 hours of video uploaded every minute to the platform, and putting the onus of responsibility on platforms like YouTube to catch every video isn’t fair, according to Wojcicki. Sounds like they could solve this really easily by just hiring a lot of people, which is also very easy to do when you stashed over $100,000,000,000 and revenue is still growing and taxes are still diminishing and employees are still called contractors.

j-pb 8y ago
That sounds like something out of an black mirror episode... Where an unprivileged worker class has to go through hours and hours of video material of the upper societal levels in order to make sure that they satisfy the grotesque utopian "always happy no conflict" image of an all seeing censor, including the denial of their own existence.
- b_tterc_p 8y ago
  Amazon has people do this for Alexa inputs, to label whether responses were good or bad.
  - wafflesraccoon 8y ago
    genuinely curious, do you have a source for that?
    - stedaniels 8y ago
      It's built into the app. It asks you to grade each response positively or negatively.
      - spullara 8y ago
        Cool. We can just ask the uploader if it is copyrighted or not.
    - b_tterc_p 8y ago
      I know someone with this job. I don’t think it’s advertised anywhere as such. But it appears the role is called “data associate” or “speech and language annotator”. Basically they listen to the phrase after the keyword and then the response, marking whether or not it was helpful (maybe more detailed than that, not sure). It’s a data labeling job in some shape or form. Anecdotally, a lot of people seem to like saying the worst possible (offensive) things to Alexa and some people use it to sext. I don’t know if the latter was transmitted because messages are fair game or if because the user incorrectly tried to use the messaging feature. The only thing about this that really surprises me is that it isn’t outsourced to a cheaper labor supply. I don’t have a Glassdoor account to confirm what this is saying but I think you’ll find at least circumstantial evidence here if you can view it. https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Amazon-Data-Associate-Reviews-EI_IE6036.0,6_KO7,21.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Amazon-Data-Associate-Revi...
anticensor 8y ago
A brigade[0] of retired old pensioners could do this review as a full-time unpaid labour. [0]:Infantry-equivalent numbers are used.
- nindalf 8y ago
  This work isn't remotely fun. It's stressful, and the people doing it often have to deal with depression and drug abuse later. https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/13/11387934/internet-moderator-history-youtube-facebook-reddit-censorship-free-speech https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/13/11387934/internet-moderat...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - anticensor 8y ago
    Retirees have less of a concern of future, hence they are less likely to abuse drugs. Pensioners also have the necessary income, and will not suffer income-related problems.
    - ska 8y ago
      What's in it for them?
      - ahje 8y ago
        I think you've hit the nail on the head here, and it's not even limited to retirees: Why would anyone want such a job? One might get someone unemployed and with no other choice to do it for a while, until another job comes by, but I don't really think anyone wants to do this for a living.
Vehemental 8y ago
all the uber/lyft drivers can go home at night and get to work for youtube
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
nitwit005 8y ago
> Sounds like they could solve this really easily by just hiring a lot of people They could catch the obvious stuff like people uploading Hollywood videos, but the reality is that humans will let tons of stuff through, and also accidentally block stuff that should have been allowed. There's far more copyrighted content than a human can even view or listen to in a lifetime. There's just no way for a human to know what's in violation and what isn't.
- phkahler 8y ago
  >> There's just no way for a human to know what's in violation and what isn't. People can host their own stuff. Simple. Don't host content you don't know the origin of and can't document you've got the right to do so.
  - ggggtez 8y ago
    Aha, so, your solution to people uploading copyrighted content to youtube, is to force them to go back to hosting their content on their own PC, like... Napster and Bit Torrent? How exactly would that solve the problem? Is there a step 2 where they also cut all the cables into and out of Europe?
jerf 8y ago
"Sounds like they could solve this really easily by just hiring a lot of people," Who are you going to hire who can watch a video and instantly know every copyrighted piece used to produce it, judge whether or not the piece is one or another sort of "fair use" correctly/consistently etc., and be correct enough that YouTube feels safe taking on the corporate liability? Getting this right is more than just "a human views the video once". Sure, there's some obvious piracy, but a loooot of things that are not obvious piracy would require active research.
manfredo 8y ago
Assuming each content checker can process 8 hours of video a day, you'd need 180,000 (wrong, 100k as corrected by the commenter below) people working to review every video. Sure, YouTube doesn't need to review every video, but that 8 hours a day figure is being very generous. Account for management, documenting the results of review, appeals process, training, etc. and the throughput of reviewers is probably less than half of 8 hours per day. Even if only 1% of videos get flagged for review, YouTube is still looking at ~50% of all it's employees working on reviewing video.
- Aloisius 8y ago
  105,120 if working 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year. Of course, that don't work for copyright protection since there isn't a person alive who can recognize every copyright protected image/video/audio on the planet and whether the person uploading owns/licenses the copyright in every territory.
  - manfredo 8y ago
    Maybe feasible if < 1% of content requires human review. (~1,000 reviewers). But seeings as a lot of people treat report buttons as a "mega downvote" I don't think this is feasible in practice. If this law is rolled out, I highly suspect that YouTube in the EU will consists solely of large channels that have a low rate of videos that violate policy.
AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> Sounds like they could solve this really easily by just hiring a lot of people, which is also very easy to do when you stashed over $100,000,000,000 and revenue is still growing and taxes are still diminishing and employees are still called contractors. 400 hours a minute is 400x60x24x365=210,240,000 hours a year, equivalent to ~100,000 full-time employees. Anything less than $15/hour and they'll be hearing from Bernie Sanders, plus FICA and any employee benefits. Then they need real estate to work, utilities, parking, furniture, computer equipment, HR/IT/accounting support staff etc. The cost is in the ballpark for the estimates of YouTube's total revenue. Profits would be a fraction of that after all the existing expenses for hosting infrastructure and staff. And the $100B in cash is across all of Google. They would have to be pretty dumb to spend it down continuing to operate something that could never be expected to turn a profit again.
Aloisius 8y ago
Mmm. Even with $100 billion, I don't think they could do it at the rate people are uploading at... There are three major problems: 1. Audio, video and image recognition systems are nowhere near close to perfect and the upload volume means even a small error rate will result in a large amount getting through. 2. Users are constantly coming up with new ways to avoid the filtering systems making it a game of tag, but where one side is made up of tens of millions of people. 3. There isn't a central registry of who owns what type of copyright in each territory so there is no good way to know if the person uploading has the right to or not. Then there are the issues of compositions... someone has the right to a music track, but only when synchronized to a particular video or someone inserting a frame of a copyrighted image inside their video. And this will affect far more than YouTube. Copyright extends to all creative works including this comment. Image hosting services, forums, reddit, social networking sites, comment systems, review sites should all worry.

j-pb 8y ago

That sounds like something out of an black mirror episode... Where an unprivileged worker class has to go through hours and hours of video material of the upper societal levels in order to make sure that they satisfy the grotesque utopian "always happy no conflict" image of an all seeing censor, including the denial of their own existence.

b_tterc_p 8y ago
Amazon has people do this for Alexa inputs, to label whether responses were good or bad.
- wafflesraccoon 8y ago
  genuinely curious, do you have a source for that?
  - stedaniels 8y ago
    It's built into the app. It asks you to grade each response positively or negatively.
    - spullara 8y ago
      Cool. We can just ask the uploader if it is copyrighted or not.
  - b_tterc_p 8y ago
    I know someone with this job. I don’t think it’s advertised anywhere as such. But it appears the role is called “data associate” or “speech and language annotator”. Basically they listen to the phrase after the keyword and then the response, marking whether or not it was helpful (maybe more detailed than that, not sure). It’s a data labeling job in some shape or form. Anecdotally, a lot of people seem to like saying the worst possible (offensive) things to Alexa and some people use it to sext. I don’t know if the latter was transmitted because messages are fair game or if because the user incorrectly tried to use the messaging feature. The only thing about this that really surprises me is that it isn’t outsourced to a cheaper labor supply. I don’t have a Glassdoor account to confirm what this is saying but I think you’ll find at least circumstantial evidence here if you can view it. https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Amazon-Data-Associate-Reviews-EI_IE6036.0,6_KO7,21.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Amazon-Data-Associate-Revi...

anticensor 8y ago

A brigade[0] of retired old pensioners could do this review as a full-time unpaid labour. [0]:Infantry-equivalent numbers are used.

nindalf 8y ago
This work isn't remotely fun. It's stressful, and the people doing it often have to deal with depression and drug abuse later. https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/13/11387934/internet-moderator-history-youtube-facebook-reddit-censorship-free-speech https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/13/11387934/internet-moderat...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- anticensor 8y ago
  Retirees have less of a concern of future, hence they are less likely to abuse drugs. Pensioners also have the necessary income, and will not suffer income-related problems.
  - ska 8y ago
    What's in it for them?
    - ahje 8y ago
      I think you've hit the nail on the head here, and it's not even limited to retirees: Why would anyone want such a job? One might get someone unemployed and with no other choice to do it for a while, until another job comes by, but I don't really think anyone wants to do this for a living.

Vehemental 8y ago

all the uber/lyft drivers can go home at night and get to work for youtube

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

nitwit005 8y ago

> Sounds like they could solve this really easily by just hiring a lot of people They could catch the obvious stuff like people uploading Hollywood videos, but the reality is that humans will let tons of stuff through, and also accidentally block stuff that should have been allowed. There's far more copyrighted content than a human can even view or listen to in a lifetime. There's just no way for a human to know what's in violation and what isn't.

phkahler 8y ago
>> There's just no way for a human to know what's in violation and what isn't. People can host their own stuff. Simple. Don't host content you don't know the origin of and can't document you've got the right to do so.
- ggggtez 8y ago
  Aha, so, your solution to people uploading copyrighted content to youtube, is to force them to go back to hosting their content on their own PC, like... Napster and Bit Torrent? How exactly would that solve the problem? Is there a step 2 where they also cut all the cables into and out of Europe?

jerf 8y ago

"Sounds like they could solve this really easily by just hiring a lot of people," Who are you going to hire who can watch a video and instantly know every copyrighted piece used to produce it, judge whether or not the piece is one or another sort of "fair use" correctly/consistently etc., and be correct enough that YouTube feels safe taking on the corporate liability? Getting this right is more than just "a human views the video once". Sure, there's some obvious piracy, but a loooot of things that are not obvious piracy would require active research.

manfredo 8y ago

Assuming each content checker can process 8 hours of video a day, you'd need 180,000 (wrong, 100k as corrected by the commenter below) people working to review every video. Sure, YouTube doesn't need to review every video, but that 8 hours a day figure is being very generous. Account for management, documenting the results of review, appeals process, training, etc. and the throughput of reviewers is probably less than half of 8 hours per day. Even if only 1% of videos get flagged for review, YouTube is still looking at ~50% of all it's employees working on reviewing video.

Aloisius 8y ago
105,120 if working 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year. Of course, that don't work for copyright protection since there isn't a person alive who can recognize every copyright protected image/video/audio on the planet and whether the person uploading owns/licenses the copyright in every territory.
- manfredo 8y ago
  Maybe feasible if < 1% of content requires human review. (~1,000 reviewers). But seeings as a lot of people treat report buttons as a "mega downvote" I don't think this is feasible in practice. If this law is rolled out, I highly suspect that YouTube in the EU will consists solely of large channels that have a low rate of videos that violate policy.

AnthonyMouse 8y ago

> Sounds like they could solve this really easily by just hiring a lot of people, which is also very easy to do when you stashed over $100,000,000,000 and revenue is still growing and taxes are still diminishing and employees are still called contractors. 400 hours a minute is 400x60x24x365=210,240,000 hours a year, equivalent to ~100,000 full-time employees. Anything less than $15/hour and they'll be hearing from Bernie Sanders, plus FICA and any employee benefits. Then they need real estate to work, utilities, parking, furniture, computer equipment, HR/IT/accounting support staff etc. The cost is in the ballpark for the estimates of YouTube's total revenue. Profits would be a fraction of that after all the existing expenses for hosting infrastructure and staff. And the $100B in cash is across all of Google. They would have to be pretty dumb to spend it down continuing to operate something that could never be expected to turn a profit again.

Aloisius 8y ago

Mmm. Even with $100 billion, I don't think they could do it at the rate people are uploading at... There are three major problems: 1. Audio, video and image recognition systems are nowhere near close to perfect and the upload volume means even a small error rate will result in a large amount getting through. 2. Users are constantly coming up with new ways to avoid the filtering systems making it a game of tag, but where one side is made up of tens of millions of people. 3. There isn't a central registry of who owns what type of copyright in each territory so there is no good way to know if the person uploading has the right to or not. Then there are the issues of compositions... someone has the right to a music track, but only when synchronized to a particular video or someone inserting a frame of a copyrighted image inside their video. And this will affect far more than YouTube. Copyright extends to all creative works including this comment. Image hosting services, forums, reddit, social networking sites, comment systems, review sites should all worry.