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I watch a decent amount of YouTube, but if it went away, I don’t think that it would be a net loss to humanity given what YT shows to children [0], and how YT r

I watch a decent amount of YouTube, but if it went away, I don’t think that it would be a net loss to humanity given what YT shows to children [0], and how YT radicalizes viewers [1]. It’s actually Patreon that pays my favorite creators, not YT, so they could protentially distribute videos via any other site. A new site for discovery would likely rise up, if Patreon didn’t do that themselves. This is the entire platform vs publisher argument that tech companies have been hiding under for years. No one is responsible for content, and look what that’s gotten us. I would shed no tears if YT ended operation in the EU, where I live. [0] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/youtube-for-kids-videos-problems-algorithm-recommend https://www.wired.co.uk/article/youtube-for-kids-videos-prob... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-politics-radical.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-po... https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/youtube-extremism-and-the-long-tail/555350/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/youtube... https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-youtubes-far-right-radicalization-factory https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-youtubes-far-right-radi...

microcolonel 8y ago
The Alternative Influence Network thing is based on outright fabricated data by the way. Becca Lewis draws direct links between people who have never collaborated or appeared on eachother's channels (the criteria described for the linkages), to draw the absurd conclusion that Richard Spencer and Tim Pool are part of some conspiratorial "network". Anyone who takes the AIN report seriously either hasn't verified the claims, or agrees that these people should be misrepresented and smeared. Your view of YouTube is myopic, and ignores the immense cultural resource that exists there. You have no idea what would be lost if the EU chased it away, but you're willing to find out just to spite some people you resent; and you resent them based on false information you accepted because it fit your lens.
lake99 8y ago
I don't watch children's videos, so I'll leave that factor aside. All your citations are to opinion pieces written by people with an agenda to push, i.e. not fact, not by a long shot. I watch YouTube for education and entertainment. The loss of all the educational content, by itself, would be a massive loss to humanity. If YouTube were to go down, some educators will re-upload their content to other places. Moreover, radical activists would be the among the first to adopt YouTube's replacements, thereby solving nothing. > No one is responsible for content, and look what that’s gotten us. I suspect your views are coloured by the kind of things you watch. YouTube's algorithms have adapted to your viewing profile. Most of my recommendations are for science, math, and music pedagogy. From where I stand, YouTube has gotten us to a great place.
- sieabahlpark 8y ago
  Khan academy started with YouTube videos I believe.
  - behringer 8y ago
    Khan academy could have easily started with another video service. Archive.org had a free video service at the time I believe. There were others that took it's place when it shut down, including YouTube.
    - andromedavision 8y ago
      > Khan academy could have easily started with another video service. Not all video players are created equal. It's really hard to make a good video player. Case in point, look at all the crappy video players created by news sites that don't want to embed the YT player. Some can't even pause properly using the space bar or even let you select your preferred video quality.
- jbigelow76 8y ago
  There should be the distinction or at least allowances for, is X "good" and is X a "net good", which a lot of responses to the GP aren't admitting. I've watched plenty of Youtube, even the now cliched defenses of DIY home improvement stuff (sink de-clogging and drywall patching for me). But for as good and helpful as the pedagogical content might be there is still the other side that subsidizes all that, that fosters some crazed asshole shooting up a yoga studio and killing two people (YT ref'd in first paragraph)[1]. Is YouTube good? Sure. Is YouTube a societal net good? Absolutely not. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hot-yoga-shooting-tallahassee-florida-gunman-scott-paul-beierle-had-prior-arrests-for-touching-women/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hot-yoga-shooting-tallahassee-f... edit: spelling
  - ferongr 8y ago
    Nice subjective opinion presented as fact.
  - 8y ago
liftbigweights 8y ago
> I watch a decent amount of YouTube, but if it went away, I don’t think that it would be a net loss to humanity given what YT shows to children The good old "think of the children" argument used by authoritarian puritans. > and how YT radicalizes viewers As opposed to TV? Cable news? Newspapers? Or any other media? > No one is responsible for content, and look what that’s gotten us. Where has it gotten us? > I would shed no tears if YT ended operation in the EU, where I live. As an american, I feel the same way. Why don't you guys create your own youtube and stop trying to censor everyone else? Oh you can't because of the EU onerous regulations. How ironic. I hate the pro-censorship lobby that has reared its ugly head on hacker news. Everyday, there is a barrage of comments sneakily supporting and defending censorship. Strange. And your "sources" are highly biased at best and "fake news" at worst. It's like asking the telegram company what they think of telephones or the horse what they think of cars.
- hayd 8y ago
  Nonsense. What we need is a good old fashioned book burning...
nradov 8y ago
YouTube is quite useful when I need an instructional video on how to repair my leaking toilet.
- protomyth 8y ago
  YouTube is basically the ‘I need to do this, how can it be done’ website. Searching for the car you are looking at buying with word repair is an interesting way to see what you might need to do. Crown molding was an amazing thing to learn from YouTube.
  - drusepth 8y ago
    Absolutely. YouTube helped me build my first PC, taught me dozens of algorithms / data structures while I was first learning to code, helped me get started with software like PyTorch, Blender, Unity, etc, exposed me to a lot of philosophical thought/thinking and random education I'd never otherwise have stumbled upon, and so much more. It's got plenty of entertaining stuff also, but the fact that YouTube allows anyone to share anything they know with anyone in the world in a simple, visual format is amazing. Other platforms can do that too, but YouTube is obviously the biggest player in the space right now and there is value in having everything together (see: the Walmart effect).
- ginko 8y ago
  I'm actually rather annoyed that it's getting more and more common these days that instructions can only be found in video form instead of articles. Articles you can quickly skim to see if it's doing what you need. Add to that that many of these videos have stupid intros and presenters trying to be funny.
mdonahoe 8y ago
Not sure if this is what you meant, but if all the content disappeared today, it would be a huge loss.
intertextuality 8y ago
You're severely downplaying the amount of educational content that it has to offer. If youtube went down overnight, it -would- be a huge loss. If you give your children unfettered access to youtube, that's your own fault as a parent. Youtube should be better about handling this but I think it's more of a communication issue. Youtube is essentially a medium unto itself. A LOT of people use it so there's going to be good, and there's going to be bad. You can make the case of "radicalizing people" for just about any other medium that people consume. In the end, it's basically what you make of it. You can find a wealth of diverse channels to watch and grow from, or you can watch drivel. It isn't any different than the trash on tv or in pulp novels, except that individual people have more power and freedom to create things. If you think differently then you're just looking at older mediums with rose-tinted glasses.
- ben_w 8y ago
  I make heavy use of the educational content — 3Blue1Brown, applied science, bigclivedotcom, braincraft, CGP Grey, Computerphile, CrashCourse, … «continues alphabetically», … ViHart, Vintage Space, WDR (German language broadcaster “Westdeutscher Rundfunk”). Most of them have other revenue streams. Patreon, or being a division of PBS, or day jobs. I’m not worried about their survival. One of those videos was “This Video Will Make You Angry”. Meme-based economics are not your friend. For extremist or propagandist content, unfortunately both those things mean it will continue even without YouTube or a clone.
  - intertextuality 8y ago
    I'm not talking about content makers' survival. I'm talking about existing content being lost. Even assuming those people had everything backed up, it would be scattered all over the place. This Video Will Make You Angry was a good video. No idea why it specifically is being discussed here. > For extremist or propagandist content, unfortunately both those things mean it will continue even without YouTube or a clone. Yes, this has nothing to do with youtube. Again, you can propagate charged content via other mediums, especially on the internet.
    - 8y ago
Pristina 8y ago
It's like you have no respect for people's agency at all.
sbr464 8y ago
I apologize to general knowledge that this is the top comment.
- consumer451 8y ago
  Honestly, as the author of the comment, so do I.
sharcerer 8y ago
I think it would be a huge loss. I couldn't live without the educational content on Youtube. Sure, they could move it elsewhere. But, Youtube has enabled this network to thrive. It's the single biggest library of visual edu content. Channels like Ted-Ed,Crash Course, Physics Girl,Vsauce, Engineering Explained, Khan Acad, MITOCW, a16z, freecodecamp, 3blue1brown,asapScience, SciShow,Computerphile,Numberphile,Hak5,LiveOverflow, How stuffworks, Jacob Clifford, Derek Banas, sentdex,Corey Schafer,Minute physics,Tinkernut, Tom Scott, Y Combinator, oh and 2 Minute Papers. Youtube bascially played a major role in democratizing creation of content :educational, creative etc. And by the way, it's still not clear how much profit YT makes. The infra costs etc are huge. It's Google's $$$ which subsidizes YT content. personally, when I see the amount of value I am deriving, I think I owe a decent amount of money to YT. I am a student right now, but will start giving creators money asap. Of course, it would have been better if Youtube had started their Donate option sooner. I think they have failed to creatively monetize users and compensate creators. (i know about ads, not creative,but it works)
scoot_718 8y ago
EU copyright laws are stupid.
- mcv 8y ago
  It's not a law yet. It's a proposal that cleared its first hurdles. Though with the overwhelming majority with which the MEPs supported it, it's not looking good. There's an election in May. Maybe if we threaten to vote out everybody who supported this, they may change their opinion. It's going to be hard to mobilize that many people about such a complex issue, though. Sadly, I'm unable to find a good overview of which parties or MEPs supported this and which didn't.
- ionised 8y ago
  Most copyright laws, globally, are stupid.
wccrawford 8y ago
This is like saying that all the smut in libraries is ruining society and the world would be better off if all the libraries closed. Those educational books would still be available elsewhere, etc etc. I use YouTube all the time to learn to do things around the house. My wife and I recently completed a bathroom renovation and the only thing we didn't do ourselves was the plumbing, including completely replacing the tile and patching the walls. It looks fabulous. Sure, I could probably have eventually found that information elsewhere, but it was almost all on YouTube and very easy to find. I looked up multiple videos on each task and figured out what the best advice was and even got to see it done multiple ways. Losing YouTube at this point would be a huge loss.
- candiodari 8y ago
  So you're saying either we can have a great resource, or we could destroy that resource entirely and let politicians get slightly less criticism ? https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/09/20/berkeley-may-remove-free-online-content-rather-complying-disability-law https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/09/20/berkeley-may-... This is a general problem with many public efforts. Reality is that the only way to make everyone equal is to make everyone equally miserable. And this is generally what we do.
HissingMachine 8y ago
You have seriously confused things, the EU copyright law isn't targetting YT, it's targetting all platforms that users are able to publish their own content, so you really aren't left with alternatives for content creators to switch to paid by Patreon supporters or not. Even Hacker News is targetted under the law and has to pay link tax when linking to content. So you should reconsider your nonchalant attitude.
- consumer451 8y ago
  I am not defending article 11 at large, the link tax seem ridiculous.[0] I was likely “thinking out loud” far too much for HN, and my own good. I would certainly miss YT, article 11 is a mess, but I just came to my original comment’s conclusion and it honestly surprised me. [0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/10/eus-link-tax-will-kill-open-access-and-creative-commons-news https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/10/eus-link-tax-will-kill...
  - HissingMachine 8y ago
    I understand it's just frustrating to hear dismissal of one platform or other from comments on EU copyright law when the fact is that it will govern everything that is going on the internet. It will affect everything as user interaction is a central and crucial part of what we do on the internet. GDPR did a number on what we consume for "the greater good" and while I do appreciate that I'm now more in control of what goes on with my data, I lost access to so many sources. And while I do have ways to protect myself where ever I go, I have been punished for the lack of care and awareness of internet users who simply didn't care then nor do they care now, collective punishment rarely does any great good for the whole. And yet again, I'm savvier so I can circumvent most of the blocks by VPN but the rest are now enjoying a worse experience. This ain't good in any metric, none of it is.
taf2 8y ago
‘I watch a decent amount of YouTube, but if it went away, I don’t think that it would be a net loss to humanity’ That is because you haven’t watched grubby playing Warcraft 3!
Skrillex 8y ago
I think that the educational content on YouTube can definitely outweigh any and all of its issues, as long as we are seeing YouTube for what it is. I am incapable of describing the breadth of knowledge that can be accessed on that site, so I will not. I can definitely see the argument that YouTube is a net-harm for children under some circumstances, but I would definitely be sad to see that amount of useful information be unavailable for everyone because it is bad for children. It is not a babysitter, and no one should trust it to be. I reject these "think of the children" arguments for something that is not designed for children to begin with.
Mauricio_ 8y ago
Why wouldn't patron have the same problem as YouTube?

microcolonel 8y ago

The Alternative Influence Network thing is based on outright fabricated data by the way. Becca Lewis draws direct links between people who have never collaborated or appeared on eachother's channels (the criteria described for the linkages), to draw the absurd conclusion that Richard Spencer and Tim Pool are part of some conspiratorial "network". Anyone who takes the AIN report seriously either hasn't verified the claims, or agrees that these people should be misrepresented and smeared. Your view of YouTube is myopic, and ignores the immense cultural resource that exists there. You have no idea what would be lost if the EU chased it away, but you're willing to find out just to spite some people you resent; and you resent them based on false information you accepted because it fit your lens.

lake99 8y ago

I don't watch children's videos, so I'll leave that factor aside. All your citations are to opinion pieces written by people with an agenda to push, i.e. not fact, not by a long shot. I watch YouTube for education and entertainment. The loss of all the educational content, by itself, would be a massive loss to humanity. If YouTube were to go down, some educators will re-upload their content to other places. Moreover, radical activists would be the among the first to adopt YouTube's replacements, thereby solving nothing. > No one is responsible for content, and look what that’s gotten us. I suspect your views are coloured by the kind of things you watch. YouTube's algorithms have adapted to your viewing profile. Most of my recommendations are for science, math, and music pedagogy. From where I stand, YouTube has gotten us to a great place.

sieabahlpark 8y ago
Khan academy started with YouTube videos I believe.
- behringer 8y ago
  Khan academy could have easily started with another video service. Archive.org had a free video service at the time I believe. There were others that took it's place when it shut down, including YouTube.
  - andromedavision 8y ago
    > Khan academy could have easily started with another video service. Not all video players are created equal. It's really hard to make a good video player. Case in point, look at all the crappy video players created by news sites that don't want to embed the YT player. Some can't even pause properly using the space bar or even let you select your preferred video quality.
jbigelow76 8y ago
There should be the distinction or at least allowances for, is X "good" and is X a "net good", which a lot of responses to the GP aren't admitting. I've watched plenty of Youtube, even the now cliched defenses of DIY home improvement stuff (sink de-clogging and drywall patching for me). But for as good and helpful as the pedagogical content might be there is still the other side that subsidizes all that, that fosters some crazed asshole shooting up a yoga studio and killing two people (YT ref'd in first paragraph)[1]. Is YouTube good? Sure. Is YouTube a societal net good? Absolutely not. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hot-yoga-shooting-tallahassee-florida-gunman-scott-paul-beierle-had-prior-arrests-for-touching-women/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hot-yoga-shooting-tallahassee-f... edit: spelling
- ferongr 8y ago
  Nice subjective opinion presented as fact.
- 8y ago

liftbigweights 8y ago

> I watch a decent amount of YouTube, but if it went away, I don’t think that it would be a net loss to humanity given what YT shows to children The good old "think of the children" argument used by authoritarian puritans. > and how YT radicalizes viewers As opposed to TV? Cable news? Newspapers? Or any other media? > No one is responsible for content, and look what that’s gotten us. Where has it gotten us? > I would shed no tears if YT ended operation in the EU, where I live. As an american, I feel the same way. Why don't you guys create your own youtube and stop trying to censor everyone else? Oh you can't because of the EU onerous regulations. How ironic. I hate the pro-censorship lobby that has reared its ugly head on hacker news. Everyday, there is a barrage of comments sneakily supporting and defending censorship. Strange. And your "sources" are highly biased at best and "fake news" at worst. It's like asking the telegram company what they think of telephones or the horse what they think of cars.

hayd 8y ago
Nonsense. What we need is a good old fashioned book burning...

nradov 8y ago

YouTube is quite useful when I need an instructional video on how to repair my leaking toilet.

protomyth 8y ago
YouTube is basically the ‘I need to do this, how can it be done’ website. Searching for the car you are looking at buying with word repair is an interesting way to see what you might need to do. Crown molding was an amazing thing to learn from YouTube.
- drusepth 8y ago
  Absolutely. YouTube helped me build my first PC, taught me dozens of algorithms / data structures while I was first learning to code, helped me get started with software like PyTorch, Blender, Unity, etc, exposed me to a lot of philosophical thought/thinking and random education I'd never otherwise have stumbled upon, and so much more. It's got plenty of entertaining stuff also, but the fact that YouTube allows anyone to share anything they know with anyone in the world in a simple, visual format is amazing. Other platforms can do that too, but YouTube is obviously the biggest player in the space right now and there is value in having everything together (see: the Walmart effect).
ginko 8y ago
I'm actually rather annoyed that it's getting more and more common these days that instructions can only be found in video form instead of articles. Articles you can quickly skim to see if it's doing what you need. Add to that that many of these videos have stupid intros and presenters trying to be funny.

mdonahoe 8y ago

Not sure if this is what you meant, but if all the content disappeared today, it would be a huge loss.

intertextuality 8y ago

You're severely downplaying the amount of educational content that it has to offer. If youtube went down overnight, it -would- be a huge loss. If you give your children unfettered access to youtube, that's your own fault as a parent. Youtube should be better about handling this but I think it's more of a communication issue. Youtube is essentially a medium unto itself. A LOT of people use it so there's going to be good, and there's going to be bad. You can make the case of "radicalizing people" for just about any other medium that people consume. In the end, it's basically what you make of it. You can find a wealth of diverse channels to watch and grow from, or you can watch drivel. It isn't any different than the trash on tv or in pulp novels, except that individual people have more power and freedom to create things. If you think differently then you're just looking at older mediums with rose-tinted glasses.

ben_w 8y ago
I make heavy use of the educational content — 3Blue1Brown, applied science, bigclivedotcom, braincraft, CGP Grey, Computerphile, CrashCourse, … «continues alphabetically», … ViHart, Vintage Space, WDR (German language broadcaster “Westdeutscher Rundfunk”). Most of them have other revenue streams. Patreon, or being a division of PBS, or day jobs. I’m not worried about their survival. One of those videos was “This Video Will Make You Angry”. Meme-based economics are not your friend. For extremist or propagandist content, unfortunately both those things mean it will continue even without YouTube or a clone.
- intertextuality 8y ago
  I'm not talking about content makers' survival. I'm talking about existing content being lost. Even assuming those people had everything backed up, it would be scattered all over the place. This Video Will Make You Angry was a good video. No idea why it specifically is being discussed here. > For extremist or propagandist content, unfortunately both those things mean it will continue even without YouTube or a clone. Yes, this has nothing to do with youtube. Again, you can propagate charged content via other mediums, especially on the internet.
  - 8y ago

Pristina 8y ago

It's like you have no respect for people's agency at all.

sbr464 8y ago

I apologize to general knowledge that this is the top comment.

consumer451 8y ago
Honestly, as the author of the comment, so do I.

sharcerer 8y ago

I think it would be a huge loss. I couldn't live without the educational content on Youtube. Sure, they could move it elsewhere. But, Youtube has enabled this network to thrive. It's the single biggest library of visual edu content. Channels like Ted-Ed,Crash Course, Physics Girl,Vsauce, Engineering Explained, Khan Acad, MITOCW, a16z, freecodecamp, 3blue1brown,asapScience, SciShow,Computerphile,Numberphile,Hak5,LiveOverflow, How stuffworks, Jacob Clifford, Derek Banas, sentdex,Corey Schafer,Minute physics,Tinkernut, Tom Scott, Y Combinator, oh and 2 Minute Papers. Youtube bascially played a major role in democratizing creation of content :educational, creative etc. And by the way, it's still not clear how much profit YT makes. The infra costs etc are huge. It's Google's $$$ which subsidizes YT content. personally, when I see the amount of value I am deriving, I think I owe a decent amount of money to YT. I am a student right now, but will start giving creators money asap. Of course, it would have been better if Youtube had started their Donate option sooner. I think they have failed to creatively monetize users and compensate creators. (i know about ads, not creative,but it works)

scoot_718 8y ago

EU copyright laws are stupid.

mcv 8y ago
It's not a law yet. It's a proposal that cleared its first hurdles. Though with the overwhelming majority with which the MEPs supported it, it's not looking good. There's an election in May. Maybe if we threaten to vote out everybody who supported this, they may change their opinion. It's going to be hard to mobilize that many people about such a complex issue, though. Sadly, I'm unable to find a good overview of which parties or MEPs supported this and which didn't.
ionised 8y ago
Most copyright laws, globally, are stupid.

wccrawford 8y ago

This is like saying that all the smut in libraries is ruining society and the world would be better off if all the libraries closed. Those educational books would still be available elsewhere, etc etc. I use YouTube all the time to learn to do things around the house. My wife and I recently completed a bathroom renovation and the only thing we didn't do ourselves was the plumbing, including completely replacing the tile and patching the walls. It looks fabulous. Sure, I could probably have eventually found that information elsewhere, but it was almost all on YouTube and very easy to find. I looked up multiple videos on each task and figured out what the best advice was and even got to see it done multiple ways. Losing YouTube at this point would be a huge loss.

candiodari 8y ago
So you're saying either we can have a great resource, or we could destroy that resource entirely and let politicians get slightly less criticism ? https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/09/20/berkeley-may-remove-free-online-content-rather-complying-disability-law https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/09/20/berkeley-may-... This is a general problem with many public efforts. Reality is that the only way to make everyone equal is to make everyone equally miserable. And this is generally what we do.

HissingMachine 8y ago

You have seriously confused things, the EU copyright law isn't targetting YT, it's targetting all platforms that users are able to publish their own content, so you really aren't left with alternatives for content creators to switch to paid by Patreon supporters or not. Even Hacker News is targetted under the law and has to pay link tax when linking to content. So you should reconsider your nonchalant attitude.

consumer451 8y ago
I am not defending article 11 at large, the link tax seem ridiculous.[0] I was likely “thinking out loud” far too much for HN, and my own good. I would certainly miss YT, article 11 is a mess, but I just came to my original comment’s conclusion and it honestly surprised me. [0] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/10/eus-link-tax-will-kill-open-access-and-creative-commons-news https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/10/eus-link-tax-will-kill...
- HissingMachine 8y ago
  I understand it's just frustrating to hear dismissal of one platform or other from comments on EU copyright law when the fact is that it will govern everything that is going on the internet. It will affect everything as user interaction is a central and crucial part of what we do on the internet. GDPR did a number on what we consume for "the greater good" and while I do appreciate that I'm now more in control of what goes on with my data, I lost access to so many sources. And while I do have ways to protect myself where ever I go, I have been punished for the lack of care and awareness of internet users who simply didn't care then nor do they care now, collective punishment rarely does any great good for the whole. And yet again, I'm savvier so I can circumvent most of the blocks by VPN but the rest are now enjoying a worse experience. This ain't good in any metric, none of it is.

taf2 8y ago

‘I watch a decent amount of YouTube, but if it went away, I don’t think that it would be a net loss to humanity’ That is because you haven’t watched grubby playing Warcraft 3!

Skrillex 8y ago

I think that the educational content on YouTube can definitely outweigh any and all of its issues, as long as we are seeing YouTube for what it is. I am incapable of describing the breadth of knowledge that can be accessed on that site, so I will not. I can definitely see the argument that YouTube is a net-harm for children under some circumstances, but I would definitely be sad to see that amount of useful information be unavailable for everyone because it is bad for children. It is not a babysitter, and no one should trust it to be. I reject these "think of the children" arguments for something that is not designed for children to begin with.

Mauricio_ 8y ago

Why wouldn't patron have the same problem as YouTube?