6 ms·

I totally understand that youtube doesn't want people replacing video files. That feature would be abused like hell. What's wrong with uploading a new video "O

I totally understand that youtube doesn't want people replacing video files. That feature would be abused like hell. What's wrong with uploading a new video "Original Title [Update Nov 2018]", and linking to that in the description?

rocqua 8y ago
View counts, and any learning 'the algorithm' has done to understand how popular the original title was, get lost.
- onion90 8y ago
  I think that's part of the problem. Does a new video, which may have nothing to do with the originial video, really deserve the views and popularity of the old video?
- SifJar 8y ago
  But if it was allowed, view counts & popularity learning could be assigned to a completely different video that is uploaded as an "edit"
  - verroq 8y ago
    How is that different to just allowing editing of the video content itself?
    - gkoberger 8y ago
      They're saying you could upload a pirated episode of Game of Thrones, get 100k views, switch the content and title to "My Newest Vlog!", and keep the views.
      - yorwba 8y ago
        How is that different from uploading half a pirated episode of Game of Thrones and replacing the other half with your newest vlog? People could try it, but I think they'd notice that lots of views can be a bad thing if most viewers react negatively. If it happens anyway, view counts could be disaggregated into "total" and "since last update".
      - jstanley 8y ago
        But you can do exactly that on your own website, and for some reason we don't have an epidemic of bait-and-switch blogs. Why would it be different on YouTube?
        thaumasiotes 8y ago
        YouTube tracks views and other popularity / credibility statistics for videos. Your personal blog doesn't -- it's even easier to just put up "My Newest Vlog!" with a little number claiming to have 100,000 views. Why would you need to do a bait-and-switch?
        hawski 8y ago
        Scale and network effects.
        vthriller 8y ago
        > for some reason we don't have an epidemic of bait-and-switch blogs I've seen a number of social network groups being sold for their audiences and then rebranded to sell questionable things. I've even seen something similar done to some YouTube channel I once subscribed to: its owner (new or not, can't really tell this time) changed its name/images/whatever, removed all the videos and started publishing things that I never wanted to be in my feed. Things will only get worse the moment YouTube allows to change videos under the same URL.
        claudiawerner 8y ago
        I'm led to believe this is also common on Reddit; someone (or a bot) will repost to karma farm, then the account with high karma is sold off. I'm not sure how much there is to gain from that since you don't see users' karma unless you specifically view their profile.
        softawre 8y ago
        Reddit "trusts" accounts with high karma in various ways.
    - SifJar 8y ago
      I don't think it is different? I think even allowing edits to the video content would open up the door to replacing a video with something unrelated but retaining the views & popularity etc.
TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
Also link rot.
Shish2k 8y ago
> That feature would be abused like hell. It would if done naievely; one seemingly-simple fix for all the problems I've seen in this thread: have multiple video versions as an explicit part of the API. You can link to a specific version, youtube can clearly show a flag saying "there's a newer version of this video available, do you want to watch that instead?", it can show comments and likes for all versions in one place (with a badge saying "this comment was made on an old version" if appropriate), etc
- codetrotter 8y ago
  Sorry but that’s just straight up stupid. Comments on YouTube are a bad experience already due to low quality, so I mostly don’t read them, but when I do read them I don’t want to additionally have to pay attention to whether we watched the same video or not. And that’s what it is — a different video. Different version, different video. If you change the video, reupload it if it’s important with a title and description that specifies what you changed. Then make the old video unlisted and point to the new version in that description plus pin a comment about it.
  - Spare_account 8y ago
    You've contributed to the discussion, but your opening gambit was inflammatory and I respectfully suggest that you tone it down in future. Just thought you should know that I was close to ignoring you outright because of your tone.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - Shish2k 8y ago
    > Different version, different video. In the context we're talking about, do you believe the comments on video A (10 minutes of maths lecture with a typo in one of the digrams) would be hugely different from the comments on video B (10 minutes of maths lecture with that typo corrected); so much so that it's worth throwing out all the early comments and starting from scratch? Or are you thinking of some other use-case? > I don’t want to additionally have to pay attention to whether we watched the same video or not. Good news for you then! Making "video version number" part of the API means that you can filter those out programatically too :)
neuronic 8y ago
What kind of argument is that when machine learning is extensively used to prosecute DMC and copyright violations? Why not detect video similarity as well and determine a cutoff under which a newly uploaded video is "too altered" and cannot be used to replace an existing video?
- jimktrains2 8y ago
  You don't need machine learning to do that. Even something like p-hash of every frame and if more than some threshold aren't the same, then it can't be replaced. I guess over the course of dozens of replacements you could replace the whole video, but you could always just store the p-hash of the whole original video, or even some sample of it, and always compare against that and not the most recent version.
  - neuronic 8y ago
    Absolutely, I was just saying that a lot of effort is already put into pattern analysis for videos so that licensing partners can be pleased. It's not like it's technically impossible. The real reason is that Google doesn't have the incentive because it simply doesn't care about its users' happiness. It merely wants to lock them in. What other service will people migrate to when they are annoyed by YouTube? Right.
kibwen 8y ago
Agreed, YouTube shouldn't allow arbitrary re-upload. If they did, then 1) upload a popular song, 2) disable comments, 3) wait for it to get millions of views and tens of thousands of likes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XycBLF6kWuY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XycBLF6kWuY), 4) re-upload the video to now be a product pitch for your startup, 5) show potential investors how many millions of people are enthusiastic for your product. And if one's reaction is, "re-uploading a video should reset all views and likes to zero", then re-uploading now has little advantage over making a new video.
xg15 8y ago
The description is not visible by default and is not shown at all in embeds.

rocqua 8y ago

View counts, and any learning 'the algorithm' has done to understand how popular the original title was, get lost.

onion90 8y ago
I think that's part of the problem. Does a new video, which may have nothing to do with the originial video, really deserve the views and popularity of the old video?
SifJar 8y ago
But if it was allowed, view counts & popularity learning could be assigned to a completely different video that is uploaded as an "edit"
- verroq 8y ago
  How is that different to just allowing editing of the video content itself?
  - gkoberger 8y ago
    They're saying you could upload a pirated episode of Game of Thrones, get 100k views, switch the content and title to "My Newest Vlog!", and keep the views.
    - yorwba 8y ago
      How is that different from uploading half a pirated episode of Game of Thrones and replacing the other half with your newest vlog? People could try it, but I think they'd notice that lots of views can be a bad thing if most viewers react negatively. If it happens anyway, view counts could be disaggregated into "total" and "since last update".
    - jstanley 8y ago
      But you can do exactly that on your own website, and for some reason we don't have an epidemic of bait-and-switch blogs. Why would it be different on YouTube?
      - thaumasiotes 8y ago
        YouTube tracks views and other popularity / credibility statistics for videos. Your personal blog doesn't -- it's even easier to just put up "My Newest Vlog!" with a little number claiming to have 100,000 views. Why would you need to do a bait-and-switch?
      - hawski 8y ago
        Scale and network effects.
      - vthriller 8y ago
        > for some reason we don't have an epidemic of bait-and-switch blogs I've seen a number of social network groups being sold for their audiences and then rebranded to sell questionable things. I've even seen something similar done to some YouTube channel I once subscribed to: its owner (new or not, can't really tell this time) changed its name/images/whatever, removed all the videos and started publishing things that I never wanted to be in my feed. Things will only get worse the moment YouTube allows to change videos under the same URL.
        claudiawerner 8y ago
        I'm led to believe this is also common on Reddit; someone (or a bot) will repost to karma farm, then the account with high karma is sold off. I'm not sure how much there is to gain from that since you don't see users' karma unless you specifically view their profile.
        softawre 8y ago
        Reddit "trusts" accounts with high karma in various ways.
  - SifJar 8y ago
    I don't think it is different? I think even allowing edits to the video content would open up the door to replacing a video with something unrelated but retaining the views & popularity etc.

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago

Also link rot.

Shish2k 8y ago

> That feature would be abused like hell. It would if done naievely; one seemingly-simple fix for all the problems I've seen in this thread: have multiple video versions as an explicit part of the API. You can link to a specific version, youtube can clearly show a flag saying "there's a newer version of this video available, do you want to watch that instead?", it can show comments and likes for all versions in one place (with a badge saying "this comment was made on an old version" if appropriate), etc

codetrotter 8y ago
Sorry but that’s just straight up stupid. Comments on YouTube are a bad experience already due to low quality, so I mostly don’t read them, but when I do read them I don’t want to additionally have to pay attention to whether we watched the same video or not. And that’s what it is — a different video. Different version, different video. If you change the video, reupload it if it’s important with a title and description that specifies what you changed. Then make the old video unlisted and point to the new version in that description plus pin a comment about it.
- Spare_account 8y ago
  You've contributed to the discussion, but your opening gambit was inflammatory and I respectfully suggest that you tone it down in future. Just thought you should know that I was close to ignoring you outright because of your tone.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- Shish2k 8y ago
  > Different version, different video. In the context we're talking about, do you believe the comments on video A (10 minutes of maths lecture with a typo in one of the digrams) would be hugely different from the comments on video B (10 minutes of maths lecture with that typo corrected); so much so that it's worth throwing out all the early comments and starting from scratch? Or are you thinking of some other use-case? > I don’t want to additionally have to pay attention to whether we watched the same video or not. Good news for you then! Making "video version number" part of the API means that you can filter those out programatically too :)

neuronic 8y ago

What kind of argument is that when machine learning is extensively used to prosecute DMC and copyright violations? Why not detect video similarity as well and determine a cutoff under which a newly uploaded video is "too altered" and cannot be used to replace an existing video?

jimktrains2 8y ago
You don't need machine learning to do that. Even something like p-hash of every frame and if more than some threshold aren't the same, then it can't be replaced. I guess over the course of dozens of replacements you could replace the whole video, but you could always just store the p-hash of the whole original video, or even some sample of it, and always compare against that and not the most recent version.
- neuronic 8y ago
  Absolutely, I was just saying that a lot of effort is already put into pattern analysis for videos so that licensing partners can be pleased. It's not like it's technically impossible. The real reason is that Google doesn't have the incentive because it simply doesn't care about its users' happiness. It merely wants to lock them in. What other service will people migrate to when they are annoyed by YouTube? Right.

kibwen 8y ago

Agreed, YouTube shouldn't allow arbitrary re-upload. If they did, then 1) upload a popular song, 2) disable comments, 3) wait for it to get millions of views and tens of thousands of likes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XycBLF6kWuY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XycBLF6kWuY), 4) re-upload the video to now be a product pitch for your startup, 5) show potential investors how many millions of people are enthusiastic for your product. And if one's reaction is, "re-uploading a video should reset all views and likes to zero", then re-uploading now has little advantage over making a new video.

xg15 8y ago

The description is not visible by default and is not shown at all in embeds.