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What a ham fisted reaction to the controversy. Now all content creators have to ensure that no kids are ever in their videos, which includes background footage

by Sargos 8y ago

What a ham fisted reaction to the controversy. Now all content creators have to ensure that no kids are ever in their videos, which includes background footage and movie clips. I think this is a major problem with our current centralized model of the internet where giant corporations make all the rules. Large corporations have no ability to rationally judge situations or inject nuance into discussions. They simply take the easiest and most expedient pathway to make the problem go away regardless of the long term consequences. This is not behavior we want from the few major building blocks of our modern life.

JustSomeNobody 8y ago
> This is not behavior we want from the few major building blocks of our modern life. It's YouTube. It isn't that important. Also, it is their product, so, yeah, they get to make all the rules.
- tfha 8y ago
  YouTube is incredibly important to the median young person in modern society. It's where probably a quarter of all my own personal STEM knowledge comes from. In high school it might have as much as half. Like it or not, products like YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat have become keystones in the lives of the younger generations.
  - agent008t 8y ago
    MySpace and Geocities were also incredibly important at the time. So what? There is nothing inherently special about Youtube.
  - westmeal 8y ago
    Better use youtube-dl now before it gets worse ;)
l33tbro 8y ago
I've never understood this entitled attitude and how content creators feel so compelled to tell Alphabet what to do. Friendly reminder: Alphabet is letting you broadcast unlimited, 4k video, for free, from anywhere in the world, to anywhere in the world. Hell, they'll even let you live-stream now for free. That's fucking insane. Now do they make ad revenue off of it? Sure. But it's negligible in comparison to the value they offer their creators, and they even share part of it with users that play by a set of rules. I do agree with your points about the centralized model of the internet where giant corporations make the rules. It sucks. Then again, I just don't see how you get 24/7, 4k streaming without it being monetised by a centralized corp. TLDR: Alphabet owes you nothing.
- gambler 8y ago
  There are tons of websites that allow you to stream and upload high-quality videos. In 2019 that's nothing special. The only thing YouTube has and none of the others do is a giant audience... which is built thanks to videos uploaded by content creators, mostly for free. Without content YouTube is nothing.
- proc0 8y ago
  Your last point is valid, not sure how that service can be truly open. However, they do have a responsibility in the same way a city has responsibilities around keeping crime low, streets clean, etc., so it's business friendly and local business can grow. What they just did is like police finding out about pedophiles and then proceeding to shut down all parks and playgrounds, along with a curfew for everyone to be home by 8pm. It's not a just a service provided by benevolent alphabet dictator. Youtubers and Youtube are in a mutual relationship (easy to argue Youtube depends on Youtubers as well), and it's currently very lopsided.
  - l33tbro 8y ago
    > It's not a just a service provided by benevolent alphabet dictator. Except it kind of is. As I mentioned elsewhere, Youtube has never reported a profit. That doesn’t mean there is not tremendous value they’ll get from it at some point, but for now it’s huge amount of effort for marginal reward.
eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
Agreed about the problem of centralization on the internet, but this problem is what happens. Ignored problems are amplified, but this is Google’s responsibility to police and fix.
- Dahoon 8y ago
  What are the parents role?
wizzard 8y ago
Ham-fisted is right. This is going to kill family vloggers, or even just vloggers who happen to have a family in the background. YouTube is a lot less engaging when you don’t feel like you can interact with the creators or other viewers. I know everyone trots our the “YouTube comments are a toxic cesspool and provide no value” trope, but almost every video I watch on YT 1) has a kid in it somewhere, 2) has worthwhile and positive comments. It’s like the joke about nuking your house from orbit because you saw a spider. Personally I’m far more concerned about the creepy videos aimed at kids than I am about pedos leaving hobo signs in the comments. As another commenter said, they’ll just move to a separate site to link to videos. You can’t stop them from watching videos and sharing them with other people unless you shut the site down completely.
- ehsankia 8y ago
  Do we know if that's the final solution? To me it seems more like a short term plug solution until they can train specialized models and adapt their moderation. I see no signs that this is the final long term solution to the problem.
  - rococode 8y ago
    You're right, they've said as much: > Hi there--this was a temporary action to protect the safety of minors while we work to improve our tools that detect & remove predatory comments. https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1100488813854351360 https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1100488813854351360 I'm sure they're just as aware as we are that disabling comments kills the community and engagement around many channels; they just needed a way to stave off the controversy for a little while. It's a blunt solution but as a temporary solution it seems fine as long as they can roll out a better solution before content creators are irrevocably hurt.
superkuh 8y ago
Yup. Not only do corporations have no way to rationally judge these things they have innumberable perverse incentives to not even try to judge and just ban everything. Whatever hurts their bottom line will soon be censored as well as anything that even remotely looks like it. Initially no one will leave because alternative don't allow you to rake in money or have the network effect like youtube does. But as the noose tightens and the money dries up people will act on their greed and move away to some new centralized service. Then it'll happen again in a handful years time. The only way to cut this gordian knot and break the cycle is to use federated services, p2p, or self-host.
Mirioron 8y ago
I disagree that this is a problem with giant corporations. I think the problem lies in the public that demands blood on everything. There is no solution to the problem that youtube is being asked to solve other than simply banning all videos with kids in them.
- Waterluvian 8y ago
  Agreed. This absurd to me. I moderate my children's use of the internet and we don't have problems. All I want are more and more fine grained parental controls. I'd love to be able to disable specific features per channel.
- pcurve 8y ago
  "public that demands blood on everything" public = Small, vocal minority.
  - judge2020 8y ago
    Not even the public, it's the small group of news outlets which are trying to discredit youtube as a source of news and entertainment. Youtube is a direct competitor to cable news and the networks that host them, so being able to say, "Look! There's bad stuff that they didn't know about!" is a great way to push that narrative and reclaim some advertising dollars. This isn't even in retaliation to the Verge and the other news articles that originally covered the story, it's due to the advertisers that pulled out of Youtube. There's very little chance the advertisers decided to pull ads because they have the 'moral high ground' - big corps like ATT and Disney are simply doing this so that, after the issue has passed, they can negotiate lower ad rates with Youtube. If there were no ads whatsoever for "Avengers: End Game" on youtube, the movie would still be popular, but it wouldn't nearly generate the same amount of buzz or 'hype' as the first one did.
    - CM30 8y ago
      This sort of stuff and the fake news hysteria in general seem like an attempt to discredit all alternative media sources, and the internet/blogging/free speech in general. For them, competing with thousands of people writing/making videos for free means their business model doesn't work any more. Fact is, they won't stop with these articles and attack pieces and hysteria till the internet is basically like cable TV.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

by Sargos 8y ago

JustSomeNobody 8y ago

> This is not behavior we want from the few major building blocks of our modern life. It's YouTube. It isn't that important. Also, it is their product, so, yeah, they get to make all the rules.

tfha 8y ago
YouTube is incredibly important to the median young person in modern society. It's where probably a quarter of all my own personal STEM knowledge comes from. In high school it might have as much as half. Like it or not, products like YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat have become keystones in the lives of the younger generations.
- agent008t 8y ago
  MySpace and Geocities were also incredibly important at the time. So what? There is nothing inherently special about Youtube.
- westmeal 8y ago
  Better use youtube-dl now before it gets worse ;)

l33tbro 8y ago

I've never understood this entitled attitude and how content creators feel so compelled to tell Alphabet what to do. Friendly reminder: Alphabet is letting you broadcast unlimited, 4k video, for free, from anywhere in the world, to anywhere in the world. Hell, they'll even let you live-stream now for free. That's fucking insane. Now do they make ad revenue off of it? Sure. But it's negligible in comparison to the value they offer their creators, and they even share part of it with users that play by a set of rules. I do agree with your points about the centralized model of the internet where giant corporations make the rules. It sucks. Then again, I just don't see how you get 24/7, 4k streaming without it being monetised by a centralized corp. TLDR: Alphabet owes you nothing.

gambler 8y ago
There are tons of websites that allow you to stream and upload high-quality videos. In 2019 that's nothing special. The only thing YouTube has and none of the others do is a giant audience... which is built thanks to videos uploaded by content creators, mostly for free. Without content YouTube is nothing.
proc0 8y ago
Your last point is valid, not sure how that service can be truly open. However, they do have a responsibility in the same way a city has responsibilities around keeping crime low, streets clean, etc., so it's business friendly and local business can grow. What they just did is like police finding out about pedophiles and then proceeding to shut down all parks and playgrounds, along with a curfew for everyone to be home by 8pm. It's not a just a service provided by benevolent alphabet dictator. Youtubers and Youtube are in a mutual relationship (easy to argue Youtube depends on Youtubers as well), and it's currently very lopsided.
- l33tbro 8y ago
  > It's not a just a service provided by benevolent alphabet dictator. Except it kind of is. As I mentioned elsewhere, Youtube has never reported a profit. That doesn’t mean there is not tremendous value they’ll get from it at some point, but for now it’s huge amount of effort for marginal reward.

eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y ago

Agreed about the problem of centralization on the internet, but this problem is what happens. Ignored problems are amplified, but this is Google’s responsibility to police and fix.

Dahoon 8y ago
What are the parents role?

wizzard 8y ago

Ham-fisted is right. This is going to kill family vloggers, or even just vloggers who happen to have a family in the background. YouTube is a lot less engaging when you don’t feel like you can interact with the creators or other viewers. I know everyone trots our the “YouTube comments are a toxic cesspool and provide no value” trope, but almost every video I watch on YT 1) has a kid in it somewhere, 2) has worthwhile and positive comments. It’s like the joke about nuking your house from orbit because you saw a spider. Personally I’m far more concerned about the creepy videos aimed at kids than I am about pedos leaving hobo signs in the comments. As another commenter said, they’ll just move to a separate site to link to videos. You can’t stop them from watching videos and sharing them with other people unless you shut the site down completely.

ehsankia 8y ago
Do we know if that's the final solution? To me it seems more like a short term plug solution until they can train specialized models and adapt their moderation. I see no signs that this is the final long term solution to the problem.
- rococode 8y ago
  You're right, they've said as much: > Hi there--this was a temporary action to protect the safety of minors while we work to improve our tools that detect & remove predatory comments. https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1100488813854351360 https://twitter.com/TeamYouTube/status/1100488813854351360 I'm sure they're just as aware as we are that disabling comments kills the community and engagement around many channels; they just needed a way to stave off the controversy for a little while. It's a blunt solution but as a temporary solution it seems fine as long as they can roll out a better solution before content creators are irrevocably hurt.

superkuh 8y ago

Yup. Not only do corporations have no way to rationally judge these things they have innumberable perverse incentives to not even try to judge and just ban everything. Whatever hurts their bottom line will soon be censored as well as anything that even remotely looks like it. Initially no one will leave because alternative don't allow you to rake in money or have the network effect like youtube does. But as the noose tightens and the money dries up people will act on their greed and move away to some new centralized service. Then it'll happen again in a handful years time. The only way to cut this gordian knot and break the cycle is to use federated services, p2p, or self-host.

Mirioron 8y ago

I disagree that this is a problem with giant corporations. I think the problem lies in the public that demands blood on everything. There is no solution to the problem that youtube is being asked to solve other than simply banning all videos with kids in them.

Waterluvian 8y ago
Agreed. This absurd to me. I moderate my children's use of the internet and we don't have problems. All I want are more and more fine grained parental controls. I'd love to be able to disable specific features per channel.
pcurve 8y ago
"public that demands blood on everything" public = Small, vocal minority.
- judge2020 8y ago
  Not even the public, it's the small group of news outlets which are trying to discredit youtube as a source of news and entertainment. Youtube is a direct competitor to cable news and the networks that host them, so being able to say, "Look! There's bad stuff that they didn't know about!" is a great way to push that narrative and reclaim some advertising dollars. This isn't even in retaliation to the Verge and the other news articles that originally covered the story, it's due to the advertisers that pulled out of Youtube. There's very little chance the advertisers decided to pull ads because they have the 'moral high ground' - big corps like ATT and Disney are simply doing this so that, after the issue has passed, they can negotiate lower ad rates with Youtube. If there were no ads whatsoever for "Avengers: End Game" on youtube, the movie would still be popular, but it wouldn't nearly generate the same amount of buzz or 'hype' as the first one did.
  - CM30 8y ago
    This sort of stuff and the fake news hysteria in general seem like an attempt to discredit all alternative media sources, and the internet/blogging/free speech in general. For them, competing with thousands of people writing/making videos for free means their business model doesn't work any more. Fact is, they won't stop with these articles and attack pieces and hysteria till the internet is basically like cable TV.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]