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Why do we have push-button screw-people-over systems at all? If the problem is that there are “too many” things for companies to review manually, too bad! If

Why do we have push-button screw-people-over systems at all? If the problem is that there are “too many” things for companies to review manually, too bad! If a company is perfectly fine raking in money from massive sales at a global scale, they should be willing to spend a proportional amount of money to do business at that scale. Let them hire their own people to review content in depth. Let them hire their own goons to send legal notices. (We certainly need more jobs for people.)

ErikAugust 7y ago
Google borders on insane with lacking any sort of manual support. For example, when you are a paid G Suite customer - you'll need to dig hard to find their support number. Then you'll need to click several buttons making it clear you still need support. You also need to then generate a PIN used to access the phone support.
- GordonS 7y ago
  Similar story with Adwords - if you want support with that, you ain't gonna get it. It's a maze of FAQs and automated email responses with useless information. If you manage to figure out the incantation to email an actual person, they're some kind of 1st-level support whose purpose in life is to piss you off so much with useless pre-canned responses that you finally give up. Truely, incredible that they get away with it. Also incredible that they're OK with this given how much profit they make from ads. By comparison, I've had excellent support from Bing Ads in the past - unfortunately they represent a much smaller number of impressions than Adwords.
  - DougN7 7y ago
    Google is OK with it because they do it to small spenders. They have human account managers and a very visible phone number if you spend enough. Not saying I agree with it, but it makes sense.
    - michaelmrose 7y ago
      Someone literally stealing from creators needs to start generating expensive lawsuits for some percentage of cases not managed appropriately. This will inspire more concern on their part.
      - icebraining 7y ago
        Except legally, Youtube has no obligation to host these videos, and can take them down on a whim. So a lawsuit has no leg to stand on. While, on the other hand, they do have an obligation to take copyright infringement complaints very seriously - in fact, ContentID came from one of those "expensive lawsuits". You need to change the law first.
        kaoD 7y ago
        > legally, Youtube has no obligation to host these videos, and can take them down on a whim Well, maybe law has to change. For example, in my country if you offer a service to the public you cannot refuse a customer for no reason. It's intended as an anti-discrimination law, but also as a way to protect customers from abuse.
        TomMarius 7y ago
        I think you don't understand what the anti-discrimination law means. That law lists reasons which you can't use to refuse service - and you're free to use any other reason to refuse service. This anti-discrimination law most probably does not force all businesses to provide services to everyone but only businesses with physical public presence.
        poizan42 7y ago
        How do you know how the law works in parent's country?
        TomMarius 7y ago
- judge2020 7y ago
  In my experience it's not hard, maybe this is because i'm on a >50 user GSuite Business plan, but it goes like so: 1. admin console, click the question mark in the top right 2. "contact support" button is right on the front page 3. Choose live chat, phone, or email 4. enter your question 5. click "continue to phone" (can't blame them for trying to show relevant helpdesk articles first) 6. call the number and enter the pin This is better than some customer support solutions, Many will bounce you back to the helpdesk homepage every chance they get, and the only way to actually get support is to email support@ or go to a special page (Tip: /hc/en-us/requests/new will work with most zendesk instances).
- blunte 7y ago
  I have used g suite live support chat many times with quite pleasant results and typically very competent and friendly agents. Now, free google services and YouTube services are obviously broken by design (no human support).
nearmuse 7y ago
This is a less technical solution, and less profitable as consequence. It is also subtracting from software's image as magic, which again amongst other things makes it less profitable.
jaredklewis 7y ago
> Why do we have push-button screw-people-over systems at all? Because that's the way our shitty representatives in congress wrote the legislation? Google could face real legal consequences for not responding to a DMCA request. They can't face any legal consequences for complying with a false one (DMCA, or their internal contentId system). And companies with the DMCA/ContentId bots sending in these bogus notices know that they too are safe. Because a victim would have to jump over the insanely high hurdle of proving the company knowingly misrepresented their ownership of the work. The company can easily claim that is was not intentional, but rather a mistake caused by a bug in their software. If congress cared about this, they could fix it in a minute: false DMCA takedown request = fine, regardless of knowledge or intent.
- developer2 7y ago
  This is the whole problem. Sick and tired of people complaining about YouTube/Google. For them to "fix the problem" just for their own platform would cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year in man hours to process every single last takedown request manually with no automation. Each takedown request would take many hours of intervention to resolve properly. Who is going to pay Google's legal department $100+/hour to defend their content, when it will take 50-500+ hours to defend a single request? Maybe the 0.01% of content creators, that's who. And those issuing the takedowns are not stupid enough to go after the 0.01%. The laws are broken. It doesn't matter how "big" Google is. They cannot afford to protect the small guy. It's a choice between "hurt the small guy" vs. "go bankrupt". Fix the laws. Don't blame Google.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
    Would it be reasonable for average person to suspect Big Co. with huge Vested Interestᵀᴹ had / has the lions share of lobbying power in this scenario? I don't know whether this is true in fact, in this specific case, but as a fairly average sort of person I suspect it might be. Therefore, it may be reasonable to blame Big Co., but you're probably right in that it won't do much good at this point.
  - inetknght 7y ago
kalleboo 7y ago
Because that's the compromise Google chose with the publishers to avoid getting sued to death over the massive and blatant copyright infringement of full TV shows and movies going on YouTube at the time

ErikAugust 7y ago

Google borders on insane with lacking any sort of manual support. For example, when you are a paid G Suite customer - you'll need to dig hard to find their support number. Then you'll need to click several buttons making it clear you still need support. You also need to then generate a PIN used to access the phone support.

GordonS 7y ago
Similar story with Adwords - if you want support with that, you ain't gonna get it. It's a maze of FAQs and automated email responses with useless information. If you manage to figure out the incantation to email an actual person, they're some kind of 1st-level support whose purpose in life is to piss you off so much with useless pre-canned responses that you finally give up. Truely, incredible that they get away with it. Also incredible that they're OK with this given how much profit they make from ads. By comparison, I've had excellent support from Bing Ads in the past - unfortunately they represent a much smaller number of impressions than Adwords.
- DougN7 7y ago
  Google is OK with it because they do it to small spenders. They have human account managers and a very visible phone number if you spend enough. Not saying I agree with it, but it makes sense.
  - michaelmrose 7y ago
    Someone literally stealing from creators needs to start generating expensive lawsuits for some percentage of cases not managed appropriately. This will inspire more concern on their part.
    - icebraining 7y ago
      Except legally, Youtube has no obligation to host these videos, and can take them down on a whim. So a lawsuit has no leg to stand on. While, on the other hand, they do have an obligation to take copyright infringement complaints very seriously - in fact, ContentID came from one of those "expensive lawsuits". You need to change the law first.
      - kaoD 7y ago
        > legally, Youtube has no obligation to host these videos, and can take them down on a whim Well, maybe law has to change. For example, in my country if you offer a service to the public you cannot refuse a customer for no reason. It's intended as an anti-discrimination law, but also as a way to protect customers from abuse.
        TomMarius 7y ago
        I think you don't understand what the anti-discrimination law means. That law lists reasons which you can't use to refuse service - and you're free to use any other reason to refuse service. This anti-discrimination law most probably does not force all businesses to provide services to everyone but only businesses with physical public presence.
        poizan42 7y ago
        How do you know how the law works in parent's country?
        TomMarius 7y ago
judge2020 7y ago
In my experience it's not hard, maybe this is because i'm on a >50 user GSuite Business plan, but it goes like so: 1. admin console, click the question mark in the top right 2. "contact support" button is right on the front page 3. Choose live chat, phone, or email 4. enter your question 5. click "continue to phone" (can't blame them for trying to show relevant helpdesk articles first) 6. call the number and enter the pin This is better than some customer support solutions, Many will bounce you back to the helpdesk homepage every chance they get, and the only way to actually get support is to email support@ or go to a special page (Tip: /hc/en-us/requests/new will work with most zendesk instances).
blunte 7y ago
I have used g suite live support chat many times with quite pleasant results and typically very competent and friendly agents. Now, free google services and YouTube services are obviously broken by design (no human support).

nearmuse 7y ago

This is a less technical solution, and less profitable as consequence. It is also subtracting from software's image as magic, which again amongst other things makes it less profitable.

jaredklewis 7y ago

> Why do we have push-button screw-people-over systems at all? Because that's the way our shitty representatives in congress wrote the legislation? Google could face real legal consequences for not responding to a DMCA request. They can't face any legal consequences for complying with a false one (DMCA, or their internal contentId system). And companies with the DMCA/ContentId bots sending in these bogus notices know that they too are safe. Because a victim would have to jump over the insanely high hurdle of proving the company knowingly misrepresented their ownership of the work. The company can easily claim that is was not intentional, but rather a mistake caused by a bug in their software. If congress cared about this, they could fix it in a minute: false DMCA takedown request = fine, regardless of knowledge or intent.

developer2 7y ago
This is the whole problem. Sick and tired of people complaining about YouTube/Google. For them to "fix the problem" just for their own platform would cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year in man hours to process every single last takedown request manually with no automation. Each takedown request would take many hours of intervention to resolve properly. Who is going to pay Google's legal department $100+/hour to defend their content, when it will take 50-500+ hours to defend a single request? Maybe the 0.01% of content creators, that's who. And those issuing the takedowns are not stupid enough to go after the 0.01%. The laws are broken. It doesn't matter how "big" Google is. They cannot afford to protect the small guy. It's a choice between "hurt the small guy" vs. "go bankrupt". Fix the laws. Don't blame Google.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  Would it be reasonable for average person to suspect Big Co. with huge Vested Interestᵀᴹ had / has the lions share of lobbying power in this scenario? I don't know whether this is true in fact, in this specific case, but as a fairly average sort of person I suspect it might be. Therefore, it may be reasonable to blame Big Co., but you're probably right in that it won't do much good at this point.
- inetknght 7y ago

kalleboo 7y ago

Because that's the compromise Google chose with the publishers to avoid getting sued to death over the massive and blatant copyright infringement of full TV shows and movies going on YouTube at the time