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It's not quite that simple either, and going through the advertisers can cause other negative side effects. This just happened recently on YouTube: there was a

It's not quite that simple either, and going through the advertisers can cause other negative side effects. This just happened recently on YouTube: there was a big uproar about sexual-ish comments being posted on videos of children, such as linking to timestamps with upskirt glimpses or similar. Advertisers got contacted about it, and some of them said they would stop doing any advertising on YouTube until it was addressed somehow. In response, YouTube completely disabled all comments on videos featuring children, and deleted all existing comments. Now there are legitimate channels related to children that had completely reasonable comments (which they moderated) that no longer have any ability to have discussions on their videos. Their ability to interact with their viewers/communities was destroyed because YouTube decided to go scorched-earth to make sure they'd satisfy the advertisers.

goldcd 7y ago
Yes... ..and?? Putting myself in YouTube's shoes, I've no idea how I could easily stamp out these links/comments. What's maybe more interesting to consider is that there's been no blocks linking a URL to a particular time in a video - so it can still be done, just not from a site with a google domain in the browser-bar.
j2kun 7y ago
> YouTube completely disabled all comments on videos featuring children, and deleted all existing comments. This sounds like a good mitigation step to me, considering that we're talking about child predators. The incentives are aligned properly here.
- DuskStar 7y ago
  > The incentives are aligned properly here. You sure about that? To me it seems like YouTube's incentives are to minimize the chances of advertiser irritation, while the incentives of the children would be to maximize their engagement while minimizing (the impact of) predation. Getting rid of children's channels entirely would be an acceptable outcome for YouTube, but I doubt the children in question would agree.

goldcd 7y ago

Yes... ..and?? Putting myself in YouTube's shoes, I've no idea how I could easily stamp out these links/comments. What's maybe more interesting to consider is that there's been no blocks linking a URL to a particular time in a video - so it can still be done, just not from a site with a google domain in the browser-bar.

j2kun 7y ago

> YouTube completely disabled all comments on videos featuring children, and deleted all existing comments. This sounds like a good mitigation step to me, considering that we're talking about child predators. The incentives are aligned properly here.

DuskStar 7y ago
> The incentives are aligned properly here. You sure about that? To me it seems like YouTube's incentives are to minimize the chances of advertiser irritation, while the incentives of the children would be to maximize their engagement while minimizing (the impact of) predation. Getting rid of children's channels entirely would be an acceptable outcome for YouTube, but I doubt the children in question would agree.