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All countries already have laws regulating speech to various degrees of freedom. Google's need to comply with these laws is part of the genesis for the moderat

All countries already have laws regulating speech to various degrees of freedom. Google's need to comply with these laws is part of the genesis for the moderation (e.g. copyright protection, child pornography). In fact, aggressive government laws for censorship are why Google chooses not to operate in China. The topic at hand is about monetization of ads -- the "acceptability" of the content is determined by the ad buyers. Not some idea of social good -- it's just the market. The problem here is about execution not policy. The plaintiffs argue Google's algorithms are not working as intended, not that their intentions are misguided. Are you suggesting that Google should create additional authority to regulate itself beyond what is legally required and needed for their business? E.g. create some expert panel that can compel Google to censor certain content? That would create more problems than it would solve.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago
Google was operating in China just fine even with censorship, they left because China started hacking gmail accounts. Some countries have much more rule of law than others.
- cromwellian 7y ago
  I think that's an oversimplification of the history. After the email hacking, Google decided to stop censoring in retaliation, and redirected traffic to HK. Eventually, they were blocked, and a few years layer, practically all Google services were blocked. It's not like Gmail was "pulled" from China, the GFW blocks it. Sooner or later, even if Search was still being censored, the other services would probably be blocked, or have unacceptable conditions imposed on them. The amount of effort to make YouTube and Gmail bend to PRC desires I think would have been a bridge too far. Once Xi Jinping took office especially. I mean, I've seen super mild videos on Bilibili, where say a Mainland athlete or contestant loses to a Taiwanese one get removed. YouTube would be overloaded quite quickly by 50 cent army takedown requests.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    YouTube was already blocked when google left China (to say, it was never in China), gmail was never hosted in China and the hacking occurred on servers in Hong Kong. There is some pretty crazy stuff on Chinese video sharing platforms, censorship in China is arbitrary and selective. That alone would make it very difficult for a western company to operate a media company in china.
- bakuninsbart 7y ago
  https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery-happiest-company-tech/ https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery... The article is very long, but definetely worth a read. Section III and VII specifically detail some of the things going on with their China business. The Tldr is that a big reason for google to stop their censored search in China was due to internal resistance as well as animosity from Congress.
pdkl95 7y ago
> All countries already have laws regulating speech to various degrees of freedom. This is mostly unrelated to what I'm talking about. > The topic at hand is about monetization of ads That's one (important) aspect of "YouTube’s LGBTQ Problem", but it is not the only issue. As others have mentioned, some of Google's attempts to "fix" the problem have, for example, been used as a weapon by various hate groups to get LGBTQ channels deleted (not just demonetized), or by fascists to remove anti-fascist reporting. > the "acceptability" of the content is determined by the ad buyers A big part of the problem is that this isn't actually true in practice. The "acceptability" of content is determined by Google's algorithm. They chose to use an opaque algorithm that they hope implements a very good approximation of what ad buyers consider "acceptable". As we've seen many times over the last few years, this has resulted in problems on all sides, including ad buyers. > it's just the market "just" a market ignores that markets are created in an legal environment that can be modified (e.g. adding, modifying, or removing regulations or policies) > The problem here is about execution not policy. The problem for Google is that they are choosing to have any policy at all. They are implementing opaque policies and thus are the only party that can be responsible for the resulting mess. > The plaintiffs argue Not relevant to my point;' I'm addressing the fundamental problem with Google's management of youtube (or similar platforms), not any particular case. > Are you suggesting that Google should create additional authority to regulate itself beyond what is legally required and needed for their business? More or less, yes. If decisions about monetization, video censorship, channel deletion, etc are going to be made, they need to happen through some kind of well-defined due process (aka being "ruled by laws"). Google could define that process unilaterally - which would be a major improvement from the current opaque and arbitrary status quo - but the best option would be to start some type of open/public entity/process for creating and managing what is meant by "due process on youtube". > create some expert panel that can compel Google to censor certain content? That already exists! That panel is whatever group inside Google chose the algorithm(s) that has been demonetizing and/or censoring videos over the last few years. I'm suggesting that transparent, publicly accountable panel is better than a hidden panel of unknown Google employees. Yes, both types will have problems, but at least we can see and attempt to fix the panel when it is public.
- makomk 7y ago
  The problem is that it's basically untenable for Google not to unilaterally try and solve these social problems; activists and the press have been putting pressure on them to do so by leaning on advertisers to pull out, with enough success that the continued existence of YouTube is imperilled if they don't. The other problem is that the activists keep demanding things which will inevitably backfire. For example, lately there's been this campaign for tech companies to eradicate far-right content the same way they did ISIS[1], often accompanied by claims that they avoided this because it'd take out a bunch of right wingers who'd get pissed off. In reality, that sweep ended up banning a bunch of respected analysts who were monitoring and reporting on ISIS's activity[2], and if they did the same to the far right it would result in a lot of anti-fascist campaigners getting banned. I guess basically what I'm saying is that Google's content moderation problem is really a problem with our society, our politics, and our press. [1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/will-silicon-valley-treat-white-nationalism-as-terrorism https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/will-sili... [2] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mitchprothero/isis-researchers-have-become-the-collateral-damage-of-the https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mitchprothero/isis-rese...
jdietrich 7y ago
YouTube's changes to monetization didn't come out of nowhere - they were a response to the adpocalypse of 2017, when as much as 40% of advertisers stopped using the platform. These advertisers (perfectly reasonably) feared a backlash if their ads appeared next to the wrong sort of videos, so they just pulled their money. There was an outcry by YouTube content creators, so YouTube took sensible and proportionate steps to make the platform more attractive to advertisers without stifling free speech. Savvy YouTubers (especially those who produce content that could be perceived as controversial) have taken control of their own revenues through sponsorship and patronage. YouTube doesn't have a business model problem - YouTubers do. You can't expect a platform to sell such vast amounts of ad inventory while also judging each piece of content in a nuanced fashion. That's the devil's bargain of algorithmic advertising and it isn't going away. If you don't like that bargain, sell your own damned inventory, or cut advertisers out of the loop completely and ask your viewers to make a direct contribution.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago

Google was operating in China just fine even with censorship, they left because China started hacking gmail accounts. Some countries have much more rule of law than others.

cromwellian 7y ago
I think that's an oversimplification of the history. After the email hacking, Google decided to stop censoring in retaliation, and redirected traffic to HK. Eventually, they were blocked, and a few years layer, practically all Google services were blocked. It's not like Gmail was "pulled" from China, the GFW blocks it. Sooner or later, even if Search was still being censored, the other services would probably be blocked, or have unacceptable conditions imposed on them. The amount of effort to make YouTube and Gmail bend to PRC desires I think would have been a bridge too far. Once Xi Jinping took office especially. I mean, I've seen super mild videos on Bilibili, where say a Mainland athlete or contestant loses to a Taiwanese one get removed. YouTube would be overloaded quite quickly by 50 cent army takedown requests.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  YouTube was already blocked when google left China (to say, it was never in China), gmail was never hosted in China and the hacking occurred on servers in Hong Kong. There is some pretty crazy stuff on Chinese video sharing platforms, censorship in China is arbitrary and selective. That alone would make it very difficult for a western company to operate a media company in china.
bakuninsbart 7y ago
https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery-happiest-company-tech/ https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery... The article is very long, but definetely worth a read. Section III and VII specifically detail some of the things going on with their China business. The Tldr is that a big reason for google to stop their censored search in China was due to internal resistance as well as animosity from Congress.

pdkl95 7y ago

> All countries already have laws regulating speech to various degrees of freedom. This is mostly unrelated to what I'm talking about. > The topic at hand is about monetization of ads That's one (important) aspect of "YouTube’s LGBTQ Problem", but it is not the only issue. As others have mentioned, some of Google's attempts to "fix" the problem have, for example, been used as a weapon by various hate groups to get LGBTQ channels deleted (not just demonetized), or by fascists to remove anti-fascist reporting. > the "acceptability" of the content is determined by the ad buyers A big part of the problem is that this isn't actually true in practice. The "acceptability" of content is determined by Google's algorithm. They chose to use an opaque algorithm that they hope implements a very good approximation of what ad buyers consider "acceptable". As we've seen many times over the last few years, this has resulted in problems on all sides, including ad buyers. > it's just the market "just" a market ignores that markets are created in an legal environment that can be modified (e.g. adding, modifying, or removing regulations or policies) > The problem here is about execution not policy. The problem for Google is that they are choosing to have any policy at all. They are implementing opaque policies and thus are the only party that can be responsible for the resulting mess. > The plaintiffs argue Not relevant to my point;' I'm addressing the fundamental problem with Google's management of youtube (or similar platforms), not any particular case. > Are you suggesting that Google should create additional authority to regulate itself beyond what is legally required and needed for their business? More or less, yes. If decisions about monetization, video censorship, channel deletion, etc are going to be made, they need to happen through some kind of well-defined due process (aka being "ruled by laws"). Google could define that process unilaterally - which would be a major improvement from the current opaque and arbitrary status quo - but the best option would be to start some type of open/public entity/process for creating and managing what is meant by "due process on youtube". > create some expert panel that can compel Google to censor certain content? That already exists! That panel is whatever group inside Google chose the algorithm(s) that has been demonetizing and/or censoring videos over the last few years. I'm suggesting that transparent, publicly accountable panel is better than a hidden panel of unknown Google employees. Yes, both types will have problems, but at least we can see and attempt to fix the panel when it is public.

makomk 7y ago
The problem is that it's basically untenable for Google not to unilaterally try and solve these social problems; activists and the press have been putting pressure on them to do so by leaning on advertisers to pull out, with enough success that the continued existence of YouTube is imperilled if they don't. The other problem is that the activists keep demanding things which will inevitably backfire. For example, lately there's been this campaign for tech companies to eradicate far-right content the same way they did ISIS[1], often accompanied by claims that they avoided this because it'd take out a bunch of right wingers who'd get pissed off. In reality, that sweep ended up banning a bunch of respected analysts who were monitoring and reporting on ISIS's activity[2], and if they did the same to the far right it would result in a lot of anti-fascist campaigners getting banned. I guess basically what I'm saying is that Google's content moderation problem is really a problem with our society, our politics, and our press. [1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/will-silicon-valley-treat-white-nationalism-as-terrorism https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/will-sili... [2] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mitchprothero/isis-researchers-have-become-the-collateral-damage-of-the https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mitchprothero/isis-rese...

jdietrich 7y ago

YouTube's changes to monetization didn't come out of nowhere - they were a response to the adpocalypse of 2017, when as much as 40% of advertisers stopped using the platform. These advertisers (perfectly reasonably) feared a backlash if their ads appeared next to the wrong sort of videos, so they just pulled their money. There was an outcry by YouTube content creators, so YouTube took sensible and proportionate steps to make the platform more attractive to advertisers without stifling free speech. Savvy YouTubers (especially those who produce content that could be perceived as controversial) have taken control of their own revenues through sponsorship and patronage. YouTube doesn't have a business model problem - YouTubers do. You can't expect a platform to sell such vast amounts of ad inventory while also judging each piece of content in a nuanced fashion. That's the devil's bargain of algorithmic advertising and it isn't going away. If you don't like that bargain, sell your own damned inventory, or cut advertisers out of the loop completely and ask your viewers to make a direct contribution.