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There’s an interesting meta-phenomenon here. I call it automation handcuffs. A platform grows massively due to radically eliminating the policy and bureaucracy

by aabhay 7y ago

There’s an interesting meta-phenomenon here. I call it automation handcuffs. A platform grows massively due to radically eliminating the policy and bureaucracy infrastructure that others have (YouTube vs typical content distro channels). That same platform is now so big that it has to add back in that bureaucracy and policy that it lacked. However, it’s now so big that it must use automation to solve these problems or else go bankrupt hiring people. In the end, society gets a half-measure. The platform is too big to legalize. The existing players are too small to compete. Users are forced to accept substandard experiences.

jay_kyburz 7y ago
If government wasn't broken, users would have have the power to say we don't want these substandard things in our society.
- xyzzyz 7y ago
  Users are very happy with YouTube experience, and are unlikely to support new regulations which would degrade it: in fact, they'd rather support opposite. It's the small content creators that aren't happy with YouTube quasi-copyright private regulatory regime, but they don't have political power to do actually do anything about.
  - nerdponx 7y ago
    What regulation do you have in mind that would degrade the Youtube user experience?
    - xyzzyz 7y ago
      Anything that would require significantly increasing human review would result in significant reduction of the amount of content on the platform, for example.
      - nerdponx 7y ago
        Is that true? Imagine if DMCA appeals required a human review on channels above a certain size, for example.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
_bxg1 7y ago
> it’s now so big that it must use automation to solve these problems or else go bankrupt hiring people This is what Google and Facebook would like us to believe, but I'm not convinced. What it really comes down to is that they'd very much like to stay in the realm of automation, especially Google who are notorious for keeping humans out of the loop at any cost. See the long history of problems with their automated "developer relations" on Android. And the problem is that the disincentives for continuing to fail at these halfway-automated tasks are simply not strong enough to force their hand. So they can just keep "doing their best" with automation, even though automation itself is far from the best they could do.
- LeifCarrotson 7y ago
  Here, let me reword it: > it’s now so big that it must use automation to solve these problems or else swim in slightly shallower pools full of money hiring people
- minhazm 7y ago
  How else can they actually operate the platform without automation? Android app store submissions weren't even within several orders of magnitude to the scale of YouTube & Facebook videos. I think something like 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute to YouTube. How do you propose people review that in real time? Just to keep up in real time you need (300*60) 18000 people watching the videos and not falling behind, which means you likely need at least 5x that number.
  - ksml 7y ago
    I don't think they need to screen all content in real time, but they certainly could use more people in reviewing flagged content and resolving disputes. This seems to be where all the major complaints -- it's just so hard to get a sane resolution when you are a corner case and the algorithm has decided against you.
  - _bxg1 7y ago
    I didn't say without any automation. I'm saying that when these unreasonable cases come up, and people appeal, there often isn't even a human brought in at that stage (or at least, not one who's given enough bandwidth to legitimately investigate the situation). Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19124324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19124324 Cases like this, and the OP, are common-sense to any human being. Google doesn't especially want them to be resolved in this nonsensical way, they just don't care enough to direct the necessary resources to make sure a human touch is applied to them.
nerdponx 7y ago
go bankrupt How many people would they really have to hire? YouTube alone made $5 billion in 3 months' ad revenue: https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-alphabet-earnings-revenue-first-time-reveal-q4-2019 https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-al...
- themacguffinman 7y ago
  Revenue isn't profit, they don't have $5B to spend on human reviewers.
- bzbarsky 7y ago
  To answer that first question: In August 2019, there were 500 hours of video uploaded to Youtube every minute according to <https://www.businessofapps.com/data/youtube-statistics/> https://www.businessofapps.com/data/youtube-statistics/>. It's probably more now (e.g. it was 300 hours in 2017), but let's go with that number. That's 720,000 hours per day. If you figure people work 8-hour days, that's 90,000 people. Assuming they never take vacations, don't get weekends off, and really do work 8-hour shifts with no breaks. None of which seems remotely plausible. If we assume 5-day workweeks, 6 hours of actual "productive" time per day, and 2 weeks annual vacation, closer to 175,000 people. YouTube revenue in the corresponding timeframe is somewhere between $9.5 billion and $14 billion. How much of that is profit and how much is already being spent on infrastructure costs and whatnot is unclear. But 175k people at $50k/year, say, is $8.75 billion/year. Which is getting pretty darn close to those total revenue numbers. Note that that's $50k expense to the employer (i.e. including benefits, employer-side taxes, office space, etc, etc, not just salaries), which is likely to be an underestimate if these people are in the US. There's the question of whether every minute of video needs to be watched by humans, of course. But at that point we're back into automation-land to some extent.
  - nerdponx 7y ago
    question of whether every minute of video needs to be watched by humans Not even close. We're talking a small % of videos that receive copyright takedown requests, which is already a small % of all videos uploaded.

by aabhay 7y ago

jay_kyburz 7y ago

If government wasn't broken, users would have have the power to say we don't want these substandard things in our society.

xyzzyz 7y ago
Users are very happy with YouTube experience, and are unlikely to support new regulations which would degrade it: in fact, they'd rather support opposite. It's the small content creators that aren't happy with YouTube quasi-copyright private regulatory regime, but they don't have political power to do actually do anything about.
- nerdponx 7y ago
  What regulation do you have in mind that would degrade the Youtube user experience?
  - xyzzyz 7y ago
    Anything that would require significantly increasing human review would result in significant reduction of the amount of content on the platform, for example.
    - nerdponx 7y ago
      Is that true? Imagine if DMCA appeals required a human review on channels above a certain size, for example.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

_bxg1 7y ago

> it’s now so big that it must use automation to solve these problems or else go bankrupt hiring people This is what Google and Facebook would like us to believe, but I'm not convinced. What it really comes down to is that they'd very much like to stay in the realm of automation, especially Google who are notorious for keeping humans out of the loop at any cost. See the long history of problems with their automated "developer relations" on Android. And the problem is that the disincentives for continuing to fail at these halfway-automated tasks are simply not strong enough to force their hand. So they can just keep "doing their best" with automation, even though automation itself is far from the best they could do.

LeifCarrotson 7y ago
Here, let me reword it: > it’s now so big that it must use automation to solve these problems or else swim in slightly shallower pools full of money hiring people
minhazm 7y ago
How else can they actually operate the platform without automation? Android app store submissions weren't even within several orders of magnitude to the scale of YouTube & Facebook videos. I think something like 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute to YouTube. How do you propose people review that in real time? Just to keep up in real time you need (300*60) 18000 people watching the videos and not falling behind, which means you likely need at least 5x that number.
- ksml 7y ago
  I don't think they need to screen all content in real time, but they certainly could use more people in reviewing flagged content and resolving disputes. This seems to be where all the major complaints -- it's just so hard to get a sane resolution when you are a corner case and the algorithm has decided against you.
- _bxg1 7y ago
  I didn't say without any automation. I'm saying that when these unreasonable cases come up, and people appeal, there often isn't even a human brought in at that stage (or at least, not one who's given enough bandwidth to legitimately investigate the situation). Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19124324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19124324 Cases like this, and the OP, are common-sense to any human being. Google doesn't especially want them to be resolved in this nonsensical way, they just don't care enough to direct the necessary resources to make sure a human touch is applied to them.

nerdponx 7y ago

go bankrupt How many people would they really have to hire? YouTube alone made $5 billion in 3 months' ad revenue: https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-alphabet-earnings-revenue-first-time-reveal-q4-2019 https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-al...

themacguffinman 7y ago
Revenue isn't profit, they don't have $5B to spend on human reviewers.
bzbarsky 7y ago
To answer that first question: In August 2019, there were 500 hours of video uploaded to Youtube every minute according to <https://www.businessofapps.com/data/youtube-statistics/> https://www.businessofapps.com/data/youtube-statistics/>. It's probably more now (e.g. it was 300 hours in 2017), but let's go with that number. That's 720,000 hours per day. If you figure people work 8-hour days, that's 90,000 people. Assuming they never take vacations, don't get weekends off, and really do work 8-hour shifts with no breaks. None of which seems remotely plausible. If we assume 5-day workweeks, 6 hours of actual "productive" time per day, and 2 weeks annual vacation, closer to 175,000 people. YouTube revenue in the corresponding timeframe is somewhere between $9.5 billion and $14 billion. How much of that is profit and how much is already being spent on infrastructure costs and whatnot is unclear. But 175k people at $50k/year, say, is $8.75 billion/year. Which is getting pretty darn close to those total revenue numbers. Note that that's $50k expense to the employer (i.e. including benefits, employer-side taxes, office space, etc, etc, not just salaries), which is likely to be an underestimate if these people are in the US. There's the question of whether every minute of video needs to be watched by humans, of course. But at that point we're back into automation-land to some extent.
- nerdponx 7y ago
  question of whether every minute of video needs to be watched by humans Not even close. We're talking a small % of videos that receive copyright takedown requests, which is already a small % of all videos uploaded.