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This might not be a popular opinion, but I feel like YouTube is doing their best with a really hard problem. I see a lot of people complaining about things lik

This might not be a popular opinion, but I feel like YouTube is doing their best with a really hard problem. I see a lot of people complaining about things like this, but I also see a lot of people complaining that YouTube/Twitter/etc aren't doing enough to take down false/immoral/illegal content quick enough. [1] It really sucks when a legitimate video is taken down by mistake. But it also really sucks when revenge porn is left up. YouTube is doing it's best to blend automation (fast but inaccurate) with human curation (more thoughtful but slower), and sometimes it gets it wrong. I feel like most of the time I see posts like this, the situation is resolved favorably and relatively quickly. YouTube is dealing with two opposing issues, and is constantly doing its best to find a fair middle ground. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23316660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23316660

bsder 6y ago
> This might not be a popular opinion, but I feel like YouTube is doing their best with a really hard problem. Of their own making. It's solvable. You throw humans at it. If Google can't deal with this then they shouldn't be allowed to collect money by running ads. Problem solved. And other sites will spring up that might actually be willing to deal with the problem correctly because now YouTube isn't a monopoly anymore. Google (and others) are going to continue to be shit until we hit them with anti-trust actions and big fines. Until then, this is all just a cost of doing business and they will laugh all the way to the bank.
- elicash 6y ago
  I favor splitting up tech companies (see my comment above). The one counter-argument I do find interesting, however, is that YouTube BECAUSE of their monopoly status is able to throw far more resources into this than others sites do. We don't notice it on those other sites because (a) far fewer people are making a living there, and (b) they aren't targeted the way YouTube is targeted. But that nevertheless, that monopoly is the only reason they are able to do as good a job as they do. And even if there was tons of competition and you lowered the stakes of getting booted, starting at zero followers on another site isn't exactly lowering the stakes to a point where it doesn't matter that you got the boot. I still say split up tech companies. That said, so many industries have monopoly issues and rather than getting 90% of the attention tech companies should probably get more like 10%.
- rrmm 6y ago
  The main innovation google has seemed to make is to create products that scale with nearly zero customer service overhead. They have half-assed algorithms that mostly do something approximating a thing that might sorta be kind of near almost the right thing. With no recourse. Their success is that they've gotten people to swallow this state of affairs because they're almost the only game in town.
macspoofing 6y ago
>This might not be a popular opinion, but I feel like YouTube is doing their best with a really hard problem. 100% agree. Also true of Paypal, another common 'whipping boy' because enforcing various regulations around moving money while still providing good customer service is HARD.
elicash 6y ago
I agree with this, except that the reason they receive so much criticism is because of their monopoly status. If you're trying to make money from digital video, getting banned or even demonetized from YouTube is a death sentence on your vlogger career. So sure, I don't blame YouTube. They're likely good folks doing their best to solve hard problems. At the same time, that this is such an impossible problem to deal with is probably a good reason to make sure Google doesn't have too much monopoly power over advertising (in this case video ads). In short, the stakes are too high! They'd be lessened with more alternatives.
- unreal37 6y ago
  I think you're giving them too much credit for "monopoly status". I know a LOT of creators who make a lot of money with digital video (including myself) who don't have much to do with YouTube. I know YouTube is called the "second most popular search engine", but it's not a monopoly when it comes to digital video.
kemonocode 6y ago
It's only ever resolved favorably if you have enough clout. I understand there simply not being enough manpower on Earth to manually review so many cases, but the balance seems to be so heavily skewed towards automation (which still does a very piss poor job at it) that just feels like there's no human element vetting the final decision at all, and that's the approach which so many people have gripes about, rightfully so until Google strikes that balance.
- gkoberger 6y ago
  Is that true? I mean, you can also argue it's only ever an issue in the first place if you have enough clout to be targeted. And I haven't seen any proof that people "without clout" aren't able to get it resolved, have you? Even this person isn't exactly a YouTube heavy-hitter, it's a relatively niche channel.
  - the_af 6y ago
    I don't know about YouTube, but I know for a fact some kinds of bans on Facebook can only be reversed if you have a friend inside Facebook that advocates for you and contacts the relevant team. Source: I know because I have such a friend, and only going through him and not through the official appeal channels got stuff unbanned (not mine: I was in turn advocating for friends. Not that it matters). The official channels are often so slow and ineffective -- and often inscrutable -- as to be useless.
    - rrmm 6y ago
      It's happened multiple times on hn (given the large number of google peoples milling about).
    - artificial 6y ago
      FB channels are slow even if you're giving them millions of dollars in ad spend.
    - burnte 6y ago
      I had a customer two years ago that we needed to rename her professional page from "Person's Name Service" to "Person's Name". That's all, we didn't change the named person, or the content of the page, just removed the service because she did more than that now. I got denied THREE times by bots claiming the change was too severe and changing the "topic" of the page, which would be potentially confusing to users, or worse, akin to changing the page to something they wouldn't otherwise support ("Local Girl Scout Troupe 4" suddenly becomes "Fans of the KKK"). I had to contact someone I know at FB to get a human to review the change. My friend and the reviewer felt the change was completely legit and allowed it. What do you do when you don't have someone on the inside?
monadic2 6y ago
> I see a lot of people complaining about things like this, but I also see a lot of people complaining that YouTube/Twitter/etc aren't doing enough to take down false/immoral/illegal content quick enough. Do you have an example? These seem like inherently contradictory values. You can either make a safe platform or one that treats its tenants well. Like many of its products, google has not made it clear which set of customers they’re trying to please, pissing off both parties.
- vosper 6y ago
  > Do you have an example? LMGTFY https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+%22not+doing+enough%22&rlz=1C5CHFA_enNZ893NZ893&oq=youtube+%22not+doing+enough%22&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i64.5591j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+%22not+doing+enough%...
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - monadic2 6y ago
    That mostly turns up media results, not anything you can extrapolate generally. There is likely money behind this media push somewhere—I’m curious if this extends to real people. Among other things, this could indicate a market opportunity for a video site that either promises quality or some mechanism to work around DMCA claims—the combination google chose seems to piss everyone off. Or, it could mean nothing and people just want normal features for the site like the ability to disable comments on the client side.
- gkoberger 6y ago
  Sure, here's one I just saw today: https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-conspiracy-wuhan-immunity-lockdown-computing-forever-2020-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-conspiracy-wuhan... Here's a bunch more: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/youtube-not-doing-enough-to-protect-children-z30ckz9bl https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/youtube-not-doing-enough-... https://www.npr.org/2018/11/27/671285261/critics-say-youtube-hasnt-done-enough-to-crack-down-on-extremist-content https://www.npr.org/2018/11/27/671285261/critics-say-youtube... https://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/story?id=4889745&page=1 https://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/story?id=4889745&p... https://coingeek.com/ripple-calls-out-youtube-for-not-doing-enough-to-stop-xpr-scams/ https://coingeek.com/ripple-calls-out-youtube-for-not-doing-... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-internet-meeting/internet-giants-not-doing-enough-to-take-down-illegal-content-eu-idUSKBN1EY2BL https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-internet-meeting/inter...
cbanek 6y ago
> YouTube is dealing with two opposing issues, and is constantly doing its best to find a middle ground. I agree with you that it's a really hard problem, but I don't see this as finding a middle ground. In reality, there are problems on both sides (people posting bad content, and bad actors taking on good content). What I expect from Google is a constantly improving process on making sure bad content is removed, and good content is not. It doesn't seem like Google's process is getting better - if anything it's just swinging back toward blocking content faster. I feel like there have been a few swings, such as back in 2011 when any background music or movie clip might mute or block your video, even when it's fair use, to a more open model a few years later, and now we're swinging back. What I would hope is that they improve over time. And yes, many times I think that involves actual people looking at things, which is expensive in terms of people as well as having to deal with tough content (mental health of those moderators being really tricky, just look at FB). But the amount of arbitrary and poorly worded emails about how you violated the TOS but won't say how. It's obvious that working with people is more expensive than not, and that seems to be what they are doing. It's always a cat and mouse game, I guess. And Google has fought this type of thing before with trying to fight people gaming search ranking. Now people arguing over what content should be allowed is obviously a more tricky, moral, problem. But between illegal content and people doing illegal acts like blackmail to valid creators seems pretty similar.
anakaine 6y ago
In this case the author shares your view. That is until the point where the third review found their video in violation. One might argue there is a corrupted element in the youtube moderation team that is either lazy, or on the take. I'd wager both. I think the best solution would be a wide, distributed network of automated takedowns targeting every nth video, but avoiding the high profile accounts. Ramp this up to a large enough issue and they will be forced to respond with a better process, otherwise their content network dies by their own process. I'm not actually advocating that the above should happen, just suggesting it would turn the tables. Fight bots with bots.
dntbnmpls 6y ago
> YouTube/Twitter/etc aren't doing enough to take down false/immoral/illegal content This is so sneaky. Why link "false" and "immoral" and "illegal" together? I can agree that social media should take down illegal content, but "false" and "immoral" content should be left up. People who whine about "false" content really mean facts and truths they disagree with. As for immoral, do we really want to play this game? Immoral from which perspective? > I feel like most of the time I see posts like this, the situation is resolved favorably and relatively quickly. Only if you are a big youtuber.
- deleted 6y ago
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autokad 6y ago
I dont feel sorry for them at all. > "I also see a lot of people complaining that YouTube/Twitter/etc aren't doing enough to take down false/immoral/illegal content quick enough" I dont want these companies touching false/immoral take downs. who are they to decide? sorry, I dont want these people in charge of the moral police. illegal stuff, like revenge porn makes sense. > "YouTube is doing it's best to blend automation (fast but inaccurate) with human curation (more thoughtful but slower), and sometimes it gets it wrong" I feel like they usually get it wrong, they are closer to being a blind man swinging a chain saw than a surgeon with a knife. HIRE SOME PEOPLE. they have huge margins, it would take very little for these companies to hire some people to review content. > " feel like most of the time I see posts like this, the situation is resolved favorably and relatively quickly." Tell that to people who have been shadow banned or demonized. most of the time, there never is resolution, their channel and all the hard work they have put together is ruined forever.
- ssss11 6y ago
  They should hire more humans to do a proper job and provide actual customer service, using their excessive profits. The AI/automation stuff is just cost cutting and its lowering the quality of service.
  - jdminhbg 6y ago
    Three hundred hours of video are uploaded to Youtube every minute [0]. There's no amount of "excessive profit" that can scale humans to review it all. [0] https://merchdope.com/youtube-stats/ https://merchdope.com/youtube-stats/
    - catalogia 6y ago
      A more relevant metric might be how many channels are subjected to community guideline or copyright strikes per day. Hiring humans to individual examine each of these circumstances is probably far more feasible than hiring humans to individually examine every single video.
    - craigds 6y ago
sneak 6y ago
There is no reason for them to be censoring how-to videos, even if those how-to videos are for illegal things. This isn’t “cut them some slack” xor “revenge porn”. This is the automated (mis)application of a rule against educational videos, a rule that should not exist in the first place. Censorship platforms are inherently dangerous.
everfree 6y ago
The solution is really very easy, add more human moderators like other companies do. But that would cut into their profit, so they don't.
tekkk 6y ago
I don't think they are really doing their best. If other Google's support forums are any indicator of their effort, they are mostly trying to automate the whole process as much as possible which then causes errors like this. Which makes sense from the SV software engineer perspective, but really is unfathomable to the normal user who then has to live in fear if some malicious teenager decides to ruin their channel. Instead of actually trying to create the best customer service, to me it feels that they treat it like a fun ML problem that they want to solve with magical algorithmic pixie dust. Yeah I know it's terribly expensive to keep a horde of content reviewers, but then it would be nice for Youtube to be upfront about it that there is maybe a human in the process, but most likely not. I guess honesty is not anymore a valuable commodity in this world, yet it would feel nice sometimes to hear the truth, not some lawyer jargon to avoid all responsibility.
- movedx 6y ago
  > Instead of actually trying to create the best customer service I've worked in high volume customer services. It's not easy for the agents doing the work or the companies operating them. I've worked in multiple call centers dealing with calls and tickets. I've worked in companies in which I dealt with mobile phone bill queries and hardware issues right up to Cisco networking problems and then eventually enterprise grade Linux clusters at Rackspace (UK). I've spanned a pretty large spectrum of industries from a customer services perspective. I've even done customer services in the food industry. It's HARD. Not just for you as an operator, but as a company trying to offer the service to begin with. of all of the companies I worked for, O2 (a mobile phone provider and network operator) had tens of millions of customers. We had several call centers that spanned close to ten thousand agents doing everything from calls to tickets, emails to Tweets. The call queue for that company never dropped below a constant 200-300 on hold and emails took days to even get to. Google has approx' one BILLION customers. What is your suggestion here? > they are mostly trying to automate the whole process as much as possible which then causes errors like this Damn straight automation, to a larger degree, is the answer. People don't scale at all. They can do one job at a time, for a limited amount of time, and are subject to all kinds of problems. > Yeah I know it's terribly expensive to keep a horde of content reviewers It cost O2 about $5/6 to answer a single call. That's the cost of the agent's time and JUST answering the call, not the cost of listening, understanding, resolving and ending the call. Humans are expensive. I'm not saying don't use people. I'm saying automation at Google's scale is one of the few solutions available to them when it comes to dealing with the simply insane amounts of complaints they'll receive just via their YouTube platform alone. EDIT: Apologies for being so crude in my original wording. I'm updating the comment to reflect a more professional, civil tone.
ajhurliman 6y ago
The videos were flagged and reviewed as acceptable several times, then subsequently flagged and reviewed as unacceptable. The inability to prevent scripted attacks like this where an attacker brute forces takedown requests doesn't strike me as "doing their best". They can defend against DDoS attacks, why can't they do better against fraudulent takedown requests? I think the answer lies in their monopoly status and the fact that creators don't have many other options for getting real traffic outside of YouTube.
- extropy 6y ago
  IMHO if you came up with a workable solution, Google would buy you out in an instant. Scalable reliable content moderation is one of the next major breakthroughs waiting to be solved. And it's not just Google it's everyone.
  - WillPostForFood 6y ago
    >>The videos were flagged and reviewed as acceptable several times IMHO if you came up with a workable solution, Google would buy you out in an instant. if passed_review_count > 0 == true buy me
SergeAx 6y ago
Sanity check in my head telling me that once content is reinstated by human operator - it shouldn't be taken down by algorithm, but flagged for secondary human examination instead.
tripletao 6y ago
> I feel like most of the time I see posts like this, the situation is resolved favorably and relatively quickly. Isn't that exactly the complaint? There's no sane human review until an issue gets embarrassingly publicized--so if the victim can generate that publicity then the system "works", and if they can't then you never see the post.
mmcru 6y ago
In my view, if platforms like YouTube/Twitter/Facebook are going to exercise editorial control over the content they host, they should be held fully responsible for all of the content that isn't taken down. If these organizations don't want to be responsible for the content on their platforms, then they shouldn't censor content unless ordered to by a judge. They want it both ways - full editorial control, but no responsibility.
denkmoon 6y ago
This is a money problem. Google don't want to spend money on human curation. The cost of that is that legitimate channels lose income. I feel bad for authors that use the platform because they must to reach a sizeable audience, yet the platform does not care about them because they are not Vevo.
AlexandrB 6y ago
> I feel like most of the time I see posts like this, the situation is resolved favorably and relatively quickly. This is because the only time a post like this rises to the top on HN is because it's affecting someone notable in the tech/startup circle or someone with a lot of tech followers. If you don't have this kind of leverage to get Google's attention you're usually SOL. An example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrMvyVEQO6M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrMvyVEQO6M Edit: follow up to the above video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIK0yafnbGM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIK0yafnbGM From the transcript: > long story short it only went back up I got a message this morning from someone who is a fan of mine who is a Google employee who kind of reached out internally about it after finding out what happened and that basically immediately solved it after three months of me trying everything that I you know basically everything that I knew to try So yeah. Unless you have a fan at Google, you can go pound sand if you run into a problem.
soraminazuki 6y ago
Censorship is not a solution to your problems. It's never going to scale due to the sheer volume of the contents. In addition to being ineffective, it would also cause active harm because there never will be sufficient checks and balances in place. That being said, there arguably are some contents that should be taken down. But content takedowns should always be done with care, and be used as a last resort. It certainly should not be taking down harmless gaming videos. It's also disingenuous to bring up revenge porn to strike down criticism. No one could possibly mistake the video in question for revenge porn. Even their automated system didn't. It has nothing to do with this issue at all.
donw 6y ago
It seems that part of the solution here is to require meatspace authentication. Here's a thought experiment: Imagine you are a global platform which needs to deal with inappropriate behavior (posting of copyrighted materials, etc.) Flagging content requires a verified account, where you must authenticate your meatspace identity: a small monthly payment via a traceable payment mechanism; a text to your phone number; a postal address verified by sending you a postcard; a photo of your government-issued ID; and webcam photo of yourself. None of this information is for public exposure! It merely ties your account to you, as a person, as tightly as possible. Nor is it required to use the service -- only to engage with the moderation system. All of these can be automated from the side of the service provider. For companies: If you are working on behalf of a company, your company membership requires similar verification. You are also limited to flagging only IP-related issues raised by your organization (copyright infringement, etc.) For individuals: You must be endorsed by three other verified users. False flags beyond a certain threshold will erode the weight of your flags, up to the point where your the moderation system will outright ignore you, with a periodic (automated) review to see whether or not your flagging behavior has improved. Endorsing a certain number of false-flaggers will also cause your account to silently lose the ability to flag. This mimics real-world behavioral modification for groups of people. Thoughts? Where does this go wrong?
electro_blah 6y ago
LOL maybe they should actually look into it before replying with their canned response.
fogetti 6y ago
Another unpopular opinion: And that's the exact reason why Youtube should be considered a platform, that Youtube is so viciously fighting now and all the Youtube believers are blindly accepting. Not that I believe PragerU's videos are factful or informative, but I think the argument by the court that Youtube is not a state actor is completely missing the point, and it only shows how outdated the legal system is in the US, but it doesn't actually reflect on the actual situation, i.e. how much power Youtube is wielding, and how it is censoring and actively blocking free speech. These kind of decisions shouldn't be granted to any private firms with such user and content size without public, democratic and transparent influence on the decision making. BTW, all your arguments seems anecdotal to me. Sentences like "I see", "I feel", etc. don't really convince me and should not anyone else either.
imron 6y ago
> I see a lot of people complaining about things like this, but I also see a lot of people complaining that YouTube/Twitter/etc aren't doing enough to take down false/immoral/illegal content quick enough. At large enough scale (e.g. Youtube scale) there will always be people complaining about almost everything. You can't please everybody, but it's in Youtube's long-term self interest to please the people that produce the content that keeps people coming back to Youtube, otherwise the creators will look towards other platforms (and we're already starting to see this). > It really sucks when a legitimate video is taken down by mistake. But it also really sucks when revenge porn is left up....YouTube is dealing with two opposing issues Except here, a third factor is in play - the extortion which caused a legitimate video to be taken down. Youtube's going to need to fix that problem fast.
bryanrasmussen 6y ago
>I feel like most of the time I see posts like this, the situation is resolved favorably a cynic might assume that is because you (and thus lots of other people) are seeing the post.
CamperBob2 6y ago
I feel like YouTube is doing their best with a really hard problem. (Shrug) They have an almost-infinite amount of money and resources to tackle those problems. It's not unreasonable to expect better results.
lazyjones 6y ago
> I see a lot of people complaining about things like this, but I also see a lot of people complaining that YouTube/Twitter/etc aren't doing enough to take down false/immoral/illegal content quick enough. [1] It looks more like YT is busy censoring content for political/ideological reasons and doesn't care too much about porn, complaints about censorship and attacks such as reported by the OP. If some fanatics still don't get their way of censoring content they don't like quickly enough, that's not really an excuse for YT's bad service.
JSavageOne 6y ago
There are relatively way more people complaining about their videos being erroneously taken down then people complaining about "immoral" content. In fact, I've never seen anyone claim that "immoral" content should be taken down, most people tend to favor freedom of speech outside of obviously the obviously wrong (eg. torture, doxxing). I've never seen a revenge porn video on Youtube, where are you coming up with this? Just look at the robotic tone of their emails, they don't care. I've had a channel taken down and all my old videos deleted due to some nonsense. There is no appeals process.
redml 6y ago
The problem is they aren't giving benefit of the doubt in channels that are in good standing for a long time with high subscriber/viewership/video counts. The guy has 100k subscribers and fairly active videos that don't get reported, you'd think that would count for something. Someone doesn't go from uploading regular content to "revenge porn" overnight. If it doesnt work on large channels then there's no blackmailing possible. If it works on smaller channels then you can't be a "bad actor" as easily.
beshrkayali 6y ago
Google support in general (and YouTube specifically) is one of the most incompetent, entitled, and utterly useless systems that exist. Your feeling of YT doing their best doesn't match the reality of how incapable, slow and unhelpful they are. There are many stories of YouTube channels being taken down, receiving strikes for false copyright claims, or just demonetized based on the whims of some virtue signaling employee. Automating thins is fine, and even getting things wrong is okay. YouTube is nothing without the content that's on it, so it goes without saying that any money-making channel deserves expedited support, especially in cases like this one.
101404 6y ago
It's pretty disturbing how you put "immoral" in between "false" and "illegal", as if it was just as bad.
spicyramen 6y ago
They are not doing their best. Google is well known for not hiring support people. They automate things, they use ML and also some people in India...but not enough
gerland 6y ago
They try their best to keep their business as profitable as possible. This often means they just don't want to analyse content in a sufficient way, although it should be possible to do it in an automated way. It's better to take down 10 videos with the word pedophilia, even if 9 of them talk about how to make your kid safe, than to spend computing power on a more detailed analysis. Why bother, those videos won't sell ads anyway. It's one of the reason that the whole "I'm a private company na na na na na na ha ha ha ha ha ha, you can't regulate me!" argument is so weak. Not every problem can be solved with automation, because content adapts. If there will be people involved, there will be biases and scandals. Not that I trust people designing algorithms to be some kind of saints. We know now that people are more likely to discriminate basing on political orientation than race. Basically all the people that would be racists 100 years ago now took a different angle to be able to behave in the same manner. I do not trust moderators and overlords, because they seem to be all from one political orientation. Being a black person 100 years ago, would you trust an all-white private company to handle all your information in an equal way, even knowing that some of the data exposes illegal practices of the said company? It's absurd to think that anyone under those circumstances would be 100% clean and it's just plain insane to thinnk we can hold hundrets of thousands of people at the same time to thius standard.
loup-vaillant 6y ago
> I feel like YouTube is doing their best with a really hard problem Two aspects of the problems are very easy: first, the automated parts of the review system can be marked as such. Automated emails can trivially be signed "You Tube Bot" or something (such signalling should perhaps be mandated by law). Second, when a video has been reviewed and found "not guilty" once, it can be marked as such, and past reviews recorded. Preventing automated takedowns for the same reason, or requiring stronger reviews, is trivial (though more costly for the videos that do end up being re-reviewed). They may have other reasons not to pluck those two low hanging fruits, but difficulty is probably not one of them.
drukenemo 6y ago
The question for me is, why censor/remove false information? Who is the judge? And even if something is blatantly false, we cannot allow it to be manifested?
mcv 6y ago
Part of the problem is also internet anonymity. I know there are cases where this anonymity is important, but there are also clearly cases where it hurts, and this is one. Addressing this problem would be a lot easier if Youtube could identify the people who make these false claims and upload the illegal content. But because they can always create a new account, they stay anonymous. Maybe an alternative would be to take long-existing, well-established accounts more seriously. That way troll accounts have a harder time taking advantage of legitimate users. It would still suck if you're a new user who gets faced with this kind of abuse, though.
cyborgx7 6y ago
They are doing their best under a particular, self-imposed, restriction. To use as little human work as possible to solve the problem. What we are learning is that you need people in the process that can look at the situation and make decisions.
panpanna 6y ago
> I feel like YouTube is doing their best with a really hard problem. No, they are not! They are treating this as another big data problem, ignoring the harm it causes. What they SHOULD do is to held the accuser responsible. To make complaints you should have a verified account and if you make wrongful claims you should foot the bill. Not rocket science really.
deleted 6y ago
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fenwick67 6y ago
> I feel like most of the time I see posts like this, the situation is resolved favorably and relatively quickly. Sadly the situation is only resolved because the person gets traction on Twitter etc. You shouldn't have to kick and scream and demand action on Twitter to get baseline levels of support from a human.
- bonestamp2 6y ago
  There's another easy fix here too. It doesn't solve the whole problem, but it makes the problem less chronic. This shouldn't happen more than once... once a human does review it, it should be nearly impossible for the automated system to override that decision in the future. Then if someone really thinks the content needs to come down then it should be reviewed by a human before it comes down.
whiddershins 6y ago
Is it very hard to have a policy that once a video has been taken down, and then successfully appealed, that it becomes harder to take down?
deleted 6y ago
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tripzilch 6y ago
But it's YouTube controlling and profiting off the platform that they created and continue to actively put out there. If it turns out to be "a really hard problem" to control, that they just can't quite manage, then it's not okay to say "well at least you tried your best" (but you still get to profit off it). What if we had our current state of self-driving cars on the road already, with all the problems that would entail, and people would say "well, to be fair, it is a really hard problem". The point is, we don't care whether it's "their best" or if they're even barely trying, what matters is that it's good enough.

bsder 6y ago

> This might not be a popular opinion, but I feel like YouTube is doing their best with a really hard problem. Of their own making. It's solvable. You throw humans at it. If Google can't deal with this then they shouldn't be allowed to collect money by running ads. Problem solved. And other sites will spring up that might actually be willing to deal with the problem correctly because now YouTube isn't a monopoly anymore. Google (and others) are going to continue to be shit until we hit them with anti-trust actions and big fines. Until then, this is all just a cost of doing business and they will laugh all the way to the bank.

elicash 6y ago
I favor splitting up tech companies (see my comment above). The one counter-argument I do find interesting, however, is that YouTube BECAUSE of their monopoly status is able to throw far more resources into this than others sites do. We don't notice it on those other sites because (a) far fewer people are making a living there, and (b) they aren't targeted the way YouTube is targeted. But that nevertheless, that monopoly is the only reason they are able to do as good a job as they do. And even if there was tons of competition and you lowered the stakes of getting booted, starting at zero followers on another site isn't exactly lowering the stakes to a point where it doesn't matter that you got the boot. I still say split up tech companies. That said, so many industries have monopoly issues and rather than getting 90% of the attention tech companies should probably get more like 10%.
rrmm 6y ago
The main innovation google has seemed to make is to create products that scale with nearly zero customer service overhead. They have half-assed algorithms that mostly do something approximating a thing that might sorta be kind of near almost the right thing. With no recourse. Their success is that they've gotten people to swallow this state of affairs because they're almost the only game in town.

macspoofing 6y ago

>This might not be a popular opinion, but I feel like YouTube is doing their best with a really hard problem. 100% agree. Also true of Paypal, another common 'whipping boy' because enforcing various regulations around moving money while still providing good customer service is HARD.

elicash 6y ago

I agree with this, except that the reason they receive so much criticism is because of their monopoly status. If you're trying to make money from digital video, getting banned or even demonetized from YouTube is a death sentence on your vlogger career. So sure, I don't blame YouTube. They're likely good folks doing their best to solve hard problems. At the same time, that this is such an impossible problem to deal with is probably a good reason to make sure Google doesn't have too much monopoly power over advertising (in this case video ads). In short, the stakes are too high! They'd be lessened with more alternatives.

unreal37 6y ago
I think you're giving them too much credit for "monopoly status". I know a LOT of creators who make a lot of money with digital video (including myself) who don't have much to do with YouTube. I know YouTube is called the "second most popular search engine", but it's not a monopoly when it comes to digital video.

kemonocode 6y ago

It's only ever resolved favorably if you have enough clout. I understand there simply not being enough manpower on Earth to manually review so many cases, but the balance seems to be so heavily skewed towards automation (which still does a very piss poor job at it) that just feels like there's no human element vetting the final decision at all, and that's the approach which so many people have gripes about, rightfully so until Google strikes that balance.

gkoberger 6y ago
Is that true? I mean, you can also argue it's only ever an issue in the first place if you have enough clout to be targeted. And I haven't seen any proof that people "without clout" aren't able to get it resolved, have you? Even this person isn't exactly a YouTube heavy-hitter, it's a relatively niche channel.
- the_af 6y ago
  I don't know about YouTube, but I know for a fact some kinds of bans on Facebook can only be reversed if you have a friend inside Facebook that advocates for you and contacts the relevant team. Source: I know because I have such a friend, and only going through him and not through the official appeal channels got stuff unbanned (not mine: I was in turn advocating for friends. Not that it matters). The official channels are often so slow and ineffective -- and often inscrutable -- as to be useless.
  - rrmm 6y ago
    It's happened multiple times on hn (given the large number of google peoples milling about).
  - artificial 6y ago
    FB channels are slow even if you're giving them millions of dollars in ad spend.
  - burnte 6y ago
    I had a customer two years ago that we needed to rename her professional page from "Person's Name Service" to "Person's Name". That's all, we didn't change the named person, or the content of the page, just removed the service because she did more than that now. I got denied THREE times by bots claiming the change was too severe and changing the "topic" of the page, which would be potentially confusing to users, or worse, akin to changing the page to something they wouldn't otherwise support ("Local Girl Scout Troupe 4" suddenly becomes "Fans of the KKK"). I had to contact someone I know at FB to get a human to review the change. My friend and the reviewer felt the change was completely legit and allowed it. What do you do when you don't have someone on the inside?

monadic2 6y ago

> I see a lot of people complaining about things like this, but I also see a lot of people complaining that YouTube/Twitter/etc aren't doing enough to take down false/immoral/illegal content quick enough. Do you have an example? These seem like inherently contradictory values. You can either make a safe platform or one that treats its tenants well. Like many of its products, google has not made it clear which set of customers they’re trying to please, pissing off both parties.

vosper 6y ago
> Do you have an example? LMGTFY https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+%22not+doing+enough%22&rlz=1C5CHFA_enNZ893NZ893&oq=youtube+%22not+doing+enough%22&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i64.5591j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+%22not+doing+enough%...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- monadic2 6y ago
  That mostly turns up media results, not anything you can extrapolate generally. There is likely money behind this media push somewhere—I’m curious if this extends to real people. Among other things, this could indicate a market opportunity for a video site that either promises quality or some mechanism to work around DMCA claims—the combination google chose seems to piss everyone off. Or, it could mean nothing and people just want normal features for the site like the ability to disable comments on the client side.
gkoberger 6y ago
Sure, here's one I just saw today: https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-conspiracy-wuhan-immunity-lockdown-computing-forever-2020-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-conspiracy-wuhan... Here's a bunch more: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/youtube-not-doing-enough-to-protect-children-z30ckz9bl https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/youtube-not-doing-enough-... https://www.npr.org/2018/11/27/671285261/critics-say-youtube-hasnt-done-enough-to-crack-down-on-extremist-content https://www.npr.org/2018/11/27/671285261/critics-say-youtube... https://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/story?id=4889745&page=1 https://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/story?id=4889745&p... https://coingeek.com/ripple-calls-out-youtube-for-not-doing-enough-to-stop-xpr-scams/ https://coingeek.com/ripple-calls-out-youtube-for-not-doing-... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-internet-meeting/internet-giants-not-doing-enough-to-take-down-illegal-content-eu-idUSKBN1EY2BL https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-internet-meeting/inter...

cbanek 6y ago

> YouTube is dealing with two opposing issues, and is constantly doing its best to find a middle ground. I agree with you that it's a really hard problem, but I don't see this as finding a middle ground. In reality, there are problems on both sides (people posting bad content, and bad actors taking on good content). What I expect from Google is a constantly improving process on making sure bad content is removed, and good content is not. It doesn't seem like Google's process is getting better - if anything it's just swinging back toward blocking content faster. I feel like there have been a few swings, such as back in 2011 when any background music or movie clip might mute or block your video, even when it's fair use, to a more open model a few years later, and now we're swinging back. What I would hope is that they improve over time. And yes, many times I think that involves actual people looking at things, which is expensive in terms of people as well as having to deal with tough content (mental health of those moderators being really tricky, just look at FB). But the amount of arbitrary and poorly worded emails about how you violated the TOS but won't say how. It's obvious that working with people is more expensive than not, and that seems to be what they are doing. It's always a cat and mouse game, I guess. And Google has fought this type of thing before with trying to fight people gaming search ranking. Now people arguing over what content should be allowed is obviously a more tricky, moral, problem. But between illegal content and people doing illegal acts like blackmail to valid creators seems pretty similar.

anakaine 6y ago

In this case the author shares your view. That is until the point where the third review found their video in violation. One might argue there is a corrupted element in the youtube moderation team that is either lazy, or on the take. I'd wager both. I think the best solution would be a wide, distributed network of automated takedowns targeting every nth video, but avoiding the high profile accounts. Ramp this up to a large enough issue and they will be forced to respond with a better process, otherwise their content network dies by their own process. I'm not actually advocating that the above should happen, just suggesting it would turn the tables. Fight bots with bots.

dntbnmpls 6y ago

> YouTube/Twitter/etc aren't doing enough to take down false/immoral/illegal content This is so sneaky. Why link "false" and "immoral" and "illegal" together? I can agree that social media should take down illegal content, but "false" and "immoral" content should be left up. People who whine about "false" content really mean facts and truths they disagree with. As for immoral, do we really want to play this game? Immoral from which perspective? > I feel like most of the time I see posts like this, the situation is resolved favorably and relatively quickly. Only if you are a big youtuber.

deleted 6y ago
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autokad 6y ago

I dont feel sorry for them at all. > "I also see a lot of people complaining that YouTube/Twitter/etc aren't doing enough to take down false/immoral/illegal content quick enough" I dont want these companies touching false/immoral take downs. who are they to decide? sorry, I dont want these people in charge of the moral police. illegal stuff, like revenge porn makes sense. > "YouTube is doing it's best to blend automation (fast but inaccurate) with human curation (more thoughtful but slower), and sometimes it gets it wrong" I feel like they usually get it wrong, they are closer to being a blind man swinging a chain saw than a surgeon with a knife. HIRE SOME PEOPLE. they have huge margins, it would take very little for these companies to hire some people to review content. > " feel like most of the time I see posts like this, the situation is resolved favorably and relatively quickly." Tell that to people who have been shadow banned or demonized. most of the time, there never is resolution, their channel and all the hard work they have put together is ruined forever.

ssss11 6y ago
They should hire more humans to do a proper job and provide actual customer service, using their excessive profits. The AI/automation stuff is just cost cutting and its lowering the quality of service.
- jdminhbg 6y ago
  Three hundred hours of video are uploaded to Youtube every minute [0]. There's no amount of "excessive profit" that can scale humans to review it all. [0] https://merchdope.com/youtube-stats/ https://merchdope.com/youtube-stats/
  - catalogia 6y ago
    A more relevant metric might be how many channels are subjected to community guideline or copyright strikes per day. Hiring humans to individual examine each of these circumstances is probably far more feasible than hiring humans to individually examine every single video.
  - craigds 6y ago

sneak 6y ago

There is no reason for them to be censoring how-to videos, even if those how-to videos are for illegal things. This isn’t “cut them some slack” xor “revenge porn”. This is the automated (mis)application of a rule against educational videos, a rule that should not exist in the first place. Censorship platforms are inherently dangerous.

everfree 6y ago

The solution is really very easy, add more human moderators like other companies do. But that would cut into their profit, so they don't.

tekkk 6y ago

I don't think they are really doing their best. If other Google's support forums are any indicator of their effort, they are mostly trying to automate the whole process as much as possible which then causes errors like this. Which makes sense from the SV software engineer perspective, but really is unfathomable to the normal user who then has to live in fear if some malicious teenager decides to ruin their channel. Instead of actually trying to create the best customer service, to me it feels that they treat it like a fun ML problem that they want to solve with magical algorithmic pixie dust. Yeah I know it's terribly expensive to keep a horde of content reviewers, but then it would be nice for Youtube to be upfront about it that there is maybe a human in the process, but most likely not. I guess honesty is not anymore a valuable commodity in this world, yet it would feel nice sometimes to hear the truth, not some lawyer jargon to avoid all responsibility.

movedx 6y ago
> Instead of actually trying to create the best customer service I've worked in high volume customer services. It's not easy for the agents doing the work or the companies operating them. I've worked in multiple call centers dealing with calls and tickets. I've worked in companies in which I dealt with mobile phone bill queries and hardware issues right up to Cisco networking problems and then eventually enterprise grade Linux clusters at Rackspace (UK). I've spanned a pretty large spectrum of industries from a customer services perspective. I've even done customer services in the food industry. It's HARD. Not just for you as an operator, but as a company trying to offer the service to begin with. of all of the companies I worked for, O2 (a mobile phone provider and network operator) had tens of millions of customers. We had several call centers that spanned close to ten thousand agents doing everything from calls to tickets, emails to Tweets. The call queue for that company never dropped below a constant 200-300 on hold and emails took days to even get to. Google has approx' one BILLION customers. What is your suggestion here? > they are mostly trying to automate the whole process as much as possible which then causes errors like this Damn straight automation, to a larger degree, is the answer. People don't scale at all. They can do one job at a time, for a limited amount of time, and are subject to all kinds of problems. > Yeah I know it's terribly expensive to keep a horde of content reviewers It cost O2 about $5/6 to answer a single call. That's the cost of the agent's time and JUST answering the call, not the cost of listening, understanding, resolving and ending the call. Humans are expensive. I'm not saying don't use people. I'm saying automation at Google's scale is one of the few solutions available to them when it comes to dealing with the simply insane amounts of complaints they'll receive just via their YouTube platform alone. EDIT: Apologies for being so crude in my original wording. I'm updating the comment to reflect a more professional, civil tone.

ajhurliman 6y ago

The videos were flagged and reviewed as acceptable several times, then subsequently flagged and reviewed as unacceptable. The inability to prevent scripted attacks like this where an attacker brute forces takedown requests doesn't strike me as "doing their best". They can defend against DDoS attacks, why can't they do better against fraudulent takedown requests? I think the answer lies in their monopoly status and the fact that creators don't have many other options for getting real traffic outside of YouTube.

extropy 6y ago
IMHO if you came up with a workable solution, Google would buy you out in an instant. Scalable reliable content moderation is one of the next major breakthroughs waiting to be solved. And it's not just Google it's everyone.
- WillPostForFood 6y ago
  >>The videos were flagged and reviewed as acceptable several times IMHO if you came up with a workable solution, Google would buy you out in an instant. if passed_review_count > 0 == true buy me

SergeAx 6y ago

Sanity check in my head telling me that once content is reinstated by human operator - it shouldn't be taken down by algorithm, but flagged for secondary human examination instead.

tripletao 6y ago

> I feel like most of the time I see posts like this, the situation is resolved favorably and relatively quickly. Isn't that exactly the complaint? There's no sane human review until an issue gets embarrassingly publicized--so if the victim can generate that publicity then the system "works", and if they can't then you never see the post.

mmcru 6y ago

In my view, if platforms like YouTube/Twitter/Facebook are going to exercise editorial control over the content they host, they should be held fully responsible for all of the content that isn't taken down. If these organizations don't want to be responsible for the content on their platforms, then they shouldn't censor content unless ordered to by a judge. They want it both ways - full editorial control, but no responsibility.

denkmoon 6y ago

This is a money problem. Google don't want to spend money on human curation. The cost of that is that legitimate channels lose income. I feel bad for authors that use the platform because they must to reach a sizeable audience, yet the platform does not care about them because they are not Vevo.

AlexandrB 6y ago

> I feel like most of the time I see posts like this, the situation is resolved favorably and relatively quickly. This is because the only time a post like this rises to the top on HN is because it's affecting someone notable in the tech/startup circle or someone with a lot of tech followers. If you don't have this kind of leverage to get Google's attention you're usually SOL. An example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrMvyVEQO6M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrMvyVEQO6M Edit: follow up to the above video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIK0yafnbGM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIK0yafnbGM From the transcript: > long story short it only went back up I got a message this morning from someone who is a fan of mine who is a Google employee who kind of reached out internally about it after finding out what happened and that basically immediately solved it after three months of me trying everything that I you know basically everything that I knew to try So yeah. Unless you have a fan at Google, you can go pound sand if you run into a problem.

soraminazuki 6y ago

Censorship is not a solution to your problems. It's never going to scale due to the sheer volume of the contents. In addition to being ineffective, it would also cause active harm because there never will be sufficient checks and balances in place. That being said, there arguably are some contents that should be taken down. But content takedowns should always be done with care, and be used as a last resort. It certainly should not be taking down harmless gaming videos. It's also disingenuous to bring up revenge porn to strike down criticism. No one could possibly mistake the video in question for revenge porn. Even their automated system didn't. It has nothing to do with this issue at all.

donw 6y ago

It seems that part of the solution here is to require meatspace authentication. Here's a thought experiment: Imagine you are a global platform which needs to deal with inappropriate behavior (posting of copyrighted materials, etc.) Flagging content requires a verified account, where you must authenticate your meatspace identity: a small monthly payment via a traceable payment mechanism; a text to your phone number; a postal address verified by sending you a postcard; a photo of your government-issued ID; and webcam photo of yourself. None of this information is for public exposure! It merely ties your account to you, as a person, as tightly as possible. Nor is it required to use the service -- only to engage with the moderation system. All of these can be automated from the side of the service provider. For companies: If you are working on behalf of a company, your company membership requires similar verification. You are also limited to flagging only IP-related issues raised by your organization (copyright infringement, etc.) For individuals: You must be endorsed by three other verified users. False flags beyond a certain threshold will erode the weight of your flags, up to the point where your the moderation system will outright ignore you, with a periodic (automated) review to see whether or not your flagging behavior has improved. Endorsing a certain number of false-flaggers will also cause your account to silently lose the ability to flag. This mimics real-world behavioral modification for groups of people. Thoughts? Where does this go wrong?

electro_blah 6y ago

LOL maybe they should actually look into it before replying with their canned response.

fogetti 6y ago

Another unpopular opinion: And that's the exact reason why Youtube should be considered a platform, that Youtube is so viciously fighting now and all the Youtube believers are blindly accepting. Not that I believe PragerU's videos are factful or informative, but I think the argument by the court that Youtube is not a state actor is completely missing the point, and it only shows how outdated the legal system is in the US, but it doesn't actually reflect on the actual situation, i.e. how much power Youtube is wielding, and how it is censoring and actively blocking free speech. These kind of decisions shouldn't be granted to any private firms with such user and content size without public, democratic and transparent influence on the decision making. BTW, all your arguments seems anecdotal to me. Sentences like "I see", "I feel", etc. don't really convince me and should not anyone else either.

imron 6y ago

> I see a lot of people complaining about things like this, but I also see a lot of people complaining that YouTube/Twitter/etc aren't doing enough to take down false/immoral/illegal content quick enough. At large enough scale (e.g. Youtube scale) there will always be people complaining about almost everything. You can't please everybody, but it's in Youtube's long-term self interest to please the people that produce the content that keeps people coming back to Youtube, otherwise the creators will look towards other platforms (and we're already starting to see this). > It really sucks when a legitimate video is taken down by mistake. But it also really sucks when revenge porn is left up....YouTube is dealing with two opposing issues Except here, a third factor is in play - the extortion which caused a legitimate video to be taken down. Youtube's going to need to fix that problem fast.

bryanrasmussen 6y ago

>I feel like most of the time I see posts like this, the situation is resolved favorably a cynic might assume that is because you (and thus lots of other people) are seeing the post.

CamperBob2 6y ago

I feel like YouTube is doing their best with a really hard problem. (Shrug) They have an almost-infinite amount of money and resources to tackle those problems. It's not unreasonable to expect better results.

lazyjones 6y ago

> I see a lot of people complaining about things like this, but I also see a lot of people complaining that YouTube/Twitter/etc aren't doing enough to take down false/immoral/illegal content quick enough. [1] It looks more like YT is busy censoring content for political/ideological reasons and doesn't care too much about porn, complaints about censorship and attacks such as reported by the OP. If some fanatics still don't get their way of censoring content they don't like quickly enough, that's not really an excuse for YT's bad service.

JSavageOne 6y ago

There are relatively way more people complaining about their videos being erroneously taken down then people complaining about "immoral" content. In fact, I've never seen anyone claim that "immoral" content should be taken down, most people tend to favor freedom of speech outside of obviously the obviously wrong (eg. torture, doxxing). I've never seen a revenge porn video on Youtube, where are you coming up with this? Just look at the robotic tone of their emails, they don't care. I've had a channel taken down and all my old videos deleted due to some nonsense. There is no appeals process.

redml 6y ago

The problem is they aren't giving benefit of the doubt in channels that are in good standing for a long time with high subscriber/viewership/video counts. The guy has 100k subscribers and fairly active videos that don't get reported, you'd think that would count for something. Someone doesn't go from uploading regular content to "revenge porn" overnight. If it doesnt work on large channels then there's no blackmailing possible. If it works on smaller channels then you can't be a "bad actor" as easily.

beshrkayali 6y ago

Google support in general (and YouTube specifically) is one of the most incompetent, entitled, and utterly useless systems that exist. Your feeling of YT doing their best doesn't match the reality of how incapable, slow and unhelpful they are. There are many stories of YouTube channels being taken down, receiving strikes for false copyright claims, or just demonetized based on the whims of some virtue signaling employee. Automating thins is fine, and even getting things wrong is okay. YouTube is nothing without the content that's on it, so it goes without saying that any money-making channel deserves expedited support, especially in cases like this one.

101404 6y ago

It's pretty disturbing how you put "immoral" in between "false" and "illegal", as if it was just as bad.

spicyramen 6y ago

They are not doing their best. Google is well known for not hiring support people. They automate things, they use ML and also some people in India...but not enough

gerland 6y ago

They try their best to keep their business as profitable as possible. This often means they just don't want to analyse content in a sufficient way, although it should be possible to do it in an automated way. It's better to take down 10 videos with the word pedophilia, even if 9 of them talk about how to make your kid safe, than to spend computing power on a more detailed analysis. Why bother, those videos won't sell ads anyway. It's one of the reason that the whole "I'm a private company na na na na na na ha ha ha ha ha ha, you can't regulate me!" argument is so weak. Not every problem can be solved with automation, because content adapts. If there will be people involved, there will be biases and scandals. Not that I trust people designing algorithms to be some kind of saints. We know now that people are more likely to discriminate basing on political orientation than race. Basically all the people that would be racists 100 years ago now took a different angle to be able to behave in the same manner. I do not trust moderators and overlords, because they seem to be all from one political orientation. Being a black person 100 years ago, would you trust an all-white private company to handle all your information in an equal way, even knowing that some of the data exposes illegal practices of the said company? It's absurd to think that anyone under those circumstances would be 100% clean and it's just plain insane to thinnk we can hold hundrets of thousands of people at the same time to thius standard.

loup-vaillant 6y ago

> I feel like YouTube is doing their best with a really hard problem Two aspects of the problems are very easy: first, the automated parts of the review system can be marked as such. Automated emails can trivially be signed "You Tube Bot" or something (such signalling should perhaps be mandated by law). Second, when a video has been reviewed and found "not guilty" once, it can be marked as such, and past reviews recorded. Preventing automated takedowns for the same reason, or requiring stronger reviews, is trivial (though more costly for the videos that do end up being re-reviewed). They may have other reasons not to pluck those two low hanging fruits, but difficulty is probably not one of them.

drukenemo 6y ago

The question for me is, why censor/remove false information? Who is the judge? And even if something is blatantly false, we cannot allow it to be manifested?

mcv 6y ago

Part of the problem is also internet anonymity. I know there are cases where this anonymity is important, but there are also clearly cases where it hurts, and this is one. Addressing this problem would be a lot easier if Youtube could identify the people who make these false claims and upload the illegal content. But because they can always create a new account, they stay anonymous. Maybe an alternative would be to take long-existing, well-established accounts more seriously. That way troll accounts have a harder time taking advantage of legitimate users. It would still suck if you're a new user who gets faced with this kind of abuse, though.

cyborgx7 6y ago

They are doing their best under a particular, self-imposed, restriction. To use as little human work as possible to solve the problem. What we are learning is that you need people in the process that can look at the situation and make decisions.

panpanna 6y ago

> I feel like YouTube is doing their best with a really hard problem. No, they are not! They are treating this as another big data problem, ignoring the harm it causes. What they SHOULD do is to held the accuser responsible. To make complaints you should have a verified account and if you make wrongful claims you should foot the bill. Not rocket science really.

deleted 6y ago

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fenwick67 6y ago

> I feel like most of the time I see posts like this, the situation is resolved favorably and relatively quickly. Sadly the situation is only resolved because the person gets traction on Twitter etc. You shouldn't have to kick and scream and demand action on Twitter to get baseline levels of support from a human.

bonestamp2 6y ago
There's another easy fix here too. It doesn't solve the whole problem, but it makes the problem less chronic. This shouldn't happen more than once... once a human does review it, it should be nearly impossible for the automated system to override that decision in the future. Then if someone really thinks the content needs to come down then it should be reviewed by a human before it comes down.

whiddershins 6y ago

Is it very hard to have a policy that once a video has been taken down, and then successfully appealed, that it becomes harder to take down?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

tripzilch 6y ago

But it's YouTube controlling and profiting off the platform that they created and continue to actively put out there. If it turns out to be "a really hard problem" to control, that they just can't quite manage, then it's not okay to say "well at least you tried your best" (but you still get to profit off it). What if we had our current state of self-driving cars on the road already, with all the problems that would entail, and people would say "well, to be fair, it is a really hard problem". The point is, we don't care whether it's "their best" or if they're even barely trying, what matters is that it's good enough.