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Googler here, who doesn't work in the YouTube PA. It does certainly seem like this was an erroneous take-down. I'm not familiar with the content, but I can't

Googler here, who doesn't work in the YouTube PA. It does certainly seem like this was an erroneous take-down. I'm not familiar with the content, but I can't imagine a more innocuous channel. If JPdylon is out there, the first recommendation is to appeal the decision [1]. Granted that doesn't always work, and it's unfortunate that common next step is to resort to "Support via Hacker News". That being said, content moderation is a super hard problem. It needs to get better and more fair on both sides (i.e. taking down what should be; leaving up what is quality content), but the scale here is often forgotten. There is far, far too much content posted to manually review. If EEVblog's suggestion was taken and Susan (YouTube CEO) had to manually review every moderation action on channels with 5K+ subs, she would not be able to keep up. If you had a team of people, they would not be able to keep up. Even if you had a fleet of people, the scale is just unreal. EEVblog's suggestion to diversify platforms is reasonable. The fact that those platforms don't have some of the same problems doesn't necessarily mean that they're better at content moderation, however. They just don't have to operate on the same scale. [1] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/185111 https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/185111

crazy1van 6y ago
> If EEVblog's suggestion was taken and Susan (YouTube CEO) had to manually review every moderation action on channels with 5K+ subs, she would not be able to keep up. Maybe perform fewer moderation actions?
- altgoogler 6y ago
  If there were fewer moderation actions, then we'd be seeing more articles saying how obviously abusive content that should have been taken down and wasn't. There are many sophisticated actors that try and game the system, and it's because of them at sometimes the system makes the wrong call.
- belltaco 6y ago
  I feel only the questionable removals make it to HN or other tech sites that make it feel like lesser moderation would be better. But the fact is there is a vast ocean of disturbing content that literally causes some moderators to lose their mental and need counseling.
mc32 6y ago
Maybe not workable due to scale but can they never the less set up a pre-emptive review system where if you’re willing to have something pre-approved (reviewed before publishing) by moderators that that content cannot be automatically axed and would require manual intervention with an independent appeals process?
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  How much do you think they would have to charge for that service? And how much would you be willing to pay?
wickerman 6y ago
The problem is that Youtube's policy of aggressive takedown has enabled a massive abuse of the system. You can go and find many prominent YT creators complaining about their videos being taken down by false copyright claims. Literally any of us could go to a single channel, issue 3 copyright strikes and their channel will be taken down, with no regards to fair use whatsoever. Moderation here isn't the problem. Youtube's policing has downright enabled censorship on the site.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  So, there's the solution then: massively file false claims until each and every channel is taken down forcing Google to deal with the problem.
armitron 6y ago
So hire more people to cope with the load? Implement automation (verifying that a takedown is appropriate) where it makes sense to reduce the load? Have established guidelines and procedures? Place the majority of the burden of proof on the initiator of a takedown action? Place repeat offenders on a blacklist after warning them?
pjc50 6y ago
May I make a simpler suggestion: - a list of clear rules - takedowns must provide a reference of which video caused the takedown, roughly where in the video it was, and which rule it was violating Someone may reply that this is feeding information on the rule boundaries to spammers, at which point I make a second suggestion which could apply to more services: - a "this platform is valuable to me" deposit, of say $10, which guarantees human review of administrative decisions. It's people's livelihood. You can't just vaporise it. Well, you can, but eventually the angry mob you create will get large enough and come for your statue.
- dmitryminkovsky 6y ago
  These are really basic, reasonable suggestions. It's baffling Google/YouTube doesn't at least afford such basic dignities to its most important population: original content creators.
  - tmpz22 6y ago
    The answer is pretty obvious, the current system is what Google wants. It’s perfect in their eyes.
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  > come for your statue. Joke's on them: Google Maps will just give the angry mob directions to the Amazon HQ instead.
  - novok 6y ago
    That is why you use apple maps ;)
- sempron64 6y ago
  Simply requiring a small fee for review is a great suggestion! It would be difficult to structure this but simply allowing a video creator (or any fan of the channel!) to pay a Youtube analyst or a third-party auditor at cost ($10 seems reasonable for 15 minutes of even a decently-payed, English-speaking Western employee's time) to review the channel/video for 15 minutes for actual violations would be a huge boon to real content creators. This would also allow Google to identify what takedown requests are blackmail botnets and block them from doing further harm. If anyone at Google is reading this please consider it! So many viewers would be willing to pay that this need not even impact creators. (Obviously this would have to be kept from getting out of hand and turning into Google racketeering with multiple takedowns of the same channel, but I trust them not to do that)
DanBC 6y ago
YT moderation is genuinely baffling. YT has policies against animal cruelty, but a search for "electric mouse traps" shows a bunch of live animals being killed. (There are a lot of these). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0D4rJ6zNuM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0D4rJ6zNuM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh_QXnJcP7M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh_QXnJcP7M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwKN8h1du8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwKN8h1du8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgh9Bs4TFdY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgh9Bs4TFdY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SIlYiiCGLI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SIlYiiCGLI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_a8Pcd8k9s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_a8Pcd8k9s
- henearkr 6y ago
  This is most likely not a problem of policy but rather that nobody has flagged these videos yet. And you should blame that (that nobody flagged them) on the double-standard most people have towards "not hurting innocent animals" vs "freedom to do any slaughter with the so-called 'pests'".
  - carapace 6y ago
    This. I was watching a video of some pigs playing the other day and suddenly became an "ovo-lacto" vegan.
    - GloriousKoji 6y ago
      I'm not sure if sarcastic but how is that different from a vegetarian? The exclusion of honey?
      - puppyprogram 6y ago
        ovo lacto is a "vegetarian" that also eats eggs and dairy so i presume it is something to do with other things, like the exclusion of leather goods? honey is a touchy subject even for vegans
        6y ago
appleflaxen 6y ago
> but the scale here is often forgotten. I don't think anybody here is forgetting the scale; they simply understand that Google-scale problems come with google-scale revenue. Omitting this fact seems like an insincere overture to the community of upset users, to me.
- kllrnohj 6y ago
  It's the small content creators getting hurt here, though. As in, the ones that don't generate google-scale revenue. You're asking a for-profit business to lose money on inconsequential revenue streams. That doesn't work. The channels that do actually have revenue impacts are the ones with actual people reps already.
lmilcin 6y ago
It is one thing to make mistakes. It is another to present a person who spent significant part of their life invested in your platform with no way to get hang of a real person to appeal their process. People should not be expected to somehow get another famous youtuber and a hang of an insider through HN front page to get their problems resolved.
alexandercrohde 6y ago
- Don't delete accounts entirely when they are reported, just lock them. If it's not disputed delete them 1 year later. - Add a "reputability score" for every channel which is log((total videos) * total views * total likes * months since first video). Obviously there should be a HUGE burden of proof when deleting a channel with millions of views and over a dozen videos. - These are just two 15-minute-ideas of an engineer who can't get an interview at google. I'm sure among the thousands of employees somebody has an even better one.
- jb775 6y ago
  I doubt the account and videos are actually "deleted". I don't think Google deletes anything.
jhallenworld 6y ago
> the first recommendation is to appeal the decision Well this is BS, it's like saying the author of a book at a library should be the one to complain if the library censors the book. Don't the library's patrons get any say?
carapace 6y ago
With respect, when I hear FANG employees putting forward scale as a reason why "moderation is a super hard problem" I'm bemused. If this was a hardware or software issue it would be obvious that you're trying to scale systems that do not scale. In technical terms, social "algorithms" are O(k^n), exponential. You're trying to do the impossible, eh? (Really, the argument could be made that FANG et. al. are becoming a new de facto world government. From that POV you're attempting to solve the hardest human problem, eh?) - - - - No one is forcing you to be that big. At the end of the day, scraping away all the bright-eyed rhetoric about "connecting all the people, places, and things for great good", you're doing it for money. Building a moderated social network isn't impossible (maybe) but it's woefully expensive. The existing systems are, arguably, harming people and messing up society, tech companies notoriously have a lot of money already, but are unwilling to prioritize and pay for the moderation that could (arguably) improve things. So... what? I don't have any answers, I just want to point out that from my POV the problem is clearly hubris and basic cheapness.
- altgoogler 6y ago
  Indeed, the question is what should be done, or how should it have been done differently? Should YT have grown more slowly? FWIW, I don't think money is the limiting factor here. If there was a known good solution, but it took $10B to implement, I think it would be done. You could pay X thousands (more) moderators, but there are drawbacks in a human solution as well. First is the fact since there's human judgement, rules will be applied inconsistently, and probably with some bias. Second is the fact that moderation is a very mentally exhausting effort. You can observe some of the cyclical nature of this balance from the news over the past few years. Article about moderators with PTSD? Well, automation is the solution. Automation fails in a lot of edge cases? Well, why not hire armies of people to do it for you? I don't think there is an obvious solution here, no matter how much it cost.
  - Majromax 6y ago
    > I don't think there is an obvious solution here, no matter how much it cost. If that's the case, then it may be back to Youtube doesn't scale. > Second is the fact that moderation is a very mentally exhausting effort. You have an impossible trilemma. Youtube: * Allows/must allow anonymous or pseudonymous content creation, without the ability to ban bad actors; * Faces significant social (sometimes legal) liability for content hosting and especially curation/promotion; and * Wants to provide friction-free, speedy, and consistent policies to its content creators. Those can't all exist at the same time. Right now, what gives is a bit of #3 (seemingly arbitrary, severe, and algorithmic actions against channels) and a bit of #2 (occasional stories about how Youtube is evil for promoting flat-earth Nazism vaccine-denial theory to children or whatever). Youtube could go with a heavy-moderation approach, by requiring content creators first register with a government ID (plus business license in each country of intended audience) along with prior human-moderator approval of each uploaded video. But that would fundamentally change the platform into something more like a traditional TV network rather than dynamic social media. Other commenters here go heavier on the "free speech" side of things and think that Youtube ought to face no repercussions (social or legal) for hosted content, freeing it of the need to moderate. I'm not sure how we would get there from here, but nevermind that job for lobbyists. Society as a whole seems to implicitly solve this problem by not being a big giant curator under its own brand. Traditional media still exists as many (notionally-)separate outlets, each with their own branding and editorial views to offer at least limited competition. But if this is the only viable model, it's still another way of saying that Youtube doesn't scale.
smileypete 6y ago
Also please have a look at Craig Tube/Vinyl TV, his channels have returned under a slightly different new name, but all the previous content has been lost from the old ones: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC40wiRfP8u2DrVvUm_VGcqw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC40wiRfP8u2DrVvUm_VGcqw https://www.youtube.com/user/CraigTube/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/CraigTube/videos Archived copies: https://web.archive.org/web/20200227065130/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC40wiRfP8u2DrVvUm_VGcqw https://web.archive.org/web/20200227065130/https://www.youtu... https://web.archive.org/web/20120625045947/https://www.youtube.com/user/CraigTube/videos https://web.archive.org/web/20120625045947/https://www.youtu...
at_a_remove 6y ago
I get that YouTube is attempting to pick through a torrent of stuff and that manual review is not feasible at such a scale. This is fine. This is self-evident. Saying what video and when in the video tripped what part of the magic algorithm is also doable. I think we both understand that the algo has to do the work, and it has to output a "yes/no" at the end. However, absolutely nothing forbids coming up with some kind of feedback or error message. The algorithm is doubtlessly complex, and was therefore debugged. Yes/no was not sufficient for debugging in its development. The mechanisms are present. Expose this to the user.
axaxs 6y ago
Why not offer a model of pay-for-support, instead of ramming us with ads and saying "LOL it's free so f off"? Not you specifically, or even Google specifically, but that seems to be a common theme. I'm sure plenty of people would be willing to pay a monthly fee to avoid exactly this.
seedless-sensat 6y ago
This comment could easily be interpreted as you speaking for Google.
- altgoogler 6y ago
  To clarify, I have no insider knowledge of this matter, I don't speak in any official context and all of my opinions are my own. I consider adding that to every Google related comment, but it gets tiring.
  - SpelingBeeChamp 6y ago
    Why not just add it to your profile 'about' section?
    - altgoogler 6y ago
      That is a good suggestion. Done.
ethanwillis 6y ago
Why does he need to go through an appeal when it's had attention brought to it? Your appeal to scale here doesn't apply to this case.
- altgoogler 6y ago
  Because it's not clear why the channel was taken down in the first place. I don't have any insider information in that regard. I don't have access to the system that would tell me the reason. It's possible (however unlikely) that there was a justified reason for the take down. Has anybody heard from the original creator?
SmokeyHamster 6y ago
This takedown was presumably automated, which seems to be a bulk of the complaints. The algorithm to automate "objectionable content" seems to be horribly inaccurate. A better approach might to be to disable all automated takedowns, and don't take down anything except content manually flagged for illegal content, which are then manually reviewed. And before you say this won't scale, this is how Reddit moderation works, and seems to work for millions of posts made every day. Also, some sort of public log of takedowns and reasons in some form we could verify might also be nice. It's super creepy seeing someone "disappeared" from the Internet without so much as a peep from Youtube/Google.
kajumix 6y ago
There appears to be a disturbing consensus here that YouTube HAS to moderate. Why? If YouTube isn't held responsible for the content, and are treated merely as a carrier, you can imagine layer 2 filtering businesses emerge, if YouTube let them. YouTube could still be the repository, still make money, but get out of the business of deciding who gets to see what.
- SpelingBeeChamp 6y ago
  Because they already found out what happens when they don't moderate enough: major advertisers leave the platform entirely. With their money. YouTube is an internet advertising company like pretty much everything else Google. That they serve video content is ancillary.
bsder 6y ago
> They just don't have to operate on the same scale. If Google can't operate at scale, then maybe it just needs to be shut down so maybe someone who can will take their place. Google simply doesn't WANT to operate at scale because that will impact profits.
shard972 6y ago
> That being said, content moderation is a super hard problem They keep saying this and yet fire all their human moderators while turning obscene profits!
gameswithgo 6y ago
maybe quit posting about how its a hard problem and go work on fixing it?
sumedh 6y ago
> but the scale here is often forgotten. Is there a reason why Google cannot hire more people?
bassman9000 6y ago
There is far, far too much content posted to manually review. Then don't take it down, and let the Justice Department do it. Or accept being an editor. You can't have it both ways.

crazy1van 6y ago

> If EEVblog's suggestion was taken and Susan (YouTube CEO) had to manually review every moderation action on channels with 5K+ subs, she would not be able to keep up. Maybe perform fewer moderation actions?

altgoogler 6y ago
If there were fewer moderation actions, then we'd be seeing more articles saying how obviously abusive content that should have been taken down and wasn't. There are many sophisticated actors that try and game the system, and it's because of them at sometimes the system makes the wrong call.
belltaco 6y ago
I feel only the questionable removals make it to HN or other tech sites that make it feel like lesser moderation would be better. But the fact is there is a vast ocean of disturbing content that literally causes some moderators to lose their mental and need counseling.

mc32 6y ago

Maybe not workable due to scale but can they never the less set up a pre-emptive review system where if you’re willing to have something pre-approved (reviewed before publishing) by moderators that that content cannot be automatically axed and would require manual intervention with an independent appeals process?

amanaplanacanal 6y ago
How much do you think they would have to charge for that service? And how much would you be willing to pay?

wickerman 6y ago

The problem is that Youtube's policy of aggressive takedown has enabled a massive abuse of the system. You can go and find many prominent YT creators complaining about their videos being taken down by false copyright claims. Literally any of us could go to a single channel, issue 3 copyright strikes and their channel will be taken down, with no regards to fair use whatsoever. Moderation here isn't the problem. Youtube's policing has downright enabled censorship on the site.

jacquesm 6y ago
So, there's the solution then: massively file false claims until each and every channel is taken down forcing Google to deal with the problem.

armitron 6y ago

So hire more people to cope with the load? Implement automation (verifying that a takedown is appropriate) where it makes sense to reduce the load? Have established guidelines and procedures? Place the majority of the burden of proof on the initiator of a takedown action? Place repeat offenders on a blacklist after warning them?

pjc50 6y ago

May I make a simpler suggestion: - a list of clear rules - takedowns must provide a reference of which video caused the takedown, roughly where in the video it was, and which rule it was violating Someone may reply that this is feeding information on the rule boundaries to spammers, at which point I make a second suggestion which could apply to more services: - a "this platform is valuable to me" deposit, of say $10, which guarantees human review of administrative decisions. It's people's livelihood. You can't just vaporise it. Well, you can, but eventually the angry mob you create will get large enough and come for your statue.

dmitryminkovsky 6y ago
These are really basic, reasonable suggestions. It's baffling Google/YouTube doesn't at least afford such basic dignities to its most important population: original content creators.
- tmpz22 6y ago
  The answer is pretty obvious, the current system is what Google wants. It’s perfect in their eyes.
ForHackernews 6y ago
> come for your statue. Joke's on them: Google Maps will just give the angry mob directions to the Amazon HQ instead.
- novok 6y ago
  That is why you use apple maps ;)
sempron64 6y ago
Simply requiring a small fee for review is a great suggestion! It would be difficult to structure this but simply allowing a video creator (or any fan of the channel!) to pay a Youtube analyst or a third-party auditor at cost ($10 seems reasonable for 15 minutes of even a decently-payed, English-speaking Western employee's time) to review the channel/video for 15 minutes for actual violations would be a huge boon to real content creators. This would also allow Google to identify what takedown requests are blackmail botnets and block them from doing further harm. If anyone at Google is reading this please consider it! So many viewers would be willing to pay that this need not even impact creators. (Obviously this would have to be kept from getting out of hand and turning into Google racketeering with multiple takedowns of the same channel, but I trust them not to do that)

DanBC 6y ago

YT moderation is genuinely baffling. YT has policies against animal cruelty, but a search for "electric mouse traps" shows a bunch of live animals being killed. (There are a lot of these). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0D4rJ6zNuM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0D4rJ6zNuM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh_QXnJcP7M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh_QXnJcP7M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwKN8h1du8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwKN8h1du8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgh9Bs4TFdY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgh9Bs4TFdY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SIlYiiCGLI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SIlYiiCGLI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_a8Pcd8k9s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_a8Pcd8k9s

henearkr 6y ago
This is most likely not a problem of policy but rather that nobody has flagged these videos yet. And you should blame that (that nobody flagged them) on the double-standard most people have towards "not hurting innocent animals" vs "freedom to do any slaughter with the so-called 'pests'".
- carapace 6y ago
  This. I was watching a video of some pigs playing the other day and suddenly became an "ovo-lacto" vegan.
  - GloriousKoji 6y ago
    I'm not sure if sarcastic but how is that different from a vegetarian? The exclusion of honey?
    - puppyprogram 6y ago
      ovo lacto is a "vegetarian" that also eats eggs and dairy so i presume it is something to do with other things, like the exclusion of leather goods? honey is a touchy subject even for vegans
      - 6y ago

appleflaxen 6y ago

> but the scale here is often forgotten. I don't think anybody here is forgetting the scale; they simply understand that Google-scale problems come with google-scale revenue. Omitting this fact seems like an insincere overture to the community of upset users, to me.

kllrnohj 6y ago
It's the small content creators getting hurt here, though. As in, the ones that don't generate google-scale revenue. You're asking a for-profit business to lose money on inconsequential revenue streams. That doesn't work. The channels that do actually have revenue impacts are the ones with actual people reps already.

lmilcin 6y ago

It is one thing to make mistakes. It is another to present a person who spent significant part of their life invested in your platform with no way to get hang of a real person to appeal their process. People should not be expected to somehow get another famous youtuber and a hang of an insider through HN front page to get their problems resolved.

alexandercrohde 6y ago

- Don't delete accounts entirely when they are reported, just lock them. If it's not disputed delete them 1 year later. - Add a "reputability score" for every channel which is log((total videos) * total views * total likes * months since first video). Obviously there should be a HUGE burden of proof when deleting a channel with millions of views and over a dozen videos. - These are just two 15-minute-ideas of an engineer who can't get an interview at google. I'm sure among the thousands of employees somebody has an even better one.

jb775 6y ago
I doubt the account and videos are actually "deleted". I don't think Google deletes anything.

jhallenworld 6y ago

> the first recommendation is to appeal the decision Well this is BS, it's like saying the author of a book at a library should be the one to complain if the library censors the book. Don't the library's patrons get any say?

carapace 6y ago

With respect, when I hear FANG employees putting forward scale as a reason why "moderation is a super hard problem" I'm bemused. If this was a hardware or software issue it would be obvious that you're trying to scale systems that do not scale. In technical terms, social "algorithms" are O(k^n), exponential. You're trying to do the impossible, eh? (Really, the argument could be made that FANG et. al. are becoming a new de facto world government. From that POV you're attempting to solve the hardest human problem, eh?) - - - - No one is forcing you to be that big. At the end of the day, scraping away all the bright-eyed rhetoric about "connecting all the people, places, and things for great good", you're doing it for money. Building a moderated social network isn't impossible (maybe) but it's woefully expensive. The existing systems are, arguably, harming people and messing up society, tech companies notoriously have a lot of money already, but are unwilling to prioritize and pay for the moderation that could (arguably) improve things. So... what? I don't have any answers, I just want to point out that from my POV the problem is clearly hubris and basic cheapness.

altgoogler 6y ago
Indeed, the question is what should be done, or how should it have been done differently? Should YT have grown more slowly? FWIW, I don't think money is the limiting factor here. If there was a known good solution, but it took $10B to implement, I think it would be done. You could pay X thousands (more) moderators, but there are drawbacks in a human solution as well. First is the fact since there's human judgement, rules will be applied inconsistently, and probably with some bias. Second is the fact that moderation is a very mentally exhausting effort. You can observe some of the cyclical nature of this balance from the news over the past few years. Article about moderators with PTSD? Well, automation is the solution. Automation fails in a lot of edge cases? Well, why not hire armies of people to do it for you? I don't think there is an obvious solution here, no matter how much it cost.
- Majromax 6y ago
  > I don't think there is an obvious solution here, no matter how much it cost. If that's the case, then it may be back to Youtube doesn't scale. > Second is the fact that moderation is a very mentally exhausting effort. You have an impossible trilemma. Youtube: * Allows/must allow anonymous or pseudonymous content creation, without the ability to ban bad actors; * Faces significant social (sometimes legal) liability for content hosting and especially curation/promotion; and * Wants to provide friction-free, speedy, and consistent policies to its content creators. Those can't all exist at the same time. Right now, what gives is a bit of #3 (seemingly arbitrary, severe, and algorithmic actions against channels) and a bit of #2 (occasional stories about how Youtube is evil for promoting flat-earth Nazism vaccine-denial theory to children or whatever). Youtube could go with a heavy-moderation approach, by requiring content creators first register with a government ID (plus business license in each country of intended audience) along with prior human-moderator approval of each uploaded video. But that would fundamentally change the platform into something more like a traditional TV network rather than dynamic social media. Other commenters here go heavier on the "free speech" side of things and think that Youtube ought to face no repercussions (social or legal) for hosted content, freeing it of the need to moderate. I'm not sure how we would get there from here, but nevermind that job for lobbyists. Society as a whole seems to implicitly solve this problem by not being a big giant curator under its own brand. Traditional media still exists as many (notionally-)separate outlets, each with their own branding and editorial views to offer at least limited competition. But if this is the only viable model, it's still another way of saying that Youtube doesn't scale.

smileypete 6y ago

Also please have a look at Craig Tube/Vinyl TV, his channels have returned under a slightly different new name, but all the previous content has been lost from the old ones: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC40wiRfP8u2DrVvUm_VGcqw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC40wiRfP8u2DrVvUm_VGcqw https://www.youtube.com/user/CraigTube/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/CraigTube/videos Archived copies: https://web.archive.org/web/20200227065130/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC40wiRfP8u2DrVvUm_VGcqw https://web.archive.org/web/20200227065130/https://www.youtu... https://web.archive.org/web/20120625045947/https://www.youtube.com/user/CraigTube/videos https://web.archive.org/web/20120625045947/https://www.youtu...

at_a_remove 6y ago

I get that YouTube is attempting to pick through a torrent of stuff and that manual review is not feasible at such a scale. This is fine. This is self-evident. Saying what video and when in the video tripped what part of the magic algorithm is also doable. I think we both understand that the algo has to do the work, and it has to output a "yes/no" at the end. However, absolutely nothing forbids coming up with some kind of feedback or error message. The algorithm is doubtlessly complex, and was therefore debugged. Yes/no was not sufficient for debugging in its development. The mechanisms are present. Expose this to the user.

axaxs 6y ago

Why not offer a model of pay-for-support, instead of ramming us with ads and saying "LOL it's free so f off"? Not you specifically, or even Google specifically, but that seems to be a common theme. I'm sure plenty of people would be willing to pay a monthly fee to avoid exactly this.

seedless-sensat 6y ago

This comment could easily be interpreted as you speaking for Google.

altgoogler 6y ago
To clarify, I have no insider knowledge of this matter, I don't speak in any official context and all of my opinions are my own. I consider adding that to every Google related comment, but it gets tiring.
- SpelingBeeChamp 6y ago
  Why not just add it to your profile 'about' section?
  - altgoogler 6y ago
    That is a good suggestion. Done.

ethanwillis 6y ago

Why does he need to go through an appeal when it's had attention brought to it? Your appeal to scale here doesn't apply to this case.

altgoogler 6y ago
Because it's not clear why the channel was taken down in the first place. I don't have any insider information in that regard. I don't have access to the system that would tell me the reason. It's possible (however unlikely) that there was a justified reason for the take down. Has anybody heard from the original creator?

SmokeyHamster 6y ago

This takedown was presumably automated, which seems to be a bulk of the complaints. The algorithm to automate "objectionable content" seems to be horribly inaccurate. A better approach might to be to disable all automated takedowns, and don't take down anything except content manually flagged for illegal content, which are then manually reviewed. And before you say this won't scale, this is how Reddit moderation works, and seems to work for millions of posts made every day. Also, some sort of public log of takedowns and reasons in some form we could verify might also be nice. It's super creepy seeing someone "disappeared" from the Internet without so much as a peep from Youtube/Google.

kajumix 6y ago

There appears to be a disturbing consensus here that YouTube HAS to moderate. Why? If YouTube isn't held responsible for the content, and are treated merely as a carrier, you can imagine layer 2 filtering businesses emerge, if YouTube let them. YouTube could still be the repository, still make money, but get out of the business of deciding who gets to see what.

SpelingBeeChamp 6y ago
Because they already found out what happens when they don't moderate enough: major advertisers leave the platform entirely. With their money. YouTube is an internet advertising company like pretty much everything else Google. That they serve video content is ancillary.

bsder 6y ago

> They just don't have to operate on the same scale. If Google can't operate at scale, then maybe it just needs to be shut down so maybe someone who can will take their place. Google simply doesn't WANT to operate at scale because that will impact profits.

shard972 6y ago

> That being said, content moderation is a super hard problem They keep saying this and yet fire all their human moderators while turning obscene profits!

gameswithgo 6y ago

maybe quit posting about how its a hard problem and go work on fixing it?

sumedh 6y ago

> but the scale here is often forgotten. Is there a reason why Google cannot hire more people?

bassman9000 6y ago

There is far, far too much content posted to manually review. Then don't take it down, and let the Justice Department do it. Or accept being an editor. You can't have it both ways.