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They’re getting hammered from the left for insufficient moderation of content, and from the right for overly aggressive moderation of content. It’s a lose-lose

They’re getting hammered from the left for insufficient moderation of content, and from the right for overly aggressive moderation of content. It’s a lose-lose where the only real option is to remove extraneous features that enable users to upload content visible to others. Even if there was a standard of moderation that would satisfy everyone, there’s too much to moderate.

reaperducer 6y ago
Even if there was a standard of moderation that would satisfy everyone, there’s too much to moderate. If only Google had a half a trillion dollars to spend on something other that spying on people. And if only there were 35 million people out of work. But, alas, poor sweet simple Google cannot possibly lie in the bed it made.
- at_a_remove 6y ago
  Ah, so in this version you have thirty-five million people who could agree on what is offensive. That's a daunting task without the "million" involved to begin with.
  - eyelidlessness 6y ago
    When you get hired as a regulation enforcer in any other scenario, it’s not your opinion but the actual regulations that determine your recourse. If it’s up to the opinions of the enforcement regime, that’s because the rules are unclear or opaque.
    - creato 6y ago
      The fact that you believe something like content moderation can be boiled down to some hard and fast regulations, let alone a set of regulations that people could agree on, is honestly kind of scary.
    - at_a_remove 6y ago
      I've been on various forums with "moderation standards." The different moderators still have different approaches and different reputations for being a soft touch or heavy-handed. Human moderators, despite having standards or guidelines in front of them, are not consistent. When confronted about it, they will cite interpretations, "reading the room," discretion, and so on. We have seen this scenario play out in censorship standards, various authorities, and so on over the decades. It never works as intended.
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    in this version you have thirty-five million people who could agree on what is offensive Yes, because that's literally what the parent posited in his scenario: "Even if there was a standard of moderation that would satisfy everyone"
  - VLM 6y ago
    The point is not to censor to match current sensibilities but to censor to push society in a direction. It doesn't matter if almost everyone hates what they're selling as long as they eventually push hard enough to sell it. They are, after all, an advertising company at heart.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  Google made the bed for free and others wanted to pee in it. The rest blamed Google for the bed having pee in it and demanded they do something, including post 24 hour guards around the bed. I would take the bed away too.
  - mdoms 6y ago
    Ah yes, YouTube, that product that Google made and that doesn't bring them any revenue. Two things that are definitely true.
    - rrdharan 6y ago
      You realize that revenue and profit are distinct? Uber has massive revenues as do many other capital intensive businesses. That doesn't make them profitable.
      - fakedang 6y ago
        Last time I checked, YouTube ads were a very profitable business. The parent to your comment chose revenue likely to note that Google makes money from the bed ie. it's not a service given away for free.
        MattGaiser 6y ago
        The bed referred to the community generated subtitles, not YouTube overall.
        martinpw 6y ago
        Where did you check this? AFAIK YouTube profits (if any) are not broken out anywhere. At least not as of early this year: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/03/google-still-isnt-telling-us-about-youtube-and-cloud-profits.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/03/google-still-isnt-telling-us... Alphabet said YouTube ad revenue in the first quarter reached $4.7 billion, while cloud sales came in at $2.6 billion. The company broke those numbers out for the first time, but it’s still not disclosing profit figures for the units.
- spc476 6y ago
  Some math shows that can't work. Half a trillion to 35 million is US$15,000 per person. For one year. And people will complain that US$15,000 is not enough to live on. What happens in year two?
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    Google goes bust? That's not likely, is it? Does Google have no concept of how YouTube drives ad sales and other synergies? Or of how much goodwill is worth?
    - spc476 6y ago
      Does any company make $500,000,000 a year?
crawsome 6y ago
That's a different argument. The justification for the removal was spam, no?
- dodobirdlord 6y ago
  This seems in line with other recent actions like disabling comments on broad swaths of YouTube videos. The given reason may be spam but it looks like there’s a pattern of surface area reduction.
wwweston 6y ago
> from the right for overly aggressive moderation of content. Yeah, content platforms aren't getting hammered from the right because of patterns of overly aggressive moderation of content anymore than conservatives complain about underrepresentation in "the media" because it's actually true. More likely it happens because: * Lots of people really have no principled philosophy of free speech beyond wanting their own privileged. And rather than understanding it existing in tension with other principles inside a classically liberal social system, it's understood primarily as a personal privilege to be indulged absent attendant responsibilities or potential checks. * By temperament people on the right are especially invested in status over other values and have a stronger tendency to take things that don't privilege their ingroup and worldview over competing outgroup/worldviews as persecution. Also tend towards below average in openness to new ideas. And of course, to the extent that your worldview is essentially a tribalized version of the fundamental attribution error writ large, introspection isn't usually among most practiced skills. * There are political operators on the right who know full well that their particular ingroup doesn't particularly suffer from a lack of platforms for discourse about their ideas. But they push the idea of persecution anyway because they know it works as political currency for the reasons above and they can cultivate a following that sees themselves as embattled rather than just engaged in discourse, and that in turn makes the process of any actual moderation or other consequences for speech loaded and lets them work the refs, which is exactly what most of the complaints about Google and FB are. * Operators targeting the right have become especially invested in disinformation and propaganda. This isn't even questionable in the age of Plandemic/America's Frontline Doctors whatever, and there were strong clues once Bannon "flood the zone with shit" tactics had become public knowledge. The left has its own issues with purity tests and cancel culture running amok among other things but that's as often the classic circular firing squad as it is a line in left-right discourse. And I do not envy any content platform that has to sort this out. But at the same time, let's be circumspect about whether/why the right really faces any kind of systemic uphill battle on the most popular content platforms.
- dodobirdlord 6y ago
  I didn’t say that there’s any legitimacy to the attacks from the right. But nonetheless they exist and they are a waste of resources to address and are a convenient excuse for a hostile government administration to harass the company.
raxxorrax 6y ago
I have the demand that they stop their abusive tracking. Would they ever do that? No. So I guess they want to become TV to pacify advertisers.
specialist 6y ago
Core problem is coupling "virality" and moderation. They're incompatible goals. Remove the gamification and few would care that moderation lags. The platforms try to mitigate virality with automated moderation. Anything to preserve that ad revenue. The only societal fix is to slow down or break the engagement feedback loops. Something the platforms won't do voluntarily.

reaperducer 6y ago

Even if there was a standard of moderation that would satisfy everyone, there’s too much to moderate. If only Google had a half a trillion dollars to spend on something other that spying on people. And if only there were 35 million people out of work. But, alas, poor sweet simple Google cannot possibly lie in the bed it made.

at_a_remove 6y ago
Ah, so in this version you have thirty-five million people who could agree on what is offensive. That's a daunting task without the "million" involved to begin with.
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  When you get hired as a regulation enforcer in any other scenario, it’s not your opinion but the actual regulations that determine your recourse. If it’s up to the opinions of the enforcement regime, that’s because the rules are unclear or opaque.
  - creato 6y ago
    The fact that you believe something like content moderation can be boiled down to some hard and fast regulations, let alone a set of regulations that people could agree on, is honestly kind of scary.
  - at_a_remove 6y ago
    I've been on various forums with "moderation standards." The different moderators still have different approaches and different reputations for being a soft touch or heavy-handed. Human moderators, despite having standards or guidelines in front of them, are not consistent. When confronted about it, they will cite interpretations, "reading the room," discretion, and so on. We have seen this scenario play out in censorship standards, various authorities, and so on over the decades. It never works as intended.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  in this version you have thirty-five million people who could agree on what is offensive Yes, because that's literally what the parent posited in his scenario: "Even if there was a standard of moderation that would satisfy everyone"
- VLM 6y ago
  The point is not to censor to match current sensibilities but to censor to push society in a direction. It doesn't matter if almost everyone hates what they're selling as long as they eventually push hard enough to sell it. They are, after all, an advertising company at heart.
MattGaiser 6y ago
Google made the bed for free and others wanted to pee in it. The rest blamed Google for the bed having pee in it and demanded they do something, including post 24 hour guards around the bed. I would take the bed away too.
- mdoms 6y ago
  Ah yes, YouTube, that product that Google made and that doesn't bring them any revenue. Two things that are definitely true.
  - rrdharan 6y ago
    You realize that revenue and profit are distinct? Uber has massive revenues as do many other capital intensive businesses. That doesn't make them profitable.
    - fakedang 6y ago
      Last time I checked, YouTube ads were a very profitable business. The parent to your comment chose revenue likely to note that Google makes money from the bed ie. it's not a service given away for free.
      - MattGaiser 6y ago
        The bed referred to the community generated subtitles, not YouTube overall.
      - martinpw 6y ago
        Where did you check this? AFAIK YouTube profits (if any) are not broken out anywhere. At least not as of early this year: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/03/google-still-isnt-telling-us-about-youtube-and-cloud-profits.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/03/google-still-isnt-telling-us... Alphabet said YouTube ad revenue in the first quarter reached $4.7 billion, while cloud sales came in at $2.6 billion. The company broke those numbers out for the first time, but it’s still not disclosing profit figures for the units.
spc476 6y ago
Some math shows that can't work. Half a trillion to 35 million is US$15,000 per person. For one year. And people will complain that US$15,000 is not enough to live on. What happens in year two?
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  Google goes bust? That's not likely, is it? Does Google have no concept of how YouTube drives ad sales and other synergies? Or of how much goodwill is worth?
  - spc476 6y ago
    Does any company make $500,000,000 a year?

crawsome 6y ago

That's a different argument. The justification for the removal was spam, no?

dodobirdlord 6y ago
This seems in line with other recent actions like disabling comments on broad swaths of YouTube videos. The given reason may be spam but it looks like there’s a pattern of surface area reduction.

wwweston 6y ago

> from the right for overly aggressive moderation of content. Yeah, content platforms aren't getting hammered from the right because of patterns of overly aggressive moderation of content anymore than conservatives complain about underrepresentation in "the media" because it's actually true. More likely it happens because: * Lots of people really have no principled philosophy of free speech beyond wanting their own privileged. And rather than understanding it existing in tension with other principles inside a classically liberal social system, it's understood primarily as a personal privilege to be indulged absent attendant responsibilities or potential checks. * By temperament people on the right are especially invested in status over other values and have a stronger tendency to take things that don't privilege their ingroup and worldview over competing outgroup/worldviews as persecution. Also tend towards below average in openness to new ideas. And of course, to the extent that your worldview is essentially a tribalized version of the fundamental attribution error writ large, introspection isn't usually among most practiced skills. * There are political operators on the right who know full well that their particular ingroup doesn't particularly suffer from a lack of platforms for discourse about their ideas. But they push the idea of persecution anyway because they know it works as political currency for the reasons above and they can cultivate a following that sees themselves as embattled rather than just engaged in discourse, and that in turn makes the process of any actual moderation or other consequences for speech loaded and lets them work the refs, which is exactly what most of the complaints about Google and FB are. * Operators targeting the right have become especially invested in disinformation and propaganda. This isn't even questionable in the age of Plandemic/America's Frontline Doctors whatever, and there were strong clues once Bannon "flood the zone with shit" tactics had become public knowledge. The left has its own issues with purity tests and cancel culture running amok among other things but that's as often the classic circular firing squad as it is a line in left-right discourse. And I do not envy any content platform that has to sort this out. But at the same time, let's be circumspect about whether/why the right really faces any kind of systemic uphill battle on the most popular content platforms.

dodobirdlord 6y ago
I didn’t say that there’s any legitimacy to the attacks from the right. But nonetheless they exist and they are a waste of resources to address and are a convenient excuse for a hostile government administration to harass the company.

raxxorrax 6y ago

I have the demand that they stop their abusive tracking. Would they ever do that? No. So I guess they want to become TV to pacify advertisers.

specialist 6y ago

Core problem is coupling "virality" and moderation. They're incompatible goals. Remove the gamification and few would care that moderation lags. The platforms try to mitigate virality with automated moderation. Anything to preserve that ad revenue. The only societal fix is to slow down or break the engagement feedback loops. Something the platforms won't do voluntarily.