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"Some people will abuse it, therefore no-one should have it" is a strongly growing mentality in these days, and woe betide us if we keep pursuing it deeper with

"Some people will abuse it, therefore no-one should have it" is a strongly growing mentality in these days, and woe betide us if we keep pursuing it deeper without proper consideration for each case.

MattGaiser 6y ago
The problem is that nice things require guards. Unless the nice thing is profitable, it cannot exist as such things require that guards be paid for.
- thombat 6y ago
  But seemingly it already has guards: apparently the captions have to be approved by the video uploader before being displayed to viewers.
  - missedthecue 6y ago
    If you look at very popular YouTubers, they will have captions translated in 20 languages or more. I'm not sure uploader approval is doing much in that case.
    - thombat 6y ago
      I wildly guess that you may find long-standing relationships between those popular creators and the caption writers, such that they've built some measure of trust. Captions contributed by a new author might get vetted more closely, e.g. at least run through an online translator to see whether it's plainly wrong / torrent of insults / etc.
rrmm 6y ago
I think the real reason is more that detecting and handling abuse would require personnel. This is the one area that makes google and youtube really successful: they've managed to offer services with an absolute minimum (or outright absence of (human) customer service). This cuts out a lot of overhead. It also lets them avoid a lot of difficult decisions wrt policing speech which is something youtube has established a long history of being awful at.
- an_opabinia 6y ago
  Yes, they are very successful at eliminating the human being. Who needs to worry about human being concerns, like being hard of hearing? Anyway, I know you're not apologizing for them. Google already has 125k+ employees. They could hire 10k+ more, it wouldn't really matter. This is such a bad look, what were they thinking?
bleepblorp 6y ago
Fear of abuse is just the excuse entities use to avoid providing services they have other reasons to oppose. Heavily abused services continue to exist if they're profitable enough or sufficiently socially useful. All adtech and most social media is both abusive and socially destructive, but it's profitable enough for the Right people that there's no serious prospect of it being shut down. The road network sees a lot of abuse (e.g. transportation of illegal property, impaired driving, simply allowing criminals to move freely) but it's too socially useful to shut down. Fear of abuse is just a cover for withdrawing, or failing to provide, services for other, unstated, reasons.
- coolgeek 6y ago
  You don't have to look any further than YouTube comments to see this abuse vector
m4rtink 6y ago
As if all the atrocities of "collective responsibility" have not been enough in the past...

"Some people will abuse it, therefore no-one should have it" is a strongly growing mentality in these days, and woe betide us if we keep pursuing it deeper without proper consideration for each case.

MattGaiser 6y ago

The problem is that nice things require guards. Unless the nice thing is profitable, it cannot exist as such things require that guards be paid for.

thombat 6y ago
But seemingly it already has guards: apparently the captions have to be approved by the video uploader before being displayed to viewers.
- missedthecue 6y ago
  If you look at very popular YouTubers, they will have captions translated in 20 languages or more. I'm not sure uploader approval is doing much in that case.
  - thombat 6y ago
    I wildly guess that you may find long-standing relationships between those popular creators and the caption writers, such that they've built some measure of trust. Captions contributed by a new author might get vetted more closely, e.g. at least run through an online translator to see whether it's plainly wrong / torrent of insults / etc.

rrmm 6y ago

I think the real reason is more that detecting and handling abuse would require personnel. This is the one area that makes google and youtube really successful: they've managed to offer services with an absolute minimum (or outright absence of (human) customer service). This cuts out a lot of overhead. It also lets them avoid a lot of difficult decisions wrt policing speech which is something youtube has established a long history of being awful at.

an_opabinia 6y ago
Yes, they are very successful at eliminating the human being. Who needs to worry about human being concerns, like being hard of hearing? Anyway, I know you're not apologizing for them. Google already has 125k+ employees. They could hire 10k+ more, it wouldn't really matter. This is such a bad look, what were they thinking?

bleepblorp 6y ago

Fear of abuse is just the excuse entities use to avoid providing services they have other reasons to oppose. Heavily abused services continue to exist if they're profitable enough or sufficiently socially useful. All adtech and most social media is both abusive and socially destructive, but it's profitable enough for the Right people that there's no serious prospect of it being shut down. The road network sees a lot of abuse (e.g. transportation of illegal property, impaired driving, simply allowing criminals to move freely) but it's too socially useful to shut down. Fear of abuse is just a cover for withdrawing, or failing to provide, services for other, unstated, reasons.

coolgeek 6y ago
You don't have to look any further than YouTube comments to see this abuse vector

m4rtink 6y ago

As if all the atrocities of "collective responsibility" have not been enough in the past...