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Many will disagree, but this is the result of holding the plataforms accountable for what the users upload. The traffic is so inmense that they have to resort t

Many will disagree, but this is the result of holding the plataforms accountable for what the users upload. The traffic is so inmense that they have to resort to shitty algorithms. Because given Google's (any big tech company really) lack of morals, I don't believe they'd care to censor anything at all.

meibo 6y ago
This is very true and the main point people brought against the EU's article 17(the "upload filter") mandating a scan of all user-generated content for copyrighted material that was put in place by oh so many very well paid(and not just by the EU), conservative MEPs that have no clue about technology. Countries are struggling hard to put this into local law right now since it has to be by July this year - and as it turns out, to the surprise of no one, it's basically impossible to do so. The worst part must be that the law is retroactive, so a lot of old content will be removed and I'm sure no one will bother putting in a counter-notice for a six year old video. I'm very curious how small services like Peertube instances will handle this. Something funny from an iteration of the law in Germany: You are allowed to use 128x128 images of copyrighted content for "fair use"/without running into the chance of it getting taken down automatically, so good luck making quality content :)
- idownvoted 6y ago
  Retroactive Laws, at odds with reality, put into legislation by MEPs who are mostly even less able then their domestic parliament's party-colleagues and whose "consituency" usually doesn't even know who they are – Another example of the inherent flaws of the European Union. Guess VPN-Serversi within the evil Brexit Kingdom are going to be in high demand.
  - meibo 6y ago
    I'm very concerned for e.g. YouTube and the vast amount of content already on there, since they will most likely apply the more aggressive filtering worldwide - maybe solutions like Peertube instances that are clearly labeled "not for EU citizens" will become a thing if it really pans out the way it looks to be at the moment.
- doh 6y ago
  > it's basically impossible to do so. Well, not true. I built whole company that does exactly this. It's disappointing that YouTube is used as the standard of what technology can do and how these systems can work. We built system with the creator as a first class citizen. This means they are able to claim exceptions (as defined by law) before any action is taken. They are also able to utilize outside arbiters (WIPO, ...) free of charge to make independent decisions when there is an issue. This are just few highlights. But the reality is that just because YouTube built shitty system doesn't mean the whole Internet has to copy it.
  - meibo 6y ago
    It's nice that there's ways to make this friendlier for creators, but wouldn't most bigger services rather block and build a cheap system in-house than rely on a SaaS/b2b product, if you don't give it away for free or price very competitively? Are they actually open to implement better systems? Hope it's alright to ask this, it's obviously a very important thing that will be coming up for all of us in the future. Good luck with your work!
    - doh 6y ago
      > Hope it's alright to ask this Absolutely! We need to be held accountable. > It's nice that there's ways to make this friendlier for creators, but wouldn't most bigger services rather block and build a cheap system in-house than rely on a SaaS/b2b product, if you don't give it away for free or price very competitively? The biggest innovation of our company is not its technology but the business model. We in fact do give it free to all platforms, rightsholders and creators equally. How do we make money? When there is monetization occurring on the platform, we take %. It's literally the same model of VISA, where cards are free (ok, not all of them) but you pay for the transaction. Some platforms will still try to build their own internal system, similarly to YouTube's Content ID. However as it stands right now, they are not complaint with EUCD and even they do become complaint, they are retaining extreme liability. We, on the other hand, created a setup where we are able to take this liability from the hands of the platforms while providing best service possible. We also aligned our incentives with the success of everyone involved. If rightsholders over block, we don't get paid. If platforms can't attract creators because the system is too intrusive, we don't get paid. If creators don't benefit from our system, we don't get paid. We intentionally built this way. We made it free to allow widespread adoption. We can scale much further than CID (currently can process 1,100 hours of content a second, or 66,000 hours a minute; while guaranteeing 5 second response time with full license being issued) but we also spent last two years working with civic societies, copyright scholars and others to help us build balance system with processes that don't favor one side over the other. We have still long way to go, but I believe we are on a good path.
- laurent92 6y ago
  For those who want to keep tabs on the topic: Julia Reda, German EU MEP, is quite a critic reference on this topic – a good blog to follow. https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/censorship-machines/ https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/censorship-machines...
  - Kbelicius 6y ago
    This is outdated. That is for article 13 which became article 17 in the text that was voted on. Article 17 contains this paragraph: "The application of this Article shall not lead to any general monitoring obligation.". That line, as I interpret it, makes the whole blog post that you linked invalid.
- swiley 6y ago
  The past few EU laws had some modicum of reason and I thought people blocking the EU were stupid. But for this one, if I were running a Peertube instance I would block EU IPs and tell people to use TOR or at least ssh to a lineode if they wanted to see things.
  - Kbelicius 6y ago
    Why would you block EU? Article 17 explicitly states that its application shall not lead to any general monitoring obligation?.
- Kbelicius 6y ago
  > This is very true and the main point people brought against the EU's article 17(the "upload filter") mandating a scan of all user-generated content for copyrighted material How can that be your interpretation of article 17 when it literally says : "The application of this Article shall not lead to any general monitoring obligation." in it.
munk-a 6y ago
To clarify - you're saying that 10 more hours of a cat dancing to techno was not at all an issue for Google to host but that a conference about media censorship was the straw that broke the camel's back? Also, platforms are famously not accountable for what users upload - that's what makes them platforms and not editors.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  No, I don't think that's what ladyanita22 is saying at all.
- travismark 6y ago
  legally platforms are often not accountable for what users upload (sec 230), but over the past several years journalists and politicians have been demanding that platforms remove content that said journo-politicians don't like, so in a sense the platforms are made to be accountable - do it or else regulation
doh 6y ago
Platforms are however not accountable to what users upload (DMCA) and say (Section 230 CDA). This is also not technology issue but more specifically YouTube's approach to everything: do the absolute minimum and when it doesn't work blame it on others.
centimeter 6y ago
> Google's (any big tech company really) lack of morals Just because the company is amoral doesn't mean that political-moral entryists can't get their hands on the internal levers of power.
tal8d 6y ago
Many will disagree, correctly, because the DMCA exists.
somethoughts 6y ago
My pet theory is that both Google and Facebook need to create training set data for their proprietary AI content moderation algos. The content moderation algorithm is optimizing for three variables simultaneously - maximum number of videos hosted, maximum number of views, minimum number of lawsuits/negative press articles written/anti-Big Tech tweets. The algorithm can't know if its truly maximizing the first two without letting the last one trigger every so often. We are just witnessing/participating in the live dataset they are testing on.
azangru 6y ago
> Because given Google's (any big tech company really) lack of morals, I don't believe they'd care to censor anything at all. Oh, come on now! A big company may lack morals, true, but in order to appease the most vocal, acutely political and obsessively moral part of the general public, including its own employees, it needs to conform to the societal demands on it. How else would you explain the appearance of banners linking to official Covid-related sites under videos about Covid, or pulling down of the videos that question the official Covid-related policies (such as lockdowns), or banners under videos from state-sponsored channels such as RT, or removal of videos that question the outcome of the US presidential election, or, well, most of the articles on the Youtube blog, really [0]. They are firmly placing themselves on specific sides of political, cultural, or ethical divides. [0] - https://blog.youtube/news-and-events https://blog.youtube/news-and-events
- tal8d 6y ago
  Many will unironically justify their actions by declaring themselves to be "on the right side of history". The phrase has an unsurprising origin.
  - lsh123 6y ago
    “This is all for the greater good”
    - tal8d 6y ago
      It is closer to "Deus vult" than "Think of the children", one is ridiculously presumptuous and the other is simply manipulative.
- sofixa 6y ago
  > They are firmly placing themselves on specific sides of political, cultural, or ethical divides Since when is public health a political, cultural or ethical issue ?
  - krapp 6y ago
Duwensatzaj 6y ago
> I don't believe they'd care to censor anything at all. Old Google maybe. The kind of Google employee who broke down in 2016 asking “How could we let this happen?” has a very different approach.
jariel 6y ago
They care a lot about advertisers and lawsuits at very minimum. Nobody wants their video ad up against 'controversial' material. That said, there has to be a way to redress these grievances. Of the many things we could start to regulated it's that: 1) If there is a take-down, they have to tell you why and give you a few days to dispute or to open a grievance. 2) Grievances have to be addressed. I don't mind even if there is a fee - it's reasonable for Google to require $100 to address a grievance, after all, they are hosting for free. Alternatively, they could be required to have a 'paid version' without ads in which the bar for issues was considerably higher. That's just off the of my head, so not exactly well thought out. The point is, however, they're reaching a scale whereby some of these platforms are equivalent to a public good. It's like they are becoming broadcast or telecoms, which were always subject to regulation.

meibo 6y ago

This is very true and the main point people brought against the EU's article 17(the "upload filter") mandating a scan of all user-generated content for copyrighted material that was put in place by oh so many very well paid(and not just by the EU), conservative MEPs that have no clue about technology. Countries are struggling hard to put this into local law right now since it has to be by July this year - and as it turns out, to the surprise of no one, it's basically impossible to do so. The worst part must be that the law is retroactive, so a lot of old content will be removed and I'm sure no one will bother putting in a counter-notice for a six year old video. I'm very curious how small services like Peertube instances will handle this. Something funny from an iteration of the law in Germany: You are allowed to use 128x128 images of copyrighted content for "fair use"/without running into the chance of it getting taken down automatically, so good luck making quality content :)

idownvoted 6y ago
Retroactive Laws, at odds with reality, put into legislation by MEPs who are mostly even less able then their domestic parliament's party-colleagues and whose "consituency" usually doesn't even know who they are – Another example of the inherent flaws of the European Union. Guess VPN-Serversi within the evil Brexit Kingdom are going to be in high demand.
- meibo 6y ago
  I'm very concerned for e.g. YouTube and the vast amount of content already on there, since they will most likely apply the more aggressive filtering worldwide - maybe solutions like Peertube instances that are clearly labeled "not for EU citizens" will become a thing if it really pans out the way it looks to be at the moment.
doh 6y ago
> it's basically impossible to do so. Well, not true. I built whole company that does exactly this. It's disappointing that YouTube is used as the standard of what technology can do and how these systems can work. We built system with the creator as a first class citizen. This means they are able to claim exceptions (as defined by law) before any action is taken. They are also able to utilize outside arbiters (WIPO, ...) free of charge to make independent decisions when there is an issue. This are just few highlights. But the reality is that just because YouTube built shitty system doesn't mean the whole Internet has to copy it.
- meibo 6y ago
  It's nice that there's ways to make this friendlier for creators, but wouldn't most bigger services rather block and build a cheap system in-house than rely on a SaaS/b2b product, if you don't give it away for free or price very competitively? Are they actually open to implement better systems? Hope it's alright to ask this, it's obviously a very important thing that will be coming up for all of us in the future. Good luck with your work!
  - doh 6y ago
    > Hope it's alright to ask this Absolutely! We need to be held accountable. > It's nice that there's ways to make this friendlier for creators, but wouldn't most bigger services rather block and build a cheap system in-house than rely on a SaaS/b2b product, if you don't give it away for free or price very competitively? The biggest innovation of our company is not its technology but the business model. We in fact do give it free to all platforms, rightsholders and creators equally. How do we make money? When there is monetization occurring on the platform, we take %. It's literally the same model of VISA, where cards are free (ok, not all of them) but you pay for the transaction. Some platforms will still try to build their own internal system, similarly to YouTube's Content ID. However as it stands right now, they are not complaint with EUCD and even they do become complaint, they are retaining extreme liability. We, on the other hand, created a setup where we are able to take this liability from the hands of the platforms while providing best service possible. We also aligned our incentives with the success of everyone involved. If rightsholders over block, we don't get paid. If platforms can't attract creators because the system is too intrusive, we don't get paid. If creators don't benefit from our system, we don't get paid. We intentionally built this way. We made it free to allow widespread adoption. We can scale much further than CID (currently can process 1,100 hours of content a second, or 66,000 hours a minute; while guaranteeing 5 second response time with full license being issued) but we also spent last two years working with civic societies, copyright scholars and others to help us build balance system with processes that don't favor one side over the other. We have still long way to go, but I believe we are on a good path.
laurent92 6y ago
For those who want to keep tabs on the topic: Julia Reda, German EU MEP, is quite a critic reference on this topic – a good blog to follow. https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/censorship-machines/ https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/censorship-machines...
- Kbelicius 6y ago
  This is outdated. That is for article 13 which became article 17 in the text that was voted on. Article 17 contains this paragraph: "The application of this Article shall not lead to any general monitoring obligation.". That line, as I interpret it, makes the whole blog post that you linked invalid.
swiley 6y ago
The past few EU laws had some modicum of reason and I thought people blocking the EU were stupid. But for this one, if I were running a Peertube instance I would block EU IPs and tell people to use TOR or at least ssh to a lineode if they wanted to see things.
- Kbelicius 6y ago
  Why would you block EU? Article 17 explicitly states that its application shall not lead to any general monitoring obligation?.
Kbelicius 6y ago
> This is very true and the main point people brought against the EU's article 17(the "upload filter") mandating a scan of all user-generated content for copyrighted material How can that be your interpretation of article 17 when it literally says : "The application of this Article shall not lead to any general monitoring obligation." in it.

munk-a 6y ago

To clarify - you're saying that 10 more hours of a cat dancing to techno was not at all an issue for Google to host but that a conference about media censorship was the straw that broke the camel's back? Also, platforms are famously not accountable for what users upload - that's what makes them platforms and not editors.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
No, I don't think that's what ladyanita22 is saying at all.
travismark 6y ago
legally platforms are often not accountable for what users upload (sec 230), but over the past several years journalists and politicians have been demanding that platforms remove content that said journo-politicians don't like, so in a sense the platforms are made to be accountable - do it or else regulation

doh 6y ago

Platforms are however not accountable to what users upload (DMCA) and say (Section 230 CDA). This is also not technology issue but more specifically YouTube's approach to everything: do the absolute minimum and when it doesn't work blame it on others.

centimeter 6y ago

> Google's (any big tech company really) lack of morals Just because the company is amoral doesn't mean that political-moral entryists can't get their hands on the internal levers of power.

tal8d 6y ago

Many will disagree, correctly, because the DMCA exists.

somethoughts 6y ago

My pet theory is that both Google and Facebook need to create training set data for their proprietary AI content moderation algos. The content moderation algorithm is optimizing for three variables simultaneously - maximum number of videos hosted, maximum number of views, minimum number of lawsuits/negative press articles written/anti-Big Tech tweets. The algorithm can't know if its truly maximizing the first two without letting the last one trigger every so often. We are just witnessing/participating in the live dataset they are testing on.

azangru 6y ago

> Because given Google's (any big tech company really) lack of morals, I don't believe they'd care to censor anything at all. Oh, come on now! A big company may lack morals, true, but in order to appease the most vocal, acutely political and obsessively moral part of the general public, including its own employees, it needs to conform to the societal demands on it. How else would you explain the appearance of banners linking to official Covid-related sites under videos about Covid, or pulling down of the videos that question the official Covid-related policies (such as lockdowns), or banners under videos from state-sponsored channels such as RT, or removal of videos that question the outcome of the US presidential election, or, well, most of the articles on the Youtube blog, really [0]. They are firmly placing themselves on specific sides of political, cultural, or ethical divides. [0] - https://blog.youtube/news-and-events https://blog.youtube/news-and-events

tal8d 6y ago
Many will unironically justify their actions by declaring themselves to be "on the right side of history". The phrase has an unsurprising origin.
- lsh123 6y ago
  “This is all for the greater good”
  - tal8d 6y ago
    It is closer to "Deus vult" than "Think of the children", one is ridiculously presumptuous and the other is simply manipulative.
sofixa 6y ago
> They are firmly placing themselves on specific sides of political, cultural, or ethical divides Since when is public health a political, cultural or ethical issue ?
- krapp 6y ago

Duwensatzaj 6y ago

> I don't believe they'd care to censor anything at all. Old Google maybe. The kind of Google employee who broke down in 2016 asking “How could we let this happen?” has a very different approach.

jariel 6y ago

They care a lot about advertisers and lawsuits at very minimum. Nobody wants their video ad up against 'controversial' material. That said, there has to be a way to redress these grievances. Of the many things we could start to regulated it's that: 1) If there is a take-down, they have to tell you why and give you a few days to dispute or to open a grievance. 2) Grievances have to be addressed. I don't mind even if there is a fee - it's reasonable for Google to require $100 to address a grievance, after all, they are hosting for free. Alternatively, they could be required to have a 'paid version' without ads in which the bar for issues was considerably higher. That's just off the of my head, so not exactly well thought out. The point is, however, they're reaching a scale whereby some of these platforms are equivalent to a public good. It's like they are becoming broadcast or telecoms, which were always subject to regulation.