5 ms·

Tech is very special in a way where they can get away with claiming that quite a lot is not possible at their scale. Imagine this for other industries. "We can

by foepys 6y ago

Tech is very special in a way where they can get away with claiming that quite a lot is not possible at their scale. Imagine this for other industries. "We cannot do quality control before sending products out. We make too much stuff." "We don't check all tickets for the venue. Too many people." "Cleaning the entire building is not possible. It's too much space."

b3kart 6y ago
All the examples you provide have to do with tangible, physical things. Tech is in some sense special because we're dealing with intangibles. It costs a bad actor next to nothing to upload the same video with harmful content to YouTube a thousand times, a million times even. And YouTube has to deal with all of this. That's why they still use physical ballots in most elections: as soon as you're dealing with physical things the costs for a bad actor to do bad things at scale balloon up.
- SamoyedFurFluff 6y ago
  But a bad actor can only do so much if manual reviews are involved. If they’re a completely new account because their previous accounts have been banned, accessing on a new device because their previous Alphabet-surveilled fingerprint had been banned, or on a VPN because their IP has been banned, YouTube could just implement manual review which would slow such a bad actor down. And if the intent is to clog up the manual review process with whatever copies of a single illegal video Alphabet we already have technology that is used to automatically identify specific videos or images and remove them, usually for purposes of preventing the spread of illegal depictions of children.
  - water8 6y ago
    If you change the MAC address on your cable modem you can get tons of different IPs. Same thing with cellular networks. With raspberryPis so cheap, fingerprints don't work that well for all devices.
    - SamoyedFurFluff 6y ago
      There are relatively few people capable of doing this compared to the population of the world that uses YouTube, and there’s even fewer people who, even with capacity, will be doing this just to upload illegal content into YouTube. I think this sizes down the problem of manual review quite easily.
      - water8 6y ago
        So what you’re saying is that their’s market for obtaining different ip numbers.. its almost exactly like a commercial VPN service
  - adrianN 6y ago
    IPs are very cheap. Botnets are huge and residential IPs are easy to come by.
- sgift 6y ago
  But Tech also enjoys the benefits of this. You make a product once, sell it thousands of times. Or allow thousands/millions of people access without much overhead. I'm simplifying here of course, but compared to e.g. a machine which you have to produce new for each customer I think we are in a very good situation. And with that advantage comes a price tech should be forced to pay.
da_chicken 6y ago
Very much so. Tech companies have a way of confusing "this is difficult" with "this is impossible," or "this is impossible" with "this isn't free," or "this is impossible" with "we don't want to."
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  It is impossible is the polite way of telling you that your idea is incredibly illbconsidered and contrary to the actual purpose of the program and please fuck off and get cancer. Linus Torvalds was one of the few who operated under that style. Sadly for transparency and clarity it is the diplomatic ignore the elephant in the room which has become the standard. I blame all of the professional emotional manipulator sophist whiners who don't even try to understand reality. "Do it yourself then." is embedded in it as a message to fuck off because everyone knows they either cannot do it because they asked in the first place in those terms.
- LegitShady 6y ago
  They are incentivized to have that confusion. So no surprise.
adrianN 6y ago
There are few other industries where users expect to get everything for free.
manigandham 6y ago
There's a massive difference between centralized production of physical goods vs user-generated digital assets. Scale itself becomes the challenge.
ghaff 6y ago
And those things are paid for. It would be perfectly reasonable if you had to pay per minute for uploading video and people had to pay for a subscription to watch it. That's just not what is expected for a mass platform today.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  Vimeo has an “uploader pays” system (of sorts), and, while it prevents garbage on the platform, it stops creators from wanting to use it when YouTube is free.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Yes. It's of course a perfectly valid (and widely-used) model to pay for hosting. But, by and large, only "serious" users who probably otherwise have a business model will do so. And there will inevitably be far less content on the platform. On the one hand, I think it's sort of unfortunate that so much of the Web has come to be about "free" access (though paying for access with attention and time) but that does come from the perspective of someone who would be able and happy to pay with money instead.
- int_19h 6y ago
  It's expected because the expectations are set by the existing platforms. And the reason why Google specifically is actively promoting those expectations, is that it makes ads the only viable business model for content creators; and Google's primary source of income is their ad services, so it maintains their dominant market position.
BigGreenTurtle 6y ago
"We cannot do quality control before sending products out. We make too much stuff." Ever buy strawberries? "We don't check all tickets for the venue. Too many people." Train conductors often check tickets after the train has started moving. "Cleaning the entire building is not possible. It's too much space." Climate change. Dirty streets.
anticensor 6y ago
"We don't check all tickets for the venue. Too many people." This happens in some public transport operators already.
- jobigoud 6y ago
  It's argued that in some cities public transport systems the price of the ticket doesn't cover the cost of its own infrastructure, the machines to buy them, the ones to validate them the salaries of the agents verifying, etc. It can be more cost effective to drop the concept of ticket and make it a free public service.
  - anticensor 6y ago
    I agree with all that, but some central governments such as Turkey go to great lengths to make public transport a paid service. The best public transport is the free one indeed.

by foepys 6y ago

b3kart 6y ago

All the examples you provide have to do with tangible, physical things. Tech is in some sense special because we're dealing with intangibles. It costs a bad actor next to nothing to upload the same video with harmful content to YouTube a thousand times, a million times even. And YouTube has to deal with all of this. That's why they still use physical ballots in most elections: as soon as you're dealing with physical things the costs for a bad actor to do bad things at scale balloon up.

SamoyedFurFluff 6y ago
But a bad actor can only do so much if manual reviews are involved. If they’re a completely new account because their previous accounts have been banned, accessing on a new device because their previous Alphabet-surveilled fingerprint had been banned, or on a VPN because their IP has been banned, YouTube could just implement manual review which would slow such a bad actor down. And if the intent is to clog up the manual review process with whatever copies of a single illegal video Alphabet we already have technology that is used to automatically identify specific videos or images and remove them, usually for purposes of preventing the spread of illegal depictions of children.
- water8 6y ago
  If you change the MAC address on your cable modem you can get tons of different IPs. Same thing with cellular networks. With raspberryPis so cheap, fingerprints don't work that well for all devices.
  - SamoyedFurFluff 6y ago
    There are relatively few people capable of doing this compared to the population of the world that uses YouTube, and there’s even fewer people who, even with capacity, will be doing this just to upload illegal content into YouTube. I think this sizes down the problem of manual review quite easily.
    - water8 6y ago
      So what you’re saying is that their’s market for obtaining different ip numbers.. its almost exactly like a commercial VPN service
- adrianN 6y ago
  IPs are very cheap. Botnets are huge and residential IPs are easy to come by.
sgift 6y ago
But Tech also enjoys the benefits of this. You make a product once, sell it thousands of times. Or allow thousands/millions of people access without much overhead. I'm simplifying here of course, but compared to e.g. a machine which you have to produce new for each customer I think we are in a very good situation. And with that advantage comes a price tech should be forced to pay.

da_chicken 6y ago

Very much so. Tech companies have a way of confusing "this is difficult" with "this is impossible," or "this is impossible" with "this isn't free," or "this is impossible" with "we don't want to."

Nasrudith 6y ago
It is impossible is the polite way of telling you that your idea is incredibly illbconsidered and contrary to the actual purpose of the program and please fuck off and get cancer. Linus Torvalds was one of the few who operated under that style. Sadly for transparency and clarity it is the diplomatic ignore the elephant in the room which has become the standard. I blame all of the professional emotional manipulator sophist whiners who don't even try to understand reality. "Do it yourself then." is embedded in it as a message to fuck off because everyone knows they either cannot do it because they asked in the first place in those terms.
LegitShady 6y ago
They are incentivized to have that confusion. So no surprise.

adrianN 6y ago

There are few other industries where users expect to get everything for free.

manigandham 6y ago

There's a massive difference between centralized production of physical goods vs user-generated digital assets. Scale itself becomes the challenge.

ghaff 6y ago

And those things are paid for. It would be perfectly reasonable if you had to pay per minute for uploading video and people had to pay for a subscription to watch it. That's just not what is expected for a mass platform today.

colejohnson66 6y ago
Vimeo has an “uploader pays” system (of sorts), and, while it prevents garbage on the platform, it stops creators from wanting to use it when YouTube is free.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Yes. It's of course a perfectly valid (and widely-used) model to pay for hosting. But, by and large, only "serious" users who probably otherwise have a business model will do so. And there will inevitably be far less content on the platform. On the one hand, I think it's sort of unfortunate that so much of the Web has come to be about "free" access (though paying for access with attention and time) but that does come from the perspective of someone who would be able and happy to pay with money instead.
int_19h 6y ago
It's expected because the expectations are set by the existing platforms. And the reason why Google specifically is actively promoting those expectations, is that it makes ads the only viable business model for content creators; and Google's primary source of income is their ad services, so it maintains their dominant market position.

BigGreenTurtle 6y ago

"We cannot do quality control before sending products out. We make too much stuff." Ever buy strawberries? "We don't check all tickets for the venue. Too many people." Train conductors often check tickets after the train has started moving. "Cleaning the entire building is not possible. It's too much space." Climate change. Dirty streets.

anticensor 6y ago

"We don't check all tickets for the venue. Too many people." This happens in some public transport operators already.

jobigoud 6y ago
It's argued that in some cities public transport systems the price of the ticket doesn't cover the cost of its own infrastructure, the machines to buy them, the ones to validate them the salaries of the agents verifying, etc. It can be more cost effective to drop the concept of ticket and make it a free public service.
- anticensor 6y ago
  I agree with all that, but some central governments such as Turkey go to great lengths to make public transport a paid service. The best public transport is the free one indeed.