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I think the argument is framed as wanting a human during take down dispute, not pre-approval. There's no need to treat this as an absolute. Why are human contac

I think the argument is framed as wanting a human during take down dispute, not pre-approval. There's no need to treat this as an absolute. Why are human contact and reasonable expediency considered mutually exclusive? There is a lot of room in the middle. Can allow human dispute resolution for non-free accounts (i.e. paid or earning). Can limit upload frequency site wide while dispute/abuse queues are backed up (knowing YouTube would be incentivized to prevent backup). Can have non-profit reviewer company that charge very minimal amounts for human review. Etc. Let's be clear, the lack of humans anywhere in the pipeline for uploaders is because they don't have to, not because it is impossible. Having said that, I really hope we do not see government intervention here.

b3kart 6y ago
Agree wholeheartedly: there's definitely a spectrum between what Google are doing atm and full human moderation. I am a strong believer in using AI to augment humans, not replace them. Nudging Google towards putting more humans in the pipeline is what I am hoping posts like this are achieving.
- prox 6y ago
  When was the last time Google listened to the public? In spirit, not because there was a backlash? It’s a techno conglomerate with no human face. Google was cool and interesting in 00’s, but nowadays all they create is fodder for those sweet ad dollars.
thu2111 6y ago
What's with the assumption here that there aren't humans involved in this decision? The linked post literally quotes Google saying: "Hi Sun Knudsen, Our team has reviewed your content, and, unfortunately, we think it violates our harmful and dangerous policy." Google has always had humans in the loop. Not for every decision but certainly the more impactful ones that affect user generated content. When I worked there, there were even humans reviewing requests for account un-suspensions (yes, really! they didn't do a great job though, needless to say). Also, it's quite hard to understand what sort of algorithm could result in this sort of suspension. What training data would give it hundreds of thousands of examples of infosec discussions labelled as harmful? But it's very easy to see how a large army of low paid humans given vague advice like "don't allow harmful or dangerous content" could decide that linking to hacking information is harmful. The problem here is not AI. The problem here is Google allowing vague and low quality thinking amongst the ranks of its management, who have decided to give in to political activists who are determined to describe anything they're ideologically opposed to as "harmful", "dangerous", "unsafe" etc. When management give in to those radicals and tell their human and AI moderators to suspend "harmful" content, they inevitably end up capturing all kinds of stuff that isn't political in nature, simply due to the doublespeak nature of the original rules.
- devmor 6y ago
  "Our team" is quite often a lie. Why do you assume that a human was involved? Especially when it comes to Google, who notoriously skimps on human support staff.
  - water8 6y ago
    It's a bad idea to give liars the benefit of the doubt
  - dbuder 6y ago
    They lie both ways too, whenever there is a public kerfuffle they always blame the algorithm / the AI.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    Because I worked there and back then, when Google claimed content had been manually reviewed, it had been. It might have been by a low wage worker in India or Brazil and they might have spent 20 seconds on it, but there was a person in the loop. That's why I turned this around. Why do you assume they're lying, without evidence?
    - hervature 6y ago
      Choosing to die on that hill of technicality seems like a silly choice. People say "human" but they really mean "a person who diligently considered the content, probably watched the video more than once, understood what they were watching, and possibly has a chance to debate with another human". Or, you know, a reasonable definition for "human in the loop".
      - admax88q 6y ago
        It seems you're defining "human in the loop" as "Google makes what I consider to be the correct decision in this case." I believe the point that thu2111 is trying to make is that there _are_ humans in the loop, and having them is no insurance against unilateral decisions that you disagree with or even just plain stupid decisions. The point is that involving more humans in the moderation decisions at YouTube does not guarantee nor is there any evidence to suggest, that it would result in better moderation. Somebody with the technical and industry knowledge to know that talking about security vulnerabilities like this shouldn't be removed can probably find a better job that YouTube video moderation.
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> Let's be clear, the lack of humans anywhere in the pipeline for uploaders is because they don't have to, not because it is impossible. The real problem here is that people are envisioning human interaction as something that can produce better outcomes, but the cost of that may not be economical. You can hire a generic human to look over a flagged video for 15 seconds and render a verdict, but the verdict is going to be bad. That's not enough time to make an accurate evaluation. Suppose you have an epidemiologist on YouTube making a claim about virus propagation. It gets flagged because there is a CNN article reporting that the CDC said something contradictory. The epidemiologist argues that the CNN article is a misinterpretation and if you look at the original CDC publication, that's not really what they said. At this point for YouTube to get it right they've basically got to hire their own M.D. to study the CDC publication in enough detail to understand the context. That is prohibitively expensive. But the alternative is often censoring an epidemiologist who is trying to correct misinformation being disseminated by CNN. And science is a moving target. The infamous example was the CDC in 2020 telling people not to wear masks. But there was a point in time when scientists were publishing studies on the health benefits of tobacco consumption. Challenging the established orthodoxy is inherently necessary for progress. The underlying problem here is that YouTube isn't competent to make these determinations. They're attempting to do something they have no capacity to succeed in.
- eecc 6y ago
  So true. Automation cannot infer nuance. It's ok to strike down obvious spam and troll but the but this pretense that private actors should spend their resources to cultivate a sane public space in just a broad-spectrum reflex reaction to micro-targeted disinformation. Nonsense.
- vokep 6y ago
  Why would youtube be trying to make a determination like that? Individuals are the arbiters of truth, not organizations. Ministries of truth are not desirable.
- posguy 6y ago
  What stops the YouTube reviewer from calling or emailing the CDC to render a verdict on which interpretation of their public information is accurate? When it comes to government agencies, they are contactable (usually with a simple email). You might not get an immediate response, but a few hours to a few days later you can expect to hear back.

b3kart 6y ago

Agree wholeheartedly: there's definitely a spectrum between what Google are doing atm and full human moderation. I am a strong believer in using AI to augment humans, not replace them. Nudging Google towards putting more humans in the pipeline is what I am hoping posts like this are achieving.

prox 6y ago
When was the last time Google listened to the public? In spirit, not because there was a backlash? It’s a techno conglomerate with no human face. Google was cool and interesting in 00’s, but nowadays all they create is fodder for those sweet ad dollars.

thu2111 6y ago

What's with the assumption here that there aren't humans involved in this decision? The linked post literally quotes Google saying: "Hi Sun Knudsen, Our team has reviewed your content, and, unfortunately, we think it violates our harmful and dangerous policy." Google has always had humans in the loop. Not for every decision but certainly the more impactful ones that affect user generated content. When I worked there, there were even humans reviewing requests for account un-suspensions (yes, really! they didn't do a great job though, needless to say). Also, it's quite hard to understand what sort of algorithm could result in this sort of suspension. What training data would give it hundreds of thousands of examples of infosec discussions labelled as harmful? But it's very easy to see how a large army of low paid humans given vague advice like "don't allow harmful or dangerous content" could decide that linking to hacking information is harmful. The problem here is not AI. The problem here is Google allowing vague and low quality thinking amongst the ranks of its management, who have decided to give in to political activists who are determined to describe anything they're ideologically opposed to as "harmful", "dangerous", "unsafe" etc. When management give in to those radicals and tell their human and AI moderators to suspend "harmful" content, they inevitably end up capturing all kinds of stuff that isn't political in nature, simply due to the doublespeak nature of the original rules.

devmor 6y ago
"Our team" is quite often a lie. Why do you assume that a human was involved? Especially when it comes to Google, who notoriously skimps on human support staff.
- water8 6y ago
  It's a bad idea to give liars the benefit of the doubt
- dbuder 6y ago
  They lie both ways too, whenever there is a public kerfuffle they always blame the algorithm / the AI.
- thu2111 6y ago
  Because I worked there and back then, when Google claimed content had been manually reviewed, it had been. It might have been by a low wage worker in India or Brazil and they might have spent 20 seconds on it, but there was a person in the loop. That's why I turned this around. Why do you assume they're lying, without evidence?
  - hervature 6y ago
    Choosing to die on that hill of technicality seems like a silly choice. People say "human" but they really mean "a person who diligently considered the content, probably watched the video more than once, understood what they were watching, and possibly has a chance to debate with another human". Or, you know, a reasonable definition for "human in the loop".
    - admax88q 6y ago
      It seems you're defining "human in the loop" as "Google makes what I consider to be the correct decision in this case." I believe the point that thu2111 is trying to make is that there _are_ humans in the loop, and having them is no insurance against unilateral decisions that you disagree with or even just plain stupid decisions. The point is that involving more humans in the moderation decisions at YouTube does not guarantee nor is there any evidence to suggest, that it would result in better moderation. Somebody with the technical and industry knowledge to know that talking about security vulnerabilities like this shouldn't be removed can probably find a better job that YouTube video moderation.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> Let's be clear, the lack of humans anywhere in the pipeline for uploaders is because they don't have to, not because it is impossible. The real problem here is that people are envisioning human interaction as something that can produce better outcomes, but the cost of that may not be economical. You can hire a generic human to look over a flagged video for 15 seconds and render a verdict, but the verdict is going to be bad. That's not enough time to make an accurate evaluation. Suppose you have an epidemiologist on YouTube making a claim about virus propagation. It gets flagged because there is a CNN article reporting that the CDC said something contradictory. The epidemiologist argues that the CNN article is a misinterpretation and if you look at the original CDC publication, that's not really what they said. At this point for YouTube to get it right they've basically got to hire their own M.D. to study the CDC publication in enough detail to understand the context. That is prohibitively expensive. But the alternative is often censoring an epidemiologist who is trying to correct misinformation being disseminated by CNN. And science is a moving target. The infamous example was the CDC in 2020 telling people not to wear masks. But there was a point in time when scientists were publishing studies on the health benefits of tobacco consumption. Challenging the established orthodoxy is inherently necessary for progress. The underlying problem here is that YouTube isn't competent to make these determinations. They're attempting to do something they have no capacity to succeed in.

eecc 6y ago
So true. Automation cannot infer nuance. It's ok to strike down obvious spam and troll but the but this pretense that private actors should spend their resources to cultivate a sane public space in just a broad-spectrum reflex reaction to micro-targeted disinformation. Nonsense.
vokep 6y ago
Why would youtube be trying to make a determination like that? Individuals are the arbiters of truth, not organizations. Ministries of truth are not desirable.
posguy 6y ago
What stops the YouTube reviewer from calling or emailing the CDC to render a verdict on which interpretation of their public information is accurate? When it comes to government agencies, they are contactable (usually with a simple email). You might not get an immediate response, but a few hours to a few days later you can expect to hear back.