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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

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.
      - hervature 6y ago
        There are plenty of cases where I disagree with the outcome of companies I interact with. When I spend 30 minutes chatting with an agent via text with Amazon or airlines, I might leave the conversation disappointed, but I never doubt their conscientiousness. I highly doubt United beat me at the Turing Test.
      - tremon 6y ago
        Google makes what I consider to be the correct decision in this case. I'll settle for "Google makes a well-informed decision and will communicate the weighted pros and cons that led to that decision."
jscipione 6y ago
Louis Rossman had his YouTube account temporarily suspended for posting a video entitled “An angry clinton” which was a video of his pet cat Clinton meowing. Human moderation is needed in cases like this. There is obviously no analysis of the video content, the algorithm looks for keywords in the video title. The keywords used by the algorithm are centered around protecting Democratic politicians from criticism. There is no advanced AI going on, the algorithm is simple pattern matching.
hoppla 6y ago
Knowledge is empowering, and one can also argue that lack of it is considered harmful. Not being able to link to resources that can help you understand how something works can lead to (in the big picture) that only criminals will gain access to that knowledge.
kodablah 6y ago
> What's with the assumption here that there aren't humans involved in this decision? The linked post literally quotes Google saying [...] The post literally quotes Google as saying that for the _last_ time this happened. Then the post literally states they appealed and never heard back. There is nothing concerning a human for this instance, though I suspect once the uploader reaches out (were it not for the popularity this is gaining), one could expect similar dismissal. That there are barely humans involved, and in a poor way when they are, doesn't mean there are never humans involved, true. But for many, the bare minimum of assistance is indistiguishable from no assistance.
- thu2111 6y ago
  Appealing and not hearing back doesn't mean the original decision was entirely automated, it means they ignore appeals. Plenty of people would love nothing more than to argue with Google employees all day about every decision the firm makes - just think about webmasters and SEO alone - so the fact that YouTube actually has such a process is already kind of remarkable.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    You seem to be arguing that because their dispute process everywhere else is reprehensible, a slightly-less-reprehensible process should be celebrated. It shouldn't, and we need to hold Google and others to a much higher standard here. I'm not sure how we do that, but the status quo is garbage.
    - thu2111 6y ago
      It's easy in theory: you create a competitor that differentiates through the quality of its content-provider service quality and how much money is spent on dispute resolution. But I am skeptical it would be successful. It might be, but it would probably require a much larger percentage take of video revenues, which would discourage most YT content creators from going there because in fact, relative to overall YT volumes, these suspensions are rare. That's why we're discussing individual cases instead of studies with percentage figures in them. It feels a bit weird to be playing the devil's advocate in this case because frankly the state of modern Google saddens me. It seems not much like the firm we built back in the day. They obviously shouldn't be doing this kind of thing and in the past they didn't, which is why I place the finger of blame not on AI (which may not even be at fault here, and is a general tool anyway) but rather on bad ideologies and ideas permeating the management classes in America. In this case I blame favouritism and feminism. YouTube content moderation is run by Wojcicki, a woman who got in to Google by renting Larry and Sergey a garage, by being the sister of Sergey's wife. She's not an engineer. Thanks to the prevailing ideology an ambitious feminist woman in an executive position at a west coast tech firm is utterly untouchable, and must be given whatever she wants. So despite being the exec in charge of Google Video when it was utterly beaten by YouTube, she has ended up running YouTube. A clearer case of failing upwards can't be imagined. It's her personality that dictates the post-2016 swing towards promoting woke "authoritative content" on YT and the general culture of unaccountability for women that prevents anyone else pushing back, even as the bad PR racks up.

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.
    - hervature 6y ago
      There are plenty of cases where I disagree with the outcome of companies I interact with. When I spend 30 minutes chatting with an agent via text with Amazon or airlines, I might leave the conversation disappointed, but I never doubt their conscientiousness. I highly doubt United beat me at the Turing Test.
    - tremon 6y ago
      Google makes what I consider to be the correct decision in this case. I'll settle for "Google makes a well-informed decision and will communicate the weighted pros and cons that led to that decision."

jscipione 6y ago

Louis Rossman had his YouTube account temporarily suspended for posting a video entitled “An angry clinton” which was a video of his pet cat Clinton meowing. Human moderation is needed in cases like this. There is obviously no analysis of the video content, the algorithm looks for keywords in the video title. The keywords used by the algorithm are centered around protecting Democratic politicians from criticism. There is no advanced AI going on, the algorithm is simple pattern matching.

hoppla 6y ago

Knowledge is empowering, and one can also argue that lack of it is considered harmful. Not being able to link to resources that can help you understand how something works can lead to (in the big picture) that only criminals will gain access to that knowledge.

kodablah 6y ago

> What's with the assumption here that there aren't humans involved in this decision? The linked post literally quotes Google saying [...] The post literally quotes Google as saying that for the _last_ time this happened. Then the post literally states they appealed and never heard back. There is nothing concerning a human for this instance, though I suspect once the uploader reaches out (were it not for the popularity this is gaining), one could expect similar dismissal. That there are barely humans involved, and in a poor way when they are, doesn't mean there are never humans involved, true. But for many, the bare minimum of assistance is indistiguishable from no assistance.

thu2111 6y ago
Appealing and not hearing back doesn't mean the original decision was entirely automated, it means they ignore appeals. Plenty of people would love nothing more than to argue with Google employees all day about every decision the firm makes - just think about webmasters and SEO alone - so the fact that YouTube actually has such a process is already kind of remarkable.
- kelnos 6y ago
  You seem to be arguing that because their dispute process everywhere else is reprehensible, a slightly-less-reprehensible process should be celebrated. It shouldn't, and we need to hold Google and others to a much higher standard here. I'm not sure how we do that, but the status quo is garbage.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    It's easy in theory: you create a competitor that differentiates through the quality of its content-provider service quality and how much money is spent on dispute resolution. But I am skeptical it would be successful. It might be, but it would probably require a much larger percentage take of video revenues, which would discourage most YT content creators from going there because in fact, relative to overall YT volumes, these suspensions are rare. That's why we're discussing individual cases instead of studies with percentage figures in them. It feels a bit weird to be playing the devil's advocate in this case because frankly the state of modern Google saddens me. It seems not much like the firm we built back in the day. They obviously shouldn't be doing this kind of thing and in the past they didn't, which is why I place the finger of blame not on AI (which may not even be at fault here, and is a general tool anyway) but rather on bad ideologies and ideas permeating the management classes in America. In this case I blame favouritism and feminism. YouTube content moderation is run by Wojcicki, a woman who got in to Google by renting Larry and Sergey a garage, by being the sister of Sergey's wife. She's not an engineer. Thanks to the prevailing ideology an ambitious feminist woman in an executive position at a west coast tech firm is utterly untouchable, and must be given whatever she wants. So despite being the exec in charge of Google Video when it was utterly beaten by YouTube, she has ended up running YouTube. A clearer case of failing upwards can't be imagined. It's her personality that dictates the post-2016 swing towards promoting woke "authoritative content" on YT and the general culture of unaccountability for women that prevents anyone else pushing back, even as the bad PR racks up.