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We don't need scale. Google needs YouTube to be the only place to watch videos out there. I don't. Smaller communities self-moderate fine enough, and bigger one

We don't need scale. Google needs YouTube to be the only place to watch videos out there. I don't. Smaller communities self-moderate fine enough, and bigger ones can raise money from members to hire mods / editors / etc. But this isn't working as well as it should because the platform / advertising oligopoly is eating up everyone's revenue and using those funds to vertically and horizontally integrate everything under a handful of megacorp brands. For as long as this consolidation (aka "scale") continues, content moderation will remain "unsolvable".

PoignardAzur 5y ago
> We don't need scale. Google needs YouTube to be the only place to watch videos out there. I don't. Smaller communities self-moderate fine enough, and bigger ones can raise money from members to hire mods / editors / etc. The thing is, you still have the scale problem even if you break up Youtube into a hundred different video streaming sites. Say that Google would need to hire a million full-time moderators (in practice it's probably more) to ensure quality moderation for every video uploaded. If it's not sustainable for them to do that, then it won't be sustainable for a hundred companies to hire ten thousand moderators each to do the job. This is especially bad because bad actors can just post the same content on multiple platforms automatically. Unless platforms start pooling their moderation resources (in which case you're back to square one), having lots of small-scale platforms means that attackers can just upload the same thing on as many platforms as they can and hope it slip through the net in a few cases. The only way we can stop that, as a society, is if we decide that any platform for content diffusion needs to factor in and charge the price of filtering that content from the get go. That means no more free uploads on Youtube; if you wanna upload something you have to pay a fee for moderators to look over your video and certify it as safe. I think that would be a viable way for the ecosystem to go, but it would make it harder for small independent creators with no budget to get started.
- fsflover 5y ago
  > The thing is, you still have the scale problem even if you break up Youtube into a hundred different video streaming sites. No, PeerTube is a decentralized video platform with independent servers, which can work together.
  - mycologos 5y ago
    How do independent servers solve the problem of scaling moderation? Every video still has to get reviewed by somebody, so the total number of reviews done doesn't change.
    - fsflover 5y ago
      No single company must pay for the army of reviewers. Different servers compete for good content, i.e. have incentive for good moderation at low scale, which is possible.
      - PoignardAzur 5y ago
        Okay, that's the theory, but in practice, how good are Peertube servers at, say, filtering out djihadist beheading videos? EDIT: A quick search shows that I was asking the wrong question; in practice, there are servers dedicated to exclusively these kinds of videos.
- nikitaga 5y ago
  > Say that Google would need to hire a million full-time moderators (in practice it's probably more) You can't use made-up numbers to prove your point. Approx 800,000 hours of video are uploaded to Youtube every day. Watching all of those in full at normal speed would require only 100,000 full time mods, but that's just about the dumbest way to go about it, so in reality it will be much less. > it won't be sustainable for a hundred companies > bad actors can just post the same content on multiple platforms automatically You'll have to reconcile this fatalism with the myriad of smaller communities managing spam and moderation just fine. Millions (not "hundreds") of topical forums (incl. independent ones, and on platforms like reddit) are doing fine, often without full time or paid moderators. > if you wanna upload something you have to pay a fee for moderators to look over your video and certify it as safe. Since no one will opt-in to that willingly while free alternatives exist, you're essentially proposing state-mandated censorship. No thanks. I'd rather Facebook / Youtube just die if their consolidated asses can't keep up with what they created.

PoignardAzur 5y ago

> We don't need scale. Google needs YouTube to be the only place to watch videos out there. I don't. Smaller communities self-moderate fine enough, and bigger ones can raise money from members to hire mods / editors / etc. The thing is, you still have the scale problem even if you break up Youtube into a hundred different video streaming sites. Say that Google would need to hire a million full-time moderators (in practice it's probably more) to ensure quality moderation for every video uploaded. If it's not sustainable for them to do that, then it won't be sustainable for a hundred companies to hire ten thousand moderators each to do the job. This is especially bad because bad actors can just post the same content on multiple platforms automatically. Unless platforms start pooling their moderation resources (in which case you're back to square one), having lots of small-scale platforms means that attackers can just upload the same thing on as many platforms as they can and hope it slip through the net in a few cases. The only way we can stop that, as a society, is if we decide that any platform for content diffusion needs to factor in and charge the price of filtering that content from the get go. That means no more free uploads on Youtube; if you wanna upload something you have to pay a fee for moderators to look over your video and certify it as safe. I think that would be a viable way for the ecosystem to go, but it would make it harder for small independent creators with no budget to get started.

fsflover 5y ago
> The thing is, you still have the scale problem even if you break up Youtube into a hundred different video streaming sites. No, PeerTube is a decentralized video platform with independent servers, which can work together.
- mycologos 5y ago
  How do independent servers solve the problem of scaling moderation? Every video still has to get reviewed by somebody, so the total number of reviews done doesn't change.
  - fsflover 5y ago
    No single company must pay for the army of reviewers. Different servers compete for good content, i.e. have incentive for good moderation at low scale, which is possible.
    - PoignardAzur 5y ago
      Okay, that's the theory, but in practice, how good are Peertube servers at, say, filtering out djihadist beheading videos? EDIT: A quick search shows that I was asking the wrong question; in practice, there are servers dedicated to exclusively these kinds of videos.
nikitaga 5y ago
> Say that Google would need to hire a million full-time moderators (in practice it's probably more) You can't use made-up numbers to prove your point. Approx 800,000 hours of video are uploaded to Youtube every day. Watching all of those in full at normal speed would require only 100,000 full time mods, but that's just about the dumbest way to go about it, so in reality it will be much less. > it won't be sustainable for a hundred companies > bad actors can just post the same content on multiple platforms automatically You'll have to reconcile this fatalism with the myriad of smaller communities managing spam and moderation just fine. Millions (not "hundreds") of topical forums (incl. independent ones, and on platforms like reddit) are doing fine, often without full time or paid moderators. > if you wanna upload something you have to pay a fee for moderators to look over your video and certify it as safe. Since no one will opt-in to that willingly while free alternatives exist, you're essentially proposing state-mandated censorship. No thanks. I'd rather Facebook / Youtube just die if their consolidated asses can't keep up with what they created.