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It's pretty straightforward: conspiracy videos generate a lot of views, which is ultimately profitable for youtube. Videos which point out that the conspiracy v

It's pretty straightforward: conspiracy videos generate a lot of views, which is ultimately profitable for youtube. Videos which point out that the conspiracy videos are garbage have the potential to adversely impact their astronomical view counts and by proxy their profitability. So of course youtube would ban accounts which attempt to undermine their revenue streams. It's despicable, sure, but not at all surprising.

lobf 5y ago
I think it's still pretty surprising...
TiberiusC 5y ago
What if the anti-conspiracy videos start spewing conspiracies like in this case?
- geoka9 5y ago
  The irony of the GP post being the most upvoted one in the thread.
modriano 5y ago
> Videos which point out that the conspiracy videos are garbage have the potential to adversely impact their astronomical view counts and by proxy their profitability. Do they really though? Is there evidence that there are *any* effective strategies for reducing viewership of mind-rotting extremist content at scale?
- jedimastert 5y ago
  I would actually disagree. Unless a video has gone specifically out of its way to say so, very often a big debunking video will cause a bump in the original video's views, which is sort of a win win for YT
- Yoric 5y ago
  Well, I've seen statistics (I don't remember where, sorry), suggesting that deplatforming Daesh worked pretty well. It is my understanding that what the right wing is going through in 2021 is kinda what Muslims have gone through in 2016, with lots of outrage because some visible targets have been taken down, the malicious actors attempting to fan the outrage and get the entire community to protect the actual evil content, the feeling of being singled out for termination, etc.
slg 5y ago
Has anyone else noticed that most complaints like this about Youtube's moderation fail Hanlon's razor? I'm just not sure I believe these type of conspiracies that attribute specific and nefarious reasons for these moderation decisions. It is natural to try to see patterns in the moderation, but I think the largest pattern is that there is little pattern. They instead have an job that is impossible to do at the scale they do it at the budget they do it at. They therefore make a lot of mistakes. They hate to admit these mistakes so they are constantly trying to defend the indefensible rather than admit that there is no way to have a uniform moderation policy that works on the hundreds of hours of video that are uploaded every minute.
- jedimastert 5y ago
  > Has anyone else noticed that most complaints like this about Youtube's moderation fail Hanlon's razor? Yes, and it drives me bonkers because everyone who makes these kinds of complains tend to like the narrative that YouTube is 100% hellbend on just being bad because Google Is Bad (tm)
- jmcgough 5y ago
  Agreed. If this was a right-wing account taken down it'd feed into their liberal-run social media conspiracy, and there'd be an article about it on Fox New instead of the daily beast. I'd be curious to know what the strikes were for, since they never discuss them. But non-political channels get burned by unfair strikes all the time, including on very old videos. Another possibility is the use of targeted reporting by fans of those featured in videos.
- rapind 5y ago
  “trying to defend the indefensible rather than admit that there is no way to have a uniform moderation policy” This is the money shot right here. They can’t admit the impossibility because if they did they further open the door to the private platform versus town square debate (which doesn’t seem to have certain consequences either way… yet)
- guerrilla 5y ago
  > Has anyone else noticed that most complaints like this about Youtube's moderation fail Hanlon's razor In this case, they're putting profit over ethics leading to negative effects, so this one doesn't. Furthermore, Hanlon's razor is a false dichotomy: In this case the result is unethical yet neither malicious nor stupid.
sneak 5y ago
This argument doesn't make sense.
throwaway8582 5y ago
I think you're misreading this. The real issue here is that Youtube does in fact have policies and algorithms in place to censor right-wing and "conspiracy" content, but it seems that now some left-wing orgs are upset to find that these same rules also apply to them. Dozens of popular conservative channels have been permanently banned over the last few years, including Alex Jones, Stefan Molyneaux, Nick Fuentes, as well as many others, but I'm guessing The Daily Beast or Right Wing Watch weren't complaining when that happened.
waterhouse 5y ago
> Videos which point out that the conspiracy videos are garbage have the potential to adversely impact their astronomical view counts and by proxy their profitability. How much overlap do you think there is between those who watch conspiracy videos and those who watch the videos that debunk them? I'd guess it's really small, probably <5% and possibly <1%—depending on how much Youtube's algorithm recommends the latter to the former. Actually, if they wanted to maximize view counts, they could tweak the algorithm and keep both videos, thus both keeping the gullible audience and driving outrage views from the skeptical audience.

lobf 5y ago

I think it's still pretty surprising...

TiberiusC 5y ago

What if the anti-conspiracy videos start spewing conspiracies like in this case?

geoka9 5y ago
The irony of the GP post being the most upvoted one in the thread.

modriano 5y ago

> Videos which point out that the conspiracy videos are garbage have the potential to adversely impact their astronomical view counts and by proxy their profitability. Do they really though? Is there evidence that there are *any* effective strategies for reducing viewership of mind-rotting extremist content at scale?

jedimastert 5y ago
I would actually disagree. Unless a video has gone specifically out of its way to say so, very often a big debunking video will cause a bump in the original video's views, which is sort of a win win for YT
Yoric 5y ago
Well, I've seen statistics (I don't remember where, sorry), suggesting that deplatforming Daesh worked pretty well. It is my understanding that what the right wing is going through in 2021 is kinda what Muslims have gone through in 2016, with lots of outrage because some visible targets have been taken down, the malicious actors attempting to fan the outrage and get the entire community to protect the actual evil content, the feeling of being singled out for termination, etc.

slg 5y ago

Has anyone else noticed that most complaints like this about Youtube's moderation fail Hanlon's razor? I'm just not sure I believe these type of conspiracies that attribute specific and nefarious reasons for these moderation decisions. It is natural to try to see patterns in the moderation, but I think the largest pattern is that there is little pattern. They instead have an job that is impossible to do at the scale they do it at the budget they do it at. They therefore make a lot of mistakes. They hate to admit these mistakes so they are constantly trying to defend the indefensible rather than admit that there is no way to have a uniform moderation policy that works on the hundreds of hours of video that are uploaded every minute.

jedimastert 5y ago
> Has anyone else noticed that most complaints like this about Youtube's moderation fail Hanlon's razor? Yes, and it drives me bonkers because everyone who makes these kinds of complains tend to like the narrative that YouTube is 100% hellbend on just being bad because Google Is Bad (tm)
jmcgough 5y ago
Agreed. If this was a right-wing account taken down it'd feed into their liberal-run social media conspiracy, and there'd be an article about it on Fox New instead of the daily beast. I'd be curious to know what the strikes were for, since they never discuss them. But non-political channels get burned by unfair strikes all the time, including on very old videos. Another possibility is the use of targeted reporting by fans of those featured in videos.
rapind 5y ago
“trying to defend the indefensible rather than admit that there is no way to have a uniform moderation policy” This is the money shot right here. They can’t admit the impossibility because if they did they further open the door to the private platform versus town square debate (which doesn’t seem to have certain consequences either way… yet)
guerrilla 5y ago
> Has anyone else noticed that most complaints like this about Youtube's moderation fail Hanlon's razor In this case, they're putting profit over ethics leading to negative effects, so this one doesn't. Furthermore, Hanlon's razor is a false dichotomy: In this case the result is unethical yet neither malicious nor stupid.

sneak 5y ago

This argument doesn't make sense.

throwaway8582 5y ago

I think you're misreading this. The real issue here is that Youtube does in fact have policies and algorithms in place to censor right-wing and "conspiracy" content, but it seems that now some left-wing orgs are upset to find that these same rules also apply to them. Dozens of popular conservative channels have been permanently banned over the last few years, including Alex Jones, Stefan Molyneaux, Nick Fuentes, as well as many others, but I'm guessing The Daily Beast or Right Wing Watch weren't complaining when that happened.

waterhouse 5y ago

> Videos which point out that the conspiracy videos are garbage have the potential to adversely impact their astronomical view counts and by proxy their profitability. How much overlap do you think there is between those who watch conspiracy videos and those who watch the videos that debunk them? I'd guess it's really small, probably <5% and possibly <1%—depending on how much Youtube's algorithm recommends the latter to the former. Actually, if they wanted to maximize view counts, they could tweak the algorithm and keep both videos, thus both keeping the gullible audience and driving outrage views from the skeptical audience.