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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 t

by 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.

by slg 5y ago

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.