8 ms·

Youtube has become such a mindless distraction of mine. Like television used to be. And their censorship really is loathsome. I don't need mega-corporations te

Youtube has become such a mindless distraction of mine. Like television used to be. And their censorship really is loathsome. I don't need mega-corporations telling me what is and isn't ok to see and hear.

Black101 5y ago
They need to become a dumb pipe...
- netr0ute 5y ago
  This is what YT used to be, some place to host video files and where people could just add comments.
  - Covzire 5y ago
    Yes it's essentially CorpTube now for any kind of news topics, they promote all the content providers who already have tremendous societal reach over everyone else by default.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    But then, they weren’t making money, and now, they are. Google is an advertising company, and YouTube will be moderated in whatever way they think is going to sell the most advertising.
- Tehchops 5y ago
  Yea except that it's been demonstrated over and over that unmitigated, unrestricted content can and does radicalize susceptible population demographics. No way around it, they have a responsibility to moderate and monitor.
  - Black101 5y ago
    > I am not that familiar with embedded software, but does that value really difficult to achieve? What is the percentage?
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      Um, did you post this in the right place? It doesn't seem related to the discussion here...
  - concordDance 5y ago
    > Yea except that it's been demonstrated over and over that unmitigated, unrestricted content can and does radicalize susceptible population demographics. Two things: A. Even if true, that is still a price worth paying to avoid having a central arbiter of truth that political factions can fight over and eventually control. B. Lack of access to good counterarguments/innoculation to the radical ideas is a consequence of those ideas being supressed. If people don't even know what a radicalized person believes how can they help dig them out of the hole they are in? It's one of the reasons why "scientific racism" continues to grow.
    - gfe8ygighjb7 5y ago
      The solution is simple either remove all moderation including AI/ML based from YouTube. And let people deal with it. Or if you will moderate content, then be held liable for your mistakes. Both censorship or recommending false information should make YouTube liable for damages.
    - danaris 5y ago
      > A. Even if true, that is still a price worth paying to avoid having a central arbiter of truth that political factions can fight over and eventually control. "The rise of neo-Nazism and other forms of militant, hard-right reactionary ideology, as well as vaccine deniers, and the hundreds of thousands of lives they have provably cost us, are a price worth paying to make sure that no one can tell me I can't post whatever videos I want on a privately-owned video hosting site."
- 0-_-0 5y ago
  Should they allow porn? What kinds?
  - Judgmentality 5y ago
    I'm okay with YouTube allowing porn, so long as it's legal. Why not? I mean, I understand why they don't want that as a business, but I feel it would benefit most consumers. You could just choose not to use it. I think there are far worse things (from an outrage perspective, obviously subjective) than porn on YouTube already.
    - Andrex 5y ago
      The domestic porn industry on the web is facing a lot growing pains right now. PornHub, arguably the poster child for "doing it right," was forced to remove all unverified user-uploaded videos last year[0]. Porn on YouTube cannot exist, legally, in the same way your ideal scenario implies. 0. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55304115 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55304115
      - fridif 5y ago
        Shall we also start devoting resources towards investigating all of the sneakernet crimes that are occurring?
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - ipaddr 5y ago
        Pornhub didn't do it right. They choose being able to process Mastercards over any other consideration. A ban on underage rape videos followed by hiring mods to enforce this would have been doing it right. I'm surprised they made that choice it must have been the most profitable path. I guess the producers left are the big businesses who create premium streams who pornhub can upsell to. Did they kill their brand?
        5y ago
- smt88 5y ago
  There are already plenty of dumb pipes if you don't like YouTube. Torrent sites are actually exactly what you're looking for in that case.
rvz 5y ago
Exactly. I'm not sure how many more 'accidents' or 'mistakes' does it take to realise that they are the problem and it's time to seek alternative platforms instead of YouTube to combat this. It has gotten to the point where it is affecting everyone, no matter the content. They just happen to be one of the most aggressive ones and the best part is they frequently change 'The Algorithm' which is a nickname for YouTube's 'recommendation's engine' to enforce this. Thus, the smaller creators are meant to lose against the established channels (Which are the TV, cable networks)
lr4444lr 5y ago
Agree, but, the power to choose what you want to watch, the breadth of ideas allowed, and the accessibility for almost any content creator is a vast improvement over TV, IMHO.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  Part of it is now data collection is significantly more accurate than it was with just cable. Now that some people can see how radical their viewership may be, it could scare advertisers knowing they're associated with say, Oregon seperatists or Black Panthers.
hytdstd 5y ago
I don't think people really understand what happens to a website when it stops censorship/moderation. I suggest visiting 4chan.org, and thinking really hard about the experience. I personally tolerate its nastiness and am a fan of the website, but I don't have any pretension that it's the right sort of moderation policy for a profitable business.
- jbarrs 5y ago
  I wonder whether 4chan is the way it is purely as a consequence of there being minimal moderation, or whether the lack of moderation combined with extreme moderation of such content on other platforms is driving it all towards 4chan. Would all platforms wind up the same way if all moderation were removed? Or would it end up being far less obviously concentrated?
  - jlawson 5y ago
    This experiment was real in the earlier era of the Internet. And the answer is: When censorship isn't universal, and there are lots of more or less free spaces to speak in, extreme views don't get concentrated and exist everywhere but at a much lower level of intensity. The mainstreamers are less ignorant too because they actually have some exposure to arguments and counterarguments against these views as opposed to just vilifying and banning the others. Lots of other benefits to this model - names that people don't get trapped in extremist bubbles as much when they're not literally banned from everywhere else.
    - edgyquant 5y ago
      What? Without censorship a single line of thought, the most vocal, comes to dominate while a majority of people who disagree decide to leave for a new place. This happened all the time in the early internet, it happened to 4chan after Obama became president and it happens in subreddits everyday.
  - grumblenum 5y ago
    Moderation is also why you won’t see comments which are impolite or heretical but may be obviously true. 4chan is moderated, but the goals are just very different from sites that want to avoid the hassle of vigilante activists by enforcing orthodoxy in content. 4chan also goes to some effort to ensure easy identification of its pseudo-anonymous users. It’s also useful fodder to trick people into rage-donating to the right party. Always ask what the business model is for popular web properties. If you can’t figure it out or nobody else can make money in the same domain, then there is probably a side channel being monetized.
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
I mean it's not different than cable back in the day. We're just alive to see the polices get put into place.
smt88 5y ago
What mega-corporatio is telling you what's OK to see and hear? There are billions of videos hosted outside of YouTube. YouTube is not trying to get them taken down. Why don't you complain when your favorite news channel fails to include a Communist guest pundit? Because it's their medium and they have editorial control.
- pstuart 5y ago
  I am not a communist but I think we could use more Communist guest pundits.
  - smt88 5y ago
    Fine. But no private org should be forced to broadcast ideologies they find morally repugnant unless they're using a finite public resource (like the radio spectrum that network news channels use).
    - pstuart 5y ago
      Yeah definitely. I do believe in "the marketplace of ideas", even for ideas I don't hold (how else is one to rethink things?) But without agreed upon facts and, dare I say it, truths, such a marketplace can't really operate. We unfortunately are living in such times.
cm2187 5y ago
Their attempt at defeating adblockers on mobile successfully removed that distraction for me at least on that medium. I think 15 years of browsing the web with adblockers and not watching TV made me ad-intolerant, and I just browse away on the first commercial.

Black101 5y ago

They need to become a dumb pipe...

netr0ute 5y ago
This is what YT used to be, some place to host video files and where people could just add comments.
- Covzire 5y ago
  Yes it's essentially CorpTube now for any kind of news topics, they promote all the content providers who already have tremendous societal reach over everyone else by default.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  But then, they weren’t making money, and now, they are. Google is an advertising company, and YouTube will be moderated in whatever way they think is going to sell the most advertising.
Tehchops 5y ago
Yea except that it's been demonstrated over and over that unmitigated, unrestricted content can and does radicalize susceptible population demographics. No way around it, they have a responsibility to moderate and monitor.
- Black101 5y ago
  > I am not that familiar with embedded software, but does that value really difficult to achieve? What is the percentage?
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    Um, did you post this in the right place? It doesn't seem related to the discussion here...
- concordDance 5y ago
  > Yea except that it's been demonstrated over and over that unmitigated, unrestricted content can and does radicalize susceptible population demographics. Two things: A. Even if true, that is still a price worth paying to avoid having a central arbiter of truth that political factions can fight over and eventually control. B. Lack of access to good counterarguments/innoculation to the radical ideas is a consequence of those ideas being supressed. If people don't even know what a radicalized person believes how can they help dig them out of the hole they are in? It's one of the reasons why "scientific racism" continues to grow.
  - gfe8ygighjb7 5y ago
    The solution is simple either remove all moderation including AI/ML based from YouTube. And let people deal with it. Or if you will moderate content, then be held liable for your mistakes. Both censorship or recommending false information should make YouTube liable for damages.
  - danaris 5y ago
    > A. Even if true, that is still a price worth paying to avoid having a central arbiter of truth that political factions can fight over and eventually control. "The rise of neo-Nazism and other forms of militant, hard-right reactionary ideology, as well as vaccine deniers, and the hundreds of thousands of lives they have provably cost us, are a price worth paying to make sure that no one can tell me I can't post whatever videos I want on a privately-owned video hosting site."
0-_-0 5y ago
Should they allow porn? What kinds?
- Judgmentality 5y ago
  I'm okay with YouTube allowing porn, so long as it's legal. Why not? I mean, I understand why they don't want that as a business, but I feel it would benefit most consumers. You could just choose not to use it. I think there are far worse things (from an outrage perspective, obviously subjective) than porn on YouTube already.
  - Andrex 5y ago
    The domestic porn industry on the web is facing a lot growing pains right now. PornHub, arguably the poster child for "doing it right," was forced to remove all unverified user-uploaded videos last year[0]. Porn on YouTube cannot exist, legally, in the same way your ideal scenario implies. 0. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55304115 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55304115
    - fridif 5y ago
      Shall we also start devoting resources towards investigating all of the sneakernet crimes that are occurring?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      Pornhub didn't do it right. They choose being able to process Mastercards over any other consideration. A ban on underage rape videos followed by hiring mods to enforce this would have been doing it right. I'm surprised they made that choice it must have been the most profitable path. I guess the producers left are the big businesses who create premium streams who pornhub can upsell to. Did they kill their brand?
      - 5y ago
smt88 5y ago
There are already plenty of dumb pipes if you don't like YouTube. Torrent sites are actually exactly what you're looking for in that case.

rvz 5y ago

Exactly. I'm not sure how many more 'accidents' or 'mistakes' does it take to realise that they are the problem and it's time to seek alternative platforms instead of YouTube to combat this. It has gotten to the point where it is affecting everyone, no matter the content. They just happen to be one of the most aggressive ones and the best part is they frequently change 'The Algorithm' which is a nickname for YouTube's 'recommendation's engine' to enforce this. Thus, the smaller creators are meant to lose against the established channels (Which are the TV, cable networks)

lr4444lr 5y ago

Agree, but, the power to choose what you want to watch, the breadth of ideas allowed, and the accessibility for almost any content creator is a vast improvement over TV, IMHO.

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
Part of it is now data collection is significantly more accurate than it was with just cable. Now that some people can see how radical their viewership may be, it could scare advertisers knowing they're associated with say, Oregon seperatists or Black Panthers.

hytdstd 5y ago

I don't think people really understand what happens to a website when it stops censorship/moderation. I suggest visiting 4chan.org, and thinking really hard about the experience. I personally tolerate its nastiness and am a fan of the website, but I don't have any pretension that it's the right sort of moderation policy for a profitable business.

jbarrs 5y ago
I wonder whether 4chan is the way it is purely as a consequence of there being minimal moderation, or whether the lack of moderation combined with extreme moderation of such content on other platforms is driving it all towards 4chan. Would all platforms wind up the same way if all moderation were removed? Or would it end up being far less obviously concentrated?
- jlawson 5y ago
  This experiment was real in the earlier era of the Internet. And the answer is: When censorship isn't universal, and there are lots of more or less free spaces to speak in, extreme views don't get concentrated and exist everywhere but at a much lower level of intensity. The mainstreamers are less ignorant too because they actually have some exposure to arguments and counterarguments against these views as opposed to just vilifying and banning the others. Lots of other benefits to this model - names that people don't get trapped in extremist bubbles as much when they're not literally banned from everywhere else.
  - edgyquant 5y ago
    What? Without censorship a single line of thought, the most vocal, comes to dominate while a majority of people who disagree decide to leave for a new place. This happened all the time in the early internet, it happened to 4chan after Obama became president and it happens in subreddits everyday.
- grumblenum 5y ago
  Moderation is also why you won’t see comments which are impolite or heretical but may be obviously true. 4chan is moderated, but the goals are just very different from sites that want to avoid the hassle of vigilante activists by enforcing orthodoxy in content. 4chan also goes to some effort to ensure easy identification of its pseudo-anonymous users. It’s also useful fodder to trick people into rage-donating to the right party. Always ask what the business model is for popular web properties. If you can’t figure it out or nobody else can make money in the same domain, then there is probably a side channel being monetized.

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago

I mean it's not different than cable back in the day. We're just alive to see the polices get put into place.

smt88 5y ago

What mega-corporatio is telling you what's OK to see and hear? There are billions of videos hosted outside of YouTube. YouTube is not trying to get them taken down. Why don't you complain when your favorite news channel fails to include a Communist guest pundit? Because it's their medium and they have editorial control.

pstuart 5y ago
I am not a communist but I think we could use more Communist guest pundits.
- smt88 5y ago
  Fine. But no private org should be forced to broadcast ideologies they find morally repugnant unless they're using a finite public resource (like the radio spectrum that network news channels use).
  - pstuart 5y ago
    Yeah definitely. I do believe in "the marketplace of ideas", even for ideas I don't hold (how else is one to rethink things?) But without agreed upon facts and, dare I say it, truths, such a marketplace can't really operate. We unfortunately are living in such times.

cm2187 5y ago

Their attempt at defeating adblockers on mobile successfully removed that distraction for me at least on that medium. I think 15 years of browsing the web with adblockers and not watching TV made me ad-intolerant, and I just browse away on the first commercial.