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See, I'd have thought that everybody tacitly understood that YouTube's scale has redefined presentation of videos over the Internet and as a consequence is the

See, I'd have thought that everybody tacitly understood that YouTube's scale has redefined presentation of videos over the Internet and as a consequence is the premier video archive for all of Humanity. This doesn't erase their fiduciary duties, but it does attenuate them -- archiving and presenting videos (to show ads) is actually how the money is made. But I'll bite -- I'm a credulous idiot who's confused YouTube for an NGO. You are a wise cynic who's come to correct me. >Their mission is to make money, not to archive the internet. So how did deleting this make YouTube money?

jwmhjwmh 5y ago
> So how did deleting this make YouTube money? I assume they remove "violent" videos to appease advertisers. In this case, they did not consider the value of the video being removed, instead prioritizing the safety of the content with respect to the advertisers.
- revolvingocelot 5y ago
  Thanks for the assumption, it clarified a lot about what you think about the situation.
shadowgovt 5y ago
By itself, it doesn't. In the large, YouTube's terms of service are structured around retaining an audience (both in terms of individual and institutional choice... Without a TOS that at least nominally says what constitutes offensive content, businesses and schools block access to YouTube and that decreases viewership which decreases revenue potential). They are also structured around being a hospitable place for advertising, and advertising (in particular brand advertising) gets real gun-shy on spending dollars on content that might be significantly off the bead from "wholesome." Whether or not this video in particular violates the TOS is debatable (though having never heard of this before this link on Hacker News, my naive read on it is that it's simple violent aggression and a display of unadulterated physical violence, which generally doesn't pass the TOS for graphic violence... "Content featuring anything listed above where the viewer is not given enough context to understand that the footage is dramatized or fictional").

jwmhjwmh 5y ago

> So how did deleting this make YouTube money? I assume they remove "violent" videos to appease advertisers. In this case, they did not consider the value of the video being removed, instead prioritizing the safety of the content with respect to the advertisers.

revolvingocelot 5y ago
Thanks for the assumption, it clarified a lot about what you think about the situation.

shadowgovt 5y ago

By itself, it doesn't. In the large, YouTube's terms of service are structured around retaining an audience (both in terms of individual and institutional choice... Without a TOS that at least nominally says what constitutes offensive content, businesses and schools block access to YouTube and that decreases viewership which decreases revenue potential). They are also structured around being a hospitable place for advertising, and advertising (in particular brand advertising) gets real gun-shy on spending dollars on content that might be significantly off the bead from "wholesome." Whether or not this video in particular violates the TOS is debatable (though having never heard of this before this link on Hacker News, my naive read on it is that it's simple violent aggression and a display of unadulterated physical violence, which generally doesn't pass the TOS for graphic violence... "Content featuring anything listed above where the viewer is not given enough context to understand that the footage is dramatized or fictional").