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The streams are back up. Yet, this thread quickly devolved into a discussion about the grand conspiracy to censor instead of the repeated failure of automated

The streams are back up. Yet, this thread quickly devolved into a discussion about the grand conspiracy to censor instead of the repeated failure of automated tools and the ease at which they're abused.

ashtonkem 5y ago
The internet is becoming a more paranoid place by the day.
trhway 5y ago
>a discussion about the grand conspiracy to censor instead of the repeated failure of automated tools i wonder whether Google/etc have already done A/B testing on how frequently and how visibly they need to have "repeated failure of automated tools" for the populace to get used to that idea instead of censorship.
baryphonic 5y ago
I think this depends on how you consider a "conspiracy" to be organized. If a conspiracy is a bunch of humans making explicit decisions about each of these incidents, it's laughable. However, if the "conspiracy" is in fact a bunch of automated tools created by a bunch of humans who all have similar biases in the same ideological direction (biases which happen to be ascendant on elite college campuses and/or in the Bay Area), then this is a fairly reasonable belief. When an incident like this happens, the outcry is great enough that the humans, who are themselves still human and capable of compassion, can reinstate accounts and override the automated system. But how many "failures" such as this occur where the affected parties simply have no recourse because they don't have the privilege of 60k simultaneous streamers watching?
- belltaco 5y ago
  >However, if the "conspiracy" is in fact a bunch of automated tools created by a bunch of humans who all have similar biases in the same ideological direction (biases which happen to be ascendant on elite college campuses and/or in the Bay Area), then this is a fairly reasonable belief. The conspiracy theorists just don't know about bad automated decisions made in the other direction because it's suppressed in their echo chamber.
  - etchalon 5y ago
    Basically. The vocal right and vocal left are both convinced that big tech is biased against them and in favor of the other, when in reality, they're mostly biased against controversy which would hurt them with advertisers.
- fragmede 5y ago
  Intent matters. It's not like the secret Bay Area college elite cabal all sat down one day and one of their secret meetings and decided to write if streamer.is_black() or streamer.is_woman(): streamer.suspend() into the algorithm. That's an irrational belief. But because of our racist past, present, and future, when mysterious ML models come into play, it's entirely possible for that to happen, and frequently. But unless you believe the above code exists somewhere and was written by a human, it's a bit much to call that a conspiracy. Which is probably why it's written in quotes. Thus, the problem to raise isn't that parties with no recourse might be silenced. That's absolutely an issue, but clearly the mere argument hasn't gotten YouTube to sufficiently change their ways. That's because that conspiracy doesn't exist. The argument to make is that it degrades YouTube's content as a whole. There are a number of other Internet video hosting platforms, most recently TikTok, and it behooves YouTube to spend more time adjusting their algorithms simply because content creators are going to create a little something with the hope to go viral, then get their content taken down, and then move to another platform, rather than say anything about it to more than a couple of real life friends. TikTok's ascendancy (and Vine before it) proves that YouTube's dominance is not assured. The right winds of change could result in YouTube to be displaced, and YouTube's "algorithm" being incorrect too frequently with takedowns is sure to play a role.
__s 5y ago
> Streams are back up just in time for the closing arguments
_yoqn 5y ago
[flagged]
- vkou 5y ago
  It would significantly help your point if the conspiracies you were citing were not plain old unsubstantiated bullshit. I, too have a laptop containing damning evidence about <whomever>, and no, I uh, won't show it to anyone, because I'm scared of the deep state. But I'm not so scared of the deep state that I will keep silent about it. I am at an incredibly particular level of scared. That nobody takes me seriously is, of course, further proof that the powers that be are repressing the truth.
  - _yoqn 5y ago
    > It would significantly help your point if the conspiracies you were citing were not plain old unsubstantiated bullshit. What's unsubstantiated about it? Jack Dorsey admitted he censored the story from the New York Post incorrectly and only after the election did they reinstate the ability to share the article. The computer shop owner who had the laptop had the signed receipt from Hunter Biden. Hunter himself admitted he's under investigation by the FBI for tax fraud. The drug and sex pictures in the laptop were not the most incriminating material. It was the emails to foreign powers selling his father's influence as Vice President and a longstanding senator that is the real damning stuff. Now, if you have a laptop containing emails selling your significantly political parent's influence to foreign interests then that might be of interest to the general public. If you just gave stupid pictures of yourself doing drugs then nobody cares.
    - jay3ss 5y ago
      Do you have a source for this?
    - voldacar 5y ago
      The guy should have just released a .iso of the laptop's hard drive. Then we wouldn't still be arguing over its authenticity a year later
    - 5y ago
tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
While I agree with your guess of "failure of automated tools", the streams being back up is only partially helpful; much of the damage is done, and it will further polarization because more people now feel persecuted.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > While I agree with your guess of "failure of automated tools", the streams being back up is only partially helpful; much of the damage is done, and it will further polarization because more people now feel persecuted. If people react to a glitch that way, I'd argue that the damage had been done before the glitch.
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    > If people react to a glitch that way, I'd argue that the damage had been done before the glitch. True, a few years ago I had clearly cut them slack and today I feel like a jackass for being so naive about it back then. It is not irreparable I think, and I don't think of Google as a comic supervillain, on fact in some ways they are way better than everyone else. I do not however cut them any slack anymore like I used to.
  - cbozeman 5y ago
    I hope you - and every other HN reader - realizes that "normal people" don't realize most of the shit running this whole grand experiment we call the Internet, and especially social media, relies extensively upon automation. A lot of "normies" think there's someone actively at a computer, doing all this stuff.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    Lacking trust isn't really damage. The "glitch" that can suppress information and live streams that effectively warrants suspicion in my opinion. You simply have to believe Youtube here. Why did it match the content? Certainly because someone fed it with parameters.
prince005 5y ago
It's very sad to see how people blame and thrash services like youtube instead of respecting the fact that all of it is provided absolutely free of cost.
- account42 5y ago
  Providing something for free (even if in this case, you do pay in many ways) is not a shield from criticism. You can't compare a free service to no service but instead have to compare it to the possible alternative reality where that particular free service does not exist. This is distinction is especially important for areas where network effects effectively prevent any alternatives from gaining traction.
- kottaram 5y ago
  Whenever something is given free of cost to you, you are the product. Not the other way around.
- Nicksil 5y ago
  >It's very sad to see how people blame and thrash services like youtube instead of respecting the fact that all of it is provided absolutely free of cost. It is absolutely not free of cost. Google wouldn't be able to sustain if they were not receiving anything in return. In this exchange, however, you don't know the value you're contributing; there is no clear value exchange: "I'll give you $x.xx for use of such-n-such." Instead you're expected to believe that what they provide you is fair for the value you provide them.
- caskstrength 5y ago
  I'm quite sure that I'm actually paying for YouTube.
  - genewitch 5y ago
    I wonder what the average family YouTube bill would be if Google charged AWS egress fees...
- raxxorrax 5y ago
raxxorrax 5y ago
I think corporations have to deal with the issue that their content control is seen as a conspiracy to be honest. Might not be objective, but it is a problem of their own making.

ashtonkem 5y ago

The internet is becoming a more paranoid place by the day.

trhway 5y ago

>a discussion about the grand conspiracy to censor instead of the repeated failure of automated tools i wonder whether Google/etc have already done A/B testing on how frequently and how visibly they need to have "repeated failure of automated tools" for the populace to get used to that idea instead of censorship.

baryphonic 5y ago

I think this depends on how you consider a "conspiracy" to be organized. If a conspiracy is a bunch of humans making explicit decisions about each of these incidents, it's laughable. However, if the "conspiracy" is in fact a bunch of automated tools created by a bunch of humans who all have similar biases in the same ideological direction (biases which happen to be ascendant on elite college campuses and/or in the Bay Area), then this is a fairly reasonable belief. When an incident like this happens, the outcry is great enough that the humans, who are themselves still human and capable of compassion, can reinstate accounts and override the automated system. But how many "failures" such as this occur where the affected parties simply have no recourse because they don't have the privilege of 60k simultaneous streamers watching?

belltaco 5y ago
>However, if the "conspiracy" is in fact a bunch of automated tools created by a bunch of humans who all have similar biases in the same ideological direction (biases which happen to be ascendant on elite college campuses and/or in the Bay Area), then this is a fairly reasonable belief. The conspiracy theorists just don't know about bad automated decisions made in the other direction because it's suppressed in their echo chamber.
- etchalon 5y ago
  Basically. The vocal right and vocal left are both convinced that big tech is biased against them and in favor of the other, when in reality, they're mostly biased against controversy which would hurt them with advertisers.
fragmede 5y ago
Intent matters. It's not like the secret Bay Area college elite cabal all sat down one day and one of their secret meetings and decided to write if streamer.is_black() or streamer.is_woman(): streamer.suspend() into the algorithm. That's an irrational belief. But because of our racist past, present, and future, when mysterious ML models come into play, it's entirely possible for that to happen, and frequently. But unless you believe the above code exists somewhere and was written by a human, it's a bit much to call that a conspiracy. Which is probably why it's written in quotes. Thus, the problem to raise isn't that parties with no recourse might be silenced. That's absolutely an issue, but clearly the mere argument hasn't gotten YouTube to sufficiently change their ways. That's because that conspiracy doesn't exist. The argument to make is that it degrades YouTube's content as a whole. There are a number of other Internet video hosting platforms, most recently TikTok, and it behooves YouTube to spend more time adjusting their algorithms simply because content creators are going to create a little something with the hope to go viral, then get their content taken down, and then move to another platform, rather than say anything about it to more than a couple of real life friends. TikTok's ascendancy (and Vine before it) proves that YouTube's dominance is not assured. The right winds of change could result in YouTube to be displaced, and YouTube's "algorithm" being incorrect too frequently with takedowns is sure to play a role.

__s 5y ago

> Streams are back up just in time for the closing arguments

_yoqn 5y ago

[flagged]

vkou 5y ago
It would significantly help your point if the conspiracies you were citing were not plain old unsubstantiated bullshit. I, too have a laptop containing damning evidence about <whomever>, and no, I uh, won't show it to anyone, because I'm scared of the deep state. But I'm not so scared of the deep state that I will keep silent about it. I am at an incredibly particular level of scared. That nobody takes me seriously is, of course, further proof that the powers that be are repressing the truth.
- _yoqn 5y ago
  > It would significantly help your point if the conspiracies you were citing were not plain old unsubstantiated bullshit. What's unsubstantiated about it? Jack Dorsey admitted he censored the story from the New York Post incorrectly and only after the election did they reinstate the ability to share the article. The computer shop owner who had the laptop had the signed receipt from Hunter Biden. Hunter himself admitted he's under investigation by the FBI for tax fraud. The drug and sex pictures in the laptop were not the most incriminating material. It was the emails to foreign powers selling his father's influence as Vice President and a longstanding senator that is the real damning stuff. Now, if you have a laptop containing emails selling your significantly political parent's influence to foreign interests then that might be of interest to the general public. If you just gave stupid pictures of yourself doing drugs then nobody cares.
  - jay3ss 5y ago
    Do you have a source for this?
  - voldacar 5y ago
    The guy should have just released a .iso of the laptop's hard drive. Then we wouldn't still be arguing over its authenticity a year later
  - 5y ago

tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago

While I agree with your guess of "failure of automated tools", the streams being back up is only partially helpful; much of the damage is done, and it will further polarization because more people now feel persecuted.

tablespoon 5y ago
> While I agree with your guess of "failure of automated tools", the streams being back up is only partially helpful; much of the damage is done, and it will further polarization because more people now feel persecuted. If people react to a glitch that way, I'd argue that the damage had been done before the glitch.
- skinkestek 5y ago
  > If people react to a glitch that way, I'd argue that the damage had been done before the glitch. True, a few years ago I had clearly cut them slack and today I feel like a jackass for being so naive about it back then. It is not irreparable I think, and I don't think of Google as a comic supervillain, on fact in some ways they are way better than everyone else. I do not however cut them any slack anymore like I used to.
- cbozeman 5y ago
  I hope you - and every other HN reader - realizes that "normal people" don't realize most of the shit running this whole grand experiment we call the Internet, and especially social media, relies extensively upon automation. A lot of "normies" think there's someone actively at a computer, doing all this stuff.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Lacking trust isn't really damage. The "glitch" that can suppress information and live streams that effectively warrants suspicion in my opinion. You simply have to believe Youtube here. Why did it match the content? Certainly because someone fed it with parameters.

prince005 5y ago

It's very sad to see how people blame and thrash services like youtube instead of respecting the fact that all of it is provided absolutely free of cost.

account42 5y ago
Providing something for free (even if in this case, you do pay in many ways) is not a shield from criticism. You can't compare a free service to no service but instead have to compare it to the possible alternative reality where that particular free service does not exist. This is distinction is especially important for areas where network effects effectively prevent any alternatives from gaining traction.
kottaram 5y ago
Whenever something is given free of cost to you, you are the product. Not the other way around.
Nicksil 5y ago
>It's very sad to see how people blame and thrash services like youtube instead of respecting the fact that all of it is provided absolutely free of cost. It is absolutely not free of cost. Google wouldn't be able to sustain if they were not receiving anything in return. In this exchange, however, you don't know the value you're contributing; there is no clear value exchange: "I'll give you $x.xx for use of such-n-such." Instead you're expected to believe that what they provide you is fair for the value you provide them.
caskstrength 5y ago
I'm quite sure that I'm actually paying for YouTube.
- genewitch 5y ago
  I wonder what the average family YouTube bill would be if Google charged AWS egress fees...
raxxorrax 5y ago

raxxorrax 5y ago

I think corporations have to deal with the issue that their content control is seen as a conspiracy to be honest. Might not be objective, but it is a problem of their own making.