9 ms·

yes, because human over-site is not viable at that scale. Please educate yourself on the scale of youtube. its not like folks at youtube didn't think of the ide

by seaman1921 5y ago

yes, because human over-site is not viable at that scale. Please educate yourself on the scale of youtube. its not like folks at youtube didn't think of the idea of using humans. even classifiers with 99.99% precision means hundreds of thousands of videos and channels will be incorrectly marked as abusive every year - we just need to accept that and hope that the automated systems are improved over time.

spyc 5y ago
We need to accept that why exactly?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
anthonygd 5y ago
> Please educate yourself on the scale of youtube. Please be less smug. YouTube has no right or requirement to operate at that scale. They've consciously decided to scale past what they're able to manage well. This is no different than a developer who produces terrible non-functional code but defends it to their boss by pointing out the line count is really high. I'd be impressed by their scale only if they managed to maintain some level of quality also.
- seaman1921 5y ago
  > YouTube has no right or requirement to operate at that scale. so only you can be smug, eh ? > They've consciously decided to scale past what they're able to manage well. That is not true. They are doing quite well considering the overall scale. > I'd be impressed by their scale only if they managed to maintain some level of quality also. So you assess quality by random one-off/anecdotal articles always highlighting the negative ? How do you know what their quality is when you can never know the number of abusive videos correctly blocked ?
gdulli 5y ago
I love the idea of admitting that scaling up technology arbitrarily can make our lives worse instead of better. But no, the answer is not to accept it and hope that it will get better despite no specific and substantive reason to believe it will.
Shared404 5y ago
> Please educate yourself... Side note on communication here. Any time someone uses a phrase like "Please educate yourself on $THING", they lose a lot of credibility, at least in the context of that communication. Why? 1) It comes across as incredibly dismissive of both any knowledge that that individual may have - especially on HN, I'm pretty sure we're all familiar with YouTube's scale - and of the idea that there may be missing information, on either the situation or context for the other persons point of view. 2) It's quite condescending as well - and if someone thinks that you are coming at a conversation from a combative place, they won't want to listen to what you are saying. Why should they listen if they think you don't care? 3) It's often used to paint broad strokes in places broad strokes may not be appropriate, and the phrase being attached to that makes it lose credibility even when it is appropriate. --- Ok, now a response to the actual content: I don't know why we've decided to allow things to exist "at scale" willy nilly. If something becomes a net negative "at scale", don't allow it to be "at scale". No one is entitled to a business model.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- titzer 5y ago
  > If something becomes a net negative "at scale", don't allow it to be "at scale". Hear! Hear! We shouldn't have to give over society to the fattest, most insatiable stomachs masquerading as technology companies.
  - emteycz 5y ago
    Well don't do that. I'm not doing it and I'm fine. It's not like Youtube is the society.
    - titzer 5y ago
      I'm trying to avoid getting by zombies too, but their number keeps growing and they're generating nice profits for ZombieCorp!
- 5y ago
afavour 5y ago
> Please educate yourself on the scale of YouTube You're being very condescending when it's totally unwarranted. I assure you people are aware of the scale of YouTube. But why should we give YouTube a free pass? You're talking about the service as if it's a force of nature rather than something human created and managed. Why are they entitled to operate at a scale beyond their own control, all while extracting huge profits?
- 4ec0755f5522 5y ago
  This is the thing exactly! They built a system that allows infinite uploads but did not build a system to handle the workload of dealing with infinite uploads. Some people just want to throw their hands up: "Dealing with infinite uploads is hard!" "It doesn't scale!" without realizing the youtube is responsible for the very problem they created. They designed it this way!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
alecbz 5y ago
I'm actually not sure this is a question of scale at all? The amount of revenue and the amount of moderation needed both scale with the amount of content. If anything, YouTube's scale gives it a better chance of being able to address this issue, since there are likely fixed costs here that YouTube can better fund (obviously investing in better automated screening, but also setting up the workflows for human moderation, etc.) I think the only benefit a smaller scale competitor has is that they're less visible and unlikely to be "caught" for hosting content they "shouldn't". But if the rules applied equally to everyone, I think YouTube is strictly at an advantage in being able to implement better human moderation.
- Shared404 5y ago
  Interesting points. If I were designing from scratch, I would probably use a Peertube/Mastodon type federated system. Each host would responsible for the videos they host - meaning they would have incentive to limit videos uploaded to any given host to an amount they could handle, or only allow trusted uploaders to their host. Then you would have the federation so that you could allow hosts that you didn't have issues with, while blocking those you did. Eventually, there would evolve safe/block lists - like with email and adblockers - so it wouldn't even require that much effort on the parts of those running the hosts.
anonymousab 5y ago
Human oversight should be a necessary cost and constraining factor of scale. Can't deal with providing non-kafka-esque support to n-many users? Then you shouldn't have n-many users.
seaman1921 5y ago
Edit - Firstly, sorry about how the phrase "please educate yourself" sounded - english is not my first language, although that shouldn't be an excuse to sound like an ass in a public forum. What I meant is that the scale of youtube is often underestimated (Eg. stats like the number of abusive channels and videos that they take down every day etc. are just mind-boggling) Secondly, for the folks saying why should we allow youtube to scale beyond what it can handle, or why should we accept the 99.99% precision ? It is because I do not see a futuristic society in which humans are doing work like "manual reviews" - to progress humanity we need to automate such manual labour so I support the fact that companies are testing the limits of automatic content moderation - and working to improve it - I see it as a win overall. Adding human reviewers would be a step in the backward direction IMO.
- anamax 5y ago
  > What I meant is that the scale of youtube is often underestimated Why are you assuming that HN readers don't understand YT scale? You do know that HN has readers who have built things at YouTube scale, including YouTube itself, right?

spyc 5y ago

We need to accept that why exactly?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

anthonygd 5y ago

> Please educate yourself on the scale of youtube. Please be less smug. YouTube has no right or requirement to operate at that scale. They've consciously decided to scale past what they're able to manage well. This is no different than a developer who produces terrible non-functional code but defends it to their boss by pointing out the line count is really high. I'd be impressed by their scale only if they managed to maintain some level of quality also.

seaman1921 5y ago
> YouTube has no right or requirement to operate at that scale. so only you can be smug, eh ? > They've consciously decided to scale past what they're able to manage well. That is not true. They are doing quite well considering the overall scale. > I'd be impressed by their scale only if they managed to maintain some level of quality also. So you assess quality by random one-off/anecdotal articles always highlighting the negative ? How do you know what their quality is when you can never know the number of abusive videos correctly blocked ?

gdulli 5y ago

I love the idea of admitting that scaling up technology arbitrarily can make our lives worse instead of better. But no, the answer is not to accept it and hope that it will get better despite no specific and substantive reason to believe it will.

Shared404 5y ago

> Please educate yourself... Side note on communication here. Any time someone uses a phrase like "Please educate yourself on $THING", they lose a lot of credibility, at least in the context of that communication. Why? 1) It comes across as incredibly dismissive of both any knowledge that that individual may have - especially on HN, I'm pretty sure we're all familiar with YouTube's scale - and of the idea that there may be missing information, on either the situation or context for the other persons point of view. 2) It's quite condescending as well - and if someone thinks that you are coming at a conversation from a combative place, they won't want to listen to what you are saying. Why should they listen if they think you don't care? 3) It's often used to paint broad strokes in places broad strokes may not be appropriate, and the phrase being attached to that makes it lose credibility even when it is appropriate. --- Ok, now a response to the actual content: I don't know why we've decided to allow things to exist "at scale" willy nilly. If something becomes a net negative "at scale", don't allow it to be "at scale". No one is entitled to a business model.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
titzer 5y ago
> If something becomes a net negative "at scale", don't allow it to be "at scale". Hear! Hear! We shouldn't have to give over society to the fattest, most insatiable stomachs masquerading as technology companies.
- emteycz 5y ago
  Well don't do that. I'm not doing it and I'm fine. It's not like Youtube is the society.
  - titzer 5y ago
    I'm trying to avoid getting by zombies too, but their number keeps growing and they're generating nice profits for ZombieCorp!
5y ago

afavour 5y ago

> Please educate yourself on the scale of YouTube You're being very condescending when it's totally unwarranted. I assure you people are aware of the scale of YouTube. But why should we give YouTube a free pass? You're talking about the service as if it's a force of nature rather than something human created and managed. Why are they entitled to operate at a scale beyond their own control, all while extracting huge profits?

4ec0755f5522 5y ago
This is the thing exactly! They built a system that allows infinite uploads but did not build a system to handle the workload of dealing with infinite uploads. Some people just want to throw their hands up: "Dealing with infinite uploads is hard!" "It doesn't scale!" without realizing the youtube is responsible for the very problem they created. They designed it this way!

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

alecbz 5y ago

I'm actually not sure this is a question of scale at all? The amount of revenue and the amount of moderation needed both scale with the amount of content. If anything, YouTube's scale gives it a better chance of being able to address this issue, since there are likely fixed costs here that YouTube can better fund (obviously investing in better automated screening, but also setting up the workflows for human moderation, etc.) I think the only benefit a smaller scale competitor has is that they're less visible and unlikely to be "caught" for hosting content they "shouldn't". But if the rules applied equally to everyone, I think YouTube is strictly at an advantage in being able to implement better human moderation.

Shared404 5y ago
Interesting points. If I were designing from scratch, I would probably use a Peertube/Mastodon type federated system. Each host would responsible for the videos they host - meaning they would have incentive to limit videos uploaded to any given host to an amount they could handle, or only allow trusted uploaders to their host. Then you would have the federation so that you could allow hosts that you didn't have issues with, while blocking those you did. Eventually, there would evolve safe/block lists - like with email and adblockers - so it wouldn't even require that much effort on the parts of those running the hosts.

anonymousab 5y ago

Human oversight should be a necessary cost and constraining factor of scale. Can't deal with providing non-kafka-esque support to n-many users? Then you shouldn't have n-many users.

seaman1921 5y ago

Edit - Firstly, sorry about how the phrase "please educate yourself" sounded - english is not my first language, although that shouldn't be an excuse to sound like an ass in a public forum. What I meant is that the scale of youtube is often underestimated (Eg. stats like the number of abusive channels and videos that they take down every day etc. are just mind-boggling) Secondly, for the folks saying why should we allow youtube to scale beyond what it can handle, or why should we accept the 99.99% precision ? It is because I do not see a futuristic society in which humans are doing work like "manual reviews" - to progress humanity we need to automate such manual labour so I support the fact that companies are testing the limits of automatic content moderation - and working to improve it - I see it as a win overall. Adding human reviewers would be a step in the backward direction IMO.

anamax 5y ago
> What I meant is that the scale of youtube is often underestimated Why are you assuming that HN readers don't understand YT scale? You do know that HN has readers who have built things at YouTube scale, including YouTube itself, right?