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> There comes a point where Youtube is not saving money by automating their content moderation but Youtube decides to keep pushing forward. When you deal with

> There comes a point where Youtube is not saving money by automating their content moderation but Youtube decides to keep pushing forward. When you deal with the scale that YT are operating at, automating content moderation is the only cost effective way. > At some point a competitor that is good enough will arrive Competitors have always existed. They existed before YT got big, still exist, and new competitors have been created since. The problem isn’t lack of competition, it’s the network effect. People go on YT, few specifically load YT to go on specific channels. Or to put it in an old world context, people don’t buy a TV for a specific TV show. They buy one to watch lots of TV shows knowing there are multiple shows they could enjoy. So content creators leaving YT doesn’t equate to all their subscribers leaving YT. If anything, what that actually equates to is that content creator loosing viewers. And bare in mind that most content creators will have significantly more viewers (regular + irregular) than the number who’ve subscribed.

Dylan16807 4y ago
> When you deal with the scale that YT are operating at, automating content moderation is the only cost effective way. Why? If youtube had 30 million in revenue, could they afford a couple moderators? Their revenue is 1000x higher, so can they not afford 1000x as many moderators? Let's take some ballpark estimates. Half a million videos are uploaded per day (probably accurate), and 10% of them reach a thousand views or are on channels that typically reach a thousand views (probably accurate), and 10% of those need a human moderator (probably way too high). Investigation takes 10 minutes with each moderator doing 40 per work day (just a guess, should be sufficient), and averaging 25 per day over the entire year. Multiply all those numbers together, and you get an estimate of 200 moderators to handle all videos of any import. For a company with 30 billion dollars in revenue. Am I super far off on one of those numbers? The fact that it's so hard for medium to large channels to get the attention of a human seems entirely like mismanagement to me, not a real cost issue.
- glandium 4y ago
  It was 30,000 hours of new content an hour on average a few months ago. That's 720,000 hours a day. The average video is reportedly 11.7 minutes, which makes it about 4M new videos per day. You're off by about an order of magnitude. Edit: 10% of videos with more than a thousand views is reportedly acurate. That makes it 50,000 videos per day according to your numbers, and with 25 videos reviewed a day on average by person, that makes it 2,000 persons with your numbers, not 200, so you're off by another order or magnitude. For 10% of 4M, that would be 16,000 people, or, what, 10% of Alphabet's workforce? Youtube itself reportedly has 2,800 employees.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    Huh, I didn't think a 2016 number would be that wildly different. Okay, 4 million videos. So if we adjust the moderation percent to 5% that would mean 800 moderators. And focusing on videos with 10k views would need 1/4 of that. Videos with 100k views would be 1/10 of that. And this is a channel that gets millions of views. There's only going to be a couple thousand videos per day at the million+ tier. A handful of people could provide white glove moderation to all of them. Edit to your edit: I think you skipped the part where most videos don't need to be reviewed. Take that 16k and divide it by 10 or 20 or 50.
    - laumars 4y ago
      The problem we have is that popular content creators are the most susceptible to the problems caused by YTs moderation. Your solution only reinforces that problem since you’re excluding unpopular content creators. You’re also making the assumption that humans are going to moderate consistently but that simply isn’t true. Different people will draw the line at different points and our mood will also vary the line too. Review guidelines would only only help with measurable criteria but so often what constitutes as acceptable or not is a lot more nuanced.
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
        > Your solution only reinforces that problem since you’re excluding unpopular content creators. If you're not even getting a thousand views then it's not going to be a big deal if some of your videos get messed with. Annoying but not important to your life. Just about anyone that would seriously call themselves a content creator, even as a hobby, should be above that bar. I'm in favor of good moderation for everyone, sure, but I want to hammer home just how easily they could provide good moderation to any video with traction.
- samatman 4y ago
  YouTube doesn't need more moderators, they need to be compelled through negotiation or law to be fair. What would that look like? Any creator could send a classification (such as age restriction) which they disagree with to an independent moderation agency, and the party which is decided for or against pays for it. There are of course issues with maintaining the independence of those agencies, but this is a problem which has been solved successfully in the past. Also (this is table stakes, it's pathetic this isn't already done) an exact timestamp for any part of a video used to classify it must be provided by YouTube. So it's about reviewing ~5 seconds of video in context, not the whole thing. There may be two, three of those timestamps, but if someone has to look at a full minute of a video to determine if it's age-appropriate? It probably isn't.
knaik94 4y ago
Maybe I have a different understanding of how people use YT but everyone in my circle has a YT account because they have a gmail account and therefore subscribe and actively watch things based on that. Because gmail has become the standard every single person also has a youtube account. In new world terms, Youtube is one of the most used apps on my TV in my house and the first question I was asked in terms of tech support by my parent was "How do I connect the TV Youtube to my account? I want my recommendations to show up." Competitors don't really exist. The closest is most likely Baidu. But even Baidu isn't close enough to be considered competition. There is very clearly no English language alternative. Knowing alternatives isn't the same as people actively using them. Even content creators that don't leave will be less excited about making content. People will watch mostly similar videos on Youtube by design. Once a large content creator leaves and demonstrates that it's a viable option, other content creators will follow. Once most of the people you enjoyed leave a platfrom, and they leave in a small amount of time, people will stop going to youtube. Having more viewers than subscribers doesn't matter nearly as much as "the algorithm" and how many people get recommended a video. "The algorithm" makes or breaks a video's momentum, and that's obvious by videos like this content creator's that bluntly put how this kind of mismanagement put their livelihood at risk. People not logged in will not be recommended a flagged video, it will be unprioritized in search results too. I have first hand experience on that. Viewers vs Subscribers is meaningless to argue when even your subscribed users over the age of 18 barely get recommended your new video. Looking from a world view, users in the EU require users to share with Youtube a valid driver's license, Proof of Age card, or passport in order to get 18+ videos unblocked. Content creators have a hard time convincing viewers to just press a button on a webpage. Some of these things are not obvious without having analytics numbers to watch when you release a somewhat popular video.
- laumars 4y ago
  You’re making a lot of illogical counter arguments here. > Maybe I have a different understanding of how people use YT… You’re not disagreeing with my point though. Just talking about it from the other end. But the point you’re making is the same as me: people don’t use YT because a specific content creator is on there. They use it because of the network effect. > Competitors don't really exist. Of course they do. There’s literally dozens of big videos sharing platforms. What you’re arguing is that there isn’t any platforms equivalent in size, which is true but that doesn’t mean that there are not competitors on the market. The problem isn’t a lack of competition, it’s the network effect. It’s the fact that most people watch YT, not $CREATOR who happens to also be on YT. > Once a large content creator leaves and demonstrates that it's a viable option, other content creators will follow. YT has already had large (millions of subs) creators leave their platform and it’s had little difference. Hence my point that people are not using YT for specific content creators. > Having more viewers than subscribers doesn't matter nearly as much as "the algorithm" and how many people get recommended a video. You’re making a straw man argument here because I wasn’t talking about the algorithm. I was talking about users. I was making the point that subscribers aren’t the full picture in terms of the number of viewers a creator might have. > People not logged in will not be recommended a flagged video, it will be unprioritized in search results too You’re making the assumption here that non-subscribed viewers aren’t logged in. That’s usually not the case. Lots of people will be logged in by default (because of GMail et al) but still not subscribing to every creator they enjoy. Example: I have subscribed to literally zero creators and still see everything you’re claiming I wouldn’t.
ehnto 4y ago
> When you deal with the scale that YT are operating at, automating content moderation is the only cost effective way. Is this something that should be a limit to scale then? If you instead ran a petrol station that grew so large that you couldn't economically hire enough people to safely and fairly service all your patrons, you've reached a natural limit of the scale of the business. I think it's fair to say that if they're failing to moderate the platform in a way that doesn't harm it's users fairly regularly then they've reached a limit to their scale. Remembering as well that a lot of their users are clients, making business transactions with YouTube, not just users watching content.
- laumars 4y ago
  How do you define “harm”? And who are YTs customers? The problem here is that “harm” is subjective and YTs customers (advertisers) are not the same as their users (viewers), who are also different from their content creators. I’m not defending YT here. Just explaining how it’s gotten to the place it is.
  - ehnto 4y ago
    Harm I feel is when YT doesn't pay them for their contribution to the platform anymore, based on any myriad of reasons that the YT moderation can trigger falsely. There's also the extra complication of brand and personal impact of having videos removed or flagged falsely. Of course you have to work within the platform rules, but many people are doing exactly that and still getting flagged by the algorithmic moderation. Especially in the music YouTube space. Content creators are working with YT for distribution of content in return for a cut of ad revenue, so it's more than an account on an internet platform like a forum, it's a business relationship, which would make them a client or vendor.
    - laumars 4y ago
      But this comes back to the point about who the customer is. YT are not harming his customers. They’re harming (from their perspective) those annoying expenses. I don’t think you can equate it to a business relationship because those same relationships in broadcasting looks totally different (disclaimer: I used to work in broadcasting). Content creators need to wise up that they’re not part of the business relationship in YTs business model. The fact they get paid at all is a by product.
DanBC 4y ago
> When you deal with the scale that YT are operating at, automating content moderation is the only cost effective way. At some point the Silicon Valley excuse of "we can't afford to do it" is going to run into dumb but powerful regulators who simply do not care and who will impose strict law to force it to happen. YouTube has managed to persuade some regulators that the advertisers and the channel owners are solely responsible for ad placement, and that YouTube (which controls which products can be advertised, which places the ads, which takes most of the money for the ads, which has contracts with the advertisers and the channels where ads are placed, which earns most of its revenue through ads) has nothing to do with ads. That's worked for them in the US, but it's a fact that regulators in other countries are losing patience. For example, YouTube needs a way to stop alcohol being advertised to children. At the moment YouTube are saying that it's the responsibility of the drinks company and the channel to stop this happening. That works in the US, but it doesn't work in Europe, and YouTube saying "we don't know how old people are because COPPA" is met with "so what? It's still a problem, and you need to fix it".
- laumars 4y ago
  Even in classical broadcasting in Europe there’s an element outside of the broadcasters control. In the U.K. we have a “watershed” where content gets more adult after 9PM. But kids can watch TV after then and still see adverts for alcohol. The solution to that is the same as with YT, parents need to accept some responsibility to vet what their kids watch (I say this as a parent myself). I’m not saying this excuses YT of any responsibility though. Just that this problem has always existed.
  - DanBC 4y ago
    The watershed is a good example that supports my point. We have law that says "don't advertise to children", and that's quite tricky so if a beer company says "we only placed ads in programmes that aired after 9pm which had adult themes" they're in the clear. If they place ads in shows at 7pm that are aimed at families they're in trouble. The YouTube version is the channel saying "I have no idea who watches my channel because YouTube won't and can't tell me", advertisers saying "We advertise with YouTube, we expect them to place the ads responsibly, and we can't rely on YT analytics because COPPA means many children watch while logged into a parents account" and YouTube saying "we don't care, it's entirely the responsibility of the channels and advertisers". It's this last "we don't care" bit that is causing problems. As the watershed example shows you don't have to have a bullet proof solution. You just need to make some good faith attempt to create conventions around ad placement that reduce the numbers of alcohol ads being served to children.
reitanqild 4y ago
> Competitors have always existed. They existed before YT got big, still exist, and new competitors have been created since. Point is, for now Google has and have had for over a decade, a bottomless source of funding. So they pushed YouTube as a free quality product for over a decade until every viable competitor was dead or irrelevant. And now they can do whatever they want: - awful moderation - censoring - remove downvotes for everyone just because their video was downvoted - show 11 ads in a row - etc I used to like Google a lot. A year ago I voluntarily dropped out of interviews with them after the first interview. I don't want to work at such a place. As an ordinary guy who used to be poor I'm not sure I'd even be safe or fit in there. When I was young I didn't understand why anti-dumping laws existed and why EU enforced them harshly. Today I wish they did against such abusers.
- laumars 4y ago
  This is true for how GMail became dominant but most video sharing platforms were already free before YouTube, and still are now. Sure there are some non-free services, but YouTube (even pre-Google) didn’t invent the free video hosting paradigm.

Dylan16807 4y ago

> When you deal with the scale that YT are operating at, automating content moderation is the only cost effective way. Why? If youtube had 30 million in revenue, could they afford a couple moderators? Their revenue is 1000x higher, so can they not afford 1000x as many moderators? Let's take some ballpark estimates. Half a million videos are uploaded per day (probably accurate), and 10% of them reach a thousand views or are on channels that typically reach a thousand views (probably accurate), and 10% of those need a human moderator (probably way too high). Investigation takes 10 minutes with each moderator doing 40 per work day (just a guess, should be sufficient), and averaging 25 per day over the entire year. Multiply all those numbers together, and you get an estimate of 200 moderators to handle all videos of any import. For a company with 30 billion dollars in revenue. Am I super far off on one of those numbers? The fact that it's so hard for medium to large channels to get the attention of a human seems entirely like mismanagement to me, not a real cost issue.

glandium 4y ago
It was 30,000 hours of new content an hour on average a few months ago. That's 720,000 hours a day. The average video is reportedly 11.7 minutes, which makes it about 4M new videos per day. You're off by about an order of magnitude. Edit: 10% of videos with more than a thousand views is reportedly acurate. That makes it 50,000 videos per day according to your numbers, and with 25 videos reviewed a day on average by person, that makes it 2,000 persons with your numbers, not 200, so you're off by another order or magnitude. For 10% of 4M, that would be 16,000 people, or, what, 10% of Alphabet's workforce? Youtube itself reportedly has 2,800 employees.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  Huh, I didn't think a 2016 number would be that wildly different. Okay, 4 million videos. So if we adjust the moderation percent to 5% that would mean 800 moderators. And focusing on videos with 10k views would need 1/4 of that. Videos with 100k views would be 1/10 of that. And this is a channel that gets millions of views. There's only going to be a couple thousand videos per day at the million+ tier. A handful of people could provide white glove moderation to all of them. Edit to your edit: I think you skipped the part where most videos don't need to be reviewed. Take that 16k and divide it by 10 or 20 or 50.
  - laumars 4y ago
    The problem we have is that popular content creators are the most susceptible to the problems caused by YTs moderation. Your solution only reinforces that problem since you’re excluding unpopular content creators. You’re also making the assumption that humans are going to moderate consistently but that simply isn’t true. Different people will draw the line at different points and our mood will also vary the line too. Review guidelines would only only help with measurable criteria but so often what constitutes as acceptable or not is a lot more nuanced.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      > Your solution only reinforces that problem since you’re excluding unpopular content creators. If you're not even getting a thousand views then it's not going to be a big deal if some of your videos get messed with. Annoying but not important to your life. Just about anyone that would seriously call themselves a content creator, even as a hobby, should be above that bar. I'm in favor of good moderation for everyone, sure, but I want to hammer home just how easily they could provide good moderation to any video with traction.
samatman 4y ago
YouTube doesn't need more moderators, they need to be compelled through negotiation or law to be fair. What would that look like? Any creator could send a classification (such as age restriction) which they disagree with to an independent moderation agency, and the party which is decided for or against pays for it. There are of course issues with maintaining the independence of those agencies, but this is a problem which has been solved successfully in the past. Also (this is table stakes, it's pathetic this isn't already done) an exact timestamp for any part of a video used to classify it must be provided by YouTube. So it's about reviewing ~5 seconds of video in context, not the whole thing. There may be two, three of those timestamps, but if someone has to look at a full minute of a video to determine if it's age-appropriate? It probably isn't.

knaik94 4y ago

Maybe I have a different understanding of how people use YT but everyone in my circle has a YT account because they have a gmail account and therefore subscribe and actively watch things based on that. Because gmail has become the standard every single person also has a youtube account. In new world terms, Youtube is one of the most used apps on my TV in my house and the first question I was asked in terms of tech support by my parent was "How do I connect the TV Youtube to my account? I want my recommendations to show up." Competitors don't really exist. The closest is most likely Baidu. But even Baidu isn't close enough to be considered competition. There is very clearly no English language alternative. Knowing alternatives isn't the same as people actively using them. Even content creators that don't leave will be less excited about making content. People will watch mostly similar videos on Youtube by design. Once a large content creator leaves and demonstrates that it's a viable option, other content creators will follow. Once most of the people you enjoyed leave a platfrom, and they leave in a small amount of time, people will stop going to youtube. Having more viewers than subscribers doesn't matter nearly as much as "the algorithm" and how many people get recommended a video. "The algorithm" makes or breaks a video's momentum, and that's obvious by videos like this content creator's that bluntly put how this kind of mismanagement put their livelihood at risk. People not logged in will not be recommended a flagged video, it will be unprioritized in search results too. I have first hand experience on that. Viewers vs Subscribers is meaningless to argue when even your subscribed users over the age of 18 barely get recommended your new video. Looking from a world view, users in the EU require users to share with Youtube a valid driver's license, Proof of Age card, or passport in order to get 18+ videos unblocked. Content creators have a hard time convincing viewers to just press a button on a webpage. Some of these things are not obvious without having analytics numbers to watch when you release a somewhat popular video.

laumars 4y ago
You’re making a lot of illogical counter arguments here. > Maybe I have a different understanding of how people use YT… You’re not disagreeing with my point though. Just talking about it from the other end. But the point you’re making is the same as me: people don’t use YT because a specific content creator is on there. They use it because of the network effect. > Competitors don't really exist. Of course they do. There’s literally dozens of big videos sharing platforms. What you’re arguing is that there isn’t any platforms equivalent in size, which is true but that doesn’t mean that there are not competitors on the market. The problem isn’t a lack of competition, it’s the network effect. It’s the fact that most people watch YT, not $CREATOR who happens to also be on YT. > Once a large content creator leaves and demonstrates that it's a viable option, other content creators will follow. YT has already had large (millions of subs) creators leave their platform and it’s had little difference. Hence my point that people are not using YT for specific content creators. > Having more viewers than subscribers doesn't matter nearly as much as "the algorithm" and how many people get recommended a video. You’re making a straw man argument here because I wasn’t talking about the algorithm. I was talking about users. I was making the point that subscribers aren’t the full picture in terms of the number of viewers a creator might have. > People not logged in will not be recommended a flagged video, it will be unprioritized in search results too You’re making the assumption here that non-subscribed viewers aren’t logged in. That’s usually not the case. Lots of people will be logged in by default (because of GMail et al) but still not subscribing to every creator they enjoy. Example: I have subscribed to literally zero creators and still see everything you’re claiming I wouldn’t.

ehnto 4y ago

> When you deal with the scale that YT are operating at, automating content moderation is the only cost effective way. Is this something that should be a limit to scale then? If you instead ran a petrol station that grew so large that you couldn't economically hire enough people to safely and fairly service all your patrons, you've reached a natural limit of the scale of the business. I think it's fair to say that if they're failing to moderate the platform in a way that doesn't harm it's users fairly regularly then they've reached a limit to their scale. Remembering as well that a lot of their users are clients, making business transactions with YouTube, not just users watching content.

laumars 4y ago
How do you define “harm”? And who are YTs customers? The problem here is that “harm” is subjective and YTs customers (advertisers) are not the same as their users (viewers), who are also different from their content creators. I’m not defending YT here. Just explaining how it’s gotten to the place it is.
- ehnto 4y ago
  Harm I feel is when YT doesn't pay them for their contribution to the platform anymore, based on any myriad of reasons that the YT moderation can trigger falsely. There's also the extra complication of brand and personal impact of having videos removed or flagged falsely. Of course you have to work within the platform rules, but many people are doing exactly that and still getting flagged by the algorithmic moderation. Especially in the music YouTube space. Content creators are working with YT for distribution of content in return for a cut of ad revenue, so it's more than an account on an internet platform like a forum, it's a business relationship, which would make them a client or vendor.
  - laumars 4y ago
    But this comes back to the point about who the customer is. YT are not harming his customers. They’re harming (from their perspective) those annoying expenses. I don’t think you can equate it to a business relationship because those same relationships in broadcasting looks totally different (disclaimer: I used to work in broadcasting). Content creators need to wise up that they’re not part of the business relationship in YTs business model. The fact they get paid at all is a by product.

DanBC 4y ago

> When you deal with the scale that YT are operating at, automating content moderation is the only cost effective way. At some point the Silicon Valley excuse of "we can't afford to do it" is going to run into dumb but powerful regulators who simply do not care and who will impose strict law to force it to happen. YouTube has managed to persuade some regulators that the advertisers and the channel owners are solely responsible for ad placement, and that YouTube (which controls which products can be advertised, which places the ads, which takes most of the money for the ads, which has contracts with the advertisers and the channels where ads are placed, which earns most of its revenue through ads) has nothing to do with ads. That's worked for them in the US, but it's a fact that regulators in other countries are losing patience. For example, YouTube needs a way to stop alcohol being advertised to children. At the moment YouTube are saying that it's the responsibility of the drinks company and the channel to stop this happening. That works in the US, but it doesn't work in Europe, and YouTube saying "we don't know how old people are because COPPA" is met with "so what? It's still a problem, and you need to fix it".

laumars 4y ago
Even in classical broadcasting in Europe there’s an element outside of the broadcasters control. In the U.K. we have a “watershed” where content gets more adult after 9PM. But kids can watch TV after then and still see adverts for alcohol. The solution to that is the same as with YT, parents need to accept some responsibility to vet what their kids watch (I say this as a parent myself). I’m not saying this excuses YT of any responsibility though. Just that this problem has always existed.
- DanBC 4y ago
  The watershed is a good example that supports my point. We have law that says "don't advertise to children", and that's quite tricky so if a beer company says "we only placed ads in programmes that aired after 9pm which had adult themes" they're in the clear. If they place ads in shows at 7pm that are aimed at families they're in trouble. The YouTube version is the channel saying "I have no idea who watches my channel because YouTube won't and can't tell me", advertisers saying "We advertise with YouTube, we expect them to place the ads responsibly, and we can't rely on YT analytics because COPPA means many children watch while logged into a parents account" and YouTube saying "we don't care, it's entirely the responsibility of the channels and advertisers". It's this last "we don't care" bit that is causing problems. As the watershed example shows you don't have to have a bullet proof solution. You just need to make some good faith attempt to create conventions around ad placement that reduce the numbers of alcohol ads being served to children.

reitanqild 4y ago

> Competitors have always existed. They existed before YT got big, still exist, and new competitors have been created since. Point is, for now Google has and have had for over a decade, a bottomless source of funding. So they pushed YouTube as a free quality product for over a decade until every viable competitor was dead or irrelevant. And now they can do whatever they want: - awful moderation - censoring - remove downvotes for everyone just because their video was downvoted - show 11 ads in a row - etc I used to like Google a lot. A year ago I voluntarily dropped out of interviews with them after the first interview. I don't want to work at such a place. As an ordinary guy who used to be poor I'm not sure I'd even be safe or fit in there. When I was young I didn't understand why anti-dumping laws existed and why EU enforced them harshly. Today I wish they did against such abusers.

laumars 4y ago
This is true for how GMail became dominant but most video sharing platforms were already free before YouTube, and still are now. Sure there are some non-free services, but YouTube (even pre-Google) didn’t invent the free video hosting paradigm.