This has been my struggle with YouTube, particularly gaming channels; I want to let my 9-year old watch fun Minecraft videos, but I have to “pre-watch” all of them since I have no idea which channels might have this kind of content dropped in the middle without warning.
Not exactly what you asked for but VidAngel is amazing for that on streaming.
You get as broad or granular set of filters you want.
From nothing blocked, to individual instances of swear words or suggestiveness->nudity are all there. Or even things like crudeness, smoking. Etc. Incredible detailed control if yoy want it.
With easy toggles for the main categories.
And you can see the instances of each of those on each episode based on what you have. It's listed out before you hit play.
I have no affiliation, just thought it was cool for if I had kids.
I use this and it’s better than nothing. I’m hoping for a day when AI is powerful enough to filter these out not by skipping them but by altering them. Subbing in family-friendly alternatives for curse words and maybe blurring or clothing the nudity. Obviously some scene will still need to be skipped entirely.
I have absolutely no confidence in this. "family-friendly" is extremely context and culture specific. You'll get lots of people actively trying to push the boundary for fun.
On the weird extreme of that are the Spiderman/Elsa videos.
On the cultural extreme is Mr Rogers washing feet together with a black friend.
Are we going to update the filters with time as well? Or would we get stuck with no toilets or flushing forever?
There's a lot of old movies in my country where the nudity happened and it was extremely matter-of-fact - for example people go for a swim in the ocean so they're naked while they change. Those movies are way more family-friendly than what this filter would accept.
Yeah I agree with the part of making it easier to do some of this stuff, heavily machine-assisted, even generative like you said, but will need a human at the end I think, to guide/audit and give stamp of approval.
Flavors guided by culture like viraptor said.
It's one of those "I know it when I see it" things. To make sure nothing glitches, is weird, or the sum of parts not "off" somehow.
EthosLab is one of my favorite Minecraft players for this reason. Pretty much all of his content is good clean fun. When he's editing, like for PvP arenas, he's pretty good at muting teammates if they are more liberal with their speech, so his own videos don't have anything offensive.
I forgot to mention TangoTek. If you want a real good time, watch their Friday Night Stabby Stabby streams (they play Among Us). It's got a great group including a lot of the above mentioned folks.
My kids are now 13 and 17. We've cursed in front of them and "allowed" them to curse since they were little. Language is language and words aren't inheriently "bad." The idea that a list of 7 words is some how offensive is asinine.
My kids are exceptional students, smart, do all the same activites as other kids. All the other kids curse, too, they just pretend they don't in front of their parents. It's a very silly game.
> What kind of harm do you think it does for kids to hear this speech?
I guess it depends on what you mean by "harm". Hearing it every once in a while, it is certainly unlikely to affect them. But if it's frequent enough (as seems to be the case in the gaming community), it will set a level of normalization that I don't want to instill in my kids.
That being said, this is my own personal opinion, and no one else should feel obligated to share it.
The video was age restricted to 18+ which, here at least, requires the watcher to prove their age with credit card or ID photo: https://i.imgur.com/hujQk37.png
Whether the video is for kids (under 13) or not is a separate flag. This type of video would generally be not-for-kids but not also age restricted.
Naturally standards change. However, back in the day there was a forgettable, campy slayer film called, I think, “Student Bodies”. I saw it because it was playing at the $2 double feature second run movie house and had air conditioning in the summer. I pretty much went there every week regardless of what was playing.
Anyway, in the middle of the movie, a fellow appears behind a desk and says something like “Everyone knows that movies with a R rating make more money. So in order for us to get that, ‘F… you’. “
And, that was apparently enough. Can’t speak to whether the tactic was effective.
As the father of a 7 and 3 year old, I never understand the desire to shelter kids from swearing. Instead, I teach my kids that some words are swear words and are only to be used in certain circumstances. It has worked well for me so far.
Abbreviated, censored, or light profanity (like “hell” or “damn”) in the title, thumbnail, or video. Moderate profanity (like “shit” or “bitch”) used in the video. Infrequent usage of strong profanity (like the "f-word”) after the opening or up to twice in approx. the first 30 seconds of the video; or strong profanity in a music video.
this guy should have censored the cursing if he didn’t want to be age restricted. If you expect a trillion dollar corporate entity to play fair, you’re delusional
since when has cursing been age restricted? i hear it all the time and videos are not age restricted even war footage from Ukraine shows horrible stuff no age restriction on most of them. There are those channels that bleep out the last second of the word so you know and heard exactly what they said, is that how they are getting around it?
I would not really include the Ukraine footage in this discussion. Pretty much every media company has loosened their rules on this topic in the interest of allowing the free flow of information. There's a time-sensitivity that doesn't apply to child programming.
It's really really easy for one side to abuse the moderation system and get the other side silenced, when all the content is horrible.
"Age restricted", in the context of terminology used by Youtube, specifically means 18+. Being age restricted heavily suppresses the video and, depending on country, watchers may be required to verify their age by credit card or sending an ID photo to Google.
Whether the video is "for kids" (under 13) is a separate matter. Generally a video like the one in the article would be not-for-kids, but also not age restricted.
Far as I'm concerned, any commercial product that contains swearing has nearly always been Rated M For Mature, which is a more verbose way to say 18+ only. Rated T for Teenagers and Rated E for Everyone straight up do not have swearing, period.
Amateur products have been the exception to this norm, because let's face it: The commons don't give a shit.
But platforms/publishers themselves are not the commons, they are businesses and they have legal liabilities: They do give a shit.
So while Youtube is asinine, flagging a video that contains swearing as Rated M (aka 18+) is reasonable. The only thing unreasonable is inconsistent enforcement. If something contains swearing, it's going in the 18+ Only bin.
I agree that the main problem is the fact that this rule is uncommunicated. As the creator of the video in the article said, they'd be fine with adjusting if they could. Instead, they complied with the publicly given rules and in return had a huge project arbitrarily suppressed.
> any commercial product that contains swearing has nearly always been Rated M For Mature, which is a more verbose way to say 18+ only. Rated T for Teenagers and Rated E for Everyone straight up do not have swearing, period.
Even in traditional media you can often get away with some swearing - especially with documentaries. Record for PG-13 movies is apparently Gunner Palace with 42 uses of "fuck".
> Rated T for Teenagers and Rated E for Everyone straight up do not have swearing, period
This is absolutely wrong. According to the ESRB website, T for Teen allows the infrequent use of strong language. This is a far cry from no swearing allowed at all.
Furthermore, the PG-13 rating for movies allows one use of the F-word per movie and more liberal use of less strong swears. So neither games or movies get rated 18+ only for swearing
seeing a guys' head get blown off in Pulp Fiction is different than when a student-peer says "Hey you wanna hear a bad word?" -- I feel like I shouldn't need to explain that.
My parents took me to see R-rated horror movies when I was like 8 years old. It owned.
One benefit of them having done that is I cannot possibly imagine giving a fuck if somebody says “fuck.” Context is what matters. Saying “fuck yeah dude!” in front of kids does absolutely no harm.
> To be restricted to 18+? If your kid goes to public school they learn these words in 1st grade.
That's irrelevant, that's about parents controlling what they kids can or cannot watch on family devices. I would not want my kids to watch any content with swearing. Inserting that footage was probably unnecessary for the purpose of that documentary at first place.
The fact that some youtuber gets less money from ads because one of his video was flagged as inappropriate is a non story.
I personally despise youtubers who fill their otherwise potentially interesting videos with cheap memes.
Summoning Salt does not include any memes in their videos. The footage that included the profanities was of a speedrunner celebrating that they had just broken the world record. This sort of footage is important for his documentaries because their whole purpose is in showing who were the key participants in the speedrunning communities for the game the video is about. You can’t do that nearly as well if you don’t actually show the speedruns.
SummoningSalt is a documentarian and it seems entirely reasonable to show the footage unaltered. Especially considering the context and the how little was actually shown.
My problem is, six rapid f bombs in the span of 3 seconds as celebration of winning a speed run just does not warrant an adult rating.
Edit: I grant that it’s not for young children, but can you really say it’s on the same level as Adults Only content because of this? Is it so bad that only 18+ year olds can handle how profane this is? The video shouldn’t show up on YouTube Kids, but this doesn’t warrant making it as restrictive as adults only.
YouTube didn't say he didn't need to. Show me in the terms of service where it says that as long as they follow specific guidelines that they don't reserve the right to flag or remove content.
You accidentally only got the first third of the rule?
> You can turn on ads for this content:
> Abbreviated, censored, or light profanity (like “hell” or “damn”) in the title, thumbnail, or video. Moderate profanity (like “shit” or “bitch”) used in the video. Infrequent usage of strong profanity (like the "f-word”) after the opening or up to twice in approx. the first 30 seconds of the video; or strong profanity in a music video.
There was one single burst of fucks. That's infrequent use of strong profanity.
The next category up, which is still the intermediate category for advertiser friendliness, is "Focal usage of strong profanity throughout a video (e.g. mentioned in every sentence)."
Learning about a word is not the same as using it appropriately. Swearing is fine, but there is a time and a place for it, and children are not well equipped to know when that is. And whether you agree with it or not, in most cultures, any kind of swearing by children in public is considered extremely rude and reflects poorly on the parents. The simplest solution is to teach children that yes, these words exist, and adults use them but children should not. That teaching is much easier when the parents limit exposure to swearing in media and other day-to-day life because children imitate what they are exposed to.
What's the time and place for swearing? I'm not sure there exists any middle schooler who doesn't swear like a sailor, let alone a 13+ year old.
Swearing in isolation doesn't hurt anyone. There's much worse things that can be spoken. It's much healthier to encourage children to not conceal things around their parents. Teaching them to censor themselves is counter protective to an open, trusting dialogue.
> Teaching them to censor themselves is counter protective to an open, trusting dialogue.
Teaching them kids to behave publicly without resorting to profanities at every opportunity is the best thing a parent can teach their kids if the goal is to prepare them to enter professional life. It's about self-control, not censorship.
Any idea or opinion, even the most controversial ones, can be expressed without resorting to vulgarity.
It's anything but counter productive, quite the opposite.
If the price to pay is some random youtuber getting less ad revenue then it's a very small price.
Right? Kids need to learn to communicate without profanities. If they can't do it, then they are going to have far worse problems and likely already do.
The secret behind a culture's list of arbitrarily banned words is that the list is arbitrary and it is really just a low-violence way of measuring who has power and who has respect. No single word has enough power to justify monetising or demonetising some video.
There isn't a way to consistently enforce standards in this arena. The instinct for most people is to try and apply the standards irregularly to measure where social power centres are.
As long as there is a middle-man, the standards they apply around language is going to be confusing, arbitrary and logically inconsistent.
Or do we truly live in a world where all sorts of horrors have become socially acceptable yet a static image of a cartoon frog is deemed "adult content"?
Just because you can find a handful of mistakes, or a thousand mistakes, or a hundred thousand mistakes, out of hundreds of billions of moderation decisions is not evidence of evil or malice.
Thousands of warehouses filled with human beings trying to manage all of this manually would introduce far, far more errors and bias.
If you hate YouTube then don't use it. There are plenty of competitors.
Mistakes themselves aren't evidence of evil or malice, sure. But when you know your system is full of mistakes, and you intentionally choose not to set up a functional system to let people get the mistakes fixed, that is evil and malice.
I've been trying for two months to provision internet service with AT&T, not because I like AT&T, but because they're the only provider with fiber in my area.
My emails aren't returned and every phone call only reaches people who have neither the ability nor the authority to fix the problem.
Today AT&T called me, not with a solution, but with offers for twenty percent off wireless service. Now that I'm a customer, I'm on every marketing list, but I cannot access the service I paid for.
AT&T's system is full of mistakes, and they haven't set up a functional system to let people get the mistakes fixed.
I believe AT&T is an evil and malicious organization for other reasons, but the fact they are denying me internet connectivity is not one of them.
This is either garden-variety incompetence, or it's a business decision that there's no ROI in fixing every broken process and edge case.
> Just because you can find a handful of mistakes, or a thousand mistakes, or a hundred thousand mistakes, out of hundreds of billions of moderation decisions is not evidence of evil or malice.
It's not a handful. Also, who cares if it's evil, malice, or incompetence, it's happening and it is YouTube that is making the mistakes.
I think you might also be missing the point, people are annoyed at that there's no way to rectify these mistakes or speak to a reasonable agent of the company more so than that they happen in the first place.
Algorithmic moderation could be okay, so long as you have the necessary human operated escape hatches, since you are in fact impacting humans with your algorithms in very real ways. There needs to be some point that you can talk to a human with the power to be reasonable.
> Or do we truly live in a world where all sorts of horrors have become socially acceptable yet a static image of a cartoon frog is deemed "adult content"?
Society has always had “outgroups”, to which anything is permissible. In medieval times, there were literal “outlaws”, to which laws did not apply, people who were fair game for anybody to kill without repercussions. Later, there were witches, satanists, heretics, anarchists, bolsheviks, jews, communists, homosexuals, pedophiles, terrorists, nazis, racists, and fascists. At some point in that list, your mind might have just said “But those people deserve it!”. But labels are mostly applied by other people; nobody declared themselves a witch. Do you truly want the law to be so weak as to not protect you, should you someday find yourself labeled and put on that list?
It is a matter of power because most people in europe don't care about people saying the english word 'fuck' but we can't see the video either.
Just like it's weird to hear talking about god as a justification for politics, or people self censoring 'nigger' into the 'n word' in a conversation reporting the usage of the word. Or hidding nipples but showing violent death. Or demonetizing videos showing pics of september 11 in a respectful context.
It's power because the american culture is strong enough to impose the view of a subset of communities to the rest of the world.
I don't like having to click through endless cookie warnings on every website just because Europe decided to enact another bullshit regulation that doesn't accomplish anything, but European culture is strong enough to waste even more of everyone's time and make the web even shittier than it was before.
You don't click through cookies just because europe decided so, you click through them because corporations (most of them american) decided that tracking you was so juicy that it was worth it to make you pay this price.
I have plenty of websites using cookies, but because we are not invading your privacy, we don't need a banner.
You are blaming laws adding informed consent instead of the bullies that milk every cent out of spying. Instead of learning, wow the web is rotten there is so much tracking, you complain to the doctor showing you cancer in your lung.
Also, what's funny is that this banner is only legal in europe, we don't impose it on the rest of the world. Again, corporations decided it was just easier to apply it to everyone. They have a choice.
But we can't uncensor youtube content. We dont have a choice. I'd be ok with a pop up "this video contain images of september 11, do you want to watch it uncensored?" that is mandatory only to americans. But we don't have that. Instead, the video is either not published, or removed from any way to discover it.
Not to mention comparing the need for a click, and the addition of a choice to not be tracked, cannot remotely be compared to forced format for most content. It's neither of the same nature, nor the same scale.
Even if you don't agree with any of that, the initial point of the comment stands: it's a matter of power.
>You don't click through cookies just because europe decided so
Wrong, it’s because the EU wrote the law so poorly that every site is able to create their own cookie gate with its own dark patterns so now we have to solve what is essentially a puzzle on every website which then decides of we’re tracked or not.
If it had been written competently it would have been a browser setting and we’d have never seen a dialog once.
Sure the intentions were good but the action on those intentions adds up to wasting probably hours or people’s time a year considering it’s every single major website.
The law shows you which companies act in bad faith (ostensibly all of them).
The companies choose whether to continue acting badly (but having to tell you, if you're in the EU); or to act kindly and so have no need to inform you they're doing something malicious.
There is already a "do not track" setting in browsers. Companies choose whether to annoy you or not.
They could have done the exact same thing by punishing the same people who don’t do the cookie popup but with do not track. As you say people don’t comply with it yet you think they’ll comply with the popup.
But instead they had to make a new thing that’s just ended up being abused. The face sites can even force you to wait a few seconds if you don’t opt in is insane.
There is no reason why it had to be a dialog, it’s just an arbitrary choice by career bureaucrats that now we have to experience at least once a day.
The law says nothing about a pop up, it requires informed consent. The corporations choose to use the pop up and to ignore the header to comply. Again you are orienting your anger in the wrong direction.
>you click through them because corporations (most of them american) decided that tracking you was so juicy that it was worth it to make you pay this price
And, realistically, the cookie banner addresses this how?
You can have site without them, with login and accounts working just fine (cookies required for obvious functionality like logins don't need consent), the single thing site would have to do is to stop tracking you
Youtube doesn't ban the word "fuck". There are consequences for using profanity in the first 30 seconds of a video in terms of marketability, but after that you can use many forms of profanity.
You can say fuck, maybe even fucking fuck, but six fucks are age restricted? That's incredibly arbitrary, especially for a video that is otherwise practically clear of foul language.
There are entire channels that spout profanity every ten seconds and get fully ad supported, yet this video is deemed inappropriate.
Banning profanity is easy to explain, but such rules must be applied consistently. The biggest guidelines problem YouTube has is that whether or not they'll add any restrictions to your video is based on a dice roll.
Thanks, this doesn't sound quagmirish at all. YouTube is taking a lot of heat for kids viewing videos on its platform. It's unsurprising that they often exceed the boundary. You know the boundary exists and you know that censoring the audio then does the trick. So just do it.
Marking the video as not-for-kids (under 13) was expected. Age restricting the video to 18+, which heavily suppresses the video and requires watchers in many countries to give ID photo/credit card verification, was not expected. I've never seen that before just for swearing.
> You know the boundary exists
From the article, the video doesn't appear to break any of the publicly given rules. Likely it breaks some internal rule they use for judgement (X swears in Y seconds). The creator claims they'd be fine adjusting accordingly if Youtube gave some stance to follow - problem is pouring a ton of work into a huge video and only then having it unexpectedly restricted due to uncommunicated rules.
A pg 13 movie can use the word "fuck" exactly once. More than once and it's an r rating (appropriate for 17+). I believe this has been the case in the almost forty years since pg-13 was introduced.
Record for PG-13 movies is apparently Gunner Palace with 42 uses of "fuck".
But more to the point, Youtube is not the MPAA. The documentary seems to comply to Youtube's publicly given rules more so than a huge number of other unrestricted videos, which makes the restriction unexpected.
The standards for MPAA ratings have changed dramatically with time. PG used to actually mean Parental Guidance, it wasn't just an initialism that meant "family friendly" in effect. Take Logan's Run (1976) for instance, that got a PG rating. It has orgy scenes and frontal nudity, if released today it would get an R rating easily.
I'll never forget staying at my grandma's house one time, she took me to Blockbuster and allowed me to rent anything that wasn't PG-13 or "worse". I picked up Airplane! because I had seen it on afternoon TV a few times, and it was rated PG. Fun for the whole family!
Grandma and I found out that day that TV networks edited out full frontal nudity.
That's the channel creator's complaint though. He thought his video was below the stated profanity threshold. But YouTube age restricted it anyway. He found other examples of videos that weren't age restricted but had twice as much profanity. He also said he'd have no problem censoring profanity if he had known he had to.
The problem is that an opaque moderation and appeals process is causing real harm to creators on the platform who are making good faith efforts to follow the rules.
In light of this I'm bemused by the streamer's lack of understanding why his video was age-restricted. Censor out the fucking curse words if you want your content to be deemed suitable for a general audience; this isn't hard! TV and radio have been playing by these rules since their inception; you can figure it out too!
The video is on YouTube and YouTube's guidance says that the following won't be age restricted:
Abbreviated, censored, or light profanity (like “hell” or “damn”) in the title, thumbnail, or video. Moderate profanity (like “shit” or “bitch”) used in the video. Infrequent usage of strong profanity (like the "f-word”) after the opening or up to twice in approx. the first 30 seconds of the video; or strong profanity in a music video.
So a video can drop an f-bomb twice in the first 30 seconds but a few times across 10 seconds of the video is frequent?
These kinds of rules are never applied strictly. Content moderation is always discretionary. If you don't want to be judged as adult content then play it safe, which includes censoring the f-bomb. It's just common sense.
They're probably running scripts on the content and likely not basing decisions on human review of any kind.
If they have any human review, it's probably contactors, reviewing only the 3 second clip of the 1.5 hr video, the tiny part that was flagged by the algorithm and understanding very little.
No, it's not "common sense" to go that far beyond what the rules say. The video has over an order of magnitude less swearing than the rule says is okay.
It’s one thing to suggest self censorship, but what about the other concerns in the article? Like how the manual review cleared it, then it got flagged again later? Or how the video will never recover from the hit taken from the recommendation algorithm? Or that YouTube is notoriously bad about informing uploaders of troublesome content with specificity? Let alone how bad they are about applying poorly written and nebulous standards.
This is more than a one dimensional “just don’t have any curse words or non family friendly content in your videos because it’s entirely your own fault if YouTube flags it capriciously ” kind of issue.
Video and article are written as though this was the first time that issues concerning moderation and inconsistent applications of the rules have surfaced, which is absurd. Also odd to want to die on the hill of replaying a video game streamer's saying the f-word in reaction to the game. It is hard to think of anything more insignificant.
Somehow nobody else has mentioned that was only the initial reason for the age restriction. It was later reflagged (after being un-age-restricted after review) for sex and nudity, which the video has none of.
I don’t understand why you think an alternative video monetization platform is going to do any better at paying long-tail video creators while not falling afoul of advertisers or legal authorities.
This form of revenue generation / business didn’t even exist before YouTube.
I don't think any of us do. Modern capitalism hasn't seen the US government abstain from promoting billionaire monopolies since before Rockefeller Steel.
On a more pragmatic note, the reason people use YouTube is because everything is there. Competitors like DailyMotion and Vimeo exist and do compete, their content libraries are pretty pathetic though, and the advertising situation is no better than YouTube.
> Do you understand the concept of competition under capitalism where the govt isn't forcing a single entity to the top?
The point is that advertisers essentially decide what's permissible and what isn't. An alternative to youtube backed by advertisement from major brands would have to abide by the exact same model.
> Google needs to get fucked, hopefully by competitors that eat their lunch
It's a cute thought, but how? If say, Amazon decided they wanted to use their AWS infrastructure to immediately start funding a more cost-effective, better version of YouTube, they still wouldn't have the monetization inroads or content catalog of YouTube. Twitch puts up a hell of a fight, but YouTube operates on another echelon.
IMO, the solution will be P2P on-demand streaming services, something akin to IPFS or BitTorrent. No other competitor should eat YouTube's lunch, because that just puts us back under the same wheel of censorship. Or (hint hint - this is most likely) nobody will care, and the status quo will continue to exploit millions of people for billions of dollars because Money Good!
P2P isn't a good model for serving giant content like this because you just can't stream at reasonable speeds from random peoples' houses.
It's hard to beat YouTube if you want a site that has free uploads, sends you views for free, and might even pay you for it. If you don't mind paying then there's other CDNs out there to host your videos, but you need a CDN to get cheap fast bandwidth.
> P2P isn't a good model for serving giant content like this because you just can't stream at reasonable speeds from random peoples' houses.
That's changing, at least I hope. Fiber is usually symmetrical and is putting pressure on other companies, and DOCSIS gets closer to symmetrical with each revision.
Once you have 50-100Mbps of upload, you won't even notice the bandwidth use from sending video data back out while you watch.
That depends how many people are watching at once. You can handle a few directly, but it’s still going to fall over eventually, especially if you’re the only serving node and all the viewers are on smartphones in Australia or something like that.
If a video is only on one random user's computer then you already screwed up badly. Start distributing it to non-leech nodes and you can fix that quickly.
I mean, I could make a similar argument about how if a video is only on one server you hit a breaking point.
But also serving leeches is a different problem from the actual p2p network. There are different considerations and fixes.
My 2 cents. They would have demographic data from these videos which probably more younger audience. Maybe a threshold for what profanity can been heard. Potentially results in complaints from parents > less viewing time from kids > less revenue.
Maybe so, but could you please stop posting flamebait and/or name-calling and/or unsubstantive comments? You've been doing it a ton, unfortunately, and we have to ban such accounts. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
This is an off-topic response to my on-topic reply, and you've mischaracterised my post history to boot. I can't see anything in the guidelines about issuing threats but IMHO you shouldn't be doing that either. Otherwise keep up the good work!
You're right that moderation comments are off topic, as well as tedious and repetitive. (They're even more tedious to write than they are to read, if that helps at all.) And yes, they sometimes break the site guidelines in other ways too. I try to keep them neutral but I don't always get that right, and am happy to take suggestions for improvement.
Nevertheless, your comments have been breaking the site guidelines badly—it's not a close call! The reason I post replies like I did here is to give people that information so they have a chance to change; that seems better than just banning an account outright. I'm sorry if it came across as a threat. My intention is to persuade you to use HN in the intended spirit—I don't want to ban you.
I don't have a youtube account, and likely never make one. I was bypassing the login wall as long as I could, but ever since login was enforced to watch age-restricted videos, I now simply skip the content.
You'd think this would be a non-issue: I'm mostly following retro-content of this kind. But the amount of age-restricted videos I'm hitting is just baffling. I was following summoning salt, and I was able to watch the video before it got age-restricted. Is there any profanity there? No. If you think there is, you should reconsider your moral views.
I've seen creators over-censor their videos for the same reason, to the point of absurdity. As in this one, I've seen as far as pixelating 8bit 8x8 "nudity" in 90ies games just to be on the safe-end side.
There's no question youtube serves as a big audience window for small content creators. Youtube is amazing for discovery due to the immense choice. However I do support and watch videos outside of youtube (and I'm more and more eager to do so).
I encourage all creators to post on youtube with this attitude in mind.
So if it were Swedish TV, then it wouldn't be age-restricted? If a Swede uploaded a video speaking English that used swear words, should it not be age-restricted because it was uploaded by a Swede?
"If you are in Australia, the European Union (EU), European Economic Area (EEA), Switzerland, or the United Kingdom, you may be asked to verify your age to watch age-restricted videos."
This change was due to EU laws. The US does not have age verification laws that would affect this kind of video.
This fact is irrelevant. Why is the video age-restricted in Sweden in the first place? Swedes use English swear words much more openly and they are significantly less taboo than in the US.
The update is more crazy than the initial flagging. Youtube went back and doubled down saying the video violates their "sex and nudity policy". This is a channel that uploads how a speedrunning record was set https://twitter.com/summoningsalt/status/1575972292395667456 . The creator only does voiceover explanations, all of the content is gameplay footage, and occasionally a picture in picture video of a speedrunner while they are achieving a specific record. The video is age-restricted again.
There comes a point where Youtube is not saving money by automating their content moderation but Youtube decides to keep pushing forward. At some point a competitor that is good enough will arrive and once large creators like this one, around 1.5 million followers, almost every video with over 2 million views, 8 videos with over 5 million views, leave they will pay attention. Until content creators have an alternative choice, Youtube knows they can implement any black box policy and ignore 99% of the backlash.
My personal theory is that they are doing manual review but only after an appeal. They definitely have software that flags videos for vulgar language internally, and I imagine only those parts and a couple minutes surrounding it are reviewed. They refuse to elaborate or make their methods public because they see it as a way to combat spam. It's becoming clear that the moderation team is mostly software at this point.
I have a different theory that Youtube is also classifying channels into kid friendly and unfriendly based on video content while ignoring the context the channel was made for. Game are generally much more popular among kids, and so this channel was marked as kid friendly. The channel is getting treated with rules that should only apply to kid targeted channels, unfortunately this benefits Youtube way more than the creator. Youtube Kids has ads.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
I don’t think uploaders would agree with that sentiment.
For starters not every video uploaded is by online personalities. A lot of corporate entities use YT. I’ve been on mental health courses that had material on YT too. These videos aren’t going to receive thousands of videos but the content is just as critical for their operations (arguments about whether they should use YT is another topic).
And you’re still overlooking the injustice that the larger personalities would feel if they have content demonetised or even banned while smaller channels have the same content available.
It’s a nice idea you have but it’s creating an uneven playing field so would have just as many problems as the status quo.
Edit: also let’s not forget that your suggestion is easy to weaponise. If you’re a smaller channel competing with a larger one then you can abuse the moderation system by reporting the other channel. Thus any moderation system has the be universal or else it’s going to be abused.
> I don’t think uploaders would agree with that sentiment.
Which uploaders? I spent a while looking through my subscriptions on youtube, and nothing I'd call a creator is below that line, not even this obscure meme channel that got banned once. Just an acquaintance's personal channel and the archives of risc-v presentations, and neither of those channels would be bothered very much by a rogue bot flagging.
> For starters not every video uploaded is by online personalities. A lot of corporate entities use YT. I’ve been on mental health courses that had material on YT too. These videos aren’t going to receive thousands of videos but the content is just as critical for their operations (arguments about whether they should use YT is another topic).
Well those aren't going to be monetized or affected by this kind of thing. And if youtube goes weird they can use any other video host; they don't need youtube or its userbase.
> It’s a nice idea you have but it’s creating an uneven playing field so would have just as many problems as the status quo.
Add those few hundred moderators in addition to whatever the hell exists already and it should improve a lot while having roughly zero downside.
> And you’re still overlooking the injustice that the larger personalities would feel if they have content demonetised or even banned while smaller channels have the same content available.
I don't know what you mean or why that would happen.
> also let’s not forget that your suggestion is easy to weaponise. If you’re a smaller channel competing with a larger one then you can abuse the moderation system by reporting the other channel. Thus any moderation system has the be universal or else it’s going to be abused.
How is that a problem? The moderator will look at it and reject it, and the small channel might get punished if it keeps doing that.
And small channels can already report big channels. I really don't understand this scenario.
> Well those aren't going to be monetized or affected by this kind of thing.
I’m pretty sure they’ll be affect by their channel getting suspended ;)
> And if youtube goes weird they can use any other video host; they don't need youtube or its userbase.
It’s not as straightforward as you suggest when busy orgs with no dedicated IT resource has to re-upload thousands of hours of training material to a new platform they likely haven’t heard of before.
You’re point of view here is pretty narrow compared to how the wider usage of YT.
> it should improve a lot while having roughly zero downside
In my experience the people who claim “zero downsides” are the last people who should be making business decisions. Every design has a trade off and all too often there are unforeseen consequences too. If you honestly believe there are zero downsides then you haven’t spent long enough in the industry at the level of seniority required to understand the the consequences.
Sorry if this sounds condescending but I’ve worked with so many engineers who have believed they shit gold only for them to discover they knew far less about the job then they believed they did.
I think they meant specific examples (as opposed to hypothetical or vague examples)
> I’m pretty sure they’ll be affect by their channel getting suspended ;)
Unless I'm misunderstanding the other guy incorrectly, what they're proposing is additive.
If I understand right, you're essentially saying "But people without manual moderation might be unfairly impacted by automation".
But it's a bigger problem without the custom moderation the other guy is suggesting?
> In my experience the people who claim “zero downsides” are the last people who should be making business decisions.
Fortunately, it sounds like the other guy isn't making any business decisions in this specific context. So why not just stick to addressing the (de)merits of their suggestion, and leave the veiled insults out?
> Every design has a trade off and all too often there are unforeseen consequences too.
Stating a self-apparent truism doesn't bring much value either. Even if someone here wasn't aware of this idea, stating it as an abstract doesn't really help the discussion much, and seems like a bad faith comment to make.
> If you honestly believe there are zero downsides then you haven’t spent long enough in the industry at the level of seniority required to understand the the consequences.
Attacking the guys seniority doesn't add any value and is a fallacy. If you seriously believe there are downsides, why not state them instead of insulting the dude?
> Sorry if this sounds condescending but I’ve worked with so many engineers who have believed they shit gold only for them to discover they knew far less about the job then they believed they did.
My dude, this doesn't just sound condescending, it is condescending. This trailing comment borders on outright gaslighting.
The fact you're aware it is condescending but decide to say it anyway means you're not sorry either - otherwise you wouldn't have said it in the first place?
I'll spare you a self-righteous diatribe about bitter, unempathetic co-workers, since I'm sure you'll agree it's not relevant.
So the moment someone confidently posts an absolute like “zero downsides”, I immediately see red flags that perhaps that person hasn’t fully explored that solution.
This is compounded by the fact that there are no shortage of cognitive biases (such as, but not limited to, the Ikea Effect) that can lead one to overestimate the value of their own ideas.
So when I see absolutes, that’s always a queue for me to engage in a deeper discussion with the individual to ensure their confidence is justified.
> So why not just stick to addressing the (de)merits of their suggestion,
I had up until then. They couldn’t look past their idea and replied that there was zero downsides to it. Hence the concern I raised.
> Attacking the guys seniority doesn't add any value and is a fallacy
Fair point. It wasn’t a tactful response. Thank you for pointing that out :)
> I think they meant specific examples (as opposed to hypothetical or vague examples)
I gave a specific example and the other suggestions were anything but vague.
You dont even need to look far to see my point, just look at the videos submitted to HN and you’ll see that YT is more than just internet personalities adding content for monetisation:
You gave an example of something that wouldn't change and called it a downside. So yes you need to do better than that for examples.
If you're taking a "no free lunch" approach, the downside is that it costs money to hire these people. Does that make the balance clearer?
Adding human review to more decisions, and changing nothing else, can possibly cause some problems but they should be very minor compared to the number of robot-caused problems they will fix.
If those are your only examples, I addressed them the line after that. Please take my comment as a whole.
> Every design has a trade off and all too often there are unforeseen consequences too. If you honestly believe there are zero downsides
It's always possible something somewhere could go wrong but "don't change anything on smaller videos" is pretty hard to screw up! If that's too risky, then your standards are too high and you interpreted "roughly zero" much too precisely.
If you’re waiting until a few hundred thousand views before moderating a video then you’re already too late.
And if you think ignoring millions of unpopular videos watched by thousands of people (in many cases, each) isn’t risky then you’ve underestimated the scale of content on YT.
I don’t even think the “roughly” disclaimer will save you at YTs scale.
The moderators only really need to review the videos already flagged by the automatic process, and the classification ML thingy can add the timestamps with positions the "objectionable content" is featured at, so the mods wouldn't need to view the video in whole.
How many of the videos are flagged down, though, we probably don't have any solid statistic on that.
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.
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.
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.
I see more clearly where you are coming from. I agree, we are looking at mostly the same conclusion from different perspectives.
But "the algorithm" isn't a straw-man argument. I am saying viewers vs subscribers is a false dichotomy to care about. People at some point will stop going to Youtube when there is competition along with their favorite creators they actively watch.
The main problem is competition. There are no viable competitors that feature match youtube in terms of feature richness and mobile experience. Having no effective competitors in size means Youtube doesn't need to do anything to keep content creators or users on its platform. People go to youtube because they know they will find something interesting. If there is another interesting site, they will start going to it as well and just go to both.
The network effect is largely due to groups of creators on a platform. If you look at an example competing platform like Twitch, there are many people that just don't come to Youtube because their favorite group or individual creator does not livestream there. The number of people that watch Vods of previous live streams when it is later reuploaded to youtube show how few people convert between platforms. It's even more interesting what happens when a creator does switch. I have heard anecdotal stories that they don't get the same viewer base back, they mostly foster a new group of fans. It is especially hard to convert when they do an immediate switch due to contracts. The numbers on Twitch and Tiktok show they have a dedicated audience.
Unfortunately those platforms aren't viable for long form content. When competition in a different space started and Youtube was behind, we saw how large Tiktok became. Youtube is still trying and partially failing with its shorts feature.
If major creators leaving the platform doesn't effect youtube enough for it to change its poor policy, the overall experience will get worse on average for content creators and viewers. The content will become optimized to remove more and more adult oriented themes. That will cause a shift in the demographic.
I didn't say content disappears, I said it becomes harder to find when it gets age restricted. It becomes deprioritized in search results and doesn't get recommended. I've even realized that if you don't search for the correctly spelled terms, Youtube will often refuse to autocorrect to age-restricted content in the results. Which I saw based on my tests with certain videos of mine and the accounts of my friends and family. It was multiple tests over 15 accounts. It does sometimes show up but it's becoming more and more rare. I am surprised you get recommended age restricted content, I don't despite subscribing to the creators and do get recommended their other videos.
There have been plenty of video platforms with a great mobile experience that have gone under. And I’d argue that YTs mobile app isn’t even that good.
You can’t make technical argument for why something gains traction. Most people don’t choose a platform because it’s technically better.
> But "the algorithm" isn't a straw-man argument. I am saying viewers vs subscribers is a false dichotomy to care about.
I called it a straw man argument because you were arguing against a point I wasn’t making (though it was a little harsh calling it that on my part because I think this is really just a misunderstanding)
The point I was saying about viewers had nothing to do with algorithms nor anything else technical. It was just to remind people that the number of people on the platform is greater than the number of subscribers. So the network effect is larger than the figures suggest.
Discussions about algorithms et al are interesting but not related.
I think "the algorithm" is the only reason Youtube is popular at all. It's also the reason Tiktok became popular. "The algorithm" more than anything else explains both Youtube's popularity for long form content and its failure for short form vertical video content as well as livestreaming. "The algorithm" recommends new videos based on what you previously watched and that depends on creators emulating others and creating content in similar areas. "The algorithm" dictates not only what the viewer can find but also what creators will spend time making and what areas new creators will try out. It's hard to predict what new thing will become popular on Youtube but it is easy to predict when the performance of similar videos is so readily accessible. View count is the first thing anyone reads after the title and creator of a video by design.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
The customer for YouTube is definitely the advertisers I do agree there.
I think the relationship between YT and creators is more akin to an event venue, definitely nothing like broadcasting. In venues, the relationship is symbiotic, without artists there would be no events, without venues, artists would have no where to host a large audience. YT similarly does not have an audience without it's creators, and so it requires their work.
YT is of course a mixed bag, since there are lots of accounts that treat it more like a video hosting platform. But for those making it their business to make YouTube videos, it's definitely a commercial relationship.
I agree it sucks but again, I feel compelled to remind people who YTs customers are.
Content creators benefit from YouTubes business model but they are neither YTs customers, employers nor even their intended users (ie the people watching the ads).
This is where the problem lies. Content creators are effectively just an expense. And it’s compounded by the fact that if one creator leaves there are plenty of others with big aspersions. So creators are an expense that’s easy to replace.
It seems to me that a tech company can only pick two of the following:
1. Free-to-use products
2. High-touch support
3. Profitability
I really just don’t see how free-to-use, instant sign-up services with billions of users can feasibly guarantee a human in the loop for every situation that arises.
Your position seems to be that if a company can’t provide human support, then it ought not expand their services. I can understand this position, but it has pretty major trade-offs: this would probably exclude large swaths of the world from uploading videos or using email.
There are many communities that 1) are unable to pay for email or video hosting services and 2) are not a big target of advertisers’ budgets.
That might be a shame but it could also be an opportunity for those countries to build their own ecosystems around it. As much as it sounds like a positive to the citizens of the other countries on an individual scale, YouTube and Google being a free global platform stops any chance of local alternatives popping up.
Though I am a massive advocate for making software more distributed and local, for the communities they are servicing. So it's worth noting I have that bias. I imagine a much more diverse software landscape, with more providers and more opportunities on smaller scales, rather than global behemoths that hoover up all the users and opportunities.
> 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".
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.
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.
Advertiser have no less of an idea who watches videos on YT than they do on TV. Advertisers choose their slot on TV. They also choose their demographic on YouTube (it’s called “targeted advertising”).
Hence why you’re more likely to get ads about tech products on a tech video vs a music video.
Funny, last time I watched a YouTube Kids video, it was a tutorial on how to create a blowtorch using Febreeze and a lighter. The kid nearly burns his hand in the video because he holds it at the wrong angle.
Surely they should be asking creators whether they classify their vids as kid friendly?
For young kids I wouldn't want any swearing or other allusions to adult themes (not that I want my young kids watching YouTube).
If you want to aim at young kids the rules should be a lot stricter than the current ones.
The current mess is too lax for young kids and too strict for anyone older. And seems to treat educational and entertainment content equally. I want kids to know about the Holocaust. I don't want them watching a possibly racist comedy sketch about gassing Jews though.
I wonder when AI will reach a point where it can reasonably detect and classify more esoteric forms of humor. Deadpan humor is very difficult to explain to a computer, the reason it is funny is because the delivery sounds like it is not a joke. You have to intuit that the speaker would never ever believe what they are saying for it to be funny.
At some point even comments will become a signal Youtube uses to decide how to classify videos.
And no, there have been many channels over the years that have complained about the age-restriction issue even though they expressed clearly that the are a mixed-audience channel.
To show a much much more severe example, here's a tweet showing youtube misclassifying Happy Tree Friends as kids friendly, a cartoon style animated show about cute looking animals that get gruesomely killed in various cruel and disturbing situations. Clearly a parody of things like Tom and Jerry in many ways. Reasonable and artistically meaningful, especially when it came out in 1999, but clearly no human was in that misclassification process. They are 1 to 5 minute episodes.
>And no, there have been many channels over the years that have complained about the age-restriction issue even though they expressed clearly that the are a mixed-audience channel.
I know. What I'm saying is channels should have the choice of declaring themselves kid friendly and be judged accordingly.
The current rules are too lax for kid friendly videos and videos are automatically being put in that slot which is the worst solution for everyone.
> It's becoming clear that the moderation team is mostly software at this point.
I always assumed that the appeal process was manned by "Mechanical Turks" kind of employees that have to fill insane KPI quotas and don't have the time to do proper reviews. However most appeals probably just hits some brick wall before even reaching the staff.
> There comes a point where Youtube is not saving money by automating their content moderation but Youtube decides to keep pushing forward. At some point a competitor that is good enough will arrive and once large creators like this one, around 1.5 million followers, almost every video with over 2 million views, 8 videos with over 5 million views, leave they will pay attention.
We're waiting for that competitor for last 10 years. It ain't fucking happening.
Hell, MS tried that with Mixer, they outright bought out few of the big content creators on Twitch, didn't worked.
I think to address this specific situation all YouTube literally needs to do is to allow you to check your video for copyright/content/etc violations before upload in a robust way. That REALLY shouldn't be impossible for google, literally just run all the checks you're running now at upload time. Then if the robust check failed, a human moderator should be able to apply a manual override.
This sort of thing would both be more economical, allow you to get a more through review in advance, and actually be less arbitrary than wholly human moderation.
There's a lot of comments in here about the video being age restricted because of the cursing, but the real story here is the inconsistency in YouTube's moderation. SummoningSalt's video has one section where there's 6 f-bombs dropped in 3 seconds, which is what YouTube explicitly called out the second time the video was age-restricted. But the video was reinstated the first time: why did they reinstate it and then change their mind later? Furthermore, despite the density of cursing in that one segment, overall the video has less curse density than other comparable videos. Why is SummoningSalt's video age-restricted but not videos from the Angry Video Game Nerd, whose whole schtick is heavy use of profanity? Is the issue really just the use of so many curse words in such a short amount of time? That seems to be a really weird rule to have
Yeah his pinned comment which is copied at the end of the article is a perfect summary. It's not a problem to age restrict videos, but their content guidelines should actually reflect the criteria they use for that. The content guidelines actually say some profanity is okay, but excessive use will get you restricted. Salt's video had a 3 second clip in a video over an hour long.
Had he known the real criteria ahead of time, he would have bleeped it. Now it's too late to fix the profanity because it's also been flagged as containing Sex and Nudity. In a Megaman 2 video.
> Why is SummoningSalt's video age-restricted but not videos from the Angry Video Game Nerd, whose whole schtick is heavy use of profanity?
Maybe YouTube works on a South Park system. Broadcasters didn't like them saying "shit" a couple times. So they repeated it 150+ times and kept count on screen.
1. As he explains, YouTube's rules don't actually instruct creators to censor these types of outbursts, and he can site numerous examples of content by more well-known creators that are much more explicit than the 3-second clip.
2. After reversing their decision, Youtube has re-restricted the video because they now claim it contains nudity/sexual content. How does that tie into your argument, exactly?
If they would accept the video with bleeps, why don't they just offer to bleep it. Then they could give uncensored versions to signed in adults who choose it?
As I said, they already falsely banned it again, this time for nudity even though there is no nudity. Is that enough to just admit that the system is completely broken?
As he explained, he would have been more than happy to bleep those 3 seconds in the first place if that was the policy. But as he pointed out, the policy only gives more severe examples than what was contained in his video. The point is that there should have been a realistic way for him to know it would break policy.
In this case, the damage is done. He slaved away for months on this video only to have lost thousands of dollars in ad revenue that can’t be recovered.
> There's a lot of comments in here about the video being age restricted because of the cursing, but the real story here is the inconsistency in YouTube's moderation. [...] less curse density than other comparable videos.
This argument never flies with rule-enforcers. I don't know why people keep trying it. You hear it a lot as well about Apple's AppStore reviewing: "Why did you reject my App A when my competitor's App B which does the same thing was approved?" Having worked with AppStore approval, bringing up other apps to compare to never helps. The same is true for forum content moderation, copyright strikes, social media moderation, and so on. The response will always be "I am looking at your content, not that other content." It never makes sense to reach for the "inconsistency" argument. It will always fall on deaf ears.
It's like arguing with the cop who pulled you over for speeding by saying "but look at all the other cars that are speeding even faster!" No cop in the history of copping has ever been swayed by that argument.
Having watched many SummoningSalt videos, I'm pretty sure I remember many times when someone breaking the world record after a long period of frustration has uttered The Forbidden Profane Speech, been included in SS's video, and the resultant SS video has not been age-restricted.
For creators such as Summoning Salt, YouTube should offer an option to manually review a video _before_ it is made public allowing him to edit it appropriately. After manual review, YouTube should guarantee they won't restrict the video after it's published. They could make this a paid option with a legally binding agreement should either party fail to meet their obligations.
I've never heard of the MPAA slapping a new certification on an already approved movie and if they did, I would imagine lawyers would get involved.
> YouTube should offer an option to manually review a video _before_ it is made public
They already have a system like that, but the process is pretty crappy, for the reasons you outline:
- Youtube might add additional restrictions at any point without justification, so the early vetting process doesn't guarantee that the video is clear.
- Youtube requires that the video be set to "Limited" and vetters don't have access to "Private" videos (I think, I don't remember the exact details) which impacts viewing statistics of the video (basically Youtube thinks nobody watched the video for a while after its release and therefore it's not worth promoting).
I think "guarantee they won't restrict the video" isn't workable at Youtube's scale, but at the very least they should guarantee a proportional monetary compensation if additional restrictions are added after the fact.
yes, I guess it is naive to expect platforms that are exempt from lawsuits specifically because they are neutral to content to behave neutral to content ...
> if there are clear rules (like for example existing laws) of what is allowed and what not the scale really doesn't matter
If that were true, then mature legal systems (which have had hundreds of years if not more to reach a point of clarity) would have very little controversy except possibly around newly passed laws.
But we observe the opposite. Legal systems which have been around for centuries creating tens of thousands of very-well-documented cases clarifying how these laws were applied, nevertheless find themselves constantly addressing new controversies.
> I've never heard of the MPAA slapping a new certification on an already approved movie and if they did, I would imagine lawyers would get involved.
Reminds me of a story from the video game industry. Halo 2 for Vista got delayed and had to have its packaging updated, all because ESRB changed their rating to include "Partial Nudity" after an obscure developer Easter egg was found [1].
> I've never heard of the MPAA slapping a new certification on an already approved movie
At least in the UK, from what I understand, if you make a "not actually new" release (by adding something like a director's commentary), it has to be re-rated by the BBFC. There's also the case of, IIRC, "The Specialist" which was a 15 in cinemas but an 18 when later released on video.[1]
(None of which is relevant to the YouTube argument, mind.)
The BBFC are (or were) mindful that films in the cinema are a one-off sequential viewing, but in the home might be watched in an unhealthy way ie repeatedly looking at a particular very violent scene.
I think their view was young people (especially) could be corrupted by material that fed into criminal ideation - so home media was either cut more or got an adult classification.
Release format: Classification decisions may be stricter on video works than on film. This is because of the increased possibility of under-age viewing
as recognised in the Video Recordings Act (see Annexe), as well as the increased possibility of works being replayed or sections viewed out of context. Accordingly, a video work (either packaged or online) may occasionally receive a higher classification than on film, or require new or different cuts. (Video works may also receive a higher classification because they contain additional content.)
No organisation would guarantee they won't change their minds - mistakes are too easy to make and decisions can change. It's also very easy to miss hate language and threats if you don't know the context.
If YouTube charged $1 for every video uploaded, it would really clean up the platform, perhaps just for 'public' videos.
In a legal sense, a "guarantee" simply means to make pre-arranged reparations should the promise be broken. That's all I'm asking for here and I think it could be possible even at YouTube's scale.
This wasn't "exposed" by summoning salt. Literally everyone on the platform knows how YouTube is inconsistent with its moderation decisions even when asking for a manual review. A lot of creators get annoyed by this to the point where they make videos about it.
YouTube seems like the number of false positives are acceptable.
YouTube doesn’t want you to swear in videos it recommends to children. If you don’t want to be age restricted then just don’t swear or use another platform.
YouTube doesn’t owe you the chance of millions of children’s eyeballs.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 261 ms ] threadHaving the F-word six times is enough for most parents to not want their 7 year old to watch. Even the author doesn't spell out the word.
You get as broad or granular set of filters you want. From nothing blocked, to individual instances of swear words or suggestiveness->nudity are all there. Or even things like crudeness, smoking. Etc. Incredible detailed control if yoy want it.
With easy toggles for the main categories.
And you can see the instances of each of those on each episode based on what you have. It's listed out before you hit play.
I have no affiliation, just thought it was cool for if I had kids.
On the weird extreme of that are the Spiderman/Elsa videos.
On the cultural extreme is Mr Rogers washing feet together with a black friend.
Are we going to update the filters with time as well? Or would we get stuck with no toilets or flushing forever?
There's a lot of old movies in my country where the nudity happened and it was extremely matter-of-fact - for example people go for a swim in the ocean so they're naked while they change. Those movies are way more family-friendly than what this filter would accept.
A Black, gay police officer, at that! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Clemmons
It's one of those "I know it when I see it" things. To make sure nothing glitches, is weird, or the sum of parts not "off" somehow.
(Trying to synthesize both ideas)
Oh, and Skizzleman. Actually, Imp & Skizz's channel is great all around.
What kind of harm do you think it does for kids to hear this speech? I've never seen anything that should worry me about it.
And I say that as the father of 4.
My kids are exceptional students, smart, do all the same activites as other kids. All the other kids curse, too, they just pretend they don't in front of their parents. It's a very silly game.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "harm". Hearing it every once in a while, it is certainly unlikely to affect them. But if it's frequent enough (as seems to be the case in the gaming community), it will set a level of normalization that I don't want to instill in my kids.
That being said, this is my own personal opinion, and no one else should feel obligated to share it.
They've always known how to swear, but almost never do.
Whether the video is for kids (under 13) or not is a separate flag. This type of video would generally be not-for-kids but not also age restricted.
Anyway, in the middle of the movie, a fellow appears behind a desk and says something like “Everyone knows that movies with a R rating make more money. So in order for us to get that, ‘F… you’. “
And, that was apparently enough. Can’t speak to whether the tactic was effective.
Abbreviated, censored, or light profanity (like “hell” or “damn”) in the title, thumbnail, or video. Moderate profanity (like “shit” or “bitch”) used in the video. Infrequent usage of strong profanity (like the "f-word”) after the opening or up to twice in approx. the first 30 seconds of the video; or strong profanity in a music video.
It's really really easy for one side to abuse the moderation system and get the other side silenced, when all the content is horrible.
Do you recall Mickey Mouse or Garfield or Charlie Brown dropping an F bomb?
No?
Exactly.
Whether the video is "for kids" (under 13) is a separate matter. Generally a video like the one in the article would be not-for-kids, but also not age restricted.
Amateur products have been the exception to this norm, because let's face it: The commons don't give a shit.
But platforms/publishers themselves are not the commons, they are businesses and they have legal liabilities: They do give a shit.
So while Youtube is asinine, flagging a video that contains swearing as Rated M (aka 18+) is reasonable. The only thing unreasonable is inconsistent enforcement. If something contains swearing, it's going in the 18+ Only bin.
> any commercial product that contains swearing has nearly always been Rated M For Mature, which is a more verbose way to say 18+ only. Rated T for Teenagers and Rated E for Everyone straight up do not have swearing, period.
Even in traditional media you can often get away with some swearing - especially with documentaries. Record for PG-13 movies is apparently Gunner Palace with 42 uses of "fuck".
This is absolutely wrong. According to the ESRB website, T for Teen allows the infrequent use of strong language. This is a far cry from no swearing allowed at all.
Furthermore, the PG-13 rating for movies allows one use of the F-word per movie and more liberal use of less strong swears. So neither games or movies get rated 18+ only for swearing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Association_fil...
Why should YouTube not try to abide by the same rules of industry they’ve done a pretty amazing job of destroying?
One benefit of them having done that is I cannot possibly imagine giving a fuck if somebody says “fuck.” Context is what matters. Saying “fuck yeah dude!” in front of kids does absolutely no harm.
That's irrelevant, that's about parents controlling what they kids can or cannot watch on family devices. I would not want my kids to watch any content with swearing. Inserting that footage was probably unnecessary for the purpose of that documentary at first place.
The fact that some youtuber gets less money from ads because one of his video was flagged as inappropriate is a non story.
I personally despise youtubers who fill their otherwise potentially interesting videos with cheap memes.
Edit: I grant that it’s not for young children, but can you really say it’s on the same level as Adults Only content because of this? Is it so bad that only 18+ year olds can handle how profane this is? The video shouldn’t show up on YouTube Kids, but this doesn’t warrant making it as restrictive as adults only.
Anyway, sure he could do that. Youtube said he didn't need to, then punished him harshly for being well within the rules.
As far as possible standards go, he was very far inside the relevant rule.
I don't know why you would interpret "said he didn't need to" as "legally bound themselves to inaction in such a case".
> Abbreviated, censored, or light profanity (like “hell” or “damn”) in the title, thumbnail, or video.
People are just making up rules here.
> You can turn on ads for this content:
> Abbreviated, censored, or light profanity (like “hell” or “damn”) in the title, thumbnail, or video. Moderate profanity (like “shit” or “bitch”) used in the video. Infrequent usage of strong profanity (like the "f-word”) after the opening or up to twice in approx. the first 30 seconds of the video; or strong profanity in a music video.
There was one single burst of fucks. That's infrequent use of strong profanity.
The next category up, which is still the intermediate category for advertiser friendliness, is "Focal usage of strong profanity throughout a video (e.g. mentioned in every sentence)."
The first sentence is not "light profanity, and only light profanity, can be in these places".
The first sentence is "light profanity, ignoring other profanity, can be in these places".
The structure of the rule is "light profanity can do A, moderate profanity can do B, and strong profanity can do C".
The strong profanity in the video follows the strong profanity rules for being advertiser friendly.
And I have no idea what you mean by "label the video correctly". Are you talking about the fact that light profanity is allowed inside titles?
Learning about a word is not the same as using it appropriately. Swearing is fine, but there is a time and a place for it, and children are not well equipped to know when that is. And whether you agree with it or not, in most cultures, any kind of swearing by children in public is considered extremely rude and reflects poorly on the parents. The simplest solution is to teach children that yes, these words exist, and adults use them but children should not. That teaching is much easier when the parents limit exposure to swearing in media and other day-to-day life because children imitate what they are exposed to.
Swearing in isolation doesn't hurt anyone. There's much worse things that can be spoken. It's much healthier to encourage children to not conceal things around their parents. Teaching them to censor themselves is counter protective to an open, trusting dialogue.
Teaching them kids to behave publicly without resorting to profanities at every opportunity is the best thing a parent can teach their kids if the goal is to prepare them to enter professional life. It's about self-control, not censorship.
Any idea or opinion, even the most controversial ones, can be expressed without resorting to vulgarity.
It's anything but counter productive, quite the opposite.
If the price to pay is some random youtuber getting less ad revenue then it's a very small price.
There isn't a way to consistently enforce standards in this arena. The instinct for most people is to try and apply the standards irregularly to measure where social power centres are.
As long as there is a middle-man, the standards they apply around language is going to be confusing, arbitrary and logically inconsistent.
It's not arbitrary, it's a community norm.
Not everyone in a community agrees with its norms, but enough people do to keep it a norm.
As community norms change, the rules change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4Mte6z7TQI
Stop making excuses for this horrible company.
Or do we truly live in a world where all sorts of horrors have become socially acceptable yet a static image of a cartoon frog is deemed "adult content"?
Thousands of warehouses filled with human beings trying to manage all of this manually would introduce far, far more errors and bias.
If you hate YouTube then don't use it. There are plenty of competitors.
My emails aren't returned and every phone call only reaches people who have neither the ability nor the authority to fix the problem.
Today AT&T called me, not with a solution, but with offers for twenty percent off wireless service. Now that I'm a customer, I'm on every marketing list, but I cannot access the service I paid for.
AT&T's system is full of mistakes, and they haven't set up a functional system to let people get the mistakes fixed.
I believe AT&T is an evil and malicious organization for other reasons, but the fact they are denying me internet connectivity is not one of them.
This is either garden-variety incompetence, or it's a business decision that there's no ROI in fixing every broken process and edge case.
It's not a handful. Also, who cares if it's evil, malice, or incompetence, it's happening and it is YouTube that is making the mistakes.
I think you might also be missing the point, people are annoyed at that there's no way to rectify these mistakes or speak to a reasonable agent of the company more so than that they happen in the first place.
Algorithmic moderation could be okay, so long as you have the necessary human operated escape hatches, since you are in fact impacting humans with your algorithms in very real ways. There needs to be some point that you can talk to a human with the power to be reasonable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqvLTJfYnik
Society has always had “outgroups”, to which anything is permissible. In medieval times, there were literal “outlaws”, to which laws did not apply, people who were fair game for anybody to kill without repercussions. Later, there were witches, satanists, heretics, anarchists, bolsheviks, jews, communists, homosexuals, pedophiles, terrorists, nazis, racists, and fascists. At some point in that list, your mind might have just said “But those people deserve it!”. But labels are mostly applied by other people; nobody declared themselves a witch. Do you truly want the law to be so weak as to not protect you, should you someday find yourself labeled and put on that list?
That cartoon frog is, currently, on the list.
At least we can still criticize the President. I wonder how long that will last.
Just like it's weird to hear talking about god as a justification for politics, or people self censoring 'nigger' into the 'n word' in a conversation reporting the usage of the word. Or hidding nipples but showing violent death. Or demonetizing videos showing pics of september 11 in a respectful context.
It's power because the american culture is strong enough to impose the view of a subset of communities to the rest of the world.
I have plenty of websites using cookies, but because we are not invading your privacy, we don't need a banner.
You are blaming laws adding informed consent instead of the bullies that milk every cent out of spying. Instead of learning, wow the web is rotten there is so much tracking, you complain to the doctor showing you cancer in your lung.
Also, what's funny is that this banner is only legal in europe, we don't impose it on the rest of the world. Again, corporations decided it was just easier to apply it to everyone. They have a choice.
But we can't uncensor youtube content. We dont have a choice. I'd be ok with a pop up "this video contain images of september 11, do you want to watch it uncensored?" that is mandatory only to americans. But we don't have that. Instead, the video is either not published, or removed from any way to discover it.
Not to mention comparing the need for a click, and the addition of a choice to not be tracked, cannot remotely be compared to forced format for most content. It's neither of the same nature, nor the same scale.
Even if you don't agree with any of that, the initial point of the comment stands: it's a matter of power.
Wrong, it’s because the EU wrote the law so poorly that every site is able to create their own cookie gate with its own dark patterns so now we have to solve what is essentially a puzzle on every website which then decides of we’re tracked or not.
If it had been written competently it would have been a browser setting and we’d have never seen a dialog once.
Sure the intentions were good but the action on those intentions adds up to wasting probably hours or people’s time a year considering it’s every single major website.
The companies choose whether to continue acting badly (but having to tell you, if you're in the EU); or to act kindly and so have no need to inform you they're doing something malicious.
There is already a "do not track" setting in browsers. Companies choose whether to annoy you or not.
But instead they had to make a new thing that’s just ended up being abused. The face sites can even force you to wait a few seconds if you don’t opt in is insane.
There is no reason why it had to be a dialog, it’s just an arbitrary choice by career bureaucrats that now we have to experience at least once a day.
And, realistically, the cookie banner addresses this how?
You can say fuck, maybe even fucking fuck, but six fucks are age restricted? That's incredibly arbitrary, especially for a video that is otherwise practically clear of foul language.
There are entire channels that spout profanity every ten seconds and get fully ad supported, yet this video is deemed inappropriate.
Banning profanity is easy to explain, but such rules must be applied consistently. The biggest guidelines problem YouTube has is that whether or not they'll add any restrictions to your video is based on a dice roll.
/me looks at the sky above waiting to be struck by lightning.
> You know the boundary exists
From the article, the video doesn't appear to break any of the publicly given rules. Likely it breaks some internal rule they use for judgement (X swears in Y seconds). The creator claims they'd be fine adjusting accordingly if Youtube gave some stance to follow - problem is pouring a ton of work into a huge video and only then having it unexpectedly restricted due to uncommunicated rules.
But more to the point, Youtube is not the MPAA. The documentary seems to comply to Youtube's publicly given rules more so than a huge number of other unrestricted videos, which makes the restriction unexpected.
It was a long time ago I watched it, but weren't the orgies just implied?
Grandma and I found out that day that TV networks edited out full frontal nudity.
The problem is that an opaque moderation and appeals process is causing real harm to creators on the platform who are making good faith efforts to follow the rules.
Abbreviated, censored, or light profanity (like “hell” or “damn”) in the title, thumbnail, or video. Moderate profanity (like “shit” or “bitch”) used in the video. Infrequent usage of strong profanity (like the "f-word”) after the opening or up to twice in approx. the first 30 seconds of the video; or strong profanity in a music video.
So a video can drop an f-bomb twice in the first 30 seconds but a few times across 10 seconds of the video is frequent?
They're probably running scripts on the content and likely not basing decisions on human review of any kind.
If they have any human review, it's probably contactors, reviewing only the 3 second clip of the 1.5 hr video, the tiny part that was flagged by the algorithm and understanding very little.
This is more than a one dimensional “just don’t have any curse words or non family friendly content in your videos because it’s entirely your own fault if YouTube flags it capriciously ” kind of issue.
Too many times I’ve heard of this failure mode. Did humanity fundamentally lost against AI?
There is not even a word spoken in it.
Why did user choice go away?
More importantly, while he could use youtube's tools to remove the profanity, it doesn't matter because they've also flagged it for Sex and Nudity.
https://youtu.be/qs_7crdHpbo
This form of revenue generation / business didn’t even exist before YouTube.
On a more pragmatic note, the reason people use YouTube is because everything is there. Competitors like DailyMotion and Vimeo exist and do compete, their content libraries are pretty pathetic though, and the advertising situation is no better than YouTube.
The point is that advertisers essentially decide what's permissible and what isn't. An alternative to youtube backed by advertisement from major brands would have to abide by the exact same model.
It's a cute thought, but how? If say, Amazon decided they wanted to use their AWS infrastructure to immediately start funding a more cost-effective, better version of YouTube, they still wouldn't have the monetization inroads or content catalog of YouTube. Twitch puts up a hell of a fight, but YouTube operates on another echelon.
IMO, the solution will be P2P on-demand streaming services, something akin to IPFS or BitTorrent. No other competitor should eat YouTube's lunch, because that just puts us back under the same wheel of censorship. Or (hint hint - this is most likely) nobody will care, and the status quo will continue to exploit millions of people for billions of dollars because Money Good!
It's hard to beat YouTube if you want a site that has free uploads, sends you views for free, and might even pay you for it. If you don't mind paying then there's other CDNs out there to host your videos, but you need a CDN to get cheap fast bandwidth.
That's changing, at least I hope. Fiber is usually symmetrical and is putting pressure on other companies, and DOCSIS gets closer to symmetrical with each revision.
Once you have 50-100Mbps of upload, you won't even notice the bandwidth use from sending video data back out while you watch.
I mean, I could make a similar argument about how if a video is only on one server you hit a breaking point.
But also serving leeches is a different problem from the actual p2p network. There are different considerations and fixes.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Nevertheless, your comments have been breaking the site guidelines badly—it's not a close call! The reason I post replies like I did here is to give people that information so they have a chance to change; that seems better than just banning an account outright. I'm sorry if it came across as a threat. My intention is to persuade you to use HN in the intended spirit—I don't want to ban you.
I don't have a youtube account, and likely never make one. I was bypassing the login wall as long as I could, but ever since login was enforced to watch age-restricted videos, I now simply skip the content.
You'd think this would be a non-issue: I'm mostly following retro-content of this kind. But the amount of age-restricted videos I'm hitting is just baffling. I was following summoning salt, and I was able to watch the video before it got age-restricted. Is there any profanity there? No. If you think there is, you should reconsider your moral views.
I've seen creators over-censor their videos for the same reason, to the point of absurdity. As in this one, I've seen as far as pixelating 8bit 8x8 "nudity" in 90ies games just to be on the safe-end side.
There's no question youtube serves as a big audience window for small content creators. Youtube is amazing for discovery due to the immense choice. However I do support and watch videos outside of youtube (and I'm more and more eager to do so).
I encourage all creators to post on youtube with this attitude in mind.
This change was due to EU laws. The US does not have age verification laws that would affect this kind of video.
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/audiovisua...
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/10070779?hl=en
There comes a point where Youtube is not saving money by automating their content moderation but Youtube decides to keep pushing forward. At some point a competitor that is good enough will arrive and once large creators like this one, around 1.5 million followers, almost every video with over 2 million views, 8 videos with over 5 million views, leave they will pay attention. Until content creators have an alternative choice, Youtube knows they can implement any black box policy and ignore 99% of the backlash.
My personal theory is that they are doing manual review but only after an appeal. They definitely have software that flags videos for vulgar language internally, and I imagine only those parts and a couple minutes surrounding it are reviewed. They refuse to elaborate or make their methods public because they see it as a way to combat spam. It's becoming clear that the moderation team is mostly software at this point.
I have a different theory that Youtube is also classifying channels into kid friendly and unfriendly based on video content while ignoring the context the channel was made for. Game are generally much more popular among kids, and so this channel was marked as kid friendly. The channel is getting treated with rules that should only apply to kid targeted channels, unfortunately this benefits Youtube way more than the creator. Youtube Kids has ads.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don’t think uploaders would agree with that sentiment.
For starters not every video uploaded is by online personalities. A lot of corporate entities use YT. I’ve been on mental health courses that had material on YT too. These videos aren’t going to receive thousands of videos but the content is just as critical for their operations (arguments about whether they should use YT is another topic).
And you’re still overlooking the injustice that the larger personalities would feel if they have content demonetised or even banned while smaller channels have the same content available.
It’s a nice idea you have but it’s creating an uneven playing field so would have just as many problems as the status quo.
Edit: also let’s not forget that your suggestion is easy to weaponise. If you’re a smaller channel competing with a larger one then you can abuse the moderation system by reporting the other channel. Thus any moderation system has the be universal or else it’s going to be abused.
Which uploaders? I spent a while looking through my subscriptions on youtube, and nothing I'd call a creator is below that line, not even this obscure meme channel that got banned once. Just an acquaintance's personal channel and the archives of risc-v presentations, and neither of those channels would be bothered very much by a rogue bot flagging.
> For starters not every video uploaded is by online personalities. A lot of corporate entities use YT. I’ve been on mental health courses that had material on YT too. These videos aren’t going to receive thousands of videos but the content is just as critical for their operations (arguments about whether they should use YT is another topic).
Well those aren't going to be monetized or affected by this kind of thing. And if youtube goes weird they can use any other video host; they don't need youtube or its userbase.
> It’s a nice idea you have but it’s creating an uneven playing field so would have just as many problems as the status quo.
Add those few hundred moderators in addition to whatever the hell exists already and it should improve a lot while having roughly zero downside.
> And you’re still overlooking the injustice that the larger personalities would feel if they have content demonetised or even banned while smaller channels have the same content available.
I don't know what you mean or why that would happen.
> also let’s not forget that your suggestion is easy to weaponise. If you’re a smaller channel competing with a larger one then you can abuse the moderation system by reporting the other channel. Thus any moderation system has the be universal or else it’s going to be abused.
How is that a problem? The moderator will look at it and reject it, and the small channel might get punished if it keeps doing that.
And small channels can already report big channels. I really don't understand this scenario.
I gave examples.
> Well those aren't going to be monetized or affected by this kind of thing.
I’m pretty sure they’ll be affect by their channel getting suspended ;)
> And if youtube goes weird they can use any other video host; they don't need youtube or its userbase.
It’s not as straightforward as you suggest when busy orgs with no dedicated IT resource has to re-upload thousands of hours of training material to a new platform they likely haven’t heard of before.
You’re point of view here is pretty narrow compared to how the wider usage of YT.
> it should improve a lot while having roughly zero downside
In my experience the people who claim “zero downsides” are the last people who should be making business decisions. Every design has a trade off and all too often there are unforeseen consequences too. If you honestly believe there are zero downsides then you haven’t spent long enough in the industry at the level of seniority required to understand the the consequences.
Sorry if this sounds condescending but I’ve worked with so many engineers who have believed they shit gold only for them to discover they knew far less about the job then they believed they did.
I think they meant specific examples (as opposed to hypothetical or vague examples)
> I’m pretty sure they’ll be affect by their channel getting suspended ;)
Unless I'm misunderstanding the other guy incorrectly, what they're proposing is additive.
If I understand right, you're essentially saying "But people without manual moderation might be unfairly impacted by automation".
But it's a bigger problem without the custom moderation the other guy is suggesting?
> In my experience the people who claim “zero downsides” are the last people who should be making business decisions.
Fortunately, it sounds like the other guy isn't making any business decisions in this specific context. So why not just stick to addressing the (de)merits of their suggestion, and leave the veiled insults out?
> Every design has a trade off and all too often there are unforeseen consequences too.
Stating a self-apparent truism doesn't bring much value either. Even if someone here wasn't aware of this idea, stating it as an abstract doesn't really help the discussion much, and seems like a bad faith comment to make.
> If you honestly believe there are zero downsides then you haven’t spent long enough in the industry at the level of seniority required to understand the the consequences.
Attacking the guys seniority doesn't add any value and is a fallacy. If you seriously believe there are downsides, why not state them instead of insulting the dude?
> Sorry if this sounds condescending but I’ve worked with so many engineers who have believed they shit gold only for them to discover they knew far less about the job then they believed they did.
My dude, this doesn't just sound condescending, it is condescending. This trailing comment borders on outright gaslighting.
The fact you're aware it is condescending but decide to say it anyway means you're not sorry either - otherwise you wouldn't have said it in the first place?
I'll spare you a self-righteous diatribe about bitter, unempathetic co-workers, since I'm sure you'll agree it's not relevant.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
So the moment someone confidently posts an absolute like “zero downsides”, I immediately see red flags that perhaps that person hasn’t fully explored that solution.
This is compounded by the fact that there are no shortage of cognitive biases (such as, but not limited to, the Ikea Effect) that can lead one to overestimate the value of their own ideas.
So when I see absolutes, that’s always a queue for me to engage in a deeper discussion with the individual to ensure their confidence is justified.
> So why not just stick to addressing the (de)merits of their suggestion,
I had up until then. They couldn’t look past their idea and replied that there was zero downsides to it. Hence the concern I raised.
> Attacking the guys seniority doesn't add any value and is a fallacy
Fair point. It wasn’t a tactful response. Thank you for pointing that out :)
> I think they meant specific examples (as opposed to hypothetical or vague examples)
I gave a specific example and the other suggestions were anything but vague.
You dont even need to look far to see my point, just look at the videos submitted to HN and you’ll see that YT is more than just internet personalities adding content for monetisation:
https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=youtube.com
If you're taking a "no free lunch" approach, the downside is that it costs money to hire these people. Does that make the balance clearer?
Adding human review to more decisions, and changing nothing else, can possibly cause some problems but they should be very minor compared to the number of robot-caused problems they will fix.
If those are your only examples, I addressed them the line after that. Please take my comment as a whole.
> Every design has a trade off and all too often there are unforeseen consequences too. If you honestly believe there are zero downsides
It's always possible something somewhere could go wrong but "don't change anything on smaller videos" is pretty hard to screw up! If that's too risky, then your standards are too high and you interpreted "roughly zero" much too precisely.
And if you think ignoring millions of unpopular videos watched by thousands of people (in many cases, each) isn’t risky then you’ve underestimated the scale of content on YT.
I don’t even think the “roughly” disclaimer will save you at YTs scale.
Oh. I'm not suggesting that at all. I'm saying that bigger videos should get a better system, and smaller videos can use the current system.
It's minimally risky because it doesn't change anything for those videos. They get the current treatment.
I think "No change -> roughly zero downside." is a reasonable conclusion, at least for those videos.
How many of the videos are flagged down, though, we probably don't have any solid statistic on that.
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.
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.
> 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.
But "the algorithm" isn't a straw-man argument. I am saying viewers vs subscribers is a false dichotomy to care about. People at some point will stop going to Youtube when there is competition along with their favorite creators they actively watch.
The main problem is competition. There are no viable competitors that feature match youtube in terms of feature richness and mobile experience. Having no effective competitors in size means Youtube doesn't need to do anything to keep content creators or users on its platform. People go to youtube because they know they will find something interesting. If there is another interesting site, they will start going to it as well and just go to both.
The network effect is largely due to groups of creators on a platform. If you look at an example competing platform like Twitch, there are many people that just don't come to Youtube because their favorite group or individual creator does not livestream there. The number of people that watch Vods of previous live streams when it is later reuploaded to youtube show how few people convert between platforms. It's even more interesting what happens when a creator does switch. I have heard anecdotal stories that they don't get the same viewer base back, they mostly foster a new group of fans. It is especially hard to convert when they do an immediate switch due to contracts. The numbers on Twitch and Tiktok show they have a dedicated audience.
Unfortunately those platforms aren't viable for long form content. When competition in a different space started and Youtube was behind, we saw how large Tiktok became. Youtube is still trying and partially failing with its shorts feature.
If major creators leaving the platform doesn't effect youtube enough for it to change its poor policy, the overall experience will get worse on average for content creators and viewers. The content will become optimized to remove more and more adult oriented themes. That will cause a shift in the demographic.
I didn't say content disappears, I said it becomes harder to find when it gets age restricted. It becomes deprioritized in search results and doesn't get recommended. I've even realized that if you don't search for the correctly spelled terms, Youtube will often refuse to autocorrect to age-restricted content in the results. Which I saw based on my tests with certain videos of mine and the accounts of my friends and family. It was multiple tests over 15 accounts. It does sometimes show up but it's becoming more and more rare. I am surprised you get recommended age restricted content, I don't despite subscribing to the creators and do get recommended their other videos.
You can’t make technical argument for why something gains traction. Most people don’t choose a platform because it’s technically better.
> But "the algorithm" isn't a straw-man argument. I am saying viewers vs subscribers is a false dichotomy to care about.
I called it a straw man argument because you were arguing against a point I wasn’t making (though it was a little harsh calling it that on my part because I think this is really just a misunderstanding)
The point I was saying about viewers had nothing to do with algorithms nor anything else technical. It was just to remind people that the number of people on the platform is greater than the number of subscribers. So the network effect is larger than the figures suggest.
Discussions about algorithms et al are interesting but not related.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think the relationship between YT and creators is more akin to an event venue, definitely nothing like broadcasting. In venues, the relationship is symbiotic, without artists there would be no events, without venues, artists would have no where to host a large audience. YT similarly does not have an audience without it's creators, and so it requires their work.
YT is of course a mixed bag, since there are lots of accounts that treat it more like a video hosting platform. But for those making it their business to make YouTube videos, it's definitely a commercial relationship.
Sure, but we have national laws, regulations, and cultural norms that specify harms and YouTube just shrugs their shoulders and says "we don't care".
Content creators benefit from YouTubes business model but they are neither YTs customers, employers nor even their intended users (ie the people watching the ads).
This is where the problem lies. Content creators are effectively just an expense. And it’s compounded by the fact that if one creator leaves there are plenty of others with big aspersions. So creators are an expense that’s easy to replace.
It seems to me that a tech company can only pick two of the following:
1. Free-to-use products 2. High-touch support 3. Profitability
I really just don’t see how free-to-use, instant sign-up services with billions of users can feasibly guarantee a human in the loop for every situation that arises.
Your position seems to be that if a company can’t provide human support, then it ought not expand their services. I can understand this position, but it has pretty major trade-offs: this would probably exclude large swaths of the world from uploading videos or using email.
There are many communities that 1) are unable to pay for email or video hosting services and 2) are not a big target of advertisers’ budgets.
Though I am a massive advocate for making software more distributed and local, for the communities they are servicing. So it's worth noting I have that bias. I imagine a much more diverse software landscape, with more providers and more opportunities on smaller scales, rather than global behemoths that hoover up all the users and opportunities.
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".
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.
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.
Hence why you’re more likely to get ads about tech products on a tech video vs a music video.
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.
Sure there are some non-free services, but YouTube (even pre-Google) didn’t invent the free video hosting paradigm.
For young kids I wouldn't want any swearing or other allusions to adult themes (not that I want my young kids watching YouTube).
If you want to aim at young kids the rules should be a lot stricter than the current ones.
The current mess is too lax for young kids and too strict for anyone older. And seems to treat educational and entertainment content equally. I want kids to know about the Holocaust. I don't want them watching a possibly racist comedy sketch about gassing Jews though.
At some point even comments will become a signal Youtube uses to decide how to classify videos.
And no, there have been many channels over the years that have complained about the age-restriction issue even though they expressed clearly that the are a mixed-audience channel.
To show a much much more severe example, here's a tweet showing youtube misclassifying Happy Tree Friends as kids friendly, a cartoon style animated show about cute looking animals that get gruesomely killed in various cruel and disturbing situations. Clearly a parody of things like Tom and Jerry in many ways. Reasonable and artistically meaningful, especially when it came out in 1999, but clearly no human was in that misclassification process. They are 1 to 5 minute episodes.
https://twitter.com/Rat_Tail_Tony/status/1215015868515655680
I know. What I'm saying is channels should have the choice of declaring themselves kid friendly and be judged accordingly. The current rules are too lax for kid friendly videos and videos are automatically being put in that slot which is the worst solution for everyone.
I always assumed that the appeal process was manned by "Mechanical Turks" kind of employees that have to fill insane KPI quotas and don't have the time to do proper reviews. However most appeals probably just hits some brick wall before even reaching the staff.
We're waiting for that competitor for last 10 years. It ain't fucking happening.
Hell, MS tried that with Mixer, they outright bought out few of the big content creators on Twitch, didn't worked.
This sort of thing would both be more economical, allow you to get a more through review in advance, and actually be less arbitrary than wholly human moderation.
Had he known the real criteria ahead of time, he would have bleeped it. Now it's too late to fix the profanity because it's also been flagged as containing Sex and Nudity. In a Megaman 2 video.
Maybe YouTube works on a South Park system. Broadcasters didn't like them saying "shit" a couple times. So they repeated it 150+ times and kept count on screen.
2. After reversing their decision, Youtube has re-restricted the video because they now claim it contains nudity/sexual content. How does that tie into your argument, exactly?
As he explained, he would have been more than happy to bleep those 3 seconds in the first place if that was the policy. But as he pointed out, the policy only gives more severe examples than what was contained in his video. The point is that there should have been a realistic way for him to know it would break policy.
In this case, the damage is done. He slaved away for months on this video only to have lost thousands of dollars in ad revenue that can’t be recovered.
This argument never flies with rule-enforcers. I don't know why people keep trying it. You hear it a lot as well about Apple's AppStore reviewing: "Why did you reject my App A when my competitor's App B which does the same thing was approved?" Having worked with AppStore approval, bringing up other apps to compare to never helps. The same is true for forum content moderation, copyright strikes, social media moderation, and so on. The response will always be "I am looking at your content, not that other content." It never makes sense to reach for the "inconsistency" argument. It will always fall on deaf ears.
It's like arguing with the cop who pulled you over for speeding by saying "but look at all the other cars that are speeding even faster!" No cop in the history of copping has ever been swayed by that argument.
etc. etc. You can understand the confusion...
Well this just reminded me that I should have signed up for SS's Patreon a while ago.
I've never heard of the MPAA slapping a new certification on an already approved movie and if they did, I would imagine lawyers would get involved.
They already have a system like that, but the process is pretty crappy, for the reasons you outline:
- Youtube might add additional restrictions at any point without justification, so the early vetting process doesn't guarantee that the video is clear.
- Youtube requires that the video be set to "Limited" and vetters don't have access to "Private" videos (I think, I don't remember the exact details) which impacts viewing statistics of the video (basically Youtube thinks nobody watched the video for a while after its release and therefore it's not worth promoting).
I think "guarantee they won't restrict the video" isn't workable at Youtube's scale, but at the very least they should guarantee a proportional monetary compensation if additional restrictions are added after the fact.
YouTube is not a spherical platform in a vacuum.
If that were true, then mature legal systems (which have had hundreds of years if not more to reach a point of clarity) would have very little controversy except possibly around newly passed laws.
But we observe the opposite. Legal systems which have been around for centuries creating tens of thousands of very-well-documented cases clarifying how these laws were applied, nevertheless find themselves constantly addressing new controversies.
Reminds me of a story from the video game industry. Halo 2 for Vista got delayed and had to have its packaging updated, all because ESRB changed their rating to include "Partial Nudity" after an obscure developer Easter egg was found [1].
[1] https://www.cbr.com/halo-2-re-issued-warning-dev-prank/
At least in the UK, from what I understand, if you make a "not actually new" release (by adding something like a director's commentary), it has to be re-rated by the BBFC. There's also the case of, IIRC, "The Specialist" which was a 15 in cinemas but an 18 when later released on video.[1]
(None of which is relevant to the YouTube argument, mind.)
[1] https://www.bbfc.co.uk/release/the-specialist-q29sbgvjdglvbj...
I think their view was young people (especially) could be corrupted by material that fed into criminal ideation - so home media was either cut more or got an adult classification.
Release format: Classification decisions may be stricter on video works than on film. This is because of the increased possibility of under-age viewing as recognised in the Video Recordings Act (see Annexe), as well as the increased possibility of works being replayed or sections viewed out of context. Accordingly, a video work (either packaged or online) may occasionally receive a higher classification than on film, or require new or different cuts. (Video works may also receive a higher classification because they contain additional content.)
[pdf] https://darkroom.bbfc.co.uk/original/a2109fba273d7dffc461f7c...
I should never have watched that Dark Knight Rises aircraft shenanigans sequence, so many times. Who else can be blamed?
Bane?!
How many planes have you hijacked since?!?
If YouTube charged $1 for every video uploaded, it would really clean up the platform, perhaps just for 'public' videos.
YouTube content creators need a union, badly.
YouTube seems like the number of false positives are acceptable.
YouTube doesn’t owe you the chance of millions of children’s eyeballs.
The post seems to be trying to justify the frequency that they can be allowed.
What is the benefit to keeping them in a video where you don’t want age restriction?