https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/t13wyv/im_banned_a...
https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/t13h44/so_youtube_...
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t147c3/defending_u...
Businesses which scale by hiring are much harder to grow and tend to be a lot less profitable. As a result, internet companies tend to see such businesses as not worth being in. Sure, there are lots of successful companies which operate this way, but Google sees it as an unacceptably high opportunity cost. Rather than pour resources into growing a scale by hiring business, they would rather put the resources toward a different business that they think they can scale with non-linear hiring.
Given this, it surprises me that Google is going after the enterprise cloud business. It is pretty well known that such businesses scale fairly linearly with sales and support staff. My understanding is that they know this and are attempting to scale the business this way instead of their usual strategy of ignoring the issue and hoping it will go away.
This is the reason I was able to sway the C suite at my last position to avoid anything Google. I'm estimating it's probably around $9m/month revenue they lost from GCE and GApps.
They're simply not trustworthy, no/terrible support, and capricious about arbitrarily holding user's data hostage when some random automated abuse system decides you're horrible.
System Engineers don't let fellow system engineers use anything google for production purposes.
I don’t think people expect much from YouTube.
For the company that loves encouraging obnoxious Captcha's to self-fund their AI/ML research and data harvest the web, they surely don't seem to like using it on their own platforms.
Compromising a system that involves 100k people is generally harder than compromising a computer algo.
Using that information I would implement a system that would figure out the topic and prevent bots flagging that specific content only.
Companies that are providing such an amazingly affordable service because they're just skipping out on doing moderation don't get to use "Well, doing it the right way would be too expensive" as a defense - that's how you end up with Uber. Uber broke laws, Uber shouldn't exist at this point, something like Uber should exist, but Travis Kalanick should have been fined into near non-existence and not currently be sitting happy on 2.8 billion. We, as a society, need to have standards.
But we mandate it because that's the world we want to live in.
The real conversation here is about Alphabet and Facebook's margins. If they're not doing enough, they can spend more and do more.
Share-holders don't have a natural right to profit off of societally destructive behavior.
YouTube does not care. They only care when large popular cable TV networks or large partners leave YouTube. When that happens, that is a big frown for advertisers. Small users, creators or live-streamers have no chance against being listened to by YouTube. The algorithms won't ban the partners throwing cash at them but the small users will get banned automatically and YouTube doesn't care and won't care.
That is how it is on YouTube and their private platform with their rules or ToS and we have known for years that they continue to do this and ultimately, they will NEVER change.
Articles about YT say that 500 hours of video are uploaded every minute. Moderation has to be automated. You cannot throw more humans effectively at this problem.
So about 10,000 moderators required. This costs under a billion per year. Given that Youtube brings in $20B + of revenue, I'm sure this would not kill their profits.
[0] https://www-nytimes-com.translate.goog/2017/08/22/world/midd...
It's not like they're going to suffer for it.
even classifiers with 99.99% precision means hundreds of thousands of videos and channels will be incorrectly marked as abusive every year - we just need to accept that and hope that the automated systems are improved over time.
Side note on communication here.
Any time someone uses a phrase like "Please educate yourself on $THING", they lose a lot of credibility, at least in the context of that communication. Why?
1) It comes across as incredibly dismissive of both any knowledge that that individual may have - especially on HN, I'm pretty sure we're all familiar with YouTube's scale - and of the idea that there may be missing information, on either the situation or context for the other persons point of view.
2) It's quite condescending as well - and if someone thinks that you are coming at a conversation from a combative place, they won't want to listen to what you are saying. Why should they listen if they think you don't care?
3) It's often used to paint broad strokes in places broad strokes may not be appropriate, and the phrase being attached to that makes it lose credibility even when it is appropriate.
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Ok, now a response to the actual content:
I don't know why we've decided to allow things to exist "at scale" willy nilly. If something becomes a net negative "at scale", don't allow it to be "at scale".
No one is entitled to a business model.
Please be less smug.
YouTube has no right or requirement to operate at that scale. They've consciously decided to scale past what they're able to manage well. This is no different than a developer who produces terrible non-functional code but defends it to their boss by pointing out the line count is really high.
I'd be impressed by their scale only if they managed to maintain some level of quality also.
You're being very condescending when it's totally unwarranted. I assure you people are aware of the scale of YouTube.
But why should we give YouTube a free pass? You're talking about the service as if it's a force of nature rather than something human created and managed. Why are they entitled to operate at a scale beyond their own control, all while extracting huge profits?
If anything, YouTube's scale gives it a better chance of being able to address this issue, since there are likely fixed costs here that YouTube can better fund (obviously investing in better automated screening, but also setting up the workflows for human moderation, etc.) I think the only benefit a smaller scale competitor has is that they're less visible and unlikely to be "caught" for hosting content they "shouldn't". But if the rules applied equally to everyone, I think YouTube is strictly at an advantage in being able to implement better human moderation.
Secondly, for the folks saying why should we allow youtube to scale beyond what it can handle, or why should we accept the 99.99% precision ?
It is because I do not see a futuristic society in which humans are doing work like "manual reviews" - to progress humanity we need to automate such manual labour so I support the fact that companies are testing the limits of automatic content moderation - and working to improve it - I see it as a win overall. Adding human reviewers would be a step in the backward direction IMO.
> If you watched any Kiev livestream it may have been the reason for your termination. It happened to a lot of us too, it seems some Russian bots have been mass-reporting every single person that watched them
> Yes, yesterday night I watched a livestream. Im shocked
> I also watched a Livestream yesterday night. How i wish I didn't now since my account got terminated.
https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/t1445p/this_accoun...
I wonder if their accounts were picked up for using the chat or if there's a viewer list that is being fetched via API.
So now if you watch the wrong video and you are in some list. Looks like it wasn't a good idea to have your full name visible and online identity tied to your youtube account.
Damn google for pushing for that crap, google+ was a blight.
Internet identity is too valuable to trust to a company that demonstrates they are willing to fall asleep with an armed grenade in their hand.
I did not lose any other Google services during this, just access to youtube.
Thankfully, the ban got reversed today.
How much live streaming happened on Youtube - and how many accounts were terminated - during the conflicts in the middle east?
Please consider supporting PeerTube: https://joinpeertube.org.
A lot of accounts were posting the comment '/cam2', with others implying something was happening on cam2. Others were saying that the cam thing was fake. I kind of thought it was a way to find out who was watching the video, since obviously youtube chat isn't going to change the video angle...And now I think that's exactly what it was, for this exact purpose.
One thing is clear, and it's very scary in light of all the NATO press conferences where people are asking if a cyber attack constitutes an act of war: There is a massive war happening on the internet right now. Reps are reluctant to respond to these questions because it's clear that total cyber war has been going on for years.
Even if some channels leave, others will take their place quickly. Youtube has sufficient size for that.
Relevance is a relative term, so I have to apologize for being pedantic here, but I also can't really help it in this case either.
> Even if some channels leave, others will take their place quickly. Youtube has sufficient size for that.
To some extent, yes. That doesn't mean it will be able to keep up with loss forever, especially when it's doing things to outright sabotage new channels.
People will get tired of a mostly PG-rated platform once YouTube truly reaches that point. Cultures shift and change, and if global internet culture swings back to being more like it was in the 2000s, the warm safety blanket YouTube provides will be a totally uncool thing only old people and little kids watch. YouTube will someday have a rude awakening when their pushing of late-night TV and mainstream news clips is no longer a significant ROI to their customers. As for movies, well, they're definitely not the only ones in town for that.
The fact is - less than 2% of content watched is stuff like this.
People are mostly watching work out videos and game streams and sports commentary and so on. Not live streams of wars.
The only reason I point this out as a bad thing is that YouTube long ago represented something else that I think mattered more than cat videos, no matter how small the audience was or is.
I mean we knew that, but now it's like they're competing who is worse.
Big tech more likely wants to censor the Kremlin than the pro Ukraine wing. Which leads me to believe this is YouTube getting trapped in its own algorithmic approach to moderation, until or unless they can manually intervene.
I do agree though, this is most likely just the nature of the problem of trying to moderate such a massive amount of video content.
Some will be caught in the net and attribute agency to the process when it was just completely random.
I mean there is 50k watching a live stream of Kyiv right now.
I mean, it's not like this idea is unfounded. Trump has praised Putin many times, including during the current invasion. Meanwhile, Putin has been very friendly towards Trump.
I think the "Russian election interference" stuff is very overblown, but it's pretty clear that Trump respects (and maybe even idolizes) Putin.
One other problem with what you said is that I think the cause and effect goes the other way. The democrats are anti-Trump in part because he's pro Putin. They're not anti-Putin because Putin is pro-Trump. Being anti-Putin is very simply a matter of being anti-dictator and doesn't require tying Putin to a controversial US political figure.
Seems like Google needs to disable autobans triggered by user reports until they have a solution to filter out the reports originating from Russian-operatred bots.
Which one would that be? I haven’t seen a single US media outlet saying this is a good thing…
https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/news/russian-military-almost-certain...
It's not farfetched to think they have something worse planned.
Eg, 6 year old account https://www.reddit.com/user/lamka02sk/ Or 2 years https://www.reddit.com/user/SoftGreener/ 4 years https://www.reddit.com/user/omerby12/comments/
These are the reddit thread ids which have "similar namess". The users behind them have different names and have been active on the network for up to 6 years.
"We have reviewed your content and found severe or repeated violations of our Community Guidelines. Because of this, we have removed your channel from YouTube."
Also posted a message showing support to Ukraine in a Kiev livestream.
Hi ***,
We’re pleased to let you know that we’ve recently reviewed your YouTube account, and after taking another look, we can confirm that it is not in violation of our Terms of Service. We have lifted the suspension of your account, and it is once again active and operational.
We’d like to thank you for your patience while we reviewed this case. Our goal is to make sure content doesn't violate our Community Guidelines so that YouTube can be a safe place for all - and sometimes we make mistakes trying to get it right. We hope you understand, and we’re sorry for any inconvenience or frustration this has caused.
If you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out to us here.
Sincerely, The YouTube Team
Don't. Have separate accounts for dev stuff, entertainment, storage, social media each.
> and a ton of SSO apps
Never do so. Use a password manager (self-host if you want) and use good old username-password to sign up and log in. I once had all my passwords stored in Chrome leaked in a security breach.
A friend's Gmail was suspended that was connected to bank. He had to waste literally tens of hours in commute and waiting and meetings to change it.
Sucks for people who are still trapped in the Goolag ecosystem though. Maybe this should be a warning at least not to host your precious family photos with Google and not to use their email service.
This is about centralization. If there isn't Google, there is Facebook Video which would do the same. If there isn't FB Video then there's Twitter, which would do the same and so on.
Even if we, as a minority remove all our accounts from those platforms, the majority use them as the primary media platforms.
We need a paradigm shift at scale to move people off centralized platforms, but we need a candidate first that is convenient for people.
It's incredibly difficult to reach a human being in their customer support chain, and using bots to take out rival / oponent / people you don't like YouTube channels has been "normal" for years.
Anyone can literally create a few fake Google accounts (or take over / steal existing ones esp. long-running ones) and write a bot to ban practically anyone else.
Are they ready to fill the gap to some extend?
I think this is a typical use case for the decentralized approach?
Still not there, once it gets there it will revolutionize media.
Yet we definitely need something different than BitTorrent, Tor, or IPFS. Something that incentivizes hosting and creation of an economy around this is a must.
It's usually not that clear cut, but the war in Ukraine has a clear unilateral nature (aggressor is pretty obvious). It's not crazy for western companies to echo western values and interests in such situations.
Edit: Consider the alternative, where western companies maintain "neutrality" and help oppressive regimes surveil their citizens or spread propaganda at home and abroad. This seems like a great way for western democracy to shoot itself in the head.
If the West expects corporations to ensure democracy prevails, the West will fail.
Google has said it is cheaper to ignore the problem and until that changes they aren't going to fix it. And remember that on the other end of these abusive systems are corporations that are willing to sue individuals for literally billions of dollars over sharing files.
Big corporations will not have your back when it could affect their income stream.
It seems to me the system is working as intended as demonstrated by the reversal of the bans being reported 90 minutes ago.
title written by OP is obvious clickbait. Youtube isn't banning accounts that support Ukraine, the automated queue mod system's threshold has been breached and after a human review on the AI's decision, the bans were reversed.
This time it's Russia. Next time it will be an American political party (whichever one you don't like). YouTube saved some money on human moderation, and all it cost was selling their platform to the first group willing to abuse the system.
And do you know how they'll respond? By trying to improve the automation. No no, no need to add costs by having humans in the loop, we'll just make better software. Because that's what worked so well for SEO, right?
Last week I thought I had invented the phrase "accountability arbitrage" to describe the core FB, Google, section 230 business model. But a quick search found it actually has been previously used in some interesting documents.
I would like to see that phrase used more commonly. It seems important and timely.
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22accountability+arbitrage%...
I'm sure this is top priority right now for Google to fix. But perhaps everything is automated to an extent that this has no good countermove. We shall see.
"It's automated" has become the new "it's policy," the go-to excuse for doing evil and pretending it's not a choice.
If it is the flagging, I think we can agree that if any political thread were ever HN-appropriate then this one is. It would also be nice to have confirmation one way or another, since if it has been that fact in and of itself becomes part of the conversation.
Twitter has this thing in Germany where they are required to tell you if someone reported your account. This is at least a good way for reporters to know that they are being targetted by trolls.
I now propose an updated motto: "Don't be evil: just look away."
They have been posting very consistently and frequently. They went from tens of subscribers two days ago, to over 100K as of like 12 hours ago. They're putting in the work.
https://theintercept.com/2022/02/24/ukraine-facebook-azov-ba...
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People have talked a lot about how this is morally wrong.
It's more morally pretty wrong for a long time.
Copyright complaints shouldn't get settled by a "report them instant action," model. Not having a fair hearing in a court of law, is a serious weakness in our modern day legal system.
Jurists legitimately have not figured out how to solve this problem. Copyright & patent law when social graphs spread IP at light-speed is a real conundrum.
But it's not a new problem.
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What's new is Youtube's algorithm has become a huge asset to Russian foreign policy.
Which is directly opposed to the United State's interests.
If you're working in the foreign policy apparatus of the US Government and watching this... the fact Alphabet is projecting Russian soft power is a big big problem.
The spiciest example I can think of is one Estonian parish being marked as belonging to Russia, even right this moment, on Google Maps.
1.) Generalized content hosting that has minimal oversight with commenting, upvotes and monetization, etc. Basically "bring your own audience" Vimeo style.
2.) More carefully moderated content that gets reviewed by human moderators/stricter opinionated screening filters before it is pushed into the auto-recommendation engine/viral feed algorithm.
This blind viral content also based solely on uplikes seems a bit too blind/automated.
Wait not like that
Maybe they want to save face for politicians who - people will argue - mishandled this crisis.
Maybe it is just not really true, despite some people saying it on the internet.
Aside from that, food for thought; I know this won't be popular but Google does have ties to JetBrains (Android Studio, Android development used to be done in Eclipse, I prefer Eclipse). JetBrains has offices in Saint Petersburg and Moscow. Google has a strong interest in pushing nginx (formerly (?) Russian made, though I personally prefer Apache) in Kubernetes.
It seems like the new media are keen to shut down information offensives, but are trying to use AI or some other lazy technique.
Strange.
It's certainly a charged event with emotions running hot. People are going to say things that are wrong.
Crimea was a difficult subject because they are ethnically russian. Due in large part to a gigantic naval base. They did vote to separate from the Ukraine.
That was then, today is different. The direct invasion of Ukraine is aggression. Putin lied, diplomacy has failed.
As emperor of canada I would have done what my gov has done so far, but also put a sunset. In 1 year, unless something changes, we end any and all connection to russia. their citizens may not come here. none of their citizens may own property here. Absolutely no trade of any kind. Anyone who is currently doing business with them, your contracts are null and void. Find new suppliers.
I also wonder if youtube is trying to do detect propaganda somehow. Some videos were clearly using old/altered clips and making claims about the war. This might be factoring in too. Unfortunately, no actual detail is provided of what exactly was the trigger. Even some of the reddit thread seems to have disappeared.
In my humble opinion, HN is a file place to be outraged about something some company/person has not but not really that good of a place if there is no data/information/real indication/ that something bad has happened. I am happy to listen to counter points.
