YouTube Is Heading For Its Cambridge Analytica Moment (cnbc.com) 100
Earlier this week, Disney, Nestle and others pulled its advertising spending from YouTube after a blogger detailed how comments on Google's video site were being used to facilitate a "soft-core pedophilia ring." Some of the videos involved ran next to ads placed by Disney and Nestle.
With the company facing similar problems over the years, often being "caught in a game of whack-a-mole to fix them," Matt Rosoff from CNBC writes that it's only a matter of time until YouTube faces a scandal that actually alienates users, as happened with Facebook in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. From the report: To be fair, YouTube has taken concrete steps to fix some problems. A couple of years ago, major news events were targets for scammers to post misleading videos about them, like videos claiming shootings such as the one in Parkland, Florida, were staged by crisis actors. In January, the company said it would stop recommending such videos, effectively burying them. It also favors "authoritative" sources in search results around major news events, like mainstream media organizations. And YouTube is not alone in struggling to fight inappropriate content that users upload to its platform. The problem isn't really about YouTube, Facebook or any single company. The problem is the entire business model around user-generated content, and the whack-a-mole game of trying to stay one step ahead of people who abuse it.
[T]ech platforms that rely on user-generated content are protected by the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which says platform providers cannot be held liable for material users post on them. It made sense at the time -- the internet was young, and forcing start-ups to monitor their comments sections (remember comments sections?) would have exploded their expenses and stopped growth before it started. Even now, when some of these companies are worth hundreds of billions of dollars, holding them liable for user-generated content would blow up these companies' business models. They'd disappear, reduce services or have to charge fees for them. Voters might not be happy if Facebook went out of business or they suddenly had to start paying $20 a month to use YouTube. Similarly, advertiser boycotts tend to be short-lived -- advertisers go where they get the best return on their investment, and as long as billions of people keep watching YouTube videos, they'll keep advertising on the platform. So the only way things will change is if users get turned off so badly that they tune out. Following Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, people deleted their accounts, Facebook's growth largely stalled in the U.S., and more young users have abandoned the platform. "YouTube has so far skated free of any similar scandals. But people are paying closer attention than ever before, and it's only a matter of time before the big scandal that actually starts driving users away," writes Rosoff.
[T]ech platforms that rely on user-generated content are protected by the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which says platform providers cannot be held liable for material users post on them. It made sense at the time -- the internet was young, and forcing start-ups to monitor their comments sections (remember comments sections?) would have exploded their expenses and stopped growth before it started. Even now, when some of these companies are worth hundreds of billions of dollars, holding them liable for user-generated content would blow up these companies' business models. They'd disappear, reduce services or have to charge fees for them. Voters might not be happy if Facebook went out of business or they suddenly had to start paying $20 a month to use YouTube. Similarly, advertiser boycotts tend to be short-lived -- advertisers go where they get the best return on their investment, and as long as billions of people keep watching YouTube videos, they'll keep advertising on the platform. So the only way things will change is if users get turned off so badly that they tune out. Following Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, people deleted their accounts, Facebook's growth largely stalled in the U.S., and more young users have abandoned the platform. "YouTube has so far skated free of any similar scandals. But people are paying closer attention than ever before, and it's only a matter of time before the big scandal that actually starts driving users away," writes Rosoff.
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it's only a matter of time until YouTube faces a scandal that actually alienates users, as happened with Facebook in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Only one problem -- that never happened. Since the so-called "Cambridge Analytica scandal", Facebook's average daily user numbers have gone up, not down.
This is just more fake outrage over another phony scandal.
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Facebook lost young users long before the CA incident. i work with teens and Facebook stopped being used by them in the '00s. Facebook is used by their parents and they don't want anything to do with it.
IMDB (Score:5, Interesting)
IMDB removed their comments sections entirely rather than police them.
Youtube's comments are more integral to the service, but if Youtube is going to be have to do more about them then respond to user complaints, they might find it easier to just shut that crap down preemptively.
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"enable YouTube to eliminate content their management doesn't want," - Huh? They have that power now. What are you not getting about this? You have no "right" to youtube under any circumstances. They own your account.
You upload content, it's theirs more than it is yours until lawyered otherwise. You think it's "demagoguery" to have control of their platform and run it like they want to? Maybe, but they can. Tighten up snowflake.
Go host your own videos if you want to be Braveheart the pedo.
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muh conservative values!!1! I'm getting verklempt!!
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Youtube's comments are more integral to the service
Holy shit no, are you stupid or something? The comments provide almost zero value.
No, not almost, the comments provide exactly ZERO value.
A complete shutdown of comments solves the problem, and, harms no one (except the egomaniacs who need a thousand comments telling them how great they are).
Re: IMDB (Score:5, Interesting)
Potential solution: allow people to submit comments, but the comments donâ(TM)t become publicly visible unless/until the videoâ(TM)s owner approves them.
(Yes, this would drastically reduce both the number of comments and the incentive to comment. I think that would be a good thing)
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Potential solution: allow people to submit comments, but the comments donÃ(TM)t become publicly visible unless/until the videoÃ(TM)s owner approves them.
Letting the video uploader decide the comment policy is really the only fair way to solve this problem. They can already turn off comments entirely, but they ought to have the option to moderate them, as you say.
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And if Youtube shuts down the comments, authors will post a link to some other site for discussion. Exactly what Google doesn't want!
Re:IMDB (Score:4, Interesting)
Glad to see you're hot on the job of speaking for all humanity.
Surprise, surprise: I completely disagree with you. I find the comments almost indispensable. And my ego has nothing to do with it.
Without the comments, the "like" button becomes effectively castrated, because you have no way to double check what ridiculous reasons people are coming up with to vote one way or another. I'm highly invested in sociology. Society is crumbling. You can't reassemble an egg without getting you's hands dirty; you can't perfect your listening skills inside a tame filter bubble.
Finally, I don't see any parallel between Facebook and YouTube. Facebook went far above and beyond the call the duty in being obtuse to reality.
Why Zuckerberg's 14-Year Apology Tour Hasn't Fixed Facebook [wired.com] — April 2018
Apart from copyright law, YouTube is in the same nasty social media hot tub as every other social media service, and not doing a particularly worse job of it. In terms of getting in between the creative class and their revenue streams, how is this different from Apple? They're different models, but with more or less the same end result: content is not king.
Being annoyed about the content situation, then trying to throw YouTube under the Facebook bus in a fit of pique won't change this reality one bit.
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but if Youtube is going to be have to do more about them then respond to user complaints
They can just threaten to remove the channels if they do not police their own comments.
This is just silly (Score:5, Insightful)
This'll blow over, some full time YouTubers will sadly lose out (and we'll lose out on some good content) and YouTube will go on.
The CA thing was a mess because not only was there privacy concerns but there was the stink of corrupt American politics all over it.
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The CA thing was a mess because not only was there privacy concerns but there was the stink of corrupt American politics all over it.
Yeah, the CA thing was entirely different. The issue at stake was that because FB was really lax on security they effectively let CA pull the whole graph down on everyone even though those people may not have fallen for CA's dirty tricks directly. That information was then weaponized to create deepfake videos and radicalize the population.
This is more along the lines of the usual "Google doesn't understand humans" policy intersected with pedos being pedos.
If comments were turned off on YouTube would any
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Yea, the CA thing was far worse because it might have been used to help the GOP win elections.
When the same thing was used in 2012 to help Obama win reelection, it was perfectly acceptable.
So when you help the party that supports KKK members (VA governor), rapists (VA lt governor), and advocates of infanticide (killing live babies as part of abortion law) you should be able to break whatever rules exist.
If you want to cut taxes on middle class or protect US citizens from Mexican drugs and violent criminals,
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As I understand it this was pushed by a YouTuber who had been demonetized because his content was creepy. His response was to use the following he had to complain to the advertisers about pedophiles commenting in certain videos in an effort to hurt YouTube and successful creators who had not been demonetized.
Not that there wasn't a problem, but YouTube was aware of it and trying to address it without forcing creators to have to moderate content. The stream of complaints caused advertisers to pull their ads
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Advertisers on the other hand are very sensitive a
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Nah.
85% of all content is garbage. 85% of all books are garbage. 85% of all TV is garbage. 85% of all movies are garbage. YouTube is not better or worse in that regard than any other content source.
But since YouTube has over 7 billion videos that means ther are 1.4 billion videos that are not garbage. Certainly compared the professional media that's way more decent stuff than they put out.
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Certainly compared the professional media
Which part of the good stuff in Youtube is not professional? When I look into my TY subscriptions, they are either traditional media putting videos on YT, trade professionals who increase their visibility by posting videos, people who have so many views, that they can monetize from TY ads, patreon or in-video ads.
If whatever amateur videos become good enough, they tend to become professional, because why not take money, if it;s there.
Were Facebook users alienated? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Sure, I was alienated by the Cambridge Analytica scandal, as was another nerd I know, but that's it in my circle of acquaintances, and neither of us gave up our accounts. When I brought up the scandal at a get-together, nobody else had even heard of it, and the conversation shifted to how much everybody likes Facebook.
Honestly, I don't think Youtube can be blamed for the, admittedly clever, use of its comment system for nefarious reasons. If there is something they can do to stifle those uses, great...but
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I'm not sure the jury has come in on that fully yet. Zuck lied to the EU and Congress. That has yet to be fully unravelled.
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videos of pre-teen mothers feeding freshly plucked aborted foetuses from bottles of heroin with blazing pentagrams on them while being sodomized by German shepherds
I have so many highly conflicted feelings about this video...
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videos of pre-teen mothers feeding freshly plucked aborted foetuses from bottles of heroin with blazing pentagrams on them while being sodomized by German shepherds
I have so many highly conflicted feelings about this video...
So you've seen it too? What did you think about the scene with the kittens and the meat grinder?
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So you've seen it too? What did you think about the scene with the kittens and the meat grinder?
That one was just terrible.
The reason I was so conflicted about the first example was how eerily specific it was. 'Kittens in a meat grinder' is the sort of shock value that proves the GGP's point effectively and would have done the job. However, the example provided was scary with how detailed it was, which is the source of my internal conflict.
"soft-core pedophilia ring." (Score:2)
i hope the producers of this ""soft-core pedophilia" " content are punished severely.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Nah, that's basically it. Really his point was two things: first, that the comments were being used for that, and second, that Google's recommendation algorithm worked really well and it only took looking at like two videos of little girls before YouTube decided that was all his new user account was interested in watching.
I'm not sure exactly what he thinks Google could do about it. Comments are clearly coming from users, and other than disabling them entirely, what is Google supposed to do? The recommendat
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The problem is google's algorithms and how they recommend videos to people. They end up inadvertently creating what are almost communities, and sometimes centered around really creepy shit. I ran into something similar to this before, but with videos of monkeys. Apparently there's a whole community of people on youtube who really really hate monkeys, and like to upload and watch videos of baby monkeys suffering. It was just like the how the softcore pedo ring was described, where you'd go to one video a
Re:"soft-core pedophilia ring." (Score:5, Interesting)
While theoretically, extremely stupid pedophiles might actually have been the authors of those comments, it seems just as likely that trolls seeking attention for either fun or publicity or money wrote those comments themselves to then base a "scandal" on them.
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One of the problems is, you can go back over say the last 5 years of court cases where that type of action shows a "pattern of behavior" of an individual who's been criminally charged with a sex crime against a minor, or trafficking in child porn. One of the problems is that kids see the attention they're getting then act out the things suggested, that *is* a problem. Said problem has multiple failures of multiple people at multiple levels. If you have kids, or nieces or nephews and so on. Especially ki
Pffft. (Score:2)
Basically, with the new "comments on your video can get you demonetized" policy is going to slowly strangle the content creator community.
Because it favors established creators with multiple revenue streams already established.
And it is slowly looking to present an insurmountable barrier to entry for NEW creators.
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Ah. Someone else who doesn't understand the problem.
What's going on is that NOW, you can post something that's completely legitimate and drawing money.
Then a random third party can come in and post something unacceptable in the comments, and BOOM, your otherwise perfectly legit money-making content gets demonetized.
And "fuck off to your own hosted video". Yep, like I said, a barrier to entry for new content creators.
Any other dumbfuckery you want to spew?
Paying for Youtube (Score:1)
I already pay and have an ad free experience. Worth every penny considering the amount of great content on it.
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Re:Paying for Youtube (Score:4, Informative)
Will creators still be paid with YouTube Premium?
"Yes, of course. In fact, YouTube Premium provides a secondary revenue stream for creators in addition to what you're already earning today through ads."
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6306276#YouTube_Red_revenue_1
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I already pay and have an ad free experience.
I use an ad blocker and have an ad free experience.
What's your point?
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A way for viewers to support people directly who make video clips without the third party politics and CoC of a CC brand, a membership platform.
No longer can an online payments network, CC brand, membership platform stop funds going to artists and content creators from their viewers.
Ensure the video clips flow from the creator to the people searching for them.
Back to been a utility connecting content to users rather than becomi
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Advertisers are sensitive to media outrage, manufactured or not. And YouTube is sensitive to advertisers, since those are their major source of income.
If YouTube actually wanted to do something about pedophiles abusing their platform via comments, they would either identify and ban the accounts making those comments or, if that is too much work or ineffective, disable comments altogether on content featuring children. Instead, they are demonetizing videos, in other words: not showing ads on them. They're pr
Another college project that needs to grow up (Score:1)
Once again a what was once a college project used by a few thousand has morphed into a multi-billion dollar corporate enterprise, sadly those still running it like it's a little college server for a few laughs.
Some people are scum and they will ruin things that most of us are happy to use for a fun. As anyone who works in retail will tell you, it's always the 5% that are the most difficult to deal with but sadly everything has to be geared up to deal with the minority and the trouble they cause, it's never
so what? (Score:2)
The answer to all is a "no"... there's no consequences for corporate oligarchs.
Freedom of speech (Score:1)
Amazing how difficult it is to police freedoms, is it not? Their excuse of, "we're too big to police ourselves" can't work forever.