Youtube Heroes - Hate Backlash Warranted?

[Olinser]

I don't see another thread, so I'll go ahead and see what people think of this.

Now, everybody knows that Youtube comments are a wretched hive of scum and villainy pockmarked with racist, sexist personal attacks, guaranteed to contain copious references to Hitler, and the ever present 'YOUR MOM'.

So to 'combat' this, Youtube has lauched the 'Youtube Heroes' initiative, with this video:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh_1966vaIA

This has debuted to utterly unreal backlash. At the time of this post it is at 8,600 upvotes, 465,000 downvotes (with 1.3 million total views)

I guess the question to be asked - is this program going to have any kind of effect, and is the backlash warranted?




I mean my first impression is that the entire format makes me feel like this is propaganda from a 3rd world country.

As far as effectiveness... the biggest knock I've heard is that people think its ridiculous and just want their current moderators/channel owners to be given more tools to actually try and clean up the comments. Right now they can basically just remove and flag comments, but have no way of knowing what actually punishment has taken place for a user and no way to do anything about the same user in videos outside their domain.

What really threw me off is the ability to 'mass flag' videos. Uh... what? In what situation would this be useful? If somebody is spamming videos you should be disabling their account to auto take down ALL of their videos, not individually flagging videos.

But even with all that the level of downvoting taking place seems unwarranted. Its a pretty bad idea, but its not THAT bad, and it at least shows Youtube is aware of the problem.

But what are some other thoughts? The Youtube comments section definitely needs major cleanup, but this definitely does not look like its going to be received well.

[Keltest]

The backlash is probably related as much to the vast amounts of feedback YouTube has to have gotten by now, and apparently ignored, as it is with any actual failures of the program. 'We gave you all this to work with, and this is the best you can do?!" sort of thing.

[Olinser]

The backlash is probably related as much to the vast amounts of feedback YouTube has to have gotten by now, and apparently ignored, as it is with any actual failures of the program. 'We gave you all this to work with, and this is the best you can do?!" sort of thing.

Hmm, solid point, I guess that also feeds into why people just want the current mods to get more power and they're doing this weird 'Level' stuff.

[Metahuman1]

Ok.


Level's 1-2 get to Flag video's. This is incredibly easy to abuse. Let's say Viacom doesn't like what you said about Spongebob in your animation review. Or CNN/Fox decide they don't like your news/current events channel giving a different and perhaps faster/more factually accurate story on a news article there gonna run but slant to fit there own bias/narrative. Or that while there's technically nothing wrong with that Guitar Lessons video, you have a personal grudge against the maker cause you don't want him to date your little sister or something.

You now have the power to go after that review, that news channel, that guy making guitar lesson videos, with impunity. You risk at most a slap on the wrist, that person looses a months income or more. Maybe there whole career.

Level 3 makes it even worse as you now have the power to do this en-mass.

And to have even a prayer of fighting back, you need to make level 4. Which basically means you either need to be able to make Subtitles at Super Human speed, or be stabbing other creators in the back to get there.



Add the nonsense recently with "Advertiser Friendly" as an excuse to demonetize, and the rampant abuse against creators of fair use laws (were in fair use is basically being ignored unless and until there forced in court of law to acknowledge it and people to give negative reviews of games or other media or who do parody or run news shows are being harassed endlessly.), and you get this backlash. Which, I'd like to add given what a disaster I expect it to be in light of the above, Is warranted. And that's not even getting into the really mean details. Like the fact that all it takes for a troll is a fresh account and taking an hour to make a couple of "reasonable." flags to pass the vetting process, but an established content creator getting harassed cause he gave EA's Call of Duty a less then perfect review can't even get in the front door the way they've described there vetting system.

[Kitten Champion]

A lot of it is simply that Youtube as a business hasn't earned much trust to implement a system of moderation reasonably, and as mentioned there are a lot of a-holes on there that would immediately conspire to abuse the system to ruin some content creator's day for whatever dismal satisfaction it will give them. As opposed to something like Wikipedia where, while abuse is a thing that happens, there are a lot of good people out there willing to put the work in to make that a viable - if somewhat flawed - information resource. They've built such a presence online over time to their credit, while Youtube built... kind of a garbage fire.

[Tengu_temp]

Outrage and screaming in hate is definitely overreacting (on my internet? Preposterous!), but considering that youtube decided to ignore all the feedback it got, and instead implements a system where a bunch of volunteers does for free what should really be a paid position, negativity towards this idea is completely understandable. Because that's what it boils down to; people doing unpaid moderation for youtube.

Oh yeah, and also Youtube Heroes is a system that can be abused to flag videos that did nothing wrong, but are simply videos you don't like. But let's be realistic here; youtube's flagging system is already really easy to abuse, and has been abused by various parties for years. Youtube Heroes won't really make a big difference here.

[factotum]

I think the main outrage is based upon the fact that Youtube makes a lot of money for Google, and they're trying to do everything on the cheap, as per usual. Volunteer moderators work for not-for-profit forums like this one, but when a business is asking people to give up their time for free to help them out...well, it doesn't go down well!

[Winter_Wolf]

Hatred warranted. If you don't have the freedom to post unpleasant or unpopular views, or views that run contrary to some vocal group agenda, that's ripe for censorship of valid criticism. I'm not down with that. Before anyone gets their knickers in a twist, do remember that there is a lot of sentiment now that only a few years ago would just as easily been buried under an avalanche of people not liking the cut of your gib. If you think you have a right to be heard, then so do the people that disagree with you. You don't have to listen or watch, but if you're not going to respect that they share the same rights as you, you're a bloody hypocrite and I'll be sure to make a note of it so I can properly disregard your own harping.

[Aotrs Commander]

The system is ridiculously open to abuse, given that youtube's community is not exactly... Friendly. And because it is so large, the absolute number of [expletive] persons is much larger and harder to control than on a (in comparison) small forum like GitP.



What happens to prevent people from starting to flag videoes they don't like (or, with the more determined, flag all of someone's videos)?

Let's take one example: Games journalism personality Jim Sterling is currently in litigation (for a truly hilariously wishful amount of damages) with a "developer" who is sufficiently bad that Steam actually removed their games when they tried to start sueing users who gave their "games" bad reviews. Someone with a little bit of nouse (jury's out on this particular case...) in that sort of situation could easily get to the point they could then start mass-flagging someone like Jim, jut ou of spite on in the hopes of making them doing their job more untenable. Yes, it may come to nothing eventually, but as with the copyright bovine excrement, throw enough of it at people and it all adds up, taking time (and potentially through stress, health) away from people doing their job.

Let alone, as mentioned, any corporatations actively going after people.

Heck, all it takes is one miserable little toe-rag one afternoon and any fan vidoes or clips from of [insert your favourite thing here] could be getting mass-flagged, sheerly because of the delight some folk take in spoiling other people's fun.



Basically, it all smacks of Google - like Steam - actually just trying to half-arse the job because the simple fact is that the sites are too big for them to maintain any actual control without spending lots of money.

(Which I personally, believe they should be required to spend, no matter how much it hurts them. Do the job right or go out of business.)

[Devonix]

I never understood people's problem with the whole " Advertiser Friendly " thing. It's actually a good thing.

You see the whole problem is that an advertiser would see certain videos's tags or other such and decide that they didn't want their ads on that video. The video would get demonitized, not by youtube but because no one is paying them. However there was no notification service to let people know that they weren't making money on a specific video or why. The money just vanished.

They changed it to notify people that their video isn't " Ad Friendly " So that the content providers would know why it was happening. Youtube wasn't taking anyone's money, or sanitizing videos, they weren't really doing anything wrong there. All they were doing was saying " Hey, no one wants to advertise on this particular video.

[Eldan]

Haven't heard of this before now, but after the video, it sounds to me like "We don't want to pay admins or community managers, so you do it, dammit!"

[Dragonexx]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLwyoHC9AGc

Here are some good thoughts on the "advertiser-friendly" thing.

[Friv]

Hatred warranted. If you don't have the freedom to post unpleasant or unpopular views, or views that run contrary to some vocal group agenda, that's ripe for censorship of valid criticism. I'm not down with that. Before anyone gets their knickers in a twist, do remember that there is a lot of sentiment now that only a few years ago would just as easily been buried under an avalanche of people not liking the cut of your gib. If you think you have a right to be heard, then so do the people that disagree with you. You don't have to listen or watch, but if you're not going to respect that they share the same rights as you, you're a bloody hypocrite and I'll be sure to make a note of it so I can properly disregard your own harping.

I go back and forth on this a lot, but overall I agree with you.

The thing is, the biggest source of cesspool on Youtube isn't in the videos, it's in the comments. It's really easy to ignore a video that's saying nasty things, because you don't have to visit that video. And the ability of places like Facebook and Youtube to spread voices that have traditionally been ignored or suppressed is huge, and valuable.

It's not so easy to ignore people screaming abuse and drowning out legitimate folks you might have wanted to hear from, because the abuse-screamers are taking advantage of the format to crush other voices. This is the place where moderation is valuable. If someone really wants to say mean things about your video, they can go and make their own video. Of course, that's not what happens in unmoderated or lightly-moderated communities. Things tend to go south in a hurry.

The thing is, most of the stuff in "Youtube Heroes" doesn't address the actual problems. The moderation activities that are being rewarded, and those being granted, are both targeted towards videos instead of comments. That means crackdowns on things that live in the fuzzy grey areas of fair use, crackdowns on people saying things YouTube doesn't like so much, and crackdowns on people saying things that other people don't like. It means video creators still have to choose between banning comments or wading through a swamp of terrible things to find people that are worth talking to. I expect it means a massive increase in the number of flagged videos overall, and YouTube has, to be blunt, a terrible track record of making good decisions when other people flag their videos.

Points for subtitles are nice. Adding captioning to videos is pretty useful.

[Winter_Wolf]

Haha, yeah the comments section of anything on the Internet is a nasty mess. I tend to avoid looking at them for the most part. But I'm not an uploader so comments only receive a look if the YouTube video mentions a link to something in their comments section that I find relevant to my interests.

I still say people have a right to say what they want. Just as people have a right to ignore those people.

[Friv]

I still say people have a right to say what they want. Just as people have a right to ignore those people.

The thing is, people clearly don't have that right. Harassment, incitement, libel, and slander are all things that are illegal. There are obscenity laws in most of the U.S. There are laws saying "You can say that, but not here or not right now." There are laws against stealing other people's words and using them as your own.

The right to free speech is pretty far from absolute. The problem is, the laws that exist don't work well online.

Consider Bob. Bob has the right to say that Adam sucks, and that he doesn't like Adam. If Bob says this in Adam's house, Adam is pretty free to kick Bob out. Bob no longer has the right to speech in Adam's house at that point.

If Bob goes to Adam's workplace and starts telling everyone that Adam sucks and Bob doesn't like him, Adam's manager could come by and kick Bob out. Even if Adam works in a store, which is a semi-public venue. Bob is now banned from speaking in a workplace because the things that he's saying are causing trouble for the workers. This is pretty important, because if Bob is troublesome enough his presence in the workplace will affect the workers, and other customers, which hurts the business, and you can't be forced to hurt yourself just so someone else has free exercise of their rights.

Youtube is claiming that it is, for all intents and purposes, a workplace. It's their bandwidth, and their right to allow or disallow people from using it. Their argument is that you can't force someone to use their resources for others, because that's against the principles of capitalism. Since there are other video hosting sites out there, so you're free to use those if you don't like Youtube's rules.

This is a little messy, because it means that the people with the power decide what is and is not allowed. This has always been pretty true, but it's a little more obvious here. On the other hand, they're not wrong. You can't force someone to sell your books, or to give you a job. Can you force them to spread your message to the world?

[Keltest]

The thing is, people clearly don't have that right. Harassment, incitement, libel, and slander are all things that are illegal. There are obscenity laws in most of the U.S. There are laws saying "You can say that, but not here or not right now." There are laws against stealing other people's words and using them as your own.

The right to free speech is pretty far from absolute. The problem is, the laws that exist don't work well online.

Consider Bob. Bob has the right to say that Adam sucks, and that he doesn't like Adam. If Bob says this in Adam's house, Adam is pretty free to kick Bob out. Bob no longer has the right to speech in Adam's house at that point.

If Bob goes to Adam's workplace and starts telling everyone that Adam sucks and Bob doesn't like him, Adam's manager could come by and kick Bob out. Even if Adam works in a store, which is a semi-public venue. Bob is now banned from speaking in a workplace because the things that he's saying are causing trouble for the workers. This is pretty important, because if Bob is troublesome enough his presence in the workplace will affect the workers, and other customers, which hurts the business, and you can't be forced to hurt yourself just so someone else has free exercise of their rights.

Youtube is claiming that it is, for all intents and purposes, a workplace. It's their bandwidth, and their right to allow or disallow people from using it. Their argument is that you can't force someone to use their resources for others, because that's against the principles of capitalism. Since there are other video hosting sites out there, so you're free to use those if you don't like Youtube's rules.

This is a little messy, because it means that the people with the power decide what is and is not allowed. This has always been pretty true, but it's a little more obvious here. On the other hand, they're not wrong. You can't force someone to sell your books, or to give you a job. Can you force them to spread your message to the world?

The way I see it is, you have the right to an opinion and thoughts. You have the right to voice those thoughts. You do not have the right to be protected from the consequences of those thoughts (including being arrested if you cause a riot or something), nor do you have the right to force somebody to give you a medium to voice yourself through.

[random11]

I never understood people's problem with the whole " Advertiser Friendly " thing. It's actually a good thing.

You see the whole problem is that an advertiser would see certain videos's tags or other such and decide that they didn't want their ads on that video. The video would get demonitized, not by youtube but because no one is paying them. However there was no notification service to let people know that they weren't making money on a specific video or why. The money just vanished.

They changed it to notify people that their video isn't " Ad Friendly " So that the content providers would know why it was happening. Youtube wasn't taking anyone's money, or sanitizing videos, they weren't really doing anything wrong there. All they were doing was saying " Hey, no one wants to advertise on this particular video.

Two basic problems:
1) It isn't a case of certain particular videos, it's a very wide definition that catches WAY too much. That along with YouTube's bots that are already proven to work very badly causes a lot more damage to videos which just shouldn't be flagged as "not ad friendly"

2) the definition of what is and what isn't ad friendly is an excellent example of hypocrisy from the side of the companies running the ads.
I don't remember many companies that have any problem running ads during shows like "Game of Thrones", but god forbid if your video contain a sexual word as part of a joke.
Ads run during news and political shows, but political views are a big no no for the system
Same goes for almost every one of the rules.

And this is what bothers people with both the content id incidents, the ad friendly initiative and the new "heroes" thing.
YouTube keep using automated systems instead of manual observations, and the automated systems are always designed first for the big companies and only then, maybe, for the content creators. Regardless of what the big companies want, what they have a right to demand and what the cost is to the content creators.

[Blackhawk748]

I never understood people's problem with the whole " Advertiser Friendly " thing. It's actually a good thing.

You see the whole problem is that an advertiser would see certain videos's tags or other such and decide that they didn't want their ads on that video. The video would get demonitized, not by youtube but because no one is paying them. However there was no notification service to let people know that they weren't making money on a specific video or why. The money just vanished.

They changed it to notify people that their video isn't " Ad Friendly " So that the content providers would know why it was happening. Youtube wasn't taking anyone's money, or sanitizing videos, they weren't really doing anything wrong there. All they were doing was saying " Hey, no one wants to advertise on this particular video.

Except that the videos that are getting demonitzed are mostly News and Current Events videos, such as Phillip De Franco. The stupidest part is is that Youtube is demonetizing videos that contain the stuff that the mainstream media makes its money off of. IE "It bleeds it leads"

Hell Thunderfoot had a video about WW1 tanks, his model Battleship and one about a Railgun i believe demonitized. So thats another issue, none of them make sense and this "advertiser friendly" crap is just a smoke screen. Then add Youtube Heroes and i swore i was staring at Cold War Russia propaganda. Seriously, that was unnerving. What does "Negative Content" even mean? Something different for every person thats what.

[Anonymouswizard]

I never understood people's problem with the whole " Advertiser Friendly " thing. It's actually a good thing.

You see the whole problem is that an advertiser would see certain videos's tags or other such and decide that they didn't want their ads on that video. The video would get demonitized, not by youtube but because no one is paying them. However there was no notification service to let people know that they weren't making money on a specific video or why. The money just vanished.

They changed it to notify people that their video isn't " Ad Friendly " So that the content providers would know why it was happening. Youtube wasn't taking anyone's money, or sanitizing videos, they weren't really doing anything wrong there. All they were doing was saying " Hey, no one wants to advertise on this particular video.

I agree here. My first introduction to the advertiser friendly thing was a video saying 'hey guys, this could potentially be a problem, but it's not that bad and there's a way around it', which made me annoyed when I saw a video saying 'oh noes, guys it's the end of free speech, YouTube is the devil' (...but YouTube doesn't get much say over where the adverts go). Heck, I've argued that, although it'll lead to an increase in sponsored videos (not that I mind, I think sponsored videos are an awesome thing) it'll be beneficial to content creators if advertisers can also say 'we want our adverts on videos like these' so they can target them correctly.

For YouTube Heroes, it's bad. It could be made okay by giving Heroes the power to report inappropriate flagging or give videos some protection from abuse, but what they need is a 'report' button and a bunch of paid moderators. I sit through enough adverts as it is, I want to know my money's going on something other than Google's company CoD tournament. It's as if my friend deciding that instead of writing a plot for his game he'd just use suggestions from the players (great for a small scale thing, but for a world-saving epic there's going to be a lot of problems).

[Winter_Wolf]

The way I see it is, you have the right to an opinion and thoughts. You have the right to voice those thoughts. You do not have the right to be protected from the consequences of those thoughts (including being arrested if you cause a riot or something), nor do you have the right to force somebody to give you a medium to voice yourself through.

Keltest has pretty well summed up what I wanted to articulate, and has done a better job of it.

The corollary, though, is that I've basically stopped watching mainstream media (like the Big Networks in the USA) because there's what I'd consider and increasing bias against people whose views I'd like to hear. Doesn't mean I agree or disagree with what they're saying, but i am an adult and I do have the ability to think for myself and examine critically what's being said. I question the integrity of those who would silence dissenting opinions from what's popular at the time.

[Olinser]

Keltest has pretty well summed up what I wanted to articulate, and has done a better job of it.

The corollary, though, is that I've basically stopped watching mainstream media (like the Big Networks in the USA) because there's what I'd consider and increasing bias against people whose views I'd like to hear. Doesn't mean I agree or disagree with what they're saying, but i am an adult and I do have the ability to think for myself and examine critically what's being said. I question the integrity of those who would silence dissenting opinions from what's popular at the time.

While I agree with you, lets stay away from expanding the discussion into news and politics, that's the kind of thing that will attract mods. Let's keep it in the context of Youtube.

[Razade]

The answer is yes for a lot of reasons. One thing to note because it was said on this thread. Youtube doesn't make a lot of money for Google. Youtube makes enough to keep itself going, it isn't a major revenue source for Google. It's never been a major revenue source for Google. On to why Heroes is terrible though. It gives power not to the majority but the minority who would use their time flagging content they don't like and getting it off Youtube. Considering the appeal process and the three strike rule, the Hero Program is so easily abuse-able it's absurd. The majority of youtube users don't have accounts and won't make accounts to be a "Hero". The Hero Program actually adds more work for Youtube because tons of flags are going to be appealed and tons are going to keep being appealed because the auto-bot in charge of it is terrible.

All around, this is a terrible idea and it's a terrible idea because of the level system...among other things. You can mass flag people before you ever speak to someone at Youtube. There's no vetting going on for these Heroes. Anyone who wants to do this can do this with impunity. I'm not against Youtube or Google creating a team of volunteer moderators because they're clearly not going to make paid positions and really feasibly can't. But the way they've implemented it creates the ability to abuse it on conception and I am against that. All Youtube Heroes is is a method to censor. It's a method of censorship on both sides. The people who are going to be most hurt by this aren't the extremes, it's the people caught in the middle.

Is this the death of Youtube though? No.

[Olinser]

The answer is yes for a lot of reasons. One thing to note because it was said on this thread. Youtube doesn't make a lot of money for Google. Youtube makes enough to keep itself going, it isn't a major revenue source for Google. It's never been a major revenue source for Google. On to why Heroes is terrible though. It gives power not to the majority but the minority who would use their time flagging content they don't like and getting it off Youtube. Considering the appeal process and the three strike rule, the Hero Program is so easily abuse-able it's absurd. The majority of youtube users don't have accounts and won't make accounts to be a "Hero". The Hero Program actually adds more work for Youtube because tons of flags are going to be appealed and tons are going to keep being appealed because the auto-bot in charge of it is terrible.

All around, this is a terrible idea and it's a terrible idea because of the level system...among other things. You can mass flag people before you ever speak to someone at Youtube. There's no vetting going on for these Heroes. Anyone who wants to do this can do this with impunity. I'm not against Youtube or Google creating a team of volunteer moderators because they're clearly not going to make paid positions and really feasibly can't. But the way they've implemented it creates the ability to abuse it on conception and I am against that. All Youtube Heroes is is a method to censor. It's a method of censorship on both sides. The people who are going to be most hurt by this aren't the extremes, it's the people caught in the middle.

Is this the death of Youtube though? No.

I don't think anybody has claimed that this would be the death of Youtube, but I feel like it MAY be the death of the comment section.

Quite frankly I feel like this is going to bomb so hard Youtube is going to throw up their hands and say 'We tried and it didn't work so no more comments!!'

One thing that I have heard suggested is to change the comment system and force you to use Facebook or another method of positively identifying the person rather than a faceless account, as having to attach your real name to it would theoretically cut down on the extreme levels of vitriol and hate.

I dunno if I believe that, though, and I especially since I don't know what actual system would be used - its ridiculously easy to create fake Facebook accounts.

[Blackhawk748]

I don't think anybody has claimed that this would be the death of Youtube, but I feel like it MAY be the death of the comment section.

Quite frankly I feel like this is going to bomb so hard Youtube is going to throw up their hands and say 'We tried and it didn't work so no more comments!!'

One thing that I have heard suggested is to change the comment system and force you to use Facebook or another method of positively identifying the person rather than a faceless account, as having to attach your real name to it would theoretically cut down on the extreme levels of vitriol and hate.

I dunno if I believe that, though, and I especially since I don't know what actual system would be used - its ridiculously easy to create fake Facebook accounts.

Thats pretty dumb. Just look at all the horrible stuff people say on Facebook, you think thats gonna stop them on Youtube?

[Olinser]

Thats pretty dumb. Just look at all the horrible stuff people say on Facebook, you think thats gonna stop them on Youtube?

I don't, no, that's why I said I don't think I believe it. But that seems to be one of the more common suggestions on how to 'fix' youtube comments.

[Razade]

I don't think anybody has claimed that this would be the death of Youtube, but I feel like it MAY be the death of the comment section.

Quite frankly I feel like this is going to bomb so hard Youtube is going to throw up their hands and say 'We tried and it didn't work so no more comments!!'

One thing that I have heard suggested is to change the comment system and force you to use Facebook or another method of positively identifying the person rather than a faceless account, as having to attach your real name to it would theoretically cut down on the extreme levels of vitriol and hate.

I dunno if I believe that, though, and I especially since I don't know what actual system would be used - its ridiculously easy to create fake Facebook accounts.

This has nothing to do with commenting on youtube. This has everything to do with content on youtube. You're not understanding what Heroes does.

[Dragonexx]

And youtube's not understanding what the problem is.

[Olinser]

This has nothing to do with commenting on youtube. This has everything to do with content on youtube. You're not understanding what Heroes does.

Level 3 clearly shows them flagging comments. Certainly its not the ONLY point, but its clearly meant to be part of it.

Which is a big part of the hate. it's almost an afterthought in this whole program, when most people think that is the MAIN problem that needs to be addressed.

[Winter_Wolf]

While I agree with you, lets stay away from expanding the discussion into news and politics, that's the kind of thing that will attract mods. Let's keep it in the context of Youtube.

True enough, but at its essence this is a censorship issue. Inherently political thing. But I agree it's best not to venture there which is why I said a whole lot less on the matter than I was thinking.

I also agree with the post that this thing won't be the death of YouTube, and I doubt it will be the death of the comment section. The heat death of the universe or the end of the human race are going to be more likely causes of the end of YouTube. It will be the death of my interest in the site if I'm no longer able to watch little DIY videos, new music, and minecraft stuff. So overall very little actual change in my day to day.

[Razade]

Level 3 clearly shows them flagging comments. Certainly its not the ONLY point, but its clearly meant to be part of it.

Which is a big part of the hate. it's almost an afterthought in this whole program, when most people think that is the MAIN problem that needs to be addressed.

I don't know who you're talking to but the main problem is the MASS FLAGGING OF VIDEOS. Not comments. It's the ability for people who aren't employed by Youtube to at any time shut a channel down they don't like. Take (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dj0JA3gzvU) a (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vXEB9LOPYg) listen (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eikOvT7GCc) to (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekpl6rIgNiw) any (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkcdKKVuLg4) content (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NxrW-JDQNg) creator (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU1F7yURZYA) whose (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25wZoyULlcI) opinion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDpv1Ztq-S4) is worth a damn.

You don't understand the problem. No one gives a crap about youtube comments. No one serious about Youtube Heroes at any rate. Policing comments is nothing compared to the actual problems this program begins. I don't even know why I'm arguing this with someone so woefully off base.

[Olinser]

I don't know who you're talking to but the main problem is the MASS FLAGGING OF VIDEOS. Not comments. It's the ability for people who aren't employed by Youtube to at any time shut a channel down they don't like. Take (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dj0JA3gzvU) a (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vXEB9LOPYg) listen (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eikOvT7GCc) to (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekpl6rIgNiw) any (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkcdKKVuLg4) content (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NxrW-JDQNg) creator (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU1F7yURZYA) whose (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25wZoyULlcI) opinion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDpv1Ztq-S4) is worth a damn.

You don't understand the problem. No one gives a crap about youtube comments. No one serious about Youtube Heroes at any rate. Policing comments is nothing compared to the actual problems this program begins. I don't even know why I'm arguing this with someone so woefully off base.

Easy there, big chief, you seem stressed. If you don't want to talk about it then don't talk about it.

I have listened to several people on this subject. And the almost universal 2 key points that they have made are 1) the system is even more open to abuse than the current one - where currently it is mostly copyright trolls trying to screw with videos, whereas now it will allow people with an agenda to attempt to take down videos/creators, and 2) it does nothing meaningful to address the problems with the comments.

People are angry about this with respect to comments because it doesn't even really attempt to do anything meaningful about the comments. It kind of waves off with 'oh yeah Heroes can regulate comments' and then says nothing more.

Which is also why it is hilarious that comments are disabled for the Heroes video.

[factotum]

Which is also why it is hilarious that comments are disabled for the Heroes video.

Pretty sure they weren't disabled when the video first went up, but later on after they'd already got a metric crap-ton of negative comments. In any case, I agree with Razade--I don't think the major issue with this is that it doesn't relate to fixing comments, it's the stuff it *does* do that's got people up in arms.

[Hunter Noventa]

It's a pretty terrible idea for all the reasons mentioned. It's not going to do any good, and might very well make things worse.

The 'ad-friendly' stuff is BS as well. YouTube just doesn't want to pony up the effort to categorize things enough to make it so advertisers can chose what kind of channel their ads appear on. When it comes to TV, you don't see ads for My Little Pony toys during Game of Thrones, and vice verse.

[AvatarVecna]

Even without touching on how this could relate to the relatively recent issues regarding copyright, I don't like this for two very simple reasons:

1) Youtube is where it is because a complete lack of moderation allowed anybody to post any video, or any comment, and providing the public with that level of freedom of speech and expression has allowed Youtube to grow into a juggernaut of online media. This "Heroes" moderation system is them attempting to take some control over what people are allowed to say on Youtube; even if they're only restricting swear word posts and nothing else, it's still Youtube placing a large limitation where before there was none, when no limits is what made Youtube successful.

2) Because the complete lack of moderation made Youtube so huge and vast that Youtube can't afford the employees necessary to moderate it anymore, they're trying to build in a system that "rewards" "helpful" commenters by giving them access to privileges they possessed before the system was implemented.

Essentially, this move shows that Youtube is both trying to restrict what made it popular while still reaping the benefits of that popularity, but is unable to actually afford to moderate, so they're trying to get the Youtube community to moderate itself for free. They're trying to restrict freedom of expression/speech, but they're too cheap to do it right so their best Plan B is giving everybody moderator privileges and assuming nothing goes wrong. For comparison, think about the Playground: this is a great forum, with a wonderful community of helpful people, but I still would not want everybody on this site to be a moderator, because all it would take is one sentient anus to fart onto the keyboard enough that they ban half the regulars in a drunken fit of nerd rage. And this place would be far better than Youtube: if everybody on Youtube was given limited moderator privileges, the entire site would burn to the ground in less than 24 hours.

[Hamste]

I didn't see it mentioned so I will mention it. With out saying anything youtube slightly changed the wording in the video to make it slightly less worrying.

[Blackhawk748]

I didn't see it mentioned so I will mention it. With out saying anything youtube slightly changed the wording in the video to make it slightly less worrying.

The fact that they did that is almost more worrying, mostly cuz it still changes nothing, but i t means that they know that.

[zimmerwald1915]

2) Because the complete lack of moderation made Youtube so huge and vast that Youtube can't afford the employees necessary to moderate it anymore, they're trying to build in a system that "rewards" "helpful" commenters by giving them access to privileges they possessed before the system was implemented.
Which is really a problem with Youtube being undercapitalized. You see this everywhere you look in the "sharing economy."

[eggynack]

Which is really a problem with Youtube being undercapitalized. You see this everywhere you look in the "sharing economy."
Yeah, that combined with some ridiculous diseconomies of scale. They have this insane number of videos that aren't making that much money on a per-video basis, which would probably make serious moderation efforts impossible without pushing them into the red. It gets even worse when you consider the even insaner number of videos that aren't making any money for them at all because of low view counts. Are they supposed to pull together legions of moderators to eliminate even things that have a view count under 100? Or 1,000? Realistically, the only way to handle this thing at all economically is through some variety of crowd sourcing, pulling in the masses for no money at all. The problem is that they don't seem to be doing it all that well.

What I think you really want is some sort of hierarchy. A real one, not one managed artificially. You get some paid human administrators at the top few levels of the hierarchy, a high number but orders of magnitude less than is required to patrol the entire site, and then you give them deputization power, where they closely manage their unpaid internet underlings. The best of those people gain some measure of administrator power themselves, still unpaid, and get the ability to act with a lot of discretion, as well as the ability to pull on even lower people. And on it goes. Even a relatively small number of layers would get a massive scope, and Youtube could probably manage a lot of layers. A bit of internal policing would even allow a relative hands off role from the hired administrators. And, of course, sufficient and visible good work could mean getting hired on as an administrator, which is neat. You get a self-perpetuating system that's controlled by people who have proved that they have the right course of action in mind.

All this sounds somewhat like what they're attempting here, with the Heroes system. Levels, power, connections between users and both each other and staff, and so on. But the problem seems to be that they're trying to do it bottom up. Youtube is starting from the faceless mass of users, and telling them to work their way up. But that sort of system means no visibility into anything but maybe the top couple of levels, and even that may not happen if they're fully automating. Which means that you're giving people power with virtually no insight into who they are or how they're using that power. Even if the power were being angled in approximately the right way, towards comments rather than content, we'd still be talking about turning the frequently insane internet into an undirected cudgel of some sort. Working a system like this bottom up is super dangerous.

And, worst of all, it feels like they're doing it this way for the wrong reasons. The system I proposed, after all, would cost money. You'd need to hire and train employees, a lot of them, and you'd need to pay them continuously. It's a variable cost, one that scales up a lot with the size of the thing being policed, and while you may eventually be able to tone down the direct role of hired administrators, how long that'd take is a mystery. A fully automated bottom up system, meanwhile, is pretty cheap. You pay the fixed cost of setting up the automation, and wait for internet crazies to roll in. The fixed cost is non-trivial, but they're massively better when you have scale on your side. It's cheap, it's easy, and it takes less time, both to get the moderation and to set up the system. Only problem is that it'll probably suck. Which, y'know, is a big problem.