
YouTube Community goes beyond video - aritraghosh007
https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2016/09/youtube-community-goes-beyond-video.html
======
niftich
I believe this is a sensible course of action and a natural
evolution/pivot/hedge of making use of an existing social network/community to
satisfy a couple goals (for Google):

\- Have a general-purpose social network, but bootstrapped from a userbase
where it can be welcome rather than vilified (unlike Buzz, Google+, etc.)

\- Stop the slow trickle of (duplicative, cross-pollinated) traffic from the
Youtube community to other platforms, because their own platform is lacking
(they needed Twitter-like micro-announcements badly)

\- Better arm themselves against other sites that have done video from the
beginning but are expected to develop a similar direction (Twitch)

\- Better arm themselves against other sites that didn't start off with video
but have branched out into it (Facebook & subsidiaries, Twitter &
subsidiaries, Tumblr, most other social networks these days)

Hopefully this also stops the (IMO, frankly irrational [1][2][3]) speculation
that Twitter will be bought out by Google.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12418727#12420732](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12418727#12420732)
[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12083561#12083975](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12083561#12083975)
[3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11913828#11914620](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11913828#11914620)

~~~
johnm1019
To add to parent, this is repurposed tech because it's part of Google+.
[https://googleblog.blogspot.de/2015/11/introducing-new-
googl...](https://googleblog.blogspot.de/2015/11/introducing-new-google.html)
I would be absolutely floored if it wasn't the same tech behind the scenes. In
that sense, they've taken something that was actually working with G+
[highlighted in blog post above] and are taking a shot at leveraging that. I
really like that they were able to push this internally using a 'white label'
process [speculation]. In big corps everyone has the disease that their name
and (internal) brand has to be on everything.

------
jkldotio
Censorship and demonetisation on YouTube seems to be happening to people
fairly regularly, and without appeal, via poorly calibrated algorithms,
corporate pressure and to satisfy mobs of complaining people for various
reasons. The rules seem to be vague to the point of meaninglessness and it
seems even the stars of the platform who often share managers and production
companies with other stars have difficulty getting in touch with YouTube to
resolve issues.

I think most content producers have wised up to this and diversify their
audience over multiple platforms. If you rely on the income putting all your
eggs in the YouTube basket is a massive risk until they clean up their
processes (there are many automated and social methods to do some of this but
they seem completely uninterested in doing it).

~~~
infinitesoup
> _Censorship and demonetisation on YouTube seems to be happening to people
> fairly regularly, and without appeal, via poorly calibrated algorithms_

Demonetization happens when a video doesn't meet their "advertiser-friendly"
policy, but there is an appeal process where you can have a human look at it
to determine if the original assessment was wrong [0]. Do you have data to
support your claim that their algorithms are "poorly calibrated"?

Can you provide some examples of "censorship"? They do have policies that
things like graphic content or spam is not permitted and will be removed from
the site, but I think that's reasonable.

> _It seems even the stars of the platform who often share managers and
> production companies with other stars have difficulty getting in touch with
> YouTube to resolve issues._

YouTube provides email support with a 1-business day response time to all
creators [1], and the bigger channels get their own Partner Managers [2].

[0]:
[https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7083671](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7083671)

[1]:
[https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/3545535?hl=en](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/3545535?hl=en)

[2]: [https://www.youtube.com/yt/creators/benefit-
levels.html?noap...](https://www.youtube.com/yt/creators/benefit-
levels.html?noapp=1)

~~~
urgerestraint
> YouTube provides email support with a 1-business day response time to all
> creators [1], and the bigger channels get their own Partner Managers [2].

Multiple demonetized channels have stated that they have _not_ received
responses via the official support channels. It's all well and good stating a
1-business day response time, but if Youtube doesn't follow through that,
where does that leave the content creators?

It's like businesses with support response SLAs that are cleared by the
sending of a robo-email from their support system. No actual support has been
rendered.

~~~
Tinyyy
Care to give some examples?

~~~
jkldotio
[https://www.maxlaumeister.com/blog/google-is-deleting-
your-f...](https://www.maxlaumeister.com/blog/google-is-deleting-your-
favorite-youtube-videos/) has some, but anyone who's been following it knows
it's happening beyond that. I am surprised that infinitesoup is apparently
unaware of these issues given his account on HN is 591 days old and over it's
history has posted about absolutely nothing but YouTube. Indeed an account on
Reddit called infinitesoup, possibly unrelated I concede, has wall-to-wall
comments on YouTube too. They all read like a superfan or possibly an employee
of Google providing support. The usual etiquette on HN is to simply disclose
an interest and then argue a point. While it's not against the rules I don't
like having to do my own research and finding out the person posting links
from Google support is likely a Google employee (the person connected with the
Reddit account seems to be a Google employee, maybe this guy isn't).

Even if they are different accounts and this guy isn't a Google employee they
haven't presented any other credible evidence for this wonderful support
anyway. They have only presented a policy aspiration. Google is not Amazon;
Google is notorious for bad customer support. Our prior belief for "will
YouTube provide good support" shouldn't be very high given they are part of
Google. Therefore it doesn't take many data points in the direction of poor
support to confirm that.

There are clear and sometimes good reasons for what Google does, it's a great
company with competent employees but let's not drink the Kool-Aid and pretend
they have great customer support just because there is a policy document
aspiring to have good response times.

------
spiderfarmer
This looks like Google+ without the name. I always thought this is how Google+
should have been introduced. Small steps, without the hype, integrated in all
Google products. Now it's too late and people will be bugged by every future
attempt at social sharing / community building.

~~~
dzhiurgis
I think its more of answer to Patreon where most decent YouTubers nowadays get
sponsored and provide extra content in exchange.

I was never bothered to register, hence I assume reducing friction might
increase my spend on educainment.

What I really want though, is proper commenting system under videos.

~~~
sinxoveretothex
> What I really want though, is proper commenting system under videos.

I'm curious to know what you mean by that?

As far as youtube comments being the butt-end of jokes about bad comments, I
think this is just due to the fact that video is the great common denominator
(and thus, the intellectual filter is very very low). Reddit's r/videos is
limited to "non-political" videos for much the same reasons (and given that
r/politicalvideos is... well, let's say the comment quality is not consistent.

I don't really see how this can be improved: a voting system won't filter low-
effort/common denominator comments if what the majority wants _is_ low effort
comments.

Or just if the mass of low effort comments is too large. And since low effort
is easy to make, the mass will be large.

CGPGrey on what kind of ideas/memes spread faster:
[http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/this-video-will-make-you-
angry](http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/this-video-will-make-you-angry)

H3h3 on the insane number of views on 'minecraft sex' videos (which is exactly
the kind of thing I mean when taking about common denominator):
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h3LhrbSp6Mw](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h3LhrbSp6Mw)

And then there's the lessons of Twitch Plays Pokemon: they had to remove the
ability to request multiple keypresses at once because people kept stalling
(start10) for example.

~~~
will_hughes
As best as I can tell, there's no way to find your previous comments, OR to
tell if you've received a reply.

It's a commenting system without the pretty standard minimum feature set
pretty much every other commenting system has.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
> OR to tell if you've received a reply.

Most likely to contain flame wars. We're dealing with base level humanity on
YouTube. You have to enact these sort of constraints to keep things tolerable.

~~~
will_hughes
I know Youtube Comments are generally the worst - but when some content
creator says "Hey, leave a comment below if you have questions" \- and you do
leave a comment, then you've got no way of knowing whether they've replied.

It seems like they may as well just remove commenting, at that point.

------
hiddenkrypt
The phrase "Youtube Community" does not bring positive images to mind when I
hear it.

~~~
ljk
Exactly my reaction when I saw it. The recent drama/scandals doesn't help
either.

~~~
WilliamDhalgren
I'm apparently out of the loop; could you help me: what scandals? what
happened?

~~~
ljk
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbph5or0NuM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbph5or0NuM)

censorship, ad revenue, etc

------
riskable
I was really hoping that, after reading the title, YouTube Community was going
to be about Google crowdsourcing DMCA takedown request reviews. As in, let the
community (a jury of your peers) decide if a takedown is fraudulent (I've got
many, yet to receive a legitimate claim!) rather than relying on the "word" of
an automated robot that only knows how to say, "take it down!".

~~~
dragonwriter
> YouTube Community was going to be about Google crowdsourcing DMCA takedown
> request reviews.

Crowdsourcing would be incompatible with DMCA safe-harbor requirements (so
they wouldn't be "DMCA takedown request reviews" if they were crowdsourced.)

~~~
sp332
Maybe not DMCA, but ContentID. If the algorithm finds a match, let some humans
look at it before slapping ads on it and handing the money to someone else.

------
GuiA
This is a good way to kickstart a social network - integrate it deeply into a
product that already has a very well established userbase.

As other commenters pointed out, this is infinitely more likely to stick than
Google Plus. I've personally never felt that Google was serious about Google+.
If they had been, they'd have gone for an approach like this one from the
start. For instance, integrate it natively to Gmail (and of course make it
individually accessible on its own domain) - it worked for Hangouts adoption.

Make it a new tab in Gmail, make it very fast and easy to switch between your
email and your social feed. Many people already spend many hours in gmail, or
have a tab always open anyway. Adoption would have been instant, and if they
had done that in 2011, maybe it would have had a shot at dethroning Facebook.

~~~
NegativeK
They integrated Buzz with Gmail and were probably terrified of doing that
again.

~~~
GuiA
Yeah. Well, for this strategy to work, you need your product to not be
thoughtless crap, which Buzz was. So that's the hard part - have good taste.

~~~
goldfeld
Google's m.o. is not predicated on good taste and foresight but old brute see
what sticks--rows of blindsided people throwing--on the wall.

------
tsumnia
I'm sure this will be a great idea. But I'm going to be honest here, I don't
want channels sending me messages. Its another notification on the long list
of other notifications I block or disable. I've already unsubscribed from one
popular channel because the host used the messaging service to announce a new
video. I'll see them when I have time to watch them, don't harass me
otherwise.

~~~
jasonkostempski
There's already a perfect solution to getting notifications when new video's
are posted on a channel, RSS. It won't bug me unless I ask it to, I don't need
a YouTube account for it and I don't have to guess what the (3) next to the
channel name actually means (new upload? new like? new algorithm glitch?). I
might like to do the same for "Community" posts for some channels but it
doesn't look like they do RSS for that (yet?).

------
legohead
a swing and a miss. there already exist powerful platforms for social sharing
that most if not all big youtubers take advantage of.

I have over 700 hundred youtube subscriptions and check out my feed daily. I
definitely do not want my subscription feed clogged up with texts, gifs, and
whatnot. I really don't care what the political beliefs of XYZ hobby channel
have, I watch for their specialized content.

youtube is the powerhouse behind video. stick with that, continue making it
better. there is still more to be done.

~~~
minimaxir
> a swing and a miss. there already exist powerful platforms for social
> sharing that most if not all big youtubers take advantage of.

Which is why Google _had_ to develop a native social solution; they were
bleeding potential users who need a feasible way to get in touch with their
fans. May be simple but it is better than a bare bulb.

For example, the previous method of YouTubers making a simple announcement was
to make an _announcement video_ , which is dumb.

~~~
mulmen
Is that dumb though? It's a video site, I go there to watch videos. When the
local TV broadcaster wants to make an announcement they do it with video, not
a text.

I do see your point, there are some video-centric features YouTube could add
but I'm skeptical that's all this will be.

~~~
resolaibohp
YouTubers have started using services like snapchat that make it very easy to
quickly make an announcement/update video. The YouTubers were still using
video but using a service that made it far more convenient.

------
huskyr
I like to propose a variation of Zawinski's law (1) that i think is
appropriate here:

Every app attempts to expand until it has a Facebook-like timeline. Apps which
cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski#Principles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski#Principles)

~~~
ebalit
You mean Twitter-like timeline. At risk of being a bit "pedantic", I think
credit should go to Twitter and not Facebook for this idea.

Facebook Newsfeed was a smart move. They took the best idea of Twitter at the
right time. That and introducing asymmetrical relation.

They're trying to do the same thing with Youtube. And apparently Google isn't
going to wait to respond.

~~~
huskyr
Maybe i should just rephrase it to 'timeline' or 'newsfeed'.

I don't think you can credit one single company for 'inventing' the idea of a
timeline. Before Twitter there were RSS readers, before that blogs, before
that newsgroups, etc. Facebook just did a very good implementation of the
idea, obviously inspired by everything that preceded it. Twitter is a good
example of that of course.

------
dexwiz
So channels can now tweet/blog directly in youtube, and not on
Twitter/Facebook/Reddit/Instagram/Whatever? Sounds like one more place to put
ads.

EDIT: I mean "sponsored content."

~~~
biot
Sure, every online property is a place for ads. However, in this case content
producers don't have to say "Subscribe to my YouTube channel for new videos.
Oh, and if you want updates follow me on Twitter. I also share pictures on
Instagram. And if you're looking for upcoming events, check out Facebook...".

Not like anyone who is already doing that is going to stop, but Google is
hoping that maybe there will be a shift towards doing it all in one place,
particularly if video is their primary medium.

------
guelo
Google's social product design is just a mess. When I open Youtube I can
barely figure out what's going on.

~~~
rajathagasthya
This is so true. Using YouTube on iOS is such a bad experience. Add to it that
it's not designed as every other iOS app (because hey it's 'material design'),
it's just feels so out of place.

~~~
brazzledazzle
I'm probably missing something but it seems like every app I use on iOS is
basically an island. Even among Apple apps there seems to be different UX
guidelines at play. To me iOS apps feel a lot like flash sites in the late
90s/early 00s in terms of the variety of interfaces. So it doesn't feel out of
place to me. The only thing jarring for me is how bright red it is. Not a fan
of that.

------
madamelic
Just make sure not to:

1) Swear.

2) Say anything offensive.

3) Have fun.

4) Forget to mention how delicious and refreshing Coca-Cola is.

~~~
izacus
And hope the random hammer of ContentID doesn't find your phrase similar to
some corpo jingle.

------
lacker
Finally, we can take the great experience of YouTube comments, and bring it to
even more places!

------
ravenstine
Google has fallen flat on its face every time it has tried to build a social
network of any kind. I'm really not sure I even want this.

~~~
x2398dh1
A testament to what you wrote is when you look at the comment section of this
Google blog, where there's a ton of people sharing the article on their
Google+, which looks like a bunch of clones repeating what the article just
said for some odd reason.

------
orionblastar
Actually we need better moderation powers when trolls start to fight on our
video comments. Some stuff gets offensive with racist, bigoted, and homophobic
slurs and other things. It is just not something I'd like to have under my
Videos, but when a video gets popular it attracts more people to comment on it
and sometimes they are trolls. I think those slurs should trigger some sort of
moderation to hide them until they are approved or deleted, like posting
multiple links might be spam, etc.

~~~
kagamine
Even the milder comments can sometimes just focus on being so negative that it
becomes an irritation.

On the other hand, certain communities have nothing but supportive and
positive comments. Much of what I watch doesn't attract a single criticism,
people are just happy that the youTubers keep providing quality content.

------
NamTaf
Excellent! I've always needed a way to interact with the type of people who
make Youtube comments!

Seriously though, I get what they're trying to make a play at - the small
communities that spring up around content creators based on a certain topic.
It's clearly a shot across the bow of Facebook pages which can embed videos in
a feed as well as post discussion pieces, etc.

I would've personally liked to see them do it a bit more robustly. This and
other platforms allow for creator - consumer interaction, but not consumer -
consumer, and I think that's a differentiating strength of content creators on
Youtube. Take it from being a copy of a Facebook page, to a sort of hybrid
Facebook page/group with one leading creator and then interaction amongst all
the consumers of that content. It could've potentially recreated the forums
community feel using an existing set of communities as the kickstarter for the
platform.

------
bemmu
Will this be accessible from the API?

~~~
kagamine
All the YT apps I have tried in the past have failed because it seems YT alter
the API so often that developers just give up trying to fix what YT break too
often. SO i would assume that this will break all existing apps and some will
again die off. No doubt the new features will make it into the API, but at a
cost to users and developers.

~~~
Sylos
Yeah, I've seen multiple great YouTube-apps die because of that. The best-
functioning YouTube-app that I currently know, actually scrapes the webpage to
get its information. It can't do subscriptions because of that, but I can
easily replace that with an RSS Reader.

------
hackaflocka
"YouTube Community" is not 'verbable' (e.g. "Tweet it", or "inbox me").

------
hatsunearu
Something nobody asked for, whereas audio-only content that everyone wants
seems MIA.

------
r-w
So… they’re slowly turning YouTube into a video-focused Google+.

------
em3rgent0rdr
How long till Google kills it?

~~~
euyyn
Are you a bot?

------
macspoofing
Oh oh.

------
72deluxe
Am I the only one who goes to YouTube to watch videos, not browse comments?

