
The Fight for the Future of YouTube - hhs
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-fight-for-the-future-of-youtube
======
stcredzero
_At first, the site was moderated largely by its co-founders; in 2006, they
hired a single, part-time moderator. The company removed videos often, rarely
encountering pushback. In the intervening thirteen years, a lot has changed.
“YouTube has the scale of the entire Internet,” Sundar Pichai, the C.E.O. of
Google, which owns YouTube, told Axios last month. The site now attracts a
monthly audience of two billion people and employs thousands of moderators.
Every minute, its users upload five hundred hours of new video._

If YouTube is now sized at entire-Internet scale, and is the overwhelming
dominant player in next generation video news and commentary, then what
YouTube does becomes a Free Speech issue. Something the size of YouTube should
rightly be a Platform. It cannot be a Publisher at this scale. Wielding the
power of a Publisher at such a scale is concentrating too much power in too
few hands.

In a way, the days of the Printing Press were far superior to today's era of
YouTube. Printing presses can be crafted by determined DIYers. Network effects
couldn't suppress an independent press, but in 2019, YouTube just has to hold
onto its Network Effect and wait until the energy and seed capital of
potential competitors runs out, or they're at least reduced to 3rd-rate
irrelevant zombie sites.

~~~
pjc50
Look, there is always going to be stuff that is banned from Youtube. They're
not going to allow porn on there. Given that they control content to some
extent, the question has to be what their responsibility is.

Also, recommendations aren't part of a platform, they are _Youtube 's_ free
speech. Those are in some ways more important than mere hosting, as that's how
Youtube has radicalized people.

~~~
einpoklum
And being "radicalized" is a bad thing per se? "radix" means root, in Latin. A
radical approach tackles issues at their root. Even adopting moderation needs
to be done with some moderation...

~~~
stcredzero
_And being "radicalized" is a bad thing per se?_

It's not a bad thing per se. It's good if it's a good person. It's bad if one
is a jerk.

------
wilsocr88
In the subtitle of this article, the author asks "How 'neutral' should social-
media platforms try to be?" I asked a similar question in a blog post[1] using
different terms. Should "platforms" just be flat platforms, or should they
curate their content like a publisher? If they don't, can they make money? Can
they pay content creators decently while still remaining a platform, or is
that something only a publisher can do? I don't know that there's a good
answer.

[1] [https://wilsocr88.github.io/#0/7](https://wilsocr88.github.io/#0/7)

~~~
basch
the world has already decided that they should be curated. the question is
now, "at what level we make the distinction."

no product does client side spam determination anymore. everyone agrees that
spam, fraud, phishing have no legitimate place.

we have a dial, and even on the "free speech" end of things, people agree it
shouldnt be turned up far enough to allow all noise.

~~~
stcredzero
_the world has already decided that they should be curated. the question is
now, "at what level we make the distinction."_

Why should it be at any level besides that of legality, or those levels
analogous to movie ratings?

 _everyone agrees that spam, fraud, phishing have no legitimate place_

Those are issues of non-consensual activity. What YouTube, Patreon, PayPal,
Facebook, et al. have done includes the suppression of content people want to
see and are even willing to pay for. They've even gone farther and not let
them pay. By going against the consent of the public, they've moved themselves
in the same immoral direction as the spammers, fraudsters, and phishers.
They're doing what large swathes of the public don't want done to their access
to data. (Merely in order to get advertising dollars from other large
corporations, I might add.) It's just that they currently look more
legitimate, as they slowly creep in that immoral direction.

 _we have a dial, and even on the "free speech" end of things, people agree it
shouldnt be turned up far enough to allow all noise_

There are disingenuous actors who want that power over almost all the relevant
discourse, and wish to turn that dial in such a way that they hold the power.
It doesn't matter if they've convinced themselves they'll wield it in a "good"
way. No one should have it. That's what Free Speech is all about.

~~~
RealWorldPolice
"Merely in order to get advertising dollars"

What else would you expect from an internet advertising company?

~~~
stcredzero
Stopping short of misrepresenting what they're doing. Stopping short of
arbitrary enforcement. (Which means keeping employees from (apparently)
arbitrarily using company mechanisms to further their own ideological ends.)
Stopping short of meddling in payments handled by another company. (Which
looks a bit too much like tortious interference.)

If the companies were merely driven by profit motive and getting ad dollars,
it would be fine. It's the manipulation of the public discourse which people
object to and feels slimy.

------
tastygreenapple
I wonder if Youtube is prepared for the massive censorship demanded to create
a safe space. It's not helpful that the progressive grievance hierarchy isn't
robustly formulated, if a woman and a black man are mad at each other, it's
not clear who has more victim points which is important for determining 'the
right side of history'. I don't envy Youtube creating a moderation engine that
attempts to place inconsistent people.

~~~
einpoklum
That's not the point. The point is for YouTube to censor views the government
and/or large corporations doesn't like and start getting traction.

------
cmoscoe
The author seems to, at several points, conflate political bias with truth.

While there may be some correlation there, to me it would seem more valuable
to point people towards factual, reputable, meaningful content regardless of
whether it's left or right wing (if the user seems to be looking for
educational or editorial content). Letting videos cite sources could go a long
way there.

If, on the other hand, a user seems to be looking for trolling videos of one
political persuasion or another, why not let them go down that rabbit hole?
That can also be fun.

------
chmod775
> In the course of the spring, YouTube drafted a new policy that would ban
> videos trafficking in historical “denialism” (of the Holocaust, 9/11, Sandy
> Hook) and “supremacist” views (lauding the “white race,” arguing that men
> were intellectually superior to women).

Cool. So YouTube will force that group of people off their platform and
magnify the intensity of their echo chamber in the process.

To many of those "problematic" videos other people have created detailed
responses explaining why they are misguided. Now the other group won't see
those rebuttals because they're on a different platform.

Thanks to what passes for a "good" recommendation engine nowadays people are
already mostly subjected to content they already agree with - instead of
content that might challenge their views and make them a better person.

This will continue until nobody's opinion is challenged ever (and doing so
won't be socially acceptable in any case). I hope to never see the kind of
society this leads too, but I fear we might be entering the endgame sooner
rather than later.

~~~
pjc50
The recommendation engine works the other way - it can happily expose people
to content that makes them a worse person.

~~~
chmod775
> it can happily expose people to content that makes them a worse person.

I'll just assume you meant "most people" here, because otherwise it's not an
useful argument.

Then this would only be true if one of the following applies:

a. The position you consider "better" can't withstand criticism. (Which I'll
just assume you don't believe.)

b. Most people don't _want_ to be a good person. (Probably untrue.)

c. What constitutes a good person is not consistent in your circles and most
people have a different understanding. (Unlikely?)

d. Most people can't think for themselves.

Assuming you believe d., let me tell you that most people are probably smarter
than you think and are indeed able to think critically. Don't extrapolate from
a few noisy but bad examples of humanity.

------
einpoklum
"executives at YouTube began mulling, once again, the problem of online
speech. On grounds of freedom of expression and ideological neutrality, the
platform has long allowed users to upload videos endorsing noxious ideas, from
conspiracy theories to neo-Nazism."

They're not "mulling" anything. YouTube, and Google's search engine, are
engaging in effective censorship of non-mainstream political content (both
left and right wing, by the way) - for a couple of years now.

See this report already in 2017:
[https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/27/goog-j27.html](https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/07/27/goog-j27.html)

and everyone knows how for, what is it now, a couple of years or so, YouTube
pushes mainstream news media items when you watch over political content -
videos which used to have almost no views, and are now artificially massively
popular.

------
ralusek
For those who are looking for neutral alternatives:

bitchute.com

minds.com

I really commend YouTube for holding out a long as they have. It can't be
overstated how important they have been in being the only real media source
for liberal/libertarian alternative thought to the censorious leftist
orthodoxy...but the writing is on the wall. YouTube, please continue to hold
out as long as you can, and thank you.

~~~
einpoklum
"leftist orthodoxy"? The orthodoxy in the US is pro-corporate neo-liberal,
which hardly counts as "left". Perhaps you mean "democratic-party-supporting"
instead?

Anyway, thanks for the links.

