
YouTube enlists volunteers to moderate site via “YouTube Heroes” program - joshmn
https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/21/youtube-enlists-volunteers-to-moderate-its-site-via-a-new-youtube-heroes-program/
======
yakult
More and more big social is democratizing the black magic of boutique PR
firms. Want reputation management? Rep-kill your competitors? Damage control
your latest scandal? Just hire some mechturks for peanuts to flag the right
videos and like the right pages and write the right reviews and submit the
right DMCAs and retweet the right tweets and...

~~~
generic_user
It's also a sneaky back-door way of letting state sponsored censorship that
stretches far beyond your legal rights. States can implement Orwellian
censorship and Youtube has plausible deniability they have anything to do with
it.

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reduxive
Oh, spectacular. This will go swimmingly!

You know, when I was in high school, we had an all volunteer group of hall
monitors, and it was this pointless excursion in self-policing that resulted
in frustration on all sides, because both the monitors and the deviants were
equally incompetent, and unprofessional.

Only the dumbest volunteered, and only the dumbest got caught. Meanwhile,
parking lot shenanigans surged, even though people were still exchanging
blowjobs in the elevators in the two-floor wings (yes, even on camera).

So, hallway fights declined, but fights were the only metric that saw
progress, and people fought behind the school, in the parking lots, and in the
sports fields instead, but at least they weren't fighting in the hallways
anymore.

Youtube, meanwhile, doesn't have a single critical metric. Their goal is
quality of community. You can't let everybody into your community
indiscriminately, and expect to have a high quality community. Selective
partitioning and curration of membership creates quality of company; choose
your friends wisely. This is why gifted-and-talented programs are so
controversial.

Youtube can't simultaneously appeal to the lowest common denominator AND enjoy
openly elitist patronage, which is by definition exclusive.

P.S.

In the end, my school district accepted defeat, and paid for professional
security guards. The school was unruly enough to warrant the extra line item
in the budget, and initially people complained that the students were being
alienated, as if they were criminals, to which the stark reply was: Some of
them _ARE_ criminals, and here're the arrest records and police blotter to
prove it!

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MentatOnMelange
So an extremely large for-profit entity is organizing a group of people,
giving them things to do that help the company, but isn't actually paying them
anything?

This makes unpaid internships look like charity initiatives.

~~~
aerovistae
But I mean, isn't that how reddit moderation works? And all of stack exchange?

Why is that okay and this isn't?

~~~
ManlyBread
Reddit moderation is very dysfunctional, especially since a large part of the
job is automated and the criteria for getting banned are largely unknown to
the masses.

~~~
bipson
That does not in any remote way answer his question though.

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atheg33
I'd be interested to see a comparison of the contrasts between YouTube's new
"Heroes" program and the disgraced AOL "Community Leader" program that was
successfully sued for $15M USD in the past. [0]

Participants in the AOL Community Leader Program claimed that AOL was using
them as employees without paying them. Thus the lawsuit.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_Community_Leader_Program#D...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_Community_Leader_Program#Department_of_Labor_investigation)

~~~
spacehome
I never quite understood that lawsuit. The volunteers understood that they
weren't being paid when they signed up for the gig, right?

~~~
aikah
> I never quite understood that lawsuit. The volunteers understood that they
> weren't being paid when they signed up for the gig, right?

You don't understand people fighting for their rights? but I'm sure you do
understand corporation exploiting them. There is no "signing up" when the deal
is both illegal and unfair. Marx theories didn't go away because some people
deemed them irrelevant. Ironically, in this era of political correctness where
people apply Marxism to culture and speech instead of economy and workers
rights, they should better remember what it is all about at first place and
how they are being tricked into fighting useless fights. Your comment can't be
more relevant, actually...

~~~
RaleyField
> You don't understand people fighting for their rights?

Are or should those be their rights? If I _voluntarily_ step into a volcano
should that volcano be liable for my actions?

~~~
falcolas
It's hard to sue a volcano, but you can be arrested for attempted manslaughter
if you fail...

Suicide is not legal.

~~~
DanBC
> Suicide is not legal.

Where?

~~~
falcolas
Check out Wikipedia's chart.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_legislation#Laws_in_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_legislation#Laws_in_individual_jurisdictions_.28table.29)

Now, I overstated its ilegality in most cases, but the reality is that you
actually have remarkably little choice when it comes to waiving all of your
rights away. Try to volunteer for a medical procedure which is governed by,
but not yet been approved by, the FDA.

Allowing people to "volunteer" for work in any condition for a for-profit
company is also a very slippery slope. It would allow corporations to get
around minimum wages, benefits, taxes... you name it. Not allowing volunteers
is much better than allowing corporations to erode our rights as a workforce.

------
sillysaurus3
There's currently a backlash against this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh_1966vaIA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh_1966vaIA)

1,500 likes vs 75,500 dislikes. Most people on the Reddit thread dislike it
too:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/53wffb/youtube_intr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/53wffb/youtube_introduces_a_new_program_that_rewards/)

~~~
infinitesoup
There's a lot of misinformation going on in the Reddit thread. These "Heroes"
get better tools for flagging videos faster (among other things), but it's
still just flagging. Every flag still gets reviewed by a human at YouTube,
according to their documentation:

> _YouTube staff review flagged videos 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and
> videos that violate our Community Guidelines are removed from YouTube.
> Videos that may not be appropriate for all younger audiences are age-
> restricted._

> _Flagged videos are not automatically taken down by the flagging system. If
> a video doesn 't violate our guidelines, no amount of flagging will change
> that, and the video will stay on the site._ [0]

And that documentation is still true for the Hero program:

> _As always, the policy team at YouTube makes the final determination of
> whether content should be removed._ [1]

[0]:
[https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2802027](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2802027)

[1]:
[https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2803402](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2803402)

~~~
pdkl95
> YouTube says that those who participate will be eligible to receive perks,
> including access to exclusive workshops and sneak preview product launches,
> for example.

Gamifying content flagging with mass-flagging tools combined with their
stupidly vague content rules[1] is a gift to the people that abuse moderation
tools for hateful or trolling purposes. Maliciously flagged videos are
_already_ a problem (regardless of any human review), and YT is now going to
reward (some of) these assholes?

[1] Remember the recent mess regarding the de-monitisation of videos
arbitrarily deemed "not advertiser friendly"? The problem isn't that some
videos were de-monotized; the guidelines - as written - could apply to
anything.

~~~
infinitesoup
I agree that their monetization policy is pretty vague; I wish it was clearer
but they probably have to cover their bases.

As for "people that abuse moderation tools for hateful or trolling purposes":
these people won't be given access to the tools. According to the site [0],
you only get points and level up for actually flagging things correctly, and
you get kicked out if you're abusing it. And the improved flagging tools are
only available once you reach a higher level. So it would be pretty hard to
abuse (especially since even after all that, there's oversight).

[0]:
[https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7159025](https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7159025)

------
tdkl
Censorship based on feelings of a "heroes" group. What could possibly go
wrong?

~~~
mc32
Curation Flickr style, for me, is an acceptable alternative to hamfisted
policies on the one hand and 2ch-style free for all blather on the other.

Groups get to run their group/forum as they wish with only occasional direct
oversight by actual employees (threats, harassment, copyright, some succession
disputes, etc.)

------
generic_user
I think all these resent attempts to censor speech and engage in narrative
peddling are going to backfire on the companies. There is nothing more
frustrating then taking the time to comment on something or participate in a
conversation and have those comments removed by someone who has an agenda or
simply disagrees with you.

There has already been a fair amount of attempts to start alternatives to
popular sites that start to censor. Voat has been fairly successful in pealing
off Reddit users. GNUsocial, Wikipedia clones etc.

It would be nice to see some of these services like Facebook and Youtube have
a sizeable chunk of there users taken away by companies that make an public
commitment to limited data retention and freedom of speech.

------
flashman
Finally, a reliable way to contact YouTube support: add 400 sentences of
subtitles

------
neom
Worked incredibly well on deviantART for years. I found when a community cares
about itself, it will usually take care of itself. This becomes especially
true if the community exhibits and fosters a sense of pride.

~~~
Someone
On the other hand, my first thought was Wikipedia.

Imagine a group of 'heroes' that goes on a crusade for something it deems
desirable, such as gender-balance, right-to-carry or 'kid friendliness', and
creates fairly strict rules as to how to present a video clip on YouTube
("yes, your video may be sarcastic, but some people may fail to see that, so
we added the standard YouTube disclaimer; we also bleeped out your usage of
the word 'ab __*ion ', as per rule 451)

~~~
corobo
Then imagine anything they do still has to go through someone working at
YouTube. Sure there's a chance that someone may agree with their fairly strict
rules but on the other hand that someone also doesn't want to lose their job
by abusing the powers it gives.

------
EdiX
This should be called YouTube Large Scale Stanford Experiment.

~~~
lake99
Nah, this will go the way of Microsoft Tay and Facebook's automated curation.
4chan will run the system to generate jokes for themselves, until Google
finally kills it.

------
smackay
Potential volunteers might want to read the following before signing up:
[https://www.wired.com/2014/10/content-
moderation/](https://www.wired.com/2014/10/content-moderation/)

------
aikah
AKA "Trust and safety council" /s

------
ethana
Flagging abuse aside, I think the text transcript is actually a really good
idea to refine their STT system. The automatic transcript that YouTube uses
has improved to about 80% whenever I try to use it. This will no doubt help
their effort in improving their accuracy. Too bad the PR team bundled it into
this "Heroes" nonsense.

------
0xdada
Multiple people thought this is a good idea.

~~~
ljk
from youtube/google/alphabet's perspective it's a really good idea

~~~
pawadu
from a _" we want to have two billion users but don't want to hire any support
staff"_ perspective it is genius...

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strathmeyer
You can report the video. Not that there would be a reason to do that.

------
ljk
huh i was wondering why my comment didn't show up..

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12551249](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12551249)

~~~
pawadu
before:

THEY REMOVED MY COMMENT, THE GOVERNMENT DONT WANT YOU TO KNOW!!

after:

THEY REMOVED MY COMMENT, THE KID DOWN THE STREET DOESNT WANT YOU TO KNOW!!

~~~
ljk
i think you have a typo here ;)

~~~
pawadu
Sorry, when alien abducted me they did something to my brain.

Every time I try to warn others about them all that comes mi munt ot si
emaningalss biggerish. well, thanks obama

