
YouTube should give users a way of knowing if a video has been altered - spenvo
https://spencerdailey.com/2019/06/24/youtube-should-give-users-a-way-of-knowing-if-a-video-has-been-altered-after-its-been-posted-a-no-brainer-consideration-in-2019/
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Crosseye_Jack
I tend to disagree because it can be used to remove information not to add it.
As OP said, the info about the number of “folds” was inaccurate so the content
was removed from the video. The tool is also used to remove person information
accidentally included from a video and is also used to remove baked in ad
segments after the ad has ran its course (useful for content that the info
contained rarely changes. I know one electronics YouTuber who had been pushing
for this feature for a while, though not actually seen them use it).

We know YouTube has the ability to edit video, heck they have done it to their
own promotional videos. But here is the thing imo. When a video is edited “in
bad faith” we hear about it pretty quickly, when a video is edited in good
faith (removing inaccurate information, ads, personal information) do we
really care?

Not everything said online needs to be set in stone. That’s just my own
opinion on the matter.

Also the dot marker on reddit only shows if it’s been edited after 3 mins. In
a heated debate that’s penlty of time to alter “what you have said”. And
atleast one of the high ups have been found to edit people’s posts directly in
the database avoiding the “edit marker” to change the tone of their posts. The
edit marker did nothing to prevent this. People speaking up brought it to
everyone’s attention
[https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/5frg1n/tifu_by_editing_some_comments_and_creating_an/)

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TazeTSchnitzel
Videos until now were thought to be immutable. If someone removes a point of
controversy from a video, a person linking to it as proof of that controversy
suddenly looks like a liar.

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Crosseye_Jack
Video has never been immutable. Video has been able to be edited long before
YouTube. Same happened in traditional media where an inaccurate slide shown on
lunchtime news would be corrected on the evening news.

You want a more immutable source, archive the video and link to that. Same
reason people archive other websites when wanting to link to something as
“proof”. Because we know that the web server is not write once.

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reificator
> _Video has never been immutable. Video has been able to be edited long
> before YouTube._

I think they're talking about the actual content hosted at a specific url, not
just video editing in general.

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Rebelgecko
Even that isn't immutable. e.g. the video of the first SpaceX Falcon Heavy
launch was modified after the livestream while still claiming that it was a
livestream from the original date

~~~
Fellshard
The /expectation/ of viewers and sharers of the content is that it is
immutable. I think the argument is that the /expectation/ will need to shift
unless proactive steps are taken to make certain guarantees about the nature
of shared content. One compromise, for example, would be to force edited
videos to be a new resource, instead of replacing the original.

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zaroth
There are at least four separate questions to address here.

One, if videos should be editable. Two, if edited videos should be allowed to
re-use the old URL. Three, if users should be able to tell an edit has been
made. Four, what level of granular detail YouTube should provide about the
editing process, up to and including if the previous version(s) of the video
should be made available by YouTube.

Many comments here arguing for point 1, when TFA is not objecting to point 1.
Obviously YouTube should allow editing videos.

I think point 2 is also a crucial feature, because of the widespread sharing
of video links, the penalty for editing would be too high if it was equivalent
to posting anew. I would hesitate to call it “editing” even, if the URL
changed.

I think that point 3–at the least indicating a last modified date—would be
uncontroversial.

I think hosting the previous versions contravenes the intent of the publisher
and is not the right choice, bad or wrong information need not be hosted by
the platform indefinitely. That’s not to say someone somewhere might not
archive it, but that doesn’t mean YouTube should.

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dalore
What about comments? Say you comment on a video and now the edit changes a
part you commented on. Should comments before an edit show something like
these comments were made before the edit on X date?

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AlchemistCamp
As someone who records programming screencasts, this is a great feature.

So many high-traffic videos on YouTube are tutorials that no longer work due
language and framework changes! At least in my corner of the web, a simple
"last updated on <date>" would be sufficient for me as a viewer.

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nickjj
Right, or you do a live / unscripted video and you forget one important thing
or say something but don't elaborate enough in the moment.

Happens pretty often in off the cuff programming screencasts.

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Procrastes
A cheap answer would be for Youtube to present a last edited date for any
video in an easy to check place.

Since current copyright makes it difficult to make a copy of the video and
link to the copy, we've fallen into the bad habit of linking to things and
hoping they don't change. Copyright interpretation isn't going to change
anytime soon, and keeping immutable copies on Youtube might be too expensive.
I say might, because, in the grand scheme of things, edited videos might be
few.

A last changed date would be enough for most purposes.

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graphememes
Why is this so controversial? It's common among other technology to show when
something was edited. It's very common for textual based social networks to do
so.

It'd be a cool feature.

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spenvo
I think this breaks YouTube's timestamped ("share at") links. So, if a user
shares a timestamp link (?t=55), and then the creator cuts X seconds from the
beginning of the video, the timestamp link will start X seconds after the user
intended it to.

A product change that's this ill-considered, half-baked, consequential, and
poorly communicated makes me wonder what the UX design process looks like at
YouTube.

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LluisGerard
As others already commented a lot of content creators are getting copyright
claims for just 5 seconds humming of a song and this allows them to edit that
part and change it. It’s funny how people want to edit their tweets when they
misstype something but don’t want others to do so. In a video of 10min there
are a lot of mistakes to be made and things that can be changed.

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a1369209993
> people want to edit their tweets when they misstype something but don’t want
> others to do so

Those are actually two different (though somewhat overlapping) kinds of edits.
People want "I wrote tyop instead of typo and that makes me sound like a
idiot, so imma fix that". They don't want "@jswift1729 tweeted that we should
kill children for food, but then edited it so everyone compaining about it
sounds delusional".

This problem could be (mostly) solved easily by showing the most-revised
version by default, but including a text to the effect of "edited 5 times ;
last edited 1970-01-02 04:30:21" linking to a list of all revisions.

~~~
NikkiA
Basically implement wikipedia's history system.

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jrockway
spencerdailey.com lets authors alter posted articles; readers should have a
way to tell.

The Internet is highly mutable. If you want a snapshot of something, take a
snapshot.

~~~
yingw787
I think there's a pretty big difference between a static page, which can be
easily and cheaply cached, and a video streaming service, which very much
cannot be.

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TazeTSchnitzel
I think YouTube should also allow viewers to see what was removed unless there
was a very good reason for it.

This should be true for video titles and descriptions too. YouTube is very
opaque about this right now. Did you know a video can have a different title
depending on your language setting? I'm not sure if that's optional automated
Google Translate or written by the uploader.

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Wowfunhappy
Who determines what constitutes a "very good reason"?

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TazeTSchnitzel
Possibly YouTube's report system would work actually. It's only in rare cases
like personal information breach or something that it should be used.

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mschuster91
> It's only in rare cases like personal information breach or something that
> it should be used.

In Germany we have something called "Recht am eigenen Bild" (right to your own
picture). I film political demonstrations but until now I've been hesitating
with uploading them as a successful "strike" with no editing option would
endanger the video itself.

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scohesc
I don't think youtube should keep copies of the un-edited video for users to
view. Quite obviously there was a reason for the uploader to remove that
section of video.

The chaotic side of me says youtube should do this, as it's another reason for
alternate platforms to crop up. youtube needs to lose it's market share.

~~~
Ajedi32
Even if they don't keep the un-edited copy around, there should at least be
some visible indication that the video was edited.

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madrox
I feel like we're starting to see the limits of single platforms. Once upon a
time, the technology YouTube built was sufficiently core to their business
that no one else could compete without also building their own video pipeline
for UGC. Today, that's commodity, and we're also learning there isn't a one-
size-fits-all approach to community. The problem described here is a benefit
for someone in their situation. It isn't always helpful in every context.

It makes me wonder if the next evolution of products are around focused
communities instead of monolithic platforms.

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rukittenme
Very expensive but YouTube could have immutable revisions. So you can still
watch old content even after the creator has modified it. Something like
youtube.com/watch?id=123&revision=0

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autoexec
there are times youtube (or the uploader) wouldn't want old versions
available. Copyright/privacy violations, ToS violations, or even just
unintentional misinformation can be edited out, but leaving the old version
accessible could be a liability issue for youtube

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mike503
I wanted to make a site/personal list of “approved” videos (for kids for
example) and the expectation would be a way to detect if the video has been
altered since it was “approved” - like mark a dirty bit until it can be
reviewed again.

I haven’t actually gone deep enough in metadata or API or anything to see if
that data is available (last modified or a hash of some sort)

But the fact it doesn’t show this on the frontend makes me wonder if that’s
even a detail I could get.

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euske
Also, news sites should let the readers know if an article has been altered
since it's published. Time and time again, I've seen some news sites (some of
them are even reputable ones) silently modified an article without changing
the published date, or not showing the date because of this very reason. I
don't know how we can stop the practice, but at least we should be aware of
it.

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mateo1
I wasn't aware they allowed this. It's a horrible idea, but it leads further
towards Google's dream of an fully and instantly mutable, impossible to
reference, fully personalised internet where no one and everyone could be
accountable for the fact that you shared a video with your coworker and he saw
a completely different version of it while neither of you is aware of it.

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gibolt
Altering videos feels very much like a key component of a site like YouTube,
but also one that could easily be used to manipulate viewership.

I feel like the only way to do it is to use a human moderated whitelist of top
producers, _and_ clearly mark them as edited.

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blondin
i wonder, though, if our feedback matters for a service such as youtube. i
don't know how many times i have sent a feedback on having the most basic
sorting order for the watch later playlist, which is simply by length.
sometimes we just have time to spare for short 5mins or less videos. and yet
over the years i have seen layout change, not very useful drag sort, mini
player, etc., being added.

but editing your watch later playlist takes you to a 2010 webpage with very
limited functionality...

(my own personal hack is to go through the list and "move to top" short
videos... it's worse on mobile because you have to drag and sometimes you lose
the drag...)

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LeoPanthera
Headline says "now" but this isn't a new feature. Article is just a huge rant
in blog form.

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spenvo
Fair, my reasoning for saying "now": the ability to alter videos is a
relatively new feature (last few months) that YouTube did not make a clear
announcement about on launch day.

It is a major departure from immutable videos, and deserved more of a company
PR effort to inform users of the change.

