> either accept some form of content neutrality or become a petty and chaotic tyrant constantly reeling from one public backlash after the other
No, there is a middle ground that Google, with its army of engineers, could implement in a weekend:
1. You stop trying to assume you know what advertisers want their ads to be displayed on.
2. You implement a basic, fixed (but can be expanded) ACL-type system based on categories such as "hacking content", "politically sketchy content", "sexual content", etc.
3. YOU LET THE GOD DAMN ADVERTISERS DECIDE FOR THEIR OWN GOD DAMNED SELVES WHAT KIND OF CONTENT THEY'RE OK WITH ADVERTISING ON.
4. You end up spending LESS on content moderator salaries, and end up with FEWER unhappy advertisers because THEY can align their principles with the content. Hak5/Sparkfun would be fine advertising on Linux Experiments. I'm sure MyPillow would be happy to advertise on a Q Conspiracy channel. The demand for this feature is unquestionably there.
5. You stop playing God and pretending that the concept of global "community standards" means anything at all in a world with 7 billion people and hundreds of thousands of disparate interests-based communities, each with their own disparate community standards.
2. You implement a basic, fixed (but can be expanded) ACL-type system based on categories such as "hacking content", "politically sketchy content", "sexual content", etc.
Who or what ensures that the Q conspiracy channel is properly categorized as "politically sketchy content" and not "hacking content"?
The reality is no amount of computer code will fix a human problem.
Your plan fails, lets say they implement what you do. Let say that company X advertises but only on the safe subjets. Then my immediate attack will be:
"Company X advertises on a website showing jailbait sexual content" or "Company X advertising on a site promoting Q Conspiracy".
You are going to fight an uphill battle explaining to people the naunces of the system, which is a losing battle.
Your comment doesn't make sense, Youtube still show those videos in the current system it just doesn't run ads on them. So if it was an issue then it would have already happened, the fact that it doesn't mean that it isn't an issue.
Yes there are still jailbait videos on YouTube, but Google is already heavily moderating and deleting videos. The more "extreme" ones are already being deleted and moderated, what is left is probably more of the tamer ones. The amount of jailbait videos or hate videos or whatever you see now is probably 1/10 or less of what would be there if it was a free for all.
What is being proposed is no moderation of content. The advertisers can choose what to show ads on, but that's it. In that case there would be a flood of these contents. Then its easier to attack them.
> You stop playing God and pretending that the concept of global "community standards" means anything at all in a world with 7 billion people and hundreds of thousands of disparate interests-based communities, each with their own disparate community standards.
I think you're confusing the Internet with YouTube. The Internet has no global content standard, but this is not the world that YouTube lives in. It lives in the world of ad-supported services which has been repeatedly very clear about its minimum expectations regarding community standards. See: https://www.google.com/search?q=adpocalypse
> YOU LET THE GOD DAMN ADVERTISERS DECIDE FOR THEIR OWN GOD DAMNED SELVES WHAT KIND OF CONTENT THEY'RE OK WITH ADVERTISING
Have you talked with advertisers? They're really twitchy about this stuff, they even have vendors for brand safety they'll want to include in their ads or have you integrate with if you're a platform like YouTube to rule out ads on anything that could show their brand in a bad light.
I don't use YouTube, but I thought this was what the demonetisation was - the creators were getting a trickle of revenue, but most of it was gone, sounds to me like the impacts of it being considered not "brand safe" and most advertises enable such controls reflexively.
> 2. You implement a basic, fixed (but can be expanded) ACL-type system based on categories such as "hacking content", "politically sketchy content", "sexual content", etc.
The problem: for some of these, the definitions, the legality status and the liabilities (especially around "politically sketchy" stuff) may differ wildly between jurisdictions. And you will always have trolls mis-labeling their content on purpose, or content that is to be classified as "gambling" in the US but not in Germany... the list of issues is endless.
> 3. YOU LET THE GOD DAMN ADVERTISERS DECIDE FOR THEIR OWN GOD DAMNED SELVES WHAT KIND OF CONTENT THEY'RE OK WITH ADVERTISING ON.
And then they will still have headlines "Youtube allowing Nazis, antivaxxers, incels and other threats to the general public". Not to mention the legal issues (e.g. Nazi content is banned in Germany/Austria, LGBT content in Russia, a whole boatload of stuff illegal in India with jail threats for local staff)...
> 5. You stop playing God and pretending that the concept of global "community standards" means anything at all in a world with 7 billion people and hundreds of thousands of disparate interests-based communities, each with their own disparate community standards.
You will always need some sort of "global minimum standards" that ideally is at least somewhat of a common ground in Western-allied nations. And that means: no Nazis/white supremacists, no Qanon, no antivaxxers, no incels, no adult content/gore, no drugs (tobacco/alcohol/illegalized drugs), no gambling, no glorification of violence.
Why Western allied nations in particular? I'm also not sure that list is as universal as you think. For instance, the no drugs thing would likely not apply to the Netherlands.
Simple: Western nations are a somewhat coherent cultural sphere.
Adding in India (with its current war against Twitter and anything that dares criticize Modi), the Arabian and other dominant-Muslim countries (women's rights, LGBT, democracy) or Russia/China (which are essentially dictatorships) into consideration would add way too much illiberality to be acceptable.
How do you know this could be done in a weekend, let alone a year, in a way that will make YouTube’s stakeholders happier than they are today? You seem to know an awful lot about this.
“There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.” —H. L. Mencken
No, there is a middle ground that Google, with its army of engineers, could implement in a weekend:
1. You stop trying to assume you know what advertisers want their ads to be displayed on.
2. You implement a basic, fixed (but can be expanded) ACL-type system based on categories such as "hacking content", "politically sketchy content", "sexual content", etc.
3. YOU LET THE GOD DAMN ADVERTISERS DECIDE FOR THEIR OWN GOD DAMNED SELVES WHAT KIND OF CONTENT THEY'RE OK WITH ADVERTISING ON.
4. You end up spending LESS on content moderator salaries, and end up with FEWER unhappy advertisers because THEY can align their principles with the content. Hak5/Sparkfun would be fine advertising on Linux Experiments. I'm sure MyPillow would be happy to advertise on a Q Conspiracy channel. The demand for this feature is unquestionably there.
5. You stop playing God and pretending that the concept of global "community standards" means anything at all in a world with 7 billion people and hundreds of thousands of disparate interests-based communities, each with their own disparate community standards.