YouTube Changes YouTube Heroes Video Stealthily | Hacker News Reader

YouTube Changes YouTube Heroes Video Stealthily

techraptor.net

154 pointsdoppp50 comments

I, and I think most other folks, treated a youtube video as write-once, read-many resource.

That trust has taken a massive hit. You can no longer reply on the same video-id having the same content as before.

It's obvious that Google is able to change their own videos - and that it does it only to them and maybe premium partners (like Vevo, to upload higher quality versions of music videos). Nothing has changed to anybody until you show any proof that contradicts me.

This is my thought as well. This was probably an ill thought through change. Most likely they have only done this to their own content or like you said, to other premium partners for small changes like quality issues etc.

I'm rather going to assume stressed bad ideas over deliberate dick moves.

Yeah. I've noticed it a couple of times.

For example, the text at 0:09 used to say "Envy" (previous band name) instead of "Nico & Vinz" (new band name), but they got Youtube to replace the video with a new one.

And as you can see, the Youtube video with their new name hardcoded into the video was "uploaded" half a year before they actually switched their name (Jan 2014).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg1sT4ILG0w

You can make certain changes to any video and still keep the id. E.g. any arbitrary trimming or other edits allowed by YouTube's video editor, adding annotations to the video itself etc.

OP's fear and my reply were about changes done by Google, not edits done by channel owners.

Turns out that database owners are able to modify their own databases, who would've thought.

Is this really all that different from a blog or online news site changing the content of a page or a company updating their terms of service page?

It sounds like they realized the message was unclear and made it clearer. I do that all the time to my blogs/sites when I get feedback they aren't clear

The difference is that I know that written articles can be changed with no notice. I did not know that youtube videos can be edited like this.

It is also common practice for news pages and blogs to leave some form of indication that the content has been edited.

Youtube did not do that in this case. I would not have had any issues with this if they had indicated that the content had been altered.

Why is video sacred? Of course YouTube has the ability to replace a video with another. Yes they probably should have put a notice about it but this isn't really different than editing an article.

archive.org probably has all the previous versions of the text, it certainly does not have youtube videos.

The ability to stealthily rewrite history is a major issue.

Because that's "how it has been" for a long time. It is well known that if you want to change the content of a video, you gotta delete the old one and reupload it.

The reason google doesn't allow you to change it in-place is problaby to avoid "selling" of popular youtube videos to be replaced/injected with ads.

> That trust has taken a massive hit.

God we can be a melodramatic bunch sometimes...

"Trust" was probably an incorrect word, perhaps "certitude" would have been more apt. It's the kind of trust you apply to a tweet/tweet_ID. These resources are expected to be WORM.

Content "Integrity"

I don't think this is intentional by Google, but think the problem comes down to the fact that they keep antagonizing the content creator community that they claim they want to help.

The YouTube Heroes program antagonized the content creator community by:

1. By trying to get free labor to clean up the comments system instead of doing it themselves.

2. Creating new concerns about who is going to watch the watchers.

3. Showing new management features for Heroes that content creators themselves have been asking for and still can't get.

This secret video edit is another slap in the face because:

1. It potentially undermines public responses they've already posted based on the original video and new people (and trolls) may call them out their complaints that no longer match up with what is said.

2. It shows yet another feature YouTube content creators have been asking for, but can't use themselves.

I don't think Google is intentionally trying to tick off their own community, but it is amazing how dense they are. And for content creators, this is just another instance of Google not listening to them.

Presumably Google hires smart product people. So how do you imagine the conversation and decision making process went assuming they were aware of this dynamic?

It seems like they live in an echo chamber sometimes or they are more fixated on solving their own problems instead of their users. Google more than any other company seems to have a bias in that if a problem can't be solved by an algorithm and brute force human labor is required, they just don't want to do it and will find every excuse to avoid it.

In this case, it really feels like they "have this great idea to clean up the comments" problem that "doesn't require Google to do any work". It feels like they were willing to buy into the hype around Gamification of everything to solve their all problems to justify an internal aversion to solving problems the hard way, which would require Google to pay for actual human labor.

It was "win-win" in their echo chamber because it doesn't cost them much in terms of effort or money, while content creators should be happy Google is trying to improve the situation.

Another good example is the case of Eli the Computer Guy. He is an interesting content creator because he has actual marketable skills outside content creation and has built his own businesses before. He was a focal point last year during another YouTube controversy which later became known as #WTFU. After getting screwed by "The Algorithm", he announced he was leaving YouTube because the environment was not conducive to building a serious business around. One of the stories he told was he used to have a Google Content Partner, an actual human he could talk to if he had problems. Then shortly after, that person announced she got a promotion and was leaving with no replacement. "But don't worry, we have a great solution for you. You can use our forums if you have questions."

Eli has gone on about how dense they were that they didn't understand that this was a terrible thing and forums were no replacement for an actual person.

It was one of many examples he cited about how out of touch Google is with their own community. Eventually, after this controversy, they managed to keep Eli on YouTube for now, doing the "bare minimum" to keep him, which includes giving him a person to talk to. But there are much bigger YouTube creators who still don't have anybody they can talk to.

Maybe they are smart along some dimensions but less along others. In general Google seems to be good at dealing with algorithms but not as good as other companies at dealing with people. It could be a conscious decision or an unfortunate consequence that their first product has been an algorithm that happened to delight people.

I like that Twitter follows the same principle. There's never ambiguity about what was replied to.

a) you were expecting trust on a free site?

b) you replied to videos? given the toxic sludge that seems to seep into most comment lists on youtube videos I don't usually want to even touch them.

so for me changing videos is great, more power to them. sometime videos get uploaded with incorrect editing or audio so a chance to fix it is good.

Why would you trust them ever?

I imagine YouTube didn't feel like breaking a bunch of links by replacing the original video, but surely they should have gone with some sort of annotation directing people to a new video.

YouTube has the most confusing and maddening UXes of any service I've ever used, and it's stuff like this that keeps shortening my lifespan.

If only there were some sort of transport protocol, which could redirect requests for a resource to some other resource...

Interestingly they didn't address the "flag mass videos" which I thought was the more painful point

I think you mean "mass flag videos", and yes it still seems to be an easy avenue for abuse

Vimeo has allowed source file replacements for years. Why is it always conspiracy theory with YouTube users?

Only corporate interests get to modify their files on YouTube. Everyone else has to delete and re-upload.

That sucks. And this shit's very close to the last straw.

If they allowed everyone to replace source file then people would start selling popular and viral videos by adding adverts to the video...

That's why it's limited to "corporate interests".

LinusTechTips, for example, already puts ads directly in the source video. And it's perfectly fine. What would being able to edit the video do?

Also, people already sell the rights to their viral videos.

I'm pretty sure anyone can edit and replace their videos on YouTube, it just resets the play count and comments.

Yeah, I mentioned that. And that sucks, because the viewcount of a video is one of the factors in deciding how often it'll show up in the Related Videos.

No, not and keep the same video ID. The trick is to create a one-video playlist, and link to the playlist. Then you can update the contents of the playlist whenever you want.

>And this shit's very close to the last straw.

And then what? Unless you're a Youtuber I don't see how any of the issues with Youtube (copyright strikes, demonetisation, this fiasco etc) affect you.

It affects the content creators that I like watching. It makes their job harder. It's easy to see how it affects them.

I pay for YouTube Red et al. so the content creators I watch get their fair share of my cash. If this begins to affect content, I'm going to stop subscribing to Red and stop watching YouTube videos altogether. It's a waste of time anyway and I have better things I should be doing.

I think if a video was edited there should be some indication when it happened, only because if feels like the right thing to do.

But because the tools to edit aren't available to everyone, they probably don't want to make this become an issue so tried to do it stealthily.

At least they didn't remove a few of the dislikes in the process (although I have no evidence they didn't).

As for the Heroes scheme itself, I don't get it. I don't know what the motivation to put all that work in is, as there is no money in it and the rewards seem to only serve the tool, but not the individual putting the time in.

Because you can get achievements/levels/points. I think you underestimate the allure of something that has been well gamified. Especially as this is done somewhere the gamer already spends time, and may have a noticeable impact. It grants "power".

Appropriation of likes and comments: you liked or commented to a video of cute little puppies and after the edit you end up having liked a video of dissecting puppies. Replace with any other uncomfortable subject.

It happens on FB when somebody changes the name and goal of a group, hijacking the non active members.

> FB

Politicians also buy pages like those, in India.

This isn't news, of course they're able to change their own videos!

Well, of course it's possible for Google change any video on YouTube however they like (yours, theirs, someone else's). The news is that they're actually taking advantage of that ability to stealthily edit the details of something controversial.

Defense lawyers in countries with poor free speech rights can rejoice. "Yes, the video was uploaded under my client's account but prosecution has not process beyond a reasonable doubt that what we see today is what my client uploaded".

There are upload logs. They can be subpoenaed.

They can also be deleted.

So various governments calling up Google to stealthily edit out video content they don't agree with or might be harmful to them, doesn't concern you?

Well that's fine, but please don't pretend this is a practice other people shouldn't be concerned about.

It's something that worries me. Erasing or changing data is a lot easier than book burning. Stalin's non-people for the 21st century.

I would be more concerned about people trusting content uploaded to YouTube as something that has meaningful, long-term political value.

It's getting harder and harder to trust anything today. Downloaded files can be fabricated. So can be paper photographs. Or old newspapers.

Welcome to XXI century.

Possibly as important as subtly-revisionist history, it would be interesting to see thunderf00t and/or Gad Saad reaction videos to the subject matter of the Heroes program, because of the likely obvious empowerment of hyper-oversensitized, arbitrary, de facto censorship this program would enable. Sure YT needs to clean up spam, crap content and figure out how to deal with neo-Nazis, Alex Jones' and perpetual machine "inventors."

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