YouTube Advertiser Meltdown: An Opportunity for Startups
righteousruminations.blogspot.com
righteousruminations.blogspot.com
Not to distract from the larger point, but this isn't true. The definition of censorship says nothing about the government being the one suppressing the content.
I used to argue that 'censorship' should be interpreted as something done by governments and enforced by the legal system but that battle has been lost. Now the unqualified 'censorship' can mean just about any sort of content restrictions and as such is almost useless in its unqualified form.
It's the original sense.
> Censorship enforced by the state is something distinctly different from editorial control exercised by private entities.
Yes, government censorship is different in important ways than censorship by a publishing or distributing entity, but both are censorship (and they are also similar in important ways.)
> When the single word can represent either concept (and other related concepts) ambiguity and confusion isn't far behind.
Heavy water is different from drinking water in some quite important ways, but its not at all a problem that both are identified with the word "water", because we can use more than one word when the differentiating features are important to the discussion.
> I used to argue that 'censorship' should be interpreted as something done by governments and enforced by the legal system but that battle has been lost.
That battle was lost centuries ago. What the censor librorum does in granting, or denying, the nihil obstat has always been censorship, even where the Catholic Church is not an established Church and so is in now way part of the government.
> Now the unqualified 'censorship' can mean just about any sort of content restrictions and as such is almost useless in its unqualified form.
It has pretty much always meant that, and just because the general sense of censorship is not something you are interested in talking about doesn't mean it's not useful.
It's certainly less useful than distinguishing between specific forms of censorship. As you concede yourself:
> Yes, government censorship is different in important ways than censorship by a publishing or distributing entity
The context (the article) is clearly about the latter, specific form.
Or, to expand on your example: When discussing an article about nuclear fusion, the distinction between heavy water and drinking water certainly is more useful then the observation that both are identified with the word "water".
But that is really ancillary to my point that in order to communicate clearly about the public policy issues involved it is important to avoid the generic use of the term because that obfuscates the arguments making it harder to explore the issues.
In particular I think that in the US context, 1st Amendment proscriptions regarding freedom of speech and of the press are often implicitly assumed to be reasons why Google, for example, shouldn't be able to have a restrictive editorial policy. The negative aspects of censorship in the 1st Amendment sense are misleadingly attached to censorship in the editorial sense.
Sure it is possible to talk about 'censorship' in the 'general sense' but that is uninteresting to me and I would argue isn't very helpful in understanding the distinct aspects of different types of 'censorship'.
The very presence of anti-censorship in the 1st amendment is the reason many people in the US get outraged when companies censor views. They view free speech as a fundamental right, even though the 1st amendment only applies to the government.
No, it's not. The value of free expression and the concept of the marketplace of ideas to which it is essential predates and goes beyond the 1st Amendment. The 1st Amendment isn't the cause, it's a product of the same cause.
Though it's a lot trickier to apply the concept to private censorship, which is both, in one sense, an exercise of the right of free speech and, potentially, a restriction on it in some cases. Government censorship is a lot more of a clear issue (even if there are issues of drawing the precise boundary.)
Free speech is a fundamental right, which is why every Western democracy at least pays lip service to the idea.
Nope. The original "censors" were Roman magistrates who enforced public morals. They're called censors because they were also responsible for the census. The government part of censorship has been baked in from the very coining of the word.
That is the original use of the Latin word "censor"; the use of "censor", even in Latin (in part, because Catholic Church), had expanded considerably in the millenium+ between the fall of Rome and the coining of the English word "censorship".
Latin and English are different languages, and "censor" and "censorship" are different words.
It's stupid to restrict your definitions by intent. Treat the restriction of information as the problem itself, rather than the fact that it was done with any specific motive.
If Google blocks my content or otherwise refuses to host my content I have lots of other options. Your assertion that Google is a monopoly is this regard is not accurate.
So basically your "imprisonment" qualification on the definition of censorship is completely arbitrary and does not stand up to critical scrutiny.
If Google takes down my video, and I publish it elsewhere, there's no real risk of anything. Maybe I'll lose my Google account if the video was particularly heinous, but that's about as far as it goes.
The imprisonment qualification is a very real difference.
More importantly this doesn't address the concept, which is that it's dumb to attach motive to the definition of a problem. It's important when assessing criminal liability, but if you're just using it as an excuse to ignore the detrimental effects of censorship, which haven't changed, just because the mechanisms have, then you're just being profoundly counterproductive.
Forfeit is not the right word. Nobody is taking your business away from you, it's just not a profitable business.
> monopoly which youtube absolutely is
That is begging the question. There are plenty of sites that let you share video like youtube[0]
[0] http://www.freemake.com/blog/top-7-free-video-sharing-sites/
If you own a platform on which other people do business which is a natural monopoly, you shouldn't be allowed to regulate the content on that platform. Youtube is a natural monopoly. It's fairly obvious that this is so, but I will elaborate anyway.
The value of youtube is the number of people use the site. The number of people on the site encourages people to host their content on that site, more people hosting content on the site encourages more people to use the site. In this situation there will always be exactly one winner.
users can't easily (and sometimes at all) switch to a different internet provider, which is why net neutrality is important.
youtube just seems to be the most monetized platform for the time being, but i don't think it's anywhere near being monopoly in terms of access to users.
I use the following analogy for the latter: Would you call it censorship if you decide to remove the graffiti someone spraypainted on your car?
No one has the obligation to provide for unrestricted distribution of opinion/information. Especially not state-financed media, as they have a stake in education of their citizens.
Our markets are usually regulated to make sure monopolies don't arise, and if they do, they may be forced to downscale, split or open market for competition.
This is not the case with major social media sites, that answer only to the mighty dollar.
It's more like you having a potluck, or cook-off, meaning anyone can come and join and contribute food.
But then someone prepares Surströmming, Hákarl or Shiokara, which is technically food (content) that someone might like. It will now smell all over your potluck and have a detrimental effect on peoples view of it. You have previously reserved the right to turn away participants, and you exercise that right.
The message of the grafitti is not what people care about, it's that it was painted in the first place.
Your analogy only works if you have a big sign outside your house saying "Please paint my car".
So my analogy still works.
The difference is that on YouTube some "graffiti" are permitted while others aren't whereas on my car, none are permitted.
YouTube is acting as a media company while pretending to be a platform. They're engaging in censorship since they're removing things on political grounds. Now, if the rules were always "no vegan videos, no violence, only kittens," it would be a different story.
I would agree with you, but Youtube isn't a place where 'editorial' happens. Youtube isn't a TV channel or a blog with a set of editors. It's a free-for-all place for hosting videos. While I have no problem with Youtube removing content they don't like (it's their website, they're free to do what they like), it does go further than exercising 'editorial control'
These companies with all the eyeballs are now able to exert an influence on people's lives in a way that companies rarely have been able to do in the past (barring media, which the censorship claim was a bit deal).
So it is that nowadays censorship on something like youtube has become a big deal.
Your response is a nice example of the problem I was pointing out. You are conflating lots of different concerns by assuming that 'censorship' as an unqualified term accurately expresses the particular nuances of the issue you are concerned about.
I'm just arguing for clarity in communication. Acting as if Google's editorial choices and speech codes at private universities and content filters on library computers and government efforts to squelch speech are all adequately summarized by the word "censorship" is harmful to clarity in communication.
What I do care about is the idea behind censorship. I will not engage you in any conversation in which you try to use the definition to argue against the point I made.
So if you would like to have a discussion about the ideas behind censorship and why the worry is valid for these large websites such as FB and Youtube, I'm all for it.
But if you're going to repeat that the definition of the word precludes anything but governments, then I'm not interested.
Read it. I promise it is worth your time.
Whereas NYT will only publish stuff of high quality.
You made me spit coffee.
Revoking a service is not the same as censoring, I would argue.
So it's one thing to ban someone from some public accommodation for specific behavior and another thing entirely if you don't serve that kind of people or if you play games with the rules and enact a grandfather clause that somehow only applies to 'that' sort, but avoids spelling it out.
Perhaps you are explicitly arguing that the legal framework of public accommodations should be extended to content hosting but you need to make that argument explicitly with full understanding of that framework and not by casually dropping that legal term into the discussion.
Going after 'identifiable groups of people' is phrased to sound terrible but doesn't seem to be what is happening. The policy changes are about content not content creators. Not arguing for or against the policies just pointing out that they aren't targeting content creators in a illegal discriminatory manner.
You may have a point about the rules changing but that is basic contract law. Nothing new there and in any case there needs to be a mechanism by which the hosting terms can evolve, they aren't immutable.
The end result is the same regardless of what you call it though. That's what needs to be addressed.
Here's a fun question for HN: Does a private entity that's of a given sufficient large size, i.e. YouTube or Facebook, that covers such vast swathes of the population have a civil responsibility to uphold freedoms of speech? Typically I err on the side of you have the right to speak, not to have someone provide you a podium and loud speaker but at the same time, if we're providing everyone the podium and loud speaker does it change the rules?
YouTube defines "politically too extreme" as anything that's slightly left of Fox News.
Google's News tab now promotes tmz, the onion, and buzzfeed as "news" over sites that actually break news and typically go against the "narrative". http://i.magaimg.net/img/co6.jpg
There's a reason I'm dropping all Google products and services from my life.
I think you mean right of Fox News? Infowars is notoriously full of bullshit, and conservativetreehouse blocks google entirely [0].
Do you think buzzfeed, printers of the 4chan fanfic "piss dossier" are not notoriously full of bullshit? Have tmz or mtv ever broken any story besides celebrity gossip? Every single "news" organization that printed fake polls for months claiming Hillary would win by huge margins is still considered "News" by Google and not demonetized by Youtube. You claim Infowars is full of shit, but they were spot on with the election coverage and calling the polls being fake and oversampled.
Why is Google's censoring of differing views tolerated?
> more than a third of his videos had become demonetized
http://www.polygon.com/2017/4/10/15246814/pewdiepie-youtube-...
> "I’m going to have [to be] family friendly from now on"
What daring and original content that's going to be. How "liberal" of YouTube and its massively "liberal" employee base. Such diversity of ideas and language being allowed. Such tolerance.
If not paying creators advertising money is censorship, then most other platforms have 100% censorship. Reddit, Vimeo, Facebook, Hacker News, Instagram, Streamable, Imgur all don't pay ad money to creators.
And FYI national polls predicted a 1-4% popular vote win, those where pretty much on the money.
Most Fake News (NBC, CBS, NYT, etc.) headlined these fake polls while not reporting sampling to their viewers. There's a reason almost all Fake News casters like Maddow were shocked on election night. They bought into their own lies and selective reporting. I learned of the sampling methodology from some of the very sites that Google now reports as "fake" and from Youtubers they have demonetized.
"Polls are used to influence public opinion, not reflect it."
What we're seeing is Google trying to control the narrative through search and monetization now. This is a more-extreme extension of the crap they pulled during the election (where Google search-complete consistently suggested positive things for Hillary and negative things for Trump).
Reminder of fake polls pushed by fake news. Almost all of the establishment media reported polls like this leading up to the election. They traded all credibility to shill for their candidate. But Google did, too, so such sites are still considered "news" by Google's standards.
But there are a lot of factors required to get listed, including applying. Maybe they didn't apply https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/40787?hl=en
And Inforwars called the Sandy Hook shooting a fake government action with child actors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap-DvMoiMOY (1:17:00) so I can see why that wouldn't be included.
The Onion is kind of disturbing, but at least it's labelled satire in the results.
Yes, hate speech of the racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, etc. variety will be a problem to these advertisers, and is the headline of most articles. But so will other forms of "hate speech" (eg: Islamic extremism). As noted in the article, even LGBT content in itself may be "controversial" enough for Youtube to have to tiptoe around. Veganism was also mentioned in the article; Googling, apparently activism that used graphic imagery has also been blocked too (http://vegnews.com/articles/page.do?pageId=7970&catId=1). I would expect the same of other content that is violently graphical, whether it is pure crass or not.
If you believe that there is a successful business model out there for hosting explicitly conservative political videos, there is frankly nothing to prevent you from pursuing that path. From my perspective, though, the opening is frankly not necessarily political. If someone like PewDiePie is akin to the 1980s/1990s radio "shock jocks" (an allegory I kind of agree with), there is a parallel: many shock jocks (most famously Howard Stern, but also Opie and Anthony and Bubba the Love Sponge) were scooped up by Sirius or XM, after the Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident caused the FCC to clamp down on controversial radio content. In other words, there is an opportunity for other video hosts to compete with Youtube merely for not having quite as onerous of a content policy.
In other words, if a site was called "ConservativeTube" or "LiberalTube" I personally wouldn't consider it censorship for them to remove views from the opposite political wing because the service is openly politically biased.
When I was a child, I lived in a Communist country. It was a grim deal for anyone who did not toe the party line, and I do not like catching whiff of the same elements now in the US.
Let's say you are an amateur astronomer, like me. You have subscribed to a paper magazine about astronomy, like me. If, again, you are like me, then you also read the magazine for the ads in it. Ads showing new telescopes, ads talking about astronomy expeditions, ads for the astronomy club. It is advertisement on the one hand, but still relevant information for my hobby. The companies that buy ads for a longer period burn their brand into my brain, in the "relevant" section of it.
Now let's talk about how this would be on the web. When I visit a site about astronomy, I can expect the ads to show: flight offers for the business trip I recently googled. SAS software because I recently did a certification with them and visited their website. Amazon ads showing me business books I recently searched there. But what they often do not show: relevant, juicy astronomy related ads. And when they do, the ad is gone the next time I refresh the page replaced by something else. The ads on the web are most often totally out of context. They might be shown to you because of your recorded behavior before, but still they are totally irrelevant.
Probably running an ad network with great ads would be much more manual work than running the next past-behavior based network that tries to mine user data for new ideas. But at least for special interest sites, it could be a gold mine.
Really? My experience is much more:
Hotels/flights to a place I went to weeks/months ago and am not planning on going to again.
Ads asking me to sign up for a service I am signed up to.
Amazon ads for something I just purchased (often the exact thing I purchased). From Amazon. For weeks.
What you describe is a system where the consumer has control over how they are advertised to, but that only works when you are the one with power in the situation. If you use a service for free, like a website, your eyeballs are the service being sold, and the advertiser is going to utilise that service in his interest. That includes putting ads you "don't like" in front of you, that actually do influence your chances of buying that product, on average, in an upward trend.
Want to target hobby astronomers who watch a specific Youtube channel? Impossible. Cloud developers who follow the same 3 tell-tale Twitter accounts that clearly define the group? No can do. People at the big 4 in SV with Go in their resume on LinkedIn? Pfff, you wish.
All the data to serve truly relevant ads is there, but advertising networks do not offer the type of targeting required. Today if you want to reach a specific audience you have to make a native advertising deal with the content creator, which is outside the budget and skillset of most advertisers.
1) If they allowed you to target such a narrow niche, you'll be turned off when you see there's only XXX people total. And you'll be even more turned off when you see you generated 2 clicks out of those XXX people. But when you see the total reach of such a broad demographic is X million people you get excited.
2) It's hard to reach such a specific demographic. Only Facebook perhaps might have that granular an information about people who view their ads.
2) As an advertiser I'd like to define the demographics in very simple terms of white-listing on the platform. Twitter doesn't need to find out who are cloud developers: I'll tell the 2-3 twitter accounts the target audience must be following, which I know for a fact makes the followers also cloud developers. I don't need YouTube to figure out who are astronomers: I'll tell the channels astronomers subscribe to etc.
imagine you want to sell an add for a chainsaw and you have two customers, a grand mother and a lumber jack. of course you'd pick the later, but once you found out that the grand mother has been googling chainsaws and visited several sites, demographics goes out the window for importance.
this is why google is so much more successful than facebook.
Edit: (With programmatic rtb display ads)
It's also a weird situation, because free video sharing on the Internet is not really a profitable line of business when it exists in a way as liberal as YouTube is (Vimeo, for example is limited for free users, etc.) so there are not as many long term, similarly equipped alternatives to it, at least as of now.
Note. YT did cultivate an entire market of independent media published as subscribe-able channels of videos. It's no surprise moving is hard.
Give me premium content around my ads for free! now!
/sarcasm.
This is a solved problem. The only people complaining are the ones that want the cake and eat it too.
There is Zero opportunity here. Because 100% of your market is already served by premium publishers.
Or... they'll find some ad aggregator, and you're basically back to step one!
Funny that we went all the back to the starting point. I do agree programmatic ads is a loop of shithole, driving both content and ads into a mutual destruction cycle. Brands are hurting, malware ads are prospering, and on the other hand, clicks become everything and it makes everything clickbaity. Some major cleaning needs to be done otherwise the whole computational ads business is going to die.
If the ads are overt then I suppose it's an improvement over the usual fare of subtle product placement and staged testimonials.
Much respect for the vloggers and content creators who have respect for their audience and avoid shilling. And even more respect for makers making things and not more goddamn fidget toys.
Website where I can tell that my neighboor is driving BMW, is single and looking for a new house, preferably penthouse with the mandatory view on the lake. So that once ad agency crunch this info, I will eventually benefit when my neighboor clicks some link for advertiser who offered a housing listings that match his preferences 99%
Even if 1 cent per click, I take it.
this sounds like a terrible idea. i imagine being directed to pages that tick me a penny, or leaving a browser tab open for months (i do that) without looking at it but getting ticked for refreshes.
or even worse, viruses that try to log visits to pages trying to take pennies from you hopping you dont notice. and who is going to try and fight a 1 penny fraud?
even in the best circumstances, i wouldn't want to revisit someones page for fear that ill get charged but the content might not be that interesting or original
That would be the wrong lesson to take away here. By and large, ads are a scam on many levels, and it's not at all clear how that could change. Individual deals between content producers and companies seem like the sanest alternative, but it's obvious how that's not an option for the internet at large.
> 2. A model that does not rely on advertising.
Ads are a symptom of what brought non-corporate Youtube content down, but it's not the root cause. Youtube and its parent company will always be susceptible to repeats and variations of the WSJ attack, and Youtube didn't exactly have a respectful relationship with their content creators to begin with. "Controversial" content such as LGBT-focused videos doesn't just get less ads, it gets suppressed by YT in other ways designed to prevent discoverability.
Siloization is the disease.
Any crisis is an opportunity for startups. The larger point here is a wakeup call about the structure of the web. There are still opportunities to change this, but companies and governments are fast at work changing that. The time would be now.
A few hours on the phone with their Indian tech support got me only false promises of call backs and refunds.
I'm unable to reach intelligent/useful person at google adwords tech support. Which is terrible, because I think that's where most of their revenue comes from?
About freaking time.
What if YouTube ads worked more like TV commercials, where you're taking explicitly out of the content (maybe to another page to view the ad?), and then returned to the video? Would this ease advertiser's concerns about placement?
People aren't on YouTube to watch ads they are there to watch videos. The ads need to be as unobtrusive as possible. The current approach is the only solution.
Ugh. It's not remotely censorship to stop funding something. You don't have any obligation to pay me to jabber in front of a camera, and neither does anyone else. Putting the distinct ideas of "refusing to pay for X" and "censorship of X" in such proximity is either the result of confusion or a deliberate attempt at emotional Roveian conflation.
The linked Guardian article makes no mention of YouTube removing either videos or channels. If that's not happening, then whatever is happening isn't even similar to censorship. Just because the Guardian author throws the term around so casually doesn't make it true.
...we should ask ourselves how comfortable we are with large corporations essentially setting the terms of acceptable political discourse by pressuring media platforms into banning unpopular opinions.
Back in the 1970s, when video in America was dominated by three huge networks, an argument like this would have made a glimmer of sense: if advertisers pulled out of a program en masse, the network management would cancel the show in search of something more profitable, and the attitudes or opinions the program espoused might not be represented on television at all anymore.
But the internet isn't like that. YouTube isn't like that. You can keep making your show, your blog, your own personal website, etc., regardless of what the advertisers do. There is no panel of bean counters controlling access to limited, valuable airwaves, because the "airwaves" are unbounded in breadth and unmoored from time. One might argue that this is the principal, signature difference between broadcast television and internet video.
Even if YouTube was deleting videos outright, they're hardly the only way to share videos online. They simply aren't capable of "banning unpopular opinions" in any effective general way.
It's a little tough to take "righteous" "Wiseman's" internet-censorship-based startup ideas seriously when 1) he doesn't seem to understand what censorship is 2) he doesn't seem to understand important differences between the internet and older media systems.