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Comment by AlexB138 | Hacker News Reader

What a dystopian nightmare the internet is turning into. Anything that isn't in line with "right thought" isn't Responsible and is therefore hidden away? How did we end up here? How did Silicon Valley go from a place focused on ideas and building the future to generating systematic censorship and endless puritanical moral panic? We badly need some new blood guiding tech development.

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>How did we end up here? [...] systematic censorship and endless puritanical moral panic?

The reason is advertising money is what funds Youtube. Ultimately, this means Google has to make sure their videos are mostly "advertiser-friendly"[0]. This unavoidable editorial tension is what the prior boycott incident (Adpocalypse[1]) was all about.

>We badly need some new blood guiding tech development.

It's not just a new programming team with different ideals. You need a new funding model.

The obvious alternative is to create a video site that doesn't depend on advertisers. With no ad sponsorships as a revenue constraint, what options does that leave us?

(a) paid subscription or donation websites. But most viewers don't have money to pay for a youtube-clone with non-ad-friendly videos. Even if they did have discretionary income, they wouldn't pay for it anyway. (Example of users overwhelmingly preferring ads over paying an insignificant 8 cents per month.[2])

(b) volunteer self-funded decentralized video service like Peertube

Both those options have massive economic and technical disadvantages. Storing petabytes of videos is expensive and so far, nobody else has figured out a non-advertising model to pay for the hosting costs to serve them to millions.

Keep in mind that the other video websites that some people do pay for such as Netflix, HBO Go, Hulu, etc are also not bastions of free speech that allow extreme political views.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google#Advertise...

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=Adpocalypse+advertisers+boyc...

[2] https://www.tune.com/blog/mobile-ads-70-of-smartphone-owners...

How come this isn't a problem for Facebook? I could see some crazy political post right next to an ad, and nobody would say "oh well, the brand from that ad is now associated with <fringe political idea>".

I don't see how this is the case for YouTube, but not Facebook. Why are brands so concerned about association on one platform, yet not the other?

For the same reason that brands aren't concerned that the bus carrying their ad may be waiting for the light to change... In front of a strip club.

Why is it a dystopian nightmare for Youtube to curate its content according to "quality", but it wasn't a dystopian nightmare for Youtube to curate its content to maximize engagement for ad revenue?

They give an example in the article of Logan Paul's YouTube channel being troubling. Apparently his fans enjoy his videos as measured by watch time, the like button, views, and subscribers, but his content also lacks a certain jena se qua that Google calls "quality".

The impulse to tell people what the quality of their entertainment is strikes me as dystopian and deeply authoritarian. In addition, it's also patronizing - suppose I like watching Logan Paul videos, why should dear Mother Google decide they aren't good enough for me and decide that I should watch advertiser friendly content instead?

It seems a bit contradictory to me, though, that here we are on a forum whose entire premise is aggressive curation of "quality," talking about a video streaming platform considered by many here to be a vapid cesspool of inane nonsense and clickbait wanting to improve the quality of what its users see, and the immediate reaction is to cry censorship, and wonder whether "quality" even means anything, rather than say "it's about time."

And if you like Logan Paul videos, you're probably already subscribed to his channel. Be sure to click the bell to be notified. There's also a search bar you can type "Logan Paul" into. He's not quality, though.

Assuming Youtube isn't secretly pushing some left-wing agenda of propaganda and mind-control (I don't believe they are, but a lot of people do) and that their goals are as stated, then I don't see how adding a "quality" metric to all of their other metrics is a bad thing.

Everything has a place. I might it find it odd if the technical library where I work started carrying the National Enquirer. Yet, that publication is perfectly appropriate where people expect entertainment magazines.

YouTube was intended as a place for people to share their videos. Logan Paul and others who create and share videos are using YouTube for its intended purpose and it's perverse for YouTube to try and figure out how to stop them from doing what their service was built to enable.

I think there should be a place for high quality curated content and a place for people to share their videos regardless of content.

YouTube is, of course, free to make whatever curation decisions they like just like I'm free to complain about them. This would be like if hacker news claimed to be a place for tech news but also banned all submissions from authors or views they didn't like, even if that content was high quality tech news.

Th latter puts the users in control of what is trending. The former lets YouTube manipulate the content for arbitrary purposes.

Youtube was always manipulating the platform for arbitrary purposes (and sometimes the content, for copyright purposes.) Users have never been in control of anything.

see: the Youtube "Adpocalypse" and the various other changes to their algorithm that destroyed the profitability of entire genres of content (such as animation.)

Enforcement of copyright is following the law not manipulation. I'm sure their automated takedowns aren't perfect, but that's due to technical limitations.

This rewarding if "quality" content is straight up picking winners and losers. But you're right it's not like YouTube hasn't done this before. Plenty of very rapidly viewed videos (e.g PewDiePie's "Congratulations" and rewind videos) mysteriously didn't appear on trending.

They do sometimes manipulate the audio channel by muting it because of a copyright claim, that's what I was referring to.

People can agree on the definition of 'ad revenue'.

And perhaps more importantly revenue can come from anybody regardless of views - money has no smell. “Quality” will easily turn into “whatever the site maintainers or majority consider good”.

This being said I pretty much agree that so far no big tech company found the recipe for properly and “fairly” curating content.

The problem is that "quality" is going to be enforced by the same algorithms that mark whitenoise as a DMCA copyright violation.

both are pretty bad options. Better to let users curate and allow popularity to dictate visibility, surely?

User curation and popularity are, arguably, just as much forms of censorship as any other, although a "trusted user" curation system similar to Steam might be interesting. The only truly unbiased system would be random.

that only really holds if you consider "not promoting" to be a form of censorship - at the end of the day, as long as they're not actively hiding content that YouTube finds to not be "quality" (while still being reasonable content), it can still be found by someone looking for the subject. I don't see an issue with that - there will always be limited space for "promoted" content.

Then YouTube risks things being popular that aren't aligned with it's collective politcal views.

That's already the case, libertarian and conservative content is more popular than progressive content on YouTube.

the latter is demand driven

One could argue that the former is as well, given the platform's low reputation for quality, and the bad press its recieved for allowing extremist and algorithm generated content. Let's not pretend Youtube is pushing this entirely down the public's throat against their will.

The internet has operated that way forever. Most hosts haven't allowed porn since the beginning of time. You're still free to make your own video hosting website if you'd like. Liveleak still exists.

> You're still free to make your own X

It's becoming plainly clear that isn't the case.

Liveleak was recently banned in Australia and NZ.

Gab extension Dissenter has been banned from both chrome and Firefox app stores despite it self-censoring far more than twitter.

Paypal, Stripe and Patreon all deplatform people based on words they have said.

I don't agree in the slightest with conservative or far right thought but this direction is scary if it continues. Once they have "fixed" this problem, who is next?

Any content creator takes certain risks when they choose to be a sharecropper on someone else's platform.

Websites being banned in Country X have no impact on my ability to spin up a home web server and publish whatever I want. If I reach a certain volume of users, and let the site become host to people fomenting hate or violence, there's a chance someone might look to take the site down. Depending on the type of website you run, that may be the cost of doing business.

If you think you might be a target for that kind of action, your game plan needs to have fallbacks:

- take personal cheques, gift cards or crypto instead of Patreon/Paypal/Stripe.

- Spend ~2 hours of your time learning how to setup a home server w/ a Raspberry Pi or an old laptop.

- Start transitioning your users towards the decentralized P2P web (Beaker Browser being an example)

Sharecropper is a great paralell. A sharecropper has no rights to buy his own land, and is forced into a psudeo-slavery, getting all of the burdens and none of the rights to his labor. Sounds unethical.

that's a separate conversation. Youtube promoting or pushing down content based on their idea of "quality" is the concern here.

>You're still free to make your own video hosting website if you'd like.

Websites like Gab started going down that path. Suddenly it becomes "you're free to make your own payment processor" and then it'll be "you're free to make your own bank". Do you think it'll stop there or do we need to make our own country too just to run a website that's not interfered with because they allow opinions some people don't like?

Two good ways to make a dystopia: 1) by trying to create a utopia, which always ends up in dystopia, or 2) by removing all rules and concept of society.

Maybe we can unwind the dystopian internet by adding a little of the real world responsibility back onto corporations that have been running wild without any rules “because it’s the net”.

YouTube, Facebook, etc. that are all behaving as publishers but without the responsibility real world publishers have, are now facing that reality. It appears they are having to choose between taking on the responsibility of being a publisher, or to do away with that by become just a platform. At the moment they seem to be trying to hold onto their publisher behavior while doing as little as they can.

In response everyone cries fowl. Instead you should be arguing that YouTube must drop is publisher behavior and design aspects and reorganize around being a pure video hosting platform if that’s what you want. But not both.

I'm starting to feel less and less concerned. The people are starting to revolt. All the YouTubers I follow are migrating to alternative platforms for both hosting and $. Even PewDiePie, long time biggest YouTuber, has put this weight into another platform and will only be doing his live streams on dlive, a streaming platform with a crypto currency tied to it. Very few are totally abandoning YouTube, but I think the writing is on the wall. Everyone is trying to figure out a different path forward.

"I'm starting to feel less and less concerned. The people are starting to revolt. All the YouTubers I follow are migrating to alternative platforms for both hosting and $."

Several streamers I watch have moved, or at least started posting their work to an alternative site. I've followed them to avoid Google/Youtube whenever possible.

Sorely needed competition has emerged.

It’s very clearly a scenario where money drives the narrative. They can literally lose advertisers overnight because of a single rogue user tainting the ad dollar pool.

Business wise it makes absolute sense.

Youtube is a brand like any other, like a TV channel.

If they want to have a theme or specific content ... that's their call.

I don’t think based on recent history there’s any real risk of people not finding a community that shares their crazy ideas.

I share some of your concerns, but we should take care that we don't simply condemn any attempt at promoting mainstreem content as 'censorship' and any attempt to promote highly specific content as 'bubbles'.

If both are dystopian nightmares we're in deep trouble.

It never was.

Silicon Valley was/is filled with smart people who knew how to get on top.

They realized that using ideals to sell their cold hard reality was a great way to get useful minions to put their hearts and souls into projects.

The useful minions came and helped, and are now SHOCKED that the power hungry people they supported would do things related to power.

Most people can't even accept the open fact that the intelligence community helped fund many of these projects (see In-Q-Tel and others)

Now everyone is 'shocked' at them gathering data and sending it off to intelligence organizations. They could have 'never seen this coming'and 'how oh how did this happen?' - The only way those questions are asked is through massive indoctrination and double think.

I don't understand the thought process that a content host has an inherent obligation to equally promote all the content hosted on their service.

It's a very anti-consumer and anti-capitalism position, and I hear it most often from people that in other contexts are very pro-consumer and pro-capitalism.