Same issue with Twitter - their golden goose sometimes lays rotten eggs. But people flock to the platform to see the spectacle.
Balancing moderation with profitability seems to be a real challenge for a lot of companies.
Balancing moderation with profitability seems to be a real challenge for a lot of companies.
You imply that the problem can be "solved", but how can it be if users and advertisers have competing interests?
Will this video contain a someone posing with, and mocking, a corpse?
Will this video contain a someone "cementing" his head inside a microwave?
Will this video of a popular children's game including people yelling words like nigger or faggot?
That bit isn't complicated.
The complicated bit is what you do to cater for the religious bigot advertiser / viewers: do you let them say "I don't want to place ads against LGBT friendly material"?
Besides people reverse ad buy to avoid certain groups. For example advertising in a church bulletin will excludd many lgbtqt factions.
Moderation is attempting to balance between all three sides, meaning there's no silver bullet but a ton of gray area. No matter what moderation solution is devised it will have downsides for one or more of creators, viewers, or advertisers.
Just like the news shows, radio/podcasters and comedians decide what gets the largest audience by looking at specific metrics. But in this case Twitter/Youtube/Insta etc have control over When, What and How they show metrics to content producers. Turning these knobs changes behavior. It is still early days and the big tech firms are just waking up to the possibilities.