Because given Google's (any big tech company really) lack of morals, I don't believe they'd care to censor anything at all.
Countries are struggling hard to put this into local law right now since it has to be by July this year - and as it turns out, to the surprise of no one, it's basically impossible to do so. The worst part must be that the law is retroactive, so a lot of old content will be removed and I'm sure no one will bother putting in a counter-notice for a six year old video.
I'm very curious how small services like Peertube instances will handle this.
Something funny from an iteration of the law in Germany: You are allowed to use 128x128 images of copyrighted content for "fair use"/without running into the chance of it getting taken down automatically, so good luck making quality content :)
Guess VPN-Serversi within the evil Brexit Kingdom are going to be in high demand.
Well, not true. I built whole company that does exactly this. It's disappointing that YouTube is used as the standard of what technology can do and how these systems can work.
We built system with the creator as a first class citizen. This means they are able to claim exceptions (as defined by law) before any action is taken. They are also able to utilize outside arbiters (WIPO, ...) free of charge to make independent decisions when there is an issue.
This are just few highlights. But the reality is that just because YouTube built shitty system doesn't mean the whole Internet has to copy it.
Good luck with your work!
Absolutely! We need to be held accountable.
> It's nice that there's ways to make this friendlier for creators, but wouldn't most bigger services rather block and build a cheap system in-house than rely on a SaaS/b2b product, if you don't give it away for free or price very competitively?
The biggest innovation of our company is not its technology but the business model. We in fact do give it free to all platforms, rightsholders and creators equally. How do we make money? When there is monetization occurring on the platform, we take %. It's literally the same model of VISA, where cards are free (ok, not all of them) but you pay for the transaction.
Some platforms will still try to build their own internal system, similarly to YouTube's Content ID. However as it stands right now, they are not complaint with EUCD and even they do become complaint, they are retaining extreme liability. We, on the other hand, created a setup where we are able to take this liability from the hands of the platforms while providing best service possible.
We also aligned our incentives with the success of everyone involved. If rightsholders over block, we don't get paid. If platforms can't attract creators because the system is too intrusive, we don't get paid. If creators don't benefit from our system, we don't get paid.
We intentionally built this way. We made it free to allow widespread adoption. We can scale much further than CID (currently can process 1,100 hours of content a second, or 66,000 hours a minute; while guaranteeing 5 second response time with full license being issued) but we also spent last two years working with civic societies, copyright scholars and others to help us build balance system with processes that don't favor one side over the other.
We have still long way to go, but I believe we are on a good path.
The whole point is that we can offer this system exactly because we get to share the upside with the platform, rightsholders and creators.
Great! In the interest of preserving that alignment into the future, it might be helpful to lock in important aspects of the business model by limiting your future decisions with a Ulysses pact[1]. Cory Doctorow gave a tall[2] about using Ulysses pacts in the tech industry:
>> It's not that you don't want to lose weight when you raid your Oreo stash in the middle of the night. It's just that the net present value of tomorrow's weight loss is hyperbolically discounted in favor of the carbohydrate rush of tonight's Oreos. If you're serious about not eating a bag of Oreos your best bet is to not have a bag of Oreos to eat. Not because you're weak willed. Because you're a grown up. And once you become a grown up, you start to understand that there will be tired and desperate moments in your future and the most strong-willed thing you can do is use the willpower that you have now when you're strong, at your best moment, to be the best that you can be later when you're at your weakest moment.
>> The answer to not getting pressure from your bosses, your stakeholders, your investors or your members, to do the wrong thing later, when times are hard, is to take options off the table right now.
Designing for durability and failure safety is still important when designing business models.
It's why we made the business model is built into the core of the service and can't be easily changed. Obviously where there is a will there is a way, but it would have very significant consequences to the business to do so.
That line, as I interpret it, makes the whole blog post that you linked invalid.
But for this one, if I were running a Peertube instance I would block EU IPs and tell people to use TOR or at least ssh to a lineode if they wanted to see things.
How can that be your interpretation of article 17 when it literally says : "The application of this Article shall not lead to any general monitoring obligation." in it.
Oh, come on now! A big company may lack morals, true, but in order to appease the most vocal, acutely political and obsessively moral part of the general public, including its own employees, it needs to conform to the societal demands on it. How else would you explain the appearance of banners linking to official Covid-related sites under videos about Covid, or pulling down of the videos that question the official Covid-related policies (such as lockdowns), or banners under videos from state-sponsored channels such as RT, or removal of videos that question the outcome of the US presidential election, or, well, most of the articles on the Youtube blog, really [0]. They are firmly placing themselves on specific sides of political, cultural, or ethical divides.
Since when is public health a political, cultural or ethical issue ?
You're either not American or you've been living under a rock for the past year. Public health has been a political issue for decades, and culture and ethics are inseparable from politcs. And then COVID happened and now everything down to believing the virus exists and choosing to take precautions has political ramifications.
It shouldn't be that way but it is.
Also, platforms are famously not accountable for what users upload - that's what makes them platforms and not editors.
Old Google maybe. The kind of Google employee who broke down in 2016 asking “How could we let this happen?” has a very different approach.
Nobody wants their video ad up against 'controversial' material.
That said, there has to be a way to redress these grievances.
Of the many things we could start to regulated it's that:
1) If there is a take-down, they have to tell you why and give you a few days to dispute or to open a grievance.
2) Grievances have to be addressed.
I don't mind even if there is a fee - it's reasonable for Google to require $100 to address a grievance, after all, they are hosting for free.
Alternatively, they could be required to have a 'paid version' without ads in which the bar for issues was considerably higher.
That's just off the of my head, so not exactly well thought out.
The point is, however, they're reaching a scale whereby some of these platforms are equivalent to a public good. It's like they are becoming broadcast or telecoms, which were always subject to regulation.
The content moderation algorithm is optimizing for three variables simultaneously - maximum number of videos hosted, maximum number of views, minimum number of lawsuits/negative press articles written/anti-Big Tech tweets.
The algorithm can't know if its truly maximizing the first two without letting the last one trigger every so often.
We are just witnessing/participating in the live dataset they are testing on.
Just because the company is amoral doesn't mean that political-moral entryists can't get their hands on the internal levers of power.