The problem is that there is no serious appeals process, and no third party oversight of moderation decisions. This is true for all the big platforms.
How do we fix that, IDK, but probably at the government level.
I produce content for YouTube full-time.
Just a few days ago a well-performing video ended up age-restricted. It was an edge case, and could have gone either way. I appealed, and included the best argument I could put together.
A few hours later I received this:
We have reviewed your appeal for the following content:
[the video title]
After taking another look, we can confirm that your content does not violate our Community Guidelines.
Thanks for your patience while we reviewed this appeal. Our goal is to make sure content doesn't violate our Community Guidelines so that YouTube can be a safe place for all - and sometimes we make mistakes trying to get it right. We're sorry for any frustration our mistake caused you, and we appreciate you letting us know.
~~~
I appeal YouTube's decisions all the time. Sometimes appeals go my way, other times they don't, but that doesn't mean there is no serious appeals process. As far as I know, almost every adverse decision can be appealed.
~~~
About your last comment, the existence of a problem doesn't mean that government stepping in would be better.
You raised high enough to be full-time on Youtube, you have a full history of interactions with their moderators, a track record of videos that performed well, and get to be handle by real humans.
That doesn’t mean it’s the same experience for the vast majority of creators, especially those who upload a video once in a while and have no reputation in the system.
On any Google service I think both sides exist, and the difference is usually pretty stark, like night and day.
PS: on the gov. part, the issue is that Google is economically big enough that there is no counterpart to make them do what they don’t want to. People are turning to govs. because there is basically no other recourse in many situations.
Now their unrelated YouTube Music account is locked
There is no fixing that without massive corporate reorganization, which won't be voluntary, and thus will take 10x the time with worse results. At this point this is just the Google way to do things, and making smaller fry follow this rules will probably only end up making Google bigger.
The one real way out there might be is making one-click self hosting viable again.
1.) The discovery associated with YouTube and
2.) In addition to being convenient, you don't need to pay to host on YouTube. It would be pretty trivial for people to host their own content--much of which is never going to pay anything to speak of in ads. But then they'd have to pay for the hosting.
I'm not sure what the best way to go about it is, but I know that advertiser and corporate pressure being the only thing that matters is not working (see: dislike count removal). I would not be surprised that if YouTube continues to be unable to regulate itself we'll see governments stepping in and regulating it for them.
Unfortunately that all seems to be proprietary money making territory right now.
The other is harder: some ISPs outright blocked or throttled P2P protocols entirely (much to the annoyance of, say, Linux users torrenting ISOs) and most others will have some mechanism to respond to copyright claims. The latter is really hard for a YouTube competitor if it allows anyone to upload content — if the network attempts to auto-mirror content, you are potentially at risk if someone uploads something illegal; if it doesn't, only the most popular public content will be well-replicated.
It's not the users' problem per se (unless they get aggressively pushed out but then they go to alternatives so that company still doesn't make profit out of them).
Elementary psychology -- one that's studied at 9th grade where I live -- could have told them that it's super hard giving people something for free and then taking it away. People don't react well to that and never have.
They only have themselves to blame.
> Nobody has been "conditioned" to think anything. … > Elementary psychology -- one that's studied at 9th grade where I live -- could have told them that it's super hard giving people something for free and then taking it away. People don't react well to that and never have.
That was in fact my point: since the mid-to-late 90s, Internet users have become accustomed to thinking that they pay for internet connectivity but that most of the content they view will be free either because it's been subsidized by investors or advertisers. There are exceptions but they generally tend to be either connected to the physical world or a handful of areas like commercial movies or gaming where the major rightsholders were largely successful at preventing people from getting used to free content.
That puts you in exactly the dynamic I described: very few people think that YouTube-level content is something they pay for but their expectations are set by the kind of resources that billions of ad profits can support.
I'm pretty tech savvy and have heard of none of these. Not a single one.
However, as to your larger point - you're right, most people don't know about these.
I would argue that those who want to escape Google's grasp should be willing to encourage person-to-person sharing as an alternative to the recommendation algorithm. Sure, 99.99% of the population isn't browsing PeerTube, but I bet you that most of them would be willing to watch a video hosted there if it was suggested to them by their friends.
This might be a good idea in general. Think of how much better ecosystems we would have if people relied on their friends to make personalized recommendations to content on any platform, as opposed to engagement-optimizing automated algorithms that exclusively recommend content on a single platform.
Oddly unmentioned are Vimeo and Dailymotion, which have been around much longer and probably have larger user bases and network effects.
If they had had a message "this is a problem with your account, fix it or else within 3 days we suspend you", that wouldn't have been nice but not completely impossible like the current solution.
How is it not possible for Google to implement that? I understand they also have some very bad cases of spam to deal with, but if I take my account as an example, the 'bad' video was uploaded 4 months ago and has 133 views in total, how can the system not determine there's no harm in leaving it up for another 3 days (in which it probably will get 0 views)?
So sad that the big tech companies can't manage to change from the inside but need to be forced by regulation to do good for their customers.
Edit: Google's profit margins aren't my problem. If they want to be such a big, all-encompassing force in the "digital lives" of individuals they need to be held to account with fair policies for dealing with Customers. If that creates an untenable business for them they can either innovate in a manner that results in a fair deal for users and lower expense to themselves or they can suck it up and take the hit on their margin.
I don't use Google's various services beyond search, personally, but it's clear that some regulation is needed. Non-technical individuals don't understand the ramifications of relying so heavily on a platform that can be pulled out from under them with no notice and no recourse. Heck, even technical people don't seem to grasp it.
If we're assuming that "youtube as a permanent monopoly" is inevitable then, sure, fair enough, but I think if you're making that assumption it's worth making it explicitly.
In all, I pay Google north of $1,000 every year.
Whether Google likes it or not, I AM their customer.
I don't think anyone here is arguing with that - it's a pretty widely accepted fact that Youtube has a hegemony (see: near-monopoly) in the space.
If you want a paid video provider many exist.
Some way that for a user to have faith in the appeals process and purchase peace of mind. Just knowing that a backstop is there would help a great deal.
Historically, such systems are legislated against and are often made illegal.
Example: Suppose you are a cashier working in retail. If at the end of your shift your drawer is short for whatever reason, you cannot make up the difference out-of-pocket. Your managager would be commiting a crime by accepting your money.
The Rumble SPAC deal is interesting because it seems they may be the first company to have the capital to compete with Youtube. I have a strong feeling that once an actual competitor emerges, Youtube will tamp down on their censorship. They censor all day long now because they know creators don't have another option. Once that other option arises, the only thing that censorship will do for Youtube is loosing customers.
This is incredibly naive. All that would happen is both services would use similar automated systems for moderation - it is cheaper for them. They would have no incentive to provide good support.
We need regulations that require access to human judgement for digital services. When millions of people use a service, even a 1% error rate in moderation / account disabling has a real impact on a lot of peoples lives.
If you’re not a YouTube partner? You’re collateral damage that is baked into the design and considered acceptable by YouTube. Your value as an independent content creator is very low to them. The effort required to moderate independent creators is significantly higher than it is to moderate managed partners on a per-view basis. It’s a lot of work for small dollar amounts.
This is a pretty common situation we’ve seen play out over the last century. When a new media paradigm is established, there’s a land rush. But once the initial land rush is over, the industry regulates itself and consolidates for efficiency. The new media landscape eventually becomes the very thing they displaced. Ever wonder why YouTube has as many ads as broadcast TV these days?
Yes there is, see [0] - also posted by me in another reply in this thread, where I mention that my own YouTube account was suspended identically to OP earlier this year, but was restored 3-4 hours after filling out the form. The decision may or may not have been AI-driven, but I'm pretty sure there was a human in the loop behind the solution.
Don't mistake me for a Google fanboy - I had my primary Gmail account locked last week for daring to use a VPN, so I'm currently looking at de-Googling myself a bit. But to be fair, I was able to fix both issues within a few hours.
[0] https://support.google.com/accounts/contact/suspended?p=yout...
yikes I check my gmail behind a VPN semi regularly. Now I'm worried.
Since I wasn't trying to evade geoblocking, I now use a VPN that's set to my own city AND I shut down the applications on the headless machine. But that still leaves my phone sucking in mails on a non-VPN connection, and that's not so easy to fix, because I'm damned if I'll switch it off every time I need a VPN, or trouble myself to use a VPN on that too.
So, yeah, in general I'm worried too. Personally I think we'll look back on VPN use in five years the way that early 20thC cocaine addicts fondly remember when you could just buy the stuff over the counter without a scrip in pharmacies. Sorry to see China setting the pace on this one.
Think about how much a court case in the US costs - orders of magnitude more than a company could possibly afford to spend on moderation. Does everybody really think it's possible to design a process that's orders of magnitude cheaper without also being orders of magnitude less accurate?
I would hope that the reason that scaling is hard is because violators would spam the system. If there really are so many legitimate users losing access, then this is a huge problem that we need to hold companies legally accountable for.
What we need is a system that disincentives large companies from having too many false positives while disncentiving bad actors from using the appeals process.
> Think about how much a court case in the US costs - orders of magnitude more than a company could possibly afford to spend on moderation.
You shouldn't need a full court case, it seems like a small claims court type approach would be sufficient.
One answer is a solution is used in many places already is to allow the judge to assign court costs to one party or the depending on the facts of the case.
> Does everybody really think it's possible to design a process that's orders of magnitude cheaper without also being orders of magnitude less accurate?
I absolutely think it is feasible to build a system that doesn't cost too much vs. the level of supplementary accuracy it would provide. I also don't see how we have a choice. In this era where we own nothing and everything is a service, we absolutely need to be able to have accountability for the companies that provide those services. We can't just allow them to cut the services off at their whim with no legal recourse.
Legally accountable for what? They do not owe anyone free access to their service. If you're a paying subscriber then they do owe at least their choice of a refund or continued service until the end of the current subscription period—unless they can demonstrate that you were the one that broke the contract—but they are have no obligation to let you renew, any more than you are obligated to continue subscribing.
Google doesn't have a monopoly on much beyond their own brand and reputation. All the services they offer, including video hosting, can be found elsewhere. If you want to build your income stream on their brand ("Oh, but no one will be able to find me if I host my videos on PeerTube!") you do it on their terms.
The legally accountable for providing a product that doesn't cause undue harm to the population.
> They do not owe anyone free access
I pay for services from Google, so does the entire customer base of the play store. The user in the published article was a paying YouTube music customer.
> but they are have no obligation to let you renew,
I would disagree. When companies are allowed to become large enough that they have a significant effect on the ability for alternatives to compete in the marketplace, they assume an obligation to provide access to that marketplace to everyone. I absolutely do not buy that large service providers have the right to deny service to someone simply because they don't like them.
Additionally, when you form a business relationship, even when that relationship consists of exchanging your product for their data, there is am entirely reasonable expectation that the relationship won't be severed without cause. This is an expectation that enables commerce and it is to the benefit of a nation to enable those expectations where possible.
I would disagree. "Past performance is no guarantee of future results." There is no obligation to keep doing things the same way they've "always" been done. Every interaction is decided on a case-by-case basis. One does not forfeit freedom of (dis)association through mere inertia; one retains the right to make exceptions or to change one's mind.
> Additionally, when you form a business relationship, even when that relationship consists of exchanging your product for their data, there is am entirely reasonable expectation that the relationship won't be severed without cause.
I might be willing to buy that, to a point. The usual rule is that the expectations need to have a reasonable basis in the contract and any liability is limited to the direct impact of having those reasonable expectations disappointed. However, even paid services routinely disappear on short notice, for various reasons. Assuming that a paid service will be maintained well after the current subscription term elapses is not reasonable. Neither is assuming long-term access to a free service.
> … it is to the benefit of a nation to enable those expectations where possible.
Then "the nation" can very well lead the way by offering its own services (on a voluntary, non-tax-supported basis, naturally) and not by, in effect, nationalizing a private service by imposing its own terms.
We are not talking about a person, we are talking about a corporation. While there is certainly a value to freedom of disassociation for large corporations, I see no reason that freedom is not bounded by the right to have access to services that are available to the general public. We don't allow service to be terminated to people of a protected class, we don't allow service to be terminated explicitly to interference with your ability to compete.
> nationalizing a private service by imposing its own terms.
Regulating a business is not the same thing as nationalizing it. Trying to conflate such terms is not debating in good faith. Please try to think outside of your black and white partisan rhetoric and participate in a real discussion.
There is value, to Google, in those expectations being possible. Those expectations encourage people to do business with Google and trust Google with their data. Similar to the value of a stable currency or an incorrupt judicial system, these are expectations that enable the flow of commerce to the benefit of all. Creating a government run AppStore or YouTube fails to accomplish those goals and does nothing to enable commerce.
There is value in free enterprise and not restricting people's ability to find new ways to solve problems. That does not mean that large corporations have the right to treat people disposably. If we don't let ourselves get trapped in ideologically rigid thought we can find a way to balance these needs and rights in a fair way.
I would also note that these large companies don't actually want to terminate service to the users who would win on appeal. It is just that these companies don't want to pay to process appeals for spammers and fraudsters. Creating a system of fair and properly incentivized account adjudication could improve things for everyone.
I saw lots of stories here about Google, but I don't remember see one about how Microsoft blocks user account. Did I miss?
Anyway. Couple years ago, I received several email notifications from Microsoft about someone tried to reset my account password. I got a little bit concerned and eventually sent a feedback to Microsoft asking what I need to do. Surprise! I got a answering call from Microsoft by a real human!
Because of all the bad stories about Google blocks user accounts, I moved all my stuff to Microsoft products and my own NAS.
Paid email has many great providers like fastmail..
Microsoft doesn't offer a video platform so it doesn't really apply.
Sue them in small claims court for the value of your music library.