YouTube: Due to limited creator history we're limiting the number of views
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I’ve never seen this in the wild, and technically without a link I still haven’t seen it live at all. I’m wondering if the channel triggered some sort of anti-spam mechanism.
EDIT: The only source I can find is from screenshots of right-wing Twitter accounts suggesting something about YouTube censoring anti-vax protests: https://m.imgur.com/dh1kU1q Until someone can link to an actual video showing this issue, I’d approach this with an extremely high degree of skepticism.
EDIT 2: Appears to only apply to live streams from new accounts. Seems like a reasonable limitation to clamp down on the spread of copyrighted material rebroadcasting (people live streaming sports and such from throwaway accounts) and cryptocurrency scams.
Might be an unpopular opinion, but I think this is fine. YouTube is a platform for content creators and they don’t want their services becoming a platform for throwaway viral live broadcasts.
Regardless of cause though, it would make YouTube a worse platform for live citizen journalism.
lol.
"Several livestreams posted on Google’s platform last weekend by truckers protesting in Canada have had their audience limited... This creator explained that they have had the channel for seven years, with 90 videos and several streams..."
A recent change to the system to tamp down on resharing copyrighted data would catch those kinds of streams in the "blast radius," so to speak. Such a change would not be targeting that very specific type of content the GP comment describes. The source does not support that interpretation with sufficient evidence.
How does limiting the number of viewers of a stream by a small channel help? Well, it means that stream with a large number of viewers is done by somebody in good standing and with something to lose (i.e. their popular channel) if they break the TOS. You can't just create a new channel for the purposes of abuse.
Frankly, I’m glad to see they’re doing something about it.
You know a very good way to control what is and is not part of the public discourse? Allow only those with a lot to lose the privilege of speaking. Those creators with skin in the game will think twice about saying something that the "platform" doesn't like, and it isn't even censorship - it is self imposed, so nobody can complain about it.
Limiting new accounts is a common, and often necessary, feature in most internet platforms. Even HN will limit how fast new accounts can post and highlights new users in green.
If HN allowed new users to sign up and immediately post hundreds of comments or links, it would be inundated with spam and abuse. Likewise, YouTube requires new accounts to demonstrate some actual traction before they’re allowed to livestream to huge audiences because the feature was being used for abuse.
Youtube is long gone from non-commercial use and for me the platform is a lot less interesting, although there still is good stuff on it. But so many people want to go back to church. Every measure is a punch in the wherever curiosity is situated in the body...
Which is why spammers & scammers compromise existing channels and stream there. It happened to one I'm subscribed to; they completely renamed the channel and started broadcasting what looked like a crypto newscast which I'm sure eventually pivoted to a promotion for some scam.
Is it possible to get more nuanced clarity on this? The word "anti-vax" used to mean one thing, but today can refer to somebody who is against mandates.
The account that streamed it on YT had some livestreams a year ago with 10s of views, and nothing recent except the stream in question which lists 1400 views.
So this does seem to fit the pattern of restricting livestreams from suddenly popular accounts. My best guess is that this has been done to combat scams and fraud, and that politically charged livestreams are collateral damage.
Over 50 subs and under 1000 subs == streaming is limited via mobile.
It doesn't matter how old your account, either -- I have an account with only 28 subscribers (somehow?) for several years and I get the same limitations on mobile streaming, namely that I can't even stream.
Technical workaround would be to set up a stream via desktop and use my phone as an RTMP source... but that's just a kludge.
Old accounts are still hotbeds of spam... There are plenty of spammers who signed up for 100,000 gmail accounts back in 2010 when there were no good captchas, and have left them mostly idle till now, and can now sell them to others to use for spamming.
Went to jail for eight years. First thing I do when I get out.. how many views did I get on YouTube while I was gone?!
I think the answer is still related to censorship. Streamers with lots of history also got throttled.
So, ask yourself, why would YouTube need to throttle in the first place? Who is giving all these protest-streamers their first 300 viewers, making them rise in the live-streaming rankings and exposing millions to anti-mandate protests?
I think YouTube is under attack. I think they learned from live-streams during George Floyd protests, which, incidentally, I also was exposed to, even though not caring too much about that. I think throttling is an attempt to avoid the artificial boosting of divisive and polarizing content.
I really do not want to turn this into a conspiracy theory, though Mark Zuckerberg did offer for Facebook to make some changes, with the rest blacked out under "secret weapon" technology. After experiments done on Facebook on emotional contagion, surely, they must have ways to, instead of rile up an entire populace, calm them down. We are at an age where a single out-of-context video of alleged police brutality can shut down the economy.
Edit: copyright - and ad fraud make little sense to me, since the videos could still be viewed when subscribing to the channel or logging out. If detected as fraudulent, the stream should go offline without warning.
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9228390
>Requirements To live stream on mobile, you’ll need: At least 50 subscribers. No live streaming restrictions within the last 90 days on your channel. To verify your channel. To enable live streaming. You may need to wait 24 hours before you can start your first live stream. An Android 5.0+ device.
>Why is my mobile live stream’s audience limited? To help aspiring creators while protecting the community, we've created safeguards to limit the spread of potentially harmful content.
Will they implement the same rate limiting for apps in the Play Store or sending emails from new Gmail accounts?
New support articles coming soon...
Why is my app's audience limited? Why is sending emails from Gmail limited? Why is sharing my Google Doc limited?
Assuming it is real however, this is another baffling decision Youtube has made in recent months. I assume the thought behind this is to try maximize their walled garden in some way, but unlike other sites Youtube has such a long history of being embedded in external sites that they can't block all external access all at once. However, the main continued success of Youtube is arguably the emergence of new viral videos that boost new blood into a position of becoming a long-term profitable creator. This is being done in the name of "small creators" but it seems apparent this will have the opposite effect.
This appears to only be for live streams, not uploaded videos.
The livestream feature has been heavily abused to promoted cryptocurrency scams and rebroadcast copyright material (sports games), among other things. Livestreams are also likely the most computationally expensive videos (on a per-viewer basis) and tend to run for hours, unlike a 10-minute cacheable video.
Honestly this seems reasonable. They don’t want the platform to become a livestream free-for-all and they’re already under fire for hosting scams and misinformation content. Limiting the reach of livestreams from new accounts is fair.
And, a moron of a product manager was responsible for trying to word that into an error message that a billion people can understand.
>Assuming it is real however, this is another baffling decision Youtube has made in recent months... This is being done in the name of "small creators" but it seems apparent this will have the opposite effect.
A few months ago, people with under a thousand subscribers couldn't livestream at all. I think for 99% of situations, "livestreaming with limitations" is going to be a step above "no livestreaming" (unless you think livestreaming in general is bad, and I can see the merits of that viewpoint)
Hope Youtube doesn't become just another mouthpiece for only government approved narratives like TV.
This is already the case. Things like the lab leak theory were getting people banned for months before it suddenly became ok to talk about once the mainstream news channels started talking about it. This is why the label "misinformation" is dangerous. Anything can be deemed misinformation depending on who the fact checker is or the sources they use.
In 2022, the lab leak theory isn't so dangerous to talk about, and China is making waves about Taiwan.
It's all about the time and the place. Sometimes it's better to keep quiet for now. That's not a conspiracy, it's strategy.
I don't think anyone reputable is saying that anything was intentionally released, but I think its quite obvious at this point that something was accidentally released and the CCP is very focused on covering it up to save face.
It is inevitable that YT is changing. Shareholders need to be payed.
I have a small YT channel for local OSM chapter with 15k views & 300 subs, good to know they could fuck me over if I ever try to make a live stream that would blow up... Not that I ever had more than two dozen viewers, but social media engagement has proven to me to be very unpredictable in both upside and downside.
> protests, since they were organized by truckers opposed to Covid vaccine mandates.
It is not a good idea for me. If I want official information, I know where to find it.
If I want to read about young men getting a heart attack one week after taking a vaccine, if I want to see how the pandemic is forming in China before going global, if I want to know how Indians combated flu epidemics with flavanoids, then I need to pass by the gate-keepers, and the experts who do not care about my personal health, just that as much people are vaccinated as possible.
But according to you that is not a good idea. I am not allowed to form my own opinion, because you think that opinion is damaging (perhaps even to you). It is a fact that all vaccines in existence increase miscarriages. But, especially after 2020, increasingly hard to find. Please do not think it is a good idea to tell a white lie, so less intelligent people go along with the government. It is not a strong-man, but to me, that is your position. Trying to curb that with feedback and debate, not censorship.
There are people still on HackerNews right now, who were back then talking about overreactions, and it just being a flu, and that masks promote xenophobia and do nothing. That must weigh really heavy on their mind, or perhaps they got with (vaccination) program, and if you downvote it quickly, it does not exist to bother your own manipulated decision-making gaffe.
Yes, I am saying a horrible thing: you want to mandate a treatment for non-at-risk people, which can give them permanent damage or even cause death. But what is more concerning? Me saying a horrible thing? Or you condemning a pregnant woman to miscarriage, because the message needs to be that the vaccine is 100% safe?
Stuck between censor-happy left, and anti-science right, and both reduce my right and duty to be an informed citizen.
What? It just being a flu is an argument that I only seen from anti-vax... never been a thing here but would be happy to be proven wrong.
> and that masks promote xenophobia and do nothing.
Never seen this also, could you show me? The best I have seen in the past was that a mask in the wrong hands do no good, which is true when you need 100x more mask than you got, which was the case at the time.
> you want to mandate a treatment for non-at-risk people, which can give them permanent damage or even cause death.
I'm curious how you define non-at-risk people too? Covid was not a risk for them but vaccine was? That's weird how the virus works ;). Whatever you fear from the vaccine, you can fear the same from the virus... except that from the virus, the numbers are incredibly much worse. Why would we use the vaccine if that wasn't the case? We would be stuck with the exact same issues.
Non-at-risk people are young people without co-morbidities or overweight. These have a similar risk profile as for influenza. At-risk people are older people, and since the decisions are made by older people, these decisions mostly favor their own pockets and peace of mind.
There are groups of non-at-risk people, with naturally acquired immunity (because these worked in supermarkets, when older powerful people had the luxury of work-from-home), for which taking the vaccine has more to fear than contracting COVID. For them, taking the vaccine still helps with pressure on hospitals, the at-risk elderly decision-makers, and aiding economic recovery. Helpful. Selfless. We are in this together. But scared into, or mandated into, or forced into taking the vaccine "for their own good".
Then it will be from known source right? And not from new source like this system is blocking you from, right?
This is against NEW content, from people that are not known.
Once more people see them, once you keep watching them as you believe in them, then yeah that restriction will disappear. There's a reason why this is asking people to subscribe...
Centralized : Dailymotion, Bitchute, Rumble, DTube, Vimeo, Vidlii, DLive, Triller
Decentralized : Odysee(LBRY), Peertube
The number of platforms that allow free live-streaming to huge audiences is much smaller because it’s a relatively expensive thing to do.
Better yet, do so on peertube.
But the reality is this is simple and yet brilliant approach to stop misinformation and policy violators. May be even lazy approach to avoid doing the hard work. What does any policy offenders usually do? Create new accounts and post the same misinformation slightly modified.
Between Youtube and PlayStore, google has seen enough of this trends. I am surprised it even took them this long to limit virality of new accounts.