Comment by laumars | Hacker News Reader

Comment by laumars | Hacker News Reader

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> Which uploaders?

I gave examples.

> Well those aren't going to be monetized or affected by this kind of thing.

I’m pretty sure they’ll be affect by their channel getting suspended ;)

> And if youtube goes weird they can use any other video host; they don't need youtube or its userbase.

It’s not as straightforward as you suggest when busy orgs with no dedicated IT resource has to re-upload thousands of hours of training material to a new platform they likely haven’t heard of before.

You’re point of view here is pretty narrow compared to how the wider usage of YT.

> it should improve a lot while having roughly zero downside

In my experience the people who claim “zero downsides” are the last people who should be making business decisions. Every design has a trade off and all too often there are unforeseen consequences too. If you honestly believe there are zero downsides then you haven’t spent long enough in the industry at the level of seniority required to understand the the consequences.

Sorry if this sounds condescending but I’ve worked with so many engineers who have believed they shit gold only for them to discover they knew far less about the job then they believed they did.

> I gave examples

I think they meant specific examples (as opposed to hypothetical or vague examples)

> I’m pretty sure they’ll be affect by their channel getting suspended ;)

Unless I'm misunderstanding the other guy incorrectly, what they're proposing is additive.

If I understand right, you're essentially saying "But people without manual moderation might be unfairly impacted by automation".

But it's a bigger problem without the custom moderation the other guy is suggesting?

> In my experience the people who claim “zero downsides” are the last people who should be making business decisions.

Fortunately, it sounds like the other guy isn't making any business decisions in this specific context. So why not just stick to addressing the (de)merits of their suggestion, and leave the veiled insults out?

> Every design has a trade off and all too often there are unforeseen consequences too.

Stating a self-apparent truism doesn't bring much value either. Even if someone here wasn't aware of this idea, stating it as an abstract doesn't really help the discussion much, and seems like a bad faith comment to make.

> If you honestly believe there are zero downsides then you haven’t spent long enough in the industry at the level of seniority required to understand the the consequences.

Attacking the guys seniority doesn't add any value and is a fallacy. If you seriously believe there are downsides, why not state them instead of insulting the dude?

> Sorry if this sounds condescending but I’ve worked with so many engineers who have believed they shit gold only for them to discover they knew far less about the job then they believed they did.

My dude, this doesn't just sound condescending, it is condescending. This trailing comment borders on outright gaslighting.

The fact you're aware it is condescending but decide to say it anyway means you're not sorry either - otherwise you wouldn't have said it in the first place?

I'll spare you a self-righteous diatribe about bitter, unempathetic co-workers, since I'm sure you'll agree it's not relevant.

I’m management now and definitely an empathetic one. But there’s plenty of studies about the assumptions people make about their own capabilities

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

So the moment someone confidently posts an absolute like “zero downsides”, I immediately see red flags that perhaps that person hasn’t fully explored that solution.

This is compounded by the fact that there are no shortage of cognitive biases (such as, but not limited to, the Ikea Effect) that can lead one to overestimate the value of their own ideas.

So when I see absolutes, that’s always a queue for me to engage in a deeper discussion with the individual to ensure their confidence is justified.

> So why not just stick to addressing the (de)merits of their suggestion,

I had up until then. They couldn’t look past their idea and replied that there was zero downsides to it. Hence the concern I raised.

> Attacking the guys seniority doesn't add any value and is a fallacy

Fair point. It wasn’t a tactful response. Thank you for pointing that out :)

> I think they meant specific examples (as opposed to hypothetical or vague examples)

I gave a specific example and the other suggestions were anything but vague.

You dont even need to look far to see my point, just look at the videos submitted to HN and you’ll see that YT is more than just internet personalities adding content for monetisation:

https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=youtube.com

You gave an example of something that wouldn't change and called it a downside. So yes you need to do better than that for examples.

If you're taking a "no free lunch" approach, the downside is that it costs money to hire these people. Does that make the balance clearer?

Adding human review to more decisions, and changing nothing else, can possibly cause some problems but they should be very minor compared to the number of robot-caused problems they will fix.

> I gave examples.

If those are your only examples, I addressed them the line after that. Please take my comment as a whole.

> Every design has a trade off and all too often there are unforeseen consequences too. If you honestly believe there are zero downsides

It's always possible something somewhere could go wrong but "don't change anything on smaller videos" is pretty hard to screw up! If that's too risky, then your standards are too high and you interpreted "roughly zero" much too precisely.

If you’re waiting until a few hundred thousand views before moderating a video then you’re already too late.

And if you think ignoring millions of unpopular videos watched by thousands of people (in many cases, each) isn’t risky then you’ve underestimated the scale of content on YT.

I don’t even think the “roughly” disclaimer will save you at YTs scale.

> If you’re waiting until a few hundred thousand views before moderating a video then you’re already too late.

Oh. I'm not suggesting that at all. I'm saying that bigger videos should get a better system, and smaller videos can use the current system.

It's minimally risky because it doesn't change anything for those videos. They get the current treatment.

I think "No change -> roughly zero downside." is a reasonable conclusion, at least for those videos.

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