[HN Gopher] YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Gets 'Freedom Expression'...
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YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Gets 'Freedom Expression' Award
Sponsored by YouTube
Author : arprocter
Score : 253 points
Date : 2021-04-20 19:55 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newsweek.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newsweek.com)
| belval wrote:
| This reads like an headline from "The Onion".
| pjbk wrote:
| Crazy. Now that you say that, I honestly thought it was a
| parody even showing up here in HN. Took me a few seconds to
| realize it was not when reading the article, and had to watch
| part of the video to convince myself. But then again, most news
| these days read like an Onion article of yesteryears. Just sad,
| not funny anymore.
| thefounder wrote:
| Not long time ago all the daily news headlines looked like from
| "The Onion".
| jkingsbery wrote:
| There was also an episode of The Office (US) about this. Dwight
| suggests to Jim he starts an employee-of-the-month award, then
| rigs it so Jim wins so that everyone turns on Jim. Jim at least
| had the good sense to decline the award.
| munk-a wrote:
| We can't really tell what is going on behind the curtain but
| my optimistic view is that no one in the room realized that
| receiving this award would have some terrible optics and that
| the awarders chose YouTube genuinely - if you have a narrow
| view of the content on there (and nobody sees everything)
| there are some segments where youtube does try to reinforce
| free speech sorta... maybe I'm being too charitable though.
|
| My cynical hope though is that Youtube pressured the award
| committee to give them one for hosting it - please someone in
| Youtube leak a memo about putting pressure on the committee
| it would be so absolutely delicious.
| gscott wrote:
| Which YouTube would turn around and censor
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| This is a joke, right?
| whereis wrote:
| Youtube's algo gaslighted me about the suicide of a childhood
| friend, by picking content that mocked his life after I learned
| the bad news.
|
| I had already curated my feed to two specific science topics, and
| the top rec was a blaring million IQ evil AI punching me in the
| gut with an Iron Fist. I've never been the same since. Florence
| Nightingale effect.
|
| People such as Wojcicki have poor moral compasses, or they aren't
| accountable.
| all2 wrote:
| I want to hear more about this.
| calltrak wrote:
| The "book burners" of Youtube have deplatformed 10's of thousands
| of content creators if said content goes against the real owners
| agenda and in most cases just the truth thats not the official
| conspiracy theory.
|
| If you put up a comment they don't like they delete it..
|
| Freedom of speech award for this youtube. Now thats a joke!
| Speaking of jokes here is a joke.
|
| https://picc.io/p/tq2sFHU.png
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| They are learning from the entertainment industry. Industry
| insiders giving each other awards like the Grammy and Oscar.
| bilekas wrote:
| Could this be related to the Dunning-Kruger Effect ?
|
| Seems incredible naive and maybe oblivious to the actions that
| are being taken by YouTube (correctly or not)..
| geniium wrote:
| Is this some kind of joke? :/
| [deleted]
| qzw wrote:
| Aren't most industry awards really bought and paid for? Like the
| stuff they give out at conferences and from trade magazines.
| ardit33 wrote:
| Yeah, but it is not so brazen, as there are more levels of
| indirection. This is way out of touch form the people involved
| in this
| ainar-g wrote:
| Here[1] is the video. At the time of me writing this comment, the
| ratio is 53 likes to 15,486 dislikes.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDcvPf78g1k
| trident5000 wrote:
| Dont worry, they'll just get rid of those pesky little dislikes
| to form cognizant conformity as their sponsors want pretty
| soon.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think this reflects the fact that no one is particularly
| happy with Youtube. Between the bans, increasingly aggressive
| (and abusable) copyright strikes, and constantly shifting rules
| around content and monetization most Youtubers I watch express
| unhappiness about _some_ aspect of Youtube on a regular basis.
| Many have started seeking alternative revenue streams to
| mitigate platform risk.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I'm sorry, but I simply can't believe that "no one is
| particularly happy with YouTube" while so many people still
| use it, including the vast majority of the people who are
| supposedly "not particularly happy" with it.
|
| When people ask, "Why hasn't someone disrupted YouTube?" I
| think the more boring answer that keeps getting overlooked is
| that it still meets the expectations of enough users, and the
| dissatisfied constitute a small percentage.
|
| > Many have started seeking alternative revenue streams to
| mitigate platform risk.
|
| What's wild about this is that the content creators doing
| this _still_ use YouTube! Even after fully acknowledging the
| problems, and actively mitigating those negative
| consequences, they _still_ return to the platform.
|
| I just don't see how that'd happen if it were actually a
| "bad" service.
| rurp wrote:
| YouTube's brand and network effects are a huge moat, in a
| market that is massively expensive to build a competitor
| in. There are only a handful of companies in the world with
| the available tech talent and capital to create a serious
| competitor and they apparently aren't interested in trying
| to attack that moat at this time.
|
| YouTube can absolutely be widely disliked and keep chugging
| along for the foreseeable future. All it needs to do is not
| be so bad that people would rather spend their time on
| something completely different. There is no BingTube with a
| robust ecosystem that users can easily jump to.
| _jal wrote:
| Youtube wants to be a cable company. Every pageview over
| there is a pile of demands to subscribe and sign in, before
| you even get to the ads.
|
| The idea that I'd pay them $65/mo to not look at a bucket
| of ass when I browse over to Youtube is nuts. I don't pay
| for "real" cable, why would I pay $700/yr. for a video site
| I occasionally follow links to?
|
| If you don't like the word 'bad', try 'delusional'.
| [deleted]
| onepointsixC wrote:
| Youtube has operated at best break even revenue, but mostly
| at a loss for years. Who has the money necessary to do that
| for years and years?
| munk-a wrote:
| Microsoft could - along with Apple - but I think both of
| those companies are way too smart to try and enter the
| market now.
|
| Youtube gets a sort of pass for the crap it's pulling
| since it's pretty much alone (Sorry - who's this Vimeo
| fellow you're talking about?) but any other major video
| service would be held up in comparison against Youtube,
| as is the way with society, the negative will shine
| through. If you start writing video suggestion algorithms
| today how long will it take you to be confident that
| "Pussy cat strolling across the back porch on a wet
| afternoon" isn't immediately followed up by WAP?
| camjohnson26 wrote:
| Alphabet does. Most of their services run at a loss but
| they make so much from ad revenue it doesn't matter.
| Causality1 wrote:
| It's not an objectively bad service, in a vacuum. It's a
| bad service compared to itself from the past.
| camjohnson26 wrote:
| Where are they going to go? It's the only decently
| monetized platform.
| ainar-g wrote:
| > When people ask, "Why hasn't someone disrupted YouTube?"
| I think the more boring answer that keeps getting
| overlooked is that it still meets the expectations of
| enough users, and the dissatisfied constitute a small
| percentage.
|
| I've seen a couple of attempts come and go. The ones that
| wrote a post-mortem after closing often emphasised how many
| resources--human, software, and hardware--video hosting
| websites consume. Not even because of the storage or the
| reencoding, but the sheer amount of bandwidth one needs to
| run such things globally. And it won't get profitable until
| a few years later, if ever. The goog is simply one of the
| few companies that can actually afford doing that.
|
| I personally have been glad that alternatives like
| Nebula[1] are popping up still. Even if their model is
| different.
|
| [1]: https://watchnebula.com/
| t-writescode wrote:
| > I simply can't believe that "no one is particularly happy
| with YouTube" while so many people still use it
|
| Are you familiar with cable television?
| cbozeman wrote:
| More troll posts... I guess people haven't seen your
| username enough yet to realize what your game is, so on
| behalf of those who haven't picked up on it:
|
| The reason YouTube has no competitor yet is because you'd
| need $10 billion just to get the platform off the ground -
| that's servers, developers, datacenters, peering
| agreements, etc.
|
| Very few people have $10 billion lying around, and _no one_
| is interested in tackling Google on their home turf.
| munk-a wrote:
| Youtube being a place to put videos for free is pretty hard
| to casually compete with when your pockets need to match
| google's. I've been surprised to see YouTube actually
| partially out-compete twitch for streaming and entrench
| itself as a place where a lot of old media places its
| broadcast (from PBS to the Colbert Report).
|
| For the first time I think they've got a real competitor
| though - Nebula has managed to somehow eek out a year long
| survival and is now scooping up a lot of creators on the
| educational/informational side of things - and it looks
| like the platform is essentially a co-op structurally where
| everyone involved is getting a much larger share of the
| take home. I think the big question coming up for Nebula is
| what it will do about "The Algorithm" - will they try and
| create a suggested feed and invest into that sort of
| algorithmic video promotion or entrench harder into the
| "see what you subscribe" approach that will end up hurting
| small creator discoverability - oh also their platform
| needs some UX work but I don't think that will be a serious
| concern.
|
| The interesting long term view for me is that I think
| subscription based services are going to win out over the
| freemium ones as those freemium ones continue to dig deeper
| and deeper into the dark magics of advertiser based revenue
| - freemium services aren't free, instead of demanding cash
| for your product they're devaluving their product to recoup
| their costs.
| philwelch wrote:
| Nebula is in a rough place. It's essentially subsidized
| by CuriosityStream and many of their founding creators
| have pulled out of the project. More fundamentally,
| Nebula is explicitly curated, which isn't an inherently
| bad thing but it does mean they're unlikely to solve any
| "freedom of expression" issues with YouTube. I see Nebula
| less as a YouTube alternative and more as a premium
| monetization mechanism for the small clique of YouTubers
| who are involved in it.
| itronitron wrote:
| They're only mistake was not awarding this on April 1st.
| jasonfarnon wrote:
| they didn't rollout the no dislikes interface quick enough
| himinlomax wrote:
| Don't worry, Youtube is set to remove the dislike buttons.
| Udik wrote:
| > the ratio is 53 likes to 15,486 dislikes.
|
| Don't worry, Youtube has already proposed to hide dislikes
| numbers. That would be a good place to start.
| spiritplumber wrote:
| Kim Jong Un get 'Freedom Expression' Award Sponosred by North
| Korea
| okareaman wrote:
| This feels like a clever ad campaign by YouTube trying too hard
| to be ironic because Susan Wojcicki might actually deserve it
| andrewclunn wrote:
| The best comments on this thread are the dead ones. The best
| YouTubers are the banned ones. The best books are the burned
| ones.
| zackees wrote:
| 13k downvotes, 30 upvotes.
| coolspot wrote:
| It is 30 YouTube engineers testing if the upvote button still
| works on the video after receiving tickets from upper
| management saying that "it can't be that this video doesn't
| have thousands of upvotes".
| alwayshasbeen wrote:
| Reminds me of when the president of a warring nation once won the
| Nobel Peace Prize.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| He was given the award for outstanding achievement in "not
| being George W. Bush".
|
| One is very often compared to one's praedecessors.
| knuthsat wrote:
| Yeah, then he ended up being a bigger warmonger than Bush.
|
| But I believe OP meant other warmongers that got the prize
| too.
| carabiner wrote:
| They could just rename it the War Prize. Definitely the most
| controversial of the Nobels:
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nobel-prize-peace/war-and...
| iab wrote:
| I always think about Richard Feynmans take on awards and honors
| whenever these things get brought up:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fes-kqRDRoY
| realsimplesynd wrote:
| I wonder if there is a correlation between being super good
| and having a disdain for awards or not.
| capableweb wrote:
| Do you have a disdain for awards?
| Igelau wrote:
| You're going to have to be more specific than that :\
| speps wrote:
| He means Obama
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Obama's main achievement at the time he received the Noble
| was that he wasn't Bush. Worst peace prize ever.
| sneak wrote:
| GP meant this has happened more than once.
| ttt0 wrote:
| A brief story of free expression on YouTube:
|
| At some point they implemented what they called a 'Limited
| state', which stripped almost every functionality, like comments,
| likes, embedding or sharing on videos that _did not violate their
| ToS_ , but were simply disliked by YouTube. They removed it after
| a while, I assume because of Streisand effect, but I'm not sure.
|
| Then they changed their ToS that they could ban you for literally
| no reason whatsoever. They retracted that since as well, but are
| still doing basically just that, it just gives them plausible
| deniability I guess.
| bsaul wrote:
| it almost reads like an oil company sponsoring an environmental
| ngo working on wildlife preservation.
| ganafagol wrote:
| You mean slonsoring an environmental achievements award which
| the oil company wins itself?
| sigstoat wrote:
| that at least has some positive benefit.
| srcmap wrote:
| And the winner is Exxon.
| Grustaf wrote:
| No it doesn't. Oil companies do that all the time, and it's
| great that at least of their money go to something worthwhile.
|
| In your analogy, it would be like Shell awarding Shell for its
| environmental work, while not doing any.
| mkl wrote:
| Bigger discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26880262
| and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26875971
| nprz wrote:
| I'm not sure how the HN ranking algorithm works, but
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26880262 seems to have
| been removed from the front page despite receiving 350+ upvotes
| within an hour of posting.
| jdsully wrote:
| There is a "flamewar" filter that derates content with too
| many back and forth replies.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26880262
| idownvoted wrote:
| Just a misunderstanding. The "Free Expression" award goes to
| overachievers in the field of redefining the "expression" of
| "freedom".
|
| Hey, which soon-to-be-fired sub-contractor forgot to turn off the
| downvotes on YouTube?
| cryptica wrote:
| I refreshed the HN home page and, for a brief moment, on the same
| page there was "YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Gets 'Freedom
| Expression' Award Sponsored by YouTube" right above another link
| about YouTube CEO banning videos which don't align with COVID19
| WHO guidelines...
|
| We live in a clown world.
|
| Even if people thought that what she did was a good thing (which
| is debatable), it's a ridiculous idea to reward someone for
| enabling 'free speech' when in fact they've been suppressing it.
|
| That makes no sense at all. It's cringeworthy that anyone would
| not realize that this award is a prank.
|
| I wonder if the people who issued this award and the person
| receiving it know that it's a prank...
| jollybean wrote:
| Let this be a lesson to all: intelligence does not in any way
| correlate with self awareness. It's likely that 'smart' people
| are just as likely to be unaware of their own follies or
| inabilities, I would argue, maybe more so as a lot of smart
| people tend to be 'inwardly focused' and less concerned about
| their direct environment.
|
| This kind of thing happens all the time among Exec. level, but
| normally we'd expect it from Ford CEO, not Google types. It may
| be an odd sign of industry maturity.
|
| That said, we shouldn't discount how often this kind of stuff
| actually does work. Watching the crowd at the Oracle conf. eat up
| Larry Ellison's huffery as through he was some kind of market
| visionary was the lesson at the other end of the spectrum, and
| it's that 'If you're rich and stand on stage and say something
| that 'sounds credible', a lot of people with just believe it'. Of
| course there's more to it than that.
|
| But this one is Comedy Gold.
|
| It might be a sign that Susan does not have a fully trusted team
| around her ... I would beg my boss in stark words to not do
| something so ridiculous to themselves.
| paganel wrote:
| > It's likely that 'smart' people are just as likely to be
| unaware of their own follies or inabilities,
|
| Just look at the recent debacle with the proposed (and now
| thankfully failed) football SuperLeague in Europe, you have 12
| billionaire owners thinking that they could go ahead with
| killing the spirit of the game that is ingrained in the social
| fabric of the continent just like that, almost by fiat.
| pulse7 wrote:
| "It might be a sign that Susan does not have a fully trusted
| team around her ..." => It might be a sign that team around her
| is afraid to tell her how ridiculous this is... Maybe they made
| good proposals in the past and where turned down and they now
| don't want to make good suggestions again...
| waterhouse wrote:
| I'm currently tickling my brain with the hypothesis that this
| is a next-level move by her team, to get her to publicly
| "emphasize the importance of free speech and the role that
| YouTube plays in protecting it", so that it will become more
| inconvenient for her (or for the rest of Youtube) to do more
| things that interfere with free speech.
|
| Analogize this to publicly praising a corrupt general for
| doing or planning something good that he hasn't actually been
| doing. It's difficult for him to turn down the praise ("No, I
| seriously haven't done anything to deserve this"), and
| meanwhile it focuses eyes on him and pressures him to
| actually _do_ the thing. I read about the tactic in a
| fictional book once, I 'm sure it works. :-)
| cbozeman wrote:
| Well that won't work... former President Barack Obama
| received the Nobel Peace prize but he went on to involve
| the United States in additional foreign wars and went ham
| with drone strikes.
| ajxs wrote:
| > "...so that it will become more inconvenient for her (or
| for the rest of Youtube) to do more things that interfere
| with free speech."
|
| This is a good theory, I don't think it reflects the
| situation though. She used her 'acceptance speech' for this
| absurd accolade to emphasise the importance of censorship
| in ensuring freedom, that war is peace, freedom is slavery,
| so on so on. If this was the aim, it clearly didn't work.
|
| Given her speech, the irony is either totally lost on her,
| or she legitimately thinks that YouTube is such a
| monolithic entity that the truth is whatever she says it
| is.
| slickrick216 wrote:
| It might be worse. They could actually believe they are
| promoting freedom of expression by silencing people. Pushed
| straight past delusion into faith.
| Grustaf wrote:
| I think it says much more about how they see the consumers.
| They're probably counting on 99% of people not noticing the
| absurdity of it, or the irony in boasting about your industrial
| scale censorship when accepting your free speech award.
| belval wrote:
| Yeah but even then I feel it shows they do not understand
| their audience. Hating on Javascript/consoles/Windows/OS X is
| something we nerds do. Free speech on YouTube is something
| I've seen discussed in friends groups that I would consider
| "normal people".
| itronitron wrote:
| It also indicates to me that the leadership at Alphabet is
| totally out to lunch. I would have thought they had the sense
| to stop this but apparently not.
| cryptica wrote:
| I would even make the case that self-awareness and success may
| be inversely correlated in fact.
|
| I've heard many people say similar things over the years... Why
| is that? Is it some kind of kin selection? Is this total lack
| of self-awareness a requirement for getting into positions of
| power?
|
| It's so obvious, I even wonder if they're just pretending to be
| hypocrites? It seems so simple and obvious, how can they not
| see the logical contradiction?
|
| Are most of our leaders complete nutjobs?
|
| Maybe humanity is a hierarchy with all the nutjobs at the top,
| mirroring back their insanity inside their filter bubbles; not
| realizing that their lives have nothing to do with reality.
| jollybean wrote:
| It's probably a lop sided u-shape. Most people lacking in
| self-awareness are either really smart or true outcasts, with
| 'high conscientious + good communicators' occupying most
| middle management ... but it does take a kind of hubris
| sometimes to overlook one's faults, even worse, to completely
| ignore them otherwise. Without being controversial I see
| hints of this in Jobs, Ellison, Trump, Musk, Page, Zuck etc.
| (again I'm not condemning here, if any one of us put our
| thoughts online consistently there'd be a few we would
| seriously regret).
| zouhair wrote:
| "Smart" and "educated" people are the easiest to fool[0].
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbwWL5ezA4g
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Isn't it standard practice not to allow people involved in the
| process to participate?
|
| I mean, even if you deserve it, it is an obvious conflict of
| interest and makes the award worthless.
|
| I mean, if say, Tesla sponsors an electric car award and a Tesla
| car wins, it will sound like a farce. Even though it would be
| expected for a Tesla car to win an electric car award in an
| independent contest.
| mc32 wrote:
| At least at radio stations they have the decency to not
| publicly allow their staff to win on-air prizes.
| rodgerd wrote:
| Perhaps Google can give themselves an "Ethics in AI" award, while
| they're at it.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| This is the most Soviet thing I've heard in a while. The Ministry
| of Culture awards itself for upholding the Soviet principles of
| cultural enlightenment!
| JoshTko wrote:
| For the past few months, my youtube recommendations have gone
| down noticeably in quality. I really wonder what management is
| prioritizing.
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(page generated 2021-04-20 23:01 UTC)