[HN Gopher] Tell HN: YouTube is banning accounts that support Uk...
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Tell HN: YouTube is banning accounts that support Ukraine
Reddit is now full of reports of people (and their channels)
getting banned for supporting Ukraine or even just watching related
live streams. Reddit is also censoring and removing these reports..
https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/t13wyv/im_banned_a...
https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/t13h44/so_youtube_...
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t147c3/defending_u...
Author : foxfluff
Score : 889 points
Date : 2022-02-25 14:05 UTC (8 hours ago)
| itchyjunk wrote:
| I am not sure about watching, but a few different streamer have
| said showing dead bodies other other list of things can get you
| banned. Some streamer I was watching mentioned that even violent
| gun fights and other things might get you in trouble. They were
| watching videos first without showing it to make sure it was
| safe.
|
| I also wonder if youtube is trying to do detect propaganda
| somehow. Some videos were clearly using old/altered clips and
| making claims about the war. This might be factoring in too.
| Unfortunately, no actual detail is provided of what exactly was
| the trigger. Even some of the reddit thread seems to have
| disappeared.
|
| In my humble opinion, HN is a file place to be outraged about
| something some company/person has not but not really that good of
| a place if there is no data/information/real indication/ that
| something bad has happened. I am happy to listen to counter
| points.
| lmilcin wrote:
| I think larger interesting problem here is possibility of those
| huge corporations taking sides in wars.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I don't know. I think it would have been good if IBM had taken
| sides during WWII instead of helping Germany build the
| infrastructure for genocide.
|
| It's usually not that clear cut, but the war in Ukraine has a
| clear unilateral nature (aggressor is pretty obvious). It's not
| crazy for western companies to echo western values and
| interests in such situations.
|
| Edit: Consider the alternative, where western companies
| maintain "neutrality" and help oppressive regimes surveil their
| citizens or spread propaganda at home and abroad. This seems
| like a great way for western democracy to shoot itself in the
| head.
| moistly wrote:
| Corporations don't much care what system of federal
| governance is in use. Heck, it's arguable that they prefer
| dictatorships and oligarchies: easier to bribe.
|
| If the West expects corporations to ensure democracy
| prevails, the West will fail.
| bedast wrote:
| It's probably worth noting that these are livestreams which have
| chat enabled. You are automatically added as a participant, and
| show up on the participant list, which anyone can see. I suspect
| watching, say, the WaPo livestream is fine because they have
| disabled chat and comments. If you must go to one of these
| livestreams, for some reason, check to see if chat is enabled,
| and if so, probably avoid it until Youtube figures out how to
| deal with this.
| rcoveson wrote:
| @dang, I'm speaking from a position of ignorance here, but I
| think this thread is getting flagged, given its age, score, and
| position on the (currently) second page. It's possible that it
| has triggered some other less-documented condition, like
| "political keywords + too many upvotes?" or something, in which
| case disregard.
|
| If it is the flagging, I think we can agree that if any political
| thread were ever HN-appropriate then this one is. It would also
| be nice to have confirmation one way or another, since if it has
| been that fact in and of itself becomes part of the conversation.
| Dolores12 wrote:
| Probably what happens is that people are being reported for
| saying something in chat that others don't like. X reports and
| your account is terminated automatically.
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| On the other hand, Facebook has temporarily lifted its ban on the
| Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian neo-nazi paramilitary group.
|
| https://theintercept.com/2022/02/24/ukraine-facebook-azov-ba...
| browningstreet wrote:
| When Google bans an account like this, and that account is a
| Premium subscriber, do they automatically cancel the
| subscription?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I presume so, else Google would get sued for charging for a
| service not delivered.
| Avamander wrote:
| Google's approach to abuse has a lot of false positives and false
| negatives but no proper way to remedy either of them.
|
| The spiciest example I can think of is one Estonian parish being
| marked as belonging to Russia, even right this moment, on Google
| Maps.
| kilnr wrote:
| I wasn't aware you can see what others are watching. How does one
| do that?
| foxfluff wrote:
| On a live stream there's chat and in the "..." menu you can
| click to see participants.
| whitepaint wrote:
| What the hell?!?!
| mistrial9 wrote:
| yeah - add to that the Google AUTH with location records,
| and you get the New New Tech scene
| baud147258 wrote:
| I think you need to have posted something in the chat for
| your account to appear there
| penjelly wrote:
| its crazy to me this can occur for _any_ reason, even if they
| blame the algo, most companies would not be able to get away with
| something like this without a major effect on their reputation.
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| I'd be willing to wager money this is a cyber operation by a
| nation state weaponizing YT's automated systems.
| ziml77 wrote:
| That's what the first reddit post is saying. Which makes sense
| to me. If YouTube had an interest in blocking support of
| Ukraine, they wouldn't have replaced the COVID news section on
| the main page with one for the Ukraine invasion news. All of
| the US mainstream media (except for one) is taking a pro-
| Ukrainian sovereignty angle, and that's what shows in the news
| area.
|
| Seems like Google needs to disable autobans triggered by user
| reports until they have a solution to filter out the reports
| originating from Russian-operatred bots.
| djrogers wrote:
| > All of the US mainstream media (except for one) is taking a
| pro-Ukrainian sovereignty angle
|
| Which one would that be? I haven't seen a single US media
| outlet saying this is a good thing...
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Which one would that be? I haven't seen a single US media
| outlet saying this is a good thing...
|
| Fox is taking a more strongly pro-Russian stance than most
| other networks.
| graphpercolator wrote:
| xanaxagoras wrote:
| I don't watch Fox News generally so I can't speak to that
| (though I doubt it). I do watch Tucker Carlson - easily
| their top rated program - and the notion that he is
| taking a pro-Russian stance is patently false.
| selectodude wrote:
| Russian state television does not agree with you.
|
| https://twitter.com/johnkruzel/status/1496905740203827205
| yonaguska wrote:
| So should poster trust his own experience with his own
| eyes or Russian state television?
|
| If an observation is also repurposed as a propaganda
| piece, does that negate the validity of said observation?
|
| I can't stand this bit of logical fallacy that's being
| used to stifle discussion. You asserted X, but so did
| some objectionable entity. Therefore, X is false, and you
| are just as bad as said objectionable entity.
| selectodude wrote:
| The poster should maybe have some introspection that if
| he thinks that Tucker Carlson isn't disgustingly pro-
| Putin, and Russian state television disagrees so
| vigorously that they literally threw him up there with
| subtitles to show how pro-Putin he is, maybe he's, you
| know, wrong about his assertion.
| PenguinCoder wrote:
| > I do watch Tucker Carlson
|
| Why? What does watching his shows or segments get you?
| coffeecat wrote:
| He's obnoxious, but also funny and entertaining. It's a
| guilty pleasure, not an alternative to intelligent
| commentary. Enjoyable for the same reasons as South Park.
| coolso wrote:
| It's crazy how many news organizations are complaining
| about Russian propaganda, and then out of the other side
| of their mouths are using propaganda to strongly imply if
| not outright state (falsely) that Fox is supporting
| Russia and Putin's invasion.
|
| The media's "don't question or stray from what we tell
| you to think in the slightest or we'll use whatever name
| we want to drag your name and character through the mud"
| just makes me and everyone else distrust the media even
| more.
| ziml77 wrote:
| I'm specifically not calling them out since their opinion
| may have shifted since the latest escalations of the
| conflict.
|
| I added that parenthetical because I expected without it
| that I might see an onslaught of comments from people
| saying that not all of the US mainstream media is in
| agreement that Russia is in the wrong here. But it's
| sounding like the parenthetical actually makes my statement
| wrong... I lost the coin flip I guess
| selectodude wrote:
| A decent amount of Fox News programming is ending up on
| Russian state television to show that the US supports the
| invasion into Ukraine.
| leereeves wrote:
| Can you cite any examples? Looking at Fox's coverage
| online [1], I don't see anything suggesting the US (or
| Fox) supports the invasion.
|
| 1:
| https://www.foxnews.com/category/world/conflicts/ukraine
| selectodude wrote:
| https://twitter.com/johnkruzel/status/1496905740203827205
| kube-system wrote:
| This is unquestionably the case. Manipulating the flow of
| information has been part of Warfare 101 for thousands of
| years. Russia's manipulation of social media is mature and well
| documented, during times of non-war. The idea that they would
| make use of those capabilities during wartime is not just
| plausible, it's just as plainly predictable as "the soldiers
| guns probably shoot bullets".
| tootie wrote:
| I think there's multiple things going on. One is coordinated
| reporting spam from Russia, two is actual misinformation being
| posted (tons of Ukraine videos being shared are fake) and mix
| in the general churn of abusive user behavior (trolling) and
| YT's moderation algos just can't keep up. I sincerely doubt YT
| is actively suppressing relevant information on Ukraine.
| Especially at a company founded by Soviet emigres. It's a very
| hard thing to get right at scale and they just can't do it.
| sharken wrote:
| It's safe to say that Russian state-sponsored hacker groups
| have become more skilled since 2017 where NotPetya struck:
|
| https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/news/russian-military-almost-certain...
|
| It's not farfetched to think they have something worse planned.
| dr_faustus wrote:
| On the other hand, RT is still happily streaming on YouTube,
| spouting their non-sense. German viewers is not even IP blocked,
| even though the have lost their broadcasting license.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I mean, Fox News and One America News Network are still on
| there as well.
| KingKaram wrote:
| somethoughts wrote:
| Perhaps a happy medium for Youtube and other content hosters
| might be to disaggregate content uploads into two buckets of
| service:
|
| 1.) Generalized content hosting that has minimal oversight with
| commenting, upvotes and monetization, etc. Basically "bring your
| own audience" Vimeo style.
|
| 2.) More carefully moderated content that gets reviewed by human
| moderators/stricter opinionated screening filters before it is
| pushed into the auto-recommendation engine/viral feed algorithm.
|
| This blind viral content also based solely on uplikes seems a bit
| too blind/automated.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Everyone keep an eye on
| https://youtube.com/channel/UCXZs3e_VSlYgrUuTqm3GgVA
|
| They have been posting very consistently and frequently. They
| went from tens of subscribers two days ago, to over 100K as of
| like 12 hours ago. They're putting in the work.
| batch12 wrote:
| The chilling effect of this should be taken in account too. Once
| this is more widely reported, I can see many people choosing to
| avoid these sources of information even after bans are lifted
| because they are afraid of losing their google account.
| TekMol wrote:
| What is the state of decentralized (ake Web3) video hosting
| platforms?
|
| Are they ready to fill the gap to some extend?
|
| I think this is a typical use case for the decentralized
| approach?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Well there are a few 'alternative' social networks, but they
| weren't very successful (gab, parler, truth social is the
| latest one iirc).
| can16358p wrote:
| This is what I exactly want, and I believe it will happen in
| the long run. We need a convenient/fast/reliable way of hosting
| content in global scale and incentivize who host content.
|
| Still not there, once it gets there it will revolutionize
| media.
|
| Yet we definitely need something different than BitTorrent,
| Tor, or IPFS. Something that incentivizes hosting and creation
| of an economy around this is a must.
| Jabbles wrote:
| OK what seems more plausible: YT is banning people simply for
| watching a live stream that _they are hosting_ , or that these
| reports are mistaken or part of a disinformation campaign by a
| country known for them.
| foxfluff wrote:
| One report came to me personally from a small local IRC channel
| (less than 100 people) from a person who's been around for
| years. I trust them 100%.
| rurp wrote:
| The most plausible explanation I've seen is that Youtube's
| reporting algorithm is being gamed. It's a known weakness that
| Google has had no interest in fixing in the past.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| Given what we know about YT's gameable enforcement mechanisms,
| probably the former.
| rr808 wrote:
| Most of Russian side social media is on Telegram. Does anyone
| even know if they ban people or moderate content?
| throwthere wrote:
| We'll this is just massively embarrassing for YouTube. The Reddit
| thread will get picked up by National media. YouTube will say the
| reporting was misuse of their terms and was a cyberattack from
| state level actors implying their reporting algo isn't actually
| at fault. They will mention that the automated algo protects
| children and at risk people. They will then reinstate the
| accounts and say they are sorry for the temporary inconvenience
| and pleased that they could respond so swiftly. And the algos
| won't change, not one bit. And there will still be no human
| oversite of these sorts of bans.
| khazhoux wrote:
| > And there will still be no human oversite of these sorts of
| bans.
|
| Articles about YT say that 500 hours of video are uploaded
| _every minute_. Moderation has to be automated. You cannot
| throw more humans effectively at this problem.
| josephcsible wrote:
| If we're going to go that approach, then I'd rather 100
| videos be incorrectly left up than 1 video to be incorrectly
| taken down.
| khazhoux wrote:
| Well, it's not really an "if".
|
| But, clearly YT's assessment is that the harm of a "bad"
| video being served on their platform greatly outweighs the
| harm of incorrect takedowns (which can be appealed). I will
| call this "The Principle Of Can't Unsee."
| criddell wrote:
| I'm not so sure that it's embarrassing for YouTube, although I
| think your expected timeline is pretty much spot on.
|
| I don't think people expect much from YouTube.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Embarrassing is not the same as surprising
| risyachka wrote:
| Considering they are a data company with heavy AI departments
| - not be able to differentiate basic russian bots from users
| is very embarrassing.
| zacmps wrote:
| Most problems Google (& DeepMind) have seen success in are
| not arms races; you're simply trying to accomplish a
| difficult task.
|
| Dealing with bots, and content moderation in general, _is_
| an arms race. You 're fighting another person who could be
| just as smart as you in developing evasion strategies as
| you are in countering them. Getting it right all of the
| time is impossible.
| dorgo wrote:
| adversarial networks - isn't this exactly the branch of
| AI which is supposed to solve this?
| zacmps wrote:
| I'm not sure exactly what you mean by 'adversarial
| networks', it could be GANs or adversarial training.
|
| Either way, yes, there are techniques for improving
| performance in the presence of an adversary but it
| doesn't negate the problem; anything you do _will_ be
| countered eventually. Clever techniques only buy you more
| time before someone figures out a way around it.
| kerneloftruth wrote:
| Yes, not embarrassing for them -- but is more clarification
| for us.
| seaman1921 wrote:
| yes, because human over-site is not viable at that scale.
| Please educate yourself on the scale of youtube. its not like
| folks at youtube didn't think of the idea of using humans.
|
| even classifiers with 99.99% precision means hundreds of
| thousands of videos and channels will be incorrectly marked as
| abusive every year - we just need to accept that and hope that
| the automated systems are improved over time.
| spyc wrote:
| We need to accept that why exactly?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| anthonygd wrote:
| > Please educate yourself on the scale of youtube.
|
| Please be less smug.
|
| YouTube has no right or requirement to operate at that scale.
| They've consciously decided to scale past what they're able
| to manage well. This is no different than a developer who
| produces terrible non-functional code but defends it to their
| boss by pointing out the line count is really high.
|
| I'd be impressed by their scale only if they managed to
| maintain some level of quality also.
| seaman1921 wrote:
| > YouTube has no right or requirement to operate at that
| scale.
|
| so only you can be smug, eh ?
|
| > They've consciously decided to scale past what they're
| able to manage well.
|
| That is not true. They are doing quite well considering the
| overall scale.
|
| > I'd be impressed by their scale only if they managed to
| maintain some level of quality also.
|
| So you assess quality by random one-off/anecdotal articles
| always highlighting the negative ? How do you know what
| their quality is when you can never know the number of
| abusive videos correctly blocked ?
| gdulli wrote:
| I love the idea of admitting that scaling up technology
| arbitrarily can make our lives worse instead of better. But
| no, the answer is not to accept it and hope that it will get
| better despite no specific and substantive reason to believe
| it will.
| anonymousab wrote:
| Human oversight should be a necessary cost and constraining
| factor of scale. Can't deal with providing non-kafka-esque
| support to n-many users? Then you shouldn't have n-many
| users.
| alecbz wrote:
| I'm actually not sure this is a question of scale at all? The
| amount of revenue and the amount of moderation needed both
| scale with the amount of content.
|
| If anything, YouTube's scale gives it a better chance of
| being able to address this issue, since there are likely
| fixed costs here that YouTube can better fund (obviously
| investing in better automated screening, but also setting up
| the workflows for human moderation, etc.) I think the only
| benefit a smaller scale competitor has is that they're less
| visible and unlikely to be "caught" for hosting content they
| "shouldn't". But if the rules applied equally to everyone, I
| think YouTube is strictly at an advantage in being able to
| implement better human moderation.
| Shared404 wrote:
| Interesting points.
|
| If I were designing from scratch, I would probably use a
| Peertube/Mastodon type federated system.
|
| Each host would responsible for the videos they host -
| meaning they would have incentive to limit videos uploaded
| to any given host to an amount they could handle, or only
| allow trusted uploaders to their host.
|
| Then you would have the federation so that you could allow
| hosts that you didn't have issues with, while blocking
| those you did. Eventually, there would evolve safe/block
| lists - like with email and adblockers - so it wouldn't
| even require that much effort on the parts of those running
| the hosts.
| seaman1921 wrote:
| Edit - Firstly, sorry about how the phrase "please educate
| yourself" sounded - english is not my first language,
| although that shouldn't be an excuse to sound like an ass in
| a public forum. What I meant is that the scale of youtube is
| often underestimated (Eg. stats like the number of abusive
| channels and videos that they take down every day etc. are
| just mind-boggling)
|
| Secondly, for the folks saying why should we allow youtube to
| scale beyond what it can handle, or why should we accept the
| 99.99% precision ?
|
| It is because I do not see a futuristic society in which
| humans are doing work like "manual reviews" - to progress
| humanity we need to automate such manual labour so I support
| the fact that companies are testing the limits of automatic
| content moderation - and working to improve it - I see it as
| a win overall. Adding human reviewers would be a step in the
| backward direction IMO.
| Shared404 wrote:
| > Please educate yourself...
|
| Side note on communication here.
|
| Any time someone uses a phrase like "Please educate yourself
| on $THING", they lose a lot of credibility, at least in the
| context of that communication. Why?
|
| 1) It comes across as _incredibly_ dismissive of both any
| knowledge that that individual may have - especially on HN, I
| 'm pretty sure we're all familiar with YouTube's scale - and
| of the idea that there may be missing information, on either
| the situation or context for the other persons point of view.
|
| 2) It's quite condescending as well - and if someone thinks
| that you are coming at a conversation from a combative place,
| they won't want to listen to what you are saying. Why should
| they listen if they think you don't care?
|
| 3) It's often used to paint broad strokes in places broad
| strokes may not be appropriate, and the phrase being attached
| to that makes it lose credibility even when it is
| appropriate.
|
| ---
|
| Ok, now a response to the actual content:
|
| I don't know why we've decided to allow things to exist "at
| scale" willy nilly. If something becomes a net negative "at
| scale", don't allow it to be "at scale".
|
| No one is entitled to a business model.
| titzer wrote:
| > If something becomes a net negative "at scale", don't
| allow it to be "at scale".
|
| Hear! Hear! We shouldn't have to give over society to the
| fattest, most insatiable stomachs masquerading as
| technology companies.
| emteycz wrote:
| Well don't do that. I'm not doing it and I'm fine. It's
| not like Youtube is the society.
| titzer wrote:
| I'm trying to avoid getting by zombies too, but their
| number keeps growing and they're generating nice profits
| for ZombieCorp!
| vikingerik wrote:
| _> I don 't know why we've decided to allow things to exist
| "at scale" willy nilly._
|
| Because we allow things to exist by default. Because we're
| a free society.
|
| If you want an exception, then recognize and carve that out
| within the democratic process, not by preemptively applying
| authoritarianism.
| Shared404 wrote:
| > If you want an exception, then recognize and carve that
| out within the democratic process, not by preemptively
| applying authoritarianism.
|
| You mean like I'm advocating for now? We've let it exist,
| and I am now advocating for it to be broken up - like
| I've been for a while.
|
| Edit: I should specify - I am advocating for platforms at
| the scale of Facebook/Youtube/Twitter to be broken up in
| general, with an explicit preference towards federated
| services. We've let them run, and it's time for this
| generations round of trust busting. I'm am advocating for
| it to be run through a legal manner though, and discussed
| and acted upon via democratic means.
|
| I think that all over comments on my gp we've gotten off
| topic, my email is available in my profile for anyone who
| wants to discuss this sort of thing further in any
| manner.
| [deleted]
| foxfluff wrote:
| > If something becomes a net negative "at scale", don't
| allow it to be "at scale".
|
| I've taken to thinking of this sort of scaling as being the
| digital equivalent of race to the bottom (i.e. cheap mass-
| produced garbage products).
| Jiro wrote:
| >If something becomes a net negative "at scale", don't
| allow it to be "at scale".
|
| >No one is entitled to a business model.
|
| When it's just ordinary American conservatives being
| censored by social media, somehow nobody says things like
| that. Ban Trump and allow the Taliban? There's nothing
| wrong with that, they're private individuals, they can ban
| whatever they want. What do you mean nobody is entitled to
| a business model? Go away with your freeze peach.
| Shared404 wrote:
| They can ban who they want.
|
| <us-pov> FWIW, I see much more domestic harm in letting
| unchecked lies be spouted by US politicians and having
| that beamed into our minds non-stop then in allowing
| people to see atrocities committed by people on the other
| side of the world.
|
| Yes that goes both ways, I'm an independent.
|
| Edited again: Got too deep into politics on that first
| edit. Suffice it to say one party is worse than the other
| in my opinion, and that may color my POV. I still expect
| to see those who are lying or encouraging violence
| banned/fact-checked/whatever - on both sides equally.
|
| If one side still has it happen more under those
| circumstances, I guess that says more about the side then
| the circumstance. </us-pov>
|
| Also, free speech isn't immunity from repercussions. If I
| say something incredibly dumb, I expect to be mocked. If
| I say something hateful/dangerous, I expect people to
| avoid being associated with me - including being banned
| under certain circumstances.
| alecbz wrote:
| This thread feels like it's getting pretty far-removed
| from the original topic but:
|
| I wish we wouldn't equate "free speech" with the first
| amendment. IMO "free speech" is a much broader concept
| than the specific legal protections outlined in 1A.
|
| Mocking people for saying things you disagree with ("dumb
| things") doesn't violate 1A, but that doesn't mean it's
| aligned with the general ethos of free speech.
| Shared404 wrote:
| +1
|
| I feel I failed to communicate all aspects of my POV
| above - I definitely agree with this. Also yeah, this did
| get off topic and I apologize for pushing that even
| further just now.
|
| In general, I try to advocate more for polite
| conversation and actual exchange/malleability of ideas -
| I just also expect for not everyone to agree with that,
| and to get mocked if I say something stupid.
|
| The bigger thing is association - If I say something that
| someone else finds reprehensible, I bear them no ill will
| for trying to stop themselves from being associated with
| me, regardless of if that's through
| banning/mocking/public press conference[0]/a music
| video[0]/anything else.
|
| [0] I'm glad I don't have a big enough platform to worry
| about these though.
| afavour wrote:
| > Please educate yourself on the scale of YouTube
|
| You're being very condescending when it's totally
| unwarranted. I assure you people are aware of the scale of
| YouTube.
|
| But why should we give YouTube a free pass? You're talking
| about the service as if it's a force of nature rather than
| something human created and managed. Why are they entitled to
| operate at a scale beyond their own control, all while
| extracting huge profits?
| 4ec0755f5522 wrote:
| This is the thing exactly! They built a system that allows
| infinite uploads but did not build a system to handle the
| workload of dealing with infinite uploads.
|
| Some people just want to throw their hands up: "Dealing
| with infinite uploads is hard!" "It doesn't scale!" without
| realizing the youtube is responsible for the very problem
| they created. They designed it this way!
| frogpelt wrote:
| It may be embarrassing but are they embarrassed?
|
| It's not like they're going to suffer for it.
| rvz wrote:
| > And the algos won't change, not one bit. And there will still
| be no human oversite of these sorts of bans.
|
| YouTube does not care. They only care when large popular cable
| TV networks or large partners leave YouTube. When that happens,
| that is a big frown for advertisers. Small users, creators or
| live-streamers have no chance against being listened to by
| YouTube. The algorithms won't ban the partners throwing cash at
| them but the small users will get banned automatically and
| YouTube doesn't care and won't care.
|
| That is how it is on YouTube and their private platform with
| their rules or ToS and we have known for years that they
| continue to do this and ultimately, they will _NEVER_ change.
| tertius wrote:
| I do fall for the argument that oversight would be too costly
| given the sheer numbers. I don't like it though.
| bradly wrote:
| I've work on similar sized systems that utilized a very large
| human workforce to verify models before release and to
| monitor/measure production models on a daily basis after
| release. There are ways to make it efficient.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Know your customer rules are extremely costly for banks to
| implement, given the sheer numbers.
|
| But we mandate it because that's the world we want to live
| in.
|
| The real conversation here is about Alphabet and Facebook's
| margins. If they're not doing enough, they can spend more and
| do more.
| philipov wrote:
| It would be costly, but I am confident that Google has the
| money. They just don't want to spend it, and I am not
| sympathetic to that.
| alecbz wrote:
| The question is would it be so costly that YouTube's
| profitability would look significantly different, and at
| that point would Google want to keep running YouTube?
|
| I'm not sure, but I don't think the answer is that it
| obviously won't materially change YouTube's profitability.
| philipov wrote:
| Youtube's value isn't as a profit center, but a way of
| keeping people inside Google's ad ecosystem. Its value is
| to dominate the video hosting market so that viable
| competitors can't rise up in its place. If Google can
| squeeze profit out, that's icing on the cake, but not the
| core reason why Google wants to hold on to Youtube.
|
| If the profitability of Youtube is on the table, then so
| should be antitrust, and Google should not be allowed to
| own it.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > Youtube's value isn't as a profit center, but a way of
| keeping people inside Google's ad ecosystem.
|
| Even more important from Google's point of view is it was
| the way to push Chrome to dominance. And a way to keep it
| there ahead of any potential competitors.
|
| Which is valuable because of the data and ability to
| block ad blockers. That is, Google's ad ecosystem.
| alecbz wrote:
| > it was the way to push Chrome to dominance.
|
| How did YT push Chrome?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| In 2009/2010 YouTube advertised Chrome as a better way to
| view YouTube videos pretty extensively. YouTube also is a
| moving target that other browsers have to hit (see also
| GoogleDocs.)
|
| It's similar to how "DOS ain't done until Lotus won't
| run", only with YouTube and other browsers.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Well, it's better if they don't keep it running them.
|
| They have a monopoly on search, that they use to censor
| any competing video hosting. If they go and start
| censoring their own service too, this is a very serious
| problem.
| simonh wrote:
| Youtube gets roughly 30,000 hours of content uploaded to it
| every hour. They'd need an army the size of all of Google,
| Apple and Facebook put together just to review it all.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > Youtube gets roughly 30,000 hours of content uploaded
| to it every hour. They
|
| Clearly you wouldn't need to review all of it. You could
| use AI to identify things for review (as opposed to
| remove them), limit it to people with a number of
| downvotes or views. Hell, you could just pay people to
| handle the reviews/escalations/appeals.
|
| Although, Google totally could afford it. It would cost
| less than 2.5% of their profits to pay US minimum wage to
| review every video.
| simonh wrote:
| > It would cost less than 2.5% of their profits to pay US
| minimum wage to review every video
|
| So you think employing those hundreds of thousands of
| workers would incur no office space costs, no IT system
| costs, no management, no service staff, no HR, no
| payroll, no recruitment, no training. Wow. And your
| talking about Google profits, but YouTube is a business
| itself that needs to make money. Why does the rest of
| Google need to subsidise it?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > employing those hundreds of thousands of workers would
| incur no...
|
| Well, my numbers do allow for a $50MM/year in the various
| IT/management/training. I would think you could have
| people working from home, so office/etc. costs would be
| minimal. But I also made them US based _and_ reviewing
| every random cat video 's full length that is only seen
| by 1 person. Some savings could be achieved.
|
| > your talking about Google profits, but YouTube is a
| business itself that needs to make money. Why does the
| rest of Google need to subsidise it?
|
| Okay, fine. YouTube could internally have added the costs
| of reviewing every video's full length with US based
| people in 2021 it would have only cut in half their
| _increase_ in profit over 2020.
| simonh wrote:
| > my numbers do allow for a $50MM/year
|
| That's hilarious. The $50m was a rounding error you
| forgot to account for. Given a work force of several
| hundred thousand, that would just about pay for an office
| chair each, let alone any other equipment or
| infrastructure, or office space to put the chair in.
| dhimes wrote:
| Human moderators probably wouldn't have to intervene in
| most of it.
| mopsi wrote:
| How much of that remains if you don't review immediately,
| but when view count exceeds -- for example -- 100 views?
| I'd expect a dramatic drop from 30 000 hours.
| philipov wrote:
| If you want to be so successful as to become one of the
| premier public forums in society, don't start crying when
| you're held up to the standards and expectations of other
| public institutions. Google, go get ye that army of
| moderators.
| simonh wrote:
| Employing that many people would likely cost in the
| region of Google's entire earnings. It would make
| Youtube, or any service like it, financially impossible
| for anyone to run. So sure, I'm not saying we need
| Youtube, but what you're saying is we can't have it or
| anything like it.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > Employing that many people would likely cost in the
| region of Google's entire earnings.
|
| It would cost 2.5% of their profits if they had an entire
| US workforce and every video needed to be viewed in its
| entirety.
| munk-a wrote:
| I really appreciate YouTube's existence, but chances are
| a communal video streaming site that the entire world can
| trivially upload videos to should probably be a
| government run service if it exists at all.
|
| There are a plethora of much more conservatively sized
| video uploading sites that vet and have specific
| contracts with their content producers.
| risyachka wrote:
| They managed to pretty well identify when you are quietly
| singing some song and claim all revenue from your videos,
| I am sure they can handle basic bots.
| munk-a wrote:
| If the oversight you provide as part of your service is
| unreasonably expensive then you probably shouldn't be in
| business - if you can't sanely moderate your platform then
| you also shouldn't be in business. I can rationally accept
| that argument as quite logical but I can also accept the fact
| that news papers ran classified ads for years and years
| without assisting terrorists by giving them a platform to
| coordinate attacks in plain text on - facebook comes along
| and suddenly the bar for obfuscated text is "r u rdy 4 the
| b0mb?"
|
| Companies that are providing such an amazingly affordable
| service because they're just skipping out on doing moderation
| don't get to use "Well, doing it the right way would be too
| expensive" as a defense - that's how you end up with Uber.
| Uber broke laws, Uber shouldn't exist at this point,
| something _like_ Uber should exist, but Travis Kalanick
| should have been fined into near non-existence and not
| currently be sitting happy on 2.8 billion. We, as a society,
| need to have standards.
| gruez wrote:
| >If the oversight you provide as part of your service is
| unreasonably expensive then you probably shouldn't be in
| business - if you can't sanely moderate your platform then
| you also shouldn't be in business.
|
| So you'd rather have the status quo of a few decades ago
| (ie. large media organizations acting as gatekeepers),
| rather than the democratized ecosystem we have now?
| munk-a wrote:
| I mean, both have their glaring issues... but I think our
| modern system is worse. Independent news outlets didn't
| get a large readership but they did exist and people did
| express non-mainstream views in them - and while the main
| companies were definitely status quo aligned they
| attracted (and focused on attracting) actual journalists
| that occasionally broke stories that gave the editors
| headaches. In the absence of them being required to be
| _the_ source of news (and due to competition from blogs
| running on a completely non-existent budget) they 've
| focused more and more on advertiser revenue acquisition
| which really just only cares about the number of clicks
| you're getting.
|
| I'd prefer neither system, and I don't think it's a
| binary choice - but if forced to choose between the two
| I'd probably go with the monolithic status-quo machine
| (even though I'm extremely progressive and they _hated_
| us).
| InitialLastName wrote:
| If your business is impossible to operate at its current
| scale pro-socially and without negative externalities, it
| doesn't get to operate at that scale.
|
| Share-holders don't have a natural right to profit off of
| societally destructive behavior.
| dhimes wrote:
| They allowed it to grow past what they can control. They just
| didn't anticipate the risk.
| Aunche wrote:
| The problem is that a finite number of human moderators can't
| win a fight against an infinite number of spammer robots. Also,
| keep in mind that humans aren't infallible judges, especially
| if you're reviewing hundreds of videos a day.
| tyingq wrote:
| It remains amusing to me that Google is able to be stymied by
| what is probably a ~200 person or less sweatshop of hackers
| and spammers. It doesn't match all their bravado about their
| level of expertise in AI/ML, automation, troves of metadata
| and historical patterns, etc.
| Scarblac wrote:
| And even without all the AI, nothing is stopping Google
| from employing ten thousand human moderators or whatever.
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| Cost is a really big stopping reason. The problem not
| being worth solving to Google is another.
| Aunche wrote:
| It's not a symmetric battle. The team of hackers and
| spammers has nothing to lose. Even if they're only
| successful 1% of the time, it's still a win.
| tyingq wrote:
| I'd venture it has more to do with where Google applies
| all that expertise. If it were hurting them, I imagine
| they would solve it quickly.
| TheKarateKid wrote:
| I don't believe this argument for a second. Google almost
| single-handedly solved the problem of email spam a decade
| ago. And yet, robot accounts are a problem?
|
| For the company that loves encouraging obnoxious Captcha's to
| self-fund their AI/ML research and data harvest the web, they
| surely don't seem to like using it on their own platforms.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Just an anecdote but quite recently it seems to be much
| less reliable at catching spam.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| You mean they decided to use advanced spam filters that
| were already used by small sites before other large sites
| decided to care about the problem? On some cases, a couple
| of weeks before.
|
| Gmail has the worst spam filter of any email provider I use
| today, excluding the one email server I have running on my
| domain that gets almost no email and has no filter. Or,
| well, spam filtering is a lesser problem on my server too
| because it doesn't block nearly all the email that I care
| about.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Yup, they nailed it! Where before I had to check one Inbox
| folder, I now need to check two - Inbox and Spam. Because
| half of legit emails end up in spam now. And no, I am not
| researching internet daily about manhood enlargement.
| [deleted]
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Google's spam blocking is showing cracks, too.
| c-cube wrote:
| Google single-handledly solved the problem of how to send
| legitimate emails from other providers into the spam box.
| In effect, non gmail emails are second class.
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| >Google almost single-handedly solved the problem of email
| spam a decade ago
|
| Google still has to routinely invent new techniques to stop
| spam. This problem is not solved - it's an ongoing arms
| race.
|
| It is also a vastly easier problem - spam filters at google
| scale work because they see the same spam across zillions
| of accounts. This is not the case for youtube, where a
| spammer provides them with far fewer samples, and those are
| across a much wider space.
|
| These problems are barely related.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| Recently, comment sections of popular YT videos are
| littered with bots spamming links accompanied by phrases
| like 'hot girls' and '18+ only'. They're everywhere, and
| this really doesn't strike me as an inherently hard
| problem to solve.
|
| (In fact, I wonder who these spammers are targeting.
| Surely the average YT user is smart enough to recognize
| blatant spam?)
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Check this video by linus tech tips
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo_uoFI1WXM
|
| Some random dude built an anti youtube comment spam tool.
| Youtube could absolutely fix this problem, they just
| don't care
| boring_twenties wrote:
| I am unsure how to take the assertion that Google has
| "solved" spam.
|
| 80-90% of the emails in my "Spam" folder are not spam.
|
| It's worse than no filtering at all, since I still get
| exposed to the spam, but now I have to check two inboxes
| instead of just one, and then jump through annoying hoops
| to view images or access links in the second one.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Are you saying they can't tell what the topic of a video is
| about automatically.. because they can.
|
| Using that information I would implement a system that would
| figure out the topic and prevent bots flagging that specific
| content only.
| bushbaba wrote:
| When a system involves a human it's harder to massively
| infiltrate it. Take counting votes. A bad human here or there
| could fudge the tally of pen on paapper ballots. BUT if you
| attempted to compromise a large percentage of these human
| ballot counters, one of the other human counters would start
| to notice and alert the world to it.
|
| Compromising a system that involves 100k people is generally
| harder than compromising a computer algo.
| causi wrote:
| Google's fetish for serving more users with fewer employees has
| been responsible for the failure of so many of their
| initiatives I often wonder who's behind it.
| loosescrews wrote:
| They are an internet company. This is how internet companies
| work, generate such high profits, and command such high
| valuations.
|
| Businesses which scale by hiring are much harder to grow and
| tend to be a lot less profitable. As a result, internet
| companies tend to see such businesses as not worth being in.
| Sure, there are lots of successful companies which operate
| this way, but Google sees it as an unacceptably high
| opportunity cost. Rather than pour resources into growing a
| scale by hiring business, they would rather put the resources
| toward a different business that they think they can scale
| with non-linear hiring.
|
| Given this, it surprises me that Google is going after the
| enterprise cloud business. It is pretty well known that such
| businesses scale fairly linearly with sales and support
| staff. My understanding is that they know this and are
| attempting to scale the business this way instead of their
| usual strategy of ignoring the issue and hoping it will go
| away.
| htrp wrote:
| > Given this, it surprises me that Google is going after
| the enterprise cloud business. It is pretty well known that
| such businesses scale fairly linearly with sales and
| support staff. My understanding is that they know this and
| are attempting to scale the business this way instead of
| their usual strategy of ignoring the issue and hoping it
| will go away.
|
| GCP can't get their act together to get a consistent
| enterprise sales model done....
| nvarsj wrote:
| > My understanding is that they know this and are
| attempting to scale the business this way instead of their
| usual strategy of ignoring the issue and hoping it will go
| away.
|
| Ha ha. Last I heard, Google were actively trying to remove
| their engineers from client engagements, and replace them
| with third party "Google preferred suppliers". They really
| don't want to ever be face to face with a customer.
| Wiseacre wrote:
| Isn't that every big tech company?
| stickfigure wrote:
| This is unfair. It's a cyber attack on Youtube, and I'm sure
| the people at Youtube are frantically working on mitigations.
| It's an ongoing battle and hopefully Russia is burning their
| bot networks over this.
| zeruch wrote:
| "Shareholders" and the McNamara Fallacy mostly
| kittiepryde wrote:
| McNamara Fallacy - thank you for posting this, it's
| extremely obvious, but seeing it in print is super helpful,
| and I think it's important for anyone working in a
| corporate setting to keep in mind
| zeruch wrote:
| I've worked in this industry long enough to understand
| when people are "McNamaranites" and I tend to push back
| against them....vigorously.
|
| To be a person is to not be reduced to an array of
| arbitrary scores in a worksheet.
| chrisshroba wrote:
| For others like me who didn't know what the McNamara
| Fallacy is, here's a quote from its Wikipedia Page [1]:
|
| "The McNamara fallacy (also known as the quantitative
| fallacy), named for Robert McNamara, the US Secretary of
| Defense from 1961 to 1968, involves making a decision based
| solely on quantitative observations (or metrics) and
| ignoring all others. The reason given is often that these
| other observations cannot be proven."
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy
| noasaservice wrote:
| Indeed.
|
| This is the reason I was able to sway the C suite at my last
| position to avoid anything Google. I'm estimating it's
| probably around $9m/month revenue they lost from GCE and
| GApps.
|
| They're simply not trustworthy, no/terrible support, and
| capricious about arbitrarily holding user's data hostage when
| some random automated abuse system decides you're horrible.
|
| System Engineers don't let fellow system engineers use
| anything google for production purposes.
| megaman821 wrote:
| I can't imagine what change they could make to the the
| algorithms to understand world context at an acceptable level.
| Reporting on the Russian Ukraine conflict and show a dead body.
| That is news and should probably be left up. A school shooting
| and show a dead body. Why did the algorithms leave that up so
| long?
| freeflight wrote:
| 2017 had a kind of similar situation where YouTube started
| deleting a whole lot of Syrian civil war related channels
| [0], apparently due to the algorithm going haywire trying to
| censor "extremist propaganda".
|
| [0] https://www-nytimes-
| com.translate.goog/2017/08/22/world/midd...
| consumer451 wrote:
| I always assumed this was related to abuse of reporting
| systems by the opposition.
| jquery wrote:
| The only thing Google understands is money. A nice fat fine
| from Uncle Sam for aiding and abetting Russia in violation of
| sanctions might make them prioritize a fix.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| alergnon1234 wrote:
| I'll always be amazed at how advanced and desperate pro-Kremlin
| shilling is, using a throwaway account just in case they decide
| to DDoS my side project as retaliation.
| gzer0 wrote:
| I stand corrected. My apologies.
| Rd6n6 wrote:
| The Reddit accounts are not new
|
| Eg, 6 year old account https://www.reddit.com/user/lamka02sk/
| Or 2 years https://www.reddit.com/user/SoftGreener/ 4 years
| https://www.reddit.com/user/omerby12/comments/
| vhgyu75e6u wrote:
| There are thousands of dormant accounts, the other day I
| found one dormant for 5-6 years, became active 1 year ago and
| had 95k comments! Most bashing the west and defending Russia
| and populist regimes
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| foxfluff wrote:
| Those are not usernames, but auto-generated ids of the linked
| comments/posts. The rest of the url is just a human readable
| title, which you can erase and still get to the same post.
| TheHypnotist wrote:
| Those aren't user names.
| npacenop wrote:
| and this is how fake news is born....
|
| These are the reddit thread ids which have "similar namess".
| The users behind them have different names and have been active
| on the network for up to 6 years.
| mabbo wrote:
| This is what happens when you remove all humans from the loop.
| The decisions made by software can be manipulated once you have a
| reasonable estimation of what the software is doing.
|
| This time it's Russia. Next time it will be an American political
| party (whichever one you don't like). YouTube saved some money on
| human moderation, and all it cost was selling their platform to
| the first group willing to abuse the system.
|
| And do you know how they'll respond? By trying to improve the
| automation. No no, no need to add costs by having humans in the
| loop, we'll just make _better_ software. Because that 's what
| worked so well for SEO, right?
| consumer451 wrote:
| > YouTube saved some money on human moderation, and all it cost
| was selling their platform to the first group willing to abuse
| the system.
|
| Last week I thought I had invented the phrase "accountability
| arbitrage" to describe the core FB, Google, section 230
| business model. But a quick search found it actually has been
| previously used in some interesting documents.
|
| I would like to see that phrase used more commonly. It seems
| important and timely.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=%22accountability+arbitrage%...
| qiskit wrote:
| > Reddit is now full of reports of people (and their channels)
| getting banned for supporting Ukraine or even just watching
| related live streams. Reddit is also censoring and removing these
| reports..
|
| That's hard to believe considering everything on youtube and
| reddit has been extremely pro-ukraine and anti-russian
| propaganda. If you have been banned from reddit or youtube for
| pro-ukraine propaganda, then you must have been caught gaming
| their system.
|
| I can go to reddit right now and it's 100% pro-ukraine
| propaganda. Why hasn't reddit banned those?
| foxfluff wrote:
| I can't verify the claim that r/youtube was deleting reports
| but having regularly used ceddit, I wouldn't be surprised.
|
| However, there's no need for me to argue about the first
| sentence. Please take a look at
| https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/ and it is literally filled
| with reports of account bans from the past few hours. 95% of
| the hot stories. You look in the comments, you find dozens
| more.
|
| Saving screenshots for posterity (those termination/strike
| threads on r/youtube are all relevant):
| https://imgur.com/a/ekqk3B7
| foxfluff wrote:
| Again, simply watching or having watched live streams from Kiev
| might net you a ban.
|
| > If you watched any Kiev livestream it may have been the reason
| for your termination. It happened to a lot of us too, it seems
| some Russian bots have been mass-reporting every single person
| that watched them
|
| > Yes, yesterday night I watched a livestream. Im shocked
|
| > I also watched a Livestream yesterday night. How i wish I
| didn't now since my account got terminated.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/t1445p/this_accoun...
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| How would a bot know to report you? How could it tell you
| watched a livestream?
| plainnoodles wrote:
| Isn't there a "chat"-like feature similar to Twitch, where
| you can see everyone's usernames?
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| Yes, I checked and in the chat window you can get a list of
| participants. I'm watching the (non-Ukraine) stream but not
| in the participants list, so I assume you have to actually
| say something in chat.
| altdataseller wrote:
| Maybe if you commented on it, liked it or chatted on the
| livestream. Otherwise I don't see how they know you actually
| viewed it.
| [deleted]
| freeflight wrote:
| OP of the Reddit submission claims they didn't comment or
| chat.
|
| But afaik YouTube livestreams with a chat also have a user
| list for who is present, at least they used to when I last
| checked.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Ukraine has actually discouraged people live streaming or
| publishing Ukranian troop movement, it's revealing their
| positions and capabilities to the Russians. I'm sure that's a
| two way street.
|
| How much live streaming happened on Youtube - and how many
| accounts were terminated - during the conflicts in the middle
| east?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| This could be why YouTube is banning everything. People
| assume this is anti-Ukraine, but it could be the opposite.
| popctrl wrote:
| I noticed something last night watching a live stream of Kyiv.
|
| A lot of accounts were posting the comment '/cam2', with others
| implying something was happening on cam2. Others were saying
| that the cam thing was fake. I kind of thought it was a way to
| find out who was watching the video, since obviously youtube
| chat isn't going to change the video angle...And now I think
| that's exactly what it was, for this exact purpose.
|
| One thing is clear, and it's very scary in light of all the
| NATO press conferences where people are asking if a cyber
| attack constitutes an act of war: There is a massive war
| happening on the internet right now. Reps are reluctant to
| respond to these questions because it's clear that total cyber
| war has been going on for years.
| gambiting wrote:
| Do you lose your entire google account just for watching a
| stream on YT??? Because if yes, that's an absolute madness
| TheFreim wrote:
| I don't think YT bans usually affect your google account. I
| got falsely flagged by a bot for copyright striking a bunch
| of my own videos which resulted in permanent, apparently
| unappealable, ban of all my YouTube accounts on that google
| account but the google account still works just fine.
| dhimes wrote:
| _permanent, apparently unappealable_
|
| This should be illegal. It's like a diner owner saying he's
| going to deny service to all terrorists and then denying
| service to anyone with brown skin because it's how he
| determines who is a terrorist.
| willis936 wrote:
| While outrageous, that's not quite the same.
|
| What you described in your simile is a violation of Civil
| Rights Act of 1964 because it is public (as in John Q can
| walk in) business practicing discrimination based on a
| protected class (race, in this case).
| TheFreim wrote:
| It's really sad. I lost one channel that I had been
| uploading content to for years. I supplied some small
| communities with, in my opinion, what were high quality
| tutorials and guides. All gone [see note below]. On top
| of all that, the videos which I tried to flag are still
| mostly up and I don't want to risk other accounts or my
| whole google account by flagging them. My only hope is to
| one day get in contact with someone at YT and ask them to
| take a look (doubt this will ever happen).
|
| Note: I think I've got the videos backed up somewhere,
| but losing the channel kind of ruined the appeal of re-
| uploading. Lost the channel url, subscribers, and most
| importantly all of the video links across the web are
| dead.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| Welcome to Google. I know it sounds like cheap answer, but
| yes, some people lost access to their entire google related
| accounts including GMAIL and DRIVE when they were banned from
| specific services, like adsense for instance.
| willis936 wrote:
| It's never too late to de-google. Use it as a good excuse to
| switch to a password manager if you aren't using one. If you
| are then it is much less painful to switch.
|
| Internet identity is too valuable to trust to a company that
| demonstrates they are willing to fall asleep with an armed
| grenade in their hand.
| kobalsky wrote:
| On the reddit thread the hypothesis is that somehow viewers
| got mass reported.
|
| I wonder if their accounts were picked up for using the chat
| or if there's a viewer list that is being fetched via API.
|
| So now if you watch the wrong video and you are in some list.
| Looks like it wasn't a good idea to have your full name
| visible and online identity tied to your youtube account.
|
| Damn google for pushing for that crap, google+ was a blight.
| ipaddr wrote:
| People still fall for using their real name on facebook,
| twitter, instagram. It's not just google..
| Saris wrote:
| It's a good reason why nothing important should be in an
| online account these days, it's too easy to lose access.
| js4ever wrote:
| You are overreacting, nothing important should be on Google
| account is enough.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| Even that's an overreaction. Saying as someone who has
| moved out everything from Google, the best bet is to own
| your "identity" (domains, email address, & logins - don't
| use Google login), and backup your data (either in
| another cloud or locally in a Desktop/Laptop).
|
| I use a throwaway Google account for YouTube as well,
| just in case.
| Gareth321 wrote:
| This is exactly the reason I am migrating away from a Gmail
| address to my personal domain. I don't think most people
| realise just how in trouble they are if they lose access to
| their primary email address.
| [deleted]
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Does this apply to embedded videos too? Imagine reading a
| news article during lunch at work and getting your corporate
| account kicked!
| raverbashing wrote:
| Besides autoplay being evil, sounds like the GDPR-compliant
| pages have it right. Your data is only sent to YT after
| your approval.
| tentacleuno wrote:
| One great example of this is the Gumtree site[0]. The
| social media share buttons at the bottom only load in
| when you hover over them (with the placeholder being
| Gumtree-styled social media icons). Great for performance
| _and_ privacy (although I would prefer no buttons /
| social media code at all). I've always been really
| impressed by this, I wish more sites would do it.
|
| [0]: https://www.gumtree.com/
| [deleted]
| imiric wrote:
| One more reason to never watch YouTube logged in or by using
| any of the official apps. Ideally we should switch to
| alternative platforms, but the amount of content on YT is
| unmatched. So try these instead:
|
| - https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp
|
| - https://newpipe.net/
|
| - https://github.com/iv-org/invidious
| fsflover wrote:
| > Ideally we should switch to alternative platforms
|
| Please consider supporting PeerTube:
| https://joinpeertube.org.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| I've been leaving comments on YouTube videos and have seen some
| strange things. I post a comment, get a few thumbs up and engage
| in some responses, and then the video will disappear, taken down.
| Quite a coincidence. So I 100% believe the claim of this post.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| And yet YouTube allows channels that call the holocaust a hoax,
| that threaten people, etc to stay up and collect superchats.
|
| Strange.
| jandrese wrote:
| This should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody. People have
| been complaining for a decade now that all automated takedown
| bots are ripe for abuse are are actively being abused by media
| cartels. You can't be shocked when systems that enable abuse are
| abused by foreign intelligence services.
|
| Google has said it is cheaper to ignore the problem and until
| that changes they aren't going to fix it. And remember that on
| the other end of these abusive systems are corporations that are
| willing to sue individuals for literally billions of dollars over
| sharing files.
|
| Big corporations will not have your back when it could affect
| their income stream.
| deutschewelle wrote:
| tbh what is the harm done to Alphabet/Youtube here? Bunch of
| alleged russian bots mass report youtuber's account temporarily
| and Youtube reversed their incorrect ban.
|
| It seems to me the system is working as intended as
| demonstrated by the reversal of the bans being reported 90
| minutes ago.
|
| title written by OP is obvious clickbait. Youtube isn't banning
| accounts that support Ukraine, the automated queue mod system's
| threshold has been breached and after a human review on the
| AI's decision, the bans were reversed.
| [deleted]
| dutchbrit wrote:
| My YouTube channel also got removed, received an email 3 hours
| ago.
|
| "We have reviewed your content and found severe or repeated
| violations of our Community Guidelines. Because of this, we have
| removed your channel from YouTube."
|
| Also posted a message showing support to Ukraine in a Kiev
| livestream.
| dutchbrit wrote:
| Update:
|
| Hi ***,
|
| We're pleased to let you know that we've recently reviewed your
| YouTube account, and after taking another look, we can confirm
| that it is not in violation of our Terms of Service. We have
| lifted the suspension of your account, and it is once again
| active and operational.
|
| We'd like to thank you for your patience while we reviewed this
| case. 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
| hope you understand, and we're sorry for any inconvenience or
| frustration this has caused.
|
| If you have any further questions, please feel free to reach
| out to us here.
|
| Sincerely, The YouTube Team
| desmondl wrote:
| Did your entire Google account get deactivated? My Google
| account is linked to Gmail, GCP/Firebase, Youtube, Drive, and a
| ton of SSO apps. Used it for the past decade, but I know now
| not to put all my eggs in one basket so I have backups of my
| most important data. Still, what happened to you is a big fear
| of mine.
| rg111 wrote:
| > My Google account is linked to Gmail, GCP/Firebase,
| Youtube, Drive
|
| Don't. Have separate accounts for dev stuff, entertainment,
| storage, social media each.
|
| > and a ton of SSO apps
|
| Never do so. Use a password manager (self-host if you want)
| and use good old username-password to sign up and log in. I
| once had all my passwords stored in Chrome leaked in a
| security breach.
|
| A friend's Gmail was suspended that was connected to bank. He
| had to waste literally tens of hours in commute and waiting
| and meetings to change it.
| Gareth321 wrote:
| >Have separate accounts for dev stuff, entertainment,
| storage, social media each.
|
| FYI this isn't enough. There are thousands of reports of
| people having _all_ their Google accounts terminated
| because they shared the same payment method /IP/cookie
| session data/etc. This is how bad it can get: https://www.r
| eddit.com/r/tifu/comments/8kvias/tifu_by_gettin...
| protomyth wrote:
| The cynical side of me thinks this to remove competition from the
| approved (read monetization) news networks on YouTube, but I bet
| it is more algorithmic incompetence with no human oversight.
| freeflight wrote:
| What's the chance of these accounts having been compromised for a
| while, and they were now activated to serve as bots, with YouTube
| detecting that increased activity and changed behavior, thus
| flagging them for suspend?
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| Question: When YouTube (aka Google, aka Alphabet) bans a user, is
| that user then deleted from the ad database so that Alphabet no
| longer makes any money from that user's data?
| airstrike wrote:
| No. To the data was never the user's to begin with.
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| Sure it was. Your data is a currency that buys you the
| services.
| airstrike wrote:
| There's no "my data". There's my usage of their service and
| there's their data about my usage
| josevalerio wrote:
| It's a private corporation, they can do what they want!!
|
| Wait not like that
| hericium wrote:
| Reddit I understand but Alphabet/Google/YouTube reached next
| level of incompetence.
| baby wrote:
| Creators have been complaining about youtube robot moderation
| for a while
| ivoras wrote:
| Yeah, but that's about "normal" for what they have been doing
| with YouTube and account security for the last 10-15 years.
|
| It's incredibly difficult to reach a human being in their
| customer support chain, and using bots to take out rival /
| oponent / people you don't like YouTube channels has been
| "normal" for years.
|
| Anyone can literally create a few fake Google accounts (or take
| over / steal existing ones esp. long-running ones) and write a
| bot to ban practically anyone else.
| decremental wrote:
| Dollars to donuts says they were fed posting and got in trouble
| for it.
| vezycash wrote:
| A livestream about watching Kiev livestream to demo how long it
| takes for the account to get banned should be interesting.
| macilacilove wrote:
| Maybe they calculate that too much outrage will make Russia
| appear more powerful especially if at the same time Western
| leaders are not going to do that much(not sure if they will).
|
| Maybe they want to save face for politicians who - people will
| argue - mishandled this crisis.
|
| Maybe it is just not really true, despite some people saying it
| on the internet.
| ukraineally wrote:
| There has also been huge amounts of bans on twitter. Say the
| wrong thing and you get ejected. Yet the clear russian propaganda
| is allowed to stay. I wonder what the threshold is to accuse
| twitter of russian collaboration.
|
| It's certainly a charged event with emotions running hot. People
| are going to say things that are wrong.
|
| Crimea was a difficult subject because they are ethnically
| russian. Due in large part to a gigantic naval base. They did
| vote to separate from the Ukraine.
|
| That was then, today is different. The direct invasion of Ukraine
| is aggression. Putin lied, diplomacy has failed.
|
| As emperor of canada I would have done what my gov has done so
| far, but also put a sunset. In 1 year, unless something changes,
| we end any and all connection to russia. their citizens may not
| come here. none of their citizens may own property here.
| Absolutely no trade of any kind. Anyone who is currently doing
| business with them, your contracts are null and void. Find new
| suppliers.
| LoveGracePeace wrote:
| Some commenters have said it could be that the videos make it
| easier for Russia to see what the Ukranians are doing, though I'd
| imagine they'd just take those respective videos down instead of
| outright banning people's accounts (since several years ago they
| force tied our YT accounts directly to our Google accounts even
| though some of us pay for services like Drive storage and Google
| Domains - and YT Premium for that matter).
|
| Aside from that, food for thought; I know this won't be popular
| but Google does have ties to JetBrains (Android Studio, Android
| development used to be done in Eclipse, I prefer Eclipse).
| JetBrains has offices in Saint Petersburg and Moscow. Google has
| a strong interest in pushing nginx (formerly (?) Russian made,
| though I personally prefer Apache) in Kubernetes.
| sharken wrote:
| YouTube, where oppressive regimes decide what you can watch.
|
| I'm sure this is top priority right now for Google to fix. But
| perhaps everything is automated to an extent that this has no
| good countermove. We shall see.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Oppressive regimes decide what you can watch and megacorps
| decide if you are allowed to downvote.
|
| "It's automated" has become the new "it's policy," the go-to
| excuse for doing evil and pretending it's not a choice.
| kybernetyk wrote:
| Too bad but luckily I don't really care anymore. I de-googlified
| myself some time ago. My email is fastmail on my own domain, I
| don't use Google's cloud services.
|
| Sucks for people who are still trapped in the Goolag ecosystem
| though. Maybe this should be a warning at least not to host your
| precious family photos with Google and not to use their email
| service.
| can16358p wrote:
| I de-googlified myself too and never intend to go back, though
| this is not just about Google.
|
| This is about centralization. If there isn't Google, there is
| Facebook Video which would do the same. If there isn't FB Video
| then there's Twitter, which would do the same and so on.
|
| Even if we, as a minority remove all our accounts from those
| platforms, the majority use them as the primary media
| platforms.
|
| We need a paradigm shift at scale to move people off
| centralized platforms, but we need a candidate first that is
| convenient for people.
| lpcvoid wrote:
| This is absolutely irrelevant for the situation. I did similar
| things, yet you cannot deny that Youtube is hugely important
| for people's viewpoints on world politics. This isn't about you
| or me.
| mrtesthah wrote:
| Your personal habits are irrelevant. We live in a shared
| society and Youtube content will still have an effect on you by
| way of its viewing by everyone else.
| ravenstine wrote:
| YouTube is quickly going on its way to becoming of low relevance.
| It will take a while, but when even non-controversial YouTube
| channels have to speak in code words in order to not get
| demonetized/striked/deleted, you know there's a real problem. I
| don't know if this banning of Ukraine support is real and, if it
| is, whether it's intentional or just another round of The
| Google's Best AI snagging on bugs again, but it doesn't matter.
| YouTube simply is becoming an nonviable platform to tie to one's
| business or opinions. At this point, you're not even that likely
| to get a following without several _years_ of posting videos
| every day because of just how biased YouTube has become against
| small creators; you 're better off posting on smaller video
| platforms or even just making your own website.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| YouTube is not going to be the source for breaking news like
| this. There's too much liability and not much money to be made.
|
| The fact is - less than 2% of content watched is stuff like
| this.
|
| People are mostly watching work out videos and game streams and
| sports commentary and so on. Not live streams of wars.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Well yeah, if you examine YouTube in isolation and disregard
| how its algorithm surfaces content, then sure, most people
| watching YouTube are watching workout videos and game
| streams. And maybe that's how YouTube is defining itself, and
| that's fine, but that's not how you create cultural
| phenomena. Likewise, millions of people drink Coca-Cola every
| day, but no one really gives a shit about Coca-Cola even
| though nearly 2 billion servings are drunk every day
| worldwide. But people still write actual articles about
| coffee for some reason, and that probably has to do with its
| relative lack of homogeneity and safety (from a taste
| standpoint). YouTube wants to sell fizzy sugar water, and
| that's the sort of relevance they will get.
|
| The only reason I point this out as a bad thing is that
| YouTube long ago represented something else that I think
| mattered more than cat videos, no matter how small the
| audience was or is.
| ok123456 wrote:
| I was watching live streams from Ukraine on TikTok last
| night. No problems.
| Gareth321 wrote:
| I have been VERY impressed with Odysee and have been using it
| more regularly. Just need more creators on there.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| I highly doubt that youtube will become irrelevant any time
| soon. The infrastructure cost to hosting over a decade of video
| across the globe is immense and that alone creates a
| significant moat.
|
| Even if some channels leave, others will take their place
| quickly. Youtube has sufficient size for that.
| penjelly wrote:
| yeah weve seen other video providers come and go, but it
| feels like nobody else is capable of hosting this much
| content and having this many active content creators. its
| kindof sad really, if its not on youtube it probably wont be
| seen.
| ravenstine wrote:
| I don't think many alternative platforms are particularly
| serious. This is probably in part because hosting massive
| amounts of video and supporting streaming _is_ a very hard
| problem. At the same time, they all shoot themselves in the
| foot in many ways, whether it 's their marketing, lack of
| real moderation, low momentum of improvement, or their UI
| design.
| ravenstine wrote:
| I didn't say "irrelevance". Just _low relevance_ , kind of
| like how ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and Fox are all still
| "relevant", but they mean a fraction to younger generations
| what they meant to even my generation (Gen Y). They're of
| such low relevance that those organizations have to pay
| YouTube to promote their content. There may come a day, maybe
| in another couple decades from now, where YouTube is paying
| some TNG platform to cross-post its content in much the same
| way.
|
| Relevance is a relative term, so I have to apologize for
| being pedantic here, but I also can't really help it in this
| case either.
|
| > Even if some channels leave, others will take their place
| quickly. Youtube has sufficient size for that.
|
| To some extent, yes. That doesn't mean it will be able to
| keep up with loss forever, especially when it's doing things
| to outright sabotage new channels.
|
| People _will_ get tired of a mostly PG-rated platform once
| YouTube truly reaches that point. Cultures shift and change,
| and if global internet culture swings back to being more like
| it was in the 2000s, the warm safety blanket YouTube provides
| will be a totally uncool thing only old people and little
| kids watch. YouTube will someday have a rude awakening when
| their pushing of late-night TV and mainstream news clips is
| no longer a significant ROI to their customers. As for
| movies, well, they 're definitely not the only ones in town
| for that.
| mindcandy wrote:
| How likely is it that this is the result of Russian bots mass-
| reporting Ukraine supporters for "violations"?
| sebow wrote:
| This has happened way too frequently and in distinct cases to
| keep pretending 'it's just incompetence/ignorance'. By the time
| people realize it's more akin to malevolence it will sadly be too
| late.
|
| I now propose an updated motto: "Don't be evil: just look away."
| jb1991 wrote:
| For starters, regarding live streams, the Ukraine government
| doesn't want citizens filming what is happening because it might
| give away positions of the Ukraine defenders as they attempt to
| maneuver in Kyiv, so that could be one motivation.
| MrDresden wrote:
| If that were the case, then deleting the videos would be
| sufficient. Banning or deleting accounts for watching these
| streams makes no sense at all.
| jb1991 wrote:
| That makes sense.
| drocer88 wrote:
| Don't browse youtube on the browser you have logged in to google.
| Use firefox with ublock origin and don't log in to google.
| Youtube is great without ads. Use chrome for any of those things
| that you are okay with being tracked. Use archive.is when they
| bitch about blockers. Use tor browser to see interesting ads not
| targeted to you.
| ipaddr wrote:
| The ironic thing is vk is not censoring similiar content.
| l4yj3lkzf wrote:
| squarefoot wrote:
| Some users reported that their accounts were restored. So it
| appears that Google is actually capable of reading complaints and
| checking for wrong removals, when they want to.
| jdrc wrote:
| This has happened to other wars in the region too. State trolls
| mass report twitter and youtube accounts to get people banned, or
| have their videos "age restricted" (which means youtube does not
| recommend them). It' s the standard practice of google's
| nonexistent jouranlism/publishing ethics.
|
| Twitter has this thing in Germany where they are required to tell
| you if someone reported your account. This is at least a good way
| for reporters to know that they are being targetted by trolls.
| jeffwask wrote:
| It's far past time for American companies to espouse some
| American values like freedom and democracy rather than boot
| licking foreign dictators for nickles.
| glogla wrote:
| Twitter, Facebook and Google - reliable allies of evil everywhere
| in the world.
|
| I mean we knew that, but now it's like they're competing who is
| worse.
| adventured wrote:
| The most interesting thing about this, is that the people that
| run big tech are all anti-Russia. They're in the Biden | Obama
| | Hillary camp, not the perceived Trump | Putin camp
| philosophically (the far left regards Trump and Putin as being
| aligned and view that as one connected political union; and
| they view themselves as being specifically on the other side of
| that; the people in charge of Twitter, Facebook, Google are all
| far left and very anti-Trump | Putin).
|
| Big tech more likely wants to censor the Kremlin than the pro
| Ukraine wing. Which leads me to believe this is YouTube getting
| trapped in its own algorithmic approach to moderation, until or
| unless they can manually intervene.
| rurp wrote:
| I believe those are weakly held beliefs relative to their
| strongly held belief of making piles of money. Despite the
| lip service Google and others haven't exactly been going out
| of their way to help improve democracy and institutions in
| recent years.
| adventured wrote:
| What piles of money? Russia is an entirely irrelevant
| source of income for them.
|
| And if that were true, they would not have de-platformed
| Trump and they wouldn't take down lots of other high
| traffic content (eg anti vax) that they do.
|
| Russia has a mediocre economy, mediocre median standard of
| living, mediocre consumer economy, zero economic growth for
| a decade, and a disaster of a future economically going
| forward.
|
| US big tech all by itself generates more surplus cash
| (capital available for saving after expenses) every year
| than the entire nation of Russia does.
|
| Russia is an economic weakling and provides no great allure
| for big tech.
| rurp wrote:
| I don't mean that these companies are literally shilling
| for Russia directly. Rather it's that their entire
| approach is based around maximizing revenue, regardless
| of the consequences.
|
| Deferring all decisions to an opaque algorithm isn't the
| most responsible approach, it's just the cheapest.
| Worrying about externalities of their services costs
| money and produces little, so they mostly don't.
|
| The fact that their approach can be used to help
| horrendous warmongers is not intentional, but maintaining
| a system that can be used in that way is.
| graphpercolator wrote:
| Sergey Brin was born in Moscow though so who is to say when
| it comes to war.
|
| I do agree though, this is most likely just the nature of the
| problem of trying to moderate such a massive amount of video
| content.
|
| Some will be caught in the net and attribute agency to the
| process when it was just completely random.
|
| I mean there is 50k watching a live stream of Kyiv right now.
| glogla wrote:
| I don't think they're anti-Russia or anti-anything really,
| they're pro-being-even-more-insanely-rich and that can
| materialize in many ways, like talking about being in one
| camp while doing things that help the other, no matter which
| camps those are.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > the far left regards Trump and Putin as being aligned and
| view that as one connected political union
|
| I mean, it's not like this idea is unfounded. Trump has
| praised Putin many times, including during the current
| invasion. Meanwhile, Putin has been very friendly towards
| Trump.
|
| I think the "Russian election interference" stuff is very
| overblown, but it's pretty clear that Trump respects (and
| maybe even idolizes) Putin.
|
| One other problem with what you said is that I think the
| cause and effect goes the other way. The democrats are anti-
| Trump in part because he's pro Putin. They're not anti-Putin
| because Putin is pro-Trump. Being anti-Putin is very simply a
| matter of being anti-dictator and doesn't require tying Putin
| to a controversial US political figure.
| adventured wrote:
| Who said anything about it being unfounded. That was quite
| obviously not the point.
|
| The point was: big tech is exclusively run by people that
| dislike the perceived Trump | Putin axis, and there's
| nothing to debate about it frankly, it's something beyond
| overwhelmingly the case.
|
| I stated no position on whether I thought that was good or
| bad.
|
| There was no problem with what I said in fact. I never
| declared cause and effect (order to why such was the case),
| that'd be a pointless distraction from the core (and would
| merely prompt endless opinion thrashing based on partisan
| beliefs on this forum, or most any forum these days). I
| simply stated the part that they're quite obviously anti-
| Putin, and they are. Why for the purposes of the thread
| doesn't matter. Thus it's more interesting that they'd be
| blocking pro-Ukraine content and most likely indicates it's
| not their preference and is an automation problem that
| they'll have to manually act against.
| acheron wrote:
| No, Democrats only became anti-Putin after Trump.
|
| "The 1980s called, they want their foreign policy back." -
| Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama.
|
| Remember how all the journos and Democrats barked and
| clapped at that line like trained seals whenever you read
| them now angsting over Russia.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| Trump might say he likes Putin and Xi and that fat fuck in
| NK, but nevertheless he started a trade war against China,
| sent the first Javelins to Ukraine after Obama didn't want
| to do so, blocked NS2(that Biden rushed to unblock in his
| first week!), sent more troops to Poland and all Eastern
| Europe countries, strongly "encouraged" NATO countries to
| up their spending on defense etc.
|
| It's almost like the conman Trump says one and does the
| other, but because he's our political nemesis this does not
| matter anymore, and all of the sudden we start believing
| what he says and not look at the actions.
|
| Tell me, is this praising Putin, or trying to put some
| sense into Germany:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRyuW51M_fI
|
| https://publimetros.publimetro.us/2018/07/trump-blasts-
| allie...
| can16358p wrote:
| Good in one sense though: people are really seeing how evil
| they are than ever before.
| lallysingh wrote:
| Is this actually happening or are people trying to keep others
| from supporting Ukraine?
| oi2j3oi32 wrote:
| ganzuul wrote:
| Isn't YT moderation outsourced? The infiltrators might just be
| overzealous Russian nationals in one of those cubicle farms.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| That's an interesting possibility. Another hazard to
| outsourcing everything.
| rcoveson wrote:
| Or Russian money swaying the occupants of said farms.
| supreme_berry wrote:
| Just to remind you all YouTube and Stadia product manager was/is
| Russian person in Silicon Valley.
| 0xJRS wrote:
| YouTube: "What're you gonna do? Go use Vimeo?"
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