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YouTube Is Heading For Its Cambridge Analytica Moment (cnbc.com)
Earlier this week, Disney, Nestle and others pulled its advertising spending from YouTube after a blogger detailed how comments on Google's video site were being used to facilitate a "soft-core pedophilia ring." Some of the videos involved ran next to ads placed by Disney and Nestle.
With the company facing similar problems over the years, often being "caught in a game of whack-a-mole to fix them," Matt Rosoff from CNBC writes that it's only a matter of time until YouTube faces a scandal that actually alienates users, as happened with Facebook in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. From the report: To be fair, YouTube has taken concrete steps to fix some problems. A couple of years ago, major news events were targets for scammers to post misleading videos about them, like videos claiming shootings such as the one in Parkland, Florida, were staged by crisis actors. In January, the company said it would stop recommending such videos, effectively burying them. It also favors "authoritative" sources in search results around major news events, like mainstream media organizations. And YouTube is not alone in struggling to fight inappropriate content that users upload to its platform. The problem isn't really about YouTube, Facebook or any single company. The problem is the entire business model around user-generated content, and the whack-a-mole game of trying to stay one step ahead of people who abuse it.
[T]ech platforms that rely on user-generated content are protected by the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which says platform providers cannot be held liable for material users post on them. It made sense at the time -- the internet was young, and forcing start-ups to monitor their comments sections (remember comments sections?) would have exploded their expenses and stopped growth before it started. Even now, when some of these companies are worth hundreds of billions of dollars, holding them liable for user-generated content would blow up these companies' business models. They'd disappear, reduce services or have to charge fees for them. Voters might not be happy if Facebook went out of business or they suddenly had to start paying $20 a month to use YouTube. Similarly, advertiser boycotts tend to be short-lived -- advertisers go where they get the best return on their investment, and as long as billions of people keep watching YouTube videos, they'll keep advertising on the platform. So the only way things will change is if users get turned off so badly that they tune out. Following Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, people deleted their accounts, Facebook's growth largely stalled in the U.S., and more young users have abandoned the platform. "YouTube has so far skated free of any similar scandals. But people are paying closer attention than ever before, and it's only a matter of time before the big scandal that actually starts driving users away," writes Rosoff.
[T]ech platforms that rely on user-generated content are protected by the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which says platform providers cannot be held liable for material users post on them. It made sense at the time -- the internet was young, and forcing start-ups to monitor their comments sections (remember comments sections?) would have exploded their expenses and stopped growth before it started. Even now, when some of these companies are worth hundreds of billions of dollars, holding them liable for user-generated content would blow up these companies' business models. They'd disappear, reduce services or have to charge fees for them. Voters might not be happy if Facebook went out of business or they suddenly had to start paying $20 a month to use YouTube. Similarly, advertiser boycotts tend to be short-lived -- advertisers go where they get the best return on their investment, and as long as billions of people keep watching YouTube videos, they'll keep advertising on the platform. So the only way things will change is if users get turned off so badly that they tune out. Following Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal, people deleted their accounts, Facebook's growth largely stalled in the U.S., and more young users have abandoned the platform. "YouTube has so far skated free of any similar scandals. But people are paying closer attention than ever before, and it's only a matter of time before the big scandal that actually starts driving users away," writes Rosoff.
YouTube isn't a social network. The controversy, such as it is, doesn't have anything to do with privacy. Also YouTube hasn't done anything dodgy or illegal, they've just responded poorly to a very minor bit of bad publicity.
This'll blow over, some full time YouTubers will sadly lose out (and we'll lose out on some good content) and YouTube will go on.
The CA thing was a mess because not only was there privacy concerns but there was the stink of corrupt American politics all over it.
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1. Fire all of the SJWs who continue to lose their shit that there are still Nazis howling from the virtual street corner. In 2019, anyone obsessed with Nazis should be assumed to either be a closet Nazi or sexually fetishizing them; either of which is moral turpitude for employment purposes as far as I'm concerned.
2. Abolish the whole ad system in favor of an ad marketplace that takes all of the ML engineers off of hunting Nazis and focusing on finding quality content creators to line up with big name advertisers who must then sign a digital contract saying "yes, we reviewed this and yes we accept full responsibility for all harm YouTube and other producers suffer if we pull out because this producer does some shit that offends us rather than just severing ties with them."
3. Give every non-premium creator a disk space quota.
4. Impose the video game rating system on content with severe penalties for any obvious attempt to evade it.
5. Create a credit system with no transaction fees that encourages people to pay for content. I would go as far as allowing people to offer up a single penny with payments happening every 90 days once a producer has made at least $5.
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