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.

Comments

IMDB

[Kyr Arvin]

IMDB removed their comments sections entirely rather than police them.

Youtube's comments are more integral to the service, but if Youtube is going to be have to do more about them then respond to user complaints, they might find it easier to just shut that crap down preemptively.

Re:IMDB

[mark-t]

Except for the channels whose authors actually interact with the comments, and proceed to post followup videos based on those comments.

Re: IMDB

[Jeremi]

Potential solution: allow people to submit comments, but the comments donâ(TM)t become publicly visible unless/until the videoâ(TM)s owner approves them.

(Yes, this would drastically reduce both the number of comments and the incentive to comment. I think that would be a good thing)

Re:IMDB

[epine]

A complete shutdown of comments solves the problem, and, harms no one (except the egomaniacs who need a thousand comments telling them how great they are).

Glad to see you're hot on the job of speaking for all humanity.

Surprise, surprise: I completely disagree with you. I find the comments almost indispensable. And my ego has nothing to do with it.

Without the comments, the "like" button becomes effectively castrated, because you have no way to double check what ridiculous reasons people are coming up with to vote one way or another. I'm highly invested in sociology. Society is crumbling. You can't reassemble an egg without getting you's hands dirty; you can't perfect your listening skills inside a tame filter bubble.

Finally, I don't see any parallel between Facebook and YouTube. Facebook went far above and beyond the call the duty in being obtuse to reality.

Why Zuckerberg's 14-Year Apology Tour Hasn't Fixed Facebook — April 2018

Apart from copyright law, YouTube is in the same nasty social media hot tub as every other social media service, and not doing a particularly worse job of it. In terms of getting in between the creative class and their revenue streams, how is this different from Apple? They're different models, but with more or less the same end result: content is not king.

Being annoyed about the content situation, then trying to throw YouTube under the Facebook bus in a fit of pique won't change this reality one bit.

Re:IMDB

[whoever57]

And if Youtube shuts down the comments, authors will post a link to some other site for discussion. Exactly what Google doesn't want!

This is just silly

[rsilvergun]

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.

Re:This is just silly

[rsborg]

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.

Yeah, the CA thing was entirely different. The issue at stake was that because FB was really lax on security they effectively let CA pull the whole graph down on everyone even though those people may not have fallen for CA's dirty tricks directly. That information was then weaponized to create deepfake videos and radicalize the population.

This is more along the lines of the usual "Google doesn't understand humans" policy intersected with pedos being pedos.

If comments were turned off on YouTube would anything of value be lost? If Google had a policy where kids couldn't be the only people in a video (ML can figure that out), would that be enough?

Re:This is just silly

[terrycarlino]

As I understand it this was pushed by a YouTuber who had been demonetized because his content was creepy. His response was to use the following he had to complain to the advertisers about pedophiles commenting in certain videos in an effort to hurt YouTube and successful creators who had not been demonetized.

Not that there wasn't a problem, but YouTube was aware of it and trying to address it without forcing creators to have to moderate content. The stream of complaints caused advertisers to pull their ads causing YouTube to this knee jerk reaction.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:"soft-core pedophilia ring."

[ffkom]

Do you realize this is about completely mundane videos of children in everyday activities, with the only thing related to "pedophilia" being the claim that it was pedophiles who left idiotic comments that suggest parts of these videos were somehow arousing sexual feelings?

While theoretically, extremely stupid pedophiles might actually have been the authors of those comments, it seems just as likely that trolls seeking attention for either fun or publicity or money wrote those comments themselves to then base a "scandal" on them.

Re:Paying for Youtube

[ZipprHead]

Will creators still be paid with YouTube Premium?

"Yes, of course. In fact, YouTube Premium provides a secondary revenue stream for creators in addition to what you're already earning today through ads."

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6306276#YouTube_Red_revenue_1

Re:Summary has it wrong

[terrycarlino]

Nah.

85% of all content is garbage. 85% of all books are garbage. 85% of all TV is garbage. 85% of all movies are garbage. YouTube is not better or worse in that regard than any other content source.

But since YouTube has over 7 billion videos that means ther are 1.4 billion videos that are not garbage. Certainly compared the professional media that's way more decent stuff than they put out.

Re:"soft-core pedophilia ring."

[Mashiki]

One of the problems is, you can go back over say the last 5 years of court cases where that type of action shows a "pattern of behavior" of an individual who's been criminally charged with a sex crime against a minor, or trafficking in child porn. One of the problems is that kids see the attention they're getting then act out the things suggested, that *is* a problem. Said problem has multiple failures of multiple people at multiple levels. If you have kids, or nieces or nephews and so on. Especially kids in the 7-12 range and how they'll act in order to gain praise from an adult for whatever reason, doubly so in cases with an absentee parent i.e. a parent who uses TV, computer/etc as a baby sitting device. Then you shouldn't have any problems figure out why this is a problem. The fact that youtube already had a policy of restricting comment sections of minors because of comments that crossed the line, means that they already know that there's issues.

The thing you mention with trolls, well ask yourself. If law enforcement and the courts have been using a pattern of behavior in order to restrict people from being able to be near children, what are the chances that trolls have been doing this for years? Pretty low. Though with the recent stuff that's been written, you're likely to start seeing trolls going after people to try and get their comments shut down and demonetized.