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YouTube Executives Ignored Warnings, Letting Toxic Videos Run Rampant (bloomberg.com)
Proposals to change recommendations and curb conspiracies on YouTube were sacrificed for engagement, Bloomberg reported Monday, citing Google employees. From the report: In recent years, scores of people inside YouTube and Google, its owner, raised concerns about the mass of false, incendiary and toxic content that the world's largest video site surfaced and spread. One employee wanted to flag troubling videos, which fell just short of the hate speech rules, and stop recommending them to viewers. Another wanted to track these videos in a spreadsheet to chart their popularity. A third, fretful of the spread of "alt-right" video bloggers, created an internal vertical that showed just how popular they were. Each time they got the same basic response: Don't rock the boat.
The company spent years chasing one business goal above others: "Engagement," a measure of the views, time spent and interactions with online videos. Conversations with over twenty people who work at, or recently left, YouTube reveal a corporate leadership unable or unwilling to act on these internal alarms for fear of throttling engagement. Wojcicki would "never put her fingers on the scale," said one person who worked for her. "Her view was, 'My job is to run the company, not deal with this.'"
The company spent years chasing one business goal above others: "Engagement," a measure of the views, time spent and interactions with online videos. Conversations with over twenty people who work at, or recently left, YouTube reveal a corporate leadership unable or unwilling to act on these internal alarms for fear of throttling engagement. Wojcicki would "never put her fingers on the scale," said one person who worked for her. "Her view was, 'My job is to run the company, not deal with this.'"
I see no problem here (except with some employees who are complaining, who should probably be fired).
YouTube could break the echo chamber effect by recommending good quality videos on the same topic. If someone is interested in vaccinations, there's no reason to just recommend conspiracy videos on the topic.
So they admit the videos didn't break the rules, but our feelings were hurt/we disagreed with their political views so we should censor them. Got it.
Notice the use of emotionally charged rhetoric.
"incendiary and toxic content" - subjective and not objective, specifically used to rally people to their viewpoint without questioning the author. After all, you don't want to be toxic, do you?
It seems to be less "don't rock the boat" and more "they're not breaking the rules, tough shit"
This is an issue of scope, profit margin, and market evaluations.
You know why Steam doesn't hand-pick games to be on their marketplace? Scope of the task. They clean up the biggest disasters, but basically filter feed on whatever pops out of that ecosystem.
Same thing for the Microsoft store, the android marketplace, and large parts of the Apple marketplace.
And those are marketplaces where the profit margins are relatively large.
Well, relatively large, compared to Youtube.
In setting any standards involving an expectation of paid human oversight - including just managing a bunch of volunteers - even at some absurdly low 1 to 1 million ratio, they risk the value they hold in the primary underlying motivation of their bosses: The market value of their platform.
That's the real issue - business stuff like staff responding to DMCA complaints is also expensive, but the market isn't going to lower their stock for that. But having to hire and maintain staff to stand in as referees in effectively political contests... that's going to generate blowback they can't shuffle under some easy cost line in a report.
That's kind of the problem with being a public traded company. The pressures aren't just financial - they are also largely the political fashion sense of the market pushing everyone to play a game of taking the most they can from contracts (customer and employee alike), and then providing that value back as maximal perceived market value.
The irony is that we call it being 'publicly traded' - where it functions mostly to funnel wealth into fewer and fewer private hands in the end.
In the end, our shared retirement accounts get regularly raided and scammed, and the entire market is expected to crash, as if it was a force of nature - because minimal oversight is seen as more expensive and odious than frequent disaster.
That's the shape of the system we make for ourselves.
Ryan Fenton
Lol, it's always the "alt-right" isn't it? Because with the left, dissenting views are *always* welcome.
YouTube already demotes you if you swear and ensures popular videos with "toxic" behavior never trend or get recommended. The problem is even videos as inane as PewDiePies latest congratulations song can get 22 million views in a day but still not hit trending because some arbitrarily decided nothing he creates can hit the trending list. Meanwhile Stephen Colbert can say trump is sucking Putin's cock and that video gets recommended because "if it's okay for tv it's okay for YouTube." You absolutely don't want to be on the wrong end of a reviewer defining you and that is what happens all the time. Numerous people are claimed to be "toxic" even just for not liking a brand or something other people like, as if just not loving something is a crime. You can never let a small group of people or even an algorithm define toxicity ir some people will always be shut up and left silent.
> The problem is they make money by showing us stuff the worst part of our nature likes, and they do this, because it hooks people.
Sensationalism gets people watching? Color me shocked! /sarcasm
The mainstream media and other "news" does the same stupid shit. Because, sadly, controversy sells. It is the same reason for the artificial manufactured drama in "Reality Shows".
Maybe part of the problem is that there is no "Good News" channel that focuses on positive, empowering people instead of the negative, bullshit ?
The bigger problem is YouTube censoring anyone who doesn't agree with their political agenda. This is a dangerous slippery slope.
The fact that FOX News didn't have to act sensationalist relative to its counterparts but instead took a route of acting relatively meek and just reacting to the left, and this got them into the current state where they of all outlets are more trusted than past trusted left-leaning outlets, should instead of inviting scorn push you to do some introspective activities and turn on some light bulbs. But i guess stupid people do as stupid people keep doing.
that Hate Crime is increasing while the rest of violent crime decreases. Here's the article you're probably referencing. Since it was the 1st hit on google.
We fought hard to delegitimize organized violence against minorities in this country. There was widespread anti-black terrorism committed with impunity right up until the 70s (and the occasional incident in the 80s and 90s).
It's not that Americans evolved some higher form of intelligence or empathy. We're the same folk we were 40 years ago minus a chunk of bigotry. What I'm saying is that it would be effortless for us to regress back to the KKK days. I'm a white dude and I do not want that.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Yeah, I mean, Communists only kill 100,000,000+ people in the last 100 years. But, you know, other than that, they're a pretty peaceful bunch.
Do you have ESP?
Everytime I see the letters SJW used in an unironic fashion, I know this is some insecure, broken and unlikable dude who gets offended a trillion times a day while simultaneously lashing at people online calling them offended snowflakes. You need more introspection than you can ever reach, unfortunately. I'm just glad I don't have to interact with you on a daily basis, sir!