To Answer Critics, YouTube Tries a New Metric: Responsibility (bloomberg.com)

YouTube is changing the way it measures success on the world's biggest video site following a series of scandals. There's just one problem: The company is still deciding how this new approach works, Bloomberg reports. From the report: The Google division introduced two new internal metrics in the past two years for gauging how well videos are performing, according to people familiar with the company's plans. One tracks the total time people spend on YouTube, including comments they post and read (not just the clips they watch). The other is a measurement called "quality watch time," a squishier statistic with a noble goal: To spot content that achieves something more constructive than just keeping users glued to their phones.

The changes are supposed to reward videos that are more palatable to advertisers and the broader public, and help YouTube ward off criticism that its service is addictive and socially corrosive. Creating the right metric for success could help marginalize videos that are inappropriate, or popular among small but active communities with extreme views. It could also help YouTube make up for previous failures in curbing the spread of toxic content. YouTube, like other parts of Alphabet's Google, uses these corporate metrics as goal posts for most business and technical decisions -- how it pays staff and creates critical software like its recommendation system. But the company has yet to settle on how the "quality watch time" metric works, or communicate how the new measure will impact millions of "creators" who upload videos to the site.

Comments

Responsibility to minimize Clickbait?

[UnknownSoldier]

I'll believe it when it when they give **users** better tools to flag clickbait when content creators pull shenanigans like hiding the number of up/down votes or just outright disabling comments.

*Cough* Verge PC Building "Guide" created by an idiot then blames the community for being "toxic" when they are called out on their ignorance.

Re:Responsibility to minimize Clickbait?

[Riceballsan]

I would say though "content creators disabling comments" isn't necessarally the creators stupidity. Youtube's recent response to the Pedo's scandal, was more or less to hold uploaders responsible for comments on their videos. Which means unless you actively keep up with all comments on all of your videos, disabling comments may be the smarter thing to do.

Re:Responsibility to minimize Clickbait?

[AmiMoJo]

Disabling comments and up/down votes is suicide for clickbait. It massively down-ranks the video by decreasing the engagement score.

That Verge video only remained visible because so many people were linking to it.

Re:Responsibility to minimize Clickbait?

[rtb61]

How about simply being able to block the click baiters so you never see their content again, done and finished. Let users decide who is good and who is bad and allow promoted content to aligned with the generally alignment of ranges of users. Who they rate up or down and who they block or subscribe to. Google of course hates this idea, as it wants to control the users, by controlling the content they can see, just a pack of manipulative slime.

They want content as ads, broken up by ads with ads as the background on the website and to force ads on you. Like android TV, block the forced commercials, they did an update and pushed them back on on the home page, the very next day, what a pack of shit stains, so blocked it again, I assume it will keep coming back.

Here's bettering Google gets into the TV market with TVs that turn themselves on to show ads at maximum volume.

Re:Responsibility to minimize Clickbait?

[goose-incarnated]

This:

How about simply being able to block the click baiters so you never see their content again

Is not compatible with this:

The changes are supposed to reward videos that are more palatable to advertisers

They're outright saying that they want more ad-friendly videos, not user-friendly videos.

The advertisers are the customer here, the users are the product. Seeing as how there is almost no shortage of product, but a shortage of paying customers, why wouldn't they harm the product to appease the paying customers?

There is literally nothing that Youtube can do that will slow down or reduce the quantity or quality of the product they are selling.

Again with the bandwagon fallacy

[DallasTruaxxx]

"The changes are supposed to reward videos that are more palatable to advertisers and the broader public..." Because the bandwagon fallacy is how everything should be decided?!? Popular lies are way more palatable than uncomfortable truths. This will not be an improvement.

Re:Again with the bandwagon fallacy

[Anonymous Coward]

YouTube wants harmless fluff videos because that's what advertisers want, the days when YouTube was a video platform for "anybody" are long gone.

Re:Again with the bandwagon fallacy

[DallasTruaxxx]

This is likely code for something like: "If the wrong people 'like' it, or watch it, you will not be getting kudos.

Re:Again with the bandwagon fallacy

[k6mfw]

Not sure how the news of YT raising price for YTTV fits into this discussion, but sure are a lot of heated comments here, https://old.reddit.com/r/news/...

Doesn't seem like it would help toxic/fake content

[SuperKendall]

It could also help YouTube make up for previous failures in curbing the spread of toxic content

I don't see how, because any way you slice it these kinds of videos would be rated as high on the list of "quality viewing" - people would be watching the whole thing, and commenting on them also. I mean, they do today...

The stuff that would fare worse under this new regime would be the video equivalent of listicles, or those videos with really terrible voice synthesizers droning on about whatever... where you just get annoyed and stop watching after a minute or skip around quickly and leave.

I do think it would down-rate some stupid content, but not the kind of content the summary thinks it would effect.

"Toxic Content"

[Anonymous Coward]

It could also help YouTube make up for previous failures in curbing the spread of toxic content.

Toxic content is newspeak for facts or opinions that we do not like.

Re:"Toxic Content"

[sinij]

It could also help YouTube make up for previous failures in curbing the spread of toxic content.

Toxic content is newspeak for facts or opinions that we do not like.

It is much worse than that, toxic content are facts that a tiny fringe minority of activists would rather not discuss. It also any opinion or statement by people that are declared "the enemy" by these people.

Re:"Toxic Content"

[serviscope_minor]

Some people have the opinion I should be murdered. That's pretty toxic.

You don't get a free pass from being an asshole just because you have opinions.

Re:"Toxic Content"

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool story, got anything to contribute to the conversation or did you just want to make an appearance to talk about a laughable extreme that is irrelevant?

Re:"Toxic Content"

[Anonymous Coward]

Toxic content is newspeak for facts or opinions that we do not like.

uhm get out of your bubble...

Re: "Toxic Content"

[poity]

If merely getting rid of videos that call for murder could satisfy those activists, they would have quieted down already and we wouldn't be in this situation. Let's be real, this is political censorship made at the request of those who are willing to stretch the definition of "harm" so wide that no criticism could escape, and are willing to interpret the rules so capriciously and self-servingly that no amount of adherence to the text of those rules could offer protection against punishment.

Re: "Toxic Content"

[poity]

Are you, Amimojo, willing to state here for the record that you will draw the line at videos telling kids to kill themselves and terrorist propaganda? Here and no further, here and no dilution to the meaning of "harm"?

If you do not make such a post in reply to me, I kindly ask everyone who reads this post to look up the "Motte and Bailey defense", and to view all further posts by Amimojo through the lens of that knowledge.

Re:"Toxic Content"

[epine]

Toxic content is newspeak for facts or opinions that we do not like.

That's one definition. Here's another one: Toxic content is content that elevates cynicism to a grand principle of life.

I've never been particularly concerned about toxic content on YouTube, so long as they move it to the back of the magazine rack, where the more extreme content has always been slightly sequestered from innocent eyes. (In real life, back in the seventies when this was still a thing, the biggest dissuasion from checking out the back of the shop was the caliber of men—it was always men—that you generally saw drifting in that direction.)

If the core value system is cynicism and outrage, market your own crap, and don't expect YouTube's algorithms to do it for you.

Only it turns out that cynicism and outrage is also damn lazy.

Most of the people consuming this content are just looking for an easy way to wind themselves up into a satisfying outrage or a smug indignation. They generally won't lift a finger to dig further into the back story, and they won't a finger to find this content, either, if it doesn't come barrelling down their automatic feed.

Some people will continue to seek out this same content on a deliberate basis. And those people will be hardly affected by this new algorithm, whatsoever.

(Demonitization is a somewhat different issue, but I'd argue that most mainstream advertisers have never intended to associate themselves with this kind of content, and the brief period where you could monetize this was a historical aberration.)

Re:"Toxic Content"

[rmdingler]

Videos encouraging children to kill themselves? How about advertisements encouraging the consumption of soft drinks, candy, cigarettes, and alcohol?

Terrorist propaganda videos? That's evolving into simply bucking the current regime. It's just a better soundbite when you rename the opposition faction a terrorist organisation. It's naming your enemies something vile that triggers subconscious revulsion. Cockroachian rebels.

Re: "Toxic Content"

[Highdude702]

He knows that, he is just trying to deflect the conversation to "censorship is good because reasons". Anybody who reads slashdot enough knows how his comments go.

Who gets to define "toxic content?"

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just wondering who gets to define what is and is not "toxic content."

Recently it seems that "toxic content" is simply anything that criticizes, calls attention to the failures of, or otherwise sheds light on the truth about the failures of leftist extremism.

Re: Who gets to define "toxic content?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to me that you're defining toxic as anyone who doesn't agree with you. C WUT I DID THERE.

Toxic content = I don't like your ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

So, YouTube is going to no-platform ideas snowflakes find triggering.

How "progressive" of them.

Descartes is spinning in his grave.

Re:Toxic content = I don't like your ideas

[Ensign_Expendable]

No, no! This is more like the ChiComs' new social demerit system.

Re:Media will receive Social Harmony Score

[forkfail]

Not much to add to this - pretty much my thoughts exactly.

Re:"I diasgree with what you say"

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nobody will ever need more than 640K of RAM"

--- Pythagoras

A page from china...

[fish_in_the_c]

This sounds like a good variable for china to add to its 'social credit score', which it routinely uses to abuse minorities and suppress freedoms. Sounds a little bit like it might be useful for the same thing as well. Are there any alternatives to youtube?

Isn't this china's social credit?

[Riceballsan]

In china there's the crazy social credit system. IE there's things that help and hurt your social credit score, which is kinda bad, but the real crazy part of it, when you hang around people with bad social credit, your score also drops, even if you don't do anything negative in the system, you are considered toxic by association.

Responsibility to who?

[AHuxley]

Palatable to the politics of SJW?
The UK gov?
France?
Germany?
Spain?
The Communist party in China?

Promising idea, but half-@ssed on YouTube

[shanen]

Too bad I didn't see the story until it was about to die. I'd have like to throw in my two-cents worth. However as it stands, the discussion is already falling off the front page, and there is no mention of "filter", the key to making it useful.

Responsibility to who?

[SuricouRaven]

The phrase "reward videos that are more palatable to advertisers" tells me exactly what this is about. It's about keeping down any videos which express sensitive opinions - because advertisers want nothing to do with politics, any specifics of religion, or absolutely anything relating to sex. Such video is more trouble than it's worth.

Re:Left *AND* Right.

[Highdude702]

You have to find someone willing to procreate with you to be able to raise children here.

Re:A modest proposal

[Highdude702]

Sorry, no thanks. I'm an adult. I can be responsible for my own actions. You can too you know. You don't have to rely on the government or corporations to tell you you're being a good boy.

Re:A modest proposal

[fish_in_the_c]

yes but in China you social credit score effects things like your ability to get an education, travel and well... live. It is the anatomy of evil, unless of coarse you are an atheist, in which case it is a incredibly innovative tool for properly ordering society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Every country should stop doing business with china until they end it.

Re:A modest proposal

[Highdude702]

I'm not Chinese or from the EU or UK. I don't agree with any nannying any country tries.