Slick
True Bro
Taking the piss
Posts: 1,015
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Post by Slick on Sept 1, 2016 17:56:51 GMT -5
Have any of you noticed/heard the outright Orwellian crackdown on political speech, sexual innuendo, language and "controversial topics"? My god, the updated tos so extraordinarily broad now. They will have to back away from this, arbitrarily enforce it or a significant amount of partners will no longer be able to monetize their videos for not being "advertiser friendly". The focus is on Youtube because other platforms don't seem to have any similar demands from their advertisers; this seems to be entirely self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the foot.
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Post by ChloeB42 (Alexcalibur42) on Sept 2, 2016 0:20:40 GMT -5
YouTube does this all the time, I give it a year at most before they backtrack again.
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Post by Pegasus Actual on Sept 2, 2016 2:09:56 GMT -5
I for one am shocked that corporate America gets to decide what does and doesn't fly on YouTube. Absolutely shocked.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 2, 2016 3:54:16 GMT -5
Okay, who let Ellen Pao out of her cage?
EDIT: But seriously, is anyone surprised that YouTube is being YouTube? People thought YouTube would die when they forced Google Plus integration on everyone. Did they ever back down on that? There's a huge list of flat-out blunders that YouTube has made over the years. YouTube can piss off its consumers all it wants- if there's nowhere else people can go they'll keep this crap up.
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Post by blackbarney on Sept 2, 2016 9:42:13 GMT -5
it's true that the comments sections are basically unreadable. They're insanely ugly. I'm glad they're doing this in a way to try and make that better. it's not a public domain so it's okay that they do this.
The timing of this thread and topic title are funny cuz i uploaded my first two videos to Youtube 36 hours ago
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Slick
True Bro
Taking the piss
Posts: 1,015
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Post by Slick on Sept 2, 2016 11:00:52 GMT -5
They did indeed back away from google plus integration - no longer required to post a comment. I'm very familiar with the ugliness of comments. Matter of fact, I used to run a fast rising channel of call of duty content back in the early mw2/late cod4 days. I don't just read the uglines;, I've been on the receiving end of those same trolls. What I take issue with, is the censoring (via demonetizing) of political discussion and sensitive topics (abortion, stem-cell research, SJW's, millennial feminists, etc.).
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Post by blackbarney on Sept 2, 2016 12:23:11 GMT -5
it's probably because those discussions lead to trolling and downspiral very quickly. Youtube isn't meant to be a discussion forum for hot topics anyway.
I'm still not thinking it's censoring since it's their website and having the comments section known to be a quagmire of hate isn't great for the brand.
I was much more surprised when CNN started deactivating comments on their news articles. Those seemed like better places to discuss, but even there it was ugly.
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42
True Bro
Bingo Bango Bongo
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Post by 42 on Sept 2, 2016 12:39:50 GMT -5
Those darn SJWs
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Sept 2, 2016 16:53:19 GMT -5
it's true that the comments sections are basically unreadable. They're insanely ugly. I'm glad they're doing this in a way to try and make that better. Less toxic isn't a bad start, but taking away people's rights is never a good thing. Which set of criteria gets to decide what critique is "over the line"? My fear is that, with such power and no means of accurately defining their terms or any means of accurately enforcing them, YouTube will silence a legitimate critic because they didn't like what they said. YouTube may silence the person who makes them less money. YouTube might silence someone because they were bribed, influenced, or coerced to do so. YouTube might pick a side and silence major representatives of a given ideal. That's uncomfortable, especially when you're actively fighting human nature. Congratulations, YouTube closed down the YouTube channel of some big douchenozzle. Now he'll open up Douchenozzle2 and continue his work saying that YouTube tried to silence him. You took down legitcritic's video? He'll just embed it on another video-hosting site and link people over there. While we may have a lot of people shouting obscenities and rhetoric in the comments section, and YouTube has had better comment systems, I doubt there will ever be a comment system that works for such a large scale. Even Reddit's comment section is bullocks. Even when YouTube's top comments featured two comments popular at the time it was still useful for both content creators and viewers. That being said jokes and popular opinion stole the spotlight, but that made for a better system than what we had now. Finally the major reason why YouTube will never reach its goal of having intelligible or controversial discussions more often is because it's like asking a chef to run a fancy restaurant on canned goods. Almost all people on YouTube are incapable of argument. They're too young. They're too biased. They're too emotional. They don't want to have controversial conversations. They want to shout at each other and spew out the funny punditry they saw on 9gag earlier today for internet votes. If YouTube wants a quality community all they can do is offer a way to have content creators filter out who they want commenting on their videos... somehow. Good luck figuring out how to do that- I don't even know how to make that work.
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Post by UrbaneVirtuoso on Sept 2, 2016 19:22:54 GMT -5
Some serious shit going on here, guys.
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Post by blackbarney on Sept 2, 2016 20:30:57 GMT -5
I disagree with Beaver, which never happens, because I think private censure is very different than public censure. But that screen shot above is all kinds of messed Up
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Post by Aphoristic on Sept 2, 2016 20:34:29 GMT -5
So, everyone wants to pin YouTube for this. Obviously, well it's their platform and they're doing this. Well you really need to be looking at the advertisers. They tell YouTube, "hey we don't want our content associated with this and that video because it is controversial." They completely fail to understand that people do not connect the advertisement with the video. It's absurd, but that's where the problem is.
It isn't entirely a political issue. This is affecting all channels on YouTube, and has been for quite a while. People were just not notified about it until now. There was no way to counter a claim. People are just assuming this is a political issue when the first big one to get noticed was Philip Defranco's video on Lyft girl. It's an automated system hitting anything that it detects as controversial. I saw some people complaining about depression support videos being hit by this even.
So yes, YouTube can't really say no to the advertisers in the same way they couldn't say no to the copyright claims. So they did the same thing, automated bot to hit the videos. Yes it sucks, yes they can do better, but in this case the anger needs to be directed at the advertisers for failing to realize that advertising online isn't the same as putting your commercial on daytime television.
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Slick
True Bro
Taking the piss
Posts: 1,015
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Post by Slick on Sept 2, 2016 21:30:13 GMT -5
If it was entirely a decision by advertisers, this behavior would be seen on other video platforms as they would be inclined to participate in the same behavior. No evidence has been raised to highlight this for Youtube's defense. I find it hard to believe nobody makes any money on another platform. It's clear to me it's almost entirely a political decision being made by the corporate heads at youtube as they can afford to do this.
I notice there's a lot of apathy toward this issue. Some don't consider youtube to be a platform for serious ideas or discussion simply because someone can post unpleasant comments on it. This is extraordinarily misguided thinking. Why are you letting other people in the comments dictate the legitimacy and authenticity of a subject matter? Why can't you watch what someone has to say and form an opinion of your own? Do you need to have the narrative or the correct opinion fed to you? Of course, the video itself to could that as well, but when you depend what the commentators think, you are participating in group think, nothing more. Youtube participating in defacto censorship is a big deal; they own the market-share of video media - they are not just a centralized source of entertainment, they are also the centralized location for much of the alternative media. Don't you enjoy having multiple sources for your news? Aren't you happy you no longer have to rely on the alphabet networks to learn what's on in the world? I hope you don't, because this new policy is so broad-brushed, the entire alternative media can and might be forced off the most watched video platform in history.
How can this not be seen as a political issue? Just look at what's being demonetized. It's not the cat videos, I can assure you. There is a greater danger still: If all platforms have to adopt this or similar standards to stay in business, that's terrible for freedom of the press, and for your ability to be informed. You don't really think the alphabet media is going to cover the news fairly, right? Are you starting to understand why this is a problem? Just the latest example of why monopolies are terrible for the consumers. God help us if it becomes the industry standard.
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Post by Aphoristic on Sept 2, 2016 23:30:53 GMT -5
"Other video platforms". So Vessel? Is that site even still around? Other similar ones like the one Cyanide and Happiness uses? They all worked on subscription models, pay for early access to videos or get them later with ads. All the people posting there were hand picked, unlike YouTube. YouTube has so many "partnered" accounts that they can't even keep in contact with them all. Ask any YouTuber how many times they've gotten to speak to someone from YouTube. So on that scale, things need to be automated. Copyright was a huge issue before which is why all the copyrighted shit on YouTube has to be flipped or distorted in some other way. Granted this new system for ad friendly content isn't the same. It probably only checks tags/titles/descriptions rather than the content itself. But it is still necessary to keep advertisers happy much like the copyright one was necessary to keep copyright holders happy. YouTube would be screwed if advertisers pulled out. They are at the will of the advertisers.
I do disagree with everyone acting like YouTube has no serious content creators. Yes, they do exist. Yes they are being hit harder than most of the other channels, but calling this political isn't correct. It is affecting both sides. The Young Turks said they have a ton of videos hit by it, and they are about as left wing as you can get. Plenty of feminist/sjws/whatevers are complaining, it really isn't just the right.
Now the argument of this shutting down the alternative media is a valid one, and more the reason something needs to be fixed. Blaming YouTube can only go so far. The advertisers they are appeasing need to be dealt with. Let's even assume that say YouTube dies because of this. The same problem will happen to the platform that replaces it once it gets enough users.
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Post by ChloeB42 (Alexcalibur42) on Sept 3, 2016 6:58:30 GMT -5
Watched a couple of videos on it, basically what it appears to be is that. 1. Youtube will now notify you when they're demonetizing your video. This is good, before it wasn't transparent. 2. It appears to be an automated system, much like the content ID system that worked so well before, and this is where the real problem lies. The automated system doesn't bother to check the video itself for anything, just if the tags or title or description has keywords in it.
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Post by blackbarney on Sept 3, 2016 10:35:35 GMT -5
Good post Slick.
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Dumien
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Post by Dumien on Sept 5, 2016 20:17:38 GMT -5
Everything is political at this point.
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Usagi
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Post by Usagi on Sept 5, 2016 22:51:02 GMT -5
It always was, chief.
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Dumien
True Bro
Black Market Trader
No engrams. Only disappointment.
Posts: 3,292
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Post by Dumien on Sept 6, 2016 12:27:21 GMT -5
Well if we want to get all Foucauldian on this... all machinations are effects generated by pre-existing power relations.
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