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I do fall for the argument that oversight would be too costly given the sheer numbers. I don't like it though.

bradly 5y ago
I’ve work on similar sized systems that utilized a very large human workforce to verify models before release and to monitor/measure production models on a daily basis after release. There are ways to make it efficient.
ethbr0 5y ago
Know your customer rules are extremely costly for banks to implement, given the sheer numbers. But we mandate it because that's the world we want to live in. The real conversation here is about Alphabet and Facebook's margins. If they're not doing enough, they can spend more and do more.
philipov 5y ago
It would be costly, but I am confident that Google has the money. They just don't want to spend it, and I am not sympathetic to that.
- alecbz 5y ago
  The question is would it be so costly that YouTube's profitability would look significantly different, and at that point would Google want to keep running YouTube? I'm not sure, but I don't think the answer is that it obviously won't materially change YouTube's profitability.
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    Well, it's better if they don't keep it running them. They have a monopoly on search, that they use to censor any competing video hosting. If they go and start censoring their own service too, this is a very serious problem.
  - philipov 5y ago
    Youtube's value isn't as a profit center, but a way of keeping people inside Google's ad ecosystem. Its value is to dominate the video hosting market so that viable competitors can't rise up in its place. If Google can squeeze profit out, that's icing on the cake, but not the core reason why Google wants to hold on to Youtube. If the profitability of Youtube is on the table, then so should be antitrust, and Google should not be allowed to own it.
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      > Youtube's value isn't as a profit center, but a way of keeping people inside Google's ad ecosystem. Even more important from Google's point of view is it was the way to push Chrome to dominance. And a way to keep it there ahead of any potential competitors. Which is valuable because of the data and ability to block ad blockers. That is, Google's ad ecosystem.
      - alecbz 5y ago
        > it was the way to push Chrome to dominance. How did YT push Chrome?
        anamax 5y ago
        Microsoft abandoned their "not Chrome-based" Edge code base, despite the fact that it was significantly faster than Chrome on almost every other site, because of the way that YouTube does some layers. This "way" has no functional effect, but it does block certain optimizations, optimizations that Edge was using and Chrome still isn't. Google optimizes YT for Chromium-based renderers. Or rather, Google pessimizes YT for other renderers.
        HWR_14 5y ago
        In 2009/2010 YouTube advertised Chrome as a better way to view YouTube videos pretty extensively. YouTube also is a moving target that other browsers have to hit (see also GoogleDocs.) It's similar to how "DOS ain't done until Lotus won't run", only with YouTube and other browsers.
- simonh 5y ago
  Youtube gets roughly 30,000 hours of content uploaded to it every hour. They'd need an army the size of all of Google, Apple and Facebook put together just to review it all.
  - mopsi 5y ago
    How much of that remains if you don't review immediately, but when view count exceeds -- for example -- 100 views? I'd expect a dramatic drop from 30 000 hours.
  - philipov 5y ago
    If you want to be so successful as to become one of the premier public forums in society, don't start crying when you're held up to the standards and expectations of other public institutions. Google, go get ye that army of moderators.
    - simonh 5y ago
      Employing that many people would likely cost in the region of Google's entire earnings. It would make Youtube, or any service like it, financially impossible for anyone to run. So sure, I'm not saying we need Youtube, but what you're saying is we can't have it or anything like it.
      - munk-a 5y ago
        I really appreciate YouTube's existence, but chances are a communal video streaming site that the entire world can trivially upload videos to should probably be a government run service if it exists at all. There are a plethora of much more conservatively sized video uploading sites that vet and have specific contracts with their content producers.
      - HWR_14 5y ago
        > Employing that many people would likely cost in the region of Google's entire earnings. It would cost 2.5% of their profits if they had an entire US workforce and every video needed to be viewed in its entirety.
munk-a 5y ago
If the oversight you provide as part of your service is unreasonably expensive then you probably shouldn't be in business - if you can't sanely moderate your platform then you also shouldn't be in business. I can rationally accept that argument as quite logical but I can also accept the fact that news papers ran classified ads for years and years without assisting terrorists by giving them a platform to coordinate attacks in plain text on - facebook comes along and suddenly the bar for obfuscated text is "r u rdy 4 the b0mb?" Companies that are providing such an amazingly affordable service because they're just skipping out on doing moderation don't get to use "Well, doing it the right way would be too expensive" as a defense - that's how you end up with Uber. Uber broke laws, Uber shouldn't exist at this point, something like Uber should exist, but Travis Kalanick should have been fined into near non-existence and not currently be sitting happy on 2.8 billion. We, as a society, need to have standards.
- gruez 5y ago
  >If the oversight you provide as part of your service is unreasonably expensive then you probably shouldn't be in business - if you can't sanely moderate your platform then you also shouldn't be in business. So you'd rather have the status quo of a few decades ago (ie. large media organizations acting as gatekeepers), rather than the democratized ecosystem we have now?
  - munk-a 5y ago
    I mean, both have their glaring issues... but I think our modern system is worse. Independent news outlets didn't get a large readership but they did exist and people did express non-mainstream views in them - and while the main companies were definitely status quo aligned they attracted (and focused on attracting) actual journalists that occasionally broke stories that gave the editors headaches. In the absence of them being required to be the source of news (and due to competition from blogs running on a completely non-existent budget) they've focused more and more on advertiser revenue acquisition which really just only cares about the number of clicks you're getting. I'd prefer neither system, and I don't think it's a binary choice - but if forced to choose between the two I'd probably go with the monolithic status-quo machine (even though I'm extremely progressive and they hated us).
InitialLastName 5y ago
If your business is impossible to operate at its current scale pro-socially and without negative externalities, it doesn't get to operate at that scale. Share-holders don't have a natural right to profit off of societally destructive behavior.
dhimes 5y ago
They allowed it to grow past what they can control. They just didn't anticipate the risk.

I’ve work on similar sized systems that utilized a very large human workforce to verify models before release and to monitor/measure production models on a daily basis after release. There are ways to make it efficient.

ethbr0 5y ago

Know your customer rules are extremely costly for banks to implement, given the sheer numbers. But we mandate it because that's the world we want to live in. The real conversation here is about Alphabet and Facebook's margins. If they're not doing enough, they can spend more and do more.

philipov 5y ago

It would be costly, but I am confident that Google has the money. They just don't want to spend it, and I am not sympathetic to that.

alecbz 5y ago
The question is would it be so costly that YouTube's profitability would look significantly different, and at that point would Google want to keep running YouTube? I'm not sure, but I don't think the answer is that it obviously won't materially change YouTube's profitability.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  Well, it's better if they don't keep it running them. They have a monopoly on search, that they use to censor any competing video hosting. If they go and start censoring their own service too, this is a very serious problem.
- philipov 5y ago
  Youtube's value isn't as a profit center, but a way of keeping people inside Google's ad ecosystem. Its value is to dominate the video hosting market so that viable competitors can't rise up in its place. If Google can squeeze profit out, that's icing on the cake, but not the core reason why Google wants to hold on to Youtube. If the profitability of Youtube is on the table, then so should be antitrust, and Google should not be allowed to own it.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    > Youtube's value isn't as a profit center, but a way of keeping people inside Google's ad ecosystem. Even more important from Google's point of view is it was the way to push Chrome to dominance. And a way to keep it there ahead of any potential competitors. Which is valuable because of the data and ability to block ad blockers. That is, Google's ad ecosystem.
    - alecbz 5y ago
      > it was the way to push Chrome to dominance. How did YT push Chrome?
      - anamax 5y ago
        Microsoft abandoned their "not Chrome-based" Edge code base, despite the fact that it was significantly faster than Chrome on almost every other site, because of the way that YouTube does some layers. This "way" has no functional effect, but it does block certain optimizations, optimizations that Edge was using and Chrome still isn't. Google optimizes YT for Chromium-based renderers. Or rather, Google pessimizes YT for other renderers.
      - HWR_14 5y ago
        In 2009/2010 YouTube advertised Chrome as a better way to view YouTube videos pretty extensively. YouTube also is a moving target that other browsers have to hit (see also GoogleDocs.) It's similar to how "DOS ain't done until Lotus won't run", only with YouTube and other browsers.
simonh 5y ago
Youtube gets roughly 30,000 hours of content uploaded to it every hour. They'd need an army the size of all of Google, Apple and Facebook put together just to review it all.
- mopsi 5y ago
  How much of that remains if you don't review immediately, but when view count exceeds -- for example -- 100 views? I'd expect a dramatic drop from 30 000 hours.
- philipov 5y ago
  If you want to be so successful as to become one of the premier public forums in society, don't start crying when you're held up to the standards and expectations of other public institutions. Google, go get ye that army of moderators.
  - simonh 5y ago
    Employing that many people would likely cost in the region of Google's entire earnings. It would make Youtube, or any service like it, financially impossible for anyone to run. So sure, I'm not saying we need Youtube, but what you're saying is we can't have it or anything like it.
    - munk-a 5y ago
      I really appreciate YouTube's existence, but chances are a communal video streaming site that the entire world can trivially upload videos to should probably be a government run service if it exists at all. There are a plethora of much more conservatively sized video uploading sites that vet and have specific contracts with their content producers.
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      > Employing that many people would likely cost in the region of Google's entire earnings. It would cost 2.5% of their profits if they had an entire US workforce and every video needed to be viewed in its entirety.

munk-a 5y ago

If the oversight you provide as part of your service is unreasonably expensive then you probably shouldn't be in business - if you can't sanely moderate your platform then you also shouldn't be in business. I can rationally accept that argument as quite logical but I can also accept the fact that news papers ran classified ads for years and years without assisting terrorists by giving them a platform to coordinate attacks in plain text on - facebook comes along and suddenly the bar for obfuscated text is "r u rdy 4 the b0mb?" Companies that are providing such an amazingly affordable service because they're just skipping out on doing moderation don't get to use "Well, doing it the right way would be too expensive" as a defense - that's how you end up with Uber. Uber broke laws, Uber shouldn't exist at this point, something like Uber should exist, but Travis Kalanick should have been fined into near non-existence and not currently be sitting happy on 2.8 billion. We, as a society, need to have standards.

gruez 5y ago
>If the oversight you provide as part of your service is unreasonably expensive then you probably shouldn't be in business - if you can't sanely moderate your platform then you also shouldn't be in business. So you'd rather have the status quo of a few decades ago (ie. large media organizations acting as gatekeepers), rather than the democratized ecosystem we have now?
- munk-a 5y ago
  I mean, both have their glaring issues... but I think our modern system is worse. Independent news outlets didn't get a large readership but they did exist and people did express non-mainstream views in them - and while the main companies were definitely status quo aligned they attracted (and focused on attracting) actual journalists that occasionally broke stories that gave the editors headaches. In the absence of them being required to be the source of news (and due to competition from blogs running on a completely non-existent budget) they've focused more and more on advertiser revenue acquisition which really just only cares about the number of clicks you're getting. I'd prefer neither system, and I don't think it's a binary choice - but if forced to choose between the two I'd probably go with the monolithic status-quo machine (even though I'm extremely progressive and they hated us).

InitialLastName 5y ago

If your business is impossible to operate at its current scale pro-socially and without negative externalities, it doesn't get to operate at that scale. Share-holders don't have a natural right to profit off of societally destructive behavior.

dhimes 5y ago

They allowed it to grow past what they can control. They just didn't anticipate the risk.