YouTube bans comments on all videos of children

[Dezz]

6 hours ago, Syntaxvgm said:

so what if a kid walks in the background? what if it's something with highschool aged kids? What's the criteria? 

They delete your channel 

[mr moose]

52 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Before everyone burns Youtube at the stake, please read up a bit on why this is happening.

 

A few weeks ago, a channel called "MattsWhatItIs" posted a video called:

"Youtube is Facilitating the Sexual Exploitation of Children, and it's Being Monetized (2019)"

In the video, he talks about some channels on Youtube uploaded videos like children in bikinis, and those videos were monetized (just kids playing around, totally family friendly, right?). However, the comment section were filled with people linking to time stamps with more "explicit" things happens, like maybe a child is in some sexual pose or whatever.

 

So as any calm and rational people would do, Matt riled up a brigade of furious people and all of them started contacting advertisers, calling for a boycott of Youtube until the problem was solved. As a result, several major advertisers such as Disney, Nestle and Epic Games pulled all their ads on Youtube.

 

 

And this is Youtube's quick fix to the issue, which they were essentially forced to implement because of the call for boycotting Youtube.

 

 

I don't think people fully understand how massive Youtube is when they say they shouldn't implement widespread and generic policies.

300 hours of video are uploaded to Youtube EVERY MINUTE. On top of that Google gets about 1400 DMCA takedown notices every minute, and failure to comply with even a single one could potentially cost them billions of dollars in fines.

When you have 300 hours of video uploaded every single minute, 24 hours a day, and billions upon billions of viewers (5 billion videos are watched every day, if I recall correctly), there isn't really room for checking every single video and comment for context. It's easy to sit in your chair, look at a single video and go "this one is good, so it should be allowed", but it's hell of a lot harder to analyze 750 days worth of video every hour (yes, over a year worth of video is uploaded to Youtube every single hour).

 

 

And to top it all of, are these changes really that bad? I doubt that every single video featuring even a little bit of a child will get demonetized and comments disabled. My guess is that this filter will work on a more primitive level such as looking for keywords. Doing content analysis on video is not really possible, at least not on the scale of Youtube.

And should those types of videos actually be monetized and have comments enabled to begin with? I saw some vlogging mom on Twitter curse at Youtube because she could no longer monetize her videos of her child playing, or sleeping or whatever it was. Why even have that monetized to begin with!?

I don't really have an answer or opinion but in general I agree with this,  the internet is getting too big and too fast for society to handle.  At some point something has got to give or the whole thing will collapse. 

[Graham Carter]

29 minutes ago, mr moose said:

I don't really have an answer or opinion but in general I agree with this,  the internet is getting too big and too fast for society to handle.  At some point something has got to give or the whole thing will collapse. 

True, true, true!

But.... I like Big Buts And I cannot... wait another discussion for another poast  

 

Lets not focus on just the internet, this is becoming more of a social / governmental norm to just ban stuff when it gets scary or corrupted!

For example, Kids / minors were getting really ill on buying too many high caffeine drinks in this country.. governments reaction... make it illegal for them to buy said drinks!

 

Educate those directly or indirectly effected by any perversion of something... don't just ban it!

 

We as kids would get our wrists slapped if we dare reach up to the top shelf of a newsagents magazine rack, where all the titty mags were!  We were educated about it, the government didn't ban titty mags from being stocked!

[LAwLz]

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

I don't really have an answer or opinion but in general I agree with this,  the internet is getting too big and too fast for society to handle.  At some point something has got to give or the whole thing will collapse. 

To some degree I agree that the Internet has gotten too big too fast, but on the other hand I don't really think it has either.

I think the biggest problem are that people are in general really stupid, gullible, naive and view the Internet, and software in general, as dark magic.

 

Like I've seen some articles say that Youtube caters to pedophiles because if you watch a bunch of videos of bikini wearing children, you will get recommended videos of bikini wearing children. I don't view that as Youtube catering to pedos. I see that as a well written recommendation algorithm that is doing its job. To me it's the same as saying IKEA is catering to murderers because their kitchen knives are good for slicing meat. Both IKEA and Youtube has simply created tools for a specific job, and it just happens that their tools could be misused.

People seem to understand this when it comes to physical objects they are used to, like IKEA and their knives, but as soon as it has to do with computers it's like they believe there is a guy sitting at Google handpicking these recommendations with the sole purpose of being malicious and help criminals.

[williamcll]

This is going to kill a lot of junior youtube channels, such as toy reviews and game channels.

[Doobeedoo]

Would be great if parents would not give their kids a phone or a tablet as a babysitter for the entire day. Maybe monitor your child a bit. The YT 4 kidz meme also haha. 

But yeah, a channel may get banne because of comments, also on Twitch same thing, if people say bad things and you don't moderate it you can get banned. I've noticed these two platforms having more of same rules to a degree. 

[ADM-Ntek]

and what is the point of that it wont make the pedos go away you just cant see them anymore. 

[Teddy07]

I hate children so I don´t watch it anyways

[kuddlesworth9419]

Something had to be done and this was the quickest and best way to get it done.

[ADM-Ntek]

5 minutes ago, kuddlesworth9419 said:

Something had to be done and this was the quickest and best way to get it done.

quick yes best no.

[poochyena]

7 hours ago, LAwLz said:

"Youtube is Facilitating the Sexual Exploitation of Children, and it's Being Monetized (2019)"

That is such a misrepresentation of what is happening. Children aren't being exploited, its just people finding videos and getting off to them.

 

2 hours ago, kuddlesworth9419 said:

Something had to be done

No it didn't.

[LAwLz]

6 hours ago, mr moose said:

the internet is getting too big and too fast for society to handle.  At some point something has got to give or the whole thing will collapse. 

4 hours ago, LAwLz said:

To some degree I agree that the Internet has gotten too big too fast, but on the other hand I don't really think it has either.

I think the biggest problem are that people are in general really stupid, gullible, naive and view the Internet, and software in general, as dark magic.

 

Found a really interesting transcript of a talk Clay Shirky did in 2003 regarding social media (when it was a new thing). I highly recommend you read it @mr moose.

 

I think it hits the nail on the head on a lot of things and explain a lot off the behavior of things like anti-vaxx movements and other movements on social media. It makes a very compelling argument that it's not the Internet that's a problem. It's that humans are not capable of handling such rapid mass communication that social media has enabled.

 

Great extract from the talk which mirrors this Youtube situation quite well:

Quote

And the adults who had set up Communitree were horrified, and overrun by these students. The place that was founded on open access had too much open access, too much openness. They couldn't defend themselves against their own users. The place that was founded on free speech had too much freedom. They had no way of saying "No, that's not the kind of free speech we meant."

 

But that was a requirement. In order to defend themselves against being overrun, that was something that they needed to have that they didn't have, and as a result, they simply shut the site down.

 

Now you could ask whether or not the founders' inability to defend themselves from this onslaught, from being overrun, was a technical or a social problem. Did the software not allow the problem to be solved? Or was it the social configuration of the group that founded it, where they simply couldn't stomach the idea of adding censorship to protect their system. But in a way, it doesn't matter, because technical and social issues are deeply intertwined. There's no way to completely separate them.

 

What matters is, a group designed this and then was unable, in the context they'd set up, partly a technical and partly a social context, to save it from this attack from within. And attack from within is what matters. Communitree wasn't shut down by people trying to crash or syn-flood the server. It was shut down by people logging in and posting, which is what the system was designed to allow. The technological pattern of normal use and attack were identical at the machine level, so there was no way to specify technologically what should and shouldn't happen. Some of the users wanted the system to continue to exist and to provide a forum for discussion. And other of the users, the high school boys, either didn't care or were actively inimical. And the system provided no way for the former group to defend itself from the latter.

 

[dtaflorida]

I actually like this news. I'd love to see this expanded to all videos. They could turn off comments on all videos and for me nothing will have been lost. I would like it if the video's description was always expanded too with the absence of comments to display they've got no reason to collapse that section, it's more useful to me than the comments.

 

Thumbs up, thumbs down, subscribe. Could lead to more 'reaction' videos to replace commenting tho. 

[JoeCoke]

13 hours ago, Bcat00 said:

Their platform their rule, live with it or move onto something else

You say that as if we have other options.

[BuckGup]

Fire the CEO plz

[Bcat00]

1 hour ago, 2Buck said:

You say that as if we have other options.

Everyone has options in life, this is one thing a lot of people can’t grasp

[JoeCoke]

20 minutes ago, Bcat00 said:

Everyone has options in life, this is one thing a lot of people can’t grasp

Well, let's hear the options then.

 

There are no other options. Use any other platform and you'll get no views. If you want to be a successful content creator, you have no choice but to post your content on Youtube. Google has a monopoly. And if you're going to say "it's simple if people just started using another platform this problem would go away", don't.

 

1. The vast majority of people won't comply, they won't care.

 

2. We'll just end up with ANOTHER company with a monopoly. It doesn't really solve anything.

[Bcat00]

54 minutes ago, 2Buck said:

Well, let's hear the options then.

 

There are no other options. Use any other platform and you'll get no views. If you want to be a successful content creator, you have no choice but to post your content on Youtube. Google has a monopoly. And if you're going to say "it's simple if people just started using another platform this problem would go away", don't.

 

1. The vast majority of people won't comply, they won't care.

 

2. We'll just end up with ANOTHER company with a monopoly. It doesn't really solve anything.

Here’s a simple one, do something else in life

[JoeCoke]

1 hour ago, Bcat00 said:

Here’s a simple one, do something else in life

So in other words, look the other way. Oh yeah, great solution.

[Bcat00]

12 minutes ago, 2Buck said:

So in other words, look the other way. Oh yeah, great solution.

And why not, it is their platform. 

Youtube owes its creators nothing in terms of obligation. It's open, use it if you like their terms and not if you don't. 

You don't just waltz into someone's property and start making demands on their turf.

[dtaflorida]

16 minutes ago, Bcat00 said:

You don't just waltz into someone's property and start making demands on their turf.

 

Unless you're an advertiser with money.

[BetterThanLife]

I don't understand really, but it is better than completely removing the video i guess?

[alicskysareblue]

Stop lumping pedophiles in with minority groups. Seriously its insulting

 

Haveing said that I dont blame youtube for this knee jerk reaction I DO blame them for how they implemnt it.

 

[JoeCoke]

1 hour ago, Bcat00 said:

And why not, it is their platform. 

Youtube owes its creators nothing in terms of obligation. It's open, use it if you like their terms and not if you don't. 

You don't just waltz into someone's property and start making demands on their turf.

Of course it's their platform and they can do whatever they want, etc. etc. etc.

 

But don't say there are "other options" when there aren't, because that's a lie. You tell it like I can just go over to Google's competitor and use their services instead. Google basically owns the internet, we are practically forced to use their services. Of course we don't have the right to force Google to improve their platform, nobody said that, but we have the right to be vocal about what we dislike.

 

(To be clear, I'm not angry with Youtube's decision here, honestly I wish those videos weren't even allowed on the platform because children are too young to understand what it means to put themselves out on the internet. What I am concerned with is, where do you draw the line? This is gonna start a slippery slope and before you know it comments will be removed all together.)

[mr moose]

12 hours ago, Graham Carter said:

Lets not focus on just the internet, this is becoming more of a social / governmental norm to just ban stuff when it gets scary or corrupted!

 

It's actually always happened throughout history, it's just that the internet is the biggest single effector of modern society and the thing most of us are personally attached to so we notice it more.  But the government of the day has been handing out bans and changing laws to adapt to technological advances since governments became a thing.

11 hours ago, LAwLz said:

 

I think the biggest problem are that people are in general really stupid, gullible, naive and view the Internet, and software in general, as dark magic.

 

That sums up people in general throughout history.  The same thing happened during the industrial revolution (specifically with the development of the railways).   The trains made it possible for people to disappear both criminals and victims.   A development occurred that ran away too fast for the society to keep up with (for the people who developed it, the police of the day and those who use/abuse it).

 

History has shown us that the two methods generally used to resolves such issues are either that new tech is developed to counter the issue or the issue is controlled through authoritarian policy.  Some times both.

 

Having watch politicians try to deal with technology today (amongst many other social issues) and comparing it to 50, 100 and 200 years ago, not much has changed.  They either have an agenda, don't have the tools, or the solution is unpopular.  Regardless, institutions of corporate/government control can't really win.